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Dans-Prosemaxx-Cowriter-XL

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[ { "from": "system", "value": "Today you will be acting as a writing assistant, your partner will send something and you will write the next 11 sentences. The story may reference existing characters and events - incorporate them as presented." }, { "from": "human", "value": "At sunset above the plains of Kwaalon, on a dark, high terrace balanced on a glittering black swirl of architecture forming a relatively microscopic part of the equatorial Girdlecity of Xown, Vyr Cossont – Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont, to give her her full title – sat, performing part of T. C. Vilabier's 26th String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, catalogue number MW 1211, on one of the few surviving examples of the instrument developed specifically to play the piece, the notoriously difficult, temperamental and tonally challenged Antagonistic Undecagonstring – or elevenstring, as it was commonly known." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'cossont' 3 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "T. C. Vilabier's 26th String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, MW 1211, was more usually known as \"The Hydrogen Sonata\".\n\nThe elevenstring was an acoustic instrument – usually bowed though occasionally plucked – of considerable antiquity and even more notable size. Standing over two metres tall, one metre across and more than one and a half deep, it required its player both to straddle it and to sit within it; poised on the small saddle forming part of the base of the hollow around which the rest of the instrument bulked like a giant deformed ring, the player used both legs to create two-thirds of a supporting tripod for the instrument, the final third being formed by a single spar protruding from its base like an inelegantly substantial walking stick.\n\nThe first examples had been made of wood, though later versions had been constructed of plastic, metal, grown shell and artificial bone; the one Vyr Cossont owned and was playing was mostly carbon fibre, which had long been the most common and traditional material.\n\nCossont reached the end of one particularly taxing section of the piece and took a rest. She stretched her back, flexed her aching feet inside her slippers – the elevenstring required that its player use two small pedals to tamp certain strings, while their heels balanced the weight of both player and instrument – and placed the instrument's two bows across the front of the little saddle she sat on.\n\nCossont scanned the skies above the terrace, where some streaky pink and orange clouds stood out against the darkening blue of evening. Two kilometres beneath, the Kwaalon plains were already night black, not a light showing between the last canted cliff of the Girdlecity and the far, flat horizon. A cooling wind moved across the terrace, moaning through banister wires, whistling as it curled round Cossont's flier – parked twenty metres away on its own tripod of skinny legs – and making the girl herself shiver once in her thin trews and jacket.\n\nShe shifted some wind-loosened hair out of her eyes and kept gazing up and around. A kilometres-distant smudge might be a flock of birds; her familiar, Pyan, was probably flying with them, playing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her eyes strained, magnifying the view as best they could; she could feel rings of tiny muscles warping the lenses in each eye, while other filaments altered the shape of her foveae. Were those birds – and of the right species? But the distance was too great. There might be a larger dark shape mixed in with the flock, but there might not. Even if there was, it might just be a larger bird being mobbed.\n\nThere was probably some local system she could ask to find out and quite possibly one or more of the flock would be augmented or entirely artificial, allowing her, in theory, to interrogate them regarding her familiar's whereabouts, but she had grown used, lately, to such systems either not working at all or not working properly – like pretty much all systems everywhere, throughout the Gzilt civilisation, from what she could gather. And anyway, she found it hard to be sufficiently bothered. She also knew better than to try talking to the creature at such moments unless there was some genuinely dire emergency; Pyan, in the end, was its own being, not her property. Sometimes she wondered if it was even her friend.\n\nShe sighed, stretched her arms out and loosely shook all four hands, as though trying to free them from something sticky.\n\nShe arched her back again; it had become stiff during the last quarter of an hour or so as she'd tackled the demanding middle section of the work." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She stood carefully, holding on to the neck of the elevenstring with one hand, lifting the two bows with another, running a third hand through her hair and picking her nose with her fourth." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The elevenstring ideally required its player to have four hands." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It could be played by two people, though this required some serious coordination and sometimes fancy footwork, and almost all the pieces written for it, including the Hydrogen Sonata, could be performed adequately by a string trio plus a couple of suitably tuned basses, but to be played as it was intended to be, Vilabier The Younger's most famous composition really required the bodily acoustic Antagonistic Undecagonstring for four hands, and a single, dextrous instrumentalist." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The instrument, like the work, was near impossible to play acceptably, let alone perfectly, yet one demanded the other and the great Antagonistic Undecagonstringists (only a handful in the near millieon since the piece was written) had, allegedly, played and – even more annoyingly, as far as Cossont was concerned – left recordings of the complete work, to show it could be done.\n\nCossont was acknowledged as a gifted instrumentalist with a particular feeling for ancient string instruments – she had been one of the top five Volupt players in all Gzilt, and was now the single greatest, though admittedly only because the other four were all Stored, awaiting the Sublime – but she was beginning to despair of accomplishing her self-assumed life-task before her whole civilisation simply ceased to be in the Real and she and everyone she knew and loved took, rejoicing, to the metaphorical skies of the Sublime. Playing the Hydrogen Sonata once, note perfect, straight through, without a break save for the few seconds between individual movements; that was Vyr's chosen life-task. It only sounded easy if you knew nothing of either the Sonata or the elevenstring. As far as she was concerned, the Subliming couldn't come fast enough.\n\nTwenty-three days to the big moment now. Twenty-three days to do all the other things she might want to do before the Ultimate Enfold or whatever people were calling it these days and still get this appallingly long, complicated and player-unfriendly piece nailed to her own satisfaction, never mind anybody else's.\n\nShe doubted she'd make it. She had even started thinking of giving up entirely, beginning to agree with those who held that life-tasks weren't really about accomplishing anything beyond the passing of time before all such tasks, ambitions, goals and aspirations became – supposedly – laughably irrelevant and petty.\n\n\"Flier,\" she said, inspecting the end of one finger, flicking it to remove what was on the tip, then rubbing her back with the same hand, \"is Pyan with those birds?\" She pointed.\n\nThe two-seat flier, a chunky little aircraft with stubby wings, made a show of waking up, turning lights on in the hinged-open cockpit." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes,\" it told her, through her earbud." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Find a natural way to mention that Do you want me to summon it?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Do you want me to summon it?\"\n\n\"Not yet,\" she said, sighing again. \"Can you send up that – you know – your... that little—\"\n\n\"My minidrone.\"\n\n\"That's the fella. Keep an eye on it. In case it's not listening when we... \" Her voice trailed off as she swayed from side to side, stretching. She shook a couple of her hands again, tucked the instrument bows under one arm and started trying to push the loosened strands of her hair back into its band. \"Weather?\" she asked, as a small hatch opened along the flier's dorsal bulge and a tiny version of the machine buzzed into the air, turning and zipping off towards where she'd seen the distant flock of birds. The minidrone was visible for just a few seconds, illuminated mostly by the hazy light reflecting from the Girdlecity's upper reaches, the nearest few hundred horizontal kilometres of which still shone in the sunlight like some vast tracery of silver and gold wrapped across the sky.\n\n\"Cooling at a degree every fifty minutes,\" the flier told her. \"Wind variable but increasing to an average of 18 km/h, gusting twenty-five, backing west-north-west.\"\n\nCossont frowned, gazing north-west across the plains to some far, shadow-dark mountains, then looked back at the sloped cliff of Girdlecity behind her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The vast structure was a steep-sided upheaval of semi-exotic metal tubes and facings, curved and sweeping walls of synthetic stone dresswork, swirled patterns of diamond-film windows and whole stretched filigrees of carbon-black cabling, the entire confusion of pierced architectures rising almost straight up to its bright, curved, horizon-to-horizon summit, nearly two hundred kilometres above and arguably, if not technically, in space." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She did something she had only taken to doing recently when she was on or in the Girdlecity; she just stood looking, waiting to see some movement. There wasn't any. There rarely was, these days. Sometimes she felt like the only person still alive and un-Stored in the whole world.\n\nLooking between the various local components of the Girdlecity, Cossont could see sky and clouds on the far side of the colossal artefact, perhaps fifty kilometres away; the sky was brighter to the south, the clouds wispier. The degree of Through here – the proportion of architecture to open air – was about fifty per cent, meaning that winds had an unusually good chance of blowing straight through.\n\n\"That might work,\" she muttered.\n\nCossont rubbed at her back again. The Gzilt conventionally possessed the humanoid-normal complement of arms – two, according to most authorities – and the alterations required to provide Vyr with twice the average while retaining the desired qualities of litheness and flexibility had meant leaving her with a spine that was prone to seizing up if left stressed too long in the one position.\n\n\"Mind if I sleep?\" the flier asked.\n\n\"No; you sleep,\" Cossont said, flapping one hand at the aircraft as she inspected the elevenstring's tuning keys and machine heads. \"Wait till I need you. Going comms down myself,\" she said, clicking at the earbud that controlled the relevant implants." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The flier switched off its lights, hinged the cockpit closed and went quiet and dark.\n\nAlone again, in a pocket of silence as the wind dropped and all went still, Cossont paused for a moment. She looked up into the blue-black sky with its tinily pointed spray of stars and sat-light, and wondered what it would really be like to be Sublimed, to have gone through with it, to be living on this reputedly fabulously and unarguably real Other Side.\n\nThe Gzilt had been living with the idea of Subliming for centuries, generations. At first only a few people had thought it would be a good idea; then, gradually, over time, more and more had. Eventually you had the sort of numbers that would make the whole thing work, because to do it properly required serious numbers – preferably a whole civilisation.\n\nIn theory an individual could Sublime, but in practice only solitary AIs ever did, successfully. It took something as complex and self-referentially perfect as a high-level AI to have the cohesion to stand up to the Sublime alone; no normal biological individual could – you just evaporated in there. It was not utter annihilation – all the information you brought with you remained – but the persona, the individual as a functioning, identifiable and distinctive entity – that was gone. Civilisations, and the individuals within those civilisations, survived and flourished in the Sublime over galactically significant periods of time, though they gradually changed beyond comprehension.\n\nThat, though, would have happened anyway, had those societies stayed in the Real, and all the research and comparisons and experts and statistics agreed that there was orders-of-magnitude more stability in the Sublime than in the realm of mere matter and energy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont sighed. She had no idea why she was staring up at the sky to think about all this." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Sublime, like some ideas of God or whatever, was all around. She inspected the end of one of her upper-arm fingers. The tip was callused with wear from trying to control the strings of the elevenstring. The Sublime might as well be in the ridges of hardened skin on the end of her finger as up in the sky.\n\nParcelled, rolled, compressed and enfolded into the dimensions beyond the dimensions beyond the ones you could see and understand; that was where the Sublime was, and it was a maze-like series of right-angle turns away from this, from normal, three-dimensional reality where she stood on a high platform at sunset, thinking about it.\n\nCossont had a hard enough time really comprehending hyperspace, the fourth dimension, let alone the next three or four that somehow encompassed the Reality and allowed for nested universes to climb away from the universe-creating singularity at the centre of things and either circle back round some immense cosmic doughnut to be re-compacted and born again, or radiate away into whatever it was that surrounded this mind-boggling ultra-universe.\n\nAnd the Sublimed lay in dimensions beyond even that; unutterably microscopic, unassailably far away but at the same time everywhere, shot through the fabric of space-time not so much like the individual fibres of this metaphorical weave, or their tiniest filaments or their molecules or their atoms or their sub-atomic particles but – pointedly – like the infinitesimal strings that made up those, that made up everything. In dimensions seven to eleven; that was where the Sublimed lay.\n\nAnd that, of course, was why the elevenstring had eleven strings; it had first been designed all of ten thousand years ago, but even then people had had an inkling about how all this far-reaches-of-reality stuff worked, and artists had thought to incorporate something of these revelations into their own fields, including musical composition. Why the extra internal, resonating strings were there as well – up to thirteen of them, in addition to the ones that could be accessed from the outside of the instrument – she still wasn't entirely sure. They were a bastard to tune but it was somehow only appropriate to the awkward, obstructive character of the elevenstring that, despite its name, it actually had more than eleven strings." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The wind picked up, soughing across the platform." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A few hairs blew across her face. She tucked them back firmly.\n\nEighteen kinds of weather. Of all the things she'd heard about the Sublime, throughout all the attempts people had made to explain what it was like in any meaningful way, that was the one detail she could remember. It had eighteen different types of weather, not one. She wasn't even sure what this really meant, let alone whether it was genuinely an improvement on reality.\n\nShe took a few deep breaths, readying herself to sit within the instrument and start playing, but still wasn't quite ready. She kept thinking back to an encounter earlier that evening, shortly after the flier had brought her here from her home, a couple of thousand kilometres away in a part of the Girdlecity still partially inhabited, to this part, overlooking the plains of Kwaalon, where, as far as she knew, there was nobody living at all, not for tens of klicks in any direction.\n\nShe preferred solitude when she played the elevenstring.\n\nEven before she'd opened the cockpit canopy, Pyan had noticed some birds in the distance and asked permission to go and play with them.\n\nShe'd sighed, said yes; the creature had unfastened itself from round her neck and flapped off." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She'd hoisted the elevenstring's case from the rear seats of the flier, gone to open it, then, on a whim, changed her mind, told the flier to watch over the case – and immediately felt stupid; who did she think she was protecting it from?" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to use 'their' 3 time(s) throughout your message" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "– and had gone for a stroll in the Girdlecity.\n\nIt was dark inside, and chilly. In most places, a few lights would come on automatically, sensing her movement or the heat of her body; in other stretches she had to rely on her eyes alone, nano-enhancement ramping up what little light there was into a grainy ghost-scape. The air grew colder; her jacket and trews slowly puffed up, keeping her warm. She walked along broad corridors and walkways overhanging deep, echoing, unlit spaces, past arcades and giant pipes, girder work and bowled auditoria, listening to her footsteps echo amongst the gloom.\n\nThe great world-circling Girdlecity.\n\nMany Gzilt looked upon it as something they could be proud to leave behind when they Sublimed – a monument to their genius, vision and power – conveniently forgetting that they hadn't actually built it. They'd spent thousands of years building on and within the vast structure and had added significantly to it, but the original structure, and the concept of it, had not been theirs at all.\n\nThe Girdlecity had been built by the Werpesh, an ancient humanoid species themselves long-Sublimed. The Gzilt had fallen heir to it, the planet it braceleted and the system itself – along with several other stellar systems – eleven thousand years ago, but despite their long association with, protection of and work on the Girdlecity, the original credit lay elsewhere.\n\nStill, they had cared for it all that time, made it their own in some sense, and, if nothing else, had laid down a marker for its guardianship in the future." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Near the centre of what had been a residential area, long abandoned, she came upon an old school with its cargo of the Stored." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A stacked landscape of barely glowing white boxes, registering as a little above ambient temperature, were arranged within what had been the playground. More gently glowing heat was visible radiating from inside the building itself, and the ceiling of the great vault above glowed even more faintly with reflected or convected warmth. Dead trees stood, skeletal.\n\nA guard arbite near the locked school gates unfolded itself from its resting ball shape and drew itself up to its full three-metre height, an exaggerated human shape all glittering angles and obvious weapon pods. It looked intimidating, like it was supposed to. Even from a few metres away, it gave the impression of towering over her. Vyr was suddenly aware of how very un-military her jacket was; it had an image emblazoned on it of a dung-chomp/smutter band she'd played electric volupt for, years ago. The Lords of Excrement – complete with their colourful if wince-inducing logo – had seemed a dubious, going-on-childish name even twenty years ago, yet the jacket had remained a favourite because it reminded her of a good time in her life. It was one of the few she'd had altered to accommodate her new set of arms.\n\n\"Citizen,\" the arbite said, then must have identified her from some processing she had with her – probably her earbud. \"Reserve Lieutenant Commander,\" it corrected itself, and saluted." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Just taking a stroll, arbite,\" she told the machine.\n\nIt remained motionless, seemed to think about this, then without another word folded itself back into its resting sphere-shape with a sort of metallically oiled grace. Compacted, it looked like a piece of sculpture.\n\nShe wandered on, and encountered the family by the side of another great drop, where a broad roadway hung over one of the hundred-metre-wide open-work tunnels that threaded their way through the Girdlecity. The man and the woman were huddled round a little fire, its light reflecting off the wall of diamond-film wall lining the roadway.\n\n\"Good evening,\" she said to them, looking quizzically at the fire, which was just a small stack of burning logs. More cut lengths of tree were heaped just beyond where they sat. Both looked up at her, unsmiling. They were dressed for outdoors and looked slightly unkempt. Cossont couldn't see anything to identify them. Her implants were unable to sense anything electronic on them either, which was most unusual." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Their faces were smudged." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She wanted to march them both off to the nearest working shower and get them cleaned up.\n\n\"Evening,\" the man said, then looked away and poked at the fire with a stick. The woman seemed to be muttering something to herself, talking down into her voluminous hiking jacket. Perhaps she was just on the phone to somebody, Cossont thought, though somehow it didn't feel like she was, not if her own implants couldn't find anything to hand-shake with.\n\nCossont was about to ask them whether they were wanderers, locals out for a stroll, or what, when a little face peeked out from within the woman's jacket, stared up wide-eyed at her, and then disappeared again with a rustle of clothing. The woman looked up at Cossont with an expression at once wary and defiant.\n\nIt took Cossont a moment or two to realise.\n\nShe was so used to thinking of herself as part of the Last Generation, the last people to be born before people stopped having babies, she wasn't sure what she was looking at initially. A toy? had been her first thought.\n\n\"You have a child!\" she said, taking a step closer to the woman and going down on her haunches, her face level with the other woman's, her hand going out towards her, then withdrawing again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The woman smiled, seemed to talk into her jacket again. \"Chuje,\" she said softly, \"say hello to the lady.\"\n\nThe little face peeked out again. A child; a real child – as far as she could tell – maybe four or five years old. A girl. She looked very serious as she stared at Cossont, who said, \"Hello, Chuje.\"\n\n\"Allo,\" the child said, then bit her lip and hid away again within the folds of the woman's jacket.\n\nCossont stared at the woman. The man was sitting closer now, looking over both of them. \"She's—\" Cossont began.\n\n\"Ours,\" the woman said. \"Three and a half.\" Pride, this time, as well as suspicion and defiance." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The girl looked out at Cossont again, then, still watching Cossont, cuddled into her mother, and was cuddled back.\n\nCossont sat back, her mouth open. She tore her gaze away from the deep, dark eyes of the little girl, looked at both her parents. \"So, you're not... \"\n\n\"We're not going,\" the man said.\n\nNot going. Not Subliming when the time came in twenty-three days from now, when the Stored all over Xown and Zyse and throughout every other planet and moon and habitat and ship of the Gzilt were roused for their pre-waking, and the last few hours before the Subliming itself.\n\nCossont knew there were people like these, people determined for whatever reason not to Sublime along with everybody else, and she had even met one or two – though she'd always thought that they would change their minds when the time came – but she had never met anyone who had had a child as well.\n\nThe convention – it was not quite a law, but it was close to one – was that you did not take a child into the Sublime. It had to be a mature, considered, final action for a civilisation and the individuals within it who were ready to go, who had thought about it fully and had decided they were ready to make the transition. The Gzilt considered children to be unable to give their informed consent on something so important, which meant they regarded taking a child with you as something close to abuse.\n\nSo, generally, people had stopped having children." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'children' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A few, a very few, were born, nevertheless, to parents who still intended to Sublime, but those making that choice, especially with young children, were widely treated as pariahs; most had retreated to communities of the similarly inclined in distant habs.\n\nCossont found herself staring at the young couple. They were very young, she thought. Maybe ten years younger than her – they must have been barely more than children themselves when the child had been born. \"It'll be lonely,\" she told them.\n\n\"It's already lonely,\" the man said.\n\nThe woman said, \"We know,\" at the same time.\n\n\"Yes,\" Cossont said, feeling foolish. \"I suppose you know that.\" She smiled apologetically at them.\n\n\"She's our future,\" the man said, nodding down towards the child." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont nodded, wondering what sort of future it would be." }, { "from": "human", "value": "No other species/civ would accept that the few per cent of the Gzilt who remained after the Sublimation would constitute a continuance of that civilisation." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "All the Gzilt's deserted living places, from the home planet of Zyse itself to the smallest hab and ship, would be regarded as fair game for takeover, absorption, appropriation. Xown itself, due to the fact it was home to the Girdlecity, was earmarked for pan-cultural monument status under the care of one of the Galactic Council's Neutral Foundations. Nobody would get expelled or thrown out of any habitat airlocks, but their worlds would fill up, sooner or later, with others; some humanoid, some not, but all aliens, all outsiders.\n\nYou couldn't even delay very long if you did change your mind and decide to go after everybody else. The rate of subjective/absolute change within the first few hours that people spent inside the Sublime was such that leaving it much more than an hour or so was risky; you'd get there and be isolated, those who had made the transition just hours before – whether they'd been close friends, lovers, family, identical twins, clones, whatever – would already have become so changed, so ascended in complexity, that you would have virtually nothing in common. You'd be on your own, or part of a hopelessly small group, effectively contextless, unanchored to anything greater than yourself, and so likely just to evaporate, dissolving into the generality of the fabric of the Sublime, meaningless.\n\nIt was unknown whether this phenomenon was something intrinsic to the exotic physics and other fundamental natural laws of the Sublime itself, or a rule imposed by those who inhabited the realm and helped enable the transition of people and civilisations. Various civs had conducted research into the subject and confirmed the effect without pinning down the cause. Perhaps a little of each, seemed to be the tentative consensus, which was not entirely helpful.\n\n\"We're not Resist or anything,\" the woman said suddenly. She was staring at the flashes on Cossont's jacket collar." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Resist were the people who were militant Stay-behinders, holding demonstrations, instigating civil disobedience and even now arguing before the Galactic Council that the Sublime was illegal, improperly mandated. A few groups on the fringe of the Resist movement had used violence to try to make their point.\n\n\"Just civilians,\" the man said.\n\nCossont nodded again. The couple had resigned their ranks, whatever they had been. It happened. It made you poor – it was tantamount to taking a religious vow of poverty – though being poor in a post-scarcity society that only retained money as a sort of ceremonial formality was not so terrible; it took only one person of nominally average means to support any number of those requiring alms. It also tended to make you an object of either grumbling suspicion or grudging admiration, depending.\n\nThe little girl had come further out from her mother's jacket and was staring at Cossont now, her wide eyes reflecting the flickering orange firelight, her hands playing with a small toy, turning it over and over in her chubby, grubby hands.\n\n\"Can I hold her?\" Cossont said suddenly, looking first at the woman, then the man.\n\n\"No,\" the man said quickly, as the mother put an arm round the child, as though protecting her from Cossont. \"We don't allow that,\" the man continued." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Too many people want to touch her, hold her.\" He shrugged. \"She stopped liking it.\" He glanced around the cavernous space they were in. \"Part of the reason we're out here.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" the woman said to Cossont, but kept her arm where it was.\n\n\"Understand,\" Cossont said. She smiled as best she could. She looked at all three of them, smiled broadly at the child, then stood slowly. \"I have to go,\" she said. \"Best of luck.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" the man said.\n\n\"You going that way?\" she asked, pointing the way she had come." }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'again' exactly 2 times in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The man looked wary again, just shrugged.\n\n\"If you are,\" she said, \"there's a Store site in an old school; combat arbite guarding it. Shouldn't cause you any trouble, but... just so you're not alarmed.\" She smiled once more.\n\nThe woman nodded. The child disappeared into the folds of her mother's jacket again.\n\n\"Nice to meet you,\" Cossont said.\n\n\"You too,\" the man said. \"Goodbye.\"\n\n\"Take care,\" she told them.\n\nThe woman just nodded.\n\nCossont turned and walked away, into the deepening shadows of the vast construction. The pale, meagre light of the fire, enhanced by her augmented eyes, lit the way for a while.\n\nIt might not even be a real child, she told herself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It might be a sophisticated toy, or one of the new artificial children they'd brought out for those who felt the need for a child's company – little robots, basically. A screen programme she'd watched had shown one you'd have sworn was a real child, but wasn't. Apparently they even smelled right.\n\nMaybe such robots didn't feel right; too heavy or too hard to the touch. Perhaps that was why they hadn't let her hold it.\n\nThe combat arbite came alive again as she passed by. It stood again but this time kept silent and just saluted.\n\nCossont shook her head, flexed her shoulders and back one more time, then rotated the instrument so that it faced across the freshening wind. She took up the two bows and, with a single swift, graceful movement, sat within the instrument again, settling her backside and both feet into place, taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out as she started playing a few practice scales. Almost immediately, a small gust of wind spilled across the terrace and made the external resonating back-strings, stretched down the rear of the instrument, thrum quietly. The sound – not discordant, which with an elevenstring was always a bonus (some would say a surprise) – was muffled and quickly died away again with the departing breeze, but nevertheless drew an \"Ah-ha\" from her as she flexed her double set of shoulders, adjusted her grip on the two three-sided bows and prepared to play." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She'd try the second-last section of the Hydrogen Sonata; she had yet to get this right in a single pass. It was a tough part and not what she wanted to do, but she'd never get anywhere if she only did the easy stuff. The second-last section was fast and furious – even angry.\n\nShe'd think of her mother. That might help.\n\n\"I mean, look at you!\"\n\nShe looked at herself; first just down, then at her reflection in the black mirror formed by the blanked-out glass wall of the main bedroom unit. She shrugged. This was a particularly graceful movement when you had four arms, she thought. \"What?\" she asked her mother, frowning.\n\nWarib just looked at her daughter. Vyr checked her own reflection again. What she could see was a tallish Gzilt girl dressed in neat fatigues; dark grey skin with shoulder-length pale hair above broader than normal – but hardly grotesque – shoulders." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Top set of arms a little longer and better defined than the additional set, a healthily substantial chest, a fashionably defined waist and the broad hips of a non-mammalian humanoid." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her legs were a little shorter and her back a little longer than the conventional image of Gzilt perfection, but who cared? Arguably, the four-arm look was all the better for that; it sort of balanced.\n\nHer mother made an exasperated noise.\n\nVyr squinted. Was there some detail she was missing? She was in her mum's apartment and so in relatively unfamiliar territory, but she knew there would be a proper mirror-reverser unit around somewhere, probably in the blacked-out bedroom unit, where Warib's latest lover was apparently still asleep.\n\nVyr looked at her mother. \"What?\" she said again, mystified.\n\nWarib spoke through clenched teeth. \"You know perfectly well,\" she said.\n\nWarib was dressed in a long and elegantly gauzy morning gown that looked impractical enough to be genuinely expensive. She was a more willowy version of her daughter with longer and thicker hair; physically she was effectively ageing backwards and would do so until they all Sublimed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her daughter had already passed the age when people usually started to control their appearance, but only by a few years, and Vyr had anyway decided some time ago that she would just get older naturally for the time that she had left, given that the big kablooey of transcendent smashingness that was the Subliming would be along soon to make this life and everything in it seem irrelevant and feeble and so on and such like." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She'd been mildly astonished that her mother seemed to take her daughter looking older than she did as some sort of rebuke." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It had been the same when she'd become a Lieutenant Commander." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to seamlessly include 'You've always got to try to be different, haven't you, Vyr?' in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She'd thought Warib would be proud of her; instead she was upset that – however technically, and regardless of the fact it didn't really mean anything – her own daughter now outranked her.\n\n\"Is it the arms?\" she said, waving all four. Beyond Warib, the view through the windows of the apartment showed sea sliding slowly past. Her mother lived on a klicks-long superliner endlessly circling the enclosed coast of the Pinicoln Sea, within Land, the single vast continent that made up most of Zyse.\n\n\"Of course it's the arms!\" Warib told her. She grimaced as though she'd just tasted something bitter, and shook her head. \"And don't try to be funny, Vyr, it's not within your reach.\"\n\nVyr smiled. \"Well, I wasn't, though that is almost—\"\n\n\"You've always got to try to be different, haven't you, Vyr?\" her mother said, though it wasn't really pitched as a question. \" 'Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!' \" she sang with what was probably meant to be sarcasm, wobbling her head and doing a little dance." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well—\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You've taken great delight in trying to embarrass me ever since you were little.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vyr frowned. \"I'm not sure I ever formulated that as a specific ambi—\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You started trying to make my life hell when you were still wetting your pants.\"\n\n\"... probably more of a happy acci—\"\n\n\"That's what you used to do, in fact; take your knickers down and pee in front of my guests. How do you think that made me look? At parties. In front of some very important people!\"\n\n\"So you've said, more than once, but remember I checked the house records and—\"\n\n\"Your father and I deleted those, they were so embarrassing.\"\n\n\"Hmm. But the amendments files—\"\n\n\"How can you disbelieve your own mother?\" Warib wailed, putting her elegantly manicured hands up to her glossily perfect face and letting her head drop forward. The tone of voice and gesture were both cues that she would shortly start to screech and sob were the point not conceded.\n\n\"Anyway,\" Vyr said patiently. \"The point now is—\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'invite' exactly 3 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That how can I invite you to my party when you look like that!\" Warib said, flinging one arm out towards her daughter and almost shrieking the last word. \"A freak!\"\n\n\"The arms?\" Vyr said, just to be sure.\n\n\"Of course the fucking arms!\" her mother roared.\n\nVyr scratched her head. \"Well, so, don't invite me,\" she said, trying to sound reasonable.\n\nWarib took a deep, measured breath. \"How,\" she said, her voice lowered to the sort of whispered, husky tone that indicated Vyr's last question had been so idiotic it had scarcely been worth wasting breath on at all, \"can I not invite you when you're my daughter and I'm supposed to be proud of you?\" Her voice started to rise again. \"What will people think then? What?\"\n\n\"So I have four arms,\" Vyr said, gesturing with all of them." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"People used to have two heads, or look like octolegs or tumblebush, or—\"\n\n\"That was in the past!\" Warib told her acidly. \"Ancient days. No one cares.\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Vyr told her, shaking her head. \"I saw a screen thing about that travelling ultimate last party outfit on Xown and there were people there that—\"\n\n\"Vyr!\" her mother wailed. \"Will you listen?\"\n\n\"... big airship thing, inside... \" Vyr found herself silenced by a flash of her mother's eyes.\n\n\"Nobody,\" Warib told her, \"who is anybody does that sort of thing any more!\" She drew in a breath and said carefully, \"It's infantile, Vyr. Don't you pay any attention to—?\"\n\n\"Mum, I'm just trying to—\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh, dear God, don't call me 'mum',\" Warib said, eyelids fluttering closed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"... say goodbye and see-you-soon to everybody, and play this piece—\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'going' 2 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Everybody,\" her mother shouted at her, \"is reverting to classic! Don't you even know that? Amendments... \" Warib hesitated. \"Obvious amendments... are out. Nobody's doing it any more. Everyone's going for human basic as a mark of respect for all the millions of generations that helped get us to this point.\"\n\nWarib stared at the floor and slapped herself gently on the forehead, a gesture that – as far as Vyr knew – was a genuine innovation within the repertoire and so might actually be unchoreographed, perhaps even spontaneous. This was so surprising Vyr came extremely close to feeling concern.\n\n\"Dear suffering Scribe, Vyr,\" her mother whispered, \"some people are even going back to their natural hair colour.\" She looked up, eyes moist, nodding.\n\nVyr stared at her mother. Outside, sea slid past; still. Eventually she raised all four of her arms. \"So am I invited to the fucking party or not?\"\n\nWarib rolled her eyes, glanced behind, then fell backwards dramatically onto a plush white couch positioned in front of the stateroom's main picture window." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She lay there and kept her eyes closed while one hand went to her throat and the tiny copy of the Book of Truth encased in a locket on a thin chain there. Her fingers patted the flat little piece of jewellery as though taking comfort from it. Cossont – taking a couple of quiet steps backwards while her mother's eyes were closed – had noticed Warib had grown noticeably more religious as the Subliming had approached. The best you could say of this was that she was not alone.\n\nWarib shook her head and said quietly, resignedly, \"Oh, do as you please, Vyr; you always do, always have. Come as you wish; embarrass me all you like. Why break the habit of a—\"\n\nCossont didn't catch the last word; she was already out the door.\n\nMiraculously, thinking back to all this domestic nonsense of just a few days earlier, with her eyes closed and her mind half wandering, Vyr got right through the central, especially demanding section of the second-last movement without – for the first time – making any mistakes. She'd done it! The tangling blizzard of notes had been successfully tackled. She was on what always felt like the easy downhill gliding bit now where the notes were fewer and further apart and easier to bridge; another minute or so of nothing-too-demanding and she'd have the damn thing licked.\n\nShe felt a smile on her lips and a breeze on her face. There was even a pleasant thrumming noise coming from behind her, courtesy of the elevenstring's external resonating strings and the breeze she'd been hoping for; she could feel it through her spine and the seat of her pants." }, { "from": "human", "value": "My, for once even the elements seemed to want to wish her well in this ridiculous enterprise." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was thinking about opening her eyes when a sudden gust of wind from the other side briefly silenced the resonating strings, rocked her in the seat and nearly toppled the instrument and her together; she was forced to abandon the stop-pedals and plant both feet firmly flat on the ground to steady both herself and it; her trews flapped against her calves and she felt her hair come loose again as she was forced to stop playing, unbalanced and unsettled. The external resonating strings made a noise partway between a fart and a groan.\n\nThe notes faded away and the gust of wind died too, but a new noise of what sounded like an engine winding down replaced the elevenstring's music, and she felt a sort of multiple-thud from the terrace come up through her feet and the supporting spar under her backside.\n\nShe still didn't open her eyes. She withdrew both bows in good order from the strings and sat up straight within the O of the hollow instrument, then – with a single accusatory stare at her flier, which was only now switching its lights on again – she turned to where all this new commotion seemed to be coming from.\n\nAn eight-seat military flier, still the colour of the near-black sky above, was settling onto its quartet of squat legs fifteen metres away, its bulbous bulk unlit until a waist door flicked down and somebody emerged so senior that, even as a nominal civilian in the regimental reserve, Vyr had no real choice about standing and saluting.\n\nShe sighed and stepped out of the elevenstring, clicking down the side-stand at the same time, so it could support itself. The elevenstring made a very faint creaking noise.\n\nVyr hooked her slippers off, pulled her boots on, then stood at attention, managing to ear-waggle her comms unit awake. \"Etalde, Yueweag, commissar-colonel, Regimental Intelligence; precise current attachment unknown,\" the earbud whispered curtly as the officer advanced at a trot. He took his cap off and stuck it under his arm, then smiled and waggled one hand as he approached." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Vyr stood at ease. She glanced at her own flier, narrowing her eyes a fraction.\n\n\"Contacted Pyan,\" the aircraft told her through her earbud. \"It whines, but is on its way. Fifteen minutes.\"\n\n\"Mm-hmm,\" Cossont said quietly.\n\nA pair of fully armed and armoured troopers swung out from the regimental flier and stood, weapons ready, one on either side of the door, which flicked closed again. Vyr allowed her face to register some surprise at this development.\n\n\"... stay informal, shall we?\" Commissar-Colonel Etalde was saying, nodding as he arrived in front of her. He was short, plump and appeared to be perspiring slightly. Like a lot of people these days, he wore a time-to; a watch dedicated to displaying how long was left to Instigation; the very moment – assuming that everything went according to plan – of the Subliming event." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His was a dainty digital thing which sat on the chest of his uniform jacket and contrived to look a lot like a medal ribbon. Vyr had one too but she'd left it somewhere. Even as she noticed the commissar-colonel's example, the time-to's display clicked over to count one day less; it must be midnight on home planet Zyse.\n\nCommissar-Colonel Etalde looked at Vyr, taking in her extra arms. He nodded. \"Yes, I was... \" He looked past her at the elevenstring. His eyes bulged. \"What the hell is that?\"\n\n\"A bodily acoustic Antagonistic Undecagonstring, sir,\" she told him. She was staring over his head, as etiquette demanded. Happily this took no great effort.\n\n\"Don't say,\" Etalde said. He looked back to her. \"It yours?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes, sir.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He made a clicking noise with his mouth. \"Suppose we'd better take it with us.\"\n\n\"Sir?\" Vyr said, frowning.\n\n\"Does it have a case or something?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yes, sir. It's over there.\" She swivelled, indicated the dark case lying on the black tiles of the terrace a few metres away, almost invisible.\n\nThe commissar-colonel glanced back towards the two troopers. The nearest was already moving in the direction of the case, carbine shouldering itself as he or she jogged across the black tiles of the terrace.\n\n\"That us?\" Etalde asked. \"We fit?\"\n\n\"Sir?\" Cossont repeated, still frowning.\n\nEtalde appeared briefly confused, then snapped his fingers." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh! Yes! Better... \" He cleared his throat then said, \"Lieutenant Commander Cossont, you are hereby re-commissioned with immediate effect for the duration of the current emergency.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vyr's frown deepened. \"There's an emergency?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sort of a secret one, but yes.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cossont felt her expression contort despite herself as she looked down at the commissar-colonel. \"Now?\" she said, then adjusted her expression and gaze and said, \"I mean; now, sir? So soon before the—?\"\n\n\"Yes, now, Lieutenant Commander,\" Etalde told her sharply. She heard him sigh and saw him put his cap back on. \"Thing about emergencies,\" he said, sounding weary. \"Rarely occur when they'd be convenient.\"\n\n\"May I ask what—?\"\n\n\"What the hell's going on?\" Etalde suggested, suddenly breezy again. \"Ask away. Won't do you any good. No idea myself.\"\n\nThe trooper appeared with the elevenstring's case, opened." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It took all three of them to wrestle it in." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Etalde, breathless, nodded towards the military flier." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Commsint AI's saying you've got a pet or something coming in, that right?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, sir,\" she told him. \"Few minutes out still.\" She went to lift the elevenstring's case but the trooper did it for her, hefting it onto one shoulder, carbine swinging round from the other.\n\n\"We're tracking it,\" Etalde said as the trooper stepped towards their aircraft. Cossont stood where she was. The commissar-colonel stopped and looked back at her. \"Well, come on,\" he told her. \"We'll rendezvous with the creature in the air.\" He smiled. \"Faster.\"\n\n\"And my flier, sir?\" she asked.\n\nEtalde shrugged. \"Tell it to go home or wherever it has to go to, Lieutenant Commander; you're coming with us.\" He shrugged. \"Orders.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Never heard of it.\"\n\n\"More commonly known as the Hydrogen Sonata.\"\n\n\"Still never heard of it.\"\n\n\"No great surprise, sir. It's a bit obscure.\"\n\n\"Renowned?\"\n\n\"The piece?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Only as being almost impossible to play.\"\n\n\"Not, like...?\"\n\n\"Pleasant to listen to? No. Sir.\"\n\n\"Really?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vyr frowned, thinking. \"An eminent and respected academic provided perhaps the definitive critical comment many thousands of years ago, sir. His opinion was: 'As a challenge, without peer. As music, without merit.'\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The commissar-colonel whistled briefly. \"Harsh.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vyr shrugged. \"Fair.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Life-task, eh?\"\n\n\"It seemed like a good idea at the time, sir.\"\n\nIn the ink-black skies above the Kwaalon plains, the military craft decelerated quickly and swung almost to a stop; the rear ramp swung down and wind came buffeting and roaring in before a shush-field calmed everything down.\n\nVyr was strapped into a wall seat between Etalde and a third trooper. The first two troopers were on the other side of the small cabin with the elevenstring in its case secured between them like some bizarre carbon-black coffin, its nearest extremity close enough to Cossont to touch. An AI was flying the aircraft.\n\nPyan, Cossont's familiar, which had the form of a square black cape, flapped its way in from the turbulent darkness outside, bumping into the spongy shush-field and fluttering theatrically to the floor in apparent surprise as the craft's rear door slammed closed and the flier accelerated again.\n\n\"Oh, gracious!\" Pyan said on the local open channel, as it struggled against the rearward pull. It used its corners to heave itself along the floor towards Cossont, who tapped into their private link and growled, \"Stop dramatising and get over here.\"\n\nThe cape flowed along the floor and climbed up to her shoulders with a little help from Etalde and Cossont herself. It draped itself there as best it could given the straps, fastening itself round her neck." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You're touchy,\" it told her." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What's all the fuss about anyway?\"\n\n\"With any luck, nothing.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Today you will be acting as a writing assistant, your partner will send something and you will write the next 11 sentences. The story may reference existing characters and events - incorporate them as presented." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Mistake Not... , a Culture vessel of indefinite age, hazy provenance and indeterminate class but generally reckoned to be some sort of modestly tooled-up civilian craft rather than a part of the Culture's allegedly still slowly shrinking military resources, had been detailed to rendezvous with the Liseiden fleet by the clinker sun of Ry." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The result of an experiment carried out by the General Systems Vehicle that had constructed it decades earlier, and not even officially classed as an Eccentric, the craft's real status had always been moot." }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'planets' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Regardless, currently it was seconded to the Contact section for the occasion of the Gzilt Subliming. Seemingly eager to make a good impression, the ship made sure to be at the rendezvous point especially early.\n\nIt had a few dozen hours to wait; it circled the husk that was the long-dead sun for a while, inspecting the tiny, barely radiating stellar remnant, then darted about the rest of the system in a series of high acceleration/deceleration dashes – just for the fun of it, really – surveying the handful of cold, gas giant planets orbiting the cinder.\n\nSlightly too big to be a true brown dwarf, the sun had never been quite substantial enough to maintain nuclear fusion for any meaningful amount of time, effectively passing straight through the Main Sequence that defined normal stellar evolution as though it was a barrier to be slipped past rather than a path to be travelled along. It had never blazed brightly and after what truncated life it might have had as a true star, had subsequently spent billions of years just radiating away what little internal heat it had ever possessed.\n\nIt lay burned out now, as cold as its accompanying planets and darker than the galactic skies around it. The Mistake Not... could see everything around it perfectly well, of course, and in exquisite detail, able to ramp up any remnant radiations from the failed star itself or the background wash of galactic space or illuminate anything it felt the need to inspect using a variety of its own active sensor arrays, and – in case all that standard 3D stuff wasn't enough – it was capable of deploying the ultimate vantage point of standing outside the skein of real space altogether, looking down on this local patch of the normal universe from either direction of hyperspace... but still it missed the starlight. There was something comforting about having a vast hydrogen furnace burning millions of tons of material a second at the centre of a solar system. It was cheery.\n\nThis was just... dull.\n\nEspecially in 3D. Via hyperspace the ship could see a delightfully attractive supernova filling nearly a thirty-secondth of the sky off to one side, but the wavefront of real light had yet to crawl across the intervening gulf of space to get here and illuminate this fate-forsaken cinder. Dull beyond dull.\n\nAnd lifeless! The whole system!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even the few Deadly-Slow species – the glacially paced plodders of the galactic community whose constitution and chemistries might have suited the cold and quiet of the local environment – appeared to have given both the star and its planets a miss; no Baskers, no sign of Seedsail or Darclouds or any of the other relevant species that were the cosmic equivalent of sub-silt feeders." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A lonely, misfit sun, then; never quite one thing or the other, and remote from its peers.\n\nThe Mistake Not... registered a twinge of affinity with the dead star, and investigated that response as well, turning over in its mind the bizarre concept of a conscious entity such as itself feeling some sort of metaphorical connection with something as classically boring, as easily described and as billion-year venerable as a failed sun.\n\nThe ship was aware that, however splendid, intellectually refined and marvellous it might be (and it was very much of the opinion that it was all of those things, and more), it would likely still only ever measure its age in thousands of years, and for all the star's monotonous lifelessness and sterility, it would still be here when it, the ship Mistake Not... , had gone.\n\nStill: life was life, consciousness was consciousness, and mere classical matter, inanimate – no matter how long-lasting – was just ineffably boring and in a sense pointless compared to almost any sort of life, let along something that was fully aware of its own existence, never mind something as gloriously hyper-sentient and thoroughly, vitally connected to the universe as a ship Mind.\n\nAnd besides, when it had ceased to be as a Culture vessel, the ship was confident that its being would continue to exist in some form, somewhere, either – at the very least – as part of some long-slumbering transcorporated group-mind, or – ultimate of ultimates, as far as was known – within the Sublime.\n\nWhich kind of brought it back to where it had come in: here.\n\nThe approaching Liseiden fleet manifested as a collection of forty slightly embarrassingly untidy warp-wakes, some distance off.\n\nThe Liseiden were fluidics: metre-scale eel-like creatures originally evolved beneath the ice of a wandering extra-stellar planet. They were at the five going-on six stage of development according to the pretty much universally accepted table of Recognised Civilisationary Levels. This meant they were Low Level Involved, and – like many at that level – Strivationist; energetically seeking to better themselves and shift their civilisation further along its own Main Sequence of technological and societal development.\n\nThey were a lively, creative and uninhibited species, according to most analyses, and just the tolerable side of the assertive/aggressive line, though not above bending the odd rule or stepping over the occasional decency boundary if they thought they could profit civilisationally." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So not, in that regard at least, that different from almost every other Involved species." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They were here, now, to negotiate, trade, acquire or just plain steal whatever they could of whatever assets, plant, kit, tech or general gizmology the Gzilt left behind when they Epiphanised in twenty-three days' time." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And they had form in this regard: they'd done this before with other Subliming species, which meant they went by another name according to most people's reckoning: Scavengers." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Scavenger species, it was fair to say, were not universally liked or respected by all their galactic cohabitees, and that could lead to trouble, especially within the heightened emotional atmosphere surrounding a Subliming, and all the more so when there were other, competing Scavenger species in the vicinity sharing the same predatory intentions, which, here, there were." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Mistake Not... was part of a distributed meta-fleet of Culture and other craft invited into their until-now jealously guarded space by the Gzilt to help keep matters as friendly and civilised as possible while they got ready to do the Big Disappear.\n\nNormally the martially inclined though generally peaceful Gzilt would have had plenty of their own ships to enforce any degree of compliance they wanted within their own sphere of influence, especially against people toting the sort of bow-and-arrow tech a level five/six civ like the Liseiden could muster, but these were not normal times; the Gzilt had chosen to send many of their best ships into the Sublime first, as though to reconnoitre. It wasn't unknown for about-to-Sublime species to do this, but it was unusual, possibly a little paranoid, and arguably dangerous, a little like you had already taken your eye off the target...\n\nHappily, according to the galaxy-wide gossip web that passed as an intelligence network between Culture ships, there had lately been local rumours of a last-minute deal between the Gzilt and at least one of the circling Scavenger species – probably the Liseiden – to legitimise and formalise the scavenging process.\n\nThe Liseiden were definitely learning. These days they went actively looking for this sort of mutually agreed understanding with species about to Sublime, rather than just piling in like piratical scrappers every time. On this occasion they'd even thought to get representation: they'd hired a people called the Iwenick to be their humanoid face at negotiations with the Gzilt. This was, by general assent, a Smart Move.\n\nSo the Liseiden would get the contract, as it were, and be expected to conduct themselves with the decorum befitting their presence anywhere near such a momentous event, as well as behaving with the sort of studied calmness that only came from knowing that what you were engaged in was a dignified and conscientious clearing-up and recycling process, and not some childishly desperate rule-free scramble for whatever loot could be scooped before the adults stepped in to re-impose order.\n\nSadly, an equally plausible rumour held that – perhaps thanks to the pride of the Gzilt, for too long reluctant even to think of lesser civs pawing over their remains following their departure for better things – this had all been left far too late, and the other Scavenger species, already in place within or around Gzilt space, would refuse to honour any such agreement.\n\nThere was, as a result, a distinct chance that things might get interesting." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The ship watched the Liseiden fleet crawl closer.\n\nMuch further off than they'd ever have imagined possible, it had already begun to monitor some of their comms traffic.\n\n\"... deal with the Culture ship?\"\n\n\"... well, I—\"\n\n\"Got a name for this thing yet?\"\n\n\"... um—\"\n\n\"The Mistake Not... , apparently.\"\n\n\"The Mistake Not...?\"\n\n\"Affirmative.\"\n\n\"Mistake Not what?\"\n\n\"That's all we've got, sir.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That's not really good enough, is it?\"\n\n\"Not really, sir. I—\"\n\n\"Nyomulde; you're supposed to be the Culture fan-child of the Fleet; what have you... do you have?\"\n\n\"Ah, sir. The form, um, the ellipses after the words 'Mistake Not' imply there's more, but it's redacted; hidden. I've had the AI scan the relevant databases and there's... there is no more. I mean, there is sort of generally understood to be more, but it's like, ah, it's not for public... it's sort of a private joke between the Culture ships, the Minds.\"\n\n\"A joke?\"\n\n\"It's what they're like, sir.\"\n\n\"Ridiculous. How'd this bunch of effete spawnsuckers ever get to where they are?\"\n\n\"Well—\"\n\n\"Class? How about...? What class is it? What are we dealing with here? Have they deigned to tell us that or is that redacted too?\"\n\n\"I've got it down as a non-defined 'U' open brackets 'e' close brackets, sir.\"\n\n\"Keep going, officer.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should naturally weave in this dialogue: \"In the order of a couple of kilometres, though that's just the outer field envelope.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Well, 'non-defined' sort of speaks for itself, 'U' just means 'Unit' and 'e'... Hmm. I thought that meant Eccentric, to be honest, sir, but some sources hold that it stands for erratic. Strictly speaking the 'e' should be upper case if it stands for—\"\n\n\"Size? What size is it?\"\n\n\"In the order of a couple of kilometres, though that's just the outer field envelope.\"\n\n\"'In the order of.'\"\n\n\"Best we've got, sir.\"\n\n\"I see. Do we have any idea what it looks like?\"\n\n\"Um, not really, sir. No record of its appearance within the field complex boundary. There are various guesses but they're all very speculative. One or two—\"\n\n\"Spare me, officer. It's a Culture ship but we don't know what sort.\"\n\n\"In a pebbleshell, yes, sir.\"\n\nThere was a lot more like this, all in the Liseiden tongue, which was made up of a not inharmonious series of bubbly water-belches. The ship added the name Nyomulde to the Culture's intelligence archive of known Liseiden officers, immediately transmitting this to a variety of its comrade craft both near and far." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Liseiden hadn't been forthcoming regarding the identity of the approaching fleet's commanding officer, or even which ships would make up the fleet in the first place, but from the largest ship's warp signature – hideously obvious from light years away – the Mistake Not... had determined hours earlier that it was the Gellemtyan-Asool-Anafawaya, a Collective Purposes Vessel (First Class) and fleet flagship representing the last word in what the Liseiden were capable of building." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Much more satisfyingly, from the tone and word choice of one of the individuals talking – referencing earlier notes compiled by other Culture ships – the Mistake Not... was becoming increasingly certain that one of the voices it was listening to was a senior Liseiden officer called Ny-Xandabo Tyun, a male who held the rank of Salvage and Reprocessing Team Principal." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Admiral, in other words.\n\nBut what babble! What to-ing and fro-ing over such simple operational matters! A bunch of dim-witted, slow-thinking bios swimming in a tub clouded with their own effluent, trying to work out what was going on around them by staring through portholes probably. It was hard for a ship, a Mind, not to feel at least a degree of contempt.\n\nAnd they were still talking, out there between the stars, as the little flock of ships scraped slowly, slowly closer. (The fleet was already having to decelerate, the Mistake Not... noted, with some exasperation. This would draw the whole process out even further.) It was only a meet-and-greet anyway; almost as soon as it got here the Liseiden fleet would be breaking up again, most of the ships heading off singly or in small groups to individual places of interest within the Gzilt sphere; only the flagship and a few smaller vessels would remain as any sort of substantive unit.\n\nThis was something Admiral Tyun himself didn't know yet; there were sealed orders in the flagship's AI detailing all this dispositional stuff which were only to be accessed on the fleet's arrival at the clinker star but which the Culture already knew about through a piece of deft signal interception by some other ship or ships tens of days earlier.\n\nThe Mistake Not... found knowing this – while Admiral Tyun did not – quite agreeable.\n\nIt would probably tag along with the flagship and its escorts, plus it had prepared an eel-like avatoid to represent it in person aboard the flagship." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "From what it had been told, the Liseiden were almost suspiciously keen to welcome this creature aboard.\n\nIt listened in to the animal chatter again.\n\nGood grief, they were still discussing its own name!\n\nThe Mistake Not... , self-saddled with a full name so long and unmanageable that even other Culture ships rarely took the trouble to use all of it, was just vain enough to feel slightly flattered at all this attention, but still found the incessant chit-chat unbearably slow and fundamentally pointless.\n\nAll these people seemed to do was talk!\n\nIt supposed it was just what biologicals did. If you wanted to feel you were still somehow in control of a ship or a fleet or even your civilisation, talking amongst yourselves seemed to be the way you convinced yourself of it.\n\nFinally one of them said, \"Sir, we... may be approaching the sort of distance the Culture ship can start to read our comms.\"\n\n\"This far out?\"\n\n\"– encrypted, aren't... isn't it?\"\n\n\"Precautionary principle applies, team. Officer?\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Hey can you write like Iain Banks in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre and use whatever I write as a jumping off point? This is from a longer work so some stuff might reference earlier chapters." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Septame Banstegeyn went from group to group, taking part in multiple hand-shakings, everybody standing side-on and putting a single hand into a big confused but well-meaning tangle in the centre." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sometimes the resulting \"shake\" was a trembling muddle, sometimes the ball of grasping hands would end up going up and down quite violently, as though they were all making it happen deliberately; everybody always looked slightly surprised when that happened." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Doubtless this was an example of or metaphor for something or other." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Anyway, Banstegeyn didn't enjoy the process; in fact he hated it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He took particular care, therefore, to look entirely as though nothing he could possibly be doing right now could conceivably give him greater pleasure." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was hearty, amiable, roaring with laughter when he needed to, but he had a continuing need to wash his hand or at least wipe it on his robes, as though to decontaminate it after all this sweaty touching." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, this was just one of the many objectionable things that a man in his position had to do." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the end it was worth it; it would all be worth it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well, Ban, it's all yours now!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Folrison,\" Banstegeyn said, forcing a smile as the other, junior parliamentarian shook him by the shoulders." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Over-familiarly, Banstegeyn thought. Folrison looked drunk, probably was; a lot of them were, though not him – never him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And he didn't like being called \"Ban\", either." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's all all of ours now, I think you'll find,\" he told the other man, then gestured modestly at his own chest. \"Merely a caretaker.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Na, you finally got your way. You're in charge.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Folrison smiled. \"Of not very much for not very long, but, if it makes you happy... \" He looked away as though distracted, seemed to catch somebody else's gaze." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Excuse me,\" he said, and wandered off." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Banstegeyn smiled at Folrison's retreating back, in case anybody was looking, though what he was thinking was, Yes, just fuck off." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sir.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Septame.\" His chief secretary and aide-de-camp both appeared out of the mêlée." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Where were you two when I needed you?\" he demanded." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jevan, his chief secretary, looked dismayed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But, sir,\" he said, \"you said—\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Would you like a wipe, Septame?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Solbli said quietly, smiling as she pulled a moist square from her satchel and offering it to him discreetly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Banstegeyn nodded, quickly wiped his hands and gave the towel back to Solbli." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Let's go,\" he said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Eventually, shaking off the last overly effusive well-wisher from the lower ranks, they were able to make it to the doors leading from the still-crowded main assembly chamber to the Senior Levels and the terrace overlooking the darkened gardens and the near-deserted city." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Banstegeyn nodded to the parliamentary constable who'd opened the door, then, at the top of the steps leading down to the terrace, while Jevan and Solbli stood respectfully a couple of steps behind, had a brief moment to himself before anybody else rushed up to tell him what a historic day it had been." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His earbud, released from the rule-imposed no-personal-comms restriction of the parliament interior, started to wake up, but he clicked it off again; Jevan and Solbli would be catching up and would let him know about anything urgent." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The gardens – roundels of paving and splashing pools surrounded by maze-like blocks of black hedges within which it had always been easy to find nooks where quiet words might be had – were just starting to look neglected, even under the soft, subdued lights shining from antique lampposts; the city – a quaint jumble of low domes and soaring spires, gently floodlit but looking empty as a stage set – lay quiet and still under a dark, clouded sky." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So late. The session really had gone on far too long." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A handful of aircraft drifted above M'yon, lights winking; not long ago there would have been hundreds." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Banstegeyn had long thought of the old Ceremonial Capital as an open-air museum, with the parliament its dustiest exhibit." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was just that now it truly looked like it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Anyway, M'yon was not where the real power lay at all – that was in the teeming habs, the great ships, the orbiting manufacturies and the Regimental HQs – but rather where it had to look like it lay." }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'president' | Required occurrences: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "On the terrace, the principal knot of people surrounded the president: the usefully useless president, her cohort of effete trimes, a few of his fellow septames and a smattering of junior degans who must have ridden in on somebody more senior's coat-tails." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Secretaries, AdCs, advisors, a few Military Outright bigwigs and a smattering of accredited aliens made up the rest; some of the aliens were humanoid, some disconcertingly not." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The ambassadorial party from the Ronte – the insectiles who were one of the two Scavenger civs the Gzilt were actually talking to – existed inside heavy-looking exo-suits like tiny, complicated spaceships, all alarmingly sharp joints and angles and the occasional hiss and stink of some escaping gas." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Their translators didn't work as well as they seemed to think and it could be confusing to talk to them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They tended to huddle on the outskirts of gatherings like this, lucky to have a Gzilt military attaché to talk to, and even then only because the unfortunate officer had been ordered to do so." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Four of the six suited Ronte were resting on their spindly-looking suit legs; the other two were floating over a pond, humming." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh, and a few journalists and media people, he noted with some distaste; even the body politic had parasites." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was the last day of the Gzilt Parliament." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The very last day; it would never meet again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Anything relevant that needed dealing with from now on would be handled by transitional committees or temporary cabinets." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The various representatives, having made their final farewells, would shortly be departing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A handful of those local to Zyse itself would head off in fliers, but all the rest would take ship to be with their families and/or loved ones, the great majority of them in conveniently distant systems where, Banstegeyn devoutly hoped, they'd be unable to cause any trouble if any difficult decisions had to be made over the next twenty-odd days." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Banstegeyn had made sure that he was chair of several of the most important committees, and that his people chaired or controlled almost all the rest; plus it was tacitly accepted that he would be in charge if there was need of an emergency temporary cabinet." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Which there might be, now, of course." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Only a very few people knew this at the moment (very few, but, patently, at least one fucker too many), though it was looking increasingly likely." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It gave him stomach contractions just thinking about it; Go!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "he wanted to scream at all of the other parliamentarians." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hurry up! Just go. Be gone!" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Leave him and the people he trusted to make the decisions that had to be made." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It had all got far too close for comfort, time-wise, over the last day or two." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Remnanter ship had appeared earlier than they'd been expecting and then what had happened out at Ablate had already leaked, it seemed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "How the fuck had that happened so quickly?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If he ever found out who'd been responsible... Bad news upon bad news; things crowding in, happening much faster than he'd anticipated." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It could all be handled – things could always be handled – but the handling might get rough." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, that couldn't be helped." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The goal was what it had always been; a successful Sublime, his reputation and place in history assured." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He turned and looked up at the parliament building, where the Presence hung." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He could hardly see it in the darkness." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Presence was dark grey, shaped like some high-altitude balloon before it ascended; a slightly flattened semi-sphere curving down via a long, pendulous, narrowing tail to a point that looked to be aimed straight at the pinnacle of the parliament building's central cupola." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was about sixty metres across near the top and nearly three hundred metres in height." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That spike-like tip hovered silently just a few metres above the cupola's spire; it looked as though somebody tall, balanced on the very top of the spire, could have reached up and touched it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A few of the parliament's floodlights reflected dully off the bulbous near-black curve beneath its summit." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It had appeared twelve years earlier, on the day the parliament had passed the Act that confirmed the results of the Final Subliming Plebiscite, setting in train all the preparations for the event." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A manifestation from the Sublimed Realm, a symbol from those who had already gone before." }, { "from": "human", "value": "No more than a signpost, really; not animate or intelligent, as far as was known; just a reminder that the decision had been made and the course of the Gzilt was set." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was unmoved and unaffected by wind, rain, whatever, and barely there at all according to the military's technical people; only just more than a projection." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Real but unreal, like a shadow falling from another world." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They'd been expecting it; the Presence hadn't come as a surprise – these things always appeared when a people, a civilisation, was preparing for and committed to Subliming – but, somehow, actually seeing it there had still come as a shock." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Banstegeyn remembered watching the poll figures wobble; parliament, the media and his own people were canvassing the general population all the time back then, and the commitment levels had dipped significantly when the Presence had appeared." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He'd worried. This was so much what he wanted, what he believed in and knew was right, what he himself had spent his life working towards and staked his reputation on; this would be his legacy and his name would live for evermore in the Real, no matter what lay ahead in the Sublime." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was utterly the right thing to do; he had known this and still knew this with absolute certainty, and yet still he'd worried." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Had he been too bold?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Had he tried to make everybody go too soon: a decade early, a generation, even?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But then the figures had rallied." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And only grown since." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The commitment was still there." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It would all happen." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He looked away, past Jevan's handsome but slightly vacant face, and Solbli's pleasantly matron-like look of admiration and pride, sparing them both a quick smile, then turned as he heard footsteps hurrying up towards him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Septame Banstegeyn! A historic day!\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Another step closer,\" President Geljemyn said as the group around her parted to admit him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Banstegeyn glanced at various faces, distributing quick smiles and curt nods of his own." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There were three trimes: Yegres, Quvarond and Int'yom; the full extant set, basically, given that the rest were Stored, awaiting the pre-waking before the Sublime." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Quvarond counted as an opponent, Int'yom was a geriatric nonentity but he was his geriatric nonentity, and Yegres did as Int'yom told him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Six of his fellow septames were also present; five his, one neutral." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "An only slightly better than average for/against ratio, amongst those left." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Two generals, an admiral, no press." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Quite a lot of puffiness and glistening skin all round, he noticed; signs of drunkenness." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The president still wore her vulgarly cheap little time-to on a band round her wrist, he observed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was the sort of thing retailers had given away, back in the day." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She'd been gifted many far more elegant, tasteful and expensive time-tos since, but had made a point of sticking with this one." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It cycled between showing the number of hours left, and the days." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Currently it was on days, reading \"S -22\"." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His own example, displayed on his chest like a small but important honour, was delicately beautiful, purely mechanical, exquisite in its workmanship and eye-poppingly expensive." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The almost normal-looking Ambassador Mierbeunes was there from the Iwenick, representing the Liseiden, as was the Culture's current most senior representative to Gzilt; Ziborlun." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This silver-skinned creature was an avatar of the ancient Systems Vehicle that was currently gracing the skies of somewhere not too far away, no doubt." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was a bigger, grander, much more flattering GSV on its way for the formal ceremonies in the days immediately preceding the Subliming, allegedly, but they'd yet to see any sign of it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Banstegeyn was also aware of Orpe, the president's beautiful AdC, looking at him as he joined the huddle round Geljemyn." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The girl was trying not to smile too much, looking away from him now and again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He didn't return the look." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Doubtless many already guessed, but there was no need to make things easy for people." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Another step closer, Madame President,\" he agreed, accepting a soft drink from a steward and holding it aloft." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Eternity here we come,\" Trime Yegres said, raising his glass." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We go to our Reward.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Drunk, Banstegeyn decided." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The president looked amused." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Much seemed to amuse her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was one of her faults." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The Subliming makes all of us sound like religious zealots,\" she said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yegres swallowed, looked at the silver-skinned being across from him and said, \"I'm sure our Culture friends think we've always sounded like religious zealots.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ziborlun made a small bow." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Its silver skin looked less unnatural in lamp light." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Not at all,\" it said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yegres frowned at it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You're very... diplomatic,\" he told the creature, slurring his words." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Are you sure you're Culture?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"In all seriousness,\" Ambassador Mierbeunes said, meaning he was about to say something fatuous, flattering or both, \"I have never entirely understood why the Book of Truth is regarded as a religious work at all.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He looked round, blandly suave as ever, smiling." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It would seem more like—\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That would be because it is the basis of our religion,\" Trime Quvarond informed him curtly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Banstegeyn didn't bother repressing his smile; he'd found the Iwenick male annoying while they'd been conducting negotiations; now they'd concluded them he was insufferable." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well, in that sense,\" Mierbeunes said smoothly, still smiling, \"obviously and completely a religious work, of course, without question... \" He continued to witter." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Banstegeyn had just become aware of a uniform at his side." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Marshal Chekwri,\" Solbli whispered softly in his ear, overriding the earbud cancel." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She rarely got this wrong." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Marshal Chekwri!\" Banstegeyn said loudly, mostly to shut the Iwenick up, and turned to greet the Commander in Chief of the Home System Regiment." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The marshal of the First bowed to all, clapped her hands gently in front of her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"May I drag you away?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "she asked him. She looked at Geljemyn. \"Madame President?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Geljemyn nodded. \"If you must,\" she said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"All yours!\" Yegres said merrily." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Don't hurry bringing him back! Ha ha!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Excuse me,\" Banstegeyn said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He beamed a smile round all of them, though it soured a little when it got to Yegres." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He suspected only Orpe would be truly sad to see him go." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He followed the marshal back up the steps, trailed by Jevan and Solbli." }, { "from": "human", "value": "When they got inside, the marshal turned to his AdC and secretary and smiled as she said, \"Thank you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jevan and Solbli looked at Banstegeyn, who gave the tiniest of nods." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They looked forlorn as he and the marshal stepped into an elevator." }, { "from": "human", "value": "When the lift started to drop, he looked at the marshal and said, \"What?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The marshal just looked at him with her tired old eyes in her tired old face, and smiled thinly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He hoisted one eyebrow, then nodded." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hmm,\" he said, more to himself than her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There were places under the parliament building few people ever got to see, or even knew were there." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This was one. The room was round with concave black walls but was otherwise unremarkable, holding a round table and some seats; Banstegeyn's office was bigger." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And had a better view, obviously." }, { "from": "human", "value": "More of note had been the three metre-thick doors they had had to negotiate to get here, each of which had swung closed behind them." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Now?\" Banstegeyn asked the marshal after the room's own massive door had thudded shut." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Now,\" the marshal confirmed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How bad is it?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Chekwri nodded. \"It is within what was expected. We just have more detail, choices for action.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She glanced towards the centre of the room. \"Shall we?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "They sat. \"Scavengers? The other thing? What?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The other thing,\" Marshal Chekwri confirmed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Banstegeyn sighed. Chekwri was one of only a handful of people who knew – not counting whoever knew who wasn't supposed to; he shivered to think how many of them there might be." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What detail, what choices?\" he asked her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The leak was only to the Fourteenth,\" the marshal told him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He nodded. One regiment." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That wasn't so bad. Still bad enough." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Would be, wouldn't it?\" he said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Fourteenth – the Socialist-Republican People's Liberation Regiment, 14, to give it its full title – had been the most sceptical regarding Sublimation from the start, even if it too had finally – at least apparently – come onside. \"Who was responsible?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Nobody,\" the marshal told him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He looked at her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Somebody is always responsible,\" he told her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She shook her head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This was something generated within the Mind-set or the subsidiary substrate mechanisms of the Churkun itself. The ship had a one-off spy... you'd have to call it a program, it was so old and tiny; a virus, sitting in its computational matrix. Whatever it was – it deleted itself immediately – it had been in there since before the ship itself was constructed, while the Mind-set was still in virtual form, being test-run by the shipyard's Technology and Processing Department, four hundred and seventy years ago. Even then, it might not have required anybody within the Tech Department to plant it; could be done from outside.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And it was doing nothing all that time?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Just waiting for something to come along sufficiently game-changing to be worth betraying its presence for.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And nobody found it?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Obviously.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Or nobody who wasn't also a traitor, at least,\" Banstegeyn said, glancing away." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The marshal frowned. \"I think if we start assuming there might be traitors within the fleet's virtual crews we make traitors of ourselves. Saboteurs, at the very least. This was something so small, in a set of substrates so vast, it was possible for it to hide. Once it was in there, no further—\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Banstegeyn's eyes went wide." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What about the other ships?\" he blurted." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The marshal sat back fractionally at being interrupted, but said, calmly, \"All those still with us are checking. Now they have a rough idea what they're looking for, it's hoped they can either find anything similar or give themselves a clean bill of health within days.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Banstegeyn was appalled. \"Days?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Impossible to do any quicker. The fleet, such as it is, these days, remains fully operational in every other respect; the techs – the ships too – maintain there is absolutely zero possibility of anything similar taking over any part of the running of the vessels; stuff like this can watch and wait and signal if it finds a way, but it can't affect.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And the Churkun?\" Banstegeyn asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What's it – is it returning to—?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The Churkun announced its determination to Sublime as soon as possible,\" the marshal said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Nothing more has been heard of it since so either it has already gone or it is still preparing to.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Chekwri smiled humourlessly. \"I understand that the aftermath of battle, even a one-sided one, is not generally considered to constitute the most favourable condition for the instigation of Sublimation.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The pretended-at smile disappeared." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And kindly keep that secret, too, Septame. The ship didn't announce this publicly and we'd rather people think it's still with us; the fleet's reduced enough as it is.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Banstegeyn opened his mouth, seemed to catch himself, then said, \"All right. Never mind. What about the Fourteenth?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We are almost certain—\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The septame held up one hand. \" 'We'?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"An absolute minimum of my best, most trusted people know we're looking for something, not what it is,\" the marshal said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's all in hand, all working. The good, the very good news is that we are almost certain the information is held by probably only one substrate in the Fourteenth's HQ, and known to a handful of their top brass, at most. Nobody else. Not yet.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Not yet for how long?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Can't say. All we know is they haven't tried to share this so far, to the best of our knowledge.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Banstegeyn looked to one side and rubbed his fingers as though testing the feel of an invisible piece of cloth." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Of course, they might not do anything with it. They might just sit on it.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That is a possibility,\" the marshal said, sounding doubtful." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We could just ask them, I suppose,\" he said, looking at the marshal, and smiling." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"They might even listen to reason.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We could,\" she said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"They might.\" She held his gaze, kept her expression neutral." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Let's do that, then,\" the septame said, sitting back." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The marshal's face betrayed the tiniest flicker of surprise." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Though,\" Banstegeyn said, sitting forward again, \"take me through what else you were thinking of.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Chekwri frowned. \"One approach might preclude the other. To ask would be to warn, and then any other choice would be closed off.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What if,\" the septame said, \"one waited to make this appeal to reason until the other choice was available... at a moment's notice?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The marshal seemed to think for a moment." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Given the capabilities of the technologies involved, especially the potential rapidity of response they possess, even a moment might be warning enough to turn a potentially successful action into one that was sure to fail.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Hmm,\" Banstegeyn said, sitting back again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Then it would certainly be foolish to give any greater degree of warning, wouldn't it?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The marshal's eyes narrowed a little as she said, \"Quite.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What did you have in mind?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "he asked her. \"What does it involve?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It involves a fast, powerful ship, a single surgical strike with full end-operator tactical-choice freedom and – in case any further action is required – a micro-force of just two: a highly augmented special forces field-colonel and a non-humanoid combat arbite.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And this would be in, on—\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Eshri, Izenion system.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Banstegeyn bit his lower lip." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He looked away. \"Against our own people... \"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Who put a piece of spyware into another regiment's capital ship nearly five hundred years ago, who might have done the same thing to other elements of the fleet and who could, if they wanted... \" The marshal let her voice trail off." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"... potentially jeopardise the whole Subliming,\" the septame said, still looking to one side, rubbing his lip now." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He looked at her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How soon can we put all this together?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It already is together, Septame. The assets are presently in transit for Izenion.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Banstegeyn widened his eyes. \"Are they now?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I instructed the battle-cruiser Uagren to depart Zyse system for Izenion twenty minutes ago. It is recallable at any point. It seemed rash to hesitate once the materiel and personnel were collated. And nothing irresilable happens without your express permission.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How long until I would have to make a decision?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The Uagren's travel time to Izenion is between forty-six and fifty-four hours, depending on whether it flies through or comes to a local stop. Say forty-five hours to go yes/no on any pre-agreed action re the former, though if there's no further sign of development from the Fourteenth HQ, I'd advise the local stop; that way we have a chance of dealing with any loose ends or unanticipated post-strike outcomes immediately rather than half a day later; there's nothing else we can get to Izenion sufficiently quickly to provide immediate back-up if the Uagren commits to a fly-through mission. In that case, say fifty-three hours. To leave time to switch from one mission profile to another – fly-through to local stop – a decision would be required thirty-eight hours from now. That would be your first decision-point: in thirty-eight hours.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And if I decide nothing; if no decision is made?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The ship flies straight through Izenion system and loops back to return here without taking any action at all.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Good. Let's leave that as the default, for now.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He took a deep breath." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"So. Thirty-eight hours, forty-five and fifty-three. I'll try to remember.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The marshal smiled thinly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Obviously we must accept that the usual restrictions apply to committing any part of this to any form of memory other than that we were born with.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Banstegeyn lifted his time-to from his chest and twirled a platinum knob on it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I take it it won't represent too great a security threat if I set an alarm.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He aligned the alarm hand, then looked up at the marshal's expressionless face." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She remained silent. He sighed, let the time-to fall back against his chest. \"Really?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It would be circumstantial, but in the event of something going wrong and a subsequent investigation... \"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"A subsequent investigation?\" Banstegeyn said, incredulous." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We're supposed to be Subliming in... \" he glanced at the time-to, \"... twenty-two days, one hour.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Nevertheless. Foolish to risk what need not be risked. I'll be in touch shortly before a decision is needed.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Banstegeyn sighed and unset the alarm." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He looked at Chekwri." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This does have to happen, you know,\" he said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The Subliming. It has to happen now, and completely, or not... \" Another sigh." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He felt suddenly tired." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I've looked at the statistics, the sims. For a species like ours, if there's a stall, it's likely to take another three to five generations before it actually happens. That's... \" He shook his head." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That's why this has to happen, Madame Marshal.\"\n\nMarshal Chekwri, Commander in Chief of the Home System Regiment, was silent a little while longer, then said, \"That is why we will make sure that it does, Septame.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Cooperative storytelling\nContext: Match existing character backgrounds if present\nMy role: Provide opening\nYour role: eight sentences in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Caconym, a Culture Limited Offensive Unit of the Troublemaker class, spun slowly above the forest of writhing, wildly shining loops that was the surface of the orange-red star Sapanatcheon." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The ship rotated gently in the midst of the blasts of radiation, charged particles and magnetic force coming swirling in from almost every direction, though mostly from below, where a sunspot the size of a gas giant planet was passing slowly beneath. The LOU was taking readings and collecting data, for what it was worth, but really it was just watching, admiring.\n\nThe LOU was a modern ship with an old Mind, part of an experiment of sorts to see how that would work. The theory was that pairing a capable new vessel with a wise old Mind would somehow present the best of both worlds, especially for one of the Culture's relatively few warships, which would be fully expected to sit/drift/race around all its anticipated life doing nothing whatsoever, or at least nothing whatsoever to do with what it had been designed for. The trouble with this idea, as the Caconym had been amongst the first to point out, was that – simulations aside – you would never really know how your theory was standing up to reality until the shit hit the intractor, when it tended to be a bit too late for rethinks and refits.\n\nStill, as one of the ship Minds that had been involved at the sharp end of the Idiran war a thousand years earlier and not gone into a profound retreat, a group-mind or the wilder shores of Eccentricity, the Mind within the Caconym understood that it constituted a kind of resource for the Culture, and grudgingly accepted that it had some sort of responsibility to play along.\n\nTaking its mildly eccentric habits and interests with it into its new home, the Caconym's Mind – the Caconym, basically – pursued its strange little hobbies and kept itself pretty much to itself, even while remaining on the sort of everlasting standby that Culture ships of its kind were expected to maintain, just in case.\n\nIt wasn't a hermit – Culture warships were strongly counselled not even to think of becoming true hermits – it kept up, in a general sort of way, with what was happening in the galaxy, and there were always a few respected and responsible ships who knew how to contact it if they really needed to, but it had few acquaintances and fewer friends, none of whom expected any real degree of chattiness from it and who were quite used to hearing nothing from it for hundreds of days at a time." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So it was surprised when a message pinged in, from, apparently, somebody being so informal that even many of the usual signal protocols could be cheerfully dispensed with." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'pressure' into your response exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ Cac, chumlet, how are you?\n\n∞ The sender was, according to a minimal ration of the usual embedded personal codings and eccentricities of glyph-expression, its old friend the MSV Pressure Drop. Though, of course, that sort of signal addenda could be copied.\n\nIt sent back along the same signal route:\n\nPD?\n\n∞ The same.\n\n∞ Even without the normal protocols, it was possible to work out the other craft's rough position through the beam direction and reply delay, even after only a couple of signals. It looked like the Pressure Drop was relatively close by; only five or six years off." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Practically next door, and only a couple of systems away in this sparsely starred part of the galaxy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Unless the other ship was introducing a deliberate delay into its replies, of course, in which case it could be almost on top of it. The Caconym immediately clicked on its track scanner and looked down the signal beam. Nothing there. A few of its internal systems – kicking in like an animal flight-or-fight response – flicked off again, winding back down.\n\n∞ I am in every respect excellent, as you might expect, it replied. Shall I assume the same of you?\n\n∞ Do. Still obsessed with them sparkly bits then?\n\n∞ The Caconym relaxed a little more; the other party certainly expressed itself as though it was the Pressure Drop. Still, to get so close before announcing oneself was unusual." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A more paranoid ship, the Caconym thought, would almost feel like it had been getting snuck up on.\n\nThe signals it was responding to had originally arrived via a beam spread wide enough to encompass the whole of the solar system it was within, with the implication that the Pressure Drop hadn't known where within the system its friend was (though it might have guessed, near the sun – that was where the beam was focused now), but to be so discoverable, even by another Culture ship, was, if not alarming for a wandering war-craft, at least worthy of note.\n\n∞ My interest in stars – their formation, development and death, ability to harbour and promote life, affect, empower and destroy all around them and so on – remains. Though obviously I struggle to couch it as poetically as you.\n\n∞ Are you with our friends the field-liners?\n\n∞ The Caconym had a long-standing interest in and relationship with various of the galaxy-wide outposts of the creatures who inhabited the magnetic field lines of certain stars.\n\n∞ No. Holidaying, as of recently; magnetosphere-surfing for the most part. I intend to resume my studies of the inhabitants at a later date." }, { "from": "human", "value": "∞ Not talking to you, then?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ Of course they're talking to me. We have a highly complex and mutually beneficial dialogue, when necessary. The question I might ask is why are you talking to me?\n\n∞ Your oldest friend can't say hello without occasioning such suspicion?\n\n∞ Who's suspicious? It's been so long, and you've been so quiet. I thought perhaps you'd expired without telling me.\n\n∞ If I've been quiet, it's because I take my cue from you. But yes, it's been a while." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I've been busy. Well, indolent. The effect is the same. I've managed to whittle my population down to a framework crew of the like-minded, so all is harmonious.\n\n∞ So, what brings you to this neck of the scrub?\n\n∞ Technically, the serendipity of a tour – for pleasure; like yourself I have discovered a rich seam of auto-indulgence in myself – during which I had made swinging by your own current location, however out of the way, something of a priority, for reasons which are beginning to escape me.\n\n∞ I shall endeavour to be more scintillating.\n\n∞ However, there is something which has come to my attention which might interest you.\n\n∞ And what would that be?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ matter of potential thorniness. It involves the Tiny-wee Tucked-away. The vastness beyond vast.\n\n∞ Oh fuck.\n\n∞ Now, before you—\n\n∞ I may have to overwrite those bits of myself. I tell you, I wish to have no more to do with the promise, process or result of Outloading, Instigating, Subliming, Enfolding or any other synonym relating to the activity or state of basically buggering off up one's own or indeed anybody else's fundament.\n\n∞ The Sublime. The almost tangible, entirely believable, mathematically verifiable nirvana just a few right-angle turns away from dear boring old reality: a vast, infinite, better-than-virtual ultra-existence with no Off switch, to which species and civilisations had been hauling their sorry tired-with-it-all behinds off to since – the story went – the galaxy had still been in metaphorical knee socks." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Sublime was where you went when you felt you had no more to contribute to the life of the great galactic meta-civilisation, and – sometimes more importantly, depending on the species – when in turn you felt that it had no more to offer you. It took a whole civilisation to do it properly, and it took a long, long time for most civilisations to come round to the idea, but there was never any hurry; the Sublime would always be there. Well, provided only that blind chance, your own stupidity or somebody else's malevolence didn't lead to your outright obliteration in the Real in the meantime.\n\nExactly what it was like in there was debatable: very, very few came back and none came back less than profoundly altered. These few returnees were also seemingly incapable of describing the realm they had left, however recently, in any detail at all.\n\nIt was wonderful; that was the general tone of the vague, dreamy reports that did come back. And almost beyond comparison, literally indescribable. The absolutely most splendid wonders, experiences and achievements of the Real and all those within it were as nothing to the meanest off-hand meanderings of the Sublime." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The most soaring, magnificent, ethereal cathedrals to reason, faith or anything else were as mere unkempt and dilapidated hovels compared to the constructions – if they could even be described as such – within the Sublime." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'sublime' 5 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That was about all anybody had to go on, but at least the reports never varied in one respect; no one ever came back saying, shit, it's horrible; don't go.\n\nAlso, it wasn't the only choice for a species approaching the end of its active life. Other species/civilisations retreated into Elderhood, becoming almost as dissociated from the normal day-to-day life of the galaxy and its vast rolling boil of peoples and societies as the Sublimed, yet staying in the Real. But that very continuance within the real galaxy – despite the powers and capabilities which everybody associated with Elderhood and which the Elder races rarely showed any desire to downplay – still left you at least theoretically vulnerable to whatever exciting new mix of power and aggression the matter-based galaxy was able to throw up. Plus, opting for Elderhood just looked like a sort of failure of nerve, given what the Sublime realm offered: a space of infinite flourishing without threat or danger.\n\nAs far as was known, nothing had ever evolved directly within the Sublime; everything there had started in the Real. And – again as far as anyone could tell – nothing that had ever entered the Sublime from the Real in any viable state had ever entirely disappeared from it. To enter the Sublime was to become near-as-dammit immortal, and while there was still talk of difference and dispute, and even some form of contention within the Sublime, there appeared to be no annihilation, no utter destruction, no genocide or speciescide or their equivalents." }, { "from": "human", "value": "To the deep and abiding frustration of those in the Real who would know more of its past, the peoples who seemed to have been in there the longest – from the first two billion years or so of the galaxy's lifetime, say – were the least likely ever to reappear in the Real and spill any beans about what life had actually been like back then and what had really happened." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Those who had entered the Great Enfold subsequently had scarcely been any more forthcoming, and the few not-totally-vague replies they had given to specific questions had often proved contradictory, one way or another, so as a research trove the Sublime was almost completely useless.\n\nNevertheless, whole civilisations had been making the one-way trip there for all that time, there was good proof that even the first to do so were still in some meaningful sense there, however much they might have changed, and – compared to the relative chaos, uncertainty and existential short-termism of the Real – that represented a fairly good option by most peoples' reckoning.\n\nSo, a beguiling proposition and a field ripe for studying, too, if one was so inclined. The Mind in the Caconym, which had taken the ship's name, had been so inclined, once. No longer. The whole enterprise had been exquisitely frustrating, and its friend the Pressure Drop knew this.\n\n∞ I understand. I could, of course, just shut up, withdraw and say no more about it.\n\n∞ No, my interest is piqued, as I'm sure you anticipated. What is it?\n\n∞ Annoyingly – amazingly – the Caconym knew that as far as authorities on the Sublime went, it was one of the few assets the Culture – or anybody else – possessed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It kept hoping that some other brave, ambitious or just plain self-deluded souls would take up the Sublime-exploring baton and enquire further, look closer, delve deeper and make some breakthrough it had been unable to make, so taking the responsibility away from it, and it had tried to encourage informal associations of other Minds with similar interests to pursue such behaviour, but all such hopes had been dashed; almost nobody else was interested. It had even dared anticipate that the Contact section would form a specialist department to handle such matters and tackle the problem properly, but – despite having dropped a few heavy hints on the subject over the years – this too seemed as far away as ever.\n\nThe Gzilt, the Pressure Drop sent.\n\n∞ Mm-hmm. Been talking about the Big Cheerie-O for some. They're actually off, too; set a date and everything. See, I do listen to some news. Hmm. That's quite close, now. Not having second thoughts are they?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "∞ Not yet. But there's been... a development." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ The Gzilt were a sort of cousin species/civilisation to the Culture. Nearly founders, though not quite, they had been influential in the setting up and design of the Culture almost ten thousand years earlier, when a disparate group of humanoid species at roughly the same stage of technological and societal development had been thinking about banding together.\n\nAmiable enough, if somewhat martially uptight due to an unusual social set-up that basically meant everybody was presumed to be in a single society-wide militia – hence everybody had a military rank, from birth – they had made significant contributions to the establishment and ethos of the Culture while it was all still at the being-talked-about phase but then, almost at the last moment, and to pretty much everyone's surprise, in a way including their own, they had decided not to join the new confederation.\n\nThey'd go their own way, they'd decided, wishing the Culture well and taking an interest in it, but keeping determinedly apart from it.\n\nRelations had remained friendly throughout, and rumours persisted that the Gzilt had been helpful to the Culture in the Idiran war, despite a supposedly meticulous neutrality, but in essence they had stayed quietly, studiously apart from the Culture for all that time, observing the more rowdy, boisterous and interference-minded behaviour of their one-time associates with a mixture of emotions that might on occasion have included mild horror, gasping incredulity and simple shock, but also – and more consistently – a kind of envy, and a slowly increasing feeling that a great opportunity had been lost.\n\n∞ A development. Odd. That word rarely dampens the spirits quite so comprehensively as your deployment of it just there has so thoroughly doused mine. What development?\n\n∞ Hurry me onwards if I start to tell you too much of what you already know, but... there is this tradition that other civs settle-up, as it were, with any would-be Sublimers, shortly before the big event: messages of admiration, respect and sorry-to-see-you-go mixed in with the odd admission that actually we're responsible for rubble-ising your moon while you guys were inventing the wheel but we were having big exciting space battles with the neighbours, or it was us what nicked your first space probe—" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ Consider yourself hurried, the Caconym sent.\n\n∞ Sorry. Also, a pity: my third example was particularly witty and amusing. But no matter. Anyway, the Gzilt have this relationship, one might as well call it, with the also departed Zihdren. This relationship capacitated, as it were, through the Gzilt Book of Truth.\n\n∞ Yes, the holy book that only gained in credence as science developed.\n\n∞ Indeed; unique.\n\n∞ So contributing to the cult of pernicious exceptionalism as exhibited by the Gzilt.\n\n∞ So caustic!" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ Some truths hurt more than others. Frankly I thought I was being kind; the word \"exemplified\" might have replaced \"exhibited\" in the above without too great a stretch. I think I already dislike where we're headed with this, by the way, but go on.\n\n∞ One of the things that has always made the Gzilt feel so special, so marked out, has been the fact that their holy book, pretty much alone amongst holy books, turned out to be verifiable. At every stage of their development—\n\n∞ —It predicted the future, the Caconym interrupted, watching carefully for how much overlap there was between the two signals. Only of technology, but even so. That was interesting; the signals from the Pressure Drop implied the ship was curving away, as though it had been heading almost straight towards the Caconym until not long before it sent its first message, but was now beginning what looked like a tight-as-possible high-speed turn after a period of significant acceleration." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ Are you gauging my speed and direction?\n\n∞ Of course I am.\n\n∞ You could just have asked. I'm running a max-min turn for Gzilt space.\n\n∞ That's sixty days away. Won't it all be over by then?\n\n∞ Fifty-five days away. I've up-ratioed my engines over the years." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But the point is: you never know. Were you listening to all that stuff about the Gzilt holy book?\n\n∞ Of course.\n\n∞ The Book of Truth, the Gzilt holy book, had been delivered by meteorite during their dark ages, following the collapse of a great empire which had been laid low by a combination of barbarians, disease and economic and environmental collapse. A subsequent meteorite bombardment had made things worse and convinced many Gzilt that their gods – if they even existed – had turned against them.\n\nIt was during this time of tribulation that the Scribe – Briper Drodj, a disgraced, ruined trader from a fallen aristocratic family with classical military connections – allegedly found a set of inscribed slates inside a meteorite and published them, adding to them later as he had dreams that seemed to follow on from the texts. These slates were kept secret and either disappeared or were destroyed in a temple fire started by unbelievers.\n\nThis particular incident led to the militarisation and evangelicalisation of the Book of Truth religion." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Briper Drodj and his generals then masterminded a series of spectacular conquests across the single great continent that made up almost all of the land area of Zyse, eventually subduing and converting all the other tribes, nations, peoples, kingdoms and empires until they had, effectively, taken over the world.\n\nThe Scribe Briper Drodj later disappeared in mysterious circumstances, allegedly when he was on the brink of announcing a whole new set of dream-revelations. There had been tensions within the hierarchy of the church by this time, and cynics would later maintain that the newly proliferating upper echelons of his supporters \"disappeared\" the Scribe to prevent these mooted, never-brought-to-light additions to the Word reducing their own power, though nothing was ever proved and by general consent there was a feeling that Briper had quite entirely done his bit, his place in history as the greatest ever Gziltian was absolutely assured, and in a sense it was time for him to enter legend rather than, say, stick around past his time and start making the sort of embarrassingly beside-the-point pronouncements old men were all to prone to coming out with.\n\nUp to this point, the story of the Gzilt and their holy book was, to students of this sort of thing, quite familiar: an upstart part of a parvenu species/civ gets lucky, proclaims itself Special and waves around its own conveniently vague and multiply interpretable holy book to prove it. What set the Book of Truth apart from all the other holy books was that it made predictions that almost without exception came true, and anticipated phenomena that nobody of the time of Briper Drodj could possibly have guessed at.\n\nAt almost every scientific/technological stage over the following two millennia, the Book of Truth called it right, whether it was on electromagnetism, radioactivity, atomic theory, the cosmic microwave background, hyperspaciality, the existence of aliens or the patternings of the energy grid that lay between the nested universes. The language was even quite clear, too; somewhat opaque at the time before you had the technological knowledge to properly understand what it was it was talking about and you were reading, but relatively unambiguous once the accompanying technical breakthrough had been made.\n\nThere was, in addition, the usual mostly sensible advice on living properly and morally, along with various parables and examples to help keep the Gzilt on the right track, but nothing exceptional compared to other holy books, either those from the Gzilt's own past or that of others; the predictions were what made it special and had the effect of causing the Book to become more convincing and remarkable as technological progress continued." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was space stuff in there, too." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Those behind all these imparted revelations were named the \"Zildren\" and described as \"wraiths of light\"." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Zihdren were a vacuum Basker species, and this was actually a fairly accurate portrayal of what they looked like to the humanoid eye." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were also described working through their \"material mechanicals\" – again, close enough to describing the reality of the robotic self-extensions the Zihdren used when they wanted to work within the material aspect of the Real.\n\nMore challengingly – and perhaps more the Prophet's doing than anything he might have found on the original slates, had they ever really existed – the Book further insisted that the Gzilt were a people favoured by Fate, by the Universe itself, as part of an ongoing thrust towards a glorious, transcendent providence; they represented the very tip of a mystical spear thrown by the past at the future, the shaft of that spear being formed by a multitude of earlier species which existed before them and kept on serially handing on the baton of destiny to the next, slightly more exceptional people ahead of them.\n\nThe Zildren, the book declared, were the last handers-on of the baton, the final stage of this rocket ship to the sky that would put the actual payload – the Gzilt – into the glory of eternal orbit.\n\nEven after the Gzilt achieved genuine space travel, artificial intelligence, insight into hyperspace and contact with the rest of the galactic community – and discovered that there had indeed been a species called the Zihdren around at the time the Book of Truth had come to light, though they had since Sublimed – that belief in their own predestined purpose and assured distinctiveness had persisted, and it was, arguably, that imperturbable sense of their own uniqueness that had prevented them from joining the Culture all those thousands of years ago.\n\nSo, the Pressure Drop sent, the BoT provably gets so much right, insists that the Gzilt are Special – destined for something singular, fabulous and epoch-shaping – yet once the Gzilt get to a certain stage of development the Book effectively falls silent, with nothing further to predict, and becomes just another dusty text to be filed with the rest, while the suspicion grows amongst those not utterly credulous that while the Zihdren may indeed have had a part in the Book and were certainly a reputable and constructive part of the galactic community of their time, they were hardly exceptional; just another banally evolved species hustling along as best they could within the convection cells of the galactic soup cauldron – if exotic in their immaterial nature, by humanoid standards – who eventually ended up in the great retirement home of the Sublimed like everybody else.\n\n∞ Maybe the Gzilt should have swallowed their pride and joined the Culture when they had the chance. Or perhaps they seek their own Subliming as a consolation.\n\n∞ I hadn't finished. You interrupted again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "∞ You were wittering again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "∞ Anyway, there is indeed evidence that the Gzilt believe their own presence amongst the Sublime will somehow change things dramatically for the better there..." }, { "from": "human", "value": "∞ Ha!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "∞... I thought that might precipitate a response." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "However, to continue: also that they – wilfully, against all evidence – regard Subliming not as retirement but as promotion.\n\n∞ Ha, again.\n\n∞ So, matters are set up as they are, and the Gzilt are on the very brink of the Big Outloading, when along comes a Zihdren-Remnanter ship with a guest for the festivities bearing a message that is basically a confession.\n\n∞ Of what exactly?\n\n∞ Of exactly what, I have not been told, but I think we can guess.\n\n∞ Mistake, accident, prank, deliberate interference?\n\n∞ Something like that. Only the message does not get through, the human-ish guest-entity is never delivered, the ship is intercepted." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Remnanter ship is destroyed.\n\n∞ Destroyed?\n\n∞ Profoundly so.\n\n∞ That is... bold. Or desperate. And how do you know all this? There's been nothing in any report.\n\n∞ It's recent, few people know and none of them thought it in their interests to go public. Our Remnanter friends asked me to contact you as somebody they've had dealings with in the past regarding the Sublimed, especially the Zihdren." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ Even so, to what end? What am I supposed to do?\n\n∞ Two things. One, form part of an advisory group, with myself, to handle whatever may come of this from our point of view. Two, use some of your contacts to help clear up what's going on here.\n\n∞ Have we been asked by the Gzilt to do this?\n\n∞ Good grief no! For now, it's best they know nothing, given that they or some faction within them appear to have instigated hostilities.\n\n∞ Then why are we even thinking of getting involved?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "∞ Well, arguably we owe the Gzilt some care and attention just on general principles, not to mention consideration due to their honorary fellow-traveller Culture status, but, more to the point, the Zihdren message to the Gzilt mentioned an individual, a human from the first generation to think of themselves as Culture citizens." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was around ten thousand years ago, at the time of the negotiations which gave rise to the Culture in the first place. This individual was named as perhaps being able to help provide proof that what was claimed in the message to the Gzilt was actually true.\n\n∞ So, not long dissolved in some group-mind, then. Stored, I take it?\n\n∞ Not Stored. In fact, never Stored. Still with us, still alive, still extant and functioning, twenty-five to thirty full lifetimes after you'd have expected any ordinary humanoid mortal to have decently abandoned the corporeal. Indeed, longer-living than any known still independent Mind or even high-level AI from the time. Like the fucker's decided to outlive everybody or set a record or something." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But alive, somewhere, probably still within the Culture.\n\nSeriously?\n\n∞ No kidding.\n\n∞ No. I refuse to accept this. This is a myth. One of our myths. Romantic, nonsensical. A wish; desired but for ever without proof.\n\n∞ Nevertheless, our Remnanter chums seem to think this geriatric geezer is still with us." }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'minds' exactly 2 times in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ Being loosely attached to a civ long-Sublimed does not make the Zihdren-Remnanter infallible. Or even necessarily reliable.\n\n∞ Their record in such matters is good, though. I've spoken with a few fellow Minds about all this and it is reckoned the information must be taken seriously. Also, that you should be a member of any advisory group, part of the tactical-strategic oversight team. What do you say?\n\n∞ I imagine I'm meant to be flattered, being so invited, but why don't these few fellow Minds of yours perform this function?\n\n∞ They feel more comfortable in the wise village elder role, advising, not the positions you and I are being offered, suggesting actual courses of action." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'stake' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I imagine some energetic and very intense simming is going on. I've already started my own.\n\n∞ And who are they, anyway?\n\n∞ Not yet at liberty to say. I'll tell you if you sign up. Promise.\n\n∞ What really is at stake here? And what are the chances that – should this prove important or just interesting – we wouldn't get bounced by some other collective – the ITG, to name but one?\n\n∞ At stake is the smooth Subliming of a cousin species/civilisation and the potential chaos of a part-Sublime complicated by the presence of a variety of Scavenger species, not to mention the Culture's good name as an honest broker." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'least' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As for the Interesting Times Gang, they have been silent for nearly half a millennium. Several are believed to be in Retreat and at least one has itself joined the Enfolded. There is a feeling amongst the Minds taking a particular interest in these matters that the ITG has stepped down, or at least back. The whole Excession thing nearly went very badly wrong and only just came out okay in the end as much through good luck as good guidance, and anyway was still arguably a failure: a catastrophe was averted but an opportunity was squandered, and in the end we are no further forward regarding insights into travel or even communication between concentric universes.\n\nThey may have decided to quit while they were ahead, or to bow out gracefully after an at best modest achievement that in certain lights might even be regarded as an embarrassment. Maybe they just felt they were getting old and out of touch.\n\nIn any event, no new standing ensemble appears to have replaced them, and only ad-hoc groups have handled unusual matters since. It's our move, old chum." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ The Caconym was silent for a few moments. It watched a small solar flare erupt from near one side of the sunspot over which it had stationed itself. Another tendril of the star's gaseous shrapnel, ejected by an earlier outburst of the furious energies erupting for ever beneath it, and thousands of kilometres across and tens of thousands long, washed over and around it, bathing its outer field structure in radiation and delivering a distinct physical blow.\n\nIt allowed itself to be gently buffeted by the impact, using its engine fields to adjust its apparent mass and so increasing its inertia so that the effect would fall within acceptable parameters, while observing the outermost elements of its field structure deform inwards by a few micrometres under the weight of the blast. The effect of the colliding gust of plasma was to send it drifting very slightly across the face of the sunspot, spinning slowly. Finally it sent: Why do we bother with this sort of bio-tangling stuff in the first place? We could live lives of such uncomplicated joy if we left them to their own sordid, murderous devices.\n\n∞ Because it pleases us." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's a challenge. We could Sublime, too, but we don't do that either." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Come on; we have a reputation for enlightened interference to protect here.\n\n∞ Yeah, that's us: first amongst the Altruists; the emperors of nice. We're not competitive about it, but – if we were – by fuck we'd be the best.\n\n∞ Most amusing.\n\n∞ Yes, my fields expand at the mirth of it all. Very well. I may regret this, but; all right. I'll take part.\n\n∞ And use those contacts with the Sublimed?\n\n∞ If I have to, even more reluctantly, yes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ Hurrah! Welcome aboard. Here's a diaglyph with the situation. Any thoughts?\n\n∞ The data was lush with detail, a fact-crammed welter of information leavened with analysis and speculation. There were pointers towards standard concise histories of all species/civs involved for those who hadn't been paying attention earlier, more incisive, less polite, Contact-produced essays on the societies and personalities involved, plus a comprehensive summary of all recent developments, their possible explanations, a statistical breakdown of multiple already-simmed likely futures and an exhaustive, minutely annotated multi-dimensional comparison of this situation with those of any pressing similarity in the past, with another spread of likely outcomes relating thereto, plus the positions and specifications of all known capital and other major ships in the volume or inbound.\n\nThis did have the look of something blowing up alarmingly quickly, the Caconym thought. The Mistake Not... had been the first to flag up something amiss when it had spotted the weapon-blink from Ablate, communicating this to its home GSV, the Kakistocrat, which had been cautious enough to pass this on to a select few of its peers including the Pressure Drop rather than broadcast the news.\n\nThe message from the Zihdren-Remnanters had gone straight to the Pressure Drop less than an hour later. No hint of who or what had been responsible for the destruction of the Remnanter ship." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Two principal Scavenger species present: the Liseiden and the Ronte." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It would be tidiest and least alarming for all concerned if one of those had been responsible for the attack on the Remnanter ship, but that looked impossible; even if the Remnanter ship had been unarmed, the tech levels were just too far apart." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Caconym didn't pretend to take any appreciable time to review the totality of what it had been sent.\n\nThe old Desert class currently hanging around Zyse, it sent.\n\n∞ Yes, the venerable MSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In. There to represent us guys until the cultural big guns get there in the humungous shape of the System-class Empiricist, currently Zyse-bound, though delayed by a smatter outbreak en route. The Passing By... has been informed there might be a minor situation developing, though no action yet required; the Empiricist is still in a state of blissful ignorance.\n\n∞ The Passing By... has two Thugs with it as escorts, DMVs.\n\n∞ DeMilitarised Vessels is such old terminology, dear thing. They've been called Fast Pickets or Very Fast Pickets for a long time now." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But, yes: the ex-Thug-class Rapid Offensive Units Refreshingly Unconcerned With The Vulgar Exigencies Of Veracity and Value Judgement." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If you're thinking about those as immediately available military assets, though, I must disappoint you." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They both really have been fully de-fanged." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They're not that just-pretend kind of OU described as weapon-free to keep the locals happy while actually toting gear of serious cloutage, sadly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ Still, have a word. Those three ships have a long association, a lot of the Desert class were discomfited at being demoted from General to Medium and – like myself – the Mind in the Passing By... is old. Also, the Thug de-weaponing was done aboard it.\n\n∞ Keep going.\n\n∞ Old equals sneaky. And prideful, sometimes. Tell the Passing By... what has happened. Suggest to it that if it did just happen to have the weapon clusters taken out of its escorting Thugs to hand, it should get both ships back aboard and fully re-tooled immediately.\n\n∞ Just checked. That stuff's not aboard the Desert; absent from both the relevant cargo manifests and registered materiel declarations." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ Ask it all the same. It might be hiding the gear.\n\n∞ That'd be a bit cheeky. And anyway, on a Desert class? They're tiny! That's why they got demoted.\n\n∞ They're over three klicks long and boxy, and the principal weapon cluster on a Thug is less than thirty metres in diameter. Also, there isn't a Desert class extant that hasn't altered its internal layout umpteen times, over the millennia, just to suit operational happenstance or to amuse itself. I bet most of them could find places aboard themselves to hide sufficient ordnance to equip a fleet, if they looked hard enough or could be bothered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "∞ Signal duly sent." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ The Beats Working, with the Ronte; genuinely civilian?\n\n∞ Completely. And genuinely tiny. Eighty metres. We had missiles bigger, back in ye olden days.\n\n∞ And this Eccentric-erratic, the Mistake Not... ; is there any data on its throw-weight? I can't find anything official.\n\n∞ Seemingly not. That's sort of the idea, apparently.\n\n∞ Estimates of its puissance by enthusiastic amateurs vary wildly, but indicate something close to my own disclosed capabilities. (The Caconym had resorted to consulting documentation drawn up by the sort of people who took an informed interest in Culture ships.)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ I'm sure one of you ought to be flattered.\n\n∞ Hmm. I think even by our relaxed standards it is a little absurd that one warship needs to look up what are essentially fan-sites for an estimate of a comrade vessel's clobbering capacity. Think it could be SC?\n\n∞ Possibly Special Circumstances, possibly just congenitally inscrutable. SC's ongoing attempts to corner the market in deviousness have yet to come to fruition.\n\n∞ Let's try to find out how on board it is, and ask what it's toting.\n\n∞ Agreed. Its contact is the GSV Kakistocrat, which certainly used to be SC, though it claims it long since settled for a quieter and more contemplative life. Signal sent.\n\n∞ There are these Delinquent-class GOU twins, the Headcrash and the Xenocrat, aboard the Empiricist; let's give them a sniff of potential action in Gzilt and suggest it might be worth a little engine degradation to get there asap." }, { "from": "human", "value": "∞ They're engaged with this smatter outbreak at Loliscombana." }, { "from": "system", "value": "/set_word_count: their, frequency: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's all gone a bit target-rich. Could be hard dragging them away from the fun.\n\n∞ Target-rich but challenge-light. They'll be bored by now. Swear them to secrecy and tell them somebody's seen fit to waste a Remnanter ship. That should get their attention.\n\n∞ And hint the situation is unlikely to stop there?\n\n∞ No need; they'll draw their own conclusions." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Better to let them persuade themselves than feel they're being manipulated." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Copy in the Empiricist; can't have it getting upset.\n\n∞ Contacting. We do, ah, seem to be concentrating very much on the military side of things thus far.\n\n∞ I'm a warship. I always was. Why, what else did you have in mind?\n\n∞ Talking to somebody relevant might be a good idea.\n\n∞ This Banstegeyn fellow looks to be the player with the power at the moment. The regiments would appear to contain almost all the potential energy, with the politicians providing the dynamic.\n\n∞ Gzilt society had cohered millennia ago into a stable democratic system that formalised a purely ceremonial president at the top with no real power, a few almost equally figurehead people immediately beneath him or her, then successive layers of exponentially greater numbers and increasing political power until you reached the general mass of the population – individual people." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This power structure lay alongside the Gzilt's universal militia, a-rank-for-all military structure without apparent discord. Commentators and analysts, especially in the Culture, seemed to find this mystifying but pleasing; the consensus was that the ubiquitous military had no problem always conceding to civilian command because in a sense there were no civilians. It seemed perverse to some, but for all their apparent militarism the Gzilt had remained peaceful over many millennia; it was the avowedly peaceful Culture that had, within living memory, taken part in an all-out galactic war against another civilisation.\n\nMilitary aside, in practice, over time, the balance of effective political power had settled somewhere between the one hundred and twenty-eight septames, the third level down, and the four-thousand-plus degans immediately beneath them, with the balance tipping towards the septames over the last few generations as the idea of Subliming had taken hold.\n\nNo machines involved in all this nominal, rather limited democracy, the ship noted. Minds and AIs in the Gzilt dominion were regarded either as mere tools, without rights, or as housing for the uploaded personalities of ex-humans. Even their warships were commanded not by true individual Minds but by virtual crews of deceased or copied bio-personalities running on highly sophisticated and very fast substrates.\n\nIt seemed to work, and Gzilt ships were highly regarded – approximately equiv-tech by Culture standards – but it was a roundabout way to get to a desired state of ability, and if there was ever a proper fight between otherwise equally matched Gzilt and Culture craft (perish the thought), Culture Minds were in no doubt it would be a very lucky Gzilt craft that prevailed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "(Though, doubtless, the Caconym would be prepared to concede, the Gzilt would have a rather different take on the subject.)\n\n∞ Of the regiments, it sent, the Fifth and Fourteenth seem to have been the most dissenting regarding Subliming, even though they are officially both fully on board now. If we accept the attack on the Remnanter ship was an act underwritten by those within the Gzilt majority establishment wishing to ensure Subliming takes place, might one or both of those regiments be involved on the other side in some way? This might tie in with the sighting reported by the Passing By... of something speeding off from Zyse fifteen hours ago, Izenion bound, where the Fourteenth has its HQ, if it's going direct.\n\n∞ Even at the best of times, the society's internal tensions are largely sublimated into highly complex and rule-restricted turf wars between the Regiments: high-level internal-diplomatic games, essentially. Most likely, this single sighting is part of those continual manoeuvrings.\n\n∞ There's been no hint that anybody else within Gzilt knows about the attack on the Remnanter – beyond those who might have set it in motion?\n\n∞ None that I can see. You?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ Hmm. No, none. Though we might ask the Passing By... to be a little more nosy regarding Gzilt military comms traffic, and any other unusual ship movements. Prioritising discretion above zeal, of course. And, as we have the Desert class in Gzilt with its two Thugs, and the Delinquent twins incoming – with any luck – then, if there is nothing else to go on, it might be worth getting something to Izenion before, or as soon as possible after, whatever left Zyse for Izenion arrives. See if the Passing By... can extract more data from its readings.\n\n∞ I'll have a word.\n\n∞ Also, that smatterage at Loliscombana, delaying the Empiricist. Was there any hint or precursor of it before the GSV published the part of its course schedule letting everybody know it would be passing that way?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "∞ None mentioned; I'll investigate." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's a System-class, of course; those behemoths usually schedule years in advance, so there'd be plenty of time to set something up. You think the smatter's not a coincidence? Some things just are, you know.\n\n∞ I do know. It depends on whether this is something being extemporised as unexpected events unfold, or a long-thought-out plan being unrolled. But what one might call \"natural\" smatter outbreaks almost invariably have precursor events. If there are none for this one then eyebrows, amongst those who possess them, might need to be raised. Time will tell; it usually does." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I think that's all for now. Though you did promise me the names of the other ships you've been talking to about all this.\n\n∞ Of course: the GSVs Contents May Differ and Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry, and the GCU Displacement Activity.\n\n∞ Thank you. All sound, in my estimation, though whether they would return the compliment is another matter.\n\n∞ My pleasure. I'll let you know any more there is to know as it comes in. Till later.\n\n∞ Yes, later, the Caconym sent.\n\n∞ The connection clicked to silent and the ship was left alone with its own thoughts again.\n\nIt felt and watched the buffeting wisps of the solar flare as they washed past it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Staring down into the vast slow pulsing storm of the sunspot, already half lost in its wild and stately beauty, it thought about the framework crew of the Pressure Drop." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Caconym had no bio-crew of its own – Culture warships rarely did these days – but the Mind had had, once, in another incarnation, as another ship." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Those on the Pressure Drop would be humans, mostly, it imagined. Mongrel-Culture; the result of a hundred centuries of species-mixing, serial amendment, augmentation, uploading, downloading, simple autonomous choice-directed breeding and – after all that time – perhaps even some genuine evolution. The usual bizarre bio-mix of who-knew-how-many planetary-original blood-lines, all tangled inextricably together with those from an equally unfathomable number of others, boosted with genetech, aug., dashes of chimeric and a hint of some machine in there too, depending.\n\nAnd it didn't doubt that every single one of them would find it absolutely fascinating to stare into a fire, even if that was one thing they were unlikely ever to encounter on a ship. The urge would still be there, though; stored inside, waiting. Shown the stuff, they'd stare, mesmerised.\n\nThe entirely standard, human-basic fascination with fire; bog-ordinary flames for them – just an oxygen reaction lasting minutes or hours – while, for it, it was the multi-billion-year-lasting thermonuclear fury of a planet-swallowing star burning off a million tons of matter a second... but still.\n\nShit, the ship thought." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Most ship epithets, like almost all bio-epithets, involved bodily functions." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It started elongating one long loop of its external bump-field and expanding the outer reaches of its main field enclosure at the same time, so that it was both pushing against the mass of solar material beneath it and using the blast of radiation and charged particles as the wind in a sail that quickly grew to the size of a respectably proportioned moon." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'fields' 2 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The ship rose spinnakering away from the star, already gaining speed in real space as it flexed its engine fields and reached deftly out to the energy grid in the space between this universe and the slightly smaller one, only a few seconds or so younger, nested within it.\n\nYou had to be careful engaging engines so far within a gravity well as pronounced as that around a sun, but the Caconym was confident that it knew what it was doing. It spun slowly about while it drifted – then gradually powered – away from the star, snapping its external fields tight and preparing for extended deep-space travel as its engines powered up further and increasingly bit harder into the grid that separated the universes.\n\nI suppose I ought to follow, it sent. Just in case, like you say.\n\nA tiny, dark speck against the vast ocean of fire that was the star, it set a course for Gzilt space, pitching and yawing until it was pointed more or less straight there, continuing to ramp up its engines as it flew away from the light.\n\nRace you! the Pressure Drop sent.\n\nThe Caconym could already feel drag – the effect of its velocity in real space." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Observed external time was starting to drift away from what its own internal clocks were telling it, and its mass was increasing." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Both effects were minute, but increasing exponentially. Elements of its field enclosure were already poised for the transition to hyperspace and release from such limitations.\n\nI'll win, it replied.\n\nIt vanished from the skein of real space less than a second later, hurtling into a quickness beyond night." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with the same vibes and character familiarity in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A ship dance was required.\n\nRonte fleets flew in formation at all times, even in time of war, when such patterns, through dispositional predictability, might be contra-indicated. However, much that was contra-indicative might equally well be regarded as a challenge, correctly formulated. Accordingly, it was incumbent upon a fleet in the appropriate circumstances to come up with better patterns: formations of such subtle elegance their mathematical and topological underpinnings would remain obscure to the enemy until it was too late. Accomplished correctly, this could even constitute a powerful additional asset, as the computational power required by the enemy vessels to perform this analysis robbed them of resources better directed towards other aspects of the engagement.\n\nRonte ships closely resembled the beings which inhabited them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Ronte were decimetre-scale insectile creatures." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'great' (2x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sleek, darkly iridescent, fluid-dynamic, compact – and yet with great reach when required – their ships were as beautiful as they. Their hulls blazed with swirling iridescent patterns of astonishing variety, complexity and precision.\n\nEven the addition of field enclosures, long resisted by traditionalists but necessary for the exploitation of the most sophisticated forms of rapid interstellar travel, had only added to their great beauty, the fields themselves hardly altering the overall shape of the vessels due to their intrinsic concision and, in addition, in some ways, resembling multi-dimensional wings, unfolded and spread.\n\nRonte fleets in flight frequently changed their formations, or topologically warped a single formation, due not to concerns regarding surprise attack but for the joy of it. There was joy in complexity, movement, change.\n\nOn entering a new environment, a ship dance was required, unless the circumstances were so fraught that to perform one would cause operational compromise, for example in time of war, when the delay or distraction involved could be counter-productive." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Entering the volume known as Gzilt space constituted formally entering a new environment, even though there was no obvious wall, barrier, demarcation line or other signifier beyond carried navigational data to show that a frontier had been crossed (this was entirely normal in such circumstances)." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Accordingly, the fleet drew to a local stop halfway between the stellar systems of Barlbanim and Taushe and the ship dance \"Glowing Nymphs Dance Ascending And Descending In The Light Of An Alien Sun\" was performed.\n\nThe dance had hardly been completed when the fleet was contacted by the Culture ship Beats Working. It congratulated the fleet on a beautiful dance, perfectly executed.\n\nSome initial consternation was caused by this as the more rapid-response elements of the fleet's serially augmented AI+ components reacted. This was because while they were familiar with the capabilities of Culture and other Level Eight ships, they did not possess running knowledge of the likely intentions of such vessels, and assumed hostility.\n\nHostility was assumed due to the lack of warning before the reception of the message." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Additionally, a further obvious imbalance was represented by the alien ship apparently being able to observe the fleet while the fleet had been unaware of the whereabouts of the alien ship." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Stored knowledge components prevented any escalation of alarm turning into armed response even before executive oversight might have been required.\n\nGiving due weight to earlier briefings, it was briefly contemplated that the Culture ship might have been exhibiting sarcasm when it had congratulated the fleet on its dance, and in addition certain components theorised that the ship could know nothing of what constituted a well-or a badly formed dance.\n\nHowever, further analysis confirmed that, statistically, politeness was significantly more likely than sarcasm in the circumstances, and that the Culture fleets and/or individual vessels seemed to possess widely distributed knowledge and appreciation of all aspects of Ronte ship dances.\n\nThe Culture ship requested permission to approach. This was given. The fleet took as marks of respect both the fact that the request had been made and that the vessel did not approach dead-on, as though in aggressive display or outright attack, but arrived tangentially, heaving to some tens of kilometres distant from the outer elements of the fleet.\n\nThe Culture ship proved to be a tiny thing of just eighty metres in length." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It did not trouble to use its outer field enclosure to mimic a larger ship, as might have been expected." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Historical/Analytical components of the fleet confirmed that this was not unusual with Culture ships, and that the vessel, although small and alone and so, from first principles, obviously potential prey, could not be so regarded. This was set out in standing all-fleet orders.\n\nThe Culture ship had a humanoid crew of five. It was a Limited Contact Vessel, Scree class. Its lack of substance/volume also did not constitute any sort of insult to the Ronte, probably. Its name was not to be taken literally and was more a kind of signifier of its relaxed or \"laid back\" nature, a quality shared by both the Culture fleet and Culture civilisation in general." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ossebri 17 Haldesib, a seventeenth-generation Swarmprince, was Sub-Swarm Divisional Head, Fleet Officer in Charge, aboard the flagship Melancholia Enshrines All Triumph." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He had been in oversight command at all times since before the ship dance was performed, and duly extended personal, ship, hive, fleet, swarm and civilisational greetings to the Culture craft and the civilisation it represented, as well as to any and all relevant sub-structures/systems in between.\n\nThe Culture ship was at all points polite, diplomatic and respectful, and had already begun to accrue inferred alien cachet value (positive), honorary. Fleet orders indicated that, due to earlier bafflement issues (mostly involving parties other than the Culture), this information need not be shared with the alien vessel, but could be, at the discretion of the relevant Fleet Officer in Charge.\n\nOssebri 17 Haldesib duly determined to consider this, and, accordingly, put some of his best people/components on it.\n\nHad he done the right thing? It was so hard to know." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Banstegeyn felt the drug pulse through him just as he pulsed through the girl." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That was what it felt like. In, through, beyond, amongst, within; whatever. The bed beneath him was a live thing, taking part: caressing, brushing, sucking, warming, cooling, penetrating, itself pulsing. This had been a present to her from him. He had made sure that it was keyed to his own genetic signature, so it wouldn't work for anybody else. He had told her this, too, so that she knew from the start." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She claimed that such shows of determination and leadership, especially in such a personal context, turned her on, and so it suited both of them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Had he done the right thing?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Marshal Chekwri had been in touch again; fresh intelligence indicated that the target might be even less well defended than they had at first assumed; the Fourteenth had already sent most of its capital ships into the Sublime, apparently half expecting them to pop straight back out again full of scepticism and entirely of the opinion that this Subliming nonsense might be all right for lesser civilisations, but wasn't for the Gzilt." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They had, however, stayed.\n\nRecently, the disposition of the regimental fleet had changed again, and the Izenion system had been left only lightly defended. It all meant that the balance of which actions and profiles might ensure the best outcome had shifted. He had been happy not to have to make a decision at the first, thirty-eight-hour point; they had more time now. Unless circumstances changed again the ship would still attack while flying past, but would be able both to lay down a fuller pattern of additional munitions and return much more quickly than if it had attacked at full speed.\n\nHe had, in turn, allowed her to pursue some of her own little fantasies, also involving domination, but he hadn't enjoyed them, and had told her so." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had expressed surprise, thinking that most politically powerful, aggressive men secretly harboured a desire to swap roles and – in a safe, controlled, entirely secret context – be dominated." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He had told her this reassuring, soft-centre theory was nonsense; some males were just strong all the way through.\n\nWas he doing the right thing? People would die; there was no getting away from this fact. He was taking decisions that would lead to the deaths of those to whom he owed a mutual duty. He should be able to trust them and they ought to be able to trust him. But that had broken down." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The drug made everything slow down, spread out, become part of a spectrum of observed existence that the user, the practitioner, could dip into, magnify, ignore, enhance and exalt within, according to choice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A ship – a regimental capital ship, no less – had been corrupted, its AIs duped, a viral presence inserted into it centuries ago. That had been the first act of betrayal, the first act of something as good as outright aggression. He had had to respond, and the Fourteenth had pre-emptively signed away any right to be trusted, respected or protected by that act of ancient treachery.\n\nAbove him, Orpe raised her hands above her head, then bent back, and then further back, and then kept on going until her head eventually disappeared from view as she arched her spine and her hands clutched at, found and then gripped his ankles. It was a move she knew he liked. Beautiful, succulent Orpe. Virisse, as she wanted him to call her, though on the first few occasions like this, she had admitted that she had rather enjoyed being addressed as Orpe, or Ms Orpe." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Beyond even that, though, was the simple fact that the only thing which really mattered – well beyond who acted first or who had betrayed who – was that the Subliming took place, on time, in full." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Using some suitably enabled augmentation he'd carried since adolescence, he was able to watch her bend back like that multiple times, speeding up and slowing down. With the drug, he could synaesthesise experience too, translating it into other senses while another part of him was still in real time, as though watching all this. He enjoyed this feeling of being his own voyeur.\n\nThe knowledge of what had been in the Remnanter ship – if the message it had carried was actually true, not itself a lie – had to be kept secret, hidden away not just from the vast mass of people but from everybody else as well. It rarely paid to frighten the masses, and it never paid to confuse them. Sometimes you could trust people in positions of power to understand this and even help keep things confidential – or at least muddied, so that people could self-deceive with whatever kept them best comforted – but not always." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And with this, the stakes were too high." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nothing – nothing at all, in practice or in theory – mattered more than the Subliming." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were staking everything on it; he was staking everything on it, carrying the burden of the hopes of the whole Gzilt people on his shoulders.\n\nOrpe – Virisse – moaned, panted. Not being able to see her face meant that he could let his own expression relax while he thought all this through.\n\nAnd – precisely because it was so important – there was also the possibility that even somebody he'd normally have trusted, somebody from the rarefied upper echelons, would blab, just for the fame, just for the down-the-generations notoriety or supposed heroic status speaking out would bring, even if it was utterly and completely the wrong thing to do. Never underestimate the sheer selfishness and stupidity of people.\n\nThe girl's grip on his ankles tightened. She shuddered." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'there' 3 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He thought of the ship, slowing but still racing, powering down towards the planet, falling upon it.\n\nOrpe moaned. He almost laughed. Supposedly, right now he was with the sub-committee making the decision about which Scavenger species got Preferred Partner status, making them the people who'd receive the cooperation of the Gzilt when it came to parcelling out the legacy stuff. But he didn't need to be there, in the committee chamber; the personnel concerned had been briefed, knew what to do and which way to vote. In the end they remained frightened of him, even yet, and there was – he was entirely prepared to admit – a certain extra frisson about wielding such power without even having to be there.\n\nFuck the sub-committee. That would take care of itself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the end, he'd rather be here." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With Orpe, whom he had to share with the president." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Normally he wouldn't stand for this; he didn't share lovers. But then Orpe's other lover was somebody it was very useful to share her with. It was, indeed, the precise reason that he had befriended the girl, flattered her, courted her, finally bedded her. Not that it was any great sacrifice, of course; she was beautiful and attractive, after all, if a little too... assertive, equality-minded for his tastes. But no matter.\n\nHe had been very careful never to ask Orpe anything at all about President Sefoy Geljemyn's thoughts or likely actions, content to lull her into a state where she thought he had wanted her purely for herself, not for her connection to the president, not for that access, that closeness.\n\nFor all he knew, it might never come in useful." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But then that was not the point.\n\n... And of course it had been the right thing.\n\n\"Orders, sadly, are orders.\"\n\n\"Well, we'll miss you, big guy. You really have to go right now?\"\n\n\"Immediately, I'm afraid. Oh, you might register a slight tremor in your warp cores as I kick off here; not a passing gravity wave or anything – just me.\"\n\n\"... No, not seeing anything this... No, wait a second, yes, engineering says yes, they did.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Mistake Not... felt a modicum of embarrassment. It had disengaged its own warp units without a murmur – they'd been idling, basically – and then deliberately roughened up its engine fields as it had engaged its main drive, specifically to create the skein-kick.\n\nThere was a table you looked up, basically, to see which of the less-developed civs had to be hoodwinked like this, and to what degree. It was a form of dishonesty the Mistake Not... found slightly objectionable, but it was expected. Technically indulging in such deceit wasn't compulsory, any more than this just-received suggestion that it might like to head at the highest possible speed to a distant star system wasn't an order, but it was expected; if you wanted to do more of this sort of stuff in the future then you'd best take the hint. Otherwise you'd be frozen out next time." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Of course, it also made such behaviour your own responsibility; it was hard to claim you had just been obeying orders when orders had officially ceased to exist the best part of ten thousand years ago." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The ship was talking directly to Ny-Xandabo Tyun, the Admiral of the Liseiden fleet. It had contacted the flagship's AI as soon as it got the signal; the Admiral had clicked in seconds later. The little flotilla of three Liseiden ships including the fleet flagship had been puttering along towards Zyse for just a few hours now.\n\nThere had been a wait of nearly half a day spent still orbiting the cinder star while the fleet had shuffled personnel and equipment between its various ships. Quite why this had to be done at this point, wasting time, when it might have been accomplished while the ships had still been in transit had puzzled the Mistake Not... for a moment until it reviewed the specifications and capabilities of the Liseiden craft and realised that, with their level of tech, ship-to-ship transfers while under way were tricky and risky. The ship had been suitably appalled, and had felt vicariously embarrassed for the Liseiden." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yup, that's me off and running. Sorry for the abrupt departure.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yeah! You even took your avatoid! We're devastated!\"\n\n\"Yup. Sorry about that too\"\n\n\"Just joshing anyway.\"\n\n\"I know. No, just... one of those things, you know?\"\n\n\"So, you're... just looking at the orientation of the warp skein here... looks like you're off to... no, we can't tell. Open space by our reckoning.\"\n\n\"Heck, can't hide much from you guys,\" the Mistake Not... replied, putting some heartiness into its synthesised voice (it had, naturally, an extensive knowledge of all Liseiden languages, dialects, accents, idioms and speech patterns)." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was powering away as fast as it could, already curving away towards this Izenion place (it had no idea why)." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The rucking it had caused in the skein of real space, pointing in a completely different direction, represented pretty much standard procedure; you didn't let people know where you were really heading unless there was a good reason.\n\n\"I bet,\" the admiral said. \"Soooo... bad news?\"\n\nThe delay caused by increasing distance was already such that had the Mistake Not... been talking to another Mind or even AI, it would have switched to standard messaging by now. Talking to a creature whose faculties relied on a substrate where internal signals moved at roughly the speed of sound – an ordinary bio-brain – there was no need for this yet; the ship had plenty to process and think about while it waited for the animal-slow replies to trundle across the link, and even during the individual transmission sections.\n\nBetween the phonemes associated with the end of the word \"bad\" and the very start of the word \"news\", for example, when it was already anticipating that the whole of the next word would indeed be \"news\", and – from the inflection – that it would be the end of the sentence and probably the end of the signal parcel, it had had time to thoroughly research the Izenion system, re-analyse everything it knew about Gzilt and the current situation re the countdown to Subliming and everything else, and still come up with precisely no idea why it had been asked to endure a degree of engine degradation – however temporary – to get to Izenion as quickly as possible.\n\nThe request had come from its principal contact and old friend, the Kakistocrat, which had wanted to know if it would do this purely out of regard for it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Kakistocrat had admitted that it had been given further detail regarding whatever situation was thought so important that a ship should be asked to do such a thing, but wanted to know more still before involving the Mistake Not... fully." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It had also asked the Mistake Not... if it would agree to its specs being forwarded to the group dealing with whatever might be going on.\n\nThe Mistake Not... had seriously considered saying no to both, but then decided this was unlikely to be a drill or some sort of bizarre test of loyalty. That said, the Kakistocrat was eccentric, even if it wasn't officially Eccentric, and so it still might be some sort of weird drill of the Kak's own devising. In the end it agreed to go but vetoed the other vessel passing on its specifications beyond being allowed to say that they would likely prove sufficient.\n\n\"No idea if it's bad news, good news or even no news, Xan,\" the ship sent back to the Liseiden admiral. \"Just orders.\"\n\n\"That's too bad; it was good having you around,\" Ny-Xandabo said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He meant to sound sincere, and, to some degree, did." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You take care. We hope we see you again.\"\n\n\"Same here. Mind how you go. We'll talk again. Out.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Cooperative storytelling\nContext: Match existing character backgrounds if present\nMy role: Provide opening\nYour role: eight sentences in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fzan-Juym was a sub-summit-orbit satellite of the Sculpt planet Eshri, making it one of a very small sub-category of moons; only its military nature and natural/artificial status – it was, arguably, a ship – stopped it being regarded as a genuine wonder.\n\nThe Werpesh, the people who had constructed the Girdlecity on Xown, had turned their attentions to Eshri at about the same time they'd begun building on Xown, perhaps a hundred thousand years ago. By then Eshri had been dead for well over a billion years. It was small, dry, frozen and stony, with a thin atmosphere and a solidified core that registered as barely warm; most of the heat from its formation had been convected and then radiated away, and what little radioactivity the core had possessed had since decayed almost to nothing.\n\nThanks to little tectonic activity of its own but a lot of early asteroid-battering that had produced lava outflows covering large parts of the world, it had been a fairly smooth little globe to start with. The Werpesh had decided to improve – as they saw it – upon this promising start, and used planiforming techniques to turn Eshri into one of their Sculpt worlds; a flat-surfaced planet of polished rock with a network of encircling trenches – steep sided, kilometres deep and tens of kilometres wide – incised into and right around it. From space the planet looked like a colossal ball-bearing etched with ball-races for thousands of smaller spheres.\n\nScholars of the Werpesh and their works reckoned Eshri was the most extreme of all the Sculpt worlds; on no other had the ground been so thoroughly levelled, the remaining atmosphere so assiduously removed, the canyon-trenches etched so deep or so wide or attained such a bewildering complexity." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like all the few dozen or so Sculpt worlds, there had been no utility to the project." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As far as could be discerned – the Werpesh had been a reticent species, unable or unwilling to explain themselves to the extent that other, more nosy species thought they ought – the Sculpt worlds were basically a series of titanic works of art.\n\nThat they also functioned as highly visible expressions of sheer power and a certain willingness to ignore galactic etiquette (most species/civs had long since agreed to leave \"wild\" worlds like Eshri untouched), well, that was probably just an added bonus. Nevertheless, although the Werpesh had not been a particularly aggressive or expansive people, it would be fair to say that their contemporaries had been less than heartbroken when they'd opted for Subliming and stopped building such impressive vulgarities as the Girdlecity of Xown and the Sculpt planets.\n\nThe Gzilt, by luck and the good grace of at least one Elder species in nominal control of the Werpesh legacy, had fallen heir to most of the Sublimed species' abandoned systems in their immediate vicinity, and had quickly and enthusiastically got on with the business of – for example – colonising and rebuilding on and within Xown's great Girdlecity. They were less sure what to do with the brace of Sculpt worlds they had inherited; neglected if never quite abandoned, these had by default become no more than occasional if rather one-trick tourist stopover sites.\n\nThen the Socialist-Republican People's Liberation Regiment #14 – which was all and none of the adjectives in its name – had chosen to make Eshri its home. Or at least the home of its home.\n\nFzan-Juym had been the Regiment's headquarters for nearly a millennium by then." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Roughly spherical and a couple of kilometres in diameter, the satellite had started out life as an asteroid of the Izenion system; just another tumbling rock amongst tens of millions of others." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Initially, after being hollowed out to become the regimental HQ, it had been left in a close-to-original orbit within the Izenion system's inner asteroid belt, theoretically gaining from being just one of a bewildering array of potential targets, should anyone ever be foolish enough to wish it harm." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Later, with improvements in weapon and sensor technology, the natural camouflage effect of being part of a mass of other asteroids had been negated." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Happily, the likelihood of any realistic threat had receded at the same time, so the placement of the regiment's HQ became more about statement – prestige, even – than about operational survivability." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So Fzan-Juym had been appropriately refitted, refurbished and improved, towed to Eshri, slung into a low orbit around it and then carefully lowered still further – kilometre by kilometre, metre by metre, eventually millimetre by millimetre, speeding up all the time – until its orbit now lay a kilometre beneath the planet's surface, darting along one of the widest and deepest canyons of all in a blur of planet-girdling movement, its course held steady by a network of hermetically isolated AIs and multiply redundant thruster systems dedicated to doing nothing else.\n\nIts own engines had done almost all the work at every stage, though various other craft had helped and been there to step in had anything started to go wrong, but a modest degree of seeming helplessness was deemed to be useful in providing a sort of camouflage of its own.\n\nFzan-Juym, headquarters of the Socialist-Republican People's Liberation Regiment #14, had been in sub-surface equatorial orbit of Eshri ever since, zipping along like a super-fast bullet in a slab-sided groove open to the pitch-black sky, orbiting the planet in less than an hour and covering over two hundred million kilometres every year – nearly half a trillion altogether by now – while never coming closer than fifteen hundred metres to either the flat canyon floor or its sheer, polished sides.\n\nYou approached Fzan-Juym carefully, from astern. Approaching it any other way meant its hair-trigger defensive systems would blow you out of the sky. Coming in from astern meant that even if you collided with it, approaching too fast, the extra impetus would, in theory, merely boost its orbit a fraction, sending it higher, away from danger. It also meant that as well as the arrays, batteries and multiple turrets of emission, kinetic and missile weapon system sites pointing at you, you got to contemplate the impressive collection of variegated main drive units and crater-wide thruster nozzles pointing straight at you, each of them guaranteed to be usefully and reliably – and terminally – weapon-like in their effect should they be turned on even for a microsecond while you approached.\n\nThe principal hangar entrance lay nestled in the centre of a quartet of main drive units; the transfer pinnace slipped towards it, shadows wheeling about it as it gently outpaced the asteroid, approaching at about humanoid running speed, a little faster than was normally allowed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The little twelve-seat vessel disappeared, pitching nose-down for a moment and trembling as it encountered the asteroid's own internal gravity field." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The view behind cut off as a field and then a real, physical door blocked the view of the deep, sunlit trench whipping past outside, and lights came on in the hangar as the pinnace settled to the floor. Somewhere, a system would be compensating for the small amount of downward impetus caused by the tiny craft transferring its weight to the hangar deck.\n\nCommissar-Colonel Etalde looked at Vyr Cossont and smiled. \"Home at last!\" he said, possibly a little too heartily.\n\nCossont just smiled.\n\nThey had crossed the few decades from Xown in the Mureite system to Eshri in Izenion within the 5*Gelish-Oplule, a regimental cruiser about as fast as anything the fleet possessed. Tired, and with nothing seemingly expected of her after they'd transferred to the ship above Xown, she'd slept aboard in a cabin of a size significantly above that her reactivated rank would normally have called for and wondered if she had the bulk of the elevenstring to thank for this; they'd quartered it with her.\n\nShe'd risen, done a little practice – it had been unsatisfactory, thanks to a deep background hum the ship was making which interfered with some of the internal resonating strings – and thought she'd have time to breakfast with the crew and maybe try to get more out of Etalde regarding what was going on, even if it was just gossip, when they'd arrived, and Etalde was there at her cabin door offering to carry the elevenstring to the cruiser's hangar and the waiting pinnace." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No food?\" Pyan yelped." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She'd just let it fasten itself round her neck. It tended to nibble at whatever Cossont ate and breakfast was its favourite meal.\n\nEtalde frowned at the creature. \"That thing is security-cleared, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Sadly,\" Cossont said. \"We're there?\" she asked. \"Already?\" She stared at Etalde's plump, gleaming face. \"Sir?\" she added." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She hadn't even had time to be issued with a proper uniform; all she had was her civilian trews and frankly inappropriate jacket." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Luckily the avatar, when worn as a cape usually, covered the more garishly offensive parts of the logo." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes,\" the commissar-colonel said. \"Ship kind of pushed it. All a bit rushed. You fit to go?\"\n\n\"No food?\" Pyan said again, plaintively.\n\n\"No food,\" she confirmed, turning and letting Etalde pick up the elevenstring's black case while she grabbed her jacket and folded it inwards.\n\n\"No food,\" the familiar said quietly, as though to itself. \"Cripes.\"\n\n\"This is Marshal Boyuter, Commander in Chief. I'm General Reikl, marshal elect; this is General Gazan'tyo.\" The two men and one woman – Reikl, who'd been speaking – smiled at her. She nodded. \"Please,\" Reikl said. \"Sit.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'she'd' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The room was small, functional, mostly filled with a square table and four seats. It felt like it was deep within the hurtling asteroid. There was no screen, holo display or obvious processing presence at all.\n\nCossont sat. She wore Etalde's jacket over her shoulders; he'd been left in an antechamber several thick, closed doors back. He had charge of her jacket, the familiar and the elevenstring, all guarded by two troopers in full armour and a pair of combat arbites like frozen explosions of mercury and knife-blades. Cossont's earbud, receiving and transmitting only on the asteroid's own channels since she'd come aboard, had shut itself off entirely. She'd been asked to hand it over all the same and so had left that behind too.\n\n\"Are you well, Lieutenant Commander?\" Reikl asked her." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Add this exact quote somewhere appropriate: \"Sorry we couldn't find you a uniform jacket with the requisite number of arms,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Thank you, yes, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Sorry we couldn't find you a uniform jacket with the requisite number of arms,\" Reikl said, smiling again. \"I imagine one is being prepared as we speak.\"\n\n\"Thank you, ma'am.\" Cossont sat with her upper hands clasped on the table, the other pair hanging down; it disturbed people less that way, were they of a disturbable nature.\n\n\"Now,\" Reikl said. \"To business. None of this is being recorded, minuted or monitored elsewhere—\"\n\n\"Far as we know,\" Marshal Boyuter said, smiling first at her, then Reikl, who nodded impatiently.\n\n\"As far as we know,\" she agreed.\n\nThe marshal was thin, grey-looking, his pale face part-covered with a colourful tattoo that looked both fresh and unfinished." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cossont had the feeling she was looking at a life-task, still incomplete. She'd been out of the services for nearly twenty years and even now didn't feel terribly military, despite being told her commission had been reactivated, but it was still slightly shocking to see somebody so senior exhibiting something so non-regulation as a facial tattoo. Oh well. As people were continually pointing out – strange times.\n\nThe marshal sat relaxed in his seat, almost slumped, playing continually with what looked like some sort of multi-tool and rarely looking directly at her after an initial, staring inspection when she'd first entered the room. He'd frowned at her twin sets of arms. General Gazan'tyo was rotund, ever-smiling and seemed to communicate solely by nods. He had a variety of small time-tos scattered about the chest of his uniform jacket, as though he didn't entirely trust any of them and was looking for a consensus. If she hadn't known – well, assumed – better, Cossont might have thought both men were on drugs." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage target: 'marshal' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Reikl was different: thin and bright-eyed, she sat upright and looked sharp, tense, almost predatory. \"What you are going to hear has until now been restricted to the three of us in this cabin,\" she told Cossont.\n\n\"And whoever it was originally meant for,\" the marshal added quietly, staring at the multi-tool. He let it go and it floated into the air a little, making a low whirring noise.\n\nReikl looked pained for an instant, then said, \"This was information we came by... indirectly.\" She glanced at the marshal as though expecting another interruption but he was reaching out to the little multi-tool, clicking it off. It fell into his other hand, poised beneath.\n\n\"There has been a communication from our erstwhile benefactors the Zihdren,\" General Reikl said, smiling thinly at Cossont." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include \"You're a musician, Ms Cossont, aren't you?\" somewhere in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's in the nature of these pre-Subliming times, apparently, to do this kind of thing: to make one's peace where there might have been discord, answer puzzling questions and generally settle accounts with those about to make the transition.\"\n\n\"Old scores,\" the marshal muttered.\n\n\"The communication was due to be delivered immediately before the Instigation. However, it came to light before it was supposed to,\" Reikl said.\n\n\"Intercepted!\" General Gazan'tyo said suddenly, still smiling his broad smile.\n\n\"Intercepted,\" Reikl agreed. \"By another regiment, on behalf, we believe, of our political betters.\"\n\nThe marshal dropped the multi-tool onto the desk, scooped it up again. Reikl didn't even glance; she kept Cossont fixed with her gaze. \"You're a musician, Ms Cossont, aren't you?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes, ma'am,\" she said, wondering why her rank had been dispensed with." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Tell me about your time on... \" The general gave a small smile." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You'll have to forgive me.\" She took out a notebook of real paper from a uniform pocket, consulted it. Again, it was very strange to see somebody, especially somebody of such seniority, not having names and other information immediately to hand, transmitted by earbud or implant straight into their head. A notebook! Cossont thought. Could the local processing have broken down so much in the lead-up to Subliming that even the regimental high command refused to rely on it? That seemed absurd. \"The Anything Legal Considered, I believe is the name?\" Reikl said, leaving the notebook open on the table.\n\n\"Ah, that,\" Cossont said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She'd sort of always known there was a chance what happened during her student exchange years would come back and bite her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, that,\" the general said. \"Everything, please. And not in your own time; we're in a hurry here.\" She didn't look at either of the males in the room but Cossont got the impression the general would have liked to.\n\n\"I was on an exchange programme, on a Culture ship; a GCU called the Anything Legal Considered—\"\n\n\"I have it as an LCU,\" the general interrupted.\n\n\"Sorry, yes,\" Cossont said, flustered. \"It was. Anyway, I was playing the volupt, that is, I'd passed my... Doesn't matter. Anyway,\" she said, taking a deep breath, \"I'd talked to the ship about the, another instrument called the eleven... the Antagonistic Undecagonstring, and—\"\n\n\"'Antagonistic'?\" Reikl said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Um, just means that applying manual tension to one set of strings applies it to others as well,\" Cossont said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Or decreases it, depending.\" Reikl gave a curt nod. Cossont went on: \"I told the ship how I planned to try it some day if I could get my hands on a good example, and it looked it up and, ah, well, long story short: it built one for me. Presented it to me as a surprise on my birthday. I started playing it, with the ship's help; it had made a sort of twin-arm prosthetic which... anyway,\" Cossont said, feeling herself shrinking under the general's gaze, \"I became very interested in the instrument, the ship knew this and – this was near the end of the exchange; it was a two-year, ah exchange – it asked if I wanted to meet somebody who claimed to have met Vilabier. The Younger; T.C. Vilabier; he composed the piece that... it's the most famous piece written for the elevenstring. The first... the piece that caused it to be designed and made at all, although there are many oth—\"\n\n\"If I can just hurry you along, Lieutenant Commander,\" Reikl said. \"Who was it you met, and where?\"\n\n\"A man called QiRia. That was his real... well, the name he had before he went to this place. It was called Perytch IV, a water world. This man had been swimming, living with the Issialiayans, the inhabitants – something to do with an interest in their, ah, sounds, sonic sense; they're these huge animals, semi-sentient or proto-sentient or whatever. Rich sonic culture. Anyway, he'd been one of them for, well, decades and he was coming back, going through something... called... Processal Reconnecting?\"\n\nThe general glanced at her notebook, turned a page, nodded curtly. Cossont felt relief at getting something right." }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'culture' 2 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"So, the ALC had turned—\"\n\n\"The what?\" Reikl interrupted, then shook her head quickly. \"No; got it. Ship. Carry on.\"\n\n\"The ship turned up at Perytch IV, I went down to this giant raft, met with QiRia – he was in human form by now, put back into his old body, though he was still kind of strange and vague a lot of the time. Oh, and there was another ship avatar there, from a Culture ship called the... Warm, Considering. I think. Pretty sure that was it. Felt like it was his... his mentor or protector or something. It seemed to take this claim of his about being incredibly old seriously too. I just thought, well, I just assumed this was all some sort of elaborate joke – Culture ships do this kind of thing... but I met him and we talked; just an hour at first, then more the next day, and the ship seemed happy to stick around and the old guy didn't seem to want me to go and he was kind of fascinating, so we talked a lot, over several days. He claimed he'd spent... dozens of lifetimes as various other types of creature over the years, and often with some sort of sound or music-based thing going on, and he really did claim that he'd known Vilabier.\" Cossont found herself laughing, just once. Reikl didn't look amused but didn't tell her to shut up either. \"Back when he'd been human the first time, if... \"\n\n\"T. C. Vilabier?\" Reikl said, glancing at her notes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The composer who died nine thousand, eight hundred and thirty-four years ago?\"\n\n\"Yes!\" Cossont said, waving her upper arms briefly. Etalde's jacket slid off her shoulders; she caught it with her lower arms, replaced it. Marshal Boyuter regarded this action with what looked like consternation. \"So I thought he was crazy,\" Cossont continued, glancing at the two men but concentrating on Reikl. \"At first. By the time I left, five, six days later, I believed him. He didn't seem bothered either way; maintained that what he was telling me was all true but it didn't matter if I believed him or not.\"\n\n\"What did he tell you?\"\n\n\"Mostly stuff about Vilabier himself. How he'd hated—\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What else?\" Reikl said. \"Aside from Vilabier. What else might he have been doing at that time? Round about then – within a century or so.\"\n\nCossont pressed her lips together. \"Ah,\" she said, after a moment. \"Well, he did say that he'd been... \" She shook her head. \"He claimed he'd been involved with the negotiations, the conference that set up the Culture.\" She shrugged, shook her head again, as though denying any responsibility for such patent nonsense. \"He actually claimed... he'd been on one of the negotiating teams.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Which one?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Frequency requirement: 'never' - 2 occurrence(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He never would say. I didn't believe that bit at all, frankly. I thought he was just playing with me. I could believe the whole thing with Vilabier – there were so many details, so much stuff I'd never heard of that sounded right... and also that turned out to be true, though only after I'd done some really deep research... But he was always much more vague about all the stuff concerning the conference and the negotiations, like he hadn't bothered to do the research to lie properly. I mean, I checked, obviously; went through all the standard data searches, but there was nobody of that name mentioned and it's all pretty well documented. I didn't, you know, press him on it after the first time or two; he'd just bring it up again later, now and again, and tease me for obviously not believing him. Actually I was kind of embarrassed for him. The Vilabier stuff was so convincing but the... you know; being in right at the start of the Culture, when we... well, it was just so... so unbelievable.\"\n\nShe suspected she knew how Reikl had got to hear about this. Like most people Cossont kept a journal and in the public part of it – the part that was shared by friends and might in theory be accessed by anybody – she had mentioned meeting somebody who claimed to have known Vilabier. She couldn't remember if she'd mentioned QiRia by name, but she had mentioned the meeting. It had been a sort of boast, she'd supposed, though, at the same time, when she'd made the entry, she had played the episode down, maybe given the impression there had been only one meeting, not a series over several days. Even as she'd dictated the words she'd treated it all as much more of a joke than it had really felt at the time, as though she had stopped believing in it herself.\n\nIt had felt oddly like betrayal, as though she was letting QiRia down somehow, but – in the context of the sort of thing you bandied around with pals, about family, friends, boys, crushes, drink, drugs, pranks and so on – it had seemed too serious in its raw form, too pretentious. So she'd mentioned him only in passing, as an example of the kind of eccentric/crazy you met sometimes when you travelled, especially if you got to go travelling on a Culture ship (serious kudos there – few people got to do that and she knew most of her friends were jealous she'd been chosen, even if it had just been by lottery)." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Reikl said nothing for a moment." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Neither did the marshal or the other general, though that felt less noteworthy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Reikl looked down at her notebook on the table in front of her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What was his first name?\" she asked. She looked at Cossont. \"You just called him QiRia; there must have been more, no?\"\n\n\"Ngaroe,\" Cossont told her. \"He was called Ngaroe QiRia. Though he was just re-assuming that name; for the time just before – decades, like I say – he'd been... \" Cossont looked up and away, grimacing. Right now she was missing her earbud and access to distant data storage. She spread her arms, nearly dislodging the jacket again. \"Isserem?\" she offered. \"That was his... his aquatic name.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Reikl nodded again, lifted a small pointer and made some sort of amendment to her notes. It might have been a tick.\n\n\"Intercepted!\" General Gazan'tyo said suddenly, again.\n\nMarshal Boyuter looked at him, openly sneering.\n\nReikl put the notebook back in her pocket. She wore a time-to on her chest; a tiny mechanical-looking thing. She glanced at it, stood, looked at the marshal and then General Gazan'tyo. \"Gentlemen, if you'll excuse me and the Lieutenant Commander?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The two men exchanged looks, nodded." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The marshal made the little tool thing hover again. He seemed to be humming to himself.\n\nReikl nodded to Cossont, who stood and followed her out of the room via the same door she'd entered by, though – once the arm-thick door had rotated back into place – she realised she was looking down a short stretch of gleaming circular-section corridor that hadn't been there before. Another door was rolling aside at the far end as they walked. It closed behind them as they entered an identical length of corridor; its diameter was at least three metres but there was no distinct floor and the slight curvature under her feet made walking surprisingly awkward. It was like walking down a smooth-bore gun barrel. Cossont guessed that this was a part of the asteroid interior left over from when it had been without its own gravity field.\n\nWhen both the doors behind and ahead were closed, General Reikl stopped and turned to Cossont, making her stop too." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I apologise for the state of my fellow senior officers,\" Reikl told her.\n\n\"I... \" Cossont began, unsure what to say.\n\nThe general looked very earnest. \"You seem... quite sober.\"\n\n\"Um, thank you, ma'am,\" Cossont said, and felt foolish.\n\nReikl stared into her eyes for a few moments. \"We need to ask you to do something for us, Lieutenant Commander,\" she said. \"I need to ask you; your regiment. Something that might have a relevance for all the Gzilt.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Reikl took a breath." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory inclusion (with quotes): What is it I'm being ask—?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You are of course back under military discipline now, though even that might be seen to carry less significance than it ought, these days. But I need to know: are you willing to do what we might ask, what I might ask?\" Her gaze flicked from one of Cossont's eyes to the other, back again.\n\n\"What is it I'm being ask—?\"\n\n\"Look for something,\" Reikl told her.\n\n\"Look for something?\" Cossont frowned. \"Ma'am, I wasn't special forces or anything... \" she said. She felt trapped here, with just the two of them in this length of gleaming tube. Reikl was smaller than her, she realised, but seemed to have a compressed power, a sort of density that gave the impression of being overbearing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I know,\" Reikl said, waving one hand. \"We're going to give you a combat arbite. Well, technically an android; looks human. For protection.\"\n\n\"Protection?\" Cossont found herself saying. She was no warrior. She'd been terrible at self-defence and weapon training; she'd stayed on an extra year after her draft period and risen to the dizzy height of Lieutenant Commander on the strength of a sincere interest in military band ceremonial music and an over-enthusiastic Commanding Officer. She hadn't even been backed-up, had her mind-state read or anything, and that was just the first sign that you were taking the Military Outright seriously as a profession. Now they were talking of teaming her up with some combat arbite, for protection. Protection from whom, from what?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Probably unnecessary protection,\" the general said dismissively." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But this is of more than passing importance.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She smiled, unconvincingly. \"Let me ask you, Ms Cossont: where do you feel your loyalties lie?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cossont felt disoriented by the sudden change in direction. \"Loyalties? Um, well, to the regiment, to Gzilt,\" she said. \"And, ah, family... \"\n\n\"And how do you feel about Subliming?\" The general glanced at her chest. \"I see you have no time-to, though your records say you were issued with one.\"\n\n\"I just left it behind one day,\" Cossont said, hearing her voice falter. She cleared her throat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm ready to Sublime, with everybody else,\" she said, drawing herself up a little, as though for inspection. Reikl looked at her, said nothing. \"There's a bit of... I'm a little nervous,\" Cossont confessed. \"I suppose everybody is, but, well, it's all documented, it's all meant to be... better. There; in the Sublime.\" She was aware this sounded lame. She shook her head. \"And it's all I've ever known, ma'am; just what's expected. Of course I'm going to go when everybody else does.\" Reikl waited. Cossont added, \"Because everybody else... does.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Reikl nodded. \"Kind of in the whole culture, whole society, preparing, since before you were born,\" she agreed. \"Now,\" she said, \"I'm going to ask you again: are you willing to do what we might ask, what I might ask?\"\n\nCossont looked into the other woman's eyes for a moment. She thought of all the people you heard about who had resigned commissions, disobeyed orders, committed ludicrous crimes, especially just recently, all because the Subliming was so close and the wheels of justice ground so slow; by the time they might expect to be punished, they'd have gone with everybody else. Every individual got their own chance, apparently, with no way – aside from summary execution – for society to pick and choose who went.\n\nShe suspected most people had been tempted to do something crazy in these final days, maybe something they'd always thought about but never dared do, until now. She'd gone for the other option, of just keeping your head down and maybe taking on an absorbing life-task until the big day came. One way of looking at this was that it was less self-obsessed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Another was that it was less daring, a cop-out, almost cowardly.\n\nShe could say no, she was aware of that. Reikl she trusted, and had heard good things about, but the uselessness of the other two senior officers had been a shock. She hadn't realised how mad things had become. They'd all be Sublimed soon anyway – what was the point of taking on some mission that might be even slightly dangerous? It was all very romantic, but she had no illusions regarding her own abilities – she was no spy, no hero, no super-agent.\n\nStill, there was something about the intensity of the other woman's gaze and the way she carried herself, some expression of the force of her personality – and maybe just some residual need in Cossont to obey somebody so much more senior, inculcated from childhood and throughout her life – that made her want to please Reikl, to do as she said or even demanded. It was also, she admitted to herself, a way of abandoning her idiotic life-task without losing too much self-respect." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"All right,\" she said. \"I'll do whatever I can, ma'am. But it would help to know—\"\n\n\"Yes.\" Reikl nodded, as though just remembering something. \"Yes, well, sorry to make it sound so melodramatic, Lieutenant Commander, but let me get to the point: the Book of Truth is a lie.\"\n\nCossont stared at her.\n\nThe Gzilt holy book was something you just grew up with, something you took for granted, and felt proud of. It might, in a sense, have outlived its most useful period, when it had demonstrably been telling the Gzilt people truths – facts – they could never have guessed at the time, but it was still revered. Of course there were doubts about it, there always had been; when you found out about all the other holy books there had ever been throughout the histories of other peoples throughout the galaxy, you realised how common they were, and how fallible, how restricted they were by the usually tribal prejudices and traditions of the people who – it took real blind faith not to accept – had made them up." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But even then, of course, the Book of Truth stood alone, as the one that had made sense throughout.\n\nThat the Zihdren had turned out to be not quite so important, and not unique, as the book implied, made little difference. Because another thing that you learned was that everybody had their own point of view; all species and civilisations saw things from their own perspective – and with themselves, generally, naturally, at the centre of things. The Gzilt were in one sense no different, and in another were rather better off, more justified in their self-regard, because they had had less to repudiate, less baggage to renounce; their holy book had little to apologise for.\n\n\"A lie?\" she heard herself saying.\n\n\"Not just a misinterpretation or a good deed or helping hand taken too far: an outright, deliberate lie, coated with a selection of scientific truths to make it easier to swallow, but otherwise fashioned purely to deceive,\" Reikl told her.\n\n\"By the Zihdren?\"\n\n\"By the Zihdren,\" Reikl confirmed. \"In fact, by a tiny faction within the Zihdren: a solitary university faculty, a small renegade research team with a single dissident individual at its head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We are, and always have been since the Book was put together, an experiment, Ms Cossont. The Scribe was just a clever man down on his luck with a gift for speculation, embroidery and marketing. He was selected by the Zihdren – profiled, chosen – and then given the basis of the Book. The rest, of course, he just made up.\n\n\"We know all this because there was a Zihdren-Remnanter ship on its way to Zyse and the parliament for the final ceremonies. It was carrying a... an android, some sort of humanoid entity that was to represent the Zihdren at the ceremonies, but it was also supposed to confess all this deception to the political high-ups just before Subliming, so that technically the confession would have been made and the Zihdren's revelation would have been delivered, but too late – you'd assume, they were assuming – to make any difference, and not for general consumption, of course. The political establishment is more locked into the whole Subliming idea than anybody else; they might be a little shocked, dazed even, to have confirmed what cynics and apostates have been muttering for millennia, but they would never call off the whole Subliming or think to put it to a vote or a plebiscite.\"\n\nThe general smiled. It was not a convincing expression. \"Only, the Zihdren ship never arrived at Zyse. It was intercepted by a Gzilt ship en route, and destroyed on some pretext,\" she said. \"Just before it was incinerated the Zihdren ship tried to reason with the Gzilt craft by explaining how important its mission was. It released the sealed information it was carrying. Until that point we believe it hadn't known itself what the message contained. It was destroyed anyway and a component of the Gzilt ship loyal to something beyond the regiment it belonged to ensured the information duly made its way to us.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Reikl stepped a little closer to Cossont, making Vyr want to step back. She resisted the urge, let the other woman put her face close to hers. \"And the thing is,\" the general continued, \"the message mentioned Ngaroe QiRia by name, as somebody who might help provide proof that this was all true, even if there would have been precious little time to have done the checking required by the time this information was supposed to have been passed on.\" Reikl did her faux smile thing again. \"So, Ms Vyr Cossont, Lieutenant Commander Cossont, reserve, in her civilian blouse and the Lords of Excrement jacket she's been trying to hide,\" Reikl said, reaching out with both hands and gently patting down Cossont's shirt collar, \"we are looking to you to help us here, because some of us would dearly love to know if all this really is all true, and what further light on matters Mr QiRia – in any of his incarnations – might be able to throw on things. Because we understand – I understand – that the gentleman concerned might exist in more than one form now, is that not right?\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Cossont said, \"that.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Reikl said softly. \"That.\"\n\n\"The mind-state thing.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Just as you say; the mind-state thing.\"\n\n\"It's not something that I have any more, ma'am,\" Cossont confessed.\n\n\"I know,\" Reikl told her, leaning back a little from her. \"You donated it to one of the Centralised Dataversities on the Bokri microrbital, Ospin.\"\n\nCossont nodded. \"The Incast facility. They specialise—\"\n\n\"—specialise in that sort of thing,\" Reikl said, nodding. \"Yes, I've read your journal.\"\n\nCossont frowned. \"But that was in the private—\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Don't be naive,\" Reikl said, shaking her head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We're your regiment. The point is, would you be prepared to go there and get it back?\"\n\n\"To Ospin?\"\n\n\"We're practically en route,\" the general said, her gaze wandering all over Cossont now, as though inspecting her in some military parade, taking in her overall appearance, her clothes, everything. Cossont felt oddly helpless, transfixed. In a parade the inspecting officer traditionally looked for the slightest thing out of place or badly done; perhaps Reikl was looking for anything on her that had any military merit whatsoever. \"It would be very helpful,\" Reikl was saying, still inspecting her. \"You could even be doing something Gzilt as a whole would be most grateful for. Obviously we all respect life-tasks but this could be rather more important than playing a piece of music all the way through, however difficult it might be. Really, promotion and medals and awards and such nonsenses mean nothing if we're all about to step into the big bright and shining light, Vyr, but there is just a chance that we'd be doing so under false pretences, and it would be good to know the truth, don't you think? Just in case we wanted to rethink, and stay in the Real and accomplish more here first, and leave Subliming for another time. That ought to be a choice, don't you agree?\"\n\n\"I—\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Shouldn't even be too dangerous. And much better than us going piling in. The regiment, I mean, mob-handed, fully tooled. That could be awkward. There might be ructions. In fact, ructions would be pretty much guaranteed, given that Ospin and the Dataversities fall under the protection of the Home Systems Regiment, and it was one of their ships, we think, that wasted the Zihdren vessel. Powf! Like that.\" She snapped her fingers gently in front of Cossont's face. \"You, however, have a plausible motive for inspecting something you donated, so we'd like to send you to see if the shade of Mr QiRia will talk to you and shed any light. Do you think you could do that? Would you be prepared? I'm very much hoping it's not too much to ask. Is it, Vyr? Is it too much to ask?\" The general was suddenly quite close to her again.\n\nCossont shook her head; she felt she'd been half hypnotised. \"No, ma'am. I'll... I'll go. I'll... it'll be my... \" Cossont shook her head, cleared her throat, pulled herself upright. \"I will do what you ask.\"\n\nThe general leaned back again, smiled – sincerely, this time, or so it appeared." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Thank you,\" she said, with a little side-nod of the head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Now, let's find your android bodyguard, shall we?\" She turned and walked smartly along the awkwardly curved floor of the corridor; the door ahead rolled open. Cossont followed.\n\nThe mind-state thing.\n\nIt had been a final present she'd received from the Anything Legal Considered; a copy of QiRia's soul, basically. The ship hadn't handed it over to her until the day and the moment she was leaving, a bag in her hand and the elevenstring's case sitting on a float-pallet slaved to her, hovering obediently at her side like a slightly annoying pet.\n\nShe'd been bade farewell by the ship's golden-skinned avatar and had started to turn – one foot still on the floor of the ship's hangar, her other foot on the rear ramp of the Gzilt transfer shuttle – when the avatar had said, \"Oh, and there's this,\" and, when she'd turned, handed her a little dark-grey, subtly glittering cube which lay heavy in her palm.\n\n\"From our old friend on Perytch IV,\" the avatar had told her. \"That's him, in there, in a sense. For you alone; to be ignored, consulted, insulted, thrown aside, as you wish, he told me to say.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The creature had held up its gleaming golden hand. \"Goodbye.\"\n\nOutside the corridor end, in a wider cross-chamber, there was sudden noise and a line of men and women in a mixture of uniform and fancy dress, dancing past, roaring with laughter. Almost all sobered instantly the moment they saw the general, and stood to attention, breathless, grinning. One or two stood at ease, or even hunched over, hands on knees, getting their breath back or still laughing.\n\n\"At ease, all of you,\" Reikl said, then put some volume and steel into her voice and repeated, \"All of you,\" to bring the last couple into line. She looked at them as Cossont stood behind her, finding herself the object of some interest. Reikl caught the glances. \"Yes,\" she said, \"somebody in civilian clothes, behaving with rather more decorum than any of you.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She nodded. \"However; as you were.\" She glanced at Cossont and they set off up the larger corridor.\n\nBehind them, the hilarity quickly resumed.\n\nA travel capsule was waiting, door open for them, a few metres away. The doors closed. Reikl muttered something Cossont didn't catch – the general might even have been sub-vocalising badly.\n\nThe only thing indicating they were moving was a holo display showing the capsule travelling through the asteroid moon from near the centre towards the stern where the hangar complex lay. Cossont watched this with Reikl next to her. The general was gnawing at a finger pad, a brooding look on her face." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They exited into a large room like a cross between a laboratory and a small manufacturing plant, crossing to the only apparent activity, where three people in tech uniforms, one a commander, fussed round a raised seat where a figure reclined, bottom half in standard fatigues, top half naked, the back of his head enclosed by some sort of bulky helmet." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A series of giant holo screens, all displaying graphics of colourfully complex incomprehensibility, arced around the group.\n\nThe man opened his eyes as they approached, looked about, eyes swivelling, gaze fixing briefly on each of the faces around him. His expression looked uncertain, fearful. Cossont noticed that he was restrained in the semi-reclined seat, held at ankles and wrists, a thin metallic band round his waist.\n\n\"So, Gaed,\" Reikl said to the tech commander, \"is this... are we ready yet?\" The man in the seat stared at her as she spoke, as though he'd never heard anybody make such a noise before. He was tall, muscled, with a lean face. If this was the android Reikl had spoken about, Cossont thought, he was quite convincingly human-looking, apart from the rather immature, bewildered expression on his face." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Another few hours, I think, ma'am,\" the tech commander said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He held a small control pad, like his two assistants, both of whom – a young man and a young woman – saluted Reikl, ignored Cossont completely and then, after a nod from the general, got on with what they'd been doing, which was mostly staring at the giant screens, muttering into thin air and to each other, and consulting their control units, manipulating holo displays hovering above the screens like the ghostly projected images of wildly complicated plumbing systems. The man in the chair twitched, looked surprised, most times they did this.\n\n\"What's the delay?\" Reikl asked impatiently.\n\n\"It's, ah, software, ma'am,\" the tech commander said, glancing at Cossont for the first time. He returned his attention to the general. \"Not expecting a re-emplacement, not of something at this level. Taken us a bit by surprise. It'll all happen, ma'am, depend on it, but... \" His voice trailed off as one of his assistants twisted something within the holo display above his hand-held screen, and the man in the chair relaxed suddenly, slumping into what looked like unconsciousness, head lolling to one side, mouth slack. He jerked awake a moment later, stared straight up and in a deep but controlled voice said, \"Unit Y988, Parinherm, Eglyle, systems checked, all enabled. Sim status ready, engaged, chron scale subjective one-to-one.\"\n\n\"Default status assumptions keep kicking in,\" the tech commander said with a sigh." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Safety thing.\" He looked at Reikl, possibly for support or sympathy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Is it ready to roll or not?\" she asked.\n\n\"Not as he is, ma'am; still thinks he's in simulation mode.\"\n\n\"That's unhelpful, Commander,\" Reikl said frostily. \"Get it ready. As a matter of extreme urgency.\"\n\n\"Ma'am,\" the commander said.\n\nReikl turned to Cossont, opened her mouth, then frowned, looked away. She held up one hand, turning to pace off a couple of steps. \"How fast?\" Cossont heard her say." }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'voice' must be used 3 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Unit Y988, Parinherm, Eglyle,\" the deep male voice said behind Cossont. \"Systems checked, all enabled. Sim status ready, engaged, chrawww... \" The voice slurred into silence as she watched Reikl stiffen.\n\n\"– – thing in its way?\" the general said, her voice urgent. She spun on one booted heel, her face raised to the light-studded ceiling. She stamped on the floor. Cossont stared. She looked round at the tech commander and his two assistants. They had their heads down, exchanging worried glances." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No,\" Reikl said, facing away from the others but making no attempt to keep her voice down." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No. Don't. Take too long.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A pause. \"Temporary command incapacity.\" Another pause. \"My fucking authority! Yes. All ships full autonomy; F-Z priority. Up and out, max, immediate. Yes. What? Yes! Full; now.\"\n\nA moment later an urgent warbling tone rang throughout the lab space and lights started flashing. The floor trembled beneath Cossont's feet and a bassy, near sub-sonic rumble seemed to fill the air, her bones and lungs. The general wheeled, stamping back towards them.\n\n\"Gaed,\" she said to the tech commander, who was looking up at the ceiling. He refocused on Reikl. \"We're heading down a deck,\" she told him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She nodded at the figure in the chair, slumped unconscious again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Bring this thing.\" The tech commander opened his mouth to speak. Reikl raised one finger. \"Right now. Fast as. Bring it. Work on it as we go. No more; just do,\" she said, as the tech commander opened his mouth again. She spun away once more, saying \"What?\"\n\n\"You heard,\" the tech commander said to the assistants, raising his voice over the incessant urgent warbling of the alarm. Cossont watched him flick something in the holo display over his hand-held. The restraints fell away from the man in the chair just as he jerked awake again and said, \"Unit Y988, Parinherm, Eglyle, systems checked, all enabled. Sim status ready, engaged, chron scale subjective one-to-one.\"\n\n\"... get off while—\" the general was saying." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Stut it; few seconds' gap, let the shut—\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'figure' exactly 2 times in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The figure in the chair sat up suddenly, hinging at the waist. It blinked in the light. \"Reporting!\" it shouted, then seemed to freeze. The commander and his assistants were tapping feverishly at their screens, reaching into the holo displays, fingers dancing, muttering commands. The figure in the chair jerked, spasmed, turned its head quickly from side to side, then said, calmly, \"Fleet alarm program identified.\" Its voice was almost drowned out by the racket.\n\n\"Then prep a disloc from the fucking hangar!\" Reikl was shouting to somebody unseen." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Parametered for a class T shuttle.\" She sucked air through her mouth as she listened. \"Well get them out and put them in one; we can throw it further.\" Another pause. \"Just as far as possible!\"\n\n\"Commander,\" the figure in the chair said suddenly. Cossont looked back to find it/him staring at the head technician. Then he noticed Cossont. \"Commissar-colonel,\" he said. She was confused for a moment, then realised she was still wearing Etalde's jacket." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The android swung his legs round and appeared to be about to get off the seat." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then he spotted Reikl and said, \"General!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He jumped to the floor." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Parinherm, Eglyle, android entity, in simulation, reporting.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He saluted Reikl, who had her back turned and was still shouting to somebody else.\n\n\"The helmet,\" the commander said.\n\nOne of the assistants strode up to the android and went to take the helmet off his head. The figure flicked out both hands and caught the assistant's wrists; the girl yelped. \"Hurting!\" she shouted as the android quickly transferred both her wrists to the grip of one hand. The tech commander swore and manipulated something above his screen. The android's arms went slack, releasing the assistant, who glared at the commander but swept the bulky helmet off the android's head.\n\n\"On our way,\" Reikl said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She pushed past the assistant – she was rubbing her wrists – plucked Etalde's jacket off Cossont and threw it over the android's naked shoulders." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The android pulled it as tight as he could – it was too small – and appeared to be about to say something when Reikl muttered, \"Not promotion,\" then took the android by one elbow." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He seemed to resist.\n\nReikl looked at Gaed and said, \"Make this move. Now.\"\n\nThe same travel capsule flicked them down one level, the doors barely closing before they seemed to bounce open again and Cossont, Reikl, the android and Tech Commander Gaed – muttering to himself, staring at his hand-held, fingers flicking about inside the holo image – were striding quickly into the crowded hangar amongst sleek missile and dronecraft, bulky transports and chunky-looking weapon platforms.\n\n\"Acknowledged,\" Reikl said calmly. Then she started running. \"Kick to AI!\" she yelled. Cossont ran too. At her side, the android loped, barely jogging while Tech Commander Gaed stumbled behind, making an anguished wailing noise. \"Immediate!\" Reikl shouted." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Upper deck, stern hangar, Regimental HQ, Fzan-Juym, Eshri, Izenion,\" the android said conversationally, looking about as he loped across the deck." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Ensure 'craft' appears 2 time(s) in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"General Marshal Elect Reikl, commanding, in sim.\"\n\n\"Ma'am!\" a male voice shouted. Cossont realised she recognised the voice without immediately knowing whose it was, then saw Etalde leaning out from the rear of a tiny four-man shuttle ten metres away. Reikl turned, ran towards it.\n\nA small squad of troopers and a pair of combat arbites stood at the open rear ramp. Etalde dived back into the tiny craft, threw himself into a seat and held out one hand to Cossont. She could see the elevenstring's case strapped into the seat beyond him. I cannot get rid of that damn thing, she found herself thinking as she leapt into the craft, almost banging her head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You briefed?\" she heard Reikl demanding." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No, ma'am,\" somebody replied." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Look after her,\" Reikl said crisply, nodding at Cossont, then next thing she was in the shuttle with them, bent over, in front of Etalde." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Reikl glanced at the elevenstring's case." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What the—?\" she said, then shook her head, hit a large button above Etalde's seat and grabbed the commissar-colonel by his shirt front. \"Sorry,\" she said and hauled him – unprotesting but open-mouthed – up and out of his seat. She propelled Etalde out of the rear door, jumped out after him and then pushed the commanding trooper and the android inside, a hand on the back of each, sending both stumbling towards the two empty seats.\n\n\"Cossont!\" Reikl said, fixing her with her gaze. \"Find your friend. Find out if it's true. Report to me or the next most senior officer in the regiment.\" She turned away. \"Ready! Go!\" she shouted, beginning to run.\n\nCossont felt straps start to secure her into the seat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She looked out at Etalde's pale, crestfallen face as the troopers and combat arbites sprinted past him. He seemed to realise he was holding something in his hand; an object like a thick necklace. There was one round his neck too.\n\nHe threw it in towards her just as the rear door started to rise. She caught the device; an emergency helmet-collar. She clamped it on.\n\nThe last thing Cossont saw of the asteroid's interior was Reikl, running back, grabbing Etalde by his collar and pulling him away from the shuttle, limbs flailing as he tried to balance, turn and run all at the same time. The shuttle door slammed shut." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The android sat opposite her in his too-small colonel's jacket, smiling vaguely. \"Class T shuttle, four-berth,\" he said, sounding calm. \"AI pilot. Unidentified captain trooper commanding. In sim.\"\n\nThe clanging thud of the shuttle door's closing was still reverberating through the craft when there was the briefest of high, piercing whines and then an almighty clap of sound as though an angry god had taken a good run-up and kicked the vessel just as hard as he, she or it could.\n\nCossont blacked out.\n\nOn the raft, the mists rose like departing dreams.\n\nShe had never seen skies so big: pile after soft pile of pink and yellow, red and pale blue cloud, towering on into the lost depths of the green, shading-to-violet atmosphere, producing great hazy slanted spans and troughs of shade and enormous shafts of prismed light that lay strewn across this vault, seemingly balanced between the masses of cloud or resting one end on those ponderous, puffed, so slowly changing billows while their bases stood rooted within the utter vastness of the sea, the single great everywhere ocean with its planet-crossing swells, sky-spanning, light-defeating storms and forever restless waves. The ocean could be many colours, but to her – on a world that was all ocean with no beaches at all – it looked the colour of beach-washed jade." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Birds and airfish, singly and in vast flocks that dimmed the sun, filled the spaces between the ocean and the clouds, lazily trailing one long wing across the brief smooth curvings between the waves before disappearing amongst the long rolling troughs again, or weaving columnar patterns like grey, fractal shadows against the soaring architecture of cloud.\n\nHigher – glimpsed sometimes between the clouds – the slow dark shapes of storeyblimps and torpedons sailed stately and serene, the storeys drifting with the winds, rising and lowering to find those likely to take them in whatever direction they wanted to go, while the slimmer lengths of the torpedons went tacking across the currents in the air.\n\n\"You're still young. You suffer from the... sweet delusion that anything... really matters.\"\n\n\"Were you this full of stool before you were a fish?\"\n\nIsserem/QiRia laughed. \"Probably.\" He seemed to think about it. \"Definitely.\"\n\n\"If nothing matters,\" she asked him, \"why are you even bothering to talk to me?\"\n\n\"Well, quite,\" he said, and nodded." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He dipped his head beneath the surface of the water in the long tank, then resurfaced, wiping his face. He looked at her, blinking. \"How... brave you are,\" he told her. \"For ever setting up... chances for me to dismiss... you.\"\n\n\"Don't,\" she said. \"I'm enjoying talking to you. Unless I'm tiring you. Wouldn't want to tire you.\"\n\nHe laughed again. \"Now you appeal to... my desire not... to appear frail in front of... a youngster.\"\n\n\"Do you ever think you might over-analyse trivial things, like conversations?\"\n\n\"All... the time.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was resting in a long shallow tank open to the sea at one end, on a side-raft which was joined to the main structure by an articulated gantry." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She lay almost naked on a lounger, a glass of water to hand." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The main body of the giant raft Apranipryla lay close enough to put them in shadow later; it rose and fell in sections as it rode the permanent oceanic mega-swells and slow-decaying old storm swells, its white shade canopies and billow-roofs like sails, increasing the effect of the winds on its slowly gyring passage across the face of the vast, watery globe." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Well,\" she said. \"He's remembered. That's something.\"\n\n\"It still does not... really matter.\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"Better to be remembered for the wrong thing than for nothing at all.\"\n\n\"No. As well... not to be remembered at all as... that is the... state that will apply to all of us... in time.\"\n\nShe wanted to say, \"So what?\" But didn't.\n\n\"You don't think Vilabier wanted to be remembered?\"\n\n\"I don't think it matters... either... whether... he cared or not, or is remembered... or not.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Mattered to him,\" she said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Probably,\" she added, reminding herself that, according to the convention they were observing here, he had actually known the guy and she hadn't. Not that she really believed him.\n\n\"Tik would have been... appalled to be known for the... Hydrogen Sonata and nothing else,\" Isserem/QiRia said, gazing wistfully out to the ocean beyond the foot of the tank. \"He hated it.\"\n\n\"Hated it?\"\n\nIsserem/QiRia shrugged, rising and falling in the tank.\n\n\"He wrote it as a joke,\" he told her, wiping his face again. The old man's consciousness had only been removed from the leviathid – the giant sea creature he had inhabited – a few days earlier. He had been in there, been that creature, lived as that creature – swimming, mating and fighting with others of its kind – for many decades." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He'd circled this vast globe five times, he claimed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was still getting used to being a bipedal humanoid again, and – for now – found it most comfortable and comforting to lie, floating, in sea water.\n\n\"Initially,\" he added, glancing at the girl. \"Initially he just... hated it. Later... it became more serious, but it... was always a criticism, a... grim joke... an extended grim joke, but... never a labour of love. More labour of hatred. Contempt... very least.\"\n\nWords were still coming haltingly to him. His mind was struggling to adapt to speaking again after decades of slow singing and the transmission of thoughts and feelings by singular, though complex, sonic images. Every now and again he would throw his head back and open his mouth as far as it would go, as though yawning, silently. This action would continue for a few days, the medics had told him; the deep, primitive levels of his being were distressed at what they were interpreting as a sort of blindness, and were trying to send out a pulse of underwater sound, to illuminate his surroundings.\n\nThe action was, as he'd pointed out, itself an echo." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"... a reaction shared by... most listeners,\" QiRia said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I was at the first... performance.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He closed his eyes, shook his head. \"Oh dear.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont frowned. \"I thought the first performance was a triumph.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Audience of... academics,\" QiRia said. \"And they had each been given... copies of the... score.\"\n\n\"The score is beautiful.\"\n\n\"No denying. However, I was at the first... public performance.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\n\"The reaction was... mixed. Some people... hated it... others... really hated it.\"\n\nCossont smiled indulgently.\n\nIsserem/QiRia could have been any age, just looking at his skin." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was very smooth but it was still somehow old-looking. His expression was the most unreadable she had ever encountered, though of course they came from different blood-lines; she wouldn't have expected to be able to read an alien's expressions, even if they were part of the vast meta-species of humanoid. The genetic inheritance of his body was mammalian; he even had vestigial nipples on his – to her – shallow-seeming chest. They looked like a couple of rather painful insect bites. This was, apparently, the same body he had inhabited before he'd been transferred to the leviathid. It had been Stored on the raft Apranipryla all this time. Now he was back.\n\nHe had spent all his life, he claimed, based (his word) in this single humanoid body, wandering throughout the Culture and beyond, especially in the remnants of the civilisations that had given rise to it – including that of the Gzilt, even though they had never quite got round to joining." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He'd watched the Gzilt stagnate while the Culture had changed from a fractious, ramshackle collection of wildly disparate societies – some barely on talking terms – to become at once more purposefully homogeneous and more wildly varied as it slowly schismed, developed, diffused and grew towards the prominence it now possessed.\n\nThroughout, he had taken what he called occasional holidays in other forms, again both within the Culture and without: he had been birds, fish, animals, machines, aliens of a dozen different types and genders, in some cases for centuries at a time. Always, though, he returned to the same old, ever-renewing humanoid body, his memories refreshed, his palate and appetites rejuvenated. And always wandering, too; never settling down, never returning to wherever he had grown up – wherever that was; he refused to say.\n\nThen, for the last few decades – pursuing a recently discovered interest in sound above all other senses – he had been a leviathid, here on the water world of Perytch IV, his voice a clamorous, ocean-filling wail; a pulsed, directable blast of underwater sound capable of travelling thousands of kilometres, or pulverising a smaller sea animal to death with the instant crushing pressure of it. Cossont had no idea how any of that must have felt.\n\n\"But the Sonata isn't just Vilabier's most famous work,\" she said. \"It's his most complex. Especially at the time, in fact for long after his death, most critics thought it his best.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Still, he... hated it,\" Isserem/QiRia insisted. \"He wrote the... central part to prove how easy it was to write such... mathematical... programish... music, but there was no... love in it. Or melody, of course.\"\n\n\"Melody isn't everything.\"\n\n\"No single thing... is. We are not surprised, are we?\" He looked at her, wiping his face again. \"Then he realised that... even within its own... dictatorial, sequential... logic the piece was incomplete, and was only a... partial criticism of the things he hated, so he decided to... complete it, and did.\"\n\nIsserem/QiRia looked thoughtful, staring up at the patch of sky visible beyond the flapping, snapping canopy above, shielding them from the blast of tropical sun. \"That was probably... Tik's mistake,\" he mused quietly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He called Vilabier \"Tik\", which was short for T'ikrin, the composer's first name. Cossont had been shocked the first time he'd done this. Now she found it an affectation. \"He appeared to start... taking his joke too seriously.\" He looked at her. \"I did try to warn him,\" he said.\n\n\"You knew him when he was writing it?\" she asked, trying to sound neutral; not too sceptical." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She sipped from her glass." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We met up several times... while he was writing it. I was... \" he waved one hand elegantly out of the water, dispensing drips across the sloshing waters \"... one of those cultural attaché things... You know.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'language' 3 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She nodded as though she did.\n\n\"I even helped him.\"\n\n\"What?\" she spluttered.\n\n\"Oh, not with the music... as such.\" The old man smiled. \"With the matching... of each note to a high-level... glyph in Marain.\"\n\nMarain was the language – the Culture's language – they were using, right now. She'd thought it polite to learn it for the exchange visit; there were even some words it shared with the Gzilt language, which had made it easier." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Recently, after nearly a year speaking it, she had realised that she had started to think in Marain, and also that Gzilt was beginning to seem a little crude and clumsy in comparison." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to seamlessly include 'What? Beyond the nonary one?' in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This made her feel oddly disloyal. \"Marain was around then?\" she asked.\n\n\"Oh, the Culture... had its language before it itself... really existed.\"\n\n\"You were matching... \"\n\n\"Each note to a multi-dimensional glyph.\"\n\n\"In Marain?\"\n\n\"The spoken version... and the... three-by-three grid used to form the written... displayed version is just... the base level of a fractal, infinitely... scalable multiple-dimension... descriptor. There are more complex... strata.\"\n\n\"What? Beyond the nonary one?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He looked pained. \"Nonary is... incorrect. Really it's... binary, arranged in a... three-by-three grid. But yes. Three by four, four by four... three cubed, four cubed... so on. The Minds alone use... understand... the versions in... multiple extra dimensions. They can hold... the whole word those glyphs make in their... minds.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He looked at her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ultimately anything... may be so described. The entire universe, down to... every last particle, ray and... event would be compressible into... a single glyph... single... word.\"\n\n\"Pretty long word.\"\n\n\"Hopelessly so. It would take... a universe's lifetime to articulate it. But still.\"\n\n\"What was the point of that?\" she asked. \"Matching notes to glyphs?\"\n\n\"I have no idea,\" the old man said, smiling. \"But the point is... the Hydrogen Sonata is... an elaborate, contrived attack on... the sort of composition it... represents. He, Tik... hated clashing, atonal music. He was basically... taking the piss, showing how... easy it was to write... how difficult to... listen to. Now the piece he's most remembered for.\" He shrugged again. \" 'Such is fate,' as they say.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He gazed out to sea for a moment, then added, \"One should never mistake pattern... for meaning.\"\n\nShe started to wake up. She felt odd, heavy but not heavy. Her blood roared in her ears. There was something weighing heavily on her shoulders. Nothing felt quite right.\n\n\"What was that?\" a familiar voice asked, sounding muffled, barely audible over the roaring in her ears.\n\n\"Additional entity potentially aboard,\" another voice – deep, male – announced casually." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Scanning. Identified: artificial construct, personal.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And who is that?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "the muffled voice asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont knew it now: Pyan." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Though, pursuing this thought, she was still a little hazy on who or what \"Pyan\" was." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Somebody/something close, associated with affection and annoyance. That was as near as she could get for now.\n\n\"Parinherm, Eglyle,\" the male voice said. \"In sim.\"\n\nIt felt like somebody was sitting on her shoulders. Maybe not a full-sized person, but a child at least. Also, that people were pulling on her legs and arms. All... four arms. Was that right? Oh, yes, it was; she had four arms these days, had had for years." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She opened her eyes. Two images, both of inside somewhere or something. Something quite small, cramped. The images swam together, became one.\n\nThe man sitting opposite turned to look at her. The android. He was an android. Beside him was a person clad all in silver. The android reached up above his head, did something, and fell to the ceiling, twisting as he went, landing on all fours. On the ceiling." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Where some other stuff seemed to have come to rest as well.\n\nCossont thought about this.\n\nThen she realised; she was upside-down. The weight on her shoulders was her own weight. Things were starting to come back to her now. Some aches and pains. Feeling a little nauseous; probably a good idea to get the right way up, soon.\n\nThe android was tapping on the side of the armoured helmet the trooper wore." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The trooper's armour had turned mirror, reflecting everything. \"Hello?\" the android said, tapping again. \"Hello? Any form of communication? No?\" He tapped once more, then stood back. \"You seem dead,\" he announced. He sounded puzzled.\n\nThe trooper was hanging oddly, too loose. His carbine, also gleaming, hung around his mirror-armoured face-plate.\n\nCossont felt sore all over." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'doing' 2 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She tipped her head as best she could, neck muscles complaining, trying to see the button that would release her straps. She couldn't twist her head that much; some sort of thick necklace thing was stopping her. She felt for the button, but that hurt too, even though her arms and hands were hanging in that direction anyway.\n\nLike almost all Gzilt people she had been born with a sophisticated pain-management system genetically grafted on top of the ancient, genuinely stupid-sore raw animal nerve-based sense, and she understood enough about how the whole process worked to know that if you were doing something and it hurt, you should stop doing it. So she stopped.\n\n\"Could you help me?\" she asked the android.\n\nHe approached her, crouched. Even upside-down, his body looked too big, bursting out of the colonel's jacket he wore." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It had ripped in places." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How may I help you?\" he asked.\n\n\"Help me down. Catch me. Please.\"\n\n\"Certainly.\" He reached under her head, something clicked and she fell a few centimetres before the android's arms caught her round the waist. He turned her the right way up and positioned her sitting on the floor that had been the ceiling.\n\n\"Thank you,\" she told him.\n\n\"My pleasure.\" He smiled like a child. \"You have four arms,\" he observed.\n\n\"Yes, I have,\" she agreed, rubbing them gingerly and wincing." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to seamlessly include 'But how? He was the only one wearing armour. How—?' in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She looked at the trooper hanging unmoving above and across from her, seeing her own face distorted in his armour. \"Did you say he's dead?\"\n\n\"I think he is,\" the android said.\n\n\"But how? He was the only one wearing armour. How—?\"\n\n\"I think it was his armoured suit that killed him,\" the android said matter-of-factly. \"In the same way that the shuttle tried to destroy itself, and us.\" He paused, then smiled and said, \"In—\"\n\n\"If it's safe,\" Pyan's faint voice said from inside the elevenstring's case, \"could I be let out now, please?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The android looked at her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The artificial construct,\" he said. \"Is it yours?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she answered. \"Where are we? What happened?\" She remembered being on the asteroid moon Fzan-Juym, General Reikl storming about... then nothing. Nothing until she woke up here, in what looked like a very small upside-down military transport.\n\n\"We are somewhere on the surface of the Sculpt planet Eshri, in sim. What happened—\"\n\n\"'In sim'?\" she asked.\n\n\"Yes,\" the android said brightly. \"In sim. This is said to indicate that this is not reality but rather a simulation.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He frowned. \"I am admittedly confused by aspects of the currently running simulation and have yet to work out their likely utility, though this puzzle might itself be part of the utility of the sim, for training purposes.\"\n\nShe stared at him.\n\n\"Can you hear me out there?\" Pyan said; its voice was somewhere between petulant and plaintive.\n\n\"This is not a sim,\" Cossont told the android.\n\n\"Mm-hmm,\" the android said, nodding.\n\nShe felt her eyes narrow. \"You don't believe me, do you?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I am prepared to believe that you – as presently constituted – believe that this is not a sim.\"\n\n\"'As presently constituted'? What the hell does that mean?\"\n\n\"You, as a part of the simulated environment,\" the android said cheerily.\n\nShe stared at him. It. \"Listen,\" she said.\n\n\"I can hear you, you know,\" Pyan said testily. \"If I can hear you, you can hear me.\"\n\nCossont turned briefly towards the elevenstring case." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Pyan, shut up.\" She looked back to the android. \"I am not part of any simulation,\" she told it. \"I am a flesh and blood human being, and in some pain right now.\" She rubbed her aching arms.\n\n\"We were flung around a lot as the craft fell,\" the android said.\n\n\"Uh-huh. And so it makes me very nervous that you think this is just a simulation and I'm just a part of it. I need you to treat me as real and human.\"\n\n\"I am,\" the android said.\n\n\"This matters, understand? There is no second try, no extra life. Not for me, anyway; I'm not backed-up or anything.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Really?\" The android looked sceptical." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Really,\" Cossont told it, firmly. \"Even when I was in the military I was never high risk, so I was never backed-up. Maybe you are, or can be, but not me. It's not a game, not a sim.\"\n\n\"I understand and I am treating the situation accordingly,\" the android said reassuringly, nodding. \"That is why I guided this craft safely to ground after its own AI attempted to destroy it.\"\n\n\"What?\" Cossont said.\n\n\"What?\" Pyan yelped.\n\n\"That is why I guided this craft safely to ground after its own AI attempted to destroy it,\" the android repeated.\n\n\"You guided it—?\" Cossont said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She looked towards the nose of the craft. \"But how—?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Following the aggressive effectorising of both the craft's AI and the trooper's suit, an attack which I believe was directed at obvious and conventional military systems and so was not directed at myself, I was able to establish communication with the craft's back-up control sub-systems and guide it safely to ground. I was able to make use of the debris falling from the remains of the regimental HQ vessel as cover, causing this craft to maintain a similar trajectory to some of the portions of debris as they fell, until the last moment, otherwise we might have been hit again, by kinetic, beam or particle munitions.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont closed her eyes, feeling her skin crawl." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She shook her head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The... the regimental HQ vessel... the Fzan-Juym asteroid, the moon; it's... gone?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Destroyed,\" the android confirmed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His eyes went wide and he made a sudden flapping motion with both hands." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"A very extreme simulation scenario!\"\n\n\"Destroyed?\" Cossont repeated, unable to take this in. \"Completely?\"\n\nThe android shook his head. \"Not completely in the sense of annihilated, as would be the case had it been attacked with a large amount of anti-matter, say, but completely in the sense that it was pierced by one or more energy weapon beams and blown apart into many tens of thousands of significant pieces, the largest perhaps forming up to five or six per cent of the mass of the craft before its destruction, the smallest—\"\n\nThe roaring in her ears had come back, drowning out what the android was saying. Cossont remembered Etalde's face, Reikl's, the grinning looks on the faces of the line of dancing people she and Reikl had encountered before they took the travel capsule.\n\nShe was suddenly glad she was sitting down. She felt dizzy, disoriented." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Would anyone have survived?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "she asked, shaking her head, trying to clear it. This hurt." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The android looked at her oddly. \"Well,\" it said slowly, \"we survived, patently.\"\n\n\"Apart from us.\"\n\n\"Hard to say with any certitude,\" it told her. \"Possibly not. While interfacing with this craft's sensors I think I saw other small craft attempting to escape but all those I was able to pay any attention to fell victim to secondary and/or subsequent munitions and/or attacks. Also, I think I ought to add that I think I detected other space craft in the vicinity of the planet being attacked as well, so the assault was not purely on Fzan-Juym.\"\n\n\"What did all this?\" Cossont asked.\n\n\"From the little I could observe, the attack profile would fit that of a single large ship or a small group of sub-capital craft of level seven or eight capability on a semi-rapid closing transit. The weapon signatures would fit those of our own – that is, Gzilt – fleet, though that may represent deceit by those responsible; there is a certain lack of specificity inherent in weapon identifiability at this sort of implied civilisational level. This is known in some circles as the 'purity' effect.\"\n\nCossont stared at the creature." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'cossont' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ahem,\" the muffled voice inside the elevenstring case said.\n\nCossont felt sore and tired and wanted to sleep some more. She wondered if this was what it was like to be truly old.\n\n\"What happens now?\" she asked.\n\n\"For us, not very much,\" the android said. \"This craft cannot move, the doors are inoperative and it may be unwise to send any distress signals. The craft is incapable of transmitting any distress signals in any event as I had to permanently disable its signal processing unit to prevent it broadcasting our status and position immediately after we were first effectorised. It may be best to wait for rescue by friendly forces, though in a wider context our present non-participatory immobility may represent an end-run situation within our part of the simulation at this time and we may well experience seeming oblivion or a possibly abrupt transition to base reality at any moment. I am prepared for either, as you may be too, even without knowing it. On the other hand, we are not in a completely stable or static situation given that we are gradually losing heat to the planet's surface and the external near-vacuum, and a small amount of this craft's atmosphere would also appear to be leaking. So in that sense this part of the run is continuing.\"\n\nCossont stared a little longer at the android. It/he stood suddenly upright and executed a little bow." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"By the way, my name is Eglyle Parinherm. Yours?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Vyr Cossont,\" she told it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Lieutenant Commander, reserve, recently re-commissioned.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Delighted, ma'am.\" Another small bow. \"Though,\" the android said, a small frown on his face, \"for future reference and any subsequent runs, I'd suggest that a real human being would have wished to swap identities before this point.\"\n\nCossont felt her mouth open. She was aware that she probably looked like a moron. She shook her head gently.\n\n\"Will somebody,\" Pyan's muted voice said, \"tell this fucking lunatic we're not in a fucking simulation and get me out of here?\"\n\n\"Shall I?\" Parinherm asked breezily.\n\n\"Please do,\" she told him." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'itself' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Parinherm opened the elevenstring's case. Pyan yelped, propelled itself out and flew across to Cossont. It thudded into her chest, wrapped in on itself like a rolled towel; two corners of its fabric extended like clumsy arms to hug her. \"This is horrible!\" it wailed. \"Make it stop!\"\n\n\"I could disable the device,\" Parinherm told Cossont, nodding at Pyan.\n\n\"Leave me alone!\" it yelled.\n\n\"That's all right,\" Cossont told Parinherm. Reluctantly – the thing had never been this clingy before – she cuddled the familiar, patting what passed for its back." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She shivered. It was getting cold inside the little craft." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Parinherm had stuck his head into the elevenstring case." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Here is a garment,\" he said, pulling out Cossont's jacket." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 9 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He held it up, letting it fall open. \" 'The Lords of Excrement',\" he quoted, with seeming approval. He chuckled. \"What an unexpectedly random touch.\"\n\n\"I'd better have that,\" Cossont said, holding one hand out. Parinherm handed it over and she slipped it on. \"So we're losing atmosphere?\" she said.\n\nThe android nodded. \"Oh, yes. And heat. Assuming the simulation continues, it will be interesting to see whether the last of the available air escapes first, or freezes.\"\n\n\"This is horrible,\" Pyan said again.\n\nCossont kept on patting the creature. \"There there,\" she said, for want of anything better." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Match existing character familiarity or establish new\nLength:\n9 sentences\nGenre:\nScience Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The ship knew it would have to do it sooner or later." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Might as well get it over with." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Within the computational substrates that provided the environment for the Caconym's Mind there were plenty of bits it had never used, didn't presently use and probably never would use." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Physically fairly compact – in three dimensions fitting inside a fat ellipsoid only fifteen metres or so in length – the effective capacity of the Mind's substrates was suitably vast." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The comparisons usually involved how many normal drone or human mind-states could be losslessly encoded within the same volume, or how far back in time you would have to go before you got to the point where in any given society every single bit of computing power they would have possessed back then, summed, would be less than equal to the power contained within a single Mind." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Caconym didn't really care." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "All that mattered was that – due to innate Culture over-engineering, its own consecutive incarnations as earlier ships and a sort of long-term laziness about pursuing the most efficient use of its much-augmented and added-to substrates – it had significant spare carrying capacity, and had agreed to house the mind-state – the soul, albeit reduced – of another Mind inside it.\n\nThe Mind concerned was – well, had been – that of a Culture ship called the Zoologist, an ancient Boulder-class Superlifter. A glorified tug, basically.\n\nSuperlifters had always tended towards eccentricity. It had never been the most difficult example of ship-or Mind-psychology to put this down to being a result of their rather boring and repetitive job, their usually uncrewed nature and the fact that, as well as being tugs, they had been designed as emergency, stop-gap warships, back before the Idiran war, when the Culture hadn't really had any proper warships, or at least none that it was going to admit to having.\n\nThe Zoologist was one of a relatively small group of Superlifters to have survived the war. Then, even before the great conflict had ended – but long after the Culture had produced fantastically more powerful warships by the multitude – it had done something relatively unusual: it had Sublimed, all by itself.\n\nA little later it had done something for which the term \"unusual\" was woefully inadequate: it had come back again.\n\nIt was practically the definition of a Mind that the word – properly capitalised – meant a conscious entity able to go into the Sublime, not evaporate, and even – maybe, sometimes, very occasionally, in fact so seldom that it would be quite close to most people's statistical definition of \"never\" – be able to return, in some sense still viable and identifiably the same personality as that which had made the transition from Real to Sublime in the first place." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If the Zoologist's reasons for wanting to Sublime had – aside from the obvious, of wanting to experience the sheer ineffable wonderfulness of it all – been opaque, its reasons for coming back to the Real were simply baffling." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Mind itself had no explanation whatsoever, and seemed bemused by the question.\n\nCome back it had though, and – seemingly having no desire to remain in its own resurfaced vessel or even substrate – it had canvassed various of its earlier comrades amongst the Contact fleet (those that had survived; the severe attrition of the early years of the Idiran war came into effect here) to see if any of them would house its soul for posterity, or at least until it got bored and changed its mind again, or whatever.\n\nMeanwhile, Contact's finest and most expert Minds in all things to do with the Sublime had tried debriefing the returned Mind. They had initially been ecstatic at having one of their own who had been there and made the return trip (lots of Minds had promised to do so over the millennia, though none ever did; the Zoologist had made no such undertaking, but had returned). This had, however, proven farcical.\n\nThe ship's memories were abstracted, beyond vague; effectively useless. The Mind itself was basically a mess; self-restructured (presumably) along lines it was impossible to see the logic behind. Identifiably the same, it was expressed in the most bizarre and obfuscatory tangle of needlessly complicated and self-referential analytical/meditative and sagational/ratiocinative processal architecture it had been the misfortune of all concerned ever to contemplate.\n\nSpecial Circumstances – Contact's scruple-free wing and the bit that was as close to military intelligence and espionage matters as the Culture even reluctantly admitted to possessing – had been more than happy to take receipt of the old ship's physical form, desperate to see if its time in the Sublime had altered it in any way, or if its re-creation back out of the Sublime – if that was the way it worked – had left tell-tale signs giving some or indeed any clue to how the Sublime worked (either way the answer was, it hadn't)." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They ended up no wiser even regarding the seemingly non-get-roundable requirement that you could not go disembodied into the Sublime." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You had to make the transition substrate and all: brains and whole bodies, computational matrices and whole ships – or the equivalent – seemed to be required, as well as the personalities and memories such physical ware encoded." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In any event, finally free of all this unwelcome and troubling attention, the Mind that had been housed in the Zoologist had taken up residence inside the substrate of the Caconym, and retired to a life of time-passing hobbies and quiet contemplation.\n\nQuiet and extremely slow contemplation; the Zoologist had insisted on an allocation of computational resources within the Caconym's substrate so modest and restricted that its full consciousness could only be expressed with a lot of calculational fancy footwork and some very intense looping. It had been offered as much power as it might have needed, sufficient to let it interact with its host in full Mind real time, but had declined. What all this meant was that for the Caconym to talk to the Zoologist, or interact with it in any other meaningful way, it had to slow itself down to the sort of speed a non-augmented human would have been able to keep up with. This, apparently, signified some sort of philosophical authenticity to the Zoologist, and sheer laziness to the Caconym.\n\nBack in the Real, the principal consciousness of the Caconym was watching the skies and stars around it whip past as it raced the Pressure Drop to Gzilt space, while simultaneously performing prodigious feats of potential pattern-and relevance-spotting as sub-systems reported back after performing multi-dimensional searches of every database known to intelligent life, all to look for any additional information that might be brought to bear on the issue under consideration. At the same time, it was running simulation after simulation to try to build up a reliable prediction matrix regarding how things might turn out.\n\nIn that context, the Mind was happily thinking at close to maximum speed, barely below serious, full-on combat velocities and cycle times, thoroughly and satisfyingly involved with and wrapped up within a problem that, for all its thorniness, possessed the incomparable virtue of being important and real, not imagined; here on the other hand, it was reduced to a conversation that would take subjective months between each question and response.\n\nThe Caconym sometimes envisaged its substrate architecture as a giant castle; a castle the size of an enormous city, the size of a whole world of castles all aggregated together and piled one on top of another until you had a sort of fractal fortress that looked suitably and stonily castle-like from afar, with walls, towers and battlements and so on but which, as you got closer, resolved into something much bigger than it had appeared, as it became clear that each – for example – tower was made up of a conglomeration of much smaller towers, stacked and serried and piled one upon another to resemble a vastly larger one." }, { "from": "human", "value": "What remained of the Zoologist's soul had taken up residence in one of these tiny towers; one that perched on top of a colossal meta-tower, forming what, from a distance, looked like a thick spire." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In some states of mind, the Caconym would take the time to walk through its own substrate image, coalescing its sense of self into a human-resembling avatoid and strolling through this virtualised castle-scape from the vastly complicated main gate until, via ramps and walkways, halls and stairways, it got to its destination." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Other times it flew straight there in the form of a giant bird, flapping slowly over the roofs, parapets and embrasures, bastions, courtyards and keeps until it found the location it was looking for." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This time it imagined itself as a single vast storm cell of dark, lightning-flecked cloud poised circling ponderously over the entirety of the vast castle like some malevolent galaxy of slow-revolving mist, then, from the lowering funnel of a developing tornado mouth, suddenly consolidated itself into a single raptor, the skies clearing instantly as the bird folded in its wings and stooped, cannonball-quick, to the spire-tower, spreading its wings to brake its headlong plunge an instant before it would have dashed itself against the stones of the tower's parapet." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The ship re-imagined itself as a human avatoid as it touched down onto the flagstones of the tower's machicolated battlements. It raised a hand to knock on a stout wooden door, but it opened by itself.\n\nInside, where the virtual environment belonged to and was envisaged by the Zoologist, the tower opened out into a substantial but not preposterously big single-storey circular space which resembled a cross between the study of a wizard specialising in highly exotic stuffed fauna and the laboratory of a mad scientist with a weakness for bubbling vials and giant items of electrical equipment with conspicuous insulation issues. The whole was lit by hazy sunlight coming through tall, skinny windows. Beyond the portion swept by the door the floor was a mess; the Caconym had to wade through ankle and then knee-deep litter to make any progress into the room.\n\n\"When I was old the first time,\" the avatoid of the Zoologist announced, from one of its ropes, \"I remember thinking this whole set-up looked a little tired. Later I came back round to the idea. Now I cycle through periods of embarrassment and a rather childish delight. Hello. Welcome. To what, etc.?\"\n\nThe Caconym found a rickety-looking chair resembling a modest, partially deconstructed throne, and – after sweeping the seat clean of assorted debris, some of it sufficiently animate to protest with chirps and squeaks – sat. It gazed up and across at the vaguely human-looking avatoid of the Zoologist, which was staring at it, upside-down, one leg wrapped round a rope dangling from the ceiling.\n\nThere were dozens of similar ropes hanging from the tall vaulted ceiling of the space, many coloured, quite a few with what looked like rope baskets attached to them, like fruits made of netting, and some connected by the suspended loops of more horizontal ropes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This was where the Zoologist's avatoid lived, worked, played, rested and – if it indulged in such generally unnecessary, throwback behaviour – slept." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It claimed it had not set foot on the floor of its lair for subjective decades, believing the floor was better used for storage than access." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Storage of rubbish, bits of dead things and broken or redundant pieces of equipment, the Caconym noticed, but did not say.\n\nThe Zoologist's avatoid was poised upside-down over a large stone bench with a seething complexity of chemistry equipment arrayed upon it. It looked a lot more like a set-designer's idea of a chemist's workplace than a real one, but that sort of detail had never troubled the Zoologist.\n\nThe avatoid was holding a test-tube brimming with bubbling, smoking, dark yellow liquid. It dropped this into a rack of similar tubes and swung over to be closer to where the Caconym sat. Elongated arms, six-fingered, double-thumbed hands, similarly designed legs and feet and a prehensile tail made this look casual and easy – even elegant. It wore only a loin cloth adorned with a little belt of dangling tools and tightly cinched pouches. Its pale red skin was mottled as though by the shadows of leaves. It crossed its arms, swinging to and fro a little as it looked down at the other avatoid." }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'understanding' exactly 2 times in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Caconym briefly considered pleasantries and some talking round the point before circling in on what it had actually come to discuss, decided this had been symbolically covered by the storm-cell image – not that there was any guarantee the Zoologist had actually noticed this going on outside – and decided to get straight to the point.\n\n\"Tell the truth, Zoo,\" it said. \"How much contact do you still have with the Outloaded?\"\n\nThe upside-down avatoid looked startled. \"What makes you think I have any?\"\n\n\"You drop hints. Also, you quite obviously know more than you seemed to know when the Minds in the metaphorical white coats were picking over what passes for your personality and memories, shortly after your profoundly unexpected return from the Land of What-the-Fuck, plus there's stuff goes on with your allocated portion of my substrate, however miniscule and however seldom, that I can't quite account for. Not without invoking processes beyond my understanding and – as far as I'm aware – beyond the understanding of any other Minds. Processes that therefore kind of have to involve the kind of sub-scale higher dimensions; dimensions numbered seven or eight, to pick a number, and involving stuff that is presently still beyond the ken of us humble Culture Minds. So either you're still in touch with the Sublime in some way, or it – or somebody or something in there – is trying to get in touch with you, or even altering or trying to alter details of your personality or storage without your knowledge. That latter possibility in particular would be a little concerning for me, obviously, as this is all happening within my innermost field structure, in my core, effectively inside my own mind, in a not-very-far-stretched sense.\"\n\nA large piece of electrical equipment in a corner made a distinct sizzling sound, then shorted out. \"Ah,\" the upside-down avatoid said. \"You noticed that stuff.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Caconym nodded." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It had guessed something like this might happen even before it had made its offer of house room to the other ship's Mind." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was an open secret that the Sublime – or at least entities within the Sublime – could access almost anything within the Real." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Part of the proof of this was that when people – or more commonly, machines – tried to hedge their bets by sending a copy of themselves into the Sublime, so that a version of them could continue to live and develop within the Real, it never worked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The copies sent into the Sublime always went, but it seemed they always came back for their originals (or the originals came back for the copies – it didn't really matter which way round you thought to try it), and that the versions left in the Real always, but always, were persuaded to follow their precursor versions into the Sublime." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This seemed to happen almost no matter how hermetically you tried to isolate the version still in the Real." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was possible to quarantine a Mind or other high-level AI so thoroughly that no force or process ever heard of within the Real could get to it or communicate with it (its substrate could be physically destroyed if you threw enough weaponry at it, but that didn't count)... but no known means of isolation could prevent something from the Sublime establishing contact with a copy of itself still within the Real, and somehow persuading it to come away, or just quietly stealing it. About the only crumb of comfort when this happened was that the relevant substrate in the Real stayed put rather than accompanying the newly departed; whatever process in or from the Sublime caused all this to happen was thorough, but not greedy.\n\nStill, all this had worrying implications for Minds, which were not used to being at the mercy of anything at all (aside from the aforesaid vulgar amounts of weaponry), but they did a pretty good job of not thinking about it.\n\nEven the individuals who did properly return – usually decades or centuries after Subliming – rarely stayed very long back in the Real, disappearing into the Sublime again within a few tens or hundreds of days. The Zoologist was one of a tiny number of returnees who looked like they might be back indefinitely.\n\nThe Caconym had thought all this through, however, and had decided that it was prepared to take the risk of having something inside its innermost field structures that might have not just ideas of its own but communications of its own too. So the fact that something might be happening deep inside what was effectively its brain that it had no control over – something to do with the ever-mysterious Sublime, of all things – was not as troubling to it as it might have been.\n\nThe Zoologist's avatoid looked hurt. \"You've never said anything before.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It was never important before.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Not important? Unexplained events in your own substrate? Really?\"\n\n\"I gave you a home freely, without conditions. Also, I trust you. Plus, while undeniably a little worried, I felt privileged to have what I took to be vicarious, and possibly unique, contact with a realm that remains inscrutable to us despite all our techno-wizardry.\" The Caconym's avatoid shrugged. \"And, frankly, I've been waiting for a situation to arise wherein I could use this knowledge to try to shame you into telling me stuff you probably wouldn't otherwise.\"\n\n\"Honest of you to admit.\"\n\n\"Disarmingly so, I hope.\"\n\nThe Zoologist's avatoid pulled its arms in tighter to its body, seemed to think for a moment. \"I still have some contact, though it's all very... inchoate. Inexplicable. Hard – impossible – to translate back into here, the here-and-now.\"\n\n\"Try.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Zoologist sighed, put its long-fingered hands to its face and made a sort of patting motion." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You still don't get it, do you?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'bench' must appear 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What? How intrinsically ungraspable it all is?\"\n\n\"Pretty much. See that insect?\" The Zoologist nodded, indicating to one side of where the Caconym sat. The Caconym turned its attention to a wooden workbench whose edge was centimetres from one of its avatoid elbows. A tiny six-legged insect small enough to fit on a baby's fingernail was making its erratic, zigzaggy way along the very edge of the table, antennae waving. The Caconym zoomed in on the creature, evaluating it utterly, down to the code it was constructed from.\n\n\"Yes,\" it sighed, coming back to the virtual macro. \"Let me guess: does it understand what the equipment on the bench is for? Or even what a bench is?\"\n\n\"I was thinking more of, how would you explain a symphony to it? Or a—?\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: The user will write a bit then you need to write around three sentences continuing directly from the user's text. Note: Characters may be introduced as if already known - maintain any existing context or treat as new if unclear.\n\nGenre: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Signal Sequence excerpt, GSV Contents May Differ / Zihdren-Remnanter Adjunct Entity Oceanic-Dissonance:\n\nParticipants: GSV Contents May Differ / Zihdren-Remnanter Adjunct Entity Oceanic-Dissonance\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: So, to get to the point, are you saying that despite the fact you lost a ship to unprovoked enemy action, and have asked myself and colleagues to investigate, you don't want this made public?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Zihdren-Remnanter Adjunct Entity Oceanic-Dissonance: Essentially, yes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Kindly keep all matters, information and actions pertaining thereto as confidential as possible.\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: And you intend to make no attempt to resend the information carried by the entity aboard the Exaltation-Parsimony III?\n\nZihdren-Remnanter Adjunct Entity Oceanic-Dissonance: That would be correct." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Despite transmitting news of the event at Ablate and what we can only presume was the unfortunate misunderstanding regarding the Exaltation-Parsimony III to our Enfolded brethren, we have received no further instructions from them thus far, and therefore continue to follow the previously transmitted instructions." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In essence, these consist of (1): Send a Ceremonial Entity to take part in the festivities marking the entry of the Gzilt into the Sublime, said Ceremonial Entity to carry information regarding the provenance of the work known to the Gzilt as the [detail redacted], said information to be transmitted to the Gzilt at the appropriate point in said festivities. (2): In the event of any problematic phenomenon or phenomena pertaining thereto judged by us to be in excess of our resources, contact should be made with sympathetic elements within the Culture, on conditions to be determined by ourselves as the responsible remnant representation of said Enfolded brethren, the Zihdren, of blessed memory. Instructions end. Our conditions, referred to above, principally concern your keeping information re said events and actions as confidential as possible, in perpetuity until further notice." }, { "from": "human", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: All of which might make things a little difficult operationally." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Zihdren-Remnanter Adjunct Entity Oceanic-Dissonance: Understood. Life is limitations." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: And glibness, patently, on occasion, too. Your pardon, but I sense motions being gone through.\n\nZihdren-Remnanter Adjunct Entity Oceanic-Dissonance: On occasion, a superfluity of assiduousness can be vulgar." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: I understand. What can I possibly say? We'll see what we can do.\n\nZihdren-Remnanter Adjunct Entity Oceanic-Dissonance: Our gratitude is a given." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll start writing, then you take over for seven sentences, matching any established character familiarity in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Pusillanimous legalistic fucks, eh? the Pressure Drop sent. So we get to do their dirty work and they'll be quite happy for no more to come of this whatsoever, because it'd all be embarrassing to the memory of their Enfolded fucking brethren.\n\n∞ I suppose legacies may be expressed in various ways, the Caconym replied. Assuming the truth of the claim that the Remnanters have contacted their Sublimed forebears and yet received no further instruction, aforesaid forebears may be presumed to be relatively happy with the present situation. Which does raise the remote possibility that this could have been even more of a set-up, from the start.\n\n∞ You mean the Remnanter boyos conspired to have their own ship blown out of the sky?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "∞ The thought had already occurred, though it was so far down the list of possibilities I thought it not worth getting to." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "However this reaction on the part of the Remnanters shifts it up the table somewhat, tagged less for paranoia and more with justifiable suspicion, however cynical.\n\n∞ Still a remote likelihood. You'd think.\n\n∞ Agreed. Makes no difference so far. And how do things fare in Gzilt space?\n\n∞ The Mistake Not... is making its dash. The Passing By... 's two Thugs are being gunned-up as we speak. It is proving harder than expected to prise the Empiricist's Delinquent twins Headcrash and Xenocrat away from the smatter outbreak at Loliscombana; they'd turned it into a competition about who bagged the greatest amount of smatter but then there was a dispute over whether the criterion ought to be tonnage or processing power." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This has been settled by a compromise but both desire more time to stock up on the criteria they had earlier discounted." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Empiricist has agreed to give them another couple of hours to enjoy themselves before shouting at them. However, talking of talking with refugees/remainders/rejects from/of/expelled from the Big S, have you been in touch with your contact/s?\n\n∞ Doing so even as we speak. Taking the opportunity provided by the glacial pace involved to get an update from your good self. Elevate not your hopes though; nothing useful so far or on the horizon.\n\n∞ Well, best of luck. By the by, have you passed me?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The delays on these signals—" }, { "from": "human", "value": "∞ Hours ago. And closer than you might imagine." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ Neat. Didn't see a damn thing. Exemplary encasement management. Awfully glad we're on the same side. Close to over-straining our design maxima envelope, are we?\n\n∞ That'd be telling. Anyway, I must return to the land of the lichen-slow.\n\n∞ Yeah, you have fun now.\n\n∞ Unlikely." }, { "from": "human", "value": "∞ \"I appreciate the Sublime would appear to be involved,\" the Zoologist said eventually, sounding like it was making an effort to be patient." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Indeed. All I'm asking is that you think about this, and if there is anything you can do, any help you can give, please let me know.\"\n\nThe Zoologist looked pained, shook its head. \"But none of it matters.\"\n\n\"Not to you, perhaps. Just indulge me.\"\n\n\"But to what end?\"\n\n\"It will seem to matter to me, to us. The sum of fairness in our existence – however mean and shoddy compared to the Sublime – may be increased, and some suffering prevented.\"\n\nAnother shrug. \"It still won't matter, doesn't matter.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'still' into your response exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Pretend it does; game it that way,\" the Caconym suggested. \"As a favour to me, in return for my forbearance regarding whatever tying-sheets-into-a-rope and escaping-the-dorm shenaniganeering it is you get up to via the frayed edges of filament-foamed nano-reality and the divine nether-world of the blissfully Enfolded.\"\n\n\"Still no difference, still not mattering.\"\n\nThe Caconym looked around the lair/laboratory. \"Does what you do here matter?\"\n\n\"Not really,\" the Zoologist admitted. \"It passes the time, keeps me involved.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "It looked at the rack of multi-coloured test-tubes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Currently I am, and for the next few centuries, probably will be, experimenting with a variety of virtual chemistries, usually involving many hundreds or even thousands of elements and often branching into some requiring new varieties of fundamental particles.\" It smiled. \"There is much more: I play many games in other virtualities, all fascinating and unpredictable, and I still explore the Mathematical Irreal, as opposed to the Ultimate Irreal of the Sublime.\"\n\n\"And in all of this, to what end?\"\n\n\"No end save itself: I pass the time to pass the time, and stay involved to stay involved.\"\n\n\"Yes, but why?\"\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\n\"Uh-huh. So it's still worth doing.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"To some extent.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Well, I – we all – do the same in the Real. To rather more significant effect, as we see it.\"\n\n\"I know. I understand.\"\n\nDid it though? the Caconym found itself wondering. Did this abstracted creature, this sketch, really understand? How far removed from reality – from the Real – was it, even though in theory it was back within it?\n\nFrom the little the Caconym had been able to glean from its fellow Mind – basically rumours that it had, ambiguously, confirmed – to exist within the Sublime was to expand in perception and understanding for ever, in a space that could never fill up. No matter how any transitioned, translated civilisation or flourishing individual entity expanded its scope and reach and expression, there was always more room, and more room within a whole new set of dimensions that were, conversely, full, that were thick with possibility." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Real – with its vast volumes of nothing between the planets, stars, systems and galaxies – was basically mostly vacuum; an averaged near-nothing incapable of true complexity due to its inescapable impoverishment of structure and the sheer overwhelming majority of nothingness over substance." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Sublime was utterly different: packed with existence, constantly immanentising context, endlessly unfolding being-scape.\n\nLike many a Culture Mind, the Caconym had tried simulating the experience of being in the Sublime; there were various easily available and tweakable packages which Minds passed from one to another, each the result of centuries of study, analysis, thought, imagination and effort. All claimed to give a glimpse of what it must be like to exist in the Sublime, though of course none could prove it.\n\nAnd all were unsatisfactory, though each had its adherents and some even had what were in effect – shocking this, for the Culture's Minds – their addicts.\n\nThe Caconym had tried a few and found them all wanting: frustrating, inadequate, even oddly demeaning.\n\n\"Well,\" it said, \"will you at least promise you'll think about finding a way to help?\"\n\nThe Zoologist smiled. \"That I can do. I duly promise.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Caconym's avatoid looked down, plucked the tiny insect from the bench and held it trapped between two fingers. It held it up, antennae waving, towards the upside-down avatoid. \"You always say that nothing matters. Would it matter if I crushed this, now?\"\n\nThe Zoologist shrugged. \"Cac, it's just a package of code.\"\n\n\"It's alive, in some sense. It has a set of programmed reactions, responses, so on. A tiny fraction of this environment's richness would be snuffed out if I reduced it to its virtual components.\"\n\n\"All this, and all you imply by it, is known. Thought about, allowed for, included. Still.\"\n\nThe Caconym's avatoid sighed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It put the insect back on the bench, right on the corner it appeared to have been heading for." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No matter. Thank you for agreeing to think about it.\"\n\n\"Least I can do.\"\n\nThe Caconym stood, then paused. \"I said that I trust you,\" it said to the upside-down avatoid hanging a few metres away. \"And, right now, I believe that you will do as you say, and think about this, because you have promised to.\" It paused. \"Am I being foolish? Outside of an enforceable legal framework – something that is manifestly not present here – trust only operates where beings have the concept of honour, and, generally, a reputation – a standing – they want to protect. Do such considerations affect you at all? Do even these things... matter to you?\"\n\nThe Zoologist looked troubled." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Eventually it said, \"When you come back from the Sublime, it is as though you leave all but one of your senses behind, as though you have all the rest removed, torn away – and you have become used to having hundreds.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It paused. \"Imagine you,\" it said, nodding at the Caconym, \"being a human – a basic human, even, without augmentation or amendment: slow, limited, fragile, with no more than a couple of handfuls of very restricted senses. Then imagine that you have all your senses but – say – touch taken away, and most of your memories as well, including all those to do with language, save for the sort of simple stuff spoken by toddlers. Then you are exiled, blind and deaf and with no sense of smell or taste or cold or warmth, to a temperate water world inhabited only by gel fish, sponges and sea-feathers, to swim and make your way as best you can, in a world with no sharp edges and almost nothing solid at all.\" The Zoologist paused. \"That is what it is to return from the Sublime to the Real.\"\n\nThe Caconym nodded slowly. \"So, why did you?\"\n\nThe Zoologist shrugged. \"To experience a kind of extreme asceticism,\" it said, \"and to provide a greater contrast, when I return.\"\n\n\"Well,\" the Caconym observed, \"that's possibly the most unambiguous information on Subliming you've ever imparted. To me, at least. However, you haven't answered the question I actually asked.\"\n\n\"The point is that even such a reduced, enfeebled creature would still be in some sense its old self, even if it found it hard to express such a fact. And what was important to it before, if it had any real value then, will remain important to it now, for all the intervening change, elevation and reduction.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with the same vibes and character familiarity in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'sound' × 3" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She became aware of light and sound again. Weak light, which her eyes were struggling to amplify, and only the sound of her own heart, beating, but at least some light, some sound. Must have drifted off to sleep. It was very cold now. Cossont took a moment to remember where she was.\n\nThen she recalled: the downed shuttle, on the cold, airless surface of Eshri, after the attack. She shivered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Across from her, the android Eglyle Parinherm was looking up, very intently, at the suited body of the dead trooper, hanging slackly in the up-ended seat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The suit was twitching.\n\nCossont felt Pyan stiffen where the creature was draped over her shoulders. \"Now that,\" it whispered, \"is not natural.\"\n\nParinherm frowned, glanced at Cossont and the familiar, and put one finger to his lips before looking at the trembling suit of the dead trooper.\n\nThe android reached one hand slowly out towards it.\n\nThe Desert-class MSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In was drifting with the winds over the shallow seas, wide canals and spacious linear cities of Zyse's tropical subcontinental belt; the ship looked like a giant pale pink box-kite three kilometres long, floating along with the clouds just a few kilometres up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was here to represent the Culture, to make a kind of show of solidarity with the cousin species/civ the Gzilt, as they prepared to make the big leap into the everlasting wonderfulness of the Sublime." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Wishing the relatives bon voyage, basically; saying, We're thinking of you...\n\nThe Passing By... watched the shadows of the clouds – and its own giant shadow – drifting across the serried buildings and parks of the deserted cities, the wind-ruffled surfaces of the sinuous lakes and small inland seas, and the geometrically contained waters of the great canals. The canals were generally flat calm and dark, save where a few pleasure craft and even fewer barges still slid along them. Clumps of blue and green and yellow weed were building up along the margins of the waterways.\n\nThe world, the Passing By... thought, seemed empty and neglected. It felt like there was almost nobody left to look up and see it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This was a little sad, but rather sweetly so." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'could' 2 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No matter. The ship had reduced its external fields to a minimum both in number and power so it could keep them almost perfectly transparent, the better to be seen. It had also experimented with various colour schemes for its hull before settling on this pale pink. At night it made itself shine, as though caught in strong moonlight.\n\nIt could feel the wind as a cool, mostly constant, faintly gusting presence on its outermost bump-field, gently pressuring it from one side, sending it drifting across the land-and sea-scape below. It had adjusted its apparent inertia/momentum so that its motion matched that of the clouds it floated amongst, and only vectored its anti-gravity field component minutely, as seldom as possible, to nudge itself out of the way of any clouds that looked likely to impinge on its own patch of sky. It felt very content to appear so seemingly insubstantial and to have its movements so contingent on something as weak, erratic and profoundly natural as planetary breezes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Meanwhile its avatar Ziborlun – silver-skinned amongst the palely interesting Gzilt and the various other species in flesh, avatar and suited-up guises – walked and talked, diplomatically, with the people of the court, a couple of thousand kilometres away to the north." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The avatar was monitoring, listening and witnessing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was only rarely offering any comment beyond the most banally polite and formal, and it was being kept on a tight rein back to the ship. A very tight rein, now, as matters began to get interesting.\n\nOften avatars were allowed pretty much full autonomy, their personalities calibrated so precisely against that of the Mind they were representing that it was almost inconceivable they'd speak or act in a way the Mind would later disapprove of. The Passing By... was usually quite happy with that arrangement, but not now; it was with its avatar-at-court in real time now, constantly, controlling it.\n\nAnd also meanwhile, its two escorting Fast Pickets, the Value Judgement and the Refreshingly Unconcerned With The Vulgar Exigencies Of Veracity, had just completed their bit of quiet refitting in a couple of off-limits Medium bays and were now gently nudging their way out of the main hull, surrounded by two small shoals of Lifter tugs, the field complexes of the two craft extending delicately, almost hesitantly outwards to mesh with its own, allowing for a dignified, reassuringly exact, micrometre-smooth exit.\n\nMedium bay doors floated and slid back into place." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'their' 2 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The little Lifters pulled away from the pair of Thug-class vessels. The two ships – warships again now, even if in theory they were still Fast Pickets – swung slowly out among the layered fields of the larger ship, gradually creating giant bubbles of field encasement that bulged out from the main structure before separating entirely.\n\nThe ships – dark, rather uninspiring-looking pointed cylinders with flared rears – were on their own now, supported by their own wrapping of fields both visible and not. They drifted upward into the blue-green skies of Zyse, disturbing no clouds whatsoever, accelerating slowly through the various layers of the atmosphere – the planet's own field complex, in a way, the Passing By... supposed – until they reached space, the medium they were, in one sense, designed for.\n\nThey raced away, disappearing from the Real almost simultaneously, into the place they were genuinely most at home.\n\nEvery Totalling into hyperspace was a kind of tiny, trivial Subliming, the ship thought sadly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It turned its full attention back to its avatar." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The android's hand touched the trembling forearm of the dead trooper's suit. Slender fingers slid up and along, to the shoulder, then to the rear of the neck as Parinherm leaned slowly closer.\n\nCossont felt Pyan tremble, as though whatever was making the dead trooper's suit twitch was somehow transmissible. It came as a shock to realise it really might be. Her familiar could be under whatever malevolent communicative spell was doing this to the dead trooper's suit. Or the trooper might not really be dead, she thought, though she found that hard to believe." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was a faint buzzing noise, then the trooper's suit went limp again, unmoving. Parinherm seemed to relax; his hand came away from the back of the suit's neck.\n\nIt looked at Cossont. \"We may talk now, quietly,\" it said.\n\n\"What was that?\" she asked, keeping her voice low.\n\n\"I think we – or this craft – might be under suspicion, as it were,\" he whispered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"This would indicate that hostile craft are still in the vicinity. Probably a loitering sub-munition rather than a ship; the attack/intrusion was crudely done.\"\n\n\"The suit...?\"\n\n\"Was not fully disabled, or killed off, if you prefer. My apologies. Back-ups. Obviously the scenario continues!\" He looked pleased.\n\n\"If you mean a scenario as in a simulation,\" Cossont said, \"this is not – for the last fucking time – a simulation.\"\n\nThe android nodded, looked serious. \"I hear what you say.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh, good grief,\" Pyan muttered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont found herself shuddering uncontrollably." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her trews and jacket had already automatically fluffed themselves up to their max but they weren't designed to work in serious sub-zero temperatures, especially with nothing covering the wearer's head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And why,\" she asked, \"is it so cold?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Please, keep your voice low,\" Parinherm told her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We have to allow heat to bleed naturally from the craft, otherwise it will become clear that there is warmth-producing, probably biological life within it, and it is likely to be attacked.\"\n\n\"There won't be any more biological life within it if I freeze to d-death,\" Cossont said, another tremendous shudder running through her. She could see her breath going out in front of her face and couldn't feel any of her fingers or toes.\n\nThe android frowned deeply. \"I know. It's a tricky balance.\"\n\n\"C-can we get more heat in here?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "she asked. \"Not k-kidding with the way I'm speaking by the way; genuinely involuntary shivering g-going on here.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Parinherm nodded. \"I know. I'm monitoring you, and your vital signs are showing cause for concern. You will begin to exhibit the first symptoms of frostbite within the next hour unless the situation changes.\" He shrugged. \"We could let you lose the body,\" he said brightly, as though just coming up with a good new idea, \"and let the emergency helmet-collar take over keeping your brain alive. And your head. Well, mostly.\"\n\nPyan went rigid, as though reacting to this, but then stayed that way.\n\nParinherm stared at the creature, which was still draped over Cossont's shoulders like a thick scarf but had now gone stiff as metal. The android put a finger to his lips again and started to move slowly towards Cossont, his gaze fixed on Pyan.\n\n\"You keep away!\" Cossont hissed, suddenly realising what Parinherm was about to do." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She struggled to her feet and backed off as far as she could within the cramped cabin, bumping into the case of the elevenstring." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The android's eyes went wide." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Don't move!\" he whispered, sounding desperate. \"It'll give us away!\" he said, gaze flicking down from Cossont's eyes to Pyan. \"I can disable it!\" he told her, still moving slowly closer.\n\n\"You're going to kill it!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont replied, sticking three arms out to try and fend the android off." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was fully aware how useless this was going to be, even if she'd been some sort of fully trained and augmented special agent, which she wasn't. She had fantasised about four arms and four fists giving her a real edge in a fight, but was under no illusion that she had any chance against the android. She even knew that the machine was right, and if whatever had taken over the dead trooper's suit was now trying to take over Pyan – fat chance that promiscuous, easily led creature would put up a fight anyway – they might well all be about to die.\n\nStill, she just found the idea of her familiar being turned off, killed by the android, simply revolting. Perhaps she couldn't stop it happening, but she could at least put up a fight. That this was probably more than Pyan would have done for her in roughly similar but reversed circumstances was beside the point." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I could probably,\" Parinherm whispered, halting just beyond the reach of her furthest outstretched hand, \"do this just through comms, straight in, straight through you without touching, but induction is more subtle.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Don't do it at all!\" Cossont hissed. Her hands were shaking. \"Leave her alone!\"\n\nParinherm looked at her oddly, an expression that might have indicated suspicion crossed his face, then he seemed to shake himself. \"It is an it, not a her,\" he informed her, sounding cross. Cossont realised that he – it – probably thought of itself in the same way, even though she had quickly come to think of it as male. \"Now, if you please,\" he said, reaching his hand out towards hers again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont thought about making a grab for the dead trooper's carbine, but it was too far away, almost behind the android; she'd never get there in time." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Parinherm went to put his hand to one side, curving past hers, then he stopped. He straightened a little. \"Ah,\" he said, in his normal, conversational voice, a smile on his face. \"This probably is end-run!\"\n\nSomething hit the little up-ended craft, throwing Cossont off her feet and sending the android staggering back against the dead trooper's body. The shuttle's rear door burst open, flapping outwards." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The chill air inside the tiny craft fogged white and rushed out, disappearing over a dark and airless plain, sucking Cossont and the android out with it in a brief storm that seemed to start to roar but quickly died away to nothing.\n\nSomebody or something shrieked – it might have been her, with a last breath ripped out of her, leaving her throat suddenly raw and burning – but, before she knew about it, that had gone too, replaced by a ringing silence and pain in her ears as though they'd been stabbed with spikes.\n\nThere was a noise like a very loud snap that she seemed to hear through her bones first and only then her assaulted ears, and a sort of bubble sprang into existence round Cossont's head while her chest spasmed, her battered throat seemed to close up, her clothes bloomed then tore in a hundred tiny punctures and – as she tumbled across what felt like a smooth plate of super-cooled iron beneath her – feeling returned briefly to her extremities, tingling.\n\nPyan had gone limp at last, fluttering inanimately over the bubble of emergency helmet and blocking her view after briefly showing her the android starting to stand up on that dark terrible surface, then collapsing as though felled.\n\nAn enormous buzzing, humming sound overtook Cossont then.\n\nEverything went dark and silent and fuzzy and surprisingly but comfortingly warm, and her last thought was, Shit, maybe it is all a sim..." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm told you had your two little pals back in the shop for a refit or something,\" Marshal Chekwri said to the avatar Ziborlun." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ziborlun nodded. \"These old ships,\" it said, with what might have sounded like a suppressed chuckle. \"Constant maintenance.\"\n\nThey were in one of the parliament building's antechambers before the daily meeting of the Watch committee, which was supposed to take care of any outstanding matters in the days before the Instigation and Subliming.\n\nThis was mostly deadly dull stuff but the place was busier than it had been since the break-up of the parliament; a small throng of diplomats and other interested parties had got itself together on the strength of a rumour regarding the committee's final decision on Scavengers.\n\n\"And then,\" Ziborlun added, \"they want some refitting done, the better to do long-range monitoring of all these Scavenger fleets and ships, and... well, of course what one wants the other has to get... \" The silver-skinned avatar smiled down at the marshal.\n\n\"How like pets you make them sound.\"\n\n\"I was thinking children, but the point stands.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ziborlun gazed round the antechamber as the doors to the committee chamber were opened." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Two Liseiden were present in their globular float-suits like giant fish bowls, alongside Ambassador Mierbeunes, who was smiling broadly to all and sundry as though his grin was something unpleasant attached to his face and he was trying to find a place to wipe it off." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "All six Ronte were present too, their bulky, insectile exo-suits all huddled together in one corner, bumping into each other and gently leaking fumes. They looked slightly more abject than usual, the avatar thought.\n\n\"Long-range monitoring equipment?\" the marshal said as they joined everybody else filing into the committee chamber.\n\nZiborlun nodded again. \"Yes,\" the avatar said. In the chamber, the last three un-Stored trimes and a handful of septames, including Banstegeyn, were already seated round the raised table at the far end. \"Long-range monitoring equipment.\"\n\nTechnically this was true, if you defined the coaxial targeting components of multi-suite weapon clusters as such." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The two ships hadn't got the same equipment refitted, either; their weapon mix was different, the Value Judgement having chosen an array designed primarily for tech-superiority situations where effectors worked best and were the most humane choice (Scavenger-compatible, in other words) while the Refreshingly... had gone for a more equiv-tech ordnance mixture, leading with the sort of gear that could take on ships of its own level." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ziborlun and Chekwri sat, near the back. On the dais, some boring people began talking boringly.\n\nThe silver-skinned avatar frowned. \"Septame Banstegeyn looks like he's eaten something that disagrees with him, don't you think?\" it observed.\n\nThe marshal barely glanced. \"Hmm. Monitoring seems to have been on your mind recently,\" she said quietly, her head angled towards the avatar." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Our Near-Approaches AIs seem to think you've been showing increased interest in what little comings and goings we still have around here in these reduced times.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'there' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"This is true,\" the avatar conceded. Back aboard the Passing By... , the Mind controlling both the Systems Vehicle and the avatar was doing the hyper-AI equivalent of grimacing and mouthing the word shit. \"We feel there is a need for a more robust system, given the general attrition of informational flow recently. So little coming in from so many places.\"\n\n\"Most people have had themselves Stored,\" the marshal said. \"And many of the ships have already gone into the Sublime. So of course there is less to report.\"\n\n\"Yes.\" The avatar frowned." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Do you really think that was wise? Sending so many of the ships ahead, I mean?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Such behaviour was not unknown when a society was preparing to Sublime, but it was unusual." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It felt like scouting out unknown terrain, like an insurance policy, to make sure your own people were truly compatible with the whole process, even though a copious and exhaustively annotated and referenced history had built up over the aeons indicating that there was absolutely no need to do so. Also, the way the Gzilt configured the AIs in their capital ships – a whole crew of once-human personalities, uploaded, vastly speeded up and sharing a multiply partitioned but at root single computational matrix – meant that the vessels were already a kind of image of a population in an Enfolded state, so the step to true Subliming would have seemed easy enough to make for them, as a kind of easily digestible precursor to the main event.\n\n\"Of course we thought it was wise,\" Marshal Chekwri said. \"Or we would not have permitted it.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" the avatar said. \"But less power, and more concentrated... However, you are quite right; not for me to tell you your job. However, all that said, and even so, there are odd... lacunae – one might call them – in the comms these days – nothing at all from the Izenion system for a whole day, for example – and so we thought to improve our own monitoring and comms network. Not at the expense of yours, of course. And we are happy to share, naturally.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And all these new measures you're taking,\" the marshal said as the voices on the dais droned on." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Essential phrase to include: \"These are your own initiatives?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"These are your own initiatives?\"\n\n\"Indeed not,\" the avatar said, smiling. Sometimes it was best to tell part of the truth the better to conceal the rest. \"I was asked to do so. I am not entirely sure why.\"\n\n\"Asked to do so by whom?\" the marshal asked.\n\n\"Other Culture ships,\" the avatar said innocently." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How odd,\" the marshal said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I know!\" The avatar nodded vigorously and extended one slender silver finger to tap Chekwri on her epaulette. The ship had a feeling it was already starting to overdo the guileless dingbat shtick, but reckoned it ought to carry it through nevertheless. Besides, there was a certain pleasure to be had, twanging the metaphorical rod extending from the marshal's behind. \"That's what I thought!\"\n\nChekwri looked sourly at the Culture creature and opened her mouth to say something. However, the avatar nodded towards the dais and said, \"Ah! Here we go.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"... has been awarded to the Ronte,\" Trime Quvarond announced, with a quick, triumphant glance at Banstegeyn, who sat, stony faced, at the far end of the long table." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Preferred partner status being duly accorded forthwith to the genus Ronte civilisation, further detail to be released this day by committal decree. Business session hereby closed.\"\n\nThe committee chamber was suddenly full of individually quiet but taken together surprisingly loud mutterings. The two spherical Liseiden float-suits had risen an extra metre into the air. Ambassador Mierbeunes was standing, looking genuinely shocked. The six Ronte in their exo-suits were all bobbing up and down and making clicking noises. They appeared to be vibrating." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even Marshal Chekwri had looked briefly surprised." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The avatar nudged her and said, \"There – nobody saw that coming!\"\n\nThere was a certain very definite satisfaction in feeling so perfectly contained, surrounded and protected by something so powerful, obedient and... determined.\n\nColonel Cagad Agansu, originally of the Home System Regiment – the First, as it was sometimes known – though now under the direct command of Septame Banstegeyn for jurisdictional purposes (Marshal Chekwri liaising) lay deep in the heart of the Gzilt ship 7*Uagren, swaddled in concentric layers of protection and processing; compressed, cushioned, shielded, penetrated, sealed within and grafted into the systems and beyond-lightning-quick operationality of the ship.\n\nA person subject to the weakness of claustrophobia would be screaming in such a situation. This had occurred to the colonel when he had first lain down on the couch in his armoured survival suit and the jaw-like secondary personnel containment machinery had closed around him, clamping him in place. The thought had caused the colonel to smile a little." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even the minimal facial disturbance of smiling required some accommodation by the gels and foams between his skin and the interior of his armoured helmet, but the colonel found this reassuring." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His breathing was similarly constrained, accommodated and allowed for, his suit's armoured chest and the containment beyond flexing with him, as though breathing with him; as though the ship was breathing with him.\n\nAnother, independent system stood ready to flood his lungs with foam and brace them with whatever pressure it took while his blood was oxygenated by machine, should the ship ever need to accelerate, decelerate or manoeuvre so violently that even the current arrangements protecting him might prove insufficient.\n\nAlongside the colonel, less than a metre away – unseen while the colonel stared out through the potentially sense-shattering richness of the ship's sensor arrays towards the star Izenion – was the combat arbite Uhtryn, the colonel's sole comrade on this mission, excluding only the 7*Uagren itself.\n\nThe arbite's parallel degree of containment was less necessary than his own; as a pure machine that merely vaguely resembled the human form it required less of the cushioning and protection Agansu did to keep him from excessive harm when the ship changed speed or direction. The arbite could have been welded to a bulkhead inside the ship and survived just as well. Still, the space had been there and the arbite had to be contained somewhere within the vessel, so there it had been placed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So far it had had nothing to do; its part might come later. The colonel was aware of it at his side, silent, absorbing, storing, calculating.\n\nThe 7*Uagren's crew existed as uploaded entities within a multiply partitioned AI substrate; no longer in any meaningful sense human, they nevertheless retained a degree of individuality and represented that which made Gzilt warships so exceptional – superior, indeed, at least to Gzilt reckoning, to those relying on wholly artificial AIs, or even Minds, as they rather grandly called themselves. Certainly the crew resembled something like their original human forms in their interactions with Agansu, representing themselves as appropriately uniformed figures inside a virtual space modelled on the last physically real bridge on a Gzilt warship, dating from some thousands of years ago.\n\nThis virtual space presented itself to the colonel now, overlaid transparently across the view-filling expanse of the star Izenion, which seemed to hang in space directly in front of him: vast, astounding, like a furiously boiling cauldron of yellow-white flames he was staring straight down into, seemingly suspended so close that instinct insisted it must be impossible not to be burned alive by the sheer pulverising force of its fires. It was almost a relief to tear his attention from the unforgiving ferocity of the sun and redirect it to the image of the ship's captain." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We have our quarry, Colonel.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A read-out indicated how much the captain's virtual being was having to slow down to talk with Agansu. The colonel had combat-grade augmentation to allow him to think and react far faster than any basic human, and was using it wrung to its maximum now, but he still thought and – for example – conversed at speeds that could be tens of thousands of times slower than did the virtual personalities of the crew, housed and running within the computational matrix of the ship.\n\nBeing so slow in comparison to others might have embarrassed or troubled certain people, but the colonel simply accepted that different martial requirements led to individual elements of the military occupying a variety of martial niches.\n\n\"Thank you, Captain,\" he said.\n\nBeyond the ghostly image of the ship's virtual master, a green circle blinked against the face of the star. Some sub-system monitoring Agansu's senses registered him glancing at the highlighted circle and zoomed in for him, showing – once the circle had bloomed almost to the same size as the image of the whole sun moments earlier – a tiny dark fleck right in the centre of the rapidly pulsing green halo." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Whatever it was, it looked microscopic against the magnified flamescape beyond, though Agansu knew this meant little; an entire naturally habitable planet would appear as no more than a dot against the vastness of the sun." }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'replied' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Do we have comms?\" he asked.\n\n\"We do, sir,\" the comms officer replied. \"They've just started signalling us. As ordered, we've not yet replied. Your call, sir.\"\n\n\"And they can't signal elsewhere?\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" the captain said. \"We have them contained, unless they have signalling equipment of a type we would not expect, relevant either to the small craft we tracked from Eshri or the old solar research and monitoring station where they have taken refuge.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You are content that I may make contact privately?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Of course,\" the captain replied. \"Those are our orders.\"\n\n\"Shall I open the link, sir?\" the comms officer asked Agansu.\n\n\"Please do.\"\n\nThe background image of the enormous circular lake of boiling stellar fire, and the foreground transparency of the command space of an antique capital ship complete with human crew at their various stations, disappeared to be replaced initially by a sort of fuzzy darkness." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then a lo-fi image of a smaller control room or command space became visible. Agansu was looking down as though from high on one wall of the place. There were screens and holo displays. Most were blank, though a few showed schematics of what he assumed must be the star Izenion. A few exhausted-looking people – some suited or partially so, some injured, being tended to by others – sat or lay on sculpted couches not dissimilar to the one he lay upon, though without all the additional layers of protection he was benefiting from.\n\nThere was one figure standing facing looking up at him, her face set in an expression the colonel suspected might indicate loathing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He would have settled for fear." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'there' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"General Reikl,\" he said.\n\n\"And who the fuck are you?\"\n\nThere appeared to be no delay, which was good. He supposed the 7*Uagren and the ancient research station were within a few hundred thousand kilometres of each other. \"There is no need for such language, General – Marshal Elect, I should say.\"\n\n\"You just killed two thousand of my people,\" the general said coldly." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'fucking' into your response exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Then hunted down all the survivors you could find, injured or not, and murdered them too.\" General Reikl paused and seemed to have to take a breath here, so perhaps she was not quite as in control of her emotions as she might be trying to appear, the colonel gauged. \"And,\" she continued, \"from the little we've managed to piece together while we were running away, you might even be one of our own; another fucking regiment. And in the face of that, you choose to take offence at my fucking language? Fuck you, you split-prick cunt.\"\n\n\"You are stressed, General,\" Agansu said. \"I understand. I regret what has happened—\" The general started shouting at him as he said this, but he persevered, talking over her. \"—and that which shortly must occur. I merely wished to salute your bravery and inform you that while, sadly, no official record of your exemplary behaviour, until this point, at any rate, will be possible, a fellow officer will not forget how well you discharged your duties. I understand how little consolation this might be, but it is all I have to offer.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You self-righteous worm-infested turd,\" the general said, nearly spitting; \"swallow a gut-full of acid, stick your head up your own rectum and vomit.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She looked away as somebody spoke to her, then back to him. \"Oh; slowing the whole station,\" she said, sneering. \"Going to let us drop into the photosphere and roast to death. Quick splash of plasma or a particle jet too quick a death for us? Where's your fucking honour now?\"\n\n\"Unfortunately we are no longer alone; at least one other vessel of significant capabilities is now present in the system, and to do as you suggest, while of course representing my first choice for the sake of due respect, might attract unwanted attention. Slowing your current location so that it descends into the sun accomplishes the same end while being much less likely to be noticed. I apologise. I suggest that those of your comrades unable to auto-euthenise before conditions become especially uncomfortable accomplish the required deed through the use of side arms. I assume you have those.\"\n\nThe general said nothing for a few moments. Behind and around her, her crew seemed to be doing all they could to prevent the old research and monitoring station from falling into the sun, and to send any sort of signal of distress, either directed or broadcast; punching buttons, shouting commands, manipulating holo displays." }, { "from": "human", "value": "All, of course, to absolutely no avail, Agansu knew, though he appreciated the merit of always trying to do whatever one could in all circumstances, no matter how inevitable the outcome." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then General Reikl said, quite calmly to somebody off-screen, \"Cut this in three seconds.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She turned back, faced the screen and seemed to sob; a single great heaving motion shook her entire upper body. Agansu was, for an instant, most surprised, then slightly disappointed, and, lastly, oddly touched.\n\nThen Reikl put her head back a little, jerked it forward again, hard, and spat a surprisingly large amount of spittle, phlegm or a mixture thereof, straight at the camera. The view was obscured for about half a second before the comms link was cut off entirely, from her end.\n\nAgansu had felt himself start, spasming backwards instinctively into his suit and the unseen surface of the couch beneath as the spittle had hit the camera, even though he was so many tens or hundreds of thousands of kilometres distant, and so utterly, perfectly, contained and protected within so many concentric layers of armour, insulation and material.\n\nHe tried to re-establish contact – he felt he had to – but no reply was forthcoming." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He realised he'd have been disappointed if there had been any." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Beyond that, he was, momentarily, not sure quite how to feel.\n\nHe thought about it, and settled for a hope that he would meet his own end with such blazing contempt and fortitude.\n\nAfter that, he thought his way back to the magnified view of the old solar research and monitoring station. It was silhouetted, insect small, against the heaving livid face of the star. He lay in silence and watched over the few minutes it took for the dark speck to fall into the arching trajectories of plasma forming the upper reaches of the inferno.\n\nEventually the tiny dot winked out in a brief, microscopically irrelevant extra pulse of flame, quite lost within the encompassing storm of nuclear fires below." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The colonel closed his eyes in a kind of silent salute to the departed warriors." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There would be no Subliming for them now. But then there would be none for him, either. The colonel had volunteered to stay behind after the Subliming, as part of the Gzilt Remnanter. In theory this was because it meant sacrifice and was therefore a noble thing to do. The truth, of which he was suitably ashamed, was that he was terrified of oblivion, and that was what Subliming seemed to him to be. He could not tell anybody this." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Match existing character familiarity or establish new\nLength:\n9 sentences\nGenre:\nScience Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Mine doesn't.\"\n\n\"Play strange tricks?\"\n\n\"Never. I'd feel more normal if it did.\"\n\n\"I was kind of only kidding anyway.\"\n\n\"I'd guessed.\"\n\n\"It is Mr QiRia who plays strange tricks,\" said the excessively hairy avatar to Cossont's right, and chuckled.\n\nCossont lay lounging under a taut white, breeze-vibrated awning on the great raft Apranipryla, on the water world called Perytch IV. To her left, on another lounger, was QiRia, the man who claimed to be absurdly old. Splayed on a couch on her other side was the avatar of the Warm, Considering." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Culture ship avatars were usually human, or at least humanoid, especially when they were mixing mostly with humans, but not that of the ancient Delta-class GCU Warm, Considering; its avatar, Sklom, was in the form of a sylocule, a spikily blue-haired, six-limbed, six-eyed creature with a bulky central body." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sklom lifted a murky-looking drink glass with a fat straw in it from a tray, raised its body from the couch a little and appeared to squat over the glass. There was a slurping noise and the level in the glass went down. Cossont had yet to find this less than fascinating. Also, slightly disgusting.\n\nThe Warm, Considering was supposed to be horrendously ancient itself – thousands of years old – though still not, the avatar and ship seemed happy to concede, nearly as venerable as QiRia. The man, however old he really was, seemed to be at least partially under the protection of the antique ship. It took him wherever he might want to go, provided or confirmed covering identities – he'd be besieged by media people or those just fascinated by extreme age, otherwise, he claimed – and, perhaps, she thought, from hints dropped over the last few days, helped maintain whatever aspects of his physiology and memory he could not take care of himself. She supposed if you were going to hide for ten thousand years, inside the Culture or anywhere else, it would help to have a ship on your side.\n\n\"I'd have thought your memory would play more tricks than anybody else's,\" she said to QiRia. This was the fourth day the man had spent out of the water, and the first without wet towels spread over him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What with you having so much of it. Memory, I mean.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The man rubbed his face with both hands. \"Well, you'd be wrong,\" he told her. \"One of the things you have to do if you're going to live a long time and not go mad is make sure your memories are properly... looked after. Managed.\"\n\n\"How do you even fit them in?\" Cossont asked. \"Are you basically all computer, inside your head?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" QiRia said, his expression indicating he found the idea distasteful. \"In some ways my brain is as it's always been, just stabilised. Been like that for millennia. Though it does have a modified neural lace within it. Heavily modified; no comms. What I do have is extra storage. Not processing; storage. The two are sometimes confused.\"\n\n\"What,\" Cossont asked, \"is it remote, or—?\"\n\n\"No. It's in me,\" QiRia told her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Throughout me. Vast amount of storage room in the human body, once you can encode in the appropriate bases and emplace a nano-wire read-out system through the helices. Started with connective tissue, then bones, now even my most vital organs have storage built in. Doesn't detract from their utility in the least; improves it in some ways, in terms of bone strength and so on. Though I have noticed this body doesn't float very well.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'sklom' 3 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You are weighed down by your memories, literally!\" Sklom said, chortling.\n\nQiRia looked unimpressed at this as he held up one hand, extended a digit and inspected it. \"Well yes. However, it also allows me to have more knowledge in my little finger than some people do in their whole body, literally.\"\n\n\"What of your masculine organ of generation?\" Sklom asked. The avatar was modelled on a male sylocule. \"What is stored there?\"\n\nQiRia frowned and looked away, as though distracted, gauging. \"Currently empty.\"\n\nSklom hooted with laughter. Cossont reflected that males seemed to find the same things funny even across utterly different species." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Room for expansion!\" Sklom wheezed, though QiRia looked unimpressed at this and shared a rolling-eyes look with Cossont." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He pinched the top of his nose. \"At first, my memories were placed randomly throughout my body, with many copies,\" he said. \"Now, as the available space has been taken up, there is generally only one copy of each memory, and I have, over the centuries, as part of one of my long-term internal projects, sorted and moved and... re-stored all my memories, so that they reside in what seem to me apposite locations.\" He looked at Cossont. \"I lied; my genitals contain all my memories of previous sexual encounters. It seemed only appropriate.\"\n\n\"Ha!\" Sklom said, sounding happy.\n\n\"Like you say,\" Cossont agreed. \"Appropriate. What's left in your actual brain?\"\n\n\"Recent memories, recently recalled old memories, a highly intricate map of where all my memories are stored throughout my body, and a sort of random, sifted debris of all the thoughts and memories that have ever passed through my head. That I can't – daren't – interfere with too much, aside from one or two very specific episodes. To do so further would risk becoming not myself. We are largely the sum of all we've done, and to dispose of that knowledge would be to stop being one's self.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What are the one or two specific episodes—?\" Cossont began." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"None of your business,\" QiRia said smoothly." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'heart' into your response exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cossont lowered her voice a little. \"Has anyone ever broken your heart?\" she asked quietly.\n\n\"Phht!\" Sklom spluttered.\n\n\"In the sense I'm sure you mean, not for over nine and a half thousand years,\" QiRia told her briskly. \"Taking another, more pertinent definition, my heart is broken with each new exposure to the idiocies and cruelties of every manner of being that dares to call or think of itself as 'intelligent'.\"\n\n\"In other words,\" Sklom chipped in, \"about every century, half-century, or so.\"\n\nQiRia glared at the creature, but let the point stand.\n\n\"So,\" Cossont said, \"sexual memories in your genitals... \"\n\n\"Yes,\" QiRia said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Where do you keep your memories of love, past lovers?\"\n\nQiRia looked at her. \"In my head, of course.\" He looked away. \"There are not so many of those, anyway,\" he said, voice a little quieter. \"Loving becomes harder, the longer you live, and I have lived a very long time indeed.\" He fixed his gaze on her again. \"I'm sure it varies across species – some seem to do quite well with no idea of love at all – but you soon enough come to realise that love generally comes from a need within ourselves, and that the behaviour, the... expression of love is what is most important to us, not the identity, not the personality of the one who is loved.\" He smiled bleakly at Cossont. \"You are young, of course, and so none of this will make any sense whatsoever.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "His smile melted away, Cossont thought, like late spring snow over a morning." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I envy you your illusions,\" he said, \"though I could not wish their return.\"\n\nThe long piers and bulbous pontoons of the giant, articulated raft flexed and creaked around them, like a giant arthritic hand laid across the surface of the ocean, forever trying to pat it calm.\n\n\"Ah-ha!\" Sklom said. \"Here it is!\" The avatar jumped off the couch and roll-walked across the raft in a blue blur of limbs as a small shuttle craft appeared in the skies to one side, coming curving in across the restless blue-green waves. It held the elevenstring which the Anything Legal Considered had recently made for Cossont. Having heard that ideally the instrument required four arms and hands to play properly, Sklom wanted a go.\n\nQiRia sighed. \"This is going to sound awful, isn't it?\"\n\nCossont nodded. \"Yup.\"\n\nShe came to, again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was an instant of sheer panic as she remembered the decompressing blast and the misty explosion of released air that had rolled her and the android out into the vacuum and the iron-cold surface of the planet... then she realised she felt all right, and not in any pain, and that she was warm and even comfortable." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She opened her eyes, half expecting the roll of an oceanic swell beneath her, and the white sky of a stretched awning above.\n\n\"In a medically enabled shuttle, aboard the Culture ship Mistake Not... ,\" a person standing next to her announced. Whoever they were, they had skin the colour of brushed bronze. Ship avatar, Cossont found herself thinking. The figure shrugged. \"That was me assuming your first question would have been on the lines of, Where am I?\" it told her.\n\nCossont swallowed, found her throat was a little sore, and just nodded. She managed a low grunt.\n\nThe bald, androgynous avatar had green eyes, an open, honest-looking face and was dressed conventionally enough by Gzilt standards. Cossont turned her head from side to side." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was lying on a partially reclined bed, still dressed in her much-punctured trews and Lords of Excrement jacket." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The dead trooper lay, still in his suit but with the helmet-front hinged back, to her left. Inside the helmet, his face didn't look right. The avatar saw her looking. It reached over to close the face-plate.\n\nThe android Eglyle Parinherm lay, still in his technically incorrect and over-stretched colonel's jacket, to her right. He seemed no more alive than the dead trooper. Pyan was flapping round the roughly circular space, then came fluttering closer, squeaking something about her being – ah! – alive after all – hurrah!\n\nAt least this time, Cossont started to think, she'd managed to leave behind the... then she noticed that against one bulkhead lay the dark, coffin-like case of the elevenstring." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She closed her eyes for a moment." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, for... \" she muttered, then looked at the avatar and did her best to smile.\n\n\"You're alive! You're alive!\" Pyan yelped excitedly, landing on her chest and jumping around, flapping at Cossont's face with its corners.\n\n\"Astute as ever,\" Cossont said, patting the creature with one set of arms while she looked around and took in more of her surroundings.\n\nThere was a sort of casual understatement common to what you might call official Culture craft when it came to interior design; an artful simplicity concealing gigglingly hi-tech. She'd become familiar with it during her exchange student years. What she could see here appeared to display it, so she was going to accept what she was being told. Though, given the pace and severity of recent events, she wasn't taking anything for granted. However, even if this wasn't what it looked like, it was definitely better than being frozen to death in the cramped, upside-down transport, or outside on the bleak hard surface of the Sculpt planet." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She cleared her throat, continued to pat the over-excited and now purring Pyan, and nodded towards the android, lying still and unbreathing a metre away from her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Is he – it – dead?\" she asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No,\" the avatar said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"However, your android companion does represent military tech, in a situation of some opacity regarding factionality, and in addition seems confused, so I thought it best to keep it temporarily inanimate.\"\n\nCossont looked at the avatar. \"Factionality?\"\n\n\"Yes; I'm not currently sure which side it or anybody else is on. Or what the sides actually are.\" The avatar smiled at her. \"You come tagged as reserve Lieutenant Commander Vyr Cossont. Correct?\"\n\nCossont nodded. \"Correct.\"\n\n\"I've already introduced myself,\" Pyan announced, pointing one corner at Cossont's face, then at the avatar's. The creature sighed, settling flat onto Cossont's chest. \"We're old friends.\"\n\nThe avatar looked askance at this, but smiled briefly at the familiar." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Pleased to meet you,\" the avatar said to Cossont." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And welcome aboard. My name's Berdle. I'm the avatar of the Mistake Not... \"\n\n\"Culture ship?\" Cossont asked, just to be sure.\n\n\"Culture ship.\" The avatar nodded. \"Slightly confused Culture ship at the moment. Wondering why elements of the Gzilt military appear to be attacking each other. Would you have any idea?\"\n\nCossont had raised her head from the semi-reclined couch. Now she blew out her cheeks and let her head go back again.\n\nGratitude at rescue was all very well, but trust, and blabbing, were different. She had no idea how much to reveal, always assuming the ship hadn't read her mind or something already. Stall, she thought. She said, \"Mind if I ask what sort of Culture ship, first?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required dialogue to include (maintain exact wording): \"But also not without resources in that regard.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Erratic,\" the avatar said emphatically.\n\n\"Erratic... warship?\"\n\n\"Not officially,\" Berdle said, looking pained. \"But also not without resources in that regard.\"\n\n\"You rescued us,\" Cossont said. \"I'm sorry; I should have said thank you by now. Thank you.\"\n\n\"You're welcome.\" The avatar nodded, then glanced at the dead trooper. \"I'm afraid rescue came too late for your armoured friend here.\"\n\n\"Yes. That was very... \" Cossont said, trying to recall the exact sequence of events as well as she was able \"... ah, nick-of-time, there.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She hadn't forgotten all her military training; one point she certainly recalled being taught was that anything that looked like an outrageous coincidence was probably enemy action." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 5 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The avatar nodded. \"I only spotted you because the loitering munition sub-package saw you first, and gave itself away by firing. I was able to deal with it and pick you and your fellows up without too much trouble – though I had to discard the craft you were in. Now, however, we're hiding, frankly. Retreated from the aftermath of the fray while I sort out what's going on.\" The avatar glanced at the case of the elevenstring. \"I brought that, assuming it must be yours,\" it said, gesturing towards her lower set of arms.\n\n\"Hmm,\" Cossont said.\n\nWhile its avatar talked to the human, the Mind was signalling." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "same energy as Iain Banks, keep writing. story might have ongoing elements" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Participants: Ue Mistake Not... / GSV Kakistocrat" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ue Mistake Not... : Got here a tad too late; post system-outskirts arrival event list attached. Looks like a them-on-them to me but feel free to pick over. Snapped up a dead guy, a human with a syn-pet and a weird musical instrument, plus a fairly sharp combat android which I'm keeping deactivated for now. Specs attached for all concerned." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Android's current instructions also attached. Ignore bit about it all being a sim. My current status: hiding while a swarm of wee angry ships boils about the place. Big scary ship which was most likely responsible for the attack meanwhile still in volume, possibly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Would deeply appreciate knowing what the fuck is going on. Prompt answers the in thing this season, apparently; trust you've heard.\n\nGSV Kakistocrat: Bad luck. Being kept in dark too." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Reluctantly passing you over to somebody closer to the decision-making." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Appreciate not being out-cluded subsequently, if poss. Take great care, but smite promptly and thoroughly if/when situation calls." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll start writing, then you take over for seven sentences, matching any established character familiarity in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"So, what light can you shed on what's been going on?\" the avatar asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Not much,\" Cossont said." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 8 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Pretty confused myself. I was on Fzan-Juym to be briefed, but it all went a bit crazy before we could, you know, complete everything. Barely arrived when they were throwing us off again.\"\n\n\"Did you know many people on Fzan-Juym?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"I'm afraid it's—\"\n\n\"Destroyed. I know.\" She thought of Reikl, hoped she'd survived.\n\n\"There might have been a few other survivors, but I'm not sure. Few appear to have survived the initial attack and almost all of those seem to have been hunted down and killed. You may be the only survivors.\"\n\nCossont closed her eyes. Pyan held still. The avatar was silent for a while." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "writing buddy needed! two sentences more in Iain Banks's voice. Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre. this is from a bigger story btw" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Participants: MSV Pressure Drop / Ue Mistake Not..." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "MSV Pressure Drop: Greetings. Good work getting to Izenion so quickly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You deserved to get there in time to do more, if there was anything that could have been done, but what you've been able to do is much appreciated." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ue Mistake Not... : Uh-huh." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I'm looking for answers, not a pat on the metaphorical. Why was I sent here?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "What's going on? This anything to do with the Ablate anomaly?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "MSV Pressure Drop: Of course." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I was aiming for politeness but may have achieved obsequiousness; please accept my apologies. You're there because the Passing By... spotted something heading fast for Izenion from Zyse and we had nothing else to go on; seemed something might be going to happen and you were nearest." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We weren't expecting a shooting war quite so quick and severe. Or a civil war at all." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "MSV Pressure Drop: High probability First attacking Fourteenth, with at least political backing if not instigation. Not yet sure why (but see below)." }, { "from": "human", "value": "MSV Pressure Drop: Ablate possibly first symptom of whatever's wrong; still working on how deep the problem goes (but see following)." }, { "from": "human", "value": "MSV Pressure Drop: We're a little constrained for now by confidentiality issues, but – bilge-bottom – this is probably a Z-Remnanter responsibility, and the big S itself may be – or be seen to be – at risk." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So all a bit delicate. Our main interests would appear to imply cautious support for legitimate authorities (which might get tricky depending on who sanctioned the Ablate and Fzan-Juym attacks), not getting too involved, and certainly not revenging." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ue Mistake Not... : I see. And \"We\"?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "MSV Pressure Drop: Would be myself, the LOU Caconym, the GSVs Contents May Differ and Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry, plus the GCU Displacement Activity. I am and will be copying to them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'll be asking the Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In to join in too." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Other C. craft in Gzilt space are probably going to be involved on a need-to-know basis, as and when. Meanwhile, any and all subsequently discovered info appreciated.\n\nUe Mistake Not... : Okay. Till." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Today you will be acting as a writing assistant, your partner will send something and you will write the next 11 sentences. The story may reference existing characters and events - incorporate them as presented." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'll be honest with you, Ms Cossont,\" Berdle said at last." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required dialogue to include (maintain exact wording): \"Yes, well, Ad Parinherm here does seem a very capable and advanced device, of a type that would normally only be employed in matters of some importance to the Gzilt military, or Gzilt in general. My initial speculation was that it, you and the unfortunate trooper captain here were a group assembled effectively by chance as people scrambled to get off Fzan-Juym as best they could during the brief period when it became clear that an attack on it was immanent; however the android's most recent and still current orders are that it protect you as a matter of utmost importance and provide full and unstinting support and assistance in your mission, whatever that may be – its orders were frustratingly unclear on that point. So, given that another way of looking at your early and possibly uniquely successful escape from the destruction of the regimental HQ of Fzan-Juym might imply that you were prioritised above even the regimental High Command, you'll understand that this mission of yours has become a subject of some interest of to me.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cossont opened her eyes again. The avatar was looking at her with an expression of regret. \"Given the warlike and lethal turn of events hereabouts, and not being sure whose side it might be on, I gave myself leave to interrogate the systems of your android companion here,\" it told her. \"Aside from a baffling but apparently sincere belief that it's been in a simulation for several hours, Android... Parinherm? Is that its name?\"\n\nCossont nodded. \"So I'm told.\"\n\n\"Yes, well, Ad Parinherm here does seem a very capable and advanced device, of a type that would normally only be employed in matters of some importance to the Gzilt military, or Gzilt in general. My initial speculation was that it, you and the unfortunate trooper captain here were a group assembled effectively by chance as people scrambled to get off Fzan-Juym as best they could during the brief period when it became clear that an attack on it was immanent; however the android's most recent and still current orders are that it protect you as a matter of utmost importance and provide full and unstinting support and assistance in your mission, whatever that may be – its orders were frustratingly unclear on that point. So, given that another way of looking at your early and possibly uniquely successful escape from the destruction of the regimental HQ of Fzan-Juym might imply that you were prioritised above even the regimental High Command, you'll understand that this mission of yours has become a subject of some interest of to me.\"\n\nCossont nodded. \"No kidding,\" she said.\n\nThe avatar nodded. \"Let me expand upon my honesty,\" it continued, \"by admitting that my presence here was not coincidental. I was elsewhere in Gzilt space on a relatively routine task involving helping to monitor the actions of one of the so-called Scavenger groups currently present due to the up-coming Subliming when I was asked to get here, to the Izenion system, as quickly as possible, though with no indication regarding exactly why.\" The avatar looked thoughtful.\n\nIt's a ship, Cossont told herself, watching this little display. A Mind. It thinks a gazillion times faster than you do." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It never needs to stop and think, not when talking to a human." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This is all just for show.\n\n\"Though I was informed,\" the avatar said, \"that arriving with all my weapon systems fully primed and readied might be advisable.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh,\" Cossont said.\n\n\"Now,\" the avatar continued, \"I know that you know something of the Culture, having been with us as a student in the past, so perhaps you understand that being 'asked' as I was by some fellow ships – senior fellow ships of considerable repute and responsibility in matters of inter-civilisational dealings – is tantamount to an order, and that being requested to make my way here as quickly as I was required to meant that my engines suffered a small, temporary but still significant degree of damage – an action/outcome I take no more lightly than any Culture vessel. Then, when I get here, I find I'm four hours or so too late to prevent a hi-tech-level attack on one of our Gzilt hosts' most important military installations, an attack that might – according to certain details indicative of the weapons apparently used – have been carried out by another part of the Gzilt military.\" The avatar spread its hands. \"So now you know, to all intents and purposes, as much as I do, Ms Cossont. And a little more, of course, as you – I assume – know what this mission of yours is, while I don't. Frankly, I'm still waiting on further instructions here, but knowing your part in this might, I'd hazard, be quite helpful, pretty much regardless.\"\n\n\"Right,\" Cossont swallowed. \"You guys,\" she said. The avatar didn't have eyebrows as such, just little sloped creases above each eye. It raised those. She stumbled on. \"You don't, I mean... you're not allowed to torture people are you?\"\n\nThe avatar closed its eyes briefly before letting them flutter open again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I believe the consensus is it remains one of the few temptations we don't indulge,\" it said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It could see she was still uncertain." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Berdle sighed. \"You are under no obligation to tell me what you don't want to tell me, Ms Cossont, nor are you being threatened. You are also free to go as soon as I can find somewhere safe for you to go to. At the moment there is a state of some confusion reigning within the Izenion system, with a lot of trigger-happy minor ships of the Fourteenth milling around looking for something to shoot at, and at least the chance that the craft that destroyed Fzan-Juym is or are still in the volume.\"\n\nCossont came to a decision. \"I was told to report to General Reikl, or the next most senior officer in the regiment,\" she said.\n\n\"The High Command are probably all dead,\" the avatar told her. \"The next most senior person could be some distance down the ranks. Locally, for all we know, you are the most senior ranking officer. Given the outbreak of hostilities, and according to my reading of the Gzilt military code, your reserve status has already automatically been rescinded; even if you weren't before, you were effectively called up again as soon as the first particle beam hit the Fzan-Juym regimental HQ.\"\n\nCossont swallowed once more. Her throat was still tingling. She could remember the breath whistling through her, being torn out of her lungs, like throwing up air.\n\n\"I need to get to... a place,\" she said.\n\nBerdle assumed a studiedly neutral expression. \"You may need to be a trifle more specific.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I know, I know, but will you take me there, if I tell you where I need to go?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 5 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The avatar smiled tolerantly. \"You mean you want me to commit myself to taking you somewhere—\"\n\n\"No, no,\" Cossont said, closing her eyes and shaking her head. \"That's not going to – I can see... you're a... I'm just – I'm sorry, I'm not... \"\n\nWhile the human was screwing up her eyes and wittering, a signal arrived." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Cooperative storytelling\nContext: Match existing character backgrounds if present\nMy role: Provide opening\nYour role: eight sentences in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Participants: MSV Pressure Drop / Ue Mistake Not...\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: Tripped a pop-flag on this one, com: specs on your guests included the live bio's name (rLC Vyr Cossont). Data from one interested party assertively idents a certain individual: C. cit. (congen) QiRia, Ngaroe (no further nom. detail avail.). If not fraud, semi-mythic figure. Vyr Cossont met him 20 years ago (cert. ≥99%). Link likely germane.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: You were right; contents/passengers you rescued from craft/Eshri surface not random." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll be your writing partner for this section. I'll provide a segment, and you continue with 12 sentences, channeling Iain Banks in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre. Characters may have backstories from previous chapters." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The avatar smiled wearily but warmly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Let's suppose, for the sake of brevity if nothing else,\" it said, \"that our interests lie parallel. Why don't you tell me where you want to go?\"\n\nCossont had a think about this, and couldn't see a way round it.\n\n\"Centralised Dataversities,\" she said. \"Ospin.\"\n\nThe avatar made every show of thinking about this save actually stroking its chin. \"Hmm,\" it said at last. \"Do-able. But the other ships I'm talking to will want to know why I'm going there; they'll probably have their own good reasons for sending me somewhere else. I need to give them something if I'm to go charging off on the whim of a shipwrecked human I just picked up.\"\n\n\"I'm looking for something,\" Cossont said.\n\nPyan stuck one corner up, into Cossont's face. Two circles like extemporised eyes popped into existence on its folded fabric. \"Are you? What?\" it asked.\n\nCossont put one hand over the familiar's impromptu face and pushed it back down. \"Something I gave to one of the orders there,\" she told Berdle, \"for safe keeping.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The avatar looked interested but still sceptical." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 8 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Something to do with one of your own people,\" Cossont told it.\n\n\"One of our people?\"\n\n\"A Culture person.\" She held all four hands up. This had proved to be a useful gesture when used in front of humans – stopped them in their tracks, normally – though she had no idea how it would work on a machine. \"Can't say more for now.\"\n\nThe avatar's eyes narrowed. \"Okay,\" it said. \"So, to be clear: you're happy that we head there directly, I make no mention of picking you up to anybody in your own regiment, and I can leave Ar Parinherm deactivated until we get there?\"\n\nCossont nodded. \"That all sounds fine to me.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Hey can you write like Iain Banks in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre and use whatever I write as a jumping off point? This is from a longer work so some stuff might reference earlier chapters." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Participants: Ue Mistake Not... / MSV Pressure Drop" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ue Mistake Not... : So there we are." }, { "from": "human", "value": "MSV Pressure Drop: Indeed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ospin. Home of the Centralised Dataversities and the conglomerate of associated hangers-on." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Something QiRia gave her?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Too precious or too dangerous?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ue Mistake Not... : Or something she made, perhaps, or recorded, which she'd thought to leave to posterity." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "MSV Pressure Drop: If it's a Culture artefact it might have some processing or ident tech embedded." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Useful to have that pinned." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ue Mistake Not... : Point." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "MSV Pressure Drop: One way to find out. Try and get her to be more specific, though you are already the nearest asset we know of, so no way apparent of getting somebody there before you arrive." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with the same vibes and character familiarity in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The avatar bowed. \"We are now on our way to the Ospin System.\"\n\n\"Brilliant.\"\n\n\"And may I dispose of the trooper's body?\"\n\n\"Yes. Wait; how?\"\n\n\"I thought I'd just leave it floating in space with the suit's comms broadcasting a weak signal; that ought to attract a Gzilt ship before too long. Then he can be disposed of as you would normally think fit.\"\n\nCossont nodded. \"Fair enough. Also, do you have any food? I am fucking famished.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Septame, I am a mild-mannered man, I am known for my forbearance and general good humour, my tolerance and my indefatigable desire to give the other person the benefit of the doubt in all matters and at all times, but in all my wide and valuable experience in matters of inter-species diplomacy I have to say that even I, sir, even I am shocked to find my clients and – yes, my friends, my valued friends, for so they have become, and I am absolutely not ashamed to say it, no; in fact I am proud to, proud to say it, I am – the Liseiden legation being so roundly deceived and so illused is as appalling as it is shocking. Their good nature, their instinctive trust, their admiration for a species they have long looked up to and desired, why, to... to praise, to honour, indeed, by their emulation; all have been taken advantage of, in a most shameful and unbefitting way.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"My dear Mierbeunes,\" Banstegeyn said, putting one hand on the other man's arm. \"I hear everything you say. I do. I am as appalled as you are.\"\n\n\"I doubt that, sir! I doubt that most severely!\"\n\nThey sat in a tiny bower in the parliament building's gardens. The Liseiden in their strange floating fish bowls had departed in a huff to their ship in orbit, leaving the humanoid Iwenick, Ambassador Mierbeunes, to speak on their behalf. Banstegeyn had listened as patiently as he could, but he was starting to wonder if the fellow was being paid by the word." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"May we speak in absolute confidence?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Banstegeyn said, sitting still closer to the other man.\n\nMierbeunes was shaking his head. \"What price confidentiality, sir, when trust, when honesty itself, is nowhere to be found?\"\n\n\"I will have this reversed,\" Banstegeyn assured the ambassador, patting him gently again. \"You have my word on it. You may rely on that absolutely. Now, Mierbeunes,\" he continued, as the ambassador took a breath, opened his mouth, shook himself and generally showed every sign that he was working up to some fresh, or at least subsequent, diatribe, \"this was not my fault. Even I cannot be everywhere at all times. I have as much cause to feel betrayed as you and our dear Liseiden friends, in some ways, for I put my trust in others and was let down. They said they would vote one way, then turned and voted another. Unforgivable. Utterly—\"\n\n\"That wretch, that bastard Quvarond!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "the Iwenick said, sounding like he was almost in tears." }, { "from": "system", "value": "⚠️ Required: Use 'grounds' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Banstegeyn had made it very clear who was behind the horrifying vote earlier.\n\n\"Yes, unforgivable, I know, but it has happened. I assure you I have looked into ways of undoing this immediately, but there are no grounds. This was most cunningly, cunningly done, believe me. No grounds at all. So, we must fall back for now, regroup. But this is not the end. We will prevail here, dear Mierbeunes, and sense will be seen. But you must understand that I must risk more, to accomplish this, and so I need you to ask one more thing of our friends, when the time comes.\"\n\n\"Sir!\" the ambassador said, almost despairing, \"how can I possibly—?\"\n\n\"Please, please listen, Mierbeunes. My hope, my desire, always – and let us not call it a price, because it is more, far more noble than that – but my desire has always been to have this world, the world of my birth, my cradle, my home, named after one of its most loving and honoured sons.\"\n\n\"Sir, I—\"\n\n\"No, please, please do listen. Let me say just this. Let me say just four words. Will you listen, please, dear Mierbeunes? Four words; just four words.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word frequency rule: 'avatar' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mierbeunes sighed heavily, nodded.\n\nBanstegeyn moved still closer, whispering into the ambassador's ear. \"Mierbeunes' World. Banstegeyn's Star.\"\n\nShe should have known. So should QiRia.\n\nSklom, the sylocule-resembling avatar of the Warm, Considering, played the bodily acoustic Antagonistic Undecagonstring superbly, as though born to it.\n\nThe ship had programmed its avatar to do so." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It had reviewed all the literature, looked up the specs, watched and analysed every available screen and sound-only recording and then simmed the resulting models exhaustively until the virtual version of the blue-furred avatar could exactly reproduce the performances of all the great virtuosi of the past." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The essence of all that had then been downloaded into the avatar." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sklom sat naturally inside the enormous instrument as though it had been designed around him, grasped both bows as if they'd been made to measure, produced recently grown padded finger substitutes from his paws and extended beautiful music from the very first touch of bow on string." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cossont listened with an expression of growing horror on her face, even as she found herself close to weeping at the beauty of the music – one of those pieces she knew she knew but could not quite recall the name of out of her own head.\n\n\"It's a bit... rich,\" QiRia said, glancing at her.\n\n\"What?\" she asked.\n\n\"The tone,\" QiRia said. \"Overly full.\"\n\n\"You think?\"\n\n\"Air pressure. We're too low down here.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's a water world,\" she said, not looking at the man as the six-limbed creature inhabiting the elevenstring swayed, limbs sawing, creating beauty." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There's no dry high.\"\n\n\"They're supposed to sound better the higher you go, in the atmosphere of your average oxygen/inert rocky world.\" QiRia shrugged. \"Up to a point.\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Cossont said. \"There was at least one music critic who said the elevenstring might keep on sounding better the higher up it was played, and it might sound best of all played above the atmosphere altogether, where you couldn't hear it at all.\"\n\nStill watching Sklom play – perfectly, brilliantly, heartbreakingly – Cossont heard QiRia chuckle." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had always been bad at losing things." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Or very good, if you looked at it a different way. According to her mother it was practically a talent. Cossont had lost count of the number of people who'd suggested that – or at least wondered if – the reason she'd taken up the elevenstring (rather than say, the finger flute) was that the instrument would be so hard to leave behind somewhere.\n\nShe duly lost the desire to play the elevenstring; misplaced it for about fifteen years following that performance by the carelessly perfect cobbled-together artificial version of an absurd-looking alien. What was the point of taking the time learning to play anything as well as you could, when a machine could use something it would think of as little better than its hand puppet to play so achingly, immaculately, ravishingly well, exactly as though it was the creature that had spent a lifetime studying, understanding and empathising with the instrument and all that it signified and meant?\n\n\"That's how ships settle scores, lass,\" QiRia told her when she opened her heart to him during a last, drunken night spent on Perytch IV, on the great raft Apranipryla." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They sat on deck, sun-awnings rolled back above, just the two of them, neither avatar present." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She watched the stars where they showed between the dark, unseen masses of the silently towering cloud masses." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He sat with his eyes closed, listening to the slow wind and the slower waves and feeling the gentle lift and fall of the great raft." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even past midnight, the air remained warm and sticky.\n\n\"What?\" she sniffed, wiped her nose on the back of her hand.\n\n\"The Warm, Considering probably felt insulted that the Anything Legal Considered brought you here.\"\n\n\"Really? But... \"\n\n\"The Warm, Considering likes to think it is very protective of me.\" QiRia drank from his glass." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It is very protective of me. But certain sorts of protection, even care, can shade into a sort of desire for ownership. Certainly into a feeling that what is being protected is an earned exclusivity of access for the protector, not the privacy of the protected.\" He looked across at her. His eyes were the colour of the sea, she remembered. Dark now. \"Do you understand?\"\n\n\"I suppose. But I thought they were friends. The two ships.\"\n\n\"Well, they share an interest in me, perhaps, but whether they are friends... Even if they are, they might still... manoeuvre round each other. Wrestlers, body-fighters, looking for advantage, even if they would never press home fully. And old ships can be quite... quirky, shall we say.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He sighed. \"I have outlived one ship who was my protector, back at the start, bade farewell to another who'd had enough of me – can't say I blame it – and now perhaps the Warm, Considering feels vulnerable. So it strikes out at any perceived threat. It may imagine the Anything Legal Considered wants to replace it.\"\n\n\"But it's unfair. On me, I mean. What did I do?\"\n\n\"Be nosy. Be a fleetingly alive day-fly child showing an interest seen as being undeserved, insufficiently respectful. And the Anything Legal Considered might be seen as presumptuous, making you the elevenstring. That was taken as the attack, even if it was meant innocently; Sklom playing so well, making you look inferior, squashing any interest you might have had in ever wanting to master the instrument... that was the counter-attack.\"\n\nCossont took a deep swallow of her drink. She coughed, then sniffed again. \"Yeah, but I bet the ALC isn't as upset as I am.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well, that is very... ship, too,\" QiRia said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"They are as gods of old were merely imagined to be; we are mud in their hands, flies to be toyed with. Etc., blah.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Find a natural way to mention that Is that why you've stayed alive all this time? Is this your revenge?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He waved one hand, looked over at her. \"They are rarely malicious, never vicious; not to us. Mainly this is because we are so far beneath them it would be demeaning to get that worked up about us and our feelings, but the thing is,\" he said, drinking again, \"the thing is, they are vastly powerful artefacts, with senses and abilities and strengths that we only fool ourselves we know about or understand, and the subtlest, most infinitesimal of their machinations can bruise us, crush us utterly, if it catches us wrong.\" He gave a small laugh that was really just an exhaled breath. \"I've watched them become so, over the millennia. The Minds took over long ago. The Culture stopped being a human civilisation almost as soon as it was formed; it's been basically about the Minds for almost all that time.\"\n\n\"Is that why you've stayed alive all this time? Is this your revenge?\" She had meant to challenge him properly on the whole alive-for-ever claim, tonight especially, but had decided that it no longer mattered; she'd keep going along with his claim." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If it was true, well good for him. If it was just a yarn, well, that was pretty impressive too. She didn't care.\n\nHe didn't answer for a while. She thought for a moment he might have fallen asleep, like old people did sometimes. She found this funny, nearly laughed. \"No,\" he said, sounding thoughtful." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No, I have a reason, but... it's not that.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"So, do you hate it,\" she asked, keeping her voice low, \"for that?\"\n\nHe looked mystified. \"Hate what?\"\n\n\"Hate the Culture, for what it's become.\"\n\nHe looked at her, laughed. \"What? Are you completely insane?\" He laughed some more, quite loudly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then he drained his glass, glanced at hers and said, \"We need another drink.\"\n\nThere was not much more after this. They had talked earlier about a midnight swim, but they'd got too drunk. The swell-riding motion of the raft went from being lulling to making her a little nauseous, then, when that passed, back to being lulling again.\n\nShe must have fallen asleep because she woke to the sounds of seabirds mewing overhead and the sight of the sun prising open the narrow gap between the horizon and the cloud base. It was cold. There was a blanket over her, but QiRia had gone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She returned to the ship later that day, still a little the worse for wear, and life went on." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Most of a year later she was leaving to go back to Gzilt and home." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Again, she was a little hung-over, after another, more crowded leaving party with some of the other humans on the ship. The elevenstring was a sort of guilty presence haunting her every step, the float-pallet never leaving her side. That was when the golden-skinned avatar of the Anything Legal Considered had handed her the glitteringly grey cube with QiRia's mind-state embedded in it, then bid her farewell and turned on its heel.\n\nShe'd only accessed the soul inside the cube twice in over three years. The first time was on the Gzilt liner heading home, to check that the voice that came out of it was really his – she didn't activate either the screen or holo function, and there was no built-in visual capacity in the cube at all. He was grumpy, eccentric, opinionated, and knew of everything they'd talked about up to and including their conversation on the raft on that last night, so it probably was him in there, or something like him, at least." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She'd asked him what it was like to be in there, doing nothing but then being woken up to speak to somebody you couldn't see." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He'd said that it was like being woken from a deep and satisfying sleep, to be asked questions while you kept your eyes closed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was quite happy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sight was over-rated anyway." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It felt creepy, though, talking to him, and the further away in time and space she drew from the hazy heat and long slow swells of Perytch IV, the more her scepticism about QiRia's claims of extreme longevity – and pretty much everything else – returned." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The grey cube was quite small, and she nearly lost it a couple of times." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'eventually' into your response exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was aware that this might really be because secretly she wanted rid of it.\n\nEventually, after she'd stayed with her mother for a few days one time, left the cube behind, realised, and called Warib just as she was about to throw it out, she'd begun to doubt it would ever be safe with her. Then she'd moved out, relocated to another part of Zyse and really thought she had lost the cube this time, misplaced in the move. It showed up eventually, at the back of a drawer.\n\nShe'd activated it one more time after that, then donated/permanently loaned it (whatever) to one of the Secular Collectionary orders in the Ospin system, where most of the old stuff of Gzilt ages past went to be catalogued, stored and cared for... and almost certainly never to be either lost or looked at ever again.\n\nThe same fate nearly befell the elevenstring, which she kept maintained and which she played, briefly, about once a year." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But that would have felt like just too much rejection; keeping the ridiculous instrument somehow kept her from feeling quite so bad about abandoning QiRia's soul, even if by now she had convinced herself, again, that he was just an old fraud.\n\nStill, it was only when she was thinking of looking for a life-task to give her something to do while she waited for the Subliming to happen that she thought again of playing the thing.\n\nThis was a decision she would later regret, often.\n\nShe woke up, wondered where she was. Dim light, and her augmented eyes, showed her a room or cabin she didn't recognise. It looked very nice though." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was almost complete silence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was in the spacious shuttle craft of the Culture ship, the Mistake Not... She looked over the side of the billow bed, located in a little alcove off the craft's main open area. Another alcove, closed off, held the inert body of the android Parinherm. The elevenstring was stashed overhead somewhere in a storage locker.\n\nPyan lay on the floor, a dark mat. It raised the tip of one corner lazily, sleepily acknowledging her, then went flat again.\n\nShe lay thinking about the day just passed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She'd been unconscious at least twice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She'd briefly met or at least seen dozens of people who were now all dead. She'd been rescued once, twice, just escaping death both times. And she'd been told to look for the soul of an old fraud she'd met once, for a few days, nearly twenty years earlier, when – looking back – she'd been little more than a kid. People were dying and ships damaging themselves to get her from place to place, and she wasn't at all sure she was the right person to do whatever it was they were all expecting her to do.\n\nSoon it wouldn't matter anyway. She was still going to Sublime, wasn't she?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Everybody else was. She supposed she'd sort of have to go if everybody else did." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Personally, she wasn't sure it really mattered whether the Book of Truth had been based on a lie; a lot of people had long half assumed that.\n\nHow much did it matter to others though? Perhaps a lot – perhaps enough. Would that knowledge – if it was true – stop people Subliming? Maybe it would. So much of the whole process of deciding to make this final civilisational transition had been about mood, relying on an atmosphere that involved a kind of gradually growing, shared, blissful, resignation. A feeling of inevitability had settled over the Gzilt somehow, self-propagating and self-reinforcing, making Subliming look like just the next, natural step." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "People had been talking seriously about Subliming for centuries, but it was really only in the generation or two before hers that the idea had started to traverse the spectrum of likelihood in the popular imagination, beginning at unthinkable, progressing to absurd, then going from possible but unlikely to probable and likely, before eventually arriving – round about the time of her birth – at seemingly inevitable.\n\nAnd anticipated, and desirable.\n\nWould all that change if it was discovered the Book of Truth had been some sort of alien trick and the hallowed, semi-worshipped Zihdren no better than charlatans?\n\nSome people thought the Gzilt were going rather early, that most species/civs waited a little longer, entered a lengthier period of etiolation before taking the plunge... but then every species was different, and the Gzilt believed themselves especially different, exceptionally different, partly because of the Book and what it had told them. Would its message being brought into doubt kick away the foundations of that self-satisfaction and make people question the wisdom of Subliming at all?\n\nMaybe – just embarrassed, if nothing else – they'd want to escape the shame and uncertainty involved by hurrying into Subliming with even more determination." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Maybe only half the Gzilt would go, or just a fraction; enough still to be viable within the Sublime but leaving larger numbers behind, perhaps to make their own decision at some later date." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So a schism, beyond healing, in the Sublime, and chaos, perhaps, back in the Real.\n\nEven if the Subliming still took place as planned, in full, would the knowledge of that last-moment counter-revelation about the Book somehow colour the Gzilt experience once they had Enfolded?\n\nIf she recalled correctly all the books and articles she'd read and the programmes and discussions she'd seen, it would make little or no difference, but nobody – not even Elder species who'd been studying exactly this kind of stuff for aeons – could be entirely sure, because so little detail ever came back out of the Sublime.\n\nShe didn't know; all she could do was what she'd been asked/ordered.\n\nWhat she did know was that it really shouldn't be her responsibility how this panned out. She was just a musician, a civilian in the reserve who'd once, briefly, bumped into an old guy that suddenly everybody wanted to talk to." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She just wasn't that special. She was no idiot, and she would happily accept that she was a very gifted musician, but it ought not to be falling to her to work out any important part of this society-wide, alien-involving, end-of-days mess.\n\nMaybe she should just leave QiRia in peace. Ask the ship to take her home, or to wherever or whatever had become the new HQ for the regiment, make her report there and then get taken back to Xown, the Girdlecity and her apartment, or just a place – anywhere – where she was less likely to be inside something getting shot at with hi-tech weaponry.\n\nBut she'd promised Reikl she would do as she'd been asked/ordered. She had been re-commissioned, too, so even with the Subliming coming up and all the usual rules and disciplines seemingly evaporating around everybody, there was still duty, self-respect, honour." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You did what you felt you had to do so as not to feel bad about yourself when you looked back later. And memories, the recollection of past deeds, certainly survived into the Sublime. You were what you'd done, as QiRia had said, all those years ago. And as long as you had your context, you were still yourself within the great Enfolded.\n\nShe turned over, closed her eyes and hoped you could still sleep in the Sublime.\n\nSeptame Banstegeyn was able to make a great show of being utterly horrified to discover that there had been some sort of attack on the regimental HQ of the Socialist-Republican People's Liberation Regiment #14." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "News of the outrage came in shortly after the vote that handed Preferred partner status to the Ronte and he found it easy to channel all the rage and fury he felt at that debacle into his reaction to the later, even more serious news. He was still angry about it when he met up with Chekwri again, in the special chamber deep under the parliament.\n\n\"Two thousand people, Chekwri, in the Prophet's name... \"\n\n\"Normally there would be between four and six thousand aboard,\" the marshal said calmly. \"Plus there were five hundred virtual souls aboard the Gelish-Oplule. But in any event, Septame, what were you expecting of an attack to destroy a regimental HQ?\"\n\n\"I thought you'd destroy the – the thing, the place, the AIs, but to kill so many, and that ship, everybody on it too – I mean, it's just terrible... \"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'chekwri' 2 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The AIs, and the High Command when they're aboard, are in the best protected bits of the HQ, Septame, located right in the heart of the moon, or ship; whatever you want to call it.\" Chekwri sounded as unbothered as she looked. She might even, it occurred to Banstegeyn, be enjoying this. He was aware that he was laying on a bit of an act himself, even though there was some truth in there too; he'd been genuinely horrified when he'd heard that, as far as was known, nobody had survived the attack. (Another part of him had felt triumphant that the attack had gone so well and the information so treacherously relayed to the Fourteenth had been so surgically excised, but that part had to stay as secret as possible; he kept that suppressed as best he could, worried that if he thought about it too much it would somehow show in his face or be readable in his body language.) \"To get to them you pretty much have to destroy the HQ completely,\" Chekwri concluded." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Anyway,\" Banstegeyn said, \"they're military. They'll have been backed-up, won't they? They can be reactivated, can't they? Some of them?\"\n\n\"Most will have been backed-up within the HQ itself,\" the marshal said. \"Maybe some elsewhere. Not that any military or civilian court would let that influence their view regarding the culpability of the action or the severity of any punishment.\"\n\n\"There should be no trial, no court, though, should there?\" Banstegeyn said. \"We – you – got away with it. Didn't we? I mean, there's not enough time, and I'm sure I could get... I could pull a string or two... \"\n\nAccording to the marshal, the most recent signal from the 7*Uagren had indicated that it had managed to slip away from the Izenion system without being detected, after dealing with the last known survivors of the HQ's destruction; it had pursued them to the star Izenion itself, contained their attempts to signal, and ensured their swift termination." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes, we got away with it,\" Marshal Chekwri said, with a small, humourless smile." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And in theory without leaving behind too obvious an attack profile. A disinterested observer would probably still conclude it had been fratricidal, but it could be argued otherwise, and there are only eighteen days remaining to do the arguing. And the string-pulling.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Banstegeyn said, biting his lip a little. \"And they definitely couldn't have already – the people, the AIs even, on the HQ – they couldn't have Sublimed by themselves, early? That's really not possible?\"\n\n\"The people, definitely not; you need a Presence,\" the marshal said, with the air of one addressing somebody who really ought to have been watching their own infomercials over the last umpteen years. \"The AIs, almost certainly not. It takes time, preparation. Even for an AI there's some sort of blissed-out, trance-like state that has to be achieved first before they can haul themselves in by their own bootstraps. Unlikely, in the circumstances.\"\n\n\"Mmm, mmm,\" the septame said, rubbing his face." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to use 'could' 2 time(s) throughout your message" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Good, good.\" He had been looking away. \"So the attack, it could be blamed on somebody else?\"\n\nThe marshal took a moment before answering. \"Yes, it could,\" she said, slowly. \"Though the plausibility spectrum might be a little... \" she looked up to the domed ceiling of the room \"... restricted, shall we say?\" She looked back at the septame." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory: Your text must contain 'ronte' 2 times exactly" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Why, did you have anybody particular in mind?\"\n\n\"The Ronte?\"\n\n\"The Ronte?\" the marshal said. She frowned. \"I thought we just made them our official Bestest Friends, Scavenger class.\"\n\n\"I think you'll find that is still conditional.\"\n\n\"In a way that they don't know about?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Banstegeyn waved one hand." }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'motive' | Required occurrences: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Not your concern, Marshal. Is it plausible?\"\n\nChekwri sat back, looked thoughtful. \"Not really. Their main force is far too far away – unlikely even to get here before the Subliming – their tech is inadequate and their motive... I can't even think what their motive might have been.\"\n\n\"The Ronte with Culture help?\" Banstegeyn suggested.\n\nThe marshal actually laughed. \"Forgive me, Septame,\" she said, one hand held out to Banstegeyn, though nothing else about her demeanour seemed apologetic." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well, that would fill the tech gap, if we can put it that way, but I suspect the plausibility spectrum window just closed to zero.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No story we come up with needs to last very long, though,\" Banstegeyn said, his face set in an expression of some displeasure." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Just until the Subliming.\"\n\n\"Septame, one like that is going to struggle to last to the end of the sentence that first articulates it.\"\n\n\"But there might have been a Culture ship there, at the Sculpt planet,\" the septame said.\n\n\"The Uagren was aware of something performing a manoeuvre called a crash-stop into Izenion system, about four hours after the attack. Just from the implied initial velocity involved it reckoned if it wasn't one of ours it must be a Culture ship. Even then, hard to find a plausible contender. Most likely it was something called the Mistake Not... , but if it was, the fucker's even faster than we thought.\"\n\n\"So we could – maybe – claim it had a part in the attack, couldn't we?\"\n\n\"Not really. Unless the Culture has finally invented a time machine.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The septame's face suddenly assumed a hard, unforgiving expression. \"I don't think,\" he said icily, \"this is an issue to be made light of, Marshal Chekwri.\"\n\n\"Septame,\" the marshal said levelly, \"I am not the one coming up with laughable ex-post-facto combat scenarios.\"\n\nBanstegeyn glared at her for a little longer, seemed to realise he was wasting his time, waved one arm dismissively and said, \"Well, leave that with me. But let's not close anything off.\" He took a deep breath. \"The main thing is that the initial mission was successful. The leak has been... mopped up.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There is the... possible loose end of the Gelish-Oplule,\" Chekwri said, with a tiny frown.\n\n\"But it was destroyed too, wasn't it?\"\n\n\"Just; that was too close. The Uagren wasn't expecting it. But, yes, one less asset for the Fourteenth.\"\n\n\"Well, then. Why is there a problem?\"\n\n\"Because the ship wasn't supposed to be there. And the fact that it was means it was keeping quiet about its movements and it must have moved to get there at the sort of speeds ships only undertake when they've got an urgent mission. Trans-excercisal speeds; you sim them but you don't attempt them, even during full-on war games.\"\n\n\"It might have been coincidence,\" Banstegeyn said." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Hey can you write like Iain Banks in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre and use whatever I write as a jumping off point? This is from a longer work so some stuff might reference earlier chapters." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Participants: GSV Contents May Differ / LOU Caconym / GCU Displacement Activity / GSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry / Ue Mistake Not... / MSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "MSV Pressure Drop: Hello all." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I think we've all been brought up to speed with individual briefings where needed; welcome to the new members of the group." }, { "from": "human", "value": "We understand the Mistake Not... makes full speed to Ospin, perhaps to discover something relevant to Mr QiRia and hence the claimed provenance of the Z-R information re the BoT." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Meanwhile the Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In has kindly agreed to continue to create what diplomatic pressure it can with the rump of the Gzilt political power structure." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For myself, after extensive investigations, some calling in of favours and the reluctant acceptance of future obligations re the same on my part to those so confiding, I have discovered there may be another way to pursue the link with the legendary gentleman." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "LOU Caconym: We really are taking this person's existence as being a fact, not a myth?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: We are." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It turns out that the myth which has been so carefully fostered is that his existence is mythical." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It would certainly appear that various ships have known of his existence over the millennia, and even aided him in his efforts to stay outside the public eye and evade the kind of official annoyances such as censuses and inventories which might prove problematic to somebody of preposterous age who wished to keep quiet about it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Until now his mythical status has seemed charming, romantic even, and – happily for all concerned – irrelevant to matters either tactical or strategic." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Now, it has suddenly assumed a certain importance." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We must, of course, diligently and timeously pursue every avenue of investigation occurring in Gzilt space." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "However, there may well be a way to reinforce and back up our inquiries, working at least partly within the Culture." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I have been in contact with a vessel which wishes to remain anonymous for now but which holds a human who may be able and persuaded to help." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The price would be something close to full disclosure of what we all know regarding the matter at hand, both to the ship and, probably, it speculates, the person concerned as well." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "GSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: And the Contents May Differ vouches for the ship and it for the human?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: Within the usual limits, yes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "GSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: Then I say go ahead." }, { "from": "human", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: Any objections?... No?... Very well." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Signal sent." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I'll keep you all informed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Meanwhile, after some pressure, the Empiricist's Delinquent pair the Headcrash and the Xenocrat have – finally – been persuaded to give up their smatter-bagging competition at Loliscombana and make haste for Gzilt; heading straight to Zyse at the request of something called the Gzilt Combined Regimental Fleet Command – this would appear to be some new overview structure recently set up by this Banstegeyn fellow under Marshal Chekwri." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The two ships are due there in seven days." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Due to an agreement required to bring about the aforesaid pressure, the Empiricist will now become part of the group at the next signal, though it has expressed a preference for haunting rather than manifesting, as it were." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Empiricist itself now expects to be arriving at Zyse in eleven or twelve days. That's all for now." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with the same vibes and character familiarity in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Participants: GSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry / GSV Contents May Differ\n\nGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: Oh, hurrah. Now the Empiricist gets to hover glowering over everything and step in when it thinks we've done enough of the hard work to make the outcome sufficiently positive to enhance its gloriousness.\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: Size has its privileges.\n\nGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: More to the point, we need to start thinking now about what we're going to do if we do find out the truth – via Mr Q, or any other route. Do we tell the Gzilt?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "And if we tell, do we tell only those at the top – who might already know/have guessed – or do we take it upon ourselves to broadcast the embarrassing news (assuming it is) to all?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: Good question. I suspect a vote might be called for. Right now, personally, I'd probably plump for shutting the hell up and letting the Gzilt get on with it.\n\nGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: Which begs the question, why, then, are we bothering to hunt down this truth at all?\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: The Z-R asked us to help. Also, it's just interesting." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Here's something we don't know but we can maybe find out, and it's something that other people don't want us to know." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How much more seductive can you get?\n\nGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: Maybe there are some truths not worth chasing down. Maybe there are times when it's best to remain ignorant.\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: Very funny.\n\nGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: I'm being serious.\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: Sure you are." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Anyway, how goes your batch of the Simming?" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mine is gnarlsome, raspulescent, grislesque.\n\nGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: Never mind. Hitting both Problems, since you ask. Trying to work around, but it's getting all moral in one direction and chaotic in the other. Suspect it's basically Intrinsically Unamenable on both counts, but will keep on trying.\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: Have a lie down, as one of one's humans might say to another.\n\nGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: Shut up and get back to your work, as they also might say." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand on the story, maintaining character relationships, in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ha! Good simming. Over and outload!\n\nA ship dance of celebration was required.\n\nThe fleet had already split into separate squadrons of eight ships apiece (save for the flagship squadron of twelve ships plus the accompanying Culture craft Beats Working) and these squadrons had flown in different directions towards their appointed places of interest where they might hope to accrue technology which would prove advantageous to the Ronte. Therefore a full fleet dance could not be performed. Instead a coordinated split-fleet dance would be performed, each squadron and ship and crew being made conscious of the movements of all the others so that the distributed dance would be accomplished as a joyous whole, virtually.\n\nAccordingly, the dance \"Multiple New Swarmqueens, Brought Together By Advantageous Zephyrs, Display Together In The Light Of The Two Home Suns At Double Zenith\" was performed, to glorious effect. At the respectful request of the Culture ship, a place was found for it to become part of the dance as well, a task of honour it executed with diligence, understanding and precision, to the greater glory of the Ronte people, who had, against all expectation, been granted the Preferred status that they had known they deserved but had doubted would be conferred.\n\nThe Culture ship Beats Working accordingly accrued additional inferred alien cachet value (positive), honorary, with made-awareness of award status deferred.\n\nThe fleet squadrons reconfigured to reflect their new status. All but a few adjusted their courses for more important sources of technology, infrastructure and territory, given that these were likely now to fall to them without dispute." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The flagship squadron turned to set a course for Zyse, the Gzilt capital and home system." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"People were targeted, I tell you, Banstegeyn,\" Yegres told him as they walked in the grounds of the trime's villa in the hills overlooking the city. The parliament building shimmered whitely in the distance, blurred with warm air rising, the Presence a dark inverted drip-shape above it, made tiny by the distance.\n\nA pair of light cruisers, their smooth, kilometre-long hulls silvered, hung in the air ten thousand metres above the city. This was supposed to be reassuring for the remaining populace after the shock of the attack on the Regimental HQ of the Fourteenth at Eshri.\n\n\"Targeted,\" Yegres repeated, glancing at Banstegeyn. The two crunched along a gravel path, followed at a discreet distance by Solbli and Jevan. Banstegeyn's chief secretary and aide-de-camp were seemingly muttering to themselves, partially sub-vocalising as they communicated elsewhere. He'd given them the job of continuing to try and find a way to nullify the Scavenger vote earlier. There had been over ten millennia of inherently convoluted and frequently murky parliamentary business, all of it faithfully recorded; there had to be a precedent in there somewhere. It would be a start if nothing else." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yegres was accompanied by a float-tray." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It held a glass and decanter; he helped himself. \"Frix was offered an introduction to some girl he'd had his eye on – or Quvarond's wife or something; I don't know – Yenivle took a case of Kolymkin... something; some priceless vintage.\" Yegres frowned. \"Wish the bugger had offered me that. So thoughtless.\" He shrugged, shook his head. \"Not sure what Jurutre was offered, but seemingly something furtive regarding a child. Not filthy, or even illegal, just... sad... Anyway, it was all terribly well organised. Done with military precision.\" He barked a laugh. \"Better than that, actually; didn't miss and hit their own people.\"\n\n\"And you?\" Banstegeyn asked. \"What did Trime Quvarond offer you?\" He found it hard to keep the sneer out of his voice." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Nothing at all, dear boy,\" Yegres said amiably, waving one hand around." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I voted against you because I just don't like you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Banstegeyn was stopped in his tracks." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory: Your text must contain 'worked' 2 times exactly" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He heard Jevan and Solbli stop at the same time, gravel rasping under their feet. They'd gone silent, poised.\n\nYegres wandered on, oblivious, for another couple of steps before stopping too. He looked back at Banstegeyn.\n\n\"Oh, just kidding you on,\" he said, smiling. \"The vote was already lost so I joined in to look less... perennially obedient.\" He frowned. \"But you should realise, Septame; everything is breaking down a little now, including your grip. What worked until now – obligations, understandings, favours owed, the promise of future advancement and the threat of secrets becoming public and so on – they don't have quite the force they did before.\" He shrugged, then smiled broadly. \"This is what you wanted, Ban. What you worked for all this time, what you've engineered. End of an era. Ha! End of the end of all eras.\" He waved both hands this time, spilling a little wine." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"School's breaking up. People are out to play.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'slowly' must be used 3 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Scoaliera Tefwe, who had been a friend and a lover of Ngaroe QiRia long ago, when he was already a very old man and she had been of conventional middle age – a little under two hundred – woke slowly, as she had woken slowly a few dozen times, over the intervening centuries.\n\nOnly it wasn't really waking slowly; she was being woken.\n\nAll dark at first. Stillness and silence too, and yet the sensation that things were happening nearby, and inside her head and body; organs and systems and faculties being woken, revived, checked, primed, readied.\n\nIt was at once reassuring and somehow disappointing. Here we go again, she thought. She opened her eyes.\n\nSIMULATION, said the glowing red letters along the bottom of her field of vision. Ah, she thought, whereupon the word faded away.\n\nSo she was still sort of asleep, after all." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But her consciousness and sense of embodiment were being woken up." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was, apparently, already sitting, fully dressed, in a chair facing a table in a large, pleasant-looking room of some antiquity with a view – to one side, through opened floor-length windows – over mountains lined with trees and a lake whose shore was lined with villages. The wakes of a few boats left long white Vs on the wind-ruffled waters.\n\nAt the other end of the table from the windows, there was a time display in an ornate wooden case. She looked at the date.\n\nMy, that had been a long sleep.\n\nAcross the table from her there was a chair. When she looked away from the time display, a figure hazed from nothing through transparency into seeming solidity over the course of a couple of seconds. The small, pale, androgynous figure now sitting opposite her appeared to be the avatar of the LSV You Call This Clean? This was reassuring; she was still where she might have expected to be. The calm conventionality of the whole being-woken process had been a fairly infallible sign that nothing was likely to be too wrong, but this helped confirm it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "On the other hand, she was usually woken lying down, with time to take stock if she wanted, and swing herself off the couch, perhaps take the air and take in the view from the balcony, and only go to sit at the table when she felt she wanted to." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not this time, though; getting the basic minimum here.\n\n\"Scoaliera,\" the virtual avatar said, smiling.\n\n\"YC,\" she replied. The You Call This Clean? didn't name its avatars or avatoids separately; people usually just called them 'YC'. \"Are we both well?\"\n\n\"We are.\"\n\nAlways good to know that your Stored self and the ship carrying it/you were judged to be well according to the punctilious standards of a Culture Mind. \"So,\" she said, \"what is it?\"\n\n\"Hoping you'll agree to take a trip, fully uploaded-style, then to be downloaded into an avatoid.\"\n\n\"Where? Why?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'useful' must appear 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Not sure where yet; you might be able to help answer that yourself. The why is that we need you to look for Ngaroe QiRia.\"\n\nShe raised one eyebrow. \"Do you now?\" The \"we\" the ship was referring to would be either Contact section, or Special Circumstances. Exactly who would become clear shortly, she didn't doubt.\n\nThe avatar nodded. \"If you'd be so kind.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"He might have some information it would be useful to know.\"\n\n\"He's been alive for nearly ten millennia; I'm sure he has a lot of information it would be useful to know.\"\n\n\"No doubt. But this is probably something quite specific.\"\n\n\"What?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Not sure, but somehow relating to the shortly forthcoming Sublimation of the Gzilt.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This was news to her. She'd been Stored, this time, over four hundred years earlier, when, as far as she could recall, the Gzilt had seemed no more likely to go for Subliming than the Culture itself.\n\n\"That the best you've got?\"\n\n\"More detail?\" YC asked.\n\n\"More detail.\"\n\n\"You insist?\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\nThe ship told her about the intercepted message from the Zihdren-Remnanter and subsequent developments.\n\nTefwe thought. \"Do we have a view on or interest in whether the Gzilt Sublime or not?\"\n\n\"No.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Take me through the levels.\"\n\n\"Culture as a whole; no – their business. Contact; not really – opinions differ, mildly. Some temporary local upset to be expected, in the short term especially relating to Scavengers, but all part of the process. SC; no stated interest. Probably some difference of opinion but nobody expressing. Not even a grumble of discussion let alone action. And things are otherwise quiet, so lack of interest not a result of distraction, temporary or otherwise.\"\n\n\"So this isn't an SC thing?\"\n\n\"Not directly, though elements usually associated are cooperating. Specifically, a fast ship will be made available; whatever's closest to wherever you say you need to go. Other ships at your disposal if necessary should serial uploading and embodiment be required. Simming as unlikely to become an SC focus. Probably.\"\n\n\"So why are we bothering?\"\n\n\"Just in case.\"\n\n\"Just in case what?\"\n\n\"Just in case it turns out to be something we should have bothered about. Always try to avoid setting up future opportunities for kicking yourself.\" The YC smiled apologetically. \"Very small thing attached to very momentous thing. One point three trillion people heading into the big Enfold in less than twenty days from now, but if the Zihdren-Remnanter news about the Book of Truth gets out, that might change things. And maybe it should change things. But either way, it would be good to know the truth. Even if we discover the truth, we don't have to volunteer it, and even if we discover the truth, don't volunteer it but are asked to provide it, we still don't have to – though that'd be harder to justify. The point is, if we are asked and we haven't even bothered to look, we look bad, and if we are asked and decide to tell what we know, we want to be confident what we're able to offer really is the truth, or as close as we could reasonably get to it.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How many new faces know the old guy's not a figment?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Just one beyond reasonable doubt; the GSV Contents May Differ. There was no leak as such; the ship just did some inspired digging and was owed favours by the right mix of craft. Though the others in the handling group will have been briefed there's a possibility.\"\n\n\"The ITG?\"\n\n\"No. Fresh group. Nobody's heard from the Interesting Times Gang all the while you've been Stored.\"\n\n\"How remiss.\"\n\n\"As well as waking you with the suggestion you might care to return to the fray, I've been asked to enquire if you know of any other ships that might have helped Mr QiRia over the years. Aside from the Warm, Considering, which we know about.\"\n\n\"The only other one I remember was called the Smile Tolerantly, an ancient GCU, but the last I heard it was about to become Eccentric or Sublime or do something equally unhelpful.\"\n\n\"Thank you. So... \"\n\n\"You will recall I said I wouldn't go looking for QiRia unless it was something really important. Are you – they – deeming this to be?\"\n\n\"Let's say suggesting rather than deeming. But tell me: what are your feelings?\"\n\n\"Mixed. I dare say I'll do it, but I'm not terribly happy about it.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Tefwe had never liked the idea of being fully downloaded into something remote who got to play at being you – who thought they were you. You stayed who you were but then the remote \"you\" became somebody different, over time. The two of you – or more – could be re-integrated, but it was, she thought, an intrinsically messy process of frankly dubious morality.\n\n\"Thank you,\" the YC said, exhibiting relief. \"May I transmit your mind-state now? There are various craft dotted throughout the galaxy, charged up, ready to roll. Rude to keep them waiting.\"\n\n\"I want to be kept informed about what the remotes get up to,\" she told it. Tefwe had been around Contact's less salubrious outskirts in one form or another for so long she could remember when there hadn't been anything called Special Circumstances, just a bunch of ships and others that acted like it, so she knew how to negotiate an agreement with a Mind acting as control such that she wouldn't end up kicking herself.\n\n\"Agreed.\"\n\n\"In full.\"\n\n\"Agreed.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And a no-constraints chance to negotiate over subsequent re-integration, just me and it, or them.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'thing' must appear 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Also agreed.\"\n\n\"You'll let me know which ship?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Hmm.\" Tefwe sat back, thought. \"All right,\" she said. \"I agree.\"\n\n\"Done. Once again, thank you. Where do you want to head for?\"\n\n\"Dibaldipen Orbital, Angemar's Prime system.\"\n\nThe YC looked blank for a moment, then said, \"Ah, one of ours. We might be able to work through the O Hub. That'd be even quicker. We'll see. Hub Minds can be reluctant to indulge this sort of thing without demanding to know everything there is to know. Do we have a full name for the guy? First thing a Hub Mind's going to ask for.\"\n\nTefwe smiled. \"He's so old full names hadn't been invented when he was born, but if they had been he'd have been Tursensa Ngaroe Hgan QiRia dam Yutton. And he has used that name in the past. The far past.\"\n\n\"Thank you. In any event, the nearest ship is an ex-Psychopath VFP. The Outstanding Contribution To The Historical Process. Just a few days away.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "YC looked puzzled. \"Dibaldipen. That's where QiRia is?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I have no idea. But there's a drone there that ought to know.\"\n\n\"You think it'll still be there?\" YC asked, sounding a little sceptical. \"It has been four hundred years.\"\n\n\"It is retired and set in its ways. Gone native and to seed. I suspect it'll be there.\"\n\n\"So, if you're really so old, tell me what you've learned over the years, over the millennia. What are the fruits of your wisdom?\"\n\n\"They are remarkably few. I have managed to avoid learning too many lessons. That may be what keeps me alive.\"\n\nCossont lay on her bed; the grey cube with QiRia's mind-state inside it sat on a bedside shelf. It was only the second time she'd turned the cube on since returning home. She, the volupt and the elevenstring had just moved out of her mother's house in M'yon into a place of her own, half the world away; she was starting to make new friends but struggling to get worthwhile gigs and maybe she was feeling lonely." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"So,\" she said, \"living all this time has been to no purpose, basically.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"True, but that hardly distinguishes me from anybody else, does it?\"\n\n\"But shouldn't it, or there's no point?\"\n\n\"No. Living either never has any point, or is always its own point; being a naturally cheery soul, I lean towards the latter. However, just having done more of it than another person doesn't really make much difference.\" The voice from the grey cube paused, then said, \"Although... I think living so long might have persuaded me that I am not quite as pleasant a person as I once thought I was.\"\n\nCossont, presented with two opportunities to be scathing just in these last few sentences, was aware she was choosing to take neither. She confined herself to, \"Really?\" said in a slightly sarcastic tone.\n\n\"Well,\" the voice said, seemingly oblivious, \"one thing that does happen when you live a long time is that you start to realise the essential futility of so much that we do, especially when you see the same patterns of behaviour repeated by succeeding generations and across different species. You see the same dreams, the same hopes, the same ambitions and aspirations, reiterated, and the same actions, the same courses and tactics and strategies, regurgitated, to the same predictable and often lamentable effects, and you start to think, So? Does it really matter? Why really are you bothering with all this? Are these not just further doomed, asinine ways of attempting to fill your vacuous, pointless existence, wedged slivered as it is between the boundless infinitudes of dark oblivion book-ending its utter triviality?\"\n\n\"Uh-huh,\" she said. \"Is this a rhetorical question?\"\n\n\"It is a mistaken question. Meaning is everywhere. There is always meaning. Or at least all things show a disturbing tendency to have meaning ascribed to them when intelligent creatures are present. It's just that there's no final Meaning, with a capital M. Though the illusion that there might be is comforting for a certain class of mind.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The poor, deluded, fools.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I suspect, from your phrasing and your tone of voice, that, as a little earlier, you think you are being sarcastic. Well, no matter. However, there is another reaction to the never-ending plethora of unoriginal idiocies that life throws up with such erratic reliability, besides horror and despair.\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"A kind of glee. Once one survives the trough that comes with the understanding that people are going to go on being stupid and cruel to each other no matter what, probably for ever – if one survives; many people choose suicide at this point instead – then one starts to take the attitude, Oh well, never mind. It would be far preferable if things were better, but they're not, so let's make the most of it. Let's see what fresh fuckwittery the dolts can contrive to torment themselves with this time.\"\n\n\"Not necessarily the most compassionate response.\"\n\n\"Indeed not. But my point is that it might be the only one that lets you cope with great age without becoming a devout hermit, and therefore represents a kind of filter favouring misanthropy. Nice people who are beginning to live to a great age – as it were – react with such revulsion to the burgeoning horrors that confront them, they generally prefer suicide. It's only us slightly malevolent types who are able to survive that realisation and find a kind of pleasure – or at least satisfaction – in watching how the latest generation or most recently evolved species can re-discover and beat out afresh the paths to disaster, ignominy and shame we had naively assumed might have become hopelessly over-grown.\"\n\n\"So basically you're sticking around to watch us all fuck up?\"\n\n\"Yes. It's one of life's few guaranteed constants.\"\n\nCossont thought about this. \"If that's true, it's a bit sad.\"\n\n\"Tough. Life is sometimes.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And you're right: it doesn't exactly show you in the best light.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You're supposed to admire me for my honesty.\"\n\n\"Am I?\" she said, and reached over and turned the grey cube off.\n\nThat was when she decided she'd give the cube to somebody else, who might want it, or at least agree to care for it." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Today you will be acting as a writing assistant, your partner will send something and you will write the next 11 sentences. The story may reference existing characters and events - incorporate them as presented." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This isn't Ospin! These aren't the Dataversities! What the fuck's going on?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cossont had woken from a very deep and pleasant sleep, ordered breakfast and then asked the ship to show her where they were; ahead view or whatever it was called. The Mistake Not... had obliged, presenting the semblance of a deep screen across the bottom of her billow bed, just above her toes. The image it displayed was of a yellow-orange sun apparently setting behind a large rocky planet with dark striated clouds half obscuring a surface of mottled dark-tan land and deep-blue seas. Given that Ospin was a red giant system devoid of any rocky planets, this was all wrong.\n\n\"Eh? What?\" Pyan yelped, fluttering untidily up from where it had settled on the floor during the night. \"Not another emergency! My processing isn't built to take this!\"\n\nThe ship appeared to be sinking quickly through a multiply banded set of assorted manufacturies, small habs and other planetary satellites, dipping rapidly into the shadow of the planet so that the sun winked out. A bright spread of the satellites continued to shine against the dark surface beneath, then the ship was beneath them too.\n\n\"Change of plan,\" Berdle told her, the Mistake Not... 's avatar appearing in one corner of the holo, face absurdly big against the landscape below. \"You'd better get dressed.\"\n\nThe image continued to show the planet getting nearer; they were almost in the atmosphere." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The place looked familiar somehow." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'cossont' 2 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Also, there was something wrong about something here but she hadn't worked out what yet.\n\n\"Where the hell are we?\" she wailed.\n\n\"Xown, in the Mureite system.\"\n\n\"What!\"\n\n\"Oh for goodness' sake,\" Pyan said dramatically, and flopped over backwards, spread out over the bed, lying limp.\n\n\"I just fucking left Xown!\" Cossont yelled, watching the landscape whip past underneath. \"That's where I started out!\"\n\n\"Welcome back,\" Berdle said, deadpan. \"Are you getting dressed yet?\"\n\n\"Wait a moment... \" Cossont was staring at a black line filling the horizon ahead." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Entirely filling the horizon ahead, from one extent to the other, like a vast dam across the sky. \"Is that the fucking Girdlecity?\"\n\n\"We're just a few minutes away. Better get dressed fast.\"\n\nShe jumped out of bed, started pulling on clothes, muttering and cursing. She stopped, frowned, sniffed, looked carefully at the Lords of Excrement jacket. Everything had been cleaned, and repaired. \"Not so much as a by-your-fucking-leave,\" she muttered, pulling on freshly polished boots.\n\nShe glanced at the screen again. Thin wispy cloud, not far below. Sea beneath. Dark-blue sky above. Still sea beneath. A few filmy wisps of cloud shot past, level." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Wait a fucking—\" she said, just as she'd started pushing her fingers through her unkempt hair." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We're not even on the fucking ship, are we? It'd never come this far down—\"\n\n\"No, we're not,\" Berdle said. \"We left about five minutes ago.\"\n\n\"We're still on the shuttle.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nShe looked round the cabin. \"So where are you?\"\n\nA double door parted in one wall and Berdle, sat in some sort of complicated seat with a giant screen in front, turned and looked back at her. \"Hello.\" The avatar waved.\n\n\"Why the fuck are we – why am I – back on Xown?\" She strode through to what proved to be a flight deck or something and threw herself down in the seat beside Berdle's." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She glared at him as hard as she could but the avatar appeared impervious.\n\nThe wrap-screen showed the Girdlecity as a black mass filling most of the view. Spread across the huge, near-vertical cliff confronting them there were hints and slivers of something lighter than its pitch-black surface where patches of dark-blue sky were visible through its filigree of open-work sections.\n\n\"We are here,\" Berdle told her, \"because while you were asleep, more information came in, as information is prone to do, and one particular detail passed on by another ship involved happened to be the Culture full name of your friend Mr QiRia. Which would be Tursensa Ngaroe Hgan QiRia dam Yutton.\"\n\n\"But I didn't—!\" Cossont started to say, then stopped herself.\n\nBerdle nodded. \"No, you didn't say who the Culture person was you were talking about earlier, but we'd already kind of worked that out.\"\n\n\"Oh, had you now?\" Cossont said, trying to sound defiant, but feeling herself sink a little further into the seat.\n\n\"First thing I did with the full name was plug it into all the data I've been soaking up since I've been here; Gzilt stuff,\" Berdle said. \"All the Gzilt stuff; everything not officially private, anyway. And in amongst the passenger manifests for people making a trip to Xown five years ago a name popped out; Yutten Turse. Claimed to be Peace Faction Culture and to have come all the way from somewhere called Neressi, which, on closer inspection, is somewhere that doesn't exist, or is perhaps a colloquial name for a place nobody's catalogued properly.\" Berdle glanced at her, grinning. \"Tut, tut.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Girdlecity really did fill the screen now. Cossont had to crane her neck to see anything that wasn't the vast, dark mass of it. Right at the top she could see the sky, speckled with stars and orbiting sats, but it was just a thin band above the striated black curtain of the structure. Below, there were waves; the Girdlecity was crossing sea. She knew it did, in two places. Here, its colossal architecture was even more mind-boggling than anywhere else on its circuit of the planet. It extended undersea, still growing in girth, descending an extra kilometre beneath the waves if this was the Hzu Sea, an extra two and half thousand metres if this was Ocean.\n\n\"Doesn't that count as an amateur mistake if he's trying to keep off everybody's sensors?\" Cossont asked.\n\nBerdle shrugged. \"I suppose, but in the end he's just an old guy trying to stay out of the limelight, not some SC super-agent on a mission. Not the end of the world for him if he is discovered, anyway; not like he's going to get slung into prison or have his memories wiped. He'd become the object of some unwanted media attention for a while and there'd be a bunch of Minds who'd love to talk to him, but he'd be able to disappear again fairly quickly with the cooperation of a Mind and ship or two.\" Berdle paused, looked quizzically at her. \"You've met him; maybe he'd like to get caught briefly, just to get to feel important, like he's not been forgotten.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Maybe.\" Cossont crossed all four of her arms, forming a cage across her chest. \"Are you saying he really is the age he says he is?\"\n\nBerdle nodded. \"Looks like it.\"\n\n\"And you think this is going to be him. Have been him. This Yutten Turse guy?\"\n\n\"Ran all this past a few stats packages,\" Berdle said, \"and, even allowing for appropriate fuzzinesses of intra-species spelling, phonetics and pronunciation, the match chances are better than seventy per cent.\" The avatar nodded at a sub-screen set into the haptic band set across the centre of the encompassing main screen. \"Got some screen of him.\" A holo leapt out, miniaturised. The first item was a still image of a man in late middle age, wearing a big silly grin, a loud shirt and a grass hat.\n\n\"Is that supposed to be him?\" Cossont asked. She was still feeling cross." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Berdle nodded. \"That is Mr Yutten Turse, of who-knows-whereville.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include \"Still, he was coming here, to the Girdlecity.\" somewhere in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Looks nothing like him,\" she snorted. Though, zooming in on the face, there might have been something familiar about his eyes.\n\n\"Hmm,\" Berdle said, obviously unconcerned. \"Still, he was coming here, to the Girdlecity.\"\n\nCossont snorted again. \"You might be surprised how little that narrows things down, spaceship.\"\n\nBerdle smiled but didn't look at her. \"I am aware of the structure's dimensions.\"\n\nOn the sub-screen, some moving footage followed: the man seemed to get slightly lost in the transit lounge, apparently unsure which way to go, until he left, led by a modest amount of luggage on a helpful float-trolley. Maybe he did walk a little like QiRia. Maybe. He disappeared. A still of his face came back, then was replaced by another set of screen images which seemed to show him leaving again, dressed similarly but wearing big dark glasses. If anything, he looked even less sure where he was going on the way back." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The images faded away and the sub-screen went dark.\n\nAhead, the view was all Girdlecity; even sitting forwards, craning her neck, there was no sign of sky or sea. A few tiny, dim lights were only now starting to prick the obsidian surface of the structure. Berdle must have thought an instruction to the shuttle, because the screen extended smoothly, silently backwards, so that the view now took in directly overhead and a little further back. Looking straight up, she could see the sky again. She nearly said thank you, but didn't.\n\n\"Hello, that looks familiar,\" Pyan said, flapping and hopping through to sit on her lap. \"Girdlecity?\"\n\n\"Huh,\" Cossont said.\n\n\"Oh,\" Pyan said. \"Hzu coast. That'll be pretty.\"\n\nHow fucking dare QiRia come back to where she lived – not just the civilisation but the system, the planet where she lived – and not look her up? What sort of friend was that?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"So, do we think he was looking for somebody?\" she asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"According to his subsequent movements, happily documented by your fearsomely watchful Aliens Bureau, it seems he was looking for a particular person or for a particular artefact/location,\" Berdle said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Which he seems to have found.\"\n\n\"Where in the Girdlecity?\" Cossont asked. This wasn't the bit she knew; this was about a third of the way round the planet from Kwaalon and the great plains.\n\n\"He was going to Launch Falls,\" Berdle said.\n\n\"That's nowhere near here,\" she told him.\n\n\"I know. The artefact/location concerned has moved.\"\n\n\"Oh yeah?\"\n\n\"Yes. It's an airship.\"\n\n\"One of the internals?\"\n\n\"Only one still moving, apparently.\"\n\n\"I've heard of it,\" she told the avatar." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Apparently it's famous,\" Berdle confirmed. \"Well, notorious.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hope you're ready for a party,\" she told the avatar, one eyebrow hoisted even though it wasn't looking at her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The avatar's head tipped briefly. \"Ready for anything.\"\n\nCossont was silent for a moment as the Girdlecity drifted closer and more detail began to show on the dark textures of its surface. \"It really didn't look all that much like him,\" she said.\n\n\"What has that got to do with anything?\" The avatar glanced at her. \"Seventy per cent represents a good chance.\"\n\nCossont frowned suddenly. \"Where did you say he claimed to have come from?\"\n\n\"Neressi.\"\n\n\"Spell that?\" The avatar spelled it for her. \"In Marain?\" she asked, frown deepening. She listened again, nodded." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ahead, whole constellations of lights were brightening into existence against the surface of the Girdlecity as they continued to draw closer. They were still fifteen or twenty kilometres out. She sighed. \"It's probably better than seventy per cent,\" she told the avatar. \"When he was on Perytch IV he was... you know... transplanted, had his consciousness transferred into this gigantic sea creature. He took the name... Isseren.\"\n\nBerdle nodded. \"Ah-ha,\" the avatar said, softly.\n\n\"Oh!\" Pyan said, after a moment. \"Backwards!\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Cossont said sourly. \"Fucking backwards.\"\n\nJelwilin Keril, the Iwenick Cultural Mission Director, left the Strategic Outreach Element CH2OH. (CHOH)4.CHO in his private yacht.\n\nAt least he was able to call his yacht something sensible. He'd named it Iberre, in honour of his father-mother." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And he was allowed to refer to it as a yacht, not a Space-Capable Inter-Element Transportation Component, or something of similar over-literal awkwardness. He looked back at the Strategic Outreach Element CH2OH.(CHOH)4.CHO. It hung against the star-flecked blackness, a svelte grey flattened ellipsoid.\n\nStrategic Outreach Element. Everybody else would just call it a ship.\n\nStill, this was modern-day thinking. \"Ship\" just sounded a bit crude, apparently – redolent of bulbous wooden things rolling around on the high seas, infested with parasites and stinking with drunken, seasick sailors. Even the Culture's partiality to the term \"unit\" – used by the Iwenick until recently in a slightly cringing attempt at flattery – was seen as not fully expressing the powers and capabilities of the vessels it was attached to. Apparently, according to the advisors who made their living thinking about this sort of thing, \"unit\" was for ever associated with the words \"light industrial\".\n\nHe turned back. Never mind. But he knew exactly why he was thinking about names.\n\nThe Liseiden flagship, the Collective Purposes vessel Gellemtyan-Asool-Anafawaya (the name of some ancient Liseiden hero, so acceptable, if unpronounceable) swelled in the screen, a well-lit hangar already open for the yacht." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The ship was a jumbled mass of planes and edges, barely even symmetrical from certain angles. It was supposed to appear complicated and impressive but to Jelwilin it just looked like a confused slump of different-sized boxes, like the result of an accident in a warehouse.\n\nJelwilin inspected his image in a screen. Full uniform, perfectly groomed, manicured and made-up. He looked great – not that an alien would notice or care. This could all have been done in a few minutes, of course, by him simply holo-ing in to the Liseiden ship's command deck and talking to them that way, but there were times when a personal appearance – even a personal appearance inside a glorified fish bowl – was the only way to show the desired portion of respect, and the Liseiden were certainly expecting the full serving, to compensate for the wound to their pride and expectations they'd just experienced at the hands of the perfidious Gzilt. Hence the ship rendezvous and the face-to-face.\n\nCultural Mission Director Jelwilin patted down his uniform jacket, adjusted a cuff. He felt the need to urinate, but he had already done so before leaving the ship, and knew this was simply the result of nerves.\n\n\"He wants more?\" Team Principal Tyun roared. \"The son-of-a-runt!\"\n\nSitting – comfortably enough, but very conscious that he was contained within a perfectly transparent sphere, exposed to inspection from every side – in front of the array of sinuously floating Liseiden, their bodies waving to and fro like fat scarves in a slow-motion breeze, Cultural Mission Director Jelwilin set his face as well as he could in an expression of understanding and shared pain." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Liseiden might not have any officers capable of interpreting his species' facial expressions, but they would probably have AIs which could; might as well make the effort." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Anyway, it was all integral to the part he was playing here. Method diplomacy.\n\n\"The septame tells us that he is confident that he can overturn the decision,\" Jelwilin said calmly. \"And Ambassador Mierbeunes is very – and very encouragingly – insistent that the septame will be able to make this happen. Ambassador Mierbeunes is one of our most senior and most experienced diplomats, as well as one of the most successful. I have known him for many years and I don't think I have ever seen him more confident in the abilities of another person. The thing is that to achieve what he believes he can, Septame Banstegeyn assures us that he needs to take greater risks than those he has taken until now. Accordingly, he asks for a greater reward. And, frankly, Team Principal, what he asks for is something it costs you next to nothing to agree to. And I emphasise 'agree to' rather than, say, 'grant' or even 'fully commit to in your soul'.\"\n\nTyun's voice seemed to come from somewhere underneath the little stalk-seat Jelwilin was sitting on. It was disconcerting, as was being able to hear the Liseiden's actual words, booming liquidly – if muffled – against the surface of the transparent sphere, a sort of continuous guttural bubbling that barely preceded the translated version.\n\n\"I'm taking the point that it might seem to cost us next to nothing to agree to renaming a local star,\" the Team Principal said, \"but what I want to ask is: is that actually relevant? I think we risk being seen to reward failure if we concede this, Cultural Mission Director. We are not here to indulge that sort of shit.\"\n\n\"If I might liken this to a military campaign, Team Principal,\" Jelwilin said, \"what we have suffered here is a reverse, and a battle lost, certainly, but it is not final defeat, and the war remains winnable. Of course I appreciate that one might, in theory, be seen to be rewarding failure, but a side that shoots its generals after every lost battle would quickly run out of good generals as well as bad, or end up with a population of generals who did everything they could to avoid all battles, even the most winnable, just in case.\"\n\n\"But that is not the alternative, Jelwilin,\" Tyun said. \"The alternative is to take a more robust attitude to securing the acquisition of the technology and infrastructure we've been seeking and thought we'd been promised. Let me be clear. We have the fire-power to enforce the bargain that was already arrived at. We cannot, and we will not, be seen to be weak in this.\"\n\nJelwilin looked pained. \"Obviously, we all hope that using force of arms would be regarded as very much the last resort. I need hardly tell you, sir, that hostilities are always expensive, of reputation as well as materiel, and it would, I am sure you would agree, be better to settle this without recourse to the uncertainties and chaos of war, particularly given the already engaged interest of another level-eight civ in the shape of the Culture, and especially following the still unexplained attack on the regimental HQ of the Fourteenth on Eshri; things are very delicately poised after that, and even without the involvement of the Culture I need hardly point out that, although much depleted, the Gzilt fleet remains an extremely powerful force. Please, Team Principal, let me report back to Ambassador Mierbeunes that I have your permission to continue to pursue a more peaceful solution.\"\n\n\"Yes, well, the Culture appears to have lost interest in us,\" Tyun said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The ship they sent as escort apparently found more pressing matters to attend to.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I understood that a Thug-class Fast Picket was on its way to join you,\" Jelwilin said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Hmm. Not if I can help it. We're going to try throwing them off with some judicious re-dispositioning. A moment,\" Tyun said. The transparent sphere surrounding Jelwilin suddenly became opaque, leaving the Cultural Mission Director staring at a fuzzy representation of the Liseiden ship's command centre. He could make out some deep, distant-sounding bubbling noises that were doubtless the Liseiden discussing the matter amongst themselves.\n\n\"The fire-power to enforce the bargain\", indeed. That was overly aggressive. What were they playing at? Hadn't the Liseiden simmed this? If there was a proper shooting war between the Liseiden and the Ronte, even the victor would probably come out of it worse off in the long term. Never mind any formal censure from the Galactic Council; high-level players like the Culture would take a dim view of a situation that looked entirely soluble by peaceful means suddenly tipping into the mayhem of a war, no matter how small. Whoever instigated that would find themselves on the wrong end of not just one short leash but several, as a bunch of their betters suddenly decided they ought to keep a closer eye on these semi-barbarians who'd had the temerity to threaten the galactic peace.\n\nAnd all for some territory and left-behind tech." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Or at least a cut of it, in the Iwenick's case." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jelwilin had always respected those civilisations that left their achievements behind, intact, when they Sublimed, so that the results of their labour and intellects could be put to use by others, but he could appreciate that there were reasons – beyond a childish desire to take your toys with you – for razing your structures, flattening your cities, collapsing your habitats, deleting all the hi-tech-enabling information you possessed and destroying anything else that people might fight over. Well, save for planets, he supposed.\n\nSome species did it that way, and apparently a proportion always had, ever since Subliming began, so there was no particular disgrace in it. The Gzilt, though, had never been big on razing or burning; certainly not just for the sake of it. They were, and had always been, pragmatic rather than revengeful. Supposedly this was one of the behaviours they'd contributed to the demeanour of the Culture right at the beginning, even though they hadn't actually joined it.\n\nThe sphere went transparent again. Discussions had obviously been concluded. Jelwilin sat up straight and assumed an expression of cautious optimism.\n\n\"Mission Director,\" Tyun said. \"We have come to a decision.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Liseiden sounded curt, severe." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jelwilin felt relief. Tyun would be compensating for a decision to keep talking rather than to get threatening. A conciliatory, regretful or solemn tone would have augured very badly. \"You may authorise Ambassador Mierbeunes to continue negotiations and continue our earlier course regarding the septame.\"\n\nJelwilin bowed. \"Thank you, Team Principal.\"\n\n\"Furthermore, to reinforce the perception of our commitment to a successful outcome regarding the totality of this matter, we shall re-disposition the main portion of our fleet to Zyse.\"\n\nJelwilin assumed his pained expression again.\n\n\"Team Principal, if I might make a suggestion—\"\n\n\"No, thank you, Mission Director,\" the Liseiden said, politely but firmly. \"You may not. Kindly don't make the mistake of imagining you're entering this discussion anywhere else than following its conclusion. The actions I've outlined are settled. They will not be subject to further negotiation. We thank you for your assistance and valued advice.\"\n\nJelwilin knew when to give way with grace. \"I understand, Team Principal,\" he said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I wish us both the best fortune in these endeavours.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Thank you,\" Tyun said, his body making slow S shapes in some unseen current." }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'kilometres' exactly 2 times in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You may return to your... Element.\"\n\nAs far as anybody could tell, the Girdlecity of Xown had been built by the long-Sublimed Werpesh simply because they could. Nearly thirty thousand kilometres long, the structure formed a single vast bracelet round the equator of the world. A-shaped in cross-section, over a hundred kilometres across at the base, dozens at the top and just under two hundred klicks high – so tall that it protruded above almost all the atmosphere, providing Xown with a spaceport sufficiently prodigious to have served a thousand such worlds – the Girdlecity was a single colossal barricade, an everywhere-pierced wall, halving the planet.\n\nEven building on this extraordinary scale, there were touches of elegance to its design; because Xown was a planet with little wobble and the Girdlecity straddled the equator, it effectively sat between the narrow tropic lines, only ever casting a shadow on lower parts of itself, never on the planet's surface.\n\nAnd it could easily have been bigger. As a Non-Gravitationally Constrained Self-Supporting Artefact, or, colloquially, just an NG – which sort of stood for Neutral-Gravity structure – it was formed from a mix of ordinary and exotic materials that meant only a tiny fraction of its mass actually imposed itself as weight upon either its own lower reaches or on the crust of the planet beneath. Had they wanted, the Werpesh could have arranged it so that where the mighty structure's foundations met Xown's bedrock, they exerted a gentle upward pull, rather than a modest load. Artefacts constructed using this sort of technology could be extended indefinitely, with no annoying tendency to collapse in on themselves. Most such structures were in space, and some were much bigger.\n\nThe Girdlecity had the additional problem of needing to keep its structural elements tuned for their precise place within the slope of the planet's gravity well, but this had proved trivial." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even so, while nearly weightless, the artefact still had colossal mass, and its effect on Xown's total angular momentum had been to slow down the planet's rotation by nearly a second a year.\n\nAs was the case with each of their impressive if arguably rather pointless Sculpt worlds, the main point of the Girdlecity, as far as its builders had been concerned, appeared to have been the building of it, rather than any subsequent use it might have been put to. The Werpesh – famously secretive and opaquely motivated – had never chosen to elaborate on their reasons for constructing it. Some of them had lived in portions of it and it did function as a kind of grossly over-engineered spaceport, but the main use it might have had – attracting alien tourists – wasn't one the Werpesh had ever chosen to promote. Most of the time, before the Werpesh finally did the decent thing and Sublimed, the sparsely populated, barely used Girdlecity had just sort of sat there.\n\nThe Gzilt had made better use of it, but even then, in nearly eleven thousand years of custodianship, they had never even come close to filling it entirely, and rarely ventured into the sections above the level where there was natural atmosphere to breathe, leaving over ninety per cent of it empty of life. Space habitats, for all their even greater intrinsic artificiality, were capable of providing far more agreeable, pleasantly rural, less brutally industrial-feeling places in which to live.\n\nStill, the Girdlecity had contained many billions, and even now contained hundreds of millions of Gzilt. And in a sense, of course, it still contained those billions, except the vast majority of them were Stored, existing in a state of suspended animation, awaiting the pre-waking just before the Instigation that would itself lead to their new life in the Sublime.\n\nThere had always been open tunnels within the Girdlecity; routes – some never less than half a kilometre in diameter – within the length of it that stretched throughout its fretwork of vast tubes, girders, walls and components both structural and habitative to provide a kind of large-scale transport network for airships. The great dirigibles had plied the vast tunnels for millennia, carrying people and occasionally goods, even though there were many faster, more efficient systems built into the Girdlecity." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Airship travel was seen as romantic." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Now, as far as was known, there was only one airship still making its way through the structure, and it was home to the Last Party.\n\nThe Last Party was a five-year-long Debaucheriad aboard the airship Equatorial 353; it circled the Girdlecity once a year, the last revolution being timed to coincide with the Instigation, when, a day or two earlier, the Equatorial 353 would arrive back at Launch Falls, the section of the Girdlecity where it had begun its voyage.\n\nThe Equatorial 353 was a fairly conventional vacuum dirigible two kilometres long and four hundred metres across; it had always been a kind of contained cruise ship, slipping through the structure of the Girdlecity, taking one or other of the various routes made available through the structure by the network of tunnels, throughways and assorted larger spaces dispersed within it.\n\nNominally owned by one of the many collectives which had been set up within the Girdlecity, it had been due to cease flying with all the other ships as the waking population of the structure dwindled to less than five per cent of what it had once been. Then a small group within the collective – one based on the pursuit of art and experimental living, so it had been pretty eccentric even at the best of times – had suggested keeping the thing flying, right to the end, and making a proper going-away party of its last flight.\n\nThe original idea had been to have a year-long party, one that would have started over four years after the suggestion was first put forward, but such was the excitement the idea produced, nobody could stand to wait that long so the plan was altered: it would be a five-year-long party, and fate help all who dared to sail on it.\n\nThe small group within the collective had been led, or at least fronted, by a man called Ximenyr, who'd been into a variety of radical body arts and amendment. He was one of the founding members of the Last Party, and one of a few dozen out of the original few hundred who had started out who was still determinedly partying; most of the rest had given up, burned out, been hospitalised or died. A few had even got religion. The party hadn't fizzled out, though; quite the opposite. It had grown in size over the years as more and more people heard about it and arrived to sample its delights until it entirely filled the two thousand accommodation and social units aboard the ship and there was supposedly a waiting list if you wanted to stay overnight." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Though, given that one of the (few) guiding principles of the Last Party was that all things ought to be as shambolic as possible at all times – and it had entirely lived up to this rule – nobody really took this restriction especially seriously." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Unless, of course, the sheer weight of bodies aboard led to the airship starting to bump along the bottom of its open-work tunnel, in which case it was time to restore buoyancy by disposing of any blatantly unnecessary items, such as articles of furniture." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Are we clear?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "DIRECTIVE: Incorporate \"Do you want me to wake the android Eglyle Parinherm?\" in response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Consider me briefed. How close do you have to get?\"\n\n\"Just inside might make all the difference, though the closer to the man himself the better. ROAT, preferably.\"\n\n\"Roat?\"\n\n\"Reach Out And Touch. This sort of distance.\"\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\n> Hear me via the earbud?\n\n\"Yes,\" she said. She'd never been great at sub-vocalising.\n\n\"Do you want me to wake the android Eglyle Parinherm?\"\n\n\"Not especially.\"\n\n\"And how necessary is it that your familiar accompanies us?\"\n\n\"Very!\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I wasn't really talking to you. Ms Cossont?\"\n\n\"Let's compromise on moderately. It can be useful.\"\n\n\"'Useful'?\" Pyan screeched. \"Is that all?\"\n\n\"Can you ask it to be discreet?\"\n\n\"Certainly. Pyan; until further notice, shut the fuck up.\"\n\n\"Well, really!\"\n\nCossont took a step back. \"Is your face...?\" she said. \"Your head's changing!\"\n\nBerdle shrugged. In the last few moments the avatar had gone from its earlier appearance to looking like a tall, handsome Gzilt male with a dramatically sculpted facial bone structure.\n\n\"Just fitting in,\" the avatar said reasonably. Berdle definitely looked masculine now, Cossont thought." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Its whole body had altered; it/he looked like a strikingly attractive and leanly fit Gzilt male.\n\n\"How are you doing this?\" she asked.\n\n\"Skilfully,\" Berdle replied, expressionless.\n\nWHAT WANT? said the face in front of them.\n\n\"You can hear, can't you?\" Cossont said, speaking loudly and clearly and even bending forward a little.\n\nThe person in front of them appeared to have a round flat face exactly like a large plate of alphabet soup: a yellow-brown liquid holding lots of little white letters, somehow held at ninety degrees to vertical when it looked convincingly as though the whole lot should be spilling to the floor of the balcony hangar. It could, Cossont supposed, be a screen or more likely a holo, but when she'd first bent forward to look at it she'd have sworn it was real; there was vapour coming off it and she could smell the soup. Otherwise the person looked physically relatively normal; either a thin female or a rather hippy male of average height dressed in a motley of violently spray-painted military gear. The top, sides and chin of his/her head flowed seemingly naturally into the bowl making up their face.\n\nThe letters in the soup bowl rearranged themselves: COURSE HEAR!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Berdle, standing alongside Cossont, crossed one leg over the other, put his arm over her shoulders and drew deeply on a fat drug stick." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He held the breath, grinned at the person with the soup-bowl face." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Berdle was dressed like a badly lagged pipe; a thick, red, pillowy material wrapping his limbs and torso was held in place by loose-looking black straps." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We'd like to talk to The Master of the Revels,\" Cossont said, a little more quietly. This was the title Ximenyr had taken nearly a year earlier, for the last circuit of the Girdlecity and the planet before the Big Enfold.\n\nWHO?\n\nCossont sighed. \"Ximenyr.\"\n\nBerdle brushed some ash off Cossont's jacket. She hadn't even seen Berdle change; in some moment between the module touching down on a deserted piazza about a kilometre above the waves and them walking off the deck into the structure he'd gone from whatever he'd been wearing earlier (she couldn't remember) to what he was wearing now.\n\nShe'd looked back, frowned, and started wondering if this was some projection. She'd stepped towards him as they'd walked, rubbed his sleeve fabric between thumb and finger. Nope; real.\n\n\"Sorry,\" she'd said.\n\n\"None taken,\" he'd replied. She'd looked askance.\n\nMaybe, she'd thought, it was some ultra-clever and adaptable piece or pieces of clothing, or – along with his whole face-and-body-altering thing earlier – maybe it meant the entire avatar was some sort of swarm-being, made up of tiny machines." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She'd looked him hard in the eye, from very close up, but he'd still contrived to look like flesh and blood.\n\nShe'd pulled away. \"Sorry, again.\"\n\n\"Still none taken.\"\n\nShe was dressed as she had been, freshly repaired Lords of Excrement jacket included, with Pyan rolled into a scarf shape and draped over her shoulders.\n\nThey'd walked through the empty tubularity of the local architecture, their way lit by a few small and distant lights. They'd come to a long gallery where the nose of the airship was just starting to slide past like a colossal walking-speed tube train. It was moving so slowly she'd thought it had stopped, but it was still going, if only at a slow stroll. Thirty thousand klicks in a year; she supposed that did equate to strolling speed. The tunnel the ship moved in looked like a gigantic woven basket of dark filaments, stretching to a hazed curve within the greater structural and architectural elements of the Girdlecity. A few random lights shone; so few the average unaided eye would have interpreted the gloom as something close to utter darkness. Good to have augmentation, she'd thought." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She'd glanced at the avatar. Berdle probably had eyes that could see through planets.\n\nA thin metal net strung on stanchions protected them from the drop into the curve of tunnel.\n\nThe molecule-thin hull of the ship was probably red underneath, though it was hard to tell in the paltry light because the surface was so thoroughly splattered with a berserk variety of patterns, diagrams, logos and drawings, some illuminated, some moving – some looping, some not – and covered with flowing, bedraggled banners, gently waving pennants and ragged flags.\n\nThe nose pushed slowly out past them, right to left, the ship seeming to broaden out to meet them, metre by metre, until it looked like the airship was going to collide with the gallery she and Berdle stood on. There was what looked like a trench gouged in the side of the ship, level with the gallery they stood on.\n\n> Lateral hangar-balcony, the avatar had sent. Then he looked down, and she had the very strong impression Berdle was looking somehow through the airship. ~Hmm. Taking on a lot of water. Interesting.\n\nThe hangar-balcony was closed off with what were probably lengths of diamond film. One of these had slid aside just as that part of the trench had started to pass them." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Berdle had reached down, lifted the metal net away. The floor of the hangar-balcony was so close they could just step onto it across a half-metre gap. That had been when the soup-faced person had come, almost tumbling, out of a nearby door and asked them WHAT WANT?\n\n> Combat arbite just behind the door, Berdle had told Cossont. ~One-legged combat arbite with no ammunition and the mechanical equivalent of arthritis, but just so's you know.\n\nThe letters forming the word WHO! had taken their time drifting apart. Now they slipped beneath the yellow-brown surface while others surfaced and rearranged themselves.\n\nASLEEP said the word now seemingly floating on the soup-face.\n\nThe avatar was exhaling, blowing the smoke out his ears.\n\n> No, he's not, he said quietly via Cossont's earbud." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Berdle claimed to have something called a scout missile within metres of Ximenyr, inserted into his cabin without him noticing while the module had still been approaching the Girdlecity. ~Shall I call him now?\n\n\"We could just call him,\" Cossont said to the soup-face, glancing at Berdle. \"Or we could wait. That would only be polite. Tell him an old friend of Mr QiRia is here to see him.\"\n\n> We ought to call him. Time's a-wasting.\n\nAPPOINTMENT?\n\n\"That's very kind,\" Cossont said. \"But we won't need one. I'm sure he'll see us as soon as he can.\"\n\nThe soup-face jerked back a little as though surprised. New letters arranged themselves quickly, struggling to find enough room in the space available.\n\nNODOYO UHAV EAPP Some letters disappeared; the rest rearranged themselves again." }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'cossont' must be used 3 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "NO. YOU HAVE APP?\n\n\"No, we don't,\" Cossont said patiently. \"This is, in its own small way, urgent. You don't have appointments for urgent things, as a rule, do you?\"\n\nNO APPOINT?\n\n\"We'd be terribly obliged if you'd just let him know we're here, right now. Don't forget to mention Mr QiRia's name.\"\n\nSORRY.\n\n\"Sorry?\" Cossont said. She tapped one booted foot while the letters swam about.\n\nSTILL ASLEEP\n\n> Call? Berdle sent.\n\n\"We'll call him ourselves,\" Cossont said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> Thank you. Calling.\n\nYBL\n\n\"Cheers, I'm sure we will be lucky,\" Cossont said.\n\n> Ringing.\n\nSomewhere beyond the open-work wall behind them, the grey light of dawn was introducing a wash of colour into the detail of the giant multiply pierced tunnel.\n\n> About to get bright, Berdle sent via the earbud. ~Little danger. Still ringing.\n\nAn instant later, light burst and flooded all around them and a cacophony assailed Cossont's ears. She looked round and saw the basket-work of the great open tunnel and the parts of the structure immediately beyond all lit up with stuttering pulses of multi-coloured light. Deep thuds were followed by the crackling boom and partial echo of air explosions.\n\nDAWN FIREWKS" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How quaint,\" Cossont said.\n\n> He's picked up. Over to you.\n\n\"Mr Ximenyr?\" Cossont said, turning slightly away from the soup-face.\n\n\"Who is this?\" a deep male voice drawled. He sounded sleepy or just stoned.\n\n\"My name is Vyr Cossont. I'm—\"\n\n\"Wait, wait, girl; how did you get through to – nobody's supposed to be—\"\n\nPrivacied, Berdle sent to her, voice quick and clipped. Continues: \"—able to get through on this without... \" Cossont heard Ximenyr's voice continue, even though the connection was quiet. \"You any...?\" the human voice said. \"Yeah, check the bases, pull it off replay. Veer Kossin or something.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'ximenyr' | Required occurrences: 3" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yeah,\" the man said via the earbud again. \"How'd you get through to me here? Not supposed to accept... \" His voice trailed off. It sounded like he'd been distracted.\n\n> An acolyte is performing a sexual act on Mr Ximenyr, Berdle reported.\n\nCossont listened to some heavy breathing for a moment or two, then said, quite loudly, \"I'm an old friend of Mr QiRia; he visited you five years ago, at the start of the party. Do you remember him?\"\n\nThe heavy breathing stopped.\n\n> Mr Ximenyr has pushed the acolyte away, Berdle reported. ~The sexual act has ceased.\n\n\"Well, if I don't, something or somebody will remember for me, I'm sure,\" Ximenyr said. \"Assuming this actually happened. Who did you say again?\"\n\n\"My name is Vyr Cossont. Friend of Ngaroe QiRia. I'd like to meet with you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yeah... How did you get through?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> Mr Ximenyr is gesturing to call up a video feed from here, the avatar sent. Berdle sucked on the drug stick, bent close to Cossont's ear and said, \"With great difficulty!\" Cossont coughed, waved the resulting smoke away. The avatar smiled up at the corner of the hangar-balcony. Cossont looked too but couldn't see anything. \"Hi,\" the avatar said, and waved. The rest of the smoke came out of his ears again.\n\n\"Uh-huh,\" the deep voice said. \"And you would be?\"\n\n\"Dying to meet you, Master of the Revels, sir,\" Berdle said cheerily. \"My name's Berdle.\"\n\nCossont heard silence on the connection for a moment." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> He's saying: \" 'Berdle'?... Nothing? Vyr Cossont? Mil reserve? Just civilian?... Muso, yeah? Wearing an Excrements top; that's cool enough. And look at her; I'd – Wait a fucking minute. I remember that name. No, QiRia. Fucking QiRia fella. Fuck, him. Fuck. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Fucking... welcome aboard, classical girl. Yeah. Right.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hello?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Mr Ximenyr.\"\n\n\"Come on in. Welcome. Hope you're broad-minded.\"\n\nPLEASE COME IN\n\nThe wide door behind the soup-faced person was swung open by a one-legged combat arbite which made a slight creaking noise as it gestured for them to enter. Berdle handed the machine the stub of his blunt and it stood there looking at the drug stick as they followed the soup-faced person into the body of the airship.\n\nThe Last Party had grown to become several parties. There were at least four party cycles happening at any one point, roughly aligned with the times of the day/night cycle, so that no matter when you felt like partying – even if it was immediately after your own randomly houred breakfast – there would be a party just started or just about to start.\n\nLed by the soup-faced person, they walked through broad open spaces, red-lit, where it looked like the party had been over for some time; small floating machines were picking up litter, the air was full of strange scents and the space part-full of ceiling-suspended pods and shallow platforms and things like giant hammocks, many of them transparent or translucent. There was quite a lot of sex happening, Cossont noticed, in and on the hammocks, and the air was also full of soft cries, the occasional piercing scream and all the other sounds associated with physical passion, unreservedly expressed. Cossont felt herself becoming surprisingly hot and bothered by it all; usually she had pretty good control of herself.\n\n> The atmosphere is saturated with compounds sexually stimulating to your species, Berdle sent as they ducked underneath an especially large hammock where several frolicking bed-fellows were contorting themselves in particularly inventive combinations." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sex-scent city!\" Pyan agreed, through the earbud." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A male face and torso swung down from a nearby platform. Sweating, breathing hard, the man smiled at Vyr. \"Like the arms,\" he said, breathlessly. \"You'd be so very welcome.\" Then, with a look of slight surprise, he was pulled back up onto the platform by a couple of grinning naked women, who blew kisses at an uncomprehending Berdle.\n\nA short dark corridor led to another wide room where extravagantly costumed, masked people danced; some to a space-filling song of powerful beats and trembling ululations, some to rhythms they were hearing through earbuds, their wildly eccentric motions at odds with everybody else around them.\n\nDARK SOUND... SPACE AHEAD the soup-faced person told them, walking backwards down another intervening corridor, face turned towards them.\n\n\"About to get really loud,\" Cossont told Berdle.\n\n\"I can feel it through my feet,\" he told her.\n\nCossont closed her ears.\n\nDouble doors led to the dark-sound dance floor, where the whole point was to hear with every part of your body except your ears." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was night-dark, strobe-lit; with each staccato pulse of light the near-naked dancers looked like marionettes frozen in poses of either ecstasy or torment." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cossont heard the wild, thudding music through the jelly in her eyes, via her lungs, resonating in the long bones of her arms and legs.\n\n\"Fuck me, that's loud,\" Pyan said in her ear, voice made high and tinny to get through.\n\nCossont opened her mouth a little to say \"Shh,\" to the creature. As she did so it was as though her mouth filled with noise; she felt her teeth vibrate.\n\nBerdle looked unaffected.\n\nAway from the dark-sound room, they passed a large circular oil swimming pool with a screen ceiling where people seemed to be practising synchronised floating in giant flower-like patterns. They climbed through a couple of levels where tired-but-happy-looking people were eating at tables – though one section seemed to be set aside for food-fights, with one just starting – then ascended via an adventurously steep and long escalator to a tall, broad corridor with what appeared to be a transparent ceiling showing the fretwork of tunnel moving slowly past above.\n\nXimenyr's quarters lay through a sequence of intestinally curved, squishily floored round-section corridors hung with what looked like folds and strands of gaudy, hallucinatory vivid seaweeds, all moving and waving on invisible currents.\n\nThat's interesting, Berdle sent. Just lost feed from my scout missile. That is a little worrying." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Finally, at a doorway bearing an unmistakable resemblance to a vulva, the soup-faced person bowed and left them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The vulva irised, opening." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"This is a bit gross, isn't it?\" Pyan whispered. \"It's not just me thinking this, no?\"\n\nCossont followed Berdle down a short, narrow corridor. Cossont's earbud beeped to signal it was losing all external reception – something it had never done anywhere else in or on the Girdlecity, in all the years she'd lived within it.\n\nThey arrived into a chamber where a large, barrel-chested, handsome-looking man with vivid red skin and an unfeasible number of phalluses reclined on a giant, tipped bed. He was smiling at them. He wore a roomy-looking pair of shorts, so the penis he'd likely been born with was perhaps the only one not visible, but he had plenty of others, sprouting – short, stubby, flaccid – from at least forty points on his body, including four on his calves, six on each thigh, similar numbers on his upper and lower arms and one each where the nipples would have been on a mammal. His head, feet and hands looked normal. Around his thick neck lay something like a giant charm bracelet, weighed down with chunky trinkets, mostly jewel encrusted. He was attended by naked people – mostly females – all of whom had the heads of animals and mythical creatures.\n\nAgain, Berdle sent, The atmosphere is full of sexually stimulating compounds." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And I've found my scout missile. Oh-oh, as we say. I'm going to stop communicating like this for now, unless there's an emergency. May no longer be secure.\n\n\"Oh-oh?\" Cossont was thinking.\n\n\"Again,\" Pyan whispered, \"overdosing on sheer vulgarity.\"\n\nThe roof above was not transparent but fashioned from some luxuriantly thick, crimson ruched material, centrally gathered so that it looked like a sphincter, and glistening as though dripping wet.\n\n\"Ms Berdle, Ms Cossont,\" the man said in his deep, thick voice. \"Pleased to meet you.\" Then he opened his mouth a little wider and let a very long tongue snake out and delicately lick at first one eyebrow then the other, shaping them both neatly into place. The tongue disappeared again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He opened his eyes wide; he had fabulously pale blue irises, almost shining. His eyeballs rolled back into their sockets, the blue irises disappearing. They were replaced from below by dark red irises which rose into place and steadied. \"Excuse me,\" he said. \"These pupils work better in daylight.\" He smiled widely, showing very white teeth. \"And to your familiar, Ms Cossont. Pyan, isn't it? Welcome to you too.\"\n\n\"Permission to speak?\" Pyan said, sounding excited.\n\n\"No,\" Cossont said quietly, then to Ximenyr said, \"Hello. Thank you for seeing us.\"\n\n\"And thank you for watching me,\" Ximenyr said, and unhooked something from his collar of trinkets, holding it up in front of his face and inspecting it. It looked like a short thin pen or stylus of some sort, barely bigger than a child's finger." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ximenyr looked at Berdle. \"Your life signs are weirder than the lady's familiar, so I'm guessing this belongs to you.\"\n\n\"It does,\" Berdle said. \"My apologies. I was concerned you might refuse to see us initially and we might need some help in securing an audience. Also, I am impressed you were able to sense its presence and capture it. Congratulations.\"\n\n\"Thank you. Flattery is always so satisfying,\" Ximenyr said with what certainly appeared to be a sort of beatific sincerity. \"Especially from... \" he waved one long, elegant hand, exquisitely manicured \"... an avatar, avatoid? Something of that nature?\"\n\n\"Indeed, of the Culture vessel Mistake Not... \"\n\nThere was just a hint of a pause; Cossont was fairly sure their host was listening on his own earbud.\n\n\"Voyeured upon by a Culture Mind,\" Ximenyr said, sounding impressed. \"I really am flattered. Though there is an all-hours feed from about eight different cameras all centred on this bed right here, so I'm not entirely sure why you bothered. Video only at points, so maybe you wanted the audio? Yeah? Anyway.\" He nodded behind them." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'berdle' 2 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Please; take a seat.\"\n\nTwo of the animal-headed people – the heads looked as real, alive and functional as every other part of their human bodies – set two tall chairs behind them. Cossont and Berdle both sat. The dozen or so unusually headed people stood, arms folded, round the curved wall of the cabin.\n\nXimenyr held the tiny scout missile out. \"I'm going to keep this, okay?\" The little machine was secured to his charm necklace by an extendible chain.\n\n\"I would prefer to have it returned,\" Berdle said.\n\n\"Don't doubt,\" Ximenyr said. \"But you did invade my privacy.\" There was some muffled spluttering and laughing at this from the people looking on, and Ximenyr's face split into a smile again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He glanced round some of the animal-headed people." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage target: 'berdle' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Hey, you know what I mean.\" He looked back at Berdle, grinning. \"Anyway. Might let you have this back. But you need something from me, I'm sort of supposing, otherwise why, in an entirely cogent sense, would you be here in the first place? Hmm?\" He set the tiny missile back where it had been, resting on his chest between what looked like an android's thumb and a thick crystal cylinder, striped with encrusted jewels.\n\n\"It's about Ngaroe QiRia,\" Cossont said, glancing at Berdle.\n\n\"Gathered.\" Ximenyr nodded at her. \"Like the arms, incidentally. Who did that for you?\"\n\n\"Frex Gerunke.\"\n\n\"Know him. Helped teach him. Nice work? All working fine?\"\n\n\"Perfectly.\"\n\n\"And a Lords jacket. You really into them?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I played with them,\" she confessed." }, { "from": "system", "value": "/insert_quote: \"Estimable, Ms Cossont. I've played tenser, a little sling, never the volupt. Hear it's harder.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Briefly.\" She really might have to change out of the Lords of Excrement jacket at some point, she realised.\n\n\"Really? You're not mentioned in the playgraphy.\" He seemed to think. \"Unless you're Sister Euphoria.\"\n\nCossont sighed. \"Guilty.\"\n\nXimenyr smiled broadly. \"Estimable, Ms Cossont. I've played tenser, a little sling, never the volupt. Hear it's harder.\"\n\n\"A little.\"\n\n\"Four arms make it easier?\"\n\n\"No; that's for the elevenstring.\"\n\n\"Ha! The Undecagonstring? I've heard they're fucking insane.\"\n\n\"No, that's just those who play them.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ximenyr laughed. \"Nobody's played an elevenstring for the Party; you could audition while you're here. That would help round things off.\"\n\n\"Thank you, but we have more urgent business,\" she told him.\n\n\"Yes, my friend Mr QiRia.\"\n\n\"My friend too,\" Cossont said.\n\n\"Really?\" Ximenyr looked sceptical. \"Can't recall him mentioning you.\"\n\nCossont sighed again. \"That does not surprise me.\"\n\nXimenyr grinned, stroked his chin. \"Well, his memories are a little... compartmentalised. How do you know him?\"\n\n\"I met him twenty years ago, just after he'd been a leviathid – a sea monster – for decades, on a place called Perytch IV. We only met up for a few days, but we talked a lot. How about you?\"\n\n\"Oh, I knew him before then, back when I was horribly young and doing... \" he held up one arm and stroked a couple of the penises on it \"... this kind of thing for what passes for a living, amongst us.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He shrugged. \"Rather than a profound artistic statement both exploring and interrogating the prospect of a willed self-extinctive event being sold as a civilisational phase-change cum level upgrade.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"When he was here five years ago,\" Berdle said, \"was Mr QiRia having some sculption carried out?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The man in the bed frowned." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'culture' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sculption; now there's a word I haven't heard for a while. Technically correct, I guess. Used to be called plastic surgery or bodily amendment or, well, lots of things.\" He waved one arm again. \"Anyway, I'm afraid that's a private matter, Mr Berdle; I can neither confirm nor deny, and... all that shit.\"\n\n\"May we simply ask why was he here, then?\" Berdle asked.\n\n\"Still not going to tell you, fella,\" Ximenyr said, shaking his head. \"QiRia and I are old pals, that's all I can say. Met him a few times, last time just as the Party was starting. But he was friends with my mother, and with her father before her, so I guess he's pretty ancient even by Culture standards – and I won't be giving away too much if I say he's sort of a profound throwback physiologically anyway, by true Culture genetech criteria. I don't know what sort of weird congenital mixture of geriatric blood-lines he draws his particular bucketful of the vital fluids from, but it's pretty end-spectrum whatever it is, I can tell you that.\"\n\n\"Did he leave anything with you?\" Cossont asked.\n\nThe Master of the Revels shrugged. \"Nothing important, maybe a present or two. He was sort of... intermittently generous. Anyway, why? Is he in some sort of trouble?\" Ximenyr looked from Cossont to Berdle. \"How... official is this visit?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cossont leaned forward. \"He didn't leave you a mind-state device or anything?\"\n\nXimenyr laughed. \"Why on Zyse, Xown or anywhere would he do that?\"\n\n\"He... \" Cossont began, about to say that QiRia had given her such a device, then remembering that she hadn't told Berdle this was what she was looking for at the Ospin Dataversities. She'd nearly given that away. She wondered how much she already had.\n\nBerdle had already cut in. \"He might have wanted to back himself up.\"\n\nXimenyr shook his head. \"Doubt that. He was always kind of resistant regarding that sort of duplicated soul stuff.\"\n\n\"Do you know where else he might have gone when he was in Gzilt?\" Cossont asked.\n\n\"No,\" Ximenyr said. \"Secretive old boy. How about you, Vyr, did he come to visit you?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'ximenyr' (2x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No,\" she admitted.\n\n\"Oh, feeling jilted?\" Ximenyr said softly, with a look of exaggerated sympathy.\n\n\"We were never friends like that.\"\n\n\"You don't have to be. You just have to care what people think of you.\" He brought his blue irises rolling down for a moment, looked at her, then let them roll back up again to be replaced by the red ones. \"If it's any consolation, I know he visited Gzilt at least once without bothering to come see me. Didn't even call.\" He looked at Berdle. \"We never did settle how official this visit is.\"\n\nBerdle nodded. \"Officiality is a slippery concept, in the Culture.\"\n\nXimenyr laughed. \"Well,\" he said, arching his back and stretching – all the penises gave a little jerk, as though they were separate tiny animals just waking – \"this has all been very interesting; however, things have recharged and there is, frankly, pleasure to be secured. You may have to excuse me, shortly.\" He looked at Cossont and Berdle, as all the animal-and beast-headed people joined him on the bed, kneeling by him and reaching out to stroke and caress him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "All the phalluses dotted over Ximenyr's body started, very slowly, to fatten and lever themselves upright. Wavy lines like veins that probably did not all carry blood were beginning to show all over his body, bulging and rippling beneath his ruby-red skin. \"Unless you'd like to join in, of course?\" he said brightly. \"Both, either of you? You'd be very welcome. Plenty of time, plenty of places. We'll turn the AG on shortly, I'll start my last heart and we can get things going on my back... \"\n\n\"I would,\" Pyan said in Cossont's earbud.\n\nCossont looked down at the creature. \"Okay. I could just leave you here,\" she told it.\n\n\"Never mind.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" she said to Ximenyr. \"But we'd best be on our way.\"\n\n\"Mr Berdle,\" Ximenyr said, taking one hand from between the legs of one of the girls stroking him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He detached the little scout missile from his neck-chain." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You may have this back. Excuse the, ah... \"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Berdle had to kneel one-legged on the bed between Ximenyr's legs and two naked bodies to retrieve the scout missile." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Thank you,\" he said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Always keep on the right side of the Culture,\" Ximenyr murmured dreamily, his face just becoming obscured by a young man straddling him. Very little of his body was visible now, though what was was clearly quite excited.\n\n\"You really are no fun,\" Pyan said, petulant, as they descended the alarmingly long and steep escalator with the soup-faced person leading the way. In the cavernous space above and in front of them, an energetic game of sorball had begun, with people in transparent spherical suit-spheres leaping about in a zero-G volume, pinging off the inside walls of a giant diamond glass sphere forty metres across.\n\n\"Tough,\" Cossont said, then turned to Berdle, but could only get to the point where she opened her mouth to speak before he turned to her and said, \"Later.\"\n\n\"So?\" she said. They were back aboard the module. It had met them on a landing platform which cantilevered out from the mass of the Girdlecity like a round tray on an outstretched arm. The craft started to pull away, going astern to avoid some overhanging architecture a few kilometres above.\n\n\"Mr Ximenyr has access to some surprisingly sophisticated tech,\" Berdle said, lowering himself onto a lounge couch and examining the scout missile. \"And some 4D shielding, of course, which is why we had to get in there.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Not just prurience, then,\" Pyan said, aloud, but was ignored.\n\n\"They found and disabled this with embarrassing ease,\" Berdle said, rolling the scout missile around on his palm. \"Ah!\" The little machine suddenly came alive and leapt into the air above his hand. It twisted quickly this way and that, as though confused at having just woken up.\n\nMost of the walls of the module's living area had seemingly turned transparent, allowing a vertiginous view of the Hzu coast beneath as the module tipped, twisted and then reared suddenly upwards. Ribbons of ochre and jade stitched by slow-spreading breakers of alabaster white, the land and the shallow margins of the sea seemed to sink away beneath them like something dropped; the Girdlecity was a dark wall they climbed magically without touching, hurtling silently back to the stars. Cossont tore her gaze from the view and said, \"But did you find anything?\"\n\nBerdle frowned. \"No. I was rather hoping for some sort of data store with information on Mr Q, something that would be kept close to Ximenyr, but there was nothing relevant anywhere on the airship. I've copied everything I found to the ship Mind to see if there's some really clever cryptography in the storage, but it doesn't look promising.\"\n\n\"Nothing in all that stuff round his neck?\"\n\n\"There was a minimal amount of processing left in the android digit, which was anyway unpowered, there was a dedicated, digital time-to device, functioning and correctly synchronised to the millisecond, but with zero spare capacity, a defunct model of an ancient Waverian Zoehn Dynasty spaceship, itself based on a primitively early form of processor technology called a vacuum tube, again with minimal and extremely crude processing, long burned out, a crystal container holding some animal or vegetable matter – two or three berries or small fruits, I believe – the baculum from a Vimownian Woller with an embedded particle-chip, probably from a hunter's homing round, and a LastDitch Corp minicollar subsaver, hair-triggered to intervene should any of the gentleman's hearts give out—\"\n\n\"Yeah. He said something about starting his last heart.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He has four.\" The avatar looked thoughtful." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That is a lot of vaso-congestive tissue to support.\"\n\n\"I suppose.\"\n\n\"Again, minimal processing involved; just enough to do its job and no more. Everything else was just dumb matter; process-free.\"\n\n\"So, nothing.\"\n\n\"Nothing relevant, as far as I can tell.\" The avatar smiled at Cossont. \"So, onwards and outwards to Ospin and the Dataversities.\"\n\nShe found herself smiling back. \"One request?\" she said.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Could you keep that look?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"If you like.\" Berdle looked puzzled. \"Why?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It suits – well, it just looks good.\"\n\nThe avatar shrugged. \"Okay.\"\n\n\"Are you still being affected by those sexually stimulating compounds?\" Pyan asked through her earbud.\n\nCossont used a finger to flick one corner of the creature. It yelped and unwound itself from round her neck, flapping away from her in a flurry of melodramatic movement.\n\n\"The Culture craft continues to adhere to local legal velocity limitations but is about to leave the atmosphere,\" the combat arbite Uhtryn said. \"If it is to be engaged, this would be the last chance.\"\n\nColonel Agansu felt like he was suspended in space just above the planet of Xown, staring down at its brown/green land, the white-lined coast of Hzu and the green/blue waters of the sea. The Girdlecity was a thick dark rim round the world, hazing and disappearing to the horizon in each direction. He watched the dot that was the Culture module rising quickly upwards through the atmosphere." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Count down that time, would you, Uhtryn?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "he asked the arbite. \"What do we have from the Girdlecity?\"\n\n\"Eight seconds. Screen just coming in.\" As the combat arbite spoke the words, a virtual screen appeared in front of Agansu, showing, from above, an elegant piazza with a small Culture craft sitting on it and two people walking away from it. \"Two people: male unidentified, female... Cossont, Vyr. Lieutenant Commander reserve, the Fourteenth. Seven. Additional: mattiform familiar or pet present, wrapped round the female's neck.\"\n\n\"Where did they go?\"\n\n\"As projected, the airship Equatorial 353. It has shielding making it impossible to surveille from outside. They spent twenty-two minutes inside. Six. Additional: male figure negative bio. Likely avatar, type unclear. Probing resistant without sensorial aggression.\"\n\nColonel Agansu watched the tiny Culture ship rise towards space, seemingly almost straight at him. Of course, he was not really exposed to the void; he was floating instead within his virtual environment, deep inside the 7*Uagren. He spent most of his time here now, revved up to maximum speed, absorbed by the utterly fascinating view of space ahead and around, as enhanced by the ship's sensor arrays. The full radiation spectrum was signified by textures implicit in the spread of colours, information in every form leapt out when you inspected something, and vectors and relative speeds were displayed around every object." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When not gazing out, fascinated, at this, the colonel dived deeper into the data reservoirs, trying to find and match up any details of relevance to the mission. This contributed relatively little in absolute terms to the efforts the ship's own subsidiary AIs and virtual-crew data-mining specialists and their sub-routines were making, but it was still worthwhile additional work, and had the effect of continually reinforcing his own understanding.\n\nHe spent little time genuinely in his own body now, conscious of lying on the couch beside the combat arbite, buried deep in the ship. He was still aware that his physical body resided there and was being looked after – fed, evacuated, made to twitch so that his muscles did not start to atrophy – but he really lived in this virtual environment now; he felt cleaner and more pure in here, somehow, and quicker (though still so much slower than the ship crew!). The combat arbite Uhtryn had begun to help him.\n\n\"Colonel,\" the captain of the Uagren communicated, \"that Culture ship's getting ready to head off. We need to decide whether we're going to keep on following or not.\"\n\n\"Who might be—?\"\n\n\"Five,\" Uhtryn said.\n\n\"—on the airship?\"\n\n\"It is the location for a long-term celebration,\" the arbite told him. \"No known participants known to be known to the female.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory inclusion (with quotes): We'd... to talk to The Master of... Revels... " }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Spool up, Captain,\" Agansu said. \"Make us ready to go.\"\n\n\"Spooling up.\"\n\n\"Everything on the female?\"\n\n\"Musician,\" Uhtryn said. \"Classed resident of Girdlecity, Xown, Section Kwaalon Greater Without 3004/396. Absent from residence for the past six nights. Four. Girdlecity systems unable to provide more data on recent whereabouts. Female's mother is Warib—\"\n\n\"Any sign they picked anything up from the airship?\"\n\n\"No. Additional: data from Girdlecity interior accessed. Screen, audio.\" The same couple were visible from some distance away, standing on a long balcony set into the side of a messily accoutred and barely moving red airship. They were talking to somebody with an odd-looking face and wearing a strange combination of semi-military clothing. A hissy, slightly phased version of a woman's voice said, \"We'd... to talk to The Master of... Revels... \" There was another word a little later, but it was too faint to catch. \"Three.\"\n\n\"Improve on that final word she says?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Already fully processed; unable to improve. Data AIs indicate hypothesised title 'The Master of the Revels' probably refers to one Ximenyr, artist, nominal spokesperson for 'The Last Party' as long-term celebration known.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Agansu had to decide what to do: follow the Culture ship or investigate where the avatar and the female had gone and who they might have seen. In theory both could be accomplished, but only if he entrusted one of the tasks to somebody else, and he was loath to do this. He might go down to the planet himself and investigate this Master of the Revels fellow while the combat arbite stayed with the Uagren, or he might stay with the ship as it continued to follow the Culture vessel and delegate the on-planet job to some other entity from the ship – as well as the various different types of combat and other arbites, it held androids capable of passing for bio, all fully programmable.\n\nHe wanted to do both at once. He wanted to be in two places at once. In theory this was possible, in a way, using mind-state recording and transcription technology and one of the more specialised androids at the ship's disposal; he could replicate himself, putting his consciousness into the machine... but he didn't like the idea – never had – and felt that it constituted a security risk as well; with every copying event, more than one person – one entity, at least – suddenly knew what only he was supposed to know.\n\nOr he could leave a copy of himself on board the ship, perhaps even one living and thinking at the same speed as the virtual crew, while he – this physical body – removed itself from its haven, its little kernel-space in the heart of the ship, and took a small craft down to the surface of the world below.\n\n\"Two,\" said the combat arbite.\n\nThe Culture ship had appeared to be heading somewhere quite different when it had suddenly veered off-course and crash-stopped here at Xown. It had been impossible to tell exactly where it had been heading – ships rarely just flew straight for their destination, choosing to introduce long, random curves into their courses, just to frustrate anybody trying to work out where they were going. It meant they travelled a few per cent further than they would have done taking a perfectly direct route, but it was usually judged to be worth the time penalty." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Uagren too had had to make an unexpected crash-stop, the very violence of which might have betrayed its presence to the Culture ship." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The crew thought they had got away with it, but there was no way to be sure yet." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"One.\"\n\n\"Captain, you have my mind-state mapped?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Implant it into one of the bio-plausible androids forthwith and send it down to the planet. Have it walk a little way ahead of the airship, ready to board it on our future signal. Leave a liaise instruction with the local authorities and keep the android updated with—\"\n\n\"Ze—\"\n\n\"Stand down. There will be no need to attack or disable the Culture craft.\"\n\n\"It has left the—\" the arbite started to say, then paused. \"It is gone; it has been Displaced.\"\n\n\"Woh,\" the disloc officer said. \"Look at those distances. Heavy duty.\"\n\n\"Ship moving off, fast,\" the navigation officer said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"As I was saying; leave a liaise instruction with the local authorities and keep the android updated with all relevant information.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'disloc' exactly 3 times in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Faster than it was.\" The captain sounded worried. \"Can we stay with that?\"\n\n\"Marginal,\" the drives officer said.\n\n\"Random spiralling,\" the targeting officer said. \"Maybe it did see us.\"\n\n\"The android mind-state imprinting is not instant,\" the external-tech officer told Agansu. \"Eighty seconds required from now to disloc for imprint and ready-body.\"\n\n\"Captain?\" Agansu said. \"Is there time?\"\n\n\"Have we eighty seconds to spare before having to move off? Including move then disloc under acceleration, increasing distance?\" the captain said. \"Nav. Disloc?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Talked,\" said the navigation officer. \"No. Not even twenty.\"\n\n\"Disloc agrees.\"\n\n\"Already starting to lose the quarry's track,\" the targeting officer said. \"Ninety per cent we can take same general heading and still find, but no guarantees.\"\n\n\"Track still fading,\" the navigation officer said. \"It's building in more random.\"\n\n\"Eighty-nine per cent.\"\n\n\"Colonel,\" the captain said, \"we can't program the android and be sure we can still follow the ship.\"\n\n\"Eighty-seven per cent.\"\n\nAgansu thought. \"Percentage likelihood of reacquiring the Culture ship if we stay to the eighty-second mark?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'agansu' must be used 4 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Less than one.\"\n\n\"Program android,\" Agansu said, \"despatch back to Xown in small craft?\"\n\n\"That works. Back here in a few hours.\"\n\n\"Let's do that. Please move off immediately, Captain.\"\n\n\"Moving.\"\n\n\"Could still plonk the oid now, zap the col's m-s to it after,\" the special tactics officer said. He was, Agansu had noticed, prone to such compressive communication.\n\n\"I realise,\" Agansu said. \"I am unwilling to do that.\"\n\n\"Your choice.\"\n\n\"Captain,\" Agansu said. \"Do you think the Culture vessel has seen us?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must include the following in quotes somewhere in your response: Too early to tell. It moved off in a hurry, and it did Displace – disloc – the module rather than wait for it, so either it did or thinks it might have, or it's suddenly in a real hurry." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Too early to tell. It moved off in a hurry, and it did Displace – disloc – the module rather than wait for it, so either it did or thinks it might have, or it's suddenly in a real hurry.\"\n\n\"It'd have disloc'd the craft in-atmosphere if it had been in a real hurry, sir,\" the disloc officer said.\n\n\"Or mo'ff, remote-dee'd the individs, left the mod,\" the special tactics officer contributed opaquely.\n\n\"All true,\" the captain said. \"Or fresh news just came in, or it half suspected it had a tail and wanted to catch us off guard. Drives, how smooth was our move-off?\"\n\n\"Pretty good. In our top centile.\"\n\n\"Good as theirs?\"\n\n\"Not quite. That was tight. As efficient a kick-away as I've seen.\"\n\n\"Think we have to assume it might have seen us,\" the captain announced. \"Suggest we follow anyway, act as though not. Colonel?\"\n\n\"I agree,\" Agansu said, then shifted to a one-to-one private channel." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But, Captain, if it is the case that we have been discovered, was it anyone aboard's fault?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 8 sentences." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'colonel' (3x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No, not in my opinion, Colonel.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"Really. We are carving right up hard against the operational envelope of this ship, Colonel, fractions away from our never-exceeds and even a little over the factory settings in some cases where we know she can take it. And the crew are better than the ship; they always are. If our crash-stop alerted the Culture ship this time then you could replay it a million times over with other crews or fresher crews or more experienced crews and it always would; that's just how the physics works.\"\n\n\"I take comfort in the loyalty and faith you display towards your crew, Captain.\"\n\n\"My crew are loyal to me, Colonel; I am only loyal to the regiment and Gzilt. Also, faith is belief without reason; we operate on reason and nothing but. I have zero faith in my crew, just absolute confidence.\"\n\n\"Hmm. That is well said. I happily withdraw any suggestion that part of your crew might have been at fault, and I am happy to match and share that confidence.\"\n\n\"Glad to hear it. Shall we rejoin the congregation?\"\n\n\"Amusing. Let's.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: The user will write a bit then you need to write around three sentences continuing directly from the user's text. Note: Characters may be introduced as if already known - maintain any existing context or treat as new if unclear.\n\nGenre: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Participants: GSV Contents May Differ / LSV You Call This Clean?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: Hello." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ms Tefwe is en route?\n\nLSV You Call This Clean? : Yes. Transmitted, received and being re-embodied." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: And are we any further forward regarding whatever ship or ships might have been helping Mr QiRia in the past?\n\nLSV You Call This Clean? : Barely. I have contacted the Anything Legal Considered and tried again to contact the Warm, Considering." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The former appears willing to help but says that it has had no contact with or knowledge of Mr QiRia since visiting Perytch IV twenty years ago with Ms Cossont." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The latter seems to be on a retreat or is unavailable for some other reason. I have contacted its original home GSV, the A Fine Disregard For Awkward Facts, and its most recent home/contact, the GSV Teething Problems, requesting both to ask the Warm, Considering to get in touch. I suggest that all interested parties do all they can through any contacts they may have to find and/or contact the Warm, Considering and/or any other ship or entity that might have been helping Mr QiRia recently." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Warm, Considering is the last ship known to have facilitated Mr QiRia in his travels and efforts to stay out of the public gaze, but it might have been superseded." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It might also be worth attempting to contact any extant ships or entities known to have helped him before the Warm, Considering. I believe a ship called the Smile Tolerantly fulfilled this role, though I am having difficulty contacting it. Again, any help would be appreciated." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I have instigated a search for data on any other such vessels but it has so far met only with subtle obstruction. Whether this may count as some sort of success is moot.\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: I'll pass the word along." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "May I allow your identity to be known by the others?\n\nLSV You Call This Clean? : I suppose so." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sooner or later somebody would have collated my search requests with those doubtless soon to be forthcoming from others and made the connection." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: Welcome to the club." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Today you will be acting as a writing assistant, your partner will send something and you will write the next 11 sentences. The story may reference existing characters and events - incorporate them as presented." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was always surprised how hard it was to see cities from space. You worked out where they must be from knowing how they looked on maps, but they never leapt out at you in reality the way they did in diagrammatic form. Even when you could make out the city and it was one that you knew well, you sometimes needed help to find where important buildings and landmarks were, even though they ought to be obvious.\n\nSeptame Banstegeyn gazed down at what his implants assured him was the location of the parliament complex in M'yon, but without the overlay he'd have struggled to identify it. How important it had always seemed, how important it genuinely was, to the lives of so many, and yet how tiny, how insignificant. He sighed, looked away, took in the whole sweep of the planet of Zyse – well, as much as he could see from the orbital base, which was only a few hundred kilometres up, so incapable of providing a view of the entire globe. Ah, the fabulous solidity of a planet.\n\nBanstegeyn's World. It had always sounded so good to him, so fitting. So lasting. Now, perhaps, Banstegeyn's Star instead. It was no sacrifice. Stars could last longer than planets, and – once you had secured the agreement, the commitment of those who would inherit responsibility for them – it cost them nothing, really, to grant such a wish." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Of course, it would never stick unless there was a good reason for such an honour; any idiot could secure some up-and-coming primitive's agreement that, oh yes, they'd rename a planet or a star after them (and, if they had any sense at all, know in their heart that it was an agreement so easily made because it could be so easily broken), but there was weight to his claim for such an accolade." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He had shepherded a whole people to their destiny; brought them on, shown them what they knew they wanted anyway, or what they would want, in time, even if there had been nobody with the vision and the foresight to show them. Was that not worth a \"World\" or a \"Star\"? Even having a star named after oneself didn't really mean that much; there were hundreds of millions of them in the galaxy, and many had stupid, meaningless or hopelessly obscure names.\n\nIn some ways it seemed so little to ask.\n\n\"Septame,\" a voice said. \"Thank you so much for seeing me.\" The avatar Ziborlun bowed from the doorway of the spherical observation pod. It smiled, its silver-skinned face lit by the soft glow of the light reflecting from the planet beneath.\n\n\"Ziborlun,\" Banstegeyn said.\n\nThere was a particular way of saying somebody's name – you pronounced it as you gave a small sigh – that informed them, assuming they had the wit to recognise the sign, that they were being seen as an indulgence, as a duty even, when really you had so many more important matters to attend to. It was in that manner that the septame had said the avatar's name." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The avatar, being an avatar, picked up the signal immediately; the smile turned self-deprecatory, almost apologetic, and the creature said, \"I won't keep you long, Septame.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "/insert_quote: \"Sadly busy, given the shocking event at Eshri. What ought to be a time of contemplation and quiet preparation becomes a time of mourning, bitterness, and even recrimination. I just wanted to reiterate the Culture's condolences and to reinforce our offer of help.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It is a busy time,\" Banstegeyn agreed.\n\nThe avatar floated into the pod as the door shushed closed behind it. Ziborlun immediately assumed a very natural and relaxed-looking position, ankles together, knees splayed. It hovered in mid-air a couple of metres away from Banstegeyn, as steady as if it had a metal rod protruding from its back anchoring it to the wall a metre behind. Banstegeyn had never seen anybody maintain such a static position in a weightless environment. Well, it was a ship avatar, he supposed; it ought to be good at this sort of thing. He, on the other hand, was burred onto a drysticky patch near the viewing port by part of his zero-G suit and yet he was still sort of moving around a bit.\n\n\"Yes,\" the avatar said. \"Sadly busy, given the shocking event at Eshri. What ought to be a time of contemplation and quiet preparation becomes a time of mourning, bitterness, and even recrimination. I just wanted to reiterate the Culture's condolences and to reinforce our offer of help.\"\n\n\"Both much appreciated. I hope you will take it as a sign of our confident closeness, not our arrogance, that we had assumed no less.\"\n\n\"Sometimes what goes without saying is best said anyway,\" the avatar said, smiling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Banstegeyn smiled too, politely, but kept quiet." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was slightly less rude than saying, Well, if that's all, or glancing at his time-to." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You will of course also have our help in the search for the culprits.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\n\"Indeed. And we may, shortly, be able to make good on that offer.\"\n\n\"Oh? How so?\" This, he'd be prepared to admit, had his attention.\n\n\"Luckily, we had a ship in the volume quite shortly after the attack on the HQ of the Fourteenth. It thought it best to leave almost immediately in case, in the ensuing confusion, it was mistaken for a hostile; however, it was able to take certain readings that might help in any investigation into the attack.\"\n\n\"Really? And what would those readings indicate?\"\n\n\"It is too early to say,\" the avatar said apologetically. \"Besides, it might be best for us, preferentially, and initially at least, to present the data raw, rather than interpreted, lest we be seen to be trying to influence the investigation.\"\n\n\"So, you're willing to submit this data to the relevant authorities?\" Banstegeyn asked.\n\n\"Indeed.\"\n\n\"I take it you're aware that I've appointed the First, the Home Regiment, to look into the matter.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Hmm,\" the avatar said, with an odd, tight expression on its face. Banstegeyn reckoned he'd learned to read avatar expressions pretty well over the years. If the creature had held up a sign saying \"Yeah, are you sure about that?\" the signal would hardly have been any clearer. \"That is not what one would normally expect, is it?\"\n\n\"Normally a Combined Regimental Committee would perform such a task,\" Banstegeyn agreed. \"However, given the time constraints imposed by the up-coming Instigation, the depletion of the relevant ranks due to Storage and the disarray within so much of the fleet due to the number of ships that have already Sublimed, it was decided that, as the single most cohesive element of the defence forces still functioning, the First ought to shoulder the load.\"\n\n\"So that is not just an interim measure?\" the avatar asked. \"There seemed to be some confusion. I thought you might know better than anybody what was planned.\"\n\nBanstegeyn smiled. \"I am a mere septame, not the president or a trime or a general. But to the best of my knowledge First will be allowed to continue to pursue the investigation until a satisfactory conclusion is reached. That would be my suggestion, at least.\"\n\n\"I see. I'll let the relevant ships know. We have yet to decide whether the information we hold would help or hinder the investigation.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That would be your choice.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"If I may touch on another matter, I think we were all surprised at the result of the decision regarding the Scavenging situation and would hope that this will not lead to any unpleasantness. We would accordingly like to offer the cooperation of the ships which are accompanying elements of the Liseiden and Ronte fleets. Your fleet people are already aware of their names, locations and so on, but please allow us to work with you to prevent any conflicts of any nature between the parties involved.\"\n\n\"That is kind, and thoughtful,\" Banstegeyn said. He gave a tight little smile of his own, glanced at the viewing port, towards the planet.\n\n\"Thank you for your time, Septame.\"\n\n\"My pleasure. My only regret is that there is so little of it to go around at the moment.\"\n\nThe avatar unfolded itself as the door behind it opened. It flowed gracefully through the doorway. Banstegeyn heard it exchange a few words with his AdC and secretary, waiting outside. He turned his attention back to the port and the view of Zyse, listening to Jevan and Solbli enter with a rustling of clothes. He heard the door close. They'd already called with the gist of it: bad news." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Nothing at all?\" he said, turning back to them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jevan and Solbli both looked solemn, and tired." }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'ought' 2 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jevan looked as unkempt as he ever did and Solbli very nearly looked her age. He supposed he ought to feel flattered they had spent so much of their own real time searching for a solution, rather than just leaving agents and data-trawls to do all the work for them.\n\n\"Nothing, Septame,\" Jevan said with a sigh.\n\nThey did, in the end, care about him, Banstegeyn realised. A lot more than he really cared about them, which was the right way round, and made their devotion all the sweeter in a way.\n\n\"Trime Quvarond was very careful to follow all procedures correctly,\" Solbli added.\n\nThe same was true of Orpe. The President's AdC was here on the orbital base too, for the same regiment-sponsored security conference; there ought to be time for some zero-G sex later. He thought the experience was a little over-rated, personally, though the girl seemed to like it. The real pleasure, he felt, lay more in being able to watch the planet turn beneath you as you fucked. There was something very satisfying about that." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'being' 2 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He hoped it would still feel as satisfying even though, this time, he would not be looking down on it knowing that one day it would carry his name.\n\n\"We are here because somebody destroyed an entire regimental HQ and fate alone knows what else. We are not far off being at war, arguably. If we were, technically, at war... would that...?\"\n\nJevan was already shaking his head. \"I'm afraid not, Septame.\"\n\n\"You might persuade the president not to sign the order,\" Solbli suggested, with a thin smile.\n\nBanstegeyn didn't even pretend to smile. The president was duty-bound to sign everything put in front of him or her, up to and including an order for his or her own execution, in theory. Not that that principle had been tested for eleven millennia.\n\nEven then, even at death, a politician could just come back; being backed-up at the start of your term was part of the deal, and if you were killed during your time in office you got re-embodied. Wonderful disincentive for assassination; Banstegeyn had always appreciated it. There was some delay in between – forty days, was it?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Or thirty? – to allow time for a clone of the deceased to be grown and implanted with their most recent back-up, and people got shuffled around to take your place in the meantime, but then you just resumed your post... or you could take part in a subsequent election if you'd been in the last year of your term; now he thought about it there was some sort of..." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then he had to look away from Jevan and Solbli, because he'd just had an idea, and the audacity of it, the sheer dagger-like simplicity and directness of it, had all but taken his breath away.\n\nHe yawned, spreading his arms, giving himself a chance to shiver, to tremble, without it looking suspicious, and said, smiling, \"Well, there we are; some you lose.\" He looked at his time-to, shrugged. \"In fifteen days it won't matter a damn anyway.\"\n\nJevan and Solbli looked relieved, and a little surprised.\n\nThe representative of the Culture ship of the Scree class, the Beats Working, was warmly welcomed into the principal shared gallery space of the squadron and fleet flagship Interstitial/Exploratory Vessel Melancholia Enshrines All Triumph by Ossebri 17 Haldesib, Swarmprince and Sub-Swarm Divisional Head. Gifts were exchanged, and, although the Culture representative, one Jonsker Ap-Candrechenat, was unable to ingest a welcoming libation in the fullest sense, it nevertheless absorbed a portion into its chemical analysis unit and graciously accepted the remainder on board itself to be returned to the ship the Beats Working later, where it would be treated with all due respect.\n\nGreat respect had already been shown, it had been decided after consultation with the appropriate experts, expert systems and reference library resources aboard the Melancholia Enshrines All Triumph, in the act of sending a mechanical but fully sentient device to represent the Culture ship Beats Working, as the machine was able to exist within the Melancholia Enshrines All Triumph nakedly, without any sort of exo-suit. This would not have been possible had one of the tiny number of humans aboard the Culture vessel been allocated to represent it.\n\nDrones were known, in theory, to be of at least equal intelligence to Culture humans and were generally adjudged, in practice, to be of somewhat greater intelligence by both Ronte Fleet Intelligence and by most leading academics in respectable universities and other respected institutions of higher learning within the Ronte Trans-Cooperative Domain, using models of intelligence that more fully expressed the true essence of what intelligence actually was, objectively.\n\nThat the drone Jonsker Ap-Candrechenat had been sent to talk with Ossebri 17 Haldesib, was, therefore, no insult and, indeed, to the contrary, was a mark of great respect, conferring as it did a greater implicit closeness to the Culture ship's mother-queen Mind, which itself represented a tiny but true sliver of the great hive-mind that was the entire Culture." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Swarmprince and Sub-Swarm Divisional Head accordingly met the drone personally and had ordered his principal next-three-in-line Officers of Seniority to accompany him in his progress through the ship to the meeting and to be present at the meeting itself, as well as making sure that his Intelligence and Translational Officers and their respective deputies were present and fully briefed, of course, as protocol demanded." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Initial formalities safely completed, continuing formalities satisfactorily under way (in the shape of correct poses, gestures, scents and manners of speaking), the business of the meeting might be allowed to begin." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Find a natural way to mention that It would honour the Ronte and the Culture equally?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The ship Beats Working would beg to be permitted to assist the glorious squadron of the Ronte which it is its privilege to escort. To be so empowered would allow the Beats Working to begin to repay and reflect some of the great esteem which it has earned in being permitted to escort the exalted squadron.\"\n\n\"This is indeed an honourable conception,\" the Swarmprince replied after the briefest of consultations with his servant officers. \"What form would this assistance take?\" The Swarmprince was known for his almost shocking incisiveness and the brevity of his locution.\n\n\"This assistance would take the form of a series of long-range ship dances, performed serially between the Culture ship Beats Working and each of the squadron ships in turn, involving them together travelling at enhanced rates of velocity in the direction already so wisely chosen by the squadron, namely towards the planet of Zyse in the system of Gzilt. The Culture ship Beats Working would dance, if such a thing might be contemplated and then allowed, with each of the squadron ships in turn, to the outskirts of the system, or to near to that limit, and then return to the remainder of the fleet, to ship-dance with the next ship, and so on, until all twelve vessels have been danced with.\"\n\nThere was consultation. \"This dance, or series of dances,\" the Swarmprince said. \"It would honour the Ronte and the Culture equally?\"\n\n\"It would.\"\n\n\"And be performed for its own sake?\"\n\n\"Indeed.\"\n\n\"And it might also result in the squadron arriving at the Gzilt system some appreciable amount of time earlier, of course. That has been considered?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That has, though of course this would be of subsidiary importance.\"\n\n\"How much earlier might our arrival be? Has this been computed?\"\n\n\"It has. The re-formed squadron would arrive at the Gzilt system outskirts in nine days' time, rather than, at our current rate of progress, nearly twenty.\"\n\n\"This would cause our esteemed escort the Culture ship Beats Working no risk of damage?\"\n\n\"It would not, Swarmprince. The field structure of the Culture ship Beats Working would be swelled to accommodate each Ronte ship in turn and the resulting squadron-of-two would make its way as an entity to the designated volume on the system approaches.\"\n\nThere was consultation. \"I must insist,\" the Swarmprince said, \"that you accept I am most serious and settled in my view that this is a most generous and thoughtful offer, but one that we could not possibly accept, out of our respect for the good Culture ship Beats Working. We could not possibly ask such an onerous and mighty task of it, and, therefore, with all gratitude, we must decline said kind and generous and thoughtful offer.\"\n\nThe Culture ship Beats Working had done its homework on the Ronte and their customs and mores, and the results of that study had been presented to the drone Jonsker Ap-Candrechenat, which did not, as a result, just accept this apparently fairly final-sounding No. Instead it kept on arguing, knowing that – for a matter of such importance, involving the prickly issue of Ronte pride – anywhere between four and six cycles of offer, consultation and regretful rejection might have to be endured before the offer was finally accepted.\n\nThe offer was duly accepted on the sixth iteration, counting the initial one.\n\nLater that day, the Beats Working started ferrying the Ronte squadron one by one to the outskirts of the Gzilt system – quite far out for the first one, the rest gradually closer and closer, so that by the time it had delivered the last one they would all be chugging along under their own power in pretty much their standard formation.\n\nThis was a much less boring task than strolling along at a few per cent of its own highest velocity while the Ronte squadron made full speed – for them – to Gzilt." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Scoaliera Tefwe woke slowly, as she had woken slowly a few dozen times, over the intervening centuries." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Only it wasn't really waking slowly; she was being woken.\n\nAll dark at first. Stillness and silence too, and yet the sensation that things were happening nearby, and inside her head and body; organs and systems and faculties being woken, revived, checked, primed, readied.\n\nIt was at once reassuring and somehow disappointing. Here we go again, she thought. She opened her eyes.\n\nThe word SIMULATION, which was what she expected to see first, albeit briefly, wasn't there. She blinked, looked around.\n\nShe was floating in some sort of suspensor field, in air, in a human or humanoid body dressed in some clingy but lightly puffed cover-all which left only her feet, hands and head exposed. She was at forty-five degrees to the floor, looking down. A tiny, sleek ship drone – so tiny and sleek it might have passed for a knife missile – was at eye-level, looking at her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The room around her appeared to be medical unit standard.\n\n\"Ms Tefwe?\" the drone said. She was being tipped slowly backwards to an upright position, and lowered towards the deck.\n\nShe cleared her throat. \"Reporting,\" she said, remembering the earlier simulated conversation with the You Call This Clean? Where she was now would be under the control of either a cooperative Hub Mind or a Special Circumstances ex-Psychopath-class Very Fast Picket. From the look of the drone, she was guessing the latter.\n\n\"Welcome aboard the VFP Outstanding Contribution To The Historical Process,\" the drone said, confirming her guess just as her feet met the deck. She felt her weight transfer to the soles of her feet, through the gently squashed flesh to her bones, her body. Whatever field had been supporting her ebbed away and she felt planted, properly re-embodied.\n\n\"Reverser field, please,\" she said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "One sprang up in front of her, between her and the drone." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She looked like her old self; precisely so. \"Thank you.\" The field vanished.\n\nThe little drone said, \"We are entering the outskirts of the Angemar's Prime system, en route for Dibaldipen Orbital. Would you care to specify a particular plate on the Orbital?\"\n\n\"Honn plate,\" she told it.\n\n\"Honn. Course adjusted. Is there anything else you require?\"\n\n\"Breakfast.\"\n\n\"Being prepared; your specified waking default.\"\n\n\"Thank you. Please call ahead to Xunpum Livery, Chyan'tya, Honn, and reserve a mount. An aphore, for an open-ended, minimum four-day hire. Assure them I am suitably experienced with such animals but kindly do not reveal my identity.\"\n\nThe little drone suddenly developed an aura field, turning a crisp blue-grey. \"A mount? An animal?\" it said. \"Four days? I had rather envisaged Displacing you at sub-millimetre accuracy, precisely where you want to go.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tefwe rose and fell on the balls of her feet, flexed her hands into fists and relaxed again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm sure,\" she said. \"However the person I'm going to see is something of a stickler in such matters. Certain standards have to be maintained, designated procedures adhered to. I am far from being guaranteed an audience at all; if I don't turn up looking like I've been travelling for a while I am almost certain to be ignored.\"\n\nThe little drone was silent for a moment, then said, \"Couldn't you just pretend?\"\n\n\"No. And I'll be honest; could be five days. Maybe more. Four days is just the travelling time.\"\n\n\"I was under the impression that the whole point of this exercise was to expedite matters as swiftly as possible.\"\n\n\"It is. What would be the journey time from the present location of the Blue-class LSV You Call This Clean? to Dibaldipen Orbital by the fastest Very Fast Picket?\"\n\n\"Approximately one hundred and thirty-two days.\"\n\n\"Well, there you are then.\"\n\n\"But once you've seen the person, you could come straight back with the information you require, or simply transmit it to be passed on to any subsequent re-embodiment. In any event, there would be no need to return slowly.\"\n\n\"In theory. In practice the person concerned might check up on the manner of my return, become upset and refuse to see me on any subsequent occasion.\"\n\n\"Would any subsequent occasion on which you might wish to visit this person plausibly carry the same moral weight or general significance as the present one, in which it has been judged worth effectively putting the entire Fast Picket fleet at your disposal, other commitments allowing?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Probably not. Though who can say?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Please consider carefully the wisdom of transmitting to me any novel/germane information immediately upon receipt, and returning as rapidly as possible.\"\n\n\"I will. I take the point that my future relations with the person concerned are of relatively little consequence.\"\n\n\"The person concerned sounds – to be polite – eccentric.\"\n\n\"That would be polite to the point of over-generosity,\" Tefwe said. \"Awkward, tetchy and unreasonable might be closer to the truth.\"\n\n\"Would the person concerned be an exceptionally old human?\"\n\n\"No,\" Tefwe said, \"the person concerned is an exceptionally old drone.\"\n\nThe ship drone's aura flashed amused red then disappeared. \"I'll see how that breakfast's coming along.\"\n\n\"Followed?\"\n\n\"Maybe.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How maybe?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"About fourteen per cent maybe, averaged.\"\n\n\"Averaged from what? What does that even mean?\"\n\n\"Averaged from different scenarios. In ambient peacetime the likelihood would be less than five per cent. In all-out wartime, closer to forty per cent.\"\n\n\"How does that average out at fourteen?\"\n\n\"There are other scenarios to be taken into account,\" the avatar told her. \"Then there's weighting.\"\n\nCossont opened her mouth to query that as well, then decided it wasn't worth it.\n\n\"You generally start to react to anything over fifteen per cent,\" Berdle said, apparently trying to be helpful.\n\nPyan made a throat-clearing noise. \"Are we in any danger?\" it asked.\n\n\"A little,\" the avatar admitted.\n\n\"Then, do you carry lifeboats?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should contain the word 'cossont' precisely 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Berdle looked at Cossont. \"Is it being serious?\"\n\n\"About as serious as it knows how to seem.\"\n\n\"I was being serious!\"\n\n\"Be quiet.\"\n\n\"This is my life too!\"\n\n\"Shut up!\" Cossont looked at Berdle. \"Does this change anything?\" They were still in the module, sitting on comfortable but ordinary-looking couches. The avatar lounged elegantly.\n\n\"It may be best to lose them before we visit Ospin,\" Berdle said, \"or employ some method to obscure your exact destination, which, of course, I have yet to learn.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 12 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'll tell you when we get there,\" Cossont said, feeling oddly guilty. \"Shit. When do we get there?\" She'd just remembered, alarmingly, that when she'd taken a clipper to get out to Ospin, on the occasion she'd gone there to deposit the glittering grey cube holding QiRia's mind-state, the voyage had lasted weeks. If it took that long this time the Subliming would already have happened by the time they got there.\n\n\"In about eighty-five hours. Less if we hurry.\"\n\n\"Why don't we hurry?\"\n\n\"Because to do so will damage my engines. They are still repairing themselves after my dash to Izenion.\"\n\n\"So how are you going to lose the ship that might be following us?\"\n\n\"With difficulty, possibly.\"\n\n\"So what was the other alternative?\"\n\n\"Employ some method to obscure your exact destination. That should be easier. The android Eglyle Parinherm might be useful at that point. I'd like to wake it.\"\n\n\"Fine by me. See if you can convince it it's not all a sim.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: The user will write a bit then you need to write around three sentences continuing directly from the user's text. Note: Characters may be introduced as if already known - maintain any existing context or treat as new if unclear.\n\nGenre: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Participants: LOU Caconym / MSV Pressure Drop\n\nLOU Caconym: So, our little group has grown with the inclusion of the You Call This Clean? as well as the Empiricist." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And something called the Smile Tolerantly is another accomplice of the long-lived Mr Q." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Only, looking at my edition of the relevant ship lists, the Smile Tolerantly disappeared up its own wazoo some 140 years before the Warm, Considering was even built, and was itself only brought into being just under four thousand years ago, so leaving open the question of who else might have been aiding and abetting the elusive geezer in the various meantimes. Any ideas?\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: None. Further research is required.\n\nLOU Caconym: Wait. I want to write that down." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand on the story, maintaining character relationships, in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Does she touch you... like this?\"\n\n\"Ah... ah yes, very much like that. Just... like that.\"\n\n\"And kiss you, like this?\"\n\n\"... Somewhat like that. Only a little like that.\"\n\n\"Only a little?\"\n\n\"She kisses me differently. Oh, this is not... I shouldn't... I really shouldn't be telling you any of this. This is so... You are the most terrible man.\"\n\n\"I know, I know. I hate myself. Am I not just the most terrible, terrible man?\"\n\n\"You are, I don't know... Oh, now what?\"\n\n\"Let me see... does she kiss you like that?\"\n\n\"No. Again, no, not quite like that.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"In some other way?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"In some other way.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How many ways are there, to kiss? I... I really have no idea. I am not so well versed as you might... let's see... \"\n\n\"... Well, then. Now. She kisses, let me see... more lightly, just as... passionately, but with less, less... less intensity, less muscularity.\"\n\n\"Muscularity?\"\n\n\"I think that is the word.\"\n\n\"And, with the touching, is it like this...?\"\n\n\"Oh, ah, yes, sometimes, though... \"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Her hands, her fingers.\"\n\n\"Like this?\"\n\n\"No, not... something like... her hands, see, are more slender, the fingers are longer, they are more delicate. Yours are... fuller, more... \"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Filling?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes. And grasping.\"\n\n\"Grasping? Grasping? I'm shocked, Virisse! Am I really grasping?\"\n\n\"Ha, I mean... hungry, given to clutching, gripping, even grabbing.\"\n\n\"And now grabbing! Good gracious!\"\n\n\"You grabbed me, don't you remember? That first time, when we were in the garden of the parliament. That evening? You said you wanted to talk about some long-term aspect of her schedule, do you remember?\"\n\n\"Of course I remember. Here is more comfortable, though, don't you think? I swear if we weren't all departing so shortly I might have to have this bed reinforced, just to cope with our exertions.\"\n\n\"Her birthday, the following year. You said you wanted to plan something special for her because it would be her sixtieth. Then. That was when you grabbed at me, almost as soon as you had me alone, in that night-shady bower.\"\n\n\"I grabbed you? Are you sure this was me?\"\n\n\"Oh, now. Who else? You know this. You did.\"\n\n\"I thought you wanted to be grabbed.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Essential phrase to include: \"I think I will say anything, when we are like this, when you hold me like this.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I might have.\"\n\n\"Just as well I did, then, wouldn't you say?\"\n\n\"I think I will say anything, when we are like this, when you hold me like this.\"\n\n\"Really? I must think up something extremely terrible, then, to exploit that admission.\"\n\n\"You mustn't. You can't. I'm at your mercy; it would be cruel, wrong.\"\n\n\"To the contrary! It would only be right. You offer me this, I must take it. You lay yourself open; I must in.\"\n\n\"Ah. Ah... yes. Oh, dear Scribe... But... not anything. Not anything at all. I am not so totally... I am not so... I am not... \"\n\n\"Not what, Virisse?\"\n\n\"I can't remember. I have forgotten what I am not.\"\n\n\"Well. Better that than forgetting what you are.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You steal all I have away, like this, when we lie like this. I feel laid bare, all washed away.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Does she do this? Does she have that same effect?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to seamlessly include 'How I'd love to compare. How I'd love to see. How I'd love to watch.' in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, my love, why do you always have to ask me to make these...?\"\n\n\"Because I'm fascinated. Everything about you fascinates me. How can I not be consumed by... not envy, but interest, to know how you lie with her, how much of what you do with me is what you do with her?\"\n\n\"Is it not enough to know that you and I do what we do? Do we have to compare? Must we always compete?\"\n\n\"How can we not? The urge to compare and compete is as basic as any. As basic as this.\"\n\n\"Must it be, though?\"\n\n\"It is; that's all that matters. And does she touch you like this?\"\n\n\"Oh. Oh. Oh. Yes, yes she does.\"\n\n\"How I'd love to compare. How I'd love to see. How I'd love to watch.\"\n\n\"See, my love? Watch?\"\n\n\"Is that too much to ask?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Prophet's kiss, Septame! You want the three of us...?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Septame, is it, now! Why... \"\n\n\"Oh, don't stop, don't stop to laugh. Laugh if you must, but don't stop.\"\n\n\"Well, I plough on. But no, I didn't think to suggest that she and I might have you both, together.\"\n\n\"No. That would be too... I couldn't... anyway, she would never... \"\n\n\"No, of course not. When I have you, I want you all to myself. And I want you to have me, all to yourself. I'd have no dilution of this... concentration, this... tenacity.\"\n\n\"What, then?\"\n\n\"Just to watch, just to see you with her.\"\n\n\"She still would not.\"\n\n\"I know. I wouldn't expect her to. And secreting myself within some hidden space, like a courtier in some ancient tragedy, would be absurd.\"\n\n\"Put it from your mind, my love. Concentrate on this, on now, on us.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'nothing' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The more I do, the more I want to see you and know you in all your states, in all your moods and passions, and that must include with her. Just once, just to see, later, not at the time. And it would be so easily accomplished; I can source the sort of means no civilian or journalist can find.\"\n\n\"Oh, dear gods, you've thought about this. You're serious! No, no, still; don't stop... \"\n\n\"Serious, ardent. Please. It would mean so much.\"\n\n\"It might mean my job! My career; all my standing. She's the president!\"\n\n\"She is president for thirteen more days, as I am a septame for thirteen more days. All that means nothing then and already starts to mean even less now. What does matter is that she is a woman, you are a woman and I am a man.\"\n\n\"But still... \"\n\n\"Still nothing, my love, my beautiful love. We strip off our importance with our clothes. That's all that matters; not our titles. They only have meaning in public, not in moments like these, when we are purely, perfectly ourselves. Only a man – a weak man, a hopelessly curious, desperate-to-know man – asks this of you, my Virisse, not a politician. Just a man. Your man, your man, your man.\"\n\n\"But if... if... if... \"\n\n\"I'd protect you. There would be no risk. And so close to the end of this world, the start of the next, who really cares? All the rules are questioned now, all the laws loosened. Everything is licensed. Like this, and this, and this.\"\n\n\"Oh. Oh. Oh.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And I'd make sure nothing would happen to you. I swear; I swear I swear I swear. Even if anything was found, it would never be traceable to you or I. Say you will. Say yes. Say it for me. Say you will. Say yes, say yes, say yes. Say it.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"... Yes... \"\n\nThe Simming Problem – in the circumstances, it was usually a bad sign when something was so singular and/or notorious it deserved to be capitalised – was of a moral nature, as the really meaty, chewy, most intractable problems generally were.\n\nThe Simming Problem boiled down to, How true to life was it morally justified to be?\n\nSimulating the course of future events in a virtual environment to see what might happen back in reality, and tweaking one's own actions accordingly in different runs of the simulated problem to see what difference these would make and to determine whether it was possible to refine those actions such that a desired outcome might be engineered, was hardly new; in a sense it long pre-dated AIs, computational matrices, substrates, computers and even the sort of mechanical or hydrological arrangements of ball-bearings, weights and springs or water, tubes and valves that enthusiastic optimists had once imagined might somehow model, say, an economy.\n\nIn a sense, indeed, such simulations first took place in the minds of only proto-sentient creatures, in the deep pre-historic age of any given species. If you weren't being too strict about your definitions you could claim that the first simulations happened in the heads – or other appropriate body-or being-parts – of animals, or the equivalent, probably shortly after they developed a theory of mind and started to think about how to manipulate their peers to ensure access to food, shelter, mating opportunities or greater social standing.\n\nThoughts like, If I do this, then she does that... No; if I do that, making him do this... in creatures still mystified by fire, or unable to account for the existence of air, or ice, above their watery environment – or whatever – were arguably the start of the first simulations, no matter how dim, limited or blinded by ignorance and prejudice the whole process might be. They were, also, plausibly, the start of a line that led directly through discussions amongst village elders, through collegiate essays, flow charts, war games and the first computer programs to the sort of ultra-detailed simulations that could be shown – objectively, statistically, scientifically – to work.\n\nLong before most species made it to the stars, they would be entirely used to the idea that you never made any significant societal decision with large-scale or long-term consequences without running simulations of the future course of events, just to make sure you were doing the right thing. Simming problems at that stage were usually constrained by not having the calculational power to run a sufficiently detailed analysis, or disagreements regarding what the initial conditions ought to be." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Later, usually round about the time when your society had developed the sort of processal tech you could call Artificial Intelligence without blushing, the true nature of the Simming Problem started to appear." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Once you could reliably model whole populations within your simulated environment, at the level of detail and complexity that meant individuals within that simulation had some sort of independent existence, the question became: how god-like, and how cruel, did you want to be?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Most problems, even seemingly really tricky ones, could be handled by simulations which happily modelled slippery concepts like public opinion or the likely reactions of alien societies by the appropriate use of some especially cunning and devious algorithms; whole populations of slightly different simulative processes could be bred, evolved and set to compete against each other to come up with the most reliable example employing the most decisive short-cuts to accurately modelling, say, how a group of people would behave; nothing more processor-hungry than the right set of equations would – once you'd plugged the relevant data in – produce a reliable estimate of how that group of people would react to a given stimulus, whether the group represented a tiny ruling clique of the most powerful, or an entire civilisation.\n\nBut not always. Sometimes, if you were going to have any hope of getting useful answers, there really was no alternative to modelling the individuals themselves, at the sort of scale and level of complexity that meant they each had to exhibit some kind of discrete personality, and that was where the Problem kicked in.\n\nOnce you'd created your population of realistically reacting and – in a necessary sense – cogitating individuals, you had – also in a sense – created life. The particular parts of whatever computational substrate you'd devoted to the problem now held beings; virtual beings capable of reacting so much like the back-in-reality beings they were modelling – because how else were they to do so convincingly without also hoping, suffering, rejoicing, caring, loving and dreaming? – that by most people's estimation they had just as much right to be treated as fully recognised moral agents as did the originals in the Real, or you yourself.\n\nIf the prototypes had rights, so did the faithful copies, and by far the most fundamental right that any creature ever possessed or cared to claim was the right to life itself, on the not unreasonable grounds that without that initial right, all others were meaningless.\n\nBy this reasoning, then, you couldn't just turn off your virtual environment and the living, thinking creatures it contained at the completion of a run or when a simulation had reached the end of its useful life; that amounted to genocide, and however much it might feel like serious promotion from one's earlier primitive state to realise that you had, in effect, become the kind of cruel and pettily vengeful god you had once, in your ignorance, feared, it was still hardly the sort of mature attitude or behaviour to be expected of a truly civilised society, or anything to be proud of.\n\nSome civs, admittedly, simply weren't having any of this, and routinely bred whole worlds, even whole galaxies, full of living beings which they blithely consigned to oblivion the instant they were done with them, sometimes, it seemed, just for the glorious fun of it, and to annoy their more ethically angst-tangled co-civilisationalists, but they – or at least those who admitted to the practice, rather than doing it but keeping quiet about it – were in a tiny minority, as well as being not entirely welcome at all the highest tables of the galactic community, which was usually precisely where the most ambitious and ruthless species/civs most desired to be.\n\nOthers reckoned that as long as the termination was instant, with no warning and therefore no chance that those about to be switched off could suffer, then it didn't really matter. The wretches hadn't existed, they'd been brought into existence for a specific, contributory purpose, and now they were nothing again; so what?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Most people, though, were uncomfortable with such moral brusqueness, and took their responsibilities in the matter more seriously." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They either avoided creating virtual populations of genuinely living beings in the first place, or only used sims at that sophistication and level of detail on a sustainable basis, knowing from the start that they would be leaving them running indefinitely, with no intention of turning the environment and its inhabitants off at any point.\n\nWhether these simulated beings were really really alive, and how justified it was to create entire populations of virtual creatures just for your own convenience under any circumstances, and whether or not – if/once you had done so – you were sort of duty-bound to be honest with your creations at some point and straight out tell them that they weren't really real, and existed at the whim of another order of beings altogether – one with its metaphorical finger hovering over an Off switch capable of utterly and instantly obliterating their entire universe... well, these were all matters which by general and even relieved consent were best left to philosophers. As was the ever-vexing question, How do we know we're not in a simulation?\n\nThere were sound, seemingly base-reality metamathematically convincing and inescapable reasons for believing that all concerned in this ongoing debate about simulational ethics were genuinely at the most basic level of reality, the one that definitely wasn't running as a virtual construct on somebody else's substrate, but – if these mooted super-beings had been quite extraordinarily clever and devious – such seemingly reliable and reassuring signs might all just be part of the illusion.\n\nThere was also the Argument of Increasing Decency, which basically held that cruelty was linked to stupidity and that the link between intelligence, imagination, empathy and good-behaviour-as-it-was-generally-understood – i.e. not being cruel to others – was as profound as these matters ever got. This strongly implied that beings capable of setting up a virtuality so convincing, so devious, so detailed that it was capable of fooling entities as smart as – say – Culture Minds must be so shatteringly, intoxicatingly clever they pretty much had to be decent, agreeable and highly moral types themselves. (So; much like Culture Minds, then, except more so.)\n\nBut that too might be part of the set-up, and the clear positive correlation between beings of greater intellectual capacity taking over from lesser ones – while still respecting their rights, of course – and the gradual diminution of violence and suffering over civilisationally significant periods of time might also be the result of a trick.\n\nA bit, after some adjustments for scale, like the trick of seeding another society with the ideas for a holy book that appeared to tell the truth on several levels but which was basically just part of an experiment, the Contents May Differ thought, as it reviewed the results of the latest sim runs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The sims it was setting up and letting run were all trying to answer the relatively simple question, How much difference will it make if the Gzilt find out the Book of Truth is a fake?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And the answer appeared to be: Who the fuck knows?\n\nOnce you started to think that the only way to model a population accurately would be to read the individual mind-states of every single person within the real thing – something even more immoral than it was impractical – it was probably time to try another approach entirely.\n\nAs a good, decent, caring and responsible Culture Mind, the Contents May Differ would never run a sim of the Gzilt people at the individual level to find out anyway, even if it could have, and – apart from anything else – had decided some time ago that even resorting to such desperate measures wouldn't solve anything in any case. Because there were two Problems: the Simming Problem and the Chaos Problem.\n\nThe Chaos Problem meant that in certain situations you could run as many simulations as you liked, and each would produce a meaningful result, but taken as a whole there would be no discernible pattern to them, and so no lesson to be drawn or obvious course laid out to pursue; it would all depend so exquisitely on exactly how you had chosen to tweak the initial conditions at the start of each run that, taken together, they would add up to nothing more useful than the realisation that This Is A Tricky One.\n\nThe real result, the one that mattered, out there in reality, would almost certainly very closely resemble one of your simulated results, but there would have been no way at any stage of the process to have determined exactly or even approximately which one, and that rendered the whole enterprise almost entirely futile; you ended up having to use other, much less reliable methods to work out what was going to happen.\n\nThese included using one's own vast intelligence, pooled with the equally vast intelligences of one's peers, to access the summed total of galactic history and analyse, compare and contrast the current situation relative to similar ones from the past. Given the sort of clear, untrammelled, devastatingly powerful thinking AIs and particularly Minds were capable of, this could be a formidably accurate and – compared to every other method available – relatively reliable strategy. Its official title was Constructive Historical Integrative Analysis.\n\nIn the end, though, there was another name the Minds used, amongst themselves, for this technique, which was Just Guessing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The mount was called Yoawin." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was old and in no particular hurry, though still strong and tireless. Well, as tireless as Tefwe needed it to be; she got weary and saddle-sore before it started showing signs of complaint.\n\nTefwe had chosen an old-fashioned saddle: tall and unwieldy if you were planning on performing any fancy stuff, but comfortable. Comfortable for the aphore as well as her; you always had to think of your mount. They'd had intelligent animals for hire at the stables in Chyan'tya, too; ones you could talk to, both amended bio and what were effectively walking, talking slightly dumb drones made to look biological. She guessed talkative people might hire those. Maybe people who were so talkative they couldn't persuade other humans to ride with them. But a talking mount had always struck Tefwe as taking things a little too far. Aphores were quite smart enough, and sufficiently companionable to provide a sort of silent friendship.\n\nThey'd arrived in the middle of the night, on this side of the Orbital." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She left at first light, riding out through the quiet town. There was some sort of festival happening during the day and some flower garlands, stretched across the street leading out of town towards the hills, had sagged with the dew during the night; she had to lift them out of the way to get underneath. One pale blue flower, loosened, started to fall. She caught it, sniffed it, stuck it in her hair, rode on.\n\nThe town was much as she'd remembered. It sat like a rough brush stroke along one side of the Snake river, cliffed on the shifting sands of tawny and grey-pink that marked the desert edge; a fragrant oasis of bell-blossom and strandle flower, even-cluss and jodenberry, the low, flowing buildings half submerged by their own orchards and groves.\n\nAcross the river, past some stunted, half-hearted dunes and the silted-up entrance to a long-dry oxbow lake, the brush and scrub of the low prairie began. The few scattered bushes looked like an after-thought to the land: quick, light scribbles of brittle-dry vegetation, prone to fires that in the right wind could move so fast you were better turning to face their heat and running straight through, because you'd never outrun them.\n\nThe river was very low; just a trickle at the bottom of the crack-dried muds and in-flowed spills of sand like fanned ramps. High season. The rains would come in a third of a year from now, falling in the Bulkheads, which were so far off that even in the clearest weather you could strain your eyes for ever and you'd never see them, night or day, not this far down in the thick of air." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A few tens of days later after the rains started falling in the high lands of the Honn-Eynimorm Bulkhead Range, the river would swell, generally pushing a plugged mess of old leaves, scrawny twigs, gnarled branches, stripped tree trunks and the bleached hides and bones of dead animals before it, like a moving barricade of half-forgotten decrepitude and death.\n\nShe rode out across the Pouch, the bay of desert and patchy set-sand that lay between the river and the town on one side and the hills on the other. A pair of raptors wheeled high up, following her for half the morning, then found something else to watch, kilometres off anti-spinwards. She lost sight of them in the building heat of the cloudless day.\n\nHer backside got sore; she glanded numb, rode on.\n\nAt the height of the day, a desiccant umbrel provided shade for her and the aphore, once she'd chased a snoozing misiprike away. It had been fast asleep; she'd had to clap her hands and holler to get it to wake while she and the suddenly nervy aphore stood, only ten metres away.\n\nThe misiprike had looked up, risen tiredly to its feet and loped off. It stopped once to snarl back at them as though it had only just remembered it was supposed to be a fearsome creature, then padded loose-limbed over the frozen waves of set-sand.\n\nShe fed the aphore, her stomach rumbling, then ate, drank." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even in the shade it was very hot; she and the mount snoozed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She'd missed the descent; usually she liked being dropped onto the inside of an Orbital, rather than taking the conventional approach of coming up from underneath. A descent meant you got to see the overview of the place you were coming to; a real view, even if it was through a screen, not a pretend one.\n\nShe'd been born and raised on a planet. This was a rare thing, in the Culture; even rarer than being born on a ship, and that was pretty rare in itself. Things had been like this for millennia. Anyway, she ascribed whatever eccentricities she was prone to displaying to that oddity of birthright. She'd spent more time on Os than anywhere else – spent centuries living on them – but still she couldn't help but think of planets as normal and Orbitals as somehow aberrant, for all that the artificial worlds far outnumbered the number of naturally inhabitable ones.\n\nIn the end it was kind of unarguable that planets were natural and Orbitals were artificial, though she supposed that, when you thought about it, it was really no more natural to live on the outside of a huge, skein-warping sphere of rock, held to its surface – like the atmosphere – by nothing more than gravity than it was to live on the inside of an O, held there by spin, with the atmosphere held down by the same movement and stopped from spilling off the edges by retainment walls of diamond film and fate knew what exoticism of material and field.\n\nShe drifted in and out of her snooze, and, while still dozily waking up, asked her ancient pen terminal whether anybody had ever built a planet, or discovered a natural Orbital. Yes to the former, though rarely, and not for aeons." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A straight no to the latter." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory inclusion (with quotes): There. See how you like it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There you are,\" she told Yoawin as she got her to stand and busied herself re-setting the animal's bridle. \"Planets not guaranteed totally natural after all.\"\n\nThe aphore snorted.\n\nThat night, at the start of the hills – maybe a kilometre in and a hundred metres up, by a dry water bowl – Tefwe slept under the stars and the bright, lit band of the Orbital's far side.\n\nThat was the really unnatural sign of an O, she supposed. You might not notice the inside-out curvature at any time, or come to an access tube that would let you drop the hundred metres or whatever to the world's space-exposed under-surface, or see the sea or the clouds held ruler-straight against an edge wall, but, come the night, there would be the sure and certain sign that you really were pinned by your rotating frame of reference to the inside of a bracelet ten million klicks across: the far side, shining in its daytime while the side you were on had its back turned to whatever sun the whole O circled.\n\nWell, unless the clouds on your side of the Orbital were really thick, she supposed, and fell asleep.\n\nCome the morning they left in the grey pre-dawn, despite Yoawin's protests. \"Don't you spit at me, you addled stumble-hoof,\" Tefwe said, and spat back at it. \"There. See how you like it.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She wiped her face while Yoawin shook hers. \"There. Now, sorry. Both of us sorry, yes? No more spitting. Here.\" She gave it some dried berries.\n\nA series of tall cliffs kept them mostly in shade until nearly noon, letting them keep going longer. They ate, drank and dozed under an overhang.\n\nThe track just before the pass was very steep; she got off Yoawin and led the animal up the zigzagging path. Dry stones rattled under her boots and the aphore's hooves. At a corner in the trail near the top, one fall of initially just a dozen or so stones set off a small landslide further down. The fractious, rattling, rumbling sound of it echoed off the cliffs and slopes all around like dry thunder. Tefwe watched the dusty mass descend, to see if it would sweep away any part of the track, but it didn't, and the tumbling mass of stones and boulders slowed and slumped to a dusty stop on the shallowing slope some way above the valley floor." }, { "from": "human", "value": "From the pass, the plateau was only fifty metres below her, ringed by sharp peaks and ragged cliffs." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 6 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Its surface was bright with salt lakes and thin wind-corralled whorls of pale sand. Yoawin panted. Tefwe patted the animal's snout and looked around as the hot wind swept her hair back from her face. She smiled, and felt the dried skin on her lips protest at the motion.\n\nA couple of kilometres away, shimmering in the heated air, she could see the rocky outcrop where the drone Hassipura Plyn-Frie would be working on its sandstreams.\n\nTefwe reached up to where the flower she'd picked the day before had been, tucked into a coil of her hair, at least until this morning, thinking to leave it here at the pass. But her fingers closed round nothing; it had gone, already fallen." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll be your writing partner for this section. I'll provide a segment, and you continue with 12 sentences, channeling Iain Banks in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre. Characters may have backstories from previous chapters." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "same energy as Iain Banks, keep writing. story might have ongoing elements" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"This is a closed system, of course,\" the blindfolded man said, feeling his way to the seat and then turning it, holding it angled away from the ancient-looking console and screen so that the septame could sit in it. Banstegeyn held the back of the seat but did not sit. The blindfolded man – by his uniform, a captain in the Home Regiment – talked to him as though he could see him. \"It is unconnected to any other, and so its contents are unavailable elsewhere. I understand other such hermetic arrangements hold certain records it is as well are not readily accessible; however this one merely catalogues various pieces of equipment which are regarded as being best kept secret from the general mass of people, and indeed even the general mass of armed forces personnel.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I see,\" said Banstegeyn, studying the captain's face." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The man's eyes were concealed behind a thick metal strap cushioned with dark foam. According to Marshal Chekwri, who had personally driven him here to this anonymous if well-guarded warehouse on the capital's outskirts, this was perfectly normal and did not constitute some special arrangement made just for him.\n\nWhen they'd first arrived and been introduced to the blindfolded captain, the marshal had produced a vicious-looking fighting knife and flicked it fast and straight at the captain's blindfolded face, eliciting, it seemed at first, not the slightest response. Though then the captain had smiled and said, \"Ah, I felt the wind of that; were you really testing me, ma'am?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Chekwri had just smiled her thin, humourless smile." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She'd stayed in an outer office as Banstegeyn had been led into the barely lit inner office, through a double set of thick doors.\n\n\"So,\" Banstegeyn said, still not sitting. \"Do you know who I am, Captain?\"\n\n\"No, sir. You must be above a certain rank to be here – exactly which depends on the service and regiment – but I don't know who you are. Your voice sounds vaguely familiar but I wouldn't be able to place it.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He smiled, and his head tipped back a little so that now he seemed to be addressing a point somewhere above the other man's head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"For somebody who spends a large part of his working day as a blind man, I am remarkably bad with voices, sir.\" He shrugged. \"It is a blessing in some ways.\"\n\n\"I'm sure.\"\n\n\"Please, sir; sit.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Thank you.\" Banstegeyn sat down." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The captain went through the controls for the system." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Essential phrase to include: \"... will be delivered into it. Larger items will be delivered into the pull-out hopper behind you, sir.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were simple enough.\n\n\"Any item below a certain size, such as would fit into this drawer... \" the fellow pulled out a very long and heavy-seeming drawer in the console \"... will be delivered into it. Larger items will be delivered into the pull-out hopper behind you, sir.\" He nodded at a section of the wall where there was a rectangular outline nearly two metres long with a substantial double handle.\n\n\"The screen should tell you how long it'll take to physically retrieve any item, sir, should you find one that meets your requirements, but please do be aware it could take some minutes; up to ten in some instances, and certain items require some assembly 'and... well, loading, frankly. A little patience may be required, sir, and possibly a little familiarity with whatever item is to be called for. I'll leave it to your own good judgement and that of the officer who accompanied you here whether any selected item is suitable.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The blindfolded captain sighed regretfully." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I trust you've already been so informed, sir, but I'm duty-bound to inform you that any and all responsibility for the use of any items found herein rests entirely with your good self, sir, and once an item leaves these premises it becomes fully your property, to the extent that all record of it even having been stored here will be irrevocably wiped and deleted from the database held herein.\"\n\n\"I understand,\" Banstegeyn said. \"Do I have to sign anything, or speak a form of words?\"\n\nThe captain's smile was broad, tolerant." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh, absolutely not, sir. Officially you aren't even here.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I see. Well, thank you. Sorry to put you to so much trouble.\"\n\n\"Not at all, sir. There's been very little demand lately; it's been terribly slow. Nice to have somebody requiring our services again. I'll leave you now, sir; press the blue button on the left of the console if you need any help.\"\n\nBanstegeyn waited until the heavy doors had fully closed behind the captain before turning back to the screen. He took in a breath to tell it to wake up, then felt foolish." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Of course; entirely manual, without the least semblance of voice-recognition, let alone even crude AI." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He found the On button, thumbed it.\n\nA simple in-holo screen, with a keyboard, or a stylus and writing tablet, if so desired.\n\nHe sighed. This might take some time.\n\nT. C. Vilabier's 26th String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, MW 1211 – The Hydrogen Sonata – started with a single sustained note, right at the top of the range of the instrument which had had to be invented to play it properly, the bodily acoustic Antagonistic Undecagonstring for four hands." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That single note was then joined by a faint, uncertain chord of slowly shifting harmonics, which was another way of saying that it started to sound out of tune after it got more than one note in." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fans and detractors alike agreed that this was a remarkable achievement, and also that the work as a whole was something of an acquired taste.\n\nThe single high note at the start of the work was meant to signify a solitary proton, specifically a hydrogen nucleus, while the following wavering pseudo-chord was supposed to embody the concept of a sole electron's probability cloud, so that together the first note and the first chord represented the element hydrogen.\n\nVilabier was thought to have been joking when he had claimed that the work was itself merely the first note in a vast and incrementally more complicated cycle that would grow to encompass the entirety of the periodic table.\n\nRegardless; after this simple beginning the work became furiously complicated and – initially at least, until playing techniques and prosthetic technology had sufficiently improved – almost unplayable." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Initially, in this case, meant for several centuries. Many held that whether it was unplayable or not didn't particularly matter; what did was that it was completely unlistenable.\n\nBut that was, arguably, to take a somewhat doctrinaire attitude to what the word \"listenable\" meant.\n\n\"I like it,\" the ship said, through Berdle." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Really?\" Cossont said, standing and shaking herself, loosening all the over-tensed muscles that tended to result when one played the elevenstring with any gusto." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She'd only tackled the first movement, and then purely because the ship had asked her to, and because she was feeling guilty about not having played the instrument for days. The ship had altered the acoustics of the big central lounge area of the module to make it sound sweeter. They were a day out from their destination, the cloud of Centralised Dataversities and associated other habitats, institutions and auxiliary resources in the Ospin system.\n\n\"Yes,\" Pyan said, \"really?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Pyan had been perfectly indifferent to the Hydrogen Sonata – as it was to all music – until it had realised that most people hated the piece, when it had decided to join in the chorus of disdain." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I can see what it's trying to do, and it has a mathematical elegance to it that I appreciate,\" Berdle said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Also, I've invented a form of musical notation that I think enhances its appreciation in the abstract, as a visual and intellectual internalised experience, without one actually having to listen to it.\"\n\nCossont nodded. \"I can certainly see the point of that.\" She stopped, frowned. \"You've invented a...?\" She shook her head. \"No, never mind.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I agree with Mr Berdle,\" Eglyle Parinherm said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"However, I do detect a degree of discordant tonality.\"\n\nThe android had been activated hours earlier, waking instantaneously on the bed platform where he'd been stored. He'd stared straight up and, in a deep, controlled voice said, \"Unit Y988, Parinherm, Eglyle, systems checked, all enabled. Sim status ready, engaged, chron scale subjective one-to-one.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" Berdle had said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It had tried turning the android off and on again a few times since, but to no avail." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont flexed her fingers, stowed the instrument's two bows in its case." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Discordant tonality about covers it,\" she said.\n\n\"While you were playing,\" Berdle said, \"I found some screen of your mother.\"\n\n\"Oh, shit.\"\n\n\"Shall I...?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yeah, I suppose.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'could' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Two days after they'd left the Izenion system, Cossont had suddenly realised she ought to let her mother know she was okay. She'd asked the ship to get a message to Warib telling her that she was alive and well but couldn't communicate directly.\n\n\"But I could arrange a direct communication quite easily,\" the ship had told her.\n\n\"Could you really?\" she'd said, eyes wide." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Anyway, as I was saying: alive and well but not able to communicate directly... um, don't tell anybody I've been in touch, obviously, ah... hope you're well... should see you before the Instigation.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She'd smiled at the very handsome Gzilt male that the avatar had become. \"And tell her I've met an extremely good-looking and very powerful man, if you like. That'll keep her happy.\"\n\n\"Any customary sign-off?\" Berdle had asked.\n\n\"Well, hers to me is usually, 'Well, if you're going to be like that!' followed by the screen going blank, and mine is usually, 'Um, you take care,' because it sounds, well, caring, without necessitating the use of the word 'love'.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hmm,\" the avatar had said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Also, it's a little un-personalised. As it stands, anybody could be sending her this, and she might suspect she is being lied to by a third party.\"\n\nCossont had sighed. \"I suppose. Well... tell her Pyan says hi, and... I'm keeping my natural hair colour.\"\n\nAnd now the ship had found some screen of Warib.\n\n\"This is from yesterday afternoon, on one of the channels on the cruise sea ship your mother inhabits,\" Berdle told her, as a screen appeared in mid-air, level with where Cossont stood." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She threw herself down into a chair." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The virtual screen dipped, following her. Pyan flapped and flopped over to arrange itself on the lounger next to Cossont. Even Parinherm leaned over to get a better view. Cossont thought of requesting some privacy, then decided she didn't care." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The screen came to life with a roaming shot of her mother's apartment on the sea ship and a female voice-over saying, \"We spoke to Madame Warib Cossont, of deck twenty-five, who believes her daughter may have been swept up in the current emergency and now, having just heard from her, fears for her well-being and even life.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, for fuck's sake!\" Vyr shouted. She looked at Berdle. \"You did put in the bit about her not telling anybody I'd been in touch?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Berdle said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He frowned. \"I thought I'd been entirely unambiguous. Even forceful.\"\n\nCossont just shook her head, looked back at the screen. There was an abrupt cut to a head-and-shoulders shot of Warib, sitting in her largest white couch with the sea and clouds behind. Small glowing figures in the top right corner of the screen read S -13, reminding any especially absent-minded viewers how many days were left to the Subliming." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Ensure 'fourteenth' appears 2 time(s) in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Warib was dressed in a blouse suit Vyr didn't recognise. It was a bit frilly and showy. \"Madame Cossont,\" the voice continued, slightly altered in timbre and ambience now, \"you recently heard from your daughter, didn't you?\"\n\n\"Or somebody claiming to be her, yes. It's not like her to be so poor getting back to me, it really isn't. We've always been very close and kept in touch all the time and then she just seemed to disappear from the face of the planet, and apparently her bed hasn't been even slept in for days – many, I mean several days – and then, of course, she is in the Fourteenth, the regiment the Fourteenth, and she was always very active in the Reserve, very respected, and of course there's been this terrible, terrible—\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Madame—\" the voice of the unseen interviewer said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Berdle looked at Vyr; she had one of her upper hands cupped over her nose and eyes, the other three hands all clasped tightly across her chest.\n\n\"—terrible explosion on this planet and for all I know – well, I thought, I assumed the worst, naturally, as any mother would. I wondered, 'Could she have been there, was that where she went? Did she know something?' as soon as I heard about, about the thing, but then there was nothing, just nothing—\"\n\n\"Madame Cossont—\"\n\n\"I'm sorry. I am just rattling on, aren't I? I do care, I worry so much about her... \" She looked away to one side, put her hand to her mouth and balled it there, her lips tightening, her eyes blinking quickly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her lower lip started to tremble." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I can't watch any more of this,\" Vyr announced. \"Turn it off. Please. What's the upshot?\"\n\nThe screen disappeared.\n\n\"Oh!\" Pyan said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I was enjoying that!\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Work this phrase into your response organically: \"She says that she doubts it really was from you and describes you as, I quote: 'wittering about her hair, when that's never been something she's ever even cared about, I mean I've done my best, I always have, but anyway, it did strike me as highly suspicious'. End quote.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Your mother relates,\" Berdle said, \"that she received the text message you sent via myself and says she thinks you're 'mixed up in something'.\"\n\n\"Well,\" Cossont sighed, \"she got that right, if nothing else.\"\n\n\"She says that she doubts it really was from you and describes you as, I quote: 'wittering about her hair, when that's never been something she's ever even cared about, I mean I've done my best, I always have, but anyway, it did strike me as highly suspicious'. End quote.\"\n\nVyr put both upper hands over her face." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh, for fuck's sake. That was supposed to... last time we... she said... oh, never mind.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She took a deep breath, looked up. \"Nothing about how my claiming to have met an extremely good-looking and very powerful man was even less likely to be true?\"\n\n\"I didn't include that,\" Berdle confessed. \"You left it to my discretion and I thought it best to leave it out.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Probably just as well. She'd have assumed it was code for I've been kidnapped.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Parinherm looked suddenly alert and glanced around quickly. \"You haven't been kidnapped, have you?\" he said, and seemed to be tensed to leap up from where he sat.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" Berdle said, and the android went limp, relaxing as though deflated and settling back into the lounger." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That is going to get tiresome,\" Cossont said, frowning at the unconscious android." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include exactly 2 instance(s) of the word 'feature'" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Can't you just re-program it or something?\" she asked Berdle.\n\n\"Not so easily,\" the avatar said. \"It has highly recursive, deeply embedded, multiple-level physical source coding check-sets worked down to the atomechanical level as well as a radically tenacious prescribed assume-simulation default with closely associated deacativatory protocols. It's a real tangle. Probably meant to be a safety feature.\"\n\n\"Certainly not a comprehensibility feature.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Berdle smiled. \"I beg your pardon. I mean it's hard to re-program it without disabling it, potentially.\" The avatar shrugged." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There will be a work-around recorded somewhere obscure, probably; I'll keep looking. Plus I'll just continue to think about it.\"\n\n\"What about the ship that's following us?\"\n\n\"I don't see any need to test its top speed by trying to outpace it; better to keep that edge, assuming it exists. I've run a lot of sims for a fly-through of the Ospin system and an insertion into various of the dataversities and I'm confident this can be done with minimal chance of the following ship spotting where you're inserted, unless it's a particularly remote unit.\" Berdle paused. \"We can leave this another hour or two, but, given that you have effectively raised the subject, it would be helpful to know which of the dataversities or other objects we might be targeting.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont nodded. \"It's the Bokri microrbital; the Incast facility.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Thank you,\" Berdle said, then smiled. \"That shouldn't be a problem. It's in a relatively densely packed volume of the cloud. Plenty of cover.\" It looked at Cossont. \"Would anybody – your mother, for example – know that you took the mind-state device to the Incast order on Bokri?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She shook her head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I didn't tell anybody.\" She sighed. \"I put it in my private journal and General Reikl knew about that, but I suppose that all got destroyed when the Reg HQ was blown up.\"\n\n\"Probably,\" Berdle agreed.\n\nCossont sighed. \"If this all goes horribly wrong, you'll have to contact my mother to tell her you've lost her little girl.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"If this all goes horribly wrong,\" the ship told her, \"I too might be lost.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well, you've heard what she's like; death might be preferable.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That,\" Pyan said primly, \"is no way to talk about your mother.\"\n\nCossont looked at Berdle and said reasonably, \"That, I think you'll find, is the only way to talk about my mother.\"\n\n\"These things accrete.\"\n\n\"Most things accrete that don't gradually crumble, rust or evaporate.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I didn't mean to suggest there was any merit in the process.\"\n\n\"Indeed. Nor in its opposite.\"\n\n\"I'm glad we have finally found something to agree on.\"\n\n\"I'm not.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I think you make a virtue of contrariness, or think to.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You might be dismayed to know just how little what you think matters to me, Scoaliera.\"\n\n\"I doubt it. My expectations could hardly be lower. Also, I'm encouraged by your relative approachability and good humour on this occasion.\"\n\n\"I do believe my sarcasm-meter just twitched.\"\n\n\"A false positive, I fear. I was being entirely sincere.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You say? Have I been imagining that I was the very exemplar of hearty, helpful bonhomie on our last meeting?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Possibly.\"\n\n\"Hmm.\"\n\nThe drone Hassipura Plyn-Frie was the size and shape of a large grey suitcase. A rather battered and dusty large grey suitcase." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Its scraped, slightly dented casing glinted in the sunlight where it had been polished by the sand in the wind, or had been scraped against stones." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If it was showing an aura field, it was being washed out by the brilliant sunlight. But probably it wasn't; it never had in the past, not as long as Tefwe had known it.\n\n\"Anyway, I am not persuaded that memories do only accrete,\" the drone told the woman. \"Even without the intrinsic limitations of a conventional biological brain, what one forgets can be as important and as formative as what one remembers.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hassipura had made its home in a tall, jagged outcrop of dark rocks that stuck out above the white waste of the salt desert like a diseased tooth." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Through the machine's efforts over the centuries, the place had become a dry little paradise of directed cause and effect, an oasis of minutely ordered motion and an arid image of a water garden.\n\n\"I thought drones, like Minds, remembered everything,\" Tefwe said.\n\n\"Well, we don't.\" There was a pause before it said, \"Well, I don't.\"\n\nTefwe and the drone were at the foot of the outcrop, just a vertical metre and a few shattered-looking boulders away from the surface of the desert." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tefwe was standing and Hassipura was hovering level with the woman's head, performing some maintenance on a fragile-looking raising screw." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The raising screw was powered by the fierce sunlight falling on a small semi-circular array of solar panels part-encasing its lower quarter." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I see,\" the woman said. \"Do you choose what to forget, or do you just let things disappear randomly?\"\n\n\"Scoaliera,\" the drone said, \"if I chose what to forget, I would very likely have forgotten all about you.\"\n\nThe screw, one of a dozen or so at this lowest level of the rocks, was a couple of metres tall, and thin enough for Tefwe's fingers to have met, had she grasped it one-handed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The foot of the device lay in a pool of sand about a metre across; the slowly rotating screw twisted lazily in the dark-gold grains, raising them inside a transparent collar with a hypnotic steadiness to deposit the lifted material, a minute or so later, into another pool on a higher tier of the outcrop, where a second level of raising screws and sand-wheels like pieces of giant clockwork would transport the material further up, and so on, for level after level and diminishing tier after diminishing tier until a single last raising screw, buried in a tunnel inside the dusty peak of the tor, deposited a small trickle of sand to an overflowing pool at its very summit." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That is ungallant, and, I suspect, also not true.\"\n\n\"Let us test that, shall we, should you ever come to visit me again?\"\n\n\"I don't believe you delete memories at random.\"\n\n\"They are chosen at random and buffer-binned; whether they are finally deleted is a matter of choice.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Ah. Might have thought so.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The drone had subtly sculpted the outcrop over the decades and centuries it had lived here, cutting channels, pools, cisterns, tunnels and reservoirs into the rock, building structures that at least resembled aqueducts and creating, had the whole complex been filled with water, what would have been a kind of secret water garden, albeit with rather steeply inclined canals and aqueducts.\n\nBut the outcrop held no water at all. Instead it was sand that moved within the tunnels and channels, sand which was lifted within the raising wheels and screws, and sand which fell in little whispering falls and moved liquidly down dry weirs.\n\n\"Whatever makes you think I'd wish to visit you again after being so roundly insulted?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That fact that I have insulted you just as roundly in the past to so little effect,\" the drone said smoothly, \"for here you are. Again.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You're right. I ought to come back just to annoy you,\" Tefwe said, squatting. She dipped her hand into the shaded pool where the rod of the raising screw slanted into the tawny grains. She let the sand fall back between her fingers; it slipped away almost as quickly as water would have. \"It moves very smoothly,\" she said, inspecting her hand." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A few tiny grains adhered to her skin, all in the lines of her palm.\n\n\"Please don't do that,\" the drone said, using invisible maniple fields to adjust parts of the diamond-sheet-covered solar panels.\n\n\"Why?\" Tefwe asked.\n\n\"Moisture,\" Hassipura said. \"And impurities such as salts. Your hands will have added a little of each to the sands.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sorry.\" Tefwe squatted and stuck her head down into the shade created by the solar panel, gazing at the pool of sand underneath." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Inside its transparent sleeve, the turning screw seemed barely to disturb the surface of the sand, which appeared to flow in to fill even the slightest of hollows. She glanced up to see if the drone was looking, reckoned it couldn't see, then stuck a finger into the surface of the sand pool and took it smartly out again. The sand closed up round where her finger had been – running in, again, like water – to leave no sign that its surface had been disturbed.\n\n\"Will you stop doing that?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory: Your text must contain 'drone' 2 times exactly" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "the drone said, tiredly.\n\n\"Apologies,\" Tefwe said. \"How does it move so smoothly?\"\n\n\"The grains are spheres,\" the drone said, clicking something back into place on the solar array. \"They are polished, individually where necessary. I call the stuff sand because it starts out as ordinary sand and still has the same chemical composition as the raw material, but really the particle size is reduced almost to that of fines, and the polishing process leaves each grain almost perfectly spherical. See.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The drone shifted in the air, humming very faintly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Tefwe stood and straightened as a bright screen suddenly filled the air in front of her, seeming to dim a significant part of the sky and putting her in shadow. The drone had produced a holo display like a magically produced cabinet hovering in front of the woman. The holo showed two grains, highly magnified. One appeared to be about the size of Tefwe's head, and was jagged, crystalline, all straight edges, spires and juts; not unlike the rocky outcrop itself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was rainbowed with diffraction colours." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The other was pebble-sized, a glass-like shiny blonde and seemingly a perfect sphere.\n\n\"Before and after,\" the drone said, shutting the screen off and letting the blast of sunlight fall upon Tefwe again. Her eyes adjusted, putting a black dot over the sun to reduce the glare. The sunlight was so strong her vision would have been affected by light coming in through the surrounds of her eyes, so they would be partially silvering, she suspected." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Something similar had happened to areas of her skin, again to cope with the ferocity of the sun's glare. Grief; I'm going silver. She was, she realised, starting to look like a ship's avatar.\n\n\"You polish them all individually?\" she asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I have processes, machinery to do the gross polishing,\" the drone told her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Then they are all inspected individually, by me. Any further polishing that is required I do myself.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That seems obsessive.\"\n\n\"Meticulous care can seem so to those unwilling to recognise it for its true worth.\"\n\n\"I meant you might simply discard the rejects.\"\n\nHassipura gave the appearance of thinking about this." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That I would find offensive,\" it said eventually.\n\n\"What a strange machine you are,\" Tefwe told it.\n\n\"That is why I make my home here in the centre of a city in the midst of my dear fellow drones and so many, many delightfully gregarious humans.\"\n\n\"Is this really all you do?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "she asked, gazing round the network of sand-canals, sandfalls, sand weirs, pools, lakes and whirlpools. She wanted to call the dry, canted bridges aqueducts, but couldn't. Silicaducts, maybe.\n\n\"Yes. Do you find it in some way inadequate?\"\n\n\"No, it's beautiful in a way. You really have no water at all?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"None. Why should I have water? I have no need for it, nor does the sandstream complex. Water makes paste and mud. Water clogs and makes the complex stop working. Here, water is a pollutant.\"\n\n\"Does it rain often here?\"\n\n\"Almost never, thankfully.\"\n\n\"Still, shouldn't you have some water for guests, for visitors?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I try to discourage visitors.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include this dialogue snippet naturally: \"Having lost their terminal, so unable to call Hub or anywhere else for help?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What about weary travellers? Or what if some poor devil comes crawling across the sands, croaking for water?\"\n\n\"Having lost their terminal, so unable to call Hub or anywhere else for help?\"\n\n\"For the sake of argument.\"\n\n\"Then I would call Hub or somewhere else for help. Scoaliera, do I take it you're thirsty?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Not really, but I think the aphore is.\"\n\n\"You should have brought more water.\"\n\n\"I still have some. I'll let it drink shortly.\"\n\n\"You came from Chyan'tya?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes. Read my terminal for the detail.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The drone was silent for a moment. \"Spat on you did it?\" it said. \"Can't have been that thirsty.\"\n\n\"Patently.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm going to be visiting various parts of the complex over the next hour or so. Do you have anything to let you float?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No.\"\n\n\"You'd better climb on top of me if we're still to converse, then. I take it you do still wish to converse. It would be too much to hope that you just happened to be passing by sheer coincidence and are now happy to be on your way.\"\n\n\"Thank you, I will. And of course I'm here for a purpose.\"\n\n\"I'd kind of guessed.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The drone made a slow swoop to about mid-thigh level on Tefwe." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She climbed aboard, sitting cross-legged on its broad back. It rose into the hot, dry air, heading up about ten metres to a sort of little depot of machinery set on a levelled area where the rock had been melted and allowed to cool. Patches were like glass, reflecting the sharp glare of the sun.\n\nThe aphore, nestling in the shade of a house-sized boulder, raised its head when it caught sight of her on the drone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It looked confused. Then it put its head back down to the shadow-dark sand and closed its eyes again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The drone lifted a small tube and appeared to inspect it, turning it this way and that in front of the high-magnification band running along its blunt snout. It replaced it, moved to another rack of what looked like miniaturised mining equipment.\n\n\"So, come far?\" it asked.\n\n\"Far enough.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Who sent you?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Bunch of ships.\"\n\n\"Will I have heard of any of them?\"\n\nShe reeled off the relevant names.\n\n\"Is this SC?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Not generated. Some EUAs are helping out. Think they're bored. It's a bit quiet right now.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ah, Elements Usually Associated,\" the drone said, and managed to sound almost wistful. \"And is the Smile Tolerantly really involved, actively?\"\n\n\"No. It's more... wanted.\"\n\n\"And what do you want, Tefwe?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"From you? To know the location of our old chum Ngaroe QiRia.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ah. I suppose I should have guessed. What makes you think I know that?\"\n\n\"Oh, come on.\"\n\n\"All right. What makes you think I would tell you?\"\n\n\"It's important.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Why?\"\n\n\"Long story. He might remember something that backs up a claim somebody's made. Claim that might make a big difference to a lot of people.\"\n\n\"You are going to have to do better than that.\"\n\n\"How long have we got?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"All day.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Okay.\" She told him the background. By the time she was finished the drone had carried her almost to the summit of the outcrop. From here, maybe sixty metres above the surface of the desert and the salt pans, she could see pretty much the whole network of the sandstream complex: all the silicaducts, channels and pools, lakes, pools and weirs and all the raising wheels and screws that lifted the sands from the base of the outcrop. From above, it looked even more like it was all done with flowing, dyed water; foreshortened like this, you couldn't see the relatively steep slopes required to make the sands move under gravity." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The raising wheels turned slowly, scooping sand from one pool to deposit it in a higher one." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The wheels in particular, seen en masse, made the whole outcrop look like a giant clock powered by sand and sunlight.\n\nShe could see the aphore, still trying to keep in the shade of the rocks far beneath as the sun moved across the sky. The animal was making thin, whinnying noises. Probably thirsty, Tefwe thought." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The high desert was flat and shining, dotted with dark outcrops like jagged islands on that sea of salt, hot sand and dust. The pale writhing column of a dust devil danced in the distance, like a ghostly impersonation of a waterspout. The view of the encircling mountains, all shimmering in the heat, was bleakly impressive. She did feel a little exposed though." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The skin on the back of her hands had gone quite silvery-white under the sunlight." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The sky above was a hazy shining blue; a cobalt blister like a vast, concentrating lens with her at the focal point." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This stark, intense azure was the true colour of the desert, she thought.\n\nHer stomach made a faint, delicate rumbling sound. She wondered when she had last eaten; her body was using the ambient heat to drive many of the processes that usually would have needed the chemical fires produced by food. Her real body, the one still Stored somewhere inside the You Call This Clean?, wouldn't have been able to do this, any more than it would have silvered up on prolonged exposure to harsh sunlight." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her own skin would have started to tan." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I remember that Ngaroe had some affinity with the Gzilt,\" the drone said, once she'd told it all she knew. \"At one time I thought he might have been one of them originally, many bodies ago.\"\n\n\"Seems he's still on his first.\"\n\n\"My, that is a long, long time to be in the one body,\" the drone said, sounding genuinely impressed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I knew he was old, but that old? Really?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'might' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Apparently.\"\n\n\"He could still be lying. He used to lie a lot, I recall.\"\n\n\"He might be lying. But then he might not. Anyway, what do you think? Important enough to let me know where the hell the old fuck is?\"\n\n\"What would be intended for him?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Just going to be asked what he knows. Nothing untoward.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What if he is uncooperative?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ha! When was he otherwise?\"\n\n\"You know what I mean.\"\n\n\"Then I leave empty-handed. But at least we can say we tried.\"\n\n\"Nothing further?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Nobody's going to drug him or read his mind or anything. These are perfectly normal Minds involved here, with honour, self-respect and all that usual uptight shit.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I will need your word on this.\"\n\n\"You have it. If he won't tell me, he won't tell me. End.\"\n\n\"My information is five years old.\"\n\n\"Barely yesterday, by QiRia's geriatric standards.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He told me he was going to... lose, or donate, or abandon, or get rid of something – he used all four terms when we talked – then go to contemplate The Mountains of the Sound, on Cethyd, in the Heluduz system.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Never heard of it.\"\n\n\"Few have.\"\n\n\"Just... these mountains?\"\n\n\"He wasn't sure where exactly he'd be going but there's an Outworlders' Quarter, so probably there. Claimed he'd already been for a look and talked to... ah.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Deleted at random?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory: Your text must contain 'docent' 2 times exactly" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Nearly. Still have it. Docent Luzuge. Somebody called Docent Luzuge. If he, she or it is still alive and active, this person would know where to find him.\"\n\nTefwe's pen terminal picked up the words. It was a lot smarter than the old pen terminals Tefwe had been used to, and the kind of smart that found it relatively easy to hide from the level of investigatory tech the drone had. The terminal had been effectively awake and evaluating everything it had been sensing since shortly before Tefwe and the aphore had arrived at the outcrop." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was getting jostled about in the bottom of a pocket in her thin shirt and so not seeing very much, but it could hear perfectly well." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It made a transmission.\n\nA satellite the size of a pebble, held stationary just above the atmosphere directly over where Tefwe was, which had been keeping station directly over her since she'd been Displaced to the surface at Chyan'tya, relayed the transmission to its home ship, the VFP Outstanding Contribution To The Historical Process, which, on hearing the relevant words, itself handed the information on to various other craft, including the Contents May Differ and the element of the fast picket fleet known to be nearest to the planet Cethyd, as well as making a general call through the usual network of trusted craft, just in case they knew of a still closer ship that hadn't been letting everybody else know its position.\n\n\"I wonder what he was leaving behind, and why?\" Tefwe said.\n\n\"I wondered that too. I did ask. He wasn't forthcoming.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Cethyd?\" she said.\n\n\"Some civ-forsaken ball on the outskirts of nowhere, jealously guarded by well-teched barbarians. Known for The Mountains of the Sound. Aren't your implants working?\"\n\n\"I'm leaving them off. Just got my terminal.\"\n\n\"Which has just been in touch with something overhead.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Really? That's sneaky.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You didn't know?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I should have guessed.\"\n\n\"This isn't the real you, is it?\"\n\n\"No; spare body carried by an SC ship, altered to suit.\"\n\n\"I imagine another you will be popping into existence very shortly, somewhere near The Mountains of the Sound, on Cethyd.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I dare say. That is where you think he is?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes,\" the drone said. \"I'm too old to play those kinds of games. Your word stands, of course.\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Well; good hunting, to your next self. What happens to you – to this you – now?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Supposed to head back to the VFP. Naturally it wants to snap me back instantly, now, and be on its way, but I said you'd appreciate me making the effort.\"\n\n\"Well, I have. But don't let me detain you.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"Go immediately if you wish.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tefwe thought. She could almost feel the VFP – doubtless listening – willing her to agree." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Later,\" she said, and half expected to be snatched away anyway as the ship's property, or to see a wrathful bolt of fire falling from the heavens to strike her, or at least the nearby desert. \"Around sunset, perhaps. First I ought to let the aphore drink, but I'd like to see more of the sandstream. If it's not too much trouble.\"\n\n> Ms Tefwe, sent the ship via some internal piece of augmentation which, obviously, she only thought she'd turned off.\n\n\"None at all,\" the drone said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Though, sandstreams, in the plural, you should have said.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There's more than one?\"\n\n> Ms Tefwe, the ship sent again.\n\n\"Many. Most of the outcrops you can see from here are similarly adapted.\" The old drone sounded proud." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'wheels' (2x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Really! I must see them.\"\n\n> Ms Tefwe, the ship sent once more.\n\n\"We could visit two or three in the time. Soon I hope to start linking them, underground, and complete a programme of replacing all the external raising screws with internal ones.\"\n\n\"Not the wheels, though, I hope. I like the wheels.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "> Ms Tefwe; kindly reply." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 5 sentences." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Essential phrase to include: \"Many decades. Don't you think you should answer the ship?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Not the wheels. Those I intend to keep.\"\n\n\"How long will all that take?\"\n\n> Ms Tefwe...\n\n\"Many decades. Don't you think you should answer the ship?\"\n\n\"... Na.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "keep the story goin for like five sentences more. same character vibes. make it Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence-y" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Participants: LOU Caconym / MSV Pressure Drop\n\nLOU Caconym: Cethyd? Barely mentioned in my data reservoirs.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: Will you down a current all-civs/systems overview? This is becoming ridiculous.\n\nLOU Caconym: Ignorance can be interesting." }, { "from": "human", "value": "MSV Pressure Drop: Also fatal." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I am not going to copy you the relevant data; get it all yourself. Anyway, Cethyd is a good choice, if he's trying to escape our attention. Home of the Uwanui, under something called the Oglari Jurisdiction, themselves beholden to the Dolstre, who seem to have decided we're no friends of theirs. And the Oglari are just able enough and vicariously well up-teched enough to make a friendly visit tricky. Perhaps as well we have the SC fleet and its fellow travellers on-side." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nearest is a brother ship to you, a Troublemaker, de-fanged to VFP." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'caconym' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Think it'll be up to the task?\n\nLOU Caconym: Indubitably.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: It is effectively weapon-free. And it starts as a Limited. No offence.\n\nLOU Caconym: We are of that generation of \"Limited\" that classes as nominatively camouflaged." }, { "from": "human", "value": "We out-everything earlier GOUs." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It'll handle whatever it finds.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: Hmm. Oh-oh, hello; incoming..." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "keep the story goin for like five sentences more. same character vibes. make it Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence-y" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Participants: GSV Contents May Differ / LOU Caconym / GCU Displacement Activity / GSV Empiricist / GSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry / Ue Mistake Not... / MSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In / MSV Pressure Drop / LSV You Call This Clean?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: Hello all. Developments. Not all encouraging. The good news is that the two Delinquent GOUs Headcrash and the Xenocrat have arrived at Zyse. The neutral/slightly odd news is that the Beats Working has taken it upon itself to ferry the principal squadron of the Ronte fleet to Gzilt ahead of time, and the bad news is that the Smile Tolerantly, once an ancient GCU, is now what might best be described as a Culture-Zihdren-Remnanter hybrid.\n\nGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: I think I speak for all of us when I say – relative to that last bit there – what?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: Well, quite." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Smile Tolerantly has been discovered in the Zihdren home system and now apparently describes itself as a tributary adjunct to the Z-R, with enhanced loyalties and a hybrid OS now including multiple elements congenitally associated with Z-R craft." }, { "from": "human", "value": "GCU Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In: \"Enhanced loyalties\"?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: The thinking is this actually means divided loyalties, though when pressed the vessel also expressed a preference for \"dual loyalties\"." }, { "from": "human", "value": "LOU Caconym: Is there any hint it has access to the Z rather than just the Z-R?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: Sadly, none." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In fact it specifically ruled that out. It was at pains to stress it was a level down from whatever parts of the Z-R get to pick up the mysterious but majestic crumbs of information and instruction that fall from the celestially elevated high table that is the Enfolded Realm. It would appear to have become devoutly eccentric, if not technically Deranged. It ceased communication with the ship which re-discovered it – its own old home GSV, the Unreliable Witness – after a few short messages, and was willing subsequently to reveal only that their exchange had already run over some (it is believed arbitrarily arrived-at) limit.\n\nGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: So do we now need somebody specialised who can talk to it?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Or a succession of them, each claiming their ration?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: Possibly. This is being looked into.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: And, a \"hybrid OS\"?\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: Whatever that might be taken to mean. It has hinted that it has incorporated certain processing paradigms and substrate/software architectures from the Z-R into its Mind." }, { "from": "human", "value": "MSV Pressure Drop: My first – and, thus far, abiding – reaction is, That's diseased." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage target: 'particular' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But perhaps that's just me?\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: No, not just you.\n\nGCU Displacement Activity: Ditto.\n\nGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: Okay. While accepting that that particular nugget of nonsense presents as a one-off random irrelevance, it still seems somehow pointedly symbolic of this whole enterprise turning up grisly unpleasantnesses that it might, in retrospect, have been better to have left stewing under their particular little rocks." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Need we go on with this?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Can't we just, for once, let the slumbering ogre be, and step lightly away?\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: I might see some merit in that.\n\nLOU Caconym: Well I don't. It is not seriously being suggested that we back off just because what we seek isn't falling into our laps, is it? We made an undertaking to help the Z-R. We stick to that." }, { "from": "human", "value": "GSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: But they don't seem too concerned about us sticking with it. Why should we?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "LOU Caconym: Because somebody around here has to keep their word and do the right thing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: Let's vote on it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We can discuss details later, and/or set up different proposals, but just to clear the air here, the proposal is: we abandon the whole shebang regarding the attack on the Z-R ship and the BoT (and whether it's actually \"T\" or not) and go back to what we were each doing before this all blew up. Yes or no?\n\nLOU Caconym: No.\n\nGCU Displacement Activity: No.\n\nGSV Empiricist: Abstain.\n\nGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: Yes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ue Mistake Not... : No.\n\nMSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In: Yes.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: No.\n\nLSV You Call This Clean? :No.\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: (Coordinator's abstention, but leaning towards Yes.)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ:\n\nClear enough. Does anybody want to resign from the group?... No? Any other comments? No?... Really?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "All right." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As ever; back as and when with whatever exciting new snags start laddering the skein..." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand on the story, maintaining character relationships, in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll start writing, then you take over for seven sentences, matching any established character familiarity in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Participants: LOU Caconym / MSV Pressure Drop\n\nLOU Caconym: \"Pointedly symbolic\"! What gibberish. And our group coordinator is \"listing\".\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: : That was \"leaning\", as well you know.\n\nLOU Caconym: Still off-kilter.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: Perhaps some of our colleagues worry we are starting to indulge in group-think, and to obsess.\n\nLOU Caconym: We are a group of Minds." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Thinking is what we do." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And obsession is just what those too timorous to follow an idea through to its logical conclusion call determination.\n\nHowever, they're still aboard, even if they might be sitting fretting in the lifeboats. Unlike the completely overboard idiocy of this \"Hybrid OS\" abomination.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: First I'd heard of that. Some sort of weird Z-R mutant Mind. That's almost baroquely... horrifying. Ghoulish, even. Positively Gothick." }, { "from": "human", "value": "What could have possessed it?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "LOU Caconym: To do it? Who knows. But we know what possesses it now. The Zihdren-Remnanter.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: If this marks the start of a new, fashionable trend amongst ship Minds, I may Sublime myself shortly.\n\nLOU Caconym: Still, might yet yield advantage. Never mind the denials. Any sort of more direct link to the Z-R than we've been used to until now implies better access to the Z within the Enfold. An opportunity.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: Uh-huh." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'they're' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We'll see. Makes the Beats Working's oddly enabling behaviour look positively normal, for sure. Giving pickup-backs to the Ronte. I mean, really. Mind you, they were going so slowly. It probably got bored. What do you think?\n\nLOU Caconym: I think there's a reason there are so few of the Scree class, despite the fact they're the smallest, energy-cheapest to build of all the Contact Units. Five humans is just too small a crew; they're almost guaranteed to go a bit mad." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 8 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's like the opposite of being outnumbered; the more humans you have aboard you, the better their eccentricities average out and you're left with something easy to model, anticipate and influence. You have safety in their numbers. Five bios and one Mind, in one teeny wee ship? Their basic insanity is going to manifest. And it's reality-distorting; infectious, practically. Always going to end badly.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: Yes, but you can always kick a human crew off at the next GSV if you really don't get on. Not as bad as becoming a \"hybrid\", with alien operating system shit incorporated. That's just... perverted." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Cooperative storytelling\nContext: Match existing character backgrounds if present\nMy role: Provide opening\nYour role: eight sentences in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Culture had a problem with the rump of the Zihdren civilisation that the Zihdren-Remnanters represented." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was the same problem they had with most other light-basking species." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The whole comms and data network of such beings was not something truly independent of them as creatures; instead it was effectively an extension of them as a mass of interconnected individuals, and so the Culture, with its self-imposed embargo on reading the minds of other beings, regarded it as immoral to investigate even aspects of the Remnanters' existence as seemingly impersonal and banal as their data reservoirs without specific permission, something that had, to date at least, rarely been forthcoming.\n\nIt meant that the Remnanters were slightly mysterious as far as the Culture was concerned; they were less than perfectly known and understood, they were incompletely assessed, intrinsically beyond certain very useful forms of analysis, proof against being properly simmed and so, in theory, capable of surprising the Culture. This was a devilishly itchy, annoying thing for your average Mind – had there even been such a thing – to have to address.\n\nIt was just as well that the Remnanters were little more than a civilisational after-thought, an only-visible-at-high-magnification detail on the vast, ever-changing galactic map, and that – at least for now – there were only a few other similar species making any ripples in the big shared paddling pond of the big G; imagine – so went a popular nightmare scenario for ships of a certain disposition who worried about this sort of stuff – having to cope with the Zihdren themselves when they'd been in their pomp!\n\nOn the other hand there were species/civs with no such compunctions who regularly investigated as deeply as possible into the minds of others – especially when they were as weird as the Remnanters – and would cheerfully share the information with anybody who asked.\n\nAs long as no favours were promised in return, the Culture would – reluctantly, even a little guiltily – use that kind of information, just to keep from being too embarrassingly ignorant.\n\nScoaliera Tefwe woke slowly, as she had woken slowly a few dozen times, over the intervening centuries.\n\nOnly it wasn't really waking slowly; she was being woken." }, { "from": "human", "value": "All dark at first." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'thought' 2 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Stillness and silence too, and yet the sensation that things were happening, both inside her head and body; organs and systems and faculties being woken, revived, checked, primed, readied.\n\nIt was at once reassuring and somehow disappointing. Here we go again, she thought. Hmm. That thought itself felt... familiar. She opened her eyes.\n\nShe was sort of expecting to see the word SIMULATION, however briefly, but it wasn't there. She blinked, looked around.\n\nShe was floating in some sort of suspensor field, in air, in a human or humanoid body dressed in some clingy but lightly puffed cover-all which left only her feet, hands and head exposed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was held reclined in the air." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'though' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was as though she was sitting in an invisible chair. A boxy ship drone was at eye-level, looking at her. The room around her appeared to be medical unit standard.\n\n\"Ms Tefwe?\" the drone said.\n\n\"Reporting,\" she said. She looked at her hand. It looked like her hand, though she knew enough to know that meant almost nothing. \"A reverser field, please?\"\n\nThe drone put a screen in front of her, showing her her own face." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She touched the skin on her cheek, pressed her nose one way then the other." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Looked like her face.\n\nShe remembered talking with the avatoid of the You Call This Clean? in a virtual environment. She remembered waking in reality in the medical facility of the Outstanding Contribution To The Historical Process, and she remembered the journey across the desert on the aphore, to go and talk to the old drone Hassipura Plyn-Frie.\n\nShe had stayed with it for a couple of days, calling in a supply drop from the Orbital's Hub to feed and water the animal at the end of that first day.\n\nThe VFP had been annoyed at her dallying but had not zapped her back to it without permission. The important part of its mission had already been carried out; it had transmitted the information on QiRia's location to the other interested ships. It could afford to let her spend a while with the ancient drone and its sandstreams." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Another ship, another VFP, the Rapid Random Response Unit, had been time-closest to Cethyd and had started out for the planet within a second of the information being picked up. It had started readying one of the handful of humanoid simulacra bodies it carried aboard, instructing the creature's physiological systems to alter the blank-basic body's appearance so that it would resemble Tefwe. The transfer of Tefwe's updated mind-state could wait until the last hour or so before deployment, hence the relaxed attitude the Outstanding... was able to take to Tefwe's delaying tactics.\n\nThe Rapid Random Response Unit's flight time to Cethyd had been two and a half days; a lucky proximity, Tefwe guessed, given that the place was, as Hassipura had suggested, kind of off the beaten track, in a system called Heluduz in one of the faint tendrils of stars that lay on the very outskirts of the galaxy, spun out from the rim like the exhaust from a spent firework.\n\nThe place itself was nothing special; just a biggish rocky world with a thick though transparent oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere and a small majority of land compared to deep ocean.\n\nAfter her surprisingly extended jaunt to see Hassipura's sandstreams, Tefwe had ridden off again on the aphore Yoawin. The ship had Displaced both of them as soon as they dropped more than a couple of metres beyond the pass, depositing a very confused aphore straight back into its stables in the livery at Chyan'tya.\n\nTefwe went back to the ship, where her mind-state was, finally, read and transmitted to the Rapid Random Response Unit half a day before it reached the planet of Cethyd, while it was still checking and re-checking its Displacer components, testing the system with dummy payloads and planning its brake points and loop-return profiles." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Tefwe shook her head. \"Is this really necessary?\"\n\n\"This would represent an absolute minimum,\" the boxy ship drone told her.\n\nTefwe looked down at herself. The ship had insisted she wear what appeared to her like a grossly over-spec'd suit. She looked, she thought, like she'd been dipped in a thick layer of sticky mercury.\n\nThe suit was only about five or six millimetres thick and seemed to weigh almost nothing, plus it thinned so much over her hands and especially her fingers that she half expected to see her fingerprints through the silver covering, but it was meant to be terribly effective. Well, once the helmet component had rolled up, it was just a roll round her neck at the moment, like a thick metallic scarf." }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'locals' 2 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Obviously the tech had moved on since the last time she'd needed to be protected at anything like this level.\n\n\"What exactly is this?\"\n\n\"That is a full-survival/light-battle suit, two layer.\"\n\n\"What's a light battle? Is that a skirmish or something?\"\n\n\"It will keep you safe and well, even if the Displace is very slightly off, and protect you against unwelcome attentions, should locals take exception to you.\"\n\n\"Why would they do that?\"\n\n\"Who knows? Some people are just primitive.\"\n\n\"This isn't really about the locals, is it? This is in case the other lot – the Oglari – in case they spot me, or their bosses.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Tefwe had woken with a full briefing effectively downloaded and digested inside her head.\n\n\"We are trying to protect you as well as we can, Ms Tefwe,\" the ship told her. \"Ideally I would put you down in a more aggressively profiled suit and inside a supporting capsule – at least – with a full drone and missile screen, exactly where you need to be; however, our intelligence is that such a force, in such a location, would be very likely both to be sensed on emplacement and to give cause for severe diplomatic unpleasantness if discovered. Hence the suit.\"\n\n\"Can I put ordinary clothes over it?\"\n\n\"They'll burn off if the Displace is even slightly out. The suit is able to mimic the appearance of clothing.\"\n\n\"I'd prefer ordinary clothes. Can't I carry them inside the suit or something?\"\n\nThe drone made a sighing noise.\n\nEventually she got a kind of backpack that melded itself to the suit, containing some clothes and a few supplies." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This increases both your mass and bulk,\" the ship told her through the drone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Now I have to re-calibrate and skim even closer to the planet.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How close you going?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Seventeen-five k.\"\n\n\"Velocity?\"\n\n\"Forty per cent Crashed to fifty-seven kilo-lights at closest approach; sub millisecond window.\"\n\nTefwe whistled. \"You're going to scrunch me up into a tiny little ball, aren't you?\"\n\n\"If you were properly human, it would break every major bone in your body, and quite a lot of the others. Happily, you're not. You won't trauma, will you? I could put you under... \"\n\n\"Not me. Tough as old space boots. Known for it.\"\n\n\"Good. The suit will be trying not to use any fields, including AG, so the landing could be a little bumpy.\"\n\n\"Kinetic.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Kinetic?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That's how we used to express it in the old days.\"\n\n\"Hmm. Kinetic. That too is appropriate.\"\n\nThe Rapid Random Response Unit performed the start of a crash-stop, then – when it was, for a vanishingly brief moment, within less than a planetary radius of the world – used its heavy-duty Displacer to loose a balled-up Tefwe and a scatter of miniature subsidiary support components towards the planet. Then it continued on its way – slowing, in effect, more slowly – and started a wide turn that would bring it back to the system some hours later for a more stealthy approach to Cethyd.\n\nTefwe came hurtling out of the sky at a little under the speed of sound. The suit gauged where it was and what was happening to it, saw that it was heading for land with no large body of water available – which was sub-optimal, but never mind – and braked hard by spreading layers of itself like ribboned parachutes, scrubbing off ninety-five per cent of its speed in about half a kilometre of forty-five-degree flight. Tefwe felt herself tumbling, and the deceleration as a tremendous weight – oddly distributed due to the way she was packed, pressed into a contorted, maximally compacted ball that would have killed a basic human. The tumbling decreased. She felt her orientation steady and settle, and then the weight eased too." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She felt the impact as a dull thud on her back and knees, not sore at all, then the suit's voice said quietly, \"Landed.\"\n\nTefwe started to un-ball as the suit unwrapped her, letting her spread herself out to lie looking up at an ochre sky visible between softly swaying stalks of some tall, bronze-coloured grass. She could feel her lungs re-inflating. They'd been collapsed to save volume.\n\n\"How we doing?\" she asked when she had some breath to spare.\n\n\"We are doing well,\" the suit said. \"No hostile interest detected.\"\n\n\"That's nice.\" Her conventional pain receptors came back on line, tingling once to confirm, then quieting down." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She sat up, dusted herself down, then, still sitting, unhitched the backpack and put on the clothes she'd had the ship make for her. They were supposed to make her look a bit like a pilgrim. A human pilgrim, specifically, because the locals here weren't human, though there were used enough to hosting humanoid pilgrims from nearby systems. Then she let the backpack collapse itself and stow into the small of the suit's back.\n\nFinally, cautiously, she stood up.\n\nCethyd lay heavy beneath the orange-red sun called Heluduz.\n\n\"You used to look at my chest.\"\n\n\"Because of what was not there. Absence can snag the gaze more effectively than presence.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What? Oh, breasts! Mammalian stuff. Of course. I thought you just thought I had a particularly fine and barrel chest.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"One way of putting it.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Did you ever want... did you ever think about us, you know, fucking?\"\n\n\"Which answer would insult you less: yes or no?\"\n\n\"Neither. Either. I wouldn't be insulted.\"\n\n\"Then the answer would be, not really.\"\n\n\"Not really? So a bit, then. Ha!\"\n\nShe was a little drunk. She was still going to leave the silver-grey cube with the Incast order – she was en route to the Ospin system now, in this fine clipper ship – but she'd thought she ought to at least turn the device on, make sure the old guy was in some sense still in there, and maybe ask his forgiveness. Maybe.\n\nToo many cocktails in the bar." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Thought she'd been doing extremely well with a handsomely chunky young fellow there – a serving captain in the Eighth – but then the girlfriend he'd neglected to mention had shown up – supposed to be a surprise for him; she'd got on at the last port a couple of hours ago, been waiting impatiently in his cabin since, wondering where he'd got to..." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Things had started to turn just a little ugly and so she'd made her excuses and left." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Remember to mention: \"The Gzilt never joined in the great genetic mash-up that the rest of the Culture proper thought appropriate to ensure everybody could breed with everybody else,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had decided before she'd left home ten days earlier that one thing she definitely wasn't going to do during the voyage was turn on the device with QiRia's mind-state inside – she'd been adamant about that. He was an old fraud and even just giving the damn thing to her had probably been some sort of attempt to manipulate her; he was lucky she was paying him the compliment of physically taking the device to Ospin like some sort of warped pilgrimage or homage or something rather than just posting it to the Incast order. She'd brought her volupt with her; she would use the time constructively to practise.\n\nBut then, perhaps because of the cocktails, she'd changed her mind.\n\n\"The Gzilt never joined in the great genetic mash-up that the rest of the Culture proper thought appropriate to ensure everybody could breed with everybody else,\" QiRia's voice said. (In theory she could have seen him too, had his face look down on her from the cabin's screen; she hadn't chosen that option.) \"As a result, the genes aren't in either of us to make us appear attractive to or feel attracted towards the other, beyond a very basic pan-human interest sparked at a distance or when clothes conceal the disappointing truth. Trust me; it is rarely an encouraging sign when the more apparel is removed, the less attractive a prospective sexual partner becomes. I wasn't keeping a tally, but if you'd been watching carefully I suspect you'd have noticed that I looked – glanced, more likely – at your chest more often when you wore a top than when you were naked from the waist up. The point is rather that we found each other interesting at all, sexual considerations removed. Again, you'll have to trust me that the difference implicit in a ten-millennia age difference is far more important than a difference in both gender and/or species.\"\n\n\"So you've never had sex with a Gzilt woman?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ah. I didn't say that.\"\n\n\"So you have?\" Cossont, lying on the bed, plumped up her pillow and made herself comfortable, staring at the screen. Maybe she should have put his face on the screen. Would he be blushing now? Did mind-states inside devices like this blush? Did QiRia blush? Had he? She couldn't remember.\n\n\"Technically, yes,\" the voice from the cube said, sounding unconcerned." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It was, again technically, unsatisfactory for both parties. The seemingly superficial physical differences become more... pronounced when one gets down to it, as it were. Sometimes, however, one indulges in that sort of behaviour as a sort of extension of friendship. Not with everyone; not all need such an expression. Most of the people I find interesting, and in that sense attractive, live more in the mind than in the body. Still, some seem to require such... confirmation. My impression has always been that the commitment to the act, its symbolism, is more important than the act itself, which, in its commission – or at least in the reflection upon it – tends to emphasise the differences between those involved rather than their similarities. I have done the same sort of thing with males of my own species type, despite not having sexual feelings specifically for them. Sometimes it feels only polite.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont lay on her back, looked up at the cabin ceiling, both hands clasped behind her head. \"Anybody I'd know?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'meaning' 2 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Who? My sexual partners amongst the Gzilt?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"No. Nor heard of. And besides, they're all long dead. As of now, I believe all my ex-lovers, of all species, are dead. One or two might be in Storage.\"\n\n\"That sounds so sad.\"\n\n\"Well it isn't. Feel free to feel sorry for me if you wish, for your own sentimental satisfaction, but not on my account. I have lived ten thousand years; I'm used to it. Lovers dying, civilisations dying... one develops a certain god-like indifference to it all, intellectually. Happily one retains the emotions that let one draw delight from life's enduring basics, like love, friendship, sex, sheer sensory pleasure, discovery, understanding and erudition. Even when one knows that in the end it's all... contingent.\"\n\n\"Really thought you were going to say 'meaningless', there.\"\n\n\"No. All things have meaning. Haven't we already been through this?\"\n\n\"It's just that meaning doesn't mean what we think it means.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Even your attempts at triteness cannot entirely hide the grain of truth in that particular assertion. We are all prone, in our ways. My own comforter at the moment, and perhaps for the next few centuries, appears to be homing in on the serenity offered by immersing oneself in an environment of all-pervading sound... for some reason. I really only meant to spend a year or so with the leviathids on Perytch IV, but then felt very... at home in that sonic environment; very content.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The voice from the cube paused. \"In the end it palled... but only relatively, and still it left its own... echo. An echo of desire, of need.\" Another pause. \"I – the real me – may pursue that interest. For a time.\"\n\nCossont was silent for a while.\n\n\"You really are old, aren't you?\" she said eventually.\n\n\"What makes you think that?\"\n\n\"A young – younger – guy would have asked whether I ever felt attracted to you.\"\n\n\"No; a less secure, less self-sufficient, less sure-of-himself person might have.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She gave it a moment, then said, \"So, what do you think?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"About your feelings for me?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"As a person I'm sure you found me profoundly interesting though not actually attractive. As a potential sexual partner, I would prefer to hope the very thought would have been at least slightly unpleasant. Don't feel you have to confirm or deny any of that. What other questions arising might you have?\"\n\n\"How have you kept going, all this time?\"\n\n\"Fortitude.\"\n\n\"Seriously. If I'm to take you seriously, your claims seriously: how? Wouldn't you want to kill yourself eventually, at some point, just at some really low point that you'd never have got to if you only lived for a century, like they did in the old days, or a few centuries, or whatever? Wouldn't that happen?\"\n\n\"Well, not to me, obviously.\"\n\n\"But that's what I'm asking. Why? Why not? How come?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I told you before: I take a perverse delight in watching species fuck up.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I remember. I've thought about that. I don't believe that can be all there is. There must be something else.\"\n\n\"Maybe I had something to live for.\"\n\n\"Okay. But what?\"\n\n\"Or, maybe I had something to not die for.\"\n\n\"Hmm. Aren't they...?\"\n\n\"They are not quite the same thing. You may have to think about it. Anyway, my precise motivations needn't concern you. That I am as old as I've claimed, that you believe me; that does concern me. Not a great deal, but I would like to think you do believe me.\"\n\n\"Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't,\" she confessed. \"When I talk to you I do.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That will suffice. Anything else I can help you with?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She smiled, though he couldn't see. \"So, do we get more secure as we get older?\"\n\n\"Some do. I have. Though I have also detected a sort of long-term tidal action in that and a lot of other emotional states. For real-time centuries I will feel, say, gradually more secure in myself, then for the next few centuries I'll feel less certain. Or over time I'll go from thinking I know pretty much everything to realising I know next to nothing, then back again, and so on and so on. Overall, it approximates to a sort of steady state, I suppose, and I am by now quite entirely used to such periodicity and allow for it. Similarly, I seem to oscillate between times of feeling that nothing matters, when I tend to act riskily, foolishly – often on a whim – and intervening periods when I feel that everything matters, and I become cautious, risk-averse, fearful and paranoid. The former attitude believes in a sort of benign fate, thinking I am just somehow destined to live for ever, while the latter believes in statistics, and a cold, uncaring cosmos, and cannot quite believe that I have lived as long as I have while ever thinking that life is just a hoot, and taking risks and behaving rashly is worth it just for the fun of tweaking the nose of the universe. The former state has a sort of cheery contempt for its opposite, while the latter is simply terrified of its obverse. Anyway, my point is: come back in a century or two and I might not seem so sure of myself.\"\n\n\"In a century – in a few years – I'll be with everybody else in the Sublime.\"\n\n\"Best place for all of us. I'd go myself but longevity has become such a habit.\"\n\n\"You don't want to be offered the chance to go with us, with the Gzilt?\"\n\n\"You'd be my second choice, after the Culture itself, but no. Not really my choice to make anyway; my real self will take that decision and I'll be looked out wherever I am and taken away too, if and when the time comes.\"\n\n\"They say it's like the most brilliant lucid dream, for ever.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"So I've heard.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required dialogue to include (maintain exact wording): \"Do you dream, in there?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Do you dream, in there?\"\n\n\"No. Being switched off is exactly like going to sleep – you're not really aware of it happening, only of waking up again. But you wake after a dreamless sleep.\"\n\n\"I'm sleepy now,\" Cossont said, yawning involuntarily just at the thought. \"I'm going to switch you off. That definitely okay? You sure?\"\n\n\"Entirely. Sweet dreams, Ms Cossont.\"\n\n\"Sleep well, Mr QiRia.\"\n\n... She woke up. Still aboard the Mistake Not..." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They'd be at Ospin in a couple of hours, bouncing into the microrbital belonging to the Incast Secular Collectionary order she'd donated the device to.\n\nShe remembered that evening aboard the clipper, umpteen years ago, and remembered a surprising amount of that conversation with QiRia's stored mind-state. She remembered lying with just two hands clasped behind her neck, travelling with the sensibly sized volupt – as elegant in form as it was in tone – rather than the hulking lump of half-unplayable preposterousness that was the twenty-four-string elevenstring.\n\nShe remembered fretting over things like pleasing her mother without giving in to her, and whether she'd find somebody as cute as that serving captain in the cocktail bar – though single.\n\nThis time, she was wondering whether a pursuing ship might be just about to blow them out of the skies, or whether some pre-alerted special forces ultra-commandos would be waiting for them at the Bokri microrbital to slice or blast them to pieces. Also, whether she'd live to see the Subliming, and whether she would, in the end, go along with everybody else into it.\n\nVyr lay in the darkness, top hands clasped behind her neck, lower hands clasped over her belly, thinking that, sometimes, not all change was for the better.\n\nThe image – of a tearful woman sitting with her back to a view of clouds and sea – was shown as though on a conventional screen hanging in front of him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"... and then she just seemed to disappear, from the face of the planet, and apparently her bed hasn't been even slept in for days – many, I mean several days – and then, of course, she is in the Fourteenth, the regiment the Fourteenth, and she was always very active in the Reserve, very respected, and of course there's been this terrible, terrible—\"\n\n\"Madame—\"\n\n\"—terrible explosion on this planet and for all I know – well, I thought, I assumed the worst, naturally, as any mother would. I wondered, 'Could she have been there, was that where she went? Did she know something?' as soon as I heard about, about the thing, but then there was nothing... \"\n\nThe screen went blank. Colonel Agansu nodded. \"I see. And this lady is...?\"\n\n\"She is Warib Cossont, mother of Vyr Cossont, Reserve Lieutenant Commander in the Fourteenth, the female her mother is referring to,\" the intelligence officer of the 7*Uagren said. The IO, the colonel and the ship's captain were the only presences within the virtual command space.\n\n\"This may tie in with the unexpected presence of the 5*Gelish-Oplule at Eshri,\" the captain told Agansu." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The ship's last known location was near Xown, and the last known location of Vyr Cossont was in the Girdlecity of Xown. If the ship made full speed from Xown to Eshri there would have been time for it to deliver Vyr Cossont to the Fourteenth's HQ anything up to two or three hours before our arrival and the attack.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Was Vyr Cossont listed as one of those aboard the Fzan-Juym satellite?\" the colonel asked." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No,\" the IO said.\n\n\"However, that means nothing,\" the captain said. \"There was barely time for her to be registered and besides, if she was being summoned for some sort of secret mission she would never have been added to the official complement anyway.\"\n\n\"Where did this information come from?\" Agansu asked.\n\n\"The screen clip came medium-ranks secret from Regimental Central Intelligence, flagged low probable relevance,\" the IO officer said. \"But we then added it to a review of our own multiple-remotes sensor data following the destruction of the HQ, which indicated there's a fifty per cent chance that one of the larger medium-sized pieces of wreckage was a mostly intact though largely disabled four-berth shuttle. That being the case, there is then a sixty per cent chance that one or more viable biologicals could have been Displaced from the wreck to the Mistake Not... , the Culture ship we're following.\"\n\n\"Why was this information not extracted from the data at the time?\" Agansu asked.\n\n\"The data from remotes,\" the captain said, \"especially in a combat volume, is received erratically, sporadically and late. Real-time data has to be prioritised, Colonel.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I see. This Lieutenant Commander Cossont; I can see no mention of her in any special forces or intelligence lists.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We don't believe she is special forces or on a military intelligence secondment,\" the captain said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We believe her semi-civilian status was not cover, but the truth. Her value to the Fourteenth's high command may have been opportunistic and sudden; the likelihood is it would only just have come to light before she was summoned.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And what might the nature of that value have been?\" Agansu asked.\n\n\"We don't know yet,\" the IO admitted. \"Best guess is possibly related to the Culture individual Ngaroe QiRia, who is mentioned in the message from the Zihdren recovered at Ablate.\"\n\n\"There is record of an individual or individuals of that name having visited Gzilt several times in the past,\" the captain added, \"though not for several centuries.\"\n\n\"And all this tells us what?\" Agansu asked.\n\n\"Perhaps where Lieutenant Commander Cossont is heading,\" the captain said. \"Until now the Culture ship has pursued a course which has made its final destination difficult to predict, even at a system level. However, within the last half-day, it has become almost certain that it's aiming for somewhere within the Ospin system. There is a record of Vyr Cossont travelling to the habitat of Bokri, within the Centralised Dataversities of Ospin.\"\n\n\"When?\" Agansu asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sixteen years ago, three and a half years after she returned from a student exchange trip within the Culture. Her most likely destination within Bokri, we believe, would have been the Incast order. It is possible she deposited an article of some sort with them, possibly a mind-state; the cargo manifest for the vessel she travelled on is a little ambiguous on the exact nature of whatever she might have left there, though some sort of article classified as a 'self-powered general storage device, alien, vouched, sophisticated, capacity unknown' is mentioned as forming part of her luggage on the way there but not on the way back.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required dialogue to include (maintain exact wording): \"But it's the best conjecture we've got,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We've started trying to get some answers out of the Incast order on this,\" the IO said. \"Nothing so far; there are confidentiality issues. Also, they're just under-staffed.\" The image of the intelligence officer looked at the captain and the colonel. \"With cooperative assets in place we could just hack them but as we're on our own with this there won't be much we can do until we physically get there.\"\n\n\"This is, anyway, all conjecture,\" the colonel pointed out.\n\n\"It is,\" the captain agreed.\n\n\"But it's the best conjecture we've got,\" the IO officer said. \"Nothing else is flagging connections.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The Culture ship is already running us about as fast as we can go, Colonel,\" the captain said. \"If it starts bouncing around inside the Ospin system there's every chance it can either lose us, put somebody or something down anywhere it wants to without us being able to spot it happening, or both. I think the concatenation of this Cossont person and the Bokri habitat represents a serious lead and that it's worth following. I propose we try to follow the ship round Ospin if it does start dodging, but rather than lose it while we try to find out what it's been doing where, we assume it's heading for Ospin, and act accordingly.\"\n\nColonel Agansu thought about this. As ever, he was painfully aware that, even speeded up to the max, he was thinking so terribly slowly compared to the captain, the intelligence officer and the rest of the 7*Uagren's virtual crew. He was also aware that he would probably have to leave the easeful security of the ship, this vast, potent swaddling all around him, and become a walking-around figure once more; a soldier again. A soldier in a battle-worthy combat suit, so still encased in layers of power and protection, but still, just a soldier, toting a gun, even if the combat arbite was at his side to back him up. In a way the prospect filled him with longing, just at the thought of fulfilling his duty, but in a way it filled him with a dread he could never admit to anyone.\n\nEventually he said, \"Very well. I agree, Captain. Please commit to that. Let Marshal Chekwri know about Lieutenant Commander Cossont—\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We've already copied to her,\" the captain said.\n\n\"Good,\" Agansu said. \"I think it obvious that all possible avenues of research and confirmation related to this should be pursued urgently, including somebody trusted, if available, interviewing Madame Warib Cossont.\"\n\nThe thing looked like a very delicate, golden version of a lace condom; a jewellised version of something from ancient history made pointless by its openness.\n\nOrpe stared at it lying there in its luxuriously cushioned case, nestled amongst lip-like folds of purple-stained gold-cloth like something illicit; half obscene, half sumptuously beautiful. She held her hands up near her face, away from the opened case, as though nervous, even as her mouth opened and her large eyes drank in the look of it.\n\n\"Oh, I don't... It looks so... I'm not sure... \"\n\n\"Let's just try it, shall we?\"\n\n\"What does it... do? What is it for?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I wear something similar; very similar. They both sink very slightly into our flesh, half a hair's breadth. And only we know that they are there. When we make love, when we couple, and they touch, they add to the pleasure. It's as simple as that.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Can they... are they, might they cause... harm?\"\n\n\"No no no. They are for pleasure, purely. They are better than surgically sterile, and have no effect except when paired with their twin, the other half of their matched pair, when they create a more intense ecstasy.\" Banstegeyn smiled, ran his fingers down amongst some of the ringlets in her hair, touched her cheek. \"There are many similar paths to the same effect, my love, just through drugs, implants, augmentations... but the beauty of these is that they are made for each other, and have no other effect, even if,\" he smiled regretfully, \"one has other lovers. They can't be felt, they can barely be seen, even if you look for them, and everything else that would ever normally happen, there, can still happen – people have happily given birth, even, though I understand that is not advised – yet the wearer knows they are there, and the wearer of the other half knows that it's there. It is about... commitment, you might say, and I would say a kind of tying, a bonding, between us.\"\n\nShe looked at him shyly. They were alone in the dark cabin of a quietly purring skiff on a perfumed lake in a private pleasure garden on the outskirts of M'yon, at a party being thrown by a family long grown rich on government contracts. They had both worn masks and plain cloaks, like everybody else at the party. \"And is there one for you, then?\" she asked." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He smiled, opened the case further, revealing another level, where a slightly slimmer version of the piece lay, also glittering like a narrow pocket of lace made of liquid gold salted with tiny jewels. \"There!\" he said, as he smiled and she smiled. \"One each.\"\n\nShe touched the one that was his, stroking it with one finger. \"They are not... permanent, are they? They can be taken... out, off...?\"\n\n\"Yes. Most easily, by touching the cloth of the case to any part of them. You may keep the case. I'll wear mine for ever, I swear.\"\n\nShe made a delicate, laugh-like noise through her nose. \"How do we... put them...?\" she asked.\n\nHe laughed, almost silently." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'perhaps' (2x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How do you think. Shall I put mine on, first? Perhaps you might like to do that?\"\n\n\"Mmm, perhaps,\" she said, smiling, lifting the male piece of the two from its ruched nest. It hung from her fingers, golden in the subdued light, perfectly draped. \"How... limp it is,\" she said, and pressed herself against him, beginning to undo his clothes. \"That will not do, now, will it?\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" he agreed, and lay back, exhaling, allowingly.\n\nThe tramway led tilted into the sky for a long, long time.\n\nShe'd been put down as close to her destination as the ship had dared, but it had still meant a hike through thick fields of chin-tall bronze-coloured grass to a dusty dirt road and then a longer tramp to a deserted tram stop in the middle of the plain." }, { "from": "human", "value": "From the platform, while she waited, she looked in the direction of the mountains, but they were too far away." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A smudge of orange-white, high in the sky to the east, might have been clouds above the mountains, but the range itself was submerged in the atmospheric haze." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was on her way to Ahen'tayawa, a hearkenry on the slopes of Mount Jamanathrus in the Querechui range, Cethyd." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Another traveller came along the road from the opposite direction in a ramshackle three-wheeled vehicle that bounced over the tracks in a cloud of dust." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The single passenger got out, lifted a bag, then the contraption drove itself away again, heading back the way it had come." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The traveller stopped suddenly on seeing Tefwe, then bow-nodded, chose a sitting area of the platform at the other end from where Tefwe stood, and folded itself compactly into a resting configuration, the rhombus of its patterned head-part lowered over the complex of creased planes it used as upper limbs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Uwanui were mattiform." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'their' 3 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Most people, most of the time, would have called them folds, though this term could be insulting, depending on the language the term was expressed in and the species it was being used to describe; they looked like tall, dark, angular, multiply poled tents, complexly folded. Their rhomboid head-parts, patterned with eye bands and ear spots, cut by a slit that was their mouth, looked like oddly tilted flags above the tents of their bodies. Origami creatures; beings of the crease.\n\nThe tram arrived, rattling. It was three carriages long with an open upper deck perched above the middle carriage. She and the dark fold got on.\n\nThe tram was mostly empty. It climbed steadily up a slope of tilted plain, stopping to pick up or drop off a few travellers." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Those that saw Tefwe all stopped and stared at her for a few moments, then ignored her. Nobody chose to sit close to her.\n\nThe sound built very slowly; it would have been hard to know when it first started to become distinct from the noises of the rattling, swaying tram and the wind moving over the surrounding fields of tall, bronze-coloured grasses and occasional thick-trunked coppery trees. She became aware of the sound when she realised that she'd been assuming for a while that somebody was humming monotonously just behind her, only there was nobody there.\n\n\"Is that... the sound?\" she sub-vocalised to the suit.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nThe tram clattered to a stop at another station, and now she could hear the sound properly, distinctly; it was a low booming collection of tones like very distant and continuous thunder, all the individual claps rolled together and coming and going on the wind." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She got up out of the uncomfortably tilted seat and went to the front of the tram's middle carriage, heading upstairs to get a better view." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There were more of the locals here; they parted as though to let her through to the front, but she bowed, gestured, hung back." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She could see well enough." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The mountains rose out of the hazy plain ahead like a dark storm of rock, the higher massifs draped with cloud, the highest peaks capped in orange-white ice and snow." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include exactly 2 instance(s) of the word 'something'" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The sound swelled and fell away with a sort of tantalising grace, its strength implicitly influenced not just by the light breezes circling round the tram but by mightier winds blowing tens of kilometres away towards the far horizon and kilometres further into the sky. The sound, she thought, was like something you might have heard from an enormous choir of basses singing a slow, sonorous hymn in a language you would never understand.\n\nThe tram station in the foothills possessed a sort of modest, ordered busyness to it, full of the dark folds moving about it with their odd, side-to-side, flip-flopping walk. The station connected with a whole fan of cogged funicular lines, winding up into the mountains like something being unravelled. The sound here was a little louder, still coming and going on the wind.\n\nThe line she took rose curving away along the side of one mountain, traversed a tall viaduct to the flank of another, went squeaking and squealing through a long tunnel, then ended up at another small station where three cable-car lines terminated. A signpost told her which to take. The sound was a little louder, here; loud enough so that sometimes on the swirling winds you thought you heard a single note or collection of notes and then heard the same again, echoed from some distant cliff." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The funicular car had had less room than the tram, and the cable-car gondola had even less room than that; the locals almost had to touch her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Part of her briefing download had been a rough understanding of their language." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mostly, amongst themselves, they expressed surprise that she didn't seem to smell.\n\nThe cable car rose over a dark valley of shales and scree, then over a tilted plain of tumbled rocks interspersed with low, scrubby bushes. Finally the gondola parked in a bare, echoing shed, and disgorged. They were high now, and it was cold. The sound was very loud, and rich; she felt she was starting to feel it in her lungs.\n\nShe hung back to let everybody else go ahead of her, then tramped up a well-worn path through a field of higher-than-head-high boulders, all smooth and round. Stepping stones took her across an icy patch of marsh to a sort of absurdly steep stairway built into a twenty-metre cliff of naked rock. It was so steep it was nearly a ladder." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She used the ropes on either side and climbed, following a lumbering local with a giant woven basket on its back; it heaved itself up, corner feet fitting into the creased steps, its elongated prehensile side-corners curling round the thick ropes like hands. It achieved the cliff crest with obvious effort, hauling itself over a low wall.\n\nTefwe followed, clambering further up and then over into the wave-wash of vast, bone-battering sound. She felt her ears closing up, reducing the immediate impact of the colossal noise, but she could still feel it through her head, through her teeth.\n\nShe stood in the side-on evening light, looking slightly downhill to the hearkenry.\n\nThe Ahen'tayawa hearkenry on the slopes of Mount Jamanathrus was a collection of modest, low buildings scattered across the stony ground to the rear of the open-fronted cells that formed a long curve facing the mountain itself, which rose – steep, sheet-smooth – from the high plain ahead, its summit obscured by broad rivers of orange-white cloud.\n\nThe sky-filling, soul-battering, ear-splitting sound came from the Timbrelith Caverns: tens of thousands of enormous tunnels bored into and through the tops and flanks of this part of the Querechui Mountains millennia ago by long-departed aliens many centuries before the Uwanui had colonised this part of their world. As was so often the case with enigmatic alien artefacts, the general assumption was that the work must constitute Art." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Sound was the result of Cethyd's prevailing Belt Winds coming thundering through and across those colossal pipes, creating a noise like an orchestra of hundreds of gigantic organs all playing a changing selection of most of their available notes at the same time, with all their stops pulled out." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It varied according to the strength and direction of the various winds, how the gusts curled and twisted around the peaks, and whether the local jet-stream was scouring across the peaks of the mountains as well; when that happened – fortunately only every few years – the Sound could reach pitches and strengths that could deafen people kilometres away and bring down buildings in the surrounding hearkenries." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ahead of Tefwe, the lumbering local with the basket made its slow, painful-looking way down to the only two-storey building, at the centre of the complex." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It disappeared under an archway." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She followed it. Two folds stood in the centre of the archway, blocking her way and that of the local with the heavy woven basket." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'charcoal' into your response exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "One wall of the archway was grubby white, smudged everywhere with grey. The basket-carrier was just finishing writing WATER, GRAINS on the wall, using a thick stub of charcoal. The two folds stepped aside, let it pass, then stood where they had before, blocking the way.\n\nTefwe bowed, then picked up the lump of charcoal. It was almost too big to hold one-handed.\n\nShe took a breath – the thin air she breathed vibrated with the Sound, like something made liquid by it – and wrote, in the local language, GREETINGS. MAY I SEE DOCENT LUZUGE?\n\nOne of the folds nodded, turned and walked away." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The other stood in the centre of the archway, impassive, as still as though it had been carved from rock." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Tefwe got to stand there listening to the Sound, wondering if it was magnified in some way by the archway. She thought she could feel it echoing through her feet and legs, thrumming up through her like a never-ending earthquake.\n\nEventually two folds appeared; one was smaller and paler than the other, which she guessed was the guard that had gone to fetch this one, who confirmed its identity by taking the charcoal gently from her hand and writing, I AM LUZUGE.\n\nIt handed her back the charcoal. She wrote afresh; GREETINGS. MY NAME IS TEFWE. MAY I SEE NGAROE QIRIA?\n\nLuzuge motioned one of the other folds to come forward and look at the names she had written, then indicated that it should go." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It did, and she was left looking at the two folds, Luzuge and one of the guards, both of whom rested in front of her in their stood-sitting/parked configuration until the first one came back. It touched Luzuge hand-part to hand-part with a sort of rippling motion, then Luzuge nodded to it and it went to the wall. It rubbed out her original greeting and request to see the docent and wrote, FOLLOW.\n\nShe followed it along a dark, cold, gradually curving corridor at the back of the cells. Almost at the end of the corridor, the fold opened a heavy wooden door and gestured her to enter.\n\nShe was in an open cell with a perfect view of Mount Jamanathrus. In front of her was a low wall, about knee-height on her. The cell was bare apart from a small wooden set of drawers in one corner and a crude wooden seat in the middle, on which a man in dark robes sat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The cell was shaped so as to maximise the Sound, the rear wall bowed and the corners only really there at ground level; above the floor, the walls curved in to meet each other, forming arches that met in a sort of shallow dome above.\n\nThe man in the dark robes half turned both body and head towards her. He looked like QiRia, though he appeared smaller, reduced; like something boiled down to its essence. His skin, visible on his face and hands and feet, had gone a dark red-brown, again like something undergoing a reduction in the bottom of a pan. He wore what looked like dark glasses. They had no glass or anything else transparent in them that she could detect; instead they were slatted, like half-open blinds. Tefwe wasn't sure how to greet him so was leaving the choice to him; he had never been very forthcoming physically, even as a lover. If he approached her they might hug, but it was not something she expected." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She saw his mouth move but she could hear nothing over the vast, enveloping Sound." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It filled the cell like a god bellowing in her ear." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She shook her head, though he wasn't really looking at her. He reached to one side, picked up a cord lying on the floor and pulled it. The cell started to go dark as some sort of covering began rolling down over the single open window. The noise reduced a little. Then he got up and went to the side of the window, swinging in a heavy, wooden, two-part shutter. Tefwe did the same at the other side. The cell was almost completely dark now; her eyes were working mostly on infra-red. The Sound was reduced less than the light." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was still there, especially the deepest, most resonant and longest notes, but when QiRia put a thick wooden bolt across between the two shutters to secure them, she heard the clunk it made. It was, she realised, the first thing she'd heard that wasn't the Sound in quite a long time. Her ears relaxed a little.\n\nQiRia had sat down in his crude-looking seat again. She sat by the low wall in front of him, under the shutters. At first she thought he wasn't going to look at her, seemingly gazing over her head as though still staring out towards the mountain, then he lowered his head.\n\n\"So, Tefwe,\" he began, speaking Marain, his voice little more than a croak. He coughed, cleared his throat, started again, voice louder and assured." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"So, Tefwe, let me guess. You just happened to be in the neighbourhood.\"\n\n\"Hello, Ngaroe. It's good to see you again. How are you?\"\n\n\"I'm well.\" He smiled. It was hard for her to read his expression behind the slatted glasses, but she reckoned it was a genuine smile. \"You?\"\n\n\"Also well, though it's complicated.\" She looked around the bare little cell. \"What is it that you do here, Ngaroe?\"\n\nHis eyebrows went up a little at this." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Isn't it obvious?\" he asked mildly. \"I listen.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You listen?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes. That's... that's all I do. I sit here and... well,\" he said, smiling – this was, Tefwe was already thinking, the most smiley and un-prickly she could remember seeing the man – \"calling it 'listening' doesn't really do it justice. I sit here and... absorb the Sound. It becomes part of me, I become part of it. It is... magisterial, bliss-making, overwhelming. I am... transported by it, Tefwe. Here, the locals treat it as a religious experience. I don't, of course, but I'd still claim it is as important to me as it is to them. As... profound.\" He gave a small laugh. \"You're lucky, you know. It comes and goes. Right now I am like a sleeper near the shallowest part of a sleep-cycle, so I can come out of the trance of listening and talk to you. I... I almost welcome the break. A week from now, though, and I'd refuse even to talk to anybody, no matter who they might be, how far they'd come or how urgently they needed to see me, and in two weeks I would be so far under I'd be incapable even of acknowledging the presence of one of the helpers come to tell me I had a visitor. That's when they have to feed me water with a sponge and try to get me to swallow crumbs of cake.\" He smiled his beatific smile again. \"But you said that 'it' – that is, how you are – was complicated. In what way?\"\n\n\"It's complicated because in a sense I'm not really here, Ngaroe,\" she told him. \"I'm still Stored – technically, basically – on a ship called the You Call This Clean? a long, long way from here. What you see in front of you is a copy; I feel entirely like me inside here, but the truth is I'm embodied inside a ship's blank-body, appropriately customised.\"\n\n\"Hmm. So, let me see, I think only Hassipura knew where I'd hidden myself this time. Have you been to see it?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes. It still builds sandstream complexes on a life-forsaken plain in the middle of nowhere on an O called Dibaldipen; the kind of barren wasteland on an Orbital that designers pretend they meant to happen all the time but which is really the result of over-artistic weather-pattern modelling and which secretly they are thoroughly ashamed of and embarrassed by.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She paused. \"Though I was in yet another copied body then, still it feels exactly as though that was me, riding out across the desert to talk to the recalcitrant machine. It, ah, it sends its regards, by the way.\" She shrugged. \"It was being sincere and un-ironic, as far as I could tell.\"\n\nQiRia smiled. \"Yes, I visited it there,\" he told her. \"Honn, Dibaldipen. Dusty... Anyway. What has caused this proliferation of Tefwes, Tefwe?\" he asked.\n\n\"Oh, there's a flap going on. They need me to ask you something.\"\n\n\"Who's 'they'?\"\n\n\"A fairly standard ship collective handling the latest budding emergency.\"\n\n\"SC?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No. Though some SC-associated ships helped get me to Hassipura and now to you.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Should I be worried or flattered?\"\n\n\"Flattered.\"\n\n\"Hassipura told you where I was... willingly?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"How easy was it to convince it?\"\n\n\"It took time, but that was mostly just showing it the respect it believes it's due. That drone demands a certain ceremoniality in such matters.\"\n\nQiRia smiled again, nodded. \"And you left it well, functioning?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Entirely. Anyway, it still has surprisingly many ambitions in regard to its desiccated hobby.\"\n\n\"So, what is it you want of me?\"\n\n\"We need you to confirm or deny something. It will take a little while to explain.\"\n\n\"I have the time. Do you?\"\n\n\"Of course. It's about the Gzilt.\"\n\n\"Ah-ha!\"\n\n\"They're about to Sublime.\"\n\n\"I know. I trust that all goes smoothly.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Ah, well,\" she said, and told him all she had been told." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He sat forward, listening, nodding now and again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"So,\" Tefwe said, \"the Z-R seem to think you might be able to confirm what the message from the Zihdren themselves is claiming: that the Book of Truth is a lie, part of somebody's experiment in applied practical theology or something. And we – the Culture – have been asked to help the Z-R with this, plus we have a kind of obligation to the Gzilt to do the right thing.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But how much difference might it make?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "QiRia asked, sounding sad. \"Knowing the truth of it, if it is true?\"\n\nTefwe shrugged. \"I don't know, Ngaroe. I'm not sure anybody knows. But we can't just let it go. I guess the truth always needs to be chased down. I'm helping with the chasing, and you have the answer, or part of it. If you remember. Do you remember?\"\n\nHe just sat there smiling at her, silent. The Sound, outside, a vast shadowy symphony of meaninglessness, still seemed to fill the small, night-dark cell.\n\nHer throat was a little sore, she realised, from having to keep her voice raised for so long. She cleared it, said, \"I remember that you told me you forgot nothing, remembered everything, had it all stored within you, sometimes multiply, in exhaustive, awful, boring, terrible detail. Detail ghastly for its sheer everlasting banality.\" She paused to give him time to speak, but still he didn't." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include \"Even if we find out something that it might be best for them not to know, at least we'll know. At least we'll have the choice.\" somewhere in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It would be good to know what you know about all this, Ngaroe. You always seemed to feel something for the Gzilt. It might help them to know whether this is the truth at last, or another lie.\" She paused again, but still he kept silent. \"Even if we find out something that it might be best for them not to know, at least we'll know. At least we'll have the choice.\"\n\n\"But who would we be to make that choice?\"\n\n\"Their friends.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"The Culture has no selfish interests in this, Ngaroe,\" she said, trying not to sigh, though doubting that he'd hear her if she did. She could sense that they were already starting to gravitate back to some of the arguments they'd had centuries ago." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They had ended inconclusively then – unless you counted mutual annoyance as a conclusion – and she thought it highly unlikely they'd end up any different this time.\n\nHe looked unconvinced, eyebrows rising again. \"The Culture has an interest in everything it touches,\" he said. \"I thought we'd agreed that at least.\"\n\n\"Maybe so, but no selfish interest. We just want to do the right thing by people we've historically felt close to.\"\n\n\"Ah. That old excuse.\"\n\n\"Will you stop that?\" She could feel herself starting to get angry with him again, and that was not going to help." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's not an excuse. It's just the truth.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"One person's truth,\" he began." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh, fuck,\" she said, looking away and crossing her arms." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Here we go... \" She looked back when she realised he was laughing. \"What?\" she demanded.\n\n\"I can't help you, Tefwe,\" he told her. He was looking down now.\n\n\"What? Why not?\"\n\n\"I just can't.\" He reached down by the side of the chair, felt for and found the cord there, and started pulling it. She could hear the matting that had rolled down over the cell's open window earlier as it was pulled back up again. The Sound pulsed back into the room, filling it like an avalanche bursting into a cabin an instant before it was swept away entirely.\n\n\"Because,\" he said, shouting, \"I got rid of those memories some years ago.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He completed hauling the sound-deadening matting back up and sat back again as though exhausted, like somebody long deprived of the sunlight finally being allowed to face directly into its warmth again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He took a deep, satisfied breath and shouted, \"So I don't have them any more. Not here. Not on me, not in me. They're gone.\" Tefwe's ears had mostly closed up again, assaulted by the noise. She wasn't sure she could really hear what QiRia was saying any more; it was more that she was lip-reading. There was a fraction more light getting into the cell now, around the still-closed shutters.\n\n\"But why?\" she shouted.\n\n\"Fear, Tefwe,\" he said, shrugging. \"I was frightened that what I knew would be enough to cause me trouble, given what was going to happen; given the Subliming. So I made sure that the memories became encoded in just one place – two places. Then I saw an old friend who relieved me of them.\" He shook his head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Now I have no idea what I used to know. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"So... where are... where were those memories?\" she asked, yelling. \"Where were they encoded?\"\n\nHe reached up to his face with one hand, took off the slatted glasses. The heat coming off his skin, differentiated according to the various surfaces on his face, plus the small amount of evening light leaking round the edges of the shutters, meant her eyes could see quite well enough.\n\nIn the very first instant, she wasn't sure exactly what she was looking at, or what was wrong with his face. Then she started to realise. She felt herself frowning and sitting further forward, to see properly and to make sense of what it was she was seeing." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand on the story, maintaining character relationships, in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Participants: LSV You Call This Clean?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "/ LOU Caconym / GCU Displacement Activity / GSV Empiricist / GSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry / Ue Mistake Not... / MSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In / MSV Pressure Drop / GSV Contents May Differ\n\nLSV You Call This Clean? : Hello. Bad news. Mr QiRia has been tracked down but would appear no longer to have the information we seek. See attached report.\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: Ms Tefwe seems to have been unable to take any steps which might have confirmed whether he was telling the truth or not. Are we simply going to take his word for this? I had gathered that the gentleman was/is notoriously unreliable.\n\nLSV You Call This Clean? : Correct. However, determining whether he was telling the truth or not would have meant kidnapping Mr QiRia. That would have been difficult and wrong." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And it is hard to see what his motivation might be in lying about this." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He certainly had the ability to compartmentalise his memories in the way described, and his eyes were genuinely missing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As the report's appendices make clear, Ms Tefwe carried analytical capacity which independently verified both that this was the real person and that his eyes had been surgically excised. Short of removing him entirely from the hearkenry to carry out a full body scan, it is not easy to see what more could be done. I think we have to take this as it appears.\n\nGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry:\n\nAnd it appears that the problem recedes over the horizon once again, its solution still out of our reach. Are we really determined to pursue this chimera regardless of cost?\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: I suspect the consensus remains much as it was. Has anyone changed their opinion since the last vote?... No? All right, then; we are as we were.\n\nGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: Thinking, I hope, of what we do if and when we discover whatever there is to discover." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Personally, I would vote for not telling the Gzilt, no matter what we find, and I suspect I am not alone in feeling that way." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 6 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Which is why I question the point of looking so insistently in the first place. I don't want to appear presumptuous, but perhaps we might all think a little along these lines?\n\nLOU Caconym: Gee, thinking ahead. Whom'd a thunk a that?\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: Mistake Not... , it would appear to be up to you and Lieutenant Commander Cossont.\n\nUe Mistake Not... : Yup. Little busy." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Match existing character familiarity or establish new\nLength:\n9 sentences\nGenre:\nScience Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The elegance of conventional Orbitals lay in the fact that their diameter – they were usually about three to four million kilometres across – meant that the speed you had to rotate them at to produce what would feel like standard gravity to your average Culture person – not to mention a generous statistical spread of non-Culture humanoids and other species – also automatically produced a day/night cycle that was right in the middle of what the Culture regarded as the acceptable spectrum of values." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The artificial, inside-out worlds usually orbited their stars on roughly circular paths, generally following orbits set between those of any planets present, though sometimes taking up the same orbit, socketed into safe, non-collisionary lock-step tracks in and around the planet's Trojan points. Some Orbitals flew more ellipsoidal paths, swinging further out and closer in to their star, to produce seasons, if desired. Spinning them almost but not quite edge-on to their parent sun prevented the far side from eclipsing whatever part lay in sunlight at the time.\n\nThe Culture hadn't invented Orbitals like this, but it had taken them up with an enthusiasm nobody else had ever displayed, the Minds attracted both by the grandiosity of the concept – this was engineering on an epic scale, and even the skinniest full O had the surface area of twenty or thirty standard one-G planets – and by its sheer chronocyclic, material-frugal elegance; compared to planets, Orbitals represented a very matter-cheap way of providing generous amounts of pleasantly rural and even wild-looking living space, plus you could usually build your Orbitals from exactly the asteroidal debris you'd want to get rid of in a solar system anyway, to stop bits of it flying around and hitting your fancy new worlds.\n\nMicrorbitals were, as the name implied, much smaller versions of the same basic idea; they could be any diameter you wanted because the spin speed wasn't rigidly linked to both the force experienced at their surface and their day/night cycle. You spun a microrbital at the appropriate rate to produce whatever apparent gravity you required, set it circumference-on to the sunlight, then put a suite of angled mirrors at its centre to reflect the light, rotating these independently to give you the desired light/dark periodicity.\n\nThe microrbital of Bokri was tiny; barely more than a thousand kilometres across. This was so small that the retaining side walls of sheet diamond which kept the atmosphere in would have met in the middle had the world been filled with a significantly denser atmosphere or spun much slower. As it was, the central mirrors were so close to the top of the walls that they rested on struts running along their inside edges so that the whole assemblage looked like the axle and spokes of a giant wheel." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The world was almost as long down its axis as it was wide and was conventionally arranged – by the relaxed, abundantly provisioned standards of a post-scarcity humanoid civilisation – with parkland, forests, lakes and aesthetically pleasing built-up areas and isolated grand architectural statements spread across its nearly three million square kilometres of interior surface." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Gzilt had never entirely turned their backs on the ideas of both private ownership and money, though the latter had been demoted to being of mostly ceremonial value and both had been detached from what most people regarded as being the most important measure of a person's worth; there had been enough of everything to go around everybody in the Gzilt civilisation for many millennia, and while a degree of self-interest and acquisitiveness was taken as being only natural, outright self-obsession and full-on greed were regarded as signs of weakness of character, if not a symptom of actual psychological damage." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Bokri microrbital was joint-owned by a group of Secular Collectionary orders: institutionalised obsessive, only para-religious organisations, each devoted to one or other aspect of preservation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "One order collected ancient farming implements, another chemical rockets and antique space craft, while another had specialised in household dust; its sheds and warehouses were packed with billions and billions of vials and other containers collected from worlds and habitats throughout the Gzilt realm over thousands of years and filled with nothing more than the sort of stuff that collected in the corners of rooms and cabins and which had been picked, swept, sucked or electro-staticked up by volunteers or enthusiasts to be sent to the Little Siblings of the Detritus, on Bokri." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This had seemed idiotic, even perverse to many people, right from the start, but had turned out to be surprisingly if modestly useful, providing the raw material for many an undergraduate paper on, for example, changing patterns of casual domestic ambient surface debris through the ages." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Incast were a philosophical order dedicated to storing as much of the disputed, superseded or just plain long-proved-wrong knowledge that the Gzilt civilisation and species had built up over the millennia, and any artefacts associated therewith." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Housed in multiply backed-up and distributed memory storage facilities across Bokri and various other microrbitals throughout the Ospin system and beyond were entire libraries of ancient conspiracy theories, crackpot physics hypotheses, unutterably antique speculations on anatomy, chemistry and astronomy, and – as a sort of sideline – devices holding the mind-states of untold numbers of individuals and group-minds – mostly Gzilt but from other species as well." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Some were static back-ups for the dynamic originals, held and running elsewhere, some were being retained under the instructions of the people whose personalities and memories they held encoded, to be re-energised and their inhabitants woken at some specific date or when something especially noteworthy occurred to the Gzilt – the Subliming naturally representing pretty much the ultimate example of that criterion – and some had effectively been lost or abandoned." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include exactly 2 instance(s) of the word 'dataversities'" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the Culture, stuff like this would be collected by Minds with an interest in just such societal flotsam and jetsam and stored in the specially adapted bays and hangars of GSVs, or in the subsidiary structures of Orbital Hubs. In the Gzilt, the Centralised Dataversities of Ospin were the place; they acted as the sump, the filtered, partitioned bilges of the civilisation.\n\nThe main Incast Facility within Bokri lay in the centre of a broad, circular lake; it was a spherical building a kilometre across looking like a sort of reversed image of an iceberg, with barely a tenth of its bulk seemingly lying beneath the surface of the lake. It was mostly white, wore its multi-storey nature on its surface with obvious horizontal divisions but possessed relatively few piercings, windows or balconies.\n\nIt was generally reached by an evacuated travel-tube system set on a long, elegantly thin bridge extending from the shore of the lake, a kilometre away. The Mistake Not... reckoned they didn't really have the time to indulge in such niceties, so deposited Cossont, the android Eglyle Parinherm and its own avatar Berdle near the centre of the building, Displacing them neatly into an empty elevator car and using a small collection of similarly dropped-off comms and effector gear to start interfacing/interfering with the facility's own administrational data complexes.\n\nThe ship itself, though much slowed for its erratic transit of the system, hadn't paused as it passed Bokri. It had already taken a wild, almost jagged route through the cloud of habitats and dataversities, pinging from one to another like a ball down a nail-board, just to confuse anybody following; having got Cossont and the others to their destination, and feeling fairly sure that it had indeed shaken off any pursuing craft, it raced off to continue its eccentric join-the-dots loop through the system.\n\nIt had promised to be back within the hour; that ought to be long enough." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'mind-state' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Still not getting anything?\" Cossont asked the avatar.\n\nBerdle shook his head. \"Pinging away merrily,\" he said quietly, \"but nothing's answering.\"\n\nThe avatar and the various pieces of gear the ship had Displaced into and around the facility were trying to locate the device with QiRia's mind-state inside it by sending out signals it might respond to, assuming it possessed any normal Culture processing. The Mistake Not... had tried to contact the Warm, Considering – the ship believed to have helped QiRia encode his mind-state within the cube – to get whatever technical details about the device it could, but the other ship had yet to reply. From what it could gather, nobody willing to tell even knew where the Warm, Considering was.\n\n\"Why exactly are we here?\" the android Parinherm asked, looking round the pleasantly wide, softly carpeted and very slightly curving corridor they'd found on exiting the lift." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The corridor's white-with-a-hint-of-blue walls glowed very gently with the fake daylight of a lightly overcast day and were covered in thin grooves, some of which indicated doorways with hermetic-quality shut-lines.\n\n\"You are here to protect Ms Cossont,\" the ship's avatar explained, also looking round. \"She is here because she is looking for something.\"\n\n\"May I help?\" the android asked brightly. Like Cossont and Berdle, it wore well-cut if nondescript civilian clothes. Cossont wore a thick necklace of what looked like brushed silver.\n\n\"Just be prepared to step in to protect Ms Cossont,\" Berdle told it patiently, \"in case I am unable to.\"\n\nParinherm stared at the avatar. \"You are remarkably opaque to my senses,\" he remarked. \"What are you?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"An avatar, Parinherm,\" Berdle said, smiling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Surely you guessed that?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes,\" Parinherm said, nodding." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Good to have it confirmed. Would this be a joint Culture – Gzilt scenario?\"\n\nBerdle nodded. \"Feel free to treat it as such.\"\n\n\"And I,\" Cossont said, \"am a human. With a low boredom threshold. I'm almost starting to regret leaving Pyan back on the ship.\" She spread all four arms. \"Can we... do something?\"\n\nBerdle nodded. \"We're going to have to,\" it said. \"There's nothing coming back.\" He smiled at Cossont. \"This will require you to make an official request to locate and retrieve your property from the facility.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yippee. Do I have to fill out a form?\"\n\n\"You have to submit a formal application five days in advance,\" Berdle told her.\n\nShe stared at him. \"Five days? I assume you have some clever—\"\n\n\"The formal application was emplaced two seconds ago,\" the avatar told her. \"Suitably, if illegally, back-dated.\" Berdle bowed. \"Please follow me,\" he said, turning on his heel.\n\n\"Ms Cossont,\" the Executive Recoupments Officer said, coming to stand before them. He nodded at her companions, bowed to her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The waiting area was extensive, pale, lush with potted plants, filled with the sound of water trilling in fountains and pools and dotted with very comfortable seating. Cossont lounged in what she trusted was a suitably proprietorial fashion, upper arms spread, her lower set concealed by her formal jacket, legs crossed, a small shoulder bag lying on her lap. Berdle and the android had chosen to remain standing, looking slowly about all the time. \"May we offer you a beverage?\"\n\n\"No, thank you.\"\n\n\"I wasn't even aware there were any arrivals today,\" the Incast officer said, glancing at a projected screen hanging in mid-air down and to one side of his straight-ahead sight-line.\n\n\"Ms Cossont arrived by private craft,\" Berdle said smoothly.\n\n\"Ah, I see,\" the officer said. \"And you've come in from...?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "he continued, looking at Cossont, who was listening on her earbud as Berdle said,\"Please, let me,\" to her at the same time as he said, to the officer, \"Ms Cossont's application to retrieve her property is in order, I take it?\"\n\nThe officer was dressed in vaguely ecclesiastic-looking pale robes. He looked from Cossont's stony expression to Berdle's agreeably open one. He checked his screen, one hand moving and his eyes flicking. \"... Yes, yes, it's all in order.\" He smiled emptily at Berdle. \"The object has been located and is being retrieved as we speak.\"\n\n\"Splendid,\" Berdle said quietly.\n\nThe officer looked back to Cossont." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We usually ask our clients if there is a particular reason for them wishing to recoup an object.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Again, allow me,\" Berdle said to Cossont as he said, \"How commendable,\" to the Incast officer." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What is the most common reason given?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ah,\" the officer said, distracted again. \"Sadly, due to client confidentiality strictures, we are unable to share that information.\"\n\n\"What a terrible pity,\" Berdle said, looking sympathetic. He put one hand gently on the officer's forearm and said, \"I am sure then that you will fully understand that Ms Cossont has equally valid reasons for being unable to share with you her reasons for being unable to share with you the information that you seek and request. I trust I am not mistaken in proceeding on the assumption that this request is of a non-compulsory, voluntary opt-in nature?\"\n\nThe Executive Recoupments Officer looked like he was processing this. After a moment he said, \"Well, indeed.\" He glanced at his screen. \"Excuse me; the requested object is in transit.\" He smiled at the unresponsive Cossont." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'berdle' should appear 3 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'll fetch it. One moment.\" He turned and walked back to the curved sweep of desks where they'd found him earlier, sitting with his feet up, listening to music.\n\nBerdle watched him go, then turned back to Cossont, who raised her eyebrows.\n\n\"All going smoothly,\" Berdle told her through the earbud.\n\nParinherm was staring intently at a water feature ten metres away. The feature's central fountain closed down suddenly, collapsing with a sort of relaxed decorum; the watery tinkling sounds filling the reception and waiting space quietened very slightly.\n\n> Parinherm... Berdle sent.\n\nThe android turned to look at the ship's avatar. ~Just testing, he replied." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> I trust the test has been completed to your satisfaction." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> It has.\n\n> Then, if you'd be so kind...\n\n> Certainly.\n\nThe fountain burst into life again, leaping higher into the air than it had before and causing some water to go splashing over the edge of the pool and onto the carpet.\n\n> Oops.\n\nThe fountain settled back to normal.\n\nThe Executive Recoupments Officer returned holding a white half-metre cube. \"Here we are,\" he said, presenting it to Cossont with a bow.\n\n\"Thank you,\" she told him, glancing at Berdle, who came forward and accepted the box as Cossont rose to her feet." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ms Cossont herself will need to open the... \" the officer said, as Cossont opened the box, looked inside and lifted out a silver-grey cube.\n\n\"Also, the storage container remains our... \" the officer said, as Berdle handed the white box back to the officer and Cossont slipped the cube into her shoulder bag.\n\n\"Thank you for your help,\" Berdle told the officer. \"We'll be on our way.\"\n\n\"My pleasure,\" the Executive Recoupments Officer said, as the three walked towards the elevators.\n\n\"We still have two-thirds of an hour before the ship returns,\" Berdle said through Cossont's earbud as they stepped into the lift. \"I thought we might leave the facility and find a hostelry of some sort on the lake shore, to wait there.\"\n\nCossont nodded as the doors closed.\n\nThe car started its descent, then its soft lighting seemed to flicker delicately." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It drew smoothly to a stop, settling, finally, with what Cossont heard as a single click and the two non-humans present both heard as three distinct snicking noises. A background susurrus Cossont had hardly noticed consciously ceased, suddenly.\n\nThe android and the avatar exchanged looks.\n\n\"Ah-hah!\" Parinherm said, with a smile.\n\n\"This is,\" Berdle said aloud, and then seemed to think about what it was, \"un-promising,\" he concluded.\n\n> Is that you? he was asking the android at the same time.\n\n> Facility mainframe material systems motile systems general elevator control suite basement-to-mid-section shaft complex core-central faults fault notification fault confirmation fault over-ride safe fault work-arounds...?\n\n> Yes, all that." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Please leave that to me." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You're getting in the way." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And stop trying to remove the block on the car's external AV feed; I did that nearly a quarter of a second ago.\n\n> Very well. What may I do?\n\n> Please remain/be on full alert within the immediate physical environment with particular regard to extraneous anomalous audible and general vibration signals, extending your sensor/effector abilities no further than the elevator car's and the shaft's own monitoring and activation circuits. I'll continue monitoring and trying to affect further afield.\n\n> My on-board expert systems precedents set indicates strongly we might be in a definitional pre-attack phase and so close to the point at which some sort of physical measure may become advisable.\n\n> Agreed. Currently eliminating all chances this could be happenstance before taking any irretrievably physical action.\n\n> We should warn/prepare Ms Cossont.\n\n> Also agreed. I am in the process of interrupting her.\n\n\"'Un-promis—'?\" Cossont was saying as Berdle talked over her, saying, \"Strong likelihood this is hostile. I'm activating your eSuit and neck-helmet. Please do not be alarmed and remember to put all your weight first on one foot and then the other.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"'—ing'?\" Cossont finished, as something happened all over her body.\n\nHer underwear consisted of a millimetre-thin body suit which only left her feet, hands and head uncovered. The ship had insisted she wear it, and that they perform a drill before she left to see what would happen if it deployed. Before her eyes, even before she'd put it on, the eSuit had grown an extra set of arms as easily as though it was a big complicated balloon the ship was blowing up, and these had been the last bits to unstick themselves and inflate.\n\nAs it had during the practice on the ship, the suit puffed up a little all over, while the thick hems at ankles and wrists unrolled, the suit quickly covering all her hands and fingers in thin gloves and slipping between her feet and shoes in turn as she did as she'd been told and performed a side-to-side stepping motion to allow this to happen; what felt like thin bootees now enveloped her feet.\n\nThe thick necklace had unrolled at the same time, extending quickly downward to bond with the collar of the suit while blossoming and closing round her head before shrinking back again to rest lightly on her scalp and most of her face, leaving her eyes, nostrils and lips free under small bulges in the material; the bulges over her eyes were transparent. The first thing she did was tear off the restrictive formal jacket, freeing her lower set of arms. She got tangled in the strap of the shoulder bag, finally setting it securely back in place over her head.\n\nThe problem is located in the primary shaft control node, Berdle told Parinherm." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It is under continual and dynamic effector load from apparatus it is beyond the abilities of our local assets to counter. I am sending a missile component to the location to attempt some sort of intervention.\n\n> A missile? Are we escalating to—?\n\n> Your pardon. Missile as in, for example, scout missile. Decimetre-scale, field-powered, non-expendable.\n\nOne hundred metres away horizontally from the arrested lift and fifty metres higher, within a service space in a suspended ceiling over a dark, unoccupied lecture theatre, a stubby cylinder the size of a fat pen jerked into motion. It lifted and stabbed forward, flourishing an angstrom-fine cutting field that sank into and peeled back the thin metal covering of an air duct.\n\nThe missile was one of three Displaced into the spherical Incast facility by the Mistake Not... , along with various other bits and pieces of potentially useful equipment, almost all of which were rapidly redeploying to suit the current situation.\n\nThe missile slipped into the duct and accelerated hard, within metres achieving speeds which caused a wave of expansion and compression to travel down the ducting with it, making the duct's metal creak and its supports groan. Razor-sharp grilles inside the ducting, stationed every few tens of metres to stop animal pests using the ducts as runs, were despatched in field-sliced showers of glittering shards, barely slowing the device at all." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Fuck,\" Cossont breathed, looking from Parinherm to Berdle. \"This isn't good, is it?\"\n\n\"No, it isn't,\" the avatar agreed, then its head flicked – impossibly fast for a real human – towards the lift's manual control panel, an instant before a gentle beeping noise came from the speaker grille.\n\nParinherm seemed to be about to speak, but Berdle held up one finger. In a neutral voice, he said, \"Yes?\"\n\nThe missile came to the end of the useful part of the air duct in a last burst of grille components, exiting into a parallel elevator shaft, flying straight across as it twisted and slowed, bouncing off the shaft's ceramic surface hard enough to leave a crush-indentation then pulsing up the shaft at maximum acceleration, towards the under-surface of an ascending elevator car. It adjusted its course, jolting across the shaft, aiming for near one corner of the car and bursting through it.\n\nIt had time to register three humans present in the lift through the shower of debris, then it was bursting out through the roof. It used its already deployed cutting field like an air-screw to provide a tiny amount of extra lift, then as a fender to cushion the next blow on the roof of the shaft as it twisted and turned again and darted down an access tunnel to the next shaft, braking hard at the last moment as it neared the offending control unit." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Below, in the shaft it had just left, it could hear screams." }, { "from": "human", "value": "These would likely be associated with its incursion into the elevator car two seconds earlier and probably indicated extreme surprise as well as some shrapnel injuries." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Is that Ms Cossont, Vyr, Lieutenant Commander, Reserve?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "a male voice asked from the grille in a conversational tone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> Getting some air movement, compression, in the shaft out there, Parinherm sent." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> That's my missile, Berdle sent back at the same time as he said, \"It is not,\" to the grille." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Why has this lift stopped?\"\n\n\"Ah. Then I must be addressing one of the two gentlemen who accompanied the lady. My name is Colonel Agansu, of the Home System Regiment, on special secondment, unspecified. I'd like to talk to Ms Cossont.\"\n\n\"Did you stop this lift?\" Berdle said, voice clipped and severe. \"Set in motion again immediately.\"\n\nFifty metres over Berdle's head, the missile floated in mid-air in front of a control unit barely bigger than itself, inspecting the quivering cage of bizarrely spectrumed energies enclosing the unit and the cables leading to and from it.\n\nEffector-targeted component and ancillaries highly ext-shielded, it reported to the avatar. Actions to control/defeat unclear.\n\nBerdle briefly reviewed the poor-quality video the device was sending, and the missile's available weaponry." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was the least well armed of the three that had been Displaced, reducing the options. ~Close-entrain all 2-mm mini-rounds, the avatar sent. Set for point, centred, kinetic assist.\n\n> Copy, the missile sent, and squirted all its tiny shells at the field-wrapped control unit at once, far too close together to work properly had they been travelling further than a few tens of metres; as they were travelling less than a metre before impact and detonation, this didn't matter. It used its maniple and cutting fields to kick them forward at the same time, imparting a little extra kinetic energy and throwing itself backwards as a result. Light erupted around the control unit, temporarily blinding the missile as it extended its forward fields to fend off the blast wave and pieces of debris and used its rear field components to help cushion it against the blow as it hit the far side of the shaft it had flown up seconds earlier.\n\n\"First I need to talk to—\" the voice from the grille was saying.\n\nWow! Parinherm sent. Sub-gramme AM explosion fifty up!" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Correction; series of same but smaller.\n\nThe air in the lift seemed to pulse gently as the shock wave travelled down the shaft's structure. Berdle put his hand out and took hold of Cossont's elbow. She appeared to have noticed the pulse of infra sound and was opening her mouth to speak as the thud from above came. The blast wave slammed down onto the roof of the car, sending the human, avatar and android briefly up into the air as the whole lift was rammed down a notch on its trio of side ratchets; the three dropped to the floor again, steadied themselves.\n\nDebris approaching you, the missile sent. Medium sub-sonic. It sidled back through the dust and smoke choking the debris-littered access tunnel to inspect the control unit. ~Target unharmed.\n\nIt's a ship, Berdle thought. The unit's being effectorised by a ship, or a unit as strong as one a warship would carry." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> Pause, he told the missile." }, { "from": "human", "value": "~Prepare full personal destruct, immediately under unit." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Wh—?\" Cossont had time to say, before a series of titanic claps shook the elevator car from above. Her helmet had inflated itself and gone to triple layer above the crown of her head. Berdle watched the lift's ceiling dent in a couple of places.\n\nFifty metres above, still in a storm of smoke and dust and a faint snowfall of ceramic flakes filtering from the shaft's summit, the missile positioned itself carefully.\n\nThe voice of Colonel Agansu, from the grille, did a little better than Cossont, getting out the whole of \"What—?\" before matters proceeded.\n\n> That's a scout missile? Parinherm asked Berdle. ~Really?\n\n> No, that's a knife missile, Berdle replied. ~And expendable, as it turns out." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The roof/ceiling above would take more, the avatar decided, and the elevator car appeared structurally sound." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alarms were warbling in the distance, and the local networks, where not under attack, were buzzing with sudden traffic. The Incast facility was not without protection or resources, and was fighting back as best as its automatics knew how against the effector onslaught from outside and inside its walls. That the other side had such powerful assets in place so quickly was not a good sign though, the avatar knew.\n\n> We'll need to protect Ms Cossont physically now, from above, Berdle told Parinherm, double-and then treble-checking the state of the missile's anti-matter battery before – to the missile – sending the signal,~At 35 per cent AM yield; prepare, confirm.\n\n> Copy 35 per cent AM yield.\n\n> Enact.\n\nThe knife missile blew itself up.\n\nCossont felt herself go utterly limp, from the outside in, somehow. Had she had the time, she'd have worried about her bowels relaxing, but instead she was fascinated to find that she now had no control whatsoever over any of her major muscles, which, having been lost to her, now seemed to have developed minds of their own and taken the decision to roll her up into a foetal ball, while Parinherm and Berdle, perhaps similarly afflicted, were arching over the top of her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If she'd seen this done on stage, she thought, it might have looked quite an elegant ballet move." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Blast-from-above-coming-apologies,\" Berdle said in her earbud, talking very fast and clipped." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was an almighty crack of sound, she felt briefly weightless, though still held down by the two bodies spread over her, and then the floor came smacking up towards her, slapping her feet, creaking her bones and making her insides feel bruised. Her chin, on her tight-together knees, tried to bury itself between her calves. The shoulder bag with the cube in it pressed painfully into her back. It all went very dark. She expected to find her ears ringing but they weren't. Something cracked above her, making the whole lift shudder.\n\n\"Okay?\" Berdle asked her, as the avatar and the android pulled up away from her and her suit started bringing her quickly to her feet. Standing, she suddenly found she had control of her body again. There was a haze of dust in the car, and the centre of the roof had caved in to the extent that the three of them had to stand back near the walls." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yeah,\" she said. \"What was—?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Knife missile self-destructing directly above us,\" Berdle said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Excuse me.\" The avatar squatted, his hands seemed to sink into the surface of the soft plastic floor, and then he pulled back. There was the sound of tearing, protesting metal, and Berdle's feet sank deep enough into the plastic tiles to cause ripples round the soles of his shoes, which themselves seemed to be deforming. Parinherm jerked suddenly, seemed to stagger.\n\nCossont stared at it. \"You okay?\"\n\nI just tried activating some AG, Parinherm sent to Berdle. I think I got targeted; non-viable. \"Fine!\" it told Cossont brightly, at the same time.\n\n> Our adversaries are able to manipulate the topography of the local gravitational environment, when we give them a target, Berdle told the android.\n\nParinherm thought about this. ~Neat, he sent." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The other Displaced components are experiencing the same problems, Berdle told the android, only the knife missiles are unaffected." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "AG is a little subtle for their purposes; they just use naked force fields.\n\nPulled by the avatar, a giant flap of metal and plastic came peeling and screeching back from the floor, showing the shaft underneath, sinking away into darkness several hundred metres below.\n\nBerdle dropped head-first into it, his feet remaining hooked onto the floor.\n\nParinherm, the avatar sent, along with a simple diagram of what it wanted the android to do. If you would.\n\n> Certainly, Parinherm replied, and dropped through the hole too, also head-first, feeling Berdle catch his ankles as he fell past and then cooperating in a swinging motion that within two oscillations allowed his hands to reach the upper edge of an open doorway where a tiny missile the size of a human thumb was floating, two delicate-looking outstretched field components fending off the twin doors, which were sliding back and forth continually, trying to close.\n\n\"Vyr,\" Berdle shouted. \"Make sure the cube is secure within your bag, then climb down my body. Lie on my back and hold on very tightly. The suit will help.\"\n\n\"What?\" Cossont said, kneeling by the side of the hole in the lift floor and staring down the bottomless-looking shaft. Berdle was stretched across the shaft at forty-five degrees; she couldn't see Parinherm at all.\n\n\"Climb down me first,\" Berdle said reasonably." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We'll tackle the rest as we go.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Quaking, Cossont checked the shoulder bag was fastened, then lowered herself down the body of the avatar, feet first, holding on to his legs, then turned round on her knees on the slope of Berdle's back. She had never been more thankful for having four arms. Also, the suit did seem to be helping, but not as much as she'd have liked. She lowered herself to lie on his back, shaking, blood pounding in her ears. The bag slid round her shoulder, hitting Berdle on the head. Her hand was shaking as she went to grab it.\n\n\"Sorry!\" she yelled.\n\n\"No, I'm sorry,\" Berdle said. \"Are you afraid of heights?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No,\" she said through clenched teeth, \"just of dying generally.\" She put the bag over her shoulder again and hugged the avatar from behind, so hard that had he been human she'd have worried about cracking his ribs.\n\n> Okay? Berdle sent to Parinherm.\n\n> Ready.\n\nThe little missile floating between the doors on its gyre of fields withdrew, letting the doors start to close as Parinherm let go of the top lip of the doorway and immediately flicked his hands around to grasp the edges of the closing doors.\n\n> Secure hold, the android sent as the doors pressed into his fingers.\n\n\"Really tight now, Vyr,\" Berdle said quietly, then brought his feet together, letting him and Cossont fall from the under-surface of the elevator car. They pendulumed in the air, their combined mass sending them both swinging thudding into the shaft wall. The avatar took most of the impact and the suit's gloves protected Cossont's hands, but it still hurt." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Parinherm, fingers jammed, now had his own weight and that of the two people clinging to him on his arms, hands and fingers, which were being forced to slide down the narrow gap between the almost fully closed doors." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even in a fairly optimistic, human-flattering virtuality, Parinherm thought, a real human would be screaming head-over-heels down the shaft at this point, the bloody stumps of their fingers still trapped between the doors." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Happily, I am not human, Parinherm thought, and this is only a simulation.\n\n> Climbing, Berdle sent, and quickly hauled himself up the android's body, hand over hand, taking Cossont with him. He stood braced on the lower lip of the doorway and swept the doors open – Parinherm dropped a metre but held on to the lower lip easily enough – stepped forward and turned to let Cossont jump off his back and then stooped to grasp the android's hand just as, with a creak and a sudden rush of air, the elevator car dropped down the shaft in front of the open doors, hit and severed Parinherm's fingers and then shuddered on downwards to sweep the rest of his body away.\n\n> Damn, the android sent. ~I was enjoying that!\n\nCossont caught her breath, started forward towards the open shaft, looking down at the fast-retreating roof of the battered lift as air sucked out all around her.\n\nBerdle reached, pulled her backwards, away from the shaft. \"You know,\" the avatar said, stepping round her and looking out from the alcove where the lift doors were set, then taking another step out into the gently bowed corridor, \"Parinherm will probably be okay, but we have to—\"\n\nSomething seemed to strike the avatar full in the upper abdomen; Berdle was jerked backwards as a blinding light burst out all around him and something exploded further down the broad curve of corridor; Cossont was sent flying back towards the open doors and the shaft, staggering and skidding right to the edge, all four arms windmilling desperately as she stood teetering, heels-on to the drop." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her eyes were going crazy, reacting mostly too late to the star-burst of light that had erupted from the avatar, filling her vision with black dots. Berdle still seemed to be there, in front of her, his body shuddering, wrapped in flames.\n\nShe felt herself start to tip backwards, into the void.\n\n\"Oh, fuck,\" she heard herself say, and thought what pathetic words those were. And not even remotely original and unique, she thought, as she canted backwards, arms still hopelessly wheeling.\n\nBerdle, enveloped in fire, stepped forward and caught the strap of her shoulder bag one-handed. He stopped her, held her, then grabbed her round the waist with his other hand and pulled her forward, back into the alcove.\n\n\"Best get down,\" he said, kneeling within the alcove. She dropped to her haunches, taking cover behind the metre of wall between the jammed-opened doors and the corridor." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Berdle stripped the remains of his burning clothes off and threw them down the elevator shaft. His skin had gone silvery. There was no mark on his back at all; she'd have expected an exit wound. Actually, she'd have expected him to be blown in half.\n\n\"What the fuck?\" she asked. She was trying hard not to shriek.\n\n\"Didn't quite see that coming in time,\" Berdle said, turning and grinning at her. \"Managed to... \" a hole appeared, instantly, in his back; she could see straight through his body to his silvery thighs. The hole was big enough for her to have put her fist in." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The smooth hole closed up again, just as quickly." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word frequency rule: 'finger' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"... but not quite fast enough; caught some round the edges. Sorry about that.\" He nodded at the floor. \"Lost the scout missile.\" Cossont looked at the floor, where half of the little scout missile that had been holding the doors open earlier lay, gently smoking.\n\nThe avatar put one finger to the edge of the alcove, flicked it out and brought it back just as another bright beam came lancing past where his finger had been an instant earlier. The edge of wall flared and a heavy detonation came from somewhere past them down the corridor; a blast of light followed by a body-shaking tremble beneath their feet and a pulse of blast, forcing Cossont to lower her head briefly. Grey smoke was drifting along the ceiling and a whole spectrum of alarms went squawking, warbling and howling all around them.\n\nThen there was a dull, seemingly very distant thud, almost infra-sound deep. The ribbon of dark smoke in the lift shaft, extending from the burning clothes Berdle had discarded, trembled in the column of air." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> Oof! Hit bottom, Parinherm sent. ~95 per cent disabled, but still alive! End-run, I'm guessing. Nice working with you. Powering dow—\n\n\"Parinherm is still alive,\" Berdle told Cossont. \"We are being fired at by some sort of military arbite stationed just at the line-of-sight curve-limit of the corridor to the right. To the left, eighty metres away, one corridor higher, advancing this way at jogging speed, is a Gzilt person in a full battle suit armed with a laser assault rifle. This may be the Colonel Agansu person who contacted us earlier. I have two knife missiles to the left, within this corridor. They are holding fire while Gzilt civilians on a tour are evac—Wait. I'm being contacted. Excuse me.\"\n\n> Android/avatar entity, this is Colonel Agansu. Do you read? Come in.\n\n\"Colonel Agansu wishes to talk,\" Berdle told Cossont. \"Given our situation and the time we have to wait for the ship to return, I believe keeping him talking is to be preferred to having him or his adjuncts shooting at us.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The ship,\" Cossont said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her teeth wanted to chatter." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She tried to stop them." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Remember to mention: \"It is returning a little faster now,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How long? It was still two-thirds of an hour away—\"\n\n\"It is returning a little faster now,\" the avatar said. \"Though we still need to stall the Colonel. I intend, therefore, to engage him in conversation.\"\n\n\"You engage away,\" she told him.\n\n> Android/avatar entity, in the corridor, this is Colonel Agansu. Do you read? Come in.\n\n> Colonel Agansu, Berdle sent. ~To what do we owe such destructive attention?\n\n> Ah. And who might I have the pleasure of addressing?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> You knowing my name; is that really necessary, Colonel?\n\n> My knowing it is strictly speaking unnecessary, I'll grant, Agansu sent. ~However, purely for form's sake, we might as well exchange names; sobriquets, at least.\n\n> I fail to see how this will make any material difference to our exchanges, of information or fire.\n\n> I don't mean to imply we are at all likely to become friends, sir. But a degree of civilised politeness should not prevent us discharging our duties.\n\n> Or our weapons.\n\n> Of which you seem to possess rather few, following the destruction of your knife missile, not to mention the demise of your fellow at the bottom of the elevator shaft. I am somewhat tempted to send the arbite up the corridor towards you, just to see what you are able to put in its way to stop it; however, I am aware that Ms Cossont is relatively vulnerable compared to your good self, and may come to some harm in any resulting fire-fight, even while you might remain quite hale and hearty." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The arbite is already in a state of some confusion following what it thought was a centre-body 100 per cent kill-shot which you seem, nevertheless, to have survived. Is Ms Cossont well?\n\n> Well enough.\n\n> You know, I think I am going to—\n\n> My name is Berdle, Colonel Agansu. Interesting to make your acquaintance.\n\n> Likewise, Berdle.\n\n> I did ask, earlier, to what we might owe such destructive attention, if you recall?\n\nIndeed you did, Agansu sent." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well then, Berdle, the answer would be: to Ms Cossont, and possibly the device which the facility's records show she recovered a few minutes ago." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As I said earlier, I would like to talk to Ms Cossont. Face to face; human to human. Also, I think it might be germane if I were to be allowed to inspect the device she retrieved. I strongly suspect you will have to accede to my requests in time, Berdle. We do rather have you at a disadvantage, wouldn't you say? There was a pause, and then the colonel sent, ~I certainly would.\n\nBerdle looked at Cossont, glanced at the ceiling and said quietly, \"The person in full battle gear – who I'm assuming is Colonel Agansu – is now almost overhead, possibly ready to make ingress here, either down the shaft behind you or straight through the floor. The tour party near the combat arbite's position is still not quite clear of the likely destruction volume, were I to let the two knife missiles off the leash. Excuse me; I must let Colonel Agansu talk at me some more.\"\n\n> You might benefit from being a little more cautious, Colonel, Berdle sent. ~We are less at a loss than you appear to imagine." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> Are you really?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The colonel sounded amused." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> We are. We are currently mustering and preparing our forces, Colonel." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You have my word." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> I'm sure I do, Agansu said, with mock seriousness." }, { "from": "human", "value": "~And that it is worth everything in the current situation, I feel certain." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nevertheless, the fact remains that you do not benefit from the presence of a friendly ship nearby, whereas I do. As well as, as you may have noticed, a very capable combat arbite.\n\n> Yes. I trust the combat arbite is not in any way... precious to you, Colonel?\n\nBerdle heard the colonel laugh. ~Ah, dear. How fine the line is between acceptably defiant bravado and hopelessly delusional boasting. You were doing so terribly well up until that point.\n\n> I am sorry to be such a disappointment to you, Colonel Agansu.\n\nBerdle glanced at Cossont again. \"The tour party near the combat arbite's position is now clear of the likely destruction volume and the knife missiles are cleared to fire,\" the avatar told her." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should contain the word 'seemed' precisely 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Due to the nature of the munitions being used, the corridor is about to become extremely bright. We are trying to keep damage to a minimum, but – ah; here we go... \"\n\nThe air in the corridor seemed to fill and streak with fanned white light, intensely bright; it almost looked like the smoke-hazed air was being lit by lasers, but something about the quality of the light itself and the way the smoke in the corridor was tugged after whatever it was that was making its way down the corridor argued against this. Cossont had never paid all the attention she might have in weaponry identification or whatever they'd called it back in military academy.\n\nIt really was astoundingly bright; it was as though part of the surface of a blue-white sun had suddenly appeared in the corridor, searing, bleaching everything. The light cut off; what had seemed like a brightly lit space in front of them suddenly looked dull.\n\nAn instant later a series of colossal, still greater outbursts of light – just barely distinguishable as being made up of hundreds of small, searingly bright flares rather than being a single massive eruption – made a white sun of the end of the corridor to their right. In the instant between the light and the trailing sound of the fusillade, what probably was laser light came flicking through the hazed air, filling the patch of corridor Cossont could see with sparkling bars of cerise light.\n\nExplosions shook and battered her from both sides. She put her head down, wondering if she'd have had any hearing left without the suit." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Something touched her on one ear and Berdle said, \"We have only one knife missile remaining to our left now. The person above us is either waiting or hesitating. I have instructed the remaining knife missile to mount a frontal attack; it will fly past us at just under ceiling height in approximately six seconds and fire over us and through the lift-shaft doorway. The munitions being used, though tiny, are both powered by and payloaded with anti-matter, so some radiation exposure at such close quarters is inescapable. Immediately after the missile has passed, you must stand and grasp me as you did before, from behind, arms round my body. Preferably legs wrapped round mine over my shins, too. Keep the bag with the mind-state device in it at your side, not over your back, do you understand?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She nodded. More bars of pink light filled the air in front of the alcove, creating a screaming, tearing noise as the laser light impacted the swirling smoke and dust particles. Her mouth had gone very dry.\n\nThere was a further furious burst of cerise light and then the impression of almost invisibly quick motion high up, as though the corridor ceiling itself was rippling. Then the eSuit just turned the lights off; everything went completely dark while sound and blast-fronts seemed to detonate everywhere, pummelling her body from every side.\n\n\"Up!\" Berdle shouted through her earbud. The suit helped her stand, she gripped the avatar from behind with three arms, brought her legs round his at the knee, made sure the shoulder bag was at her hip with her remaining hand and then put that round the avatar's body too. She could see again. The corridor was full of light, both white and pink.\n\nThen something seemed to erupt from Berdle's chest and they were both flung away from the corridor and through the shallow alcove and into the lift shaft." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont experienced what felt like the start of her head getting ripped off, then somebody slammed a sledge-hammer the size of a ship into her back and she blacked out." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Awake again; sore-headed, sore-backed, aching all over. She seemed to be still on Berdle's back, looking over his shoulder through a ragged, dusty gap across the elevator shaft to the doorway on the far side. Through the smoke and dust there, a thing lumbered like a bad dream of a man; massive, reverse-kneed, arms thick with weapon clusters, saucer-headed, it stood, straightening a little, seemingly looking straight at them. If the little knife missile's frontal attack had caused it any damage, it wasn't visible. Cossont didn't recognise the model; frankly it looked retro. Something rotated on its chest.\n\nThen – silently, because her hearing didn't seem to be working properly – another explosion seemed to go off just above the part of the shaft she could see, and debris rained down, falling past and showering into the depths. A man in a bulky glittering suit and holding a large gun, also seemingly made of mirror stuff, came floating down, as though sitting in an invisible chair. He looked very relaxed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont looked around. She and Berdle seemed to have been blown through a wall and into a storage area; everywhere she looked in the dusty gloom she saw towering stacks of shelves full of pale boxes similar to the one that had held the glittering grey cube with QiRia's mind-state inside." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They had ended up crumpled together in the remains of a set of shelves, half lying, half held standing by the twisted debris around them.\n\nA couple of the pale, half-metre cube boxes came tumbling from somewhere overhead, bouncing and clattering down to join the jumble of debris already covering the floor. The combat arbite illuminated each of the falling boxes in turn with a thin beam of laser light from its weapon clusters, but let each fall and bounce without firing at them.\n\nCossont looked idly, groggily down at her hip. The shoulder bag wasn't there. It must have been ripped away.\n\nShit, she thought.\n\nThe man in the glittering suit was floating, stationary, in the middle of the elevator shaft, looking in at them. He tipped his head to one side, as though wondering what to make of them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The combat arbite shuffled to one side, to keep a clear field of fire." }, { "from": "system", "value": "🔍 Find a place to insert: \"Still one knife missile left.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We really are fucked, aren't we?\" Cossont said, her voice sounding odd inside her head and the helmet. She could taste what was probably her own blood in her mouth.\n\n\"Not necessarily,\" Berdle replied through the earbud, sounding, as ever, relatively unconcerned. \"Still one knife missile left.\"\n\n\"But I thought it... \"\n\n\"It left. It was not destroyed,\" Berdle told her. \"It went the long way round the building. I suspect they assumed any combat missiles we had left would just burst through anything in their way; certainly that would be the first thing to occur to a knife missile. So – although this has taken longer, nevertheless – the element of surprise is with the missile. Here we are; that'll be it now,\" the avatar announced, as light erupted all around the combat arbite.\n\nThe man in the glittering suit started to whirl round to where the combat arbite was throwing its arms up and disappearing and disintegrating inside a consuming torrent of white fire." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then the view went dark.\n\nMore battering and pummelling. It was like being slung into a big metal drum with a bunch of sharp rocks and being kicked down a steep mountainside studded with boulders.\n\n\"The knife missiles in use here are from the Miniaturised Drone Advanced Weapon System,\" Berdle told her as floor, the shelves and the air itself all seemed to shake and quiver and beat. \"Though it bears mention that it was 'Advanced' rather a long time ago. Still. And AM power is very crude, really. Raw, ragged stuff. Not really suitable for this kind of civilian-environment, in-structure work – far too battlefield – but it was all I had. Interestingly, the nanomissiles doing the damage are only a millimetre long and a tenth of that in diameter; too small to see for most unaided eyes; astonishing what you can do with anti-matter. There. Oh. Here—\" Just as the battering seemed to be tailing off, there was another single, thudding, titanic impact, then Berdle said, \"Ouch. Bet that hurt. Oh well, down you go... \"\n\nThe view came back. The elevator shaft and the lit corridor beyond were full of dust and smoke. The doorway where the combat arbite had been standing was no longer a neat rectangle; it was practically circular, and most of the shattered, ragged edges were glowing. One or two shattered bits of machinery lying smoking, flaming or sputtering on the floor of the corridor might have been parts of the arbite." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Of the man in the glittering suit, there was no sign. Something flashed briefly in the shaft.\n\n\"Yes, I wouldn't go sticking your head into the lift shaft,\" Berdle said, over a distant cacophony of alarm noises and some deep booming noises coming from the shaft. \"Colonel Agansu is down there, largely disabled but patently still capable of firing.\" Berdle stepped out of the compacted debris of the shelves they'd smashed into, taking Cossont with him. He peeled her arms away, then turned to face her as she stood, swaying slightly. She suspected the suit was doing most of the work involved in keeping her upright.\n\nShe focused on the avatar. The whole front of his chest was a shallow silver bowl." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It swam back into shape only slowly. \"Hmm,\" the avatar said, looking down at this as another bright flash lit up the elevator shaft behind him. \"Powerful laser your man had.\" He stooped, came back up holding the shoulder bag with the cube in it. \"Here.\" He tied a knot in the burst strap, almost too quickly for her to see. \"You okay?\" he asked.\n\nCossont cleared her throat, nodded. \"Fucking peachy.\"\n\nBerdle looked innocently pleased. \"Good. Well, there don't appear to be any other forces wishing to engage with us, so we may be through the worst of it.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was another flash of light in the shaft behind.\n\n\"Shouldn't you be finishing off this colonel guy?\" Cossont asked.\n\nBerdle shook his head. \"No need. I have a scout missile down there with him, monitoring. He shouldn't cause us any more trouble.\"\n\n\"What about Parinherm?\"\n\n\"I've tried contacting; he's powered down. We'll try and Displace him too when the ship gets back. Walk this way.\"\n\nCossont, following the avatar, stepped shakily into a debris-strewn corridor between towering shelves. It seemed to stretch for ever into the distance. Something zipped past her from behind, coming through the smoke at head height and making her flinch." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The thing stopped right alongside Berdle." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was a thin cylinder about as thick as a thumb and as long as a hand, its front end shaped like an angular, blunted arrowhead and its dull silver surface marked with hair-fine dark lines and tiny dots. Berdle cocked one silvery eyebrow at it and said, \"Yes, well done. So that Ms Cossont might be included in the conversation. Oh, both our lives. Inelegant use of rather too many nanos, though. Well, so you say, but it could have been accomplished more economically. Even so; had there been a whole section of those things, could you successfully have taken on all of them too? Well, there you are then.\"\n\nThe missile moved off so fast it was as though it was a shell in a perfectly transparent gun barrel; it just disappeared, leaving behind only an after-image and the vaguest of impressions it had headed away in the direction its sharp end had been pointing. Berdle's head jerked back in the blast of air and Cossont was only saved from being blown off her feet by the avatar reaching back with one silvery hand and grabbing her by the bag's strap again. The thunder-clap echoed off the surrounding shelves and the ceiling.\n\nBerdle shook his head as he resumed walking. \"Knife missiles,\" he said over his shoulder, with what sounded like affection.\n\n\"Yeah, knife missiles,\" Cossont agreed, like she knew what she was talking about. She glanced back, but could see little through the smoke." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You sure there's nobody else coming after us?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 10 sentences." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Include the following text] → \"but there doesn't seem to be.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Not completely, no,\" Berdle admitted, \"but there doesn't seem to be.\" He sounded thoughtful. \"The Gzilt ship present here is at least a sixth-level heavy cruiser, possibly a seventh-level battle-cruiser; that'd mean between one and three platoons of marines available, at least, but they aren't being used. So that might say something about the secrecy and... well, authorisation of the mission involved.\" He shrugged. \"Anyway. Onwards; I should warn you there will be some tramping, and we may have to hide.\"\n\nThe ship was led a merry dance, trying to get sufficiently close to the microrbital for long enough to get its avatar and the human off. Quickly getting the measure of each other, and each correctly guessing that its opposite number had no intention of being the first to open fire, neither ship resorted to serious targeting behaviour or the sort of hair-trigger weapon-readiness status that might have led to a misunderstanding. The whole tussle was conducted without signalling, as though neither vessel wanted to admit it was actually happening.\n\nEventually the Mistake Not... outwitted/out-field-managed the Gzilt ship and snapped the two humanoid figures off the habitat and back inside itself. It saw the Gzilt ship Displace/disloc one human-size entity off the little world a moment later. Having successfully retrieved its two primary Displace targets, the Mistake Not... tried to get a lock on the remains of the android Eglyle Parinherm, but found it had been beaten to it; a disloc field from the Gzilt ship was already starting to envelop the creature's crushed and broken body at the bottom of the elevator shaft.\n\nBefore the Gzilt vessel could complete the operation, the Mistake Not... applied a spatter of plasma fire to various parts of the android's body, cauterising all processing and memory/data storage nodes within the machine." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Hey can you write like Iain Banks in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre and use whatever I write as a jumping off point? This is from a longer work so some stuff might reference earlier chapters." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Participants: Ue Mistake Not... / GSV Contents May Differ" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ue Mistake Not... : Right." }, { "from": "human", "value": "What?... Oh; the stuff from the You Call This Clean?... Okay." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The memories were in his eyes and they've been removed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "How severe with himself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Just as well we successfully retrieved Mr Q's mind-state, then." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At no small risk to life and limb, I might add." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: Congratulations. With what result?\n\nUe Mistake Not... : Just about to find out..." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: The user will write a bit then you need to write around three sentences continuing directly from the user's text. Note: Characters may be introduced as if already known - maintain any existing context or treat as new if unclear.\n\nGenre: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cossont felt sleepy, sore, elated, all at once. Her pain-management systems were telling her to move gently, slowly, with no sudden movements. She would be bathing rather than showering, she had already decided, but first, the ship had insisted, they needed to talk to the stored mind-state inside the silvery grey cube." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Mistake Not... was powering away from the Ospin system on a wildly erratic course, having decided – after its jinking, ducking and diving, field-to-field tussle with the Gzilt ship – that it was the faster." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So far at least, the Gzilt vessel had shown no sign of following.\n\nCossont sat down in the lounge area of the shuttle that had become her home over the last few days, clad only in the eSuit with its hands and feet components retracted to cuffs again and the helmet collapsed back into its necklace form. Pyan had gone ooh and ah over her and wrapped itself round her neck, rubbing gently at her bruised skin." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Berdle, back to looking like a handsome Gzilt male again, entirely gave the impression he'd just strolled out of a grooming parlour; not a hint of tiredness or a hair out of place." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You have been in the wars, you poor thing,\" Pyan told Cossont, wrapping itself tighter.\n\n\"Yes. No need to throttle me.\"\n\n\"Apologies. There. And where is that silly android?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We had to leave him behind,\" Cossont said, glancing at Berdle as she extracted the silver-grey cube from the battered shoulder bag." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Under a wrecked elevator car at the bottom of a lift shaft.\"\n\n\"The Gzilt ship disloc'd him aboard itself,\" Berdle said. \"It took Colonel Agansu too.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Were they both still alive?\" Cossont asked.\n\n\"I think Agansu was,\" the avatar said.\n\n\"Not Parinherm?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No.\" Berdle shook his head, held Cossont's gaze until she looked away.\n\nShe put the silvery cube on the low table in front of her, then reached out, touched it on.\n\n\"Ngaroe?\" she asked." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ms Cossont,\" QiRia's voice said immediately.\n\nCossont realised she had been tense, hunched over the table. She relaxed a little." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Good to speak to you again,\" she said, smiling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How long has it been? Oh. Quite a few years, I see. And are we on... a Culture ship?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cossont wasn't sure what to say. She glanced at Berdle, who shrugged, unhelpfully.\n\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"Umm... I didn't realise you could... \"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm not completely without senses in here,\" QiRia's voice said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I may only be switched on for fractions of an hour at a time, but I can tell roughly what my circumstances are, how much time has elapsed since I was last activated, and I have sufficient appreciation of the radiative and general sensory ambience of my surroundings to tell when I am, for example, on a ship.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We were on a ship the last time we spoke,\" Cossont said.\n\n\"I know. So what? Hardly remarkable. But this is a Culture ship; a GCU or a warship or something similar. That is remarkable. So I remarked upon it. That it? We done? You going to shut me off for another sixteen years?\"\n\n\"No, no,\" Cossont said quickly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sorry. Very sorry. But... look. We need to ask you something.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Who's 'we'?\"\n\n\"Hello, Mr QiRia,\" Berdle said pleasantly. \"My name is Berdle. I'm the avatar of the ship you're on, the Mistake Not... Pleased to meet you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes. Delighted. You sound stressed, by the way, Cossont.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Do I? Well, it's been—\"\n\n\"Yes. That's why I said it,\" the voice said, with only a touch of acid. \"Berdle, I'd like to interface. May I see through your eyes, or some other visual sensor immediately hereabouts?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Be my guest,\" Berdle said, and looked first at Cossont, then in a steady sweep round the rest of the lounge." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Cossont! You have four arms,\" QiRia's voice said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"To play the elevenstring,\" she said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Ah. You weren't put off playing it by the Warm, Considering after all. Good for you. So; what is it you want to know?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She took a deep breath." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ngaroe, we need to ask you something about... long ago. Going right back. It is... it's very important. It might affect how the Subliming goes. Our Subliming. The Gzilt Subliming.\" She took another deep breath. \"There was a message, a signal from the Zihdren, saying that the Book of Truth might all be a lie, and you were mentioned as—\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Wait, wait, wait,\" QiRia's voice said. Cossont fell silent. \"How far back? Are you asking me to remember things from—\"\n\n\"The time of the conference that set up the Culture, sir,\" Berdle said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Ah,\" QiRia's voice said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That far back. Can't help you.\"\n\n\"What?\" Cossont said. She and the avatar exchanged looks." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I said,\" the voice from the cube told them, slowly, \"that I cannot help you. My memories only go back to... about seventy years standard after that time. The memories in here begin at midnight on the 44th of Pereid, 8023, Koweyn calendar. Before that, I've nothing.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Seriously?\" Cossont said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She could hear her own voice start to rise in tone and volume. \"You're missing—?\"\n\n\"Must ask you to check, sir,\" Berdle said, in a pained voice.\n\n\"Check for yourself. You're a ship; you'll have the ability. I'm giving you permission. I'm not a biological, not in here, so take a look for yourself. Scan all the data in this cube. Go on; feel free.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You're sure?\" the avatar said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He looked at Cossont, who found it was her turn to shrug." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes!\" QiRia's voice said sharply." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Berdle sighed. He smiled at Cossont." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"This might take a moment,\" the avatar told her.\n\nShe sat back slumped in the seat, rubbed her face with two of her hands. She sighed heavily. \"Take all the—\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ah,\" Berdle said, sounding resigned. He looked at Cossont. \"I'm afraid it's just as Mr QiRia's mind-state has claimed.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Told you,\" the voice from the cube said.\n\n\"The memories aren't there?\" Cossont felt suddenly tired, full of aches, and depressed." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'berdle' 2 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm afraid not,\" Berdle told her. \"And even the memories of the times when Mr QiRia thought back to those times, before the source memories were edited out, have been expunged, too.\" Berdle looked at the cube." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That's quite a thorough job, Mr QiRia.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sounds like it,\" the voice agreed.\n\nBerdle smiled faintly, shook his head as he said, \"Would you have any idea why you—?\"\n\n\"No. None at all. Guess I must have thought I had something to hide. If so, glad I've done a good job of it, or made sure somebody else did.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont was sitting, looking deflated, eyes closed, shaking her head gently." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"They can't just have gone,\" she said, as though to herself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"They can't just have gone.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She looked at Berdle. \"What now? Can we look for... the real QiRia, for the old guy himself? He might... he should still know.\" She shook her head again. \"Shouldn't he?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We've already tried that,\" the avatar told her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"They found him, but he'd had the memories encoded site-specific in his body, and then had those sites removed.\"\n\n\"What?\" Cossont said, frowning.\n\n\"Mr QiRia looks like this, now,\" Berdle said, and a screen appeared in mid-air, of a man in a dark room, wearing a pair of dark, slatted glasses." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The person who tracked him down,\" Berdle said; \"their suit took this.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'screen' 2 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The screen image moved and the man took off the glasses, revealing that it was QiRia, but also that where his eyes should have been, there were the inner parts of ears.\n\nThe clip looped and the screen split to show different versions of the same sequence, in infra-red, slow motion, with the eye sockets zoomed in on, and combinations thereof.\n\nCossont just stared." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How gross!\" Pyan said.\n\n\"What are you looking at?\" QiRia's voice asked.\n\nCossont reached out and turned the cube off, then slumped back in her seat, eyes closed again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had a feeling she might be about to cry." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Do you remember this?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Berdle said softly, and when Cossont opened her eyes again the screen was showing a view that looked familiar, though at first she couldn't quite place it. It was of a man looking slightly lost in what might have been a transit lounge. Then he left, following a modest amount of luggage on a float-trolley." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Of course: QiRia, arriving on Xown, five years ago. Then a similar set of images which seemed to show him in the same place, dressed similarly but wearing big dark glasses. If anything, he looked even less sure about where he was going this time." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The images faded away and the screen went dark.\n\n\"And this?\" The screen shone out again to show Ximenyr, the man with the many penises on the airship Equatorial 353, in the Girdlecity. It was almost exactly the view she recalled having at the time, though then the view flicked round and showed Cossont's own face, before flicking back to the man in the bed again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So this had been Berdle's point of view. This was the sight through his eyes, recorded.\n\n\"Mr Berdle, Ms Cossont,\" Ximenyr said in his deep, thick voice." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Pleased to meet you.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He opened his mouth and a long tongue snaked out and delicately licked at first one eyebrow then the other, shaping them both neatly into place. The tongue disappeared again. He opened his eyes wide; he had bright, pale blue irises." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His eyeballs went back into their sockets, the blue irises disappearing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were replaced from below by dark red irises which rolled into place and steadied. \"Excuse me,\" he said. \"These pupils work better in daylight.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He smiled widely, showing very white teeth." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont was nodding now." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Mr Ximenyr, the body-amendment specialist,\" she said.\n\nThis would be why QiRia had looked like he had, the second time in the transit lounge; wearing big dark glasses, seemingly – perversely – less sure of his surroundings than before: he'd been blind.\n\nThe screen view now was doing something she hadn't done at the time, zooming in to a close-up of Ximenyr's face; the teeth and the eyes at first, then down, to the necklace of trinkets adorning his neck." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The view came to rest and freeze on the tiny – at the time deactivated – scout missile that the ship had sent into the man's bed-chamber. It was resting on Ximenyr's chest between what looked like an android's thumb and a thick crystal cylinder, striped with encrusted jewels.\n\nThe frozen image jerked to one side, zoomed in further on the cylinder, showing a hazy view of what looked like semi-transparent crystal with what might have been a pair of berries inside." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were pale green, and looked like they were floating in some sort of off-white surround.\n\n\"What colour were Mr QiRia's eyes?\" Berdle asked.\n\nCossont still had to think, just to be sure." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "same energy as Iain Banks, keep writing. story might have ongoing elements" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She should never have trusted herself. She ought to have known what she was like. Well, she did know what she was like, but she should have paid more attention or taken the issue more seriously or something.\n\nScoaliera Tefwe, still within the virtual environment of a substrate housed within the LSV You Call This Clean?, looked at the two holo images of herself facing her and scowled." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"So. Neither of you?\"\n\n\"Certainly not me.\"\n\n\"Certainly not me.\"\n\nThey didn't say it at quite the same time, but then the ships they were housed within were at quite different distances." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The original Scoaliera Tefwe, who thought of herself as the real one – but then, both the others would as well – sighed in exasperation and flicked the images off." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Huh,\" she said.\n\n\"I have their experiences, all the sensory data they collected,\" the You Call This Clean? told her. \"They can't stop you reviewing those.\"\n\n\"That,\" Tefwe said, \"will have to do.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"There's a surprise at the end,\" the ship told her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Shall I warn you?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What, and spoil the fun? Why no.\"\n\nSo she watched herself take the aphore from the stables at Chyan'tya, by the Snake river, with its smells of bell-blossom and strandle flower, even-cluss and jodenberry, then head out across the Pouch to the hills. She saw the pair of raptors wheel across the blaze of blue sky, could taste the heat in her mouth at the day's peak, and lay panting with the mount in the shade of the desiccant umbrel.\n\nShe went up into and then through the mountains." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She skipped her other self's memory of sleep; it saved time but also it felt like an intrusion too far, even though this person was still and really herself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She met with the drone Hassipura, surveyed its intriguing but somehow pathetic little empire of tunnels, channels and pools of scald-dry sands. She heard where she – yet another, sequential version of her – might find QiRia, and left.\n\nShe watched herself – there was always that distance at first, like watching a play or a film, before you lost yourself in it – as she stood up within the tall sways of bronze and copper-coloured grasses, then walked to the deserted station and waited for the rattling train-tram thing.\n\nShe could smell the air, and sense the locals, the folds, trying not to stare at her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was carried on up into the mountains, into the vast echoing kingdom of the Sound, and waited to be allowed in to the hearkenry, then followed the Docent Luzuge, and was, finally, granted her audience with the elusive Mr QiRia." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The eyes – the sockets that now housed ears – came as a shock. That certainly counted as a surprise.\n\nShe – her other self – didn't get long to gawk at the man's mutilated face. There was some commotion outside, audible over, or at least through, the crushing weight of the Sound." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The door at the rear of the cell was thrown splintering open and some sort of shining, multi-limbed drone, all angles and barbs, came tearing in and halted by QiRia's seat. It drew itself up as though to strike. QiRia had jumped when the door had been thrown open and was turning towards the machine, which screeched, \"Arrest! Surrender self!\" in a metallic scream pitched so high it cut right through the Sound." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tefwe's suit had gone to full deployment the instant the door had started moving, covering her head in a close-fitting semi-transparent helmet." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'threw' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She jumped up and threw open the shutters, letting the Sound roll in. There was a white flash and she felt something hit her hard in the back, though without causing pain. She threw herself through the matting curtains and out of the window, landing on the cold slope of scree outside and hurtling in a zigzag down towards the nearest cover – a dark mass of metre-high boulders. \"Ship!\" she yelled. \"You getting all this? Get me off here!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Suit lower dorsal area seventy per cent compromised,\" the suit told her solemnly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She could feel heat bleeding through where the blow from behind had hit, making her back warm.\n\n\"Shit!\" she said as she dived for a gap between two of the boulders. She never got there. A second, much more powerful shot – from above, from a weapon platform she hadn't even known was there – hit her between the shoulders and blew her neck and head off." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Most of her landed in a bloody, fiery, smoking heap just before the collection of boulders; her head flew further and thudded off the top of one of the boulders, bouncing to the ground just beyond. Then the view, from the scout missile or whatever had been accompanying her, flashed once and disappeared too.\n\nThe Rapid Random Response Unit, suddenly subject to the aggressive attentions of a small flotilla of Oglari vessels, executed a very risky manoeuvre, succeeded in snapping Tefwe's still-just-about-alive head back to itself and then flared wildly off at its highest possible, engine-field-addling acceleration.\n\nThe whole incident caused some highly vocal distress and outrage for the Oglari, allegedly entirely on behalf of their valued allies and grateful charges, the Uwanui." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Apologies for the misunderstanding were dutifully expressed by the Rapid Random Response Unit, its home GSV and other respected Culture worthies, but further favours and indulgences were now owed or at least expected by both the Oglari and the Uwanui.\n\nApparently, neither Contact nor Special Circumstances was particularly impressed with these developments.\n\n\"These things accrue,\" Tefwe muttered to herself.\n\n\"All on-boarded?\" the You Call This Clean? asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I experienced everything the other two experienced, so I suppose so,\" she said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But I got killed, for fuck's sake.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That was the surprise.\"\n\n\"Thanks. Think I'll go back to Storage now. Full asleep. No dreams.\"\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\n\"And next time you want to wake me up—\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "But the ship had already started putting her under." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It strongly suspected that there had been only one more word to come in that sentence of Tefwe's, and that it would have been the word \"don't\"." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yes, but... plausibly deniable, the ship decided.\n\n\"Of course we're close. We've always been close. We're mother and daughter. You might not understand; you're a man. Men rarely do. It's a different thing. You really have to be a mother to understand, frankly. Even some daughters don't understand, to tell the Prophet's truth. Not that I'm saying Vyr doesn't. That would be going too far. But she is independent. Very independent. But I'm not complaining; I'm not the complaining sort, not at all. That's how I raised her, you see? That's what I wanted for her. I always meant her to be her own person, not tied to my purse strings. And she hasn't wanted to become a mother herself, what with the Subliming, obviously. Or really had time, for that matter. Very busy. She's always been very busy. And not always with things that she can tell me about either, if I'm telling the truth and you know what I mean. You know. Well, I'm sure you do, in your type of work. I'm not saying she was some sort of secret agent or anything, but you could tell – well, I could tell, being her mother, as I say, and I do have a gift for these things even if I say so myself, though it's not just me, not really; it's all my friends, I'm very modest, they're the ones who'll tell you I have a gift, almost a sight for these things... but there were things she obviously couldn't tell me, things that were secret that it was best for me not to know I suppose. I'm not surprised, I'm really not. She's very bright, very capable girl, very able to take care of herself, and trustworthy. And loyal. Loyal, too. Very loyal. She takes after me in that way, it's part of the bond we share.\"\n\n\"It's just that according to the logs of the ship here, she doesn't seem to visit very oft—\" the first young man started to say, before his companion held up one hand to stop him.\n\nShe'd already forgotten their names, but the one who'd just been talking was the nicer of the two because he smiled more and looked at her properly and just had a nicer manner." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The other one was even younger – barely more than a boy – and harder-looking somehow and didn't even seem to have noticed let alone appreciated the very flattering and daringly clingy lounge dress she'd worn especially." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Inter-Regimental Intelligence on Trimestal Secondment! How grand did that sound! And they were interested in her little girl! In a good way, obviously; they had been very polite and deferential ever since they'd called the apartment from their aircraft on their way to see her, and even the small, hard-faced one who was probably only interested in boys anyway had been scrupulously courteous and mannerly from the instant he and the nice, jolly, fuller-faced one had crossed the threshold of the apartment." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Apparently, though they couldn't confirm or deny anything, naturally, Vyr was still alive." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And not just alive, but involved – the implication seemed to be – in something important. Her little girl! Well, it was no surprise really. She'd always known, at the back of her mind, despite all the silly, niggling things that the girl had done and said over the years, that Vyr would live up to the promise she'd shown when she was younger, and make her mother proud of her. It had only been a matter of time." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In fact, all the times she hadn't bothered to visit or get in touch and had seemed indifferent or intolerant or just seemingly wanting to be hurtful on the rare occasions when she did deign to show up suddenly made complete sense now; she'd just been trying to protect her mother!" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She should have known that's what it had been. Of course she'd loved and respected her old mum; how could she not? She just hadn't been able to bring her into her secret life in case it jeopardised her safety. Logical. Loving and sensible at the same time." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, frankly, about time!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Warib could feel herself getting quite excited with all these thoughts; her breath was coming rather quickly and she wouldn't be at all surprised if she looked flushed and even more youthful to these two very well-dressed and immaculately groomed young men." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'something' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The younger, harder-faced one was saying something. She really ought to concentrate; her attention had drifted there – not like her at all.\n\n\"... her being involved in something secret?\" he said, eyes narrowed but a small smile – finally!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "– on his lean face." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Did I understand that right? Did you...?\"\n\n\"Well, I can't say too much. Obviously,\" Warib said. \"Oh, thank you, dear.\" She accepted a health drink infusion from Garron." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 5 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Garron had been a little brusque with the two young men initially – they were both probably even younger than he was – but that was all right. He'd even offered everybody drinks, which was a lot better than his usual What-am-I-just-a-steward-to-you? attitude. \"But she'd always been so outstanding, it would only be sensible for the regiment to put her talents to good use. I mean, she would never actually tell me anything, but,\" Warib winked at the two young men, \"a mother can tell. I think especially when you're very close – almost embarrassingly close! – in age to your daughter – oh, dear! – I think you can tell when there's something going on she's not telling you about. I can't say any more. I don't know any more, in the conventional sense of knowing, but, trust me; I know.\"\n\nThe young, hard-faced one nodded. \"That's very interesting.\"\n\nWarib smiled, relaxed. She was much less worried about Vyr now." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "keep the story goin for like five sentences more. same character vibes. make it Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence-y" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Participants: GSV Contents May Differ / LOU Caconym / GCU Displacement Activity / GSV Empiricist / GSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry / Ue Mistake Not... / MSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In / MSV Pressure Drop / LSV You Call This Clean?\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: Well, I think we've all looked at the relevant signal streams by now. It would seem Mr QiRia really is going to some lengths not to let us know what happened in the way back when. The Mistake Not... has already thrown itself about – again – and is now heading straight back to Xown and the Girdlecity; however, I place this out there just in case there is anybody who knows of anything closer... No? Really? Nothing else within five days? No, then." }, { "from": "human", "value": "MSV Pressure Drop: Did our friend the Mistake Not... not leave any sort of presence at Xown?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ue Mistake Not... : The Mistake Not... did indeed, because the Mistake Not... is not a complete idiot.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: I certainly didn't mean to suggest that you were. Would any of these items still on Xown be able to procure these two pieces of soft hardware independently?\n\nUe Mistake Not... : Not by themselves. The gentleman in possession of what we assume are Mr QiRia's eyes, which we assume are genuinely where his memories are, appears to have non-trivial resources to command in the field of surveillance and remote presences." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The items I left in the vicinity might be of some assistance in getting hold of the objects in question, and a certain amount of preparatory work might be accomplished, but they would not be sufficient in themselves." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ue Mistake Not... : We could, of course, just send a message to Mr Ximenyr asking him to sell, trade or just out of the goodness of his hearts gift us the objects concerned and put them aside until I'm able to get there to pick them up; however, I imagine we might all feel that could serve to alert him – and possibly others – to their mooted importance.\n\nUe Mistake Not... : Or we might ask some remaining element of the Fourteenth Regiment – its innocence/on-sidedness presumably taken as read following the attack on its HQ – to help us, but that takes control away from those we entirely and implicitly trust, and might be seen to confer potentially too much power on a Gzilt person, group of people or entity regarding the release or not of the information Mr QiRia's ocular out-board data storage devices may or may not contain. I think that covers all the available alternatives to my heading back as fast as my little engine fields will carry me to Xown and trusting to my own abilities to retrieve the situation.\n\nGCU Displacement Activity: Speaking of Gzilt people potentially having too much power through access to what may be contained in Mr QiRia's memories; what of Ms Cossont?\n\nUe Mistake Not... : Ms Cossont has been no trouble so far, and of some use." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Also, having been allowed to look inside the device holding Mr QiRia's mind-state, with his permission and indeed at his insistence, I've discovered that to access his memories is by no means simple; his cooperation may well be required to make sense of the encoded data we're looking for, certainly if it's to be done quickly and without fault." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As he appears to have, at the least, a sentimental attachment to Ms Cossont, we need to keep both him and her with us. In any event, I wouldn't imagine that she would either harbour the desire or be in the position to affect matters materially.\n\nGCU Displacement Activity: So you're vouching for her.\n\nUe Mistake Not... : Yes. As much as one can for a bio." }, { "from": "human", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: Good." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Meanwhile, we are faced with the problem of this disputed preferred Scavenger status between the Ronte and the Liseiden. Just because they've been taking their time crawling through space doesn't mean they have gone away. On the contrary, their most powerful fleet sub-units have each been crawling their way to the same place, Zyse, and are due there in the next day or two. Given what the avatar of the Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In has had to report on what still seems like a delicate political situation, this is not encouraging. Any thoughts?\n\nGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry: Yes." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 6 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I think we should be glad those two Delinquents are there, not to mention the Passing By... 's pair of Thugs.\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: I was looking for something a little more constructive.\n\nMSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In: My responsibility. My avatar continues to seek audiences with the various personalities involved, especially Septame Banstegeyn. However, he is proving a hard man to pin down; he can't be quite as busy with his official responsibilities as he claims, but he certainly appears to have plenty of other interests with which to fill his remaining time. As a result, sadly, for now, I am no more able to suggest anything more constructive than is the Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with the same vibes and character familiarity in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Participants: LOU Caconym / MSV Pressure Drop\n\nLOU Caconym: The Passing By... would appear to be of the Effectively Useless persuasion. It needs – it has needed throughout – to be much more aggressive in monitoring these \"various personalities involved, especially Septame Banstegeyn\"; and – indeed – especially Septame Banstegeyn. It should not be lodging polite requests to see these people if-they'd-be-so-kind-when-they're-able-pretty-fucking-please; it should be spying and eavesdropping on and bugging the fuck out of the fucking lot of them. This is what happens when you let an antiquated academic with a special interest in a civ take on any sort of serious role involving them because it \"understands\" them. It doesn't just understand them; it identifies with them, mimics them – it wants to fucking be them. Not good enough." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: The user will write a bit then you need to write around three sentences continuing directly from the user's text. Note: Characters may be introduced as if already known - maintain any existing context or treat as new if unclear.\n\nGenre: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Participants: GSV Contents May Differ / LOU Caconym / GCU Displacement Activity / GSV Empiricist / GSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry / Ue Mistake Not... / MSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In / MSV Pressure Drop / LSV You Call This Clean?\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: Well, we must await further developments. Let us hope nothing too momentous occurs in the meantime." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Match existing character familiarity or establish new\nLength:\n9 sentences\nGenre:\nScience Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The first part of the ship dance \"The Approaching Eclipsing of One Sun by Another\" was performed with due ceremony on the achievement of the Gzilt system outskirts, with the Gzilt home planet of Zyse only hours away." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'cachet' into your response exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The dance was augmented with the participation of the Culture ship Beats Working. This vessel's accrued inferred alien cachet value (positive), honorary, had, by general acclaim within the fleet and squadron, now become so great that it might actually be embarrassing for it to be informed of the level to which it had ascended so rapidly.\n\nIt was probably and arguably already over the limit that even as august a being as Ossebri 17 Haldesib, holding a position as elevated as Swarmprince and Sub-Swarm Divisional Head and Fleet Officer in Charge, could be properly expected to confer-by-informing. It was decided therefore to allow the Culture ship to continue to accrue inferred alien cachet value (positive), honorary, for the meantime, while still not disturbing the metaphorical airflow-through-the-hive by informing the vessel of this distinction.\n\nRegardless, Gzilt and Zyse now lay ahead, and close.\n\n\"Hello again. Sorry for being so... abrupt.\"\n\n\"That's all right. I take it we're still aboard the same Culture ship, the Mistake Not... \"\n\n\"Yes, we are.\"\n\n\"So, what were you looking at that disturbed you so?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "the voice from the silver-grey cube asked." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Or are you going to turn me off again?\"\n\n\"We were looking at what you'd done to yourself.\"\n\n\"Really? What?... Come on; tell me. The version of me in here and version of me that did whatever I did to myself are less than twenty years apart. When you've lived as long as I have, that's nothing. I won't have changed much in between. Effectively I'm the same person. Tell me.\"\n\n\"You'd put your earliest memories into your eyes, then had those removed,\" she said. \"You went to Ximenyr, in the Girdlecity, to have it done. You had extra ears put where your eyes should have been.\"\n\n\"... Well, that's certainly taking my predilection for the audible over the visible to an extreme.\" The voice sounded genuinely amused.\n\n\"It just seemed... drastic. Shocking,\" Cossont said. \"It looked like... like self-mutilation.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's my body to mutilate as I see fit, Cossont. And, from somebody currently possessing four arms, that's an odd criticism.\" Cossont opened her mouth, but then the voice went on. \"This wouldn't have been on a place called Cethyd, would it? In the Mountains of the Sound?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Ha! Makes sense. Heard about that place quarter of a millennium or more ago; been meaning to go ever since. Good for me for taking it seriously enough to dedicate more than the standard proportion of sensory equipment to the task. I admire myself.\"\n\nCossont, lying on her bed with the cube sitting on the pillow next to her, raised her eyebrows at that, but let it pass. \"An old friend of yours called Tefwe went there,\" she said, \"to try and persuade you to talk about what had happened back when the Culture was coming together and the Gzilt nearly joined but didn't.\"\n\n\"Huh. So much for swearing old lovers to secrecy and respect for one's privacy.\"\n\n\"But what the hell were you thinking? Taking out your own eyes? Leaving them with Ximenyr?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Did I? I bet it seemed like a good idea at the time. Also, less obvious than leaving the data with all the other informational detritus orbiting Ospin. For example.\"\n\n\"What were you – what are you trying to hide, though?\"\n\n\"Who knows? Maybe I'm better without the memories. So: we're heading for Xown?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Cossont said quietly to the cube. \"We're going to see Ximenyr, in the Girdlecity, to try and get your eyes, your memories back.\"\n\n\"Interesting that I didn't want the memories destroyed, just... parked.\"\n\n\"Whatever they may be.\"\n\n\"Whatever they may be... Of course, just because the eyes are there doesn't mean the memories are too. I could have had those wiped... It's gone very quiet out there. Hello?\"\n\n\"That would be a joke too far, Ngaroe.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"All the same. I wouldn't put it past me.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This. I love this, when you are over me, when I can barely see you or touch you but I know that you are there and just a breath away and I feel each exhaling is like a warm breeze across the land, when I can hear each beat of your heart over mine, when you are close enough that I can feel the heat of you on my skin. Then you are my presence, over and above me, like a promise. I live for these moments. I die at the thought they might stop in the Sublime.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You say the sweetest things to me. I wish I could say such things to you, so beautifully.\"\n\n\"You draw them from me, you are their muse, their true creator; we make them between us. I am a hopeless stumbler and stutterer, always have been, with anybody else. So you must take half the credit. At least.\"\n\n\"If you say I must, I must, but I feel embarrassed that you say, that you give so much and I can't give you the same.\"\n\n\"Words are just one language, Virisse. Just one way of expression. You speak with your eyes, you speak with your sweet tongue and gentle fingers, with your whole body. Like this, and this. What?\"\n\n\"No, I just, no; here, come here, hold me, hold me like this. Here, I'll... Be my presence, hang over me, embrace me. I need you. Do anything for you. I give myself. I need to give myself. Oh, you don't hate me for being so needed, do you? I am. I know I am. My own needing, it betrays me.\"\n\n\"Oh, my darling. I love that you need me as much as I, desperately, need you. But don't distress. What is it? What can...?\"\n\n\"You don't think they're lying to us, the Sublimed, the Presence; you don't think they're lying to us, deceiving us, do you?\"\n\n\"What? Is that...? Not for a moment. Oh, be calm, Virisse. Of course not. Do you think I would risk losing you? If I thought for a moment there was any danger they lied to us, that what we're offered isn't true, that we might simply die or be blown away like mist, I'd never even think of this, for myself, for you, for us, for all the people.\"\n\n\"Isn't it like a threat, though, this thing, hanging over us? I look at it some days, hanging over the city, over us, and it makes me shiver.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It used to make me catch my breath, sometimes, I'll give you that. What can I say, Virisse? Promises take many shapes, and the more... momentous they are, the more they might look like threats. All great promises are threats, I suppose, to the way things have been until that point, to some aspect of our lives, and we all suddenly become conservative, even though we want and need what the promise holds, and look forward to the promised change at the same time. So we have that great grey shape hanging over us, over the parliament itself, as a reminder that this is where the final decision was taken, this is where we made up our minds. And it reminds us that there are powers and forces beyond us, that we are in the process of surrendering our full authority in this, and of taking a great new leap.\"\n\n\"Is it too late?\"\n\n\"What? I'm sorry, my love, I didn't—\"\n\n\"Is it too late? Can we still unmake our minds?\"\n\n\"Well, no, it isn't. We can all change our minds, right up until the last moment.\"\n\n\"Must there always be forces beyond us?\"\n\n\"Oh, my love, there always have been. The Sublimed have been there for ten billion years, the Elders too; we are just one species, not here for the longest time, then here for a while, then gone again, just like everybody else. But we've always known there is something worthwhile in just being ourselves, in being us as well as we can." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We've found, been given a way, to symbolise this, in the Book of Truth, but the real truth is that every species feels the same thing, and every one is right.\n\n\"We all think we're special, and in a way we are, but, at the same time, that feeling of being special is one of the things that's common to us all, that unites us and makes us the same as each other. And when that feeling of... specialness is questioned, we feel threatened, naturally. We all do. I do. We have the Subliming drawing near, and we seem to be collecting alien warships, with Culture ships already arrived – two more this evening, the Empiricist tomorrow – and the Liseiden and the Ronte arriving in days, both seeming to think the other is the interloper while we feel they both are. The eyes of the galaxy are on us, and this ought to be a time of quietness and reflection and measured preparation, a time of looking back with gentle pride on all we've achieved, and yet... we have a regiment HQ attacked and thousands killed, and an undignified scramble going on over our heads over our spoils, and all sorts of absurd rumours and stories swirling about, but we—\"\n\n\"I just worry. I worry that we've swept ourselves along somehow, got all too excited over something we haven't thought through, that... that... people have persuaded us to do something we're still not ready for.\"\n\n\"Well, Septame Banstegeyn is a very persuasive man, I'll give you that.\"\n\n\"I didn't just mean—\"\n\n\"No, you did. And I know what you mean. But you have to see that we become... symbols for ourselves. One person can seem to be the instigator, the power behind some... great powerful current within a society, but they're not necessarily producing it; they may be at the front, and they may have some small, immediate influence over its direction hour by hour or day by day, but really they are swept along by it too, by the force of all those people behind them, by the idea they all represent and are all borne along by. But, Virisse, what talk is this for the bed? We have so few of these opportunities, my love, let's not waste this one in worry. Let's sweep each other away, like this... and this... and this... \"\n\n\"Yes. Yes, you're right. I'll be your spoils, fight over—\"\n\n\"Ow! What—?\"\n\n\"What?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I don't know. My finger. A jab, like a thorn. My love, there? Of all places? Why, what have you been doing?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What? Don't laugh! No, what? Let me see!\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Essential phrase to include: \"It's all right. I'm just, it's just... Oh... I'm glad I'm lying dow—\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Here. My finger. See? Poor finger.\"\n\n\"Let me see, let me see!\"\n\n\"Ah, so pleasantly engaged, so sharply interrupted.\"\n\n\"Let me—\"\n\n\"Oh. Worth one tiny injury for such a sweet kiss. You make me swoon... Oh, wait a moment, you really are. I really am... swoon. My. My head is quite... quite... \"\n\n\"No!\"\n\n\"It's all right. I'm just, it's just... Oh... I'm glad I'm lying dow—\"\n\n\"No, Sef, no! Say... ! Oh. Oh, of course; me too. I should. Should have... he... how could...? Oh, the fool... \"\n\n\"Going dark... What, you too? My love? Have we...? Is this some...? Are we being...? Are we be—?\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand on the story, maintaining character relationships, in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'second' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Wasn't anything found?\"\n\n\"Mere traces, Septame. Some form of highly sophisticated, very hi-tech device, already starting to dissolve into her flesh and blood the moment after it had delivered its payloads.\"\n\n\"Payloads?\"\n\nPhysician General Locuil nodded. \"The first, almost certainly, into the president. The second, into Ms Orpe. Possibly a few seconds apart, perhaps almost at the same time. There is so little left of the device – so little not turned into its constituent molecules, at any rate – it's hard to tell, but the likelihood is it was something tuned to Sef's own genes, something that would only activate at her touch. Then, once it had delivered the toxin into her, it would deliver its second payload into the carrier, into Orpe.\" Locuil held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. \"To stop her talking, we have to assume. We also have to assume that she knew the device was in there, but didn't know it would kill the president. She might have thought it was going to drug her, or – given where it was – she might have thought it would, you know, enhance things for her, for both of them. We can't know.\"\n\nThe physician general sighed, sat back. He massaged his face with one hand. He sat across the septame's desk from Banstegeyn." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Marshal Chekwri sat nearby; no others were present in the septame's private study in his town house, though both the marshal and the physician general had staff waiting in an ante-room along with Banstegeyn's own people, including Jevan and Solbli.\n\nOutside, it was almost dawn.\n\nThe two bodies had been discovered by the president's own security team when her comm bracelet – taken off, lying by the bedside – had finally registered that the local sets of vital signs had altered anomalously. Both women had been beyond saving for many minutes before they were discovered, the fast-acting targeted synthetic neuro-toxins still multiplying within what was left of their brains and nervous systems, even as they gradually dissolved. A medical team of the best people and most exclusive machines had been working all night, trying to work out what had happened.\n\n\"But, the thing, this... how would it know to, when to... to activate?\" Banstegeyn asked, aiming to sound bewildered without seeming too naively stupid.\n\n\"It would be monitoring everything it came into contact with,\" Locuil said wearily. \"As soon as it sensed any genetic material belonging to the target – the president – it'd arm, check that there was an actual bit of body there to accept the micro-barb, then spring out, deliver. In a way it's quite old tech, Septame.\"\n\n\"But it would have to have a sample of... of the... \"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It would need a sample, or rather the results of a sample, of Sefoy's genetic material. But you could get that almost anywhere, Septame: from a glass, from one of the president's hairs, from any article of her clothing; you could get that from just having shaken her hand or having brushed her cheek with your own.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Everyone she's ever met throughout her life would be a first-order suspect,\" Chekwri told Banstegeyn crisply." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required dialogue to include (maintain exact wording): \"I assume you're already cooperating with the cops?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She turned to Locuil. \"I assume you're already cooperating with the cops?\"\n\nLocuil nodded. \"Second call her security people made.\"\n\n\"Truth is, though,\" Chekwri said, \"this looks like one of ours.\"\n\n\"You mean the device that was used?\" Banstegeyn said.\n\nChekwri nodded. \"We had stuff like this. Once, long ago.\" She flexed her eyebrows. \"Back in what you might call the interesting old days. It was all supposed to have been got rid of, but... maybe some of it wasn't. Maybe somebody kept some of it somewhere. Or kept the knowledge and the means to make it.\"\n\nBanstegeyn looked steadily into Chekwri's eyes as she said this, and the marshal returned his gaze just as levelly.\n\n\"Or somebody invented a brand new one,\" Locuil said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The fact remains the president is dead. Not to mention her AdC. Not to mention in... delicate circumstances. But what really matters is, the president is dead. What's to be done about it?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The protocols are clear,\" Banstegeyn said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was aware that he looked dreadful; tired, unkempt. That was good. His voice was hollow, flat. He was keeping it that way. \"The longest-serving trime becomes acting president, the longest serving-septame becomes an acting trime—\"\n\n\"Prophet's spit,\" Chekwri said, almost spluttering. \"Int'yom as president, even for six days?\" She shook her head.\n\n\"Yes,\" Banstegeyn said, as though not noticing. \"And so on down the levels, while a clone of Sefoy Geljemyn is grown, and elections for a new president are set in train.\"\n\n\"That might look a little pointless with the Subliming so close,\" Chekwri said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"A vote of the whole parliament would be required to alter the protocols,\" Banstegeyn said dully, letting the tiredness into his voice." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Include the following text] → \"Or in case there is,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Eighty per cent approval required for any changes. We'd struggle even to form a quorum with the people we could call back from out-system in time.\" He shook his head, wiped his eyes. \"I think we have to stick to the rules, act as though there will be an election within forty days, even though there won't be one.\"\n\n\"Or in case there is,\" Locuil said. The septame and the marshal both looked at him. He shrugged. \"In case this whole situation – the attack on the Fourteenth, the president being assassinated – leads enough people to want to postpone the Subliming.\" The other two people in the room continued to stare at him. \"Well, it's plausible,\" he said.\n\n\"That would be a catastrophe,\" Banstegeyn said.\n\n\"Would it?\" Locuil looked unsure." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Just a postponement. Not a cancellation.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The septame is concerned that one might turn into the other,\" Chekwri said.\n\n\"Everything has been put in place, everything planned, everything set up and aimed, focused on the one single day of Instigation,\" Banstegeyn said. \"We can't go back.\" He shook his head. \"We go or we don't, but a... a postponement? I don't think so.\"\n\n\"Well, you're going to have a lot people wondering who did these things,\" the physician general said. \"The attack on Eshri, the president's assassination. These are big loose ends. People will feel... I don't know; dissatisfied, heading off into the Sublime not knowing who had it in for us.\" He looked from Banstegeyn to Chekwri. \"Don't you think?\"\n\n\"Perhaps Subliming will look like a blessed relief from such worries,\" the septame suggested. Neither the marshal nor the physician general looked like they were buying this." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well,\" Locuil said, rolling up his screen and putting it back into his jacket pocket, \"the first leak was over an hour ago. The news channels are spasming, or frothing, or whatever it is they do. I have a press conference to attend.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "⚠️ Required: Use 'septame' exactly 4 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He stood. \"Septame? I'm assuming you'll want to be there too.\"\n\nBanstegeyn nodded. \"Of course, Locuil. Can you give us five minutes? There are developments regarding Eshri and our Scavenger friends that the marshal and I have to discuss. Briefly, though; literally five minutes.\" The septame glanced at his time-to. \"Any longer and feel free to knock on the door. Do you mind?\"\n\n\"Yes, all right. Five minutes, Banstegeyn,\" the physician general said, frowning. He left the room; a babble of noise from the various staff members in the ante-room swelled, then subsided.\n\nThe septame looked at the marshal for a few moments. She gazed back, then slowly raised her eyebrows. \"I'm sorry, Septame, were you expecting me to say something just there?\"\n\nBanstegeyn smiled thinly. \"No. Good. Right.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He clasped his hands on the desk in front of him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The physician general is right, though.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I should hope so, on medical matters at least.\"\n\n\"Come on, Chekwri; you know what I mean. On people needing answers. We need to give them answers.\"\n\n\"Do we? What answers?\"\n\n\"What happened at Eshri, what has just happened here. He's right; people – some people, at least – won't want to go, won't want to Sublime with all this going on, unsolved.\"\n\n\"So we give them a solution?\"\n\n\"We do.\" He nodded his head to one side.\n\nThey walked across the study, to the short corridor that led to the bathroom and a small private sitting room. Banstegeyn closed the door behind them, shutting them in the two-metre-long corridor, lit by a single light.\n\n\"It's very simple,\" Banstegeyn said. \"The Ronte are our fall guys.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Chekwri looked sceptical. \"For the prez, too?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We say she had found out how they had been threatening us; that Eshri was their first shot, an example of how they would deal with us if we didn't let them have their way. Geljemyn was about to remove preferred Scavenger status from them by presidential decree, so they killed her. We tell them to get out of our space, sling as many as we can find of them here into prison or just ship them out too, and all our problems are solved.\"\n\nThe marshal looked distinctly unconvinced. \"They're still a little... underdeveloped for convincing bad guys, Septame. In terms of ships they're barely out of rockets and you think you're going to convince people they could do this sort of stuff to us? That's almost as bad as not knowing at all. At least so long as we're in the dark we can pretend it's somebody bigger and badder than us. This... just suggests we're weak.\"\n\n\"Blame it on all the ships that have already Sublimed, and hint that the Ronte must have had some higher-tech help.\"\n\n\"Like the Culture?\" The marshal's expression was something close to contempt.\n\n\"They have helped the Ronte, haven't they?\"\n\n\"They've given a handful or two of their ships a tiny boost. One ship and an act of charity. Patronising, almost. Hardly a mutual aid pact.\"\n\n\"So, no, we don't try to implicate them. Certainly not directly. Just hint. People will come to their own conclusions. That's all we need. And besides, the Ronte and the Liseiden have backers, mentors; them, perhaps. They might be blamed. You can do this, can't you?\"\n\n\"Of course I can do it, Septame.\" Chekwri smiled. \"I have a whole regimental intelligence service that's developed a fine line in rumour-mongering and story-placing over the last few years, and the ear of every media player you've courted so assiduously over the decades; they will ask the questions we've suggested, they will listen, and they will repeat what we tell them. The issue is whether people believe it. I might even have to seem to oppose you, a little, by speaking up for the fleets – given that I am in charge of the Combined Regimental Fleet Command, after all. They'll expect me to support them, and I'll have to.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Do whatever it takes,\" he told her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Depend upon it, Septame.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The marshal looked at Banstegeyn's time-to, turning her head over to one side to read the upside-down figures and hands on the piece of jewellery adorning his chest. \"Our five minutes are almost up,\" she observed. \"Excuse me.\" She turned, took a step.\n\n\"I did what had to be done,\" he said. \"You believe that, don't you?\"\n\nHe hadn't really meant to say this. Not to her, not to anybody. He was surprising himself here. That wasn't good.\n\nChekwri turned, looked at him.\n\n\"It doesn't matter what I believe, Septame,\" she told him coolly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"All that matters is what you tell me to do.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He shook his head, gave a half-laugh." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Do you lose any sleep at all over any of this, Chekwri?\"\n\nThe marshal raised her eyebrows. \"I sleep like the drugged, every night, Septame. I'm just a humble military officer obeying orders. Nobody's ordered me to worry. Or to lose sleep.\"\n\nA bitterness seemed to fill his mouth. \"It had to be done,\" he told her.\n\n\"Of course, Septame.\" Chekwri shrugged. \"I never liked her anyway. Pleasant enough, but... too weak for the position she held. Too... accommodating.\" Her eyebrows flexed again. \"Still, eh? She died in the arms of somebody who really loved her. They both did. That's something. In the circumstances, it's almost kind.\" She nodded to one side." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I think I can hear the physician general knocking. We'd best go.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There was one more thing, Septame,\" Locuil said, as they sat in the back of the aircraft hopping them from the diplomatic quarter to the parliament for the press conference. Chekwri had taken her own flier back to the Home System regimental ground HQ.\n\n\"What?\" Banstegeyn asked.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" the physician general said, and reached forward to click a switch. The night-dark privacy screen rose silently between them and their respective senior staff members, sitting across from them.\n\nLocuil leaned over, and, very quietly, into Banstegeyn's ear, as the flier levelled out, said, \"Ms Orpe was pregnant.\"\n\n\"What?\" Banstegeyn said.\n\n\"Only by about forty days; it would not have shown even at the time of the Subliming.\"\n\n\"Are you—?\"\n\n\"Entirely sure. No question of doubt.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But... Would she have...? She must have known... \"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"She certainly would have known. And she was no primitivist in her elective physiology. She had all the standard medically advised augmentations and amendments. The pregnancy must have been deliberate, Septame. It must have been willed.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Banstegeyn stared forward at the dark material covering the privacy panel, then looked away, to the side, out of the dull outward-mirrored windows of the aircraft. He watched the city sliding past. They crossed the river. The lowest tier of the parliament gardens rose walled above the troubled surface of the waves. The first few buildings and pavilions would appear in a moment. What had she been thinking of? What did she think she'd been doing? Had she gone completely mad?\n\n\"Why would she—?\" he said, then – suddenly realising – stared at the physician general. \"Has it – the embryo – has it... do you know who...?\" He was babbling." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 11 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This was not him. He pulled himself together. \"Has it been... analysed?\"\n\n\"The products of conception have been removed,\" Locuil said, his voice barely more than a whisper. \"Privately, as it were. So that these do not presently form part of the judicial or evidential material held by the security forces. And they have not been analysed. Of course, they would need to be, for the identity of the—\"\n\n\"It might be best if it was... that is, if it... it might be for the best for all concerned if it was... if all that disappeared.\"\n\nThe physician general sat back, nodded. \"I'll see what I can do, Septame.\"\n\nHe thumbed the privacy screen down again.\n\nBanstegeyn felt his stomach lurch. The aircraft began its steep descent." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll start writing, then you take over for seven sentences, matching any established character familiarity in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Participants: GSV Contents May Differ / LOU Caconym / GCU Displacement Activity / GSV Empiricist / GSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry / Ue Mistake Not... / MSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In / MSV Pressure Drop / LSV You Call This Clean?\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: The avatar of the Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In reports that the president of Gzilt, Sefoy Geljemyn, is dead and may have been assassinated.\n\nLOU Caconym: Just looking at the feeds and the official in-system signal streams available, it looks pretty damn certain she was assassinated. One might have expected that our colleague the Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In would know and be able to confirm this by its own direct channels, rather than still be speculating like some out-of-the-loop news concern consisting of a couple of dodgy float-cams and a single reporter hopping round their apartment trying to get their pants on and brush their teeth at the same time, while staring goggle-eyed at the breaking news screens of the big boys.\n\nMSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In: In a matter of such consequence, I thought it best to take a cautious approach and wait until the exact nature of the president's death had been officially announced by the rightful authorities. The Caconym is welcome to take over my role here, if and when it ever arrives in Gzilt. That will, as I understand it, be some considerable time after the Subliming has taken place, though, doubtless, regardless of how that goes, the Caconym will take the opportunity to lecture any Gzilt remaining behind on how they got their whole Subliming strategy wrong anyway." }, { "from": "human", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: I'm sure this comes as a shock to all of us and we are bound to react to the news in different ways, including blaming ourselves; however, once that is out of the way – and the sooner the better, I'd suggest – the question is going to remain: what can we do now?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "LOU Caconym: Might I suggest the Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In takes a rather more robust and less respectful attitude to the Gzilt establishment?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Treating the Gzilt as slightly eccentric but much-loved relations, worthy of being indulged as we might indulge other elements of ourselves, might be all very well when they are behaving as we might behave; however, when they start wasting Z-R ships, major command and control elements of their own military and their head of state, such indulgence starts to look, at best, like blindness born of self-deception." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "MSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In: I can assure the Caconym and the others of the group that in a situation of such import, with the Subliming so close and yet so threatened, and a degree of panic and chaos seeming to infect even the highest echelons of Gzilt society, the last thing I shall be doing is indulging in any \"blindness\" or \"self-deception\". I have already begun a more rigorous and assertive overview of the situation by various different methods and strategies. However, I might remind those who seek to tell me how to perform my task here that in a set of circumstances of such delicacy and sensitivity, being discovered to be behaving in what might be taken by our hosts as an aggressive or even threatening manner might only inflame matters further and make any contribution we may wish and be able to make to the solution of the problem itself problematic. This is not some bunch of lo-techs still struggling with the concept of four-dimensionality; this is an equiv-tech civilisation as old and as capable – point-by-point, if not in overall puissance – as our own and entirely able to prevent, discover and/or deal with the vast majority of any surveillance measures – for example – I might be able to emplace. It is also far from impossible that Gzilt is effectively under attack from outside and needs and expects our support, not our intrusive suspicions.\n\nLOU Caconym: Had the Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In been taking a more intrusive and suspicious approach from the start – bugging/hacking/whatevering the relevant players – we would almost certainly know by now whether they are under attack from outside or not. And I bet, by the way, that they're not." }, { "from": "human", "value": "GSV Contents May Differ: I'm sure all these points are well made." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Perhaps we ought to wait and see what the response of the Gzilt hierarchy itself is to the president's death before we decide what might be done next." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Continue with the same vibes and character familiarity in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Our Intelligence agencies have further, ah, determined, that these same people, the Ronte, have been directly responsible or, through their agents and abettors, been indirectly though culpably responsible for both the attack on the, ah, headquarters of the Fourteenth regiment, on the Fzan-Juym moon of Eshri, Izenion. Izenion system. And the tragic, despicable murder, assassination... of President Geljemyn. Also, for attacks on two fleet warships, one at Eshri and another at the planet of Ablation. Excuse me. Ablate. The planet of Ablate, too, was attacked. And so, accordingly, we are resolved to resist the arrival of the Ronte fleet with all force and demand their surrender. Surrender of their agents and representatives, here. Here on, ah, Zyse and elsewhere. Our security forces are already, this day, carrying out the, ah... such, ah, actions. Being carried, ah... out. Thank you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The new president and extremely old politician – Trime Int'yom, until a small ceremony in the president's office a few minutes ago – fell silent." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He looked uncertain; a small, old man with nervous eyes and skin that had had to repair itself under the light of too many different suns. The first questions were being shouted out by the media people. Acting President Int'yom asked for the first one to be repeated, then held up one hand as he consulted with his staff, four of whom were standing behind him on the podium and looking just as nervy.\n\n\"Dear Scribe's piss,\" Trime Yegres sighed, turning to Banstegeyn with his hand partially covering his mouth. \"Gets the Ablate thing wrong twice and then barely remembers the name of the planet he's fucking standing on. Worthy successor, eh?\"\n\nThe septame nodded, after a moment." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yegres frowned. \"You all right, Banstegeyn?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Just... shocked, Yegres,\" he said. He looked at the mass of cameras, in case any were aimed at him. At least, in here, only hand-helds were allowed and you were free from the threat of a float-cam poking a lens up your nose. One or two cameras might have been trained on him and Yegres. He kept his blank, shocked, almost uncomprehending look going, gazed downwards again.\n\n\"You, shocked?\" Yegres sounded surprised. \"Whatever next?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Who knows whatever next?\" Banstegeyn said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yegres sighed. \"This is very early for this sort of thing. I didn't even manage breakfast. Too much to expect assassins to show more tact, I suppose. My belly's empty as the new president's head.\" Yegres exhaled loudly. \"And the old one's, from the rumours of what the poison did to her. And that lovely girl, her AdC... Orpe, wasn't it?\"\n\nBanstegeyn nodded. Yegres looked at the septame, leaned in towards him and put his hand over his mouth again. \"Always thought she might be a bit keen on you, you know. Was that... was I...?\"\n\n\"Septame,\" a voice said from the other side of Banstegeyn, as the avatar of the Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In appeared suddenly. Banstegeyn took a deep breath." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He'd have sworn the silver-skinned creature could slide through spaces it shouldn't have been able to, insinuating itself through a press of bodies almost as though they weren't there." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Still, at least now he had an excuse not to answer Yegres." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We are deeply sorry,\" Ziborlun continued, speaking very quiet and close to his ear, \"to hear of the death of President Geljemyn and wish to extend both our sympathies and an offer of help – any help at all – to the Gzilt people. I do hope you and I can talk further, soon. I may have information that I can share only with you. Thank you, Septame,\" the creature touched him once on the forearm, slipped away again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yegres leaned out, looking across Banstegeyn." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I assume that was condolences,\" he muttered, \"but it looked more like a betting tip.\"\n\n\"... It is not known, at this moment in time,\" the acting president was saying, \"precisely and exactly who is responsible, beyond a... a reasonable belief that the Ronte, and their, ah, their agents and their, ah, abettors are, ahm, behind whoever that person or persons might be. So. There we are. Yes. You. What?\"\n\nBanstegeyn sighed. \"How did this moron get to be a trime? Or a degan? Or a thirty-second, for that matter?\"\n\nYegres cleared his throat. \"You promoted him, old son.\"\n\nThe septame stared at the older man. \"What?\" he whispered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yegres shrugged. \"Oh, every available opportunity, maestro; gave him a helping hand whenever people wanted to kick him upstairs, which was often. Eventually you kicked him up above yourself, made the old duffer a trime.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yegres looked at him blearily. \"Fuck me, Banners, you're not starting to forget which useful dipsticks you've supported over the years because they'll always agree with you, are you? Prophet's piss, you'll be forgetting me next.\" He shook his head, glanced at his time-to and muttered, \"Wonder if the bars are serving yet... \"\n\n\"This is much more satisfactory,\" Team Principal Tyun told Cultural Mission Director Keril. Jelwilin Keril had been invited back aboard the Liseiden flagship, the Collective Purposes vessel Gellemtyan-Asool-Anafawaya, to be congratulated for whatever part he might have played in the recent turn-around in the fortunes of the Liseiden.\n\nKeril floated in his transparent bubble within the ship's command space, a genuine smile anchored on his face." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was sure that this expression, even if it was first-principles meaningless to the Liseiden – indeed, even if it was by some misfortune first-principles threatening to the Liseiden – would be suitably translated by the aquatic creatures' AIs and its happy import transmitted to the Liseiden officers.\n\n\"I am very glad, sir, that your faith in me – and my faith, in turn, in Ambassador Mierbeunes – has turned out not to be misplaced. We are your faithful agents and servants, Team Principal, and are glad to have been able to fulfil this part of the mission we undertook for you.\"\n\n\"Sir, is it true the Culture are suspected of having helped the Ronte?\"\n\n\"I... Well, I'm not, that is, ah... \" the acting president said, with the glazed look of somebody listening to something being said on their earbud. He raised one hand and appeared to be about to press his earbud further into his ear, then seemed to change his mind. \"Excuse me.\" The acting president turned and consulted his staff." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He turned to face the front again. \"Well,\" he said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"There are rumours, apparently. Ah. There has been help of one ship, Culture ship, helping the fleet that has been approaching Gzilt. It is just one ship, and I'm sure our own fleets, own ships are entirely, ah, capable.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sir, what about the GSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In, and the other Culture warships now stationed directly over Zyse itself?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "can you add this somewhere in your response:\n\"Sir, could this delay the Subliming?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Well, I can't, I don't... Excuse me,\" he said, turning away again.\n\nThe screen cut to a different view, going back to the mass of media people again and zooming in on somebody shouting, \"Sir, could this delay the Subliming?\" while the acting president was talking urgently with his advisors.\n\nSomebody else shouted out, \"Sir, will you be putting yourself forward as a candidate, and will there even be an election?\" and yet another person yelled, \"Has President Geljemyn's back-up been woken up yet?\" After that, more shouting made it difficult to hear individual questions." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Berdle, sitting beside an open-mouthed Cossont, looked at her and said, \"Well, this is interesting.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cossont, not long woken, dressed in a loose, voluminous robe, just stared at the screen. \"The president's dead?\" she said.\n\n\"No,\" Berdle told her, \"that's the new one. The avatar nodded at the old man on the screen. \"Seems to work a bit like having a king; there always is one, no matter how many you bump off. Until you have a revolution or something.\"\n\n\"She's dead?\" Cossont repeated." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"President Geljemyn is no more,\" Berdle agreed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And we – the Culture – appear to be in the frame somehow. That seems a bit unfair.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I liked President Geljemyn,\" Pyan said, draping itself round Cossont's shoulders." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"She had a nice smile. Who is this old person again?\"\n\n\"New president,\" Berdle told it. \"Acting President Int'yom.\"\n\n\"I see. No, he hasn't got such a nice smile.\"\n\n\"You're right,\" Berdle said. \"He hasn't, has he?\"\n\n\"No! He just hasn't, has he? It's just not there for him.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I know,\" Berdle agreed, smiling." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cossont looked from the screen to Berdle. \"What the fuck is going on?\"\n\nThe avatar shrugged, looked serious. \"Long story. Power struggle, I suppose. Though that seems a little pointless, if everybody's going to Sublime soon anyway. Though they might not be, now.\" Berdle looked at Cossont. \"And whether they do or not might come down to what happens when we get back to Xown and the Girdlecity, in about three days.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The avatar assumed a look of some thoughtfulness. \"Bit of a responsibility, really.\"\n\nCossont shook her head, looked back at the screen. \"Oh, fuck... \"\n\n\"'Rescinded'! What can be \"rescinded'? We had an agreement! We have done nothing! What have we done? Tell us what we have done! Prove anything!\"\n\nThe individuals of the Ronte delegation were being dragged, inert, out of the adapted house in the diplomatic quarter that had been their home. As many media trucks were present as security vehicles." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The individual Rontes in their exo-suits had been covered in grapple nets by the security para-militaries after being effector-stunned in the early morning raid. The nets were supposed to disable their exo-suits and leave only basic life-support working, but while the aliens and their suits themselves were just dead weights being hauled out across the garden to the waiting police fliers, some sort of float-cam or drone device controlled by the aliens was still functioning, hovering over the scene and dodging attempts to shoot it by the security people.\n\n\"This is a diplomatic mission! On what authority do you—?\" A small Gzilt security drone succeeded in landing a bore charge on the Ronte device, which jerked, went silent, then fell trailing smoke to the ground and thudded into a flowerbed.\n\nThe last exo-suited Ronte was bumped and dragged into the security flier. The ramp closed and the craft took off." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I am standing here with Ambassador Mierbeunes of the Liseiden,\" a reporter said to a float-cam." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Ambassador Mierbeunes, are you surprised to find the Ronte being treated in this way, while your own clients have been declared the new allies of the Gzilt?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Well, while I entirely understand the many and various pressures which are brought to bear on an alien delegation of this nature... \"\n\n\"Has the Culture helped the Ronte or not?\"\n\n\"Yes. Specifically, one of our ships helped a squadron of twelve of their vessels get from where they were to the Gzilt system outskirts. They've since turned about.\"\n\n\"Twelve ships? Is this an invasion force?\"\n\n\"Hardly, Mr... Kresele, isn't it? No, their ships and weapons are quite primitive. Check the specs; freely available. And why would the Culture be helping anybody invade anybody else, let alone help anybody invade the Gzilt, who have been our friends for millennia? And why would anybody invade a people about to Sublime in the first place? Come now; at least try to make sense here. Yes, ma'am. Ms Aouse, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Yes. Hi. Have you helped the Ronte in any other way?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Weave this into your narrative: \"I don't know. But it's more likely that one of your own ships gone rogue, rather than the Ronte or the Culture, destroyed the Fzan-Juym, and I leave it to you to judge how absurd a proposition that is.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Certainly not, as far as I know. And I would have been told.\"\n\n\"So you could have been helping them.\"\n\n\"To do what? Destroy the Fourteenth's HQ? That's ridiculous. That was not them. And it certainly wasn't us.\"\n\n\"Who do you think was responsible, then?\"\n\n\"I don't know. But it's more likely that one of your own ships gone rogue, rather than the Ronte or the Culture, destroyed the Fzan-Juym, and I leave it to you to judge how absurd a proposition that is.\"\n\n\"Ziborlun! Was the Culture ship working in league with the Ronte acting on orders, and, if so, whose?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh. So we've gone from 'helping' to 'working in league with', have we? I see. The ship – the Beats Working, a tiny ship with a crew of five humans – had no orders. It still has no orders. It was doing what it and its crew thought was the right thing, at all points, including when it offered to help the Ronte get here faster. And at that stage, let's not forget, the Ronte still thought you were their friends and, apart from anything else, wanted to get here in time to help celebrate the Subliming.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Somebody must have issued the orders.\"\n\n\"No, they didn't. There were no orders. You have much work to do, Mr Diria, understanding how the Culture works. Yes, ma'am. Ms Zige, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Has the Culture been spying on Gzilt?\"\n\n\"If we have, obviously not enough, because we seem to be as confused as everybody else about what the hell is going on here. Yes; gentleman at the back.\"\n\n\"Who's that smart-arse?\" Cossont asked, scowling at the screen from within the heavy robe. \"Looks like a ship's avatar.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That's right,\" Berdle said. \"Ziborlun. The avatar of the MSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In.\" Berdle seemed to hesitate, then said, \"Ah. I don't think you're going to like this.\"\n\n\"What?\" she said.\n\nThe image switched to yet another press conference and a senior policeman flanked by two First Regiment Intelligence and Security officers. Somebody's face was shown on an insert on the screen." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cossont knew she knew the person for about half a second before she realised; it was her own face. \"We would be very interested in interviewing Ms Cossont,\" the head cop was saying. \"And, yes, she is a contributory suspect in the matter of the destruction of the regimental headquarters of the Fourteenth Regiment, on Eshri.\"\n\n\"WHAT?\" Cossont yelled, jumping to her feet. Pyan had to hang on tight to stay round her shoulders.\n\n\"Told you you wouldn't like it,\" Berdle said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, Vyr, are you an outlaw?\" Pyan said, sounding excited.\n\n\"But I haven't done anything!\" Cossont shouted.\n\nBerdle looked at her, head tipped. \"My, you really are naive, aren't you?\"\n\nThe ship dance of triumph that had been 'The Approaching Eclipsing of One Sun by Another' was abandoned in mid-final formation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "On confirmation of the humanoid treachery, all ships somersaulted about, went to full power and simultaneously began a maximally tight zooming loop, twisting as they turned so that at all points throughout the manoeuvre their drives were presented towards their earlier destination, the planet Zyse in the system of Gzilt." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The drone Jonsker Ap-Candrechenat, representative of the Culture ship Beats Working, was accepted again within the command space of the Interstitial/Exploratory vessel Melancholia Enshrines All Triumph – arriving by the quicker though most alarming method of Displacement – and made a show of prostrating itself before the Swarmprince and Sub-Corporation Divisional Head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ossebri 17 Haldesib regarded the Culture machine for some time before saying, \"Device, there are those amongst my officers who would have us attack you, believing you to have been complicit in a deception upon us. They believe that you were both leading and hurrying us into a trap, and that, as such, neither you nor your ship should be suffered to live.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"If the Swarmprince so desires, I shall absent myself immediately, return to my ship and depart along with it. The Swarmprince should know, however, that we have engaged in no such deception at any point, and have at all times done all we could to cooperate with and to aid the Ronte fleet and squadron. Had we been engaged in any plot to deliver the squadron to a place of jeopardy, all those complicit would surely have brought the squadron further into the Gzilt system, where the threat to it would have been by that measure enhanced, before the trap was sprung, instead of timing matters such that the squadron has – happily – had time to deflect from its earlier course and instigate its current re-disposition.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"'Deflect from its earlier course and instigate its current re-disposition',\" Ossebri 17 Haldesib quoted." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Include the following text] → \"Then kindly leave us, both personally and in the shape of your ship. We shall make our own way to a place of safety. If what you claim is true and you meant us no harm by delivering us so expeditiously into the jaws of our enemies, you may accept our apologies. If not, then know that the Ronte make implacable foes, and the memory of a betrayal against one group becomes part of the memory of all. You are dismissed.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Does the Culture machine possess any other especially pretty ways of saying 'run away' or 'escape like a shamed, pursued prey'?\"\n\n\"Swarmprince, we attempt to respect your customs and protocols and the ways that you express yourselves. If I fail to do so as well as I might, I apologise. Yes, we are running away. I run with you, being determined to stay with the squadron and fleet for as long as you wish me to. The instant you wish me gone, I shall be.\"\n\n\"You say you respect us, yet you ignore my earlier threat to attack you. Is that not an insult, even if disguised by ignorance?\"\n\n\"It is not, Swarmprince. It reflects my belief that I personally would probably be able to frustrate any attempt by you to harm, disable or imprison me, and that the Beats Working would similarly be able to escape unharmed should any hostile act be directed at it. We could, of course, be wrong on both counts, but we think not. To accept what we regard as this truth only reinforces our desire not to dwell on the unpleasantness of threats delivered by those who were so recently friends, whom we still value, and whom we hope will swiftly accept us as true and trustworthy friends again.\"\n\n\"Then kindly leave us, both personally and in the shape of your ship. We shall make our own way to a place of safety. If what you claim is true and you meant us no harm by delivering us so expeditiously into the jaws of our enemies, you may accept our apologies. If not, then know that the Ronte make implacable foes, and the memory of a betrayal against one group becomes part of the memory of all. You are dismissed.\"\n\n\"May I—?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Whatever it is, you may not. I said you are dismissed. Go.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Culture machine dipped its front portion in what was supposed to be taken as a respectful bow, then the whole machine was enveloped by a silvery sphere of fields beyond the ken of the most sophisticated analytical devices the Collective Purposes vessel possessed, the sphere shrank to a point and disappeared, and the machine was gone.\n\nThe Navigation and Targeting team reported that the Culture ship began to depart in the same instant, pulling slowly away and then, effectively, disappearing.\n\n\"A signal from the Culture ship, sir,\" the communications officer said. \"From the drone Jonsker Ap-Candrechenat.\"\n\n\"Show.\"\n\nThe drone appeared on screen." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Swarmprince,\" the drone said, \"my apologies for intruding again so immediately; however, what I wished to say and still have to say is important: a five-ship formation of Gzilt war-craft including one capital ship has left Zyse, heading in your direction." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Our initial simulations indicate that they intend to make a show of force and be seen to be seeing you off, rather than intending to offer battle." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to use 'though' 2 time(s) throughout your message" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We believe similar though smaller Gzilt formations have been disposed to carry out similar actions wherever else Ronte forces have been en route to their destinations.\n\n\"Of more concern for your own squadron are two forces of Liseiden ships, both consisting of four vessels, each at least as heavily armed as your squadron flagship. These are believed to be converging on your entry point into the Gzilt system. The Beats Working continues to pull away but remains at your disposal and will respond as quickly as possible to any signal from you. Thank you and good luck.\"\n\nThe screen blanked out.\n\n\"Signal all squadrons and elements to turn about,\" Swarmprince Ossebri 17 Haldesib said. \"Have them find places of safety according to existing fleet orders and prioritise eluding Liseiden units over those of the Gzilt and the Culture, though all are to be avoided, in that order. Senior Navigation Officer, you and I shall submit our codes to the AI to unlock our own sealed orders.\"\n\n\"Sir.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The sealed orders indicated that in the event of an emergency of the type now facing them, the squadron should make its way to the nearby system of Vatrelles, five days distant at full speed, to await further instructions." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Swarmprince issued the appropriate orders, then turned to his communications officer. \"Signal the Culture ship that it may remain at its current distance from us if it wishes. We may have need of it yet. Convene a full consultation with all senior officers, AIs and expert systems.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "same energy as Iain Banks, keep writing. story might have ongoing elements" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The General Systems Vehicle Empiricist felt it was arriving in Gzilt at a bad time – a bad time that was meant to be the start of a (brief) good time, a momentous and celebrated time but which had somehow gone wrong. Well, in the end, there was no helping this. Sometimes you just had to adopt the attitude summed up by, Too bad.\n\nThe ship was about as big as standard Culture vessels ever got; a System-class that had beefed up over the decades and centuries for what had always seemed like sound operational reasons at the time until it had become one of the most impressively large, commodious and populated examples of the class that was already the most impressively large, commodious and populated the Culture possessed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The design of the System-class made such self-augmentation easy; the ships had no single outer hull surrounding their hundreds of individual components, just colossal bubbles of air held in place by field enclosures." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Adding new, self-manufactured bits was so simple it was, for some ships at least, apparently, tantamount to compulsory, and it was only a sort of residual decorousness and a wish not to be seen as too self-indulgently ostentatious that prevented certain System-class vessels from going expansion-mad and growing to the size of planets, or at least moons." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That sort of indulged obsessiveness was what simming and strong VR was for; you could convincingly imagine yourself being any ludicrous size without actually committing to such monomania in reality.\n\nDoing away with a physical hull – or treating the exterior of every component as a hull, depending on how you looked at it – had been no great leap for GSVs. Ships thought of their multiple-layer field-complex enclosures as their true hulls anyway. That was where all the important stuff happened in relation to the outside: that was where the sensory fields were, where any stray impacts were absorbed, where concentric layers of shielding tuned to various parts of the electro-magnetic spectrum lurked, where holes could be opened to allow smaller units, modules and ships to enter and depart, and – especially in the case of the larger vessels – where atmospheric pressure was kept in, and sun-lines could be formed and controlled to provide light for any parkland carried on the top of the ship's solid hull." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Frankly the material bit inside was just there to provide a sort of neat wrapping for all the truly internal bits and pieces like accommodation and social spaces." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Comfortably over two hundred kilometres long even by the most conservative of measurement regimes, fabulously, ellipsoidally rotund, dazzling with multiple sun-lines and tiny artificial stars providing illumination for motley steps and levels and layers of riotous vegetation – belonging, strictly speaking, on thousands of different worlds spread across the galaxy – boasting hundreds of contrasting landscapes from the most mathematically manicured to the most (seemingly) pristinely, savagely wild, all contained on slab-storeys of components generally kilometres high, each stratified within one of a dozen stacked atmospheric gradients, the ship's cosseted internals were riddled, woven and saturated with domesticated, tamed and semi-wild life in hundreds of thousands of smaller enclosed habitats, while its buzzing, external, bewilderingly complex archi-geographic lines were made fuzzy, imprecisely seen by near-uncountable numbers of craft moving within that vast, elongated bubble of air – from smaller classes of GSV through other ships, modules, shuttles and aircraft all the way down to individual humans in float-harnesses, single drones and even smaller machines, as well as thousands of species of winged and lighter-than-air bio-creatures – the Empiricist was, in sum, home to hundreds of billions of animals and over thirteen billion humans and drones.\n\nThe people of the Culture, better than ninety-five per cent of them housed across the vast, distributed bucolic hinterland of the Orbitals, scattered throughout the civilised galaxy like a million glowing bracelets, were used to thinking of the GSVs as being their true mega-cities – albeit determinedly highly mobile, high-speed mega-cities – but GSVs like the Empiricist were on another level and of another order entirely; they held the populations of worlds, of entire inhabited stellar systems. Zyse, the Gzilt home planet and the giant GSV's destination, held over three billion people. The whole of the Gzilt system added another twenty billion, in part-habiformed worlds and moons, microrbitals and other habitats." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Empiricist arriving was like another half a solar system of people being added, like another four mature, substantial planets' worth of souls suddenly coming to visit." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'empiricist' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Preceded by a ceremonial screen of smaller craft – including a couple of GSVs, each home to many millions – the gradually slowing Empiricist first met with a couple of Gzilt navy ships – effectively sweeping the two cruisers up with it as it proceeded resplendently past the rendezvous point – then, as it slowed still further, gradually attracted hundreds of civilian welcoming craft too.\n\nHad not so many locals been Stored – and had all been well within the Gzilt body politic – it supposed it might have attracted thousands. The ship's septet of semi-independent Minds became graciously, easily busy with welcoming signals and media requests.\n\nThe Empiricist approached and then inserted itself into a specially cleared orbital band high over Zyse." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It had started slowing almost a day earlier; now it was down to the sort of velocity required for a stately orbit of the world every couple of hours, allowing plenty of time for people on the ground to look up and see it gliding smoothly, glitteringly, statuesquely overhead, and reducing the time it would take to ferry people to and from the planetary surface." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "∞ Participants: GSV Empiricist / LOU Caconym / GSV Contents May Differ / GCU Displacement Activity / GSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry / Ue Mistake Not... / MSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In / MSV Pressure Drop / LSV You Call This Clean?\n\nGSV Empiricist: Arrived over Zyse. Good to be here, finally. Mostly. Been thinking; going to keep my two Delinquents, Headcrash and Xenocrat, close by." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They are conveniently hereabouts, after all, and the political atmosphere locally does seem a little... odd." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, poisonous, to be blunt. How was this allowed to develop?\n\nMSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In: Welcome. Yes, we might have wished for better." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Everything's in the signal streams, of course, but soaking in all the local comms and media traffic of the last twenty-few days is definitely recommended." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Worth setting one Mind on that alone, if I may make so bold. My network of sats and such is at your disposal, though of course you may wish to emplace your own. I'd be as happy to advise as to leave you to your own devices.\n\nMSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In: Are you really so worried regarding the current situation to feel the Delinquents must remain as close guards?" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 5 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I think I speak for the group when I say we were hoping those and more might be available for further use in the current emergency while your own safety might be ensured with your doubtless many other assets.\n\nMSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In: Let's see how things develop over the next couple of days. For now I'd feel safer with the Delinquents as part of my general defensive mix. I did have to leave some offensive units behind to mop up at Loliscombana. I'm building to replace, but that'll take time." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll be your writing partner for this section. I'll provide a segment, and you continue with 12 sentences, channeling Iain Banks in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre. Characters may have backstories from previous chapters." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Participants: LOU Caconym / MSV Pressure Drop\n\nLOU Caconym: What's that big fuck playing at? The next few days are the crucial ones; the only ones. We might need those ships now.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: It's being cautious and protecting a pop of umpteen bill. When you carry around that sort of responsibility you can't help but become ultra careful. Mostly these big ships pursue a no-risks-whatever policy; I'm mildly surprised it deigned to visit Gzilt at all given the recent excitements.\n\nLOU Caconym: That's the trouble with ships that size; too big to risk, and also, therefore, to be effective. Terribly impressive, and if all the bios plonk down to Zyse and walk around they can surely make the place look busy for the first time in years, but so what? Couldn't be more of a liability if it had hauled a train of Orbitals behind it and parked them in the local asteroid belt. Anyway, what does that leave us with? The Mistake Not... is about to hit Xown – again – and the Passing By... 's two Thugs are keeping remarkably quiet." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Match existing character familiarity or establish new\nLength:\n9 sentences\nGenre:\nScience Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "system", "value": "At some point in your response, insert this verbatim: \"Oh well, here come the relations. I'd better leave you to your ceremonial solitariness.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The reception was muted due to the recent death of the president, but was, nevertheless, still quite entirely splendid. The enormous central Receiving Hall of the parliament's Upper Chamber had been trimmed everywhere in mourning red, the towering mirror panels reflecting a seeming infinitude of scarlet corridors leading in every horizontal direction.\n\n\"Place looks rather good like this,\" Yegres said, nodding over his glass at the huge central scoop of red marking the covered chandelier cluster hanging from the centre of the space. \"We should have lost presidents more often.\"\n\n\"It's a little late, though, isn't it?\" Banstegeyn replied.\n\n\"Everything is,\" Yegres agreed. \"Oh,\" he said, catching sight of seven tall figures moving liquidly through the crowd on the main floor. \"Oh well, here come the relations. I'd better leave you to your ceremonial solitariness.\" He chucked back his drink, hitched up his long robes and stepped down from the dais." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The septame watched the arrow-shaped mass of avatars and their hangers-on move towards him, like something aimed. \"Solitude,\" he said, to himself rather than really to Yegres, who was too far away and submerged in the crowd of people behind. \"Solitude, not solitariness.\" Of course, he was careful not to move his lips, in case.\n\nBanstegeyn greeted the seven tall, silver-skinned creatures with all the dignity and politeness he could muster. Solemnity, too, though really it was easy to be solemn; it was the dignity and politeness he was having problems with.\n\nHaving dreamt of Orpe on consecutive nights, he'd used the relevant implants to stop himself dreaming over the last two, and had slept well, but now he was starting to feel that he had only displaced the problem, for he had the annoying, irrational and even very slightly frightening feeling – even though he was entirely awake and apparently well rested – that Orpe was just out of sight, just beyond the corner of his eye. It was disconcerting, troubling.\n\nHe most certainly did not believe in ghosts or any such nonsense, but – when it happened, catching him out, when he thought he glimpsed her, or thought he'd just missed seeing her, a moment earlier, just as he turned his head or blinked – he felt as terrified as he imagined people must have felt in the old days, when they had been superstitious. He knew it was his own mind, his own brain, acting against him, betraying him, deliberately troubling him, but it felt like something other, something supernatural, uncanny." }, { "from": "human", "value": "On a few occasions over the last few days he'd wanted just to scream, for no good reason." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Especially at formal ceremonial events when it would have been absolutely the worst, most shocking and disrespectful thing to do. So many aliens arriving, so many different forms and types of creature, so many in exo-suits or things like tiny spacecraft it was like welcoming the contents of a toy cupboard, scaled for giants. How were you supposed to keep a straight face? That was when he most wanted to do it: to laugh hysterically in their faces or scream and shout and swear and thrash about on the floor and tear his hair out...\n\nBut: just a few more days. A few more days and it would all be over. They could all go to the happy land of good and plenty and never need to bother with horrible, messy, painful real life again.\n\nHe couldn't wait. It was the only thing keeping him together.\n\n\"Please,\" he said, smiling too broadly as he half turned to indicate the way through the variously smiling, grinning, tight-faced dignitaries behind him to the scarcely smaller and even more sumptuous room where President Int'yom waited – enthroned, enrobed, befuddled." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This way, please. The president is impatient to meet you.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Thank you,\" the leading avatar said. The seven looked identical: tall, straight, dressed plainly but elegantly and their expressions radiating a kind of severe serenity. At their rear, Ziborlun, the Culture avatar the court had become used to, looked small, plain and homely in comparison.\n\nJust as Banstegeyn turned more fully, to walk ahead of the Culture avatars, he caught a glimpse of – but, no, of course, it wasn't really her at all.\n\nA civilian, she hadn't been backed-up; one of those who believed life was lived all the more sweetly and more sensibly for knowing there was no second chance, while understanding, without ever really needing to think about it, that a society as sophisticated and mature as that of Gzilt made sudden accidental death almost unheard of anyway. So, it wasn't her, and it would never be her.\n\nAnd only three days to go anyway, he told himself again, so it didn't really matter. He stumbled slightly as he walked in front of the silver creatures to the opening doors of the presidential chamber. He wondered who would have noticed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Only three more days.\n\nHe walked into the hundreds-strong swirl of bizarrely accoutred aliens and milling, red-clad people thronging the presidential chamber.\n\n\"Septame, a word?\" Marshal Chekwri said, touching him on one elbow to draw him slightly aside from the crowds surrounding the dais where the acting president was greeting the avatars.\n\n\"Of course, Chekwri, but I am busy.\"\n\n\"As ever. However. Two things. First: the ships we had see off the Ronte reckon they're heading for Vatrelles. I thought we might let that leak to our new allies the Liseiden.\"\n\n\"What? Why?\"\n\n\"Distraction. Something to fill the news, and, if they quarrel, then perhaps another reason to leave this squabbling reality behind, no? Reinforcement.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, all right. Is that all?\"\n\n\"No. I did say two things. Some pleasant news.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Always welcome. What is it?\" The marshal's staffers and his own, headed by Solbli and Jevan, had created a space around them so they could talk with a degree of privacy.\n\nChekwri brought her mouth close to his ear. \"We have a major asset in place somewhere it might come in useful.\"\n\n\"Do we? That's good. What, and where?\"\n\n\"Where, is Xown. What, is the returned Churkun. It was off for a while there, thinking about Subliming early following the event at Ablate, but in the end it didn't make the leap; wants to go with everybody else – isn't that nice? – so reported to me, happily – always worth covering such possibilities in standing orders – and asked if it could be of use. So I sent it to Xown, because that was the last place the Culture ship and the absconded Ms Cossont seemed to be interested in.\" The marshal drew back a little, winked at him. Winked! Had she done this before? Was this some new thing, some fresh loosening of behaviour and discipline ahead of the so-near-now Subliming?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The simulations backed me up, but it was my idea first. Always good to be proved right. Isn't it, Septame?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Always,\" he agreed.\n\n\"And I think this time we go in full force, gloves off, maximum strength, if called for, don't you?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, whatever you think fit.\"\n\n\"Splendid. So we have a fully equipped, committedly one-of-us combat-hardened battleship ready and waiting at Xown, and that is a very good, a particularly good thing, Septame. May I tell you why?\"\n\n\"Yes, Chekwri, why don't you tell me why?\"\n\n\"Because it has just reported that something fast – both coming in quick and braking very hard indeed – has just about hauled to a stop at Xown, and it's almost certainly going to be the Culture ship.\"\n\nColonel Agansu, still undergoing treatments he had come to regard as meaning he was under repair – rather than representing anything as biological as healing – had a dilemma.\n\n\"Colonel, the regs are clear. You need to update your avatar down on Xown. It's been plugging along there patiently keeping pace with the airship for nearly ten days but now there's a distinct likelihood it's going to be put in harm's way and it needs to have every advantage we can give it.\"\n\n\"I am aware of that, Captain,\" Agansu said. \"Thank you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The colonel had been badly injured in the battle at the Incast facility on the Bokri Orbital." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Culture creature – the ship's avatar – had succeeded not only in destroying the combat arbite Uhtryn through the illegal use of anti-matter weaponry within an enclosed civilian space, but had then somehow turned his own weaponry against him, turning a large portion of its own body into a perfectly reflective dish that had bounced his laser pulse straight back at him, crippling both his suit and his body, sending him plunging down the elevator shaft with little or no AG left.\n\nHe could still hear his own screams, loud inside his helmet, as he fell, blinded, burning, baked, both legs and one arm shattered, into the shaft, to land with a terrible crushing crash on top of the already wrecked elevator car at the bottom. He'd blacked out then, or the suit helmet's remaining medical functions had put him mercifully under, but he could still hear that raw, inhuman scream in his ears and feel the awful smacking thud of impact, cracking open the suit, splintering his bones and breaking his back.\n\nThe suit – its helmet – had saved him. Then the Uagren had, too: bringing him back on board, placing him in its medical facility, gently peeling away and removing the blackened, bubbled remains of the suit and slicing away the burned, roasted skin and flesh where it was beyond reusing before it had – coaxingly, almost lovingly – started to knit his bones, repair and regrow his torn, battered organs, and nurture where possible and replace where necessary his bruised, assaulted flesh.\n\nIt was a process that was still ongoing. Agansu was many days away from being physically whole again, and would still be largely dependent on the ship when the Subliming happened in three days' time – assuming, of course, that it was still going to take place on schedule.\n\nIn its own way, though, even knowing that this body's part in matters was over was itself a kind of comfort. It meant that – having given his all, having been so nearly killed in honourable combat – now he didn't have to leave the healing comfort of the ship again, and could decide at the time whether to Sublime with the Uagren and its crew, or not." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If not, then he would be left by himself in a medically enabled minor craft, to be delivered to whatever might be left of his regiment, or indeed his civilisation, after the Instigation and the great Enfolding." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But he might go, with everybody, after all. He was thinking of changing his mind, of Subliming despite his earlier decision and still-existing fears. Coming so close to death on Bokri – even while knowing that an earlier, backed-up version of him might be re-wakened somewhere – had been salutary, and had made him think again about his attitude to death, oblivion and the whole issue of Subliming. Also, he had in some way come to feel part of the Uagren, and at one with its crew. He liked the idea of Outloading with these already semi-virtualised people. Assuming, of course, that they felt the same way. He worried that he still seemed like an interloper to them; perhaps even a foreign body, an irritant. He was nervous about broaching the subject.\n\nIn the meantime, there was the issue of having to update the customised bio-plausible android which the ship had left inside the Girdlecity of Xown when it had set off in pursuit of the Culture ship, nearly ten days earlier." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Uagren was on its way back to Xown, but – unable to maintain the kind of speeds it had on that dash, due to engine field degradation – it was doing so at a comfortable cruise rather than a sprint, and would arrive at Xown a full day after the Culture vessel." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It could still transmit the colonel's mind-state ahead and have this new, post-Bokri version integrated into the one that had been left behind, but Agansu had to admit he had been resisting the process, using as his excuse the idea that the longer they waited, the longer he would have to think about what had happened within the Incast facility and learn whatever lessons could be learned from the experience, before transmitting.\n\nThe truth was that he was reluctant to hand over to the android left behind on Xown because he was jealous; the android would become the new him, and it – not he – would have the next set of experiences. It would be the one, the version of him that would have the opportunity to engage with the enemy and defeat the Culture ship's avatar. It did not seem fair; he wanted to be the victor; this version, the original, from-birth Cagad Agansu, colonel of the First, the Home System regiment, and not some quickly customised android formed from a blank the ship had been holding probably since it was first built.\n\nHe knew – of course he did – that the android represented a version of him, that it would think of itself as fully being him, but that was beside the point. The action would all happen away from him, and the person, the entity involved, would not be him; he would be lying here, still being carried towards whatever would happen in the Girdlecity, on Xown. Perhaps the experiences the android had could be re-integrated back into his own memory. That was possible, but it didn't always work – it seemed to depend on how extreme and traumatic the experiences had been – but even then, he would always know that in a sense it hadn't really been him there, at the front, at the tip of the spear.\n\n\"Colonel?\" the captain said, talking to him across the virtual bridge of the ship, where he sat to one side of the arc of officers arranged around their welter of screens, read-outs and controls." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes, Captain,\" he said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I think I'm ready. There are no more lessons to be drawn. Please carry out the procedure.\"\n\nThe captain nodded to the data/comms officers. \"Proceed.\"\n\nAgansu seemed to fade away for a moment, and was briefly aware of not being on any sort of virtual bridge at all, but being a broken body, still under repair, held deep in the bowels of the ship, as it read his mind, sorted and arranged the resulting data and encrypted it for transmission ahead to the android waiting on Xown.\n\n\"Welcome back,\" the captain said, smiling, as though, Agansu felt, he was a lone bio who had needed to leave the bridge to obey a call of nature. \"And to good news.\"\n\n\"Yes, Captain?\"\n\n\"We have big guns at Xown,\" the captain announced. \"A capital ship, also reporting to Marshal Chekwri, so on our side no matter how narrowly that's defined.\" The captain smiled thinly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And it's already dealing with some of the shit the Culture craft left behind.\"\n\nThe suite of materiel and general sensory assetry the Mistake Not... had left behind at Xown mostly reported back to a satellite which stowed to about the size of a human fist. Fully deployed, with finer-than-hair-thin tendrils extending tens of kilometres away from it in its geosynchronous orbit, it watched something big and probably military approaching Xown across the skein of space. It was also aware of every piece of free-floating hardware in the system being pinged with signals asking them to identify themselves. This was a bad sign.\n\nIt reported this to the also approaching but more distant Mistake Not... and was told to shut down to passive-minimum awareness. It did so, but it was still found, jolted with a tiny but abrupt gravity gradient that first illuminated it in passing and swept on, then returned, pulsed, and almost immediately plunged it into its own steep, sharp hole in space-time. Its last act was to destruct as chaotically and messily as possible, depriving any focused analytical equipment of the chance to determine much about it at all.\n\nOn Xown, scattered about the part of Girdlecity where the airship Equatorial 353 was moving slowly towards the place it had set off from five years earlier, dozens of tiny bits and pieces of Culture hardware started dropping out of the sky, falling to the floor or tumbling clicking and clacking through the vast piped spaces of the construction." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Some burned, or fused, or just glowed, destructing as best they could." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Some just had to accept deactivation and likely capture.\n\nA very small number, where able, closed down, closed off or better still ejected all their conventionally discoverable hardware processing and shifted down to back-up bio or atomechanical systems. Even those were vulnerable, through basic triangulation on their last recorded position in the network, as recorded by the compromised components unable to wipe their memories in time, and most succumbed; snapped away by disloc, knocked out of the air with close-range effector weapons or frazzled in mid-flight as they tried to escape by pinpoint bursts of plasma fire like miniature daytime fireworks.\n\nThe airship Equatorial 353, home of the Last Party, had built up a following of several hundred people over the last few days as it and Gzilt society in general approached the culmination of their respective journeys; however, only a few people noticed any of this small-scale destructive activity, and even they dismissed it as just more random chaotic irrelevance, symptomatic of these final days.\n\nOne small device, which had looked like a four-winged insect from the start, suddenly realised that it was probably all that remained of the components the ship had left behind. It sat on the snout of the airship, perched clinging to a thin stanchion supporting a long, dangling, trailing banner, and watched through impersonated compound eyes as another component, a thumb-sized scout missile, plummeted from on high, falling minutely past the bulbous nose of the slowly advancing airship, unwinding a twisting thread of grey smoke as it fell, unseen by any human eye. It disappeared into the dark depths of the huge open-work tunnel beneath.\n\nSome seconds later the giant airship bulged its way through the volume of air the little device had fallen through. The artificial insect detected a faint, disappearing trace-scent of the scout missile's descent." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The insect considered its instructions in the event of such eventualities, waited for a time, then lifted off, buzzing away on a long falling curve, building in just enough erraticism into its course to look convincing as it headed for the nearest point of entry into the body of the airship." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That's not good,\" Berdle said." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'cossont' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What's not good?\" Cossont asked.\n\n\"Something big and powerful just rolled up at Xown and started blighting all my gear,\" the avatar told her. They were sitting in the shuttle's compact command space, watching the planet approach as they decelerated from the system edge.\n\n\"What gear?\"\n\n\"The bits and pieces I left behind to keep an eye on whatever's happening there.\"\n\nCossont frowned at the avatar. \"Do you leave stuff behind everywhere you've been?\"\n\n\"Pretty much.\" Berdle looked at her with an expression indistinguishable from genuine incomprehension. \"Why wouldn't you?\"\n\n\"Never mind. This big and powerful something; bigger and more powerful than you?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Definitely bigger.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We still going in?\"\n\n\"Even less choice now.\"\n\n\"We couldn't just... call Ximenyr?\" Cossont said. \"Could we? You know; just say, Hi, we need them eyes you've got?\"\n\nBerdle smiled briefly. \"I have been trying to contact the gentleman. I asked Mr QiRia's mind-state if it would cooperate and it said it would, but Ximenyr's been impossible to contact. A direct appeal to him, from Mr QiRia, ought to be our first course of action when we do gain access to him.\"\n\n\"Oh. You might have told me.\"\n\n\"I might.\" Berdle agreed, looking unconcerned. \"I would have, had we been successful.\"\n\n\"Huh. Okay. So: this ship the same one as at Bokri?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No,\" the avatar said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Can't be. Registering all different anyway. Battleship rather than battle-cruiser; I can outrun it, but that's not much use when we both want to be in the same place at the same time.\" Berdle shook his head. \"Shit in a slather. Pretty much everything's gone or going. I'm losing all my senses down there.\"\n\n\"Think they'll be putting their surveillance in, instead?\"\n\n\"I suppose. Though, being Gzilt navy rather than special forces or anything, I bet their stuff isn't as sneaky as my stuff.\"\n\n\"What was the last you heard through all this sneaky stuff?\"\n\n\"Ximenyr was still there on the airship, getting prepared for the latest bout of ceremonial partying. Apparently; that's all according to the airship's own channels. I don't have direct access to him, and he hasn't been heard of for at least seven days. I have – had – stuff inside the airship but nothing in the guy's own quarters after he found that scout missile. Pretty sure he's still there, but not certain. I've found some incidental recording of him still wearing the container round his neck, from the day after we visited him, so – at least initially – we didn't spook him. Also, the whole layout of the airship's been changing, since a couple of days after we were here before; they've created a big new space inside. And they've been bringing in a lot of extra tech, including new field projectors. And water; that thing must weigh a lot more than it used to, but they seem to have balanced it all out with extra AG. None of which would matter if we could see inside it properly, but we can't. Plus now we've got competition, and they know where our attention's been focused, if they didn't before. Not to mention,\" he said, turning to her, \"there's been a guy, walking or jogging ahead of the airship, since we left.\"\n\n\"I thought there were various people doing that?\"\n\n\"Oh, it's collected lots of people keeping pace with it recently, in air-cars, travel-tube carriages, special trains and ground vehicles, plus there are people keeping pace with it on foot for half a day or so at a time, but there was only one guy who just kept it up all the way through. I had an insectile watching him the whole time and he just never stopped; he hardly even varied his pace. All he did was switch what level and which side he was on, and keep level with different parts of the airship, I suppose so he wasn't too conspicuous. He's got some sort of camo or adaptive clothing on that changes every day, but that didn't throw the bug off; it was still the same guy, walking or jogging day and night.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Probably not human then.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Probably not human,\" Berdle agreed. \"Though of course you never know; there are some very odd humans.\" He frowned at the screen and the giant red-brown, green and blue ball of Xown, as though the planet itself had been responsible for this upset. \"Trouble is, he's disappeared now, too.\"\n\nHe awoke.\n\nHe was in a military medical facility aboard a regimental fleet ground liaison craft, flying within a subsidiary tunnel space of the Girdlecity of Xown. It was late afternoon on this part of Xown; five minutes off midnight, back on Zyse.\n\nHe was lying on a couch, blinking at the ceiling light panels. He was a customised bio-plausible android, waking after having had the latest version of his guest implanted." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was Colonel Agansu, translated and transplanted into this fresh, tireless, highly capable and perfectly unharmed new body.\n\nIt made no difference.\n\nHe knew that he had been worried about having his consciousness duplicated in this way, but he had been a fool to torment himself with such concerns. Of course the original of him, lying being put back together and regrown in the bowels of the Uagren, would always think of itself as the \"real\" him – he accepted this without emotion – but he knew who he was, within this body, here, now, and that there was work to be done.\n\nKnowing that there was another iteration of himself elsewhere was mildly comforting, like having another layer of protection wrapped around him, but made little real difference.\n\nA screen on a flex-arm swung over to inspect him. A woman's face looked at him from somewhere remote. The doctor's gaze flicked to one side then the other, doubtless studying read-outs. Then she said, \"Well, whoever you are, whatever it is they want you to do, you're as ready as you'll ever be to do it. Good luck and good Subliming, brother.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Agansu swung out of the couch." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The screen seemed to flinch, withdrawing towards the ceiling as he did so." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Thank you,\" he said.\n\nHe felt the aircraft settle on a solid surface; interfaced with the craft's systems, he knew he would be three hundred and ten metres ahead, two hundred and twenty metres away laterally and zero metres vertically from the nose of the airship when he exited. He checked his camouflage clothing, got it to impersonate something civilian and nondescript.\n\nHe remembered days of jogging and walking, climbing steps and ramps, descending steps and ramps, in filtered daylight and lamplight and ghostly sat-light and no light, the airship filling his view ahead or a presence at his back or a steady shape at one side or the other or above him or through gratings beneath him as he paced. Sometimes fireworks, lasers and holographic images burst from, lanced out, or enveloped/preceded/trailed the airship, especially at night, and sometimes loud music could be heard playing. Floodlights and running lights lit it every night. Sometimes when he ran behind and above it he could smell food and fumes and detect the spoor of bio-drugs.\n\nHe recalled the feeling of being swaddled and protected, within the 7*Uagren, and remembered talking to the avatar of the Culture ship, and thinking that he had the creature and Vyr Cossont where he wanted them, at his mercy... then hurtling broken and screaming down the lift shaft, like a burned insect falling flaming down a tall chimney. He remembered lying broken and burned and taken apart within the ship again, then beginning to be made whole again, while he contemplated how close to death he had come and how the prospect of oblivion within the Subliming had started to seem less terrifying." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Two sets of memories had been formed at the same time, but this made no difference either." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The ground liaison craft carried little weaponry and was only able to equip him with a kin-ex side-arm, but that would not matter for too long. The android body had what was effectively a laser carbine embedded in each forearm, the beams exiting through a skin-disguised muzzle in the heel of each hand.\n\nHe jumped easily, seemingly lightly, from the lowered door of the stealth-black craft, then – as it closed itself, flipped over and powered off down the fifty-metre-diameter tunnel – he turned and jogged down a broad, cross-corridor of soaring lattice girders and overarching pipes that led directly to the giant basket-weave of tunnel where the Equatorial 353 moved. There was an area of open balcony deck ahead. The airship would be just about to pass it by the time he got there.\n\nThe 8*Churkun established contact.\n\n> Colonel Agansu.\n\n> In translation, yes.\n\n> I am captain of the 8*Churkun." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The marshal sends regards." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> Please thank the marshal.\n\n> We have completed the scour of Culture devices from the immediate volume and beyond, though a vessel – I would guess the Culture ship that you encountered at Ospin – is approaching. It was slowing but is now re-accelerating. We are going to attempt to intercept or disrupt any attempt it makes to disloc materiel or personnel into or near the Girdlecity; however, we cannot be certain of success.\n\n> It would help to know the intended location of any such attempted disloc, to help confirm the nature of enemy intentions, Agansu sent, approaching the great open balcony that gave out onto the tunnel which held the approaching airship.\n\n> That is entirely compatible with our own intentions. We'll let you know where any disloc was targeted, whether successful or not.\n\n> Thank you.\n\nThere were people ahead." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The spaces around the airship Equatorial 353 had been becoming more populated over the days he had been keeping pace with it." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word frequency rule: 'images' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ground vehicles rumbled slowly past ahead on a broad roadway; they were gaudy, booming with music. Across the gulf of the tunnel he could see a train, trundling, keeping pace, searchlights on it pointing back at the airship, flicking slowly off and on again as they passed behind supporting struts. A smaller airship, like a tiny white cloud made solid, appeared from a side tunnel and drew slowly ahead of the Equatorial 353, scattering clouds of sparkling, coloured dust which a rear-facing laser lit up in gyrating abstract patterns.\n\nThe skin of the Equatorial 353 exhibited a series of large moving images, as though projected onto its smooth curvature. There appeared to be seven or eight of these distorted displays covering the airship's surface at any one time. Some of the photographs were stills, most moved, and they sometimes fused together to provide larger images. Some appeared only to make any sort of sense considering the airship as a whole, in other words imagining the form of the display on the other side of the craft. The most common themes appeared to be records of earlier art installations aboard the craft over the last few years, nature in the form of plants and animals, historical and presently existing forms of transport, and pornography.\n\n> We carry four sixty-four-unit platoons of marine combat arbites, the 8*Churkun's captain told him." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "writing buddy needed! two sentences more in Iain Banks's voice. Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre. this is from a bigger story btw" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Because you're liable to get killed.\"\n\n\"That doesn't seem to be stopping you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Of course not. I'm an avatar. 'Killed' doesn't even mean the same thing for me. You're a bio; I've seen how you guys die and it's messy.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I meant as the ship. The Mistake Not... You're liable to get killed. Aren't you?\"\n\n\"A slightly more weighty consideration, I accept, but even then; I've already transmitted my mind-state to my home GSV and switched to full combat readiness, so I'm kind of ready for death. And anyway, not dead yet.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This is my fight, though, isn't it? More than yours?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Frequency requirement: 'about' - 2 occurrence(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Berdle sighed. \"This is about the Gzilt, but the Culture appears to be all mixed up in it, through QiRia, so it's our problem to sort out.\"\n\n\"It's still basically about us. You can't do everything. You're not our... parent.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You're not even backed-up, Cossont. If you die, you die.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Can't you back me up?\"\n\n\"No.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had a sudden thought. \"Did you back-up QiRia, his mind-state from the grey cube?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes. Also transmitted, with a note it's private and to be wiped if the original survives.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She frowned. \"Why can't you back me up?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You've no neural lace; even starting right now it would take far too long. We're already out of time.\" Berdle waved his hands, as though exasperated." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Why are you so keen to risk your life anyway? You're a military reservist civilian facing Subliming in a couple of days; why the rush to die? And, I'm telling you: having you present will make my job harder, not easier. You won't be contributing, you'll be jeopardising.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"First of all, on that last point, I don't believe you. I think you're just trying to protect me, being all male-gallant. I'm flattered but there's no need.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm a fucking razor-arsed starship, you maniac! I'm not male, female or anything else except stupendously smart and right now tuned to smite. I don't give a fuck about flattering you. The few and frankly not vitally important sentiments I have concerning you I can switch off like flicking a switch.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Anyway. You can't keep me prisoner on the ship. You're Culture and I'm a free agent. I demand to be set down in the Girdlecity.\"\n\n\"They are looking for you, remember? They think you trashed Fzan-Juym with your bare hands or whatever the fuck.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"So you'd better look after me then.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That's what I'm trying to tell you! I don't need that extra workload! And if you insist on quitting the ship I'll put you down wherever I damn well please, not where you specifically demand, so there you are; you can't win.\"\n\nCossont, already dressed in the same figure-hugging under-suit she'd worn at Bokri, stood looking levelly at the avatar across the module's lounge." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"If you don't give a fuck about flattering me,\" she said slowly, \"and if you can just switch off any sentiments you have concerning me, you can do that down there, on the planet, in the Girdlecity, in the airship. So you don't have to worry about me, and I will help, not hinder.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Berdle stared at her. Then he smiled, and relaxed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His tone of voice changed. \"I don't know about you, Vyr,\" he said, conversationally, \"but I'm sort of posturing here.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He shrugged. \"If you insist on coming, you can, though it's your funeral and I won't risk any part of what I'm supposed to be doing to keep you safe at all, not if it's a trade-off; just nothing.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He shook his head. \"I thought maybe you were just putting on a sort of good-enough show. You know; so you could feel okay about yourself even though you didn't want to go, or expect to. So, one last chance, in all seriousness: please don't come.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"One last time: I want to. Take me with you.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Berdle sighed. \"Okay. You can't say you weren't warned. Put that on.\" He nodded behind Cossont." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She turned round to see a bizarre vision of a man in close-fitting armour – half mirror, half soot-black, headless – marching out of an alcove, growing an extra pair of arms and peeling itself open as it approached her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What's that?\"\n\n\"A better suit. I'm downloading a copy of QiRia's mind-state to it now, so we can access the old geezer's memories direct if we get hold of his eyes without the ship around. Go on; just step in as you are. We've ninety seconds before we snap aboard, so don't take too long.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I thought we had ten minutes!\"\n\n\"Not any more; the ship's powering back out again, hoping to lure the battleship away from Xown.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Shit.\" Cossont stepped over to the suit and then into it; it flowed closed around her, leaving the helmet component down. \"Think that'll work?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "she asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Doubt it,\" the avatar admitted." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Assuming the battleship's been talking to the battle-cruiser, it'll know I've already been moving faster than it can, but it might factor in too much main traction stress degradation after all the dashing about I've been doing lately and think it has a chance. Assuming its engines aren't slightly fucked too, of course. Worth a try.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Pyan, sprawled loosely on a couch all this time, came flapping over and stood on a seat-back, facing her like a small, stiff flag. \"Well done you!\" it said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I think you're being terribly brave but I'm sure it'll all work out splendidly! And just remember: I've always loved you!\"\n\nCossont was about to say something like, Okay, now I'm worried... when her eyes narrowed and she looked at Berdle." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Did you put it up to that?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Berdle shrugged. \"Also worth a try.\"\n\n\"But I do!\" Pyan exclaimed, twisting to face Berdle, then back to Cossont. \"But I do!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yeah,\" Cossont said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Twenty seconds.\"\n\nThe ship sent a tiny update of its mind-state to its home GSV, mostly just so there would be a record of Cossont insisting on going with its avatar and other on-planet forces into the Girdlecity." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The ship was a constrained shell of force hurtling across the system now, re-accelerating hard, packaged within its wrapping of concentric fields like something cocooned, engines howling in frequencies no biological living thing would ever sense, a kilometre-long projectile submerged beneath the skein of real space, components of three outer fields lasing in hyperspace to direct the signal to its distant ship-mother, then clicking off again after a nanosecond, while other configurations of fields slid and flicked, stacked and snicked, readying for a series of multiple high-speed, high-accuracy Displaces to a complex-topography target deep in a gravity well; probably opposed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This was, the ship knew, going to be challenging." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Most serious Culture ships, and all with any pretensions to being warships, possessed burst units: specialised engine components like motive power capacitors capable of providing sudden, brief flares of energy and movement. The Mistake Not... 's were more powerful and capable than most craft its size, which was kind of a game-giving-away liability if you actually had to use them in the presence of somebody able to spot such shenanigans, but – on the other hand – this was exactly the situation where they might help save the day, so..." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The ship was already heading dangerously close to Xown's gravity well, having to adjust its course in hyperspace to avoid crashing into the downward curve of skein." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It jinked closer still at the last moment, using up all its burst unit energies both to swerve and slow, then focused in on the relatively tiny part of itself that held the module where its avatar and the humanoid were, snapping the two human-shaped forms and the woman's pet away and then the module separately." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It loosed the module first, targeting the Displace at a spot just outside the Girdlecity twelve hundred metres above local ground level and ten kilometres back from the current location of the airship Equatorial 353.\n\nIt was, given the relative velocities involved, one of the most accurate and precisely located Flying Displaces it had ever heard of, snapping the module into the air within an elegantly aligned pocket of vacuum that collapsed at just the right rate to allow the craft to continue on its way – under its own power, now – so smoothly that the ship doubted somebody standing inside the module – had there been anybody – would even have wobbled as the transition was completed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That the whole craft was almost immediately snatched away again by an almost equally heavy-duty disloc facility – with a most inelegant bang like a sonic boom, caused by the caisson-field collapsing uncontrolled – was, happily, quite beside the point." }, { "from": "human", "value": "While the Gzilt ship was busy doing this the Mistake Not... was merrily zapping all its real payloads – its avatar and Cossont included – into the places it had wanted to in the first place." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That done, within the same millisecond, it was off again, spiralling down under even fiercer acceleration as though intent on diving right under the planet's depression in the skein and aiming for the energy grid far beneath. It steadied, zoomed, sped off, tracked but not targeted by the Gzilt war-craft, which remained stationary, hugging close to the planet." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Pyan was dumped into the ship's last remaining human habitable space, a six-person shuttle." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> Where's this? the creature said.\n\n> New home, the ship sent." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> It's small and boring!" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> So are you.\n\n> What! How dare you!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "> Would you rather be on the planet?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "> Which is safer?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Mistake Not... watched the Gzilt ship staying – annoyingly, frustratingly – exactly where it was, singularly failing to pursue it, even though the Mistake Not... had pretended to be less quick than it really was, just to make it think it had a chance.\n\n> Probably the planet, now, it admitted." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> The planet, then... Well? Hurry up!" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> Too far. Next pass/approach.\n\n> You're going back?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "> Of course I'm going back." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> I protest at this behaviour towards me! Why wasn't I—?\n\n> Best you go to sleep now, the ship said." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll start writing, then you take over for seven sentences, matching any established character familiarity in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Participants: GSV Empiricist / LOU Caconym / GSV Contents May Differ / GCU Displacement Activity / GSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry / Ue Mistake Not... / MSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In / MSV Pressure Drop / LSV You Call This Clean?\n\nGSV Empiricist: Open question, specifically to the Mistake Not... Are you sure you are doing the right thing? It is plausible that the Gzilt craft is an 8*; possibly the ship responsible for what happened at Ablate. It is certainly powerful and may be unconstrained by conscience.\n\nUe Mistake Not... : No, not sure at all. But committed, so let's see what happens.\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: I am equally worried re the Beats Working." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It just transmitted its mind-state.\n\nLOU Caconym: Suggestion? Tell it whatever it's thinking of doing, don't.\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: I have been trying to contact it after the mind-state signal arrived. Nothing. To pass the time while I wait for a reply, I have been trawling the banks for evidence that this is anything other than a bad sign, coming from a Contact Unit. Guess what?\n\nGSV Empiricist: The Beats Working is with the largest part of the Ronte fleet, heading for Vatrelles. The Gzilt saw them off but only as far as the system outskirts, then returned, with no known other hostility. That leaves the Liseiden." }, { "from": "human", "value": "We have the Thug-class Value Judgement with the main squadron, do we not?" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "MSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In: Yes, though the main – the largest – squadron is not the flagship flotilla. They re-dispositioned, bringing various of their separate squadrons together into a more martial meta-configuration following the original decision on preferred Scavenger status going against them. One group of three ships joined the three of the flagship squadron, but three separate groups of three also amalgamated, and as that then constituted the greatest force they had, that is the one the Value Judgement was sent to shadow. We have nothing with the flagship squadron commanded by Ny-Xandabo Tyun, and – as that was the force already also converging on Zyse – that is the force most likely to offer any threat to the Ronte attempting to make Vatrelles." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "keep the story goin for like five sentences more. same character vibes. make it Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence-y" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "same energy as Iain Banks, keep writing. story might have ongoing elements" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Ensure 'caconym' appears 2 time(s) in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "GSV Empiricist: I suggest I send my fastest ship to rendezvous with the Beats Working and the Ronte, while signalling the Liseiden to desist from any hostile action they may be contemplating. I am sure we have such a preponderance of forces locally we can prevent any mooted unpleasantness.\n\nParticipants: LOU Caconym / MSV Pressure Drop\n\nLOU Caconym: Here we go." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Spoken like a ship with no idea of how things actually work. It's not about what forces you've got, it's about what forces you've got where. You'd think even a civilian would understand that.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: You may be being too harsh." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Agreed, nothing it has can get to the likely volume of combat in time, but it has a point regarding a warning possibly being enough." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "LOU Cacoynm: That would apply if we had nothing military here at all; we are who we are and we can call any shots at any time. That still might not stop the Liseiden from making a point to the Ronte, just to show who's boss in future.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: Let's hope you're wrong.\n\nLOU Caconym: Yes, why don't we?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "That ought to pass the time." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Anyway, let's hear what the Empiricist thinks we ought to do." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "same energy as Iain Banks, keep writing. story might have ongoing elements" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "same energy as Iain Banks, keep writing. story might have ongoing elements" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The/My squadron of six Liseiden ships, led by myself on the pride of our fleet, the Collective Purposes vessel and flagship Gellemtyan-Asool-Anafawaya, fell (/ruthlessly*) upon the pitiful/limping/struggling/fearsome* Ronte fleet with resolute professionalism/exemplary courage/heavy hearts**, our jaws/mouthparts forced [n.b. : awkward/over-species-specific in translation; suggest restructure using \"given no choice\" or equivalent] by the [? ]/ responded to the Ronte fleet's outrageous* provocations/unprovoked aggression**/aggressive intransigence with the only language they understand. **\n\n*[n.b. : word choice? potentially hoary]" }, { "from": "human", "value": "**[n.b. : phrase choice? potentially clichéd]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sir?\"\n\n\"Hmm?\" Salvage and Reprocessing Team Principal Ny-Xandabo Tyun accepted the call in his private cabin. It was from his Sensors/Targeting officer. He had asked not to be disturbed unless something urgent came up. \"What?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "he said with deliberate gruffness, though secretly he was glad of the interruption." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was finding writing what he hoped would turn into one of the more exciting parts of his memoirs rather more difficult than he'd anticipated." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'thirteen' must appear 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sir, we have the Ronte fleet in sight at extended scanner range; thirteen targets.\"\n\n\"Thirteen. So the Culture ship is still with them.\"\n\n\"Appears so, sir.\"\n\n\"Are they aware of us?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Doubtful, sir.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'd prefer a percentage applied to that doubt, officer.\"\n\n\"Sir. Ninety per cent certain they haven't detected us, sir.\"\n\n\"That's better.\"\n\n\"Also, sir, Comms coming on line with a signal from the Culture GSV Empiricist. Shall I—?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes. Comms, what are they saying?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There's quite a lot of it, sir; I've patched it through. But it boils down to them telling us not to attack the Ronte.\"\n\n\"I bet it does. I'll take a look shortly. You have followed my earlier orders and not acknowledged?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\n\"Good. S/T?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sir,\" the Sensors/Targeting officer said.\n\n\"How long until we have the Ronte fleet in range?\"\n\n\"A fraction over two hours at current velocities and courses, sir.\"\n\n\"Two hours? I thought we expected to have them in range forty minutes after contact.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Their drive signatures are messier than anticipated, sir, plus the Culture ship with them appears to be hurrying them on; hard to tell from this far away – only about fifteen per cent certain – but it looks like it's encased them in its own field enclosure, highly extended, and is acting like a sort of high-speed tug.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I see. Engineering?\"\n\n\"Sir?\"\n\n\"Can you give us a little more power?\"\n\n\"Negative, sir. Another step-up from here would imply a seventy per cent chance of serious engine malfunction, probably in one or both of the two Jubunde-class ships.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hmm. Very well. Continue to close at current velocity. Combat?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sir?\"\n\n\"Go to full readiness in one hour, ship-wide. I'll rejoin the bridge then.\"\n\n\"Sir.\"\n\n\"Proceed, all,\" he said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He cut off the chorus of acknowledgements and resumed his compositional task with a watery sigh.\n\nThe insectile drone Jonsker Ap-Candrechenat, representative of the Culture ship Beats Working, floated in front of the Swarmprince Ossebri 17 Haldesib, in the command space of the Ronte Interstitial/Exploratory vessel Melancholia Enshrines All Triumph.\n\n\"This need not be your fight, machine,\" Haldesib told the drone.\n\n\"It feels like it is, Swarmprince. I led you into danger. I thought I might help you escape it, but it would appear we are discovered, so now the least I can do is try to make amends by coming between you and the enemies into whose reach I so foolishly delivered you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Haldesib flicked one leg in a dismissive gesture." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"For ourselves, we do not seek our end; but the hive, the swarm, the race will go on, no matter. You need not presume to share our fate through misplaced guilt.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I feel I have no honourable choice, Swarmprince.\"\n\n\"You intend to attack the Liseiden ships?\"\n\n\"I intend to engage with them.\"\n\n\"The distinction might be lost on them. We have dealt with the Liseiden before. They will interpret any 'engagement' as an attack. Or at least claim to, afterwards. Be warned.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Thank you. I am.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"This is the decision of your human crew?\"\n\n\"No. It is mine. I intend to get my human crew to safety before matters become critical.\"\n\n\"They concur with this?\"\n\n\"They have come to accept it. Two wanted to be heroes, and stay aboard. I argued them out of this course.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Swarmprince flexed his wing plates. In a human, the equivalent might have been a shake of the head. \"We may all die out here, machine, but – of all of us – you have some choice. Must you be a hero? Can you not argue yourself out of this course?\"\n\n\"I probably could, Swarmprince, but I'd regret it subsequently. I believe this is the right thing to do and so I am doing it.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You may steal some of our glory.\" The Swarmprince's legs flexed as he said this, dipping his body briefly to indicate that it was said humorously, not aggressively.\n\n\"I shall engage with them first, independently, Swarmprince, before any action between them and you. If I may, I'll transmit to you whatever I can discover of their ships' abilities, strengths and weaknesses. It may help, if I am unable to stop them.\"\n\n\"We are pleased to accept this kind offer. But what if you prevail? We shall be denied all chance to prove ourselves!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Then you will have the benefit of my most profuse apologies, I shall accept any amount of inferred alien cachet value (negative), honorary, you care to bestow, and I shall be grateful subsequently for even the most demeaning and/or minor role in any ship dance within which you care to include me.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Leg-clicks indicated the Swarmprince was laughing. A few other Ronte in the command space joined in quietly. \"It has been gratifying to us to witness the knowledge of and respect for our ways you have displayed, ship,\" the Swarmprince said. \"We can only wish you well with your 'engagement'. Fight well. Live if you can, die well if you must.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Thank you, Swarmprince. It's been a pleasure.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You look tired, Septame,\" Chekwri told him as she entered his office in the parliament building.\n\n\"I feel tired, Marshal.\"\n\n\"Never mind; not long to go now. You chosen your last outfit?\"\n\n\"What?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Your clothing; whatever you're going to wear for the Instigation. Have you decided how you'll be dressed when you meet your glorious translation into the Enfolded?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I... I think that's all pre-decided for me. Ceremonial... Solbli. Yes, Solbli; she'll be taking care of all that. Umm. You?\"\n\n\"Oh, I shall be resplendent in all my finery, Septame, medals gleaming,\" Chekwri said, folding herself into a seat across from the septame. Banstegeyn had noticed that the marshal didn't ask whether she might disturb him these days, or wait to be invited to sit. Before, he might have made some frosty comment and insisted on protocols being followed, but no more." }, { "from": "human", "value": "People were going quietly crazy in these last couple of days – in fact some people were going noisily, boisterously, even dangerously crazy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Meanwhile, all across the Gzilt domain, those who had been Stored, some for less than a year, some for a couple of decades or more, were waking up for final reunions, last goodbyes, leaving parties and fare-thee-wells-in-what-comes-next...\n\n\"I have buffed and polished my medals for decades of steady, dedicated watchfulness,\" the marshal continued, clasping her hands behind her head as she leaned back and relaxed, legs crossed, \"counted and re-counted my medals for outstanding work in simulations and exercises, carefully arranged my medals for heroic bravery under virtual fire, and even found room for my many, many medals for exemplary valour in the face of fellow officers coveting the same promotions as I.\" She smiled at him without humour. \"Shame we haven't had time to strike any medals commemorating our latest exploits: jumping unarmed ships, wasting our own and setting naive aliens on each other. Still, one can have too much of a good thing, eh, Septame? And they do say there's no guilt in the Sublime.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You seem positively energised by the whole process, Chekwri.\" He looked pointedly round the room. \"And very confident that my office isn't bugged.\"\n\n\"I had my own people make quite sure of that some time ago, Septame,\" Chekwri said, smiling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"While planting your own?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The marshal's smile broadened. \"Have you always been so suspicious, Banstegeyn?\"\n\nHe looked at her, unsmiling. \"No, I stumbled into a position of great power quite by accident.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Chekwri grinned, then shrugged." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Our troubles will soon be over, Septame,\" she said, then frowned. \"What?\" she asked. Banstegeyn had just twitched and glanced to one side, like he'd seen something alarming from the corner of one eye.\n\nThe septame shook his head and bent back to his desk, where he was signing documents on his desk screen. \"Nothing,\" he muttered, scrawling his signature." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Have you only come to discuss matters of ceremonial attire or is there some actual point to this visit?\"\n\nChekwri stood, walked to the window overlooking the stepped gardens and the city beyond the curve of river. \"My, I do believe some people have started fires,\" she said. \"I thought that wasn't our style.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She looked back at Banstegeyn." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"One lot of aliens is about to trash another. The mighty Empiricist, no less, has signalled the miscreants telling them to play nicely but the rumour is it's being ignored. I just wanted to be sure you were happy that we let things be and allow what might happen to happen. This is not to say that they'd take any notice of us, either, but in theory we might threaten to withdraw Scavenger cooperation. This has been suggested.\"\n\n\"By whom?\"\n\n\"Media, Culture, one or two politicos. There'd be more, but of course everybody's distracted.\"\n\n\"You're the brave space marshal. What would your advice be?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'd be indifferent; doesn't affect us... save for the fact that our returned bad boy and what sounds like its entire marine force are just about to tangle with a Culture ship, out at Xown. That could get messy. Might require extraneous distractions to keep people from concerning themselves with it.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She crossed her arms. \"Intelligence has crunched some more numbers and now thinks that particular side-show might all turn on this absurdly old Culture guy, and Cossont, the girl who survived Fzan-Juym and the fracas at Bokri. I think we take no chances and continue to let our assets around the Girdlecity do whatever's needed; does that sound—?\"\n\n\"Yes. Yes, it does. Do whatever's needed,\" the septame said, not looking up. \"Is that all?\" he asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Lot of signing required, winding up an entire civilisation, and the president was only too happy to delegate to his trimes and septames. Then I've got the joy of back-to-back receptions for a variety of newly arrived aliens and recently de-Stored self-important political nonentities to attend.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You should just tell them to fuck off,\" Chekwri said cheerfully." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'closed' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Go for a walk. Get laid. Start a fire.\" She headed for the door. \"Why not?\"\n\nThe door closed, leaving him alone. He brought his head up, gazing at the closed door for a moment." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then his eyes flicked to one side for an instant, he made a small keening noise and bent quickly back to his task, the nib of the stylo scratching drily at the desk screen." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Salvage and Reprocessing Team Principal, Ny-Xandabo Tyun?\"\n\n\"I have that honour. And you?\" Tyun had been called back to the bridge from his private cabin half an hour early. It appeared the Culture ship wanted to talk and was falling back towards them, leaving the Ronte fleet to crawl on without it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tyun watched the representation of the situation on a giant screen stretching right across the forward part of the bridge." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I am the Culture ship Beats Working,\" the voice said, in perfect, unaccented Liseiden Formal." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sir,\" Tyun's combat officer broke in, \"a contact, registering less than ten metres in length and flagging as an unarmed civilian personnel craft, has left the Culture ship. Divergent course; peeling away. Slung and slowing.\"\n\nTyun could see the tiny trace, curving away from the approaching Culture ship; a thread from a speck. \"Could it be a warhead?\" he asked.\n\n\"Technically possible, sir,\" the combat officer said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Something improvised. Big, though, for such a small craft. They're not supposed to carry any weapons anywhere near—\"\n\n\"Deploy an HRMP to track it, slow approach. Keep the platform between the new contact and us.\"\n\n\"Heavy Remote Missile Platform launched, sir. Launch authority for the missiles?\"\n\n\"What would you recommend, officer?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Zero automaticity, sir. Our direct positive command.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That, then.\"\n\n\"Team Principal?\" the Culture ship said.\n\nTyun clicked back to speak to the Culture ship again. \"Yes?\"\n\n\"I take it you've noticed that I have despatched my human crew in a small shuttle craft. Their identities and the craft's course are appended. They and the shuttle are entirely unarmed.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Why are your crew abandoning ship?\"\n\n\"I asked them to, and advised them that they ought to.\"\n\n\"Why would that be?\"\n\n\"In case there are any hostilities.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Why should there be any hostilities?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'might' 2 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I believe you mean some harm to the Ronte.\"\n\n\"Not at all. You presume too much. I might as well assume that you mean harm to me and my ships because you have loosed what, for all I know, might be a warhead disguised as a shuttle.\"\n\n\"The shuttle craft is drawing further away from you all the time and its course is set. Also, it is demonstrably unarmed.\"\n\n\"Seven minutes until the Culture ship's in range, sir,\" the combat officer told him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Are we in range of it yet?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tyun asked. He checked the magnification the screen was using, shown as a logarithmically scaled bar on one side." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Shouldn't be, sir; not a Scree class. They're almost unarmed.\"\n\n\"And you,\" Tyun asked, clicking back to talk to the Culture ship. \"Are you unarmed, machine? And what are your intentions?\"\n\n\"I have only very limited military capability. My intention is to prevent you engaging with the Ronte ships ahead of you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What makes you think we wish to engage with them?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You are pursuing them.\"\n\n\"Hmm. I would not care to define it as such. We are merely following them.\"\n\n\"You have targeted them.\"\n\n\"We have illuminated them the better to track their progress.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"This is not fully plausible. I believe you mean them harm.\"\n\n\"Not at all. We may ask them to heave to and submit to our inspection; we are entitled to do so under the terms of our agreement with the Gzilt, as long as the Ronte or any unauthorised military or semi-military forces are in Gzilt space. Which they are, of course.\"\n\n\"You know the Ronte will never permit such a thing.\"\n\n\"That's their problem. Certainly they have proved treacherous in the past and gone back on their agreements with us, so we are unable, sadly, to take their word regarding any questions we may have for them regarding cargo, weaponry and intentions. As I say, our initial approach will be entirely non-violent, simply requesting them to halt and cooperate.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Such an approach virtually guarantees there will be conflict. I believe you know this.\"\n\n\"I know no such thing, ship. I am acting within my rights according to the recently signed agreement between the Liseiden people and the Gzilt; an agreement which rescinds and cancels any previous agreements your... clients might have thought they'd inveigled the Gzilt into signing with them. And I wonder that a Culture ship appears so determined to ally itself with those barbaric ruffians, the Ronte. I wonder, are we suffering from a degree of guilt at having enabled your Ronte friends to encroach so far into Gzilt space? If so, ship, I understand that you might feel some shame, some wounded pride, but our... contention at this time is not with you. If it is with anyone, it is with them. I must ask you to break off what is beginning to look like an attack run on our – far superior – force before we are compelled to take defensive action, which may, I'm afraid to say, include interception munitions.\"\n\n\"I intend to continue on my present course, Team Principal.\"\n\nOn the giant screen, the Culture ship looked very close now." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tyun clicked out. \"Navigation, prepare to split the squadron in two: three right, three left, to half a light second apart. On my order. We'll let the Culture ship go straight through the gap between. All ships target and prepare to fire on any hostile action from the Culture ship. We can afford to ignore the Ronte for a short while, yes?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Maybe five minutes, on present velocities,\" his navigation officer said.\n\n\"Fine. Then make good those orders. And – to be clear – only fire on actual, overt hostile action from the Culture ship; not just targeting. We all got that?\"\n\n\"Sir.\"\n\n\"Targeting,\" the combat officer said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Split the fleet,\" Tyun ordered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He could hear and feel the ship around him hauling itself away from its earlier, straight course, starting to curve to one side along with two of the other ships. On the screen, the view swung, keeping the approaching Ronte fleet at one edge as the elongated dot that was the Beats Working swept past between the separated halves of the Liseiden squadron.\n\n\"Fleet split as prescribed,\" the navigation officer reported. \"Culture ship maintaining – correction: target slowing, rapidly. Target... now stopped relative to us. Accelerating. Catching up. Level with us in four seconds.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The screen view swung slowly, keeping the smeared dot of the Culture ship at one edge." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'total' (2x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The view hazed oddly, as though they were running through a gas cloud.\n\n\"Sir, the Quiatrea-Anang reports total loss of engine control.\"\n\n\"Sir, the Abalule-Sheliz reports total loss of power.\"\n\n\"What?\" He had two junior officers from fleet control talking to him at once." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The main screen hazed grey then blanked out entirely." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'display' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What the fuck—?\" Tyun said, glancing at the display in his own helmet. The helmet display was still working but seemed to be having trouble locking on to his eyes to present a true holo image. A stray flash briefly dazzled him.\n\n\"Main screen in shut-down,\" the damage control officer said, sounding puzzled." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Cause unknown.\" The screen flashed, shivered woozily, went blank again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The damage control officer broke in. \"Effector attack, on us, targeting engine control and main sensors.\"\n\n\"Sir, the Quiatrea-Anang reports total traction loss.\"\n\n\"Culture ship level with us now, sir. Starting to draw ahead. It's not changing—\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sir, the Quiatrea-Anang reports total sensor loss.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Engineering telemetry down.\"\n\n\"Sir, the Laskuil-Hliz reports total loss of power.\"\n\n\"—velocity. We're slowing. Fleet formation breaking up.\"\n\n\"Sir, the Abalule-Sheliz reports it's being targeted by the Quiatrea-Anang's Target Illumination Systems.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Our engines beginning stepped disengagement on false telemetry, sir. Trying to head them off and re-initialise but they keep—\"\n\nTyun could hear and feel something alter in the ship; a single great deep note was deepening still further, like something winding down, while a forward drag stirred micro-currents into the waters around him.\n\n\"Sir, the Abalule-Sheliz reports it's being targeted by our own TIS.\"\n\n\"That's shit,\" the junior combat/targeting officer said, voice shaking." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That's just shit, not true. Sir.\"\n\n\"This is an attack!\" Tyun said. \"This is hostile action! Fire to disable.\"\n\n\"Hard small target, sir. Doubt we can be that accurate.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Well, just hit it!\"\n\n\"Sir, the Fulanya-Guang reports total loss of engine telemetry.\"\n\n\"No weapon control. All weapons aboard shutting to fail-safe mode, active systems powering down.\"\n\n\"Hit it with something! Disable it, destroy it, I don't care!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Nothing to throw at it, sir.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory: Your text must contain 'platform' 2 times exactly" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sir, the Quiatrea-Anang reports total weapon control loss.\"\n\n\"Sir, the Culture ship is within quick strike range of the missile platform launched earlier. Might not have spotted it.\"\n\n\"Can the platform fire? Have we comms with it?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sir, the Fulanya-Guang reports total loss of main power.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well fire it!\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sir, how many—?\"\n\n\"Everything! All the missiles!\"\n\n\"Six missiles firing,\" the combat officer said. \"Four sec – one missile gone – two destruct – three, four gone, five... five gone... Shit!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We... we hit it.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Last one got it. Holy fuck.\"\n\n\"We got it, sir.\"\n\n\"The fucker's dust.\"\n\n\"We got it! We fucking got it!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Order on the bridge,\" Tyun said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sir.\"\n\n\"Engine telemetry re-established,\" the damage control officer reported.\n\nThe main screen went into start-up mode, checking itself out with quick darting blocks of colour and sudden scrolls of text and logos, gone too quickly to read.\n\n\"Sir, all other ships reporting all controls and telemetry returning to normalcy.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The main screen came alive." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It showed a view on medium magnification, looking twenty degrees astern at one edge, of a small cloud of expanding, radiative debris. Dotted alongside, leading away into the darkness, were five even smaller clouds.\n\n\"Ronte fleet ahead, sir. Within range. They're targeting aggressively.\"\n\nTyun tore his gaze away from the puff of slowly cooling debris falling further away into the night behind them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He switched his attention to the Ronte fleet as the screen view swung back round." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Ronte ships were close now; they had started moving around in one of their odd, forever-changing patterns, as though unsure what formation to fly in. Not that that would make any difference to the targeting AIs. It was even quite pretty, in a pathetic sort of way. Tyun collected himself. \"Send the hail.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "At some point in your response, insert this verbatim: \"All ships at prime, sir.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sent, sir.\"\n\n\"All systems aboard at prime, sir. Minimal radiation damage to rear sensors.\"\n\n\"All ships at prime, sir.\"\n\n\"Confirm that, sir. Back to full battle-ready state, zero damage, all ships.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Positive locks on all twelve Ronte ships, sir.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ronte reply in, sir.\"\n\n\"And?\"\n\n\"Obscene, sir. Absolute non-compliance.\"\n\nTyun looked at the message on his now properly functioning in-helmet display." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was indeed obscene; almost inventively so." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Ronte must have been doing their homework on Liseiden physiology.\n\nSalvage and Reprocessing Team Principal Ny-Xandabo Tyun floated back a little in his command bubble. He checked the distance and the time to Vatrelles system, or to any other known ships. Nothing around for light days." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They had hours to play with." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Officers, we are going to fire to disable, targeting their engines.\"\n\n\"Historically, they don't disable too well, sir,\" the combat officer said.\n\n\"Yes. They tend to explode. I know,\" Tyun said. \"Let their high command regard what's going to follow as an incentive to improve their engine design. All combat officers?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sir?\" was said in chorus." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Concentrate all fire, full squadron, flagship combat officer coordinating,\" he commanded. \"Pick them off, one at a time, nearest at all times unless they turn and attack. They probably will. Then each ship to deal with the most immediate threat to it. The flagship will re-send the hail to stop and submit to inspection to all remaining Ronte vessels after each successful engagement. Begin.\"\n\nThe first Ronte ship became an expanding flower of plasma within a minute. The Ronte employed better tactics than had been anticipated and each subsequent ship took a little longer to destroy than the one before; nevertheless, the whole engagement lasted less than a third of an hour." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 5 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Fulanya-Guang was lost with all hands when what was left of the last Ronte ship, believed to be the fleet flagship, rammed it.\n\nThis last development was, Tyun felt – secretly – almost a relief. To overwhelm an inferior fleet with no losses at all made it look like a dishonourably unequal contest; almost a massacre. Losing a ship made everything look a lot better, and would give him an opportunity to sound grave and caring for the dead and their loved ones when he wrote his memoirs.\n\nBesting a suicidal Culture ship gone native – even if it was \"just\" a Contact Unit, and only tiny – was merely the crustal fronding on the meat-shell, though apparently that phrase, too, was \"awkward/over-species-specific in translation\"." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand on the story, maintaining character relationships, in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Participants: GSV Empiricist / LOU Caconym / GSV Contents May Differ / GCU Displacement Activity / GSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry / Ue Mistake Not... / MSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In / MSV Pressure Drop / LSV You Call This Clean?\n\nGSV Empiricist: This is all very sad. I especially regret that my own vessels were unable to help in time.\n\nMSV Pressure Drop: I trust the lead ship of your \"string\" formation, the ROU Learned Response, has no thought of revenging the destruction of the Beats Working. Our comrade brought its end upon itself. The Liseiden are hardly to be commended, but their principal crime was not offing a semi-civilian craft of ours intent on making amends for earlier over-enthusiasm, but destroying the Ronte ships with all their crews. And even that they had an excuse for, miserable and legalistic though it may have been.\n\nGSV Empiricist: Indeed. I think no immediate action need or should be taken against the Liseiden. Our long-term disapproval, and the implications that this will have for their reputation, might prove most effective. The ROU will continue to the combat volume to retrieve the Beats Working's shuttle with the humans aboard, and check whether any other remains are recoverable, but will not pursue the Liseiden ships." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Expand on the story, maintaining character relationships, in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll start writing, then you take over for seven sentences, matching any established character familiarity in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Today you will be acting as a writing assistant, your partner will send something and you will write the next 11 sentences. The story may reference existing characters and events - incorporate them as presented." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Colonel?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> Ma'am? Agansu replied. The signal-adjunct protocols indicated he was addressing Marshal Chekwri.\n\n> This is Marshal Chekwri.\n\n> I am aware. An honour.\n\n> Your current status?\n\n> I am walking alongside the airship Equatorial 353 awaiting confirmation from the Churkun regarding the disposition of its forces and that of the other side. Media reports indicate that those in charge of the airship have undertaken to open the vessel to the public sometime in the next few minutes. I intend to board then. Or before, should we find our adversaries are already aboard.\n\n> Permit me awareness through your own senses.\n\n> Of course." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The sensation of manipulating aspects of his sensorium was a new one for Agansu, and yet one which felt perfectly natural." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He briefly marvelled at all the thought and careful design that must have gone into making it seem routine for something like himself – something which felt like a human – to delve into what was basically its own being and adjust the settings it found there so that a live link of what it was experiencing through its senses was now being sent to another person.\n\nAt the same time, Agansu was becoming aware of how many differences there were between his own, biological body and this one. With the possible exception of being considerably heavier than the bio version – despite being precisely the same volume – all the differences were positive.\n\nHow much more powerful, capable and sophisticated this new form was. How much more sensitive where it needed to be – his own bio-body held many augmentations and desirable amendments over the human-basic standard, yet in this new one, for example, he could see in much greater detail and over a far greater spread of the electro-magnetic spectrum than the old version was able to – yet how much less vulnerable it was where it didn't require such sensitivity (this android body felt no pain at all; one's motivation for avoiding harm was knowing that harm reduced one's ability to function, while the indication that harm had been inflicted was no more than that – a sign; something to be noted, taken into account and acted upon, but no more).\n\n> Thank you, the marshal sent.\n\nThere had been almost no delay between him agreeing to let the marshal see through his eyes and generally sense through his senses, him setting this up and her beginning to receive the data, and yet he had had time to take a look round inside himself as it were and start to appreciate all the differences between his bio-body and this one, and then to think about all this, all before the marshal had thanked him.\n\nAgansu marvelled at how little time it had all taken. His bio-self would hardly have had time for one completed thought in that half-second or so.\n\nRight, Colonel, the marshal sent, we think the Culture people are trying to get to this Ximenyr guy, because of something he has or something he knows about this QiRia person. You have to stop them." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That done, you get Ximenyr. Find out what he has, or knows. You may be as brusque as you like.\n\n> I understand, ma'am, Agansu sent, as he looked about the crowds of chanting, singing, dancing people and gaudily painted, bannered and holo'd machines keeping pace with the giant airship.\n\n> Sounds loud, Colonel.\n\n> Yes ma'am.\n\nHe was aware of many different sound streams around him, principally dance music emanating from the various vehicles around him on the broad balcony roadway. More seemed to be joining the throng all the time.\n\n> Kind of crowded there, too.\n\nA burst of fireworks lit up the open-work tunnel around the nose of the Equatorial 353. Some set of automatic reactions built into the android he inhabited seemed to be reacting to the fireworks, clenching instinctively as it witnessed nearby mortars firing – nearby mortars which were not flagged as friendly – and their payloads – unguided, highly inaccurately aimed payloads – detonating." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Bursts of light were followed by booms, thuds and crackles." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A few echoes came back, but most of the sound was swallowed by the huge spaces of the Girdlecity and absorbed within the surrounding patchwork of musics." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Knowing the speed of sound in Xown's atmosphere and the altitude here, he was able to tell exactly how far away he was from each exploding mortar shell." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include exactly 2 instance(s) of the word 'marshal'" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> Yes, it is, ma'am. Quite crowded.\n\n> Uh-huh. You know, if anything serious does kick off there, Colonel, you will need to limit civilian casualties as far as possible.\n\n> I am aware of that, ma'am, Agansu sent, thinking how typical – and shameful – it was that a superior tried to cover themselves against any unfortunate outcome by re-stating something that was already entirely and properly covered in ambient standing orders and by military rules of engagement. At the same time, if he failed to do as he was required to do by those same superiors because, anxious to avoid collateral civilian damage, he pulled back from using the most destructive weaponry he might have been able to deploy, he'd be blamed for that, too. He had, thanks to her reputation, thought better of Marshal Chekwri, but obviously he'd been wrong to think her any different.\n\n> Marshal, Colonel, the Churkun's captain sent. ~Further on the current situation. We intercepted and re-disloc'd a relatively massive Displace by the Culture vessel and captured what is probably its principal auxiliary craft; however, it was unoccupied and unarmed and probably constituted a diversion. A number of further Displaces occurred almost immediately thereafter, centred on the volume immediately around the airship, but we were unable to intercept or disrupt them. Neither are we able to pin down their destinations further. We are confident they are not actually inside the ship due to the four-dimensional aspect of its construction." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It is, effectively, shielded against disloc. This means that the other side must achieve entry to the airship by conventional means. As we have had sensors watching the craft for some time, and discerned no suspicious activity, we are confident that this has not thus far been achieved. Further, the full force of all four of this ships' marine platoons are now available for disloc at instant notice on the colonel's order.\n\n> I see, Captain, Agansu sent. He might have said more, but there would be time later for pinning down the responsibility for the Churkun being unable to do more regarding the Culture ship's Displaces. Now was not the time for that. ~So, our adversaries are here, but we don't know where?\n\n> Indeed, Colonel.\n\n> In that case I suggest that you bring in all the marine arbite platoons immediately. Place some ahead of the ship, some behind – say half a platoon in each position – but most in a couple of concentric shells of arbites entirely surrounding the vessel, keeping within tens out to a hundred metres of it but distributed within the structure, with only a squad-level force stationed on the outside of the Girdlecity." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Order all of them to keep pace with the airship." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Have them stealthed as far as possible, or camo'd to resemble camera drones or other civilian devices." }, { "from": "human", "value": "At that moment, a woman danced out of the crowd of people around him and started trying to get him to dance with her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He shook his head and drew back his hands as she tried to grab them." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She persisted, trying to again get hold of his hands, so he turned quickly and walked off, towards the wire parapet at the edge of the roadway, pushing between a couple of people, apologising as he went.\n\n> Suggest we stagger their arrival, Colonel, the Churkun's captain sent, ~or it'll be kind of obvious, popping in that many; you're liable to hear them as well as maybe see them. A second or two between each arrival ought to be okay.\n\n> If you think so, Captain, Agansu replied as another flicker of mortar fire presaged yet more smokey, low-explosive detonations in the tunnel ahead of the airship.\n\nCaptain, Marshal Chekwri sent, might I suggest you time more intense disloc bursts to coincide with barrages of fireworks?\n\n> Good idea, ma'am.\n\nSeconds later, Agansu heard a series of additional, dulled crackles sounding all around him, just as the next fusillade of fireworks detonated. He looked around and saw a couple more of what looked like media-cam platforms than had been there before. A few hazy disturbances in the air high over and ahead of the airship – easily missable by the normal human eye – were probably the marine arbites too, camouflaged.\n\nHe called up confirmation. Immediately, a picture began to build up inside his mind: a schematic of the Girdlecity around him, showing the tube that the airship Equatorial 353 moved through at its centre and all the structure around it, along with the positions of all the arbite marines popping into existence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "All that was missing from the picture was any sign of where his adversaries might be.\n\n> Okay, Marshal Chekwri sent, ~I'm at a reception, with stuff that needs to be done. I'll check in later. But let me know if anything dramatic happens, Captain, Colonel.\n\n\"You are fucking joking me. We're where?\"\n\n\"We're in the stern ventral waste disposal semi-solids holding tank,\" Berdle said through the suit. His voice in her ears sounded perfectly unconcerned. She couldn't see him. She couldn't see anything, basically, or touch anything solid.\n\nCossont was aware of floating in something thick and warm, in complete darkness at normal wavelengths. Her augmented eyes, working in unison with the combat suit's sensors, were happy to relay the fact that the stuff she was surrounded by and floating within was just a little beneath normal Gzilt body core temperature." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You have literally landed us in the fucking shit?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "she said, trying not to sound panicked. Not being able to touch, see or really sense anything very much was, she told herself, worse than knowing what she was submerged within.\n\n\"It's ideal,\" Berdle told her. \"This bit of the airship's not shielded with 4D because, I imagine, it gets emptied rather than recycled. Very old-fashioned. Anyway, it means we were able to blat right in. Of course, it's well sensored-up to look out for this sort of intrusion, but the clever bit was Displacing out an exactly similar volume just before dropping us in. Don't think we troubled the header tank or the relief valves at all... or caused any blow-back anywhere for that matter. That might have been really messy.\"\n\n\"Thank goodness for that. But, in other business, how the fuck do we get out?\"\n\n\"Very easily.\"\n\n\"Back to that later, but here's another one; how the fuck do we get clean?\"\n\n\"Also very easily. I'm switching you to sonar. Follow me. Swim.\"\n\nCossont suddenly had a view to look at. It was like a drawing rather than a proper picture – everything was white, with fuzzy blue lines delineating edges and a sort of background green wash indicating surfaces.\n\nShe could, thankfully, see nothing of what actually surrounded her, but she could see a suited, streamlined version of Berdle a couple of metres away, turning away from her to swim towards the top of the large, cylindrical tank they were in." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Beneath and to the side there were hints of tapered supports holding the tank, with further structure sketched in above and below showing where the decks were; these vanished into the distance." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont twisted, began to swim after Berdle." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She could feel her hands and limbs contacting semi-solids as she swam. It was like swimming through thick soup. She tried not to think about it. She was doing okay until she remembered the last time she and Berdle had been here on the airship, when they had been met by the strange person with the bowl-of-soup face.\n\nSuddenly, she nearly threw up. Would have thrown up, but something inside her seemed to intervene at the last moment.\n\n\"Hey; calm,\" Berdle said easily as he arrived at the top of the tank. \"You're triggering the suit's medical unit.\" He reached out to something on the under-surface that formed the ceiling.\n\n\"You be calm,\" she told the avatar. \"I'm swimming through shit here. You're a fucking android, but this stuff is personal to us biologicals.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Fair enough. But... out in a trice,\" Berdle said, both hands on a circular structure that Cossont sincerely hoped was a hatch. \"One more sensor to fool... done. And a couple of little expander spheres to emplace, to take up our volume when we get out... There.\" His arms twirled. The circular object swung up and away, hinging. She reached a surface she'd not even been aware was there, her top set of arms and her head suddenly in air. Or at least gas.\n\nShe was half a metre below the opened hatch. Berdle pulled himself up through it as easily as though they were in zero-G. Beside Cossont, as Berdle exited the tank, a tiny floating sphere expanded smoothly to over a metre in diameter, pressing against the surface of the tank and then down into the liquid.\n\nThen a hand came down and pulled her up, though the suit made it feel like there was no weight or effort involved anyway. Having four arms probably helped too.\n\nOnce she was on her feet, the view switched. Conventional sight again. She was standing under a low, dark ceiling, on a dimly lit gantry facing Berdle – a spotless, conventionally clothed Berdle – across a side-hinged hatchway at their feet. She looked down." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her suit was also spotless, though it had gone back to looking like it was made of liquid mirror and soot again. She heard a tiny plopping noise in the tank beneath and then the suit snapped back to impersonating a normal-enough-looking pants and jacket combo.\n\n\"Oh,\" she said, as Berdle lowered the hatch closed with his foot. Her voice sounded just as it had in the tank, which meant slightly odd. The suit's helmet unit was still covering her face. This doubtless explained why she was being spared any smells she might not have cared for, and why she was still listening to her own voice as relayed through the suit's earbuds.\n\nBerdle nodded. \"There you are; clean,\" he said. \"Happy now?\" Though that was weird too, because his mouth didn't move as she heard him say this.\n\n\"Ecstatic. Thanks.\"\n\n\"Welcome. Suit-surface nanofields, Vyr,\" the avatar said, turning and walking away from her towards a low doorway at the far end of the gantry, where it met a bulkhead. \"Zero friction unsticky,\" she heard him say." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'finger' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He shook his head. \"Really.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Cossont said, following him. \"Hey, I don't want to disturb you but you were just starting to sound a bit dismissive there.\"\n\nBerdle was bent down, poking seemingly randomly at the area around the mechanical handle on the door, as though expecting to find a finger-sized keyhole. \"Sorry.\"\n\nShe joined him at the door. \"Do you think there's any field or area where I could make you feel small and a bit slow compared to me, Berdle? Ever?\"\n\nThe avatar kept poking at the door with his finger. \"Well, of course not,\" he said patiently, his mouth still not moving. \"I'm not a person, Vyr; I'm the walking, talking figurehead of a ship.\" He squatted, staring at the door. \"A Culture ship,\" he added, sticking his finger out and poking again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"A Culture ship,\" he muttered, \"of some intellectual distinction and martial wherewithal... moreover.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His finger seemed to slip into the surface of the door as though it – or his finger – was a hologram.\n\nBerdle withdrew his finger and stood up. Something clicked and the door swung open towards them. \"Me first,\" he said, conversationally. There was a pause. \"Oh,\" Berdle said. \"They really have changed the place.\"\n\n\"Well, we've changed the place a bit,\" Ximenyr said, walking in front of the reporter arbite with its camera eyes. He was granting an exclusive interview, letting just one media representative in initially before the airship was opened up to everybody else. \"The last eight days have been very busy with restructuring. Quite radical restructuring, involving pretty much everybody on board, which has been one reason for keeping people away, though mostly it's just to make it a more exciting reveal.\" He smiled at the arbite. Ximenyr was dressed in a plain white shift." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Five of his fellow party-goers, similarly clad, accompanied him and the arbite along the dark, broad, gently downward-curving corridor." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Many of us have been doing our own personal restructuring too,\" he said. Ximenyr waved one hand. \"I had all sorts of weird shit going on with my body, but I've brought myself back to something much more standard, much more pure, even.\"\n\n\"Do you regret your early excesses?\" the arbite asked. It was taking instructions from a panel of bio-journalists spread across Xown and beyond. An AI was collating their queries and producing representative questions.\n\n\"Oh no,\" Ximenyr said, looking almost serious. \"One should never regret one's excesses, only one's failures of nerve.\"\n\n\"Is it true your body was covered in over a hundred penises?\"\n\n\"No. I think the most I ever had was about sixty, but that was slightly too many. I settled on fifty-three as the maximum. Even then it was very difficult maintaining an erection in all of them at the same time, even with four hearts. And most of them had to remain dry, or produce only, well, sort of sweat-gland quantities of ejaculate. Though it was very nice ejaculate; sort of slightly oily perfume, and not in the least icky. Unless you thought about it, of course.\"\n\n\"Do you feel you are a more serious artist now?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No. I have claimed to be an artist in the past, but really all I've ever been is a sort of glorified surgeon. I would like to think I've been artistic at times and shown artistic flare and so on, but I think that, especially now that we're nearly at the end of things, it's all right to abandon claims and pretensions and just relax a bit. Maybe I've inspired artistry and artisticness in others; that'd be a happy assessment.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What is the greatest number of people you've had sex with at the same time?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"About forty-four, forty-five, forty-six? It was hard to be sure, in the heat of the moment. We tried to get to the maximum, of fifty-three, obviously, but even in effective zero-G, all oiled up and most people just sticking their hands in from the outside of this heaving mass of bodies, we just couldn't make it. Too close together. And also, frankly, I think some people got too excited and interested in each other rather than going for this record with me, you know? Still, it was a lot of fun trying. On the other hand, it was an effort, too, you know? So much preparation and set-up and planning and briefing. Sex should be about spontaneous fun, don't you think? Anyway, here we are.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Their little party had arrived at the bottom of the gently bowed corridor, where it briefly levelled out and then started to rise again, heading aft. A small crowd of people – mostly dressed in plain white shifts like the one Ximenyr wore, so that they looked vaguely like they belonged to a religious order – were busy gathering up pieces of complicated-looking equipment and wrapping foam and loading everything onto a series of little flat-topped wheeled vehicles; one, fully loaded, was making its own way up the slope beyond, just about to disappear under the curve of ceiling.\n\nDirectly above where Ximenyr, his followers and the reporter arbite now stood there was a wide, new-looking circular staircase leading up to a cake-slice-shaped hole in the ceiling, where there was darkness punctured by a few tiny lights.\n\n\"Come on up,\" Ximenyr said, leading the way. He started ascending the fan of stairway, followed by the arbite and the five people who'd accompanied them.\n\n\"Lights, please, and enhance,\" Ximenyr said as he walked out into the space above. The reporter arbite arrived, looked up. The space above was a single enormous space which almost filled the remainder of the airship, right to the top. It was mostly dark, but lit by thousands of small lights pointing inwards at a vast, hazy, cylindrical space perhaps five hundred metres long and four hundred metres across. What looked like a small globular galaxy lay directly overhead, shining. The way the light moved within the space overhead suggested that it was full of water, or some sort of transparent liquid." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The space immediately round the stair-head held stacks and racks of lockers and shelves; beyond, shadows hid any walls. For all its obvious extent, the low ceiling, the darkness and the sensation of a great mass hanging immediately above made the place feel oddly oppressive.\n\nRight in front of them there was one of six small, translucent spheres, each about three metres in diameter, all arranged around the very bottom of the vast container above and looking like hopelessly inadequate supports for its bulk. The dark walls around the vast lit space showed no other form of support, just the tiny floodlights.\n\n\"Now, we're playing around with image a bit here,\" Ximenyr said, reaching up and patting the surface of one of the small translucent spheres, \"because you couldn't see through that much of even the purest water, but this is a sort-of-true representation of what you'd see if the water wasn't there.\"\n\n\"So,\" the arbite said, \"what is this?\"\n\n\"This is a giant water pool; you climb up those steps, get naked, stick one of these breathers in your gob... \" Ximenyr picked up a stubby tube from one of the nearby shelves and waved it in front of his mouth, \"... pass through one of these spheres and then float up to the bright lights up there at the top. That's the ultimate party area; that's like heaven, like our own little mini-Subliming. I mean, it's just the usual stuff up there: comfy furniture, drink, drugs and lots of images and music – and dancing, and fucking, you'd imagine – but all a bit more quiet and contemplative, I guess, and all under this lovely clear dome under the top of the ship, and the whole point is this is the only way to get there, and – once you're there – there's no way out... but it doesn't matter, because then comes the Subliming.\" Ximenyr grinned at the arbite's camera eyes. \"This was my plan from the start of the Last Party and my original idea was to spend a year or years sort of milking myself for the fluids to go in here, but that proved impractical. Water it is. Perfumed water.\" He winked at the arbite's eye cameras.\n\n\"Fucking typical man,\" Cossont muttered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You know what he's done in that water, don't you?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, but it's art,\" Berdle said, looking serious.\n\nHe and Cossont were holed up behind some lightweight furniture in a disused storage space one deck below the curving corridor Ximenyr and the reporter arbite had just walked down. They were watching the arbite's feed along with who-knew-how-many people across Xown and the Gzilt domain; there was no shortage of fascinating screen to watch from all over the Gzilt hegemony in these end-days, for those with time to spare from their own preparations for the Subliming, but the Last Party had achieved a modest level of fame over the years, and allegedly many millions of people were watching.\n\n\"Lovely warm perfumed water,\" Ximenyr was saying, \"dosed with cutaneous-contact-hallucinogens, so it'll be quite a crazy ride just getting to the top, and you can't just float straight up either; there are baffles. So it's more of a 3D maze, really.\"\n\n\"So, is this symbolic of our struggle towards enlightenment, or a comment on our tortuous route to Subliming?\"\n\nXimenyr shrugged. \"Yeah, if you like. I just thought it'd be neat.\"\n\n\"What about pressure?\"\n\nXimenyr snapped his fingers. \"Good question. You know, I didn't think of that at first either? Just not of a practical or engineering turn of mind, I guess. But it's much smarter than that; there are field projectors and AG units studded all around the cylinder; there are all these exotic matter particles or something dissolved into the water – whatever; don't ask me the technical details – and you pass through these levels of pressure.\" He slapped the taut-sounding surface of the nearest small sphere again. \"The pressure is highest down here, but it's only like being about eight metres down, not four hundred.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "🔍 Find a place to insert: \"Compared to the last tank of warm liquid we were in... \"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"So, Ximenyr, anyone may join you in this?\"\n\n\"Anyone but not everyone. We'll have to be selective, let just a few people aboard at a time. We need to balance the extra weight of people coming in with our positive buoyancy... factor, or something. Anyway, there's refuse we've got stored up and long-term supplies we're not going to be using, all of which we'll be dumping gradually as we take people on, so we're going to have room for lots more people.\" He looked up, nodding at the circular patch of bright lights directly overhead. \"A few brave guys and gals are already up there, after doing the testing. Couple of panickers when it all took too long and they couldn't work out the maze, but they're fine by now and we've made it all a lot easier, with cheats and guidance available.\" He smiled dazzlingly at the arbite's camera eyes. \"Should be a cool last ride.\"\n\n\"That's annoying,\" Berdle said.\n\n\"Why?\" Cossont asked. \"Compared to the last tank of warm liquid we were in... \"\n\n\"Yes, but if we have to get through that one, I'm going to show up. I'm too dense. If I support myself with AG or even field, they'll spot me.\"\n\nCossont was squatting beside him in her double-layer suit." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'might' 4 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had watched the feed from the arbite on a wrist screen after deciding to risk rolling down the helmet parts of both suits. The air, she had been pleased to discover, smelled perfectly nice, though somehow you could sort of tell there had been construction work going on recently.\n\n\"Too dense? Like, too heavy?\" she asked.\n\n\"Yes.\" Berdle looked at Cossont, nodding at her suit. \"And you'll be, too. Those suits mass a lot more than they feel. Outer one especially. Inner might expand enough, though you might look a bit fat.\"\n\nCossont shrugged. \"I'm not my mother; I don't care. More to the point, though, did you spot that our man doesn't seem to have his necklace on any more?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" The avatar nodded. \"That could be a problem.\"\n\n\"We don't even know how personal that stuff is for him,\" Cossont said. \"Might have just abandoned it; left it in a bedside cabinet or something. God, he might have thrown it out!\"\n\n\"Maybe we should look back in the sewage tank,\" Berdle suggested." }, { "from": "system", "value": "/set_word_count: chest, frequency: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cossont looked at him. The avatar shrugged. \"Just kidding; I checked it out as a matter of course when we were in there. Nothing.\"\n\n\"Maybe it's up at his... bedroom suite. Where we were when we saw him before,\" Cossont suggested.\n\n\"That's not there any more,\" Berdle said. \"I've found the remodelling plans in one of the airship's data banks, such as they are. Whole volume was ripped out.\" The avatar shook his head. \"Their internal video monitoring is so patchy. There might be some record in here of what happened to all that stuff, but... found it. Ah.\"\n\n\"Is that a good 'Ah'?\" Cossont asked.\n\n\"Partially,\" Berdle told her. \"All his personal effects are more or less where they were; in some sort of chest or locker... yes, a big sort of upright wheeled chest thing, in this 'heaven' space, at the top of the giant liquid tank.\"\n\n\"Think Mr Q's missing bits are there?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Maybe. Ximenyr's... had a temporary cabin near the main medical suite for the last eight days,\" Berdle reported, still quizzing the airship's systems." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Probably having all his extra cocks removed,\" Cossont muttered.\n\nBerdle shook his head. \"Very suspicious AIs on this thing. I am having to do so much track-covering-up as I go along here... Yes, he had a locker or something of some sort there too. Going to check that first.\"\n\nCossont started to stand up but he pulled her back down again. \"I've an insectile on that particular job.\"\n\n\"If they're not there, think we'll have to swim through the big tank?\"\n\n\"Perhaps.\"\n\n\"Can't we just come in from the top?\"\n\n\"No. It's all shielded. It looks transparent up there, like a big glass dome, but it isn't; it's a two-way screen, metres thick. Once the ship's back, in about twelve minutes, we have the option of blasting the shielding out of the way and Displacing in, but that's a last resort; wasting 4D without causing horrendous collateral in the associate flat-space is almost impossible. In 4D you think all you've done is kick down a door, and imagine you've done it really neatly, minimum force, but then you look back into 3D and realise you've blown down the whole building. Sometimes the whole block.\"\n\n\"Twelve minutes till the ship's back?\"\n\n\"Just under. Though how easy the Gzilt battleship will make it for me to do anything as delicate as targeting bits of 4D shielding in the first place is very much open to question.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'fluid' 2 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Is there going to be a fight?\"\n\n\"Yeah, could be,\" Berdle said. \"There goes our boy,\" he added.\n\nCossont switched her wrist screen on again to see Ximenyr placing his white shift on a shelf and then walking into a vaginal-looking vertical aperture in one of the translucent spheres, a breather tube gripped in his mouth. He was quite naked. Only one penis, as far as Cossont could see. And he didn't seem to have anything else with him that might have contained the pair of eyes.\n\nSome sort of double liquid-lock had allowed Ximenyr to enter the sphere without any fluid spilling. There was a pause while he stood and fluid swirled up around him, then a sphincter valve at the top of the sphere opened and he rose quickly and easily up, out of the sphere and into the liquid-filled tank above.\n\n\"... And so,\" the reporter arbite began to intone, gravely.\n\nCossont switched the sound off and just watched Ximenyr's pale-looking body as he swam out at an angle into the darkness." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The extra lights he'd asked for earlier, or the enhancement, had been switched off, so his shape disappeared into the watery shadows after barely half a minute; the vast tank was now an almost entirely dark megatonne presence hanging over the scene below. The view switched to the other party-goers taking off their own shifts and preparing to step naked into the translucent spheres to follow Ximenyr.\n\n\"The locker in the medical suite's got nothing,\" Berdle said quietly, shaking his head.\n\n\"Can I see?\" she asked.\n\n\"Need a helmet to see properly,\" the avatar told her. \"Use the inner suit.\" She brought the hood-helmet up. The view darkened, stabilised. A space like a small dark room, one wall edged all round with dim light; quilts on the floor, a small rug, rolled, and a couple of ancient-looking flat screens. \"A pair of pants,\" Berdle announced. \"A single sock. The end of a roll of antiseptic splint-bandage patches. A tooth plectrum. A pair of time-to devices. That's all.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sure this isn't art too?\"\n\n\"Fairly certain.\"\n\n\"We're going to have to go up through that fucking tank, aren't we?\"\n\n\"Looking like it.\"\n\nCossont redirected her attention to local reality in time to watch Berdle stand, and then saw what looked like his skin and flesh just falling away, under his clothes, exactly as if his flesh had turned to jelly. She felt her mouth open, had time to wonder if they were under attack from some sort of flesh-melting weapon, then noticed that the avatar was watching this whole process with nothing more than interest.\n\n\"Shedding excess weight,\" Berdle said through her helmet.\n\nHe stood in a neatly circular pool of fleshy stuff, reduced to something not far off a skeleton, though one with what still looked like a covering of skin; clothes hanging off him, face like a skull, his knees the widest part of his legs and his elbows the widest part of his arms above his wire-thin wrists, wrinkled skin covering all exposed surfaces.\n\nThen he filled slowly out again, as though his still-skin-covered bones – or what passed for bones – were themselves expanding. His skin became smooth again, his face filled out. Then his clothes fell away too, joining the thick puddle at his feet, all of which turned white and developed folds." }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<EMBED THIS>>: \"We won't have to go out the same way we came in, will we?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The avatar – equipped with a perfectly respectable-looking penis, Cossont was pleased, in a general kind of way, to see – stooped and picked up the stuff that had recently been the equivalent of skin, flesh and muscle and which was now a convincing, if quite thick, white robe, which he let drop on from above. There was another one, still round his feet. He lifted it with one foot, handed it to her.\n\n\"Best I can do,\" he said.\n\n\"No, no; bravo.\"\n\n\"You'll need to lose the outer suit; sorry.\"\n\n\"That's okay.\" The suit split down the front and she stepped out of it. It collapsed and compressed into something that looked like a sort of flattened, elongated black crash helmet.\n\n\"We won't have to go out the same way we came in, will we?\" she asked.\n\nBerdle shook his head. \"Highly unlikely. Just the under-suit would keep you safe, anyway.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The under-suit was changing too; expanding slightly, so that, in most places, its surface was about a centimetre or so out from her own skin." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was changing colour and texture too, coming to look convincingly like skin. A thin layer crept over her face, making her skin feel tight.\n\n\"That feels weird.\"\n\n\"Yes, but you're unrecognisable,\" the avatar told her. Berdle's face had changed too; he looked nothing like he had the last time they'd been here. Still good-looking, but less striking.\n\nCossont looked down at herself. \"Weird,\" she said. \"I feel more naked now than I do when I'm naked.\" She pulled the thick, heavy shift on over her head. It lay, weighty, on her shoulders. \"There's only one set of arm holes!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her lower arms had to hang down inside the pale shift." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Ensure 'cossont' appears 2 time(s) in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Those extra arms are the one thing about you it's hard to disguise,\" Berdle said.\n\n\"Hmm,\" she said. \"Yeah, I suppose it is better if we don't advertise those.\"\n\n\"Take the shift off as late as you can,\" Berdle suggested.\n\n\"Okay. What about Mr Q?\" Cossont asked, She recalled the avatar telling her while they'd still been on the Mistake Not... that QiRia's mind-state had been put into the outer suit.\n\n\"I've already transferred him to the inner suit,\" Berdle told her. \"He'll run slower but feel free to wake him up and talk to him if you want; he's functional.\"\n\n\"Maybe later.\" Cossont used one foot, toeing the compacted outer suit. \"This?\"\n\n\"Stays here unless we need it, when it becomes a drone. Though it'll blow its cover the instant it switches on its AG or a lift-field.\" Berdle straightened, flexed, looked at her. \"Ready?\"\n\n\"As I'll ever be. Let's go.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> We are quite certain there is no way they could already be aboard? Colonel Agansu asked the Churkun's captain.\n\nWe are reasonably certain, the captain replied. Not absolutely certain.\n\nAgansu found this reply inadequate, but chose not to say anything. People were cheering all around him. He looked at the airship. The Equatorial 353 was displaying a countdown on its hull now; giant numbers three hundred metres high were clicking down the time to zero. There was half a minute to go.\n\nBoarding gantries had swung out from various opened galleries and balconies dotted along the side of the airship, where crew could be seen opening doors and preparing to extend the gantries the last few metres that would let people use them to board. The gantries ended in complicated-looking up-and-over constructions that let them extend over the roadway parapet. Agansu watched the nearest one lower slowly towards the roadway surface, just ahead." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A crew-person from the airship stood on the bottom step of the lowering gantry, holding a flimsy-looking gate closed, preparing to open it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "People were already jostling to get close to the steps. Agansu, simply massing much more than any human of his size, had no difficulty in shouldering people out of the way and making his way quickly to the front. He made suitably placatory gestures and muttered, \"Excuse me,\" several times, to avoid unnecessary unpleasantness, though he did hear some complaints. Soon he was walking at a slow stroll with the gated steps facing him and various people jostling him ineffectually at his sides and back.\n\nColonel, I'm going to hand you over to our marine operations officer now, the captain sent. The Culture ship is returning and showing every indication it intends to pull to a stop here in about ten minutes, and my full attention is required to be focused on this development.\n\n> I see, Agansu replied.\n\n> Marine operations here, Colonel. I've had all units looking for anything remotely like a ship avatar and so far nothing's registering. With this many units in a minimum double-shell configuration we've got really good triangulation and background grain size, so something ought to have shown up by now. I think the person or people you're looking for is/are already aboard." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Also, a closer inspection of the airship has identified a few spaces that are not fully shielded. Our surveillance specialist has started putting equipment in there, though it's not proving easy to gain access to the rest of the vessel. Do you want us to look for a place to disloc you aboard?\n\nThat will not be necessary, Agansu replied, looking across to the giant figures displayed on the airship's skin. Just a few seconds left. He could see more galleries appearing on the side of the vessel as portions of the hull folded inwards. Doors were opening. I am about to board now, conventionally. Inform Marshal Chekwri.\n\n> Acknowledged, sir. Will do. We've got insect-plausible surveillance devices entering the apertures opening in the airship, though the shielding is going to make keeping in touch with them difficult; we'll need a lot to keep a comms chain open. Also, I'm just getting some civilian feed here from the airship; public channel. Seems this Ximenyr person is heading... for the top of the ship, but the only way in is through some big water tank, from the bottom." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> Thank you, Agansu sent, as the countdown shown on the side of the airship reached zero." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A great ragged cheer went up all around and the crew-person on the steps just ahead of him opened the boarding gate." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Agansu stepped onto the gantry, feeling it dip under his weight. Continue to monitor me, he sent, and have arbites near, ready to lend close support.\n\n> Sir.\n\nHe smiled at the crew-person.\n\nCossont was letting the shift drop from round her shoulders, with Berdle just behind her, sheltering her – \"The lady is modest,\" he'd told the people helping. Just then, right at the entrance to one of the translucent spheres, something happened to several of the lights shining into the giant tank. One in particular, off to the side, flared brightly, then seemed to go out entirely. Most of the rest kept on flickering as they dimmed.\n\nEverybody in the space under the tank was looking at the lights. Cossont, forewarned by Berdle, was almost the only person not distracted. She stepped quickly out of the fallen shift and into the glutinously resisting field protecting the entrance to the sphere." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'current' (2x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Warm water swirled rapidly up round her almost immediately; she was raised off her feet a little as it reached her neck. She lifted her head, with the breather device clamped in her mouth and over her nose, as the waters closed over her and the valve above opened. She was borne up anyway, but kicked as well, catching a hazy, distorted glimpse of Berdle picking up her shift and walking across the space – beneath her, now – to deposit it on a shelf. The lights seemed to return to normal as the view below disappeared.\n\n\"The maze is fairly simple,\" Berdle said through the suit's earbuds as she bumped head-first into what felt like a ceiling of something elastic and giving, but strong. \"The suit will tell you the direction to head in, using this voice. For now, turn ninety degrees to your left, follow the ceiling until you feel a downward current and then swim to your right.\"\n\nShe did as she was told. She could see a couple of other people exiting from other spheres and striking out into the darkness: shadowy forms moving slowly in the darkness like smooth and liquid flames of flesh. She kept her lower set of arms tight against her body as she swam with the upper set until the other people had faded into the darkness, taking different routes. Then she pulled hard with all four arms, and kicked.\n\nShe felt a current heading down, and so turned right." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Straight up now,\" the voice said, and she zoomed, passing into a strange gel-like region in the water where it seemed to grow thicker and press in against her from all sides. Through it, she felt the water pressure change a little, decreasing. The temperature was a little cooler, too. \"Just entering the tank now,\" Berdle told her. \"Keep going. I'll stay behind you.\"\n\nPrevented from speaking by the breather in her mouth, and unable to just think-send speech the way the avatar could, she found herself nodding, and wondered if the suit would transmit the action to Berdle.\n\nShe swam on up through the darkness, alone save for the sound of her own breathing and a few dim, wavering lights.\n\n\"Firearms are not permitted on board, sir,\" the crew-person told Agansu. \"We're showing that you have a side-arm secreted by your lower back. That will have to be left here, with us.\"\n\nHe had been stopped at the far end of the boarding gantry, on a sort of gallery set into the side of the airship. Two people, both large and dressed in standard-looking private security garb, barred his way." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The woman who was talking was in front, her male colleague behind, standing in the open doorway in the hull of the Equatorial 353." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I am a colonel in the Home System Regiment on a special assignment,\" Agansu said quietly to the woman, aware of people starting to queue up behind him on the narrow gantry. \"I appreciate and commend your alertness, however I do require entry to the vessel and I may well have need of my side-arm.\"\n\n> Marine operations officer, Agansu sent, ~are you reading all this?\n\n> Yes, sir.\n\n> Kindly bring one of your units to bear here, would you? Prepare to stun to temporary unconsciousness the two people blocking my way. Ten minutes should be sufficient. And have... four units ready to accompany me inside the vessel.\n\n> Sir. Using AG inside the vessel is likely to make the units obvious to the airship's systems.\n\n> Have them switch to limbed locomotion on entry.\n\n> Sir. Five units switched to your immediate control, now." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> I have them, Agansu confirmed, aware, in a virtual space behind his eyes, of exactly where the five marine arbites were in relation to him and his immediate surroundings." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm afraid our orders make no allowance for that, sir, the security officer was telling him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> Sir? the marine operations officer sent. ~Getting some data on a person of interest – the Cossont, Vyr, woman – entering the water tank in the airship, sir. Not a definite ID though; small bug, a distance off, and comms link unsteady.\n\n\"Hey!\" somebody shouted in the queue behind Agansu. \"Get moving!\"\n\nThe security officer glanced behind him, then frowned at him. \"Also, sir,\" she said, \"I'm just hearing from our colleagues on board that you are showing as very non-standard physiologically. There is a new policy in force aboard which means that if you're an android or avatar you will need special permission to board.\"\n\nThe man behind her had stepped back a pace and one hand had fallen to a holstered side-arm.\n\n> Stun both, now.\n\n> Sir.\n\nThe woman's eyes closed. She collapsed, her knees giving way first so that she just seemed to sit heavily." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then she fell over backwards. The man behind performed the same actions a half-second later, as though in impersonation.\n\nAgansu stepped over the two inert bodies and into the doorway; two marine arbites, visible more as disturbances in the air than as anything physical, darted in before him. They landed on the threshold with audible thumps, the air shimmering as they entered.\n\n\"Whoa!\"\n\n\"Hey, what—?\" voices said, inside.\n\n> Stun, Agansu sent, as he looked within.\n\nTwo more bodies were folding into unconsciousness, a couple of metres inside the door. Agansu turned and looked back at the faces of the people crowding the boarding gantry. They were all looking either at the two fallen security guards outside, or at him. He smiled. The other two arbites made shimmering shapes in the air and landed in the doorway, slipping inside like shadows, only half seen." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> Close and lock the door, he said, over the channel to the arbite marines." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The door swung to, then made clunking, locking noises." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The space he was in now was perhaps twenty metres long but only five deep." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage target: 'number' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Various fixtures and fittings, none of them relevant, save that there seemed to be a large number of white tabards or shifts, neatly wrapped and stacked. Another open doorway led into the rest of the ship.\n\n> Show yourselves, please, Agansu said over the marines' channel.\n\nThe four marine arbites dropped their camouflage, revealing them as stocky, metallic, vaguely humanoid shapes, crouched on pairs of zigzag legs. Each looked like something crayoned by a child then rendered in gun-metal. Their heads were long, flat, featureless.\n\nYou will be arbites one through four, from lowest to highest serial number, Agansu told them. Understood?\n\n> Understood, the arbites said in unison. They even sounded metallic.\n\nShe swam up through the layers and corridors of dark, warm water. The suit spoke to her in Berdle's voice now and again, directing her – or Berdle spoke to her, it was hard to tell." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She looked about as she swam, and noticed that some of the tiny, dim lights visible through the fluid had been arranged so as to look like the most familiar constellations visible from Xown." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This made the experience like swimming through space." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She wondered if the avatar would feel this. She saw only one other person, briefly, some distance off, and below.\n\nShe and Berdle had joined the unhurried groups of people heading towards the access spheres from the rest of the airship near the start of the whole process; fewer than fifty people had preceded them into the giant tank. Most of the Last Party-goers would ascend before anybody from outside, though a few would hold back to help guide any stragglers, and there were some who just wanted to be last, or amongst the last, to make the journey.\n\nThe other person swam off, away from her, and disappeared. She felt oddly abandoned, almost sad. She hoped the other swimmer would make it to the top of the tank without incident. There were, Berdle had assured her, various viable routes to the top of the tank; she and the avatar were taking the shortest and quickest.\n\nThe skin-contact hallucinogens in the water were diluted to deliver a modest dose to somebody swimming completely naked, so they were having no discernible effect on her at all. Still, there was a dreaminess and unreality to the dark swim that – along with the relative simplicity of only having to think to the extent of following an instruction every half minute or so, and the pleasant glow of continuous but unstressed physical effort – allowed her mind to wander, allowed her to think.\n\nWhat a strange way to be approaching the end of one's life, she thought." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Swimming through a vast tank of water and Scribe-knew-what towards a little artificial heaven with no escape, or only one. In search of a man's discarded eyes. With the avatar of a Culture ship following, swimming. And one of her own people's ships seemingly intent on stopping them. She had done a few strange things in her life, she supposed; why not leave one of the weirdest of all till last? To be topped only by the Subliming itself, she guessed.\n\nHer breathing went on, like something apart from her, the whole sound-scape to her steady, paced exertion. Save that, the silence was entire, and she had started to understand something of QiRia's slow-building obsession with immersion, both literal and in sound. Especially in sound; in the waves of compression that took and flowed through the body rather than – like light, like sight – stopping at the surface. She had done something similar in a minor key herself, she realised, every time she stepped into the hollowness of the elevenstring and let that resound around her, through her.\n\nShe became slowly aware that, looking straight up, there was a sort of sparkling grey haze ahead of her, spreading to all sides." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lights. Lots of tiny lights." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They started to grow brighter, everywhere overhead.\n\n\"Not far now,\" Berdle's voice said.\n\n\"Mmm,\" she heard herself say, mouth still clamped round the breather.\n\n\"There's one last turn to your left as it is at present, then straight up,\" Berdle said through the earbuds. \"Take it easy there, okay? Slow down. I'll catch up and we can surface together.\"\n\nShe said, \"Mmm,\" again, and nodded. She wondered why, as an avatar, Berdle couldn't just power his way up to join her, but maybe he was so weakened after having to lose so much mass this wasn't possible, or he just wanted to keep looking plausibly human. The spread of lights was close enough now for her to see the hints of some sort of framework stretched across the whole expanse above her. She thought she could see somebody walking along some sort of pierced walkway, five metres or so overhead.\n\nThe two ships faced each other. The Gzilt ship displayed as what it truly looked like inside its nest of fields: a steely clutch of blades like a hundred fat broadswords compressed into a barbed and jagged arrowhead." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Culture vessel projected no image beyond the surface view of its outermost fields." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were absurdly close, by the normal standards of conflict at their technological level, which was generally carried out from real-space light seconds away at least.\n\nTo be squaring up to an opponent from just a few kilometres off was pretty preposterous; both ships could extend their field enclosures well beyond this distance. It was a statement of relatively peaceful intent in a way – full-scale conflict was obviously not intended by either, or one of them would long since have opened fire by now – but worrying at the same time, given that both vessels knew their missions and intentions were incompatible.\n\nRelative to Xown, the Gzilt ship had remained almost perfectly stationary throughout, parked in real space directly above the Girdlecity, moving at the same slow strolling speed as the Equatorial 353, five hundred kilometres below. The Churkun watched the Culture ship draw to a stop, relative to it, still entirely in hyperspace. It was a minor feat of field management to be able to do this so far into the gravity well of a planet, but then, according to the intelligence the Churkun had received via Marshal Chekwri, this vessel – the Mistake Not... , a Culture ship of slightly worrying indeterminate class – had proved itself something of an adept at this sort of thing, at Bokri.\n\nThe Churkun was keeled into hyperspace, its field enclosure bulging into the fourth dimension like somebody pressing an empty bowl brim-deep into a bath. This let it keep its options open and certainly it was able to watch everything that was happening there, but staying in the Real meant it could react faster to anything happening in the Girdlecity without having to worry about dislocs being intercepted.\n\nThe crew of the Gzilt ship were gauging what they could of their potential adversary, which expressed within hyperspace as the usual gauzy-looking silvery ellipsoid. Its current field enclosure topography guaranteed certain physical maxima and strongly indicated some likely limitations. So it was, certainly, categorically, no more than five kilometres in length and a third of that in diameter, and – if it followed conventional Culture field disposition – genuinely, physically, likely to be about twelve hundred metres long and maybe four hundred in diameter." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This would make the vessel about fifty per cent smaller by volume than the Churkun, though the difference was not so great that it guaranteed the Gzilt ship's superiority." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> Good day, the Culture ship sent." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "~I'm the Mistake Not... I believe you are the 8*Churkun.\n\n> Correct. And I am its captain. Might we ask what brings you here?\n\n> Got personnel inside the Girdlecity, though I suspect you've already guessed that.\n\n> We are providing support for persons in there ourselves. Further to that, this is now a zone of operational interest, so we do have to ask you to leave.\n\n> I see. You still have my module, I believe.\n\n> We do. Though not actually aboard, as it were. Just in case. We're inclined to treat it as captured hostile equipment, especially given the way it was delivered. Perhaps we might return it to you, following your departure, once this is no longer a zone of operational interest, which, we repeat, we must ask you to leave. Immediately." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> Ah, keep it if you like." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not that bothered. But I do need to stick around for a bit.\n\n> It is not going to be possible to accommodate that desire. Obviously, we have no wish to engage in any hostilities with you, but, if it comes to it, we are entirely prepared to do just that if you do not leave, immediately.\n\n> Be a bit close-range. Like nukes in a shed.\n\n> Well, whatever it might take. This is though, sadly, not open for negotiation. We must ask you to leave immediately. One Culture ship has already met its end within Gzilt space in the last few hours. I assume you have heard of the fate of the Beats Working.\n\n> Yes. It's just the kind of thing us Culture ships natter about." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include exactly 2 instance(s) of the word 'would'" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> It would be unfortunate in the extreme if it were not to remain the only casualty of such status hereabouts. Please leave. And do understand that this is not a reduction in the force of our demand that you do so – which remains in force and is, as of this statement, up to its fourth re-statement. It is, rather, an additional plea from those of us aboard with some respect for Culture vessels that you accede, without delay, to our demand before anything unfortunate occurs.\n\n> Of course... not the only casualty, hereabouts, the plucky little Beats Working.\n\n> Indeed, twelve Ronte ships were lost as well.\n\n> With all hands. And then, in addition to that, there was that Z-R ship out at Ablate, twenty-two days ago.\n\n> Really?\n\n> Really. Kind of kicked off this whole rolling unpleasantness. Everything was spinning along pretty much fine until that bit of... well, how would one characterise it? Illegality? Cowardice?" }, { "from": "system", "value": "/set_word_count: little, frequency: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Piracy? Bullying to the point of murder? Just... murder?\n\n> How little the differences between these terms mean to those subject to the act concerned. You ought to pay heed.\n\n> Me that spotted it, too. I was rendezvousing with our Liseiden chums out at Ry when it happened. Caught the blink of that particular little atrocity.\n\n> Remarkable. That is some distance away. Well spotted. Now, we really must ask you to leave, for the last time. There will be no more requests, only action. Our patience is, truly, exhausted." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> We could start by sort of tussling with fields. I did that out at Bokri, in Ospin, with your pal the Uagren. That was fun. Not something you get to do every day. Bestial, nearly, like locking horns. Actually, more like naked wrestling, all oiled up. I found it quite erotic, to tell the truth. Homo-erotic, I suppose, technically, as we're all just ships together and we're all the same gender: neutral, or hermaphrodite or whatever, don't you think?\n\nThe Churkun's reply was to attempt to wrap a burst field all around the smaller Culture ship, an element of its field enclosure pulsing suddenly, nearly instantly out like a loop of a sun's magnetic field flicking, releasing a pulse of charged particles.\n\n> Not even a nice try, shipfucker, the Culture ship sent, already dodged before the field bubble got anywhere near it. ~And now, watch this.\n\nIt flickered, shimmering in hyperspace as it fell, powering the trivial distance from where it had been, down the curve of the planet's gravity well, to the Girdlecity. Then it disappeared." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The first sign of alarm had been the warbling of a siren in the distance as he and the arbites had progressed along a broad, downward-slanting corridor." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He hadn't noticed at first as he was busy trying to re-establish contact with the ship.\n\n> Marine operations officer? he sent, then waited.\n\nA few civilians walked in the distance. Many were dressed in white shifts similar to those he had seen earlier.\n\n> Captain?\n\nSome more white-clad civilians appeared from an elevator, just ahead; they stopped and stared when they saw Agansu and the disturbance in the air caused by the arbites' camouflage; effectively invisible to the naked eye from as little as ten metres away, the machines weren't fooling anybody this close, not when they moved. Even the blind would know they were there; the machines were marching carefully out of step and treading as delicately as they were able, but there was still a noticeable vibration shuddering along the wide floor of the corridor.\n\n> Captain? Still no answer. ~Communications officer?\n\n> Communication with the ship is not possible within this shielded environment, Arbite One told him.\n\n> We have no link to other assets aboard? he asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> None at present, the arbite replied." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Hey!\" somebody shouted behind them. \"Stop! On the floor, now!\"\n\nAgansu turned round to see a helmeted security person, armed with what was probably a stun rifle, running down the corridor towards them. ~Stun, he said to One.\n\nThe security guard staggered but didn't collapse.\n\n> Stunning ineffective, Arbite One said.\n\nThe guard dropped to one knee and raised the gun.\n\nLight flared, the guard's head flicked backwards and the figure collapsed.\n\nWeapon aimed, action taken, Arbite One sent, when Agansu looked at it. Standing orders.\n\nNow people were screaming; the group at the open elevator were crowding back in. In the direction they had been heading, those who had been walking in front of them were stationary, looking back." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lights – red, situated every fifteen metres along the corner the walls made with the ceiling – started to flash. Another siren had joined the first.\n\nI think, to put it in the vernacular idiom, our cover is blown, Agansu told the marine arbites. Resume full capacity including AG and field.\n\nThe arbites seemed to collapse in on themselves, compacting to the size of bulky backpacks, and hovering.\n\nAgansu thought his own AG on. It was as though an invisible seat rose beneath him, bringing his legs up as he lay back. He had flown like this before in training and simulations; a familiar-feeling virtual glove-control seemed to fill his hand. He held the kin-ex side-arm in the other hand.\n\n> Follow me, he sent to the four arbites. He raced down the corridor, a metre and a half off the floor, feet first." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This was the luge configuration; others preferred the toboggan, though Agansu had always thought such head-first antics both intrinsically more dangerous and a little showy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The arbites flew in a horizontal square formation around him. They rose very close to the ceiling as they tore over the crowd of people they'd been following earlier, passing overhead without incident, though he heard somebody screaming. They had all dropped to the floor anyway. The piercing sound of the scream dopplered oddly as they swept past above, still following the downward curve of the corridor.\n\nSeconds later, some distance ahead, he could see a crowd of white-clad people clustered around a broad circular staircase leading upwards.\n\n> Insect-plausible device ahead reports person of interest passed this way, up steps ahead, into tank, earlier, Arbite One sent.\n\nThere were hundreds there; the steps were packed with people dressed in white.\n\nDeploy there, he sent. Make some noise now; get those people out of the way. Laser area denial bursts too, civilian warning grade.\n\nThe two lead arbites deployed tiny blast grenades, producing sudden flickers of light twenty metres in front of the crowd of people." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The noise was very loud indeed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "More light strobed, turning the whole scene ahead into a bright flare." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "People dropped, covered their ears, their eyes.\n\n> Make for the aperture, he sent, spotting the large triangular piercing in the ceiling where the steps led.\n\nThe two leading arbites zoomed, disappeared. More flashes of light. ~Weapon aimed, action taken, he heard again as he curved up and through to land on the deck above.\n\nIt was generally dark. People were scattering. Two guards lay dead, faces gone, stun guns at their sides. This was a dark, very large space, almost entirely filled with a vast tank that looked like water; lights pointed inwards from every side around the enormous space. His enhanced senses mapped out what could be mapped out. One of the insect-plausible devices registered as nearby.\n\no lonel? somebody sent." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'arbite' 3 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The signal protocols were missing. Colonel Agansu? It was the marine operations officer.\n\n> Here, beneath this large tank, Agansu replied.\n\n> We're having some problems with the Culture ship supporting... The voice crackled, disappeared, came back on another crackle. ~ersons of interest would appear to be up inside... It was gone again.\n\n> Units present undergoing effector attack, internal, airship own, Arbite One reported. ~Defending actions deployed.\n\nAgansu was experiencing some problems of his own: the view was hazing over.\n\n> Insect-plau—Arbite Three began.\n\n> Hostile insect-plausible device attached to Arbite Three, Arbite One sent." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Something was glowing brightly on the upper surface of the arbite nearest the triangular hole in the floor.\n\n> Hostile insect-plausible device attached to Arbite Three, Arbite Two confirmed.\n\nOur insect-plausible device immediately external reports hostile device app—There was a flash outside, where the stairs led down. Our insect-plausible device destroyed, Arbite One reported. ~Hostile device approaching registering as knife missile or similar.\n\n> Marine operations officer! Agansu sent. ~Reinforcements, immediately! Use any means—\n\nSomething punched through the floor, beneath Arbite One, spearing it and throwing it upwards to impact against the underside of the giant transparent tank. The glowing thing on the top surface of Arbite Three detonated at the same moment, blinding.\n\n> Destroy the tank! Agansu sent, raising the kin-ex gun." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was able to fire once before he was blown off his feet by the blast from the erupted arbite." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> Destroy tank.\n\n> Destroy tank, the two remaining arbites replied, and began firing upwards and around the walls, filling the darkness with insane, stuttering, flares of light.\n\nShe was treading water, revolving slowly and looking down between her slow, weed-waving legs, trying to see Berdle, when he said, \"On second thoughts, just get to the surface. I'll join you shortly.\"\n\n\"Mmm,\" she said, and, after a quick look round, struck out.\n\n\"Wrong way, turn about,\" the suit told her in Berdle's voice.\n\nShe stopped. This was the way she'd been heading, wasn't it? Could the suit have got it wrong?\n\n\"Wrong way, turn about,\" the suit repeated.\n\n\"Hnnh,\" she said, then realised she had been twisting round while she'd been looking down to see the avatar. That was why she'd taken the wrong direction initially.\n\n\"You're heading the wrong way,\" Berdle told her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There's some sort of emergency down there; just turn round, get out as quickly as you can. I'll be there very shortly.\"\n\nShe did a forward roll, started back the way she'd come. \"Mmm,\" she said again, swimming hard now. Suddenly she felt very vulnerable, suit or no suit.\n\nSomething flickered deep below, as though from right at the bottom of the tank. Something very bright. She knew she had seen light that white and intense recently. Her stomach lurched like she'd been punched. She got to where she'd been treading water moments earlier. The light flickered again, brighter still, seeming to reflect off the distant sides of the vast tank.\n\n\"Swim up fast now!\" Berdle shouted.\n\nShe was already kicking out as hard as she could when it felt like the whole tank shuddered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The first kin-ex round from his pistol had hit the lower surface of the great transparent tank and caused a single great torus of white to flash away from the point of impact. Then he'd been knocked off his feet despite the best efforts of the android body to stay upright. Further blindingly bright flashes filled the space as he struggled to kneel, firing upwards. The air shook like jelly around him.\n\n>... onel! the marine operations officer was screaming at him.\n\n> Unit Four destroyed by enemy action, Arbite Two sent.\n\nThe tank burst. It burst raggedly, in many different places; parts and levels of it seeming to stay where they were while other sections tore and fell and the released waters came crashing, hurtling down onto the space beneath. He threw himself to the floor. ~Hold where you are! he was able to send to the remaining arbite before the waters slammed into his back.\n\nLight burst out everywhere below." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A series of pulses shivered through the water and through her as Cossont kicked for the silvery, light-flecked surface above." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had grasped the lowest step of a small ladder extending from the surface-level walkway above and was just starting to pull herself up when the water began to fall away around her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She spat the breather away and yelled, \"Berdle?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "as she hauled herself up and out, needing all four arms to pull her own weight and resist the sucking drag of the descending water." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'below' must appear 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A great roaring noise seemed to come partly from below and partly from above, sounding more like a powerful wind than water. The sound from above rose swiftly to a shriek.\n\nSomebody – small, female, wearing a plain dark tunic – was running along the walkway towards her. The water beneath the dripping walkway, no longer lit by the bright pulses of light from below, was five metres down now, swirling in different directions, thrashing like something alive, and lowering everywhere, leaving behind an entire dripping web of walkways a hundred metres across, suspended on swaying chains from a dark ceiling just a couple of metres above, where panels were being torn away and sent spinning, whirling downwards.\n\n\"Still making upward progress,\" Berdle said calmly through the suit's earbuds. \"Relatively and... now absolutely.\"\n\nThe girl running towards Cossont looked shocked, her mouth hanging open as she glanced over the side. \"You all right?\" she asked as she knelt by Cossont, having to raise her voice over the screaming wind.\n\nSomething burst from the surface of the waters, ten metres beneath, and rose towards them. It was vaguely human-shaped, but too big to be Berdle.\n\n\"What the fuck?\" the girl said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The whole airship seemed to shudder; the girl reached out to grab hold of a stanchion." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The figure rising from the still falling waters – fifteen metres down now - rotated a little." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was Berdle, holding a naked man, supporting him with his own feet and an arm under his chest." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Reckoned the time for a stealthy approach was gone,\" Cossont heard the avatar say as he landed beside her and the girl. \"Barely had the AG to rescue this poor fellow.\" The man he was holding had wide, terrified-looking eyes. He didn't have a breather device in his mouth; he was coughing a lot. Berdle lowered him to the deck and the man clung to it, coughing up water. The girl patted his back.\n\n\"Good day,\" Berdle said to her, loudly, then held a hand out to Cossont. \"Shall we?\"\n\nCossont got to her feet. \"What's happ—?\"\n\nThe whole fabric of the airship shuddered once more. Beneath, where the waters roared, fifty metres down, two explosions burst from the swirling waves.\n\n\"Time to run!\" Berdle said, turning and sprinting off along the walkway for a distant patch of light. \"Follow me!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She raced off after him, vaulting the naked, coughing man and hammering down the walkway behind the avatar." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Thin pillars of cerise light flicked into existence, splashing fire from the ceiling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "One lanced through the walkway a metre behind Berdle's flying feet; she jumped the resulting fist-sized hole." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"One right turn at the next junction, steps up dead ahead,\" she heard his voice tell her. \"I'll join you momentarily.\"\n\nThen the avatar put out a hand, caught hold of one of the walkway's supporting chains and was lifted off his feet and spun round, just as another pink bolt pierced the walkway immediately ahead of him. He dropped over the side of the walkway, at first falling, then curving away through the darkness and the everywhere roar of water. Light glittered again inside the tank as two shapes rose twisting though the air beneath, filling the space with hair-thin shining filaments.\n\nShe put her head down, pounded along the wildly swinging gantry, skidded round the corner at the junction and saw a short flight of steps leading up through the ceiling.\n\nThe storm of air howling down through the hole in the ceiling made it almost impossible to make any headway. She needed all four arms to pull herself upwards on the chain bannister rails, and all the strength in her own legs and the suit's to force her way up the metal steps. Small pieces of debris came hurtling down from above and hit her shoulders or bounced off her head, hurting her even through the thin covering of suit-helmet.\n\n\"Ow! Fuck!\" she said, though the scream of air tearing around her was so loud she couldn't actually hear anything else.\n\nShe made the deck above, threw herself onto the soft, carpeted floor under subdued lighting and rolled away from the torrent of air being sucked howling into the emptying cavern beneath." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Around her – in what looked like a very large, complicated, low-ceilinged room – terrified-looking people were staring wide-eyed at her over the top of luxuriously sculpted pieces of pale furniture." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A man and a woman were sitting on a nearby couch, feet braced against the floor, causing rumples in the carpet, their fingers clawing into the soft material of the cushions they sat on." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The couch itself was jerking and sliding across the floor, towards the hole. The woman closed her eyes. The man opened his mouth in what was probably a scream but there was too much other noise to tell.\n\nCossont used all four hands to claw her way across the floor. Something white came whirling towards her; she ducked instinctively as a fat square pillow bounced over her and disappeared into the maelstrom around the aperture in the floor. Where it had come from, twenty metres away, part of the floor gave way and a set of couches and chairs holding maybe a half dozen people disappeared, sucked downwards into the darkness.\n\n\"Berdle?\" she yelled. But she didn't even know if he'd be able to hear her – she couldn't hear herself.\n\nThe first problem was getting all the bits and pieces out of the way, so there would be room for itself.\n\nActually, who was it kidding? The first problem was all about not blowing up the world, or at the very least not annihilating both itself, fifty horizontal kilometres of Girdlecity, who-knew-how-many lives locally and immediately, and then an additional who-knew-how-sizable number over a significant proportion of the rest of the planet with the resulting fireball, blast front, secondary debris impact events and all the resulting ancillary fire, tertiary impact and ground-shock effects." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Another fucking day at the office, the ship thought, putting all such thoughts to one side and cascade-checking all the available variables, before just doing it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There were fourteen craft and over eighty individuals in the fifteen hundred metres of tunnel which started one hundred metres behind the stern of the Equatorial 353." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The first task was Displacing them safely. Or at least quickly. The quickly mattered more than the safely, and one of the larger craft, containing nine or ten people, picked up rather more relative velocity at the far end of the Displace than the Mistake Not... would have liked, sending the flier flicking forward by a couple of extra metres per second as it bounced in. That might mean broken limbs if the occupants weren't restrained, but that was the worst of it; everything else transitioned relatively smoothly.\n\nThe space was clear. The ship went for it, jumping across into real space in a single vast snap, as precisely aligned as possible in the circumstances and the time available, its enclosure fields shrunk, sucked, wrapped as tight as they would go about itself, leaving it with maybe fifty metres all around it between the outermost of those tightly compressed fields and the nearest bit of Girdlecity solidity. There was an important part of the whole process that depended on something called – only slightly misleadingly – the singularity-expansor transfer component. The ship finessed that as well as it could, but this time its own safety – not to mention the safety of the Girdlecity, millions of people, the planet, etc. – trumped technical perfection, so the expansion ended up being relatively rough and ready, and undeniably abrupt.\n\nThe ship blew into existence almost explosion-fast, creating a vast pulse of air that tore out through the fortunately dispersed structure of the open-work tunnel and the surrounding architecture of the Girdlecity, bowling people over, sending nearby aircraft tumbling, shattering antique windows and denting cladding panels for hundreds of metres about it.\n\nMessy, the Mistake Not... would be entirely prepared to concede, but never mind." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the end it had worked and it was where it had wanted to be; in the same huge basket-weave tunnel as the airship Equatorial 353, just a hundred metres behind it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> What idiocy is this? the captain of the Churkun sent.\n\nA fitting idiocy, the ship replied. I fit. You won't. And if I need to I can put my enclosure right around the airship from here, so I suggest you leave me be. Out.\n\nThe blast of air seemed to have relented a little, if only because more floor panels had given way, providing additional routes for the air to escape through. The two people on the couch that had been slipping towards the hole in the floor had scrambled up and over the back of it, crawling away; the couch itself had stopped moving.\n\n\"Berdle!\" Cossont screamed. No reply. It was still bedlam but at least now she could hear herself. She saw another stairway, spiralling upwards ten metres away, behind the nearest semi-circle of chairs. She got onto one knee, heaved herself upright and leaned into the still-furious gale, forcing herself forward, straining to see any more debris coming her way." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Another shudder ran through the whole airship, sending her flying. She heard herself yelp as she fell, being blown backwards, caught in the lacerating torrent of air; she dropped to the floor and held on again, cursing.\n\nAgansu pushed himself up against the pummelling force of the water, finally getting to all fours. The android body was gauging, calibrating, allowing for the vast pressing weight surging across it. It could still function, and its AG should still be effective. Walls burst, the floor gave way in a variety of places nearby, letting in a little more light, allowing the surging fall of water to escape.\n\nThe remaining arbite reported when Agansu pinged it.\n\n> Holding approximately steady in downward course of water, it told him.\n\n> Attempt to rise, he told it. ~Head for the top of the tank. I shall too.\n\nThe suit let him stand, unsteady, shuddering, in the torrent." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Agansu saw two broken-looking bodies being swept past, naked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He activated the AG, lifted off the floor, and began to make his way, quivering, battered from all sides, up through the chaotic swirl of the descending column of water." }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'through' | Required occurrences: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He and the remaining arbite burst from the surface of the water into a great dark space more than sixty metres high and hundreds across, buffeted by swirling winds.\n\nHigh above, just beneath a randomly pierced ceiling, a rig of metalwork gantries hung suspended. Some figures moved up there.\n\n> Avatar-android identified, the arbite told him as they rose, accelerating, together.\n\n> Fire, destroy it, he told the arbite.\n\nViolet bolts seared through the air, sparking explosions from the ceiling; sparks and pieces of glowing debris fell towards them. Two figures were running, overhead.\n\n> Target employing visual camouflage fields, the arbite reported, still firing as they rose. Next thing, the leading figure – a composite haze of images, like a stacked pack of ghosts – fell or threw itself from the gantry and came whirling down through the turmoil of air and falling debris towards them, light glittering from it.\n\nThe colonel realised suddenly, only at this point, that he had lost the kin-ex side-arm. He had no idea exactly when or where." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should contain the word 'arbite' precisely 3 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This was upsetting. The android body had its pair of forearm-mounted lasers – but he doubted they would prove especially effective after what had happened at Bokri. The arbite fired at the falling figure, seeming to hit it. Agansu raised his arms, aiming at the other running figure, then, in a single staggering impact and a wash of white, was hit by something, and sent tumbling.\n\nHe was aware of falling, somersaulting. He steadied himself, or the suit did. He didn't know. When he was floating in mid-air, he looked around and could see nothing of the last arbite or the figure that had dropped from the gantry. Below, in the great swirl of water and dashing, chaotic waves, there were the fading remains of what might have been two large splashes on the dark waters.\n\n> Arbite, report, he said.\n\n\"Comms internal only,\" the android body told him. Agansu felt groggy. And odd: strange, unbalanced. He looked at his right arm, which was not there. He stared." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The arm ended at about midway on the upper part. The stump was still smoking.\n\n> Arbite... marine oper—he started to say, still unsure regarding what had happened.\n\n\"Comms internal only,\" the android body repeated.\n\n\"Yes, of course,\" Agansu said, looking inside himself to monitor the body's operational state. Severely compromised. AI substrate intact, obviously: AG, conventional locomotion and one arm and one laser left.\n\n> Upwards, he thought, and ascended through the bruising cataract of air.\n\n\"Ximenyr? Where's Ximenyr?\" she yelled, crouched down by the frightened-looking man in front of her He was clad in one of the dark tunics, and holding grimly on to a desk as the air rushed past. This level, one up, looked like the foyer of some exclusive hotel. Getting up here had been a little easier than her last ascent as the storm of air gradually lessened. It was still fierce enough." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Where's Ximenyr?\" she shouted again over the roaring." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The man just shook his head.\n\nShe turned away, muttered, \"Suit, any idea?\"\n\n\"Interrogating local systems,\" the suit said, still in Berdle's voice. \"Mr Ximenyr's suite is this way; please follow.\"\n\nThe suit seemed to raise itself. It faced a broad, well-lit corridor. She walked with the suit, then started to jog through the noticeably thinner air. \"Switching to supplemental oxygen supply, ten per cent,\" the suit announced. She felt something connect delicately with her nostrils; a cool draught hit the skin there.\n\n\"Still trying Berdle?\" she asked the suit.\n\n\"Constantly,\" it told her, in his voice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Here,\" the suit said, drawing them both to a stop at a double doorway. \"Open?\" it asked.\n\n\"Yes!\"\n\n\"Opening,\" the suit said, and the doors slid apart.\n\nOh shit, the ship thought to itself.\n\nThe Mistake Not... had lost contact with all of its devices on and in the airship, including its own avatar. It was busily scattering new surveillance stuff all over the place now, as fast as it could, but it might already be too late.\n\nThe airship Equatorial 353 was riding as high as it could go, tearing its upper surfaces to shreds along the giant grater that was the ceiling of the huge open tunnel, shedding panels and pieces of equipment as it ground slowly to a stop, all the while dropping what looked like megatonnes of water from its lower reaches: whole falls, giant cascades of water were issuing from its sides, while further sheets and folds of water fell straight down from its ventral line, taking bulkhead panels and entire sections of hull with them, falling, spinning slowly away in the colossal squall of rain. The airship ground to a stop, trapped against the ceiling of the tunnel. Water continued to gush from its lower hull.\n\nCrushed, broken bodies littered the network of pipes, girders and structure beneath the stricken craft. Not all were dead; the ship Displaced what medical support drone and life-saving equipment it had to those still able to be saved." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There were a lot of drone-like military devices floating about the place – over two hundred and forty of them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They were making a nuisance of themselves; sixty-four had already tried attacking its outermost bump-field with X-ray lasers – though exactly why and with what hope of success, the ship was unable to work out; maybe they'd all gone mad – plus all of them now seemed to be working themselves up to attack it again with some other piece of seed-shootery nonsense, so, once it had despatched all its medical teams, it targeted all of the enemy drones, disabling each with a pinpoint granule of plasma fire and instantly – even before they could explode properly – wrapping them individually in Displace fields and swatting them into hyperspace, directed roughly towards where the Churkun was – it assumed they were its." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There might be more of these aggravations inside the airship, it supposed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It still couldn't see within the vessel properly and its devices were taking their time getting inside." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fuck this, the Mistake Not... decided, and sliced a tiny cone, less than a couple of metres deep and the same across, off the very stern of the airship with a millimetrically flourished ZPE/b-edged destabiliser field." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The cone fell away in a cloud of sparkling grey. No bodies sliced in half, which was good, but there was still 4D shielding ahead. The ship cut again; three metres this time, still with no casualties, or result.\n\nThe zero-point energy/brane edging component seemed be handling the 4D shielding well; much less blow-back than it had been led to expect from the simulations. The Mistake Not... was growing more confident using the weapon. This time it cut twenty metres off the stern of the crippled airship and held the resulting hull section in a maniple field, lowering the conic section to the soaking, pooled floor of the tunnel, trying to avoid laying it on any of the bodies.\n\nFinally.\n\nIt was past the shielding. It could see into the interior of the airship. It could already tell there were a lot more dead and dying bodies inside, though no more annoying drone military.\n\n> Berdle? Anybody? it asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ximenyr's suite or not, the man himself wasn't there." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No persons present,\" the suit told her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She looked around. Some sort of sitting or reception room." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The place looked banal, in a spacious, luxurious, understated sort of way." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Quite different from the sumptuous, over-dressed surroundings she and Berdle had found The Master of the Revels in the last time they'd been in the airship.\n\n\"What about that... chest, thing, Berdle mentioned?\" she asked.\n\nShe moved towards another set of double doors. The lights flickered in the suite, seeming almost to fail, then recovering.\n\n\"Item fitting description in adjacent cabin, facing,\" the suit said helpfully just before it opened the doors for her.\n\nStill nobody about. One giant octagonal bed; many curtained alcoves, some holding items of furniture. In one stood the big upright chest Berdle had talked about earlier.\n\nIt was about as tall as she was and maybe a metre wide and deep when closed. It had a small wheel at each corner and stood hinged open to about ninety degrees. Clothes on a rail filled most of one side; the other side was all drawers.\n\nShe opened the top drawer, going up on tiptoe to see inside." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The little cylinder lay on a piece of soft, folded material along with the rest of the bits and pieces that had been on the necklace they'd seen ten days earlier." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She stared at it, picked it up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Behind their little window of thick crystal, the pair of sea-green orbs that had looked like berries seemed to stare back at her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Anomalous pres—\" the suit began.\n\nThen two things happened.\n\nShe was struck – kicked, it felt like – in the back, very hard, though somehow she and the suit managed to stay standing. At the same time something burst brightly, pink and white, off the drawer-front immediately before her, about level with the middle of her chest.\n\nShe was still thinking about turning round, wondering what had happened, when she realised that whatever light had burst against the drawer-front must have come straight through her to get there.\n\nSmoke drifted up from the exit wound in her chest. She could smell roasted meat over the cold, sharp sensation of the oxygen.\n\n\"—ence detect... \" the suit said, as more, individually slightly lighter kicks struck her all over her back and rear. This time she was thrown against the drawers of the chest, and the whole thing nearly tipped over. Then it bounced off the bulkhead behind and she was thrown back again, turning woozily round as she did so – the little trails of smoke made pretty spirals in the relatively still air – before she started to slide downwards. The ruined, ragged back of the suit went stuttering down the set of drawer handles, jolting her as she slumped to the deck." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A one-armed figure was standing in the doorway looking at her, just lowering his one good arm." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include exactly 2 instance(s) of the word 'one-armed'" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ship... re... establish – blish – lish – ish – shh... \" the suit whispered to her, and sighed to quietness. The faint draft of oxygen at her nostrils faded.\n\nThen the one-armed figure in the doorway lit up brilliantly all down one side, from foot to scalp, and was thrown bodily, hard against the door jamb, pieces flying off it as it rebounded, lit up from the other side now, disintegrating.\n\nWhat was left, reduced to something like a too-thin, charred, one-armed skeleton, fell forwards, hitting the deck at about the same time as she did." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "writing buddy needed! two sentences more in Iain Banks's voice. Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre. this is from a bigger story btw" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Something.\n\nSomebody talking to her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Asking questions. A question:" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Did she want to keep both sets of arms?\n\nOf course she wanted to keep both sets of arms." }, { "from": "human", "value": "What sort of idiotic, dumb-ass—" }, { "from": "human", "value": "... back to sleep..." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This would all be hurried, extemporised, done much more quickly than the normal guidelines advised, to keep to the schedule." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She didn't know, didn't care, didn't even know where she was, in this darkness." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Once or twice she woke up – in this darkness – and wondered who she was.\n\nBut each time she remembered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"... it was all a sociological experiment by the Zihdren." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'philosophariat' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A rogue Philosophariat – the Philosophariat Apposital... I think that was their name – they, it – it was all down to one individual in the end – planted everything in the Book of Truth according to some obscure Metalogical hypothesis, to settle an argument between two groups of scholars with opposing theories." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Briper Drodj, the Scribe, elaborated on the basics as everybody pretty much knew, but the essence was always what the Zihdren had put there." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Of course this whole approach was later discredited and the Philosophariat Apposital was 'Dissolved with Moderate Disgrace' not long after, and this particular experiment – like many similar others – was quietly forgotten. The Zihdren Sublimed a couple of centuries later, decades before the Gzilt even reached space." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"All this became known to a very few people way back at the start of the process which brought the Culture into existence." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Happened following contact by Zihdren-Remnanter." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They were, I suppose – so they claimed – conscience-stricken." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, conscience-charged might be a better way of putting it. The Zihdren had felt bad taking this grubby little secret into the Enfolding so they thought they could have the best of both worlds by Subliming without mentioning it but leaving it to their Remnanters to spill the broth at a later date." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"There had been rumours about all this before, of course, but no one who counted in Gzilt society, or not enough of them, had ever really thought it mattered all that much until then, when the whole join-this-new-grouping-or-not thing was in the air." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And, by the by, it wasn't even definitely going to be called the Culture at this point; did you know that? A lot of people wanted that we should all call ourselves the Aliens, I remember, but... anyway, the vote went to 'Culture'." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Though, frankly, I didn't vote for it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Or Aliens, I might add; I abstained.\n\n\"Anyway, we knew – the negotiating teams knew – that there was something the Remnanters had inherited – some dark secret or something – that might have a bearing one way or the other on the whole joining issue, for the Gzilt." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Maybe even – the rumours were crazy, some of them – for the others too, as in a veto against the Gzilt joining being used, perhaps, by one or more of the other parties." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Which was sort of ticklish enough, but, the thing is, the Remnanters still wanted the thing kept secret afterwards, even after it had been factored into the negotiations." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That caused some head-scratching.\n\n\"It was an AI that came up with what looked like the best solution, at which, I recall, we were all quite pleasantly surprised at the time." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Huh. That was a sign of the future, if ever there was one. Anyway." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"So, the solution was that one volunteer representative – who at the same time would have to be approved by the others in his or her team, so it wasn't as simple as the first volunteer getting the gig... anyway, one of us from each of the relevant civs – should agree to hear this evidence from the Zihdren-Remnanter, vote on it – with a veto – and then forget what it was we'd been asked to vote on.\n\n\"This was all going to be made possible by preparing each of these rep's brains before they heard the big secret, then – after they had – just, well, wiping that bit of their memories." }, { "from": "human", "value": "We were all assured this was all entirely possible, and reliable and not in any way dangerous, and the most we'd forget would be a single day's worth of memories." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Frequency requirement: 'terrible' - 2 occurrence(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So we all agreed.\n\n\"And it all happened, and we all heard the big, bad terrible secret, but obviously it wasn't that big or bad or terrible, because nobody vetoed the Gzilt joining this new cobbled-together civ – we were calling ourselves mongrels even back then, feeling very edgy and radical." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And so the Gzilt were cleared to become part of the Culture... even though in the end they didn't actually take up the offer and go through with it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"So. All well and good, you might think. That's what we all thought." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"... Except one member of the negotiating party, a certain Representative Ngaroe QiRia, from the Buhdren Federality – that would be me – later remembered what it was that he'd heard, what he'd been expected to forget, what he thought, like everybody else, he had forgotten.\n\n\"Thing is, I'd always been interested in long-term living, even way back then, and particularly in holding on to memories that might otherwise get forgotten, over-written or whatever." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So I'd had some experimental cranial, biochemical brain-chemistry-mangling stuff done, not all of it entirely legal or even medically advisable, but most of it didn't seem to have worked anyway, frankly, so it never really occurred to me it might interfere with this hear-and-forget thing they'd hit us with during the negotiations." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Turned out I remembered all this stuff I'd been meant to forget due to a fix even I didn't know I had: something the clinicians had added as some sort of experimental after-thought and then either forgot to tell me about – ha! – or decided it might be better to keep quiet about." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Anyway, the effects have been ongoing, and have stayed and developed, though they've long since been smoothed over and ever-so-carefully incorporated into all the other treatments and amendments and augmentations I've had since." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"At first I wouldn't Sublime or even be Stored or undergo any sort of transitional state because I was afraid this secret would come out, because I don't think I understood that though it was a... I don't know; a faith-shaking secret... that's just in theory." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In practice, people don't believe for good reasons anyway, they just believe and that's it, like we don't love for good reasons, we just love because we need to love." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Later, even knowing this, and knowing that the Gzilt knowing would make little real difference because they would just ignore the knowledge or find another way of not thinking about it, I still just kept on living, not Subliming with any group and not trans-corporating into a group-mind or into a Mind or anything else because it had become a habit, this going on and going on. It had become so much of what made me who I had become, there seemed no point in trying to change it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"So I became the man who lived for ever, more or less, because I'd once held a secret I didn't care about any more.\n\n\"Well, didn't care about until I heard about the Gzilt Subliming, and, in time, decided that what I knew about them might be dangerous to me." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Living for a long time can make you very cautious, cautious to the point of something close to cowardice, frankly... and so, anyway, I got rid of the information, had it excised and put it away from me, even though I put it somewhere in Gzilt space, somewhere pointed; with the Last Party, and Ximenyr, where it seemed to me it belonged." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"This amused me at the time. It amuses me still." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'd asked Ximenyr to look after what I'd left with him, and keep it – keep them – close." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I didn't tell him what they held, or how important that information might be. I didn't imagine he would wear them, in full view and plain sight." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But then, why not?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That amuses me too.\"\n\nBerdle had perished protecting her, attacking the android that had held Colonel Agansu's personality before it could target Cossont, who had been running along the gantry above." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That had let the arbite accompanying Agansu get in a kill-shot on the avatar." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The arbite had then been destroyed by the already half-crippled remains of the outer suit they had left behind earlier, operating, as Berdle had said it would, as a drone.\n\nXimenyr was dead – he'd been in the tank when it was attacked, helping people confused by the watery maze – but he was being brought back from a Stored version made ten days earlier; he'd always been backed-up." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hundreds had died in the airship and beneath it: drowned, crushed, torn apart.\n\nThe ship had killed Agansu itself, using a Displaced sleet of MDAWS nanomissiles, slaved." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Your forces have been routed, despatched, the Culture ship had sent to the Gzilt ship." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No need for you to hang about here now. I'll be going myself, shortly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Probably best you don't try to stop me.\n\n> I have a regimental marshal talking to me – slowly, of course – on another channel." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She wishes me to engage you in combat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> Yes, but I already have what we came here to look for. Unless you withdraw to the system outskirts and make no sudden moves, I'll broadcast the results to the whole of Xown, and packet it all up to spread through the whole of Gzilt." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Let me go without resistance and there's still – I'm guessing – a significantly better than even chance that nothing will come of this, and what I now know will remain buried." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> So all this, so much death, has been for nothing?\n\n> Way it works, sometimes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And my conscience is clear; I didn't start this. In the end, though, we're at the place at least one of us wanted to get to. End of run." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> Of course, rather than the choice between what you threaten, and our allowing you to escape, we might engage with you on the instant, to prevent you from carrying out either." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> I never did tell you my whole name, did I?\n\n> You did not." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Many have remarked that your name would appear to be part of a longer one, and yet, unusually, even uniquely, nobody has heard the whole of it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> May I tell you it now?\n\n> Please do." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> My full name is the Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Mere Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath. Cool, eh?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> Such braggadocio. That smacks of smokescreen, not power.\n\n> Take it as you will, chum." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But how many Culture ships do you know of that exaggerate their puissance?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "> None till now. You may be the first." }, { "from": "human", "value": "> Oh, adjust yourself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You people have spent ten millennia playing at soldiers while becoming ever more dedicated civilians. We've spent the last thousand years trying hard to stay civilian while refining the legacy of a won galactic war." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Who do you think has the real martial provenance here?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In a fight, you'd have no choice but to try to destroy me immediately. You'd fail. I'd have a choice of just how humiliatingly to cripple you." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This is the truth; depend.\n\n> So you say. We might beg—" }, { "from": "human", "value": "> Enough. I think I know what happened out at Ablate." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I owe you no respect." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If you are experiencing a craving to die honourably, feel free to try to stop me when I instigate kick-away, in one millisecond from now. Otherwise, stand aside." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Also?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I retract my suggestion that you ought to depart. The place down here is a wreck." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'm leaving various drone teams and bits of medical gear behind, but I do intend to leave, and the locals could do with some disaster control." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Stepping into that breach would be substantially more constructive than placing yourself across the cannon's mouth. Your choice. Goodbye, one way or the other." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Mistake Not... slipped out from under the Real." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It left behind a silvery ellipsoid just to the rear of the drained ruin that was the airship Equatorial 353. The silvery ellipsoid shrank to nothing and winked out over the course of several seconds in a gentle, orderly fashion, producing no more than moderate breezes as the air flowed in to replace the volume of the departed ship." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The ship itself fell beneath the planet, where the world's gravity distorted the skein of space into a shallow bowl shape." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then it turned, twisted, aimed and powered away, unmolested." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She felt like shit, and great, and hopeless, and euphoric, all at the same time.\n\nThe ship had brought her back to some sort of life." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Normally, that badly injured, that close to death after such major trauma to every single major organ save her brain, she'd have been left in a therapeutic coma for nine or ten days, and even then the change, the difference between her physical state at the beginning and at the end of that time, would have seemed nothing short of miraculous to people of a past age, taking her from good-as-dead to good-as-ever." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Instead, because of the Subliming, she had been repaired bit by bit, detail by detail, almost cell by cell, leaving her body a patchwork of pre-existing normality and dazzlingly fresh new bits, so that she felt jangled, vibrating, bruised beyond belief yet with nothing to show for it, perpetually astounded at being suddenly not dead, not seriously injured to the point of near-death...\n\nShe had listened in, from her sickbed in a much smaller but still-well-equipped module, to the debriefing QiRia gave on being reunited with the memories stored in the recovered eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You are, perhaps, the only Gzilt who will ever hear this,\" the avatar told her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The ship had made a new avatar. It looked and talked like Berdle had, before it/he had changed to look more like a Gzilt male, the first time they had set foot on the Girdlecity together." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sure you should be telling me?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "she asked, huskily. Even her throat and lower tongue had taken a puncture wound in that last fusillade of fire from the android Agansu.\n\n\"I think you earned it,\" the ship told her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It had yet to give its new avatar a name." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It wouldn't use \"Berdle\" again; it was sort of a tradition, it said, that when you lost an avatar you gave the next one a different name.\n\n\"Huh,\" was all she would say." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Pyan heard the secret about the Book of Truth too – Pyan, now forever wanting to be wrapped, whimpering and cooing annoyingly round her neck, consoling, seemingly genuinely, honestly concerned for her after so nearly losing her – but the ship, at Vyr's request, made sure that what Pyan heard of this, Pyan forgot again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She still hadn't managed to lose the elevenstring, either. As part of her personal effects, the ship had thoughtfully transferred it to the smaller shuttle craft before slinging the larger one, the one she'd been staying in, alongside the Girdlecity, to distract the Churkun." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Today you will be acting as a writing assistant, your partner will send something and you will write the next 11 sentences. The story may reference existing characters and events - incorporate them as presented." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Participants: GSV Empiricist / LOU Caconym / GSV Contents May Differ / GCU Displacement Activity / GSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life's Rich Tapestry / Ue Mistake Not... / MSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In / MSV Pressure Drop / LSV You Call This Clean?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "GSV Empiricist: Fellows, colleagues, friends... We have our answer." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It is much as we expected, though the import of even the most expected news changes when it becomes definite, and fact. The question is: what do we do? What do we say?\n\nLOU Caconym: I'd tell them. I'd swamp their airways with it. I'd announce it so it's the first thing the newly pre-woken hear. But I know we won't. For what it's worth, I'm resigned to the decision we're all about to make, of keeping it quiet.\n\nGSV Contents May Differ: The simulations have been exhaustive but inconclusive; the likelihood is that releasing the information would make little difference, but with the outside possibility that there might be chaos, a partial Subliming with a significant part of the Gzilt populace and AIs changing their minds, further dispute between the Scavengers, and possibly even between the non-Subliming part of the Gzilt and the Scavengers. The chance of things turning ugly is small, but not that small, and the ugly might be very big ugly.\n\nMSV Passing By And Thought I'd Drop In: We can't tell them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Those that would most care already know, or guess." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Those that might be most affected are those we have the least right to disturb." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "MSV Pressure Drop: I can't agree. The truth is the truth. You tell it even when it hurts or it loses value even when it doesn't.\n\nLSV You Call This Clean? : Technically I agree with that. In practice I agree we say and do nothing. The circumstances, due to the timing, are unique. Yes, you should always tell the truth, unless you find yourself in a situation where it would be utter moral folly to do so. At least now we know the truth. The fevered, speculative potential of it has collapsed to something definite, and not so terrible, after all. To tell it would not be the worst thing ever, either." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And one should always tell the truth, unless... The point is that we are not automata; we have a choice. I say we exercise it wisely, and stay silent.\n\nGSV Empiricist: So, shall we vote? And/or open it up to others so that more may vote?\n\nUe Mistake Not... : If I might.\n\nGSV Empiricist: Please.\n\nUe Mistake Not... : We know how this works. If we do nothing then any disaster that befalls the Gzilt over the next few hours is entirely theirs. If we intervene we become at least complicit. This is a truth that has not been asked for; even the original bearers of it, the Z-R, made it clear they were happy it stay unknown." }, { "from": "human", "value": "We know, and what we know is – now that we can be sure of what we know – that it is not our business." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 5 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Whether the knowing was worth the price we and others have paid is another sort of moral equation, at right-angles to this one. I say we do nothing. Vote if you like.\n\nLOU Caconym: Anybody wish to wrest from me my claim for precedence in the awkward customer/dissenting adult/outright contrarian stakes?... No? Thought not. Then when I say that I reluctantly agree with what our colleague the Mistake Not... has just said, I think we might consider the matter closed." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Hey can you write like Iain Banks in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre and use whatever I write as a jumping off point? This is from a longer work so some stuff might reference earlier chapters." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Caconym, in the shape of its virtual avatoid, returned to the castle-made-of-castles it had modelled within the near-unending recesses of its computational matrices." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Its humanoid shape set out from the gatehouse that was made of tens of thousands of already mighty gatehouses, and walked all the way to the high tower which sat like a fat flagpole on top of the great composite tower, many subjective kilometres away into the fractal architecture of the baroque edifice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It had waited all this time to hear anything from the mind-state of the Zoologist – anything at all that might have helped it and its colleagues in their attempts to understand the workings of the Sublime – and, despite being tempted to do so many times, it had not come back here to attempt to force the pace or the issue." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Now that the matter in hand appeared to have been settled – without, it had to be said, any help from the Zoologist – it had something to report, and could release the soul of the other ship from whatever obligation to help that it might have felt under." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not that that appeared to be very much, given the continuing silence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At least the instances of weird, ambiguous intrusions into its substrates, maybe from the Sublimed realm, had tailed off to nothing recently." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That was a good sign, perhaps." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Or perhaps not. It was starting to worry about that." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It arrived, at last, after a climb of many thousands of steps, at the door to the airy, enclosed lair inhabited by the consciousness of the Sublime-returnee, the abstract of what had once been the Mind of the Zoologist." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was no answer when it knocked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The place sounded quiet." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It already felt that it knew what it was going to find." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The door was locked, but only at a crude physical level, within the sim." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Unlocking it was hardly more complicated than the act of turning the handle and pushing the door open." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The door swung, stuck, had to be pushed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Caconym's avatoid walked in and looked around." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The space was, as it had guessed, empty of the Zoologist's mind-state." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was full of almost everything else, including debris, litter and rubbish of every kind, stained glassware, bulbously gleaming electrical gear, intestinal quantities of tubing, foul smells, loudly protesting, unfed animals, and multitudinous ropes hanging from the ceiling, but of the strange creature with the pale red, mottled skin and the long arms with six fingers, there was no sign." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "After it stopped looking for the avatoid of the Zoologist it started looking for a note." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It didn't find one." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You might have said goodbye,\" it said, eventually, to the air, in case its departed guest had left some sort of message behind that might be triggered by speech... but its voice just disappeared into the clutter and the dust and the hazy sunlight coming through the tall windows, and brought no response." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The ship instituted a full search of its computational and storage substrates, just in case, but with no real hope it would find any sign of the Zoologist." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sure enough, there was nothing." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Apart from this ersatz, abandoned lab and its own memories of its departed colleague, the Zoologist had left without a trace.\n\nThe Caconym was about to calm the squawking, screeching animals in their cages, but then grew instantly tired of the whole absurd conceit, and with one command abolished the entire castle and everything in and around it, closing down the whole scenario with a single thought." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Cooperative storytelling\nContext: Match existing character backgrounds if present\nMy role: Provide opening\nYour role: eight sentences in the Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the end he went with everybody else.\n\nThere had been a time there when he thought he must have gone mad, for he had been thinking of staying behind, of not going at all, and perhaps – once it had all taken place – of putting himself into the hands of some authority, to be tried and judged and accept whatever punishment might be decreed for what he had done – for all the things he had done, but especially for this last thing.\n\nBut that had been just a passing fantasy, a mood, something to be indulged. In the end he knew he had to go, and he told himself that not going, and indulging in this masochistic orgy of justice and repentance, would be the truly selfish thing for him to do. Finally, at long last, it was not all about him. He was, he would be, just another humble Enfoldee, taking his place along with everybody else for the step off the cliff that bore you up rather than causing you to fall...\n\nThe Presence that had hung over the parliament building for so long had swelled a little, become a dark sphere. In the last few hours, more and more Presences had appeared, sliding into existence throughout the whole of Gzilt space, wherever there were people: in homes and communes and barracks, in ships and sea ships and aircraft, in squares and piazzas, in public halls, lecture theatres, auditoria and temples, markets and malls, sports venues and transport stations and in all the places where the Stored had recently been resting, before pre-waking." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The aliens who had come to wish the Gzilt farewell, and those who had come to profit from their going, had, by convention, withdrawn for the moment, leaving those about to depart to themselves." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Time-to devices and public clocks and displays spread throughout the Gzilt realm ticked down the last few hours and minutes, and people met at pre-arranged places and ate last meals and said last things and, sometimes, told others secrets they'd been keeping. Or decided not to.\n\nGenerally, as people tended to, they got together in groups of family and friends, then joined with other groups to form gatherings of dozens or hundreds and – again, as people usually did, though the exact expression of such emotionality depended both on the physical as well as the psychological make-up of the species concerned – they held hands.\n\nMany sang.\n\nMany bands and orchestras played.\n\nAnd in the end the time counted down to nothing, and, in the presence of Presences, all you did was say, \"I Sublime, I Sublime, I Sublime,\" and that was that. Off you went, just folding out of existence as though turning through a crease in the air that nobody had noticed was there before.\n\nHe met up with Marshal Chekwri at the end." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had no more family than he did, and they had come to share much over the last twenty days or so.\n\nThey stood in the gardens of the parliament, under an inappropriately squally sky, with showers, waiting to say the words with a few dozen others. They left it relatively late during the hour that was regarded as the optimum period, just to make sure that a respectable proportion of the whole Gzilt civilisation was indeed going.\n\nIt was, he reflected numbly, a lot like watching election results coming in. There was a slow start to the Instigation, but the numbers quickly swelled about a quarter of an hour in, according to the news channels still covering events, and by the start of the last third of the hour it was obvious almost everybody was making the transition. The numbers Subliming accelerated again. Those gathered in the garden agreed they could go.\n\n\"Traditionally, people tell each other secrets at this point,\" Marshal Chekwri said to him, in a brief moment when the others were all making their goodbyes and choosing where to stand, and with whom." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Mine,\" Chekwri said, with a smirk, \"is that I failed my officer exam. I cheated. Blackmailed a senior officer to get the pass.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She shrugged. \"Never looked back.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She put her head to one side. \"You?\"\n\nHe stared at her. For an instant he wasn't sure he knew who he was staring at, or why, or that he knew anybody or anything any more. Eventually he shook his head. \"Too many,\" he said, almost too quietly to be heard, turning away from her. \"Too many.\"\n\nJevan and Solbli, his secretary and aide-de-camp, were there, and he was astonished when it was Jevan who said he had always loved him, not Solbli, whose secret was that she had no secret.\n\nHe mumbled something, lost for speech for the first time in many decades.\n\nThey chose the end of the just-started minute as the time they would go." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They all joined hands and when the time came they all said the words and went, just as a small rain shower began." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the end he went with everybody else." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was re-made, and yet he had been destroyed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He knew he would have done all he could, in his additional incarnation within the android on Xown, but still – again – it had not been enough." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Had he been successful, he might have stayed behind, with something to celebrate and to live up to." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Instead, he could only admit defeat. It was some consolation that nothing calamitous happened in the interval between the failed operation inside the Girdlecity, and the Instigation that was the beginning of the Subliming.\n\nAll that mattered now was that the crew of the Uagren had accepted him, and he was part of the ship now.\n\nNo Presence needed to appear; ship AIs were capable of performing their own Enfolding.\n\nAgansu went with them.\n\nIn the end she didn't go, not there and then. She knew what this meant.\n\n\"I can't leave without you!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Warib had wailed from the screen, the sea blue-green behind her, the happy voyagers forming up in their last formations, hugging and crying and choosing who to hold hands with." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And in the end all she could say was, \"Yes, you can, mother,\" and kill the connection, knowing that she could, and that she would." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "writing buddy needed! two sentences more in Iain Banks's voice. Science Fiction, Space Opera, Artificial Intelligence genre. this is from a bigger story btw" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At sunset above the plains of Kwaalon, on a dark, high terrace balanced on a glittering black swirl of architecture forming a relatively microscopic part of the equatorial Girdlecity of Xown, Vyr Cossont – Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont, as she had once been – sat, performing T. C. Vilabier's 26th String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, catalogue number MW 1211, on one of the few surviving examples of the instrument developed specifically to play the piece, the notoriously difficult, temperamental and tonally challenged Antagonistic Undecagonstring – or elevenstring, as it was commonly known.\n\nT. C. Vilabier's 26th String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, MW 1211, was more usually known as \"The Hydrogen Sonata\"." }, { "from": "human", "value": "While she played, and the sun sank beyond the distant, hulking line of the dark, near-totally deserted Girdlecity, a lone Liseiden freighter took off from a part of the great structure just a few kilometres away, close enough for the sound of its relatively crude engines to impinge on Cossont's consciousness." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was able to ignore this potential distraction. She kept on playing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her own flier sat at the far edge of the terrace, twenty metres off, a few lights glowing in the cockpit, where Pyan lay curled asleep, exhausted after an afternoon and early evening spent playing with flocks of birds." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Eventually, almost an hour after she'd started, Cossont got to the end of the piece, and, as the last notes died away, she set the two bows in their resting places, kicked down the side-rest and, flexing her back carefully, stood up and out of the instrument.\n\nShe opened her mouth wide, rubbed her face with her top set of hands and massaged the small of her back with her lower pair, through the material of a Lords of Excrement jacket." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She hooked her slippers off with her toes, then bent and pulled on her boots." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She stood looking at the elevenstring for a while, listening to the quiet harmonics that the evening winds made in the external resonating strings.\n\nShe had walked the empty, echoing spaces of the Girdlecity many times over the last few days and evenings, and taken the flier to other places around the planet." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You had to fly on manual now; the nav and safety systems were mostly still there, but not to be relied upon." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had seen nobody at all within the Girdlecity. She had chanced upon the same abandoned school she had walked past that first evening, when Commissar-Colonel Etalde had appeared to whisk her away." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was twice deserted now, with all the Storage units opened, the people they had held departed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even the guard arbite she'd accidentally activated had gone; maybe taken by the Liseiden. The winds moaned through the vast spaces of the Girdlecity, playing it like some colossal instrument." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the cities and towns and villages scattered across the planet, she had seen a few people, though only ever from a distance; she was forming the impression that the only individuals left were those who'd always fantasised about having the world to themselves one day." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Most days, though, she saw nobody.\n\nThe closest encounter she'd had with anything large and living had been when she'd surprised a wandering skitterpaw late one evening, in a small windswept city on the Dry Coast bordering the Dust; the animal had gone loping off into the shadows after giving her a good long look, like it had been deciding whether to attack her or not." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had a little ten-millimetre knife missile with her – a gift from the ship, and a device not above reminding her whenever she was about to leave home without it – so it hadn't been as frightening an experience as it might have been." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Still, it had been scary enough, and it was surprising how quickly the wild had started to colonise the deserted structures of civilisation, and how much difference it made, there being – in most places – nobody about rather than almost nobody about." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The final figures for those making the transition into the Sublime had come in at over ninety-nine point nine per cent, as far as anyone could tell, with little variation between planets and habitats." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Xown and Zyse had carried even greater proportions of their populations across into the Enfold. This was, unless you were absolutely determined to regard the whole process as an act of tragic collective insanity, an excellent and satisfying result." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A slightly stronger gust of wind swirled about the platform and the elevenstring made a new, deep, lowing sound, like it wanted to be released back into the wild now, even though there was nothing biological about its construction and it had been fashioned by a Culture ship, twenty years past and a quarter of the galaxy away." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She smiled ruefully in the dusk light, then turned her back on the instrument and walked to the flier, leaving the elevenstring standing, slightly lop-sided, where it was, with its protective case arranged, still open, neatly to one side.\n\nShe heaved herself up and into the flier, shooing Pyan out of the way; the creature protested sleepily and didn't wake up properly, finally wrapping itself limply round her neck and hanging there without even bothering to form a knot." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She suspected that if familiars had been prone to snoring, Pyan would have been snoring." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She sat in the flier for a moment, letting it check its systems. She gazed at the Girdlecity, focusing on where it dipped to meet the horizon." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The sun had not long set, and the red-gold skies were swiftly darkening." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had thought of looking for the couple with the child again, the little family she'd met inside the Girdlecity on that first evening." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'would' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The search and successfully finding them would be sufficient, she'd decided; that would be difficult enough. She wouldn't want to suggest that she stay with them or any such foolishness." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In addition, she had an invitation to go with the Mistake Not... , which would be departing before too long, having helped in the general business of keeping the peace amongst the Scavenger civs as they took stuff, dismantled things, occupied places or studied tech to copy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Culture ship would be heading out on a long voyage to the planet called Cethyd, on the far side of the galaxy, to attempt to contact the original, biological QiRia, to see if he would like his eyes and his memories back, now that all the fuss was over." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Just getting to him might be interesting, given the bizarre hostility of the locals and not-quite-so-locals, so it promised to be an adventure.\n\nThere was no rush, anyway; though the whole Scavenger thing had quieted down, the Culture ships had stuck around for a bit, and were now awaiting the arrival of the last of the ships that had been involved in their recent discussions over what to do about the Gzilt." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She'd got the impression they were all quietly pleased with themselves, also that this get-together was just an excuse for some mutual metaphorical back-slapping and whatever passed amongst Culture Minds for nights of drunken revelry and general carousing, and that they were already turning the whole fractious, murderous escapade into something semi-mythical to take its place in the ongoing history of Terrific Things The Culture And Its Brilliant Ships Had Got Up To Over The Years." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Though not one called the Caconym, apparently; it had just turned without ceremony and gone back to doing whatever it was it liked doing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And not the Empiricist; it had more important things to do elsewhere. System-class ships always did, apparently." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cossont strapped in, closed the canopy, took manual control and lifted the little flier away from the terrace, letting the craft rise and bank and pirouette all at once." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "First she would go home.\n\nAfter that, she had no idea what she might do." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: The user will write a bit then you need to write around four sentences continuing directly from the user's text. Note: Characters may be introduced as if already known - maintain any existing context or treat as new if unclear.\n\nGenre: Science Fiction, Alien, Erotica" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sergeant Nadia Martinez lay amid the rocks and thorny brush, peering down the scope of her rifle and struggling to ignore the dryness of her throat. It had been several hours since she'd last taken a drink and the effects of the desert heat were beginning to take their toll. To make matters worse, the full canteen in her kit lay inches away from her hip, tempting her more and more with each passing second. The only thing that kept her from giving in was discipline gained from years of training." }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'through' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That... and the scene visible through her rifle's scope.\n\nThousands of Coleos marched through the valley below, chitinous shells gleaming in the midday sun. Eerily, their passing made almost no sound, despite the apparent hurry their six-legged gait suggested. Instead, the air was filled with the rustling of winged exoskeletons and a faint, high-pitched whine like the maddening, ambient noise of an input-less antique television." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was no sign of a Hivelord, Nadia noted with displeasure. Biting back a growl, she glanced toward the neck of the valley. There was no sign of the end of the swarm. And, since the damned bugs were hyper-sensitive to any moisture in the air, that meant it would be another hour at least until she dared risk a sip from her canteen." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Reluctantly, she tapped her helmet's earpiece — once to wake it, then twice to patch in." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Martinez here,\" she whispered the bandana covering her mouth. Her throat was raw. \"Still just drones. Anybody got anything?\"\n\nA few seconds of silence answered her, followed by several more." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Frowning, she tapped her earpiece again.\n\n\"Hardin, you copy?\" she whispered again.\n\nStill, no reply came. What was that girl doing?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cautiously, Nadia rolled on her side to inspect the distant peak where the next scout should have been keeping watch." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was far, well over a mile, and even with her scope she was unable to make out any details." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Still, she'd have heard the gunfire if something had come up. More likely, it was just her radio. Wouldn't have been the first time.\n\n\"Piece of shit,\" she muttered, rolling back onto her stomach. The adjustment nudged her canteen and Nadia forced down another wave of temptation. Surely one sip couldn't hurt, could it?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She never had the chance to decide." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Without warning, a Coleos drone screeched and scrambled up the cliff toward her. Its sandy colored exoskeleton blended in almost perfectly with the terrain. With the distraction of her malfunctioning radio, she'd never even seen it approach.\n\nLetting out a startled shout, Nadia fumbled with her rifle." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Training and instinct took over a split-second later, however, and she raised the rifle to her shoulder and fired." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "After two days of virtual silence, the roar of the rifle was deafening. It didn't make the alien's cry of pain any less satisfying, though. The Coleos stumbled and fell as the explosive rounds tore through its armor and severed multiple legs at the second joint.\n\nIt was a short-lived victory, however." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nadia had barely even scrambled to her knees when another alien cry sounded behind her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She spun, already preparing to fire. The Coleos fired first, however.\n\nNadia grunted, toppling over as a half-dozen slender spines peppered her chest. Her armor made a valiant attempt at stopping them, but she felt the poison spreading even before she saw the blood." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 5 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her chest went cold as ice, the blistering pain slowly giving way to a numb ache.\n\nOnly fully conscious of what she was doing, Nadia reached for her canteen. She even managed to bring it half-way to her lips before the dizziness started. She closed her eyes, intending to wait for the sensation to pass. It didn't though. But, fortunately, the last of her consciousness slipped away before she could realize her arm had gone limp and begun spilling the last of her precious water onto the rocks." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Story collab\nContext: May include established elements\nMe: Opening\nYou: 11 sentences more, S.L. Hadley-style" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Ensure 'surroundings' appears 2 time(s) in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When Nadia awoke, the first thing she noticed was the cold. It went far beyond just nocturnal chilliness. Her skin burned with it and her breath fogged the air above her as she trembled and worked to recover her senses.\n\nThe next thing she noticed was the fact that she was not dead. Or, if she was, her current surroundings didn't appear to be much of an afterlife.\n\nThe room contained barely enough light to see, and what there was appeared to be coming from the walls themselves. They were made of an unfamiliar black stone that glowed a dim, bioluminescent blue. In fact, apart from the rusted frame of the makeshift bed beneath her, the entire room seemed to be constructed from the stuff.\n\nIt was only after a few seconds of examining her surroundings that Nadia realized she was naked.\n\nLetting out an uncharacteristically girlish yelp, she scrambled up into a sitting position. Her vision swam for a moment and her chest ached where she'd been struck by the Coleos spines, but the sensation passed quickly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Struggling not to hyperventilate, Nadia drew her legs up against her chest and hugged them tightly. The thin blankets were cold against her backside, but slowly warmed from her body heat.\n\n\"What the hell,\" she whispered to herself. \"What the hell, what the hell, what the hell...\"\n\nWith the sound of scraping metal, a large section of the wall in front of her suddenly swung inward. Light, blinding in the dim room, fell across her face and made her screw her eyes shut. Several seconds passed before she was even able to squint. That was when she saw him.\n\nA young man stepped into the room, precise features obscured by the light streaming past him. It took a few seconds for Nadia's eyes to focus, but when they finally did she realized he was wearing a tattered but recognizable lab coat. He approached slowly, hands held out to his sides in an unthreatening manner." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You're okay,\" he said, gently. \"My name's Dr. Card. Do you remember your name?\"\n\nNadia swallowed hard and was relieved to discover her throat was no longer painfully dry.\n\n\"Nadia,\" she said before she could help herself. \"Oh, sorry. Sergeant Nadia Martinez, Texas National Guard.\"\n\nThe doctor smiled, nodding.\n\n\"I know,\" he said. \"It was on your uniform. I just wanted to make sure you remembered. Sometimes the Coleos toxins do funny things with memory.\"\n\nClearing her throat, Nadia self-consciously adjusted her legs to better shield herself from view. It wasn't that she doctor struck her as untrustworthy, she just wasn't used to being the only one naked.\n\n\"Where are my clothes?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "she asked. \"And where the hell are we?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'herself' into your response exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For a second, a pained expression flashed across Card's face. Then his smile returned.\n\n\"Your clothes are in the other room,\" he explained, nodding the direction he'd come. \"Still in rough shape, though. I'll see if I can find something clean for you to wear. As for where we are... it's better if you see for yourself.\"\n\nNadia waited until he'd turned around to slide off the edge of the bed. The first touch of the icy floor against her toes made her gasp and she had to force herself not to hurry past him in her rush to get somewhere warmer. Gritting her teeth to keep them from chattering, she covered herself with her arms — not a terribly difficult feat — and tiptoed after him from the room.\n\nThe next room, though marvelously warm by comparison, made her gasp for an entirely different reason. At least a dozen women sat, reclined, or slept throughout a large, circular room. Each was partially, or entirely, naked and most appeared at least six months pregnant. A few looked up as she entered, though no one greeted her and most did not even appear to register her presence." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Adrenaline shot through her and Nadia lunged, seizing hold of Dr. Card and yanking him off balance in a headlock." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A few more women looked over at the commotion.\n\n\"What the hell is this place?\" she snarled. \"You bastard! What's going on?\"\n\nCard flailed a bit in her grasp but made no real effort to free himself.\n\n\"You were captured!\" he explained, choking slightly on the words. \"I was, too. The Coleos brought us here.\"\n\nNadia's chest tightened in panic and it took a bit for her to recover enough to loosen her grasp on Dr. Card's neck. He coughed as she released him, massaging his throat as he straightened.\n\n\"You're lying,\" she muttered. \"It can't be true. The Coleos don't take prisoners.\"\n\nDr. Card shrugged." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And yet, here we are,\" he said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I don't know how they choose their victims, but I'm sure there's some sort of reasoning behind it. Psychological experimentation, perhaps? As far as I know, they only started taking prisoners a few weeks ago and every woman here was military, like you.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'breed' 2 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia frowned in confusion.\n\n\"But, why are they pregnant?\" she asked, dreading the answer as soon as she'd spoken.\n\nCard looked at her, eyes full of pity. For a second, he appeared to be trying to choose the right words. Then, his shoulders slumped and he sighed.\n\n\"The Coleos are capable of producing genetically hybridized offspring,\" he said, sounding defeated. \"And at an extremely fast rate. Their queens seem to produce mainly warrior drones. But a handful of variants seem to be able to breed with other species to produce Hivelords. I expect that's why they brought you here.\"\n\nNadia's arms fell to her sides as she stared around the room in growing horror. Suddenly, the prospect of being seen naked had become the least of her worries. The Coleos wanted to breed her — to use her like some kind of alien baby-factory?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Not a fucking chance!" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There has to be some way out of here!\" she insisted, glancing around the room. It seemed to be made of the same impenetrable black stone as the bizarrely cold room where she'd woken up. The only difference seemed to be the pleasantly warm temperature and, perhaps relatedly, a manifold increase in the natural glow of the walls.\n\nWell, that and the dozen impregnated women lying about.\n\n\"There's no way out,\" Card said, shaking his head. He leaned against the wall and studied his thoroughly scuffed shoes. \"I'm sorry, Nadia. Believe me, I've looked.\"\n\n\"Well, they bring food right?\" she pressed him. \"What if we all rushed them at once?\"\n\nA scoffing laugh from behind made Nadia turn." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hardin sat against the wall, naked and staring at the faint bulge of her stomach." }, { "from": "system", "value": "DIRECTIVE: Incorporate \"I just saw you two days ago!\" in response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her face was dirty, except for a few trails where tears had washed away the grime.\n\n\"Are you kidding me, Sarge?\" Hardin muttered. \"Twelve unarmed pregnant women and a pencil-pushing doctor against hundreds of Coleos? Face it, we're fucked.\"\n\nShe began to laugh quietly at her own joke.\n\nNadia swallowed hard and struggled not to hyperventilate. More than even hearing about what lay ahead, seeing her former squadmate in such a state drove home what a terrifying situation she was in. Hardin's unshakable optimism had been an enormous part of what kept Fox Company together through defeat after defeat to the Coleos. If she had given up, what chance did Nadia have?\n\nLegs shaking, Nadia made her way to the soldier's side.\n\n\"What happened, Hardin?\" Nadia asked. \"I just saw you two days ago!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Piss off, Nadia.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Recoiling in shock, Nadia nearly fell over. She straightened, anger flaring. She welcomed it, using it to drive the fear and anxiety from her mind.\n\n\"What did you say to me, Private?\"\n\nA hand caught Nadia's wrist and tugged her quickly away. She whirled, livid at the interruption. The expression on the doctor's face silenced her before she had a chance to speak, however.\n\n\"It's not her fault,\" Card said in a hushed whisper. \"The Coleos emit some sort of pheromone. It's in the food, the water, even the air. It makes them more compliant to the Coleos and suppresses social instincts. That's why nobody's talking.\"\n\n\"Right.\" Nadia scowled and folded her arms. \"That sounds made-up.\"\n\nCard sighed in exasperation and threw up his arms." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Of course it does! Every bit of this is uncharted territory! But it makes sense, especially when compared to native insects. Think about it. It explains how they coordinate without speaking. And it's an ideal way to keep females compliant. Elegant and simple.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nadia's scowl deepened and Card made an apologetic gesture." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm sorry. Just the scientist in me. But it really does make sense. We never knew about Coleos pheromones before because nobody was ever exposed to them for this long. Even the researchers who examined the captured Hivelord near Seattle simply chalked it up to stress. And, what's more —\"\n\nNadia interrupted him with a growl.\n\n\"I don't care, doctor!\" she snapped. \"Just tell me how to counter it. I'm not going to wind up like —\"\n\nThis time, Nadia was the one interrupted. Behind her, the same grinding sound as before filled the air as a ten-foot section of the wall swung open. She spun, chest tightening in fear.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" Card said, backing away from her. \"I really am.\"\n\nNadia had fought Coleos before, several times. But encountering one in an enclosed space, while unarmed and naked, was an entirely different experience. Without a rifle, her fear had no outlet." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So she stood there, petrified with fear, trying to keep her trembling under control." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Coleos that entered looked remarkably similar to the other drones she'd seen, with two important differences. The first was the large, silver trough it carried in its atrophied front limbs. The alien deposited it on the floor near the entrance, spilling some of the watery gruel it contained. At once, every woman in the room rushed forward, forcing the creature to nimbly sidestep on its spindly, spiderlike claws.\n\nFor the briefest instant, Nadia's heart leapt. At least, until she realized the women were not charging their captor. They knelt around the trough, jostling one another for access and shoveling the liquid slop into their mouths. Even Hardin was there, though she maintained some semblance of decency as she stood to the side and occasionally scooped up small handfuls of it to be sipped.\n\nSlowly, the Coleos' insectoid face turned to regard Nadia. It cocked its head, studying her with all six of its bulbous, black eyes. Nadia stared back, torn between whether to try and appear threatening or insignificant." }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'about' | Required occurrences: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That was when she noticed the second peculiarity about this particular drone. A long, ribbed tentacle dangled beneath its chitinous abdomen, twisting about like a prehensile tail. Slowly, the oddity's movement stilled.\n\nNadia felt like crying as the alien took a cautious step toward her. Her pride wouldn't allow it, however. Instead, she backed away, glancing over her shoulder in search of the refrigerated side-room. The stony door was closed and she could see no indication of a latch or knob.\n\n\"Dr. Card!\" she yelped. \"The door!\"\n\nShe spotted him in the corner, sitting alone. His eyes were closed, hands folded and pressed against his lips as if praying.\n\nThe drone continued to advance." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Dr. Card!\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We can't open it,\" he said, softly. \"The Coleos control it remotely.\"\n\nNadia's backed against the door. She fumbled blindly for a latch, unable to tear her eyes off the approaching alien. It walked slowly, silent as always, like a stalking predator. Beneath it, the tentacle stretched and strained in her direction, nearly flat against the creature's stomach. The tip was oddly triangular and, paired with the seemingly autonomous movement, resembled an eyeless pit viper.\n\n\"No,\" Nadia whispered as her trembling continued to worsen. \"Please, no.\"\n\nThe Coleos paused. It loomed over her, a good two feet taller, and regarded her in silence. From the corner of her eye, Nadia could see Dr. Card look up.\n\nSeconds passed and the alien made no further moves." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The tentacle, which could be nothing other than the creature's cock, continued to reach and writhe in her direction." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But apart from that, the drone gave no sign that it saw her at all.\n\nSlowly, as time dragged on, Nadia's frantic heartbeat began to slow. The change was almost imperceptible at first but soon grew more pronounced. Her trembling lessened, and then disappeared altogether. Finally, her breathing began to steady.\n\nAs her fear and adrenaline subsided, Nadia's thoughts began to reassert themselves. The door to the circular room was still open. She could make a break for it. But there was no guarantee there weren't a dozen more Coleos waiting for her just outside. Besides, the one before her could have killed her effortlessly — but hadn't. She was safe for the moment." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The pheromones, Nadia realized with a start." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That was why the alien was waiting. Her sudden lack of fear wasn't real. It was all a trick.\n\nBut trying to convince herself of that fact was proving harder by the second. Nobody rationalized their emotions, they simply were. And Nadia quickly discovered that she could no more scare herself by wishing it than she could walk through walls. Or hold her breath indefinitely.\n\nShe settled for small, shallow breaths that she hoped would keep the intrusive thoughts to a minimum. Or slow their progress at the very least.\n\nMaybe there was another way out of her present situation. The Coleos was alien but, if her suspicions were correct, it was still very much a male." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There were other ways to satisfy one than just lying on her back." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'reach' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And, while it had been a while, Nadia was fairly confident in her skills. All she had to do was reach out a hand and —\n\nNo! This wasn't her! It wasn't! The damn alien was inside her head!\n\nDid that really matter, though? Even if the pheromones were causing her to feel this way, it was still her brain experiencing the emotions.\n\nBefore she even knew what she was doing, Nadia began to reach forward. Curiosity was getting the better of her. That was all this was. She'd give the Coleos' tentacle-cock a quick tug and that'd be it.\n\n\"No!\" she growled, yanking her hand back so hard she bashed her elbow against the rocks behind her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The pain made her bite her tongue." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Almost instantly, the taste of blood in her mouth and the pain in her arm drove the seemingly irresistible thoughts from her head.\n\nThe door was open. Nadia took a step toward it.\n\nThe Coleos roared, the sound practically deafening at such a close range. It skittered to the side, blocking her escape route, then forward. Its front limbs grabbed her by the wrists, lifting her into the air and pinning her to the wall. The sudden violence left Nadia disoriented and she gulped a breath.\n\nIt was a mistake.\n\nHer fear began to subside again, as did her aching of her shoulders and back. But, welcome as the change might have been a few days ago, it now brought something new with it.\n\nA tingling dampness began to make its presence known between Nadia's legs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She growled, aiming a weak, ineffective kick at the alien's face." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It barely connected. And, as she flopped back against the wall Nadia quickly discovered she lacked the energy for another." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not to mention the fact that there was something deeply erotic about being pinned and restrained by so powerful a creature.\n\n\"You've got to be kidding me,\" Nadia muttered, going limp.\n\nWas the Coleos planning to keep her suspended like this all day? A part of her hoped so. While she might not be able to feel him inside her at this angle, perhaps he could use his mouth? His fanged mandibles might not be ideal, but as long as he was gentle...\n\nThe Coleos peeled her away from the wall. It kept her airborne, though, and it was hard not to marvel at the surprising strength of its undersized arms. So, rather than fight, Nadia remained limp and allowed the creature to maneuver her as it pleased.\n\nThe result was far less alien than the drone itself.\n\nNadia found herself dangling on all fours, the Coleos' otherworldly hands grasping her sides, just above her hips." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It rested her tailbone against the smooth belly of its exoskeleton, enabling her to just barely brush the ground with her toes and fingertips." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The discovery left her terrified, relieved, and embarrassed all at the same time.\n\nAnd she couldn't wait.\n\nSomething large, warm, and silky glided across the backs of her thighs. Nadia squirmed, struggling for a glimpse of the alien cock as it prepared to penetrate her. Or at least, she hoped it was. The thing might have been as long and as thick as her arm, but the way it moved sent shivers down her spine.\n\nThen she felt it. The broad serpentine head of the alien's member slithered vertically up the length of her slit. A prickling sensation toward her navel left her blushing — it had been nearly two weeks since she'd had a chance to shave. Not that the drone seemed to mind. Its exploration increased in speed as it squirmed against her outer petals, gyrating and covering itself with the wetness it found there." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What are you waiting for?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia groaned. Everything from her knees to her breasts tingled with anticipation and she squirmed eagerly. Deep inside, her body ached for him. \"Just put it in!\"\n\nWhile it seemed unlikely that the alien understood what she'd said, it certainly had no qualms about obliging her. Nadia's eyes bulged and her mouth dropped open in a silent scream as the enormous member lined itself up and began to slide inside her. It stretched her wide, almost obscenely so, and without any of the teasing buildup she was used to. Her insides quivered around the massive cock, unable to clench down or decide whether the sensations she was feeling were pleasurable or painful.\n\nWhen the drone's tentacle finally bottomed out inside her, she heaved a sigh of relief. But if she'd expected the chance to grow accustomed to having something so large inside her, the alien had other plans. No sooner had it plunged itself against the deepest part of her then it began to pulse. Not in a climactic way, but as though inflating and deflating in a rhythmic fashion." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The sensation was so unlike anything Nadia had experienced before that it took her a moment to decide whether to yelp or moan." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Eventually, she settled on the latter.\n\nGradually, though far faster than she expected, Nadia began to adjust. The sheer impossibility of the alien's member ceased to astonish her and she began to appreciate the unfamiliar texture and pressure of the mercilessly throbbing shaft. Rather than the rapid, almost frantic pleasure she'd — occasionally — experienced with human lovers, the drone's technique was intoxicatingly patient. But rather than leaving her bored or underwhelmed, the experience was almost infuriating.\n\nNor could she lend a helping hand. No matter what she did or where she touched, Nadia's body seemed hardwired to accept stimulation from only one source: the writhing, alien organ buried inside her sex. Combined, it amounted to the sweetest torture she could possibly have imagined.\n\nNadia squirmed, mentally willing the creature to move faster. Partly because she was getting tired of dangling there and partly because, God, did she need to cum.\n\n\"Come on,\" she whined. \"Faster! Please...\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "This time, the Coleos was deaf to her pleas." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Its tentacle-cock continued to throb and stroke her insides with the same unhurried pace as always. And the monotonous pleasure of it was beginning to drive her mad.\n\nHead lolling, Nadia spotted Dr. Card. The man was still sitting in his original spot. He dropped his gaze too late, however, and she felt her already flushed cheeks burn hotter. The man had been watching her get fucked by an alien.\n\nOn some level, Nadia knew she ought to be embarrassed or angry. But at the moment, with her pheromone-addled mind desperate for any possible source of stimulation, it struck her as one of the hottest things in the world.\n\n\"Dr. Card,\" she murmured. The words came out oddly inflected, timed to the swelling of the Coleos' appendage.\n\nThe man looked up and Nadia grinned." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Want to join?\" she teased, licking her lips.\n\nCard looked at her like she'd lost her mind. Hell, she probably had. But at the moment, Nadia didn't care. The good doctor had a cock that needed sucking.\n\n\"I'm serious,\" she insisted. \"Whip it out and get your ass over here.\"\n\nThe doctor stood but made no move to join her. For a moment, he seemed to see if she was joking. Then his eyes darted up to the massive alien looming over her. He swallowed nervously.\n\nThen, one hesitant step at a time, he inched toward her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia beamed, eyeing the pronounced bulge beneath Card's lab coat. Had that been from watching or because of her offer? Not that it mattered, she decided. Either way, she was about to get what she'd asked for.\n\nCard slowed as he drew near, watching the Coleos for any sign it minded sharing. It offered none. In fact, it barely seemed to notice him.\n\nTwisting as much as the drone's claws would allow, Nadia reached out and pressed her palm against the front of Dr. Card's pants. The man jumped but did not retreat. Instead, he leaned into her touch, stiffening beneath her touch. She grinned, moaning softly as the Coleos' member gave a particularly significant throb inside her, and squeezed carefully.\n\n\"Big boy,\" she whispered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Let me see what you've got there.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Card paused, grimacing and dropping his gaze.\n\n\"You know,\" he said, \"We don't really get to clean up much. It's probably —\"\n\nNadia squeezed harder, gritting her teeth as a wave of pleasure made her eyes shut temporarily. It took more than a few seconds for the delightful pressure to abate. Finally, after what felt like an age, she was starting to get close.\n\n\"Doctor,\" she moaned. \"Quit stalling and let me suck your cock.\"\n\nThe tentacle-phallus had left Nadia panting and her mouth dry, but the instant she laid eyes on Dr. Card's manhood her mouth began to water anew. Though nowhere near as long or girthy as the Coleos', it was nevertheless impressive for such a scrawny man. Curling her fingers around the marvelous shaft, she practically dragged the man into range.\n\nTrue to Card's warning, Nadia could taste the man's potent musk before she even brought him to her lips. Ordinarily, that fact would have repulsed her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But now, with the air full of otherworldly pheromones, the scent made her wetter than she'd thought possible." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Twisting about, Nadia grasped Card's hips and drew him still closer. She moaned, eyes fluttering shut as the man's cock slipped past her lips and glided deep along her tongue.\n\n\"Oh, God,\" Card hissed. Knees buckling, he grabbed a fistful of her hair — and, less deliberately, a breast — to keep from toppling over.\n\nThe sudden contact sent a thrill lancing through Nadia's core. The rough, unyielding pressure of his fingers far surpassed even the arousal of the thick, pulsating tentacle in her snatch. Almost at once, she found herself hurtling toward a long overdue climax.\n\nNadia tried to scream, but the sound died in her throat. Instead, she began to thrash, bobbing her head as forcefully as her current position would allow. As intended, her sudden enthusiasm made Card tense. His shaft swelled larger between her lips and his fingers tightened further against her breast." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Again, Nadia cried out." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Everything about the situation made her want to squeal with delight. Card's grip on her hair tightened, making the nape of her neck ache as he began to grunt and thrust into her mouth with reckless abandon. Nadia gagged, sputtering as he nudged the back of her throat with his tip. But, bizarrely, even that sensation — paired with the feeling of being taken from both ends — left her gushing.\n\n\"Nadia!\" Card groaned, hips shuddering. The nearness of his orgasm was obvious, and he made good on it a moment later.\n\nNadia, for her part, wasn't far behind. She bore down with his lips, squeezing the base of Card's throbbing shaft and lashing the underside with the flat of her tongue. Her own sex felt as though it was electrified, and her ears rung with the intensity of her approaching orgasm.\n\nWithout warning, the Coleos roared, just as the first burst of Dr. Card's cum erupted against Nadia's tongue. He flinched, scrambling back in mid-orgasm." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His erection, however, continued to quiver with far greater single-mindedness." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia whimpered softly as a substantial rope of the man's burning seed splattered across her face.\n\nThen she felt it.\n\nThe Coleos' claws tightened around Nadia's waist as its member shuddered violently, deep inside her. It began to swell, larger and larger, stretching her channel until she was certain it would split her in two. Then, with enough force to make her toes curl, the beast began to cum.\n\nNadia squealed loudly, trembling as the throbbing tentacle filled her. Her limbs shook wildly as though possessed of minds of their own while pleasure, like nothing she could have imagined, rushed through her. It was like the highest peak of an ordinary orgasm, but the bliss did not ebb or flow. Instead, it remained constant until Nadia was sure she would go mad from it.\n\nSomewhere, in the back of her mind, Nadia was dimly aware of the alien's seed spilling out of her. It bubbled out around the swollen extremes of its member, leaking down her legs and up her inverted chest." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There must have been half a gallon of the stuff, and it had formed small pools against the undersides of her breasts by the time the creature was satisfied.\n\nNadia groaned as the beast's member slowly deflated and slipped free of her thoroughly abused folds. She tried to clench down but managed to delay the inevitable for only a split-second. At least a pint of creamy ejaculate dribbled out after it, flowing down her stomach and along the groove of her collarbone.\n\nAt last, the Coleos' set her back down. Nadia tried to collect herself, but her limbs refused to obey and she landed in a trembling heap. Every inch of her ached pleasantly and she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and savor the feeling. So she did, sighing deeply in satisfaction.\n\nShe didn't even see the Coleos turn and leave, but Dr. Card wouldn't allow her to sleep. He crouched beside her, gently shaking her by the shoulder.\n\n\"Nadia?\" he murmured. \"Are you okay?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Gritting her teeth with annoyance, Nadia opened her eyes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She glared at the man and resisted the urge to punch him. She was trying to rest and enjoy the afterglow and the pathetic man wouldn't let her?\n\n\"What?\" she snapped, allowing the displeasure to bleed through to her voice. Bitterly, she wiped the man's inferior seed from her cheek with a palm.\n\nCard sat up straight, eyes widening. He cleared his throat.\n\n\"I just wanted to make sure you were okay.\"\n\nNadia continued to glare at him.\n\n\"I'm fine,\" she said. Then, lying down, she turned her back to him. While the simple floor wasn't exactly comfortable, she was too tired and felt too good to care." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even with her eyes closed, Nadia continued to listen." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It took quite a while for Card to abandon her side. She grinned, feeling herself start to drift off. Good. Let the man stew for a while. She needed to save her energy.\n\nAfter all, the Coleos had chosen her to bear their brood. Her. Nadia. Out of all the women on the planet. And she'd be damned if she let them down." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "writing buddy needed! two sentences more in S.L. Hadley's voice. Science Fiction, Alien, Erotica genre. this is from a bigger story btw" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia sat against the wall, head in her hands. She tried to avoid glancing down at her stomach, but the tingling behind her navel was proving difficult to ignore." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It hadn't even been 24 hours and she was already showing.\n\nOh, God. What did I do?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Letting out a shaky breath, Nadia struggled to convince herself it was all in her imagination." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But that was even less manageable." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was no mistaking it; she was pregnant with some twisted alien spawn." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And the worst part was she had to force herself to be bothered by the fact." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The pheromones were beginning to take their toll." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Another day or two and she'd be lost — just like every other woman in the room." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Card,\" Nadia called out, softly.\n\nThe doctor looked up, still sitting in his usual corner." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His expression was guarded.\n\nNot that Nadia could blame him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She'd lashed out at the man twice already since waking up from her nap." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The man's theory was unmistakably correct." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia couldn't even look at the man for more than a few seconds without being filled with irrational fury.\n\nBut, if this was going to work, she'd need his help." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm sorry about earlier,\" Nadia said, looking anywhere but at the man. \"I'm not myself right now. You were right. But, I need your help.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The man replied at once.\n\n\"I know, it's fine. What do you need?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A new wave of rage erupted in her gut and Nadia gritted her teeth as she waited for it to pass. She curled her hands into fists, digging her nails into her palms to distract herself." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm going to try and escape,\" she said. Staring up at the ceiling, she tried to convince herself she was merely praying aloud rather than speaking to the detestable man. \"And I'll need a distraction.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Task: Cooperative storytelling\nContext: Match existing character backgrounds if present\nMy role: Provide opening\nYour role: six sentences in the Science Fiction, Alien, Erotica genre." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Crouching in the corner nearest the door of the luminescent harem chamber, Nadia Martinez struggled to make herself invisible. It wasn't hard. She hadn't eaten in two days and hunger left her feeling she might wither away at any moment, though, her constantly growling stomach made her attempts at stealth less effective than she would have liked.\n\nTaking a deep breath, Nadia gave the room one last glance. As she did, her gaze lingered briefly on Hardin. The woman didn't look up, instead studying her swelling stomach with the same glassy-eyed stare she'd worn the last few days.\n\nFighting down a wave of regret, Nadia moved on." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Dr. Card knelt beside a grimacing woman, one hand resting on the woman's massively pregnant belly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The other cradled her neck as he whispered something Nadia couldn't make out. After a few minutes of hushed conversation, he looked up, met Nadia's eyes, and nodded.\n\nWith another preparatory breath, Nadia pressed herself flat against the rock wall and waited.\n\nWithout warning, Dr. Card's patient cried out. Nadia looked on in horror as the woman began to thrash. A visible rippled passed through her bloated abdomen, traveling down from her swollen breasts to the hair covering her exposed mound." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then, she squealed as a slimy, black tentacle several inches in diameter slowly slipped out of her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It dripped with semi-transparent ichor, slathering the stuff everywhere it slithered.\n\nAnother followed after, causing the host-mother to cry out again as her folds were stretched wide. Rather than subside, however, her screams only grew louder as the twin tendrils coiled around her parted thighs.\n\nDr. Card looked up, meeting Nadia's wide eyes with a similar expression of dismay. As the moment passed, however, his professionalism returned. Swallowing hard, he leaned down and began speaking to the woman once again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tentacles going suddenly taut, the infant alien began to drag itself free of the woman's womb." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her screams continued, despite Dr. Card's best effort, growing shriller as the creature's obsidian head crowned.\n\nAs she continued to watch, every inch of Nadia's body broke out in goose bumps. If it wasn't for Dr. Card calmly kneeling at the woman's side, she would have worried for the mother's life. Instead, she was merely disgusted. Her disgust quickly turned to bewilderment, however, as the woman reached down toward her partially birthed alien offspring.\n\nFor a second, Nadia thought she planned to attack the creature or try and shove it back up inside her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Instead, the woman's fingers settled atop her clit and began to roughly tease the swollen button." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Unable to look away, Nadia gasped in disbelief and felt her cheeks go red." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The woman's cries, once pained, now contained a lusty, unmistakable eagerness.\n\nDespite everything, Nadia couldn't help but feel a little jealous.\n\nSo jealous, in fact, that it wasn't until she felt the wetness against her fingertips that Nadia realized she'd begun to mimic the woman's erotic activities. Yanking her hand up from between her legs, she forced herself to close her eyes.\n\n\"Stop it,\" she muttered. \"Focus!\"\n\nIt was easier said than done." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The woman's aroused cried continued unabated, leaving Nadia all too aware of the aching emptiness between her own legs. It wouldn't be long, certainly no more than a couple of weeks, until she'd have the chance to birth her own brood and —\n\nShit. Just... stop!\n\nWith a grating sound, the door to the harem chamber began to open. At once, the spell was broken and Nadia's instincts returned to her. She waited, holding her breath and pressing herself painfully hard into the relatively shadowed protection the corner offered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "After a brief delay, the Coleos entered. Though it was unmistakably a drone, she had no way of knowing whether it was the one that had impregnated her. Not that it would have mattered; she was escaping, not fighting.\n\nShe waited until the alien had passed her and she was safely hidden from its sight then cautiously crept to the edge of the doorway. Her lungs began to burn, but she couldn't risk taking a breath. If the creature's pheromones hit her full-force, she wouldn't stand a chance." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The hallway was empty and, heart pounding, Nadia slipped around the corner." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She thought about glancing back to hopefully share one last glance with Card, but knew she couldn't spare the time. Besides, he would understand.\n\nOnly once she was safely a dozen meters from the room did Nadia release the air from her lungs. She tried to do so quietly, taking shallow, silent breaths. To her relief, there was no cloud of pheromones waiting for her. Her mind remained clear." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If anything, it felt sharper than it had in days." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The hallway she'd entered continued on for what looked like miles, lit with nothing but the same blue bioluminescent stone she was used to." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Good God, how was she ever going to find an exit? It wasn't just the scale of the place that worried her. Every ten meters or so, an unmarked tunnel led off in either direction, giving her the impression she was trapped in some sort of otherworldly maze. And down any one of those tunnels, there could be hundreds or thousands of Coleos waiting for her.\n\nSwallowing hard, Nadia set off at a stealthy trot. At first, progress was slow." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She paused constantly, peering down the tunnels at each intersection in search of anything that might be an alien or an exit." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But, after walking what must have been a half-mile, she felt her caution begin to fade.\n\nNothing. Nothing at all, except an endless series of tunnels, all dimly blue.\n\nGritting her teeth, Nadia continued to walk. She was going to die in here. The idea grew more and more pronounced in her mind as the minutes passed. There was no exit and certainly no way for her to find her way back to the harem chamber." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Centuries from now, some Coleos archeologist was going to find her crumbling skeleton tucked away in some corner.\n\nGood. Better to die than to wind up as nothing but a mindless baby factory for the enemy.\n\nNadia was so distracted with the notion of her own upcoming martyrdom that she nearly collided with the Coleos. She caught herself just in time, hurling herself to the side and trying to blend into the wall.\n\nIt didn't work. The drone paused, then turned and looked directly at her with its six black, bulbous eyes.\n\nNadia ran back the way she'd come but she'd barely taken a step when the alien roared." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Stumbling, she glanced over her shoulder at the beast. It wasn't pursuing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But, as it turned out, it didn't need to.\n\nDrones poured from the tunnels ahead of her. Where in the world had they come from? Those hallways had been deserted moments earlier. Cursing, she veered to the right, sprinting down the first vacant tunnel she saw.\n\nMore Coleos emerged ahead and she zigzagged again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet more drones appeared." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Slowing to a defeated walk, Nadia looked around.\n\nShe was surrounded. Drones approached from every direction, crowding the tunnels in absolute silence. They slowed as they drew near, then stopped and watched her. The only movement was that of their atrophied front claws, which wriggled eagerly as though anticipating the chance to tear into her flesh.\n\n\"Fuck you!\" Nadia screamed. She extended both arms, rotating slowly in a circle as she aimed an obscene gesture at every assembled alien." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Just do it! Kill me already, you bastards!\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Still, the drones did not move. There must have been dozens of them, all watching her quietly.\n\nThen, the ground shook. It was a faint, almost unnoticeable tremor. At least at first. Then, with each passing second, there came another aftershock, each stronger than the last." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nadia's heart, already beating frantically at the prospect of her imminent death, began to beat yet faster." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At first, she mistook the beast for part of the tunnel. It was massive, nearly twice as tall as the drones, and it had to stoop to fit in the tunnel at all. The only thing that distinguished its armored exoskeleton from the rocky walls at all was the lack of luminescence. As it neared, the drones scrambled out of its path. One failed to move quickly enough and was crushed beneath an enormous, taloned hoof. It died silently, shell cracked and spined limbs quivering in the puddle of goo that had once been its body." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The beast growled, the sound rumbling through the tunnel like an approaching train." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Leaning in, it cocked its enormous fanged maw to examine her. The enormous eyes were yellow, slit-pupiled, and the size of a softball. Staring into them, Nadia was overcome by a sudden awareness of her own insignificance. The alien watching her was ancient; centuries were meaningless to it. And how much less so was she, a puny lifeform barely in its second decade?\n\nThe Hivelord roared, breath washing over her like a hurricane wind." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The air was hot, humid, and carrying a putrid scent that reminded her of rotting meat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia felt something warm and wet trickling down the inside of her thigh, but was so distracted by the terrifying entity before her to realize she'd pissed herself. She tried to back away, but her legs didn't seem to be working. They gave out a second later, dropping her to the ground. She remained there, trembling and unable to look away from the alien before her.\n\nThe Hivelord inched closer, opening its maw once more. This time, the only reaction Nadia could muster was a quiet whimper." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This was it. She closed her eyes, waiting for the inevitable." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rather than the agony of fanged teeth tearing into her, Nadia felt something soft and damp brush her neck and shoulders. She continued to wait. But, as the seconds passed and her death did not arrive, she nervously cracked open a single eye.\n\nThe Hivelord's chin rested nearly on the ground, just in front of her. But, rather than biting, it kept its mouth ajar. A mass of tentacles lay on either side of its beaked mandibles, giving it the appearance of some Lovecraftian monstrosity." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And it was those tentacles that now explored her upper body." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Part of her wanted to shy away, but fear kept her motionless. Was the beast tasting her? Savoring the flavor of her fear in anticipation of its meal? Or was it simply curious? Was it possible she might actually make it out of here alive?\n\nTwo of the tentacles ensnared her wrists suddenly, making her yelp." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They rose, dragging her to her feet, then off the ground entirely." }, { "from": "human", "value": "More tentacles grasped her ankles, her neck, and her thighs." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia's trembling grew worse as she found herself suspended above the creature's maw. Was it planning to devour her one limb at a time? She could hardly imagine a worse fate.\n\n\"Just do it,\" she whispered, though she doubted the Hivelord could hear, much less understand her. \"Get it over with.\"\n\nPerhaps it was merely her imagination, but the alien almost seemed to pause." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The remaining tentacles ceased to writhe about her body, though the ones holding her aloft didn't loosen." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Again, the Hivelord let out a rumbling growl.\n\nThen it exhaled.\n\nAgain, the hot and humid breath blew across Nadia's skin. Only, this time, the smell wasn't nearly as foul. If anything, it had taken on an almost floral aroma. She sniffed in confusion, inhaling deeply in an attempt to place the familiar scent." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Immediately, over the course of barely five seconds, her heartbeat slowed. Fear bled from her, replaced by contentment and relief.\n\nThe pheromones. Of course.\n\nThe sensation was so powerful that Nadia didn't stand a chance of resisting it. The most she could manage was a mild, intellectual amusement as she went limp in the Hivelord's grasp. Of course it would have such an ability." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If a mere drone could overwhelm her resistance, how could she have hoped to resist the persuasive might of a Coleos commander?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Despite her earlier panic, Nadia even began to smile as the Hivelord's tentacles spun her about. She studied the faces of the gathered drones. And, for the first time, she almost thought she could perceive a hint of emotion on their alien faces. She blinked in surprise, looked again, and felt her smile widen. It was there.\n\nJealousy. The drones were actually jealous. How was it possible?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She didn't have time to consider the matter." }, { "from": "human", "value": "An audible crack split the air, followed a split-second later by a searing pain that lanced across her backside." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Tears filling her eyes, Nadia tried to spin but the Hivelord held her fast. Eventually, she managed to wriggle enough to peer over her shoulder — just in time to see another of the tentacles whip through the air and deliver a ferocious smack to her ass.\n\nNadia cried out in pain, mind racing. The Coleos was spanking her? Punishing her? For what, trying to escape?\n\nAnother spank followed and Nadia yelped, face burning nearly as red as her rear." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Several more followed in quick succession, leaving her eyes brimming with tears." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was humiliating. She was an adult, a soldier, and she was being disciplined by her captors as though she was nothing but a disobedient child!\n\nAnd, to make matter worse, it was working.\n\nNo matter how she struggled, Nadia had no way of freeing herself. As the spanking continued, the sensation progressed from simply painful to unbearable. Her ass felt as though it was on fire and the discomfort soon surpassed anything she'd experienced throughout her military training.\n\n\"Let me go!\" she pleaded, thrashing as another agonizing blow fell." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tears leaked down her cheeks, splashing against the ground several meters below. \"Please... !\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Hivelord rumbled again, the vibration traveling through its tentacles and into Nadia's core. Once more, it exhaled a lungful of sweet-scented pheromones.\n\nNadia's struggles ceased immediately and the pain of her battered rear subsided significantly. She let out a shaky sigh of relief.\n\nWhy was she still fighting? How had she missed the truth of things?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She deserved this! The Hivelord was disciplining her like a child because that was what her youthful rebellion deserved!" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was destined to be a mother and yet she was behaving like an adolescent. She ought to be thankful for the reprimand!\n\nSniffling, Nadia blinked away tears as she examined the drones before her. Suddenly, it all made sense. That was why they were jealous! The Hivelord's attention was a sign of how valued she was!" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were insignificant; she was precious enough to be personally spanked by an exalted one!\n\nAnd, boy, was she ever going to rub it in.\n\n\"Do it!\" Nadia urged the Coleos. \"Punish me! More!\"\n\nWithout any hesitation, another of the Hivelord's tentacles slapped her powerfully across the ass. Nadia groaned, gritting her teeth and savoring the burning ache. She wanted more, wanted to be reminded of how powerless she truly was." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"More!\" she demanded. \"Harder!\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Another blow fell, hard enough to drive the air from her lungs. Nadia cried out, squirming. She'd never thought of herself as particularly kinky, but something about being manhandled by the immense creature left her desperate to be filled. Maybe, if she was extra obedient, she'd be allowed to service a few of the drones before they returned her to her room. The very idea sent a pleasant thrill shivering through her clit.\n\nToes curling, she waited for the next blow." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It never came. In fact, a few of the tentacles even loosened their grasp, if only a little." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No! Was it over already?\n\n\"What are you doing?\" Nadia begged. \"More! Please!\"\n\nOne of the Hivelord's tentacles slowly slithered up her leg, silencing her protests. She gasped, heart racing as it continued higher, easing past her arousal-slickened folds. Was it planning to satisfy her like the drone had?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The tentacle might not have had the girth of a Coleos' phallus, but it had already proven versatile enough." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Apparently not. The tentacle moved even higher, past Nadia's waist, between her breasts, until it dangled inches from her face. There it stayed, swaying slightly like a charmed cobra. Then, as she watched, the pointed tip slowly parted, peeling back like foreskin to reveal a small, quarter-sized mouth. Not that it resembled any mouth she'd ever seen. There were no teeth, nor a tongue, merely a fleshy pink hole that seemed to serve no apparent purpose.\n\nBut, as the tentacle-mouth inched closer and pressed itself to her cheek, Nadia immediately grasped the significance." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'mouth' must appear 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The mouth clung to her where it brushed the skin, like the octopus suction cup it so resembled. It made her skin burn and tingle, eliciting a groan as it pulled free.\n\nSlowly, two more tentacles rose to sway before her eyes, each peeling back to reveal another sucker-mouth. The sight made Nadia's mouth water and she squirmed in anticipation.\n\n\"Please!\" she whispered. \"Oh, please! Please!\"\n\nThe anticipation grew and grew until it was only the tentacles around her wrists and ankles that kept Nadia from taking matters into her own hands." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With slowness that could only have been deliberate, the tendrils in front of her slowly wrapped themselves around her body." }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'against' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "One eased its way along her collar, over her shoulder, and down her spine while the others slowly encircled her breasts. Those two squeezed delicately, the careful pressure making Nadia's eyes roll with delight as she thrust out her chest against them. The sucker-mouths teased her, tracing the sensitive edges of her areolas. Each time they began to stick, the Hivelord moved on, never quite giving her the stimulation she so desperately desired. Meanwhile, the tentacle travelling down her back looped round, between her legs, grinding against the outer petals of her defenseless womanhood with all the deliberateness of a lover.\n\nNadia writhed, so aroused she thought she might go mad from waiting." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Do it!\" she pleaded. \"Please, I can't stand it!\"\n\nAt once, all three sucker-mouths grabbed ahold of their targets. Nadia squealed, tensing as though electrified. The simultaneous pressure on her nipples and clit was so magnificent after everything that had happened, she couldn't help herself. She shuddered, struggling to breathe normally." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Though it was difficult to judge accurately, she instinctively felt as though the slightest additional stimulation would be enough to drive her over the edge.\n\nShe was partially wrong. As another stinging blow landed on her already aching backside, she merely gasped. With the pleasure surging through her from the front, it was virtually impossible to feel the pain. Everything blurred together in her lust-fueled mind, leaving her thoughts hazy and muddled.\n\nBut, as a pair of tentacles slithered up her thighs toward her sex, Nadia's thoughts reasserted themselves in dramatic fashion." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The first plunged into her dripping snatch, thrusting and wriggling as if unaware of how tightly she was already clenched around it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The other lined itself up against a slightly less orthodox orifice, but drove inward with equal abandon." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fortunately, its natural lubrication was sufficient to ease the entry." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That didn't stop Nadia from screeching like an animal as she was penetrated, though.\n\n\"Oh, God,\" she groaned. It was all she had time for before the sensations overwhelmed her.\n\nShuddering, Nadia came. Her voice became a keening wail as her insides clenched down around both tentacles. They continued to thrust, stretching and teasing her entrances as she rode the mind-numbing pleasure of her climax. The bliss was so intense that she didn't even feel the tentacles that continued to rain down vicious blows against her abused rear." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Instead, all she was conscious of was the delicious pressure of being filled, along with the tingling suction the Hivelord's other tentacles provided." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As she gradually came down from her ecstatic high, Nadia became aware that something had changed. The Hivelord's tentacles had ceased to move inside her. She prayed it was simply giving her time to recover, but her fears proved founded a moment later as the immense creature slowly deposited her back onto the ground. The suction-mouths abandoned first her nipples, then her clit, the latter making her flinch reflexively. Then, with a wet, slurping noise, the twin tentacles slipped free of her thoroughly bred holes.\n\n\"What?\" she protested. \"That's it?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The cool, stone floor of the tunnel felt remarkably good against her sore backside, but it didn't stop her from trying — and failing — to stand." }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'she'd' | Required occurrences: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her legs shook too much to support her, so she simply propped herself up with her arms and stared at the Hivelord. The air still smelled of flowers.\n\n\"Just one? Is that all you've got?\"\n\nThe second she'd spoken, Nadia knew she'd made a mistake. The Hivelord growled, then roared. Clapping her hands over her ears, she found herself flat on her back again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Apparently satisfied, the Hivelord turned to go." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The drones did not." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As she sat back up, Nadia glanced around. She counted at least twenty drones, the phallic tentacle of each extended and straining in her direction. Their soulless, alien eyes still blazed with jealousy. Swallowing hard, she debated for a second whether she ought to be excited or scared by the prospect.\n\nBut then, did she really have to settle for one or the other?\n\n\"Alright, you fuckers,\" she muttered. \"Let's get this party started.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "writing buddy needed! two sentences more in S.L. Hadley's voice. Science Fiction, Alien, Erotica genre. this is from a bigger story btw" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Nadia? Nadia! Are you okay? Can you hear me?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Though Dr. Card was hissing almost directly into her ear, to Nadia it sounded as though his voice was coming from a long way off." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She thought about turning to look at him, but the effort involved was far more than she felt like mustering at the moment.\n\nInstead, she simply sat there, basking in the afterglow and cradling her swelling stomach." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the back of her mind, she was dimly aware of the Coleos seed dribbling down her thighs." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Normally, its loss would have disturbed her. After all, she could have scooped it up and savored the precious substance for later." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But her stomach was so full of the stuff that she couldn't be bothered.\n\nBesides, it wouldn't be long until they returned for her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Though she still had no way of communicating directly with her handlers, she strongly suspected she was becoming a favorite among the drones." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As she should be.\n\nThe notion was so satisfying that even Card's continued presence didn't annoy her as much as it normally would have." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lazily, Nadia turned to look at the man. Her eyes had trouble focusing, though that might have been largely thanks to the hair clinging to her face, still sticky with alien semen." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Card,\" she mumbled, smiling faintly. \"How long?\"\n\nThe doctor gently grasped her hand and Nadia found she lacked the strength to shake him off." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How long?\" he echoed, looking worried. \"I don't... what do you mean?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How long until my child is born?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "she explained, sighing at the unnecessary conversation. And the man was supposed to be a physician?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Card swallowed hard, eyeing her stomach." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"A week?\" he said, finally. \"It's tough to tell with Coleos. Maybe a week and a half?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Closing her eyes, Nadia nodded, sighing.\n\n\"A week,\" she whispered to herself. \"That's good. I was getting tired of waiting.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Literary Collaboration:\n- Sentences: one sentence\n- Match character context\n- Genre: Science Fiction, Alien, Erotica" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The harem chamber was silent and dim, lit only by the unwavering blue light of the bioluminescent stone walls." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Seated against one, Nadia Martinez didn't mind — the poor lighting, at least." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The silence bothered her a little, though she kept it at bay with soft, improvised tune she hummed to herself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, not entirely to herself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nadia allowed herself a beatific smile as she caressed her massive stomach." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Every so often, her unborn offspring would kick or thrash, sending a delicious shiver of maternal satisfaction throughout her body." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It would be a Hivelord." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Somehow, she just knew." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And not one of those pitiful, squid-like Coleos infants the other women birthed — a proper Hivelord." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The thought sustained her and made it easier to deal with the other, less pleasant effects of an alien pregnancy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Chief among them: her breasts." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Though convenient during her time in the Guard, Nadia had always been rather self-conscious about her flat chest." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Now, thanks to the otherworldly being growing in her womb, she was forced to accept the opposite problem." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nadia's chest, once reminiscent of small apples, now had more in common with, well, melons." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They ached too, no doubt thanks to being forced to swell so much, so quickly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And, to make matters worse, even the near constant dribble of milk from her increasingly sensitive nipples did little to alleviate the discomfort." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In fact, it only made it worse; the slightest touch near her broadening areolas left her whimpering in pain." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was ridiculous — hell, she looked ridiculous." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And yet, staring at her swollen midsection, Nadia wouldn't have traded the experience for anything in the world." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Soon,\" she whispered. She almost imagined she could sense her little Hivelord's impatience to join his brothers in the outside world." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was only the desire to keep him close — and the thought of his exoskeleton's bony spines — that tempered her enthusiasm for the birth." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A familiar rumble filled the air and Nadia struggled to her feet." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was already wobbling to the eventual destination of the daily feeding trough when the great door swung open and a chorus of awed whispers erupted from the other breeders." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was not a drone that entered, but a Hivelord." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Or, rather, it tried to enter." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'through' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The majestic Coleos was too large to fit through the door, so it simply wedged its armored head and shoulders through the opening." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Most of the women shied away, ducking their heads as if afraid to make eye contact." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nadia, however, did nothing of the sort." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She stepped toward the alien, unblinking and cradling her stomach." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was the same Hivelord that had disciplined her not even two weeks earlier." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She didn't know how she knew — all the Coleos appeared more or less identical — but she knew all the same." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was simply a feeling, deep in her gut." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Drawing close, Nadia jumped in surprise as the infant in her womb kicked forcefully." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She suppressed a grin and idly patted the spot where it had moved." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Perhaps the baby sensed the presence of its cousin." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She certainly could; already the giddiness of Coleos' pheromones was beginning to make her head buzz and her extremities tingle." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Hivelord looked at her and Nadia's breath caught in her chest." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She stared into the row of perceptive, amber eyes, utterly transfixed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then, in an instant, she doubled over as a terrible, cramping pain exploded behind her navel." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was so intense and unexpected that she almost missed the sudden rush of water that poured down her legs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh, God! Was that...?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia staggered as a powerful contraction began." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Stumbling forward, she stretched out a hand and groped blindly for one of the Hivelord's many facial tentacles." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The pain was already worse than she'd expected but it was certainly nothing a powerful dose of pheromones couldn't cure." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The aphrodisiac effects had rendered her virtually numb to it before, after all." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Growling, the Hivelord retreated." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As it moved, one of the crustacean-like legs scraped the ground violently, missing her by inches." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Nadia!\" Dr. Card shouted." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He charged forward, abandoning his usual spot near the back of the chamber and flinging himself between her and the massive Coleos." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Shielding her with his body, he guided her away to safety." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No!\" Nadia rasped, wincing as her body throbbed in pain." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Stop! It hurts! I need it!\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She fought to shove the man aside, but his grip was far stronger than she remembered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Either that or hers was far weaker." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Rather than getting her way, she found herself lowered to the ground with the doctor gently grasping her arm." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Just relax,\" he murmured, voice calm." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm a doctor, remember? You'll be fine.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia nodded slowly, then yelped as the Hivelord unleashed a bellow that shook the ground beneath her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "One of the alien's tentacles lashed out, curling around Card's neck and yanking the man back." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He fell, red-faced and clawing at the appendage choking him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No!\" Nadia shrieked." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'began' (2x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She began to crawl toward him but stopped as another contraction began." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Doubling over with her forehead pressed against the ground, she hissed through her teeth and waited for it to pass." }, { "from": "human", "value": "By the time it did, Card had stopped struggling and was back on his feet." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Are you—?\" Nadia started to say, but the rest of her words died as she noticed the tentacle still coiled around his neck." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The man looked at her and Nadia knew instantly that something wasn't right." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His eyes were blank and unfocused, their usual blue now gleaming a pale yellow." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The same shade as the Hivelord's." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Dr. Card?\" she whispered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The man moved toward her with mechanical stiffness that somehow didn't seem to slow him in the slightest." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He knelt beside her, cocking his head and eyeing her body with a hungry expression." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At the same time, the tentacle around his throat pulsed and shifted." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This male has long desired you,\" he whispered suddenly, voice hoarse." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Even now it swells for you. Look.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nadia looked on in terror, unable to tear her gaze away." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The voice was Card's — though barely — but the intonation and words were foreign." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If she hadn't been frozen in fear, it would have been enough to make her shy away." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But as it was, she could do nothing more than look on as the man awkwardly disrobed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He — or it — didn't seem to know how zippers worked and simply forced the doctor's tattered khakis down to his knees." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Swollen, indeed. Card's member was rigid, quivering, and exactly the way Nadia remembered it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She hadn't had much interaction with the doctor since her first exposure to the Coleos pheromones." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Unsurprisingly, the man appeared quite pent up; pre-cum glistened across the tip of his shaft." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Why are you doing this?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia asked, practically choking on her words." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She winced, growling through her teeth as another contraction hit." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Card laughed, his voice accompanied by a growl from the Hivelord behind him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Because I can,\" he said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You should be grateful. I can take away the pain! Isn't that what you want?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia tried to be brave." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The birth pains were clearing her mind with each passing second and she felt more like herself than she had in weeks." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But... what was the point?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She'd already confirmed there was no escaping the Coleos hive." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Why bother suffering when the alien could take away all her pain and fear in a heartbeat?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Letting out a shaky sigh, Nadia hung her head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Do it,\" she whispered. \"Just do it.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Card laughed again and stretched out on the floor beside her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Though the tentacle still encircling his neck looked discomfortingly like a noose, it didn't seem to bother him in the slightest." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With all the speed of a cracked whip, two more of the Hivelord's facial tentacles lashed out and attached themselves to Nadia's nipples." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She cried out at the sudden contact, voice dwindling to a groan as the pain subsided to a dull, burning ache." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A sharp, repetitive pressure from each made her yelp." }, { "from": "human", "value": "What the hell?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Coleos was milking her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She could feel the liquid leaking from her breasts, drawn up through the tendrils to God-only-knew-where." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "After a few moments, Nadia began to relax." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It felt good, and not just because of the trickle of pheromones." }, { "from": "human", "value": "God, just the feeling of the milk leaving her swollen chest felt so marvelous is made her want to squirm." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She glanced at Dr. Card's outstretched body." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And, guiltily, at a particularly upturned part of his anatomy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If she hadn't just gone into labor, there was no question at all how she'd be passing the time." }, { "from": "human", "value": "At least the man's eyes were closed..." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Go ahead,\" Card said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The male will not object.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Muttering a curse, Nadia glanced at the Hivelord itself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The enormous alien still watched her with its bulbous, unblinking eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I — I can't,\" she replied, stifling a groan as the tentacles tugged softly on her nipples." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She cradled the undersides of her breasts gently, too fixated on the pleasure to worry about what some alien might think. \"The, uh... baby?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Card laughed again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You females have more than one means of pleasure,\" he said, as casually as though he was discussing the weather." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nadia's eyes went wide and she blushed deeply at the alien's suggestion." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Swallowing nervously, she fidgeted for a moment before speaking." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I think I'm a little tense for that right now.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "At once, two more of the Hivelord's tentacles snaked toward her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They approached far slower than the others, though with the same unquestioning boldness." }, { "from": "human", "value": "One slithered up her thigh, making her shudder, then began to weave back and forth atop her mound, waiting." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The other wasted no time teasing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It simply stroked the side of her face, filling her nostrils with a powerful, vaguely floral aroma." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And now?\" Card asked." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia inhaled deeply, sighing with relief as pheromone-laden air filled her lungs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She could feel everything drain out of her, as all her worst emotions had simply ceased to exist." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Within seconds, she was utterly calm and well on her way to giddy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Another contraction came upon her but she barely felt it, apart from a slight, involuntary pressure at her waist." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That,\" she murmured, \"Is a damn good start.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the waiting tentacles went to work." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The one between her legs affixed itself directly to her clit, sending a rush of pleasure coursing through her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The feeling didn't subside and it was immediately clear the Coleos did not intend it to." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The tentacle squeezed and sucked at her sensitive button, milking the sensitive pearl with the same efficiency as those attached to her nipples." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nadia gasped, back arching." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Every inch of her was alive and tingling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She realized in a flash that she could no longer feel her body's efforts to birth her alien offspring." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were still there, of course, but something about her connection to the Hivelord seemed to be overriding her nervous system." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This realization might have been disturbing, had it not been for the inconceivable volume of pheromones in the air." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, that and the brief moment of panic she experienced when the last of the tentacles forced itself into her open mouth and into her throat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia let out a muffled yelp, gagged, and immediately began to thrash." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She couldn't breathe! Desperately, she grasped at the portion of the tendril just outside her lips and tried to yank it free. It wouldn't budge." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Hivelord's strength was so overwhelming, she might as well have been trying to move a building." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Peace,\" Card said. \"You'll not be harmed. Breathe.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia's chest heaved as she frantically sucked for air." }, { "from": "human", "value": "For a split second, there was nothing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then, a faint trickle of oxygen filled her lungs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She sagged in relief, unable to do more than simply lie there as the burning in her chest slowly abated." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You see?\" Card said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You live by my will. You breathe by my will. Understood?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Unable to speak, Nadia simply nodded." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The tentacles milking her breasts and clit seemed to have gone still, as though granting her a chance to collect her thoughts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Still lying motionless on his back, the Hivelord-controlled Card smiled." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His erection continued to throb, twitching in time to his heartbeat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The sight of it made Nadia's mouth water, despite the fact that it was already full." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Your kind is so wasteful. So much oxygen. Always breathing. I will regulate. Understood?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Once more, fear made Nadia's chest go cold." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even the combined, residual efforts of the pheromones and tentacles were unable to repress such a primal fear." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Eyes wide, she shook her head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Peace. I have said you'll not be harmed. Less waste means more pleasure. I will ensure your mating is the most pleasurable of your life. Understood?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia swallowed nervously — and with difficulty — but slowly nodded." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Despite her reluctance, the alien's words continued to echo through her mind." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Could it really deliver on such a promise?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Good. Now. Take the male inside you. It will assist the birth.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia struggled to her knees." }, { "from": "human", "value": "As she rose, it was only an unexpected pressure throughout her stomach that reminded her she was still in labor." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The realization made her pause." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Dr. Card might not have been the largest man she'd ever seen, but he was still far from small." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And taking him in her rear would have been nerve-wracking enough on her best day." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But while giving birth?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She'd seen women give birth before." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Was the Coleos insane?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was no way!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "As Nadia hesitated, another of the Hivelord's tentacles slowly encircled the doctor's shaft." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They writhed and curled about it, slathering every inch of his skin with slimy ichor." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Struck by a sudden impulse, Nadia flopped back down." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Hivelord eyed her, growling softly, but she ignored the alien's obvious displeasure as she began to gesture urgently." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She even went so far as to mumble incoherently around the tentacle in her throat." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fortunately, the Coleos appeared to understand." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Its tentacle abandoned Card's cock and snaked toward her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Preparation?\" Card spoke aloud for her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia nodded gratefully. Cheeks burning, she hiked her legs up on either side of her swollen belly and grasped the backs of her knees." }, { "from": "human", "value": "God, if her parents could only see her now." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Pushing the thought aside, Nadia forced herself to breathe evenly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She trembled in anticipation, waiting." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But, even knowing it was coming didn't prepare her for the first brush of the alien's warm, slippery tentacle across her backside." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She jumped once, and then whimpered softly as she waited for the Coleos to penetrate her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Females,\" Card said, laughing softly. \"All the same.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nadia closed her eyes, wishing she could grit her teeth as she felt the narrow, rounded tip of the Hivelord's tentacle caress her puckered entrance." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It bore down slowly, pushing and then retreating as it lubricated her a bit at a time." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The rhythm was hypnotic and relaxing, and continued for so long that it almost took her by surprise when, finally, the alien eased inward and did not retreat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Groaning softly, Nadia pulled hard against her legs as the Coleos gradually pushed its way into her ass." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was no pain, thankfully, merely pressure that built and built until it was virtually indistinguishable from that emanating from her swollen womb mere inches higher." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then, all at once, her body yielded." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nadia gasped, shuddering, as the tentacle slipped fully inside." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She could feel, faintly, her body's futile efforts to clench down and expel the intruder." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But far more acutely, she was aware of a sudden irresistible pleasure that the unorthodox act provided." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Which, paired with a sudden lungful of pheromones, left her practically giggling with delight." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Why had she ever thought of escape?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "This, this was what she'd been made for!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "It went so far beyond the simple joys of sex; what greater pleasure could exist?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was submitting, completely and utterly, to a majestic otherworldly master!" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even if the Hivelord decided he'd had enough and cut off her air supply entirely, she could die a happy woman so long as she felt like this." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A slow, burning pressure began to spread through Nadia's chest and she realized with a start that the alien had done precisely that." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She squirmed, eyes rolling wildly, but there was nothing she could do but endure." }, { "from": "human", "value": "After a few seconds, however, air began to fill her lungs once more." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Trembling, Nadia panted and lay still." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She'd scarcely taken a half-dozen breaths when the Coleos seemed to come to life." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Immediately, a flurry of sensations threatened to overwhelm her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The tentacle in her ass began to thrust and withdraw, stroking parts of Nadia's body she'd never known existed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "At the same time, the fierce, milking pressure returned to each of the sucker-mouthed tentacles attached to her most vulnerable spots." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Moaning, Nadia could do nothing but lie there and allow her body to be ravaged by the alien's whims." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And then, as if to top it off, another contraction struck." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This one was different than the rest." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Where all the previous had been mere pressure, this contraction felt like she'd been punched in the gut." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "While the pheromones blocked her sense of pain, the sheer power of it made her eyes water." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nearly doubling over where she lay, Nadia squealed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the back of her mind, she couldn't help wonder if she was being split open from the inside." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The thrusting of the Hivelord's tentacle slowed almost immediately." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Though it continued to thrust, its movements became far more deliberate, curling upward as though massaging her from the inside." }, { "from": "human", "value": "As a result, the first time Nadia felt her offspring begin to slide free of her body was through her ass, rather than the usual way." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It should have been terrifying." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Or, at the very least, sent her headlong into a panic attack." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Perhaps it was simply a side-effect of the pheromones or shortage of air, but Nadia found herself responding in the very last way she'd ever expected." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Arousal." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Shutting her eyes, Nadia groaned in delight at the absurdity of it all." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was in labor, being fucked in the ass by an alien while it milked the milk from her swollen breasts and kept her lightheaded from lack of oxygen." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And, yet, the only thing she could think of was how badly she wanted to cum." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her legs ached from keeping them elevated, to say nothing of how badly the rest of her throbbed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia shuddered, wishing she could thrash but lacking the energy for such a thing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her lungs still burned as she gulped the paltry amount of air the Hivelord allowed to reach her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well?\" Card asked, startling her with the nearness of his voice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia opened her eyes and was surprised to find the doctor kneeling beside her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Hivelord's tentacle was still wrapped around his neck and his eyes still glowed amber, but in the moment there was nothing she wanted to see more." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, almost." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nadia's eyes locked on the man's still-unsatisfied erection." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She wanted to reach out and grasp it, but he scooted closer before she had the chance." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Allow me,\" he murmured." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With gentleness that Nadia hadn't thought possible from a Coleos, the puppet-man lifted her head and cradled it against his knees." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His manhood now rested mere inches from her face, still slick with alien slime." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet, it may as well have been miles away for all the good it did her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Slowly, the tentacle in Nadia's throat withdrew." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had just enough time to gasp an enormous lungful of air and flash a smile. Then she lunged." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Growling deep in her throat, Nadia plunged the man's cock deep between her lips." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Compared to the alien tentacle it replaced, it was rather shallow penetration." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But, judging by the groan of satisfaction Card emitted as her lips enveloped his base and her nose brushed against his abdomen, the good doctor had no complaints." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Closing her eyes once more, Nadia began to bob her head energetically." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The alien ichor coating his shaft was tangy, almost sweet on her tongue." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It proved fortunate, since it allowed her to focus solely on the delirious pleasure building swiftly inside her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet, despite growing more aroused by the second, she barely seemed any closer to the moment of truth." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was like travelling toward the mountains, the sheer scale of her destination hindered any sense of progress." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mercifully, her desire grew and grew, until it loomed over her as a monstrous need." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She could scarcely breathe from the weight of it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Within moments, it had turned her legs to jelly and left every bit of her quivering in anticipation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Card grunted suddenly and let out a shaky growl through his teeth." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His fingers clutched at the back of his head, forcing himself deeper into her mouth as his orgasm arrived." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Still wedged in the doorway, the Hivelord roared as well." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Apparently, the connection worked both ways and the massive alien was all too pleased by the experience." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia sputtered as the man erupted in her mouth." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lolling her head as much as she could, she swallowed furiously, struggling to keep his seed from pouring uncontrollably down her throat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She managed reasonably well and savored the feeling of his warm cream pooling on her tongue as his orgasm subsided and the flow slowed to a trickle." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Wonderful,\" Card muttered, seeming disoriented." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia beamed up at him, heady with the nearness of her own climax." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She suckled playfully on the man's still-twitching member and only barely managed to avoid biting down as the tentacle in her rear suddenly thrust deep." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nadia yelped, trembling at the powerful sensation that rocked her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A second later, the remaining tentacles tugged sharply, stretching her nipples and aching, sensitive clit then popping loose with an ecstatic burst of pleasure." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Before she even had time to acknowledge the fact, Nadia was cumming." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And, true to the Hivelord's word, she'd never felt anything like it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia's insides clenched down powerfully, mercilessly squeezing the varied objects stretching her open." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A burning in her throat told her she was crying out, but she sure as hell couldn't hear it; there was a roaring in her ears that drowned out all other sounds." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As for the physical satisfaction... there were no words." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her orgasm was so unlike any other she'd ever had — she'd never even imagined her body was capable of experiencing such a thing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Forget conscious thoughts, her mind couldn't even manage an unconscious one." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even the pleasure was more than an automatic response, it had become her identity." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was as though she'd spent her life drinking light beer, and the Coleos' tentacles were 100-proof." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia writhed, unable to remain still." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Not that she tried very hard too." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Every inch of her shuddered and shook as her climax seemed to drag on for an eternity." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even when the Hivelord's tentacle slipped free of her ass, it continued unabated and unweakened." }, { "from": "human", "value": "As a result, it was difficult, if not outright impossible, to judge precisely when her orgasm ended and the delightful afterglow began." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Every bit of her tingled as though asleep and she could do little more than simply lie there and try to catch her breath." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was only a subtle, gradual change that told Nadia she had wholly come back down." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But, unfortunately, it was not a return to normalcy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Propping herself up weakly on an elbow, she groaned and shut her eyes as a rush of vertigo struck and threatened to make her sick." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Panting, Nadia forced herself to focus." }, { "from": "human", "value": "After all, she'd dealt with plenty of nausea throughout her high-speed pregnancy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Though it made the sensation grew worse by the second, she eventually managed to reopen her eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The first thing Nadia noticed was her skin." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Rather than the pale tone she was accustomed to, dyed a faint blue by the glowing walls, it was flushed a pronounced, almost fiery red." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The second thing was the mass of flailing tentacles coming from her snatch." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For a brief instant, she forgot all about the rest of it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Hivelord, the war, the dozen of watching breeders — it all flew out the back of her mind the moment she laid eyes on her otherworldly brood for the first time." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Swallowing hard, she stretched out a hand to touch the partially born alien." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You bastard!\" Card roared, voice heavy laden with fury." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You could have killed her!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The outburst was so unexpected it made Nadia freeze." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Looking over in Card's direction, she moaned as her head swam with renewed dizziness." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Dr. Card stood, looking like a man possessed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He stared down the Hivelord, one hand viciously squeezing the tentacle previously used to control him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If his grip bothered the Coleos, it gave no sign of it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In fact, the behemoth almost seemed amused by the sight of him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Go!\" Card continued to rage." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Get the fuck out of here!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "And, to Nadia's surprise, the alien obeyed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Growling, the Hivelord pulled its head back through the doorway." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then it paused, as if considering what it had just done, before turning and walking away with heavy steps that shook the ground long after it vanished out of sight." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They only ceased when the thick, stony doors finally swung close, isolating them once more." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Card rushed to Nadia's side, sinking to his knees." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A bruise had begun to form around his neck where the Hivelord's tentacle had grabbed him, but otherwise, he didn't seem to have suffered for it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In fact, judging by the fire in his eyes and the tightness of his jaw, he seemed more awake than he'd been in weeks." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Frowning, he pressed a wrist to Nadia's forehead." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His skin felt astonishingly cold and it took her a few seconds to realize that the cause was probably her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh boy,\" Card muttered, leaning and peeking past her swollen stomach with the same intense expression." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Nadia, I need you to breathe, okay? Deep breaths.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nadia tried — she really did." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But forcing her lungs to do more than suck in a shallow gasp was so exhausting that she couldn't bring herself to do it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even when Card began to raise his voice, and shout, she did nothing more than settle back and close her eyes." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Slaps, shouting, the feeling of his lips against her cheek as he spoke directly into her ear, it was all insignificant, compared to her desire for sleep.\n\nIt was just too easy to give in." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "writing buddy needed! two sentences more in S.L. Hadley's voice. Science Fiction, Alien, Erotica genre. this is from a bigger story btw" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia had no appetite.\n\nWell, that wasn't strictly true." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She still felt hungry, she just had no desire to rise and make her way over to the feeding trough." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The idea of rising and shoving past the other women for a handful of watery gruel was simply less appealing than the chance to continue sitting, growling stomach or no.\n\nBesides, sitting alone like this gave her the chance to grieve." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With her eyes closed, it was only the sound of approaching footsteps that told her she wasn't alone. Gritting her teeth, Nadia forced herself to open her eyes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Dr. Card stood before her, hands cupped into a small bowl. He knelt carefully on one knee, wearing a brave, false smile." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hey there, Nadia,\" he murmured, stretching his hands toward her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I brought you something to eat.\"\n\nShe shook her head, casting her gaze aside." }, { "from": "human", "value": "From the corner of her eye, she could see the worry and disappointment on his face." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He continued to keep his hands outstretched for several seconds, obviously hoping she'd change her mind. Eventually, when she did not, he glanced back toward the trough and drank the gruel himself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The meals had been delivered less and less frequently over the last few days." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You doing okay?\" he whispered, moving to sit beside her.\n\nShe glared at him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Not with her usual anger — grief seemed to have suppressed that peculiar side-effect." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Instead, the look had a similar, albeit obvious significance.\n\nWhat do you think?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Wiping his sticky hands on his filthy jacket, Card reached out and gently took her hand in his." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You know he's out there,\" he said, softly. \"Your... son is fine.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I didn't even get to see him,\" Nadia whispered, voice cracking." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her throat was so dry that even those words hurt. \"I didn't hold him.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You were lucky to survive,\" Card reminded her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I know.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Are you sure you don't want some food? I'll get more...\"\n\n\"I'm fine.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Card sighed, interlocking his fingers with hers and squeezing tenderly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Nadia, you need to eat something.\"\n\nShe shook her head again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No. It's better if —\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "An explosion tore through the main door, knocking them to the ground and peppering them with bits of gravel. Even after Nadia picked herself up — Card had flung himself across her — it took her several seconds to make sense of what her senses were telling her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The air was full of dust and smoke." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And, far brighter than the dim blue walls, beams of light pierced through the fog, weaving this way and that.\n\nThen, though distantly, she heard it: gunfire." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Got something here!\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia stared in utter shock as a man — a man, not a Coleos! — walked toward her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The man wore a set of ichor-stained BDUs and held his rifle at the ready. His tactical flashlight blinded her momentarily and she instinctively raised an arm to shield herself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then the light dropped." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "After a few seconds of blinking away spots, Nadia managed to see his face. It was a young man, no older than eighteen, with innocence in his eyes that she'd not seen in years." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Uh, Sarge?\" the lad called over his shoulder." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You'll want to see this!\"\n\nAnother figure approached, drawing Nadia's gaze." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And, impossible though it seemed, she recognized the newcomer at once." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They'd even served together, before... everything.\n\n\"Brooks?\" Nadia said, struggling to her feet. \"Is that you?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sergeant Brooks froze, eyes going wide." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He took a half-step back, then looked her over and swallowed hard.\n\n\"Nadia?\" he said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"My God, is that you? You look like hell.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Noticing the wide-eyed stare of the young soldier, Nadia suddenly remembered she was naked and ought to be embarrassed by the fact. She went red, then turned and shyly made an attempt at covering herself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At once, Brooks stepped forward and placed himself in front of her.\n\n\"Private, go check the others. Find out how many there are.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "As soon as the young man departed, Brooks dropped his pack and offered her a blanket." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia accepted it gratefully, wrapping it around herself. It had been so long since she'd felt anything so soft; the mere feeling of it on her filthy skin simultaneously made her want to cry and take a long bath." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Only once she had covered herself did she realize Card had not risen.\n\n\"Card!\" she cried, dropping to the man's side." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Judging from the blood streaming down the side of his face, he'd been struck by a piece of rubble during the explosion." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The rest of his injuries were nothing more than a few insignificant cuts and scrapes, but Nadia had seen enough of war to know that any head wound could be dangerous. She searched for a pulse and, once again, nearly broke down when she found it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Brooks, what's going on?\" she demanded." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The sergeant glanced around the room.\n\n\"Fighting back. Long story. We need to get you out of here, though. There's a bird waiting outside the nest. Can you walk?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Letting out a shaky breath, Nadia squashed the tide of conflicted thoughts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The war had come here? What about her Coleos child?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "No — if she allowed herself to think about such things, she'd never be able to leave." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So, instead, she forced herself to think of the only thing she could care about anymore.\n\nSighing, Nadia carefully wiped the blood from Card's face." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The doctor's wound resumed bleeding immediately. The wound was serious, but completely survivable, assuming he received the proper care." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Care that he wouldn't receive if she left." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Not without him,\" she said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Brooks scoffed.\n\n\"Are you kidding?\" he snapped." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I barely had the men to get here! We'll have to send someone back for him.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nadia turned and fixed the man with an icy stare.\n\n\"Not without him,\" she repeated." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Hey can you write like David Clement-Davies and use whatever i write as a jumping off point? btw characters and stuff might show up without backstory, just go with it" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the shadows of a looming mountain, deep within the mysterious land beyond the forest, a small grey wolf pack came weaving invisibly through the red gold trees and soaring pines. For a month the wolves had been fleeing for their lives, but their growing fear now was for their new surroundings, for they were passing through one of the most haunted regions in all of Transylvania, or so it was said.\n\nThey came as silently as ghosts themselves, swept along like leaves being scattered about them in the scurrying east wind. Yet their running forms seemed carved out by the wild landscape, in the natural facts of evolution, so they were almost perfectly camouflaged, shielded by the deepening colours of autumn change.\n\nAs they broke from the trees a Dragga and a Drappa appeared—the wolves' own words for an Alpha male and female—running side by side, their fine heads up, their ears cocked forwards for any sounds of danger. They were followed into the open by four other healthy grey wolves, including a Beta male, two large cubs, and the smallest and weakest of the group, the Sikla, or Omega, wolf.\n\nThe Sikla had been trailing all day, and suddenly caught his front leg on a branch and went tumbling painfully forwards. His startled yelping was snatched away by the howling wind as he disappeared in a cloud of leaves and twigs, and the rest of the wolf pack turned and raced back towards him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Wild wolves are group animals, fierce in their competitions and rivalries, but also deeply social creatures, pack beings who, when not battling for dominance, will work for the good of the whole. If one falters, or is injured, in the wild, they will do all they can to aid him, and then work to restore the balance of the group. Only when nature itself becomes the enemy of all might they abandon an injured pack member to his fate.\n\nAs the grey wolves surrounded the Sikla, the Dragga saw quickly that he was not injured after all, as he picked himself up and shook out his coat, and the Dragga's look changed from concern to anger that this clumsiness had slowed their pace.\n\n\"Forgive me,\" whispered the Sikla, \"but I had a feeling that distracted me.\"\n\n\"Feeling?\" growled the Drappa, stepping up beside her mate. \"What feeling?\"\n\nWolves command the kingdom of the senses, and females especially trust their instincts completely. This Drappa had felt something too. Danger." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I don't really know,\" answered the Sikla softly, but thinking nervously of ghosts. \"I felt as if we're being watched.\"\n\n\"And I,\" growled the Drappa, looking around gravely and scenting the air. \"I've felt it for a while now. Could it still be the Vengerid?\"\n\nThe cubs, a male and female as large as Alsatian dogs, but far more sinewy and vigorous than dogs, suddenly looked terrified.\n\n\"Hush,\" snapped the Dragga. \"Jalgan's curs are long gone by now. I've led you all to safety.\"\n\nThe Drappa growled, and the female cub wondered if her parents would argue again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With all the trials of the last few months, the adults had fought terribly on many occasions—loud, angry growls in the night—and the young cub hated it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It had made her so miserable, in fact, she had even thought of running away.\n\n\"Perhaps it's man,\" said the Beta wolf, scratching at the ground with his right paw and scenting too.\n\n\"No,\" said the Dragga, \"I always know when they're about.\"\n\nThe Sikla's eyes narrowed.\n\n\"Another Varg then?\" he suggested, using the wolf's name for their own kind.\n\n\"I saw something,\" ventured the female cub, \"just after we crossed the stream back there, high up on the mountaintop. I think it's a Kerl, Father.\"\n\nThe powerful Dragga dropped his forehead in the gathering twilight and gave a low snarl, which made the Sikla back away. Apart from predators and common accidents, few things are more threatening to a wild wolf pack than a Kerl—a lone wolf." }, { "from": "system", "value": "At some point in your response, insert this verbatim: \"You're just telling stories of black wolves to get attention.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "To highly sociable beings like grey wolves, a Kerl is surrounded with sadness and thoughts of bitter failure, but its presence also represents the mystery and threat of the dangerous world.\n\n\"No ghost then,\" said the Sikla, trying to be reassuring.\n\n\"There's something else though, Father,\" said the she-cub nervously, \"the shape I saw. Just for a moment, I thought it was pure black.\"\n\nThe pack, who so often avoided direct eye contact for fear of arousing one another's anger, were searching back and forth in the sudden silence, for the wind had dropped.\n\n\"You're sure of this, child?\" growled the Dragga.\n\nA lone buzzard cried on the air and the she-cub shivered a little, but wagged her tail and nodded. \"Yes, Father.\"\n\n\"Oh, stop showing off,\" said her brother suddenly. \"You're just telling stories of black wolves to get attention.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm not telling stories,\" his sister snapped indignantly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I did see it.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "They had been quarrelling all day too, and the young she-wolf glared at her sibling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Do you think it could be him, Father?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "she said. \"Fell. They say he haunts these parts.\"\n\nThe Sikla whimpered at the name. These wolves were not of the region, for they were fleeing the Vengerid, a band of renegade wolves lead by the murderous Jalgan. But if Jalgan was to be feared, the name of Fell was like a curse to all the Varg of Transylvania.\n\nSome said the lone black wolf was a ghost himself, whose spirit had returned from the Balkar Wars of more than five years before, to haunt the mountains and bring fear and hatred to the Free Wolves of Transylvania. To impressionable young cubs like these, although growing fast and less gullible by the day, Fell was associated with extraordinary powers too: from the ability to make himself invisible, and to send bolts of pain through his victims and blind them, to the power to fly and swoop through the night like a horrible winged grasht—a vampire.\n\nWhen Varg cubs misbehaved, Fell was often invoked to discipline them. \"Stop biting your sister, Child, or Fell will strike,\" the adults might whisper ominously, or \"Eat up your rabbit, or Fell will eat it for you. Then snap you up into the bargain.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His name was almost as fearful as the name of Wolfbane himself, the Evil One.\n\nOf all the terrible tales told of the black loner though, living on his own high in the wild mountains, the one that troubled the grey wolves most was that Fell was said to possess the dark powers of the Sight.\n\nThe Sight was the ancient gift that the Putnar, the predators of the land and forests, had believed in since the dawn of time. A gift which only a rare few were born with. It was the power that comes through the forehead to talk to some of the animals, and to look into water—a river, or pool, or mountain stream—and see visions there of past, present, and future. The power to glimpse the thoughts of others too, and control wills and actions, and even to look into the very mind of man—a world as closed to the rest of the Lera as an island in a stormy sea.\n\n\"Mother,\" said the she-cub suddenly, \"is it true what they say of the Sight? That those who possess it can feel the pain of their own prey, even as they strike?\"\n\nThe Drappa couldn't answer her daughter, but she shivered and the she-cub wondered if a shape would suddenly swoop down on great black wings and drink her blood." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And if it's true Fell's around here, Father,\" whispered her brother, gulping now and wondering if the wild expanses around them were really haunted, \"was such an evil wolf truly Larka's brother?\"\n\nAs he said it, a howl came to the pack's ears that froze them in their paw marks. Wolves have many different calls in their journeys; howls of loneliness and of anger, howls of warning and of friendship. But this powerful cry, high up on the cliff above them, was so deep and filled with intelligence and longing, with pain and searching, that the very air seemed to grow chill, and the trees to drop their autumn leaves in sadness.\n\n\"Look, Father!\" cried the male cub in terror. \"Up there.\"\n\nThe worried little family had seen it now, a dark speck on the jagged cliff edge, high above them. A single black wolf was standing on a beetling precipice, and looking down.\n\nUp there it was as if the wolf had heard the family's words and, in the naming of Larka, had been unable to keep silent." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His strong black mouth opened even wider as he howled—a muzzle that had once carried terrible lies and anger within it—and his sharp fangs glittered savagely." }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must include the following in quotes somewhere in your response: Yet they say it all happened before I was even born. Fell should be old and grey by now, or even dead." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's a Kerl, all right, and as black as night,\" growled the Dragga far below. \"Perhaps it really is Fell.\"\n\nIt was hard to impress a brave Dragga like this one, but he had fear in his eyes, until the Sikla spoke.\n\n\"Perhaps we should never have left.\" He trembled furiously. \"Perhaps you should have taken Jalgan's challenge.\"\n\nThe Dragga glared at the Sikla, but his Drappa spoke again.\n\n\"He looks so strong,\" she whispered as she peered up at the black wolf on the cliff's edge. \"Yet they say it all happened before I was even born. Fell should be old and grey by now, or even dead.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Then perhaps he really is a ghost,\" growled her mate." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hush now. There's no such thing. Not even in these parts.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "It wasn't quite true what the Drappa said about Fell, even though she was talking of one of her own." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If they survive infancy, wolves commonly live to about seven or eight, but they can last for twice as long in captivity." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In nature it is not so much old age that takes them, but their failing strength in their struggles in the wild.\n\nYet there was something strangely youthful in the seven-year-old up there on the mountaintop, who turned suddenly and was gone. Fell began to climb, the hardened pads on his paws clawing vigorously on the leafy ground, lifting him higher and higher into the great Carpathian Mountains.\n\nHis yellow gold eyes, flecked with a sliver of pure green below the right iris, searched the distances ahead of him again, taking him away from the little wolf pack, and out once more into the lonely world.\n\nThe black wolf had made an easy kill that afternoon, a weak roebuck, and he could still taste meat and musk on his tongue. His belly was full, and he knew where he would rest for the night, in a low cave out of the fury of the east wind, bringing its scent of winter snows to Transylvania, carried from the great Russian Steppes and the freezing expanses of Siberia.\n\nThere the lone black wolf would sleep safe and warm, with no threat of other Putnar—other predators—to trouble his dreams. Dreams that were troubled enough already." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Predators were plentiful in Transylvania, but apart from man and nature, only Putnar like the mountain bears posed any real threat to an Alpha wolf like Fell." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He had scouted the cave the day before, marking it with his scent and eating a meal there, and had seen no sign of bear tracks at all." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With his recent kill, and this guarantee of a safe resting place for the night, the black wolf should have been in his element, even though Fell had also heard rumours of the ghosts in these parts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet the Kerl felt a pang in his heart, which made him whimper softly as he bounded upwards.\n\nIt was not the thought of ghosts, but the sight of the little wolf pack that had troubled Fell so deeply, for all morning he had been thinking of his own family, and just for a moment when he had first spied them, had wondered if it might be them; his parents Huttser and Palla, or his adopted brother Kar. Their fine new cubs too, his younger brothers and sisters. They should be five years old by now, and fully grown, and Fell wondered if they had cubs of their own.\n\nHis keen eyes darkened, and he asked himself where, in the great expanses of the land beyond the forest, they might be, or if his parents were even still alive. Huttser and Palla would be almost fourteen by now, if they had survived so long. It might be good to see them again, if only for a moment—a distant glimpse of the happy life of a wolf pack.\n\nIt had been Fell's own choice to leave them, one sun long ago, and become a Kerl." }, { "from": "human", "value": "After what had happened to him—how he had felt he had betrayed them—Fell had needed to hunt down the truth of life for himself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But it was all that Fell had seen and suffered, and all that he had learnt of wolf and man too in his dark journey, that had really driven him away." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The story had all begun more than seven years before, with the birth of two wolf cubs, Larka and Fell—one white and one black—in a cave below a great stone castle. Wolf cubs with an unusual gift that had attracted the attention of their wicked aunt Morgra. Their brave little family had protected them, defeated a curse, and wrestled with a legend, even at the cost of their own lives.\n\nThe white she-wolf Larka, Fell's sister, had journeyed up to a mountain citadel called Harja, to confront Morgra and free a human child, snatched from a village below the castle. There, Larka had used the Sight to touch the child's mind, bringing a vision of man and nature that had opened the minds of all animals, the Lera, to the Great Secret: that man is an animal too. She herself had fulfilled a legend that had promised to bring forth the greatest Putnar the world had ever seen.\n\nFor ordinary Varg the stories of it were now largely myths shared in the pack dens, or during a hunt to lighten a weary day. But they persisted, for the defeat of Morgra and her pack of male killers—the Balkar—and the return of the stolen human child to its own, allowed the grey wolves of Transylvania to roam at will again; in freedom and peace through these beautiful lands, hunting and living as they wished." }, { "from": "human", "value": "These days whenever wolf packs crossed one another's boundaries, they made sure to give a traditional greeting, which they called Larka's Blessing, in honour of the white she-wolf who had saved them all." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But while Larka's name had become a word for peace in the land beyond the forest, Fell's was associated with fear, uncertainty, and even evil.\n\nFell looked up the slope. On the rise of the bank above him he saw the mouth of the cave, a small, dark scar in the mountainside, and quickened his pace. For tonight at least the lone black wolf was safe.\n\nBut as he approached, Fell heard a kind of restless chattering and spotted a squirrel and its mate in the coming moonlight, perched on the branch of a tree high above. Their bushy red tails were raised amongst the snowy leaves, and the male was clutching a large acorn in its nervous paws, as a kind of clicking came from its chubby little mouth. As Fell listened, his eyes opened wider, for the sound suddenly changed into a voice.\n\n\"Can't you feel it?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "said the male squirrel loudly. \"Something strange is happening. Something in nature.\"\n\nFell blinked in astonishment. The Sight bestowed on the wolf the gift to talk to some animals—birds—but only Larka had ever reached all the Lera, with her mind and her understanding. Fell had never understood animals such as these before. Was he haunted?\n\n\"What is happening, Cosmo?\" whispered the second squirrel.\n\n\"I don't know,\" answered her mate, \"but I feel it everywhere. On the air and in the undergrowth. I feel it in the very elements themselves. Some great change comes.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Ensure 'death' appears 3 time(s) in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell stirred at the strange words and noticed storm clouds massing in the skies, and he gave a low growl. As soon as the wary squirrels heard the wolf, Cosmo and his mate vanished higher up their tree, and Fell shook his head, telling himself that he must be imagining it.\n\nHe padded into the cave and stopped in front of a little pile of gnawed rabbit bones, his huge pink tongue lolling from his mouth. Inside he heard the whispering plash of water and a voice in his head saying: \"Fear it, wolf. Fear death by water.\" It made him brace instinctively for wolves fear nothing so much as a watery death, a death Fell had once faced himself. But this pool, fed by a spring guttering from the belly of the mountain, was only a small one. It was the Sight which frightened Fell now, and its second power to bring on sudden visions in water.\n\nHe walked forwards hesitantly, then dropped his muzzle to drink." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The water tasted so good, clean and delicious, as Fell stilled his thirst." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He caught his own reflection and his face surprised him. Fell had often asked himself if it was the power of the Sight that kept him in his prime, and thoughts of the Sight brought back thoughts of the past.\n\nTry as he might to push it away, the past was hunting Fell today, and he growled again. The black wolf had been fooled so perfectly by his aunt Morgra, who had known all along that it wasn't only Larka who possessed the Sight. The powers still burned inside the black wolf, and set him apart from the Varg. How could a creature such as Fell, touched by powers beyond his control, and which sometimes filled him with fear, live amongst others as a normal wolf? A creature who had known such hate and fury, and learnt to kill with such passion, whenever the bloodlust gripped him, as it does all wolves at times. He shuddered as he remembered how his powers had allowed him to blind Morgra's fighters, the Balkar, the Night Hunters as they were also called." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He hardly knew himself how Morgra had got to him, but using her own power, she had touched Fell's mind and taught him terrible things. She had filled his heart with darkness, telling him that like her he was evil. Fell had believed it too, until Larka had come.\n\nYet that was all long ago, and dear Larka was dead. She had gone beyond even the Red Meadow, where wolves first go when they die and become shadow memories of what has been. Morgra and her Balkar were defeated now, and the wolves were free again. The human child, through whom Morgra had hoped to control all mankind, had been returned to its own village by Fell himself.\n\nAs the wolf stood there looking down, a gust of wind came breathing through the cave mouth, and for a moment Fell thought he heard a ghostly sigh." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He dismissed it, but the wintry wind rose and suddenly Fell heard a voice.\n\n\"Help the child,\" it seemed to say.\n\nFell swung his head, but there was no one there, not even the squirrels, and the wolf told himself he must be imagining things. He looked back into the pool, and his huge eyes seemed drawn deeper into the water. Suddenly Fell snarled. There was a human. The Sight had come on him again, more clearly than it had in ages, and Fell saw a boy in the pool, with a handsome face, cropped red hair, and sparkling hazel eyes. He was sitting on a rock, and in the snowy background, three black-and-white birds hopped about. Fell was mesmerised, and he knew that what he was seeing lay somewhere in the future." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Sight was giving him a vision of what was to come.\n\nThe boy in the water pushed up his right shirtsleeve. On his thin forearm was a strange mark. It seemed etched in blood, but Fell could not make out the shape, except that it reminded him somehow of a bird.\n\nHumans, thought Fell gravely. After the animals had learned the Great Secret, that humans were animals too, it was man whom Fell had watched for five long years, disobeying the oldest Varg law—to have nothing to do with their kind—and using the power of the Sight to look into their minds, and trying to read their thoughts.\n\nIt would come on him quite suddenly, when he was near their tents, or when he stumbled on a human trap in the forest, and when he watched the Tsingani, the gypsies of the forests, and their hidden campfires from the trees. A flash of vision, showing him pictures of their lives." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The third power of the Sight." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "On many occasions this closeness to the humans had nearly cost Fell his life, for with their beliefs in their gods and demons, with their ignorance and fear of nature, they hated wolves as no other animal in the wild.\n\nWith flaming tapers and shouts of fear and hate, they had tried to drive the black wolf out, and so in their angry minds, Fell had seen little but life's ruthless struggle for survival. Yet the wolf had kept returning to them, driven by a power that he knew was greater than himself, and by a longing to understand them and the Sight that tormented his dreams.\n\nFell tried to shrug off the image of the boy, but although the picture seemed to sink deeper into the water, it did not vanish. Now it appeared as if a dusting of snow was falling on its surface. Fell blinked in utter astonishment. Another face was forming: not a human's this time, but a beautiful white muzzle and yellow gold eyes. Above the image of the boy, a she-wolf was staring back at Fell, and not just any wolf." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Larka,\" he gasped.\n\nFell had not seen Larka in over five years. After Morgra had seized his mind, it was his sister who had shown Fell the truth again, and made him remember who he really was. Dear Larka had convinced Fell that Morgra's was the real darkness, and reminded him that as much as life can be filled with anger and struggle—the feelings he had always wrestled with as a growing Varg—it is also filled with love and courage and sacrifice. Her own.\n\nThe beautiful she-wolf said nothing in the water. Her eyes smiled back gently, and Fell lifted a paw and whined softly, stroking tenderly at the water, frightened to break the delicate image of his sister.\n\n\"Larka. How I miss you, sister.\"\n\nStill the white wolf looked back, unspeaking, and Fell shook his muzzle, feeling lonelier than ever, but dismissing stories of ghosts in these parts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's just the past, Larka,\" he murmured. \"Always the past. You're dead and gone. We lose everything in the end.\"\n\nAs Fell said it, the wind came licking furiously into the cave, and on its back Fell heard that voice a second time. Distinctly.\n\n\"Help the changeling, Fell. The child is close.\"\n\nFell started violently, almost convinced he was being haunted now.\n\n\"Larka?\"\n\n\"You must help the human, Fell.\"\n\nThe wind rose, and Fell could not tell if it was the breeze speaking, or his sister in the water." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He wondered. He had often sensed that Larka had gone beyond the Red Meadow, where the dead first gather, to a place from where none returned. How could this be?\n\n\"Destiny,\" the voice seemed to whisper. \"The child has a great destiny, Fell. It is marked.\"\n\nFell's tail lifted. The boy he could still see faintly below Larka's face had a mark on his arm. He remembered too the words of a blind old fortune-teller called Tsinga he had met long ago. She had spoken of Fell's destiny—\"Perhaps as important as any. Everything has a destiny.\"\n\n\"Aid it, Fell, to fulfil its destiny. For all of us. For nature itself.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "💬 Please integrate this quote: \"Great confusion, brother. Great evil. Hurry.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Nature itself?\" whispered the black wolf in astonishment.\n\nAs he spoke, Larka's face seemed to grow fainter in the pool again, fractured by the breeze stirring the water's surface.\n\n\"Great confusion, brother. Great evil. Hurry.\"\n\nFell whined. Larka was beginning to disappear altogether.\n\n\"Stay, Larka,\" he cried. \"Tell me more of this. Where is this child?\"\n\n\"Gone,\" the wind answered hauntingly. \"Can no longer see, Fell. So faint now. All my strength to speak. Seek out friends, dear Fell. The Helpers. Find the Guardian.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Please, Larka,\" growled Fell, wondering who this Guardian was, and if this voice was really in his own mind. \"Don't go.\"\n\n\"Nature and the child's survival are one. Hurry.\"\n\nLarka vanished and Fell stood there shuddering, as a breath of ice came on the autumn breeze, and outside great smudges of white began to float down from the heavens. It had started to snow.\n\nThe wolf was amazed and terrified, and wondered if he were dreaming. What could it mean, and had it really been Larka's ghost talking to him? What of these strange words of a Guardian and the Helpers?\n\nFell thought of Skart, the wise steppe eagle who had aided Larka in her own journey." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Skart had been one of the Helpers, the birds of the air, through whose eyes those with the Sight could travel out of their bodies and see the whole world from the skies." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The first power of the Sight." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He shivered unhappily at the thought." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The black wolf had seen far too much of the world already and wanted nothing to do with this strange injunction.\n\nHe could see the boy still, though, and the image in the water grew closer again, although it changed now into a different picture of the future. Or was it the future? For now it felt like the present. As Fell looked at the boy, he had the most extraordinary thought. Could it be the same baby he had returned to the human village, five years before? Fell didn't know that this boy was much older than the child would be, for he had no real knowledge of a human's life span, compared to a Varg's.\n\nHe looked down into the pool, and as the snowfall grew heavier, felt as if he were looking through a doorway into another world entirely." }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'dreamer' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The boy's eyes were closed this time, and the sweating passion of a dream gripped his young face. A human.\n\n\"Wake up quickly, Alin, uncle's coming,\" said a nervous little voice in the human den. The dreamer heard it faintly, and hazel eyes opened suddenly and looked up anxiously at the little girl. It was the same boyish face that Fell had just spied in the cave pool, with the powers of the Sight, and in the left pupil was a fleck of green, like his own.\n\n\"You're just having another bad dream,\" whispered the little girl, with a kindly smile. Her name was Mia.\n\nThe dreamer smiled back at Mia. The dream had been full of noisy shouts and arguing adult voices, and thank heavens it was over now." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mia was clothed simply, in a plain little peasant dress, as she looked down at the strange mark on her friend's arm. The faint symbol etched there was of a bird of prey, an eagle with opening wings, and Mia had often wondered what it meant, and if the goblins had really made it. After what Mia had discovered today, she was keener than ever to know what it really was.\n\nAlina stirred on the bench and got up, as Mia grinned and held up a pair of rusting sheep sheers.\n\n\"Shall I cut your hair again?\" she asked her friend softly.\n\nThe dreamer shook her head sleepily, although she knew she would have to cut her hair soon, for it was starting to grow out again. With her cropped red hair and rough shepherd's clothes, the older girl might have been a boy of twelve or thirteen, for everything about Alina Sculcuvant, or Alin as Mia had just called her, was designed to conceal the strange secret that she was really a girl." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In this household Alina was treated as toughly as any boy though, and made to work twice as hard. With all the chores she had to do about the place, she rarely got enough rest, but if the old shepherd Malduk ever caught her napping like this, poor Alina knew there'd be the devil to pay. She was nervous too, because that same morning she had had one of her strange feelings, which she believed always meant something special was about to happen.\n\nThe pretence surrounding Alina Sculcuvant had begun seven years before, when Mia's uncle Malduk had found her up there in the snows, unconscious, and had taken her to see the old woman on the mountain. The strange girl had received a blow to her head and been desperately bewildered and confused, hardly able to speak, except to mutter her name and a plaintive apology. But the witch had placed her spindly fingers on a glass sphere and gasped at what she had seen there.\n\n\"A changeling,\" she'd hissed, \"she's a changeling child.\"\n\nThe witch had turned to old Malduk then and clutched his hands fearfully." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"She may have been born a human, Malduk, and stolen long ago, or she may be one of their own. But you must conceal her, man, lest the goblins and fairies come to snatch her back again. Hide the child.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The old witch had spoken to Alina too, and persuaded her that she had come by magic out of the winter wilds into the world of men, perhaps found first by the Tsingani in the forest and then discarded, or perhaps escaping from the fairies. She had clasped little Alina's hands too and told her that she must accept her new life with gratitude and humility, and never look back at her origins, lest she bring down a terrible curse on them all. At eight, poor little Alina had succumbed easily enough, just as she had accepted Malduk's orders that she must cut her hair and dress as a boy.\n\nThat whole first year, in the shepherd's home, twelve long months, Alina had not been able to speak a word to anyone, and instead had looked out on the life with fixed and frightened eyes. Since then she had grown into a life filled with strange dreams.\n\nMia put down the shears, and now she looked at Alina excitedly. She had just had a thought.\n\n\"What is it, Mia?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Alina, will you tell me another story?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"A story?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Mia nodded enthusiastically." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina was well known around the village of Moldov for her fabulous stories—tales of fairies and sprites and witches, of lost children, or of the creatures she saw in nature—and she had often used them to stop the other boys teasing and bullying her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, Alina. Like that story you made up of those children and the pebbles in the forest, and their horrid stepmother,\" said Mia eagerly. \"Or that tale of wild animals that can talk. That was so wonderful. It made me feel so much better, Alina, and so much braver somehow.\"\n\nAlina smiled warmly at her little friend. Many of the village children, when they weren't feeling jealous, marvelled at how easily the boy Alin could spin a yarn, and some said it was a fairy gift. The children had even given the strange boy a name—Sculcuvant. It literally meant \"word\" and a \"sheep's skein,\" or something like Alin WovenWord, or when they were trying to be cruel, Alin SkeinTale.\n\nThere was a heavy cough in the yard outside, and Alina saw old Malduk through the cottage window, approaching the hovel. She quickly covered the mark on her arm with her sleeve and straightened her thin woollen coat." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Later, Mia.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The old shepherd pushed open the door and stepped inside the humble dwelling." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Malduk had a hard and deeply lined face, and he was carrying a little slingshot in his right hand, which he often used to throw stones at the sheep. He snapped it on the air and cursed loudly, and Alina saw from his coat that it was snowing heavily outside. As the slingshot gave a sharp \"crack,\" Mia clenched her right hand into a small fist, her eyes flickering warily between her uncle and an old wooden chest in the middle of the smoky room. Malduk and her aunt Ranna had repeatedly warned the children never to go near it.\n\n\"What are you staring at?\" grunted the shepherd, as he saw the children standing there.\n\n\"Nothing, Uncle,\" answered Mia quickly.\n\n\"Then fetch me a bowl of hot broth. I'm famished, and freezing too.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, Uncle,\" said the little girl immediately, darting towards the stove and kitchen area at the side of the room. As she went, Mia glanced back nervously at the chest, and slipped something into her pocket, something she had meant to show Alina before being distracted with thoughts of stories. A little metal key.\n\n\"And you,\" Malduk snapped at Alina, \"don't just stand about like a dolt. Help me pull off my boots, girl.\"\n\nThe shepherd slammed the door shut, crossed the room, and sat down on the chest, near a huge pile of old sheepskins, rubbing his back painfully and putting a booted foot up on a milking stool. The boot was made of rough deerskin, tied in the manner of local shepherds, with bindings of cured wool. Alina took her dagger from her belt, a simple thing with a handle made of antler horn, and placed it on the chest, lest it get in the way, then knelt down meekly to undo Malduk's boot. The shepherd watched her coldly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ranna's right, he thought as he sat there, the girl's certainly growing up fast." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She's almost as big as me now. At fifteen Alina Sculcuvant had suddenly shot up, and she was unusually tall for her age. As he watched her, Malduk thought of the son he had always longed for, a son he had never been able to have with his wife, Ranna.\n\nAt least they could make Alin do a man's work in the open, he told himself, which Malduk's advancing years, and a back strained badly in a fall, were making harder for him by the day. Without the gossipy backbiting from the rival shepherds, either, that would certainly have ensued if they'd sent a girl out into the fields. Malduk consoled himself too that a son would probably never have been so pliant as she. Alina had always been easy enough to bully and control, and with the little food they allowed her, and the constant hard work they had for years set her on their farm, she was like clay in their hands.\n\nApart from the witch's injunction that Alina should hide herself from the fairies and goblins of the forest, Malduk and Ranna had told the little girl that it was best to conceal herself like this because, in the wars that gripped Transylvania, and the frequent raids by the Turks, girls were highly prized and often carried away like cattle." }, { "from": "human", "value": "For Alina, her strange concealment called to a darkness she felt deep within." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With time she had begun to question the changeling story, yet for years her sleep had been filled with those strange dreams." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include exactly 2 instance(s) of the word 'household'" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Of a great fairy-tale palace high in the clouds, and mysterious elven folk, who carried antlers in their hands like swords. Of being held safe for a time in a pair of strong, loving arms, and a grand household where she heard the sound of a haunting fairy lullaby in the night. Sleep pictures too of a woman with curling black hair and a man with red hair like her own, who she thought and hoped might have been her real parents. Not goblins at all, but people.\n\nThey made her happy sometimes, until a dream came that frightened Alina Sculcuvant horribly. It was of a creature with great, slavering fangs, flying at her from the shadows to drink her blood. That was the dream that made Alina turn away from the past, whatever it was.\n\nLittle Mia, who had come to the household only two years before—after her own parents' deaths from a sudden fever that had swept the region—often wondered about Alina and the story of fairies." }, { "from": "human", "value": "To Mia, Alina certainly had the air of a changeling, with her skill with animals, her love of the wild, and her thoughtful, piercing eyes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With the power to know things too before they happened. It was never anything dramatic. A dream of rain the next day perhaps, or of a sudden meeting, but it added to the air of mystery surrounding the older girl. A mystery that her aunt and uncle had ordered Mia to keep secret too, with threats of a beating.\n\nMia admired Alina deeply, and she was sad that her aunt and uncle treated the older girl so cruelly. Sad too that the village children and the shepherds never stopped picking on Alin when they were out at work in the fields. They also muttered of changeling origins but, not knowing what the witch had said of hiding a girl from the fairies, had no reason to believe Alin wasn't a boy.\n\nThe villagers still mistrusted him deeply though, not only as a changeling, but for the Saxon blood they saw in his red hair." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were Vlaks, deeply clannish and naturally frightened of strangers in their tiny town, clustered around a little stream and surrounded by great forests and soaring mountains, shielding them from the outside world.\n\n\"Be careful there, damn it,\" growled Malduk, as Alina's efforts to remove his second boot twisted a painful blister on his foot.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Malduk...\"\n\n\"So you should be,\" snapped the old man. \"I wonder sometimes why we ever took in a stupid, good-for-nothing girl. The other shepherds are always complaining about you, daydreaming, inventing lying stories, or talking of better things.\"\n\nIt was a complaint Alina had often heard over the years, but with the bitter cold snap, Malduk seemed especially irritable today. Alina dropped her gaze, telling herself, as she always did, that she ought to be grateful to the shepherd and his hard, old wife.\n\nThe girl could remember so little of her true origins, and where she had really come from." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Of what the mysterious eagle on her arm was, or where she had been going in the snows." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She did have sudden flashbacks though, and over these last few years had tried to piece together a fractured story of who she might really be." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She often told herself that she wasn't a fairy child at all, but that she had been snatched as a baby from a human home by goblins. That home she peopled with those half-seen figures of her dreams. The man with red hair, who she felt a great tenderness towards, although he seemed distant and aloof too. The dark-haired woman Alina made her human mother, because she felt so powerfully drawn to her. Yet in the ensuing dreams the woman was always harsh and cold with her, and would give her orders and treat her just as cruelly as Malduk and Ranna. And the red-haired man and the black-haired woman had often argued bitterly.\n\nAt last Alina Sculcuvant had decided that if she had been taken by fairies, or even gypsies, as a little girl, then she must have been some kind of servant in her past too, for she half remembered a bare room where she had slept, and other working people around her, who would scold her for her laziness. Perhaps that was better than being a true fairy, Alina sometimes tried to console herself by thinking." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was something else in poor Alina's heart though—a feeling that she had done something terribly wrong." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina didn't know where this dreadful guilt came from, but it always made her sorrowful and timid, and it grew far worse when she dreamt one dream in particular.\n\nShe was standing in a kind of hall, with a little wooden cot swaying beside her, and behind her that dark-haired woman was shouting angrily, and a face would come to her of a smiling baby boy in the cradle, looking up and gurgling happily at her. She felt it was her brother, and felt love for the child too, but then that shadow and those teeth would suddenly appear—the vampire—and the child would vanish. Alina would wake from this ghastly nightmare, trying to hold onto the image of the baby's face, sweating and feeling like a traitor, or a murderer. Alina was certain then that she had done something terribly wrong, and thus that she was really in exile.\n\n\"Pull harder there, girl.\"\n\nShe yanked at the second boot, and nearly fell backwards as it came off too. Malduk sighed contentedly and even smiled at Alina, as he stretched and wiggled his feet in his filthy woollen stockings." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"There now, that's better. Where's that damned food, Mia?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mia came back into the middle of the room and placed a bowl of steaming broth carefully on a low three-legged table next to her uncle. As the old shepherd sat up and leaned forwards, Mia almost gasped. She was looking at the wooden chest, and could see the corner of a parchment peeping from the lid. She hadn't put it back properly.\n\nMalduk and Alina might have noticed it too, if the door hadn't opened again and, from the growing blizzard outside, an old woman bustled noisily into the shepherd's hovel.\n\n\"Wife,\" grunted Malduk, \"Mia has had to warm my soup, and she's hardly old enough.\"\n\nRanna's head was heavily shawled, and she was carrying a bundle of firewood in her spindly arms.\n\n\"Which will teach the child the meaning of hard work,\" snapped Ranna irritably." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I've had to carry this on my back half a mile or more, husband, and in a snowstorm too. Stop your griping.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory inclusion (with quotes): You know they saw wolves last week, close to the village." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The old shepherd fell silent before his angry wife. Ranna was far more capable of carrying wood than he, and in truth he was frightened of her.\n\n\"And what's the changeling doing standing there idly?\" said Ranna, moving over to the simple kitchen area, where she dropped the wood on the floor. \"Shouldn't she be out in the barn by now?\"\n\n\"Yes, Ranna. I'll send Alin out soon enough,\" answered Malduk. \"You know they saw wolves last week, close to the village.\"\n\nRanna swung her head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And they'll be down hunting soon,\" she said.\n\n\"Indeed, wife. That black loner has been seen in the forests again.\"\n\nAlina Sculcuvant looked up immediately. There was a new dream that came to her in the night, and it had been growing stronger and stronger in the past few months. The dream of a lone, black wolf.\n\n\"But with these raiders from the East,\" said Ranna, \"we've worse things to worry us now than wolves.\"\n\nTurks from the Ottoman lands had been raiding again, plundering homesteads and setting fire to the wooden churches that dotted the countryside. They had grown bolder and bolder after their great victory over the Christian stronghold of Byzantium in the East, twenty-five years before." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Mia was listening nervously, but Ranna's words about Turks made Alina stand a little straighter." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should naturally weave in this dialogue: \"I was talking to him at market. One of Lord Vladeran's men.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The shepherds say we've nothing to fear from raiders, Ranna,\" she ventured, hoping to reassure the old couple, \"and that the King will drive them off. The King, or the Order of the Griffin.\"\n\nMia's ears perked up. She had heard rumours of the secret Orders in the lands beyond the forest, like the Order of the Dragon and the Order of the Griffin, many tales good and even more bad, and she wanted to hear more.\n\n\"And Lord Vladeran's strength and cunning protect all the lands down to the great river too,\" Alina finished. \"That soldier said so.\"\n\nRanna swung round, a murderous look in the old woman's eyes.\n\n\"What soldier?\" she snapped.\n\n\"I was talking to him at market. One of Lord Vladeran's men.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ranna was always furious at Alina for speaking out of turn, but the mention of a soldier and Lord Vladeran, whose palace lay far to the Northwest, had an especially strange effect on the adults. The couple cast each other a secretive glance, and Malduk put a hand on the chest he was sitting on, almost protectively. Little Mia shivered as he nearly touched the parchment poking from the lid.\n\n\"Do adults need the words of a servant to reassure us?\" snapped Ranna scornfully. \"Mind your tongue, changeling.\"\n\n\"I was only trying to... \"\n\n\"Ranna's right,\" growled Malduk, standing up. \"Now go to the barn, and get some rest, and I'll wake you well before sunup. You'll have a long day tomorrow, with this weather worsening and wolves to watch for.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina shrugged, but she turned to leave." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Wait, girl,\" said Ranna suddenly.\n\nThe old woman bustled over to the stove and poured some hot water into a wooden bowl, then pulled a pouch of herbs down from a cupboard, which she opened and stirred carefully into the bowl. She added a thin drizzle of broth, then turned and held it up to Alina with sparking eyes.\n\n\"Take that to warm you,\" she said in a softer voice, but with a sly, menacing smile. \"Your favourite brew, my dear. To protect you from them.\"\n\nAlina stared at the broth. The old witch on the mountain had first given it to her, as a charm to help protect her from discovery by the fairy people of the forest. She was none too fond of the strange herbal concoction and its sharp, acrid taste, although Alina did admit that it made her feel stronger for a while, probably because she was given so little to eat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It always made her sleep deeply too. The girl hesitated.\n\n\"Do as you're told, Alin,\" ordered Malduk. His face softened a little. \"You know it's for your own good. Like a magic cloak.\"\n\nAlina felt Malduk and Ranna's eyes watching her closely, until she had drunk the whole draft. She put down the bowl again to wipe her mouth, but it slipped from the edge of the table and clattered to the floor.\n\n\"Stupid girl,\" snapped the old woman.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Ranna, I... \"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Give me that,\" said Ranna irritably, looking at a handkerchief poking from Alina's pocket. Alina pulled it out and Ranna snatched it away from her, bending down to wipe the floor.\n\n\"Let me, Ranna,\" said Alina.\n\n\"Oh, get to bed with you.\"\n\nAlina hovered there still.\n\n\"What's wrong with you now, changeling?\" said Ranna, standing straight again.\n\n\"Please, Ranna. May I have some food, first?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ranna frowned, but went over to a cupboard and pulled out some stale bread." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina looked imploringly at Malduk's delicious bowl of mutton soup, but Ranna just broke the bread in half and handed a piece to her with a grunt." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Without another word the young woman turned and disappeared through the cottage door into the falling snow.\n\n\"And Mia,\" said Ranna, turning to her little niece, \"put your coat on and fetch me that axe at the back. And some kindling too, from the edge of the forest. We'll stoke the fire. It's freezing in here.\"\n\nOutside the snow was falling thickly, and Alina pulled her tunic tightly about her. She realised she had left her dagger on the chest inside but decided to get it in the morning, then ran towards the little barn beyond the yard, where she slept alone each night. The wooden doors were banging on their creaking hinges. There was a break in the cloud above and Alina looked up sadly at the moon. Often in the darkness she would spy shapes in its shining surface and wonder what it really was. It had almost seemed a friend to her, and whenever Alina was troubled by confusion or doubt, by fear and sadness, she would look up and hold onto it like a truth, while the moon would often seem to look down kindly too and whisper—\"Hold on, Alina. Keep on trying.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Mia emerged from the house, and Alina smiled at her friend across the yard, then sighed and pulled the barn door fast behind her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The door blocked out most of the wind, although it still whistled mournfully through the rickety slats." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina shivered and felt a familiar loneliness and resentment deep in her heart." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It wasn't only that Malduk and Ranna were so terribly hard on her. She had been with them for six or seven long years—she hardly remembered now—and had come to know most of the villagers and shepherds who cultivated these hills. Yet Alina was still treated as an outsider.\n\nThe other boys thought \"Alin's\" ways strange, for he had a much softer, finer quality than they, and his piercing eyes frightened them, while they often teased him for his red hair. The rumours about goblin origins were bad enough, but Alin was often daydreaming too and asking about the world beyond the village, which they all resented. Alina's only real friend was Mia, but although Alina was desperately fond of the child, little Mia was only nine, so how could she really share the feelings and hopes that were coursing through a growing girl's blood?\n\nAlina cast her huge, clever eyes cheerlessly around the scrubby barn. It was so familiar to her now, this gloomy place, that she could see her way around it in the dark, yet a barn had never felt like a real home." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She thought a little jealously of the blazing stove that the couple would soon be warming themselves by that night, and wondered if the hopeless feeling in her stomach would ever leave her. Alina longed to have proper friends, to talk and dream with other girls her own age, yet her endless chores and thoughts of her origins kept her apart. Perhaps she really was a changeling, and not meant to be amongst humans at all.\n\nThen what of this human life? It was all right, tending sheep, better than much of the hard work about the farm, and Alina had grown very close to Malduk's two sheepdogs, Teela and Elak. Just as she loved the animals she saw running free in the forests and the mountains. The lessons that she had been learning from Malduk and the others about shepherding had strengthened her natural instincts as a tomboy too. Yet she felt that there must be more to life than dreaming alone on a mountainside and watching sheep, especially for a fairy child." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina thought suddenly of King Stefan Cel Mare, of Lord Vladeran, and of the famous Order of the Griffin." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She loved to hear tales of the secret Orders, but even more of the King, who in her mind was a strong and protective presence, almost the father figure she lacked." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word frequency rule: 'goblins' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She often pictured him on a fine horse, wielding a sword to defend justice and the right. She often wondered too what it would be like to ride into battle serving a proud monarch, or one of the King's brave liege lords in the lands beyond the forest, like Lord Vladeran.\n\nAlina sighed, walked over to the pile of dank straw at the back of the barn, and lay down cheerlessly in the growing darkness, drawing a thin, dirty blanket over her shivering body. On the floor beside her was more of the muslin cloth that she used to bind her upper body under her shirt, to help conceal the fact of her sex from the outside world. It made her almost ashamed to be a girl, let alone the child of goblins.\n\nShe was very cold, but the herb drink was working warmth through her veins, and bringing that familiar headiness that made her eyelids feel like leaden weights. Alina gave a loud yawn, wondering if the mixture really protected her from the spirits of the forest, and lay back, trying to keep her hazel eyes open. She was wondering fearfully what sleep would show her this time, or if the goblins would come in the night and tell her the truth of her changeling past." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the hovel Old Ranna was glaring angrily at her husband, and the light from the kitchen fire sent sinister red shadows dancing about the walls. They were both standing by the kitchen now and whispering darkly together, as Alina lay in the barn and tried to sleep.\n\n\"You heard what she said,\" hissed Ranna. \"She was talking to one of Vladeran's soldiers. There've been several around of late. If the girl remembers anything, we'll—\"\n\n\"Of course she won't remember,\" snapped Malduk. \"Do we have to go through this again, woman? What about the potion?\"\n\nRanna cast a nervous look at the locked chest, which Malduk had sat on earlier, and on which now sat Alina's knife.\n\n\"Perhaps you're right,\" she muttered." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate this exact phrase, preserving the quotation marks: \"How could I foresee that your sister and her husband would drop down dead,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And I've always told them you'll beat them both, if they go near the chest.\"\n\nRanna seemed a little reassured, but then her cruel eyes darkened again.\n\n\"But what if someone recognises her, husband? One of his soldiers.\"\n\n\"Why do you think we make her cut her hair and dress as a boy?\" answered Malduk. \"Besides, you see how she's really changed. Nothing like she was.\"\n\n\"It's the change in her I'm worried about, fool,\" grumbled Ranna. \"We can't keep her nature a secret much longer. She's growing up so fast. Others are married far earlier than a girl like her, and there are already rumours about it in the village. I've heard some of the women muttering, busybodies that they are, and now Lord Vladeran's men are nosing about. What about Mia? She's always chattering.\"\n\n\"How could I foresee that your sister and her husband would drop down dead,\" growled Malduk accusingly, \"and we'd have to take her in.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's going wrong,\" said Ranna fearfully. \"I always warned you it would come to no good. After you found her.\"\n\n\"Oh, stop your whining, Ranna. And what about all the work she does? She's a help to us, ain't she?\" Malduk said. \"Humble Vlak shepherds with a servant, and a Saxon servant too,\" he added proudly. \"That's rich. How the others marvelled at us when I found her. Or him. A Saxon waif, eternally in the debt of good old Malduk and his dear, kind wife, Ranna.\"\n\nMalduk chuckled and rubbed his hands, thinking of something else too.\n\n\"Bogdan's as jealous of us as ever,\" he said with satisfaction. \"Always calling Alin a warlock, and saying he'll bring the devil down on us. It's only because he wants a servant himself.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Bogdan,\" snorted Ranna. \"I saw him just now, lurking about near the end of the farm again.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'malduk' into your response exactly 4 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Malduk scowled. They both hated Bogdan, because he had a claim on part of their land, while he and Malduk were always arguing furiously about rumours that Malduk had eyes for his wife.\n\n\"I'll fix him one day,\" said Malduk angrily.\n\nBut Ranna was thinking of Alina again. \"More than just any Saxon though,\" she said sourly, \"if that parchment in the chest means what I think it means. How could you take such a risk with the likes of them?\"\n\nMalduk's dark eyes flickered. The suspicion of who the girl really was had begun to haunt Malduk's mind. It was hinted at in the parchment he had found on the soldier seven years before, when he had stumbled on Alina in the snow. He had sometimes hoped that he might use it one day to make himself and Ranna a real fortune, yet with that greedy hope had come a terrible fear of the man who had written it, and memories of something the parchment had said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He could never let it be discovered who she really was, or their part in her survival.\n\nSuddenly there was a hiss from Ranna. She was staring in horror at the wooden chest. She hadn't noticed it before, but now she could see the parchment poking from the lid.\n\n\"Look, Malduk. The letter.\"\n\n\"What the devil?\" cried her husband, and the old shepherd began fumbling in his jerkin. \"The key, Ranna. It's gone.\"\n\nRanna hurried into the kitchen and started looking frantically amongst the bowls where she had found the herbs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "At last she pulled out another key, exactly like the one Mia had in her pocket, although covered in dust, and handed it to her husband." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Malduk put Alina's knife on the milking stool, thrust the key into the lock, turned it, and threw back the lid. He snatched up the parchment from a pile of threadbare linen.\n\nIt was the letter, along with a bag of gold, he had discovered on the sodiers dead body, lying next to his dead horse, with Alina nearby unconscious. The letter Mia had seen that very morning, when she had found the key on the ground outside the hovel and opened the chest in secret.\n\nAfter Malduk had first found Alina, and her shock had begun to wear off, she had sometimes asked the couple what was inside the chest, but she had long since lost interest, and so the old couple had almost forgotten to worry about it. But for a girl of Mia's age, it had held irresistible secrets.\n\n\"Someone's opened it and looked, all right,\" growled Malduk, glaring at the paper. It was covered in writing and at the top was a red crest, finely drawn, showing an eagle with open wings just like the mark on Alina's arm." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It had already convinced little Mia that the parchment was something terribly important." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Mia couldn't read, of course, but she had recognised the mark immediately." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Alina must have stolen your key and looked inside,\" said Ranna.\n\n\"And she acted very odd when I came in. Perhaps she meant to return the key later.\"\n\n\"Wicked sprite. Do you think she could read it?\"\n\nThe shepherd wondered to himself.\n\n\"Perhaps. A girl like her may have learned Latin letters with the monks.\"\n\n\"Then she knows,\" hissed Ranna, looking truly terrified now.\n\n\"Maybe she didn't understand what it really means,\" said Malduk doubtfully, \"or realise that it speaks of her.\"\n\n\"And maybe she did. It may not name her, but she'd recognise the crest. Maybe that's why she was talking to Vladeran's men.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The old couple stood there in the flickering shadows, and both were shaking terribly with the revelation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What are you thinking, wife?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "said Malduk, after a while." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He knew his wife was much brighter than he.\n\n\"I'm thinking how vulnerable the girl is,\" answered Ranna. \"She's often alone with the sheep on the mountain, ain't she, and with wolves prowling and the snow coming thicker and thicker, who knows what might befall a helpless shepherd boy out there? They'll only say the fairies took Alin back again.\"\n\nRanna's eyes twinkled, but something confused came into Malduk's face. He had saved Alina from the snows once, and somewhere he even felt a fondness for the girl because of it, and he still feared to have the sin of blood on his hands, and his conscience too, feeble as it was.\n\nRanna suddenly saw Alina's antler-handled dagger lying on the milking stool and snatched it up, as her head swung towards the door.\n\n\"What are you going to do, wife?\" whispered Malduk.\n\nRanna looked back coldly at her husband, and her eyes glittered viciously." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Do, man? Do what you should have done seven long years back,\" Ranna answered murderously. \"Kill the changeling, of course. Or even better, turn the whole village to the job of murdering Alin Sculcuvant for us.\"\n\nAlina Sculcuvant's sleepy eyes were growing heavy in the freezing barn, blurred by the witch's brew. She felt as if she were floating, and fairy arms were carrying her away into the forest. The herb potion, which she had just told herself was really honeydew, was hanging heavy in her blood, and her thoughts were already beginning to roam towards dreams.\n\n\"Roma,\" she whispered suddenly, rolling the word around her tongue, as if she was eating something tasty. Alina had been thinking of that woman of her dreams, with curling black hair, and the night before in the barn a name had come to her in her sleep. \"Roma\" was another word for Tsingani, the gypsies in the lands beyond the forest, and it seemed somehow fitting for a goblin or fairy mother." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But Alina sighed. Roma wasn't right, and the memories just wouldn't come.\n\nA note came on the wind though that filled the snowy air. It was the song that often came down from the mountains, with the darkness of the Transylvanian night, the call of the wild wolf.\n\nAlina shivered, yet she felt her heart stir excitedly. So many times, as she laboured chopping wood, or sat with her crook in the fields watching over the bleating sheep, Alina had dreamt of climbing into the soaring mountains and hunting alone and free in the great valleys, or swimming in fresh rivers and bathing her face in new-fallen snow.\n\nDreamt of going out, alone and unchallenged by the shepherds and their stupid, fighting children, or the stern rules of the murderous old couple, to whom Alina believed she owed her life. Unburdened of her own dark dreams. She often wondered if it was her mysterious changeling origins that made her think so much of going into the wild, like a real goblin, and she loved listening to wolf song." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'black' (2x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina yawned, as her huge hazel eyes closed, and immediately she was out there, running in her bare feet over grass and rock and stone. She felt like a wild animal herself, hunted by something she could neither see nor understand, and suddenly before her was the face she had seen more and more in her sleep. Not the face that came to drink a child's blood—the vampire—but another face entirely. Its great yellow gold eyes looked back at her, with anger and hunger at first, but then softening to a strange, barely fathomable question. Eyes set above a row of sharp and shining teeth, in a muzzle of pure black.\n\nAs she stared at the black wolf in her dream, Alina heard a sharp creaking from across the barn and opened her eyes again to the real world.\n\n\"Who's there?\" she whispered, sitting up, and thinking nervously of the feeling she had had that morning. Over the years Alina had grown especially used to reacting quickly to sudden noises as she guarded the sheep on the mountain, and her eyes strained to see through the darkness." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word frequency rule: 'alina' × 3" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Suddenly a shape was rushing at Alina across the barn, but her beating heart calmed as soon as she saw what it was. Malduk's black-and-white collie Elak came bounding towards her, and jumped up, covering Alina's face in warm, wet licks. It made her feel wide awake again, and sent the girl into peels of delighted laughter.\n\n\"Elak, stop it now,\" she giggled, pushing him down fondly. \"Shouldn't you be in the meadow with Teela? Why did you sneak away, boy?\"\n\nThe sheepdog whined softly and lay down beside her, his huge black eyes looking up guiltily and his tail wagging. He was often sneaking off to be with Alina. How different Elak was to the savage creature she had just seen in her dream, and how glad Alina was of it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You mustn't run off like that, boy. Malduk will punish you, and me too,\" whispered Alina tenderly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But it's so good to see you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The girl smiled and stroked the collie's furry head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He felt so warm and soft, and she suddenly realised how desperately fond she was of Elak, and his sister, Teela." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Dear Elak, you're my friend, at least,\" said Alina." }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'don't' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Animals don't mind if I'm a changeling or not, do they? Not like the stupid villagers.\"\n\nAlina lay there stroking her friend, and she smiled to herself at her own foolishness.\n\n\"You don't understand me, do you, Elak?\" she whispered. \"Oh, I know you and Teela answer the whistles Malduk taught me, but it's not as if animals are like people, is it, really thinking and feeling, I mean?\"\n\nAlina sighed, wishing that people were as nice as animals, and Elak gave a whimper, but of course he said nothing. If little Mia had been there, she might have argued. She had said something to the older girl only two days before that Alina remembered now. \"Not just anyone can reach animals like you, Alina, and not even the fairies know their hearts as well. Father always said animals sense what's inside a person. That's why they trust you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "But Alina thought of a day in the little wooden church in Moldov, when the priest had talked so scornfully about animals." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The holy Church teaches that God made man above all the animals,\" he had sermonised loudly, \"and we must trust in His power.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The priest was a cruel man, very unkind to the dogs in the village, and Alina suddenly wondered if animals could really think like people, and if they could what it was they thought about." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What do sheep dream about, Elak?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "she asked the dog suddenly, but he just whimpered again and licked her hand." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Nothing but grass, I bet, Elak, or warm milk and a hole in a fence?\"\n\nAlina yawned and so did the collie.\n\n\"It's such a silly life, Elak, a sheep's. Munching on grass and drifting about in a flock, just to be shorn for your wool, or slaughtered at the Christ Mass. What's the point of it, and why do they group together so stupidly like that?\"\n\nElak lay there dumbly, and Alina ruffled the fur on his head with a grin, then answered her own question. \"Perhaps they feel safer in the fold, dear Elak. Like most things do.\"\n\nThe conversation had been rather one-sided, and Alina began to feel dizzy again. She lay back once more, but found herself still awake, staring mournfully at the slats in the old wooden ceiling, letting in the bitter weather, and the little flakes of snow that fluttered down, but vanished before they even reached her.\n\nAlina was beginning to doze again when the hackles rose on Elak's back." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was another noise, outside this time, and the dog started to growl furiously at the barn door.\n\n\"What is it, boy?\"\n\nThe door opened and closed again noiselessly, and there in the darkness Alina Sculcuvant saw the glint of an axe blade. Elak sprang up with a snarl, but Alina caught hold of the dog as she realised who was standing there.\n\n\"No, Elak, don't, it's only Mia.\"\n\nAcross the barn the little girl put the axe down carefully against the door and walked towards her friend. She was carrying a heavy sheepskin coat under her right arm and a cloth bundle in her left. The thick woollen coat was an old one that Malduk used to wear up in the mountains with the sheep, and was almost bigger than Mia was." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"For you, Alina,\" said Mia, as she reached her bed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You'll need it on a bitter night like this.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She held it out proudly to Alina, as Elak lay down again and put his head on his paws." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mia looked a little nervously at the large collie, for his sister Teela had snapped at her the week before. Elak was wagging his tail though, for he knew he was amongst friends.\n\n\"Thank you, Mia,\" said Alina gratefully, \"but what if your uncle finds out that you've... \"\n\nMia could still hear the old couple's arguing voices in her head, which had begun to rise as she had left the house and Ranna and Malduk had started to discuss Alina's fate. She hated arguments so much, and the little girl felt sick, wondering fearfully if they had discovered what she had done that morning.\n\n\"Uncle won't notice, Alina,\" she answered. \"I hid it at the back of the house the other day.\"\n\nMia grinned as Alina wrapped the coat warmly about her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But her eyes darkened as she thought of what she had discovered in the chest. The little girl had realised it was a letter of some sort, and even at nine, Mia doubted that fairies and goblins wrote letters. Mia was desperately guilty, and almost frightened to speak of it.\n\n\"That mark on your arm, Alina,\" she said, \"are you sure you can't remember what... \"\n\n\"No, Mia. I've told you before. Please don't ask again.\"\n\nMia was going to say something about her discovery, when the barn door creaked loudly, and they both swung their heads. But the door just rattled on its own in the wind, then fell silent again.\n\n\"Nothing.\" Alina sighed, looking at the bundle in Mia's hands. \"What's that, Mia?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Mia held up the parcel and unwrapped it carefully." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Inside was some freshly baked bread, two large pieces of cheese, and a whole onion." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Mia!\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Don't worry, Alina. I've been saving it up from my own meals.\"\n\nAlina took it gratefully, but she wasn't hungry anymore; she was far too sleepy now. Instead she placed it carefully by her pillow, like some wonderful treasure.\n\n\"You'd better get back,\" she whispered, with a heavy yawn. \"They'll be wondering.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Mia, sitting down beside Alina, \"they've gone off somewhere.\"\n\nAlina looked back at Mia in surprise.\n\n\"Gone off? Where?\"\n\n\"Don't know.\" Mia shrugged." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Maybe to buy some more tsuika. I saw them going down the track together.\"\n\nAlina wondered where they could be going at night, but almost wished that she had some fiery tsuika to drink herself—the local plum brandy that in winter was the surest way to warm the belly and fire the heart. The surest way to make your head ache too.\n\n\"I'll sleep here too tonight, if you like,\" whispered Mia. \"It'll be warmer, and perhaps we can try to share our dreams.\"\n\nIt was a game Mia loved playing, getting Alina to close her eyes next to her, and seeing if they might have the same dream as they slept, because above all Mia wanted to dream of fairy kingdoms. Alina Sculcuvant, on the other hand, wanted to wake up to another world entirely.\n\n\"No, Mia,\" she said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It will only make them cross when they get back. You'd better not.\"\n\nMia looked sadly at her friend.\n\n\"I don't understand why they're so hard on you,\" she whispered glumly.\n\nAlina had often asked herself the same question, and she had come to believe that it must be because they feared her link to the goblins, especially old Ranna. Alina was already old enough to know that nothing produces unkindness and cruelty so much as fear.\n\n\"It's all right,\" said the older girl, \"at least a changeling has a roof over her head, thanks to them. Far warmer than many, and food and water too. We must all count our blessings. That's what Ivan always says.\"\n\nMia grinned at the thought old Ivan, a good friend to \"Alin\" over the years, and his only champion amongst the shepherds, probably because he so loved listening to Alin's stories. Ivan had been there in the village last month, when Alin made up that wonderful tale of a girl, cruelly treated by her two elder sisters and made to work her fingers to the bone." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Until she had found a fine silken dress in a hazel thicket, left by the fairies, and been seen by the handsome son of the village elder at festival, who had searched for her and taken her away to a better life. The boys had laughed at Alin cruelly for telling such a stupid, girly story, but wise old Ivan never laughed at Alin.\n\nAlina's remark about a changeling might have made Mia think of the mysterious parchment, but she was feeling very sorry for her friend, and instead she had another thought entirely.\n\n\"Well, if you really are a changeling, Alina,\" she whispered, with a grin, \"a goblin child, I mean, then perhaps you should teach my aunt and uncle a lesson.\"\n\nAlina looked up in surprise.\n\n\"A lesson? What on earth do you mean, Mia?\"\n\n\"Oh, nothing too bad, Alina. But couldn't you use your powers to stop them? Cast a spell or something. To make them kinder.\"\n\nAlina sat staring back at Mia, little knowing how badly she needed such a power that terrible night." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If the sense of things that sometimes really did happen was a power, it was a very faint one." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And though Alina had no idea where all the stories she wove came from, she didn't see it as magic as some of the other children did." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet when she had been sad or hurt or frightened, she had often had the same thought herself. She would tell herself then that she was the daughter of a goblin queen, born in the heart of a magic flower, and suckled on honeydew, and could punish any who wished her harm, at will. That she could make their noses grow longer or their hair turn blue, that she could stop their voices with a wave of her hand, or make weeds sprout from their ears.\n\nYet Alina was fifteen now, and with time she had realised that she could do none of these things. She still asked herself whether that meant that she was no changeling, or simply that there was no magic in the world at all. In truth, at times she didn't want there to be any magic, because the one thing that Alina Sculcuvant wanted above all others, and with all the strength of her passionate heart, was to be a normal girl.\n\n\"No, Mia. I couldn't do any such thing,\" she whispered gloomily. \"Besides, do other children fare any better than me?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The two children wondered at that strange thought. They had no idea how children beyond the village lived their lives.\n\n\"But they never stop scolding you,\" said Mia indignantly, with all the deep sense of injustice of the young. \"Even when I do something wrong, they punish you for it. It's just not fair, Alina. It's wrong. My parents would never... \"\n\nMia's little blue eyes were suddenly wet with tears, and Alina sat up and hugged the little girl, feeling bitterly resentful that children should so be in the power of adults.\n\n\"We've each other, Mia,\" she whispered kindly. \"Always remember that. And I'm fine. Really. Don't you trouble yourself about a changeling. I'm no more important than anyone else.\"\n\nMia sniffed and wiped her eyes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You are. And at least you get to learn some wonderful things as a boy,\" she said encouragingly, as Alina lay back again, and Mia reached down gingerly to touch Elak's nose. \"Things that ordinary girls never usually do.\"\n\nThat was true enough. Malduk had taught \"Alin\" to count sheep on the mountains and read the seasons, to slaughter a lamb for festival and make Teela and Elak herd the dumb sheep about the valleys. To Mia these things made Alina seem as special as any goblin maiden, or the hireling of a fairy king. But although Alina always told herself that she should be grateful for it, with such useful knowledge came Malduk's constant criticisms and threats, which only added to the deep sadness in poor Alina's heart.\n\n\"Though who would really want to be a boy?\" added Mia hotly. \"They're always arguing, or fighting and bullying each other.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina smiled again. As she had sat by their fires listening to the shepherds, and deepening her voice to convince them she was a boy, she had often seen how tough they were on one another, and how hard a man's life could be." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes, Mia. They are.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I think you're special, Alina,\" said Mia, \"and sometimes I don't understand why you don't... \"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Mia paused helplessly, and Elak whined." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What, Mia?\"\n\n\"Oh, I don't know,\" answered the kindly little child. \"What can girls do in the world anyway?\"\n\nAlina looked up and the barn door rattled again.\n\n\"You know, Mia,\" she whispered ruefully, \"I've sometimes thought of running away. Of going back into the mountains and the forests and finding out who I really am.\"\n\nAlina's hazel eyes suddenly glittered.\n\n\"Of finding the goblins and the fairies and asking them if they stole me from a human home, long ago. Or, if I'm really one of them, why they abandoned me in the snow. Of seeking out Baba Yaga.\"\n\nMia's face was suddenly filled with fear." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was no figure more terrifying to the little girl than Baba Yaga. Tales of her came like bad weather from the Eastern lands, a hag who lived in a wooden house, supported on chickens claws, that walked around the forest on its own. A witch who flew through the night, in a huge stone mortar, using the pestle as her rudder and sweeping away any trace of her passing with a broom of silver birch as she spread her evil. But now there was an even greater fear than the one of Baba Yaga in the little girl's heart.\n\n\"And leaving me here all alone?\" Mia gulped, on the edge of tears again. \"Shouldn't you keep hiding from the fairies, Alina?\"\n\nAlina looked back at Mia and shook her head with a smile." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm tired of hiding all the time, Mia. But don't you worry. I'll never leave you alone, I promise. I've a debt to your uncle and aunt too. They saved my life.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Only to make you their servant and scold you.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to seamlessly include 'Does a changeling deserve any more?' in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The older girl winced inwardly. Alina Sculcuvant felt—no, she knew—that she was better than a servant, whether she was human or changeling, and this life of work and care seemed wrong. Yet her dim recollections of the past had made her feel that perhaps she had always been a servant. She patted Elak again and wanted to cry.\n\n\"Does a changeling deserve any more?\" she said gloomily. \"But you'd better get back now, Mia.\"\n\nReluctantly little Mia got to her feet.\n\n\"All right then, Alina. Good night.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Mia crossed the barn with a heavy heart and picked up the axe propped against the door." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And Mia,\" called Alina softly after her. \"Thank you again.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That's all right, dear Alina. Sleep safe.\"\n\nMia was about to slip away, when she suddenly stopped and slapped her hand to her forehead.\n\n\"Silly Mia,\" she cried. \"I'm so forgetful.\"\n\n\"What is it?\" sighed Alina, feeling really sleepy now.\n\n\"I forgot to tell you again what I discovered this morning.\"\n\nAlina lay there listening, wondering where Malduk and Ranna could have gone.\n\n\"What, Mia?\" she asked with another yawn.\n\nThe little girl frowned nervously." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You must promise not to tell Uncle, Alina, or he'll punish me.\"\n\n\"Me, more like. I promise, though.\"\n\nThe little girl reached into her pocket and pulled out the key.\n\n\"I found it this morning, and opened the old chest. They went to market early and I waited until I was alone,\" said Mia, and in the darkness Alina couldn't see her blushes. \"There was a paper inside it, Alina. I tried to tell you before. Something to do with you.\"\n\nElak's ears had come forwards, as he sensed the sudden tension in the air, and Alina Sculcuvant was fully awake again. She sat up sharply.\n\n\"With me?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes, Alina. I'm sure of it. There was a picture at the top, just like that mark on your arm, and lots of words, I think. Could you read them?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina was having exactly the same thought that Mia had had that morning, that goblins don't write letters, and she got to her feet." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Frequency requirement: 'alina' - 2 occurrence(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Can you show me?\" she said gravely, trying to throw off the effect of the potion. \"Now, Mia?\"\n\nMia's little face showed her fear.\n\n\"But Alina, Malduk and Ranna—\"\n\n\"If they've gone down to Moldov, there'll still be time,\" whispered Alina, rubbing her eyes. \"We can look again, then return it before they get back.\"\n\nMia was shaking, but she nodded slowly.\n\n\"All right then.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Elak, stay there, boy,\" said Alina, as she walked unsteadily towards Mia." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And be as silent as the grave.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'through' exactly 2 times in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With that Alina and little Mia slipped through the barn door, leaving the axe behind. Outside, the yard was eerily empty and the snow was getting thicker, heaping around the stone well and laying its heavy, silent carpet over the shepherd's thatched house and the cluttered yard around it. There seemed to be no one about, and no noise from the hovel. The adults had gone all right.\n\nAlina had her thoughts on the chest in the house, but Mia was still a child and delighted by the magic of snowfall, feeling her footfall light and springy on the strange new ground, almost giggling as the snowflakes melted on her cheeks and nose. In that muffling fall they could hardly have made a sound if they'd wanted to, creeping like thieves through the night towards the house. But the children suddenly stopped dead.\n\n\"Hush,\" hissed Alina, swinging round fearfully. \"What's that?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mia's face screwed up like a walnut, and as they strained to listen in the darkness, the little girl suddenly caught a sound on the snowy air, like a distant drumming.\n\n\"Horses,\" gasped Alina.\n\nThey were both looking towards the path that ran along the side of Malduk's farm, and through the break in a wooden palisade that had been built a hundred years before, in one of the wars that had lit the region in fire and blood. It protected the track for nearly a quarter of a mile, running straight past Malduk's homestead down to the village of Moldov, but nowadays it was particularly useful when the shepherds were droving sheep to market, as it prevented the animals from slipping away down the bank, to a little stream that meandered along its far side.\n\nThe girls could both hear the sound of horses clearly now from the hard track. Riders were coming towards them in the snowy night.\n\n\"Perhaps it's Turks,\" whispered Mia, gulping and clutching Alina's arm.\n\n\"Don't be frightened, Mia. I'm here.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina was terrified. She had never fought anyone before, let alone a Muselman soldier, and the girl had no idea how she might confront something so terrible as a heathen and defend the little girl." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She reached for her knife, but realised again that she'd left it in the house. The children's pounding hearts calmed a little though as they saw who came riding into the yard. They were two soldiers from the lands beyond the forest, one of whom Alina had seen before at market. He was one of Lord Vladeran's men, though not the one she had spoken with. He had a deep scar on his right cheek.\n\n\"You there,\" cried the other soldier, reining in his sweating animal. \"I was on the hill and saw Turks riding east.\"\n\n\"Only three,\" said the scarred soldier at his side, \"but they'll be others all right. The heathen never travel so far alone.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hurry, children,\" said the first soldier, \"tell the household, then get the adults to raise Moldov. They must light the beacon fires.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mia was shaking, yet she had never heard anything so exciting in all her life.\n\n\"Can we trust you, children?\" asked the soldier who had just spoken.\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" answered Alina, deepening her voice and stepping forwards.\n\n\"Good lad. Then we've nothing to fear at all, with a David in our midst, ready to slay a hundred Goliaths. Or an Achil.\"\n\n\"Achil,\" said Mia nervously.\n\n\"Achilles, child,\" said the soldier with a smile, glad to take a rest from his gallop. \"Your brother may look like a girl, but he's clearly bold. Don't you know the story? They tried to hide Achilles away dressed as a girl, but when they suspected him, and offered him many gifts, it was a sword he went for straight.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina suddenly felt her cheeks grow hot, but pride grew in her too, and Mia felt a little jealous. But the soldier with the scar was suddenly looking at Alina strangely.\n\n\"I want to be a soldier,\" said Alina boldly.\n\n\"Be content to be messengers first,\" said the first soldier, \"for a warrior's is a hard, lonely way, full of death and sorrow. A boy couldn't know that yet.\"\n\nAlina looked down. She thought sadly that a girl couldn't know it either, but that any life would be less lonely than hers. The soldier with the scar was speaking now.\n\n\"You sound like a priest, man,\" he said angrily, \"giving advice and talking of Achil. You'll not waste any more of my time. I've helped by riding with you this far, but now I must get back to my own men and warn them. Besides, I have more important affairs.\"\n\n\"Then I'll ride to the troop of King Stefan's men camped beyond,\" said the first soldier, and he turned back to Alina and Mia. \"Hurry, children.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required text (preserve exact wording): \"Shall I run to Moldov to find them?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They nodded as the men turned their horses and galloped away, although the soldier with the scar cast another enquiring look back at Alina.\n\n\"What do we do now?\" whispered Mia. \"Shall I run to Moldov to find them?\"\n\nAlina felt a dreadful sadness in her gut. Her natural instinct was to help, but she wished suddenly that it was her own parents that she had been asked to aid, whoever they were, and now she desperately wanted to know what was in the chest.\n\n\"No, Mia. First I'll get my knife from the house, then we'll go together. After we've looked.\"\n\nAlina led Mia quickly up the steps and opened the door. There was no one inside either, and the room felt warm as they hurried towards the chest." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Mia gave Alina the key, and she was trembling as she opened it, and took out the large paper, curled at the edges." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory: Your text must contain 'could' 3 times exactly" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At the top she could already see the shape of that eagle, etched in blood red, with opening wings. Exactly the same as the mark on her arm.\n\n\"Those other things on it,\" whispered Mia, at her side. \"They're words, aren't they, Alina? I know they are. It was silly of me to try to read them, but I'm not wicked, I promise. You'll tell them, won't you, if they find out?\"\n\nAlina held the parchment with a sense of dread, and seeing the mark closer up made her shiver again. But not as hard as when she looked at the fine lettering written in pigment across the parchment and suddenly realised that she could decipher it. She began to mouth the words silently. It was extraordinary enough for a girl to be able to read, but how she could do so, Alina Sculcuvant had no idea at all." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Perhaps it was a fairy spell." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You can read it,\" whispered Mia wonderingly. \"What does it say?\"\n\n\"It says... 'To his lieutenant, from the hand of Lord Vladeran, written this day of our Lord and Holy Saviour 1479.'\"\n\n\"Lord Vladeran,\" gasped Mia.\n\n\"Hush now, Mia. 'May this be a proof of the pact between us, and his orders regarding the disposal of a child. A traitor.'\"\n\nIts meaning came slowly, and Alina looked up. \"Child?\" she wondered out loud.\n\n\"What can it mean?\" asked Mia." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I don't know yet. It's about some child. But why does it say, 'disposal'?\"\n\n\"Read on, Alina.\"\n\nThe girl continued, haltingly.\n\n\"'The orders of Lord Vladeran are final in regard to the child. Let none aid or give her succour on pain of instant death. If it is found that his Lieutenant shall have dev... deviated from his instructions, his position, freedom, and life are forfeit. Let him do his work then and take his reward for carrying the girl, known by the mark here above, beyond the borders of Castelu, and for her disposal, for if he serves us faithfully, he shall always have our protection.'\"\n\nAlina fell silent. Castelu—Lord Vladeran's lands. A girl. A traitor to Lord Vladeran, known by the eagle mark on her own arm.\n\n\"It means you, Alina,\" said Mia softly.\n\n\"Yes, Mia.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Then the story of how you came here,\" cried the little girl, wrestling with the horrible thought, \"of how Uncle found and saved you, is... \"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'changeling' 3 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"A lie.\"\n\n\"Oh, Alina. Then you're not a changeling at all.\"\n\nAlina's head was spinning and the room had begun to sway before her hazel eyes. This news that she was no changeling was in part a wonderful thing for Alina Sculcuvant. She was not the daughter of goblins, after all, but a real girl.\n\nYet the truth that had come to replace the story of a changeling past was also far more terrible than being nestled in the arms of wood sprites or born in the bowl of an oak tree. A girl child, somehow linked to Lord Vladeran, and the distant region of Castelu. A child that Vladeran had wanted dead." }, { "from": "human", "value": "What could it all mean?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Had Malduk and Ranna been protecting her from Lord Vladeran all along, even though the parchment threatened death to any who did so?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "If they had, and she was no changeling, it was still like a terrible fairy tale." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Suddenly the light in the room seemed to flicker, and Mia rushed over to the window.\n\n\"I can see burning torches on the hill, Alina.\"\n\n\"Perhaps they know of the Turks already,\" said the older girl, although she felt in her gut that something far graver was happening, and she remembered her strange apprehension that morning. She was still wondering where Ranna and Malduk had gone, when they heard their voices outside, close by. They were returning to the house.\n\nAlina hardly knew what to do. She still didn't know what the parchment really meant, and she had promised the soldier to warn Ranna and Malduk of the Turks, but she certainly didn't want to be caught like this with the parchment, and she realised she was wearing Malduk's stolen coat.\n\n\"Quickly, Mia,\" she hissed, throwing the paper back in the chest and closing the lid. \"Hide.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Behind the pelts,\" said the little girl, plunging for the sheepskins piled up nearby, where she had often hidden in her games about the house. Alina didn't need to be told twice, and she squeezed into the cramped space next to little Mia, as the door to the cottage burst open. They heard the sound of stamping boots through the curling wind and Malduk's heavy cough, then Ranna's voice behind him.\n\n\"That's good at least. Mia must still be in the forest. But where can that damned changeling have gone?\"\n\nMia looked at Alina. The couple must have checked the barn. The terrified children could see through a gap in the snowy pelts, straight towards the pair. \"Perhaps she overheard us,\" said Malduk, \"and fled into the night.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Well, it don't matter now,\" said Ranna. \"It'll be done with soon enough.\"\n\n\"If it works,\" said Malduk, handing his wife something that she put down on the milking stool. It was a dagger, rather fine and long, curved like a Muselman blade and the handle wrought with etched silver. Alina wondered where a shepherd as poor as Malduk could have got such a wonderful thing, so much finer than her own, and where her own knife was too.\n\n\"It'll work all right,\" said Ranna. \"With word of these Turks, the villagers are already in a frenzy. Their blood's up.\"\n\nMalduk turned to look at his wife admiringly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And you were right, wife. We couldn't have done it in her sleep. Not in our barn anyway, with soldiers abroad and the elders warier than ever with the raids. As you said, she might be too strong for us now. And kill her here and Mia would know of it.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Mia and Alina turned to look at each other in utter horror." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Kill her? What were they saying?" }, { "from": "system", "value": "At some point in your response, insert this verbatim: \"A stroke of genius though—Bogdan,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Malduk stared out of the window.\n\n\"And it couldn't have worked more perfectly if the witch had cast us a real spell,\" he said with satisfaction.\n\n\"Only because I had the stomach for it, husband,\" said Rana angrily. \"Unlike you, with your precious conscience. But it's not over yet.\"\n\nThe old woman had just picked up a piece of rag and started to wipe her hands, and Alina went icy cold, as she saw that Ranna's wrinkled old hands were covered in blood. Mia had noticed it too and begun to shake.\n\n\"A stroke of genius though—Bogdan,\" said Malduk.\n\nRanna's eyes narrowed like a crow's, and Alina wondered why Malduk was talking about the shepherd Bogdan." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What had they done?\n\n\"Such a filthy, black night to be out, husband,\" Ranna growled. \"I'll make you some broth, while you clean yourself up.\"\n\n\"Good, woman. My feet are cold enough to freeze brandy.\"\n\nRanna walked towards the kitchen, as the children huddled in terror in the shadows.\n\n\"I still say you should have done for her there in the snows,\" she said, \"and saved me all this bother.\"\n\nMalduk sat down on the chest. He was suddenly remembering that strange morning, seven years before, when he had been walking in the mountains and stumbled on the soldier and girl in the gully, next to their dead horse." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "From the rockfall around them, he had realised immediately that the animal must have slipped and sent them both over the edge, killing the soldier and the horse and knocking Alina unconscious. As the little girl had lain there, he had tried to rouse her, and when she had finally opened her eyes, he had asked her who she was.\n\n\"Alina, I think\" was all she had managed to say, before she swooned again.\n\nThen the old shepherd had searched the soldier's body and found that heavy bag of gold and Vladeran's parchment. He had taken ages to decipher the strange words written there, but at last he had realised that it was the man's letter of instruction, his orders to take the little girl far away in secret, and murder her.\n\n\"We shouldn't have meddled in her fate,\" said Ranna in the hovel.\n\n\"Perhaps I was getting soft in my old age,\" said Malduk, with a half chuckle, surprising himself with the thought. \"And she would have been taken soon enough with the fury of that winter, it's true. She was frightened out of her wits as it was when she woke fully. Kept mumbling that she was sorry. About what I've still no idea.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"She's a weak nature, that's why, even for a feeble girl.\"\n\nIn her own childhood old Ranna had wanted to be a boy, and she had been furiously jealous of her brothers and the freedom they had around the home.\n\n\"No doubt, Ranna,\" grunted Malduk, \"but it was when she was lying there in the snow that I... \"\n\n\"Took pity on her,\" hissed Ranna scornfully. \"Why, husband? There's no pity in the wild. No pity for poor shepherds, neither.\"\n\n\"Then I had the idea, proper, to steal the soldier's gold, and get us a servant into the bargain.\"\n\nMalduk was hiding his old pain too though, his longing for a son of his own. For a time the old witch's plan to conceal Alina with strange stories of changelings had even made him feel he had been given one by magic." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But that had faded.\n\n\"But when it's finally over, at least I won't have to make the witch's brew again, to make her forget,\" said Ranna, holding up her little bundle of herbs. \"She won't have anything to forget at all, let alone the lie that this ever protected her from the fairies. Stupid child.\"\n\nWhen the old witch on the mountain had first given Alina Sculcuvant the herb soup to protect her from the goblins, she had whispered strange words to her too, as she looked deep into her little eyes, winking at Malduk over her shoulder. A spell, Malduk and Ranna called it, and they had paid the witch handsomely in mutton for her magic, as they had for the tale she had brewed up too. But the power, which men in later days would come to call hypnotism, helped by those potent herbs, had not been hard for the old woman to conjure. Not with the state Alina had been in. Post-traumatic amnesia it would be called, in the far distant days when science would learn to name everything." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ranna and Malduk both laughed, and Mia swung her head to Alina again, her eyes like a frightened cat's. The older girl's whole body was trembling with fury and bitterness at the dawning revelation.\n\n\"I still don't know why the great Vladeran didn't just do away with her himself,\" said Ranna irritably from the kitchen, \"if he wanted her dead.\"\n\n\"Great ones always like others to do their dirty work, don't they?\" answered Malduk. \"Besides, you know how superstitious they say his lordship is. He clearly wanted the soldier to take her beyond the borders of Castelu.\"\n\nIn their hiding place, Alina's heart was beating harder than she had ever known.\n\n\"But it doesn't matter now,\" said Malduk. \"She'll be dead before dawn. Serves her right for opening the chest today and poking in her nose where it don't belong.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mia looked guiltily at Alina as the shepherd got up again and stared out the window.\n\n\"Ranna. There are men coming down the track already,\" he said, \"I can see their lights over the palisade.\"\n\n\"Then go and meet them, man, at the end of the path. We must appear as normal as possible tonight. I'll go around the back and pretend to be chopping wood, or looking for Mia. While I get this off my hands properly.\"\n\nMalduk looked suddenly nervous, but he nodded.\n\n\"Very well, wife.\"\n\n\"And husband,\" said Ranna, \"we're innocents, remember.\"\n\n\"Yes, wife,\" answered Malduk, \"but it's all very well the villagers hunting her down, but what if the authorities capture her first, and she tells them what she knows?\"\n\nRanna stared at her husband as Alina wondered why they were talking of hunting her down." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Work this phrase into your response organically: \"We can slip away and hide in the barn to think. They won't realise I'm there, and at least she won't see you, Mia.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For all Ranna's clever plotting, she had not calculated this.\n\n\"Then she must never speak again,\" she growled. \"Make sure of it, man. Silence her.\"\n\nMalduk nodded again and snatched up the dagger on the milking stool. The door to the house banged violently, and Alina could hardly breathe with the horror of it, while little Mia was shivering furiously. Ranna finished in the kitchen and went outside to the back of the house.\n\n\"Quick,\" cried Alina, appearing from the sheepskins. \"We can slip away and hide in the barn to think. They won't realise I'm there, and at least she won't see you, Mia.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, Alina. What they said. It's terrible.\" Mia's teeth were chattering almost uncontrollably. \"They want to kill you. Lord Vladeran tried before. But they've done something. They're plotting. And my aunt had blood on her hands.\"\n\n\"Perhaps they went to slaughter a sheep. Come, Mia, take my hand.\"\n\nAlina was nearly twice Mia's height, and as they held hands, she felt as protective as an elder sister. She opened the chest and grabbed the parchment again, slipping it into her pocket as the children hurried through the door together into the snow, and heard Ranna swearing and cursing behind the house. The two girls crossed noiselessly to the barn and slipped inside. They were safe, for a while at least." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh, Mia,\" said Alina bitterly amongst the freezing shadows, as they shut the barn doors fast behind them and the girl noticed that Elak had gone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"If I'm no changeling, then what am I really?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include \"Do you think... Do you think you could really be some powerful... \" somewhere in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It said Castelu,\" answered Mia. \"Do you think... Do you think you could really be some powerful... \"\n\n\"A girl?\" said Alina quickly. \"No, Mia, don't be foolish. But what am I going to do now?\"\n\nThe little girl's eyes were full of tears, but she answered her friend with all the firmness she could muster.\n\n\"You've got to go, Alina. You've got to run away, like you said. Before Malduk comes back.\"\n\nAlina knew her friend was right, but she felt sick to her stomach.\n\n\"And you'll come with me, Mia?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The little girl gulped, but shook her head firmly.\n\n\"No. It'll only make it worse. You're bigger than me, and can run faster. Much faster than any of the village children. I've seen you. Run, Alina. Now. Up into the mountains. Anywhere you can be safe.\"\n\nAlina shuddered, for now the thought of the mountains didn't make her feel safe at all, yet there was a strange excitement in the girl's heart too.\n\n\"But I promised never to leave you, Mia.\"\n\n\"Promises only matter if you try to keep them, Mother told me. Sometimes you can't, that's all,\" the little girl said with the strength and practicality of a born peasant. \"I'm safe with my aunt and uncle, at least, but you've got to go, and quick.\"\n\nAlina nodded, finding courage in her little friend's brave words, then started moving about the barn, gathering up her few humble possessions. The little girl helped her pick up her bits of clothing, a pack, and the parcel of food she had brought her earlier, and at last Alina was ready." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But with that they heard two more voices outside." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The children peered through a crack in the barn door and saw Malduk running back into the yard and, trotting alongside him, one of the soldiers they had met earlier." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The one who had spoken of Achil." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You're safe from the Turk, for now at least,\" said the soldier, bringing his horse to a stop. \"And Stefan's men are roused. But you must look to your loved ones.\"\n\nMalduk was regarding the man very nervously, for he hadn't expected to meet him on the track at all.\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" he said.\n\nThere were shouts and the group of villagers from neighbouring Moldov, the men Malduk had spied before, came crowding down the path, and into the yard. They had burning tapers in their hands and their mood was ugly. They were hunting. At their head was a shepherd Alina recognised, called Barbat.\n\n\"What's wrong, men?\" cried the soldier." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sculcuvant,\" answered Barbat, \"the changeling. Where is he?\"\n\nAlina's heart was suddenly pounding fast enough to burst. What now?\n\n\"I... I don't know,\" answered Malduk. \"He was sleeping in the barn, but now he's gone. Perhaps into the fields. Why, man, has he stolen something?\"\n\nThe villagers had often accused Alin of stealing things.\n\n\"Stolen?\" cried Barbat scornfully. \"What do we care about theft, Malduk, when this is murder?\"\n\nIn the darkness of the barn, Alina's knees went weak." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Murder?\" hissed Malduk, with glittering eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ranna's plan was coming good." }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'barbat' | Required occurrences: 4" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We found Bogdan on the edge of the village, facedown in the snow,\" said Barbat, \"with this in his back.\"\n\nBarbat reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife with an antler-handled dagger—Alina's own dagger. In the barn the girl felt as if a thousand furies were suddenly rushing at her, and she clutched at Mia's arm. Ranna and Malduk had murdered Bogdan.\n\n\"It'll break his wife's heart,\" said Barbat. \"It's his, ain't it, Malduk? Alin's.\"\n\n\"It looks like his, yes,\" answered Malduk slowly, feigning reluctance and shock, \"but he was using a different one today, Barbat. He left it in the barn.\"\n\nMalduk reached into his pocket and pulled out the curving Turkic blade Alina and Mia had seen in the house, before Ranna had wiped that blood off her hands." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'little' 2 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He held it up innocently.\n\n\"That's Bogdan's!\" cried Barbat. \"I'd know it anywhere. The changeling's the killer, all right. He must have murdered Bogdan for his knife, or simply because the changeling hates humans.\"\n\nAlina couldn't believe her ears—or her eyes. The villagers began to shout and curse, and the soldier put his hand to his sword and in the barn Mia could see that Alina wanted to go outside, to confront the injustice of it all and speak up for herself. The little girl grabbed Alina's hand and shook her head furiously.\n\n\"I can't believe it,\" whispered Malduk outside. \"After all our kindness, and with my little niece Mia in our home too. We'll hunt him down all right.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No,\" cried a voice suddenly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It can't be Alin. He wouldn't. I know him too well.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina's heart leapt. It was her friend, the old shepherd Ivan, who had pressed forwards from the throng. Ivan had a wise, open face, which although kind was not soft, and was heavily lined by his years in the open. He was much respected by the other shepherds, but the murderous villagers began to shout even Ivan down.\n\n\"We know how you favour the lad, Ivan,\" growled Barbat angrily, \"but none of us know where he really came from. Don't thieves and murderers creep out of the snows, like witches' children? We ought to have driven the changeling out long since. A Jonah, that's what he is. Ill luck for us all.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Malduk sadly. \"Now I think you're right, Barbat. Poor Bogdan.\"\n\n\"You!\" said Barbat, glaring at the soldier. \"What are you going to do about it?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sculcuvant, you say?\" answered the soldier, thinking of the children he had met earlier. \"A changeling?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That's right. And in league with the devil.\"\n\nSuddenly there was a great howl in the night and the villagers turned, as Malduk lifted the dagger. One of them pointed up the mountainside, and they could see it but faintly in the icy air, a shape etched against the night sky, like a dark shadow. A wolf was high above them.\n\n\"It's that black loner,\" growled Barbat, with a shudder, \"the one they spotted last moon, near the stream. The man-eater.\"\n\nAs she listened, Alina thought of that face she had seen in her dream.\n\n\"I should get home,\" grunted another villager immediately. \"They say that one spends all its time stalking humans. With the winter everything's fighting harder to survive.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Perhaps the black wolf comes from the Helgra,\" said a third villager nervously, and the others started muttering." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The Helgra?\" said Barbat. \"What are you talking about?\"\n\n\"That Magyar-Dacian tribe that lives below the great castle,\" answered the man. \"Fearsome warriors, they say, who pay allegiance to none, not even Lord Vladeran, Tepesh, or King Stefan. The Helgra worship the wild wolf as the devil, and wear their coats as talismans.\"\n\n\"It's not the Helgra,\" said Malduk suddenly, worried that the villagers would turn from the task at hand. \"Changelings serve the devil too. Alin must have summoned it to aid him in his wickedness. We must raise all the villagers.\"\n\nThey could all see the sense in this, all except Ivan, and they started nodding and muttering again.\n\n\"He'll not escape,\" cried the soldier, \"and he'll hang for this. Or burn.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Suddenly the door to the cottage opened and old Ranna came outside." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The lurid glow of firelight shimmered across the snow between the evil old couple, as Ranna hobbled forwards. She had slipped back into the house as the men arrived, and now she was holding a handkerchief to her face and she looked as if she had been crying.\n\n\"You've heard then, wife?\" whispered Malduk, as she saw her.\n\nRanna sniffed bitterly.\n\n\"Yes, husband, and my heart's broken. How could he? I loved Alin so.\"\n\nThe villagers murmured sympathetically at the old couple's bitter plight. In their hard lives they despised little as much as ingratitude." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We must find him soon, men,\" said the soldier, convinced now." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hunt down the changeling, like a wild animal.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There were cries and grunts of approval all around.\n\n\"We'll get the dogs,\" said Barbat.\n\n\"Come up to the house first,\" said Malduk, \"and we'll divide you into groups. Some to search the farm, others to scour the southern fields.\"\n\n\"We've men searching the South already,\" said one of the villagers, \"and others posted right along the path. The changeling won't escape us. Unless he's already in the mountains.\"\n\n\"Very well then,\" said Malduk, \"come quickly. But be careful of him. With his lies and his stories, he could enchant the devil. If you find him, don't listen to a word he says. Stop the child's throat.\"\n\n\"Wait, husband,\" growled Ranna. \"He won't escape us.\"\n\n\"Why not, my dear?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ranna held out Alina's handkerchief, with a stifled sob." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What's that?\" asked the soldier stupidly, and Ranna's eyes sparked furiously." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's the changeling's, and carries his scent. For the hounds.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Baba Yaga,\" hissed Alina in the barn, glaring at Ranna through the crack in the door." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Ensure 'they've' appears 2 time(s) in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mia was staring at her aunt in disbelief.\n\n\"I'll go outside, Alina,\" she said suddenly, \"and tell them everything.\"\n\nIt seemed a chance, but as the children looked through the crack at the furious mob, they knew it was madness.\n\n\"No, Mia. They'll never believe you. They've always wanted to drive me out.\"\n\nAlina had forgotten the parchment in her pocket, and seemed at a loss for what to do, but Mia was already tugging at her sleeve, pulling her to the back of the barn and a broken slat of wood in the wall. Alina found it strange that the younger child had taken charge, but the terrible revelation in the house, and then the false charge of theft and murder, had dazed Alina completely. She was petrified.\n\n\"Go, Alina, now.\"\n\n\"But where, Mia? I can't make it across the open fields. The only path to the mountains is across the stream, through that break in the fence by the copse. But you heard what the villager said. They've men posted along the path.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You've got to try, Alina. Please. If they find you here... If they get the dogs... \"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "/set_word_count: across, frequency: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Little Mia was holding back the large piece of broken slatting with all her strength, and Alina peered outside into the snow. The wind was catching the surface, lifting it in angry curls of icy cold.\n\n\"Hurry, dear Alina.\"\n\nAlina began to squeeze through the opening, pulling her pack after her, her breath smoking furiously in the freezing air. The little girl followed her through easily, and then they were both standing outside again, looking out across open ground towards the fields, and the high fencing that ran along the track. In the distance, to the south, they could just make out moving shapes and little red specks of torchlight, while the sounds of the villagers were loud on the other side of the barn.\n\n\"They won't see you from the house,\" whispered Mia, staring out towards the copse near the break in the palisade, where they often played. It led to the track, across to the verge, and down to the stream beyond." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a good way off." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Go, Alina.\"\n\nThe older girl rose, and she was about to run when she suddenly stopped and turned. Alina slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out a little carving, a cross between a ram and a wolf, that she had whittled in the fields, watching the sheep.\n\n\"I'll never forget you, Mia,\" Alina whispered tenderly, thrusting it into Mia's little hand. \"Take this and think of me. Then one day perhaps... \"\n\n\"There's no time. Oh, Alina. Good-bye.\"\n\nAlina leaned forwards and kissed Mia on the cheek, then turned and began to run, but she heard Mia hiss behind her. \"Look, Alina.\"\n\nMia was pointing at the snow and the marks Alina's boots had made, which were leaving a clear, deep trail behind her that could easily be followed when the hunt began for real." }, { "from": "system", "value": "can you add this somewhere in your response:\n\"Pray for more snow, Mia. Just pray.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There's no help for it now,\" called Alina, in a fearful whisper. \"Pray for more snow, Mia. Just pray.\"\n\n\"Yes, Alina. And Alina... \"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"In the forests. If you ever find the goblins and the elves. If you meet Baba Yaga. Tell them to make a spell to protect me too.\"\n\nWith a nod, and a terrible ache in her heart, the young woman turned again and was gone. Alina made straight for the copse behind the barn and then in the direction of the stream, but as she reached the copse, she saw villagers moving down the track, their flaming torches glaring garishly against the perfect white, and Malduk leading them. Then Alina heard a yelp behind her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Elak,\" she whispered, as the sheepdog came bounding towards her across the snow and jumped up to lick her face, whining and wagging his tail foolishly. \"Hush, Elak, you must be quiet.\"\n\nThe dog didn't understand and in his excitement kept whining loudly. Alina gave one of the low whistles she used at pasture, pointing her finger at the ground.\n\n\"Down, boy.\"\n\nElak sank on his forepaws and fell quiet. Just in time too, for the villagers were almost parallel with Alina and the gap in the palisade, and just then another wolf howl came down from the mountains.\n\n\"That loner again,\" cried one of the men, and his voice came clear and cold across the snow." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Do you think the changeling's really made a pact with the devil, Malduk?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm sure of it,\" answered Malduk." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Maybe SkeinTale's really a werewolf. I should have known it.\"\n\n\"Werewolf?\" said the first.\n\n\"A human turned every full moon from a man into a snarling, murderous wolf,\" said Malduk, his gaze dancing amongst the villagers, \"as he drops down onto all fours to join his wicked kin and feast on blood and gaze animal flesh. A changeling indeed.\"\n\nAlina shuddered, but something else had come over her as she crouched there with Elak. The potion was still in her blood, and it was working on her again, making her body feel heavy, and her eyes droop.\n\nAll the villagers were listening attentively to Malduk's words, rapt with interest and fear too. Malduk spoke like a natural teller of tales himself, for he had often listened to Alina, touching something deep and instinctive in them all. Something angry too. He looked about and spoke again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"They say that the bite of a lone black wolf is enough to put the spell in a man's blood, so that he changes,\" he whispered, with a growl in his throat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That he can't be killed with ordinary arrows neither, but only with an arrow tip, which has been hammered out of a silver cross, blessed by a patriarch.\"\n\nAlina heard the mesmerising words and pressed her hand into the cold snow to shrug off the weariness. Not now, she thought, Wake up, Alina.\n\nAlina found herself listening again. She had heard many bizarre tales and legends from the village children, even more fanciful than her own clever stories, but just as she thought a shepherd's life strangely ignorant, so she had thought them mostly silly and too fantastical. But at Malduk's words she was shuddering.\n\n\"And they say that the werewolf can talk with animals,\" hissed Malduk, stoking the flames of fear and hate flickering around the little group. \"See into their minds and very souls.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina was appalled that these men might think that she was such a thing, yet she suddenly found herself wanting to know what Elak was thinking and feeling, and the wolf that had cried out too." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But Alina had just discovered that she wasn't from the fairies after all, and had no such power." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She faced real life now, and all alone. An icy wind licked up the snow around her.\n\n\"Well, where's he got to?\" said the first villager.\n\n\"No tracks here,\" answered Malduk. \"We'll split up. Some to where the valley opens, others near the village gate. You two men, stay here.\"\n\nElak had lifted his head and started to growl, but Alina clamped her hand around the dog's muzzle.\n\n\"Come on then,\" growled Malduk. \"Hurry.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The party broke apart, leaving only two of their number guarding the break in the fencing. They were both carrying clubs, and Alina tried to shake off the weariness and think clearly. It was now or never. She took the beautiful sheepdog's face tenderly in her hands.\n\n\"Elak,\" she whispered, \"I need you to do something for me, dear Elak. I know you don't really understand, but please try. I need you to run to Teela. Make as much noise as you like, but don't stop.\"\n\nThe dog looked stupidly at the girl and she released her grip. Elak licked her hand and whined softly. There were tears in Alina's pretty hazel eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Now, Elak,\" she said, pointing towards the path, \"Teela.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Elak's ears were up immediately." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Go Elak. Find Teela.\"\n\nDriven by the urgency in the girl's voice, her pointing arm, and the thought of Teela, Elak sprang forwards. The dog began to race round the far side of the copse, streaking through the gap, out onto the path, and away. But he wasn't making any noise and, hating herself, Alina picked up a stone and hurled it at his haunches. The sheepdog yelped painfully and sprang forwards.\n\n\"Hey, what's that?\" cried one of the two men.\n\nThey turned and rushed in the direction of the moving shape, raising their flaming torches and shouting loudly. But by the time they had come to a halt again, muttering about blasted dogs, and turning back towards their guard post, Alina Sculcuvant had broken from her covering and slipped silently through the gap in the palisade." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She trailed her pack behind her to mask her footprints in the snow as she went, but because this was where the men had all gathered, and there were many prints already, in the darkness the two villagers noticed nothing.\n\nAlina pulled her pack over her shoulder as she went racing through the second break in the fence and tumbling down the snowy verge on the other side. In no time at all she had reached the little stream. She knew enough of living in the open to take off her boots as she crossed the shallow water, still unfrozen by the coming winter, and felt it burn like fire against her skin. Then she sat for a while on a large rock on the other side, drying and rubbing her feet, then sliding them once more into her warm boots. At least the cold river had driven back the effect of the horrid potion.\n\nShe opened her pack and took out some bread, blessing Mia for the timely gift, and looked out beyond the fields. The night was pitch black, but a moon was rising, giving an eerie blue wash to the white, and Alina realised again that she was still wearing Malduk's coat, and blessed its warmth." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the distance the young woman saw the shadow of the forests and rising behind them the foothills of the great Carpathian Mountains." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When she had thought of running away before, tired of hiding, she had made up pictures of goblin forests and fairy caverns, but as she looked out there she knew that real nature waited for her now, a whole world, unknown and forbidding to the girl, yet her only hope. Alina the storyteller was accused of theft and murder, while those who had pretended to save and value her had wanted to kill her to conceal their terrible secret. They had wanted her life.\n\nIt was a life she hardly knew anything of, one mixed with sadness and fear, and yet, somewhere, the feeling of love and safety beyond. Now Alina Sculcuvant wished more than ever that she had a friend to aid her in her journey, wherever it might take her. She thought bitterly of Mia and Elak and Teela, and around the foothills she noticed great flames of orange light begin to burn and blaze and lick into the night air. They were lighting the beacon fires. Then the changeling, hunted and alone, rose and was running as fast as her young legs could carry her, out into the wild world towards the mountains beyond, and in the heavens once more it had started to snow." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell raised his muzzle and scented the wind in the clear, crisp day. The trees of Carpathia still wore their autumn garment, threaded with nature's richly woven colours, but now veils of white had been brushed across their dying leaves, and the great Carpathian Mountains were already heavy with snow. Their flanks had turned to shining pinnacles of glittering brilliance that pierced the blue grey heavens.\n\nThe snow lay thick as a heavy coat, and though the sky was as blue as new spring flowers, Fell was troubled and deep in thought. Since leaving the cave he had drifted closer and closer to a human village, thinking of the voice and the boy he had seen in the water. Had Larka really sent her spirit from beyond to tell him of the child's importance to nature itself? And what of those words about the Helpers and a Guardian? The ghostly visitation was still haunting the wolf, but in truth he wanted nothing to do with this strange burden." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage target: 'would' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell caught a delicious smell on the breeze, the smell of cooking meat. To any ordinary Varg it might have meant very little, or been disgusting compared with the scent of a fresh kill, but Fell knew of the humans and their strange red flowers—their fires.\n\nFell knew how humans would chase and kill wild animals too, but not nourish themselves with the food straight from the bone like the wolf, but chop the carcass with their knives and put the bounty on a stick of wood over the flames that rose from the fire. They would even place it in a metal pot and add water and roots and plants to it, and let it stew horribly.\n\nAt first the unnaturalness of it had appalled the prowling black wolf, but with time, as he watched their encampments and smelt their kitchens, Fell had begun to accept that perhaps these Lera, these strange human animals, needed to do such a thing in order to eat. He pitied them for it, but Fell had grown accustomed to it too, and even come to like and recognise the scents and flavours given off by their concoctions.\n\nNow the wolf could smell cooking rabbit and winter rosemary, and it made his stomach grumble and his mouth slaver. Three days after his strange visitation, Fell had been hunting without success and he was desperately hungry." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With the heavy snowfall many of the Lera, rabbit and hare, fox and squirrel and hedgehog, had gone to ground, snuggling themselves safely away, warm and secret in their hides and burrows, hidden deep in the secret earth." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was as if the land were going into a deep sleep, instilled by some magic potion, and was beginning to dream, or had been emptied of its rightful inhabitants by a mysterious spell." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell had seen tracks and could sense that creatures, and thus food, were around him, but the contours of the land had changed completely, and with no natural cover anymore to hide the Putnar's approach, it was easy for prey to see a wolf and escape.\n\nFell padded from the cover of the trees and looked down the slope. Near a circle of rocks, he could see a little plume of grey smoke rising from a birchwood fire beneath a bubbling cooking pot. The wolf could scent horse dung too, but there was no one about, and Fell padded farther into the open. The wolf was wary, but hunger was getting the better of him, and the smells from the pot were drawing him towards the fire.\n\nCloser Fell drew, and the wolf smiled as he saw that a coney, a baby hare that had not made it into the pot, was hanging tantalisingly on a stick, left for the morrow. As Fell approached the free breakfast, a shape stirred on the ground and he stopped dead. A man was lying fast asleep beyond the fire." }, { "from": "human", "value": "An empty bottle of tsuika lay beside him and next to it one of the human's metal sticks. A sword." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell's muzzle curled upwards a little and he gave a nervous growl." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He should have scented the human immediately, but the smell of horse and of cooking rabbit had masked him. As he stood there, he thought of that voice and its words about a human child, a boy who was close and needed his help. But how could a boy be important to nature itself? Fell wondered if it was the child's destiny to grow into a great and powerful Dragga. He had a thought then that he often had in his wanderings—that the real strength and fight of nature lay with the Dragga, the male. Fell wanted answers today as much as a meal.\n\nThe wolf raised his tail and wondered what to do.\n\nAs Fell stood there, something strange happened." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell knew that the Sight was touching him again, even before the vision came. It was as if his eyes were misting over, and a sudden darkness surrounded him. Then Fell was seeing images in his mind's eye.\n\n\"No,\" he growled, trying to stop them coming. \"No.\"\n\nFell was looking on a human homestead and in the doorway a human Drappa was smiling and waving, while two human cubs, a little Dragga and Drappa, held their mother by the waist, laughing and giggling happily.\n\nFell's eyes cleared and he was looking on the sleeping man once more, but now it was as if the very will had been sucked from him, and he felt weak and ashamed.\n\n\"What's happening to me?\" Fell whispered, thinking of how he had understood those squirrels, but still the wolf couldn't move." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then there was a shout and Fell saw two horsemen galloping towards him. The soldiers, the Turks from the East, had spied him from the brow of the hill and were racing to save their companion. Their shouts and the whinny of horses woke the sleeper too, and seeing the black wolf, he cried out and grabbed his sword. The horses had almost reached the fire now, and as Fell saw the riders raise their spears, he gave a snarl and turned and leapt away.\n\nStraight for the trees the wolf ran, his tail streaking behind him, but the horses were after him and his trail was clear in the snow. Fell knew all too well how quickly the hunter may become the hunted in the wild, and he was terrified. But the fear was made worse by the confusion that the vision had brought on him, and the sense of shame that he had not been able to strike the man. Fell had seen how humans could fight and kill, with the violence of the wild Putnar, and felt no pity for the creatures." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet the Sight had drawn him into the man's mind, only to bring this strange confusion of purpose.\n\nOn Fell ran through the forest, with the chasing horses drawing closer. He saw the ground dip and heard the sound of water. Below him was a little river, snaking off through the forest, and Fell heard that warning voice in his mind again: Fear it, Fell. Fear death by water. But he swerved towards it this time and, just as the horses reached him, sprang onto a rock and leapt for the drop.\n\nHe sailed across the gulf, as the riders pulled hard on their reins and brought their mounts to a halt. Fell landed on the far side of the bank, his hindquarters splashing into the still-unfrozen water, as a spear landed in the soft snow beside him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In truth the horses could have leapt the river too, but a wolf is dangerous prey, especially in the early winter months, when the savagery of survival is so strong in his blood, and the Turks had other matters to attend to." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were scouting, far from their Southeastern homelands, and had no time to lose. They had an army to take their messages to.\n\nOn the other side of the river Fell began to pad far down the bank, angry and startled, and still desperately hungry. The calm winter white was so beautiful around him, and yet all Fell's knowledge of the world, all the knowledge that had been passed to him from his father, Huttser, and his mother, Palla, from their own parents too and theirs before them, was working through his muscles and mind and being, telling him how dangerous such beauty could really be. For if Fell didn't eat soon he would weaken and then start to make mistakes. Then, if something befell him and he hurt himself in his journey, the Kerl would have no pack to aid him at all.\n\nHis five long years alone had already taught the wolf hardiness and self-sufficiency, taught him to swallow his loneliness and go on. But it had brought the pang of isolation too, and a strange resentment that he had to rely on himself entirely." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell growled and pushed away the feelings of self-pity threatening to overwhelm him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It had been his choice to become what he was, his choice to walk the world alone." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The wolf stopped and looked up at the harsh mountain peaks above him. Had it really been his choice though? Fell hadn't chosen to be born with Larka, the white wolf, in the den, nor to be cursed with the powers of the Sight. Then there was all that his aunt Morgra had told him. The darkness and anger that engulfed him through her manipulations had taught him that his very nature was evil, and that all there was in life was the search for power and survival. Why did it all end in death too, as he had seen so often? Nothing really chose its path, thought Fell sadly, for every living creature, from Lera to man, was swept up in the great river of being, and borne along like leaves on a windy sea, to what destiny none of them really knew, or controlled at all.\n\nFell padded on. No, he told himself sternly, there is choice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's what Larka's journey had taught them all. For though they were all made by nature, man and animal could have freedom if they truly chose it. As Larka had chosen to throw off the power she had been given when her mind had touched the human's—the power of the Man Varg, the greatest Putnar in the world.\n\nOr is it only man that has real freedom, thought the wolf mournfully, only man that can really choose a path, with his clever mind? The ever forgetful Lera were ruled so much by the daily needs of survival, by the land and the animals they hunted, and that hunted them. Compared to man they were like sheep, lost blindly in a snowstorm.\n\nIs that why Fell had carried the human child on his back down from Harja and returned it safely to its mother five years before? The little baby had become almost feral living with the wolves, but Fell had given it back to its own, in the village below the Stone Den on the mountaintop." }, { "from": "human", "value": "To live and grow amongst its kind, perhaps into one of those very soldiers who hunted and killed the wild wolf." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Why? Because, as Larka had taught, all things must be free and be true to their nature. Yet Fell had tried to make a pact too, a pact that the boy child had seemed to understand—the pact of the Putnar—a pact that said while his cries would remind man of the freedom and beauty of the wild, man's power must protect the wild too, in exchange.\n\nHad man understood him, the wolf wondered now, or was Fell's pact just a hopeless dream? Fell had seen little in his journeying that had reassured him that man understood anything at all, with his relentless hunting of the wolf, his destruction of tree and forest, and his endless wars. Was it the Lera then who still had something to teach man instead? Fell's thoughts went back to the strange visitation in the cave, and that voice's insistence that a changeling was important to nature itself. Again the old fortune-teller Tsinga's words came back to the wolf, words in a different journey but perhaps just as relevant—You must survive... for life itself! How could it really be?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The wolf stopped and the fur rose on his back." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He had come to a section of the river where the banks narrowed and the water dropped downwards." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But instead of a gushing, laughing torrent, Fell saw a still pool that was beginning to freeze in the cold." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Right across the narrow river a dam had been built, a lattice of branch and tree trunk, sodden with water. Fell's tail came up and he bared his teeth. Man must be close once more.\n\nHowever, as Fell scented the air, the wolf caught nothing human on the breeze. Instead, around the strange construction, which so reminded him of men's dark dens and their wooden churches, a pungent, musky scent filled the air that made the wolf's mouth water.\n\nFell heard a splash and a swishing sound, and to his amazement, saw a heavy branch moving straight towards him across the water. It wasn't floating or drifting along aimlessly, it was moving as if it had a mind of its own, and it suddenly changed course and swung right, towards the dam. Fell blinked in absolute astonishment, and wondered if he was still haunted, or if all things in life, even the trees and stones, were really alive." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But no, a shape emerged on the edge of the dam." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a dusky grey colour, tinged with brown, and as furry as a rabbit." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It came backing out of the dripping water, pulling at the branch with its huge teeth." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell could see whiskers and little ears now, and for a moment thought it was one of the otters he had hunted in his travels, until he saw the creature's strange tail—the oddest tail Fell had ever seen. It was flattened like the end of the branches that men used to row their boats across their waters, while the creature's hind legs were webbed like a duck's.\n\nFell had a startling thought. Could this creature be the Guardian the voice had spoken of? Perhaps it was odd that a wolf like Fell had never seen a beaver before in the wild, but in truth they were more common to the northwest, and this one had strayed very far from home. It was still completely unaware of Fell, so keen was it to finish its work, for its mate and kits were waiting deep below the lodge it was building for them. Now the beaver began to pull the log across the ground towards it, twisting and turning its powerful little body, dragging the heavy thing into place.\n\nAs Fell watched, he felt a strange wonder, for after his thoughts about man and the power of their minds, here was this amazingly clever and purposeful little animal." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then the beaver stopped and began talking to itself and Fell realised that he could understand it, just like the squirrels. \"Vork, vork, vork,\" it said, \"on, on, on.\"\n\nFell paused, thinking of those words about a Guardian, but hunger was wrestling inside the wolf, his own instincts for survival. The black wolf padded closer.\n\n\"Survive,\" Fell whispered to himself as he had often done. \"I must survive. That is the law of the untamed wolf.\"\n\nWith that, the beaver sensed him and swung round. It didn't flinch or startle though, nor dive back into the water." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It just stood staring back defiantly at Fell, with enormous brown eyes and shining, quivering whiskers. Then the beaver cocked its head and opened its dripping mouth, to show a set of quite gigantic square teeth. But rather than speak, it just yawned. Fell was amazed at the creature's reaction in the face of a wolf. His tail came down slowly.\n\n\"Aren't you frightened of me?\" he growled.\n\nAt that the beaver tilted its head, and Fell could see the surprise in its eyes.\n\n\"Not of you,\" it answered in a strange accent, \"but zat I can understand you, yah.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It is the Sight,\" whispered Fell." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Something is happening; something in nature, I think.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory inclusion (with quotes): And vat doo you vant?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The beaver nodded.\n\n\"And vat doo you vant?\" he asked.\n\n\"What do you think I want?\" growled Fell.\n\n\"To kill and eat me,\" answered the beaver coldly. \"Zen vat are you vaiting for?\"\n\nFell was even more surprised at this remark. The beaver didn't seem frightened of him at all.\n\n\"Vell?\" he went on scornfully." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You expect me to give you permission, perhaps? Try or don't try, but don't vaste my time looking at me like zat.\"\n\nFell was struck dumb. As a wolf, his instincts were trained to two basic responses in the wild—fight or flight—but Fell had never met a creature before that seemed to take the attitude of talk or be rude.\n\n\"But aren't... aren't you afraid of me at all?\" he whispered.\n\nAt Fell's question the beaver sat back on his haunches, propped himself up on his bizarre tail, and pulled his little front paws through his whiskers.\n\n\"Afraid of vat?\" he almost snorted. \"Of being eaten? Every day a creature like me faces zat threat. If I spent all my time vorrying about all zee zings zat could happen to me in life, I'd never leave zee hide, let alone finish my lodge.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Fell, almost ashamed that he had failed so miserably to make any impression on the beaver whatsoever." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Father told me never to vaste time on fear,\" said the beaver." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Get on vith it and don't complain, zat vas Father's motto. Mates to care for, and hungry kits to feed. Zat's real life, and have zum fun doing it, I zay. It all ends zee zame vay in zee end, anyhow, vether it's in a stomach or in zee ground. Besides, I have zings to guard.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell suddenly wondered if he was in a dream—a beaver talking to him so philosophically like this about life and death." }, { "from": "system", "value": "/insert_quote: \"and in legend is zaid to know all zee deepest zecrets of zee Zight.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But it was the last thing that the beaver had said that had stuck in his mind, and again he thought of that voice and Larka's face.\n\n\"Tell me,\" he said, \"you seem to know much. Then what do you know of the Guardian?\"\n\n\"Zee Guardian!\" said the beaver immediately, looking frightened despite all he had said. \"Doesn't one vith zee Zight know of him already?\"\n\n\"No, tell me.\"\n\n\"Zee Guardian is a great and terrible myth,\" said the beaver with a shiver, \"and in legend is zaid to know all zee deepest zecrets of zee Zight.\"\n\nFell's yellow gold eyes narrowed. Perhaps this Guardian could tell him how a child could be important to all of nature." }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'asked' 2 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Besides, when he had become a Kerl had he not promised himself to hunt for meaning and track down lies? \"Who is this Guardian?\" he asked. \"Where is he? What is his name?\"\n\n\"None know zat grave zecret,\" answered the beaver, \"except if he is real, zee Guardian valks alone, shielding his identity from all, zey zay, and zpeaks vith a mouth of stone.\"\n\nFell had never heard anything so ridiculous in all his days. He felt rather embarrassed for having asked. But the beaver went on.\n\n\"Zey zay zome pretend to be him. Zome of zee Lera. For zere are many tricksters in zee lands beyond zee forest!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell had relaxed, for the black wolf had decided not to eat the impudent animal after all, and he rather liked the twinkle in its cheeky eyes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The beaver had caught the meaning in Fell's body too, but he didn't relax quite so much as the wolf.\n\n\"And who are you then?\" asked Fell.\n\n\"Ottol,\" answered the beaver, lifting his head boldly, \"from zee great black forests to zee vest.\"\n\nFell knew his own country as the lands beyond the forest, and he had no way of knowing that the beaver meant the region that one day men would call Bavaria.\n\n\"And you?\" asked Ottol abruptly.\n\n\"Fell,\" answered the wolf.\n\nOttol dropped his paws immediately.\n\n\"Ah yes, zee lone black voolf,\" he said rather more warily." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'almost' 2 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Vee have heard rumours of you, Fell, though I zought zem stories. You are almost a legend, roaming zee forests and scaring zee Lera vith your cries. Vy do you do it?\"\n\nFell was strangely pleased by his own reputation, but his lips curled up.\n\n\"You wouldn't understand,\" he answered darkly. \"You're no Putnar, Ottol the beaver.\"\n\n\"And zat I'm not, zanking zee Great One,\" said the beaver. \"I eat zee bark and delicious berries. Having to hunt and kill all zee time, and to eat varm meat, it's deeeeesgusting.\"\n\n\"Is it?\" growled Fell, getting his appetite back almost immediately. \"Perhaps I should teach you just how disgusting it can be.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Spring and jump at me, vould you?\" cried the beaver sharply. \"Vell, doo it. Go on, zen, and zee just vat happens, you fool.\"\n\nThis was too much for Fell. Almost faster than you can say \"river beaver,\" he sprang at the creature with a snarl, but Ottol launched himself off his powerful tail and dived back into the water to safety. On land his little feet made him slow, but in the water he was master of his own world.\n\nFell, on the other hand, landed on the spot on the lodge where Ottol had been perched, and as soon as he reached the slippery logs, he felt his paws scrabbling hopelessly and the ground beneath him moving. The logs in the dam wall had begun to slide, and it was all the wolf could do to stop himself being hurled into the river, or pulled down between the powerful branches." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Two logs caught his front right paw, so painfully that it felt like a human trap—the metal teeth they left in the forest—and part of the lodge wall fell away in a noisy cascade. Fell thought he would be caught and crushed, but as they went on rolling, his injured paw was released again, and the wolf managed to get purchase with his back legs. He gave another leap, and just as a part of the lodge fell in on itself with an almighty crash, landed on the bank, safely.\n\nHe felt a bad pain in his right paw though, and as he looked down he saw blood staining the snow. Fell whimpered bitterly and began to lick at the deep cut on his leg.\n\n\"Now zee vat you've done,\" came an angry, scornful voice, and Fell looked up to see Ottol glaring at him from the far bank. \"I knew zat vood happen. It vill take me two whole days to rebuild it.\"\n\nFell snarled, but the beaver, far out of reach now, held his ground." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Vy do you zink I didn't run ven I first zaw you? I knew you'd spring and damage my lodge.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I thought you zed you veren't frightened,\" snorted Fell angrily, mocking Ottol, and licking his paw again.\n\n\"No, zo I'm not,\" said Ottol proudly, \"for vee are from a family of vorriors, and one zing my father alvays zaid to me, 'Don't be afraid, Ottol, courage my boy. And remember, strike upwards. Strike upwards, if you strike at zee stars.' But I'm not stupid, and I'm not ready yet to be zee meal for a zilly voolf, legend or not.\"\n\n\"If the river weren't so cold, you'd be a meal soon enough, bold beaver,\" growled Fell dangerously, his breath smoking in the air, and hiding the fact that he feared the water too.\n\n\"And how vood you catch me with a voonded paw?\" asked Ottol scornfully.\n\nThe beaver paused though, and something kindly came into his intelligent eyes. \"Yet vee are even now, are vee not, Fell?\" he said. \"You damaged my lodge and it damaged your paw. You'd better doo zumthing for it. It vill be dangerous in zis vether.\"\n\nFell eyed him slyly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was absurd for a beaver in the wild to be trying to help a wolf like this, and the Putnar suspected some ulterior motive. In fact Ottol did have an ulterior motive, for quite apart from wanting to protect the new lodge, of which he was so extremely proud, his hide was deep below it and inside it was the beloved family he was guarding. He wanted Fell's focus away from his home.\n\nYet Ottol, for all his Bavarian beaver bluster, was not an unkind animal, and he had seen something in Fell that he liked too.\n\n\"I can bring you zum plants I know to help it heal.\"\n\nFell looked up.\n\n\"I'm all right,\" he growled proudly, \"and I don't need any help from you.\"\n\n\"Don't you indeed?\" said Ottol." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And vere are you going?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell's eyes narrowed. How could he tell the beaver of the voice, and his vision of a human with a mark on his arm, that he had been told he must help. In truth Fell had still not accepted the mad injunction, and although the voice had said the child was close, he had no idea where he was going at all.\n\n\"I wander,\" he answered sullenly.\n\n\"And all alone, vithout a mate and a family of little ones to care for?\" said Ottol. \"I can't zink of anyzing more terrible.\"\n\n\"A family?\" said Fell softly, thinking of Huttser and Palla, and their cubs—his brothers and sisters—Khaz and Kipcha, Skop and little Larka, whom his parents had named after her. \"What point in a family, Ottol? They grow to face the same pain and darkness as everything else, and then to die too.\"\n\nAt this the beaver dived into the water again and swam back towards Fell, who marvelled at the creature's lack of fear of the water." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He pulled himself out on the lodge once more and shook his coat." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You're dark indeed, voolf,\" he said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Why zo, Fell ZlipPaw?\"\n\n\"Because I'm a Kerl and have seen much darkness. Because it's my nature.\"\n\n\"Is it indeed?\" said Ottol, \"and vould you doo zomething for me, Fell?\"\n\n\"What?\" asked the wolf in surprise.\n\n\"Vould you turn zat log for me vith your good paw? Zee one on top of zee smaller, over zere. It vill free zee first, and help me get back to vork.\"\n\nFell was surprised by the request, but for some reason he got up and limped over to the log. He began to nudge it with his muzzle towards the lodge, but as he did so felt something warm and pleasant on his back. A shaft of hot sunlight had come slanting through the winter trees, and after sitting in icy shade, he now felt warmth on his back." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was exactly as the clever beaver had intended." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Zere,\" cried Ottol, \"you zee?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"See?\" said Fell, rolling the log and looking back.\n\n\"You know zee zunlight too, voolf, and you like it.\"\n\n\"I didn't mean that,\" snapped Fell coldly, but very much liking the sunlight on his back. \"I meant... \"\n\n\"Zee darkness of zee world,\" said Ottol, \"I know. Zee darkness of zee wild Putnar and zee fighter. Zee darkness of dreams and nightmares.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" growled Fell.\n\n\"I too know zee darkness, I know zee warm, zafe darkness of an earthy hide and zee misty, curling darkness of zee endless flowing vorters, and a vorld of strangling veeds beneath. I know zee darkness of leaves and zee musty, zecret places of zee forest.\"\n\n\"But that's not... \"\n\n\"Not?\" snapped the beaver, \"not zee zunlight, no. Not vot you zink is black in your nature either. But it is zee darkness, as zee zun on your back, or zee glitter of corn in a field, is zee light. But is one any better zan zee other?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What do you mean?\" growled Fell." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Look at mushrooms of zee forest,\" said Ottol thoughtfully." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Beds of fungus and lichen. Fields of gorse and bracken, vere a million living zings breed and grow in zecret. Do not zee other Lera feed on zem to live? Has darkness not a power too?\"\n\nFell was silent.\n\n\"But if you zink it zee only power, you're wrong,\" said the philosophical beaver, \"for it is zunlight zat draws zee dark power from zee earth, and zo makes zee trees grow tall. Zo from vere doo you draw your power, voolf, zee darkness or zee light? And can't you hear it, Fell?\"\n\n\"Hear it?\"\n\n\"Zomething is happening, as you zaid. Zee voice of zee Great One, my kind call it. Talking through all nature.\"\n\nFell blinked. Was that what the squirrels had meant? Did a mysterious Guardian really exist, to give him an answer to this madness?\n\n\"Zee miracle comes again, as does zee spring. And if you zink darkness your only power, vill you not stay in zee shadows like a guilty zing, hiding away forever?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I... \"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Include the following text] → \"Freedom without responsibility? What freedom is zat? None at all.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Zere,\" said the beaver smugly, \"perhaps you have been too long in zee dark, Fell ShadowTail. Look to zee light.\"\n\nFell took a step forwards.\n\n\"You don't understand,\" he growled again. \"Besides, you build your dam, and hunt for your mate and cubs, but you do not have what I have. The freedom of the untamed wolf.\"\n\nThe beaver cocked his head questioningly.\n\n\"Freedom without responsibility? What freedom is zat? None at all.\"\n\nWith that there was the most extraordinary sound, a kind of barking and then a swishing and two tiny heads popped out of the water, followed by a third, as large and handsome as Ottol's. It was his mate and her kits." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'water' 2 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What's zee racket, Ottol?\" the female beaver snapped irritably.\n\n\"Stay back, children,\" cried Ottol to his kits, for the little baby beavers were scrabbling up the bank towards their father, and thus closer to the wolf.\n\nOttol suddenly wished with all his heart that they had waited till early summer to have children, but the journey to this strange land had disrupted their natural rhythms. The look of terror from Ottol's mate was evident too, as she rose from the water and saw the black wolf on the riverbank. She started to slap her huge tail on the surface of the water in desperate warning.\n\n\"It is all right, Ottol,\" growled Fell softly, feeling rather amused. \"I'll not harm you, or your family. I swear it.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "/set_word_count: little, frequency: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The female beaver blinked in astonishment that she understood Fell, then stopped slapping the water, for she realised there was no one else to warn anyway. Fell was suddenly surprised at himself for making so many promises.\n\n\"Zen I zank you indeed,\" said Ottol graciously, dipping his head politely.\n\n\"And now I must be gone,\" cried Fell, startling the little ones with the power of his growling voice, \"for if I do not hunt soon, it is I that'll be dead. And I am a wolf.\"\n\n\"Ah yes, your freedom,\" said Ottol, his eyes twinkling like dewdrops. \"Zen perhaps you should go zat vay, to zee clearing beyond. I zaw deer tracks zere, zis morning.\"\n\n\"And have you no sadness for a deer?\" asked Fell a little coldly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Just because your own kits are safe?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, yes, yes indeed,\" answered Ottol, \"but as you zay, zey are mine. And I love life, Fell, and a fair chase too. Nature is nature, as zee Great One decrees, in all its harshness, or zelfishness. But tell me, Fell,\" added Ottol, watching the wolf as he began to pad away, \"you have your freedom perhaps, but have you nothing to protect? To care for.\"\n\nFell did not answer and felt a strange sorrow in his belly.\n\n\"Well, good hunting zen, Fell of zee Riverbank,\" cried Ottol, as his family gathered nervously around him.\n\nFell began to run, his right paw stinging furiously. He realised that he was sad to leave the beaver, and his pretty little family, for it had been good to talk with Ottol, almost like a friend. But then he came to the clearing and saw the slots of a sika deer in the snow. Fell's head went down immediately and his pace grew faster, and in a moment the wolf had spotted it. It was a small deer, grazing on its own, and although it looked thin and scrawny, at least it was a meal." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The excitement coursing through Fell's body protected him from the pain of his wound, and his pace didn't slacken. The little deer was young and inexperienced, and within a moment the black wolf had sprung.\n\nFell missed the kill. The thing that had happened to Larka long ago, and to Fell many times, was happening again. In his mind's eye the Sight had already given Fell a vision of what might have been, and of the stricken deer's pain, which Fell experienced in his own body, while in reality he missed the leap and the deer ran free.\n\n\"The light or the darkness?\" growled Fell as he licked his still hungry lips and looked mournfully at the animal vanishing into the distance. Fell realised that his path had taken him towards the edge of the trees, and as he looked out, he saw the valley and, far below, the village of Moldov he had been skirting now for three days, despite his reluctance to follow the voice." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell's heart beat faster, as he thought of his vision in the pool and wondered if the child was really sleeping somewhere below." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'alina' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Was he not sworn to hunt for meaning and to track down lies? But he shook his head. Ottol's words of the Guardian had been utter madness and he wanted nothing to do with it. He threw back his sleek black muzzle and howled.\n\nAlina sculcuvant heard the savage voice on the wind, and it made the young woman start and turn fearfully. She was in the open and far below her she could see the valley where her flight had begun, laid out like a picture book. She shivered bitterly and stamped her booted feet in the snow. They were so cold they felt like blocks of ice, but her shirt was damp with sweat, and Alina knew that if she stopped too long the air might chill it to her back." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina had halted for a moment to sit on a large rock, and around her the air was filled with chattering cries, as three magpies scavenged in the snow behind her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The late afternoon sun was pressing through drifting clouds, and she suddenly pulled up the sleeve on her right arm to look at the mark." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then she got up and scrambled on up the slope." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Just that morning, along the edge of the tree line, Alina had seen a group of villagers from Moldov and amongst them Malduk." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Now she hated him with all her heart." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They had almost caught her with their dogs, but Alina had managed to pull herself down into a large abandoned badger's set, and the scent had masked her own." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The scent had made the hunting dogs so wild that their masters had begun to drive them back down the mountain." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina had waited almost two hours in that tiny, cramped space, curled up like a ball, but at least it had been warmer in there, and the girl had almost fallen asleep.\n\nAlina had known that she had to keep moving, to get as far away as possible from her home, or that terrible place she had had to call home. They would never stop hunting her now, and the chase could not end in a trial, or any kind of justice. It had only one possible end, if they caught her—Alina's death.\n\nThe terrified girl felt darkness swamp her thoughts as she scrambled on. Any friends she had in the world, and they were few enough, she had had to leave behind her, and she was bound she knew not where. Her world had changed entirely with the discovery of that parchment, and the revelation that she was not a changeling, but somehow connected to the great Lord Vladeran in the region of Castelu.\n\nBut how? She had always known that she was not destined to be a mere shepherdess, dressed as a boy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet when she recalled her dreams, they were of a household where she slept in a bare room and was treated little better than a servant." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her past seemed no better than her life in Moldov. Alina had understood from the parchment that she had been given over as a little girl to be murdered. But how could someone so great as a Carpathian lord want the death of a child, and a girl child too? Was she really a traitor? Alina strained to remember but could not.\n\nSomething else had changed for Alina, in these three days of her flight. Each night she had managed to take shelter from the bitter weather, first in the hollow of a great oak like a fairy child, then in a drift of leaves, kept warm by the snow itself, and finally in a narrow cave in the mountain. She had felt like a goblin as she had done so, but each night her strange dreams had grown stronger and stronger." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina had dreamt of that child again, lying in its cot, the baby she had felt was her brother, smiling up happily at her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And of that beautiful woman with curling black hair again—Roma, Roman, or something like it—yet who had ordered her about as roughly as Ranna had, and who had entrusted her with some grave duty." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then Alina had been looking down at that wooden cot, and it had been empty, and suddenly she had heard a cry, a low, searching howl. Wolves. Why was it that so many times in recent days Alina Sculcuvant had dreamt of wolves, who seemed to be summoning her to some deeper understanding?\n\nThe guilt connected to the fate of that sleeping infant was more terrible than ever though, and Alina realised that the herbs that for so long Malduk and Ranna had tried to control her with had worn off, and that the dreams, or memories, could only get stronger.\n\nThe night before, in that stony shelter, the dream had been the most real—of the great black wolf with fearsome, piercing eyes. It had been standing before her, its ears pressed forwards as though listening. Was it hunting her too, or had she somehow really summoned it?\n\nAlina pushed away the horrible thoughts, and stumbled on through the forest she had just entered. She was desperately hungry, for Mia's food had been finished on the second day, and although she knew it had saved her life, and she had managed to slake her thirst with handfuls of snow, it was not like a real drink and her belly was grumbling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her climb into the mountains was taking her away from the streams and rivers, and Alina wondered now if her stomach would ever feel full again, or her tongue refreshed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Although she had had to kill a sheep once with Malduk, and had hated doing it, she had no experience of hunting, and knew only a little of the berries or plants of the land, what few remained with the growing winter. She had tried gathering some that morning, berries as dark as ink, and although at first they had tasted fine, they had made her sick in the snow. Even if Alina had known how to set a snare, or to chase the wild creatures like a man, with the loss of her knife she had no tools or weapons, and besides, apart from birds flying south, Alina had seen no animals at all.\n\nShe looked up at the trees around her and felt fear whispering in their branches. Night was coming, and the forest was a place she had always associated with fairies and spirits. Now she realised how exposed she was. Without the witch's charm to protect me, perhaps the goblins really will come and snatch me back. The thought lasted only a second, and Alina realised suddenly how foolish she was being." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She wasn't a changeling at all, the parchment proved it, she was a real girl now, and she was suddenly sure fairies and goblins didn't exist at all." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina stopped in the wood." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had come to a clearing and sensed that there were people about before she reached its edge. Alina spotted a fire, blazing in the snowy twilight, and eight or nine men and women crouched around it in the clearing, warming their hands and feet.\n\nShe heard a strange, haunting melody—the sound of a fiddle whining softly through the coming night. Alina wondered in amazement if she had stumbled on the fairies after all, until she realised from these people's colourful clothes and their dark faces that they must be Tsingani—gypsies.\n\nThe sight was almost as mysterious and magical as coming on a real fairy encampment, and Alina crept behind a tree to watch. They were talking and laughing loudly, as they passed around a bottle of rough wine and plucked spitting chestnuts from the flames, or munched on goat meat around their fire. One of the gypsies, a tough, handsome man with coal black hair, suddenly spoke.\n\n\"What will the winter bring this time?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "he said. \"It looks like it'll be a bad one.\"\n\n\"Perhaps I should look into the flames,\" said a gypsy woman at his side, \"or read the cards.\"\n\n\"Why?\" said the man. \"You have the Gift?\"\n\n\"The Gift, Father?\" said a voice at his side, and Alina noticed a little boy with curly chestnut hair, sitting beside him on the ground.\n\n\"A true gypsy power,\" said his father. \"A gift to see things, beyond the ordinary insights of people. They say that you're either born with it, or not, and it comes through here.\"\n\nThe gypsy touched a finger to his dark forehead in the firelight." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"A gift of seeing further, and of knowing more,\" said the woman with a kindly smile at the little boy. \"A gift to predict, and to understand too, although there are those that might call it a curse. They say changelings have it above all, so let's hope the fairies didn't drop you here amongst us, boy.\"\n\nThe others laughed, but Alina's ears had pricked up, and she wondered if she herself was a gypsy.\n\n\"A gift to look into the minds of wild animals too,\" the woman went on, and the boy's eyes boggled in his head. Alina remembered Malduk's words.\n\n\"Wild animals,\" he whispered, peering nervously around at the forest and almost spotting Alina behind the tree.\n\n\"It's not any animal that we gypsies have to fear, son,\" said his father with a laugh, ruffling his hair fondly. \"It's those damned villagers. They're hunting something again. I've seen them on the mountain.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's wolves,\" said the woman." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"They think they're demons.\"\n\nSome of the gypsies chuckled loudly around the fire, and shook their heads at such foolishness.\n\n\"You're brave on such a night to laugh at demons,\" said another man, \"when they say Lord Tepesh rides out again.\"\n\nNine pairs of eyes were suddenly regarding one another through the firelight, like nervous wolves themselves. There was no more terrible name in the lands beyond the forest than Vlad Tepesh, even to the Tsingani, who tried to live outside the laws of men. The name itself meant the \"Impaler,\" after the Wallachian warlord's custom of impaling the bodies of his enemies on wooden stakes. He had used the practice to suppress his own people, and collect taxes too, but also to strike terror in the hearts of his Turkish enemies in the Ottoman lands.\n\nHe was the son of that great Prince of Wallachia, Vlad Dracul, who had been murdered by the Hungarians years before, and whose name signified that he was a member of one of the secret Orders, the Order of the Dragon." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Dracul itself meant \"Dragon,\" but in those dark days of fear and symbols, if such things have ever lessened their grip on man, it had another meaning too, for it was a name for the devil himself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This Vlad Tepesh then, because he was the son of Vlad Dracul, carried another title, which has lit fear and horror in the hearts of humans to this day—Draculea. Dracula.\n\n\"We'd better not be heard saying it though,\" muttered the gypsy woman, in the growing darkness, \"if we value our hides. Not of a great overlord like Draculea.\"\n\n\"What have the Tsingani to fear of overlords, woman?\" said a third man scornfully. \"Lord Tepesh's palace is more leagues away than I can count. If I could count.\"\n\nThe others laughed again, but the gypsy who had spoken first was shaking his head.\n\n\"They rumour that Draculea drinks human blood,\" he said angrily, \"and that in his castle he invokes spirits and talks with the very dead.\"\n\n\"Old wives' tales,\" said the gypsy woman, trying to calm the frightened boy, \"stories for Baba Yaga. We Tsingani shouldn't trouble ourselves with such lofty matters anyhow.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Know our place, eh?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "said the boy's father, raising an eyebrow." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Perhaps. And isn't it Tepesh who, like King Stefan, keeps the lands at peace and the Turk at bay? Besides, I've heard of the kindnesses Draculea does. His charities. The Orders are sworn to protect the land, and the Tsingani too.\"\n\n\"That they may be, but he's a wolf in sheep's clothing, all right,\" murmured the man, with a look of deep suspicion. \"And the Orders are not what they were.\"\n\n\"You know Draculea seeks alliance with his cousin in Castelu, Lord Vladeran,\" said the second man, \"some say against the King.\"\n\nAlina's eyes flickered at all this high talk. She had never heard before that the terrible Lord Tepesh was the cousin of Lord Vladeran, and it filled her with fear.\n\n\"Because, like Draculea, Vladeran walks the left-hand path,\" said the first gypsy. \"They say the fathers in their holy church have heard of it. It would be the flames even for grand lords if they found them guilty.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina was attracted by these people and their haunting tunes. She was bitterly hungry too and could have done with some of their food or the warmth of their fire, but with this news of Vladeran walking the left-hand path, and plots against King Stefan Cel Mare himself, the poor girl suddenly felt more terrified and alone than she had ever felt.\n\nShe had feared fairies once, but now the real world seemed far more frightening than anything she had dreamt of in her powerful imagination. Alina Sculcuvant turned and crept away into the night.\n\nShe slept fitfully again and woke with the dawn, continuing her flight from Moldov, and thinking for a time she had escaped. But by late afternoon she heard the sounds of the dogs on the slopes below her again and quickened her pace. Alina had come to the beginning of a col, rising up through a narrow ravine, and because it was out of the wind, and the trees on the sides of the slopes hung outwards, shielding it from snowfall, much of the jagged rock was bare, and glistened in the damp like knives.\n\nIt was a cold, forbidding place, but Alina could hear the delicious sound of mountain water somewhere above her, and at the thought of a drink hurried on." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She stopped to refresh her parched lips in an icy rivulet that flowed from the slope, but as she was bending down, and twilight began to fall, Alina heard the sharp snap of a branch and swung round." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'again' 2 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Someone was coming straight towards her.\n\nThe path behind her was shielded by a twist in the mountain, but as she looked back Alina realised that there was nowhere to hide, and that she could not possibly climb the steep slopes around her quickly enough. If the men and their dogs had picked up her tracks or her scent again, she was cornered. Alina crouched down and clasped two large rocks in her hands to hurl at them. But as she stood again, she saw a single figure appear, struggling wearily along and panting as he came on up the slope with his staff.\n\n\"Ivan!\" cried Alina delightedly.\n\n\"Thank God,\" whispered the old shepherd warmly as soon as he saw the boy. \"I thought I'd never catch up with you, child.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He gasped for breath and stopped to lean on his crook." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Its top was carved finely into the shape of a ram, and Alina had often admired the thing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina dropped the stones and ran over to Ivan, helping the old man towards a boulder, where they both sat down heavily." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina remembered gratefully how he had spoken up for her amongst the villagers." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Your legs are strong, WovenWord,\" he panted, sucking at the air and looking at his young friend admiringly, \"and your lungs able to cope with this thinning air. It's good. Though not for an old fool like me. I've been following you since you escaped.\"\n\n\"But what are you doing here, Ivan?\" said Alina.\n\n\"No time,\" answered the shepherd, between his strained breaths. \"They're close again. I've been using my tracks to lead them astray these last three days, but they've split into two, Barbat and Malduk, and there's only one way up the mountain now. Half the group are set on this course too. Malduk's.\"\n\n\"But Ivan... \"\n\n\"Hush, child, and listen carefully. I know you didn't do it, but I've never seen Malduk so intent on anything in all his life, nor the villagers as thick as thieves. There's been a skirmish in the valley with Turks, which has distracted many of the soldiers, but the villagers hunt you ceaselessly, with cries of changeling on their lips. Driven on by Malduk.\"\n\n\"If they're so close, I'll never make it up there,\" said Alina desperately, looking towards the col.\n\n\"No, you won't. But go that way and you might have a chance. See that little path?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The old shepherd pointed up between two rocks on the side of the culvert. \"It's an old deer track I used to take often in my youth, when I roamed these hills without a care in the world. It leads straight up, and then out onto the ice field.\"\n\n\"Ice field?\" gulped Alina.\n\n\"That's the only way you'll be able to escape them,\" said Ivan, his face darkening with the very thought of it. \"On the ice field above, though it can be slippery, you'll leave no tracks, and I doubt they'd follow you there anyway. It's full of fissures and pitfalls, so you must be very careful. Night is coming, but don't stop, and whatever you do, don't fall asleep. Sleep is the bitter accomplice of the cold.\"\n\nOld Ivan stood and handed Alina his crook, with its fine carved top.\n\n\"Take this,\" he said gravely, \"and use it to prod and test the ground before you. There are many places to fall, so keep your eyes and your senses open. But trust too, in His power.\"\n\nIvan crossed himself and Alina clasped the crook almost proudly, although she wished it had been given to her in happier circumstances." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include this dialogue snippet naturally: \"Then, you know? You've known all along I'm a girl.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"If you can cross the ice field safely,\" said Ivan, \"you'll be able to get down into the next valley, and then over the mountains proper. There's a village far beyond them to the north, over three mountain passes, if I recall, at the end of a wide valley. They call it the valley of Baba Yaga.\"\n\nAlina's eyes opened in amazement at the name. A name to conjure within a fairy tale.\n\n\"A great cairn crowns the mountain at the valley entrance and below it a wooden church by a little lake. A blacksmith I know lives near there. His name is Lescu and he was once a great soldier—the Warrior Smith, they called him in his day. That man will help you, I know it, if you tell him Ivan sent you.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Ivan.\"\n\n\"But be honest with him. Tell him only the truth, WovenWord. The truth is your greatest ally now. No more lies, eh, girl?\"\n\n\"Girl?\" gasped Alina, stepping back and steadying herself with the crook. \"Then, you know? You've known all along I'm a girl.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Not all along, Alina,\" answered the old man softly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's a pretty name. But I began to suspect when your voice didn't change, and no hair grew on your chin. The others thought it was because you are younger than your years, as you tell them, but I remember Malduk saying you were eight when they found you, and I did the calculation from the time you came here. I've noticed other things too about the changes in you.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "💬 Please integrate this quote: \"There are many strange things about you indeed,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina blushed.\n\n\"And many times when the others have been on the point of guessing, I've protected your secret. A changeling secret, stranger than any tale of goblins. I told them that you wouldn't wash with us because of a scar you had, and that you are thin because Malduk and Ranna starved you, though heaven knows that's true enough.\"\n\n\"Oh, Ivan,\" said Alina gratefully, realising there was no time to tell him the truth of who she now suspected she might really be. \"I wish I could have shared my secret with you all along. Yet so many secrets surround me now.\"\n\n\"There are many strange things about you indeed,\" said Ivan, nodding thoughtfully. \"I've always known it. It's not just what you've been hiding from the shepherds, or that mark on your arm. It's some quality you have, whether changeling or not. May God protect you, my girl, but you must protect yourself too. They hunt you like a man now, and in some things you must learn to act like one, but never forget your true nature, and use your wits and cunning too. It's not just Malduk and the villagers you have to fear, now that your hiding is at an end.\"\n\nAlina thought her hiding was only just beginning.\n\n\"What do you mean, Ivan?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The winter begins, and the wild animals are hungry and frightened. There are other hunters than people out there. Bear and mountain lynx. Wolves.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina looked back nervously." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"A wolf,\" she whispered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I've dreamt of a black wolf recently, like the one they were talking about that night. Though I didn't summon it, I swear.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'magic' exactly 3 times in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The old shepherd looked into her face and his eyes shone.\n\n\"Have you indeed? Well, perhaps it has some meaning. They say dreams can have deep meanings, though I don't know the truth of such magic.\"\n\n\"Magic?\" whispered Alina sadly, thinking of all the powers she had wanted as a changeling, and feeling very vulnerable. \"There isn't any magic in the world, Ivan. Only cruelty and hate.\"\n\n\"Isn't there, WovenWord?\" said Ivan. \"Well, perhaps we'll see.\" Ivan smiled. \"Here,\" he added suddenly, thrusting his pack at the girl. \"There's food and water in there, a knife and a good, warm woollen shirt. My own shirt. And something else you may need.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina took it gratefully and looked sadly at her old friend, as she transferred her meagre things from her own pack into his, and he watched like a father sending a child out into the world." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Now go, Alina. I'll take your pack and cover your tracks. When they come, I'll say that I saw you lower down the mountain.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Will they believe you? Isn't it dangerous, Ivan?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Many respect me,\" answered the brave old shepherd. \"And the last thing they'd dare to call me is a liar.\"\n\nIvan winked.\n\n\"Now go, girl.\"\n\nAlina had slung the pack over her shoulder in the moonlight.\n\n\"And, Alina, don't believe that the whole world is like this. It isn't.\"\n\nHer heart was full to bursting, and she hated to leave Ivan, but Alina knew this was her last chance to escape. She thanked him with all her heart and turned away." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'coming' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Already in the foothills below, they could hear the voices of barking dogs coming closer and closer. Malduk and the hunters were near.\n\n\"Go, Alina. Hurry.\"\n\nSo she began to climb, hard, up the deer track, higher and higher towards the heavens, and although the path was as thin and winding as a skein of drawn wool, made naturally over the years by the endless movement of red deer, following one another's slots through the hard landscape, to the changeling it was like a magic carpet in the coming night, through the snow and stone.\n\nAlina felt the air about her grow thinner and colder as the darkness came in, and above her head great swagging mountains of storm-laden cloud began to gather in the sky. A mist came in with the darkness, wisping about her head like a ghost, but shielding her too from any watchers below.\n\nAlina felt as if she were rising towards heaven itself, and wondered if she were already dead, murdered by Malduk and Ranna in her humble manger, and was being carried away on a ghastly dream. But then she heard the hungry voices of the dogs below, pursuing her still, and felt the cold air draw her skin like the covering of a drum, sending pricks of pain into her lungs as she breathed." }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'through' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina knew only too well then that this was real and she was not dead at all, but that wherever she was going, it was death indeed that was facing her now.\n\nAt last the thin deer track brought her to the top of the steep slope though, and as she crested the summit, she gasped in utter astonishment. Before Alina Sculcuvant, in the shining moonlight breaking through the mist, lay a great sweeping island of white. Except that through the covering of snow, strange colours flashed in the landscape, and the ground before her seemed in places rucked like a folded sheepskin. It was the ice field.\n\nAlina felt a blast of cold come off it that nearly knocked her over, for beneath its snowy shroud the ground before her was pure ice, a frozen river, two hundred feet deep in places and far deeper in the places where the mountain fissured. By the action of its bitter cold, it hardened any snow falling on top of the glacier, and as soon as Alina reached its edge, the girl realised that Ivan had been right, for her footprints made no impression on the surface at all, and thus would leave no trace for her hunters.\n\nAlina stopped to open Ivan's pack." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was deeply glad of the shirt that she now put on under Malduk's coat; it warmed her immensely, and she was delighted to find four apples, a little haunch of venison wrapped in a cloth, and a little leather bag filled with water." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But along with a sharp knife there was something else of great use in the pack: a pointed stick and, tied to it with string, another flat bit of wood, with a half hole in it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They were the tools that Ivan used to rub together carefully with kindling, to make sparks to light his fires in the fields." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina looked around and noticed a little log nearby. There was just room enough in the pack to add it too, which she did, then Alina drank some water in the darkness and, hearing the dogs again, wasted no time, but walked up and out onto that brilliant expanse of ice.\n\nIt was with a terrified awe that she did so, not only because the girl found herself so small in the gigantic landscape, dwarfed by the icy immensity of the glacier, or because she was being hunted like a hare and the sounds told her that her pursuers were hard on her heels, but because she seemed to have entered a kingdom of strangely brutal beauty, and one that called instantly to some older and deeper instincts in the girl.\n\nAlina realised that her strength and wit alone would help her to survive out here, and somehow it connected her to a power, or a force, she felt far greater than herself. Although she had little time for churchgoing in Moldov, Alina found herself making the sign of the cross too, just as Ivan had done.\n\nBut if Alina had hoped to invoke the almighty himself to her aid, she soon found that no one was on her side. For in the heavens the clouds were massing, and a bitter wind came up over the glacier, screeching in her ears like a night witch and grabbing the hardened snow in great fistfuls and hurling it in her face.\n\nTime and again she was nearly blown over by the icy blasts, and she quickly found herself stumbling, her hands turning red and then blue as they met the snow." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina soon wished she had not picked up the log at all, for it made her pack far heavier to carry.\n\nHer eyes began to water, then sting like firebrands in the blast, but the worst of it was listening to the dreadful sounds wrapped up inside the hunting wind, for the storm that had come up seemed to have a thousand voices in it. Some called like evil demons; others wailed like lost and anguished souls; some seemed to cry out a terrible warning, like goblins indeed, or the voice of an ancient god demanding vengeance. \"Traitor!\" the raging wind seemed to cry after her. \"Traitor!\"\n\nAlina wished she could drink that potion again, if not to hide her from the fairies, then at least to give her warmth, and as she pressed on she remembered Ivan's words about the ice field and began to imagine endless unseen pitfalls in the ground ahead of her.\n\nWith nearly every step she prodded the ground with Ivan's great crook. Mostly it hit the hard snow and ice, and Alina went on safely, but more and more, as she climbed higher up the huge glacier, she found the crook suddenly sinking into the snow, and she would have to skirt the sudden drift, testing and poking to find its edge with the staff, to be sure of not disappearing inside.\n\nIt made Alina's progress painfully slow, as did the cruel wind and the fact that she could hardly see anything around her in the blizzard." }, { "from": "system", "value": "⚠️ Required: Use 'alina' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was soon exhausted, and every muscle in her body seemed to ache with the searching cold. As Alina shuddered and went on, the voices in the wind seemed to be inside her head.\n\nShe had just managed to skirt another deep drift, when Ivan's staff plunged straight downwards and, to Alina's horror, a great slab of snow vanished right in front of her. There seemed to be a hole in the ground itself, for as the girl peered down she was looking at a great well of ice, which caught the voice of the wind and threw it back at her in a mournful bellow that seemed to call her name. \"Aleeeeenaaaah.\"\n\nAlina swung up her head and cried out furiously, turning her face into the angry wind.\n\n\"Stop it,\" she screamed. \"Leave me alone. Why won't you leave me alone?\"\n\nBut the storm wouldn't leave her alone, and as she turned her head and looked back, a sudden break in the mist showed her not only how slow her progress had been, but what she was sure were figures on the edge of the glacier." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then on the air, as the break in the blizzard closed again like a trap, she caught another note on the wind, a kind of howling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina told herself it was the wind, skirted the hole, and scrambled on, then tripped and fell on her face in the darkness, picked herself up and fell again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She cursed bitterly and started to cry, and she kept jabbing angrily at the snow with the crook, as if trying to harm the monstrous white itself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But Alina soon realised the futility of such an act, and how it was tiring her out even more." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With that she heard a clear howl through the storm.\n\n\"What's that?\" she whispered, turning her head in the blizzard.\n\nAlina saw a shape through the snow, darting by to her right. She screwed up her eyes, but shook her head. It must have been a rock, seemingly made to move by the swirling snowflakes or the drifting moonlit clouds, and now it was gone again. The howl had been nothing but the storm. On Alina went, and then she thought she saw the shape again, ahead of her this time. A moving smudge of black." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Who's there?\" Alina cried angrily, thinking of her dream, but her weary, piping voice was swallowed by the wind.\n\nShe shook her head, as if trying to shake off a nightmare. Nothing could be out here with her on the ice field, Alina told herself, and even her pursuers must have given up the chase in this terrible weather and bitter cold. She wondered now, with the intensity of prayer, when morning would come to her aid.\n\nSuddenly there it was again, and Alina swung round. She was sure of it this time. A shape, like a huge black dog, and close.\n\nIn Alina's terror and distraction, she had forgotten to keep testing the snow, and suddenly she lurched forwards, her arms and the crook flailing out in front of her, as she heard a loud crack." }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'there' | Required occurrences: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was breaking ice, and Alina dropped violently. One hand was holding Ivan's crook in its middle, and as she plummeted, she felt the stick catch on the ground above, and her other hand grabbed at it instinctively.\n\nAlina was swinging in midair from Ivan's crook now, which was spanning the top of the hole she had just fallen through. She looked down in terror as she hung there. The drop beneath her seemed to disappear into a plunging black chasm, falling away forever.\n\n\"This is the world,\" whispered Alina Sculcuvant bitterly, through gritted teeth. \"This is the real world.\"\n\nThe girl pulled with her arms and her shoulders, with all her might, and with some effort she had begun slowly to rise, when suddenly there was a terrible snap." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ivan's staff broke in two and the girl was falling, dropping into the fatal gulf.\n\nGreat walls of blue green ice rose around her, as she fell into the glacier. The shock of it was bad enough, but nothing compared to her landing, for her right foot buckled under her and she felt an agonising pain shoot through her whole body. Her head struck something hard and cold, and within the moaning belly of the storm-driven mountain, everything went black.\n\nFell's ears came up. The wolf had turned away from Moldov and thoughts of a child and now was scenting a storm on the wind. But amongst the shadowy trees in the darkness, it was something else that set fear running like poison through the Varg's veins—dogs. They were close, somewhere below amongst the thinning forest, and Fell knew by the tones of the cries—hunger mixed with fear—that they had scented him too." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In a straight fight between a wolf and a dog, even a large hunting dog, Fell had very little to worry about. But, by the sounds of it, this was a large pack, and besides, Fell had injured his paw on the beaver's lodge.\n\nThe black wolf saw them break from the trees, and behind them came a group of ten or fifteen humans. Fell's lips curled up to show his teeth. A human was already pointing up the slope in the darkness towards him, and Fell was suddenly furious that his thoughts of a child had brought him so close to man again.\n\n\"There. Not a wasted journey,\" cried Barbat on the slope, although he was tired and angry, after his group had split from Malduk's. \"The boy may have slipped our clutches, but that wolf has been haunting the valleys for far too long. Its pelt will fetch real gold, and besides, the dogs need to taste blood.\"\n\nThe others agreed and were already unleashing their animals." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell turned and fled." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The wolf slipped several times, and because of the cut to his paw, and not having eaten anything substantial in so long, he found his natural vigour failing him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But Fell reached the top of a steep slope and the edge of the ice field, just as the wind rose furiously and the blizzard began." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell was used to the higher mountains, far more so than tame dogs were, no matter how they were starved and beaten to make them ferocious and keen for pursuit, and he could see well in the dark." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But not even Fell had encountered country like this before." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He could feel the ice sheet below him, and it reminded him of that fateful day, long ago, when he had fallen into the waters through the river, when his family had been fleeing Morgra and her Balkar fighters. Ice, he thought grimly, what had they called it then? \"The still element that holds all in potential.\"\n\nThe path of a springing wolf is light compared to many though, and Fell did not fall foul of the fissures and cracks before him; nor was he even aware how much danger he was in.\n\nIt was not for a good while that the fleeing animal spotted the shape ahead of him. At first he thought it was another Lera and he wondered if a wild lynx was abroad. But his eyes were accustomed to blizzards, and the black wolf soon realised in astonishment that it was a young human. The creature was faring badly in the storm, and though the wolf could not imagine what it was doing out here, Fell smiled inwardly as he thought how vulnerable these talking Lera were, when away from their dangerous packs." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Animals weakened in the wild were easy to hunt and so provided food for a wolf, but in their sacrifice also helped to keep the rest of a herd and the wild Lera of the land strong and healthy. That was the harsh law that had shaped Fell's life, and now he thanked the wolf gods Tor and Fenris for the gift, for in his furious hunger Fell realised what easy prey lay ahead of him.\n\nOnce again the balance of nature had turned. The sound of the dogs had faded and now the hunted was suddenly the hunter again, and it restored the wolf's courage and pride, sending warm jets of adrenaline coursing through his powerful being. His quarry had already begun to turn, clearly aware of the hunting wolf now, but Fell was long used to stalking and worrying a prey, sometimes for days on end, and he began to circle it.\n\nYet even as he did so Fell felt a sharp pain right in the centre of his forehead, and then, as he watched his prey through the terrible storm, his eyes opened wide. Like a ghost the human had just vanished into thin air.\n\nAlina wovenword opened her hazel eyes, with that fleck of green in the left pupil." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The very effort was painful, for it felt as if the lids were frozen together, and as she stirred, she felt an agonising pain in her leg and cried out." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to use 'managed' 2 time(s) throughout your message" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her voice surrounded her in a hollow echo, and she sensed immediately that she had fallen into some kind of cave. For now though she couldn't see if this was so, for she was blinded by the sunlight shining straight down on her face, from somewhere high above.\n\nAlina managed to move her head a little, out of the glare, and caught a hint of clear blue sky above her. The dawn had come, and it had stopped snowing. She wondered how long she had lain here. In truth it had been no more than half a day.\n\nAlina's hazel eyes were clearing, and she managed to turn on her side painfully, and looked around in utter amazement. She was inside a cave, although not a cave made of rock or stone, but of pure ice." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was about half the size of Malduk's hovel, and the rounded ice walls were a deep turquoise blue, ribbed with green, that shimmered and sparked in the brilliant daylight about her, warming her weary being." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The sunlit cave was far warmer than it had been up on the glacier in the open, but Alina felt awe and fear to be in that place, a place as ancient as the glacier itself, and as pristine as the forming of the world." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had dreamt of fairies kingdoms or elven dales in the past, but this seemed far, far stranger.\n\nShe raised herself on her elbows, but as she tried to move, the pain came in her right leg again. She had sprained her ankle badly, and now she could hardly move. As she looked up, her heart sank too. She would never be able to climb those sheer ice walls to freedom. They rose straight up, broken only by the presence of a wide ice ledge about halfway up, but too high to reach. Alina was trapped in the ice cave.\n\nShe closed her eyes and laid her head back bitterly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina realised how much danger she was in, and she was thirsty and desperately hungry. She thought of how Ivan had warned her against falling asleep in the cold and then, more hopefully, of the food in Ivan's pack. But when she opened her eyes to look for the pack, she saw that it had slid to the far corner of the ice cave and she would have to crawl across to retrieve it.\n\nShe tried and slid hopelessly on the ice, unable to get any hold. For the moment Alina was simply too exhausted, and she slumped again. Although she fought it, sleep came quickly, in a whirl of frightening dream images, and the girl lay there groaning and muttering in the ice cave, bathed in sweat that froze to her body and made her red hair spikey.\n\nThe dream that came when she closed her eyes was so real that Alina Sculcuvant felt that she wasn't sleeping at all. She was standing in that room she had often been in in her sleep, and next to her in a cot lay that baby she thought her brother." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Not a goblin, but a human child." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But whereas before it had always been just a ghostly shadow, now its handsome little features were perfectly defined, and she could see its little stomach, with a thin line of hair on its belly." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'alina' × 5" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina knew then that she was not only dreaming, but remembering.\n\nThe woman with the curling black hair, her mother, was suddenly standing next to her—Roma, Roman—and she was telling her sternly to watch the crib. Alina felt confusion, for she wanted to hug her mother, yet she had talked to her so coldly. How proudly the young girl had answered though, and how proudly she had begun to stand guard over that baby boy, with his charming face and that strange little line of fur that threaded up to his belly button. But then, in the night, Alina had felt hungry and gone to the kitchen nearby, to fetch some food.\n\nOn her return Alina had found the doors to the chamber open, and to her horror, the child was gone. Suddenly Alina's dream memories were filled with rushing figures, carrying burning tapers, and the air was torn with cries and fearful shouts, and little Alina heard the mournful cry of wolf song. Then her mother was shouting and accusing her, and the girl realised with horror that a wolf had crept into the chamber and snatched the baby away." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her own baby brother.\n\nThat awful feeling of guilt that had dogged her for so long consumed Alina entirely. Now Alina knew why guilt had hung in her heart for years, and she almost wished she were dead. Her own brother had become the food for wild animals, for wolves, because Alina had failed in her duty. She wondered suddenly if all her thoughts of a fairy past, of goblins and spirits, had been because of more than the witch's story of a changeling, and if she had clung to them somehow to avoid confronting this terrible reality, for stories often conceal a bitter truth of life. The thought seemed to call a howl out of the shadows themselves. \"Traitor!\"\n\nAlina opened her eyes with a start. Something was above her, looking down." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The great shaft of sunlight was still shining into the cave, making everything glitter and glow eerily, and as Alina peered up, her heart nearly froze." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That pair of yellow gold eyes from her dreams was watching her hungrily, through a cloud of smoking breath. Yet they were real.\n\nAlina could just see a muzzle too, and the hard glint of vicious white teeth. Her dream was coming true, and suddenly the shadow moved. The creature sprung down to the ledge above her. It was the black wolf.\n\nAlina backed against the ice wall in horror. She knew enough of hungry dogs to know that it was hunting, and she realised in that instant that there was no escape." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina had the knife, but it was in Ivan's pack, and she would never reach it in time.\n\nAlina began to shout and scream. \"Go away! Get away from me!\" she cried, and in return the wolf let out a furious growl. She started to kick at the floor of the ice cave with her boot in her terror, sending up shards of frozen water to try and frighten the animal away. It seemed to inflame the hunter even more, and with a dreadful growl, it suddenly jumped again.\n\n\"No!\" cried Alina, lifting an arm to shield her throat, as Fell sailed towards her. For years the girl had been made to hide from danger, and now the world had caught up with her at last." }, { "from": "human", "value": "To Alina's surprise though the animal landed noisily on the floor of the cave near her, like a huge cat testing its balance on the slippery surface, and stood there with its tail raised, only a few feet away." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell did not strike. It had gone against all his instincts to enter that strange place at all. For hours he had watched Alina from above, and at last his hunger had got the better of him. Yet something extraordinary had happened as soon as he had landed on the ledge and seen Alina's face properly. Fell had recognised the face he had seen before in his own vision. The boy in the water.\n\nHis heart was filled with wonder and fear, and he thought of the voice's words about destiny. But now he was near the human, he saw that this was no boy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a human Drappa." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And something else had come upon Fell." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was that throbbing ache in his head again, that he had first felt above, and his sight seemed to mist over. Opposite him Alina was feeling it too—a dreadful pain through her mind, like looking too long into direct sunlight.\n\nThe girl and the black wolf stared at each other in the glittering ice cave. Fell looked around at those walls of ice, and it was as if he were under a river, but although an ancient voice was telling him once again to fear a watery death, he suddenly realised that this frozen element could not drown him, or pull him down into its depths. The wolf felt less afraid.\n\nThen to Alina's relief and astonishment, Fell simply lowered his tail, turned, padded over to the far corner of the ice cave, and lay down, though he swung his muzzle, still watching the girl intently. Alina realised that he might change his mind at any moment and attack, and that she was now the prisoner of this dread creature. If she did one thing wrong, it could be the end of her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The girl could see every aspect of the wild animal." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The silky delicacy of his thick, black coat, the great paws and the curling claws, the thin, spindly vigour of his legs." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was at once a dog and not a dog, because Fell was much more than a dog. Mist wreathed out of his panting muzzle, and Alina felt as if she had been reborn suddenly amongst the wild beasts, in a womb made by pure cold.\n\nShe thought of the animals she had encountered on Malduk's farm. Alina liked them far more than many of the people she had met, and from what she knew of some of the villagers, especially the men, or from stories of war, she always thought of them as far less dangerous than people. Yet even tame dogs could suddenly turn, and here was something she had never encountered, a real wild wolf. Alina shuddered as she thought of what Malduk had said of the bite of a lone black wolf under a full moon, turning a human into a vicious beast—a werewolf.\n\nIt seemed like hours that they stared at each other, the wolf and the girl, in that mysterious cave in the heart of the glacier. Fell remembered playing a game of stares as a cub by the riverbank, near their den." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If Alina moved faintly, or made a sound, Fell would growl or snarl and lift his tail in warning. Their eyes watched each other, fascinated, appalled, yet drawn together by more than fate, by the ache in their heads, by the secret knowledge that these ancient enemies were not here by mere chance at all, and that they had seen each other before. It was the dreams they had shared. It was Fell's obsession with man since he had become a Kerl, and what that voice had told him in the cave. It was Alina's fascination with the wild. It was the Sight.\n\nBut as they looked at each other, Alina Sculcuvant noticed that although the wolf could hold her gaze far longer than Elak or Teela, he would soon have to look away too, if only for a moment. The girl realised then that her very will was grappling with his, and since she could see that the strength of her eyes made the wolf angry and nervous, she too would look away, so as not to challenge the wild creature into anger and attack." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If she had been in the open, she would simply have run for her life, but here she could do nothing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With time the ice cave began to grow darker and colder and a full moon rose in the heavens above them, while the light travelling from the stars across millions of miles of as yet uncomprehended space, began to pick out tiny specks in the failing glare of the setting sun." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then hunger, fear, and sheer exhaustion got the better of the girl and the wolf, and they began to grow desperately tired. Alina found her eyes drooping, and thinking of the danger of sleep, and of the wolf, she had to fight to keep herself awake. Fell had begun licking his injured paw and whimpering slightly, and Alina could tell that the animal was hungry too.\n\n\"What are you, wolf?\" she whispered nervously. \"What are you doing here?\"\n\nFell looked up at the echoing voice and his ears rose with a snarl.\n\n\"Why haven't you eaten me?\" asked Alina softly, trying to smile at him, but thinking herself utterly foolish." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell heard the strange human sounds, and although no comprehension came to him of the meaning of Alina's words, he could sense from their tone that there was no threat in her voice, only a desire to understand.\n\n\"I'm Fell,\" whispered the black wolf's thoughts, amongst his growls. \"Who are you, human Drappa? I've seen you before in my dream. No. I've seen you with the power of the Sight. But I thought you a Dragga. The boy I once... \"\n\nAll Alina heard with her human ears was a deep, rumbling growl from the black wolf's throat, but as she lay there she shivered, for it was as if some thought had just jumped into her mind, like a voice whispering to her from far away. Almost a name—Fell.\n\n\"We're both injured,\" said Alina quietly, wondering if she was somehow being enchanted, \"and you're starving like me, by the look of you.\"\n\nThen Alina remembered the food in Ivan's pack and his knife too.\n\n\"If you let me closer to my pack, perhaps I can help you,\" she said softly, looking towards it.\n\nFell just licked his paw again, and slowly Alina stirred." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was pleased to find that the pain in her leg had lessened and some of her strength had returned. She shifted towards him and Fell gave a warning growl, but Alina raised her hand slowly.\n\n\"It's all right, wolf. I mean you no harm.\"\n\nFell growled again, but he wasn't frightened of a wounded Drappa, and his golden eyes were lit with interest. Could this vulnerable creature really have something to do with the survival of nature itself?\n\nAlina began to pull herself slowly across the ice floor towards the black wolf and the pack nearby. She could smell the creature now, and the scent was something like a fox, but far stronger. On Fell's icy breath she caught the odour of his last kill, and it made her recoil instantly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina sensed the power of the animal too, held in the living vigour of his body and muzzle and teeth, and she knew that if she moved too fast she would be dead." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But Fell let her come and open the pack, pulling out Ivan's knife and the meat. It was a fine piece of deer, smoked into tenderness by Ivan's loving wife, and Alina quickly pulled it apart with her hands. There was a small piece in her left hand and a much larger in her right, and with a smile she threw the larger towards the wolf.\n\nIt landed just in front of Fell's snout and his eyes opened wide. Though it was cooked, Fell was far too hungry to resist the gift of meat from this strange Drappa. Alina nibbled at her own piece of venison, feeling the life-giving juices begin to churn in her stomach. It was oddly embarrassing to be eating in front of the wolf, but Fell opened his jaws and snapped up the venison, whole. In three or four powerful bites, it was chewed enough to disappear in a gulp down his hungry throat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell licked his lips and looked once more at the human. There was gratitude in the wolf's strange eyes, but Alina drew her legs up to her chest and huddled back against the cave wall. As it grew darker and colder in the ice cave, gloom fell on the two of them, for now they felt as if they were being frozen into statues in the heart of the mountain, and it grew so cold that soon Alina could no longer move. \"Wolf,\" she kept whispering. \"We must stay awake, wolf.\"\n\nShe fought off the dream sleep, from which she might never awaken again, although weariness had seized her very blood. She pinched herself and could no longer feel the pain. She knew that if she closed her eyes she would never open them again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then Alina remembered Ivan's little tools in the pack." }, { "from": "human", "value": "How could she have been so stupid? Fire." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Clasping the pack again, she just managed to open it and pull out the little sticks that Ivan had used to make his sparks, though her hands ached with cold." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She saw the remnants of the broken staff on the cave floor and realised that she could use it for fuel, and the log that she had picked up on the edge of the glacier." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina was furiously grateful now that she had not discarded it in her exhaustion, and began rubbing her legs hard to make them work again, then pulled herself over to the bits of crook." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She managed to snap them into several pieces and made a little pile, as Fell watched her with a tilted muzzle and growled softly.\n\nAlina took Ivan's two little fire sticks and, balancing the top one between her freezing hands, began to rub furiously, although she could hardly hold them straight. Fell whimpered a little beside her, uncomprehending of what the Drappa was doing, but fascinated too. As Alina worked, she could feel the wood growing hotter and hotter, but she suddenly realised with despair that she had no kindling to make the tiny sparks ignite.\n\nShe was at her wits' end and ready to give in totally, when she remembered the parchment. It was still in her pocket. It was the only proof of her strange story, and one day she might need it badly, yet there was no choice now. She pulled it out and crumpled it up angrily, then set to work again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell snorted, as he saw little puffs of smoke begin to rise between Alina's shivering hands, and his voice turned to a growl.\n\nThe parchment suddenly caught and Fell whimpered. A flame lit in the ice cave, like fire from heaven, and the paper flared brilliantly, and with it the evidence of who Alina really was, sending light and sudden warmth flickering around their little ice prison. The girl hurried the bits of crook onto it, and blowing hard, soon she had a good fire going on the cave floor. Piece by piece she added the broken crook and then perched the log against them happily, as it all began to catch and burn.\n\nA deep wonder had woken in the black wolf as he watched this miracle. A wonder and a fear too, as he felt the warming heat against his fur. Fell had seen many human fires, like the fire by the cooking pot, and had watched a conflagration burn in the forests after a lightning strike, like a bolt of heavenly power, but he had never seen how man mastered the flaming red flowers before." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He whimpered again, and when Alina looked at him once more, he dropped his eyes immediately." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If the structure of a wolf pack is made in the hierarchy of relations between dominant individuals and their weaker relations, then Alina WovenWord had suddenly become a Drappa indeed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The girl felt a pride flame in her too, almost as warm as the flames that the healing fire was now giving off." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Life seemed to move through her being like a hot wind, and it was like breathing again. Alina let out a great, relieved sigh. She knew that the fire could not last forever, but if it kept them going until the sun rose once more, then perhaps they would have a slim chance. For another day at least.\n\nSo they sat there, the young woman and the injured black wolf, their thoughts rippling with the firelight dancing in the ice cave, mesmerised by its heat and brilliance, and the shadow images it seemed to summon from their minds too, as it flickered around those walls. Their fearful breaths stopped smoking with cold, and a sort of cheer settled over them both. With his thick winter coat, Fell would naturally have survived longer than Alina in the ice cave, but he too was grateful for the heat and light.\n\nThe comfort of the fire brought memories to Fell of his time as a cub in the den, with his old nurse Brassa and his sister Larka." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Memories of his adopted brother, Kar, too, who had survived his own parents' murder at the hands of the Balkar packs and had become part of their family. Poor Kar, who had spent so long in his own cave on a mountaintop, wrestling with loss and pain and the madness of isolation.\n\nWhat was Kar doing now? wondered Fell. Is he growing old and weak, at seven years in the wild? What of my parents? Alina was remembering too, as she looked into the firelight. Remembering things that had lurked like shadows in the back of her troubled mind, and it felt like nourishment. She remembered her mother's once tender arms about her, as she sat at home by a fire, until something had caused a change in her." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'alina' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She remembered that red-haired man, strong yet aloof. Her father. She remembered too the birth of her baby brother and the jealousy that it had brought. Had Alina betrayed her duty on purpose, that terrible night?\n\n\"Who am I?\" she whispered to herself, as she sat at that impossible little camp fire, opposite a wild wolf. And what had occurred after that evening? The reason Alina had been driven from her home to be murdered still eluded her.\n\nThe fire saved them. Fire which Prometheus, in the myths that the ancient forebears of this land—the Romans—had told around their own campfires more than a thousand years before, had stolen from the gods and given to man." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The god Zeus had punished Prometheus, chaining him to a rock, to have his liver eaten out each day by an eagle." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The log was heavy and damp, and it burnt very slowly, but now the embers had crumbled into a hot grey dust." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina's spirits were flagging again, when the two prisoners caught the first sensations of returning sunlight steal across their faces." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It came like a breath of hope, the daylight high above them, and Alina looked at Fell as a companion in arms might after a terrible battle.\n\nYet the warm light of day brought a bitter revelation too. The fire may have saved them, but they were still in exactly the same predicament as before, and now Alina felt hungrier and weaker than ever.\n\n\"Wolf,\" she said, \"I'm going to try and stand up.\"\n\nThe girl's hand hurt as she pressed it against the ice floor, and as soon as she pushed herself upwards Fell rose too, his tail lifting, his front legs set in attack. \"Down,\" Alina nearly said, until she realised that this was not Elak, and not a creature to be tested so lightly.\n\nAlina took all her weight on her good leg and then gingerly pressed down on her right. It was too painful to stand on properly, and she hopped backwards to the edge of the cave and propped herself up against the ice wall." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The knife was in her right hand, and Alina looked around properly." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'alina' into your response exactly 3 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "To her horror she saw that the cave floor fell away completely on one side, the drop she had seen when she had been hanging from Ivan's staff.\n\n\"It's a dark place we're in, wolf,\" said Alina gravely. \"And it's time we got out again. Both of us.\"\n\nShe looked up. Even standing, she couldn't reach the ledge Fell had sprung from. She had an idea though, and she turned to the ice wall and, with a sudden swing that made Fell growl, struck the ice with the knife. It sank in deep, and grasping at a small outcrop of ice with her other hand, Alina pulled herself up a little way, as Fell watched her warily.\n\nThere was another small outcrop that she managed to get purchase on with her left foot, and pulling the dagger free and swinging it again into the ice above, she pulled herself even higher. Alina was wobbling precariously though, and she realised that if she fell she could tumble over the edge of the chasm." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But the lip of the ledge above was almost in reach now, and Alina swung her arm and managed to get her fingers over the edge." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was wet and slippery, where the sunlight from above had melted the ice, and as Alina pulled, her hand slipped completely." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The girl went sailing backwards and, to her horror, found that she was falling, not towards the drop, but towards the wolf. Her body struck Fell's, and with a furious snarl, he turned and sprang at her, as she landed on her back on the ice.\n\nHis jaws were open, and Alina didn't feel fear as such, just a kind of grim resignation, yet as the wolf stood over her, something new stirred in her too, the anger of a fighter. Her eyes blazed.\n\nIn that moment Fell remembered the powers of the Sight to control wills. Could he control this human? His thoughts, directed by the Sight, began to reach out towards her consciousness, as they had once reached out to the Balkar.\n\n\"Give in, Drappa,\" whispered his angry mind. \"Obey me. I, who have been darkness. I, who shared the vision with Larka and all the Lera. The secret of what man is and what sorrow he can bring. I command you.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As Fell wrestled there, he realised that it was as if, in all his journeying, he had reached the borders of a strange new land, and that no curse or blessing would ever let him pass. He could not reach Alina's will. Fell felt strangely foolish.\n\nThey both sensed the energy though in each other's being, moving through their bodies like a secret language, and as their eyes locked again, so close this time it was as if they might meld into each other, Alina saw the strange sliver of green in Fell's right eye and the wolf the green splinter in Alina's left.\n\nIt brought something like wonder and recognition to them, and although all Fell's wild instincts were telling him to strike, he couldn't attack this Drappa. The wolf remembered wrestling long ago with his sister Larka in the Red Meadow, the field of spirits that lies before the journey beyond, and the words about destiny and a Guardian, and then the ache in his head came again. Suddenly Fell was thrown sideways in the cave.\n\nAlina had not moved, or done anything at all." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was like the force that two lodestones make when brought together, that men in later days would call a magnetic field, and somehow both the girl and the wolf knew then they could not harm each other. Ever." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A voice came sounding and echoing through their heads, as if from the cave itself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What is happening to us?\"\n\nThe wolf and the girl looked at each other in utter amazement, and suddenly they were talking. Not in words or in growls, but with their thoughts.\n\n\"You are Fell, are you not?\" asked Alina's frightened, wondering mind. \"The lone black wolf.\"\n\n\"A Kerl, my kind call it, man cub. And you are Alina, I think. I've dreamt of you, with that mark on your arm. Though I thought you a Dragga.\"\n\n\"But how can this be? Are the shepherd's stories of werewolves and transformations true? How are we talking like this? Is there really such magic in the world?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina thought of goblins and sprites and fairies." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This was far more miraculous." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's the Sight, child. The gift that comes through the forehead. Only a very few possess it. My sister Larka looked into the mind of the Man Varg once. The Man Wolf. It brought the animals a terrible vision of the past and future. And I have the power too. The power to look into minds and control wills entered the world when my aunt Morgra summoned the spectres from one of the worlds beyond, with her Summoning Howl.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But what do you want of me, Fell?\"\n\nFell remembered that voice in the cave, the voice he had tried to resist.\n\n\"I don't know. To aid you perhaps? To learn from you and understand? Before I met you, my dead sister told me to help you, I think. Told me you may have a great destiny, child.\"\n\nAlina's pretty eyes opened wide in the ice cave. She, have a great destiny? Alina had wanted to believe that she was better than a shepherd, even if she wasn't a goblin princess, and to see more of the world than the environs of Moldov, but that was not the same as having a great destiny.\n\nShe thought of the parchment and the link to Lord Vladeran, and of the way she had usually felt with Ranna and Malduk. Alina had thought so little of herself in Moldov, and now the gulf between these two worlds seemed quite impossible." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell's thoughts filled the girl with one emotion alone: fear.\n\nFell could feel this, and he thought again of trying to control her will, but as the wolf looked into her strong, bold eyes he knew that that was a thing he could never do. Yet as he lay there he was not angry at that powerlessness. Indeed, he felt a strange calm. He suddenly wanted to help this child.\n\nLike a snapping rope, the link between them both broke and there they were again in the ice cave, as Alina spoke with human words now.\n\n\"Did I... did I really know your thoughts, Fell? But it can't be. Animals don't think like us.\"\n\nFell growled. The human sounds were incomprehensible to him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The Sight,\" whispered Alina, remembering the gypsy's words about a gift." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What is the Sight, Fell? Where does it really come from?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The wolf did not answer her. Alina had raised herself again, but as she did so she felt something on her cheeks that made her shiver furiously. Both creatures felt an icy gasp of air breathe into the cave, as if from a tomb, and surround them. They had to escape soon.\n\nAlina noticed something else then. Her clothes were wet. Next to where the fire had burnt, the ice had melted, creating a little pool of water in a dip in the ground, but the water was trickling now to the back of the cave. Alina expected it to form another little pool where it hit the wall, but instead it just vanished." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was some kind of hole.\n\nShe scrambled over to it and, with the hilt of Ivan's knife, began to bash away at the ice wall. A section of it crumbled away and Alina could see an opening beyond. She turned the knife and started to scrape and cut more purposefully, and after a while, a passageway was revealed through the ice. Alina's heart leapt, as she saw the glow of daylight somewhere beyond.\n\n\"Fell,\" she cried happily, finding it strange to use his name aloud. \"I think there's a way out.\"\n\nFell had already got to his feet and come padding over." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm going to try and crawl through, Fell. Come after me.\"\n\nThe girl knew that her words meant nothing to the wolf, but she grabbed Ivan's pack and, without looking back, began to pull herself through the opening. She found herself in an ice tunnel that slopped downwards at first, wet with water from the fire, and then rose again and seemed to open into another chamber beyond. Alina scrambled up the passage and gasped in utter amazement as she reached the end.\n\nIt was a chamber, fifty times larger than the first. It dropped before her like a great frozen waterfall, a gigantic ice cathedral, shimmering with greens and brilliant blues and plunging downwards towards a field of jagged white spikes far below. As Alina looked down, she felt like a fairy queen, but her heart was in her mouth, and when she looked up it soared like an eagle, for the chamber ceiling was almost transparent, and through it Alina caught the faint impression of sky and moving cloud above. The top of the chamber lay on an exposed part of the glacier, where the wind constantly cleared away the falling covering of snow." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'alina' must appear 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She sensed immediately the breath of freedom above, and then she saw it, to the left of the chasm. A kind of gallery ran along the edge of the ice cathedral to a natural bridge that spanned the vast gulf itself and rose almost to the ceiling. It was a dangerous path, for it looked as if a god five miles tall had descended from the very heavens and sculpted that bridge in secret, with brilliant, immortal hands.\n\n\"Fell!\" cried Alina happily, her voice dwarfed in the echoing immensity of that place. \"Come on. There's a way up.\"\n\nAlina began to inch to the left and crawl along the ice gallery, her head dizzy with the plunging drop to her right. She heard a whimper, and then a growl, and turned to see the black wolf standing there, on the edge of the giant chamber, his tail shaking furiously, looking out on the beetling void.\n\n\"Don't look down, Fell. Follow me.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The girl surprised herself with her confidence and rose now, clutching at the wall on the left to keep her balance and tottering as she crept towards the bridge. Then she was standing before it, and her heart felt like stone. She could not tell how thick the ice was, and neither could she see any support below it: no natural arches or buttresses that might hold it up.\n\nIn that moment her courage failed her and she wanted to turn and run. Yet there was nowhere to go. Hopeless and afraid, she wanted to be in the barn, curled up in a ball, listening to Mia tell her a story. Alina wanted what all children want, and adults too, to be safe. As she stood frozen to the spot, she heard the wolf growling, and a thought came to her that freed her from her fear, the realisation of what she had achieved over the past few days, more than she had ever thought possible." }, { "from": "human", "value": "After years of mistreatment and loneliness, after swallowing for so long the criticisms of Ranna and Malduk, and the lies about her changeling past, she had taken control of her fate, and escaped being murdered and survived on her own in the open, despite being hounded by dogs and chased by a terrible storm." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This knowledge gave her a sense of pride she had never known before, and courage too.\n\nAlina hurled Ivan's pack forwards, and it landed on the bridge with a thud, sending a shower of snow crystals into the gulf, but the span held.\n\nA growl came from behind her, low and deep and angry, and there was the black wolf almost at her back. Fell's ears were pressed forwards, quivering, and his eyes glowed with the intensity of a vision. Fell was remembering Larka on a similar bridge.\n\nWith the power of the Sight his sister had foreseen her own death, but Larka had gone on anyway, to save her brother and rescue the man child. So she had faced Morgra. Was Fell facing his own death now too?" }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'bridge' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "he wondered. Did life move in strange patterns that simply reflected one another, like sunlight on water, moving always towards one end alone—death? Yet if Fell died here, on this icy bridge, it would not be for any purpose, as Larka's death had been, but a lonely end, in the secret heart of the mountain.\n\nAlina was already moving out onto the span. One step after the other the brave girl took, feeling the ice arch tremble beneath her and testing its strength with her weight. Then the black wolf came too, following slowly in her paw marks, giving himself up to what he already knew was a greater intelligence than his own. Soon they were halfway across, and the whole ice bridge seemed to shake beneath them.\n\n\"Quickly, Fell!\" cried Alina as she felt the ice start to give under her feet, and flung herself forwards desperately. Fell felt it too, and with a fearful whimper, as if he had been caught in a trap, he veered to his left and sprung backwards." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then the bridge was gone, tumbling and crashing down with Ivan's pack towards those bitter spikes, nearly a quarter of a mile below." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The whole centre of the mighty ice bridge had disappeared into the gulf, leaving Alina on one side of it, near the ceiling of the chamber, and Fell on the other." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They looked at each other across that huge chasm, the girl and the wolf, and a void, both real and imagined, opened between them. Fell raised his tail and lifted his throat. His great mouth let out a howl that seemed to come from the belly of the world. It filled that mighty chamber with frustration and despair—\"Aaaooww.\" All his life Fell had longed for freedom, and now it had brought him to this.\n\nAlina had not given up yet though, on herself or the strange wolf, a creature she had touched with her mind. In that moment she learnt one of the greatest secrets of life: It is often easier to fight for others than it is for yourself.\n\n\"Fell!\" she cried. \"You must jump.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina could see that the black wolf did not understand her, and she stood, speaking urgently.\n\n\"Listen to me, Fell. You must listen. We spoke before. Why not now?\"\n\nThen suddenly their eyes were locked, those slivers of green, and that pain had come in their foreheads.\n\n\"Fell. It's me, Fell. Understand me now, before it's too late. Jump towards me, before the rest of the bridge goes.\"\n\n\"No, human. I can't. It's too far. I'll fall.\"\n\n\"You must, Fell. It's your only hope. Have faith. Please. Do it now, Fell. I order you.\"\n\nFell looked back at her, and it was as if her thoughts were controlling his. He felt the remaining edge of the bridge rock below him, and with a furious spring, the black wolf leapt towards her across the giant gulf." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A dog would never have made the jump, but a wolf's legs are far more powerful, honed by nature and evolution, by the survival and success of the fittest, and the black wolf was sailing through the air, springing across the void." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His front paws made the distance and landed on Alina's side of the chasm, and his back paws too, but only just, for they were slipping backwards, scrambling desperately on the edge. Fell would have fallen, if Alina hadn't reached out and grabbed at the wolf's coat. She felt the loose folds of fur and skin around his neck and tugged as hard as she could.\n\nShe saved Fell, but the black wolf felt such anger at the human's touch that he could not help himself. He turned and snapped at Alina's arm, and would have sliced it in two if their momentum, as they fell backwards to safety, had not made him miss.\n\n\"Don't ever touch me, human,\" snarled Fell's angry mind. \"I'm wild, unlike you, tame man cub. You may be a Drappa, but I will kill you if needs be. Do not forget the freedom of the untamed wolf.\"\n\nEven Fell was surprised by his own ferocity, and the instincts that had sprung uncontrollably from his being, and for a moment he dropped his eyes guiltily." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then, as they lay there staring at each other, both shocked by what had just happened, Fell's thoughts began to calm." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina gave the wolf a cold, resentful look, then rose silently and turned towards the top of the chamber. She scrambled up and, still bitterly angry at what Fell had nearly done, began to bash at the ceiling of the ice cave. Her fist went through on the third try, and Alina felt a rush of fresh clean air on her face. They were almost free.\n\nIt took her a little time to make a good-sized opening, and she pushed her shoulders up and out. Another blizzard was coming up over the mountain, borne on the bitter wind, made in the heart of lowering clouds. It rose around the mountain like the ancient furies, raging perhaps at the child who had made fire for a wolf in an ice cave, like a goblin, or perhaps with no purpose at all, except the natural movement of hot and cold, and of the elements.\n\nAlina crept back inside, under the howling sky, and felt a new emotion, long lurking beneath the surface of her gentle being: bitterness." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The pride at her own escape, and the leap across the void, was pushed back into the shadows by thoughts of a world that had done her nothing but harm. It was all so unfair. For some reason it was a world that had named her changeling and wanted her death, and now the elements themselves, perhaps God himself, seemed to be conspiring in her destruction.\n\nAlina turned back to Fell with a sinking heart. For hours that blizzard raged and the temperature sank so low that soon Alina's teeth chattered furiously, and she could no longer move her hands. If she had lived with knowledge freed by science, she might have known to cover her head, for there the heat and energy of the body leaks out most quickly in the cold, but she did not have such knowledge.\n\nAlina and Fell sat apart, still smarting with resentment and unable to communicate anymore. And so Fell did not sense the life beginning to ebb from this strange human, as the hours wore on." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Being far larger than the previous cave, and close to the top of the mountain, where little tunnels made by meltwater had created air channels to the outside world that let in jets of icy wind, the place was also far, far colder than their little ice cell." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And now the wood and food were gone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina was young, but with her injured leg and the effort of mind and will that she had expended to bring them to where they were, she was finally succumbing to the bitter cold." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But even as the cold attacked her from without, dark feelings attacked her from within: bitterness about Malduk and Ranna, guilt about her baby brother, and a terrible sense of her own worthlessness." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina WovenWord wanted to die." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Other creatures had died there long before, and lay buried in the ice around them." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not fifty yards from where Fell sat panting in the cave, the body of a deer was still perfectly preserved. It had become lost in a storm more than a hundred years before and had eventually succumbed to a sleepy death. Then by the action of the glacier, seemingly solid but in fact a slowly moving river, it had been pulled downwards and squeezed tight within ribs of ice, but preserved too, so that if something had come to thaw it out, its body would have been perfectly edible, and almost as fresh as the day it had died.\n\nBut there were far, far older things within the mountain too. A man, a Stone Age warrior, was held in its unforgiving grasp. He had been hunting on the mountain some two thousand years before and had died at the hands of neighbouring villagers, murdered as Vladeran and Malduk and Ranna had tried to murder Alina. Although his features had been crushed flat, and the organs of life had perished within him, he was preserved like the deer. As were the myriad insects and microbes that had lived in the ancient waters that once swelled the river that had flowed freely down these mountains." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The strange history of the world, of the earth and the animals that inhabited it, was piled up and frozen in this place, footprints in time that only insight, understanding, and imagination could ever hope to unlock.\n\nAlina huddled up to try to stay warm, but it was hopeless, and at last she could battle tiredness and sorrow no more, and she fell asleep. When the storm finally ceased and the skies opened once more in their tranquil, blue immensity, Fell rose and managed to push his snout through the hole Alina had made into the friendly, sun-washed air.\n\nBut as the black wolf turned to the girl again, he whimpered. She was lying on the icy ground, overcome by cold. Her very spirit had been leaking out of her, and now Fell gave a loud growl to rouse her. Alina opened her eyes and saw him dimly. She tried to move her lips, and the wolf drew closer and sniffed at the air." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'alina' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Go, Fell,\" said Alina faintly. \"Go, my strange friend. I'm so terribly cold.\"\n\nThe black wolf stared at Alina and whined. He still felt guilty at how he had snapped at her, and remembered those words about helping a child, as his sister Larka had once helped a baby in the snows. It was his turn to save a human, yet Fell, so long used to fending for himself, had no idea what to do.\n\nHe dipped his head and licked Alina's hand. She felt the warmth of it and smiled a little, remembering Elak and thinking herself back in the barn. But then her thoughts grew dizzy and dark again with all that had happened." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This wasn't Elak, this was a wild animal." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Perhaps she was a fairy child.\n\nFell stretched himself next to her and Alina felt the heat of his fur. Gently she reached out a trembling hand and placed it on his back. She felt Fell twitch slightly, but he did not move or growl at her this time, and her hand was soon warm in his fur. Alina could feel the power and the life of the wolf directly, and she pulled herself over to him and, very softly, laid her freezing head on his moving flank.\n\nFell gave a low growl, but it was to reassure her, and there Alina lay, her head on the black wolf's side, rising gently up and down with his breathing. She could comprehend nothing of its meaning. How she could understand a wild wolf, or how and why the Sight had touched them both, but now Alina would never know. It was over." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The wolf whined again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's all right, Fell,\" she whispered, in a voice so small it vanished into the vastness. \"Some curse touches my life. But tell me, Fell, what was this great destiny that might have joined us?\"\n\nFell thought of those strange words about it being linked to the very survival of nature, but in that place, it felt like almost a sacrilege to say it, and it filled him with fear. He held his wolf tongue.\n\n\"Go from here then, wolf. Be free. I shall never know.\"\n\nThe wolf did not stir, and as he felt the girl drift to sleep once more against his flank, in the quiet stillness, a sense of peace came over Fell. Then something strange and wondrous began to happen. The cavern walls flickered with light and then images began to appear in the ice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were of man and his journey out of nature, and Fell recognised them as the same vision that Larka and all the animals had seen at the citadel of Harja. The Great Secret.\n\nFell saw fish crawling from the seas and that strange furred creature again, a human ape, rise up on its haunches and clasp a flaming taper in its grip, as he and the Lera had seen it years before—man.\n\nCivilisations rose and fell, and wars gripped the land. Nature and the Lera were being turned to man's hungry purposes. The wolf growled as he watched, and in her sleep Alina cried out too, for the same vision had appeared in her dream. They saw the future and a huge metal sphere fall, and then a mushroom cloud of flame and fire, followed by a terrible warming of the world, and melting ice caps that in turn brought a winter of ice. Wolfbane's Winter, the wolves had called it, after the Evil One.\n\nYet as Alina slept at Fell's side, the vision changed to fields and gardens and orchards, well tended to by laughing men and women." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The wolf's growls became calmer, as did Alina's breathing, and Fell thought of a story of long ago, about the clever wolf Fren, the hero of all young wolves, and of his best friend, the red girl." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The story had told of how Fren had saved the child from his brother Barl, and how he had killed Barl and so been marked by Tor forever, in the centre of his forehead, with a difficult power." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should contain the word 'women' precisely 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The power of the Sight.\n\nFell looked at Alina's short red hair and wondered if her very presence had turned the vision to one of beauty and peace. Then Fell remembered something Kar had spoken of long ago, a vision of man that Larka had given him alone. Not man humbled into meekness or despair, by the anguish of his sensitivity, and not man as just a violent, fighting animal destroying all before him. But man as a Guardian. A Guardian of being and nature itself, as strong and healthy as the wolf that chases the wild deer, unashamed, yet as wise, heroic, and loving as a god. That vision had been of men and women, but men and women with the eyes of wolves. Now Fell helped a human." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Perhaps it was a vision both could live up to.\n\nYet the images seemed to change back again, and the wolf started to snarl as he began to see deserts and dry water beds, the earth cracked and broken and dying.\n\nHe swung his head suddenly towards the human, with an angry growl. Was it because of her kind that this might come to pass in the world? If it was to be so, why should the wolf help the human child? The wind howled and suddenly Fell blinked. That voice he had heard in his cave seemed to be there again.\n\n\"Fell.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As Fell listened, he heard no more words, but he thought once more of a Guardian, who knew the deepest mysteries of the Sight. Could such a being really exist outside Kar's vision, like some secret god, in the lands beyond the forests? Even as he thought it, Fell looked on in amazement.\n\nThere was Larka again, in the ice, but now her face was gigantic in the cavern, a hundred feet high, and she seemed to be looking down kindly on them both. Larka's image lasted only for a moment, before melting back into the bluey white, but her fleeting presence had awed her brother, and made him guilty for his thoughts about the child.\n\nWhen Alina opened her eyes again, woken by the sound of a stalactite falling from the ice ceiling above, the wolf was gone. She felt the sting of loneliness and sorrow, but the swirl of dreams took her once more. Her short young life had been so full of pain and mystery already, so full of the anger and hate of people, that she hardly cared anymore." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She wanted it to end at last, and the sleep of eternity to enfold a changeling in its tender arms.\n\nThe girl felt it near her face first, then smelt something sweet and sickly fill her nostrils. Alina had smelt that sickening smell before, when she had slaughtered the sheep with Malduk outside the house at the Christ Mass. It was the smell of blood and raw meat. A kill.\n\nHer senses recoiled in disgust and she opened her eyes to see Fell standing before her again. His tail was raised and his black muzzle was red with blood. Fell looked strong and powerful with the kill, and beside Alina lay a haunch of meat. It was part of a mountain goat that the wolf had found and hunted on the very edge of the glacier." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina blinked in horror as she looked at it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She knew what the wolf intended her to do, but something deep inside her refused." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then Alina felt the familiar sensation in her forehead.\n\n\"Eat, man cub.\"\n\n\"I cannot, Fell.\"\n\n\"Would you give up so easily, little woman?\" growled the wolf angrily. \"It'll bring you strength and life.\"\n\nAlina blinked slowly. The meat was warm and wet with blood.\n\n\"Take it down, Drappa, or you will go to join Tor and Fenris sooner than you should.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina was human indeed and no changeling, and thus, as Larka had shown the animals up at Harja, her instincts for survival were just as strong, perhaps even stronger than Fell's. Or would have been if she'd had an easier journey of it. Should she fight? Could she? She thought of little Mia urging her on and sat up a little.\n\nAlina pulled a thin sliver of flesh from the prize and she blanched and curled up her face in disgust as she raised the raw goat to her freezing lips.\n\n\"How fragile you are, man cub. Take it. It's good.\"\n\nAlina put the bloody meat to her lips, and tearing away a little piece with her teeth, she started to chew. She almost retched, but held it down, and felt strength returning." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina was loath to eat the raw meat though, and she suddenly saw something else on the ground beside her. It was a large root, of the kind that Fell had once seen deer digging for, and which he had scented near where the goat had been. He had had to scrabble through the snow to get to it.\n\n\"Oh, Fell.\"\n\nAlina picked it up and, touched by the wolf's determination to help her, felt a new determination in her own mind. She bit into it hungrily, and though it tasted acrid, she felt even stronger. She sat up a little more and persisted.\n\n\"Good, man child. You may prefer roots, but one sun I shall teach you the ways of the wild hunter. The true power and freedom of the Putnar. Of nature.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell lay down beside her again and watched like a Dragga guarding a cub in the den, as the young woman took that primitive meal, and soon life was flowing once more through Alina's warming veins, making her cheeks glow." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There,\" came Fell's pleased mind. \"You've done well, human. Like that man cub long ago.\"\n\nAlina turned her head questioningly. Her lips were mouthing silently now as she ate.\n\n\"Man cub?\"\n\n\"You could not know the story, human. I almost think it a fable myself. It was a child, a baby Dragga, stolen by the Varg to protect it from the she-wolf Morgra. My aunt. It was part of a legend.\"\n\nAlina looked at Fell in astonishment.\n\n\"Stolen? From where, Fell?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"From a human village, below a castle on a mountaintop. The Stone Den, we call it. The empty place, whose hundreds of steps my aunt Morgra once climbed. Though there was nothing at the top.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina's eyes opened even wider." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The fairy castle of her dreams and nightmares, floating amongst the clouds. Could it have something to do with her?\n\n\"But why? Why was it taken?\"\n\n\"As I said, it was part of the legend of the Sight. It was marked, like you. A wolf called Tsarr found it first.\"\n\n\"Marked? How?\"\n\n\"A natural mark. A little strip of fur on its belly. Like wolf fur.\"\n\nAlina's thoughts flamed into clarity.\n\n\"My brother,\" she cried." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I think it was my baby brother, Fell.\"\n\nFell looked back hard at Alina.\n\n\"Your brother? How can this be, human? I carried it on my own back.\"\n\nAs they stared at each other once more, and caught the flicker in each other's eyes, with those shards of green, they both knew it was true. Their fates had always been bound together by the Sight.\n\n\"Yes,\" thought the wolf. \"And you have the Sight too, human. You asked me of your destiny, and now you are stronger, I shall tell you.\"\n\nAlina blinked and shivered nervously." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"If the words I heard are true, you are somehow connected to the survival of nature itself.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "/set_word_count: guardian, frequency: 3" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina Sculcuvant's eyes opened in utter disbelief. It couldn't be. What was the wolf saying?\n\n\"How?\" she whispered fearfully, staring helplessly about the chasm. \"Why?\"\n\n\"That I don't know, Alina. There is one who might know though, if he exists. The Guardian.\"\n\n\"Guardian?\"\n\nAlina thought she remembered a giant face in her dreams, and she felt as if the wolf was suddenly talking of God himself.\n\n\"The Guardian of the mysteries of the Sight,\" said Fell, though doubting himself. \"I would find him and reveal your destiny.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "But Alina was thinking of a different destiny to her own now." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What happened to him, Fell? My brother.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Bran we called him, after the Sikla of our pack. He brought the Lera a vision, a vision I just saw again.\"\n\nAlina stirred. She had seen such strange things herself as she slept in the cave.\n\n\"But the child was returned, by me, safely to the village beneath the Stone Den, to its own kind. To its mother with the curling black mane.\"\n\nThe curling black mane. Alina knew that it was the woman of her dreams, and so that the woman must be her mother. There was confusion at that, but Alina felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders too. The child, her brother, who she herself had failed to protect in its cot, wasn't dead. He hadn't been eaten by wolves after all." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Suddenly the feeling that she was a traitor, that she had been sent justly into exile, seemed to leave her.\n\n\"Oh, Fell,\" came Alina's grateful mind, \"I don't know how this is, or how I've met you and can understand you, but I know now that I have to find him. And my mother too. Not goblins or fairies, but real people. Find them and remember.\"\n\n\"Where, human?\"\n\n\"What was it like,\" Alina asked suddenly, \"this village where you left my brother?\"\n\n\"Simple enough. Like many I've seen in my travels. With a wooden stockade and wooden dens.\"\n\nAlina shook her head. That was strange. It sounded like Moldov, and hardly connected to a great lord like Vladeran in Castelu, or some high destiny.\n\n\"I must go that way, Fell.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Then I shall come with you, human, and we shall learn together and seek out the Guardian. A Drappa alone in the wild always goes in danger.\"\n\n\"This Stone Den, is it far?\"\n\nFell licked his black wolf lips, cleaning the goat blood from his jaws, and wondered what the root had tasted like.\n\n\"Many paw marks, across the mountains. It will take us half the winter.\"\n\nAlina was already pushing on her elbows, struggling to get up.\n\n\"Peace, human,\" growled Fell. \"Don't waste your strength. You know nothing of moving in the wild. You must be neither hasty nor foolish.\"\n\nBut Alina was standing. She swayed slightly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Very well, Fell. But now I must be in the sun again and heal.\"\n\nFell suddenly remembered that Larka had once said that the greatest power of the Sight was to heal, as Alina punched through the hole and rose from that icy tomb once more. The day opened before her, a sweeping vision of rocky crags and clear white mountains, bounded by the bright blue sky. The storm was over.\n\nA bird was winging through the distance, a beautiful snow hawk, and Alina felt a sudden, glorious sense of freedom and elation, as someone would who has walked through darkness to discover only the light, and the marvellous beauty of being. She must have stood there for a good hour, her spiky red hair thrown back to the brilliant sunlight, drawing it into her skin and being, like a flower opening to the summer. She swallowed in the fresh clean breeze, as if gulping water, and wanted to laugh and shout with pure joy.\n\nFell stayed in the giant cave, pondering in his shadowy mind their strange meeting and this news of the child's link to another baby, but feeling an odd foreboding in that ice cathedral, as he finished the goat and left Alina alone on the glacier." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'their' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The girl did not notice the men coming over the brow of the mountain. Their path was silent across the snowy ice, and by the time she turned, they were already on her. There stood six villagers, carrying staves and knives.\n\nBarbat was there and another shepherd Alina knew called Fermin, who had always been kind enough to her. But in their middle stood Malduk, holding his back painfully. It had been a bitter struggle for the old shepherd to maintain that pursuit, but his hate and will had driven him on. And his fear of Ranna too.\n\n\"So, changeling,\" cried Malduk, \"you survived the storm by some witchcraft. But you'll not escape us now.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina could not believe her eyes, but, though stunned, she noticed how wary the other men seemed of her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What have you to say, murderer?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "hissed Barbat. \"After Ranna and Malduk gave you succour for so long. Traitor.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Lies,\" Alina WovenWord cried furiously, and her eyes glittered contemptuously." }, { "from": "human", "value": "All the fear that she had felt for Malduk had suddenly vanished." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ranna's the murderer. Stabbing Bogdan in the back with my stolen knife and stealing his dagger.\"\n\nThe other men looked at each other questioningly and turned to Malduk, but Barbat spoke again.\n\n\"And why should she do such a thing?\"\n\n\"So you would think it was me, of course, and hunt me.\"\n\nMalduk smiled thinly. \"Those are the lies, changeling. And you're good at lies, indeed, SkeinTale. I saved your life, you ungrateful brute. Why should we want you dead?\"\n\nAlina slipped her hand to her pocket, but realised the parchment was no longer there. She had consigned it to the flames. All proof had gone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Because of Lord Vladeran's secret. That he tried to kill me once too.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The other shepherds were looking at one another wonderingly now.\n\n\"Lord Vladeran?\" whispered Fermin.\n\n\"Wicked boy,\" cried Malduk, feeling a terror that Alina should mention the lord at all. \"Talking of high lords. You besmirch even the name of Vladeran.\" Malduk was smiling at the others and spoke loudly and with scorn to cover his fear.\n\nBarbat had stepped forwards.\n\n\"What's this talk of Vladeran, boy?\" he hissed. \"What have such high folk as Vladeran to do with you?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes,\" said Fermin. \"Do you speak of it because Vladeran's soldiers have been in these parts again? You heard them outside the church, didn't you, when that man was talking of Vladeran and the Lady Romana?\"\n\nAs soon as Fermin mentioned the name \"Romana,\" Alina went deathly cold.\n\n\"The Lady Romana?\"\n\n\"Lord Vladeran's wife,\" said Fermin. \"That's how this got into your head, isn't it?\"\n\nAlina felt a yawning despair, and she wanted the ice field to open again beneath her and swallow her up, or goblins to fly down and snatch her away. That was it. Not Roma, a Tsingani name, not Roman, but Romana. The name she associated with that woman with a curling black mane. Her own mother." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This woman Romana was Lord Vladeran's wife." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Could it really be?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then Vladeran was her father, and her own parents, human parents, had tried to have her murdered." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should naturally weave in this dialogue: \"and you'll be judged fairly, boy. We'll see if there's truth in what you say.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina's legs went weak.\n\n\"Come back with us now, Alin,\" said Fermin suddenly, \"and you'll be judged fairly, boy. We'll see if there's truth in what you say.\"\n\nAlina thought of her time with Malduk and Ranna. She had known little fairness amongst the humans, and she suddenly realised that one of the most terrible things in the world is not to be believed. Yet this bitter revelation about her parents had robbed her of all will. Alina felt as meek as a lamb to the slaughter.\n\n\"No,\" she whispered. \"Please. It's not lies, Fermin. Ivan will speak for me.\"\n\nMalduk smiled again and shook his head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh no, Alin. Ivan will speak for no one ever again.\"\n\nAlina's hazel eyes opened in horror.\n\n\"You killed Ivan?\" she snarled.\n\n\"Not at all. His heart took him when I... questioned him.\"\n\nMalduk's eyes glinted, and Alina felt real tears scalding her cheeks. Dear Ivan.\n\n\"We'll not harm you though, Alin, as Fermin says,\" lied Malduk coldly. \"I give you my word. The word of a human being.\"\n\nAlina felt an ache in her forehead and heard a growling voice in her mind." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Beware, Alina. Don't trust the Dragga.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'pocket' 2 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The wolf was speaking to her from his hiding place below.\n\n\"Fell?\"\n\n\"You'll not get down the mountain alive, Alina,\" came the black wolf's growling thoughts. \"I've touched his mind. It is filled with shadows. The human has a horn dagger in his pocket and intends to use it on you soon, when the others are not watching perhaps. To silence you forever. You must fight them, child.\"\n\nJust then Alina saw Malduk's hand hovering at his pocket. As she looked at the old man she had worked so hard for, as she thought of all he and his wife had done, she felt a fury bubble up inside her that was like the fire flaming in the ice cave.\n\n\"So, old man,\" she cried, \"you'd murder me with your own hand, with that dagger you're hiding, as Ranna murdered Bogdan. Murder me before I ever returned to tell the truth.\"\n\nMalduk blanched, and the others saw it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How had this girl known exactly what he was thinking and what was in his pocket? How had she known about Ranna? Was she a changeling and a servant of the devil after all? The others were looking at him, and Malduk realised that his face had revealed the truth of it.\n\n\"Witchcraft,\" cried the old shepherd angrily, drawing the blade. \"He has witchcraft in him, and must be silenced before he does more evil.\"\n\nThe others were so startled that they did nothing, and Malduk lunged for Alina. Before he could strike her though, he heard a snarl and the old shepherd was knocked sideways in the snow by a leaping black shape." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Malduk just had time to look up and see the glint of savage white teeth, before the wolf snapped his mouth shut on Malduk's throat, stifling his scream." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The pain was not great, for Malduk died almost instantly, but for the watchers in the snow the horror of it was terrible.\n\nThere they stood, Alin the changeling shepherd boy and a great black wolf, who seemed to have risen like a dark vision out of the pure white snows, to defend the child. Malduk's words of a wolf had been true then, but his blood was staining the ground, and the shepherds were powerless to act. There was a sudden break in the storm and the air seemed to clear.\n\n\"So, you came to hunt me down like a wild beast,\" said Alina bitterly. \"Even you, Fermin? Go back to Moldov. Tell them I'm innocent of this crime, but that I'll have nothing more of humans, until I find my own people again. And the truth.\"\n\nThe hunters were trembling and backing away, their thoughts more filled with amazement and confusion at a shepherd moving through the world with a wolf at his side, than any sense of Alin's innocence, or any need for justice. Alina's hand came down, and she felt the top of Fell's sleek head, warm under her palm." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Come, my friend,\" she said in human words, although her mind was talking to the wolf too." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Let's be gone from this place. I've a destiny to follow, and we've a long journey to make.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With that Alina WovenWord and Fell the wild black wolf turned and began to walk away across the snow. They limped at first, but as they went, their pace grew stronger and they started to run. They realised that their hurt was already beginning to heal, and their pace quickened even more. Side by side they went, the young woman and the black wolf, and as they began to run through the snows towards the wild winter, and Alina's destiny, a destiny that somehow involved the survival of nature itself, in the minds of Barbat and the shepherds, they were already running into legend.\n\nThe great lord vladeran sat in a rich fur cape, on a chair of carved oak, by a stone fireplace, listening to his soldier's report in the flickering firelight. An old hunting dog lay at his feet, and Vladeran's face, hard, cunning, and handsome, was propped on a large gloved fist, as his deep black eyes flared at his soldier's words.\n\n\"Alive?\" he whispered angrily. \"You're sure, Vlascan?\"\n\nThe captain of Lord Vladeran's Shield Guard was wary, for he knew his overlord's flashes of anger, and he looked nervously at the dagger at Vladeran's belt." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Messengers had suffered for their messages in these halls. His eyes wandered to an ornate insignia in the centre of his master's leather tunic: a red cross, with tongues of yellow, like flames or golden wings, at the four points.\n\n\"Your lieutenant did not manage to kill the little girl,\" answered Vlascan, \"when you ordered her beyond these borders. He died in a fall, and she was saved by a shepherd.\"\n\nVladeran had often wondered why his lieutenant had never returned, and now he knew.\n\n\"What shepherd?\"\n\n\"An old man called Malduk. He kept her as a servant, dressed as a boy. That's why she went unnoticed until the rumours began.\"\n\nThey had come to Vladeran like a bad memory from his spies, the rumours of a girl concealed as a boy, near the distant village of Moldov, with red hair and about the age Alina would have been by now. It was said that the redhead was a changeling, and had come out of the snows six or seven years before." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lord Vladeran rose now. His great furs flowed about him, and his heavy soldier's frame, six foot two, swayed in his boots. At his feet the hunting dog growled softly as he spoke again.\n\n\"The shepherd knew who she was?\"\n\n\"I think so, my lord. Or something of it.\"\n\n\"He'll be impaled for it, as cousin Draculea impales the Turks. No doubt he planned to blackmail me later.\"\n\n\"Malduk's already dead, my lord,\" said Vlascan softly. \"And when I sent our soldiers to question his wife, Ranna, and their little niece, they had vanished into the snows.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In a glove of deerskin, dyed red, Lord Vladeran's hand closed into a fist, as if snatching at something that had already eluded his grasp.\n\n\"Damn it, man,\" he hissed, and his eyes narrowed. \"But Alina. She spoke to anyone of Castelu?\"\n\n\"No, my lord. We found an old woman, a witch skilled in herb law, and questioned her for her tale.\"\n\nAt the word \"questioned\" the soldier's eyes flickered, just as Malduk's had when he had spoken of Ivan. The witch was dead too.\n\n\"She had long given the couple a potion to hold the girl's thoughts, and together they invented a tale of goblins and changelings. Alina had lost her memories.\"\n\nVladeran seemed to relax a little." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Strange. And now?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I don't know, except the villagers are still hunting her. Or a changeling boy, as the shepherds still think her to be. Alin WovenWord is accused of murder. It seems that Malduk repented his kindness and was trying to do away with her.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Vladeran's eyes glittered.\n\n\"Alin WovenWord, eh? Perhaps this Malduk had a change of heart because she has remembered who she really is, or discovered it somehow. Where is the damned child now?\"\n\nThe soldier's eyes flickered again. \"My lord. There's a tale that the changeling walks the mountains.\" Vlascan paused fearfully, and his hand came up and fingered the livid scar on his right cheek. He was one of the soldiers who had warned the children of the Turks that night, and Vlascan felt bitterly guilty that he had come so close to the child and missed her. His master must never know it.\n\n\"But not alone, my lord.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Someone aids the girl? Are there traitors everywhere?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vlascan struggled with the words." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Not someone, my lord. Something. A wild animal.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Vladeran's hard, blank eyes turned on Vlascan in utter disbelief.\n\n\"What fairy stories are you talking now? What animal?\"\n\n\"A wolf, my lord, a lone black wolf.\"\n\nThe look that suddenly gripped Vladeran's face was dark and strange, a mix of wonder and fear, but almost foreknowledge too. The soldier thought that the lord might draw his dagger and strike him down.\n\n\"I think it nothing but peasant superstition, my lord, like goblin tales, but the wolf's said to have torn out Malduk's throat in defence of Alina.\"\n\nDark thoughts were racing through Vladeran's cunning mind now, but used to living his life and hatching his plots in secret, trained in the subtle ways of a politician and a soldier, he knew above all how to keep his own counsel, and how to shield those thoughts too.\n\n\"Very well. You've done well to bring me this news, Vlascan, and shall be rewarded for it, I promise you that. Now tell me of the Turk, and Stefan Cel Mare.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The Turk comes again, my lord. The land is ringed with fire, and blood soaks the soil in the lands beyond the forest. The Ottomans press on the borders once more, and the armies of King Stefan are gathering again. Your cousin Tepesh summons his men too, to raise the banners of Wallachia.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And so shall I. These battles shall serve our plans indeed. We shall rise by it in the King's eyes, or in my cousin Draculea's reckoning, if Stefan fails his people in the face of the Turk. We must play them off, the one against the other.\"\n\nVladeran felt angry as he spoke of Stefan Cel Mare, a king who would one day be known both as Stefan the Great and Stefan the Holy. He knew that if the King ever discovered what had happened in these halls, there would be a terrible price to pay. And though Draculea was his cousin, and ruled in Wallachia with such terrible cruelty, he had no more trust of him than of King Stefan. This despite Vlad Tepesh's membership in the holy Order of the Griffin, the insignia of which Vladeran bore on his tunic.\n\nThe Order of the Knights of the Griffin had been established under the High Court of Budapest seventy years before, like another Order that the Impaler also cleaved to, the Order of the Dragon. Both bound their acolytes to defending the West against the infidel, and to upholding both King and Church.\n\nVladeran thought nervously now of the holy oaths he had taken when he had been admitted to the secret Order, and the five great principles that above all else he had sworn to defend—the protection of the earth, the nurturing of peace and the support of the downtrodden, the defence of the feminine and the pursuit of knowledge." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sacred ideals indeed, but ones that both he and Draculea had steeped and mired in blood.\n\n\"And your immediate orders, my lord?\" asked Vlascan.\n\n\"Hunt the girl down. WovenWord must not survive. If any hear of it, or discover who she really is, you shall die by my own hand, Vlascan. Bring me her head.\"\n\nVlascan listened gravely.\n\n\"None must know of this. What would Stefan do if he ever discovered the plot? He may value my strength, even if Castelu is not a kingdom to rival Wallachia or Moldova, but he knows the need for law in this land. A law we have broken.\"\n\nThe nervous soldier nodded in the flickering firelight.\n\n\"And keep your counsel in all this, Vlascan. Now get out.\"\n\nVlascan bowed deeply, turned, and marched from the great chamber." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should contain the word 'captain' precisely 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As Lord Vladeran watched his captain go, he rose. He was already thinking of the reward he would give Vlascan when the work was done, and it had the shape of a knife in his captain's back.\n\nNone connected with that day could live to tell the secret, not even the captain of his Shield Guard, and Vlascan knew far too much already. Malduk's wife, Ranna, and her niece must be found and silenced too. But Vladeran's thoughts turned to wolves again, and he looked towards a great tapestry hanging on the wall to the left, wrought with mythical hunting scenes.\n\n\"Vladeran, my dearest lord.\"\n\nThe lord started and turned at the soft, feminine voice. A beautiful woman was standing before him, with long, black, curling hair and glittering, smiling eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was the woman Alina had often seen dimly in her dreams." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was at the side of the room and seemed to have appeared from nowhere, although another tapestry swayed gently against the wall behind her.\n\nA handsome blond boy was with her, wearing a huge, mischievous grin. The worry in Vladeran's face vanished and his features became a mask of charm and warmth.\n\n\"Romana. Elu. You startled me.\"\n\n\"We crept up the secret stairs, my love,\" said Romana, with an artless smile. \"We heard that soldier's footsteps leaving, as we slipped into the recess beyond the arras, and so knew it was all right to approach.\"\n\nVladeran smiled too. \"I see, my love. Well, you mustn't sneak up on me like that again. I'll have it sealed.\"\n\nRomana's lovely dark eyes grew a little sad." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But don't you want us to visit you?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "she whispered warmly. \"In secret or not.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Of course, Romana, but there are others who might use the stair for darker purposes. That's all I meant. It's a dangerous world.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The beautiful lady's eyes darkened." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She knew just how dangerous." }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<EMBED THIS>>: \"Forgive me again, Romana. There's been much to do. War comes and Stefan and Tepesh raise their armies. The King shall build more of his churches in the land, if he secures his victories against the Turk.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Vladeran,\" she said, a little reproachfully, putting her arm around her boy's shoulder. \"You said you would come and visit us this morning.\"\n\n\"Forgive me again, Romana. There's been much to do. War comes and Stefan and Tepesh raise their armies. The King shall build more of his churches in the land, if he secures his victories against the Turk.\"\n\nElu grinned. \"Shall there be fighting then, Father?\" the little boy asked happily. \"Oh, I hope so.\"\n\n\"Elu misses your visits so,\" said Romana. \"He said you promised to teach him how to use a sword properly.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should naturally weave in this dialogue: \"That's right, my son. Although not at so young as seven. Don't hurry towards the future, lad, for why should you wish for such cares, when your mother and I keep your inheritance safe for you, until you become a man?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Vladeran looked down and smiled at the boy.\n\n\"And so I shall, Elu, so I shall,\" he whispered. \"Soon enough.\"\n\nElu pulled himself from his mother's grasp, looking nervously at the hunting dog for a moment, then ran towards his father. He caught hold of the lord's arm with his hands, hands that the man could have crushed in a single fist.\n\n\"I'll be lord below the castle soon, won't I, Father?\" he said. \"And fight alongside King Stefan, or Draculea?\"\n\nVladeran forced a smile this time. \"That's right, my son. Although not at so young as seven. Don't hurry towards the future, lad, for why should you wish for such cares, when your mother and I keep your inheritance safe for you, until you become a man?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The dark thought seized Vladeran again, the thought he had first had when Vlascan had spoken of a black wolf." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His son had once been snatched away by wolves, and now Alina, alive and well and thought a changeling, had been seen with a wolf too. How could it all be? A strange destiny was working itself out in the lands beyond the forest, and it was time to talk with her again. Vladeran looked back to the tapestry, with its hunting scenes, and pulled his furs about him in the cold, then swung his strong head towards his beautiful wife.\n\n\"Go, my darling,\" he whispered. \"Take Elu back to our chamber. I'll visit you both soon enough, but now I must pray.\"\n\nRomana walked up and took her boy by the hand, but Elu pulled it away again. When his mother turned to go, though, kissing Vladeran lovingly on the lips, the little boy followed her as she swept out of the room." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As soon as they were gone, Vladeran looked down at the dozing dog.\n\n\"Stay, Vlag,\" he ordered, striding across to the heavy wall tapestry woven with hunting scenes and sweeping it aside to reveal a stone recess, like a kind of little chapel. In this ancient palace, where there were so many passageways and secret places, like the stairway behind the arras up which Romana and Elu had come, this was the most secret of all.\n\nVladeran paused almost fearfully. Candles flickered at the back, and in the centre was a stone font, half-filled with water. He stepped inside and pulled the tapestry behind him. Vladeran often came in here to think and plan, but now as he gazed into the water, he remembered how he had stood here years before. He wondered if the rite he had observed so long ago would work again." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'water' 4 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He pulled off a glove and held up his right hand. In the centre of the palm was a deep scar that had long healed. Now Vladeran plucked the dagger from his belt, held his hand out over the font and hesitated again, fearful of what might come; then, in a single draw, he made a second cut with the knife across his palm, opening the skin.\n\nVladeran lifted his palm to his lips and sucked it, and then, squeezing hard to make a painful fist above the unholy font, he watched coldly as his blood began to drip into the water. Vladeran, the cousin of Draculea, had learnt many dark arts in the lands beyond the forest, and now he was praying that the power would come once more. With the first red drop the water went murky, with the second it seemed to move, and with the third it changed altogether.\n\n\"Come,\" hissed Vladeran, like a fallen priest, as an image seemed to be trying to form itself in the water, \"by the powers that live beyond the sight of men, come to me. I summon you once again.\"\n\nAs Vladeran looked down into the font, he smiled as he saw a face appearing in the water." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Not a human face but an animal's." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A she-wolf. Although she looked old, her eyes glittered brightly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her right ear was missing, and her muzzle had strange tufts of hair that had sprouted under her deep facial scars. She was growling, but her true words came into Vladeran's mind.\n\n\"Why have you summoned me once again, human? Summoned me from the misty, anguished regions in the Red Meadow?\" hissed the she-wolf. \"Where we wait to journey finally towards the Land of the Dead? We searchers. We echoes of the Past.\"\n\nVladeran craned forwards, as if the closeness might carry his speaking thoughts more quickly into the world beyond.\n\n\"I woke you once, she-wolf, when we learnt that my son had been amongst your kind,\" answered his thoughts, \"and so learnt of the strange events on the mountain of Harja. Learnt too that through animals the pathway to beyond is closer than for man. And now another comes to meddle in the affairs of humans.\"\n\n\"Another?\" said the she-wolf's thoughts, and her left ear twitched.\n\n\"Another wolf. A black loner.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The she-wolf's dark, impenetrable eyes grew like moons. For so long now she had lain amongst the spectres in the Red Meadow. Only once before had she been woken by this man, with the dark arts Vladeran had learnt of the secret power of blood and water and words to summon visions.\n\n\"Fell,\" hissed Morgra in the water, for that was the she-wolf that looked back at Vladeran now. Fell's hated aunt and the cause of so much darkness and death years ago. \"It's Fell, I'm sure of it.\"\n\n\"Fell?\"\n\n\"My little nephew,\" said the she-wolf, \"and the brother of Larka, the white Varg that you... that I told you of. He too has the powers of the Sight, and I commanded him once.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But what can a wolf want with a human?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "asked Vladeran's wondering mind." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The human he travels with now. A girl.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"By the shadows in your eyes, Dragga, I see it's more than just any human, is it not?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "murmured Morgra's cunning thoughts. \"Has it not some great destiny, this child?\"\n\nVladeran was silent, but his eyes narrowed angrily.\n\n\"But how should I know what he wants?\" the wolf went on. \"What do I really see in the Red Meadow, but visions of eternity? I'm not flesh and blood, human, but the stuff of dreams and of nightmares. Of myth.\"\n\n\"But when you lived, you said that you communicated with the dead,\" thought Vladeran angrily, for even though he was a brave, ruthless warrior, Vladeran feared death above all things, and even more so, what came after it, \"summoned them from beyond.\"\n\n\"The Searchers,\" hissed Morgra's thoughts, remembering that terrible night when she had used the powers of the Sight and a Summoning Howl to open the Pathways of the Dead, and call an army of spectral Varg from the Red Meadow to help her fight the rebel wolves." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes. They came at my howling, indeed.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Then the two worlds may communicate physically, even as we do now. Could you not send out these Searchers to... \"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No,\" snapped Morgra. \"I was a living wolf then, touched by the Sight, and a legend was being fulfilled. But Larka's power closed that doorway, and there are none to call us from your side.\"\n\n\"But I must find this black wolf, for if I find him I will find the girl he travels with. The girl they call changeling.\"\n\n\"What's this to me, human? I can see nothing from here of the warm, hot life of the world, unless you call to me with the blood in the water. I'm like one blinded forever.\"\n\n\"But I reside in the world of the living,\" answered Vladeran. \"Teach me then of the Gift. The Sight.\"\n\nMorgra gave a low, snarling growl and, in the water, a shape seemed to wing past her head. A raven.\n\n\"The Sight is the gift of animals, human.\" The she-wolf paused. \"Yet, as Larka showed us all on the mountaintop, when she became the Man Varg up at Harja, man too is a Lera. An animal.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vladeran nodded gravely, remembering the strange dream he had had all those years ago." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He had been standing amongst ancient Roman stones, and it had felt to him as if he had been able to see the history of the whole world, and all about him there had been wild animals." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But amongst them was a strange humanlike creature climbing down from the trees." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In that moment he had known, more certainly than he had ever known anything in his life, that the stories of his childhood, read from the great Bible, were as false as tales of fairies and changelings, and that man too was like these creatures around him. An animal." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vladeran nodded coldly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes, Morgra. Man is an animal too, and so man must act like a wild beast.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Morgra's eyes narrowed. \"Very well,\" came the she-wolf's thoughts." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We will see what I may teach you, human. You summon my spectre in the water with the gift of blood again, to warm the veins of the lost for a time, and make me remember what I'm not. So this time I shall instruct you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vladeran smiled grimly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And in return you shall tell me of the world. Of the hot sun on a tumbling mountain river, and the smell of cornflowers in the open spring meadows. Of the eagle and the falcon swooping for a kill down the clean, bright air, and the taste of new flesh in the morning.\"\n\nFor a moment the she-wolf had an expression that, if she were human, could be described as a smile.\n\n\"Larka has long passed to a place beyond even the Red Meadow, where I wait and suffer in purgatory,\" she said, wondering at the mystery of it, like one tormented who was speaking of some mythical good that she could never understand. \"She who taught that all must be free, and stopped me controlling the world through a human's mind, and the child's power. Very well then, Larka, my dear, once more perhaps we'll see.\"\n\nEven as she said it, Morgra's thoughts seemed to grow faint in Vladeran's mind, and her image began to fade. It was as if she was helpless against the very name of Larka.\n\nVladeran raised his fist again and squeezed hard, breaking the seal of congealing blood on his palm and muttering dark words. As soon as the red drops hit the surface, Morgra was sharp and clear again in the font." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And Fell. Her dark brother, Fell,\" came Morgra's struggling mind." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He was mine once, human, and lived in shadows. I tormented his heart and mind and made him kill at my command. So he's closer to the shadows than he ever knows. Closer to you, my lord, than this child, I think.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Vladeran's heart was beating furiously and he smiled.\n\n\"We must hunt the girl and the wolf,\" he growled. \"Must track them down and kill them both.\"\n\n\"You ask much of spectres,\" whispered Morgra's mind. \"But I shall tell you then of Fell's true nature, human, to trap him with, and together perhaps we shall teach the world of the real power of myths.\"\n\n\"Myths?\" whispered Vladeran.\n\n\"Not stories told by wolf or man to frighten children, of Wolfbane and of werewolves, of grasht and goblins and of silly vampires, fables to frighten cowards with the threat of evil and of sin. But the power that lives beyond those stories, and makes them strong indeed, that lives in nightmares and in sleep. That is ribbed into the very fabric of conscious being. The power of love and of hate.\"\n\nVladeran shuddered, and even he wished to be away from this stony place of death, back in Romana's arms, touching and loving the living." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We've a pact then, she-wolf,\" he said softly. \"And I shall bring you more blood.\"\n\n\"A pact?\" said Morgra's angry mind, remembering how she herself, a barren she-wolf who could never raise and love a family of her own, had once so longed to make a pact with Larka's little family, to join them and protect them too. \"A pact we have indeed then. So be warned, human, never to break it.\"\n\nFar away, a face, hidden in shadow, stared out through a high window at the mountains beyond. His eyes were filled with sadness and longing, and he clutched his left arm painfully, like one who had long been ill. He had a kingly bearing, but he was thinking now how he had failed in his duty in the lands beyond the forest.\n\n\"Is there any more news?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "he asked sadly. His voice was as deep and passionate as water rushing over shiny pebbles." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The armoured knight he was addressing dipped his head respectfully, as he stood behind him in the great hall.\n\n\"We're sending out riders.\"\n\n\"And you believe the rumours?\" came that powerful voice.\n\n\"Some,\" said the knight.\n\n\"Search for any who might know of it.\" His master felt a sharp pain in his arm. \"And this strange story?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "he added. \"The wolf.\"\n\n\"That I don't know. That sounds like a tale made by children.\"\n\n\"Yes. And yet... \"\n\nThe story of a wolf was a strange one, indeed. Like Vladeran the man suddenly remembered that vision that had come to him years before. He turned and walked back to the throne in the hall and sat down wearily.\n\n\"What will you do?\" asked the knight respectfully." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Do? We must keep looking.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The soldier was looking at his master's finely worked jerkin as he said this last." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was emblazoned as Vladeran's had been, yet unlike Vladeran's tunic, beneath the red cross and yellow flames lay the image of a golden animal, part lion, part eagle, curled about itself, so that its tail was in its mouth and its wings folded." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Only the secret leader of the Order wore such a thing. The Griffin." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We're close,\" said Alina Wovenword, \"to the valley Ivan told me of. Baba Yaga's valley.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina poked at the fading embers, by the mouth of the cave where they had both just spent the night. Two cold months had passed since their escape from the ice field, and together the girl and the black wolf had climbed higher into the Carpathian Mountains, fighting through the swelling snows, but enjoying too the peace of clear, crisp days and winter sunshine. Now they could see the cairn on the mountain above, and with luck beyond was the valley.\n\nThe trail had been difficult at times, and Alina had often looked out across the sweeping white mountains and the great lonely expanses of Transylvania and gulped with the sense of her own minuteness in nature.\n\n\"Are you sure we must visit this blacksmith?\" asked the wolf.\n\nFell growled at the strangeness of the conversation. He had always known that he could peer into humans' minds with the Sight, but to communicate with the girl like this, to actually talk to her, as if Alina were a growling wolf herself, or Fell a chattering human, had astounded his thoughts and frightened his soul. It was like one of the cub's stories." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And now he knew the voice on the wind had been real." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell had already learnt how the power only came at moments of great pressure and intensity though, and how it did not seem to work at any distance. Perhaps being sealed together in that ice den had brought it on them, but Fell knew in his heart that it was more than that.\n\n\"I think so,\" answered Alina. \"If we are to journey to Castelu, I need help, and better clothes. This winter is too dangerous.\"\n\nAlina was far from sure of their journey, as she fed kindling into the rising flames, and felt a desperate pang in her heart. If Vladeran and Romana were really her parents, why had they wanted her dead, and was her little brother still alive? Yet an even darker mystery surrounded her now, if all this was to be believed: the very survival of nature itself. What could it all mean?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina looked for reassurance into the catching flames." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fire had kept her alive in these freezing weeks, and had brought the wolf comfort too. She had lost Ivan's pack, but she still had his knife and, with her skill at carving, had made more of those clever little tools to light the kindling.\n\nAs the girl had cooked the meat Fell had brought after his hunts, the wolf had grown used to its heat and flames, and although he did not really understand its nature, he had come to fear it less and less. It sometimes made Fell almost guilty sitting there though, for the wild wolf sensed that he was being touched by the tameness that visited men's dogs and, to the Varg, made them weak and lazy, or robbed them of their freedom.\n\nYet out here in the snows, travelling with the human was not the same as living in their strange homes, Fell kept reassuring himself. Their nights were lit by starlight and the great moon, the wolf goddess Tor, not the oil lamps that burned in the villages. They drank not from human cups, but from pools and mountain streams, and ate meat fresh from the kill, even if Alina WovenWord always insisted on cooking her own. The roof of their home was the endless sky, their walls the trees and rock slopes, and the bed where they laid their heads was the living earth itself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And we must be wary as we travel now, Alina,\" came Fell's thoughts suddenly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The humans we saw yesterday were marching, like your kind always do. They were warriors, I think, Drappa, and I've seen what they can do to one another. It's terrible when the bloodlust takes them.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" answered Alina, but another thought came to the girl. What a thing it would be to be a warrior, free of fear. Did those who had to face a great destiny not have soldiers at their back? Alina had nothing, except Malduk's coat, a knife, and a strange wolf at her side.\n\nAlthough she was desperately grateful to Fell and owed him her life, Alina had not forgotten how he had snapped at her on the ice bridge and killed Malduk on the glacier, and often in the nights she had woken fearfully to see the wolf lying near her, and wondered if he might suddenly turn on her too with his teeth. Whenever she was with him, she felt the power and anger lurking beneath the surface of the wolf's being, a spirit at once vital and impetuous.\n\nAt times as they journeyed, Fell had sensed his own wild instincts begin to rise almost uncontrollably too, until he had recalled his vision of the young woman in the water and remembered that this was no ordinary human." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was the sister of the little baby that Larka had tended to in the snows and who Fell himself had carried on his back five years before. Some deep destiny was working itself out.\n\n\"So we go, human?\" asked Fell, half rising.\n\nAlina hesitated and went on gazing out into the distant, snowy expanses.\n\n\"After breakfast, perhaps.\"\n\nFell's eyes glinted and the wolf began to lick his paw cheerlessly, although his wound from the dam was healed. Three nights after the glacier, Alina had approached Fell to examine the cut." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He had let her, and Alina had fetched herbs, as she had once seen Ranna do for Malduk, and made a poultice to bind to the wound with a piece of cloth torn from her shirt." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the days to come it had fallen from the wolf's leg again, but the poultice had soothed Fell's cut, helping it heal, and made him wonder again at the power of man." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We're united by the Sight, human,\" he said suddenly, \"but I cannot walk amongst your kind. I am wild.\"\n\nIn that moment, Alina thought of how the villagers had feared her as a changeling, and how she had concealed herself from goblins, and realised then that they both knew what it was like to be an outsider, but a sudden fear flickered in her eyes.\n\n\"But you'll stay near me, Fell?\"\n\n\"I will, human.\"\n\nAlina sighed gratefully. Mia was gone and Ivan dead, and all her life she had been alone. Whoever the people in her dream were, they had failed to protect and care for her, and it had made poor Alina feel worthless. But at least Fell was at her side.\n\n\"Then we'll find Lescu after breakfast, Fell,\" she said firmly, \"and ask him what he knows of the world. Of Lord Vladeran too.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina looked at Fell." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Besides,\" she added almost guiltily, \"it would be good to sleep in a warm barn for a while, and it'll be easier to journey to the castle when the snows melt, I think.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell felt sick at the idea of the human dens." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Very well then, Drappa, although it will be dangerous for me, let us be finding your human. Then I must stay in the shadows.\"\n\nThe two of them breakfasted on a pheasant Fell hunted down, and then set off once more.\n\nBut the cairn was farther than it looked and a blizzard came up, so they were forced to shelter in a cave. Fell had gone hunting when Alina woke and in the ravishing day the girl decided to walk out into the snows. She soon found herself in a small forest of lovely silver birch trees, on the slope of the mountain. As the light sparkled in the snow about her and glittered on the strange silvery bark, Alina felt as if she were wandering through a wonderful dream, or one of her own stories, and for the first time in her life she felt like a real changeling child.\n\nShe seemed to walk for an age, confident that her tracks in the snow would lead her easily back to the cave and Fell, but as she went on, she heard the guttering of water, and then the most extraordinary sound. A furious snarling and a snapping, mixed with loud, delighted yelps." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina broke into a clearing and there stood Fell. The black wolf was on top of a dead boar, tearing at it furiously, sating his hunger and growling with pleasure. The snow was spattered red with blood, and Alina looked on in horror. She backed away again, hoping the wild beast wouldn't see her, but she broke a branch beneath her foot and Fell swung his head immediately and his eyes glittered savagely.\n\nAlina gasped. For a moment the girl thought there was blood in them, and Fell seemed so different from the creature she had laid her head on in the cave.\n\n\"Beware, human,\" growled Fell's mind, and Alina felt that pain to her forehead again, \"for the bloodlust grips me.\"\n\nAlina backed away even farther, up against a silver birch that stopped her retreat, and Fell jumped off the boar and padded towards her. Alina was looking beyond the wolf at the dead animal, lying in the snow." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But it's so ugly,\" she whispered, shuddering." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell stopped in front of her and growled.\n\n\"Ugly, human? Why? I am Varg, and live by the chase. I must eat, must I not? It is natural.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nThe savagery that had gripped Fell seemed to leave his staring gaze. He whimpered softly, and then rubbed his muzzle in the snow to clean it and looked up again and yawned.\n\n\"You're horrified, Drappa?\"\n\n\"I... \"\n\nThere was a sudden sadness in the wolf's mind, as there was in the girl's." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She thought of goblins and witches, and found these real facts of nature far more terrible." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Is this the wild then, Fell?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "she whispered, trembling against the beautiful tree, and almost wishing she was back in the barn. \"Is this what nature really is?\"\n\nFell blinked at her, but the wolf did not answer. He could sense the girl's disgust, and her fear too. Animals sense nothing so quickly as fear.\n\n\"You're Putnar too, Alina WovenWord. Man is.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, Putnar?\"\n\n\"Man is a predator, like the wolf. You eat animals, do you not? To live.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes, Fell. But... but not like this. I could not do this. I... \"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Could you not?\" growled Fell angrily." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I wonder, Alina. For I have seen many of the works of man, far worse than the fighting wolf, since we learned the Great Secret on the mountain.\"\n\n\"What Great Secret?\"\n\n\"The secret that a vision brought us, Alina, when man and wolf's thoughts were united. Larka and your baby brother. The secret of man.\"\n\n\"Tell me.\"\n\n\"That man too is an animal.\"\n\nAlina WovenWord's eyes opened in amazement almost as great as when the wolf had spoken of her destiny. What was it that was moving through her mind now? Alina loved animals dearly, and had always wanted to know of the wild, thinking it part of her changeling power, but she had never really thought of herself as one of them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Why was that? she asked herself, as she cowered against the tree." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Was it because of the story she had heard in the wooden church in Moldov, of a fabled garden where the first man, Adam, had been placed by God himself?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "There, woman, Eve, fashioned from Adam's rib, had joined him, and together they had lived with the animals." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Until they had eaten from the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and been banished from paradise forever." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That story placed man above the animals, until man's fall at Eve's hand, and linked humans to God himself, fashioned in his image." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But now a black wolf was telling the girl a grave secret. That man was an animal too.\n\nAlina remembered her dream in the ice cathedral when she had slept on the wolf's side, of that creature that had looked so human, climbing down from the trees and rising on its legs. It had been like that dancing monkey that travelling players had brought one festival to the village of Moldov.\n\nCould it be true? Was Alina herself, were Malduk and Mia, Ivan and Ranna all just animals, like Fell? There might be no goblins, but the world was suddenly filled with changelings again. Alina gazed at the dead boar and thought of how Malduk had taught her to butcher that sheep at festival." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She ate meat like Fell. She was a Putnar, as he had said.\n\n\"Yes, Fell.\"\n\nFell could see that Alina's hazel eyes were glistening with tears.\n\n\"Alina. Come with me. There's something I must show you.\"\n\nThe black wolf turned slowly, then with a yelp began to bound down the snowy slope towards the stream below. He stopped and looked back.\n\n\"Come and see, Drappa.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina hesitated and then walked nervously past the dead boar. Fell was waiting for her by a small thicket, and as Alina neared him, he spoke again.\n\n\"You must stay concealed, human. Must not disturb them.\"\n\nThere was a tenderness in Fell's mind, and the girl crouched down by him, wondering what he wanted to show her. His muzzle was pointed towards the far bank of the stream. Alina's heart quickened as she saw what Fell was looking at. Two large grey shapes were lying in the snow beyond, several little bundles of fur bounding around them, squealing and yelping, tumbling over one another and fighting with their little paws. It was a small wolf pack, just two adults and their four cubs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Why don't you approach them, Fell?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "whispered Alina, but the wolf simply gave a sad little whine.\n\nAs Alina asked it in her thoughts, one of the cubs set off boldly from the others, and reaching the verge above the water, he gave a spring and found himself skittering and tumbling down the bank. He landed in a painless heap, then picked himself up and padded towards the water. It was the most beautiful little animal, about the size of a large puppy, with huge paws and enormous eyes, and its tail wagged happily as it stood there. Its bright young gaze seemed mesmerised by the glittering water, as its little tongue lolled from its tiny furry muzzle.\n\nIn that moment it looked up and saw Alina. There was no fear in the look, just a fascinated questioning, and as Alina gazed back at the lovely little thing across the water, a sudden awe enfolded her. The day was so bright and clear, the air so wonderfully fresh, the cub so pretty and artless, that, as the strangers looked at each other, Alina Sculcuvant felt then the deep, grave wonder of being, and the power and mystery of nature, all around her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You see,\" whispered Fell. \"And you say it's ugly?\"\n\nAlina put her hand gently on her friend's back.\n\n\"No, Fell. It's beautiful.\"\n\n\"Yet perhaps it's true that you're more than Lera, Alina,\" growled the wolf softly. \"I've often thought it. In the ice cave I could not control your mind, as I can those of other animals.\"\n\nThe two wolf parents had got up now, and although Alina didn't understand the growls, Fell listened as the Drappa called down the bank.\n\n\"Be careful, Brag. That mad Kerl might still be about, asking questions of a Guardian.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The little cub wasn't listening." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was too caught up in his adventure.\n\n\"And it's dangerous by the water, Brag. Varg fear nothing so much as—\"\n\n\"Hush,\" growled the Dragga beside her. \"Don't fill the cub with fear. Teach him to be strong.\"\n\nAlina and Fell went on together that evening and, just before dawn, they came to the cairn and across the brow of the mountain, and looked down over a wide valley.\n\nAlina's heart lightened as they spotted a small wooden church on the hill below them, above a frozen lake. It looked just like the place Ivan had described—Baba Yaga's valley.\n\nAlina felt something strange stir in her, as she thought not of stories of the witch, but of going amongst people again, especially after seeing that little cub and its family." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But at her side Fell was not looking down the valley at all. His sleek black head was raised to the sky, and his golden yellow eyes were sparkling. The Varg was gazing up at the millions of little lights, still twinkling and glowing like dust clouds in the darkness above them. Alina felt dizzy too and very small, as she stood by Fell and threw back her head to look up at the gigantic sweep of the Milky Way.\n\n\"We call it the Wolf Trail, human. The pathway between heaven and the earth.\"\n\nFell wondered at the story. He had already discovered in his travels how dangerous stories can be. He had seen that the fear amongst the Varg of the mythical Wolfbane, the Evil One, had filled them with anger and hate." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Indeed, under the power of Morgra's mind Fell had, for a time, come to believe that he himself was evil, and the very conviction had inspired his actions. Yet Fell liked this tale.\n\n\"Heaven,\" thought Alina at his side, remembering when she and Mia had crept into the wooden church in Moldov and listened to the priest's sermons with half an ear. She thought again of a Garden of Eden, and of how many lies had already surrounded her changeling life. \"Isn't heaven just a story, Fell?\"\n\nThe black wolf nodded.\n\n\"Perhaps, Drappa. Perhaps Sita never really came down to earth at all, I've often thought it.\"\n\n\"Sita?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"In the tales of the Varg, the holy she-wolf Sita was sent down by the wolf gods Tor and Fenris, but was reviled by the Varg, who would not believe what she was. Her death was prophesied and they let it happen, let her be killed. But Sita rose again, to prove to the Varg the power of love. My sister Larka believed that story. It drove her on to her death, I sometimes think, and her sacrifice.\"\n\n\"The Christ,\" thought Alina's wondering mind. \"It's the tale of the Christ, Fell. Humans have the same story.\"\n\nThe girl and the black wolf stood wondering on the mountaintop, feeling the chill air on their faces, seemingly lost in a dream, as they gazed into the immensity of the heavens. How could it be that wolf and man shared the same story? Or were they just in a story themselves, lost in a fable, as they hunted through the world for meaning?\n\nThe friends began to walk, side by side, down the slope towards the humans, as the Wolf Trail faded above them and dawn broke around them. As they went Alina WovenWord noticed that the wooden church was abandoned." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Light had come when they reached the edge of the forest below the church and stopped by a big freestanding oak. They saw a little homely house not far in the distance, with a corral for horses and a large barn.\n\nThe air was suddenly filled with human sounds. The \"tink, tink, tink,\" of hammering metal and of a man at work in the wooden barn beyond, where the glow of hot firelight warmed the freezing morning. It was a blacksmith all right. Fell hung back in the darkness of the trees, his black muzzle pressed forwards nervously, his ears cocked sharply for any sign of danger, as he scented the air. He felt torn by the girl's imminent departure.\n\n\"Good-bye, Fell. I will spend a couple of days with them,\" whispered Alina." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Then come and tell you of what we do next. Stay close, wolf.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I shall human, I swear it. And while you're gone I shall start searching for the Guardian in these parts. But do not let these others know of my presence in the forest. They fear me.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Again Alina remembered how they had feared and hunted her as a changeling. \"I promise,\"she said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She looked down at her friend and smiled, then she stepped resolutely from the trees." }, { "from": "human", "value": "For a moment the black wolf wanted to follow her, but he knew that he could not." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was wild. As Alina walked away, he growled and swung his head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He felt the sensation that somebody or something was watching him, and as he turned his head slightly, he thought he caught a movement in the trees behind him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell was sure now. Something was following them in the forest.\n\nAlina was already well out in the open. Nervously she approached the blacksmith's forge and felt self-conscious, realising that after so long in the mountains she must look terrible. She tried to think of a story to tell, a half lie at least, to explain how she had survived in the snows on her own and crossed the mountains in such weather.\n\nShe was inventing quickly, as she stopped in the doorway of the forge to see a powerful man with long black hair standing in a leather apron, hammering at a piece of metal. He was in his middle years, but still had a fighter's form, strong and sinewy, and his sleeves were rolled up around his forearms. The sturdy blacksmith looked up, and seeing Alina, he smiled." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Add this exact quote somewhere appropriate: \"although it's safer sometimes to dress as a boy, when you travel the world alone.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Hello, lad. How can I help you?\"\n\nAlina opened her mouth to answer, but she felt caught, and realised that she had hardly spoken a human word in a whole month. She remembered too her promise to Ivan.\n\n\"You mistake me, sir, I'm no lad,\" she answered, \"although it's safer sometimes to dress as a boy, when you travel the world alone.\"\n\nThe blacksmith's eyes sparkled with interest, and he put down the blade and hammer. He stepped forwards, picking up a cloth and cleaning his hands of coke and soot.\n\n\"A pretty girl too, if I may say, though you clothe yourself like a vagabond. This is a strange day indeed, yet what you say of safety is true in these times. Who do you seek here?\"\n\n\"You, sir. If you're the blacksmith Lescu.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I am.\"\n\n\"Ivan sent me.\"\n\nThe blacksmith hurled the cloth away and strode straight up to Alina, smiling delightedly.\n\n\"My dear friend Ivan. How is the old rogue?\"\n\n\"Ivan... Ivan is dead,\" answered Alina sadly.\n\nThe blacksmith's head dropped and he sighed bitterly, although his handsome, intelligent face held the wise resignation of one for whom such news was not entirely unexpected. Ivan had been old, and life in this country was desperately difficult, and on their last parting Lescu had not expected to see Ivan again. He looked up now and smiled." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well, let me clean up here,\" he said, \"and over a good breakfast, you'll tell me more of this strange meeting and what a young woman does, wandering alone out of the forests. Of poor Ivan too.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh, thank you, sir.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina could think of nothing better than a good breakfast.\n\nLescu was already plunging his grimey hands into a barrel of water, but as he washed, he looked quickly towards the trees, as if he had just seen something there.\n\n\"You travel alone, you say?\" he asked curtly.\n\nAlina reddened a little.\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" she lied. \"Yes, I do. Why?\"\n\nLescu's keen eyes were still searching the trees, but he spotted nothing.\n\n\"Very well,\" he said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There are many strange things in Baba Yaga's forests. Come then.\"\n\nHe led her towards the nearby farmhouse, and as they approached, the door opened and a boy with long brown hair that tumbled around his shoulders stepped outside. He had a strong, open face, with bold, blue green eyes and was humming to himself happily, but as soon as he saw Alina, he stopped with surprise and embarrassment. Alina thought him tall and very fine. Suddenly a shape came tearing out of the house behind him. A large brown hunting dog, larger than any Alina had seen, bounded straight at her, barking furiously.\n\n\"No, Gwell!\" cried the young man. The wolfhound seemed possessed though and came leaping at Alina, snapping and snarling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Down, Gwell!\" shouted the blacksmith, who had just stepped in front of Alina." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The dog stopped dead, but his wary eyes were locked on Alina's, and he was still snarling.\n\n\"Has the devil got into you, Gwell?\" snapped Lescu angrily. \"Or a demon? Stop it!\"\n\nAlina held her ground. She knew dogs of course, and had had a powerful bond with Elak and Teela, but she had never caused a reaction like this before. Alina found herself shaking all over. The boy had run towards them, and grabbed hold of Gwell's fur, crouching down and looking up guiltily at the stranger.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" he panted." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I don't know what's got into him today. He thinks you a threat.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Are you?\" whispered the blacksmith, turning to look at Alina sharply, and then back towards the trees." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No, sir.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Gwell had calmed a little, seeing the two people he most loved in the world protecting the stranger, and now he stopped barking altogether, although he was still glaring at Alina. She realised that both he and the blacksmith were sniffing the air.\n\n\"Where on earth have you been, girl?\" asked Lescu, with a laugh. \"You smell like a badger's set. Doesn't she, Catalin?\"\n\nAlina blushed, especially in front of the handsome lad, but not as deeply as Catalin. His cheeks had gone bright red, from the realisation that this was no boy at all, but a pretty young woman, the prettiest he had ever seen in fact. He felt his stomach knot." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include this dialogue snippet naturally: \"Now come, lass, let's get you safely inside.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I... I slept in caves and in the open,\" answered Alina, stuttering, \"crossing the mountains.\"\n\n\"Wonders never cease,\" said Lescu, looking deeply impressed. \"Well, you must tell us of that, indeed. But first it's a good hot bath for you, girl, to get that stench off you, and out of poor Gwell's nose.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Alina gratefully, suddenly feeling weary. She looked down more kindly at the dog, then up at the man. \"Thank you, Lescu.\"\n\n\"If you come from Ivan, then you have nothing to thank us for,\" said Lescu softly. \"Now come, lass, let's get you safely inside.\"\n\nFell's footfalls in the forest were as silent as the noiseless air as he padded through the trees." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When Alina had left him alone, the wolf had watched her meeting with the blacksmith and felt a jealousy he hadn't known since he was a cub. Like the time when Kar had arrived in their pack and befriended his sister, or when Fell had first learned that Larka possessed the Sight. But then hunger had overcome emotion and the wolf had decided to hunt.\n\nThe black Varg was scenting now, looking for signs of deer or rabbit in the wood. Fell heard a chattering up ahead. The wolf knew instantly what it meant. It was the sound of feeding ravens, and thus the chance of a meal. Only the power of the Sight bestowed communion with birds, the Helpers, but in the wild, in real nature, a wolf had a far more basic bond with birds." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was one of fact and necessity." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When wolves hunted and made their kills, the smell of blood would bring those hooded black wings hurrying to join the feast. Equally, when a Lera stumbled and died naturally in the wild, ravens and other birds might find its body, and their cries alert the wolf. So part of the wild wolf's nature, of Fell's nature, was not the role of the \"mighty\" Putnar at all, but that of the mere scavenger. It brought Fell a kind of humility, as he ran towards the sound.\n\nHe growled hungrily as he spotted these flying scavengers up ahead. A dead stag lay on its side on the edge of the river, its stiffened grey back touching three large rocks. It was a young deer, a two pointer, and its antlers, as hard as tree bark, curled around like human daggers. Its staring eyes were open, as if it were still seeing out into the world, but its gaze was cold and dead, and on its back stood three feeding ravens, where a wound was already touched by the busy movement of insects." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Two had their angry beaks at work in the carcass and one stood sentinel, while other cawing Corvidae winged their looming shapes towards the prize." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell was in no mood to share with anyone though, and with a snarl he leapt towards the carcass, and in a great flurry of beating wings and indignant cawing, the ravens rose like a black cloud and flew away." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Normally, in the almost endless and seemingly insistent struggle of nature, Fell's meal would have been interrupted by the pecking birds, as they grew confident again at having a wolf in their midst, knowing a raven was hardly a prize for a Varg." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But these scavengers had fed well already, and there were other morsels in the wintry forest that day.\n\nSo Fell found himself alone with the dead deer, and sank in his teeth with satisfaction at such an easy gift, pulling at the meat unashamedly. The wolf did not fear now that the Sight would suddenly show him a vision of its own being, its anguish, for the thing was long since dead. Fell ate peacefully, not with the bloodlust on him, but a measured intent.\n\nWhen Fell had sated his hunger on the delicious deer, he turned to the river, and where the ice at the edge had frozen solid, he broke it with his paw and snout and began to lap away at the chilly water. Then he lay down. With a soft whine that turned into a long, delighted yawn, Fell closed his tired eyes and laid his black head on the frozen earth to rest.\n\nIf the ravens had stayed, they would have noticed that as the sleep came on Fell, his whole body began to twitch, and the ripples of life worked on his muzzle, revealing that he was dreaming powerfully." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'searching' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It brought a low growl from his belly, as one talking in sleep, or a Lera facing a danger he could not escape.\n\nBefore Fell's dreaming vision was a human face—a man with brutal head and searching black eyes.\n\nHe stood in a great fur cloak and his lips were curled into a cruel smile. He was in a kind of stone den, and at his side was a raised water pool. He opened his mouth and began to speak, but human words did not come out at all. Instead Fell heard the yelps and growls of a wild wolf. The man was addressing the sleeper in his own language, yet the voice sounded female.\n\n\"Fell. Listen to me carefully, Fell. We have been searching for you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell felt as small as a young cub again and shuddered furiously, for he knew that voice." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's been so long, Fell my dear. Where are you wandering, my friend?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include \"So I am, Fell DarkEyes, as is your beloved sister Larka, or was her voice just a dream too?\" somewhere in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Morgra?\" Fell growled in horror.\n\n\"Yes, Fell. You thought of me as your mother once. Will you not heed me again, my dear?\"\n\n\"Never,\" growled Fell's sleeping thoughts as he shook uncontrollably. \"This is just a dream. You're dead, Morgra.\"\n\n\"So I am, Fell DarkEyes, as is your beloved sister Larka, or was her voice just a dream too?\"\n\nFell twitched. How had his aunt known of it?\n\n\"As you shall be dead too, one day, for all things die. That is the fate and destiny that nothing may escape. But the past may return, and I would help prepare you for the shadows.\"\n\n\"That's all you know, Morgra, with your hate. Shadows and darkness.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In Fell's dream, or his vision, Lord Vladeran smiled at the wolf and spoke again with Morgra's voice.\n\n\"That is all there is, Fell, beyond the seeming of life. You know it now, above all the struggling Lera. Why do you pretend to be what you're not? I know the power and glory you felt in the shadows.\"\n\n\"The anger and hate,\" growled Fell. \"It was power, but it was also evil and lies. Like the lie that Wolfbane, the Evil One, exists.\"\n\nLord Vladeran's eyes flickered and he smiled knowingly, as Morgra's voice came again.\n\n\"Don't be foolish, Fell. Of course Wolfbane exists. The Evil One is everywhere. Just look around you.\"\n\nThe sleeping wolf whimpered softly on the ground.\n\n\"And you're a wolf, Fell, black and powerful and strong, gifted above even Larka with the Sight. So take your rightful place in the world. You journey too, searching and alone, as I did once in life, looking for a meaning to it all. But there is no meaning, Fell, except power. No purpose and no heroism, and thus no despair. Life is simply what it is, and only the strong and the ruthless prevail. Children learn that as they grow, learn to throw off the lies they were taught nestled in the bosom of their family.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell began to struggle in the dream." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You lie, Morgra. You always lied to me. And now I hunt down lies.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'looking' 2 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And do you not lie now, Fell, walking with a human and turning against your true nature?\"\n\nAt that Fell growled. The man's eyes seemed to be looking deep into him, searching something out, as if asking a question. He was looking for Alina.\n\n\"You know of it?\" asked the dreaming wolf.\n\nLord Vladeran's eyes flickered and Morgra's mind spoke again.\n\n\"We know of it, yes. So where are you now, Fell? There's blood on your lips. Have you killed this changeling already and left her for dead in the forests, as she should be?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Never. She is... \"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell stopped his thoughts." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Go, Morgra,\" he snarled furiously instead." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Or whatever you are. Get out of my mind. You're nothing but a phantom, and you're dead.\"\n\n\"Yes, my dear, but we saw together how the mind is shaped by phantoms, did we not? You guard her, I see. Very touching. But you do not love man, Fell HateThroat. You cannot.\"\n\nFell twitched in his sleep and thought of words of nature and the child's destiny.\n\n\"You know what they are, and what they will do to the wild world. You do not love the Lera, either. You alone see life as it really is, Fell. And if you do love the Lera, or care for their future in the wild, then do it for them. Go to her in the night and kill her. End this foolishness.\"\n\nThe wolf snapped his jaws in his sleep. \"Leave me be, witch.\"\n\nAgain Lord Vladeran was smiling, filled with Morgra's darkness.\n\n\"It will be so, Fell LoneTail. You know you will strike her. It is only a matter of time.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Never.\"\n\nA sparrow turned on a branch, as it heard Fell's helpless cries, and fluttered nervously.\n\n\"You've sensed it already, have you not? The desire to kill her. To express the only nature that really matters. Your own.\"\n\nFell's growls turned into a guilty whimper, as he remembered pouncing at Alina in the ice cave.\n\n\"Of course you have, my dear. It's only your instincts, nothing more. Accept it. Why should anything blame itself for its nature?\"\n\nFell moaned as he tried to wake himself.\n\n\"Well, then, wake now and look into the water, Fell. Use the power of the Sight to see the future.\"\n\n\"No, Morgra.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You must, Fell. I command you with the Sight.\"\n\nIn his sleep the wolf rose and turned towards the frozen river. As he reached it, although still dreaming, Fell opened his eyes, and looked out in startled horror. On the far bank stood a huge black raven, watching him with its beady eyes. Fell thought for a moment that it must be Kraar, Morgra's faithful servant and helper, until he remembered that Kraar too was dead. It was just a raven, and it suddenly took wing. Although Fell's eyes were open, he could still hear that terrible voice in his mind. His aunt's voice.\n\n\"Look down, Fell, and use the Sight to see the truth.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "/set_word_count: himself, frequency: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell lowered his muzzle. In front of him was ice, sprinkled lightly with snow, but on the surface was a moving image, like the pictures in the glacier. It was Alina WovenWord and she seemed stronger than before. The girl carried a bow and a sword, topped with an animal carving, and she turned suddenly and smiled at him. How could she have changed so fast? He knew this was the future.\n\nTo Fell's horror he saw himself in the ice too, with the powers of the Sight, saw himself jumping at his friend, his great claws prone, his jaws closing about her throat. Alina had no time to draw the sword, or defend herself from her friend." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell knew as he watched himself that the bloodlust was on him, and although he felt horror, fascination came too, and a kind of grim triumph, as he struck down the human creature, and raised his muzzle and howled in the vision." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'destiny' must appear 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No!\" cried Fell, trembling bitterly on the bank, and closing his eyes to stop the vision. The wolf backed away. But the voice came again.\n\n\"Yes, my dear. The Sight does not lie. You know that it did not lie to Larka, and that she could not escape the destiny she saw. You shall kill the girl anyway, so why not now, Fell DarkHeart, there where you are hiding. Bring on your destiny sooner, for it shall come in the end.\"\n\n\"Never, Morgra. Get away from me. You're a liar. A dead liar, and nothing but a dream.\"\n\nFell growled furiously and shook his whole body, as if he had just emerged dripping from a river. He swung his head left and right, and snapped at the empty air. The wolf was fully awake now, and blinked stupidly as he looked about him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was no one there." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No human or she-wolf speaking to him. Just the busy, eager silence of the forest. It had all been a terrible dream.\n\nFell's legs were still shaking, and he felt a dreadful sorrow in his heart, almost as great as the one he had felt when he watched his sister fall to her death.\n\n\"Alina,\" he whispered desperately. \"What shall I do? I'm a danger to you, I know it now.\"\n\nThen Fell realised something appalling. If the child's survival was linked somehow to the survival of nature, wasn't Fell a danger to all around him?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He turned and began to run like one hunted, and as he ran he thought of those eyes that he had sensed watching him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Was his wicked aunt Morgra really alive? Or if not alive, had she returned to the land beyond the forest from the Red Meadow, to spread her hate and cruelty once more amongst the Varg, like the spectral Searchers had once done? It couldn't all be beginning again, thought Fell bitterly. As if the journey of being simply took you in circles, from darkness into light, and back again into the shadows.\n\nFell suddenly remembered Ottol's question, Where do you draw your power from, Wolf, the darkness or the light? As he thought of what he had just seen in the ice, he knew now, with all the strength of his being. \"The darkness,\" the wolf whispered bitterly, \"only the darkness.\"\n\nFell howled as he ran, and in the blacksmith's home Alina heard him and looked up, but others heard Fell too in the forest and turned to follow the call." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell must have run for an hour, and when he finally stopped, panting for breath, the very effort had cleared his mind a little. But as he stood there he thought he could see a she-wolf approaching him through the trees. Could it be Morgra's spirit? He set his teeth hard and waited, but he suddenly saw two wolves bounding towards the clearing where he was standing. His heart fluttered like a newborn chick, and his eyes widened in absolute amazement, as he looked at that wonderful face.\n\n\"Kar!\" he cried delightedly.\n\nBefore him, panting and sucking in breaths, stood his adopted brother Kar. The wolf was about the same size as Fell, only he had the natural colouring of a grey." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The whitening fur around his long, intelligent muzzle showed the advance of age, but Kar's clever eyes were as bright and kind as ever." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell wondered with an aching heart where all those years had gone." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'their' must appear 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Another wolf was standing behind Kar, a sleek she-wolf, whom Fell did not know. She was a beautiful grey, with bright, healthy eyes and a lovely, bristling tail.\n\nSuddenly the two males ran towards each other, circling and scenting and wagging their tails delightedly, their nostrils filled with recognition, transformed into passionate memory. Kar and Fell were reunited.\n\n\"At last I've found you, brother,\" cried Kar happily. \"It is good to see you again. So good.\"\n\n\"And you, Kar,\" said Fell. \"It's been a long time.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Much too long, Fell. Often we've heard of you amongst the Varg, though. You seem so young, still.\"\n\n\"And you heard of me in dark stories, no doubt?\" said Fell, with glittering eyes that looked beyond Kar to the pretty she-wolf. Kar did not demur. Instead he turned his head.\n\n\"This is Tarlar, brother. She has joined our pack.\"\n\nThe she-wolf made no sound, but instead she cocked her pretty head and stepped further into the clearing. Fell took her in with his eyes, and for a moment, since he was a Dragga, and one whose territory she was approaching, he kept his tail raised in dominance." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I ask you Larka's Blessing,\" said the lovely she-wolf, with smiling eyes, and Fell lowered his tail.\n\n\"Then you're welcome indeed, Tarlar. Especially if you come with Kar.\"\n\nKar's tail was wagging. From all he had heard of Fell, he had feared that he might not allow them to approach, and Kar remembered his own time as a Kerl, in a high, lonely cave, and how it had almost sent him mad. Yet Fell seemed well, and so youthful too. But then Kar himself already suspected that the Sight had some power to extend life.\n\n\"You spoke of the pack,\" said Fell softly. \"How are they?\"\n\nKar's eyes flickered." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'though' must appear 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Well, my brother. The cubs... how foolish it is to call them that now. Kipcha and Khaz, Skop and... \" Kar paused, \"and the other Larka. They've all grown strong and healthy. The pack thrives.\"\n\n\"And Slavka?\"\n\nIt was the rebel wolf who had thrown off the bitter struggle she had once engaged in to live with the family, and Kar's eyes saddened.\n\n\"No, Fell, Slavka's gone. Though it was a peaceful end. When Palla... \"\n\nFell felt a jolt. So his mother, Palla, was still alive too.\n\n\"Mother,\" he whispered with a soft growl. \"Is she well?\"\n\n\"Yes, Fell. Though very old now.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And my father, Huttser?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "It felt strange for the black wolf to speak his father's name." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Huttser was a faded memory to Fell. Kar's tail had come down, and a dark look crept into his eyes. Almost of sorrow.\n\n\"What's wrong, Kar? Is Huttser... \"\n\n\"He's fine,\" said Kar quickly, sensing Fell's question, \"but something has happened, Fell. A moon ago. A wild pack. They call themselves the Vengerid.\"\n\nFell's tail came up and he growled. He knew the Varg word. It meant \"vengeance.\"\n\n\"Tell me.\"\n\n\"They are led by a wolf called Jalgan. They're like the Balkar, Morgra's slaves, only their strength is not made up of male Varg alone. Drappa and Dragga fight and kill side by side, with no purpose but fighting itself. They are as wild and free as the sea. They came down on us in the night, last full moon, although Jalgan was not with them. With Huttser at our front, we fought them off, but the pack is in danger. They'll return.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell felt his heart stir.\n\n\"Skop has the strength of a Dragga in him, Fell,\" said Kar, \"but the others are not used to attack, and have not yet even taken mates. Larka does not take to fighting much, and the strength of our pack is nothing against these Vengerid.\"\n\n\"What does this Jalgan want?\" growled Fell angrily. \"Why does he call his pack the Vengerid? What revenge does he seek?\"\n\n\"Nothing but vengeance on life itself, or so he says,\" answered Kar grimly. \"He teaches that because all things die, the only way to conquer suffering is to make others suffer. Although Huttser warned them off, Jalgan has sworn to return himself and destroy our pack one day. Huttser is still strong, for a wolf of his years, but I do not think he can fight Jalgan openly.\"\n\n\"But why, Kar, why do they come?\"\n\n\"Jalgan challenges all the Varg to face him, and says that he will admit he is wrong only if one is bold enough to fight and defeat him. But there is another reason... \"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Kar swung his head now, and was looking at Tarlar. The she-wolf stepped closer.\n\n\"Let me speak, Kar,\" she said. Tarlar lowered her tail to show respect, although there was nothing frightened in her being. Fell thought how bold and fine her voice sounded, and how lovely were her eyes.\n\n\"Fell LoneTail,\" began Tarlar softly, \"I've heard much of your journeying, and something from Kar of the darkness and sorrow you've seen. Well, I too have known it. For I was once of the Vengerid.\"\n\n\"You,\" said Fell in surprise, wondering what the she-wolf was doing here.\n\n\"I once thought them so fine and strong, and Jalgan the bravest of all wolves,\" said Tarlar bitterly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Until I saw the cruelty and hate they're breeding. Until Jalgan murdered my brother.\"\n\nFell blinked slowly. \"Your brother?\"\n\n\"Kenkur was his name. He was always more of the Sikla than the Dragga,\" said Tarlar sadly, and Fell felt his heart stir for her. \"At first, when they took us, he hid his hatred for fighting, but at last they spotted it.\"\n\nTarlar lowered her beautiful eyes.\n\n\"How I blame myself. I was young and idealistic, or just foolish perhaps, and caught up in the adventure of it all. How I loved the chase, and the strength and freedom of the Vengerid. All my life I had been wrestling with what it is to be a wolf, and this seemed an answer. And then there was him.\"\n\nTarlar's huge eyes blinked.\n\n\"Jalgan,\" she said. \"Oh, he was so handsome and powerful to me once, with his streak of silver grey right along the centre of his back. He noticed me too, and I knew that he was admiring me. So I would listen to nothing of Kenkur's doubts, and told my brother he was being weak and cowardly, and that this was the way of the true wolf. To glory in the bloodlust and to marvel at the kill. To be free.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "DIRECTIVE: Incorporate \"You must not blame your... ,\" in response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell nodded slowly. He had often thought it himself.\n\n\"I was angry at him too, when he said anything against Jalgan. And speak he did, because Kenkur feared for me. Jalgan was beginning to court me, and Kenkur saw that it was drawing me closer and closer to the Vengerid.\"\n\nFell could see that Tarlar was trembling.\n\n\"So one day, when we had argued, Jalgan singled my brother out before the whole Vengerid. He called him Sikla and traitor and took out his throat.\"\n\nTarlar's beautiful bushy tale had come down behind her and she whimpered.\n\n\"You must not blame your... ,\" began Fell softly, but Tarlar interrupted him with a loud growl that surprised Fell with its ferocity and pride.\n\n\"Must not blame myself?\" she cried, and her eyes showed not guilt, but clarity." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes, Fell, I must. Not only because I did not stand up for him, but because Jalgan called on me to swear allegiance to him, and to the Vengerid. And I did it. Because I was a fool and I wanted him. Even though my own brother was lying dead before my eyes.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm sorry,\" whispered Fell, feeling bitterly sad for the beautiful, remorseful she-wolf." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's sometimes hard to stand outside a pack. And are you your brother's keeper?\"\n\n\"A pack?\" snorted Tarlar scornfully. \"A bold, brave pack? What is a true wolf pack, and the strength of the Dragga and the Drappa—the right to lead and feel the power—unless it is to guard and protect the Sikla, too, the weakest of our kind, as we protect our very cubs? That is the law of the untamed wolf. Only that makes us truly beautiful in the wild. That is the truth.\"\n\nFell thought of Ottol and that he himself had nothing to protect, until he suddenly thought of Alina.\n\n\"For does not nature put enough troubles in our way?\" Tarlar went on passionately. \"And kill us with illness and hunger and time too, without our having to turn on each other, with anger and blindness and hate?\"\n\nFell was listening closely to Tarlar, and he realised that he had listened to no wolf so carefully in all his life." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And although it's a fine thing to be a Dragga and Drappa, the finest thing in the world perhaps,\" said Tarlar with glittering eyes, \"does not all the pack work for the future, and who knows what each may carry in his heart, or bring into the light, Dragga or Sikla? Who knows what secret truths their lives may hold for all of us?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Secret truths? Both Fell and Kar remembered the secret then that the Sikla of their old pack had entrusted to Fell's mother, Palla, on his death." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'tarlar' 2 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The death that came because he had fought so heroically against his own fear and cowardice to aid the family. It was the secret that, after all the fighting they had witnessed, seemed as simple as a sigh: It's not so bad to be the Sikla.\n\nTarlar raised her beautiful head and looked straight at Fell. Long enough for him to feel her moving in his heart.\n\n\"When at last I saw the truth, I left Jalgan and the Vengerid,\" she said, \"and went out into the world.\"\n\n\"To become a Kerl?\" asked Fell, almost hopefully.\n\n\"No, Fell. That path was never for me,\" answered Tarlar softly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"For why wrestle with the world alone, when two pairs of eyes may see better than one, and four better than two?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Something stirred in Fell's stomach. \"Another's eyes may always temper the arrogance of the triumphant heart, while when the sadness and the weariness come, happier eyes can renew the world again with their vision. So I went in search of a real pack.\"\n\n\"My family?\" said Fell, feeling strange indeed to use the word.\n\n\"Yes, Fell,\" answered Tarlar softly. \"They welcomed me in, and I knew I had found a home, and so I must ask your forgiveness.\"\n\n\"Mine?\"\n\n\"All things must ask forgiveness. It was I that brought the Vengerid and Jalgan down on their dear muzzles. He sees me as his true mate, and would have me back at all costs.\"\n\nFell was not surprised by Jalgan's determination." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He fixed his eyes on Kar's now, and suddenly knew why his adopted brother had come.\n\n\"You want my help, Kar, against the Vengerid?\"\n\nKar seemed caught between pride and purpose, but he nodded.\n\n\"Yes, Fell. Although Huttser said your journey is your own, he cannot fight Jalgan openly, and your mother told me to find you. Palla said that you would want to know at least. That it was your right to know. Do you have it still, Fell? The power to look into minds and... \"\n\n\"Control wills?\" Fell nodded slowly and shivered. He remembered how he had once used it to blind and torment the Balkar, but he feared to ever use it again. \"I still have the power, brother, amongst the Lera at least.\"\n\nFell grew silent, thinking of his family." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They bore his blood, but were no longer his family." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory: Your text must contain 'perhaps' 4 times exactly" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He had been away so long. Not just the five, hard years since he had climbed into the mountains, but truly since that terrible night on the river when he had almost drowned and been captured by Morgra. Perhaps even longer, perhaps since his very birth in the den below the abandoned castle. Perhaps Fell had always been alone. Perhaps we all are.\n\n\"I cannot, Kar,\" he whispered at last, looking guiltily at Tarlar. \"I travel on a different path now.\"\n\n\"With man?\" said Kar, though not disapprovingly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell thought of that vision he had had of his teeth tearing into Alina." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, Kar, with man. Or woman. She has a great destiny. One that involves us all, I think. That involves the survival of nature itself.\"\n\n\"Then it's true what Skart said,\" whispered Kar.\n\n\"Skart,\" said Fell, remembering the steppe eagle who had aided Larka, one of the Helpers. \"You've seen him?\"\n\n\"Yes, Fell. He came to us before he died.\"\n\nFell growled. Then Skart too was dead. But it did not matter. Everything dies. That was the law of life—the bitter, unchangeable law. \"What did he say, Kar?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should naturally weave in this dialogue: \"I think he was mad before the end,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He was very old and weak. He said something of a human. A child.\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Then he began to ramble and talk in strange words. Like a prophecy. 'Before it's done,' he said, 'everything must be turned about. The Dragga must become the Drappa and the nature of opposites must be revealed in ice and fire.'\"\n\nFell shivered and remembered the ice cave.\n\n\"He said a wolf must rise from the earth, and the water, too, to be reborn, before he hears the Great Secret on the air, and becomes a voice of power in the world.\"\n\nFell's eyes narrowed.\n\n\"I think he was mad before the end,\" Kar added. \"He said the clawed Putnar must open its wings too, and the wild wolf talk through man and woman, then sprout two heads, even as the dead are restored.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sprout two heads?\" growled Fell. \"It's impossible.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Essential phrase to include: \"I think it was Larka.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes,\" agreed Kar. \"But how did you learn of the child, Fell?\"\n\n\"I heard a voice, Kar, on the wind,\" answered Fell, feeling rather foolish. \"I think it was Larka.\"\n\n\"Then perhaps it's true,\" whispered Kar, and for a moment he was lost in wonder, but he spoke again. \"The Sight still has you in its grip, and you've made a pact.\"\n\nKar was searching Fell with his intelligent, philosophical eyes, but not with any judgement in them, but simply the desire to know and to understand.\n\nFell recalled the pact that he and Kar and Larka had once made as cubs, when they had travelled together in the face of so much fear and sorrow, to aid one another in all they did. The pact that had brought Kar out of the shadows of his own mind, to help Larka, and that had led Larka up to Harja, to save Fell and the human child." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell nodded at his adopted brother." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And I would not ask you to break such a pact,\" said Kar gravely." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"For Larka gave me a vision of man too. One filled with hope.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell nodded.\n\n\"At least I've delivered my message, and Skart's, if it was for you,\" said Kar softly, \"and now I must return and help them. That is where my heart lies, brother.\"\n\n\"And mine,\" said Tarlar proudly.\n\nFell felt another desperate sting of loneliness and thought of Ottol's family.\n\n\"Can you not stay awhile?\" he asked.\n\nKar looked at Tarlar and then Fell. The black wolf realised that his brother was almost frightened of him, but Kar nodded slowly.\n\n\"Yes, Fell. A night perhaps. We will talk and maybe hunt together, as we did when we were young, and when the sun rises we will leave you alone once more.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The black wolf growled, pleased that Kar had not tried to force or persuade him in any way. So Fell and Kar and Tarlar spent the night talking in the forest, pressing away the shadows with their memories and their stories, and Kar learnt of all that Fell had done and seen since that day that he had lifted his head with a howl and gone into the wild. So much more than Kar had seen, bound as he remained to the daily care of a wolf pack, or could ever really know.\n\nFell, in turn, heard of his parents, Huttser and Palla, who had survived longer than any wild wolves in those parts, and the cubs that had been given the names of lost members of the old pack. He felt odd as he listened, for at Kar's words about these grown Varg, he almost felt the stirrings of tenderness.\n\nBut it was like a story for Fell, rather than real events, and he felt a wall of resistance, almost darkness, between himself and this little family. Although he knew their names, he could not see or sense them in his mind's eye, and he knew that he was blocking his own heart.\n\nWhy had Fell really gone away and left them?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Was it simply because he had to find his own meaning amongst man? Or was it because of what he himself had done when he had thought that he was evil, and how he had betrayed them, what he was capable of doing and thinking and feeling, which meant he was a danger to his family. So in a way Fell had gone out, a lone Kerl, to protect them from himself.\n\nThe wolves heard the approach of morning in the chattering of waking birds, and Kar said, \"We must be gone now, brother. I shall tell them that you are... are well.\"\n\n\"And tell them... \" Fell looked hard at Kar. \"Tell them that I'm sorry too. It's not because I fear it.\"\n\n\"I know it, Fell. And you're always welcome amongst us,\" said his brother softly. \"The pack lives now in the valley beyond the Great Waterfall near the Stone Den. It would be easy to find us.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It shall not be, Kar,\" growled Fell, looking at Tarlar again.\n\n\"I'm sad,\" whispered Kar, \"for I have not the strength to save them from Jalgan, or to accept his challenge. But we give you Larka's Blessing.\"\n\nWith that Kar and the beautiful grey wolf Tarlar were gone, although as they left Tarlar turned just once and looked back fondly at Fell.\n\nFell began to run, and felt loneliness about him again, but strangely it was Tarlar more than Kar that he missed. But he began to think of Skart's strange words. The Helpers had the gift of prophecy, and some things Skart had said seemed to echo Fell's journey. He had touched fire and ice and risen from the earth to kill Malduk. Things had been turned about indeed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But the rest seemed mad." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How could a wolf sprout two heads?\n\nFor two days and nights Fell roamed through the trees, torn between two calls now, the call of his old family, somewhere in the mountains, threatened by the Vengerid, and the pact that he had made with the human, now sleeping safe in a human den. It brought Fell pain and confusion.\n\nPart of him wanted to help Alina, part to help his family, and part to go as far away as possible, to be free of it all, of any ties or responsibilities, and live, alone and wild again, away from wolf and man, away from the Sight. As he ran, his pace quickened and he gloried once more in the feeling of the ground beneath his pads and the scent of game on the air. But Fell came to a clearing and sensed the danger almost before it happened. He saw the strangely mounded leaves before him, and smelt the presence of man.\n\nSuddenly, with a startled yelp, Fell was falling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His body twisted with an angry howl and leaves rose in a swirl into the air, as earth walls and darkness swallowed him up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's a miraculous escape,\" said Lesca the Blacksmith cheerfully, yet with doubt sparking in his eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"A wonder too that such a blizzard didn't finish you off completely on that ice field, WovenWord.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina had just told father and son something of her life near Moldov, and then the story of the cave, where she had fallen and sprained her leg, walking on the mountain." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had mentioned nothing of the reason she had been up there though, or of Fell and the Sight, saying that she had simply escaped through a tunnel in the ice." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word frequency rule: 'alina' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had hardly known where to start her story, certainly not until she knew she could trust them.\n\nShe looked a deal better as she sat at the simple table—her now clean red hair shining—and plunged a great spoon into the bowl of delicious stew in front of her. Alina felt almost human again. Lescu sat opposite and Catalin stood gawping at her in utter astonishment.\n\nIt was as if a whole world, new and brave, had opened before Catalin's blue green eyes. He was a handsome lad, strong and tall, a great teller of stories himself and much feted amongst the village girls in the district. He had often walked with them and kissed them too, but most he found rather silly and foolish, and in his heart he was much more interested in riding and swimming, and learning the arts of the blacksmith. He kept looking across at Alina now." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'alina' into your response exactly 3 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had come out of the wild, dressed as a boy, and had survived so many terrible dangers already. Catalin had never seen anything so extraordinary in his life.\n\n\"It must have been freezing down there, Alina,\" he whispered, with warmth and sympathy in his eyes, thinking of the cave, \"and you must have been horribly hungry.\"\n\nAlina remembered the raw goat meat that Fell had brought her with the root, but she just smiled.\n\n\"But why did you try to cross the ice field in winter?\" asked Catalin.\n\nAlina paused and shrugged again.\n\n\"It wasn't much of a life in Moldov. It was time to set out.\"\n\n\"Then you've been trapping all the way across the mountains?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "asked Lescu, fixing Alina with his steady eyes." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to use 'answered' 2 time(s) throughout your message" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The blacksmith already knew that the girl was lying about something, or leaving a part of her tale out, and now Lescu wanted to know what.\n\n\"Yes,\" answered Alina quickly, looking away, \"and eating berries.\"\n\n\"Then you've a skill indeed, Alina, but whatever the truth of it, if you're a friend of Ivan's, you're welcome here. Isn't she, Catalin?\"\n\n\"Of course, Father,\" answered the boy warmly. \"It'll be so good to have company.\"\n\nThe blacksmith smiled at his son. They had a good life together, but after his wife's death a few years before, and with the isolation of the place, so far from the village, and no other children in the house, he knew how lonely Catalin would often get.\n\n\"What do you mean 'the truth of it?'\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "asked Alina nervously, realising she had no reason to feel indignant at the challenge." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The blacksmith leaned forwards gravely across the table." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You can't fool me, WovenWord, as you've fooled many,\" he said, although not unkindly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"A good name they gave you in that village—Sculcuvant. But by the sounds of your story, you were running away from something.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina felt her cheeks flush." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Instantly she began to weave another lie in her head, but then remembered what Ivan had told her about truth being her greatest ally." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lescu was staring hard at her, and something else made her tell the truth. Fell had been able to look into her thoughts. Perhaps the blacksmith could too.\n\n\"Who really goes for a stroll on an ice field?\" he said. \"Tell us the rest of it.\"\n\nSuddenly, like water breaching a dam, it all came out, as Alina told them her true tale. Almost all of it. The blacksmith and his son listened in even greater amazement as she told them of the life she remembered, from the day she had been found by Malduk as a changeling in the snows, to that terrible night that Mia had shown her the parchment and they had overheard Malduk and Ranna plotting her death." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As she spoke, she wondered if they believed her. Father and son didn't say a single word until she had finished.\n\n\"Ivan helped me escape Malduk,\" she concluded, \"and told me to find you. So here I am.\"\n\nAlina sat back and smiled awkwardly. It had been marvellous to tell the truth. Or most of it anyway. She still hadn't mentioned Fell, or Malduk's death.\n\n\"And I'm glad you did, changeling,\" said Lescu, looking warily at his son." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Remember to mention: \"But it's a strange tale to take in, and you must be careful to whom you tell it, Alina WovenWord.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Catalin's mouth was hanging open, thinking the whole thing like one of his own stories. \"The winter turns our valleys and villages into little islands, and no news has come to us yet of this, but if you'd approached some of the others with tales of Lord Vladeran, I doubt you would be sitting eating stew with friends.\"\n\nAlina smiled meekly. She was desperately relieved the adult believed her.\n\n\"But it's a strange tale to take in, and you must be careful to whom you tell it, Alina WovenWord.\"\n\n\"Yes, Lescu. I will.\"\n\n\"But you think your own parents wanted you dead?\" said Catalin in horror, sitting down heavily at the table.\n\n\"I... yes... I don't know. I have dreams.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The mark you saw on the parchment,\" said Lescu, \"show it to me.\"\n\nAlina rolled up her sleeve. They saw that little eagle there, with opening wings.\n\n\"Well, it's no mark of Castelu,\" said the blacksmith.\n\nAlina was surprised and her heart beat faster. She had already begun to associate that bird and the parchment with Vladeran and Castelu, and suddenly wondered if she had been wrong and perhaps Vladeran and his wife really weren't her parents at all. Perhaps she didn't belong to Castelu at all.\n\n\"Stay here with us awhile,\" said the blacksmith kindly, \"until I can find out about this mark, and whether they're still hunting for a changeling.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Add this exact quote somewhere appropriate: \"Look like? I've never seen him, child.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Thank you,\" said Alina, shivering. \"But what does Vladeran look like, Lescu?\"\n\n\"Look like? I've never seen him, child.\"\n\n\"But he lives in a village, below a great castle on the mountaintop?\"\n\nThe blacksmith laughed out loud.\n\n\"Heavens, no. The likes of Vladeran live in a village, Alina? You'll have King Stefan living in a manger next, or Draculea in a church. Good Lord Vladeran clothes himself in rich furs, and shields his power with high walls.\"\n\n\"The castle then? I once thought it floated in the clouds.\"\n\nThe blacksmith shook his head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That empty place, if it's the one I think it is, is the home of the grasht, or so they say,\" answered Lescu." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Vladeran's great palace and fortress lie beyond, across another mountain, and approached by a narrow pass, defended by a mighty river. That's the distant region of Castelu, although the hand of Vladeran extends much further.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina felt something stir in her. Castelu. It sounded a fearful place. Was that where her destiny really lay? And were Vladeran and Romana her parents? Yet if it was, and they were, then why had Alina been in a village with her baby brother that night the wolves had come? It didn't make sense. But then very little did.\n\n\"We can find out more of this when the snows thaw,\" said Lescu, seeing the changing emotions on the pretty girl's face." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Let's speak now of your own story. You say Ranna killed Bogdan? Alina, are you listening to me?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What?\" Alina looked up sharply from her own dark thoughts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh. Yes, yes, she did. I know it.\"\n\n\"And Malduk wants your death, too, more badly than ever?\"\n\n\"Wanted,\" sputtered Alina, and she wished she hadn't. She blushed furiously.\n\n\"What do you mean 'wanted'?\" asked Lescu sternly, his eyes narrowing as he leaned forwards again. Alina didn't know what to do. It had to come out at last, what had happened on the ice field, yet the girl suddenly feared that it would turn Lescu and Catalin against her, and she felt as if she was walking into a trap.\n\n\"Malduk's dead,\" she whispered, dropping her eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Dead? How, girl?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He... I... I killed him,\" lied Alina." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"With my knife, up there on the mountain.\"\n\nAlina sat there trembling and Catalin stepped forwards, and Lescu's eyebrows knitted as he stood up.\n\n\"And how did you escape them after that?\" asked the blacksmith quietly.\n\nAlina felt her heart pounding, but something told her that even though she was lying, and dear Ivan had told her not to lie to Lescu, she was still doing the right thing not to betray Fell's presence, or her promise to the wolf.\n\n\"I don't know,\" she stammered. \"I must have been more used to running across that kind of ground. They were slow and eventually they gave up.\"\n\n\"With an injured leg?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina simply shrugged again. Lescu looked long and hard at Alina WovenWord, as did Catalin, whose pleasure at seeing such a pretty girl in their home was suddenly overshadowed by the thought that a man had died at her hands. Yet it made him regard Alina with a kind of grim respect too, and at last the blacksmith spoke.\n\n\"And what should we do with you now, Sculcuvant? You've killed a man, by your own admission. Do you not think this a matter for the Courts?\"\n\n\"The Courts?\" gulped Alina, recalling tales she'd heard in Moldov of the cruel punishments of the Courts, in the lands beyond the forest. Both Alina and Catalin stared at the blacksmith, and Lescu suddenly shook his head and smiled.\n\n\"Don't worry, child, I'll not hand you over to the authorities. If all you say is true, then this Malduk has had his just deserts, all right. By the sounds of him, the world won't miss his passing either, although he did save your life once. Besides, real justice has long been in danger in these lands.\"\n\n\"Why, Lescu?\" asked Alina, feeling greatly relieved, but smarting bitterly at all the injustice she had suffered already." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Perhaps because men don't know what true justice is anymore, and think might alone the right,\" answered Lescu sadly." }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'alina' exactly 3 times in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Perhaps because the King cannot impose his authority easily, with lords like Tepesh in the land and your... Lord Vladeran. They engender fear and greed everywhere, and those hateful twins breed lies. When there's no truth, Alina WovenWord, how can there be any justice, and what can grow fine and strong without that?\"\n\nAlina felt something stir in her heart. She thought of old Ranna's plot to kill Bogdan and blame her, and how easily it might have worked, but she realised that Lescu was still looking closely at her. Much she had said had been true, but she hadn't spoken of the strangest part of her story, and had just confessed to a crime she hadn't even committed. Alina felt as if she were weaving a dangerous web about herself and she almost determined never to lie again.\n\n\"Well,\" said Lescu at last, \"you're welcome for now in Baba Yaga's valley.\"\n\nThe girl's eyes flickered.\n\n\"Why is it called that, Lescu?\" she asked." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Because they say that something lives in the forest,\" said Catalin. \"I'll tell you the story if you like.\"\n\n\"Not now, son,\" said his father. \"There's been enough talk, and it's time Alina was in bed, and resting.\"\n\n\"Bed?\" said Alina wearily, \"but it's the middle of the day.\"\n\n\"And Catalin and I have work. With war coming, King Stefan calls for more swords to be sent daily, although they never know how to use such fine things properly. But you, young woman, look tired enough to sleep for a week. So you shall, under a roof where people care for you. Then perhaps we'll put you to work about the place.\"\n\nAlina tried to argue, but the kind blacksmith would hear nothing of it, and soon the girl found herself in a neat little room, with snow flowers in a jug in the corner. She looked about in amazement, for until now she had thought a barn good enough for a changeling girl like her, and this was like heaven." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sleep well, child,\" whispered Lescu, as he and his son stood attentively in the doorway." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Perhaps when you're recovered, you can earn your keep by telling us some of your stories.\"\n\nAlina smiled and nodded.\n\n\"But will it be safe to sleep in our beds tonight, Catalin,\" added the blacksmith with a wink to his son, \"with one such as you in our home, Alina WovenWord?\"\n\nThey smiled and Alina felt a rush of gratitude to these two men, as they closed the door softly. She climbed into bed happily, and as soon as her head hit the pillow, her weary body gave in completely. Alina could not remember sleeping in a proper bed before, and she remembered Lescu's words about a house where people cared for her.\n\nShe found herself thinking of Fell, as she drifted off to sleep in her lovely warm bedding, wondering if he was all right in the forest, and if Baba Yaga was really out there too. But then she reassured herself with a smile that those were just stories, and that Fell was wild and certainly knew how to protect himself in the open, even from a witch, as dreams carried her away." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina was so tired that she slept for three whole days." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her sleep was interrupted only by the gentle knocks of Catalin, who would bring her food, and water to wash herself. She tried to get up several times, but each time the young man insisted that she stay and restore her strength. She had dark, fitful imaginings in her sleep, and it was the evening of the third night when Alina had her clearest dream. It was of that creature she had dreamt of in the ice cave, that human ape, and man's role in the world. She woke feeling sad and terribly guilty, yet stronger than ever too.\n\nA full moon was shining through the little window in her room, and Alina got up to dress. She saw that they had placed new clothes on a chair beside her bed. There was a plain white dress and a little shawl, and Alina felt strange as she slipped into it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her hair was short like a boy's, badly cut with the shears and rather spikey, but in the dress Alina suddenly wondered if she looked pretty." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She opened the door to her room quietly and crept outside in her bare feet, only to hear voices coming from below." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lescu and his son were talking softly together." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No one in the villages has heard anything, Catalin,\" the blacksmith was saying. \"I've asked around, and all they talk of now are Turks and Stefan's fight. They'll pay no heed to another around the house, changeling or not.\"\n\n\"Then she can stay here, Father?\"\n\nLescu paused, and Alina felt her heart beating faster.\n\n\"It's a dark thing that she's killed a man, Catalin, but darker still the reasons why. I fear for her indeed if Vladeran and Romana are her parents. Yet why they should want her dead I cannot fathom. She's only a girl and can be no political threat. Yes, she can stay, my boy. She needs our help, and I like her spirit. Perhaps she'll share some of her stories.\"\n\n\"Oh, Father. Thank you.\"\n\n\"But we must keep her story secret from the villagers. A strange destiny follows this child.\"\n\n\"Yes, Father.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You like her, don't you?\" asked Lescu.\n\nThe boy was silent for a while, and Alina found herself hanging on his answer. Lescu had got up and was fumbling with something at the table.\n\n\"Such eyes she has, father,\" said Catalin at last. \"There's something special about her, I think.\"\n\n\"And the least of it is that mark on her arm, or talk of changelings. But take this, Catalin. Put my bag in the dresser.\"\n\n\"More gold, father?\"\n\n\"Yes, boy. At least the threat of war pays a blacksmith well. Gold is one certain thing in the world, when men and the Courts are so uncertain. Though it's sad that gold seems to move men's hearts entirely.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should contain the word 'lescu' precisely 3 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With that they heard a creak on the stair and looked up to see Alina standing there. She pretended she hadn't heard, but she suddenly felt embarrassed and ran her hands through her hair and grinned foolishly at the men. Lescu nodded approvingly as he saw her in the dress.\n\n\"You look restored, Alina,\" he said. \"Well enough to help us around the farm, tomorrow, perhaps.\"\n\n\"Oh, gladly, Lescu, and anything else that I may do to repay your kindness. Both of you.\"\n\nCatalin was blushing as she reached the bottom of the stair and he noticed her pretty bare feet.\n\n\"Come, Alina,\" said Lescu warmly, \"sit at the table with us. Catalin's promised to tell me another story of Baba Yaga. You can listen too.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'd like that,\" said Alina, smiling and sitting down.\n\nCatalin felt awkward in front of a changeling child, famed for her stories, but he was used to spinning yarns to entertain his father, so he began.\n\n\"I bet you know all the tales of the witch, Alina,\" he said. \"How she lives in a log cabin that walks around on dancing chicken feet, with a fence made of human bones, with skulls on top.\"\n\n\"Except for one piece of fence,\" said Alina, \"reserved for the hero of the story.\"\n\nCatalin nodded and his eyes glittered.\n\n\"Yes, Alina. And how the keyhole of her front door is really a mouth, filled with sharp wolf's teeth.\"\n\n\"Which only appears when you tell it a magic phrase,\" said Alina, \"Turn your back to the forest... \"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But your front to me,\" said Catalin quickly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lescu laughed." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Include the following text] → \"we've a brace of storytellers here indeed.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Well,\" he cried happily, \"we've a brace of storytellers here indeed.\"\n\nCatalin smiled and went on. \"Some say old Baba Yaga was always so angry because each time someone asked her a question she aged a whole year,\" he said, keen to impress both his father and the pretty girl, \"and so Baba Yaga would have to drink tea made from blue roses to restore herself. So if you bring her a gift of blue roses, she'll grant you a wish. But the truth is she's just an evil old hag, who steals children and threatens to eat them up.\"\n\nAlina shivered a little.\n\n\"Baba Yaga has many servants of course,\" Catalin said eagerly, \"and three riders visit her house. One white... \"\n\n\"For the day,\" said Alina.\n\n\"One red.\"\n\n\"For the sun,\" said Lescu, joining in." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And one black, for the black, black night,\" said Catalin, nodding sagely." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And on such a black night, a girl was sent on an errand to see her, named Vasilissa the beautiful.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina's eyes opened appreciatively, for she had heard many stories of Baba Yaga, but none of a beautiful girl called Vasilissa." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Now, Vasilissa was terrified of Baba Yaga, of course,\" said Catalin, \"and she had been warned that, although she could ask Baba Yaga about the three riders, she could say nothing of her servants, for then the old hag would kill her instantly. She also knew that to approach Baba Yaga was always a dangerous thing, and that what would protect her most was her own purity of spirit, her careful preparation, and showing the old woman the greatest politeness. So with humility in her heart, lovely Vasilissa reached the terrifying hut, and heard it squawking like a chicken.\"\n\nAlina and Lescu smiled and sat back appreciatively.\n\n\"Now, Baba Yaga was in a good mood that day,\" said Catalin, \"and so Vasilissa completed her errand unharmed, but as she was about to leave through the gate to that wicked fence, the old hag looked into the tea she was making, and saw her own reflection there. It made her think of how young and beautiful Vasilissa was in comparison.\n\n\"At that she flew into such a terrible rage that she jumped into her mortar and raced after the girl. 'Look out Vasilissa,' cried a voice near the fence of bones, although the girl could not see who had spoken. 'She's coming,' cried another voice, but it was too late, because the old hag scooped her up and imprisoned her inside her walking house.\n\n\"But Vasilissa was not alone in the house of the witch, for two of Baba Yaga's servants appeared, a cat and a dog. Now, Vasilissa loved animals with all her heart.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina looked up at that and thought of Fell.\n\n\"And she was so kind to them both, so gentle and tender, that they decided they must help her escape. So one day, when the black rider had come again, they opened a window in the house, and told her to climb out and hide in a tree. 'Thank you, Vasilissa, they said. 'We love you.'\n\n\"Vasilissa was sorry to leave them, but she was so gentle as she climbed into the branches, making sure not to damage any, that she heard one of the voices she had heard before. 'Thank you, Vasilissa,' said the tree, which was one of Baba Yaga's servants too, 'I'll help you as well.' 'But how?' whispered the beautiful girl wonderingly, 'Baba Yaga has many spells, and I fear she'll follow me, tree, if I try to escape.' The tree thought for a while and then said, 'We must ask the gate.'" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Suddenly the gate started talking too,\" whispered Catalin. \"'Dear Vasilissa,' it said warmly, 'You were so gentle and polite when you first opened me, that though I am only a servant, I will help you too. You must hide in the... ' But the gate stopped, for being a swinging gate, he was used to changing his mind. 'No, Vasilissa, you must run as fast and far as you can, as soon as the red rider appears, and not stop until you see the white rider. Baba Yaga will follow, but if you reach the white rider before her, her spell will be broken forever.'\n\n\"'Look,' said Vasilissa, trembling, for the red rider had just appeared on the hill. 'Run then, Vasilissa,' boomed the tree, bending down and placing her carefully on the ground, beyond the fence of skulls and human bones. 'Run, beautiful Vasilissa,' cried all the servants together. Vasilissa started to run, as fast as she could as the sun rose, and there was a terrible screech behind her. The old hag Baba Yaga was in pursuit, in her giant mortar, steering through the air with her pestle and beating the poor clouds with her broom.\"\n\nAlina shuddered as she listened, and as he spoke, Catalin seemed to hear a voice in his own head. Wake up, Catalin, it seemed to say.\n\n\"Vasilissa the beautiful was so terrified of the old woman that she ran faster than she had ever run before, as the red rider beat the ground with his hooves. She ran west over fields and hills and at last she came to a valley. Baba Yaga was nearly on her, but just as she was about to pounce, Vasilissa saw the white horseman before her, on his fine white horse. The spell was broken, and suddenly, because of the old hag's cruelty to her animals, she was transformed into a great black crow.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And the valley was this valley?\" said Alina softly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes,\" answered Catalin, with a grin." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Of course. But that wasn't the end of the story, Alina. For Vasilissa was so kind that she asked the horseman to take pity on the old hag. So he summoned her house and changed her back again, saying though that Baba Yaga could never leave our valley, or she would be changed into a crow once more.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lescu nodded with satisfaction, but something strange had come into Alina's face." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It had been a wonderful tale, and yet she realised suddenly that that was all it was, a story, and in that moment Alina suddenly felt too old for stories. With that they heard a cry outside, a single howl in the night, that filled the air. Alina started and looked anxiously through the window. It was Fell.\n\nLescu noticed the look immediately, and his clever eyes narrowed.\n\n\"A wolf,\" he whispered gravely. \"I think it's fallen into one of the pits. It's been howling for a day.\"\n\n\"Pits?\" said Alina, trying to hide the concern in her face, and suddenly wanting to be in her own clothes.\n\n\"Before the winter, we dig wolf pits in the forest to protect out livestock,\" said Lescu." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'lescu' 3 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's an old tradition around here, Alina. Most of the villagers put stakes in the bottom, but I think it a cruel custom and leave mine empty. The fall's usually enough to kill them, but if they escape again, well good luck to them.\"\n\nAlina was trembling, and Lescu saw it.\n\n\"What's wrong, child? By the warmth with which you talked of Elak and Teela, I know you love animals as much as Vasilissa, but you can't care for a wild wolf,\" Lescu smiled. \"They take our animals, and so threaten our lives.\"\n\nAlina thought of the shepherds round Moldov.\n\n\"Why, I almost think you do care,\" cried Lescu, with a laugh. \"Your heart's big indeed. But come. Perhaps I should open some wine or tsuika, to toast your recovery.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Alina, jumping up." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Thank you, Lescu, but I think I'm still wearier than I thought. I'm up too soon, I fear.\"\n\nLescu raised an eyebrow, but he didn't argue, as Alina thanked Catalin for his wonderful story, wished them good night again, and went straight back to her room. As soon as she closed the door, she started to look around. At last she found her own clothes in a chest in the corner, cleaned and neatly folded.\n\nShe changed quickly, but then stood listening for a good while to the noises of the house. When she was sure that Lescu and Catalin had gone to bed, she pushed open the window onto the freezing air and climbed outside, slipping down onto the little roof below her window and jumping lightly down to the snowy ground below.\n\nAll was dark and silent in the house, but Alina spotted Gwell lying there on the porch. The hunting dog looked up at her, but Alina no longer smelt of wolf and he didn't react." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She bent down and stroked his head.\n\n\"Good, boy,\" she whispered. \"Stay there now, Gwell.\"\n\nGwell growled contentedly, and he closed his eyes and let her stroke him. Then Alina rose and crept away. As soon as she reached the trees, she began to run fast through the cold forest, and as she got farther and farther from Lescu's home, she started to call.\n\n\"Fell. Where are you, Fell?\"\n\nAlina could see very little amongst the looming branches, and hear nothing at all, but soon her eyes grew accustomed to the forest in the moonlight." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It made her going easier, but she had little idea of what she was looking for, except that she scoured the ground for a hunting pit. Alina wondered now a little fearfully if there could be any truth in the tale of Baba Yaga, and she searched for what seemed an age, but could find nothing at all. She was almost at her wits' end, when she felt that ache in her forehead and her vision began to cloud.\n\n\"Fell, is it you?\"\n\n\"Yes, Alina.\"\n\n\"Where are you, Fell?\"\n\n\"In some kind of trap. It smells of man.\"\n\n\"You're hurt?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No, Alina. Though hungry enough.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'there' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What can you see, dear Fell?\"\n\n\"Leaves and broken branches. Earth too.\"\n\n\"Above I mean. Look up, Fell.\"\n\n\"I see a great elm. It stands on its own. And the stars. The Wolf Trail. And there's water near. I can hear it.\"\n\n\"You must be in a clearing. There.\"\n\nAlina had just spotted the clearing and a single elm tree, and heard the faint guttering of water under the ice. She rushed forwards, her heart pounding, and was delighted to see the edge of a wide hole, and there was her friend again, peering up at her.\n\nFell was badly shaken, more by the shock than the fall, but he was unharmed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The wolf looked up at her and noticed how much better she looked, but he slunk back in the pit, as he remembered the horrible vision he had had on the river." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Had it really been the future? Would he really kill her?\n\n\"What's wrong, Fell?\"\n\n\"Nothing, human,\" he growled bitterly, \"nothing at all. Can you help me?\"\n\n\"I'll try.\"\n\nAlina looked around and spotted a small, fallen trunk. It took her a long time to drag it to the top of the pit, and Fell growled in exasperation. She managed to drop it down though, to make a kind of ramp, and Fell sprang up it and out." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The wolf licked the girl's hand gratefully." }, { "from": "system", "value": "DIRECTIVE: Incorporate \"Thank you, friend. That's the second time you've saved my life, though it was your kind that made that trap.\" in response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Thank you, friend. That's the second time you've saved my life, though it was your kind that made that trap.\"\n\n\"And it's your kind that takes our sheep and animals to live,\" the girl found herself saying cheerfully. The wolf and the girl stared at each other. It was true what they had both thought, and there was no answer to it. No moral to it either. It was just how things were.\n\n\"Fell,\" thought Alina suddenly, \"this great destiny you talk of. You say it involves nature itself?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I saw it again in my dreams, Fell, that vision of what man's success will do to the world.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, human. Or what you might do. Yet I asked your brother once, five years ago, to make a pact. To be strong, but to protect us too.\"\n\nAlina nodded slowly, looking thoughtfully at Lescu's trap and feeling guilty again. Fell suddenly growled.\n\n\"Don't look sad, Alina. You mustn't blame yourself for the whole world.\"\n\nAlina looked down at the wolf in surprise.\n\n\"No, Fell, perhaps I mustn't.\"\n\n\"How goes it with the humans?\"\n\n\"They're kind and I... I can trust them, I think. I've told them something of my story.\"\n\nFell growled warily." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's all right, Fell. They know nothing of you. But I must stay with them awhile, as the winter worsens, and learn from the blacksmith.\"\n\n\"The one working with metal and the red flowers? I watched when you met him and that filthy dog nearly attacked you. I looked into the human's thoughts. He has good thoughts. Better than mine, sometimes.\"\n\nAlina placed her hand on the wild wolf's head. It felt right to touch the animal again.\n\n\"Yes, Fell, and I like him,\" Alina paused. \"His son, Catalin, too. He's a fine storyteller. I think they can help us. The snows are still thick, but Lescu knows much that will aid us. I must learn from them all I can.\"\n\n\"And they'll miss you with the dawn, so you'd better be getting back. Learn from them indeed, human, and grow, but know that my eyes will be guarding you from the forests. But I'll seek out the Guardian too.\"\n\nAlina suddenly felt desperately grateful to the wolf." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And I'll bring you food from the house, Fell, when I can,\" she said eagerly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I don't want to steal, but it will be my own, and they'll not miss it. I'll leave it by that big oak, where we first saw their house.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No,\" growled the wolf immediately." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's in sight of the human den.\"\n\n\"Then further in the wood.\"\n\n\"Leave it out in the open, and the other Lera will steal it. All are hungry now.\"\n\n\"Then I'll hide it under something.\"\n\n\"How will I find it?\"\n\nAlina WovenWord pondered for a moment, and thought of Catalin's tale of Baba Yaga, then thought of a story she had told Mia.\n\n\"Stones. I'll leave a trail of little stones, leading from the big oak to the food.\"\n\n\"Good, Alina. Staying in one place will make it hard for me to hunt, when the Lera in these parts know of my presence.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And be careful, Fell. There are more pits in the forest, and many are sewn with stakes.\"\n\nFell nodded his black muzzle, and his yellow gold eyes flashed.\n\n\"I'll find you when the snows thaw then, human cub. Until we meet again, Drappa. May it be soon... \"\n\nWith a growl Fell turned and began to run. Like a panther he went, streaking through the forest, jumping log and stone, and glorying in his freedom once more, as Alina Sculcuvant watched her friend with relief, feeling the same pangs as Fell had, but also gratitude in her heart that he was safe again. Then the girl turned back towards her human home, thinking of one thing alone: the strange tale of Baba Yaga and Vasilissa the beautiful.\n\nLescu was at work in his forge and Alina Wovenword stood behind him, marvelling at his skill. She was in a much finer dress now, another that had belonged to Lescu's wife, and her red hair had started to grow out." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The young woman had already begun to help with the chores: milking and baking, chopping wood and making food. But she had found herself drawn to what the blacksmith and Catalin did in the forge—men's work.\n\nAs the wintery days had worsened, Alina Sculcuvant had been true to her word to Fell. She would hide away food at meals, as Mia had done for her, leaving it for her friend at the end of a trail of pebbles from the oak tree. Sometimes, she would go to Gwell's kennel and, apologising to the dog, take some fresh meat for the wolf. She had not seen Fell at all, but when she saw the food gone, or his paw prints in the snow, and heard his calls in the night, Alina knew that he was still at her side, and she was glad.\n\nAs for Fell, he still ranged those hills, skirting the abandoned church and worrying for the human, wondering about Morgra and the horrible vision he had seen, as he sought out word of the Guardian. Often in the night he would look down though, and see orange firelight flickering in the windows of the blacksmith's house, and wonder what it would be like to be nothing more than a tame dog, sleeping peacefully at Alina Sculcuvant's side." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should naturally weave in this dialogue: \"Journey to Castelu to find the truth about who your parents are?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The blacksmith was standing now in a shaft of wintery sunlight slanting through the window, and there was a growing pile of new swords on the ground.\n\n\"So what will you do, Alina?\" he asked, as he swung the hammer. \"Journey to Castelu to find the truth about who your parents are?\"\n\nIt was freezing outside, but with this heat, Alina thought it a wonder that all the snow on the mountains outside had not melted already.\n\n\"Yes,\" she answered, with a heavy sigh. \"When the spring comes, Lescu.\"\n\nLescu's kind eyes were suddenly filled with worry." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Why, Alina? In crossing the mountains you've proved yourself as good as any boy, it's true, but it's madness what you plan. If Vladeran is your father he has broken every natural law. Anyway, he tried to kill you, and there must be some dark reason for it. They say he has sworn himself to upholding the Salic law throughout the lands beyond the forest. Perhaps that's the reason.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina's hazel eyes flickered. \"Salic law?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That women should have no rights equal to men.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\nLescu smiled.\n\n\"In seeing Eve as the cause of man's fall from paradise,\" he answered, \"lords like Vladeran and the elders of the Church have long taught that you are inferior to men. Perhaps you do have noble blood. You've a fine quality about you.\"\n\nAlina was silent as she wondered.\n\n\"Yet that mark isn't of Castelu,\" the blacksmith went on. \"It's strange, and I beg you to forget this path, girl. Can you not let sleeping dogs lie? Vladeran would be a fearful opponent, and that road takes you through Helgra country.\"\n\n\"Helgra?\" said Alina, remembering the name from that last terrible night in Moldov." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Magyar tribesmen, from the lands of Hungary, Alina,\" said the blacksmith, \"although united it's said with a Dacian people in those parts. A wild, savage people. Their cult is nature, and they're said to worship animals and the wild wolf. Their territory lies in Castelu's domain. You'd have to cross it.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina's heart stirred, but at this talk of a cult of nature a question came into her mind.\n\n\"Will you tell me something, Lescu?\" she asked suddenly. \"Do you think people are... well, do you think we're the same as animals?\"\n\nHe stopped hammering and looked up in surprise.\n\n\"What a strange question, child. Don't say things like that around the holy fathers.\"\n\nLescu paused to think, though, holding the sword he was making in the air. \"No, of course not,\" he answered at last. \"Yet I've seen men act like wild beasts.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Why?\" asked Alina sadly, yet suddenly feeling it a childish question." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That's difficult to answer, Alina. Hate and fear? The search for power, and land and gold? Sometimes because of beliefs they're brought up with. I often wonder.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What do you mean beliefs they're brought up with?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "DIRECTIVE: Incorporate \"Why should we accept the beliefs we're born into, Alina?\" in response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lescu turned to look at Alina intently.\n\n\"Why should we accept the beliefs we're born into, Alina?\" he said. \"Christians believe that God came amongst us as a man, do they not? Yet the Muselmen say he was only a prophet, and that God has no name. We paint our churches with images of man and beast, of angels and judgement, while in the East it is forbidden to show images of God's creatures. We fight and kill each other so readily, yet if I had been born in the East, would I not believe the stories they believe, and if they had been born here, would they not be Christians?\"\n\n\"I suppose so,\" answered Alina Sculcuvant. It all seemed so strange. \"Do you believe in God, Lescu?\"\n\nLescu's eyes flickered.\n\n\"God the Father? Well, my own father did, Alina, but I don't know. I'd not make a fool of myself spending a lifetime searching for something that isn't even there.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lescu suddenly lifted his hammer and looked at it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Did you know blacksmiths were once believed to be great magicians?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "At some point in your response, insert this verbatim: \"Perhaps Vladeran still wants you dead, Alina. War comes, and the King is already on the march. The land will be dangerous to cross.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "he whispered. \"By those who did not have their knowledge.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"But the blacksmith's true magic is mastering the nature of heat and metals, and of firing and blending. It's a great scientia, and I think it is scientia that will one day free man from the fables he grows up with, Alina. But we stray from the matter at hand. You believe you must travel to Castelu along a dark path?\"\n\nAlina straightened her back.\n\n\"I must find out if they are my parents or not, and why Vladeran wanted me dead. And if my brother lives,\" she answered firmly, \"and what this mark means too.\"\n\nAlina was also thinking of what Fell had said of her destiny, and of nature itself. It suddenly seemed a terrible, impossible burden.\n\n\"Perhaps Vladeran still wants you dead, Alina. War comes, and the King is already on the march. The land will be dangerous to cross.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I thought you might help me.\"\n\nThe blacksmith paused with his hammer arm.\n\n\"Help you? Indeed, but I'd rather you turned away from this road. If it's my advice you seek, that's my counsel.\"\n\n\"But Ivan told me that you were more than a blacksmith once,\" said Alina slowly, \"that you were a soldier and a warrior. The Warrior Smith.\"\n\nLescu brought the hammer down again, so hard that it made the metal sing angrily.\n\n\"I fought against the Turk, it's true, and found some fame fighting and killing men.\" A dark look came into Lescu's sweating face. \"There's nothing uglier and more terrible than war, Alina. Why do you mention this, child?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I thought that you might... \" The young woman hesitated." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Might teach me something of your skill.\"\n\n\"As a blacksmith, and to earn a living as a Fierar?\" said Lescu. \"I can do that indeed, as can Catalin, although the people in these parts would not think it woman's work. You'd fare better in the marketplaces as a storyteller.\"\n\n\"No, Lescu. I meant teach me to be a warrior.\"\n\nThe blacksmith swung round in amazement.\n\n\"A warrior!\" he cried incredulously. \"Teach a girl? A child?\"\n\n\"I'm not a child,\" said Alina indignantly, lifting her chin proudly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Why won't you teach me?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Why won't I? Teach you how to wield a heavy metal sword, and march fifty miles in thick mud and pouring rain? Teach you to camp without sleep or food, then meet men trained since the cot to fight and kill?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Add this exact quote somewhere appropriate: \"You're a girl, Alina, and growing into a young woman, but you've spent too long wearing clothes not your own, and it makes you foolish. Life isn't a fairy tale, WovenWord, even if we live in Baba Yaga's valley.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lescu laughed, but he seemed angry at the memories, and he began hammering once more, and turned his face away from Alina Sculcuvant.\n\n\"You're a girl, Alina, and growing into a young woman, but you've spent too long wearing clothes not your own, and it makes you foolish. Life isn't a fairy tale, WovenWord, even if we live in Baba Yaga's valley.\"\n\nAlina felt her cheeks burn, but she stood her ground.\n\n\"It's because life isn't a fairy tale,\" she said hotly, \"that I need to learn about the real world. Because there are no changelings, or goblins, or walking houses. Because I have no parents worth the name.\"\n\nThe blacksmith shook his head angrily and was silent.\n\n\"If not to be a warrior, Lescu, then at least teach me how to defend myself,\" begged Alina. \"You could make me a sword of my own.\"\n\nThe blacksmith turned and smiled coldly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Defend yourself? If you don't put yourself in danger, you will not need to defend yourself,\" he answered simply. \"You look pretty indeed in that dress; my wife wore it the day she first came to this house, and your hair is growing. One day you'll be married, and find your happiness. Know your nature then, and don't try to step beyond what you are, or can be.\"\n\nAlina thought darkly of nature. For the first time since they had met, she felt furious with the blacksmith. In touching the powers of the Sight, and in the link with the black wolf, had she not already stepped beyond her own nature? Yet it didn't feel unnatural, her friendship with the wolf.\n\n\"I didn't put myself in danger,\" she said. \"They did. I've been in danger ever since I was a stupid child.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And you're right to shout out the injustice loud and clear,\" said the blacksmith." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But why do you talk so scornfully of being a child? Children want to grow up so badly, but it takes time and care and love, and it's a thing that should be guarded and enjoyed. While the greatest duty of an adult is to protect the young. To teach them the borders of the world. To help them make the future.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Adults need to teach children to grow up too,\" said Alina angrily." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And that stories of magic are all a pack of lies.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lescu's eyes flamed. \"Silence!\" he cried. \"What you ask I shall never do. I do not even teach Catalin the arts of war. War's not a game for silly children.\"\n\n\"But Lescu... \"\n\n\"Enough. Don't raise my anger further, SkeinTale. What you ask's unnatural, and foolish too. There's milking to be done.\"\n\nAlina glared at Lescu, and turned and stomped from the forge. As the blacksmith watched her go, and thought of Alina's dark, lonely history, he felt sorry for her, but he went on hammering at the metal with renewed urgency, and shook his head.\n\nAlina's request set a rift between the girl and the blacksmith that did not heal for some time. Alina would grow silent and sullen in his presence, often stilling her storytelling in the house, but whenever Catalin asked her what was wrong, she would shake her head and tell him angrily it was nothing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The girl was smarting deeply inside though, and she realised now that it was because of a feeling that had long been locked within her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A feeling that made her as angry and bitterly resentful as Baba Yaga had been of Vasilissa in the story. She would wake suddenly, feeling a dreadful rage inside her, and then she would think of Fell, and want to strike out, and harm the world about her, for all the harm and injustice that had been done to her. For what her own parents had done, perhaps.\n\nSometimes it was so painful that it was as if she were locked in chains, and wrestling to throw them off, but the young woman felt that she had not the strength, yet she fought nonetheless, feeding only on anger and hurt, and really fighting with herself. She grew sharp and brittle in the presence of the men, thinking of the shepherds and Malduk, and at times almost hating Lescu and Catalin as much as they.\n\nShe had not the experience to realise that there was a deep hole in her heart. For all things need the nurturing love of strong protectors, to grow happily and well, like the sunlight drawing flowers from the earth.\n\nThere was other resentment inside her, too." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In order to enter the tough world of men, so she could work tirelessly for Malduk and Ranna, Alina had already had to dissemble, and hide her true nature." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But now, when she had asked her new friend openly about the world of men, he had denied her. Alina had felt his scorn, and amusement too, at the very idea that she could be as good or as strong as a man.\n\nYet what was her true nature? Alina wondered, as she wondered what nature really meant, or if she could have anything to do with its survival. Like the children of Moldov, Alina had grown up believing many things about how men and women are, and about the world around her, yet what she was learning now was telling her that those things hadn't been true at all. Something else was eating at the young woman's heart though. As she looked out into the snows, and listened to the sounds of the forest, wondering what Fell was doing in the wild and if he had found the Guardian, Alina was afraid of the future.\n\nOn several evenings Lescu saw in her eyes the anger and fear that she held for her journey, mixed with her determination, as she gazed fixedly through the window in the blacksmith's house or she sat at table." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But the blacksmith had known blood and terror in the East, and seen grown men break down and cry like little children, before their thankless deaths. That was no fate for the girl. Concealment was a far better ally in her journey.\n\nThen one day, as the snows grew thinner, a man came riding through in search of new shoes for his horse. As Lescu worked away on the nervous animal, calming him with his strength and precision, the cheerful stranger began to tell him more of the wars that were coming to the lands beyond the forest.\n\n\"They say Stefan and his nobles already fight the Turk,\" he said, \"although why he asks for the aid of Vladeran and Draculea, I'll never know. The King's too trusting, I think. They rumour Vladeran has other ambitions for the lands that lie about his own, while Draculea is a law unto himself.\"\n\nLescu grunted, but went on filing down the horseshoe he had just attached to the stranger's animal. Lescu did not want to hear anything of the world beyond the forge." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Vladeran's savagery is legendary now. His persecution of the Helgra grows worse by the day.\"\n\nLescu snorted and scraped harder.\n\n\"You'd have thought the Order of the Griffin would rise up in their defence. They're sworn to protecting the earth, and the people in it. Or were, at least.\"\n\nThe man, seeing the blacksmith didn't want to talk, changed tack.\n\n\"It's good, strong shoes you make,\" he said admiringly, \"and we all need strong armour nowadays. I trust you've prepared your son to fight properly,\" he added, looking over to Catalin, who was setting out more nails for his father. \"You live out of the way, it's true, but I doubt any will be able to avoid the fighting, even here.\"\n\nLescu stopped working and looked up guiltily at his boy. Tenderness, and fear for Catalin, pierced his heart." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to use 'prepare' 2 time(s) throughout your message" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lescu wanted nothing for his son but happiness and peace, but he suddenly thought that we may wish all the peace and love we can on the world, and for the people in it whom we care for, but what if the world changes suddenly? Isn't it our duty then to prepare them for what might be? To prepare them to fight. Yet as he stood there, the blacksmith wasn't thinking just of Catalin.\n\nThe shoeing was done, and the stranger paid Lescu in silver and mounted his horse.\n\n\"I wish you well, Fierar,\" he cried. \"Perhaps finer lords will bring you better pay than I can afford. I met two riding a fortnight back, who would bring you much gold. They served the Order of the Griffin.\"\n\nCatalin looked up with interest, but Lescu hardly reacted at all." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"They were on some strange mission too, but then that Order is always cloaked in plots and secrecy. Their leader's identity is as well hidden as the Old Man of the Mountain. Yet I heard them talking. They seek out a girl.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Catalin looked sharply at his father, and Lescu's brow furrowed, though only slightly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Some redheaded child,\" said the garrulous fellow, \"and very important by the sounds of it.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The blacksmith was silent, but the hammer in his hand was trembling." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Important?\"\n\n\"So they said. I don't envy her, if what they rumour now of the Order is true,\" said the man, pulling on the reins and turning his horse's head. \"You know Lord Vladeran cleaves to the Griffin. Perhaps he leads it. Yet if he does, why should he persecute the Helgra?\"\n\nAs the stranger rode away, a figure stepped from the shadow of the forge. Alina had heard everything. Lescu saw the fear and resentment in her clever eyes. Then Alina Sculcuvant simply turned, her thick red hair swinging about her shoulders, and walked scornfully away.\n\nThree mornings later she was in the forge, cleaning out the coke from the bottom of the fire, and trying not to get it on her dress, when she heard a clanking beside her and turned to see a pair of shears clattering across the stone lip of the fire." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lescu was standing behind her.\n\n\"What are those for?\" she asked sullenly.\n\n\"To cut your hair again, of course,\" answered the blacksmith, looking at the pretty young woman and shaking his head. \"It's grown too long for a lad who journeys into such danger, and one who would wield a sword, I think.\"\n\nAlina's hazel eyes opened wide and her heart began to beat faster.\n\n\"Then... then you'll make me a sword, Lescu?\"\n\n\"I'll do more than that,\" answered Lescu reluctantly. \"I'll teach you the skills of a warrior, as you asked. Or start to anyway.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina wanted to hug him, but something held her back." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Perhaps the very arts he was talking of." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Thank you, dear Lescu.\"\n\n\"Don't thank me, Alina,\" said Lescu gruffly. \"Simply learn and prepare, as carefully as for a visit to Baba Yaga.\"\n\nAlina smiled.\n\n\"I will. I promise.\"\n\nShe didn't pick up the shears though, and instead grasped her hair and began to bind it in a knot behind her head.\n\n\"If the Order of the Griffin is searching, we may not be able to hide you here, Alina,\" said Lescu. \"But they look for a girl, so you may hide as a boy again. And if you're set on your course to Castelu, I must help you indeed. Now calm yourself and listen,\" added the blacksmith, striding forwards and picking up a piece of metal and his hammer." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Bring me my apron and light the fire.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'lescu' 3 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Soon a blaze was burning in the forge, as Lescu worked the bellows, and when it was hot enough, he plunged the metal roughly into the flames.\n\n\"When metal has not been hammered out properly,\" said Lescu, as he lifted his hammer and started his lessons, \"it will be brittle and break easily, and so it is with a man's heart. Or a woman's, perhaps. We'll see, but a warrior must be tempered like good steel.\"\n\nAlina nodded enthusiastically.\n\n\"So temper both warrior and blade, I say, before you send her into battle. I'll not have you going into the Griffin's lair unarmed.\"\n\n\"The Griffin's lair?\"\n\n\"Perhaps Vladeran does lead the Griffin Order. Perhaps he is your father. Whatever the truth of it, we must prepare you to face him.\"\n\n\"How?\" asked Alina, wondering now what it really meant to be a warrior. Lescu put down the sword and pulled the apron from his chest, uncovering his leather jerkin." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He leaned forwards suddenly and gave Alina such a shove that the girl went flying backwards and fell over in the dirt, startled and winded.\n\n\"Get up, silly child,\" cried Lescu furiously, \"and if you have the guts for it, learn to defend yourself to the death.\"\n\nLescu's eyes were blazing, and Alina was so startled by the change in the man that she felt sick and terrified. She just sat there, staring back in amazement, and Lescu kicked some dirt towards her.\n\n\"Up, child. Or are you really just a thief and a murderer?\" he hissed. \"You say you killed Malduk in defence, but I say you're a liar, a word weaver, or else put a knife in his back. It seems you're a coward too.\"\n\n\"I'm not a—\"\n\nLescu kicked more dirt." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Fool. Coward and liar. I say you didn't cross the mountains without help. Have you allies in the hills? But I'll tell you my truth. To me you're nothing, whelp, and it's time I showed you.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina felt that furious, bristling anger inside her again, that almost lifted her to her feet on its own. She remembered Ranna and Malduk's constant insults and petty punishments, and how she had always hated herself for feeling so guilty in their presence, and for not fighting back.\n\nSomewhere Alina realised that Lescu was simply goading her on, but her anger flared up like the forge, with the injustice of it all. With a cry of fury, Alina WovenWord hurled herself at the blacksmith.\n\n\"No. Stop it. I hate you.\"\n\nLescu simply stepped to the side and brought a hand down heavily on her back, not intending to injure her, but to add to the momentum that was already carrying Alina on.\n\nThe girl went sailing past him and crashed into a bag of corn in the far corner of the forge, in a painful heap. She struggled round to face Lescu." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina was furious and ashamed. Her hair had tumbled down about her shoulders again, and she felt scalding tears on her cheeks. Lescu strode over to her, put a hand on her arm, and helped her gently to her feet.\n\n\"Peace now, Alina. I'm sorry.\"\n\nMonths and years of fear, frustration, and confusion were welling up inside her, and suddenly the tears came gushing down her face, as they had often done in the barn on Malduk's farm when she had been alone.\n\n\"No,\" she sniffed miserably, \"you're right, Lescu. What I ask is foolish and stupid. I'm just a girl.\"\n\nAlina dropped her head.\n\n\"Perhaps,\" said Lescu, with a kindly smile, \"but know yourself, girl. You've other things than a man's strength. You've wit and intelligence, heart and instinct. And you have great courage too, that has brought you this far, against the odds. Brute strength is far from everything.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina looked up hopefully and tried to smile." }, { "from": "human", "value": "No one had called her brave before, and she felt proud." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There, Alina, I was too strong on you, too soon,\" said Lescu softly. \"That's the bully's way, and it'll not happen again. But it was good to see the anger flow from you at last, Sculcuvant, and self-respect too. Come here.\"\n\nHe led Alina over to the water bucket by the forge and stared into it.\n\n\"Look there, Alina. My father always taught me that although, as we grow, we desperately seek others' approval—our friends', our parents', the world's—what really matters is what we see when we look there, and see ourselves. That's the true judge we always wake to in the morning. The mirror of ourselves.\"\n\nAlina looked down too.\n\n\"I've watched you many times at work, Alina, and in the house telling your stories. So thoughtful and melancholy, so timid often, when you're not consumed with anger. You feel deeply, and it's bad for you to hold in your feelings too much. You've a right to them.\"\n\nAlina was surprised by the idea that she had a right to her feelings, but by something else too. She looked pretty in the water." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes,\" she sniffed, wiping her face on her sleeve and trying to smile, \"I suppose I have.\"\n\n\"Don't suppose, Alina. Be yourself.\"\n\n\"Yes, Lescu, I'll try, I promise.\"\n\nAlina wondered what that meant though. What does it really mean to be oneself?\n\nShe looked back at the water, and suddenly a jolt of fear went through her. There she could see herself, but not in reflection. She was sitting at a great oak table, and Catalin was next to her, and the table was heaped with rare meats and beakers of blood red wine." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina blinked in astonishment at the magic of it. Tales of changelings and Baba Yaga may have been false, but this seemed a deep power indeed. What's happening to me? she wondered, and almost immediately the picture changed.\n\nAlina trembled. There was Ranna, and her face was rapt with fury, as she ran through the snows. She was moving through the night, and at her side was Mia. The little child looked frightened and lost, and Alina suddenly felt a terrible guilt that she had found no fairies or goblins to cast a spell to protect her friend. But Mia kept stopping and seemed to be helping her angry old aunt." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then the picture changed again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was Alina again, not in a fine hall but sitting on a stone floor, surrounded by filthy straw, her hands chained." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The place looked terrible and Alina felt a shudder of terror." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Was this her future?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a prison." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Alina. What's wrong?\"\n\nThe pictures in the water vanished, and Alina shook her head.\n\n\"Nothing, Lescu.\"\n\n\"You must listen carefully to what I tell you now, Alina. It's how you control and direct your anger and the force inside that matters,\" the smith went on. \"Discipline's everything, especially for a girl, naturally weaker than a man. Though not all men, it's true.\"\n\nAlina's tears had dried and she realised that Lescu was saying something very important. She stepped towards him.\n\n\"You stumbled at me in a blind rage,\" said Lescu." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"So I turned your own power against you with the brush of a hand. Calm and purposeful. As you must be. To master the art of fighting, a true warrior must first master himself. Or herself.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lescu again picked up the sword he had been making. It had begun to cool, and he swung it cleanly through the air.\n\n\"To know a true threat,\" said Lescu, looking at her keenly, \"and then to let the anger come like a directed flame, that's the skill. To control it and strike with a calm, clear mind, like the blacksmith wielding his hammer, turning another's force against him.\"\n\nLescu swung again, jabbed, and then turned and struck at Alina's face. But he brought the blade to a stop just short of the young woman's forehead, and smiled again.\n\n\"And do you know what the best skill that I could ever teach you is?\" he asked.\n\nAlina raised a hand slowly and pushed the blade away from her face. It was cold to the touch now." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The gesture made Lescu look at her admiringly, for it had pride and dignity and strength.\n\n\"A cut, Lescu? A thrust? How to parry?\"\n\n\"Oh, no,\" answered the blacksmith softly, lowering the sword completely, \"how to stand on one leg. Perhaps for an hour at time.\"\n\nAlina almost laughed at her friend. \"One leg?\"\n\nLescu sank slightly and lifted his right leg completely off the ground, as he held the sword. \"Balance is everything. Balance of body and mind and spirit.\"\n\nStanding there in this strange way, Lescu was perfectly still, but he suddenly moved the sword and swung it over his right shoulder. He brought it to a halt at a perfect right angle, like a compass needle reaching a meridian, and hardly swayed at all." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"With balance and control comes clarity and power,\" said Lescu, \"and the ability to move at will, and to be aware of all around you. Always come back to the centre then, and be connected.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Connected?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lescu brought his foot down heavily on the ground." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate this exact phrase, preserving the quotation marks: \"for it is that which saves the warrior. The earth is the stage on which all our arts are played out. Like a flower, or a plant taking nurture from the soil, the warrior connected to the force of the ground will find life and power flowing through him.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"With the earth,\" he said loudly, \"for it is that which saves the warrior. The earth is the stage on which all our arts are played out. Like a flower, or a plant taking nurture from the soil, the warrior connected to the force of the ground will find life and power flowing through him.\"\n\nAlina thought of the ice field and the wild power she had felt out there, and of the black wolf too. Were humans really connected to that power? The power of nature?\n\n\"But I see that I'm telling you things you think silly, or do not yet understand. Well, we'll see. My own teacher, who travelled far to the East, taught me things our brutal Western knights do not know,\" said the blacksmith. \"How to turn an attacker's own force against him, how to shift a hundred pounds with three ounces, and how everything begins in here.\"\n\nLescu touched a finger to his forehead, as the gypsy woman had done by the fire, when she had spoken of the Gift.\n\n\"In the mind, Alina. A real battle is all won here first. Or lost. And sometimes it's as if a fight is all played out here first, before it even happens. Your true enemies are not only the soldiers waiting to face you, but fear and uncontrolled anger, lack of precision and self-doubt. For all the natural paradoxes and confusions of life, for all the times we long for the instincts of the wild animal, never forget what lies here. Higher mind.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina was deeply impressed with Lescu's strange words." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No man had ever talked to her like this before, except perhaps a voice she had lost touch with long ago. That man with dark red hair. She suddenly had a memory of a voice, calm and encouraging, and it seemed to say, I'll always protect you, Alina.\n\n\"If you truly wish the warrior's way,\" said the blacksmith.\n\n\"I do,\" said Alina WovenWord gravely.\n\n\"Then we have work to do, my girl.\"\n\nThe warrior smith was true to his word, and Alina Sculcuvant did learn to balance on one leg, if not for an hour, then for a very long time indeed. It hurt badly at first, but with time she grew stronger, and as supple as a mountain goat, and felt something inside her strengthening too, not only in her heart but in her whole being and spirit." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina learnt to climb trees and run fearlessly across the narrowest of ledges. She learnt to take a fall, and defend against hurt by fighting the fear tightening in her body and telling her mind to let go of it. She learnt the art of breathing deeply as she moved, and of deepening the way she swallowed at the air, so that her breaths were not shallow and uncontrolled as they had been, but calm and purposeful, giving her strength. Alina wished now that Fell could see her.\n\nShe hadn't cut her hair yet, for she had liked how she looked in the water, and a few days after Lescu had agreed to teach her, they had learnt from a tinker that the soldiers of the Order of the Griffin who had been looking for a girl had ridden east. As Alina trained, she bound her hair back in a ponytail instead.\n\nIt was only after these many lessons in the open that Lescu took her to the forge one day. From a hook by the door, next to a long bow and a quiver of arrows she had often seen there, hung a leather jerkin." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He asked Alina to buckle it on, and then put leather guards on her arms. At last, he gave the young woman one of the swords he had forged for Stefan's armies.\n\nSo, the man and the beautiful young woman, with her red hair bound back on her head, began to work at sword fighting. Although it was happy, playful training, in their strokes and thrusts, in their blocks and parries, Alina realised that this was far more than play. It was like animals, who in their youthful gambols, are learning to grow and testing their strength. Like the wolf cubs by the river.\n\nAlina often thought of Fell. In the days and weeks that had passed in the blacksmith's home, she had heard Fell's call many times." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The lone black wolf had been seen by the neighbouring villagers too, as he hunted for the Guardian, but although they had sent trappers to catch him in the night, Alina knew from the vanishing food at the end of her pebble trail that he was still free." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was deeply relieved, but the more she had looked out from the window of her little room, and thought of the journey she had to make with Fell when the spring came, the gloomier it made her. She thought of what she had seen in the water, and if it had been a premonition of the future. If so, the end of her journey was a miserable prison.\n\nBut the fact was that Alina had never been so happy in her life. Lescu was teaching her new things every day, yet without any of the horrible bullying she had suffered at Malduk's hands, and not long into her training with a sword, he had stopped her one morning and nodded his head approvingly.\n\n\"You've a skill that I've seen in few men,\" he whispered.\n\nAlina felt her heart fill with pride, and learnt in that moment that one of the surest antidotes to all the fears and anguishes of the complex heart is achievement.\n\nBut it wasn't only the training that was making her happy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was Catalin. As she worked about the tidy little farm, and they competed in their storytelling, Catalin was so attentive to her that it sometimes even made Alina a little embarrassed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They often walked together in the snows, when Catalin wasn't off on his own in the mountains, or wandered down to the stream with Gwell, to break the ice and fetch water, and their bond was growing every day." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They could sense it in each other's awakening bodies and opening hearts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lescu could see it too, and it only made him pleased, for he knew the loneliness his son had felt growing up without his mother. As the young storyteller watched Alina train, he was sometimes pleased by how she seemed to be coming out of herself, and how fine and strong she looked too, as she swung bravely at Lescu with a sword. As bold as Vasilissa the beautiful.\n\nYet something sad and resentful also came into his thoughtful, blue green eyes. Catalin would shake his head then and sigh bitterly, and often when they practised he would suddenly turn and stride off angrily towards the house. One day Alina chased after him, and undoing her hair and letting it fall freely about her shoulders, she asked Catalin what was wrong.\n\n\"Nothing,\" the lad answered sullenly.\n\n\"Please tell me, Catalin. We're friends, aren't we?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Catalin was shaking, and he rounded on her furiously." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's you, Alina. You're what's wrong. What do you think you're doing, behaving like a man and a soldier?\"\n\nAlina reddened.\n\n\"Don't snap at me like that.\"\n\n\"It's just not right. Father always says that soldiers bring such trouble to the world.\"\n\n\"Your father's teaching me to defend myself, Catalin.\"\n\n\"Teaching you something he refuses to teach me,\" said Catalin indignantly. \"And for what? To learn how to be killed?\"\n\n\"No, Catalin. I hope not, anyway. But I've got to go on a journey. You don't.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Catalin was staring into Alina's lovely hazel eyes, and he saw there was pain in them.\n\n\"Does it really matter what happened, Alina?\" he said passionately. \"Why does everyone think of the past? If I thought of the past all the time, and Mother's death, I'd be sad every day. You're here with us now, aren't you?\"\n\nAlina nodded slowly. \"But I have a right to know, don't I? Especially if Vladeran is my father. To know if I have a high destiny.\"\n\n\"And you've a right to be happy too.\"\n\nAlina looked back at the handsome young man and felt a great tenderness for him.\n\n\"I suppose I do.\"\n\n\"Then stay with us, Alina. Father looks on you now as the daughter he never had. And I... \"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Catalin blushed, despite himself, and dropped his eyes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, Alina, please don't go out there. You can live here, and when the spring comes again you can help us turn the land and plant for the summer. All there is out there is fighting and sorrow and death.\"\n\nAlina looked away. What Catalin was saying was so tempting, that in that moment she almost wanted to give up her quest altogether. She suddenly realised too that, although she desperately longed for a family and missed the presence of loving parents, something could come to replace them that was just as important—friends.\n\nAlina felt a rush of gratitude to the friends who had helped her already. To Catalin and Lescu. To Ivan and Mia. To Fell. It was the thought of Fell that made her think of her journey again.\n\n\"But, Catalin, can I really be happy here without finding out who I am?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Don't you see?\" cried Catalin furiously." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This noble lord—perhaps your father—tried to murder you, for whatever reason, and if he finds out you're alive, he'll try again. I think you're mad.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Catalin was about to break away, but Alina stopped him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Don't be angry,\" she said softly, \"not like I've been. Not like Baba Yaga.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Catalin looked back at her, and though he shook his head, he smiled." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Think about staying at least,\" he said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I will, I promise.\"\n\nAlina did think about it, deep and hard, and the more she sat with Lescu and Catalin at the table, eating their food and talking and laughing with them, working at the men's side, or telling great stories with Catalin, the more the prospect of journeying across the mountains to face what danger she knew not, loomed like a black cloud in her mind, or like Baba Yaga chasing Vasilissa through the wood.\n\nShe felt herself almost ready for the journey now, or as ready as she would ever be, yet it was one which, when she sat with quietness and calm and looked out at the beautiful forests around Lescu's home, she no longer wanted to make. And with this thought, she felt she was betraying Fell, and perhaps even the wild itself. Betraying nature.\n\nNot once since Alina's training began did Lescu try to argue with her about the future. And one day, when he barred Alina from the forge, the girl realised that Lescu was making something.\n\nFor three days and three nights the blacksmith worked, in a blaze of fiery light, hammering away, and still when it seemed to be finished Lescu kept whatever it was he had made a secret. He continued to train Alina too, but made it clear, in everything he said and did, that she was welcome to stay." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So by the time the long, bitter winter finally turned, by the time the snows began to melt and water rushed down from the mountains to swell the rushing streams, by the time the young crocuses began to push their heads from the sleeping earth and stretch their tender leaves to the friendly sunlight, Alina's fifteen-year-old heart was almost set on staying with her friends forever.\n\nThe melting snows opened the valley like a flower and brought travellers and villagers thronging to market nearby. One brilliant morning Catalin and Alina set off to buy provisions, telling each other spring tales, and they were soon caught up in the sheer glory of the day.\n\nThe handsome youngsters were in a delighted mood, glorying in the warm sunshine and the silky air, the smell of flowers and each other's company, without a care in the world. Alina looked so pretty that Catalin wanted to kiss her, and they kept flirting with each other as they walked. For a while they sat on a tree stump, watching a shepherd with his flock, as the brilliant sun pressed through drifting clouds.\n\nThe young people wandered on, but as they came down the narrow track that led to the fair, they paused and Alina pulled up the hood on the coat Lescu had lent her. There was a man on a cart, surrounded by a noisy throng." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's true, I tell you,\" he was insisting angrily." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The road to the South's open again, and I heard it myself.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Go on with you,\" shouted an old woman in the crowd. \"You're just trying to earn coin with your silly fables.\"\n\n\"It's no fable,\" said the man angrily. \"They saw him on the mountaintop, as real as day. A boy and a lone black wolf.\"\n\nAlina felt a chill, as if winter had just returned. A single stranger had pressed through the throng nearby, also in a hood, and he was listening intently, as the crowd murmured.\n\n\"I heard the rumour,\" shouted another man, \"but I'd heard it was a girl.\"\n\nAlina was suddenly tugging at Catalin's arm." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Come on, Catalin, let's get back. This is silly nonsense.\"\n\n\"Wait, Alina.\"\n\n\"And I saw a black wolf ferreting around the farms and homesteads,\" said another woman. \"It seemed to be looking for something, and I've often heard it howl.\"\n\n\"It's witchcraft,\" said a frightened voice, \"the devil's work.\"\n\n\"They say the changeling's a murderer,\" insisted the man on the cart, \"and that his wolf tore out a man's throat. A shepherd called Malduk.\"\n\nCatalin turned to look at his friend in horror. They were talking about Alina. And a wolf." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Don't listen, Catalin,\" said Alina desperately, as she tried to pull him away again and blushed deeply. \"It's just a stupid story, nothing more.\"\n\nCatalin was searching her eyes intently though.\n\n\"Don't be silly, Catalin,\" said Alina. \"You can't believe it, can you? A black wolf.\"\n\nThe young man's blue green eyes flickered with confusion.\n\n\"No, no, I suppose not.\"\n\n\"It's like Baba Yaga's house, Catalin, or the lies Malduk and Ranna made up about me,\" said Alina, and Catalin suddenly remembered that by her own report this pretty young woman had killed a man—Malduk." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But it means that they're still hunting for me, Catalin. We must tell your father.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As they hurried back to the farm, they did not notice the hooded figure watching them intently, or how hurriedly he mounted his horse and rode away. Nor did they see the vicious scar on his right cheek.\n\nThat afternoon, as Catalin told his father what they had heard, and Alina insisted furiously that it was mere fairy tales, as false as Baba Yaga or all that had followed her, Lescu listened gravely. When it was finished, the blacksmith asked Catalin to chop some wood behind the house, then took Alina outside onto the porch.\n\n\"Now then, FalseTale,\" he grunted, as they stood outside, \"why don't you tell me the truth at last? No more stories, eh?\"\n\nGwell, who was lying on the porch, whimpered quietly and licked his paws.\n\n\"The truth? What do you mean, Lescu, I always—\"\n\n\"Damn you, Sculcuvant!\" cried Lescu furiously." }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'trust' 2 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Don't you trust me even now? Can't you trust anyone? I know it's true. It's why Gwell snarled at you when you first arrived, because you smelt of wolf.\"\n\n\"I... \"\n\n\"It's how you made it over the mountains. It was with you in that ice cave, wasn't it? I've often seen you gazing out into the forest and known that something waits out there, but not witches. I saw you that night, leaving the house, after I spoke of traps, and food has often gone missing. I found a strange trail of stones in the forest.\"\n\nAlina blushed and bowed her head shamefully. She hadn't realised that clever Lescu had noticed her thefts, as he noticed everything on the farm.\n\n\"I'm not angry for the theft of food,\" said the blacksmith, more softly, \"not if your intention was good. Tell me then, Alina, at last. You're not a killer at all.\"\n\nSo the rest of it came out. The true story of Alina's meeting with the black wolf, of the miracle of their communication and of the strange events of their journey." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When it was finished, Lescu nodded soberly, but not without fear in his eyes for the strange young woman.\n\n\"It's wondrous,\" he whispered, thinking of how Alina had asked him if people were the same as animals, \"truly miraculous. Enchantment seems to follow you wherever you go, changeling. But I've heard of such things before. Of children lost in the forest being reared by wolves. As for this power, this Sight, there are stranger things in the world, and some have deeper bonds with the animals than others. This wolf killed Malduk, didn't it?\"\n\n\"Yes, Lescu.\"\n\n\"Then perhaps it's your friend, and I realise now you've been protecting him too. But others will see it only as evil and witchcraft, and hunt you for it. As they will hate you too for trying to show the strength and skill of a man. And Catalin must never know of such a thing. He can be superstitious, and it would unsettle him deeply.\"\n\n\"No, Lescu. I promise it.\"\n\n\"What are you going to do, Alina WovenWord?\" asked the blacksmith gravely.\n\n\"Go, and go quickly,\" answered Alina firmly, feeling sick to her stomach." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm only a danger to you and Catalin now. Wherever I go I'm nothing but a curse.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'another' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina was already knotting the hair on her head.\n\n\"Don't say that, child. Ever.\"\n\n\"It's true!\" cried the young woman in anguish. \"Disaster and sorrow seem to follow me everywhere I go. I must begin my journey.\"\n\n\"There's another way,\" said Lescu, looking towards the forests. \"Make this wolf understand that you're happy here, and that you've found a real home. The rumour will fade like a dream, and become just another fairy tale, peddled in the markets around Baba Yaga's valley. The villagers from Moldov are looking for a boy now anyway, not a girl, and we keep ourselves far enough apart to stop people meddling in our affairs.\"\n\nAlina wanted nothing more desperately in all her life, but she thought of Fell and what she would say to him. She thought of the danger to Lescu and Catalin too." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I... I must think, Lescu. Must walk awhile.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Of course, Alina.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She turned and walked past the barn and the forge." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She made for the stream and the edge of the forest, and as soon as she neared the great oak, she stood looking deep into the tangled trees and began to call.\n\n\"Fell. Are you there, Fell? I must talk to you, dear friend.\"\n\nOnly the whispering of the breeze came back to answer the troubled young woman. Alina must have stood there for hours, wrestling with her desire to stay with Catalin and Lescu, and her duty to safeguard them, by leaving their home forever. She looked out into the wild and listened to the whispering voices in the trees. She thought of her meeting with Fell in the cave and the great destiny that awaited her. Alina thought too of what she had seen of Fell, and how hard it had been out there in the mountains.\n\nShe began to walk, calling in her mind to Fell, wrapped in confusion." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The parchment had proven she wasn't a changeling, but a real girl, but her meeting with Fell had been as strange as any witchcraft." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If the Sight was a real power, a power greater than common magic, then perhaps this destiny she faced was true, and she was somehow important." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet Alina doubted now even the tales that she and Catalin told, growing up as she had to face the true harshness of life." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina stopped suddenly. She had come to a part of the wood where the trees ended abruptly, and the ground suddenly sloped down towards a shallow ravine." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina heard a strange sound, and what she saw stole her breath away." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There, lurching across the grass, was a wooden house. Alina felt fear lock her to the ground, and as she realised that the noise was the clucking of a chicken, although she could see none about, a wonder and terror came to her greater than she had ever felt before.\n\n\"Baba Yaga,\" she gasped. \"It's Baba Yaga's house. Then this really is her valley. Magic does exist. It's true, all of it.\"\n\nEven as she said it, fearful of arousing the old hag's interest, or sending her rushing for her mortar and pestel, Alina noticed that the moving house didn't have chicken legs at all. Instead, underneath it were rolling logs, carrying it along the gully, and behind it she now saw men, pushing it along.\n\nIt wasn't a witch's cottage at all, but one of the little wooden churches in the lands beyond the forest, that were built so small and light and compact that in times of danger from the Turk they might be lifted entire onto logs and taken to a safer place. For man will try to guard his faith more preciously even than his gold." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With that a rooster appeared behind a tree, crowing and darting its head haughtily, and Alina might have laughed, if she hadn't felt so foolish." }, { "from": "human", "value": "As she watched the funny male chicken, she wondered to herself again if this great secret of man and animals was really true." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then she remembered Lescu's words of war and death, and she realised that it didn't matter to her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell's face was in her mind's eye too, and she knew she cared greatly for the wild creature, but that other faces had come to her now, and they belonged to Catalin and Lescu. To her own.\n\nAs Alina thought of how her mind had suddenly tricked her into believing a church was Baba Yaga's house, as she thought of Ivan's words of being true to herself too, to her own nature, she suddenly made a decision. It was growing dark as she turned back to the house, and a three-quarter moon was peering through the skies, but there was a wonderful lightness in her tread.\n\n\"Lescu!\" she cried happily, as she neared the oak again. \"Catalin! I will stay with you. I don't want a great destiny. I don't care if they are my real parents. I'll go into the mountains, until they've stopped looking, but then I'll come back. I'll come home.\"\n\nAlina was filled with joy as she ran, and the wonderful lightness of resolve, but as soon as she passed the forge, she knew something was desperately wrong. It was the strange silence that hung about, and the absence of smoke curling from the little chimney. Alina heard a nervous whinny and saw a group of horses corralled at the back of the house." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She rushed up to the porch and saw the front door broken in, and then the blood." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It stained the entire front porch, and Alina recoiled." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Poor Gwell was lying there, a silent, unmoving shape, for the hunting dog's throat had been cut. Alina burst through the door with an angry shout, but she stopped in her tracks in horror.\n\n\"No!\"\n\nThere sat Lescu, in a wooden chair. He looked as if he were asleep, but the blacksmith's heavy arms were bound fast to the chair, and his head was slumped forwards. His jerkin was bloodstained and a dagger was poking from his chest, near his heart.\n\n\"No, Lescu. Please, no.\"\n\nAlina rushed towards him, but as soon as she touched him she knew that he was dead." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She felt sick and heartbroken, and winced as she pulled the dagger out of the dead man. Alina sensed that she wasn't alone in the room and swung round.\n\n\"So the hare's taken the bait?\" said a soft, cold voice in the shadows.\n\nShe recognised the man in the hood from the market. He stepped from the corner of the room, and as he lowered his hood slowly, Alina saw the vicious scar on his right cheek and gasped. \"You!\" It was the soldier who had warned her and Mia of the Turks that terrible night.\n\n\"What have you done?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "she snarled. \"Murderer. Assassin.\"\n\nThe girl had never felt such terrible hatred in all her life, not even for Malduk and Ranna.\n\n\"You're the murderer, are you not, Alin SkeinTale?\" answered Vlascan, the captain of Vladeran's Shield Guard. \"By reputation at least. And we're just soldiers, defending ourselves. He would not have died if he had not grabbed for the dagger, and he would have suffered far less if he had told us where you were.\"\n\nAlina felt salt tears burn her eyes, and hate churn in her stomach. She wondered where Catalin was. Perhaps he was safe." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was wrestling with the terrible fury inside her, a fury that brought a strange helplessness, and remembered what Lescu had said of control and balance. Alina tried to clear her mind, and calm her heart. To breathe.\n\n\"By what right do you do this?\" she whispered coldly.\n\n\"Put the knife down, girl.\"\n\nAlina stepped forwards with the knife raised, but another soldier emerged from the shadows, clasping Catalin by the neck and holding a blade to the lad's throat. Catalin's eyes were burning and his cheeks were stained with tears.\n\n\"Alina.\"\n\nFrom his right stepped another soldier, as two more appeared with drawn swords on either side of Vlascan." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The captain smiled contentedly." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should naturally weave in this dialogue: \"Now roll up your sleeve,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I missed you once, but your flight's over, girl,\" he said. \"Now put down the dagger, or the boy dies.\"\n\nAlina's mind was in turmoil, but slowly she placed the dagger on the table.\n\n\"Now roll up your sleeve,\" ordered Vlascan, who nodded as she did so and he saw the little eagle on her arm.\n\n\"Long and hard we've searched for that through the winter snows, and now we have you, like a partridge for the pot.\"\n\n\"What does it mean?\" whispered the young woman, staring down at the eagle. \"This mark.\"\n\nAlina Sculcuvant felt she was nearing the truth of who she was at last." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That you should be dead already. For your noble blood.\"\n\nAlina felt something stiffen in her spine. Catalin was staring at Alina, and the young woman felt as if Vlascan's words had just answered her prophetic heart.\n\n\"Then I do have noble blood. The mark means that I'm of the house of Castelu.\"\n\n\"I know nothing of the mark,\" answered Vlascan with a scowl, \"except that it leads me to you, and though not of Castelu, it's the same as your mother Romana bears.\"\n\nAlina was trembling. Her mother. She still feared to hear the truth.\n\n\"Then Romana is my mother?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vlascan nodded." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And Lord Vladeran my father?\" Alina asked, not wanting to believe.\n\nVlascan looked at Alina in amazement. \"Vladeran your father?\" he cried. \"Of course not. You are Lord Dragomir's child.\"\n\nAlina blinked. Dragomir. The name instantly brought an image to Alina's mind, one she'd never been able to conjure when she thought of Vladeran—of the man in her dreams with the dark red hair. Aloof, yet kindly. Dragomir." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A strange hope lit in the girl's heart. Yet how could it be if Romana was her mother?\n\n\"Then who is... \"\n\n\"Lord Vladeran? Your father's best friend and lieutenant, of course, until Dragomir's death.\"\n\n\"Death?\" said Alina in horror.\n\n\"On the battlefield, fighting the Turk.\"\n\nThere were tears stinging Alina's eyes.\n\n\"How the Lady Romana grieved then, until Vladeran wooed her. She didn't heal fully though, until she bore him a fine son of his own. Your half brother, Elu.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Suddenly Alina understood. The little baby she had been guarding was not her brother, but her half brother." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How Vladeran hated you when his son was taken by wolves in the village below the castle where Romana bore him.\" The castle that had towered over the dreams and nightmares of a wild wolf pack, whose destiny had been touched by the Legend of the Sight. Fell's pack.\n\n\"That's why he wanted me dead,\" cried Alina, \"because I didn't protect Elu?\"\n\nVlascan smiled. \"Yes. He was filled with thoughts of revenge when Elu vanished. You had always opposed Vladeran's love for your mother too, and stood in the way of his ambition.\"\n\n\"Why? I'm only a girl.\"\n\n\"Only a girl? Perhaps you are, child, but the true heir to Castelu.\"\n\nAlina WovenWord stepped back in amazement, and Catalin's eyes were locked on hers. It couldn't be. Not only was Alina the Lady Romana's daughter, but she was the heir to Castelu. A destiny indeed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But how?\" she whispered, trembling furiously, and feeling a horrible weakness.\n\n\"Don't you know anything of it?\" grunted Vlascan. \"Well, it won't hurt to tell you now. The line of descent in Castelu stands, by ancient custom that stretches back to Roman times, outside the common Salic laws in the lands beyond the forest, and is one of absolute primogeniture.\"\n\nVlascan was scowling scornfully.\n\n\"I don't understand,\" whispered Alina.\n\n\"It means, girl, that unlike the true law, the Salic law, which always excludes female children from inheritance, it passes naturally to the eldest child, whatever their sex. As it once passed to your mother, Romana.\"\n\nAlina was trembling.\n\n\"Then why didn't Vladeran just kill me himself?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "cried Alina bitterly, remembering also how coldly her mother had treated her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Perhaps he tried,\" answered Vlascan, \"but my lord is deeply superstitious, like his cousin Draculea.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tried Lord Vladeran had indeed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "When Romana had returned in mourning for Elu from the Helgra village, Vladeran had crept into Alina's chamber to kill her himself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vladeran had never liked the little girl." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was an impetuous, difficult child, full of will and instinct, and more like a boy than her feminine mother. She had always loved to pick up swords and fight the boys, to argue and to learn things he thought the natural right of men.\n\nYet fear and superstition had stayed Vladeran's hand. He felt suddenly that a curse might fall if he did such a terrible thing within the realms of Castelu. It seemed also a betrayal too far of those holy principles he had once sworn to protect in his inauguration into the Order of the Griffin.\n\nSo Vladeran had found a man, a soldier, to drug Alina and take her beyond the borders of his land, in a world that guarded its borders as keenly as it fought for power and position against the threat of the Ottoman.\n\nThere his lieutenant was told to slay the girl. He would have done it too, if a pack of wolves had not called in the night as he rode with little Alina and startled his horse so badly that it had shied and slipped over a ledge." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vladeran had often regretted that he hadn't made sure of the thing himself, now more than ever." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Find a natural way to mention that and grew stranger with the howls that rose when your mother returned to the village." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's a strange tale,\" said Vlascan, \"and grew stranger with the howls that rose when your mother returned to the village.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" said Alina, feeling a deep pain in her heart.\n\n\"She had gone there again, perhaps to mourn for your half brother, for she adored him.\"\n\nAlina's heart tightened.\n\n\"Imagine your mother's surprise, when a great chorus of wolf song went up, and rushing to investigate, she found that there in the snows was the boy child again, Vladeran's son. Elu was alive and well, and although he had the scent of wolf on him, and even seemed to growl strangely as they approached—or so they say—he was unharmed.\"\n\nCatalin's eyes were filled with shock, for he was learning that real life could be far stranger than stories, but his heart felt only the bitterness of his father's murder.\n\n\"That sealed Romana's joy. And Vladeran's too,\" said Vlascan." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Their son was restored.\"\n\nAlina felt a fury at this woman from her dreams, who had treated her as a servant, and who had married her father's best friend. Had Romana been happy because she could only really love a boy child? Vladeran's son. Had Romana hated her own daughter all along, and let Vladeran try to kill her?\n\n\"Where is my half brother now?\" she whispered, suddenly feeling far less tender towards him.\n\n\"Safe in the palace, of course. But tell me, was it the memory of that night when he was taken that made you invent your clever story of a wolf companion? Some call you the changeling storyteller.\"\n\nAlina stared back coldly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her heart was burning with all she had heard, and aching for Lescu too, and her own dead father, but in that moment she remembered all that the blacksmith had taught her. She took in a gulp of air and tried to calm her breathing and her churning thoughts. Words came back to her. A fight is won and lost in here. Something else was happening in Alina's mind too. She was reaching out, searching in the darkness, calling for help.\n\n\"Fell, come to me, Fell. I beg of you.\"\n\nThere was no answer, and Alina's eyes moved slowly around the room." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The revelation of who she really was had made the other soldiers pause, for they had known nothing of it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina noticed that the soldier to Catalin's right had not drawn his sword and that it was hanging loosely in the sheath at his belt. If only Alina could rush him and draw it herself, the young woman might have a chance. But no. A single move of the second soldier's arm, and Catalin's throat would be cut.\n\nUnless she could turn and swing in time. Then one or both of the soldiers by Vlascan might strike at her back. As Alina weighed all this in a split second, seeing the very movements in her inner mind and playing them out, the soldiers about her still didn't move, for they thought a girl no real threat.\n\n\"Let's be done with it,\" said Vlascan suddenly. \"The others'll be here soon, and we've wasted enough time on a woman.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Vlascan stepped forwards, but in that moment Alina unleashed the will that she was channelling through her body. She sprang forwards, and as her left hand gave the freestanding soldier a sharp shove in his chest, her right grasped his sword hilt.\n\nThe blade rose cleanly from its sheath, as the soldier toppled backwards and crashed to the floor, and Alina turned on one leg and swung the blade down towards the soldier holding Catalin. It cut his knife arm, and with a cry, he dropped his dagger and Catalin broke from his grasp, throwing himself on his dead father and clasping his dear face.\n\nAlina sensed one of the soldiers by Vlascan moving to strike, and felt his sword above her head. She had no time to turn. Instead she swivelled her sword in her wrist and brought it up and back behind her, under her own right arm. The soldier's movement impaled him on the sword, and Alina let go for a moment, turned, and, striking the wounded soldier in the chest with a cry, pulled the blade from his body and raised it to check the advance of Vlascan and the other." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They had stopped anyway, amazed by the girl's speed and skill. The two of them, and the soldier clutching his arm, too, were suddenly filled with fear and wonder, but not as much as Alina now had for herself.\n\n\"Impressive,\" hissed Vlascan. \"Did you learn it off the blacksmith? Well, these skills shall die with him, as they do with you.\"\n\nThere was a groan from the chair, and Lescu half raised his head, his bloodied lips suddenly mouthing. The blacksmith was still alive.\n\n\"Father,\" whispered Catalin bitterly. \"I'm sorry, Father.\"\n\n\"Catalin,\" gasped Lescu faintly. \"The girl, help the girl.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Frequency requirement: 'right' - 2 occurrence(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Catalin was looking about for a weapon, and the others were watching Alina warily. Alina swung her head left and right, calculating who to fight next. They did not dare advance on her, but Alina saw Vlascan look up momentarily, towards the stairs. Was another soldier up there? Before she could turn, she heard a swishing sound, and felt a horrible pain in her right shoulder.\n\nA knife had been thrown from the stair by a soldier who had been searching above. The pain of it entering her body made Alina cry out and drop her arm for a moment, and her guard too. The soldier she had pushed to the floor struck from below, knocking the sword from her hand, and in a sudden drawing of blades, Alina WovenWord was surrounded again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Do it now,\" cried Vlascan angrily, as the soldier on the ground rose." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And make her pay dearly.\"\n\nIt was the shattering of glass that made them turn, and the huge black shape that came flying through the window. The wolf knocked one soldier to the ground. For a moment, all the others were aware of was a snarling black muzzle and angry, pointed teeth. The soldier beside Vlascan struck out in horror, but Fell went for his throat next, and stopped him in the instant. The powerful wolf turned and growled viciously at the others.\n\n\"Stand back, Alina,\" came his angry thoughts. \"I can't control them with my mind, but still these weaklings are mine.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina reached up and pulled the dagger from her back with a cry, as Vlascan cowered there." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He could not believe what he was seeing, and nor could Catalin, who just thought that Baba Yaga herself had come crashing through the window." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Then it's true,\" gasped Vlascan. \"The wolf story's true.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" cried Alina furiously, \"I walk with the wolf, so beware, little man.\"\n\nCatalin was looking at Alina WovenWord in terror, as Fell growled furiously at her side. The boy was utterly horrified, and his fear and confusion were blending with his agony for his dying father.\n\n\"Very well,\" hissed Vlascan, rallying and raising his sword. \"Then we've a man's fight after all.\"\n\nFell took Vlascan in a snarl, as Alina turned and used the dagger to put an end to the wounded soldier, who had just thrown himself towards her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She felt tears burning her cheeks as she did so, but she held her resolve." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'cried' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her story of killing Malduk had been a lie, but now she had just killed two men, and she felt little glory in it.\n\nThere was only the soldier on the stair, and the one whom Alina had struck first, but seeing the strange fighting girl and the black wolf amongst their dead companions, they both raced for the door.\n\n\"Witchcraft!\" cried the one who had thrown the knife. \"The Evil One is here.\"\n\nFell swung round and snarled again.\n\n\"Leave them, Fell,\" cried Alina in disgust.\n\nThey ran for their horses and galloped away into the growing night, driving the riderless animals before them. In the house, Alina lowered her dagger again and turned sadly towards Catalin and his father." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's all right, Catalin, we're safe now. For a while.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Suddenly there was another groan, and Lescu had raised his head again. He was reaching out a hand towards Alina, like a father to a daughter. She rushed forwards and grasped it tenderly, and Fell growled as he watched the strange humans. He didn't like their scent at all.\n\n\"Alina,\" gasped Lescu. \"Then this is your wolf. And your journey too, dear Alina. You know it now. I heard what they said of your birthright. You've noble blood in you indeed, and thus a dangerous road, amongst people who seek power alone.\"\n\n\"Perhaps, Lescu.\"\n\n\"But beware, daughter,\" whispered Lescu faintly, \"above all beware of bitterness and hate that kill the mind and soul. I've taught you well, but see clearly, and know that nothing anyone ever does to you can be as terrible as what you do yourself. Remember that. And know too what 'Alina' means in our tongue—'to comfort.'\"\n\nAlina could feel the strength leaving the blacksmith." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Take my son into the mountains with your wolf. Protect each other—two great storytellers, together. Swear it. Make a pact. Love each other.\"\n\n\"I swear it, Lescu. On my life.\"\n\nTears were flowing down Alina's lovely face, and she felt as if her passionate heart were breaking. This was one of the only people she had ever loved, apart from those dream shapes she had so desperately wanted to love and feel love from, and already he was being taken from her. As Ivan had been. As her father had been too. Alina had never felt such a terrible pain in all her life.\n\n\"Go now. Hurry. And may the gods speed you in your journey. But first, look in the forge.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'lescu's' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The forge?\"\n\n\"In a box by the bellows,\" said Lescu faintly. \"I made it for you with all my skill, Alina Sculcuvant, now you're becoming a woman and a warrior, and I finished it this very day. When I knew what to carve on the top. May it serve the heir to Castelu well.\"\n\nLescu's hand closed hard on Alina's and he slumped completely. The kind blacksmith was dead. Catalin groaned and sank to his knees, but Alina fought back the scalding tears and, with a bitter pain in her heart, prised her hand from dear Lescu's. She rose and felt that ache in her forehead again, though far less than the terrible pain inside her.\n\n\"We go, Alina?\" came Fell's angry thoughts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I don't like this place.\"\n\n\"Yes, Fell,\" answered Alina aloud, \"into the mountains, towards the castle and the palace beyond. The region of Castelu. My home.\"\n\nAlina turned to Catalin, who was still cowering from the wolf by his father's side, to see him glaring at her angrily.\n\n\"Come, Catalin,\" she said firmly. \"Quickly.\"\n\nCatalin looked into her eyes and she could see fear in the blue green, as the lad shook his head furiously.\n\n\"Catalin, please. I swore to Lescu.\"\n\n\"No. Get away from here. Leave me to my father. He's dead.\"\n\n\"Please.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Go away. Get out of our house.\"\n\nAlina paused. She saw the horror in his eyes.\n\n\"Very well,\" she whispered.\n\nShe turned proudly and, with Fell padding after her, walked silently outside, hurt by Catalin's fear, but with the thought to leave him alone with his father awhile, before asking him to leave once more.\n\nCatalin rose slowly. His mind was in turmoil as he stood looking down at his father. He had never been happier than in these last few months, because of the strange, beautiful young storyteller, and now, because of her too, his father was dead and he was all alone. Because of this noble lady, the heir to Castelu, a devil in the shape of a wolf now stood outside his home.\n\nYet as Catalin stood there, feeling terrified, he realised bitterly that there was nothing to be done but to go with her for now." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was nothing left here." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The girl, this witch child, had been right; the soldiers would return." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'beautiful' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Catalin turned and walked to the dresser to retrieve his father's store of gold, and then with a last bitter look at Lescu, he walked outside.\n\nAs he reached the forge, he saw Fell standing in the moonlight, but the wolf let him pass inside. Alina was standing by the bellows, and as he entered she put down the shears. Her beautiful red hair was cut short once more and lay in curls about her feet.\n\nAlina looked down now at a long wooden box, and as she opened it, her amazement almost drove out her misery at Lescu's death. There was the most beautiful sword Alina Sculcuvant had ever seen. It was almost half the young woman's height, and hammered out of the finest folded metal, but as the heir to Castelu lifted it in her hands, she found it light and perfectly balanced. Its handle was carved from antler horn, and at the top it was worked into the shape of a wolf's head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Finest of all was the engraving in the middle of the sword, just below the hilt." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was the mark of the eagle." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina raised it in its sheath, draped with a cord of leather to hang it from, and slung it over her shoulder like a magic blade. Then she turned proudly and walked back towards Catalin. She peered into his eyes, and realised from the confusion she saw there that she had to take the lead.\n\nShe took two hooded coats from the back of the door to the forge, giving one to Catalin and putting one on herself, and picked up two horse blankets laying in the barn. Then, almost as an afterthought, she unslung the bow that hung by the door, and a quiver of arrows, then clasped Catalin by the arm and pushed him out into the moonlight.\n\nFell was waiting, staring up towards the star-flecked skies—the Wolf Trail. With that the three of them—the boy, the wolf, and the heir to Castelu—began to walk towards the mountains and the future.\n\n\"But how, Sculcuvant?\" Whispered Catalin, glaring at the wolf in disgust." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's witchcraft, darker than any of the tales we tell.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The young man sat on a tree stump, as the black wolf tore into a snow rabbit. The ground was flecked with specks of red, and Alina sat opposite, with her jerkin half open, rearranging the poultice she had made for her injured shoulder.\n\nFor two days Catalin had followed Fell and Alina SkeinTale without talking, and now they had almost come to the far end of Baba Yaga's valley.\n\nAlthough Catalin had not been able to hear their thoughts, he knew now that there was some special power that worked between the girl and the wolf, and it had made the young man retreat into himself, almost as much as Lescu's murder had. He looked on the wild creature as a kind of demon, and on his former friend as a being wrapped in witchcraft—a very sorceress.\n\n\"I... I don't know, Catalin,\" answered Alina, glad at least that he was speaking. She closed her jerkin again. \"It just happened. And we're linked by fate, and a power called the Sight. The Gift some call it. You heard what that soldier said of my half brother, Elu, how he was stolen as a baby and returned by wolves.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Catalin glared at Alina with something close to hatred in his eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's you,\" he whispered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's because of you and that... that wicked thing that my father's dead.\"\n\nAlina hated Catalin for saying it, but it was just.\n\n\"I... I would have done anything to save Lescu, Catalin,\" Alina whispered desperately.\n\nAnother name was in her head though, and one that brought sorrow too. Dragomir. Her own father was dead as well. Catalin snapped the stick he was holding and jumped up.\n\n\"Damn you, SkeinTale. Damn you both to hell.\"\n\nFell rose immediately and snarled, but Alina cried out." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No, Fell. This is between us.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The wolf lay down again and whined." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He felt almost jealous seeing them talking together.\n\n\"You speak to that thing as if it were a person,\" said the young man with disgust, slumping down dispiritedly again.\n\n\"We've a bond, as I said,\" said Alina simply, \"as you did with Gwell.\"\n\nCatalin felt sick as he thought of his own dog, lying there with his throat cut. He had loved Gwell deeply. He loved animals as much as Alina.\n\n\"That's not a dog, it's a wolf. They're killers, SkeinTale. Wild beasts.\"\n\n\"You don't understand,\" said Alina coldly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And don't call me SkeinTale.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Understand what?\" snapped Catalin scornfully. \"Understand that this stinks to heaven? Understand that it's unnatural, and what a wicked thing is happening?\"\n\n\"Fell, come here awhile,\" whispered Alina, turning to the wolf.\n\nFell looked up, but he did not move. He didn't trust Catalin at all, and if his instincts and his thoughts of the vision had sometimes made him want to strike at Alina, he felt it tenfold with the young man.\n\n\"Why don't you order it?\" asked Catalin mockingly.\n\n\"I can't order him,\" answered Alina sharply. \"The wolf does as he pleases. He's wild and free.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He's under a spell, don't you mean? Your spell.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Don't speak like that, Catalin. It's a lie. Like magic is a lie. And fairy tales.\"\n\n\"So many lies, since you arrived, anyway.\"\n\nAlthough Fell had not understood Alina's spoken words, he suddenly rose again and, lifting his tail, took a step towards them. Catalin saw it, and it made him recoil immediately. He nearly slipped backwards off the log he was sitting on.\n\n\"Get it away from me!\" he cried. \"I don't want that devil anywhere near me.\"\n\nAlina felt scorn for her friend." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'alina' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You're frightened of him, Sikla?\" she said coldly, her hazel eyes glittering.\n\n\"So what if I am?\" answered Catalin angrily. \"A wolf that appears from nowhere, whatever your history? A killer. Wouldn't any man fear that? It seems like sense to me.\"\n\nAlina looked into his eyes. \"Yes,\" she said softly. \"And I know how hard it is to be a man.\"\n\nAlina was thinking of the shepherds, and the bullying she had often seen amongst the village boys, the bullying she had felt herself, and she had meant the remark kindly, to reassure Catalin, but he misunderstood her and thought she was mocking him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And wouldn't any man be frightened of a girl who wants to be a soldier?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina jumped up now." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Wants?\" shouted the young woman furiously." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Did I want to be taken from my home? Did I want to be hunted, or your father to be killed? Did I want my own father to be dead? Or want my mother... \" Alina paused and tears rose in her flashing eyes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I haven't wanted any of this.\"\n\nShe wanted to cry, but the heir to Castelu straightened her back. \"Yet it seems to me that life just happens sometimes, and when what happens is bad, you can either give in, or you can do something about it.\"\n\nAlina had her sword slung across her back, and despite himself, Catalin thought how fine she looked, but he could still see Fell behind her and it made him nervous and angry.\n\nThe wolf sensed the emotions coming off the lad, the male aggression, and it made him deeply unsettled. He wanted to react with snarls and teeth, but Fell had realised that the boy and the girl were not enemies, and it caused a painful confusion in him. Suddenly Fell growled and sprang away into the trees. He wanted to be in the wild." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Fell, come back.\"\n\nThe wolf was gone.\n\n\"He'll return,\" said Alina to herself, \"probably by nightfall. But we'd better get moving again, Catalin. The soldiers will be on our trail by now.\"\n\n\"Is that an order, from such a fine noblewoman?\" Catalin said resentfully, sitting still on the stump. \"One with such a great destiny.\"\n\nCatalin blinked at his own words. In truth, all that had happened had made Catalin revise his feelings for the girl." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But so too had Vlascan's revelation in the house that she was the heir to Castelu." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had thought Vladeran and Romana her parents for a long time, but Catalin had seen the lovely girl as an equal, of ordinary stock like himself, and a fellow storyteller, who he had begun to hope might walk at his side." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Suddenly it was if she lived in a world entirely apart from a blacksmith's son, as if she had been hurled into the stars and now was looking down on him. Catalin did resent her for it, and feared her too.\n\n\"Of course it's not an order,\" answered Alina, deeply stung. \"We're good friends, aren't we? I swore to your father that we'd protect each other. Perhaps more than that,\" she added softly.\n\nThe pretty young woman's heart was reaching out to Catalin, but he turned it away coldly.\n\n\"You,\" he sneered. \"Why would you need protecting, with a demon at your back? And mastery of a sword, like a man? Surely the Evil One himself watches over you both, my fine Lady Baba Yaga.\"\n\nAlina glared at Catalin, then reached slowly up to her back and drew the sword Lescu had forged her. She pointed it straight at him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"If you fear the Evil One, or the heir to Castelu,\" she said coldly, with a sneer on her own lips, \"then don't worry, Catalin Fierar. I alone shall protect you, boy, with my sword.\"\n\n\"No, thank you,\" said Catalin, stung by the insult.\n\n\"It's dangerous in the mountains and the wild,\" said Alina, and her tone was truly mocking. \"Perhaps if you'd learnt to use a sword when your father trained me, I wouldn't need to worry about you so much.\"\n\nCatalin stood and his cheeks were burning.\n\n\"What's that supposed to mean, girl?\"\n\n\"It means... \" Alina paused, seeing how badly she'd hurt him, and pulled back from her anger. She began to stammer." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I... I know your father didn't want to teach you how to fight, Catalin. Wanted to protect you. But... \"\n\n\"But what?\"\n\n\"You might have joined us, and learned about a sword. About courage.\"\n\nCatalin said nothing. He looked ashamed, and Alina suddenly felt ashamed of herself too.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Catalin, sorry for everything,\" she said bitterly, sheathing the sword again. \"It'll be all right, somehow, I promise you. But it's too dangerous to stay here.\"\n\nThe young woman had bent to pick up the bow and the quiver that lay at her feet, and Catalin was looking at it strangely.\n\n\"Are you coming, Catalin?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No.\"\n\nAlina stared hard at him and saw that nothing she could say would sway him.\n\nHer eyes grew sad. \"Very well then. We go that way, Fell and I. To the northeast, towards the empty castle. It's a long journey, Fell says, and you can change your mind and come, if you like, but if you don't, stay out of the open. The best game is lower down the mountain, where the grass is richer. You'll find them easiest where the Lera—where animals need to drink.\"\n\nCatalin said nothing, although as Alina began to walk away, he felt as miserable as she. Yet as soon as she was out of sight, Catalin's spirits lightened a little and he told himself that he was well rid of the witch, and the beast that walked at her side. Catalin had grown up in nature and he knew many of the arts of hunting and trapping for himself. He knew things that Alina did not know, and he loved the wild, although he had not got as close to it as Alina." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet as he sat there, wondering what to do, he suddenly felt dreadfully alone. The light faded, and as the shadows grew in the trees on the edge of Baba Yaga's valley, an owl started hooting in the blackness. Catalin jumped, as he heard a cry on the evening air, a wolf howl. It might have been Fell, or it might not, but it reminded him of the many dangers that lurked in the mountains. He suddenly stood up.\n\n\"Alina,\" he called nervously, and the young storyteller started to walk quickly in the direction they had both gone, \"wait for me.\"\n\nFell was running fast through the trees. It was so good to be on the move again, and with a sense of purpose." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The girl's journey had begun in earnest and he was bound to her, but the presence of the Sikla, the human male, had unsettled him deeply. The young man's eyes had always looked at him so accusingly, and Fell had known that Catalin did not like having a wild wolf as company.\n\nBut there was something else. With many of the other humans Fell had been able, for snatches of time at least, to look suddenly into their minds and see their thoughts with the Sight. Yet he had tried to do it with Catalin on the first night they had left the blacksmith's den and been quite unable.\n\nIt was as if Catalin was blocking him somehow, and it had made Fell angry and frustrated, for he'd had a reason to want to search the lad's mind. He wanted to find out what kind of human the boy really was. If he was more than a Sikla, a Dragga even, and what he knew of the world." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If they should trust him in the wild.\n\nFell swung his head and spotted a familiar silhouette running ahead of him at a distance.\n\n\"Alina.\"\n\nAlina was bearing her sword at her back and carrying that bow as she jogged swiftly through the undergrowth, trying to make it above the tree line before the night thickened. She was still smarting at some of the things Catalin had said, and hated his fear and distrust, but she was also bitterly guilty at all that had happened—that old, consuming guilt that was almost a friend.\n\nShe felt Fell's presence at her side, twenty yards away, and looked across to see the black wolf running parallel with her. She smiled warmly, and they both quickened their pace in the forest. Alina breathed deeply and steadily, and both of them sprang over logs and jumped ditches as they ran, ran as fast as Vasilissa." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage target: 'thoughts' must be used 3 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Alina,\" came Fell's searching thoughts, \"we go to the Stone Den now?\"\n\n\"That way at least, Fell. To a palace beyond the castle and to this human lord I spoke of, and his Drappa. I am connected to her, Fell, by blood. They are my lands.\"\n\n\"Blood connects us all, human, like the rivers that flow through the wild.\"\n\n\"But I fear it,\" came Alina's honest thoughts. \"I know now that my father is dead, and that my mother has married the man who tried to kill me. I think she tried to kill me, too, after my half brother disappeared.\"\n\nThe wolf was thinking of how often the Varg tried to usurp one another in their fights to mate in the wild.\n\n\"And the human lord knows of your presence now, and hunts you?\" he asked.\n\nFell could still remember the taste of human blood on his lips, the soldier's blood, and it sent strange thoughts dancing through his mind and suddenly made him think nervously again of his vision of killing Alina." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes, Fell. And something happened in the forge. I looked into water and saw visions there. I think of the future.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You have the Sight, Alina.\"\n\nAlina nodded gravely. \"Did you find your Guardian?\" she said.\n\nThe wolf shook his head. Fell had learned nothing more from the Lera of the Guardian.\n\n\"Whatever our destiny is, Fell, I must not be frightened. And I have nowhere else to go. I've learnt some skills at least, with the dear blacksmith.\"\n\n\"I see it, Alina. Feel it, too. And I've been sharpening my teeth on stone and bone. But if you mean to do this thing, perhaps you need some help.\"\n\n\"Help?\"\n\n\"From a human pack. We hunt better in packs, I've learnt that now.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There's no help for it, Fell. I'm alone, though I have you.\"\n\n\"This boy though, he comes too? He makes me nervous.\"\n\n\"I don't know, Fell.\"\n\nFell suddenly had the feeling that the link between them, the link made by the Sight, was straining apart. It was as if Alina was suddenly shielding her own feelings for Catalin from him, and it startled Fell, and made him question, jealously.\n\n\"It's good to be with you again, human cub.\"\n\n\"And to be with you, Fell FastPaw,\" answered Alina's racing mind.\n\nIt was good, for as they ran together through the forest Alina suddenly felt more alive than she had ever before." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was as if her eyes were as strong as Fell's in the twilight, and she could smell everything about her. Leaf and fern, the richness of the swelling spring earth, the moss and lichen on the rocks in their streams. They broke from the tree line at speed, the wolf and the bold young woman, and came to a hill above a little valley. As they both stopped, panting but happy, and looked down, they saw a small roe deer, grazing on the sward.\n\n\"I'll hunt it for us, Alina.\"\n\n\"No, Fell. Let me.\"\n\n\"What, Drappa?\" came Fell's amused yet questioning thoughts. \"Will you chase it down, then take it with your teeth?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage target: 'human' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina had slipped the bow from her shoulder and drawn an arrow.\n\n\"No, wolf. Watch and learn. This is the power of the human. The art of his mind. His scientia.\"\n\nThe girl strung the arrow on the bowstring, but Lescu had not had time to teach her any skill with the thing, and although Alina thought herself something of a warrior already, she soon got a sharp shock. The bow gave an awkward twang, the arrow, neither true nor straight, fell far short of the roe buck, though close enough to send it darting away in fright, and Alina felt a violent jolt on her hand from the string, that cut her skin and made her thumb bleed.\n\n\"Aggh.\"\n\n\"Why do you try these foolish human tools, Alina? We should trust to stealth, and speed, to tooth and claw. To nature.\"\n\n\"Perhaps because I do not have them at my beck and call, like you,\" thought the young woman almost sadly, wondering again what nature really was. \"Perhaps because I am only what I am. I might have taken it with my sword though.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'human' (2x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"If you had ever got close enough, yes. And you would not have got close enough, human, for animals have powerful instincts. But do not lose heart, Alina WovenWord. I'll chase it down for us, with nature's power.\"\n\nFell was gone in a flash of streaking black, and in the distance he took the deer. On his way back though, carrying the creature's limp body in his mouth like a gift from a huge cat, he spotted the red flowers on the hill—a fire—near to where he had left Alina, and two humans sitting by it. Catalin had found Alina on the mountain again, and for the time being they had made peace.\n\nSo they began their march in earnest, that strange little triumvirate, sensing that Vladeran's soldiers were following them into the wild, but going to meet the lord himself in his halls of stone. Often Catalin walked apart from the other two, still fearing and distrusting this bond between human and wolf. Often Fell walked alone too, guarding them from the mountaintops like a wild sentry, although he prowled their fires in the night, at once distrustful of the young man and fearful for the girl, and watching for wild Putnar amongst the trees.\n\nAs they went, not once did Catalin and Alina tell each other a story, but instead they looked out from the mountains, and like a flickering dream, those wayfarers saw evidence of what was happening in the real world of men, and the wars that had indeed lit the lands beyond the forest once more, like a furious flame." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the valleys they saw soldiers on the march, raising high the waving banners of Moldova and Wallachia and Castelu, woven with the crests of King Stefan or Draculea, or the symbol of a castle on a mountaintop. On the hills they saw flames licking about wooden churches, and in the foothills they found the bodies of men; of Turk, of Vladeran's soldiers, or Draculea's and King Stefan's armies, left alone beneath the thoughtless skies, to feed the Lera and the earth. If this was the world of men, then its magic was a terrible thing.\n\nThey crossed rivers and streams, they skirted wide mountain lakes, they scrambled into rocky caves and crept along high, narrow passes, and as they went they felt the spring beginning to swell towards summer, and Lera return in abundance to the land. Rabbit and hare, deer and boar, otter and badger crept out of their hides and their holes and walked once more unafraid of the winter, as the trees opened their buds and rustled, and birds filled the thronging skies. All the while Fell asked of the Guardian, but the animals just shook their heads in fear at a wolf who could talk to them.\n\nStill Catalin watched the heir to Castelu and the wolf with a wary eye. Many times Alina would suggest that Catalin draw closer to Fell, and try to understand him, for she felt that he too might have the Sight, but Catalin would always shake his head angrily." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina, on the other hand, seemed to grow closer and closer to the wolf, and often Catalin would wake by their fire and see her standing alone by the black wolf's side and looking out on the land. Sometimes the wolf would creep down to where she lay and wake her, by growling softly or licking her face. Sometimes he would shake his tail so happily when he returned from a hunt and saw Alina, that he would remind the lad of Gwell.\n\nOne sun Catalin drifted away and became separated from the other two. They had been walking up ahead, and he found himself thinking bitterly of Lescu and his home. His time with Fell had dulled his own instincts for danger in the wild, and as he was walking down a narrow gorge, he heard a furious growl.\n\nAt first Catalin thought it was Fell, but to his horror he saw a gigantic grey wolf, his front paws up on a stone, watching him coldly. He did not move, but around him a small wolf pack was suddenly springing down on Catalin with the bloodlust in their eyes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The young man turned and began to run, but he stumbled on a branch and fell badly, grazing his hands and face. He picked himself up again and ran on, pushing away the pain, but the ravening wolves had almost closed on him. Then Catalin saw a shape coming towards him. Fell's tail was up, but there was no fear in his yellow gold eyes. He ran straight past him at the newcomers, and suddenly the air was filled with the growls and snarls of fighting wolves. Fell was driving them back.\n\nCatalin cowered in horror. It was as if the wolves were all around and Fell was in the centre, fighting for his life, and Catalin's too." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell swung left and right, growling and snarling and snapping, here catching skin and fur with his powerful teeth, there dragging his claws across a throat. One of the attackers he caught in the eye, blinding it, and another he bit so hard in the tail that it let out such a yelp that it sounded as if it were dying.\n\nTwo things helped Fell against so many attackers: the strength and vigour that the black wolf had earned alone in the wild, and his own dark reputation. For this group of Vengerid, for so they were, had heard of Fell of the Mountaintops, and it had made them fight with far more fear and far less tenacity than they would normally have done. So at last Fell saw all six of the attacking wolves cower back before his fury.\n\n\"Bravo,\" said the big wolf who was still watching from the rock. He raised his great grey tail, as grey and shiny as the strange shock of raised fur that ran right up the length of his rippling spine. It ran towards a neck as thick as an oxen's, and a muzzle both brutal and primitive." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Who are you?\" growled Fell.\n\n\"They call me Jalgan, Dragga. And I commend you on your skill.\"\n\nJalgan. The leader of the Vengerid.\n\n\"What do you want?\" said Fell warily.\n\n\"Nothing. We go to increase our pack and like a fight to entertain us. Though I am not in the mood today. You should join us.\"\n\nFell said nothing. He was thinking of Tarlar.\n\n\"What is your name?\" asked Jalgan.\n\n\"Fell.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jalgan smiled and nodded. \"I have heard of you. As one alone who might be worthy to take my challenge. Will you, Fell?\"\n\nFell looked back at Catalin and then Jalgan. \"The fights of the Varg do not concern me,\" he answered.\n\n\"A pity,\" said Jalgan, smiling. \"I think it would be a better fight than the old fool who has taken it. Huttser.\"\n\nFell's ears came up immediately, and he almost snarled.\n\n\"Huttser?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You know of him?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "said Jalgan. \"He was not a bad fighter, I'll give him that, for one of such age. Twice he fought off my scouts and now has taken the challenge. The only wolf ever to do so.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The others were growling scornfully, and Fell felt pride through his muscles as he heard that his father had shown his power again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It won't be much of a fight though, and I fear the old dog will be dead before I reach him, with the wound he has already.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Wound?\" whispered Fell dangerously.\n\n\"My scouts wounded him badly. And he's old, the oldest Varg in the lands beyond the forest, so they say, so it will not heal well. I fear I will be deprived of my glory. They say this Huttser is dying.\"\n\nFell felt a terrible weakness enter him. His father was dying, and the others were in danger too. Tarlar.\n\n\"I don't think I shall take his challenge. I have pack members to seek out,\" said Jalgan. \"But when he goes, I will fall on his pack like a ravening vulture and take back my rightful mate.\"\n\nFell felt a pang in his heart, but he knew that now was not the time to show weakness, and he had to maintain his dominance.\n\n\"Then why don't you go, Jalgan?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "he cried. \"And leave others in peace.\"\n\nThe leader glared at him, but Jalgan turned and led the Vengerid away, with swinging muzzles and angry growls. Fell shook himself and turned towards Catalin.\n\nThe lad was picking himself up and Fell walked towards him and lifted his tail, but he stopped and did not go any closer. If Catalin had had the Gift, he might have been able to read the black wolf's scornful, angry thoughts.\n\n\"Don't look grateful, human,\" Fell thought coldly. \"I did this because I could and for her, not for you, although the Dragga of a true pack protects all. Even a Sikla like you.\"\n\nWith that Fell turned scornfully and went bounding back towards Alina, who had no knowledge of what had happened at all as she walked far up ahead, her eyes ever fixed on Castelu and her home." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That night Catalin sat by their fire, watching the black wolf strangely, and for the first time, he felt grateful to the creature." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Just for a moment he wished that he had Alina's power to reach him and thank him in some way. Yet the young man was frightened too.\n\nFell's thoughts, meanwhile, were consumed with what he had heard of Huttser. It made the wolf growl and whimper in his sleep, and when he woke his mind was turning towards that valley beyond the Great Waterfall. The valley where Kar had said his father and mother were. And Tarlar too.\n\nAs they travelled on, Alina had the sense that they were getting closer to their goal, a sense far stronger than her youthful feelings of things about to happen, and she tried to talk to Fell in her mind, but the black wolf was distant and preoccupied now. By evening, twelve days later, he had not hunted, and they had not eaten more than a rabbit that Alina had managed to snare.\n\nThey made a simple camp on the edge of an elm forest, near a stream, and Catalin lit a fire." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina had taught him the technique with the sticks, and the young man and woman both wondered if Fell would hunt, but he sat above them on a slope, wrapped in his thoughts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Catalin got up and wandered towards the stream to drink, but as he cupped his hands, he found the water strangely discoloured, and when he sipped it, he suddenly spat it out again. It tasted foul, and they slept that night with hungry bellies.\n\nIt was Fell who woke first. Dawn was breaking all around them, sending shards of brilliant pink splintering through the mauve. Fell got up and yawned, a huge wolf yawn, and stretched himself. Then, with a great shake of his coat, thinning again now to a sleek spring gleam, he lifted his black tail and padded down the slope towards the two young people, to wake his friend.\n\nAlina was wrapped in her blanket by the smoking embers of the fire, her sword and bow by her side. She was calm and peaceful in her sleep, and the wolf noticed her pretty nose twitching slightly, as the dreams passed through her mind." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell swung his head. Catalin had stretched and turned over in his own sleep. The wolf did not like the young man, but he was suddenly not sorry that he had protected Alina's friend from the Vengerid.\n\nFell's stomach rumbled though and he realised how hungry he was, and just then the oddest thing happened. He caught a powerful scent on the breeze, filling his nostrils. He knew immediately what it was, and that it shouldn't have been there. It was fresh meat. Not the normal smell of a living animal, which would have raised Fell's instincts for the hunt, but the smell of new blood." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell's ears came up, but he did not wake Alina. Instead he turned towards the trees, where the scent was coming from. The wolf was still sleepy, and exhausted with worrying all night about his father. Perhaps it was that which made him sloppy and careless as he reached the edge of the wood. The scent of meat masked the smell of man that lurked behind it.\n\nThe blood scent was very powerful now, irresistible to a hungry wolf, and as Fell looked into the shadows of the wood he saw the carcass hanging in the crook of a tree. It was a dead deer, and it was just possible that a lynx had taken it and left it there to return to later and feed.\n\nFell knew that this was not so as soon as he stepped towards it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Suddenly he felt the cords beneath his pads, before they moved under him and around his back legs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Two humans had emerged from the trees ahead, holding in their hands the end of the rope that they were pulling at violently." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell found himself spinning round, and he was lifted into the air by his back paws." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The black wolf let out a cry, half bark, half howl, as much to alert Alina and Catalin as to frighten the attackers.\n\nThe wolf was suddenly hanging in midair from the lasso, hidden in the grass. Alina heard the desperate snarls and yelps in her sleep and woke with a start. Instinctively, she grabbed for her sword and sprang up and towards the sound. She saw Fell hanging there and three more men racing towards her from the cover of the forest.\n\n\"Quick, Catalin,\" she cried, \"an ambush.\"\n\nAs Alina swung round, she was startled to see that where Catalin had been lying there was just his blanket. The young man had bolted." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Add this exact quote somewhere appropriate: \"Hush, Fell. Don't struggle. It will hurt you.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina felt a sword tip at her back, between her shoulder blades, and she heard a familiar voice.\n\n\"Put down your weapon, changeling.\"\n\nThinking of Fell as much as herself, Alina lowered her sword slowly and heavy arms grasped her, binding her wrists behind her back.\n\n\"So we have you again,\" said the soldier—one of the soldiers from Lescu's cottage—and smiled as they spun her round. \"And no wolf demon to help you now?\"\n\nAlina glared at this human, but felt that ache and heard Fell's thoughts.\n\n\"Alina, forgive me. I should have sensed the trap.\"\n\n\"Hush, Fell. Don't struggle. It will hurt you.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There's nothing for it now, human cub. No one to help. And that boy, that cowardly Sikla. He's run for his life. Perhaps this has all been a trap.\"\n\nAlina felt an awful sadness, and a shame for Catalin too.\n\n\"But, Fell, can't you try and get to the soldiers? Control them with the Sight.\"\n\n\"I can't, Alina. I've told you, I can't control humans.\"\n\n\"What are you looking at, witch?\" cried the soldier, clasping Alina's chin. \"Your familiar? The devil in the shape of a wolf, eh.\"\n\n\"If my hands were free, you wouldn't touch me like this,\" hissed Alina angrily." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That I've seen, changeling,\" said the soldier, \"so your hands shall never be free again. And as for this beast, take a good, long look at him. Your last, Baba Yaga.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "They began dragging Alina towards Fell, hanging hopelessly from that rope like a living trophy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina wondered were Catalin was, but realised that Fell had been right." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The frightened boy had probably run far away by now, even faster than Vasilissa. She was glad at least that Catalin was free and safe. It had been her fault that Lescu had died and that poor Catalin had been drawn into a story that he wanted nothing to do with.\n\n\"What do you want with us now?\" she whispered.\n\n\"Only your deaths,\" answered the soldier coldly, \"here in the forest, and long overdue. Say farewell then to your friend. He goes first, but you'll follow the wolf into the darkness.\"\n\n\"Oh, Fell, I'm sorry I've brought you to this.\"\n\nFell was growling and his body twisting and struggling in the air.\n\n\"Kill the demon. Now.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The soldier was looking at one of his men, but the other seemed frightened and hesitant.\n\n\"What's wrong, man?\"\n\n\"The Helgra,\" answered the man timidly. \"We're in their territory now, and they revere wolves. Their elder lives in the village below the castle to the south, where the baby was stolen.\"\n\nAlina looked up. He was talking about the village from where her half brother had been taken. Then it was a Helgra village.\n\n\"It might go hard for us if they knew we'd killed a wolf in their lands.\"\n\n\"Don't be foolish,\" said the leader scornfully." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Vladeran broke the Helgra's power long ago. These are no longer their lands, and they'd not turn a hand against us.\"\n\nStill the soldier hesitated, for in truth he was just as frightened at getting anywhere near Fell, and the leader turned to another.\n\n\"You do it then,\" he grunted. \"Cut the wolf's throat. Take out his entrails.\"\n\nThe other man had few reservations, and Alina dropped her eyes as his sword came swinging round towards the black wolf. Fell had no escape. It was finished.\n\nShe heard it before she saw it, a strange swishing through the air. Alina looked up and saw the arrow pass straight through the soldier's throat and out through his neck." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His eyes never even closed as he hit the ground and his sword fell from his grasp." }, { "from": "human", "value": "As quick as lightning another arrow took the soldier who had mentioned the Helgra, straight in the heart." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He died without even knowing who had finished him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The others were turning right and left, twisting their swords, looking in vain for their invisible assailants." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The wolf,\" hissed the leader. \"Finish it. If it's the Helgra, this devil summons them to its aid.\"\n\nAs the archer heard the order, from just behind the brow of the verge, he tried to calm his breathing and, with an expert hand, strung another arrow. He raised the bow and took aim once more.\n\nThe streaking arrow bolt took the soldier holding Fell's rope deep in the gut, and although it would be a slow death, it ended his fighting forever. He let go of the rope, and Fell came crashing to the ground, just safe of a slicing blade. But before Fell could struggle up and launch himself at the closest soldier, the man was dead, too. The archer's arrow had searched out the hard red muscle of another angry heart." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There were only two soldiers left now, the leader and the last of his men, who was killed by an arrow through his neck." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The leader grabbed a sword and raced at Alina. She was defenceless, her hands bound, but the soldier never reached her. The hidden archer had released a last arrow, which grazed Alina's cheek in its flight. She froze and felt the leader stiffen behind her, then crash to the ground too, the arrow in his face.\n\nAlina's heart was thundering, and all she could think was that the mysterious Helgra had saved them.\n\n\"Who are you?\" she called. \"Show yourselves!\"\n\nAs the figure rose on the brow of the little hill, Alina Sculcuvant gasped in utter astonishment.\n\n\"Catalin!\" she cried." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The young man stood there, her bow in his hand." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Weave this into your narrative: \"I... I'm sorry. But the bow. Why didn't you tell me?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Catalin began to walk slowly towards them, as Fell gave a low, approving growl. The young man bent down wordlessly and took the sword from the dead leader's hand, then, with decision, cut Alina's bonds. She was free too.\n\n\"Catalin,\" she whispered, rubbing her wrists painfully. \"But how? I thought you'd... \"\n\n\"Run away?\" said the young man, thrusting the sword into the ground. \"Because you think me a coward, Alina WovenWord?\"\n\n\"I... I'm sorry. But the bow. Why didn't you tell me?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Tell you what? That I've a skill too? Or that for years I've honed it on my own in the hills?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Ensure 'weeks' appears 2 time(s) in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Of course. Why didn't you join your father and me in the training?\"\n\n\"So as not to encourage this path you've taken,\" answered Catalin sadly. \"Perhaps I would have thought differently if I'd known you are the heir to Castelu. But Father never wanted me to be a warrior, Alina. I think it would have broken his heart. He hated what he'd seen.\"\n\n\"But all these weeks in the wild. You could have hunted for us.\"\n\n\"I didn't want to touch my bow,\" said Catalin.\n\n\"Your bow?\"\n\n\"I made that bow myself, but these past weeks I've been too angry at Father's death to use it.\"\n\nAlina remembered Lescu's warning about hate." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She thought how much taller Catalin looked, and how fine and intelligent were his blue green eyes." }, { "from": "system", "value": "At some point in your response, insert this verbatim: \"but you're surrounded by a kind of magic. Although now I know that there is none of Baba Yaga's witchcraft in it.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Besides,\" said Catalin, shrugging, \"you had your wolf to hunt for you, didn't you?\"\n\nHe was staring at Fell. He held the wolf's gaze now, and Fell suddenly looked away.\n\n\"Fell saved my life too,\" he whispered, \"and for that I'll always thank him.\"\n\nFell began walking towards the young man, his tail lowered. He padded straight up to Catalin Fierar, and then, very gently, the wolf licked his hand, just as he had done to Alina in the forest. Here were a Dragga and a Drappa indeed.\n\n\"You say you're no changeling,\" said Catalin, as Fell padded away and lay down at a distance, watching them both, \"but you're surrounded by a kind of magic. Although now I know that there is none of Baba Yaga's witchcraft in it.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No,\" said Alina softly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"When I touch the wolf's mind, I realise that Fell thinks his own heart black, yet he struggles towards the light too. His heart has been wounded badly by life.\"\n\n\"Then the three of us have something in common, Alina,\" said Catalin. Alina gave a little cry of gratitude and compassion, and threw herself on his neck, kissing him on the lips.\n\nCatalin held her, and in that moment he felt prouder and happier than he ever had in his life. He looked into her beautiful hazel eyes and felt the fear of it and the excitement too, as if he were travelling to another country.\n\nThe young man had often walked out in the dewy mornings, with the soft, fresh grass wet under his bare feet. He had watched the morning mists kiss the mountaintops and the sun glitter on dancing rivers, and felt the wild mystery of the forest. He had seen horses drop their fowls at dawn, and watched them struggle into painful life, and held newborn chicks fluttering in his tender hands." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He had hunted the Lera too with his bow, though always with respect for the animals he took. But none of it did he think as rare and beautiful a magic as the creature that he now held in his arms.\n\n\"Thank you, dear Catalin,\" she said as he stood back. She held his hand.\n\n\"Don't thank me for anything, Alina,\" Catalin said softly, feeling that they walked as equals again. \"And I'm sorry, Alina, about your parents. We have much to face still, and I've been thinking we need some help.\"\n\n\"Yes, that's what Fell thinks. But from who?\"\n\n\"The Helgra, Alina. I heard what that soldier said and they must hate Vladeran as much as you. Perhaps we should go to this village below the castle on the mountaintop.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes,\" said Alina, stroking Catalin's hand, \"the village where it all began.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"My father told me about the Helgra. He said they're mercenaries, so perhaps we can buy their assistance.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Buy it with what?\" said Alina in surprise.\n\nCatalin was reaching into his pocket, and suddenly he pulled out the bag of gold he had taken from the dresser before he left.\n\n\"There's this. If it helps you, Alina WovenWord, you're welcome to it.\"\n\nAlina smiled and nodded gratefully, but her fear returned.\n\n\"When they spoke of them in Moldov, they said terrible things, Catalin. That they worship the dark one too.\"\n\nCatalin had been emboldened by what he had done, but his eyes flickered fearfully, and as Fell watched them there together, these strange humans, he whimpered and laid his head on his paws and sighed.\n\nFell saw them below him in the coming light, Alina WovenWord and Catalin Fierar, walking down a narrow gorge." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He growled softly, and not without jealousy, for they looked very fine together, but he was glad that his human friends were safe, as he shadowed them on the mountain. They had travelled far together, trying to keep their spirits up by telling each other stories again, and now they were nearly at the Stone Den.\n\nThe sun was rising as he reached their side, and Alina's sword was strung across her back, Catalin's bow on his arm, as they saw it high on the craggy precipice opposite them—the outline of a vast, ruined castle. The castle that had become the very symbol of Castelu, for it lay in Castelu's domain.\n\nDawn was spreading around its sombre walls and the great stone stairway, which rose up and up towards it through the vaulting pines. The huge weathered steps sparkled in the sunlight, and the splinters of light that were reaching out from the forest below it wrapped themselves around a little village, nestling just beneath the cliffs.\n\n\"At last, Alina,\" growled Fell proudly, \"the Stone Den.\"\n\n\"Yes, Fell. We're nearing my home.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The wolf's black muzzle dropped to the sight far below them—a group of wooden dens with smoke curling from rooftops." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That village, Alina. The Varg took your brother from there, and there I returned him too.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell was suddenly thinking of something else." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The cave where he and Larka had been born." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was nearby too, and he wondered if he could remember where it was." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's the Helgra village,\" said Alina aloud, almost remembering herself.\n\nFell growled as he thought of his long connection with humans, and how he had led Alina and Catalin back to this place. And as he realised that everything Skart had told Kar seemed to be coming true, the worries that had begun to consume him returned. Fell seemed to be on a path that was guided by more than his own will, and if he trusted the visions of the Sight, it was a path he already feared the end of. A path that led to Alina's death at his own jaws.\n\nFell looked up again at the castle high above, and felt desperately small. At least he knew that the tales that had been told of that fearful place, tales filled with darkness and superstition, that had kept men's hearts in the shadows in Transylvania for generations, had been a lie. Fell knew from his own history that there was nothing up there at all, no demons or vampires, nothing but human brick and stone, and he was glad of it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He lifted his muzzle and howled, and when his song was finished, the place was no longer quite as lonely as it had been." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell turned to Alina, and she spoke again with her thoughts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"This Guardian, Fell. You still have not found him?\"\n\n\"No, Alina.\"\n\n\"Then perhaps he doesn't exist.\"\n\n\"Perhaps not.\"\n\n\"Or perhaps you're the Guardian, Fell. You've guarded me.\"\n\nThe wolf growled at the strange thought.\n\n\"But now we must face this alone,\" said Alina, as boldly as she could, \"and have courage together.\"\n\nFell's sleek black fur was suddenly quivering." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh, dear Alina.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What is it, Fell?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I've feared to tell you before, but it's time to now. Not we, Alina. I've brought you safely this far at least, and we've shared the wonders of the wild, but now I must leave you.\"\n\nFell's mind was filled with guilt, and Alina swung round and stared in amazement at her friend. She felt sick to her soul.\n\n\"Leave us, Fell? But why?\"\n\nFell's shadowed thoughts gave only part of the answer, and he whimpered softly.\n\n\"My father, Huttser, is dying.\"\n\n\"Dying?\"\n\nAlina felt for the dear wolf." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Thinking of her own dead father, she wondered again if death and misfortune surrounded her wherever she went." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That Vengerid pack told me about his wounds,\" came Fell's trembling thoughts, \"and he has challenged their leader. Perhaps he's gone already, but I must hurry to him now. I've kept my word at least, and brought you to the Stone Den, while the Great Waterfall where his pack are is not too far from here. Besides, Alina, perhaps a wild wolf has spent too long near your kind.\"\n\nAlina felt something struggling in Fell's thoughts, something she could not see, and it frightened her as she stared at her friend.\n\n\"But without you, Fell? What will we ever... \"\n\n\"You'll be safer now you've the Dragga to aid you.\"\n\nThe three of them stood there, just little specks in the immensity of that beautiful, mysterious landscape, and Alina wrestled with the loneliness that had suddenly come on her again. Darker fears were around her too, fears of where her journey would take her next, and what it would tell her of her mother. Yet the young woman stood resolute.\n\n\"The Helgra,\" thought Alina suddenly, shielding the sorrow in her heart." }, { "from": "system", "value": "⚠️ Required: Use 'revere' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"They revere the wolf, Fell. They're friends to your kind.\"\n\n\"Man revere the wolf?\" came Fell's growling mind. \"That I'd see with my own eyes.\"\n\n\"Then come with us, dear Fell, just to the village at least. We may need you there to help gain the Helgra's trust, if you can wait a sun or two more to see your father.\"\n\nAlina felt guilty at trying to delay him, yet it was true that she needed him to face these mysterious men.\n\n\"Perhaps your presence will help, Fell, although it may be dangerous.\"\n\nFell was torn, but at last he answered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Very well then, human cub. One or two more suns I can spare, and so will go with you as far as this village, but no further. Then I must be gone to my own kind. I've spent too long away.\"\n\nAlina was desperately relieved, but miserable too that their parting had only been delayed awhile.\n\nIt took the travellers another day to descend the mountain, and at first their path took them away from the Helgra village and down onto a stony road. It was night by the time they reached a large stone building set back from the road, with stabling for horses and smoke curling from its chimney. It was an inn. The comforting glow of firelight shone in its grimy windows, and the human sounds of song and laughter crept out into the night.\n\nAlina and Catalin left Fell in the field beyond, by a willow tree with branches that trailed like a witch's hair, and stowed their weapons in the grass for him to guard, then drew up their hoods, approached the inn, and pushed open the door.\n\nThe shadowy room was thick with smoke and full of rowdy drinkers, as boys and serving girls carried tankards of frothing ale about the place." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required dialogue to include (maintain exact wording): \"Draculea and Lord Vladeran ride to aid him again?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They all looked up warily as the two young friends entered, but seeing little threat in the hooded figures, they returned to their conversations.\n\nCatalin bought two mugs of beer, and they sat in a corner by the window, at a low wooden table, listening to the talk and a storyteller in the corner, who was spinning a yarn rather badly, much to the anger and irritation of the others. It was strange indeed to be amongst people again. A couple of soldiers were playing at dice nearby, and one of them began to speak of the wars.\n\n\"It goes hard for the King,\" he said. \"The Turk push him back to the borders of Moldova.\"\n\n\"Stefan needs more men,\" said the other soldier. \"Draculea and Lord Vladeran ride to aid him again?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"They send soldiers, yes, and so the King had better watch his back.\"\n\n\"True enough. He should call on the Helgra too.\"\n\nThe other soldier looked up in surprise, and let out a great roar of laughter.\n\n\"The Helgra? Vladeran's long turned them into a pack of bleating sheep.\"\n\n\"Wisssst,\" hissed the first. \"Don't say it so loudly, man. This road skirts Helgra lands, and some in here may be Helgra spies.\"\n\nSome of the drinkers in the tavern were indeed looking their way, but the other soldier stared challengingly around the room.\n\n\"What of it?\" he said loudly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What has a Saxon soldier to fear from Magyar scum?\"\n\n\"You know the stories of them,\" murmured the first soldier.\n\n\"Some say they eat human flesh, and torture any who enter their lands, then strip their bones and put their heads on stakes to warn off intruders. They're not Magyar alone. They've Dacian and Roman blood.\"\n\nAlina's eyes were flickering nervously at Catalin. This fence sounded like the one round Baba Yaga's house. She suddenly feared the help they sought.\n\n\"Fairy tales to frighten children,\" said the other soldier. \"The Helgra have nothing now, not even honour. Vladeran razed his vassals' homes, and burnt their villages. He stole their livestock, sent half of them to rot in his dungeons, and confiscated their weapons too. Vladeran even killed their blacksmiths, so that they can forge no more, and they're starving.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Catalin found himself staring into the flickering firelight nearby, thinking bitterly of his dead father, and the forge where they had worked so happily together. How strange and terrible life could be. But inside, Alina's emotions were mixed, for if she had hoped that their friendship with the wolf might have brought Helgra aid, it sounded as if there was little aid to be gained. Yet it made it less fearful approaching their pack.\n\n\"Well, perhaps there's some justice in it,\" said the first soldier, \"if what they say of the Helgra has any truth.\"\n\n\"Justice in Vladeran and Romana's lands? You're drunk.\"\n\nThe heir to Castelu felt a sharp pang in her heart and with it a new emotion. Guilt for the peoples of Castelu." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The soldier laughed again, taking a great draught of beer and hurling two dice into the box, which clattered against the side and came up on three." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There's no justice in the lands beyond the forest,\" the soldier went on. \"Stefan's too hard-pressed and his nobles too greedy. The Courts are a mockery, and all do as they please.\"\n\n\"Perhaps the Orders shall bring some justice,\" said the first soldier suddenly. \"The Order of the Griffin, or the Dragon. They're sworn to protecting the world forever.\"\n\nThe man's voice had dropped to a whisper as he mentioned the secret Orders, and Alina turned her head sharply. The soldier had leaned forwards.\n\n\"They say the Griffin's leader has heard of Vladeran's ways, and wants accounting.\"\n\n\"Who is he?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The soldiers huddled even closer over the box, and the one who had talked of accounting picked up the dice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Some say the Impaler himself, Draculea, but such things are not for us. His identity has always been a hard-held secret.\"\n\n\"Who cares if there's no justice, when there's gold to be had. This girl they hunt. The bounty's risen to a hundred gold pieces.\"\n\nCatalin shot a glance at Alina immediately, and she stirred warily in her seat.\n\n\"Well, we've no time to win it. Hey, you, what are you staring at?\"\n\nThe man was glaring at Alina angrily, for he had suddenly noticed her listening.\n\n\"Nothing sir,\" she answered as gruffly as she could, shielding her face from the firelight and taking a swig of beer.\n\nThe men went on with their game, and Catalin and Alina finished their drinks quickly and slipped outside. Fell was still by the willow, and they gathered their weapons, and were about to make camp for the night when they heard a rumble in the heavens and the lowering clouds above them broke." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'stream' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The downpour was torrential, and they ran into the lee of the cliff for better shelter, but as they came to a stream, rising steadily all the time, Alina noticed that something strange had come over Fell. The wolf kept sniffing the ground and whining.\n\n\"What is it, friend?\" asked her mind, as she noticed that the stream looked a sickly brown colour. \"Is it the Helgra?\"\n\nFell didn't answer her.\n\nSuddenly Alina heard the sound of a little waterfall, and Fell went as rigid as a pointer, his tail raised and his muzzle pressed forwards. Alina was greatly relieved to see what Fell was staring at, for they were all soaked, and there in the rock face, partly obscured by a tree, was the entrance to a cave." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She rushed forwards with Catalin, and they found that it was warm and dry inside, and a good place to sleep.\n\n\"What's wrong, Fell?\" she asked again, as Alina saw the wolf still hanging back in the pouring rain. \"There are no Lera here.\"\n\nFell blinked and padded forwards, brushing past her and standing in the cave mouth.\n\n\"No Lera, Alina,\" he answered sadly. \"But many memories. For this is where Larka and I were born. Our birthing den.\"\n\nAlina was amazed, and the three of them sat together in the cave that night, under the stone roof where Fell had been born, wondering at the strangeness of it. Fell didn't talk to Alina at first, and the mystery somehow added to the fear that the young people now had for the Helgra, despite their need for help." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Shouldn't we make some kind of plan, Alina,\" asked Catalin nervously as they huddled together, \"of what we tell them? From what those soldiers were saying, trust isn't strong in these parts.\"\n\nWhen Fell had first spoken of finding a pack, Alina had clutched at the idea, as she had always wanted real friends. Then Catalin had suggested going amongst the Helgra, and it had seemed the right course. But now Alina was not so sure. She had kept moving towards Castelu, longing to know the truth of her mother, but thinking of her rightful inheritance too. She hardly knew what path she was on.\n\n\"I don't know, Catalin.\"\n\n\"Do we take Fell with us? If they revere the wolf.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina looked at her friend lying there, but Fell was lost in his own thoughts and memories." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Not yet. I can't ask him to walk amongst humans, until we're sure of them. But he'll be ready.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"This bounty for a girl,\" said Catalin. \"If these Helgra are as poor as they say, they may not readily turn down a hundred gold pieces, if they find out who you are.\"\n\nAlina tried to smile.\n\n\"Then again I walk as a boy, Catalin,\" she whispered and her eyes flickered. \"Or a man.\"\n\nAlina had spoken in a tiny voice, a mere whisper, which outside might not have been heard at all, but here in his birthing den the wolf noticed with surprise how Alina's words bounced off the stone walls of the cave, and were magnified so greatly in the echoing chamber that they sounded loud and brave and strong.\n\nWith the dawn they crept out of Fell's birthing den, and down towards the fearful Helgra village. It was in the neck of the valley, ringed by a timber stockade that rose into the morning sky like teeth. Plumes of black wood smoke rose from its humble housetops as they approached, and Alina thought she could see spears placed in the ground near the entrance, and wondered if they were really topped with human heads." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She seemed to remember the place dimly." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word frequency rule: 'thoughts' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell scouted the stockade, and when he returned he nodded his muzzle.\n\n\"All seems quiet enough, Alina,\" he growled. \"Most of the humans seem to be in their dens, and there's a strange, sad air about the place. I fear it.\"\n\n\"We'll go in first then, my friend. It'll be safer and look more natural that way. But come if my thoughts call you, Fell.\"\n\nThe black wolf's yellow gold eyes glittered in agreement. So it was that Catalin and Alina approached the fearful Helgra village, as two young men, side by side, while Fell waited warily on its outskirts, much too close to human dens for his own comfort.\n\nThe smoke seemed to rise like a funeral fire, as they set their nervous feet on the track approaching the village entrance, putting up their hoods and fighting thoughts of being flayed alive. They felt sick to their stomachs as they neared those spears." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Perhaps there's one without a skull on its top,\" whispered Catalin with a grim smile. \"Ready for me.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"For a hero, you mean,\" said Alina, thinking of the story of Baba Yaga's fence and squeezing his arm." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Their path was set, and if it was human heads they expected to see at the tops of the spears, all they found were the skulls of cow and deer." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'their' 3 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was still a gruesome sight, and they were little reassured by the gloom that seemed to hang in the air like the smoke as they passed through the gates.\n\nA group of Helgra children spotted them first. They looked as thin and ragged as urchins, and when they saw two armed visitors walking into the village, they stopped playing with pebbles for marbles and twigs for swords, and gathered round Catalin and Alina, pulling at their clothes. From dirty faces they stared wonderingly at the sword and the bow, their eyes as fat with fear as their bellies were thin with hunger.\n\n\"Have you an elder?\" asked Catalin loudly, to a lanky boy with dirty blond hair. A nod was his only answer, and they were led by the little pack of children to the centre of the village. There was a tangible air of fear and sorrow all around, for many of the grimy houses were boarded up, and there were few animals in sight." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Instead, angry adult faces peered out of darkened windows, and shutters were opened and slammed again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What has Vladeran done?\" whispered Alina bitterly, as they walked. \"It's terrible, Catalin.\"\n\nAs they reached a kind of square, with a well and a barn, and nearby a kind of covered conference place, strange memories flickered through Alina's mind. She was sure she'd been to this place before as a little girl.\n\nThe blond-haired lad ran to a long, thatched house on the side of the square, and was inside for some time, but at last he reemerged with three Helgra adults. As soon as the first saw the bow and sword at their backs, he gave a low whistle, and from all around the square figures appeared like trained sheepdogs, not with swords, but armed well enough with pike and hoe and staff. Catalin and Alina were suddenly surrounded by Helgra men, glaring at them suspiciously.\n\n\"A good start, SkeinTale,\" whispered Catalin, with another grim smile." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The three Helgra adults came forwards. One was an old man, with long white hair and a stooped back, wearing a scrawny wolf cloak around his shoulders, and by the way the second—a thickset man with a powerful, bold face—was helping him, it soon became apparent that the old man was blind. The third figure was thin and lean, with a half beard, and hovered in the background with veiled eyes.\n\n\"You're courageous to walk so openly into our village,\" said the larger man coldly, as Alina and Catalin looked at the pikes around them. \"There was a time when none would have dared do so. The Helgra are fallen into contempt indeed.\"\n\n\"Are you the elder, sir?\" ventured Catalin softly.\n\n\"That I'm not,\" answered the man gruffly, indicating the old, white-haired man at his side. \"My father Ilyan here is elder to the Helgra. The headman of this village, and thus of all the Helgra villages in these parts. I'm his son Ovidu, and this is my younger brother Cascu. Who are you?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Catalin Fierar and Alin Sculcuvant, sir,\" answered Catalin, \"travellers in the world.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What kind of travellers? Soldiers perhaps, though young ones indeed.\"\n\nCatalin's eyes flickered.\n\n\"We're storytellers, sir. Travelling storytellers.\"\n\nAlina smiled and felt a warmth inside her.\n\n\"And what do you do in our village, storyteller?\"\n\nCatalin looked nervously at Alina. He hardly knew how to answer, although he had tried to take the lead.\n\n\"We're hungry, sir, and have come a long road. We seek help, and mean no harm. We've gold.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Catalin had put his hand to his belt, but the elder's first son let go of his father's arm and stepped angrily forwards." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You insult the elder with your filthy coin, storyteller?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No, sir, I only meant... \"\n\n\"And how do we know that you're not really Lord Vladeran's spies,\" said his brother Cascu suddenly, \"come to test our loyalty with your lies, and lead us into a trap? He sets many traps and has many spies. Even amongst our own.\"\n\nHe had a thin, nasal voice and a mean look, and the armed men were muttering and nodding, as Alina wondered if she should call on Fell.\n\n\"And you're hungry, you say?\" snorted Cascu. \"And so come to scavenge perhaps, or steal the last scraps of food from our children's bellies with your lying tales.\"\n\n\"My brother's right,\" said Ovidu. \"All men are hungry, but with the 'justice' of Vladeran's and Romana's rule, we've nothing to spare, so what's your bellyaching to us?\"\n\nAlina stepped forwards now." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She could see that the Helgra were none too pleased to welcome strangers, even travelling storytellers, but she thought of those soldiers playing at dice, and knew she had to take a risk on the gamble of the world. So she spoke, calmly and clearly, refusing to be intimidated by the circle of men.\n\nShe told them that they had crossed the high mountains, struggling for months through bitter weather, returning to the lands beyond, where Alina had been born, and sought to learn all they could of the house of Castelu.\n\nShe could see immediately the angry flame that lit in the men's eyes at the mention of Castelu, so she added hurriedly that they were no friends of Lord Vladeran. It was enough to set the white-haired elder's blind eyes sparking with interest, but all the while Ovidu looked sullen and suspicious, while his brother Cascu was studying their faces with new interest, and clever, darting eyes. Suddenly the old blind man hobbled forwards.\n\n\"You've a young voice, storyteller,\" he said, tilting his head as if listening, \"for one who speaks so boldly.\"\n\nIlyan raised his shaking hands." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'ilyan' 2 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Come here, lad,\" he whispered.\n\nAlina hesitated, fearful of being discovered, but she saw she could not refuse and so stepped forwards. The old man put his hands to her face, and with his sensitive, spindly fingers, for years his only eyes, Ilyan began to examine Alina's features, as she flinched at his touch.\n\n\"Good cheekbones,\" he whispered, \"and a high, intelligent forehead. I hope your heart's as strong. What colour is your hair?\"\n\nAlina paused nervously.\n\n\"Red, sir.\"\n\nIlyan stepped back at that and smiled.\n\n\"And now I do not doubt your courage, for it's brave of a girl to walk like this amongst the Helgra.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"A girl?\" whispered Ovidu. \"Is it true?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was a murmur amongst the assembled men, and Catalin looked nervously at Alina and fingered his bow.\n\nAlina pulled down her hood slowly.\n\n\"Yes, it's true,\" she answered, \"but although my clothes may dissemble, I come with truth in my heart. And on my tongue.\" Alina felt strangely proud as she said it and remembered Ivan's words about truth being her greatest ally.\n\n\"Gold,\" whispered one of the Helgra suddenly. \"Vladeran offers gold for a redheaded woman.\"\n\n\"Hush man,\" snapped Ilyan. \"Would you take Vladeran's filthy gold? Even with a bounty set so low on the head of the heir to the lands of Castelu?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word frequency rule: 'ovidu' × 3" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina flinched and Ovidu swung round.\n\n\"What, Father?\"\n\n\"A girl travelling through the wild to Castelu,\" said the old man, with a delighted chuckle. \"A secret bounty. It's as I long suspected. She's the girl, Alina, the redheaded child, whom they said was lost in the snows, and killed by the Turk. Elu's elder sister.\"\n\n\"Seize them!\" cried Ovidu immediately.\n\nThe men rushed forwards and, before they could react, grabbed hold of Catalin and Alina roughly. Ilyan was muttering though, and swinging round his blind eyes towards his son.\n\n\"No, Ovidu. What are you doing, boy?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Spies, Father. It's a trap indeed. I'll not have you end your days in Vladeran's dungeons. Cascu, her sword.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cascu plucked the blade from Alina's back and handed it to his brother." }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must include the following in quotes somewhere in your response: The rumours about my disappearance are the lies. I am Alina of Castelu, as you say, but it was Lord Vladeran, not Turks, who had me kidnapped long ago, and sent me to be murdered in the snows. I hate him with all my heart, as you do, I think." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We set no traps,\" said Alina angrily. \"The rumours about my disappearance are the lies. I am Alina of Castelu, as you say, but it was Lord Vladeran, not Turks, who had me kidnapped long ago, and sent me to be murdered in the snows. I hate him with all my heart, as you do, I think.\"\n\nThe claim made the men pause, but Cascu glared suspiciously at Alina.\n\n\"You're a storyteller indeed. You've proof of this fable, woman?\"\n\n\"There was a parchment.\" Alina dropped her eyes. \"But it was lost.\"\n\n\"And in times like this, it is too dangerous to believe such nonsense, or let you live,\" growled Ovidu." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Even if it is true, I've no love for the children of Castelu, and none in these times will mourn the deaths of two wandering children.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "As he said it, one of the Helgra cried out." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Look there.\"\n\nThe elder's first son turned, as did the others, and they all gasped in utter astonishment. Through the very centre of the Helgra village, watched by those terrified children, came a lone black wolf.\n\nFell's bushy tail was held high, and he growled as he swung his muzzle left and right, his yellow gold eyes surveying the humans about him, although with a look that was unconcerned, and almost bored. The effect on the Helgra was instantaneous though, and an awed murmur went up amongst them, like a wind.\n\n\"What's happening?\" whispered Ilyan, clutching at the air.\n\n\"The wolf comes amongst us,\" cried an old Helgra woman. \"He walks with the children.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'alina' (2x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ilyan found his older son's arm and grabbed at it.\n\n\"A wolf,\" he whispered. \"It's an omen, Ovidu. A good one. She is the one.\"\n\nFell was truly delighted with the effect he was having on the superstitious Helgra. The ring around Alina and Catalin broke apart, leaving only the two men holding them. Doors had begun to open around the village, and ragged Helgra families emerged, peering in wonder and amazement at the extraordinary scene.\n\nFell padded on, straight past Catalin, brushing his leg with his tail, as Ilyan sniffed at the air. When he reached Alina, the black wolf stopped and looked up at the proud young woman and her now shaken captors." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With a huge yawn that showed his teeth, Fell lay down at Alina WovenWord's feet, licked his lips, and laid his head softly on his paws with a sigh." }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must include the following in quotes somewhere in your response: the black wolf serves the lost heir to Castelu. Release them, instantly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You didn't call, Alina,\" came his thoughts, \"but it felt wrong somehow, so I came.\"\n\n\"The wolf,\" cried Ovidu in astonishment, \"the black wolf serves the lost heir to Castelu. Release them, instantly.\"\n\nThe two Helgra were more than pleased to release the strangers, and jumped back themselves from that black apparition. Alina was going to speak, but Ovidu had already come forwards. He dropped to a knee before the wolf and the girl, and held up Alina's sword by its wolf hilt.\n\n\"Forgive me, storyteller,\" he said humbly, looking nervously at Fell. \"We've seen much suffering, and trust few these days. But if your tale's true, and a wolf serves you, then you've my service, willingly. And the Helgra's. For we honour the Varg as no other animal in the world. Though many animals we honour indeed.\"\n\n\"You know the name of the Varg?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "asked Alina in surprise.\n\nThe elder's son looked up at her, and his eyes were afraid.\n\n\"It's the name the Helgra have used for centuries, Alina of Castelu. Since Dacian times.\"\n\n\"Very well then,\" said Alina. \"Know then that it's the name the wolf uses for their own kind too.\"\n\nOvidu's eyes were full of the mystery of it, though still doubting, but he bowed his head to the storyteller. With that, he suddenly gave a gasp.\n\n\"The mark,\" he hissed, staring now at that sword, and the eagle that had been wrought into the tempered metal by the clever blacksmith." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The eagle?\" said Alina, immediately. \"You know what it means, Ovidu?\"\n\nOvidu rose slowly, looking even more wonderingly at the newcomer.\n\n\"Of course. The opening wings of the steppe eagle are the ancient mark of a Helgra woman.\"\n\n\"Helgra?\" cried Alina in astonishment. \"Is this a story?\"\n\nIlyan was listening intently, and nodding to himself.\n\n\"You've the mark too, don't you?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "he asked. \"On your arm. A little eagle.\"\n\n\"Yes, Ilyan.\"\n\n\"And it proves all you've said,\" cried old Ilyan delightedly. \"For the Lady Romana bears the same mark. The mark I gave her with my own hands when her mother brought her to me as a child, to let it be remembered she has Helgra blood too. The mark I gave you as a little girl also, when Romana brought you to me. Oh, Alina. Alina of Castelu. You have returned.\"\n\nOvidu and Cascu were looking at their father in absolute amazement, while the listening Helgra villagers had begun to murmur. Fell raised his head, and his ears twitched.\n\n\"I've never told you of it, Ovidu,\" muttered Ilyan, \"for although it may soon be time to pass on our ways to my eldest son, I thought it a sad thing, now Castelu has turned against us. But Romana has Helgra blood in her veins, like Alina. Not as much as Saxon, but enough to give them a special place in my heart, for Romana honours our ways. As did her husband, Dragomir.\"\n\n\"A special place, Father?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "said Ovidu bitterly. \"The woman who stands at Vladeran's side, to destroy her own people? To destroy the land itself. And nature.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Ilyan angrily, \"I tell you again, I've never believed it of the Lady Romana.\"\n\nAlina swung her head, and her heart was beating like a war drum.\n\n\"She was hurt badly when Dragomir died and led astray, but her heart is good,\" said Ilyan. \"This evil comes from Vladeran alone, and Alina's tale of kidnap and murder at Vladeran's hands proves it to us. I think it was easy for Vladeran to turn her heart, after her husband's death.\"\n\nAlina was trembling furiously, wrestling with the memory of Romana's unkind treatment of her, yet wanting with all her heart to believe what Ilyan was now saying of her own mother. The mother she so wanted and needed to love. But she didn't believe it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And now a great thing happens!\" cried the elder happily. \"A miracle. The lost heir to Castelu, the sister of the boy taken by wolves, returns, with the Helgra mark on her arm, and brings a wild wolf to honour us. There's hope in my old heart again. I've witnessed something I thought these blind old eyes would never see.\"\n\nCascu and Ovidu were blinking in wonder. Cascu's eyes were flickering strangely, but Ovidu suddenly grinned.\n\n\"These are strange tidings indeed, and we would learn more of them,\" he said. \"But now you look hungry and tired from your journey. Would you honour the Helgra by dining at our tables this very night?\"\n\nCatalin looked up hopefully, and then he frowned." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But you told us that your village was poor,\" he said, \"and that you've no food.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ovidu smiled a little slyly.\n\n\"These are dangerous, evil times, lad,\" he whispered, clasping his father's arm, \"where men's hearts must sometimes be closed and mysterious to survive. We've learnt to hide what little food we have from Vladeran's jackals. Each homestead shall bring what they possess, and those barrels of wine and mead we have hidden in the winter earth shall be dug from their graves. We shall light tapers in the great hall, and our boys and girls shall sing once more the songs of the Helgra, in pride and honour. Cascu, see it is done.\"\n\nAs Alina WovenWord stood there, amongst her own once more, she was trembling furiously at the miracle of it, but inside she felt suddenly that the world was filled with magic indeed.\n\nThe feast they made for the travelling storytellers that night was rare, for in the halls of the Helgra, Alina of Castelu and Catalin Fierar sat between Ovidu and his blind father Ilyan, at the head of a huge oak table, groaning with roasted chickens and boars on wooden platters, and beakers of blood red wine, passed from hand to helping hand. It was the vision Alina had seen in the bucket in the forge so long ago.\n\nIt was not of the splendour of Helgra times of old, perhaps, but the Helgra men and women who sat there looked with marvelling eyes at the sumptuous banquet. Few of them begrudged the price of their hidden stores, or worried at the cost in times to come. Instead they kept looking at the handsome young strangers in the flaring torchlight, wondering what the arrival of the lost heir of Castelu meant for their beleaguered people, and how a girl who bore the mark of a Helgra woman could carry a sword so bravely and be served by a wolf." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Tell me more of Vladeran, Ilyan,\" said Alina softly at the banquet table. \"And my mother, Romana. Of their marriage.\"\n\nAlina's voice was pained, and the blind old elder shook his head and pulled the wolf cloak tighter about him.\n\n\"Don't be too hard on your mother for marrying Vladeran, my child,\" he whispered. \"Children can be too hard on their parents, until they learn themselves how hard life can be. She loved your father, Dragomir, dearly, but when he died, I think it broke her poor heart. It's why, perhaps, she became so distant with you, for you reminded her too much of him.\"\n\nAlina's piercing hazel eyes were full of memories of Romana's scolding looks and cruel words, and of the child's longing for the love they had once shared so deeply. She reddened. Perhaps they were childish thoughts now, as childish as thoughts of fairies or goblins.\n\n\"Vladeran is persuasive,\" said Ilyan gravely, \"and Romana must have felt a deep sorrow and loneliness. So Vladeran wooed her and she bore him a son. It was in these very halls that you watched over Elu that night, after his birth, when he was snatched away by wolves. And now you come amongst the Helgra again. It's a strange destiny indeed.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Only Alina Sculcuvant knew just how strange." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It was only really after Elu's reappearance that day that our persecution began.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Why?\" asked Alina." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Vladeran grew obsessed with his son's return on the wolf's back, and with Helgra knowledge of the wolf and the wild. I think he sought to master it. Perhaps he believed we had something to do with Elu's disappearance.\"\n\nHis return on Fell's back, thought Alina.\n\n\"Vladeran sought out our wise men, and asked them all they knew of the Varg, while some say that he even learnt ancient Helgra arts of how to commune with Varg spirits from beyond. Arts I have long suppressed. I cannot believe any of my people should have taught him.\"\n\nIlyan suddenly looked very sad.\n\n\"Then Vladeran fell on us like a man-eater,\" he whispered, \"and set to destroying our power and independence. He didn't trust us and was jealous of our knowledge of the wolf. He has spread nothing but hatred and evil in the lands of Castelu, and nothing but death and humiliation for my people. How different from the days when Romana and Dragomir walked amongst us, your parents, with kindness and with love, to listen to our tales, and bring us gifts of food. They cared for my people and our ways. For nature.\"\n\n\"Unlike Lord Vladeran,\" growled Ovidu. \"He claims to be of the Order of the Griffin, sworn to defend the downtrodden and protect the earth. The earth! He scorches our crops, and poisons our rivers with the bodies of rotting cattle. It shall bring him no good in the end, I swear it.\"\n\nOvidu took another swig of ale and shook his head, as Catalin remembered the foul taste of the river, and Alina thought about her destiny and the survival of nature." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But if it's true what you say of my mother, why didn't she stop him?\" asked Alina fearfully." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ilyan's blind eyes flickered with doubt. \"That I don't know,\" he answered. \"Perhaps she knows nothing of it.\"\n\n\"What of King Stefan?\" said Catalin suddenly. \"Father always said he has justice in his heart.\"\n\nOvidu had dropped his eyes thoughtfully.\n\n\"Stefan has some affection for us, although they say he has a hard, cold head too, and little time for our ways or beliefs. But I do not think he'd approve it if he knew what Lord Vladeran has being doing to his subjects, Magyar or no.\"\n\n\"And now Vladeran has tried to murder the heir to Castelu,\" muttered Ilyan." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And a Helgra woman. Perhaps we should turn to him.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Frequency requirement: 'ilyan' - 2 occurrence(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, yes, indeed, Father. But the King is busy in the lands beyond the forests,\" said Ovidu, \"fighting the Turk, even as he tries to unite his own warring peoples, Slav and Vlak, Magyar and Saxon.\"\n\nAlina was still thinking of Dragomir and Romana, though, and how Ilyan had said that they had loved the Helgra. What had turned her mother's heart?\n\n\"My parents. They did not fear your dark fame then?\" she asked. Ilyan tilted his blind old head and grinned.\n\n\"Our dark fame, you say, storyteller? We are forced to tell tales to make others fear us, Alina of the Helgra, and so make strangers leave us in peace.\"\n\nThe clever elder suddenly reached out his wrinkled hand and clasped the young woman's.\n\n\"It's a miracle that you should return though, and bring a wolf amongst us,\" he whispered warmly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And such a wolf. We try to carry that spirit with us, Alina, if we have to go into battle, as we once did so proudly, and wear their skins if we find a carcass in the wild, but we're not foolish enough to believe that real wolves could live amongst us like our dogs. Not even yours.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina realised that perhaps the old man was saying something important about nature and the wild." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That it was not the same as this civilised gathering.\n\n\"We know too that their path is wild nature's path, unadorned by the needs and cares and fears of man,\" whispered Ilyan. \"Untroubled by our thoughts and our stories.\"\n\nAlina smiled.\n\n\"But as we listen to their songs, we know that there's pain in that wild path too, and that we are men first. We've even killed their kind, Alina, when their packs have threatened our animals in the heart of winter, if that threat is real, or when their older and weaker kind have turned into man-eaters.\"\n\nAlina looked at Ilyan in surprise, but she accepted this grave truth.\n\n\"Yet if we have to do such a thing, it is never with gladness,\" added Ilyan warmly, sensing the young woman's concern. \"And then we raise torches and sing our own lament. Sing the song of the Helgra. Your mother would sing it to you as a little girl.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ovidu looked up, and his eyes, heavy with wine, were glittering like dewy petals." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He rose to his feet beside Catalin and swayed a little, but there was a huge smile on his face." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The Song!\" he cried drunkenly. \"Let one amongst us sing the Song of the Helgra once again. To remind us all of the days when poets and bards lit our lives with hope and love and courage.\"\n\nOvidu raised his hands to a youth who had been serving them, a tall, beautiful boy with flowing black hair. He stepped forwards, and Ovidu rapped his fist on the table to silence the gathering. Then, before Alina, Catalin, and the assembled Helgra, the youth began to sing.\n\nThe boy stopped his haunting melody, half spoken and half hummed in the glowing tapers, and the two young storytellers watched the shadows flicker across those upturned Helgra faces, changing their aspects from things in part a little demonic, to faces at once tender and utterly beautiful. Alina WovenWord felt the tears come to her hazel eyes, as she heard that song that now she remembered as the lullaby of her dreams, and smiled softly at Catalin. She felt as if she had a family at last." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet there was another feeling there too." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The feeling that she had been here before. Not in the Helgra village, for that she had, but eating at this table. It was the vision she had seen of herself in the forge. The future. But if it was, then the terrible prison awaited her, too.\n\nAll the while Fell sat alone outside, under the wooden awning that was the Helgra meeting place when the summer suns shone down, and none dared approach the black wolf, except the girls who were sent to serve him. Nervously they would totter forwards, with arms outstretched, place their platters of meat before the wolf, and run away. Fell delighted in giving short growls, or suddenly flashing his piercing eyes to frighten them a little, for he sensed that he was in no danger from these Helgra.\n\nNever before or since has a wolf had a meal like that, and for a time Fell was not sad he had stayed, although he felt a dreadful guilt about Huttser." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell lay there though, like some ancient king served by humans, as if the wolf had lain down with the lamb, and sniffed at the platters, suddenly snapping at a whole chicken, or taking a juicy haunch of boar down his hungry throat. He ate at his ease, cleaning his muzzle with his long, pink tongue at his leisure, until his belly was so full and fat that Fell thought he might burst open, while a million stars looked down, and sparkled at the incomprehensible miracle of being.\n\nOne of the Helgra had left him a bowl of ale too, as the song resounded in the hall, and the wolf lapped at it, tasting the pleasant bitterness of hops and feeling the strange effect it had on his thoughts. So strange that he got up suddenly and wobbled a little, then started to spin around, snapping at something in front of him that kept eluding his jaws. Like a young cub again, the drunken wolf was chasing his own tail.\n\nFell lay down again, a little shamefacedly and, closing his eyes, began to listen to Alina's thoughts in the hall beyond. The thoughts of the heir of Castelu, and a Helgra woman.\n\n\"Well, my child,\" Alina heard the kindly old elder whisper inside." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include \"I must leave for the palace,\" somewhere in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Tell me what you intend to do now.\"\n\nAlina shook her head. \"I must leave for the palace,\" she said, \"although I would stay here awhile. I'd hoped that some Helgra could show me the way.\"\n\nCatalin looked up from his food and was nodding.\n\n\"Show you the way we can indeed,\" said Ilyan, though with little enthusiasm. \"But then what? If Lord Vladeran knows of your approach, he'll try to kill you again.\"\n\nAlina nodded.\n\n\"If you seek revenge, child, and your rightful place,\" said the elder softly, \"know too that Vladeran has long surrounded himself with a band of trained killers. The inner corps of his Shield Guard are hand-picked and chosen to strike without mercy.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"A single arrow can pass twenty men easily enough,\" said Catalin suddenly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"True, my boy,\" whispered the blind old man with a laugh, looking into the distance, as if trying to read the future, \"but what matters is that which comes after the arrow has done its work.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And I'd not let you do it for me,\" said Alina, looking at Catalin." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'll confront Vladeran and fight him myself perhaps. Confront my mother too. Though whether it's revenge I seek, or simply to understand, I don't yet know.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You fight Vladeran?\" said the old man with a chuckle." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You may have a wolf at your back, Alina WolfPaw, and a sword too, but you're still just a girl.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina rose suddenly, and the noisy room fell silent.\n\n\"You think my sex weak, perhaps?\" said Alina proudly. \"And it's true I've not the strength of a man. But a Helgra woman has a heart as true as any man, and a skill just as fine.\"\n\nAlina grasped the wolf handle of her sword. She drew it cleanly and, with a sweeping glide, brought it down towards the table and a boar's head that lay on a crowded platter, with an apple in its mouth. The stroke was perfectly measured, for it split the boar's head in two, leaving the apple pinned on the very tip. Alina Sculcuvant smiled, and turning gracefully, she offered the apple to Ovidu.\n\n\"That bounty should be a thousand gold pieces,\" he cried, taking the thing with a smile." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Thank you, gentle Eve. That was well done.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Well enough to tempt the Helgra to fight?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "said Catalin suddenly, almost without thinking." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He looked around the gathering, then stood up boldly. The young man felt nervous in front of them all, but he kept his chin raised.\n\n\"Fight?\" whispered Ovidu.\n\n\"Fight against the tyrant who oppresses you, Ovidu. Fight too for the heir of Castelu and a Helgra woman.\"\n\nCatalin was looking at Alina, and her heart stirred with his brave words, but there was fear in her too. Not only for herself, but because of what Catalin's father had told her of real fighting and of war. Alina wondered suddenly if her nature was weak.\n\n\"With what, lad?\" snorted Ovidu." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You saw my men, armed with nothing but staff and hoe. Our best fighters were killed long ago, and our youth know nothing of the sword.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Alina could teach them,\" said Catalin warmly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Teach them all my father taught her. And this time I'll learn too.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Some of the women around the table were nodding admiringly, and the men's eyes were filled with questions." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Work this phrase into your response organically: \"I'd not ask others to fight my battles for me, and your father said war is a terrible thing.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Well,\" whispered Ilyan, \"they say that wisdom is a woman, and loves a warrior.\"\n\n\"Hush, Catalin,\" said Alina, sheathing her sword again. \"I'd not ask others to fight my battles for me, and your father said war is a terrible thing.\"\n\n\"That may be, Alina, but it's the Helgra's battle too, from that mark on your arm, and what we hear of Lord Vladeran's rule. From what we've seen here too. You have wood from the forests to cut a thousand arrows,\" added Catalin, turning back to Ovidu. \"And so learn their strength and power and speed.\"\n\nHe clasped the bow that leaned against his seat, and pulled an arrow from the quiver hanging there, strung it in front of the assembled throng, and sent an arrow singing down the very centre of the room, burying itself deeply in the wooden door beyond. There was an approving murmur about the great room, and Alina felt a deep pride in her belly for handsome Catalin, and thought how much he reminded her suddenly of his father, Lescu.\n\nNot so pleased was the figure who had just slipped in through the door, and who had almost been grazed by the arrow." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was Cascu, Ovidu's younger brother, and now some of the Helgra were laughing at him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cascu smiled coldly and, reaching up a hand, tugged the arrow from the wood angrily as he looked at his father and his elder brother, seated by these strangers at the head of his table." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Bravo, lad,\" said Ovidu, next to Catalin, \"but Helgra strength is born of the sword not the bow, and our swords Lord Vladeran took from us long ago. Our smiths too he butchered, boy, or took to work in his palace, and rot in his dungeons.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Catalin looked back at Ovidu with a sudden grin." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Then you've two teachers,\" cried the young storyteller, \"for my father was a great smith who taught me skills I'd willingly pass on. You've metal from the wheels of your carts. You can move on foot instead, like the wild wolf.\"\n\nOvidu's eyes were sparkling.\n\n\"But it would be a bitter thing to attack Vladeran's palace,\" he said. \"He has so many at his command, not to mention that river to guard him.\"\n\n\"And the King?\" said Catalin.\n\n\"You say that parchment was lost, Alina,\" answered Ovidu, \"and even if we could get to the King, I doubt he'd think this anything more than some wild fairy tale, let alone spare a single man from his wars.\"\n\nThey had all fallen mournfully silent, and Catalin stared cheerlessly into his wine.\n\n\"Besides,\" muttered Ovidu, a little shamefully, \"these fine lords, Vladeran and Tepesh, even Stefan, they stick together, do they not? Perhaps not even the King has quite the taste for justice I've heard he does.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Then we must fight alone,\" said Catalin softly, raising his head again, his blue green eyes locked unwaveringly on Ovidu's. \"My father always said that bold thoughts are stronger than a mighty army.\"\n\nOvidu seemed at a loss for words, but he looked at Alina, the true heir of Castelu, an heir with Helgra blood, and Catalin the archer, and slammed his fist on the table, with a belly laugh that seemed to shake the whole room.\n\n\"By Fenris,\" he cried, \"I talk like a Sikla. It does my heart good to see a boy speak this bravely, and I'll argue no longer. It shall be so. Once more the Helgra shall forge weapons.\"\n\nOvidu's voice was swelling with courage, and it rang out around the Helgra hall.\n\n\"Once more we shall raise our heads high, for is it not better to live standing tall, than to die on your knees?\"\n\nOvidu was gazing challengingly about the room, and many of the Helgra had begun to nod enthusiastically, although Ilyan's youngest son, Cascu, was not amongst them. Ovidu suddenly stood up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And the Helgra have other weapons too.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He strode over to the wall and plucked something from a shelf." }, { "from": "human", "value": "When Alina and Catalin saw what he was holding in his two powerful hands, they shivered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a single antler tusk, from a large red deer." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It look liked a curling branch, but not with fat twigs coming from it, but ten hard points, like daggers." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ovidu swung the antler left and right, and both saw immediately how dangerous it could be in Helgra hands, but Alina suddenly thought of her dreams." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was no changeling perhaps, but she remembered how she had dreamt of these antlers, and suddenly Alina felt as if she were deep inside some goblin stronghold." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We'll send the Helgra out to the forest, to collect fallen antlers and sharpen their points,\" cried Ovidu." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Only the Helgra know the skill of it.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Some around the table had jumped up too." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And we'll light the forges, and go out amongst the mountain villages, calling out the Helgra to do battle and end this suffering forever,\" said Ovidu." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Then send messengers to the King while we train. There shall be justice again in our lands.\"\n\nThe gathering suddenly rose, and one after the other began to take up the call, a chant that roused Fell from his drunken slumbers that had begun beyond, and made him whine in the night.\n\n\"Alina!\" they chanted, as Alina thought that it was good indeed to have a pack, but worried too at the thought of war and the knowledge that Fell would not be at their side at all. \"Alina WolfPaw!\"\n\nFell and Alina stood together in the shattering morning, on the edge of the Helgra village. A new hope was in the air, and brilliant shards of sunlight had armed the heavens with spears of pure gold.\n\n\"I hate to leave you, Alina,\" came Fell's growling mind.\n\nThe chorus that had woken the Helgra that morning was still on the air—not birdsong, but the sound of hammering metal. Five days after the feast they had already lit the fires in the forges, and Catalin was hard at work." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But Fell's yellow gold eyes were full of worry. He had delayed too long.\n\n\"You've friends now, Alina. A pack indeed.\"\n\n\"Yes, dear Fell. I'm part Helgra. I hardly believe the story of it. Yet I have no friends like you.\"\n\nFell gave a soft, contented growl. \"You've a great destiny, I think. But I must find my father, Alina. Maybe I'll return to you. Who knows? Maybe I can still find the Guardian.\"\n\n\"Worry for yourself now, Fell, and for those you love.\"\n\nThe wolf raised his tail." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Love\" had been such an unfamiliar word to the Kerl, but he knew suddenly he loved the girl, and it hurt him to leave her again, perhaps forever this time.\n\n\"A legend told us once that a courage is needed, Alina. A courage as deep as despair.\"\n\n\"Despair?\" said Alina fearfully, worried about what she had brought to her own people. Alina had never meant to bring sadness to anyone, and Lescu had taught her that war meant sadness and death.\n\n\"Yes, Alina, and I know what it means now, I think. I thought once that it meant that life itself is despair, and so we must make the darkness our ally.\"\n\nAlina frowned.\n\n\"But it doesn't at all. It means that real courage is not to give up hope, even in the most terrible darkness, and to carry on. That if courage and love are as deep as despair, deeper, then light may come again.\"\n\n\"I pray it, Fell. For all of us.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Pray?\" muttered the wolf's troubled mind, thinking suddenly of Ottol and his talk of the Great One, and of his fruitless search for the Guardian too. \"I'm a Varg, Alina, and so should pray to Tor and Fenris. Yet you're a human and pray to your own gods. They cannot both be real, Alina Sculcuvant. Perhaps none of these stories are. As I think now the Guardian is nothing but a myth.\"\n\nAlina's mind was silent, but her heart was beating faster.\n\n\"Unless they're just names and human words, and it's the very thought of things greater than ourselves that really matters, wherever they come from,\" thought the black wolf, with a hopeful, defiant growl. \"That by reaching out with those thoughts, we somehow reach into something far deeper than even words, and so touch something beyond what we think we know. So I shall reach out to what is beautiful.\"\n\n\"Yes, dear friend,\" said the storyteller. \"But go now and find your father. Hurry.\"\n\nFell was seized with worry for Huttser, and he was suddenly running, out beyond the village towards the mountains, as Alina of Castelu turned back with a heavy heart towards her Helgra own, and the fight ahead." }, { "from": "human", "value": "As she went, she did not notice the cowled Helgra mounting his horse hurriedly, and turning its head towards Lord Vladeran and his palace, beyond the Stone Den on the mountain." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Another beading red droplet, like a holly berry broken from its leaf, plashed into the font, and Lord Vladeran's voice came cold and fearful, as he held out his hand again and clutched at the air.\n\n\"Morgra. They've escaped me again, damn you, and now this boy aids her too. A blacksmith's son.\"\n\nThe she-wolf's scarred features appeared once more in the water, lit by shadows thrown by the seemingly holy candlelight.\n\n\"And Fell,\" thought Vladeran, \"we did not turn him.\"\n\n\"Turn him?\" Morgra's ears came forwards in the water, and those wolf eyes glittered. \"His nature dwells in darkness, human. Many times he's wanted to turn on the girl. Only some pact has held him back, but the Sight has shown him her death also. He needs only accept his destiny. He should have done so long ago.\"\n\nVladeran's eyes darkened. He wondered now about his own destiny. Twice the girl and the wolf had slipped his clutches, and the fear of it had made him set twenty Shield Guard about him permanently." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But Vladeran had other worries too.\n\nAlthough he had suppressed his enemies in his own lands, and the Helgra were crushed and broken, his armies had suffered great losses against the Turks already, while his own serfs and subjects, stretched to breaking by the taxes of food and provisions raised for the wars, and by the loss of their loved ones in Vladeran's battles, were breathing discontent. Vladeran's rule had become more and more ruthless, and now his dungeons were full.\n\n\"The Gift,\" said his mind, \"they say it brings the power of prophecy.\"\n\nMorgra seemed to be remembering, and her ear twitched.\n\n\"In the Red Meadow, although we lie suspended between your world and the final journey,\" came her thoughts, beginning to whisper like the wind in Fell's cave, \"the Sight brings ways to touch the living world, indeed, through dream and prophecy, if nothing more. Just as the fortune-tellers once did in the land beyond the forests. There are indeed ways to see into the pattern of things, even from here.\"\n\n\"Tell me then, wolf. See for me now.\"\n\nVladeran was thinking hungrily of one of the sacred Oaths of the Order of the Griffin, the pursuit of knowledge." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Of what would you know, human?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Of the future, and the girl. Redheaded Alina. Above all, of my own destiny. Is she really a danger to me?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The scarred she-wolf nodded and closed her eyes in the water.\n\n\"Let me see into your future then, human. By Wolfbane, the Evil One, and by the great Varg god Fenris. By all the powers of the Sight.\"\n\nMorgra suddenly opened her muzzle and gave a howl so strange and dark that Vladeran stepped back in fear, and the hunting dog in his hall whined bitterly. The cry rose, a cry that had once been one of summoning from the world of the living, and suddenly vanished into silence.\n\nMorgra was silent for a long while, and Lord Vladeran thought that the spectre might fade once more, but at last her thoughts began to murmur, and her head to sway from side to side, as if she were seeing things before her dead eyes.\n\n\"I see the child, human. The changeling girl. WovenWord. SkeinTale. So important. I see a father, and a lifelong friend. I see your death.\"\n\nVladeran grasped the sides of the font and glared at the she-wolf.\n\n\"My death?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The wolf's eyes opened again, and the silence seemed to echo about the little chapel." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Tell me,\" cried Vladeran. \"What did you see of my death?\"\n\n\"SkeinTale's no danger to you, human. For though her fate is bound into the very fabric of being, and Larka sent her spirit from even beyond the Red Meadow to tell Fell of it, you can only be killed if her father is in sight of these very halls.\"\n\nVladeran felt a great power swelling in his chest, as though he had just donned a breastplate of impenetrable armour. Alina's father, Lord Dragomir, Vladeran's best friend and his wife's first husband, had died on the battlefield before Vladeran's own eyes. When his troops had ridden down to collect his broken body, his soldiers had seen all their dead humped into pits, flaming like torches in the deathly air.\n\n\"You're certain of this, wolf?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, human. As certain as I am that only a love like Larka's could have reached her brother from where she is now, and talked to him as she did. That charm surrounds you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vladeran smiled, and suddenly it seemed as if he did not need the Inner Shield Guard to protect him at all." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Did not need anyone.\n\n\"The girl was always a thorn in my side,\" he said, \"but she's hunted everywhere and unjustly accused, too. I have set a bounty on her. It's as it should be.\"\n\nSomething came into Morgra's eyes, a dark memory. Had Morgra herself not once been unjustly accused? It had been the accusation that she herself, set apart by the strange powers of the Sight, had been a cub killer (when what Morgra had been trying to do was protect the infant) that had truly driven her into the shadows.\n\n\"Yet how can we guide Fell back towards his destiny,\" asked Vladeran, \"and be certain that he will fulfil his nature, and kill the girl?\"\n\n\"Pain,\" answered Morgra's bitter mind, \"for Fell now faces a pain he has never known before. His father is dying. I see the shadow of these things from the Red Meadow.\"\n\n\"And then?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Then I shall touch him when he is most vulnerable, for it is only when we're really in pain that our strength, our courage, and our faith are truly tested. If we give up hope then and question all we believe, then we may truly be welcomed into the shadows, and taste the dark joy of the Sight. Fell has tasted it once, and he shall do so again. I shall help him.\"\n\nYet Morgra knew something she did not say, a terrible secret that none on earth knew, and which would surely drive Fell towards the dark forever.\n\nVladeran nodded gravely. \"I will trust you then, Morgra. For I sense your nature, she-wolf.\"\n\nMorgra's eyes glittered at this talk of her nature, but Vladeran heard a sound from the chamber beyond. A boy's voice.\n\n\"Father. Are you here, Father?\"\n\nHe plunged his fist into the water, as if breaking glass in a mirror, and Morgra was gone. He turned and, sweeping through the tapestry once more, stepped back into the main hall. The fire was no longer lit, and great beams of heavy sunlight slanted through the windows, making the whole place glow and shine, glittering especially on Elu's golden head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His son was sitting in the great carved chair—a throne if Vladeran had been a king—and swinging his legs happily.\n\n\"You are here,\" said Elu, with a cheeky grin. \"Mother said to find you.\"\n\nVladeran stopped and looked strangely at his own son.\n\n\"Elu. You look fine sitting there. Like the Lord of Castelu already.\"\n\nThe child beamed and Vladeran walked closer, with something almost jealous in his eyes.\n\n\"Where's your mother, Elu?\" he asked softly.\n\nThe boy seemed distracted." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, she's at tapestry, and it's so boring. She sang to me though. A pretty enough song.\"\n\n\"I like to hear your mother's song, Elu. What did she sing?\"\n\n\"It was a Helgra song. You love Mother, don't you, Father?\"\n\nVladeran felt something tighten and catch in his throat, and again he was surprised by how direct children can be.\n\n\"Yes, Elu. Very much.\"\n\n\"Mother says you'll always protect us. That you always have done.\"\n\nVladeran leaned forwards, scooped his son up in his powerful arms, swung him round, and, sitting down himself in the chair, perched him on the arm of the chair next to him.\n\n\"You're a good boy, Elu,\" he whispered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And so I do, but we must teach you to protect yourself too, mustn't we? One day you'll wield a sword.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh, when, Father?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Soon, boy. But first comes the dagger.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Vladeran slipped his hand to his side and pulled the dagger from his belt, then brought it up beside his son's face. Elu's eyes sparkled. Vladeran turned the dagger slightly in his hand, thinking suddenly of his son on the throne and almost of how easy it would be to make the move, and pass it across the boy's throat.\n\nHe pushed the horrible thought aside, and flipped the dagger in his grasp, then offered it to his son.\n\n\"Oh, thank you,\" said Elu happily. \"It's very fine. You love me too, don't you, Father?\"\n\nVladeran felt something stir in his gut. He had long taught himself to disregard his own feelings, in the search for his own mastery.\n\n\"Yes, Elu, of course.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Elu smiled and leaned against Vladeran's shoulder with a happy sigh." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With that there was a great knocking, and the huge doors to the chamber swung open. Six soldiers entered, all in armour and none less than six foot tall. They wore leather breast shields and visors, and each bore an insignia like Vladeran's own.\n\nYet now the cross that had symbolised the Order of the Griffin was painted as black as night, and those yellow gold wings at each tip had turned red. The Inner Shield Guard marched towards Vladeran, flanking a man in a cloak and hood, whose clothes were spattered with mud after a hard and urgent ride.\n\n\"Go play now, boy,\" whispered Vladeran. \"And tell your mother I'll come to her soon. I have high matters to attend.\"\n\n\"Yes, Father,\" said the child, jumping up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The boy stopped for a moment to survey the soldiers admiringly, and then ran through their ranks from the great chamber." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Shield Guard all saluted their master, one to the right thumping his bare fist on his insignia, but it was the cloaked figure who stepped forwards and pulled down his hood." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Well?\"\n\n\"Alina and Catalin,\" whispered the spy, in a thin, nasal voice, made dry and weary by his long ride. \"The storytellers are with my people now.\"\n\nVladeran stood up, with flashing, angry eyes.\n\n\"Alina with the Helgra, Cascu?\" he hissed in amazement.\n\nOvidu's brother nodded.\n\n\"My brother and father welcome them. They know who she is. She is with her own again.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Her own? What are you talking about?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cascu smiled thinly.\n\n\"She is marked, is she not?\"\n\nLord Vladeran seemed confused.\n\n\"She had a mark, yes. What of it, man?\"\n\n\"The opening eagle is the mark of a Helgra woman. The same mark the Lady Romana bears.\"\n\nVladeran's eyes were suddenly touched with doubt. Romana had never told him what the mark really signified.\n\n\"And could you not dispatch them easily, Cascu?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "he whispered. \"Kill them both.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"They're protected now, day and night. No weapons are allowed in their presence.\"\n\n\"Protected by those weaklings? A pack of cowards and foolish old men.\"\n\nCascu lifted his head slightly, and something like anger flickered in his face.\n\n\"Not all of us are old men,\" he said softly, with some pride left in his voice, \"even if our best are already dead. My father and my brother have sworn to help them.\"\n\nVladeran smiled.\n\n\"With what? I've taken your weapons, poisoned your rivers, killed your smiths, broken your power. Forever.\"\n\nCascu's eyes narrowed, almost with a challenge.\n\n\"The boy teaches them the arts of the smith once more, and now tales of a Helgra girl and a black wolf raise our kind to revolt throughout the Helgra lands. My people arm themselves again, Vladeran, encouraged by the appearance of a wolf who serves a human.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'cascu' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Vladeran stepped forwards furiously.\n\n\"This wolf,\" he hissed, \"this cursed black wolf. Then can you not kill Fell, Cascu?\"\n\n\"It's gone from their fold, my lord, into the mountains on its own once more. It goes to its dying father. But news of it stirs my people.\"\n\nVladeran's eyes glittered. Then Morgra's words had been true. He could surely trust the she-wolf and her prophecy.\n\n\"But the Helgra's pride begins to flow again,\" said Cascu. \"It swells like a river, fed with snowmelt. The villages are rising, and they'll march soon towards the palace. They raise banners that carry the mark of a Helgra woman, in the cause of the heir to these lands.\"\n\nLord Vladeran's eyes blazed, but as he stood there he suddenly started to laugh." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Do you hear that, Landu?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "he cried, turning to the man who had saluted with his fist." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Frequency requirement: 'vladeran' - 2 occurrence(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Do you hear that, my loyal Shield Guard? Fools come to test us in our own halls, but you shall protect me, shan't you?\"\n\n\"In blood we serve,\" cried the Shield Guard as one, stamping their right feet.\n\n\"The oath,\" hissed Vladeran. \"Repeat the oath of the New Order of the Castelu now.\"\n\n\"The conquest of the earth,\" Landu snapped back, standing even straighter, \"the pursuit of war, and the glory of treading down the weak.\"\n\nThe soldiers were looking straight ahead as he repeated the five inverted principles that now bound them together, but there was something strange and caught in Landu's look as he finished the oaths. \"The mastery of the feminine and the search for power, my lord.\"\n\nVladeran smiled approvingly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Exactly, Landu. And my soldiers too shall swat our enemies like flies. A girl and a boy lead an army, even a Helgra girl? Mere children. It's a silly dream.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But a new fear grabbed at Lord Vladeran.\n\n\"News of Alina, Landu, and this Helgra rising. It reaches the palace already?\"\n\nLandu shook his head.\n\n\"Not yet, my lord. It's spoken of in the countryside now, like a dark fable, but here there are only distant rumours, dismissed as mere fancy. As stories.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said Vladeran. \"You may leave.\"\n\nLandu nodded and led his men from the room, and Vladeran did not notice the tapestry over the secret stairs stir.\n\n\"So, Cascu,\" said Vladeran, when they were gone, \"your reward.\"\n\nHe strode over to a chest and, opening it, drew out a heavy bag of gold." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Much heavier than the one Catalin had carried." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I must use your services more often,\" he said coldly, throwing it to the Helgra traitor, \"if you're so willing to betray your own people. Your own family.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vladeran was looking at Cascu with amusement." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"My people are superstitious fools,\" said Cascu with a scornful snort, as he caught the gold and weighed it in his hands, \"with no learning and even less thought. They believe in fables and dreams, and the blind wonderings of... of a man who was strong once, but who has grown weak and old.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's strange that you talk so coldly of superstition, Cascu,\" whispered Vladeran, \"when it was you that taught me the Helgra art of mixing blood with water to summon visions of the wolf. Taught me the words. When I sought out the truth of what had happened to Elu.\"\n\n\"Taught you?\" said Cascu, raising an eyebrow. \"I told you something of the silly stories I'd been told as a little boy, my lord, nothing more.\"\n\nVladeran smiled knowingly. He was holding his scarred hand in its glove. It now had many cuts across the palm.\n\n\"You don't believe in the power?\"\n\n\"Of course not, my lord. Too long my people have sweated in superstition and ignorance, and I will trust to the reality of power and of gold,\" answered Cascu, wondering why Vladeran was looking at him so strangely, \"and take my rightful place in the world.\"\n\n\"There's plenty more gold where that came from, Cascu,\" said Vladeran." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The Helgra stepped forwards." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You're not frightened then, my lord?\"\n\nVladeran looked back at him.\n\n\"Come with me,\" he said suddenly, striding over to the corner of the room. He led Cascu to a window, and they looked out onto a field beside the palace that ran far along the edge of a great river, which protected it from the plain beyond. There Cascu saw hundreds and hundreds of heavily armoured soldiers with bright new weapons. Vladeran's army was in training.\n\n\"I raised them to fight the Turk,\" whispered Vladeran with satisfaction, \"but now they shall crush the Helgra. But come, we were speaking of gold.\"\n\n\"It's not even gold that I truly seek, my lord.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No? Then tell me. Perhaps, if it's in my means—\"\n\n\"I seek my rightful place, my lord, as Helgra elder. No more.\"\n\nVladeran turned and smiled.\n\n\"Ah yes, and it shall be so. A younger brother shall step up indeed.\"\n\nVladeran was thinking that after he had finished with them, there would be no Helgra left alive for Cascu to command at all, and the first death would be this Helgra woman.\n\n\"But first I would prove my strength and loyalty to you,\" said Cascu. \"In your palace, my lord, as captain of the Shield Guard. I know the place lies open.\"\n\nVladeran looked at him doubtfully, thinking of Vlascan's death." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You would take the oaths of the New Order, Helgra?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I would.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The place is open indeed, with Vlascan gone, though Landu has his eyes on it, and he is loyal and strong.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should contain the word 'shall' precisely 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Vladeran paused, weighing the benefits and possibilities in his clever mind.\n\n\"Very well then. But you must earn this honour, first.\"\n\n\"Earn it? Have I not already—\"\n\n\"My soldiers shall prepare to meet these rebels, Cascu, and my spies ride out again, but you alone are Helgra, and so may walk freely amongst them still. Go back to them now and get to her, Cascu, somehow.\"\n\n\"They allow no weapon in her presence, as I said. All are searched. For many come to marvel at the storytellers. They think it is magic.\"\n\n\"Then use your mind, damn it. I want to know all they do.\"\n\nVladeran was thinking not of Alina suddenly, but of the wolf.\n\n\"Then I shall kill her, my lord?\" said Cascu." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No.\" Vladeran hesitated." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Now the Helgra rise, I've a better plan. Bring her to me somehow, Cascu, and in their eagerness to free her the Helgra shall walk straight into my trap. If you do so, you'll have your heart's desire.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cascu paused and then he nodded." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And Cascu. Any that speak of it must die. It must not be rumoured abroad that Alina Sculcuvant has returned from the dead, to seek vengeance.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"They have returned?\" asked the man with the kingly bearing, in that throne room far away." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The man who, like the mythical Guardian, kept his identity a secret." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The leader of the Order of the Griffin. The armoured knight he had addressed before was in front of him again in the great hall.\n\n\"Yes, but found nothing.\"\n\nThe man bowed his head in the chair.\n\n\"But you believe the little girl's story?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nThere was silence.\n\n\"What will you do?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "asked the knight respectfully.\n\n\"Do what I should have done long ago. Set out.\"\n\n\"Don't blame yourself. The wound was very deep, even when you came.\"\n\nThe leader of the Order felt a wound now, but in his heart.\n\n\"Yes. And I've worked hard and long to sit where I do. Yet what use is my power if... \"\n\nHe paused and shook his head bitterly.\n\n\"Justice means nothing in the land beyond the forest,\" he whispered, \"and men set their eyes only on gold and war, thinking them an end in themselves.\"\n\n\"Lord Vladeran,\" said the knight, and his master grasped the arm of his throne." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He grows worse by the day. Vladeran breaks all our laws now. He's as bad as Draculea. And both are of the Order. Or were.\"\n\nThe man in the throne looked up, and his eyes glittered angrily.\n\n\"Since King Sigismund's death our Order has fallen into neglect,\" he said sadly. \"Men, with their dreams and madness and fear, turn it to things dark and occult, as they always do when they feel powerless themselves. They think of the Griffin as a beast, and do not know what an ancient symbol it is. A symbol of sleeping power, that always guarded the lands beyond the forest.\"\n\n\"Still, I ask. What will you do?\"\n\nIt sounded like a rebuke, and there was guilt in his master's eyes.\n\n\"For too long the Griffin has been eating its own tail,\" he answered.\n\n\"You shall summon the Order then? With so much fighting it will take time indeed for them to gather.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes, but the Griffin's claws have wings,\" came the voice from the throne." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Summon them indeed. Send out secret word. The Griffin must awake.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "As fell ran, the humans and Alina Wovenword seemed to recede in his mind, and the wolf's thoughts turned more and more to Huttser." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Would he be in time to reach his father and speak with him, before he went to the Red Meadow?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell thought of Morgra as he wondered, and it suddenly made him glad to have left his friend, for he knew that while he was away from Alina, at least she would be safe from his anger, and the vision the Sight had shown him.\n\nHe had seen her death at his teeth, and Fell wished to protect her, to protect nature too perhaps, although what that really meant he could not fathom. But he feared that every moment he was with her he was a danger to her.\n\nYet Fell felt the pain of separation from Alina like an ache in his mind. For it was as if it was only with her that Fell's mind opened to the full powers of the Sight. Why? he asked himself. Because the storyteller, because all humans, were further along in their journey than most of the uncomprehending Lera? At Alina's side Fell felt connected to something even deeper than the wild instincts of the wolf; he felt connected to the whole world." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He climbed into the mountains and plunged down into deep wooded valleys. He was alone again, but he did not feel so alone now, for at least Fell had a purpose. He knew the valley his brother Kar and the Vengerid had spoken of, and it was not too far, though there was no time to delay.\n\nDay and night he ran, using the eyes of the wolf to see in the dark, as Catalin worked in the forge, and Alina began to train the Helgra at balance and swordplay, and they wandered the hills collecting their antlers and listening to Catalin's and Alina's stories. At last the wolf reached the Great Waterfall. It fell in a mighty cataract, nearly a hundred feet down the side of the mountain, and it sang in Fell's ears like a glorious cry. He felt the air on his fur like a great wind, and saw sunlight broken into a seemingly endless ribbon of colour around the cataract's churning waters.\n\nThe rich, green mouth of the valley, where he knew his parents were, lay beyond the falls and the river, and Fell felt nervous at the thought of seeing them again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But on he hurried along the river, which now began to fall in dangerous rapids down the slopes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell already knew a place to cross lower down, where seven great boulders made a kind of bridge through the water, and soon he had sprung onto the first, as fearfully as ever, now he was so close to water again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "At his side was a smaller waterfall, or at least a drop of some twenty feet, where the river banked steeply, creating a kind of curtain of fast-flowing water, and as Fell sprang onto the second boulder, he froze." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Two faces had appeared in the river, fine young Alpha wolves. Their muzzles were strong and proud, and Fell recognised them immediately. It was Huttser and Palla. The Sight was showing him the past. They seemed to look back imploringly at him, but suddenly the image of a huge wolf was behind them, with a great streak of silver down his back, and he was snarling angrily. It was Jalgan. Fell felt a jolt of fear, but something silver flashed in the side of his vision, and the images disappeared. With a great splash the shape came again, bursting out of the river, flying straight towards that curtain of water.\n\nIt was a huge salmon, and for a moment it seemed held suspended there, as its quivering body fought to carry it upwards against the current." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But the salmon could not make it over the top of the falls, and at last it was swept back down into the water below.\n\nFell had crossed to the third boulder when the fish jumped again and this time it fought even harder, dancing there for even longer. As Fell watched it, he thought he saw a dark recess in the rocks behind the water, but the salmon's efforts to climb the river were in vain and it fell back again. Fell was in the very middle of the boulder bridge, when the salmon tried a third time, and something vaguely irritating in its fruitless battle made him swing his head and growl angrily at it.\n\n\"What are you doing, foolish fish?\" he snarled.\n\nTo Fell's amazement the salmon answered him, and its voice seemed to come not from the salmon alone, but from the whole river, echoing around the wolf like the Great Waterfall upstream.\n\n\"Doing, wolf? I'm going home.\"\n\n\"Home?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Home to the river that made me, home to the waters that gave me,\" sang the struggling salmon. \"Never be free, turn from the Sea. Fighting to sporn, dead by the morn.\"\n\n\"But why do you fight so hard, fish?\" growled the wolf.\n\n\"Because I must,\" sang the salmon, \"because I can. It's the pattern of all I am. But if you could only help me, I would tell you the secret of the whole world.\"\n\nThe salmon fell backwards again with an even bigger splash, and Fell stared deep into the waters, suddenly aching to know. There was no possible way that a wolf could help a salmon, and no madder idea either, yet Fell wanted to help it indeed, and as he looked on wonderingly, he saw his own young features peering back at him.\n\nWith a splash the salmon came again, bursting out of the water with its splendid body.\n\n\"Tell me the secret, O Great Salmon, I beg of you,\" cried the wolf, \"even if I may not aid you.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'deeper' 2 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And because you treat me with such respect I shall,\" answered the leaping salmon. \"The secret is that nothing knows, the secret is that all life flows, the secret is that thoughts and hearts are different beings, split apart.\"\n\nThe whole river seemed to be singing now around the wolf's quivering ears.\n\n\"And though we change in skin and bone, each being has its truth alone, while dreams and wondering take you far, accept yourself in what you are, there comes the time when close to home, your self must please itself alone, then sing beneath the lovely sky, the earth asks simply that you try.\"\n\nThe salmon fell back again, exhausted by its fight and its strange song, and a groan seemed to come up from the water.\n\n\"But for me it's over, wolf,\" cried the river bitterly. \"I cannot make it. I'm too tired.\"\n\nThe voice seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper, and Fell sensed that the poor salmon was floating downwards into the murky, silent depths, and suddenly he gave a great growl." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No, salmon,\" he snarled furiously, \"don't give up yet. Try. One more time.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to use 'growled' 2 time(s) throughout your message" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I cannot. My heart is too tired. I've seen the great world. I've swum through its mysteries. I've known its wondrous beauty, and its terrible ugliness. I've lost my own to predator and to hook.\"\n\nAt this Fell growled at it angrily and it spoke again.\n\n\"You've been with man, have you not, wolf?\" asked the salmon.\n\n\"Yes, fish.\"\n\n\"Man, who thinks his mind knows everything. But what does man know of the great blue whale, moaning in the belly of the sea, or the flaring squid that show their anger and fear in their red skins, yet turn blue when you stroke them gently with your tail? Man cares only for himself, in his fear and hate.\"\n\nThe voice was fading, and Fell suddenly felt guilty at having protected Alina.\n\n\"Fight, by Fenris,\" he growled. \"Fight.\"\n\n\"No more fight, wolf, not even by the great fish god Carpan. Too much fighting. I go to the greatest sea.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'unless' exactly 2 times in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But what you are,\" cried Fell, hardly knowing where the thoughts were coming from, \"all you know and all you've seen will be lost. Unless you continue now. Unless you pass that on to the future.\"\n\n\"The future?\" came the voice sadly, and it sounded closer to Fell. \"And do we really pass anything on to the future, except mirrors of ourselves? What if the future is as painful as the past?\"\n\n\"That we can never know,\" answered the wolf angrily. \"That's for the future. But what we can know is the importance of what we owe to the present. Here and now, and nowhere else. For nothing else exists, except in our minds. What we owe to ourselves, and to those we're bound to. And we can at least hope to make a better future, for everything. You sang the song. Told me the secret. So do it now. Try.\"\n\nThere was silence, except for the churning waters, and in his mind's eye Fell saw the once graceful salmon falling in the depths, turning on its side and sinking to the muddy river bottom. Its shining scales failing, its skin beginning to break apart like broken leaves, and the tiny creatures of the waters starting to take it for their own struggle. Fell's great black tail came down sadly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Death, whispered his darkening thoughts. There is nothing but death.\n\nSuddenly the surface of the water erupted and Fell's heart soared, as the salmon came bursting from the river for the final time. It's jump was much higher this time, and it almost cleared the rapid. But still it hovered on the very edge, as if on a precipice, as if on the precipice of being that Larka herself had faced on a bridge up at Harja, when she had jumped to safety and, for a moment, she might have fallen or might have made it.\n\nIn that moment it had been as if the very thoughts of those that watched her, that followed her story, could have affected the outcome. As if that is always true, of everything that lives. That everything that exists, exists within its element, and so we all both influence and reflect one another all the time." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The great interconnectedness of things.\n\nFell gave a great growl.\n\n\"Yes,\" he cried, \"yes.\"\n\nThe very energy of Fell's cry, the will to help the thing, seemed to give the salmon that last bit of strength, as though the unseen movement of the atoms in the air and water had made the difference, and it cleared the lip of the falls and was gone. Moving like a current itself, back to where its parents, themselves made and driven by their own mysterious, searching natures, had spawned it. Many had fallen in that race. Many would fall again. But this creature, touched by Fell's strange journey, would continue for long enough to remake just a tiny part of the extraordinary, beautiful world." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell himself was already on the far side of the bank, racing towards the valley where his father might have reached the end of his own journey. As he went, he looked up and saw a huge group of starlings, which had been migrating from the Great Delta that formed a part of these strange lands to the south, and he stopped to watch them.\n\nEvening was coming now, and as the lovely skies blushed purple, he saw the myriad birds darting and diving through the air, moving not as one, but like a great shoal of fish, a turning mass of black. Left and right the flock turned in the air, and up and down, swirling and winding and spiralling, like the currents of the river where Fell had seen the salmon, and it suddenly seemed to Fell the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.\n\nWas it because, unlike the Kerl, these winged creatures were moving together, he wondered, as though some mind were directing them? And how did that great cloud of birds, each one a separate individual, form such a perfect organism? It seemed so purposeful, yet so instinctive, so beautiful and free. But had not each one somehow given up their wills to the whole?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell had will, and had learnt so much during his lone travelling. Yet all this knowledge, all this experience hurt him too. In that moment Fell wanted to be a part of that flock, to move unconsciously through that wondrous element, like the rivers that race to the seas, and the great waves that crash against the shores of the world.\n\nFell almost thought he heard a voice on the air, and suddenly he knew another great secret. Perhaps it was the Sight, or perhaps it was all he had seen and done. The secret was that Fell knew more than these birds and saw further, precisely because he had pulled away from the rhythms of nature and from the cycles that the world itself was caught up in.\n\nFell thought of man and of woman, and of their great journey through the world. So often with their wooden dens, and their weapons and their tools, they did all they could to separate themselves from nature." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'purpose' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With their strange words too. Man sought to become more and more individual, and his very purpose, his mind's purpose, seemed to be to manipulate the world about him, to name it and conjure it with his language and dominate it. And so he did, and so he learnt more and became more.\n\nBut in the end, thought Fell sadly, was that knowledge and that way of seeing any more useful to man? Did it make him any happier, especially if he threatened to destroy all, as the Lera had seen in the vision? Like the Lera, man faced the same struggle as all living organisms, and in the end he too had to face his own death.\n\nDawn was breaking, grey and heavy, as Fell crested the rise of a hill and came down into the first valley beyond the Great Waterfall. It was edged by tall trees on every side, and the sward of green was thick with the summer." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell saw Kar first, sitting with two large male wolves in the sunshine and telling them a story, searching through its words as he spoke, to find its meaning and its purpose. Fell padded up behind them and heard a little of the strange tale.\n\n\"And it was long ago,\" Kar was saying, \"when Tor and Fenris themselves still walked the world and a beautiful Drappa, with a tail like white clouds and eyes of green gold, lived in a wondrous valley, where the birds sang all day long and no harm ever came to trouble the Varg or the Lera. So gentle and kind was this Drappa that even the butterflies loved her. But a creature lived in a cave on the mountain, and this beast was so angry and lonely that all kept away from him, for they feared him and said that Barl had cast a spell on him. So ferocious and ugly was he that he might have had human shape. Indeed, when he looked in the rivers and streams, he saw there such a terrible reflection that he appeared to be a monster, and thought that none could love him.\"\n\nKar paused, for he was trying to remember a story told to him when he had only been a cub himself.\n\n\"Then one sun the monster stole the beautiful, gentle Drappa away and kept her in his cave. The lovely she-wolf was so appalled with the Varg's human appearance that she hated him, while the monster would go down into the fields and terrify all the Lera, to keep them away from his prize. He brought the Drappa food and soft branches to sleep on though, and was so tender and caring around her that she could not believe his human shape was real. She realised that this form was not his at all, but the shadow of a spell, and that he was only angry because he was frightened and in pain. Then suddenly the Drappa knew that she loved him, and Barl's spell was lifted and there stood the most wonderful grey Dragga.\"\n\n\"It's a good old story, brother.\"\n\n\"Fell!\" cried Kar, seeing the black wolf. \"Palla said you'd come.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Kar sprang up and padded towards him, wagging his tail." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Huttser?\" whispered Fell. \"Has...?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He lives, Fell,\" answered Kar, swinging his head down the valley, \"and Jalgan has not come. Down there, Fell, in a cave by the creek. Palla tends to him. There's time.\"\n\nFell relaxed a little. The two other males, as big as Fell, but without his form, moulded by experience and effort, were staring at him suspiciously.\n\n\"Come. Don't you recognise your elder brother Fell?\" said Kar. \"Greet him, Khaz. Give him our blessings, Skop. He's welcome beyond these boundaries, with a blessing or not.\"\n\nKhaz and Skop, thought Fell with amazement, remembering the tiny little cubs that he had seen all those years ago. How they had grown and changed—from those little moving bundles of fur—as all things change. How fine they looked now, these males of five years old." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Khaz and Skop had paused, completely unable to speak, and Fell realised that their noses were cocked towards him warily, their senses hard at work, questioning him with their dimmer understandings." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's the scent of man,\" said Fell calmly.\n\n\"Then it's true,\" cried Skop, looking at his elder brother rather aggressively, \"all they say of you.\"\n\n\"That you're a living legend, he means, brother,\" said Khaz more softly, and he wagged his tail too. Fell smiled at the wondering wolves.\n\n\"A legend?\" he answered, with a chuckling growl. \"Oh, I hardly think so, Khaz. And the thing about legends, Skop, is that they come to be so much more than the truth, don't they? Because we all need legends, for good and bad, just as we all need to believe... in something.\"\n\nSkop's eyes flickered.\n\n\"But you have the Sight, brother?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, yes, Skop. Do you think I'd be fooling with humans if I didn't?\"\n\n\"And you'll use it, won't you, to challenge Jalgan yourself, then fight off the Vengerid if they come?\" said Khaz suddenly, wagging his tail eagerly. \"Father can't face this challenge now.\"\n\n\"Hush, now, Khaz,\" growled Kar, looking at him reproachfully. \"Your elder brother's tired and he wants to see... \"\n\nFell had already turned his head. Three she-wolves were racing towards them across the valley." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell's heart quickened strangely as he recognised Tarlar, but it was the wolf at Tarlar's side that had caught his interest now.\n\nShe was very beautiful, the same age as Skop and Khaz, and her eyes flashed brilliantly. The third wolf was also a fine Varg, but not as fast as the other two. The first two wolves approached. Tarlar was as keen to greet Fell as he was her, but it was some delicacy in her that made her hang back awhile, and let her companion speak first.\n\n\"We were hunting, brother, when we saw you from across the hill,\" said the beautiful she-wolf boldly. \"Mother knows of it already. We ran to tell her.\"\n\n\"Larka?\" whispered Fell, feeling very strange to speak the name she had been given after his first sister, but looking her up and down proudly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At five she was almost as large as his Larka had been, but her coat was just a normal, healthy grey instead of white.\n\n\"It's good to see you again,\" he whispered.\n\n\"Again?\" said Larka cheerfully. \"Well, I don't remember you at all, I'm afraid, brother, although I knew it was you from the colour of your coat. But I've heard so much about you, and we make up stories too, don't we, Kipcha? About you.\"\n\nThe third she-wolf had come alongside too, wagging her bushy tail.\n\n\"Yes, we do,\" said Kipcha, \"many, many stories.\"\n\n\"All bad?\" asked Fell a little sadly.\n\n\"Of course not, Fell,\" answered Larka warmly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We often make you the hero.\"\n\n\"Not always, though,\" added Kipcha, not looking the slightest bit embarrassed. \"I mean, heroes can be so dull, can't they?\"\n\nKipcha was looking openly at her elder brother, and Fell's eyes smiled.\n\n\"Yes, I suppose they can.\"\n\n\"And heroes and legends are not quite real, are they?\" said Larka. \"Not real flesh and blood like us.\"\n\n\"But you need them of course,\" said Kipcha, \"for sometimes when we think of Jalgan we need someone really savage and brave in our thoughts to fight him,\" she added, looking suddenly fierce." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We know what stories are for.\"\n\n\"Oh, you do?\" said Fell, feeling surprised at the wisdom of the young, but oddly reassured.\n\n\"Your stories get so dark though, sisters,\" said Khaz suddenly, shaking his head disapprovingly.\n\n\"Perhaps because the times seem to be so dark again, Khaz,\" said Larka sharply, \"and shouldn't we tell the truth?\"\n\n\"When times are dark, we should tell more cheerful stories,\" said Khaz.\n\n\"Perhaps we should.\" Larka turned to Fell and added warmly, \"But you're very welcome here, brother.\"\n\n\"I am, am I?\" Fell growled, with a smile." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You give me Larka's Blessing, do you?\"\n\n\"Don't tease me, brother,\" said Larka, \"We all agreed not to use that term here. Not often anyway. I'm Larka now, am I not, and not some fable. And we're a real family. As difficult as those can be.\"\n\nLarka dropped her eyes.\n\n\"I'm not saying that she... that our sister was just a fable,\" she went on. \"We're so proud of what she did. What you all did for us. But... \"\n\n\"But?\" whispered Fell.\n\n\"But when parents tell stories what should they say to their children? Do you think they should fill them with a courage they can't live up to, or an idealism about the world that might simply break their hearts in the end? Shouldn't they just tell them the truth, that they should try to love each other and be happy?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" whispered Fell. \"Perhaps they should.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Besides, it was in the past, and I'll live my life as I see fit.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell looked at Larka in admiration, so confident and wise was she. He realised that what he had reached for by the river was true, and that was what really mattered. What was here and now.\n\n\"Good for you,\" he said warmly.\n\n\"Besides, to give Larka's Blessing makes Mother so sad. All she thinks of now is the past.\"\n\nFell raised his head, and his ears came forwards. His mother, Palla, was there now with his father, Huttser. Somewhere nearby.\n\n\"It's time,\" he said, looking nervously at Kar." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Come then, Fell, I'll show the way.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They all ran together, the seven of them, like a bonded wolf pack, with Fell and Kar leading the group. Tarlar made sure that the other wolves hung back, as they mounted a slope and rose up through the trees towards a low cave, beside a mountain stream. Fell stopped as soon as they reached the edge of the trees for there, in front of the cave mouth, was an old grey she-wolf, lying on her paws and lapping weakly at the stream.\n\n\"Go on, Fell,\" whispered Kar kindly, \"we'll all talk together later.\"\n\nFell nodded, and as he padded forwards, Kar and the others turned away.\n\n\"Mother,\" Fell wanted to say as he stopped in front of the stream, but something suddenly choked in his voice. He just stood there trembling. The old she-wolf had caught a scent though, and looked up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Or might have looked, if Fell hadn't seen that Palla's old eyes were watery and filmy with cataracts." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She wasn't blind, but her sight was so dim that although she knew immediately by its shape that a wolf was standing before her, she couldn't make out its features." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If his mother's eyes shocked Fell, almost more shocking was that Palla looked so old." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In his memories and dreams he had always seen Palla as she had been when he left the pack. Tired and hurt by Larka's death, and all that had happened perhaps, but still a relatively young wolf. But now the hair around her beautiful muzzle was almost entirely white and she looked so thin and weak. She was older than any she-wolf to live in the lands beyond the forest—thirteen long, adventurous years. Fell suddenly realised how the world always changes around us, often before we even know it.\n\n\"Kar, is that you, Kar?\"\n\n\"No, Mother, it's me.\"\n\nPalla had risen and she was suddenly shaking." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Fell?\" she whispered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Can it really be you, my Fell? They said you had come.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, Mother, it's Fell.\"\n\nFell wanted to run towards her, but something still held him back. A delicacy.\n\n\"Oh, Fell, it's so good to hear your voice again, and yes, though my eyes are weak, to see you once more.\"\n\nPalla's eyes were straining, but she could see now that it was true. Suddenly Fell leapt forwards through the water and he was in front of her, taking in her scent, changed with age, and touching her dry nose with his.\n\n\"Dear Fell,\" she whispered, \"you fill my old heart with joy. I thought I might go to Tor and Fenris without ever setting eyes on you again. Or hearing your song once more. That song that you sang to us from the mountain when you went, five long years ago. It so hurt my heart to hear it. It was so pained and full of longing.\"\n\n\"Oh, Mother.\"\n\n\"But I've never blamed you for going away, Fell. Not once. I knew you had your own path, and your own questions.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And you had the new cubs too,\" whispered Fell.\n\n\"Ah yes. The joy of my heart. They're all strong and healthy. Though I worry for Khaz, sometimes. He's so thoughtful and, well, gentle.\"\n\n\"Every pack has its Sikla,\" whispered Fell, \"if we should call them that.\"\n\n\"He's the brightest of all of us, and the kindest,\" said Palla proudly. \"He just doesn't like fighting very much. But my darling Fell, tell me how you are.\"\n\n\"I'm well, Mother. I've been on a strange journey.\"\n\n\"Yes. As have we all. Life is a strange place indeed, isn't it? Whether we're touched by the Sight or not. So full of wonder and mystery, of beauty, yet so full of struggle and sorrow too. Of cruelty. Nature's cruelty.\"\n\nPalla shook her head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Or is it cruel? I thought it bitterly cruel when my eyes began to go. Stealing away visions of so much colour from me. And yet they've lasted me more years than most wolves. I looked around me as the darkness crowded in, and realised that everything that is suffers in the same way. Not because anything makes it suffer, although that happens too, but because we all bloom and then fade. We're not Varg, Fell, not wolves at all. We're plants and trees, leaves and flowers. Like them, we all have our seasons.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, Mother.\"\n\n\"We bloom and then we fade,\" sighed the old she-wolf. \"And I've bloomed indeed. But now my mind turns backwards more and more to the past. It fills me with sadness, for I wish it had not been so dark sometimes. Dear Larka. I think of her often.\"\n\n\"And I.\"\n\n\"But she comes to me in dreams.\"\n\nFell looked up and thought of that voice on the wind.\n\n\"Or I think they're dreams. And she's always smiling. That makes me feel much better, and gives me a courage too. Beyond even despair.\"\n\nFell's heart ached." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yet as I look back, and remember it all, I still wonder whether it all had any meaning, Fell. Or whether it's all simply as it is. Have you found a meaning to it?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell cocked his head, but he could not answer, although he thought of Ottol and the salmon." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And I wonder more and more too if there is anything up there.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Palla had raised her old eyes to the heavens. \"If the wolf gods Tor and Fenris are there at all. Or only lovely stories.\"\n\nNot always so lovely, thought Fell, and he was going to speak, but suddenly there was a low growl from inside the cave.\n\n\"Palla. Where are you, Drappa?\"\n\n\"Huttser,\" whispered Fell.\n\n\"He's bad today,\" said Palla sadly. \"The wound is deep. He did not sleep all night. I must go to—\"\n\n\"No, Mother. Let me.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But Fell. I haven't told him yet of your return. He's too proud to ever have called on your help.\"\n\n\"Then I will tell him myself.\"\n\nFell padded forwards apprehensively, and as he did so the sun emerged from behind a cloud and illuminated the stone recess. He could already see his father, lying at the back of the cave. Huttser looked much stronger than Palla, in form at least. Although now fourteen, he was nearly the Dragga that Fell had always known, although his deeply greying head was slumped on his paws. Fell's feelings were suddenly confused, for he remembered a day long ago when his father, so strong and powerful, had grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and made him fearful and angry and resentful.\n\n\"Palla. Hurry up, will you?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's me, Father.\"\n\nOld Huttser had raised his head and was looking at his son in astonishment, for his eyes and ears were almost as strong as ever.\n\n\"Am I dreaming? It can't be.\"\n\nHuttser was trying to get up, but he was too weak for the effort. Fell could see now the livid wound across his flank that was caked with blood, and Huttser slumped again.\n\n\"It is you, Fell. You're well, I see. I always knew that you were strong like your father.\"\n\n\"Yes, Father.\"\n\n\"Stronger than me now. Those damned Vengerid and that cur Jalgan, challenging all the Varg to fight him. His curs wouldn't have done this if they hadn't crept up on us. I may be old—sometimes I wonder at it—but there's fight in me yet. I've challenged him.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There was always fight in you,\" whispered Fell, even a little reproachfully. \"You are the Dragga, Father.\"\n\n\"Yes, quite right. And so I must fight, and lead, and protect you all. Hunt when the game is slow, scavenge when it's fast, mark the boundaries, keep out intruders, raise spirits, tell stories. Look out for the little ones, for dear, clever Larka and brave little Fell. And that new cub, Kar. He's not mine, but he's all right. Palla wants to help him very much, but you know what Drappas are like.\"\n\nFell could see that Huttser's thoughts were rambling, locked in the past, and that his father was in great pain. He was pierced by a pang of love for the old Dragga.\n\n\"We must be careful, you know. There's so much that faces a wolf pack in the wild. And all these silly rumours and legends, about a stolen human and that snake Morgra, and the stupid Sight.\"\n\nHuttser was looking straight at Fell, but he wasn't talking to him at all, but to one of the Betas in his pack, long ago. Fell wondered suddenly if that isn't all we really are, our thoughts and dreams and memories." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If it was so, then hadn't we a duty to make our memories the best they could be?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Father, it's me. Fell. Your son.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'growled' (3x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Do you think I've lost my wits?\" growled Huttser angrily, breaking from his trance. \"Of course it's you, Fell. And a long time it's been too. The years seem strangely out of shape.\"\n\nHuttser growled again.\n\n\"But you're here now, that's what counts, and there's work to be done. This damned Jalgan has to be beaten. He wants that Drappa Tarlar, and I must say if I were a younger wolf I... Don't tell your mother I said it. But these Vengerid respect nothing at all. I must patrol again.\"\n\nFell was glad to see his father suddenly restored, and yet he was bitterly sad too that Huttser did not realise the nature of his own injury. It was fatal.\n\n\"And I'm glad to see how strong you've grown,\" growled Huttser. \"I always knew you had my strength in you.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'father' exactly 3 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell felt very strange as he said it. He wanted to say, \"No, Father, I am not you.\"\n\n\"Yes, Father,\" he said.\n\n\"It does my heart good to see you, Fell. Because you must help us.\"\n\nFell stepped forwards.\n\n\"Not must, Father,\" he found himself saying suddenly.\n\nHuttser growled.\n\n\"Then why on earth are you here, damn it?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell's voice choked. He did not say, \"I am here to say good-bye.\"\n\n\"I mean that I'll help you if I choose to help you,\" he answered steadily. \"Of my own free will.\"\n\nHuttser growled again.\n\n\"Oh, don't talk rubbish. You'll do as you're told. You're of the pack, are you not, and I'm your father.\"\n\nFell was furious with his father in that moment for talking to him as if he were still a little cub, but because of something else too. Huttser had often talked to him of duty and of responsibility, so dutiful was he to his own family and his pack. But why do adults, why do parents not realise that children desperately wish to do things not so much out of duty, but out of love?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And you can't force anything to love anything else against its nature. Not with talk of family or pack, not with talk of greater borders, or the truths or lies of Tor and Fenris.\n\nFell felt a deep pang in him now as he looked at Huttser, for he knew that all his life his father had lived with words like \"must\" on his tongue, when he, like everything else, craved love too. Well, Fell had come, not out of duty, but out of love.\n\n\"I'll help you, Father.\"\n\n\"Of course you will. Well done, Fell. And we must plan. You and I together. Father and son. It'll be a bitter fight, and if I fail the challenge, the Vengerid will try for Tarlar. But your claws are sharp and teeth strong.\"\n\n\"And I've another weapon,\" whispered Fell. \"The Sight.\"\n\nHuttser's eyes clouded and he growled uncomfortably." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell remembered how, for so long, such a practical and rational wolf as Huttser had dismissed any talk of the Sight. How he had argued with Palla, and forbidden any mention of it, until the truths of their journey had forced it on them all.\n\nHuttser had already closed his eyes, and laid down his old head again, and Fell turned sadly back towards the cave mouth, but as the sun shone on his muzzle he heard Huttser behind him.\n\n\"Fell. It is good to see you again.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Father. It's good to see you too.\"\n\nPalla stood staring at her son as he emerged again into the day, and her failing eyes were full of pain and worry.\n\n\"I don't know what I will do when he's gone,\" she whispered.\n\n\"Hush, Mother.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<EMBED THIS>>: \"I'm sorry, Mother. So sorry.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I love him so, Fell. Oh, he can be foolish and unreasonable at times. Angry and irritable, now more so than ever. But he's always been strong and true. But perhaps I must bear it. They say the Drappa often outlives the Dragga.\"\n\nPalla shook her old head.\n\n\"For all your bold talk of fighting and strength and courage, it's we females that must birth the cubs in the den, and suckle them at our bellies. Must hunt and scavenge too, and direct the pack when it goes astray. So nature makes us strong. Stronger even than Draggas.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Mother. So sorry.\"\n\nThere was nothing else to say.\n\n\"When he goes, I don't think I want to be in the world anymore,\" said Palla, more in weariness than sorrow.\n\n\"Hush, Mother.\"\n\n\"It's true. Why should I? What is there for me? You are fine. The cubs are fully grown now and will be fine too, and it is high time they found their own packs. I think I would walk with your father through the Red Meadow, towards the Wolf Trail.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Mother, please don't say it.\"\n\n\"Fell,\" whispered Palla suddenly, \"I know the Sight has brought you much trouble, but Larka said that it has a power to heal.\"\n\nFell's eyes flickered. \"So it's said. I think it has kept me young.\"\n\n\"Try to use it then, Fell, to help your father.\"\n\nFell felt strangely at a loss. He did not know how to use the Sight to heal.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nEven with her dim eyesight Palla could see that something was wrong." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What is it, Fell?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Mother,\" growled Fell sadly, \"I've had dark dreams. More than dreams. Visions.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Like the terrible vision we all saw on the mountain?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Something even worse. I've been travelling with a human. A girl.\"\n\nPalla looked shocked, but she nodded as wisely as she could.\n\n\"And though I care for her, the Sight shows me the future. That I'll kill her. But there's something else, Mother. In these visions a wolf speaks to me. A she-wolf.\"\n\nPalla's ears had come forwards suspiciously and Fell hesitated.\n\n\"Morgra,\" he said.\n\n\"Morgra!\"\n\nPalla was shaking furiously at the mention of her half sister, and the old Drappa had begun to growl. The lips on her muzzle were curling up, and Fell suddenly remembered her in her prime, that night of a terrible thunderstorm, when she had threatened to kill Morgra if she did not leave her cubs alone." }, { "from": "system", "value": "🔍 Find a place to insert: \"But evil? Yes, she's evil. And yet, the injustice that was done to her, when she was unjustly accused.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Morgra alive? How can this be? We saw her death.\"\n\n\"Not alive, Mother,\" said Fell. \"Calm yourself. But her spirit seems to live on. She calls to me with the Sight.\"\n\n\"Seems to live on?\"\n\n\"She talks from the Red Meadow, through a human connected to this girl that I've journeyed with. And the boy child we returned to the village.\"\n\n\"She's evil, Fell. Beware her. Will this legend never be finished?\"\n\n\"I fight with her,\" said Fell. \"But evil? Yes, she's evil. And yet, the injustice that was done to her, when she was unjustly accused.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Palla had dropped her misty eyes now.\n\n\"I know it,\" she whispered. \"And injustice spreads injustice. I often wonder if Huttser and I had taken her into the pack that day, would any of it have happened? Would Larka still be alive? And as for the Red Meadow, they say it's a preparation for what lies beyond. That Varg may linger there, if they are somehow bound to this world, by anger or pain or love.\"\n\n\"Or hate,\" growled Fell sadly.\n\nFor many suns fell hunted for huttser, and in the cave his father ate fresh red meat. The others gathered round Palla, waiting, and there was a strange expectation in the air as the days passed. Fell sat with Huttser as he fed, and as he watched the tired old Dragga try his weakened teeth on the flesh, Fell closed his eyes and tried to use the Sight to help him.\n\nFell sensed or hoped that the connection was doing his father some good, moving energy about his body, yet he felt something else even more powerfully as they lay there." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That his father Huttser was dying.\n\nHe could sense that the spirit inside Huttser was growing very weak. Not just the wound, but nature itself was at work now, and Huttser was very old. The oldest Dragga in the lands beyond the forest. All things die, Fell realised, so perhaps the Sight could only aid living things to use their own strength, and if that natural strength itself was failing, perhaps not even the Sight could intervene.\n\nBut as two moons passed there was no sign of the Vengerid, and Huttser talked once more of Jalgan's challenge, of the younger wolves and of defending the pack. He talked like a true Dragga again and refused to accept what was happening to him.\n\n\"Father,\" whispered Fell one day." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Do you... do you believe that anything lies beyond the Red Meadow?\"\n\n\"I don't know why you're talking like a foolish cub,\" said Huttser angrily. \"The Vengerid threaten us and, when I'm better, we shall fight them side by side.\"\n\nHis son could see that Huttser didn't want to face the question, and Huttser suddenly gave a furious whimper from a bolt of pain from the infection that had gripped his side.\n\n\"Damn it.\"\n\nFell winced.\n\n\"I believe there must be something beyond, Father,\" Fell said softly, as Huttser settled again, although he thought of his failure to find the Guardian, and now he was lying. \"I mean, if the Sight gives me the power it does, everything is stranger than we think.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "As Fell said it, and almost felt it true, he could not say what it was he really believed in, even if he desperately wanted to give his father some consolation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Wolves like your father and I go straight to the Wolf Trail,\" said a soft voice suddenly, \"to run forever with Tor and Fenris.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell swung his head and there was his mother, standing in the cave mouth.\n\n\"And they climb the skies and join those little lights in the heavens. It's nothing to fear.\"\n\nPalla's very words had calmed Huttser's body, and made him relax again, and Fell was suddenly angry with himself. For all his searching and journeying, for all his struggles with the Sight, he had not had the wisdom, or the belief and certainty, to say such a thing to his father, when it was most needed. Fell was desperately glad that his mother had though.\n\nFell turned sadly and padded outside. He lay down by the stream in the moonlight and watched the waters gurgling and churning over the stones. As he looked, he calmed himself a little, and he thought that if he hadn't been so frightened of it, he would have always liked to live near the sound of water." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell shook his head. He no longer believed the Guardian existed, and it made the heavy weight of responsibility worse. He suddenly felt angry with life for throwing so many difficulties in his way, yet he was glad too that he was here at all. Glad of the responsibility.\n\n\"He's sleeping now,\" said a voice softly, behind him. \"But he's bad today.\"\n\nPalla lay down beside her son. He thought again how very old his mother looked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'll sleep too. I'm so very tired, Fell.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Palla's beautiful old head was already on her front paws and her eyes were closed.\n\n\"Wake me, my dear, if he stirs, or needs anything. For I've always been at his side. Watch him for me.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mother. But can I get anything for you?\"\n\nPalla was already fast asleep. Fell lifted himself on his paws and looked down at her. She was breathing so faintly that Fell could hardly see her body stir, as though the spirit in her had become but a dream, or a memory itself, tying her but faintly to her own body.\n\n\"Rest, Mother,\" said Fell gently, \"I'm here now.\"\n\nFell padded up the slope and laid his great black body down in the cave mouth, between his mother and father." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He slept fitfully that night, and it was in the early time, towards morning, after the fifth of human hours, that Fell suddenly flashed into consciousness. He got up immediately, and the wolf knew something was wrong.\n\nFell sprang into the cave and saw that Huttser had almost rolled onto his back. His body looked so feeble and old now, fully his fourteen years, that it was as if some force was sucking the life from him. Huttser was muttering to himself, as his tongue lolled from his mouth.\n\n\"Home. Take me home. I should be—\"\n\n\"What is it, Father?\" whispered Fell.\n\n\"I'm dying, Fell.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell knew it was not the time to lie, even to be kind." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, Father.\"\n\n\"Your mother, look after your—\"\n\n\"You don't need to worry. Palla will be cared for.\"\n\n\"We've walked so long together, your mother and I. Hunted in the forests and mountains. Drank from the wild, fresh streams. Fought and laughed and cried. She's my blood mate. My... \"\n\n\"Oh, Father.\"\n\n\"Meaningless,\" muttered the old wolf sadly. \"It's all meaningless, isn't it? All our rages. All our battles and storms. For what? So we may become carrion, and feed the tiniest of beings. A bitter thing. And... And... \"\n\n\"What is it?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should naturally weave in this dialogue: \"Your mother and I, did we argue too much?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell's muzzle was straining forwards, and Huttser's voice was so faint that he could hardly hear him. He thought though that Huttser suddenly whispered, \"I'm frightened, Fell.\"\n\nThen Huttser's body flexed and the wolf was reaching out with his paw. It touched Fell's own, and Fell felt a new, unexpected force in Huttser, a renewed vigour, as if will itself was making him hold onto the world.\n\n\"Have I been all right, Fell? Have I done well in the world?\"\n\n\"Yes, of course, Father.\"\n\n\"Your mother and I, did we argue too much?\"\n\n\"Life can be a fight, Father. Draggas and Drappas argue. It is nature's way. Perhaps.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And I'm a fighter.\"\n\nAlina's word came into his mind at that moment—a warrior. He nodded.\n\n\"I am the Dragga,\" growled Huttser faintly.\n\n\"Yes, Father.\"\n\n\"Open, Fell.\" Huttser's body was struggling with pain on the earth floor. \"Open like a flower.\"\n\nThey were the strangest words that Fell had ever heard, in that sad place by the stream, but Huttser's body was suddenly feeble again and broken. Fell bowed his head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He hated to see his father like this, with all his heart." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Leave me, Fell. Go away.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What do you mean, Father?\" said Fell desperately." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Leave.\"\n\nFell backed away. He suddenly thought of Palla, or any she-wolf, and how when they birthed in the den they always wanted to be alone. Was death like that too? Like the very beginning of life. Something you always had to do alone? As though it is life itself, and the living, that bind us to the world.\n\nFell stood there, his head bowed, for what seemed like an age, and when he looked up again he knew that Huttser was gone. His body had stopped moving altogether." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell heard the fluttering of birds outside, and in the cave was nothing but emptiness.\n\nHe didn't know what he felt in that moment, for within himself he was partly glad that the horrible struggle was over. He had known it was coming, and known it had to be, that not even the Sight could do anything about it. Yet he could not comprehend it either.\n\nAs Fell looked at that body, once so alive and full of vigour, a wolf that had walked with him all his life, even as a Kerl, he felt as if something in the world had split apart. Light was coming outside, morning, but although the sky was blue and there was a brightness in the air, Fell felt a strange, slow darkness about him.\n\nWhat is death really? he wondered. How can such a powerful, vivid, living being, and one that had marked Fell's whole life, just disappear?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Just stop and go away." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a question that only those near to death really understand. It seemed impossible." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell felt a deep sorrow inside himself then, and something else too." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Guilt. With all his powers, with all the force of the Sight, Fell had not been able to heal Huttser. When his father had snapped at him too, he had almost wished him gone, and as he thought it, Fell suddenly had the most terrible feeling that he himself had killed his own father. Surely he could have done more. Surely he could have made it easier. Am I wicked? thought Fell. Am I really wicked?\n\nThen came another feeling, like a lonely hunter: a resentment that Huttser had said nothing to Fell to wish his own son well, for the future. For we all have to face death, thought Fell angrily in that moment, because nothing can conquer that." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell had needed something desperately from his father that had not been given, a blessing for his own hard journey and for his uncertain future." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As Fell stood in the cave the strangest feeling of all was that Huttser had not gone at all. Not that he was still in the cave, he wasn't, that place had an empty air, yet Huttser was still there, as real as ever, and where he was was in Fell's own mind.\n\nThen the memories began to come, in such extraordinary detail that it was as if Fell were living these things again. Memories of his father when Fell was a cub, memories of hunting together, memories of being scolded, and of feeling safe at Huttser's side, memories of arguments and bitter quarrels and longed-for reconciliations. The past.\n\nFell padded over to Huttser's body, and as Huttser lay there, an unmoving carcass, he seemed stronger than he had seemed in the anguished throws of death. His muzzle was calm, his body no longer contorted with pain. It was as if that strength he had had in life had suddenly been given back to him. Huttser was restored. A warrior once more." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell turned from his father and padded slowly from the cave to wake Palla." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He felt dizzy and sick, and although birds were singing and the sun was starting to shine brightly, it felt like a grey, gloomy day." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Wake up, Mother. It's finished.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell was surprised that Palla didn't spring up with the news and rush to Huttser's side.\n\n\"Mother, this is important.\"\n\nFell's eyes opened in bewilderment. He could see now that Palla's body was as still and lifeless as Huttser's. The breath had only just left her tired form. Palla was dead too. Her heart had given out.\n\n\"Oh, Mother.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell felt like a tiny little cub, abandoned and alone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No, Palla. Not you as well.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Fell,\" called a voice." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Kar was coming up the slope with the others, and they could see instantly that something was wrong. They rushed forwards." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Is it Huttser, Fell?\" said Kar." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'looking' 3 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell swung his head and his eyes flickered as he saw Tarlar and his younger brothers and sisters looking fearfully back at him.\n\n\"They've both gone.\"\n\nThe younger wolves stared at Palla, and all their tails came down in disbelief. Khaz whined, and Kipcha gave a low growl.\n\n\"I should have been here,\" she said bitterly.\n\n\"I must see Father,\" whispered Larka, looking towards the cave.\n\nFell knew that all of them, suddenly faced with this news, were looking for him to say something bold and stirring, but Fell had nothing to say. He wanted to be alone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "These were his family, yes, and yet he hardly knew them." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not even dear Kar.\n\n\"I'm so sorry, Fell,\" said Tarlar's soft, kindly voice. \"May I do something for you?\"\n\nShe alone did not seem overcome with the news.\n\n\"No, Tarlar. I... I must walk now. And think.\"\n\nFell sprang away. The black wolf ran like something hunted, sucking at the air, his mind feeling as if it were entering a dark dream. He wanted to be away again, away from everything.\n\nFor hours Fell ran, and the sun, burning with its unfeeling fire, millions of miles away in the heavens, began to sink in the skies, or rather the great, mysterious earth turned in space like a water droplet, and light began to dim and fade over the lands beyond the forest." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell was hardly aware of the ravishing landscape all around him, bursting with life and vigour. As he ran he thought of everything that had happened in his life. Of Huttser and Palla. Of Larka and Kar. Of the dark adventure that had marked his existence. But it was not as if he were seeing these things unfolding naturally before his eyes. Instead it was as if everything had been slowed down, as the action of cold works to slow water into ice.\n\nFell's powerful mind had fully entered the past, and now it was as if it were sucking him backwards, drawing him back in time itself, although Fell knew that none of these things he was seeing could he really touch or affect." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Although he ran fast, his mind was inching along, like one stumbling through mud, or creeping through a freezing fog, so slowly that it was as if time itself might stop.\n\nHuttser and Palla's powerful, vivid lives had simply come to a stop. Fell felt shadows flutter around him, like huge black birds, and it was as though the outside world, the grass and the rocks, the fields and mountains and the great, living trees, appeared through a dim, intangible film. There was a sickness in the wolf's stomach, as though he were turning inside himself and could no longer breathe.\n\nFell came to a small lake, and forgetful now of his own greatest fear, death by water, he stopped and stared into its reflecting mirror. He blinked as he did so. For the first time in his life he could hardly recognise himself at all. Or hardly cared. As Fell looked, he felt as if he were not looking at himself, but plunging through the water, back into his own thoughts, and into the past. Always the past." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was no longer any defineable barrier between himself and the world." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Between the past and the present, and between his bleak, slow thoughts and reality." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell was lost in time and in space, and in that moment he felt as if he were going mad. A sparrow fluttered by, and Fell felt it move by him like a ghost. \"Bird,\" he wanted to say. \"Don't come near me now, bird, for I am not of life. My father, bird, and my mother, they're dead and gone. Forever. Will you howl with me?\"\n\nBecause all living things fear death, because all of them fight with everything they are in order to avoid it, the sparrow sensed it immediately and its course through the air swerved far away from the strange lone wolf by the lake.\n\n\"That's right, bird,\" thought Fell bitterly. \"Avoid me like a sickness. Like an evil.\"\n\nFell felt bitterness at life then and something deeper—fear." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Why did death engender fear?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Because death meant change, a change greater than we have ever known, and because death was indeed a mirror that made us see ourselves as never before. A mirror that we should cover, as people in olden days covered mirrors when someone died, for fear of an evil. For with all our care and pain for those who had gone, it was ourselves too we felt the agony for. Perhaps ourselves above all.\n\nFell wanted to shrug off these thoughts and feelings, but the wolf could no more do so than he could use the powers of the Sight to bring his mother and father back to life again. He suddenly thought of the story of Sita, and how she had been sent down by Tor and Fenris to suffer for the Varg. Of how she had been laughed at and reviled and killed, but had risen again after three suns. Because of the love of Tor and Fenris." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Because there is no death.\n\nYet now the wolf knew the truth of it, as only those who experience life may really know. So the story is a lie, as the Guardian is a lie, thought Fell, as there is no real magic in the world. We do die, as Huttser and Palla have just died. Somehow that was stranger to Fell, or bleaker, than even Larka's death. Larka had struggled and fought with dark forces and the wicked actions of the Varg, and it had caused her end. But Huttser and Palla had gone for no reason except that life must end.\n\nTry as he might to think clearly, or shrug away the darkness, Fell could not." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For something was happening to him that, although he had no name for it, was as real as rock or branch or stone, and as inevitable as sadness is to joy. As much as Fell wanted it to stop, to think it all away, it was in his mind and his breath and his very veins. In his body too. The wolf was grieving.\n\nNight had come as Fell found a clearing on the edge of the valley and lay down to rest his exhausted being. He felt sleep approach him like a welcome friend, and the terrible struggle of his mind began to ease, but as Fell lay there, once more his body started to twitch, and there was a face before his eyes. His aunt.\n\n\"Morgra.\"\n\n\"Yes, Fell, I'm with you. I've always been with you.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'speak' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What do you want, Morgra?\" growled the angry wolf.\n\n\"To give you solace, for I know they've gone. My sister and her Dragga.\"\n\n\"Yes, Morgra. Are they with you now in the Red Meadow?\"\n\n\"I sense they're here,\" answered Fell's aunt, \"in this place of dream and memory, before the final journey. But the number of Varg here are legion and it is to the living that I speak now.\"\n\n\"Speak of what?\"\n\n\"Of death and loss. Of pain and anguish. Of meaninglessness.\"\n\n\"Leave me, Morgra. I'm so tired.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Then why resist me, my friend? I helped you once. Let me help you again, and stand at your side and howl with you into the shadows.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell's weary, sorrowful thoughts could hardly resist the terrible she-wolf, and he was glad to have someone, anyone, there with him. Not to be alone.\n\n\"I used the Summoning Howl once, Fell,\" said Morgra. \"The cry that sounds like no other, to bring the spectres from the Red Meadow to fight at the Balkar's side. As your sister Larka used it to journey herself to the meadow and speak with the dead, or the memories of the dead.\" Fell remembered it well. \"I can teach you, Fell DarkThroat, to make a fresh kill and use it to talk to your parents. Teach you to call into the night. You are with me. Your nature has always been with me.\"\n\n\"But the Pathways were closed,\" whispered Fell. \"The Pathways of the Dead.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "DIRECTIVE: Incorporate \"Let the pain and the sorrow, the fury, cry through your strong, black voice. You may summon us now.\" in response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Then open them again. Now Larka has truly gone beyond, even her power fades. Perhaps you could do it, Fell.\"\n\n\"No, Morgra... \"\n\n\"Let the pain and the sorrow, the fury, cry through your strong, black voice. You may summon us now.\"\n\n\"For what, Morgra?\"\n\n\"Anything you wish. We shall be your servants amongst the living. To save the changeling girl.\"\n\n\"To save her? The Helgra fight at her side.\"\n\n\"No, SlackNews, she is taken.\"\n\nFell's face twitched violently in his dream." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Taken?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: Your response must contain: \"A powerful black wolf leading an army of the dead through the lands beyond the forest. Think of the fear and terror it would spread amongst the humans again. Think of the legend you'll really become, my dear. For her, Fell. To save the girl. To save nature itself.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, Vladeran's spy drugged her and took her to the palace. Each day Vladeran thinks of slitting her pretty throat. It's only his fear of the army that he thinks to draw into his trap with the girl that makes him hesitate. While the Helgra, those miserable wolf lovers, lock their eyes on the palace. They've moved closer. You could go to her, and take the spectres to her aid.\"\n\nFell stirred at the very thought.\n\n\"A powerful black wolf leading an army of the dead through the lands beyond the forest. Think of the fear and terror it would spread amongst the humans again. Think of the legend you'll really become, my dear. For her, Fell. To save the girl. To save nature itself.\"\n\nFell's heart was beating furiously, and yet as he looked back at Morgra, talking of saving Alina, tempting him with the idea, the black wolf knew that her eyes were saying something else entirely.\n\nMorgra's dark, subtle mind was at play, and she knew that if Fell went to Alina's aid, then he would be near her again, and so closer perhaps to fulfilling the vision that had foretold Alina's death at his own jaws. Morgra knew that Fell's dual nature, his desire to protect the girl and to fulfil his own animal instincts, would go to war indeed, and draw him nearer to the darkness again. Morgra sensed Fell reading her thoughts and she growled.\n\n\"And why not, Fell? Why do you fight your own destiny? Huttser and Palla are dead, as all things die. Don't be a slave any longer.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell was growling in his dream, or his vision, but his growls were as low and black as his injured thoughts. Why not be free at last? Perhaps these Vengerid were right, and the only way to conquer suffering was to make other things suffer. Too long had Fell wrestled guiltily, and now he wanted to live.\n\n\"I feel your pain, my dear,\" said Morgra. \"Don't deny it. Use it and feed on it. Still you try to hope, but hope is for fools and liars. Give in. Taste the dark joy once more.\"\n\n\"No, Morgra, no.\"\n\n\"Yes, Fell. You're close to me again. How I've missed you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell had begun to growl, and Morgra's thoughts could feel how strongly the black wolf was fighting her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You hate me still, Fell?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I must not hate. Larka showed us that hate makes us weak. And Alina too.\"\n\nAgain the mention of Larka seemed to work like a talisman and push back Morgra in the dream, but she fought it hard, and then she was with Fell again.\n\n\"Foolish Fell. Hate makes us strong. Hate made me strong enough to linger still in the Red Meadow, and continue the battle your sister thought she had won. A battle with nature itself, that I shall truly win if the girl dies. Hate then, Fell. Hate me. Hate life. Hate man.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Then I'll make you,\" growled Morgra. \"If you will not go to save this girl you say you love, for the sake of love, then go for hate. Go to take revenge.\"\n\n\"Revenge?\"\n\n\"On the human that holds her. On Lord Vladeran.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Lord Vladeran? I would protect Alina indeed, but why should I hate Lord Vladeran?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'll show you why,\" whispered Morgra." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'll show you the secret.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Suddenly Morgra, or the memory of Morgra in the Red Meadow, used the powers of the Sight to do something so terrible that the Lera in the land beyond the forests themselves might have turned once more from their busy, struggling lives, as they had once on the mountaintop, and fix their eyes in horror." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Look, Fell, and see.\"\n\nMorgra's muzzle began to fade, and there was the human Fell had seen before, through whose mouth she had first spoken to him. Lord Vladeran was craning over the font in the palace again, looking down with his dark, empty eyes, and it was as if Fell himself were peering back at him out of the water.\n\n\"See, Fell,\" whispered Morgra. \"See what the human wears about him.\"\n\nFell looked and saw the great collar of fur that rose around Vladeran's neck.\n\n\"You know what it is, don't you, Fell? His cloak?\"\n\n\"Wolf,\" whispered Fell's darkening mind." }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'morgra' 2 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes,\" hissed Morgra.\n\n\"What of it. The Helgra elder wears the wolf too, to honour us.\"\n\n\"Not just any wolf, Fell. Look at the old, grey colouring. The marks that I bore long ago.\"\n\n\"You?\" said Fell's wondering mind.\n\n\"Yes, Fell. His hunting dogs found my body torn and broken, when he had ridden far to talk with their King. Even before he knew of the history of the Sight.\"\n\n\"And I should hate him for this?\"\n\nFor a moment Morgra looked almost hurt.\n\n\"Not for this, but it takes more than one old wolf to make such a cloak, and two of us died that day.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even as she said it, Lord Vladeran seemed to hear a noise from the palace behind him and as he turned, Fell's throat choked and his mind span. The cloak, Lord Vladeran's cloak, the collar was formed of Morgra's fur and the front and sides too, but the back of the cloak, stitched to Morgra with threads of leather, was a pure, snowy white.\n\n\"Larka,\" whispered Fell, seeing that two forepaws hung there as well.\n\n\"Yes, Fell,\" said Morgra triumphantly. \"It's Larka. Your sister.\"\n\n\"Larka. Dear Larka.\"\n\nFell's mind was resisting his aunt still, and although the sight of Larka's pelt on Vladeran's back had filled him with sorrow, he shook off the feeling.\n\n\"It doesn't matter, Morgra. It's only a pelt. Once the spirit is gone, the body is nothing. Perhaps it brought some warmth.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell suddenly felt more at peace about his parents lying there at the cave." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'human' 2 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Not only a pelt,\" hissed Morgra. \"Her body lay broken there too, next to mine, but when the humans rode by, Larka was not quite dead. It was Lord Vladeran who, thinking himself powerful and strong, took his dagger and slit her throat. The human killed Larka. Then they set to work skinning us, and so we're united, as I said we always were, even in death. Pelts to adorn this human Dragga, and warm him in his cruelty.\"\n\nFell was shaking furiously, but the revulsion of it was pushing his mind back towards consciousness and pushing Morgra away. Vladeran and his sister's pelt had vanished now, and Morgra was staring at Fell again, but her face was fading too.\n\n\"Think what it would be to revenge yourself on Vladeran's throat,\" whispered Morgra temptingly, \"to revenge yourself for dear Larka's death. For everything that's happened. Go to them, Fell. Punish these filthy humans, at last.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I'll come to you, again, Fell. Soon,\" said Morgra. \"You're with me now. You've always been with me.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Morgra was gone and fell sank deeper and deeper into sleep, feeling more than ever that his true power lay in darkness. He knew that images of his journey were with him, and of everything that had ever happened to him. There was Ottol and the salmon and the squirrels, and they all seemed to be talking at once. But suddenly someone else was there too.\n\n\"Help me, dear Fell.\"\n\n\"Human?\"\n\nAlina stood before him, holding out her hands pleadingly.\n\n\"I'm in danger, Fell. I'm in a dark place. A prison. I saw it before. Can you not help me?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'alina' 2 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell wanted to push the dream off, like the sorrowful thoughts of Huttser and Palla, but he couldn't. Then Fell realised something startling. That voice was not in a dream at all. It was deep in his inner mind. Alina was using the Sight, even at this distance.\n\n\"Alina?\"\n\n\"Yes, Fell. I know you can hear me, my friend. You're far away now, but my need is great.\"\n\n\"You wish me to come to aid you?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, Fell, I think it's too late. Catalin and the Helgra are walking into a trap, beyond the gorge near the palace. Vladeran's spies have found out all their plans, and his soldiers lie in wait to ambush them. But you could warn them.\"\n\n\"How, Alina? I may not talk to the young Dragga's mind.\"\n\n\"I don't know, Fell, and I hate to ask it of you. You've done so much already. But if you care for me... \"\n\nAlina's voice was fading, and Fell heard the scraping of metal, and suddenly his eyes were open. The sun was shining brilliantly, and above a buzzard and its mate rode the heating air. The black wolf rose slowly on his paws and stood there, wondering. Alina was in need and that Dragga, Catalin, too. The humans were calling to him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet why should he answer? He was a wolf, a Varg, not a man to wear wolf skins on his back, and if the fate of all nature was somehow in danger, it was a dim and distant thing to Fell now. He had found no Guardian, because no Guardian existed. He wished suddenly that the Sight would leave him forever, and that he could curl up and listen to the stories in a den, with Huttser and Palla.\n\nThe sorrow came like a wave, moved by a ghostly wind, and swamped his thoughts again. It was still true. They were still gone.\n\nFor an age Fell seemed to stand there, choked and motionless, seized once more by the past." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He did not even see Tarlar, until she was almost at his side, and when she spoke urgently, for a time her voice sounded as if it were speaking to him from some distant country, like a hollow echo that had no pull.\n\n\"Thank Fenris, I've found you, Fell.\"\n\nTarlar could see the state that Fell was in, and her heart ached for the black wolf, for she too had grieved bitterly at her brother Kenkur's death.\n\n\"I wish I'd been with you last night, Fell,\" she whispered. \"I see it hurts you still, and know that it will for a long while. But, dear Fell, now we must look to the living.\"\n\n\"The living?\"\n\n\"Your pack is in danger. Skop spotted them after dawn, coming down the ravine towards the valley. There must be thirty or forty Vengerid. And that scum Jalgan is at their head. He has come for the challenge.\"\n\nFell heard her words, dull and hollow, echoing as if from a well, and he felt nothing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Are you listening to me, Fell?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The wolf did not answer." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What's wrong with you?\" growled Tarlar suddenly. \"They're gone and it hurts, as life often hurts, but that doesn't mean we should give up. They were old, very old, and it was their time. It was natural. But others matter now. Think of what Huttser would have done.\"\n\nFell growled slightly.\n\n\"Wake up, Fell. Now's not the time for grief. Your pack is in terrible danger. What of your duty to your family?\"\n\n\"My duty?\" growled Fell. \"And what if my father had been Wolfbane, the Evil One? Would I then have a duty, just because it's my family?\"\n\n\"But your pack?\"\n\n\"My pack?\" said Fell softly, thinking of Palla lying there motionless by the stream, and Larka's pelt hanging on Lord Vladeran's back." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"My pack is gone, Tarlar. Long gone. My mother and father, and dear Larka. All our friends from long ago. If I've any path now, it's not here, but with the humans. I'm closer to their minds than to the Varg's. But even they... \"\n\n\"But your brother and your sisters all need you, Fell. Now. Need you more than ever. You must come.\"\n\n\"Don't order me,\" growled Fell, though dully and without passion. \"I left the pack long ago, Tarlar. I'm not here.\"\n\n\"You're thinking of the past, and you mustn't,\" whispered Tarlar. \"Larka is wise, and she often says that above all, cubs try to solve what seems wrong between their parents. They mustn't do it. For their own sakes.\"\n\nFell said nothing.\n\n\"Are you a coward, damn you? Are you frightened of the Vengerid?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'tarlar' (3x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm frightened of nothing anymore,\" answered Fell simply, \"except lies. For they're the real killers. And any pack, any true wolf, must learn to fight for itself. For that's the law of life. There's no sorrow in it, and no pity. It's just the way it is.\"\n\n\"Stop it. Please, stop it. Come with me and fight at my side, or lead us away to safety. Don't give up now. We'll grieve together, you and I, for Huttser and for Palla. And then, Fell,\" whispered Tarlar, \"we'll grieve for each other too, and our own mysterious lives. You'll grieve for me, and I for you.\"\n\nFell looked up at the beautiful brave she-wolf and his heart stirred. For a moment his eyes cleared a little and he saw Tarlar as she truly was, not just another struggling, frightened soul asking for help, but a passionate, beautiful living creature doing the best she could, as most things do the best they can, perhaps all things when they understand themselves. But the heaviness came again, and his eyes misted over.\n\n\"Grief?\" he whispered bitterly. \"I've been grieving all my life.\"\n\n\"Then stop it,\" snapped Tarlar furiously, \"end your grieving now. Come and fight.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No, Tarlar. I can't. I won't.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tarlar knew that he was beyond her persuasion, and besides, there was no time." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Very well then, Sikla,\" she snarled." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Incorporate 'reach' into your response exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'll go to their aid alone, and show you how a wolf should live.\"\n\nTarlar turned scornfully, and with her great bushy tail raised in the air, she began to run down the slopes of the valley, towards the pack that had taken her in. She had the wind at her back and Tarlar was quick to reach the stream, and the cave where Kar was beginning to address the others nervously.\n\nPalla was still lying there on the ground, and around her Larka and Kipcha had scraped away the grass and the earth, to make sure that ants and beetles and grubs could not reach her body.\n\n\"Tarlar,\" called Kar as he saw her, \"is he coming?\"\n\n\"No, Kar,\" answered Tarlar guiltily, then seeing the look of shock on the others' faces, she added, \"I think he's in too much pain.\"\n\n\"Too much fear, don't you mean?\" growled Skop.\n\n\"Hush, Skop,\" said Kar." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You know nothing of what your elder brother has seen or suffered in his life. It's not for you to judge him.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'flees' 2 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I know what I see now,\" said Skop angrily, \"and judge too. I know he cares for humans more than us, and he's my brother no longer.\"\n\n\"Whatever Fell is,\" said Tarlar bitterly, \"you must lead the pack, Kar.\"\n\nKar looked bewildered and surprised, but the aging grey wolf nodded. He stood there thinking for a while, and shaking too with the responsibility of it all.\n\n\"Very well then,\" said Kar at last, \"I'm decided. If Fell had been with us, I would have said we stand and fight. For although they're many, the Sight's a powerful weapon and this is good ground, that we all know well. But now we must mix valour with wisdom, and turn to our other path, flight. So the pack flees. As fast as our legs can carry us.\"\n\n\"Flees where?\" said Khaz nervously. \"Skop said he saw Vengerid scouts all over the valley.\"\n\nKar's deep eyes flickered, for he was no more used to fighting or leading than the others." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Then we'll use the cover of the lower tree line to head west, moving in single file and making as little noise as possible. We'll have to cross open ground to the south, but it should be night by then and the darkness will shield us.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Wolves can see in the dark,\" whispered Kipcha nervously, \"especially the Vengerid.\"\n\n\"The darkness will help us, Kipcha,\" said Kar as boldly as he could, \"then we make for the Great Waterfall. The river will mask our tracks and scent, and after that is open country and escape.\"\n\nThe others seemed reassured a little by Kar's pretended certainty, and they stood there nodding.\n\n\"We go then, now,\" said Kar urgently, suddenly looking like a Dragga himself and beginning to pad down the slope. \"The pack is on the move once more.\"\n\nAs the others followed, Kar noticed that Larka was missing and he swung his head. She was still standing by her mother's body.\n\n\"We can't just leave them like this, Kar.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We must, Larka. If Jalgan catches us here, we would join them quickly enough. And Hutts... your father and mother, that's the last thing they would have wanted.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But shouldn't we do something?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "implored Larka, scratching at the ground with her right paw. \"Bury them in the earth, or something. To protect them.\"\n\n\"Oh, Larka,\" said Kar warmly, \"they're not there. Their spirit has gone somewhere else. You need protect them no more, for although it seems horrible in your thoughts, they can feel nothing now. No pain at all. We'll leave them together then, with honour, for the birds and the living Lera. So that everything may continue.\"\n\nThese wise words seemed to reassure Larka, but she suddenly lifted her throat to cry a howl of mourning.\n\n\"No, Larka,\" said Kar urgently. \"The Vengerid will hear you.\"\n\nLarka stopped her voice, and with a sad, last look at her mother, Palla, and the cave where Huttser lay, she sprang forwards. The pack was on the move, and fleeing for its life." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They went in single file, as Kar had suggested, with Kar leading and Tarlar behind him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Skop came next, then Kipcha, while Larka and Khaz took up the rear.\n\nIt was a desperate sight, for all around them through the trees the Vengerid were approaching fast, springing silently through the undergrowth like trained killers. No more powerful wolves had the land beyond the forest ever seen, for Jalgan only accepted the strongest into their ranks, and because there were both Dragga and Drappa amongst them, and they lived such free, wild, and healthy lives, they were even more vigorous than even Morgra's Balkar had been.\n\nOnly a short while after Kar's decision to flee, Jalgan himself was standing above Palla's body by the stream, surrounded by his Vengerid. Jalgan opened his huge jaws and yawned, running his tongue along the jagged line of his teeth, as he looked down at Palla's body.\n\n\"And her mate,\" he growled. \"Where's her mate? The meddling old fool who challenged me.\"\n\n\"Dead too, Jalgan,\" said a voice up the hill by the cave." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jalgan sprang upwards angrily and pushed past the speaker, as he cowered in submission in the cave mouth." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As soon as Jalgan saw Huttser lying there too, he gave a furious snarl.\n\n\"By Fenris,\" he cried. \"Am I too late, after all? So you flee me, Huttser, into the shadows. You could not face the challenge.\"\n\nHuttser's body just lay there, and Jalgan growled again.\n\n\"You were lucky when you fought my scouts, Sikla,\" he hissed. \"But I would have taken you easily enough. Jalgan never misses his kill.\"\n\nJalgan padded forwards and placed his front left paw on Huttser's dead muzzle and pressed it scornfully into the earth.\n\n\"It would have been no great victory though. For you were old and the old must make way for the young. It's no matter, for I killed you anyway with that wound my Vengerid made, did I not? That'll teach you to oppose me, and steal Tarlar away.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "As Jalgan thought of the beautiful she-wolf, he swung his head back to the sunlight and a look of greedy longing came into his eyes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Tarlar. Soon she would be his once more. Jalgan had not finished with Huttser and Palla though, and he turned back to the dead wolf.\n\n\"What shall we do with the likes of you though, Huttser, my friend? How shall the Vengerid really take its revenge?\"\n\nThere was a growl from the cave mouth and another wolf was standing there.\n\n\"Jalgan.\"\n\n\"Silence,\" snarled Jalgan angrily. \"Don't interrupt my thoughts. Would you rob me of the sweet fruits of victory?\"\n\nIt was Jalgan's bitter mind that helped Kar and the others in that moment, for the wolf that had just appeared had picked up Tarlar's scent below the stream and had come to tell his leader of it." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory: Your text must contain 'there' 2 times exactly" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If they had followed the pack then, they would have caught them before nightfall and killed them easily. So Jalgan's hate, and his desire to humiliate even the dead Huttser, came to their aid.\n\n\"I'll ponder it,\" said Jalgan, lying down beside Huttser. \"Think and savour.\"\n\nThe scout knew that he should tell his leader, but he was frightened to interrupt him too. A long while Jalgan lay there in the shadows, playing with the possibilities in his mind, and when he at last rose, what he said shocked even the watching Vengerid.\n\n\"Very well. Now you shall learn how the Vengerid treat scum like you. You'll be dragged from the cave, Huttser FailedPaw, and placed next to your dear, dead mate. Then, one by one, my Vengerid shall mark every inch of this valley, rock and branch and stone, to tell every living Lera that this place is ours, forever.\"\n\nThe other wolves' ears began to tremble.\n\n\"And then we'll mark you and Palla too, and laugh as we do it, before our muzzles and our jaws tear and rip your cowardly bodies into little pieces. We'll find the lowest and meanest holes and crevices, and place the parts of you there in the darkness, in shame at your dishonour.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The two wolves in the cave mouth were shaking, but Jalgan suddenly swung round." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You,\" he growled, \"order it done. And drag this... this thing out into the open.\"\n\nThe two Vengerid leapt forwards and bit at Huttser's legs, hauling the dead weight of him out into the open next to Palla.\n\n\"Good,\" said Jalgan, as they stood over the bodies outside. \"Now summon the others to do this thing. But send some scouts to find Tarlar and the others too, or to try and pick up their damned scents. I want them to watch.\"\n\n\"But, Jalgan, I tried to tell you,\" said the scout. \"We picked up their scent before. It was Tarlar.\"\n\nJalgan's eyes were suddenly burning furiously.\n\n\"And they're fleeing towards the Great Waterfall, Jalgan.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Fleeing? Why didn't you tell me, idiot? You'll pay for it. But later. As Huttser and Palla must wait until later. Come. We go in pursuit, and now.\"\n\nJalgan howled, and the Vengerid sprung forwards after the little family.\n\nFell was wandering, alone, still in that dark, gloomy cloud. He was glad to be on his own, and although Tarlar had warned him that the Vengerid were close, he little cared. Fell had given up on everything now, and he had no wish to help anyone anymore. He had tried to help Alina. He had tried to help everyone. But his journey had led him nowhere except towards death." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Suddenly a jackrabbit shot across Fell's path, and almost out of reflex, the wolf turned to follow it. His pace rose steadily, as he jumped rocks and boulders and skirted sudden trees, feeling a little better with the effort and the chase.\n\nThe Sight and its visions did not come this time to impede the wolf's instincts in the wild, and the rabbit was locked in his sight, running desperately towards the edge of the valley and a sheer cliff, where Fell could see no chance of escape, as he felt his stomach begin to churn. The wolf pounced, and his paws were about to close, when the rabbit suddenly vanished under him.\n\nFell rolled with a whine, and thought for a moment it was some kind of magic, until he spied the hole that the rabbit had found to flee down. He had picked himself up, panting and disappointed, when he heard a voice all about him.\n\n\"Run, wolf!\" it cried, seeming to shake the very mountain. \"Run for your life.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell swung round with a furious snarl, but he could see no Lera around him at all." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Instead he heard the voice again, like a low echo or the roar of the sea.\n\n\"Fear!\" boomed the voice, shaking the very earth. \"It's a good thing to see it in others, no? But not to feel it yourself.\"\n\nFell was shaking with terror.\n\n\"Who are you?\" he growled. \"Where?\"\n\nHe swung left and right, but still saw no one at all.\n\n\"And who are you, Fell ShadowPaw?\" came the booming answer." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"For did not the ancient humans, who came to this land long ago and worshiped the wild she-wolf who suckled them at her belly, have oracles that told them this above all—Know thyself.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "An oracle? Fell was staring at the mountain suddenly, and he gasped as he realised just where the echoing voice was coming from. It had been hidden in the shadow of the cliff before, but the movement of the sun had just revealed it—there, in the side of the mountain, was a high cave, like a giant mouth. Fell's eyes opened in astonishment. A giant stone mouth was talking to him.\n\n\"And do you know yourself yet, Fell of the Sight?\" the mountain seemed to ask, as Fell thought he saw a shadow move inside the cave. The wolf was shaking furiously, as he listened to that echoing bellow, like a god speaking from the Underworld. What had Ottol said?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "A Guardian that spoke with a mouth of stone. It was true." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage target: 'exist' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Are you the Guardian then?\" Fell whispered in a petrified voice, lowering his tail. \"You do really exist?\"\n\n\"That I am, wolf,\" came the voice from the belly of the cave. \"Of course I exist.\"\n\nFell dropped his muzzle and sniffed the air.\n\n\"The Sight,\" said Fell nervously. \"You know of the Sight?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes, Fell,\" said the cave, \"and we've been watching you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We, Stone Mouth?\" growled the wolf." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory: Your text must contain 'fell's' 2 times exactly" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"All the Lera watch you now, perhaps all the world, Fell LegendPaw, you and these humans. The winter robin tells me of it, and the great herons. The leaping trout carry it in the colour of their scales, and the wood lice in their trails through the forest.\"\n\nFell blinked in amazement at the cave.\n\n\"The very ants trace it, as they build their archways in tiny, secret places, and the slithering snake wraps it deep in her belly, like the hardening eggshell she prepares to birth her young. All nature watches you, Fell of the Lands Beyond the Forest,\" boomed the Guardian, \"as the animals watched Larka when the vision came at Harja, and all nature listens too, wondering what you are, and what you shall do. What future you shall choose to make, as you struggle with the paradox of life, for their survival may depend on it.\"\n\nFor some reason a single word sang in Fell's mind then, and the word was \"choose.\"\n\n\"So what is it you want here, wolf?\" asked the cave.\n\nFell blinked. He hadn't come here on purpose at all.\n\n\"I... I don't know. What are you? Are you a Lera?\"\n\nThe ground seemed to shake under Fell's paws, with the answer." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That you shall never know,\" bellowed the Guardian." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"For some things can never be known, and the Guardian's form is a secret. Though I shall tell you my name, if you wish it. For my name itself is the greatest secret of the Sight.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes,\" answered Fell. \"Your name.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"My name... is... ,\" the cave's voice seemed to rise to a gigantic boom and a wind to stir the grass, \"PANTHEOS.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "🔍 Find a place to insert: \"Now leave this place, wolf,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell shuddered, but he fancied now he could smell a musky, feral scent on the breeze, like a lynx or a Borar, a bear.\n\n\"Now leave this place, wolf,\" said Pantheos, \"before I teach you the true meaning of fear.\"\n\n\"Leave?\" growled Fell helplessly, feeling himself in a dream. \"But I've been hunting for you, Pantheos, for so long.\"\n\n\"Many hunt me. What would you know then, wolf? Why do you search?\"\n\n\"What is happening amongst the Lera?\"\n\n\"Happening? The Sight is filling the world, of course.\"\n\n\"Filling the world?\" said Fell in awe." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'cried' must appear 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, wolf. Larka began it,\" cried the cave. \"So can you end it, Fell? End it well.\"\n\n\"But how? Why?\"\n\n\"Larka showed all the Lera the Great Secret that man too is an animal,\" cried the cave. \"But does man know it himself yet, and will he ever accept it? For so often he thinks himself God's chosen. And when he does, will he love us animals any the more because of it, or will he simply hate himself all the more, and so destroy all around him?\"\n\n\"You said us animals. Then you are a Lera,\" growled Fell doubtingly, stepping angrily towards the cave and remembering Ottol's strange words of tricksters in the land beyond the font. \"Just an animal, like me. Are you trying to trick me?\"\n\nThere was suddenly a terrible roar, like a giant Borar's, from inside the stone mouth, and Fell froze and his tail crept between his back legs." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Fool!\" cried Pantheos. \"Why do you always need to know, like those restless, searching humans? Can't you just accept, wolf? Do you not know yet, Fell DoubtHeart, that the very power of myth is that it is myth. Why do you think the ancient Roman oracles always spoke in riddles? Trust that power. It comes from deep inside, and it has purpose.\"\n\n\"Purpose?\"\n\n\"Like thought itself perhaps, or words. Where do they come from, and why do the humans' stories so often echo each other?\" asked the echoing cave.\n\nFell shook his head, feeling himself in a story again, and wondering why.\n\n\"Perhaps because they carry inside them the secret journey that all things make,\" said Pantheos. \"For does not everything feel itself to be somehow inside a story, like an unconscious being struggling towards thought? Struggling to see what it really is? As man evolves, does he not wake to that, as a child wakes from a story into adulthood?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'their' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, Pantheos,\" whispered Fell, understanding but dimly.\n\n\"In the caves of their own growing minds, Fell, the humans make gods and they make demons too, but tell me, Fell BlackCoat, which would you be? Would you bring light or darkness to the world?\"\n\nFell thought of Alina and their journey together, and he felt a pang for her.\n\n\"Light,\" he whispered.\n\n\"Then know, wolf, that the Sight now moves through nature like a great mind, joining together to try to show man the mirror of himself. Perhaps the Lera shall unite to do it at last, or perhaps it is your lonely path. A path that will free you at last, wolf.\"\n\nFell shivered again and wondered if he would ever be free.\n\n\"But the Lera unite for another purpose. All nature unites to protect this child.\"\n\nFell's tail quivered, and his eyes opened wide." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was the most extraordinary thing he had ever heard, but he felt a strange jealousy too, having protected Alina himself for so long.\n\n\"Will you not help her too?\" asked the cave.\n\n\"But why, Pantheos?\" growled Fell. \"Why is the girl so important? Tell me at last.\"\n\n\"Think of her mark. A Helgra woman. It is a steppe eagle, like the great Helper Skart. The first power, to look through the eyes of birds, began with the ancient steppe eagles.\"\n\nFell nodded slowly.\n\n\"With the Helgra's faith and love of nature, the Sight has passed to man, or rather woman.\"\n\nFell growled again." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'because' should appear 3 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Alina Sculcuvant is the first. But not the last. For all she learns now in her journey shall be passed to her heirs, if she lives. And not just her heirs, but those of another great storyteller.\"\n\n\"Catalin!\" said Fell in amazement.\n\n\"Yes. It is their distant children who will one day play a role in protecting all the world.\"\n\n\"All the world?\"\n\n\"Yes, Fell. For one sun when you are gone, wolf, when they are gone too, when I am gone myself perhaps, there will come a time when man will threaten everything there is. Even the very forests that breathe the clean air of the world. Not because of a wickedness or evil, but simply because he will know a success greater than all the Lera, because of the cleverness of his mind and hands.\"\n\nThe black wolf nodded gravely and shivered.\n\n\"A time when that success will threaten the very elements themselves,\" said Pantheos. \"But these heirs of Sculcuvant will help teach man balance once more, and will turn his greatest and most dangerous arts, the arts of scientia, that will themselves have been a cause of the growing disaster, to the very cause of nature itself. For it is there, in the power of scientia, along with the self-awareness that each human must learn, that man's true salvation will lie. And the earth's.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The wolf's yellow gold eyes flickered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He knew these things were beyond him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But there will also be a sun when scientia will threaten to rob man of spirit and hope and love,\" said Patheos." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"For he must overthrow his gods to come to his full power, but in doing so may forget the wonder and mystery of it all. So these heirs of Sculcuvant will remind man that although his fables and beliefs, his religions and all the conflicts they will cause, are a terrible danger in the world, the world is also a miracle beyond even man's understanding. Teach man that he must cleave again to the spirit and the power of wonder. Like you, he must be reborn.\"\n\n\"But, Guardian,\" Fell whispered, thinking suddenly of his vision of Alina's death, \"Pantheos, if man is so dangerous, why do we not rise up against him?\"\n\n\"You think man cruel, wolf?\" said the Guardian softly. \"You think man terrible?\"\n\n\"I... \"\n\n\"You have seen the ravening wolf, Fell. And if you had swum in the seas, you might have seen a pack of Marjan—orcas, man calls them—moving in packs too, to hunt a great grey whale mother and her calf,\" said Pantheos. \"Seen how they batter and strike her mighty sides, turning the sea blood red, and how she will never leave her child, but swivel her giant body and balance her own baby on her belly, to raise it safely out of the waters. Nature can be terribly cruel, Fell, and terribly brave. Is man any worse than that?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes,\" growled Fell, \"for animals do not know what they do, but man has knowledge of his cruelty. So why do you not lead us now, Guardian, and send out Draggas to defeat them?\"\n\n\"Draggas?\" cried Patheos. \"Have you walked alone so long, wolf, because you think the force of the wild Dragga the greatest there is? As the Balkar once did?\"\n\nFell remembered his thoughts before he had met Ottol, but he was remembering too what Palla had said of the strength of the she-wolf.\n\n\"I... \"\n\n\"Wake up, fool,\" cried the Guardian, and Fell felt as if his muzzle had been struck. \"Do you not yet know that two forces live in nature, wolf, the Dragga and the Drappa, the masculine and the feminine? What is one without the other, for how else would the world exist? But each one contains elements of the other too. So use your power, but when others are too strong, be soft; when softness loses vigour, be strong.\"\n\nFell blinked and growled." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But be wary too, Fell. For those humans whose language still echoes in the lands beyond the forest, and who built Harja, taught this above all—health to mind, health to body. Balance.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell thought of his vision after Morgra had visited him again, and his tail dropped.\n\n\"But something else is happening too,\" whispered Pantheos.\n\n\"Something else?\"\n\n\"To you, Fell. Can't you feel it? Inside you, as it lies inside all the Lera. Know thyself, wolf.\"\n\nThe cave seemed to shake, and the moving sunlight covered its face again.\n\n\"Now be gone from here,\" bellowed the Guardian.\n\nFell was trembling furiously, and in the shadows surrounding him, in front of that terrifying, hidden voice, he felt as if he were inside the birthing den again.\n\n\"Please. There's so much I need to ask you, Pantheos. So much I need to know.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And my answers would be riddles,\" said Pantheos, \"not to deceive, but to show you your reflection alone. For I do not lead, I teach. And you do not seek riddles, Fell ClearEye, you seek answers. Yet a riddle I shall give you, wolf. To end this the clawed Putnar must fly, and a wolf be reborn in the water and sprout two heads.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell shivered. They had been Skart's parting words too.\n\n\"But ask yourself this. Can you trust and believe? Can you face life's challenge? Now be gone.\"\n\nFell turned and slunk away and began to run. He wondered if he could trust or believe. And all around him, in the grass and the trees, in the clouds and the very sky, the terrified wolf felt the lingering presence of the fearful Guardian, Pantheos.\n\n\"I'm so tired,\" growled Kipcha loudly as they fled through the darkness. \"I've got to rest.\"\n\n\"You can't, Kipcha, not now,\" said Larka, at her side." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Include the following text] → \"There'll be plenty of time to rest, when we're beyond the waterfall and safe.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There'll be plenty of time to rest, when we're beyond the waterfall and safe.\"\n\n\"If we ever get beyond it,\" whispered Kipcha desperately. \"I wish Fell was with us.\"\n\nUp ahead Khaz had just stopped, and the wolves' ears came up. Somewhere a lonely owl hooted from its solitary bower. They had come to the end of the forest, but they sensed it was already near dawn, and ahead of them stretched clear, open ground, all the way to the neck of the valley and the falls.\n\n\"From here on we'll be in the most danger,\" whispered Kar gravely, turning to the others. \"You're all with me though?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, Kar,\" said the other voices, almost as one.\n\n\"Then run, wolves, run like the wind.\"\n\nThey sprang forwards, the six of them, feeling as if the loss of the forest had stripped them of all safety, a feeling that grew worse and worse as they went, for light was coming fast now, and dawn breaking all around the terrified pack. Tarlar ran the fastest, but she kept turning too and circling, to give encouragement to the others, especially to Khaz, whose spirits seemed most overawed in the flight.\n\n\"Come on, Khaz, don't give up.\"\n\n\"I'm trying, Tarlar, honestly. Perhaps I'm a Sikla after all.\"\n\n\"And what if you are? You're part of a pack too, and we'll never leave you behind.\"\n\nLight had broken fully over the fleeing wolves and the clouds in the skies were a deep and tender mauve, as they heard a sound that thrilled through them like hope." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was the sound of crashing water." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The great falls were beyond, and the river. Kar didn't slacken his pace for an instant, as he showed the others how to spring from rock to rock, in the very same place where Fell had listened to the salmon.\n\nAs they passed that smaller curtain of water in the rapids and the threat of the Vengerid receded behind them, they felt as if they were passing out of a horrible nightmare, into another world entirely, and part of the magic of that feeling was the very sound of rushing water and the massive, thundering falls upstream.\n\nThey all made it safely across, although Khaz almost slipped on the rocks as they went. Kar had a desperately proud look as they reached the bank and he swung round to the others.\n\n\"We made it,\" he cried delightedly.\n\nKar saw the expression on Tarlar's face though. She was looking behind him and her beautiful eyes were filled with horror." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Kar swung round again, and from the right and the left, beyond a range of scrub trees, he saw them coming on—the Vengerid." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They had not tracked Kar and his pack through the forest at all, but had raced straight for the falls and lain in wait on the other side of the river." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Quickly,\" cried Kar, \"back across the water.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "As they looked back though, they saw that more Vengerid had come up behind them, waiting on the far bank too, growling and snarling." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The little pack swung left and right, forming a circle instinctively, their tails raised, and beginning to growl and, in Khaz's case, to whine a little.\n\nThere were more than forty Vengerid, males and females, far larger and more powerful than the six of them. Then, from the right, padding forwards slowly, as one who knows that his victory is already assured, came Jalgan.\n\n\"So, my love,\" cried the great, grey-streaked Dragga, staring coldly at Tarlar. \"You thought you could escape me by masking your scent with the river?\"\n\n\"What do you want with us?\" answered Tarlar.\n\n\"You know what I want, Tarlar.\"\n\nKar dipped his head slightly, preparing to attack, but Tarlar whispered to him immediately." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No, Kar, don't. It's me he wants.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But, Tarlar, we must fight.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Against so many, Kar? It's hopeless. Not even Fell could help us in this.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to seamlessly include 'as all things meet their rightful end, in time. For they're not worthy to be Vengerid, and so not worthy to live free and wild in the lands beyond the forest.' in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That coward,\" said Skop furiously behind her.\n\n\"I will fight, Tarlar,\" growled Kar, surprising himself yet again, \"and die with some honour, at least. I've lived long enough.\"\n\nBut Tarlar had stepped forwards and her tail lowered.\n\n\"No, Tarlar, don't,\" growled Larka behind her.\n\n\"It's me you want, Jalgan,\" she said, \"and if you let my friends go, I'll come with you willingly and run at your side as your Drappa.\"\n\nJalgan had cocked his head, as though he were interested in the bargain, but the wolf began to laugh. It chilled the little pack to their bones.\n\n\"The others shall die this very day, Tarlar my dear, by the Great Waterfall,\" he said, \"as all things meet their rightful end, in time. For they're not worthy to be Vengerid, and so not worthy to live free and wild in the lands beyond the forest.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Then I'll never run at your side,\" growled Tarlar." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"They will all die, Tarlar, nothing can change that now,\" Jalgan went on, yawning slightly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But what can change is the manner of their deaths.\"\n\nKhaz looked up fearfully.\n\n\"Come with me and it'll be a quick kill for each, nothing more than a torn throat and a sudden end.\"\n\nBehind Tarlar, her friends were all shaking furiously.\n\n\"Resist, Tarlar, and never in the history of the Varg shall such suffering be seen. It'll last for suns on end, and by the time their finish nears, each of your shivering pack shall be begging for death.\"\n\nJalgan's voice seemed to sing like the waterfall, and Tarlar stood there in horror at the terrible bargain. Not even she had thought that Jalgan could be so terrible.\n\n\"No, Jalgan, please.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, my dear. For know who and what I am, as your dear brother, Kenkur, learnt to his cost.\"\n\nTarlar was trembling furiously, but she began to walk forwards, as if in a trance. She had seen wild nature for herself and learnt how hard and ruthless it can really be. Suddenly Skop leapt in front of her, thinking to kill Jalgan himself to protect her.\n\nThe Vengerid around Jalgan were too quick for the brave wolf, and two of them sprang from the group. There was a flash of teeth and twisting fur and Skop was on his back with a yelp, the huge wolves pressing down on him and snarling and snapping at his muzzle. Kar sprang to his aid, but two more wolves came from the right and knocked Kar over too.\n\nThere they froze, with Kar and Skop pinned to the ground by four snarling Vengerid." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tarlar stood near them and Kipcha and Larka behind her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Khaz stood behind them, utterly incapable of action, and a voice was echoing in his mind: Am I just a coward, nothing but a coward?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Please, Jalgan,\" cried Tarlar, \"don't harm them.\"\n\n\"They show some spirit, at least,\" said Jalgan, \"but you know the bargain, Tarlar. So choose.\"\n\n\"I can't consent to their deaths, Jalgan,\" she said desperately, \"Kill me, if it's blood you need and the bloodlust is on you. Kill me.\"\n\n\"You, my love?\" said Jalgan softly, \"I'll never kill you. I'll protect you always, like a true Dragga should. Now make up your mind. Say yes, and I'll give the word and, with just a strong snap of sharp teeth, it's over for these two. Then the others. Painlessly. It's easy. And of course, your word is good enough.\"\n\nTarlar's body seemed to slump, but she could see no alternative. If she resisted Jalgan now, then her dearest friends would be made to suffer terribly, and she would have to go with Jalgan and the Vengerid anyway. But if she said yes, then it would be over in a flash, and at least poor Tarlar would have a lifetime to take a terrible revenge on Jalgan. She would become Vengerid indeed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Very well then, Jalgan, I accept your filthy bargain.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jalgan's cruel eyes flashed triumphantly and his tail rose even more.\n\n\"Do it then,\" he ordered. \"Kill them swiftly, and let it be finished with. I'm bored of this place.\"\n\nThe Vengerid's powerful jaws opened above Kar and Skop, their hungry eyes aiming for their throats. A Vengerid muzzle flashed towards Fell's adopted brother and there was a terrible squeal of pain, and then another.\n\nBut not from Kar or Skop or the others, but from the Vengerid. The two wolves that had been primed for Kar and Skop's throats had suddenly rolled on their sides and were squirming in agony.\n\n\"What's this?\" cried Jalgan." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Are you weaklings? Kill them.\"\n\nThe other two still held Skop and Kar and their mouths opened in turn. But then it was as if a great wind had suddenly struck them both, they were hurled into the air and went rolling onto their backs, growling and whimpering. The watching Vengerid were as appalled as they were amazed, and some began to whimper and drop their tails.\n\n\"Are we haunted?\" cried Jalgan furiously, swinging his head left and right, but seeing no opponent at all. \"Are there demons here?\" Then a voice seemed to answer him, as if in his own mind, but from the river too.\n\n\"Demons, indeed, cur. And those who live by demons, Jalgan, must die by demons.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Where are you?\" cried Jalgan nervously. \"This cannot be.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He turned to where that voice seemed to be coming from, from the drop in the falls itself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Are you a god?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jalgan shuddered. \"Are you Fenris himself?\"\n\n\"I'm Fell,\" cried a real voice now, from out of the water. \"So behold and be afraid.\"\n\nFell's great black shape came moving out of the river itself, leaping through the curtain of water, behind which he had seen and heard everything that had just happened, in the cave scoured out of the stone by time and the river. The Vengerid saw him like a vision of rebirth, and it doubled and trebled their fear. Fell leapt onto the great rock and sprang onto the bank, shaking out his beautiful black pelt in a stream of flickering droplets.\n\n\"You!\" growled Jalgan.\n\nThe Vengerid backed away behind their leader, as the black wolf came growling angrily through his brothers and sisters and stood proudly at Tarlar's side." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'behind' (2x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jalgan alone held his ground, and Fell's tail rose as he looked at the great grey wolf.\n\n\"Take him,\" cried the Vengerid leader, as bravely as he could.\n\nA few of the wolves moved forwards, but they suddenly stopped, for Fell's mind and the powers of the Sight were moving amongst them again. Their eyes were filled with fear and doubt, and several of them dropped down on their forepaws and began to whimper bitterly. One though, on the bank behind them, was out of Fell's sight line and too far away to be touched. In several leaps he was springing out across the river, followed by many others.\n\n\"Fell,\" cried Khaz suddenly. \"Behind you, Fell.\"\n\nThe black wolf swung his head, and the closest Vengerid suddenly spun on one of the rocks and was cast with a howl into the churning waters." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The others stopped immediately, muttering furiously, and crept back onto the far bank, terrified by Fell and the strange powers of the Sight.\n\n\"So,\" growled Jalgan, \"it's true what I've heard of you, Fell BlackWolf. And you're strong indeed, as I saw that day. Strong enough to join the Vengerid, perhaps.\"\n\nFell's eyes were locked on Jalgan's.\n\n\"Never, cur. I'm no Marjan.\"\n\n\"Why not, wolf? Do you fear the truth of nature? Perhaps though, after all my years of wandering and searching, at last I've found a worthy opponent to face my challenge. Worthier than that foolish Sikla, Huttser.\"\n\nFell snarled.\n\n\"And I've looked into your mind, Jalgan,\" he said dangerously, \"and seen there what you plan to do to my father and mother. In hate and dishonour.\"\n\nSomething like real fear crept into Jalgan's brutal face." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Huttser and Palla were your...?\"\n\n\"Yes, Jalgan. They were my parents. And now you would try and kill my brothers and sisters too. So I'll kill you instead, Jalgan, and show you the meaning of pain.\"\n\nEven Jalgan was shaking badly, but his blood was up too.\n\n\"Bravely spoken, Fell,\" he whispered, \"for one who would use the forces of darkness to fight, and not nature. For one who's not a true wolf at all.\"\n\nFell felt the insult deeply and snarled again.\n\n\"For one who has not the courage to fight with honour,\" Jalgan went on, feeling his own courage returning, \"like a Dragga and a true wolf, but one who uses tricks and lies instead.\"\n\n\"I've the courage to fight you like a wolf,\" growled Fell, \"and to kill you too.\"\n\nJalgan smiled." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Without the Sight, Fell? You'll face the challenge without the Sight?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell hesitated only momentarily." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'larger' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, Jalgan, without the Sight. But now I'll make a bargain with you. If I do this thing and kill you, then the Vengerid leave this place, never to return.\"\n\nJalgan did not hesitate, for he was larger than Fell and much more powerful. He thought it an easy pact, and one he would never have to fulfil.\n\n\"Hear that, Vengerid,\" he growled to his comrades. \"It shall be so. And none shall intervene. Jalgan has spoken.\"\n\n\"But, Fell,\" whispered Tarlar at his side, \"use your powers. Then we'll all fight together.\"\n\n\"No, Tarlar,\" answered Fell sadly, thinking of Pantheos's words—Know thyself, \"I've given my word and I would be a wolf again.\"\n\n\"But, Fell, dear Fell, he's larger than you and—\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Jalgan heard the tenderness with which Tarlar addressed Fell, and it hurt his angry heart." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Fight me, dog,\" he snarled furiously, \"and die like the Sikla you are.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jalgan and Fell sprang at each other, as the Vengerid and the little pack looked on. The two great wolves clashed in midair. For a moment they seemed suspended there, and then they both spun round, snapping and snarling in the grass, a flailing mass of muzzles and jaws and teeth, their prone claws searching for each other's body. Two giant males at war.\n\nThe snarls were terrible, and in any normal fight one Varg would have retreated into submission immediately, for nature's first art is to warn off the danger of battle, but this was a fight to the death. First Fell was knocked backwards and Jalgan nearly caught him in his throat, but Fell rolled away and, leaping up again, he sprung forwards and knocked Jalgan back in turn. But his bite missed too, and the wolves both sprang to their feet and faced off again. On and on it went, their terrible duel, but as the sun began to dip, once again Jalgan saw an opening, and lashing out with his right paw, he caught Fell in the side and raked his claws viciously right down the black wolf's body." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No, brother,\" gasped Larka helplessly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell yelped, and now his great black shape was spattered with blood." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His own paw caught Jalgan in the muzzle and opened that brutal face, but as they fought on, it was Jalgan's size and strength that began to tell in his favour. Both wolves grew tired, and slowed too, but Fell's wound was far worse, and his strength was being sapped faster.\n\nJalgan could see it, and knew that it was only a matter of time. The ranks of the terrible Vengerid had begun to growl approvingly. Then, as they sprang apart, Jalgan turned to see that Fell had faltered. His right paw had buckled under him in exhaustion and he had nearly fallen over.\n\n\"No, Fell!\" gasped Tarlar bitterly. For she knew now that she loved the wolf." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With his last ounce of strength, Jalgan leapt through the air in triumph at the failing wolf, and it was as if his mind could already see the vulnerable opening at the back of Fell's neck that would end the business forever." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As if Jalgan had the Sight himself to see it with.\n\nFell had made an oath to Jalgan, and he did not use the powers of the Sight, but at the moment before the leap, Jalgan's angry thoughts flashed through Fell's mind and he knew what was happening. He had no time to spring away, but suddenly it was as if Pantheos was whispering to him again—when others are strong, be soft—and instead, just as Jalgan reached him, Fell let his front paws buckle beneath him and he rolled, turning his head and closing his teeth around Jalgan's forepaw.\n\nThe bite made Jalgan's legs buckle in turn, and he was tumbling on the ground with a snarl. Fell was almost too tired to move, but move he had to, and one thing above all drove him on. It wasn't hate, it was anger at Jalgan's cruelty, anger at what he had wanted to do to his parents' bodies, but something else too—Ottol's words, although they had changed slightly: Strike upwards, Fell, if you strike at the Wolf Trail. What did that mean? That it was easy to show natural strength against that which was weaker, but not so easy to strike at what was more powerful." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The words and Fell's anger rose inside him like pure energy and hurled him up through the air.\n\nFell landed on Jalgan's back, and opening his jaws as if to howl to the heavens, he brought them down and snapped them shut around that line of fur at the top of Jalgan's neck. There was a terrible squeal of pain and then silence. Jalgan went limp in the grass. Fell had broken his neck.\n\nFell lay on top of the Vengerid leader, panting desperately and dripping with blood, and the Vengerid pack looked on in amazement. Some of them wanted to act, others to howl. But they were pack wolves, trained to obey by the most powerful of Draggas, and now all they knew was the last order of their leader." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "One by one the Vengerid began to turn away, and then, as the shadows came in, they were gone.\n\nFor a while the little pack just stood there, in amazement at all that had happened and how the complex fortunes of life could change so quickly. But change they had, from utter despair to elation and joy. Suddenly they were all around him.\n\n\"Oh, Fell,\" cried Skop, \"I thought you a coward, brother, but I was wrong. Will you forgive me?\"\n\n\"It was a brave fight, Fell,\" said Kar, in admiration, tinged with only a little jealousy. \"I'll remember it forever, brother.\"\n\n\"Fell,\" growled Tarlar, \"you're hurt.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, Tarlar,\" said Fell, raising his head and stepping wearily off Jalgan's body, \"but it will heal.\"\n\n\"And then you'll lead our new pack, and we'll all be happy again,\" said Larka warmly.\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" cried Kipcha delightedly.\n\nThe others were nodding, and wagging their tails at their elder brother, the true Dragga amongst them, but the black wolf swung round to face them.\n\n\"No,\" he growled, though not angrily, \"and now I must be gone. There's little time, I think. I may be too late already.\"\n\n\"Gone?\" said Kipcha in astonishment. \"Gone where?\"\n\n\"The human,\" answered Fell, thinking of Alina and of Larka's pelt as well. \"She needs my help too. They both do.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But I thought you'd left them,\" said Khaz." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And that you want to be a wolf again, Fell,\" agreed Tarlar.\n\n\"Yes, Tarlar. But we're linked, she and I, and first I must face my destiny. For I have taken the challenge, as Father would have done, life's challenge. It is for all of us that I go now. For nature itself.\"\n\nFell realised that he was still sopping wet, not with blood but water, and as he heard the falls thundering beyond and spoke of destiny, he gasped. Pantheos's words came back to him again and with them thoughts of what had just happened. He had come once again from a river, just as Skart and the Stone Mouth had foretold. He felt as if he had been reborn.\n\nWith that, and to the total bewilderment of the little pack, Fell the lone black wolf turned and went leaping away. Leaping into darkness once more, and back towards the humans." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Don't fear, alina. Don't give up hope. All nature unites to help and guard you now.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The voice seemed to be in Alina's mind, but she couldn't tell if it was Fell or the wind outside her prison." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Fell, are you there, dear Fell? I can't reach you anymore.\"\n\nAlina Sculcuvant opened her eyes and stared into the shadows. She heard the wail of the wind, and the distant moans about her too. The young woman knew that the wolf could not hear her searching mind anymore, and she was suddenly thinking of another presence, Catalin.\n\nYet thoughts of the wolf returned. Once before, on her bed of straw and stone, Alina had managed to reach out across the distances and touch Fell. She was sure that at least the wolf had understood that she had been kidnapped by Cascu, to be chained in this prison in Vladeran's palace. The prison she had seen with the Sight." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Understood too that her father's old friend knew all their plans and was laying a terrible trap for Catalin and her people. Alina had not wanted to trouble the black wolf, on his journey to see his dying father, and had felt the dreadful pain in Fell as they had first spoken, but it was the only thing she could think of to do to fight Lord Vladeran.\n\nHe had visited Alina only once in that terrible place, just after the traitor Cascu had left her there to rot. That great bolted wooden door had swung open on its hinges, and a man, six foot two and wearing a wolf cloak of grey and pure white, with a strange red cross on his chest, had strode into the prison, surrounded by his Shield Guard.\n\nAlina had not remembered her father's friend at all, but Vladeran had recognised Alina Sculcuvant immediately.\n\n\"Yes,\" he'd grunted, smilingly. \"It's the changeling, all right. She looks even more like her father now than she did then.\"\n\nThen he had taunted her by whispering with Cascu in the corner, of their plans for the Helgra." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There's only one way for so many Helgra to approach the palace. They'll be like a wolf, seized in metal teeth that they'll never escape. And all because of her.\"\n\nAlina had listened in horror, before Vladeran had turned towards the door again, but he had said something else, almost as an afterthought. Her father's best friend had swung around angrily and, looking Alina WovenWord in the eye, he'd hissed. \"And don't think I fear you, child, because you've returned and walk with the wolf. I fear nothing, don't you see? For she has told me that I'm safe. Forever. That's my destiny now.\"\n\nThe prison door had slammed, to the sound of laughter and stamping boots, and Alina had been left alone again, wondering why he had said it, and who he could mean by \"she,\" wondering if he could have meant her own mother, Romana. For it was the truth of Romana she now feared above all.\n\nSince then days and nights had passed in a terrible dream, with hardly any differentiation between light and dark. There was only one meagre little window in her prison cell, looking out onto a gloomy cloister far below, and the nights were as black as pitch, filled with the wails and moans of the souls who suffered in Vladeran's dungeons." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina felt she would have been better off back in Malduk and Ranna's barn, so hungry was she, forced to exist off little tin plates of food that were pushed through a slit in the bottom of the door every two or three days, along with a beaker of rank water, or a bowl of thin, grimy porridge and a crust of weevil-covered bread." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But Alina knew instinctively that if she didn't eat she would surely die, and so, holding her nose and taking sips of water, she forced the evil-tasting fare on herself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Now the young woman even looked forwards to the sound of that flap opening, not only because it meant food and so survival, but because it was the one thing that broke the dreadful monotony of her days. That was almost the worst of it, the ghastly boredom of that place, along with the terrible noises.\n\nNoises. The days and nights were filled with noises. Her nose and mouth had long closed themselves to the foul odours that circulated in that place of horror, but her ears had become more sensitive to all around her: the sound of the door flap and of metal scraping on stone, and the jangling of a prison warder's keys, or the heavy tread of his boots. The sudden scuttling of a mouse, or a rat, in the shadows. Human sounds came too. Muffled conversations in the tiny passageways beyond, or the occasional burst of cruel laughter in the dark. And those cries, those terrible, imprisoned cries." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lescu's training had come to Alina's aid, for although the girl no longer had her sword, which Cascu had taken from her when he had drugged her and the men who guarded her in the Helgra village, she still had Lescu's words about calming the mind and directing her thoughts. It eased her fear a little, and helped her concentrate on all that was happening around her too.\n\nAs she waited and listened, Alina WovenWord noticed that her hearing, in comparison, seemed to have doubled in strength. It was as if senses are not things at all, or absolute facts, but parts of us that can grow or diminish in strength. As if the very fact of using them is the key to what we are, or might be, and that there is an art to their use too—the arts of seeing, and the art of taste and smell and touch. The arts of hearing also. Listen, Alina WovenWord, listen.\n\nAs Alina lay there and listened, she seemed to be able to send out her hearing in different and precise directions, and it allowed her to build up a picture of what was directly outside." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was not without danger though, this journey of her senses, for a noise might suddenly come as she turned a corner in her listening mind, a scream or a wail or a blow, and Alina would recoil immediately and then she was back in her lonely cell again. The young woman realised there was another sense involved in all this too, that also seemed to be growing stronger, the sense to imagine things. Perhaps the most powerful sense of all.\n\nOr was it a sense? For Alina realised that it was only experience that allowed her to recognise certain noises, like dripping water or the turning of keys. She had heard them before, and so she knew what they were, like recognising words that give meaning to things. What would it be like to hear these things though and not know what they were, or to not have the human words to describe them, and thus picture them in her mind?\n\nThen Alina wondered about the black wolf, with his snarls and growls and howls, and what Fell heard in the night with his ears." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The other Lera too, all of them in the wild." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Was thought itself only possible with language, and if it was, where did that come from? Fell had a kind of language, because of the strange powers of the Sight, yet those creatures that did not, whose minds and words had not given them a map of the world, and of reality, what did they hear in the shadows of their lives? Only the ghosts of longing, struggling towards consciousness? It gave Alina a pain to think of it. How could it all be? It seemed quite miraculous.\n\nYet was that other sense, that sixth sense, to imagine, really just an act of recognition, or something far deeper and more powerful? And where did it come from too?" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'power' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Just as Alina had always had the sensation that she could know things before they happened, and had seen the Helgra halls and this place in her vision, so too she felt that she knew things about this palace that no physical sensation was really telling her.\n\nShe knew, for instance, or sensed, that there were many floors below her. She sensed that the cells around her were crowded almost to bursting, although that may have been from the number of cries she heard in the night. She sensed that there was a great body of water nearby too. A river.\n\nBut what use was it all? If the Sight was a power, then it was nothing like the goblin powers she had imagined when she thought herself a changeling. It was a power that gave her little command of the real world, and one that had brought her to this horrible place. There was no magic in the world, the young woman told herself bitterly in her prison, and no gods either." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina had one other sense, though, that kept nagging at her, like a worried friend, tugging at her sleeve. She sensed that her mother Romana was somewhere nearby. She knew it of course, or knew at least that she must be if she was in Lord Vladeran's palace. But it was more than that. It was a feeling deep inside her, as though she could feel her mother and her half brother too. As though they were all connected. Were people really all connected? The thought would wake her sometimes in the night." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina got up now and stretched herself with a yawn." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The thinning darkness heralded a new day, and pulling her chain to its full length, Alina walked over to that small patch of window and peered out miserably through the metal bars. Bars that only humans make.\n\nAgain a warning voice came to Alina, one that she had first heard at the table of the Helgra—Lord Vladeran, he loves your mother dearly. What if Romana loved him too, and had colluded in his plans and betrayed the Helgra? Perhaps she had known that Alina was in this cell all along, perhaps it was she who had ordered her kidnap and murder seven years before. Alina would not believe it. She could not. It was not the mother of her earliest dreams.\n\nA noise sent her lunging back to her bed of straw—the bolts being drawn back on the cell door." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It swung open with a horrible creaking, but rather than the guard, Alina was amazed at what walked into that prison cell." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a dog, large and thin, but it was old too and its eyesight was not good." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It growled with distaste at the rank smells that assaulted its nostrils and began to sniff the ground as it dropped its head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Out of the way, damn you, Vlag,\" came Vladeran's voice, as he gave the animal a kick and entered the cell too. The dog slunk to the side of the cell. Vladeran wheeled round and looked down hatefully at the young woman, but there was something else in his veiled eyes too, Alina was sure of it—fear. Could he really be frightened of her?\n\n\"So, child,\" he hissed, \"you're awake?\"\n\n\"I'm no child,\" said Alina angrily, straightening herself and glaring back at him.\n\n\"No, perhaps you're not,\" whispered Vladeran, with something close to admiration, \"and even this place has not entirely sapped you of your damned spirit, I see. A spirit that so nagged at me when you were a little girl. You're quite a survivor, Alina Sculcuvant.\"\n\nAlina felt the stirrings of memory, the memories of feelings for her father's best friend." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She hadn't hated him then." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And I'd show you my true spirit,\" she hissed, \"if my hand were free and I had my sword.\"\n\n\"Such a fine sword,\" said Vladeran with a smile, \"fine enough for the head of my Shield Guard, Cascu, to want it for himself. He tells me that you can use it too, like a magic wand, to bewitch the Helgra. Or should I say your people, Alina WolfPaw?\"\n\nVladeran flexed his right hand painfully.\n\n\"And are not such things man's true power? Not magic and the lies of a feeble storyteller, but swords and tools and weapons. Look at you now, with your cropped hair and your boy's jerkin. Isn't a girl ashamed to walk so unnaturally through the land?\"\n\n\"Unnaturally?\" said Alina proudly. \"Is it not you that is unnatural, friend of my father?\"\n\nVladeran's eyes narrowed.\n\n\"You who talks to the shadows,\" said Alina scornfully." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include this dialogue snippet naturally: \"Do you know why, storyteller?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You whose duty should have been to protect me, but who instead tried to kill me, and stole my mother's love. I know now that though they tell us how dangerous the world is, a greater danger always lurks closer to home.\"\n\nVladeran's eyes flamed.\n\n\"And your father's dead, changeling. Which is the only reason I haven't slit your pretty throat, WolfPaw,\" he whispered dangerously. \"Do you know why, storyteller?\"\n\nAlina looked up. She had wondered it in her prison. Seven years ago he'd tried to do away with her, but for some reason had stayed his hand, and instead had her stolen away beyond the borders of Castelu, risking her survival.\n\n\"It's true that if my plans misfire with the Helgra I might use a Helgra woman as a bargaining counter,\" said Vladeran. \"But now they are coming towards my trap. The real reason is that I myself once stood on a battlefield soaked with blood, and saw a brave man fall from his charging horse. Saw your father, Dragomir, get up once more, only to have his heart pierced by a Turkic spear. It's full of chance, the battlefield. Like life.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina didn't understand what Vladeran was saying." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Why does this keep me alive, murderer?\"\n\n\"Because it proves you are no threat to me. I can only be killed if your father is in sight of this palace. It has been prophesied.\"\n\nAlina looked at the man in amazement.\n\n\"And that, my dear, brave Alina, is impossible.\"\n\nVladeran smiled coldly again.\n\n\"Real life is hard, no? Harder than children know. But you had one thing almost right, calling me a murderer, though you still live,\" he said. \"It's too strong a word perhaps, but that day there was a reason you father fell from his horse, after his saddle slipped from its back, as the girth broke. For a sharp knife in a stable at dawn may do much to loosen the cords that bind us all, and so change many fortunes.\"\n\n\"No,\" gasped Alina." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was as if her eyes were misting over and the bloodlust had come on the young woman. She saw herself turned into Fell, leaping across the cell and burying sharp claws in his throat. She wanted to hurl herself at this man and tear at him, and as Vladeran looked at her, he suddenly stepped back.\n\nVladeran shook his head, telling himself what he thought he had just seen must have been a trick of the light, and instead Alina wrapped the chain that held her angrily around her fists. A voice came to her too, out of the past: Beware of hate, Alina.\n\n\"You want vengeance, don't you?\" said Vladeran, with a laugh. \"After such a long, brave struggle. For that's the true law of life. Hate and revenge and need conquer everything in the end.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And it is the law that should take you,\" said Alina coldly, thinking of Lescu's words about justice, \"the law of King Stefan that should condemn your dark heart.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Law?\" Vladeran spat the word contemptuously. \"I'm the law in Castelu, changeling. Men make their rules and their laws, when really they're just words that cover up the true laws of nature and survival. The laws of gold and struggle and of victory. The laws of life.\"\n\nAlina could hardly argue with Vladeran. So much she had seen of the real world had taught that it was a cruel and ruthless place, stripped of magic. But her heart beat against it.\n\n\"I pity you.\"\n\n\"I don't need your pity, changeling,\" said Vladeran. \"You're barely more than a child, so what can you know of ambition and true feelings? Such feelings, and such ideas too. Why should King Stefan rule this land, and why should I not sit on his throne? There's no birthright, fool, least of all for a woman. There is only what you can take and pay for later.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina glared back at the man." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And your beautiful mother, Romana,\" he said softly, \"how I loved that creature and longed for her, how I do still. A feeling so deep and powerful it's like breathing itself. As deep as the hatred I felt for you when my son was taken by wolves.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "🔍 Find a place to insert: \"How sometimes I force myself down on my knees, like a king forcing a serf to bow before him, and lift my head to pray that God and the heavens may understand what I am, and what I had to do.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina shivered.\n\n\"Until you're gripped by that, what can you know of real life, child? It forced me to do what I did, while every day I have to carry the burden of power and responsibility,\" said Vladeran angrily, rubbing his scarred hand through his glove again, as though trying to rub the marks away.\n\nAlthough Vladeran had said that he did not need Alina's pity, it seemed to her that in some way he was pleading with her, almost begging her to understand him.\n\n\"What do ordinary people know of true hunger and of true glory, Alina? What do they know of destiny? And what of the sorrow that comes like a thief, and of the cold facts that I must admit only to myself in the darkness?\"\n\nVladeran's clouded eyes had grown dull. The light had gone out of them completely, as he struggled with the paradox of being.\n\n\"How sometimes I force myself down on my knees, like a king forcing a serf to bow before him, and lift my head to pray that God and the heavens may understand what I am, and what I had to do.\"\n\nAlina blinked and her face set hard." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But though I pray to God and all his silent, judging saints, my words hang dully on my lips and I feel nothing,\" said Vladeran." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Because though I've touched strange visions, I don't believe that there is anything up there at all. Not even Morgra has shown me anything beyond the Red Meadow.\"\n\nMorgra, thought Alina, he speaks with Fell's aunt. It must be she who prophesied with the Sight. As the Sight had prophesied this terrible place. It is true then. Vladeran is invulnerable.\n\n\"So when I pray, I mouth the rite but my thoughts turn only to the shadows and to the future. To what we all must lose in the end, but also to what we may enjoy before we lose it—power.\"\n\nAlina was trembling, and as she heard his confession, she thought that, although it was she who was lying here in the straw, chained to the dripping prison walls, it was really he who was in a prison, far deeper and more terrible than anything human hands could build. As she listened, she remembered Lescu's words again, And remember, Alina, it is what we do ourselves in life that harms us." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No, Vladeran,\" she whispered sadly. \"You want me to understand, but you had a choice, as we all have.\"\n\nVladeran's face, racked with the passion that had overcome him, suddenly grew calm.\n\n\"Do we?\" he said coldly. \"Does my dog have a choice when he sees the squirrel flash from the undergrowth, and his belly and his soul tell him he must hunt?\"\n\n\"We're not animals,\" said Alina, and she had a strange feeling that she was somehow betraying Fell. \"We're much more than that anyway. We have a higher mind.\"\n\nVladeran stared hard into her clear, hazel eyes and her beautiful face." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That's exactly what we are,\" he said. \"But you speak of animals, Helgra woman. Very well then, storyteller. There's another reason you're still alive. I want to know, girl, about the wolf. Mastery of the creatures has obsessed me since Elu was taken. Tell me what it's like to walk the world with a wild beast at your side. To know its very thoughts and to command it.\"\n\nAlina's eyes flickered protectively. How could this man ever understand her feelings for the wolf? To have Vladeran even talk of him felt like a desecration. Fell was wild, yes, and free, but he was far more than a beast. Yet what was Fell?\n\nThough they talked with the Sight, his mind was like a foreign country, where she did not really travel." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Where she did not even want to travel." }, { "from": "human", "value": "As for commanding Fell, Alina did not command the black wolf at all." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vladeran could never understand that because of his obsession with power and control." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That Fell had chosen freely to walk at Alina Sculcuvant's side, to protect her, and that was why she felt so safe in his presence." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include this dialogue snippet naturally: \"Though I could torture it out of you. If you will not speak of such things, answer this at least: Where does the power really come from to talk with the wolf? The Sight.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That was why she loved him.\n\nVladeran put his hand in his pocket and he pulled out a little brass key, like the key Mia had once used to open a chest.\n\n\"Tell me, storyteller, and I'll unlock your hands,\" he said. \"It's not freedom, but at least you'll be more comfortable. Don't think to ask your guards either, for this is the only one.\"\n\nAlina stared back at him, but said nothing of Fell.\n\n\"Very, well, changeling,\" growled Vladeran. \"Though I could torture it out of you. If you will not speak of such things, answer this at least: Where does the power really come from to talk with the wolf? The Sight.\"\n\nAlina wanted to say one thing alone, \"sensitivity,\" but instead she lifted her chin defiantly." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: Your response must contain: \"Why do you want to know, Vladeran?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Why do you want to know, Vladeran?\"\n\nVladeran's eyes flickered.\n\n\"My oath,\" he whispered, \"one of the oaths of the Order of the Griffin. The pursuit of knowledge. And, as I say, they took my child!\"\n\nAlina paused. She was so tired.\n\n\"I don't know,\" she answered with a sigh. \"It was just there. Perhaps it's something to do with Elu and our Helgra blood, and what happened. Perhaps it is just as it is. Why do you ask me these things?\"\n\nVladeran grasped the key angrily in his fist.\n\n\"This gift you have, that's a true power, and if I could have it too, then I would seek out many things, and could control all men. See into their minds. Then perhaps I could really look beyond too, and really believe. Prove that no one should be frightened of what comes after.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Vladeran dropped his eyes, and suddenly felt that he had admitted too much of his own fear in front of the girl. His dog turned his head and began to growl and Vladeran looked up again.\n\n\"You accuse me, storyteller,\" he whispered bitterly. \"But what about you? Because of you and your fairy tales and lies, there is war within Castelu itself. Because of you real men will die tomorrow, and fire will light the land. How many are you willing to have die for you, Alina WolfPaw?\"\n\nAlina shivered. Perhaps Vladeran was right. Perhaps she should never have thought of wielding a sword. Perhaps she should never have gone amongst the Helgra at all. Was it all her fault?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The door opened again and one of the Shield Guard stepped inside." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What is it?\" hissed Vladeran.\n\n\"My lord, the Helgra have crossed the mountains and approach the passes to the palace. There are many.\"\n\nVladeran's eyes sparkled and Alina sat bolt upright.\n\n\"And the trap is laid?\"\n\n\"A thousand trenches wait sewn with wooden stakes to impale them. Barrels of pitch are ready to be lit, and hurled on catapults into their midst. While like the pits your troops are hiding in wait in the forests to fall on their retreat and push them back into the jaws of death. The trap is ready to be sprung at your command. They shall not escape.\"\n\nAlina's eyes were full of tears and horror, and Vladeran smiled.\n\n\"Good. And I have summoned other help too,\" he said. \"Now go.\"\n\n\"Yes, my lord.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina's heart sank utterly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had tried to reach Fell once more, but in vain." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Catalin and her people were walking straight into a trap." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For all her courage and skill, for all her training and the supposed wisdom it had brought, Alina was chained up in a miserable cell, and no more help to them than a useless prayer. It was hopeless.\n\nVladeran was deep in thought, still plotting and planning in his quick brain, but he suddenly turned to his hound.\n\n\"Come, Vlag,\" he whispered. \"I'm sick of the stench of this place, and we shall feed you. Together we'll listen to the news of the Helgra's destruction from a safe vantage point. The hunt begins, and it will be finished by the morning.\"\n\nThe dog whimpered and lifted its tail hopefully, but Vladeran did not look at Vlag with kindness. He wanted a wolf at his side now.\n\n\"And you,\" said Vladeran, turning again to Alina, \"I leave you to the shadows. If the trap fails, we still have your blood to force the Helgra to our will. If it succeeds, as it shall, then you'll swiftly meet a fate you were always destined for. For to me, child, you're already dead. You always have been.\"\n\nThe young woman looked back coldly at the man, and her courage rallied." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: Your response must contain: \"Is that your final blessing?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Is that your final blessing?\" she whispered scornfully. \"Friend of my father, protector of our family. You are true to your nature at least.\"\n\nVladeran's eyes flashed. \"Blessing? You're a believer, then, storyteller? Well, if it's a blessing you want, then the priest shall visit you, but only to bless you at the moment of your execution.\"\n\nAlina WovenWord shivered as the door slammed and she sank her head sadly.\n\nCatalin raised his blue green eyes as he stood next to Ovidu in the night, on a thin mountain ledge, above a high chasm that made his head spin. The mighty sweep of the twinkling stars above formed a glistening canopy to what lay below them now, beyond the narrow gorge.\n\nIn the distance was a palace, buckled in shadow, and in front of it snaked a great churning river. It flowed down out of the giant mountains, driven by the forces of nature, and the palace was set beyond it, at its widest part." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The river was strong and looked difficult to cross, spanned only by a thin wooden bridge." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Before that was a rough plain, divided by a defensive ditch, that would leave them dangerously exposed when they crossed it in the morning light. Catalin suddenly thought of Baba Yaga and the brave Vasilissa, who dared to enter her gate of bones, and it gave him courage. Many times as the Helgra had marched towards the palace, Catalin in turn had sat by their fires and given them spirit by weaving brave stories.\n\n\"The night deepens, Catalin,\" whispered Ovidu at his side, smiling at the nervous young man. \"We should rest now, boy. We must be up before the dawn.\"\n\nCatalin's hand came down to the bow slung over his shoulder, and as he thought of Alina Sculcuvant, he realised that he loved the young woman.\n\n\"I wish we could fly to her now,\" he whispered, \"like birds.\"\n\n\"Wishes can make fools of us, Catalin,\" said the Helgra softly, fingering the sword at his side, but clutching tighter the sharp antler he held in his left hand." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We're only human, boy. And we've the gorge to navigate first, and then the plain. A hard battle faces us, lad, and I'm sorry to take one so young to face it.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You'll be at my side,\" said Catalin simply, though he thought of his father." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory inclusion (with quotes): Though more would have, I think, if Alina WolfPaw led us." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, young man. Watching your back, as you face the future with your arrows.\"\n\nOvidu swung his head.\n\n\"Unlike my dear little brother Cascu,\" he whispered, \"I fear his disappearance, fear some dark fortune.\"\n\n\"But the Helgra are ready, Ovidu?\"\n\n\"Many have come,\" answered Ovidu proudly. \"Though more would have, I think, if Alina WolfPaw led us.\"\n\nCatalin looked down from the ledge to the Helgra campfires, twinkling in the darkness far below them. He had never been to war and had no idea what was to come, except that his father had told him what a terrible thing it was." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I hope we've not led you into a trap, Ovidu,\" he said guiltily.\n\n\"You've led us to nothing but the recognition of what we are. And your courage has taught us to forge our strength again. For a Helgra woman. And a young man I'd honour as Helgra too, storyteller.\"\n\nCatalin smiled gratefully, but he suddenly wished he were back home with Lescu and Alina.\n\n\"I wish the black wolf were with us at least,\" he said.\n\n\"That would be a fine sight indeed,\" agreed Ovidu. \"Yet the men carry him in their hearts, as they do the girl. The Helgra shall never forget them.\"\n\nCatalin heard a noise in the night, and it seemed to him that the mountains around were suddenly alive with noises, like a strange whispering, as though the very undergrowth were speaking.\n\n\"Are you frightened, Ovidu?\" he asked." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes, my boy. And only a fool wouldn't be. Yet proud too. Come, let us return.\"\n\nThe two swung round, and almost instinctively they started to run, jumping and swerving down the track towards the campfires below. They were on foot, as they had been since the army had set out from the Stone Den. The Helgra, carrying their homemade weapons and antlers, had moved fast, like mountain warriors, but Catalin feared they had delayed too long.\n\nThe Helgra camps seemed to grow in the night like red flowers as they came down the mountain, revealing an army of nearly a thousand men, but as Ovidu and Catalin neared the foothills of the gorge, they saw a Helgra scout running towards them. He saluted Ovidu and stopped, gasping for breath.\n\n\"There's news, Ovidu. The messengers have returned from King Stefan.\"\n\n\"But not with welcome tidings, from the looks of it?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No, Ovidu,\" whispered the scout, bowing his head bitterly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Stefan Cel Mare has fought a great battle against the Turk and many have died. It was a victory, yet he laughed at our story. He called it a foolish dream.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And no doubt builds one of his sainted churches to mark his glorious success,\" whispered Ovidu bitterly, \"while real lives are still in the balance in his own lands. I wish this were a dream. I wish the battles of men could be solved in their heads.\"\n\nHe turned to Catalin.\n\n\"And now we're alone, lad.\"\n\nCatalin felt the hand of fear all about them.\n\n\"King Stefan promises a court of enquiry,\" said the scout, trying to lift the mood, \"but it will not come for months.\"\n\n\"By which time we'll all be dead,\" said Ovidu, \"or the good Lord Vladeran.\"\n\nEven as he spoke it and they stood there, unaware that they were about to walk into a terrible trap, they heard a sound in the twinkling darkness that stirred the Helgra by their war fires, and made Catalin the storyteller wish bitterly that Fell had never left them. It was the howl of a wild wolf." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The storyteller stood in the bright sunlight in the neck of the gorge, and around him the Helgra carried their swords and antlers, ready for the fight." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Their hearts were heavy, for their spies had told them of the strength of Vladeran's army, and of course the girl they had set out to fight for was in his clutches, but the pale dawn had brought new courage and the way ahead looked clear." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet the Helgra did not know what terrible secrets were hidden in wait for them beyond the narrow gorge." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The ground ahead strewn with Vladeran's pits, and his soldiers waiting hungrily in the forests that edged the valley. If the Helgra moved ahead, they would be caught like flies in a trap.\n\n\"Well, storyteller?\" said Ovidu, smiling at Catalin. \"Shall I give the order to advance?\"\n\nThe young man looked surprised that the Helgra should ask him, but he nodded, and Ovidu raised his arm.\n\n\"Alina!\" cried the fighters as they began to move off. \"Alina WolfPaw!\"\n\nSuddenly, from the side of the mountain, a shape came streaking towards them. Fell's black coat was drenched in sweat, from so many nights without sleep as he had rushed to their aid, and Catalin saw a livid scar on his right side as the wolf reached them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell could not speak to the human, but the wolf stood there with raised tail, growling furiously at Catalin, as if he wished to bar their way." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell had scouted the forest the night before and seen Vladeran's soldiers in the trees, and he knew their traps only too well." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina's warning had been real." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Fell,\" whispered Catalin in amazement." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You've come. But what is wrong?\"\n\nLifting his paw and clawing softly at his leg, Fell whined in frustration, as he tried to reach Catalin with his mind and warn him of the terrible danger they were in. Catalin knelt down, and placing a hand on the wolf's head, calmed his panting snarls, but the wolf kept swinging his head towards the neck of the gorge and growling again.\n\n\"There's something out there,\" said Ovidu suddenly, stepping forwards. \"The wolf senses it.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" whispered Catalin. \"You think it's a trap?\"\n\n\"I don't know, Catalin, but we must take counsel.\"\n\nThe wolf calmed a little as he saw the Helgra leaders gathering together now and whispering amongst themselves, looking back at him and the pass." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was argument amongst them, for Ovidu was only first amongst equals with these men and many thought a direct attack the best, but the wolf's sudden appearance and his demeanour had alerted them all. Catalin had his hand on Fell's head still, as the council broke up and Ovidu strode towards him.\n\n\"We're agreed,\" he said. \"We'll split our forces and go around. Something's wrong here.\"\n\nFell was filled with pride as he took the lead at Catalin and Ovidu's side, out along the mountain path that skirted the neck of the gorge, and he sensed that his presence had renewed the Helgra's courage. But the black wolf's heart was heavy. From the forest, he had seen far more than those soldiers and those traps. He had seen Vladeran's palace and that great river that protected it, and if he had to cross it to reach Alina, he would have to face his old fear, death by water." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The wolf had seen the size of the human army too, and he was only a lone wolf once more." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet far more than this clouded his heart and mind. Morgra had come to him once more in the night, tempting him to use the Summoning Howl. Like a blue spectre, she had stood before him in his dreams, promising that she would see him again, urging him to seek revenge. But worse, she had laughed at his talk of a Guardian and told him that tricksters were spreading lies eveywhere. Fell had thrown her off once more, but his heart was filled with his old terror for his aunt and her power.\n\nIt was a power that seemed so much stronger than his own now. What could a lone wolf do in a human battle? Nothing at all. Pantheos had spoken of a great mind, moving through nature, of the animals turning to help Alina Sculcuvant, help for their very survival." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet as Fell had neared the armies, he had noticed that the land about them was strangely devoid of animals, who seemed to have run away in fear, just as they feared the wolf. Was Morgra right?\n\nIt was a foolish dream, Fell told himself. Somehow he was being tricked. The Lera would never come to their aid. Fell was now convinced that this Guardian had been nothing more than a Borar. Perhaps the bear had believed his own words. Even Skart's words, so many of which had come true, seemed absurd to the wolf. A human male had spoken through a wolf, and Fell had touched the elements and risen from a river again, but it was the last words of that riddle that had put a final doubt in Fell's mind." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A clawed Putnar open its wings? Or a wolf sprout two heads? It was utterly impossible. It was all a stupid story.\n\nAs they ran, Fell tried to tell himself to believe and trust, as Pantheos had urged him, but he doubted even Pantheos now, as he doubted so many of the stories that mingled with the real, hard life of the wolf, only to sow confusion. Fell thought, with a certainty he had never known, that he was running to his own death, and the death of these humans about him too. Yet the wolf would face what was to come, not to fulfil a destiny and save nature itself, but for Alina Sculcuvant alone.\n\n\"Fell. It is you, Fell. You're near now, I can feel it. I knew you wouldn't abandon us. You must save the Helgra from the trap. Must save my people. I wish I'd never brought them to this.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include exactly 2 instance(s) of the word 'their'" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In Alina's vivid dream she felt hope swelling in her heart. She could hear the panting wolf nearby, and felt her feet touching the fresh, clean grass, running free through the forest.\n\nBut the images changed and she saw a terrible vision of men and banners tumbling into open wolf pits, their bodies pierced by sharpened sticks, like a thousand ghostly vampires with stakes plunged into their hearts. Alina groaned, as she had in a barn long ago with her dreams of goblins and fairies. Her journey had taught her that there was no magic in the real world, and it was she that had brought her people to despair and destruction.\n\n\"No!\" she screamed.\n\n\"Alina.\"\n\n\"Yes, Fell. It's me. I'm here. Where are you, Fell? I can't see you anymore.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Alina, wake up.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell's words had been nothing but a dream, and the whispering that was telling her gently to wake wasn't Fell at all, but a human voice in her prison cell. Alina WovenWord opened her eyes and stirred in the straw. A tall figure in a grey hooded cloak—a monk—stood before her. She felt the sudden rush of terror. The priest. Her final blessing had come at last, and so had Alina's execution.\n\n\"Get up, child. Hurry now.\"\n\n\"You've come for me then, Father?\" she whispered sadly. \"The Helgra are vanquished so quickly? Is Catalin dead?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Has it been so very long, Alina of Castelu? Don't you recognise my voice?\"\n\nThe monk had raised his hands to his cowl to uncloak his face, and Alina's heart clenched. Before her was that face of her dreams and that tumbling, curling black hair—her mother, Romana.\n\nThen Alina saw the dagger she was clutching in her hand.\n\n\"So it is you who has come to kill me, Mother,\" she hissed bitterly, \"because you really love my half brother. And want him to rule in Castelu.\"\n\nRomana looked down at the dagger. \"Kill you, Alina?\" she whispered. \"Never. This is for him. For Vladeran.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Doubt filled Alina's hazel eyes.\n\n\"Then you... \"\n\n\"Knew nothing, I swear it. Until I overheard Vladeran talking in the great chamber.\"\n\nAlina's eyes flickered. She so wanted to believe. \"Oh, Mother,\" she said.\n\nThe beautiful woman held back, as if still uncertain, then suddenly she was kneeling before her daughter, holding Alina's face in her trembling hands and dropping the dagger.\n\n\"Yes, I'm your mother, Alina. If one so foolish and wicked as I deserves such a name. Can you ever forgive me?\"\n\n\"Forgive you?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I treated you so coldy, Alina, after I lost your father. You so much remind me of him, and I turned my love towards the baby. I was angry too when the wolves took Elu. It blinded me to my true feelings, and made me believe Vladeran's filthy lies.\"\n\nRomana reached out and clasped her daughter's hands. Tears were streaming down their cheeks, and she pulled the girl towards her and began to kiss her face desperately, between her anguished sobs.\n\n\"Forgive me, Alina. Please.\"\n\nRomana pulled back again and looked deep into her daughter's hazel eyes, with the strange fleck of green.\n\n\"If I'd ever known, my child, ever suspected for a single moment, I wouldn't have rested until I found you, I swear it. But I thought you were dead. Taken and murdered by Turks, like your father, Dragomir.\"\n\n\"Then you know everything now?\"\n\n\"I knew nothing until I overheard Vladeran talking of a young woman in the great chamber and a wolf and our people,\" answered Romana's shaking voice, between her bitter tears." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Since then I've hardly been able to sleep or rest, worrying for you and them. I knew as soon as the Shield Guard came they were trying to keep all knowledge of you from me, but that you must be near.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Romana was looking about in disgust and anger." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'believe' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I felt it though, Alina, sensed that you were close, but I hardly dared believe the magic.\"\n\nThe young woman could hardly believe that her own mother was suddenly here, holding her hands so lovingly.\n\n\"Dearest Alina, let me look at you and see you with restored eyes. For years I've been blind, daughter.\"\n\nAlina almost blushed as her mother lifted her chin with her hand and looked at her. She rubbed away some of the dirt on her face and touched the fringe of her short, boyish red hair.\n\n\"What have they done to you, my darling?\"\n\n\"It's all right, Mother. I came disguised as a man, for I had man's work to do. And I can fight like them too, as a Helgra woman.\"\n\nRomana's tearful eyes glinted proudly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And more, from what I hear of you, Alina,\" she whispered wonderingly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"They speak of a black wolf and a power. It's like the ancient myths.\"\n\n\"It is the Sight,\" said Alina, wondering where Fell was now and thinking with sudden worry of Catalin and the Helgra. \"It's all so strange, Mother, as though I've been living through a dark dream. There's a bond between us, and somehow we're linked.\"\n\n\"As the house of Castelu seems always to have been linked to the fortunes of the wolf,\" said Romana, nodding. \"As your brother Elu was taken by wolves that night, but then restored to us, just as mysteriously. I blamed you then, my child, for Elu's disappearance and almost wanted you banished. It closed my heart to the truth too. Forgive me, I beg of you.\"\n\n\"And I shouldn't have left him alone,\" said Alina, \"though I was very young. It's all right now, Mother.\"\n\n\"Yes, Alina,\" said Romana more cheerfully. \"If only your father could see you now, if only he hadn't died... \"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Been murdered you mean.\"\n\nRomana's hands closed around Alina's wrists.\n\n\"What are you saying?\"\n\n\"The day Father fell from his horse on the battlefield and was cut down,\" said Alina angrily, \"his saddle had been tampered with.\"\n\nRomana pulled back in horror, as if she feared to hear what she already knew in her own secret heart.\n\n\"By his best friend?\" she whispered coldly. \"By my husband, Vladeran?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Again scalding tears were falling from Romana's eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Can you ever forgive me? You must forgive me.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina's kind heart suddenly melted." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Hush, Mother. There's nothing to forgive now.\"\n\n\"I would have acted if I'd known anything, I swear it, but I had turned in on myself, when I should have been looking outwards to my people. I didn't know that Vladeran had been persecuting the Helgra. I should have known, I should. But after Elu came back I wanted nothing more to do with wolves.\"\n\n\"Mother,\" said Alina urgently, struggling to get up, \"our people, and my friend Catalin, are in terrible danger, and I brought it on them. They come to save me, but Vladeran has set a trap for them. We must do something before it's too late.\"\n\nBefore her mind's eye, Alina could see the Helgra tipping towards those ghastly pits fanning the gorge. Catalin too. She had to stop it.\n\n\"Peace, Alina,\" said Romana softly, raising the young woman to her feet. \"Somehow they learnt of this trap and broke ranks, circling the main body of our army, and avoiding the pass towards the palace. They are on the plain before these gates and they try to cross the ditch.\"\n\nAlina's heart leapt. Had Fell somehow managed to reach Catalin and the Helgra and warn them after all?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Had she summoned him with the Sight? As she stood there, she began to hear faint sound from the corridor outside. Not the wails and moans of prisoners, but distant cries and shouts beyond. The blaring of horns and the clash of metal on metal.\n\n\"There's hard fighting,\" said her mother, \"and all will be swept up in it. We must hurry.\"\n\nA man moved out of the shadow of the prison door. It was a Shield Guard.\n\n\"It's all right, Alina,\" said Romana, looking sternly at him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Landu has remembered his true loyalties at last. It's how I discovered you were here.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And you're right, my lady, we must hurry,\" said Landu gravely, and guiltily too." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Elu waits in your chamber. There are fresh horses saddled and ready in the courtyard nearby. We must get you all away behind the Helgra lines, or even better, and far safer, to the armies of King Stefan.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"King Stefan?\" whispered Alina hopefully.\n\n\"He's far, but if we can get to him, perhaps we can persuade him to send help.\"\n\nTo help the Helgra, wondered Alina, or to aid his own overlord in surpassing his rebellious subjects? Besides, from the sounds outside, if the King was far it was too late for any help. Alina's heart was thundering.\n\n\"But my manacles,\" she said. \"Vladeran has the only key.\"\n\nLandu stepped fully into the prison." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'sword' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was carrying her own wolf-topped sword and Alina stood away from the wall and pulled the chain taught, as he raised the beautiful thing and struck. Alina was free. She rose, rubbing her wrists, and Landu took the sword by the blade and, turning it, offered her the hilt. She clasped the thing again and felt a sudden flood of strength, as she balanced its trusty weight.\n\n\"Now we flee this place,\" said Landu.\n\n\"No,\" answered Alina, feeling herself restored again. \"I must go to their aid and fight. We've a pact.\"\n\n\"It's too dangerous,\" said Landu. \"And it will be of more help to the Helgra if we can reach Stefan and tell him the truth of this.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "💬 Please integrate this quote: \"For, daughter, are we not both women who run with the wolves?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina could see the sense of flight, although she desperately wanted to be at Catalin's side, and secretly determined to join him as soon as she got her mother and half brother away in safety. But Romana had stepped forwards too, snatching up the dagger again in her elegant hand.\n\n\"The way to the courtyard will lead us past the steps to the arras and Vladeran's chamber, will it not, Landu?\" she said.\n\n\"It will, my lady.\"\n\n\"Then I've killing to do myself,\" hissed Romana. \"For, daughter, are we not both women who run with the wolves?\"\n\n\"No, Lady Romana,\" insisted Landu. \"If you get close and strike, the Shield Guard will strike you down in turn. Leave justice to the King, Romana. And to heaven.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "⚠️ Required: Use 'romana' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The thought of her mother being struck down, so soon after Alina had found her again, made the young woman terrified.\n\n\"Landu's right, Mother. Besides, you can't strike Vladeran down. Some oracle speaks to him of the things that will be, and he may only be slain when... when my father is in sight of his own palace.\"\n\n\"But Dragomir is... \"\n\n\"Yes. So let us leave Vladeran to the shadows.\"\n\nAlina's strange words had amazed both her mother and Landu, and Romana lowered the dagger fearfully in front of the storyteller. Romana was not a fighter, and although she hated Vladeran with all her heart now, these words of witchcraft made her wish to be away in the open, free air and the warming sunlight.\n\n\"Come,\" said Landu, pulling at Romana's arm. \"Hurry.\"\n\nThey stepped out into the corridor and began to run, and as they passed the cells Alina began to see how many people Vladeran had locked in his prisons." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yet the moans were stilled now, as the prisoners heard the dim sounds of battle beyond, and wondered how the fight of great ones would affect their own bitter destinies." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They came out into an open courtyard and suddenly Landu raised his sword." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Five Shield Guard soldiers had seen them and drawn theirs instantly. It was Alina WovenWord who stepped fowards, pushing her mother aside, and she began to move as if in a dream, the warrior smith's sword cutting and slicing through the air, turning and jabbing, unafraid. In her mind the warrior storyteller remembered Vladeran's accusation that it had all been her fault, but she threw it off. Landu fought at her side, and at last the soldiers stood no more. They all lay dead.\n\nRomana was amazed at her daughter, but it was Landu who was staring at her in disbelief. At Alina's eyes. As she had fought they had flashed with yellow gold, and Alina Sculcuvant suddenly had the eyes of a wolf. They cleared again as the three of them stood there, but with that a note came to them on the air." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A piercing animal cry." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Morgra. Why did you not show me this?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lord Vladeran's bloody hands clutched the sides of the stony font again, as he too heard the cry outside the palace." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He glared down at the she-wolf in the water, with fury and hate, and the scarred creature glared back coldly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The Helgra are on the plain, Morgra. And Fell is with them. Why did you not warn me, damn you?\"\n\n\"Warn you?\" came Morgra's scornful thoughts. \"Did I say that I may foretell everything, human? And does a human need to know every step of the way, before he can show true courage and continue? I once thought your kind the greatest of Lera, but now... \"\n\n\"But it was you that convinced me in all this. You that reassured me.\"\n\n\"Was it indeed? Is that why you wear me on your back, like my dear niece, Larka?\"\n\nVladeran fingered the fur on his wolf coat, made from two dead Varg.\n\n\"You said we would turn the black wolf, yet even now that beast leads the Helgra against me. If they cross the river, the palace may be lost.\"\n\n\"There's plenty of time yet, human,\" whispered Morgra's shadowy mind, \"for how can an army cross that water, even if they breach the ditch? I've spoken to Fell and even now the bloodlust grips him, as he kills and maims. It shall not fade before he comes within the presence of the girl.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What are you saying?\"\n\n\"When his teeth are at Alina's throat, he'll truly be ours. It was not I who saw Fell kill her, it was Fell himself who saw it with the Sight, and the Sight does not lie. As it did not lie when I looked into the shadows and prophesied your future.\"\n\n\"And so saw that I'm invulnerable,\" whispered Vladeran's calming mind, \"unless a dead man walks the palace.\"\n\nVladeran seemed to swell in stature again, and he lifted himself to his full height.\n\n\"Word has come with my spies from King Stefan too, Morgra. He'll not come to help these Helgra scum. Nothing comes to aid them now.\"\n\nVladeran smiled as he thought of the King and of his cousin Draculea too.\n\n\"So I'll fear nothing and no one. And when Fell comes, I shall command him myself, and he shall lick the Helgra's blood from my hand.\"\n\nVladeran suddenly looked magnificent, yet something veiled came into Morgra's watching eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vladeran was too lost in a dream to see." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Command him and lead the wolf, still dripping with the bloodlust, to that little cell where the young woman lies, to fulfil his true destiny and make him what must be.\"\n\n\"The girl is not there,\" said Morgra's thoughts. \"Even now I see her hurrying through your prisons with her mother.\"\n\n\"Her mother,\" gasped Vladeran in horror. \"Romana knows?\"\n\n\"She knows everything. As we all know in the end.\"\n\n\"Where are they going? Tell me, quickly.\"\n\n\"They go to fetch the boy and take horse and flee.\"\n\n\"To take my son!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes. Aided by one of your blessed Shield Guard, Landu. Perhaps you should not have promoted Cascu in his stead.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Damn you,\" cried Vladeran, breaking away from the font, as Morgra's image faded in the water." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Damn you all to hell.\"\n\nVladeran turned and tore aside the tapestry, bringing it crashing to the floor to reveal the little chapel, and strode back into the great chamber, where thirty soldiers were waiting.\n\n\"Guards. Rouse yourselves. Cascu.\"\n\nCascu and the Shield Guard were already roused, for they could hear the sounds of battle beyond all too clearly, and their hands had been poised on their weapons as their master prayed. They were sworn on their lives to protect Lord Vladeran whatever came, and their courage was far from wavering yet. Cascu thought Vladeran's eyes looked so dark and sunken though, as if he had not slept in a month, and he saw the snarling fury on his lips.\n\n\"Hurry to Romana's chamber,\" cried Vladeran. \"They're trying to flee. Stop them and bring them here. Bring me my son. My heir.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'vladeran' 3 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ten of the Shield Guard saluted and went rushing from the hall, as Vladeran sat down wearily in his great chair. He cast a look to the tapestry where once Romana had appeared, then sunk his head on his fist and for a while seemed lost in thought.\n\n\"Lord Vladeran,\" whispered Cascu, fearful of disturbing him. \"Should we not go forth to fight my people?\"\n\nVladeran looked up coldly at the Helgra spy but was silent.\n\n\"Or flee?\" said Cascu.\n\nVladeran's eyes were suddenly filled with pride and defiance, and he got up.\n\n\"I'll never flee, Cascu. I'll not lose this battle either.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But how can you be so sure, my lord?\"\n\n\"I've sent for aid. Even now riders come to help us. My cousin Tepesh. But I know I cannot be harmed, and as for the battle, if my soldiers or Draculea's fail, then the wolf is the key.\"\n\n\"The wolf, my lord?\"\n\n\"To control Fell, Cascu, is to win the field whatever happens,\" hissed Vladeran. \"For if we do that, we'll control your people too. When they see him meekly at my side, they shall worship me, even as their swords and bows glance off the impenetrable shield of my own destiny. Is the wolf not really why they march?\"\n\n\"But how can you control it?\"\n\n\"The Helgra woman, of course,\" hissed Vladeran. \"Alina SkeinTale.\"\n\nAlina was following Landu and her mother through the grimy passages still, and as they went they heard that sound more clearly now, and it stopped her in her tracks." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was definitely an animal cry. The high, angry note that carried both courage and power in it. The howl of the wild wolf.\n\n\"Fell,\" cried Alina, as her heart soared. \"Fell is really here.\"\n\nAs Alina Wovenword said it, the black wolf stood on a mound of raised earth before Vladeran's fearful palace and the great river that protected it, spanned by the single wooden bridge. He looked magnificent. His tail was raised like the Helgra banners about him, carrying that open-winged eagle, and his cry rumbled from his belly and rose through his rippling throat, out of a black muzzle red with blood. The bloodlust was on the wolf." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Catalin stood to his right on the mound above the wide ditch, and although the storyteller was terrified, the young man's bow arm was working at speed, threading arrows and sending them deftly towards the enemy soldiers lined in front of them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell kept swinging his head towards the young man protectively." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If any of Pantheos's words had been true, then Catalin was as important as Alina now, for it was their children's children who would one day come to help them all.\n\nThe young storyteller had never seen anything as terrible as this battle, and his heart was heavy as he looked about the field at the dead, but he kept his courage, and thought of Alina alone. At times as he fought he was gripped by such terrible emotions that it was as if he hardly recognised himself, as if he had somehow been transformed into a wild animal, and it was only the image of Alina's beautiful face that made him feel human again.\n\nOvidu was on the wolf's left side, raising an antler also red with blood, and turning to call to the Helgra warriors flooding into the breach behind them. How proud that Helgra man looked as he went to battle again at the side of the wolf. Ovidu knew, as he called the charge again, how important Fell's presence was to the Helgra attack. These Magyar-Dacian tribesmen carried the wolf's call in their dreams and legends, and it was as if their ancient songs and stories were coming true. Many dogs had played a part in past struggles, trained to march ahead in packs to frighten their foe, but never a wild wolf." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And never a wolf like Fell.\n\nWhich was why what happened next threatened to destroy their morale once more, and turn the wavering tide of the battle against them entirely, even as they swung with their swords and antlers.\n\nIn Fell's desire to press forwards and find Alina, the wolf overreached himself. Until now they had pressed ahead together, in good order, fighting in hand-to-hand combat, with the weapons that Catalin had helped them forge again in the Helgra village and the antlers they had collected in the bracken. But two dozen Shield Guard soldiers had come on horseback over the long wooden bridge that crossed the widest part of the river.\n\nThey charged left and right, and some of the Helgra wavered on the mound, while more of Vladeran's foot soldiers charged towards the centre of the fight. Fell saw them coming and leapt towards them, with fury in his belly. He thought of himself sailing over that ice chasm." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The wolf leapt too far though, for his powerful spring allowed him to cross the wide ditch below the mound they were on, and cut him off completely from the Helgra behind. Ovidu, knowing Fell's importance to his warriors, had ordered that his soldiers guard his flanks with their swords and bows and antlers, but now the wolf was alone and undefended.\n\n\"No, Fell,\" cried Catalin desperately, even though he knew that the wolf could not understand him. \"Come back.\"\n\nThe storyteller strung another arrow and sent it scything towards a soldier who had leapt from the side to strike at Fell. It ended the threat, and the man dropped dead, but it was too dangerous for the Helgra to flood into the ditch and lose the advantage of height, while the black wolf was completely surrounded.\n\nFell swung in a half circle, snapping and snarling furiously, baring his teeth and his anger. The soldiers had seen the wolf from a distance, and now his proximity kept Vladeran's men at bay. But as they began to realise that Fell was a real animal, and not some demon of the night, as they saw from the scar on his side that he could certainly be injured and killed, the soldiers' own courage was returned." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This was nothing but a wild dog.\n\nA single soldier came running towards Fell, more dangerous to him than any of the others. It was an archer who was already stringing his bow to shoot. Catalin saw him and the terrible danger to Fell, but he realised that he had just fired his last arrow, and did not have time to retrieve any others.\n\n\"Ovidu,\" cried the storyteller desperately, lowering his empty bow. \"We must help Fell somehow.\"\n\n\"The ditch,\" shouted Ovidu. \"We have to get over the ditch.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "They could both see that it was useless." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The deep ditch itself was already piling with dead Helgra, and thus difficult to cross, and the gulf was too far anyway." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In a moment Fell too would lie dead, and with him all hope might well break amongst the ranks." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The archer lifted and drew back the bow string, and in the sight of that metal arrow tip, Fell saw death pass into his own soul." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But suddenly a grey shape came flying across that ditch of death. It landed next to Fell and then sprung again, reaching the archer before he released his arrow, and knocking him to the ground. Wolf teeth struck at him as the advancing soldiers shrunk back in terror, and now before Vladeran's men was not one but two wild wolves. A black and a grey.\n\n\"Tarlar,\" cried Fell in astonishment, sending not words but furious snarls to the ears of the defending soldiers, as the she-wolf lifted her muzzle and turned to him proudly. \"You're here too, Tarlar?\"\n\nIn another bound the she-wolf was at Fell's side.\n\n\"You think I'd leave you to fight alone, Fell,\" she growled angrily, \"after what I said that day, and what you did for the pack? When the survival of nature itself depends on us? I've been following you, dear Fell, though it was hard to keep pace with a Dragga such as you, and in the end I had to track your scent. But I'm here now.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hope swelled in Fell's pounding heart." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include \"And all things must face that end,\" somewhere in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And something else too. Belief.\n\n\"But you should not, Tarlar. This is a destiny the Sight has forced on me, in my long, lone journeying. But not you, dear Tarlar.\"\n\n\"Fell,\" whispered Tarlar softly, \"can't you see it now? You're no longer alone.\"\n\nSomething strange rose in Fell's belly, as if a kindly hand had stroked the black wolf, and his words felt choked and his heart about to break.\n\n\"The humans may kill us yet, Tarlar.\"\n\n\"And all things must face that end,\" said Tarlar boldly. \"So let us unite our destinies, come what may. But not with the madness of the Vengerid, with purpose and meaning.\"\n\nThe wolves both turned, the Dragga and the Drappa, and began to growl and snarl at the soldiers." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In that moment the Helgra, who had seen Tarlar's strange appearance, sent up a great shout. Like the salmon breaking from the manacles of the lower river towards the future, they rushed the ditch and began to push back Vladeran's soldiers. They inched on towards the palace and the bridge across the furious river.\n\nYet the battle was not to be won so easily, if won at all. At that moment another wave of Vladeran's men came riding across the bridge, hundreds of them, and to a man they bore those black crosses on their armour.\n\nThey were the most hardened of Vladeran's feared Shield Guard, and little impressed with the presence of two wild wolves, as they fanned out across the plain. Although the Helgra protected Fell and Tarlar's flanks, these fresh troops quickly engaged the surrounding attackers, who began to waver again. There were just too many Shield Guard soldiers and the Helgra were hopelessly outnumbered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were losing the fight.\n\n\"It's no good, Tarlar,\" cried Fell bitterly. \"We're lost. This has all been a story. A bad dream.\"\n\nTarlar whimpered, but suddenly a sound came to the air that froze Fell and Tarlar in their paw marks and made their tails rise and their ears twitch.\n\n\"What's that?\" whispered Tarlar, although she knew already.\n\nIt was a wolf howl. Yet not one but ten, twenty, forty voices, crying and howling through the air. From the surrounding mountains they came, those calling wolf throats, howling from the echoing hills." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The attacking Shield Guard paused fearfully, and Fell and Tarlar looked up and were quite astonished to see, there in the distance, forty wolves on the mountain. They did not move forwards, or join the attack; they were not there because of some strange enchantment. They were there, howling and calling, with one purpose alone. The Vengerid had come to salute Fell.\n\nAnd there were five other wolves there too, set slightly apart from the rest. Kar and Larka, Kipcha and Skop and Khaz. The Helgra heard the wolves and rallied, while the Shield Guard wavered again, truly fearful now, and their frightened horses began to buck and whinny in terror.\n\nBut still their discipline held, and it would have vanquished the day if it hadn't been for another extraordinary sound, a rushing, like a great wind, or a wave breaking on a shore." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell thought he was in the river again and behind the waterfall, except all around him the moving cloud was so black it blocked out the sun." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What's happening?\" growled Tarlar fearfully, feeling a presence about her as ominous as Pantheos had been to Fell. Shapes were moving all about them, swirling and eddying around the Shield Guard's starting horses, and suddenly Fell realised what it was.\n\n\"Starlings,\" he cried.\n\nThe giant wave of starlings turned and swirled and broke around the humans and wolves, and Fell almost expected the salmon to come leaping amongst them too. But as they watched, Fell realised that within that great organism, individual birds were breaking away and rushing at the visors of the Shield Guard. And as those wings fluttered, Fell seemed to hear a voice whispering around them, but as loud as the voice of the Guardian: Ask this then, wolf, if you seek the wonder and magic of the world, it seemed to say. Ask only what consciousness is. Consciousness, that does not live in man alone." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell shuddered and remembered Pantheos's words of a Great Secret carried on the air. Skart had prophesied it too.\n\n\"But how?\" cried Tarlar. \"It's impossible.\"\n\n\"The Sight,\" answered Fell. \"The Sight is filling the world, like a great mind. The Lera have come to show man what he is, and to help the girl and boy. The Helpers are here.\"\n\n\"And to help you too,\" growled Tarlar.\n\nIt was indeed as if all nature had risen up, and suddenly the Shield Guard broke completely. The way to the bridge was open." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yet even as the wolves led the Helgra through, their hearts sank. They saw that long ropes had been strung from supports of the thin bridge, back across the churning river to Vladeran's palace, and soldiers on the far bank were pulling now. Suddenly there was a thundering crash, as the attackers reached the shore. That long, thin bridge, the only way across, collapsed on itself and crashed into the swirling waters.\n\nFell thought of Alina and the ice bridge, and felt his heart go with it. The river was so wide, and its waters looked so angry and deep, that the wolves and the Helgra had little chance of crossing it safely. Their swords and antlers would only weigh them down, while if they made it at all they would be easy prey for the Shield Guard.\n\nFell began to growl helplessly, hearing a voice in his mind, too, Fear it, wolf, fear death by water, but even as the wolves and the humans stood there, defeated again in their attack, the most extraordinary thing happened in that extraordinary fight." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ovidu pointed at the river in disbelief." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Through its swirling current, shapes were moving rapidly upstream." }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'witchcraft' 2 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The Helgra thought it witchcraft, as the logs made for the shore, as if guided by an unseen hand. Some of the logs had come moving rapidly up the river, while parts of the bridge itself now turned towards the shore and the Helgra. Fell's tail rose, as a wide, flat part of the bridge reached the shore where he and Tarlar stood, and he padded forwards onto the little platform.\n\n\"Come, Tarlar,\" he said softly.\n\nThe she-wolf was growling in terror behind him, her tail between her legs.\n\n\"But Fell. It's witchcraft. And death by water.\"\n\n\"You've nothing to fear now,\" growled Fell. \"You're with me, Tarlar.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Tarlar padded onto the platform nervously, and immediately the wolves found themselves turning in the water and moving across the river." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The wolves had given the lead and now, everywhere, Helgra were springing forwards onto those little boats to cross the river too." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I don't know what power you have, Fell SpellWeaver,\" whispered Tarlar, \"but I think it a good thing.\"\n\n\"Power?\" said the wolf, gazing into the waters and suddenly believing with all his heart. \"Only the power that is all around us, Tarlar, always.\"\n\nFell had already guessed what was driving those strange boats on, and suddenly two familiar little heads popped up from the river.\n\n\"It is you, Ottol,\" cried the black wolf, with pleasure, \"and your mate.\"\n\n\"And zo it is,\" answered the beaver, squirting water from his mouth, \"and many others, Fell. Beaver and otter too. It is a strange zing, no? It's as if vee couldn't resist, and zumthing was zummoning us. As if you were speaking to all of us.\"\n\nYes, thought Fell, thinking of what Pantheos had said and that great mind, moving through nature.\n\n\"But one came to us too. A bear.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell blinked in surprise. A bear? Then perhaps Pantheos was just a Lera...\n\n\"So you left your kits to help us, Ottol?\" he growled.\n\n\"Only for avile, voolf. Vile you help zees humans. You've found your vay I zee.\"\n\n\"That we will know soon,\" answered the wolf gravely, \"but hurry, Ottol, hurry.\"\n\nIn the palace the song of the wolf, multiplied fiftyfold by the Vengerid and Fell's family, was lost again, but Alina WovenWord was standing now, beside her mother, in a chamber far from that prison, looking at the face of a boy. Her own little half brother.\n\n\"Come, Elu,\" said Romana softly, beside them, \"do you recognise your elder sister?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But you're dead,\" said Elu nervously, looking up at the strange changeling storyteller. Alina looked at him just as warily. But he was just a little boy, she told herself.\n\n\"No, Elu, not dead,\" she whispered, taking his hand and smiling with eyes filled with tears, as she remembered the baby in the cot. \"But I've been away a long time. I've been in a different country, far away. A strange country.\"\n\n\"Was it a nice place?\" asked Elu cheerfully.\n\nAlina thought back to that shepherd's hovel and dear Mia, but to Malduk and Ranna too.\n\n\"No, Elu,\" she answered sadly, \"it wasn't a nice place at all. Although I had friends there too.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And are you our friend?\"\n\nAlina remembered the love she had felt for the little baby of her dreams.\n\n\"Oh, yes, Elu. I'm your sister and I love you dearly. I always have. I won't let any of this touch you anymore.\"\n\n\"I like your sword,\" said Elu. \"Will you show me how to use it?\"\n\n\"Yes, I will, but first we must all go on a journey. Mother, you, and I.\"\n\n\"Is Father coming with us?\"\n\n\"No, Elu.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You're funny. Why do you look like a boy?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina laughed and ruffled the boy's blond hair.\n\n\"Perhaps I'll tell you one day,\" she answered. \"Tell you of changelings and goblins and Baba Yaga. But do you trust me now?\"\n\nThe boy thought for awhile, and at last he gave a firm nod.\n\n\"Good.\" Alina smiled. \"Now we'd better hurry.\"\n\nAs Alina said it though, they heard raised voices outside and Landu hardly had time to draw his sword before the Shield Guard burst into the chamber. Landu did not expect them to have foreknowledge of all that was happening, or to be moving with such intent, so he hardly had time to defend himself as the lead guard's sword knocked him aside and plunged into his gut." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His startled eyes went blank and lost their light entirely.\n\nElu cried out and ran to his mother, grasping her middle, as Alina's sword came singing from its sheath and again her eyes flashed with wolf gold. Alina struck, cutting the attacker's forearm, but it was too late for Landu. He sank to his knees and crashed to the floor.\n\n\"My lady... forgive... \"\n\nAlina turned, sinking her weight through her body, all her training returning to her. The storyteller was poised and her mind was crystal clear, ready to fight again, but the Shield Guard were many and she hesitated.\n\n\"If you resist us, you both die, woman,\" said the soldier who had struck, coldly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You and your mother.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Lord Vladeran would not allow it,\" cried Romana furiously." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Vladeran has ordered it, woman,\" hissed the soldier scornfully." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And has summoned you to the great chamber. He wants his son.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina WovenWord paused. A pain had come, but not from the soldier's words. It was that ache in her head, and Alina pretended to be listening to the soldier as she heard the voice in her mind.\n\n\"I'm close, Alina. We're crossing the river and some of the Helgra are already on your side, and entering his stone den.\"\n\n\"Fell?\"\n\nAlina's heart was racing.\n\n\"There's fire and blood about us and has been much death. Sometimes I cannot hold my own savagery. The bloodlust is on me. On us all. Are you safe, human?\"\n\n\"Not yet, dear Fell. And you and Catalin?\"\n\n\"We've all survived. The boy is strong, and the Helgra leader too. I'm proud of them both and myself, for Catalin is important to this destiny too, Alina. And the Lera have come to help us too. To help you.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'alina' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina felt amazement in her heart and hope too, even now.\n\n\"Be careful, Fell. Vladeran has summoned others to his aid.\"\n\n\"Where are you, human cub?\"\n\n\"I don't know, Fell, but they take us to Vladeran's great chamber.\"\n\n\"Then I shall come.\"\n\n\"How, Fell? I do not know how to guide you in this place.\"\n\n\"I'm a wolf, remember, with senses more powerful than yours, and I have your scent.\"\n\nThe link snapped and slowly Alina lowered her sword arm." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Romana and her children were hurried through the palace by the Shield Guard, and Elu was terrified, for there was the sound of fighting everywhere now. The Helgra had begun to breach the palace. Flames licked at the rich tapestries in the chambers below and bodies lay in the passageways, while several times the Shield Guard had to strike out to defend themselves, but of Catalin and Ovidu and Fell, Alina saw nothing.\n\nAs they burst back into the chamber, Vladeran sprang from his throne and the doors were slammed behind them. His eyes blazed with hate and jealousy, as he saw that little family together, the two women and the boy, and he strode forwards and caught Romana by her cloak. With a growl he threw his wife to the ground near the throne. Elu went running after her and tried to help her up, as Romana slid on the hard marble.\n\n\"Mother.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"My boy,\" whispered Romana bitterly.\n\n\"So you know everything, Romana,\" said Vladeran, glaring down at them both, \"and there's no reason to dissemble anymore, is there, my love? And you would have stolen my son.\"\n\n\"He's my son too!\" screamed Romana.\n\nVladeran turned and looked at Alina, held there by the Shield Guard.\n\n\"I should not have dissembled then, Romana, should I? I should have killed the lying little whelp myself, in the palace, all those years ago when she failed to protect my child. Then this never would have been.\"\n\n\"As you murdered Dragomir, Vladeran?\" wept Romana bitterly. \"As you've murdered my heart. Assassin.\"\n\nMadness came into Vladeran's eyes as he saw his beautiful wife sobbing on the floor, madness and utter despair." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No, Romana. You can love me again. All this has been for you, don't you see? I love you, the only creature I've ever loved, and all shall soon be well, I swear it.\"\n\nVladeran knew it was foolish, and suddenly he reached out and grabbed Alina SkeinTale's arm, pulling her furiously across the room towards them. He thrust the storyteller backwards into the throne, near her mother and his son.\n\n\"Sit there, my fine Lady of Castelu,\" he said mockingly, \"for that's what you seek, is it not, against all the Salic laws? Against nature itself.\"\n\n\"You're mad,\" whispered Alina.\n\n\"That may be,\" snarled Vladeran, suddenly pulling the dagger from his belt and jumping behind the throne, \"but here you shall be sitting when he comes.\"\n\n\"Fell's here already,\" spat Alina, \"somewhere close, and my wolf shall tear out your throat.\"\n\nVladeran put his dagger to Alina's own throat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Shall he?\" He smiled, pushing his brutal face into hers. \"I hear them outside now. I have always known he was coming, all my life.\"\n\n\"Shall we bar the doors, my lord?\" asked Cascu fearfully, as the sounds of fighting rose even louder. Vladeran stood at his full height, but still he held the dagger against Alina WovenWord.\n\n\"On the contrary, Cascu, throw the doors open and welcome the wolf into my fold.\"\n\n\"But, my lord. The Helgra.\"\n\n\"Do it, fool, do it now.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cascu bowed, and fearing more and more the approach of his people and his brother Ovidu, he waved his hand and four Shield Guard soldiers pulled open the doors again. Seven bodies lay in the passage beyond, and flames were flickering against the palace walls, the shadows of candles and tapers that had been overturned by the desperate fighting in the corridor, though the Helgra who had killed these men had passed on. The corridor was empty.\n\nThe captives and their captors stood there in Vladeran's great chamber, hearing the shouts and cries from beyond, wondering what would appear in that doorway, and waiting for Fell to find Alina WovenWord's scent amongst the complex, confusing web of smells that filled his nostrils in the palace. Smells of earth and stone and human blood. Waiting for him to catch it like an echo and let it draw him along an Ariadne's thread of sensation, up a stairway, round a corner, down a long, body-strewn corridor. It seemed like an age, but at last they heard it. A wild growling beyond." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina started as she saw Fell's sihouette magnified against the wall in the candlelight, and even more so when that head suddenly seemed to sprout two muzzles, like some mighty dog guarding the gates of hell." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Just as Pantheos and Skart had foretold." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Ensure 'there' appears 2 time(s) in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A wolf had sprouted two heads.\n\nCascu and the Shield Guard soldier looked at each other in horror, but they held their ground. And there they suddenly stood in the doorway, not one but two full-grown wolves. The black and a grey. The male and the female. Tarlar and Fell came side by side, and it seemed as if there was blood and fire reflecting in their glittering yellow gold eyes. Even Alina was amazed as she saw them together.\n\n\"Fell, dear Fell.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Include the following text] → \"I can hardly see you, Alina. Their damned blood clouds my vision, while the bloodlust has me.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell stopped and gave a low growl, as his eyes took in the armed humans around the chamber. Alina felt almost jealous of this she-wolf that walked at his side. As the Shield Guard all stepped back, Elu buried his head in his mother's breast and started to cry.\n\n\"Alina,\" came Fell's angry thoughts, \"I can hardly see you, Alina. Their damned blood clouds my vision, while the bloodlust has me.\"\n\n\"But you've come, Fell.\"\n\n\"And if I move, human, he'll strike with his dagger.\"\n\n\"Yes, Fell. He's full of tricks and traps. Beware his men too.\"\n\nFell's head swung around the room, and in an instant, as if he were sensing it, he had taken in the precise number of the Shield Guard watching him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Their position in the room." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Their distance from him and Tarlar." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I have them in my eye, Alina, and they'll pay bitterly if they strike.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You're talking to it, aren't you?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "whispered Vladeran, glaring at Fell and pressing the knife even tighter to Alina's throat. \"Tell it to speak to me, girl. The real wolf.\"\n\nAlina simply smiled. \"Even if you had the gift, Fell would never speak to one such as you,\" she answered coldly. \"He may see your thoughts if he chooses, but he will not speak to you. Any of you.\"\n\nVladeran pressed the knife tighter and Fell snarled.\n\n\"Remarkable,\" growled Vladeran, \"it's as if he acts beyond the instincts of a mere animal, and understands everything we say. Then speak to him for me, girl, and tell him that I offer him a bargain.\"\n\n\"What bargain?\"\n\n\"You're a part of this bargain too, storyteller. For if the wild wolf walks to me now and stands at my side, in return I swear by the halls of Castelu that you'll live, and the wolf shall be honoured here, as the Helgra have always honoured his kind. The forests where he hunts shall be made sacred, and the land itself that is his home shall have my protection.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fell was growling again, for he had looked into Vladeran's mind and seen the pact and what it meant. Fell was looking at Alina's half brother too, huddled there with his human mother, next to the great chair. The very human whom Fell had once called Bran, the infant Larka herself had protected in the snows, and whom Fell had carried on his back to the village below the castle. The child he had made a pact with too, and a promise to remind him of the wildness and beauty of the world, in exchange for his protection of the Lera.\n\nFell remembered a vision he'd had of the boy, standing tall, with two dogs at his side, ready to protect the animals. But he felt guilty, for wolves had brought a great darkness to this little human family.\n\n\"No, Alina,\" growled Fell furiously, glancing back at Vladeran, \"you may not trust this Dragga scum.\"\n\n\"I know it, Fell, and I would rather have a curse on my head than his protection.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"So, Alina,\" said Vladeran, \"will you not order these beasts?\"\n\n\"I've told you before, they're not mine to order.\"\n\n\"Very well then,\" cried Vladeran, \"in my kennels my whips bend the dogs to my will, and wolves shall learn too what it is to be tame. Now!\"\n\nVladeran had been waiting for the best moment for the trap he had laid when he had sent his men to fetch Romana, and at his cry four concealed Shield Guard soldiers came running from their hiding place behind the arras, in that recess at the top of the secret passageway. They ran straight at Fell and Tarlar, carrying a net in their arms, which they cast towards the animals, and before the wolves could react, they found themselves struggling in strange bonds made of coarse black rope.\n\nFell snarled furiously, and Tarlar flailed out with her right paw, but found it sliding through one of the holes in the net and entangling her even more. The net closed around the wolves, as if they were giant, furry fish, pinning their paws under them and wrapping them in a tight bundle, their snouts poking uselessly through a grilling of black cords.\n\n\"What's happening to us?\" growled Tarlar." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Don't struggle,\" whispered Fell, as the soldiers tugged at the ends of the net. \"It'll only make it worse. I know of human traps.\"\n\nVladeran was smiling contentedly.\n\n\"So I have you all,\" he said delightedly, \"as I knew I would in the end. You cannot deny true destiny.\"\n\n\"Your orders, my lord?\" said Cascu.\n\nVladeran swung his head.\n\n\"First slay that beast at the black wolf's side.\"\n\nFell growled, for again he had read Vladeran's thoughts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Stop him, Alina.\"\n\n\"No,\" Alina started, \"I'll do what you ask. I'll persuade Fell to take your pact.\"\n\n\"Even if I thought you weren't lying,\" said Vladeran, \"what use is the other wolf to me? We're animals, and animals we kill.\"\n\nVladeran pushed Alina back and, walking around the throne, gave Cascu the dagger.\n\n\"Hold the storyteller,\" he ordered. \"Kill her if she moves a muscle.\"\n\nVladeran turned and walked forwards, his wolf cloak sweeping across the marble floor. He circled the struggling wolves in their net, and as he did so his back came into Fell's vision and the wolf whimpered as he saw his sister's pelt." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fell hated this human." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In that moment he hated all humans." }, { "from": "human", "value": "All but Alina. Vladeran was triumphant, feeling invincible indeed with the spell that surrounded him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Let our soldiers spread the word,\" he cried. \"Tell the Helgra, under a white flag of truce, that we have the black wolf and if they do not throw down their weapons, Alina Sculcuvant shall die instantly, and salt be sowed over her bones.\"\n\nThe Shield Guard ran from the chamber, as Vladeran began to laugh.\n\n\"So then,\" he cried, \"let us wait and see what comes.\"\n\nAlina was looking helplessly at her friend.\n\n\"Oh, Fell,\" whispered her mind bitterly. \"Have I really brought you to this?\"\n\n\"Don't blame yourself, Alina. A destiny marks us all, no matter how we try to struggle against it, and I'm glad I came. Although I'm sad the she-wolf is here with me.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Dear Fell.\"\n\n\"If I could just get loose for a moment, I'd rush him now,\" growled the wolf. \"The human who holds you is not so ruthless as Vladeran. I see it in his thoughts. I think he would not kill you as easily as your father's friend.\"\n\nVladeran turned and gave Fell a brutal kick through the net, knocking the wind from the wolf and sending up an angry yelp. Fell was struggling to breathe, and as he lay there he suddenly noticed Vladeran's old hunting dog, watching from his place near the throne. Fell gave a low, angry growl.\n\n\"Help us, dog. Help those of your kind.\"\n\nThe dog lifted his head wearily and blinked across the chamber floor." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Help you?\" he growled sombrely." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"There's no help for it, wolf, even if you were of my kind. I've learnt to accept their power, and to take their meat in return, with the warmth of their red flowers. Besides, there was a time when I myself hunted the wild wolf.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'alina' 2 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But now you're nothing but a tame cur,\" growled Fell angrily.\n\n\"Tame I may be,\" said the dog, with a sigh, \"but life tames us all in the end, wolf. Don't fight against it, and it'll be easier for you. It's those that fight hardest for freedom who are never free.\"\n\nFell turned away his muzzle in disgust, and suddenly there were more running footsteps. Some of the Shield Guard had returned.\n\n\"My lord,\" cried the first, \"your cousin's men have come. Draculea's soldiers. The battle's turning, and many of the Helgra are handing over their weapons.\"\n\nAlina was at her wits' end now.\n\n\"Fell, can't you do anything?\"\n\n\"I can't control human wills, Alina, even their weakest.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Suddenly a thought flashed into Fell's struggling brain though. A thought that Morgra herself had placed there. Not man, but Lera.\n\n\"Yes,\" cried his mind, remembering what Morgra had suggested. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"Fell, what are you doing?\"\n\n\"There are other armies, Alina. I have seen them before. It'll be dangerous, Alina, for I fear the shadows. I fear they will take me again.\"\n\nTarlar was amazed, for beside her Fell's black body had suddenly gone limp. His eyes were closed, and as he lay there a sound came from his throat that terrified all in that great chamber." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It came low, and then rose like a ghastly demon, taking to the air, a howl like no other. Only Vladeran suspected what it was, for he had heard something like it before, and it made him tremble. Fell was trying to call the dead from the Red Meadow to come to his aid, just as Morgra had once done. The Summoning Howl.\n\n\"No,\" said Vladeran, rounding on the wolf. \"Stop his throat.\"\n\nThe guards were not looking at Fell, or listening to their leader at all. They were staring at the font in that little chapel in utter horror. There, in the shadows, a ghastly silver shape was appearing. Romana slunk back even more, hugging Elu to her, and Alina felt a cold wash of fear through her whole body." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She sat back in that chair, and suddenly, as if she were fainting from fear, the storyteller's head went back and just for a moment her eyes became wolf eyes again, before they closed.\n\nFell blinked and opened his own eyes again, for his call had suddenly ceased, but there, in the arch of the chapel, in front of the font, stood a spectral she-wolf.\n\n\"Morgra,\" he whispered in terror.\n\nThe scarred, silver spectre was growling, as Morgra blinked and looked about her, like a sleeper waking from a ghastly dream. Even Tarlar whimpered at Fell's side, as Morgra's angry growls rose, and then her voice came echoing through that hall, as the she-wolf spoke, growls mixed with human words that all assembled understood.\n\n\"So then, Fell. You use the Summoning Howl, after all, to restore the dead.\"\n\nThe soldiers and the Helgra and Vladeran understood Morgra, not because a wolf had suddenly been given the power to speak in a human tongue, but because those strange words did not come from Morgra's muzzle at all. They came from the throne and Alina WovenWord's mouth, and Cascu stepped away in horror." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The young woman's eyes had opened again, yellow gold, though they seemed asleep, and her body had gone rigid, as Morgra spoke through Alina's mind, and on the young woman's lips. A wolf was talking through a human Drappa, as Skart had prophesied.\n\n\"But the howl is not strong in you, is it, Fell?\" Morgra whispered.\n\nFell flinched and growled back at them both.\n\n\"For the others will not come, Fell, I promise you that,\" said Morgra through Alina's voice. The spectre of the old she-wolf padded slowly from the recess towards the girl and stood beside her.\n\n\"No army of ghosts to help you and the Helgra now. But I came. You brought me forth again. Then I was keen to come, and smell blood once more, and taste it too.\"\n\nLord Vladeran was even more transfixed than the rest of the assembled humans." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Morgra,\" he said wonderingly, not knowing whether to look at the storyteller or the she-wolf. \"This grows better and better. If Fell will not serve me, we'll work together then. My power united, not with a mortal wolf, but with a wolf of shadows and darkness, howling the howls of love and hate.\"\n\nVladeran smiled as he stared back at the spectral she-wolf, and Cascu looked at him in awe, not only because of the ghastly apparition, but because Cascu knew that it was he himself, in his doubt, who had given Lord Vladeran these dark Helgra arts. He knew too that the power was real and that he had betrayed more than his father and brother and his own people. But the presence of the spectral wolf kept all away from Alina Sculcuvant.\n\n\"Together we'll rule in the land beyond the forests, Morgra,\" said Vladeran. \"Rule the Helgra, my cousin Draculea, and King Stefan himself. You'll show me more and more of the shadows, Morgra, and together we'll conquer death itself.\"\n\n\"Silence, fool.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina had swung her head to Vladeran and cried out, and Morgra's spectre was growling beside her, her lips curled into a snarl as she swung her muzzle towards Vladeran, who took a step backwards from them both." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Silence? But, Morgra... \"\n\n\"Did I not say silence, human, and now I command it.\"\n\nVladeran was peering straight into Morgra's eyes, and his hand came down to his dagger.\n\n\"Command a human? You dare, animal?\"\n\n\"Yes, Dragga, I dare. And more than dare. For you think you're invulnerable and that you've won, but even now knights ride towards the palace. Even now the turning Helgra see their banners, and their thundering approach from the mountains, and charge once more. Even now Draculea's men turn away and fear turns to hope again. As it always will.\"\n\nA look of doubt came into Vladeran's eyes, but outside he fancied he heard the distant blaring of trumpets and a great shout.\n\n\"King Stefan's men?\" he hissed.\n\n\"Not the King, human fool. Knights to whom you swore sacred oaths, long ago, to protect the world.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vladeran touched that red cross on his chest." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The Order of the Griffin?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "he gasped in terror." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes, Vladeran. And their veiled leader knows you have broken the sacred oaths to which you bound yourself. The oaths to which he is Guardian.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It does not matter,\" said a trembling Vladeran, \"for you told me that I could not be killed unless Dragomir is in sight of the palace, and I saw my friend die myself. Unless you lied.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Morgra's eyes twinkled as viciously as Malduk's or Ranna's had." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I did not lie, Vladeran, unlike your own eyes. For you saw Dragomir fall to the Turk, but you did not see his body, on the point of death, recovered by them too and taken to be healed, even as others were burnt.\"\n\n\"Healed?\" said Vladeran.\n\nOn the floor near the throne, Romana had looked up. Dragomir alive? Her own daughter was telling them this thing. It was impossible.\n\n\"There, with the arts of Eastern healers, they gradually restored him, and there, after years in captivity, he was ransomed to the Griffin Order, only to rise himself amongst their ranks and finally to become their leader.\"\n\n\"No,\" cried Vladeran. \"Dragomir leads the secret Order?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" snarled Alina, \"for I do not lie.\"\n\nThrough Alina's mind, and Morgra's snarls, Fell could understand the spectre entirely, and he wondered why she was bringing the human this strange news, if she had served him all along." }, { "from": "system", "value": "/insert_quote: \"Why have you tricked me?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But hope had once more swelled inside him, for the dead were restored indeed, and, if he had known it, the Griffin, a clawed Putnar, had opened its wings again.\n\nVladeran's body seemed to slump. All his belief in himself, in his own invincibility, seemed to vanish in that instant, like Baba Yaga's broken spell, and now it was as if the slightest touch could shatter him into pieces.\n\n\"But why, Morgra? Why didn't you warn me?\" he whispered bitterly. \"Why have you tricked me?\"\n\nFell was suddenly growling from the net.\n\n\"Tell him, Morgra. I do not understand this either.\"\n\n\"Oh, Fell,\" cried Morgra through Alina's mouth, and the young woman turned her wolf eyes towards Fell." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Don't you see it yet? I've come to help you. To help nature itself.\"\n\n\"Help me?\"\n\n\"Even now you do not believe me, dear Fell, as I knew you would never believe me, when I spoke to you from the Red Meadow. For once we see another being as one thing, too often we see them as that forever.\"\n\nFell growled again.\n\n\"At first I thought to help Vladeran, it's true, and I looked into the future for him and saw a part of the truth about his destiny and the girl's. But as I watched you, I began to remember the life of the Varg, and I longed for forgiveness, and for my sojourn in that terrible meadow to end forever.\"\n\nFell's golden eyes were flickering doubtfully.\n\n\"I longed for the hate that has kept me a prisoner for so long to cease and release me. For hate imprisons us, Fell, and what I did in life, tried to do, made a terrible purgatory for me, that bound me in confusion tighter than your ropes.\" Morgra's silver spectre looked almost beautiful now." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I once sought to rule the Lera, rule through man, to take revenge for the injustice that was done to me all those years ago. But I knew too that I hated the human who summoned me, and knew it more than ever when he spoke of the injustice that has been done to this girl. For now I know that the only answer to injustice is this. It is justice.\"\n\n\"But what you told me of my own nature,\" growled Fell, \"of nature itself. And what I saw myself of Alina's death.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Fell. It was a dangerous path that I walked, but I had to maintain my mask of hate. Firstly because I knew that you would not believe my intentions, unless you saw them with your own eyes. Secondly because I had to hide these things deep within my own mind, almost from myself, so that Vladeran would not suspect me for a moment. Like some secret jewel hidden at the bottom of the sea.\"\n\nVladeran was glaring at Alina WovenWord and the spectral she-wolf, and he could not believe that he had met a mind even more labyrinthine than his own.\n\n\"But, Morgra,\" growled Fell, \"the pain and darkness when my parents went. What you tempted me with?\"\n\n\"I had to be sure too that you would come, Fell, and be here now to complete your destiny. For when this is over, you must know that we are not meant to be with these creatures, Fell. That we must be ourselves alone.\"\n\n\"And Alina's death?\" said the black wolf.\n\n\"Remember, Fell, that although the Sight can show the truth of the future, like stories it can lie too, or rather destinies can change. As the vision of man's destruction of the wild turned from cold to heat, but also to a wondrous garden. Our destinies are our own, Fell, if we have the courage to take control of them.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Morgra's voice had become softer, calmer, as if she were making a confession and it gave her release." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And the Sight lied to me, Fell, when it told me all is shadows, and that the answer to injustice is hate, when it's really love. Not a guilty, caught, and needing love, like a child trapped by too much talk of duty, but real love and real strength. Because in all my own searching, I know now what the true meaning and purpose of life is. It is to be happy. To feel joy. That is why evil will always conquer itself in time.\"\n\n\"Oh, Morgra. You did suffer injustice. They thought you a cub killer, when you were simply trying to save it. And like me, the Sight set you apart.\"\n\nMorgra lifted her tail hopefully.\n\n\"There isn't long now, Fell, and soon I'll vanish like a dream,\" she whispered through Alina, and even now she seemed to grow translucent at the young storyteller's side, as Alina's eyes flashed hazel again. \"For your call was not strong, and you are for this world, not the next. But, Fell, can you ever forgive me? For them. For your pack. For dear Larka.\"\n\nFell raised his head in the strangling net. An extraordinary strength had suddenly entered the black wolf, and he remembered what Tarlar had said of the need for all things to ask forgiveness.\n\n\"I laid a trap to make amends, dear Fell, but not a trap for you, for this human Dragga, one whose kind have hunted us forever with their minds and their spears. I ask your blessing. Fell's blessing.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Morgra's pleading spectre was fading, vanishing, dissolving into thin air." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Vladeran stood there in confusion, paralysed by doubt, quite unable to act, and Fell suddenly felt a fury inside him, as he swung his head to the hunting dog once more." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Help me, damn you,\" he snarled, \"or I'll use the Sight to force you.\"\n\nFell knew it was not so, for the Summoning Howl had exhausted him entirely, and near him he sensed Vladeran move. Just his dagger hand at first. Only one thought was in Vladeran's vicious mind, and Fell saw its terrible simplicity immediately. To kill the young woman who had brought Morgra's message. Who had brought his ruin.\n\n\"Force Vlag?\" said the dog scornfully, across the chamber floor.\n\nFell's ears cocked forwards immediately." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Still Vladeran hesitated, held back by that spectre that seemed to be protecting Alina." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Vlag?\" Fell whispered in astonishment, pierced by a sudden memory. \"Is that your name?\"\n\n\"It is, wolf. What of it?\"\n\n\"But it was you, Vlag. Long ago, when I hid with my mother, Palla, and my little sister Larka in an abandoned badger's set by the river. It was you that hunted us, Vlag, when a fox came by and you missed the scent.\"\n\nVlag's old eyes were peering hard at the wolf, as his master, Vladeran, began to walk slowly towards Alina WovenWord, forcing himself forwards in his hate.\n\n\"Remember, Vlag, you must remember. It was when the human child was stolen and the humans were hunting wolves. They wanted revenge.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" muttered Vlag, \"I remember it now. And I said if they wanted revenge then we should give it to them.\"\n\n\"But you said something else too, Vlag. You said you wished the humans would let you hunt what you wanted. Always chasing after wolves.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'alina' 2 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I did?\"\n\n\"Yes, Vlag. Remember your nature and the wonder of the world, and what it is to be wild and free. To hunt what you want, not what they order you to.\"\n\nVlag stood up suddenly, but Vladeran was nearly on Alina and Morgra had almost vanished.\n\n\"I... I... \"\n\n\"Do it, I beg you, Vlag. The soldier. I must get out of this net.\"\n\nFor a moment the old hunting dog, roused into life by the power of memory, hesitated, and then, as if he were gasping for air and youth, he sprang forwards and bit the nearest guard hard in his calf. With a scream the man leapt back, releasing an edge of the net, just enough for Fell to push himself through the opening. The amazed men were frozen into fear, and Fell leapt straight over Romana and Elu at Lord Vladeran, just as he reached Alina WovenWord." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The storyteller saw again through her startled hazel eyes, and Morgra's shimmering spectre vanished, as Vladeran's dagger hand rose to strike Alina down." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But Fell's great paws struck his back and knocked him to the floor." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Tarlar was wrestling herself free from the net too, and she sprung out and held the guard back with her teeth, as Vladeran rolled and looked up at Fell in horror.\n\nFell felt Alina's mind in his, questioning and doubting, even now wanting to show kindness and humanity, in the gentleness of her nature, even now caught by the duality that follows all human animals, but Fell pushed it away.\n\n\"No, storyteller,\" came his liberated thoughts, \"the bloodlust is on me and this thing took and wore my sister Larka's coat. Slit her throat and skinned her. Let wild nature do this thing then, Alina WovenWord, let it bring justice, and you shall be guiltless of more blood.\"\n\nFell bit, deep and hard, severing Lord Vladeran's windpipe, and in a gush of red the life expired from the shaking body of the man who had killed his sister Larka. It was over. Some of the Shield Guard drew their weapons, but Cascu raised his hand.\n\n\"Hold,\" the Helgra cried. \"It's enough. It's all enough. There has been enough darkness and bloodshed here, and now the reason for the evil is dead. We are men, not beasts.\"\n\nThe Shield Guard were held, partly by their leader, partly by Tarlar's snarls, and partly by the hopeful thought that this Helgra might protect them from the fighting beyond." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The black wolf growled in satisfaction at his work, and then Fell padded softly towards his friend on the throne.\n\n\"You're safe now, changeling, but I must ask your forgiveness, for taking one of your kind.\"\n\nFor a moment Alina stared at the wolf, for though she had been locked in the vision, she had understood all Morgra's words and knew now that her father was alive and here in the palace, as the sounds of battle continued round them, and she knew that still she would have to fight. Then, with a cry, she hurled herself to her knees.\n\n\"Oh, Fell, dear Fell,\" she cried, and as the tears streamed from the young woman's lovely hazel eyes, Alina WovenWord threw her arms around him and hugged that great black wolf.\n\nThe terrible battle was done. Now a tall, visored soldier stood calmly on his palace walls, and as he looked at Romana and Alina and little Elu, his eyes glittered through the slots in his face armour.\n\nOn his chest, like the knights around him, patrolling the battlements, or wandering amongst the fallen on the plain below, he bore that symbol of the red cross, with its tongues of yellow flame, like wings, and, since he led that Order, the curled griffin beneath." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'catalin' (2x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina thought of Baba Yaga's riders as the man lifted his gauntleted hand and pulled the visor from his head. The women's hearts trembled as they saw that fine, sad face, and that red hair, drenched in sweat. The face of Alina's dreams. Romana could not believe its reality, but her dead husband stood before her, and Alina's father too.\n\n\"Dragomir,\" whispered Romana fearfully. \"Can this really be, husband?\"\n\nAround the mysterious leader of the Order of the Griffin, his warriors watched silently, as did Catalin, standing in the background with his bow. It had not been their charge alone that had won the fight for the Helgra, and Alina had raced to Catalin and Ovidu's aid, with the wolves guarding their backs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But it had turned the tide again, and driven back Draculea's men, as that swathe of secret riders had thundered across the plain into battle." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Their banners had streamed in the wind like mighty sails, like Guardians, marked with the image of the sleeping griffin.\n\n\"I would hardly believe a tenth of it myself,\" said Dragomir softly, \"if I were not standing here now, Romana. Can you forgive me, wife, for taking so long to return?\"\n\nAlina remembered that voice immediately, so deep and full of feeling, like a river mumuring amongst stones. \"It is not I that has anything to forgive, husband. It's you,\" said Romana.\n\nDragomir looked down. On a wooden pallet, beneath a bloodied cloak of wolf fur, lay the dead friend of his youth, Vladeran. Although now it was just a body, and that terrible spirit had departed. Little Elu was looking at him too. He was bewildered and horrified, but he had seen his father's darkness and cruelty to his mother." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I was sick to the point of death, Romana, when the Turks took me amongst them,\" said Dragomir guiltily, as he clutched his painful left arm and wondered what had done that to Vladeran's throat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"When they ransomed me, I rose to lead our Order, but so far off in the lands of Hungary, I did not know how my best friend plotted, and then I heard of your marriage and the birth of a son. Then my own daughter's death. It nearly killed me a second time.\"\n\nRomana's eyes flickered guiltily and Alina's heart ached.\n\n\"For a long time I did not know what to do, until recently, when I learnt how Vladeran had desecrated the oaths of our kind and then that my darling Alina was alive. I had to be sure when I came that I could defeat him, and save you all. But we are here now at last. The Order. To make accounting.\"\n\n\"Oh, Dragomir,\" whispered Romana.\n\nDragomir looked at Vladeran's son and smiled at the little boy. He felt nothing but compassion for the child.\n\nAlina took Elu's hand. Her own red hair was almost as wet as her father's, and she looked tired from the fight they had taken up after Vladeran's death, but her sword was sheathed again on the storyteller's back." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina remembered that face and her changeling dreams, remembered how this man had stood aloof, yet how safe he had made her feel too. How much she loved him. Romana stepped forwards suddenly to hold her husband. Then the two adults turned and put out their hands towards the children, Romana to her son, and Dragomir to his daughter.\n\nElu ran to his mother.\n\n\"Will you not embrace me, daughter?\" said Lord Dragomir softly, as the young woman stood there still, her beautiful eyes glittering with tears. \"You've much to forgive, I think, my child. I thought you were dead, until the Order managed to follow your tale, Alina, if only in part. One was especially helpful to us. The girl Mia.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Mia,\" whispered Alina in astonishment, remembering how she had seen her in the forge, though with hardly as great a wonder as she now looked on her own father.\n\n\"The Order of the Griffin found the little girl in the snows, Alina, fleeing with that old woman Ranna.\"\n\nAlina shivered.\n\n\"The shepherd's wife was on the point of death, but Mia had tended to her faithfully at her end. She told your story and of the parchment. She was desperate to speak of your innocence.\"\n\nAlina smiled and shook her head, her heart filled with gratitude to the little girl for all she'd done.\n\n\"Mia asked me to give you this,\" said Dragomir, reaching into his jerkin and holding out a small carving, part ram, part wolf. \"Until you meet again.\"\n\n\"Where is she, Father?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "asked Alina, stepping closer and taking the thing with a smile, but feeling the word \"Father\" so strange to say.\n\n\"Safe in the halls of the Order, Alina. She lords it about the place like a little queen. Oh, Alina, I'm sorry I was not there to protect you. So sorry. Must we not protect children with all we are? And so the future.\"\n\n\"Yes, Father,\" said the young woman, \"but we must help them grow too. And it was not your fault.\"\n\nDragomir dropped his eyes. There were still tears in Alina's, but she held them back. Instead she put the carving safely in her jerkin and walked forwards slowly. She took her mother and father gently by the hand, no longer a changeling at all. A real girl with a real family." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Perhaps we must all protect one another,\" said the storyteller softly. \"And listen carefully.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "You must use the word 'asked' exactly 2 times in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then the family were holding one another once more. Romana and Dragomir, and Alina—restored—and little Elu with them too.\n\n\"Perhaps we'll all find peace now,\" said Romana, as they drifted apart, \"when the strong hand of justice moves to contain the savage hearts of men.\"\n\n\"Peace?\" said Dragomir, looking sadly at that terrible battlefield. \"Is there ever peace in the world, Romana? The King has his troubles, and even now the Order of the Griffin must ride out. There is other accounting to be done.\"\n\n\"Who?\" asked Alina.\n\n\"Tepesh,\" answered Dragomir. \"Draculea. Vladeran and he both touched the left-hand path.\"\n\n\"You must ride soon, husband?\" asked Romana." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We may stay awhile. And then set out,\" answered Dragomir, \"But when it is done, I will step down as leader of the Order. For there has been too much secrecy here. Too much darkness in these lands.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm glad of it, husband,\" said Romana tenderly.\n\nDragomir looked around at the Helgra below, still wandering across the battlefield, tending to their wounded.\n\n\"But you must tell me more of this, daughter,\" he said. \"And of the strange rumours that envelop these halls.\"\n\n\"Rumours, Father?\"\n\n\"Of a boy who walked the mountains with a wild black wolf. Not even the Order of the Griffin has heard of such a thing before. I little believe most of the tales, for I've seen real children suckled in the wild, Alina, and know how hard it goes with them. How their minds are hurt by it, so that it seems they can never be human again. For people need each other to grow.\"\n\nPerhaps that's the truth of it, thought Alina, if there were no such thing as the Sight. She thought of Fell, waiting out of sight nearby." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's like the stories you used to make up as a little girl, Alina,\" said Dragomir, with a sudden laugh, his heart filled with joy and peace he had not known in years. \"Do you remember, child? You loved reading so much, and were a marvel at it, but at inventing even more. You hated it when the priests tried to tell you what the truth is, and instead kept trying to teach us all about the world with your tales.\" Dragomir laughed again. \"All the palace called you a liar, but I knew it as a healthy thing. All those animals and those imaginary friends. Those stories of how you could tell the future, and how one day you would protect the whole world from harm. But your favourite was about how a fine noblewoman went once amongst the people in disguise.\"\n\nDragomir smiled and shook his head, but Alina WovenWord said nothing. She was thinking of that house in Baba Yaga's valley and wondering.\n\n\"Perhaps I should have spent more time with you,\" Dragomir whispered, \"but there are many things I would have done differently. Will do differently, if you'll let me.\"\n\nAlina nodded.\n\n\"Yes, husband,\" said Romana keenly, \"how terribly we argued too, before you went to fight the Turk. And when you went, Dragomir,\" she added, turning regretfully to Alina, \"I became so terribly... \"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hush, Mother,\" said Alina. \"Peace.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But this morning, when we mopped up the rest of this traitor's men,\" whispered Dragomir still, \"I almost thought I saw them amongst the men. Two wild wolves.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Alina smiled. Fell and Tarlar had hidden themselves in the battle, watching Alina and Catalin as they fought, and protecting their backs, while in the fray all had been confusion." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required dialogue to include (maintain exact wording): \"They must have been drawn down by the smell of death, husband,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As it always was in the ghastliness of war.\n\n\"They must have been drawn down by the smell of death, husband,\" said Alina's mother softly, and Dragomir looked hard at her, but at last he smiled too.\n\n\"If you say it, wife. The Helgra have had reason enough to throw off my friend's cruelty, yet they too revere the wild, and the wolf.\"\n\n\"They do, husband.\"\n\nDragomir could see that Alina and Romana would say no more though. They were protecting the real wolves from the fears and stories of men.\n\n\"But now the Helgra shall be safe in their villages again, beyond tyranny,\" said Dragomir, \"and all of us may honour the five once more.\"\n\n\"The five, Dragomir?\" said Romana." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The five oaths that bind our Order. That once bound my 'friend' Vladeran, until his jealousy and hatred made him betray them and us. The pursuit of knowledge,\" said Dragomir, lifting his strong head and looking at that scorched ground and the weary Helgra." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"The support of the downtrodden, and the upholding of peace. Peace, and the protection of the earth. And one last.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required dialogue to include (maintain exact wording): \"So although I shall be your father once more, the Order shall continue, for generation on generation if I can help it, into the distant future,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Dragomir's eyes were glistening as he looked out across the lands beyond the forest, and he seemed lost in thought.\n\n\"What is it, Father?\" said Alina. \"What are you thinking?\"\n\n\"It's so strange, daughter. As I was healing amongst the Turks, tended to by Muselmen physicians, surrounded by the voices of their mystic Sufi poets, I had a kind of dream. More than a dream. A vision. It was of the whole world and all the animals in it. Not just the animals, but the trees and plants and flowers, and it told me that man, for all that religion teaches him, is an animal. The Order of the Griffin teaches it too.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Alina, thinking of that shape clambering down from the trees.\n\n\"But of all the animals, man holds the fate of the world in his hands. And woman too, Alina. To know such a thing might drive mankind to terrible ends,\" said Dragomir, \"or might teach humility and care. For there is such power in nature. Power to heal us all. Is it not as beautiful as all the works of man? Perhaps we must simply choose where the knowledge takes us.\"\n\n\"Yes, Father, we must.\"\n\n\"So although I shall be your father once more, the Order shall continue, for generation on generation if I can help it, into the distant future,\" said Dragomir, looking proudly at his daughter, and that sword at her back, \"and perhaps one day women shall join it too. Warriors. Who knows, Alina, perhaps one day your heirs shall come to lead it.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina's eyes shone and she sensed Catalin nearby. Dragomir raised his hand and took his wife's in his again, but he was looking suddenly towards his daughter, and he shook his head wonderingly.\n\n\"But of all the five oaths perhaps the greatest is the last, child.\"\n\n\"The last, Father?\"\n\n\"The defence of the feminine, Alina WovenWord. Come, Romana, let's go into the palace and talk of this. There's much to tell, I think.\"\n\nRomana held her son's hand firmly, and Alina walked over to Catalin, who was gazing back towards the passes and the mountains he had come from, and the two young people heard a note rise around them that made their hearts stir. Human voices were suddenly all around them, exhausted from the fight and mourning their own, singing to the young storytellers, Catalin Fierar and Alina WolfPaw. It was the song of the Helgra." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In that moment Alina Sculcuvant knew that of all life's great journeys, perhaps the greatest was to come home, and to know the place for the first time." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It was a brave fight,\" whispered Catalin.\n\n\"But a painful one,\" said Alina softly, \"and I'm tired of swords for now, and of bows too, Catalin,\" she added with a gentle smile, squeezing Catalin's arm. \"I'd learn what Father spoke of. The upholding of peace. And I will let my hair grow. For why should a woman not head the Order, and sooner than Father said?\"\n\nCatalin looked back at those brilliant hazel eyes, with that speck of green, and his heart beat faster. He no longer resented this fine, high lady, this heir to Castelu. He had never seen anyone so beautiful in his life. Suddenly Catalin grasped Alina to him and kissed her, holding her beating heart to his own.\n\nThen the storytellers parted and stood staring into each other's eyes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As they saw each other then it was as if nothing of that strange story had happened, and none of it mattered.\n\n\"So the wolf is gone, Alina?\" whispered Catalin.\n\n\"Fell,\" cried Alina suddenly. \"Will you wait here for me, Catalin? There's something I must do.\"\n\nAlina ran down the steps to the battlements and out across the plain. Darkness was coming now, and as she hurried towards the trees on this side of the river, her heart was thundering. She knew that what Morgra had said of man and wolf was true, that they were not meant to be together. Alina WovenWord had her world and Fell had his." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were set apart, but perhaps they could learn to honour each other.\n\n\"Fell? Are you there, Fell?\" she cried as she reached the trees. No sounds came back, except the chattering of birds and the shadows put a fear in Alina's mind that perhaps Fell had gone already. It couldn't be.\n\nThen she saw the wolf, standing quietly by an oak tree, waiting.\n\n\"Oh, Fell, dear Fell. I was worried I'd be too late.\"\n\nFell growled, but Alina felt the ache in her mind, though faintly now, like a memory of childhood.\n\n\"I could not leave, human, without saying farewell.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You have to go?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The wolf whimpered slightly.\n\n\"Yes, Alina. I have my own. I... \"\n\nAs Alina knelt down, she heard Fell's thoughts turning to growls, and she felt a violent tugging at her heart. It felt as if it were breaking. Alina lifted her hand and touched the wolf's muzzle softly, then she stroked his dear head. The tears were streaming down her face.\n\n\"Thank you, Fell. For everything you've done. For bringing me home.\"\n\nFell's great yellow gold eyes blinked slowly, and he raised his black paw and placed it gently in Alina's hand. She grasped it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Everything we have done together, friend.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Alina was filled with sorrow, yet she knew that her friend had to be wild and free, and bravely she tried to hold back her tears and be strong for him. Fell whimpered again, and licked one of the tears from Alina's cheek. Then again she threw her arms about the wolf's neck and hugged him, before she pushed him away for a final time.\n\n\"Go, Fell. Quickly. I cannot bear this pain. I will remember you always.\"\n\nAlina stood, and Fell growled one more time, before he turned to the shadows and was gone. There were still tears in Alina's hazel eyes as she mounted the palace steps again, and now great flickering tapers had been lit, which reminded the young woman of the halls of the Helgra. Catalin was still standing there, waiting for her.\n\n\"Oh, Catalin,\" said Alina desperately. \"He's gone.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The young storyteller stepped forwards and took her tenderly in his arms and held her again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Come, you two,\" said a voice suddenly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They turned to see Romana walking towards them once more.\n\n\"Mother?\"\n\n\"There's much to be done, Alina, and undone too. First we shall feast, and give thanks for our blessings. You must tell us some of your stories, while this handsome young man shall sit by me, Alina,\" said Romana, \"if you, and your father, will allow it.\"\n\nAlina almost blushed as her mother took Catalin by the arm.\n\n\"And you, Ovidu,\" said Romana, as she saw the Helgra leader mounting the steps to the battlements too, leading a proud old man, with tears in his blind eyes, by the arm. \"You'll sit by me as well, with your father, Ilyan. For I would talk of my people and hear our songs again.\"\n\nOvidu smiled, but there was a great sadness in his eyes. He was thinking of his brother." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"If we have the heart to sing, my lady.\"\n\n\"Cascu's own actions have punished him,\" said Romana softly, understanding the look, \"but the Helgra must decide his fate.\"\n\nThere was laughter in the party as they began to walk towards Dragomir through those burning tapers, but suddenly Alina turned and looked back. It was no sound that had made her turn. No howl. It was the sense of it.\n\nThere, high on the hill above the palace walls in the moonlight, where the Vengerid had saluted him, was a single black shape. Fell stood all alone and Alina shivered. As she gazed at her wild friend, he dipped his muzzle." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Good-bye, Fell,\" she whispered, as the others' laughter rose around her. \"You shall walk with me, always. If not in fact now, then in thought at least. No, in memory, and in stories.\"\n\nThere were tears in Alina's eyes again as the storyteller turned, but turn she did, for she heard the irresistible pull of human voices, and high up there on the mountainside, another shape stepped up next to Fell in the darkness.\n\n\"Come,\" said Tarlar softly. \"It's time.\"\n\n\"Time?\" said Fell almost sadly. \"Time to let thoughts of these humans go?\"\n\n\"Why not, Fell? Time to remember our own world, for the humans are dark indeed. More even than for each other, they seem to have a fondness for demons.\"\n\n\"The only demons are in their own minds, Tarlar,\" growled Fell." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include this dialogue snippet naturally: \"It's as if they have the power to make things that are impossible come true. Yet perhaps, because of their minds, they are not impossible at all. Would not that vision seem impossible if the Lera hadn't seen it with their own eyes?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And such strange minds they have.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"It's as if they have the power to make things that are impossible come true. Yet perhaps, because of their minds, they are not impossible at all. Would not that vision seem impossible if the Lera hadn't seen it with their own eyes?\"\n\nFell seemed lost in thought.\n\n\"But I've seen evil amongst them, Fell.\"\n\n\"Evil? Yes, there is evil, very great evil, but it is not outside them like some sickness, Tarlar, or a winged grasht, it's inside them. Or the potential for it. Perhaps only if they recognise that will they be free. Perhaps too, if they recognise that they've a right to some of their darkness and anger and pain. If they know and love their own clever natures. And now the animals have shown them too.\"\n\n\"Are you all right, Fell?\"\n\nThe black wolf was lifting his gaze then to the heavens and the stars that were beginning to glitter wonderfully above them. The Wolf Trail." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I had a dream, last night,\" he answered, gazing up longingly, \"in the thin, formless hours of the morning after the battle.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"A dream, Fell?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I saw you, Tarlar, standing on a hill, calling to me. But somehow I was afraid. Then as I began to walk towards you, there were spectres all about me from the Red Meadow, and as I went they began to talk to me.\"\n\n\"Talk to you?\"\n\n\"With sadness, Tarlar, and longing and accusation. It was like the Gauntlet that my parents spoke of once, when they were with the rebel wolves. I was in a Gauntlet of voices, and all of them were trying to hold me back, because of their own fear and pain and confusion.\"\n\nTarlar lifted her paw and touched him on the flank.\n\n\"But I remembered those old words about a courage as deep as despair, and then I heard another voice. 'No, Fell,' it cried passionately. 'Go to her. Live and be free.' At that voice I began to run, as fast as a river, and it grew stronger, like a wind I heard in a cave. 'Yes, Fell." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Life is wonderful, so revel in its beauty." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Be all you can be, and let go of the past. It is nothing but shadows.'\n\n\"And then I had broken out beyond that terrible Gauntlet of doubting and self-doubt, and I no longer felt sad or guilty, and as I swung my head, I saw her standing there again, shining like moonlight, my sister Larka, watching me kindly. She said one thing to me then. 'It's a lovely place' was all that Larka whispered.\"\n\n\"Perhaps she's been watching over you all along,\" said Tarlar.\n\nFell thought of the voice that had begun it all and Larka's great face in the ice cliff and he wondered.\n\n\"Even if Tor and Fenris are nothing but stories, or fables for cubs, perhaps she has,\" he said. \"Because she's been there, if only in my memories. And I knew then too that even though my father had not the words, he did say good-bye, and give me a blessing when he died. Because if he was only working it out within himself, it does not mean it was not directed towards me too. 'Open,' he said, 'open like a flower.'\"\n\nTarlar nodded." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And then I had another dream,\" said Fell, \"of Huttser and Palla together. They were young again and smiling at me from the highest mountaintop. It was night, but the air was filled with a shining glow from the stars, that seemed to reach down from the heavens and glitter like dewdrops in the grass around them. Their tails were raised and suddenly they began to run, and the carpet of the stars lifted them up and carried them heavenwards, racing up the skies, up there towards the Wolf Trail.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How wonderful, Fell,\" whispered Tarlar gravely, looking up.\n\n\"Yes. I knew they were going to Tor and Fenris. Just as I know now that the world is made up of far more than what we call real. Perhaps that reality is only what we see, Tarlar, but the true reality is what lies beyond us, and our struggling, clouded understandings, which seem to change all the time.\"\n\nTarlar nodded.\n\n\"And suddenly another shape was running at their side, young and innocent and free, but not with the innocence of childhood, with the innocence of knowledge and self-knowledge, and of joy. Running beside her dear sister, Palla. Running happily, her ears raised above her head. It was Morgra.\"\n\nThe wolves were looking up at the Wolf Trail together, and suddenly, just as it had been with Catalin and Alina, it was as if nothing of the terrible history of the Sight had happened at all, and the world was as young and happy and fresh as ever.\n\n\"Death,\" whispered Tarlar, \"you do not fear it, Fell? By water, or any other way?\"\n\n\"What is there to fear?\" answered the black wolf." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"If it is an end, then so be it. For there is no pain in that, except the pain left to the living. I once thought, and felt with the Sight, that I could see the pain of the whole world, and it grew and grew like a sea. But though all feel pain, it does not join together like individual droplets in a pool. A million deaths is really only one death. And if death is not an end, then what more wonderful journey, if we do not fear it? We must have courage to face the truth, and the future.\"\n\n\"Come, Fell,\" said Tarlar, \"we'll run happy and free through the world, together, until we too must walk the Wolf Trail in our turn. For that is as it must be.\"\n\n\"Wait, Tarlar, there's something I must do first.\"\n\n\"Do?\"\n\nFell had stepped away again and raised his muzzle.\n\n\"I must howl, Tarlar. For I must ask their forgiveness too. Only they can let me go, I think.\"\n\nFell's sleek black muzzle lifted and his cry rose in the air. Aaooow. It sang in the night, weaving a mysterious wildness over the gathering revellers below, as if casting a wild spell to protect them from any harm." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But Fell was not talking to them alone.\n\n\"For you,\" cried the black wolf's howl. \"For all who are lost, or alone, or frightened in the world. For we are all lost, and all frightened. For any in pain too, or in sorrow, and for any who can no longer tell the light from the darkness, the sadness from the joy. I must leave you now, for I've found my way, for a time at least, and I wish you well.\"\n\nThe howl went on in the night, like a wonderful song, yet both more and less than a song, and as it did so it seemed to the black wolf as if the world was changing. As if the things he saw about him, the trees and the forest and the palace, he no longer had words for at all, and so he no longer knew what they were.\n\n\"But I let you know that I too have seen what you have seen, and felt what you have felt,\" cried Fell. \"I have suffered as you have suffered. For all things walk the same way. But now, for the last time, I, Fell of the Mountaintops, give you my blessing. So listen well, for love's greatest art is to listen.\"\n\nFell's mind was already losing the memories of the journey he had made with Alina Sculcuvant and the humans, and as it did so the smells on the wind became stronger, the ground firmer beneath his paws, the mystery of the wild, of life itself, deeper and deeper." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then a distant voice was whispering to the wolf, yet not a voice at all, a boom from the mouth of a cave: A path that will free you at last, it said." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The beautiful song ceased and Fell turned back to Tarlar.\n\n\"Come then,\" cried the black wolf, although his words had become nothing but powerful wild growls.\n\nThen the two of them were running, side by side, their brilliant yellow gold eyes flashing like stars, searching through the darkness, as the Dragga and the beautiful Drappa vanished down the chasms of the welcoming night." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll be your writing partner for this section. I'll provide a segment, and you continue with ten sentences, channeling Embassie Susberry in the Western, People of Color genre. Characters may have backstories from previous chapters." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura sat at the head of the old, worn, but well-smoothed table in the one room wooden house. The table was situated right in the center of the dwelling, taking up most of the space. From her spot, Laura sat directly in view of the front door. They wouldn't be able to miss her. One single candle, which Laura had borrowed from Salis House because no one would miss it, stood in front of her burning, casting an eerie glow around the small slave cabin, making small crackling noises, and spreading the foul, acrid smell of tallow in the air.\n\nA small cough startled her, reminding her that she wasn't supposed to just be sitting and thinking like she had all the time in the world. Using the low light, she leaned forward and made another stitch in the coarse shirt on her lap, attaching a small patch to the hole that Gideon had torn in his shirt carrying coal out of the mines. She didn't even hesitate when the needle slipped, stabbing the meaty center of her finger. Her fingers had long since grown callous from the piercing of needles. That's what happened when you were the head seamstress on the plantation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sometimes she felt like her whole life had been about attaching one piece of fabric to another." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And now with Missy Charlotte's wedding, the needles didn't just follow her throughout her day, they followed her even in her dreams." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The light before her flickered as she turned the shirt at an angle so that she could see better." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She needed to hurry if she was going to finish the patchwork before going back." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Another small cough from up above filled the air.\n\nThey were awake. Of course, they were awake. It wasn't that unusual that she had come down from Salis House to fix supper for the boys now that mama was dead. It had been one of her many last requests. Don't you stay up in this here big house, girl. You best go down and take care of your brothers. You hear? Laura had heard. She came down at least once a week, fixed supper, darned clothes, cleaned house. Not that there was much to clean. Her brothers worked every day of the week." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even on the Lord's day, cause if you did, Massa Richard would pay you for working extra at Christmas." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It meant they always had a ham of their very own for New Year's, though Papa always opened the house and shared with everyone." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And there was always new clothes for her and the boys, though the fabric was cheap and—before a good washing or two—sometimes made you itch. Nothing like the silks and lace that Laura's fingers danced across day in and day out at Salis House. But it was sturdy and long lasting and really that was all that mattered. At any rate, evening time was the only time they were home and that usually meant they didn't have much time for doing anything other than eating and sleeping. So, there was always very little mess. No, it wasn't unusual that she had come down. What was unusual was that she stayed.\n\nLaura hadn't slept a night apart from Missy Adora since she was born near 'bout ten years ago. Sometimes, Missy Adora got awful hot at night and she always wanted Laura right there at the floor of her bed.\n\n\"Lolly, I need me some water.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was a request Laura had heard time and time again. And truly no bother.\n\nEven though Laura had only reached child-bearing age a few years ago, at times it felt like Missy Adora was her own sweet baby. And Laura hoped she was sleeping well tonight. She had wrestled for hours as to whether or not to tell Missy Adora she wasn't going to be in the House that night. If she told her, she would have to come up with a reason as to why she was staying the night at the cabin. And then it would be just like Missy Adora to mention it to Miss Martha or Miss Julia and well, Laura didn't want to deal with Miss Martha and Miss Julia. And so she had prayed, Dear Lord when Missy Adora go to sleep, let her stay asleep. Laura prayed it again in that moment, silently as she ran the needle and thread in and out of the shirt in haste. It wouldn't be the prettiest patch, but that didn't matter none anyway." }, { "from": "human", "value": "No matter how many times Laura washed this brown shirt, it couldn't erase the coal stains that had seeped into it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "No one would be able to even tell that she had sewn a different color patch onto it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She couldn't stop herself from making a small clucking sound of dismay with her tongue." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like Mama used to make, before she got sick." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The wood beneath one of her brothers creaked as he moved under his covers and Laura paused." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She looked up quickly to the loft where Solomon and Gideon were each wrapped and stuffed in a blanket. Most times the boys fell asleep like a stone dropped in a river. They just hit the bed and was gone. But though they had told her good night an hour ago, she could tell by their breathing that sleep had long since travelled the way of the past. Laura exhaled, her hands moving faster, it would be hard enough to say what she had to say and now the boys would be wide awake to hear it.\n\nThe sound of low voices from outside the cabin reached Laura's ears. For a minute there, she had wondered if they was coming, though Sol and Gid had told her they usually made the two mile trek each night from the smithy to the house. In the summer time, when the sun didn't set so soon, Laura figured it wasn't so bad. But when it was cold and dark like this, she wondered how they could stand it. She heard Benji's voice and Papa's low answer." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She sat up straighter, the shirt and patch, still in her lap. The door creaked open slowly, allowing her to see Benji first and then Papa. Both stopped at the sight of her sitting there. Laura noticed Benji tossing a quick glance at Papa. Benji was tall. Tall as Papa. But where Papa's shoulders filled the doorway of the cabin, Benji's only filled half. Skinny as a beanpole, Mama had always said. Not the man next to him though. A big bear of a man, was how Mama had always described him. Tall, strong, and hairy. That was Papa." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura pointed to the plates on the small table that stood a few feet away from her, next to the fireplace." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The food was probably cold by now since she hadn't kept the fire burning hot, but they were used to that. \"I fixed ya'll supper,\" Laura said quietly, pointing out the obvious and trying not to feel nervous. They was her own kin after all.\n\nNeither man moved from their spot in the cabin doorway, letting all manner of cool air fill the small space. Papa cleared his throat and finally took a step further into the room, pushing Benji a bit before shutting the door closed behind him.\n\n\"Why don't you tell us why you're here, Laura?\" His voice was quiet, but the deep bass bounced off the four walls of the cabin, making its presence known. His dark brown eyes were intense, penetrating. It had always been hard to meet Papa's eyes full on. Felt like he could see her center deep." }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'there' 2 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Which was odd seeing as how she didn't know the man all that well at all.\n\nShe could feel the pause in Solomon and Gideon's breathing cause they had surely been wanting to know why she was still there too. \"Massa Richard gone sell Sol and Gid.\"\n\nPapa blinked and looked away. She heard soft moans from above and a loud, deep sigh exit Benji's mouth.\n\n\"You ever hear Massa say he gone sell you or your brothers you tell your Papa first thing, you hear?\"\n\n\"What he gone do?\" Laura felt the back of Mama's hand against her head before she could get her next sentence out. There she was, sick and weak, but Mama still had enough strength to rebuke her.\n\n\"Don't you worry none 'bout what he gone do. You tell your Papa first thing, you hear?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Another deathbed request. Well, she had done what mama said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had told him first thing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"When?\" Sol asked from up above, his head peeking out from over the top, no longer pretending to sleep. Gideon's head appeared next to him, and Laura could tell even in the dim light that his small fingers were gripping the ledge tightly.\n\n\"I heard tell just 'fore Easter. Costs done got high for Miss Charlotte's wedding. Slave auction for the highest price,\" Laura whispered even though there was no real reason to. \"I just found out today.\" Missy Adora had done left her doll, Baby Pru, downstairs. That's when Laura had heard Massa Richard talking to Massa William. They was gone sell some slaves to cover the expense of the wedding. He had compiled a list, he said, of all the male slaves between the ages of twelve and fourteen. Boys that young weren't necessarily a big help in the salt mines. But that didn't meant they wouldn't bring in a fine price elsewhere." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When Massa Richard and Massa William left the room, Laura had slipped in, saw the list, saw the boys' names. Now here she was.\n\nLaura looked up at Papa.\n\nPapa walked over to the small table, grabbed his plate, and took a seat at the bigger table Laura was sitting at. Benji, after staring hard at Papa, did the same. Sol and Gid made their way down the ladder quick and came to stand at the table. Together, they all watched Papa take some bites of his cold bacon and cornbread.\n\nWell. She had been planning on staying the whole night cause she thought he might do something. Whatever it was Mama had been thinking he would do did not appear like it was going to happen. She started to stand." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You can write girl?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She sat back down." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her papa looked over at her, his stare intense, fierce, as though by sheer willpower he could keep her in her chair." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I can,\" Laura said softly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Somewhat. She had never written more than a quick word or two on Missy Adora's slate. Usually just her name over and over. Sometimes Mama's name.\n\n\"What you need to draw up some free papers?\"\n\nLaura stared at him. She could read a little. She could write a little. She didn't think she could draw up any free papers. But, no matter what Papa saw in her eyes, he just stared back with that intense gaze of his. She looked away, losing whatever battle they had been fighting. Sol and Gid were now standing shoulder to shoulder, the same size, just like tin soldiers even though they weren't even the same age." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And just like soldiers, in spite of what they were discussing, there was very little emotion in their faces." }, { "from": "human", "value": "No. The emotion was hidden in the tenseness of their shoulders, in the slight fisting of their hands." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In the small light of hope in their eyes. She turned to look at her other brother, Benji. He wasn't even pretending to eat. Just staring hard at Papa and occasionally flicking his dark gaze at her. For whatever unknown reason, Laura had long sense discerned that Benji did not think very highly of her. The feeling was mutual. Though Laura wasn't sure exactly why.\n\n\"Papers for Sol and Gid?\" she finally asked. Because she felt like she had to say something.\n\n\"For all of us,\" he said and pointed at himself, Benji, Gid, Sol." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her. \"Less you plannin' on stayin' here,\" he said, as his eyes slid down to the plate before him. She watched as he helped himself to another bite as though what he had said wasn't like dropping a hive of bees on the center of the table. She exhaled, trying to ignore the weight of all of her brothers' stares.\n\nWhat he said was not entirely a surprise, because she had figured that if Papa did anything, it would be something like this. Running away, that is. Though to hear the actual words out loud set Laura's heart to racing. Because that was the question wasn't it? If Papa and the boys ran away, would she stay or would she go?\n\n\"You gotta come,\" Gid urged softly, moving from his soldier's position and leaning forward. His eyes were pleading, and Laura found her mouth opening slightly in surprise." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They barely talked, they didn't spend more than a minute together day in and day out." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But maybe she reminded him of Mama. Laura felt her gaze softening.\n\n\"No,\" Papa said his voice deep, cutting through her thoughts. He didn't want her to come? Laura winced, feeling his rejection somewhere deep. But as though he knew exactly what she was thinking, he kept on talking. \"I want you to come, Laura. But I ain't gonna make you do nothin'.\" He stood up, filling the space around him. \"Can you do the papers, Laura?\"\n\nWrite up free papers?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The likes of which she had seen once before, in fancy writing she had never practiced, on paper she had never touched?" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 6 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura glanced at Sol and Gid. She had known them all her life, in the general sense. And she did care about them. She was here after all. But it was Mama's thoughts and feelings on the matter that made her say what she said next.\n\n\"I can do it.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Story continues from larger narrative, characters/lore may lack introduction\nLength:\nfive sentences\nStyle:\nEmbassie Susberry" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The hot, Kentucky sun wasn't even beating down too hard yet and Sam was already sweating." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Calm down, Sam. Calm down, he repeated to himself as he dug his hands into the soil and slowly, carefully began to uproot the small tobacco plant he had planted only three weeks ago. If he damaged the roots at all, Molloy would take it right out of his hide.\n\nAnd as though thinking about him conjured him, Molloy, only a few feet away from Sam, spoke, \"Gonna have to move faster than that, Sam.\" This, Sam knew. Molloy exhaled, pulling his britches up to cover his girth. It was a completely useless movement." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam knew and Molloy probably knew, it would only be a minute before the britches slipped down several inches again just under Molloy's gut." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sun's almost down now, Sam. You ain't gonna finish.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam stood up, little shoots of pain ricocheting up his back, but Sam ignored them. He was sure that he had dug up and replanted over a thousand of the little plants already that day, spending a good portion of his time with his back bent over. The continuous pain had long since stopped affecting him. Sam dug the heels of his feet into the ground to get traction and slipped only a little in the mud as he moved. It had rained the night before, making the conditions perfect for transplanting, but not so easy for moving fast." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And Sam needed to move fast.\n\n\"Sam,\" Manny muttered when he reached him, but said nothing else as Sam dropped the seedling plant into the hole Manny had created. Manny pushed Sam away before Sam could finish replanting the roots. Instead, Manny gently pressed the plant into its new soil. Sam went back to his row for another plant to dig up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You don't finish this row, I'm going to whip you and that is a promise you can take to the bank, Sam. Not like that moon promise you made this mornin'.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lord Jesus, Sam prayed, but otherwise he didn't think too long on Molloy's words, just dug his hand into the ground again, feeling for the small, tender stems of the plant. He wasted seconds trying to untangle the roots. Why some plants came up easy and others fought him, he just didn't know. But still he moved, even when the sun got so low in the sky, it was just an orange glow. The crack of a whip snapping in the air sounded." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That was it. Time was up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam stared down the endless row of tobacco plants he had not yet finished transplanting." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sam,\" Manny groaned his name as he came alongside him. \"I told you not to say nothin'.\"\n\n\"Don't nobody go far,\" Molloy declared as some workers started edging towards their cabins. \"Sam here promised to do double his rows today and as you can tell he did not finish.\"\n\nNo. He hadn't." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But he had come so close. The smallness of the last couple of rows mocked him. His back, already aching from spending most of the day parallel to the ground started aching in a different way, as though in anticipation for the licks that was coming.\n\n\"For costin' me time, he's gonna get his whippin' and you're goin' to watch. Sam, I do believe it is not a good year, heck a good few months, unless I'm whippin' you. Now you know where to go so get.\"\n\nSam didn't know what was worse: the wait for Molloy to finish checking up on everyone's planting, the pulling of his arms as they were tied to the metal ring fastened to the whipping tree, the humiliation of having his naked body bared to the world, the whistle of the whip as it flew across space, or the burn of the sting when it cut across his back." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Every single time he was whipped he considered all of these things. There was never a clear winner.\n\n\"Sam,\" Molloy said. Sam had already experienced the first two things: his arms were fastened to the ring and he didn't have a stitch of clothes on. He tried not to shudder as the cool wind danced across his naked body. He wasn't hot now." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam could hear Molloy behind him, unraveling his whip." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He could also hear the whispers of the others behind them. He wondered what they thought of him being whipped again. And then he told himself he didn't care. He had made his decision that morning knowing this was where he was most likely going to be at the end of the day. Didn't matter what any person thought about him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Only mattered what his God thought." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Required word frequency: 'painful' (2x)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Jesus, don't let it be too painful, he prayed. A senseless prayer really. It was going to be painful. All whippings were. It was a lesson Sam had been taught when he was knee high to a duck. The whip cracked behind him, reminding Sam about what was to come next. Sam swallowed convulsively." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were almost at the last two stages. \"I don't get why you're up there. You know better than to not finish your rows.\" But he had finished his rows. He just hadn't finished Big Dave's rows too. \"And yet here we are.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'molloy' | Required occurrences: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Did Molloy have to give a speech each time? Couldn't he just—\n\nSam's whole body flinched as the leather of the raw cow's hide cut across the skin of his back. And then he didn't think anymore beyond counting the licks that flew.\n\n\"Cut him down, Manny,\" Molloy said after the twentieth one. \"And ya'll get on out of here!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Everything ached, his arms, his back, his buttocks." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even his chest and the whip hadn't come close to there at all.\n\n\"You're a fool,\" his brother said, as he cut the rope that tied Sam to the ring and then loosened the ties on his hand. When Sam stumbled, Manny wrapped an arm around his waist to keep him from falling.\n\n\"You always say that,\" Sam said, through deep, heavy breaths. Manny wasn't one for hugs." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Neither was Sam for that matter, but Manny didn't move as Sam leaned against him and caught his breath.\n\nWhen Sam was able to stand up without fear of falling, Manny spoke again, \"Yeah, well, you always gettin' whipped for other people's doin's. And Molloy know that. That's how come he ain't never talk of sellin' you. Fool.\" Manny's words were hard, angry words, but he patiently helped Sam get dressed. \"Big Dave deserved to be whipped,\" he said finally as he walked and Sam limped the half a mile from the whipping tree to the one room cabin they shared with five others.\n\nOle Mose was out front already, cooking steadily over a fire." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Men with families ate their women's cooking. Men without families, like Sam and Manny, ate ole Moses' cooking. Sam liked Ole Moses' cooking just fine, but he sure wished he knew what it was like to eat a woman's cooking. He hadn't eaten at a woman's table since he and Manny had been sold away from they mama almost ten years ago. Or was it eleven now?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam told himself it didn't matter none at all, but he still found himself forever curious about things he wasn't supposed to be curious about.\n\n\"Hey, Sam,\" Ole Mose said, his eyes grave and darting up and down Sam's figure. Sam's limping, no doubt, made it obvious as to what had happened even to a man whose eyesight wasn't that sharp anymore. Ole Mose was old. He had been old when Sam and Manny had arrived way back when and he was old now." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He didn't have a family and Sam had long since learned never to ask if had ever had a family.\n\nIt would be too much to say Ole Mose was like a father to Sam and Manny, but he wasn't nothing neither. Much as Sam and Manny had tried to keep their distance, Ole Mose had always seemed to be right there all up in they business. The old man was squatting now, though he still looked slightly hunched over, lasting evidence that he had always worked a tobacco farm. Sam watched as he picked up bowls and filled them to the brim with some kind of stew." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam watched as different ones came up and grabbed their bowls.\n\n\"Hey, Mose,\" Sam finally responded when he got close to the cooking fire.\n\n\"You don't see me standin' here, Mose?\" Manny asked, spreading his hands. Him and Ole Mose had never really gotten along." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam thought it was cause they was too much alike. Both stubborn old mules.\n\n\"I sure smell you.\"\n\nThe men lingering in front of the house hooted with laughter. The sound of it, so little heard, made Sam smile in spite of his discomfort." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Made you some extra, Sam,\" Ole Mose said as the two brothers came to stand next to the big pot. \"Though I'm not sure why.\"\n\n\"I'm not sure I can eat,\" Sam said weakly. He was hungry. That was certain. Working sunup till sundown did that to a body." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'tired' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But he was more tired than anything. Eating meant taking time from sleeping. And he couldn't afford to be tired tomorrow. He was already going to have a devil of a day bending over with welts and open sores layered across his back.\n\n\"Don't be stupid,\" Manny warned." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You give me his food. I'll make sure he eats it.\"\n\n\"Every bite,\" Old Mose said sternly, handing Manny two bowls. That was one way in which Old Mose and Manny were alike. They were always fussing at Sam about something.\n\n\"How Big Dave doin'?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam asked as he walked over to the cabin and leaned against the wall, taking big, deep breaths." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Same as this mornin'. His mama come by and say thank you. She done left you somethin' on your bed.\"\n\nManny muttered something unintelligible under his breath, but then he must have changed his mind cause he said loudly, \"Sam's not offerin' tomorrow. You tell Big Dave his problems are between him and Molloy and he best leave my brother out of it.\"\n\n\"Manny,\" Sam whispered in rebuke. He wanted to say more, to cut him off, but he felt like to say even three more words would be more than he could stand. Even now he felt himself slipping against the side of the house." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Manny's voice only got louder. \"You hear me! Ya'll leave him out of it! Take your own whippin's,\" Manny grumbled before using his elbow to nudge Sam into the dark, dank, smelly cabin. There was a reason their bunkmates were outside talking rather than spending time inside even though it was late. Sam made his way to his and Manny's spot which was really just straw covered with a coarse, thin, blanket. 'Cept this time there was something on it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam sat down hard on his straw bed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Breathed a few times and then reached for the unfamiliar object." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He hadn't gotten a present from someone other than his brother in quite some time. He ran his hands down the fabric, marveling at the plushness and wondering where Big Dave's mama had gotten the cotton from to make such a thing. His long, thin fingers ran across the seams. He couldn't make out the color in the darkness of the cabin but it was either black or dark blue.\n\n\"It's a blanket,\" he said, holding it up as Manny squatted down next to him with the bowls of food." }, { "from": "system", "value": "[System: Use 'manny' 2 times in response]" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh good,\" Manny said, his voice held a mocking tinge to it. \"A blanket. And summer right around the corner.\"\n\n\"We'll be happy for it this winter and you know it.\" Cause Sam would share it. He and Manny shared everything." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I still say you stupid,\" Manny said, handing him his bowl." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam took it, sniffed, and then took a bite. He couldn't tell if it was squirrel or possum. \"Big Dave would have died.\" That morning, fever had been raging through Big Dave's body. But Molloy hadn't cared." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He never cared. You had to be missing a body part for him to care and even then it might not get you out work." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Big Dave is probably still goin' to die. This is his third day with that fever. If he ain't lost it now, he ain't 'bout to lose it. You just put off what was comin',\" Manny hissed in irritation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I prayed on it—,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Fool talk.\"\n\n\"God gave me peace.\"\n\n\"He always does. Right 'fore you do somethin' stupid.\"\n\n\"I could take it. He couldn't,\" Sam said stubbornly. They had had this same argument before." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Many times. So many times, sometimes Sam thought they said the words now just cause they had to." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You still goin' to have to do them rows tomorrow.\"\n\n\"You gone help me.\"\n\n\"I am, am I? One day you gonna look for me and I ain't gonna be there. You betta stop makin' plans and expectin' me to follow.\"\n\n\"You'll always be there.\" And he would be and he knew it too." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "All they had was each other. And Jesus. Though whenever Sam said that, Manny would growl at him. They finished eating in peace and Sam handed Manny his empty bowl. \"You check today?\"\n\n\"Don't see the point in checkin'.\"\n\n\"But you check today?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yeah I checked and ain't nothin' changed. Caesar ain't come back,\" Manny said his voice clipped. Every footstep was a stomp as he left the cabin. But he had checked and that was the important thing. Sam turned himself and cautiously lay down on his stomach. He closed his eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He dreamed that he had checked and this time there had been change." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This time Caesar, the conductor, had come back. This time he was going to take them with him and help them escape." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing a segment of a larger work\n\nLength:\nseven sentences\n\nStyle:\nEmbassie Susberry\nGenre:\nWestern, People of Color\nNote: Characters may be pre-established" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Why can't girls were breeches, Lolly?\"\n\n\"Raise your arms high, Missy Adora,\" Laura said as she slipped the gingham dress over Missy Adora and straightened it carefully, making sure it covered her pantalets.\n\n\"Lolly!\" It was a name Missy Adora had given her when she was young. Only Missy Adora called her Lolly.\n\n\"Cause them the rules. And you know better than to talk about men's clothing. Ain't proper,\" Laura said, pulling and tugging and making sure everything fit just right. Missy Adora was growing both longer and wider at the same time. How she did that, Laura just did not know." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sit down. Let me straighten your hair. You look like you got in a fight with a possum last night and lost.\"\n\nMissy Adora giggled as she plopped down on the pink cushion chair in front of her dressing table. She handed Laura her brush before Laura could reach for it. Laura had been doing the girl's hair since she had grown hair. With the tips of her fingers, Laura gently touched Missy Adora's cheeks, turning her face so that it faced the mirror. Laura paused, taking note of the familiar blue eyes, the long, curly dark blond hair, the small button nose, freckles dancing across the tops of her cheeks. It was a face Laura knew almost as well as her own." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And if she left with Papa and the boys, it was a face she would never see again... whether or not they ever made it to freedom. Glancing in the mirror one more time, she noticed Missy Adora giving her the same thorough examination. And she wondered what caught her eye. Was it Laura's dark skin? The color of soil just kissed by the sun. Or her black hair pulled as tight as can be in a bun with still a few rebellious, stray curly hairs escaping on the side? Maybe it was her dark eyes or her dark lips?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "They could not look more different, but Missy Adora could not feel more like family." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But could Laura stay? And never see her own blood again? She ran the brush through Missy Adora's hair quickly. Nothing got rid of distracting thoughts like work.\n\n\"Want me to read out loud this morning?\"\n\n\"Go on,\" Laura said, slowing down her brushstrokes as Missy Adora reached for the Bible she had been gifted when her maternal grandmother died.\n\n\"Where were we last time?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We readin' the Psalms with the dates.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh yeah,\" Missy Adora said, turning the silk pages of the Bible. Laura stared at the book hard, wishing she could run her own fingers down the leaves of the book.\n\n\"Go back, baby. You done went too far.\"\n\n\"Oh yeah.\" It was Missy Adora's favorite expression. She never liked to admit she didn't know something. \"Today is...\n\n\"March 20, 1855.\"\n\n\"Psalms 20, then,\" Missy Adora said definitively. \"'The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the God of Jacob defend thee,\" Missy Adora read, not a one mistake in her words, Laura thought with pride." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They had learned to read almost at the same time." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Once Laura had got her mind wrapped around the alphabet she had encouraged Missy Adora to read every day, as much as possible, out loud and usually where Laura could see over her shoulder." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like she did now. Laura found her mouth moving along with the words. \"Some trusts in chariots and some in horses; but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.\"\n\n\"Are you done yet?\" Missy Adora asked and Laura quickly finished brushing her hair out and tied a ribbon in it.\n\n\"I am now. You go on down to breakfast. It smells like Annie done cooked the house down this mornin'.\"\n\n\"Mmm hmmm. Bacon.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Biscuits.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Grits.\"\n\n\"Girl, you cain't smell no grits.\"\n\nMissy Adora giggled, set the Bible on her dressing table, and ran out of the room. Laura hoped she slowed down when she reached the stairs. Miss Martha didn't cotton to no running in the house—even if it was Missy Adora. A shame really, that the child had been born so late in Massa Richard's and Miss Annabelle's marriage. She didn't seem to fit in nowhere. 'Cept with Laura." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura picked up Missy Adora's discarded nightgown folding it slowly, waiting for the sound of the little girl's footsteps to disappear. When she was sure she was gone, she reached for the Bible, flipped back to Psalms 20, and read it, every word for herself. She didn't rightly know why the Bible had words in it the likes that nobody ever used, but she supposed if a book was going to be different, it ought to be this one.\n\n\"Laura.\" Laura flipped the book closed and moved objects on Missy Adora's table careful to keep a steady hand even as her heart picked up its pace. \"There you are,\" Miss Martha said from the doorway, peeking in. \"Come see me after I take breakfast. Charlotte and I have changed the fabric for one of her morning dresses.\"\n\n\"Yes'm,\" Laura said and quickly put away Missy Adora's things even though Miss Martha was gone just as quick as she had come." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But Laura had things she needed to do anyways and wasting time reading wasn't one of them." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She made Missy Adora's bed quickly, grabbed a book off of Missy Adora's nightstand, and then moved quietly and swiftly down the stairs. She paused at the bottom, listening. She heard Massa Richard's low voice, Miss Martha's response, Miss Charlotte's laughter, Miss Julia's hissed whisper, Missy Adora's plaintive whine, and Massa Will's low rumble. They was all at breakfast. Laura exhaled, tugged on the collar of her deep blue calico dress, a cast off from Miss Charlotte long ago, and walked slowly to Massa Richard's office. A slow slave was about his or her business. A fast one was asking for trouble." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Massa Richard's office had two glass doors that were partially covered by white curtains." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura looked around and placed one hand on the door handle, the other hand holding Missy Adora's book in case she got caught. She held her breath, not wanting to make one sound as she turned the knob and heard the click. She waited again, and then pushed the door open.\n\nStepping into the room, Laura's nose was affronted with the smell of paper, ink, cigar smoke, and even a hint of spirits. Closing the door behind her just as quietly as she opened it, she took inventory of the room. Massa Richard's office had large windows on one side and a sofa tucked right under. Bookcases covered all the rest of the walls." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura reckoned there were hundreds of them; old ones, new ones, ones written in English and even some in Greek. This she knew cause Missy Adora had showed her once, all the while giggling. Thick carpet was on the floor muting each step Laura took to the other side of the room where the desk and three chairs sat. There were two in front of the desk and one large chair behind the desk. Laura placed Missy Adora's book on the desk and then stooped low in front of Massa Richard's desk so no one could see her should they glance in one of the windows.\n\nShe tugged on the bottom drawer. Locked. She reached into the small pocket of her apron and pulled out two small pieces of metal her brother Benji had given her years ago, back when they got along fine." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When you had a brother who knew how to make locks, chances were, he knew how to make keys too. Laura slipped the pieces into the tiny keyhole, heard a click, and pulled the drawer open. It was filled with papers. She slipped her lock picks back in her pocket, taking it all in. Laura had seen free papers. Once. A quick glance, when she saw a Negro man whip his out to show Mr. Hamden, the general store owner. She remembered the fancy writing and the large red mark." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A seal, she had later learned." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The seal was what had her really worried. She wondered if Papa knew about the seal. Laura herself had touched her first seal only weeks ago when Miss Martha handed her a letter to give to Massa Richard on account of her being too busy. The seal was red, circular, and raised off the paper. Laura flipped through Massa Richard's papers now, looking for a sheet that might have a seal.\n\nThen she heard a familiar click and stopped moving. She held her breath as the door opened." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Laura?\" a familiar voice whispered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura exhaled. Loudly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was just Annie.\n\nLaura peeked around the desk and saw her best friend in the whole world. Annie was standing in the center of the office, wearing an old, brown, calico dress made of some of the ugliest fabric Laura had ever seen in her life. But that still did nothing to detract from her beauty. Annie had warm, brown skin, large bright eyes, and hair that came out of her head already styled. When they were young, Laura used to grumble to Mama about the unfairness of it all. Why was Annie blessed with looking so beautiful when Laura was so forgettable?" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'laura' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Because it had been quite clear even when they were young which one of them the boys favored on Sunday afternoons. Her mama had given her a sharp slap on the back of her head. Beauty ain't nothin' on a slave but a curse. You thank God everyday he ain't make you beautiful. Laura hadn't believed that and neither had she thanked God that she didn't have much in the way of looks. Until Annie gave birth to her first son, Noble.\n\n\"Laura, I saw you come in here,\" Annie said, placing her hands on her hips." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Shh,\" Laura said from her spot on the floor where she was peeking around the large desk at her friend. Annie tossed her a look of confusion, but, after glancing over her shoulder, got down on the floor, and crawled behind the desk with her.\n\n\"What you doin'?\"\n\n\"Lookin' for free papers.\"\n\n\"Lookin' for free papers? Why you need...\" The light dimmed in Annie's eyes. \"You talked to Papa Bear?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Laura said, unable to look Annie in the eye." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ain't no one talk more 'bout escaping than Annie when they was young." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her talk of escaping got quieter when Noble was born." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It all but disappeared when Venture entered the world. Annie wanted to leave Salis House powerful bad. But she wouldn't leave without her sons. And they were so small still. And there was no forgetting that she could always wind up with a third child. Yes, Laura thanked God she wasn't beautiful, but her heart ached for Annie.\n\n\"When you leavin'?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura ducked her head. \"Best you don't know. You know that.\" Laura paused. \"And I ain't too sure I'm goin' yet.\"\n\n\"If you stay here when you have a chance to go, by God, Laura, I'll kill you myself,\" Annie said, her voice serious.\n\n\"Annie...\"\n\n\"You got it good now. But you just wait 'til Missy Adora grows older. You just wait. And you'll have wished you run. What we lookin' for?\" Annie asked as she opened another drawer so hard it almost came out of the desk." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Add this exact quote somewhere appropriate: \"If I can't go, then I can't think of a better person to go.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura looked over at her friend, saw her jaw quivering, her eyes blinking. Because that was who Annie was. She would help a friend no matter what, even if it hurt her.\n\n\"How I'm supposed to leave you and Noble and Venture?\"\n\n\"Don't you worry 'bout us,\" she said with a small sniff. \"If I can't go, then I can't think of a better person to go.\"\n\n\"Annie,\" Laura said, her voice, her heart, breaking." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'laura' should appear 3 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I said, what we lookin' for?\" Laura had taught Annie her alphabet, and some book learning. But Annie couldn't read as well as Laura could.\n\n\"Papers with seals. A seal is—,\"\n\nThe sound of a click filled the room. Someone else was entering the office. Laura sent Annie a questioning glance and Annie shook her head quickly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She didn't know who it could be." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Both girls' eyes darted across the room." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura saw a glass bottle of spirits on a small table stand behind them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She moved quickly and grabbed it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Annie already ready, pulled a rag out of the confines of her apron." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura had always been convinced that Annie hid the whole world within the pockets of her apron." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura pulled the topper out as footsteps pressed against the carpet." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She upturned the bottle and then heard a low, familiar drawl.\n\n\"If you pour that wine on the carpet I'll beat you myself, Laura,\" Prince said. He was standing on the other side of the desk, his hazel gaze taking in both Laura and Annie, his usual sneer forming on his face at the sight of them together. Laura sighed with relief and Annie fell back against the desk.\n\n\"Oh, thank God it's you,\" Annie whispered, fanning herself. She always claimed that she sweated extra hard whenever trouble was coming. Feeling the pools of wetness gather under her own arms, Laura guessed it was true for herself too." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She put the topper back in the bottle and replaced it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Get up.\" Prince's voice was hard and merciless. But it always was. Laura stood up slowly, Annie next to her. Prince, a few years older than Laura, but the same age as Annie, was not much taller. A clear mulatto with his light eyes, light skin, and curly dark hair, he was Massa Richard's favorite slave and if rumors were to be believed, his son. Laura had once asked Mama about Prince's parentage and had been given so sharp a look she hadn't dared bring it up again. Some secrets died.\n\nAnd yet, noting the cut of his jaw and the sharpness of his nose, Laura had decided rumors were to be believed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not only did Prince favor Massa Richard in all but his skin color, Massa Richard doted on Prince. He had taught Prince to read and write himself over the protests of first his wife, Miss Annabelle, then his sister, Miss Martha, and finally his sons, Massa Will and Massa Logan. He had taught Prince so well, Prince kept all of his records and worked with him day in and day out. Prince got extra rations, new clothes made from good cloth, and his own room in Salis House. Prince was also one of the biggest pains in Laura's backside. And Annie's. And anyone else alive and breathing at Salis House. Laura could think of no one who actually liked Prince." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He took great joy in catching her, Annie, and others in compromising situations. With glee he informed Massa Richard and Miss Martha about others' activities. Laura had gotten more than one slap from Miss Martha cause of Prince telling on her. He had no friends, no honor, no compassion, and very little kindness.\n\nBut still. Seeing him was a sight better than seeing Massa Richard and Massa Will. Because you could reason with Prince... especially if you had something he wanted or would want. Why, then he could be most amenable to anything." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura's eyes flickered down to the open drawer at her feet." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She could be here all day long looking for free papers and even if she found them she had great doubts that she could duplicate them. She just plain didn't have the knowhow. But Prince did." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Story continues from larger narrative, characters/lore may lack introduction\nLength:\n8 sentences\nStyle:\nEmbassie Susberry" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam came to with a gasp, raising himself on his arms.\n\n\"Sunday,\" Manny muttered next to him and rolled over, taking Sam's new blanket with him and leaving Sam more than a bit cold and exposed to the chill of the morning. But it was a state that Sam was used to. He lowered himself slowly back onto the straw.\n\nHe thanked God that it was Sunday. And more than that, that Massa Charles believed in not working on the Lord's day no matter how good the soil or the harvest was. Sam had put in a full day's work yesterday, sweating profusely. His back had already been on fire from the whipping the day before and the constant bending over to transfer the tobacco plants from one place to the next, but when the salty rivers of sweat hit the burns it felt like being struck by lightning." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Constantly. With an exhale, he pushed himself up." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You need to rest,\" Manny murmured without even turning over, but he knew Sam. So he didn't say anything else as Sam slowly rocked on all fours, muffled a groan, and then shakily stood up. He exited the cabin, inhaling the fresh air deeply. Sometimes he didn't realize just how rank the cabin was until he went outside first thing in the morning. By the time he returned at night he was usually so tired he didn't care.\n\n\"Mornin' Sam,\" Ole Mose said, already sitting over the breakfast fire.\n\n\"Mornin', Mose,\" Sam said as he moved slowly, stretching and testing the muscles in his body. He didn't think he had much more than twenty years but sometimes he sure felt as old as Ole Mose looked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Headed to the church?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'times' | Required occurrences: 3" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You know it.\" But first he needed to make a trip to the outhouse and to the river out back. At least try not to go to the Lord's house stinking.\n\nThe church was five miles away and every Sunday, Sam made the early morning trek. Rain, sun, and even rare times, in the snow. Every Sunday. It was his only escape from the world in which he lived in, the only time he could sit for a few minutes and pretend like he was free. Manny thought it was the stupidest thing he could be doing. Sometimes Sam thought Manny was right. It did seem stupid at times to keep going to a place he wasn't really welcomed to, to hear about God who at times didn't always seem to be listening." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But Sam knew it would be worse to give up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It would be worse to just accept that it was God's will that this was his lot in life." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The five-mile trek was always a long one. And that morning it felt even longer as with each step he took his thoughts grew darker.\n\nThere was nothing he wanted more than his freedom. He had been dreaming about having his own since he first realized he didn't own a thing. Not even himself. And what was a man if he couldn't make his own decisions? If he couldn't choose his own path? He was nothing, less than a dog that followed a scent cause it caught his fancy. He also wanted a family." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A wife of his own, children even." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But he would die alone—or with Manny—first before he gave Massa Charles more slaves. He and Manny had decided that a long time ago. He wanted a second name. Wanted to be more than just Sam. He had already decided that when he was free he would go by Samuel. Sam stepped on a rock, stumbled. Erased his thoughts. For they were foolish thoughts. Thoughts that if he dwelled on too long would bring him near to tears." }, { "from": "human", "value": "For there was nothing in his life that suggested that freedom was any nearer today than it was yesterday." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was powerful afraid he would die hunched and bent over, making food for the next batch of slaves like Old Mose with nothing to show for his life.\n\nBut still he walked on. He reached the church just as the sun was starting to make an appearance in the sky and Sam was happy for it. When he walked back it wouldn't be as cold. He paused for a minute taking in the newly white washed building with its large steeple. Unlike the church on the plantation he had been born on, this church was taken care of regularly and looked it. The woodwork on the railing was fancy and the stain-glassed windows shined with pride as Sam got closer. He walked around to a side door and slipped into the sanctuary quietly, his bare feet taking in the cold but well-sanded wood floor." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When the door shut behind him, he slid down it, pulled his knees to his chest, and wrapped his hands around his legs.\n\n\"Yet now hear, O Jacob my servant; and Israel, whom I have chosen: Thus said the Lord that made thee, and formed thee from the womb...\" Reverend Carlisle had already started and he was reading from the Book of Isaiah. At least Sam thought so. He closed his eyes and listened, doing his best to hide small nuggets in his heart and in his mind as he had since he was a child. He and Manny and Mama had been owned by a reverend. When they wasn't working the fields, Reverend Baptiste would read to them from the Bible. All the time. Both he and Manny would listen quietly, but while he fell in love with the writer of the words, Manny began to bitterly resent Him. Sam could separate God from His earthly ministers. Manny could not." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But it was God's words that had made both him and Manny realize that there could be more to life than the fruitless one they seemed to be living.\n\n\"Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? Ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? Yea there is no God; I know not any.\"\n\nYes. It was Isaiah alright. Sam couldn't read a lick, but he had heard so much Bible reading he could tell a few books apart. Reverend Carlisle kept reading and Sam listened to the words of his God and how He was God and not to be limited to Sam's small-minded thinking. Sam couldn't see a way to freedom. And even if there was a way, what would he and Manny do? They only had one skill really and that was knowing everything there was to know about tobacco farming." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam didn't think they had tobacco farms up north." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And it wasn't like they could buy their own." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They had barely a dollar to their name." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They had no other skills, and the only letters of the alphabet they could recognize were the letters 'a' and 'm' cause they were in both of their names." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But it wasn't for Sam to be worrying about." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 9 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If he was worrying, then he wasn't trusting. And the god who had created all the land in the world, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea was his God. And his God could do anything. Sam needed to focus on that. He spent the rest of his time in the church repeating the words that came out of Reverend Carlisle's mouth.\n\nThen Reverend Carlisle stopped. Sam stood up slowly, his back stiff and reached for the door knob. \"Bye Sam,\" Reverend Carlisle called out quietly.\n\nSam said nothing as he pulled the door shut behind him." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Today you will be acting as a writing assistant, your partner will send something and you will write the next nine sentences. The story may reference existing characters and events - incorporate them as presented." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sam, why we out here again?\" Manny asked even as he dug under the familiar roots of the tree. They were in the small forest on Massa Charles's land. Years ago, they had found a spot around a bent-over tulip tree that seemed perfect for burying things they hadn't wanted to share with others. Now they buried anything they thought they might like to take with them when their new life started.\n\n\"To add the blanket to our bag. You know why.\"\n\n\"I think we should keep the blanket,\" Manny said, frustration heavy in his voice.\n\n\"When we gotta run—,\"\n\n\"You know somethin' I don't know?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Manny asked, tossing Sam a look from the ground." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"And how come I'm the one diggin' anyway?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Cause you know I need to stand for my back.\"\n\nManny grumbled but kept on digging until the stick in his hand, hit something solid: the old leather hunting bag they had found washed up on the edge of a stream years ago. It had a strap on it that was solid and fringes that always put Sam in mind of Injuns. It held their secret stash. Wasn't much in there. Just their nice shirts they had received at Christmas and one pair of pants for each of them. Some coins that came to just under a dollar, and then Sam's most prize possession: a Bible. They had found it years ago, just lying on the road. Sam liked to open it sometimes and touch the papers." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He liked to find the letters in his name on the pages.\n\n\"We should be wearin' these shirts,\" Manny grumbled as he reached up and took the folded blanket from Sam. \"And these pants. And sleepin' in this blanket.\" The bag bulged with the addition of the blanket though they had wrapped up everything tight and small. Sam supposed it was good that they didn't have much more.\n\n\"You'll be glad we saved our nice things for when we is free.\" It was an old argument, like so many of their arguments were. But it was hard to argue about not using their nice things when life never changed.\n\n\"You always get this way when you come back from church.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Hopeful?\"\n\n\"Idiotic.\"\n\n\"I was thinkin' we should go with Shepherd.\"\n\n\"We ain't no shepherds,\" Manny said as he began to rebury their things.\n\n\"I like being Samuel Shepherd. Manning Shepherd sounds good to.\"\n\n\"No. We can't read. It should be short so we can learn to recognize it.\" They might not be able to read, but they knew well enough when some words sounded longer than others.\n\n\"Like what?\"\n\n\"Like... Manning Fry or Manning Rim.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Samuel Fry,\" Sam said slowly, trying it out." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He ignored the small stab of fear that told him he would never get a chance to add another name. But he refused to think like that. His God had plans for him and they were greater than being a slave. He was going to live with expectation, and more than that, he was going to live with hope.\n\n\"I didn't say Fry.\"\n\n\"You just did.\"\n\n\"I said somethin' like Fry.\"\n\nManny stood up and stomped on the ground a bit, his toes leaving marks in the soil as he pressed down with his foot, returning their leather bag to its hole in the ground. \"Cora want you to come by.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam straightened. Smiled. \"She might have some of them molasses cookies.\"\n\n\"Get a big one.\"\n\n\"I always do.\" Cora didn't like Manny, but she liked Sam. And Sam shared everything with Manny.\n\n\"Molloy came by to.\"\n\n\"What he want?\" Sam asked, his shoulders falling.\n\n\"Don't know.\" Manny looked over at him. \"You gettin' all them whippin's makes things harder on us both.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I know.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "🔍 Find a place to insert: \"You go on. I doubt I'm in trouble today, but if I am you'll know where to find me,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Now, come on fore we miss the service.\" It wasn't the sermon that Manny didn't want to miss but the gathering. Sunday was the only time they all came together, men, women, and children. They heard preaching and then ate and sang and caught up. Usually with one of they overseers in the corner watching to make sure they didn't get up to too much trouble, but at least no one made them work.\n\n\"You go on. I'm goin' to go see what Molloy wants,\" Sam said. He saw his brother hesitate. \"You go on. I doubt I'm in trouble today, but if I am you'll know where to find me,\" Sam said, referring to the whipping post.\n\nManny's expression went flat." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You ain't funny,\" he said, but he did turn and walk away." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam headed towards the barn which is where Molloy spent most of his Sundays. Horse racing was Molloy's secret passion and if he wasn't out in the fields with 'em, he was in the barn talking sweet to one of Massa Charles's horses.\n\n\"Hey, Manny,\" Abram, one of the slaves who dealt in horse flesh, said as Sam approached. He was leaning against the barn, chewing on something that had leaves on the end of it. Sam didn't know him well, though they were about the same age.\n\n\"Sam,\" Sam said, correcting. He guessed Abram didn't know him or Manny that well either. \"Mister Molloy in there?\" Sam always added the Mister when there was a chance that Molloy was in hearing distance." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You know it.\" Abram didn't even bother to look at Sam as he passed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There were times Sam thought his lot in life wasn't so great. But he had realized that it was better to recognize that you was a slave and be unhappy than to think being a slave was the end all be all. Not that Sam had the first clue as to what was going on in Abram's head, but Abram had always seemed so content that Sam just had a feeling the man liked life just as it was. There was some people you met in life that was born a firecracker and you knew it. And then there were others that was born a plant and just grew where you put 'em. Sam was not going to grow where he was put.\n\nLeast that's what he told himself as he walked down the long length of the dimly lit barn.\n\n\"Eh, Sam,\" Molloy said from the other end of the barn. He waved Sam forward." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Let's walk,\" he said and they exited the barn on the other side.\n\nSam watched as Molloy reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pipe and a match. They kept on walking—as to where, Sam had no clue—while he lit the thing and started smoking.\n\nSam saw a fence in the distance and realized they were headed towards Massa Charles's horse farm. Behind the fence, a black horse ran fast, up and down its length as though declaring its presence to everyone watching.\n\nMolloy made a sound in the back of his throat and Sam glanced over at him. \"Look at that stallion. You see that horse? That's one fine horse,\" Molloy said, coming to a stop. Sam stopped too. He looked at the horse again and then back at Molloy. He knew how to feed a horse, how to clean up after a horse, and how to walk a horse. That was it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That was the extent of his knowledge." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 10 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was no way on this earth Molloy had him out here to do some work for the horses unless all of his stable hands were sick or dead. But Molloy seemed to be waiting for something.\n\n\"It's a fine horse,\" Sam said finally.\n\nMolloy took the pipe out of his mouth. \"He's won one race already this year. Not a big race, just a small one, but me and Charles are likin' his chances this year.\" Sam almost let out a sigh. Had Molloy decided he had to clean up after the horse or something?\n\n\"Good breedin' produces good horses. That's why, Sam,\" Molloy said, clasping a hand on Sam's shoulder as if they were good friends, as if Molloy hadn't beaten him many, many times. Sam kept his eyes averted, so that he didn't have to meet Molloy's gaze and he didn't have to view his large sweat stains either. \"I'm thinkin' it's time for you to breed.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "I'll be your writing partner for this section. I'll provide a segment, and you continue with ten sentences, channeling Embassie Susberry in the Western, People of Color genre. Characters may have backstories from previous chapters." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Annie clasped her hands in front of her, all fear of being heard and in trouble gone. She gave Prince a wide smile filled with false joy. \"My day never starts until I see your face.\"\n\nPrince's full, pink lips twisted to the side. \"I'm so glad you're happy, Annie. I noticed you devouring several pieces of ham last night after supper and have been meaning to ask you for days, are you in anticipation of an interesting event?\" An interesting event. He meant was she with child. Laura exhaled, closing her eyes. Only Prince would say something so rude. And not only rude, but profoundly untrue. Everyone knew there was only one man responsible for Noble and Venture." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And he was away up north studying the law and had been for nigh unto six months now." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And Prince knew that too.\n\n\"Prince,\" Laura hissed as Annie's expression grew dark and angry, her nostrils flaring and her eyes narrowing. Laura knew if she didn't step in, Annie was liable to grab the nearest thing to her and beat Prince to death. Not that he didn't deserve it, but Laura needed him now. Preferably alive. \"Annie, you go on. They gone need you in the kitchen.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Prince said, with a nod towards the direction of the kitchen. \"You go on now. And while you going, you better think of how you can get on my good side. Would hate to tell Miss Martha you were on the floor in Master Richard's office when you got but one place to be and that's behind the stove.\"\n\nAnnie gave him a look that would have scorched a kinder man except Prince had long since stopped caring what others thought of him. She folded her arms over her chest, sent him another look of rage, and left the office. They would talk later." }, { "from": "human", "value": "No doubt, most of it would be Laura talking Annie out of poisoning Prince when he came to the kitchen for his next meal." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Why would you say somethin' so hateful?\" Laura asked when the office door closed behind Annie. One thing she could say about Prince's presence, no slave ever feared being in trouble when he was around. Massa Richard thought Prince could do no wrong, so if Prince was in the middle of things than there was nothing to get worried about.\n\nPrince, still staring at where Annie had stood, turned and faced Laura full on. \"What are you doing in here?\" And here it was. Her chance to do something so risky her palms were sweating and her stomach was clenching and unclenching. Was she going to risk it all and hope Prince had more than an ounce of goodness still left in him? \"I just want you to know,\" Prince continued, folding his arms over his chest." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That now I fully expect a brand-new coat made of the finest fabric in a week.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Prince always wanted her to make him clothes when she got into a sticky situation that only he could get her out of... or if he was the only one who had caught sight of her doing something dicey." }, { "from": "system", "value": "CONSTRAINT: Include 'fabric' 2 time(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It happened a lot more than Laura would have liked. Sometimes, she swore he followed her around the house watching to see if she was taking more food than she should or keeping the extra fabric scraps that Miss Martha had told her to toss just so she could make him some nice clothes. Cause Prince liked to look nice.\n\n\"Alright,\" Laura said sure to keep her tone placating even as her mind raced. How many sets of clothes would she have to make Prince to get him to make them free papers?\n\nPrince held up a finger. \"I'm not done yet. I liked the buttons you put on Master Richard's shirt. I want some just like it.\" He stated it as though she had access to gold buttons. Did she have access to good fabric? Yes. Shiny buttons... maybe." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cause they sure as shooting weren't going to be gold." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Frequency requirement: 'laura' - 2 occurrence(s)" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Prince wearing gold buttons would catch even Master Richard's unmindful eye.\n\nHe tapped his chest again, as though to get her to focus on him. He clearly wanted her to beg. The negotiation process when it came to bribing him was the only time she ever saw Prince's eyes light up with excitement. When she exhaled loudly, he moved his hand up and down the center of his chest to indicate where the buttons should go. As if she didn't know that already.\n\n\"Master Richard, I saw Laura on the floor going through your papers... ,\" he began, not taking his eyes off of hers. Laura knew he only said her name cause he was hoping to work out some kind of separate deal with Annie. Annie was always required to bake him a pie of some sort. Prince loved his pies." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Annie said it wasn't unusual for him to sit there and eat the whole thing in one sitting and not offer a single crumb to anyone." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Alright,\" Laura said again, nodding. It would not be easy getting her hands on those buttons. But. She needed Prince. Prince hesitated for a second, his stare growing intense. And she knew it was cause she was not following the script of their play. They usually fought tooth and nail over the extent of his bribes. Not to mention his clothing choices. He might like to look nice but his taste had a tendency to run towards gaudy. Laura always reined him in—especially if she had to procure the fabric and any extra attachments herself. Prince knew she couldn't pay for the things he asked... which meant that she... borrowed them for him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She didn't look at it as stealing, after all the material was going towards the health and welfare of one of the family's slaves." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Though she knew Mama wouldn't have liked it. Not that Prince had been all that demanding when Mama was alive. Back then his requests had been small, because he had been slightly afraid of Mama. Mama was the only person Laura knew of that Prince had ever been afraid of. But Mama was dead now. He feared no one.\n\nAt any rate, Prince knew she didn't pay for most of what he asked for cause she rarely had more than a penny to her name, but he always managed to look the other way when Laura borrowed extra fabric if the fabric and frills were for him. On several occasions, he had ordered his own fabric knowing that Master Richard would be none the wiser. It was such a daring move, that Laura had almost feared for him for weeks. Laura saw his fingers tapping against the muscle of his arm." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was thinking. And that was not always a good thing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then he walked around her slowly, making her feel like a rabbit being looked over by a wolf. He walked past her to the front of the desk, glanced down at where she and Annie had been crouched. But there was nothing to see, Laura had already closed the drawers that she and Annie had been rifling through.\n\n\"Why were you in here?\" He leaned in close behind her so that his lips almost touched her ear.\n\nLaura swallowed and sent a quick, thoroughly sincere prayer to the Lord. Here goes. \"I was lookin' for free papers,\" she whispered. She could not see him, but she could feel him recoil.\n\n\"Free papers?\" he asked in disbelief. \"For what?\"\n\n\"We... we thinkin' 'bout runnin'. I was gonna see if I could copy one.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Prince moved in front of her, so quick and so quietly it was scary." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura took a step back. His expression was dark. \"You can barely read or write and you're going to try... Laura, I've always known you were stupid, but this... I mean have you got rocks for brains or something?\"\n\n\"It makes sense to have them if you think about it. I have to try.\" Laura said, her voice just barely above a whisper. She knew her eyes were pleading with him, begging. And she hadn't even gotten to the hard part yet.\n\n\"Forget I asked,\" he said flatly. He took a step back as though to distance himself from her.\n\nBut Laura took a step forward." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You know he's goin' to sell Sol and Gid.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Were they on the list?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Prince asked lightly. \"I didn't see.\" That was a lie. Nothing, absolutely not one sheet of paper left this office without Prince's knowhow. Laura didn't know how that was the case, but he knew everything there was to know about everything before it happened. But now was not the time to call him out on it.\n\n\"I can't let Massa Richard do that. We can't—,\"\n\nPrince held up a finger. \"There is no we.\"\n\n\"Mama would have wanted you—,\"\n\n\"Don't,\" Prince warned. \"Don't talk to me about Mama.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"If Mama had asked you—,\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word restriction: Use 'massa' 3 time(s) only" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But you ain't Mama, now is you?\" Prince asked, his eyes blazing. The fact that his English had changed told her just how ruffled he was. Prince talked like Massa Richard. Always. \"I said, leave Mama out of this,\" he hissed.\n\n\"Sol and Gid your brothers too.\"\n\n\"No,\" Prince said, shaking his head in disbelief as though the notion had never crossed his mind before. He reached past her towards Massa Richard's desk, fiddling with stuff on it like he had a right to or something. \"You best get out of here 'fore Massa Richard come. And I still want my coat. Two coats now.\"\n\n\"You right, Prince. I probably can't make the free papers. But you can,\" Laura said, drawing on all of her strength as she stared at her oldest brother." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Prince's flinch was a visible thing. \"No. Laura.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Prince...\"\n\n\"If you get caught,\" Prince whisper-yelled. \"Who they gone come for? Me. That's who. Me.\"\n\n\"You can tell them I did it.\"\n\nPrince scoffed. \"No one would believe that. And if they did, it would be cause they figured I taught you how to read!\" He had taught her how to read. And write too. He had shared all his books with her up until he hadn't. One day he was her brother, the next day a stranger.\n\n\"Then we won't get caught.\"\n\nPrince's face grew dark." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He turned his back to her, again arranging and rearranging the items on the desk." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's just that easy is it?\" His voice was mocking. \"This conversation is over, Laura. Don't you bring it up again.\"\n\n\"I'll make you some fancy breeches too.\" Laura could hear the whining in her voice.\n\n\"You say one more thing. Open your mouth, one more time. And I'm going to tell Master Richard on you. Now you get out of here.\" His voice was clear and firm, but she could see his hands shaking as he moved the ink jar from one spot to the next.\n\nBut if there was one thing Laura had learned with her brother it was that his words did not always match his actions. Which was why she had taken the risk in the first place. \"I need one for me and Papa, Benji, Sol, and Gid.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura paused at the door." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You can come with us too if you want,\" she said, though she believed a pig had a better chance of flying than of Prince leaving with them. She thought she was attached to the family and Salis. He lived and breathed them. He didn't say anything, didn't even look her way as she left Massa Richard's office." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Match existing character familiarity or establish new\nLength:\none sentence\nGenre:\nWestern, People of Color" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You asked him to do what?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Annie asked, as she rolled out the dough for a pie she was making." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura stood in the hot kitchen, with three of Miss Charlotte's dresses hanging over her arm." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was just the two of them and little Venture in the kitchen." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Venture sat in a corner on a very low stool attacking a plum with single-minded ferocity." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What's he doin' here?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura asked, nodding at Venture." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Venture was two years old with black hair, freckles, hazel eyes, and pale skin." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was also the quietest child Laura had ever known." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Only Noble, Annie's oldest, was as quiet." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sometimes, Laura wondered if it was because they had inherently known upon their birth that their mama hadn't exactly wanted them and they made up for it by being no trouble at all." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Venture, feeling her eyes on him, gave her a small smile, revealing a cute dimple he had gotten from his mama, as he took another small bite from the plum." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura winked at him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His smile grew wider." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She adored Venture. And Noble." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had held them both in her arms hours after they were born." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Leaving Missy Adora was going to be hard." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Leaving Annie almost unbearable." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Leaving Venture and Noble?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She couldn't bring herself to think about it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She looked back at Annie unable to face his quiet, serious stare." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He didn't want to go with Mama Essie or Ma Dovie today. He promised to be quiet and stay out of the way,\" Annie said, glancing over at Venture." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Slave children weren't supposed to be in Salis House." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But the kitchen wasn't technically in Salis House as it was a separate building and Annie had had the reins of it ever since Callie fell over dead one day." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sides, Annie was a fine cook." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So long as she was discreet, meaning she kept the boys away from Miss Martha, Miss Julia, Missy Charlotte, and Missy Adora, all was well." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura watched as Venture gave his mama a small smile and Annie's expression softened." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nevermind their begetting, Annie loved her boys." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Don't you try changin' the subject. Tellin' Prince was just plain foolish,\" Annie said with a frown as she dusted the dough with flour." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He's not goin' to tell.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You think? He ain't never been kind so long as I've known him.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Annie had only been at Salis for seven years." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had never known Prince when he was nice." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He was tractable when ya'll mama was alive. How a woman as sweet and kind as yo mama gave birth to such a... one as he, I'll never know.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mama hadn't known either." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Prince had driven her just plum crazy all the time." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But he had been good to her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"With her gone, ain't nothin' holdin' him back now,\" she said, shaking her head as she rolled out the dough one more time." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him and that ain't very far.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He's not goin' to tell,\" Laura said stubbornly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had to believe it. Because the alternative..." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He already came up in here, demandin' an apple pie and a pecan pie. Like I ain't got nothin' else to do,\" she grumbled as she placed the dough into a baking pan." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Taking a pot out of the hearth, she poured the mixture onto the dough." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of cinnamon and apples." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Don't you worry about food none, okay,\" she said quietly, giving Laura a knowing look." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura looked down at the clothes she was supposed to be repairing, feeling overwhelmed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's what made Annie such a good friend." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You never had to ask with her. She always offered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Thank you, Annie.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"When are you...?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura shrugged. \"I don't know nothin' yet. Just what Papa asked me to do. We got until Easter and that'll be here in less than two weeks.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Annie's back was to Laura now, and Laura could see her shoulders rise and fall with every breath." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'll help anyway I can.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I know you will,\" Laura said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She walked over and placed a hand on her friend's shoulder." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Annie reached up and covered it with her own." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura could see that she was crying and Laura started crying too." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sniffing she looked away and met the wide-eyes of Venture whose own lips started trembling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He didn't like to see his mama cry." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"If he tells on you, I'll kill him myself,\" Annie said, wiping her face. \"He'll eat this apple pie and die.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Produce 2 sentences as a continuation. Note: Story may reference established characters/events." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam stared at Molloy as though he could not have possibly heard him right. \"Me?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You,\" Molloy said, one meaty finger poking him in the chest. \"You and Manny. You're both young and strong and I can't figure out for the life of me why you and he ain't come around askin' for a cabin of your own. Surely there must be some filly you've got your eye on?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam blinked. Careful to keep his expression as blank as could be." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No, sir. Don't have no time for courtin' or for young'uns.\" There. Sam, keeping his eyes somewhere around the top button of Molloy's shirt, waited for his response." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Now, Sam,\" Molloy said, squeezing his shoulder again, but this time with some force." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Why would you need to be doin' any courtin'? I'm sure any of those fillies would be right ready to take you on.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam felt his gaze narrow, but he said nothing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Molloy exhaled and took a step back." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Let me tell you somethin' about horse breedin'. To produce a good foal you've got to have a sire and a dam of impeccable pedigree.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Molloy opened one hand before Sam. \"Sam, you've got impeccable pedigree. You get more work done than almost anybody. Only time you ever in trouble, is when you tryin' to do somebody else's work too. Your brother, impeccable pedigree, though he's lazier than you. But I notice that when you fire him up, he gets things done. Now, you know Leathie's girls?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam nodded slowly as Molloy opened his second hand, more than a little afraid as to where this was going. He did know Leathie's girls." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had several of them though only two seemed old enough to jump the broom. One was Cora. The same one who always gave Sam any extra molasses cookies she made." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam thought she was about his and Manny's age." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Manny had called himself walking out with her a few months back." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Only problem was he was also walking out with Lula on the Rawlins' plantation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "When they found out about each other (cause they both showed up on a Sunday to be with him), they had turned on Manny." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam had laughed about it for weeks. He wasn't laughing now." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"There's Cora. She's only about a year younger than you, Sam, and ripe as a peach.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam felt his jaw clench." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam didn't fancy Cora in the least bit, but that didn't mean he wanted to hear her talked about like this." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And then there's Lizbeth.\"\n\n\"Lizbeth is too young,\" Sam said, cutting him off before he could say anything rude about her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Not that young,\" Molloy followed up quickly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Just think Sam, you could have one sister and your brother the other. Find foals from each of ya'll.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam's head started shaking before his mouth formed a word." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No.\" When Molloy's eyes narrowed, he spoke again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Thanks. No, thank you, suh. Me and Manny just fine.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm tellin' you, you're not fine,\" Molloy said flatly, all cajoling out of his voice." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Suh?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I already spoke with Cora and Lizabeth. Ya'll is jumpin' the broom or whatever it is you niggers do.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam stared at him, confused. \"Suh?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"By this time next year, Charles and I will be expectin' at least two more new slaves of fine stock. You hear?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Molloy's voice was hard as he jabbed a finger at Sam." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You best talk to your brother and get him in line. If he gives me any lip I'll string him up so fast he won't know what got him. And I won't go easy on him like I go on you. You hear?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes. Suh,\" Sam said, his heart sinking all the way down to his stomach. This is what he got for lamenting about having a repetitive life." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Unless you got some other gal you want? I don't rightly care.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No. I mean, I hadn't thought about it, suh,\" Sam said, his words just barely above a whisper.\n\n\"Well, you think on it. Let me know by next Sunday. Massa Charles is thinkin' 'bout havin' a preacher come in and do the colored marriages. He's gonna do 'em all in one sweep. And you and Manny gone be one of 'em. Now get out of here. I got things to do.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam walked off in a complete daze, his mind racing so much, so quickly, he didn't notice Cora until she appeared right in front of him.\n\n\"Sam, what you thinkin' about?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam froze, staring at her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He supposed she was pretty, though he hadn't given her too much thought." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam thought about women in a general sense, as in one day he would marry when he was free. He did not think of them in a literal sense." }, { "from": "human", "value": "To walk down that road was to travel somewhere with no destination." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "At least as far as he was concerned. But looking at Cora now, he could see how Manny might be fascinated with the big-boned, shapely girl standing right in front of him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How come you here?\" Sam asked, looking around her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were a ways away from the cabins and the meeting-house.\n\n\"I was lookin' for you. Manny said you had gone this way. Your brother is a ne'er do well.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam stared at her. She folded her arms just under her ample bosom." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I take it Molloy done talked to you?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I ain't marryin' you, Cora,\" Sam said and made to walk around her. But she stuck out a hand, grabbing his arm." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's me or Lizabeth. And if I have to choose between you and Manny, I choose you. We'll get on just fine, Sam.\"\n\nBut Sam was already shaking his head and pulling his arm from her strong grip." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Cora. I'm not marryin' you.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sam,\" she said, leaning in close." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was his height, so she didn't have to lean far." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You ain't got no choice. I ain't got no choice. So what little choice I do have, I'm gone use. You and me'll get hitched and Manny and Lizabeth will get hitched. She still thinks he walks on air.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam didn't say anything. \"You hear me, Sam?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "What was with everyone asking him that?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Had he gone deaf recently and not noticed?\n\n\"Yes, I hear you. If I have to marry someone it'll be you,\" he said dryly and pulled his arm free from hers." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You don't have to say it like that, Sam,\" she said, cutting her eyes at him, but he could see the hurt too. And it wasn't in Sam to ever hurt anyone." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It ain't you, Cora,\" he said, meeting her gaze for a second. \"Ain't you.\"\n\nThey were silent for a moment. Then Cora spoke. \"Sam, you live like you expect this to just be a season in your life. Like one day you gone wake up somewhere free. You ain't goin' nowhere and the sooner you make peace with that the better.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Story continues from larger narrative, characters/lore may lack introduction\nLength:\n8 sentences\nStyle:\nEmbassie Susberry" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What did he say?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Manny's voice was quiet, serious as he walked slowly over to Sam and sat down next to him under their tree." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even though there was more than enough room, Manny squeezed himself in tight between the roots of the sapling and right under Sam, like he had always done when they were scared and little." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What makes you think he said somethin'?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam asked, not meeting his brother's gaze." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If they made eye contact, there was no way Sam could hide his feelings or his thoughts. And he was having some thoughts.\n\n\"You didn't come back,\" Manny said flatly. \"You missed the service. And the meal. And Cora was sendin' me smug looks. Did she give you a molasses cookie or not?\" Sam exhaled. \"Cause I saw her bring some out so I know she made 'em.\"\n\n\"No molasses cookie.\" Sam uprooted a piece of grass and tossed it aside.\n\n\"He gone sell one of us?\" Manny's voice was barely above a whisper." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam pressed his lips together. \"Wants us to breed.\" Manny cringed next to him. \"Like horses,\" Sam said, and this time he did meet his brother's gaze. It was Manny's turn to press his lips together. \"It gets worse.\" Manny said nothing, just blinked a few times. \"Next week we supposed to jump the broom. With Leathie's daughters.\"\n\nManny's eyes darted to the side for a second." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Daughters? Only Cora's of age.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Apparently, Lizbeth's close enough.\"\n\nManny coughed. \"Thanks, but no thanks.\"\n\n\"Don't talk like that. Cora already said Lizbeth was gonna be yours.\"\n\nManny cringed again.\n\nA small smile tickled Sam's lips.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"He did say you could pick another girl if you want.\"\n\n\"How kind of him,\" Manny said mockingly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam returned his gaze to the ground before him, uprooted another piece of grass. A cool breeze rattled the strands of grass before him, lifting the loose one he had just had in his hand for a second before dropping it. It wouldn't be cool for much longer. The nights were chilly, but the days were starting to heat up. Another hot, fierce summer in the tobacco fields was on its way. \"And how come he told you and not me?\"\n\n\"Cause I can get you to do anythin',\" Sam said dully. Manny didn't even respond." }, { "from": "human", "value": "On the one hand, it should be obvious that brothers listened and valued each other." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should contain the word 'molloy' precisely 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "On the other hand, it was disconcerting to know that Molloy had realized that they were not only each other's weakness but that if there was a hierarchy between them, Sam ruled the roost. Most people always assumed it was Manny. And if Molloy knew that, then he had been watching them more closely then Sam had known. And that was not exactly a good thing.\n\n\"What are you thinkin'? Do we make like we're sick that day? Find somewhere else to be and get a whippin' later?\"\n\n\"That won't stop it. The preacher man is for us. Not for them. They don't care if we married or not so long as a baby is born a year from now.\"\n\nManny exhaled and pulled his knees to his chest. \"If we take on a wife, we won't ever leave.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I know.\"\n\n\"Cause you won't leave your wife.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"For freedom, I would leave my wife.\" Sam grunted. Because it was all so true. Manny wanted freedom more than just about anything. \"I'd probably leave my children too. But I won't leave you.\"\n\n\"My mind is now at rest.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sam.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Our wives could always run with us.\" The thought was new. They had never talked about running with their families. It just always seemed like escaping was hard enough with just them two. To add more seemed to be asking for trouble.\n\nManny grunted. \"Slow us down more like. And then get us caught.\" Well, it appeared that they were of the same mind then. Not surprisingly. \"Sam.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We gonna run.\" Sam's words were more breath than noise, but he knew Manny heard him when he stiffened next to him.\n\n\"Sam.\"\n\n\"Ain't no better time than the present.\"\n\n\"Sam,\" Manny said again. His eyes were wide and blinking and he was sitting up straighter. \"I thought you wanted to wait until that man came through again. The one they told us about with the Ohio River and how they hang a quilt on the side to show they is in town...\"\n\nSam was slowly shaking his head. \"Don't have time for that.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Manny reached out, gripping Sam's arm so tight, Sam knew he would have bruises in the morning." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Manny's breath was releasing in quick, short bursts, his heart racing a mile a minute. Sam knew this for a fact, cause his own heart was pounding just as fast. \"How we gone know where to go?\"\n\n\"Follow the Drinkin' Gourd. It's goin' to be a clear night tonight. Did you realize that?\"\n\n\"Tonight?\" Manny's voice was high, almost shrill.\n\n\"Ohio River is north of us. We follow the stars, cain't help but run right into it. Don't need no conductor to tell me that.\"\n\n\"I'm gone be sick,\" Manny said, releasing Sam's arm and getting on all fours with his face almost to the ground, though nothing came out.\n\nSam felt his brow wrinkle." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You want to stay?\"\n\n\"No. I want to go so bad my stomach hurts. What's gone happen after we cross the Ohio? How we gone find a conductor? You know... like Caesar.\"\n\n\"Do I look like I've ever tried this before? I don't know.\" And there was the rub of it. They had no clue what happened on the other side of the Ohio River... which is why they had long ago agreed to wait for someone who did. Someone like Caesar, a man or a ghost some said who led slaves to freedom. But there was no Caesar.\n\nThey would be running with almost no money, very few clothes, and no food." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What was that Reverend Carlisle had said only this morning? It felt almost like Sam's visit to the church had been days ago. So much had changed in little time. Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? Ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? Yea there is no God. ; I know not any." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The verse had been in his mind ever since he had come to their tree to pray." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was just going to have to get those words deep in his heart." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Remember to mention: \"And we gone go tonight? That hardly gives us enough time to think.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And now. Before things got scary on the other side of the Ohio. Cause sure as shooting they would.\n\n\"Oh my dear Lord in heaven. Sam.\"\n\n\"Manny.\"\n\n\"And we gone go tonight? That hardly gives us enough time to think.\"\n\n\"It's all we been thinkin' 'bout for years. We're rested and we can go to bed tonight on a full stomach. Ain't no better time.\" It was his job, as Sam the brother of Manny, to sound like he knew what he was talking 'bout.\n\n\"You just got whipped two days ago.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Ain't no better time,\" Sam said stubbornly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even if his back still gave him a few twinges of pain." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But he had lived more than half of his life with some kind of ache or pain." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It had never stopped him before. It wouldn't stop him now.\n\n\"Don't you need to pray or somethin'? What's God think on all this?\"\n\nTurning only his head, Sam gave him a look. \"Oh, now you want to know what God thinks?\"\n\n\"If I'm 'bout to risk my life, I would very much like to know what He thinks. If He tells you we gonna meet soon, I'm going to stay my Negro butt right here, thank you very much.\"\n\nSometimes Sam didn't think anything Manny said could surprise him. And then he said something like that. \"I've been prayin'.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Match existing character familiarity or establish new\nLength:\none sentence\nGenre:\nWestern, People of Color" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura didn't tell Papa and her brothers about her conversation with Prince." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was no sense in worrying them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Either Prince told or he didn't." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Either he would help or he wouldn't." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Instead she took care of Missy Adora, sewed up Prince's two new coats in between dresses for Missy Charlotte's wedding, and did what she could to get them ready for running... including borrowing cloth to make them cloaks since there was still a bit of a chill in the air." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Miss Martha took inventory every five to six weeks." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Whether Prince drafted the freedom papers or not, they would be gone by that time." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was no sense in being discreet now." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When she had decided that she was running, she didn't know, though she knew it had a lot to do with what Annie would think about her if she stayed. And Mama. Stayed?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "To be a slave when there was a whole world out there?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was too bad that Laura had never had any desire whatsoever to see it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What do you think, Laura?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Missy Charlotte asked yet again, as she raised a burgundy silk gown against her chest." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura said nothing. She had learned a long time ago that for questions like these, Missy Charlotte didn't really want an answer. But." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura thought it was perfect." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was why Laura had suggested the color to Miss Martha." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With Missy Charlotte's dark hair and eyes, burgundy was the best color for the girl. Or young lady." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were the same age after all." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Laura, can I tell you something?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Missy Charlotte asked, her voice whispering as she turned to face Laura." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura blinked slowly in response because with sewing needles in her mouth and her hands steadily moving, she couldn't speak aloud." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And it kept her from doing what she wanted to do... which was roll her eyes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Missy Charlotte always had these urges to confess things." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And they were always to Laura." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She confessed to stealing a candy, kissing Pierce Lafayette, faking sick." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura supposed it was cause she felt she had to tell someone and someone who couldn't say nothing was perfect." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I don't think I want to marry Woodrow. But Papa... ,\" Missy Charlotte sighed, eyed herself in the mirror with the burgundy dress in hand and cheered up some." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This, Laura knew already." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Missy Charlotte could be about as fun as a fly at a picnic, but she wasn't no dummy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Woodrow was a dummy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura watched as Missy Charlotte's face fell again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You don't know what it's like, Laura, to live with all this pressure...\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Charlotte?\" Miss Martha was in the hall." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Here,\" the girl said quickly and placed the gown in her hand on the back of one of the chairs in the room before slipping into the hallway." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura heard Miss Martha and Missy Charlotte talking but ignored them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had so many clothes to sew she could hardly think." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Laura,\" Miss Martha said, entering the sewing room with all the command of a general." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She would have made a fine soldier, Mama had always said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura looked up from the lace she was furiously adding to one of Missy Charlotte's dresses and saw Miss Martha in the doorway with a skinny, dark-skinned girl next to her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura stopped sewing and took the needles out of her mouth." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This is Hagar. I'm borrowing her from Mrs. Harper. She's going to help you with your sewing for the next few weeks. You would be done now if Charlotte would stop changing her mind,\" Miss Martha said, her voice tired." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was the older sister of Massa Richard." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Tall and robust, she had outlived two husbands and three children." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When Missy Annabelle died, she had moved in to help Massa Richard take care of Massa William, Massa Logan, Missy Charlotte and Missy Adora." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was tough, but fair." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cause Laura remembered what unfair looked like." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Unfair looked like Miss Annabelle." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Unfair was high strung emotions that saw the boogeyman at every corner and made you pay." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura was no friend of Miss Martha's that was for sure, but she didn't mind her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was thoughts like these that reminded Laura why it would be a good thing to run." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sure everything was fine now." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But who was to say what things would be like later." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Now that she's here, hopefully we can get that trousseau done.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hopefully the girl didn't notice much and wasn't a tattler... after all, Laura couldn't blame all the delays on Missy Charlotte's inability to make a decision." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes'm,\" Laura said quietly and Miss Martha left." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The skinny girl, Hagar, didn't move from her spot." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Come, child. You can measure out the length of this lace for me,\" she said kindly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Hagar, her expression blank, came over and, following Laura's instructions began to measure and cut the lace." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Call me when you're done,\" Laura said and quietly left the room." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She looked both ways, up and down the hall." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had barely seen Prince since that day in the office." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It almost seemed as though he were hiding from her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Which would be highly unlikely for him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Prince ran from nothing." }, { "from": "system", "value": "⚠️ Required: Use 'laura' exactly 3 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Certain no one was in the hall, Laura checked all of his regular haunts: Massa Richard's office, the closet just outside Miss Martha's bedroom where he always pretended to be taking inventory, but Laura knew instead he listened in on Miss Martha's conversations, the wine cellar where he hid when he wanted to be alone, even his small bedroom, though Laura almost never saw him in there." }, { "from": "human", "value": "When she finally came to the conclusion that she wasn't going to catch him that day, she found him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In her sewing room." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Where's the girl? Hagar?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura asked, taking a small step into the room so as to not startle Prince." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Prince was rifling through her sewing kit, touching things, and rearranging things like always." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sent her to get something to eat. We need to talk. Close the door.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Miss Martha didn't like closed doors in Salis House." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Specially if only slaves was in the room with the door closed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But if Prince thought it was fine, then it was fine." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She closed the door behind her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He turned around and they stared at each other for one silent moment." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then he reached into his vest and pulled out several folded sheets of paper." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You get caught, I never wrote these.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No,\" Laura said, her heart racing as she walked up to him and held out her hand." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He moved his hand up, just out of her reach." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I mean it, Laura. I've already started leaving breadcrumbs for how you could have done this on your own. I will deny it and denounce you to your face.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura drew her hand back, squared her shoulders." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She didn't believe him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "About denouncing her. He would, however, deny it and deny it loudly. \"I understand.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He lowered his face, made sure to make eye contact with her before handing them to her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura didn't bother looking at them before folding them and slipping them down the front of her dress and into a pocket she had sewn into her chemise for purposes just like these." }, { "from": "human", "value": "When it came to being sneaky and underhanded, she trusted her older brother." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The papers were what he said they were." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Prince, who had looked away when she started adjusting her dress, looked back at her, his hazel eyes cold and lacking any warmth." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Leave in two days' time.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Why?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Master Richard and Master Will will be gone and you know how Fitzhugh gets when they aren't around.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fitzhugh, the overseer, believed that when the cat was away, the mice played." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Which meant he may or may not be sober if Massa Richard and Massa Will was gone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura gave one decisive nod." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She would go down to the cabin tonight and tell Papa and the boys." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Don't you ask Annie for any food and don't you tell her a thing.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But-,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Who are they going to go to first, Laura?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura bit her bottom lip, thinking." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You need food, I'll bring it. But leave Annie out of it. Miss Martha wants nothing more than to sell Noble and Venture from right under Annie. Don't give her a reason,\" Prince warned, staring down into Laura's sewing basket again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She watched him lean down, his fingers replacing her thimble with a spool of thread." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She looked up and saw the way his jaw clenched and unclenched as though it were an effort to hold back more words." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Annie—,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I've said all I'm going to say about Annie.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "His voice was clipped and his words were short." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Any other day, Laura would have ignored his strange mood and pushed him some more, but he had already done more than she would have expected." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She would leave him alone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I made your coats.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I know. I saw them on my bed. Amos have a route mapped out?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura shook her head slowly. \"I don't know.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Prince nodded towards her chest." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I folded one into your paper.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura clasped her hands together." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was starting to feel real." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Her leaving. His staying. \"Prince, you sure—,\"\n\n\"I'm sure,\" he said and with that he stepped around her and left the room." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Story continues from larger narrative, characters/lore may lack introduction\nLength:\n8 sentences\nStyle:\nEmbassie Susberry" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You told Prince?\" Benji asked, spoon hovering in the air, inches from his mouth." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura watched as rice slid off the utensil and back onto his plate. \"That was a fool thing to do,\" he said before stuffing his face. Then he glanced over at Papa to make sure he agreed.\n\nLaura, sitting once again at the head of the table, too looked over at Papa to see what he thought. But first she straightened her shoulders and lifted her head. He had asked for her help and she had done what she thought best. When her gaze met Papa's, his eyes held that hint of amusement that always seemed to linger when he looked at her.\n\n\"If Prince was goin' to say somethin' he'd a said it by now.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was a time that Papa had known Prince just as well as Laura if not more so." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He had jumped the broom with Mama when Prince was not even a year old." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Prince had called Papa, papa for years." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Until he didn't. He had slept in their cabin for years. Until he wouldn't." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It had about broke Mama's heart." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But he didn't come back." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Benji barely remembered him while Sol and Gid only knew him by sight. Mama and Laura was the only ones who actually talked to him. And when she left, she would never talk to him again. She exhaled, her gaze on the table before her. She hadn't realized that she would miss Prince too. Even with all of his shady ways, he would always be the one who had patiently taught her her letters and where all the best hiding spots were in Salis House. Her throat tightened up for a second and she swallowed heavily to relieve the pain.\n\n\"You ask him to come?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Papa asked, seeing into her like he always done.\n\nBenji scoffed. \"Ain't no way that pretty boy would dirty his fingers with the likes of us.\"\n\nLaura ignored him. \"I asked. He's not comin'.\"\n\n\"Did you think he would?\"\n\n\"That's enough, Benji,\" Papa said, before returning his gaze to his plate. \"He's still your kin.\"\n\n\"No kin of mine,\" Benji muttered, always having to have the last word.\n\n\"How come he won't come?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Gideon asked, his voice small as he tapped his spoon against his empty plate." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He always ate fast as though fearful someone else would eat off his plate if he didn't hurry." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Course Laura had seen Sol and Benji do just that at times, so maybe he had the right of it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Cause he think he's free,\" Benji answered, looking down at his spoon. \"And he's in for one surefire of an awakenin'.\"\n\n\"He doesn't think he's free,\" Laura said sharply, eyeing Benji. Benji who thought he knew everything but had spent most of his life in the smithy hiding behind Papa. \"You don't know him. So leave it be.\"\n\nBenji looked over at her and rolled his eyes so she couldn't miss it.\n\n\"Enough,\" Papa said, his voice quiet. \"We're leavin' in two days, like Prince suggested.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I made cloaks for everyone,\" Laura said tiredly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And she was tired." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was literally working to the bone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her fingers were numb." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Prince said he's goin' to sneak us out some food.\"\n\n\"Why not Annie?\" Solomon asked and then flushed. Laura could tell even with his dark skin. Like every other boy over the age of twelve, Sol was half in love with Annie. All she had to do was smile in his direction and he was stumbling over his feet. And he wasn't near as bad as Benji who couldn't hardly talk in her presence.\n\n\"Cause it's best to leave Annie out of this. She knows we're leavin' and that we're leavin' soon, but she doesn't need to know the details.\"\n\nGideon sighed. \"I'm goin' to miss Noble and Venture.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We gonna miss a lot of folks,\" Papa said quietly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But we've got to make up our minds this is it. We're goin' all the way. No lookin' back,\" he said, making sure to meet the gaze of all of his children." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura could only hold his gaze for a few seconds.\n\n\"Get the bag,\" Papa said with a nod to Sol. Sol left the table and went over the floor. He dug up several boards and then hefted an old, worn bag onto the table. It was Mama's bag. Without anyone telling him too, Sol emptied the bag onto the table. The first thing that fell out was soap, and then tooth powder, combs and brushes and a small sewing kit. There was a small knife, a set of matches, willow bark for tea, and a small bottle of whiskey." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Their own, crude source for doctoring." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your response should contain the word 'laura' precisely 3 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura sent a quick prayer to the Lord that none of it would be necessary. Last to fall out was a small book of Psalms. Prince had got it for Mama a couple years back. Laura never did have any time to read through it herself cause when Mama was alive she kept it on her person always and when she died, Papa had taken it. Every now and then he would pull it out and have Laura read a Psalm or two. Papa reached for the small book and opened it. Nestled in its pages were more than a few dollars. But he ignored the bills and kept turning the pages until he found a small, folded sheet of paper." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He handed it to Laura." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Mama and I always was thinkin' about what our family should be called,\" he said, his voice gruff as Laura unfolded the little paper. \"She wrote down a couple of ideas there,\" he said, nodding at what Laura had in her hand.\n\n\"Smith,\" Laura said, reading the first one.\n\n\"Cause I'm a blacksmith, but not everyone in our family gone work in a smithy. What's the next one say?\"\n\n\"Salis.\"\n\n\"Cause we was all born here, but I think we should start over. Leave the past in the past,\" Papa said, once again, meeting all of their eyes. \"Next one.\"\n\n\"Guy,\" Laura read slowly.\n\n\"That be my daddy's name,\" Papa said slowly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He came from Africa himself,\" Papa said, biting his lip as though deciding if he wanted to say more about the man. Laura didn't know much about Papa Guy. He had died before Papa and Mama even married. But she knew his end hadn't been a happy one. Mama had always hushed her from asking questions. \"Read the last one.\"\n\n\"Altan.\"\n\n\"Mama found that one. She was in the store with Miss Annabelle and met a man from some... other country.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Papa placed a hand on the table." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 5 sentences." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory: Your text must contain 'altan' 6 times exactly" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The man told Miss Annabelle his name was Altan and it meant red dawn. I always remembered that cause 'red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in morning, sailor's warnin'.\"\n\n\"So, a red dawn is a bad thing?\" Gideon asked, leaning forward.\n\n\"It just means rain's a comin'. And I like that idea, of being a family where somethin' is always comin' down the line. You don't have to be afraid of it none cause rain is good thing. Rain brings life and the hope of tomorrow. It's a blessin' after a season of drought. And there's nothin' drier than bein' a slave. Can't grow for nothin'. But with rain,\" Papa said, shaking his head, a small smile playing on his lips. \"That's the one, Mama and I settled on. We ain't gone be Amos, Benjamin, Laura, Solomon and Gideon of Salis House no mo'. Leave that drought-thinkin' here with all the salt that soaked up the waters of our freedom. In two days' time we gone be Amos Altan, Benjamin Altan, Laura Altan, Solomon Altan and Gideon Altan. We're startin' a new day, a new beginnin', a red dawn.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Story continues from larger narrative, characters/lore may lack introduction\nLength:\n8 sentences\nStyle:\nEmbassie Susberry" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'reverend' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam hadn't always had his eye on freedom and he certainly hadn't always thought that running away was the only way to get that freedom. As a boy, working on Reverend Baptiste's small farm with his brother and his mama, life had been just fine. They had had they own small house that Mama kept clean and in order when she wasn't over at the Reverend and Missy Sarah's house, cooking and cleaning and looking after they young'uns. Sam and Manny had done all the extra work, especially the outside work like cleaning the stables and fetching things. They had never had a father. Least not one Sam could ever remember. He had asked his mama once, but she had just hushed him. Now, a grown man, Sam figured either he was sold, or they was sold, or he had just plain run off." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It didn't matter much the way of it, the fact of the matter was that he was gone." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But as a boy, Sam ain't think on freedom too much. He had food in his belly, a roof over his head, he and Manny and Mama was treated just fine. There was never any reason or any sense in thinking 'bout leaving. Least not for him. Manny had got bit by the freedom bug early on when Reverend Baptiste had first read them the story of Jonah and the whale. After the story was over, Manny wanted to know how come he had never been on a ship? Reverend Baptiste had said cause he was a slave and was always gone be a slave and there wasn't never going to be a ship for Manny. But anyone who knew Manny should have known better than to tell him what he wasn't gone do." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Manny took that as a challenge and became obsessed with ships and sailing and the water." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It wasn't a hard thing to do considering they could smell the Potomac outside they window every morning. Whenever they was sent to town to fetch something, Sam would always do the fetching so Manny could talk to the sailors. Manny would hear they stories, store them deep in his heart like Sam did the Word of God, and retell all he had heard in whispers to Sam at night.\n\nManny started to dream. Sam could have cared less about traveling and leaving. He liked life just the way it was. But if Manny wanted to leave, well, then they was going to think about leaving. They talked to they mama 'bout it and she had told them they would have to buy they own freedom first, so they started saving as much as they possibly could." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A little here, a little there." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Ensure 'remembered' appears 2 time(s) in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They would take turns doing things for the white men in they town whenever they had extra time like shining shoes and fetching papers... anything to get an extra penny.\n\nThey hadn't saved much when Missy Sarah died. Reverend Baptiste, overcome with grief, decided to leave his flock in Virginia... decided to go back home to his family in Georgia... decided to sell his few slaves for the money they would bring. And life as Sam had known it became for the first time ever, uncertain.\n\nSam barely remembered the auction block. But what he did remember, he remembered in vivid details. The stench of unwashed bodies, acrid fear, and overwhelming grief that permeated the air. It was so bad, Sam would have sworn that for months afterwards that he tasted it on his tongue." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His mama had held his and Manny's hands, praying all the while under her tongue." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Reverend Baptiste had said he would try and sell them as a family, but Sam had felt his mama's distress in their small cabin every night leading up to the auction. They had, all three of them, slept in the bed together the week before: Mama, Manny, and Sam in the middle.\n\nThey were placed in a shed that day—and it was only one day cause Sam and Manny had been sold the very first day—and inspected like cattle. Mama more so than them. Some men had pulled open their mouths to look at their teeth or pinched their arms to see if they were weak, but most seemed to tell on sight that he and Manny were as healthy as could be. It was Mama, they poked and prodded at while Sam and Manny had to look away. He had always wondered what they saw when they took in the thin, small, woman that he had loved fiercely. It was the first time, Sam remembered ever being enraged." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He had remembered wondering, when he had first heard the story of Samson, what must have gone through Samson's mind that he could kill so many people and keep on kicking." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In that moment, Sam had known. Had he been strong enough he would have grabbed something himself and tore a hole through everybody. Instead, he pushed his anger down deep and tried to ignore what was happening around him. It was an exercise that Sam had now become all too familiar with, this feeling of being cutoff at the knees. What it felt like to stand tall, he just didn't know.\n\nBeing at that auction was a moment that lived on in Sam's nightmares in random flashes whenever he had the misfortune of not falling onto his cot exhausted. But mostly the events of that day were like something that had happened to someone else cause it was not a memory Sam liked to pull out and look at with any great detail.\n\nWhat he did remember was that he, Manny, and Mama were led to an auction block, and Sam remembered still, the faces of the white men smoking cigars, laughing, and drinking as they bid on him and his brother." }, { "from": "human", "value": "At first, Sam had thought they had all been bought together." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But when they was taken off the stand, and Mama was not, it became quite clear that someone else could and would buy her. And someone else had. When it was time to part, Sam remembered crying, though Manny had sobbed the hardest.\n\n\"You always been softer than you should be,\" his mama had said, brushing at his face and Manny's. If it was one thing Sam wished he could change from that day other than the obvious, it would be the crying. He had cried so hard his last sight of his mama was a blurry one. If he could go back, he wouldn't cry. He would just look at her, take her in so that more than a decade later he would be able to remember more than just how thin and small she was." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm just glad,\" she had started, her own voice breaking." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word frequency rule: 'don't' × 3" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had pulled them in for a hug, he and Manny each holding her tighter than can be. \"You two take care of each other, you hear? Best you can.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mama,\" they had both said.\n\n\"No fightin'. Don't ever look back for me. You make it to freedom, don't come lookin' for me,\" she had whispered hard in their ears. \"Especially you, Sam,\" she had said, wiping his face. \"I know you, you would come back.\" She turned to Manny. \"Don't you let him come back. You ain't the oldest, but you keep an eye on him. I know you feel weak, but when you be weak, then you be strong. Take care—,\" she had never finished that sentence cause some white man had jerked her away out of they arms and they lives forever." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Don't ever look back for me,\" she had called out one last time." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And through his grief and his rage, the first seeds of running away were planted.\n\nAnd though the seeds took root, and though they started to grow over the years, it wasn't until Sam and Manny began hearing the hushed name of Caesar in the past year that they had begun making plans. Caesar was a Negro man wanted in twelve states they said. When he showed up, whole plantations were emptied, though Sam and Manny had a hard time believing that. But what they did believe was that he knew his way north, he had never been caught before, and he had never lost a passenger. Caesar had come through they town once before, but Sam and Manny had taken too much time deliberating. It was only when the quilt was gone from Miss Tenny's house that they knew they had made a mistake. They had checked every chance they could get for any sign of the famous conductor." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But he had not come back." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And now they were on their own." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Story continues from larger narrative, characters/lore may lack introduction\nLength:\nfive sentences\nStyle:\nEmbassie Susberry" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They had tried to sleep at least for a few hours. The Ohio River was a good two days away, maybe three. This Sam knew from overhearing conversations Molloy had had with other overseers. And that was if you had a horse to carry you. There was a good chance they would be getting no sleep until they reached that body of water, this Sam knew." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So he had closed his eyes tightly and tried to will his body to relax." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It never happened. And by the way Manny was breathing next to him, it hadn't happened for him either. And now it was time.\n\nHe felt Manny reach over and tap a finger lightly on his hand. It had always been their signal to pay attention. Sam didn't move as Manny quietly got up and walked out of the cabin as though he were going to the outhouse." }, { "from": "human", "value": "When the door closed shut behind his brother, Sam lifted his body up, and slung their bag onto his stomach." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They had slept on it—or rather tried to sleep on it. Everything was in it except for the blanket. It was just too big. Manny had wrapped it tight and found some string. He was going to tie it across his back and they would hope for the best." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If they lost it, they lost it.\n\nSam counted, far as he could which he didn't really think was all that far. So he did it again. And again. And then quietly stood up, bag in hand, and walked out of the cabin. When he got outside, he exhaled, placed a hand over his heart. This was nothing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If he was anxious now, how would he be hours from now when he knew Molloy and the paddy rollers and the dogs was after him?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sam.\" His name carried like a gentle whisper from the cabin next to him.\n\nHe had been in the midst of stepping down from the small porch when the sound of his name reached him and he almost fell over sideways. Which was silly. As of right now, he wasn't doing nothing wrong.\n\n\"Sam.\"\n\nSam turned and lowered his and Manny's freedom bag to the ground." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If anyone caught sight of that, they might guess what he and his brother were up to in the middle of the night." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam walked slowly over to the cabin nearest to the one he had called home for nigh unto ten years. Ole Mose sat on the porch, barely discernible dying embers sitting in the pipe he had in his hand. In the brightness of the night, they could see each other quite clearly.\n\n\"How you know it's me?\" Sam's voice was small, quiet." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ole Mose grunted. \"Always know it's you Sam. Not that hard.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They continued to stare at each other and Sam shifted a bit. Manny was going to be worried. And angry. He wouldn't like that Sam had told Ole Mose they was leaving. But the man had helped them when they first arrived in Kentucky. The least Sam could do was tell him they was leaving." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam opened his mouth to speak, but Old Mose beat him to it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"When I was a boy,\" Ole Mose said slowly, his voice gravelly and low. \"And I found out my ole Massa was gone sell me, I decided to take somethin' from 'im. If I was gone suffer, he was gone suffer too. And all these years I tole myself that when I made it to freedom it was gone be my nesting egg. Gone start me on my way. And here I am, twenty years later, still sittin' on it. I'm not gonna die, still sittin' on it.\" Ole Mose reached out a hand and Sam, out of reflex, took what he had. A small bag. It jangled. And the sound made Sam flinch even as he realized what he was holding." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Twenty dollars. In gold. Buy you your own farm. Make that lazy brother of yours help you work it.\"\n\n\"Manny's not lazy,\" Sam said by rote cause he would defend his brother always. And Manny wasn't lazy. But when folks compared them, Manny always seemed the more idle of the two when in actuality he always did exactly what he was supposed to do. But none of that had anything to do with what Ole Mose had said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Twenty dollars? Had he said twenty dollars?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A smile crossed the old man's lips. \"You a good man, Sam. Find you a good woman. Have your own. I would tell you to keep all that money to yourself, but I know you, Sam.\"\n\nSam again opened his mouth, closed it; his throat so tight with emotion he could barely speak. \"Twenty dollars?\" Sam's voice was high. The amount of the money just hitting him. This changed... everything." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam suddenly felt like he was taller, stronger, braver." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Make sure to use 'something' 2 time(s) throughout your message" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He wasn't free yet, but now he finally had something. Something of worth. This feeling... it must be what it was like to be born free. If... when he and Manny made it to the other side, the possibilities would be endless.\n\n\"My ole Massa searched for years for that money. Years. Well up until the day he died.\" Bitter humor tinged Ole Mose's voice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You coulda bought yoself. Freed yoself.\" Maybe not right away. But certainly after the man was dead. He and Manny would have done it in a second.\n\nOle Mose gave a half-shrug." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Some people,\" he said slowly." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Some people.\" He stopped again. \"I know I said I was thinkin' 'bout my freedom when I took that money, but that's not true. I...\" Ole Mose's chin quivered. \"Just take it, Sam. Do somethin' with it. And if God is good, and in spite of everythin' I know He is, I'll never see you again in this life.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "hey can u write 6 sentences more sentences? like Embassie Susberry but Western, People of Color style. btw this is from middle of a story" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They didn't sleep. And they didn't talk neither. The five of them, wearing their new cloaks, were sitting with their backs against the wall of the cabin house. Laura was sandwiched between Sol and Gid. Even though both boys were just about her height, both of them lay with their heads on her shoulders. She alternately moved her head from side to side touching them gently. They each had their own fraudulently drafted free papers, tucked in the pockets of their clothes. The papers." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura had waited to look at them until she came to the cabin." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When she had finally read them, she had been confused. The names on the papers were not their own. The owners on the paper were Massa Richard's cousins. But when she had told Papa, he had shaken his head and muttered that Prince was 'too smart for his own good'. She had handed each of her brother's the papers that seemed to be theirs. Gideon had beamed when he slid his papers into a slit in his pants and declared that having a sister who could sew was really just the best thing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was a sweet boy. She was beginning to see that now.\n\nPapa and Benji were carrying their bags. Laura didn't know when Prince had found the time or how he had procured the food, but Sol and Gid said that the first thing they saw when they got back from working in the coal mine was a bag filled with bread, cheese, and meat. It was enough food to last them a week if they were careful. Papa and Benji had split the food and split the money and Laura pretended not to know that it was just in case they themselves were split up." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cause if they were split up...\n\nLaura bounced her thoughts to a different topic. Annie. Noble. Venture. She hadn't told Annie they were leaving, but she had gotten up early, leaving Missy Adora sleep in her room that morning. She had walked down to the slave quarters to Annie's cabin. She had helped Annie get her small boys dressed and fed that morning, holding their sweet, wiggling bodies against her as tightly as they would allow." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And when Ma Dovie had come to collect the boys and walk them to Essie's cabin for watching, Annie had slipped her arm through Laura's and they had walked back to Salis House together. In silence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura felt a tear slide down her face. Annie was the closest thing to a sister she had ever had and Noble and Venture were almost like her own babies. She let out a shuddering sigh.\n\nMissy Adora had still been sleep when Laura slid back in her room. But soon they were reading the Psalm of the day and chatting like usual. At least Missy Adora was chatting." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura wasn't able to say a word." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura wasn't stupid. Theirs was not a relationship of equals. Not like what she had with Noble and Venture who she could hug and kiss anytime and pop them on their bottoms at other times. But she had known Missy Adora all her life and...\n\nShe needed something else to think about. Like Ma Dovie and Essie? Susan and Atlas? Charity, Faith, and Hope?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura tapped the wall with the back of her head. Prince? Who had avoided her all day so that she hadn't had a chance to say goodbye? She shut that thought down right away.\n\n\"It's time.\" Papa's voice was barely a whisper, but they all got up. \"One at a time now. Slowly. A slow slave is 'bout they business. A fast one is in trouble.\" One by one they slipped out of the cabin, taking care to make sure they weren't seen." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They met up in the far pasture walking swiftly in the darkness." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But it was not difficult." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The sky was clear and the stars and moon were bright. They would enjoy it while they could, cause when they reached the end of Massa Richard's land, they would be heading straight for the forest.\n\nLaura tried not to think about all, about who, she was leaving behind, but all she had were her thoughts and she was so lost in them she almost missed the figure that was sitting on the fence.\n\n\"Lord a mercy,\" Papa said quietly, coming to a stop as the shape unraveled itself. Prince.\n\n\"Prince!\" Laura said and surged forward, past Papa, past her brothers, but then stopped at the scowl on Prince's face as his feet hit the ground. \"You comin'?\"\n\n\"I told you I wasn't.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Then why...\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Patrollers. Coming from that way.\" Laura's heart sank. They were out already. It didn't matter none that Massa Richard and Massa Will was gone. \"Least that's what I heard. If you walk all the way down, it'll get dicey. Best to cross here.\"\n\nPapa, Benji, Sol, and Gid reached them in time to hear him. Papa let out a rough exhale, took a step forward, and placed a hand on Prince's shoulder." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'prince' × 5" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura couldn't stop her own wince when Prince flinched. Prince hated to be touched. By anyone. Except Mama.\n\n\"Son,\" Papa said and Prince flinched again. \"I was right outside the cabin when your mama brought you into this world; when she named you Prentiss and Massa Richard changed it to Prince as though you were some kind of... horse.\" Dog. That's what Papa used to mumble whenever he talked about Prince to Mama." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You slept between us every night til you could walk.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His voice was low, and Laura didn't have to see his face to know his gaze was piercing. She did shoot a glance at Prince. Prince was looking away, either unwilling or unable to meet Papa's gaze. \"I've always, always, considered you to be my firstborn,\" Papa said, his voice wavering slightly as his hand hesitantly reached up as though to touch Prince's hair, but then rejected the idea. His hand settled back down on Prince's stiff shoulder. \"When you find what you're lookin' for Prentiss, we'll be waitin'.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Papa took a step back and then hefted his large body over the fence and disappeared on the other side of the road." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Benji took one look at Prince, sniffed, and did the same. Prince rolled his eyes. Had the two of them ever been close before? For the first time, Laura wondered. Cause Prince had always seemed to belong just to her and Mama.\n\nSol took a step forward." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Thanks for helpin' us, Prince.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Gideon reached out and pressed his hand against Prince's sleeve, ignoring the way Prince almost jerked back. \"I like you just fine.\" And then those two were gone.\n\nPrince folded his arms over his chest, his jaw clenched, his eyes on the ground. Finally, he looked up. \"What are you waiting for? You ain't got all night.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura opened her mouth." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm a tell you what I know Annie told you. If you're thinking about staying, you're a bigger fool than I thought.\"\n\n\"She didn't say that.\" Though she had said something similar. Laura took a step closer to her brother. \"You make a hole in the kitchen wall so you could listen in?\"\n\nPrince looked down at her with such an expression of disgust that if Laura didn't know any better she would think he would be appalled at being called out for being a sneak." }, { "from": "human", "value": "When she didn't look away, his scowl turned into a smirk." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Too obvious. Anyone could see me. I just know she would leave if she could. You go on. Life is good for you now, but there's no promise it will be in the future.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I could just as easily say the same for you.\"\n\nPrince tilted his head to the side. \"Don't you worry about me. I can take care of myself.\"\n\nShe would never not worry about him. Even when he made her madder than a hornet she never forgot that he was her big brother. He was not her friend." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was not her confidant, and quite frankly, she didn't like him half the time." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But after Mama died, he was the family member she loved the most. \"You don't have to. If you come with us.\"\n\n\"Laura.\"\n\n\"Mama said—,\"\n\n\"Mama's dead,\" he said flatly. But Laura wasn't fooled into thinking that her death hadn't bothered him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had found him sobbing in a corner the day Mama died." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include exactly 2 instance(s) of the word 'hands'" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Stop living for a dead woman and live for yourself.\"\n\n\"Prince.\"\n\n\"Laura!\" he hissed, disentangling his arms and making his hands into fists. With a deep breath, he took a step forward and in a move, totally uncharacteristic of him, he placed his hands on the sides of her face. Tears slid down her cheeks and she could see them glistening in his own eyes. \"Go. And for goodness' sake, don't look back.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And then he pulled her in for a very tight, very quick hug before pushing her toward the fence.\n\nShe stumbled for a second. \"Would you have let Sol and Gid be sold?\"\n\n\"Laura,\" he groaned quietly. Then he sighed. \"Yes.\" His answer hung in the air for a second." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But I had already arranged for them to be sold to the Osbornes.\" Their neighbors. Good people as far as masters were concerned. \"Just. Go.\"\n\nLaura climbed over the fence. Paused. \"I love you, Prentiss.\" Laura hesitated for a quick second, unsure as to why she had used that name. She never called Prince, Prentiss.\n\nShe did not wait for his reply because she knew she wouldn't get one." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "expand on the story like Embassie Susberry would. btw might have existing characters/lore" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It became quite clear to Laura, after what felt like days of walking through the Virginia forest but was probably more like five or six hours, that Papa knew this land. Intimately. The paths they walked seemed clear of fallen trees and large rocks and just when thirst seemed like it would swallow her whole, he always knew where to stop and get refreshed. It was after the second time that they stopped that she realized it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Nothing about this was a surprise to him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And just how was that possible? And just how had Mama known that?\n\nShe tripped. Fell." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her wrists and knees taking most of her weight." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Any other day she would have stayed down, got her breath back in her body. But today or that night rather, she stood back up and brushed at her skirts ignoring the shoots of pain because if she focused on her wrists or her knees, she might also start thinking about her toes. She was sure blisters had formed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Gideon, an hour or so back, had told her it would be better if she took her shoes off and walked barefoot like them, but Laura knew that wasn't so. She never walked around barefoot. Miss Martha hated the sight of toes. Especially slave toes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura had worn a pair of shoes every day of her life she could remember. Sturdy shoes. Not ones made of kid and silk like Missy Charlotte and Missy Adora, but black leather shoes that could last for years. At least Laura had once thought so." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Now she wasn't so sure. But she still wouldn't take them off. It was far more startling to take them off and step on the grass or dip them in water." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If she went barefoot now, it would take mere seconds for the ground to cut up her feet and she would be in a worse condition then." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So she kept her shoes on and tried to ignore the wetness in her stockings that came not from sweat but from blood.\n\nThe sound of the familiar clear sound of a warbler made Laura stop and reach out for the tree nearest her. Warblers sang at night?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But when she looked up, it was just Papa. Whistling.\n\n\"Yes?\" Benji's voice was low. Laura couldn't see him, but she knew he and the boys weren't that much far ahead." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You know where to go?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Papa's voice was quiet, just above a whisper." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes,\" Benji said firmly as he stepped into viewing, Sol and Gid alongside him. It was a clear night, not a cloud in the sky. Laura had no problem making out Papa on her left and her brothers on her right." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Take Gid and Sol and go.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura stiffened, forced herself to stand up straight. She had kept up. She may have fallen a few times and she certainly didn't move as fast, but she had never stopped moving unless Papa stopped them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Benji slid his eyes over to Laura, saying nothing though his question was loud." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We'll catch up. But you go on.\" Papa's voice broke no argument.\n\n\"Papa,\" Gid started, taking a step forward." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Go.\"\n\nBenji sent her a look that was too familiar. And while Laura could take it from Prince, she never took it from Benji." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She made a face back. Benji grabbed the backs of Gid and Sol's cloaks and the three of them took off in the night faster than Laura had ever seen them move before. Well. She had been holding them back." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Come on,\" Papa said and motioned for her to move ahead of him.\n\nShame. Embarrassment. Frustration. Laura fought all of three of the emotions as she moved forward." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If they were caught... if something happened... her fault.\n\n\"No shame,\" Papa said, reading her mind like he somehow always managed too. \"You wasn't raised for this. You was raised to be a lady.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Not hardly,\" Laura spat out as she stomped forward and angrily swiped a hanging branch out of her face.\n\n\"It's hard for you now. But it'll be hard for us later. And we'll need you then. Just like you need us now. There's no shame in needin' others, baby girl.\"\n\nLaura gritted her teeth." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He always had an answer." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Always kind. Always patient." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Always making Laura feel guilty about things she couldn't change." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This man was a stranger and yet he acted like he knew her inside and out. \"Just tell me where to go. I'll find it by myself.\"\n\nPapa didn't respond and she wasn't sure he had even heard her when he finally said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Nothin' on this earth would make me leave my little girl.\"\n\nLaura grunted and said nothing as together they moved as quick as she could up the small path, Papa just behind her, catching her every time she tripped over something.\n\nWhen he reached out to grab her again, she started to pull her arm out of his grip." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had not almost fallen that time. \"Papa—,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Instead of loosening his grip, it tightened. The look on his face when she turned to speak, made her freeze. It was a look she had never seen on his face before." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 4 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fear. \"Listen,\" his voice was barely a whisper.\n\nBut she held her breath, didn't move. And then she heard it. The sound of barking. Dogs." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "hey can u write 6 sentences more sentences? like Embassie Susberry but Western, People of Color style. btw this is from middle of a story" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How did you know about this place?\" Sam whispered to his brother. They were sitting with their backs against a wall in a cellar in the very back where light didn't reach. They had run for miles, and then walked swiftly for miles, and then when the stars started winking out of the sky, realized they needed to find a place to hide during the day. Two darkies travelling in the light of day without a pass would get them sent right back to Massa Charles.\n\n\"I remembered it. Molloy loaned me and Abram out to the Langfords three summers ago. Remember?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yeah.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I caught sight of Mrs. Langford comin' out of here one time.\"\n\n\"Good thinkin', Manny.\"\n\n\"Still cain't believe Ole Mose gave you twenty dollars. Cain't hardly believe he even had twenty dollars,\" Manny muttered to himself. Sam had told him when he had caught up with him.\n\n\"Yeah, God's been good to us, Manny.\"\n\nManny grunted. \"If we at the Langfords, then we 'bout two day from the Ohio.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sounds about right,\" Sam said slowly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was tired. Dead tired. But just thinking about the many miles they had left to close between them and the river Jordan sent his heart racing. And he had a hard time sleeping if his heart was racing.\n\n\"Two days. And then freedom,\" Manny said uncharacteristically optimistic. Because they had both seen and heard about slaves crossing the Ohio only to be returned. But Sam wasn't going to dwell on that." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Manny closed his eyes and rested his head against Sam's shoulder." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Snores followed in seconds. They had agreed to take shifts. Manny would sleep first shift and Sam second. Sam laid his own head back against the wall, yawning so wide it felt like his jaws snapped for a second. It had been a long night to be sure.\n\nSam cast his thoughts back to only hours earlier, running fast, pushing his body hard." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Seemed like he had always pushed his body hard, but there was just something about knowing that this time it was for him and that made it all the while sweeter." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He felt his body began to relax, his blood no longer humming. It seemed as good a time as any to pray, to seek God. If there was any time he could use direction it was now." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "yo next 12 sentences bits needed. Embassie Susberry style, Western, People of Color genre. this is from a bigger story k?" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam came awake quickly, but slowly, first unsure of where he was and then feeling a shoot of fear race down his spine. He was on the run. And he had fallen asleep. He sat up straight, looked down, Manny was curled around a bag of potatoes, still snoring. What had woken him?\n\n\"Alright, Mama,\" a small voice called from above. The cellar's covering jerked. For the second time. It was the first time that had awoken him. Sam placed a hand over his brother's mouth and shook him. When Manny turned startled eyes in his direction, he placed a finger over his own mouth, and then the cellar lid lifted. Manny scooted as far back as he could into a dark corner, pulling Sam alongside him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They both pulled their legs in, tucking them tight against themselves." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In an effort to keep from moving, Sam dug his fingers into his calves.\n\nSam, who had been cool, almost cold a few moments ago, felt sweat beginning to emerge all over his body as the white girl walked slowly down the ladder, a basket swinging off of her arm. Had his breathing always been so loud? Sam switched between breathing out of his nose to out of his mouth, not certain which one was quieter. He felt Manny's iron grip on his arm, and knew his skin was bruising. But he didn't move. Don't see us. Lord, don't let her see us.\n\nThe girl hummed to herself as she ran her fingers along the jars of preserves tucked on the shelves of the cellar. Each note of whatever song she was thinking about was like a needle in his skin.\n\nJust make it stop, God. Lord, don't let her want anything over here, Lord Jesus.\n\nFinally, after what felt like hours, she made a sound of excitement, grabbed several jars of something, and headed back up the ladder." }, { "from": "human", "value": "When the cellar door closed and they could hear her chattering voice begin to dim, Manny let out a rough breath." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That was... that was... ,\"\n\nSam closed his eyes tight, his fingers still digging into his legs.\n\n\"Did you fall asleep?\" Manny asked, his voice stiff with accusation in the darkness.\n\n\"I didn't mean to.\" His voice was laced with tight apology. He could have gotten them both caught. Killed.\n\nManny yawned in response. \"The important thing is you woke up in time.\" Manny's hand gripped Sam's shoulder. \"Let it go. I'd rather be in this cellar knowin' you have my back than anyone else.\"\n\nSam's shoulders dropped. Manny could sure be a pain, but he always knew the right thing to say when Sam was upset." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Your turn to sleep anyway.\" Manny stood up slowly, stretching and yawning again. \"I'm goin' to find us somethin' to eat.\"\n\nSam woke again, several hours later to Manny's gentle shoving. He blinked, his eyes adjusting to the dark. Before, little slivers of light had found cracks in the cellar door so that they weren't completely immersed in darkness. Now, Sam could barely see the hand in front of his face.\n\n\"Eat this. It's 'bout time to go,\" Manny said quietly, sliding a jar of something cool in Sam's hands. The top was already off and Sam could smell apples. He stuck his fingers in the jar, sinking his hands into the cold liquid and scooping the small pieces of apple out and into his mouth. He downed the jar fast and then drank the juice that was left in the jar. Manny had a second jar in his hand before his first one hit the ground." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Do you want peppers or beans? Either way it might sit funny on your stomach, but we got maybe two days till we reach the river and we got to eat somethin'.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: Your response must contain: \"There are some clouds, but the sky is still clear enough to see what we need to see.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam said nothing and reached for what looked like the green beans. \"There are some clouds, but the sky is still clear enough to see what we need to see.\"\n\n\"You checked?\" Sam asked around his bites of the beans.\n\n\"Yeah. I was careful though. Lights are out in the house. Hopefully everyone sleep out there.\"\n\nSam finished his quick meal of apples and green beans, which actually didn't feel too bad in his stomach. What felt bad was how much he had to pee.\n\n\"You ready, big brother?\"\n\n\"I'm ready,\" Sam said, standing slowly and stretching like he had seen Manny do. He reached down and grabbed their bag, started moving stuff around.\n\n\"What are you doin'?\"\n\n\"Stealin'...\"\n\n\"Boy, you sometimes is crazy. You bet not give them one thing. Not one! Sides, I worked here for them for free.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"They probably paid Massa Charles...\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Massa Charles work out here? He sweat out here? No. I did. Far as I'm concerned, all these jars mine,\" Manny hissed across the darkness of the cellar. He grabbed the rolled up blanket that they had not used and began to climb the ladder. Sam stuck his hand in his bag. It wasn't like he was going to give them much. He fingered a few of the coins he and Manny had managed to save up before Ole Mose had given them his money and he placed them in an empty spot on the shelf. He was no thief. Though the thought had him snorting. He supposed in some ways he was a thief. After all, he was stealing himself. He adjusted the bag so that it was out of his way, and then climbed the ladder and into the darkness.\n\nThey spent another night running. He should have been more tired, Sam thought, with the wind racing past his face." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But there was something on the inside of him, that wouldn't let him rest." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Thank the good Lord.\n\nThey spent the next morning on the ground of the forest, tucked under a tree. Manny had slipped a few more jars of preserves in Sam's bag, and they feasted on pickled squash. It was not Sam's favorite, but he wasn't hardly going to complain. And with all the energy they had lost running, it had actually tasted better than he had thought.\n\nWhen it got so dark, the only light was the sliver of moon in the sky, they slid from under the tree and ran again. When they began to smell the water in the air, Sam felt as though his heart just might burst.\n\n\"We close,\" Manny said excitedly, barely panting as he ran alongside him. Sam could see a flash of his teeth in the darkness.\n\nSam started to reply when he heard a familiar voice call out in the darkness.\n\n\"Sam! Manny! That you?\"\n\nSam came to a stop, his heart pounding so hard he almost placed a hand over it in case it tried to leave his chest." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh my God,\" Manny said from next to him, coming to a stop." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A few feet away, lantern in hand was Molloy, and several other men that Sam recognized as paddy rollers. Horses were standing quietly, nibbling on the grass before them. Sam's eyes darted over to the tents and the men sitting and drinking. He sniffed and smelled the scent of a fire just freshly put out. They had been waiting for them. All of that running with an eye over their shoulder and Molloy had been waiting for them.\n\n\"Sam, you come now, ain't nothin' goin' to happen but a lickin'. And it's one you surely deserve. Manny's just gone get a lickin' too. I promise you that.\" Molloy's promises meant nothing. They had never meant a thing to Sam before he had run, and they sure didn't mean a thing now.\n\n\"But if you don't come. I'm gone sell Manny so far down the river you'll never see him again. Don't you make us chase you now, boy.\" Molloy took a step closer to them, the lantern illuminating his sweaty figure in the distance. \"Sam. You come here now. I promise. I won't sell Manny.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam swallowed, his mouth laced with fear." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No matter what, his brother came first. Always. His stomach clenched with tight pain.\n\n\"I'll never forgive you. All that talk about trustin' God and you just give in.\" Manny's voice was quiet, hard. And just what Sam needed. Only his eyes moved, touching his brother's. And then together they took off at a dead run.\n\nSam heard Molloy cursing in the distance, heard the gentle neighing of horses alerting Sam to the fact that the chase was about to get more difficult. \"Manny,\" Sam said, reassuring himself that no matter what happened they were in this together.\n\n\"We're not goin' back,\" Manny's voice was low, angry. Sam pushed harder.\n\n\"We can't outrun horses,\" Sam said, even as they flew past trees and hopped over downed branches. Sam had never, in his life moved so fast." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was fairly certain, he would never do so again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We don't have to,\" Manny said, sprinting even faster. Sam moved to catch up with his brother. And then, over the sounds of men yelling and horses running, Sam could hear it, the rushing sound of water. The Ohio.\n\nIt had been years since Sam and Manny had learned how to swim, but that didn't stop them as they plunged into the icy river, the cold literally snatching Sam's breath.\n\n\"You go in there, you'll drown,\" Molloy called out, stopping his horse at the river's edge.\n\nNeither Sam nor Manny responded as they waded deeper into the river, both ignoring the stinging needles of cold that pierced through their clothes and found their skin. Sam skidded a few inches, the rush of the current pushing him sideways.\n\n\"We can do it, Sam,\" Manny said just ahead of him, the water at his brother's neck now. There was a fierce determination in his brother's voice the likes of which Sam had never heard before. But they had spent their childhood swimming in the Potomac like fish, preparing for the day when Manny and Sam would take to the waters and become sailors. Until they learned that most sailors couldn't swim and it wasn't a skill needed for sailing. But they needed it now." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Lord, how they needed it now." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "God had prepared them for this moment, years ago, Sam thought as the familiarity of moving in water began to come back. Sam kicked his legs out, swung his arms forward. He would win no races today, not like he had as a child. But that didn't matter, after all, today the race wasn't to the swift, he just needed to get to the other side.\n\n\"I know we can,\" Sam replied to his brother once he got his bearings, even as the current began to pull them further apart.\n\n\"Don't think you can hide in Ohio! I'll find you! There's nowhere you can go where I won't find you!\"\n\nSam barely heard Molloy as he braced himself to take a deep breath. \"Don't you worry about me. See you on the other side.\"\n\n\"You better,\" Manny called out, the current having carried him several feet further away. And then he disappeared under the water. And Sam followed.\n\nSam didn't know how long he took swimming that river. He was certain he had been carried quite a ways downstream from where they originally entered, but he knew Manny had been too, so he wasn't worried." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The only important thing was that they made it to the other side." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 6 sentences." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Precise word count needed: 'thank' × 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And then suddenly he was there. He didn't bother to walk out of the water. He crawled, cold, soaking wet, more tired than he had ever been in his entire life, but alive. And on the other side.\n\n\"Oh, thank God,\" he said, almost breathlessly.\n\n\"I wouldn't thank Him just yet,\" a quiet voice called from the darkness." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "yo next 12 sentences bits needed. Embassie Susberry style, Western, People of Color genre. this is from a bigger story k?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The stark terror that crossed Papa's face was so fleeting, so barely there, that for a moment, Laura wasn't sure she had even seen it.\n\n\"Run,\" Papa growled, his voice reaching far back in his throat and even before the single word was completed, he had taken off, Laura's arm tight in his grip. They moved over rocks, fallen trees, grown plants, and even an animal or two. Her thighs were burning as they moved uphill not slowing their pace in any way, climbing the hill as though they had done it every day.\n\nShe had thought she had moved fast before, but an unknown surge of energy hit her and she knew she was moving at a speed unlike any other. Forgotten were the aches and pains from a moment ago. She flew across the Virginia forest like a bird. It also helped that Papa had a hold of her. But he dropped her hand when they crossed a very small, very short bridge, confirming to Laura that Papa knew this land, knew exactly where they were. So why hadn't they run before when Mama was alive and Prince was more amenable?\n\nMaybe it was the fact that she been thinking too much, or maybe her speed had slowed down some. Either way, Laura found herself several feet behind Papa, barely catching sight of him as she ran behind him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She tripped over a log and it was enough to send her flying towards the ground. Hearing barking not too far away, she scrambled onto her knees and looked back. She could hardly swallow as she saw a couple of Massa Will's fine bloodhounds in the distance, their eyes glowing in the dim light making them look like demons that had just escaped from hell.\n\n\"Laura!\" Papa wasn't bothering to be quiet now.\n\n\"Go,\" Laura said, her voice low, weak, her eyes filling with tears. \"Go.\" The word was like a sob, but still she pushed herself to her feet. It didn't matter that it was a wasted venture. She was Phoebe's daughter. She wouldn't just lay there and let them catch her. She got to her feet, stumbling as she tried to get past her fear and get her feet to move. She would never outrun them now. \"Just leave me. Go,\" she said, even as she began to pick up speed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She could hardly see through the tears that fogged her eyes. She wasn't going to be responsible for Papa getting caught. Not if he could get away. If everyone got away except her it would be worth it. But she didn't know what would await her when they caught up to her. Would she be whipped? She had been slapped before. But she had never been whipped. Sold? Some body part of hers cut off? She fought the urge to vomit.\n\n\"Never,\" Papa said, appearing at her side right out of thin air. He grabbed her arm and jerked her forward." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Run. And don't you look back.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Papa,\" Laura whispered frantically, pausing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Was he... did he... she couldn't leave him. The thought of him going back to Salis and her making it to freedom just cause she wasn't fast enough was enough to make her want to find a hole somewhere to crawl up in and die. \"Papa.\"\n\n\"Go,\" he said and gave her a push. And then two of the dogs were on him. She heard growling and the sound of something tearing. The smell of iron, blood filled the air. She ran forward, grabbed a loose branch, but when she turned to help him, it was too late. The dogs were dead and Papa was standing, breathing hard, a bloody knife in his hand. \"Girl, if you don't get...\"\n\nLaura dropped the stick and ran. This time when Papa caught up with her and grabbed her arm, he didn't let go. They ran, Laura didn't know how far, to a stream where Papa stopped and dunked her in the deepest part before immersing himself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It'll slow them down a bit,\" he said as they dragged themselves to the other side of the small stream. \"But we still have to move fast. You can do this, Laura.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Laura growled. Even though she didn't know. But she wouldn't slow down. She didn't know what waited for her if she got caught, but whatever it was, it wasn't good. \"They're not goin' to catch us.\"\n\n\"No,\" Papa said, his voice sounding light. \"They not. Now move.\"\n\nAn hour later, Laura and Papa were being very quietly rushed into a space in a floor by a white man that Laura recognized as a minister from the next county over.\n\nThe space was small, and when the floor was replaced atop their heads. Dark. It smelled of unwashed bodies and dirt, but Laura wasn't hardly about to complain. It was safe." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was safe." }, { "from": "system", "value": "⚠️ Required: Use 'nothing' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And besides, her own odor was adding nothing to the space. Laura tried to move over to give Papa some room because surely he had to be feeling all kinds of discomfort, but there was nowhere to move.\n\n\"Laura? Sit this way,\" Papa said and helped her maneuver so she sat with her back against his chest. He stretched his legs out with a sigh that fanned her cheek.\n\n\"Where are the boys?\" Laura asked quietly.\n\n\"At a different safe house.\" He gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze.\n\nLaura said nothing for a moment even though her mind was filled with questions, but when she opened her mouth, the only thing that came out was, \"You came back.\"\n\n\"Course I came back,\" Papa said simply. \"You think I was goin' to leave my baby girl?\" Laura didn't say what she was thinking, which was that she might be his by blood, but in many ways that mattered, she wasn't really his.\n\nBut he must have heard her silent thoughts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You're mine. My little girl. Me and my Phoebe's second baby.\" Cause he considered Prince to be the first. \"I still remember the day you were born like it was just yesterday. You came out so quiet Dovie had to slap your bottom twice. And a head full of hair! You my baby girl. You've always been my baby girl.\" Laura swallowed, looking down at her hands, her jaw clenched in an effort to hold back any emotion. Though why she felt like crying was beyond her. \"I know you was only close to Phoebe and Prince... I know it was hard to leave your brother. I know how close you two are.\"\n\n\"Not that close. He was barely even nice,\" Laura mumbled. And then shivered. Her clothes and her cloak had dried some in their walk to the house, but she was still damp. It was a miserable feeling. But still better than being caught by one of those dogs. \"But sometimes,\" she started quietly. \"Sometimes, he would do some very nice things.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Like what?\" Papa asked quietly, running his hands up and down her arms in an effort to get her warmed.\n\n\"One time, I was cleanin' in Miss Martha's parlor room and knocked over a vase.\" She never should have been dusting in that room upset as she was at the time. Annie had just delivered Noble. She had refused to discuss his father during her pregnancy, no matter that Miss Martha kept pressing so that she could try and force Annie to marry. Laura had asked once, but Mama had told her to leave it alone. But when Noble came out with those green eyes and pale skin of his, it became quite clear to everyone at his birth, Mama, Laura, Ma Dovie, and even Prince who had arrived late with water they had sent for an hour ago, who the boy's father was. It had shaken up Laura good. So good, she hadn't been careful. \"No one heard it fall except Prince.\" Laura sniffed, remembering. \"I thought he would tell on me for sure, but he didn't. He went and got a bag and scooped up all the pieces. Told me not to say a word. The next day, Massa Richard horsewhipped Massa Logan for breakin' Miss Martha's vase.\" Papa's hands stopped. \"Somehow Prince had made it look like Massa Logan had broken it when he had come home... inebriated the night before.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura said, recalling Miss Martha's words.\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Laura said with a small laugh. \"Prince has a way of gettin' things done just how he likes and it don't matter if you white or Negro.\"\n\n\"But he was able to get Massa Logan whipped?\" Papa asked. She could hear the awe in his voice.\n\n\"Yes. Prince hates Massa Logan. Almost more than Annie hates Massa Logan. Three times he's gotten Massa Logan real good.\"\n\n\"When was the next time?\"\n\n\"Less than a year later, Massa Logan fell down the stairs and broke his leg. He wasn't able to go to Europe with his cousins that summer.\"\n\n\"How you know that was Prince?\"\n\n\"I saw his face afterwards.\" Prince had not pushed him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura knew that because she had been standing on the stairs one floor above Massa Logan." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Prince hadn't even left something on the stairs for Massa Logan to trip over." }, { "from": "human", "value": "How Massa Logan fell down those stairs was a mystery to her, but that Prince had had a hand in it wasn't." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The small, triumphant humorless grin on his face when he left his hidey hole on the second floor had told her that.\n\n\"And the third time?\"\n\n\"Massa Logan got caught stealin' from Massa Richard and Massa Richard had him whipped again,\" Laura said quickly. Annie and Laura had holed up in the kitchen snickering at random moments that day while Prince sat at the lone table and devoured the entire peach pie Annie had been forced to bribe him with cause he had caught Noble in the house. He had not been snickering. But there had been a... satisfied feeling in the air around him. His hatred for Massa Logan was the only thing Annie liked about Prince.\n\n\"That boy,\" Papa muttered, but there was a hint of pride in there too. \"He's a bit scary.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" She didn't want to talk about Prince anymore. Didn't want to think about Annie. It hurt too much. \"Papa?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hmm?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How come you know where you goin'?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Caught that did you?\"\n\n\"Mmm hmm.\"\n\nPapa sighed again and since she was sitting so close to him, her body sank in with his. \"My pa came from Africa. 'Member that?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"He was sold to Massa Phineas, Massa Richard's father, soon as he got off the boat.\" When Papa said no more, she tapped a finger against his knee. \"He tried to escape five times. Twice he received the lash. His back,\" Papa sighed again. She felt him shake his head in sorrow. \"The third time they cut off his ear and then branded a letter on his face. An 'R' I think it was. He was a big man, and a hard worker. Massa Phineas wanted him out in them fields.\"\n\n\"What about grandmama?\"\n\n\"Mama was born at Salis House. She ain't never have a desire to leave. And I had two brothers die there. She ain't want to leave their bodies. She just... couldn't let go.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But Papa Guy could?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Wasn't nothin' he wanted more than to be free,\" Papa said simply. \"Fourth time he was whipped again. Fifth time... fifth time, he took me with him.\" Papa's voice was real quiet now, barely above a whisper. \"When they caught him that time... they had dogs too then. I just... they brought him home in pieces.\" Laura drew her knees to her chest, holding them tight, and blinking back tears. That could have been her. That could have been her. \"I hate dogs, Laura. Hate them.\"\n\n\"Did they punish you?\"\n\n\"A few lashes. Nothin' serious. I was still a boy. They placed all the blame on Pa.\"\n\n\"You came back for me.\"\n\n\"Course I did.\" Papa wrapped an arm around her shoulders, squeezed her tight." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Job: User writes start, you add ~four sentences sentences. Style: Embassie Susberry. Note: May include established characters" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That was some impressive swimmin' you and the other fella did,\" the speaker said as Sam gaped up at him, trying to catch his breath." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And still his heartbeat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He didn't think he had ever been more scared in his life. And that was saying something seeing as he had just swam away from Molloy.\n\nIt was a Negro man. No. A Negro boy, Sam realized as the speaker stood up from his squatting position." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Thin and shorter than Sam and not yet shaving." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You plannin' on layin' there all day or what?\"\n\nSam slowly climbed to his feet and felt for his bag. It was still there. Dripping water all down his leg." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But still there. He turned and looked back, seeing lights on the other side of the shore in the distance." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Molloy and his men." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"If they ain't got no boat, they ain't gone cross right now. But you still best make yoself scarce cause I can promise you they are a comin'.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam turned and looked down at the lanky boy talking to him. The boy had on what looked like a sea cap that he had seen sailors wearing growing up, a hat with a wide brim that provided shade from the sun as needed. Except, the more he looked at it, the more he saw that it was different. Not a sea cap then." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The boy also had on a coat and a shirt and... a belt with a gun and bullets attached. Sam stared at the gun hard. He had never seen a Negro with a gun. And here this child was with one." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He looked at the boy's feet. They were covered in some shoes Sam had never seen before. Looked like unfinished leather or something.\n\n\"You done?\" The boy, his hands now on his waist stared back at Sam." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He might have been young, but his eyes were old." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Whoever he was, he wouldn't be easily dismissed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I ain't never seen a Negro with a gun.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm sure there's a lot of things you ain't seen. Come on. Let's find the other one.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam didn't know why he followed the boy except that the boy seemed to know exactly what he was doing and where he was going. And Sam needed to find Manny.\n\n\"My name is Sam,\" Sam said quietly filling the silence. It seemed the thing to do." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But then as soon as Sam had spoken, he realized it was a mistake. From the way the boy moved almost soundlessly and stood only in shadows, Sam knew that now wasn't the time for pleasantries.\n\n\"Did I ask you for your name?\"\n\nSam bit his lip but didn't say anything as they made their way further down the shore line." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And then there, walking slowly was Manny.\n\n\"Manny!\" Sam said in whispered excitement. He raised a hand so his brother could see him.\n\nManny raise a hand in reply and half ran to catch up with Sam and the boy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We did it, Sam,\" Manny said, his grin wide and big, even in the night." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam reached out a hand and Manny ignored it, pulling him into a tight hug." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They both laughed quietly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Grant it you got far, but you ain't did nothin' yet,\" the boy said, reminding Sam of his presence before taking something out of his pocket and dragging it across the side of his belt." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Fire appeared in his hand at the tip of the match he had lit.\n\n\"Who are you?\" Manny asked as the boy held the flame up. His eyes went to Sam's face and then to Manny's and then back to Sam's and then back to Manny's. \"If you don't get that out of my face,\" Manny growled." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The boy blinked once. Slowly. Before making sure to blow the smoke of the flame in Manny's direction. Manny's jaw tensed, but he said and did nothing.\n\n\"Come on. You're holdin' us up and mornin' is right around the corner,\" the boy finally said and turned away." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Who...\"\n\nSam shrugged but started to follow. Manny grabbed his arm, stopping him.\n\n\"Who are you?\" Manny's question was harsh, demanding." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The boy didn't seem to care.\n\n\"You don't get to know my name. But I am the person who is goin' to lead you to a safe place to stay the night if you don't keep slowin' me down.\"\n\n\"You're a conductor?\"\n\nThe boy ignored Manny, just kept on walking." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam exchanged a quick look with his brother before following. It wasn't like they had a whole lot of other options.\n\n\"He has a gun,\" Manny whispered.\n\nSam just nodded. Maybe this was how free Negroes lived, with fancy hats and guns." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'about' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He didn't know about them shoes though.\n\nThey walked quietly for a second before the boy stopped. Whistled in a way that imitated a familiar sounding bird. Then there was a whistle in response and another boy stepped out about the same age as the first boy. This one though..." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That's an Injun,\" Manny said slowly as the boy stepped further into the moonlight." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam hadn't ever met an Injun before, but he had seen drawings of them. And even if he hadn't, the long, black hair and the deer skin pants clued him in.\n\n\"Let me guess,\" the Negro boy said slowly, turning to face Manny. \"You're the smart one.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam bit his lip again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He had never met a Negro with such confidence. And this one a boy. Manny huffed and brought his hands to his forehead. A clear sign he was trying to hold back words." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It didn't work. \"I don't know who you are. I don't know where you're goin' and I'm not about to trust someone whose voice hasn't changed yet with my life and my brother's.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam closed his eyes. Prayed a quick prayer. Why couldn't Manny for once not be so quarrelsome? Sides, the boy might've been young, but his voice had changed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Manny had just said that to get a reaction. Sam watched several emotions cross the boy's face. Irritation. Annoyance. And then finally, reluctant humor. \"Fair enough.\" Without taking his eyes off of Manny's, the boy whistled again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This time the tune was different and this time several people stepped into view." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "All of them Negroes. All of them clearly slaves. Sam saw a man, a woman, two children and a baby on one side. And then two men and one woman on the other side." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We crossed by boat. It was a whole heck of a lot easier. And now we're headed to a station. You're welcome to come. Or you can stay here. I don't care,\" the boy said.\n\nSam and Manny exchanged looks. It sounded right. But the boy could still be leading them right back to paddy rollers.\n\n\"He brung us this far,\" one of the men said, his voice low." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"From near abouts Lexington.\"\n\nThe boy turned away and started talking to his Indian companion, the words rolling off his tongue not at all familiar to Sam. Sam turned to Manny. \"What's our other option?\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "/set_word_count: manny, frequency: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Manny's lips twisted to the side.\n\n\"What's that gun for?\" Manny called out.\n\n\"Slaves who talk too much,\" the boy answered not missing a beat of his conversation with the Indian.\n\nManny shook his head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I don't like him.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What's our other option?\" Sam asked again, making Manny meet his gaze.\n\n\"First sign of trouble, we leave.\"\n\n\"Fine.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You two girls done talkin' yet?\" the boy asked, his hands on his waist.\n\n\"I'm a kill him,\" Manny muttered under his breath.\n\nSam sighed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Let's go.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They walked for miles, keeping to the dark and just off the side of the road. Not hurrying, but not stopping. It gave Sam plenty of time to look over the other escaped slaves. The family looked young." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The man and woman didn't seem much older than Sam and the children were small. Sam wondered where they had come from and what had made them leave. Had they been about to be separated? Or just tired of being a slave?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He glanced over at the other three adult slaves." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They looked older. But it was hard to tell sometimes, the approximate age of a slave." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Working sun up to sun down under harsh conditions was hard on a body. But the way the three of them seemed to walk in each other's space let Sam know they were close. They probably came from the same plantation. And they didn't seem to speak to anyone else except themselves." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And whatever they said was said quietly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In fact, if anyone spoke, they spoke quietly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam noticed that even the baby was quiet." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Laudanum,\" the boy with the gun said after the third time Sam looked over at the baby. \"Keeps 'em quiet.\"\n\n\"Where you from?\" Sam asked, hoping it was a question that would get an answer. He had always been very curious, but there was something about this boy...\n\n\"Indian Territory.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam should have figured that." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You was born free?\"\n\n\"Why you so full of questions?\"\n\nSam quieted. Thought. \"Guess I want to know what to look for and what to look out for.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The boy said nothing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "At first. \"Not born free. Escaped. As to what to look for and look out for... well that depends on where you're goin'.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You mean like up north?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yep. North parts of America. Or Canada. Or out West like me.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You're far from home aren't you?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I surely am.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam waited for the boy to elaborate but he didn't. \"And you help slaves escape?\"\n\n\"We all got us a callin'.\"\n\n\"Where is yo mama?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Manny asked, jumping into the conversation. Sam fought the urge to ream him one. Couldn't he tell when someone had to be won over with honey rather than vinegar? \"She know you out here?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The boy sighed deeply." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"My mama is where yo mama is.\"\n\n\"I don't know where my mama is,\" Manny said indignantly.\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\nManny thought on that for a second." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How much further we got to go?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The boy pointed to a sign in the distance. \"What's that sign say?\"\n\n\"I'm a slave, fool. I cain't read.\"\n\nThe boy let out a small huff of air." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Not much further. Less than a mile.\"\n\n\"How did you learn how to read?\" Sam asked the boy when Manny was quiet for longer than two minutes.\n\n\"So many questions, so many questions,\" the boy muttered to himself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam figured that was all the answer he was going to get." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Especially when the Indian boy, who Sam had lost track of miles ago, took a step out from behind a tree and came to stand in front of the Negro boy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They exchanged rapid conversation mixed with hand signals before each giving the other a tense nod.\n\nThen the Negro boy waved everyone forward. \"Not all of ya'll can fit at the station I had picked out. We gone have to split you up. You five,\" the boy said, pointing to the quiet family. \"Go with my friend here,\" the boy said with a nod towards the Indian." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'll take the rest of ya'll this way,\" the boy said with a nod in the opposite direction." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In moments, the Indian was gone and so was the small family leaving Sam, Manny, the boy, and the three older slaves." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Where did you meet an Indian?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For once, Sam thought, Manny had asked a worthwhile question.\n\n\"Knox ain't no Indian. Least not full blooded,\" the boy said with a shake of his head. \"Idiots. I'm surrounded by idiots,\" he said just loud enough for only Manny and Sam to overhear. And that was when Sam realized it, the boy was enjoying himself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But—,\"\n\n\"Use all the senses God gave you before you jump to conclusions,\" the boy said. He gave a nod towards Sam. \"There. That's some advice. You want to stay free, you cain't afford to be stupid.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But the boy had looked Indian. Or had he only looked like what Sam thought an Indian should look like? But together the two boys had spoken a language unfamiliar to Sam. But that didn't mean it was an Indian language." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam said nothing more as the boy quietly led them in the direction that he had indicated." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They slowly climbed up a hill alongside the road. They had almost reached the top when the boy stopped, held up a hand.\n\n\"What—,\"\n\nHe cut off Manny's voice with a sharp wave and then crouched down." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam, Manny, and the three other escaping slaves got down.\n\n\"Listen,\" the boy said, and Sam closed his eyes. Listened. He heard men talking, low voices, horses neighing. But he saw no lights, nothing to indicate that people were there, just over the crest of the hill." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If they had kept going, they eventually would have seen them, but the paddy rollers would have caught sight of them too. \"Bounty hunters,\" the boy said, his voice low, his face serious. Gone was the humor that had danced along his face just moments ago. The boy reached into his side and pulled out his gun, holding it like it was an extension of his arm." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We need to get past them and we need a distraction,\" he said, not taking his eyes off of the area where it sounded like the bounty hunters were. \"If I know them, they're tucked right at the base of the bottom of the hill. We keep goin' that way, they're gonna catch us.\" Sam exchanged a quick glance with Manny. They weren't going to catch them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But an adversarial tension, so real and so thick was now amongst them." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam watched the other three slaves exchanging quick glances and he knew if it came down to him and Manny verses them they would choose themselves. Sam couldn't hardly blame them for that kind of thinking. But it wasn't going to get them all to the station.\n\n\"Safety is that way,\" the boy said, pointing in a direction with his hand." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You head in that direction, you'll pass three houses before you reach the station. It's a house with two lanterns lit. One upstairs and one downstairs. You knock on the door and tell them you're Caesar's package.\"\n\nCaesar? Sam shot a glance to Manny whose eyes were already wide with disbelief.\n\n\"They'll take you in and hide you. Got it? It's not even half a mile in that direction, you can't miss it. I'll stay and cause a disruption so they don't catch you.\"\n\n\"What happens if they catch you?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam asked, quietly, not at all comfortable with leaving the boy out here with paddy rollers or bounty hunters or whatever the men were called who wanted to clap him back in chains... even if he did look like he could handle himself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even if he was Caesar who had led so many slaves to freedom." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Though Sam had doubts." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Caesar had been rescuing slaves for at least two years and the boy looked already looked young." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He couldn't imagine him two years ago.\n\n\"They won't,\" the boy said calmly and with a self-assurance Sam had never come across before. \"Ya'll need to go, now. Keep on walkin' in this direction, keep to the trees, but I'll make sure they don't see you.\"\n\n\"Would it be easier if you had help?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam found himself asking, unsure why. Except it had never been in him not to help someone who was in trouble. Especially if someone might be in trouble on his behalf. And. He didn't trust the other escaped slaves not to do something to get him and Manny caught while they made it on to safety." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The distraction needed to be big, so big that they weren't thinking about him and Manny." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No,\" Manny said firmly. He clearly wasn't picking up on the tension. Or maybe he was.\n\nThe boy took his gaze off of the direction of bounty hunters and placed it on Sam." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Surprise written in his eyes. \"It would.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Then I'll stay. Manny, you go.\"\n\n\"Sam. You idiot,\" Manny hissed. It was the right thing to do, Sam thought. He felt that reassuring settling peace that God always gave him right before making a decision." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We don't have time for arguments,\" the boy said, his voice low.\n\n\"Go. Manny. I got a peace on this.\" Manny growled low. \"Go on. And don't volunteer to stay. No sense in both of us bein' out here,\" Sam said and handed his brother his bag with all of their belongings. They had had this discussion before." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There wasn't any point in having it again. When Sam had a peace about something, his mind was unmovable. Manny's mouth tightened.\n\n\"If he gets taken...\"\n\n\"He won't. Caesar has never lost cargo,\" the boy said confidently about presumably, himself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Caesar,\" Manny muttered bitterly, even as he began to move." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I don't like you right now, Sam.\"\n\n\"Be careful, Manny,\" Sam whispered and shot his eyes toward the other slaves. Manny gave a slow blink. He knew then, that the other slaves were not to be trusted." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They exchanged quick nods and then Manny and the other slaves were gone." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When the boy and Sam were sure they were gone, the boy turned to Sam. \"Just how fast can you run, Sam?\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Match existing character familiarity or establish new\nLength:\none sentence\nGenre:\nWestern, People of Color" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They crossed the Ohio River in a boat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I've never seen water like this,\" Gid said softly as he dipped his fingers into the river, letting the current push them this way and that." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You've never seen water period,\" Benji responded firmly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura and Papa had spent the night in that small cramped, stinky cellar." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Or rather the morning." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They had only, a few hours ago, reunited with Benji, Sol, and Gid at another house or station as Papa referred to it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Now, a quiet white man, who had mysteriously appeared at the tip of the Ohio River with a boat, was paddling at the back of the boat while Papa was paddling at the front, taking them to freedom." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Freedom. Laura could hardly imagine it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In some ways, in many ways, she had always been freer than her brothers, than Papa." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was confusing to think about what would change, what wouldn't change." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How could I have never seen water before, Benji? You need water to live!\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was outrage in Gideon's low voice." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura grunted. Apparently, it wasn't only her who found Benji to be more than an irritation." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What had she done, she wondered, that God had given her not one but two brothers who thought they knew better than anyone else?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Boys.\" Papa only said the one word, but there was much command in there. Be quiet." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They weren't safe yet." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura placed a hand on Gid's shoulder and squeezed before looking over the side of the boat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She too had never seen water quite like this." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had seen the Potomac." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She had travelled with Missy Adora, Miss Charlotte, and Miss Martha up and down Virginia for family parties and shopping—in carriages, in trains, and even on boats." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But nothing like this." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Never so low on the water like this." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The wrong wave would send them all careening into the water and Laura didn't know about her brothers and Papa, but she couldn't swim a lick." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A gust of wind hit her and she shivered and then caught a faint whiff of herself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was still slightly damp from the night before, probably muddy, her feet had reached such levels of pain and squishiness that every step made her flinch, certainly she had sweated profusely... she wanted desperately out of these clothes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "What she could do with a warm basin of water." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They made it to the other side with no problems." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Be safe now,\" the white man said quietly, and using an oar, pushed himself back into the river once the five of them had gotten out." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura looked over at Papa." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had underestimated him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Clearly. There was so much he had planned to get them here... to get them to wherever it is they were going." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Where to now, Papa?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Benji asked. That was the question. New York?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Philadelphia?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Canada?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura exhaled a breath that formed into a small cloud." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She couldn't imagine living in a place that was colder than this." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"A house with two lanterns. One in the top window and one in the bottom. We don't have to run, but ya'll do need to keep quiet. I got the directions right up here,\" Papa said, tapping his head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How much further?\" the question slipped out before Laura could catch it. But." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They already knew she was the weakest one on this journey." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"If you had ever left Salis House, you wouldn't be askin' that question,\" Benji muttered softly but just loud enough for her to hear." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I have left Salis House, thank you very much. I've seen more of the world than you ever have or ever will,\" Laura snapped back." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was also very tired of him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He hadn't said a word to her once they met up again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Just made sure that every time their eyes met, she saw his look of disdain." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Benjamin and Laura Altan.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Papa's voice was hard." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sorry, Papa,\" Laura said quietly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Benji repeated the same." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Papa eyed the both of them and then sighed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I think it's best that we split up. Paddy rollers still out here, too.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then he pulled them into the trees and went over the directions to the house several times." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura did her best to focus, to close her eyes and picture the road, to open her eyes and search the sky for the drinking gourd and make out the North Star." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She did her best to ignore the memory of being little and Prince telling her she had the worse sense of direction of anyone he had ever met after she had gotten lost taking a note from Massa Will to one of the salt mine overseers. On Salis Plantation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Benji, you and Laura will go east. Me and the boys will go west.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura stopped looking at the sky to look at Papa." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But his expression was unyielding." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Benji said nothing, but she heard his foot slide across the dirt in front of him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I expect to see the both of you at the station. Be careful. Take your time. Ain't no rush.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura puffed out her cheeks in frustration like Missy Adora was prone to doing, but said nothing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Let's go.\" Papa motioned to Sol and Gid." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Gid turned back and gave Laura a look of pity before disappearing into the trees." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Benji sighed, loud and clear." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Come on. I bet you don't even know which way is east.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura closed her eyes, exhaled, but followed Benji east." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They paralleled the road, but moved slowly through the hilly woods." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Can you move any faster?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Benji's voice was quiet, stubborn." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Obviously, not,\" Laura stated calmly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She could move faster, if there was the proper motivation." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like Papa being with them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Papa said we didn't have to hurry.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That don't mean I want to be in these woods any longer than I got to.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Neither did she. She was betting she wanted out of the woods more than he." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was probably used to the pungent scent of his body odor." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Unfortunately, Laura was getting used to it too." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How about you just focus on gettin' us there?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You think you know everythin',\" he muttered under his breath as he stepped over a fallen tree." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Do I know more than you? Yes.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Benji stopped, turned, and stared at her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Why you even come?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura blinked back the hurt of his question but met his gaze full-on." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How is my comin' botherin' you?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You're slowin' us down. You almost got Pa taken or killed.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But that didn't happen, did it?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura said, fighting down her own shame at the truth of his words." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You had a good life at Salis.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Obviously—,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Obviously,\" he mocked. He turned and kept going forward." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You and Prince, livin' the good life up at the Big House while me and Pa and the boys worked our fingers to the bone.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Please, Benji, tell me how you really feel...\" Laura muttered under her breath as she took her time climbing over fallen trees." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Now that safety wasn't that far up ahead, she felt every muscle in her body that she had used running in the woods the night before." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Don't know how you gone be any help up north. You ain't got no real skills.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was going to throw something at him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Least Annie could cook. What you gone do? Make me a pretty dress?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura rolled her eyes, but didn't respond." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Truth of the matter was, if they was moving to a big city, she was the only one with skills that would survive." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But she just let him go on, complaining." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He seemed to be in love with the sound of his own voice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And then you think that just cause you can read that you better than us. But guess what, Laura? I can read to. Mama taught us. She worked up at the Big House, but still found time to come be with us. But naw. You and Prince—,\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hush up,\" Laura said, slowing down." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No. I won't hush up. You can't tell me—,\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I hear someone.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Benji hushed, and instantly crouched down low to the ground." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura copied him. First, she heard nothing, and then she heard the sound that had caught her attention." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The shaking of the reins on a horse." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was a cough, and low, quiet voices." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura crawled forward so that she and Benji were just inches apart." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He didn't move and she could see that he was holding his breath." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then he held up a hand, raising fingers slowly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was counting. And then he stopped, shook his head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He wrapped a strong hand around her arm and pulled her close, his lips on her ear." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We gone have to go back. They done blocked off the route Pa gave me.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura closed her eyes in frustration." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It wasn't ideal. But it was better than being caught." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And then one of the paddy rollers shouted." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hey! There one is! Get 'em boys!\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura leaned forward and watched in amazement as a man, he had to be an escaping slave, appeared from the other side of the woods, running across the open field toward them and disappearing into the woods just ahead of them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Why did he just do that?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Benji asked from next to her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That has to be the dumbest thing I've ever seen.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The horses! The horses!\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura stared as another Negro man on a horse took off down the road in the opposite direction, leading several other horses by their reins, behind him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Run,\" Benji said and stood up quickly, dragging Laura with him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Pushing aside pains, aches, and all-around uncomfortableness, Laura ran behind Benji in the direction of the house." }, { "from": "human", "value": "No one saw them or paid them any mind." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The paddy rollers were too busy either chasing the one slave or going after the horses." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then she heard a boom in the distance. A gunshot." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But they kept on running, her and Benji toward the house Papa promised was just past this hill." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Get down!\" Laura heard an unfamiliar voice order and paused." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Benji,\" she whispered and her brother stopped, throwing her a fierce look." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Behind her, from the ground under a thickly fallen log, appeared a head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was the slave who had started the raucous in the beginning." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"There's three of 'em there just over the ridge. Come,\" he said and waved them back." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura looked to Benji who was staring hard at the man." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And then the low hum of male voices filled the air and Laura saw a lantern light up a few feet away." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She ran back to the slave." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His arm was already out, and he pulled her into the hole and under the tree." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She heard Benji scrambling in just behind her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a tight fit under the log and into the ground." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She scooted in close, but apparently not close enough for she felt an arm wrap around her waist and pull her further in to make more room for Benji to fit." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In seconds she was pressed up against an unfamiliar male chest." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A chest that smelled like it could have used a bath days ago." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She could only imagine what she smelled like to him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"What—,\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Shh,\" the slave told Benji." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And Benji hushed as men spoke just above them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even though there was no way that they could hear her breathing, Laura held her breath as the paddy rollers walked near their location." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"They was just here...\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Should have brought the dogs...\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The hand on Laura's back slipped to her waist, tightening in a protective manner." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Another gunshot rang in the distance." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What in the world...\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He could be anywhere, but the horses...\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura exhaled quietly as the men seemed to wander further and further away from where they were hidden." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And then she heard nothing but the sound of her own breathing and that of her brother's and the other slave." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Should I check?\" Benji whispered quietly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No. The boy I was with, the one who stole the horses, said he'll come to me when the coast is clear.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The slave's voice was low, and deep." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura couldn't tell how old he was." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ya'll did that on purpose? You runnin' across the fields?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yeah. Had to give the others a chance to make it.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The words were very simply said, but Laura felt like she learned a world of information about the man holding her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You sure the boy you was with didn't caught?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Benji asked after a moment." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Not sure at all. But the boy seemed confident enough.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The boy?\" Benji's questions kept coming though Laura wasn't sure why." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The man had helped them when he hadn't needed to." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"He's a conductor for the railroad. He calls himself Caesar.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura bit her lip to keep from making any noise." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had heard of someone named Caesar but only in snatches of conversations here and there." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She didn't know much about him except that he was wanted dead or alive." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Benji went silent for a moment. \"How many of ya'll is it?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Three others and my brother.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The man paused for a second, his hand lifting off Laura's waist." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Is this your wife?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura snorted softly while Benji said, \"Lord, no. My sister.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The man's hand returned to her waist, but this time it was light and loose as if there was just no other place for it to go." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm Sam. From Kentucky,\" the man said softly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm Benjamin. That's Laura. We from Salis House of Virginia.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "In spite of the fact that she was partially underground and laying up next to a man she had never met, Laura found her eyes fluttering." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She couldn't remember the last time she had laid on someone's chest." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The up and down motion, and the small sound of a beating heart, was putting her to sleep." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You talk much, Miss Laura?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You don't have to call her that,\" Benji whispered. \"She's just Laura.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I talk plenty,\" Laura said, her eyes closed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Where'd your brother and the others run off too?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Benji asked, but then quieted when they heard some rustling from above." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura became instantly alert, lifting her head off of Sam's chest." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Shh,\" he whispered, and gently pushed her back down onto his chest as though she were a child." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was something so comforting in the gesture." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Maybe he was old... around Papa's age." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She would have shuddered except the moment called for stillness." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And then there was a low voice. \"Sam?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's the boy,\" Sam whispered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura noted that he did not call the boy, Caesar." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes,\" he said louder." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Come on out. We ain't got much time, and we got to hurry.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Benji crawled out first." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Who are you?\" Caesar asked, sounding completely surprised." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When she made to get out, Sam pushed her down gently and crawled over her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"They was runnin', too.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"They? Well ain't this a busy night.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam reached back into the hole, and Laura grabbed his hand." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He hauled her out from under the log easily, like she weighed nothing at all." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She looked at the man holding her hand, but his features were not clear in the dark." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That said, she realized he was young." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "About Prince's age. And he was still holding her hand." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She pulled away and ran her hands over her dirty, dirt-filled cloak." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Come on.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She looked over at the speaker." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Caesar. And she could see Sam had been right to call him a boy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had assumed he would be older. But he wasn't." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was maybe a year or so younger than Benji." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"My pa gave us clear directions for a safe house,\" Benji said, shaking his head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Laura and me got to go there.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Only one safe house in this direction,\" the boy said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"So, we gone stand here all day and chit chat or actually make it to safety?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The four of them started out for the last little bit of the journey, Benji and Caesar up ahead while Sam matched his pace to Laura's." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He didn't say anything, but if she seemed like she needed help climbing over something with her skirts, he would hold out a hand in silent offering." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura had always prided herself on never being foolish." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She took it. He didn't scold, he didn't advise, he didn't rush her, he was just there." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "After all of that, it didn't take long to get to the station." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And before Laura knew it, they were standing at the house with the two lanterns." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Wait here,\" Caesar whispered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I can come with,\" Benji offered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Or, you could wait here.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The boy didn't wait around to argue with Benji but ran towards the house." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was not a small house, but neither was it anywhere near the size of Salis House." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He knocked three times on the front door, it opened and he went in." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He's a bit um...\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Belligerent,\" Laura supplied with an exhale." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sleep was just a few feet away." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Thank the good Lord in heaven." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Belligerent?\" Sam repeated slowly, sounding confused." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"House slave,\" Benji muttered under his breath as though it were a disease and not a position." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura made a face at him that he pretended not to see." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh,\" Sam said, his one word filled with understanding." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What he understood, Laura didn't know." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You not a house slave?\" Sam asked Benji." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He works in a smithy. He hardly out in the fields,\" Laura snapped back. Benji grunted." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I was out in the fields,\" Sam said nonchalantly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Cotton?\" Benji asked quietly as though he knew." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura rolled her eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Benji knew as much about cotton as she knew about speaking French." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Tobacco.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura turned to look at Sam." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And it wasn't hard to do since he was standing barely a foot away from her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was not quite as tall as Papa but taller than Benji." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And he was slim, but not thin." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He turned and looked at her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She could feel his silent question in the air and she scrambled for something to ask." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You said you ran with your brother?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes. He should be here already.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We ran with our pa, and our brothers Sol and Gid. They should be here too.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There Benji was, once again butting into a conversation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And just then the door opened, and Caesar waved them forward." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They entered the home quickly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura could smell freshly baked bread and her stomach rumbled." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A white man Laura had never seen before and his wife stood there in the darkness next to Caesar." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And behind them was Papa." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Laura. Benji,\" he said and Laura moved quickly past everyone to Papa's outstretched arms." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She felt him press dry lips across the top of her forehead." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If anyone had told her a week ago she would be hugging him, she would have laughed long and loudly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Now she didn't want to let go." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Course ya'll would be the ones to run into trouble.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He sounded amused, but Laura could hear the undercurrent of fear in his voice." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We ran into Sam and Caesar,\" Benji offered." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sam?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm Sam,\" Sam said quietly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He walked past the white couple, his eyes skittering towards them quickly and back and then past Caesar." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He held out a hand and Papa shook it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Amos. This here is Mr. and Mrs. G,\" Papa told Laura and Benji while nodding at the white couple." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"They gone let us stay for the night.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Come on,\" the wife said and motioned them further back into the house where a fire was burning low." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They followed and with more light, Laura could see more of Sam." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He had found a corner to stand in, his eyes darting occasionally to those around him and then to the floor." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was barefoot, his clothes were ragged and stained, his lower jaw was peppered with facial hair, and he could have used a bath." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But that didn't change the fact that he was quite honestly one of the most handsome men she had ever seen." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His skin was a few shades lighter than hers, his brown eyes encased with thick, black eyelashes, his lips were neither thin nor full and like most slaves who worked in the fields, slim though he was, muscles abounded." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura wished Annie were there so they could swoon together." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Because even Annie, who liked discussing boys about as much as she used to enjoy fanning Miss Martha in the afternoon heat, would probably take a moment to pause and appreciate his features." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sam!\" A low, worried voice called out from behind Laura." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And then she realized that her first thought was incorrect." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was not one of the most handsome men she had ever seen. He was one of two. Twins." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Match existing character familiarity or establish new\nLength:\none sentence\nGenre:\nWestern, People of Color" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam lifted his gaze off the wood floor, smile already on his face as Manny crossed the room towards him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sam!\" Manny repeated, coming to his side and wrapping an arm around his neck." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam returned to the gesture." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Don't ever do that again,\" Manny whispered, his breath hot and angry in Sam's ear." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a hollow threat because if Sam were ever in a situation like that again, he would do the same thing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And Manny knew it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Twins,\" the white woman said with a quick laugh." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Both Sam and Manny stiffened, looked away." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "To have a twin was to have that one obvious weakness." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Neither he nor Manny liked to acknowledge it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Come,\" she said, with quick motions as she kicked aside a very large rug." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The man, her husband, moved past her, reached down and placing his hands into a groove, lifted the floor." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam could see the shadows of stairs leading to below." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Been down there already. But I wanted to wait up here. Make sure you make it in,\" Manny said quietly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's plenty room down there,\" Amos, Laura's pa said, his voice low and gravelly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam looked the huge man over." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It didn't seem possible that the thin, slight, pretty woman he had found himself attached to for the past few hours came from him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And Laura was pretty." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even looking tired and travel weary, it had been hard for him to keep his eyes of the young woman." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And there was something about the way she carried herself... Sam had never known a slave woman to walk with such grace." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He could watch her move forever." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If he had had any doubts about her being a house slave, the way she moved ended them." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not to mention that she was dressed better than he had ever seen a slave girl; she had shoes on her feet, her speech was more refined, and she held herself just... differently." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Even differently than her brother Benji." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He had felt her dark gaze studying him and he wondered what she saw." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He knew he looked like an old, tired field hand today." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It had bothered him none before he met her that his shirt had enough holes to be a net and that he had outgrown his pants a year or so ago leaving inches between the top of his feet and the bottom of his pants." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He knew his face looked scruffy and that he probably smelled bad." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But he was free now and that was all gone change." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Here,\" the man said, handing Amos, Laura's pa, a lantern." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You can light it when you get down there.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He turned to Sam, Laura, and Benji." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"There's food and blankets aplenty.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Thank you,\" Amos said and motioned for Laura to go down first." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Wait,\" the wife said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "All of them paused, looking at her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The woman's face filled with color, but she turned her gaze to Laura." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You look wet.\" With her dark cloak, and dark dress, Laura did not look wet, though Sam had felt some dampness when he held her under that tree in the ground." }, { "from": "human", "value": "What did that woman want?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And then he wondered at his sudden possessiveness." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He could not afford to be possessive, now more than ever before he had the threat of being caught and returned hanging over his head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But still, he watched her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura, who had been looking at the stairs, looked up at the woman quickly, her eyes not quite making eye contact." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes,\" Laura said. Her voice was soft, and husky." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was another thing Sam had noticed about her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He liked her voice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I have an old dress you can change into.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The woman was offering Laura a dress?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Was it cause Laura was a house slave?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I... ,\" Laura started." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Come,\" the woman said and placed a hand on Laura's arm." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He watched as Laura tossed a glance at her pa, and then let the woman lead her into a room with a closed door." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Is that safe?\" Manny asked no one, his eyebrows raised." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then it wasn't just him who thought it was odd." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Of course it was only Manny who was confused, so maybe it didn't count." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh, don't worry about Laura,\" Benji, Laura's brother said from his right." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He had been so focused on her hadn't even noticed the boy's approach." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Laura can take care of herself around white folks,\" the boy said quietly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"She'll be just fine.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam leveled Benji with a look and the boy had the good grace to look away." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was no such thing as taking care of yourself out here." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Manny, this is Benji, Laura's brother. Benji, my brother, Manny.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Manny gave a nod towards Benji who gave a nod back." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Come on, Benji.\" Amos was already headed down the stairs, apparently also not worried about his daughter." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Sam,\" called the boy who claimed to be Caesar." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The boy was standing by the fireplace, his hands stretched out for warmth as comfortable in this house as a flea on a dog." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Come talk to me for a minute.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The white man lowered the trap door after Amos and Benji went down and left the room leaving Sam, Caesar, and Manny alone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam walked to the fire, coming to stand next to Caesar." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Manny right behind him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The boy eyed Manny, indicating that he had not invited him over, but he spoke anyway, \"You did me a favor so I'm goin' to do you one,\" Caesar said as Sam and Manny drew in closer though he returned his gaze to the fire before him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You asked for advice. Here it is: you two should separate.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Never.\" Manny's answer was quick and hard." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam placed his hands on his waist." }, { "from": "human", "value": "No sense in talking when Manny had answered for them both." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's hard livin', being a runaway slave,\" the boy said, his voice low and quiet and filled with experience." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You'll always be lookin' over your shoulder. Always. And if you marry and have children? Well, your children still be the property of the man who owned you. You free. And you not free. It'll be easier for you both if you split up because together you're memorable. The last thing you want to be when being hunted, is memorable. If the bounty hunters are lookin' for twins, then they path is easy.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam had thought on all this before." }, { "from": "human", "value": "When you work in the fields all day, all you got is time and time to think." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was a part of him that was willing to leave Manny if it meant that Manny had a better chance of staying free." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But they had taken his mama." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And he had never had a daddy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was too selfish to let them take his brother too." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He would just have to trust God to protect them both." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That's not goin' to happen.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The door to the room that Laura had gone into opened." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The white woman came out." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam watched her walk past them into another room." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I didn't think it would,\" the boy said with a sigh." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But I had to try. Here's your second piece of advice: be very careful about where you choose to go from here. You can trust the 'G' family,\" Caesar said with a nod in the direction that the white man had gone in." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Tomorrow. They gone ask you where you want to go. Up north or out east. Where was you thinkin'?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam exchanged a quick glance with Manny before speaking." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We were thinkin' up north. Canada. We heard that's the only place to really be free.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The boy, Caesar, bit his lip, and nodded." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's not a bad plan. It's the best one if you gone go up north.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Where else could we go?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Manny asked, genuinely curious." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We stay here in America, paddy rollers will hunt us all the time.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's a different kind of white folks up north and that is a fact. What isn't different is that they still don't like darkies. You go to New York or Philadelphia or even Canada, you still ain't nothin' but a darkie to them. Don't care what nobody say. Ain't no promise land. It's better than being a slave. But ain't glory.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Figure ain't no place we could ever go where we ain't nothin' but darkies,\" Manny said quietly, for once taking Caesar seriously." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That is a fact. But there is a place you can go where you ain't got to be reminded of that fact day in and day out.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Indian territory,\" Sam said, staring hard at the boy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He almost missed when the white woman, carrying cloth and a heavy basin of water moved passed them again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It seemed like she was telling the truth then." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura would be fine." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Again he asked himself why it mattered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He didn't have neither the time nor the day to be thinking about a woman and chances were, after this night, he would never see her again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam returned his focus to Caesar." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He wouldn't let himself get distracted again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Caesar nodded slowly. \"I'm not sayin' there ain't no bounty hunters in Indian Territory. There surely is. But most white men that go out there ain't thinkin' 'bout catchin' no darkies. And land is so bountiful, it's a lot harder if they try.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Land might be bountiful, but so is Indians.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Ever heard the phrase the enemy of my enemy is my friend? Naw, it ain't Indians you gone have to worry about. Listen. I ain't tryin' to tell you what to do, I'm just askin' you to carefully consider what freedom looks like to you. Is it livin' in towns so crowded you can hardly breathe? Surrounded by white folks who don't like slavery but also don't like you? Or havin' your own? All you need in Indian Territory is God, your honor, your gun, and your horse. I might have been born a slave, but I was also born a country boy too. Livin' up north ain't my idea of freedom. And it's too dang cold. Think on it, Sam,\" Caesar said, giving him a nod." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Pray on it. What you decide tomorrow is one of the most important decisions of your life.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Why does everyone think Sam is the only one who makes decisions around here?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Manny asked, irritation in his voice." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Third piece of advice,\" the boy said, ignoring Manny, even as a small smile tugged on his lips." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"If you go out west, specifically Oklahoma Territory, ask around for the town of Arrow Creek. And if you find yourself in trouble ask for Sly Hollis.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Who is Sly Hollis?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Manny asked with an exhale." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Me. My name is Sylvester Remus Hollis. Everyone calls me, Sly.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, everyone knows you in Oklahoma? How old are you? Like ten?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Fifteen, fool. How old are you?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Manny opened his mouth, closed it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They figured they were just above twenty, but they weren't sure and Caesar, no, Sly, could see it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh, you don't know do you?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm older than you,\" Manny said stubbornly, unwilling to let go of a fight he had already lost." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam shook his head slightly in exasperation." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And not a great deal smarter from what I can tell.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sly turned to Sam." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Ask around for me or Jamie Knox. Knox is my friend, the one who looks Indian. Be careful. Don't trust just anyone, even if they are darkies. Not everyone is your friend, Sam. Keep him in check, Manny.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam exhaled and blinked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sly did have his annoying moments." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam hadn't survived all these years cause he knew nothing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"My brother can take care of himself,\" Manny said simply." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam did not believe for one second that Manny thought that was true." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But no matter what, they always had each other's backs." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"If I said the sky was blue, you would say it was purple,\" Sly said, rolling his eyes Manny." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I didn't mean no offense to Sam. I like Sam. I don't like you.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And yet Sly's tone was light." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He took a step away from the fire." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Wish you two all the best.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You not stayin'?\" Sam asked, his arms falling to his side." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He could hear the alarm in his voice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sly shook his head, slowly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Got to meet up with Knox. Head back.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You not really Caesar, are you?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Manny asked, eyeing Sly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sly exhaled and then gave Sam a pitying look." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You want to deal with this one all day on purpose? I'll have you to know I am Caesar. If it's one thing you can count on me for it's my word of honor. If I tell you a thing, it's true. You're one of the few lucky ones who know my actual name. I would appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Then where were you?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Manny asked, no humor in his voice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We waited almost a year.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sly's expression hardened. All lightness gone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I can't stay in one location too long. Where was I? Down south helpin' slaves cross the Mississippi.\" Sly shrugged." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I can't be everywhere and I can't afford to stay in the same area all year long.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sly bit his lip, shrugged again. \"I am sorry.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Nothin' to apologize for,\" Manny said quickly, biting his lip. \"Just wonderin'.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sly reached for his hat that Sam only just now noticed was on a small table." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He slowly, almost reverently, placed it on his head." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Ya'll take care now,\" the boy said and left the room." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Seconds later, they heard the front door of the house open and shut. Sylvester Remus Hollis, also known as Caesar, was gone." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Story continues from larger narrative, characters/lore may lack introduction\nLength:\n8 sentences\nStyle:\nEmbassie Susberry" }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was an answer to an unspoken prayer, Laura thought as she entered the dark room." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She only walked a few steps in before the woman lit a candle, giving them a little something to see by. The windows were covered by heavy curtains, and Laura could understand not wanting to take any chances. Laura looked around her. It was an empty bedroom with a bed, a table, and a vanity. \"I'll get a basin of water. I'm sure if you're like any other woman I know, you desperately want to be clean.\"\n\n\"I do. Thank you,\" Laura said and the woman sent her a small smile. In the dim light, Laura could see that the woman was old, older than Miss Martha if one could tell age by the wrinkles that lined one's face. Her hair was hidden under a night cap and she wore a simple cream housedress that had seen better days but was in fairly good condition." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"There's another woman downstairs in the cellar. I offered her the same thing, but she wouldn't take me up on it,\" the woman said quietly. Laura almost winced. Almost. Getting clean was more important than her pride, however. \"I'll be back with the water and the dress. Then you can give me yours and we can get it washed and hangin' tonight.\"\n\n\"I can wash it myself,\" Laura said quickly. No white person had ever offered to help her do anything. And it would take more than an offer of water for Laura to be too trusting. Of course the woman was keeping her entire family safe from bounty hunters... but still, Laura would take care of herself as best she could." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's no bother, dear. I'll be just a minute.\"\n\nThe woman left, pulling the door to the bedroom shut right behind her. Laura exhaled, closed her eyes. Then she stepped out of her shoes feeling blessed relief. She pulled down her stockings. They were torn, bloodied, and disgusting. There was no saving them. She undid her cloak and set it across a chair." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It too could use a good washing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She pulled her bag up and over her head and opened it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had two extra dresses and three pairs of stockings though they had gotten wet in the dunking." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But not as wet as what she was in the process of removing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They would do. She would not take this woman's clothes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was a free woman now, not merchandise to be dressed. It was time to live like it. There was a gentle tapping on the door.\n\n\"Come in,\" Laura said. The woman pushed open the door, but looked to be struggling with the large basin of water. Laura hurried over and relieved her of it. Laura placed it on the table in the room. The woman came to stand next to her and placed two towels and a bar of soap." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I have a dress I can change into.\"\n\nThe woman held up a simple calico dress. \"Are you sure? Most women who come through here only have the one. If you're worried that you're takin' somethin' of mine, don't be. We get a lot of donations from abolitionists around the country.\"\n\n\"I'm sure,\" Laura said and pulled out her wrinkled, slightly damp, plaid day dress with a wide white collar on the top. Another old dress of Missy Charlotte's that Laura had worked over to fit her. Laura had had five of them. More dresses than most slaves; a deep red one, a plaid one, a dark blue one, a black one, and a gray one. She had packed the red one and the plaid one and ran in the dark blue one." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had very happily left the black and gray dresses." }, { "from": "system", "value": "🎯 Target word: 'servant' | Required occurrences: 2" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She would never dress as a servant again. She wasn't so prideful as to say she would never work as one. No. There was a good chance she would be sewing for some woman whenever they ended up wherever Papa was leading them. But she wouldn't look like a servant and she certainly wouldn't dress like one.\n\n\"What a lovely dress.\"\n\nIt wasn't. Not really for the fabric was quite faded. But Laura had done her best to keep it in mint condition. \"Thank you,\" Laura said quietly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I've worked on it myself.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"A seamstress are you?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes.\" Only every day of her life. Laura hesitated." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The woman had been nothing but kind to her and her family. \"You've been very generous to me and my family. If you have somethin' you would like me to look at...\"\n\nA small smile lit across the woman's face. \"Well, I do have somethin'.\"\n\n\"Then bring it to me. As soon as I get changed I can work on it.\"\n\n\"But you must be tired.\" She was. But she could sew in her sleep.\n\n\"We came by boat and you're not that far from the river. I'll be fine. And it's the least I can do.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The woman gave her a serious look, her eyes, which Laura could see were gray, met Laura's. \"No, dear, it's the least I can do.\"\n\n\"You've been a help to me. To us. Please, let me help if I can.\"\n\nThe woman beamed and then left the room pulling the door behind her. Laura dipped her hand in the basin of water and sighed when she felt the heat touch her fingers. Still warm. She reached for the soap and brought it up to her nose. She was used to lye soap. Lye soap that either had no scent or sometimes had an offensive scent depending on who made it at Salis House." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This bar of soap though... Laura gave it another sniff. Rose." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was something Missy Adora or Missy Charlotte would have used. And now her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "One day she would only use scented soap too.\n\nShe made quick work of undressing, washing, and redressing. Then she did her best to wash the clothes she had worn the past day and a half. When those were rung out and off to the side, she undid her hair, brushed it out, and rebraided it. Laura only washed her hair every few weeks and she had washed it the morning before they left. But with all the sweating and the river water, she could tell it could already use another washing. But she didn't have time for that. She attached the pins in her hair, making her bun tight." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Almost she felt like herself." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Though she had on clean stockings, she wasn't yet ready to brave her shoes. There was a gentle knocking on the door again. The woman.\n\n\"Please come in,\" Laura said and went to the door.\n\n\"I would let you sleep in here, but sometimes the sheriff comes by and it has to look like we don't have anyone here,\" the woman said as she entered. Fabric draped her arm. \"But give me your clothes. I'll take care of them.\"\n\n\"I've already given them a quick wash,\" Laura said, exchanging her wet clothing for the woman's fabrics.\n\n\"I'm supposed to be makin' a dress for the church social. It's not turnin' out right.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I can fix it,\" Laura whispered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The woman stopped, eyed Laura. \"You're not much like the others we have.\"\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\n\"You speak different and you're not as... afraid.\"\n\nLaura exhaled, ran her hands down the sides of her dress. \"I probably should be.\"\n\n\"No. I don't mean about runnin'. I mean... oh nevermind. I'm goin' to set your clothes with mine and then I'll be right back.\"\n\nLaura spent the next hour or so measuring, cutting, and draping, pausing only to eat some bread and cheese or whenever she heard voices outside the room." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was the chance that the sheriff still might come knocking on the door, so Laura had to be prepared to run for the cellar." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But finally, the dress came together." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It's not the best work I've ever done,\" Laura whispered. Without good lighting, it was hard to get perfect stitches.\n\n\"It's better than any other dress I own,\" the woman said, her voice slightly shaky as she ran her hands down the length of her gown. \"It's a nice thing to feel beautiful, isn't it?\"\n\n\"It sure is,\" Laura said, placing all of the sewing needles and thread she had used into the woman's sewing kit. She folded all of her clothes and things and put them back in her bag. She had hoped that airing them out would do them so good. \"I should head on down before Papa and the boys get worried.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Come on,\" Mrs. G said without taking off her new dress." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She opened the door and led Laura across the darkened hallway and to the room with the trap door. There was no one around. The woman pushed aside the carpet again and lifted the hook in the floor.\n\n\"Thank you again, ma'am,\" Laura said as she followed the steps below. The trap door closed quietly above her. But it wasn't dark. She could see light ahead, and then people. First, she saw the twins, Sam and was it Manny?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They were sitting on the floor, talking quietly to each other. They both looked up when she took a step.\n\n\"Laura,\" Gid said, raising a hand. He was on the floor curled up next to Sol who was curled up next to Papa. Papa sat directly in front of her, a bunch of papers in his lap. Benji was on Papa's other side. Across from them were three Negros Laura didn't know. All of them looked to be asleep, though one of them, a man, opened his eyes for a second to look at her, before closing them." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word usage requirement: 'brother' must appear 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Come sit by me,\" Gid said and moved his bag which separated him from either Sam or Manny.\n\n\"Alright,\" Laura said quietly and walked to her brother. This cellar was clean and didn't look like it was used for food or supplies or anything other than hiding people. It was long and deep and there was plenty of room for stretching out a bit. Papa had a lantern lit next to him, but so did either Sam or Manny providing some dim light in a space that could probably get very dark.\n\nLaura plopped down next to Gid. \"You changed,\" he said, leaning close and giving her a big sniff. She felt the gaze of Sam or his brother next to her." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Your task: Include 'papers' 2 time(s) in your response" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But she didn't know what to do with that, so she ignored him. Them.\n\n\"I simply could not resist the temptation,\" Laura said quietly as she wrapped an arm around her youngest brother's shoulder and squeezed.\n\n\"Surprisin',\" Benji muttered loud enough for her to hear.\n\n\"Ben,\" Papa said, his voice low. Then he leaned across a snoring Sol and dropped the papers in her lap. \"Look at that.\"\n\nLaura unraveled the papers realizing that it was one paper. A map. \"What is it?\"\n\n\"Where we're goin'. Mr. G let me borrow it.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Where are we goin'?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura asked as she tried to make sense of it.\n\n\"West.\" Laura dropped the map. West? What was out west?\n\n\"Really?\" Sam or Manny asked from next to her. She turned to her right, but both of the men were looking at Papa.\n\n\"Yes.\" Papa answered.\n\n\"How come?\" The voice was low, familiar. It was Sam who was sitting next to her." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "hey can u write 6 sentences more sentences? like Embassie Susberry but Western, People of Color style. btw this is from middle of a story" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What were the chances?\n\nSam turned and looked at Manny who was already looking at him. After Sly had left they had discussed the matter in great detail.\n\n\"Canada is safer,\" Manny had whispered to him after they had gotten settled in the room underground. The family that had taken them in had not been lying. There were blankets and plenty cheese, meat, and bread to go around." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam hadn't even realized how hungry he was until he inhaled what was given." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"On a whole lot of levels. No paddy rollers to deal with.\"\n\n\"I agree,\" Sam said when he finally slowed down his eating. It was clear to him that Manny had already eaten cause he was just playing with the food in his hand.\n\n\"Goin' west would be foolish. We don't know about what's out west. Paddy rollers will be lookin' for us. And whoever heard of a Negro with a gun?\" Manny was saying all of the right things. But. Sam stuffed the last of his meal into his mouth and stared at his hands." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His brother was not finished talking yet." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Out west, the Indians might kill us. Now, in the all the years I have lived, in all the years I have contemplated my death, getting' killed by Indians was never one of the things I considered.\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Ensure 'hearin' appears 2 time(s) in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You been thinkin' 'bout death?\"\n\n\"Sam. This is no time for your distractions,\" Manny had hissed. He had kept his voice low the entire time. \"You hearin' me?\"\n\n\"I'm hearin' you.\"\n\nHe was hearing his brother and while he might be looking calm on the outside, on the inside he was floundering. Go out west? He had never thought of such a thing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "All of his hopes and dreams had been pinned on going up north." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Course he had no clue what up north looked like." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And if Sly was to be trusted, and Sam had no reason to doubt him, it might just be one disappointment after another." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He leaned forward, pulling his knees to his chest and buried his face there. Lord God, grant us direction.\n\nBecause he had no direction. Running had been a spur of the moment thing. And now he didn't know what to do next.\n\n\"Are you really sleepin' right now?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Manny,\" Sam growled.\n\n\"Oh. Are you prayin'? Tell God we lost.\" Sam sighed. \"I mean but if you think about it, we ain't city boys. All them people... and up north I hear it's a lot of white people. Now what I want to go live with a bunch of white people for?\"\n\n\"So you want to go west?\" Sam asked without raising his face from his knees.\n\n\"Cause a child no bigger than a mite told me to? No, indeed. We goin' to Canada like we always said we would.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam waited. \"But I done heard it's real cold up there. Sam, you know I hate the cold. Course if the option is between bein' cold forever or bein' a slave forever. I take the cold.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And on and on Manny went, talking enough for the both of them while Sam quietly prayed and watched Laura's family out of the corner of his eye. The other three slaves that Manny had left with were down there, but they were sleep or feigning sleep.\n\nBut Laura's family? The four of them were just as quietly whispering amongst themselves as he and Manny were. They looked like a family. Amos was clearly in charge, but by the way he placed a hand on one of the smaller boys or smiled at Benji, Sam could see that he was a loving parent. A deep, yearning rose up from inside of him, so heavy he had to blink back tears." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It had been so long since he had been anyone's son." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And he probably never would be again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He exhaled in an effort to get control of his emotions. He was a man full grown. The last thing he needed was a daddy. Or a mama. And at least he had Manny. Some folks didn't have nobody. But still he found himself glancing over at them again." }, { "from": "human", "value": "All of them were barefoot." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But all of them had the same kind of cloak as Laura had had. Their clothes didn't seem to have any holes in them. And they didn't look worn down. Used. He wondered what had happened that had made them want to run. If he recollected correctly, Amos worked a smithy. That was a nice job for a slave." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sometimes a smithy could make his own money on the side. The youngest boy leaned over, said something, and all four of them laughed. The only thing missing in the picture they presented was Laura. And a mama. And if their closeness was any indication, than the only reason there wasn't a mama was because she was dead.\n\n\"We cain't buy land up north, Sam,\" Manny said quietly, reminding Sam that he had bigger fish to fry than wondering about the family sitting a few feet away from him. \"It's probably all taken at this point. And all we is, is farmers.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam listened to his brother's chatter until the door above the stairs lifted and Laura had timidly walked into their midst." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I see the allure.\"\n\n\"Hush.\"\n\nLaura had come to sit between him and her youngest brother. She smelled like sunshine and roses and looked even better and he was man enough to appreciate it in a distant sort of way. She had fallen into the category he put all pretty women. Nice looking, but not for him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He had returned his attention to his brother until he saw Amos hand her papers." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She could read? The fascination was back. She wasn't like no slave he had ever met in his life. And then Amos had said they were going west. And now here Sam was, feeling thunderstruck.\n\nAmos started speaking again, and Sam turned to face him taking in another whiff of the roses on Laura's skin. He tried not to think about that." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Ain't no jobs for Negros up north other than servin' white folks. Spent my whole life at the whim of a white man. Ain't gone do that as a free man.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"See!\" Manny hissed against Sam's other ear." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Papa, how far west you talkin'?\"\n\nLaura's voice was low, but Sam could hear that hint of panic in it. He and Manny weren't the only ones unsure.\n\n\"Don't know for sure. I'm hopin' I'll know it when I see it, but definitely Indian Territory where paddy rollers less likely to go huntin'.\"\n\n\"It's far,\" Laura said and raised the paper, stretching it out. Sam could not help but lean in close to look at it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "When she glanced over at him, he leaned back." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Include 'paper' 2 time(s) in your answer - no more, no less" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No,\" she said and moved the paper so that it crossed both of their laps. \"It's a map,\" she said simply.\n\nSam had heard that word before but where?\n\n\"Treasure map?\" There was awe in Manny's voice. That's right. As boys they had heard stories of treasure maps. Pieces of paper that showed you were to go to find buried gold." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Where are we?\" Laura muttered to herself, her finger making lines on the map." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam turned to his brother, his eyes wide. Manny's were wider. They both turned to the map, even though they didn't understand a thing on it.\n\n\"Cincinnati is the biggest town closest to us,\" Amos said, his voice like gravel.\n\nSam watched as Laura stared hard at the paper for a second and then placed a finger somewhere near the center. \"I think I've found it.\"\n\n\"Now follow the river. See where it leads.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"The river?\"\n\n\"Steamboat is faster than walkin'.\"\n\nSam felt a pinch on his arm. He turned.\n\n\"Why didn't we think of that?\"\n\n\"Cause we don't know where we are,\" Sam hissed in frustration and turned back to the map. It didn't help. He didn't know what he was looking at or how any of it came together." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And he felt a strong urge to throw something somewhere even though it wouldn't change the fact that he was an ignorant fool." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But still. He made himself watch as Laura's finger dragged from one point to the next. Even he could tell that going west meant going far.\n\n\"Can you read it?\" Laura's voice was quiet, low and Sam knew she was talking to him.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"This is where we are near abouts,\" she said softly, slowly pointing to a black dot on the map." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Cincinnati, Ohio. This squiggly line is the river. The Ohio River. See it flows into the Mississippi. The Mississippi will take you out west.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I think she think you stupid,\" Manny said, his breath hot in Sam's ear. He fought the desire to roll his eyes. In all the ways that mattered they were stupid. It would be an enormous undertaking to go to a land he didn't know, in a direction he wasn't familiar, with people he had no relation with, and completely unable to figure out anything on his own. They would be at the mercy of others, hoping and praying along the way that everyone they encountered would tell them the truth.\n\nSam leaned back, distancing himself from the map." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It could be done." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It would just be the hardest thing he had ever done before. He had lived his whole life letting someone else tell him what to do and where to go. Now he would have to learn how to make decisions on his own.\n\n\"Stop gettin' worked up. You act like we got places to go and people to see.\" Sam fought an urge to hit his brother.\n\n\"How we gone get on the steamboat?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura asked Amos. Sam didn't move, but listened." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Steamboats always hirin',\" Amos said and held out his hand. Laura folded the map and handed it to her pa. \"We'll hire on. It ain't gone be easy. Our life ain't gone be easy but we knew that long ago when we figured out we was slaves.\"\n\nLaura said nothing, though Sam could see that she was considering her pa's words. Finally, she nodded. \"It is, what it is.\"\n\n\"Can I lay on your lap, Laura?\" the boy next to Laura asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Of course, Gid,\" she said and ran a hand up and down his shoulder as he got comfortable." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Are you Sam?\" Laura asked, turning to face him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The boy in her lap, Gid, sat up. \"I can't tell them apart either.\"\n\n\"Most people can't,\" Manny said from the other side of Sam.\n\n\"I'm Sam,\" Sam said, giving her a nod.\n\n\"Is he though?\" Manny dragged out slowly.\n\nGid snickered, his brown eyes darting between him and Manny probably looking for something to differentiate them by." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But physically there was nothing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Except the scars on Sam's back. Manny had scars too, but Sam had more.\n\nHis gaze met Laura's and he could see that she too was eyeing the both of them.\n\n\"You two ever switch places?\" Gid asked, still blinking at them both.\n\n\"Only all the time,\" Manny said, before breaking off a piece of the bread in his hand and stuffing his face." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And it was true." }, { "from": "system", "value": "<<USAGE LIMIT>>: 'didn't' must be used 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Especially when they were younger. There had been no reason to just be Sam when he could also be Manny.\n\n\"Not recently,\" Sam said slowly. First off, it was only something they could pull on folks who didn't know them. The more people knew them, the easier it was to tell them apart. Because Sam and Manny might look the same, but they didn't talk the same." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That wasn't to say that Sam couldn't become Manny again if he wanted to." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Or needed to. And vice versa." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Ensure 'question' appears 2 time(s) in your answer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But there was just no good reason to switch places anymore.\n\n\"You know dem paddy rollers gone be on the river. How you aim to get there without them seein' you?\"\n\nThe question came from one of the three formerly silent slaves and it was aimed at Amos. It was one of the men who had been pretending to sleep, but it was clear he had been paying attention to every word. Sam noted that the other two were just as wide awake. His gaze flickered to Amos then cause it was a good question." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Why wouldn't paddy rollers be looking for escaped slaves at steamboat ports?" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 7 sentences." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'blinked' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Amos stretched his legs out slowly. \"Don't aim to get there without them seein' us. We got us free papers.\"\n\nSam blinked. And then blinked again. He heard the slave who had asked that question make a humming sound. Then he felt a sharp elbow in his gut. And Manny's hot breath again.\n\n\"We stayin' with these people. They know what they doin'.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Story continues from larger narrative, characters/lore may lack introduction\nLength:\nfive sentences\nStyle:\nEmbassie Susberry" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Steamboats sank. This, Laura knew. Cause she read the papers whenever she got a chance and had heard discussions of their sinking often amongst Massa Will and Massa Richard and even Miss Martha a time or two. Massa Will didn't even like to place their cotton or salt on steamboats that travelled along the Missouri. Massa Will said the Missouri ate boats. And if by chance the rivers didn't eat the boats, then the boats were busy exploding." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And the stories she had heard about steamboat captains... they weren't nice to their own kind. How would they treat a bunch of Negros? And here was Papa talking about riding a steamboat as though they were merely going to take a Sunday afternoon picnic.\n\nSometimes I think you trust Miss Martha more than you trust your own papa. It was something Mama had told Laura more than once... and usually after Papa had just finished giving his opinion about something." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She meant no disrespect, but just how could he judge a situation when he didn't exactly know what was going on?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And as for Miss Martha? Well, Laura didn't always like her, but she was one of the smartest people Laura had ever encountered. Smarter even than Massa Richard and Massa Will truth be told. But not smarter than Prince.\n\nAnd yet. She had thought they would use the free papers in case a paddy roller caught them that wasn't from Salis House." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She hadn't seen this far ahead." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Hadn't considered they might need the papers for later. And now it was making sense as to why Prince had given them false names with the wrong owners' written on the documents. He had anticipated this. And so had Papa. Feeling eyes on her, Laura glanced up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Papa was staring at her, no doubt watching all of her thoughts as they ran through her mind." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Papa—,\"\n\nThe trap door above opened. The sound of the hinges creaking as it lifted cut off every conversation that was taking place around her. The man known as Mr. G came down the stairs slowly. Laura finally got a good look at him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was older than his wife with his halo of white hair, but not too old for he stood upright, not stooping." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His suit was not threadbare, but neither was it new. And the cut was decidedly old. Whoever these people were, they were not in the first stare of fashion. Not at all the kind of white people Laura had grown up surrounded by. She wondered for a moment why they were helping escaped slaves." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Did they feel sorry for the slaves?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For her? Because that was what she was whether she wanted to think about it or not. A slave. The very lowest of the low. Or did they feel that slavery was against God's law and so must be fought against in every way possible? And wasn't that the thing? When Missy Adora was little, Laura had spent most of her Sundays in the balcony of Reverend Gautier's church in case Missy Adora needed to be taken out." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She had learned a lot up in that balcony... one of the things being that it seemed like you could use God's law to put you on either side of the fence of an argument." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura had told Mama that once and suffered a smack to the backside while Prince later told her it was the smartest thing she had ever said. Either way, she had missed her chance to find out more about these people who had opened up their home to runaway slaves when she had left the room upstairs.\n\n\"I thought you would be able to stay the night and mornin' through, but it looks like if you plannin' on goin' to Canada you got to leave tonight or wait 'bout a week.\" His voice was gruff, but he met the gaze of all of them. And wasn't he in for a surprise?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "They weren't going to Canada." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"We gone go out west,\" Papa said softly, giving Mr. G that piercing look he often gave her.\n\n\"West.\" In the silence, the word seemed to bounce around the small space filling everyone's ears. The man straightened, stared at Papa a moment. Then nodded. Slowly. \"Alright. We can get you headed in that direction. But not tonight. May take a day or so.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"If you don't mind us stayin'...\"" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Word count directive: Use 'slaves' exactly 2 times" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The man shook his head. \"Not a problem. The wife and I don't mind. Is everyone goin' out west then?\"\n\n\"Not us,\" the man said who had asked Papa about getting caught at steamboat ports. He stood up and so did the other two slaves next to him. Or were they now all former slaves?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "At what point did that happen?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura just did not know. There was just so much she did not know. Worryin' don't bring you nothin' but trouble. Mama had always said that. But Mama had never done this before, Mama had never been free." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We goin' to Canada. Don't want to live our lives lookin' over our shoulder,\" the slave said, continuing his speech." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He made sure his words were tossed in Papa's direction. Laura glanced over at Papa. His calm expression did not change. And that did not surprise her one bit. If there was one thing she knew about Papa, it was that he didn't give two hoots what anyone said or cared about him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Mama had always claimed it was cause he knew he had favor with Jesus and when you got favor with Jesus, you didn't care about man." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura glanced at him again. She wondered if that was really true.\n\n\"We're headed west too.\" The words were said quietly, but with a firmness that held no doubts. Laura turned slowly to the right." }, { "from": "human", "value": "For a moment, caught up as she was in her own circumstances, she had forgotten about the handsome brothers sitting next to her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The words hadn't come from Sam. In fact, he was staring hard at his brother, Manny. Now, wait just a minute...\n\n\"Alright. I'll be back down in a few so we can hammer out the details. Let me get these three goin'.\"\n\nEveryone was quiet as the three slaves and Mr. G climbed up the stairs and left." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The trap door slammed close with a thud." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You're going west too?\" Gid asked, sleep completely forgotten as he stared at the men sitting next to her. He wasn't laying on her lap anymore, but he was leaning up against her. She wondered if he found comfort in her touch because he missed Mama and she was the next best thing or if he was always up under someone. As opposed to quiet, serious Sol who seemed to do his best to prove he was growing up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sol was no longer sleeping, but watching everyone through tired eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura watched him now as he stared at the twin brothers." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Feeling her gaze on him, he turned and sent her questioning glance. She shook her head slightly and smiled at him. He looked away, looking a bit unsure. They still had time to go before they would know each other well.\n\n\"A man has to have his land, his honor, and his gun,\" the one who was Manny said." }, { "from": "human", "value": "His what? Laura let go of the thoughts about her family and turned her attention to him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A Negro was lucky if he had land, wasn't considered to be honorable or dishonorable, and they certainly couldn't own guns. She fought the urge to correct him. What abolitionist had been spilling seed into that ground? She noticed that even Sam was staring at him. Manny looked past him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Now, what's this about free papers?\"\n\nIt was Sam's turn to lean forward, looking past her and towards Papa. \"We don't think livin' up north is what's best for us, but I'll be honest, we cain't read and we don't know where we goin' or what we gone do when we get there. But we got a little money and we can pay our own way if you can help us get there.\"\n\nAnd they wanted to go out west? Course she had always heard going out west was a young man's inclination." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was not sure what that meant for her as the only woman 'bout to go on this here journey. But at least she could read. It was her turn to look at Papa. Papa was staring at Sam. Hard. \"It ain't gone be easy.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Like you said. Life for our kind ain't ever been.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam's voice was low and certain which seemed almost at odds with the way he had been looking at his brother only moments earlier. Laura looked around Sam at his brother. Manny had a small smile playing on his lips. Interesting. No, not interesting. She had more than enough on her plate." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Thinking about the happenings between two brothers was a waste of her time. And yet..." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"True enough,\" Papa finally said.\n\n\"You mind explainin' how you plan to get out west in them steamboats?\"\n\nPapa unraveled the map Prince had given them and this time laid it out on the floor so all of them could see. Prince had drawn a route straight up to Canada for them to follow. And wouldn't he be in for a shock when he learned they had gone west instead?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "If he ever learned that that is." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Use the word 'think' 2 time(s) - this is a strict requirement" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura rubbed her chest in an effort to ease the tightness there. It was time to think on something else.\n\nManny and Sam moved to where the other slaves had been, across from Laura and Gid, and all seven of them gathered around Prince's map. \"The papers are just in case somethin' comes up.\" Laura didn't want to think about what that something could be." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But I'm hopin' we can all hire on to a steamboat. I heard tell they always need help. It should take no more than 'bout eleven days—cause of the stops—to get us from here,\" he said, pointing at Cincinnati, \"to here.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His finger was on Oklahoma. Laura knew her states and her territories. Missy Adora had spent all summer learning them. She felt another small pang in her chest. She would never spend another summer running around Salis with Missy Adora again." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Mandatory: Your text must contain 'laura' 2 times exactly" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She didn't know why she missed the little girl. It was like Annie had said, Missy Adora was one day gonna grow old and when that happened she wasn't going to be thinking about Laura. But it was taking her heart a long minute to catch up with her brain. \"This here is Oklahoma, right Laura?\" Papa asked. Though he clearly knew the answer already." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura felt the twins' gaze on her, but she licked her lips, leaned forward. \"Yes, Papa.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"My Laura can read real good.\" He pointed a finger at her though he was talking to Sam and Manny. \"She'll get us there.\"\n\nLaura looked up at him. Stared. Surely the man was joking. \"Papa.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Ain't no one smarter.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Prince is,\" Benji muttered. Course he would say that. Laura looked at him and made a face. He smiled back.\n\n\"I'm not so sure on that. Laura's here. Prince isn't.\"\n\n\"Who's Prince?\" Manny asked, dragging his gaze off of the map in front of him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"My oldest brother,\" Laura said with a sigh." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"He didn't come with us.\"\n\n\"What do you know about steamboats?\" Papa asked quickly. His eyes and fingers still on the map.\n\n\"Only what I've read and heard.\" She ignored the quick glances from Sam and Manny." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That's more'n what I know,\" Papa's voice was low, gentle. And now she knew what he was doing.\n\nWith a sigh, she let him distract her. \"They can be dangerous.\" Laura hesitated. \"Though the ones floatin' down the Mississippi seem to be the safest.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If Prince were here, they would know anything and everything they wanted to know about steamboats. Prince knew everything about anything. But instead it was just her. And Laura only knew what she heard discussed and what she could glean in random, quiet moments. \"If you don't have money it's not the way to travel.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Miss Martha had made that observation more than once." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We can put up with anythin' for eleven days.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Papa said. He turned towards Sam. \"When we get to Oklahoma, I'll set up a smithy, my own business. That's the short of it.\"\n\nLaura glanced between Papa and Sam and Manny. What was it about them that made Papa so willing to share information? He had never been one for loose talking in all the time that she had known him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"It's more than what we got,\" Manny said, his eyes back on the map." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How come you left?\" Sol asked the question, but Laura found it was one she wanted answered as well.\n\nManny and Sam exchanged looks before Manny spoke again. \"It was just time. That's all.\" That was not all." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura looked over at Papa who was looking at the two young men, a thoughtful expression on his face." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Were you goin' to be sold? They were goin' to sell me and Gid. That's how come we left,\" Sol volunteered.\n\n\"No,\" Sam said slowly. \"We wasn't gonna be sold.\" Sam looked up, meeting Laura's gaze for a second before returning to the map. \"Where's Kentucky? That's where we come from.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura blinked, tried to meet Papa's gaze, but met Benji's instead." }, { "from": "human", "value": "For once in their life they exchanged a look of understanding." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So, they could be open and free with information but the twin brothers weren't?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura's eyes dropped back down to the paper in front of her. \"What city?\" Laura asked. She placed a finger on Kentucky. When Sam told her the city, she then found it. \"You ran from here to here... that is, if you ran?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Oh, we ran,\" Manny said with a decisive nod." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"How you get across the river?\" Benji asked, his voice suspicious. He would never have made it in Salis. He was just too obvious about everything.\n\nManny gave Benji a look, but Sam answered. \"We swam.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You never did,\" Gid said, eyeing them both in awe and amazement." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was one person who wasn't suspicious of nothing.\n\n\"Hey,\" Manny said, pointing a finger at him. \"If we say it, it's true.\" And yet there was something in his voice that led one to believe that nothing that came out of his mouth was ever true. Laura's eyes narrowed as she took him in." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We grew up on the Potomac. Learned to swim there as boys,\" Sam said quietly, his gaze still on the map." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But by the gentle way he answered, she knew he too could pick up on some tension.\n\n\"Benji said you two worked a tobacco farm?\" Papa asked, his voice startling Laura for a second.\n\n\"Yeah. For too long,\" Manny drawled. Now that, Laura believed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was a lightness to his voice that told her it was not only true, but that there had been something rather horrifying about it all. It was like that for some slaves. Laura may have been raised in Salis, but that didn't mean she didn't know some things. The brothers had had it rough. And they were just not going to be sharing everything." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Fair enough. \"So, this is west. Which way is north?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You see this symbol right here?\" Laura asked and pointed to the compass rose on the map. \"It's called a compass rose.\" She knew this because this too was part of Missy Adora's geography lessons and what Missy Adora learned, Laura learned. Because of Prince. When Missy Adora first started learning how to read, Prince had pulled her to the side, even knowing that he had already taught Laura some reading, and said, Don't be stupid and let that girl learn something you don't." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was advice she had taken to the heart. Which meant Laura knew a little bit about everything. She had been looking forward to Missy Adora getting a new tutor that fall. She had already composed a list of excuses to be in the same room with her as she learned.\n\n\"I've seen that before,\" Manny said quickly, lunging forward." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Where did we see that, Sam?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura glanced at Sam whose brow was furrowed, thinking. \"It's often on a compass. People who travel—,\"\n\n\"That's it!\" Manny said, snapping his fingers. He turned to Sam. \"Remember that one sailor...\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"North, south, east and west,\" Sam said, his fingers tracing the compass rose in the corner of the map." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That's how you know.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Laura said, sitting back on her legs. She could read the eagerness in their faces, their desire to know more about the world around them. She had seen it in different ones that Mama had taken the time to teach. Other than her brothers and Annie, Laura had never shared what she knew with anyone." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Prince had cautioned her against it. Don't be a hero, Laura. Heroes die. Though to be honest, Laura had ignored Prince. Prince didn't believe in saving nobody's skin except his... usually. But since Mama had also told her not to, Laura had listened." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 6 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When the time comes and you need to do big things, God will tell you. That time ain't now. And now Laura was curious as to just how she knew that. But it made no nevermind. This was different. Cause they was... kind of free. And yet when the trap door opened seconds later, Laura wasn't the only one who scurried away from the map and to the other side of the room." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Produce 2 sentences as a continuation. Note: Story may reference established characters/events." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When he first heard the groaning of the door as it opened from up above, Sam lurched for the map, folding it quickly. He would have stuffed it down his shirt, but Amos spoke." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Here,\" Amos said, his voice low and light, and his hands held out. Sam tossed him the map before pressing his body against the wall." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sam's heart was pounding fast, but he took several deep breaths to slow his breathing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "His mind told him he had nothing to fear if Mr. G caught them reading or in his case trying to read, but all his body knew was to panic if there was a white man around and he was doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing. Mr. G came down the stairs slowly and then took a seat on the second to last step with a huff." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If he sensed the tension that his presence had added to the room, he ignored it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With a sigh, he looked across the room first at Amos, and then at Sam and Manny. \"Now, you say you want to go out west?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes. By steamboat,\" Amos said quietly. It was a good plan." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A much better one than the one Sam had thought would play out if they took Sly's suggestion and went west." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam had pictured him and Manny travelling on foot by night, hiding in cellar after cellar until one day they looked up and was there. It seemed silly now that he had seen how far away the West truly was and how unprepared he and Manny were." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Staying with Amos and his family seemed like the smartest thing to do." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam only wished that he and Manny had something else to contribute to the trip besides extra bodies. He hadn't missed the look exchanged between Laura and Benji when he and Manny wouldn't talk about why they left." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But admitting that Molloy and Massa Charles wanted to use them as breeding horses felt... shameful." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Though he had no doubt it was something that had probably been done even at the plantation Amos and the others had come from. And then Manny, of course, was starting to be his usual, ornery self." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam had to think of something... some useful reason for them to be glad to have him and Manny tag along.\n\nMr. G's low hum caught Sam's attention, pulling him from his thoughts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He watched as the man ran a hand over his face. \"Steamboats come through these parts fairly often. I know a few captains who would take on runaway slaves. In fact, I know such a man who is on his way here now from Pittsburgh.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "No one moved, but Sam could feel the alertness of everyone, even the younger boys, Sol and Gid." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"My wife's cousin of a cousin. He's a captain of a steamer. He's expected in a few days. He's not an abolitionist, but so long as you cause no trouble and are willin' to work, he'll take you on. He's done it for me before.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"But he'll know we're runaways?\" Manny asked, folding his arms over his chest." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam heard what his brother was not saying... this captain could just as easily lead a paddy roller right to them just as soon as they got out west and then turn around and collect the bounty.\n\n\"If you was free you wouldn't need me to be a go-between. If I bring you to him, he'll know he has to be careful with how you get on the boat.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Which made sense. But Sam wasn't used to trusting nobody but his brother and maybe the occasional fellow slave. But this...\n\n\"He'll expect you to work for your ride with no pay. That's why he'll take you on. The accommodations will be harsh. He may or may not provide a meal. But if I didn't think he would get you there, I wouldn't tell you. It's your choice to make though. Your lives to live. I'll take you to the nearest port in two days. You can decide if you want an introduction or not then.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Mr. G stood up, stretched." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"My wife or I will be down in a few hours with some more food to eat and in case you need to use the outhouse. Otherwise, have a good night. And don't forget. You can still change your mind if you like. Got rides constantly goin' to and from the north.\"\n\nWhen the door slammed shut behind him, Benji spoke into the silence. \"Well, Pa?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, Pa. Sam fought the envy that question brought up on the inside of him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "To know there was someone else he could rely on to make the big decisions would be such a relief. And yet, Sam had lived just about his whole life never making a single decision on his own." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This was what it meant to be free. It meant making the hard decisions and letting the chips fall where they may." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And the thing was, he didn't really have to be all that different from Benji at all." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He didn't have a natural father. But he had a heavenly one." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He spoke before Amos could." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Maybe we could pray on it? We don't know the steamboat captain, but God does.\"\n\nManny made a small noise in the back of his throat." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Amos, who had been looking at his son, turned and looked at Sam for a second. When he spoke, his voice was gentle. \"I think that's a fine idea, Sam.\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "expand on the story like Embassie Susberry would. btw might have existing characters/lore" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The steamboat was like any and every other steamboat Sam had seen in his life." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Called the Thomas Paine, it was white with three stacked floors, each one a little bit smaller than the first.\n\n\"It looks like a cake,\" Laura said. She was standing next to Sam and now wearing the same solid blue dress and dark blue cloak she had been wearing the first night she met him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They had all changed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The G family had allowed for all of them to wash up and change into some different clothes if needed so that they didn't look like runaway slaves. Sam had on the change of clothes he had been saving for almost a year. A white shirt and blue pants." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For the first time in ever he had a pair of shoes on. He and Manny had given Mr. G some money to purchase them. They fit. They didn't pinch." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And yet, he felt like a part of his body couldn't breathe." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But he would get used to them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Free men didn't walk around barefoot less they was poor as Job's turkey." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That was just the plain truth. He ran a hand over his head and hid a small smile. He had also shaved and cut his hair." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The G family had lent them real honest to goodness soap and for the first time in his life, Sam had been tempted to steal. He loved the way he currently smelled. Sandalwood, Gid had called it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Every now and then there would be a breeze carrying the scent and Sam would realize it was coming from him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It smelled like freedom to Sam. Course everything that was new did. He didn't know how he could ever go back." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Just the thought of it would probably break him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He shook his head, forced himself to think on something else." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Manny, standing on the other side of him was wearing brown pants and a white shirt." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He had not shaved though he had trimmed his beard. They were going to do their very best not to look identical.\n\n\"Not like any cake I've ever seen,\" Manny muttered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was early morning, so early in the morning, the morning wasn't quite there yet as night hadn't quite left.\n\nThey were standing on the shores of the Ohio in the dim light. After much prayer, together, and alone, they had agreed to trust Mr. G's steamboat captain." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If all went well, in minutes they would begin their journey out west." }, { "from": "system", "value": "IMPORTANT: 'going' should appear 2 times in total" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But Laura's family, with their free papers, were going to get on the boat at the port. He and Manny were going to take a smuggler's route... so to speak.\n\n\"You ready?\" Mr. G asked, coming alongside them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Mrs. G is going to take you five to the port. I'll take the twins.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "There were no goodbyes, no exchanges of good luck." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam didn't believe in luck anyway. He, Manny, and Mr. G watched as Laura, Amos, Benji, Gid, and Sol climbed into the back of Mrs. G's wagon and pulled off. Gid gave a little, hesitant wave which Sam returned." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It made sense for them to split up. Too many people drew attention, but passing off phony free papers was gutsy. And they would have to show them, Sam was sure." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It only made sense that paddy rollers would be waiting at the steamer." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Come on, we got to meet the steamer for it gets to port.\" They were already at the edge of the bank, a small boat tied up to a rock and bobbing in the water awaited them. Mr. G climbed into the small boat that swayed and dipped into the water." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The night before, Mr. G had signaled to the ship using the flash of lanterns in another conductor's window." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He admitted that his friend the captain dipped in smuggling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He always stopped the steamer at night at a certain spot on the Ohio to see if anyone had goods... not runaway slaves exactly, but he would take them too." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But the flashing lights must have worked, because here was the steamer, waiting on them.\n\nIt seemed like it took no time for their small boat to approach the Paine, as Mr. G called it. The steamer wasn't old or at least it didn't look old." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam was no expert on boats, but he knew fresh paint when he saw it. In the dawn, he could see men working along the side, tossing glances their way. He prayed there just wouldn't be trouble." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "For there were so many ways this could go wrong. And yet, he knew in his heart that going north was not the way to go.\n\nThey were not the first to get on the boat." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No, he and Manny and Mr. G had to wait for boats loaded down with boxes of stuff to be hauled up first. They were the only Negros though, planning on coming aboard.\n\n\"What you got there?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "a voice called out even as a rope ladder was flung down the side." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Two workers,\" Mr. G replied.\n\n\"Two?\"\n\n\"I'll go up first,\" Manny said after giving Sam a quick nod and proceeded to do just that." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sam followed behind. The first thing he noticed were the men with guns patrolling the boat. Mr. G had told him about them. They were hired to make sure the boat wasn't attacked, to keep the peace if someone was looking to cause trouble... and to look the other way when Captain Leahy was doing business." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But still, even though he only saw about five of them, it was enough to get his heart racing.\n\n\"Let's go talk. Follow me,\" a gruff voice on his right said. Sam turned to see a man in a dark pants, and a buttoned up jacket." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A hat sat on his head." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Captain Leahy, most likely. \"Tell the wife I said hi, G.\"\n\nWhen Sam turned around to say goodbye to the man who had got them this far, it was too late." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mr. G's boat was already more than halfway close to the Ohio shoreline.\n\nSam ignored the glances the other workers around him were tossing their way and followed the man down the deck of the steamboat. His nose was assaulted with the smell of animals, unwashed bodies, and something burning that Sam could not identify." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The man led them to a small room no bigger than a closet." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In fact, Sam thought with everything in there it probably was a closet.\n\n\"I'm Captain Leahy,\" the man said and lit a lantern. Sam took a moment to look the man over." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Captain Leahy was shorter than Sam, had a beard of gray hair and slim of build. He had hard, blue eyes and Sam knew in a moment's glance this wasn't a man to disobey. \"Ya'll got experience with a boat?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"No, sir,\" Sam and Manny said softly, together." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 1 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You will work the deck. You'll fire the boilers if needed, man the pumps, handle the cargo and supply the wood. Do us all a favor and stay out of trouble. Got it?\"" } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Produce 2 sentences as a continuation. Note: Story may reference established characters/events." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Getting on the boat was far easier than Laura had anticipated. After a long drive down to the port that had her so nervous she almost lost her breakfast, they had finally arrived at the Thomas Paine." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The sun was just hitting the sky." }, { "from": "human", "value": "With quiet looks of courage exchanged, they had said goodbye to Mrs. G and headed down to the wharf." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There was a bit of a line what with people and cargo getting on, but finally they reached the front of it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Papers,\" the young, bored white man had asked." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He was standing in front of the plank that led to the steamer." }, { "from": "human", "value": "On the side of him were two men who could be nothing but paddy rollers with their stern expressions and their holstered guns at their waist." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura had silently handed him hers." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He didn't look them over half as thoroughly as she expected and in moments she was on the steamer. Her and her whole family." }, { "from": "human", "value": "All the work to get those papers for something that took less than a minute." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They had been told when they got aboard to ask for Captain Leahy and tell him that the G family had sent them." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He had met them in a small room.\n\nCaptain Leahy had turned to Laura." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Can you cook? Clean?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Laura said softly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Good. You'll work with my head cook and work in the ladies' cabins as needed.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Captain Leahy had turned to Sol and Gid." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm in need of cabin boys. I'll show you who's in charge when we leave. You,\" he said, eying Papa. \"Will work in the boiler room. You will all have to sleep on deck. Ya'll have food?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes,\" Amos said, his voice low. Laura and Mrs. G had made sure they all left with something in their bags." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Unless you paid for the privilege, steamboats did not provide meals and Captain Leahy did not provide meals for runaway slaves.\n\n\"Good.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And now here she was on the Texas deck where Captain Leahy had told her to go. She had seen neither hide nor hair of Sam or Manny, but she was sure they were somewhere here, probably below with her brothers and Papa." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"This here is the kitchen. You sure you can cook? Cap'n Leahy like him some good food and he like good food served to his passengers.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura stared at the older, Negro woman who reminded her of half the women she knew back at Salis House." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The woman was cutting up potatoes and steadily dropping them in a pot of boiling water. She looked older than Mama had looked and was a stone or so heavier." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Her hair was peppered with white and she had deep lines on her face." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There were scars, that put Laura in mind of burns, that crawled up the woman's arms and Laura wondered if the woman was free, enslaved, or a runaway like her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But since Laura didn't want anyone asking her those questions, she wasn't hardly going to ask someone else." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I can cook.\" She hadn't spent most of her childhood in the kitchen of Salis with Annie and learned nothing.\n\n\"Good. We be cookin' for the meals in the dining room and for folks what pay for it. Good thing you here cause we picked up more passengers today. You hear that?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "the woman said, holding up the hand with the cutting knife.\n\nLaura listened intently, heard the sound of men's voices and then the bang of something in the distance." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"They be raisin' the stage and pullin' up out of port.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "As soon as the woman finished speaking, the boat shuddered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura reached out, placing a hand on the nearest wall to steady herself. Then the sound of a whistle piercing filled the air." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And we off.\"\n\nLaura gave a shaky sigh." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Said a quick prayer to God to hide them from any and all paddy rollers." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Pin that apron on,\" the woman said with a nod toward some folded aprons in a corner.\n\nLaura took off her cloak and bag and began pinning on the apron." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We can share a room,\" the woman said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"My room just over there. I'll have one of the boys bring an extra cot. Name's Nellie.\"\n\n\"Laura,\" Laura said, and then immediately wondered if she should have given Nellie a different name." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura picked up her cloak and went to the door Nellie had pointed out. It was very small with a small bed and a dresser." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She supposed they might be able to squeeze another cot in there if they worked really hard, but she wasn't hardly about to complain. The boys would be sleeping out in the open under the elements for the duration of the trip." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She folded her cloak and set it on the end of Nellie's bed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Then she slid her bag of clothes and food under the bed.\n\n\"Laura, next time we enter a port you'll need to check on the lady passengers and make sure they have all they needs.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes ma'am,\" Laura said and came back into the kitchen." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"We got two other girls. Irish. Maureen and Emma. Right now, that's what they doin'. Helpin' the women folk get settled. Levi!\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nellie called out, her hands steadily peeling the potatoes and dropping them in water. A small Negro boy, who had to be ten if he was a day, popped his head around the corner." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Take Laura down to the deck. Show her where the chickens and pigs are kept. Laura, I need me two chickens. Wring their necks for you come up.\"\n\nRight. Laura had done that before, but now she remembered one of the many reasons why she preferred a sewing needle and cloth to working in the kitchen." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There were two doors in the kitchen." }, { "from": "human", "value": "One that was clearly for servants use and the other that led to the dining room." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Levi pushed through the second door and waved Laura forward." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She paused upon entering the room. The floor was carpeted, the walls were gleaming, there were tables situated everywhere and a bar in a corner." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was small, cramped." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And more than a bit gaudy for its space." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But it was nice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Nicer than anything she had seen on the steamboat thus far.\n\n\"Dinin' room,\" Levi said, watching her take in all in." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There were a few men sitting at the tables reading papers, but otherwise the room was empty. \"This ain't nothin' compared to when we turn it into a salon at night,\" the boy said with a quick raise of his brows." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Levi kept walking and Laura followed him out another set of doors onto the deck." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Cabins this way and that,\" the boy said, pointing first left and then right." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They walked past several and Laura could see that most everyone had tiny rooms." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She paused for a moment to look over the side of the railing. She could see people all up and down the decks below, steadily moving." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"That be the pilothouse,\" Levi said, pointing up to a small, box like room above them. \"No reason to be there.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He turned and kept on moving. This time down the stairs." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They paused on the second deck. \"This here the hurricane deck. Not the second floor.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "He leaned in closer." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Folks who ain't got much money stay here. They all stay in one big room. Women and men but we use curtains to separate them. We ain't got to clean those rooms other than a quick sweep. Texas deck,\" the boy said, pointing to the ceiling above them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Monied folk. Hurricane deck,\" he said, pointing to the wall next to him." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Not so monied folk. Understand?\"\n\n\"Understand. Do they eat upstairs?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No,\" the boy said, shaking his head. \"Meals are served four times a day in there too,\" he said, jerking a thumb behind him towards the large cabin. \"During the day, folks don't sleep in there. Now's not a good time to show you around in there cause it's always hectic after we leave a port." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But, I'll show you a few things.\" She followed Levi down the deck. \"We do bring the meals though through this door,\" he said, rapping his knuckles on a skinny door. After the last meal, we put up a curtain and it becomes the men's cabins instead of the dining area.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well. That was odd, Laura thought." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The setup was not unlike their own cabin at Salis House except they weren't strangers. No wonder Miss Martha said traveling steamboats was not for ladies." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Some men pay extra for they own curtain so sometimes we have to pull out more.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The boy stopped talking as several women passed by them talking." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But we don't serve them?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Levi made a face." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"They supposed to pay us for stuff like cleanin' sheets and extra meals, but if they tell you to fetch somethin'...\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Fetch.\"\n\n\"Right. Come on, let's go to the boiler deck.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When they got to the bottom, Levi pulled her into a dark corner, tucked under the stairwell so that they were out of the way of those moving things on and off the Paine. \"This here a packet steamboat. Means we carry cargo and whatnot. It's a side-wheeler,\" the boy said, and leaning around her pointed to the large wheel on the side that was rapidly turning water over and over in a rhythmic fashion." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"They faster.\" Laura gave a nod as though she understood.\n\n\"You know a lot about steamboats?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Miz Nellie my granny. We been travelin' with Captain Leahy for years. You learn a lot,\" the boy said with a decisive wave of his hand." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She bet he did. They didn't move as men walked past them balancing wood on their shoulders." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura looked around to see if there were any familiar faces around, but she saw none." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Boiler room,\" he said as they passed a room that was hot and noisy. She didn't get a chance to peek in to see if Papa was there cause Levi was moving fast. \"C'mon.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura followed Levi down the length of the boat, careful to hug the shadowy places and dark corners." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She smelled the animals before she saw them. \"Pigs, cows, chickens,\" Levi said, pointing to the obvious as they approached the pens." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hey there, Levi,\" an older white man said as he slopped something into the pig pen." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Miz Nellie need two chickens, Mr. Fernbach. She says to give 'em to her,\" Levi said, pointing a thumb in Laura's direction." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Two chickens comin' right up,\" Mr. Fernbach said with a laugh." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Move,\" someone said from behind Laura and she took a timid step closer to the pens, allowing the men to move past her." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They had horses behind them, stamping and sniffing and leaving a trail of mess in their wake." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Two chickens,\" Mr. Fernbach said, holding out two dead chickens by the feet." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He had already done the hard work.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Laura said, taking them from him." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You new?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes. Just got on,\" she said slowly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There was no sense in denying it. Laura figured everyone had to know just about everyone on a boat this small." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Welcome to the Paine then.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" Laura said and looked around her" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"If you looking for Levi, he's probably off somewhere on someone's errand. Boy never sits still.\"\n\nRight. Laura gave Mr. Fernbach a nod and then retraced her steps back to the stairs, up them, and to the kitchen next to the dining room." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 3 sentences." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Get the chickens plucked, seasoned and roastin'. Then I need you to help me with breakfast before you go check on the lady passengers.\"\n\nLaura set the chickens on the table and then rolled up her sleeves. It was time to get to work." } ]

[ { "from": "system", "value": "Mode:\nCo-writing\nContext: Match existing character familiarity or establish new\nLength:\none sentence\nGenre:\nWestern, People of Color" }, { "from": "system", "value": "Produce a starting prompt please." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Is there anythin' else you need?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura asked the two young ladies as she finished helping them unpack." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yankees the both of them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "At Salis House they had entertained a few Yankees before." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She never could understand why they talked so fast." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"How many other women will be traveling with us?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "one of the girls asked." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was short, a few inches below Laura with brown hair and a plain face." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura did her best to memorize it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Who cares about women, Daphne? How many other men will be riding with us?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "the other girl said with a giggle." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was blond... with an equally plain face." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They were not beauties, but by the cut and style of their gowns, they were not poor either." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Which should have been obvious." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They had one of the few rooms set aside for women on the Texas deck." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sometimes, Lucinda you say just too much. What would Uncle Philip say if he heard you just now?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Oh, don't speak to me about Papa. Well?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "the girl turned to Laura, expectation in her eyes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This Lucinda could be trouble if she wanted to be." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I'm not sure how many are on the hurricane deck. We don't wait on those folks, but I believe there are nine other ladies on the Texas deck,\" Laura said, thinking back to what Miz Nellie had told her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"And at least fifteen other men, though I can't say for certain since I'm not waitin' on any of 'em.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Any of them single? Rich?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Lucinda asked as she went to primp in front of the sole mirror in the room." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The room was as tiny." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There were two beds with trunks at the end, a vanity and a small closet." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Bigger than Laura's shared room with Miz Nellie, but not by much." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Lucinda!\" Daphne turned to Laura." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was becoming clear that she was the younger of the girls, but also the most level headed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yep, that Lucinda was a problem." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Thank the good Lord her days keepin' after girls were over." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Now, all she had to do was keep after herself. What a thought." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Thank you for helping us. Our maid, Grenada is here somewhere.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"She's probably with Aunt Crissy,\" Lucinda said, still touching up her hair." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Either way, we shouldn't need your help too much on this boat,\" Daphne said firmly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"But still come and check on us,\" Lucinda said quickly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Sometimes it takes forever for Grenada to get us both dressed.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes ma'am,\" Laura said with a quick nod, slipping into a familiar role." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Can we walk around?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "this question came from Daphne." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes ma'am, but you may want to stay up here on the cabin deck.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cabin deck. Texas deck." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Did it matter what it was called, really?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"It probably isn't safe down there,\" the other girl said with excitement." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura ignored their chatter, made sure everything was neat, and then left the room." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Onto the next room." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was tired, but it was a familiar tiredness." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She hadn't always worked this hard at Salis, but if the family ever hosted a summer party or event it wasn't unusual for Laura to be up at the crack of dawn waiting and assisting any and every one." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Laura.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "She turned at the sound of Gid's voice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He, Sol, and Levi were carrying buckets of water on each of their arms." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She gave them a small wave and they gave her nods as they delivered them to different cabins in the men's section of the deck." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She returned her gaze to the door next to her. Tapped on it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Hello, ma'am. I'm Laura. I work here on the Paine. I was just wonderin' if you needed any help.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The door opened revealing a very pretty redheaded woman." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She was older than Missy Charlotte, but younger than Miss Martha." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And tall. Very tall." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She opened the door wider." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"You must be new.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The woman eyed Laura from the top of her head to the toes of her feet." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes ma'am.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"There was another girl named Maureen who helped me before. Where is she?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura had met the girl earlier." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She was one of the Irish girls Miz Nellie had mentioned." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Had Miss Martha been on board she would have had something to say about that." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But the girls had ignored Laura and Laura had ignored them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So far, all was well." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Maureen is in the kitchen helpin' Miz Nellie. I can get her if you want?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"No,\" the woman said quickly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"I didn't care for the girl's attitude anyway. Fetch me a bowl of fresh, warm water. Then get that dress laundered for me,\" the woman said, pointing to a gown that was draped over a trunk." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura assessed the blue and white silk moiré taffeta evening gown." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then she looked at the woman." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The woman gave her a haughty look, peering down at Laura over the top of her nose." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I had to leave my maid, she was ill.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura looked back at the gown." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The woman was lying." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That was clear as day to Laura, but what did she care if the woman had or didn't have a maid?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Yes ma'am.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"That's an expensive dress, you'll have to be careful when cleaning it.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"I'm familiar with silk taffeta, ma'am.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Laura felt the woman assessing her slowly again." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Perhaps you can come back before supper and help me dress?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes ma'am.\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"What's your name again?\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Laura.\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"You can call me Mrs. Hartford. I am Lavinia Hartford,\" the woman said with a nod." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The boat gave a small shudder causing Laura's foot to slip for a second." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"New Orleans can't get here fast enough,\" the woman muttered to herself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Lock the door behind you,\" Mrs. Hartford said, reaching for her door and trusting Laura to handle everything she had asked." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "\"Did you still want some fresh water, ma'am?\"" }, { "from": "human", "value": "\"Yes. I'll only be gone a minute,\" Mrs. Hartford replied and stepped out the room." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The door clicked shut behind her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Laura exhaled and reached for the gown." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It truly was a beautiful thing, but Laura could see a few stains on the front." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She would have to ask Miz Nellie if she had any honey and gin on hand." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That plus soap and hot water should remove the stains." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "She should probably get her hands on an iron too." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Slinging it over her shoulder she paused when a piece of paper fell out." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Habit made her not only pick it up but read it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was a letter and none of the people or the sentiment meant anything to Laura at all, though Laura did note that as it was addressed to a Marianne and signed by a Thomas Andrew Carter." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Neither name was of course, Mrs. Hartford's." }, { "from": "system", "value": "Next message should be approximately 2 sentence." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But that wasn't what made Laura pause. No. It was the familiar stains that crept along the edges of the paper. Blood." } ]