Cohost writing prompt: @make-up-a-starship-pilot — Starship pilot who is a registered warlock
The old powers jockey for new roles, out here. Rise and fall and are unwillingly syncretised, shift and mutate; but the bargain remains the same. Buy now, pay later. Puissance for fealty.
"When shall we three meet again?" Bingley intones pompously. Life support warlocks are the fucking worst; who cares that in ages past, your patron preferred the culture-level confidence trick of clerics to the contract-law quid pro quo of warlockry? Old gods of healing and agriculture brought low are, functionally, just as fucking low, whatever airs you put on. "In solar storm or debris rain...."
"When our path's at apogee," Chandrasekhar grates, in the resonating growl that patrons of ice-locked necromancy still cultivate. Fucking conservatives, all spiky black armour and frost-blue glowing eyes. "When solar charge is full and free."
"Next jump is set for 12:03," Leclerc says dryly, hands in jumpsuit pockets. Everyone hates pilots, the knee-jerk loathing of falling powers for the nouveau puissant. "Oh-five, really, but I wouldn't want to put anyone out by not rhyming."
The Winterlight was not a great power, before spaceflight. Not a god, not even a patron. Visiting all the world's children in a single night of celebration? A folktale, a culture story, but not a practical power. But out here, the combination of impossible velocity, unerring navigation, infalliable ETA, and cargo delivery mean so much more than could ever have been imagined.
The ability to summon a reindeer familiar is weird, but magic's just like that.