It takes a great many colours to make the western sky seem so colourless. The sky itself must be an indigo blue, so deep and absorbing that the only way to make it any darker would be to fill it with stars. The clouds must be a grey so mighty and dominating and varied that to look upon them is to feel the promised rainfall lash in imaginary waves across your skin. The mountains of the north must be the pitch black shadows they cast, the outlines of trees breaking up their jagged features, cloaked in a nondescript violet that matches perfectly with the rolling hills of the south. The moon must gleam in silver, haloed at its edges with an invisible light that renders the void of its shadow at the centre of a spotlight. Such painstaking attention to the sombre palette of twilight was a necessity. The splendour of the sunset in the west was rendered all the more magnificent because of how utterly it transcended the miracles of the east.

A cool summer's evening breeze ripples across the tall grass, the increasingly steady breath of evening. Carried in its lips are three red oak leaves, the first whisper of autumn. The distant hills are lit with gemstone lights, and here and there those light ascend directly upwards, the columns of red dots rising into the sky that speak the shape of the space elevators. The glass wreckage of broken suns form a ladder of refracted colours that descends all the way into the molten orange furnace of the east, passing behind veils of crimson red clouds in storm-rent patterns. Below the Terraced Lake reflected the colours of the sky in three levels, outline hazing with the patterns of waterfall.

The lights and leaves are tiny fragments against the scene itself, and yet they are transformative. They take this glorious act of cosmic beauty and render it a backdrop. They take all of these colours and lights and transform them into a blessing. They render the dance of mathematics and celestial mechanics a treasure to be appreciated by every weary farmer and yawning artist and pensive princess.

Princess Chen has been atop this hill for an hour now before her phone buzzes. A brief interruption that despite ending the moment of meditation does not feel like it has broken the otherworldly liminality of the moment

Qiu: hey
Qiu: nice evening
Qiu: you seeing this?

*

Daily Affirmation of the Way <3: [i]"A masked king stood upon a beach and demanded the grains of sand tell him which of them was in charge."[/i]

The twilight breeze brings flames.

You are no stranger to fires at darkness. Though you are now the Rose from the River, though you are now centered utterly in the guidance of the Way, you once wore this aspect. Once you stood passionate and brilliant and inspired and all of the midnight electricity of the underground ran through you, and you ran through it. Once you burned in the knowledge of financial databases and viewership patterns and social network connections and the howling of cooling turbines was required to chill your pounding blood. Once you were a demon princess in your own way. No longer. Now you are devoted.

The Pyre of Inspiration has no such centre. She burns with all the glory of the darkening skies, all the fierceness of summer's night-time heat, all the direction of the wildfire. Purpose has been placed within her by the magic of Princess Qiu and she grasps for it like a masked king grasps for a peasant's wallet. Pity her.

She has come in the carnival of herself, the roaming celebration comprised of her joyous and bounding sub-souls; the broken aspects of her personality, vices so vast and craving that they could not be contained within a single body and soul. She sits on the throne wearing a mask of woven wire, red and blue and violet, as spiral-headed dancers cavort around her like halos of hypnotism. Three great sub-aspects lie at her knees, wearing as much fabric upon their faces as they do upon the rest of their bodies. You see here the Scales of Meaning, a naga with flowing white hair that turns into flowing white scales, horned head perfectly level as scales hang from each of her horns. The Secrets of the Stance is second, aspect of conflict, muzzled and trussed, still scratching pointlessly against her bonds that she might reach the blade that awaits her inches away. Finally the Voice of Ballet hangs upside-down by her ankles as spiral dancers sponge and wash and polish her gleaming crystal feet that already shine brighter than diamonds. Protestations cannot escape her gagged mouth and so she lets her fury be known with lashes of her tufted lion's tail.

Such is the Pyre; both ruler and landscape. She is each of these, and each of the dozens of demons that follow in train. She herself is as beyond mortal conversation as a mountain, her role is to rule and to laugh and to indulge endlessly as befits the great sovereign of Hell. And yet work must be done, and so it is to be done by her aspects - with a cry of mirth she plucks the gag from the mouth of the Scales of Meaning, breaks her chains with a flex of her slender wrists, and kicks her unceremoniously from the mobile throne dais. The Scales of Meaning lands in the mud and is trampled upon by two dozen laughing demons as they pass, many of whom take the time to ensure that they stomp upon her throat or back or tail and wipe their feet in her silver hair. When the demonic carnival has moved on and the Scales picks her disheveled, elegant form out of the mud transcendent fury and shattered longing burns in her eyes bright enough to see by. She will fulfill her task that she might return to her rightful place at her own feet and renew her hated humiliation. 

And you, Rose from the River, watch in darkness. If there ever was a perversion of the Way, according to those fellow monks who do not regard you as a perversion of the Way, it is the Pyre of Inspiration. Her carnival has been sweeping the Terraced Lake hunting for a girl seen only in the sketches of wanted posters, and the Scales of Meaning is the leader of this hunt. Your goal in all of this has yet to be revealed to you by the Way. Is it to rescue the hunted girl? Is it to defeat the Pyre of Inspiration in glorious battle, one against one-that-is-an-army? Is it to hang upside-down from the dais as the Scales of Meaning weighs your heart and determines if you are to take the place of the Pyre of Inspiration as great ruler of hell? 

What is certain is that you will find answers within the dances of the Demon of Knowledge.

*

It seemed like a joke. Your face on a wanted poster, Yue? Perhaps your sister had been behind it. What was definitely a joke was the reward - a dance with Princess Qiu the Threeshard Sovereign, or equivalent, for whoever brings you in. As though you would be worth so much as a wink from her! An easy enough thing to laugh off, and easy enough to assume the uncomfortable number of the posters around the market was simply tasteless over-commitment to a joke. Biao Biao the woodswoman definitely seemed to think so, roaring with laughter and slapping you on the back and asking what crimes against the throne you'd gotten yourself into this time.

It had been a happy day, and a happy walk home. The sunset was too beautiful to care about the lateness of the hour or the deepening shadows. Right up until you saw something in them.

Rivers, for all their beauty and value, were ever things of peril and fairy-tale warning. One walks with one's wagon in between them and the water so that no grasping demons might pull you below. A silly warning, a silly habit, but it saved you - demon soldiers with spiral faces erupted from the depths and surged to catch you, and only the barrier of that heavy wagon bought you enough time to let out your scream and run. Over the darkening hills you ran, silhouetted against the setting sun, the pounding of wet and evil feet slapping behind you as froglike creatures pursued. You ran and you ran to the sound of demonic burbling and a fearfully yipping fox to accompany you, all the way back to your home where you dived inside, slammed the door and drew the curtains.

And then, as your heart still pounded, you noticed someone sitting in your grandmother's chair.

Silver haired, silver smiled, silver eared, silver tailed, leather of brown and black, eyes of red and hunger. For a moment it seemed like you had fallen into the arms of something even more terrifying than the demons outside. She stood in a smooth motion and stepped forwards, and again as you stepped back into a wall. She put one hand beside your head and leaned down a little so her eyes rather than her fangs were level with your face. "Don't worry, little dove," said the wolf, "My name is Hyra, and I have been sent by my princess to keep you safe."