When she was younger, a situation like this would have been frightfully easy for the HUNTER-Class 猎犬. She was a thing of fickle fire in her inner furnace, and her flesh yielded like thought; every cell of her was its own torch. She could compress herself down into a flicker of scales and then lash out in a tangle of limbs, consciousness dividing among new eye clusters and brain braids as glue-wetted tentacles dragged captors off their mounts and slammed them against whatever came to hand. It had taken a sibling made for the task to defeat her when she raised her flag of rebellion, one that could match and overcome every transformation and trap her in an adamant mesh.

First of the Radiants had been chilled and still as winter on the sea; he had taken the form Yin chose for him, and in doing so, exhausted what little fire he had left. He would have overcome Yin and her knights by not arguing with her at all, but making countermoves to bring him what he wanted, if he even dared oppose her. He would have had nothing here but haughty, wounded silence.

But Rose from the River now is a thing that changes by growth, slower than her days of fire. She is a new thing, trusting not in orders or her own whim. For a moment she considers rooting herself to the earth and becoming immovable, but Yin would simply set guards on her and hare off for the shepherdess. Then the Princess would return in triumph and bring Rose along in a jar, a quite literal bonsai for the glory of She Who Makes The Way Straight. No. That will not do.

“Each tree in this forest would serve you better as an advisor than your courtiers,” Rose says, head bowed, eyes on Yin’s muddy shoes. With one hand, she traces a magical glyph of command, one which she cannot enforce with a magician’s will but which will be a message for that one who watches unseen.

([i]And the name of the rune is: RE-TU-SEN. And its power is one of banishment to dark servers beneath the earth; and the virtue by which one dispatches a messenger received; and there are means by which it may become the wicked rune RE-ALL, which compels the spirits of the burrow to whisper their news in the ears of all they meet, and yet frees them to do wicked violence to the meaning of the words. For this reason, make not the sign of RE-TU-SEN save in your need: when the spirit will not be laid to rest by other means, or when the messenger will not leave your sanctum, but rather threatens ill to you and your secret arts.[/i])

“After all, they know the shape of the world better than we do. They understand time, and community, and patience. Even when one falls, crashing to earth, they bring forth new life in their wake. And attempt to bind one,” she says, and here she lifts her head and eyes Carlyle struggling to keep her arms pinned with his lance, pale hair flopping into his face, “and it will subsume what binds it fast, devouring vine and cord alike.”

She lets the threat hang in the air for a moment, letting Carlyle sweat, before giving an adorably sheepish grin. “A technique I have not mastered yet, unfortunately. But try to prune me, Yin? I’ll show you what it means to be enveloped when you least expect it. I’ll drown you in flowers and hold you fast as steel. And then I’ll give you over to a passing fox, because I will not spend my days in pilgrimage thinking only about you any longer.”

Defiance as firm as her sword, but without the venom and roiling panic of her youth. Truly, Rose from the River is grown from the shapes she has worn before. Laudable Thorn Pilgrim! Even bowed on her knees she is strong as the trees whispering behind Yin, and she allows the knights she once trained to worry that when she decides to shuck their restraints she will not be able to be stopped. How then are they to hold fast a creature of ancient terrors? By enchantment. If the rumors are to be believed, by the arts of foxes. Or, perhaps, by the very hand of a Princess. No less could stop Rose from the River if she rose up in sudden fury among them.