[b]Chen![/b]

Princess Jessic has a palace - a place of power, mastery, and the realization of visions. She also has a house. It's a smaller little annex, comfortable and soft, filled with all the pursuits and hobbies that don't fit into her Princessly image. Three walls are shelves groaning to hold the weight of manga books. Some sense of organization was made once in the past but the collection outgrew that system and now surplus books are crammed into every gap, books stacked to fill every inch of shelf space but not quite yet spilling out into the floor. A large central floor heater is ignited with a passing breath of dragonflame causing the temperature to raise sharply before Jessic hurriedly turns it down. An array of couches surround the heater and is that - ah, yes. There are the excess books, hidden underneath the couches. Stories did mention that dragons liked to sleep on top of their treasures.

With a series of quick vocalizations the lights dim and a projector starts to run, covering the fourth and empty wall with a large projected movie screen. A few claw gestures and the screen had resolved to a title: [b]Magical Girl * Ydian![/b] 

+This is a good starting place!+ thought Jessic. +It's about - well, I don't want to spoil too much. But I've found it's hard to know how to be without a hero to aspire to, and that's what these stories are about. Heroes, the girls who become them, and the trials they have to go through to get there. Oh and this is technically part two of an ongoing series but the author was really finding her feet during the first part so all you've really got to know is that there was a war where the main character's grandmother broke the Wheel of Reincarnation and now people can turn into demons or reach enlightenment within a single lifetime and an order of fortune tellers was founded in order to predict which would do which and they destroyed the King of Darkness but that was fifty years ago and he's a good guy now. Got it? Let's go!+

And so your education begins.

[b]Rose![/b]

If you were insufficiently endowed before, Rose, you are not so now. Not with all the gems, necklaces and exotic shadowsilks Cyanis has stuffed down the front of your dress. Your arms strain to carry all the paintings that she has placed within them, and she has wrapped you in a heavy cloak heavy with pockets stuffed full with even more treasures. Every so often she finds some new gem or portrait, does some mental calculus, and then empties one of your pockets so that she can replace the contents with higher value items. Sometimes she gets out a phone and tithes to the Scales of Meaning to check prices she's not sure about. Isn't she such a diligent businessfox!

Walking gracefully under all this weight is a real challenge indeed though! Roll to defy disaster with Grace to see if you should happen to stumble and alert any guards!

[b]Yue![/b]

One day of training, one day of rest. One day to sit and watch the clouds pass by at close range, to watch the brilliantly coloured biplanes swirl and dance. One day to listen to the street musicians with their meandering violins and watch the elderly men stain their hands deep with earth so rich it is almost violet as they prepare the city's many public flower boxes for when they will bloom in the spring. One day to taste beetroots that are like an ocean filled with as much sugar as salt and see a community come together to cheer the launching of a new balloon. One day to watch a hackysack game run for an improbably long time, the young men involved preternaturally skilled at keeping that beanbag in the air, and then meet a stranger taking a dozy owl for a walk. One day to rest and you've barely scratched the surface of the ways in which you might rest in the Sky Castle.

One day to spend in blissful harmony with Hyra, your girlfriend, who experiences it all with you there by your side.

When the sun dips down over the horizon and the lights of the Arena come on, announcing your battle is to begin, you are as rested and calmed and filled with light and life as a girl might be. In the distance you hear your name called and hear the rising roar of the crowd and you know that it's your time. As the portcullis of the arena rises before you and bids you to enter, Hyra takes a red kerchief from her pocket and ties it around your neck - for after all, a knight can't go to battle without her lady's favour.