[b]Zhaojun![/b]

“You are obviously a spirit of great power,” Machi says, her voice reverent. “You even talk in riddles like a sage.”

Then she smiles. It’s positively feral. “Which means when I defeat you and force you to grant my wishes, you’ll be able to bring our warband to glory!”

This is why comparative theology is an important subject.

The heavenly emissary will find herself assailed on all sides by both sweaty catgirls and desires of glory, adoration, love, plunder, physical striving, and victory. The uncomplicated but yearning desires of simple girls.

Their plan is simple: they mean to wrestle the emissary down and twist limbs until she concedes and agrees to grant their wishes. This might be a somewhat undignified way of being able to manipulate them all the more easily. It might also be a shame that the heart of the emissary cannot endure. Will it come to swords and firewands? Or will Zhaojun somehow outwrestle half a dozen baying N’yari?

***

[b]Kalaya![/b]

It is moon-dappled night and you cannot sleep.

You have encamped on the far side of the river that runs between Rose and Mount Fang. It is the quiet hours of the night; the rain is a gentle pitter-patter on the canvas over your head, and the insects sing in their orchestras. The cooking-fire is simmering low embers beneath its umbrella. The air is warm and wet all around you, though that’s hardly unusual. These are the Flower Kingdoms, after all.

You get up and slip out of the tent you are (by her request) sharing with the priestess, who teased you not to peek as she got ready for bed, and seemed perhaps a little disappointed that you didn’t. She is surely asleep. Not that you notice the glimmer of light beneath her lids as she watches you go.

A walk. That’s what you need. Your legs will still be sore come morning, but all of this destiny mess is going to crack your head in two if you don’t move. You walk in the muted silver light of the moon hidden behind the clouds, through pale shadows, trying to exorcise the confusion that swells in your heart like mist rising off the river.

Then you hear it: the clash of swords. Your sword is already in your hand, even before you draw close and realize that it is one traveler by night, hidden in cloak and straw hat, against three N’yari. The traveler weaves a net of steel around themselves, but even so, it is clear the N’yari will win this fight inevitably; the traveler must fight as hard as they can against three raiders lazily darting in and out. Go and even the odds.

***

[b]Han![/b]

The little bud stops to think. She really considers. But she’s still quick to come to her conclusion.

“No. No, I’m not going to change my mind. Unless you’re trying to tell me I’m not wanted, but I think you’d just say that if that’s what you meant. You’re very... earnest. Simple, even.” That... didn’t [i]sound[/i] like she knew how that sounded. “Besides, that’s probably not true. If people see that you’re looking after a priestess, they’re more likely to excuse crass behavior outright or ask me to correct you, rather than being gossips about it, and— oh!! Hello!!”

A little brown fox darts out of the shadows and zooms over to the priestess, who kneels down and greets one of the messengers of the Sapphire Mother as if it’s a beloved family pet. She even takes its little paws in her hands!

“Mmhm? Really? Oh, [i]thank you.[/i]” Yip! Yip yip! Arf! Tail wag! “Oh, while you’re here, what do you think of her? I think— mmhm! That’s what I thought, too. And she’s... oh, gosh!” She looks up at you and, even though it’s dark, you can [i]feel[/i] the sparkliness. (And, conversely, Incredibly You Energy coming off the tattletale fox.) “Of course! How could I not realize? You’re a daughter of the Thunder Dragon! That’s why you’re so [i]heroic![/i]”

She lets her veil fall to one side so she can give that dumb brat fox kissies on its dirty muddy face, and then fusses it back into place. “Well, that [i]settles[/i] it. I’ve always wanted to meet one of the dragon-blooded! Eee, this is so! [i]So![/i] Just so exciting!!”

***

[b]Piripiri![/b]

“Finally,” the Laema hisses, adjusting her bulk on the couch so that she can get a better look at you, “one of them with deeply-buried taste and sense. Though it should know to address its [i]betters[/i] appropriately: it is to use [i]my terrible Lord[/i] when speaking to the Prelapsarians. Still, we will forgive this lapse in decorum the once. Forget again and we will not be so generous.” Pointing out that discrete gender markers in address are in fashion these days would be a foolhardy thing to do.

One long scarlet nail the size (and sharpness) of a sword lifts your chin. “If we were to use other colors for it, we would draw from page-whites and boar-blacks. It might like gaudy colors like most of its kind, but that is because it is ignorant of sumptuary law. Blue is for Our Mother of Law, yellow for the Enlightened Dancer, silver for the Mirror-Copses, red for the Dreamer. But the Sky-Twister and the Unspoken Word allow for white and black for one of its station. And of course, anything can look good in our King’s colors.”

“Well, there she is.” The warlock marches through the attendants with the arrogance of someone who knows they are untouchable. The Laema withdraws her nail with a warning hiss, and you can look at— ah. She’s dressed for the road. And she stopped to gawk at you.

“You’re lucky, you know,” the warlock sneers. “I’ve got better fish to fry. The daughter of the Sapphire Mother thinks herself safe away from her mother’s arms. Don’t think she’ll keep you company here, though.” She reaches out and takes your chin between forefinger and thumb. “I intend to keep you close. How I’ll make you scream, you impudent little worm. I’ll burn the thoughts out of your worthless skull. When I’m done with you, you’ll be useless for anything that’s not serving the true Empress of the Kingdoms.”

(She’s posing. Posturing. Trying to work up something in herself as much as she’s trying to scare you. A real disciplinarian would be stern and precise, not looking like she’s a stupid impulse away from—)

She knots her fingers in your hair and pulls you in for a kiss. She’s sloppy, uses her teeth, is trying to prove something. She kisses like a demon. Perhaps she’s only had the chance to learn from them.

“Lots more of that when I come back for you,” she whispers into your lips. “As much as I want. Everything in these kingdoms is mine by right, after all.”

“Is it done?” The Laema sounds like she’s as impressed with the warlock as you are (which is to say, absolutely not at all). “Our commerce is over, Prince Ven of the Brass City, and your master’s credit will be charged. That is all.”

“No,” Ven says. “Not until I say you’re done.” That was a flash of anger in her eyes when the Laema pointed out, spitefully, that she’s beholden to others in Hell. For a moment that anger could have been directed at you, but it seems she’s decided to be petty and nasty right back. “I am not satisfied with this outfit. An old crone wouldn’t be caught dead wearing something this out of style. Tear it all off and make something that actually lives up to your reputation, [i]rag-weaver[/i].”

The Laema launches into an apoplectic fit of cursing in the First Language. It is extremely and uncomfortably comprehensible; the meaning and sensation of each curse, [i]being forced to eat rotting meat[/i] and [i]being stabbed in the spine by a lover[/i] and [i]being whipped by the dogs of hell[/i], is slamming into the back of your mind like a rock. Ven smirks, having won this stupid dominance dispute, and then “pats” you on the cheek just hard enough to sting. “I’ll see you when I come back, little bud. And that’s when your obedience training will [i]really[/i] begin.”

And that’s when she miscalculates; she leaves you in the Laema’s care assuming that the Laema will be immediately paying attention to you and that her assistants wouldn’t help you cause mischief. Both of these, you of course realize, are incorrect assumptions; the Laema is incandescent and tearing through a chest of dresses with her nails (and the violence with which she does so is proof enough of the dangers of Hell), and the assistants are draping themselves over you and languidly complaining about having to get rid of all their hard work without actually getting started.

***

[b]Giriel![/b]

You are in a room deep within Uusha’s sanctum. Keep hold to that. You are in the candlelit dark. The air is stale. You are sitting on a firm stool.

It is just that your hearts have also slid through the door you opened to the Demon City, drawn by its gravity, and found yourself on the Wrack-waste. It is the detritus of ten thousand battlefields, heaped up upon themselves: broken weapons, bloodstained scraps of cloth, torn canvas tents, blackened spurs of wood. The wing of some magnificent flying ship juts out of a dune, its golden ornamentation corroded and rusting away, its feathers all plucked and torn. This is the birthing-place of the Wrack-dolls, assembled from all around you.

The General arrives. Tichtokh breaches the surface of the Waste like a centipede-whale. He is the size of a tower, hundred-handed, thousand-handed, each one clammy and pale, with too many fingers, each arm wrapped in bandages and quilted cloth and burnished leather, each arm jutting up against the one further along. Each hand has its part to play: supporting him as he rears up above the tarnished sea, grabbing at that which has reached the surface and examining it, weaving together tattered banners and ruptured breastplates and chipped spearheads. He wears a serene white mask, framed with coarse black hair; his mandibles churn, visible just underneath its rim. He brings it low, even as more and more of him catches up to where you stand. You are nearly as tall as the span between his lip and brow.

“Augurs! Oracles! Diviners! Prognosticators!” His voice is a fluting multitude, a legion of boys too young for the battlefield, lilting above the bray of trumpets and the beat of drums. “How goes the [i]War?[/i] What are our victory-omens, our triumph-signs, our inevitabilities, our certainties?”

The General never accepted that he lost. Or, rather, he is the aspect of the Broken King that will never accept that defeat, complete and utter as it was. By turns deluded and shrewd, gregarious and apoplectic, as likely to conscript you and offer his munitions as to imprison you on suspicion of espionage, he is perilous— and you leave his presence only by his sufferance, as long as his attention is on you.

(Though that is not as long as might be feared. He is very busy. There is so much to be done. Armies to be sewn. Munitions to be inspected. Stratagems to consider. Fair-weather allies to beseech. Temporary setbacks to lament. Tunnels to burrow. Saboteurs to sentence.)

Without waiting for you to finish an answer, he cocks his head and exclaims: “Ha! From the thousand-seven-fifty-seventh front! Straight from the beachhead! Deliver, deliver! Bring your news from the front— unless you have brought us more [i]traitors?[/i]”

Two hands brandish a blue rope, pulled taut between them. No, not a rope. The veils of priestesses of the Sapphire Court, knotted together. Too new to be old trophies.

The General accepts your String, Giriel. You should treat any further roll of 7 or 10 in the scene as being a 6 or a 9, respectively, for he will spend it then.