[b]Han![/b]

You bite down on something terrible, and it yields under your jaw. How could it not? You could bite through the mast of a real sea-ship when you are so suffused with Essence. There is a horrible echoing scream, and the kidnapper is released, only to be caught up by a dragon.

There is a wild panic in her eyes as she rolls over, mostly tangled in her cloak, sword half-drawn. She’s helpless. You are power, strength, rage. And now you get to make her squeal about where your little priestess is.

But first, doesn’t she deserve to be small and scared? Doesn’t she deserve to be punished for everything she put you through?

***

[b]Kalaya![/b]

There is a dragon in the room. It is standing over Ven. It throbs and burns with power, with essence flow unlike anything you’ve ever seen. It is not the dragon from your storybooks, to be revered as an ancestress, or the dragon of the Dominion, ancient and greedy and so, so distant. It is here and it is alive and it is an animal, and it is going to kill Ven.

Are you a knight, or aren’t you?

***

[b]Piripiri![/b]

Uusha shoves you onto the ground. Hard. For a moment, your head rings where you hit the ground. Then the hiss fills your ears.

The room is furious with arrows. Burning arrows, ricocheting arrows, howling wind arrows. And Uusha has just put herself between you and it. Arms crossed before her, feet set, head lowered, she takes to the task of protecting the three of you without complaint. Did she even think about it?

***

[b]Giriel![/b]

[quote][i]And four winds birthed the Mother of Loss, and one was the grinding-wind, and one was the brilliant-wind, and one was the promise-wind, and one was the arrow-wind. And of these only the arrow-wind will kill, with a thousand darts, or with the arrows of Yes and No, or with a long knife, as she chooses.[/i]

Kalmanka, the Arrow-Wind. She can be ten thousand arrows, or she can be a needle; she can be a black wolf, a silver swan, or a woman wearing a scale-coat of arrowheads. If Ven has called upon her, she is digging herself very deep in debt.

But worst of all is that Kalmanka holds the arrows of Yes and No in her quiver-soul, with which she may inflame passions or shatter them. No sorcerer may command her to use the one without accepting that she will also use the other as she wills, and often to their doom. She could turn [Uusha] into a sobbing berserker, or leave you with nothing but cold ash where your regard for her was.[/quote]

***

[b]Fengye![/b]

There! The General roars, a hoarse and chorused bellow, and jerks back a mangled hand from the sea. Something on the other side got him [i]fierce.[/i] He rears up and out of his sleeves spill dolls, hundreds of them, jerking broken shattered empty uniforms and breastplates, who walk as best they can on top of the sea of waste. Whoever is on the other side (which is to say, likely Kalaya) is about to be dragged into battle with a demon army. Could even she claw her way out of that kind of host?

If he pulls too much harder, incidentally, he risks doing damage to the world itself. The kind that will fester until its effects on the Flower Kingdoms are impossible for Heaven to ignore. It would ruin a beachhead for Hell, but the effects on the Flower Kingdoms would be… deleterious, in the short run.

The ideal ending for all of this is for the General to be distracted long enough for someone enterprising to contact the priestesses of the Sapphire Mother to exorcise this place as thoroughly as they can, at great expense.

He could be distracted, perhaps, with a truly audacious lie. Or with whoever this Ven is. Or— no, you wouldn’t hand over this cutie, you’re not that cold.