Rose crumples into a shuddering heap of torn silk, the Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade clattering to the ground, forgotten. The world around her fades away as her blood boils from within, scorches her veins, her teeth lengthening, the slit of her eyes widening until it swallows everything, as she sees the parade. Not that of the Pyre of Meaning, not this time.

First comes King Oja, borne on a motorized throne, his mask hanging to his knees. His dark hands are speckled with age— no, they are thin claws beneath his gloves, folded on his lap. Tear him open and you could sort the few remnants of what he was born with out from the replacements, organs born from the same nano-alchemy that created Rose. (Rose tears a gouge into the ground, blind.) So fragile. So vulnerable. Dragon curled on his hoard of numbers and papers and dirty little secrets, leaning on his cane, his face small and pinched when his attendants lift the mask from his face, his white curls cut close to the head. So many enemies! Anarchists, communists, union organizers! Abolitionists, activists, assassins! Kill him and his dead man’s switch goes off; kill him and the other kings tear themselves apart over the secrets poured out of his hoard.

It— no, [i]she[/i], she meant to scare him. She’d meant to show him that nowhere was safe. She’d meant all kinds of things. When she stood beside him wearing a mask beneath her mask, helped him with the buttons he could no longer undo, she told herself that she would force him to rescind his orders to hunt her and harry her, would make him understand that if she wanted him dead he would be dead, only too late to realize that it [i]was[/i] what she wanted, now that she stood in front of the man who had commissioned her, the man who had used her as his hunting-hound, the man who wanted her to stay a pliable animal without volition, taking on shapes and identities pressed into her like a mold, a monster in the dark that would never turn on her handlers.

He had been paper-thin under her claws, her drooling jaws; he had choked on the scream, and when his bodyguards broke the door open they found her there, as his hoard of secrets poured out electronically, [i]if you are receiving this message—[/i], and she should have been covered in his blood, drenched in it, but there wasn’t [i]enough,[/i] he was so dry, like biting through a wasp’s nest, and she licked it from her lips as she stood before them and flexed her claws. (Her eyes dart from side to side, but they are all black, impossible for even the Scales to read.)

With Oja come the Burrowers, with their riot shields and their pristine labcoats, with their designer drugs and their loan collections, with their memetic jingles and their sonic dispersal units, with their sweatshop heels and their steel-tipped boots, and with them the prison laborers, shaved and barcoded and muzzled, staring hatefully at her, betrayer, skinthief, tool, stealer of kisses in nightclubs, the king’s relentless hound, hated by those she’d never saved.

Then, the Eight Trigrams Coffin. Huge, its energy flows aligned to ground and dissipate anything that could rouse her to wakefulness, its mouth open and empty and hungry. And riding inside of it, hair flowing down her bare shoulders: Yin. The Radiant Knights carry it on their shoulders, just like they carried it into Yin’s armory, a weapon— but not for such a well-behaved knight, never again, don’t you worry, First. But she never destroyed it. Never let First destroy it. Too [i]useful.[/i]

The spotlights are all on Yin as she stares at Rose and purses her lips. Then, she says: “Fine. Be a girl if you want, First. But be [i]my[/i] girl.” (“That’s [i]not[/i] my [i]name[/i],” Rose drools through her fangs.) “All this nonsense about the monks of the Way— you don’t know what you’re talking about. You [i]need[/i] me to explain. Don’t you get I’m doing you a favor? Don’t you remember who pulled you out of here? [i]Do you want me to put you back?[/i]”

(After she’d snapped it, one hand on First’s chest, teeth bared, the look on First’s face had jarred her back to shame. She’d teared up before he could, every part of him frozen and screaming as she bawled and asked why he’d made her say something that awful. This Yin does not.)

Behind Yin looms an allegory in the form of a space elevator. Do you know how to escape from orbit, Rose from the River? Unburdened. You must shed everything that weighs you down; you must be content to serve everyone with your strength, to surrender all the things that bring misery through desire: possessive love most of all. You must be free to walk away and leave everything behind if you are to play your part in bringing about universal happiness, whether that be the joy of fighting or the collar of a princess. You must turn yourself into a mirror that reflects the world for a time and then is gone, like the rose that grows from the mud of the river, swept away on the current, rootless, unwilting, glimpsed by many to their delight, never selfishly held.

Because you are a monster, Rose from the River. And the only way for a monster to be a good girl is to learn the Way, give up its selfish desires, and work towards the happiness of everyone without complaint. But you failed, Rose from the River. You have let yourself be bogged down. You compromise because you cannot overcome your desire to be beloved. (“I want to be loved,” Rose admits, small, broken. “please. let me be hers. just for a little while. let me be small and helpless and loved. she knows what I am and she loves me anyway, can’t I have this, please?”)

Once there was a king who gave stock options to three vassals. (“no. stop. please.”) And one used them as collateral to get an interdepartmental loan, and enriched his corporation thereby, and was promoted to manager. And one cashed them in in order to buy a better class of consumer goods, and through this proved the largesse of his king, and was promoted to assistant manager. And the third clung selfishly to them in fear of poverty, not trusting in her king’s largesse, and when the time came to account for them, she was found to Not Meet Expectations and had the stock options and her annual bonus revoked.

What will you do with your strength, Rose from the River? Will you hoard it and refuse to use it simply because pretending to be weak makes you wet? Or will you act under the direction of universal eudaimonia? Will you reach paradise through violence?

…

Scales of Meaning makes the mistake of coming too close, and Rose from the River is a sudden blur, and the sword in her hands protests as she twists it into its blade again. She is sobbing, fighting blind, lashing out at the world that she is unworthy of, that demands so much of her to be a good person.

She came so close. But Rose needs help. She can’t fight this battle alone. Which is to say, she shouldn’t; she [i]can[/i] defeat the Scales of Meaning, she [i]can[/i] overthrow the Pyre, but like this? Her skin like scales, her eyes dark, her hair lashing and digging at the ground, tears falling from her chin, veil dangling from one ear, clothes sloughing off of her as she becomes more serpentine, more thorned, more a monster to rival the Pyre herself? No. Please, no.

Only two ribbons hold her above an abyss. Imagine them: a pale blue-white ribbon, the lace digging into her wrist, soft and insistent and holding all of her weight, and braided around it, a simple brown ribbon, as a country girl might use to tie up her curls.

[Rose hits a [b]12[/b] to Fight against the Scales of Meaning: inflicting a condition, stealing a String (perhaps because she can tell Rose is [i]barely[/i] holding herself back), and opening an opportunity for aid once again.]