[b]Yue![/b]

"Impossible," said Princess Qiu. "I cannot be defeated. Nobody can do what I do. Not if all the Nine Kingdoms stood against me."

Her legs tremble, her shoulders shiver, exhaustion is writ across every part of her but the sword beneath your chin. That is held steady enough to trust your life to. And as you fall at last - it's gone. All that's left is warmth and strength enough, just enough, for this.

"But even if I cannot be defeated..." she said the words because 'thank you' alone could never have been sufficient. "It seems that I [i]can[/i] be satisfied - something I also thought to be impossible. You have lost the fight... but it seems you have saved the world."

Legends tell of the first great Princess who shot nine suns from the sky, but they do not mention why she spared the tenth. In this moment, though, the answer is obvious: the tenth sun, alone amongst its kin, has a perfect sense of timing. Because for whatever time the clocks might have imagined it to be, now it is sunset. Now the sky is streaked with pink and gold and blues that brush the edge of green. Now in this moment of exhaustion, with nothing to do but touch and breathe and watch, the largest canvas of all is set out in all its colours. 

[b]All![/b]

But then the edge of cool air and twilight violet whispers over the horizon, and there is one final danger.

Her thighs are wrapped in lunar white and her armour is blue silver steel. Her hair is ghostly white, bound for war in knots of threatening, promising skill. Whichever way she turns her sword it seems to catch the moonlight and, oh! The power of her Shard! You feel it brushing against your skin, electric, lulling away aches and exhaustion and filling it with a strange and riotous energy. The sky alights with fireworks, red and white, echoes of the Princess in whose hands all power now rests. Her captive mewls and begs at her booted feet, such a proud creature reduced and broken. The world hushes before the mighty.

"Congratulations, Yue," said Princess Hyra of the Wolves, sitting atop her brand new Sunshard. With a flick of her toe she sent the conquered Princess Yin forwards to bow at your knees. "I got you a present."

Her crimson eyes flick cautiously between the Pyre of Inspiration and Princess Qiu. It's a wolfish stare, looking for vulnerability, contemplating violence. Was this the moment she followed through on the play? Where she attacked the weakened Qiu and the defenseless Pyre, taking three more shards, another princess, and an obedient handmaiden as prizes? 

A word from her girlfriend would be all it would take.

The fate of the world once again hangs upon the ambitions - or lack thereof - of Yue of the Terraced Lake.