Come and take her? 

Oh, wouldn't that be lovely? To be a creature of such strength and power that she could just fucking do that? Even here, alight on the edge of adrenaline, glowing with the cerulean wash of desire she knew that she couldn't. She couldn't cross that distance. She couldn't beat this spirit. This one thing, this small thing for something she wanted more than she'd ever wanted anything and she [i]couldn't[/i]. A wall of mud and muck and indifference and she couldn't climb it on broken legs. No sword. No spear. No bow. Only an umbrella and the ability to call monsters.

Monsters. Demons. They filled her head, their names and shapes and catalogues. You couldn't just read about them - even in words explaining the curve of their wings some of them made their way inside you. They changed the way you thought, the way you imagined, the way that problems [i]could [/i]be solved. Puppets for a road, chariots for mercy, the howling wind for silence. Their logic flowed through her mind in alien cascades. The prices they'd declare. The power they represented. The allegiances they held. Would they free her Maid from her prison form? Would they shatter her and ascend on the wreck of her power? Would they do their job as commanded? If only she had the capability to do things herself she could choose [i]how [/i]they got done. She'd thought that power had meant strength, but there had never been enough strength to make all the world bend at once. She'd thought that power had meant authority but there were always fractures between her desires and the desires of her monsters. Even manipulating the powerful, how she'd started her career, had placed her on the razor edge of her mistress' caprice.

[i]How [/i]could she get what she wanted? What was the path? The azure stars were still as unreachable as ever no matter how many times she altered her approach. In changing her approach she'd lost coherence with herself. With each re-invention she was still a slave and she could hear the laughter of Venus in her ears. In her temper she saw a new path; one where she could cast this god's star from the sky and weave it into a needle of starlight. A new path to power built on fear and ruthlessness. Maybe [i]that [/i]would be the way.

Come and claim her. Her fingers itched. Her knees didn't. She could see the tumbling arms of the haywain. And...

She remembered. Words said in a past life.

Which did she desire? The Maid, or her pride?

... the Maid. Perhaps untrue, but she was too proud to admit to herself that she was a slave to pride.

And so, with eyes burning blue, she turned and looked towards Kayala Na. Do you remember her, Kayala? The crippled girl you met in the forest, who you helped briefly and then forgot in your pursuit of another? She remembers you. She'll never forget the way you discarded her. It's a dagger in her pride, right next to the one she adds there now.

"Help me~!!" Fengye begs, clasping her hands together, eyes filling with shining tears. "Please, noble lady! That terrible monster has stolen my darling and is imprisoning her inside it! Please! You're my only hope~!!"

[Entice: [b]10[/b]. Fengye takes a string on you, and choose from the list]