[b]Godspeed You! Golden Fawn and My Draconic Romance![/b]

The lights wink out as Eclair Espoir makes for an exit. For a moment, it is easier to remember where you are: in the depths of a castle dedicated to the end of all things, surrounded by the dancing dead and flickering shadows of lightless foxfire, clutched tight by a forest where the roots drink hate and the flowers sing surrender. For a moment, the magic threatens to fall apart, for all the good intentions of Eclair Espoir. The music of Keli and Seli falters, and surely they will be seen as the dance ends.

And then neo-Thellamiepunk starts playing off a tablet.

In one hand, Alcideo of the Chrysanthemum has a lotus shining with the light of his heart. In the other, he holds the pole that once held up a banner now long rotted away. He wraps his legs around it and throws back his head, his teeth shining, his eyes shut as his shirt flutters to the cobblestones.

It's a remix of one of Civelia's hymns: a pean to order, to cooperation, to all the things that can be achieved when the people of this world work together. But the true music is in the cuts, the loops, the thumping beat underneath it all. As Alcideo hangs upside down from one ankle, his body taut and his hair hanging loose, it's hard to ignore that this is a song about [i]selfishness.[/i] About taking what you want and letting it make your radiance shine all the brighter.

All around you, there is clapping to the beat as the Cult of Inara keeps a ritual spinning, frantically, improvisationally, [i]sexily.[/i] All things in which we excel down in Aestival. There is cheering, there is "tweaking" (I am sure this is correct Yukisearth slang) and there is still an irresistible [i]beat.[/i]

[hr]
[b]Yuki of Yukisearth![/b]

The heartblade of Walking Elm is (you might remember) wickedly thin and black as rot, and corrosive sap runs down the groove in the blade. Except the sap is sluggish, barely flowing, and the blade is crooked like the branch of a sickly tree, and instead of fighting like a proper fencer, she is [i]whipping[/i] it at you, hacking at the air itself, and she staggers like she has no fine control of her sword arm. Underneath her honeyed sweetness, underneath her promises of bliss, this is the tree that was grown in this garden: flailing about in an attempt to [i]hurt you.[/i]

When she catches you on your cheek, when she whips the tip through your mouth and black sap follows in an arc like blood, it stings like wasps. It burns like demon pepper curry. Something trickles down your throat and [i]you are useless and unnecessary and Thellamie would be better if you'd never come back.[/i] Her smile is the bared rictus of an animal as she tries to catch you on the backswing, and a dancer bumps your shoulder, and that thin sword sails just over your head.

She's trying to drive you back to Alcideo. Maybe she'll just skewer you both in one thrust. But that's as far as her spite can get her, as far as a strategy goes, and you have an advantage:

You can dance.

[Mark a Condition. If you dance-fight, add +1 to your next Fight roll.]

[hr]
[b]Eclair Espoir![/b]

Mayzie catches at your sleeve at the worst possible moment: right as you dive through the window and fall forever through shadows and the coils of sleeping dragons and you don't even have a candle to keep you safe, but the wings of the Hero's Shadow are around you, and I thank it for taking an interest here. It takes you no time at all, on wings like those, to crash through the stained glass on the far side.

It is an impossibility, what you have just done, only possible because you have attracted the attention of multiple... well, calling us Players might distract you from the case at hand. Powers. Principalities. A Fallen Star and a Hero's reflection. Which means, even as Mayzie tumbles onto the amethyst-and-phosphophyllite floor of the transit station of Hero's Haven, one of the holiest cities of Kel; even as false-maids with beads in their hair and kumis on their breath look to you in astonishment; even as the fool struggles and tries to get up to keep fighting with a wound in her side; even then, even in that moment, you have something over Timtam which you have long sought:

You have the advantage.

A multiplicity of shining Eclairs will, at least for a moment, keep your enemies at bay as you close with the traitor maid. And the acoustics in here are, I promise you, simply [i]extraordinary.[/i]