Tellus!

Dyssia's eyes flick back and forth, comparing spire and pyramid and skyline against Redana's stories. It's everything Dany ever described, everything Dyssia imagined, and yet--

Nothing could have prepared her for it. Prepared her for the smell, the air, the everything. It's so much worse, and already, she can feel the purple leaking in, hear the drums, feel the--

There's so many people she needs to protect! So many lives, so many [i]villages,[/i] so many--! The horsegirls! The lakes! The people she loves already, here with the people she's learning to value! They need--!

They need her! They need a knight, a hero, a savior, a--

The thought slams to a halt like a train through a line of schoolbuses. 

Pause. Draw back. Look, actually look, and actually think. Don't just react, don't embody the moment, don't listen to [i]DAH[/i] dun dun duduDAH--

Do they?

Do they actually?

Or a diplomat, or a priest, or an orator or a smith? A grav-rail wizard? A logistics manager? Any of the rest? How often have they needed any of that in the scant few days she's been here? How often does not-a-Princess Yin ([i]Princess Yin, Princess Yin[/i]) need that? 

This is a world where a girl with a sword can cut a ship in half, and act confused and befuddled that [i]you[/i] can't.

The drums aren't just quiet. They're waiting. [i]Listening,[/i], she realizes, with the kind of expectation that sucks up all the sound in the room.

She turns, scans, finds the mad mask staring at her. Meets the gaze, her eyes entirely clear, entirely free of the tinge of indigo.

Offers it a bow. Thank you, old friend. Thank you for helping her so long.

And begins to sway.

This is not the dance she is used to. Not the frantic button mashing of that first holdout with the Pix, or of delaying an army on a beach. This is not a world of stillness, frozen redshifts and blueshifts. She does not fight as a berserker, but as--

As just Dyssia. Not trying to save a world, not trying to crush an empire all on her own, or with just a few friends, or with a harem of foxgirls.

Here is enough. Now is enough. Let others lift where they stand, and she will do the same, here with her friends.