Please understand. Injimo exists to do a single thing, and she does it badly. If there was anyone who valued that they would be incorrect. This is not self pity or depression; to her, it is an object of quiet, steady motivation. She is aware of the mountain. It is enough to be climbing it. Even if it grows faster than she climbs, even if her hand slips more than it grasps, even if she is surpassed by every new-born hero in turn just as she was surpassed by the Hero of Ages, still she reaches. She does not need love. She just needs a mountain.

It hurt to lose hers. But it was a selfish luxury to get to watch it for so long up close. Enough time to steal a technique or two, but nobody would value that either. There is no one who values half a swordsmaster; no one who would be content with someone who achieved their full potential only for it to render them mid.

So it is with genuine surprise that she finds her feet kicking not off rubble and air, but off golden-brown scales. There is something solid beneath her, unreality offering itself in the shape of Morning.

[fight]

Injimo relaxed into her sprint, ascending with blade in hand. Perhaps this was it? She had never succeeded in the duels of girls, never had the flirtatious confidence, never been able to disorient and incite, never had a defense against cutting words and long lashes. To fight them was not to climb a mountain but to catch a fire. But to fight a beast, a monster, a dragon... what if that was an entirely different thing?

Because she was good at this part.

It's weird that shadows burn, right? Like, shadows are the absence of light, the places light doesn't touch, so shouldn't they be cold instead of hot? Or maybe they _are_ cold but it's the kind of cold that's like holding onto an icecube so long that it burns you? It's weird that hot and cold both do the burning thing, actually, and that you can even feel that from shadows at all.

This is not what Yuki expected to think about as she chased the jingle jingle of a tambourine through clawing shadows singing her skin and her hair raw. But then, there was only so much her mind could chant Juni, Juni and in the face of this cloying darkness, she could not bear to open her mouth to speak. So a little part of her mind just detached and thought about how highkey weird it was that shadows worked this way while she kept putting feet in front of each other until eventually...eventually those feet made the thunk thunk thunk of boots upon stone and not the lost whisper of sound sucked into darkness. Until she tumbled out and she could hear Juniper's prayer and hear the name Olesya.

And still she couldn't speak because her body was wrapped too tightly into the hug. Her face pressed into Juni's shoulder, her tail curled around Juni's legs, her arms holding Juni's back so tightly that she might just crush the fox before she remembered to let her breathe.

And, when she can speak at last, she manages. "Ah, Juni, you fell in love, didn't you? Fine, fine fine. Where's your girlfriend then~? We've got a golden faun to collect on the way out, and then we'll go get her." Her tail still curls protectively around Juniper's legs, but she begins to stand up properly, to brush herself off and try to get the char off her knight's cloak. Maybe shadows were hot then, if they made her clothes sizzle? Made no goddamn sense though.

HEY

Stoppit! Stop that at once! You! He! He doesn’t care how many hands you lay on him he’ll just squirm them right off! Twist and tug and groan and squirm them right off! Riiiiiiiiiight off! Squirm and squirm and squirmity squirm squirm off!

Right! That’s it! You wanna cheat the foxboy? You wanna cheat the foxboy like the princess? (Princesses totally get cheated, that’s the only way anybody ever beats them, duh) You just let him go and let him get his heartblade back out and eep! get his heartblade o-ooh!! let him get his heart why!?! let hapskjuk?! go and let him hrkk-! get his squeak! heartbl ohmygoodness ade to to mmmpphhh!!! to show you o-oh, that, thigh go squish show you all wait hang on

The Khan takes his chin in her hand. Her big hand. Her hand that is big. Because of many much muscles. That’s why it’s big, silly. And! She is delighted to hold his chin. She is adoring to hold his chin. Adoring, hold, for chin, who wouldn’t, for Golden Faun chin? This is all proper and good and so it’s really weird that you’d call any of these huntresses disrespectful bet you didn’t think about that huh. A-and, he’s breathing in her face, actually. Oh! No! Not, mocking her! No mocking breathing here! That’d be rude! Feel how hot his breath is, can breath that hot be mocking? Didn’t think so. See, he’s breathing to get all the heat out, because he needs to get the heat out, or else he’ll burst into flames, and she’ll burn her hand, and that’ll be super embarrassing. She might even burn her other hand. If she’s got one.

“A-aww, you - eep! - you recognized me?” Now he’s speaking in her face! How about that! “And I thought no one in a…ahh…alll the Outside still remembered the Tale of Twin Tails.” Now he’s foxily smiling in her face! How about that! “Lucky me~”

Now he’s kissing in her face! On her mouth, specifically!

How about that.

When a foxboy doesn’t need to fuss with arms, hands, legs, standing, the next five minutes, that sure clears up a lot of room for kissing, huh? Between you and me and the Khan, he maybe doesn’t exactly know what he’s doing. But he has thought an awful lot about it. So when, for once, he’s the one doing the stealing, well, that’s the perfect opportunity to try, isn’t it? Not to smother. Not to overpower. Just. Glow. Give. Let a little hum flutter in his throat. Let the joy and fire bubble up from his chest and press it tenderly, clumsily to her lips. From a Prince-Princess to a huntress.

He really did want to finish that duel. Wasn’t it fun? Won’t you give him your name? Won’t you indulge him with one more dance?

Taste him, and know truth.

[Hazel takes a String, and gives one in turn.]

“The offer still stands, my brave khan.” He breathes. He whispers. Dangerously close. “And that makes two points for me~”

There is a glimmer in his eye. And his nose. And his triangles. And all both his tails. And his other eye. And

FWOOSH

And Hazel Valentine Fletcher’s mouth hangs open. Unable to speak another word.

(oh gosh i led her on)

[Rolling to Entice Khan Mikela: 5 + 5 - 1 = 9]

Eclair Espoir!

Mayzie's ears go up. Uppies! Her eyes go wide as she fixates on... a spindle. The kind that you'd use for old-fashioned carding, with a distaff you stick between your legs. (This wonderful world being what it is, that's a very ordinary thing and not something worth making innuendos over, generally.)

"That! There! Do you know what that is, Eclair?! That's Civelia's Spindle! Here?! You can spin anything on that, including--"

She dives back and clings to you as a plane of jagged glass the size of a wagon crashes into the mercury sea right where she had been standing. You were, of course, already in motion, so the two of you entangle.

"I can spin anything on that," she says, staring into your eyes. "Anything."

---

Injimo!

Morning is the light that plays on swirling, eddying quicksilver. She is the motion of globules detaching, bouncing, sinking back into the whole. She is the shattering of glass. She's all these things, but put them together, and she is also unmistakably a dragon. She is vast and joyful and getting in where she's not supposed to be.

Heron would be having a fit! Rurik would be having a double fit! But that doesn't really matter right now, because right now? Right now, you get to combo with someone. And that's nothing new. You were the set-up for a Heron combo all the damn time. Or you'd get in the second hit which unlocked the aerials.

But Morning is setting you up for combos.

[harder! you can do better!] she cheers, as she dives into mercury and explodes out, spinning, flinging half-formed limbs all about, setting you up for a 360 omnislash noscope. She's showy, but in a way that invites you to be showy back. And through draconic telepathy, she floods you with the delight of a puppy who has a very, very big stick and gets to run with the stick.

She'll be so disappointed when those two Avel manage to figure out how to bottle Cair back up. Unless that's not what they need to do? Unless they need someone to explain the mechanics of this fight to them.

---

Hazel!

So here's the thing, Hazel? You cannot be allowed to win. The pride of the Khan will not settle for you having a win. So Mikela the Fierce grabs you and snogs you back, hot and impatient and oh goodness gracious me she's got her teeth on your lip and she tugs until you make a delicious little squeak.

And then she tosses you into the pawing hands of her hunting-pack. Who are making a circle. A circle around Mikela. Who is peeling her top off. And, wow. Muscles. Heaving muscles, because she's breathing heavy and wiping her lips.

"You want to play it this way, boy? Fine." She tosses her top aside, and hey, that's a cute pattern on her bra, lots of colors in between black angles. There are huntresses hooking their fingers under your top. "We wrestle until you beg to be my sluzhanka."

---

Yuki!

"Oh no. Mikela's going to flatten him," Juni frets, as the four of you peer out of the Ossuary and look down upon the Khan flexing. "And then... oh, Olesya will be in so much trouble! And Mikela has no idea what the Khatun will do to her if she gets in the way of the OTP!"

"That's a lot of Serigalamu," Seli says, tapping her teeth. "Guess Mama got away."
"She's going to punish us for that one."
"Oh no, she's going to punish us~?"
"Unpaid ten-hour shifts at the Diamond Deluxe~"
"So, what, like when we were apprenticing?"
"But meaner. Bossier. Skimpier outfits."
"Unless we bring her something worth the scheme."
"But look at all of them! How are we supposed to save him?"

"...we can't all go out there and get caught with him," Juni interrupts. (Poutily? Conflictedly? Even being tortured by the Khatun hasn't fully tempered the characteristic passion of the Aestivali.) "And... wait, Our Lady was the distraction?"

"Oh, very distracting."
"Very bouncy."
"Very indignant."
"Mmph, mmph, wiggle, wiggle~!"

They are going to deserve every bit of their punishment.

"Either way, we can't let him get pinned underneath Mikela! Feeling her full weight on him, the strain of her muscles, seeing her victorious smile, and, and, he'd melt, and, he wouldn't be safe, but that's because, oh, if only Mikela was the leader of her own tribe again, not being bossed around by that, that horrid woman, because then he'd be free to not be free..."

Literally. Never been set up for a combo before.

Like. There's an entirely different. Entirely different category of things that become possible like that. There are things you just can't do if you have to be watching your left. There are moves that look great in display but never see use in real combat because the demand of balancing attack and defense rules them out. It's not even the same thing. Being able to move without watching your back, because you know someone has got it?

It's. It's like she moved. This is how she could move like that. It wasn't just because she was built different. It was because. Because.

"Oh, uh," said Injimo, snapping out of it for a moment. "Sorry Cair. I kind of started thinking about stuff and zoned out for a second there."

The puddle of burning, frozen, poisoned mercury pooling in amidst the smouldering wreckage of the Stacks gradually congealed. Shivering, from the goo, arose a single limb - an arm, a hand, a thumb, raised.

"I guess I had some stuff I needed to work out," said Injimo. "Uh. But not against you specifically. We're cool, right?"

The hand collapsed into the puddle of goo. Gradually it raised up out of the puddle again, thumb raised again.

"Like, I probably could have given you a chance to surrender earlier, but this was the first time I'd ever been placed to use the Trifold Status Edge for real and did you -" she hovered uncertainly.

The hand slowly raised up out of the mercury again. This time it did not raise its thumb. Injimo watched as it slowly reached to the soot-blackened stone and traced a message in flawless cursive.

IT WAS COOL

It was the rush all over again. The telepathic draconic joy snapped back into her head redoubled, the thrill of the fight revisited. Euphoria. The joy of your joy not having come at someone else's expense. The relief of having not hurt someone. To be granted permission to enjoy this feeling. The gratitude to everyone who made it possible. She almost wept.

Ah. Almost, nothing.

Three sensations. Three mysteries.

The first and by far the most coherent is the weight of the spindle in her hand. She has no memory of reaching for it, no concept of what kind of effort it might have taken. Forensic data implying her path through the now-fallen wreckage. The storm has passed. The motion through it can no longer be imagined.

But it is a certainty that she is holding the spindle. And that the artifact is intact and undamaged. Mayzie is looking at her. Not with stars in her eyes, not with gratitude. Not even with concern. Raw intensity. That's what Eclair Espoir identifies in her fellow Avel. She must have been quite rude, in that case. They had wrapped up in one another, she recalls that quite clearly, would she really have been so crass as to rotate Mayzie and kick off of her as the beginning of a parkour sequence?

And yet, she must have. Because she is holding the spindle. In that moment, in those eyes, had she seen the promise of a dream worth anything? Had she perceived something too valuable to lose, though but a moment earlier it had been worthless junk designated for dusting and deletion. The hierarchy had been shattered. Typically easy calculus had been flipped on its head.

She'd... wanted to see. What was possible. How absurd.

The second sensation, only slightly less conspicuous, was the pain arcing along the path of her back. This type of thing is not a rarity; her methodology subscribes to the notion of "minimum viable effort" which by its nature left zero room for error. Errors were of course unfortunately common: as with detective work, as with combat, or combat-adjacent action sequences.

She'd simply misidentified the puzzle of the Stacks. That was all this meant. 'Unless' had unfurled far sooner than she'd anticipated, and Injimo had responded to encouragement Eclair hadn't even thought to look for. Oversight, but a positive outcome. Though, it's an unusual injury? As these things go? The... what name did she just hear? Three... part... mmmn, damn it. Perhaps the Triple Cross Edge? This is an irrelevant detail, named attacks are a dead end of creativity to begin with. But all the same, her head is buzzing. She wishes she could write it down.

Regardless! It was a broad-spectrum attack with the potential to inflict a lot of area damage. If Eclair had sought to encounter that with unshaped Light, which felt like the sort of thing she would try (why is it so hard to piece this together??? why is her mind nothing but this strange buzzing?), then the damage should have been spread across her body in random places. Not to mention...

No, that is impossible. Mayzie is untouched. The spindle is likewise perfect. The odds of these two things coinciding with... but no, could she, could Mayzie have applied another of her heretofore unanticipated talents? Did she? Did she hate, er, was she mad at...?

?????

But.

Assess the damage, Eclair. Her dress, shredded from her shoulder blades to beneath her waist. Her Aurora armor, likewise cracked and crumbling away from her flesh. Her skin, torn and burning. But not bubbling. Not poisoned. Not cold-burned either. Something else, something from the environment, something that... across her back? Only there? She would have pivoted. Attempted to dodge? Failed? But the two most precious things in this accursed subspace trash pile are both pristine. Untouched.

Then, are these facts... linked?

The... third sensation.

A tingle, and a sense of lingering warmth across her lips.

Eclair may live her life with a face half buried in a notebook, but one does not spend so much her of life living in a mansion tended by maids without learning to recognize the flavor of a kiss.

But she, haha, this is the strange part. She can taste it on more than just her lips. Her tongue has the strange heaviness of having to carry two people's worth of tastes, and even as she brushes it across them, her teeth are stained with it as well? It must have been... rather forceful. Which returns the subject to Mayzie. Watching with untraceable intensity.

Oh, Eclair. To have forced yourself so upon a childhood friend? Shameful and disgusting. Is that why? Is that why she cannot remember it? Is it guilt that makes her feel as though she's been struck by the very lightning for which she was named?

Numb, she hands the artifact to another cat. She turns her gaze to the pile of fallen treasures now smouldering around everyone. Her own treasury is both smaller and vaster in its way, but there is one perfected jewel among its depths that she makes a habit of never reaching for, except in the most desperate of circumstances.

She pulls that blade here and now. A slash of her wrist, the familiar burst of opal light. The heartbroom rests heavy in her hands. She looks again at Mayzie, and heat steals the color of her cheeks.

"I... have... no right to call myself a maid. Not anymore. But I... even so, I..."

She turns, and begins to sweep. The Heartbroom is the purest and most concentrated weapon in the treasury of her heart, and its power is thus: that what it sweeps, if it should be a mess, will burn harmlessly into dust, easily swept. All treasure is made instead to shine, and all innocent infrastructure to glitter. Indeed, this blade cuts only that which is unnecessary.

She sweeps it now against the ruin of the Stacks. Anything to cease this endless contemplation of her failure. Sure Mayzie could not have kissed her!

...Could she?

This is the part where he really ought to explain himself. What will he say, exactly? That’s an excellent question; he’ll get back to you on that one. Unfortunately, it is very, very difficult to explain yourself when someone’s kissing you so fiercely they’re threatening to claim a piece of you for themselves. There may have been some…oh, who is he kidding? There’s no words said. Noises, yes. A yelp muffled beneath her tongue. A panicked squeak at the prick of his lip. And. A soft little whimper. Shuddering and fluttering. When she pulls away.

Now, this is the part where he needs to argue for his life, because whatever dance he had been thinking of it was not an intimate session of getting twisted into a pretzel in front of a live huntress audience. This would require at least one (1) plan. But whatever he had been thinking of, it was not what would happen if he kissed a Khan, much less a plan for what comes after, now was it?!

(Ah, eto…bleh! :3c)

(EXCUSE ME???)

Unfortunately, it is very, very difficult to think of a way out of any kind of mess when a half-dozen huntresses are creating a thorough map of all the interesting places they can squeeze you. And checking their work. And sharing their discoveries. And showing their Khan, in great detail, where she should put her hands to make you make this noise or wiggle like that. Which is completely unfair in a pre-wrestling context, if you ask him, but you’ll have to ask him later, because one of them just found where he’s ticklish-

OH OKAY THAT’S HER ENTIRE BRA

This is the part where he looks away! No, wait, this is the part where he looks at her! No, wait, this is the part where he looks at her, but not her chest, but still her arms and legs, but not her chest, but yes the wrestles, but, but-!

“Excuse me!”

Oh, so this is the part where he talks?!

“PleASe! Could you - ack! Couldyoupleasebecarefulwiththattop?” Which one of these huntresses has their hands on his back? Wait why are there three hands on his back?! “That was a gift from a friEEND! It’s very important to me! Please don’t rip it!!!”

Cool! Yes! That was the most important thing to straighten out! Good job, Hazel!!!

“Khan! Ma’am! Miss Khan! Is this ackpthpth, is this, really, the sort of hunt you want? It seeaaah, ah, seems a bit! Stacked! And IIIIII! Thought! Chase! Contest! Preferable???”

What is he saying?! Why is he saying?! Why is she licking her lips?!?!?!

“Good question,” says a huntresses from behind him, and he can feel the grin in her voice. ”Cutie~”

Oh.

Oh no

[Why, I do believe this is the first time Hazel has had a proper conversation with this, an important NPC. Which triggers Friendly Benefits. Khan Mikela takes another string on Hazel, and tell us one thing she finds attractive about him.]

"Does that boy even want to get rescued?" Yuki sighs as she looks down from the Ossuary. "I didn't know he was so head over heels for buff girls. I'll have to tell Suli."

She's listening to the banter behind her, but also has her tablet out, with Juni peering over her shoulder.

>Home-away-from-home
>[.snowkitten]
>Juni's safe, hanging at the Ossuary, trying to actually get to Aestival
>Best idea I've got is we join up with a splinter Khan over here
>Hazel seems into her
>@realsuloarju he really seems to like buff girls, be sure to squeeze him tight next time
>Open to ideas for how best to travel with a Khan without anybody getting turned into a captive on the way
>Do I need to like, sleep with a knife under my pillow? Heart knife? Can you even do that?

She slips her tablet back away with a grin for Juni who's getting all those buzzes right next to her, but it's worth telling the whole group chat.

"Okay, come on folks." She's pulling the foxgirls by the arms with a gentle nudge. "Oh and Keli, Seli. Thank you. For...the music. For being here. For helping me and Juni. You're good friends."

[Keli and Seli can each take a string on Yuki for Family is Community.]

When they come out of the Ossuary downstairs though, she's all swagger, tail waving about and stepping strong and confident. Yuki's got Juni at her side with an arm around her, Seli and Keli together at her other side. She steps up to the group and glances around before pushing the followers to the side and approaching the Khan who's so close to Hazel.

"Hello ladies" she says, eyes all for the Khan. "Sorry to bother you, just finished freeing my friend from that shadow cell you were guarding and cutting through the darkness of the Khatun's heart. Which she knows about now." She levels a pointed stare at the latest girl who hasn't offered Hazel all the personal space he'd ask for (though she well might be giving him the exact amount of space he wants). "Doubt she's gonna be happy with her guard duty. But, I am happy to announce to you that the Khanate has an opening for a suitor! And one supported, at least in temporary alliance, by the hero of Thellamie herself!"

Yuki grins and cocks her head just a little. "And, as a gift, I'll even offer you a new...hmm is it a sluzhanka if you don't catch her yourself? Well, nevermind that, I'm getting very versed in maids, so a new maid in your service." She gives Seli, who has been positioned closer to her, a nice whap on the backside so that she jumps forward before she even quite realizes it.

Then Yuki extends a hand to Khan Mikela, her smile all warmth and teeth together, her other hand now free of Juni and poised to draw a blade that she obviously won't need. "So, what do you say?"

The Stacks!

"And you are going to find the Blessed Waters of Civelia, or the Pan-Lunar Panacea, or, or whatever you have in here for first aid," Mayzie demands. It is a fierce demand from a fierce little cat, angry at the sort of nonsense her maid flings herself into over and over and over again.

Between her fingers, she spins out and spools Cair. What's the way to restore a woman who's lost her shape? Make her a new one. Making fine quicksilver thread establishes an order, and new order can be built from it. No - woven from it.

She spins like a woman possessed, and like a woman who would really like to have the confidence and chutzpah to be able to steal it directly from the Hero of Ages. Visions of impossible dresses crowd around her irritable head, and it's all she can do to ignore them and keep restoring the Quicksilver Golem to fix things around here.

After all, that's more likely to be of use to Eclair than running around this impossible place, rubbing shoulders with a dragon and a madwoman who fights alongside dragons, trying to find a first aid crystal worth its weight in power.

---

Hazel!

You're a challenge. And some women can't back down from a challenge.

You're brave enough to kiss her. She cannot let you walk away singing that you stole a kiss from her and escaped.

You're cute and squeaking and teasable in a way that no girl of a certain temperament can resist. I mean, as you are right now, half your Suitors would be drooling all over themselves.

What. A tasty. Treat.

---

Yuki!

There's a moment of silence, punctuated only by the furious squeaks of Seli (got too close to wolfgirls). From the back, someone yells: "I thought she was taller?"

"The Hero of Thellamie, huh?" Mikela gives you a savage grin. "Well, you'll have to get in line, Little Miss Heroine. I can help you take a nap after I get a collar on this brat~"

(Not that you have time properly right now; for all you know, the Khan might be on her way. The fastest way to get them all moving is to either establish dominance right out the gate or to take a dive and make Mikela think running's her idea.)

Yuki stretches her arms up and offers an affected yawn.

When she'd first arrived in Thellamie, this probably would have baited her. Even given her own self-doubt about being the hero without the infusion of starlight, she wouldn't have tolerated being insulted like this, and certainly not in front of her friends. But then, she'd been through a few things since she first arrived. A relationship with Purnima, for one, and a couple rounds seeing her friends through the hearts of wolfgirls, and most recently a brush with the heart of the Khatun. And this...well, this was kind of cute. Oh and also, it was going to get them where they wanted to go and Hazel would enjoy the trip this way no matter how he might splutter about it out loud~

"Mm, I could use a good nap, so I consider that a promise. Oh and you'll have to carry me because we need to get moving to Aestival before anybody else decides to come looking here. So don't take too long with that collar, okay?"

She yawns again and starts walking, flicking her tail at Mikela as she walks past her and waves her arm broadly for everyone else, foxgirls and wolfgirls alike, to follow. Time is precious and these negotiations are done.

"No, this one is only for wounds suffered under conditions of petrification," said Injimo, tossing the wand aside. She had actually gone through eight checks during the time it had taken her to speak the words; the task was independent of communication, and the mountain loomed ahead. She didn't need to think about it either, this was a rant that had been prepared for her before by...

Wands set with emeralds, orichalcum rings. Bottled moonlight and cursed paintings. Here was a feather from an phoenix's wings - these were a few of the Hero's magical things.

"In the ancient days they made healing potions," said Injimo, though the words weren't quite her own. "Healing potions! The essence of health, stoppered and bottled. What did they cure? Everything! Sight to the blind, precision to the paralyzed, wakefulness to the sleeping. Miracles of an earlier era. Everybody hated them. Partly it was the cost, more fitting for a dragon's hoard than a common infirmary, but partly too because they made a lot of assumptions about the essence of biological structure of the person drinking them. Sometimes you'd drink an elixir and discover that it had been made to cure a dog, and your knees are no longer in anywhere near the right places. Sometimes a 'healing potion' might transform you into a clone of the spellcaster. In one notorious case, a prolific maker of potions was unaware that she had a poor sense of taste, and so deadening of the tongue was an obliviously inflicted side effect to some huge batches of medicinal potions, ruining the culinary traditions of entire regions. Obviously this wasn't sustainable, so the White Conclave was formed to begin formalizing the discipline..."

Pick, check, sort. The work was relaxing, a thing of muscle and instinct, a rhythm that could be accelerated up to. She didn't know when she'd learned any of this. It just came out of her, like a ghost speaking through her lips.

"And so medical magic became increasingly specialized. Even a simple spell for healing a cut could produce a weird scar if it was not designed for a species with scales, or a patch of incorrectly coloured fur. Healers went from being raw conduits for white magic to broken rainbow fractals, trying to capture within their minds every hue and shade of reality. Branches of specialization opened, enchanted items became increasingly specialized, every spell was increasingly tailored for limited subsets of people, injury and status debuff. And so the formation of a collection like this becomes inevitable - what if the Hero of Ages has call to cure a," she checked the label, "rear fin laceration, mermaid, acid/fire? Or a winged oxen, stage three feather mange?"

She looked at the Stacks as they rolled out ahead endlessly, ordered and chaotic, standing and collapsed. "Do you think it was worth it? All the effort it took to do it this way, instead of just casting HEAL and letting the magic figure it out?"

"...I am a detective."

She says it with a shrug. As if that explains everything all by itself. As if it was all she could or even needed to say to solve this case.

She has, for the moment, discarded the remains of her armor. And with it, her skirts and colors. She is clad now only in white: a clinging tank top and simple tights. And, absent all of her carefully designed pageantry and costuming the obvious temptation would be to call her diminished. But if anything it is the opposite: now it's possible to see how broad her shoulders really are, how thick her calves, the degree to which her body is a thing of effort, cut and scarred and built until it could withstand the things she thought were necessary for her work. The armor had been a mask, yet another disguise trying to make her seem like a small thing trying to look large.

"I seek only the truth. That is to say, the nuances of the healing arts are lost on me. It is unhelpful to know, and if I learned anything I would bend my will toward forgetting it as quickly as possible. I feel similarly in regards to combat arts, to magic writ large, to sewing, even to deduction itself. To study anything with granularity is to lose sight of its purest form. I do not know a single spell or sword form. I wield only raw Light. I apply only raw force. If I knew the true colors of anything I would never be able to respond to anything! It would take me so long to be certain I had the right tool that I would lose my window every single time. I wouldn't dare take that risk."

It is also possible to see the many ways in which she is falling apart. With no support, her leg twitches violently every time she puts weight on it in payment for her duel with Timtam. Rather than resting it, she has continued performing heroics and acrobatics until it's started to give the impression that it would rather twist around backwards and dump her on the floor than put up with her bullshit any longer. Her back too is bending, and for all she tries to play it off as simply leaning on the handle of her Heartbroom anybody who has been with her for longer than fifteen minutes could realize she would always stand straight in this sort of situation. She simply cannot manage it anymore.

In fact, she really ought to at least sit down. Mayzie won't even let her help with the sorting, so what good is it doing her to stand like this? Except that, if she left her feet in this condition, how would she ever regain them? The case has needs. That was the point of sculpting herself in the first place.

Eclair turns her neck and looks out over the Stacks for herself. Her broom has dusted a great many treasures both ancient and modern since she took to trying to sweep this place up. All manner of weapons, armor, mystical relics that do who-knows-what, and a plethora of tools so marvelous their like will never be seen again are all nothing but a heap of golden dust, swept into a little sack she's keeping on the floor between her feet and guarding like a dragon. All of it consigned as worthless trash. A mess.

She sighs.

"That is why I cannot demean those who walk the paths that I refuse. As you say, did leaving decisions to the magic even work? Any simpleton can cut a knot or locate a fulcrum. A child barely old enough to walk could trip someone, and her parents would call that a magic trick. Do you understand what I am saying? I am a passing storm, best experienced for an hour or two before the wind carries me over the horizon. For all my light and thunder, what do I leave behind but vaguely dazed memories? Everyone who lives with me someday decides they would be better off if I kept moving, and they did not. That is why they call me the Violet Flash."

The one thing that has invariably resisted her attempts at cleaning it have been the random, awkward elixirs and overly specific healing salves. Every tincture, every wand, every hourglass or scale or pestle made to cure exactly one thing for exactly one animal or type of person is simply sitting in a big sortable heap, having outlives even the tables and the shelves they'd been sitting in after Eclair had brushed them into oblivion. These, at least, were treasures.

"I think... it would be a genius indeed who could cast HEAL in the first place. To hold in one's hand pure white and understand that what she wielded was not one simple color, but the violent and unpredictable rainbow itself? And from that impossible puzzle to pluck exactly the threads that would grant relief to the needy, and in the way that they needed it?

"Yes. I would call that mastery. And I would say that it had been worth any amount of effort that it took to give it to the world."

Her shirt is white. On her back, it crawls with colors she did not put there. But she cannot hide anything anymore.

Yuki!!!

Wait oh no Yuki.

She can’t

She cannot see what’s still written on his back.

It’s bad enough that a bunch of huntresses saw the name Cutie written on his back in magical, flowing script. But! But he’s about to be rescued, and he may never see them again, and he can absolutely, for sure get this removed the first chance he gets. (No more fooling around. You knew this would happen. And yet.) But Yuki?

Yuki will never look at him the same way again.

(We can’t explain it. There’s no excuse. She’ll know.)

Keep your head down, Hazel. Just act casual.

“Excuse me?!”

Act casual after correcting this misunderstanding. Yes.

“What part of that was brat behavior?! That was a normal…mostly normal duel! As far as I’m aware! Dueling somebody shouldn’t qualify you as…as a…”

Hazel, along with a dozen of his closest huntresses, turn to watch Yuki stroll away.

“Um...Yuki?”

She. Uh.

She’s not doing a whole lot of rescuing.

“Yuki?”

Not very much rescuing at all.

“Yuki. What are you doing?”

Juni. Why are you smiling like that.

“Yuki? Yuki?!”

Keli stop blowing him a kiss this is NOT the time

“Yuki!!!!!!”

YUKI THIS IS NOT HELPING

Deo! Deo. Deo?

Deo, please, c’mon, don’t leave your Cutie out to dry.

Best and dearest catboy friend, you wouldn’t :3 him at a time like this, would you?

Stacks Crew!

There is - I have been told - a jagged lake within the Stacks, and deep within the lake lies the Invincible Flame Armor that Heron the Hero once wore, before, you know. The Catastrophe Of Which We Shall Not Speak. And that in a band around the lake, there is a zone where the water is the right kind of hot, and there the successions of Handmaidens that Heron has had have built a shrine.

The bath is a holy place, at least to Heron of the Many Romances, Heron who said each bathhouse was a Collectible place, though the items she carried away from them were always different each time. And it is here - if anywhere - that Eclair Espoir, worn out utterly, must rest.

Must have warm compresses applied to her back. Must have healing potions mixed into her tea. Must rest, despite the world demanding that a hero step up to save it once again, despite the weight of need that threatens to thrust the Violet Flash into the role of Heron - because there is one small, demanding woman who would snap in half if the world did not stop here. And Eclair Espoir would fold herself into eight pieces if that happened.

So here you must be. Who else is here, I wonder?

---

Outside Crew!

The huntswomen of the Serigalamu ride goblins. This is known! The strange creatures of dream, wrestled into tameness, each mount unique in its own way. They hang handcrafted saddles upon their backs, and place their lunches beneath the saddle, and hang blankets and yurts and ropes wherever purchase can be found.

There's typically a ring in the horn on the front of the saddle, and that's for the sluzhanka, Hazel. The rope around your wrists loops through the ring, keeping you prim and proper and squished between horn and rider. Khan Mikela's mount is a golden leopard, spotted with rosettes, with the long neck and head of a serpent, which might bring to mind one of the princesses still vying for your hand.

Off in the distance, there are thunderstorms. The stars overhead hang low near the edges of the horizon, as if attempting to get a closer look at my world. The air is charged with little lightnings. These are not good omens, let me be clear.

"So, little hero," Mikela says to Yuki (who has been granted the honor of riding one of the smaller goblin-beasts, though this did involve wrestling it into submission). "Do you have a plan for standing up against the Khatun herself? She's the next ruler of all Thellamie, unless I beat her and take her crown and her victory - and even I wouldn't give good odds on that. The maids? Off the board. The goddess? Somehow, off the board. From what you've said, you've cleared the Rot Star, too. So how the hell are we going to win this, hero?"

It's an actual question. She believes that you, the hero who defeated the Mirror Star, will have some ace up your sleeve that will bring her victory and make her ruler of all Thellamie with a cute deerboy as a consort.

She's going to be very upset about this later, but Eclair Espoir the Violet Flash has fallen asleep inside of a bath.

She is not in any danger! Just to be completely clear about that! But this is why she was insisting on standing to begin with, don't you see? She could force herself to march on, probably break herself to save the world, sheer willpower could have held her together long enough the shatter Timtam's new cult and clear the board of any other villains who tried to take advantage of the chaos. I'm pretty sure she had it in her. But only if she never stopped.

And it had been insisted that she stop. And she did not know how to insist back that she not. So she peeled off her remaining clothes, draped a towel across her front for modest, and waded into the waters so she could lean against the rocks where she might be served tea and have her back tended to.

And the tea was - ok, well. It's not really tea if we're being real about it. This is what you'd refer to in the Manor (or in any good shop if we're being the realest) as an "herbal infusion". But anyway. It is mint and catnip and those both already tend to make her very sleepy, and there is honey in there to disguise the taste of medicine, so into the midst of the warmth and the wet you introduce sweet steam and healing admixtures which themselves have known sedative properties and, well. Yeah.

She was polite enough, well. Let's say strong en-- actually no no no wait. Stubborn! That's the one, yeah. Eclair is stubborn enough to drain her cup (polite and proper sips only!) before she admitted that her neck was too heavy to keep it up and let it slowly sink into the crook of her elbow. She admitted nothing about the heaviness of her eyelids, but those fluttered shut before she had time to complain in any case.

And now she is snoozing. And not, I wish to be clear on this point a second time, in danger of drowning. Her stance is very strong, and even in sleep she won't toss or loosen enough that she might float out into the lake and be lost to Heron's treasury. She is a hero, which means she's strong enough to fall asleep wherever and the only result assuming it sticks is that she's rested by the end of it. She is also (whatever she insists) a Maid, and that means that even asleep she cannot impose upon her guests by becoming a liability.

So no. She's just asleep. In a pool of very warm and pleasant water. Wearing no clothes. You all could, were anyone so inclined, do anything you wanted to her. Win any argument, draw whatever on her face, even tend to her wounds properly if that's your thing. The world has need of a hero, just as soon as it starts moving again. And Eclair has a need to become one, just as soon as she starts moving again. This is the chance to figure out what that looks like on her behalf.

But. Uh. Yeah. She is asleep. With all that this entails. And normally? In a steamy, fun kind of story? This is where her lowered inhibitions would tease secrets from her lips and embarrass someone close to her. Sort of a... what'd they call that? A Sleep Cute? Or something like that. But she is down too deep for even mumbled words. And. Like. Besides? I think we already know what she would have said in her sleepy mumble voice. Sorry. Just imagine it if you need that, kay?

She'll be mad about this when she wakes up. No matter what anyone does. No matter how good she feels. She could not afford this indulgence, do you understand? But she is here. She is vulnerable. At the mercy of varyingly broken people who will not stop gathering around her.

And she is... snoring.

There are things that need to be done. Need to be done even if no one's around to do them. Well, no one's around!

Patch. That. Hole! The air hole, not the blood holes, though that needs to be done too. Respiration is the key to mana flow, it's the link between the self and the natural world. The deeper, slower and quieter the breaths the more the spirit is able to reach harmony with that flow. You can't intake mana while yapping, and snoring is even worse - it's the vocal chords scratching incoherent spell-notes into the mana flow, burning energy as quickly as it arrives. Chronic snoring can ruin a career as a magician as surely as it can get you kicked out of bed. And so a gentle little adhesive is applied, bringing the lips together and forcing that flow through the nose instead. As important as any bandage.

But we've got those too! Soaked in slow release relief spells, brightly coloured with rainbow glyphs and unicorn runes. The rainbow is important - you can be as contaminated by fiery red making wounds itchy and hot as corrupting black invites in decay. A constant oscillation of mana types is important to give the body time to work its own healing and reassert its own identity. Burn out the black with red, quench the red with blue, drink the blue with green and ignite the red before the fungus starts growing in. It's not so much about balance as it is about sprinting past consequences.

But as for the deeper stuff? The invisible problems, the wear on the bones, the stress that becomes insomnia that becomes eye twitching madness that becomes eczema? For the things that have gone so deep that they've stopped being identified as debuffs and look like bad stat rolls on level up?

Well...

No one can cast HEAL, right? Eclair said it herself. It's impossible.

So no one does.

"It is pretty convenient that every major power that would stand against the Khatun is off the board, huh?"

Yuki strokes her chin with one hand and curls her ears, while the other pulls up the reins of the little Lynxogrif she's riding (you can tell from the stubby tail). She trots along next to Mikela, pointedly ignoring the squishing noises from Hazel pressed against her. Out of politeness to him, of course. He's clearly fine.

"This does beg the question though, is SHE a major power or is she working for one? Miaou perhaps? Her shadows burned like fire, so that would be my guess. But it's kind of a two part problem, you know?"

Mikela probably does not know, not having once been empowered by Starlight herself, or having stabbed any champions of any particular deities. Not a ton of shared experience there really. But Yuki does, and she's starting to see the shape of it. "Think of it this way. If the Khatun is, herself, some kind of empowered deity, then we're kinda screwed. The only thing we've got going for that is Inara and maaaybe Hazel there setting some kind of ground rules that can level the playing for us. But I think if we're fighting a deity, we need something divine to even make it possible to engage and that's a bit out of our hands. But..."

Yuki looks at Mikela now, and at Hazel. "Well, here's the but. I don't think we are, not that directly. Why try to set up her daughter for all this starlight crown nonsense if she could just empower a champion? Or at least why not cheat, right? But if she's just a badass, well, that's cool she sounds super tough, but I figure we can get like a whole team for that. I've got at least two snakegirls who, if they don't try to kill each other first, can field a really powerful team together. Now you. I'm betting even Olesya herself isn't super happy with her mom right about now, and while I did knock out the Rot Star's avatar, I wouldn't put it past one of the trees to at least make an appearance. The enemy of my enemy and all that."

"...Also" Yuki shrugs, thinks about materializing her axe, but doesn't have a good way to do it while riding, "...well, also, I'm trying to learn something a friend taught me, which I've only seen the Khatun and one maid knight pull off. So, maybe there's a way to get up to her level a little bit, if I can."

Yuki shrugs, gives Hazel a pat. "And if not, well, there's always the ultimate win of actually taming this guy and earning the crown of light. I don't think the Khatun can force that one, and I assume whoever wins will have the power to match her."

You know, in the long, long, long line of mistakes that had led him to this moment, at least Suli wasn’t here to see him like this. Hands bound with, what was this, silk? Something soft. Shirt gone into a huntress’ pack, carefully folded. Muscled arms around his middle. A ribbon tied around his neck, complete with elaborate bow and bell. ”Until I get you a collar fit for a Queen,” she’d whispered through her teeth.

She was going to kill him, wasn’t she? When she found out he hadn’t really meant to kiss her. Or, well, kiss her, in the sort of way that makes someone think you want to kiss them again, regularly, for the rest of your life. His memory wasn’t…no, his memory was just fine. He knew everything he’d said and swished and slashed, and none of that was particularly honest either, was it?

She was going to kill him. Or at least be hurt and disappointed in him. Which was just about the same thing.

“I, don’t think that’s something we can really count on.” The pats were nice. Yuki was nice. Mikela keeping Yuki from seeing his back was very, very nice. “The prophecy said ‘tame him’, right? Well, I don’t think it’ll work if I just walk up to somebody and say, ‘yep! They tamed me!’ Doesn’t sound very tamed, does it? Goes against the spirit of the thing.” He nestles up flush against the Khan. To keep all the angles covered. “I don’t think we’ll have a Queen of Light until…” (At least blush when you say it.) “...um, until I’m. Tamed. For reals.”