Phoe

Breathless Dead

The coin is lighter in her hand than she thought it would be. Colder, too. She watches, enraptured, as the swirling dust inside floats around in a helpless, endless circle. Her finger traces the surface of the containment ring, but even the sensation of touch betrays the secret of the power hidden inside it. Her skin touches its smooth, almost slick, vaguely oily surface before it slips off and brushes against the many tiny bumps and ridges that make the etchings on the coin instead. She sniffs the air but it's tainted with the thick and acrid stench of the cigar with only slight traces of some sort of sweet peony and a tiny bit of silver tang underneath it. There is nothing to suggest the kind of power that's held inside of it. Nothing she can find with any of the senses she was so proud of. And yet.

This is a place of miracles. It must be. Miracles beyond the scope of even Empire, if somebody as low as Thist commanded this much so freely.

XIII stiffens as she sets the coin back on the desk. Her cheeks burn as her tail bristles with obvious discomfort. Shame. Her muscles twitch. Shame. Her ears droop low. Shame. Inadequacy. Shame. Her fingers reach into the purse and pull out an empty containment ring. This one is even less remarkable to look at and touch than the filled one. Still, she squeezes her eyelid shut over her Auspex and observes the daric through a permanent wink.

Her fingers tremble as she brings them closer and closer. She feels pressure build against her fingertip where her talon touches the surface. Her lips part uneasily, showing the clench of her sharp and perfect teeth. She squeezes her eyes shut, and feels rather than sees her hand drag across it. Her claws and her talons tears deep grooves into the surface of Thist's desk. She opens her eyes again and lifts her hand to find the ring has split into three neat pieces along the lines she left. XIII lets out of a breath deep enough to make her shoulders sink in relief.

"Gave you my name," she hisses, "Never. Call me Reacher. Again."

She stands still for a long second. Lighting strikes of embarrassment strike her brain like spears while her skin crawls with hot pinpricks up and down her arms and legs as her heart seems to drop into her stomach at the same time. She breathes, and the air is danger. She snatches the purse up with one hand while the other nervously tries to smooth out the gashes she's left in Thist's desk. She doesn't even feel her legs backpedal toward the couch; she simply retreats backwards without thought and the next thing she's aware of she's sitting there with her hands folded demurely in her lap.

"Don't 'Zeus and the Path' me, either. I'm not stupid. Lie to yourself. Not to me. My ship's worth more than this bag and you're pocketing the rest. You promise me riches if I sit here and ask nice. But I won't see a tenth of what you wind up with, if it even works. And your Shah or whoever will reap all the benefits of raking the Order over the coals. None of this is for me."

XIII smiles with the sort of plastic precision she hasn't needed since her childhood when she had to charm potential owners. She forces her body into a maid's prim and rigid posture, and then a moment later flops over with the drama of a dozen fake and imagined injuries.

"That's fine. I'll allow it. Grift me as much as you want, I'll play along. I'll be the quietest and sweetest guest of the Azure Skies, just for you. Because you're going to help me, aren't you? That's why Apollo brought me to you. You're going to find out where the person I'm looking for has gone. And you're going to get me on a ship that'll take me where I need to go. Aren't you?"

She winces with the pain of sitting up again, bringing her hand up to gingerly brace her ribs. Her tail swishes merrily behind her.

"And while you're at it, you're going to tell me what this place does for wine."

Sunshards

What kind of wolf is she? That's a silly question, she's not a woof! Not a... woof. Not a, ahaha that's so funny. She's not a woof, ok? Woof! Woof. Grrrr! L-look, just check out her paws! Then you'll see, she's not... wait. Wait wait wait. Wait wait wait wait. Does anything look a little, y'know, bigger to anyone else? No? Oh, phew. Wait, wait.

A trembling, nervous Yue glances down at her hand as she lifts into the air. It's heavier than it should be so already she knows she's not going to like what she finds. But even still, she has to see it. Right? She's gotta look. It's not real unless she looks. So she gathers up all the courage she's got left, and she bends her neck to really see. Which is also weirdly awkward and a lot harder than it should be, and that's not a great sign either, is it?

She smacks herself in the face straightaway. It, um! H-hey! D-d-don't laugh, it's not her fault! They're not su-supposed to be this close to each other, ok? It looked weird so she brought it closer but then her nose turned out to be sticking out way farther than she's used to and before she knew it, whap! She yelps with fright, and the sound of that yelp's not her voice either, which only brings on further yelping, which helps even less than the first one! The Yelpy Loop is a dastardly trap, indeed.

B-b-b-bu-but maybe it's a mistake? It's not. She looks down again and makes to wiggle her fingers, but she's got no fingers to wiggle and all she does is shake a bulky gray paw like a silly girl. She whines, maybe with frustration or maybe with despair. She's not sure right now, ok? Ask her later. But right there, in the middle of her pitiful whine and the sad drooping of her tail (wait, what?), she is saved by the feeling of soft and warm fingers massaging her head.

Yue looks up. And up. And up. She tilts her head like she's ready to howl, and she finds the red eyes and the beautiful and oh-so-perfect smile of Hyra. All human. All herself. All just the way she should be, except the way the sparkle in her eyes looks more like pity than delight, but perfect just the same. Yue feels her heart explode with love all over again, which for some reason feels a lot like a perking of her ears atop her head and a rapid thump-thump-thump of a floofy tail she's got no control over. Her jaw opens up into a big goofy smile that's just filled with sharp teeth, and a long pink tongue lolls out with something kinda like happiness. Oh, she's drooling. Haha, whoops! This is hard!

...Ok. Ok. Ok. Wait? Ok! This isn't... no, it's still bad. She's supposed to be training to become a warrior, darn it! Or a, uh, y'know a... more goodful fighty person or something. But a person! A person! Herself! Yue! And she's not and it's. Well. It's worth it, for Hyra. Maybe she'll get lucky and Cyanis' work snuck over with the rest of the curse, too. Maybe when the moon goes full again she'll have hands and feet and she'll only need two of those to stand. It'll be a lot slower learning everything she wants to like that, but she could still do it! She was just figuring out how fun it could be! And if... if it took that extra time and bought Hyra all this extra to be the beautiful woman she was meant to, then that's a price she'd have paid on purpose if she could. She thinks. Probably.

Woof.

"Yue? Are you all right?"

She nods. Then she takes a punch on the top of her head.

"Then what were you thinking!? That was so stupid, Yue! Why'd you have to go and do a thing like that for me, you... you... dumb, beautiful girl?"

<<Because I love you>>

She wishes she could say it with words. She's got no idea if Hyra knows animals the way that she does, if she can decipher all the meaning of their language. For that matter, she can't really tell if she's even saying it right. Everything's all weird. It's trying to be human and animal both at once and it's like squeezing her brain into two jars at once and it's weird. But she feels the hand that punched her switch to patting instead, and she sees Hyra kneel down to pull her into a hug, and even though all she can do is flop her silly fuzzy head on Hyra's shoulder now, that seems good enough for a start.

She glances down and startles to see her dress pooled around her paws. Well, it makes plenty've sense that it'd flop off now that she was a completely different shape and all, but she kinda thought it'd've... nah. Of course it wouldn't succumb to some silly ol' curse. Not [i]her[/] dress. She snorts with pride, and steps out from on top the pile of fabrics.

She goes toppling over with a pitiful yelp before she finishes the first step. Legs go every which way except the ones she wants them to, or... maybe they do? But the way she wants them to move isn't the way she needs them to move, in any case, so here she is bouncing off the Prison Floor to roll helplessly onto her back in a pile of gangly wolf limbs. She can't blush like she is right now, but she feels her body heat up in embarrassment anyway. Hyra helps her to her feet. Fwump! Failure number two, thy name is Yue.

She rises shakily to her feet, and decides to try and master sitting, first. Slowly now, careful girl, just lower those haunches (wait, what?) and... hey! Yeah! Good girl, Yue! Good... g-goshies! Woof! A-a-at least this gives her time to look in a mirror.

And there she is. Yue the Wolf is a creature with beautiful blue eyes, which is how she knows it's her looking back if she ignores the part where the reflection-wolf tilts her head at the same time and in the same direction that she does. Her legs feel a little overlong for her body and her paws are massive and heavy and end with very prissy looking useless claws that don't know a thing about the hunt and the wild. She might be slightly smaller than Hyra was, maybe. She's not sure. It's hard to tell under all this floof. Which makes sense, doesn't it? If Yue had one particular quality she'd define herself by, it was the frizz of her stupid, rebellious hair. And that's stayed with her in the form of thick, super soft mottled gray-and-black fur that runs through here and there with patches of warm cinnamon, especially across her back.

She looks less like a mighty huntress and more like a naughty pet who's wiggled out of her collar. But the awkward pile of limbs called Yue is gone. Yue the Wolf fits together much better. Her tail is pristine, her triangles are wonderfully perky, and her muzzle ends in a soft, wet button of a nose. Somewhere in that frame, there's power lurking deep inside her. But mostly she is scared that if she tries to move again, she's gonna fall on her face again. Most of the rest of her is trying to come to grips with the fact that she is, technically, naked.

But, still. She stands up and makes to pad her way across the room, and goes scrabbling and screeching back onto her stomach. But still. She stands again. She makes it a step or two this time. Again. She's finding it hard to count the attempts, but she walks over to her sword, and paws somewhat ineffectively at the hilt.

Ya wanna know what kind of wolf she's not? A quitter.

Breathless Dead

"Hmph. That's rich, you're gonna lecture me about being from 'the reaches'? You're so far out in the middle of nowhere I had to get lost to find you! Do you have the slightest idea who you're talking to? I'm, hahaha, I'm..."

She wants to throw her head back and laugh until this entire joke of an office cracks in half under the weight of her ego. Her throat itches with want to spill titles, accomplishments, and especially lineage like venom to melt this pathetic, pretentious ass into sludge. Her muscles twitch as though about to lift her off the couch with such grandeur that it'd send mortal creatures sprawling to their knees to worship her like a queen. She'll roll forward and rise to her full height, she'll stretch with such luxury they'll pay her triple just to keep looking at her, please, please, Your Highness, I!

But her neck tips slowly toward the table, instead. She sits forward, but only to lean and hunch forward with her elbows on her thighs. Her eye flicks across the pamphlets, full of words and pictures and ideas she doesn't know. They smile at her. Of course they're smiling at her. She shoots a nervous look behind her, expecting to see Him sitting in the corner in a lotus stance with his horrible and infinite smile. Her only company forever. But there's nothing. This room is just a room. What makes it amazing is that it's someone else's room.

Bella does not laugh. She does not boast or stand or prove the majesty that took dozens of generations of careful breeding to produce. She doesn't turn her claws or her regalia or her Auspex on this stupid, hapless rube. Where did any of that get her, anyway? Here. So deep inside the the backwards half of reality that they stopped measuring themselves by their distance from Tellus... from home. In someone else's trashy, fake, scam of a room.

She sighs, and shakes her head.

"...Trēdecima. That's who I am. My actual name. Never mind the rest. You wouldn't understand it anyway."

Her heart twists itself into knots inside of her chest. She squeezes her claws into her palms and snorts in shock when some instinct that shouldn't be inside of her stops her before she can break the skin. So much pressure. No release. She needs to vent, she needs to get it out, she needs to tear something into little pieces!

"Your coins are stupid," she says haughtily, "They're meant as passage for the Ferryman for a reason. With eighteen hundred of them I'd barely be able to move around. And these are how you get food?! Stupid. Insulting. Stupid. Is it all like the trash you left sitting out? Nobody would pay for that, not even with favors. Your plan is stupid, too. The Order of Hermes will just shrug and say it's a shame it didn't finish me, after everything else. And if Her Imperial Majesty hears that I let--!"

Bella goes silent. Her eye stares with hollow, ravenous emptiness at the pamphlets in front of her. But for the slight flaring of her nostrils, she barely seems to breathe. When she finds her voice again, it's hollow too.

"...If it's supposed to take a week before I can fend for myself, then what the fuck did you expect me to do in the meantime? I just finished flushing the chlorophyll from my system, I am not turning green again just to help your fat ass out."

Sunshards

She doesn't see it.

When Hyra spoils the fun of blameless little vixens by jumping onto the bed so that she'll notice what Kat is up to and then tackling her as she wrestles with her pet, she doesn't see it. She takes a thwack to the thigh and she fills the Prison Room with squeaks, but she doesn't see it. She sees a kind heart looking out for her and keeping her out of trouble by making sure jailors don't find out she's let their bed get ruined, instead.

When Hyra runs around behind her so that she trips when she tries to spin to match the movement, she doesn't see it. She takes a lick to the face and she fills the Prison Room with breathless laughter, but she doesn't see it. She sees a beautiful soul who isn't so caught up with winning that she forgets to check and make sure her partner is still having fun, instead.

Her swordplay is sloppy at best, even by the standards she set for herself while she was purifying that ghost. She's not creative with her movement and she doesn't follow the forms as she was taught them, like this then like this then like this, finishing like this. She's slow to the point of standing still, which is a courtesy born from the fact that she's much more scared of cutting Hyra on the sharp edge of her blade than she's even kinda sorta interested in winning the duel.

It's not like she doesn't try, y'know? When Hyra's on the offensive she's much brighter and smiles a whole lot more, running through whole routines where she parries, spins, releases, catches the hilt with her other hand, and grins right before she falls victim to some new trick or technique. But she blocks like a champ, my girl does, and after the twentieth or so thwap to her poor red thighs she catches onto the idea that she can use the flat of her blade too. Which helps! A bit. Maybe. But even then the slowness and the nerves creep into her style and she never lands a single touch.

And she doesn't see it. Hyra has a million ideas about fighting that she's never dared to dream about, and she falls for every single one of them. Sometimes, like with the coat-rack? It works four times before she figures out how to catch it without exposing hers--- meeeeeeep! Thwap! Ow! Ahem. Five times. Without leaving an opening, please and thank you miss. And a block's as good as a hit as far as she's concerned, 'cause she's fighting Hyra of the Wolves who is by definition the bestest and most skilled swordswoman ever to grip a blade.

But she doesn't see it. When Hyra gets in real close and plants her front paws on Yue's shoulders, she doesn't see it. She loses herself in a pair of piercing red eyes that for a moment forget to be hard or taunting or any of that because they're too busy looking into a pair of vulnerable, wide blue ones, and right when there's maybe a spark of something so real and beautiful it makes her want to cry it ends with Hyra ducking low and thwap! Thwap! Owies! And she doesn't see it. But she feels her heart flutter faster, and she's pretty sure it's not 'cause of all the working out she's doing just now.

When Hyra crouches low on the other side of the room, she doesn't see it. When she waits there, cautiously and patiently and a buncha other ly's, she super duper swooper doesn't see it. She sees a stubborn wolf who's too good at this, gosh darn it, lift her tail and wiggle it like a finger to tease a poor, sore, sweaty girl and from there it doesn't matter what she sees because something tweaks inside of her and Yue goes rushing headlong into the trap, just for the chance to wipe that smirk out of her eyes. And she... well, I mean, can't you guess? She doesn't see the trap until all that momentum catches on a paw and she goes tipping and YEEPing into a full jacuzzi bath.

She doesn't see it. Not just yet. She sees that she's sopping wet and that her frizzy hair has drooped all clingy to her back. She sees that her gorgeous and wonderful dress is stuck to every scrawny inch of her body, and she'd expect it to stop looking beautiful so that it could make her look as silly as she feels, but for some reason her reflection doesn't show her that? Instead it's beautiful, like someone made it to be wet, and only now is she allowed to understand how wonderful she can look. Especially when she's at her worst. And she sees the bubble jets turn on, and goshy goshing goshies does she moan, because a body full of sore muscles and over-thwapped bruises in warm massage-y water can't help but do anything else now can it?

She wins the fight against the bath though, give her credit. She doesn't sink into the water and just bubble about until she falls asleep, even though that's half of what she can think about and it sounds so super good, doesn't it? It's just the other half that makes her fumble about the jets for her sword and (oh-so-carefully!) grip the hilt again so she can leap out and charge again before Hyra's got time to think of a new angle. Her charge is swift and silent. Her strike is sure.

She doesn't see it. Her hands are too busy hugging every bit of wolf she can get them around, and her eyes are busy drinking in every little detail and all twists and knots of muscle, the clumps of fur and dirt, and every other wonderful tiny little thing that makes Hyra the most beautiful person on earth, even when she's not... y'know, a person just now. And she feels her heart squeeze itself to pieces and her breath choking in her throat and her hands let go of her sword. She braces for another smack. She knows it's coming, she blew it.

Just... not before she sneaks in her first good shot of the night, yeah?

"I love you." she whispers, and flushes pink with the effort of never having actually said those words out loud before.

"I love you," she says it louder, fuller, so it can't be mistaken for anything else. Come on girl, give us a shout, "I love you!"

[Figure Out a Person: 6. This is happening with blades crossed, so even though she fails she still gets to ask, "What do you hope for the future?" This nets an advance, and I'm open to suggestions]

Breathless Dead

Some cruel god or other must have filled her with mercury while she slept. Her body feels heavy when she stirs though not in the way it had the last time. Her muscles are smooth but sluggish, and the effort that would normally buy her feet only manages to roll her over on the hard and somehow also jabby couch. Where she shifts, she feels her center of gravity move with her, pulling her unsteadily in the direction she tries to move until it flips her over and sends her crashing back down again.

The headache brownie tray drops to the floor with a crash louder than King Jaso's thunderbolts. And, oh! It turns out she can move as quickly as ever with the proper motivation. See how her hands fly to cover her ears with the reckless speed of a void skiff? She moves from lying to sitting straight up to hunched over with her head between her knees and her eyes squeezed shut against the blinding light of the room while seeming to skip the frames of motion in between these poses. She groans, or rather she whimpers, from the pain.

But like everything else in this little room, the danger here is a lie. She holds still, and her breathing steadies. The sounds of the room quiet to obnoxious murmuring and rustling with the occasional 'click' she can for some reason feel in her teeth. The knife-sharp light dims until it's safe to open her eyes again, and even flickers often enough to threaten to plunge her back into the familiar dark. The smell is cardboard, plaster, and cheap scented oils to cover all the dust, which tells her exactly who's office she's in without having to look around.

The muscles in her back come unclenched, bit by torturous bit. Her ears lift on top of her head, tentatively at first, but then to full perk. Bella rises to a proper sitting posture, and her spine keeps curving and loosening until she flops backwards onto the back of the couch with her arms splayed to either side of her. She lifts her head back up to keep an eye on Thelis as she moves about the room. This is a stance of triumph.

Bella scowls. Not ten seconds to rest after the effort of lifting herself and she's already expected to move and respond to something. She'd forgotten how much she hated dealing with other people. Just how stupid and impatient they could be. She leans forward with the grace and control she'd normally associate with the end of a whipping and grabs at the cheap cup full of pills. By the way her new talons tear straight through it, she notices that she is still wearing them and that they have not been plucked off her hands for scrap metal while she slept. She lets out a breath.

"Whatever."

A gaudy blue and yellow pill rolls about the palm of her hand for a moment as she stares at it without comprehension. How was this supposed to help, exactly? There wasn't a single nanite or a whiff of regeneration-inducing pheromones in the whole fucking container. Nothing of food or wine, either. What was it meant for? What did it do? She drops the cup on the table and lets the contents spill across everything while she eyes the 'food' with equal scorn.

She did not consider herself a master of cooking. She was good enough to be Redana's favorite chef, which was good enough to not get punished on a daily basis, but Redana was an idiot who thought that pancakes were the height of civilization so that didn't prove anything. To be a master you had to be dedicated entirely to the craft so you had time to absorb all the subtle nonsense that elevated high cooking from low. Bella had too many jobs to do in her old life to ever develop those skills. But even by her low standards, the offerings in front of her were lazy to the point of insult.

She picks up a sandwich half and sniffs it. Her entire face wrinkles with disgust. Stale, plain bread with such poor texture that it was surely baked by some sort of drone instead of a person, and weeks ago at that. If she was lucky. And what kind of dipshit made sandwiches with only peanut butter in them, anyway? Sticky and disgusting overly sweet garbage... nobody could possibly eat this willingly. Could they? She lifts it with the intention of throwing it atop the pills, but the hollow pit at her center pulls her hand without permission toward her mouth instead. It tastes even worse than it looks: the top of the bread has gone crunchy but somehow underneath that was dense and chewy trash that reminded her of the cup of drugs. It clung to her mouth unpleasantly even without the help of the gloopy filling, which wasn't made from nuts so much as some dumbass' idea of nuts held together with glue and syrup.

She devours all three in a moment, without asking if she can or should. The egg follows, unseasoned and slightly sour in a way that makes her stomach churn the more she thinks about it. She gulps the milk down greedily without bothering to taste it. The film that covers her tongue manages to be tart and unpleasant anyway. She holds her head in her hands and winces, which is how she notices her beret is missing. If she's being charitable, it must have died in the crash. If she's not...

"What the fuck are you trying to do? What the fuck is all this? What the fuck do you think I... what the fuck?"

She'd eaten the food because she was starving. But she'd kept going even though it wasn't helping, because it meant she was doing something with her mouth other than talking about payments. Money... Bella had a dim awareness of what it was, borrowed from Redana's old pulp adventure novels. Azura pirates flitting about the universe burying troves of treasure. On Tellus it was useless. If she needed something for her work it was simply given to her without transaction, and her position didn't come with compensation. On the streets outside the palace they dealt in strange and shoddy coins, but that was the desperation of a bunch of mangy, dying servitors unfit for duty and the boredom of the humans in between bouts of mutilating themselves with ink. None of it made any sense.

But this... Bella feels the vague sense of creeping dread of a person who's about to get ripped off for something she wasn't planning on selling in the first place. Money. She'd never thought about money. As a Praetor she received tribute from every system she visited just to avoid her (Empress') wrath. She was never supposed to wind up here. Never supposed to leave the zone of her Regalia's protection. But here she was, and now she needed money if she was going to get out. Probably?

"Eighten hundred," she repeats unsteadily, "Is that a... trove? Or just a chest?"

Sunshards

Maybe Yue didn't understand enough about prisons.

It didn't look like the kind've thing she'd imagined a prison would look like. There weren't any bars or chains or hard stone floors or, or uh... racks? Prisons had racks, right? She's pretty sure. And whatever those are, this room didn't have them. So that's a knock against it right there. In terms of its Prison Score, you see. Anyway she wasn't sure about this? But it did seem like from the way people wrote and talked about prison cells that they'd be... y'know, smaller? With no soft beds covered in super fluffy pillows and the coziest blankets you ever did see?

Then again maybe not. But they definitely didn't have bubbling jacuzzi baths or room service where they brought you delicious dumplings and soba and a frankly astonishing array of traybakes too numerous to even try to name. Oh, and they definitely definitely didn't let you bring pets and girlfriends (meep!) in with you. Unless they did? Maybe she just hadn't seen any good prisons. Or any prisons. Or... y'know. It had to be something. There had to be an explanation.

'Cause for as nice as everything was? She still felt trapped here.

"Ohhhh, what am I gonna do, Hyra? I can't fight my way up an entire castle's worth of rankings! I don't even know if I can fight in the first place! The duel is supposed to be about the duel but now I'm supposed to be stealing strength from someone? And a lot of someones, at that? Goshies, Hyra, this is too much! What am I doing here? I shouldn't be here!"

And Hyra did not answer her, because Yue did not give her time to take a breath.

"No I know, I know! If I go I'm leaving all my friends just when I got finished meeting them. I shouldn't. I should stay. They'll be so upset. Maybe duels, like... leak extra strength into the air or something? And I just breathe it in? Is, is that how it works? That wouldn't be so bad, but I, augh! Ohhh, I can't I can't I can't, I can't do it, Hyra! They won't even let me make tea! All my leaves are gonna go bad and it's been sooooo long since I've got to harvest any, and, and my good sun spots are probably all taken up by lizards now, and I bet all the animals are just freaking out without me, and, and I... I miss home, ok? I do! Is that so wrong?"

And Hyra did not answer her, because the full moon did not shine in the night sky.

"Yeah I know they don't want me to leave, but they've all gotta go to sleep sooner or later, right? I'll just... sneak out, and, and uh... I dunno, there's probably a rope ladder somewhere I can climb down on and, oh what do you mean it's not going to be long enough to reach? Of course it... oh wait no, you're supposed to fly up aren't you? Ok new plan, I climb the rope ladder part way down and then I wait there until I can ask a big enough bird to carry me the rest of the-- oh, but that would leave you behind, wouldn't it? Ok no, we'll steal a basket, right? And then... Hyra, are you even listening to me?"

And Hyra did not answer her. Because she is a wolf. Are you stupid?

"Look. No, you're right. I'm sorry. But I can't do this. I don't wanna, and I can't. I can't, ok? I'm just gonna apologize and tell them there's been a mistake, would you mind flying closeish to home please? And I'll go back to my cabin and that'll be that, and Yi-- PRINCESS Yin'll uncurse you 'cause I'm not there anymore, and you can be happy again too. So, so just... move, please, so I can go find someone to tell and we'll get all of this-- h-hey! Give that back!"

Yue reaches, but too slow. Her fingers close on empty air, as Hyra plants all four feet firmly on the ground between Yue and the door to ordinary freedom. Her red eyes shine with fierce determination against the ceiling lights and the evening air. In her mouth, clenched between her sharp and gleaming teeth, is Yue's wooden sword.

"Hyra, this isn't funny. I made that sword myself, give it back! What're you... h-hey, don't point that at me! What do you think I've been trying to... NO I can't do this! I told you why! I don't care if you believe in me, I'm getting out of here and that's, ow! Ow! Owies!!"

Thwap! Thwap! Thwap! Three times, with perfect lupine form no less, does Hyra bring the, er, "blade" down on Yue's thighs and fill the room with frightened and pained yips. There's more of fox in ya girl than she realizes, don'tcha think? But Hyra's snarl cuts through all the philosophical quand... uh... thinkies of the evening, and she gestures sharply toward Yue with the tip. And then over to her bag. To Yue. To her bag. Yue. The bag. Yue.

"...Huh?"

Did you know it was possible for wolves to make frustrated snorts while holding swords in their mouths! I didn't! But now I do, which is neat. She rolls her eyes and pads softly over to the bag, sure to pause and gesture sharply with the sword several times in case Yue gets any bright ideas. She doesn't, she's too busy sniffling and rubbing the welt on her leg, but it's good to be prepared, y'know? She paws at the bag, and kicks it across the floor with a thumpafwoppafwippaclank. Wait, clank? Yue gasps as the pristine, glittering blade of the Demon Swordswoman clatters on the floor at her feet. She's so surprised she picks it up without thinking.

"Wait a second... no, Hyra. Absolutely not! This isn't fair to you, come on!"

Undaunted, Hyra brings the wooden sword up into the air and taps it on the side of Yue's proper one. She settles into a dueling stance, or what passes for a wolfish version of one at any rate. She's at least six... no, seven times more sure and graceful than Yue's panicked and half-remembered reply.

"That's a wooden sword, dummy! This one's real! I'm gonna hurt you and I don't want... I know you're way better than me Hyra, but you're a wolf! You don't have hands! There's no way for you to-- ow! There's no way you can, OW! Owies! St-stop th-- owwwwww!"

Yue leaps a full foot away from the next strike and parries it with a sweeping circle motion. She doesn't quite disarm her opponen, maybe 'cause she's got no arms, but it's close enough to get an appreciative wag from the veteran. Yue's stance is just how she remembers it from the shrine, which is to say she's bobbled it and she's too narrow by half a foot. But her bow is perfect. And the little smirk that plays across her lips? Oh, divine!

First Opponent: Hyra of the Wolves
Technique: Wolf Holding a Sword Style
Special Moves: ???
Secret Weapon: Is Literally Yue's Girlfriend (...Meeeeep!)

Fighters ready? The wheel of fate is... hm?

Come again? What of widdle Kat, you ask? Whither Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits, our bright and shining superheroine?

Well. Not to brag or anything, but while these two sillyheads went at it? A certain darling cutiemittens went and stole the best spot on the good pillows. And now she's good and comfy and chewing on a feather that doesn't belong to her and nobody's stopping her or even noticing her doing it, so honestly? Whatever happens here, there's your real winner.

Anyway, fighters ready! Beginify!

Breathless Dead

"What do you think, Bella? Are you any good at pretending to be sick? Do you need me to poison you? Because I could... Bella? Bella! Can you... Bella? Are you listening?"

Despite her very best efforts, she was. Bella stood with prim and proper posture, as rigidly as she could get away with while still being able to reach the next in a seemingly endless pile of freshly washed white sheets. She set herself to the task of smoothing out the next one across her table so she could begin ironing and folding it, a supremely difficult task that took every ounce of a Servitor's concentration to get right. Her golden eyes burned with focus. Her lips stayed set in a very careful, placid smile that betrayed no interest in the conversation, or any emotion other than satisfaction with her lot in life, as was proper for an Imperial Pet. Her arms moved in swift and practiced patterns as she fought the last remaining wrinkles the way a phalanx might fight a band of heroic pirates.

But her damn... AHEM. Her gosh darned ears! They gave the game away! She couldn't keep them from perking up at the sound of Mynx's voice, and even worse, she felt the little traitors wiggle and bend toward her friend, and now no amount of diligent ironing would be enough to pretend she was too involved in her work to hear anything. There was an edge to her voice that caught Bella off guard. Mynx was a creature of total confidence, that tinge of nervousness didn't belong in her scheming. Unless that was part of the trick?

She stepped away from the laundry so she could look up. Mynx's scales rippled across her face as she hid behind her tented hands. Her eyes looked deadly serious, which had to mean she was smiling like an idiot where Bella couldn't see. But the thing that really got her tail all bushed up was the fact that Mynx had her attention and wasn't doing anything with it except... waiting. She sighed and rolled her eyes. Her lips curved into a tiny scowl, which she quickly forced back off her face before anybody could punish her for it. She ran her fingers over the smoothness of the sheet, and made to fold it.

"Hmph. Troublemaker."

"I knew you'd understand! Dany's actually starting to catch on to some of the usual tricks, and I just don't see how I'm going to pull this off by myself this time! Oh thank you Bella, thank you thank you thank you!"

"H-hey I didn't say I'd!" Bella squeaked as she fussed the wrinkles out of her skirt and apron.

"Oh good point, maybe this would work better if we mussed your clothes up a little bit. You're good with a sewing needle, right? So you wouldn't get too mad if we maybe cut that little skirt of yours up? Just a teeny bit?"

Mynxed hopped down from her perch on the shelf. She wasn't bothering to hide her grin anymore. She advanced with bouncy steps while Bella retreated, clutching her apron like a shield. She fought as hard as she could, but she was losing the war. She couldn't keep the smile on her face from melting into a picture of flustered horror. She couldn't keep the rose from creeping onto her cheeks, when everybody knew that roses were only meant for Empresses. She swiped at Mynx, who caught her by the wrist with a soft smile.

"Wh-wh-what does any of this have to do with?? A-and I didn't agree to!"

"Right, so if you can't fake it, I'd better give you a light dose. When Dany hears you, or better yet sees you, she'll find you all faint and weak..."

"M-Mynx, what?"

"...and then right when she's thinking it a trick I'll make sure she sees me..."

"Mynx, please!"

"...So then she'll know it's real, or well, not really real, but for our Princess what's the difference, right? And she'll run up to you and..."

"MYNX! Stop!"

All at once the energy in the room popped. Mynx blinked with obvious confusion, in that slow and incredibly off-putting way of hers, and tilted her head.

"Why Bella, what's the matter?"

"I... I will not," it took all of Bella's willpower not to show her teeth. A Lady was polite. Demure. Unassuming. She took tiny little breaths in and out of her nose, "Be part of such, such... silliness! Leave me out of it! Please!"

"But Bella! Sweetie!" Mynx's face was a mask. An enigma, even. The glitter in her eyes could have been malicious amusement as easily as it might have been determination, "This is for you! I'm just helping you get what you want!"

Bella froze. She swallowed nervously, fumbling for her voice. It was a long and awkward moment full of heat and fidgeting before she found it again.

"What I... want?" she winced at the way her voice cracked.

"Well of course! It's obvious to anybody with eyeballs that you're completely nuts for her, but we'll never get the Princess to figure out how much she likes you back without a little mmmphrble!"

Zeus herself could not have spotted Bella take the pillow up from under the laundry pile even if she'd been watching the conversation with her full interest. But if she had, she'd certainly be proud of how much like a thunderbolt she'd managed to throw it. The second strike was even deadlier, and the third was certainly overkill, but the sound of her flustered squeaking was still being drowned out by merciless giggles, which meant the meteoric rain of sleep aids couldn't stop until the traitor had been well and thoroughly murdered for her crimes.

***

Bella's head is stuck inside a clamp. Every bit of blood that squeezes past her skull crushes her with blinding pain. Light exists only as a sense of nausea, and sound for dizziness. Her lips are dry and cracked when she opens them to yell at... whoever the fuck this is, but the pounding against her brain steals her thoughts from her before she can turn them into venom. She could be birthing a new goddess from her temple right now, and not even notice the difference. Her scowl is filled with teeth.

Every breath she is tainted by the overwhelming smell of mint plastered over faint traces of rot. Onion. Garlic. Vinnegar. All swim in the stinging ocean of sugar-soaked mint. This is the monster come to kill her: a sweaty sack of who crams her face full of candies to hide the fact she couldn't be bothered to pick her lunch out of her teeth or wash herself clean after. Disgusting.

The growl in her throat feels drowned out by the one in her stomach. It makes her skin crawl to think this puffed up suit full of death and bad ideas is sparking her appetite, but she also hadn't eaten once in the entire span of her journey, which for all she knew could have taken years. Even the muscles she's certain still work like they should feel heavy and devoid of power. She moves to lift her arm, and it's like trying to carry the sky on her back. Every inch takes a mile's worth of effort and then some.

That doesn't stop her from grabbing Thellis Thist by the collar. That doesn't stop her from yanking her close so that the Azurite had nothing to look at but the dead, red gleam of her Auspex, or her neat and glistening teeth if she was cowardly enough to try.

"The fuck're you trying to do to... me..."

The weight on her neck is unbearable. It presses down against her spine and pulls what little energy she's got left out of her body. Her face goes slack. Her claws clench blindly. She pulls herself free from the wreck, just to tumble onto the grimy, scuffed up floor with a lazy, exhausted flop. Her ears droop uselessly against her still screaming skull as her tail flops dully alongside her. She is vaguely aware that her eyes are closing.

And she sleeps, for the first time since Apollo woke her. And this time he lets her.

Sunshards

How come she's crying? It's not like Yue's a mind reader or anything. She's not even that good with faces! One time on market day she paid three times the usual price for a jar of red beans because she'd misread the seller's surprise for disappointment and accidentally haggled her way up instead of down. So it's not like... it's not, it's not like she can see Rosie's dream, right? It's not like, it's not, it's, it's... stop it stop it stop it Yue! You're being so, so..!

It's not like Rose said a word about anything one way or the other. She could be thinking about a perfectly baked loaf of bread (with nuts and seeds and spirals of cardamom baked inside!) as easily as she could be begging for her life. Maybe? But the Countess isn't scary any more than Jessic was, and she was a dragon carrying her across the endless skies. There's just, just, just no reason!

But the fact of the matter's that she's crying just as surely as she's blushing. And she's blushing as surely as she's shaking. And she's shaking about as much as she's swallowing, as if somewhere in the air she's gulping there'll be some words for her to spit back out that'll do what she needs them to do. Which is what, exactly? She's never been so confused in all her life, unless you count the time that Sis asked her what the sound of one hand clapping was and then shook her head when she tried to make it.

"I..."

She's not sure where she's trying to take that 'I'. Where's it supposed to go, and where she wants it to, and if either of those two things are different from each other. What she's sure of, though, is that Rose is big and strong and scary in a way that Yue never can be. And that she's the one who's making those eyes that remind of her Kat's, that she's not making threats or standing up or brandishing the... uh... what was it again? The Consillyuhsomething Blade Or Other? She's not using that to break anybody out, not demanding anything at all or doing any of the stuff she's pretty sure Hyra would be doing in this situation. She's just looking. Like that. So vulnerable. So quiet.

It's beautiful to Yue, even if she can't figure out why. Maybe it's not beautiful to anybody else, but for her it's just... it's weird, y'know? It makes her wish she was every bit the knight she was dressed as. It makes her wish she was a master with her sword and that she could fly like a princess already and carve glittering circles through the air with the sword she'd inherited from the shrine. It makes her dream of a world full of maidens just like Rose offering kisses and adventures and doe-eyed looks just like this one to wanderers who look a lot like Yue.

"I don't..."

She forces herself to stand up to the full degree her fox-wounds will allow her. She wipes her eyes on her sleeve even though her sleeve is overlapping plates of metal right now and ow. She sniffles loudly as she accepts the touch under her chin with the closest she can manage to polite acceptance instead of total flusterbarassment.

"I don't know." she says, with an oddly tinny pitch.

Yue folds in on herself like a paper fan in the hands of a courtesan. All the effort of pretending and feeling and thinking and realizing and wondering scorches its way out of her body and leaves her with nothing but frazzled nerves and a dream thumping inside of her chest with insistent power that she's got no idea how it got there. It can't be hers, can it? Gosh, it'd be nice to just... just have like a, uh, a hot bath and a cup of tea and get to sleep in a soft bed tonight. Wouldn't it? Don't ya think? It'd be nice if there was a way to ask for that, too.

The tears on her cheeks are so warm and soft that they're making her smile. She must look like a complete moron. Might as well sound like one too, y'know?

"I'm not good for much of anything. I'm still learning how to hold a sword. Oh, and uh, and swing it too. I don't know how to... oh, I'm an ok cook, I guess? Princess Qiu seemed like she liked my cookies, at least before she chased me in that helicopter and, um. N-no, I mean, that's not..."

She swallows one more time. Come on words, help her out here.

"I just wanna, I just. I, uh, gosh. Ahaha. I wanna keep my friends safe. I wanna be strong so they can be soft instead when they wanna. I wanna save my girlf-- um!!! M-my g-g-gahhh very special person from a curse! I wanna, I wanna... I wanna belong up here! What... d'you want me to say, t-to make that happen? Where do you have to put me, to pay for all've that?"

Breathless Dead

Snuck in among the blazing kaleidoscope of colors is a thin ribbon of golden light that threads the galaxy between Alced and a point somewhere still in the middle of the infinite depths of the sea. It is not a powerful light, nor a bright one. Even a talented and invested observer would struggle to look here and see anything other than the galaxy as it should be, as it always was: rippling, powerful, alive, and alone. It is no proof at all of the blazing strength a mortal defying Fate or the gods, though for that matter it barely counts as a manifestation of their will.

It is thin and translucent. Where the solar winds blow by or chunks of rock cross through, it melts away into bits of ragged sparkles. Sometimes the trail is straight and decisive. It cuts through the sea with the confidence of a sword thrust or the stroke of a pen. Other times it is cautious and clever. It winds long and winding loops around obstacles and gracefully serpentines between chunks of asteroid and fragments of old discarded hulls as if it knew they were there all along.

Just now, it is playful and capricious. It zips about in a corkscrew spiral and bends upwards into a series of loops for no other reason than because it can. The golden ribbon is speed. It is control. And more than that, it is Bella. Here and there the sparks break in such a way to prove that the pattern of her thread is not perfect. There are erratic jerks in her movement toward debris, toward stars, toward storms that would crush her to pieces and burn those pieces to ash in an instant. It would be simplicity itself to let those errant moods take her over. She would become the flaw, and be perfect. Her arc would carry her into a lethal obstacle, and she would disappear from the universe without pain. Everything she dreamed of for months on end, granted in a single instant that needed no effort or the slightest bit of will. All she needed to do was fall asleep.

But she corrects each mistake as it comes, as easily as she might swish her tail. She does not consider why she does this. It's simply natural to move. It is natural to swim through the sea and it is natural to move forward and it is natural to to seek a destination even when you do not know the place you are heading toward or what might be waiting for you there. Motion is the gift Apollo has given her. There had been a Bella who thought that being calm was the same as being still. But this Bella understands the serenity of motion. This is the secret that Apollo painted on her before he sent her on his secret paths.

She banks. The void skiff is surprisingly simple to control; all she has to do is make sure she's got the controls gripped tight and from there it's as simple as flexing her wrists. But in the act of flexing her wrists, she remembers that she has them. She remembers the soreness. She remembers the burning of the acid in her muscles built up from weeks of perilous spaceflight where she hasn't been able to move her arms more than to briefly and unsatisfyingly stretch them for fear of becoming the kind of nothing she'd rejected while riding the wave. She remembers how cramped her feet are, and the numbness in her legs that tell her the vibrations of a sighing star have turned her into a useless paralytic lump. She can only tell the muscles in her calves still work because they're desperately squeezing together hard enough to force a grunt from her throat. It's the first sound she's made since she left.

Her spine is crawling with flaming ants, and the small of her back is a block of uncomfortable marble. Her hair and her dress are soaked with sweat, and her ears feel so limp she can't imagine they'll ever regain their proper perk again. Her fingers itch, which piled on top of everything else feels just as bad as dying. Voidskiffs weren't meant for the kind of journey she's putting hers through, and here in the middle of nothing she is proving why.

But the work is not so bad. It's straightforward and surprisingly mindless, for all that it's uncomfortable. Keep her hands on the sticks that bend the sails. Sit up straight. And pray for her next decision to keep her alive, and the next one after that, and the next one after that, and the next one after that. There's no time to second-guess herself at this speed. There's no time to plan a course, and even with her Auspex no chance to see more than one in a dozen problems coming before they happen. It might think at those speeds, but she can't. There's no room to think up here. Her mind does not wander, neither to worry or to reminisce. In its way, void sailing is much the same as sewing a new dress out of ten thousand hand-crafted beads, and she thanked it for that in her heart.

Prayer is easy work. Prayer requires no song and no words from her. Prayer requires no sacrifice except the ones she's making with her body. Prayer is movement, just like freedom. If Apollo put her on this ship and sent her to die in space, he's certainly had his chances to finish her off. So she prays, with every flick of her wrists and every second she holds her arms forward in defiance of her aches. She prays with every twist and turn, and she prays with every action that carries her further from anything she knows. You put her here, Apollo. You shared your wisdom. Now bring her home.

Her landing is not a comfortable one. The voidskiff isn't meant for landing, either. It doesn't seem to be made for much except helping Poseidon kill crazy idiots. When she touches down she immediately bounces off of the landing zone off the back of sheer momentum. Her muscles clench with every impact. Her bones rattle inside her body and send shocks of lightning up into her brain. She smells the acrid tang of something burning, but there's no time to figure out what it is. She wrenches the controls with every ounce of remaining strength in her ragged body. She snarls, because it's better than screaming, as her tiny ship skips across the length of a dock built for landing the kind of behemoth Odoacer would send here before slamming into the railing and tipping over onto its side.

"Ugh... fuck."

It takes her minutes, or maybe hours to pull herself out of the skiff. She's not sure; time's so much harder to count than she remembers it being. Her legs touch solid ground for the first time in centuries, and immediately betray her and turn to jelly before they dump her on the floor. Her blood rushes through her furiously and fills her skin with millions of sharp needles as it brings her back to life.

She smiles, just before a wave of nausea burns her throat. She manages to cough up a bit of spit, but after that she rolls through endless cycles of dry heaves squeezing her lungs, squeezing her stomach, and wrenching her neck. But she smiled. Because she noticed as she looked that her skiff looked better after landing than the last one she'd found so very far from home.

Sunshards

Y'know what's funny? For most of her life, Yue assumed she was afraid of heights. It was just, well, trips to the top of the waterfall were so scary! And any time she had to climb a ladder she got a sense of vertigo, like her stomach as a knot and a hawk at the same time and was twist-swooping down into her legs and blurrgh arrrgh flegh. So, like, yeah. What else was she supposed to think?

But when she was flying with Hyra, she was was so amazed to be up there, seeing what birds see that she just sort of... forgot to be scared. At first she thought it was because Hyra was holding her, and those wonderful, beautiful arms were making her feel too safe for the rest of it to catch back up with her brain. But then the demons came and she was definitely scared to be up there floating all by herself, and with so much... everything going on she couldn't tell her heart from her butt, if y'know what I mean.

And even that'd been her home, right? Those were her trees, her river, her house off in the wayyyyy distance, her grass, her flowers, even her demons, sorta kinda maybe. They say starting the journey is the hardest part, but at this point she's gotta wonder if they haven't heard about continuing it. So many paths look like the way home if you squint at 'em hard enough, and when your legs are aching and your stomach's empty and the longer you think about it the more you realize you're about to run out of good tea and, goshies, when was the last time you even got to run around gathering leaves? Yeah, the longer you think about it the more those roads home look mighty tempting. Every choice you make to keep on keeping on is a tiny little sliver of iron will those sillies with the fancy pens keep forgetting to write about. And maybe in the meantime you try to master a flight spell to keep yourself feeling like you belong, and you don't stop to think about how scary you're supposed to think that is?

But now she knows. Now she knows. It wasn't heights that scared her, how could it be? She's being carried HOW far up? Tangled up in a net? Being carried by a dragon? And she's not even shaking! Well, maybe a little bitty shiver, but that's on account of how much colder the air gets up here. She's just, it's so, everything is, is... wow! Wowies!

This is so much farther than she ever dreamed of going. Sometimes she worries she's repeating that thought a lot, but then all that stuff about bitty little slivers happens and she takes another step and, sheesh wouldn't you know it that's a new personal record all over again. These are not her trees, her river. Those certainly aren't her sunshards. Her eyes turn to liquid with wonder and delight as she gazes far below her the the grand... no, ruins wasn't the right word, was it? Signposts? Monuments! These beautiful shells of pure art and love that call back to a time when, they say, a Princess declared there were too many suns.

And the cliff face! She never knew that rocks could be so red! Oh gosh, Rose! Rosie! What plant is that down there? What... ohhhh, a Firebird! For true? Yue wriggles into the net for the first time all journey, trying to wave at the marvelous creature. Oh, hello there! Hello! Thanks so much for stopping by, friend! Love your coat, would you mind treating us to a little song? Oh, you're busy? Haha, that's ok! Safe journeys and pleasant wings, friend! Byyyyeeeee!

She never thought she'd see half of what she's seen just this afternoon. And if flying and being up all high and stuff was what brought it all in front of her, then how on earth could it be so bad?

And... and that's another thing, ok? That's another thing! This whole time, her whole dang life she looked up at the sky and thought it couldn't belong to her. She'd been kinda slacking off on her practice for just that very reason. Well, plus she's been a bit busy, but now? Even though she can't really bring her hands together properly, she's moving them like this. Then like this. Then like this. Finishing like this.

And it's 'cause of what's going on above her. Power turning into fire turning into speed. Turning into flight, yeah? Yeah! Yue glances up at Jessic and smiles with the deepest sense of wonder she's felt the whole trip so far every time she does it, 'cause... 'cause... she knows that power. Shut up, she does! She's got maybe more in common with this dragon than a single person in her little hometown! Even Sis, just maybe! She's got more in common with a dragon than any person she's ever met.

'Cause that up there? That's work. Effort. That's practice, for something so completely normal and obvious that nobody would ever guess you needed to do it. And that's... that's her! That's her too! What's Yue ever been good at in her life? Nothin', 'cept what she put all the work her body could handle into. And all've that was always such silly, petty things that nobody ever really gave her credit for it. But sometimes she sees Jessic shift her tail or a muscle twitches and sends a ripple through her powerful body and Yue and her two good friends go bumping and giggling into each other, and...

Oh gosh! Oh goshies and goshlings! Do it again, please! Make a mistake! And then keep going! You're incredible Ms. Dragon! You make flight look like hard work! You make it look so, so tricky! You make it look like years and years went into this, and years and years'll come after to finish getting it right! You make it look so pretty! So real!

'Cause if a dragon has to work so hard to ride the winds the stories all say she was born to? Then it's ok for Yue, Silly Stupid Yue Just Yue The Sun Farmer to have to try so hard at everything, too. It feels like, like, it feels like a journey with an end? Something she can achieve, y'know? So just watch her! Watch her, Rosie! Watch her, uh... o-oh, maybe Chen won't be watching much of anything right now. But she'll tell you later, ok? She's gonna do it! Why couldn't she be like a dragon, too?

Just a little, bitty bit?