Phoe

Aristeia! Building a Champion

The timer ticks down to zero.

The scoring zone clicks off.

Two women wrestle in the grass and increasing amounts of mud, just outside the hex.

One of them is painfully aware of falling short. The other is snarling, so caught up in the fight and the scent of her opponent that she has no awareness of the time. Or the concept of scoring zones.

Madeleine opens her eyes. Then she starts to see. She takes a late foot to the chest, sprawls backwards onto the ground, and pushes herself up to sitting. She is covered in sweat and grass and dirt, and her breath is hot and heavy. She looks across, just across from her, and there is Titanomachia.

Without her coat. Without her ribbons. Just as hot, nearly as breathless, just as dirty and gross. Not invincible, but... ordinary. Like her. Madeleine wipes her lips with the back of her wrist.

"Ah," she says, curling inward, "S-s-sorry."

This is the part where she stands up. This is the part where she extends her hand to Machia to-- no, wait, this is the part where she takes her mark again before the next round starts! This is hardly the first point Titanomachia hasn't scored on, if Madeleine isn't ready she'll be behind and her mad, stupid scramble would just get her killed or worse, she has to go, she has to fight, she has to be a good practice partner, she--

Her cheek is wet. Why?

Madeleine looks up at the sky. No helpful drops of rain obligingly splash on her forehead or into her eyes, but her vision feels more blurry than it ought to for her level of fatigue. Something dribbles off her chin and strikes her collarbone. She looks back and Machia again and touches her cheek, and now her fingers can trace her tears all the way back to her pale golden eyes. Sh-she? Ah, ah, ahhhhh!

To say that the dam bursts would be laughable. It's not misrepresenting the situation but it's so far underneath the mark of reality that it may as well convey negative information. First the tears start streaming. These are the cracks spreading across her. And then there is no dam at all, there never was. Just a void that water temporarily forgot that it could rush into.

She falls forward onto her knees as her face twists into something ugly and utterly uncomposed. This is what it means to be vulnerable. Hormones are rushing through her system and all of her emotions are set to 13 and every breath only comes into her body so that it can hitch and squeak and come back out as a sob. The word 'sorry' repeated endlessly but mangled in new and exciting ways until it physically drags her forward and she is flopped, twitching wet and loud, into Machia's shoulder.

Because it shouldn't have been that close. Because she should have seen that beautiful juke coming and started moving to counteract it before it ever came to her useless animal maneuver. Because she wanted to do a better job than this. Because, because... because she wanted to see it work. She wanted to witness the perfection she used to watch that seemed so beautiful it was like watching art. Because she was worried. Because she needed to say something, and she couldn't. Because she should've noticed sooner. Because every time she 'won' it came from some obnoxious stupid technicality that proved nothing about herself. Because really, that last lunge should've beaten her anyway. She wanted it to. And it did not. Because it was selfish not to rehab Machia, selfish to take up her time when it should all be going into her instead, because it was monstrous to consider it, because outside of the flash of realization in that single instant...

She wasn't that impressed at all. And everything is wrong now. And everything is upside down. And everything is wet and sniffly and sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry

Madeleine stops. She takes the deepest, most centering breath that she can. She moves to push away and stand again. She falls apart instantly and collapses straight back into the storm. In this moment, all she knows is that she ruined everything. The world is ending, and this disgusting sticky mess is the proof.

Aristeia! Building a Champion

Madeleine says nothing, but stands there with the bottle upturned onto her lips and refuses to move until the entire bottle has been drained. She licks her lips rather than wiping them, and shivers. Suddenly she is bouncing around on the balls of her feet and shaking her head, which sends her dark hair billowing first this way and then that in waves.

Yes, yes, yes yes yes! She gets to do the course like a normal person! Sure, she suddenly has to compete with (in her opinion) the best to ever do it, but who cares? Normal person! Yes, yes, yes yes yes! She's going to be more horse! As far as appreciable aesthetics go she's been like 90% of the way there for some time now but there's a hundred different things left to be improved, and this is a journey with no defined end where every step she takes is more exciting than the one that came before it. Yes, yes, yes yes yes! She's going to bite Machia!

...Wait. What?

She takes her position. Raises her left hand to call ready. She takes a single deep breath, in and out through her mouth and all in the chest. And then she is running, bounding, climbing, and scrambling toward the center of the course for the very first time since she became Machia's project without locks or weights or five competing drugs trying to drag her down. It's difficult to know quite what the difference is. She might just be excited. She might be thinking too much about a compound her body hasn't actually absorbed yet, might just be so giddy at the thought that it's making her form look better, her body (and even her heart) feel stronger than it has in months or maybe ever. All she knows for sure is...

No, don't do it. Don't become a parody of yourself, Madeleine. It is perfectly normal for even two Scorers who run into each other in Aristeia! to get into a bit of a tussle but there's no need to lean into any ramping feelings of aggression right now. It would be the dumbest thing she could do. But god, she can't stop thinking about it! Don't do it, don't do it, just please please please don't do it, just slip into the center hex and take the point the way you always practice to.

Doesn't she deserve it, though? Madeleine squeezes her eyes shut as she jumps through a chute in the middle of her path that's intended as a training aid for mid-air dodging through either enemy attacks or random Hexadrome obstacles, and all that she can see behind her eyelids while she's flying is an image of ridiculous violence that she absolutely cannot, must not make reality. Because the answer is no, Titanomachia does not deserve a biting. Even though it's possible the 'bite toy' she's lined up is just Madeleine. Even though she's annoying. A shadow. That's the playstyle Madeleine desires to perfect. Not a raging beast.

She slides heavily on her knees as she stumbles out the other side and has to slap her palm down on the ground to keep from bouncing and skinning her knees in spectacular fashion. She hurries back to her feet and continues running, lungs burning but nowhere near fatigued. Ok no, she's still nothing special, but this is definitely getting easier. That alone is proof that she shouldn't

Don't bite her. Don't bite her, Madeleine Cross. Use your fists and your feet like a proper Lady. Do NOT bite her.

It's there, in her mind, this white hot desire and barely controllable aggression that has her on the verge of tears even as she's the happiest she has ever been in her entire life. And that tangled mess of adrenaline comes crashing into the center hex, half wanting just to win a pure race against a rival, half wanting to stand and fight for better practice, and half just wanting to curl up into a ball and hold herself until the storm passes.

Inside her are three wolves. Against chaos like that, against a woman literally giving it 150%, even Machia might not know what to do. Madeleine is, for better or worse, in what could be described as The Zone. What happens next is not hers to guess. But at the end of all three paths, there is a stammered apology.

Aristeia! Building a Champion

"Monster. Fiend. Charlatan. You aren't human..."

Madeleine is running out of invectives. Really she's already run out, but the stream out of her endlessly whenever her breath allows for it. Hating Machia makes her heart beat. Hating Machia means the world is correct and normal. Hating Machia means it's possible to stand up again so she can walk over there and kick her right in her stupid artificial shin. You know, where it'll hurt.

But being fair, this isn't her fault. Madeleine should have known better after she'd suggested a local obstacle course and Machia had agreed so enthusiastically. That should have been her clue to call it off, or at least set a more reasonable expectation for the event. But now she was running through it, again and again, under the influence of any one of a dozen bizarre compounds.

The most recent run had been testing one that caused random muscle spasms. To hear Machia tell it, someone like Musashi would shrug this off and deliver a perfect sword stroke even through the worst fit of twitching it could dish out. Madeleine had been scrambling up the rope ladder when hers happened. Then she was falling, getting caught around her ankle, twisting, dropping, and...

Landing perfectly on one knee. Just before her leg shot out from under her and smashed her face into the ground. And if that wasn't enough she had to do this whole thing while Machia randomly fired beanbags out of a t-shirt cannon she'd... acquired? Modified? Did she want to know, or alternately tried to douse her in some other kind of cubegel to add swelling or sneezing or total adrenal burnout to the current challenge.

She turns her neck and stares ruefully at the unused weight sets over in the corner. What she wouldn't give for another round of calibrations. A chance to feel her body working for once, instead of finding out all the million ways it was possible to break it. God, she'd give anything to just... run in a circle for a while. Even if she had a madwoman shooting at her the whole time, it sounded like bliss.

"You know what worries me? That you act like building a missile is more virtuous than an airplane. Especially because I'm the missile! No I do not want the changes reverted that is... not the point!"

Madeleine struggles to her feet and walks over to a line of slowly diminishing bottles of sports drink. This one is yellow flavored. Not 'lemon', not really, these things were way too nutrient dense to taste like real things anymore, but somehow the color always gave it a sense of a different type of sweet than all the others. Or maybe salty, or... what was in this, anyway?

"...I've been thinking. Psych training tonight, and more of this in the morning. Right? Doesn't it feel silly sending me home at the end of these sessions? I should be staying over. At least until the night of the match. You have a real shower, so I... no, forget it. Next compound, please. What is my PB again? I'm going to crush it this time."

Madeleine settles in at the start of the course again. She did promise, after all. Nothing wasted.

Aristeia! Building a Champion

Are you sure? she does not ask, because that would be stupid and insulting and only make things worse.

But you could get hurt! she does not say, because it's so obvious that letting it out would make both of them dumber for having to hear it.

There must be another way. she does not suggest, because if there is she doesn't know one. And if there was, it probably wasn't faster.

Still though, she had quit. And if that'd been to participate in mob-rigged death matches with mercenary runners, she would never have been interested in training Madeleine in the first place. Unless it... well, no. Even then it amounted to something deeply unpleasant. Special and important in a way that she couldn't really process.

Madeleine places her feet underneath her. Carefully. Pressing one palm on the table, she rises into a standing position which through the magic of Eating and Drinking Properly she is able to keep. Quietly, she gathers the dishes of her meal and walks them into the kitchen to wash with the nervous care of a tightrope artist. When she disappears behind the corner, only then in the moment when she cannot be observed, she allows herself to blossom into the quiet smile she can neither explain or understand.

But she comes back with a storm in her eyes. And also the spoon, washed and dried. An intrusive thought in the back of her head tells her to lick it, but she kicks that into the abyss and plunges the utensil back into the poor neglected cake. Once more she lifts, and once more she offers the bite to Machia. Though less... intensely than she had at the cafe.

"I appreciate this," she says, "All of it. I will not waste any part of the training we have left. I promise..."

Aristeia! Building a Champion

Spoon Acquired. Now that Madeleine has a tool that's up to the current challenge, eating is easy. She stirs together the remains of everything left on her plate into the rice and then dumps both sets of pickled vegetables on top.

Bon Appétit.

...Ok no the sauerkraut in particular isn't supposed to go on this. But, too late now. Spoonful after careful spoonful disappears at a steady rhythm that suggests she's given up on tasting anything. She does not speak or look up, and only occasionally pauses for water, which she drinks in too-large gulps and runs out of well before her plate is empty.

There is one brief moment where her eyebrows lift and she stares at the spoon instead of using it, having just registered where it had been. Or rather whose mouth. She turns a very slight pink, but resumes her rhythm with a tiny shake of her head. The rest of the world, even this apartment, does not exist until her plate is empty.

She breaches the surface of this momentary bubble, quiet and still. No promise, but no rejection. No comment, but no dismissal. And now...

She shakes her head.

"I went once, but I got turned away. They said there was a prize pool, and the number was too high for me. I still remember... the laughter, when I turned and walked away. The official amateur circuit was easier to join. That I did online. The fee was higher, but they had financing. I did courier work. Before I was... myself. It was very bad. But I looked good in the hat."

Aristeia! Building a Champion

She can't protest through a mouthful of eggplant, so Madeleine simply listens. Ah, so this is what she was smelling. It must have... well, no. She should really try studying more. But in her defense there are always people in the communal kitchen at her apartment and they are the friendly sorts who like to talk, and is there anything more unsettling or exhausting than that? It's the same reason she never takes her trash out until deep in the dead of night, which had started a rumor that a ghost had taken up residence in her room and...

"Why do you call her 'Sammy'?" she asks, voice suddenly sharp, "Do you let her call you, I mean, is she really that big of a deal? Are you so..."

Her question is lost amid fluttering eyelashes and an exquisite bite of cake disappearing right in front of her. Madeleine lowers her head to hide the sudden smile creeping over her face under the guise of looking at her own meal. This meant nothing. It was only relief. That she could bare the depths of her weakness and not have it even warrant comment. It has nothing to do with what Machia is doing on the other side of the table. Nothing to do with hearing her own name. Nothing at all. It is simply better for her professional career if she is able to maintain this relationship.

That is all.

"Er, rather, I know she's strong. And fast. Her reflexes are..." don't say 'catlike', don't say 'catlike', don't say 'catlike', "Er, ca, uh... a match for Gata."

Phew.

Madeleine reaches for her chopsticks. She's been given the opportunity to feed herself (and being fed is humiliating in a way that makes heat rise uncomfortably in her chest), so she might as well make the attempt. The food is shockingly tasty anyway, though she's blown out her palate with so much late night takeout lately that maybe there's no real compliment to be found there.

She's not stranger to chopsticks of course, but for all her stretching earlier none of Madeleine's fingers feel particularly cooperative just now. She abandons the pair in favor of a single-stick technique, and simply spears what she wants to eat. That means lots of peppers, onions, and bits of eggplant. She ventures demurely (as demurely as one can while eating like a spear fisherman) into the kimchi between courses, but rice and cashew are beyond her abilities tonight.

...Help, Machia.

"Still, don't you think she's... simple? Maybe this is just armchair A! brain, but I feel like you could drive a truck through the holes in her strategy. Like, if anyone needs to worry about anti-hypnosis training wouldn't it be..? Aha. No, of course you see it. You're saying I don't have my license yet."

She puts the chopstick down. After a long, slow sip of water, she collapses into a Madeleine-shaped pile in her chair. In safety, she truly is coming undone. How unseemly.

"Hey. If I... if you really believe I can, then would you... that is... if I win? Finals, that is. If I... become a champion, like y- like we're aiming for. Would you? I would... like you to promise. That we can go on a trip. I've never cared about it until today, but I desire to see the night sky. I wish to see the scars on the Moon. Away from the city's grasp. With someone who understands. Would you..?"

She sighs, and shakes her head. Forget it. Just forget she said anything.

"Yes. The next session needs to hurt. Pain, music, pain, monsters, and then teeth. After I bleed. That's when she'd extend her hand to me, I think. So that's when I would need to endure something... pleasant."

Aristeia! Building a Champion

"Monster. Bully. Cretin. Tyrant. Stop it. Do not. I am fine, give me the mmgblgh!" she slops water down her chest, but swallows obediently, "Please, I... I can still... where are you going? This is not what I meant!"

Madeleine's body is heavy. It's heavy in the way that inert cybernetics are heavy, or dead bodies are heavy, like her arms and legs and chest and even her hair and tail are being grabbed and pulled by spectral limbs whenever Machia isn't there to sweep them away. She strains, but it is like commanding a puppet without strings. She does not shift: she flails. She convulses. It is like a slow, torturous seizure. One that happens while she watches from outside her body.

But then she feels the warmth of those hands upon her flesh. She is posed and it forces her inside herself again, and after every sip of water which she does not control the pace of the bottle is taken away from her again. She is not even trusted to hold it. Weak. Weak. Pathetic. You are weak, Madeleine Cross. You are incapable of taking hold of your dreams, no matter how small. It was pointless to ever believe that any help would be enough.

There is not enough water in her body to manage tears. She hiccups violently, instead. Every one of them squeezes an undignified squeak out of her typically low and cool voice as they heave her shoulders up with enough force to jerk her arms out of her lap. She gathers a breath and holds it in her mouth, willing it to stop. HIC! She twitches hard enough that it almost tips her over. She grits her teeth and pulls herself into the position Machia left her in again, the way a proper doll should.

If she could just HIC! stop HIC! this HIC! stupid HIC! spasm!

...HIC!

She smacks her head against the table in frustration. The smell of sweating onions wafts across the room, and her stomach starts to howl at her and then... and then nothing. Now that she has to acknowledge how hungry she is, the fight leaves her completely again. Her body is heavier than ever, though no longer with the creeping sensation of the ghosts that have tried to twist it to their purposes since she was young.

She is hollow. She is heavy. She is here. She is with someone. The lights are on and the floor is a mess and she can smell a mirepoix building in the kitchen. There is a presence about everything, and more importantly an irritation that is forcing her to be present. The rhythm of Titanomachia's knife cuts is different from Madeleine's, and it's very stupid to fixate on this because she realizes she has no idea which one is more correct. But why shouldn't that perfectly honed body be capable of finer dicing than her self taught nonsense? Ah, it makes her want to scream.

But she merely sits where she is placed. Where she is posed. She drinks her water when it is given to her and she swallows with all the poise of the woman who figured out on the first attempt how to drink through a bit in her mouth. She waits for food to cook, and to be fed.

"Machiaaaaaaa~" she whines, "When is it going to be ready?"

She hiccups again. Once, and louder than any previous time. As her chest bounces she feels the corners of her eyes start to sting and grow hot. Her neck slumps down and she begins to flex her fingers: curl, then uncurl. Curl, then uncurl. Flex, then relax. Flex, then curl. Relax. Now the wrists. Prove you are not weak. Prove that you are capable of at least this much.

She sniffles.

"Please... do not give up on me. I can... still... get stronger."

Aristeia! Building a Champion

There had been a moment where-- wait. Was it a moment? It might have been a long time, actually. But it felt so fleeting. It... still. It had happened, in spite of how much she'd been letting the ropes bite into her skin to stay focused, it had happened inside her mindscape that they'd come loose and on shaky feet she'd stood up in the middle of the herd and tried to run with them, run through the valley and over top the lakes and she could feel their heat and the vibrations of their thunder rattling through her when suddenly one wheeled about on her and it

"Mmmgh... uh."

There are words she is supposed to be saying. She can feel the timer ticking down inside her head, the same way it does inside of the arena. The countdown to the loss of her scoring window was blaring inside her skull. Funny how five seconds was so short and yet took so much time to pass, once you became aware of it. But long or short it's inevitable all the same. And her body feels heavier than it should, and she doesn't understand it. And her mouth feels drier than it should, and she doesn't understand that either. And her tongue feels bound and even more useless than when it had struggled against the bit the other night, and she understands that least of all.

Why won't it move? Why won't it let her say the words? Doesn't it know she has to?

"Chhhhhhhhhhhhhhiron..." she coughs, for one terrifying instant sounding like there is no air inside of her at all, "Ch-Chiron runs with... fair ribbons through..."

But she knows. She feels the pang of guilt wrench her chest in half when it registers. Five seconds is several years too short for her to have finished in time. Her body unclenches, which is to say it unravels, all at once. She collapses into the embrace of the ropes holding her in place, sagging against them and well past the point where she can feel them scraping against her skin. The marks are turning slowly to burns and she can't even care because she can't feel it over the prickling jolts of lightning burning out her nerves. Her lungs feel hot and empty and her heart is exhausted as if she'd run for hours without ever letting up.

She is drenched and trembling and so hungry she is hollow, and it's all for nothing because she failed.

"Grand many stars." she says stubbornly, with a voice full of acid.

Madeleine's eyes are glassy and unfocused as she looks up at Machia. She tries to pull herself up back into a sitting position but all she does is convulse; she would fall on the floor in the midst of an apparent seizure. All she is is spasms and dehydration and the sense of immanent unconsciousness.

"...Put me back in," she hisses, "Make it sharper this time."

Her fingernails curl into her palms and bite against the flesh. They are too flat to cause real harm, but they press hard enough that the indentations will be visible long after she relaxes again.

"Bite me. Hurt me. When she touched me it was blinding pain. You can't serve me this doting dream if I'm to beat her. And you hardly had me under for a minute. Stop thinking of me... as weak. Give me another phrase. I'll do it right this time. I'll show you. I'll..."

Aristeia! Building a Champion

Humanity hasn't really considered horses for a long time. Once they were the great enabler of civilization, but they faded into technology like everything else and then their great size doomed them. Once racing became a thing of pure speed and engineering it was over for them completely. Reduced to historical curiosities, a thing that girls learned how to draw sometimes to teach themselves about musculature (or dragons), now they only wandered about queer little isolated pockets of the world. And people could go their entire lives without giving one the time of day.

And that was a shame. It wouldn't be true if anybody understood how beautiful they were. If they understood how violent they were. Calling them water misrepresented the reality of being among them; if the herd was a waterfall, then it was one large and powerful enough to crush the city she lived in, crashing down on immortal stone that could only endure for so long before shattering into pebbles and less. Every hoof scorches the earth like thunder; clumps of dirt and grass fly and scatter and soak the air with their scent. Like fireworks, like cannons, blasts of noise and fire and transcendent beauty that risks its own destruction even as it wheels about and tears the world with its passing.

You couldn't know this and not be enthralled. You couldn't understand this and not want to become like them. To know was to change, to strive for that transcendent loveliness and beauteous ultraviolence it represented. To be vicious and radiant, to be powerful even when still, to be pure fire in the shape of flowing water. But nobody wanted that. Nobody understood.

...Except Titanomachia.

Madeleine strains against her ropes, until she can feel them pressing into her skin even through her clothing. Enveloping her, squeezing her in every place they have slipped without her permission in their quest to hold her still. She is knelt in prayer and she longs to witness the divine, instead. To stand, to leap, somehow to fly and float above it all, to see without eyes and know what her ears cannot quite perceive: the true shape of these horses and the pattern that sets them galloping about her. Thunder, drumbeats, gunfire, bowling pins roar all about her and her breathing grows faster and shallower and steamier in desperation to see, to know, to feel, to join in, and...

And Chiron runs with fair ribbons through grand many stars. She pulls her wrists to make the rope bite into them. She returns to quiet prayer.

The only way to love this properly was to rise above it. She could not let herself forget why she was here. She can feel the sweat slicking her body, and the fabric clinging to her now sticky skin. She shudders when she sighs.

Aristeia! Building a Champion

Chiron runs with fair ribbons through grand many stars.

Chiron runs with fair ribbons through grand many stars.

Chiron runs with fair ribbons through grand many stars.

Chiron runs with fair ribbons through grand many stars.

Hold onto that, Madeleine. The first step to being able to repeat it back come the end of this is having it in the first place. Chiron runs with fair ribbons through grand many stars. Ok then. It belongs to her now. All she has to do is keep it. Chiron runs with--

Where is she? How did she get here? She was not expecting it to feel so... real.

Blindfolded and bound, Madeleine can only live in the world of sound. And at first all she does is hear the noises of this unnaturally natural world, but Machia's skilled manipulations pull the entire rest of the world out of her bending, twisting ears. She feels the wind on her face, the tickle of her bangs against her forehead where it tugs at them. She hears her tank top fluttering and strain against the ropes keeping it tight there. She feels the warmth of the sun against her shoulders, even though it makes no noise, just because the purity of this hallucination tells her that it cannot be raining.

She can see the sky. It is endless and unbroken by the rise of buildings or mining equipment or all the little signifiers of civilization that have been part of her world since the day she was born. There are small wisps of cloud twisting up above her, and if she stares at them long enough she will start to see shapes, shapes that tell her stories. Stories about Chiron, running with fair ribbons through grand many stars... oh, but she would like to see that. It would be beautiful, to see the night sky this far away from people. In a place, an impossible and secret place where there was no light pollution to steal all the secret colors of the night sky.

She is kneeling near a lake. She can taste the water on the breeze, she can hear the little ripples of the waves as they surge. These are not true tides, just the water churning when the air plays with it too hard. It is beautiful and serene, especially set against the staggering fields of tall grasses that dance along with the wind and the water and tickle her thighs.

Madeleine tries to stand and explore this glittering paradise that Machia has constructed inside of her, but the ropes pull her tight. She can feel every inch of her body as certainly and intimately as if she were actively measuring it. Even the pieces of herself that normally fade into the background of muscle memory are singing with all their might, joining the chorus of a woman who will never move, nor fall to the temptations of this mystic land. For piety's sake, she prays to Chiron of the fair ribbons.

But she can hear the distant thunder of a herd. It pulls her short, and tears dampen her blindfold. Her breath hitches and her feet clench even as her chest starts to ache with a longing that has little to do with this challenge or its ostensible goal, or even her desire to be in the Hexadrome to compete for the dream she has which it unlocks. Hoofbeats fall on grass like a waterfall crashing over all creation.

Madeleine's voice is only audible to her through the vibrations in her skull. For a split instant, the fidelity of this place fractures. Shadows take it, black silk and eyelashes where there ought to be waves and reeds. But there's no reprieve from the rhythm of the falling hooves, like rain, like hail...

"Ah," she moans helplessly, "I want to run..."