Tatterdemalion

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Adila!

Unravel. Unwind. Jump. You skip from situation to situation like a broken illusion, which means... well, you’re not sure if there’s a technical term, but your gut instinct says that this is very bad. “Lose Hornet’s mind to the timestream forever, temporally unmooring her, dooming her to mix up past and future for the rest of her life” bad.

“Friendship: data point,” she says, opening up a Science Journal. You’re sitting at her thirteenth birthday party. There are seats for twelve princesses. Hornet is sitting alone in front of a cake shaped like interlocking gears. “Adila, my Best Friend, has informed me that Hypothesis #17 is incorrect, and that friendship is not gratitude. Data points from Charts C7 and F4 support this interpretation.”

A jump. Iron Star is on your back and Hornet is looking up at you, her mother’s loving hand on her shoulder, as you prepare to go and show off for your crush. “After the dramatic failure of both the Friendship-Generating Spleen and the Friendship-Attracting Appendix,” she says, rubbing her side, “and in light of this new data, I am forced to conclude that Hypothesis #18 is, in fact, correct.”

A shiver. The cold immediately begins to destroy you. Frost forms a rime on your scales. Your wings freeze into useless place. The sky is huge and black; all around are snow-covered lumps the size of goblins, and lightless, heatless generators. Your eyes begin to fail, stinging with the sharp pain of absolute cold, but still you see Hornet sitting in a Marvelous Ambulatory Armchair, ice creeping up her tiny body.

“Namely,” she says, into the still and bitter air, “that Princess Hornet is a friendship null zone, incapable of interacting with its chum matrix or the fondness array, uniquely flawed and unviable for further residence in Hyperborea.” The Best Friend contract slips from one hand and shatters into a thousand pieces of ice when it brushes against the snow.

“It makes sense,” she says, as you become nothing more than another dead statue in this wound-down pocketwatch fortress. “I was the flaw in the data all along.”

You can’t stay here. You’ll be lost, too. Everyone will understand; it’s just Hornet, after all. How will anyone be able to tell the difference? She’ll just not make any sense, as usual. No one will blame you, Adila. It’s better than losing yourself here, too, in the dark future of Oberon’s victory, in the empty wasteland of Hornet’s forlorn heart.

It’s done. Let go.

***

Kazelia!

Your father hands you a pin and expects you not to stab him with it.

The flower is delicate and clear, a bloom of frost to go on the lapel of his wedding suit. The suit is perfectly fitted; he is leaner and sharper than you remember. Maybe he is melting here, too slowly to be noticed. Maybe, here, he cannot hide his heart any longer. His eyes are a smoky grey, and reveal nothing.

“Did you think that you could win?” The pin is too heavy in your fingers. Don’t drop it. Don’t lunge forward. “I am forever. I am inexorable. And I am so much bigger than this world. Your new stepmother was content to stagnate here, but she will grow vast and beautiful once I show her the worlds beyond. She is the only one to ever complete me.”

She is the only one to ever complete me. He’s said this before. He’s married before. And his brides never meet his impossible expectations. What do you remember, Kazelia?

***

Alina!

When Cassian comes back in, it’s in a sharp black suit with white gloves, his hair slicked back and the amulet heavy and leaden on his chest.

“Right,” he says, with a wicked smirk. “Now that I’m finally prepared... let’s get you lovely ladies ready for the ceremony!”

You are doomed.

Fellowship: The Heart

Coleman!

She’s as quiet as a snake, and you have to choke down a surprised bark when you realize that you’re not alone.

She’s made of driftwood, mostly. Ink-blotched envelopes are crammed into her ribcage in the shape of organs, each and every one completely illegible now. Her hair is lank moss, muddy brown and reeking, and her eyes are smooth pearls, unnaturally bright. Her teeth are silver and gold, dull in the rotten black wood of her jaw.

She is the Flood, in the same way that you are one of your fingers. And if she touches you she can make your body forget its pains, or erase memories that cause you grief, or fill your lungs with brackish water.

“It is a long way to Terminus,” she exhales, her stamp-stained lungs slowly contracting. “Many of the things that hunt them would not give you anything but my death.” Forgotten, choking, erased from the Heart; and maybe a day after, or a century after, it would vomit forth your bones for some other explorer. She turns on you, as inevitable as a wave. “Give it to me. You will name a price.”

***

Jackdaw!

A bell begins to ring. It is deeper than you would expect from its small size, and dull, dull, dull. It sounds like it comes from some impossibly vast distance, despite the fact that you can see it hanging over the bar, which is a very neat trick indeed.

The matron sets her fishy lips in a grim line. “Our stories aren’t ours. They’re consigned. But you want a lesson? Here she comes to give it.”

She gestures for you three to follow her outside, and... there’s something about the way that bell’s ringing that makes that seem like a very attractive proposition.

Fellowship: The Heart

So a note on mechanics! =D

This specific mode of Fellowship has what is called a Response Level, intended to keep you from squatting in one place. The response level rises when you piss off The Boss of the area, when you break the rules of the local community, or the first time you do any of the following:

• cause collateral damage
• deface a place of power
• harm the local wildlife
• insult someone in charge
• or upset the natural order

And, incredibly, you’ve gone from zero to three in one posting cycle, which means I make three moves in response immediately.

I’m marking Famine, Show of Force and Wild Animal immediately, with an eye to Guardian and Bad Weather moving forward.

And if you hit 6, that’s when things really get bad.

Masks: Resurrection Roundabout

“THAT’S MY WIFE, EVERYBODY!”

Ignore the fact that the whole point of this ceremony is that they’re not married yet. Ignore that Comstar is obviously posing and trying to make it sound like she’s still being talked about. Ignore the motorcycle and the thugs in suits and gowns.

Just focus on the adoration and joy in Sara’s voice. And how it’s one of those sentences that changes with the inflection. She could have gone with “that’s my wife” or, more on brand, “that’s my wife.” But no, she went for “that’s my wife.” Wife. Wow. They’re going to be wives. Has that sunken in yet? Maybe not. From the look of worshipful awe on Sara’s face, she’s finding new facets of delight even now at the altar.

“She means that, by the way. She’s going to make a point of breaking people’s legs. She’s switching off the limiters that stop her from snapping them like twigs when she steps on them right now.”

She stops, pecks her battle bride on the cheek, and then adds in a stage whisper that provokes nervous laughter from the audience: “Can you see about breaking Comstar’s jaw, too? We still owe her another asskicking over that incident...”

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Alina!

Diana breathes easily. There is a rosy flush to her cheeks, and every part of her is more vivid, more unreal, as if a master painter had prepared the finest paints in all of Ilumina to depict her, in your arms. There is no doubt now. She will live.

Maybe she won’t ever forgive you. Maybe she’ll wake up and tell you that you only saved her to salve your own conscience, and that she will never trust you again, you lying, selfish princess.

But you can live with that. Because she’ll be alive. And that’s what matters.

When you look up, through a crack in the fetid black shells that surround you, your eyes meet Ourania’s. Her eyes are wet, and full of pride in you. And if she could speak, she would say something like: even now, after all these centuries, I can be moved by the heart of a princess. Isn’t that marvelous? Isn’t that wonderful?

What do you say to her, while it is just the two of you, in the heart of occupied territory, as you do your best to breathe through your mouth and not touch any of the still, waiting, hungry constructs around you?

***

Kyouko!

The Garthim hunt by sensing magic. To this end, you have been leading them on a merry chase, tossing your smoke bombs one way and your lively coils another, seeking out the weak point: Prince Cassian Fleet.

Cassian

Interference — you can’t Get Away while Cassian has his attention on you.

Heart of a Healer — Damage this stat to restore all stats of a Threat in scene.

Amulet of Sarcosis — Cassian controls the Garthim, and keeps them from rampaging across Argossa trying to eat everything magical. Everything.

Weenie — damage one of Cassian’s stats and he’ll immediately wet his pants and try to scamper out of the scene by the most direct route.

You have a very particular set of skills. Unfortunately (and this is your greatest weakness, the curse of your arts, never to be revealed to an outsider), you must declare your intention to woo and marry Cassian for your skills to work on him at all. And you haven’t quite worked up the courage to do something that hideously gross.

So. While your girlfriend is menaced by her father... what do you do, Kyouko of the Apricot Clan?

***

Adila!

“I’m so glad you asked!” Hornet chirps delightedly, her tail’s fluffy tip wagging. “It is an Unstoppable Bazaar Organizer, and it’s going to make everything neat, and put up signs and labels so that nobody gets lost, and make the streets wider so that people stop shoving me, and assign loud zones where people can be loud if they want to be, so that I don’t have to go there!”

The famous Souk of Ropes is pulled down, a knotted and tangled mess of black market stalls and hideouts dangling between three spires. There are quite a few screams as the Organizer begins feeding ropes and black marketeers into its Automatic Sorters.

“And once it’s done,” she says, almost wistfully, her manic energy suddenly petering out, “everyone will see how much better it is and want to be my friend because I helped.”

That’s... true. Pretty much every one of Hornet’s inventions was designed to help people, even if sometimes you have to turn your head and squint to figure out where she started from and how she ended up with a giant scorpion that makes people invisible by stinging them.

(“Thank you,” Tashanna says, laughing, squatting on her haunches to look Hornet in the eye. Hornet is marveling at the precise curve of Tashanna’s winged eyeliner. “Truth be told, it takes quite a bit of time to put on every day, but that’s the price of beauty!” She laughs and ruffles Hornet’s hair, not noticing the infinitesimal way that Hornet tenses up, dimly aware she’s being patronized. “If only we all got to be invisible now and then!”)

Hornet’s looking up at you through her goggles, her tiny body nestled up to you. “Can I make anything for you, Best Friend?”

***

Jessamine!

Shiva knickers testily as you shift your weight. You have Rita cupped in one arm, check. Dandy has her arms wrapped around your waist, check. Azora is secured side-saddle on Shiva’s rump by bands of dark magic, check.

“Okay, girl,” you whisper in her ear. “Let’s go save Kazelia.”

Immediately Shiva’s shining glass wings flare out, and with a gallop and a few strong beats, she soars up from the roots of Argossa.

Maybe Oberon will figure out you’re coming, but that’s a risk you have to take. The stairway up is impossible to avoid detection on, and you don’t have time to climb for days. You soar up on the back of the fastest pegasus in Hyperborea, silently pleading for your sister to be all right...

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Kazelia!

"I'm in love," your father says, and somehow doesn't burst into flames. Your Mother stirs inside you, a roiling wrath. Lies. Lies. Lies. The number of lies, one wrapped in another! The lie that he is in Love, that he is nobly pursuing his heart, rather than just wanting and wanting and wanting, and not being able to let go when his desire is denied. The lie that this justifies anything that he will do in pursuit. The lie that his desires are more important than hers, that anyone who would get in his way just doesn't understand his cause...

All these lies he is telling to himself. Undo. Unmake. Take apart. He has never had the truth told to him, his lies dismantled and torn apart. It would be dangerous. Those lies are what are keeping him on track with a wedding, are what keep him from lashing out at you, are what stop him from crumbling apart. Your Mother is selfish in her own way; she rages and roars in your chest, itches your palms and your fingers with the desire to disassemble, to lay him bare and show him that he is layering his true and beautiful Want inside so many lies--

No. That's her thought. His Want may be pure, but it is pure like the hunger of a sea monster cutting through the water. It is True, but it is not Good, and it is not Beautiful at all. There is more to life than just Truth.

Your father touches your cheek, and this too is a lie. The gentle look he gives you, an errant lock of silver hair hanging over his temple, is a lie. They are lies that say: I will forgive you completely. All that you need to do is obey me, and help me devour this world, and together the two of us, no, the three of us will go on and see things you haven't even dreamed of yet.

The name of this lie is: I love you, snowflake.

And the ugly truth looming behind it is that he will have you cheering him on at his wedding. He doesn't know it yet, but you can see the shape of his Want. He will have you in your proper place as his daughter, and he does not care whether your mind comes along.

***

Alina!

Diana's voice is dead and even. "You didn't need a spy." You don't even need to look at her. This wasn't even Oberon's doing, there's no question as to whether he did something to make Kazelia's heart go cold. This was all on you. This was your fault. You did this. "He asked you to acquire me, didn't he?" She's burning up under your hands. When she tries to push away from you, it's like having a newborn kitten bat at you.

"Oberon pulled my magic out of me," she says, and her voice is sharp as a glass knife, as crisp as fresh snow. "He ripped it out. There is a hole inside me where it was, and there's nothing left. I can't feel our world. I can't hear the crystals. I can't even do something as simple as..." She coughs, and it goes on too long. She's too light. She's too light. "...potion concoction," she concludes. Is that simple? Apparently! Haha! That's a thing to focus on! Just think about, wow, you didn't know that making potions was simple, or maybe you just need the bare minimum of magic you get from being born in Hyperborea? The magic that Diana doesn't have any more? Oh, whiskers. Now you're back at the bad thoughts.

She goes quiet, and you hold her closer, and she is too still, and you're so afraid until her chest rises ever so gently, and breath mists on her lips.

She doesn't have the strength to speak any more, but you can feel her glazed eyes, blue as a lake, tearing through you. There's nothing to arrest them. You're a hollow princess, and Oberon was right. You're nothing. Nothing but fluff and cotton candy and tickle fights and betrayal.

"HMMMMMNNUHH!" You jerk your head up, your vision fuzzy with tears. Ourania is glaring at you. And you deserve it! You failed her, and you failed Diana, and now she knows, and... why is she jerking her head over at the wall?

The wall.

You're inside Argossa. And it's tainted and corrupted and terrible, but... but it's also the wellspring of Hyperborea's magic. You don't have your lights, you don't have any protection, you don't have any formal training as a witch, but... but Diana is going to die. And you made a promise. You can give her more time.

***

Princess Hornet!

It is the first time you have ever been at the Bazaar and it is too loud. It is disorganized. But that's okay! You are fixing it.

+Excuse me, um.+

You look down through your goggles. And, oh. your. gosh. There's a dragon there! Fascinating! She just spoke directly into your mind! Wouldn't it be nice if you could do that? You should start researching dragon telepathy, so that you can just let people see what you're thinking. Like, right now, you're thinking about how the Bazaar will look once it has been sorted and organized. Everybody is going to stop screaming and they'll thank you for making its urban planning logically consistent. Is the dragon telepathical node inside the brain, the heart, or the liver? It would make sense for it to be more centrally located, given the inefficiency of having the vocal cords so relatively exposed.

(It is Carnival, and you are brushing Axonian lacquer over your Best Friend Contract, using precise and even strokes. It is the first one you have ever had signed. No one back home will sign a friend contract with you, citing concerns that you are a princess, and none of the princesses will, for a variety of reasons you hypothesize boil down to "you are Hornet, and we don't like you." But you have one, and it's your favorite princess of all time.)

"Can I see your brain??"

+What? No! I mean. I'm here to issue a citation.+

Curses. You'll have to construct a theoretical model of a dragon instead. She's so... she's so much of her! Her biological design is so efficient, so streamlined. You consider what it would be like to be a dragon. You would need to construct fine manipulators, possibly telepathically-powered, in order to assist with construction, but you would be able to use all four limbs for walking. That just feels natural! Two legs are, frankly, not enough legs. Anybody who's anybody knows that.

"Oh. Am I in trouble?"

+Kind of? You're rampaging through the Bazaar.+

Rampaging, ha! You're not rampaging. That's what other people do. Still, she might have a point in that nobody seems to be appreciating your Unstoppable Bazaar Organizer. If only you had built in a stop lever, but that would have been ridiculous! You don't need to stop an Unstoppable Bazaar Organizer. It's in the name!

(Your Fascinatingly Avid Printer is chugging along, and as usual, you can't look away. It's Fascinatingly Avid, after all! The way it uses those little brushes you spent weeks picking out hairs for, the tiny pincers that assemble the sticker sheet, and the design, well. You drew it yourself. You drew her yourself. #1 Lab Assistant. This is what having a Best Friend means. It has to be.)

+Please come down!+

And maybe it's because you feel the desperation and confusion in her please, the one that's so familiar, because you feel it all the time talking to people, that you hop off the Unstoppable Bazaar Organizer and into her talons.

"Hi," you say, over the sound of reconstruction. "I'm Hornet! I'm a princess. Are you a princess too?"

Please say yes, you think, hoping she can hear you.

Fellowship: The Heart

My current headcanon is that animal people are common topside, and that the Chimerae of the Heart are notable because a) they mutate and mix attributes from lots of different creatures and things and b) they have a distinct tendency to grow horns.

Fellowship: The Heart

Lucien!

You have a sixth sense for these sorts of things, honed after years of dodging unfortunate assignments and ducking blame. And you're absolutely confident that if you escape through the floorboards, there will be shenanigans. Maybe even hijinks, which is the last thing we want around here. No, as long as you're here keeping Ailee reasonably behaved, you should be fine, and you'll walk out of this smelling of roses.

That being said, the quickest way out is getting down in the fetal position, stuffing your ears soundly, and inviting Ailee to rant. You will be able to leave immediately, given that this place of residence will very quickly cease to be a residence, or indeed even a place.

***

Coleman!

There's a far-off rumble in the distance. A ripple runs through the placid waters. The Storm is heralding its imminence. In the Storm are stars unwatched and thunders devouring and rain which sleeks against the windows. The Storm takes the tracks and changes where they lead to, and shows those caught in it mysteries and prophecies, and its leavings are the sharp taste of petrichor and a sense of personal smallness in comparison to the vastness of the Heart, and occasionally lunacy. You'll be fine, probably, as long as you get going sharpish.

Tell us about the barge, and how you mean to propel Sasha (and company) across the hungry waters.

***

Jackdaw!

The word is scrutinize.

The matron (her whiskers nearly dragging on the floor, her diminutive size suggesting she was once... perhaps a Felin, before her eyes became milky-white orbs and her lips scaled), scrutinizes Ailee, who's standing there looking like she's about to explode, with a thin strip of Lucien between her and doom for all.

Then she takes her knotted driftwood stick and pokes it into Ailee's stomach.

"You're a Rodine," she burbles, "but a fool one. The King only brings ruin and fire, child. Our lady might be able to wash it away, if you want... but I'm too old to make choices for children. Either ask to learn her mysteries or leave as sharpish as you can. We don't want you anywhere near us when you burn."

***

Ailee!

The stupid, paranoid, superstitious fish-creatures crowd behind the stupid old woman poking you with a stick as she lectures you about power, as if you aren't Ailee Sundish. Please, please, please tell her exactly who you are, what choice you made, who's in control, and why you are not doomed to a fiery and cruelly ironic demise in the depths of the Heart.

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Kazelia!

Your father sneers. His mechanical moth may have brought the box to you, flung from a sling, but why didn’t he? It’s an angry sneer, full of wounded pride.

“Why should I?” Always spinning it back. Always deflecting. “After all, what form could be better than this one?” He stands, cradling Alina in one arm as if she were an exhausted toddler, before handing her casually off to one of the Garthim. “Take her to meet the bride,” he says. “And the fox, too.”

Then he holds his hands behind his back and waits for you to approach him. You know what you are meant to do: to go for a walk with him. It might be your best opportunity to stop this and help... well, Adila. And Ourania! And, you suppose, Alina, too. (Your heart feels frozen when her distress drifts across your mind.)

But his words are cold. And he has so much to say.

“You can’t win,” he says, conversationally, as the Garthim scuttle away. “By the time the wedding bells ring, I will have made Argossa my own.” He taps his foot, and you notice that the stone-like wood under his feet has tendrils of cold rot running through it. And now that you’re looking carefully, you can see them spreading in the corners of the room. Your father is going to tame Argossa or (more likely) kill it. The thought of a dead, rotten tree at the heart of this beautiful world... how does that make you feel, Kazelia?

***

Alina!

As Kazelia makes her choice, you’re already being carried off by a stinking, wet, gross Garthim. Kyouko hisses, and then there’s the sound of a smoke bomb going off behind you, but she doesn’t come save you. Maybe she can’t. Maybe she just doesn’t want to.

And Cassian escorts you, smirking, doubling down on his arrogant self-assurance, to the Bridal Suite.

It used to be Ourania’s salon, but now it’s been transformed. Magical constructs made out of iron and ice weave together a bluish-white wedding gown for the bride, who sits shackled to her chair. But the sight of Ourania, proud and defiant even with a midnight-black scarf wrapped over her face, isn’t the worst thing in the room.

It’s Diana.

She’s lying on the floor, one ankle shackled to the wardrobe, her breath shallow and her cheeks pale with fever. When the Garthim push you down next to her, she stirs weakly, and raises her head.

“Hey, Alina,” she rasps. “I’m sorry. I tried...”

“Shut up,” Cassian says, rolling his eyes as he tosses your lights on a side table. (They rattle about and fight against the strangely absorbent silk. Another of his father’s toys.) “I don’t want to hear you whine about losing your magic any more.”

The look Ourania gives him would wither stone, and he beats a hasty retreat after making sure your ankles are shackled to that same wardrobe, leaving the Garthim standing watch. Diana coughs, and gestures for you to wiggle closer. “I can’t do much,” she says (with the earnestness of someone who is used to being able to do everything), “but let me see if I can help with that gag...”

***

Adila!

It’s... not what you expected. As you fast-forward, you see flashes of Hyperborea from above. You see devil-fortresses, and the first sun and moon. You see the Shadow War, as Eupheria’s nightmare army spreads whimsy and misrule across the land. You see Ouroboros wrapping herself around the world, seizing her tail in her mouth, shoring it up against the black and endless sea beyond. You see rainbows and the growth of mountains and fireworks and...

You see a cold and desolate wasteland, Argossa split down its trunk with black rot, its limbs drooping and broken. The sun and moon are gone. The stars shine unnaturally bright over the frozen desolation that once was a sea.

And then you’re in Hornet’s arms, and she’s holding you like she never intends to let you go. You’re on the edge of the wedding preparations, which are being made (slowly and clumsily) by Garthim on sorcerous autopilot. As long as you are very, very careful... you won’t activate their deep predatory instincts.

But Hornet’s just standing in plain sight, not moving a muscle, squeezing you tighter and tighter as one of them lumbers past, trailing white lilies from a large bag in its claws.

***

Rita von Catabas!

“I love you,” Alina says, and her lips meet yours. You feel so full of love, you’re drowning in it. You nip playfully and gently at her, and her lips taste like salt under your teeth. You can’t breathe, your heart is so full it’s going to burst, and you need this moment to go on forever but the longer you kiss the more it feels like something has to—

You roll over and lose your hairballs. They’re a wet, soggy mess, just like you. What’s going on?

“—and you’re sure that Alina wasn’t drifting dead in the water? You can tell me, it’s fine. I don’t actually care about her, except insofar as she’s useful to our mission.”

“Azora, I’m sure you’re just all discomposed because of nearly drowning, so I’ll let you retract that,” Dandy says, cold as turf in midwinter and just as yielding.

You open your eyes and everything is pastel corals. You’re in a Mermaid’s Shell, for visitors from above the waves. Which means...

“Where’s Alina?” You croak, and turn back to the princess who just resuscitated you, whose smile shatters like glass. You’re sorry, Nemie, you really am, but... “Please, where is she?”

“Oberon has her,” Nemie says, and strokes your forehead. “I’m so sorry, but...”

“Then we’re going after her.” You close your eyes and try to will yourself back into being human, and only too late realize that it’s too much too soon and the blackness sweeps back over you as Nemie calls your name from far away...

Chuubo's GMD: Love and Shattered Alchemy

“A cat.” Don’t play coy with me, narrator! As if I don’t recognize this cat on sight! I know pretty much all the cats, you know. It’s part of being a Yatskaya. Sure, I don’t know him the way I know Molly or Phoebe or Old Whiskers or Adora or Timmytom, but I recognize those stripes, and the fuzz around his face like he’s got a tiny cat beard; that’s so obviously Edelgard von Hresvelg, named after the Prussian philosophy person, that I am insulted, yes, insulted that you would insinuate that I don’t know him! Of all the nerve!

Still, it’s always good to get to know a cat better, especially if you’re, and I’m tossing out a pure hypothetical here, trying to hide the fact that you are in a forbidden friendship with the heir to the rat throne, which is probably made out of all this silverware, all butter knives and fork tines all sticking out like a porcupine, and I haven’t mentioned my theory to Eduard (no relation to Edelgard) yet but it just makes sense when you think about it, because that’s objectively the coolest kind of throne, and it’d be really good at stopping a cat-level incursion from eating the king of the rats in one bite. That’s why there’s a ban on loose cats in Fortitude, you know. If you find a mommy cat that’s snuck off and made kittens, the only kind thing to do is send them to this animal shelter over the hill in Horizon because otherwise you have to put them to sleep unless there’s a cat on their last life who’s willing to give up a slot, because the Treaty of Rodentia declared that you can’t have over a thousand and one cats in Fortitude on pain of war being declared between ratkind and catkind until there were a lot, lot less cats. Oh, and also humans would be treated as “feline collaborators,” which, uh, isn’t good. And from the sound of it you might think, wow, these rats must be straight-up jerks, but they’re not, not really, because there’s a prophecy. Eduard hasn’t explained anything about the prophecy to me yet, and neither has my dad (but what else is new), but that’s okay, because I figured it out myself.

When Fortitude is swollen and bloated with cats, specifically being one thousand and two cats, then the spirit of the catssiah will descend on the Virgin Moggy, and she will give birth to a kitten and name him Puss in Boots. Because he has boots, he’ll be able to travel to the Far Roofs, beyond the roofs we know.

And obviously the rats don’t want that to happen! Imagine, a cat up there, tromping around in his rainboots! It’d be so unfashionable that they’d all die of second-hand embarrassment!!

Anyway, I start Operation: Sneak. I get down on all fours and look deep into my own soul, and then I take dainty little steps with my hands and knees, imagining that I’m a sneaky fox who doesn’t make a sound. (But out here, I don’t actually become a fox.)

It takes forever. Empires rise and kingdoms fall. The crickets chirp. The water striders dance. I put my weight on a twig and Edelgard twitches an ear and I have to wait for my heart to slow down which is tough when you’re holding your breath because that makes your heart want to speed back up again! But eventually I start pushing through the longer grass onto the jetty, and that’s when Edelgard raises his head and fixes me with a death glare.

I mollify him by giving a traditional greeting: slowly blinking to establish trust, and then sticking out the tip of my tongue between my lips. Blep!

(Storytelling: 1/9 XP)