Tatterdemalion

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Shelomit!

“AS-TER-EE-ON!!” Flesh, striking on flesh; ragged cries from perfumed lips; stamping heels and a wave of delight. You are drunk and delighted and The Destroyer’s fist shattered the drink alcove; sapphire wine spills out, pooling in the tile-lines (whatever they’re called) and turning your head. “AS-TER-EE-ON!!” Watching her unleash everything she’s got at this new challenger is better than being high; the angles twist your brain to watch, and you cling unsteadily to your BFF, Debrah. “AS-TER-EE-ON!!”

Then, all of a sudden, The Destroyer screams, grabbing at her Berserker Collar, and guards start swarming her in the arena. “Your excellence,” a snotty little Lynx in Marduki red says to you. “We’re evacuating the gardens on suspicion of—“

“Shut up,” you say, and shove him backwards. He crumples down the stairs. “ASTEREEON,” you shout at the arena. “Win! Beat them up!”

The Lynx’s Thornback— there was more than one? She puts her unworthy little branches on you. You backhand her, head thumping full of wine, and then get distracted as someone on the other side of the arena throws an entire cooler of white sunrise and spirits onto the diamond, all of them already on fire. Yes! Fire! In honor of The Destroyer!

“Let The Destroyer fight,” Debrah screams, and breaks a bottle over the Thornback’s head.

***

Canada!

Oh. You’re not dead.

There was a moment when you thought, maybe, this time, you actually were, when Asterion lifted you off the ground and suplexed you head-first and you thought, wow, the ground is coming at me really fast—

And now you’re staring at the top of an elevator. The roof? Or is that on the outside? Regardless, you’ll be fine in a minute, now that your brain’s not being pounded into guilty pieces. Just need a quick breather.

Somebody else is in here, too. From the vague shape in your peripherals, and the sound of their shaky breath that’s going to become crying in a minute, it’s not Asterion.

And that’s when the elevator jerks to a halt. “All non-essential services are on temporary lockdown,” Caphtor cheerfully lilts through a speaker. “Like... please wait for us to handle, you know, the problem?”

***

Mra’al!

Hunt! Your spinal mane stands on end; your mind is a white-hot claw. Your ancestors hunted great horned, tusked beasts on the broad savannahs so that you, in this moment, could fulfill your holy purpose. A shield slips over conscious thought like a vestigial eyelid; you react faster than thought, following the commands of your body.

There is a peace, here, without thought, without awareness. A holy emptiness. Your rod is a part of your body; you use it to push off a viewscreen and rake your claws where the prey will be. She reorients, in time by a fractional second, and fires at your face; you snap your arm into place and let the blast resound from you, then duck out of the way of the shot returning. Clever tricks! You are clever too.

Your own escalation is instinct; your unconscious mind knows your armaments by heart. The pellets you scatter around the room break into choking, coiling incense.

It cuts off your senses as much as it does hers, save that humans (furless, foolish, mewling) do not have spinal manes, or tufted ears; you feel her, and in her moment of confusion, leap.

***

Heb Ur!

There are supposed to be seven of you who check that the Troll is here, every quarter-hour. But because the Temple is aroused, and there is an attack from Below, you are reduced to three: yourself, your clutch-sister Mek Ah, and the twitching runt Nga’al, who is granted a measure of Rushing River by his quartermaster. His eyes are, as usual, wide and watering.

The Troll is here. One stony foot is chained to the wall so that it does not wander off. A net serves as its veil; silk would be wasted on these animals. You carry out the inspection: all is in order.

“Did you hear that?” Nga’al’s ears lie flat on his head, his eyes darting, the whites yellowed. You and Mek Ah stop and listen. There is nothing. Degraded Rush-addict. It is not your place to question the quartermaster, so you instead direct your heart’s displeasure at the weakling, too incapable to serve in his place without his stimulant. A growl gets his attention.

“Nothing. Useless shak.”

***

Marianne!

Jerioth struggles vainly in your arms. She nearly alerted those guards: two Salamanders and a Lynx. It looks like Canada did her job, and drew guard patrols elsewhere; this is half the size of the patrol you’d normally expect here.

The Troll, however, is a problem. Silicon-based life, multi-limbed. Set would love to ramble about them, but for your purposes? They’re strong, take orders from Annunaki and only Annunaki, but don’t tattle on resistance fighters; if you avoided tripping its orders, you could do a musical number about your plan right in front of it.

Jerioth’s face is hot and sweaty under your fingertips. You lift your thumb, letting her suck in air frantically, before pinching her nose shut again. This way, even you can barely hear her frantic, furious grunts. You need those guards out, that troll neutralized, and Jerioth humiliated even more before she plays her part. (And, technically, one of the ab-Ereshkigali— but you have a plan for that, too, right?)

What’s the play, Phantom Thief?

Chuubo's GMD: Love and Shattered Alchemy

[Storytime: 2/9
Adventure GET: 3/21
Up to Date: 1/15
Something To Deal With 1]

There is really only one way to get to know somebody in a situation like this. Think about it! The rain’s pouring down outside, the sky’s a dark grey that barely provides illumination, and in here there’s warmth and soft lights and people who are going to be my friends, probably, unless it turns out that they are my nemeseses by the will of fate. Maybe it’ll be maid girl? Her air of flustered refinement will slip and be revealed as a mask as she ties me to the giant minute hand on the Horizon belltower, Big Benjamin, and leaves me to watch as the even more giant hour hand gets closer and closer...

Which makes it even more vital that I get to know her now, so that I’ll have ammunition for heroic banter as she cinches the knots and I hide my pocketknife in my fluffy, fluffy tail. Without heroic banter, she’ll never be distracted enough not to notice!

So I hop up on one of the stools, the wobbly one, and put my elbows on the counter. “Truth or dare??”

The maid totally looks me in the eye and says “dare.” That’s what happens. Don’t listen to her if she tries to tell you otherwise! That’s just her regretting her pick.

So it has to be a dare. She’s brave, letting me, Rinley Yatskaya herself, pick a dare! If she knew me, she’d know better! But she doesn’t, which is the whole reason we’re doing this, so I have to pull out all the stops. Do I dare her to chug from a bottle of Old Indescribable? (They make it here in Fortitude out of seaweed and Outside dust, and the taste is indescribable! At best, I’d have to tell you to imagine making out with an elder god with a tentacle face, who’s slept at the bottom of Big Lake since the beginning of time but has been awoken by the alignment of the stars once more, who has toe-curling morning breath. That’s Old Indescribable!) Do I make her hop down the street on one foot with one hand over her eye, doing Balor’s Walk? No good, it’s pouring outside, her dress would get ruined. I’m not that mean!

But the lights give me an idea. A light bulb flickers over my head. (Thank you, faulty electrical wiring!) I hop off the stool and scamper over to the light switch. Click! The lights go out, and the only light’s the faint grey of the rain and the flickering light of the camp stove. Click! That’s me, with a flashlight. (Which happened to be over with the other tools for refurbishment, because if you have to get into nooks and crannies, you really want to see what you’re putting your hand into.)

“A long, long time ago,” I say, as the cook grumbles about how they’re supposed to make food in the dark, “it wasn’t safe to walk in Fortitude at night. Specifically, between midnight and three in the morning. Because if you saw the Witch, it was already too late. She wore purple and a white, white mask, and a tall, tall hat. And if you tried to walk past her she’d walk behind you and close her long, long fingers around your wrist. And she’d whisper in your ear...”

I let my voice drop into a sepulchral whisper that echoes eerily in the dead quiet room. “Give. Me. Your. Face. Then... they’d find you the next morning, wearing a white, white mask, and nobody would remember who you were, not even you. That’s because the Witch was you, now. And people only figured out who was who when the Witch abandoned a face and took a new one. Everyone started being suspicious of each other! Because the Witch loved to cause accidents that weren’t really accidents, to say cruel things that she allegedly didn’t mean, and to destroy beautiful things for the sake of destroying them.”

Outside, lightning flashes! Thunder rolls, so close that the room trembles.

“Of course,” I add, lulling everyone into a false sense of security, “Rinley eventually ran into her at 2:45 and a plan, and when she tried to take his face, he whipped out his shaving mirror. When her fingers touched the silver, they bled right through. Quick as a wink, he ran that mirror up her arm, over her head, and then right down to the ground, but... he failed at the last minute. He couldn’t bear to stamp on his shaving mirror! It had never lied to him, and always told him how handsome he looked (which was very). But that gave the Witch a chance to escape into the world every mirror connects to, and now... if you stand in a dark room and say her name three times in front of a mirror... she’ll hear.”

You could hear a cushioned penny drop.

“So, your dare... is to say her name three times in the bathroom mirror,” I say, hoping to send a thrill of terror down my new friend’s back. “Melanie Malakh, Melanie Malakh, Melanie Malakh.”

Breathless Dead

Okay. No problem. Think of it as racing. You like racing, like, Redana? All this is, it’s just a nine-hundred meter dash with extra obstacles. You can do this in your sleep.

She steps deeper into the corridor, does her warm-up stretches. (Body of a champion! You sharpen your sword before a battle, should you not prepare your body before you unleash your potential?) One, two. One, two. Stretch that hamstring.

Then she sprints—

The world doesn’t move in slow motion. She’s not that fast. But it’s obvious that she’s one of the finest classically trained sprinters on Tellus: her limbs move like pistons, her core is rock steady, her breath cycles through her in a great wave only to be expelled once more a moment later. She is lean, pared down, and focused. Too late, one of the skirmishers manages to get a bead on her, and tosses a bola at her legs.

Watch as she does a perfect mid-sprint jeté that Bella would be proud of[1], letting the bolas strike uselessly at the ground beyond her.

And then, as the Phalanx finally starts a useless maneuver to bank and follow her, she’s already flung herself up into one of the many openings open around floor level.[2] She pulls herself up gantries to the rudimentary bridge in the Boar’s center, and then slams down the emergency switch that reignites the engines.

Then it’s just a matter of using the mag harness to hold her steady while, with a terrible screech and rattle like the battle at the end of the universe, the Boar careens across the hangar. All she can do from here, without turret access, is engage the thermal cutters in bursts (so that she doesn’t cut through the floor and collapse into a lower level). They’re firing when she hits the opposite wall with a surprisingly wet crunch and crumple, and once her mags have stopped chirping frantically at her, she deactivates the harness and works her way out.

The hangar will, uh. Well, where there’s a will, there’s a way! Nothing some elbow grease can’t fix! (Molten slag drips down into the pipes below.) Besides, this is a lot more important than something like “having a place to park smaller ships inside of a larger ship.” The smaller ships can just go on the outside! With the determination of someone who’s done exactly as much thinking as she plans to do, and a quest from a god pressing upon her brow, Redana lifts the hatch of her Plover.

She flips a cover open and slams on the Cable Release. Parts of the hatch flash warning as the battery power kicks in, as Redana straps herself down and lets her limbs nestle into the controls. But there’s no cable whipping dangerously behind her as it coils; it’s still sitting, waiting, in the fertility idol hips of the Hurricane.

For a second time, Redana charges across the hangar, the jet set directly behind her roaring to furious life as her Plover’s feet lift off the ground and she flings herself into the storm-in-waiting, the void of Poseidon; her auxiliary boosters kick in as she slams her output to maximum and is shoved back in the pilot frame by the reacting force, potent even through the dampeners.

The first warning she’ll have of the ELF barrage will be when the roar of the jets cuts out completely, and then her hatch’s viewscreen will begin to flash red in reaction. (It’s not electric in nature, but rather thrice-tempered smart glass, you see.) Then she’ll just have to trust in momentum; that Poseidon won’t drive her off course with an errant wave; that she’ll crash onto the deck of the decrepit man-of-war that slowly grows in the viewscreen, rather than being fished out by the Armada.

“This is the will of my father,” she whispers to herself, and clenches her fingers tighter around the controls.

***

[1]: everyone knows that overwhelming pride makes one’s heart beat hard and fast; that it makes one stare, awe-struck, at the ripple of well-defined muscles underneath skin, before suddenly blushing and looking down at one’s feet; and that it makes one grab at one’s apron and start kneading it with one’s claws. Just ask Bella! She knows all about pride.

[2]: there is no THIS SIDE UP label on a Boar.

***

[12 to Get Away.]

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Marianne!

“Animal!” The spoiled tyrant spits out, struggling to sit up under the weight of her ornaments, her decorations, each one shaped and beaten and burnished by the hands of slaves.

(When did this all start? Were they ever innocent, once, like Tamytha, or did their “gods” spit them out into existence fully formed and cruel? When did these self-proclaimed gods reach out to the stars in order to strip them to the bone?)

“Don’t touch me,” she hisses, more bestial than you. Her eyes are burning with indignant terror and the desire to rake her nails across your skin. “I will see you muzzled and brought to heel for the glory of the goddess! Submit and spare yourself the rod!”

(crack, crack, crack. “This one... nnngh! This unworthy one...” crack, crack, crack. “Stop, please, please, she’s sorry, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again...” crack, crack, crack.)

“Our Lady is inexorable! The whip and the lash and the leash and the bowl are her tools! She tames the wild brute and brings forth rich fruit from its loins!” She crumples back onto her elbows, losing the battle against the weight of her own hair. “Bow before the blessed one of Ishtar,”” she screams at you, lips flecked with spittle.

And underneath that scream is an unspoken whisper: I am frightened, and I should not be. This is not the way the world works. You have made the world wrong and I hate you for disrupting my perfect, pampered world. How dare you.

***

Canada!

You feel more than see the eyes of the ostensible gladiator behind you. He (scratch that, we don’t know their pronouns, let’s use they)— they are torn up inside. And why wouldn’t they be? The Great Betrayer is saving them from a Lioness. A war goes on inside them: do I attack her from behind? No, that’s stupid, she’s saving my life. What, are you stupid? She’s going to kill the animal and then kill you, you need to strike her down, do it.

Then the Lioness snaps its jaws inches from your face, you make a less than dignified throttled squeak, and that’s when the kid makes up their mind and steps by your side, prodding it back with their saber. They glance at you (their eyes are brown and soft) and in that moment, the Great Betrayer is offered trust again.

Then everything goes wrong. The world refracts into sharp angles. Perspective warps and yawns; you can’t tell whether the Lioness is a mile away or close enough to kiss. The elements of your body decohere. You send a missive to your eyes to close to stop some of the dizzying input.

So, you’re in a lot of trouble. You’ve handled Asterion’s Labyrinth Green before in training, but this is different than usual: unstable, unrestrained, and incoherent. The only silver lining is that the Lioness, immeasurably distant, has (from the sounds broadcast directly into your ear) curled up into a ball and is making distressed, agonized yowls. And, in your other ear, you can hear the ragged breath of the monster who walks the Labyrinth, and she’s pissed at you.

Put yourself between her and everyone else, your Savior commands. Let her fists hit you over and over again until she runs out of fists. It’s what you deserve. You failed, and now the only way to redeem yourself is to let Asterion beat the stuffing out of you. Then everyone will understand you didn’t betray them on purpose. And even if they don’t forgive you, you got punched for them. That’s what counts.

No, Mundane sighs. Asterion has never, ever been so lost in that maze that you couldn’t help her out of it. Sure, the head injury looked really, really bad. Sure, you were certain she was dead when she went limp like that and the charioteer stepped on her spine and ground her heel down. But if you tell Asterion your true feelings about her, love will save the day. You don’t need to get punched any more.

Fragmentation of self is a common reported side effect of exposure to Asterion’s LABYRINTH GREEN, your Superior mumbles from the closet she’s been shoved inside deep in your prefrontal cortex. Just don’t listen to Savior.

PUNCH HER BEFORE SHE PUNCHES YOU, Danger yells.

***

Set!

The Lynx walks in like she knew you were in there all along, rod extended and held at a deceptively casual angle. Her top is made of two bands of interlaced leather strips crossing over her breastbone in an X; a delicate mesh hangs down beneath it, so fine as to be almost invisible, connecting at its lower edge to a girdle and a loincloth which reaches down to her knees. A similar, more tightly woven mesh serves as detached sleeves and leggings, down to the rings on her fingers and toes.

You know better than to strike that mesh; it’s reactive. Good way to knock yourself out, or blast yourself through a wall. See that slight shiver running through the translucent fabric? It’s been activated.

Her veil is a short thing with a magnetically weighted lower hem, for staying in place no matter the circumstances; the matching magnets are in her ornate collar. Her fur is fine, silky yellow, and patterned in long white stripes, with a spattering of dark spots along her throat.

When she sees you, her eyes narrow in that excited, focused way the Lynxes have. There was something she was going to say, but she drops it in favor of falling onto all fours and charging. You drop through a portal, emerging behind her, and— whoa look out that nearly slammed into your skull, the head of the rod blurring past your own head as she effortlessly redirects herself.

You can try to keep her busy, but that’s a dangerous game she’s likely to escalate hard. You can try to fight her properly, but if you shoot her in the mesh it’s coming right back at you with interest, and she’ll be happy to follow it up by slamming that spinning rod into the side of your face. Or you can *blip* away, but if you’re not fast, she just might be through the portal you leave behind before you can close it.

But you definitely have 100% of her attention. The problem is that this means she’s 100% into this fight, and the moment you make the wrong move, she’ll pounce and refuse to give you room to breathe.

Breathless Dead

The most efficacious location for the head of a spear is in the place where your enemy will be. Be as the false-wolf, who waits with his jaws open in the burrow of the hare.
—Llameth ar Violé, Third Dynasty tactician

***

Ack! Redana presses herself against the bulkhead and wills herself to be invisible, as her auspex informs her through neural jolt that it is ready to give her volumes upon volumes of data: the number of men and women in the chamber beyond, their species, their medical histories, the ethnoaesthetics of their panoply, their resting heart rates and their likelihood to engage in criminal activities. If she disengaged the throttler, she’d be sitting here for hours trying to sift through the overwhelming amount of information. Heaven only knows how Mom handles it.

Okay. Breathe. Be quiet. (Redana presses a hand to her mouth, not trusting her ability not to talk out loud.) Jas’o has already breached the hangar. It looked like there was a Boar[1] that had punched through the left hangar wall, and now there’s guards just waiting for panicked crewmen to surge for the skiffs. Which means that her best option for escaping is probably... the Plovers are designed to trade with anti-ship weaponry, though the best defense is always not getting hit. If she tried to burst out in one, though, they could just reel her back in by the cable. Unless... there’s some on-board power capacitors. They’re garbage in these circumstances— one shot and she’ll be floating dead in the water.

Unless.

Auspex, how many active reactors remain around the Eater of Worlds? Thank you. She closes her eyes and drags the information out. Okay. If she slingshots herself out, fully expecting to be hit but with too much velocity to be intercepted, and she has a rebreather on, and aimed just right... she could do it. The alternative is fighting an entrenched position using only the element of surprise.

(The Nemean[2] roils against the edges of her consciousness, but she bites down upon the thought. If she mantles herself inside, if she becomes glorious and shining and irresistible, she will be a beacon, and she cannot channel her divinity indefinitely. Jas’o will just have to wait and then peel her off the floor where she’s collapsed. No. We’re not becoming her today.)

So all she needs to do is find... “A path to the Plover.” It’s a Hurricane frame with belchers slung underneath the forearms and a Chors Anti-Denizen Longsword; the latter’s designed for killing void monsters and severing power cables, but the former’s an excellent if uncomfortably vicious way to clear a room. It’s non-lethal for Plover combat, but no one in here happens to be in one. Maybe they’ll all get behind shields and let themselves get blown away by the choking, furious smoke clouds, and nobody will get killed by the fragments of the pulverized slug the cannons destroy and accelerate?

Okay, how about a version of the plan where she holds off on firing those in an enclosed space and just barrels through. Then if anyone gets hurt, it’s because they’re Standing On The Landing Strip, which everyone knows you aren’t supposed to do with Plovers live. Yeah. That eases up on the knot in her stomach.

***

[1]: spacer slang, short for “Boarpedo,” short for “Boarding Torpedoes.” Recursively, many now have boar iconography alongside the peans to Artemis engraved along their sides, pleading for her to send these darts true into their quarry’s heart.

[2]: the Nemean is hers by the will of the gods. However, to explain her in a way you would understand, look to the Nocturne school of philosophy[3], which states that the gods always abide by the rules of the cosmos, their mother, and it is only their omniscience that allows them to do anything they like; if we understood as they do, had we ten kalpa to memorize the interplay of everything in existence and everything not in existence, then we could travel across the universe in a step and conjure forth being from nothing. In this framework, we may think of the Nemean as being the superposition of an unrealized potential, drawn forth from possibility into realspace by the Will of the prime instance. It is, of course, nonsense; but it is nonsense you may understand.

[3]: ”Ah! Of all I have heard this night, I love this delightful fancy most.”
—The Phoebus Dialogues.

***

[7 on Look Closely: tell me about the route to the Plover. How can it hurt me? How can it help me?]

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Étoile!

It's the hair that does it. Jerioth sits up (a motion that is as ponderous and weighty as the raising of an obelisk, her attendant there to support her hair and be ready in case she has decided to get up), and gestures for you to come closer. You do, naturally. She smells of alien fruits, almost like citrus, and this close you can tell that her lapis lazuli necklace has charms of protection and glory woven in the beads; that'll be your first target.

"It would be my pleasure," she says, one hand on your ponytail. Not possessively, but in the manner of someone who has every right to do so. If she wants to touch you, she may, and there is no question in her mind as to her right; her thumb strokes your golden strands thoughtfully. "But first... I trust you remember your lessons. Show me the Third Hymn of Our Lady's Power."

There's a barely contained huff from behind you; you're holding up the line by being such a suck-up! Now the slaves behind you are going to have to wait while you dance for her, show her the Hymn expressed through your body... but will you? She is so close, her hand offering you a lingering pat, and everyone knows the Phantom Thief is so crafty...

***

Set!

There! In the Saffron Hall, a Lynx wearing the black and gold of the ab-Ereshkigali. She's moving with intent, you can tell even from here. And part of that intent is that she's going to be at the panopticon sooner rather than later. That would be bad, because there's two unconscious guards and one (1) cutie-pie in the panopticon. And also the djinn, of course. Okay, don't panic. It's possible that this is a random probe, or they're investigating corruption and heresy in their sister temple... but it's safest to react as if you've been made. Okay. The guards are likely there to make any attempt on the nobility within fraught with peril. If Marianne makes some grand entrance, she's going to get lit up with musket fire. That also means that Canada's diversion has become even more complex-- they might react by drawing guards from the hall, or they might hunker down and become even more paranoid. The greatest danger on the board right now is almost certainly that Lynx, though. She's got one of those extending poles in one hand, and moves like she's already on the hunt.

As for clearing the route, well, if you're going to be made anyway, you have access to Caphtor and a great view. You might as well let the temple know that something bad's going down. Everywhere. Make up as many false reports as you can: rebels in the stairwells! Thieves in the maternity wards! Truant students sneaking into the wine cellars! Fires, chaos, anarchy!

Marianne would be awesome at this part, given her dramatic flair, but that just means you have a chance, right here and now, to prove to yourself that you're creative, dramatic, and also a really good planner. Yeah! Show Caphtor your best performance!

***

Canada!

The cheers and jeers slowly turn into confused murmurs. You're not the fearful Bull, and that must mean... you're the warm-up? Yes, that's it. The dusk sun gleams off your shield as you pose, and some of the youths lean forward and try to get a better look at you. And why shouldn't they? You are radiant.

Two more elevators release their occupants into the arena: a frightened-looking teenager (what are they thinking, sending a kid to fight Asterion?) with a buckler and saber that he(?) can barely hold out of fear, and a furious Lioness. The rules: three enter, one leaves. But that's not how things are going to go down, are they?

Save the kid. See if you can handle the alien creature without killing it. Prove that your defiant thumbs down isn't just empty bravado. And then challenge them to send the worst thing they've got! This is your chance to be a hero again, and to look good while doing it!

Fellowship: The Heart

Jackdaw!

Everything goes still. Well, almost; the whirlpool’s still churning, but almost lazily. It’s child’s play for Ailee to lift Lucien up and start bringing him over to the raft.

But you know the price, right? Everything’s going to go bad if you choke, or if you offer an insult. She’ll rage and drag you down, thrice insulted, in a towering fury.

Make your sacrifice, make your offering, and I promise you: Ailee and Lucien will make it to the raft, and Coleman will be able to dock at the Tyrian Spire, and you’ll all survive. You just need to make good.

***

Lucien!

Farewell, faithful shoes! Far you came, into a dark and wild place, and now you will rest, beloved, in the grasp of a watery tart forever. What is the benediction of the faithful accessory, gone for good?

***

Ailee!

From here you can get a better look at your goal, the Tyrian Spire. Once, it may have been a glory in red marble and mottled white, its interior walls lined with more books than you could ever read in one lifetime. Coleman says that in the basement should be a way to get down deeper into the Heart...

But that’s going to mean spelunking in the drowned levels, isn’t it? Uuuuugh. And what’s worse, you see, from high up in the tower, through a broken window, a delicate trail of smoke. It’s not abandoned.

***

Coleman!

The raft shudders, but you’re holding her true. Sasha, on the other hand, is starting to get agitated. Bad agitated. You’re not in her to settle her down with a stroke of your claws over her curves or a twist of a spigot to release gas. What’s your surefire way of calming her down in situations like this?

Breathless Dead

When the blast doors are thrown back in a deafening hail of molten slag and broken metal, having been weakened enough that the blasting charge could tear them apart like the claws of a furious beast, the corridor is empty except for the broken remnants of a thunderbolt. The dark passage ahead, lit only by those fading embers, is perfect for a trap; and so the phalanx moves through the broken corridor seal, carefully, bristling; if Redana jumps out at them, or leads a counter-sortie against them, or even lies around the corner bleeding out face-down, they will be ready. So they steel themselves, and advance.

King Jas’o, flush in the victory of piercing his quarry, bringing her down to ground, does not notice the single droplet that bursts next to his foot. And why should he? Ships like this are always leaking: condensation, or oil, or coolant. The ceiling is a nest of cables, thick and coiled, hung with blessed cords and circulating the life’s blood of the ship. In the low light and clinging shadow, he is to be forgiven for not looking twice; in such lighting, even the most precious blood appears black.

The phalanx surges deeper into the ship, seeking out the bridge, or else the engine room, to leave the ship a drifting, useless hulk. And in the stillness they leave behind, Redana drops down to the floor and stretches. “Okay,” she hisses; even though her wound is already closing, the speed incredible, it’s still sore and complaining about how deep and dangerous a wound like that was. If it had hit her dead center, she’d be dead. Very dead. Her heart’s hammering like a drum as she turns and starts loping down the corridor.

Then she stops. “Oh. Shoot. This is my actual job, isn’t it?” She’s the champion, after all. It’s her sacred duty to serve as the captain’s sword and shield, monster-slayer and hero, resplendent in the eyes of the gods, seeking their favor on behalf of the entire crew through daring and piety, valor and submission.

She starts back after the phalanx, and then stops again. Hades just did her a favor and implicitly gave her a command. Insisting her job’s more important here... “That’s hubris, isn’t it? That’s real hubris.”

She looks over her shoulder to where she will find a skiff capable of taking her to the dead leviathan, the Eater of Worlds. Then she looks back at the dark where the intruding force has vanished to. “Maybe they’ll just get lost looking for me?” No, that’s wishful thinking.

She slips an obol out of an inner pocket and sets it against her thumb. “Father, Keeper of Fortunes, Lord of Honor, Stormbringer and Titan-feller... please tell me which one is right. Heads I go and charge Jas’o’s rear guard, wreaths I find Hades’ daughter and help her. Guide me, father, and this too shall be yours.” Even as she says it, it feels right: she’s out here to help everyone she can, after all. And Vassila would probably be angrier if she brought Hades’ wrath down on the ship.

But she still flips the coin, because she doesn’t know for sure which course of action is most virtuous. (And if she asked Apollo, he’d take far too long getting her to walk herself to a conclusion.)

***

[Get Away: 10. Quick and safe.]

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Set!

The vast hall is hexagonal, with multiple covered booths surrounding a shared space in the open; balconies open up above the booths, allowing for a middle ground between visibility and privacy. (After all, the booths are only for those who make the necessary arrangements or agreements. Some are even rented by the half hour.) The space is dominated by a statue of Ishtar herself, flanked by two muzzled Lionesses. (If you squint, and ignore the number of legs, the animals really do look like they'd be at home on the savannah.) On one side, the hall opens up onto a garden, the pertinent features of which are the arena and a lovely maze garden.

You can't see Marianne (which might be a good thing?) but you do see that the security at the doors into the temple is being quietly reinforced; it's possible that some paranoid noble is worried about the Phantom Thieves ruining their perfect event, or it could be a move in a social game, but it still sends a worried shiver down your spine. This is a bigger target than you've hit before, and things need to go just right.

When you're worried about things, when you feel anxious or stressed, what teachings do you draw upon; how do you steady yourself?

***

Canada!

Certain. Sure. You leave Asterion to yell at you to come back, don't you dare, when I get out of here, Mountie...

Pretty soon it's just the noise of her voice, too muddled to make out clearly, as you prep yourself to go up and face who knows what in the arena. Do you take any of the weapons arrayed here? Do you present yourself clearly as Canada, the superheroine, the Great Betrayer? And does the sound of a great metallic clang down the hallway cause you to hurry at all?

***

Étoile!

The Annunaki are preening, puffed-up songbirds half the time, aren't they? Do a little bit of patter, compliment them shamelessly, and they look right past or through you, noticing only the compliments, the appreciation, the attention. You defused the risk of offense expertly by bringing up the offer for tea at her discretion, modeled your daring outfit well (but keep it up, make sure she sees only the outfit and the flash of gold), and asked the sort of silly, servile questions she'd expect from an properly-trained handmaiden.

Keep singing her praises, like Bilbon Sacquet in the dragon's lair, and she'll drop her guard completely, and that's when Marianne can strike.

"Tell her to give the tributes to you, Zimut," she says, again addressing her herald, "and to finish her questions. It does not become one of her station on the Great Chain to offer flawed and incomprehensible requests." Don't worry, she's just negging you to put you in your place, and to get you to spit it out. You're getting very close to the opportune moment. Keep swaying, little cobra, and this songbird will be entranced.

Breathless Dead

"Redana!"

When Redana opens her eyes, Bella's nose is inches from hers. Her ears are flat underneath her frilly headdress and her eyes are wide with concern. It's only seeing Redana open her eyes that causes the servitor to relax slightly. "Milady," she says, sitting back on her haunches, hands tight in her lap, "Are you all right? I think that, um, it might be better to call it there for today."

"LESSON NOT COMPLETE," the Wrestler groans through his voxbox, settled back into an opening stance. "TRUANCY WILL BE LOGGED." Bella hisses at the automaton, showing her teeth. Redana closes her eyes and feels the temptation to lie back and let the floor swallow her. Her limbs throb, her head aches where it hit the sand, and her chest is convulsively rising and falling, her body desperate for air.

But if she doesn’t get up, if she teeters off the last of her strength and collapses into exhaustion and aching pain, she’ll lose the only thing on her biweekly report that she’s really proud of.

"I'm not done, Bella," she says, pushing herself up onto her elbows. Her body throbs. "I'm not done yet." She can't stop herself from a breathless giggle, her grin vapid and delighted, even as Bella's eyebrows meet in a worried frown. "It's okay. I promise, I'll be careful this time."

***

One of the worst things about a thunderbolt is that it cannot safely be removed from a target. The power running through it causes muscles to convulsively clench, locking it in place. Once struck by the hammer of the gods, the only thing that may be done for the unfortunate survivor is to be carried from the battlefield so that the surgeons may inject relaxants around the impact site. It is not a weapon to be used lightly; it is not a weapon that respects life.

Redana's hand is clenched into a gnarled claw, her arm will not bend, and her eye of flesh is blinded with salty tears running loose and free down her cheek, cutting a trail through the sweat and the oil. Her Ianuspater locks on the god of the dead, and helpfully informs her that she is in the presence of a deity. On the other side of the corridor seal, the boarding phalanx carefully weakens key points so that the blasting charge will tear it open and blast Redana and any foolish counter-boarders (as if there were any left) with shrapnel.

The official line is that Redana is proof to any violence save decapitation. King Jas'o apparently means to test the blessings of the gods. She does not know whether she is to be taken alive or dead; she does not know whether her fate, should she fail here, is to become the Grand Admiral's concubine or to suffer from an "inauspicious hull breach event" and drift forever among the sea-rimed dead. All she knows is that her flesh cannot, will not heal with this intruder forcing open her skin and muscle, sending shocks of power against the bone it grazed in its impact, and that she is bleeding out at an alarming rate. Dimly, she's aware that her nanites must have some limits to the amount of blood they can replicate at a moment's notice.

And she is so tired. The pipes shuddering against her back invite her to make them her bed, and not even the valves stabbing her in the kidney and spine can make that less appealing. All she needs to do is close her eye and will the Ianuspater to silence. All she needs to do is reach out and take that hand, and he'll carry her off to bed.

"...it becomes us... to uphold our vows," she murmurs, through bloodied lips. "All civilization is... based on the promises that, that the gods make man, and... and the promises that man makes, makes the gods. In all things, the prince... princess... must reflect the proper order, or... or risk undoing... the very founding of their rule." Her head lolls, but the Ianuspater holds steady. "Theoclitus," she cites with absolute certainty.[1] "I made a promise," she adds, but she's not thinking of the promise she made to him. She's not on the ship at all.

***

The eyepatch has a skull on it. Written around it in a circle is BORN TO DIE 777813 DEAD GHOSTS. If Bella understands what it means, she's doing a really good job of hiding it, and Redana really has no clue. It's a "subculture" thing. Down here, everybody has their own "subculture," which they cling desperately to. Everybody has their, their thing, and they'll fight about whose is best, and cram it into their tiny apartments, and take it out on their servitors, and the servitors collect the scraps and make their own incomprehensible mixtures just to survive.

Redana sits on the bench and swings her lace-up boots, and she's thinking so hard that she hasn't said anything at all in, well, minutes. She's practically overheating with it. Beside her, Bella fidgets in the snakeskin jacket and plaited denim leggings, broadcasting her distress loud and clear. And why wouldn't she be distressed? There's only room for the humans, here, which means that a servitor has to live with their human or...

The alleyways are dangerous. Her knuckles aren't bruised any more, but she can still feel the contact, how one swing broke the servitor's jaw, how he fell back onto the box which crumpled underneath him, how he keened as Bella tugged at her hand and begged her to run, how she realized as she let Bella drag her away that she just made him crush everything he owned under his own weight, how thin and lean and hungry he looked, how desperate he must have been...

When she argues with her tutors, she's got rooms and rooms to give herself space. But there's no space here. And everyone loves her mother, and everyone tunes in to one of the seventy available channels every night, and everyone clings desperately to their apartment and their subculture and they never, ever look up. It's like sticking a plant in a pot that's too small, and then shoving it in the back of a closet for good measure, and the worst part is that she can see so much creativity, so much wanting, stifled and channeled into tiny rooms and weird clothes and lashing out at servitors for taking up too much space...

"I'm going to fix this," she says, and her fingers brush against Bella's. "I promise."

***

"King of Stones," Redana says, each word dragged out of some bottomless depth, her throat raw. "I. I thank you for your gift." Her gauntleted hand reaches out and, so carefully, closes his fingers on his palm. "But. I made a promise..." You can do it. Finish strong, Redana. This is the last mile, and then you can drink, and walk in a circle so that you don't cramp. "King of Stones, loosen my flesh as the dead, so that I can pull this dart free. I will... will give you my food, burnt as offering. All yours." She dimly remembers that the gods don't actually eat the burnt offerings. It's something to do with the smoke and the energy released. Without waiting for the answer, she reaches up to her shoulder. (A target chosen by instinct. If she kept her ELF there, it would have been obliterated.) When she grabs it, the energy threatens to short out her gauntlet, but what other choice does she have? What else can she do?

She made a promise.

***

[1] Arathmus, The Letters: "It becomes us to uphold our vows in all things, from the smallest to the most momentous. The structure of civilization is composed of the promises that man makes to the gods, sure in the knowledge that the gods will uphold their one great vow: to maintain their essential and discernable natures. In all things, o prince, you must reflect this good and proper order, or risk undoing the foundation of your rule."

***

[Talk Sense with Sense: 9.]