Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

"Hey, Redana! What are you reading?"

Redana looks up into the soft glare of the Solar-Reminiscent Lamps, squinting in a way that some might call adorable, or at the very least dorky, at the silhouette of Bella. "Sullust's Histories," she says, and for once there's excitement in her voice. "I finally got to the part where he summarizes the battle over Yugurten VII, and describes the arrival of the Eater of Worlds. Listen to this!"

Bella folds herself up, brushing off her gardening apron (which has all the little pink paw prints running around the hem), and rests her head on Redana's shoulder. "I'm listening," she says, tucking her legs in underneath her skirt as a warm breeze runs around the garden. It's not open to the outside world-- almost nothing is, here-- and so the sky is false, and the air currents are false, but the grass is real. The cherry sapling with its dainty white-pink leaves is real, dusting the ground around them. The walls pretend to be hedges, and the ceiling pretends to be an open sky, and even though it's all fake, if Redana closes her eyes, she can almost imagine that it's not, that it's real, that Bella's here and they're alone in all the world, and the butterflies aren't shipped in specially just for them, but that a whole world lies open for them to explore. She can almost pretend she's free.

"The Eater of Worlds, being the last resort of Olympus upon those planets they deemed unworthy of continuation, reared by the hand of Poseidon Ptortheion in the raging vortices of the Maw of Terror, grew to such size that it could fulfill its purpose without delay or frustration by the hand of mortal man; its beak, made such that it could peel continents away from the firmament as a man might skin an orange with his thumb and forefinger, would brook no obstacle save for the Aegis of Blessed Athena, with which she warded it from devouring Plutonia, and indeed the strength of its jaw would crack the crust, just as a hungry maiden cracks a pie's crust with her little finger."

Bella laughs. "You made that part up!"

"Okay, maybe I did," Redana says, setting the book down on a protruding root. "His sentences just don't stop! I keep getting lost in them!"

"Well," Bella says, resting the back of her hand against Redana's thigh, "maybe you could tell me more, instead of him? Will the Eater of Worlds come here?" Her tail bushes up, and she presses closer. "Please tell me you'll save me, my lady!"

"Of cour--" Redana turns her head, and Bella's is right. there. Those soft, arresting eyes... Redana doesn't get why poets keep talking about cows' eyes. Cows have solid black fear orbs, according to her Children's Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Cosmos. Bella has soft, pretty eyes, and her breath is washing against Redana's lips, and, and she's so warm, and... and it clicks.

So she grabs Bella and shoves her down onto the grass, shoves an arm down on her windpipe. Those eyes widen, and then involuntarily blink, and there it is, there it IS. "Nice try, Mynx," Redana pants, letting off a little of that pressure onto her bodyguard's throat, just to be polite. She can make redundant windpipes, after all. "But Bella's not as touchy-feely as that. She always gets fidgety when she's that close to people."

"Isn't she?" She breaks into a wide and toothsome grin. "I guess I'll have to study her more closely. I thought for sure I had her just right..."

"MYNX! Where ARE you?!" That smile just gets wider and wider as Bella storms into the garden, trailing ropes, a very heavily chewed kerchief dangling over her collar. When Bella sees them, she stops dead in her tracks and starts fumbling with her rumpled skirt and apron, obviously embarrassed that she didn't escape in time to stop Mynx from getting to her charge. What if this was a real assassination attempt, after all? That's why she's blushing furiously and bobbing in a curtsey. "Oh, hello, my Redana, my lady, good afternoon, I do hope this childish prankster didn't inconvenience you. They were... helping... me with training, and, um, gosh, I can handle them from here, please don't let this distract you any more from your studies, what were you reading? Can you tell me about it? After I go and have a talk with Mynx, of course..."

***

"Without delay or frustration by the hand of mortal man..."

The words are dredged up from somewhere deep inside her as the Eater of Worlds fills her viewscreen. They sound... resonant. The kind of words that naturally would stick with her. But they make sense. How are you supposed to stop something this big? The head on its own would dwarf a space habitat! This close, even the battleship thrust between its eyes seems almost pathetic, a dagger that felled a giant, and nothing should make one of those dreadnoughts seem small, given that even the Plousios might as well be a Plover in comparison, and a Plover like hers just a gnat on its side...

She lets the controls go slack, trusting in her speed and her head start, and slumps back in the seat. It keeps getting bigger and bigger! And it's doing so with all the deliberate slowness of a painter! If she hadn't been told to go inside, it would be so tempting to go and get thoroughly lost in those rainbow forests, vast biomes of stone and light and void, and let the dazzling radiance and heat confound all those who pursue her. There are much worse hiding places in this galaxy.

But no, it has to be inside. She has to slip between those slabs of bone, each one the length of an entire elevator, and find some safe place to land upon its frozen tongue, or else continue down its length (for who knows how long?) and avoid... "Oh, will it have those things in its throat?" Redana grimaces. Sea turtles were made to hunt creatures in the water, slippery and desperate to escape, and so their mouths, she remembers... "Were they all the spines, or the hooks?" Either way, it's a chilling thought.

She turns that nervous energy into stretching her legs, letting the tremble run all the way down to her toes, and lets the Eater invite her closer, its clouded eyes each the size of oceans blind to her approach, and all the while the droplets of blood hammer against her Plover like rain on the branches of the little cherry-sapling in her garden...

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada!

“...I got you,” Jason says. And that’s when Caphtor bing!s right in.

“Elevator service resuming,” she says, a little more focused than usual; Caphtor is focusing attention here. “When you exit, janissaries will helpfully escort you to your accommodations. Thank you for your service, and remember that all must find their link in the chain.”

The elevator descends smoothly; Jason grabs the sword and stands, keeping its point low; he’s keeping it between you and him, better safe than sorry, but at least he seems willing to consider fighting his way out with you, not against you.

And then the door slides open smoothly and relief flows through you. These are some of the janissaries the Seneschal lent for security, and you are sure, recognizing them but not recognized, that every one of the laser muskets they’re carrying had a spent power pack locked into the stock.

They think they are armed. You know they are not. They stand before you, scaled and furred (and in one case, thorned), all in the royal red and gold livery of Marduk. “Leave the arms in here,” their leader, a burly Salamander sergeant, says to you. Muskets are held not pointed at you, but low-pointed in your general direction. It’s six against two, and there’s no way you can lose.

***

Set!

You get [hesitation; the fear of hurting a small and foolish animal] from her, which isn’t very flattering, but one supposes you started the kitten analogy. As you enter the room, she draws on herself, taking a deep breath and rallying around a thought— but she is afraid. You can tell that even without her hammering it into your head.

And then she turns a water hose on your brain and slams it into a wall. The information stream is incomprehensible; everything is broken and jagged and glitching out and wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong and

You’re on your knees, hands on the floor. When you raise your head, there’s no black-eyed girl, just Marianne and a very confused Annunaki in a ruined dress and a troll who hasn’t reacted at all.

Thank goodness for your training; it’s what lets you straighten your mind, bring order to a confused array of thoughts, and keep walking forward instead of curling up into a ball and turning your brain off.

Mark Hopeless as you piece yourself back together.

***

Marianne!

The cigarette falls from your numb fingers. Set walked in here with an eyeless girl. The eyeless girl looked at Set, they shared a moment, and then the eyeless girl exploded. She exploded into shapes you did not see with your eyes; they simply triggered the parts of your brain that recognize things. The eyes said: there is not a girl there. Your brain said: mandibles, and wings, and teeth, and darkness, the absence of light, the fumbling for the light switch in the middle of the night, and the shadow of the wings stretched from wall to wall.

Set, what did you do? That was... that was a Spirit of the Heart, a monster like Marianne, but level 99 where Marianne is, oh, perhaps 30 if we are generous with your training grind. And the part of you that is Marianne surges into a savage sort of joy, flooding you with that revolutionary fire as if fanned by a bellows, the urge to tear down the haughty and the proud, liberté, unité, égalité!.

Mark Angry; there is no room for silly little Étoile in the flood of Marianne, not now. You can taste the hot blood of the oppressor like a coal between your teeth!

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada!

“Or what,” Jason says, in mocking imitation of... oh, it’s himself. “What are you going to do, send me to the pits? And then they sent me to the pits. I just couldn’t handle the bullshit, you know? The constant pressure of oh, prove you’re a person, because a person is a servile little slave. They made a mistake when they decided I was a person, I guess. Really, I was just terrified, but... well, you can only deal with that bullshit sanctimonity for so long, you get me? Fuck off, just because you have lasers and spaceships doesn’t mean you’re gods, or angels, or however their fucked-up religion works.”

Oof. The kid’s a last-chancer: they throw him to the Lionesses, and then if he survives, he’s either scared straight or useless for more training (and you saving him definitely tilted him towards the latter) and if he dies, well, obviously he should have been a better student. You came close during your training, but you had Tirzah pulling strings on your behalf to keep you on a special accelerated course, working with a carefully constructed new identity.

Which means that she’s the only person who knows both of your identities, and she holds that over you so carefully. She hasn’t made a move yet about your extracurriculars, and that’s obviously because there’s still good in her and you can save her and you definitely shouldn’t tell Anathet or Marianne because they’d jump to conclusions.

“What was it that Spanish lady said? Better to live on your feet, than... you get the picture.” He’s scared of dying, terrified even, but too stubborn to break, so he’s clinging to his bravado like a shield even as it splinters. He’ll die crying up there, sooner rather than later.

Unless you change that.

***

Marianne!

“Yes, yes, I will, I’ll do everything you say, I’ll be your good girl,” Jerry says, and then lowers herself onto her face, chained hands stretched out in front of her, and grovels desperately in the Annunaki style.

Your keen ears catch Set’s voice. Ah, she’s coming. Good. She’s a better hand at this sort of thing, even though you’re definitely the better actress. She’s just got a magic touch for those Djinn, no? And those feeling powers, the ones that meant you had to tell her who you were early, before she figured out and blurted it out.

But she’s taking her time, and you have a little more time to play with Jerry. Blow off some steam. Make sure she remembers her encounter with the demon of her nightmares for the rest of her life. You might be passing up on the big boost to your reputation... but you can still help your legend grow.

***

Set!

You’re approaching the doors now. If everything went right, Marianne’s in there with Jerioth, and she’s cracked open the doors and is already plundering the library. If everything went wrong, she’s not there, or worse, she’s been captured and you’re walking into a trap. Either way, you’re definitely picking up Fear and Humiliation coming from inside that room.

The black-eyed (or eyeless, yes, she is that too) girl is following you around. [smashing the face of Marduk, smash smash smash] Huh. That’s an intensely personal grudge. Then— [holding, petting, stroking fur, mother cat taking care of small fuzzy kitten]

That last bit, the feeling about cats, suggests either she’s familiar with them or picked it up from your mind. Possibility: what if she’s the projection of a superhero from the prison somewhere in the Temple of Enki? Or an actual escapee who didn’t bring all her faculties with her?

[a mummified cat being lowered into an ornate black sarcophagus] One gets the feeling that wasn’t so much a threat as thinking out loud, word association.

Breathless Dead

You would never believe, watching the flight of the Plovers, that Redana has known how to pilot one for less than a month. She is a natural. Even as the Veterosk thunders after her, she is one step ahead, light as a petal on the breeze; her palms are steady on the grips, for all that they’re sweaty inside her gloves. The spitting lightning of ELF weaponry never so much as grazes her, and more than one of her pursuers finds themselves burning out instead.

Admittedly, they are creating a net of presence around her, one they will be able to reinforce easily; but getting out of the net isn’t her goal. She’s getting to that ship, speared within the skull of the biggest thing she can imagine existing. Sapphires swirl in her wake, and the cabin is full of the rich smell of lilies.

Two Plovers end up too close, having failed to scramble into position in time, failed sheepdogs: blam, blam!! Her Belchers vomit forth chaos, and through the smoke she hurls, clotheslining her opponents decisively. She doesn’t even draw her sword, just slams them into the side of a light cruiser and keeps going[1]. She has to; to stop is to be caught.

When she launches herself towards the beak of the long-dead monster, fecund with long spikes of its dark blue blood, immense wide-based fountains frozen even as they were flecked upon its lips, there is gunfire behind her, there is shrapnel scoring on her back, but she holds steady and refuses to flinch.

She may be caught in a trap, but the thought has not yet sunk in. She is thrilling with adrenaline and the freedom of flight, and the ache in her shoulder where she was pierced by a very thunderbolt has become only a hole punched in her jacket, a pale white scar that will remain for whole days, perhaps even a week. No blemish can last longer on the heir of Nero.

She smashes through a needle of blood, Plover’s arms held in front of the cockpit, and hits the ground hard; the feedback shakes the entire suit. But she has made it, and the thrill of victory drowns out any other concern[2].

***

[1]: let it be known that she does stop to let out a wild, barbaric yawp of delight and performs a fist-pump that could dent steel before vaulting up the length of the light cruiser.

[2]: if you asked her right now, Redana would probably say: “I can cut a hole through, right? How hard could it be?” This is because Redana has not tried to apply her sword to the near-petrified, frozen flesh; or to cut a hole large enough for a Plover to tunnel through with an Anti-Denizen weapon; or even paid much thought to her errand beyond “I have to fulfill my promise, and then I’ll figure things out from there.”[3]

[3]: pushing one’s way out through the excretory system is not only undignified, gross, and likely to be surprisingly dangerous; it is also the sort of thing a sailor would refuse to do. Poseidon would never let you take to the stars again, and that’s assuming your crew would ever let you live it down.

***

[7 to Overcome the pursuit; it’s a very temporary solution. As a result, this is also a successful Get Away, and Redana gets to choose two options, marking Safely and Quickly.]

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Marianne!

“I can’t,” Jerry sobs. “No no no no please let me explain please I’m sorry I’ll do whatever you say,” she says, as your fingers hover a sodden mass of fabrics dangerously close to her lips. “I, I can’t do it alone,” she gasps. Her ornate gold-flecked eyeliner is running and blotting on her priceless veil. “Caphtor only opens the lock if one of us— if I,, I’ll do it, but I have to do it with an Inquisitor, we’re not trusted with what’s inside, neither are they, we have to keep each other accountable, I swear on Ishtar’s holy foot that I’m telling you the truth, please, please, I,” her voice is so thick and wet and you have to remind yourself of all the students who cried like this but didn’t get any mercy at the hands of the great machine she’s a pampered cog in, but that reminder’s not hard at all, “I’m your good girl, I am, I swear, you don’t need to kill me please Ma-ri-Ann please please,” and in her eyes there is a terror of the waves and the dark and the certainty that you would.

“I’ll do anything, I’ll give away my household slaves did I say give away I’ll, I’ll treat them like treasures, I’ll pamper them,” she babbles, and your fingers tighten in her hair. “I’ll free them,” she screams, and now all you need to do to sow some chaos is to get that on a recording. Jerioth ab-Ishtar, promising to free slaves? The ensuing power struggle of her meteoric fall in power after tonight will turn the attention of the ab-Ishtari inwards, buying you time and breathing room to work on your next project.

The entire social system doesn’t allow for it. By the standards of her people, she might as well have offered to piss on a crucifix; abolition is a vile heresy, and once word gets out, her possessions will be seized and her slaves redistributed, and she herself will vanish into the Temple of Ereshkigal for... re-education.

(The guards don’t count; it’s a classic “they said, she said,” and Jerioth would just get huffy over their scurrilous accusations and have them... disappeared.)

Jerry sobs in abject terror, looking to you for some reassurance, some praise, desperate for something tumbling out of her mouth to be the key to her salvation.

***

Set!

The Nameless Library is built into a false support pillar; or, rather, a false section of a real pillar. The grand, vaulted chamber where Marianne even now waits for you is the only one that directly abuts against this section. On paper, it is nothing more than a Ecclesiastical Sub-Vault consecrated to Ishtar Tenebros, only to be used on the Day of False Radiance. (This is code, only understood by those high enough in the cult to understand the meaning; their lessers do their best to pretend of course they know when that Day is in the complex liturgical calendar. It does not behoove one to admit ignorance of the festivals.)

It is part of an entire wing dedicated to Ishtar Warbreaker, and as such, there’s usually a heavier guard complement moving down these hallways. They are, instead, fortifying the entrance to the wing and preparing to sell their lives dearly for the secrets of their masters. If they were needed elsewhere, Caphtor would tell them to relocate; and so it is that you pad silently down darkened corridors. A word, and Caphtor would stir the lights into life, revealing huge doors and eyes cunningly concealed in the baroque wall engravings and icons of Ishtar.

Behind each door is a room the size of a megachurch amphitheater, because the Annunaki are so extra their religious right builds a room for each festival of the year, equal parts “storeroom for the rest of the year” and “perfectly decorated for the occasion” and “holy places for the priestly caste to meditate upon the facets of the gods.” The perfect place to hide a top secret library behind the name of a false aspect.

[hate, long curdled and turned sour] is thought at you, but a little less loudly this time. The black-eyed girl pads silently next to you. Jump scare! [a grudge held so tight the fingernails turn red with blood]

***

Canada!

“Uh,” the kid says, eloquently, his train of thought derailing. That’s good. Deescalate. (It’s exhausting having to be the one to break up fights all the time, isn’t it? Must be nice to just switch the brain off and go ham like Asterion.) “Jason,” he manages to get out. “My name’s, it’s Jason. And you’re Canada.” He pulls down his veil in solidarity; he’s got a Mediterranean complexion, dark curly hair. No way to tell if he used to have facial hair; the Annunaki like a clean shave. “Look, I don’t know what your deal is, but... shit. You know I could have taken it, right?”

He’s still defensive, but his conversational spear is wavering. He doesn’t quite know what to think of you, and the stories probably don’t paint you in a charitable light at all. It’s probably been on the backburner of your mind, trying to figure out how to make people see you only ever wanted to help... once you figured out how to survive here, of course. But treat him like you treated that dog in Kabul and you’ll be able to give him (probably metaphorical) belly rubs.

Fellowship: The Heart

RESPONSE LEVEL: 5

***

Lucien!

Whoever made this place (if it was made at all, and not just spat up from the depths of the Heart fully formed; if it is not some trap, designed by a blind idiot predator to lure delicious adventurers inside) was really interested in three things: books, squids, and books being held by squids. The motif is everywhere; verdigrised tentacles weave their way between damp, overstuffed shelves, and vast beaks loom above doorways.

There was also an infestation of giant, barnacle-infested crabs. Emphasis on was; their mottled shells lie broken on the ground, each one easily half the size of you, crushed and corroded. Someone fought their way through here.

There are signs that the stacks have been rifled through, now that you’re looking more closely. Books lie discarded everywhere, though here and there are neat stacks, carefully aligned: The Cup of Fortune; The Cricketer’s Cup; Cuprum Tools of the Meronni; Owl Be Back: The Daring Adventures of Lucien Roue, Continued. Wait, what was that last?

You pick it up and flip through it idly: it ends with Lucien Roue walking up a stairway in the Tyrian Spire, setting off a trap, taking a holy pie to the face, and falling down the stairs screaming through a burning throat and trying to claw off his skin until an errant spur of weathered stone breaks his spine.

...charming!

There is an epilogue in which the Vainglorious Witch, the Drowned Seeker, the Promised Conductor and the Grail Questor set your body out on a spur of driftwood and set it alight from afar.

And that’s when the terrible, terrible noise comes from below.

***

Ailee!

When you pull Jackdaw up from the water, she’s too heavy. Dangerously so, in fact. But you put your back into it and haul her up into your arms. She feels like she’s made of lead. Waterlogged or not, she can’t be this heavy.

Though, really, thinking about it, this isn’t that bad. You were worried, like, a shark made out of trash would burst out of the water and try to tear your head off. More stupid parlor tricks from a stupid garbage goddess.

When Sasha runs, you’re pulled back onto the shore without a hitch, right up until Sasha hits a hard stop.

***

Coleman!

It’s something like a lobster, but put back together wrong, and with quite a few replacement parts. It’s the size of Sasha and then some, and it exploded up out of a hole in the floor, dragging its exoskeleton along the wet tiles. Exoskeleton, armor, shell— it has something fastened all around it, splintering rotten wood and cannons and salt-swollen ropes.

It fires a cannonade that brings Sasha down to one knee, a barrage of fire from one side of its body, belching out acrid smoke. It opens its mouth, showing a nightmare throat full of pincers and spines (so that fish or kobolds can’t swim back up and out) and screams: a terribly, horrifically person sound. Those eyes, too, rolling and crying thick salty tears— each and every one of them is a person’s eye.

Take Damage.

The Wreck

Rotten Armor — if the Wreck retreats inside its shell, it cannot take damage or suffer Cuts unless the shell is destroyed.

Wet Powder And Hateful — if the shell is destroyed, there will be a massive earth-shattering kaboom, causing extreme damage both personal and environmental. The Wreck will, miraculously, be unscathed.

Claws That Catch — the Wreck is Melee, Dangerous, and can snap anything between its claws.

Breathless Dead

Redana is watching the winds. Even the warning of Hades himself must slowly sink in through her consciousness; her mind is swirling magenta and indigo. Her gold cascades down behind the port in her helmet, the end of her hair knotting into a thick sapphire knot counterbalancing the wreath of lilies. Even holding out her hand into the gale threatens to unbalance her; if she throws herself heedlessly across, the winds will steal her away. She is not afraid. It is a different sort of hesitation: am I ready? Have I seen enough? Have I missed something? Yes, thank you, Auspex, it is fast. She could hardly notice.

"I'll be careful," she says, but she doesn't think through what it means to be careful. If she was being particularly careful, she might invite the Nemean to interpose herself; to become, for a moment, that towering amazon, confident and strong and effortlessly heroic. But it means more if she does this herself. "I can do this." This time, Mother... this time, Hades will understand. She can do this. She can do this. Throw herself against the headwind, let it shove her into place, roll on the shoulder... she tucks the plug into her belt. It will be both a lifeline and a way to keep her hands free.

For a moment, she rests the hand of her thoughts on the stovetop of Bella, looking up at her while she balances on the athletic beam, smiling so bright. You can do it, princess! I believe in you! And she had done it, first try: she had dashed down the beam, caught the rings hanging from the ceiling, vaulted onto the climbing wall... "I'm sorry," she murmurs to the Bella in her memory. Memory Bella doesn't hear her; she keeps clapping, hopping up and down with glee, looking up at her for once, smiling so happily. "If Bella was here, she'd tell me to be careful, too. And she'd be hopping from paw to paw, and telling me how the dust is actually a health hazard, so maybe we should find another way around. But she's an itsy bitsy scaredy-cat, isn't she?"

The howling of the wind is the only answer. There's no squeak or stammer, no blush and no Bella telling her that she'll get in trouble if you're a daredevil, Dany, I mean, Milady... there's just the wind, and the mourning howl that makes a shiver run through her limbs, because she can hear the pain. Someone, out there, in the wind, is hurting so big that it fills up the whole world. She peers out as far as she dares, but doesn't see the mourner. "Besides, Dany, what would you even do to help them? You need to get the Plover working before you can help anybody."

She backs up, licks her lips, braces one heel against the spot where two tiles meet. Then she lunges forward, leaps-- and activates her mag harness once she's past the point of no return. Even if the wind tosses her away, she'll end up pinned to something that she can climb down from, and that should stop her from having a sliding landing. The harness will keep her steady. A perfect plan.

[8 on Overcome. My pitch: the only reason she makes it is because her gloves and boots are designed for grip in situations just like this; marking one use of her Spacer's Uniform.]

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Jason!

This scene is fucked. You’ve got a general idea of what interacting with a superhero is supposed to be like; you were a freshie when the aliens showed up, after all. They save you. If they get the shit kicked out of them, they tell you it’s not that bad, worry about yourself. You stuck your neck out for the Great Betrayer, the person who was scheming with the Annunaki the whole time, and you’ve heard the only reason she’s moonlighting now is because they screwed her over back, and, like, that’s not noble, that’s just getting even. And here she is curling up into a ball and your heart’s still going seven million miles an hour.

You’d almost, you know, convinced yourself that you were cool. The sweaty palms you could ignore. The cold feeling of dread you could shove to the side. All you had to do was win the gladiator fight. They might even have mercy on you if you won one fight, or was it three?

“I could have taken it,” you blurt out. It’s seductively easy to blame her for the horror leaking back into you. You could have died! You could have died! “Nice job fucking it up like always. Cool to see you’re still finding new and exciting ways to ruin things for everybody, I guess.”

You toss your sword at the wall and flinch when it bounces back and skitters on the floor.

***

Marianne!

Jerioth flops into your arms like the catch of the day. It’s instinctual and almost effortless to shift and make sure the force of impact ends up distributed across her body, rather than dangerously concentrating anywhere— especially with that useless, gaudy jewelry hanging from her head. Someone should take those. They’d make good souvenirs.

“Grrrrfff, glllrrmph!” She weakly pants out further complaints and dire curses upon you and your whole family, each and every one completely incomprehensible, and the deeper she digs, the more helpless she feels, the more her eyes start to widen and her chest to heave. If she had her voice, it would be as easy as pie for her to order that troll to crush you. As it is, it’s looking at you with those dull, glowing amber eyes.

What’s the plan, Marianne? Was it to cow the cow, to make sure Jerioth understands what the consequences of saying one word off-script will be? Or was it to go and daringly fetch her little Shalomit, too? Or, perhaps, to offer the troll freedom and a weapon with which to rampage?

***

Mra’al!

The pain breaks your concentration; thoughts come flooding back in as your mane flattens. You’re lying on the floor, and your back throbs, your ribs screech and burn. This little girl, this child has claws. And what sort of huntress does that make you? You burn with shame, with anger.

Your Inquisitor trusts you! She hand-raised you! She shares her food with you, and this is how you repay her: you play with your food and damage the holy armor she arrays about you.

You roll to your knees, see that you have destroyed the windows of the djinn’s eyes; red-hot wrath fills you. You have failed! You have caused destruction to this most holy device! If you had been faster, this wouldn’t have happened. You surge forwards, a bola in your left hand and your rod in your right—

And then you hear your Inquisitor’s whistle. Keep her here, then. That’s the inflection.

Mra’al

AFRAID
[X] ANGRY
GUILTY

• Act with primal, thoughtless perfection
• Make a sudden, decisive entrance or exit
• Make them feel like prey
• Spring a trap

***

Set!

It is time to go to the rendezvous point, because ops here are busted. You managed to send the Lynx hurtling into the monitors: unfortunate, but not like you could have done anything else. Now there’s not much more info you can get from here.

Also: because you just heard an Annunaki signal, and she’s gone from trying to catch the mouse to trying to cut you off. If you take your eyes off her for a moment, if you don’t make this a very smooth portaling out, there will be Trouble, and that is a promise. She’s spinning a pair of bolas, and those hurt when they wrap around a limb or two; if they slam into your head, you might even black out.

Breathless Dead

"All is hushed / all is hushed / for the song of Orpheus..."
- Ashes Ohvan, "Fragment for the Underworld."

***

A shiver runs through Redana, her skin pricking as a silence fills her up. She embraces that silence, the one hiding behind ordinary silences, and lets go of the grips on the controls. She leans forward and feels the shiver on the back of her neck as she watches the slow eddies of fragmented, twisted debris. Flotsam and jetsam. She never remembers which is which, but she loved saying those words while she read to her purring bedmate, a better solace at night than any stuffed lion. Flotsam and jetsam washed up on the shore of Cloudcuckooland, and with them came November, missing her shoe and her way...

The colors seep inside her. The impossible violet of the gun barrels, against the mottled slate of void-scarred adamantium. The cold blue and indigo of the... oh, what's the scientific name? The whale trails. Poseidon's paints. The sapphire crystals that drift by, each one glinting where the light of distant stars catches them. The silence grows to fill every part of her, and her eyes water with the force of it. She stares. Every scene, every detail, needs to be etched down inside of her. This is what is wordlessly demanded of her by something so, so much vaster and more meaningful than her. So what if she's a hero? Some things are much, much bigger than heroes. This is less than a fraction of a percent of the wonders that the universe holds, and what is she in comparison to this?

How can something be so meaningful without having a meaning? How can something be so important without being made? How can she be expected to go back to Tellus and rule over cramped tenement buildings and starving servitors in alleyways and issue permits for acceptable genetic modifications that do not dilute the essence of humanity when this would go unbeheld? How could Mother limit humanity to subculture wars and silly shirts when...

She's crying, now, soundlessly. Her elbows are pressed up against the glass, and her eyes are wide, but not wide enough. They need to see. They need to see everything. She needs to be able to rise to the implicit challenge, the command, the roaring need for this to be acknowledged. It is alive, the whole and totality of it, a living thing made up of unliving things, a genius loci, and her perception of it is what causes it to stir in its sleep. It was always waiting for her to be here, in this moment, shivering and crying because it is beautiful and alone and nobody was here to see it, and if she goes back, then this will still be here, forever, unseen. And that cannot be so. No, it should not be so.

By the time the Plover shakes with the impact of one of the vast iron-bound chests of plunder and tribute, gathered by violence and tossed free by violence, Redana has stopped crying. She's wiped her eyes and sat back in her seat and taken up the grips with trembling fingers, still overwhelmed by seeing the genius loci, but able to activate the thrusters. Sputtering, shaking, the Plover course corrects ever so slightly; it would be a waste to fly all the way into the Vespine's wound, carved into its helm, when she will need delicate handling inside its vast hallways. Each passage she floats down is shaped like a hexagon, with broken mirror tiles on every side; in its heyday, it must have looked like a glimpse of infinity.

She drifts lazily into the hangar, and sets the Plover down carefully as close as she dares. Pop the plug's hatch; pull the helmet out from under the seat and pull it over her head; smooth down the seals built into her clothing that keep the chill out. And then she swings the hatch open and steps out into that abandoned cathedral, silent save for the almost imperceptible rumble of the still-beating heart. She crosses herself in a silent measure of thanks to Hermes, and then takes the plug in both hands and begins the march to the port.

Fellowship: The Heart

Jackdaw!

in the great grey room
there was a train engine
and a green ribbon
and a picture of--
the academy tower at dusk
and there were disappointments sitting on chairs
and two drifting kittens
and a pair of mistakes
and a little toy house
and a brash little mouse
and your parents' expectations for your life
and a quiet old name who was whispering: "hush"

goodnight room
goodnight moon
goodnight academy tower
goodnight light
and the green ribbon
goodnight disappointments
goodnight chairs
goodnight kittens
and goodnight mistakes
goodnight little house
and goodnight mouse
goodnight parents
and goodnight expectations

goodnight nobody

goodnight life

and goodnight to the name who is whispering: "hush"

goodnight stars
goodnight air

goodnight sorrows everywhere

***

Team Heart!

Sasha bellows her happiness with a toot of her horn and surges up onto the makeshift pier that once was a landing on the great ballroom stairs. Books tremble beneath her, but she's up and at 'em! Congratulations, all of you successfully made it: Coleman, Sasha, Lucien and Ailee! Now's the time to cheer!

...

Hold up.

Jackdaw is back out in the water, and she's floating. She's floating face-down. Did she fall out? Is she the price that the Flood demands? Questions swirl about, but the fact of it is: Jackdaw's out there, and her coat should be dragging her down, but she's floating almost peacefully.

Taking from the Flood, again, will doom you to disaster. The reasonable thing, the sane thing to do is to leave Jackdaw to float and bob until she slips silently beneath the water. That's how you survive in the Heart. Take her back, and there will be disaster; there will be a reckoning; all that you have done thus far will be child's play.

And you will all be, just a little bit, more like creatures that can survive in the Heart.