Tatterdemalion

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Set!

Caphtor thinks very, very hard, and then brightens! She’s figured out the answer. “Ah, of course. You must be working with Annan ab-Ereshkigali. That is very clever of her, bringing more than one masrur on such an important mission! She’s here to catch the Phantom Thieves, you know.”

The locks on the door disengage and it rolls back silently, revealing the Nameless Library, built into a hollow pillar, the storehouse for every bit of knowledge the Annunaki wish to keep suppressed.

When you step inside, at first you must think that you have made some sort of mistake, that you fell for an elaborate trap, because the walls are elaborate depictions of Ereshkigal and the Ten Thousand Exquisite Torments. Here is the Rose’s Kiss, there is the Leading by the Nose, and there is the cruel Shutting of the Sarcophagus. (Rumors circulate about particularly stubborn sinners left blind and deaf and sustained for years inside those elaborate oubliettes, thrashing helplessly as Ereshkigal’s Love washes over them day in and day out.) And there, the Wiping of the Slate, the hypnosis that turns its victims into, if one were to be uncharitable, giggly useless ditzes. It’s not permanent, but reversal requires the forgiveness of the Inquisitiors, so in your case...

It very much would be so.

***

Marianne!

Jerry is trying so very hard not to look at those murals, isn’t she? So she can only look at the ornate carpet in the center of the chamber. It has anti-gravitational properties woven into its elaborate design, much like the war-chariots that darkened Earth’s skies. A stone plinth sits before it, and a tablet rests there, its stylus carefully chained to the plinth.

You look up, and see the niches, each one holding a scroll or another tablet, innumerable and leading up into the shadows. Ah. So that’s their game. You enter the carpet’s directions into the tablet, and it rises up to allow you access to one of the niches. Doubtless every access is logged and recorded. It’s likely one is an index, and that’s the only one that’s taught to the vast majority of Inquisitors; that’s the way you’d do it, if you were a paranoid, sadistic godling who got her kicks turning spanking, bondage, and sensory deprivation into divine sanctions.

Too bad she never expected that Marianne would be here to stick her hands into every little niche until she found what she wanted...

***

Canada!

It is fortunate that the chain of command is so rigid. Even though these janissaries know they have caught Canada, the notorious Phantom Thief, they had their orders: pacify the gladiators and put them in their cells. So here you are, in your new cell, chained to the wall by your wrists. The spare veil they forced over your face smells funky, and you’re very aware that the news of your capture is trickling back up the chain. Not the chain holding your wrists up over your head, the other one, the chain of command.

You’ve got a narrow window of opportunity here for getting out of this dingy cell before Unpleasant Things Happen, but it’s incumbent on you getting out of the cuffs, and your superpowers aren’t exactly helpful with that, right?

So you have time to think, and stew, and think back to when you first found the Power of Ra...

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Set!

"At once!" 'Jerry' manages to get up onto her knees, and sniffs with as much ragged dignity as she can muster in that position. "Brute! Stand aside, by order of Jerioth ab-Ishtar!" The troll gives the three of you a look, as much as something with such a craggy face can, and you can feel the slow rumble of its heart. (Trolls are difficult; their feelings are solid, very tricky to penetrate and understand.) Then, obediently it shuffles aside, its huge chain dragging noisily on the floor behind its foot. "Caphtor!"

bing! "Hello, my lady," Caphtor says, this piece of her more present and aware than usual. "Are you aware that you are restrained?"

"It's fashion," Jerioth sneers, punching down the only way she can; you can feel the angry, tearful spite radiating off her. "And I did not ask for your opinion. Shut your useless mouth and open the Nameless Library. The Inquisitor requires the volumes that we, blessed of Ishtar, keep out of the sight of the ignorant and the feeble-minded."

"The... Inquisitor?"

Jerry looks back behind her, expectantly. That's your cue!

***

Marianne!

Hah! Give Jerry the chance to put that mask back on over her face, that air of complete superiority, and she grabs it like she's drowning. Pathetic. Her bravado will melt when you lift that ruined veil off her face, fold it in fourths, and cup her chin in your hands. She'll beg you to have mercy, to give her even a slave's thick veil, but you will give her a kiss and tell her that she is to sing, little bird, sing a story of Ma-ri-Ann...

The troll watches you with those sullen red eyes. How do you feel about trolls? They're huge, most often used for construction work and to guard places like these, and one swipe of one of its hands could send you flying all the way across this hall. If Jerry found her courage, or a priestess happened to stumble in here in some grand comedy of errors, you would have one hell of a fight on your hands. But they're not vicious, the way a lot of the Salamanders are, just single-minded about carrying out their orders. If you didn't know better, if you hadn't heard them humming strange vibrational songs to themselves in the dark, you might even think they're just animals, or very strange robots.

***

Canada!

The janissaries raise muskets and fire. Or, at least, the two in the back try to, and are unpleasantly surprised when their muskets just make a low rattling sound of defeat. Those two see the melee that ensues around you and Jason and retreat to find reinforcements and working muskets; you would have been able to cut them off if this Salamander hadn't averted her eyes from your distracting face and grabbed you, shield and all, in a bear hug. Ugh, if word spreads that there were mechanical malfunctions with the weapons, your mild-mannered alter ego back home is going to get it. Still worth it, but you'd hoped to avoid triggering that failsafe. Anyway, back to the Salamander: it takes a head-butt for her to loosen her grip, and by then Jason's already had his sword knocked out of his hand.

Take a Powerful Blow. This isn't the grand, dramatic sort of fight where you stagger back up and defiantly slam your shield into the ground, this is a chaotic, messy fight where the question isn't whether you'll win but how badly things are going to go south in the meantime.

Breathless Dead

The Plover squats, boxy and solid, far below. Its sword is driven deep into the roots, and it kneels there like a hoplite deep in prayer before battle. It’s not just possible but probable that when her pursuers enter in after her, they will prepare an ambush[1].

Good.

If they stop to prepare an ambush, it means they won’t try to have a Plover battle. If they fought here, Plover to Plover, they would level trees and score them with fire; they would burn clearings with explosives and tear apart the sounds of the jungle: the strange chittering calls of things more bat and wasp than bird, the creaking of the mangroves in the wind, the sound of rain striking the boughs forever, a ceaseless drumming that shines in all the colors of Hades’ vaults.

No. Leave the Plover behind. Don’t let them draw her in to a fight. Preserve the jungle, as much as she can.

Sweat and rain drip down her skin; her clothes thin, reacting to the high temperatures, becoming light and billowing-cool. She twists a button on her wrist three times and instead of black and gold, she is wearing dappled, pale green and brown, blending in among the mangroves. A biting insect alights on the back of her neck, thrusts its proboscis underneath her skin, and promptly combusts from the inside out; Redana fails to notice, and the itching welt never forms. She sees a raptor lurking underneath a particularly thick knot of leaves, and coos over its sleekness, the way it cleans its webbed wings, the lashing of its tail.

It takes her some time to ascend, but perhaps less time than one might think: she is, after all, an Olympian athlete, very capable of lifting her whole body by her fingertips and of making daring leaps over gaps, and laughing merrily while she does it. Her heart is a bird, soaring and free, as she approaches the settlement, bedraggled and delighted in equal measure, her golden curls gleaming in the sunlight.

This! This is what she was dreaming of back home, though she never knew. How could Mother close off a universe that had sights like these? How could she tell her daughter to be ambitious, then refuse to let her explore the vast universe worthy of that ambition? How could she shut humanity in a box and refuse to let them see this? How could she let everyone on Tellus think food depots and televised entertainment and insular, bellicose fashion subcultures were the peak of human experience?

“I won’t stop until the skies are open again,” she says to herself. “You can’t stop me, Mother.”

***

[1]: it is possible they might try to crack it open, but Redana has the key, and she is at her most vulnerable approaching it again. It is very unlikely that they destroy it, for not only would that remove the one place they know the princess will return to, it would be a waste of ammunition. It is, however, likely that they will burn out the batteries again. No sense in letting their bait actually remain useful to their quarry[2].

[2]: Redana has not yet realized that her pursuers might just ride their Plovers up to the settlement and demand cooperation from the locals.

Chuubo's GMD: Love and Shattered Alchemy

[Storytime: 2/9
Adventure GET: 4/21
Up to Date: 1/15
Something To Deal With 1]

Oh, gosh, yes! This has it all! Mystery, adventure, horror, and an intriguing plotline! Though, hmmm, maybe "ask the maid to look in the mirror" was the Heartless choice, which isn't my brand at all! Really, I should try to make up for that, but in my defense, I wanted to know if she'd chicken out or not! And it was a cool story to tell, which is why, when you think about it, this really isn't my fault at all, but rather, I'm a hero for thinking about her feelings and wanting to help her out, and this isn't guilt, nope!

I put my hands on the small, dinky sink. It's the kind with the one metal faucet, and whatever temperature you get is what you get, which makes washing your hands a pain in the winter, like, literally a pain, all pins and needles and wiping them off on your pants. I lean closer to the mirror and flash Melanie Malakh a grin. A hero grin! A "look out I'm Rinley" grin. I raise a heroic eyebrow. She lunges forward at the mirror and I give a heroic yelp and dive under the sink. When I peek back up, her shoulders are shaking with silent laughter, and my tail bushes up.

"You're a jerk!" I say at her, but suddenly she's gone, and I'm just saying it at my own reflection, which is... shut up, I'm not a jerk. Would a jerk have walked Sessily over to have a cool time over here? Would a jerk have spiced things up with an awesome party game? No, and so I am not a jerk. I am making my way hastily over to the storage room and opening the-- I am jiggling the locked handle of the storage room, kind of uselessly.

"Hey, so," I say, kind of lamely. "It's your turn. You know, for the whole Truth or Dare?" That'll lure her out! If she's upset with me, well, now it's her turn to think of something mortifying for me to do! Then we'll be totally even. I give Sessily a wan grin: what does she think of this whole, uh, delightful shenanigan?

Fellowship: The Heart

Lucien!

A-ha! Here it is! A cunning, spidery mechanism has attached itself to the ceiling up in the stairs, its many girder-iron limbs tense, its vespine stinger tipped with a huge, crimson-crusted pie. You play a game of bobbie weavers with it, and when it finally loses its cool and stabs the pie at you, you're able to smoothly remove it. And that's when things start to go a little wrong: firstly, it opens its mouth and starts to let out an awful noise of pipe organs, causing clatterly cacophony upstairs from whoever set the trap, presumably the Grail Questant; secondly, the pie is hot. Very hot. Scorchingly hot. It is hellfire and condemnation, ghost peppers and crushed mace, and the steam off it is getting in your eyes.

Take Damage!

That being said, if you managed to get this somewhere sensitive on that horrible thing, it only stands to reason that the infernal fires of this pie, this wrathful punishment of the wicked and the merely shady, might overcome the watery nature of the beast. It's ridiculous, preposterous, and illogical, which means that by the rules of the Heart it's sure to work perfectly.

And as for the surroundings: really, that's a terrible idea. The decay's going hard here; if you start tipping things over and breaking things, you'll accelerate its descent into the Flood. This is, for what it's worth, a place where you can all catch your breath, probably. A place where you don't have to worry about losing memories or beautiful shoes. Start shoving statues over and you'll bring the whole place down!

***

Jackdaw!

You are at peace. You are shapeless, formless; you are water moving on water. You are remembered forever in the currents and the bed. Existence is painful; memory is painful; the Flood takes all these things from you as an act of love. In the depths there are no colors; in the deep places, there are no sufferings. There are no worries, there are no fears. There--

hurk.

There is a burning inside you, and a hammering on you. Your throat constricts as you vomit up: salt water, and barnacles, and a rusted jumping-jack, and sodden paper, and your throat burns with the expulsion. There are tears in your eyes as it all comes up, more and more, too much to fit inside of you, and with it all come memories flooding in, painful and sharp and angled, and not all of them yours. And then Ailee, in your face, smug as ever.

Do you feel saved, Jackdaw? Or do you feel bereft?

***

Coleman!

Amalgamation.

It is one of the great mysteries of the Heart. When one is transfixed by the eye of one of the great and terrible powers of the Heart, they change; their flesh becomes a canvas, and they become both more and less than what they were. Its study is one of the sciences you were never terribly good at, but it strikes you, as you fight, in some detached signal-box in your head, that this monster is the result of amalgamation. If you were able to study it, examine it and compare it to the shape of a train and some other subject, you might be able to discover secrets...

Secrets that might be the difference between failure and success when you reach the end of the line; when you reach Nexus; when you act as midwife.

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.