Tatterdemalion

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada!

Getting in to the Temple was the easy part. You just had to disguise yourself as a student returning from an errand. From there, you were able to sneak up into the gladiator cells, which are ominously close to the Academy grounds. Leaving, however? Leaving is trickier. You had to bust through a blockade on the entrance. (The trick was looking through the ominous gate, past the janissaries leveling laser muskets at you and ordering you to stop, and focusing on the statue of Ishtar Resplendent beyond, and thinking: okay, I need to get over there right now.)

But now that you're out, on the streets of Caphtor Below, under the false stars twinkling, you're not out of the woods yet. They didn't just reinforce guards on the exits to the temple, but they've already got hunting packs patrolling the narrow, winding streets. You're being pursued, hemmed in on all sides, and pretty soon you'll end up surrounded and facing down a fight that you can't win, not after being beaten by Asterion; your body's complaining, and it's getting harder to take step after step down the street as you try to figure out how to shake them.

You duck down an alleyway and try to catch your breath.

"ça va?"

Before you can so much as yelp in surprise, Marianne's pulling you through the wall and into a cramped apartment. The only light in the room's coming from a lantern sitting on the central table, and, yep, there's Anathet, too, sitting in the middle of a tablet fort, making glyphs bubble and melt from form to form as she swipes hurriedly through the one she's holding. You're the only ones here tonight. Thank goodness the Resistance came through. You'll have a little time to talk and review the mission here before the janissaries figure out you vanished out from under their noses and start doing door-to-door checks, at least half an hour or so.

Congratulations! You did it! Mission: success! Now, it's time to figure out if this was worthwhile at all.

***

Marianne!

Ah, dear sweet Étoile! She was so accommodating, was she not, setting up this little safe haven? A place where you may convene for a breath, while the cats yowl outside, and discuss what you have found. How did she go about it? What was the process of plucking strings in the web of the Resistance like for her?

(Speaking of her... you do not have much more time, no? Even if the cats were not about to start banging on doors, at their wits' end, dragging out innocents and accusing them of being collaborateurs, the Lady needs to wake to a clean room and a fresh, fortifying breakfast, and, oh, silly little Étoile has so much work to do! How does that make you feel, with your burning heart, with your new trophy proudly hanging from your belt?)

***

Set!

Or are you Anathet now? After all, both Canada and Marianne know your identity.

The tablet you're poring through is poetry, the commemorative epic that Annunaki dandies enjoy spending years ossifying into something so far up its own perfumed ass that it's technically an ouroboros. Managing to get one of these censored is legitimately impressive in some small way. But it's no surprise that The Tiameid was crushed before it could ever be published. Even mostly finished, it's... enlightening. And ominous.

Her vessel shattered, her rage uncontained...

If you unravel the flowery metaphors and unnecessary digressions, the picture that emerges is suggestive. The Annunaki are building another engine here, you know. The beating heart around which another city will coalesce. But this isn't the first engine that has been built on Earth.

"Enki, honored craftsman, keeper of the mysteries / to you I call, armorer, generator, unbegotten but fecund..."

The last time they built one, something went wrong. The poet blames the animals of Earth, brutish and wickedly cunning, for willfully disobeying the perfect work orders that were delivered from on high, such that when TIAMAT was drawn down from the High Waste of LENG into the vessel shaped for her, it shattered into ten thousand quivering shards, and the wrathful spirit reached up to drag down Babylon from the very skies. The fall of the holy city would have shattered the unworthy planet below; another extinction event.

Only, that's not what happened.

In such manner did the Protocol pierce the demoness's throat, descending through her, a burning logic which undid her sinews...

The rest of the poem is about the uprising of the Children of Tiamat, horrific monsters led by GLGMSH which...

Oh. Oh, that would do it. That would get this censored. What was the poet even thinking?

You can't say that one of the High Gods died. Even if you're flowery, even if you talk about her spirit passing into the underworld until such time as it was drawn forth in glory and splendor, even if you assert that GLGMSH did so by the most wicked means and that her death-curse undid his very heart... you can't possibly let the people know that humanity killed Ishtar.

There's a hypothesis strongly supported: if the Ishtar that your marks tonight worship isn't the same Ishtar that invaded Earth in the first place, then it's much more likely that the High Gods are masks used by the highest-ranking Annunaki rather than anomalous superbeings. Or, at the very least, that they're not literally immortal deities, but that they can be replaced if one of them meets an untimely end. Which means that it wouldn't be enough to make some kamikaze run at taking one out, you'd have to take all five down at once.

But more importantly... if you freed Caphtor, she'd die. The High Gods would take up the terrible logic of the Iblis Protocol (some sort of infohazard? an energy pattern that destabilizes Djinn specifically?) and they would kill her. Which means that if your plan has a hope of succeeding...

You're going to have to steal the Iblis Protocol itself.

Breathless Dead

The Ceronians believe that they are dead. The angry Auspex believes that they are alive. Yes, Redana can see the green health crosses next to them. Thank you, Auspex. Hades is here, but is giving no indication as to whether they are all dead and the Auspex has been deceived by the veil of life draped over the town as Hades’ kindness, or whether he has merely allowed them to believe they are dead because it is a salve to their pride, or whether their state of life is connected to their belief in their life or its absence. Maybe this is Elysium. Maybe she is squatting down next to two decayed, brittle skeletons. Or maybe this paradise merely overwhelms them, make them feel that in life they could not ever deserve this, that they would have to take up arms and continue on to the next battle.

In short, it’s all Philosophy, and the easiest way to handle Philosophy is to just wait until it makes sense in the end.

Or to make an assertion of your own.

“She’ll never be happy here until she’s had the chance to leave,” Redana says, with all the conviction of an Empress-to-be. “If she is allowed to leave... she’s more likely to come back than if you lock her up to keep her safe, and tell her that the Empire depends on her, and if anything happened to Queen Hatchan, it would be her responsibility to continue everything that Hatchan did before her, and that she can never, ever leave. Not until the work is done. But it will never be done, and the stars are calling her name: Epistia, Epistia, we are beautiful and forever and we have treasures you never would have dreamed about, like leviathans of the void drifting in storms of sapphires...”

She slings her ponytail over her shoulder and rubs the sapphire beads woven into them by Hades’ clever fingers. “I’m going to make her smile. And I’m going to offer her the stars. And even if this place is dimmed, there will still be that beautiful sun, and the forever rain, and mangroves growing, and Elysium here, forever. So please, Leon, Sands, take me to meet Epistia. I don’t know whether she’ll stay or go, but all I know is that I will make her smile. I have promised no less than her father to bring one to her.”

And her eyes are bright, and her hair gleams underneath the light of that roaring star, and for a moment she is like her mother must once have been, fervent and bold and burdened with an overflowing heart.

But just for a moment.

[Talk Sense with Grace: 6.]

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Mra’al!

On your first hunt with your alpha, you had failed her; the revolutionary used a vial of stolen perfume broken in an alleyway to burn your nose and mask her trail. Then, you had fallen to your knees and begged her for forgiveness, tried to confess your weakness to her. She ordered you up and kept the hunt on. You caught the revolutionary in the end, and delivered her to salvation, that she might understand her place in the Great Chain. And when you returned to her estate, your alpha punished you both for your failure and for begging for forgiveness at the wrong time. When you are hunting, you are hunting, and the huntress does not stop to beg for the scourging of her sins.

This is why you are not groveling at her feet. That would distract her from her thoughts. She looks out over the crowd, fingers drumming on the marble railing, as the revelers demand answers from the guards.

“They scattered the guards outwards,” she says. “So that they could work inside. The response has to be both internal and external. The witch, she has Zhiantu arts; locking the doors will not help. We need an Altar of Interdiction, but by the time the ab-Enkiji respond to our request... Caphtor.”

The djinn appears, bowing her head in reverence.

“By the name of our lady, who is the Scourge and the Rose, carry this to the Hierophant. Annan ab-Ereshkigali bids her to have three-fifths of the janissaries under her mantle conduct a rice-grain sweep through the temple.” If we do not find them, your alpha thinks to herself, we will find their objective, and so understand them. “The other two-fifths should conduct a slave-search both above and below.” They must masquerade as slaves, your alpha knows, so we will strip that anonymity from them.

“As you will,” Caphtor says, and then is gone. Your alpha pours herself a glass of a rich, dark wine, the bottle taken from a platter held by a golden-haired slave girl, and then a second for you.

“Now, Mra’al,” she says, as you take your cup from her mailed fingers, “tell me everything about your battle with the witch.”

***

Set!

“Please, please, don’t send me back!” The high, panicked voice of Jerry snaps you out of your focused reading. “Anything, anything, Ma-Ri-Ann, just don’t lose me in Hell!”

Interesting! The Annunaki have a religious concept that is best translated as “Hell” and thinks that Marianne has access to it.

...oh right Marianne’s looking at you, you’re on cue! As the avatar of your goddess, you get to establish yourself as someone who passes judgment. There’s a reason that you picked Jerioth ab-Ishtari tonight, and there’s a reason that Marianne has been so gleefully terrorizing her. Plenty of them, in fact: you’ll have to narrow them down to the ones that she’ll remember from now until the end of the Annunaki Empire. Marianne has ranted to her, probably about tyranny and lessons and dire threats, and now it’s your turn to explain to the head midwife (and controller of the slave breeding programs) her sins.

Tell Jerry what she’s being punished for. Explain to her that this wasn’t just a case of being in the wrong place in the wrong time, but a deliberate choice. Give her something to think about while she stews.

***

Canada!

Arákh crumples to her knees. She looks up at you like you are the light of heaven. One by one, everyone else in the room kneels and beholds you. One of the Lynx janissaries starts crying, confronted by the gap between who they are and who they could be.

“I’m sorry,” she says. And you get the sense that she means it. It’s not a confession. It’s an apology. “I meant to make you one of my dancers, but... that is unworthy of you. It is ugly,” she says, as if pronouncing it to the fires of purgatory. “And there is nothing in this world that is righteous but beauty.”

Silently, she takes a key from her Thornback and unlocks your chains, one after another. Her smile is beatific, but you’re very aware that this doesn’t last for long. Beauty and righteousness have a short half-life in this world once unveiled; as soon as you leave, it’ll start to fade like a dream.

Objectively your best choice is to lock them all in the cell (they’ll agree that you should if you tell them) and then leg it before the lusty, petulant Arákh reasserts herself.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Canada!

When the door opens, five janissaries enter, all of them in the white-and-gold of troops on a long-term loan from the Marduki. The next to enter is a Thornback in loose, flowing robes, and then one of the Annunaki. Of course, you think, as you recognize her. She’s both a hail mary chance at escape, and the promise of a terrible fate if you can’t play her.

Arákh ab-Ishtar is better known as the Puppeteer in Caphtor Below. She’s not just rumored to be in charge of the Cult of Ishtar’s counter-intelligence wing, despite being merely a chief breeder by rank, but she’s a playwright. And she mostly writes very, very blue bodice-rippers. No, that name doesn’t translate to the “if you’ve got them, flaunt them” Annunaki. Veil-tearers?

Her marionettes flaunt themselves in exciting outfits and play out these stories as entertainment, sometimes just for her household, sometimes for exclusive feasts, as her readers sitting in front provide dialogue, stage directions, and reactions. The marionettes spin and gyrate and grope each other, the chains attached to their limbs and collar rising up into a vast and intricate mechanism that makes up a large part of any stage she chooses to grace with her stories. (They say it gives Caphtor instructions on how to move the chains, constantly, so she cannot forget. They say that there are almost never accidents.) And their thoroughly muffled groans of effort and yearning are almost impossible to hear, even if the audience were to try; her prose is too fine to let some barbarians ruin it with an ill-timed word, just as her choreography must be perfect, perfect, perfect!

She’s here to decide whether she wants to turn you over to the Ereshkigali or keep you as her own prize. Which one is worse, do you think?

“Have her displayed,” she says to the Thornback. Her nails are encrusted with powdered pearls; her veil is a deep, dusky blue, and the many layers of her sheer top make it look as if she’s wearing a wave. “I want to see what I’m working with.”

***

Marianne!

You open your eyes. Then you open your eyes again.

The feedback is stinging and hot, pressure building up in your skull, behind your burning eyes; you squeeze them shut a moment later, the tangled cables of interconnection burning beneath your eyelids like electric lights. There, that thick and tangled knot; that is the Index. It must be.

You are there in two steps. Glyphs indent themselves into its sleek surface as you lift it; you sink the stylus into the tablet and draw your query with a flourish. The glyphs are filled in, and then a new sequence carves itself: the location of the few tablets concerning TIAMAT. You toss it down to Set easily, trusting her to take it with her. Let the tyrants puzzle out what has gone missing the slow and painful way.

Then you launch, fall upwards, drag a screaming Jerry with you as tablet after tablet becomes yours: all the dirty laundry of Caphtor.

***

Set!

Frustratingly, digging into the tablets concerning the ab-Enkiji reveals mostly heretical treatises and blueprints. One of the small advantages you have up your sleeve is that the Annunaki hold dogma and divine revelation over personal innovation, at least publically. There’s a story emerging here, or at the very least a narrative.

Like, look at this! A transmatter receptor that could, with some development, lead to tech like your Rift Generator; SEALED BY ORDER OF THE HIGH GODS. They don’t want any of their oh-so-loyal servants having access to your toys. Instead they rely on vast, power-hogging teleportation circles, wasteful and dangerous.

But the medical records that the ab-Enkiji are doubtless producing, the experiment logs: those are absent, save for a recent treatise arguing that Earth is inherently corrupting and that the profane powers of mankind are signs that it is a knot of cancerous flesh in the skin of the universe we know.

A miscalculation. If he is right, then the High Gods were wrong to return. This is not just impossible but impolitic. How fortunate that he was silenced: his solution was to “purge this mire of corruption through holy fire, until it splits open and by the grace of the High Gods, we may excise its ill-being from existence.”

Wait. Hold on. What’s this here? A footnote scrawls its way along one side.

“(cf. the sightings of the blind child, harbinger of the corruption of those impious few among our peers who are given to the graces of our caretakers)”

A chill runs down your spine. An implication is unfurling in your heart. The corruption this treatise refers to is superpowers. You could very well read that note as an admission that Annunaki have developed superpowers and then been handed over to the ab-Ereshkigali. But how? What does the blind child have to do with it? And why haven’t... well, of course. Because any pious Annunaki would turn to confession, and being “disappeared” for re-education by the secret police is a common enough occurrence.

(Your sibling could just vanish one day, and the only recourse you’d have to find out more is passing a request to your superiors, who then would ask their peers in the Cult of Ereshkigal for more information. By law, they’re required to pass that information to your head of house, but little more.)

Your eye drifts over to the mural of the Shutting of the Sarcophagus; the mummified sinner, frozen in writhing as the lid is set into place. If any Annunaki might deserve sympathy, it would be one who suddenly, through no fault of their own, finds themselves an unacceptable state secret...

Breathless Dead

“Oh my stars.” The words slip out before she can catch them. But it’s no use! Here! The warriors of Ceron! In her mind’s eye, they would have been tall and shirtless and carrying bronze shields as large as themselves, and might even have insisted on carrying her to their alpha. Be like the Ceronians, princess! Do you think they would give up before beating this record? Would they be satisfied losing to this Marvelous Mechanical Man in wrestling? Surely not! Surely, surely not!

Redana does not have a lot of experience talking with the elderly. It’s a little distracting, trying to look at them and not focus on the wrinkles, the sagging jowls, the pot bellies in those hand-dyed shirts... that’s so rude, Redana, focus! Be a princess! Be their princess!

“Hail, champions,” she pivots smoothly into. Look at the marbles, that’s less distracting. She strikes her fist against her shoulder in salute. “Princess Redana Claudius of Tellus salutes you[1]. Praise to Pallas Athena, who crowns you in glory, who tempers the shield and steadies the spear. I invoke your protection—“

She stops. Looks at the village again, considers the words that just sprang out of her lips, drilled into her: these are the words that will protect you. “No, I— I counter-invoke. It doesn’t count. I just need to know if you know of someone named Epistia. Hades sent me here to help her. And I’m glad he did, because your home is beautiful. I wish I wasn’t here on a quest; Dolce would love it here. You’ve been here all this time, haven’t you?”

So that they don’t have to get up, she takes a seat with them. That will help the counter-invocation, probably. Nobody making serious proclamations ever sits down criss-cross-apple-sauce to watch a game of marbles with two old men. And, really, when you look closer, they have been keeping up with their fitness; you could bounce a marble off that firm arm.

***

[1]: Bella, if she were here, would wince and hide her face in her hands. Really, Dany? You’re the most wanted woman in the galaxy and you immediately introduce yourself by your title? But what Bella would not be taking into account is that these are the Ceronians. Of course you can trust them, Bella! Don’t be silly!

***

[Redana’s doing her best to Speak Softly here, and she hammered out a 13. So, with that in mind, in a conversation over marbles, hopefully with some lemonade served in an old mason jar...

• What can they tell her about Epistia?
• What do they want, and how could she help them get it?
• What would they have her do next?

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.