Tatterdemalion

Chuubo's GMD: Love and Shattered Alchemy

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

I flash my most winning grin at the people in the room, the ginger and the spirit. “See? She just needs a minute and she’ll be fine. Besides, what horror story doesn’t have a moment of personal trauma? It’s what makes it horror. And, hey, at least neither of us got our faces stolen... yet...”

Outside, the rain’s starting to lose its power, isn’t it? Puddles lie like lazy cats, reflecting the marbled greys of the sky, and in here, everything’s dark (because someone turned off the lights) but there’s the warm smell of cooked eggs, and warm air coming in under the door, and I’m sure that by the time I start tucking in to my omelette, everything’s going to be okay. We’ll all laugh about this later.

Right?

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

More On Aliens

The High Gods themselves are... well. They’re probably like the Annunaki, but they project their own conceptions of themselves so forcefully that it’s hard to think about them clearly. Ishtar is the Queen of Heaven, undeniable and irresistible; Marduk is the General, terrifying and vicious. Though individual recollections differ, they’re usually described like members of the Annunaki: bronze-skinned and dark-haired, tall and willowy, bedecked in gold and silks. It’s just that they’re also ten feet tall and heavily armored and could crush you like a bug while you cower at their feet.

Shrikes are terrifying. Seven feet tall with an impressive wingspan, they would be difficult to fight, what with their arsenal of weapons and nigh-impervious armor plating, even if they weren’t upgraded with thaumatech to be inhumanly strong and agile. They never give up on a mission once they have their orders, they sometimes work in teams, and the only good thing about them is that they’re hideously expensive and time-consuming to make, each one worth more than some planets. It’s estimated that the occupation only has thirty Shrikes to keep the entire planet in line. (Well. Maybe not the only good thing. Everybody’s heard the friend-of-a-friend story of running into a Shrike while unveiled, and simply having them haltingly, clumsily laugh and then just advise the criminal not to get caught again.)

The Thornbacks are bad news. They’re put-upon personal assistants, skilled artisans, and taskmasters, and there’s nothing your average Thornback likes more than venting stress by punching down. They have more in common with cacti than any mammal, and have wizened little faces, gangly limbs covered in spurs and spikes, and fingers with far too many joints in them. Most of them are a deep, glossy black, and they commonly wear either thorn-pinned scarves or loose robes, depending on their owner’s preferences.

Djinn are the Annunaki answer to AI, and because the Annunaki are terrible, that answer is to imprison a dispersed energy consciousness in a magnetized lead vessel, only letting it partially phase out to serve as an interface. They’re capable of doing complex thaumaturgic calculations on the fly and memorizing practically anything for brief periods, but they frequently have to dump their memory, given how they are plied with the wines of magnetism into a haze of vapid laughter and geniality.

Salamanders are four-armed, reptilian bombshells, if you’re into dating outside of your species. They’re very sinuous. They’re also a warning for humanity, having forgotten the name of their own planet and the history of their species entirely. Most of them want to keep their heads down and avoid trouble, but there’s always one or two enchanted by Earth and willing to share their knowledge of how to get by...

Lynxes are feline aliens, graceful and swift, used as hunters and messengers and dancers by the Annunaki. Shrikes are too important to use on minor troublemakers, so most insurgent cells instead have to worry about Lynx trackers. More than one would-be revolutionary has found themselves dragged into a dark alley for interrogation by hunters with ungentle claws and fangs. (And more than one has, in turn, been saved by canny use of perfume bombs. Sufficiently pungent odors give them crippling migraines.)

Trolls are huge, multi-limbed silicon-based creatures used as guards, construction workers and shock troops by the Annunaki, in each case relying on their ability to carry out orders implicitly. Rumor has it that the last Troll Queen is secured in the vaults of Babylon, each one of her eggs removed by handlers before they can hatch, and that for her sake no Troll will ever disobey orders.

Macaws are small, brightly-plumed flightless avians, now finding themselves directly competing with humans for “who’s the cutest?” About half the height of a human, with brilliant feathers, they’re useful as singers, messengers and decoration, as well as household staff, and most of them are pretty quietly bitter that humans are both good at those things and close enough to Annunaki in appearance to be favored.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Anathet!

You are the transportation for Canada. Without your ability to open portals, you would find it much more difficult to sneak in and out of one of the most heavily guarded palaces in all of Caphtor. Opening the portals to come back is always a little nerve-wracking, isn’t it? Wondering if today, someone will be in the wrong spot in the wrong time, if you’ll be seen, discovered, revealed.

But tonight, there is no one. And now, you are alone. Above, the night sky shimmers through the soft haze of Caphtor’s environmental shielding; it’s raining outside, but no rain was scheduled for tonight, so if you can squint, you can see the distant flickers of raindrops burning away to nothing above the tallest spires. The breeze is dry and cool as it winds through the branches.

The gardens you now call home are opulent. There’s really no other word. The Annunaki take and take and take, and one thing they take are the lushest and most beautiful flowers and plants from every world they conquer. With a rasp of many leathery wings, tiny Bats flutter to and fro, pollinating and drinking deeply of dew.

At night, the gardens shine with bioluminescence, indigo and sapphire and violet, with the path under your feet burning vivid as opals. You can’t let your guard down completely— the gardens are open at all hours of day and night— but as long as you are attentive, you have little risk of discovery. There are few eyes painted here for Caphtor to see through.

The footsteps of the black-eyed girl are silent. She’s... different. Less substantial. You feel the ebb and flow of her thoughts, an acidic sea lapping at your toes, deliberately not overwhelming you with immersion in something so alien and strange.

Frogs (Earth frogs, real ones) croak in the pond. They’ve established a good place for themselves in the patchwork, hellish ecosystem of the gardens: eating insects from halfway across the galaxy with all the absurd stateliness only a frog can perfect. That’s where the two of you stop to talk.

***

Canada!

“You’re up late.”

God! Does she have to do that? Your heart rate jumped up to approximately seven million miles an hour with I’m caught before your heart kicked in with a sigh of longing. Even now, as you turn to face her, you’re still dealing with the physical effects of having fight-or-flight rammed directly into your veins.

Tirzah wears a blindfold. Back when you were traveling together, she spun you a sob story about how she was born blind, and now... well, now you don’t know if that’s true. It’s possible she really can see, and she only wears it because she’s trained in Ammun Vah, the art of seeing without sight, her senses so keenly attuned that she comes off as almost prescient. She can hear lies, smell fear, and fight in absolute darkness.

But it’s also possible that she was blinded, by accident or by intention, to make her the weapon she is. She always smiled when you described things to her, her fingers entwined in yours, her head on your shoulder, as you sat in a dingy diner or out under the stars you didn’t know she came from.

And that is a whole pile of worms on its own. Annunaki don’t fuck their slaves, thank goodness; it’s not just that you’re incompatible when it comes to reproduction, but that it would be lowering themselves on the Great Chain, which is a big no-no. Unthinkable, even. They prefer to ogle you and use your humiliation and debasement to get in the mood.

But, again, and this is very important as she silently walks towards you in the deserted corridor, a floor away from your bunk: Tirzah is very confusing and sends a lot of mixed signals. Maybe it’s you trying to cling onto your childish dreams of marrying her in Paris. Maybe it’s her, twisting you around her little finger and making you her weapon to bring down the resistance from within. Or, maybe (her smooth fingers cup your hip) she wants to slide down that Great Chain like it was a greased fireman’s pole.

“I wonder, why shouldn’t I tell Auntie Rose that you’re sneaking around?” Oof. Straight to “I’m going to tell your manager,” thanks, Tirzah. Well, your manager’s manager: that harsh Thornback works most closely with the domestic staff, relying on the Head Armorer to deal with the likes of you. “I think you should make it worth my while,” she says, spreading her fingers on your collarbone.

See? Mixed. Signals.

***

Ètoile!

So, let’s hear it straight: just how petulant and petty was Marianne in arranging you just so to be found, completely innocent, completely in need of salvation, to be picked up and given pats and ushered back home after a quick interrogation, in which of course you would be just a useless, overdramatic mess?

(You do not know, yet, that there is an Inquisitor here already. Perhaps that would not make a difference to you; perhaps it would make you quail.)

Out with it! When that red tide, that incandescent rage receded, in what condition, in what locale, did little helpless Ètoile find herself, knowing that she had done this to herself, that you have no one to blame but yourself?

Fellowship: The Heart

Lucien!

The flying stick (which, at this size, is more like a clacks pole, if we're being honest) slams into the monster's outstretched limb, knocking its aim aside. The retort of its discharge is deafening, and you are showered with fluttering bits of ruined spine and paper as it gouges a hole in the already ruined bookshelves. Boom, boom! You got to stare death in the face, haha! Isn't that moment when you realize you're still alive... isn't it exhilarating?

And if it's not, if you're trying not to curl up in a ball and cry, what's keeping you here in the fray, rather than running as far as you can and scraping your way back up to the surface?

***

Coleman!

Amalgamation! It is both a threat and a necessity. You've seen it yourself on the trains, when nails turn to brass and Engineers become more engine than man. The powers at play within the Heart are so vast that they impress themselves on the inhabitants like a pattern into wet clay. Each of you have your own defenses against it, if you're intelligent, though Ailee's defense is "I'm already claimed, suckers." She might even be able to do the opposite: to impress herself on King Dragon. If anybody could, it would be her.

Careful! Watch the claw!

You'll have to do that, too. To get Sasha to hatch properly in Terminus. It'll be much more, ah, equal than most cases. You'll become more like her; she'll awaken fully and become a little more like you. That's why you've been chosen for this honor. You won't flinch when you reach the end of the line.

As for something hidden? Ah, there it is! You've figured out the location of the Descent; a thin place, where you can lower yourself into a deeper region of the Heart. The problem is that it's down a side stairwell, one that the Wreck's cannons just blew open, and the smell of rot and decay's wafting up from it. You're going to have to dare the wrath of the Flood one more time... but it's not the end of the world! You've got options!

Speaking of options, the Wreck's hunkering down, withdrawing into its shell. The harder you attack, the more you risk setting off a very, very bad explosion. Putrid powder is scattered all around, and the slightest thing could set it off. Really, it's lucky Lucien didn't land that pie dead on.

***

Ailee!

"Well said, Miss Sundish! You always did have the pragmatic edge needed for real work." Squeak, squeak, squeak. The saddest sight in the world comes ambling up to you, the slap of his oversized shoes on the puddles comical and distressing in equal measure. Professor Hamptonshire, your former advisor, lost to the Heart and his own obsessions.

He's clean-shaven for the first time in decades, the better for slathering on the face-paint. What little hair he has remaining has been fluffed up and curled in neon blue, and he wears the traditional armor of the Grail-Questant, smeared in the wicked paints of the Dark Carnival. His eyes are watery brown, floating in those sharp diamonds, and in his hand he has a nail-studded bat. "It's just a shame you never followed my arguments to their conclusion."

Hamptonshire's all consumed with death anxiety, see. The word immortality hooked in his spine, making him ignore the counter-arguments to seeking the Grail: the Ship of Heaven (if you replace something piece by piece, when does it stop being the original?) and the fact that immortality in the depths of the Heart is worse than dying up above. The fool threw away the chance to pursue real power because he lost all the hair on top of his head and started needing to walk with a cane. And, to his credit, it looks like he hardly needs the cane anymore, not after pursuing the Fools' Mysteries all this time.

***

Jackdaw!

You never turned in your final paper on Comparative Alchemy in Hamptonshire's class, due to his suddenly closing his office and selling everything he owned in order to fund a descent into the Heart. But you've still got it in your collection, somewhere. You should make him grade it! But, then again, was it really worth grading in the first place? Surely you've learned more on the subject! Except that now that you're on the spot, your head's empty. Oh no! This is just like the nightmares!

Except for the hideous monster over there. Weirdly, that wasn't in the nightmares. Or, well, it might be more accurate to say it's not in your nightmares yet!

Breathless Dead

When the gods stand against you, there are but three paths you may walk: the path of harmony, the path of renunciation, or the path of wisdom.
- Kyllos, The Dialogues

***

Aphrodite! Of course Redana knows better than to disrespect any of the gods, but her education focused mostly on “how to invoke Aphrodite for blessings in political marriages” and “the proper ceremonies to request the love of one’s subjects.” If she had read more of the right sort of books, she would be a lot more scared than she is now; she would be more likely to consider, even if only for a moment, the path of wisdom[1].

But Aphrodite is toothless, she thinks. He is almost silly, a crooning singer who touches hearts and lifts spirits, patron of the cosmetologist and the cosmetic surgical kit, and of course she does not want to offend him, but it should be simple enough to walk in harmony, present herself as a suitor, and delight him enough so that he lets her walk away with Epistia. What could go wrong?

“Thank you, both of you,” Redana says, clapping her hands together twice and bowing her head. “May you be wreathed in honor, as befits your dignity. I will heed your wisdom as I court the hand of the princess.” There! Are you not pleased, Aphrodite? We shall put on a show[2]! Redana will walk your labyrinth until she comes to its center[3].

Far-off mortar fire and the toppling of trees catches her attention: the pursuit is here. She flinches, guilty, pained. Knowing that it is her fault that violence has come here is a knife in her heart, and further proof that she cannot escalate the godly conflict. Every distant crash of splintered timber twists in her.

“There is no time to lose,” she adds, fervently. “I’m very sorry to ask, but can one of you please take me to her? The sooner I win her, the less hurt my enemies can cause this wonderful place.”

***

[1]: give up on your plans and walk away.

[2]: to renounce Aphrodite is to be heartless; is to steel yourself and let no kindness or sympathy sway you. To walk under Athena’s shield in such matters is to take what is yours by cold stratagem, the mathematics of battery fire, overwhelming force and spoil. It is to Redana’s credit that she does not even consider this.

[3]: Redana has not thought this far ahead yet.

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?