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Canada!

You painstakingly match mirror shards to frames. It’s like a danger puzzle. The Cat insists that there’s a way to look at glass and know where it belongs. You haven’t learned it yet, so there’s a lot of slapping your hand involved.

“I had to train. I had to learn.” Her eyes gleam as she watches you reach for another shard; you go unsmacked. “No kitten is born knowing how to hunt.”

Later, the rats have cannons, and strong opinions about becoming food. You hunker down behind a makeshift barricade while the Cat dares them to fire at her, her wickedly sharp teeth gleaming.

“Hunger! No one who is satisfied with the world as it is can ever fight. It will not arrange itself for you, Canada! When you let hunger spur you on, then you may change the world to your liking.”

Today, the secrets are drawn in violet ink on the wings of butterflies. You must act with deliberate care to avoid crushing them when you catch them in your hands. The Cat eats each one after reading the wings.

“They succumbed to the hunger that does not stop. A throne is a cage, mon ami. They gorge themselves and grow hungrier. What a waste.”

A flick of an elegant tail. The crunch of butterfly bones(?) under white teeth.

“The more you gain, the more vigilant you must be to see that it is not taken from you. But you already know that, don’t you? Cherchez la femme!

***

Anathet!

The click of chitin on a marble desk. Your own chair is uncomfortable, cramped, and hard, all by design. The office is choking with floral scents and incense, and you’re quite thankful how much of it your veil keeps out.

“I recall entrusting you with a duty,” Auntie Rose says, her raspy whisper dripping with menace. Her eyes are hard as coals. “Pray tell, why were you found at a den of ill repute in the places below? Are you not enjoying your privilege of direct service?”

At least you likely managed to save the bar! After you revealed your ownership, getting you home very quickly became a priority. And, hey, you’ve still got a date, as long as Auntie Rose doesn’t ground you! Or worse.

(And maybe even then, if you’re clever and lucky.)

***

Tamytha!

You ache. You are dizzy, and the ropes bite where they suspend you from the pole. You want to wake up and find this was all a dream. But here you are, left as bait for the savage humans so that Jezcha can get her trophies. Your head lolls bonelessly as your blood goes thin and you drift in and out of sense.

“Ohmygosh and goodness!”

You lift your head, mouth dry. “Little star, run,” you rasp, but even you can barely hear it. Your heart tightens in your chest as she (bedraggled, frightened— what did they do to her?) runs forward with your pistol. Oh, oh! No, lamassie, you silly little thing! You close your eyes and flinch, unable to watch Jezcha shoot her again.

There is firing and screaming. And... your little star keeps screaming. And then she’s here, she’s here, how could all those shots have missed? What is Jezcha playing at? But she’s here and trying to undo those painful knots pressing into you with all the strength of gravity.

Lamassie,” you manage to force out between dry lips, “you’re such, such, such a good girl.” Then you look up, and see Jezcha advancing, rifle raised to her shoulder, aimed at your little pet. You scream a warning for all that it hurts your throat, nudge her with your knee, and she turns just as Jezcha fires.

It barely misses both of you, embedding itself in the pole inches from your feet. And Jezcha already has another shot in the chamber.

“How dare you,” your sister roars at your pet. Another shot, this one firing wide in her fury. “I’ll have you shut up in the Houses of Correction forever!

If she catches your lamassie, she will hand your beloved pet over to the Inquisitors and you’ll never get to see her again. She’ll be punished and taught her place and given to somebody else. Your stomach twists.

“Please, please,” you beg, but you know better than to ask anything of Jezcha. “Run, lamassie!” But lamassie tugs desperately at the central suspension knot, and you tumble down into her arms, nearly knocking her to the ground. Which...

Which has given Jezcha time to line up another shot.
“Mmmn mmfffr!!” Bella has a firm grip. Her fingers grip Redana’s cheek and jaw snugly, stifling further response as she lectures her princess on what’s going on. And of course, Redana realizes with a sinking heart: of course Odoacer is going rogue. She’s not stupid: she’s seen (some of) what the Admiral has tried to do. She knows she’s supposedly a prize. Well, the joke’s on the Admiral: she has no intention of being a damsel in distress today.

She grabs Bella’s wrist and pries her hand free, having figured out that just shaking her head was getting her held tighter. (The hand relents, but rests against her jaw and throat stubbornly, threatening to silence her again. Is Bella still sore over how Dany had to make sure she wouldn’t call for Mynx?)

“Then help me,” Redana pleads. “Together, we can do anything!” Even to her, it sounds desperate and childish, an echo of their games. “We can run away,” she yields, as Bella vaults an overturned cart, “but with Epistia, and Alexa, and Vasilia and Dolce! You’ll love Dolce, he’s so sweet and soft and...“

Aphrodite’s slender fingers undo a button, already twisted on its side and half slipped free by Bella’s exertion, and Redana glances down. Soft. Bella is soft. Not just her fur, which is silky and so good for running fingers through, but. Every step sends a ripple through her. Color rises to Redana’s cheeks as she stares, wide-eyed, thoughts arrested.

Bella’s buds strain against that soaked top, shockingly dark and firm. Why is the sound of her heart reverberating in her skull? She’s bathed with Bella before, she’s always treated her pet with respect and never treated her like a, like a concubine, or a trophy, she’s her best friend so stop staring and why does her mouth suddenly feel so empty? Why is that a sensation her flushed, hot body chooses to focus on?

“Hold on,” Bella says, and before Redana can react they’re already jumping from a high place down onto a lower street, and Bella’s hand is on the back of her head pulling her close and tight and the world is, for a moment...

Soft.
The command seal is livid black and red breaking the cream of her skin, spread over the back of her hand. It is fully subdermal now, a twisted and delicate thing of Protohermaic script in gleaming metal. Redana has no idea how long she has until her theft of it is discovered. Maybe the wardens are already on their way.

“See this?” She pulls her glove down and Bella recoils, her tail stiff and her eyes wide. “It’s a command seal. I can use it to tell the statue at the door to help us steal a ship! She’ll take us to the hangars, and then we’ll go see the stars. The stars, Bella! Imagine how many wonders we could see out there, how many new friends we could meet—“

Redana ignores the warning until it’s too late: the way that Bella’s ears lay flat on her skull, the sick and frightened smile that isn’t matched in her eyes, the tensing of her fingers. She’s just too excited. The crack of Bella’s palm on her cheek tears the words away, leaves her ear ringing.

For a moment the two stare at each other. Redana holds her blemished hand to her cheek, her mind a whirl. The Auspex highlights in shimmering orange the pressure points of Bella’s body for a painful, non-lethal takedown; she misses the way that Bella’s eyes flick wildly between the red mark on her cheek and the hand that planted it there.

“Take that, that thing out,” Bella finally hisses. “We are going to put it back and pretend nothing happened.” She isn’t clear what she means by that, exactly. The Auspex pops up a little picture of a frantically beating heart. So many distractions! Her cheek is still throbbing; Bella put her hips into the swing.

“Bella, please, we don’t have time for this!” In her mind the wardens are already at the door, waved in by the statue of Athena, here to help with removing the seal and assisting her to her room, where she is to stay until her mother arrives. Why can’t Bella see that? An adorably stylized princess presses her thumb against the flashing orange spot until the servitor slumps over with zzzs over her head. Another slams an open palm against the base of her perfectly fluffy ears and then presses two fingers against her jaw until the struggling stops. Redana closes her eyes as tight as she can but the horrible images keep coming.

When she opens her eyes, Bella is framed perfectly in the doorway, her tail lashing, her chest heaving. “The Empress said to keep you safe,” her Bella says, crumpling and kneading her apron. “Even from yourself...”


***

“You scaredy-cat!

Redana hauls herself up using a bell strap as a handhold. She looks terrible. Her hair tie has given up the ghost, her breath is shallow, and her pallor makes her look like she’s put on her paint for the Festival of the Honorable Dead. But she’s not stopping. Her grip is firm and her mismatched eyes are steady.

“I made a promise, Bella! We have to go back!” Her boot hits a corner as Bella ducks into a side street and she bites down on the scream, burying her face into Bella’s neck for a moment. She still smells like home. She always smells like home. “Bella, please,” she sobs in frustration: at her body, at her servitor, at Jas’o. “We don’t have time for this...”
Anathet!

“This really is your first time, huh, dumpling?” The bouncer is sweating and you can feel how firm her arms are as she presses you down against the dirty arabesque tiles. “You’re not getting caught up by them. I’m just stopping them from hitting you until you curl up.”

(She’s wrong, but only because you’re a monk. You know that you’re going to be collared as a potential Enemy of the Chain. If only you had a disguise! But that’s a goal for later.)

“But sure, what the hell. At least you’ve got guts.” She winks, and then— oh no! You see a janissary loom over her with a baton.

“We’ve got a monk!” He yells back at his commander. And here it comes, oh boy. What are some of the protocols for handling a potentially rogue Zhianku, given their psychic prowess?

***

Canada!

“Don’t sulk,” the Cat crisply snaps back at you. “You came to me looking for guidance, and I offer it at very reasonable rates.”

Much like Variance, she’s a mercenary with ideals. She has dream logic work for you to do: rats to catch, mirror shards to sweep up, and bizarre secrets for you to deliver to her. It’s profitable for both of you, given your vastly different frames of what’s valuable.

“What you want is redemption. To achieve it, you must undergo transformation. You will never atone for your failures as you are, girl.” What makes the words sharper is the fact that she means them. She really does. From her point of view, she has to turn you into something different than you are.

You’ve already won serious concessions on that front after the Butterfly Incident. So now she’s focusing on changing you on the inside.

“You must be willing to kill one of them again,” she adds, her feline face betraying nothing. “But the process will be difficult. Now, let’s see about your payment for the next lesson. I do believe twenty rats will suffice...”

***

Étoile!

The restaurant is a mess. There definitely was a struggle here, and the rifle is gone. Most of what’s scattered about is your picnic supplies, a change of clothes, her sketchbooks and tablets (two broken). Of course not the wines, those were stolen by those brutes.

But, ah! Look here! Forgotten in the tumult: a sidearm with five shots left. (It’s an ornate, clunky revolver, very clearly not a laser weapon.) Your Lady must have had the courage to pull the trigger once! There are four of them, not counting their own valets, so that’s a margin of error of one shot.

It would be so easy to pick them off from the shadows with a rifle. It would take a skilled pistolier to take four Annunaki down at close range, and it would take a very, very skilled actress to make it seem like improbable luck. But what else can you do?

Your Lady needs you.
Everything is a jumbled confusion. She saw Bella-- blood-- kissing-- but, again, again, Bella, Bella, Bella. Which was impossible. Because Bella was safe at home. At least, Redana hoped she was safe. She prayed that Bella would be safe. She made a sacrifice to her father[1] on the first planet she landed on with Alexa: a wild stag, brought down with her bare hands. Please, she'd prayed, head bowed over the roasted meat. Please keep Bella safe. Convince my mother that Bella is blameless. Turn aside her anger.

It's Bella, the Auspex says, grumpily. There's a little catgirl holding a sign with her name on it, even, in her peripherals. 100% certified Bella. Except the Auspex thought the Ceronians were alive, so clearly, in Elysium, all bets were off and... no, no, it has to be Bella. Unless it's Mynx? That would make more sense, the shapeshifter would be a better huntress. Bella was lots of things, but she was no good at hunting at all.

But when she opens her green eye and lets herself look, even that thought withers away. How could it not be her Bella? Mynx was always too flirty, too wide-eyed, when it came to Bella. Only Bella would ever dare call her an idiot, and even then, only when she was sure they were alone, and only when chastising her about a new sprain or bruise or near-death in a training accident.

"Bella, why are you here?" There's something that's safe to be confused about. Not all those confusing half-dream memories of what the Nemean did in her place, perhaps thoughts or desires more than actual, well, act, because of course she wouldn't kiss Bella. Not her best friend. She wouldn't be so cruel to her Bella, not ever. "You said you wouldn't let me go, so why did you come?"

Then Redana looks up and down that new dress. The cleavage! The skirt that ends above the knees! Where's her apron with the pawprints on it and the long gloves? Her Bella doesn't like clothes like this! She's demure, modest, even a little bit of a prude, and... oh. Of course. Redana lifts her head and sees Jas'o there, ready to shoot her new friend and her oldest companion and even her, if she makes the wrong move. And absolute fury surges through her again.

"How dare you, Jas'o?" Her voice has a little bit of the Nemean's thunderclap left in it, a lingering echo. "Help me up, Bella," she adds, not even turning her head to look; she knows that Bella will happily back her up. Here, at least, even if she was afraid back home. "Jas'o, I can forgive you shooting me," she yells, keeping her weight on Bella, "but how dare you drag Bella out here? She wouldn't leave with me; I can't, I don't want to imagine what you did to her! Poor thing, she's worried sick, look at her! And another thing, how dare you dress her up like this? Drooling over her the whole way from Tellus, I'm sure, making her dress up like a party favor to titillate you and your dirty crew! Now put that Thunderbolt down, and if you dare shoot either of my friends I will make you very, very sorry you did it!"

She glares daggers at him, and then whispers out of the side of her mouth: "Bella, I can't stop him if you don't help me up..."

***

[1]: it should have been to Hera, except that Hera never accepted any of her offerings, no matter how hard she tried, no matter if they were hand-baked cakes or expensive golden earrings. So a sacrifice to Hera's bride would have to suffice.
Jackdaw!

The Tyrian Spire was extruded in order to be a lure. Those are the words rising up inside you, darling. You look up at these books and know that they were grown here for the purpose of bringing people just like you here. It is... difficult, right now, to say whether it is a lure of the Flood or for the Flood. It would make a terrible sense that the Flood would churn it up out of her waters, hide her knowledge inside it, and bring poor doomed fools right to her banks. But that doesn't quite fit the brief image you gained of her. It's just as likely, really, that something even more potent than she made this place so that she would coalesce herself around it and try to drag it down into her. To bring all those books (perhaps poisoned?) down into her deeps.

The books here are dangerous, dear. If you stuffed them in a bag, you'd be able to use them later, but you must not let yourself believe that doing so would be safe. They are quietly inviting, suggesting that you should read them, that what you want to know is inside, perhaps on the next shelf, or in the next chapter. Really, it's fortunate that you were touched by the Flood. Otherwise, maybe Ailee would have victoriously brought down that Wreck and then turned around and found you gone, scampered off into the stacks. As it is, looking too closely at the titles makes you sick to your stomach. Who knows how much time the clown spent here already? Perhaps you have saved him by stumbling across him.

As for fixing it? You would have to talk to the entity that caused it to be, in order to address or alter its fundamental purpose. Which would either be the Flood, or, perhaps...

Do you believe in the Shadow King, Jackdaw?

(They say he lives below Terminus. They say he is the first being who lived, or the last. They say he grows the Heart like a bonzai tree. They say he is the warden of the caged gods. They say all sorts of nonsense. But every story has its seed.)

***

Team Sasha!

You now are being guided by an elderly professor-turned-clown who is carefully holding onto a woefully face-painted donkey, perched upon Sasha's shoulder. "Climbing up was harder than going down will be, I think. The Flood likes things to be down and stay down, but Little Lightfoot here kept her footing, didn't she?"

The walls are clammy and water drips up and down, both ways, almost as if the tides were rolling in and out. The roar grows louder and louder as you make your way down upon Sasha. It's a very tight squeeze, and slow going, which means you all have a little bit of time to stress out about what you're going to find down at the bottom.
Canada!

“You have the eyes of the Lion,” the Cat says, her tone so acidic it could be used for etching steel. “Are you telling me that the most detail you could distinguish was that it was startling?”

A crack, a hiss, a pop: not coming from the Cat. The jewels you gathered are broken, and in several cases, reduced to molten slag. Burned out. Better them than your eyeballs.

(Their power is not like yours. In this place they are blind idiot gods, dangerous only by dint of their towering presences. They have not been touched by the Lion; this is not their home. Here, if you trained, if you somehow armored yourself against that burning spite and fury, you could fight them on even ground—)

“You saw one of the gods of the invasion. Shamash. They are an admiral, master of chariots, commander of fleets. If Earth had been space-capable, they would have torn your ships out of the sky like they did the Watchtower. They would have set thousands adrift to die in the ice up there, and would have been disappointed there wasn’t more of a thrill. Look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t want to do whatever it takes to stop them.”

[Label shift: +Danger, -Savior.]

***

Anathet!

The bouncer looks torn for a moment. On the one hand, she’s got a job to do here! She should be cracking a few heads together and then joining the janissaries as the representative of the bar! On the other hand, there’s chemistry here.

Roll to Provoke; if you botch it, she’s going to try to cut corners by laying you out, but she’ll follow through on a hit.

***

Étoile!

You breach the surface of the water. You’re in the great big Frontierland lake, and, ah, fortune! There are ducks here, too, making enough noise that the Annunaki who tossed you into the lake would be hard-pressed to hear you, as long as you’re careful and don’t gasp like a beached whale while you struggle your way to the shore.

Once you get there, you’ll have to work your way out of the ropes and figure out where they took Lady! Knowing Jezcha, she’s probably setting up some cruel display of Lady in order to serve as “human bait.” It would be her just desserts to let Marianne out to play... but would Marianne save Lady, or deliberately make her predicament worse? And would it be too suspicious for her to be here, of all places? But what is little helpless lamassie supposed to do to save her?

And why are there fences around the lake, like they didn’t want kids falling in? You’re going to have to suffer to pull yourself out and up and over.
"Eeeeek! Somebody, please, save me!"

The helpless Princess Stellabrande squirms against the totally incapacitating plush serpents wrapped around her forearms and kicks out at one of the vicious velvet squids approaching her. You can tell that she's a princess in need of saving because she's got a spare tiara on her head instead of a headdress. And, oh, goodness, how she squirms against those serpents, sent by Poseidon in his most wrathful aspect! Won't anyone save her? Won't anybody at all?

"I'm here!" The fabulous swashbuckling Princess Redana charges into the room, grinning. She sets about her with her training foil, dealing the velvet squids devastating blows! One! Two! Her sword sings as Stellabrande gasps excitedly. "Don't worry, princess, I'm here to save you!"

"My hero," Stellabrande says, smiling shyly. "So, what happens next?" she asks, as Redana unwinds the no-longer-resisting stuffed animals from around those white-furred wrists.

"Well, usually the princesses kiss," Redana says casually. Princess Stellabrande looks very carefully nonchalant as her tail stiffens. "And then Aphrodite warns them about danger and they have to run off together! And usually the running tires them out and so they have to sleep together."

"Well, you, you should let me go first!" Stellabrande says, her smile very big and not panicked at all. She takes Redana's non-dominant hand and gives the back a demure kiss. "You're my hero, Redana..."


***

For once, Zeus heeds the prayer of this humble Servitor. Even as the Nemean's hand slips underneath Bella's skirt, cradling the base of her tail (right where it's ticklish), the doors to the Seventh Dimension begin to open. Being so close is a terrible miracle: it is like an infinity of mirrors unfolding, cold and sharp. Ozone curls from the Nemean, and she raises her head and barks at the sky: "I'm not done yet, father!"

But it's too late. Bella falls from her hands and the cards are shuffled again, time and space correcting themselves as Redana stumbles out and collapses into Bella's arms, groaning in pain. Her journey to the couch of the Moirae only postponed her pain; the Fates did nothing to alleviate her suffering. The Princess is returned, and in a moment her blessed nanites will begin their work again to try and force her back up onto her feet, but right now she has collapsed insensate, head lowered and weight all on Bella, dazed and swooning.
Anathet!

The bar is a swirling maelstrom of chaos, one you flow through like water through rocks. You redirect attacks flawlessly, shroud yourself, and generally act like a ghost of bar brawls. The only thing that surprises you is when you bump into the bouncer, who’s wrestling down a Salamander.

Your eyes meet. She looks exasperated and sweaty, but when she looks at you, her eyes don’t look angry, but rather... well, her aura is that of someone watching a small, yappy dog do zoomies in the living room. She’s still underestimating you!

And that’s when there’s the sharp whistle of janissaries. They’ve arrived to break up your bar fight! By beating everyone senseless until they stop resisting. And they’re definitely not going to care who started it or who’s a bouncer or not!

***

Canada!

Right before you pull away from the vision of that shattered god, they look up. You catch a glimpse of a bloodshot eye, wide and staring, peering out from between trembling fingers.

You are seen. Only for a moment, and maybe they won’t recognize you, it’s not like they’re an actual god, but your fight-or-flight reaction kicks in hard. There are things that should not see you, and they are one of them.

“Tell me what you saw,” the Cat says, primly. She is very intent on you. But her gaze reminds you of that wild eye, that moment of revelation.

***

Étoile!

Tamytha rests her hand on your silly little head and smiles, her face crinkling into delight. “You’re such a good girl,” she says, her tone light and lilting. “You’re the best lamassie a girl could ask for.” Her thumb rubs a circle on your face, gentle and adoring.

“I wish we could just play here, lamassie,” she adds, and you know better than to let anyone else ever hear those words. “I could take you on a walk, and you could tell me about all your quaint little customs. These buildings... they’re connected to your myths, aren’t they? Your festivals and your legends. I recognized the iconography of your Bears— what did they symbolize? Strength, wasn’t it? Oh, you could tell me all of that, and it could just be you and me...”

Yes! This is it! This is your chance to tell her how much you want that, too! How nice it would be to pack up the awful rifle and the pistol and stop caring about the hunt, and just walk her around the park, kept on a leash that’s never yanked or pulled taut, explaining the memories and stories. You could tell her about Walt Disney, and share your favorite stories with her (and which were those, again?).

You open your mouth to speak, and that’s when the tranquilizer dart hits you in the rump.
There is a moment before everything goes wrong. Before disaster and apocalypse. Before the blood sinks into Bella’s lace. Just a moment, full of quiet panting.

”What a dangerous little knife you are,” the Nemean says with the voice of someone who appreciates the artistry of a knife, hoisting her up easily off of the queen with one hand. ”Good! Your princess will need all the protection she can get. She’s going to the end of the stars. I may have been there, once. Or perhaps that was simply another dream.”

Her lips are crushing, hungry, on the servitor’s own. She tilts her head down, holds Bella well off the floor. Then she bites down on a vulnerable lip, and laughs deep in her throat. The kind of laugh that suggests she may just pull that frilly lace off right here, if she’s welcomed.[1]

She is every inch her father’s daughter, after all. And Zeus cannot resist beauty.

What a tragedy, then, that there is no time and no opportunity for them.

***

[1]: in the Quantum Tomb, there is a sharp hiss of conceptual breath, as if from the lips of a dreamer who has seen something both dreaded and desired in her sleep. Insofar as anything can be said to happen in that place.
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