Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

Ack! Blppph! Mynx, why is that handkerchief already wet? Reusing a handkerchief on the Imperial Princess is illegal!

...well, it isn’t, but it should be! And it can be! Let’s put a pin in that! One day, there will be an official ordinance outlawing the use of sweaty, gross handkerchiefs on royal lips! And the fact that Mynx is breaking this pre-law will get her punished terribly!

Yes, when she takes Bella and Mynx back to the ship, she is going to scold Mynx in front of the entire crew! And she’ll have to wear a sign that says NAUGHTY SERVITOR! That’ll teach her to be so naughty!! And...

W-what’s with that smile, Mynx? Wait, you’re not allowed to discipline a princess!! Bella! Bella!! “Dnn’t hyyu drrrr,” Redana burbles, and, oh no, oh no, here comes the blush! Why is her face so vulnerable to blushes? Bella’s tail is squeezing her tightly and Mynx is leaning in and her face is starting to get hot, and, gosh, where is Alexa anyway??

She starts to realize that, um, Mynx’s ideas of discipline might not involve being told to stand in a corner and think about what she did.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Anathet!

Getting inside the library is easy. There's always the thrill of risk: for all that you have planned things out, there's still the chance that some guard, or even a guest or servant, might be in the abandoned corner of the library you are sneaking into. Does that make you anxious or does it fill you with energy?

Either way, you're inside. You're on one of the upper rings of the library: it radiates outwards and upwards from a luxurious reading area on the ground floor. Tablets are tightly packed on the shelves, but there are a multitude of niches for paintings, statues, and trophies, much more than you'd expect from a human library. (It's the fact that they pack all that information onto a tablet, you see. Gives them room to show off.)

There's conversation close by, and you start towards it, only to come face-to-face with Tia immediately, and that's not a face you want inches from yours all of a sudden. It's a jump scare, to be honest. How do you handle the sudden surprise?

***

Team Mirrors!

There are no people here. Only their shades. In the mirrors they are a strange menagerie, but here, in the Mirror-Margravate, they are indistinct and trembling shadows that bend and warp as you pass through them. (On the streets of Caphtor, Annunaki feel a chill run down their spine and step aside without thinking. Guard patrols unconsciously bend their paths to avoid the sense of being watched by many burning eyes. Gardeners clutch their shears tighter, their collars itching about their necks.)

The wind, too, is only here. It is cold and dry, wailing down the streets. In the neon-blue sky, painfully vivid, chariots scream and roar in their final landing approach. You are on your way now to the landing pad to get a first-hand look at Shamash's shadow.

Fellowship: The Heart

Team Train!

The song snaps into cessation as the antisirens throw themselves upon the thrown book. The whole Heart shudders from the moment the cover is swung open, or so it feels. They don't notice, gorging themselves upon the pages. It would be a good idea to get down before whatever happens to them catches you up in the crossfire.

One terrifying train rappel later, you've managed the Descent. At the bottom of the drain the world opens up into a desert. Each grain of sand is a bit of rust, and out of the dunes jut hideous iron buildings clawing at the sky. (The sky is false. It is yellow-white, and the glittering stars are black. It bulges like the shell of an egg.) Off in the distance stand the feet of a statue; there is a plaque beneath it. Doubtless it is telling you to look, ye mighty, and despair.

At the other end of the desert is a riotous jungle that will allow you to Descend, if Jackdaw's maps are correct. Now you must simply cross these dunes. Other than the Worms, all you must worry about is starburn and heat exhaustion, dwindling supplies and sand madness, not to mention the mirages.

Jackdaw, Lucien, tell us about the night that you spent cooking together.

Ailee, Coleman, tell us about the petty argument you had.

Breathless Dead

“MNNX???”

To say Redana is flabbergasted is an insult to flabbers, probably. How is Mynx here? Oh, wait. She was probably working with Bella all along. Who Redana is still mad at! Don’t get it twisted! But at least... at least they were working together for once. At least Bella had a plan to save her that wasn’t relying entirely on herself. And now that Mynx was going to let them free and help them escape and—

Sorry, what?

“Nnnh! Mnnx! Dnn’t huu drrrr!!” Redana glares! She furrows her brows together and gives her best impression of the Empress, despite (or because of) her shirtlessness, right up until Mynx leans in and bites her and— “MMMMHMHMHMHMMMPH~!!”

Mynx is a fiend! A devil! A tormentor from the pits of Tartarus! She knows that is exactly where Redana is vulnerable. Helpless. Ticklish. Redana squeals and grabs frantically, desperately, at Bella’s fingers, which she squeezes like a vice because Mynx is holding her still and she can’t pull her knees up to her chest and all of this frantic be elsewhere energy has to go somewhere.

While Mynx talks to Bella, Redana is wetly panting, making a mess all over her lack of shirt and clinging to Bella’s fingers. When she escapes— because she is, she can’t be held by anything, that’s what Zeus promised her— she’s going to have her revenge!! There will be pinning, Mynx! And noogies!!

From the sound of it, Mynx is pulling a prank on Bella anyway. But the joke’s on her, because Bella? Bella’s coming with her Princess. And so will Miss Ticklefangs over here!!

Chuubo's GMD: Love and Shattered Alchemy

[Storytime: 3/9
Adventure GET: 5/21
Up to Date: 1/15
Something To Deal With 2]

"After her!" Sessily is hard to steer, and I have to frantically wave my arms to keep my balance as we turn and chase after you, Dulcy! Don't think you're getting away that easily! Especially at the speed you're moving, which is keeping pace with a concussed and very sleepy snail. That snail's careening all over the sidewalk at half a mile an hour, can barely keep its eyes open, and doesn't even really look forward to arriving at its destination, which is the snail doctor's office, because it's getting a salt removal, and that really stings, and it's not looking forward to its snailsthetic which always makes it light-headed after an operation, and the snail's still keeping up with you, so really it's no wonder that we're able to catch up pretty quickly.

"Well, yeah," I say, leaning one elbow precariously on your head in a familiar and friendly manner. "A giant snake! A real one would be inconvenient to get out of the lake at this time of year, and besides, the handling requirements are killer! So we need you to whip up a mechanical one for us so we can win the competition!"

Breathless Dead

Don’t despair. That’s what Redana clings to, desperately. Don’t despair. If you give up now, then Odoacer wins. There’ll be a sham wedding, where the bride hobbles down the aisle while the Admiral preens. Don’t forget, she’ll whisper as the sacrifice to Aphrodite is performed, one word from me and your precious little Servitor will be spaced. Now, be a good princess and say I do. And after that... another gilded cage. A cell deep within the flagship, meals delivered by dumbwaiter, a door triple-locked from the outside, and always the threat: one word from me and Bella dies.

So that has to be stopped here and now. There has to be time. She needs time. The longer she can delay Odoacer, the more likely it is that her friends will come to save her, guided by the wisdom of her father. The gods help those who delight them, after all.

She takes a moment to try and steel herself. It’s not easy. Her stomach feels strange, like she’s teetering in the edge of a cliff, nervous and guilty and tight — and that was before Bella wrapped her warm, soft tail around it. There’s a tension taut at her breastbone and a breathlessness in her head that absolutely, totally only has to do with how any breath through her mouth is wet and slobbery. Is it warm in here? She’s so warm. And tingly. Is that because her body’s falling asleep?

If she squirms out of the chain (and she totally could) she’d just be making Odoacer angrier. She can’t fight with her leg still numb and useless, she can’t run away, and she needs to let Odoacer think she has the upper hand completely. That she can gloat.

So instead she rests her head against her shoulder while Bella furiously wiggles behind her. (Fingers accidentally interlace. She feels guilty for how reassuring that feels. Bella is being a real brathead stinkyface right now. And letting her free so she can kill another person is very much the wrong idea![1])

She looks Odoacer in the eye, and then casts her gaze down and flutters her eyelashes like Cassiothe in Danger on Orion VI when she’s captured by the Azora captain. She groans, huskily, around the leather bit in her mouth; spit bubbles on her lower lip; her toes curl in her boots as she keeps going. Look back up, keep your eyes lidded but let her catch you sneak a look, then push out your chest[3] and moan.

Come closer, she says. I’m helpless and all yours, she says. Tell me everything, she invites, wordlessly.

***

[1]: ”You’ve been a very bad girl,” Redana says, going down to one knee to look Bella in the eye. Her bloody-handed Servitor writhes against the steel stocks, her hair messy, her ridiculous skirt hiked up. “And I’m not letting you back out until you’ve been unmurder-trained properly—“[2]

[2]: this is where Redana’s imagination burned itself out out of sheer embarrassment, leaving her to note that maybe Keeping Bella Contained was a good idea.

[3]: this was, comparatively, much less visually impressive than if Bella had done the same thing. Redana has a bad case of Olympians’ Chest[4].

[4]: “two bronze medals,” as the punchline goes. Or “built for archery,” as the polite euphemism goes.

***

[7 on Keep Them Busy!]

Breathless Dead

"I wanted you to come!"

This is too much. Everything is too much. Her body throbs and aches and Bella is yelling at her so confusingly, everything is getting upended and she needs time to think through everything that's happening, but Bella sounds like she's mad she got left behind and is blaming her for wanting to go on a magical adventure alone and that's not what she wanted, that's never what she wanted, and the unfairness, the unfairness is burning her up and vomiting up words.

"Why do you think I told you? Oh, Bella, I'm going to save Tellus, be sure to have my laundry done when I come back!" This is such a bad idea. She hasn't even thought through what Bella was saying yet. "You and me! It was always supposed to be you and me and then you hit me and what was I supposed to do, cry and go to my room?? And, and it's not a servitor thing! My new friends are servitors too and I don't order them around! And they can pilot ships too so good for you, I guess, but it could have been us piloting that ship because honestly Alexa was not a very good copilot!!" She's babbling and her heart's going faster than Poseidon's tempests.

Thank gentle Aphrodite that Bella does not move at her, so that Redana does not flinch and make that gentle maid's heart shatter into ten thousand fragments. Instead, Redana gets up, wincing and making a strangled noise when she has to put weight on her tainted leg, but she forces herself to stand up and look Bella in the eye. Her cheeks are that mottled red-and-white that they go when she's trying her hardest not to start bawling.

"So thank you, I guess, for going the long way around and killing someone you didn't have to and yelling at me and pretending to be my friend this whole time, you did a great job until I wanted to stop sitting around being useless!!" A wave of nausea hits her and she doubles over, putting her hands on her hips and nearly toppling over. Okay, Dany, breathe. Through your nose. You're not going to throw up on Bella's pretty boots.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

||SHAMASH||

OBJECTIVE: One of the High Gods is visiting. The Annunaki are all abuzz, and there will be a triumphal parade from the landing pads on the far side of the city to the Temple of Ishtar, which has recently stepped up their security. Making a play there is foolhardy. No, what we want is to make a play. Preferably one that doesn't lead to us getting nuked from orbit.

OB1: Acquire one of the Fleet Keys that Shamash carries and replace them with these forgeries. The Fleet Keys are concentrated data shaped into rods instead of tablets, hanging upon their breastplate. If #MAT can take one apart, she'll be able to put together a "skeleton key" - something that identifies you to the ship's systems as having the authority of one of the High Gods.
OB2: Identify what Shamash is doing here. Ideally, figure out some way to get them to leave. We don't need the attention on this city in particular.
OB3: do NOT allow yourselves to be compromised. As long as Shamash is here, this city does NOT have revolutionaries. It is law-abiding and smoothly operational. The reprisal would be terrible if anything were otherwise.

***

The chariots are a host darkening the sky. There are at least fifty of them, heavily-armed and expertly piloted. Work crews in Caphtor Below frantically finish their realignment of the intricate hangar systems as they begin their final approach, after seven times soaring over the city. It is impossible to tell which one is piloted not by one of the Annunaki but by Shamash themselves.

If you are human in the city, you are either collapsed in bed after three days of double shifts or rushing to finish your tasks under the watchful eyes of your overseers. There is a nervous mania in the air: what Shamash has decided to do is almost unthinkable, breaking with centuries of tradition. While it is understood that Shamash must by necessity often leave Babylon, they never stoop so low as to descend upon a planet personally. (Excepting, of course, upper atmosphere dogfights, where the unworthy foe seeks to hide in the winds and the clouds, but even then they do not land.) It is not done.

But now it is happening. (And of course, the Annunaki nervously joke, if any of the High Gods were to do this, of course it would be Shamash, wild and free, touched by the spirit of adventure that so define the ab-Shamashi. Of course it is them, and not Ishtar or Ereshkigal.) The rumors as to the reason for their appearance are wild and excited and impossible.

Name your approaches.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Haman ab-Marduk!

The breeze you ordered comes wafting over the garden wall, curling about your guests as they applaud the esoteric that you got for the garden. It is appropriately exotic. The Macaw chanter and Lynx musicians standing by one of the fountains begin their own performance, performing the Twenty-Seventh Prayer of Celebration. It, in turn, is appropriately familiar and soothing. The entire garden moves like a well-oiled mechanism, and this is just as it should be. You appreciate it when everything does what it is supposed to. When things do not work as they should, you are unfortunately forced to press the issue. It's such a bother.

A successful party like this, tastefully restrained, appropriately indulgent, adds to your reputation. Naturally, you are the Seneschal of Caphtor. Of course you are. Why wouldn't you be? You proved yourself in the Hymissian Reach against the foes of the High Gods, fearsome but ultimately pathetic devils and unholy beasts, leading first a company, then a legion, then an entire Expeditionary Force. You secured spoils and broke every weapon that was arrayed against you in the name of the High Gods. Your promotion to civic administration was deserved, as was your rise through the ranks.

You even had three children, one of whom was actually promising. The most the other two can offer is not disappointing you. Not shaming you. You're not meant to break them, after all. Not unless the Inquisitors are circling.

You take a sip of your black wine and breathe through your nose. Yes. All is as it should be.

"My lord," the Thornback hisses apologetically. Your gaze drifts down to it. Your execrable wife's favorite. Maybe that alone makes it worth breaking. You arch a perfect brow and say nothing so viciously that it digs its talons into its own palms. "You have a visitor awaiting your pleasure in the Eightfold Nave. The honored and esteemed Asahel ab-Shamash of the House of White Steel offers his congratulations on this, the celebration of your incomparable daughter's upcoming examinations, and bade me insist on a moment of your time."

You press your drink into its hands and stride away without a word. Asahel. Now what does the Huntsman want with you? He knows you are busy tonight, and he knows better than to waste your time. He is not the first Huntsman of Caphtor you have seen during your administration, and he has wisely kept his distance.

When you enter the Nave, he is pacing in his ridiculous flight-jacket and boots, his veil close-fit to his face. "Haman," he says, with undue familiarity. There is sweat beading on his forehead. "They're coming here."

You take a breath. Your fingers curl. He will regret every word he has just spoken by this time tomorrow. "Slow down," you bid him. "I fear your wits must be addled by the high airs. Take a seat. I will call for drinks."

"No time," Asahel says. "They sent word by courier, they want a hunt prepared for them, suitable accommodations, we will need to advance their feast days--"

The blood turns to ice in your veins. You reach out and take Asahel by the breast, fixing him with the furious eyes that made your soldiers quail and advance time and again from the trenches. "Asahel. What did you overindulge in?"

He wordlessly hands you what he should have offered you from the first: the tablet, golden and gleaming. The commandments, each one carved perfectly. The seal of Shamash, the Breaker of Horses, who turns the stars in their wheels.

For the first time in centuries, one of the High Gods descends upon the unworthy from the heights of Babylon.

Breathless Dead

When Bella turns, Redana is already looking at her. And the expression on her face is horrified. One hand covers her mouth; her eyes are wide with shock; her every nerve is frozen and taut. She is prey.

She knows, indistinctly, that Bella was, is a trained bodyguard, a last line of defense for the greatest prize of the Empire. But she has never seen anyone die at Bella’s claws before. Never. Never ever! Bella Oystershell Meowmeow is a fussy little maid who’s always worrying and fixing her lady’s hair and blushing whenever someone makes an off-color joke and does a silly little trot in place when she’s flustered!

And watching that calm attentiveness, that worried twist of her lips, that demure lowering of her lids, slip back onto her face is sickening. Redana’s stomach plummets as if someone kicked her legs out from under her. Everything. Everything she thought she knew about her Bella was a lie.

Was she trained before she ever hopped into that box? How long has she been pretending to be her lady’s friend? Her best friend? How many lies has she told her princess, if she can kill someone and then put on the mask of meekness? Was their whole friendship a lie?

That’s why she didn’t want to let you leave.

No. No no no. Bella can tell something’s wrong. Redana can’t get purchase in the mud, can’t get up on her feet, not with one leg now completely numb. Her scramble backwards is ungainly, panicked, her fear palpable. Let her face a dozen hydras, or a legion of thinking machines, or a void dragon, just please don’t make her face the monster in front of her.

She can’t hurt Bella.

And she doesn’t know, can’t know, whether Bella won’t hurt her. For her own good. Jas’o is a crumpled mess and he was an ass and deserved punishment—

Zeus, father, was this the punishment for Jas’o’s hubris? Bella your thunderbolt? The words won’t come out of her mud-clogged throat. All she can do is gurgle and crack her elbow on a rock as the ground slips out from under her again.

Weak. Vulnerable. Pathetic.