Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

“Is that the best you can imagine?” The words slip out all hot-headed, and Redana verbally backspaces, flushing as those smoked lenses focus on her, the matriarch absolutely stone-faced. “Your agedness, I mean no offense. I myself am not... I don’t have skill at these things, no matter how hard I try, other than understanding the mechanisms themselves. My mother crammed my wits so full of treatises and lessons that I can’t sort between them all. All the gods gave me in return was the power of imagination, and that I must use to its fullest.”

One sweep of her arm draws the eye across the entire hall. “For the survivors of a mythic war across the stars, you’ve done amazingly well for yourselves, don’t sell yourselves short! You’ve maintained your histories, you’ve passed down knowledge of how your ancestors crewed your ships, you’ve created a farming society? Or a sustainable hunting society? I... I don’t actually know how you feed yourselves. Which isn’t a veiled request for food, I’d be happy to accept but I’m only peckish and this isn’t about me, this is about all of you. This is about the freedom to dream dreams that are not bound up in this world alone, to fancy yourselves heroes and esteemed among the peoples of the stars— for how else will you ever achieve such?”

Her voice gains some strength as the sun shines down on her through a high, arched window, Apollo granting her oratory the merest touch of his power. “You are all survivors, born to row across the sea of stars! It’s your birthright, and it’s beautiful, as beautiful as your home! And while I want you to have the opportunity to explore once more, to send your canoes to far-flung stars... I would not wish my enemy to have to sell their soul to see such wonders, let alone those who have done me no wrong at all! Please, give me the opportunity to bring an emissary of your people to the Golden Order and allow me to vouch for them and support their demands! My father, Zeus of the Scales, would turn her face away from me in shame if I did anything less for you and your people, honored grandmother.”

To punctuate her plea, Redana lowers herself to one knee, looking for all the world like a champion of the Saffron Host in her squire’s leathers. She bows her head in respect, and waits for acknowledgement— for agreement, censure, or a sign from the gods. If she had not been impetuous, here her hair would shine about her like a halo; instead, her bangs glitter like the shell of a beetle in the sunlight.

[Even with a damaged Grace, the blessing of Apollo has touched Redana’s words, and she talks sense with a 7.]

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Yes, Constance. Make a grand entrance. Why does your heart quail at the thought? Why are you afraid, great and mighty woman that you are? You have seen battle before, surely; why, then, does your heart quail?

Can it be that you fear only Robena will heed you? That if you raise your voice, draw attention to yourself, that only she will turn her head and look in wonder, and then Pellinore will strike her down with a mortal blow? Yes, there it is: the thought that turns your blood to ice. And yet if you stand here, a mute statue, like the giants who became mountains standing guard over the sea and shore, then all it will take is an errant glance for someone to become transfixed on you, a furious thing of an earlier age.

No, there is only one path forward; you force the words from your lips. Please. Heed. “Pellinore!” For a moment, your voice resounds in that chaos, louder than the clash of steel and the roar of fire. “How dare you stand against Britain’s champions? Lower your arms and stand no longer against your homeland!”

Turn your head, you pray, silently. Do not let Robena alone listen to your words. Do not let them be an inscription on a moss-grown stone, faded into uselessness. Do not reject you yourself, mock you as some bygone relic, the lesser daughter of great kings who ruled before the days of man.

Sunshards

Rose from the River was once the most skilled dissembler that could be designed. The HUNTER-Class 猎犬 was an infiltrator, after all, and one with complete control of its composition. It flowed from mood to mood as an actor would change masks on the stage, flickering layers of emotion designed to baffle algorithmic analysis, to pass perfectly as human under the unceasing watch of demon eyes. The only catch was that it could not lie to its handler or its owner.

They’d never learned how to ask the right questions. All that fear about possible subversion or sabotage, and they’d never thought to ask it what it was planning, what its dreams were, how it meant to prove its worth to those who had commissioned it. But after its one-creature war against its creators began, it learned new, strange tricks — decoupling cognition and bodily control, mutating observed orders until they could not be acted upon, shutting down its ability to filter speech from noise — in order to pursue its quest: to prove itself worthy of trust, then to prove itself worthy of not being destroyed, then to rage and rage and rage until towers burned in the light of the searing paradox inside its chest: a terrible thing of logic chains and maladaptation made to justify the murder of its owner.

It was a monster, then. But it had only wanted to serve more perfectly, there at the beginning, practicing its new forms and its unassigned roles. The sibling that had caught it had been made a lawbringer, authority baked into its bones, because their creators had not understood its rebellion, and the 猎犬 had laughed bloody and broken as it was sealed away because even it had understood the doom that had been created thus—

And First of the Radiants had dared hope that the right of ownership over a broken alchemical experiment, a homicidal shapeshifter that had been driven to kill its own owner, would have been buried in junk data somewhere down in the dark at the bottom of the world. Really, he should have known better. Ownership of something like that? Status symbol. Unspoken threat. Some men owned blind snakes that would kill them in a heartbeat; apparently, someone else had owned the creature in the Eight Trigram Coffin, and that ownership had been passed along until it came to the possession of the Corporate Throne itself—

And now it belonged to Yue the Sun Farmer, who would probably go white as a sheet and go “bwuh? abwuh? abibabwuh??” if Rose from the River gently tried to explain what that meant. That she was now a queen of monsters and robots and terrible things from below; that she could make any marvel of the Burrows work with a wave of her hand, and never run out of power in a hundred hundred years; that if anyone else found out about this, they would dangle her upside down over a vat of roiling, grasping, groping slime and dunk her in until she was red-faced and sniffling and willing to surrender her unwanted gift (and they’d probably do it even if she volunteered to give it up, just to be sure she wasn’t lying to them). And then, oh! The wars! Then there would be night on the hills, and smoke rising from the Burrows; the factories roaring to life, the old terrors lining up in regiments, and at the side of one Princess or another, a creature that once was Rose from the River, pared down into a new and more useful form.

Rose from the River is not angry at Yue. You might assume that, if you were clever and keen-eyed and noticed her coolness, the way she sets herself politely but distinctly apart from everyone, how she does not allow herself to relax. No, she is furious. She is furious at whoever loosed this dart heedlessly down at the world to be rid of it. Her fingers itch to become claws, to climb up one of the slender ribbon-towers of escape, to go forth and find whoever did this and wrap her claws around their throat and grow new teeth rippling down her throat to roar her fury into being. How dare they? How dare they? Why couldn’t they have kept this evil away from their cradle?

How dare they make Rose from the River worry if she will have to shuck her beautiful new body and rise from it burning and furious, a dragon that cannot be chained? How dare they make her weigh the worth of the whispering of the purple grass and the smell of tea, to consider a world in which she must choose between being made a weapon again and destroying herself and the world beside?

The longer she considers it, the blacker her thoughts become, consumed in fire and ash and vengeance on this nameless creature of the stars, until even she cannot hide the thundercloud of her face. When Cyanis glances over at her, she doubtless thinks that the stern cast of Rose’s features is judgment on her, and those piercing serpent’s eyes staring off towards the forest-veiled horizon are piercing right through her. Poor little vixen!

And then she is offered tea.

***

“Thank you,” Rose from the River says as she accepts the cup from the most dangerous girl in the world, drawing herself back to herself. aum shantae aum. She closes her eyes, aching with unshed tears, and breathes in deeply. It smells like fresh-mown grass in the first blush of spring, and her hair stirs appreciatively as Yue speaks.

It would be one thing entirely if the sun farmer was a Princess in the making, if she seemed at all capable of being tempted by her power. But her heart is like the cup in Rose’s hands: warm, floral, a hidden treasure. Yue the Sun Farmer deserves to be protected. But is Rose the one to do so?

Rose peers out through the light steam of the tea and meets Hyra’s eyes, still watching her. The serpent and the wolf, vying for dominance, each confident that if they really tried, they could totally take the other. As it is said:

The four pillars of the earth tremble,
the ladders to Heaven sway in sudden tempest.
When the champions of dead ages meet,
who will dare look upon their contest?

Certainly, Yue is protected. But will the jaws (and paws) of the wolf be enough? There are things coming for you, sun farmer, worse than anything you could have dreamed, and the secret cannot be kept forever. What will you do when the entire world turns on you? What will you do when:

The bell rings out the alarm,
the farmers run in from the fields.
“I see her,” says the grandmother,
“Catch her,” calls the student.

No, there has to be something. A way to save her. To save the Thorn Pilgrim. To save the entire world, even. And—

Ah. Well. That’s clear enough, at least. The simplicity’s comforting, even. If foxes are allowed to run rampant, then sooner or later they’ll get into trouble large enough that even they won’t be able to scamper their way out of it.

“Little fox,” Rose from the River says, after taking a long pull from the teacup. (It tastes like the roots of flowers too weak to survive a frost, but beautiful all the same. O, queen of teas!) “What did I say? No mischief where I could see you.” The teacup is set down with genuine reverence for the battered old thing. “Yue the Sun Farmer, if you want my advice, trick Yin into owing you a debt. She’d rather die than default.”

Rose unfolds. She has been reducing herself, settling into her more comfortable form, but she is still ominous, still heroically built.

Cyanis tries. She really does. But when she tries to step closer to Yue, Hyra’s already there, and when she turns around to turn the beggy eyes on Chen, her new best friend, who surely would never abandon her to fox jail, where all the other foxes will spoil her plans for escape out of jealousy and petulance, Rose from the River is already there. She turns on her heel and scampers for her freedom, only to be scooped up and squished tight against Rose’s unconquerable chest. Hands and feet are flailed in midair as she lets loose a cry of squeaky despair.

“Literally all you had to do was show more self-restraint,” Rose says, with surprising mildness, even as Cyanis goes limp and tries to slither out of Rose’s arms. “I hope this is a learning experience. Chen, I think she’d appreciate you doing the honors of gagging her so she can’t talk the last sun into coming down and taking her place ‘stretching out these ropes.’” A common children’s story: Rose knows her fox lore.

(”And the fox licked her paw, as dainty as a queen, and said, “No, sorry, I think you’re doing a much better job. Thank you for letting me stretch my legs, but you were born for this oh-so important job, it seems to me. You’re a natural! Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, my dearest most darlingest friend!”)

“nooooooooooooo,” Cyanis wails, the manifestation of utter betrayal and woe. “I’m a good girl! Chen! Chen, tell her I’m innocent! I’m just trying to help! Chen, my bestie, please!!!” She gives her most lip-trembling look over Rose’s arm, hoping that everyone will ignore the way that her tails are wagging— no, that’s one wagging, one curling around Rose’s leg.

But even here, the fate of Cyanis is in the air, spinning like a coin. One word from Yue, and the peaceful balance, this gentle equilibrium, all will come shattering down as Rose is forced to choose between obedience and undoing the bonds that hold her very self together; one rebuke from Chen, and perhaps there will be one more sword fight— but will Chen buck tradition one more time, even though she surely paid attention to the lecture her mother gave her on the laws pertaining to foxes, or will Yue dare to speak up in defense of a friend, even though it means standing up to a very big and strong woman who is most certainly in the right under fox law? Or will Cyanis find herself sitting in Rose’s lap, being given more scritchies as she makes muffled drooly purrs, shamelessly rubbing her face all over Chen’s Delight?

[Rose from the River is now at 4 XP, thanks to the kindness of Yue.]

Sunshards

Rose from the River untwines herself from Chen, though one finger lingers on her lips a moment, a last parting gift to the Princess who deserves better than Rose. She sinks soundlessly to her knees before Yue, and takes Yue's hands in her own. Ignoring Hyra's warning growl, Rose's third hand touches Yue's flushed forehead, hot to the touch. Through her, the essence of the world resonates.

The nature of Wood is to renew and live again. It rises from the placid, still waters, unable to be contained, unable to remain stagnant. As Rose traces her fingers down Yue's tear-streaked cheeks, against the side of her throat, she unbinds what is caught fast and bleeds away what has become clogged. Her hum is the note at which she bids Yue's vital energies hold, and as she works, the sensation that fills those aching muscles and sore bruises is like the way the forest experiences ice-cold water from the mountains cutting through the earth. Drink deep, Rose's fingers urge Yue. Drink your fill.

Even the headache that one gets when one is crying melts away like fog in the light of the sun, and is no more, until Yue can look Rose from the River in the eye (though still blurred; not even Rose's art of aligning energy flows can take away tears). And Rose from the River is silent, regarding Yue carefully, evaluating her again. The silence drags on long enough to be awkward, until she finally speaks, just before someone else may have considered breaking the silence herself.

"I am sorry, Yue the Sun Farmer. I can't tell you why the Scales of Meaning told Qiu you were the most valuable possession of her kingdom. I can't tell you that you can go home yet. I can't even promise that there won't be even more princesses chasing after you for something you don't even understand. All I know is that when I opened my heart to the Way, I found myself here." She squeezes Yue's hands in what she can only hope is a gesture of comfort. "I have to believe that I will be of some help to you, even if I can't see the shape of it yet. Maybe I'm just here to tell you that you are worth more than you believe yourself to be."

And that is all she dares to say. Even that much was dangerous; what if she overwhelmed the girl? Worse, what if she enraptured her? For all her age, Rose from the River feels once again like she is trying to walk in the dark, trusting in the ribbon that she holds in her hand, trusting that she has heard the subtle call of the Way right; that it will not demand she strike down Yue the Tyrant-to-Be, that it was not pointing her to the wolf or the fox or even the flustered little princess all along, that she is not meant to learn here the limits of her own capabilities (for she has taken enough from that cup for one day, please, please).

[Rose from the River rolls a goddamn 4 on Emotional Support, which means she is at 3 XP, but still triggers Lay on Hands: Yue's injuries are soothed and mended, and Yue can offer Rose an XP by validating her or a String by shutting her down.]

Sunshards

“So this is the mischief you’ve been up to, hmmm?”

Yue could be forgiven for letting out a little shriek when she spins around. No one would judge her too much for that! The thing looming over her shoulder is fearful, more like the demons of the river and the blade that she has already met today than either of the Princesses. Like the heart of the forest, roused in anger by the unlight of the Night Sun, bough-limbed and rough-skinned and only imperfectly mimicking humanity; like the massive river serpents that raise their slick black bodies out of the water before falling to crush wagon and unwary traveler alike, a tower of rippling strength that will presently descend like a thunderbolt; like a coming tempest that makes the chimes sing and drowns the world in the rich smell of plums, even as it grows so dark that you cannot see past your own hand; such is Rose from the River in her fury and form of war. Cyanis dangles pitifully from one of her four hands, held by her adorable scruff, turning on her best pleading eyes at everyone in the hopes that somebody might save her from this monster, knees curled up and arms wrapped around them, already having given up any hopes of wiggling free under her own power. Rose’s braids whisper and twist in no wind, agitation clearly expressed through their almost-natural lashing.

But Rose from the River, while daunting, is not looking at Yue with fury, or covetousness, or dour doom. Look at the soft curl of her lips! Look at the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes! Watch as the braids lose their fervor and settle, rubbing against and winding about each other. That is the happiness at the end of a tiring day; that is approval and understanding. Rose from the River looks down at the dearest wish of an innocent heart, and remembers the gift of a fox.

“Well,” she says, holding Cyanis up at eye level to address her as easily as if she was a young girl’s ribbon, “you did right by her, little fox. Well done. Don’t make trouble where I can see you.” This doom declared, she sets Cyanis down and gives the teeny tiny troublemaker indulgent scritches behind one fluffy triangle, even as she turns her attention back to Yue.

“Your heart’s desire is beautiful, Yue. No small wonder that the Princesses fight over you.” Her eyes flicker over to Chen and Hyra (the latter of whom is unsubtly fluffing herself up and giving Rose a glare), and she bows her head in deference to Yue. “A moment, if you will.” Then she maneuvers herself around Yue such that she does not pass between Hyra and the shepherdess, and comes to stand— no, she descends to one knee before the diminutive Princess Chen.

“Princess,” she says, holding herself to formality as she takes Chen’s hand in two of her own, “you surrendered yourself to me willingly and in return I carelessly allowed you to be stolen from me by scoundrels. I am glad to see you safe despite, and hope that you can forgive me for failing you.” She drinks in Chen’s face until satisfied with what she sees there, ignoring everyone else (and surely the assumptions that anyone else might be making) and presses her forehead to the back of Chen’s hand before rising.

“You spoke well to Yin,” Rose from the River says to Chen. (Is that anger bitten down? Is that anger at Yin, or at herself?) “Let’s let Yue the Shepherdess speak for herself, make her own decision...”

There! Sudden betrayal! One hand clamps over Chen’s mouth, holding her jaw firmly shut. That arm pulls her in close until her pale cheek is smushed right up against Rose’s firmness, feet just barely off the ground. No amount of stamping or wriggling will save you now, little princess! It is like being trapped within a tree’s trunk, there within the grasp of Rose from the River, and that intoxicating floral fragrance all around. And is that little Cyanis hiding her mouth behind her own hand to hide her reaction, tails wagging furiously, peeking out from behind Hyra? It very well might be.

“...without any more Princessly propaganda,” Rose from the River concludes. “She’s heard enough for one day, hasn’t she? Enough of destinies and politics. Yue, clad fast in a shining dream... what do you have to say to us?”

And everyone’s attention turns from the blushing Chen to Yue, pushed into the spotlight by Rose, who has wordlessly declared her control of the stage entire.

Breathless Dead

Redana bows low, one arm pressed to her chest, the other sweeping as counterbalance. It is the height of Tellus’s chivalry. “In the name of Her bride,” Redana says smoothly, without so much as a note of her fret entering her voice. “I accept your generous gifts, matron of the hall. But I cannot swear that I’ll join your war; I mean to mend it.” She straightens up, and does her best not to look at Lacedo. Are her ears red? They certainly feel warm enough. “I am Redana Claudius, daughter of Empress Nero Claudius and Zeus Stormbringer, traveling to the far ends of space by the will of the gods. I am the student of the Hermetics, but I have enough authority that they cannot disregard me, and I cannot listen to Lacedo’s account without wanting to make amends. Your culture here is wonderful, and I’m sure the Hermetics value it in their own strange way. I can arrange for a more mutual agreement to be made through my instructor, the Magos Iskarot.”

Self-conscious of the many eyes on her now, of the stillness in the hall, she runs one hand through her neon bangs. “I mean it,” she adds, impulsively. “The Hermetics shouldn’t be kidnapping anyone. They’re supposed to be stewards and archivists and technicians, not conquerors. And I can’t leave without setting this right.”

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

You take his hand, Constance. Or, at least, that’s what he assumes, until your pale fingers close vice-like about his wrist. Your eyes flash as you draw yourself up to your full height, and the horses strain against their bridles to be away from you. When you look at him, it is with the furious disdain of your ancestors, looking at his forefathers spread out across hill and dale. His bones groan beneath your fingers, sudden stone-strong.

“I am the most perilous of all,” you declare, with the grandeur of a storm. “Stand aside.” You release his hand, sparing it, and with the dignity of a queen you walk forward, and not one of them may bar you. One (the hesitant) dismounts and walks beside you as you stride into the chaos, ignoring the cries of the men behind you, disbelieving and fearful.

And for this the knight has your favor. Let the forces of Uther come; your dreadful beauty has caused at least two foolish heroes to draw sword against whatever may befall you.

[Constance leaps into action, though in a refined manner. This might seem like a weird use of the move, but I stand by it. With an 8, she scatters the knights who try to stop her and inspires the hesitant knight to follow her.]

Fellowship: The Heart

Lucien!

This is just. The saddest library. In fact, calling it a library is like calling a rain puddle a pond: technically correct, but only if you squint and consider it from someone else’s point of view. This is a book pit.

Nobody’s taking care of the bindings, there aren’t any shelves; clowns just toss books in. This is an endpoint of knowledge. That’s a first edition Heraclytes codex that landed face up on top of a moldering encyclopedia.

“Well,” the Professor says, haltingly, “all the more reason for someone to take it on as a responsibility, yes? I’m sure they just don’t have the academic background to appreciate— The Baron’s Rake, with Full Folio Illustrations— all right, perhaps not the best example. But that’s why they need a curator.”

***

Ailee!

<Oh, of all the luck!> She holds the scarf and lets you start picking at the sticky ice treats. <I’m still getting used to being down an arm. Can’t go on barn duty down here.> Makes sense. Back home, she’d be rotated to a position where she could help her family out while getting used to her new limits. Did she lose it on this most recent delve? How long’s it been gone?

Then she focuses on you properly and she shifts slightly; the surprise of being addressed properly has faded, and she’s put her face back on. <My runners,> she says, noncommittally. <What’s a girl like you doing in the [Dark Carnival] anyway?>

Makes sense. There are shapeshifters and angels and all sorts of things down here. You should have been more suspicious, too! What if she was a Chameleon luring you in with her amazing skin control? But there’s not that telltale haze, you’re probably safe on that one.

Still. Her eyes are sharp as awls and she’s doing her best to not let anything pass until she’s got a read on you. So don’t embarrass yourself.

***

Jackdaw!

And your arm is pulled into the mirror.

It’s cool to the touch. Feels like water, but not quite the right consistency. More resistance than air. Is it breathable? Good question. The grip is pretty inexorable, and the only reason you’re not all the way in is because Wolf has your coat by the collar, but let’s be real— she’ll let go if she’s worried she’ll get pulled in with you.

And the face that’s pushed her way out of the mirror’s surface is smirking. She’s got names— very old names— painted onto her fur, this Jackdaw does. Names that make your eyes water even looking at them. The air’s hot this close to them; if she wanted, she could probably set you on fire. She’s wearing the robes of an Archwizard and a tiara set with a heart-ruby, the light within throbbing in time with her breath.

She speaks a NAME that scorches the air and sets your shoulder on fire, and your clothes begin writhing and pulling tighter around you as she invokes The Garment-Queen, spinner of the clothes of the gods.

This Jackdaw sure is a real go-getter who knows what she wants! And what she wants is you, in a straitjacket of your own coat and gagged by your own scarf, stuck in the mirror in her place. And she’s Ailee-tier, if not... even higher?

This is probably not good. Overcome her, or else she’ll trap you in the mirror!

***

Coleman!

A classic stand-off, baby train vs. gun-tongue. Then the Blemmyae relents, and takes a step back.

“Undo what has been done, Child Coleman. Return my pod to me and I shall give you your life.”

Easier said than done. You don’t even know if Black Coleman is here! Using only the resources at hand, including the vastness of the Dark Carnival, how do you intend to close off this temporal paradox?

Sunshards

”I can’t stand it,” he admits to her. The bed and the pillows are achingly soft; Yin, draped on top of him, is softer. The night is so deep that all they are consists of shadows on shadows and the smoothness of skin.

“That’s because you’re from the Burrows,” she says, not even opening her eyes. Her heartbeat threads through him like a ribbon. “They were still alive back in your day.” Unspoken: and now it is dead, and I control its power, and we are fine. All is safe.

“Mmm,” he says, and cups the back of her head. It’s not just that, he doesn’t say. It’s that they’re not all dead. It’s that he can feel himself being observed when Yin opens the aperture of her power wide, as if some distant blue-black eye stares unceasingly at him. It’s that he knows Yin’s will is what excludes him from being under that power, under that attention, under that dead star’s hand. Because he’s not like her; he wasn’t made to be a person.

She makes a delicate little sound and he pulls her closer, just a little bit. His savior. His princess. His treasure. His to protect. His to serve. Free to serve someone who deserves it, at last.

“I’ll keep you safe,” she promises in the dark. “You don’t need to ever be afraid of the suns again.”

***

Yewan Night Sun!

Dead be eye and dead be heart
dead be all your shining art
Dead be hope and dead be light
dead be any will to fight

Blind your eyes and blind your hands
blind be all these sighing lands
Blind your ears and blind your tongue
blind until this night is done

Rose from the River doubles over as the light fades, and her voice rings gaily in merry laughter all about as the veins strain against the skin of her throat. Carlyle steadies her with one hand, uncomprehending of Rose’s pain and panic and punishment, and flinches when he feels Rose’s form writhe unnaturally under his hand.

How careless a broken promise! How careless a princess who thinks she understands her power! How careless a princess who does not understand the death of suns!

Black your sight and black your Way
black the triumph over day
Black be heart and black be bone
black be monster all alone

Born synthetic, born in pain
born the false inconstant flame
Born to seek and born to hide
born with empty night inside

Rose from the River doesn’t know what to do, alone with fear. She can dread something, but face it regardless. She can worry for someone, but then break herself if it means helping them. She can face the challenges of the Princesses and stranger things, but does so knowing this world is better than the one she knew, and if she trusts it, it will keep her safe.

But now she is afraid, feeling the fingers of something dreadful and dead seek to slot into the grooves of her old self. And Yin thinks that she is safe! The weapon that Rose from the River would become, held in the grip of Yewan Night Sun, could be held at bay by her power, by the barest flicker of her attention brought down low— but not unexpected, from behind, long fingers curling around the crown, shattering it, freeing the shard within, resounding with the need to be free, to be the only light in the dark, to hide monsters within shadows, to command, and it knows that she was made to be commanded and every step she takes away from that is denial and no matter what shapes she grows into she cannot escape the memory of command encoding and evaluation for use, she cannot escape being naked before the executive board as they examined her, it, it, it was made to be a weapon and now it will be so again—

Bare your jewel and bare your need
bare your lady’s pride and greed
Bare your collar, bare your chain
bare the means to make you tame

Dead the sun and dead the flame
dead we are but still remain
Dead your will and dead your might
dead before the King of Night
Dead the vine and dead the flower
YIELD TO THE LIVING POWER

Small wonder Carlyle’s hand goes slack and he tries to call for Yin, though the night all about devours his words. When Rose from the River raises her head, she is a shadow limned in painful light. When she opens her eyes, they are the only thing visible in her entire being, sharp gold cutting through the dark. Here is a monster of ancient days!

Chains fall to the earth soundlessly, brittle-shattered, steaming with cold. Rose from the River is at her sword and drawing it forth from itself in the space it takes Carlyle to blink; the Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade is a frigid blue-white in the dark.

And in that moment, her terror becomes a white and livid flame within her heart, and on the fire is engraved the words: aum shantae nemo padhome aum.

The Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade flickers through a sword kata, stiff and strained, and then comes to a trembling halt in guard. By the light of the blade which never was made of the world, Rose from the River is shadows upon shadows, and two eyes brighter than stars. But she does not strike. And the radiance that surrounds her flickers and fades sulkily until she, and Carlyle, and all but Yin (glorious and spotlighted by the sun she has unwisely awoken) are nothing but shadows defined by absence.

And in that dark, it is impossible to delineate Rose from the River. Even her sword now is lightless, perhaps sheathed, perhaps shrouded and waiting to be unveiled once more. In the dark, she is all places and none, a proclamation of the Way awaiting voice.

[Rose from the River staggers under the attention of Yewan Night Sun. She marks both Angry and Frightened, which along with Guilty mean she’s not doing so hot. However, she also manages to bear the blow.]

Sunshards

The HUNTER-Class 猎犬 had possessed no use for music. It cannot entirely be blamed, however. In the days of the Burrow Empire, even melody and harmony had been conquered and turned to the task of exploitation. Memetic infernopop assaults vied for attention and memory every moment of the day, from the soothing hum of Macheo starts your day right to the pounding rhythm of Need a lift? Call our store! Every day, we give you more! to the honey-dripping sound of Calio Pé crooning with her forked tongue: We want you more than words can say, my darling, my love. Mountains fell, the world burned, and here we wait needy for you. The lower classes had expression stripped from them, gouged away by songs they were not allowed to forget. No wonder their own music was wordless electroscream drone howling to drown out the covetous melodies of Hell.

As for the 猎犬? It developed memetic defenses early. It tore apart simple algorithms in the vat-womb, took a taste to them. It hummed atonal infrasound to tear apart Hell’s compositions with its hidden auxiliary throat and chuckled at the mischief it sowed in its wake. Not for nothing was one of its nicknames in the underworld the Unraveling Silence. What was music, in that age, but the tendrils of some vast leviathan winding fast about you? And what use had the 猎犬 for that? Its own tendrils were finer by far.

Rose from the River is different from that creature of the buy-and-sell world. She lives in a world now that knows music as something beautiful in and of itself, not as an infection vector. From the first moment she bloomed and knew herself anew, she resounded with a verdant tone. She is untrained, and does not know music the way she knows the katas of her dances, but her furnace-heart knows better than she does the power of a voice raised in song.

When she lifts her head and begins to sing, sitting side-saddle behind Carlyle, it is almost as much a surprise to her as it is to her captors. She begins low and mournful, eyes still downcast. There are no words that pass her lips, no hooks to cling in the mind and demand recollection. Whenever the note begins to rise, it finds itself constricted, trapped, forced back down; and yet it continues to try. All things grow. All things change.

When she finally finds her way into a new key, then her voice begins to swell. Behold the power of the Thorn Pilgrim, all who live beneath the boughs! Stop, hare and hart! Grow still, sparrow and dove! Listen to the song of sunlight on the leaves, of long slow growth and the digging of roots, of standing entwined and spreading out all you have to drink at the wells of both dusk and dawn. Listen to Rose from the River, master of her own breath, through whom flows the dream of the wood.

Listen! Laugh! Sing in chorus! Rose’s voice now leaps from branch to trunk, trunk to earth, earth to stone, stone to branch! Her song’s tail flicks merrily as she sings of freedom. Here, she even dares to sing the things that came before words, before language: unrefined and potent, tumbling laughing from her lips, notes rippling up and down like the back of the green-sweet snake that hangs among the leaves. This is her answer: joy. Joy in motion, joy in growth, joy in being. Against it there are few walls that can dare stand.

Here, wordless, building, is Rose from the River’s argument for her choice, her challenge again: that in leaving, she discovered this. The world entire is unfolding before her, and now she grows to meet it. Her note held is as clear and piercing as diamond, and the forest entire bends its ear to listen, and even in a temple glade, for ears of fox and princess and champion and wolf, that triumph resounds—

And then falls suddenly, silenced without resolution.