Tatterdemalion

Sunshards

Of course Rose recognizes the shining light in Chen’s eyes. How could she not? That joy, that hope, that belief in fox wishes: she would have to have a heart of stone lying leaden in her chest not to recognize it and love it, because once she knew it, too. And it is certainly for Chen’s sake that, instead of putting her foot down immediately and informing Cyanis in no uncertain terms that she was banned, yes, banned from doing any more fox mischief, and that they would figure out a more practical plan all on their own, one that would not get hearts racing and so beguiled with delight that they would miss the delightfully wicked fox crimes being carried out right in front of their helpless eyes, Rose just blushes darker and thornier and feels her own heart start to race with that familiar excitement and longing. She should not! She should be strong! She should, at the very least, carry out her duty as a mendicant monk and supervise Cyanis in her granting of a wish.

But what Rose instead does is hum thoughtfully. So thoughtfully! One might almost imagine that she was developing some sage insight, not sweating like an ordinary girl (all apologies to Yue, who we are sure sweats a simply ordinary amount when in the presence of Hyra). “Well,” she says, her voice slightly huskier than usual. “One prize might not be enough for a globe-trotter like Jessic. And we can’t let dear Chen here get dangled as bait alone. Her plan is... sound.”

And then she turns to Cyanis suddenly, back to looming, full of doom. “Little fox,” she says— no, she declares, tipping Cyanis’s chin up to look at her. “If you carry this out and then make an attempt to run away, then I will make you regret your choice to flee justice. But if you carry out the wish of Princess Chen, to be the lure that brings Jessic here, I will regard it as Service to the Community. Consider carefully the fact that we are likely to be peers for a very long time.”

It should be obvious to see, despite any protests to the contrary, conflict war across Cyanis’s darling little face. On the one hand: tie everyone up and then escape from the monk! On the other hand: have both a grateful princess and a monk in your debt! On the third hand: make Chen, Jessic, and Rose in your debt with a successful hand-off and then get pampered as a fox should be in the Sky Castle! Oh, look, resolution. Wasn’t that quick?

“Cyanis, pure-hearted fox,” Rose manages to say without a hint of irony, “I offer myself into your hands. Secure me alongside our dear Twinshard Chen, spare no expense in making sure I am truly helpless so that Princess Jessic has no reason to suspect treachery, and...”

Rose closes those great golden eyes and lets out a shaky sigh. “Please take this collar off my neck and then give me a makeover. A dragon-attracting makeover. I suggest Royal Concubine or High Priestess, but you know best.”

Now this. This is a surrender. To admit that she needs Cyanis’s help to remove the collar, then to give her free reign over her wardrobe, all but begging her to be strict and stifling and be impudent in showing off how helpless she can make one of the pilgrims of the Way? To allow herself to be put into a position where Cyanis could walk off with all her belongings (and some cute new floral panties) and leave Rose from the River shouting “~n, ~n!!” after the fox?

Chen isn’t the only one unable to hide the sparkle in her eyes, suffice to say. After all, is it not said:

The river from the mountains runs clear,
the window of the palace is wiped clean:
so too is the heart of a maiden
when awoken to her secret desire!

Rose then turns and shares a long glance with Hyra, and then offers one hand to Yue. “You are, of course, not required to join us,” she says, doing a remarkable job of seeming composed. “But it behooves every young adventuress to take the plunge and explore new experiences in a safe way.” And what could be safer than the hand of the monster who binds her own heart?

Fellowship: The Heart

Jackdaw!

A Victory of Crows was manifested in the latter years of the Hlon Dynasty by the mystic scholar and cult leader Birthing-from-Stones. That is to say, the book was made of and from him by his disciples, a method to stop the great rented way torn by the rites of Hu Xian, who sought in that otherplace a final vindication in their long rivalry.

Can you see them in their green tunics, Jackdaw? The rise and fall of their axes, the white-hot terror of acting as a cordon, even as Birthing-from-Stones writes on each page he draws from inside himself, his eyes lucid even as his body shakes feverish with its transmutation of form. Blood on snow, red on white that becomes black, as the trees loom huge and hot and hateful, as the crows laugh. There is no sophisticated argument to be had here about the value of the extant world and its right to not be overwritten, to be a palimpsest like the many-layered Heart that hangs below all the possible worlds. They fight for the simple reason that we treasure what we have, and will not dive into some new world without thought, without consideration, without knowing some small thing about how our lives will change-- unless we are like Hu Xian, who became a slash of red and white, who emerged in a glory of eyes and tails at the eleventh hour, at the very stroke of her doom. Shake out the red, watch it clot to black, let the snow slump under the heat.

But by then it was too late for her. The nameless disciple lifted A Victory of Crows from the crumpled remnant of Birthing-from-Stones and drew Crowhame through the rent and into their master's final argument. The oral tradition that sprang from that spiritual surgery was, incidentally, the birth of the Urlokan Parade-Opera, with its fearful masks and procession of actors from one side of the stage to the other, though conventions have certainly changed since then, and the stock archetypes that you'd be familiar with now have little to do with the gods of Crowhame who marched, tumultuous and disdainful, into their new prison, and last of all Hu Xian digging more rents into the world with her claws, obliterating two dozen eyewitnesses with her wild omnidirectional glances, but unable to resist the gravity of the place prepared for her and her new family.

How lucky for you, Jackdaw, that despite the great pressure of the world within that bursts frothing forth into monochrome horror, the book was made from the start to be closed! Once you have the right leverage, the right place to stand, it is conceptually simple to shut the book, and in the process, to draw back the world from its high-pressure outlet. And now, of all times, is the only time that you can! Without suffering greatly as you force your way deep within, that is. Every moment you wait, the Professor (as much statue hacked out of white stone as person, now) becomes definitionally further and further away from you all, buffeted by the world surging out all around him.

Or you could destroy it, tear out the spine and obliterate not just the Dark Carnival and the Grail but an entire layer of the Heart. Not even Crowhame can overwrite the entire Heart, but you would very certainly be making a new landmark in this alien geography, one that would be greater than the Flood could ever dream. Of course, you and everyone here would then have to very quickly self-select for survival, and most of the unfortunates that found themselves in Crowhame would find themselves defined by relation to the attention of a god. This is bad. You do not want this. You do not want your existence to revolve around how you are acted upon by the Flayed, or the Wheel, or the Long, or the Eyewitch.

Especially because time is not native to Crowhame. It is a contaminant. In deep Crowhame, all things happen forever and ever and ever.

Wolf reaches out and squeezes your shoulder. She gives you a ragged, keen growl; she’s out of spoons for words. But when you pull away, you can see the space where the connection between the two of you is Not. And in Wolf’s hands, that’s as good as a chain.

***

Coleman!

The Ringmaster is discovering the limits of violence. He is an invincible honking war-sage, a concentrated murder-wind that snaps bones and tears leather-skin and smashes down the Flayed over and over and over again. But the definition of the Flayed is that it is changed into new forms by the application of violence (inflicted with Lucien or otherwise), and it unfolds with every blow, stretches new taxidermy-limbs and claws and clutches at the sky to pull itself back up. Under its idiot smile he is changing, too. If nothing is done, then eventually the Ringmaster will seize the Flayed and twist its open ribcage in two directions, and then with a mighty heave he will rip his monstrous self apart as the Flayed stays still, and then it will scoop him up in its labyrinth of hands and begin to make him a new creation, and all that purple will leech out until the clown-doll is all red and white and black.

It might not even want to hurt him. It is very literally not of this world, after all.

As for what might happen if you got involved? Depends. The damn thing would probably react very... unproductively to being hit with Sasha. Hey, kids, who wants to see what it looks like when an immature train gets its furnace twisted out of its steampipes? And the Ringmaster probably wouldn't be very grateful in the moment. Or afterwards. Until the very moment it all goes wrong for him, there won't be any doubt in his boiling bones that he's winning this fight. If you're hoping that you might have the Dark Carnival owe you a favor, well, you'd be better off asking Jackdaw to fake a miracle from the Grail. That'd probably do something useful.

Above the Carnival, the impossibly huge head of the Long looms, and all else begins to fall under its vast shadow. You don't want that thing to get involved, either; it's tough to fight something that you can't, by definition, see the other end of. The longer this goes on, the more risk that nobody's going to be able to get them shoved back into the book and still be able to get out before the door closes, if you will.

***

Ailee!

"I should cash out," Surma says, but it's amicable. The look she gives you is sly, calculating. You become a bookhunter for two reasons all tied up together, after all: you owe an astronomical amount to the kind of people who make that a health hazard, and you have a lust for adventure. The sort of adventure where you win it all or lose everything. "But, oh, look, my prize is gone. Shoot. Too bad I don't know anybody who might point me in the direction of a consolation prize."

There's her pride, too: she's not some innocent like Jackdaw, easily spun round on herself. She has standards. And she expects you to damn well show her respect if you want her time. She's not going to huff and puff about it, but when she looks you in that glowing eye and doesn't so much as flinch, that's what she's saying.

Breathless Dead

"Yes," Redana says, distantly, staring a hole through a countertop. "Yes, that's a good idea. I know that. All the information's there, Redana," she adds, reciting by rote. "All you need to do is take it apart, evaluate each piece of the whole, and for Athena's sake, apply yourself. So. There's the Alcedi, and they're good... sailors. So they can sail the ship good. And then there's the hoplites, and they can handle the security on board the ship, as long as they're only supposed to be in one place, so maybe if we have, like, an obvious way in, we can just have them wait there for boarders? And we have the Priests of Hermes, who keep looking at me and asking me what the ordained configuration is, because I'm supposed to know, because I did the same sem-- I did two semesters of naval command in case of Outside Context Problems causing an actual honest-to-Olympus war out here, and sometimes it's the really strong ships that can remain powerful and strong and unbroken that hold together an engagement, and sometimes it's the fast ships that can evade SP and carve apart leviathans bite by bite that turn the tide, and all this is useless anyway because I'm not trying to prove why Decadion's[1] ridiculous 'jousting lance' strategy is no longer viable in the current engagement environment I'm trying to make sure you don't all die in space because I wanted society to be better[3]!"

Is Redana shouting? Redana's shouting. At herself. Dolce's faded into the background; there's just her and the specters of tutors in the shadow of Athena. The white of her eye overlarge, she takes the work of hours, her sketch of the heavily-armored Plousios, and she crumples it into a torn mess in one hand, because what good is it, anyway?

What good is she, anyway?

And there's no Bella here to put her hand on Dany's hand and give her a gentle purr. How pathetic is she, missing a crutch like that? You fell for it, honey, and here you are aching for an actress's affection! An actress who tried to hurt you! Who never... who never...

She unclenches her fingers and splays them across the crumpled, torn page. "...I'm not your god," she mutters, once again not to Dolce. "I'm just a girl who's not smart enough for this."

***

[1]: Opinions vary as to whether this admiral was a subversive genius, a lunatic who fundamentally didn't understand the subtleties of space combat, or simply had the misfortune of having his treatises survive to a different age of the universe. Regardless, "you should never be close enough to see your opponent until the battle is decided" and "it is not the wind even when it is the wind" are both hotly-contested koans from his work[2].

[2]: "I don't have to win, I just have to make you lose," on the other hand, is largely considered to be his last transmission, added posthumously to the Book of the Drake.

[3]: And yet she uses her society's spaceships. Curious.

Sunshards

Rose from the River cups her drink in both hands, legs folded, impossible to read. Even the fact that she’s still wearing the collar (it has resisted repeated attempts at removal, and may in fact have been jammed in all the chaos) doesn’t seem to phase her. She has much the same gravitas as a statue of one of the nameless saints, which is why Cyanis is leaning on her for support.

Dear little fox! The night outside looms with existential horrors that cannot be tricked or pleaded with, things without hearts to appeal to. Things that aren’t so much dead as never were alive. Things with gleaming eyes and cold hands. Rose is a comforting pillar of stability in the darkness, because what’s the good of being arrested by a monk if they won’t even protect you.

“Yes, poor Jian,” Rose says, lifting her eyes from the inky dark of her drink. They glitter like the eyes of a ghost. “There are all sorts of dangers like that in the world, children of the new age. I think they are more frightening to me than the punishments of Hell, for at least those can be understood, even if they are unfair. It is possible, sometimes, to come out the other side.”

Cyanis heaves a shaky sigh of relief under her breath. That’s a comforting thought, at least. That’s when Rose goes in for the kill. “Though when I met the Principle of Hidden Promise in the deep places of the world, she told me that her darling Klarissa was racking up more debt faster than she could pay it off, as demerits for misbehavior and low quality work ramped up. And this, too, I recognized. It is the nature of the world that was to impoverish its victims, then set traps for them to keep them in their place, desperate and willing to work. So now there is only the choice for the Countess.”

Here, Rose takes a sip of her drink and settles back into silence until Cyanis pipes up: “The choice?”

“Well,” Rose says, very seriously, “there are... opt-ins. A veritable menu of toys and humiliations and extra services, designed by the demoness herself. Every one signed for, every one a permanent addition to her routine. What do three inches of skirt matter if they bring you closer to freedom? Or three inches of your height, for that matter? And since you’re so busy anyway, surely you don’t need the right to relieve yourself without permission, or to be able to talk whenever you want, and what’s the harm of the kitty-ear headphones constantly playing a... curated playlist? There is a way out of Hell, yes, but it narrows as you climb, and eventually you are likely to find yourself... stuck.”

She examines her audience, all the more shaken by her simple, ostensibly factual account, and manages not to smile. Who is to say whether this is true or not? Have they climbed down into the ancient burrows and dallied with technodevils? (And let little Chen remember that Rose herself was once one.) Surely, after all, a simple monk could not be drawing this scenario out of her own fantasy.

“I met the Scales of Meaning some time after that. She informed me that the sophont once known as Countess Klarissa (whose new name I will not share in such innocent company) had accepted, at that time, one hundred and eighty-seven amendments to her original contract, that she would be free within one thousand and seven days barring further demerits or amendments, and that the chances of her choosing to leave her service by the end of that period were seven to three thousand and two.”

Cyanis is a wide-eyed bundle of floof as Rose’s voice becomes low and gravelly. “But at least for her there was that seven. A possibility that she could save herself from her fate of endless humiliated toil. The ghosts of this world... they are not as sophisticated. They do not play games. And they do not give chances, even chances designed to make you even more theirs. So, companions... I pray that the devils find you first.”

And then, the killing blow, the line that makes Cyanis fling herself into Yue’s arms in a trembling bundle, the sepulchral hiss of ancient stagnant water and molding cubicle labyrinths that sounds horribly wrong coming out of Rose from the River’s throat: ”After all, we have a special place prepared for every one of you.”

After holding it a beat, she clears her throat, hocks up something phlegmy into the shadows, and takes a long drink. “I hope you appreciated the voice,” she croaks. “I don’t really do it anymore.”

Breathless Dead

Oh no, Dolce. Now you have Redana's attention. She's sitting there looking at you with those mismatched eyes like a cat that's making up its mind whether to lick you or to go full feral Silly Mode. "Okay," she says, still drowning you in attention. "So what did you have in mind? Do you think we can compensate better for the heavily armored ramming configuration or the lightly-armored lightning strike design?" She flips another page and hovers her ink pen over the paper, not so much as blinking. It is Dolce's time to shine. "Because I need to give my presentation on this in, uh, six hours? Yeah. Six hours."

She definitely has not slept in the past eighteen hours, which would make her upcoming presentation a little... difficult. Especially if she doesn't make some sort of decision on this right now. Which means it's all on Dolce's fluffy shoulders to help her come to a conclusion and be able to pass out. But what if he makes the wrong decision now? It's not like he's an expert on upgrading starships, after all. Maybe what Redana needs is confidence to follow her instincts, but what if she gets irrationally upset that he's dodging the question? And what is that third sketch up in the right corner that looks like some sort of... pleasure barge? Not on topic, Dolce, focus!

Sunshards

Rose from the River should not care whether she is the object of mockery or not. Only the fool heeds the chittering of monkeys, and only the vain desire to be revered and respected by all. But there's something in how Chen almost falls over looking at her, how Hyra is carefully not looking at her, how Cyanis is radiating pure innocence...

So Rose from the River inspects herself carefully. It cannot be a sign that Cyanis has put on her back, given that Chen cannot see her back (nor can anyone else, given her braids). It is not something that she can see-- ah, when she looks down, something digs into her jaw. Something familiar. Something humiliating. Her grip on Cyanis tightens, and for a moment she considers punting the fox over a mountain, or at the very least onto the other side of the river. Instead she takes Cyanis with both hands and swings her, one, two, three, then sends her flailing into the water.

"Just a fox trick," she says, unbuckl-- hmm. This is. How does this mechanism work? She could tear it off, but that would be... admitting defeat. Yes. Except the longer she tries to figure out how to unbuckle this, the longer it might seem that she is either too incompetent to do so or does not want to do so, and so she tries to casually seem as if she was stretching, not trying to take it off. "This is why someone is going to Cutie Jail."

Then, calmly, rationally, as a response to Chen nearly dunking her head in the water doubling over with giggles, and as a response to the most shit-eating grin from a soaked Cyanis sitting up in the water with her hair in her face, Rose from the River wades into the river, spins her staff, and with a single blow reverses the flow of the water back on top of Chen and Cyanis in a mighty wave. Behold, the martial skill of the Thorn Pilgrim, defeater of rivers and giggling foxes and princesses! Let nobody challenge her who does not wish to be defeated, yes, not even Qiu, because that first battle was a fluke and next time the collar will be on the other throat!

Fellowship: The Heart

Jackdaw!

Seven by seven by seven.

Wolf pulls out something that isn't a candle and unlights it. It flickers dark and hungry, and you see that which is not in its light. Wolf smiling, hearty, hale. Unhaunted. Fortunate.

The woman who used to have a name that wasn't just Wolf came down into the Heart because she was hunting something. A sign, a crown, a betrayal. Seeking it, even. She hated that she dreamed of it, that in empty moments it would signify itself at her, seven by seven by seven, flickering candles one by one on the Candle Line. She took up a gig on the trains because the kobolds were friendly, and because she needed to go someplace that was otherwise than she was, and because she could drown the signs and symbols in the ten thousand lights of the Candle Line. And then her fate swallowed her up and stranded her in the oubliette of fortune, where all the bad girls go when they won't stop but they won't go forwards, neither.

You're seeking a Name, Jackdaw. She's seeking something similar, but it's not hers. It belongs to something else, some other story down here, the light at the bottom of a well or at the very edge of dreaming. What matters is that you're both being eaten up by something so much bigger than you. When Wolf regains her voice and her strength, that story is going to keep pulling at her. Her story. And maybe it'll eat her, and maybe she'll come through it different. Sometimes two people just meet for a little while, you know? And sometimes they give what they've got, because why else do we do things? Why have things if not for the moments when they're needed by the people whose orbits we move into?

In the priceless light of something that's not a candle, you can see the lack of exit clearly, if not painlessly. Wolf (which is not her name, but it is the name you know, a collection of sounds all crammed against each other, a signifier for someone with her history and heart trapped behind the hollows of the words she ate when there was nothing else left) takes your paw and leads you fearlessly to the place where there is not an exit (for of course there is no exit from this place, and it is not too dark and too regular and too impossibly frightening to look at, looming like the side door that led down to the unlit basement that you always convinced yourself did not have the monster from the woodcut so that you could walk past it without vividly imagining those bulging eyes leering at you through the window, a not-door that might as well be screaming that here there are monsters), and Wolf's shadow flickers with bells and candlelights and the way that light passes through the windows of a train, and for a moment, in the unlight, she is not beautiful and she is not at peace.

My treasure is that, impossibly, I am still alive, Wolf does not whisper into your ear, because she cannot, because she is skin and bone and trauma. I am still alive and even if every step brings me closer to the one I cannot take back, it's still one more than I thought I'd have. I am alive, and I choose.

And she chooses to walk you through the place that is not an exit, and into the rain (which does exist) and the storm (which does exist) and the clowns, wild and frothing and fatal (which should not exist). Wolf growls a warning, tail lashing, holding nothing, putting herself between you and the clowns and--

Oh.

Lucien.

***

Lucien!

click-clack click-clack go the hagstones. Crowhame is twisting and infecting the storm all around you as the Professor holds the book open as desperately as he can. The rain is black. The space between the rain is white. The Ringmaster is an offensive purple splotch of color, grabbing you with a hand like a sack of knives. And above you, the hagstones of the Flayed go click-clack click-clack click-clack as it gives you two a frozen idiot grin, all black-and-white-and-red all over, the black-dot eyes rolling in those white side-sockets. What better god to greet a clown but the shrike-god, the trophy-god, the sacrifice-god, white skin pinned back from white animal bones with black sutures, white stones swinging in that opened chest where all his organs should be, white antlers splitting the black sky into fractals?

You swing from one arm, which may very well be dislocated, as the Ringmaster bares his teeth in the mother of all smiles and then roars a challenge at the intruding alien god. (The Flayed being what it is, it doesn't seem to notice; its jaw clatters in what might be laughter, or might just be a spasm of sinew.) It appears that the Ringmaster intends to beat a motherfucker with another motherfucker. And there's not a lot of soft places to land there, just angles and bony knobs and fingers sharpened into talons.

Well, it's been a good run, hasn't it? And look on the bright side: you'll probably black out from the physical trauma well before you actually die. Like falling asleep at the end of a very long day.

***

Ailee!

There is a fountain. It falls in and on itself, water dancing for the sake of dancing, and Surma unlaces her boots and slips her feet into the pool. "<Bastard,>" she says, affectionately. "<A genuine> Victory of Crows <and he just takes it away from me.>" She doesn't talk about how Lucien was a hero. She doesn't ask you how you're feeling or tell you that everything's going to be all right. She just invites you to sit next to her by implication.

The interdimensional hutch is decked out in trophies from the Heart and keepsakes from the Old Country and a small shrine with the prayer sticks lit to keep the memory of people she's lost alive. What's one more stick slowly smouldering out? What's one more name added to the sticks, never to really die as long as they're remembered? What's a pretty girl like her doing alone at the bottom of reality, if not looking for one more score to make the prices she's already paid worth it?

The gun lies heavy in your hand, and ridiculously, impossibly, you know how you're going to kill King Dragon. Or, at the very least, what's been consecrated for that purpose.

***

Coleman!

"You know," Black Coleman says, thoughtfully, "the Heart can piss off. Because for you, that means you can try it, see if it works. But you and I both know that we're not going to meet again, like as not, and now I've got a face to put to the question of what if it had worked? What if I'd made that gamble, that we wouldn't tear each other apart over dwindling fuel supplies and the Powers muscling in on the Vermissian and... what if, what if, what if."

He tosses you a bit of the coal that Sasha likes particular. Naturally, you catch it. "Good luck making a better story, though. I'd like to think that yours ends well, you know? And in one version of the Heart's fuckery with time and space, there was a kobold who had a train, and for a little while, everything was all right. But you're needed somewhere else right now, aren't you?"

Aren't you indeed. Here you are, jawing off with yourself, when someone needs to go find where everyone's run off to. It's the conductor who knows the end of the line best, after all.

Breathless Dead

“I am playing rock-paper-scissors with our lives, Dolce!”

Redana is stressy. When Redana is stressy, Redana does not sleepy. When Redana does not sleepy, she ends up here, a bundle of nervous energy and frazzled hair, in the (now crab-free) kitchens. She is not drinking the calming herbal tea. She is making dangerous gestures with the calming herbal tea, grand sweeping commands that threaten to get tea everywhere.

“So take a look at this one, right?” She flourishes her sketchbook. You might be surprised at how good her technical drawing is; these had some thought put into them, with Hermetic glyphs scrawled in the margins. Displayed on the page is the Plousios with the kind of hull that cracks asteroids apart and multiple landing bays converted to secondary engine installations: the kind of ship that can make surprisingly sharp turns and hunts its enemies like a nearsighted wolf. “Stellar, right? But what if there’s something we can’t just or don’t want to just punch through? What if we get brought to bear by pirates? If we reduce our Plover bays, we’ll be relying totally on the prow and flying blind against anything too small to bring to bear. But if we don’t have extra maneuvering vents, we’ll be blundering about like a silly drunk Servitor, and say goodbye to outracing anything! Oh, so reduce the heavy plating, Redana, you say!” (Dolce did not say.) “But if we skimp on this, we risk being torn apart by space monsters!”

Even as she says it, she flips another page, and reveals an elegant, stripped-down Plousios, with solar sail mechanisms on every face to unfold when necessary, an unparalleled maneuverability, with landing bays and SP weapons bristling, a corsair-vessel that lives on its speed alone. “Sturdy, swift, and not toothless: we get to choose two. And if I choose wrong you’ll all die when the Plousios gets caught in the radius of a collapsing star, or when alien locusts tear through our depleted Plover coverage and burrow in to lay their eggs, or when a Star Dragon curls around the ship and squeezes us apart!” She flops, considers a moment, and then contemplatively adds: “Though maybe if we sacrifice Plover coverage, we’ll be lucky enough to be boarded by Azora corsairs and sold into slavery, which doesn’t get you all killed, so maybe that’s the least bad option?”

Somebody needs to actually drink her tea and calm down, right? And what’s up with her considering everybody else’s safety? Sure, she’s human, she’s tough, but she’s not that tough, right?

...right?

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Two weeks of worry. Two weeks to think about what might make a knight worthy. Two weeks to think about the death of Pellinore, as keenly as she did in those first terrible days after the brutal killing. The rise and fall of the axe-blow.

It is up to Tristan to say how he kept her from disaster, from spiraling into dark and worried thoughts. But she manages, thanks to him, and she considers how she may test Robena, the Bear Knight. The question, after all, is what Robena learned from that moment: whether she learned the lesson of the axe, deep in her heart.

Perhaps she should leave a trail for Robena that led to her. Perhaps she should let the castle rumor that she was leading Pellinore here, that striking her down would save the knight from her fated confrontation. That way, if Robena failed again, only one person would be at risk; and it was she who misjudged Robena’s mettle first of all.

And yet still she had not made the decision, still had not committed herself to the lure, as she fretted outside the banquet hall that fateful night. Or had she? After all, she wore foxfur on her robe, and the tail was draped around her pale neck. The symbolism was not hard to miss. But when would she gather up the courage to enter?

Breathless Dead

"If you're sure."

All around, mixed squads of Coherents and Alcedi worked together (by Imperial order; making them work together was the first step to making them want to work together, right?) to bring the shuttles onto the beach. Shuttles, plural. And there was the problem. Her words were falling on deaf ears; no, now she was the hero of the hour, champion of the Alcedi and Occluded Magistrix of the Coherent, and even if some of both contingents were going to be taking to the stars themselves, the lion's share of both were demanding the chance to serve her. And what could she do but let them? The crown demands.

"My teacher, Iskarot, Magos Iskarot, sorry, he's in charge of our Hermetic contingent by seniority and by my authority. And, frankly, Komninos? You might not have given the orders to abduct new initiates, but I'm not impressed with your judgment in carrying it out. 'The tool is nothing without the hand; yet the tool that fails the hand is nothing.' Am I right? Thank you, Magos. I'm taking you on, but part of that is trusting me when I make a decision. And I have made it. Now, Lacedo, Emissary for the Alcedi-- everyone coming with us will be Plousios-clan, but make sure everyone knows that they're going on a voyage to the gates of the gods, and not everyone's going to be coming back. We need you, and there will be glory, but it's still dangerous. It's worth it. But you need to know what you're deciding."

This is different than asking Bella to come with her and not expecting a refusal. She's been a guest of the Alcedi, and now they want to follow her[1]. She can bring the Hermetics along without batting an eye, given that they have some idea of what they're signing up for, but taking the Alcedi along is... now she knows a little better how she might have seemed, so eager to explore the unknown that she was heedless of its realities and dangers.

But she can't say no to them, and not just because they need a crew. If she says no to the Alcedi, if she tells them that they can't come with her, she might as well go back home right now. Everyone deserves the sky. Human, Alcedi, Servitors; they all deserve to be able to make that choice for themselves, whether or not it ends up being the right choice.

When the shuttles begin to land, for a moment Redana is caught in a halo, and Lacedo can't tear her eyes away from the young woman: shoulders bare, eyepatch black against her fair skin, an omphalos that the world turns around. Then Redana turns, and shares the smile that kills maidens' hearts, Redana Acaceta in her glory. You can scheme against her, you can fight against her, but you can't be more charming than her, without artifice and unbowed by the weight of her phantom crown.

Redana is going to save the universe. And her magic is that you can believe.

***

[1]: or, as she's starting to pick up on, they want to follow Redana Acaceta[2], Gracious Redana. The shining hero who slips through time and saves the innocent, who dances between seconds and carries golden emptiness in her hand. Try not to think about living up to that, Dany!

[2]: Redana is blissfully unaware that the slang meaning of Acaceta is "completely guileless; well-meaning ditz (affectionate)." Already the Denunciation of Hera is being relayed to the Coherents, and knowledge of what sort of mistress they have sworn loyalty to is spreading.