Tatterdemalion

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Kalaya!

As Piripiri could have told you, beneath Kingeater Castle is a labyrinth of old passages. The rotten smell of roses is thick enough to choke you down here, and it is lightless. Close by, too close by, is the sound of Hell’s revelry: just behind a door, on the other side of a wall— but so, too, there is the sound of barked orders, and the clash of swords. Hell is martial in nature, in some of its seasons.

Up there, you broke through some of the dolls effortlessly, knocking them aside with your sword, letting Fengye trample them, and oh! It was thrilling! But down here, you don’t have to worry about being chased (yet) or fighting for your life (yet).

All you have to do is follow Fengye, one hand on the disturbance in the air that is her horse, and hold one hand over your face to avoid retching at the thick, intolerable smell of dead roses all around.

Can it be that Ven is down here, too? Can you even fight her in the oppressive dark? Can you hope to protect two priestesses and yourself, here in the dark where danger could come from any direction?

***

Fengye!

The dream part of that was over faster than it could even properly begin. A burst through, a charge, the discharge of firewands, and then Kalaya kicked open a cellar door and the demon horse almost flowed down the steps. (It’s quite possible it doesn’t have hooves. It has something else?) And now you’re down here, in the aforementioned dark, with the aforementioned smell of charnel roses all about.

The horse is the one actually leading you, and you have to hope that it’s leading you to someplace good, and not someplace like its home. The home that is so very, very close down here.

a-click-a-click-a-click. You hear the sound in the distance, now close, now far, as if it flows through the walls. a-click-a-click-a-click. Like hail falling on the tiles of a roof.

And four winds birthed the Mother of Loss, and one was the grinding-wind, and one was the brilliant-wind, and one was the promise-wind, and one was the arrow-wind. And of these only the arrow-wind will kill, with a thousand darts, or with the arrows of Yes and No, or with a long knife, as she chooses.

That’s as clear an omen as any as to who the horse belongs to. Kalmanka, the Arrow-Wind. She can be ten thousand arrows, or she can be a needle; she can be a black wolf, a silver swan, or a woman wearing a scale-coat of arrowheads. If Ven has called upon her, she is digging herself very deep in debt.

But worst of all is that Kalmanka holds the arrows of Yes and No in her quiver-soul, with which she may inflame passions or shatter them. No sorcerer may command her to use the one without accepting that she will also use the other as she wills, and often to their doom. She could turn Kalaya into a sobbing berserker, or leave you with nothing but cold ash where your regard for her was.

Zhaojun alone could face her and hope for victory. You? Never.

***

Piripiri!

You’re not fast enough.

Which is to say, there’s never enough time to do everything! A snake’s working its way up the highlander’s body, unnoticed, while you focus on carving out space around Azazuka, who’s trying desperately to catch her breath so she can try and help. And when the witch finishes her spell, well, you won’t have time to get away from Uusha. She’ll be on you.

But you set out to protect Azazuka, and that’s what’s important. Well done! Truly a triumph of the Dominion’s way.

***

Han!

”Everything’s so hard,” a voice hisses in your ear. There’s a tickling sensation, like a tongue flicking against it. ”Isn’t it? And your heart’s been so heavy.” A comforting, knowing sigh. The kind that a good friend would make, listening to your romantic woes. ”Why don’t you sit down? Tell Aunty what’s been troubling you.”

This is an excellent idea, probably. So excellent that, if you let the world keep getting kind of fuzzy and indistinct while you share your woes, for Aunty (and definitely only her, who is the soul of discretion, and who’s listening nearby anyway?) to tut and console you.

Your blood’s heavy, too. Isn’t it? Like it’s thick. And you feel warm. No, warmer. Like you could shed a few layers, too. It’s really comfortable. Like sitting by the fireplace. Take your shoes off, your very hard-to-digest shoes. And open up that heart of yours.

***

Giriel!

That’s very definitely a Heartache Worm on Han’s shoulders. One of Hell’s nasty little ambush predators, drawn to broken hearts and inner turmoil. Takes a very long time to digest its prey, but also takes a long time to get around to eating them; you’ll be able to get it off her once you finish, as long as you can get someone to pin her down. They’re nasty little puppeteers when threatened.

You’re about to slip behind the screen, as it were. Like in a play. That’s where the fairies are. You’ll have to lead everyone down behind the screen, into the earth, through the tunnels. It won’t be a real place, and that’s very much by definition, but as long as you don’t linger you shouldn’t attract any nonexistent predators. Probably.

More troubling is the fact that Uusha’s extremely intent on the waitress. In the “I have spotted a danger” sense. You’re likely going to have to defuse a very tense situation once you pull everyone behind the screen.

What kind of stories do you like, Giriel? This is a very important question, so don’t lie to us now. We’re about to go backstage, after all.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

3V finds her way over to the window to stare. She’s seen these before, too. Fallout: Magic Kingdom boasted one of the most complex skyboxes in modern gaming: real simulated weather patterns, real simulated dawn and dusk, and between the two, a night sky only here and there broken by the neon glow of settlements and the lights strung on MK Moss’s Castle. But, in some impossible qualitative sense, these stars are different. They weren’t created and set to their courses by an algorithm (unless you believe in the New Sequence party line). They’re the same stars that cavemen watched, back before fire, back before the spark of energy that would lead them all the way up here.

“Did you know that as many as 80% of original SNES games have been lost?” She leans against the window, not looking at her hostess. That’s a night sky you could fall into forever and ever. “Just gone. The emulation data’s gone, and their creators didn’t keep backups. Nobody’s ever going to play them again. More to the point, no one is ever going to have the opportunity to experience them. The most you can get is finding some obsessed fan’s wiki listings: this is what ActRaiser was like. This is what Chrono Trigger was like. This is what EarthBound was like. And it’s not like they were necessarily good, but how would I know? Not like I got the chance to play them. Because hosting fees, and anti-piracy rulings, and every year more and more slips through the cracks.”

She raps her knuckles, gently, against the grass. “And that was just an experience for a couple of generations. Imagine losing something that was a shared part of humanity for generations. The experience of climbing a mountain. The experience of looking out at the stars. Even the muscle ache of climbing, but in a constantly working uphill way, not a climbing wall way. Different muscles. Maybe you could get that if you took the stairs? But that’s not quite the same thing, either. Stairs are just the same damn thing over and over. Maybe some interesting graffiti, maybe some leftover gum. A thing like this almost does emergent discovery perfectly.”

A snort. An aside. “Almost. The one thing a mountain doesn’t have is intentionality. When you climb a mountain in a video game, any developer worth their salt will have worked in interesting content. A suggestive tableau, an encounter with wildlife, a perfect view. Out here, you’ve got to make all of that yourself, or just luck into it. Exhausting. Can you believe I enjoyed myself anyway?”

Sunshards

There’s nothing quite like the water on the hot rocks. The steam, the pleasant hiss, the warmth given to the whole room: what could be better than that?

Rose’s skin is… smoother, now. Not as rough, now that she’s found someone she wants to touch her. But when Chen rubs one hand along her shoulder, her fingers still feel the slight roughness, the quiet reminder that her girlfriend isn’t human. Her hair’s a little more natural, less obviously moss, but the flowers still bloom in her locks. She is still tall, still strong, but now she feels confident enough to not present herself as a warrior of warriors. Confident that she’s not faking. That she can be this, and not a weapon. That if Yue, unthinkably, tried to control her… well, Chen wouldn’t let that happen.

As long as Chen’s by her side, she can ignore the Way. She sits in Chen’s grasp and feels pretty in a way that doesn’t require her to be small or effortlessly domineering, and she lets herself just relax, not thinking about all the problems she could be solving, should be solving right now. Not thinking about them at all. About the great responsibility given to those with great power. She’s too busy. Because she’s watching her friends.

Hyra lounges like a wolf; she takes up space in a way that Rose finds very familiar. She doesn’t do it just to make a point, though. Rather, it’s that she can relax when she’s with Yue, in a way that is intensely relatable. But she still sits between the lovers and her Yue. No funny business, not from a princess or her, her rosepetal. No teasing Yue or making her suddenly self-conscious!

Because Yue is so incredibly unconscious. Her nakedness is only and simply that, and when she sinks down low into the water and lets her brown curls surround her like a halo, like a sun and its rays, it’s with the air of someone who really, really enjoys a hot bath. Her smile! It’s effortless, practically spilling off her face. Her laugh! Endearingly dorky, particularly when you consider that it belongs to a very special heroine indeed. If anyone could be trusted with carrying around the fortune of the Burrows in her head, it would be her, and best not to tell her; she’d just worry, the poor thing. The longer she goes without finding out, the more peace there’ll be in the world, and more importantly, the more peace there’ll be in her heart.

Yue submerges beneath the water for a moment, only her eyes visible, like the great whale who swims in the depths of the Terrace Lakes, and then— fssst! Out the water sprays from her mouth, shooting like a jet at Chen, who squeaks and tries to hide behind Rose. (Rose finds herself trying to catch the water, to be a good… a g-good handmaid. A thing she’s never gotten the chance to be before. How do you know whether you’re doing it right if you’ve never had the chance to practice?)

Chen. Chen, who snuggles up to her Rose, who doesn’t leer but who isn’t ashamed of herself, either. (Why should she be? She’s had her whole life to get comfortable in one body. Of course she’s not worrying about whether she got it right.) Chen, with her beautiful laugh. Chen, young and vital and full to bursting with energy. (They’d be close, with Rose not too much her elder, if she could pretend the long sleep of centuries didn’t count at all. Surely years spent in dark and dreamless sleep didn’t count? She wasn’t robbing the cradle, right?) Chen, still childish enough to splash Yue back with her feet, and then to command: “Rose, get her!”

For a moment, Rose freezes up. Just for a moment. Long enough for Chen to look at her, and then look at her again. Then Rose breathes out, intentionally, trying to say without saying anything that she’ll be okay. You didn’t mean it, and— besides, watch this!

Her hand skims the surface of the water at a precise angle, and from it erupts a great spray. Yue, with a delighted shriek, ducks underneath the surface of the water, which means that it ends up hitting Hyra with a full blast and an undignified yelp.

And the rest of the spray hits the coals and becomes a great, relaxing cloud of steam.

***

“Yue,” she says, as they walk back to the bed-and-breakfast in the long, beautiful twilight, right in the middle of the road, and to their left a crumbling old wall barely at thigh height, and beyond it rolling half-wild fruit orchards, which will provide their breakfast. She doesn’t quite stick it, and she coughs to give herself an excuse for the upwards inflection she thought she’d try. “Yue,” she says, in a more reliable voice. “It would be very silly if a handmaiden was looking out for you without being assigned the task,” she explains. “I told you that I was going to look out for you. Protect you from the Princesses, from Qiu and Chen and Yin. But…” She spares a glance for Hyra, who’s part of why she’s saying this. But then her attention returns to Yue, and she gives her the most sincere smile she can find, only drawing a little from old (bad) memories for what that should look like.

“You don’t need me to protect you any more,” she says. “Not the Wolf of the Sky Castle. Not the same Yue who proved her worth in the arena. Not the same Yue who helped save Princess Chen and I. If I insisted on looking out for you now, I’d just step on your toes.” She’s too self-conscious to try to laugh in a more Rose way, and one of Rose from the River’s condescending, fond chuckles wouldn’t work. So she just adds: “Please, accept my resignation as your guardian.”

And she takes a moment to curtsey, hoping that the next time Yue needs confidence in herself, she’ll remember Rose telling her that she doesn’t need protection (from her) anymore.

***

This is the most self-conscious she’s ever been in an outfit. Ever.

When she was the HUNTER-Class 猎犬, clothing was something that it created out of its own flesh. Part of a disguise. Learn what people wear, what will give it away: what brands are appropriate for what social class, what modifications are usually made after purchase, how much plausible deniability it had in baring skin (and how important a flash of bare stomach might be while stretching) to arouse and thus distract a target. Nobody thinks with a clear head when they’re controlled by lust. (Not even her, she treacherously thinks.)

Then when she was First of the Radiants, he dressed to Princess Yin’s standards. Tight, constricting, monochrome suits. Gloves, ties, breastplates. Layer on layer on layer until he might as well have been trapped in the Coffin again. Faced with the most petty choices in what was appropriate for a gentleman of his station to wear: which precise combination of jacket and shoes, tie and cufflinks, scabbard and greaves? Variations on a cloying theme.

Then, the Briar Pilgrim, dressed to announce her new femininity in the most deniable of ways. A bared midriff, bare feet, all concessions to simplicity, surely. Dark, muted hues, because if she dressed to attract attention she’d have to admit that she wanted attention. Attention it wasn’t safe for a monster like her to want. Attention that would entice others to ask her to stay, to break her promise to the Way, to be bad. Or, worse, if she tried to dress like that, what if others told her she was trying too hard?

Trying too hard.

That’s why she doesn’t look Chen in the eye when she comes out of the booth. Because she chose every part of the outfit. She can’t hide behind Keron this time. She’s the one who picked out the pink, baggy trousers, reminiscent of the much more translucent pair she wore on the Sky Castle, with her sword hiding in plain sight as a Rose-sized flute on the belt; she’s the one who picked out the top with the faux rose gold beading, the one that shows off her cleavage and leaves her toned stomach on display, and she can’t hide behind practicality and lightweightness as an excuse, not with the way it jingles with every sway. No, she picked this out, just like she picked out the shoulderless sleeves hugging her biceps, the ones going down to a ring on either middle finger, just like she picked out the earrings (no monk-prizes these, cheap hoops for a girl relying on her girlfriend’s credit), just like she picked out the flat-heeled sandals. Just like she picked out the veil.

The one she’s trying to hide, too shy to wear. Because it would be trying too much. Because it would make Chen frown and ask her what she’s doing, dressing up like that, like she’s a real Ysian. Are you that desperate to be someone’s girlfriend, Rose? Go back and—

“Kneel,” Chen says.

A shiver runs through Rose as she, with surprising awkwardness, gets down on her knees, and her flute-sword raps once against the floor. Yue’s talking to the owner of the shop, nobody’s paying attention, it’s just her and Chen, why does she want somebody to look at her following orders as much as she’s mortified by it? Because maybe they’d approve. Because maybe it’s allowed and it’s been allowed the whole time.

“Let me see what you have there, rosebud~” Rose tries to find someplace that’s safe to look as she hands the silly, exciting pink thing over. You were going to put it back. Just say you were going to put it back! If you’ve left the Way behind like a selfish girl, you might as well go all the way and start getting used to—

It’s so soft on her face.

It’s so soft, the way Chen touches her.

“There we go,” Chen says, guiding Rose’s face up to look at her, and Rose blinks, and blinks again, not really understanding why she’s tearing up.

Chen leans forward on her tiptoes and kisses her rosebud on the head. “Yeah, there we go,” she says, and it’s so kind that Rose can’t stand it. “That’s the perfect look for my Rose.”

And then Yue does look over and notice, but that’s just because of the noise Chen made when Rose picked her up to hold her so, so close, and she’s got her face buried in Chen’s shoulder, so she’s got time to compose herself before she shows herself off again and practices wearing things that make her happy.

Breathless Dead

”You know, maybe we don’t have to do this,” Bella whimpered, digging her fingers into Dany’s lace shirt. The little scaredy-cat peeked over Dany’s shoulder, still so tense! That was okay, though. She was going to have fun.

She still was jumping at noises and wringing the hem of her pretty dress and according to Dany’s research in the Encyclopedia Puellae she might be missing her litter, and even if she was clapping at games and smiling with all her teeth and following Dany around everywhere, she needed to have fun. She needed to see that life from now on was going to be awesome. Just the two of them, all the time forever.

Below them, the three hundred steps of the Blue Skies Staircase.

“This is going to be awesome,” Dany said, and tilted the sled forwards. Bella squeaked and leaned forward with Dany, and the front of the sled hit the first step, and down they went, picking up speed even as it got bumpier and bumpier, Dany clinging to the lead to keep the nose up, Bella clinging to her chest so hard and making a noise that might have been a scream and might have been a squeal, right in Dany’s ear, and Dany grinned big enough to fill the whole world, but the whole world was just the stairs and the blur shooting past them, exquisitely carved railings and mosaics on the walls and marble pillars burnished until they shone under the azure-blue light of the Victoria Chandelier, none of them distinguishable as they went down faster and faster and then she didn’t pull the nose up high enough and they were launched into the air, and then everything was blue stairs and a blue chandelier and spinning and the sled flying overhead and the air getting knocked out of her lungs and Bella shrieking and thump thump thump thump thonk, except she didn’t remember the thonk, that’s just what Bella said later it sounded like when her head hit the floor, and from her perspective the world suddenly became Bella.

“Oh no oh no oh no,” Bella said, her ears flat on her head and her hands smooshing Dany’s face and her eyes wide. “Milady, are you okay? Do I need to— I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—“

“‘mokay,” Dany said, and giggled out of the leftover adrenaline and the way the world was still spinning, even if the look on Bella’s face wasn’t really funny, but that’s okay, because her next plan, whatever it was going to be, would really make Bella laugh and have fun, and besides, that was awesome, even if the sled was going to mysteriously go missing afterwards, and it was all the better for having Bella on the sled, holding onto her, yowling, and even if she wouldn’t admit it was fun, Dany knew, Dany knew that scream was a fun scream right before they went flying…

It would be nice to be Redana again.

Stupid. Feckless. Disastrous. All reasons why she can’t come back. But it would be nice, wouldn’t it? For this moment to have some kind of context. To be able to blurt out “‘mokay” and see the relief flood her scared face again, to know that in all their roughhousing no one ever really got hurt, that Dany just wanted to make her dour, serious little puella smile again.

But Skotia can’t be Redana, because to be Redana right now would mean being a dangerous, selfish friend-killer. Being Redana would mean being the person who turned Bella into this monster who fights monsters instead of a maid who looks away and bites her lip so she won’t laugh at a dumb pun. Being Redana would mean taking on all the responsibility for everything that led them here.

And being Redana would force Bella to give up this Beautiful and make her whole world about the princess she hates and resents. Again. It would mean ruining her life all over again.

No.

Redana has to stay dead.

But when Skotia comes back to himself, with a throat full of black bile and a body that’s alternating between feverish cramps and the chill of death, it’s so hard not to wish he was Redana, in Bella’s arms, and that she’d have the right thing to say this time. A thank you. An apology. The words to convince Bella to take her hand and come back to the Plousios and have dinner with Dolce and see how much and how amazing Alexa has been growing, the strongest and most amazing warrior in the galaxy, and she could show Bella how much she’s learned about naval engineering and starship engines and then, oh, she’d swap places and prove to Hera and Bella how much she really meant it by being Bella’s maid, learning what it was like for Bella back home, doing her best to earn some forgiveness from her ex-best friend in the whole universe, while Captain Dolce led them all to freedom and a new tomorrow.

But it’s okay. He can’t blurt anything disastrous out. He can’t even touch her and tempt them both away from saving Beautiful. When he convulses underneath her, and her eyes go small and frightened and her ears go flat on her head, he’s only saved by her last-second realization; she turns him on his side as he vomits up wine and party snacks and the ablative layer of his esophagus, until he’s a shivering, helpless mess, crying and hacking and miserable.

But this, too, is just. Is right. Bella must have been miserable, abandoned and shut away in the dark and unable to move. Her hurt is his hurt, just like she has made his hurt her hurt (burning red in the socket, don’t you remember how much she cried out of one eye, the other’s ducts swollen shut after the surgery?).

Right now, he’s ugly, like her heart always was. (It must have been. She was so selfish. So oblivious. Just trying to make her new toy stop being sad to make her feel better about owning it.) His hair is plastered to his forehead; his lip is black and swollen; his eye is bloodshot and half-blind.

Is this enough, Hera? Is this enough, Bella? Until you forgive him, he’s not allowed to stop. Even if he can’t stand up, or even take her hand. Even if his perfect human body is fighting back with agonizing slowness. Even if watching her kiss someone better will crack his heart in half because he doesn’t deserve another kiss from her, ever. He’s still not allowed to stop.

Because if he gives up, he really will be worthless.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Fengye!

You sit on the shape of a horse, and it settles in an eerie calm as you scream. One of your hands finds an ear, fluffier than you might expect, and perfect for scritchies. Finally, it turns and begins a slow trot towards the ruined, moss-veiled castle.

The only problem? Well, other than the fact that you’ll run out of breath eventually and need to figure out some way of keeping the noise ongoing? Well…

***

Kalaya!

You know what’s really good for stealth missions? Just stupidly good? Screaming. Screaming is amazing for stealth. That’s why the most famous thieves are known for howling “IGNORE ME” as they make their way into the treasure-vaults of queens. Fengye is a genius.

Nothing jumps out at you, but you’d better have some sort of second plan, because if you try to walk through that broken, empty gate, you’re walking right into the wakeful jaws of whatever evil lurks within. Just like Fengye is doing right now.

Do you help her take the reins and then try to find some hidden way inside (that will also fit a ghost horse)? Or do you let her approach the gate, or even run up to take point and meet whatever awaits you there with steel?

***

Han!

You make it up with almost everybody, and the almost isn’t even really your fault. It’s not Azazuka’s fault, either, let’s be clear: it’s the snake that headbutted the tree right when you were at your most unbalanced. If it hadn’t sent a reverberation up, shaking the branches, all three of you would be sitting pretty.

But Azazuka is jarred backwards, and slips right off your arm as you fumble her, and down she goes screaming—

Onto the backs of snakes. It’s half-comical for a moment, as if she were a boat floating on the waves of their backs. But then they start to slither over her, while she curls up and (rather unadvisedly) screams. It’s mostly a fear scream. (If you saved her, it might become just an adrenaline scream and giddy, confused laughter.)

***

Piripiri!

No, actually, because your student is in danger, because this dumb musclebound country girl dropped her. Umbrella or no umbrella, it is your duty to defend the innocent.

No, actually, here’s a question for you: when you dive for her, what gives your Hymairean training away to the keen eyes of the Stag Knight?

***

Giriel!

A Tipplebacked Hammerhead rears up, almost level with your face. This one’s spirit-touched, a child of the earth; some of the scales around its broad snout are stone. And the Tippleback has a very dangerous reaction to being startled by a human close up: it slams its head into whatever startled it after rearing up for height. It’s like being kicked by a horse.

You have just enough time to think that before Uusha dives down, grabs it by the throat, and lifts it bodily off the ground before heaving it into the rest of the Hunt with a low, animalistic grunt. It splashes. Not in a gory way, but in a “snakes flying everywhere” way.

She glances at you, and for a moment you see her eyes in the depths of her helmet, and then she looks away with— Uusha! Is that embarrassment? “Good work,” she growls, and spins her long spear, a stick good for warding off serpents.

She’s got your back, and you’ve got a String on her (on her! actually! wow!).

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

“Actually,” 3V says, drumming her glowing fingers on her knee for a moment, “I’m also interested, personally, in a question I’ve been mulling over all day. It ties in to what you suggested just now. What is the value of climbing a mountain?”

She picks up a strawberry. If she’d bothered, it could have been an incredible experience, her fingers giving her feedback on every ridge and seed, unconscious thought turning every impulse in her arms into a blurred jab of a finger. But if the haptic feedback is too overtuned, it gets distracting; she doesn’t need to know what the pockets of her coat feel like, the shape of bits of fluff, as intimately as she knows her face. That’s always the way of it, isn’t it? The features get slapped on there so that you’ll feel they’re worth buying, better than yours, when really she just needed the split-second APM and perfect keyboard control so that she could focus on all the parts of winning Mythos that weren’t dependent on her reflexes: fleeting alliances, which realms to tackle in which order, anticipating everyone else’s builds and disrupting the blessing meta. So it’s just a strawberry. Sticky. Wet.

“I have climbed a lot of mountains. Well, mostly the same mountain, repeatedly. The Weirding Wall keeps contracting over the course of a match, and it’s usually Olympus at the center where the last champions end up. I have clambered up that mountain dodging lightning bolts and astra and the final minion waves enough times that if I close my eyes, I can see it, more real than real. I have been to the very top at the end, and seen the blue fires licking at its base; I’ve been to the very top at the beginning, even if it meant I was throwing, and seen Elysium and Eden and Tir na nOg and Mictlan stretching out in every direction, Aaru and Yomi and Valhalla. Mythos swept the last VGAs for design and Graphical Experience. And if Mythos is too high stress, there’s always Wanderhearth for just climbing and enjoying the company of characters and listening to the birdsong on the wind, or Hyperborea Online if you want to play dress-up while climbing a mountain and then probably swordfight and kiss a princess up there.”

She pops the strawberry in her mouth. It does not burst and pop in flavor. It squishes. “There’s no emergent loop in climbing a mountain except for the one where you alternate which leg you’re moving, and you can do that without thinking about it. You have to be lucky for anything interesting to happen, and there’s no achievement or easter egg up at the top. Well. I mean. Other than getting to see Howl, I suppose. So why’s it worth doing, when I could do that and have an experience someone carefully curated for me, optimized so that I would have a good time?”

She looks Ferris in the eye, signaling: here it is, even if you didn’t get any of that, here’s what I’m building to. “And if I’m not sure what the value is in this big hunk of rock, how am I supposed to convince anyone in Aevum to log off and come out here?” Don’t worry, she hasn’t forgotten, she’s got her own theory formulating, but she wants Ferris’s thoughts.

Breathless Dead

There’s a certain little voice that sometimes devils readers of adventure fiction, belonging to a quite wicked imp of practicality, and it says: you would not survive this. You are not a protagonist, little reader: the hero will only escape because everything aligns just so. Redana Claudius was not often bedeviled so. Skotia, however, for all that he is a creature of romance— he knows this voice. And the voice is saying: if you fight this monster, you will die. Your concentration will slip at a vital moment; you will fail to dodge a falling pillar; you will be backhanded through a mural and off a cliff to your death. This creature is too dangerous for Bella, killer of princes, so what do you think you’re doing?

Paying for the last kiss he’ll ever give her, is what he’s doing.

His palms are dry. His heart aches in his chest. He is shaking as he draws his sword with a duelist’s flourish, one wrist beneath the other, tip at attention. His feet find their marks with rote ease. An ELF cracks out and he flicks it away as if training in the courtyards of an imperial palace.

Bella is screaming at him to move. But that, too, is part of the story. It’s about his character. The lothario promises everything and then proves himself false, a coward, selfish. The true lover allows his love to carry him into the maw of Leviathan, and then— well, it depends on what sort of story this is, isn’t it? Maybe he’s only here to die in front of Bella, to save her and her Beautiful, to make amends, and maybe at the end she’ll realize that her Redana— but no. He’s past that now. All he is is a desperate gamble by a selfish princess to do one thing right for her oldest, dearest friend.

Nobody in those stories had the decency to mention the dryness at the corner of his eyes, the right clench of his asshole, the neon throb of ELF weapons in the dark pounding in the back of his head. Fuck.

(The look on her face, confusion and trepidation that she hadn’t recognized when she reached down into the box— the look on her face, pale, eyes lidless wide, her hand trembling as she hissed through bloodless lips at her princess— the look on her face, hidden in the dark but obvious enough, the longing for someone who was right for her, who could give her a love untainted by failure and failure and failure—)

“Avaunt.” The world narrows to the dark and the light. His body is moving to parry another shot before his mind has caught up. The blade throbs from tip to insulated hilt. “I will kill you if you touch her,” he says, and he means it, even if he doesn’t know if he can. How’s this for a storybook, dearest and best of maids? How’s this for the Maneater, the filler of graves, the doom of cities? How’s this for choosing you? “Avaunt!” His voice is too small for the heart it carries; it cracks beneath the weight.

And this is the moment. This is why Aphrodite raised him up from the shadows to be the prince of the night. For this, and this alone; and all outcomes, then, are part of his song. End of the line! Curtain fall! And what are you in the dark, Skotia, in that heart of hearts, standing so small and pathetic in front of a living nightmare, while you stand between the protagonist and her doom?

Not a coward.

Not with Bella on the line.

He digs his heels in and screams his defiance in the face of death herself:

“Av—!”

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Giriel!

Uusha flinches away like a wild animal. For a moment, her breath is panicked. She isn’t used to being touched like that. Not any more. She rides that panic like a wild horse, however, and while she moves in such a way that she could backhand you, she doesn’t. She could have, her animal heart wanted to— but Uusha of the Holly is not an animal. She is a knight. And she is in control.

The more important thing is that you derailed her train of thought just long enough. If she wasn’t suddenly focused on you, she might have noticed the cresting wave in time.

Not all of them are demon snakes, horned and brass-scaled. Just some of them, hissing their snake-songs, commanders of the host. Every other snake is a more regular, ordinary snake, green or yellow or black, red or purple or mottled brown. But this is the Flower Kingdoms, and some of those snakes are as big as horses; some of those snakes are venomous enough to wilt grass where they breathe; some are descended from spirits, heavy and mossy and earthen, stone-eyed or rain-slick; and they are a river that has burst its banks, and will drag you down beneath the waves, and bury you underneath their bulk.

Behold, the Serpentine Hunt, led by the Messengers of the King, and you the prey.

Uusha performs an incredibly impressive vertical leap and swings herself into the branches of a tree to get a better vantage point, but that leaves the rest of you high and dry. Some of her retinue breaks, screaming, panicked into the jungle— doubtless playing right into Ven’s hands.

***

Han!

This would be a very bad time to find out you have herpetophobia.

***

Piripiri!

Oh by the wandering stars it’s more snakes. Azazuka jerks her ankles up and screams as the tide thunders towards you, likely because of her last experience with demon snakes.

***

Fengye!

This was a fortress, but (for a time) a secret one. These stables were not used by raiders on their foreign mountain ponies, but by outlanders here to meet with the cannibal-cult who raised these walls. The rotten wooden sheds have long been in the shadow of a horrible place, and it has seeped into them.

On first inspection, there’s nothing here— but if that were the case, why would the hair on the back of your neck stand on end when you gaze into the depths of the stables? Then, and even Kalaya Na can see this, two pale lights wink into view, and a horse emerges from the stables to challenge you.

No.

The shape of a horse emerges to challenges you. There is nothing there except for the marsh-lights, one to either side of the head. It consists of the motion that a horse would make, if it were agitated, if it were one of King Salamedes’ fabled flesh-eating horses.

This is one of the Hlungta, the Horses of the Children of Adorjan. Its presence suggests that Ven may have called up something that cannot easily be put down. Something that is dangerous, incredibly so, even more than the horse (which might take one of your arms off).

Here, then, is the danger and the opportunity: the Hlungta will maul you if not placated, and you risk attracting terrible attention if you choose to ride it; but there is no finer mount from here to Chiaroscuro, and perhaps you want to be a doomed distraction for the sake of Kalaya-phraya.

***

Kalaya!

There’s something there that makes your eyes kinda hurt when you try to look directly at it, because they’re telling you that there’s nothing there but also, it’s moving, and there are two pale lights higher than your head, and you can hear it breathing, wet and hoarse.

Why don’t you break and run from this phantom?

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

“Well!” 3V says, cutting through what might have been, in the (flesh-and-blood) hands of a much less capable person, a nightmare of an awkward moment. Her smile’s too self-aware of what’s about to come out of her mouth, and she’s inviting Ferris to laugh along with her, not at her. “I’m afraid that most of what I’ve got to work with is a bit ridiculous. 3V’s silly, sure, but Ms. Valentine isn’t that much better.” A lifetime of getting little chocolate kisses and jokes about how won’t you be my Valentine, and laughing at February every year to avoid cringing at it.

You’ve got to control the moment. You’ve got to project both magnanimity and power, and how better to do that than making them laugh? So what if it’s an audience of one right now? Everybody’s acting, darling. (Daaaaahling.) Because the price of not doing that is being awkward.

The real trick is finding the sincerity, too. You know how many people can’t hack that after mugging for the stream over and over and over again? It’s always got to be the sincerity. And she’s sincere in wanting to make Ferris laugh, a little bit, at ridiculousness and the dumb little dance we hedgehogs have to do.

“You could just use Vesna, but if we go to drinks and first names in fifteen minutes? I’m not that easy, ma’am.” A wink, a sincere grin, a lift of the shot glass and a-down it goes.

And that buys her just enough time to wonder why a woman doing her best to live a life free of the culpability that everybody else buys into would want to talk to her. Friend of a friend situation? Or because she represents the journalists, because she’s the one who was willing to drop everything, leave the keys under the proverbial mat, and climb a mountain just to speak with her? Because it’s very obviously not watching her old streams. Hell, maybe it’s just the novelty of seeing someone who used to be somebody, too, getting involved with the real activists and the shit-kickers.

“What do I want?” 3V muses out loud, once the moment’s passed. “Well! I want to have a good time. Meet interesting people. Make a fuss about things that deserve to be made a fuss about. Sleep at night knowing that I dug my heels in where I should.” That’s still surprisingly tender; she bounces after it with the giddiness of someone playing with a knife against their skin. “I run a little place on Aevum because it’s fun. I could be making a lot more money if I wanted to encourage people to get into a game designed to find people with gambling addictions and fleece them for a bunch of digital pictures, but it wouldn’t be fun. I climbed a mountain today because it was there and people for centuries have thought it was a pretty big deal, so I might as well, right? And I’m going to jazz up what you tell me so that folks who can’t climb mountains or even take enough time off work to come out here can be entertained for a little bit, and feel things for a little bit, and maybe somebody smarter than me will have a realization and realize there’s something that they can do with your way of looking at the world to improve things. I think we owe it to everybody else to make things better, and we owe it to ourselves to chip in, because otherwise the only thing left is deadening the part of you that cares, y’know? I can’t bring down capitalism, and I’m definitely not strong enough to be as hardcore about avoiding consumption as you are, but… like, the alternative is rolling over and ignoring how shit things are for other people and climbing mountains because you can put the pictures online or because it’ll convince you that you deserve your managerial job. When really, the mountain’s here to be really, really human at.”

This time, the tea. Down in one long gulp. Roll the taste around before it’s gone.

“I wish everything worked like that, you know? Just! Everybody rolling out of bed and asking themselves what would be fun to do. And maybe, if we all promised to be cool about things, it’d even work.” Her smile’s tinged with a bit of self-criticism, trying to establish itself before Ferris can express it. “But some people just want to see Number Go Up, or proof that they’re special and don’t have to play by the same rules. Gotta have moderation one way or another…”

Breathless Dead

”No!”

Skotia’s vehemence rings out dangerously in the dark, his fingers curling tight on Bella’s dress. He is firm against Bella’s softness, his muscles taut against her skin. He’s not blushing any more, the way he lit up when accused of talking like a character, a barb that hit squarely and left him acutely embarrassed. No: he burns, but not with embarrassment. With passion. With pain. And with indignation.

“I’m not giving up on you, and she didn’t either,” he says, one arm around her shoulders, forehead resting against her cheek. His breath is only a little ragged. “Isn’t it obvious, Praetor? She wanted to save you. She was stupid and selfish and impulsive, but she left because she thought the whole universe was the only thing big enough to give you, to give her loyal kitten.”

One hand crawls up his neck towards his face, but he almost playfully nuzzles it into Bella’s neck, the way that Redana might have when they were both so small. “Besides. How was she supposed to give that love back, even if she’d been smart enough to see it? Her holos were full of slave-girls and servitors being saved from cruel masters who wanted to force them into bed by the heroes and heroines. How could she have ever touched you and known that it was because you wanted her, not that it was only because she wanted you?” Skotia’s voice isn’t entirely his voice any more; there’s a quality to it, an antique, like listening over long-gone radio waves. It’s not just Skotia talking. “She probably dreamed of you every night. Of how it hurt when you struck her, how she never thought you would; how betrayed you looked, stuffed in that closet, and how much it hurt to leave you behind; that you must have thought her stupid, and that maybe she was. No, that she definitely was. And that you knew it now, too.”

One hand finds hers, wraps around her fingers, holds it close to his throat. Close enough to choke. He simply trusts, despite everything, that she will not. “Because you were always the clever one, Bella. The elegant one. The pretty one. The one who could fill out a dress. Do you think she never compared herself to you? She, small and artless and flat, an athlete who could never live up to her mother’s expectations, living beside someone who effortlessly, seemingly effortlessly, fit into her social role and found happiness in it? She wanted you and she wanted to be you and she wanted to be good for you, and she couldn’t be any of those things, so she ran off to make a universe where maybe she could be. And when I look at you? I can see it, Bella.”

In the dark, his eye gleams for a moment, a sea-blue. In the dark, his lips on her neck are just like the princess’s. In the dark, he smells of cigarette smoke mingled with a familiar cologne. In the dark, he could be her, except that he speaks with a clarity and cleverness that she never had. But he’s just as idealistic, in his own way.

“You deserve the kind of love she couldn’t give you. You deserve the kind of life you could never have at her side. And you deserve love. So, no, my Praetor. Tonight, by the stroke of midnight, you will be reunited with your lover, no matter what it costs Skotia of Paris,” and there, the deep cut, the joking reference to The Golden Apple, to Bella in the garden reading out loud to a princess burying her face in a pillow as her purr accentuated the passion, and there too the martyrdom, the tossing-aside of his own feelings, the same impulse that led to the splitting of pancakes in bed, “or may Aphrodite open my ribs and remove my beating heart for my failure to beauty, love, and truth.”

And he nips at her neck, the hand tossed around her shoulder reaching down to pull her dress to one side, and in the dark it could be Redana, couldn’t it?

“How’s that for a holo, Bella?” And in the dark that could be Redana, too, making a dumb joke that makes those fluffy ears burn and makes fingers want to knead an apron, that send lightning down that perfect spine to the very tip of that white tail.