Tatterdemalion

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Giriel and Piripiri!

Uusha’s breath is hoarse, echoing in her terrifying helmet. She’s very deliberately not limping as she makes her way towards you. She’s also got that great spear slung over one shoulder, and an intensity rolling off of her in waves as she approaches.

“Nice catch,” she says to Piripiri. The mockery is thick, but deniable: of course you would play with a pretty snake. Then, to Giriel: “There’s the warlock.” She points down to where the knight is— oh. Oh, well. At least someone’s having a moment. “Be ready to leave.”

Back to Piripiri, looming huge and terrible. “Stay with the witch. She speaks for me.” A moment of trust? Or simply necessity? Does she think Giriel would side with her, or is she simply out of options?

Then she begins to march down towards the knight and the warlock, stiffly, like a boulder slowly picking up momentum as it rolls. Now, Giriel, you have a dragon-blooded at your disposal. Use her wisely.

***

Kalaya!

Ven is breathless, and for a moment, unguarded. She’s drowned everything else out: the struggle between the Generals, her own plans, the fact that the two of you have sunken in the waste (somewhat uncomfortably) down to your ankles holding still like this. She nuzzles into you and looks up, open, vulnerable.

“Stay?” She asks, and cups her brass hand against the small of your back. “I can keep you safe. Show you wonders. Introduce you to Whirling-in-Rags.” She’s trying. She’s wedging open her life, the life she’s made here, and all but begging you to step inside, instead. Her eyes dance with visions of you in hellish armor, someone she could trust, someone she could believe in, someone who she can show the wonders and horrors of the Demon City. “Please. This time. Stay with me.”

Behind her advances the Stag Knight.

There is danger in every stiff, deliberate step she takes across the waste. She’s found the warlock, and she will treat Ven with all the gentleness and care that a traitor to the Flower Kingdoms deserves. You don’t have very long at all to think about this.

You can accept her offer and defend her from the Stag Knight. You could try to stand between the two and defuse the situation, but that would just result in you being stabbed from both directions in the tumult; there’s no way to stop them from fighting.

Unless. You could take Ven prisoner.

You could clamp your hand over that perfect mouth you just kissed and convince Uusha that you seduced her into letting her guard down. You could wrap one arm around her torso and march her, flailing like a cat, into cuffs. She would be furious, she would feel betrayed, she would stare furious daggers into your heart.

But your options are narrowing down to betraying her for her own good or drawing your sword on a fellow knight to defend a warlock. And if Uusha rolls over you with her expertise and reach, then she’ll be at Ven’s throat anyway.

Or you could take her hand and try to run away, but where? You’re in a sea of the trash and detritus of war, there’s not exactly any place to go to unless you let Ven take the lead, and then you’re back to accepting her offer.

What will it be, knight of the Accord of Thorns? How will you protect the heart of the girl who’s falling for you, hard? How will you uphold your knightly vows and keep Ven safe from the scariest knight in the entire Flower Kingdoms?

Run or seize or draw?

***

Fengye!

We all knew the General would yield. He thinks of it simply as a tactical withdrawal. He gives ground in this way; he will then be in position to make a second advance and strike you where you are weak. Such is his thought. Such is his hubris. Such is his fear of being unmade. He is, after all, a fragment of the Broken King, the part that will never believe the war is truly over, no matter how long he has to fight— but to fight, he has to survive. He has to continue. He has to be.

And what he ignores is that he will be something very different; that, perhaps, when you are done with him, he will be unrecognizable, that he will no longer think in terms of grand strategies and the war that must not end.

He is yours, now. Show him the enormity of his error.

***

Han!

Her hands are so wonderfully soft on your scaled cheeks. She is dainty and small but when she moves those hands, you follow; you allow her to move your chin up, to be made to look at her, into those golden rings that protect such deep, soft eyes.

“That’s me,” she says, her fingers fluttering so soft against your scales, as if she’s playing you like a noblewoman’s harp. “Your little bud.” Her unveiled smile is shy, but sweet, and when she looks into your eyes, you don’t see fear. You see awe, which could become fear, but you also see happiness. She’s overwhelmed to see you, here, for her.

And maybe that’s why she makes you turn your head so she can brush such soft kisses against your cheek, warm beneath her lips: because she’s rewarding her rescuer. Prematurely, but the Generals seem busy and nobody’s bothering you right now and, besides, can you really think at a time like this? When you’re getting reward kisses? Or one hand reaching up and rubbing you at the base of one horn, so bold, and don’t you dare think about her taking it in her hand and leading you around by it, knowing you’d follow wherever she went, knowing you wouldn’t dare tug it out of her slender fingers.

You’re allowed to be happy, even as the two of you start to sink. Or, well, the one of you does. Melody doesn’t— is she really that light? Or is she just somehow balanced perfectly on the beams of a shattered catapult? But you’re the one finding her claws sinking under the waste as she shows you her gratitude. Don’t worry about that. You’re strong. You could sink all the way to your neck and still break free, as long as Melody asked you to. So relax a moment longer. There’s no danger in it. You defeated the danger and some other danger is getting rid of it. And you can just spirit her away when the time comes. So don’t worry. Just be happy, for once. It’s allowed.

Sunshards

Rosepetal knows a little thing or two about how scary it is to chase your dreams. The ones you never ever thought would actually get to come true, the ones that make your soft cheeks grow red as a harvest moon. And Chen supports hers without any hesitation; the least that she can do is return the favor. So she stands, and lifts Chen into the air as she does so, resting her on one hip just to make her squeak. Every little bit helps when making your case, after all.

“I wish that I could make that decision, your highness,” Rosepetal says, Acting. “But I am just a simple, lowly slave to the whims of the Pyre of Inspiration. Only she can decide whether she wants the services of the cutest and most submissive maids in all of Ys.”

She cups Chen’s chin with two fingers and leans in closer, teasing a kiss. “I don’t think she will,” she adds, her hot breath washing on Chen’s lips. “She wants too much to be ordered about by the likes of Princess Qiu. She’d rather have the approval of a Princess using her for land development than have two of the most beautiful girls in the world,” a thing she only manages to say because it will obliterate her girlfriend, “washing her Scales of Meaning by hand. With those dainty little gloves, and brushes, and maybe even, if commanded, a little bit of tongue. She’d rather see more chaos, tumult and upheaval, in the hopes that maybe this time it will fill the hole in her heart, than the sublime flash of a maiden’s panties under a frilled skirt. A shame— I can speak from experience when I say that Chen of the North Wind, the Twinshard Princess, is the prettiest, most flusterable, and easily the most delightful maid from here to the Terraced Lake.”

She tsks her tongue and shoots the Scales of Meaning a look. “No, the Pyre of Inspiration is a good girl. She’s exhausted the depths of vice, and the thought of having a relic of the old world and a champion of the new willingly, eagerly submit to her most lewd and perverted desires doesn’t sway her heart at all. Such a shame. We’d do anything for her, we little maids. We really would.”

[Rose is spending a String in order to find out what would make the Pyre hire two maids instead of using Rose to continue the assault.]

Breathless Dead

Dolce!

It’s deeply unfair. Incredibly unfair, even! How could you ambush Redana like this, Dolce? She’s here to get scolded! After all, what she did was very bad. And when you are very bad, Redana, there have to be consequences! Especially for this, something so much worse than anything she’s done before. Especially now, when there’s no Bella here to get punished behind her back, and all the weight of her actions is supposed to fall on her.

And you just forgive her?

No wonder you reduce her to blubbering as she squeezes your fur and buries her face into your floof. No wonder she shakes and lets her body tremble like the waves crashing against the hull of this dark, forbidding ship. And no wonder her heart flutters like a bird freed from a cage.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I couldn’t save her,” she says. “I could have killed you,” she says. “I’m sorry,” she says, over and over, until the gentle pats and brushies allow her to subside into sniffles and hiccups. “Thank you,” she says, and means it. Means it so, so hard.

Thank you for being, always and ever, kind.

***

Vasilly!

“Bella was filming the whole thing!” Redana says, a little quieter. Not by much. “She had this camera that she was using to record her journey, and she started out so happy and hopeful, but by the time she got to Ridenki she was, well, you know how she was better than maybe I do! But you were interrupted by that horrible thing, and then she left you without helping? The Bella we… I left behind on Tellus never would have left something unfinished like that, because she was a good kitten! She never would have left something half-done!”

Redana’s face goes firm with determination. “When we save her from those assassins,” she says, with unshakable conviction, “I will convince her to apologize to you! I promise, Vasilly! And you can even tie her up if you let me untie her after! That’s fair, isn’t it?”

***

Alexa!

It’s the doodles that really have the heart. Redana’s actual letters are a bit banal, after the first few: hopes that you’re doing all right, updates on the engine room and how secure it is and, wow, is it true that your arms were living light by the end? (She is so sorry you don’t have arms any more, but also, you could probably kill her with your thighs, right? Oh, the things she’s heard from the Coherents about how they feel concerning your thighs!) Hope you get well soon, I’ll send Iskarot with some arm designs, but maybe we should wait to install them to cut on the risk of strangling people (like me) if the blindfold doesn’t work? (Also, how are you supposed to kill yourself without arms? You could try running into a wall, but the wall would break before you could, you know? I suppose you could— but here she breaks off, scribbles out what she wrote so hard the pen leaves a gash in the paper.)

But she starts doodling on the letters, too: Hermetic seals drawn from memory in a lazy moment, more and more abstract wings, Possible Arm Designs? that are increasingly implausible (from tentacles to swords to things that look like broken birdcages). Your face, from memory; hers, from a mirror; half of a sketch of a familiar maid, left unfinished. Starbursts, Poseidon’s mandalas, meditative tools for the worship of the Worldshaker. Flowers from her garden back in Tellus.

She’s always been busy, our princess, throwing herself into tasks on the Plousios. It’s possible that you find out things about her you never would have through your infrequent conversations: how steady her hands can be, how you can tell where she’s set it down and come back hours later based on how her handwriting changes, how she thinks she’s stupid when she can’t immediately come up with perfect solutions like her mother, the genius, the god.

(She slips that into one letter as if she’s forgotten you were not present for that revelation. Redana, daughter of Hermes. Perhaps just accepting what the Hermetics say about her and her mother, but something about the way she wrote it…)

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Zhaojun!

That was touch-and-go for a moment, wasn’t it? But there’s nothing better than the rush of seeing everything click into place. The General is perilous, powerful, and potent, but you have turned his army against him, a child of the dragons has rebuked him, and at the end of the day, he is of Hell. They lost the war. Their days of glory are far behind them.

So down he crumbles, bleeding ichor from his hewn limbs, as Wrack-dolls climb all over him with rusted chains and frayed ropes, and when he tries to sink beneath the Waste they dig in their heels and slow him down. They will not last forever, and even now vambraces are snapping free and broken lines are sawing through the air, but he is not acting at his full strength and he is unable to simply dive and then burst out from beneath you, as he would like.

He is vulnerable. You may strike with the authority of Heaven and the law of Hell. And you should do so quickly, before the advantage is lost, and he marshals his strength and turns to the work of unmasking you.

***

Piripiri!

“My savior! My heart! Kindest of mortals! I am Naji, daughter of the Laema, sworn to torment those who cast aside true beauty in the Revolution and to provide loyalists with the ageless finery of the true aesthetes, and yet, I want nothing more than to yield to the iron command of a mortal, so long as she is you! Please, let me be yours, yours, yours! Let me be your slave, let me slither upon my pride and my mother’s war, let me be a filthy little traitor to the cause, if only I am yours!”

…is what the serpent-girl is trying to say. Even as you shush her, even as you trace a thumb over her drool-sodden gag, even as she grows more and more mortified, even as she squirms and writhes needily in your arms, cheeks flushed, top heaving, eyes bright, slithering neatly into the archetype of the Traitorous Demoness (who denounces the Demon City for the sake of love, despite the terrible punishments that may well be inflicted upon them when their lover dies and they must return home).

Her words are muffled, incomprehensible, and you can feel how the more she tries to talk, the faster her alien heart beats, the more she strains her muscles against the ropes, the more she huffs through her neat little nose, the higher-pitched her stopped-up voice becomes, and the more adoring the looks she gives you through her lashes.

This serpent has it bad for you. Just absolutely tumble-down-a-flight-of-stairs catastrophic. She associates you with the blissful neediness of suspension, the erotically charged transgression of dallying with a mortal, the shock of sudden relief as she’s plucked right out of the sky and held reassuringly close, and your fondly condescending smile as you listen to her just dig her own horny grave. Tell her how pretty her voice sounds like that and she’d shamelessly arch her back and moan. And keep reassuring her, tell her that you’ll keep her safe, and you’ll have earned the loyalty of a competent demon operative.

And also she has a long, powerful, clever tongue, if that is relevant at all.

***

Kalaya!

Color rises to Ven’s cheeks. She tries to say something, but it comes out as a little squeak. Her eyes dart from your boots to the collapsing demon monster far off, and then she stands up and starts pacing. So that she won’t start sinking into the sea, that is.

Then she pulls her top off.

Beneath, her body is hard. Scarred. The simple wrap over her chest doesn’t hide the place where her arm meets her body. It’s not pretty; the metal was hot when the fusing process began. The arm itself is gleaming brass, of strange design, impossible to mistake for a human’s arm: ornate, fluted. The fingers, articulated, are more like claws.

“Well?” She snaps. “Look at me and say that. Look at this and say that. The Green Sun gave me this instead of my useless one. It was mangled, Kal. I couldn’t even open my fingers anymore. I would have spent the rest of my life as a cripple, forgotten by the world, left on some backwards little farm, pitied and unloved and weak.”

(You know this Ven, too. The Ven who’s too proud to admit she needs you to agree with her.)

“So are you still happy? Because I’m not going to give up. The Broken King promised me the Flower Kingdoms. I’m going to march into Golden Chrysanth at the head of an army. I’m going to bring the kings and the princesses into line. I’m going to make my family proud and free again; Snapdragon will blossom, and there will be peace throughout the kingdoms, and all because of me. So don’t you—“

She gets in close. Touches you, before she realizes what she’s doing. Her brass hand on yours, her eyes shining with challenge and bravado and something more. She freezes up. She’s very close. You could reach out and touch her flushed cheek. Trace your fingers against the pulse beating in her neck. Bring your lips to hers.

“Don’t you try and stop me,” she breathes. “I don’t— I— you— you won’t—“ Her eyes snap down hotly from your face, and her grip tightens on your hand. “Shut up! Shut up!” You haven’t said anything. “I’ll! I’ll kill you! You stupid, beautiful—“

Her voice cuts off into a choked strangle of rage and… not rage.

***

Giriel!

You squeeze your eyes tight when you land. Not because you are afraid, but simply because the body has its own reflexes.

Even so, you see the world light up in searing emerald. Your skin prickles with sudden sunburn, red and sensitive to the touch. There is a sound of hissing, of settling ash, of the wind carrying off death.

And when you open your eyes, Peregrine is not offering you a hand to help you up, or comforting Azazuka, who is curled up and whimpering with the pain of that green fire touching her skin. She is watching the battle of the two Generals with delighted awe on her face, drinking it in greedily, even as a soft halo of Hell’s sunlight plays around her head.

“Fascinating,” she breathes. “What’s going to happen if she wins, removes him from play, allows Title to collapse? Diminishment? Scarring? Competition to fill the role? Old accounts from last war unreliable, biased. Contradictory. Implications… momentous. And her! Actions sanctioned? Risk of censure? Possibility of deep cover agents? All of Hell is Heaven unlikely, but… ha! Tell Giri later.”

Also, take a Condition. Being sunburnt hurts.

***

Han!

Mark Hopeless, too, as the fire wanes inside you, as the relentless green light of Hell’s sun beats down on you. Sure, you did it, you really showed that asshole, but the battle was harder than you maybe noticed at first. Gashes from the swords of dolls, ignored in the moment; bruises that will hurt more and more when you dwindle down into a smaller shape; and the question slowly sinking in of what you’re supposed to do now. There’s a second one, after all, and the sea all around you is swarming with the dolls.

But ignore that for a moment. Ignore all of it. Because Melody is nuzzling into your body in relief, and her dorky little smile is dazzling without her veil, and she’s shaking in that snug ribbon with the aftershocks of excitement, and when she looks up at you it’s like the first sunrise in the whole damn world.

“You came for me,” she says, and she’s still smiling even as tears well in her soft brown eyes, her glasses crooked on her nose, her body pressed up against yours like she wants you to never let her go.

Ignore your impending doom. Ignore the pain. You gave her a little more hope, gave her a reason to smile. You came back for her. Lower your head and nuzzle her and let that be enough, no matter what happens next to the two of you. Just let that be enough.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

That’s the trouble with being the first one awake: silently wheezing and trying not to be a terrible guest. (She’s been one before; she once stood, poleaxed, as a young girl, panicking over barking dogs and unable to walk away and let the house settle back to sleep.) Every time it cuts back! Every time, it gets funnier! The child! She leans against a counter and tries not to pull a muscle, mouth frozen in a rictus.

Now this is content. Content which absolutely needs to be sent to Persephone. Either she’ll find it just as funny, or she’ll be braced for when this becomes the next big thing for… oh, maybe a couple of days. Then it’ll mostly be forgotten, except for the occasional video shitpost.

Orange juice. Toast, cut herself with a bread knife, and hard butter, the kind that has to be scraped across as a solid lump and then forced into the bread with increasing amounts of violence. The weird feeling of domesticity, not microwaving anything or digging something out of a plastic wrapper. Like this is what real food is supposed to feel like.

The toast ends up in several more pieces than she was expecting. It’s the butter’s fault.

***

“So! Is that it, then?” 3V says; she can’t let it go that easily. “All about the dunk? Have you been fighting with Black again, or is this possibly a contest?”

She turns to Blue and turns on the Dazzle. The rakish 3V charm, the inviting smile, the way her jacket’s feathered collar frames her face. It’s safer to unload on Blue than, say, Yellow.

“C’mon! Blue, you have to tell me if this is one of your group contests. Yellow’s making a pretty good case, but I can’t let her run away with it if you’re waiting your turn~!”

Breathless Dead

Dolce!

It’s a surprise when you almost literally run into her, because there she is: fist raised, about to knock, and how she reacts to you! It’s one you’re familiar with: the way her eyes go wide and her mouth goes thin, the way she freezes up and goes stock-still before awkwardly shuffling backwards a half-step; the way her eyes light from you like they were burned.

She’s been a bad girl, and she’s scared of you. You! She’s trying very hard to be tense and firm and unbreaking so she doesn’t start crying. Even odds that she’ll just start bawling in the middle of trying to speak. It took all of her courage just to be here, in front of your cabin, saving you the trouble of going to seek her out.

“Sir,” Redana says, and spreads her feet like a sailor, staring determinedly at a point somewhere past your shoulder. “I am here to tender my resignation from the post of ship’s champion, sir. As a result of my behavior in said post. Sir.” She’s on the thin ice, waiting for the crack, waiting for a rebuke.

From you, of all people. Just because she was so worked up, she thought her options were to kill you or to stop existing. Because she was upset about Bella.

***

Vasilia!

“vaaaaaassssssiiiiiLLLYYYYYY—“

There’s nowhere to escape from being tackled into a hug by Redana moving at high speeds. Not unless you were to turn and run away, but you don’t do that, do you? Not to the princess.

“I saw the whole thing!” She blurts out, hugging you like she’s trying to snap you in half, face half-buried in you. “You, and Bella, and the tree, and the knife, and the bed, and—!!” She shakes the hug from side to side, which shakes you from side to side, and then she looks up with those big, tearful mismatched eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell me? All I heard about that day on Ridenki was that you had a fight, and of course you had a fight, Bella was being beastly, but I didn’t, and you wouldn’t have even been there if she didn’t want to do it to me, and I just— you know how to do ships and I don’t, and you’re so cool all the time, and, I’m sorry for not finding out earlier!”

She’s making a scene about, well, that, and her voice is carrying, and if you don’t reroute her somehow there’s going to be rumors. Well, more rumors.

***

Alexa!

The letter you receive back is short, and wrapped in a thick black cloth. When unwrapped, it simply states, in Redana’s hurried cursive, with as many swoops as Ti-jm’s hand but at much higher speed:

Why don’t I just order you not to follow any of his orders?

I know it would put a lot of pressure on my command seal, maybe even burn it off, but if I can use it for that then good. I don’t want it anymore.

I don’t want to overthrow or kill him. You know me. I hate killing people! I just want him to leave you the fuc depths alone! So let’s just figure out a way that you can spend the rest of your life away from him!!

Or I could just change my name to Molech and trick you into thinking I’m him, and take back all “”my”” orders in order?

Ti-jm has BEAUTIFUL handwriting and I am very jealous, please tell her how pretty it is!

- Your Friend(?), Redana

P.S. if it’s on sight, maybe the blindfold will work? I miss you already!

Sunshards

You’re the first person, Chen. Did you know that? Of course, you got here out of luck; if Yue was here, you would have been beaten to it! Nothing can stop that girl from giving hugs to big scary monsters so that they’ll stop being so scary. But you’re here and she isn’t, and you’ve got a different reason to look at her when she’s at her most monstrous, a thing of thorns and scales and power and fury, and still choose her, still try to hold her, still refuse to give her up: it’s because you love her.

So Rose bellows through a mouthful of teeth that could take your arm off, and she lashes out with her sword in a way that means you can feel her muscles rippling beneath you, like a bed of snakes, but she doesn’t reach up with her claws, and instead your words trickle into her like water reaching the roots of a flower, and she drinks, because that is her nature. She is a thing of flowering wood, here and now, growing and learning, pliant and yearning.

The heart is a flowering rose,
its roots spread wide and thirsting.
Good counsel will see it bloom;
a cruel word, see it die.

Her transformation is slow. It always has been. She doesn’t just let all the thorns zip back into her, she doesn’t suddenly shrink and pop into your arms all smooth and soft and pretty again. The thorns sink slowly, becoming nubs, then simple patterns on her skin; she diminishes with a creaking like a tree in the wind, and her steps become slow and clumsy. Then she topples, felled, onto her knees.

Her hands slowly reach up and hold you close, her sword again forgotten. She lowers her head, breathes in deeply, shudders. Her face is wet.

“I’m here,” she says. Then she says it again, loud enough to be heard. “I’m here.” Her fingers stroke the back of your head. She shudders again. “I’m here. You’re here. You won’t let me hurt anyone.” Her nails scrape the back of your scalp, almost possessively.

Then she hesitates. She is underneath the gaze of the Pyre of Inspiration. This is not the time for words she does not mean. Her other hand drifts along your ruined, bramble-torn dress; a host of regrets and sins roar in the back of her head. Then you hiccup. She blinks back tears and finds herself smiling through dry lips, undone utterly.

“…I love you, Chen.” Rose says. “You didn’t run away.” Not from the skill and power of the Thorn Pilgrim. Not from the sensual promises of Rose. Not from Rose from the River in all her pain and fury. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

She finally looks up, meets the eyes of Scales of Meaning and the Pyre of Inspiration, holds you closer. And there’s both embarrassment and resolve in those golden eyes, isn’t there? Rose from the River, being saved by her hiccuping, clinging girlfriend; changing from a monster of ancient wrath that could challenge the Pyre to a very disheveled little concubine, hugging you close with all four of her arms. Go on, those eyes say. I know you could make fun of me forever, but touch one hair on her head and I’ll show you.

She’s so serious, she’s not even squirming thinking about all the ways Scales of Meaning could cash in her remaining service time with a silly little princess and a mostly-naked monk. Usually that would wreck her, imagining being forced to tie you up oh so apologetically, kissing you tenderly before silencing you and then being tied up with you before the throne of the Pyre. But you’re here and you’re saving her, and she’s here and she’s protecting you, and that means so much more to her. Because you came back, Chen. You saved her. For the first time, you came back.

When she exhales, she breathes out smog and acid smoke and burning batteries. When she exhales, she breathes out hate, and shivers as if suddenly cold under your hands, and you squeeze her tighter until she feels like she could burst like fireworks forever across the sky, lights gleaming off the Sunshards.

And that’s how she knows, isn’t it?

[Rose chooses to open up to Chen, the best girlfriend in the whole wide world (sorry, Hyra). She clears ANGRY and receives an insight.]

Sunshards

Rose crumples into a shuddering heap of torn silk, the Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade clattering to the ground, forgotten. The world around her fades away as her blood boils from within, scorches her veins, her teeth lengthening, the slit of her eyes widening until it swallows everything, as she sees the parade. Not that of the Pyre of Meaning, not this time.

First comes King Oja, borne on a motorized throne, his mask hanging to his knees. His dark hands are speckled with age— no, they are thin claws beneath his gloves, folded on his lap. Tear him open and you could sort the few remnants of what he was born with out from the replacements, organs born from the same nano-alchemy that created Rose. (Rose tears a gouge into the ground, blind.) So fragile. So vulnerable. Dragon curled on his hoard of numbers and papers and dirty little secrets, leaning on his cane, his face small and pinched when his attendants lift the mask from his face, his white curls cut close to the head. So many enemies! Anarchists, communists, union organizers! Abolitionists, activists, assassins! Kill him and his dead man’s switch goes off; kill him and the other kings tear themselves apart over the secrets poured out of his hoard.

It— no, she, she meant to scare him. She’d meant to show him that nowhere was safe. She’d meant all kinds of things. When she stood beside him wearing a mask beneath her mask, helped him with the buttons he could no longer undo, she told herself that she would force him to rescind his orders to hunt her and harry her, would make him understand that if she wanted him dead he would be dead, only too late to realize that it was what she wanted, now that she stood in front of the man who had commissioned her, the man who had used her as his hunting-hound, the man who wanted her to stay a pliable animal without volition, taking on shapes and identities pressed into her like a mold, a monster in the dark that would never turn on her handlers.

He had been paper-thin under her claws, her drooling jaws; he had choked on the scream, and when his bodyguards broke the door open they found her there, as his hoard of secrets poured out electronically, if you are receiving this message—, and she should have been covered in his blood, drenched in it, but there wasn’t enough, he was so dry, like biting through a wasp’s nest, and she licked it from her lips as she stood before them and flexed her claws. (Her eyes dart from side to side, but they are all black, impossible for even the Scales to read.)

With Oja come the Burrowers, with their riot shields and their pristine labcoats, with their designer drugs and their loan collections, with their memetic jingles and their sonic dispersal units, with their sweatshop heels and their steel-tipped boots, and with them the prison laborers, shaved and barcoded and muzzled, staring hatefully at her, betrayer, skinthief, tool, stealer of kisses in nightclubs, the king’s relentless hound, hated by those she’d never saved.

Then, the Eight Trigrams Coffin. Huge, its energy flows aligned to ground and dissipate anything that could rouse her to wakefulness, its mouth open and empty and hungry. And riding inside of it, hair flowing down her bare shoulders: Yin. The Radiant Knights carry it on their shoulders, just like they carried it into Yin’s armory, a weapon— but not for such a well-behaved knight, never again, don’t you worry, First. But she never destroyed it. Never let First destroy it. Too useful.

The spotlights are all on Yin as she stares at Rose and purses her lips. Then, she says: “Fine. Be a girl if you want, First. But be my girl.” (“That’s not my name,” Rose drools through her fangs.) “All this nonsense about the monks of the Way— you don’t know what you’re talking about. You need me to explain. Don’t you get I’m doing you a favor? Don’t you remember who pulled you out of here? Do you want me to put you back?”

(After she’d snapped it, one hand on First’s chest, teeth bared, the look on First’s face had jarred her back to shame. She’d teared up before he could, every part of him frozen and screaming as she bawled and asked why he’d made her say something that awful. This Yin does not.)

Behind Yin looms an allegory in the form of a space elevator. Do you know how to escape from orbit, Rose from the River? Unburdened. You must shed everything that weighs you down; you must be content to serve everyone with your strength, to surrender all the things that bring misery through desire: possessive love most of all. You must be free to walk away and leave everything behind if you are to play your part in bringing about universal happiness, whether that be the joy of fighting or the collar of a princess. You must turn yourself into a mirror that reflects the world for a time and then is gone, like the rose that grows from the mud of the river, swept away on the current, rootless, unwilting, glimpsed by many to their delight, never selfishly held.

Because you are a monster, Rose from the River. And the only way for a monster to be a good girl is to learn the Way, give up its selfish desires, and work towards the happiness of everyone without complaint. But you failed, Rose from the River. You have let yourself be bogged down. You compromise because you cannot overcome your desire to be beloved. (“I want to be loved,” Rose admits, small, broken. “please. let me be hers. just for a little while. let me be small and helpless and loved. she knows what I am and she loves me anyway, can’t I have this, please?”)

Once there was a king who gave stock options to three vassals. (“no. stop. please.”) And one used them as collateral to get an interdepartmental loan, and enriched his corporation thereby, and was promoted to manager. And one cashed them in in order to buy a better class of consumer goods, and through this proved the largesse of his king, and was promoted to assistant manager. And the third clung selfishly to them in fear of poverty, not trusting in her king’s largesse, and when the time came to account for them, she was found to Not Meet Expectations and had the stock options and her annual bonus revoked.

What will you do with your strength, Rose from the River? Will you hoard it and refuse to use it simply because pretending to be weak makes you wet? Or will you act under the direction of universal eudaimonia? Will you reach paradise through violence?

…

Scales of Meaning makes the mistake of coming too close, and Rose from the River is a sudden blur, and the sword in her hands protests as she twists it into its blade again. She is sobbing, fighting blind, lashing out at the world that she is unworthy of, that demands so much of her to be a good person.

She came so close. But Rose needs help. She can’t fight this battle alone. Which is to say, she shouldn’t; she can defeat the Scales of Meaning, she can overthrow the Pyre, but like this? Her skin like scales, her eyes dark, her hair lashing and digging at the ground, tears falling from her chin, veil dangling from one ear, clothes sloughing off of her as she becomes more serpentine, more thorned, more a monster to rival the Pyre herself? No. Please, no.

Only two ribbons hold her above an abyss. Imagine them: a pale blue-white ribbon, the lace digging into her wrist, soft and insistent and holding all of her weight, and braided around it, a simple brown ribbon, as a country girl might use to tie up her curls.

[Rose hits a 12 to Fight against the Scales of Meaning: inflicting a condition, stealing a String (perhaps because she can tell Rose is barely holding herself back), and opening an opportunity for aid once again.]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

The problem is that the human body learns early that you have a regular bed. It is easily lulled to sleep by familiarity; give it the same pop singles it knows and loves (Those Firm Pillows, That Creak In The Frame, That Total Lack Of Ambient Light) and it’s out like a light. But oho. Ohoho. You take those things away? Then it reverts back to its oldest script: Wake Up Every Three Hours To Make Sure You Are Not Going To Be Eaten By A Lion. Presumably, lions only attack during the fourth consecutive hour. Catch them with a stopwatch and a pair of binoculars out in the brush, waiting for that fatal mistake.

3V is doing just fine meandering around on the porch a full eighteen fucking minutes before her alarm is set to go off thank you so fucking much for asking. This is great! This is great. Nature. Wow. There’s so much of it. And so much to look at!

She has earbuds in within four minutes.

Nature is great! Nature is nice. Nature is very big, and if she wasn’t worried it would look like she’s trying to make a run for it, she’d go on a walk. (In fact, she does so anyway, but just within sight of the house, hands in her pockets, melodrama pop blaring in her ears, eyes fluttering closed of their own accord.) But nature doesn’t have any meaning signifiers. Humans? They’re all over cramming those things in basically anywhere they can. Take a walk through Aevum and see the change in meaning from neighborhood to neighborhood. Places where you’re not allowed to go inside, and places that are begging you to come inside (just like— ahem.); places that have been manufactured for the perfect view, and places that just stumbled upon them if you know where to look; places that have stuck to their original design and places that have had the stamp of living change them and places that say Excuse Our Mess, Safety Is Everyone’s Priority; places that everyone knows is a great time and places that you have to find for yourself and places where you can pull off the road and take your helmet off and think while you watch traffic go by and places where you can get the perfect Hawaiian-Japanese combo breakfast.

This is beautiful, but part of 3V is already itching, saying: go, go, go. You’re a creature of the city trying to cram the majesty of nature into your skull, and you want to be meandering around Aphrodite and finding new places to snack before you retire back to Gensoukyo and sprawl in one of the booths with coffee and biscuits and wifi.

She’ll be fine after breakfast, though. That’ll weigh her down enough that she’s not quite so antsy.

What’s on the news, though, when she finally pulls the phone back out and demands service and glacial loading of pictures? What’s trending? Who’s the Main Character of the day?

***

3V doesn’t spit her drink out. (Well timed, Yellow. And good distraction; 3V was starting to get jittery over the implications of what you were telling her, drumming fingers on the table as fast as if she were executing a macro.) She makes a little “hrk” sound as she tightens up, though. Immediate… discomfort? Shyness? Panic?

She sets the coffee back down, neatly, hand not shaking at all. (Another benefit of the hands. You could do surgery with the things, provided it was an emergency and you were being coached by a professional and you held the manufacturers free of any liability for the results.) “Now, when you say we,” she says, playful, making herself look Yellow in the eye before glancing away, “do you mean womano-a-womano, or do you mean all of November? If it’s the former, I think the rest of you might get… jealous~ If it’s the latter, though, I might not be able to keep up with the need to prove I’m Player 1 with all of you. I might be The Best, but even BigWinShot only did his 48-hour marathon of wins the one time.”

Does she entirely know what she’s doing? What she wants? She fends you off and then beckons you forward, unable to hide her reflexes but with a face so coy that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

Breathless Dead

In the stories, heroes are always doing things in a swoon. It’s a lot less fun when it’s happening to you. And this time, there’s not even the blessing of Dionysus to make everything vivid, important, or comfortably blurred.

She keeps losing herself in the dark. The journey through the Anemoi is fragmented, like the broken mirrors; suddenly she will see a lantern, and be struck by the knowledge that she cannot remember what she has done since the last light she saw, only that she has been moving forwards, forwards, forwards. Then she moves past the light, drawn on by that faint scent, and the dark rushes in to drown her again. In the dark, she is numb. In the dark, she is the aching, and the aching cannot hurt, it only is.

And then she is by the bed.

She sits down and stops moving. And now that she’s stopped, she can’t start moving again; and now that she’s stopped, she can hurt again. And the shape of the hurt is Redana, but it is also Bella in the arms of an insect, and it is also the scar torn across a galaxy, the list of names, the lights going out one by one, the dark pouring into the absence, and the light pouring into the dark, searing pink forever and ever.

She doesn’t find the film reel. Not at first. She lays herself down on the bed and she wraps her arms around a pillow and she buries her face in its softness and she breathes in deep until her whole head is full of the roses and the soap and the sweat and she convulses there without tears until she drowns in the dark and sinks deeper, deeper, and deeper still. She does not dream.

When she wakes, she doesn’t stir. Not yet. She clings to the pillow in misery and shame at her weakness. Bella may have held Skotos in her arms, but her touch lingers on Redana: her chin and her ear and her thigh, dirty, sullied. Like father, like daughter[1]! Give her a mask, let her think there won’t be consequences, and what does she do? She drools all over the forbidden fruit of her childhood, tries to trick her into bed, because that’s the only way Bella would ever share herself with her hated owner now.

In her mind’s eye, she sees Bella on Barassidar, sneering, furious. That’s what she’s earned. That’s all she deserves. And Bella gave her heart to someone else, someone who could be honest with her, someone who isn’t a greedy little slut. Redana grinds herself against the pillow despite herself and lets out a sound like a dying animal, gripping the pillow tighter so that her treacherous fingers do not defile Bella’s bed further.

The Redana who eventually sits up and sees the film reel waiting for her is a miserable little creature, stewing in how much she misses someone she doesn’t deserve, hiding in that pain to stave off the deep, crushing sorrow that laps at her ankles, vast enough to drown a god. If she tries to think about it, if she tries to think about her mother (and how silly old Iskarot was correct the whole time) she will be pulled back under. So she clings to the reef of Bella to stop herself from drowning, though it cuts her like a knife.

When she takes a seat on the bed by the note, she pulls her legs up to her chest and stares, flatly, at the opposite wall as it turns from monochrome to polychrome. And when Bella lights up the screen, Dany lets out a miserable groan and pulls herself tighter into herself, peeking up over her knees at the larger-than-life Servitor. And the first recording is easy enough to discount as performance. A fake smile plastered on with the makeup, a new dress for playing with her detested owner; nothing more.

But it’s the second that starts to prise her out of that shell of misery. The indignation of hearing what Bella really thought of Batrachomyomachia Untold! It’s compelling, Bella, and you said you liked them! And that’s enough real feeling that when Bella freaks out over Zahar, Redana lets out a croaky little laugh. There she is. The prissy, easily scandalized Bella who sometimes snuck out from behind that cheerful professionalism. The one that Mynx loved drawing out just to entertain her.

Which means that expression of longing and nostalgia while Bella holds Cloudcuckooland in her hands slips between Redana’s ribs and spreads like venom, until her throat closes up and her eyes are hot. Because Bella’s not acting, and Dany doesn’t know what that means.

So she keeps watching. She watches Bella at prayer for the first time, guilt crawling up her spine over the intrusion into Bella’s privacy; she watches Bella treat a mouse with the same incredible confidence and gentleness that she treated Skotos with, and her heart strains against her ribs; and she watches Bella, more disheveled than she’s ever been in Redana’s life, sing herself to sleep.

And by the third verse, Redana is croaking, trying to sing along, her eyes stinging and her cheeks wet, as if Bella could hear her. The thought occurs to her: she could steal this, cut it out. Put it on a loop. Make Bella sing that perfect song that means home over and over again. And she shouldn’t. But she could. She could keep this even when Bella goes off with her Beautiful, a memento of the way things used to be, a secret meant for her and only her.

Then the horror of— whatever it was. Vasilia. The tree-man. Violence. But violence like the violence against the snake-lady. Violence against a monster. Violence that Bella wields like a knife. She doesn’t understand what she’s seeing. She doesn’t want to understand. But every move Bella makes makes her more ashamed of lecturing her on the Eater of Worlds, back when she was horrified by the death of a monster, back when she thought Bella was tainting herself with the kill, ruining something innocent and perfect and precious, ruining the girl at the beginning of the reel. But that was the mask, wasn’t it, Bella?

You were always ready to kill if it meant protecting someone else. Your princess. Your pet. Your Beautiful. Never for your own sake.

When the reel runs out, Redana sits there and doesn’t move, and doesn’t speak, and doesn’t cry. And she does this for a long, long time. The lights overhead are relentlessly soft; the ship groans as tension presses somewhere in its ribs. And that is really all there is to see.

***

[1]: Diana’s shape and habit strait she took,
but soften’d her brows, smooth’d her awful look,
and mildly in the hunter’s accent spoke:
“How fares my girl? How went the morning chase?”
To whom Callisto, starting from the grass:
“All hail, dear Diana, whom I prefer
to Jove herself, tho’ Jove were here!”
The God was nearer than was thought, and heard
well-pleas’d herself before herself preferr’d.
Jove then salutes her with a warm embrace;
and, ere she half had told the morning chase,
with love enflame’d, and eager on her bliss,
smother’d her words, and gagg’d her with a kiss.