Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

“No!”

Redana stands and makes to leave the palanquin; Lacedo barely holds her back, on her own orders.

“Dolce— Captain— what she has done is my fault! I have failed her, failed Hera, failed myself! When I thought her dead, I— you know what I did! When I walked with her on Salib, she saved my life and showed her scars, her hurt, her life spent being punished, punished for my imperfections! And now you want— Lacedo, let me go— now you want to, you want me to abandon—?!?”

There is a struggle. Growling. Panting. A hushed compromise.

“I am bound in our chains,” Lacedo finally says for the room, her voice burying agitation under solemnity, under the half-memorized rhetoric of a born naval officer. “If I leave her behind again, if I let her fall, she will drag me into the dark with her. I will be unworthy of both Zeus and Hermes. I have lived with her since I was a girl, and I tell you now: she is not evil, she is wounded, and roars loudest where the thorn pricks her.”

There is a silence. The curtains of the palanquin have fallen still. The shapes within can barely be seen, mere silhouettes, close together.

“Heap punishment on my head, but let us save her if we can. Lock us in cages, but set them together. Make me do penance in her name, shame and denounce me for her crimes, whatever must be done, I welcome it. Only do not make me abandon my oldest, most ill-treated friend.

“Please.”

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Chamber of Harmonious Arrangements!

“—and of course, we expected anyone still remaining around the cursed castle would be in league with the warlock and her demon army,” Cathak Agata says, making an expressive gesture with her goblet. “So when a dragon emerged with several demons in tow, they thought they were under attack and moved with their characteristic efficiency to neutralize the threat! We’re all lucky that I was there to interpret the situation, aren’t we?”

Rain slicks the windows of the oversized cabin. Lanterns softly sway overhead from heavy chains, interspersed with incense braziers. The tables were set down easily, slotting into grooves on the floor to keep them steady, and the floor liberally cushioned to accommodate sitting or reclining as might please one. An erhu player sits in one corner, his silk robe loose and his chest intricately tattooed, playing O! Gloriana of the Triumphs! Legionnaires stand to attention between the narrow glass-paned windows, stoically ignoring the pervasive aroma of Dominion cuisine: duck skin and greens wrapped in pancakes, roast sweet potatoes served with cashews and dried piri-piri, sesame-seed cake and smouldering-wine. Cathak Agata has her own bottle of that last, spiced herself, and poor Lotus’s eyes start watering whenever she twists the lid off.

Because Lotus is sitting next to her at one table, wearing a red-and-gold gown, her blue hair bound up around a golden comb, skin fairly glowing from her hot bath, her lips and lids both gleaming red, with golden accent lines down the center of her lids and lower lip matching her gold-rimmed glasses. It’s not like Cathak Agata has a spare priestess outfit to hand, after all. You’ve all been helped into similar outfits, given that everything you were wearing was taken to be washed. (Though for some of you, “it’s being washed” was the second reason, the first being “evidence.” But the whole silly thing got taken care of! Everything is fine!

That is to say: Han, Giriel, Piripiri, and Fengye are all there, accompanied by Azazuka (on the other side of the Red Wolf), the demonesses (in the service of Piripiri), and Melody/Lotus (unveiled and very aware of it), as well as attendant slaves in black collars and fine robes (open low at the chest) to handle pouring drinks and lubricating conversation.

Han, Fengye: you have been through the mortifying experience of being processed as prisoners of the Dominion. Stripped, cold water poured over your head, then left to stew while bound in cells barely as large as a closet. This made suddenly being pulled out and tossed into hot baths, untied, and offered extensive help from Agata’s handmaidens in getting ready for dinner all the more abrupt and dizzying. Agata’s got the final say on which of those experiences you get when you leave dinner, but it seems like she’s eager to shrug it off as a ridiculous misunderstanding by everyone involved.

Giriel: you have not been through this experience. After waking up on board Beneficence of the Hearth, you cleared up the whole thing with Cathak Agata, who declared that she’d set the whole situation to rights. She’s also explained to you that both of the knights are under care from her physician to see to their injuries and that she would like to have a private night meal with you tonight in her cabin. The sort where food’s an excuse to taste sweeter things. Congratulations! You saved Han and her demigod from the brig, and you’re going to get rewarded for it! Everything is coming up Giriel tonight.

Piripiri: you have been Disciplined for letting Azazuka out into dangerous situations, given that you were meant to keep her under safe observation in Golden Chrysanth. In her usual magnanimity, Agata then turned around and delivered both the demons into your care, and (just before the two of you entered the Chamber of Harmonious Arrangements) informed you that she wanted you to arrange a night meal for Giriel Bruinstead. Because that is, unfortunately, actually a very good use of your talents.

Do try making your own duck rolls. They’re a delicacy for a reason, after all. Don’t even think of having to refill your own glass. Just enjoy the warmth to contrast with the rain lashing against the windows, the pleasant music and incense filling the room, and the brilliant smile of your hostess.

Everything is fine.

***

Kalaya!

You woke up naked in a cell, and it got worse from there. When legionnaires dragged you out of the cramped cell (through a hexagon-shaped room down in the hull, suggesting room enough for six other prisoners), they didn’t offer you clothing or answers for what was going on. They just dragged you up several floors, hands under your armpits, and cuffed you down to a chair in a guest cabin, leaving you to stew and bite down on your gag, trying to find some way out.

Then Cathak Agata takes a seat opposite you, in full Dominion uniform, gold cords and impractical jacket, her fiery hair falling loose down one shoulder, and studies you for a long moment, pointer fingers resting under her lip.

“Kalaya Na,” she says. “Not really what I was expecting.” She reaches out, hooks one finger under your gag, and pulls it down to rest around your neck, then pulls out the sodden wadding, setting it down casually on your lap.

“So, Kalaya Na, Princess of the Lily, can you explain to me how, exactly, you plan to…” She makes a show of pulling out a journal, looking for a certain page, reading the contents carefully. “Unite the Flower Kingdoms under your sword, defeat and humiliate the Dominion and the N’yari, force Cathak Agata to pull your chariot through the streets of Golden Chrysanth during your Triumph procession, and then usher in a golden age unseen since the days when the dragons ruled the whole world, as declared by virtue of the Five Maidens of Destiny?”

The journal snaps shut like the fall of an executioner’s axe.

“I am very interested in hearing how you plan to do all this, and how you’re making your sales pitch spread so fast. It’s like wildfire, and I have to know, because I didn’t think those particular techniques of Imperial Intelligence were disseminated yet. But they’re the only people I’ve seen who are this good at spreading a “”grassroots”” movement, so.”

She smiles, and it’s like staring down a dragon. Your heart really wants you to know that even if she doesn’t have fangs, she might as well.

“Let’s do this the easy way, like friends,” she adds. “I like you, after all, even though you apparently intend to dress me in a cow’s harness and make me trot with a whip licking at my heels. You know, apparently it was a grandmother who was sharing those details when my agent noted it down? Wild stuff. Wild stuff.”

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Giriel!

“I wanted to thank you for your service, didn’t I?”

When Cathak Agata cups your cheek with a bloodied hand, she wraps her spirit around you. Warmth suffuses you; the rain hisses away before it can touch you. Being this close to her is like sitting next to a fire, letting the heat sink in deep, until it is almost but not quite painful. She helps you to your feet as if helping a doll stand.

“What were you thinking?” Her admonishment is half gentle, half baffled. “Taking on an entire demon army by yourself, sealing their gate, defeating the warlock and her minions?” Her thumb rests on your mouth and she shushes away your attempts to explain. The warmth is so pervasive that it’s all you can do to stop yourself from falling asleep and letting Agata take care of where you walk. Even injured, she’s a pillar of confidence. You’d never think Han managed to lay a claw on her.

Han. She’s being wrestled down by legionnaires, dragging her over to the coffle: Han’s little demigod stands with the mad, brilliant woman who dared to impersonate the General, and the little demoness who used to be one of the most feared power players in Hell, all three collared and gagged, waiting for their forced march. Kalaya and Uusha are chained down to medicinal stretchers, and Azazuka—

“Release her, you dumb bastards,” Cathak Agata barks, the way that important people yell at people they think are simple but, dammit, good at heart. (The condescension of those who think themselves protagonists, and everyone else supporting players.) “Don’t you recognize her? If she’s so much as bruised…!”

And then Azazuka’s throwing herself into Red Wolf’s arms, which is to say, somewhat into your arms. “Oh, Gatty,” she squeals. “Don’t be too hard on them! I don’t know what’s been going on, but this witch here, she helped me, and so did the Hymairean, they’re innocent of whatever is going on!” Even as tired as you are, you recognize the shift in her demeanor: this is the mask of the Hapless Socialite Who Gets Her Way Out Of Indulgence. She’s trying to protect you and the Hymairean, and to a lesser extent, everyone else. She gives Agata a look that probably gets her anything she wants back home, but Agata frowns and gently lays a hand on her shoulder. Azazuka’s breath hitches a moment, but not from pain.

“What happened? How did this— and why are you here?” Concern. A hint of anger, roiling underneath for the first time. Azazuka definitely isn’t supposed to be out here, and shit’s going to rain down on someone who is responsible. She glances off to one side, her face away from you, but you can tell someone’s getting eye daggers. Then she returns her attention to Azazuka. “I’m afraid I don’t have a palanquin, my dear lady,” she says, taking her hand and simply breathing across her knuckles, the better to not irritate the sunburn, and Azazuka’s eyes flutter helplessly for a moment. “But if it is not beneath your dignity, I would make these brutes bear you on one of our stretchers back— and you, too, my witch. There’s no need for any more walking tonight.”

Han roars her fury into thick-packed cloth as her ass is smacked by a legionnaire to get the coffle marching. But that might as well be a mile away, because Agata’s helping you down onto a stretcher and she’s even got an umbrella for you.

After all, she’s the hero. She’ll take care of you.

Sunshards

Rosepetal doesn’t set her Chen down. One hand strokes along the back of Chen’s neck as she nimbly— up, up!— takes Chen up to meet the Pyre of Inspiration, taking great bounding steps like gravity is something she can ignore by simply wanting it to be so. So she comes to meet someone who is finding the world to be suddenly new and beautiful, and takes her by the hand, with all the solemnity of a monk and all the grace of a handmaiden.

“Princess Chen of the North Wind and her Rosepetal, reporting for duty, mistress,” she says. “However, I am happy to inform you that if you are willing to wait until after the battle to cash in the shares you own of me,” she says, with a playfulness, as if joking between friends, “I am authorized to extend our contract until such time as you are satisfied with our service.” No more hours. No more seconds shaved off. An openness, a shutting of the eyes and falling into her arms, trusting that she will be caught. “This special offer is only increased in value, because it comes along with a fox-certified master maid.”

No hiding in your Rosepetal, dear sweet Chen! She knows you want her to turn your head, to tilt your chin up, and make you look up at the Pyre. “That’s right! The second time I met her, she was displaying her core competencies by cleaning an entire shrine wearing the most darling little uniform, weren’t you, Chen?” And now look whose head is being nodded!

Rosepetal’s voice only becomes a little more serious while her little princess is busy overheating. “It’s just that this city and its safety is very important to Chen, and if she’s worried about it, she’ll be so clumsy, knocking over valuable vases with her skirt and tripping over her own heels and let’s not even get into all the things she’ll spill all over herself! And if she’s not worried, you’ll know that whenever she does that, it’s because she’s trying to be a naughty girl who needs Burrows discipline, just for you.”

She looks out at the walls of the city, the multicolored smoke and the assault ribbons, and squeezes Chen closer. Her Chen. Her defender, her treasure. “It’s your choice,” she says. Because if she doesn’t say it, if she tries to trick her and run rings around her, if she doesn’t treat the Pyre like a person who’s even more vulnerable right now than her Chen, then she’s betraying everything she still holds dear, all for the sake of Chen— and that would sink its fangs into the root of their love, a still-young tree still coming into its fruits. How could she meet Chen’s mothers knowing she was a traitor of innocence? How could she kiss Chen’s perfect lips knowing what she’d paid for them?

So she holds Chen tighter and her heart plummets, as if blindfolded, waiting to see if it will indeed be caught. If the dream she danced, here and now, was true. If the promise of the twilight on those purpled hills was true. If she can still bring happiness into the world.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Kingeater Castle!

Thunder rattling the trees. Rain, pouring down on the ruin.

Where there was a castle, there is now devastation. Everything was uprooted, down to the dungeons, down to the very foundations: the earth is a loose slurry being churned into mud. Trees have fallen, the stables have been washed away; come morning, there will be nothing to say that Kingeater Castle was once here but the mudslide drowning the earth.

Night on night pierces the darkness, forcing it open like the wedge of an axe’s head, and from it pours innumerable silver grains of sand, glowing from within as if imbued with moonish light, as if the stars themselves had been crushed to powder, and the murmur of their rush, hissing and tumbling over each other, is a hymn: all hail to the Mother of Deserts, all glory and power to the Edict Fount, may her body stretch into the shadows of eternity. And behind the ten sleepwalkers who stagger out into the sand-clogged mud, a presence rises, night blotting out night, and its tears are sand, and its mantle is the color that remains when all other colors have been eaten, and the sand surges forth like a high tide, hungry, inexorable, infinite; but the one who walks last, so that none will be forgotten as they walk single-file through the body of the Mother of Deserts, who alone did not slip into the cold waking dream of the rise-and-fall, the spell of the place where everything is the same as everything, she raises one hand and the door closes behind them, the ten of them, mortals and dragon-children and demons alike, and then there is nothing but the rain in the almost-light before dawn and the driving rain and the exhaustion, the bone-deep exhaustion, of walking the devil’s road out of Hell.

For the Mother of Deserts is the sister-bride of the Broken King, and she drapes herself around his bones like a suffocating robe; and her dictate is that those who leave must walk her road, and stand in her waste of ruined stars, and suffer for daring to leave, which she may never do, being now infinite. She could drown all creation beneath her weight and still only have extended the merest finger out of their prison.

The spell that the one wrapped around the nine was a mercy. Better to walk through that wasteland dreaming than to feel it bearing down on you, than to be tempted to collapse, than to be forced to understand the length of the journey.

***

Giriel!

Objectively: days. But also objectively: it’s maybe been an hour since you left. Subjectively: you are exhausted. You walked last in line, holding a candle, and you saw the shadows heaped up on themselves in the distance, horribly suggestive of entire civilizations drowned beneath the sand. You heard the sand-hymns and were coming dangerously close to understanding them. You held back the attention of one of the creators of the world with a candle and a waking dream, with blood and will and Peregrine’s help.

Peregrine. She stayed behind. She’s almost certainly got business with that warlock, who ended up escaping Uusha. She’s there because she’s got her hands in the guts of some interesting experiment, down to the wrists, and she’s there because— well, the last time you saw her was when she was abducted by that strange heavenly spirit, and there’s a connection there that you’ve almost hit, but it’s slipping through your fingers like smoke.

But can you be blamed? You’ve just walked for days without stopping, beating the responsibility of everyone’s safety on your shoulders, keeping all of them safe. And are they going to understand what you just did? Are they going to be grateful? Or are they going to listen to the dragon-blooded girl who looked at you with hate in her eyes? (Peregrine would understand.)

You’re sitting down. You don’t remember when you sat down, but it’s a thing that’s happening now. Sat down in the sandy mud (muddy sand?). You did it. And now it would be very appreciated if the world stopped requiring you to do things, because you’re going to need someone’s help to stand back up. Your thighs and feet have decided to go on dockworkers’ strike together. And the conversations happening all around fade in and out, cut together with the song of the sand.

That’s why you don’t notice what’s going wrong until it’s too late.

***

Piripiri!

Naji has wrapped herself around you, and you are sinking into her coils. Your hand throbs; your legs ache. The world has been too much, too loud, for too long. You need to dig your roots in and drink deep (metaphorically speaking).

Here’s a fun question to consider, though. You’ve been traveling through the Demon Desert for… folklore says it’s at least three days. The witch wrapped a simple enchantment over your eyes to protect you from the journey, but time still passed. If you sleep for three days and then awaken, are you still a hostage? Are you still required by honor to remain? Or does it even matter, did the witch break the oath of protection that stood between you and Uusha?

Naji nuzzles you with her body and you can feel her anger radiating off her. It’s not directed at you. It’d be nice to think it’s at the witch, wouldn’t it? Devils don’t much care for oathbreakers, after all (though they resent the oaths they are forced to swear). She probably deserves to be untied and told what a good girl she’s been, doesn’t she? It’s just that your fingers are so thick and heavy right now.

It’s the warmth of her fury and the softness of her flesh that drown out the signs you should have picked up on before it was too late.

***

Fengye!

You’re small again. But, luckily, Maid Confined in Yearning is smaller. She tugs at you, trying to pull her wrist out of your fingers, hissing— and she’s got more energy than you do, because walking through the desert (Zhaojun knows more) is harder on you comparatively fragile mortals than it is on them. So you’re forced to shift your footing and try to keep her from pulling you onto your bad leg.

Which is why the crossbow bolt screams through the place where your head was, before ending in a meaty thud that meant it hit someone.

Maid Confined screams and her helpless, pliable body throws itself of its own accord into your arms; she buries her face in you even as your leg goes out from under you and you both collapse into the muck, and she’s screaming so shrilly that you can’t hear yourself think, and you’ve got to wonder: is this how you die? With a former part of the Broken King’s soul squealing and kicking her feet on top of you while people get shot at?

***

Han!

The fire within you is waning. You won’t be able to stay like this for long. It feels achy, like you held a stretch too long, like you’ve been holding a muscle in place and now it won’t relax. It’s… fuzzy, memories of walking through somewhere dark and empty, like a tunnel, but with no walls, and there was this song—

Melody shifts on your back and sinks her fingers into your mane. Her chest rises and falls; she’s actually asleep. There. That’s something you can focus on. You didn’t manage to punish the rotting bastard who did this to her, but you saved her. That’s enough. She’s safe because of you.

Then pain explodes along your neck, crackling, burning, and Melody screams herself awake because her wrist’s caught in it, and everything— as the saying goes— goes to Hell.

***

Kalaya!

The world swims into existence. Rain hammers down onto your face. Pain swims underneath the bleariness of the world. But you’re home. You’re definitely home. The Flower Kingdoms, where the rain never stops during the rainy season. You push yourself up onto your elbows—

And Uusha grinds her boot down onto you, sending your head thudding back down against the mud. “Stay down, beetle,” she hisses. She looks about as bad as you feel: her face is bloodless, her eyes are half-shut, her stiffness is the fragility of someone who knows she is brittle. And even so, if you tried to get back up again, she would beat you into the mud until you stopped moving. Again.

The clash of your sword against her spear! The whirl, the execution of moves known by heart, the reserves of strength you pulled from again and again! The thorns that snapped from her armor, the bruises that blossomed on her skin like opening petals, the elegant arcs of her spear’s heads through the air, the whine of the wood put under such pressure! You fought like devils under the green light of Hell!

You can’t really be blamed for losing, you know. You were fighting the Stag Knight. One day, you’ll be as good as she is; one day, she was where you are now. She’s got long limbs and experience on the battlefield and a relentless fire in her heart, and that’s a lot to stack up against love.

(Love: Ven got away. She’s safe. You did it.)

Uusha opens her mouth to say something to you in her brittle, burned-through-anger voice, and you, through those bleary eyes, get to watch as she painfully turns, as she grabs at the air, slowed by exhaustion and the fatigue of fighting you. You hear the crunch, the way the air is forced out of her lungs in one sharp exhalation, as the bolt punches through a weak point in her armor, just a hair too fast for her to catch. You see the moment when she decides to lean into the momentum, so that instead of standing like an idiot who will get shot more, she topples like a falling tree and tumbles down a muddy slope.

And you hear the roar of the Imperial Legion.

***

Kingeater Castle!

Han is having a very bad time; she shakes and flails and roars to topple towers as the thunder bolas constrict about her throat, as a confused Melody screams in agony and tries to pull her wrist out from underneath the lines crackling with the power of a trapped lightning bolt, as Uusha topples into the dark bleeding from her side, as Imperial legionnaires reload a bolacaster and close in, ready to kill everyone. They’d do it, you know. Without so much as blinking.

And that’s when Cathak Agata rides into the scene on her coal-black horse (an already unusual animal to see here), rain hissing into steam in a halo around her body, and vaults from its back, does a somersault in the air, landing squarely on Han’s back.

The Red Wolf’s sword bursts into leaping flame and she raises it high. And with her in the midst of you, crossbows are lowered and shields are hammered into the mud, soldiers forming a ring of pikes to keep you hemmed in while their glorious leader plays her part.

“Hold still!” she says, pulling Melody to one side, and swings her blade down. The bolas explode into thrashing, arcing things like eels boiling in a pot, agony lancing through the air looking for victims, and in that moment, this is true:

Cathak Agata has Melody held tight to her chest, and is prepared to defend her from such things as a rampaging dragon out of her mind with pain.

After all, she’s the hero.

Breathless Dead

It’s Zeus you should fear. Redana’s hackles rise. When has she ever been afraid of her father? Even once? Her father is complicated and scared of the cycle of violence and wants you to be the most yourself that you can possibly be. And, sure, that might mean encouraging the Master of Assassins to be the best killer that she can be, but part of being Redana Claudius is being very good at not being killed, so it will even out, probably!

“Well, Zeus doesn’t give her favor to people who sit in the back,” she says, a little too loudly, before she remembers to keep talking through Lacedo. “She doesn’t! If I stay up here, she’ll turn out to have a plan for blowing this horrible ship out of the sky. At least if we all go down together, she’ll have to go through all of us. And that way, my dad— Zeus the Thunderer will be more inclined to look on us with favor, too. I say we land and meet her with our heads held high.”

It’s a scary thought, but what’s scarier is the plan of staying up here while her friends risk their lives, or worse, not having a plan at all. Just spinning her wheels while, down there, Bella suffers and the Master of Assassins waits smugly. Better to do something, anything. Better to try.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

On the Park!

Oh. Something is going on here. The reporter's senses, keen and honed, latch onto that. There's something going on, another angle to the story. Not the time to press him, but... something to keep in mind, at least. He probably recognizes that he's spilled some beans, based on the intensity with which 3V regards him. And that's probably got him with one eye on the door, to tumble back down the mountain.

"Nah," 3V says, all easy charm. "We mostly talked about archival, preservation, how to get data off old hardware, that sort of thing. Because, you know, I used to be in video games." A meaningful cock of the wrist. "Not that I personally can be of much use, but I know where to ask around for people who do. You do any games, Gavin? Phone, text-based, console? You can be honest; this is off the record."

***

On Aevum!

3V tightens her grip, too. Just warm enough to feel alive, but just cool enough to feel mechanical. Smooth, firm, precise, and absolutely invincible. An edge you can't afford to miss out on in the big leagues, given how much precise twitch control and speed of input opens up the meta. (There's some attempts to mitigate it, of course; a ceiling on how many inputs you can make in quick succession, abilities that depend on reading what your opponent is going to do, branching decision paths that anyone can take, and a ban on pre-programmed macros in professional events. And, of course, all the input precision in the world won't help you if you get flustered.)

"Hold on," 3V says, and her hands betray nothing. She's looking Yellow in the eyes like the android's an oncoming freight train and she's not 100% she's got superpowers now. "I haven't asked my dates what they'd like to do. Unless one of you experiencing it is the same for all of you? Because I don't think it is."

Already! Already she's having to think about the logistics! Green legitimately seems like she'd be fine set up in one of the corner booths at Gensoukyo with an outlet and the wifi password, happy to chill in 3V's radius like a cat, but Blue? Would Blue really be okay with watching Yellow swan off with her? Dammit. Dammit.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

On the Park!

3V laughs. Not meanly, mind you! The kind of laugh that invites you to join in. She manages to keep the nervous edge almost off it, given how dating is a bit of a touchy subject right now. She turns on the dazzle, though not to a degree that would blind someone who hasn’t seen the sun recently, glittering in its offer of everything all the time forever.

“Oh, god, comedy of errors, am I right? Nah, I’m a platonic houseguest, Gavin. Here to talk about her collection, stayed the night because I missed the last bus off the mountain, you know how it is. Can I get you a drink? Her casa mi casa, after all.”

She raps her knuckles on the counter, and how they flicker and flash! Got all kinds of settings packed in those things. And yet she still hasn’t mastered the art of cracking the egg perfectly the first time, like anyone with cyberhands should be able to do.

In retrospect, how she’s probably coming across is someone who was just turned down. Which is fine! That’s totally fine if he believes that for the rest of his life! It’s just that her persona’s a little manic even when she’s not walking a tightrope and the flames of hell underneath it are labeled dating!!

“How’d you end up here? Not at Casa du Ginsburg, but on the Park. I like getting different perspectives on the whole question of why not Aevum? C’mon, it’d be a waste if you came up all this way just to pop into the kitchen and restock it like a magical brownie.” She takes a seat and shoves the wicked phone with its invitations to hang out, to lunch, to game, to do all sorts of things, into her pocket, and focuses on him so she doesn’t start itching for it.

***

On Aevum!

Her smile’s frozen. There are wheels spinning, careening out of control, behind that smile. Her fingers tap the rhythm of the cheerful pop song playing over the cafe speakers, do it do it like me do it, and she gives Blue a very considered look above that frozen smile.

“I keep odd hours,” she counters after a minute, and the smile’s mocking herself, the cafe, the music, the world. “I flit between hobbies, which currently include business ownership as a way to cultivate an interesting social vibe, journalism as a way to hang out with interesting people, motorcycling as a way to find new vistas and places to eat new foods, and Hyperborea Online: Lostlight, critically acclaimed mor-pee-gee that you can no longer play for free up to level 60 including the award-winning first expansion, Clockwatcher with all the restrictions on playtime because our servers are in Devilhome, someone save us.”

You know this. Of course you know this. It is impossible to escape the meme right now. The fans howl for server slots. Blood feuds have been declared over unmarked spoilers. The fans are also screaming about the death of low-poly lemons, for some reason.

“I am a heartbreaker. And you will have to delete all your feelings when we break up over, I don’t know, my refusal to let Black ride my motorcycle or my refusal to treat our fake betrothal with the gravitas it deserves, or— something like that. If I made this profile myself, it would be entirely just Redflag, over and over. I am telling you right now that this is a bad idea. Terrible. The worst. You accept everything that will happen from now on. So how bad do you want it?”

She’s glittering again, almost goading you. She holds one flashy gamer hand out across the table, elbow on her napkin, with intense nonchalance. Take it; don’t take it. She’s holding it out to Yellow, but Blue was the decision point. Take it; don’t take it. She wants you to reach out; she wants you to flinch. She wants them both, so bad.

Take it. Don’t take it.

Sunshards

Oh, Chen. Your Rosepetal is holding you close, even down on her knees, bound by the chains of debt. She holds you so gently, even as her lower hands gouge furrows in the dais, trying desperately to hold fast in the face of this overwhelming will. It threatens to scour her clean, to upset her internal alchemy in a flood, to make her simply another of the satellites of the Pyre. But she holds you close until your heartbeat is a drum in her ears, and that steady rhythm is what gives her the strength to simply remain, still, herself. With you, she is so much more herself, after all. You give her the courage and the approval to shine like the pieces of a shattered sun.

It is because she is holding you that she finds the strength to stand again, in rags that hide nothing; almost as a joke, her fingers lift her veil back into place. Because she is holding you, her fingers that could break stone as gentle as feathers on the back of your neck, she is able to curtsey like one of Keron’s handmaids should, low, her lower hands spreading an invisible skirt, without so much as letting you shift. And it is because she is holding you that her feet find their places, because the fire of your breath on her breastbone is licking through her bones like kindling, because she can feel your cheek pressed against her firm skin, because she knows how brave you were, how very brave indeed.

She starts slowly, for you, knowing that you will be dizzy enough by the end, that you will be giddy and out of your head and clinging to her with your whole body once she is spinning and swaying, flicking her hips and rising onto the pads of her feet, showing the delights that she has learned in the Sky Castle. And as she does, her thumb strokes your cheek, and you feel the rise and fall of her chest as she breathes— no, as she allows air to cycle through her, her breaths long and slow and surprisingly deep, as if the air rushes through her to the tips of her fingers and the tips of her toes.

And then, using your heart as her drum, she closes her eyes and dances as if the Way flows through her body again; as if every step is the only step she could have taken, every pinch of her fingers the correct one, every invitation to look long and hungrily at her a revelation of eudemonia. But she is not just flaunting her body, on full display for anyone to look at, the pitiful remnants of her special dress simply highlighting her nakedness; she is flaunting you, and isn’t beloved a much better word than prop? She holds you close until, suddenly, she lifts you over her head, or shifts you to her hip and dips you low, or even spins you over the back of her neck, head over heels, only to hold you close again, as if she would ever let you fall, as if she would ever let you fall. You are a part of her dance, Chen of the Northern Wind, and she controls you as much as she controls herself, and you let her because your heart is bursting full, because you are small and easy to handle and because she is so confident with how to move you, because she is inviting you to be a part of her delight.

(She was like this that night at the Sky Castle, too, when she played you like an instrument, when she drew your eyes back up into your skull, when she flowed over you like the wave that swallows the shore, when she explored you and you melted into her hands, her tongue, her confidence, until you were small enough to be hidden behind a grain of sand and light enough to balance against a feather and shining more beautifully than any of Jessic’s treasures.)

And then she sings, and her voice harmonizes with itself, until it’s as if three Roses all at once are singing out of one throat, one ducking above and under the other two playfully, and you don’t need to see her lips to know she’s grinning bright enough to outshine the very last sun. Don’t you remember, Chen? That voice, winding its way through the woods to you, that day when you first met Yue?

And out of her bursts:

if you ask her
what it will look like
when we know perfect satisfaction—
she lifts her face
and says,

like this!

when you ask her
about the beauty of the suns
which scoured the earth away—
she smiles wide
and says,

like this!

if you ask her
how we will survive
without stocks and bonds—
she holds you high
and says,

like this!

mistress, what do we owe each other?
what is the address of Heaven?

lean your head against me,
keep it close as you breathe.

like this.

mistress, what do we owe each other?
why are we one dreaming we are many?

undo my sash,
kiss me on the lips.

like this.

The silk is between your lips and hers. It is impossibly thin for something holding back an entire sea. It promises: you will receive more later, when I allow you to unveil me, when I blush and grind my fingers against my knees in yearning, when it is my turn to be undone—

like this.

if you ask her
how she thinks to stop you
when she is at your mercy—
she bites the silk
and moans,

like this!

when you ask her
how we will live
if the banks did not—
she forms a house
and says,

like this!

if you ask her
to reveal the secret names
of the elevator and the burrow and the star and the demoness and the day and the night
she traces them on you
and says,

like this!

how did we survive?

like this!

how do we live?

like this!

why are you here?

like this. like this.

Her forehead rests on yours as her voices unravel into whispers, her audience forgotten, all for you,

like this. like this.

“Why are we here?” Rosepetal asks, and then, to educate the Pyre of Inspiration, kisses you until the world is full of the smell of new flowers and the sheen of her skin and your mouths intermingled on the silk,

like this. like this.

[Rose rolls a 9 on Mirror Ball, and Chen spends another string to bump it up to 10. Rose chooses that the Pyre of Inspiration is rapt and interested in Chen’s perspective. Chen may choose another benefit for her Rosepetal.]

Breathless Dead

Redana sits, awkwardly, in the palanquin, with its protective curtains[1]. Once again, she’s where her mother (the goddess) once sat: listening to her generals and advisors argue about an impossible situation. The difference is that Nero/Hermes/Mommy would see through the attempt to trick her. She’d just flex her brain and everything would fall into place; she wouldn’t just see right away what the plan was, she would see the pieces of the trap and know how to take them apart.

But there’s nothing but sand trickling through her thoughts. The procession winds its way across the sands of Sahar, and there’s no way for her to see if Bella’s down there among them, as companion or prisoner, trophy or sacrifice.

She needs to say something. She needs to make some royal pronouncement. She needs to show that she’s not useless. But her thoughts keep slipping, impossible to hold onto. Tumbling down into the dark. Into the Rift. Into oblivion.

When two stray thoughts finally clash strongly enough to cause a spark, she latches onto it, and turns to Lacedo of First Fleet, whose outfit is… interesting[2]. “She’s expecting us to go for the Plousios,” she whispers. “Because she’s left it unguarded. But that’s a trap! She might have left commandos inside, or set the reactor to blow remotely, or any number of things! So we need to land our shuttles between her and the Plousios, but not too close!”

And the princess sits back, relaxing her shoulders ever so slightly, relieved that she came up with something useful to say, while Lacedo raises her voice and speaks on Redana’s behalf to everyone outside the palanquin[3].

Hang on, Bella. She’s coming.

***

[1]: not because they are armored. They are simple, everyday curtains. But it’s best to have redundancies in play to make it easier on Alexa.

[2]: it’s very… colorful. And jingly. And there’s so, um. Well! Not a lot of it! And Lacedo keeps picking at it and adjusting it and then leaning closer to Redana and it’s not helping with trying to think! Is it some sort of Alcedi fashion? Or did she pick something up from the Azura? And why in all the worlds was she wearing it while stuck in a palanquin with Redana of all people, with nobody to look at how she’s showing off? Because as it is, Redana’s the only person to get to see it and, um! Well!! Um!!! Can she really be blamed for having her thoughts blank out when Lacedo stretches next to her and takes a deep breath??

[3]: redundancies.