Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

“Re… da… na…”

She’s in agony. That’s a bad sign. That’s a very, very bad sign. Because her body is supposed to release painkillers naturally, when it’s this close to death, but it does so through her circulatory system. And now it’s been destroyed. There’s nothing moving her blood; it grows stagnant in her limbs, her head. She can’t breathe.

It’s as if a black cat is curled up on her chest, crushing her beneath its weight, stealing the breath from her lips, making her heavy and eating her thoughts. Except it also has its claws out, gouging out the hole in her chest, nipping and tearing, making itself a nest. And the next time that Hades sends heroes all the way to Ancient Gaia, gifting them a ship and promises of aid, they’ll find a tree growing here, its branches heavy with pink blossoms, speared through her body. Another failure in a long line of failures.

Redana!

Hades is the only vivid thing in the world. Everything else is being swept away as her senses fade away, the sound of the battle and the storm and her own strangled choking fading away, the sky becoming one huge undifferentiated bruise, and Hades alone, standing there in his black and white. This time he will not offer to pick her up. He will have to leave her here, forever, until she rises again as the shell of something terrible, green and growing quick.

All he can do is stand here as she fades out, her wonderful and genetically-refined body’s functions collapsing, panic running circles around what remains of her thoughts. All Hades can do is stand there, uselessly, and remember her, just as he remembers everyone, every single one of them, every would-be hero and explorer and savior, everyone who jumped at the quest or the prize or the hope or the adventure itself.

Redana!

Goodbye, Hades. Goodbye, Bella. Goodbye sun and goodbye stars. Goodbye, Alexa. Goodbye, Vasilia and Dolce. Goodbye swords and goodbye ships. Goodbye, good night, good night.

She’s so very sorry.

and of all these wonders
of which you have been part;
of all these shining things,
count you first thy mother’s—

She can’t tell whose voice it is. She doesn’t even know if this is just the dying gasp of the Auspex, garbage data unspooling into the long dark. But she still recognizes the figure leaning over her, though the name’s not on her lips. Her face shines like morning forever and ever. She’s gold and diamond and a shining sapphire, and she’s reaching into Dany’s head and dredging up the very oldest storytimes, the chest in the wood, the lonely November and the lonely god, the lullaby and the sword, the sword everyone’s mother leaves secret and special and safe just for them, and, and, and.

Redana has trained for the Olympic Games. She has pushed herself to extremes that even ascended humanity finds daunting. She has learned the ways to push past pain and daunting thoughts. And lifting her arm, the blood in it congealing, the muscles as difficult to command as a pack of cats, is still the most difficult thing she has ever had to do. The face above her is still so, so familiar, and she believes that Redana can do it. The Heart almost slips from her numb fingers. Almost.

Someone’s hand closes over hers, and she can’t tell whose. Is it her, shining, immanent? Or is it Hades, intervening just to show a brave little girl a kindness in the middle of a nightmare?

The Heart settles in her chest, and then everything is light and pain and tears, so many tears, everything her fault, how can she live with herself after failing every one of them, not fast enough, not fast enough, a frozen scream, the weight of every one of them gone, erased, undone. And a hand reaches back and takes her by the hand, and that is the miracle of Ridenki come around again, Hermes who goes back and forth between the living and the dead, between one moment and the next.

Who is here to save you, Redana?

It was always you.

And the Shepherdess embraces herself, and whispers: “I still remember how brave we were.”

***

Redana Epimelios stands up, and keeps standing up. She’s leaner than the Nemean, a coiled bowstring, long-limbed and long-haired. The lionskin tossed over one shoulder of her red breastplate is not particularly subtle. She holds in her hand the shape of a sword. And despite it all, she’s smiling.

“Not a good idea to take her on directly,” the Shepherdess says, half to herself. “Only so many miracles we can fit in one day, right, uncle?” She turns on the husks of the dead, approaching someone who should have been dead and refuses to be, and she makes a cut. The shape of her sword, her wand, flickers in her hand.

Bodies fall to the earth, tumbled among neatly-severed plants. And the Shepherdess, the daughter of Hermes, darts forth on glittering sandals, back into the fray. Alone, even she cannot stand against the Master of Assassins.

How wonderful, then, that she did not come here alone!

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Piripiri!

The blush and the stammer and the meandering attempts to explain herself further just dig the little demigod into a deeper hole, and make it painfully clear: she wants Han to be her hero, but part of her wants Machi to be her villain. When she saw the N’yari kissing Han, she was jealous of Han, whatever her growing feelings towards the highlander. And while she knows it’s a terrible thing to think, she still thought: what if Machi gets me alone, carries me off, torments and embarrasses me while I wait for Han to come save me again? Or what if she takes both of us?

But she wants Han. She wants Han’s company. She wants to be around Han more than she wants the flutterings of a maiden’s heart; she wants safety that doesn’t feel safe and she wants more kisses that feel wonderful and she wants to make that surly ruffian smile.

She asked you one question, though, so sincere that it slipped through your defenses like a knife: what are you and the Red Wolf? And she caught a glimpse, however you might try to hide it, of your true feelings towards Cathak Agata— which may make her dangerous.

However you answered, here you find your feet bringing you deeper below. There’s one more person who you must attend to tonight, after all…

***

Fengye!

The little thing in front of you seems like a sullenly blushing chambermaid, a creature doomed to service and helplessness in either world she might find herself in. She is also one of the soul-fragments of the Broken King, and thus, horrifically dangerous. If there is some way that she could return to what she once was, it would be devastating. She could kill all of you before she was cast back out into Hell. It’s just that she can’t, as far as you know, not without returning to Hell and waging war for her title.

She’s also mumbling and furiously blushing as the seamstress-demon tightens her coils and rubs against her, using some of her loveliest features to smother the little chambermaid’s face. She’s fallen very, very far. How does that make you feel, knowing that she’s ended up in such a pathetic state?

Beside you, in this rather secure cabin, is the Hymairean agent, who took control of the contracts that allow the demons to remain in the world. She’s… prodding. Prying. She’s still suspicious enough not to fully trust your word. And if she finds out the truth, well, that would be very bad, wouldn’t it?

***

Giriel!

It was a chance meeting. Agata kissed your cheek and smacked your rump and told you to run along, she needed to have a private meeting with an advisor. So here you are, collared and wearing one of those bright, soft Dominion robes, taking the time in the garden on the deck— and there Kalaya was, going through a ritual of Bright Rose Aching, a further plea for a sign.

You should offer your service as a witch, even one so obviously… owned. After all, Kalaya is Agata’s guest, and your duties as a witch are sacred, in their own way. Ask her what she needs. Give her advice. Try not to blush as she stares at the collar and hears the tinkling of the bells.

***

Han!

You heard the quiet voices around the corner, but that didn’t quite prepare you for what you saw, all the same.

The Red Wolf, forearm braced against the wall as she leaned forward, hair half-loose. Her hand, cupping Lotus’s chin, tilting it upwards. Their faces, closer than maybe they need to be for conversation. Lotus’s bare cheeks, flushed, her shoulder blades flush with the door to her cabin.

Lotus jolts when she sees you. “Han!!” Now she’s even more flustered, and it’s hard to tell whether she’s guilty or relieved. The Red Wolf, however, doesn’t show any sign of guilt at all. She lets Lotus’s chin slump back down and catches your eye, her smile completely devoid of self-consciousness.

“Let’s get another opinion, then,” she says, as smooth as ice, as if nothing were wrong at all. “How are you finding my hospitality, Han?”

(It’s been pretty great. Emli’s been spoiling you rotten, and you’re clean, fresh, well-fed— and yet you’ve stumbled across… something? Is it something? The Red Wolf is very handsy. But she doesn’t seem like you caught her doing anything, but Lotus seems like she was just… maybe Lotus was…? No, surely not. Right? But then why would she look so…? Is she trying to move up in the world?)

Breathless Dead

The sword is Redana’s herald. It announces her arrival with the hiss of a torn veil, lashing out like a torn hawser— and it kisses Sagakhan on the throat. Say what you will about Redana Claudius, her sword hand is careful and controlled.

The blade stops there, wet against her skin, and Redana steps in closer. Her knuckle presses firmly against Sagakhan’s chest as she tries to utilize leverage against the larger, much more ruthless woman.

“It’s over,” she says, reaching across her guard and pulling her mother’s heart from Sagakhan’s keeping. Her voice is firm, giddy triumph threatening to bubble up from underneath. “Order the Kaeri to stand down, and you can walk away from this. This blasphemy will be destroyed, Bella will be released from your custody, and the only choice I am giving you is whether you keep your life or whether your final legacy is making sure that more people die senseless deaths down there.”

Historically speaking, that’s not an argument that would work on many generals, particularly not when servitors are being used as soldiers on either side. But she has to try. Maybe the terrifying ghost owls can just go home and sulk. Maybe without them standing in the way of the Starsong Privateers, it will be simple enough to push through that deathless horde below and destroy the pyramid. Maybe more people won’t die. Maybe she won’t even have to kill the Master of Assassins.

Because that doesn’t fix anything! It’s terrible and vicious and stupid! War isn’t supposed to be about life and death, it’s supposed to be about convictions, and courage, and the challenge! It’s about sword duels and cunning stratagems and the pulse pounding through her body! It’s about Athena’s glory and Ares’s provocation! Everything down below is stupid and terrible and blasphemous and she hates that she can’t trust this woman without a blade set to her throat.

“Well? Well?” Hurry up! Every moment you stand there smirking is a moment where someone’s dying down there, clawed by owls, dragged down by the dead, or being battered by that hideous champion! Every moment you lean against that blade is a moment of hideous fear and panic down below, and each one is a moment too many. “Surrender! Or I’ll— I’ll—“

[Redana Claudius rolls a 6 on her Get Away. However, she always gets to choose an option, and so she chooses to Get Away with the Heart in her possession.]

Sunshards

Sun's out, guns out.

Rosepetal may have emphasized her muscle definition in a way that would be very difficult for someone without a body under their full control, just to show off for her girlfriend(!!). Her choice of outfit was designed for obliterating cute princesses, too: a one-piece swimsuit with a back that's not so much plunging as toppling down a waterfall locked in combat with a nemesis, just to show off her impressive back, and a sarong with a Foxcatcher Knot tied snugly at her hip, for the devastating glimpses of thigh.

She isn't carrying a sword anymore, but don't get it twisted, she's still acting as Chen's bodyguard. The sarong's a deliberate trap: the Foxcatcher holding it together is so overcomplicated and showy that they keep trying to tug it apart smugly to reveal Rosepetal's tightly-clinging swimsuit, only for it to not budge, and then they're easily scooped up into arms or over shoulders or tossed into the ballpit. (There is a war going on in the ballpit. The ballpit, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide.) The real release is-- shhh, you think she's going to tell you? With all these foxes around?

Also, she's the one who has to keep in mind that if they let the ship be sunk, they're going to lose the deposit. Making a cruise ship isn't a trivial thing in this day and age, after all! It represents entire weeks of work from Princess Kikill, and if it were to run aground, it would be a terrible thing for sealife and the purity of the sea, not to mention wasting all of that time and effort on the Princess's behalf. If it got out that Chen let the cruise ship run aground on purpose, well, they just ended one Princess War, and letting Chen start another one is completely unacceptable.

So Rosepetal takes a quick break in between casting off lines for sea-dunked foxes to shimmy and scamper back up, as much of one as she dares to take, and stops to rub her girlfriend's shoulders. She knows all about pressure points, you know. The places to push, the firmness to exert. One of Rose's greatest passions is the body, and her control over hers allows her to exert some very precise control over her girlfriend's. As she's repeatedly, happily demonstrated. At length.

"You're that eager to be tied up?" Rosepetal purrs, kneading, obliterating any hint of soreness or stiffness under practiced fingers. "Am I not doing a good enough job of satisfying your insatiable need for being bound, gagged and pampered, my Lady?" One of her braids twitches like a fox's tail in irritation, just at the thought of that maybe being true, that maybe she's been too needy and desperate and taking too much without giving in return enough, but she doesn't let it seep into her voice. "After all, that's the only reason why you'd give up. A clever, imaginative girl like my Chen could figure this out if she really wanted to. Just like you figured out how to stop Hyra, save Ys, and save me."

She stoops and kisses Chen right between those two fluffy triangles, and whispers: "Love you." Then a splash, a howl of outrage, and Rosepetal's already on the move again, moving like an unstoppable object. Woe betide the fox that tries getting underfoot or in her way, because they will be scooped and tossed without remorse. Woe betide the fox that tries to tempt her with her heart's desire, for daring to imply that Chen's not sufficient! Rosepetal got her happy ending and as long as she never takes Chen for granted, everything will be fine, and if she talked Chen into letting the foxes sink the ship just because it makes her heart thrill imagining being kidnapped with her once again, she wouldn't be able to forgive herself!

She's going to make sure that Chen fulfills her promise, gets all the foxes to freedom despite themselves, and prove, once again, that she deserves the love of the Threeshard Princess. After all, she's been spoiled so much, she's been so lucky, she doesn't deserve all this happiness, so she won't take Chen for granted, not a bit!

But Rosepetal's so busy, she doesn't even have time to ask Chen what she wants out of this trip.

[Rosepetal offers a very mechanically loaded Emotional Support with a 12, burning a Chen string to get over her GUILTY condition's -1 penalty. If Chen opens up to her Rosepetal's reassurance, she gets to pick two options out of the list and Rosepetal will clear her Guilty condition, and if she doesn't, Rosepetal eats another Condition. Furthermore, if she accepts Rosepetal's faith in her, she marks XP; if she doubts herself, she gives Rosepetal that string back.]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

The Park.

3V has never ever ever been good at this ever. She's a good enough person to know that her visceral spike of "there is something wrong with this person" isn't something she should let anyone see, but she's not good enough to know what else to do with it but let it spin inside her like a blender. She shouldn't stare. She shouldn't pointedly look away. She's an asshole for staring off into the middle distance and pretending she doesn't notice. She should know what to say.

Instead she gets up and puts on her Streamer Smile and says: "No problem, let me help." Her blood is roaring in her ears just as loudly as it is in Ferris's own head, one stuck in the mortification of vulnerability, the other stuck knowing that she's not doing the right thing, whatever the right thing might be. The silence is incredibly awkward, but she's not going to try and crack a joke. She knows that much, at least.

Orange juice has to be mopped up. She doesn't know the right thing to say, so all she can do is show sympathy with a dishcloth. She's young, she's got better ankles than either one of them, don't you dare tell her not to help. And maybe she could figure out how to show sympathy in a way that Ferris could understand, could parse, could accept, if her stomach wasn't treacherously clenching up, and it always does this. She had to be out cold for both her hand upgrades because the sensation of not having a hand would have killed her, it would have rotted her open from the inside out, and she's always like this with people in wheelchairs and folks with cerebral palsy and anything, anything that makes their bodies and their minds out of sync, and she's lucky enough that Elodie doesn't trigger that response in her, because her prosthetics are interesting, fluid, transhuman, it's more acceptable to stare, to flatter, to ask questions.

It isn't until the end that she manages to pin down a lie that feels right. That gives Ferris an out. "Sorry for keeping you up last night," she says, wringing the orange juice out into the sink. "I'm used to screwing up my sleep schedule, but I didn't think about how it would affect yours." It's a lie, but a kind one. Makes her a heat sink, lets Ferris possibly assume she stayed up late talking, lets her know that Vesna isn't going to get soppy and "how long has it been like this" and pushing her, pushing her, making her focus on that growing lacunae.

How long before it stops being awkward for her to leave?

***

Aevum!

Is it narcissistic to be attracted to that sort of echoing? Because on the one hand, weird. On the other hand, weirdly flattering? My own clone! Now neither of us will be virgins! Like, like attracts like, right? To be seen, to be read, and to have that integrated into the life of the collective-- that's a hell of a thing.

"You mentioned living expenses," 3V points out, locking up the door. "What are your living arrangements like right now, if you don't mind me asking? You're always busy, busy, on the go, but you've got to have somewhere to put your feet up and charge the battery packs, right?" She gives the sunflower-yellow girl a meaningful look. "Do you have an apartment? Which one of you, sorry, which part of you gets really domestic?"

Breathless Dead

How can the great be reduced? That’s not the question. Of course that’s not the question. Redana knows the answer to that one. She’s been reduced so many times herself, and she’s supposed to be great. She’s been small, she’s been captured, she’s even been so ashamed of herself that she stopped being herself. Of course she knows the answer.

She stops at the base of the pyramid and rests one hand against its black stone. It remembers. He remembers. Just like Dany did; just like she tried to forget. At least, that’s her understanding. Maybe she’s projecting. But maybe she’s not.

Then she’s bounding, step by step, up the pyramid, towards Sagakhan, towards ending the battle, but her mother’s eye throbs in her skull, in pity, in sympathy, in concentration. What does it show her? How does it answer the question she did not speak, but her heart is screaming?

The question is not how the great may be reduced. The question is always, always:

What can I do to help?

And so often she picks the wrong answer, but not today. Because today she is on the other side of the veil, today she is fighting for Dolce and Vasilia and Alexa and Epistia and the Coherents and Hades himself with his pitying kindness and Bella, Bella, Bella. Today her eye is unlocking deep parts of itself, functions so often held back, systems it doesn’t trust her with, insights it held back out of condescension and love. So today she’ll get it right. For once, she’ll get it right.

[Redana marks Keen Senses, asking a question that must be answered honestly. This one is deliberately broad: point her to where she needs to go.]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Kalaya!

“Nonsense,” the Red Wolf explodes, jovially. She slaps one hand on her knee and then bounds up to her feet. “It’s the least I can do now that everything is settled. Oh, Princess, I am delighted to be able to release you!”

She scoops your face up into her hands, which are warm on your cheeks, dangerously and beguilingly warm. “Together, we’ll protect this beautiful land, stop those fairies and cats, and prove to everyone that I was right to trust you!”

She plants a possessive kiss on your forehead, lingers for just a moment too long, and then sweeps past, already giving orders.

“I’ll have her released,” she says to the medic. “Get her something to wear for now, show her to a cabin, and then get her something appropriate for a bold knight.”

Congratulations! You’ve done it! Now you’ll be escorted to a (guarded) cabin. Maybe you’ll even be allowed (accompanied) roaming of the barge! Everything’s looking up for Kalaya Na!

***

Piripiri, in the Threefold Gardens!

“Oh,” the demigod says, suddenly hesitant. “Well, see, their leader was very… she wanted Han to join her, to be one of the N’yari, and she was very… kissy. So naturally there was some confusion afterwards.”

She’s upset about that. But there’s something more complicated there than the most simple reading. You could try puzzling that out, if you like, for intelligence or simply your own curiosity.

“And while she was fighting,” Lotus adds, rushing past that unpleasantness, “she broke some umbrellas, and she really is a nice person, it’s just that when she’s all riled up, she’s not thinking about how someone’s umbrella is special to them, she’s just using everything she can fight with to fight.”

She glances back at you, suddenly worried. “You won’t tell her I told you about the umbrellas, right? Please don’t. I don’t want her to think I’m being a gossip…”

***

Giriel!

The Red Wolf’s bunk is opulent. She apologizes, of course, making excuses for how hard it is, how cramped, how it’s only what an emissary could afford— but it’s big enough to be cozy with her entwined with you, your hair intermingled, her fingers tracing maps of unknown territories along your shoulders. It’s sinfully soft and the sheets are velvety smooth and it’s got many, many oddly firm pillows.

And the Red Wolf declaims poetry in the Dominion idiom into the expanse of your body, unafraid, adoring, impossible. That you could be wanted by a woman like this.

Between the far-flung poles the mountain stands:
the blessed rod, the cornerstone of earth,
by which the shiv’ring world anchored holds,
o Meru, peak of peaks, unconquered height!

Yet I have climbed a peak as resolute,
foundation set to hold the skies apart,
and there I left my conq’ring claim to stand
in royal color: red to match Her mail.

And there beheld a vision wond’ring fair:
the flowers pink, bursting from the snow;
and these I plucked to make a garland sweet,
the fragrance for to wreathe about my head.

Has anyone ever spontaneously declaimed poetry at you? For that matter, have you ever been wooed like this? Have you ever known luxury like this?

And what else do you let slip, unwisely, during pillow talk?

***

Fengye!

Han of the Highlands is like a stringed instrument in your hands. Maybe not an erhu, but an oversized Western mandolin. Ask Han your two questions, which will be answered honestly, whether or not Han knows she is answering them.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Aevum!

Gensoukyo. The Land of Illusions.

The styling of the place is self-conscious Classical Japanese: the sloping roof tiles, the dark wooden walls, the lantern out front. Parking’s cramped around back; 3V takes it in with practiced ease, and then they’re in a different sort of privacy, not the anonymizing privacy of being visible by everyone but the cramped privacy of having no eyes on you at all, and while it’s can access the store from the back door, you can also take the back staircase and be up in 3V’s rooms. That’s the whole reason for the place, after all— to be just a flight of stairs away from the possibility of company. The same reason she’d never really consider moving to the Park.

“If you need a ride back,” she says, “it’s no problem after I help close up.” It’s not necessary, given the bus stop around the corner, but that’s only half of what she means. “Upstairs is a mess, but you’re free to crash there. Or behind the counter, if you like. I always like that— getting to see into the employees’ area. It’s always enlightening, seeing the full geometry of a place for the first time, when you strip away what you’re meant to see as an outsider.”

An offer of intimacy, one that’s got nothing to do with vibrating fingers. Stress-testing the fake relationship. Offering a treat as a way of saying thank you, using what she knows she’d appreciate herself.

***

The Park!

“…so the thing is, it plays fantastic on virtual tabletop, but the thing that really elevates it is the companion app. It does everything that you’d expect an app to do— character sheet management, dice rolling, quick reference— but it’s also got a build-your-own-mech feature where you can cobble one together out of segments or customize one of the frames already in the game, and when I plug it into the printer, boom, customized mini. And almost all the time, the player drags me over to the hobby table to figure out their first paint job. There’s something fantastically tactile about that.” She raps her knuckles on the chair, as if reminding her audience that, yeah, she can still feel, maybe better than she used to. “And the mech corps in-game are keyed off different genre archetypes, so you’ve got the one that’s grody and almost organic, with— hey, boss!”

She couldn’t do it. She’s curious, sure. And that curiosity’s eating at her. But if he tells her Ferris’s secrets, then suddenly she’s a wedge right in the middle of whatever they have going on here. She doesn’t know what it is, and something something she who breaks a thing to understand it has left the path of wisdom.

Like a vampire, she has to be invited in. And Ferris just keeps shutting this door on her. So, y’know. It is what it is. She leans back and lets the conversation that was trail off into the nebulous space of “you really gotta try it out, I will bring you the files on a USB if I have to.”

[Rolled a 7 after modifiers.]

Breathless Dead

Mind. Heart. Sinew.

Redana breathes through the rose-pink silk, a long, slow breath. She adjusts the grip on her sword. The heart thumps in her chest, trying to escape. The Auspex hammers her perception with lines, with arrows, with the flow of battle. It hums and throbs and tries to explain to her the basic truth: that they will be overrun.

Green arrows crash over violet lines, over and over. If they hold and simply try to fight for time, they’ll get wrecked, isolated. (A shell explodes into caustic gas: up and to her right. The smell is horrible.) And the Kaeri behind, quick and clever and relentless. She’s lost to them once before.

Die. She could die. She’s going to die. Threads of possible futures snap one by one, until there’s only one left. Run. Run now. You’ll survive.

Her feet don’t move.

Maybe this is how she’ll prove it to everyone this time. That she really is sorry. That she’s sorry for failing Bella, sorry for hurting Dolce, sorry for dragging Alexa out here so that she could lose her arms. The only thing she’s not sorry for is wanting.

Mind. Heart. Sinew.

“How do I win?” She hisses, angrily, under her breath. The Auspex’s calculations of war halt for a moment, and then highlight the Master of Assassins. A monster. She’s seen what happens to monsters. She’s still got that thug in armor by her side, but…

But if Redana holds her life at the tip of a sword, maybe even she would yield. Maybe she doesn’t have to end this with killing someone. Maybe, just this once, as many people can walk away as possible. (The Auspex does not agree. But she’s the princess, not the Auspex. And she’s not going to— maybe even that old hag has a story and heart. Maybe even she can accept defeat.)

“Lacedo,” she says, placing one hand on her friend’s wrist. “Give ground. Don’t break, but don’t die for ground. I’m going to cut through.” And then she moves before she can let the fear catch up with her. While she’s moving, she doesn’t have to be afraid. And—

The Auspex roars in her skull, and the world falls away, and is replaced by golden thread, coiling, uncoiling, and the gods in a different shape. They are the space between the threads. They are everything. They are existence, and here, they are present— but look closer. They’re all here. They’re all always here. Her uncles and aunts and cousins, all present, always present, each one the size of the universe itself. Against them she is so small. So very, very small. But she is here.

“Could you always do this?” Silence. The Auspex (which should be part of everything, but is shut up, severed, made as concrete and discrete as Redana herself) simply draws a ribbon through the not-air for Redana to follow. And she darts forward like a hart with victory on its antlers.

[Redana, for the first time, marks Camoflauge on her Auspex.]

Sunshards

Rosepetal knows better than to look at that candle. Even if its new wick wasn’t encoded for her, anything potent enough to stop the Pyre of Inspiration in her slithering tracks would almost certainly work on her, too. Cyanis is wily and impish and took such terrible advantage of her back on the Sky Castle, and behind her, she can hear the stillness of the Pyre, and beneath that incredible stillness, heated huffs of breath. But she still has a part to play. She can’t just sit around like a helpless damsel in distress who needs her Chen to save her, as appealing as the thought might be! No, her Chen trusted her to handle an army of foxes, and that includes fox tricks!

Her wrists are caught, but her fingers are free. If she can get the flame between two fingers… it will hurt. She is a thing of wood, and even if the living wood does not burn, it still fears the flame. But how better to prove her bravery? If there is anything that she still holds dear, it is Chen: Chen who freed her, Chen who saved her, Chen who came back for her.

So she digs the heels of her shoes in, and scoots back, inch by careful inch, as Kat cheerfully pretends to snooze on top of her. It is painstaking work. If she doesn’t lift her hips just so, she’ll either startle Kat or work her skirt right off, and she’s not going to let either of those things happen! She twists and rocks back and forth, seemingly helpless, getting grass stains all over her shoulder blades, not flinching a bit even as Hyra lays out her plan to cry havoc and let slip the foxes of chaos. She bites down on the sodden handkerchief filling her mouth, keeps scooting along, and comes closer and closer to the prize.

Then Cyanis laughs: a maniacal cutie laugh that promises mischief and mayhem, and directly brings those things about by perking up Kat’s ears. The little vixen lifts her head, sees that her prisoner of war is being sneaky, and she yells! Her war cry is squeaky and adorable, and her weapons are two flooferdoodle pawsies that she brings up and back down onto Rosepetal’s cheek, doing almost absolutely nothing.

Except for turning her head so that her gaze falls on the candle.

One hand cups her chin, and another wraps its fingers around her hair.

They’re not real, Rosepetal tries to tell herself. But her spine and her skin both betray her, as the candle’s flame coils around her cervical vertebrae. You are being held, they both say. Can’t you feel the pressure? The fingers tightening around your hair? How your jaw can’t move? You can’t look away.

More hands press down on her, pinning her arms against her torso, her legs to the grass, holding her heels together. It’s useless to try to struggle; they won’t let her slip an inch. She can’t even kick. She tries. She strains. But her brain won’t let her legs lift; after all, she’s being held down.

She takes a deep breath to try and call for help from… somebody. Anybody. Chen, with her clever sword’s singing tip, which could lash out and cut the candle in half, send it toppling to the grass. And the hands press over her mouth, more than one, the pressure sending a giddy shiver down her body as she’s stopped even from pleading for help. A pathetic, needy groan leaks through those strong fingers.

Then the sensations of hands slip under her clothes, and her eyes widen, and she tries to buck and yelp, but she can’t even do either! Her eyes flutter as hands work up and down her body, squeezing, pinching, rubbing, weighing, like a dozen eager Chens, and—

That may have been a mistake to think. Because now the candle’s got a name and a face and visible hands, drawing on Rosepetal’s own memories to fill in the blanks. Who knows what the Pyre of Inspiration is seeing, or whether she’s capable of imagining being caught by anything but her very own self, coiling around her, stifling her thoughts and making her a prisoner of her own thoughts.

“Did my silly little Rosepetal think she was going to be the hero~?” Chen purrs, her eyes a flickering flame, kicking her adorable heels behind her as she lies on the grass. She reaches out and boops her Rosepetal on the nose as her many, many grips tighten. “I can’t even leave you for a moment, can I?”

And Rosepetal, blood rushing to her cheeks, skin alight with the wicked intentions of a dozen imagined Chens, makes a valiant attempt to try to talk back, to defend herself, to do anything but melt into a blissful haze— and fails, utterly.

Kat, triumphant, curls back up on her cushioned bed, which has conveniently stopped trying to get around and is instead pleasantly vibrating in place. Another decisive cutie victory.

[Rosepetal rolls to Defy Disaster with Wits and hits a beautiful 5.]