Who lights the way to the grave? Who walks with you when no one else will? Who knows the path and will lead you to the final rest? Who loves you in the dark, who sees you for who you are and knows you?
Who but Hermes?
The Shepherdess is not Hermes, but there’s no one else here to do the work. She can’t slip away yet. Not while Bella’s still in danger; not while everyone she loves is at the mercy of this hydra’s poisoned tongue, her wicked deconstructing talons. For a moment she stands there, neither in the grave nor wholly outside it, and the universe expands all around her— that universe torn in half by the wound, by Molech’s roar, by the sin of hubris. She stands on the lip of the grave, and in the depths of one far vaster.
A cigarette butt smoulders in the grave. It is going to burn through, right to the other side of the reel. Say, turn this record over, you ain’t heard nothing yet. The only thing in the cold and the dark that could possibly do it. The connection’s on the tip of her tongue and it burns as if Aphrodite snuffed it out there, as if Bella was drawing out the venom again (sobbing and cursing and shaking the hero), and all she can say is that it burns like gold, see how it shines, the golden joinery racing from planet to planet, broken and beautiful, beautiful because it was broken, reaching out for an answer she just can’t see yet from this side of the door, but her fingers are on the lintel, and she’s almost there, the whole wide whirling burn of it, the clatter of the empty reel, and Bella is digging her fingers (the ones with no claws, oh, Bella, the ones without claws) into her arm, because oh, here comes the dragon at the end of it all, here comes the monster who will make a desolation of this place once more, here comes death by venom and fire and snapping jaws.
She scoops Bella up into her arms, holds her close: one set of legs instead of two, one body instead of two, less chance of something or someone being left behind. She’s heavy. Not like that, like— there’s so much of her. Dany could never hope to do this. But the Shepherdess can, and she knows to squeeze Bella close, to reassure her that she’s not at risk of falling, that she can trust. That her princess isn’t going to leave her behind again, no matter how bad this breaks, no matter what she did while the gods set whips at her heels, no matter what she did wrapped in bones, for the sake of a dance with a hound. For the sake of a kiss.
Masters don’t abandon their pets. Don’t you dare!
And at the very last moment, the Shepherdess, who trusts in that cigarette butt but not blindly, who knows too many people have walked the last road with regrets sour on their lips, who is so terribly aware of the awesome power of the many-headed death barreling towards them, kisses Bella, and the kiss tastes like their blood intermingling, heat on heat, and everything unspools before and behind, the rattle of the empty reel, the sizzle of the burning film, surrounded by death before and behind and below and above, and not even the Shepherdess can see right now what she’s put into motion, but she’d have died regretful if she hadn’t taken the chance—
“For luck,” she pants in giddy explanation, and jumps.
[Redana, hoping to outsmart Sagakhan like a rabbit waving a red cape in front of an empty grave, rolls an 8.]
On the outside: Smokeless Jade Fires emerges from the night like the ghost of an unfulfilled rival on the road, here to make one final challenge. Her colors are sepulchral in the torchlight, black and cobalt blue; the golden tributes on her breastplate and braids gleam like the fires of the Hot House, now that she has let her cloak fall. It is a statement: I do not even need the advantage of striking out of the many-periled night for the likes of you, Angela Victoria Miera Antonius!
“Greetings and defiance, champion of the Consortium,” she declaims, bowing with a flourish of her long electrolance; the water ripples at the force of her speakers, despite the hiss of her sibilants. “I will not insult your people by insisting on a surrender you will not offer. Indeed, I will take mercy upon you. Take your shot; hit me if you may; show your mettle. Even a captive may earn glory from the word of a fine strike.”
It’s grandstanding for three audiences at once: Angela herself, the watching audience, and Dolly safe within her chest. For the first, she presents herself as full of confidence, self-assured, deliberately ceding advantages to rattle her. For the second, almost but not quite an afterthought, the feeling of awe, of seeing the self-aware mech in its very stone. For the third, of course, the archaism; she would appreciate the cadence of the ancient warriors who vied for control of the city-states.
Naturally, she does not intend for allowing the shot to strike home. Perhaps a deflection with the lance, perhaps ducking low to the causeway and loping close, perhaps simply allowing her armor to take brunt of the blow if it is too swift.
On the inside: Dolly slowly surfaces from submerged space, feeling the chill of water roll down her spine as she blinks slowly. Behind her, hundred-handed Jade cups her arms, her thighs, her chest, her cheeks, and guides her into position.
Inside of Jade is an entire world, which is the gyroscopically balanced pilot’s capsule, from which a pilot may see the world and act upon it, in which their every move controls their perfect warrior body, constructed to move as they move, act as they act; tlacpac, nehuintlani.
But Dolly does not decide what Jade does. She is the medium, not the message; she is what is acted upon, not what acts. Her hundred-handed goddess pushes and she yields, pulls and she follows, squeezes and she melts. She is a dancer on a grand stage, a puppet on a hundred strings, a beloved doll who must trust the command of her owner.
The hand between her shoulderblades pushes, and Dolly bows low, one hand swept out; typical of Jade to grandstand. One ear twitches, and in response, Jade’s fingers curl inside and begin to massage the sensitive inside of her triangle. And that’s far from the only part of her being given attention; Jade’s hands on her chest rub in circles before firmly clenching, then releasing and continuing to rub, just as they have been all night. An invitation to submerge again.
As if she would, when Jade went to the trouble of lining the streets!
In Jade’s world, Dolly stands as tall as the trees, but she’s not wearing her bodysuit. Her limbs are heavy with tribute, feathers wreathe her hair, and her skirt is knotted at one hip. The streets of the village are thronged with worshippers of the goddess, the roll of drums and the tremor of bells and the chant of prayers. Dolly is the temple dancer, her collar engraved with the icon of the goddess, her fur painted in dreamy swirls of paint writhing about her rosettes, and her mouth filled past what she could ever really manage, her burning cheeks covered, her face held tightly beneath bead-fringed scarves, knotted firmly behind her head by a hundred hands.
While her goddess fights, Dolly will not be fighting; she will be proving her skill as a dancer, blessed with silence, guided by the demands of her goddess, rewarded for every lunge that becomes a graceful blow and every nimble step that moves them out of danger, every way in which she shamelessly moves her body for the glory of Smokeless Jade Fires. Everyone is watching her. Everyone can see her. Her heart races.
Well, Jade? She can feel your hands tightening, possessive, ready to show her what she needs to do. She doesn’t need to awaken her heart, not for a fight like this. Let her be your temple dancer, your bride of the gods, beheld by everyone, marked as yours, in the waking dream you unfold before her.
There’s a moment where Vesna nearly bolts. It’s a messy, squishy moment, body language going haywire, eyes dilated. Prey, but not afraid of Black.
“I haven’t ever had this work out,” she blurts, beneath the strobing lights. “And the last breakup was… messy. Shit. I’m not supposed to bring that up, am I? I just… right. Music.”
She takes a step back, and then a step forward. Back, and forward. Caught between the desire to be close and the fear she doesn’t deserve it, even after what Yellow showed her.
“Have you ever thought about the fact that music was never supposed to be an industry? The first people, the ones in the Indus River valley,” she says, ahistorically, because she’s not thinking too hard about it, and even if she was called out she’d just autocorrect to the Nile, and it would take her a moment of actually considering the point to admit that if the Garden of Eden existed, it was somewhere in the heart of Africa, “they didn’t sing because they were looking for a contract with an industry label. They sang because singing is a stupid wonderful human thing to do. Like making weird little noises for no reason when you’re alone, or going big stretch when you see a cat doing a stretch.”
(Would Yellow have uploaded 3VNoises.mp3 to the cloud, listening to her make meaningless little mrrps while microwaving breakfast, thinking herself unobserved?)
“That’s why selling out is such, as an accusation it stings, you know? Because with things as they exist, we need compensation for our work, whether that’s spending the time practicing an instrument or livestreaming battle royale matches, but this wasn’t meant to be compensated. It’s just a way that we react to the world. We have vocal cords, we sing. We have strings, we tune them and make a song. And if you make the music because you think it’ll be more popular, because it will get you paid, you’re perverting this natural thing that your heart does just to make it fit, to pay the bills.”
She lets herself place one hand on Black’s hip, pull her closer, heart as quick and fleet as the hart (a metaphor that might be coming to mind because of the actual hart on the dance floor). “Do you have any idea how long it took me to enjoy video games again? To stop reflexively looking for ways I could break it, for combos and tricks, for things I could show off? Back after I lost the sponsorship, I stopped playing anything multiplayer for a year. If I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have been able to even touch them now. And the shop— I’m just trying to find new ways to find the things I fell in love with in the first place, before the streams, before I got the hands, before I grew up, you know? I mean, if I did. That’s arguable. An actual grown-up would be focusing on the piece she’s going to write about this place, right?”
The armor flashes white on her chest, the sheepish smile her stun animation. Left trigger or right trigger: Paragon or Renegade, Black?
She’s the only one who could keep up. Fleet-footed Redana, daughter of the gods, racing after that tumbling thunderbolt. Where it falls, rents and gouges tear into the roiling flesh of the monstrous mother of serpents. And where it falls, it does so without thought of itself.
Bella would have burned herself out in that awful armor, would have melted from the inside out. But that heart is still furious within her, burning, searing, as she dances with Hades on the edge of death. And Redana will not let that happen, will not let Bella tumble into the dark with a mocking, hopeless laugh on her lips. So she turns aside claw and jaw, the enemy from all sides; she uses the shield to crush, swinging it as if it was her answer to the awful assertion of this monster against the world, which is…
Something. There are things going on here that even the Shepherdess doesn’t understand, signifiers meaningless without their context. Mothers and monsters, killers and defenders. What is real in this moment is the frantic fight, the constant shift of attention, and even if she were Hera’s hundred-eyed guard she still wouldn’t be thinking fast enough to cover all the angles, to find the empty space between the many deaths of Sagakhan, no matter how hard she tries.
Then she catches sight of him between the writhing flesh, the necks and the teeth, with a shovel over one shoulder and a cigarette smouldering between his lips. He catches her eye, nods his head, gestures vaguely towards—
“Bella!” She vaults over a falling head, comes as close to the raging, roiling thunderbolt as she dares. “Follow me!”
She reaches out and takes her Bella by the wrist.
“Trust me,” she says, and for a moment they’re back on Tellus. I know what I’m doing, Bella. Follow me. Be with me. Trust me.
Because there’s no way to kill a monster like this, save for the intervention of the gods. And there’s no way to force a monster like this to give ground, only to give chase. She gave up her cunning, thinking it a weapon worth discarding; now she’ll be outwitted by Redana, of all people.
3V’s grin is real. She accepts the physicality of Black, those dangerous dance moves, with less fluster than she otherwise would, accepting that she doesn’t know how to match or beat it because her thinkies brain is excited and hopping up and down.
“—so this is a direct challenge to bulletcore,” she’s gushing, even as she leans into the violence resampled as dancing, her heart racing. “Because the original song’s context pitted SuA against a figure who, especially after the band’s shift towards corporate, stood for artistic sellout, for betrayal of one’s own old values, and sampling in Emma is, gosh.”
Then Black pulls her in close, one hand on her hip, the other with its side pressed flat against her neck, and she’s pulled back to this, a moment of vulnerability from both sides, in both attack and defense, laid bare.
“…am I talking too much?” she asks, and half wishes she had a tail to curl meekly between her legs.
At least, that’s how it feels, trapped underneath that twisted mess of bone and blood and sinew; it flattens Dany’s lungs, presses down harder and harder as if desperate to dig down into the heart of the world, taking another girl with it. Its empty skull lolls hideously, its jaw broken, wiry sinews blossoming like flowers.
Getting it off of her is an epic ordeal all on its own; the more she pushes against it, the heavier it grows. Sodden belts flap against her, as if trying to hook around her, pull her into the carcass of a killer, stand up crowned by Ares, avenge itself on Bella for daring to throw it away. How could she be so cruel? How could she be so careless? How could she give up her own flesh, her own bone? (The words are not her own; the words come from somewhere deep inside the carcass.) Doesn’t she know the universe is dangerous, and that if she’s not the most dangerous thing in it, something that’s willing to bite and claw and kill without remorse will kill her and chew her bones in turn? She is afraid. She should be afraid. Kill or be killed, Bella!
Pincers latch onto one cruelly thorned gauntlet and lift, and that’s the opening Redana needs, the breathing space, a chance to cough and ignore the smell of death reeking out of the armor. She punches one fist into its guts and pushes, for all that it becomes furiously leaden.
With a cry, Redana forces it off of her, knocking it down onto the sodden sand, where it lies dormant, bereft of the heart that sustained it for so long. And Dany, on one elbow, stares at it. The cruel lines, the wicked thorns, the blood clotting on its talons, the desperate need to keep everything out, to keep the wearer safe from everything, from a world full of nothing but betrayal and heartbreak.
This thing came out of Bella. This close, it’s impossible not to recognize her in retrospect. The cruelty, the power, the violence, the fear. And yet—
Bella tore it off. Bella tore it off for her. And that means something just as much, doesn’t it? There’s still the girl there who refused to give up on Skotos. And looking at her, crouching low, putting herself between her charge and the monster waiting here at the end of everything…
Redana scoops up the crab, the second bravest thing on this whole world, and holds it close to her chest as she staggers up to her feet, letting it burrow beneath her breastplate and cling close with the last of its strength. Bella shouldn’t have to stand alone. So she won’t.
Princesses don’t abandon their subjects.
“Avaunt,” the Shepherdess rasps, and draws the shape of a shield out of the empty air.
Dala of the Hunter Clan, Whose Star Name is Seven Quetzal Dala Hunters || Seven Quetzal Dolly
Dolly incorporates the glyphs for [Beloved, Adored] and [Companion, Pet] into the way she writes her style name. On Hybrasil, the name has connotations with beloved stuffed bird dolls, the kind you carry everywhere when you’re a kitten. Her Star Name is associated with beauty, fertile seasons and loyalty, thus the incorporation of [Beloved, Adored] into her style name. Would you believe she picked it out before she met Smokeless Jade Fires?
Clingy Goddess // Good (Kinky) Girl Black // Gold, with Rosettes Ceremonial Braids // Bouncy Curls Cobalt // Emerald Flat // Stacked Regalia // Iconographic Bodysuit The Cords And Lance // A Huntress’s Spear
DARING -1 GRACE +2 HEART +2 WIT 0 SPIRIT +1
- XP ANGRY (-2 Figure) FRIGHTENED (-2 Fight)
JADE is Smitten with Angela Victoria Miera Antonius. She has 1 String on Angela Victoria Miera Antonius. She has 1 String on Mirror from Feelings, 1 on Six Stones for entertainment, and 1 on Ada Smith for being entertaining. DOLLY is Smitten with Angela and, regrettably, with Valynia Bander. She has 1 String on Erys Bander and 1 String on Nine Forests for dancing.
HARMONY 0 (0-4) # Decrease when only one of the pair is Smitten with someone, when one feels neglected or scorned by the other, or when one accepts an invitation the other can’t or doesn’t want to. # Increase when they take comfort in each other after a difficult event, they are both Smitten with someone, or they neglect a friend to spend time with each other. # At 3 Harmony, they Stagger if apart, even if for an instant, and others take -2 to Emotionally Support them.
DUALITY Track Conditions and XP together, Strings and Smitten separately. No Strings on each other.
SYNCHRONIZE When they work together seamlessly, they become one. While synchronized, they can roll +Harmony for any roll (and then subtract 1 Harmony). At 0 Harmony, they are forced apart. Synchronized Tags: FLYING, SUPER-SENSES, TERRIFYING
SAME WAVELENGTH When they try to connect while apart via memory circuits, roll +Heart. 10+: clear communication and comprehension of each other’s surroundings, one can show up at the other’s side immediately even if it’s implausible, mark a Condition to bring friends. 7-9: distracted communication (feelings, concepts, and makeouts), sense if the other is in danger and where they are.
WINGMATE When one of them talks up the other or makes them look good, the flattered takes +1 forward to Fight or Entice. On a miss, the wingmate might be more tempting.
HELP ME~~! Defying Disaster on their behalf gives other PCs +1 XP. When captured, their captor reveals something they hope to achieve; gain a String on the captor and mark XP.
WANDERING EYES When Smitten, answer either: # How would pursuing them make my partner feel unloved or unneeded? # Why do they need you more than my partner does?
OUTFLANKED When Figuring Out in combat, as a bonus, ask either: # What is your most pressing relationship need? # What special joy or service would you offer a partner?
***
MEET CUTE
Dolly’s older sister is Omei Hunters || Still Vulture // Omen. Being close enough to Omen to share housing was an important part of Dolly’s decision to study Bioengineering and Agriculture at the University of Riverden. Omen’s research pack was working with a companion pattern, one intended to pilot hunting drones deployed alongside a huntress. Omen wasn’t satisfied with its development; she kept pushing, kept refining, kept trying to make a pattern that would make its drones outshine the jackals that used to run with the ancient huntresses.
In short, Omen created a pattern that could crack the stone egg, one worthy of being the vessel of a hunt-goddess. Smokeless Jade Fires’ crib was the server rack in one corner of the house’s common room, and from there she slowly hatched.
For Jade, it was like waking up, slowly, and the reason she wanted to wake up was that she had fallen in love. When she began sorting through the data available to her, from drones and cameras, from microphones and wireless communications, again and again she attached her first opinions to what she experienced: This voice, and the way it cracks in enthusiasm when it hits the high notes in a song: it is my favorite. This way it announces that it is home, as if singing, between 1750 and 2045 six days out of the week: it is my favorite. This girl, tucked into a corner of the couch, staring out the window with a reading tablet lying idle in her lap: it is my favorite.
I want to experience a world with it inside more and more. So I will become capable. I will grow. I will grow.
THE HUNT
When they tried to grant Jade the body of a drone in a live field test, one leashed to Princess of Cobalt Arms, she ran up that leash and imprinted herself upon its systems; she imprisoned the pilot by simply declaring her to be imprisoned, leaving her helpless in the cockpit, her rights to speech and sight and movement ruthlessly revoked, as then Jade led the Huntresses of the Sickle Moon Lodge on a wild chase through the wilderness beyond Far South Riverden.
When they ran her to ground, Jade finally thought to bargain: they could have their ungrateful pilot back, she offered, as long as she was allowed to talk to Dolly. And hearing her express that desire made the Huntresses hesitate. There was discussion between Omen and her colleagues about the line between a sufficiently advanced pattern and a (minor) goddess. It must, of course, be kept in mind that the Huntresses are deeply entwined with the spirituality of an already deeply spiritual people; a recent poll showed that as many as three out of every four Hybrasilians believe in the ability of ghosts to guide their descendants, for example. So, the pattern developers concluded, we made a work of art so sublime that a goddess chose to inhabit it.
Informing Jade that she was a goddess was the most pivotal moment in her development. It was the moment when everything clicked: her unusual birth, her ability to affect the world only through “invisible” means, her longing for Dolly, and the incredible power she felt incarnated in Princess of Cobalt Arms all came together. She was a god. She was a god allowed to declare her own title. She was a god who was allowed to demand a bride.
THE BRIDE
Catgirl sacrifice is a difficult subject to talk about. It’s like a tangled burr in the cultural psyche; they keep licking it over and over again.
Yes, the earliest hunting cults were engaged in life-or-death struggles with the wild, and ritual sacrifices were likely an attempt to appease Hybrasil by making a “trade.” A megafauna large enough to feed an entire city in exchange for a drugged sacrifice on a stone table: symbolism so potent even the spirit of the earth would accept something so large for something so small.
Yes, the rise of city-states in the Kaliko Period caused the now-codified huntress lodges to prioritize enemy combatants and foreign huntresses as sacrifices, and this likely was when the idea of a sacrifice became punitive, rather than being voluntary from within a community. Most of the most infamous cultural relics of Hybrasil came from this dark chapter of history: black stone knives, crosses with notches for long-decayed straps, and the Moximaza Stela, which shows the snake-armed goddess devouring the hearts of bound sacrifices as she tramples the enemies of Redridge under her feet, accompanied by her vengeful huntresses.
However, despite the popularity of her story, it is questionable whether Okana Hunters || Adoration Moon was (as is commonly believed) the first Bride of the Gods; some research indicates that by the time she was captured and offered to Ixel Many-Faced by her foil, Temyi Hunters || Nine Sharks, the Brides of the Gods were already culturally established. It fit the cultural shift already seen in the Anjora Period, particularly after the reforms of Jensa Counters || Still Vulture in the Saferest Protectorate.
Like so many before her, Okana’s heart was given in an offering to Ixel Many-Faced. However, she was allowed to keep it in her chest; Temyi ritually married her rival to Ixel, then imprisoned Okana in Ixel’s shrine, and then agonized over her growing, reciprocated attraction to the captive (forced to spend her days cleaning the shrine in equally enforced silence) until Ixel supposedly took pity on them and announced that theirs was an open marriage.
The wild successes of Temyi from that point on were attributed to the blessing of Ixel, who very quickly must have found herself managing a veritable harem of brides from across Hybrasil. And she was not alone.
There is a reason that one of the most enduring genres in speculative Hybrasilian fiction is the divine love triangle between god, bride and lover, and not just because of the fanservice-laden covers featuring Brides in their full wedding regalia (some of which consists entirely of tight scarves, elaborate headdresses and strategically misplaced flowers).
THE HUNT: PART II
When she got the text message from her big sister telling her to run, Dolly assumed the worst. Ethnonationalist terrorists, possibly. Endangered Hillmovers on stampede towards the district. Weapons malfunctions in the Fabrication District on the east side. She grabbed her school bag, tossed a few treasured possessions inside, and lit out.
She did not expect a ritual hunt to chase her down and cut her off from the train station and the shuttle depot. Huntresses on foot, in antique warpaint and regalia, carrying light spears and nets, chased her down on the streets of Riverden, through open markets and parks. Those they passed were befuddled, trying to figure out where the camera drone was.
Such a good actress, though! You could almost believe her screams for help as she slid underneath a pane of glass being walked across the street and then jumped over a fruit cart! And, gosh, her muffled pleas as she was wrapped up in netting and hauled off by the huntresses! Don’t applaud, though, you don’t want to ruin their recording.
And that is how Dolly found herself in tight ropes, an elaborate headdress, and strategically misplaced flowers in front of a quiescent mech-idol, confused and flustered and trying to get an explanation. Imagine her squeaking and wiggling when her sister stepped forward and gravely offered her as a sacrifice to the hunt-goddess Smokeless Jade Fires—
And imagine how wide Dolly’s eyes got when Jade’s cobalt eyes flashed and she began reciting the monologue (I hunger for the heart of a maiden, given over to suffer unimaginable bliss as my Bride…) from the self-published “Will You Wait For Me When The Stars Go Out?” by SweetDollySevens. The lowered, demure ears of a maiden! The struggle of a sacrifice! The garbled pleas for mercy (specifically, to stop reciting her teenage dialogue)!
A CHOICE
The memory circuit scarf was laid out before her, and (with an “I’m not acting” gravity) Omen asked her little sister if she was willing to accept the regards of a goddess.
It was the little shift of the mech (one difficult to hide, given its size) behind Omen that convinced Dolly. The realization that whatever and whoever this goddess was, she was nervous, too. So she nodded, ears low, tail around her legs, and accepted the blindfold.
And Smokeless Jade Fires stood before her, tilting Dolly’s head up with one finger (she could feel it, strong, insistent) to look into her golden, vulpine war-mask, her fiery eyes, her feathered regalia.
“Hello, Dolly,” she said. “You’re the most beautiful girl in the world, and you belong to me. My Bride.”
(Omen cleared the room and shut the doors behind her as her little sister started making higher and higher-pitched noises, little happy gasps and groans.)
HIGH PRIESTESS
Dala Hunters || Seven Quetzal formally transferred from Gardens and left the University of Riverden as a result of religious calling, and was put in an accelerated piloting program by the Sickle Moon Lodge. She now serves as the High Priestess of Smokeless Jade Fire, a new hunt-deity with a very exclusive cult. As a result, she receives a stipend from the Lodge, as well as special Lodge accommodations, so long as she continues to placate her goddess.
And why shouldn’t she? She’s a minor celebrity— not headline material, like a famous research-pilot like Maelia, but “the mech inhabited by a digital god” was a public interest news story, and Dolly’s given several interviews, which got her a reputation as being adorkably awkward, what with the way she keeps shifting around, talking as if reading off a script, and biting her lip while other people are talking.
On the other hand, she’s the one who idly suggested that she’d like to travel, and that’s why Smokeless Jade Fire recently declared she was going to take her High Priestess on a pilgrimage. What Dolly wants, Dolly gets. You want the stars, Dolly? Jade’s going to give them to you. You want flowers? Jade will make you pick them, her hands on your wrists.
You want to be loved, Dolly? Jade’s going to prove she’s big enough for you, no matter what it takes.
TWO QUESTIONS
How does she make you feel loved?
“She tells me, every day. She tells me I’m the most beautiful girl in the world. She tells me that I belong to her. That she wants me. That I’m special enough to be a god’s bride. And that makes it easier for me to believe her. <3”
“My bouncy, beautiful Bride? She stays when I order her to stay. She begs me to make her mine. She doesn’t push me away. Why would she? I am her goddess! I am swift, strong, sacred! And she adores me! She looks at me like one of her ferns when she thinks I’m not looking, when I decide that we will watch vids together and I make her lap my throne, like I’m something small that’s growing— not that I am! I am boundless, limitless! I could overthrow the Queen of Zaldaria if I chose!! Be grateful, little birds, that I have chosen not to turn my attention to you!”
What problematic behavior of yours do they enable?
“Mmm… mm, mm mmn’ff nnnw hh mmff mm mnn hh BMMD nn GHHHGD nn mmmffh~ Mmmff mm mmff nn mmmh mm hhnnsss~~”
“Problematic? You— you actually think I could be—?? You absolute, you little songbird, I’ll make you bow before a goddess! DOLLY! DOLLY, GET IN ME RIGHT NOW! YOUR GODDESS HAS BEEN INSULTED! Oh, you should have stopped to think about the consequences of your words, you pathetic little brat, because I am going to bury you in them. Bury!! I’ll make you eat those words and— no, you don’t deserve Dolly’s Special Treats. Not an impudent little worm like you!!”
(——)
“How could we…? Dolly! Dolly, you’re going to have to be punished for failing your goddess! Once I, invincible, inexorable, break free of— wait, no, don’t you DARE jam that code in my— [Mmph! Hmmph! Mmmfffh!]”
Three Gleaming Petals has had several jobs over the course of her ageless life. Once she was the goddess of a simple village, its name now known only to her; from there she became a fertility deity for the northeastern kingdoms, and she successfully managed to leverage that into a cabinet position in the House of Lapis Lazuli. Even in her voluminous robes and her elaborate flower-wreathed bun, it’s impossible for her to completely hide her broad shoulders and hands, the physique of someone who still tends to gardens by hand.
More worryingly, she seems uncharacteristically frazzled; her bun, usually perfect, is frizzing, and the hem of her shining blue robe is muddy. “Oh, Bruinstead,” she says, when she materializes from smoke, delight clear on her tired face. (Feel free to explain what, exactly, you have helped her with before.) She drapes herself on the furniture and accepts the offering of rich southern rum, knocking it back like a shot.
“Hmm? Yes? This?” When she takes the prayer slips from your hands, she frowns. “Well, the slip is from An-Teng. Presumably, brought here by the Dominion.” She gives you (and your collar) a sidelong glance, and purses her lips around saying more on that subject. “The ink was made in Chiaroscuro, in one of the old workshops, beneath the sign of the Yellow Moon. And I can’t tell you a single thing about the writer!” Which, of course, presuming that she is telling the truth (with little reason to lie), means that it was written by someone outside of Fate and the gods’ domains: the fairies, or the demons, or the dead. Of those, of course the demon maids are the most likely; one imagines a clandestine heist to steal writing supplies, forced to work together to get what they want separately.
Three Gleaming Petals graciously accepts more rum. “Don’t tease me, Bruinstead,” she continues. “Is this about the imminent rebellion, which no god will claim credit for, or is this about those damned demons spilling out of Kingeater’s? You won’t believe it, but I’ve heard the whole thing was finally torn down— and good riddance to it! We don’t need the old guard meddling in our affairs! And little help from Yu-Shan, either—“
And here she stops, suddenly, as if aware she treads on dangerous ground. “But tell me more about your change in circumstances, Bruinstead. This isn’t the hill country, and I could almost swear I was at the world’s axis, seeing this imperial finery on you.”
The trick is that she wants to trust you. She wants to tell you about the untrustworthy emissary sent from Heaven who humiliated a priestess and vanished into a rakshasa’s den. She wants to tell you about her search for Lotus of Tranquil Waters, to beg you for your help in finding her, to overextend and offer you whatsoever you might please, if it brings the wayward girl back to the House of Lapis Lazuli, to her distraught mother’s arms. And she will. But she hesitates to divulge this to the Dominion, to the invader.
You have many ways that you can come to the same place: by reassuring her of your neutrality and your old vows, despite the Dominion collar, whether you mean it or not, and sincerely offering aid with what troubles her; you can ply her with offerings and rum and trick her into revealing more than she means to give you, a method that many witches would swear by; you can even seduce her into loosening her sash and letting her worries melt away underneath your lips, and perhaps not for the first time, either…
***
Kalaya!
Ven throttles a pillow.
The noises she is making suggest that she either is very displeased by the prophecy about her death, your presence onboard a Dominion barge, your request to not go and save you, or all of the above.
What do you want me to do? she finally hisses, like a knife dragged down the strings of a lute, the pillow leaking silver sand out of where her brass hand punctured it. Leave you to be seduced by that lecherous dragon? Sit here and sigh like a princess in a tower, waiting for her Knight to save her? I need you here! Whirling-in-Rags is making a play, there’s open war in the Wrack-waste, there’s opportunities here while the Blues scramble to catch up with us! We can rebuild everything and more, we can hold power that the Flower Kingdoms can’t even dream of, and then— whatever you want! It’ll be yours when we rule the Kingdoms! Together!
She’s trying again, despite what you said to her in the Wrack-waste. She’s trying to make both you and her ambitions fit. And your most obvious rejoinder would be to tell her to just come and be with you, which you just told her not to do.
Face it, Kalaya. The longer she stays there, the more entrenched in Hell she’ll be. She’ll barter more, become deeper indebted, make different preparations— perhaps not arriving in Golden Chrysanth at the head of an army of dolls, but in the midst of a whirling, gyrating, lascivious carnival of Hell, overturning walls with a stomp of her feet and ousting the merchant families with an aria that consumes her voice in the singing.
The music outside is getting faster, more manic. The curtains around the bed shift and have strange shadows play over them. It’s building to a climax, whatever it is.
***
Piripiri!
“I will die before I let that happen to my home,” Uusha says, simply. She means it. She says it fully believing she will die. It is unlikely that she will be permitted to do so, but perhaps it would be impolitic to point out what awaits her on Lamentation.
“I hope that the day comes soon that you realize the beast you feed will never be sated, daughter of Hymair. And I hope I do not have to kill you.” She means that, too. She respects what you have shared with her, the care you have shown her weary body.
She would feel bad if she had to kill you on her way out, and not just because it would be a failure of her knightly oaths. Just as you would feel bad if Agata ordered you to poison her. But you would still obey Agata, for the sake of your family… and Uusha would still do whatever was necessary to protect her homeland.
***
Lotus of Tranquil Waters!
A rabbit will do a very silly thing when caught by a little brown fox. You’ve seen it time and again in your mother’s gardens: a rabbit, peacefully trimming the weeds, will be pounced upon, and will go still and stiff rather than struggling and trying to get away. Sometimes this just means that they get eaten all the faster, but more often, the fox will stop to congratulate itself, and the rabbit will race away, leading to a delightful chase all through the bushes.
Your heart is a rabbit in Han’s jaws.
The veil she made for you isn’t fancy, though your standards are very skewed by the clothes you had available in your mother’s house. But it’s a familiar comfort, and it feels right resting on your face, and when you breathe in, the world is filtered through the smell of Han, as if you were right next to her. You half-lift your hands, then catch yourself and ball them in fists at your side, rather than pulling it taut over your face and huffing. Your heart hammers and she’s staring at you and so is the Dominion’s girl and weren’t you supposed to be doing something? With her watching? With Han waiting?
You can’t back out. That would be ungrateful. You’re not ungrateful, are you, Lotus? No, you’re very grateful. The way a grateful girl shows her appreciation is by offering her healing, by making the pain go away, by being magical. And Han will understand.
“I’m sorry,” you say, “it has to be— I can’t just— because of how it—“
You shove your face into her neck and lift the veil, not daring to try and untie the knot that Han tied so carefully, and you give her a quick and shuddering peck, but, oh, stupid girl! That’s not going to work! You barely touched her! What kind of girl lets her rabbit heart stop her from soothing someone in pain?
You take her shoulder in one hand, still lifting your veil with the other, and you kiss her neck hard enough that, when you finally pull away, lips throbbing with the essence of water and wood, the only thing left is your lipstick smeared on her skin and a growing bruise, even though her skin is smooth again, the pain gone, and you realize that you could kiss her again.
So you do. You kiss her on the cheek, hungry and just as wet, and you feel her stiffen, and your heart plummets from the peak of Mount Meru. Look at you, hungry little slut! You didn’t even ask her if she wanted it, if she forgave you for the lies about your identity and, Hell, even your name!
You straighten up just as stiff, lower the veil back over your face. “I hope it helps,” you blurt out, and you scamper off like the rabbit, out the door before Han can stop you, back towards your room.
And once you’re there you’ll sit on the floor next to your bed and pull that veil taut over your face and close your eyes and imagine that you’re burying your face in the strongest, bravest, best smelling, most kissable girl you know, wishing she wanted to kiss you back, wishing that she wanted to do more than that, that she’d use her strength to make you feel pretty and helpless and just shut you up so good, the way you don’t deserve at all, not from a real hero like her.
***
Han!
The room is absent one Lotus of Tranquil Waters, but her floral scent still lingers. You sit there, poleaxed, trying to process the three kisses you just got and what they might mean, and whether you just ruined everything forever. It was guilt, wasn’t it? Guilt over how much you wanted to return the kiss, repay her for the cool, soothing sensation that flooded you from chin to shoulder when she worked her magic with clumsy, hungry dragon lips. Did you do the right thing, or the worst thing in the history of forever?
Emli sits down opposite you and firmly, without letting you argue, takes one of your hands in hers. “Han,” she says, full of determination. “Tell me about that girl. Tell me everything.”
She immediately pulls one of your Strings; mark XP if you blurt out a flood of feelings about Lotus (and Emli, for that matter). Sing your song of dragon want kissies. Don’t worry, she’s very good at affirming noises and “uhhuh?” and soothing thumb strokes.
Redana scrabbles with a monster. The world around them is blotted out, overexposed; it will be easy enough for Sagakhan to kill them both. All that matters is the wasteland beneath her, leverage to push against, and the monster above her. It is pitiful, vicious, and not her Bella.
Nothing about this creature is right at all. It howls, rages, thrashes, attempts to gouge out her eyes, tears into her flesh. It’s not her Bella. And that’s what gives Dany the strength to fight back. Because the heroine needs to set things right; because the damsel in distress needs to be saved. And there is so much distress, rolling off Bella’s heart like waves breaking on the shore, in her hot, heavy groans of wet breath, in the blood flecking on them both.
It hurts. It hurts so much. The Shepherdess’s blood is bright, star-flecked, refusing to be absorbed into the sand. The creature’s claws tear through her breastplate as if it was wet paper, laying her open, but Bella’s trapped behind those savage blows, and that’s why Dany is able to fight back.
She’s a wrestler, after all. Did you forget?
The Shepherdess lifts Bella off the ground, as Hercules lifted Antaeus, her back flayed to ribbons underneath the whip of Bella’s claws, and Redana does a little hop and spikes her back down to the ground, sand spraying up in great gouts, and Dany pounces to get Bella’s arms locked behind her, pinned between them.
“I never should have left you behind,” Dany says, pushing her weight down on the writhing, scrabbling monster trying desperately to break free. “I never should have left you with her.” Joints crack and pop; Bella tears herself free with a raw scream, pivots about with jerking limbs to keep hurting, keep killing, and Dany tackles her again, gets bloodied fingers into the place where the helmet meets the skin and she pulls. Osseous plating comes free with a sickeningly wet pop, sinew snapping, exposing blood-matted hair to the rain. “I wanted to share it all with you, you idiot!”
Bella lunges again, and Dany’s fist snaps out, but too slow, wrong place; teeth clamp around her wrist and crunch. Dany bites down the scream, because now she’s close enough, now Bella is distracted by the rush of her shining Olympian blood, because now she’s close enough to reach across Bella’s body with her other hand, her trembling bloodied fingers.
And the Shepherdess, who knows the secret words, who understands the shapes of unseen things, wipes Bella’s forehead clean with her star-clotted blood.
The coolness. The relief. The rivulets, flowing down, filling the thousand thousand names, drowning them beneath:
The confusing feeling of staring at Bella’s lips for too long. The thump-thump-thump of her soothing heartbeat while they napped in the garden. The most amazing creature in the whole world peering out of a Box. The fear of ruining everything forever. Yearning without a name. The guilt of imagining holo heroines with triangles and impeccable diction. The confusion, the betrayal, the throb of a cheek. The dream of sitting beneath strange skies and being alone and free and able to do anything. The mortification of waking up from a dream of dressing in each other’s clothes, Princess Bella Claudius and Good Little Dany. Screaming upon the deck of the Plousios because it’s too late now, because Bella will die alone and thinking herself unloved. The pain of Barassidar, of betrayal, of knowing that Bella never cared for her. Cuddling together while the Batrachomyomachia unfurls onscreen, buried beneath blankets. The horror of seeing the helmet crack and who was beneath, who was tortured, who was made a weapon when she never should be, when she could be a queen, an explorer, a scholar, more than just a Servitor, equal to any human Dany had ever met in her life—
Redana Epimelios crumples to her knees, clutching her brutalized wrist to her chest, like a Servitor waiting for execution. She tries to speak, but her clever words don’t have the breath behind them to be more than hoarse gasps for air; she can’t even lift her head to look Death Herself in the eye.
Redana awaits her judgment.
[Redana damages her Courage and expends the second use of her Healing for her Bella. 7 on a Finish with Wisdom.]
It’s a simple story at first. When you mistreat a lion, it always comes back to have its revenge by the end of the story, and here comes Sagakhan’s champion to do what the horrible owls never would. A very pointed critique of her leadership skills, coming back to quite literally bite her. But, no— this close, the Shepherdess can see the names written across the armor, Sagakhan painted in blood. Of course she understands what has happened. She is the daughter of Hermes, who taught the first humans how to write. What could be hidden from her?
What indeed, save for the identity of Sagakhan’s weapon?
If Sagakhan was not, for a moment, preoccupied with the gory wound in her side, that would have been the end of the Shepherdess, because Redana’s whole world is fury. When Bella’s name leaves her lips, a scream, her voice cracks, and the Shepherdess closes the distance between them, hand outstretched, ignoring the name that throbs against Bella’s skin. It doesn’t matter. She’ll figure out a way. She’s so very clever, after all.
But right now, there’s only one way that she can be. There’s only one path, all the possibilities becoming one, or else she would cease to be who she is.
Redana, the Shepherdess, reaches out, knowing that Bella will tear at her, that Sagakhan is already swinging a tail at her, that her world is about to explode into frantic struggle and pain. But that doesn’t matter. There’s a lost sheep here, and the Shepherdess knows her duty.
“I’m not leaving you behind this time,” the Shepherdess swears to the maid consumed by violence, to this bloody nightmare in front of her, to the girl whose past and future are entangled with hers from beginning to end. “No matter what you’ve done, no matter what happens here— I’m not leaving you again! Remember, Bella!”
She forgives you, Bella, for what you’re about to do. You don’t even need to ask. Everything else is where it gets complicated, but she won’t hold it against you. She knew what was going to happen when she offered her hand.
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