Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

“Bella!”

Her throat is raw, and it shouldn’t be. It’s raw and trying to close up and her body is shaking and it’s small again, the Shepherdess receding from her in bright ribbons shining in the sunlight. There are a hundred reasons why, and all she can do is trust the last squeeze against her skin as reassurance that this isn’t a retreat from a moment too painful to relive. But she’s still afraid. And why shouldn’t she be?

Her Bella is sprawled limp in her arms, bloodied and surprisingly heavy now that her muscles are no longer supporting her, keeping her up, keeping her moving, and Redana knows enough about how a body is shaped to see Bella’s body for what it is.

A fellow Olympian.

“Bella, you can’t,” she says, and her eyes are hot, and her legs itch where she’s kneeling in the grass, and she’s pulling Bella close but Bella’s not resisting, Bella’s not opening her eyes, Bella is barely breathing. “No, no no, I won’t let you, it’s not fair!” She gulps down air, and hiccups, small and dumb and useless. “Stop! You can’t! After this whole thing! I stopped the Assassins, I got you out of that awful— and you haven’t even apologized to Vasilly!”

The tears land hot on Bella’s bare skin, her matted fur. She doesn’t move.

Redana lifts Bella onto her shoulders. One hand on her thigh (and she doesn’t even flinch) and the other on her wrist, and Redana deadlifts from kneeling. She is small, and tired, and her face is wet, and Bella is very still. So Redana takes a step forward. And then another step. Then another. All that matters is taking another step, because there will be triage set up by the Lanterns now that they’ve won. It was in the meeting. She was listening. She knows where they are. So all she has to do is carry Bella, and then there’s a chance. Maybe everything will be okay. Masters don’t abandon their pets. Her face is red and she feels like she’s running the last lap of the marathon, but she can’t see the finish line.

There’s so much, she doesn’t say, because she’s focusing on breathing: in, out, in, out, hiccup. There’s so many apologies. Apologies to Dolce and Vasilia and the film! Bella doesn’t even know that Dany saw them! Bella can’t die without knowing that Dany knows about the holos and the Lanterns and they still need to talk about how Batrachomyomachia is good, actually, Bella! And she needs to apologize to you, and you need to apologize to her, and you need to talk about what happened with Skotia, and so she’s going to! She’s going to get you there!

…and she would have, too, if she hadn’t heard the long, slow round, a twisted braid of voices rising and falling, singing—

And when I fall, don’t lay me
under earth or lonesome sky;
and when I’m gone, don’t mourn me
just send me out and watch me fly.

Lay me down among the stars,
let me soar through veil of night;
send me out on one last jaunt,
see me shining far and bright.

The strength leaves her. She could be strong enough to carry Bella. She could be strong enough when she was just thinking about the things they couldn’t lose, all the reasons that Bella can’t die here, not yet.

But here they come, Coherents in all their beautiful glory, their incredible bodies, bearing one body from the field: her four arms limp, her arms and armor laid out on the stretcher, missing her head. And Dany breaks. Her legs crumple beneath her and her knees hit the earth hard, and her body convulses as she’s reminded that she’s lost Alexa, brave Alexa who was fighting so hard against her creator, Alexa who kept her safe and came with her all this way, Alexa who ended up here (like Bella) because of Redana, because she insisted, because she escaped, all of this hers.

All of it.

The dead. The dying. Bella, Alexa, Lanterns, Alcedi, even the horrible Kaeri. Her fault. Her fault.

And she’s lost. She failed. Alexa’s never going to know what it means to be free. Bella is never going to get to make anything right. All because she was selfish. Because she had to ruin everything. If she’d just stayed home, none of this would have happened at all.

It’s the Coherents who stop to help her, who take pity on the little princess who dirtied her hands and put her shoulders to the work without complaint, no matter the task. It’s the Coherents who change their song, who help Dany find the last of her strength, who make a work-song of it.

Dany can do that. She can do the work. Even if she’s sputtering and snot’s on her lips and chin and she can’t see what’s in front of her for grief, even if her chest’s torn open and all her love’s spilling out on the ground, useless useless useless, she knows what to do when there’s a Coherent on either side of her and the round is changed, because it’s what Alexa would have wanted.

Bella lies on Alexa’s body, bloody cheek against her chest, and Dany puts her shoulder to the work, in her place, bearing the two beautiful women she ruined back to the world that will be less without them, a thought she does not have to think because there is only the work, and the song, and the knowledge that everyone around her is lifting, too.

She can play a part. And when they finally reach the triage, when they finally find themselves among the Lanterns, that’s when she’ll fall apart completely. When she’s got nothing else to do, that’s when she’ll crumple in on herself and break so completely that she’ll be really, for real useless, and not even a song will work to get her moving.

Only a miracle, then.

Only eucatastrophe.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

For Dolly, the world is full of fireflies, a storm of them, roiling and humming and streaking through the night. Her heart races as she realizes that her goddess is going to hold, is going to make her wait for the very last second, and only then will she let her Dolly move, show her the right moves to make. A thought flashes through Dolly's head as the fireflies streak fearfully close, and she strains slightly, offering a suggestion. Smokeless Jade Fires' attention alights upon her like a halo, like the sun that cuts through the treetops, and then she is pushed, tumbling into the motion she offered.

Dolly does the splits: heels out, palms on the earth, fireflies streaking through her headdress, back low, head up. She brings her heels back behind her, toes digging into the stone, and lunges forward on all fours. The storm tracks her movements, descends to meet her, but Jade already knows what they need to do. Dolly does a headstand on one hand, lets the momentum flip her over and carry her back onto her feet, and now she's up on her arches at the very edge of the water, heels up, as much hopping as running, and Jade's laughing for her, and now the fireflies are setting the very ground beneath her feet alight.

Dolly drives her dancer's stave, hung with feathers and bangles, onto the stone and vaults up into the air. There's a moment where her stomach lurches, even though the hundred hands are holding her tight, pulling her up into the sky, as if Jade means to make her a constellation, or as if she's going to be one of the bird dancers, soaring down to earth with the rest of her flock, making the thirteen circuits around the heart of the world. And there, hung in furs, her rival: one of the Dead Wolves, the tzitzi, her ribs all lit up with fireflies. Dolly knows better than to compare Jade's enemy designs to Starless Skies bosses again unless she really wants to get it good, but she can still think it: the baroque and over-the-top arms and armor, the skeleton iconography straight out of late-Kaliko temple art, the reverb on their laughter as they point up higher than Jade thought they could and--

Oh.

The fireflies are like hot embers washing over her bare fur (and, more to the point, her bare chest) and she lets out a muffled, mortified squeal as she tumbles backwards, but Jade's hundred hands have her, cradling her spine and head, slowing her tumble as much as Jade can without breaking their connection. Dolly lets those hands spin her around, loosening her grip on the pole, and then snatching it back out of the air as she hits the ground on one knee. Her front throbs with the feedback, and Jade's fingers are rubbing her in soothing circles, almost shyly, almost apologetically. Almost.

Not that her Jade would show weakness when she knows her Dolly needs her to be strong, needs encouragement and bravado.

"Is that all you have?" Jade roars, cackling. "I barely felt it!" One open palm cracks on Dolly's rear to get her moving again, and Jade excitedly guides her through flinging the pole straight at one of the tzitzi's arms. Her choice whether to let it get hit or to twist out of the way, buying Jade the time she needs to close. Sure, Jade's down one weapon, but that's why she has two. Dolly looses the thongs at her hip, the cords of a huntress, and spins them to life, taking deep heaving breaths from her exertion (which are translated into the fluid, organic shudders of Jade's body, just as any other mech interface would). "You must want to pay homage to a true goddess." The hundred hands tighten their grip. "Well, I already have a bride, but I might accept your pathetic prayers..."

[Dolly and Jade, working together, manage a desperate 7 on Defying Disaster, and are willing to give up their electrolance and any hope of winning without wrapping up the foe. Or, you know, it could turn out that Jade's once again underestimating Angela Victoria Miera Antonius.]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Piripiri!

Tomorrow, the guests are leaving: Kalaya to go and begin her mission, and the highlander and the demigod to continue their pilgrimage. Which, of course, is why you are up this late, preparing for the order you have been given: to make sure that the highlander and the demigod are seen leaving, and they are not seen returning. Even if something unexpected were to happen (say, if they were to escape tonight), those would still be your orders: to ensure that their trail obviously leads away from the Dominion. You need to give the Red Wolf the plausible deniability she needs to carry out her own negotiations.

How are you preparing? Walk us through it. Have you brought Azazuka (who has been busy with being pampered by Agata, and being obviously conflictedly jealous of Giriel, the poor dear) in on this, or is this the sort of work that a student shouldn’t be trusted with?

And then, by the by, tell us your reaction when Agata’s grand barge runs aground, a terrible tremor that can be felt all throughout the ship.

***

Giriel!

Everything is falling into place: Agata’s interest in Han and Lotus, the heavenly spirit you met at Turtlehead, Ven’s attempt to offer Lotus to the powers of Hell. The most terrible burden of the witch is knowledge that brings responsibility. Is your responsibility to help Agata as a loyal slave in, most likely, keeping Lotus as a bargaining chip? Or is your responsibility to the Flower Kingdoms and making sure Lotus is free?

Either way, Three Gleaming Petals has fallen asleep on you, her shining blue robe lying forgotten on the floor, completely relaxed. It’s to her credit that she doesn’t even wake up when Agata’s barge runs aground.

***

Kalaya!

Ven says: Crunch. Snapping timbers, the groan of wood, disaster.

That’s not—

You wake up, and the cabin is tilted in a way it shouldn’t be. The barge is huge enough that your cabin hasn’t been directly breached, but something is obviously very wrong.

But if you want to get out and help (of course you do, you’re a knight, after all) you’ll have to get past the hardened guards waiting outside your door, who likely would need a push to even think about leaving, let alone let you leave.

So, Kalaya: how does a knight of the Flower Kingdoms approach a challenge like this?

***

Zhaojun!

The pink fire sparks and surges in your blood. The little foxes leave their paw prints up and down your spine as they run, run, run with their tails burning like brands.

The steering system for the barge is remarkably simple: a wheel connected to a rudder, little more. Really, if any part of this was hard, convincing the door that it was unlocked and then convincing the sailors that they were unconscious was much more difficult than convincing the barge to turn.

Which you did, because it’s what was destined. Laid out. Of course it was, because it’s what you’re doing. Everything you are doing is sanctioned. Everything you are doing is justified. Watch the fields burn.

What three things did you do before you caused the Beneficence of the Hearth to run aground? What lovely chaos prescribed action have you undertaken tonight?

***

Han!

This is before all this. Don’t worry. Not too much before, but you don’t have to worry about the ship running aground, just the fact that Emli just walked into Lotus’s cabin.

Which is a problem, because you are also in Lotus’s cabin, in the middle of packing a bag for her and explaining why you are leaving tonight, and you have no idea how much of the conversation she might have heard.

”I care because you’re our guest,” she’d said. “And because helping our guests makes me happier than I ever was back home. And also because you’re in love, and you don’t even know it.”

And Emli— Emli who’s supposed to be taking care of you, Emli who (you are belatedly realizing) will be punished for letting you escape, Emli who told you you were in love with Lotus and then let you stew in those thoughts, Emli who has been nothing but kind and sweet and wears the Dominion’s collar— she offers you the bag that she packed for you.

“Good luck,” she says, and that’s the moment you know you cannot, cannot just leave her here to be punished for letting you escape. That’s the moment you realize, Han of the Mountains, that Emli’s a little bit in love with you and Lotus, and this is what her love looks like: food stolen from the kitchens and extra raincoats and two pilfered umbrellas.

Show her (and Lotus) what a dragon’s love looks like in return. And before you get all flustered and complain, consider it a String pulled.

Breathless Dead

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.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

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.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

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?

Breathless Dead

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.

If Bella comes with her.

If.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

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.

Breathless Dead

The armor is heavier than the heart of a titan.

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.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

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?

***

Floof and Fluff

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!]”