Tatterdemalion

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Smokeless Jade Fires is a spearhead. The conception of her self narrows until she is sharp, focused, a thrust. The feedback of the systems of the idol is tinder to her fires, until— as fast as thought— she is almost slavering, jaws flecked with digital spittle. Her claws/talons/knives do not cut Dolly, but they prick her as they swing her legs up and clench them around Ksharta Talonna’s midsection, tight, and Dolly’s squeal as she squeezes fills the cockpit, her head thrown back, the idol matching, grinding the back of its head against the muddy earth.

Then Jade flips Dolly over, and the idol flips with her, pivoting from the hips and shoulder, the fulcrum point perfectly known in the space of a breath. Jade lets out a wild yawp that rings through the forest, even as her drones begin a swirling targeting formation around the two, tangled together in the water, which makes that constricting net spark where water fountained up from the fall.

Dolly, eyes squeezed shut, still squealing as the lightning arcs around her torso, hissing and caught in rope, sending pulses of warmth and modulated stinging through her body, her fur floofing out like an army of speartips, teetering on the edge, trying to pant her goddess’s name through sealed lips, but she can’t think her way through the labyrinth of lightning to the next thought, and it’s getting tighter and tighter, and the compression is so intense, her nose flaring as she tries to breathe through what her mind tells her is covering her face, and Jade hasn’t had to push this hard before except for that one time and that was just training, Jade was in control of the pacing, but here, but here…

“Impressive,” Jade says, luxuriantly stretching her back, grinding against Ksharta Talonna’s front. “As expected from a huntress of Hybrasil. I see you came prepared to worship me.” Her talons spark where she tries to cut through the net, and she hopes the sparks make it seem like she’s succeeding. “What a good girl you are, Ksharta Talonna.”

The pack snaps fire, stinging little nips and pinches along Ksharta’s front, as Jade lets loose a husky laugh. Control. It’s all about control. Huntresses crave to know that someone else is in control, that the gods are guiding them, that they are not the arbiters of their own fate.

“But it’s over.” It is not over, if Ksharta remembers her cannon. “The only question is how long you want my jackals to bite.” A second strafe, a little rougher. “All you need to do is admit you are ready to be my trophy, Ksharta Talonna. I will honor you. Sign you, if you choose.” She leans in closer, taking a risk, hoping Ksharta Talonna is staring at her idol’s head and not the net she still strains against. “Bless you for entertaining me. Daughter of huntresses, daughter of Hybrasil.” Their faces are so close that were Ksharta to say anything, the backwash of their speakers would mingle.

Keep it up, Dolly. You’re being such a good girl. Hold it a little longer. Bend lower; I love your tummy when it folds like this, so much to love, good girl. You’ll be rewarded even more than Ksharta Talonna.

Smokeless Jade Fires, goddess, is a spearhead with a broken shaft, telling her quarry: ”see, I have already pierced you,” and expecting them to fall over as if dead. But will she? Is Ksharta Talonna the kind of silly girl who will let those honeyed words drive out thoughts, drive out a possible victory, drive out anything but the squirming need to be a good girl?

[Jade refunds the String and counterplays by pulling her own: take an XP, Ksharta Talonna, if you are reduced to verbal keysmashes and useless flailing. Notably, if she does not, she wins the match; this is all Jade’s got left, and silencing her renders the match won.]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Giriel!

Cathak Agata’s attention is intense. Her delight drowns out anything else— questions of what the price might be, questions as to whether it is the right thing to do, questions of whether Giriel needs anything. “That’s my good girl,” she says, and holds you by the chin, and she is happy with you because you are doing what she needs you to do. And that means you are perfect, because Cathak Agata is delighted in you.

“And if they ask for too much,” she adds, suddenly, quietly, “keep in mind— isn’t it lucky we have those demons?” Naji stiffens, but does a halfway decent job hiding it. Agata didn’t give you an order. But it’s a suggestion. After all, demons are monsters from the prison of Hell, and you, Giriel, beautiful Giriel, are a person. More than that: you’re her person. Her witch who came into her life to help her, to adore her, to revere her.

If you agree with her, out loud, right now, just because you’re intoxicated by her presence, mark XP and Naji’s enmity. And if you disagree with her, out loud, right now, she will smoothly tell you that she meant the demon could protect you, silly girl. That’s all she meant. Right?

---

Kalaya!

“Being a knight means that I can knock heads together and it’s a good thing,” Petony snarls. And there it is, Kalaya. A flash of vulnerability.

Petony, the Tiger Knight, believes in her heart that she is a bad person. She’s crude and violent and needs the moral certainty that being a knight provides: that as long as she is pointed outwards at the enemies of the Flower Kingdoms and their people, she is— not a good person, but less bad. And she buries this beneath drinking and carousing and mentoring, until she almost forgets…

And then the princess she took under her wing went and stabbed one of the good guys. One of her own. Uusha, who might be scary but is still a knight. She thought you could be better than she is, and then you proved her wrong.

You want to convince her? Take a step forward. Hug her. Tell her that whatever happened, it’s not her fault. Thank her for trying. She’ll crack. She’ll start crying. She might even break out the drinks and tell you more about how her ex broke her heart by seducing the Red Wolf…

But while you do that, reveal to Petony exactly what your feelings are towards her. She’ll know, whether or not you tell her.

---

Fengye!

“Do you eat rocks?”

Her hair sticks to her muddy forehead. Her body is shaking as she drags you forward, one arm around your body, the other holding your wrist, her dainty little face right next to yours. The determination to not give up… that’s something that she kept from her old self. The General, refusing to admit the war was lost. The world swims in a film of rain and pain and exhaustion.

Eventually— very eventually— you wake up, not quite sure when you blacked out. Above you, the huge leaf of a turtleback fern. Beside you, an angry hiss of ”Gadzooks. Tarnation. Hecking hecking hecks.” The tap tap tap of rocks being hit together in a way that will never create a spark, even if the sticks she’d gathered weren’t wet. In the Flower Kingdoms, they have to use lanterns, and carefully dried tinder, and…

But you have firedust, don’t you?

”Rotten roots,” the Maid blurts out, on the verge of tears at a world that refuses to bend to her will.

---

Han!

“I am performing an important service to the Flower Kingdoms,” Sagacious Crane crows. Oh, great. Here it comes. She’s got a light in her eyes and you’re going to have to listen to what she’s got to say!!

“I am attempting to warn everyone I can about a duplicitous spirit named Zhaojun! Far from being a heavenly emissary, she is nothing more than a trickster and a disturber of the peace, and very soon, I am sure, the Sapphire Mother will have her declared anathema! She is pretending to be a lion-spirit, dressed in blue, with a brace of terrible firewands! She might speak the tongue of Heaven, but she is a deceiver and a scoundrel, even worse than you! Far, far worse! In fact, I would go so far as to say she’s even worse than the Vermillion Beast!!”

From the exhausted rumble around the inn’s common area, it sounds like she has already given a speech about this. At length.

“But helping one of my sisters takes priority,” she continues, tossing it in your face that she’d rank a fellow priestess over you in terms of who counts as a sister. “Now get out of my way and let me see her, Han!”

She doesn’t touch you, but she’s going to push her way past you if you don’t do something about that, and she will go find Lotus and badger her into being roommates, where she will put her under terrible dreadful big sister scrutiny, with two possible outcomes…

Either she’ll decide that Lotus is a fraud who needs to be punished, or she will tell Lotus all the embarrassing stories!

How do you stop her? Do you stop her? Can you stop her?

---

Piripiri!

Emli touches the back of your hand. “That sounds dreadful,” she says in her Service Voice. Her touch is unfairly soft. And she’s looking at you with that same attention that she gives all the guests that she falls a little bit in love with, and, well…

You know, you could let her just turn this around. Let her guide your head into her lap so she can brush her fingers through your hair. She’s so good at listening.

(So good, in fact, that it would count as an Emotional Support. And there’s no downside to breaking this Commandment, save what’s in your own heart.)

And the worst part of it is that she’s only capable of being so devious. Seducing you into being distracted is beyond her. There are slaves on board who would be capable of it, but Emli is simply, earnestly, just devoted to making sure that everyone around her who is hurting… hurts less.

Is that enough to make you make a mistake, Piripiri? Is everything you have been through too much weight for you to carry when she offers to let yourself unburden yourself? If not, please make a dramatic exit of some sort.

Breathless Dead

Is it in question that Redana dives into the engine room? No. No, it is not. As soon as she sees that vast and familiar hall filled with mist and flowers, an otherworld to match Elysium, the heart of that horrible jungle she thought she had defeated when she buried Sagakhan beneath the sands, she’s fumbling with her clothes. Out come the goggles from one pocket, pulled down over her eyes, even as her mother’s eye traces paths through the mist: her destination laid out as it is destined. Up comes her scarf, pulled over her face, making an airtight seal with a trace of her fingers along its edges.

But before she does, she stops, just for a moment, aware of who’s next to her. Bella. Bella, beautiful, questionably loyal, an enigma, but—

“You don’t have to follow me,” Dany says. “I’ll come back this time. I promise.” And then, her duty done, hoping desperately that Bella will wait this time, Dany opens her eye and jumps, for once in sync with her mother’s eye: it traces out the steps it knows she can take, highlights where she will need to vault over hissing cabling and duck beneath sickly-sweet orchids, allows her to immerse herself in the moment, this moment.

[Dany Overcomes with a 9, marking a narrative use of her Spacer’s Uniform to continue. This triggers her Survivor move, which she will use to get to Alexa quickly, avoiding any harm along the way, but not quietly.]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

3V doesn’t really “do” tea. She can drink it, sure. But if water tastes like anything, it should taste like ice; like cold, like relief in the heat, like snow packed down your throat. A faint flavor, as if experienced from another room, just makes her want to go for an actual flavor, the kind that would explode on her tongue and likely kill a sickly Victorian child. Fruit flavors should be bolded and underlined. But, y’know, she can drink it, if that’s what she’s got.

Which is why the tea she hands Junta’s good hand is green, cold, and canned. Like drinking water from the roots of a tree, cupped in your palms, kneeling at something old and wonderful. (That’s the metaphor that gets her through the taste.)

“You,” she says, bubbly irate iron, a ring of swords swirling in a halo about her (in an aura reading sense), “are going to sit down until you stop shaking, and then we’re going to talk about the research project you’ve been working on.” Deliberately vague. “Thesis statement” provokes follow-up questions about where he’s attending.

The couch already has a tactical blanket deployed, draped over the back five minutes ago. She carefully but firmly maneuvers him around the coffee table until she can squeeze him in, and then she takes a seat on her regular spot (on the armrest). The blanket is going to be wrapped around his shoulders, and he will drink from the roots of Yggdrasil until he starts spouting some oracular wisdom, in one form or another.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

They lean in and meet the spear. Its head strikes Jade’s breastplate, off-side, and the breastplate does not yield— but the momentum, the step forward, drags the head down to the hip, where it lodges. They reach out and seize the spear’s haft, and for a moment—

I will not sacrifice my pack. That was the thought that consumed Jade’s cognition. Too attached, bringing them a mistake, her responsibility; using them callously too terrible to bear. But now there is a spearhead in their hip and she is having to try and shield Dolly from the worst of the feedback and it was her fault, she failed to hold Dolly as the most important again, again, her Dolly, she should have let every drone smash to pieces before she let Ksharta Talonna land a blow on her Dolly. Under her hands, Dolly is panicking, eyes wide, heart racing, unable to speak. Failed her, failed her, failed her! Dolly’s grip is made to tighten on the haft, groaning under her fingers, as Jade’s fury at herself narrows into a vicious point.

Jade is agitated all around Dolly, who feels the spear like the bite of an ant, but one of the really big ones, throbbing and insistent, or like Jade’s talons when Dolly reassures her she wants them, and why did she lean into the movement? She just wanted— it’s just that Talon sounded so excited, and Jade was pushing her forward, and Dolly wasn’t thinking, she was just blushing and happy and now she’s let Smokeless Jade Fires down, she’s already cost them an advantage by not being good enough, by not doing exactly what Jade wanted her to do, by letting Talon’s little kitten enthusiasm get to her head, oh no, oh no no no, she bites down and slumps into Jade’s guiding hands and resolves to do what she’s told, and just what she’s told.

Dolly, in pain, slumps. Jade, screaming inside her thoughts, cups her firmly, her beautiful arms, her lolling head, her perfect curves, and pushes her to move as much as she can. She could twist the spear out of Ksharta Talonna’s hands, use her idol as a weapon of leverage, but she cannot put Dolly through that. Not her Dolly. She pushes forward, feels the resistance, panics, tugs back. Dolly loses her balance; Jade helps her down as gently as she can, cushions the fall, but they’re down.

Pain is an important part of life, Dolly thinks, ridiculously, laid out on her butt, half-dunked in a stream. The body tells you that you are at risk of causing damage to itself. It’s one reason why some degree of pain was a benefit in mech feedback; it tells you what you can’t put stress on. If she puts all her weight on this leg, it risks buckling, lines disconnecting, causing cascading structural damage. Pain also produces relief, and Dolly found herself wishing that Jade’s hands would… do something. Spank her a little. Squeeze. Make her feel like she’s been punished and then forgiven, not this constricting, swirling agitation.

Then the spearhead lifts her chin, like in The Two Cliffs, and her treacherous heart beats faster, her thick thighs squeezing together just a little more firmly as she’s forced to look up that spear at the enthusiastic Talon, and she is a kitten, isn’t she, just this big ball of energy and exhilaration, and oh no she’s been downed, whatever could happen next? Maybe… no… Jade would never stand for it… but…?

Oh, just imagine it, Dolly’s treacherous heart whispers. Listening to Jade with muffler code clamped over her output, wrapped up in cords together, humiliated in front of the audience as Talon’s over-eager paws accidentally undo Jade’s breastplate harness and it comes crashing to the arena floor, and in the divine world of the feedback, Dolly’s dress would come undone—

No, that’s why they can’t. Humiliation is for Dolly. Smokeless Jade Fires demands glory, on her terms.

”The first hit is free,” Jade says, clamping Dolly’s hand just behind the spearhead again. Divinity is presentation. The faithful need to see what they believe. “Come here and I’ll make you pay for the second.” She tugs, furiously, and the spear’s head rams into the riverbed, and Ksharta Talonna comes down, down, d—

Ah.

And before Jade can think to stop it, the obvious metaphor plays out in her world; Dolly finds herself pinned underneath the hot, panting, simulated young Talon, eyes looking up pleadingly as she blushily mumbles, ears low, aware of just how, how much this reminds her of treacherous thoughts she’d already had about Angela…

[Smokeless Jade Fires and Dolly Stagger together, giving Talon a critical opportunity to exploit. They also hit a Fight with Grace on a 7, choosing to take a String on the awestruck pilot and to remove Talon’s spear from immediate use. It’s the mech herself that’s the sword, after all…]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

FreshNewTasteOf3VEnergy: I’m on it. He’s been at my place for the past week, actually.

She’s already rearranging the room, shoving the coffee table which is the death of all paperwork to one side so that she can fold out the couch. One hand(‘s thumb) types at blurred speed while she locks the frame in place with the other. No exclamation points. Not today.

FreshNewTasteOf3VEnergy: I’ll talk to him as soon as I can. I think he’s been working on some kind of academic paper. Only been leaving at odd hours to clear his head. You know how brains people are.

Food. She’s going to need extra food. Easy to digest, healthy: soups, station bananas… soups, station bananas… soups… bread! For dipping in soups. She’ll go shopping herself, rather than leave a digital trail via courier.

FreshNewTasteOf3VEnergy: I’ve got the medical billing.

Because hospitals are still required to provide invoices, and to accommodate those in need, and it’s just recently that the guidelines requiring them to inform patients of this fact went lax. There will be no $370 suture charge, for instance. Not when 3V is done with it.

FreshNewTasteOf3VEnergy: I am outraged at whatever caused this. I would say so to anyone. Anywhere, even.

She doesn’t know, but the sharp knife of anger inside of her, twisting under her ribs, might as well have some better purpose. And anything that would put Junta in the hospital and require surgery is likely a good place to stick it.

TSL: Sjakal

Nahla!

Grace-of-Heaven’s delight shone. That look of admiration, of acceptance, of joy: that will linger with you, Nahla, child of the north. But then she was pulled away to attend to Taima (a flimsy excuse for Taima to get to work seducing the Sultan), and now…

Now you have, once again, time to yourself. Time to get ready for Ruz’s inspection of you, and then time to… just exist.

Is it difficult, Nahla? Can you handle being alone in the lap of luxury, or do you seek out other members of the harem so that someone has need of you? And if you can be alone, what do you do? Who are you without someone to please, Nahla?

---

Soot!

Rosethal pulls you into one of the side chambers of the palace, and shoves you up to the couches set up around a table in the middle of the room. As your eyes adjust to the gloom, you realize that you’re not alone in here: there’s at least half a dozen Fire Wheels, playing with knives and bottles of wine as they wait for their game of cards to resume.

Their… game of cards.

“Here’s my stake,” Rosethal says, grabbing you from behind. “How’s that?”

“Yeah,” one of the Fire Wheels says, pushing her hair out of her face as she leers at you. “That’ll do to keep you in the game.”

Navigate this very carefully, Soot.

---

Silsila Om!

So when someone mentioned Hai Lin, what they meant is that Hai Lin is here. And so it is, poor hungover Silsila, you find yourself facing down a dozen Palace Guardsmen, led by their impeccably dressed leader.

“Hello, Silsila,” she says. She hasn’t drawn her sword. She doesn’t have to. Make a wrong move and you’ll start a whole fight, one that’s been close to boiling over for a long time. “I’d like to invite you to lunch.”

---

Birsi!

The gag comes out, a wet and suspicious mass, and is slopped down unceremoniously on your feet. An extra bit of incentive to behave.

“What are you doing here, sweetie?” Bes takes a seat in front of you, crosses her legs, accepts a glass from one of her sons. “And how did you get in?”

“And why didn’t you fight back?” Jekkan adds, watching your reaction carefully. Lie at your own peril— but think carefully before revealing any secrets, either.

Breathless Dead

That’s what it feels like— as if the search across the ship, the time spent drinking coffee with Beautiful, the trek through the vaulted halls of the Plousios, the slow accumulation of more knowledge— it all bleeds away, swirls down the drain of thought, is blasted away to nothing in the face of the sun.

Redana stumbles forward. She hits something. A chair, maybe? She walks through it. Doesn’t matter. The world is vast. The world is a face. The world is incomprehensible. Her heart is in her throat. Think of something, she thinks to herself, over and over.

She’s at the head of the table now. Dolce blinks at her. Bella stares at her, red-and-yellow against blue-and-green. She is her body. Her body does not understand what it is doing. She needs to say something. She had so many things she was going to say. They were important. She needs to say them. Bella isn’t saying anything. Olympus.

She opens her mouth, dumbly. She licks her lips. Coughs, the once.

“Hey, Bella,” she manages. The worst thing anyone has ever said. She blew it. Her brain explodes. Hey, Bella. Like they’re on speaking terms. Like nothing at all happened. Like she’s about to ask Bella what she wants for dinner. Bella is going to run away and hide and everything beautiful will be ruined. She’s sweating. Her hand is warm where she’s leaning against the table. Hey, Bella. She needs to have something else to say.

“…I didn’t know you knew Dolce?” Perish. Perish. Perish. I didn’t know you knew Dolce! Her mouth is dry. She’s smiling weird. It’s frozen on her face. Beautiful, come back, Dany does need an assassin, she’s taking out a hit on Princess Redana Claudius For Embarrassing Herself In Front Of A Pretty Girl, And Also For Thinking Of Bella As Just A Pretty Girl, But She Is, So Also Impugning Bella’s Honor Just While We’re At It.

She’s nothing like the Bella that terrorized her on Baradissar, feral, vicious. She’s nothing like the Bella that kissed her on Salib, lush and hungry and explosive. She’s here. She’s almost (almost) the Bella (her eye) that Redana (her clothes) remembers from Tellus, but… changed. Changing. Different. Can she learn more? Please? She’ll listen this time. Promise.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Smokeless Jade Fires does not carry her lance as she exits the hangar. Rather, she emerges flanked by her pack, each one tethered to her will. Her jackals! She was meant to be nothing more than the pattern governing one of them: sleek, adjusting their position midair with minute movements of their vents, lightly armored but packing a bite. She does not rely on them— refuses to rely on them— but they have their uses, and she refuses to deny herself the use of them where appropriate, either. She will fight with claw and lash, with the strength of her idol, with Dolly’s grace, and she will use her jackals to deny Ksharta Talonna a place to hide.

The jackals’ patterns are simple, almost childish; Jade runs her fingers through their algorithms, whispers approval, encourages them to optimize object avoidance, and sets them loose. She runs an idle claw up Dolly’s back, encourages her into a relaxed stroll without hesitation, and opens her mind to

running lashing whipping branches
light dappled on the water
the worldshape of echolocation
a net woven through with light
eyes above and eyes below and eyes across
vent, boost, correct
world as motion
world as speed
world as scraped
world as known
and
THERE

Jade barks a tangled knot of intent and it becomes a slug fired from the jackal’s jaw, punching through: a vine, bark, the wood beneath; scraping: chips from the tree, paint from the shin.

The pack contracts, whining, howling, as Ksharta Talonna explodes from her nest and swats the drone out of the sky. Jade half withdraws out of the pack (it’s all pattern algorithms, they’ll flush her out, hit her as she crosses a path) and urges Dolly into a run; she needs to be faster, needs to reach the inflection point before Ksharta Talonna does; she licks almost viciously at the back of Dolly’s legs and rump with a thought that cracks, and she shivers at the sound that threatens to explode out of her bride: the squeak, the groan, the helpless protest that she’s already going as fast as she can, because that’s not true, is it, Dolly, you can go faster, there’s a good girl, keep up the pace or else~

After all, don’t you want to look your very best for your peers? We’ve an audience, Dolly. Chin up, leash taut, mouth stuffed, hands clawed, moving in a blur that’s as close as you can come to the sublimity of lingering in the head of a running jackal. Good girl, good girl.

[Smokeless Jade Fires has rolled a 6 on Defying Disaster with Wit to make flushing out Talon look good and effortless, and I am putting Jade’s plan of an ambush on the line; perhaps Talon is making a deliberate feint, or plows into Jade in unfavorable ground (perhaps a river crossing is involved). Regardless, they mark their second XP.]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Piripiri!

Oh, Emli doesn’t blush! She’s been trained very well. Smooth as butter, flicking a stray lick of hair over her shoulder with an ever-so-slightly shaky hand. “It was before,” the northerner says, and isn’t her slight twinge of accent adorable? “I don’t know how long I spent there before, well, the crash, the plummet, the, the terror!” A technical truth, hiding the simpler one: it wasn’t much time at all. That’s the direction of the misdirect; people assume that any unaccountable length of time must have been long.

“What happened?” Now she’s pivoting, changing the subject. Except… no. Maybe? She might be sincere. She is softhearted. But you can’t be sure. “Is everyone all right? Did Lady Cathak save us?”

What did happen? Who really deserves the credit for saving lives on the barge, Pipi?

---

Kalaya!

Petony is not a woman given to much introspection. “I wanted to kick ass,” she says, pretty much immediately. “Why do you care so much?” But there might be more to it than that; something complicated underneath that she’s just not sharing with you. Not unless you use that mind of yours, think hard, and suss her out.

She doesn’t want you to, though. She doesn’t want to hear that you can’t sleep or more questions or any nonsense like that. She wants you to shut up and sit down and pretend to sleep so she doesn’t have to worry about you, and so that she doesn’t have to grapple with questions over how culpable she is for putting you in that position, and how she feels about the whole thing. She wants to be free to go steal someone’s wine and drink until it’s gone or she’s passed out. And you’re standing between her and just that, so if you’ve got a plan, it had better be a good one.

---

Giriel!

Go ahead and take a mixed beat on Comfort and Support, as if Naji had opened up. And she does. She curls up on that massive tail of hers and sips tea with all the demure elegance of a proper maid. Maybe she’ll make it in the world yet. It’s always wonderful when someone makes the world a little bit brighter by being themselves.

But then, oh, here comes the Hero, distraught and disheveled. “Giriel,” Agata says, with a smile. “Giriel, I’m so glad you’re safe.” She takes you by the hand (dregs of tea are nearly spilled) and squeezes it firmly. “You can find them, can’t you? Han and Lotus, they must have been tossed from the barge, they need our help— you can find them. I know you can.”

And you can. That’s true enough. But it will require bargaining with those things that know, the spirits of the high airs and the wild rain, and you would need to be at your best to avoid even more disaster coming down on your heads.

But just look at Agata. Does it look like that’s what she wants to hear?

---

Zhaojun!

“I will never be worthy of that scepter,” the Maid Confined hisses, bitterly, “not until I defeat you!” And she hisses, her stockings torn, her eyes wild, her mood feral.

She flips you over, has you by the wrists, knots the ruined stockings around them— this, a compression of minutes of pathetic, clawing, desperate fighting, and fumbling, and rain getting everywhere, because it’s the Flower Kingdoms, and the rain does that, and the Maid spits and fumbles with the hair flopping into her eyes.

Then she stands up and tries to roar. It’s not very good and her throat goes hoarse halfway through. “I won,” she says. “I won, I…”

She stops. You turn yourself up on your side. She looks small, frustrated, like a mortal. Then her eyes alight on you. “But you haven’t admitted I won.”

She scoops the mask up— she drops the mask in the mud, makes a keening noise, wraps her fingers up in her apron, picks the mask up again. “If you want this back,” she says, “then keep up.”

How badly do you want to keep that mask, Fengye? Because she’ll walk you until you’re both exhausted, at a snail’s pace, into the reeking jungle.

(And if you give out, exhausted, broken, unable to keep going… she’ll double back and drag you to somewhere that’s almost dry. The world does not get to defeat you.)

---

Han!

“I’m just saying, Han, that between the cats and the musicians,” she says, as if that was not one time, “you seem to attract trouble.”

Then, suddenly, a redirecting, an ambush from another angle. “But maybe I am being too harsh. If she’s this bedraggled and desperate, maybe she’d appreciate seeing a sister in the veil, hmm? I could offer the poor dear some help, maybe even come with you. Wouldn’t that be just blooming?”

And she does the sassy little head tilt of I Won And You Have To Grumble But Behave Now.