Tatterdemalion

Huntresses of Hybrasil

The panic reaction is entirely instinctual and physiological.

The way that she tenses up, tail bushing, is meant to make her look bigger and more dangerous to a threat. The strangled yowl that escapes her throat is a similar warning: teeth bared, a fierce huntress ready to bite into this challenger. The way that she clings to Sam is a memory of safety in numbers, in the camaraderie of the hunt.

But because she is also a person, Dolly eventually manages to squeak out: "...I didn't think they'd do that."

---

What ARE you?

The goddess cannot let this challenge, this lacuna in her understanding, pass her by. She shifts her position in the swirl, tosses out pistons, attempts to crack open what is increasingly barred to her (and barring her way to extraction). What ARE you? What ARE you, you thing of ghostwhispers, you unquiet spirit, you thing that has entered this place?

Are you a kind of thing like me?

This thought excites her, haunts her.

Are you a kind of thing that is born of the place where the clever stone meets the embodied spirit? Are you some (obviously much more pathetic and not-divine) peer? Her teeth are bared in interest, her focus sudden and all-consuming. After all, Angela's coming with the extraction, and Dolly will be sure to scoop up the glove, so she can continue to issue her demand for an identity.

What ARE you?

Breathless Dead

The Lantern is heavy bronze, worked in repeating spirals like the death of clouds. The power that thrums through it is enough to make the hair on Ember's arm stand on end, grey and shivering. The Shield is, in comparison, horribly light. The platinum that traces through it is like the hungry roots of a tree, stark against the dark metal. It will become more and more difficult to hold later on.

They are a necessary pair. The Lantern's fire draws in the howling energy of weapons such as the Star Kings are rumored to hold, bending their arcs in flight to smash the fragile casing apart. The Shield, linked by cable (secured to Ember's shoulders), traps the fire, flickering and hissing across its face, until the bearer is ready to return it.

Limitations? What is not limiting? The weight, the inability to draw her sword, the need to interpose the Shield between fire and Lantern, the way that any reasonable Ceronian would give the order to cease fire after the first return salvo-- but it will deny the Star Kings their preferred means of battle. Their mighty weapons will be tossed aside if Ember can do her part, and if she is fortunate and thoughtful, she might be able to bring down any fortification in their way.

Particularly if the Silver Divers can seize some of the weapons in turn, and use them to prepare the Shield's vastest roar.

The photographs sourced from the Syfenno were very helpful in turn. The light armor of the Divers has been hidden beneath red-and-black checkered tunics and rough blue trousers, their ears beneath hats-- some shapeless, some wide-brimmed. This is what wilderness women among the Portuguese wear, is it not? They will blend in, even with the scabbards at their sides, surely.

Breathless Dead

"Star Kings," Sagetip sniffs. "It's all psychology with them. And the weapons, but those can be circumvented. It's the superiority that makes them dangerous. Breaking their opponents' will to fight, acting as if they are invincible, and cluster bombing an opponent: that is where they get their reputation as warriors."

Ember is half listening, and half imagining the Portuguese, and more than half angry at the thought of a bunch of... and here she imagines the people of Beri, but in loud orange and green outfits... a bunch of people, stuck on that planet, stuck in a system where they have to spend their whole lives trying to scramble their way to the top, instead of there being enough for everyone. Poverty and being trapped and the only way out is through the Knight and what if they just--

But she has to think of the ship first, doesn't she? Like Mosaic. And how could she, leader of a pack, go in and fix it? It's not like she can trust everyone in the pack to behave, anyway. Oh, sure, they'd go down, they'd have fun, they'd declare themselves here to save the world, but... they can't. Not here. Not now. And it keeps stabbing at her, like a needle. That she has to do the right thing for the pack and the ship and her girlfriend. Not for the Portuguese (staring at her in her mind's eye).

Get in. Scatter the Star Kings. Get the materials they need. Get out. You can do that, can't you, Ember? Without getting in trouble? Without needing to be dragged back out? Without trying to slot into the perfect position that will be vacated once the Star Kings are gone? For everyone (except the Portuguese)?

Staring at the simulacrum of their world, it's hard to be sure.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

One thing more. One little twist. She's allowed this, isn't she? You knew who you were working with, Whispered Promise. You knew what laughing, petulant deity you were working with. To call upon the powers of the underworld is to recognize that power.

When the transmission cuts off, it cuts to the burning skull of a goddess, made of the leaping, giddy flames, the color of unclouded jade. The burning jaw contorts into a gleeful nip, a way to show the entire universe that this, the coup of Whispered Promise that will be remembered for generations, that will turn entire worlds on their fulcrum...

It could not have been done without the intervention of a goddess.

Then she turns her eye away from Whispered Promise's plummet (because she knows best of all not to intrude on a moment that is sacred in such a way), and she sets her labyrinth awhirl, drawing the strings of wild speculation being yowled out into the universe and sending them scattering where she will. Ten Things You Need To Know About Mayze Szerpaws. Szerpaws Revealed (Live Reaction). What Does This Mean For The Consortium? Nothing- absolutely nothing- will be allowed to pass through here that does not pertain to the Revelation of the Trickster.

Well. One thing. One string, tugged. One screen, flicked on.

"Come and fetch our Dolly, Angela Victoria Miera Antonius."

---

Dolly sets her jaw, insofar as she knows how to do it.

"...fuck," she says, and there's an adorable lilt to it, even now. "Goddess damn it all. I thought... fuck!"

Then she begins trying to move one of the server racks in front of the door, puffing, trying her best to buy time. What's the worst that they could do to her, anyway? Nothing they can accuse her of is anywhere as bad as letting Mirror's dream be shattered in this moment. Nobody gets to see Solarel and Mirror, not now, not until it's all over.

That's the promise she made to Mirror, after all.

"We are about to have company, so give me a hand here! We can't let them interrupt her! Please!"

[Dolly immediately pulls on that String.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Her fire does not give off smoke.

Here, in the center, in the shape of this which is a name, she burns, and her fire does not give off smoke.

Here, in the center, in the shape of this which is a name, she plucks a string, and she burns, and her fire does not give off smoke.

Here, in the center, in the shape of this which is a name, she plucks a string, and the reverberation pulls every block into place where she wants it, and she burns, and her fire does not give off smoke.

Here, in the center, in the shape of this which is a name, and the name is Smokeless Jade Fires, she plucks a string, and the reverberation pulls every block into place where she wants it, and she burns, and her fire does not give off smoke.

---

Her heart is racing. Her prey instincts, honed by evolution to keep her save from behemoths and hungry birds, yells at her to go and hide under a desk. She's been seen, she's been made, she's been spotted, she's been striped. It's all going to fall apart, and she'll have failed to keep Jade...

To keep her safe, in turn. To protect her as she protects her priestess.

It's like it's somebody else who moves her hand, who presses one finger against Sam's lips. But it's her that manages to wink. A plea from a place of weakness, but presented from a stance of strength. Those alien lips (like Angela's) are soft, warm. Breath mists against her fingerpad.

Won't you be a good girl and keep quiet for me, Sam? It's an actual question the way that Dolly's body asks it; a request. Not a declaration the way that Smokeless Jade Fires would make the question. And some Terenians like a soulful gaze from a voluptuous, soft Hybrasilian. (Actually, according to network searches, that number is much higher than you'd expect. Not that Dolly knows. But Jade does.)

[11 on either an Entice or a Defy Disaster, dealer's choice.]

Breathless Dead

“We need to know their mon and lineage,” Ember of the Silver Divers says. Her tense air is surely just eagerness to fight. She is Ceronian, after all. Thus the restless tail, the bouncing on her heels, the ears at attention. “Then we can start planning where and how we’re going to fight.”

She’s trying so hard not to look at Mosaic, both because of the feeling prickling along her spine and because, well, look at her! She’d be useless to the Tyrant of Beri with Venus arresting her eyes. She needs to be alert. She needs to pay attention. She needs to figure out what is making her fingers itch and her mouth wet. Maybe the Synnefo?

(After all, the Synnefo are perfect targets for any daughter of Ceron. What better challenge than to turn the unflappable, aloof bureaucrats into bleating, flustered messes? What more comfortable trophy than sheared wool? Every one has their weak spot, and it’s a long, delightful game to find it~)

This one’s good, though. Hardly blinking in the face of half a dozen members of the clan, all eyes fixed on him: half-lidded, hungry, proud. Go ahead, little sheep. Be a good boy and give us our quarry.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

“She’s just about got it,” Dolly lies, encouragingly. Her smile shifts from a facade to genuine as the technician does her fumbling best to fix it. Then, because only the very best of girls would be able to resist, she turns her attention back to Sam. “And really, you think I look like D— Seven Quetzal? Is she your favorite~?”

Hmmm. No, this can work. All she has to do is get behind the guns. She drops like a cenote stone, into the narrowing spaces. All she has to do is do a light/shadow attack— something that any reasonable program would have defenses against, but not this, not with the holes in its conception.

“Because if she wasn’t up against Mirror, of all pilots, maybe it’d be her down there against that terrifying Zaldarian, right?” The shiver is, to her surprise, not feigned. She’s getting pieces of the fight over the tall one’s shoulder, and the raw fury, the way that the hulking mountain of a mech moves…

What you do is you make a poison out of your tooth, and when the time comes, you bite the defenses. Light is shadow, shadow is light, the sudden blindness of high hot summer. Legitimate attempts to interact with the system are locked out, treated as the enemy, and the viper at the heart has everything fall at her feet.

Pins prickle underneath her fur as she watches for a moment, tail brushing against Sam’s ankle. They never could have won this. Not against this demon. Mirror should be losing instantly, crushed under the weight of Hunger and Night. But she’s not. She’s not. She slips through those claws like she slipped through Jade’s defenses. She is something outside of the game of gods and demons, and that’s why—

But that’s a last resort, even as the venom throbs in her jaw. Better to weave all things from here, constantly plummeting in and out of the dark as conceptual gravity warps around her.

“We couldn’t have won,” Dolly murmurs, with the flustered Sam close enough to hear.

Breathless Dead

wag wag WAG wag wag goes Ember's tail, her ears perked up, her smile hidden but obvious. The energy is shared by her honor guard, who are leaning in as if to pounce, intent on the very idea of a rival pack to clash against.

"It all depends on their dynamics," Ember says, bringing her fingertips together like the archetypal "scheming Synnefo." "If we crush them, seize their pack treasures, prove our dominance, some clans would disintegrate under pressure like that, or at the very least would shed new recruits and wandering bands chased offworld. Others would harden like diamond under external pressure, fighting to the last, impossible to tame. We won't know unless we challenge them. A strike force, hitting at their base, demanding plunder and satisfaction, testing their mettle-- that is how we can know this pack."

Then, with the air of a hound that has suddenly realized she has been caught halfway to the cookies, and thinks that if she freezes up she will become invisible: "If you think that is necessary. It probably is, no matter who we side with. They're a thorn in everyone's boot, except for the Generous Knight, but we've already established, I think, that we won't side with her. And we shouldn't. If she wanted an entertaining fight, she should have looked to us."

Pride radiates from the elegantly-made knight, and her bannermaid drums her stave's butt against the floor once, twice, thrice in enthusiasm. But more than that, Ember keeps sneaking glances out the window at the world below. She yearns to see, to run, to challenge, and to meet the unknown. To greet the Argumentative Portuguese without hiding, to acknowledge that she is the Speaker for the Tyrant and that she has come to solve their Ceronian problem. To win veils for her belt and to win gifts from a populace eager to be saved and spared. And who can blame her?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

The network is a labyrinth of stone slabs shifting, grinding, calling out to each other, the carvings writhing, the noise cacophonous. It extends into four dimensions, dizzying, hectic, and impossibly complex.

Smokeless Jade Fires has pistons and cords.

She falls through the labyrinth, never touching a surface. The pistons are driven through eyes to pin them into place, into mouths to silence them, and the shifting of the walls tangles the cords into constant new structures, and in her mind she rotates the shapes of the cords. Pluck here and a security system updates. Shiver there and a password falls neatly into place. Her gravity pivots and she is falling always, trailing cords, flinging them out with divine precision.

It is a shame that Dolly isn't here to see the catsuit, or the mask that leaves only her clever eyes shining. Perhaps Jade will have to model for her bride later. As a reward. As a victory lap. But right now, she slides through shifting corridors, cutting through air, weaving her victory.

---

The zipper. is. the zipper is. well. see. it is. definitely. it sure is.

stuck.

"I, uh, I'm getting, over the, set, earset, that it's stabilizing but let me just see about getting this, I mean, haha, I can't very well go out there and, like this, right?" Panic flutters inside her, but she can't let it win, or else the plan will spin out of control, and besides...

Jade's depending on her. To keep it together. To fulfill their debt to Mirror. To be a gosh darned high priestess. Would Velvet Tread fall apart like this, Dolly? Would Six Dappled Ferns? No!

"Like, the second worst thing that could happen would be me walking out there and running into the ~Red Band~ with my damn zipper down to here--" She tugs harder on it, and manages to not bounce out of the jumpsuit, but the engineer's definitely noticed the not bouncing out. "And the worst thing would be running into my manager, haha ha! Do you think you could...?"

The look she gives is innocently devastating. She has to brush a lock of hair up out of her face, and her nervousness comes off more as shyness, demureness; anyone who knew who she actually was, in this moment, might suddenly understand why Jade is so possessive of her.

Breathless Dead

The fireworks bruise the ribs of the ceiling in livid purples and greens, blues and pinks, until the whole of the world is the coral reef beyond Beri's shore. Her veil hangs askew, unnecessary here between them. Her breath comes in hitches, colors drowning her eyes, the scent of love blossoming around them. Fingers that could break stone brush over her skin, leaving giddy trembling in their wake. The surface of the breaking, shining waves swims far above them, and here they can linger in the sea forever.

"I will find them," Ember pants out, her chin wet, her heel digging into the blanket beneath them. Turquoise, teal, sapphire blooms. "Bella donna." Beautiful woman. It stings her lips like salt. "I will ask the biomancers, I will ask on every planet, I will seek them until, until, ah, aaa~ah..."

Her hips are the swell of broken ships' hulls. Her breasts, open to the air, are flowering coral. Her teeth, biting down on Mosaic's finger, are pearls. She can feel the tension in her lover's body, the flexing of those titan's fingers, the sting where Mosaic bites down on her ear with those teeth like sharks. But there is no fear in Ember of the Silver Divers, who melts into a string of incoherent groans, half-syllables, and particularly pathetic Pixesque yips. There is no place for fear at the bottom of the sea, only acceptance.