Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

When Redana shows up, she's wearing a cape. Well, the cape's built into the double breasted Ceronian jacket, but it's still a cape. She deserves one here at the end, after everything. There are things she could have lost - there are things she has lost - and she is not going to let a cape for a princess-heroine be one of them.

She has been everyone: little girls and dashing princes, flustered dancers and plucky scouts, the thief and the bride. And now she's here. Standing, with a little smile, looking the wisest she's looked on the whole trip - or at least the most grown-up. She's holding a feasting board. It's handmade, but done with an eye for the details: meats high in fat and salt to put a patient to sleep, mellow half-cheeses to balance them out, a warm loaf of bread with sailor's butter in a bowl. The sort of food that would help with the process, once the unguents were chugged.

"Hi," she says, simply. Her hair's loose, falling in waves down to her shoulders. There's a fresh scent to it, one that even non-Ceronians might be able to pick up on. She has passed through the Acheron and come out the other side - less rejuvenated than her wife, but cleansed, none the less. She is present, and she is in control of her selves. "I brought this for him," she says, obviously, offering it with a casual grace. "How is he?"

Return to Thellamie

Handmaidens!

Chip damage is a concept from Yukisearth in which constant small attacks can overwhelm incredible defensive prowess.

In the midst of the blaze, the Khatun stands, nearly toppled from chip damage. Tattoos roil across her body, sigils of the Demon Queen Miaou. The sort of dramatic reveal that would not have happened had someone not thrown several hundred Explosive Flasks at her. She advances like death. Yes, death, that's exactly what she advances like. Not like mayhem, rushing and furious, but slow and deliberate.

But she's limping.

It's like the Kel monk Xeno and his famous Paradox: if a tortoise closes half the distance between it and an honorable foe it wishes to stab with a tortoise-sized knife every time it is tapped on the shell, it will never reach its opponent so long as it is tapped on the shell over and over again. It is exactly like this paradox. Every time she closes half the distance, she is hit by another Explosive Flask. And eventually, she starts taking a half-step back every time another explodes against her chest.

Her eyes mirror the inferno around her. Her clothes are glowing with heat. She is losing herself to a raging fury. She is--

The ballroom floor is flooded with sweet-scented brown tea. The Nagi proprietor of the Chrysanthemum is on an upper level, directing her staff to upend a rune-bound tub of tea which has no bottom at all. Ironically enough, a gift from a former Heron. And the tea comes in waves. Enough that the Khatun is knocked from her feet and stumbles into the tea with a sizzle. It cascades over the sides of the ballroom platform and crashes into the hot springs below, and soon the entire building is full of the scent of it, warm and comfortable and soothing.

"If we can't play nice with the Golden Fawn," Yaz declares from above, "we don't get to play at all."

Sayanastia still stands where others have fallen or are wading through hip-deep waves of tea.

I believe that Yaz takes a String, as well. Ah, dear me.

---

Yuki! Eclair!

I will be short and sweet, like the tea. You emerge into waterfalls of tea and billowing, delicious clouds of steam that are beginning to fill the lower levels of the Chrysanthemum. It is the sort of ridiculousness that is disarming, I think - to have to admit to oneself that this is still a world where this sort of thing can happen.

It is the sort of environment where it is easy to slip away, but it is also the sort of environment where it is easy to linger - and easy to run into someone else trying to navigate through the steam and the rushing, swirling tea all about.

---

Hazel!

Someone, somewhere, is making a great big rushing noise. It's soothing. It's like a relaxation song file off a tablet. Have you gotten into the music-sharing scene here? You simply must indulge.

Alcideo curtseys with lethal precision and saunters out, being sure to close the door behind him. Someone, somewhere, is still making the sound of running, rushing water. And it's not your problem right now! Sure, you'll have to go out there soon, and probably declare the winner ASAP, and...

Oh, you're still not sure who the winner is, are you? And you could be here all night - you could be here two nights - and there would still be people desperately trying to teach you how to do the can-can in hopes that they would get to win.

It's not fair, I know. But do you really think that tonight has been a success? Do you think you can do this again and again and again?

Maybe you should go and ask Civelia for help. She's supposed to be here tonight, after all.

Breathless Dead

The Princess-Alpha Redana Claudius rests her head against Bella’s shoulder.

At some point— blink and you’ll miss it, though perhaps no one did, perhaps everyone knew— Dany’s embrace wrapped around Bella’s neck, trying to hide where her face was wet from sputtering up coffee, became the knot of a blanket knotted as a heroine’s cape, coming to the small of Bella’s back. It is not the perfect accessory for this ensemble, but perhaps it is comfortable. Perhaps it’s a reminder that she was loved from the moment Dany met her.

This Redana— the Redana in Bella’s arms— is all of them and more. She’s the actress under all the masks, always changing her identity, never changing her heart. She was Skotia, torn apart by desire[1]. She was Redana, young and eager and broken into a new shape[2]. She was Ember, irrepressible, proud, silly and valiant[3].

And she was Dany. When she looks up at Bella, snuggled into the crook of her arm, that’s impossible to deny. Look past the Ceronian augmentations, look past the growing-up, and it’s clear to see.

“…I’m glad you were still there,” she says, after a while, mumbling it with her cheek pressed firmly against her heroine. Her eyes are wet sapphire and emerald. She does not say: all of me was frightened. She does not say: it was like being touched by Dionysus again, the way that the world seemed to change, the way it whispered that what she knew was a lie. She does not say: it hurt. She does not say: but a knight will be hurt for her paramour, and it is the duty of a knight to bear it.

Her fingers on the breastplate say: I love you, even the parts of you that frighten me sometimes. The half-sad smile on her lips says: one day I will tell this story and make it your triumph. Her heart says: the best of me protected you from the worst of me, and I am grateful that the lion was not loose in your heart.

And what she says when she lifts her head is: “Dolce, thank the gods you were here, too.” And her smile for him is as brave as Dany’s heart.

---

[1]: and she cannot say that she never wished to be torn apart, when she was feeling like the most terrible person in the entire universe, when she hid from her own name and responsibility, when she wanted to be someone who could be with Bella without being hated.
[2]: she only told Bella about that nightmare once. It was a foul, awful thing for Aurelia to make her experience again[2.5].
[2.5]: all of the particulars were different, but it meant the same. In that one, it was her mother who took her apart and put her back together in a jigsaw with new pieces, and she was a dog, not a throne, but it meant the same.
[3]: and very, very thirsty.

Return to Thellamie

Yuki!

The Nagi princess makes faces. Several of them, actually. The kind that an honest girl can't help but pull when she wants to say something but is trying to keep it buried. And, to her credit, she doesn't prioritize herself, or argue with you, dear. Not when you're like this. Instead, she cups your chin and makes herself say: "I should have enough time tonight to, to rent you out a suite. You can stay in! You and Eclair! And then by the end - if you haven't gone to bed - we can stay up and talk about the ball and wait for news that Aadya's been a great big hero, and maybe I'll even bring Hazel along, and there won't be any need for talk about chosen ones, not here."

She smiles. It's a little strained, I must admit. You're not the only one who's coming loose. That connection with Hazel, that one magical moment, and now she's swept to the side like a worm trying to evade Purnima hassling her for a rematch, hoping that someone else doesn't steal his heart, wondering what happened to all the gifts she tried to send him during the reconstruction efforts, trying not to think about the fact that Eclair is a wanted criminal, trying to be good.

She wants you, one way or another, Yuki. She wants time with you, to scheme with you instead of having you run off behind her back to scheme with Karn-Pana, to flop onto you and go limp after she's crushed the ball and figured out a way to make Hazel all hers (romantic, possibly; pet, possibly).

And she's trying to be good.

---

Eclair!

You wake up with your face plastered against Nagi tummy, and in this moment, for just a moment, you imagine that you are snuggling with one of your mistresses again. That you have been plucked from the Order, based on the arcane whims of dragons, and that you are a doll snuggling with a vast presence that loves you. That you can hear their contented rumblepurring, that you can feel the way that they have wrapped around you, that the weight of a great paw has you pinned to the ground, that you are here and you are loved and it's your turn with snuggles.

In this moment, for just a moment, you feel love, don't you?

This is important. It will be on the test.

---

Handmaidens!

Well. That's a plummeting Rurik. There's an obvious problem, isn't there? And he was doing so well. Someone should definitely catch him, if there's anyone among you who happens to be able to fix an obvious problem like this. After all, Heron's certainly not going to come do it for you. That being said... well, the employees of the Chrysanthemum are rather capable. Why, there's one saving the Golden Fawn just now. I'm sure that they'll be able to pull out an emergency sex trampoline if necessary. (This is the Chrysanthemum. All the regular trampolines are in storage right now, since the Great Phontasia's carnival routine is on hiatus.)

But it's likely not going to be Sayanastia, because she's once again the subject of attention. What do you call the definition of insanity, darlings? And here she is trying once again to storm Civelia's party and make it all about her, struggling through shining azure chains that can't quite seem to hold her back, but--

"Enough," the Khatun declares, seizing the Dark Dragon herself from behind. "Enough of dragons." She is a huntress; of course she knows how to wrestle. She rams her heartblade through Sayanastia, and then pulls her into a suplex. And though she grunts and has to pick herself back up afterwards, she still suplexed the Dark Dragon. And she laughs.

Heron doesn't laugh like that. Not like that. That's the cackle of someone who's enjoying herself for the first time this evening. Someone who has been wanting to do something like this all night.

Mark a Condition, once again.

But I can't give you a complete disaster, can I? All right, then, a little nudge from me, a little twist: Aria Thendragon stomps over, still trailing toxic smoke, and tries to shove the Khatun off you, Sayanastia; her teeth are bared and her eyes are alight with fury that someone else is getting the opportunity to put you in your place.

So, naturally, the Khatun tries to stab her heartblade through Aria's eye.

As they squabble, the Dark Dragon has a moment for the ceiling to stop spinning and come up with plan B...

---

Hazel!

You are counter-swooped.

One moment you're plummeting down to the ballroom floor, and the next moment someone's got a firm arm around you and you're swinging rather perpendicular to the whole falling thing which was going on, and you get a view of all the fighting that's starting to break out, once again, over you, over you being the most special boy in the whole world, and how did Yuki manage all this?

And then you're jumping over a railing, onto a carpet, and hustled into a familiar cafe, and someone is pushing a spiced apple cinnamon cider into your hands.

"We've got a moment before everyone comes trampling up the stairs looking for you, I think," says a familiar voice. You look up, disoriented and befuddled boy that you are, into the beaming, indefatigable, relentless smile of Alcideo, who is not going to let you get overwhelmed in his holy temple to the pleasures that Heron shares with all Vespergift. "Do you need more of a breather than that, Cutie?"

...the cider feels good, doesn't it? Its heat is radiating through the cup and into your sweaty palms in a way that I am very certain are bringing back memories from Yukisearth. I have a nose for these things, and so does Alcideo, and we both know that there's definitely something here.

Breathless Dead

"Like all sorts of heroes, no one saw what she was when she was a baby. They just saw how valuable she could be," Dany says, butting in like always. Stories are a place where she can feel smart for knowing what comes next. She steps forwards toward the stage, and with her small and sticky hand she leads Bella forward with her. "One day a wicked witch looked at her, but she didn't see the girl, just what she wanted the girl to be. And so the wicked witch taught her all sorts of things in the moonlight, and introduced her to her sisters, and finally put this girl into a box to be a present to another lonely girl."

Her fingers clench around Bella's. Just because it's what the story needs doesn't mean it's fun to admit it out loud. But she had been, which means that she is the Redana who is lonely right now, who holds onto Bella because they're the only two girls in the world who might understand each other. That must be why Bella keeps taking step after step, even as they draw close to XIII and Mosaic's straining battle.

Across the silver screen, the camera watches Bella's face as the Box is opened up and two small hands reach in for her. It is a silent witness to the games of hide-and-seek (which is to say, training to get to the security rooms without being caught) and tag and A Young Lady's First Introduction To Naval Combat and fort-building and Empress-for-a-Day and matches of croquet abandoned in favor of napping in the shade beneath the facsimile of a sun.

"But neither of them knew how to say the most important thing to each other, and so one day the lonely girl said to the girl who did not know herself: I'm going to go make sure that we can play across the stars forever."

A chip of stone slashes across her forehead. Dany flinches, and nearly cries out. But she's the girl who could never stay hurt, and so her gash closes as quickly as you can whistle, with no more white or pink or red. Her grip on Bella is tight and determined. In her other hand, she holds a stained blanket like a shield.

"It was the only way that she knew how to say that she loved her friend!"

---

"This girl who did not know who she was had an Empress look at her next, and the Empress saw all the things that she wanted this girl to be," says an exhausted cook. His muscles are tight, but a breath leaves him as he watches Dany's brow knit back together. She is still in danger - they are all in terrible danger - but to kill her, the smallest and most innocent, would take deliberate effort. And that is something that can be postponed, avoided, if this works.

Please, Olympians, let this work. Whatever this is.

On the screen, for a moment, Redana and Bella face each other. Then the camera pans and it is just Bella proving her worth as an Olympian, proving that she could be Redana's equal, that she was worth investing in, that she could be made into a good tool for an Empress. And yet in every scene there is a rose somewhere in the background.

"They argued in the belly of the Leviathan, and on a planet of mad robots. Above a world of scuttled ships, the girl who did not know who she was nearly went mad." Did he remember this? Surely she must have told him. There is no other explanation for how easily it falls from his tongue. On the screen, Bella stares out at nothing, lost and more fragile than she has ever been. And then she picks up needle and thread.

"But she survived. She rode the void in a ship of her own making. She found her sisters and refused to leave them behind ever again, even when the wicked witch found her again."

On that screen, XIII roars, and off the screen, XIII cocks her head.

“No matter what you’ve done, no matter what happens here— I’m not leaving you again! Remember, Bella!”

On that screen, a demigod wrestles with a monster and refuses to let her go, even as her star-clotted blood flows freely. On that screen, a girl is saved from a monster who was not forever. And for a moment, XIII is watching. And in that moment, Mosaic embraces her and lifts her off the ground.

---

This is the part that is tricky. Or would be, for anyone not a Ceronian Scout who was put through the wringer again and again to keep her head in the most disorienting, uncomfortable positions imaginable. This is much less sexy than most of her training, but that doesn't mean Ember can't play her part, too.

Devotion, laced with Wanton Adoration. Forgetfulness, tinged with Melancholy. Devotion, intermingled with Worshipful Desire. Unmistakable to the assembled Bellas, with their heightened senses, as Redana and Bella cross the Lethe together. The way that Redana looked up at Bella, the fear of losing her across the Rift, and the way that she came to look at Mosaic. Even bereft of all context, they came back together.

Ember cannot look at Bella, or Bella, or XIII, or her Mosaic, or even the screen. All she can look at is the hands which are coming for her eyes. She bares her bloody teeth in what might be an agonized grin, and she keeps working to writhe free. No knots to pick at, but her hairy limbs are slick with sweat and blood, and that's a start.

The Camaraderie that promises that you are never alone.

Return to Thellamie

Yuki!

The absence of Aadya, the Rock upon a Mountain, is thick. Now that the oppressive thickness of the sauna is almost dissipated, it is the shape of where she is not that fills the room. There are tears on your arm and a twitching Eclair in your grasp and somewhere, outside, there is a lot of drumming and foot-stamping and "hiyaaaaah!" and we must hope, together, that Hazel is having a wonderful time. If you must suffer here, alone in the dark, then perhaps he will get the chance to shine all the brighter up on that stage, starlight dripping from his antlers.

This goes on for an indeterminate time. You shiver as the dampness on your skin settles in properly.

Then a vision in indescribable colors enters, slithering in and doubling back to shut the door behind her for the sake of privacy. Underneath the still-open skylight, she is brilliant, and the darkness is all the thicker around her in contrast. There is a new bruise on her throat in the shape of someone's fangs and she is somewhat more disheveled than when you saw her last, but she has no care for her appearance in this moment.

"Oh, Yuki," she says, and sweeps you up. It is an effort for her to bear both of you up into her coils together, but she strains herself and gets her sequins underneath you, wrapping her arms around the two of you to share warmth. "When Aadya told me you needed me, I didn't think... what happened?"

Her voice aches with concern for you. There is applause and laughter and foot-stomping up above and she doesn't even think about it. Bereft of Purnima's dress, picked out to make you a pawn in their game, there is nothing that stands between the two of you but that Eclair is still in your arms, that Purnima's lips have made a bruise on her neck, that she might be the one who tames the Golden Fawn.

She will hold you through any tears you have.

Do you kiss her?

---

Eclair!

Timtam laughs as much as she can with her windpipe constricted. Her smile is manic, her eyes wide, daring you to punish her more, to try and force some insight out of your dreaming mind (of which she must merely be a part). Her fingers writhe and she snaps at the air in front of your nose, drumming one heel on the floor beneath the two of you. This threatens to spiral into nightmare.

There is a sound of wings behind you. A presence, vast and enshrouding. The feathers on these wings, if you would turn your head, are the some color as your hair. Timtam cocks her head, and her eyes reflect your face like mirrors. The sort of thing that would, in most proper Thellamie stories, be what Yuki calls a "jump scare," to be wrestling with one of the Mirrorfolk. Or a dream that has, in some small way, become one of the unreal people on the edge of existence. There is a sound of wings behind you.

"...I am in love," she sighs. Under your fingers, her neck is the color of your hair. "Am I not allowed to be, Eclair Espoir? I am so much in love that I am a monstrously selfish thing, because when I empty myself out there will be so much more room for everything I get back. And because I am selfish there is room for you in here, too, after I have been cruel to you, after you have been cruel to me, after we play tug-of-war with your broken and my broken."

Her hands are yours. She pulls you close with her legs instead. Her blood throbs quick and mirror-silver through her thighs. You can see your whole face inside her eyes, and the vast wings of The Hero's Reflection behind you, and that hooked beak on the very edge of her eyes. Must a reflection of the Hero's heart by necessity be everything the wrong way around, as in a mirror? Or is there something Heronish about the beast behind you?

Something that yearns to understand you in order to help you, strange creature of the right-way-round?

"You can't stop me," she says. You have her throat. She cannot kiss you, teasingly or wantonly or distractingly or otherwise. "Our narrator likes me too much, even if she hopes I don't win. She has to give me a chance, yah? A chance for my happily-ever-after." Her sigh is like a maiden's first flutter of love. "For our happily-ever-after."

---

Handmaidens!

BRAVE ADVENTURERS, YOUR TASK IS TO [infiltrate] THE DREAD FASTNESS OF [the Boar's Ossuary] WHICH MAY BE FOUND [by following signs of bone on the very edge of the Khaganate].

ONCE YOU HAVE FACED THE [bored Khaganate legbreakers] WITHIN, YOU WILL RECEIVE [the damsel-in-distress, Sister Juniper] AS WELL AS [two chests full of things which have been lost and forgotten on the edge of the world] AND [a gold star for being good girls].

[Heron would have a plan. She'd lead you all into the Stacks, now a nightmare zone full of living trees and undead minions of the Rot Star, and fight her way to the Cool Skeleton Collection, which she would have Tsane assemble into a doorway out into the Ossuary. Then she'd use stealth and archery in order to disable the legbreakers without triggering an alarm, have a fight with the lieutenant that the Khatun left there with orders to kill first and ask questions later, and then comically take her time trying to figure out how to untie Sister Juniper while being a naughty flirt.]

[You cannot take the roads between hubs. Not when time is this painfully of the essence. You must ride out into the hateful Tanglewood and overcome its influence to make your own road. This will require starlight squeezed from the Golden Fawn's antlers and worked into occult tools in order to make a bubble of reality in the Outside fragile enough to go at significant speed towards the Ossuary - at the speed of plot, one might say.]

[Alternatively, Sayanastia might be able to eat the distance between Vespergift and the Ossuary. This will be dangerous, particularly given how she returned to form tonight. She might lose herself, or rather, might find herself and be lost in old memories and perils. I foresee a risk of Sister Juniper being tossed from one captor to another, one who would clasp her gently in dreadful claws and consider ways of transforming her into the crux of some new and wicked plot.]

[But don't mind me and my wicked wiles! My dastardly schemes. My nefarious plots. Really, is it so hard to believe that I'm a bleeding heart every now and then?]

---

Hazel!

As uncomfortably close explosions rock the hall (wow, cool special effects, don't mind Alcideo forming a bucket brigade as tremor after tremor rocks Vesper Victoria's on the other side of the street, isn't it unfortunate how these things just keep happening to Vespergift), you are grabbed and pulled by the wrist, away from Olesya, into the arms of...

Starglasses. A grin full of diamond braces. An insistent tug that leads you exactly where Khanum Negodincia wants you. In the center of all this magnificent dance, suddenly she's tugging you along like a planet, a wandering star, narrowly evading heartblades and kicking legs as she throws her head back and laughs. Her dress has a plume of lace pinned to it, lace torn away from other dresses and kept as a trophy. She has black studded boots on that she delights in stamp, stamp, stamping. Olesya is coming after the two of you but she's having to try and keep time and continue to be part of the dance lest it dissolves, which leaves Negodincia free to pull you along in an erratic orbit as she cackles and narrowly misses disaster over and over again.

Out of everyone who's had you tonight (thus far), she's easily the most gleeful to have you. True, in the same way that one might be gleeful to have a new trophy, but listen to her laugh, feel the way she drags you along, and narrowly evade her attempt to slap a collar on you as she comes back in so close you can smell the fruity cocktails on her breath.

A bone-rattling climax (which keeps going, explosion after explosion outside echoing the drums), and the howling of the pack all around, both happen as she gives up and falls backwards, pulling you along with her, on top of her, onto the ballroom floor (which still smells of Walking Elm smoke).

She looks at you. Not only at you, because you can tell that a flustered Olesya is above you, but definitely you're part of it.

And then she kisses you like she can steal you away from her big sister if she does it hard enough. Like you're candy that she's licking in order to make everyone here give you to her. Like someone who has seen a lot of kissing but hasn't had a lot of time to practice. And very definitely like someone who thinks that sloppy kisses are good civilization.

Take a String on her somewhere in there.

Return to Thellamie

Eclair!

Before we get started it's important that you be imagining me in a detective's cape and beaded cap as I rattle off answers to your questions. Even in dreams, your mind is always racing down its own path, isn't it? Trying to drink the world like a glass so that you can react to it appropriately. Little wonder you have so much disdain for me - but do your best to imagine me trying to fit in, anyway. Allow me to show you the courtesy of making some figment of thought which might bring the ghost of a smile to your face.

Now. Questions.

• You are wearing your Mansion uniform, naturally. I believe it's striking in how little you have customized it.
• Your hair is in the awkward stage where it is growing out after a severe cut.
• The room seems relentlessly mundane for a dream. No strange tricks of perspective here.
• You are adrift in a sea of memory, and it is difficult - but possible - to touch what else you are. It takes deliberate effort.
• You are the same in Timtam's eyes.
• You are a prodigal girl with a dream and her own apron in the griffon's mirrors.

There is no ticking clock in here. There is the rain coming down the windows in shades of grey that only the Order of the Aurora has names for. There is a fire burning merrily in the hearth. The two of you could sit here until the tea grew cold and Evening began to stir.

• Timtam is watching your hand.
• Her own hand is avoiding the interlocking pieces of the Mistresses, and it strikes you that she has never given you a clear shot at them in this game. That all of her strategy is a series of shells with them at her center.
• In the griffon's eyes, you are wearing Heron's cape.
• Yes.
• When has it ever been?
• Victory looks like picking up the table, setting it aside, and catching Timtam in your grasp before she can hide behind a game or a mask or a joke or a firecracker or a crime or a kiss and then holding her no matter what shape she takes, and then you'll figure out the next step of that story. She's hidden one piece in her cleavage, you see. And there's no way to win without that piece; the best you can get is a draw. And I'll tell you that because I have already forgiven you for earlier, and because you have been a good sport, and because I want to see what that piece is, too.

---

Yuki!

"I... need you," Aadya says, heavily. Her shoulders slump. She had been doing her best to hide that weariness. It's not physical exhaustion, it's exhaustion of fuel for courage, for self-love, for selfishness. The kind of weariness that, and I speak only hypothetically here, might make one trudge on single-mindedly on the one thing they told themselves that they were going to do because they don't have the energy to compare it to anything else that they could be doing, and they'd just grind to a painful and tearful halt if they tried. "I need your strength, Yuki. With me. Together. You need a win," says a woman who desperately needs a win.

"And then, once this is... once we've solved this, together, once we've saved Hazel's adventure, we can just... I'll take you places. You never got to visit my monastery last time. Or go down into the Shining Stones. I'd even take a leave of absence to Crevas for the rest of your stay, and you won't want for anything, I'll use my stipends. You can rest. But I need your help or I'll get it wrong."

And there it is. Laid out before you. The saddest, most miserable secret of her heart. She knows that she's going to get it wrong. Like she got it wrong talking with you over brunch. Like she got it wrong trying to find Timtam. Like she got it wrong fighting with Eclair back on that first night when this adventure got going.

She means it, by the way. She'll keep that promise no matter what.

Bump her Need up by one. She Needs you. Not in a way that involves smooches, probably, but in a way that says that friends have each other's backs when one friend has to fulfill her duty and try and rescue a goddess.

---

Handmaidens!

The absolute cheek. The gall. To ask me such things, well! I never.

I will point out here that you and Tsane would be familiar with tensions between Aestival and the Khaganate, ones which recently were fanned into open invasion. If not for Civelia's intervention, there is every chance that the Khaganate's war goals might have involved establishing a beachhead at Onyx and claiming a multitude of the pure and innocent locals. But I promise you, darling, that it is a case of two wonderful goals happening to dovetail. They really, really actually do want to save Sister Juniper from her likely doom. And they need it to go without a hitch. They need the Khaganate to face a battle with a true heroine.

Heron's been known to have a lot of success with infiltration missions, after all. Especially when she's got her lovely handmaidens to provide a distraction.

As for their feelings towards me? Ohohoho. Filial affection, of course. The drive to impress. And really, you old stick in the mud, why the hesitation to aid me? Just because I am, regrettably, fallen down here where everything is interesting and there are so many stories to play with? I'm hardly like that awful Rot Star or that hot-headed Demon Queen. And I am, in a cultural sense, your auntie. Just because you've run off to be a steward for Old Firstie's champion doesn't mean I'm not still watching over you.

Hm. Perhaps I answered my own question. Aren't you too old to be bratting~?

My way will be much more interesting than whatever Civelia has planned. There will be more heaving bosoms and romantic gasps and distress for damsels to enmire themselves in. There will be revolution and all of the truly, awfully wicked will get what I have coming to them. And maybe I'll toss in a love interest for you if you behave.

---

Hazel!

The look on Aria Thendragon's face is one of cold, searing fury, Haziekins.

To be fair, you just used the light of Civelia, preserver and cornerstone of this world, in order to rebuke a creature animated by rot and hatred and decay. And the mask of chivalry slips, just for you to see, as the chains of that magic settle uneasily on her heart. She wants to pin you to a pillar and break you until you rescind your command, until you beg for the sweetness of Walking Elm to be a balm to your pummeled body, and then she'd go just that little bit further and for a moment she'd feel something like delight in her wet, rotten woodheart. She'd grind your hand into the floor for the crime of touching that token and then she'd leave Walking Elm to show your fingers how to bend again.

Fortunately, you have Civelia's magic to protect you. And surely nothing could change that.

"I am a queen," she sneers. "Take your time with mangy, half-real puppies and Nagi tying themselves in knots. True nobility will wait for now, but anyone who thinks to deny me what is rightfully mine should remember me! Me! Aria! I defeated the Dark Dragon here tonight, and anyone who stands between me and my Hazel will come to regret it."

Olesya is clinging to you, Hazel. She slowly and deliberately turns her back on Aria, so that she is between the undead queen and you. And she presses her face against the top of your head and breathes deeply. (You have seen her do this with Juniper. It's more than a dominance display: it's centering, calming.)

Then she tosses her head back and howls to echo in the rafters, and the Serigalamu respond in kind. "SWORD! DANCE!"

Oh. A fast-paced dance which involves heartblades. You have a heartblade to use in a ceremonial fashion, don't you? You're confident in being able to use it, aren't you? I'm sure you are good luck have fun.

Breathless Dead

Ember's laughter bursts out of her, despite the careful training of the Silver Divers. Perhaps it makes a sheep shudder a little bit, hearing that wild and delighted bark right behind him. It is a laugh with Ceronian fangs. It is a laugh for skydiving with weapons strapped to every limb. And it is giddy.

"Under a perfect, starless-- damn! Damn! Sagetip would have me on half rations for not seeing it. For not seeing you." She takes a step forward, rests a hand on Dolce. Don't be fooled by the gentleness: there's something of the sheepdog in it. A promise. Approach my charges and I will bite you until one of us is dead. Her eyes are bright with seeing, with knowing, with the giddiness of not quite enough rehydration. The point where a headache is a whip driving a hound on.

(Dany is clinging to her Bella. Out of everyone in this room, she trusts a Bella who knows how to handle wonderberries and cries over croissants the most. She's trembling, caught in the terror of knowing that no end to this tense conversation will be good for anyone, unable to figure out some diplomatic and politically astute way to get everyone to stop being like this, because she's only got her wishing heart. Nothing more. Nothing less.)

(In the far distance and between things, a roar, muzzled. Even here, at the inflection point, when the maze has reached its end, a possible Redana must not be allowed to rejoin the whole. The Nemean is the only one who could stand up to XIII, and in joining the fight would doom them all.)

"The most basic, rudimentary mistake would be assuming that none of these Bellas are real-- because I'm real. Real enough, right? I was us for a while. But that meant I wasn't watching for the fake when she was right in front of me." She runs a hand through her golden hair. A clever woman would be watching her other hand. "To be fair, one of my wife's faces was convinced to pummel me for a while. Distracting. And the thing about that is--"

And she swings the knife at the throat of Aphrodite's promise in a classic Fisherman's Dance. Taurus would have wept to see the smoothness of the blow.

Of course this won't be enough. But in the fight that's coming, she's got to buy time for everyone else to find the right path. Or for parts of Bella that aren't tainted or devoured by the searing selfishness of True Love to bail her out, as usual. (And if it does nothing at all, she'll still throw a follow-up punch, because all the words coming out of this awful Bella stripped of everything that made her worth loving don't deserve to go unanswered.)

Nevergibsuppy, Mosaic.

Breathless Dead

Dany comes close to taking Bella right out at the knees. Fortunately, there is a stabilizing and wide-based Synnefo right there who helps everyone involved avoid a croissant tragedy. She holds her Bella - bigger, older, but still a child - as Bella cries. And isn't this familiar territory for everybody?

And perhaps she can be forgiven if there is a sniffle or three on her part. It's been a very big day. She's had to see things that were worse than anything she'd ever experienced growing up, and who can say whether Bella experienced anything quite so awful herself? With her face hidden in the folds of Bella's skirt, it's quite impossible to say. A mystery that will never be solved.

Ember does not. Ember watches, and aches, and sits alone. Her eyes turn to the door, to the source of that howling, mocking laughter. Getting down off the counter isn't so hard at all, not compared to everything she's already been through. It would be nice to hold her Bella, but the best outcome for the mission - as far as she can articulate to herself, which has never been Redana's strongest suit at all - is for Redana to hold Bella by the end, assuming that there's still enough of Bella who wants this.

Who wants to hold her and praise her under the moonlight.

Who wants to build a home together.

"I'll get the recipe from you later," she says to Dolce. Okay, fine. Croaks at Dolce. Happy, pedants? It needed to be said, just in case. Just in case Redana remembers later to do it, and manages to learn. Manages to earn Bella's love over again. Manages to make a golden-brown, flaky croissant for the woman she loves, no matter what comes between them.

No matter what's on the other side of that door.

Return to Thellamie

Yuki Edogawa!

You can see it blossoming across her round face. It's surprisingly gentle, that face, for all that she strives to be a mighty warrior. But there is determination in every inch of her right now, from her alert triangles to her feet suddenly braced to run. There is an innocent to protect. There is a duty to carry out. There is a goddess to save.

If she goes alone, Yuki, as she yearns to, perhaps she will not be enough. Eclair beat her in a fight back in Crevas, after all. But she will go. All you can do in this moment is decide whether you will go with her, whether you will be something of a hero after all, or whether you will wish her luck and put your chips down here with Eclair and dear Hazel.

What will you be tonight, Yuki?

---

Handmaidens!

"A rival for the Faun?"
"HAEH! A rival for more than that!"
"We could have him if we wanted--"
"And if we want him we'll have him, yah?"
"We'd do things to him--"
"--which would ruin Nagi for him forever!"
"Putty in our hands!"
"Melting like butter!"

They share a glance together. Seli rolls her eyes; Keli glances away with practiced ease. And if you want anything more than that, you'll have to break out the dice, young man.

"But that's not our aim."
"Not our move."
"Not our play."
"Not in this game."
"Not a game at all, yah?"
"Yah, not a bit."

Rurik is lowered to the floor with the exaggerated care that a revered elder deserves. They flourish as they bow, consummate performers always. But not everything about them is a performance. Do you understand? You've been performing for so long, young man, that perhaps it's easy to miss a strategic bit of sincerity.

"We're out of time for tonight's show!"
"Catch us at our next showing!"
"If Heron won't come and play..."
"...we'll have to show her up ourselves!"

They sound jovial. They sound careless, even. They are good actresses, after all.

---

Hazel!

Smoke floods the stage.

It is not toxic smoke, not all of it. Not most of it, even. It smells heady, rich, inviting. Lie down, it promises. Lie down and your dreams will be sweet and full of kisses. It is the sacrificial death of flowers. It pours from the skin of Walking Elm, and perhaps that is why its aftereffects will not be pleasant - but for now it caresses the dancing Serigalamu, worms its way under their leathers, caresses their ears and their chests, and sings: down, down, lie down. The wild drumming dance falters.

And Aria Thendragon strides through them all, and where she walks the smoke billows and forces apart the Serigalamu, forces them to their knees, swallows their heads, sings little poppy-songs and fills their heads with what Walking Elm thinks laughter is supposed to be. Aria does not stand on huntresses. She does not need to. She is unmistakable even with her head at the level of your shins.

"So this is what you have to represent the champions of this age: wiggling serpents and prancing puppies." Her voice drips pitying venom. Under her eye, even Olesya seems smaller, ganglier, all elbows and knees and sweaty palms. And under your eye, you, Hazel, you are a small and silly thing, made to be pinned against walls and lead on leashes. She's not even that big! But she was a queen in her day, and a dragon in masquerade, and her dress is undulating smoke, and her voice is blackest velvet midnight.

"Come here, Fletcher. Let me show you how we danced in a fairer age."

The smoke builds. It will build until you accept, or until you do something daring.

---

Eclair Espoir!

Rain flickers against the windows. There are no lights in this room, only the suffused grey nowhere light that seeps through the Mansion's windows. There are few lights anywhere in the Mansion, but there are many windows. The furniture here is classical Kel, all angles and muted colors with the occasional bright scarlet-and-gold throw, washed out in the light of the rain.

Timtam has her fingers interlaced under her chin as she looks at the board. Not the chess of Yukisearth: Vesper's Game, rather. There is only one win condition in chess. There are many in Vesper's Game, and part of the path to victory involves obfuscating one's win condition.

Timtam is very, very good at Vesper's Game.

"Tough luck," she says. A carrot-orange curl is resting between her eyes. Her smile is her mask in the games of dominance that the maids play here. "I've got you right where I want you." The board has different pieces than usual. Your hand rests next to a Detective. But your piece has been boxed in by Paladins. Her foot is so close that if you stretched innocently, you could have her by the ankle. Her finger brushes down the length of her Sleeping Goddess.

"Are you ready to concede?" Her smile doesn't waver. It could even be an innocent question. Innocence is a weapon in the Mansion.

In one corner of the room, you are watched by a griffon with mirrors for eyes, loafing with its head resting on a windowsill. But, in the ways of dream, this does not seem particularly noteworthy. Not when Timtam is this close. You could have her wrists, but for the fact that the gameboard lies between you.