Tatterdemalion

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Eclair Espoir!

As the sky falls, as your wrist is grabbed and you are pulled into what is called "bullet hell" on Yukisearth, as Mayzie throws herself into hell in order to find a path through with you as you malfunction from love of a girl--

What secret or mystery about her irresistibly draws you in? There must be something which sets your thoughts a-sparking as you graze the collapsing collection of lost bric-a-brac and treasures and health potions (never used)...

---

Handmaidens!

Injimo, naturally, throws herself towards destruction. But she is not alone. She has never been alone, all this time - not when waiting for Heron to need her tutelage, not when training obsessively, and not now, in the heart of Cair.

She does not get through this on her own strength. Tell us whose strength protects her as she makes her way through the storm, or whose affection for her. Show this yearning knight that there is someone who values her.

---

Yuki!

It's the way out that's always tricky. The shadows writhe and burn and attempt to coil around you - only, the music drives it back, tamps it down, leaves you a winding path to the exit.

Halfway out, Juniper gasps and clings to you. Tears run down her face as she says: "I knew the hero would come to save me." And she lifts her head and prays to me as you claw your way out of the abyss of the Demon Queen.

And then you are out, all of you, and Juniper is coughing and curling up around you - until she lifts her head, and her eyes are little embers. "I don't know what she's doing," she says, even as Seli is pulling her hair back and weaving a hair tie into place, "but we have to stop her. We have to save Olesya."

---

Hazel!

So, as it turns out? The khan's good at poker faces. Because the first you know of the hunters - her hunters - which have doubled back is when you're grabbed from behind. Big, strong, powerful arms. Suddenly, you're out of options for fighting.

Hot breath on the back of your neck. The laughter of huntresses - half a dozen of them - closing in around you. Olesya was respectful of you, for all that she could bench press you, but you are now surrounded by very disrespectful women.

There is delight in the khan's eye as she lifts your chin with her hand, grip on your jaw firm. "Well, well, well," she breathes (in your face (her breath is shaky)). "Looks like the Golden Fawn's been caught. Think we could have some fun with the catch before we string him up and bring him to the Khatun, girls?"

Grips tighten. It's very apparent, suddenly, how hard everyone involved here has been exerting themselves. And how delighted they are that you have been caught. And how delighted they will be to make sure that you stay caught.

Are you going to be a brat? Or will you be a good boy? Either way: take a String on the Khan Mikela the Fierce, and give her a String and a kiss in turn. She's important now. You made that happen with the last of my light!

Breathless Dead

She's been running this whole time, and now Mommy-- no, her mother-- no, Hermes-- has showed her that it was all a futile effort. That she could always take one step and be right by her daughter, her disappointment's side.

She shouldn't

She shouldn't still lean forward for the praise.

She's crying because it's hot in here. That's all.

Smoke stinging her eyes. Yeah. That's it.

It's not that her mother always wanted her to be more, to be better, to be smarter, to study harder, and to hear praise fall like rain from her lips threatens to turn her into a little girl beaming from behind a report on naval tactics in the Atlas Cultural Sphere.

For a moment, her heart is a burning rose being lifted to the lips of Love. For a moment, she almost takes the first step forward, even after it all, even knowing that they're here to stop the worst mistake Nero's ever made, a shortcut which threatens the souls of all of humanity. Despite it all, she still feels the impulse to bow her head and accept acceptance. The praise. The love.

The crack of Bella's palms against each other jerks her awake like a sleepwalker.

As her wife speaks, the color slowly rises in Redana's cheeks and her mismatched eyes widen. It's not every day that the heroine takes center stage, after all. It's especially rare to get teased by the heroine right before you have to speak to your mother again, and refuse the incoming regime of little treats (and very big fires).

When she's given the floor (right after Yue is tossed out like a card in some sort of battling game), she's shaking, but her hands are steady as she draws her sword, Chalcedony, the one Taurus gave her (which is, somehow and also, the sword she had before crossing the Lethe). The stance she takes is not one of the manifold openings she learned as a child, but one she picked up from the Silver Divers.

"...you dumbass!" Her voice cracks. "I'm not going to let you burn yourself up to make a future where we all make the same fucking mistakes all over again! Do you hear me, Mom?!" The tears run down her cheeks. "I don't want your crown, and I... I do want freedom, but I want you not to burn yourself up for this stupid plan!! And now my friend Yue is going to kick your butt, and if she doesn't, I'll take you and Bella and the whole fucking Codexia on if it means we all get a happy ending!!"

And there's your mistake, Nero. You haven't seen what she went through in the heart of the saddest little meowmeow to ever sail the stars. You don't know what she'll do in order to make sure everyone wins.

Redana throws back her head and howls. And what's her mother think now that she's been blessed with Ceron's gifts, huh?

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Eclair, o, Darling Eclair!

Here's a gift for you: tonight, Mayzie's heartblade is a pin. It is properly sized for her hand, and it has ribbons streaming from its globe of a handguard, and it is every color that your hair has even been, coruscating up and down its wicked, jabbing point. And she is leveling it at the hoard coming against you, uselessly, adoringly, in the hopes that she might somehow buy you another moment.

She reaches for your hand, but stops herself at the last moment, as she realizes: she cannot weigh you down. Whatever you do next, you do with her, but she will not cling. She cannot demand you stay by her side.

She can only hope that she will deserve to stand there with you at the end.

---

Injimo!

The tsundere has just pulled out a heartpin which she doesn't know how to effectively use. Now, I know, and you know, that there isn't a weapon that's been invented on this little world of ours which you don't know how to use, and more importantly, which you don't know how to teach someone how to use.

Three's better than one when it comes to solving a problem of this size, you know. Even if you feel like you've caused it. Even if you're alone. Even if you can't admit you deserve better.

And doesn't her courage remind you of someone?

---

Yuki!

Juniper has fantasies. You know. She keeps brushing up against them in conversation and then using too many exclamation marks when she swears up and down that she's just trying to tell you how wonderful the huntresses of the plains are. She wants to be claimed by her big muscle wolf mommy, and she'd be dizzy with delight to be tied up and thrown into peril just like, um. You know. Somebody. Who is very cleverly evading the hunt and you don't get to ask me how. I need to keep some secrets, you know!

But it's wrong for her to be here, weighed down with chains which writhe like serpents, in a room which is dark and hot and dry and heavy. A room full of shadows which drink light. A room full of whispers which wind about her throat.

She doesn't even look up as you enter the room. The weight of the chains on her shoulders is too great, and the hiss of hate is too loud. Her hair hangs limp and, looking at how she sits, she reminds you of nothing more than a discarded doll.

This is the heart of the Khatun. Not in a literal stab-and-she-dies sense, but this is what came out of it to confine an unwanted complication.

"...oh, it's worse in here now," the guard breathes from somewhere impossibly vast behind you.

And then there's the shake of a tambourine. There's the clap of two hands. There's an irreverent little laugh. And there's a swirl of colors, too rich for the darkness to devour.

There is a way through. Trust in my daughters to be your liferaft when you dive in.

---

Hazel!

So here's what you can do, bright little boy clinging to the ebb of his stolen light: you can lose, and keep her attention, and feel like you did such a good job, and eventually you will be saved by Yuki on her way out, and you'll be twitterpated and everyone will coo at you and say that you did the best that you could.

Or. You. Can. Win.

In this moment, you suddenly see it: the thrust, the flinging into her arms, the way you'll knock her down. You'll have won your first heartblade duel ever, and then suddenly you'll be in charge of what happens next. She could still call for help. She could struggle back to her feet despite the overwhelming shock of being stabbed with your heart. Suddenly it'll be your turn to distress someone.

Can you do it? Or do you flinch and stay the safe and easy boy?

Breathless Dead

The Princess Redana Claudius And A Whole Bunch Of Other Things runs through her prison-home-memories, leaving behind a bunch of foxgirls ("see if you can find some other Alexas, they're big strong women with four arms!").

The funny thing, part of her keeps remembering, is that she's done this before. It was in her own heart, admittedly, and she was running from herself at the time, or, no, the person she could have been, if she'd given up on Bella and on the quest and been some sort of awesome and terrible void pirate. But that got most of the trauma of seeing her home destroyed out of the way already and she's certainly not half-expecting the Nemean to break through a wall and reach for Bella with one massive hand. Not in the least. She's staying close to Bella because that's tactically sound, especially in a place which is so chaotic and cloyingly sweet-smelling. Through the fire and the flames they carry on.

The other funny thing is that she is both indignant that Mom would tell the people of Tellus that they had just been on the journey from Tellus to Gaia together, when really they were just taking a shortcut on the route of the Plousios which had been the hardest and biggest thing she had ever done in her life, to the point that come to think of it it has been her life, and she is also ashamed of being that indignant. Every time she's ready to start complaining to Bella through her trendy sailor's gasmask that it's stolen valor, is what it is, which is the way that those funny foxgirls would say it, she remembers her mother's opening salvo in the coming fight:

Showing her the people of Tellus.

So many of them. Lonely, boxed-in, afraid. The people who don't look up because there's no sky. Ghosts repeating their obsessions, just in smaller worlds than they once did. It's wrong to punch them down just because they didn't have the opportunity that she did. (There's something that the Nemean would have done, happily.) And if this succeeds, if Mommy brings the world of man back to the stagnant Azure Skies, then...

Then they'll have avoided the whole thing.

The journey. The places. The people.

She's never going to lock herself back up in her rooms but what are the odds that everyone on Tellus just looks at the sky and then closes the curtains?

Too high.

A wardrobe crashes down through a weakened floor, spilling the contents out. Bella leaps over it easily, but Dany hesitates, watches the fires start to lick at the dresses which she wore once before getting bored of them.

She pulls out a very familiar scarf, wraps it around her neck, and keeps going, regardless of the fire risk. Some things are important. The memories from the far side of Lethe are among them, and so is going to meet one's destiny.

When she races down a hallway, past a blazing garden full of the smoke which is death, for just a moment it's like her feet have wings.

Return to Thellamie

The Nexus!

It all went wrong when the Rot Star chased you out of here, didn't it? All of you, all of you lovely, frantic handmaidens. But now that its champion has been brought low by everyone's favorite beautiful heroine, Yuki Edogawa, it's safe to come back inside and survey the damage.

Oh, Eclair, Eclair, Eclair. You thought that the paladin's place was bad? Welcome to the Nexus, where Heron tossed everything useful that she came across. The contents of every interesting crate, every breakable-looking vase, every chest of doubtless-symbolic treasure found in the depths of the Outside, it's all here. I'm sure that as soon as you make any sort of comment about organization, Cair will end up right at your elbow to make a case for it.

But that's not even the worst part. The worst part is that it's absolutely choked with vines. Also, the wandering, aimless undead, like someone decided that the Hero of Ages needed an "endless dungeon" mode with limited enemy variety.

Well. Other than that adorable undead mouse full of moss. That's variety, isn't it?

Mayzie clings to your sleeve, Eclair, doubtless because she's just as overcome by the state that the most legendary hero ever has left her secret base in. You must, of course, reassure her - and, oh you Handmaidens, now is the time to be excellent hosts, if ever you had the power to be so!

---

Yuki!

"I still think you should have come here for university, yah?"

Seli shoves a guard off-balance with a perfectly executed blade lock and shove, then cuts a rope holding up a tapestry so that it falls on them. She flourishes her heartblade with a wink.

"The university at Lapis Lazuli is so very renowned, yes," Keli adds, keeping three other huntresses at bay with a swirling pirouette. "We're majoring in dance and finance!"
"We're getting such good grades in it, you know--"
"--we can definitely be trusted with any questions you might have--"
"--or information you need explained--"
"--or kept in a safe location, yah!"

The big guard (there's always a big guard, isn't there?) flings a silver tea-tray at your head. Better do something clever about that before it smacks your noggin and gives these two wicked girls an opportunity to give you a lesson in personal finance!

---

Hazel!

Isn't it just so unfair when a boss has both a very big weapon (for reach) and quick recoveries after moves?

The way that this woman fights (with a grin, her nose crinkling right next to her eyepatch as she leans in with every swing, showing off sharp teeth and an intense fixation on you specifically) is just like bosses from that one game you all play, the Elven Ring? When she swings her heart down onto the ground in a two-handed pound, it's all you can do to roll out of the way, and she's got a very strong swing-swing-pound dodge canceling into thrust-thrust-backspin.

This is certainly too much for a silly boy to handle, isn't it? You should just give up now. Let her squish your cheeks with one hand as she mocks you for how easy you were to defeat...

Breathless Dead

Grass. (Concrete.) Sky. (Apartment complexes drowning out the clouds.) Bella's laughter. (Nero's laughter.) Foxgirls chirping adorably. (Servitors wailing in terror.)

Redana digs her fingers into the grass. (The concrete yields.) She breathes in and out. (Fire fills her blood.)

All this time, she was running from home, and it was, what? All part of her mother's plan? Or was it just an opportunity that Hermes chose to run with, a quick carnival trick, exploiting the value that a runaway princess could have?

Her friends are real. Her friends have to be real. She's not about to be betrayed by, by Dolce pulling out a sword from a cane and telling her that he's actually a real baa-stard, right? No one else would have come so far with her if she wasn't surrounded by true friends, all sharing this doom with her, carrying hell to heaven.

Because that's what it is. That's what it's going to be. All these people who haven't dared to try and escape, suddenly handed the universe that the Azura made all blue and ordered and regimented. None of them ever dived down into a turtle's throat, or danced with Dionysus on a world of broken automatons, or crossed the Styx. None of them have had dinner with Yue and sat on the porch afterwards and watched Princesses fly along standing on swords. They won't know what to do.

All of them, mother? All at once?

Nobody's ready, are they?

"We're not going to let her do this," Dany says, quietly, under the sound of her wife's helpless, joyful laughter. She reaches out and grabs at Bella and--

Oh, um. Bella. You have flopped onto her. Because you were laughing. Very hard.

Oh. Um. Bella.

Your hair smells of.

How do you make it smell so.

So much like home, and nothing like Tellus?

She reaches up and buries her face into Bella's mane and shudders and for a moment it's as if they were never separated, as if they'd run away together and crashed onto a jungle world with Alexa there to say that she told them so, even as she lifted logs into the shape of a shelter and tended to the emergency flares.

As if she wasn't carrying this world's doom with her this whole time, from one end of the universe to the other.

"Okay," she breathes into Bella. "Together. Let's tell my mom that she's grounded."

Because what else is a heroine for, if not fixing her own tragic mistakes?

Return to Thellamie

Teahouse Ceremony!

Mayzie's doing her very best to take notes, Eclair, but... well, can you blame her for being a little distracted? And not just by your dizzying display of deductive dprowess, or by the cup of tea lightly steaming at her elbow. For this world of ours is undergirded by certain pillars, and one of these is:

The goddess sustains the world, and when she is in danger, the Hero comes to save her.

She's always been nervous, hasn't she? More concerned with danger than what might be won by daring it. And now she finds herself, like any denizen of Thellamie would, tumbling into a pit without a trusted trampoline at the bottom. We are on our own.

"...but that can't be right," she says, and what she means is: tell me that we're going to be okay. Her voice is strained, and her grip on her notebook is tight.

But Aadya, the Rock upon a Mountain, narrows her eyes. She's a hunter after truth, too. "...then it's up to us to save her. All of us."

---

Quest!

I suppose it's impossible for me to not be a hot mom when I am called upon to beguile, trick and seduce. (The other one, on the other hand? She'd throw a tantrum that every huntress in that place wasn't bowing to her already! Dazzling, psh.) And I do appreciate the slack in the ankle ropes. That'll just about give them all a fair fight.

Because, after all... I am a star.

A fallen one, certainly. But one nonetheless.

You can feel it, can't you, Hazel? How your light seeps out into the grass, how it makes the grass seem to whisper chase me chase me chase me, how an entire castle of huntresses surges out after me without giving you so much as a second glance? When there's a prize like this on the table, who cares about the scraps?

...well, hm.

Okay, so.

That one with the eyepatch? The Kel paladin jacket heavily customized and patched up? The capacity to pull a very big heartsword out of her heart? The one still standing at the gate, smoking? Um. Well. She's... she must be one of the Khatun's khans. The kind who doesn't run, but sets her hounds after the prey.

You're going to have to stop her because, even with my light all about us, if she gets her hands on me... well, we'll have to cut to a different scene entirely!! This one will end up Patreon-only!

(That's the right reference, isn't it, Yuki?)

Breathless Dead

Three-card monte - also known as find the goddess, find the lady, find the queen, find the maiden, find the mother, three-card trick, three-coconut surprise, triune trick, Hecate's Delight, Cerberos's Delight, Kindly Ones' Delight, Hermes' Delight, and the Turtle Game - is a confidence game in which the victims, or "heroes," are tricked into betting a sum of money on the assumption that they can find the object of their quest among three face-down cards (trump, tarot, oracular, business, or otherwise).

Carmen Oya has transformed her cube into a bar. There is no bar on Tellus which has the space to sprawl out beyond the confines of a cube, and so the distinction between bars is simply in terms of quality and vibe. To open a bar is an admission that one's tightly-circumscribed living quarters cannot sustain oneself without a tightly-knit group of regulars choosing to leave their cubes and come to yours. She sleeps in a hammock that unfurls from the ceiling and she sleeps amidst her drinks, which all refill themselves overnight. She likes making cocktails and dislikes the sight of herself in a mirror in the dark.

She's screaming

It was Hermes Trismegistus who first demonstrated to humanity what could be done with three cups and three balls, though the historical record is silent on whether she performed this revelation with the fan, the wand, or the cigarette. It did not take much encouragement for nascent mortalkind to consider how they could use this holy miracle in order to profit at the expense of others.

Cassia is coiled at the door to a secret vault. She is made of stone and she has four mighty arms and a scaled trunk. She has never met her sisters, but soon there shall be no need for the vault to be hidden by a mighty warrior, for it will be sealed away by a host of ten million demons, and she may be released from her long and silent vigil to blink beneath the stars. She has spent centuries memorizing the location of each slab of marble around her and has given each one a code name.

Yue is asking if she's got a lash? a lash? a lash? in?

To transform the game of balls and cups into a hunter's snare, there must be an element of misdirection. One of the most enduring is to portray it as a test of skill, pricking the hero's vanity with a poisoned needle. They are special, they are different, they are unique: surely they can overcome this challenge by nothing more than proving their innate excellence, skill, arete. Some performers ensure that they are seen losing beforehand, or for small wagers.

Xenophonia's cube is a maze of aquariums. She watches the fish listlessly circle around and around the plants, the miniature sunken temples, the hollow rocks. She makes a loop of the entire cube three times a day, speaking to her pets about their lives, their secret hopes, their piscine dreams, but never asks them if they dream of the sea. She does not dream of the sea. The very thought is incomprehensible to her - how would all that water be cycled? She likes snails and dislikes betta fish.

stop it stop it stop it stop it

Attention-Grabbing Gambit: many performers of three-card monte utilize a various number of methods to distract their heroes from the con being played out in front of them, many of which are Crowning Moments of Awesome in their own right. Hermes' Return of Tellus may soon be one of the most famous ones ever - check out that page for details!

She shrieks. Above her, Yue blurts out: "I'm so sorry, did that make it worse?" She's holding a vial with a dripper and inside there's sunlight. Redana blinks, and the sunlight soaks into her Auspex. Her heart is thundering in her chest, but she can see again, she can think again, without her mother...

"Mom."

"I'm really not?!?"

Redana wraps the stammering sun farmer into a tight hug, nearly forcing her up onto tiptoe, and then stumbles past Hades, crumpled on the floor like a wadded-up piece of homework, and she lunges through the door after Bella, towards the home she gave everything in order to escape, towards all of humanity cutting in line.

Towards her mother.

Breathless Dead

Light plays around Dany's fingers. It's soft, the sort of light beloved in watercolors and pastels. Wisps of it play at the edges of her body, trailing belatedly after her movements. It's a new pet from her father, a resignation gift[1]. She cups it close to her chest as she sits squished up right against Dolce[2].

And she tells stories. She's got dozens of them, after all, from one end of the galaxy and back. But someone paying attention might notice that the stories that Redana's choosing to tell are all the stories of how she met other people, and what their stories were. The Alcedi and the Starsong. The Assassins and the Ceronians. Alexa. Dolce. Vasilia. Dyssia. Bella.

In Dany's stories, veering here and there, back and forth, as the ute rattles along, she's just the observer. She's just someone who happened to meet them, and her value here is being able to tell you about them. That once, their paths intersected, and you need to know about that path, and suddenly she'll take you on a tangent right up to what she's heard about Bella being stuck on an orbital kill station with nothing to do but bake and make dresses. And the way she tells it, it's full of admiration for Bella's ability to do things, to make things with her hands, to motivate herself to escape[3].

And every bubbly laugh, as she goes on and on and on until someone stops her, is punctuated with little flares from the aurora in her hand, all the colors of fresh fruit and bruised sunsets.

---

[1]: Though shouldn't it be the other way around? But nobody told her this was going to happen, so she didn't have nearly enough time to fret about what sort of thing it would be acceptable to get the King of Olympus herself on the day when she walks among mortals and sets down the scepter and the laurel crown, and honestly, she still hasn't come to any sort of conclusion. Unless making it here at all is the gift? But she never would have made it if not for the gods, and for her friends, and for her wife, and for her dream, and... there are all sorts of things that aren't her, the girl whose identity is as blurred and colorful as the light around her fingers.

[2]: 's butt.

[3]: she does not talk about what was going on upon the Plousios at the same time. That's not a story particularly worth telling.

Return to Thellamie

The Ceveline!

Aadya sits like a rock settling in place atop a mountain. There is an inevitability to her, a weight that will not be denied, as she takes a seat at her own table. She can be forgiven, I really hope, for sitting down somewhat heavily, for putting her weight on one side of her body, and for taking a deep and careful breath.

"I'm the local response," she says. "I'll tell 'em that I tossed her out a window. Now. Heron is what?"

Unthinkable! Scandalous! Blasphemous! The Paladins are not a religious order devoted to Heron specifically - they're an offshoot of the stargazers of Kel - but they are in tight with Civelia, and thus also with Heron, and so this stubborn paladin looks to Injimo for answers.

(Incidentally, I think it's quite possible that Tsane might have figured out that with the recent drubbing of the Rot Star, the Stacks might be retaken with a bit of elbow grease and someone who can fight. As a thought.)

---

The Outside!

The Ossuary is made of bones.

The bones of goblin-boars, vast and yellowing and curved: ribs and tusks, hooves and spines. From its spiraling towers, Serigalamu huntresses can see the inconstancy of grass and sky for many long spans. There is no stone-road that can get anyone here quickly; it must be quested for. And it is here a damsel languishes, knowing that as soon as her usefulness to the Khatun is over, she will be buried among the bones.

You must have some sort of clever plan to get past the guards, mustn't you? Something clever to trick them, since they'll certainly see you coming? Hey, why are you looking at me like that??