Thanqol

Sunshards

Daily Affirmation of the Way <3:

A student once walked by a river and found enlightenment. He stood there for a long time, enraptured in cosmic bliss, until his master came by and gave him an apple. Immediately his stomach rumbled and he fell back into samsara.

"Why did you give me this apple?" said the student angrily. "I was perfectly in tune with the universe, and you ruined it!"

"It seems like you were in tune with a poor universe," said the master.

Chen!

Today you have learned a valuable lesson from a wise mistress regarding the relativity of concepts. A master might demonstrate incredible skill in swordplay and nonetheless criticism herself for a slip that only she can perceive. Likewise, a fox might look at a temple abandoned to the forest for a hundred years and flushed with an open trash pipe to the Underground and say that it was a tiny bit of dirt. Perhaps kitsune society is a strange and relative culture worthy of devoted study.

Perhaps you might have learned a second, deeper lesson about the ability of foxes to misrepresent a universally recognized objective truth - but were you to voice such a thought it would be blasted by the tearful eyes of a heartbroken fox who was betrayed by someone she considered a friend. How could you, Chen? What evil lurks in the hearts of princesses to allow them to get away with such wickedness??

Either way you're up to your ankles in muck armed with naught but a mop and a dress that seems innocent enough at first but tends to reveal rather too much of your thighs when you bend over to pick something up.

Cyanis is supervising your work from a nearby sunbeam, a task that's so exhausting and selfless that the Wheel of Karma itself insisted that she balance the scales by eating some delicious green tea ice cream, lest the injustice shatter the cycle of reincarnation. You were called over to spoon it into her mouth on a few occasions when lifting it was too much for her poor, delicate arms. She has, thus far, declined to share any with you, but she has given you some encouraging pats on the behind with her fluffy tails. So selfless!

But that was a while ago and Cyanis is now napping and you are trudging through sludge when suddenly a great flow of water gushes down the corridor, sweeping you from your feet. When it is past the worst of the muck is gone and Cyanis has moved all the way to the edge of her sunbeam to see if you are all right - and then immediately suggest that if it is the case you have somehow managed to flood her one and only home then, while she is understanding and forgiving for what was no doubt a genuine accident, it would still be honourable to stay her slave until the debt was paid -

But then, from the shadows of the tunnel, emerges a warrior princess of legend, flanked by a magnificent silver wolf.

Yue!

Right now, in this moment, you're not just Yue. The way Cyanis and her, ah, new maid(?) are looking at you? This is the way that the people in the vision looked at the Demon Swordswoman. Awe.

You're not sure if it's the dress or the kiss that is making you so radiant right now.

"Yue?" said Cyanis, tails waving uncertainly as she looked down at you, lying flat at the top of the stairs so just her face and elbows were visible. "Are you, um. Possessed by the ghost of an unstoppable demon swordswoman, perhaps? Because if you are, don't worry, I have my personal maid, Princess Chen, working to clean this tomb and bring honour to your memory, so you don't have any quarrels with me!"

Hyra gave what was, to your more sensitive ears, a playful growl, but it was one that made Cyanis' ears lie flat across her head and made her duck her head so just her eyes were visible.

(Did she say Princess...?)

Rose!

There are chains and there are chains - and these are distinctly the non-italicised version.

Ah, Yin! What happened to these knights? Where is Hyra? She might have been, if not your equal, at least your best student - and one who would have been frightening indeed to see leading this pack of knights. Instead it is Carlyle here and, oh, there must have been some staff turnover if he wound up as the right hand of the Princess. You ask and see a flash of openly grumpy anger on Yin's face and that's answer enough.

You can't run a kingdom on heartbreak alone. It makes you too sensitive to betrayal. Yin has been doing poorly without you, it seems.

Does that soften your heart at all, Thorn Pilgrim? Does standing in the fullness of your power even while wearing Yin's brittle collar give rise to pity or compassion? Does seeing how lost she is, nursing hurt until it ferments to anger, spark some form of mercy in your heart?

Or does it spark mischief, trickery, thievery, and general brattiness?

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

This lesson the Holy Land taught Robena above all others: When the earth quakes, the skies burn, and the end of the world is at hand, that is the time for knights to go to war.

Apricot alone of the stable's horses has not panicked and shrieked or fallen. He stands sure-footed and ready with the same grim resolve he learned on the fields outside Antioch. Her helmet falls into place, deafening her ears and constricting her sight - things that were far more advantageous than mere protection on a battlefield like this. She draws her lance and levels it straight as they emerge from the stables in their full panoply.

Upon burning sands and shaking earth there is no time for the confusion of hearts. Lady Sandsfern is beside her, that is enough when they may both be dead in minutes. It would be a cruel irony indeed for them to have survived the Holy Land to perish here in green and gentle England but perhaps that was the true lesson of the pilgrimage: that the devil's work extends beyond any single kingdom and any single conflict.

Her hand touched the chalice amulet of Exsanguinated Xristos and she spoke the words of Roman prayer. She touched her heels to the sides of her Roman stallion. She lowered her lance and faced the foe and prepared to unleash Roman war upon these forgetful and doomed daughters of England.

Breathless Dead

Response Level 3: Patterns of Enforcement
The Order of Hermes sees the value of things - and unfortunately, you are now bargaining chips.

The Order of Hermes: The Order of Hermes is present here in force.
The Huntress Awakens: You are being observed, no matter where you are or what you do.
Patterns of Enforcement: Investigative channels have opened from the Magos to the Order's forces; they will attempt to arrest any player character they encounter

Redana!

Even in times of total war, Nero tried for something better.

After this planet was broken, but before it was rebuilt, it was a staging ground for the final conflict in a galactic war. To oversee this battle Nero built a castle. Though it is squat and lumpen to stand against the winds of a burning planet, though its surface was made of scorch-black steel and stone hurled from orbit in prefabricated arrays into the heart of a combat zone, though any other ruler would have been content with a battle-bunker, Director Nero still had an eye for the aesthetic. Incongruously domed roofs, sweeping walkways and slender towers disarm the brutality of what is still nevertheless a building shaped by and for war.

It is overgrown now. The jungle has moved in, and with it, the Alced. They took this place in the end, bless them, and the tribe's warriors and maidens flit amidst the battlements. There aren't seem to be enough to occupy a fragment of this place - this place could house an entire Ceron Legion - but their presence gives this place a little bit of the loveliness Nero aspired to and fell short of.

You're not two steps into the gates before you're mobbed by hatchlings - young Alced covered in adorable fluff or the hideous scrag of pubescents halfway through their first molt. Soon after them are a number of very visibly armed parents who have their eyes not only on their young children but their adult children, many of whom are pointing, giggling and whispering as they size you up.

You're being pelted with delighted questions, interested glances and threatening stares. You're a visitor from the stars and one of the mythical humans of legend. It's not that you're not used to being the centre of attention, but this is raw and direct and not bound by any courtly etiquette. How do you handle it?

Vasilia and Bella!

The gears inside the Magos' voice emitter start to whir. Internal fans start to rumble and a tremor passes through the entire ship. The distant clatter-clack of a difference engine overclocking rises on the air and the Auspex floods Bella's body with adrenal responses as the only way to process how dangerous all of this is -

And then the situation resolves. Vasilia is not standing before you proud and free and defiant. She stands before you in chains, her words now the defiance of a prisoner. You can all remember what happened - Vasilia came before the Magos to surrender herself rather than to seek the protection of hospitality. You can remember it even as you are also aware that's not why she originally came here, that the act was some sort of non sequitur, that the Magos is almost certainly responsible for this - somehow. Both versions of events stand equally clear in your minds, and if the changes were less blatant you might wipe the former version of reality away as a strange moment of deja vu.

Only Vasilia is in chains - the rest of her crew remain free, though equally confused between versions of events.

"Praetor," rolled that deep machine-mind voice. "We long for compliance with the Imperium. As a sign of our submission we present to you this wanted criminal. As a sign of our submission we shall share with you all the details of the planned experiment. As a sign of our submission we shall beg for Imperial mercy, for we only sought to learn that which the Empress Nero, she who crossed the galaxy upon a thunderbolt, has left behind."

Vasilia, this is what they in the negotiations business call a bad sign. Birmingham is legitimately afraid of the damage Bella could do to him and his station - the Order of Hermes is deeply pro-Imperial to begin with, and the Magos believes Bella has both motive and ability to destroy him personally. He is focused entirely on Bella and doesn't give a single damn about you and yours, and the only way to get him to stop obeying would be to make him believe that obedience won't save him.

Hider

Magos Birmingham
The Saffron Lord travels between life and death - surely time, too, is within her power.
Threat to the World: You must pay a price to act against the Magos.
Master Chronomancer: The Magos holds the secret of nonlinear time within his clattering contraptions, giving him limited precognitive abilities and some ability to alter the past.
Fateful Bargainer: The Magos may use his magic to alter the conditions of any deal struck - a gift may become a trade, a promotion can become an exile. Subjects will remember agreeing to the updated terms, though they will not recall why they did.
Locked In A Bunker: The Magos' bunker walls are impenetrable, though he can only leave them by proxy. Inside, he is helpless.

Alexa!

"We're - leaving?" said Princess Epistia. "We're not going to fight to rescue her? Our Captain is in trouble, Alexa!"

She's very plainly eying up the nearest Coherent warrior (who has noticed the attention and misinterpreted the signal, and so is flexing her muscles and striking cool poses with her spear). But you're up against Ceronian loyalty here - punching their way though anyone who threatens their leader is right up there with 'drink water when thirsty' as far as instincts go, so you'll have to talk sense if you don't want to start a brawl right here.

Fellowship: The Heart

Home is the shadow of a rooster.

Of course, it's not really a rooster. That's how it's translated but not what it means. What it means is a bird made of fire, feathered like sunlight flowing in a waterfall of gold broken by a prism of rainbow, the mere sight of which promises good fortune and harmony for all the kingdom. This is not a comical farm animal as it is seen in Grand Jelt, it is the peer of dragons and a pillar of the world.

And 'neath the sheltering wings of the rooster all of life can be found. The feel of fabric filled with metal, letting it shift and roll and trying to guess how much it weighs. Soup so heavy with spice and oil it's as good as boiled, for no evil could survive within it. Riddle-lanterns that flow overhead, teaching the wind how to be lucky. All of these deep, ancient memories wrap themselves up and cast themselves towards her in the form of a bracelet of shaped like a snake - that being the protection a rooster will carry with them as a ward against dogs.

She touches her rooster bracelet - a ward against the same. And some part of her finally draws a mental association between this subterranean event and the celebrations of her memory.

<Let me get that for you,> she said, offering her hand with a politeness that never occurred to her before, in the same way that hitting the brute with her wicked magic didn't occur to her now. <Are you all right? Are you here with anyone?> What was that strange note to her voice there?

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

It seemed like a small concession in that moment - she had won the brawl against Sandsfern, won the argument against Tristan - but it felt agonizing nonetheless. Robena slumped into a chair and grasped a tankard so tight that her armoured fingers left dents in the metal handle. She had been an avalanche of willpower and intent, all driving relentlessly towards a single objective. And now she had to stop. And wait. And consider. Rather than crashing stone she was the poor devil holding the sheer weight of it back and drowning under thoughts like can I, should I, what if I.

No! The one thing that she cannot do is nothing! And yet that is where she is trapped.

"You," she said to Sandsfern - another thing that should have been buried under the avalanche. "look... well."

Bloodless Xristos, was she really going to have to deal with this impossibility now?

Sunshards

Chen!

"Awesome!" said Cyanis. "You won't regret this! But that said all deals are final and magically enforced."

She tries to snap her fingers, though it sounds a bit off (close analysis would reveal she's just making the gesture and clicking her tongue because she never could figure out how it worked). What she does not do is magically transform your clothes into maid dresses - instead, she creates from air a big, beautiful flowing maid dress made entirely out of frills and ruffles - and cutting short just above the knee - hanging from a mannequin standing above you. Then she loosens your ropes and continues to stare with the utterly innocent smile of someone to whom things like 'looking away to give privacy while changing outfits' simply does not occur.

Rose!

"Do you know where wild growth gets you, Rose?" said Princess Yin. "It gets you forests of groaning, ancient trees filled with wolves who menace the innocent. There is no virtue in growth."

You have driven her back, back, back. To the edge of exhaustion and the edge of tears. There seems so much vulnerability in her then - such gentle weakness, unprepared for a conflict like this. It seems unfair how you fight her, a demon against a girl.

Ah, Rose. You face Princess Yin during the day - the little dot of black amidst the radiant white. You do not see her true hand in this because in your past life you were that hand. Now she has others.

You hear the thunder of hooves.

Knights slam their dog-catcher lances into place around your neck and around your arms. The loops pull tight and muscle and armour strain together to drag you down to the ground like an animal. It is love that fuels that strength and you know how fierce it is for you used to wield it yourself.

Princess Yin stands over you. "Mastery is not creating more diseased forests, Rose," she said. "Mastery is creating a bonsai that will grow more beautiful and perfect with every year. All that is necessary for love to triumph is to fit you for the cords."

[Marking Hopeless, both summoning allies and creating an opportunity for them to bring you low]

Yue!

The ghostly dress holds its blade under Yue's chin, shining in the woodland sunshine. Then it steps into the final step of this dance. It lowers itself on one knee, bending to the point where a pair of lips might touch Yue's forehead. For a moment the feeling touches there, dry and just a little bit warm but leaving a tingling happiness far deeper than the touch itself should allow.

Then, with a twist of light and rustle of fabric, the armour of the Demon Swordswoman embraces Yue. Fabric with the soft flow of cotton cooled by mountain snow and steel with the warmth of the ocean in summer slide into place. Straps and bonds wrap and bind, the tug and pull and restriction of each leather cord promising that it will keep you safe. It takes but a moment and then you are armoured for a wonderful kind of war.

The remnant of the ghost does not try to control you any longer but you can feel it latent alongside you. It no longer will force its lessons upon you but the feeling of them will always be there against your skin. In future days and future duels it will not force you to do it right, but it will help you recognize what 'right' is. It provides its advice softly, like a teacher, or a map.

And as you rest in a temple of water, the thought finally occurs: You have succeeded at your quest and helped a Fox. You... could go up there and ask Cyanis to make everyone forget about you. You could decide that this, right now, this magical day was enough. You could go back to your home and have memories for a lifetime. If you wanted, this could be the end of the adventure.

Is it?

[Mark XP]

Sunshards

Chen!

"She's adorable!" Cyanis declared, yanking Chen's scarf up and pulling the ends tight so that it gagged her. "I love her! Almost enough to overlook the fact that she comes packaged with some sort of ancient world monster hot on the chase. W-O-W guys, you were just gonna dump that live grenade on me and split town?" Her eyes widened and her lip trembled. "Betrayed, on my very first Princess purchase? You were just gonna take advantage of my seiso heart and throw me to the robot wolves where I'd be captured and bound and made the plaything of the entire pack?"

"Woah, no, Cyanis we were totally going to tell you -" said Elkibrant, but was immediately cut off because Cyanis wasn't even close to done yet.

"And then, after months and months of the cruelest torture, and no less than five failed escape attempts, each of which is punished more severely and extensively than the last, pushed to my absolute physical and mental limits and in the end when I'm of no more use, you'd see me dumped shivering and gasping on the edge of the woods with nothing but my tails!?"

Only the faint thump of fluff hitting metal indicated that her tails were wagging. Her face maintained its betrayed and distraught look.

"So, uh..." said Elkibrant. "I swear, I wasn't going to - I mean, I had a technomancer distract her -"

"Two months good fortune," said Cyanis. "Final offer."

"Two months!? This is one of the most valuable Princesses in the world!"

"Oh, I'd be delighted to stay and haggle," said Cyanis, thump-thumping on the roof picking up tempo. "You know. If you don't think that big ol' monster you've just set on me isn't the kind of problem you need a head start getting away from."

"This is daylight robbery!"

"Chen, snookums, didn't you say there were other Princesses in the area too? Mumble once for yes."

With much ferocious grumbling, the fox contract is signed and you, Princess Chen, are dumped out onto the soft grass in front of Cyanis' crumbling temple, left in the spreading dust of the departing car.

"So anyway," said Cyanis happily, putting her feet up on top of you. "I hear that you're the kind of Princess who enjoys being captured, dressed as a maid, and being ordered around. What's all that about? Hard work is miserable! Anyway, I'll help you with your wish, you just need to promise to help clean out an itty-bitty amount of dirt from inside my awesome new temple. Sound fair?"

Rose!

"And this is what we are to each other now, then, Rose?" said Yin, as much to herself as to you. "Princess and monk. Condemned by fate. Severed so utterly that we might only know each other with harsh words and with battle."

She draws her sword with the determination of an executioner - or the condemned.

"Well, then, Rose," she said with weary voice and steely eyes. No bright magic or wicked wolves or choir of horrors plays court to her this time, she faces you as powerless as any other maiden. "Step from my path or force me from it. You have held my life in your hands too many times for me to fear you - and you know too much of my capabilities for you not to fear me. Do you think you could hold to your ideals were you my prisoner? Of course not. You fled the Radiant Lands because it was only a matter of time before you realized that love matters more than freedom. If you do not flee again now I will see to it that your heart catches up to you at last."

Yue!

Water is rot. Water is ruin. Water is pollution. Water is danger. These are the lessons children are taught, and taught for good reason, but they lay the blame at the wrong feet.

Water is purification. Water is rebirth. Water is motion.

It is because of water's purity that it accepted every evil cast into it. It is because of water's selflessness it flowed uncomplaining as it became choked with polymers and tin and glass. Water bore all the weight of the world's evils uncomplaining until it was so full of choking toxins it clung to itself and forgot how to move. Forgot that it was water at all. Forgot that it was beautiful. Forgot that it was loved.

But, like a princess, all it ever needed was a reminder.

When water remembers how to move, oh how does it move. It shifts slowly and then gains speed, faster and faster, roaring and racing and once again carrying the thick of evil away to the deep places below the earth from whence it came. And, like a princess, it offers no extended warranty plan for this service and instead just shines as a light to guide weary hearts.

Throughout the tombs the waterfalls erupt. Steady drips become rushing flows. Fetid pools become gleaming lakes. Ugly muck-creatures in the depths are washed away to become glittering carp, goggling in fishy amazement at each other's forest-fire colours so long concealed.

And in a single beam of sunlight stands one more similarly purified creature. One shouldering colours of the sea in a world that has forgotten that the sea could have such colours.

Scales drip in blue silver and sea gold, so smooth and sleek and cutting, set with faint lines of coral-gems - deep magenta, glacier blue, squid black. The armour trails down in elegant and asymmetric angles, rising bands of metal wrapping around the right shoulder in bands of woven adamant. It is unbalanced in the most graceful way, the precisely placed protection of a swordswoman who knows exactly where a blade might fall and eschewed protection on places where it might not. It is armour that does not make sense until one is in a duelling pose - and there it seems unbreakable. At its base, empty guards on the shin and knee taper away to shoes of living, shifting sand - at times becoming as hard and clear and brilliant as slippers as glass, at others as flowing and mobile and comfortable to walk upon as the loose-packed sand upon a beach.

Above the armour, wrapped comfortably around its shoulders, is a kimono of sunset daisy yellow contrasted against patterns of twining black branches heavy with blossoms. In stillness it is subtle, gentle, as serene as a flower in the garden - but when it moves the edges flash with orange and magenta and it seems as though the sun dances back and forth upon the horizon, colours that would be chaos if not set against the eternal branches of that blossoming tree.

The armour-dress has no wearer - the princess who wore this died happily and departed oh so long ago. What animates it now is not evil or wickedness or corruption or craving. It's joy - memories of joy worn so deep into steel and fabric, memories of love found while dancing and dueling, passion that burned so bright for so long how could it do anything other than leap to life with drawn sword upon the arrival of a maiden of pure heart? It raises its sword in ready salute - a gesture performed so often it's as much a part of the dress as the shoes or gems - and offers its blade and hand for one more dance.

Please take what I have to give for this joy is too much for me alone.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

Cynicism is not a vice for the islands. One does not treat the words of elders with distrust, for their words speak truths about tide and wind and sail. One does not treat the words of the foreigner with distrust, for they come under the aegis of Zeus Cloudgatherer who favours travelers so that they might share their stories in distant lands. And besides, for a girl raised on stories, what easier thing to believe than the idea that she is in one?

And so the Alced girl nods seriously, with the thoughtful dignity of someone who has spent many summer afternoons planning what to do upon meeting an alien princess. "Very well then, hatchling of Ne'ro," she said. "I am Lacedo of First Fleet, sheltered by the Essex. I will bring you to the Captain."

While the two of you had been talking, the Coherent patrol had moved on. They were creatures of motion, after all, and if they could dump their cargo on a Magos who seemed to know what he was doing then that was sufficient for their purposes. Their clanking walker was visible miles away down the beach, the warriors but distant specks against the headland. Ahead of you looms the rainforest.

Tell us, Redana, of what it is to move through untamed life? What it is to move through branches and roots and snakes and tree sharks? How does a daughter of Tellus come to grips with this wild place?

Vasilia!

Perhaps it is surprising to hear just how frustrated the Magi of the Order of Hermes are with the demands of academia. And yet, so it is - the vast majority of those present, even amongst the Coherent, are priests and they are scholars and every one of them has a story to tell of bureaucracy, grant funding, and intransigent colleagues. These are scholars who desperately seek truth, wisdom and meaning and by and large they are fundamentally dissatisfied with the games they must play to accomplish that aim. To a soul they only seek individual power because that is the route within the order to greater knowledge.

They are, however, familiar with that route. They tolerate their dissatisfaction because they believe it is still the most effective route to accomplishing at least some of their goals. They believe the scraps that fall from Birmingham's plate are still more valuable than they would accomplish alone, and trust none of their colleagues to be more generous with data and resources than he is. But if that calculation ever changes - if they think they will learn more by the Magos' overthrow than by his reign - he will be gone in moments. And likewise, if someone gifts them a true secret of great importance, they will honour that person forever.

Alexa!

Even a social gathering is a thing of military force. The movements of the Coherent define importance; their presence expresses power. A figure may robe themselves but to cloak one's power is often to lose one's power. And everything about this event is an expression of power - so where is the one wielding it?

It takes a while to come to the realization that Birmingham is not a person - and perhaps not even a one.

The Coherent aren't guarding an individual here. They are defending infrastructure nodes. Glittering sensestone geodes, elaborate transmission apexes, even a column of heavy machinery swathed in robes you initially took for a Hermetic. Birmingham is a shipmind - a mechanical savant, a clattering machine intelligence the size of a building with the wisdom and knowledge of a mighty sage. Dozens of magi walk amongst his exposed brain, correcting broken thoughts and patching his agenda, and he emerges from the interplay of contradictory and ancient and morphing codes. Notably though, to the Hermetics this renders him no more or less than any of their colleagues.

Isolating him is, accordingly, impossible. He runs through different systems of the ship and can maintain half a dozen conversations at once. There will however be a vault where the majority of his intelligence is kept, and the doors to that vault will be no secret - simply walk in a circle around the central Coherent barracks and you will find it soon enough.

Bella!

A great rustle greets you as a hundred more Hermeticians fall to the floor in bows as you enter. The only souls who don't stand out to you immediately - Vasilia, Dolce, Epistia, Alexa - but of Redana there is no sign. There is a moment of silence as you are taken to a dias before a glittering array of wires, bulbs, and resonance tubes. Your Auspex identifies it as like the questing tentacle of an octopus - intelligent and undoubtedly part of the whole creature, but also extended from a central intelligence.

"Praetor," the voice has a deep, slow rhythm - the kind used by a creature born to a more musical language who must slow their speech down to speak to yours. "I am Magos Birmingham, Shipmind of the Yakanov. We long for compliance with the Imperium."

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

"Ah, so this is why I return to find England in such a state," said Robena. "This is why I return to find castles burned and filled with bones left to rot 'neath the falling rain. This is why I return to find cursed knights who fight to kill, heedless of safety or sanity, beneath a tournament flag. This is why I return to see the shadow of fear in the eyes of the common folk, why laughter halts and joyful girls have grown to be haunted women. Because, it seems, that even though chivalry is dead, courtesy," she almost spits the word, "is enough to keep the blades of the people's defenders sheathed. Of course you have no quarrel with Pellinore. She treated you kindly, and what is mere England in comparison?"

Her hand tightened around the haft of her axe.

"And now I am asked by a coward knight to explain to other coward knights what chivalry means? You would have me debate them to the side of righteousness as the Greeks do? How about this? If they are such cowards as you make of them, and they love you as much as you say, then you convince them to throw down their swords and stand aside before they face the ruin of my axe."

Sunshards

Chen!

"I'm new!" said Cyanis. She's already bounded onto the top of the car after it stopped and her head is upside-down in the window. She extends a hand awkwardly in through the window to shake one of your tied hands. "Cyanis! Two-tails! Just getting started!"

"Well, feel like getting started with an actual for-real Princess?" said Elkibrant, spinning the roller so he could look out the window at her. "This here's Chen. Absolute softie. I reckon you could have her wrapped around your tails in a matter of hours."

"Oh! Wow!" Cyanis said, half-clambering in through the window to get a better look at Chen. "An actual - already? A real - was this because of my fliers?" she looks at Elkibrant with amazement. "Those were my idea, by the way! J'el said that advertising was undignified and burrowery but I thought that maybe if I let people know I was going to grant wishes then I might get more business! And I was right!!" she somehow props herself up on her elbows on the base of the window while her legs and tails were still firmly settled on the roof of the car. She looks genuinely shocked and amazed that her idea had worked.

"Yeah - well word certainly got around," said Elkibrant. "You've got the monks hot on our heels behind this, so you want to do this deal quickly?"

Cyanis didn't seem to hear him, focusing in on Chen, and letting her hand trail down to toy with her scarf. "Are you really Princess Chen?" she said. "Aren't you the unstoppable mega-Princess who is going to save the world from Princess Qiu? How did these guys catch you?"

Rose!

In the darkness of night, Princess Yin is a radiant star brighter than any other. In the brightness of day she seems an exhausted echo. She runs her Shard harder than any other Princess for her needs are greater than any other Princess, and so too does she demand a level of perfection from herself that never was sustainable. When she comes walking the forest path, dress torn and scorched from clashing blades with a devil, she is not that goddess of that darkens the world to properly contrast her brilliance. Instead she is drab and downcast and burned-out, eyes bloodshot from staring too long at her own light.

Her woven-antlered stag too follows at the most gradual pace, head nodding and crystals chiming as it borders on exhaustion. Travel, too, has its prices and even a mythical beast like hers may tire. The main thing keeping the two of them awake is the music playing from Princess Yin's phone - one headphone in her own ear, one headphone in the ear of the stag. The surprisingly low-quality cabled things bleed music into the surrounding softness of the forest, at this distance no more than a tinny echo of some goth-rock opera.

As they near where you have hidden yourself, Princess Yin pauses to yawn, stretch and sniff the air. Even odds to if she winds up noticing you or not, but for now you have the drop on her.

Yue!

This ghost is not an echo of words, it's an echo of sensation. Some monks say that there are two souls; the higher, that dwells in the crown and deals with thought open to the sky, and the lower, which dwells in the stomach and deals with senses deep like the base of the mountain. It does not tell you a story, because stories are things of words and thought. It shares with you a memory, real and visceral and drawn from every nerve and sensation.

You feel the shift coming when you say you are pretty. A deep sense of uncertainty wells up within you; an eruption of butterflies and doubt and defense and denial. Hot blood flushes the cheeks like rain after a drought, the throat swallows air and imagines it to be a frog, the heart remembers to tell you how hard it is beating. The sunlight is bright and the view is familiar and yet not - the enormous steps of the Terraced Lake before the Red Dam had broken. Instead of the blue cascading water and constant waterfalls that seemed an eternal part of your home you see oceans of green and brown criss-crossed with lines. Rice-paddy fields fill the entire three-tiered crater, roads winding between them like serpents. You can hear, too, the flapping of the tall war-banners - ten thousand of them and all of them black and red, the colours of the Warlord. They rise above the valley and in their shadows stand figures of hard edges and long swords. An army to watch a people enslaved in the shadow of a puzzle-box fairy-tale castle, alight with plum blossoms whose purple flowers blow though the valley and into your hair.

You were young. You were unsure of everything but the blade at your side. This was a time when the lower soul ruled you and all that you thought of was trading for the rice that would fill your belly. But then she said that you were pretty. And then the wind picked up and the sun shined brightly and for a moment you felt yourself recognized for something other than the blade that made others call you the Demon Swordswoman. In this moment on this hilltop in the shadow of war you received a smile from someone who did not want or need you to draw your blade.

The sword still came to your hand in the end. You couldn't keep it away, it was as much a part of you as your fingernails and even if you cut it short it would grow back. But a fingernail did not need to be a weapon - a thing of tearing and clawing. It could be painted. It could be coloured. It could be brilliant. It could be sexual. Could not that apply to this sword that you had sculpted your hands to carry? If you had the skill to kill any opponent could you not instead use your blade to write a story? Could you not use it to express a heart that could never find its way through uncertain words?

Could you not teach others to do the same?

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The memory falls apart and the offensive redoubles. The dress comes at you harder, faster, fiercer - still not looking to hurt but determined to make you feel like you're getting your money's worth. Toxic hijacked messages blare at you from all directions, from the walls, from hidden speakers. LOOK at how out of shape you are YOU NEED THIS. LOOK at how pretty you can be - green shards of broken glassy crystal light up in the muck clinging to the dress giving it an eerie air - YOU WANT THIS. LOOK at how DANGEROUS the world can be DONT LET IT PUNCH YOU WHEN YOU CAN STAB IT FIRST. LEARN TO BEAT ANYONE WITH THIS WEIRD TRICK - SAMURAI HATE IT!