Thanqol

Breathless Dead

Redana!

Zeus freezes for a moment - and then gently, so gently, starts to relax.

"I killed my father," she said. "And he killed his father before him. Some part of me expects every embrace to contain a knife - some part of me thinks that despite all my striving I've somehow made my family as toxic as his. So... thank you, Redana."

And as you turn and run you know her smile will stay with you for as long as you ask.

*

You emerge into war.

This is not the war of the modern age, the thing of glorious phalanxes and terrible poisons. This is a mythic war. This is the battle of Ridenki as remembered in the chants and stories of the Alced. This is the war where the golden rooster and the world-shattering wolf battle in the heavens and the fleets burn upon the surface of the waves.

But oh, how the Alced move in their storming flocks! They fly like birds but when they cut below the waves they swim like fish. They swoop and dive as mirrors to the burning skies, falling in time with the voidships falling from the skies.

It's a moment of overwhelming scale and violence, and all the more overwhelming for the inaudible lament that runs through it. We failed, we lost and this was how our world burned.

Alexa!

Just as rapidly as her initial assault tried to carve through you, the Master of Assassin's plan shifted to trying to disengage and go around you. The matter shifts from duel to something more like wrestling, where she tries to slip by you and you need to position to block her.

The entire nature of the fight has shifted, now it is like trying to hold onto an oil-slick eel. Success is no longer measured in blood, it is measured in inches and intersections - when the corridor opens up to allow the Master to sprint away across open ground. Violence proper has become incidental but still Ares pours his blessings upon you. He has offered them to you for so long it would be churlish indeed to make them anything other than glorious in this moment.

Dolce!

"Her what has what?!" said Mynx, lifting you up and giving you an experimental shake to see if your senses had been knocked loose. "Redana is a precious and naive little goofball who once cried because Bella drew a stick figure with a sad face. She stayed up for two nights wondering what made that stick figure upset! Her judgement is not sound! She is not prepared to see all of this!!"

She sounded genuinely agonized by the idea. The idea of Redana's heart breaking was causing Mynx genuine and real hurt in turn.

"And she's not the only one her departure is hurting..." Mynx said. "You don't understand, but she doesn't belong out here. Bella's been... Everyone would be so much better if she just..." the shapeshifter sighed. "Why am I telling you this?"

Vasilia!

Tell us a legend, Vasilia. Tell us of how you cut through those cursed by Demeter and Artemis. Tell us how you leap from the Anemoi moments before it decouples from the Yakanov and sails out into the Void. This moment is your aristeia, your moment of excellence when the tale stops and all marvel in your skill. Tell us of it.

[Roll to Overcome]

Bella!

It is a long moment in the bloody red emergency lighting. Then, finally, the lights flicker - off, and then back on to their normal pale glow, casting everything in a surreal and sterile light - everything that is, except the green-yellow verdency pouring from the open door to Magos Birmingham's vault.

Machine Intelligences are not alive (Dionysus' blessings notwithstanding). They're exceedingly complicated difference engines, clattering pistons and whirring microfilm scanners - Rube-Goldberg machines of transcendent complexity, analog computing in raw and heavy metal. The Magos performed calculations and managed a mighty starship but it was continuously maintained and updated by a council of senior engineers and programmers who would carve in new priority cylinders to load into the fiendishly complicated device. They have been dead for a very long time.

The inside of the Magos' vault is a garden. Soft and fresh grass runs underfoot and cherry blossoms fall in sheets. Amidst the wildflowers, bones. It's so soft, so quiet, all the machine gears muffled by moss - and it sends a shiver up your spine even without knowing that this same environment is unaccountably replicated in the depths of the Plousios.

But your golden eye tells you that the golden heart upon that table is what powers the mighty weapon that will kill Redana. The heart you know you cannot break for it is as divine as your eye - but the brilliant wire-weave mesh that the Order of Hermes built to surround it, so full of crunchable crystals and tearable steel? Oh, that is so very mortal.

[You must Pay a Price to Finish Magos Birmingham]

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Robena is a practiced hunter - she earned her cloak on the hunt and spent many years on the road where her only meals might be what she caught herself. She's hunted boar, phoenix, stag, wyrdgoat and plenty of others besides. Adapting to new prey was something of a necessity for her as she could never really take the time to master a certain animal's habits or instincts before moving on, the end result of which was that she grew to become a very quick and accurate shot with the bow.

She's tracked a bit of everything over time - when you're crossing Anatolia in the barren mountain land between Roman forts one does not turn one's nose up at rabbit or field mouse - but overwhelmingly she has gone after large, prestigious and preferably dangerous prey. A fox is a different matter. While she leads the party in the hunt, and her hand is on her bow to take a snap shot should she spot it, her mind is elsewhere and her pace is slow. She thinks not of glorious confrontation with the terrors of nature; instead she thinks of the villagers who build fences and coops and lay traps. These people might not have dogs and horses but they are terrorized by foxes more than any knight and so have likely accumulated more wisdom in their undoing than she has.

[Take Stock: 10. How might I best hunt this fox?]

Sunshards

Chen!

Qiu gives you a long sideways look, and then pulls herself from your embrace. "Chen," she said gently. "I think that maybe you need to take some time for yourself. You look miserable."

Rose!

"It seems that you are questioning my assumptions," Princess Qiu smiled as she unsheathed her katana. "Perhaps this conversation will be more productive once they are proven."

You are a creature of the ancient world, Rose from the River. You have chased a great many unwary souls. You have fought many security guards and daemonic concepts. You have had the knowledge of the techniques uploaded into your consciousness and been equipped with a shapeshifting body of limitless strength. You have served as knight and guardian in turn. But you have never in all your life fought a real duel. You never had to face anything that your natural gifts alone were insufficient to overcome.

And you are not prepared for Princess Qiu.

Is it the Sunshards that let her move like this? To have her blade brushing your neck before you've even bought your staff into position and then - the tiniest nick, just enough to feel but not enough to bleed, a hicky of a cut. And then as you swing she's already wrapping around you, ghosting flawlessly into an angle where all the momentum is wrong for a strike. Her next nick flicks a fragment of your monk's robe into the air like a falling autumn leaf. And around you come and around she flows and the air comes to fill with falling orange leaves.

With each humiliation you restrain yourself a little less. With each needle-slice of fabric you allow yourself a little more power with which to bring this smiling girl to heel. But each escalation passes unremarked upon except by another fragment of orange cloth swirling up into the air.

After all, you never learned at the feet of a master, Rose from the River. You never practiced for long hours with your blade beneath a waterfall. You never meditated on what it was to engage another. You come from a world where skill was store-bought and a duel was as simple as running the math on who spent on the better combat algorithm. And where that runs short so too do your shapeshifting tricks, as though Qiu can read them on your blushing face.

You're fighting at your full strength and she's still patiently waiting for you to begin.

And then it finally registers. Princess Qiu doesn't need the Sunshards. She doesn't need an army or a kingdom. She doesn't need the Pyre of Knowledge. She doesn't need a HUNTER-Class 猎犬. She has what seems like an unlimited capacity for violence and her confidence is all justified.

This is the first time you have pursued a target and found it out of your reach. This is the first time you have been forced to confront the possibility that you are not the most dangerous thing on this world. You have been beaten and bound before, but that was the work of Empire - and though your mind rebels at the idea, your heart tells you that Qiu could face that Empire too.

You did not understand how a Princess might shoot down the suns. You did not understand the nature of the tomb where you found Yue, or the dress of the Demon Swordswoman. Now you do.

And it's a lot to process.

Yue!

Princess Qiu quietly gasps when you take that bite of cookie.

And isn't that the part that sticks in your head? She watched you come storming back in to get your sword without even a flicker of reaction, like she had wordlessly agreed not to undermine your dramatic exit by commenting or laughing or anything. She had understood that wasn't what you wanted and politely overlooked it. But she had understood exactly what was meant by that act of cookie-tasting defiance and she hadn't politely overlooked it - she'd treated it as deathly serious because she'd understood that was what you wanted. It was like you'd messed it up a dozen times throughout the conversation but with Qiu you'd somehow gotten your point across perfectly anyway.

For a tyrant jerk she was probably the best listener you'd ever met. It's the kind of listening that makes you feel powerful and satisfied. You did it, Yue! You told her right to her face and somehow that's the part that stands out in your memory instead of all the mistakes. Qiu had let everything else fade into the background and as you storm from the palace you actually feel like you'd done that a little bit like a real hero would have.

You've even got a moment to feel a little bit proud of yourself.

And then you look up and see a sky crosshatched with Assault Ribbons. Amidst them are larger ones, much like bulky kites, with painted on yellow eyes - and as those turn towards you they direct the lesser ribbons to dive down from the air towards you. If you're going to get out of here you'll need help - and a vehicle.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Robena delays her answer, but only so that she can take the time to pat one of the hunting dogs. Who's a good boy? They could have asked her to hunt every fox in the forest and they would likely have gotten the same "Yes, sure," for who could focus on the declarations of knights when the remaining dogs had realized pats were on offer and were petitioning for their own turns with the pat-giving stranger? She had been reprimanded by masters of hunts before for distracting the hounds from their duties, but if Robena saw a tummy she had to rub it. Behind her, Apricot snorted in either impatience or jealousy.

"Yes, sure," she repeated eventually, looking up at Lady Sauvage. "I then am Robena Coilleghille, and am honoured to be your guest this night."

Breathless Dead

Redana!

"You will succeed," said Zeus. "Or you will fail. People will call you king or you will fade into obscurity. You will not know which. It is not logic that calls you now Redana, not recognition of station or respect for your natural talents or judgement for past successes. It is madness. Madness that makes you take responsibility for all suffering and all death. Madness that makes you shoulder the weight of the cosmos. Madness that makes your heart break in time with each breaking heart."

Zeus stood up, shoulder damp with tears, and with a thunderclap of her fingers a door opened in the distance. She offers her hand to you.

"The madness will not heal your scars. It will not give you wisdom. It gives one thing only: The will to stand. In a galaxy lost in darkness that is a mighty thing indeed."

[Heal your Grace]

Alexa!

"I thought you'd never ask."

It is perhaps the most sick joke of your existence that you have never before had a real fight.

The training was endless, of course. The battles were likewise. You've fought against phalanxes and Plovers and monsters on every battlefield you could be sent. You've fought kings and the warriors of Ceron and Codexia. You've won and you've lost, but the dark truth in every battle is that you always knew you had the potential to win. It simply wasn't always clear why you should exert that strength. Your cause was lacking and your opponents were weak.

Neither is the case now.

Is this what Princess Epistia dreams when she dreams of war?

The Master of Assassins fights as Artemis does. She has performed every ritual, worked every prayer into that mighty armour, devoted a lifetime in service to death precise. She overflows with knives. To think of her is to be rewarded with jagged counterattack. She has mastered no forms or practices of war except insofar as she is the inverse of you. To fight her is to swim through blades engraved with the words of your inadequacy.

And you?

You fight to save the lives of all those you have decided to care for. You fight with the unrestrained power of Ares erupting inside you like a volcano. You fight as the ultimate weapon of war finally unleashed and the station around the two of you melts and shatters in the inferno of unleashed energy.

Tell us how you fight, Alexa.

[Remember that you must Pay A Price as the Master of Assassins is a Threat to the World]

Dolce!

"Don't get too friendly," said Mynx. "I might have to kill you myself someday."

There is much more 'trying to sound like a calloused badass' than 'calloused badass' in that warning.

"But on that note, is this finally enough to convince you that Redana belongs on Tellus?" she said as she cautiously advanced to avoid the constantly flowing Coherent and Hermetic movements. "You've got no idea what you're messing with when it comes to Imperial politics."

Vasilia!

You will later concede that Zeus Most High, whatever her flaws, is unparalleled when it comes to giving gifts.

You enter the armoury where your gear is contained and there, floating in mid air upon a time-frozen web of violet electricity, are your pistols. They are as you remember them in terms of grip and weight with but one alteration: the charge chambers are sealed shut and crackling with intense violet energy. You respond to motion as a bonsai zombie rounds a corner and you disintegrate it with a single shot that does nothing to drain the charge in your weapons.

You have an army and a goddess between you and your husband. Zeus has given you two guns and infinite ammunition.

For the first time today you finally feel like the scales are even.

[Your pistols have the stats Ranged, Piercing, Dangerous, Ammunition: Infinite until the end of the issue.]

Bella!

The lights flicker out - and blood red emergency lighting fills the hall.

The Coherent move unexpectedly for a just a moment and then recover. Khitava gestures and twenty bare-chested and masked warriors drag forth a glass cage that stands atop a stone altar. Inside is a bonsai tree, heavy with apples and flowers both. This greenhouse is the altar of Demeter and in this bloody light it seems like a vision of the Styx.

The Coherent roll and dance around the Altar as it is wheeled out before you, the cage doors opening to reveal that the soil in which the tree grows is thick with bones. Khitava stands tall and domineering and with flick after flick of her fingers she lifts you up and drags you closer to that monstrous garden. The beat is still there but it's been stripped away of every instrument leaving only the twisted sound of your blood rushing in disordered time.

"Well?" said Aphrodite, lighting a cigarette - the only real light in this twisted place. "Go on. Back in the box."

[Damage your Sense]

Fellowship: The Heart

Regret. You bitch.

It's the most worthless and impractical Word you could have hit her with. It doesn't slow her down at all - in fact, she comes at you harder and faster than before, ablaze with the glyph of Wrath. She flights and she claws and she burns and she is not slowed down at all.

Ailee Sundish, after all, has a lot of experience with fighting on through regret.

No Word could have done less to slow her down. No Word could have done more to hurt her. Every pain that she was keeping just out of focus is now in agonizing razor clarity. The life she threw away tears at her like a ghost. All of the things she sacrificed to reach the Heart weigh around her neck like anchors.

But fuck them and fuck you. Even if she can't inflict this pain on you she'll make sure you learn that this was a fucking mistake.

The Archmage burns, and the Archmage drowns.

[Keep EVIL JACKDAW busy: 9; consequences are deferred but not denied]

Sunshards

Chen!

"Princess Chen," said Princess Qiu. "I have a confession. I have in fact painted the places I intend to conquer."

And out here on the balcony, beyond the easel surrounded by reference photographs of Ys, you have a grand view of Princess Qiu's mustering legions[1].

[1]: Princess Qiu has needed to perform some truly heroic feats of optical illusion to make this sight seem as grand as it does, given that her army consists of about a thousand total - of which seven hundred are actual uniformed soldiers, and of which five hundred are deployed on various guard duties around her kingdoms. Even fully assembled it's barely a medium sized army by regional standards, and that's including her Assault Ribbons. With careful spacing, giving everyone dramatic helmet feathers, use of vehicles, tents fires, ensuring the skylines are clustered with evenly ranked Assault Ribbons, and other filmmaker's tricks, Qiu has been able to create the impression of a mighty legion ready to march despite having barely enough people to fill up a community theatre hall.

"In fairness to me," said Qiu, "since I intend to conquer everything, it's hard to find subject material outside of that range."

Rose!

"You know what I think, Rose from the River of the White Doe with the Cute Nose?" said Princess Qiu, tail snaking around your neck. "I think that you're a raging submissive who's had some shitty masters. I think that you believe nobody will give you the right orders unless you manipulate them into doing it. I think that you joined the White Doe School of all possible schools purely because you knew they'd send you against me, and you desired this confrontation. Poor girl, to want so badly to throw yourself upon another's mercy while being unable to trust anyone enough to do it."

Her finger pushed against your mouth firmly, pushing aside your lips, sliding along your teeth, intimate and invasive and vulnerable all at once.

"Well, you're in luck," she pulls her finger free and tosses aside her sheathed sword, and draws in its place another, lesser blade. A condescension in shining steel. "You've put yourself in a position where you can be collared and bought to heel in a way that is and is not your will all at once. But..."

She brings her still-wet digit to her own lips and kisses it gently. "... If you fight me here you are surrendering all of your concerns about my monopolistic power. You will lose, of course, and in defeat you will not be able to act on your fears. If you fight me here you won't be able to stop me from taking over the world as you will be too busy decorating the walls of my harem. Can you live with that, Rose from the River?"

Yue!

Watching someone move through a familiar kitchen is a magic of its own. Drawers and cupboards open up like puzzle boxes. Utensils and equipment emerge as if by magic. It's a little world where everything is known, mapped and measured. Princess Qiu must not have any maids to know her way around this place so well. She assists you with diligence and without ego, performing the constant string of support tasks needed to give a chef true freedom of motion.

And all the while her eyes remain fascinated. She's drinking in information and when you catch those eyes in passing you see thoughts swirling beneath.

And then you confront her and she hesitates, and it's not that she's surprised. It's that she's specifically creating a moment where she is letting herself be just another girl in the kitchen here with you. But her eyes linger on your radiant battle-dress, and on the sword you have left by the door. Her eyes meet yours one more time and you can feel the uncertainty there, the edge of guilt to that slowly swishing tail. And then, a smile that is a guess.

"Oh? You dare question me?" said Princess Qiu, leaning back alongside the oven and spreading her arms imperiously. "How audacious! Very well! I have bought you here because you pose a threat to my reign! If you were to be trained in the blade by Mistress Tsao who hides from my wrath aboard the Sky Castle then the demons prophecise that you may yet be my match! And so I have bought you here to be my prisoner - and should you escape, my armies shall pursue you to the ends of the earth!"

This is the kind of thing that no doubt feels more dramatic coming from someone playing a pipe organ at the top of a great pyramid. Somehow, though, having it over cookies and tea in a comfortable kitchen doesn't feel wrong.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

"A fox?" Robena asks, and reflexively she takes in each rider and each coat of arms a second time. All these, not for a boar or stag, but a fox? She is searching for the sign of the chalice, for the sign that these are penitent knights like her - for who else would chase such ignoble prey?

But no, these are strong and noble figures wearing fresh cloth, with strong horses and handsome squires. Their faces are unbesotted by drink and while they are mirthful they are not flippant or flamboyant. Knights as true as any she has seen upon her travels. And they hunt a fox of all things! A creature with no meat, no antlers, no danger and no prestige. Practically an orange rat.

Once she might not have understood. Once her fingers did not ache from so many long hours reinforcing the fences around chicken coops. While she has not met a fox in the hunt she nevertheless feels like she understands on some level what μαλάκες they must be in order to merit such fortification.

"No, I have not seen any foxes," she said. "If I should see it, should I slay it, or do you reserve the right of hunting here for yourselves?"

Breathless Dead

Redana!

"But the dawning scatters dreams as the sun rises from his grave," whispered Zeus, holding your hands where Bella had been but an eternity before. "And in humble resurrection death's brother fades away."

She kisses your forehead with the kindness of fatherhood itself.

"Once I lay in the same place you do now," said Zeus, gently pulling you into her shoulder and stroking your hair as the tears flow freely. "I had escaped my father and the wounds were so fresh. How does one stand up to a parent who desires for you to become a part of them? To take you in and digest you, breaking down every new thing that was growing inside of you? How does one pull oneself from the crushing teeth while protecting that brand-new soul from scars?"

And did you never notice the scars before now, Redana? The huge patches of stained white skin across her face and neck all the way down to the dress? They seemed before but marks of power, additions to a terrifying and imposing presence that called to mind violence even in her restraint. Now it's as though the veil has parted and they are simply scars after all.

"Mortals call Dionysus mad, you know? They are fools, for I am mad too. Mine is the madness of those who have fallen to the bottom of the world, forsaken and alone, and in the heart of their despair they find responsibility. They recognize that they cannot save themselves but they can save those around them - they must save those around them."

She takes the bloody crown from your hands and does not wipe it clean, but places it upon your head.

"Kings think I favour them for wearing crowns. They, too, are fools. This is not a badge of office, this is a metal bandage holding in a broken mind. This is the symbol of someone who will stand against all the power of a twisted cosmos because they have taken responsibility for the suffering of others. You need such a bandage with you now, Redana, for you have a great many people to save."

Dolce and Alexa!

"Yeah," said Mynx awkwardly. "She'll be fine. From Artemis, at least. Demeter who the fuck knows -" she realized she wasn't being reassuring so changed tack. "But she probably doesn't kill people herself, which is why she bought Artemis! And we've got tonnes to worry about just from Artemis!"

The end of the hallway ignited in a vicious grey light.

The Master of Assassins had returned in an aspect of deadly force, encased in a cathedral of divine armour. It's so loaded with detail everything upon it blurs together - each inch of black metal is covered with gold engraving, holy battle scars, wax seals, gleaming trinkets, diamonds and gemstones, feathers and skulls, leather pouches, animal teeth. It's a suit of armour with which to invade Faerieland.

It's a suit of armour to run in terror from.

"I think it's worth a try!" said Mynx, hurriedly picking Dolce up off his feet and tucking him under her arm. "Good luck with the unstoppable killing machine!" she said, hurrying off down the corridor with the swiftness of someone who clearly knows exactly what that suit of armour is capable of.

Vasilia!

"Oh, this insistence on forward momentum!" Demeter said, putting her hands on her hips and petulantly kicking over an anthill, spraying you with biting fire ants. "Where does Hermes keep finding you people!? Every year it's the same thing! She rummages up half a dozen omnidirectionnelle people who only go in straight lines no matter how many times you step on their fingers."

She punches you in the arm causing your tattered uniform to explode into a nest of biting venus fly-traps, but her voice has ascended into genuine whining. "She is doing it to hurt me! She knows that I hate this kind of thing! She could find smarter people, you know, ones who understand when they are beaten and say 'thank you for the opportunity to test my strength against you, Demeter' - but time and again she gets the absolute most stubborn ones possible! Listen, when you die, talk to that brute Hades for me, won't you? Tell him: I think that selecting these obsessively driven mortals to carry your mail knowing I have to stop them is cruel. Next time he should send some robots! I tell you what, I'll have a word with little Zeus and have her knock it off with the electricity thing so the humans can build proper robots again, and then we'll fight using those for a while instead." She put her hand on her chin thoughtfully. "Or," she added, "you could simply tell him to stop doing this entirely. It was cute the first couple of times but now it's become a chore for both of us, don't you think?"

Bella!

The Magos' bunker lies ahead. Its massive sealed vault doors are woven through with vines and the sound of mad clattering spirals from within. It's the height of summer and all is fire.

Before you stands Khitava, General of the Coherent. She has not come carrying weapons - she nor none of her followers. This is time for a different arsenal, this one comprised of leather gloves and bloody lipstick.

The music is in your blood, in your pulse - and it stops. Then it hooks you violently in a different direction. Your head turns, following each curve of her hands as though pulled by invisible strings. She pulls you towards her like an animal and then slips closer like a lover, circling you without quite touching as her gloves brush ghostly-close to your hair and lips. She's in your blood and in your ear, not an overpowering cascade of force like Demeter's chant. This is a thing of Hermes and everything is motion and redirection.

She stands behind you and pulls your invisible chain tight around your throat - your breathing is not interrupted but still you fall back gasping even as her hand rises and falls with the crack of a whip. You're spiraling away and she catches you, one hand above your head like a puppeteer, the other below your chin holding you without touching, gazing with dark contempt into your eyes. Then she pushes you back, through a cascading crowd of her Coherent soldiers - each time one falls out of your way it is like falling deeper into her trance.

It's the denial of touch, you/your Auspex realize as another pantomime push sends you pressing into a wall, and as invisible pulls bring your hands up above your head. She can control you so long as she can keep you in this moment of musical suspense. She can twist you around and pull you deeper and deeper into this hypnotic song until she doesn't need the divine music to control your limbs and you become a true puppet. But again she's come, close and commanding, turning your head this way and that, forcing your blood to beat the colour of her lipstick - moving as close as she can, as close as the song demands, without allowing herself the contact that will break the spell.

Sunshards

Princess Qiu smiles. Her hand brushes the hilt of her katana and she pulls just an inch of it from its sheath - and whisper of metal is enough to divide the world.

Everyone who has ever faced her has told tales of how Qiu wields the power of her Sunshards, each contradictory and impossible. The truth, though complex in magic and metaphysics, is profoundly simple in intent and effect. Her blade cuts away everyone and everything else so that she can be the absolute centre of each person's world - and so she can give everyone her undivided attention in exchange.

Stare hard enough at the edges of the world, the perfect severing of reality, and you'll see her again and again. There she is with human-shaped Hyra, facing her down beneath the full moon, blades in each of their hands. There she is with Cyanis, competing for whose kissing booth can attract more customers. There she is with Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits, engaged in a trial of ultimate endurance: can she continue providing pets for the entire duration of the pet-ee's nap?

But in every other respect she is here, now, the centre of everything.

"But why postpone, Rose?" says Princess Qiu, turning her full attention directly onto you, letting the others and their failure to recognize you to fade into the background. "You have been dogging my footsteps for months now. You have been ambushing my demons and I hear you have terribly humiliated and confused the poor Scales of Meaning."

She comes down the steps, scales still glistening wet with ruby and gold, as her talons run along your collar and then up under your chin.

"I have had so many other priorities lately but time and again you seemed so determined to push yourself to the top of my list. What is it that could have attracted such intensity from a monk of all things, hmm? If I didn't respect your vows so much I would even suggest you had become obsessed with me."

But at the same time, in a different world, she's taken the arm of Yue - gently! Casually, even, the kind of ordinary gesture that proves that she's not made of fire and ruby, the kind of gesture that answers unaskable questions about the texture and smoothness of scale and the warmth that runs beneath. "If you intend to bake, Yue, then of course I'm going to help! Come on, the kitchen is this way!"

There's such interest in her eyes as she walks with you, such focus which is all the more intoxicating by the fact that she doesn't seem in the slightest bit disappointed by what she sees. Any stuttering or hesitancy or awkward laugh she can wave off with such confidence that it's impossible to think that you've somehow fooled her into thinking you're someone you're not. Princess Yin had seen through you and her eyes had hardened with contempt; Princess Qiu's blaze with genuine fascination.

"It's a bit of a mess, but I know where everything is," she said, and sounded legitimately embarrassed even though her idea of messy was 'left a box of cereal on the table'. Everything else was gorgeously clean while also being surprisingly compact and ordinary - after all the cyclopean architecture outside, Princess Qiu at least has enough sense in her not to put the stove five hundred meters away from the sink. "Tell me what you need and I'll fetch it for you!"

"Hey, that's a lot Chen, so thank you," said Qiu elsewhere still, patting your head affectionately. "The Scales made it sound like she was in the game, and if she wasn't I'm going to bind her into a vending machine. I might do the same to Yin, to be honest. Is she back on her bullshit again? I'll take care of it, don't worry"

She hasn't stopped patting your head, even crooking her arm around your neck so she can gently lead you along as she does so.

"But anyway, what I've really been thinking about recently is painting. You wanted to see that from me, right? Well since you made me commit to not knocking over any other kingdoms until you showed up again I've had nothing to do but paint. Have you gotten the opportunity lately? I can't imagine, with all the running about you've had to do..."