Marianne!

“Animal!” The spoiled tyrant spits out, struggling to sit up under the weight of her ornaments, her decorations, each one shaped and beaten and burnished by the hands of slaves.

(When did this all start? Were they ever innocent, once, like Tamytha, or did their “gods” spit them out into existence fully formed and cruel? When did these self-proclaimed gods reach out to the stars in order to strip them to the bone?)

“Don’t touch me,” she hisses, more bestial than you. Her eyes are burning with indignant terror and the desire to rake her nails across your skin. “I will see you muzzled and brought to heel for the glory of the goddess! Submit and spare yourself the rod!”

(crack, crack, crack. “This one... nnngh! This unworthy one...” crack, crack, crack. “Stop, please, please, she’s sorry, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again...” crack, crack, crack.)

“Our Lady is inexorable! The whip and the lash and the leash and the bowl are her tools! She tames the wild brute and brings forth rich fruit from its loins!” She crumples back onto her elbows, losing the battle against the weight of her own hair. “Bow before the blessed one of Ishtar,”” she screams at you, lips flecked with spittle.

And underneath that scream is an unspoken whisper: I am frightened, and I should not be. This is not the way the world works. You have made the world wrong and I hate you for disrupting my perfect, pampered world. How dare you.

***

Canada!

You feel more than see the eyes of the ostensible gladiator behind you. He (scratch that, we don’t know their pronouns, let’s use they)— they are torn up inside. And why wouldn’t they be? The Great Betrayer is saving them from a Lioness. A war goes on inside them: do I attack her from behind? No, that’s stupid, she’s saving my life. What, are you stupid? She’s going to kill the animal and then kill you, you need to strike her down, do it.

Then the Lioness snaps its jaws inches from your face, you make a less than dignified throttled squeak, and that’s when the kid makes up their mind and steps by your side, prodding it back with their saber. They glance at you (their eyes are brown and soft) and in that moment, the Great Betrayer is offered trust again.

Then everything goes wrong. The world refracts into sharp angles. Perspective warps and yawns; you can’t tell whether the Lioness is a mile away or close enough to kiss. The elements of your body decohere. You send a missive to your eyes to close to stop some of the dizzying input.

So, you’re in a lot of trouble. You’ve handled Asterion’s Labyrinth Green before in training, but this is different than usual: unstable, unrestrained, and incoherent. The only silver lining is that the Lioness, immeasurably distant, has (from the sounds broadcast directly into your ear) curled up into a ball and is making distressed, agonized yowls. And, in your other ear, you can hear the ragged breath of the monster who walks the Labyrinth, and she’s pissed at you.

Put yourself between her and everyone else, your Savior commands. Let her fists hit you over and over again until she runs out of fists. It’s what you deserve. You failed, and now the only way to redeem yourself is to let Asterion beat the stuffing out of you. Then everyone will understand you didn’t betray them on purpose. And even if they don’t forgive you, you got punched for them. That’s what counts.

No, Mundane sighs. Asterion has never, ever been so lost in that maze that you couldn’t help her out of it. Sure, the head injury looked really, really bad. Sure, you were certain she was dead when she went limp like that and the charioteer stepped on her spine and ground her heel down. But if you tell Asterion your true feelings about her, love will save the day. You don’t need to get punched any more.

Fragmentation of self is a common reported side effect of exposure to Asterion’s LABYRINTH GREEN, your Superior mumbles from the closet she’s been shoved inside deep in your prefrontal cortex. Just don’t listen to Savior.

PUNCH HER BEFORE SHE PUNCHES YOU, Danger yells.

***

Set!

The Lynx walks in like she knew you were in there all along, rod extended and held at a deceptively casual angle. Her top is made of two bands of interlaced leather strips crossing over her breastbone in an X; a delicate mesh hangs down beneath it, so fine as to be almost invisible, connecting at its lower edge to a girdle and a loincloth which reaches down to her knees. A similar, more tightly woven mesh serves as detached sleeves and leggings, down to the rings on her fingers and toes.

You know better than to strike that mesh; it’s reactive. Good way to knock yourself out, or blast yourself through a wall. See that slight shiver running through the translucent fabric? It’s been activated.

Her veil is a short thing with a magnetically weighted lower hem, for staying in place no matter the circumstances; the matching magnets are in her ornate collar. Her fur is fine, silky yellow, and patterned in long white stripes, with a spattering of dark spots along her throat.

When she sees you, her eyes narrow in that excited, focused way the Lynxes have. There was something she was going to say, but she drops it in favor of falling onto all fours and charging. You drop through a portal, emerging behind her, and— whoa look out that nearly slammed into your skull, the head of the rod blurring past your own head as she effortlessly redirects herself.

You can try to keep her busy, but that’s a dangerous game she’s likely to escalate hard. You can try to fight her properly, but if you shoot her in the mesh it’s coming right back at you with interest, and she’ll be happy to follow it up by slamming that spinning rod into the side of your face. Or you can *blip* away, but if you’re not fast, she just might be through the portal you leave behind before you can close it.

But you definitely have 100% of her attention. The problem is that this means she’s 100% into this fight, and the moment you make the wrong move, she’ll pounce and refuse to give you room to breathe.

The thing about Danger was that she looked and sounded exactly like Asterion.

Coward, she snarled, pacing fore and behind. You pretend to be so very helpless just because you don't have your pointy crutch.

Their voices were inextricable - the demon of the labyrinth and the shadow she cast in her best friend's mind. Was Asterion truly as hard and cruel as the voice of Danger? Was Canada too soft-hearted to comprehend the full might of her friend's fury.

That's the legendary hero. The crusader. Throwing herself beneath the trampling hooves because somebody might feel sorry for her.

She clutched her shield like it was her lifeline. It was the only thing she could rely on. She was helpless here. It didn't matter how fast she was - distance meant nothing. Asterion could change distance like she was tilting her head, and on that awful horizon the crimson outline of the minotaur hunted.

But you're weak, Canada. Too weak to say how you feel. Too weak to trust your friends. Mundane was Asterion too, now. The shadows of the bull's horns closed in on her from all directions, a cage of triangles. You're jealous that it was her and not you to get crippled. What kind of sick mind envies a broken spine?

Asterion is not your equal any more, hissed Asterion, Asterion's voice, her own voice, so close her ear felt wet. You failed her. You didn't even suffer with her. She's been through something you haven't.

A weak voice, as though from far away, How can you call that love?

It's simple. You can't love her until you're equals again. Until then it's just pity.

*

Poor Asterion had no idea what she was walking into.

The mental fragmentation of the Labyrinth was usually such a fearsome advantage. It rendered the foe confused, disoriented, unable to work objectively, tilted towards their extremes, rendered easy prey. She underestimated the sheer, violent toxicity of Canada's thought processes, the guilt and pain and rage that was going on inside her friend's head. The last time they'd done this Canada had been rendered almost helpless, easy prey for a terrible monster, struggling to reach her friend.

This time she came at Asterion like a thunderbolt.

They're fighting - they're really fighting.

It spills out everywhere in the arena - in the stands, in the prisoner complexes, in the monster pits and in the royal box. Rolling, shattering blows, sharp with the intimate ferocity that comes with the knowledge that the other person can take anything you dish out.

The bull and the eagle fight until there is nothing left but shattered breath and stone. Canada is clearly the loser in terms of bruises, in terms of position, in terms of willpower... but that she dared to fight Asterion directly at all is shocking to both of them.

[Directly engage: 12-1: 11
- Impress, frighten or surprise my opposition
- Create an opportunity for my allies

Taking a powerful blow in exchange: 8 - marking Angry and Guilty]

Oh she's a lynx like a leopard. Oh that's so cute! Set really wanted to pet the fur around her neck with the little dark spots! But oh! Oh! She was really fast and really focused!

Oh man, this was adrenaline pumping. That mesh wasn't the only thing doing some reflecting a back. An opponent this intense made Set get intense too and she started speeding up her movements. Without a sound, she slid under the rod into a new portal, left it open and fired her laser blasts into the mesh at an angle. Sching! The shot absorbed, the mesh tightening and bouncing the energy blast off twofold from the angle of fire. So Set opened another portal where it was going and reflected it back out towards the lynx again!

Meanwhile, Set's dropped herself through another rift in the floor and is sliding out from the ceiling on the other side of the lynx, sliding right near her back, linen just tickling the Lynx's mesh armor. Set permits herself just a little pat of that spotted neck, which is soooo soft and luxurious even through the mesh (a light pat is too slow for it to tighten and respond anyway) before throwing herself away from the lynx turning towards her to strike. But oops, there's that reflected laser blast coming at her from behind, and another one coming up from below, only Set's already slipped into another portal and she's on the opposite side of the room now.

There's an almost feral grin on Set's face through the tattoos, and maybe even the Lynx might feel a moment where she can't tell who's predator and who's prey.

[Unleashing Powers to turn the environment into high stakes laser pinball. 3+6+2=11.]

The Annunaki are, if nothing else, extremely solid. It's a trick of their physiology or something; their muscles and their bone structure are both very dense. It makes them tougher than their decadence would otherwise imply. It's at least some of why they think of themselves as so invincible. More to the point, it means it hurts a lot to punch one.

Marianne's sharp backhand across Jerioth's cheek sounds like a hammer hitting a cinder block and cracking it in half. Her grin, impossibly, grows wider when she sees the neck twist in surprise. She grabs a great handful of silk and jewelry gathered around Jerioth's chest to keep the sudden change in balance from toppling the useless cretin over (with all that hair, she'd never get her facing the right way again). She squeezes her other hand into a fist to hide how numb it is.

"That is how you command silence, tyrant dog. You were told to dance, and so you shall. There is no need for you to move your lips."

A phantom thief must dazzle. A phantom thief must seem capable of anything, at any time. And most importantly of all, a phantom thief must be cool. Tonight will ripple far beyond the job itself. They must talk. They must whisper at each other, look over their shoulders at every darkened corner and wonder, and in their dreams for weeks to come see the face of the revolution and the republic, whose name is the name of the people.

The eye on Marianne's forehead opens wide, burning like a tiny star. She stares openly at the heart of Jerioth ab-Ishtar, and judges her prey without words. Disgusting. But she must be motivated for what comes next.

Marianne jabs her hand down toward the ground, a useless gesture with no meaning other than misdirection. But beneath Jerioth, the ground is warping. Chains snake through the hidden paths, encircling their target unseen before they burst forth all at once like a furious hydra. She binds the neck with thick links like a collar, complete with leash. She wraps each wrist in turn and ties them both together with a short band that will allow for little more than vague wiggling or shuffling along on the hands and knees, which she repeats around the conceited brat's bronzed ankles. More and more and more, squeezing the thighs and binding the chest and encircling the waist. Marianne's fingers contract in another exaggerated command gesture and all at once the chains pull taut and pull Jerioth down onto her belly.

There is a gleeful sound of slashing, tearing fabric. Marianne's eyes are alight as she bends down and lets her mask chains dangle in her prisoner's face. She holds up several strips of what was once a gorgeous and perfect festival dress and waits with saintly patience for the inevitable scream. Her fingers fly down to snatch at that weak chin and hold Jerioth's fat and stupid lips held open.

"For such superior beings, you do not seem to have very good schools for yourselves. These were very simple instructions, yes. And even then, you failed to follow, yes! So now, lucky you! Marianne will teach you your missing lessons, yes yes!"

She shoves a square of torn fabric into Jerioth's mouth without a hint of gentleness. Then a second, then a third. Her smile is toothy, glinting, and more than a little evil when she sees the proud matron's cheeks bulging. You Annunaki love your excess, don't you? Then you must be enjoying this. Marianne pulls the final strip of dress taut and ties it between the lips. Her fingers drag slowly underneath Jerioth's chin, and then she rises and repeats the gesture with the toe of her boot.

"There, class is in session. Aren't you lucky? Now come along, today's lesson is a field trip, yes!"

She grabs up her makeshift leash and, with a powerful backflip, dives into and then through a corner of the hallway, dragging her "student" behind her.

Shelomit!

“AS-TER-EE-ON!!” Flesh, striking on flesh; ragged cries from perfumed lips; stamping heels and a wave of delight. You are drunk and delighted and The Destroyer’s fist shattered the drink alcove; sapphire wine spills out, pooling in the tile-lines (whatever they’re called) and turning your head. “AS-TER-EE-ON!!” Watching her unleash everything she’s got at this new challenger is better than being high; the angles twist your brain to watch, and you cling unsteadily to your BFF, Debrah. “AS-TER-EE-ON!!”

Then, all of a sudden, The Destroyer screams, grabbing at her Berserker Collar, and guards start swarming her in the arena. “Your excellence,” a snotty little Lynx in Marduki red says to you. “We’re evacuating the gardens on suspicion of—“

“Shut up,” you say, and shove him backwards. He crumples down the stairs. “ASTEREEON,” you shout at the arena. “Win! Beat them up!”

The Lynx’s Thornback— there was more than one? She puts her unworthy little branches on you. You backhand her, head thumping full of wine, and then get distracted as someone on the other side of the arena throws an entire cooler of white sunrise and spirits onto the diamond, all of them already on fire. Yes! Fire! In honor of The Destroyer!

“Let The Destroyer fight,” Debrah screams, and breaks a bottle over the Thornback’s head.

***

Canada!

Oh. You’re not dead.

There was a moment when you thought, maybe, this time, you actually were, when Asterion lifted you off the ground and suplexed you head-first and you thought, wow, the ground is coming at me really fast—

And now you’re staring at the top of an elevator. The roof? Or is that on the outside? Regardless, you’ll be fine in a minute, now that your brain’s not being pounded into guilty pieces. Just need a quick breather.

Somebody else is in here, too. From the vague shape in your peripherals, and the sound of their shaky breath that’s going to become crying in a minute, it’s not Asterion.

And that’s when the elevator jerks to a halt. “All non-essential services are on temporary lockdown,” Caphtor cheerfully lilts through a speaker. “Like... please wait for us to handle, you know, the problem?”

***

Mra’al!

Hunt! Your spinal mane stands on end; your mind is a white-hot claw. Your ancestors hunted great horned, tusked beasts on the broad savannahs so that you, in this moment, could fulfill your holy purpose. A shield slips over conscious thought like a vestigial eyelid; you react faster than thought, following the commands of your body.

There is a peace, here, without thought, without awareness. A holy emptiness. Your rod is a part of your body; you use it to push off a viewscreen and rake your claws where the prey will be. She reorients, in time by a fractional second, and fires at your face; you snap your arm into place and let the blast resound from you, then duck out of the way of the shot returning. Clever tricks! You are clever too.

Your own escalation is instinct; your unconscious mind knows your armaments by heart. The pellets you scatter around the room break into choking, coiling incense.

It cuts off your senses as much as it does hers, save that humans (furless, foolish, mewling) do not have spinal manes, or tufted ears; you feel her, and in her moment of confusion, leap.

***

Heb Ur!

There are supposed to be seven of you who check that the Troll is here, every quarter-hour. But because the Temple is aroused, and there is an attack from Below, you are reduced to three: yourself, your clutch-sister Mek Ah, and the twitching runt Nga’al, who is granted a measure of Rushing River by his quartermaster. His eyes are, as usual, wide and watering.

The Troll is here. One stony foot is chained to the wall so that it does not wander off. A net serves as its veil; silk would be wasted on these animals. You carry out the inspection: all is in order.

“Did you hear that?” Nga’al’s ears lie flat on his head, his eyes darting, the whites yellowed. You and Mek Ah stop and listen. There is nothing. Degraded Rush-addict. It is not your place to question the quartermaster, so you instead direct your heart’s displeasure at the weakling, too incapable to serve in his place without his stimulant. A growl gets his attention.

“Nothing. Useless shak.”

***

Marianne!

Jerioth struggles vainly in your arms. She nearly alerted those guards: two Salamanders and a Lynx. It looks like Canada did her job, and drew guard patrols elsewhere; this is half the size of the patrol you’d normally expect here.

The Troll, however, is a problem. Silicon-based life, multi-limbed. Set would love to ramble about them, but for your purposes? They’re strong, take orders from Annunaki and only Annunaki, but don’t tattle on resistance fighters; if you avoided tripping its orders, you could do a musical number about your plan right in front of it.

Jerioth’s face is hot and sweaty under your fingertips. You lift your thumb, letting her suck in air frantically, before pinching her nose shut again. This way, even you can barely hear her frantic, furious grunts. You need those guards out, that troll neutralized, and Jerioth humiliated even more before she plays her part. (And, technically, one of the ab-Ereshkigali— but you have a plan for that, too, right?)

What’s the play, Phantom Thief?

Naturally, when she was doing the early scouting work for this job the first thing Marianne tried was slipping through the vault door in the Nameless Library. It was a disaster. No matter how many angles she tried attacking it from, she wound up being thrown aside. Sometimes the hidden paths just wound up this way and there wasn't a way between them that didn't require something stupid like growing wings, but this felt very frustratingly different. It was more like something Papa would have loved to ramble about before the Annunaki came: cognitive... such and such, a barrier that extended in all directions because it was like that inside her head.

And outside of her head, merde. In the end she'd wound up hitting her head so hard it had actually left her concussed and she'd actually had to spin up a story about falling down some steps that required her to twist her own ankle just to keep Tamytha from asking too many questions. But today? Today would be sweet, sweet vengeance.

Since the library was housed entirely within the Temple of Ishtar, it meant the entrance was surrounded by gaudy, giant statues and carved stone pillars that formed a kind of labyrinth of broken roofs. Here a monument to the Bull of Heaven, there a long series of columns that only existed so that somebody could hang rich tapestries between them depicting all manner of acts of submission and obeisance. Disgusting. But a perfect hunting ground.

She leaps from the tip of the bull's horn to an archway that's spaced dangerously far away, twisting in the air as she flies and catching herself upside down by sticking her foot inside the keystone. Her chains jangle as she links them into the stone, and then there is the satisfying lurch inside her stomach as she drops in a free fall with Jerioth in her arms, still pinching her nose shut to block out the pitiful screams that would give them away. There's a tiny clank and a jolt, and together they come to a halt in mid-air, swinging roughly from side to side in the dim space just above the temple lightning below.

Marianne takes her hand off of Jerioth's nose. She immediately slides it over to cup her cheek instead, and flashes a nasty grin when she sees the Annunaki's flustered response. Yes, she dares! Are you feeling helpless yet? Are you feeling controlled yet? Are you feeling frightened yet? Yes, yes, yes! She lets herself fall free and straight through the floor, which leads her back to the top of the archway again. Let the hunt begin.

She is a shadow, passing overtop what passes for a patrol. Merci, Canada. She leaps, twists, and swings her away across the architecture, staying just out of sight except to brush the tops of their heads with the lining of her coat, say, or let them hear the jingling of the ornaments on her shoulders. She's everywhere, and then she's nowhere. Her eyes blaze with amusement to see the way they draw into a circle, forgetting even to abuse the drugged-up lynx. That one will be last.

Her hand reaches into a wall, all the way down to the shoulder. The taller one first, that's the way she'll do it. She stretches, tongue poking out from between her lips with concentration, until she feels her fingers close around the ankles of a salamander. Just like fishing. Except, you know, fun. She yanks her hand back up to the sound of screams and angry shouts. She'll never get tired of the expressions on the faces of these sycophants after they travel the paths for the first time. There, see? This is how she does it. Now you try.

"Allo~"

She lets the salamander fall again, screaming, into a nest of chains she's wound between the pillars behind those tapestries. She hears the snarling rushing closer behind her, and runs vertically up the wall without so much as a wobble.

"Mek Ah? Mek Ah! I am coming! Where are--"

The trap is sprung. The snarling guard feels the tap of two fingers on her back, and then in the next second her screams join her clutch sister's as she's falling up, up, up, bound from tail to chest and left to hang upside down and stare at the squirming, thrashing form of Jerioth ab-Ishtar trying to keep her veil from flopping uselessly and scandalously up over her eyes.

One more. Marianne glides across the ground like a shadow now catching those wide, runny eyes and waving before -- zwoop! She disappears inside a statue and reappears a second later in the air with her leg already extended above her head. She twists 180 degrees and lashes out with her heel, reveling in the dull sound of contact across the back of the neck. The lynx bounces twice on the ground before she comes to a halt, moaning and twitching, but useless.

"Sweet dreams, little kitty."

She spreads her arms and makes ready to catch her prisoner when she falls.

[been told this is another Unleash roll, which is another 10]

Ahnn.

Exposure burns through her, igniting all the scaffolding she's used to cover the broken patches of her heart. All the wounds are open again, old and new. The haphazard attempt at healing is undone in a stroke and what she'd thought was recovery was merely bouncing off the bottom.

She wasn't ready for this.

She hated being seen like this. She wished her power was invisibility. She wished the things she did never connected back to her, wished that she could pass through the world like a ghost. She'd never asked for the friends, the fame, the duty. They'd added to her burden brick by brick until she was lifting the whole world like Atlas. Of course she'd dropped it. She couldn't even lift herself.

Ahnn.

What was she doing? She couldn't even beat Asterion, let alone all the people Asterion couldn't beat. She had all the authority and potency of a stop sign. What was it about her that made people think she could?

She grasped her hood and pulled it up over her head. It'd do until she found a proper veil to hide behind.

Set feels some sympathy for the lynx before her. That sense of smug orange superiority oozing off of her is so strong. Set understands, sympathizes even. Isn't that something like what the Phantom Thieves themselves are trying to create? That mystique of just being better than everybody else. That turns heads, tugs on hearts. Little Annunaki thinking "maybe I want to be like that." The lynx feels that superiority over humans, and so it clouds her judgment and causes her to strike with abandon, secure in the belief that she's just better because nobody without a spinal mane could possibly see through the choking incense to react in time.

It's just that the lynx is wrong. She's underestimated the little goddess in front of her. That orange smugness shines off her like a torch in the night and so she's easy to predict.

She leaps. There's a swish of colorful linen. Set sinks into the floor. Lynx claws brush a swirl of dress that flutters aside leaving only air to rend. Then there's a light tug on her chest, a hand that's grabbed her from below. It's not that hard, even for a weak, small human, to grab the armor so the lynx's own momentum rips a chunk of her protective mesh off her chest, and then a new blast curls around the wrist of that hand. Just a light one, not too wide, a pinpoint strike of lapis energy that feels like a bull just kicked her right in the ribs.

[Directly engage with Littlest Space Bandit: 2+2+3=7. We trade blows, but Set selects the resist or avoid their blows option. Mra'al probably marks a condition.]

Jason!

This scene is fucked. You’ve got a general idea of what interacting with a superhero is supposed to be like; you were a freshie when the aliens showed up, after all. They save you. If they get the shit kicked out of them, they tell you it’s not that bad, worry about yourself. You stuck your neck out for the Great Betrayer, the person who was scheming with the Annunaki the whole time, and you’ve heard the only reason she’s moonlighting now is because they screwed her over back, and, like, that’s not noble, that’s just getting even. And here she is curling up into a ball and your heart’s still going seven million miles an hour.

You’d almost, you know, convinced yourself that you were cool. The sweaty palms you could ignore. The cold feeling of dread you could shove to the side. All you had to do was win the gladiator fight. They might even have mercy on you if you won one fight, or was it three?

“I could have taken it,” you blurt out. It’s seductively easy to blame her for the horror leaking back into you. You could have died! You could have died! “Nice job fucking it up like always. Cool to see you’re still finding new and exciting ways to ruin things for everybody, I guess.”

You toss your sword at the wall and flinch when it bounces back and skitters on the floor.

***

Marianne!

Jerioth flops into your arms like the catch of the day. It’s instinctual and almost effortless to shift and make sure the force of impact ends up distributed across her body, rather than dangerously concentrating anywhere— especially with that useless, gaudy jewelry hanging from her head. Someone should take those. They’d make good souvenirs.

“Grrrrfff, glllrrmph!” She weakly pants out further complaints and dire curses upon you and your whole family, each and every one completely incomprehensible, and the deeper she digs, the more helpless she feels, the more her eyes start to widen and her chest to heave. If she had her voice, it would be as easy as pie for her to order that troll to crush you. As it is, it’s looking at you with those dull, glowing amber eyes.

What’s the plan, Marianne? Was it to cow the cow, to make sure Jerioth understands what the consequences of saying one word off-script will be? Or was it to go and daringly fetch her little Shalomit, too? Or, perhaps, to offer the troll freedom and a weapon with which to rampage?

***

Mra’al!

The pain breaks your concentration; thoughts come flooding back in as your mane flattens. You’re lying on the floor, and your back throbs, your ribs screech and burn. This little girl, this child has claws. And what sort of huntress does that make you? You burn with shame, with anger.

Your Inquisitor trusts you! She hand-raised you! She shares her food with you, and this is how you repay her: you play with your food and damage the holy armor she arrays about you.

You roll to your knees, see that you have destroyed the windows of the djinn’s eyes; red-hot wrath fills you. You have failed! You have caused destruction to this most holy device! If you had been faster, this wouldn’t have happened. You surge forwards, a bola in your left hand and your rod in your right—

And then you hear your Inquisitor’s whistle. Keep her here, then. That’s the inflection.



***

Set!

It is time to go to the rendezvous point, because ops here are busted. You managed to send the Lynx hurtling into the monitors: unfortunate, but not like you could have done anything else. Now there’s not much more info you can get from here.

Also: because you just heard an Annunaki signal, and she’s gone from trying to catch the mouse to trying to cut you off. If you take your eyes off her for a moment, if you don’t make this a very smooth portaling out, there will be Trouble, and that is a promise. She’s spinning a pair of bolas, and those hurt when they wrap around a limb or two; if they slam into your head, you might even black out.

"Awww, what's the matter little cow? You are disappointed that your beaten down dogs could not save you, yes? HA! As if they could! You must not allow yourself to think your precious slaves can steal you away from me, any more than they could stop me plucking you from your party tonight. It will only break your heart, ma chérie."

When she smiles, it is not with kindness. There are too many teeth, they are too sharp and too colorful, and the shadows that her hood casts over her face keep warping and twisting it, as if just underneath the skin of this earth woman was a terrible monster out to devour the stars themselves. When she lifts a red-gloved hand to touch Jerioth's hair, it is not to soothe, but rather to neatly pluck the many glittering and sacred ornaments from her head and tuck them carelessly into jacket pockets. Making good the promise of her face. She radiates power, and spares not one look at the troll her prisoner is now trying very hard herself not to eye too greedily.

Marianne sighs and shakes her head.

"I am very disappointed in you, Jerry. Did you not hear me? Have you not seen me? And you're still thinking you might be in control? Non, non! You are not. Sweet little thing, you are mine."

Here she spins and sweeps low, tilting Jerioth until her head nearly brushes the ground and leaning in a powerful dancer's lunge to push her face inches from the Annunaki's nose. It's a corny romantic gesture that belongs in a movie on some other, sillier world, but the baleful light in her eyes makes it seem so dangerous it might actually wrap back around to sexy. She bends even closer, as if to kiss her prey, but at the last moment turns and sweeps Jerioth back into her lap, instead.

Now her fingers are under Jerioth's chin, directing her gaze forcefully to the troll. She grins with savage triumph when she sees her eyes try and flick away.

"There it is. That's my Doom, Jerry, yes! And you are hoping that when I loosen your gag so we can sing together and open that little door over there, you will be saved by your precious monster. But you won't do that, will you Jerry? No, you will not. Would you like to know why? Because you know already, you will not stop me. You may inconvenience me, yes, but I will have my prize just the same. And then I will be very angry, Jerry. You have not seen me be angry yet. And you do not want to.

Normally, a disobedient little cow like you, I would drag to market. I would bring her through the darkness to the secret dens of my brothers and sisters, to our little haven that your rumors call Absolution, and I would toss her to the stage in shackles for all the free spirits to enjoy as they please. Can you imagine it? All those filthy human hands, touching her divine body? Stroking her thigh and laughing at the noises that she makes? Maybe they will even touch her lips! I think that I will do this to your little sister, yes! But not you. No, never you. You are Jerioth ab-Ishtar. You do not get to feel the other side of your coin. No, I will take your sister, and I will steal all of your secrets with her, and you will know that this is true while you sink beneath the waters. Your people keep so many chains, yes! They will not miss their heavy irons, yes yes! I will tie you down with the full weight of your monstrous soul, and I will laugh as the waters take you and erase your memory from this earth. That is what will happen if you call out."

Marianne is burning tonight. She burns hotter than Jeanne D'arc, and more darkly at that. In the warped light around her, she seems to cast a shadow three times the size of the troll, with her head and her chains but a body made of snakes and tigers and worse things besides. And then she smiles, much more simply, and the illusion breaks and leaves her simply as the woman of the revolution once again.

"Or~" she chirps, "I will free your mouth, Jerry. And because you are a good girl who has learned her lessons at my heels, you will not speak out of turn. You will sing, sweetly and simply, and you will open the door with me, sit quietly by, and watch me plunder your treasures, and you will smile while I do it. Do you know why? Because you are a good girl, Jerry. You wish to please me, yes! You know that unlike your entire filthy rotten fortress of sin, I mean what I say. That is why I am not worried about your monster. You are a good girl. You are my good girl."

And when she smiles, she has all the charming countenance of a demon carved from shadows.

[Provoke: double sixes]

[Unleash powers to escape: 5+6+2=13!]

"Ah, everything is broken. All those screens that were so useful for spying." Set shakes her head, the movement like a parade of Set animals crossing her cheeks as her snake crown stands in judgment above. Perhaps she would play longer, try to really impress the lynx, but then there is that high whistle and she knows that one girl cannot stay in one place with the force of the Annunaki converging. Especially when there's nothing more to do here to help her team. Now was the time for departures.

Set walks daintily over to the Lynx as she recovers from her leap, stepping carefully around the little incense pellets, glass shards, and the poor unconscious guards. Red hot rage is rising from the lynx like steam, poor thing. She really ought to take a long swim to clear her mind, though perhaps Lynxes, like earth cats, did not enjoy the water. Idle musings. "I'm sorry, kitty. I can't play any longer, I need to leave for now." Set giggles a bit, high and clear, the giggles of a young goddess of chaos. Then a portal opens beneath her and she drops where there is no floor and is gone.

The plan was in a bit of disarray, not too much just a bit. She'd originally hoped to keep the security room for longer, alerting her friends of any dangers and ensuring no guard patrols were in the way. Canada was supposed to have been the one make the big distraction and then she was on her own to get out of there, and Marianne would handle getting them cleanly into the library. With all the fighting, Set hadn't had the chance to see anything of Marianne past her entrance and had no idea where she was at the moment. Canada had done something big and flashy, but who knew where she was now either! And there had been all those extra guards that Set had tried to send into a panic with all those false alarms to Caphtor. The best thing now would be to make her way to the rendezvous point in front of the library early so she could pull away any guards there and make sure Marianne had a free path. She didn't want to run into any of the alerted guard patrols either because it would suck to pull them towards where she was going.

So she took a roundabout route, slipping out of the panopticon and to the corridors below. She peeked around pillars, looking for where the guards were heading and then slipped back into those pillars in short jumps, slipping from shadow to shadow so that she could scout the library and see what dangers awaited them.

She shifts. Gets the shield underneath her and pushes. She props herself up to a sitting position and takes a steadying breath. Every motion hurts so much and that hurt shows in every flex of muscle.

For a moment there's rage. For a moment she feels that same choking, all consuming spite and fury that Asterion feels. It hangs before her like the sweetest ambrosia, the ability to just block everything out; to slay her emotions with a sword of spite. She could just attack and attack and attack and there'd be nothing left of her afterwards to hurt. Please. Let her have this. Let her blot herself out. Let her scar over.

What a luxury that would be.

"What's your name, kid?" she asked, gingerly rubbing the dirt and muck from her sleeve. There's a steady, calming confidence in her voice now. She still has this to give.

Marianne!

“I can’t,” Jerry sobs. “No no no no please let me explain please I’m sorry I’ll do whatever you say,” she says, as your fingers hover a sodden mass of fabrics dangerously close to her lips. “I, I can’t do it alone,” she gasps. Her ornate gold-flecked eyeliner is running and blotting on her priceless veil. “Caphtor only opens the lock if one of us— if I,, I’ll do it, but I have to do it with an Inquisitor, we’re not trusted with what’s inside, neither are they, we have to keep each other accountable, I swear on Ishtar’s holy foot that I’m telling you the truth, please, please, I,” her voice is so thick and wet and you have to remind yourself of all the students who cried like this but didn’t get any mercy at the hands of the great machine she’s a pampered cog in, but that reminder’s not hard at all, “I’m your good girl, I am, I swear, you don’t need to kill me please Ma-ri-Ann please please,” and in her eyes there is a terror of the waves and the dark and the certainty that you would.

“I’ll do anything, I’ll give away my household slaves did I say give away I’ll, I’ll treat them like treasures, I’ll pamper them,” she babbles, and your fingers tighten in her hair. “I’ll free them,” she screams, and now all you need to do to sow some chaos is to get that on a recording. Jerioth ab-Ishtar, promising to free slaves? The ensuing power struggle of her meteoric fall in power after tonight will turn the attention of the ab-Ishtari inwards, buying you time and breathing room to work on your next project.

The entire social system doesn’t allow for it. By the standards of her people, she might as well have offered to piss on a crucifix; abolition is a vile heresy, and once word gets out, her possessions will be seized and her slaves redistributed, and she herself will vanish into the Temple of Ereshkigal for... re-education.

(The guards don’t count; it’s a classic “they said, she said,” and Jerioth would just get huffy over their scurrilous accusations and have them... disappeared.)

Jerry sobs in abject terror, looking to you for some reassurance, some praise, desperate for something tumbling out of her mouth to be the key to her salvation.

***

Set!

The Nameless Library is built into a false support pillar; or, rather, a false section of a real pillar. The grand, vaulted chamber where Marianne even now waits for you is the only one that directly abuts against this section. On paper, it is nothing more than a Ecclesiastical Sub-Vault consecrated to Ishtar Tenebros, only to be used on the Day of False Radiance. (This is code, only understood by those high enough in the cult to understand the meaning; their lessers do their best to pretend of course they know when that Day is in the complex liturgical calendar. It does not behoove one to admit ignorance of the festivals.)

It is part of an entire wing dedicated to Ishtar Warbreaker, and as such, there’s usually a heavier guard complement moving down these hallways. They are, instead, fortifying the entrance to the wing and preparing to sell their lives dearly for the secrets of their masters. If they were needed elsewhere, Caphtor would tell them to relocate; and so it is that you pad silently down darkened corridors. A word, and Caphtor would stir the lights into life, revealing huge doors and eyes cunningly concealed in the baroque wall engravings and icons of Ishtar.

Behind each door is a room the size of a megachurch amphitheater, because the Annunaki are so extra their religious right builds a room for each festival of the year, equal parts “storeroom for the rest of the year” and “perfectly decorated for the occasion” and “holy places for the priestly caste to meditate upon the facets of the gods.” The perfect place to hide a top secret library behind the name of a false aspect.

[hate, long curdled and turned sour] is thought at you, but a little less loudly this time. The black-eyed girl pads silently next to you. Jump scare! [a grudge held so tight the fingernails turn red with blood]

***

Canada!

“Uh,” the kid says, eloquently, his train of thought derailing. That’s good. Deescalate. (It’s exhausting having to be the one to break up fights all the time, isn’t it? Must be nice to just switch the brain off and go ham like Asterion.) “Jason,” he manages to get out. “My name’s, it’s Jason. And you’re Canada.” He pulls down his veil in solidarity; he’s got a Mediterranean complexion, dark curly hair. No way to tell if he used to have facial hair; the Annunaki like a clean shave. “Look, I don’t know what your deal is, but... shit. You know I could have taken it, right?”

He’s still defensive, but his conversational spear is wavering. He doesn’t quite know what to think of you, and the stories probably don’t paint you in a charitable light at all. It’s probably been on the backburner of your mind, trying to figure out how to make people see you only ever wanted to help... once you figured out how to survive here, of course. But treat him like you treated that dog in Kabul and you’ll be able to give him (probably metaphorical) belly rubs.

"Yeah," she said. They both know the truth. "So, what are you in for, Jason?"

It's an extremely obvious question but she's confident he'll bite. After all, if there's anyone in the world he hates more than her right now, it's whoever put him in the arena in the first place.

It would be so easy.

All she has to do is put it to tape and disseminate it across the city. Simpler than breathing, especially once Set gets here. And then just sit back and watch it all burn. She can picture it so clearly: the panicking of the elites. They'll bluster harder than ever and insist things are as normal as could be, all the while drawing closer to their inner sanctums and pulling their security closer in fear of "Ma-ri-Ann". They'll invent new festivals, just drag them out of the calendar and pretend they were always there, just to put their own minds at ease and lose themselves in revelry. But everywhere she goes, she'll hear them whispering the name, watching the shadows, and shaking because they will not understand how it happened. The extra space she'd buy for the next job would be worth it if she had to repeat this a hundred times tonight.

But sweeter by far would be the satisfaction of watching their great and terrible wheel turn on itself. She'd burn most of her extra planning time just to be able to see it happen in person. The look on her face! The mewling cries for mercy! They'd ignore Jerry just like they'd ignore every human, then they would discipline her, and then they would break her! And when she was vapid and harmless and of no use to anybody, Marianne would get to watch them kick her all the way back down to the bottom of their ladder. And she would laugh!

Her third eye blazes furiously on her forehead. Marianne's hands curl into fists. She cracks her neck; a slow, deliberate motion that produces a thick and horrifying crunching sound. She glares down at Jerioth, full of fury and resentment and shadow and fire. Say the words, set the blaze, say them say them say them say them!

"...You will not free your slaves. You will do no such thing, Jerry."

A derisive snort. Marianne wads up the sodden packing and tosses it to the floor. She bends down on one knee to put her face inches away from Jerry's. Her breath is hot, and smells like rust.

"You've let your brain shrink to a shiny little marble. Your gaze is no wider than a puppy's; yapping without understanding just to please your mistress. My eyes see farther, yes! I understand your society better than you do, yes yes! You are not the source of the rot, chérie. You are a symptom. Declare your slaves free, and your friends will come and scoop them all up to parcel them out to crueler owners than you had dreamed of being on your most decadent day. Worry not! I will burn your whole society clean, in time. But tonight your silly promises will do nothing to keep my brothers and sisters safe."

She pauses and sighs. Let it go, Marianne. Let it go. Dim your flames, if just a little. She pats Jerioth on the head, a motion that snatches away two more ornaments as reparation and funding for the Resistance.

"Here is what you will promise me, instead. You will keep your slaves. You will protect them with your entire being. Do not punish them, not ever. Learn their names, properly. See that they are safe and treated with the kind of respect you would afford your own house. Keep being my good girl, Jerry, or I will find you, and I will be furious. My reach is longer than your walls, Jerry. My eyes are everywhere. I will be watching. But I can trust my good girl to behave, can't I?"

She stands up again, and makes no effort to undo the chains still binding her prisoner.

Set ought to be arriving to Marianne right about now, but she is busy having the jump scare of her life. It's all she can do not to cry out loud (years of meditation and focus training just barely paying off). Instead her jump is a mental affair, yellow colors, cat scurrying underneath a pillow!

Then a breath, that feeling of hatred. Set reflects that, yellow turning to angry red. Idols of Ishtar and Ereshkigal burning and then a sort of tilted head, question mark. Did she understand the target of hatred correctly? And then, belatedly, cat coming out of hiding, purring because she's delighted to meet the eyeless girl and it just took her brain a minute to catch up to that fact with all the intense emotions!

Is the Eyeless girl walking somewhere or following her? Can they hide in shadows to converse? Hopefully she's not keeping Marianne waiting too long, right?

Canada!

“Or what,” Jason says, in mocking imitation of... oh, it’s himself. “What are you going to do, send me to the pits? And then they sent me to the pits. I just couldn’t handle the bullshit, you know? The constant pressure of oh, prove you’re a person, because a person is a servile little slave. They made a mistake when they decided I was a person, I guess. Really, I was just terrified, but... well, you can only deal with that bullshit sanctimonity for so long, you get me? Fuck off, just because you have lasers and spaceships doesn’t mean you’re gods, or angels, or however their fucked-up religion works.”

Oof. The kid’s a last-chancer: they throw him to the Lionesses, and then if he survives, he’s either scared straight or useless for more training (and you saving him definitely tilted him towards the latter) and if he dies, well, obviously he should have been a better student. You came close during your training, but you had Tirzah pulling strings on your behalf to keep you on a special accelerated course, working with a carefully constructed new identity.

Which means that she’s the only person who knows both of your identities, and she holds that over you so carefully. She hasn’t made a move yet about your extracurriculars, and that’s obviously because there’s still good in her and you can save her and you definitely shouldn’t tell Anathet or Marianne because they’d jump to conclusions.

“What was it that Spanish lady said? Better to live on your feet, than... you get the picture.” He’s scared of dying, terrified even, but too stubborn to break, so he’s clinging to his bravado like a shield even as it splinters. He’ll die crying up there, sooner rather than later.

Unless you change that.

***

Marianne!

“Yes, yes, I will, I’ll do everything you say, I’ll be your good girl,” Jerry says, and then lowers herself onto her face, chained hands stretched out in front of her, and grovels desperately in the Annunaki style.

Your keen ears catch Set’s voice. Ah, she’s coming. Good. She’s a better hand at this sort of thing, even though you’re definitely the better actress. She’s just got a magic touch for those Djinn, no? And those feeling powers, the ones that meant you had to tell her who you were early, before she figured out and blurted it out.

But she’s taking her time, and you have a little more time to play with Jerry. Blow off some steam. Make sure she remembers her encounter with the demon of her nightmares for the rest of her life. You might be passing up on the big boost to your reputation... but you can still help your legend grow.

***

Set!

You’re approaching the doors now. If everything went right, Marianne’s in there with Jerioth, and she’s cracked open the doors and is already plundering the library. If everything went wrong, she’s not there, or worse, she’s been captured and you’re walking into a trap. Either way, you’re definitely picking up Fear and Humiliation coming from inside that room.

The black-eyed (or eyeless, yes, she is that too) girl is following you around. [smashing the face of Marduk, smash smash smash] Huh. That’s an intensely personal grudge. Then— [holding, petting, stroking fur, mother cat taking care of small fuzzy kitten]

That last bit, the feeling about cats, suggests either she’s familiar with them or picked it up from your mind. Possibility: what if she’s the projection of a superhero from the prison somewhere in the Temple of Enki? Or an actual escapee who didn’t bring all her faculties with her?

[a mummified cat being lowered into an ornate black sarcophagus] One gets the feeling that wasn’t so much a threat as thinking out loud, word association.

"That's rough, Jason," said Canada. "But I think the worst part of that is that it's not even dying on your feet. It's dying in a pit. Their rules, their game, their system right to the end. They don't even have to lift a finger."

Again, the shield is a pillar. The only support she has. She lifts herself up on it, aching joint after aching joint pulling her up, all that weight resting on the top of that mighty shield. Without it she'll fall, so fast and so far and so deep.

"The least you can do is make the bastards work for it. Right?"

[Potential: 1]

Shade of a captured hero. That was a good guess, interesting too, maybe worth investigating?

First she acknowledges the cats with more purring. That was sweet, and almost mentoring. The girl had chosen mother cat, not a companion. Did she think she was stronger than Anathet? Or older? Maybe she viewed herself as caring for others that way, or had when her whole self was present. There wasn't a lot of time though, Set needed to help her friends.

image of girls flipping through books, looking for signs asking "should I look for information about you in the library?" Set's thoughts are settling into a calm blue.

She can sense the strong shame on the other side, not Marianne's though she'd recognize it, so it must be a prisoner then. Really impressive as always. There was something about Marianne, maybe she could be a true kindred spirit even if she didn't have the sort of empath training that this eyeless girl had, or the Zhianku. She had that joy in life, in moving that made Set feel like sisters when they ran together and glided through walls each in their own way (Set thought hers was much less dizzying though).

The girl's shade flickering in the library the flickering is indecisive yellow, Anathet wondering whether the girl can stay with them while they look for information or if she'll have to leave again. And then: This one is a quick image, like a person changing from animal to animal, first cat, then crocodile, hippo, jaguar, mouse, cat again and on. It's a general question, a question of shape and self-identity, asking the eyeless girl to lock herself in from possibility. At it's heart, it asks the simplest question: "who are you?"

[Rolling to pierce the mask: but 1+2-1=2. Gaining a potential.]

Maybe it's too much too fast, Set starts feeling a purple melancholy regret at offering so much, she should have been more careful. Argh, if only there were really an expert here, not like her!

She's distracted like this when she walks in on Marianne and her prisoner. In fact, she very nearly thinks at them, which wouldn't do either much good, and has to stop herself and try to focus. She forces a short laugh, almost a bark, and says "well, Marianne, who do we have here?"

Marianne chuckles darkly as she watches Jerry grovel at her feet. It's not a full-blown evil laugh, the kind that would invite crashing thunder and blinding flashes of lightning, but you can hear the potential for all of that building in her throat. It's too much, seeing this exalted Annunaki in the exact pose she might this very same evening have demanded Étoile bend herself into had she said more than a handful of words out of line. Ah, but playtime is sadly almost over, n'est-ce pas?

"Come, little cow. It's time to open the door you say cannot be opened. We must be ready before our guest of honor arrives."

She curls her fingers onto her palm by way of waving and then flashes her terrifying wolfish grin to see Jerry crawl after her all hampered by her chains. That's good, yes! That's what you deserve, yes yes! She melts into the floor with a hop and a flutter of her long coat only to reappear a moment later, leaning against the door to the Nameless Library and casually lighting a cigarette.

It's an affectation, really, just part of the show. A trick stick she learned about back in high school when she needed ways to get back at Papa for whatever little things he did to upset her. But the smoke she can blow out is at once so casual and so dramatic that it's perfect for Marianne. She snorts a cloud of the stuff, like a dragon contemplating dinner.

"Do you like it here, Jerry? Is the decor to your taste? You'll be getting... intimately familiar with it tonight, yes." she tosses her head back and laughs at the involuntary shudder, "Aww, you're not surprised, are you? Every good thief leaves a calling card to mark their crimes, little cow. Tonight, you are mine. So make sure you leave an impression on your little friends when they find you~"

She's building dangerously close to that laugh, now. It's already echoing through the deep chamber, reaching the ears of the dangling guards who will hear it in their nightmares tonight. She stops herself to take another long drag of her cigarette, and breathes a deep ring of smoke out through the chains of her mask. She lets the light fall and stamps it out on the heel of her heavy boot. While she grinds it underfoot she inspects her gloves with casual disdain, pulling them tighter on her hands and then tucking her arms behind her head. She flashes another smile, all rubies and mirth with no love in it at all.

"You're picturing it, right? Don't worry, I'll take very good care of your veil. It'll be the crown jewel of my collection! Shall I take it now? You want that, don't you? You do, yes! Let Marianne take the weight of your repression from your face! Let us... ah. How disappointing, our Inquisitor has arrived. Greetings to my second key! Have you met my first?"