Canada!

“...I got you,” Jason says. And that’s when Caphtor bing!s right in.

“Elevator service resuming,” she says, a little more focused than usual; Caphtor is focusing attention here. “When you exit, janissaries will helpfully escort you to your accommodations. Thank you for your service, and remember that all must find their link in the chain.”

The elevator descends smoothly; Jason grabs the sword and stands, keeping its point low; he’s keeping it between you and him, better safe than sorry, but at least he seems willing to consider fighting his way out with you, not against you.

And then the door slides open smoothly and relief flows through you. These are some of the janissaries the Seneschal lent for security, and you are sure, recognizing them but not recognized, that every one of the laser muskets they’re carrying had a spent power pack locked into the stock.

They think they are armed. You know they are not. They stand before you, scaled and furred (and in one case, thorned), all in the royal red and gold livery of Marduk. “Leave the arms in here,” their leader, a burly Salamander sergeant, says to you. Muskets are held not pointed at you, but low-pointed in your general direction. It’s six against two, and there’s no way you can lose.

***

Set!

You get [hesitation; the fear of hurting a small and foolish animal] from her, which isn’t very flattering, but one supposes you started the kitten analogy. As you enter the room, she draws on herself, taking a deep breath and rallying around a thought— but she is afraid. You can tell that even without her hammering it into your head.

And then she turns a water hose on your brain and slams it into a wall. The information stream is incomprehensible; everything is broken and jagged and glitching out and wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong and

You’re on your knees, hands on the floor. When you raise your head, there’s no black-eyed girl, just Marianne and a very confused Annunaki in a ruined dress and a troll who hasn’t reacted at all.

Thank goodness for your training; it’s what lets you straighten your mind, bring order to a confused array of thoughts, and keep walking forward instead of curling up into a ball and turning your brain off.

Mark Hopeless as you piece yourself back together.

***

Marianne!

The cigarette falls from your numb fingers. Set walked in here with an eyeless girl. The eyeless girl looked at Set, they shared a moment, and then the eyeless girl exploded. She exploded into shapes you did not see with your eyes; they simply triggered the parts of your brain that recognize things. The eyes said: there is not a girl there. Your brain said: mandibles, and wings, and teeth, and darkness, the absence of light, the fumbling for the light switch in the middle of the night, and the shadow of the wings stretched from wall to wall.

Set, what did you do? That was... that was a Spirit of the Heart, a monster like Marianne, but level 99 where Marianne is, oh, perhaps 30 if we are generous with your training grind. And the part of you that is Marianne surges into a savage sort of joy, flooding you with that revolutionary fire as if fanned by a bellows, the urge to tear down the haughty and the proud, liberté, unité, égalité!.

Mark Angry; there is no room for silly little Étoile in the flood of Marianne, not now. You can taste the hot blood of the oppressor like a coal between your teeth!

[Potential 2
Hopeless. Insecure.]

Mistake! Pain! Fire! Flood!

In another world, another time, Set could just curl into a ball and cry. She could try to sift through every image, pick them apart piece by piece like a tangled knot, forget all the world around her, forget to eat or drink and just work at the thread until the world started making sense again.

It's shame that brings Set back to the present. The knowledge that Marianne is present and that she needs to be a good team member. The knowledge that a significant Annunaki prisoner is here and that anything more than a momentary reaction to some unusual thing will break the spell of power that the Phantom Thieves have woven for themselves. She stands, despite everything. She can't settle her mind back into blue, but she settles for a churning white/blue like wind on the waves rocking back and forth. She can go with the motion, ride it forward. She breathes more evenly. Strength lives in the breath.

But also, you know what, today has been a shit day for first impressions. And for a moment, as she stands up, she turns her face up and away from the prisoner so only Marianne can see her. Only Marianne can see the tears she's fighting back, the pain in those eyes, the way her face is all twisted up and she's biting down so hard she's nearly grinding her teeth. She was so close, she had felt something that hadn't been near her in months and she'd blown it! Right in front of Marianne and a very important prisoner to boot. Shame burns on her face and she can't hide it.

[Sharing her weakness with Marianne. Marking Insecure, marking potential, and Marianne gets influence over Set.]

She brushes a hand across her face, clearing her eyes. "Well, who do we have here?" She asks weakly, recovering enough to get back into her act. She is still painted with the images of the Set animals, still wearing her serpent's crown, still without a veil and adorned in her rainbows. She draws that into herself, rides the waves. "This is an Annunaki noble? I'm supposed to, what, wait until she's done groveling to get the door open?"

That's something at least. Gods what a day.

Marianne is burning. Her eyes flash like three tiny stars and the chains about her waist and shoulders rattle excitedly in response to the visions filling her mind.

Oho? Oho? What is this, what is this? She's never seen anything so beautiful! Oho! Could this be love? Is she meant to be intimidated? She is not! She is filled to bursting with the heat of revolution, which feels just the same as blood lust, which feels just the same as romance. Behind her, her shadow rises to meet the challenge of this newcomer, heedless of its obviously superior potency. She spreads so wide and tall that she engulfs the entirety of the great sealed door and then some, twisting and mutating until her shadow bares no resemblance to the girl still folded against the door at all.

The front of her is tiger, matted and wet with shapes like spines jutting about here and there. Her great paws end in claws so massive and sharp that Jerry at least would swear they actually crack the ground. Around her body are great shadowy chains, and at the end of every set of links, the metal gives way to scales, and a great serpent's head flicks its huge forked tongue and wriggles about impatiently. The back of her is a formless, nameless something, perhaps it is recorded within the library, and perhaps it is not. Its name is Fear and its name is Vengeance and its name is Marianne. Is it a tail, or great stomping legs with crushing cloven hooves? Is it the great talons of some huge bird of prey? Is it writhing tentacles that curl and crush and maim? The light flickers, and the canopy of shadows fills in what the imagination of its audience cares to see. When she is stronger, she will impose the shape properly. For now, the eyes must wander up up up and up, where her head floats misshapen and disturbing, and when she smiles it splits the shadow head in half and it is a monster, she is a monster, there is no human with a shadow like this and...

She is alone. This strange mating dance is now here only for Set. Marianne huffs and diminishes back into herself. She stomps the remains of her cigarette with unnecessary force and twists her heavy heel against it until it can never be lit again.

"Don't be stupid," she hisses, and this is definitely what her pouting looks like. She was just given a treat and now it's been taken away, and all the emotions she doesn't know what to do with are spilling out into the chamber, "Jerry is much too useless to open the door by herself, no matter how long we give her to finish groveling! She needs, oh! Poor thing! She needs help! From an Inquisitor of Ereshkigal! And tonight that is you, yes yes! Congratulations on your promotion!"

She steps away from the door and takes several dramatic paces forwards, clapping and then spreading her hands wide.

"Jerry, you may begin! Do not dawdle, do not doubt me, and do not fail."

It’s six against two, and there’s no way you can lose.

You say that, but then, you've never fought Asterion.

Her feet half give out under her as she leans into the charge - shield forwards, a striking ram, throw and toss, at least so goes the theory. Instead she impacts quickly but uselessly into the incredible abs of a terrifyingly impressive reptilian janissary. She pushes with her exhausted strength but it's like shoving against a brick wall. Maybe it's something to do with leverage? If she lowered her centre of gravity... oh no, that wasn't helping at all. Oh, of course, put your hips into it... no, that wasn't it either. Perhaps...

She hated fighting tough girls. So distracting.

[Directly engage: 3]

Set!

"At once!" 'Jerry' manages to get up onto her knees, and sniffs with as much ragged dignity as she can muster in that position. "Brute! Stand aside, by order of Jerioth ab-Ishtar!" The troll gives the three of you a look, as much as something with such a craggy face can, and you can feel the slow rumble of its heart. (Trolls are difficult; their feelings are solid, very tricky to penetrate and understand.) Then, obediently it shuffles aside, its huge chain dragging noisily on the floor behind its foot. "Caphtor!"

bing! "Hello, my lady," Caphtor says, this piece of her more present and aware than usual. "Are you aware that you are restrained?"

"It's fashion," Jerioth sneers, punching down the only way she can; you can feel the angry, tearful spite radiating off her. "And I did not ask for your opinion. Shut your useless mouth and open the Nameless Library. The Inquisitor requires the volumes that we, blessed of Ishtar, keep out of the sight of the ignorant and the feeble-minded."

"The... Inquisitor?"

Jerry looks back behind her, expectantly. That's your cue!

***

Marianne!

Hah! Give Jerry the chance to put that mask back on over her face, that air of complete superiority, and she grabs it like she's drowning. Pathetic. Her bravado will melt when you lift that ruined veil off her face, fold it in fourths, and cup her chin in your hands. She'll beg you to have mercy, to give her even a slave's thick veil, but you will give her a kiss and tell her that she is to sing, little bird, sing a story of Ma-ri-Ann...

The troll watches you with those sullen red eyes. How do you feel about trolls? They're huge, most often used for construction work and to guard places like these, and one swipe of one of its hands could send you flying all the way across this hall. If Jerry found her courage, or a priestess happened to stumble in here in some grand comedy of errors, you would have one hell of a fight on your hands. But they're not vicious, the way a lot of the Salamanders are, just single-minded about carrying out their orders. If you didn't know better, if you hadn't heard them humming strange vibrational songs to themselves in the dark, you might even think they're just animals, or very strange robots.

***

Canada!

The janissaries raise muskets and fire. Or, at least, the two in the back try to, and are unpleasantly surprised when their muskets just make a low rattling sound of defeat. Those two see the melee that ensues around you and Jason and retreat to find reinforcements and working muskets; you would have been able to cut them off if this Salamander hadn't averted her eyes from your distracting face and grabbed you, shield and all, in a bear hug. Ugh, if word spreads that there were mechanical malfunctions with the weapons, your mild-mannered alter ego back home is going to get it. Still worth it, but you'd hoped to avoid triggering that failsafe. Anyway, back to the Salamander: it takes a head-butt for her to loosen her grip, and by then Jason's already had his sword knocked out of his hand.

Take a Powerful Blow. This isn't the grand, dramatic sort of fight where you stagger back up and defiantly slam your shield into the ground, this is a chaotic, messy fight where the question isn't whether you'll win but how badly things are going to go south in the meantime.

Set takes a deep breath. This she knew how to do, and she felt more confident falling into her role in the plan. No time to blush with shame or seethe with anger at herself when she had a job to do. And if Caphtor was more present, all the better. "That would be me" Set says, stepping forward. She puts a hand out and takes Caphtor's in her own. Let Jerioth see her share of heresy today. Treating a Djinn as a being worthy of empathy instead of as a tool to be treated as a lesser by all other beings. She raises Caphtor's hand to her own heart.

"If it's all right with you, I need to perform the duties of an inquisitor of Ereshkigal today, Caphtor." She lets a bit of herself bleed over to the Djinn: a confident blue when it comes to the skills necessary (for she can surely read people and seek information as well as any Ereshkigali) and then a little bit of contrasting brash orange, the sort of emotion that says I'm ready for anything without even bothering with the question of what substance backs that up.

Caphtor may never have been asked this before, but then again, in all of Capthor's history with the Annunaki, it's doubtful that anyone ever presented themselves to her as an inquisitor of Ereshkigal when it wasn't true. Just think of the scandal! Their whole house would be brought in for reeducation for keeping such a fool among them. Great dynasties of Annunaki have been brought down for lesser crimes than that!

So Set has every confidence that she can simply ask, sincerely, for what she needs from Caphtor.

Ugh, Set. She's talented, you have to give her that. Dedicated, too. Essential. But come on girl, where is your sense of the moment? This whole operation is being held together right now on the back of "Ma-ri-Ann's" reputation, and you won't lean into that even a little? Too much faith is dangerous, you know.

Marianne looms just behind Jerioth and puts a hand on her shoulder. It is not for comfort. Her fingers curl and squeeze just to the point of pain, then relax, hover, and squeeze again on a loop. She is seething. Do not grow too comfortable in your mask, Jerry. You must not think that bullying will save you.

Because it is essential that Jerry not consider the troll, Marianne makes a show of not considering it, either. Her eyes are only on Caphtor, or on the door, flickering like angry coals that cast her hungry smile in ghostly light. The emotions that she radiates are confidence and impatience. Do not ask her what colors those are; she has no patience for these analogies. She is waiting, she has waited, it is time, the door will open now. It will open for her. You cannot keep her out. You will not.

But underneath that... trolls. What a bothersome group of creatures they are. It's not that Marianne isn't confident she can defeat one, if it came to that. In fact she's done it once already; that's part of where her legend comes from. The problem is... well. The problem is that they are more like aliens than any of the other alien things that now occupy her world. The Annunaki themselves have left...

No. You do not get to talk about your feelings here, Étoile. Sleep and be silent. Swim in the sea of rage. Trolls are merely walls that emotions bounce off of. You cannot terrorize them. You cannot trick them. If they come at you then you must run or you must crush them, with no other alternatives.

And worst of all, they hit very hard. Marianne will never flinch from pain, nor will she fall from something as trivial as giant rocky fists. Not on a night like tonight when the fire in her heart is stoked so high. But she has her other life to consider. Étoile must weather the same wounds as Marianne, do not forget. A little bit of blood tonight will be essential, but if she snaps an arm and several ribs? It will be... problematic.

That is why she pays it no mind. She is waiting for her moment. The door will open, as it has to, and she will freshly break her little Jerry so that she will not slip back into her ugly self the second everyone's backs are turned. The image of it floods the front of her brain. Her face shall be lovely without that veil to mar it. But lovelier still will be the expression plastered all over it. The fear, the frustration, the humiliation! And best of all? The need. Let the walls of your civilization crumble before Marianne, Jerry! Give to her your soul, yes!

She watches, and she waits. She cannot keep the rumble of laughter locked inside her throat.

Canada Taliv does not have super strength. She has medium sized girl strength. It is extremely easy to dismiss heroes who make their name off of super strength until you're being hugged to unconsciousness by a salamander and can't break out of it no matter what you do.

She's not a warrior. She never was. In the world before, her battles were against unpowered people, strange mystical effects, traps, supervillains whose claim to fame was having a freeze ray. She's not ready for this.

[Powerful blow: 10. Canada is taken out]

Set!

Caphtor thinks very, very hard, and then brightens! She’s figured out the answer. “Ah, of course. You must be working with Annan ab-Ereshkigali. That is very clever of her, bringing more than one masrur on such an important mission! She’s here to catch the Phantom Thieves, you know.”

The locks on the door disengage and it rolls back silently, revealing the Nameless Library, built into a hollow pillar, the storehouse for every bit of knowledge the Annunaki wish to keep suppressed.

When you step inside, at first you must think that you have made some sort of mistake, that you fell for an elaborate trap, because the walls are elaborate depictions of Ereshkigal and the Ten Thousand Exquisite Torments. Here is the Rose’s Kiss, there is the Leading by the Nose, and there is the cruel Shutting of the Sarcophagus. (Rumors circulate about particularly stubborn sinners left blind and deaf and sustained for years inside those elaborate oubliettes, thrashing helplessly as Ereshkigal’s Love washes over them day in and day out.) And there, the Wiping of the Slate, the hypnosis that turns its victims into, if one were to be uncharitable, giggly useless ditzes. It’s not permanent, but reversal requires the forgiveness of the Inquisitiors, so in your case...

It very much would be so.

***

Marianne!

Jerry is trying so very hard not to look at those murals, isn’t she? So she can only look at the ornate carpet in the center of the chamber. It has anti-gravitational properties woven into its elaborate design, much like the war-chariots that darkened Earth’s skies. A stone plinth sits before it, and a tablet rests there, its stylus carefully chained to the plinth.

You look up, and see the niches, each one holding a scroll or another tablet, innumerable and leading up into the shadows. Ah. So that’s their game. You enter the carpet’s directions into the tablet, and it rises up to allow you access to one of the niches. Doubtless every access is logged and recorded. It’s likely one is an index, and that’s the only one that’s taught to the vast majority of Inquisitors; that’s the way you’d do it, if you were a paranoid, sadistic godling who got her kicks turning spanking, bondage, and sensory deprivation into divine sanctions.

Too bad she never expected that Marianne would be here to stick her hands into every little niche until she found what she wanted...

***

Canada!

It is fortunate that the chain of command is so rigid. Even though these janissaries know they have caught Canada, the notorious Phantom Thief, they had their orders: pacify the gladiators and put them in their cells. So here you are, in your new cell, chained to the wall by your wrists. The spare veil they forced over your face smells funky, and you’re very aware that the news of your capture is trickling back up the chain. Not the chain holding your wrists up over your head, the other one, the chain of command.

You’ve got a narrow window of opportunity here for getting out of this dingy cell before Unpleasant Things Happen, but it’s incumbent on you getting out of the cuffs, and your superpowers aren’t exactly helpful with that, right?

So you have time to think, and stew, and think back to when you first found the Power of Ra...

[Potential 2. Hopeless. Insecure.]

Set lets Marianne take the lead entering the library, pulling Jerry through. She waits until they're looking the other way before she gives Caphtor a slight nod of thanks and enters herself.

She had messed up, hadn't she? Not like, the worst or anything, but ugh, she was so off her game, not feeling at all sure of herself. She had just done her thing, treated Caphtor the way that felt right to her and not stopped to think at all! Ugh ugh ugh! Now the big Annunaki noble had seen her do that. Maybe they'd hurt Caphtor or change her rules or something? Plus Marianne was obviously trying to do the whole big fear thing. Set hadn't even been paying attention to Marianne's expected emotions when she'd asked her to be the inquisitor. She was probably supposed to make a big magic show of it, get all glowy and make it look like she had some special way to control the Djinn that the Annunaki couldn't stop, then just share her mind with Caphtor and ask nicely that way. Now she'd screwed it up and kind of broken the mystique. God what an idiot. What a big softie. Marianne was going to chew her out for this later. "Set, we are but three, we must rely on our notoriété if we are to accomplish anything!" and so forth.

Okay, well she could still make at least something of a show of it. Behind the two, she steps into the library proper and brings down her sandal with a loud *clack* and causing her dress to flare up in a swirl of reds, blues, and greens. "In the name of the great goddess Set, lord of the desert and the storms, god of the outsider and the beast, I consecrate this space!" She brings her other foot down, setting them apart and rotating slightly into a strong stance, as though defining the bounds of a magic circle. "By her power, I claim this knowledge that it may be freed. The beasts will roam the halls and tear down the walls! The winds will shatter the windows and the sands will breach the gates!" Her jewelry glows in a sudden, bright flash (never mind that it's all just theatrics and low power laser effects) and then she is quiet and still with her arms crossed as she lets herself settle into place.

So, alright there Marianne, some theatrics. She's not at all confident in it, but she's projecting strength as best she can. Over to you to finish things up.

When Marianne is done with her prisoner, Set is actually eager to dig into the stacks. There is the question of TIAMAT to research (and then to rip as many tablets out of the archives as possible as fast as possible to cover their tracks). And, there is the matter of the eyeless girl. She's going to search for captive heroes and for descriptions of spirits and gods with dark holes for eyes and see what that turns up. She's very excited, but she's doing her best not to act giddy because that would be unbecoming of a Phantom Thief in front of a prisoner.

Also, Canada had better be making her own way out. There wasn't going to be time to wait for her at this rate.

She'd been given a smartphone as a gift for her seventeenth birthday - something that had diligently held pride of place at the top of every christmas list for half a decade, finally realized now that the threat of going on strike from her job at her parent's cafe was becoming credible. What she hadn't expected to find was that the device was far more interesting with the screen off than with the screen on.

The reflective surface was fascinating. With the screen on the millions of tiny pixel-lights filled the world with light, but when it was off there seemed to be a hollow in the world occupied by a shadowy version of herself. She sensed potential in that deep place and she grew so used to keeping the phone off that she took out the battery.

That's when it deepened. Now the hollow of light had a physical hollow in it too, an empty shell, a void of being - all the more pure for its emptiness. She opened it up and took more things out - the SIM card, the wiring, the processor, drawn along by strange logic. Something moved in the deep and she could see it - and once she took out the phone's speakers she could hear it too. Methodically she unpacked the phone, discarding the casing so she was holding just the liquid-crystal screen as a single glowing reflective part in her hand. Then she peeled off the protective film.

And finally she removed the screen itself, leaving only the reflection.

ANAH KEL ANNUNKI ZENT KARI MAR ANUN CAPHTOR UNKIROS TAIRAN VERDA KALIS KEL VARKALONT

Piece by piece she had freed the reflection from every physical constraint that chained it. She stood before the solar lion that had been caged within the shadows of the mirror and it burned white and gold and violet. She saw it with eyes that had seen it in every shadowed surface for a lifetime but never realized. It raised its mighty left paw and with razor talons it repaid her in kind. Down those talons came and they ripped away her ugliness. Her selfishness. Her sloth. Every part of her she regarded as a failing was undone in a moment of radiant cleansing and the vision of the mirror finally aligned with the vision of the heart.

As the lion stepped from the mirror into her the dark reflection snapped in two. They fell into the world, sharp and jagged and almost-physical. Sword and shield. Two different visions of her own self were contained within, but for that moment when she held them up, they were in balance.

She'd come a long way from that moment of perfection.

She'd scourged herself of her weakness once, but now she knew that wasn't the same thing as being strong. She had been her most perfect self, but it hadn't been enough and she had failed to live up to it. And now here she was, squirming against a wall, wondering if the Annunaki knew enough about her to call forth the lion and have it finish its work by tearing out that troublesome edge of defiance.

Or if they had other ways to scourge the feeling out of her.

She struggled harder, wrists and ankles squirming uselessly against her chains.

"You seem scared. What is the matter?"

Marianne breathes deeply of the aftermath of Set's benediction and plants her foot firmly next to Jerry. There's a rustling of fabric, a jangling of chains, and she claps her hand on her prisoner's shoulder. She kneels, to put the sound of her breathing in Jerry's ear. Her impossible ruby grin is devouring her face. Her eyes glint like coals. Her emotion is: Delight. But the color is tainted dark and creepy, swirled up as it is in anger.

She takes her fingers gently under Jerry's chin and lifts her gaze to the many absurd murals on the walls. Every flinch and squirm summons a derisive bark of laughter.

"Your mind is clouded and milky, little cow. Can it be true? Is the exalted Jerioth ab-Ishtar just a naughty girl afraid to face her spanking? Worry not! Your Ma! Ri! Ann! is here for you! She will show you a world beyond the silly bedroom antics of your little temples! She will open your eyes to the truth! Did you think your lessons were over? Non, non! Now is the most important moment of your classes with Professor Marianne! You must walk the paths, Jerry. You must see the way your little catalog means nothing and less to me! Come! Let us plunder the most forbidden secrets of your people, yes! Let it be the declaration of our love, yes yes!"

With careless grace, she scoops Jerry up off of her feet and tosses her roughly over one shoulder. Let her kick and squirm! Let her squeak! But let this be the moment little Jerry is baptized! Still cackling, Marianne tosses a sloppy and very unofficial salute in Set's direction and then walks into, and through, a wall. She reappears a quarter of the way up the cylinder, still hauling her precious student with her.

There are no locks to keep her out of anything in here. There is no need to follow the systems the Annunaki laid out for themselves. There is no need to fear their reprisal. She falls through the Nameless Library to rise higher. Twisting, singing, warping, stealing. Laughing. She is here for the materials relating to TIAMAT, whatever those may be, but this is rather like being a thief in an unguarded jewelry store, no? You cannot blame her if she plucks more than her fair share, and all the better if her little cow has no idea where her true target lies.

She must take some care to protect little Jerry's place in society, after all. Just a little. Or else she'll never be keep her promises to be the shield her many slaves require.

Canada!

When the door opens, five janissaries enter, all of them in the white-and-gold of troops on a long-term loan from the Marduki. The next to enter is a Thornback in loose, flowing robes, and then one of the Annunaki. Of course, you think, as you recognize her. She’s both a hail mary chance at escape, and the promise of a terrible fate if you can’t play her.

Arákh ab-Ishtar is better known as the Puppeteer in Caphtor Below. She’s not just rumored to be in charge of the Cult of Ishtar’s counter-intelligence wing, despite being merely a chief breeder by rank, but she’s a playwright. And she mostly writes very, very blue bodice-rippers. No, that name doesn’t translate to the “if you’ve got them, flaunt them” Annunaki. Veil-tearers?

Her marionettes flaunt themselves in exciting outfits and play out these stories as entertainment, sometimes just for her household, sometimes for exclusive feasts, as her readers sitting in front provide dialogue, stage directions, and reactions. The marionettes spin and gyrate and grope each other, the chains attached to their limbs and collar rising up into a vast and intricate mechanism that makes up a large part of any stage she chooses to grace with her stories. (They say it gives Caphtor instructions on how to move the chains, constantly, so she cannot forget. They say that there are almost never accidents.) And their thoroughly muffled groans of effort and yearning are almost impossible to hear, even if the audience were to try; her prose is too fine to let some barbarians ruin it with an ill-timed word, just as her choreography must be perfect, perfect, perfect!

She’s here to decide whether she wants to turn you over to the Ereshkigali or keep you as her own prize. Which one is worse, do you think?

“Have her displayed,” she says to the Thornback. Her nails are encrusted with powdered pearls; her veil is a deep, dusky blue, and the many layers of her sheer top make it look as if she’s wearing a wave. “I want to see what I’m working with.”

***

Marianne!

You open your eyes. Then you open your eyes again.

The feedback is stinging and hot, pressure building up in your skull, behind your burning eyes; you squeeze them shut a moment later, the tangled cables of interconnection burning beneath your eyelids like electric lights. There, that thick and tangled knot; that is the Index. It must be.

You are there in two steps. Glyphs indent themselves into its sleek surface as you lift it; you sink the stylus into the tablet and draw your query with a flourish. The glyphs are filled in, and then a new sequence carves itself: the location of the few tablets concerning TIAMAT. You toss it down to Set easily, trusting her to take it with her. Let the tyrants puzzle out what has gone missing the slow and painful way.

Then you launch, fall upwards, drag a screaming Jerry with you as tablet after tablet becomes yours: all the dirty laundry of Caphtor.

***

Set!

Frustratingly, digging into the tablets concerning the ab-Enkiji reveals mostly heretical treatises and blueprints. One of the small advantages you have up your sleeve is that the Annunaki hold dogma and divine revelation over personal innovation, at least publically. There’s a story emerging here, or at the very least a narrative.

Like, look at this! A transmatter receptor that could, with some development, lead to tech like your Rift Generator; SEALED BY ORDER OF THE HIGH GODS. They don’t want any of their oh-so-loyal servants having access to your toys. Instead they rely on vast, power-hogging teleportation circles, wasteful and dangerous.

But the medical records that the ab-Enkiji are doubtless producing, the experiment logs: those are absent, save for a recent treatise arguing that Earth is inherently corrupting and that the profane powers of mankind are signs that it is a knot of cancerous flesh in the skin of the universe we know.

A miscalculation. If he is right, then the High Gods were wrong to return. This is not just impossible but impolitic. How fortunate that he was silenced: his solution was to “purge this mire of corruption through holy fire, until it splits open and by the grace of the High Gods, we may excise its ill-being from existence.”

Wait. Hold on. What’s this here? A footnote scrawls its way along one side.

“(cf. the sightings of the blind child, harbinger of the corruption of those impious few among our peers who are given to the graces of our caretakers)”

A chill runs down your spine. An implication is unfurling in your heart. The corruption this treatise refers to is superpowers. You could very well read that note as an admission that Annunaki have developed superpowers and then been handed over to the ab-Ereshkigali. But how? What does the blind child have to do with it? And why haven’t... well, of course. Because any pious Annunaki would turn to confession, and being “disappeared” for re-education by the secret police is a common enough occurrence.

(Your sibling could just vanish one day, and the only recourse you’d have to find out more is passing a request to your superiors, who then would ask their peers in the Cult of Ereshkigal for more information. By law, they’re required to pass that information to your head of house, but little more.)

Your eye drifts over to the mural of the Shutting of the Sarcophagus; the mummified sinner, frozen in writhing as the lid is set into place. If any Annunaki might deserve sympathy, it would be one who suddenly, through no fault of their own, finds themselves an unacceptable state secret...

Sympathy? Of course sympathy. Set thinks that what the Annunaki do is monstrous, but when she can see the emotions of the people around her so clearly, how can she not have sympathy? Even the Seneschal has his worries, his desires to do right by his people, to ensure that the city runs well and all are prosperous. His mind is not animated by a desire to do evil, but rather by the evil that is all around him and formed him. The evil of his blindness that he cannot see the suffering of the djinn or the people he enslaves for the wealth of the Annunaki. Each Annunaki is bound already in countless chains long before Marianne reaches them. Chains of family, duty, and expectation. It does not forgive their invasion nor their cruelty, but still Set feels sympathy for them as she fights them. That is her nature, too kind by half.

Even her choice of deity is a choice of sympathy. Set is the god(dess) of war, storms, and chaos. The goddess of the outsider and the red desert beyond the safety of civilization. She styles herself a force of freedom. A breaking of the society that confines the Annunaki so rigidly that even in the library right in front of her face she watches as they fail to think and grow. Anathet imagined, when she chose her persona, that hers would be the storm that struck with a vast and powerful force but departed with a sweet and tender kiss, the water that renewed civilization once the confining walls were shattered.

So! So to think now of an Annunaki who has become anathema to them. Who is trapped and lost. Ah, it's so sad and so hard. The hatred she felt towards Marduk, that was understandable. But what would she do if freed? All that power. Would she work for change or merely destroy? The Zhianku have a phrase for that: the self-consuming whirlwind. A gale of such force and power that it falls in upon itself and blows itself out and after there is nothing but silence.

Set is grabbing the tablets, as many as she can carry. These files on the eyeless girl and the heresy (how cool, an Annunaki schism! Though she wasn't in any rush to convince people they wanted to destroy Earth). Grabbing the tech files too, she thought perhaps it would help her improve her own stuff or at least keep them unique and mysterious longer. The Enkiji didn't need to be studying her. Gross.

Step, step, warp, step from pedestal to pedestal. She's got an idea for the eyeless girl. She needs something, some maps, plans, routes of the secret ways in these Annunaki halls so she has something to shorthand directions. A way to picture the temples in her mind's eye. A way to let the eyeless girl show her places to go, to guide first and then to find her and free her. When they were ready.

Oh, and there is this other thing. TIAMAT. Marianne had tossed that her way, so she needed to grab those. They were supposed to be worth this whole mission, so they'd better be important too. What was going on with that?

The World of the Nameless Library is a truly twisted place. How fitting for a place even the decadent Annunaki tyrants feel the need to bury it three layers deep. 'Forbidden knowledge.' Ha! What a farce. If they really wanted their silly tablets to go unread, they would have destroyed them. This is just another layer in the pyramid scheme they call "The Great Chain". Of course it is. The Annunaki only ever 'forbid' anything so that it feels more luxurious for those who are permitted.

It's veils. Veils all the way down.

Navigating this spiraling maze of knife edges and shadowy whispers that slip off of everything like black muck is the most fun challenge Marianne has had in her short time on this earth. The glyphs run through the paths like veins, throbbing like the heart of a lovesick maiden. These are the only lights to navigate by. The landscape itself is nothing but pillars jabbing up out of the murk like giant spears stacked on top of each other at impossible angles. Sometimes they fit together almost like steps, only to suddenly break apart into gaps too wide to navigate without suicidally dangerous leaps or swings. Sometimes they melt underfoot and collapse, crumbling and screaming like frightened children, into the void of nothing that spreads between the corners of what most people would call the 'real world'. Even the air feels charged and tense, more than is usual for the hidden paths. These secrets have sharp edges. If it could be compared to anything, it would be like trying to breathe the sea, if the sea were filled with razor blades and free swimming tongues. All at once it's choking, cutting, wet, and terrifying enough to give a person nightmares for months.

Marianne laughs. She pitches through it at angles bodies were not meant to bend, in and out and in and out again before it can hurt her. Some nights when her heart was less clear, a place like this would be the death of her. But Marianne burns brightest when she burns hottest, and tonight that heart creature has stoked a rage in her so deep it may well risk seeping even into Étoile's life for a night or two. She'll have to take it out on herself. Images must be maintained. The mask must still be worn.

She plunders secret after secret with little rhyme or reason. Schoolyard tattling is as rich a reward to her as weapon designs or theoretical mumblings that might explain her own origins in whatever vague and stupid terms they might use. It will be horrible drudgery to sift through it all later, but what fun to disseminate the juicy bits to the public after that! The other side of the coin that comes with forbidding knowledge to fuel your fetishes is that any light that gets shined on it is automatically scandalous, no matter how pointless the actual tidbits may be.

But all good things must come to an end. Marianne does not have infinite time to play in here tonight, and the insides of her eye sockets are beginning to burn rather painfully. With deep reluctance, she forces them shut again, and lets herself fall to the proper floor with a heavy clonk of her boots. Her grin is as evil as it ever was. Her eyes weep smoke. She shifts to sling Jerry into both her arms, and flashes her one final deep look to remember the evening by.

"You won't get away with this," said Canada, squirming against the chains. "When I get out - eek!"

She was in the habit of downplaying her looks. She couldn't deny the tactical advantage they presented (and how nice it felt to be pretty), but she was a knight first and should wield a weapon like that cautiously. And show respect to her opponents by allowing them to battle as warriors, and hopefully be respected in exchange. And because the flirting of villains in general and Annunaki in specific didn't really follow boundaries and - eep! No! S-stay back!

Her hair was loosened from its practical ponytail into a long cascading raven waterfall, perfectly falling towards her left and pooling on her shoulder. Her face was cleaned revealing the glow of health, cheeks slightly flushed, eyes naturally shadowed. Her rough slave jacket is discarded, revealing an athletic anatomy that couldn't quite conceal it's natural softness...

To answer Arákh's question, there's a lot to work with. But most compelling of all are the eyes. They reflect a different world, a flawless world. To look deeply into them is to see your best possible self and that is the most intoxicating thing of all.

[Unleash: 12]

Mra’al!

On your first hunt with your alpha, you had failed her; the revolutionary used a vial of stolen perfume broken in an alleyway to burn your nose and mask her trail. Then, you had fallen to your knees and begged her for forgiveness, tried to confess your weakness to her. She ordered you up and kept the hunt on. You caught the revolutionary in the end, and delivered her to salvation, that she might understand her place in the Great Chain. And when you returned to her estate, your alpha punished you both for your failure and for begging for forgiveness at the wrong time. When you are hunting, you are hunting, and the huntress does not stop to beg for the scourging of her sins.

This is why you are not groveling at her feet. That would distract her from her thoughts. She looks out over the crowd, fingers drumming on the marble railing, as the revelers demand answers from the guards.

“They scattered the guards outwards,” she says. “So that they could work inside. The response has to be both internal and external. The witch, she has Zhiantu arts; locking the doors will not help. We need an Altar of Interdiction, but by the time the ab-Enkiji respond to our request... Caphtor.”

The djinn appears, bowing her head in reverence.

“By the name of our lady, who is the Scourge and the Rose, carry this to the Hierophant. Annan ab-Ereshkigali bids her to have three-fifths of the janissaries under her mantle conduct a rice-grain sweep through the temple.” If we do not find them, your alpha thinks to herself, we will find their objective, and so understand them. “The other two-fifths should conduct a slave-search both above and below.” They must masquerade as slaves, your alpha knows, so we will strip that anonymity from them.

“As you will,” Caphtor says, and then is gone. Your alpha pours herself a glass of a rich, dark wine, the bottle taken from a platter held by a golden-haired slave girl, and then a second for you.

“Now, Mra’al,” she says, as you take your cup from her mailed fingers, “tell me everything about your battle with the witch.”

***

Set!

“Please, please, don’t send me back!” The high, panicked voice of Jerry snaps you out of your focused reading. “Anything, anything, Ma-Ri-Ann, just don’t lose me in Hell!”

Interesting! The Annunaki have a religious concept that is best translated as “Hell” and thinks that Marianne has access to it.

...oh right Marianne’s looking at you, you’re on cue! As the avatar of your goddess, you get to establish yourself as someone who passes judgment. There’s a reason that you picked Jerioth ab-Ishtari tonight, and there’s a reason that Marianne has been so gleefully terrorizing her. Plenty of them, in fact: you’ll have to narrow them down to the ones that she’ll remember from now until the end of the Annunaki Empire. Marianne has ranted to her, probably about tyranny and lessons and dire threats, and now it’s your turn to explain to the head midwife (and controller of the slave breeding programs) her sins.

Tell Jerry what she’s being punished for. Explain to her that this wasn’t just a case of being in the wrong place in the wrong time, but a deliberate choice. Give her something to think about while she stews.

***

Canada!

Arákh crumples to her knees. She looks up at you like you are the light of heaven. One by one, everyone else in the room kneels and beholds you. One of the Lynx janissaries starts crying, confronted by the gap between who they are and who they could be.

“I’m sorry,” she says. And you get the sense that she means it. It’s not a confession. It’s an apology. “I meant to make you one of my dancers, but... that is unworthy of you. It is ugly,” she says, as if pronouncing it to the fires of purgatory. “And there is nothing in this world that is righteous but beauty.”

Silently, she takes a key from her Thornback and unlocks your chains, one after another. Her smile is beatific, but you’re very aware that this doesn’t last for long. Beauty and righteousness have a short half-life in this world once unveiled; as soon as you leave, it’ll start to fade like a dream.

Objectively your best choice is to lock them all in the cell (they’ll agree that you should if you tell them) and then leg it before the lusty, petulant Arákh reasserts herself.

[Potential 2. Hopeless. Insecure.]

"Time does fly." Set sighs and puts aside the remaining tablets that she's reading, slipping it into a little rift of her own make, her bracelet lapis glowing ever so slightly. Then she shakes her head, letting the snake upon her crown lean into Jerrioth Ab-Istari. Her gaze is shadowed and in the dim light of the library, perhaps her face does not look entirely human, tattooed as it is with the animals of Set. Perhaps Jerry thinks that a crocodile will come alive to eat her?

She's ready for this now, at least. She's still not feeling good, but she's had time to calm herself properly, to steady her heart and lean into her role. This will be much better than her act at the gate. She stands close, but leaves Marianne to her work. Set's role is to pass judgment, to tear down the last gates in her mind. She speaks firmly, but quietly, her gaze intense and unblinking as that snake seems to stare hypnotically with her.

"Your people think to build walls to keep out beasts and shelter from the storms. But your walls are filled with rot. Do you see, Jerioth ab-Istar? Do you see the rot within your shining walls and your vaunted great chain? The rot of brutality. The rot of sloth. And yours, the rot of willful blindness. We know of your doings. Did you think that because you could surround yourself with beauty that you could ignore the suffering of others? Did you think we would miss your role as midwife and breeder of slaves?"

Set gathers herself up and her aura is black. Dark enough that as she projects herself to Jerry's mind, the lights may even seem to darken. A little bit of theatrics to supplement Marianne as her judgment reaches the crescendo.

"Yours was the hand that sought to rob the slaves of their humanity. To make them weak and docile. To rob them of their thoughts and their dreams. That you did not hold the rod nor draw blood yourself does not lessen your crime. This is why you will be sent back. Your sentence now to be unable to be blind. You will right your wrongs, you will teach your servants to act with respect and your slaves to dream again. You will not let your brothers and sisters take your position nor undo your good works. Only that will purge your share of the rot and purify your great chain. And if you fail, then your rotten walls will be shattered and the great storm will purge your homes and cleanse your people for you. So declares Set, goddess of the reclaiming desert."

"Oh, it's the opposite actually," mumbled Canada as she gently tried to tip-toe around all the kneeling people. It was really hard because this cell was not very large and they took up a lot of floor space and she really didn't want to step on anyone right now because that kind of thing left people with a complex. "It's actually righteousness that is beautiful. Uh. You know, spiritually," she had to push the two Salamanders gently aside and they fell into each other with sighs. "Unrighteous hearts pollute physical beauty and make it, you know, scary. Um."

This part was always so awkward.

"So, uh. You can attain this kind of beauty in yourself!" said Canada, trying to be inspirational. "You just need to bring your heart into alignment. So I'm going to leave you here to think about it, okay? Be kind to each other."

She waved uncomfortably as she locked the cell door.

"This is twice tonight you have received our warnings, Jerry. You have been visited by two spirits."

The shadows are twisting Marianne's face. Her smile warps so severely it actually flips upside down. For a moment it looks like it's growing out of her forehead, sharp and ruby red as ever and no less malicious for being inverted. Her eyes burn from a shapeless spot somewhere closer to where her chin should be. Then the whole thing spirals, the illusion breaks, and she returns to her terrifying normal.

"Do not require a third. You know how it will end."

Marianne is the cruelest of the Phantom Thieves by far. Or is she merely the strictest teacher? Jerry has proven a very poor student thus far, after all. She cannot be trusted to be lectured into compliance. And that is why the ground beneath her yawns open and begins to drag her down. Deeper and deeper she goes! To her waist! To her absurd chest! She is being swallowed by the jaws of... what was it again? That creature who judges the unworthy where Set has chosen her iconography from. Ammut! Yes, yes! There is nothing better than a demon to drag you down to Hell, little Jerry!

But then she stops. The sound in the hallway is not the growling of some terrible demon, but the stomping of her boots as she marches across the hall to kneel next to her evening's great work: the bust of Jerioth ab-Ishtar. Her teeth vanish into her mouth as she finally drops her horrible smile for a more playful sort of smirk. She reaches out with both hands and takes Jerry by the cheeks, lifting her back out of the floor as easily as if she was plucking a reed from a stream.

And then she lifts Jerry's gauzy, useless veil. No more pretending, little cow. Do not hide behind your glittering and pointless walls. The gold chains of Marianne's mask feel cold against the Annunaki's face as Marianne takes her prize. She is a greedy kisser: rough and wild and conquering. She is stealing Jerry's breath away, replacing it with heat. She must surely burn to death! She must explode! She must, she must, she must..!!

The moment ends. Marianne spits and wipes her mouth on her sleeve, and when she stands up Jerry finds herself rising with her on chains that have been linked to the many decorations outside the library while her mind was otherwise occupied. Marianne turns her back and spreads her arms wide.

"Rejoice, Jerry! Your eyes are open, yes! You see the truth now, yes yes! We did not build your Hell, Jerry. Not us. That is the weight of your sins! That is the truth of the world your people built off the back of your cruelty and your slaves. But worry not; I shall not abandon you to that land of rot tonight. You are precious in my eye, ma chérie. My darling student. This is where we part tonight. You shall be my messenger. Do not worry about getting the words correct; you will not need your mouth."

She breaks into a fresh grin as she plucks Jerry's veil free entirely, and carves more strips from her dress to stuff her mouth with anew. She turns and flashes Set a look of grim satisfaction and approval. And then she grabs her partner and melts with her into shadow, leaving only laughter behind.