[IC] Sunshards

[Thanqol]

Chen!

The wagon groans under the weight of masks. Many are bright and colourful, cartoon characters from ancient days, painted fox-faces, snarling bears and eerie horses. For all their eye-catching friendliness there is absolutely no doubt that they are here for one reason only: to soften the blow of the mask at the centre of it all. It looms like a vision from a dream, long and cylindrical with bulging eyes and enormous teeth, all in cool blue steel. That's an Old World mask and this lady is a Technomancer who is making an attempt not to frighten small children while still advertising her profession.

Sitting next to her you can feel a faint electronic buzz on your skin, and your phone starts to chime again and again where you cannot reach it - not a big deal because those are no doubt spam messages from one of the Techomancer's tame advertising geists. The woman wears a similarly subterranean dress - long slick curtains of dark blue leather, lines of clattering loyalty cards hanging from her wrists and neck.

"You look like you're in the market for someone in my line of work," said the Technomancer, watching as Rose runs and jumps. "But I'm afraid you'll need someone a lot more powerful than me. Do you know Princess Kikil? I'll send her a message. If you're lucky she'll come out here to rescue you herself, Princess..." her eyes flick down to her phone where her digital demon has just sent a text, and she gives a smile that leaves you in no doubt that she's fucking with you. "... Chen."

Rose!

A god from the heavens themselves steps forth from his cramped car to assist you in your work.

This is a guardian spirit, one with mad painted eyes and swirling and frenzied cheeks and teeth bared with fangs all in red and jade. He covers these features beneath a wide-brimmed cowboy hat and a slouch for the ages, and perhaps he conceals more than just his divinity. That suit hangs loose and those eyes are hungry and, just as a monk must look for happy demons one must look too for hungry gods. Less separates them than you might think.

The driver of the car stays behind the wheel, reading a newspaper spread out over the wheel and dashboard and smoking a cigarette while inching his car immediately through any small gap opened amidst the fluffy sheep by you. He is probably a man, and the contrast between his expensive watch and beat-up old car gives you the impression that he is up to no good whatsoever. He strikes you as a thief, frankly.

The guardian is much less animated than you, a creature of calculated movements. Now and then he will cast his spear to land just ahead of a straying sheep causing it to think better of adventuring in the wide world and head back to its paddock. Throughout, though, the god's eyes are on you alone. "You will need payment, ancient one," said the god in stiff words. "I give you my life, though spare my master."

Always so dramatic with these guys.

Yue!

"My tricks!?" said the vixen, feigning hurt in a way that was both obvious that she was faking and nevertheless extremely effective at making you feel guilty. "This is my very first shrine! Look!" She waved her butt tails. "Two! Two tails! If I was the kind of trickster you were accusing me of I'd have at least three or four. If I had eight or nine then you'd be a fool to trust me! But I am a brand new kitsune with a heart as pure as mountain snow. I haven't tricked anyone! I've never even had the chance! And already I'm being accused of having tricks! If every kitsune who starts a shrine gets this kind of response, why, it is no wonder so many of them go into crime! They never even get a chance to make an honest living!"

She sighed extremely dramatically, flopping face-down on the stone. In the process she successfully tricked the lizard king into reflexively a few centimeters before he realized what was happening and immediately she had moved into that patch of sunlight. The lizard king stopped and gave the lizard equivalent of the someone-stole-my-wallet look.

"But you've got a wish, huh?" she mused, opening one eye to give Hyra a piercing look. "And not an easy one. That's a serious curse. I can't break it... but I can weaken it. Let her turn into a human some of the time. And if somehow I was to earn another tail or two I'd be able to do even more."

[Anarion]

Chen was just growing relaxed with her routine when Rose sets her down for the sheep and gives her the most undignified pat on the butt. She lets out an "eep" through the scarf and shoots Rose an indignant glare, ruined entirely by the renewed blush creeping up her face and the fact that her wriggling butt is in fact more wriggling than, strictly speaking, is needed to settle herself on the ground.

When Rose then jumps straight to the task of herding the sheep, rather than merely lift the travelers past them and move on, Chen's eyes grow wide and she stares closely at Rose. It's a lesson in movement and style, jumping from point to point, making her presence somehow greater than the whole herd so that they have only a single route to follow. Chen's eyes track her as a practiced learner, taking notes on how she lands, how light she is on her feet even as she asserts herself. Chen wondered if the old world was really like this, though. In her mind, she thought Rose was something special and instead of this impressive showing, the old world probably just had ten knock-off Roses for the same job, each one barely lifting a finger while they stood around under their master's orders. Every time her Mom told such stories, the burrows were always too much heat and excess and it made her feel rather queasy thinking too hard about it.

Instead, her buzzing phone finally gets her attention and she turns to the technomancer and her mask cart. Wait, did she just say that Chen needed a technomancer? Did she think she needed rescuing from Rose? Oh, oh no! Chen squirmed and tried to wriggle to loosen her bonds, squeezing her thighs and then flexing her legs to turn herself in the grass while she wriggled her neck to try and work her scarf down a little bit.

She needed to explain that wasn't what she...did the technomancer just say Kikil?! No! No no no. Princess Kikil was in the cold alliance, but whenever she visited Sourcefall, Princess Hestia always made sure that Chen was at a safe distance and couldn't get anywhere near her. Something about "static discharge" one time, she couldn't remember anymore. But Princess Kikil was scary! She liked to fly around wearing that huge burrow mask that stretched almost to the ground when she was standing. The mask had these spiky tips on its bottom half and jagged red and black painted lines like reverse lightning on them! Now that Chen was old enough to travel on her own most of the time, she did kind of want to get to know Kikil. She thought maybe there was a really nice Princess under the mask and it would be neat to learn more about burrow tech, an area where Chen's education was relatively lacking.

But! Even worse than being scary and mysterious, Kikil was scary skilled at her tech! If she showed up with Chen in this state, pictures would find their way onto the phones of every princess in the world, nevermind Rose's legendary sheep herding. Chen would never live it down, and she was not prepared to be that deep in Kikil's debt for sparing her that fate.

Chen tried to squirm again, stretching her shoulders and wriggling her arms from side to side while shaking her head a little that no she did not need a technomancer, thank you very much! If she could just wriggle her hips and her shoulders a little more, maybe she could loosen the tape so she could start working on an escape and...ah would you quit staring with your knowing phone?!?! Embarrassed at hearing her own name (not noticing in the moment that the technomancer is teasing her) Chen starts getting worked up and struggles faster, straining with all her might (okay maybe not all) to push the tape apart without ruining her scarf, to no avail. She tries to say "I'm fine" but it comes out as "mmphhmm!" instead. Frustrated, she rolls back and forth on the grass and tries to look imploringly over at Rose, who is, alas, busily engaged with some kind of spirit in a hat helping her with the sheep and some kind of car. Oh no, she was on her own here and all she could think about was being strung up in front of Kikil for the entire world as she gets redder and redder.

[Reputation: 1+3+2=6. A downbeat for the MC.]

[Tatterdemalion]

Rose from the River considers the god’s words carefully as she works the flock back through the gap in their pasture fence. So rapt in thought is she that the goat almost manages to sidle right past her to make a second run at that tether. Almost, but not quite; one hand takes the goat’s horn again and gently rotates him in a circle so that he once again faces the paddock that the herd is inexorably filling once more.

“One thing still amazes me every day,” she says, finally. “The hidden name of this world is Freedom. I am free, certainly, but not only that, they are free.” She gestures to the technomancer and the Princess, still wiggling in the mint leaves. “The heavy yoke that lay on everyone has been broken into pieces for all of us. It guided them down furrows of profit motive and market optimization, and we followed as the plow follows the ox. And now? The only question is not whether something is profitable to do, but whether something is right to do.”

She lifts up a particularly troublesome little lamb in one arm; he bucks and squirms but is as helpless as Princess Chen, a comparison that would make the girl quite sheepish. “And yet how are we to decide what is right? We are set in our ways, things like us. If we think ourselves wise, we will either run in the furrows or play between them. I thought I was doing the latter when I was unearthed and rose to serve at the right hand of a Princess, but I could not escape the furrow. I went from serving one master to another, and it took a new breath for me to realize I was stuck on that same path.” She manages to get the lamb over the fence, even though he puts his hooves up on a slat and bleats indignantly at her upon reaching the ground.

Rose from the River meets the eyes of his mask. She no longer hides her nature, despite the risk she runs from being recognized by those who might seek Qiu’s favor. She has had enough of concealing herself through changing shape for one lifetime; now she does it to reveal herself. Her eyes are careful, and requires intent for her gaze to not be predatory by instinct, but she manages. See how she relaxes and does not tense for a strike. See how she patiently guides a ram’s head away from chewing at her belt. This is a creature that has learned how to change both inside and out, even if she is not always able to change completely.

“I require no payment, Watchman,” she says, simply. “Guiding the flock back to safety is worthy in and of itself, I think. The road is meant to be traveled, and these travelers... yes, allowing them passage feels right. This wood was not broken in the fulfillment of the Way.” She kneels and takes the broken fencing from where it lies. She could set it right, if she had the nails. She does not ask; she allows the Watchman to make his own choice as to whether he will offer.

[Rose from the River rolls an 8 to Figure Out the figure that I have named the Watchman. Let me offer these questions, and take one in return: what do you hope to get from your life? what are your feelings towards the driver of the car?]

[Phoe]

"This is your... oh my gosh I am so sorry! I didn't realize you! Erm, I mean! You just seemed so... professional that I just assumed you were! Y'know! A, uh, a veteran or... yeah. This is your first shrine? Really for real? Oh gosh, am I your first customer? Oh no, and I went and said all those things! I'm so, so, so sorry!"

GranGran would be so mad at her right now. For that matter, so would everyone else she's ever known from the village. Or... everyone she doesn't know from other villages, probably. Hyra doesn't exactly look happy about it either. Really it's only Kat who doesn't seem interested in registering a negative opinion on this moment, and that may have more to do with the fact that Snuggle Time has her relaxed enough that she feels content curling up for a nap more than it's got anything to do with her actually trusting Yue's decision making skills.

But at this point? It doesn't matter. It's too late, she's already felt that spark of connection. This isn't just a pretty girl with a cute butt pair of tails, this is a kindred spirit. Yue smiles, and even through the sudden splash of tears she's dazzling in her eagerness.

"I've got lotsa wishes, y'know. Just about a million of them, really. It's just that this one is more important than the rest of them and I, well, y'know, y'know? I can't say I know a whole bunch about kitsune, especially not about how to help you get... oh, though! Have you thought about doing meet and greets, like? When you're trying to get your feet under you it's really tricky when nobody knows what you can do. I'm a sun farmer, see, that's my real job, and it took me for ev er to find anybody who would make a trade with me because it was like, hello? What do we need the sun for, anyway? It's already up in the sky making us all warm and stuff, and you want to...? So I had to really... nnnn! Y'know? I did a whole buncha stuff like pet care and flower arrangement and house repair, stuff like that. And then after they figured out what farmed sunlight was good for suddenly it was like... bam! And... uh, stuff. So I..."

Yue trails off indistinctly and starts to blush some more. Hyra gives her A Look and then heaves a great sigh and shakes her head to say, "Well, you'd better know what you're doing..." and then she flops over on the ground. This would take a while. But she was patient. She knew how to hunt. Yue, meanwhile, squirms and wiggles her... not tails, trying to find a place she can negotiate from with any modicum of dignity.

"I'm... I'm sorry, I'm being so stupid. I didn't mean to imply you were... I just... gosh, please don't, please don't go. Don't give up on me. If I could help you, um. W-well I just... don't really have... y'know, friends, so I'm not... not. Um. Maybe I could have your name? As a start? I just... I know, I know, I know, I'm being so pushy and terrible and judgy and you've got your tails and your shrine to look after and I just can't shut up can I but I just, I'm trying to show I'm, I mean, I know it doesn't seem like it but you... you can trust me. Ok?"

If there's a trick here, it's buried so deep that even Yue's heart can't find it. How'd she get this flipped around to be so exactly backwards? But if she's playing or she's being played it almost doesn't matter, because anything that she can do for Hyra, she needs to do it. And even more than that... those words are still echoing inside of her. How's this pretty fox girl living in an enchanted glade filled with all the world's bounties and comforts supposed to make it in this cruel, unforgiving land if nobody will give her the chance to be good?

[Thanqol]

Chen!

On the horizon red lights blink in sequence. Radio towers rise to the heavens like saplings in the shadow of the space elevators. The wreckage of a forgotten internet lies up there, a garden walled so high that not even the rain could get inside. One day it finally shucked its transitional role as a communications platform and finally became what the burrowers had always desired: a modernized television network, smoothing away the inconvenience of having to pick up the phone to dial the number in the infomercials.

And across it is shooting a media-geist, launched from the blue steel phone of the Technomancer, off to fetch Princess Kikil.

"Well, that's all sorted then," said the Technomancer, starting to chop pumpkins and white radish. "Rescue is on the way. Or alternative kidnapping. Either way, it should at least be more graceful than getting captured than that old robot. Did you hear that there's an ancient tomb near here with a water connection straight down to a major undercity? Heard it was taken over by some old machines for a while, but Princess Yin came by and drove them off, bless her. You know she's in town right now? Looks exhausted. Hey, maybe you'll have some company on the ride back to the Hive."

Rose!

There are signs by which you can read the nature of a falling god and separate it from a rising devil. There is weariness in the way the figure shoulders his spear, disappointment in the lack of teeth at his throat. Once this man was the emperor of all of Heaven, as every soul has at some point been. Now the wheel turns and responsibilities weigh heavy, the weight of ten thousand compassionate deeds bearing down on the god like buckets of water. This path leads him to wickedness, inevitably, until he stands at last as the foremost princess of Hell and realizes again there is no satisfaction there either.

A story as old as life. He seeks, and not knowing for what he seeks, will find only whatever it is he does not currently possess.

"I thank you for my life," said the god, bowing. And there, perhaps, is excitement in his voice - and an affectionate glance at his master as he inches the car through the departing herd. "Let us know if there is anything we can do to thank you."

He looks at you and your need for nails, and he does not help you unasked. He sees you as an aspect of the life he is leaving, one built of meritorious deeds and compassionate responsibility. He sees you as a creature limited and bound, nothing like his master who is teaching him the new fascinations of vice and theft - new bindings in old ways. This, he thinks, is freedom. This, he thinks, is what he is here to learn. This is exciting!

"But. Perhaps." the god said stiffly, this way of thinking still novel to him. "You are here for a different reason. Do you, too, have a wish to make from the fox spirit? What would you wish for?"

[His question to you: how could he get you to indulge in your vices?]

Yue!

"Great!" and oh wow you're being hugged. "Oh, I'm so glad! I knew I could count on you!" With the same deftness with which she navigated the lizard's biting jaws, so the kitsune pulls back at the perfect point where Hyra's growl starts to rise. "My name is Cyanis! Ah! It's so wonderful that you're giving me a chance! I promise you won't forget it!"

She walks away down the forest path with a spring in her step, tugging you along by the red thread of fate. "Come on! I've got just the thing!"

This is not just a shrine, this is a tomb. Some ancient heroine was buried here and it was expected that dozens would mourn her at once. Great stone channels filled with stagnant water and terrible garbage from deep beneath the earth spread out in front of the structure and trees have torn themselves up through gaps in the marble tiles. More lizards dwell in the sunlight, but here too is a flock of galas - pink feathered birds with grey wings who rummage through the grass in their hundreds and bobble away from you and the fox as you approach.

"Ta da!" said Cyanis. "As you can see, it's a bit of a mess. But I've got plans! I'm going to turn this place around! Clear out the trash, dust off the marble, brighten up this stuffy old pile of stones! But there's one itsy-bitsy little problem I need your help with - I need to get inside and clear out the old ghost who used to live here. It'll be easy though! It's just the lower ghost, the higher soul has definitely moved on already. Otherwise anyone I try to help might just wind up getting haunted instead! Definitely neither of us want that!"

[Phoe]

"You want me to what? You're sure you, I mean, no I mean of course you are but... y-you were listening when I told you what I did? Right?"

Yue shivers, even though it's warmer here than it has been anywhere she's seen since she got to the forest. This is what all of those stone pillars and crumbling bits of artwork have been leading her towards. This was the answer to the question of what could have possessed the people of the ancient world to have shaped such wonders. It was all for this, this spot, this place, this... monument. Is that the word? This goodbye, this thank you, this tearful song they sang so deeply it carved itself into the stone so that the world could sing it for them after they'd long passed on, too.

And now the song was fading. Maybe the earth had grown tired of the tune, or maybe with enough time even it starts forget to the words and replaces them with something else. Whatever it can find, just to get to the good parts, like she does herself in front of Kat and her evening fires when she tries to recall the most beautiful parts of her sister.

The thought forms a lump in her throat that won't go away no matter how much she sniffs and swallows. Yue looks around, but for once she can't see the intense beauty of the trees, or the wonder of the galas as they wander about the place, or even the warmth of having companions to share these things with, for once. Her mind is being pulled as if on its own red string along the river and back up the hills to the quiet little clearing where her lonely little home is, and from there to a time when it didn't feel half so lonely and not a quarter so little. Back when GranGran was still full of stories, and Mama and Papa knew everything there was to know about home cooking, and Sis made adventures feel like something that happened to you for an afternoon, that you could finish up and take them back with you in time for tea and cakes.

Yue's grip tightens around the hilt of her sword. What's this? Something's changing. Something's changed. The weight feels almost comforting in her hand, the hardness of the wood like a friend squeezing back and telling her that everything would be alright. She turns her head away from the tomb and looks at Cyanis again, finally managing for once to find her eyes before any other parts of her drew the gaze to wandering. Oh. Oh gosh, her eyes are... beautiful. Not the color or the shape or the way she's painted them to draw out the corners and make herself look so mysterious and sexy, though all of those things are also nice. But it's, she's, there's a wonder there and a sparkle that just doesn't happen in normal people's eyes. It's like she's thought of this great joke and she's just waiting for the right time to tell it, or like some of her or even all of her is made out of dreams, and hers is just through here in the warm darkness of this tomb.

She sparkles so much it's impossible not to think she's here to fill this place with light. She'll be the one to teach the earth the words again so it can sing and everybody can remember what must be the incredible legend of the woman who stirred her people to sing it in the first place. And that's the promise of foxes, isn't it? That's the wonder that makes people come to them again and again and again with a heart full of wishes and eyes filled with dreams, no matter how many times the stories say the wily vixens betray or sell them out. Because somewhere in each of them there's a song and a heart that's as elegant and beautiful as the largest jewel in a Princess' war chest.

It's not enough to stop the shivering. It's not enough to stop the queer and queasy feeling in her stomach, or the terrified pounding in her heart. But it is enough to make her smile. And when she looks down and sees Hyra staring straight through her soul, it's enough to make her do more than smile. She takes one hesitant, trembling step forward. That's the miracle purchased by fox dreams and wolf pride. One step toward adventure. One step toward the kind of danger she's never dared so much as stand still around, let alone move closer.

She doesn't dare ask anything stupid like, what a lower ghost is or how it's different than a higher soul. She doesn't question how Cyanis knows this sort of thing, at least not to her face. Probably it comes with the profession. Maybe they teach it at kitsune school or something. In any case if she gave it a voice it'd only keep her from casting her next miracle. Her head is swimming with so many different emotions she can't even tell which one of them is the one pulling her forward. Is this for Sis? For Cyanis? Is it for Kat, in some silly way? Is it for the brave heroine who's on the precipice of fading into the ground forever?

Yue pauses. She gulps with terror that no amount of sword squeezing and fox magic can chase away. But when she looks at Hyra and sees those red wolf eyes watching her with, of all things, uncertainty, she feels her own fill with a hard glint like steel. This is foolishness, what's she's doing. No matter what happens, she's still Yue. Just... Yue. She could never be so special and perfect that she could dance with demons and lure them into a trap with nothing more than her courage and skill. She could never fly on her own, could never make anyone feel like they were flying. Quite frankly she's got no idea what she's doing and no business trying to purge... um? Purify? Cleanse? What is she even doing to this ghost in the first place? What's the good ending even look like here? How's she even supposed to know? That's why she's the last person on earth who should be trying this.

"N-no, you're right. I don't want that at all, I... think. I'm, I... I'm not sure what I can do, exactly, but. Um. I'll try."

She must be the least qualified adventurer in history. She's such a doofus she doesn't even know for sure how far in over her head she's getting. But she takes another step forward anyway. And then another one. Because if she doesn't? If she just gives up? Then Hyra's eyes are never going to look into hers again in that way that makes her spine melt and her body feel so warm and liquidy and good. Not ever again. And if those eyes aren't worth a little moonlighting... well, she might as well be a mouse right about now, huh?

[Tatterdemalion]

Rose from the River bristles suddenly. “Foxes! Wishes! Ha!” Her cheeks are darker than dark, her flowers are blooming in delicate purples all up and down her braids, and she very deliberately does not look at him. “Do you think I can let myself be distracted? There is so much to do, so much that should be done! Do you think that little princess will see herself where she needs to be on her own? So that I can go and ask a fox for something I could do for myself?”

She is not lying, not precisely, but she is betraying herself. She has had dealings with foxes before, and she knows that she will be tempted to be vulnerable around them, and allow them to take liberties with her, and she knows, too, that she is not supposed to be going and playing with fluffy-tailed tricksters. She needs to get Chen somewhere important, she needs to find Yue the shepherdess, she needs nails to finish this fence, she…

No! She is not going to go from indulgence to indulgence! When she straightens up, it is with flashing and furious eyes. Furious, that she should be so revealed. Furious, that she does not want to follow the subtle nudges of the Way because she is distracted by memories of a fox. Furious, that she gave him the opportunity and he failed her test anyway.

“If you owe me, Watchman,” she says, as dangerous as a cobra’s flared hood, with a voice as level as a sword’s edge, “then you can give me the nails to fix this, and then go hopalong with your master to go and wish for fox-treasures. Of course you know that it’ll come from someone else’s hands, don’t you? And that the fox will go and sing their pretty song to half of the Nine Kingdoms until someone wishes for that treasure to come to them instead? It’s a rare fox that’s got an inch of kindness in her tails! And what do you mean for an offering, hmm?”

The question coils in the air. There are few options left to the god. He can tuck his tail between his legs and run, if he still has some humility clinging to him. Or he can answer her implicit challenge, send her nails from the barrel of his gun, to see if she can snatch each one out of the air or if he will manage to pin her humble tank-top to the boards of the fence. Or he can suggest to his master that here is a prize that a fox would give heaps of gold and jewels for.

She’s all tangled up in guilt, see. To help her into her vices requires taking her culpability out of it, sneaking it behind her back when she’s pretending not to look. She hasn’t been a good enough monk, has she? Not a bit. So here she is, trying to be better, trying to be good for everyone and to show them the proper walk of the Way, but one hint of a fox’s brush promising her even more enjoyable distractions and she’s gone bristly as a boar and dark as a plum.

Now, if only he had a Princess to dangle in front of her. But she’s got the one already, and another on the way. All Princessed up, and in a direction that’s not on his way. No, the only way to get her to indulge is to toss her in the trunk of that car.

***

The Knight’s Tale

“It’s not hard to tell you’re security,” the fox says to him with the same cocky sort of look that half the princesses— no, Princesses. There’s a difference in how it’s written and how it’s said. But half the Princesses have that arrogant, knowing look on lockdown, like they have all the answers already. Like they’ve seen everything before them and dismissed any possible danger with a floof and a fluff, and for all that this world doesn’t have many dangers left, it still feels presumptuous to him. He sighs, looking her up and down; she’s all frills and lilac lace, the bustle of her ballgown hiding the number of her tails. Ruddy orange-brown ears poke out of her coiffed hair, and when they are straight up, they peek just above his head; he suspects heels. He is a tower looking over the ebb and flow of the party, and here comes a fox to pull his eyes away, like he isn’t trained to thread sensory data.

“Whatever gives you that impression?” Probably the suit. It is a very carefully chosen indigo, a suggestion of color that will become darker than black when his Lady flares her heart. The contrast with his alabaster skin and white-gold hair is pleasing to her, and First of the Radiants lives to please her, in any way that she desires. He is the sword that fits perfectly in her hand; he is the sanctified monster that she keeps on a holy leash.

“You’re so stiff,” she purrs. The look he gives her is flat. The worst pickup line he’s heard in… no. Posture. Ah. Maybe he is. But isn’t a knight supposed to be at the ready? The festivities are loud and garish. Ysian dancers dominate the ballroom, half-dressed and gyrating to the beat of drums and flutes from a dozen different cultures. An obvious distraction from Ysel. Princess Ysel. The real challenge of the evening will be watching for her move: where her soldiers will storm the ballroom, where they will attempt to cut off exits, the shortest path that he can take to Yin to defend her while she casts Ysel down and defeats the army by cutting off the head. And thinking about his posture is going to distract him. But the perfect knight has to be able to show courtesy. Another test. One he will pass. He will earn this.

“You will have to forgive my ignorance,” he says, arching an eyebrow. “What, exactly, do you foxes… do?” The implication is vicious enough. I am a trusted knight, a Handmaiden, who is on a path to become the Countess of the Radiant Lands. You are a fuzzy little trickster and I see through you, even if I don’t know the specifics. There’s a dizzying amount to learn about this new world, after all, and foxes weren’t quite at the top of the list. And, like clockwork, the fox (vixen?) puts one hand (paw?) on her chest and gives him a dramatically offended look.

“Why, you don’t know?” By Yin’s elbow, a dancer comes perhaps too close; a shadow lingers just a moment too long at a window; the maddening whirl demands more and more processing as the drums swell. “We grant wishes. Whatever the heart wants most. And since you are a very special someone indeed, I might be persuaded to give you a free sample.” The lure is transparent. His eyes flutter up for a moment in exasperation.

“So if I were to tell you that my heart’s deepest desire is to be ready to defend my Lady Yin? Surely there isn’t anything you can give me that I don’t already have.” He does have it all. Shining armor. Squires. The love of a Princess. Anything he wants is at his disposal, as Yin’s consort-in-training. Through her generosity, he could have pearls, white rings, a cape in furs and cloth-of-gold, jewels; if he expresses dissatisfaction with anything, she will order it removed and changed for him, and that is why he does not express dissatisfaction with anything. That and that there is nothing to be dissatisfied with, yes. Yes.

On the bandstand, an electric sitar begins to play, jaunty and full of bounce, played by a heavy young woman with golden bangles and a broad grin. A Baron, and one of some repute, if the wild cheering is any indication. The noise is enough that no one can hear the whisper of the fox, as she leans into his shoulder, fingers taking his hand and squeezing, not maliciously, but with some strangely overfamiliar tenderness. Perhaps he has misjudged her, he thinks for just a moment; she is not attempting to distract him, but rather she is the sort of wild fool who thinks that she can seduce the chosen of Princess Yin, perfect and radiant, the Anahata of the Radiant Mercy School, the auspicious ruler chosen by Heaven. Then he hears her whisper: “I know why you won’t let yourself look at the dancers.”

He should say something. He can’t. His throat just isn’t working. She has him by the hand. Everything, the whole of it, there was nothing dangerous in here expect for her all along. She’s tempting him. Leading him out into open air. He can’t. He shouldn’t. What would Yin say? What would Yin say about what, exactly? What does he think she’s offering him? What does she think he wants? Maybe she thinks he’s guilty of a wandering eye. She’s going to flash her navel at him and offer to let him collar her. He can say no to that. If that’s all. He knows he is owned. He is pure in that he is only used by one. She has taught him so much. What is the fox offering?

“Come with me,” she says, laying out her trap so neatly. And he doesn’t know yet if it’s one that he can escape. He shouldn’t take that step. It won’t be what he is eagerly terrified it is. Then the traitor-thought envelops him like a serpent: if it is not a trap that can catch him, then he will seize the fox that thought herself clever and present her to Yin as a gift. Perhaps some time as a songbird will make the fox eager to sing about her employers. Following her is the clever thing to do. It’s not wrong. He can make it right.

But he is half-blind as she leads him by the hand, so obsessed with the fear that he will be seen and marked that he only slowly realizes that she has indeed taken him backstage. There are no stagehands; did she arrange this, or is it simply luck? There are rooms set aside for Barons here, and it is to one that she draws him. The room is dark; she only opens the door a crack and pulls him inside, slamming it shut behind them. He flexes and takes her wrist in his hand, ready to fight both her and whoever she has with her, ready to take her by the ears and beg for mercy. He is a fine knight, but he was born a better hunter.

Then, with a wave of her hand, the soft lighting flickers on. It is shadowy, low, and makes the narrow room seem like it could contain multitudes. And the amethysts drink in that light. His grip tightens but now he is holding onto her for support. He’s going to fall over. His heart is throbbing, almost painful. It’s impossible and frightening because of how much he wants. He’s not supposed to want. He’s supposed to be what she needs him to be. She saved him. “I can’t,” he stammers. His ears pulse with heat.

“You can,” the fox says. “I know wishes. And your heart sings in the empty places you deny yourself, because if you let yourself want things, you’d risk wanting things that she doesn’t want. Isn’t that right?” Her fingers slip down his chest, and buttons come undone as smoothly as if she’d cut them with a knife, an impossible magic.

It isn’t until she comes to his belt that he blurts out, again, cheeks ruddy with betraying fire, “I can’t. I won’t…”

The slim trousers snake down his legs. The fox stops and cocks her head.

“Oh,” she says, and he can hear the suppressed laughter. It hurts. He tries to push her back.

“I’m not going to be a joke, fox--”

She lays one finger on his lips.

“You’re not going to be.” She cups him, pushes Yin’s delight back against his legs. “Trust your Auntie Sa-chan. I promise you that you will look just like you always wanted. Not a joke. Not a billboard.” So she’s seen those, too. Down in the Burrows. “I am a fox, darling. And we work in wishes. And you don’t want to be laughed at.” She guides him to step into some unusually thick undergarments, and when she pulls them up to his hips, he’s flat, not sexless as he once was but… “You want to be beautiful.” She smiles, like she’s sharing a joke between the two of them. “And we can’t have your Princess hogging all the beauty for herself, now, can we?”

She guides him over to the mannequin. The thin silk is the color of spring flowers, lavender and vervain. He’s uselessly thinking that over and over as she helps him into it. Lavender and vervain and plum-flowers. It whispers against his smooth skin, loose and revealing, decorative. As if he was just another of the dancers offering a distraction. Just a decoration. And that’s not how he thinks of, of the Princesses, but… but he wants to think it of the dancers. Because he wants to be one of them. He always has, from the first time he saw them in this soft and gentle new world, because they are something delicate and lovely and kept close, because they are beloved but objectified, and he’s never been allowed to simply be the figure of want, all eyes on him. Except that’s not quite right, is it? He’s Yin’s trophy. But the shape is wrong. His shape is wrong. And this… this is right. It makes him feel almost right.

He knows he can’t become this. There are other shapes that are worrying at him. A Way, still here, still believed in despite all he did to stamp it out. Something older and truer than him. Much is called to those to whom is given much. And while the cult surrounding his Princess is wrong, laughably wrong, it is their intepretation and not… but he does not think about it. He lets himself believe, if only for a moment, that this is who he can be.

Finally she reveals her tails, so many of them, and each one is curled around a brush, a comb, a palette. He obediently closes his eyes and lets her drape spring over his lids, scatter stars in his lashes, dust his high cheeks with life, bring crushed plum to his lips. His stomach twists with delight as she gathers his pale hair.

When she guides him in front of the mirror and tells him to open his eyes, it is the bravest thing he has done since he awoke in this age. And when he does, it does not matter that he is tall, it does not matter that the silk lies flat on his chest, it does not matter that he is still in this form Yin breathed into him. He is radiant. The way he toys nervously with his fingers, the shy glance through glittering lashes, these things just make him feel more right. Happier. His hair lies in a tail draped against his neck, caught up with a jade barette, and amethysts radiate from his slim collar to his low neckline, caught on invisible threads, looking as if they are simply part of him, as if he is a princess’s doll. The billowing trousers are low on his hips, scandalously so, and a deep violet gem flashes in his navel.

“May I?” It is the first question that the fox-- that Sa-chan has offered him in some time. He should be worried about Yin. He should thank her for his… for this. He should leave and go and help her, doubtless under attack by Ysel’s ruffians, or soon to be. But the silk in her hands is the thickest that he would wear, perfect for hiding his lips, his nose, his chin, drawing all eyes to his eyes. He nods, still not trusting his voice, and she sets the loops carefully about his ears. He shivers and suddenly feels as if he is going to cry. And he can’t! He would ruin his eyeliner, not to say anything about his lashes!

So he stares and he stares and he turns from side to side and admires the slimness, the leanness, the way he is turned into a delectable sylph of a… of a dancer. If he walked out there right now, would they know? Would they see him? Or would they see a boyish young woman doing her best to draw attention to her femininity? Would he… he wouldn’t know the first thing about how to dance. He didn’t let himself watch. He’d end up shaking his ass in circles as everyone laughed at him. Better to stay here. Safe.

“Usually, I don’t do this for free,” Sa-chan says to him. “And I haven’t. I was paid quite a bit to draw off Yin’s bodyguard, you know. But that’s as much as I was paid for; you can still go and be the hero, if you want.” He turns, stupid, off-balance again, and finds her offering the hilt of his sword, thin and wicked silver. But when he reaches out on instinct, she lifts it ever-so-slightly out of reach. “You can, but you don’t have to.”

She meets his eyes, and there is a… there is a kindness there, hidden behind the glee at her own cleverness. One that says that she is happy at his happiness. That she did this for money and her own satisfaction and her own caprice, but that she is not quite done granting wishes, either.

And in the face of what she is offering, he cannot be strong and noble and chivalrous. He cannot take the blade and shove her aside and charge out like some sort of battle-dancer. Because she is giving him the choice to choose the dream he’d kept hidden and close tight inside of him. And he does not know if it is programming that makes his body light and airy, and he does not know if he is doing a right thing or a wrong thing, and all he knows is that he would regret it every day if he did anything else.

First of the Radiants offers her wrists to Sa-chan, who smiles like only a fox can.

“Good girl.”

And when the Radiant Knights arrive, they will take hours to find their redeemed captain, because none of them think that releasing the squirming, helpless dancers backstage is a priority when they have a captain and a Princess alike to save. And they will assume that he was hidden among the dancers so that they would not find him for a long time, and they will be very right; and they will assume that this was why First of the Radiants was dressed so, and they will be very wrong.

[Anarion]

"No it is not sorted!" is what Chen wants to shout, but of course she can't because Rose from the River is an expert at bindings and has tied Chen with bindings of memory and nostalgia, far too strong to be broken by even the most valiant Princess. So instead, she strains at her bonds without breaking them, lets out a muffled shout that says "nnnnnmm, iff nntt!" and gives the technomancer an imploring look.

In Chen's mind a thousand different fantasies and terrors play out. She imagined Kikil, arriving with her burrow visage and crackling with lightning while cackling at her new prize. She would string up Chen like a fresh-caught fish and pose with her while doing some kind of victory stance to commemorate the day. Then she'd pull out a magic tracker to attach to her phone, easily pick up Yue and offer the both of them to Qiu to be new handmaidens in training. The very thought of it made Chen burn with shame. The hot and cold alliances would lose so much face! There would be jokes among the princesses and handmaidens about Chen's "demotion" even after she was ransomed, and her mothers would get suggestions to send her back to novice training with the children until she learned how to properly slip a knot. If they didn't just suggest that she quietly go into another career as an artist running a little studio. She imagined handmaidens and aspiring princesses, maybe even the rare countess would come in and she'd collect a few coins in exchange for doing a regal-looking portrait. They'd share some stories and behind her back people would talk about how she was once an heir to two sunshards before pictures of her tied up in her own scarf became everybody's wallpaper. Someone cheeky would even offer double her normal price for her to paint the scene of her delivery to Qiu and she'd toss them out of the shop while blushing the whole time.

Chen was supposed to be imagining her worst nightmares, so why she was almost chuckling to herself instead?!? Here was she, trapped like a sheep with its head in a fence with a technomancer who obviously knew who she was and hoped to get in good with Kikil, and she was smiling at dreams of being humiliated and forced into a new career.

Chen closed her eyes and let out a breath slowly through her nose, the warmth filling the wool and tickling her face. The rhythmic sound of the technomancer chopping pumpkins was relaxing and made Chen think of a spicy pumpkin soup that Princess Ysel would make sometimes. Hestia always said it was too spicy, but little Chen really liked it. Even one time when Ysel overdid it with ghost peppers and Chen had tears streaming down her eyes, she absolutely insisted she was enjoying it. Chen resolved to ask her Mommy for the recipe the next chance she got so she could make it herself.

With a little bit of calm, Chen decided to relax. She had trusted Rose for this journey, and she just had to continue trusting. If not, well, she'd figure something out with Kikil. She knew some things about the demons floating around and their target. Even the technomancer had let something slip about what Princess Yin had been up to, and Chen doubted it was a total coincidence that a powerful ancient huntress was suddenly running around when Yin had been poking around in an ancient waterway. Still though, she had never seen this Rose at Yin's side, which was odd.

Chen stretched out as best she could given the scarf wrapped around her and looked off at the horizon, past the sheeps being herded and to the distant blinking radio towers like giant one-eyed titans. She let her mind wander, thinking about how she'd like to learn more about those too. Her mothers had been so focused in their education that Chen sometimes thought she didn't know anything about the real world because she had spent so long on princess politics and magic. If she got lucky, the technomancer would at least have the heart to offer her some pumpkin and radish soup. Right now, something warm and hearty like that sounded like the best meal in the whole world. Chen did blush a little at the thought of being fed by this woman who was already having fun at expense, but even that would be a little pleasant. She had decided she was going to relax for this, so she would darn well relax!

With that, Chen lay back, settled her neck comfortably on part of the scarf, and wiggled her toes in the grass as she waited for something to happen.

[Thanqol]

Chen!

"Is this yours?" said a voice - we will call them 'he' because that is how they feel today. He has a suit, he has a sword, he has a grin and those are all one truly needs to accomplish mischief. It is the driver of the little car and how did he get back here? Hadn't he gone on ahead?

"This pretty little thing?" said the Technomancer, hand on her own sword. "No. Can't say that it is."

"Can't tell if I'm lucky," said the thief, still ready with that tension. "Or unlucky."

"It's hers," said the Technomancer with a gesture at Rose. "Wouldn't want to fight that. Wouldn't want to fight any of the others that'll come after her."

"That's fine," said the thief, stepping cautiously close and lifting up Chen with the hand that wasn't on the hilt of that sword. He tosses her over one shoulder. "I've got a buyer close by."

"The fox?" said the Technomancer. "You're a bold one."

"Speaking of buyers, you for sale?" he said. "I can put in a good word with the fox if you can slow the Ancient down a little."

"I'll take cash, if it's all the same to you."

"It's a deal," the thief tossed a thick wallet on the ground. The two exchanged one more glance, full of tension that could have broken into violence or passion - as any confrontation between sword bearers always could. But then they glanced aside and he stole you, Chen, away - running low through the ditch beside the road to toss you, still trussed and gagged, in the back seat of his car.

Rose!

The confrontation looms larger. The falling god faces you with eyes that had picked the monkey king from amidst a crowd, with a spear that itched to carve the calligraphy of martial perfection. Oh, doesn't he crave it? Aren't his desires the same as yours? Distractions and duels and precious victory and indulgent defeat?

But then he abruptly bows. He offers you the nails. And then he turns and strides magnificently back to the little car and crams his bulk inside, and it speeds off down the dirt road, bumping all the way along. It happens so fast and so decisive that you're left stunned, unsatisfied, burning at that anticlimax - that shove from a violent embrace that seemed so immanent for a second there.

It takes a long moment to unpack how he transitioned away from it so seamlessly. He was feeling the craving too but he did not have to apply willpower to tear himself away from the challenge. He did not have to swallow his pride. The only way he might have been able to do that is if he was vastly more advanced in the Way than you were... or...

If he'd just won a different way.

Where was your Chen?

Yue!

Whoever had made this place had not feared the water. The entire place is built around it. The walls are meant to glisten in eternal waterfalls and the floor is meant to open up into great pools and fountains. The floors were scattered with crystal flowers meant to catch sunlight falling through thick yellowed marble slats in the walls. A tree grows in the centre of it all with the ancient character of a bonsai, each root placed like a ribbon, each leaf like a blade of glass. This was not a place that feared anything.

It should have. The flows have run brackish and stagnant. The pools bubble with mud and rot and pollution. Robots sit dead and rusted waist deep in water, robots swim living and pointless beneath it. Toys and shopping carts and endless cans and the snapping pincers of crabs that lived within those cans. One entire wall has been decorated with a painting advertising personal injury insurance, but the machine that made this work did not have access to the colour green and so the painting sits garish and half-finished. Its mechanical creator slumps without power in front of its unfinished graffiti.

Of course the ghost would be mad at this. Anyone who had to live here would be disgusted. And while there is silence here there is not stillness. The entire room is filled with hunger - not wishes, not yearning, just hunger. Hunger enough to wake the dead.

And wake they do.

Three ancient machines, corroded and covered in algae and slime, wrench themselves to their feet - perhaps one intact machine between them. Two of them have clubs, heavy and brutal, and the third has a fist that isn't much better. They shuffle towards you and though they are slow, oh, how you wished they were slower!

[Phoe]

She should be scared right now. Terrified out of her mind, in fact. Knees knocking together, full body shivering, heart pounding so hard inside her chest it makes her dizzy, hands blistering around the hilt of her sword because it's either that or drop the stupid thing and then it's gone forever in a sea of rotting knickknacks. Y'know, scared! And she is! She absolutely is right now! But she's also not squeaking or screaming or running away, and that's because...

That's because there's something that looks an awful lot like courage welling up inside her, too. And it's funny, isn't it? How close that feeling is to love?

This must have been the most beautiful place in the whole world, once upon a time. It must have been. It has to have been. Even now, when it's filled with blackish brownish greenish grossish water just kind of bubbling in ways that seem entirely unsavory and the walls are smothered with graffiti and strange advertisements that couldn't have been relevant even to the people of the old world, even with every third step interrupted by the crunching of an ancient rusted can or a broken toy or some misshapen lump of plastic, even with all of that this place gave off a sense of beauty and nobility and grace like it shouldn't even be possible for it all to fit on one little ball of rock.

Once upon a time, they were right not to fear the waters. Once upon a time, and now. Yes, and now. Though the river be full of demons, so walk always with your wagon between it and you, though eternal waterfalls someday stop and their sprays turned diseased, though it can be cold and cruel and crushing when it wants to be, though the rain can soak you through your dress down to your bones and leave you a miserable shivering wreck in the middle of the nicest picnic... what child of the Terraced Lake could not love the water? That's why. That's why Yue can't help falling in love.

And love is why she isn't running. And love is why it hurts so much to see such a beautiful place dragged so low. She didn't, actually she'd never, everything atop her tiny little world was new, see? It had all been made in the time after the first Princess shot down the suns. Long after that, even, well beyond the time when the Burrowers built their glittering golden staircases and walked away to be among the stars. Long after that too, everything she had and everything she owned and everything she saw was from a time and a place where there was too much plenty and too much freshness to let anything go to rot like this. So she's never seen something so beautiful get turned into a decaying shell of itself, not unless you counted Mr. Stuffles, whose crime was getting too many hugs until his stitching started to come loose enough that it was too hard to sew him back together so that he had to retire to the shelf opposite the fireplace to watch teatime and be cursed to never have another adventure even though his smile still begged for them occasionally. And for some reason nobody ever did seem to count Mr. Stuffles, so being here hits that much harder.

It's like some careless person wandered off from their beautiful castle and left the door open. It's like they left the door open and the wind blew in and knocked everything over. And even when people noticed the door was still open, they just shrugged and left it like that so that the rains could wash out all the colors. It's like they didn't even care when the goats started wandering in and chewing on everything. It's like... it's like no one cared. How horrible! Only it's worse than all of that because it's gone on for so long that the world itself was giving up on this place! You ever been so mad at something it made you squeak? Well take a look at Yue.

She doesn't have a sleeve to wipe her eyes on, so her arm's going to have to be good enough for the job. Yue cries openly, because whoever it is that was buried here, she must have been important. She must have been special beyond special. This was not the resting place of a simple handmaiden, even the greatest ever to wear the title. Not even the most beloved hero and servant of all time could have moved the world to remember her like it tried to. She must have been a Princess herself, or so much like one that it didn't matter, if her world lacked titles like Yue's had. And somebody so incredibly special and wonderful deserved to have people cry for her sake, because nobody seemed to have bothered for a dozen dozen dozen lifetimes.

And these are the feelings that surge through Yue's body as she trembles and holds her silly wooden sword in front of her as the machines of at least three bygone eras prior to her come shambling at her like jiangshi or something even worse like they'd put in a horror movie. And they're why even though she desperately wants to flinch, to run away from those ominously swinging clubs, she digs her feet into the ground and holds herself still... erm, steady, uh, in place. Yes. And it occurs to her like a flash of inspiration that in a moment like this she ought to say something. This is when warriors shout challenges, isn't it? To help them pluck up their courage before they go about the dirty business of fighting? Hyra's probably expecting her to, oh no, she'll be so disappointed if Yue can't come up with something cool! And doesn't she want to look cool in front of Cyanis so that she knows she's found a friend she can rely on and--

CLONK!!

"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee~!"

Something! Something just hit her sword! And! And! Oh gosh oh no get awwaaaaaayyy!

Yue twists and scrambles and somehow goes leaping backward some twenty odd paces until she nearly lands in a pool of brackish filth, and that sends her forward another five until she remembers, oh shoot, the robots, and when she looks up to scream some more that's when she notices that the one that was raising it's big metal fist at her has fallen over. Does that? Is this? Does he count as her first ever vanquished foe? Oh gosh! It must have stepped wrong when it tried to swing, so that when it smacked into her sword it toppled over! But that counts! That totally counts, doesn't it? Surely it must, if you've giving bonus points for holding the sword in front in the first place!

There's all sorts of things she's feeling at once. First, the tears that are rolling down her cheeks right now are made with the terror of being in a fight without an invincible swordmaiden to protect her. Second, the rising heat that turns those tears to steam: that's how embarrassed she feels knowing that anyone is watching her and realizing that she still has no idea what comes after Step 1 of Hyra's lessons. And finally, the shaky laugh of almost kind of pride that shatters into more screaming and flailing as she notices the truth.

This isn't a victory at all! The two club-wielders have taken advantage of her distraction, and now they're striking; not from the front, but from the sides! Ooh, clever girls! Yue flinches and shrinks in on herself and just barely manages to slip on a patch of algae in time to duck her head under the heavy swings before they can knock her senseless. She lands gracelessly on her butt and scrambles like a crab to avoid the WHUMP, WHUMP, THUD of clubs smashing at her every which way, until... yeeep! Something just grabbed her ankle! Yue twists her body swings wildly with her sword with her eyes squeezed shut so that she can't tell when she's hitting her attackers or the ground or (oh please no) an increasingly frustrated wolf.

All she knows is that she's doomed. All she knows is that she's in over her head. All she knows is, oh gosh, how in the world is she going to get out of this one?

[Tatterdemalion]

“aum shantae aum. aum shantae nemo padhome aum.”

Nails slam into wood with such violence that sheep, sudden-spooked, bleat plaintively. Rose from the River needs no hammer. Between nails she chisels the words of her jewel mantra into the air. aum shantae aum. aum shantae aum. aum shantae nemo padhome aum.

Princess Chen trusted her. And the greatest good for the harmony of all things demands that this task be completed before pursuit. It is necessary that this road remain open; leaving it undone just because she can imagine those dark, pleading eyes staring at her through the rear window of a car now long gone? Just because she can feel her flesh straining with the desire to bloom into a terrible new form, many-limbed and many-jawed, a monster to equal anything that the Watchman has ever fought? Just because Rose from the River wants to feel good about herself, wants to pick up the girl and hear the sigh of relief into that scarf as Chen nuzzles into her arms?

There is work to be done.

The last nail sinks deep; too deep. She reaches behind the fence and bends the tip back in a neat curve. There. Now no sheep will find itself caught or bloodied by her carelessness. She stands, ignoring the thanks from those left behind in the car’s wake. She does not have time to accept the thanks for her work.

Up on the fence, on the pads of her feet. From there to the lower branches of a tree leaning over the flock. Up. Thank you, old one; your branches are strong. aum shantae aum. She moves in sudden shocking bursts, much like a cat, until she is perched on the very top of the tree for the space of a breath. Her weight focuses down to the size of a pin, and the trunk groans beneath her as she balances. Then, only then, she leaps.

Her braids stream behind her as she soars in an arc, trousers billowing, her blade held out to her side undrawn. And she looks out over hill and valley and forest, looks at the car on the winding single-lane road, looks at brake lights as small as puncture wounds, looks to the turn-off where the car will ascend into the sun-dappled wood. Going to find foxes, ha! And if you cannot give them a monster, a Princess is fine enough. Where were you when there was the work left undone?

Rose from the River reaches the apex, and she breathes out. In that moment of weightlessness, she makes herself empty, a vessel to be filled, and lets the wind twist her where it will. Then she falls like the sudden bolt of lightning which strides across the sky.

She hits the ground running. Still on two legs, but running all the same. Running because she has the momentum and she must move, because it is all she can do not to drop to all fours and lope faster, because her bare feet are sure and nimble on the grass, because her heart is an engine that churns and roils and can only barely be constrained and directed. Her self resides in the fire but does not burn; it radiates light to the eight corners of her heart. She sits within herself and observes her own unaware grace, her sensation of motion in the moment that does not begin or end.

Chen, little Twinshard-heir, Rose from the River makes for your destination. You are not her first and dearest responsibility; not yet. But when she finds the one who took you, then you will see the anger of an ancient huntress, for as it is said:

The birds are disturbed in their motion,
the clouds above roil and churn.
Better to throw oneself into the hungry earth
than awaken the pious woman’s wrath.

And yet, perhaps it will be longer still, for though Rose from the River may take a more direct route than the car may, still she may have more perils on her path. The Way does not protect its disciples from the ebb and swell of the world around them; it merely calls upon them to do better, to achieve more by more noble means, and to make the path to harmony smoother for the feet of all. Bold Thorn Pilgrim! Where shall those bare feet take you, hurtling as fast as you may?

[Rose from the River trusts in the Way to make her path short, seeking to perform the amazing feat of arriving at the fox before the car and its passengers can. However, she rolls a 5 with Spirit, claiming her second XP and allowing for a Downbeat.]

[Anarion]

"Thhhhp!" Chen shouts, bumping and rolling on the suited thief's shoulder with a mixture of fear and almost wild glee. No princess Kikil! No crazy fantasies. She was on some sort of wild adventure instead and Chen could handle wild adventures way better than she could overbearing technomancers and terrifying mask Princesses! (Oh gosh, perish the thought there could be more than one terrifying mask Princess!).

She's not even protesting as loudly as she could. There's the scarf of course, but also the parts of her that are still covered in only thin and revealing silks from Qiu's little costume change are rubbing against this very nice suit and that is some nice fabric. It's very comfortable and Chen is appreciating that she's dealing with some excellent mischief makers today. Mom (Hestia) always warned her against letting her guard down, but being carried by strong arms and pressing into fine clothing was great! She nuzzled the thief's back with one cheek before being tossed into the car like a sack of (softly bound) potatoes.

She gave the thief a pointed look and a "mmmmmm" that said "ungag me this instant you fiend!" without actually using any words, but he wasn't having it, so she settled into her seat. This was nice enough. Chen had actually ridden in a car before. Mommy Ysel had one in Ys for times she felt like getting around in style. Finding the fuel for one was expensive or time consuming, but that just made it all the more grand. Ysel had painted hers a bright sparkling red because it was her favorite color and would occasionally take it out for show. It had struck Chen how easy it was. It wasn't quite as fast as sword-flight (at least for an expert) but it didn't take focus or concentration really, especially for the passengers. It was really hard to transport people using magic. Not as hard as herding sheep (Chen still couldn't believe Rose had done that!) but definitely something that took training and care and required the passenger to pay some attention and not be a problem. A car ride, you could just relax and look out the window.

So Chen did, looking out at the fields and twisting and squirming to get a little bit of a view behind her. That's when she saw Rose, her fence-mending finished suddenly leap into the air, braids flying behind her, sword hilt gripped in her outstretched arm for all the world like a golden eagle about to swoop upon them. Then the car crested past a little rise and Chen lost sight of Rose and the trees behind them as the incline rose up behind her to fill her view with rolling low grass.

Rose was coming for her! Chen blushed and couldn't help bouncing a little in her seat, wiggling her knees back and forth in excitement. This was so much fun! Her new friend was keeping her word, or at least trying to, she wasn't getting swept up into permanent Princess exile, she got to ride in a car, and she was still confident that they'd find Yue and she could turn this into a win! Never give up, never surrender, right? Right!

Trying to settle her beating heart, Chen glanced forwards, towards the driver, looking to see what they were doing and whether there was any sign of a destination before them. The technomancer had said a fox, right? Chen knew foxes a little. Tricky, but her mothers couldn't keep her from learning about them when they were everybody's informants, spies, and cute little fluffers wish granters in a pinch. Chen had been carefully supervised when she met her first fox, not allowed to make any wishes but just to help Ysel negotiate some kind of scouting thing, maybe? She didn't remember it that well because she had stumbled through the words while wishing in her heart the entire time that the fox would understand that she just wanted to be whisked away and maybe tied to a wall in the fox's lair (f-for plausible deniability later) while she was brushed and tickled with all four of those big fluffy tails. ...Chen blushed a lot harder thinking through this.

That wasn't going to get her anything though. She needed to get the driver's attention and get him to start talking so she could figure out what the right play was here. "Mmmph!" she shouted into her scarf, twisting and sliding her legs and her butt across the car seat so she made a swishing sound across the fabric. "Mmph, mmphh!" "Mmphm, hmphhh!" hey, pay attention to me back here!

[Thanqol]

Chen!

"Good afternoon, Princess!" said the thief as the car bounced down the dirt road at a sheep-startling pace. "I'm Elkibrant, gentleman thief, and this is my partner, Vogodoris, Fifth Sentinel of the Malachite Gate." He reached back one-handed to tuck a business card into your gag. "We're probably not going to be together long - you're hot cargo, haha, and I imagine by the end of this you'll end up traded a couple of dozen times. But hey! Today's prisoner is tomorrow's client, so I ask you - do you need a couple of rogues in your corner? Anyone you particularly do or don't want to be captured by?"

"Should I -?"

"Oh yeah, ungag her Dory, there's a sport."

For a confusing, relieving, disappointing moment your mouth is yours again.

Rose!

Oh, you are a Hunter most fierce, Rose from the River. Within the physical realm there is naught that can escape you. But the digital geists who swim the shores of the ethereal sea have ever slipped through your fingers and your ad-free subscriptions have long since expired.

"Are you someone who can keep your head when everyone else is losing theirs?" said an entity as timeless as you. "Are you someone who can keep her eyes on the prize despite anything? Daytrading may be for you, Rose!"

This is Will0 WZP, your own personal awareness organizer - and one of the sub-souls of the Scales of Meaning. It manifests in your vision as a version of yourself as you could be: dressed in the latest* fashions, with a swish watch, a modern* hairstyle, and a retro* sidearm. It's currently showcasing what your hair would look like reformatted into a towering beehive shape. It dominates your field of view, your hearing, even your sense of smell is overcome with its advertised perfume (Megasoda Nightclub).

"So let's start with the trading!" it buzzed peppily. "The Scales has placed a high stake in your conquest and subordination, but we don't need to deal in absolutes. Perhaps I can interest you in a timeshare arrangement? I could broker an arrangement where you sub for the Scales some of the time in exchange for a trial membership in the ad-lite premium package?"

Yue!

like this

It's not a coherent thought that runs through you, and it's certainly not your own. It's a trigger of some sort of deep muscle memory - an instinct so deeply ingrained that it would hurt more to not follow it. A basic, wide horizontal slash that catches one of the rusted machines in its centreplate and knocks it over.

then this

It's almost like falling. Not the glamourous high altitude falling with a view, but the tripped over your own feet and oh no I'm going down in front of everybody kind of falling. Your body barely keeps up with the impulse, stumbling forwards and putting your weight into the reverse sweep that strikes the second decrepit machine.

ending like this

You're spinning, being spun. Situational awareness is an impossible concept and your feet have never felt more treasonous. They don't know how to tell the difference between left and right - what use to feet have for language? You figured walking out as a child and didn't particularly need to revisit the concept. And now they're doing this totally unnatural thing and absolutely none of it feels right - other than the fact that by the end of it you're standing and they aren't. Even when you run you never move that quickly.

again.

Just when you thought it was over. A radiant, platinum glow wraps around the heads of the machines and one by one they stagger back to their feet, held like puppets - just like you. They set their clubs into ready stances far more elegant than the ones they had before and then before you know it you're being shoved through the motions a second time.

[Anarion]

Once she has the attention of the two thieves, Chen stays still and makes eye contact while Elkibrant makes his pitch. There's a slight blush when he puts his card in her gag, but he doesn't have that teasing tone in his voice, so it's not the same as if Rose or Qiu were doing it. Just going through the motions didn't really get Chen's heart beating when it was obviously a sincere business offer. Instead, this sort of business arrangement put her in mind of her training and guidance from her Moms. Mom always said never to pass up an opportunity, and these two were, if not trustworthy, at least acting like their motivations were pretty straightforward: make them a better offer than the competition and don't put them at too much risk and they'd do what you wanted. There were plenty of people in the world who just wanted to get their next meal, and at least a few who wanted that next meal to be extra fancy and there was nothing wrong with that if it was what made them happy. Well maybe. Unlike Mom, Mommy always seemed to have some disdain for people who she didn't think really enjoyed what they were doing. Chen remembered her moms fighting about that a couple times.

When the gag comes off, Chen swallows to get the fuzzy taste out of her mouth and looks between the two thieves kidnapping her. "I'll be happy to take advantage of your services if I ever need them. I assume your card says how to get in touch if I need you?" She looks at Elkibrant, who's clearly doing the talking here, but also gives Vogodoris a nod of appreciation for his care. Both her moms always said it was important to make sure everyone felt included in a group.

"I don't know if I should just tell you who I do or don't want to get kidnapped by though" Chen says, a little bit of mischief in her eyes and her smile. "I mean, that's the sort of thing I'd want to know if I were hiring you, so I don't think I should just give it away for free. How about this. I'll tell you which Princesses I'm interested in after you tell me something useful first. Your choice, though if there's time I really want to know about Vogodoris here and how you two started working together. I've met a lot of ancient spirits today and they all seem so interesting!" Chen gives the two of them another warm glance, totally innocent. "Or if we're short on time, you could say who put you up to blocking the road with that herd of sheep."

Chen isn't really sure they did that, but they might not know when she and Rose first spotted them or the range of their skills, so she's ready to try a bluff and watching both of their faces to see if her guess gets a reaction that proves her right.

[If this kidnapping is substantial enough, I'm intending this to be the moment for them to reveal something they hope to gain from Help Me!~~ If not, I could roll either an Entice or Figure Out depending on what seems most appropriate here.]

[Tatterdemalion]

Rose from the River skids on grass. Only her sense of touch remains fully hers; she feels how her heel digs into the earth, how she leaves a strip behind her as she comes to a hard stop. Without thought, the Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade, still sheathed in its staff-shape, cracks right through Will0 WZP’s head; the lack of feedback means that she has no choice but to lean into the motion, to flip heels over head and land crouched low. Only then does she realize that she has been assailed by a sales-sprite. Of all the misfortune!

If she was a great sage, then perhaps she could meditate here until Will0 timed out. But then her Chen, which is to say, the Princess that she had defeated in battle and who had been temporarily removed from her care, which was in and of itself a temporary state, and not something that should make her want to scream at Will0 to get out of her way, would be sold off to a fox, and the fox would send her elsewhere, and likely as not great mischief would be done. But here is an enemy that cannot be fought with force of arms, one that steals perception and offers to sell it back to you at high price. How, by the jewel and the thunder, is she to overcome this demon of offers and deals?

The perfume is sticky. It makes Rose’s bark-smoothed skin prickle with unease. It reminds her of places she has been before: throbbing nightclubs, ultraviolet back rooms, urine-marbled restrooms. The sugary quality makes her teeth ache. It completely drowns out the scents that she has grown for herself with care. And, worse? Will0 makes the robe work. It is Vantasblack with gold accents, abstract designs interlocking at the sleeves and the placket, hugging her upper body tightly before spreading in a halo around her legs, one silver stilletto barely visible. It is wealth and good taste, and the good life which could be hers, all she needs to do is become her own boss and become a part of the Family!

(It would not particularly matter to Will0 which Family it was: the ones that sold miracle cures, the ones that sold weapons, or the ones that sold insurance and its breaches. What matters is that for a meager upfront cost and with a go-getting attitude that saw people around her as marks, she too could end up helplessly entwined in debt, moving product just to keep her head above water. Marie Ojixa explained that to her at length at the Sagegrass, so serious behind her thick glasses, speaking just loudly enough to be heard over the thump-and-boom of the music.)

(Later she’d cracked Marie’s glasses in the fight in her apartment, leaving Marie squinting tearfully as the HUNTER-Class 猎犬 wrapped its adhesive-secreting tentacles around her and pulled her into a cruel, hopeless embrace. Eighty years at an Incarceration Center and Production Facility for sedition, breach of contract, and propagation of terroristic anti-capitalist philosophy.)

No. The only way out is through. What is her pride, that she should cling to it?

“I need Foxes Near Me and route mapping,” Rose from the River says, rising to look Will0 WZP in the phantom eyes. “In return for two ninety-minute Ownership credit chits.” She flicks her wrist, and behold! Two of the iron coins, favors in material form. “Scales of Meaning, unfortunately, cannot afford two revelations and an epiphany, which, as you certainly know, is the current competitive price for my long-term service contract. However, I would be delighted to offer her a one-day free trial in my Secrets of the Black Serpents(trademark) meditation wellness therapy course if she wants to branch out into the market.” She talks shop patter exactly like she drank it in during infiltration. “Again, this is a limited time offer; we can only afford to offer two ninety-minute chits for the next forty-five seconds, so be sure to pick up this deal before it closes!!” That was… too much like Will0. And Rose has no way of knowing if anyone is nearby to have heard the way she just chirped. Please, by the axis point, let nobody have witnessed her Saleswoman Smile.

[Phoe]

Y'know? There was a time, long enough ago for it to be embarrassing but not so long ago that you wouldn't recognize her if you saw the video, when Yue thought that it was very important that she learn how to dance. Haha, can you imagine? The sheer cheek! What's a little village girl need to know dancing for, anyway? Was it her plan to skip on down to the big city and twirl her silks and her fans in exchange for supper? She never said. And maybe she didn't know! But she'd been reading a book about a Princess (they didn't use that word exactly, but you could tell, ok? You can always tell.) who stole hearts (and jewels!) with her dancing, and it was important! Real important that she learn! So she begged and she begged and finally Sis, who knew everything there was to know about everything you see, sighed said ok and took her outside.

If you're wondering what this has to do with anything, well, the sensations just now are remarkably similar. Pull this way! No this way! Now that way! Yue squeaks with fright as her body jerks around in an awkward dance that's somehow even less graceful than she managed to be back then. Her feet don't quite trip over themselves, but if she's watching them she's got no idea how they're managing it. And she's not, because it's too important that she keep those pretty blues trained on her, erm, her 'partners' as they brandished those awful and awfully heavy looking clubs at her. Her arm lurches one way and her foot slides another and her weight shifts like meep! and then clack clack clatter clack! Wooden weapons beat their song together and she goes spinning till she's sure she's gonna hurl, till she's definitely absotively gotta smack her dainty little face right on the slime covered floor.

like this! and then this! ending like this!

But she doesn't. Yue flinches and yanks her arm away at the last second so that her horizontal slashing finisher turns into more of a crossways halfways whichways sort of half-boop. And that's not right at all, is it? It's like being a puppet, she supposes, or well... weird the way everything here comes back to jiangshi isn't it? But come on! If it's strings or magic it makes no difference, she hops when she's told and nobody seems to mind or notice when she winces because it's uncomfortable, and oh no oh no oh no she's gone and done it, hasn't she? She's been possessed! Or... or lower possessed or just plain cursed and oh! Oh no! Was it going to be like this forever? When she thought all that stuff about this place being pretty she didn't, y'know, um. She didn't mean she wanted to be the monumeEEEp!

...like this.

What is this?

...

All of her muscles feel like jelly just now. If her heart beats any faster she's pretty sure it's gonna explode, and that's a mess she'd best not try to imagine unless she wants to add fainting to her list of bad things that are about to happen to her. Every time she tries to move her body on her own it feels like fighting to push through the sea, if the sea were made of sheep's wool but also somehow yanked back like a teacher dragging her idiot student out of incoming traffic. Shame and pain and a palpable sense of disappointment, of letting someone important down. She'd like to cry right now, but her eyes don't belong to her at the moment. You would think she would be thrilled, wouldn't you?

But this doesn't feel like when Hyra held her close. It's got none of her warmth, it doesn't... um. Oh gosh, don't take this the wrong way, but it doesn't tease right. Y'know? That smirk was everything, when you got right down to it, and without it there's just pushing and pulling and nobody's letting her move so it's just like getting stuck in a whirlpool while being clung to by an octopus, but also there are robot zombies with large clubs who are much better at being puppets than she is and they keep swinging bit hurty chunks of wood at her and eep! And likewise, eep! And aish! Once more with feeling, EEEEEP!

...Except. A third loop and a forth, there's a feeling of exasperation clutching at her lungs, but there's a glimmer of something else now too. And... it's just, she's not sure, but she thinks it might be hers. No, it must be hers. A thought that she's having, a connection that she's made, because it flows like water down a hill after a night of rain and suddenly, suddenly, suddenly!

like. this.

And then... this?

finishing like this!

It's a miracle. One of those tiny every day sorts of miracles like when you crack open a shell and there's an extra nut inside for some reason, or a cold winter's night where you're feeling sad for no reason at all but suddenly there's a floofy little fox in your lap who won't stop kneading and purring until you finally smile. That kind of miracle. The kind that goes this way: Yue about the way she's being pulled and which thing goes next and then, aha! It's clack and clack then clatter clack! She steps into her parry for once, just ahead of being yanked into it, and it's only for a moment but suddenly she feels as warm as summer, and there's a little squeeze on her shoulders.

Yue is allowed to pose.

When she smiles, it's a shaky sort of thing. Thank goodness it's so dark down here, because it's really rather ugly. After all, she's still half-crying and half-unsure if she wants to not be crying. Her heart's still racing, but she's doing her best to stuff all those fears into some tiny pocket maybe down by her toes? Because... hahaha, it's so strange. But her curse feels... well. Not exactly. Maybe? No, gosh. She must be imagining it. But still. Doesn't it feel just the littlest bit like love?

This poor thing. This poor, poor girl. Maybe... maybe she doesn't have any other way to show love anymore. Maybe this is how she does it. Maybe this is how she laughs. Maybe this is how she cries. Maybe this. And then this. Now that. Ending like this. Yue is yanked back to start, and her increasingly dented opponents stand and brandish their weapons with renewed vigor at her equally increasingly bruised arms.

She gulps. But she closes her eyes, and tries to imagine herself, but a heroine worthy of a song. Or maybe just a verse or two. A rhyming couplet, maybe? Her hair drawn up into a ponytail instead of left to frizz and floof wherever it felt like. Soft boots, and a pleated skirt, a bit of leather armor maybe, like Hyra wore, but... she giggles. It's hard to imagine that working without also having Hyra's, erm, physique. But it helps enough, at any rate, to let her trust her, oh gosh! She almost said 'mistress', didn't she? Oh gosh gosh gosh, no no it's not, um. Focus!

She lets each move flow into the next, just letting go, just trusting, not needing to move herself at all because there's someone here who can do that for her. She surrenders her control, and it's strange how much that feels like power. But that's a thought to unpack later, by a campfire under a blanket, when everybody else around her has gone to sleep. Right now, her mind is on the feeling of it all. She's got no idea how to speak to this ghost. None at all. In fact if she was brave enough to try speaking at all right now it wouldn't surprise her to find out that she couldn't. Which is why she isn't. Because she's not. Brave enough, that is. So what she's got left to speak with are the feelings in her heart, and that floaty little trust sense that comes from surrender, and... hope, she guesses. Hope that it's enough. Hope that it helps.

Hope that, maybe there's a Level Two?

[Thanqol]

Chen!

"That wasn't us," said Vogodoris the falling god. "We would not bring sheep into our crimes. There are limits."

"We were on the lookout for an opportunity like this, though," said Elkibrant. "Never negotiate with a fox without a maiden's heart, after all! Your own or a sufficiently gagged proxy."

"Such picky creatures," said Vogodoris, shaking his head.

"As to ol' stoneface here - where else do you meet a god? The Buddha cemetery! You should see it - this huge beach on the shores of Green Coral Bay where all the Buddhas of the world wash up. Plastic and stone and sodden papercraft, books and bronze and chocolate. Millions of them, laughing and calm, serene and warlike, rich and starving. Buddha statues the size of mountains and Buddha statues sealed within marbles. Temple playsets and motorcycle maintenance Buddhas and hitchhiker Buddhas. Enough Buddhas to enlighten the world, if that was how it worked.

"I grew up near there. Every winter when the tides are calm and the coral is hibernating we'd go down there with trash bags and grabby sticks and plenty of monks. We'd pick through the Buddhas looking for our yearly Buddha. Everyone gets to pick one of the ten million Buddhas to be their Buddha for the year. It's like a new years resolution, you know? The Buddha you're going to care for says a little about how your year's going to go. If you're tired and need a rest then you take a little Buddha and have a little year, but if you're bright and full of energy you pick a huge Buddha that comes with huge problems! Every year some dumb kid picks one of the mountains statue Buddhas and has to spend all year climbing it to clean the bird shit, hauling incense out to the beach by the barrel, and undergoing a crash course in stonemasonry in addition to all their schoolwork.

"Gods, of course, live in Buddha statues too - Buddha's kind so he lets them stay. Sometimes you get a wicked one, just like some years you get a wicked year. Sometimes you get a really good one and your life is blessed. But sometimes... sometimes you get a god who's going through some shit, just like you. A god who's on the brink of some kind of transformation and needs as much from you as you need from him. You get a god like that, well, maybe it's time to leave the Buddha behind and hit the road. See if the two of you can find where you're looking for on your own, together. Some days respecting the Buddha just isn't enough - you've got to try to be the Buddha too."

Rose!

"A sale!" squeaked Will0 in shock and delight. She bounced happily on her heels and fist-pumped, childishly delighted - and snatched the two coins without hesitation. "Oh! A sale! I got a sale!"

Immediately ten thousand other geists are present. They're swarming over your senses, piling into this dataspace like seagulls to the scent of chips. For a moment it's a total sensory overload of blaring data confusion before things start abruptly cutting off. Will0 is returning your senses to you piecemeal, and you perceive her walking back and forth with a large mop, alternately cleaning away the advertisements plastering your senses and beating other geists with it. Finally the crowd backs off a little and the world is yours again, none witness to your bargaining than the sheep.

"Sorry!" said Will0. "I wasn't thinking - wow, they're really bored, huh? Well, I better stick with you! I've gotta keep my end of the bargain!"

This is a demon and her own creature, but she is also a fragment of the Scales of Meaning in the same way the Scales is a fragment of the Pyre of Knowledge. Like a thought can change a person, her perspective can change the Scales and the Scales' perspective can change the Pyre. And right now she is beaming at you with such happiness and delight that at least some of that must be running up the chain.

"Come on! Let's go meet a fox!"

Yue!

good

These aren't thoughts that are haunting you. No evil will is this, no higher purpose, no agenda or unfinished business. This is instinct. This is all physicality, its lessons speaking themselves in bone and nerve and muscle. Clack clack clack! This time when the machines go down they land in twisted and ruined heaps, too damaged for even the golden light to illuminate. They struggle, and then the light moves on.

duels aren't about control. not about controlling yourself. not about controlling your opponent. not about surrendering yourself. not about making your opponent surrender.

The light flowed through ancient channels and ran into a wall covered in muck and filth. Bubbles ran out in lines - the force of ancient pressure seals breaking, releasing air held still for centuries. Through the filth emerged a structure of filth. A gown of muck, a feminine form with no head, dressed in sticky black tar which glows red-orange from the golden light trapped inside. It raises its sword in salute - the faintest fleck of metal visible through the decay. Then it steps, steps, twists its legs, raises its blade, all present and ready energy and oh so beautiful and oh so dangerous despite the sludge.

It pauses in that motion, then stands straight and repeats the steps. As it goes through them your legs are dragged into the same places, the same angles, repeating its stance so the two of you are mirrors of each other.

duels are about the duel.

You step into the same step, you strike the same strike, slime-covered steel clashes with polished wood. Again and again - one! Two! Three! Faster and faster! So fast you're afraid of it, the speed, the whirling clash! It's striking a mirror - no, it's being the reflection. You're being made to imitate everything this spirit does and it turns out that you can. You can do it. You can move this way. There's nothing physically stopping you other than that you don't know how. You're leaning into it rather than fighting it and it's like learning the difference between falling and flight.

the duel has its own logic. its own steps. it is something that we create together, greater than the sum of our hearts.

Amidst the whirl of being a reflection lines of tar are leaving your opponent. With flicks and flourishes drips are leaving the hem of that animated gown and revealing gold and violet and orange, like a sunset emerging from beneath the sea floor.

The mirror shifts.

Now when she goes high you duck low, reflecting her in the inverse. You're still being guided but with each exchange the control loosens a little. Here is how you do this. And this. And finishing with that. Good. Again. Again! Again! One more time! One more again! And again! You're in spectacular beautiful motion, in sync with the duel - but every time it seems like it might conclude, that formless fabric recovers, withdraws, falls back into its stance and calls into your bones - again!

one more time, just one more - please. i'm not done yet.

It feels like this might go forever. And while you're keeping up you can't forever. This, after all, is a hungry ghost - the base craving instincts of the body, abandoned by the thoughts and compassion and soul that have gone on to the next life. It is simply craving, craving for the joy that it remembers in life. Craving the clash of blades, the whirl of steps, the beat of hearts. Just one more time. That is all it needs.

(But what is the filth of this place but the craving of the ancient world? What would blind a ghost so if not for endless exposure to the advertising geists and toxic excess? Perhaps one more duel truly would satisfy it were it not soaked in the corruption of ancient days).

[Tatterdemalion]

The forest is older than Rose from the River’s wood-nature. True, she was decanted from her vat-womb before the seeds of the eldest trees here were shaped and sown beneath the lonely sun, but while she lay entombed and imprisoned beneath Mount Hoa in the Eight Trigram Coffin, the trees learned well here the secrets of wood: of growth, of life which ends in death, of death which brings forth life again, of interconnected networks, of seeds and their transformation. The world is shadow-dappled beneath the boughs, and low things grow between the trunks, bushes and creeping vines and delicate white flowers, and there is birdsong lilting from branch to branch, and there are great grey moths who settle here and there and fan their wings slowly, and fat red squirrels who chitter their many outrages as Rose from the River winds her way between the trees.

To her eyes alone, there is a golden ribbon that cuts through the world. In the trackless wood, it can only tell her the straightest, the most direct path. Leaves crackle briefly underfoot as she weaves her way through the wood, a continuous rushing motion, fierce and fearful to behold, more dangerous than bear or wolf. Her eyes catch the light filtered through dark leaves, and the flash of gold in her dark face is startling enough that were there any to look and catch a glimpse, they might think her some terrible predator of the wood, and they might not entirely be wrong. Her limbs might as well be branches, flexible and strong; her braids sway like the vines which catch in the wind, and she moves as quickly as the squirrels on the branches and as smoothly as the snake which darts from log to log.

If only she could stay here a while and listen! Each wood has its own song. This one is thick-trunked, strong-crowned, and the earth beneath rises and falls like a frozen wave, and so too the trees learn to shift their footing and grip the earth strongly to avoid disaster. But even disaster has its role, its purpose: fat black insects chew rotten bark on a fallen trunk, moss-draped, and scurry into hiding as Rose lightly vaults over it, pushes off it, veers left where the ribbon goes straight on through a thicket. Mushrooms sway in the wake of her passage, grown where the body of a small bird fell; now bone and feather are both gone, and only the mushrooms remain. The world around her is pregnant with meaning that should be interpreted and understood, if only she had the time. But she does not. Not if she wants to grab a fox by the scruff of her collar and discuss a certain upcoming deal, and instructions for how to carry it out. Steal from her, will they? Steal her Chen? She’ll teach them about foxes, make no mistake.

Then she stops, suddenly struck by instincts, and considers her path. It has brought her to a depression in the earth, overlooked by what once was a statue. It was done in a severe style, but wind and rain and faint sunlight and time have worn the corners soft and mild. There is only the faint impression of a face, and there is only the faint impression of a sword held close and low, point downwards, enveloped in fabric by the end (or else the point itself has simply been worn away completely). The hollow is clay-walled, root-matted, and it would take her but a moment to cross at a lope. But here, the birds have grown quiet. Sunlight streams down upon the statue’s head, and breaks into a numinous haze, a halo never dreamed by its maker. The underbrush is thick on either side, spilling over the lips.

Will0 cocks her head curiously; Rose from the River raises one finger to where she perceives the sprite’s lips to be. Her breath is still, her sudden flight brought to complete silence. The world aches for that silence to be broken, and she will not miss that moment when it comes. “I will owe you,” she subvocalizes, mouth moving noiselessly. The ribbon throbs as it snakes down through the hollow, telling her to rush on, to find her vulpine prize. But route generation systems are simple, and they never were good at recognizing danger.

Staff on her shoulder in deceptively casual form, Rose from the River walks down into the earth, letting it rise on either side to the height of her shoulders. The statue stands impassive as roots rustle beneath her bare feet. Her breath is silent. Her heart is silent. The world swells with the anticipation of noise. And in that moment, when it comes, Rose from the River will not be taken by surprise.

[Phoe]

How long has she been doing this? The only way she has to keep track of the time in here is by counting the loops of the duel and, quite honestly? She lost the rhythm somewhere around six or so and now as far aware she's been doing this from autumn straight till spring. Or maybe an hour? It's somewhere between the two.

The only thing she knows for sure is that she's not in a dream, or trapped in some sort of time loop or, or, um, y'know, one of those big... smartypants, uh... magical field-ish... things. You know the ones! A-anyway, this isn't one of those! She can tell by the way the way the burning is slowly creeping into her body. It starts with sore fe-- ok well, no. It started with the bruises up and down her arms, but after she graduated from the Clubs course those stopped accumulating as much, except when that muck-covered blade has slapped her on the backside in place of actually defeating her. It's happened once or twice now, and it hurts about as much as you'd expect.

But, y'know, anyway, it starts with sore feet. Which makes sense, bare as they are and on this hard flat stone with so many old bits of plastic to not quite avoid stepping on! Even if it was softer, all of this stomping and spinning and twirling and leaping and ducking and running would get even the toughest of feets to start complaining, just you see if it wouldn't! But of course, she's past that now. Now she's reached the spot where that creeping, burning sensation is spreading out across her calves and up into her thighs, like somebody lit a bunch of tiny candles underneath her skin and now they've started tipping over.

She feels it in her arms too, at this point. Did you know? Blocking a sword hurts almost as much as being hit with a club. Yue twists her wrists and swings to deflect another blow, and the impact goes rattling down the length of the wood and all the way up into her elbows. They've started developing a permanent shake that makes her sword feel about three times as heavy as it did when Hyra first put her spell on it, which is really starting to make it hard to keep her first and most important promise. She squeezes it tighter anyway, as if that was going to do something other than give her blisters.

"I... I don't... I can't..."

Her lungs are shrinking too small to hold all the air she needs. Or is it that she needs more air now than they've ever been able to hold? It's hard to tell when they feel so tight even though she's found her voice again. Her eyes have gone dry even though she's just as scared as she was when this began and there's just as many if not more reasons to cry.

But like this. And then like this. Finishing like this. It's not so much that she can't stop as... no, it's exactly that, isn't it? Because if she does stop, if she begs for mercy or runs screaming or just falls over and gives up like those robots did before her, then nobody is getting the thing they wished for today. Not her, not Hyra, not Cyanis, not Kat, and certainly not this ghost. Yue slips a bit on a bit of algae gunk and narrowly avoids a straight thrust. She spins, a little bit like a dancer (a very very tired dancer) and lifts her sword again at the floating dress as it shakes off a tiny bit more of the slop that's been making it seem more like a monster than an outfit.

"You're... a-actually, really... pretty," she gasps, "D-did anyone... ever tell you... that?"

Yue smiles. Just a teeny, tiny little itsy bitsy one. And then it's gone in a flash, because making her face do anything other than hang kinda slack and exhausted-like is really too much work to be doing right now, not when she needs all that energy for important stuff like sword holding and not dying and trying to wipe the bits of sweat that are starting to build up in every little place she'd really rather it didn't. Which is everywhere, for the record. It's not like she's out of shape, y'know? Just last week she spent all afternoon picking through a field of flowers, which required long hikes both to and from home and when she got back she still found the energy to pick up a tangled ball of string and dangle it for Kat to chomp and tug her all over the place because she'd been so terribly bored sun farming that day and wouldn't stop whining for play time. So that's... y'know, really good! But there's a difference between normal people shape and hero people shape, and Ms. Ghost was looking for the second one and... aish.

It's a lot, isn't it? How are you supposed to fix something for a person who's not really there anymore? Maybe if her house wasn't so covered in, uh, ick then this'd be fixable. But have you ever even seen a more ickful place in your life? Of course you haven't! You're not some, like, really old thing from back when ickifiers ran free or whatever, are you? That's just silly. This is just. A lot. A lot a lot. A lot a lot a lot. Maybe even too a lot. Her sword arm starts to slump even though she's willing it not to with every bit of her heart that's not busy pounding to push blood to all the places that didn't know they needed so much of it at once.

"I'm, I'm, I'm n-not," she stammers, letting the tip of her sword hit the ground with a dull thwack, "I just, I just, I just... p-p-please. Help me. Help me..."

[Figure Out a Person: 2+3=5. But since this is a physical conflict, she still gets to ask "What makes you feel loved?"]

[Anarion]

Chen claps with pleasure at the story! Or, she would, but she's still got her wrists bound. It's just, there's a moment while she's learning all about local Buddha adoption customs and the gods who live in them where she kind of forgets all that and her eyes are sparkling and her arms flex and pull at the bonds and she realizes she can't move and twists her whole body instead and finally settles for a very very faint sound from tapping the edges of her fingers against each other that's sort of like clapping.

Chen's voice pitches up a little as she's talking through the story for herself. "Oh, that's so sweet! I really like how people get to choose what's best for them each year! I hope that most people are realistic about it, oh do you get any training for how to pick your Buddha so you don't get stuck in over your head? Oh gosh, maybe I could visit for New Years sometime, oh I'd love to make a painting of everyone combing through the beach picking out their Buddhas for the year!"

Chen lets silence settle into the car for a few heartbeats, her eyes looking upwards at the velvet ceiling of the fancy car, or at nothing at all while the scene plays out in her head. Elkibrant and Vogodoris are too polite to interrupt a Princess engaged in that sort of fantasy. It's how you can tell that they're gentleman thieves and not rude interrupting thieves with no respect for anyone else's heart. Which is a lucky thing for them because rude thieves wouldn't get any business from Princesses, whereas they're making a great sales pitch right now.

Presently, Chen focuses her eyes back on them, looking first at Vogodoris, then at Elkibrant, who seems to be the more talkative by quite a bit. "Well, fair's fair," she says, her face still turned up in a slight smile. "Truth be told, your kidnapping was a blessing because I was terrified of being picked up by Princess Kikil, and the technomancer said that she had called her." Chen's whole body does a little shudder when she said terrified and she looks pointedly at both of the thieves. "Kikil's really scary, she has all that old-world knowledge and the big mask with the spike designs at the bottom, and I was worried that she'd make a whole thing out of it and I don't know what to expect from her, which is kind of the scariest thing of all! Compared to that, I'm really not that worried about Yin. She's really loud and has her whole shiny knights and monsters thing, but if she picked me up she'd listen to what I had to say after she'd had her fun and I wouldn't really mind owing her a favor. I mean, she'd ask for a lot, but she's all about showy shining knights and I could do her thing no problem, I'm actually one of the best swordswomen in all the nine kingdoms." There's a little swelling with pride when Chen says that, her scarf even stretches a bit, but she says it in tone that's calm and measured, the confidence of someone who worked really hard and feels proud of that work, not the bravado of someone trying to show off.

"As for who I'd like to be kidnapped by. Qiu, maybe, but we have a prior arrangement, so you probably shouldn't try to negotiate that one with the foxes. Also she's supposed to be my arch-nemesis." Chen sticks out her tongue briefly, again looking at both of them to get across what she think of that. "Maybe Jezara. I've hung out with her a little, but she's never kidnapped me and I'd really like to pet her and have her nuzzle me, which maybe could happen in the right kidnapping, you know?" Chen blushes, but a deal's a deal. Also, this part is way easier than the part she's been putting off and it's much more fun to think about Jezara in fluffy kitty form rubbing up against her than anything else here.

Eventually, she gives a little sigh and settles into her seat, now talking without looking directly at either of her two kidnappers. "Also, you probably know already that Hestia and Ysel are my Moms. So, you can ransom me to them and get a good deal to avoid giving any of the other kingdoms a leg up on us. I'm sure the fox you're taking me to will already know that, and I'd really rather you didn't, but we made a deal and you told a great story, so it wouldn't be fair if I set you up to undersell me. I'm worth a lot if you start playing off the kingdoms against each other." Chen lets out a deep breath that turns into a long sigh and if she were looking at the two thieves, they might see her roll her eyes at the thought of it all.

Another few beats of silence hang over them for a minute, much less joyous than the first before Chen gathers herself and breaks it. "So, who's the fox around here anyway? I didn't know there was one."