Phoe

Breathless Dead

Bella's boot squeaks on the hard surface of the palace floor. Her ears strain and twitch toward every little sound that slips under the roaring of the engines settling outside in the storm that thunders as furiously as ever. She flinches; there are so many. Another step backwards, toward the door, toward freedom, toward her life, and the squeak is so loud that it's deafening. The ship is just a holo her messy princess left on before she passed out. The storm could fit inside a tea kettle. They don't measure up to the squeak squeak squeak of her boots, inching backwards.

The wet and incomprehensible moans of her Mistress as she strains as heroically as she used to in wrestling practice against her bonds, like the only thought inside her head is to wriggle free enough to crack her face open on the floor. The grinding of Bella's teeth joins the horrible chorus trying to drag her to her knees right now. Her bells chime angrily as she pulls her arms even tighter around her princess. Do they mean nothing to you, Princess?

There's a scraping grind of bronze settling into place that draws Bella's eyes away from her Mistress and across the room to Alexa. Her gaze slides down the length of that form, this love song to Athena, down her legs to lock on to where her feet are planted. Bella's face twitches. Surprise. Betrayal. And for a single moment, a hurt that she can't keep off of her features. Squeak, squeak, squeak go the boots. She backpedals faster. She'll be at the door before long, and...

Bella drinks deeply of the storm-soaked air. Her ears flatten against her skull to drown out the noises, leaving her inside the world of scents instead. In and out, in and out. Her muscles relax as she picks up the whiff of the Princess' favorite perfume peaking out from beneath the tang of her sweat, fear pheremones, and the strange musk of sickness that's plaguing her poor broken body right now. She squeezes tight again, hard enough to steal breath this time. No. No! Leave that one behind. That is not for you, Bella. Find it again, the speck of warm cinnamon cloaked in roses and violets that swim in a sea of...

Her nose wrinkles. She sniffs again. Again. Again! She spits violently. That disgusting reek of pure laser. Bella's ears perk up just in time to catch a single sound more terrible than any other in all the vast universe of sound trapped inside this room.

"Redana."

She trembles. Her lips curl upward, showing sharp, dazzling teeth. Her golden eyes are burning, open wide as they can go and filled with the bitterest of hatred. Hatred for her stupid scent that she wears like a barbarian clown. Hatred for her tacky captain's uniform that no sane person would do anything less than burn, and yet, and yet... that scoff. That stupid, sleepy drawl. Confidence stolen from some dark crevice where no one else would even think to sniff for it. The tail, swishing so lazily behind her. Her ears, her nose, her, her, her..!

"Redana..."

Bella isn't stepping backwards anymore. Another twenty paces at the most and she'd be free. Her mouth opens, but the only sound that comes out is a low hiss. Her every motion is slow and deliberate. Even rippling with tension and aggression as she is, she stoops down to set Red-- her Mistress on the ground with a gentleness that's immediately swallowed up by the way she shoots back to full height, and the deliberate stride with which she steps over her body.

Bella's tail is raised high behind her, fully bushing in a display of naked hatred more ancient even than the lost empires that sowed the seeds of her homeland. The fur on her arms and legs bristles right alongside it. Her left leg slides in front of her and strains more rigidly than steel with readiness and with need to explode forward and pounce in the only sort of motion that could satisfy her right now. Her arms hang in front of her as she curls and uncurls her fingers, stretching her deadly and still dull-red claws and the glistening talon-rings on her index and middle fingers. The shattered half of her collar's chain slumps around the front of her and clatters against the floor. Her back hunches forward until her fingers are low enough to dig grooves into the marble.

Her every breath is a hiss. Every sound her throat makes is choked with flecks of spittle. Every muscle coils like springs and tenses with pure, animal lust for revenge.

"...say her name..." the words sneak out in strained and barely audible chirps in between her growls.

"Don't..." her chest heaves with the effort of pulling in enough air to calm herself, to bring everything back under control.

It's too late. It's much too late for that. How dare she. How dare she do it so easily. How dare she, how dare she, how dare she?

"DON'T YOU EVER SAY HER NAME AGAIN! Stupid bitch, I'll tear it right off your lips!"

Breathless Dead

There is nothing of softness in Bella's face. There is no hint of joy. The thought that she might purr comfort or sing as sweetly as the muses is to be banished from the mind forever. Bella is rigid. Her jaw is clenched so tightly that it might shatter soon, and her lips are pressed thin against one another as she chances a glance down at her squirming, struggling, suddenly very noisy ward. Her eyes are sharp and hard, and no less determined than Redana's. She has not come here to fail.

But there's an instant before everything breaks, where her fingers find the softest bed of gold in the entire universe and move themselves faster than the speed of thought to smooth those mussy locks. Her thumb tastes wetness; a tiny flicker of motion that reaches across time and finds them both safely home and whole. Redana's tear beads against Bella's thumb. The heat of it is unbearable; she flicks it away and with this new motion rips them back from Tellus to exist again in the crumbling landscape of the World Eater.

She opens her mouth with a loud and deliberate breath to speak to Alexa, and in this moment she's interrupted. Her ear flicks with irritation. Bella lifts her head and pulls her princess tighter against her. Her claws press more insistently as she squeezes tight. Possessive. She wrinkles her nose and flicks her tail from left, to right, and left again in a gesture of supreme irritation.

The scoff burns a path up her throat as it forces its way into the world. Her face melts slowly into a vicious sneer, muscle by muscle bubbling and rippling and reshaping itself to convey the sheer depths of her scorn. Her fangs flash brilliant white against the redness of her lips. Bella straightens her spine a little sharper and pushes out her chest, inexorably drawing the princess deeper into its prison. Her eyes flicker briefly and shrink themselves to slits before she suddenly stirs and noiselessly stretches her neck.

"...What the fuck is that supposed to mean? This what you deal with all the time, Alexa? Gods, no wonder you're eager to hitch a ride out. Right then, somebody please tell the circus reject to fuck off. I know it's hard to understand, but I actually don't want to be here any longer than I have to."

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Marianne bears witness to this moment. Her coat flutters behind her, and inside its shrinking shadow her ruined wings wrap themselves around her shell. Her hood is torn from her head and flaps around her neck with a series of dull thwacks, the bounding of a half severed head. Her chains are rattling furiously. She raises one arm to cover her face, but there's nothing to hide the brilliant golden hair that's whipping unchecked behind her with all the rage of a waterfall and shining as though it were a crown pronouncing her a queen. The red-tinted gleam of her teeth shines painfully bright.

She is scowling. A thousand insults shred themselves to bits on her teeth before they escape her mouth. This is an important moment. A turning point. A moment of reckoning she has allowed to happen in her sloth, and so must allow to play out in full. She is decided. She will not cut Canada down at the knees. She will not swoop in and steal her away, she will not add her voice to this chorus, will not step onto the stage and wrap around her like some smothering security blanket. Great paws of shadow tense themselves at the edges of the light.

She leaps up, and is gone. Marianne finds a column of Doubt looming over Canada's battlefield, and she spins herself around it and vaults on, up, and on again until she reaches the top. She leans forward at the edge on all fours. She is a lioness waiting to pounce. But just now, she bears witness. From the cracks inside the light, she watches, and snorts, and smolders.

She knows who you are, Canada Taliv. She knows how this will end. Marianne is watching, waiting, to see what kind of shape your dagger-heart might be. This is the moment, the only moment, for you to find out what sort of teeth are hiding in your mouth. What is a dagger to you, Canada Taliv? And once it's in your hands, how will you choose to wield it?

Marianne leans forward. Her burning eyes drink in the sight of a god, the first god of her young life. She licks her lips with relish. She will bear witness.

Breathless Dead

Endure. For just a little longer, endure. Look at Mynx. Right in the eyes. Watch the way the scales shudder like a wave across her arm. She's about to crack. She's going to break first. Imagine the sweetness of that moment, that comes from being patient. Just a little longer. She'll pack up the show and move to the important bit. Endure. As long as it's just the three of them, endure. The world is Mynx and the world is Bella. The world is their princess. So endure. Endure. En--

Bella startles at the clumsy, unsubtle clomping of heavy feet into the chamber. Unfamiliar. New. Soldiers. And more. And more! The air fills with new smells, new sweats: there's a bit of salt lagging somewhere in the back, barely noticeable over the much stronger punch of bronze that must mean the Princess' new toy has found them, and coming from... ghk. The world is expanding, filling with eyes and ears and the heat of Redana's body wriggling against and the sounds that are escaping from her mouth! How is she supposed to focus over these garbled, wet moans? This lustful, longing noise that's lancing through her brain? Mynx is brushing her ear. Just touching it really, just for comfort, but she can feel it stirring inside her, there's a purr sneaking into her throat, and no no no, fuck, no. NO!

It's Hera's hands that touch the cuffs locking Mistress and Servant in place. It's her blessing and her desire that rules this moment. So it's Bella's hands that spring free, and in another instant she's twisted up, twisted free, twisted away, and twisted her tail around Redana's wrist just long enough to get her tangled in the sudden excess of chain as the servitor jumps to her feet at the expense of her owner.

It's too late. Redana's fire has already caught her fur. She's bristling with the sheer heat and indignity of it all. Her breath is ragged and shallow, sucking air greedily through the leather gag. Her knees buckle with fresh weakness, but her claws are free at last. They tense and scrabble desperately at the band stuffed inside her lips, tearing through it as easily as if it were paper. Her shallow gasps turn into a deep, heaving gasp. It does nothing for the blush that dominates her cheeks.

Against all instinct, she closes her eyes. She lifts her hands, talons gleaming in the light of the room, and lifts her deadly weapons to her head. With utmost care and precision, she smooths her long blue-black hair back into perfection. She gingerly adjusts her jacket, her sleeves with their merrily chiming bells, her delicate and still soaking skirts. She bends down and deftly plucks her princess off the floor and back into her arms. Where she should have been this whole time. At no point do her fingers go near Redana's dual gag. She turns and faces Alexa, while her tail flicks with equal parts annoyance and embarrassment.

"Don't let it bother you," she says with a wan smile, "Her Highness simply can't help herself sometimes. It's why she's so constantly in over her head. If anything, I should apologize to you for failing to stop her from dragging you into this... little adventure. But don't worry! I can take it from here. It won't be necessary for you to serve her anymore."

Breathless Dead

Bella is catching fire. She must be, because she's burning to death. It starts at her face, flushed and twisted into a desperate mockery of her real self, and it spreads down from there. Past her throat, which dries like she's walked through a desert, past her chest, where it sets her heart ablaze like an inferno that pounds and roars and tears her to pieces. Down, down, it seems to settle in her stomach so it can tickle and crawl around inside her like she was a garden unto herself filled with butterflies for Redana to admire and...

The fire spreads lower. It's morphing, shifting, changing into a boiling ocean. She's wet. Soaked. Dripping. Her breaths comes in ragged flutters as she tries to squeeze her legs together, but it's hopeless. Her brain is soaked with fever dreams, chains falling away into soft silks, these fingers entwined around hers, Redana, Redana, Redana, looking like this, sounding like this, Redana Redana Redana, begging with her eyes and tongue against her lips as she opens herself in invitation to her Bella, Redana, Redana, Redana!!

Bella wrenches her fingers free from the Princess' so she can squeeze them into fists. Her claws press deep into her palms, deep and sharp and terrible, until the skin punctures and warm wet sweet relief goes flooding through her system disguised as pain. Only now does she dare to open her eyes. Her bright, golden eyes so full of pain until they deaden. Darken, and grow cold with fury.

Mynx, you stupid cunt. Dumb bitch. Do you really think it's going to be Redana who punishes you? She'll find your breaking point, and she'll hold you at it for hours. Do you want the brand or the whip? The salt or the crop? The collar or the muzzle? Imagine how much fun it's going to be, finding out what shape you pop into when you're beaten past the point where your little act can save you. Imagine how it's going to feel to dangle from chains just like these in that body, till you say the words, say sorry sorry sorry mercy please and you mean them!

Bella draws a sharp breath through her nose. Her whole body is stiff and unyielding against the Princess'. Her tail has resorted back to clenching around Redana's stomach and squeezing in a way that confuses the lines between comforting, possessive, and spiteful. She lets the breath out, and with it she lets it all go. Her fists unclench and she smoothly spreads her fingers with their mysteriously wet claw tips open again to make them available again for Redana. If she wants them. If she needs them. If she'll have them.

She lets it all go. She'll be patient. A good gi-- a good maid always puts her Mistress' needs before her feelings. Always.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

Marianne spends a moment floating in front of Canada, simply staring with those bright burning eyes of hers and drinking in the measure of the knight. She tilts her head, and for a terrifying moment she is nothing but quiet. She sinks into her own shadow and pops up directly in Canada's face. Her breath is hot, and smells faintly of smoke. Her smile is playful, but it doesn't reach her eyes. Of course it doesn't. Just look at her!

She takes Canada's face in both of her hands, caressing her cheeks with the warm leather of her gloves. Her fingers explore up and around, stroking behind the ears with a feather touch. She lingers like a lover, stroking and caressing lower and lower, down the neck and then back up underneath the chin, when all of a sudden she seizes Canada behind her head, grabs a handful of hair, and pulls her into a kiss.

Marianne does not kiss gently. Her lips are hot and her tongue is forceful. She kisses like she's trying to steal something; breath, the heart, the fillings out of teeth, the soul perhaps. Her tongue presses deep into Canada's mouth, finds her own, and pins it forcefully to the bottom of her mouth. She does not come up for air. She does not need to: she can breath inside this space, this moment, just fine. She holds it, seizes it, twists it and tastes it.

And then she parts, and wipes her mouth on her sleeve with an exaggerated, wet sigh. She tosses her head up to the sky and laughs. HA! HA! KHEHEHAHAHA!

"Ah Canada, you are a better thief than I gave you credit for! I am proud, yes! Such pretty words, yes yes! Who did you steal them from? Do they know you are carrying them around in your pocket? Ah, but not, I think, in your heart."

Marianne grins and prods Canada in the chest, getting all up in her business, draping herself across her shoulders. Zero sense of personal space.

"You do not taste like conviction, mon petit chevalier. I could not find your fire, non. Just as well, you aren't to this body's wants anyway. But very well! Be the dagger if it pleases you! Marianne shall be your cloak tonight! And when you realize which shape you are meant to belong to after all, she will teach you how to bring down walls with a shield! Yes!"

[Reject: 5. Marianne marks guilty, potential, and the shift]

Breathless Dead

"Mnngfh! HHHnn uu... gff! Ghhflllk!"

Bella chokes on her insults, vitriol, and drool. She's cut off from the first two by the third and loses all of them to a messy coughing fit that leaves her neck and chest glistening and uncomfortably slick. Uncomfortable. Unseemly. Her cheeks burn furiously with the shame of a maid who's been caught with a messy apron. Her wrists burn from the strain she's still putting on her restraints, wiggling and thrashing and stretching her fingers to the point where she can feel them start to--

She stops. Redana's hands are pinning hers in place. Fingers entwine. Bella rides the wave of her Princess' ridiculous giggle fit, and with great difficulty manages to swallow through her gag. Her eyes blink shut for a moment, snap open again, and then... she closes them softly, takes a deep breath, and holds it all the way through the long moment of relentless wiggling and obscene noises. Her hands turn from wrought iron to sand like a passing wave of magic had washed over them. She is the stillness to her Princess' incessant fidgeting. Her heartbeat slows.

Finally. It's over. Finally. She's going home. She's... she's going home! This is not how she envisioned her moment of triumph, not by an Olympic mile, but it doesn't matter because she's finally going home. Bella's tail unclenches from around Redana's waist, even in the face of Mynx's brazen assault, and begins happily swishing back and forth of its own accord. Redana's skin is soft. Nice. Tail does not consider why that should be a thing it's discovering. Tail only knows swish swish and brush brush. It tickles the Princess' stomach and sets her to fresh waves of muffled giggling. The tip brushes her tiny chest, and Bella's ears twitch at a very different sort of noise.

She feels fingers on her cheek. Bella instantly snaps her eyes open to glare daggers at Mynx. Stupid bitch. She squeezes Redana's fingers tighter so that she won't (attempt to) say something indecent again. She rolls her eyes. This is such typical Mynx. Power play with all posture and no tooth. That stupid smile that's seconds away from breaking into a flick of her nose and a "gotcha" without any power in it because even an idiot can see she wants her meal ticket back in place as badly as... as...

"HWWHHHTT?! HUU BHFFF! DNN HUU DRRR! Hnnnnrrrmmph~!"

Bella's fangs aren't sharp the way her claws are; they can't snap through this leather in a clean bite. But that is not stopping her from lunging and trying to tear Mynx's face off anyway.

Masks: BABYLON MUST FALL

"Oho? Oho? Ohohoho? What is this? You have been holding out on me! When were you planning on telling me you found a Path Between? Wicked Canada! Naughty girl, keeping your playground all to yourself! C'est terrible! You are begging to be disciplined, yes!"

Marianne's feet have not touched the ground since she slipped her way in here. She glides effortlessly on a hazy cloud of shadows next to Canada, and starts to laugh. The gold of her chain-mask glints painfully. Her ruby-fanged grin spreads wider than her actual head, as if the shape of the girl floating along the hall here wasn't enough to contain all that power and fury and raw domme energy that's always dripping off of her.

Every time she passes a reflection, there's a different shape to notice. Or rather there are different pieces of the same shape: here a long serpentine tail with a whiplike protrusion that resembles nothing so much as a thresher shark's appendage, there a wall of quivering muscles wrapped in dark and shredded robes, further up a pair of broken, feathery wings too devastated for proper flight, and finally her face, her true face, as enormous as the sphinx and just as inscrutable for all her rakish, hungry grinning.

Marianne, which is to say the phantom thief herself, blinks from a spot just behind Canada to a point several steps in front of her, looming and staring with a look of intense judgment plastered all over her that she doesn't bother to conceal. In here it's possible to watch her in action, to pick apart the mechanics of her movement. She doesn't teleport, obviously, that's simple enough to figure out just from having been carried side-along one or two too many times. But here, the paths are obvious; without much effort at all it's possible to see her stretch her leg beyond the accepted border of a space and leap into the architecture of the space around her. She's free running: performing feets of parkour across nightmares and truth. Canada can make her own decisions about whether that makes her more or less impressive.

"The paths are shallow here," she pouts, "But your sea is deep. I like it very much, mon chevalier! Yes! A shining knight should walk a twisted path indeed. Is this your hope, Ca-Na-Da? Are you twisting yourself into a knife the stab the heart of the tyrant-gods? You are too small for this, yes! A little mouse and nothing more! Give it to me! Return yourself to a shield and give the role of cutpurse over to its rightful owner!"

She grins, and spreads her shadow wide across the street. The impression of a shark smelling blood in the water is impossible not to conjure. But then she tilts her head. It's a question, then. What are you here for, little knight? What do you want? What do you want? Tell your big sister Marianne what moves you!

Breathless Dead

Bella's heart is pounding with the particular panic of a trapped predator. The ropes around her wrists are rough and chafing. The ropes around her ankles squeeze uncomfortably tight. The sensations following her are the nagging tugs at her hair where her sleek blue-black locks are tangled with Redana's knotty golden ones, the firmness of the space their backs share with each other that melts into softness as it descends to where their thighs are forced to brush against each other.

The fear-smell is gone. There are others now, a confusing cocktail of responses Bella does not have specific names for because she has spent her life trying to avoid them. But they're here now, swimming underneath the thickness of her perfume which somehow is still soaked into everything, and they bring color to Bella's face and a feverish warmth to her body.

She thrashes like a caged animal in her bindings all the same. Her heart is about to burst, the pressure is so tight. Caught. Caught. Caught! She writhes, she twists her hips, she kicks her legs with all the power in her body, she torques her wrists past the point of agony to get her claws into her restraints. It's all for nothing. The chain holding her above the floor saps her of the leverage that would turn her weight to her advantage. The bindings around her wrists are such that her fingers, stretch how they may, can't reach anything but the Princess'. With her ankles bound to Redana's she can't even bend her legs up enough to get a good kick in, so all her straining accomplishes is adding the feeling of her body rubbing, brushing, touching up against her Mistress' to the miserable soup she's stuck in right now.

Her ears turn on her head to catch the sound of the voice that's taunting her, but the rest of her head can't pivot to put eyes on it. It doesn't matter. She knows the voice. Her teeth clench hard against her gag, but the sharpness of her teeth are defeated by the thick leather. She chews anyway, not caring about the saliva bubbling up and dribbling down her chin to splash against her shirt.

"Mnnnf! Ghllph hrrrrr, MMMMrrrrm! Ffffffk uuuuuu!"

It's not enough. The unintelligible threats aren't enough. Being bound hand and foot to Redana isn't enough. Bella's tail, the one part of her that's free to do what it will, whips free of the prison of two women and wraps itself possessively around Redana's stomach. It squeezes, as if its soft length would be enough to fend off all the trained warriors in the room and the voice that's commanding them. It writhes against her in challenge to everyone who thought that putting her in this predicament would be enough. This is Bella's prize. Nobody else's.

Her fur is soft. Her voice descends into garbled moans that forget to even try to be words, taken as they are to hold the note of defiance mixed in with her desperation. She's trapped. She's helpless. She hates it.

She's going to kill Mynx.

Breathless Dead

Bella smells it before she sees it. Even underneath all that mud. Even with the rain muting everything into a bland haze, she couldn't possibly miss this. The first and only scent her Imperial handlers specifically trained her to isolate as part of her bodyguard training: the sour, vinegar-soaked note of fear. Redana scrabbles backwards. Bella follows into the space left between them.

The smile falls off her face. Her eyes open in obvious shock. She... she sniffs the air, loudly and deliberately. She shakes her head. No. No! This isn't happening! Why? Why now? She hadn't smelled it at all while they were running from Jas'o, not even while he was putting his boot on the Princess' chest and stomping her into the ground. Why now? Why now? This isn't how it's supposed to be!

"Princess, stop it. You need to let me clear your airway out before you..."

She reaches out with the characteristic fussiness of home, too late realizing she's done it with her bloody hand. She flinches; Redana smashes her arm on a large sharp rock in her desperation to put space between them. Bella's face skips straight past disappointment. Her eyes narrow. Her fists clench. Her lips curl, showing teeth. The growl builds up in her throat, and it feels louder than the thunder.

"You... YOU MORON! Don't run from me, you idiot! I'm here to save you, don't you get that? You heard him! You know what he was here to do! A million slaves, Dany! A hundred worlds destroyed, just to spite you! Do you seriously still think you can stop a person like that with a knock on the head and some pretty words? So listen to me! JUST LISTEN!"

The muscles ripple underneath her soaked and dripping fur. Her tail thrashes behind her and every step, be it forward or back, is the dull song of her bells. Water falls in waves upon her. Thoughts turn like gears inside her. They hit her all at once, and she... stops. In mid stride, she stops. Her newest breath is still caught in her lungs, and she stops. Her heart freezes in between beats. And then rushing, changing, twisting all at once, it comes. Her eyes narrow. Her snarl morphs into a nasty smile. Her hands squeeze so tightly that her claws break open her palms and add the drip, drip, drip of her own blood to the deluge washing over her every second.

"...I get it. I see what this is, now. You don't care at all if it's someone like him, do you? Perfect, invincible little Dany out on her magical adventure! But not me. Not me. It's 'cause I'm your servitor. Isn't it? ISN'T IT?! Scrub the floors, do my laundry, cook my food, Bella! No thank you, never thank you, you don't have to thank the silly maid! Well guess what?! I'm more than that, Redana! I'm so much more! I came here to find you! Me! On my own ship! I sailed across the stars just to find you! I slipped free from Odoacer, I killed Jas'o, I! Am! Strong! Where's my fucking gratitude, Milady?" She spits and turns her head sideways, "...And by the way? I dressed myself, too. Not that you think I can, apparently."

Bella stands there, tall as she can be, the grin that splits her face and the gleam that lights her eyes as sharp and wicked as can be. Only her ears are pinned back, and her tail wraps around her legs, which pull close together. She shivers, and if it's from the rush or the cold or from fear, she could not say. She stands. She shivers. Her chest heaves. Some thing or some god stops her from reaching out her hand.

"It's over, Princess. That's enough. You don't belong out here. Let me take you home."

Her voice is strained to breaking with something almost like tears, but which must be the raw effort of stuffing her monster self back into a civil shell. Must be. And the same force that held her hands at her sides steals the word 'please' from her lips.