Phoe

Sunshards

Hey! What? No! You can't just... what does any of that even, we were just getting to the good part! What is, why are, how dare you? How dare you, how dare you, how dare you do this to her? Don't you feel the slightest bit of shame just spewing all that... all that... nonsense at her all the time? Look what you're doing! And, a-and is it 39 or is it 99?! 39 or 99 what?!

Anger flashes in Yue's eyes like it hasn't in her entire life. Not even that time when Sis borrowed her best dress without asking and wound up ruining it by going firewalking on a dare. Not even that other time when she was at the market and the chicken-seller insisted he was only trading for butt pinches, or any other silly story she can call to mind. No, not even then! She's never had a reason to burn like this before, and she's never had anything to burn at that she wasn't too afraid of hurting to really let it show like this even if she had.

Kat's heart would break on the spot if she ever saw her Yue like this, but these ads, these buzzing little flies, all hot swordswomen in her area and galaxy lights with oddly satisfying skin masks, hey this blew up! Wanna become famous? Buy followers and subs at bogfellows dot com! Buzzing, droning, swallowing consuming, just what in the heck is a credit chit to begin with? It must have served a purpose to somebody, once upon a time, and maybe even it was considered beautiful. But there's so much of it here piled up so high it's toppling over in on itself and the only thing it's causing is pain. That'd get anybody's eyes to angry burn, just you see if it wouldn't.

"I can't!" she cries, "I won't! Just, just stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"

Yue's fully free of the dance, now. So when she suddenly lunges and throws a wild diagonal slash at the floating dress, it's the first move in the entire set of duels she's picked for herself. Cross! Thrust! Slide and stab! Like this and like this, finishing like this, but now pivot and slash again! It isn't elegant or masterful, all she's doing is copying the muscle memories of somebody smarter and better and prettier than her. But in the end it doesn't matter, because it's her heart and her body that's choosing each move. This is her dance. She swats at the blade held opposite her again and again and again. Even though her arms are burning, again! Even though her lungs are screaming, again! Clack, clack, clatter clack, again, again, again! Again, until the sounds of the fight are loud enough that nobody can talk to her about the expiring warranty on her car and she can finally, finally, finally think straight!

What's a girl to do? If she were a magician then maybe she could purge this place with a spell or six and return to the beautiful and natural state it belonged in. Maybe that would fix everything. But she's not. She's a sun farmer and she couldn't tease so much as half a handmaiden's worth of spellcraft out of a whole bag of her best beads even if she were brave enough to try. If she were a brilliant swordswoman like her ghost friend was in life then maybe she could win so hard it'd strike the heart of this lower spirit and satisfy her all the way to her final well deserved resting place even through the muck and ick and if you sing or dance you lose (very hard for multistans!). But obviously if she were that she wouldn't have needed this girl's lessons in the first place.

Maybe she should have been a monk. Then at least she'd understand all of this upper lower higher, uh... l-lower silliness that keeps flashing around inside her head, and she might know the right words or poems to be able to speak her heart. It wouldn't fix the problem, not unless it would, but at least she'd have a language more potent than her own stupid words to convey all the love and hurt and want she's felt today. Or would she? Maybe being a monk would mean she wouldn't have felt any of those feelings, in which case that was good and useless, wasn't it? But in any case here she is, spinning and clacking away with her wooden sword with another ten minutes left in her, tops, and no plans at all for how to fix any of this.

But, it turns out? You should never ask for a miracle until you've asked nature for her advice. It's a total accident that she catches it at all, actually. Yue's ears are straining so much already just because every other part of her is that she can't help but push her hearing too, and that's the only reason she catches it.

Caw CAW! The throaty croak of a silken-feathered raven. Caw CAW! There's a chorus of them, somewhere up above her just hacking and hemming and singing their terribly ugly song maybe just for her. Or maybe because they just want to drown out all the drivel, too. But in either care, isn't it strange? Ravens are supposed to be kingly birds, all sorts of stories agree. What would they be doing in such a broken rotting place unless there was..?

She twists her head to find them and catches the flat of a sword on her ribs for her trouble. She yelps and topples over, but in the space it takes what's left of her puppet's string to pull her back up, she's spotted them. Caw CAW, friends! Hello! They're gathered up above her, by a patch of shaped stone that seems different from all the rest. She squints and strains and by luck more than anything catches the glint of a valve.

"Oh... thank you friends! Thank you so much! I can... j-j-just... hold on, ok? I can... fix this! I can! I know I can fix this! So please, give me... let... eep! EEP!"

Yue stumbles backwards on both heels and barely manages to avoid the latest strike that might have knocked her legs out from under her for good and all. Goodness, that'd almost be nice, wouldn't it? She's so tired. She's just... oh, but it doesn't matter. There's work to do, and she'll never be able to smile at another waterfall for as long as she lives if she doesn't do everything she can right now. Her scrawny, gangly legs tense up with the poise and purpose of a warrior. She lunges with everything she has, basic flat thrust. She cringes physically when she feels the tip hit fabric, and hears a tiny tear that's somehow still more terrible than all the chanting and dazzling laughter Princess Yin could throw at her.

"I'm sorry! But you wouldn't! I just! I'm sorry!"

It buys her just enough space to let her run away. She cries fresh tears as she goes, though she doesn't have the breath to spare for any of them. She runs as her entire body burns with shame under the palpable aura of disappointment. This ghost misjudged her. The sense of betrayal is so raw it almost makes her turn around again. But she doesn't. Her legs beat as fast as they know how across the hard stone floor and the slippery blooms that cover it, because she needs every bit of speed she can find to make that jump.

She climbs. The answer is above her, so she climbs. Her raven helpers croak encouragement and add a mad flutter-flap of wingbeats to guide her along. They take flight before she reaches them, swooping away with their mad song ringing in her ears to divebomb the pursuing ghost, to silence Hyra's furious howls, and to terrify Kat just for the fun of it. Yue winces and knows she's just cost herself a month of vixietreats to undo the damage she's just caused. But at least she's reached her chance. She's so sorry, flooferdoodle.

It'd be impossible to believe these pipes could still pump water if you didn't live your life at the Terraced Lake. Sometimes a bad storm could clog the dam, and the waterfalls that so defined her home almost seemed to shut off. But when it happened nobody ever panicked, because the stuck up water always found a way. It just needed a might of encouraging, sometimes. Yue very nearly drops her sword as she reaches for the first valve, descending into a torrent of panicked squeaks as she very double nearly drops the blessed thing all the way back down into those awful puddles so full of muck she's not even sure she'd want to fish it back out again, Hyra promises or no. It's a trickier thing than she'd expected to turn a rusted crank with her hands half full of sword.

"I'm not! Going! To let! You live like this! Anymore!"

Her muscles are fire now. Every inch of her including muscles she never knew existed is howling, shaking, and begging her to stop, but she squeezes and strains against the metal anyway. If you didn't want to work this hard, body, then you should have learned how to be a swords-wizard-monk by now!

"You! Deserve! To feel! Loved! Because! I!!"

There's a nasty creaking and crunching sound, and for a moment it seems like she's broken the valve off instead of turning it. But then, blessed squeaks. She pumps her arms for all they're worth, squeak squeak squeak! And... nothing. She slumps, defeated, and in her brilliant tactical defeated slumping notices the massive fortress of sludge and hair and total nastiness that's built up inside this pipe. Oh no. Oh gosh oh no oh gosh, please. Was this really not en-- eeeeuuuuuughaahck!

Such is the war cry of Yue. Just Yue, if you please. Her open hand digs in and, urp! Oh sweet sun in the sky, she's going to hurl. The smell! The texture! The... the... blorf!! And now her throat tastes like burning too, and you would not believe how not better that makes all of this. But she digs on. Her fist closes around a blob of, actually, she would really rather not know. She yanks it with every spare ounce of strength, even the bit she was saving to be able to lift chopsticks to her mouth for dinner tonight, and she gives zero thought or care to where the disgusting blob lands beneath her. There's more to dig, there's, urp, more to...

Bubble. Blurble. Gush and splort. Is that the sounds of..?

"Gack! Eeeerrrk! Phhhhbbbtt!"

The first water that hits her in the face is the most disgusting, foul smelling liquid mankind has ever beheld in all its time upon this rock. To be honest, probably on all the other rocks they've been on since, too. Yue squeaks, screams, and scrambles backwards to try and make it stop, but this is what she wanted, wasn't it? It follows her like an overexcited puppy, and enough of it winds up in her mouth that come to think of it the idea of dinner tonight is really not sounding like a thing that she wants to happen after all.

It might have been thirty seconds like this. Or thirty lifetimes, or another hour plus like her training. She doesn't know! All she knows is muck and muck and spray and... oh joy! More muck! There is nothing but muck unless you count regret, in which case there is muck and regret. Until finally, mercifully, the waters of her homeland win out and the torrent that soaks her down to the bones is as clear and crystal-sparkling as anything she's ever seen.

It's so strong it knocks her right off her feet. She screams as she falls, tumbling and somehow also flailing back down to the main platform beneath the statuary she'd climbed up to be here. But, y'know? It's a great view to watch the first great waterfall of remembrance this place has seen in at least a dozen lifetimes as it starts to do what water's best at. If she wasn't scared and screaming for her life she might even have found it in her to smile at the way it started to wash away the filth and offer just a hint of what this place was meant to be.

But then... but then? Well, what happened next?

[Yue is Defying Disaster and it doesn't really matter with what because she got a 10. This is what it looks like when she does something with style, ok?]

Breathless Dead

"Hmph. Another mouthpiece? At least he sent a pretty one this time. Tell him that the next time we have to do this dance that he should show at least enough courtesy to start with you. I've got better things to do with my time than play these stupid games."

Bella offers an insincere smirk, but the effect is somewhat ruined by the way her ears have reached full perk and her tail suddenly won't stop flicking. Inside her body, the Auspex sets off fireworks. Dozens of sparks burst inside her chest in brilliant reds, greens, golds, and blues. They pop and tingle with the imminent threat of a purr that she has to keep pushing down only to have it creep up elsewhere.

She is not so crass as to squeeze her thighs together here in public, but that doesn't mean she can't feel the rush creeping through her. It shows in the way her breath hitches just slightly, and the slightly glazed look that flickers through her natural eye which might otherwise be attributable to her wine. But not the way she licks her lips when the Coherent woman dips into her kowtow. She is so terrible at disguising her shifting body language that it might as well be another feint.

She takes a deep breath through her nose in the space she has to think. As soon as it hits her nose, she realizes that Khitava's scent will linger with her through the entirety of her stay here. The smell of soaps that linger under her robes tell Bella that this woman understands the true value of cleanliness. But more than that, more important than that, is her scent. This one smells like strength. There are sweet notes to her aroma and a vaguely earthen whiff mixed in with some of the more metallic tangs that she would have expected, which scream power at her.

This is a woman who is used to getting her way. This is a woman who is used to power. This is a woman who came here ready for a fight, and even after seeing the situation for herself her smell and the way her muscles tense so aggressively even in a posture of submission she still thinks that she's the superior specimen. Oh, that's so like her kind, isn't it? So proud of their augs and the shapes they've beaten their bodies into that they forget the power that comes through superior breeding. Not to mention... her Auspex lights up spots on her ribs, under her armpit, and spots along her back, and with them come another ripple of sparks that threaten to set her spine to shivering. Oh, wouldn't it feel so good to take this woman and tear her down, to pin her and show her where she really ranks and--

"What is your will, Mistress?"

Omn's metallic timbre startles Bella so much she almost jumps. She almost ruins everything. What she does instead is scowl and make a show of straightening out her jacket. She flicks the bells dangling at her hip to hear the chimes, and centers herself again before waving her hand dismissively.

"Forget about it. We've found our straight-talker after all. Besides, it'd be rude to reject an invitation from the Magos; might as well see how he wants to spin this first."

"Of course, Praetor. It is the Empress' preference to keep things civil, after all. But in the meantime..."

"In the meantime, nothing," Bella sniffs, "You're accompanying us: something tells me I'm going to need a translator."

Bella smirks, and gestures with no small degree of impatience for Khitava to get on with it already and lead the way. But a moment later she stops, and stretches her neck.

"Actually," she chirps, "Let's have the Lanterns oversee the loading of all this junk while we're away. Magos Birmingham can thank us for clearing up his overhead while he's explaining all the ways he's not a traitor."

Sunshards

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?"]

Sunshards

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?

Breathless Dead

The Auspex betrays no emotion. It does not flinch when surprised, or blink stupidly when it's overwhelmed. And right now that's a very good thing, because it means that Bella only needs to twist her head slightly and the fact that she is both of these things at once disappears into the faint shadows of the hangar. Her tail twists itself around her leg as her stance shifts uneasily into a closer and less firm position. She folds her arms across her chest, and her nostrils flare a little too sharply in the single breath she allows herself lest anybody notice. But the Auspex shines as sharply as ever, and that's what saves her.

Silence rules the loading dock for the longest of minutes until Bella finally wills it broken. Her steps feel awkward and overly deliberate as she crosses the awkward space between the treasures piled on top of each other, but she forces herself to focus on the rhythm and the soft clicking of her boots on the hard concrete. Good, that's very good. Give nothing away. She picks up a bolt of silk and turns it over in her hands several times without comment. Finally, she rips her claws through the soft fabric and tears it in half with barely a whisper of protest, and walks steadily back to the Pilate, who is still squirming underneath Mynx.

"I'm pretty sure," she says, balling up the tattered fabric and shoving it into the Pilate's mouth, "I told you not to speak."

She steps away, leaving the silk to its good work without bothering to secure it. She dares the Hermitician to defy her and spit it out. The smirk that crosses her lips is cruel... but calm. She turns away with a disdainful flick of her tail to find that her crew has gone and fetched her advisor without waiting for her to ask. Omn glitters and as it shifts and rotates its many surface structures with even greater polish than it had when Bella had tried to present it as a gift on Baradissar, easily a match by itself for the entire pile of bribes in front its gaze. The mice flanking it dip into a flourishing bow and retreat once more with a touch of the bracers on their arms. Bella nods, and mimics the motion across her fur. Silence is sacred to the Lanternites. Do you see, Pilate? This is what an act of worship looks like.

"How may I serve you, Praetor?" Omn's voice resonates across the loading dock with mechanical charm.

"I have a problem, Omn. Look at all of the treasures that the Order has laid out to try and buy my silence. Do you see them?"

"There is more arrayed here than may be safely stored about the Anemoi, Mistress."

"And after forking it over, this little creep is trying to bullshit me about their intentions!" Mynx-Bella chimes in. Omn pivots smoothly from one Praetor to the other.

"I can't trust a fucking word out of their mouths. Am I supposed to believe they're here gearing up to shoot their biggest gun at one of Her Majesty's planets out of the goodness of their hearts? Tell me Omn, is this a simple misunderstanding?"

"It is unlikely, Praetor. The Order of Hermes has a long history of defying the law when they believe the data is more valuable than continued goodwill. The nature of the proposed experiment and their initial overtures strongly suggest there are elements at work which they would prefer you remain ignorant of."

"You see my problem, then. These assholes eat secrets like candy; getting a straight answer out of any of them is going to take forever."

"And that's if you trust anybody but the Magos to even know. But he's pretending to be too busy for an officer of the Empire. You can smell the guilt on him from here. Prick."

"The nature of the situation is dangerous, Mistress. If we are receiving insufficient overtures from the Order, I recommend authorizing the use of the Ikarani adept. As an information specialist, she is well equipped to seize access to any and all hidden information aboard this station."

Bella is silent as she nods along with her advisor. She hasn't given the order just yet. But she makes a very deliberate point of turning and facing the Hermeticians gathered near her, so they can see the light in her eyes and the smile spreading across her face. The Auspex radiates a sense of power and control through her chest once again. Her tail flicks with the simple pleasure of a cat who's caught the bird she's been staring at all afternoon. She lifts her hand, as if to give another silent order, and uses it to toss her hair about instead.

Sunshards

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?

Breathless Dead

This is a place of contradictions.

The docking bay is a messy crisscross of starlight-bright lighting and deep shadows crawling out of passages leading deeper into the leviathan sized bulk of their great ships. You could fit much of the Imperial Palace in this room alone. And yet. The light bounces off of the gathered tribute here in a way that feels clumsy and cluttered, that takes these infinite-seeming treasures and crams them with spotlight levels of lack of grace into piles until their luster is all drained out of them.

The clutter is so intense that the bay gives the impression of being smaller than the Princess' old bedroom, even with the Anemoi looming behind her as just one of many ships swallowed inside this beast's grand belly. Where the darkness should cast gloom and mystery, it feels cheap and poorly optimized, instead. Compared to the impossible murk of Bella's own ship the Hermetics would need to work a lot harder than this if they wanted to frighten her. Or hide anything from her. Instead it's just like they couldn't settle on an interior decorator and hired five of them at the same time. Empress Nero would be appalled.

The smell of this place is... confusing. Back home, labs (were everywhere, first of all) gave off a sense of absolute sterility. They smelled of nothing so strongly that it burned her nose. Or if not that, the scent was burns and metal shavings and the oddly alluring aroma of varying kinds of oils and fuels. Whichever way they tended, they committed, and their domain was absolute within the walls that Nero had set for them.

Bella had expected more of the same here, but every sniff only further confused her. This place wasn't clean. And this place wasn't put to work. There were wafts of personal perfumes that lingered from where this or that Coherent stayed to chat with someone however long ago, and the always unpleasant smell of uncontained dust drifting across... everything, really. To her left were traces of mud, sweat, and brine that several, or more likely several hundred people dragged across the floor on their way back from whatever it was they were doing on the planet below, and none of them or even anybody who noticed afterwards could apparently be bothered to clean it up properly. A Servitor who left the palace in this bad a shape would be whipped to death, and they'd be absolutely right to do it. She's smelled gymnasiums that were cleaner than this.

And yet, the marks of cleaners were everywhere, as well. It wasn't as if they didn't know how any of this worked. The god-engine sitting almost too far back to see was so immaculate that even Bella doubted she could manage better. Some hallways felt fresher, while others seemed ready to corrode under their obvious lack of care and standards. Everywhere she looked, it was a mess. But more than that, it was a mess of a mess.

She grinds her teeth as her Auspex flicks this way and that to inspect the treasures laid out just to please her. And here a fierce sense of pride wells up inside her throat almost like a back-kick of wine might after a bad bender. Hot and yearning, almost as good as it felt bad, with a lingering sort of shiver following after that said that this was enough, this was more than enough, this was too much by half and that she needed more anyway. Her tongue feels ash dry in the dusty hangar. Would it have killed them to lead their little show with some actual wine?

"As you are, of course, aware, it has been a period of 57 years, 9 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, and 11 hours since Her Imperial Highness last sent someone of your position and, ah, stature to treat with us so deep into the Frontier. We are as honored as you might imagine to be able to reset that particular counter."

Bella arches an eyebrow slightly. No, she did not know that thank you very much. There's a thinness to this Pilate's voice and a deeply unpleasant hissing behind every word she says. It's tinny and artificial, but worse than that there's a harsh clicking that accompanies every hard syllable and sticks inside her ears. It rings, and it builds, and it rings. It's worse than a headache. Her ears flutter with pain, as if trying to shake the voice out of them.

"...six point eight tonnes of hydronix, the uses of which are manifold. We hope that these quantities prove sufficient for you to advance your own projects while you carry out the Empire's good work. Now, as to the silks, which I can imagine excite you given your, ah, proclivities..."

She's still going. Bella has stood here wordlessly this entire time, and yet no amount of blatant disinterest seems enough to cut this short. Always these games with people like this. Information masquerading as secrets, and secrets pretending to lie in the open until you bend to pick them up. She's exhausted already. She stretches her hand to one side, and a moment later a tall-ish Lanternite done up in the ceremonial stylings of her people has set a glass in Bella's hand with a wordless bow. A second later, another shorter girl pours the wine. The vintage of Baradissar. Bella nods, and the pair retreats noiselessly to the shadows of the Anemoi without a word having passed between any of them.

"...a praetor from the Servitor races! Empress Nero has long favored the children of Ceron, but even they aren't known to be given Her own authority to be carried around like this. Forgive me for my boldness, but I would be very glad to hear your stories of how you overcame your handicaps to rise to such an exalted--"

Her golden eye contracts into an angry slit. Her tail flicks with displeasure. These are the measures of her politeness before she surges forward like a storm and lifts the Pilate off the ground with one arm. Her fist clenches a ball of intricately patterned robe and pulls it tight around whatever sort of freak show is hiding underneath it. Bella's arm sings with strength. She is a golden wave of raw power that surges across the docking bay and slams the Hermitician against a particularly large crate, knocking several bars of latinum skittering across the floor. In the mismatched lights of the room, her Auspex gleams like a tiny, evil moon. Her claws shift upward off the robes, seeking what passes here for a throat to press themselves against.

"Shut. Up."

She squeezes. Suddenly all the words are gone, like magic. The clicking is gone, faded to a distant echo in her ears. She squeezes harder, and even the hissing starts to stutter. It's like crushing a grape, right down to the juices that start to trickle down her fingers. Bella makes a disgusted noise and tosses the Pilate to the ground to shudder and gasp for new air. She turns away, and swirls her wine.

"The next one of you fuckers to open your mouth had better have something useful to say," she hisses, "or I swear in front of the gods I will crack this ship in half!"

She drains her glass in a single swig. It's gone before she can even taste it.

[Speak Harshly: 3+2+2=7. My question is actually straight from the book: "What are you hiding?"]

Breathless Dead

"I told you to be n-- nnnnnnnnrgh!"

Bella holds the breath in her lungs until it starts to burn, then slowly pushes it out. As she does, she lifts her hands to her chest and then slowly pushes them down to her thighs, where she stretches her fingers out as far as they'll go. Her jaw clenches with guilt; she's stealing a ritual from Empress Nero right now and she's not sure if her position gives her that right. But in any case it works as well as she can remember it helping Her Majesty.

She is calm. Calm enough to watch... herself. Or, no. More like the memory of herself. When was the last time she bounced like that when she moved? She hears her own voice inflecting upwards until it cracks in an excited squeak that she hasn't made since she... since she was a child. Since her life was about preparing a princess for fancy parties and being allowed to attend Her Majesty's grand plays as a special treat for being a Good Girl.

She hadn't realized she could still make sounds like that. She clenches her teeth and clutches at her head as a wave of pressure builds underneath her temple. It swells with the memories, too tangled, jumbled, and intense to pluck any specific thought from the kaleidoscope. All it brings is pain. Pressure. Pain. The muscles in her neck start to cramp, as if realizing all at once how tense they are. That tension creeps down to her shoulders, and then...

She takes another deep breath, and this ritual is hers to use freely. The faint wisp of Mynx's scent hits her nostrils, and bit by bit Bella unclenches. She opens her eye again, not having realized she'd squeezed it shut in the first place. She is calm. Calm. That is not her. It's not. Mynx finishes dressing herself, and spins around. Bella greets the sight of her own face all lit up in giddy excitement with a bemused smirk. It melts almost instantly into a serious expression as she considers the puzzle in front of her.

"...Go ahead and mirror me," she says after a minute, "Start or finish sentences for me or... whatever. I don't care how you do it, just make them think we're linked somehow. It'll throw them off more that way when we switch."

Bella frowns at a sudden thought, and hesitates. Her nostrils flare as she drinks in Mynx's scent, like she's trying to hold it in her memory.

"You need perfume. Anybody with a halfway decent nose will pick you out faster than the way you flirt. We have to match, or it's pointless."

Sunshards

"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?

Sunshards

"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?