Phoe

Breathless Dead

The world smells like blood.

Every breath is saturated with it. It crawls down her nose and sticks there until it's climbed on top of everything that might have made it tolerable. It fills her throat like a film, growing thicker and thicker until the air stops fitting inside her. She hacks and wheezes, but every bit of spit she draws up only pushes more blood-smell back down to replace it. There is nothing but the putrid stink of it, and the terror they pushed inside her skull when she was just a kitten. Thicker and thicker, gagging and choking, thicker and fouler and... ghk! Hhhhgk!

Skotia adds the bouquet of half-digested wine and delicacies to her prison, and Bella's mind turns to static. She's on her knees before she knows what's happening. Her stomach contracts with horrible insistence, and the hand she notices is pressed tight against her lips would be useless were she not dry heaving. She wipes her mouth anyway, gasping for air. Her legs have turned to jelly in the blank. She wobbles to her feet anyway, spitting repeatedly until the taste finally clears. That's when she notices she's not amid the ruin and the blood anymore. That's when she notices she's brought Skotia with her; his limp body could not possibly have carried hers. She scowls.

"Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. For a Praetor to be so... nnngh, fuck. Just look at you. Look at you, you fucking asshole! I let a two-bit con artist turn you into meat and I'm the one feeling sick and sorry? If I... if I make it back home, Her Majesty should skin me alive for being so stupid."

The air is cleaner here. Bella sucks it down greedily without seeming to care how unsightly the sound of it is. She is weak and getting weaker, and there's no more room to be hiding it. Only the uneven twitching of her tail gives away the true depths of her disgust, and that only Redana would ever really be able to pick up on it. She flinches, and her ears flutter despondently. How dare she wish that she was here?!

"Don't speak. Don't say a single fucking word to anybody. Ever. Just... just don't in general, ok? Save whatever's... just don't. Don't. The. The Princess... Redana would be scolding me right now. How dare I take a life, wasn't I raised better than this? Well I! I wasn't, ok?! Like I asked for this! They just. Listen to me. Idiot. Like it matters. Like a Servitor gets to pick. Dance, Bella! Sing, Bella! Drink the wine Bella, win the Games, Bella! Not like that, you stupid girl! Stay alive! Die! Kill! Don't! I! I!!"

Tears are falling from her eye so fast she couldn't blink them back if she tried. Her shoulders tremble as she lifts an arm to wipe them away on her ruined fur. Pathetic. Pathetic. All her power, useless. All her pride misplaced. Pathetic. Every choice and every order lead to the same place. How could everything she ever wanted hurt her this much? Apollo. Apollo demanded she live. Apollo sent her here, for this specific purpose. He taught her about the wider world just so she could destroy it. Was it so important that a monster run about like this? Was there anything she got to pick?

She looks at Skotia, blackened and hideous and breathing raggedly beneath her. As suddenly as they started, Bella's tears ebb. Thank Hera that Redana would never know this happened. But if she, if she had one wish, O Goddess... could you tell her anyway? She bends down to lift Skotia in her arms, only to fall over in a painful heap. He's covered in so much of her blood she can't even tell where his wounds are anymore.

"Up. Get up, you fucking idiot. Pets never abandon their owners, understand me? Owners never abandon their pets. So get up. Up! I'm out of time. I..." she looks up toward the ceiling. That's where she's going. Where she can overlook everything. Where she can see the night sky, "We are going to save Beautiful. And then after that, nothing else fucking matters. So just... don't slow me down. Or I'll tear you into such tiny pieces even Hades won't want you."

There's enough energy left in Bella to put Skotia's arm around her shoulder. So that's what she does. These trembling legs can shuffle faster than most can walk, even now. She could go faster still if she abandoned him. Bella adjusts her grip to get more of his weight on top of her. She's going to make it. She's going to make it.

If there was any point to all her journey, it must be this.

Breathless Dead

There was nothing that little Redana loved more than playing Princess Adventures. So of course there was nothing Bella loved more than playing it with her. Not that there was generally a lot to playing, as far as she was concerned. By her own admission she wasn't a princess, it would not have been proper for her to play the part. And besides, she always insisted, Redana was far more athletic than she, and a natural born hero to boot. So no matter how the argument went, that was how things wound up. It was... necessary.

Every Adventure Princess needed an Innocent Maiden to rescue, whether from a Sultan or a Djinn or the mighty Beast of Calamity. Usually they were represented by a stack of pillows, but occasionally some poor guard would get dragged into the game. But whatever the twist, it was Bella's job to wriggle helplessly and call "help me, help me!" in a sweet voice while the Princess bravely vanquished plush and pillow and short-strawed palace guards to rescue her. Then would come the untying of the blanket-ropes and True Love's First extremely chaste Kiss on the cheek. It felt increasingly ridiculous as the years piled on, but Redana never outgrew it. Or maybe there was something she wanted that she wasn't getting. Or maybe...

Ah. It's like that, is it? There are memories enough here tonight to drown her. Her old teachers would kill her for daydreaming in a fight like this. But it was impossible not to. She's never seen a real hero before. The way Skotia moves, the indescribable grace and determination of his movements. The flash of his blade and the dance of his feet. There's beauty in the sacrifice of his movements, more than she could find in all the stars in the sky. It's so surprising that, for a moment, she drops her guard. For a moment, she almost forgets the pain and fear, that she's not a child safe and home. A small part of her heart yearns to call out in a soft voice for rescue. She's living in the middle of an adventure holo, and it's impossible to believe the Prince won't defeat the monster.

But he falls. This is another lesson. We taught you to fight, you dumbass. If brave heroes and warriors won all of their battles, we would have come home and finished your lessons.

Bella's teeth crunch together. Her tail raises behind her, as rigid as her spine. Her claws twitch horribly and the ends of her fingers, and her face contorts into an expression of pure hate. There is nothing beautiful about her now. Nothing. The dress clinging to her body is like a twisted mockery of decorum, like draping a veil on the Minotaur and telling it to attend a party like a good girl.

She always longed to play the Princess. To be the one doing the gallant rescue with kisses waiting for her at the end. All those years, she played the maiden because she had to hide that she was actually the monster the whole time. Even now in her final moments, it's all that she can be. Two monsters collide over the body of a fallen prince, and their dance will reduce this empty hall to nothing but crumbling rock.

With a howl, she rushes Thist in a storm of terrible claws and lightning. Her blows crush everything they touch, leaving gashes twice the size of her body in the walls and floor. Columns and statues shatter into a rain of tiny pebbles. But Thist turns her away like nothing and swats her away with a powerful tail swipe that sends Bella careening across the room into the opposite wall. She flops down onto one knee, a snarling, spitting mess. She can get angrier. She can be stronger. She can hit you. She can kill all of you! She can!

She struggled to her feet just in time to watch a burst of ELF lightning arc off of Thist's organic spikes and drive her straight back into her crater. Her dress shreds in uneven tatters where heat and rock and pressure finally prove too much for Beautiful's planning and rob her of her skirts. She spits on the ground, tasting iron. She has nothing to say. Scipia would pull out her guts for talking to the enemy in the middle of a fight. Old fuck, she's coming for you too.

Two monsters collide, and this time no gods intervene. But Bella is an unfinished product, a student still in need of lessons and a beast that could only be properly instructed by carving lessons into her skin. Not even an Adept. Never intended to be. The Eater of the Dead is the collected strength of every mighty warrior the Master has ever sacrificed in whatever grand game of chess she's been playing all these years. What can she possibly overcome that with? Righteous anger is of no value to a monster. If she had a blade that it could sharpen, even she could even hold one in the first place without bursting into flames, then she never would have lost Redana in the first place. Or Beautiful. Or Mynx. The Auspex can only do so much to balance such uneven scales, and if it had the power to win every battle then Skotia need not have fallen. She is useless. Outmatched.

And despite it all, she screams her battle song. She rises. She lunges. She is knocked down, burned, and broken. Poisoned, cut, and choked with her own blood. And then, snarling and hissing and slobbering, wheezing with uneven and hideous notes of pain and anger, she rises again to do it all over. She does it again. And again. And again, again. She does it until her dress is an indecent mess of rags clinging to her body. She does it till her skin is covered with ugly gashes ready to scar up the front of her if they don't manage to kill her first. She does it till her white fur turns reddish pink with steaming blood, and bits of it burn away. She does it until her hair falls loose, and some of it even falls out, and the clattering jewels she wore in it swing dangerously behind her and lash against her back as punishment for her repeated failures.

The building splinters around them. Time slips away into the night and steals from Bella all the things that secretly bid her rise again, that keep the monster's heart stubbornly beating. But she does stand again, through the burning in her legs and the sting of her many cuts, and the clogging, maddening stench of the smoke filling her lungs. No god grants her victory, but here is what her tenacity wins her anyway: a single fleck of stone. Just a chip, a bit of marble that had sat in a ceiling unconcerned with anything for a hundred years until disaster finally came for its sisters and set it free. It falls silently and swiftly, and lands on the left eye of Thellis Thist. The Eater of the Dead flinches, very briefly, just a leftover bit of instinct from ancient times stubbornly clinging to her DNA. And this tiny, random moment is the end.

Bella rushes across the chamber in the span of that eye blink, following the golden path laid out for her by Nero's great and terrifying invention. Her talons still gleam unblemished in the twilight. She leaps and strikes as though transformed into a spear thrown by Apollo, and finally, finally her hand kisses the warm insides of Thist's stomach. She clenches her hand into a fist, and feels the hollow tear wider. She wrenches her arm free, and slams it in again. Seven times for seven hills, though in truth she isn't counting. This is Empire, o Eater of the Dead. You should have studied your prey more closely.

"Thank you, honored teacher," Bella growls as she presents her host with the perfect curtsey tradition demands, "For finishing my lessons. I can do my job now."

Her heel slams on Thellis Thist's throat with a vicious stomp. She lingers, squeezing, until with a final twist and a pop she sees the serpentine head flop to one side, and the light leave one monster's eyes forever.

But the game is not finished. The beat is slain, the maiden is saved, but now the hero has to get his reward. Bella's hands are gentle as she scoops Skotia up from the rubble that she has, even in the middle of her war, kept from crushing him this whole time. She cradles him close against her, and pressed her ear against his chest to feel the timid straining of his heart. His wound is horrible to look on. The smell is putrid, and turns her stomach. She doesn't flinch away. The game has to be finished properly, it has to be, it... he... she...

She plucks his mask away to look at his face properly for the first time. A hero must have a name and a face, even if he's some ephemeral bit of nothing plucked from a storybook. All the more reason. All the. Need. Finish the game. Tears blur her vision. That's so cruel. There are words that are meant to go with this moment. A thank you and a thousand praises, a pledge to be with the Hero forever. Those are the rules, so sacred they hardly even need to be said. But Bella's still a monster and not a maiden after all. She moves her mouth, but no sounds come out except for strained sobs and choking noises. And when words do come, they're all wrong.

"You idiot. You idiot! You stupid... idiot! I, I'll! I'll kill you, you moron!"

She does not kiss him like he deserves. She is not soft or sweet or tender. Bella's lips close around the veiny cracks where he'd been bitten, and sucks hungrily where the toxins entered. Does it hurt? Good! Fucking idiot. F-fucking...

[Finish w/ Iron: 3, 2, 6: 11]

Breathless Dead

Why does a maid need to learn how to fight?

Bella was never stupid enough to ask the question out loud. Not even before the very first lesson, just after Redana had wiled away an hour brushing her hair for the pleasure of making her new pet purr. But she asked it with her eyes, every single time. When she thought she could risk it, she asked it with the slouch of her shoulders and the aggravated flick of her ears. She asked with a drooping tail and a "Yes sir, at once sir!" that was half a second too late to be proper. But she never asked it out loud.

Why does a maid need to learn how to fight?

She had quite enough to be getting on with as it was, didn't they know? Didn't they understand? The Imperial Kennels trained her to be a pet. They taught her to wear pretty, floofy little dresses and how to always, always be polite even if she didn't like the feel of the collar a human was putting around her neck. They taught her how to sing and do stupid magic tricks for guests' amusement. They taught her how to sit in a lap and close her eyes all content-like while fingers wandered all the places she didn't want them. And when she was a Good Girl, they taught her how to run races. And little Tredecima had thought that was a lot of things to know! But Bella was expected to be perfect, so there was more for her to learn. Washing the laundry, drying it, folding it after. Cooking, and how to be so good at it nobody could tell it hadn't come from a proper chef but never well enough that she threatened their position. How to grind rust out of plovers' limbs. How to repair the great machines of Tellus so that the planet could function perfectly, though never the inner workings of such wonders. How to braid hair, trim nails, apply makeup, even tailor dresses for people vastly more important than her. All of it made sense. An idle Servitor was a mistreated Servitor, wasn't it said? And when your job was to be pretty, who better to put to work making everything around her pretty, too? So then.

Why does a maid need to learn how to fight?

Scipia declared that a Princess' life was full of danger. Empires would always have enemies, and those enemies would always seek out chances to strike at weaknesses. A Princess who was still learning how to be an Empress was as weak a point as an Empire could have. Therefore, defense must always be to hand. Therefore, a Princess can have no greater defender than she who is always close to hand. They bred Bella to have sharp teeth and claws, did they not? Here she was, a product of pure Imperial intent, growing stronger every day. So it must be! It is ordained. It is the will of the Empire! It is therefore the will of the Gods! Therefore quit slouching, little one, and fight! And she did, and did well at it. She passed every lesson. But still, she wondered.

Why does a maid need to learn how to fight?

He made her spar against initiates of the Ikarani temple, though she didn't know it by name and didn't know what that meant. Not really, anyway. For her it was fighting shadows. Awkward children with distant eyes who memorized her habits and her posture after only a pass or two. It meant hiding her intentions. It meant adapting what she was doing while she was in the middle of doing it. Swinging her leg in a big sweeping kick that turned into momentum for a dodge that left her low to the ground so she could lunge upward from an angle she should have been weak from, given her taller height. It meant taking hits so that she could trade bigger ones. It meant making her muscles strong enough that her hits were bigger ones. But always carefully, carefully. She had to be soft. She had to be pretty. She was still a maid, before anything else.

Why does a maid need to learn how to fight?

Anakoni believed that every citizen should be a warrior, even in an empire that had sworn off of killing. He also believed that a Servitor was close enough to a Citizen that they hardly needed to be Ceronian to answer the call. A maid was just a warrior who cleaned mansions instead of plowing fields in between wars. And there would be wars, slut. Fight them in your pretty dresses if you must, but fight or face the consequences. And she nodded at this too, and thanked her instructor for wasting his time on her with the deepest curtsy her legs could manage. But this was such obvious dogma that even young Bella couldn't swallow it unquestioningly. This was strength, the kind of strength they turned on her to make sure she was worthy of the kindest, best parts of Tellus she was allowed to call home as long as she was perfect. This was a lash for her to endure, punishment to smile through so she could show Her Highness what a good girl she was. But her heart was still a storm. And over and over, the question repeated itself inside her head, begging to be let out.

Why does a maid need to learn how to fight?

This instructor pitted her against the initiates of the Oratus temple. But like Scipia before him, he did not name the temple, and Bella lacked the wisdom to realize the nature of her opponents. This was not like Scipia's challenge; she couldn't win by being rash and unpredictable. She couldn't win by being clever or through willingness to destroy herself. These ones did not predict: they commanded. She would rush in, leaping over obstacles and choosing her angles to catch by them by surprise, only to find herself staring up at the ceiling when her blood suddenly screamed at her to trip. To win she had to push her body harder, train her ears to catch every little vibration in the notes of every voice, to train her eyes to watch for movements hidden in even simple hand gestures that might turn hypnotic, and her nose to catch the chemical notes that meant pheromones were entering her body. She had to identify them to cut them off, and never make a mistake, and she had to cut them off perfectly, or they'd use her own dulled senses as a weapon against her. She hated this training more than any other, especially as she got older. One wrong move on even the subtlest level could mean her claws wound up dug into her own throat, and then there'd be no one left to ask the question.

Why does a maid need to learn how to fight?

Lucia was the kindest of her instructors. And maybe it was a coincidence, but she was also the only one who never asked Bella to fight her way through waves of strange trainees roughly her own age. She might even have answered the question directly, if Bella had dared to ask it. But she didn't. Any idiot who let her guard down after only a little bit of kindness deserved to be culled. So she never found her answer from her favorite teacher. But Lucia's muscles and the scars she wore proudly across her body told Bella that, in her opinion, it simply felt good to be strong. Crafting your body to be able to leap higher, run faster, hit harder, and dodge more agilely was simply part of becoming a better person. And that made her think of Redana. And that made her smile. And that made her not mind the rest of it so much.

Why does a maid need to learn how to fight?

Maybe that was the wrong question. Why does she need to fight like this? Lucia's instructions were simple. Hit her, don't get hit. Both impossible. Maddeningly so. And that was the entire point. She needed to learn what kind of power was locked inside anger, how much farther she could push herself if she rode it like a wave. She could crush stone, rend steel, crumple sevenfold shields like origami cranes if only she embraced that white-hot lightning inside of her. To win... that is, to succeed, because hitting Lucia only made her deck Bella harder, she hard to turn herself into a whirlwind. She had to hide power under that pretty frame that nobody could possibly believe was there. She had to seethe, explode, and then quickly and quietly pack it all back inside of her again before anybody could be offended by it. It was as anything she could remember doing, and the contrast only made her more curious.

Why does a maid need to learn how to fight?

Mynx came too late to be of any help. By the time the Toxicrene was willing to drop the body double routine and be a friend and confidant, Bella had lost her window to ask the question. The maid already knew how to fight. Now she needed to keep in practice, and this much Mynx was very good at. She could be any opponent, any lackey of Odoacer's that rumors said might be after Dany, and she could be anywhere at any time. More to the point, Mynx knew how to fight in ways Bella hadn't seen before. A single touch could end a fight before it began, but dodging wasn't always possible when she'd waltz in and suddenly her arms ended in tendrils or claws to rival Bella's. She talked all the time, too, that was the weirdest part. Fighting Mynx was one hundred percent a case of fighting against her own secret insecurities (or sometimes fantasies) without ever letting them rattle her. Misdirection made her forget that behind the curtain was a first class ass kicker with an infinite variety of daggers. Sometimes the fight did end before it began. Sometimes she'd ask to spar and wake up three hours later from a nap she never meant to take. But always one she needed. Winning was impossible, honestly. But Bella didn't mind as much as she thought she was supposed to. It always made her think, and these were the only lessons she got to learn that came with a hug at the end.

Why does a maid need to learn how to fight?

...Now she knows. Maids need to know how to fight because the galaxy is full of monsters. Monsters like Thellis Thist who eat the dead and smoke their souls to feel alive. Monsters who fight with every power Bella's ever trained against with a viciousness that only comes from long ages in the dark. Grasping. Scheming. Adapting.

Her ELF flashes harmless against Thist's. The rush of her claws is batted aside like she was a child again, first by predictive movement and then, far worse, again with pure animistic strength. Thist moves like mist and strikes like falling stars, too fast and too slow at once for Bella's eyes to follow. The Auspex calculates trajectories, and she changes them three times before Bella can respond to the first. It shrugs inside her head and squeezes her ears to punish her for being this stupid. She was prepared to fight a god? Well not Artemis. Definitely not Hades.

Bella digs her heels in deeper. There is nowhere for her to run. No escape is possible from this. Maids have to learn how to fight because Thellis Thist exists. And they should have been taught better. Wasn't she warned? Stay out of trouble, XIII. When nothing you do can impress a two-bit lawyer, that means you're outmatched. All of the posturing and pride of Empire means nothing in the face of a proper monster. That's the lesson. That's the hospitality of the Endless Azure Skies. Breathe it in, Bella. And then die.

There is one lesson left that can help her. Bella howls with toxic fury and slashes her claws into everything she can reach. She may be no match for Thist, but this palace is no match for her. She'll bring the whole fucking place down on everybody's heads, and then see who's feeling smug about it after the fact. She's... sorry, Mynx. You were right. When you can't win, you cheat. And then you hope to run away.

[Overcome: 1, 2. A failure means Bella reactivates Tenacity Incarnate]

Sunshards

S'funny how stories work sometimes. I mean honestly, S'funny how love works too, come to think. Like, you'd think after everything that's happened that she wouldn't have any secrets left, right? Or if she did, they'd be really easy to let out into the world at this point, wouldn't they? Not even the world! Just Hyra! All she's gotta do is let her last bits of mystery seep into those fluffy, attentive ears and then that's it. It's done. They don't have to go any farther than that. And if she can't trust the woman she gave her body to with her secrets, what's even the point?

But. In the spaces between mysteries disappearing and the kissing, she's quiet. Or no, she's not quiet. She's got plenty to say, but it's all about Hyra. About how cool her home sounds or wondering in amazement about making your own maps or about how now that she knows about that scar it's her mission to find it and kiss it, and no, the way that she got it doesn't make it any less sexy. And also, meep! She's using that word right, right? She is! Meep!!

But when it's her turn, she's quiet. She sits there smiling, maybe sipping some tea or some water or some fizzy drink with a ridiculous name she can't pronounce, in varying states of undress given what happened most recently (once in just a towel! Spa trips're nice~), and she doesn't say a word while she waits for Hyra to reveal some new amazing part of herself. The good that you can say for her is that she never stops being amazed. She even takes 'able-eye-tie' in stride, sorta kinda, rapid-blinking for a few seconds after a single "I'm sorry, what was that again?" At least her giggles are very good natured, I'll have you know. And she doesn't correct or insist on changes, except to explain that where she's from they say it thisaways.

Then come the questions. And these, probably, are why 55% of marriages end in divorce. Or wait, they're not married. Also how old is that number? Seems like it oughta've stayed buried with the Old Ones. Er, the uh, the Burrowers I mean. Sounds like a Them number, to me. Can't be right, can it? Nah. Definitely not. But anyway, the questions. They're hard, and they hurt, and they make Yue think this isn't gonna work out after all, which is enough to make them the worst thing that's ever happened to her.

Tell me about yourself? Dunno where to start. Well how about the Terraced Lake, what's it like there? Nothin' to tell, you saw pretty much all of it comin' to pick me up. Well no, but aren't there big floating cities down at the bottom of the waterfalls? What're those like? Dunno, never been. Never been? Never been. Well why not? Dunno. Never felt like it, too far to walk, too much to do, never seemed important, what would even be there for her, she's always kinda hated cities actually. But you loved the sky castle, didn't you? Well yeah but. And doesn't your sister live down there? Well yeah but!

S'funny. It starts with... oh, right. I should mention, that's not a contrack... thing. I don't mean "it's funny". It's a word, S'funny is, or leastwise it's a word in Yue's house. It's Gran Gran's word, from when she was around, or maybe it was made even earlier than that. What do I look like, a linguar? Ist? Anyway it's a word. Sad-funny. S'funny. Means when somethin's out there makes you wanna laugh but it hurts your heart to do it all the same.

Anyway where was I? Oh right, it starts with a confession. She lied just now, sorry. Of course she loves cities! Of course she does! Or, the idea of them, at least. She's had so little experience, she guesses she just doesn't know how she'd actually feel bein' in one all the time. But she knows how they make her feel, thinkin' about 'em. That's where the stories all come from. The fancy clothes and the nice pots and pans and the people who can read good and do math without having to stop and tick off their fingers to make sure they didn't lose their place partway in. It's where the songs all come from and she loves songs. But when she thinks about life in her tiny village and tries to map it onto living somewhere huge and glittering like that it makes her brain hurt, y'know?

And besides. She has a rule. She... had a rule. There was a rule in her house. Don't go far, Yue. Wherever you go, make sure you can walk home again while the moon's still young. And gettin' all the way down the terraces and all the way back up took way longer than a day, least on foot, so she never went. Sis went for her, and brought back all the stuff that wound up being her favorite stuff in the house. 'Cause Sis didn't have that rule, see? She was free. Yue's the one who needed to be careful, though she never really got why. But she didn't question it for serious. It's a rule. Was a rule. So she followed it.

She could spend all day in the village, but bein' around people for a lot was hard and none of 'em ever seemed to like her the way that Sis did, so she poked around in grasses and the woods instead. Everything she knows about herbs and cooking and animals is self taught. Ok that's a lie too. The plants and animals taught her. Not like it's hard to listen to 'em, if you've got a mind to. She'd help them with her problems, and they'd help her with hers. Wolves 'n foxes and... actually, can you keep a secret? In the village, they laugh all the time about Nature Girl Yue. Yue the Sun Farmer, what a ridiculous little girl. Not even vegan, can you imagine? How could she go frolic with the water deer all day and then come home and eat one? Well it's not... it's a part of, of life y'know and, and, her best friends all eat meat so like. It always made sense to her. She never let it get to her. Except when she wondered if that was why she had no friends. Which she doesn't. Didn't. Things are so different now, it's weird.

And even then, which is to say, even now. Right here. With Hyra. She tries to stay quiet. There's nothing else interesting to know. Her life was a loop of wandering the same few kilometers of land, popping in the same dens and warrens and copses, picking the same flowers, finding the best tea leaves, teaching herself about sunshine until she figured out how to bottle it, which she thought was gonna be her Thing but then nobody ever cared so it's just, it's just, just Yue, just the same old, plain old Yue stuck at home following her rules and never doing anything different or worth sharing and that's all there is to her, that's the whole story, if she keeps talking then all that'll happen is that Hyra will realize what a terribly boring person she's decided to love. And she'll leave. They always do.

Her parents left before she ever even knew them. Gran Gran never wanted to talk about what happened to them and got that dusty look in her eye when she tried that made Yue tell her nevermind, it's ok, it doesn't bother her really. And Sis said it was better not knowin' and that Yue was lucky to not remember 'em at all, so why hurt herself diggin' it up? And then Gran Gran left 'cause she was old and eventually it's your time, and that was the saddest day of her life. And then Yue went and got herself all grown up and Sis left too, the only other kind've leaving there is when you pack a bag and say goodbye instead of making weird people burn you and scatter the ashes through the streets. Which she guesses is kinda worse 'cause you always think they might come back, but they never do. Sis went down to the city one last time 'cause she loved it and now she's prob'ly married to some fancy noble, like why wouldn't she be as pretty and amazing as she is and that's all that...

Hm? Her name? Sis' name? Oh, it's uh... um. What was it again? Xiu! Yeah, Sis' name is Xiu. How come she had to think about it so hard? Well it's, like, y'know, she never had to say it. Sis is Sis, and if she said that then everybody knew who she meant. D'you keep old useless names in your head to collect dust just for fun? Just how it is. And actually there's... there's...

What there is is tears. The mystery of Yue, Just Yue, shrinks into a sniffling, blubbering mess who's so greedy she'd throw her arms around her girlfriend without even askin' permission, even after bein' so boring and not even trusting her with the little stories until they got dragged out of her piece by piece 'cause even in love she was so afraid to be a disappointment, had so little clue how people actually work and she's sorry, she's sorry, please tell her it's ok and please just. Please. Please.

...Kisses are nice even when your eyes are leaking and you keep hiccupping in the middle of them. And when a girl can kiss you mid-sniffle and even lick your lips after, with her eyes shining like starlight while she does it? Oh man. Like I was saying, that divorce number's made up. Don't even worry about it.

The rest spills out of her in the middle of tears. Did you know, she had no idea it was called 'manga' until... well until she heard Princess Jessic, actually? They were 'the stories' all her life. And there were six of 'em, as far as she knew. Her favorite was the one about the traveling sorceress who went around solving people's problems and then charging them silly amounts of money after. She always wondered what it'd be like to have a ton of money, even now when the idea had sorta shriveled to be like what never havin' to haggle in a market and always gettin' what you want must feel like. It'd be neat if she had all the fancy things in life like a phone and... no of course she doesn't have a phone, where would she have found one of those? Didn't even know they were a thing until she saw Chen's, and that made her head start spinnin' and it's all just... w-well anyway, animals don't care how fancy your stuff is, they only care if you smell nice and if you brought treats. So it's... well, it doesn't really matter, does it?

You could fill a book with all the stuff in the world she doesn't know about. And another ten with the stuff she does, but doesn't know is real. She can only sleep curled up on her right side. Yes, that's why she has to be the little spoon. No, she doesn't know what that means. Does it? Oh. Goshies. She always steeps her tea ten minutes longer than she should, even when the manual Sis brought home for her said that meant you'd be eaten by cave trolls for your crimes (by the way, this is why she's never gone inside a cave for any reason since she was seven years old). She's never seen the Lion King. She didn't know that lions could be kings. She knows parts of one hundred and five songs, but can't sing along to all of any of them. She makes all of her cookies with spice, almost, because when something's sweet but also burns her tongue it makes her toes curl up all happy-like. Also, she curls her toes when she's happy, is that weird?

She doesn't know. There's a whole world she doesn't know, because her whole world was a village with a handful of anime nights, some manga she didn't know were called that, and a tiny sphere of places by the river but not so close as to be dangerous where she could ask the local animals how their days were going and what they knew about the outside world. And that's all. It's that and what Sis taught her for 'school'. There's probably more for her to tell, but she doesn't know what it is just yet. She'll have to find it out herself and then tell it later. She thinks about her little house a lot, by the way. She hopes nobody's mad at her for breaking the rule as badly as she has.

She'd like to go back and see, if she's being honest. But she knows that if she does, the adventure will be over. Just getting the one was hard enough, if she gives it up she'll never see another. And she has so much left to do. She's gotta help Chen and Rose, and she's gotta go see your home, Hyra, and all of the places that are special to you, and she's gotta see the city, and she's gotta... she's gotta.

She's sorry. She's sorry, y'know? She doesn't actually know how to talk about stuff and not have it turn into a whole thing. She's just got so little practice.

Breathless Dead

Again. She is thrown violently back in time to the grand halls of Tellus again. Every breath, every halting step, and every frantic flicker of her eyes only confirms what her heart is desperately wishing was true. That she is back. That she is home. That she is loved.

There are fingers playing on her jaw. They feel cool and soothing against the heat of her skin as they brush up her face in one direction and then flutter back down in the other. The skin that touches hers is roughened by months of work aboard a derelict space ship, but the texture excites her. Up and down, up and down. Skotia pulls a shivering breath from Bella's lips.

There is breath against her neck, hot and steaming and perfumed. Her nose tingles. Her brain tells her she smells mint. Her eyes flutter in helpless pleasure. And then she feels lips. And then teeth, the tingle and pressure of tiny, gentle nibbles on her skin. Too delicate to be possessive, this is an act of worship.

There is lightning racing through her body. Every touch, every squeeze, every teasing weight pressed into the softness of her body sends columns of surging pleasure racing from the tips of her ears down to her toes. She is not strong, here in the night darkened embrace of her home. She is better than strong. She is wanted. There's a hand working at the plunging line of her dress and pawing greedily at her breast from underneath the fabric, and another pleasuring her jaw. The weight of an entire person giving all of themselves just to attend her own delight, trusting in the strength of her arms to keep him from falling to the floor even as he spends every effort turning her legs to jelly.

There is a honeyed tongue speaking words to fill her heart, words to fill her mind, words to make her heart tremble with desperation. And then that tongue slides up the length of her neck and across her face, all the way to her lips. She feels the warmth and the wet spreading everywhere at once. It consumes her.

She is home. She is dreaming, don't wake her up. She's home and these hands belong to Her and this voice belongs to Her and these kisses are Her kisses and these whispers are Her whispers and it must be true, it must, because everything is right. The hardness of those muscles is exactly what she remembers and the slightness of the body is right too and she smells it, she can't have but she swears she does, she does, she does, the sharp aroma of her Princess' sweat just barely not covering the floral sweetness of her perfume. She is home. Loved. Wanted. Loved. Loved. Loved! Greedy, possessive fingers squeeze her until the noises start, and among the moans, her confession:

"Re, Reda! Redana..."

Bella shifts. She has to, if her dress is going to come off. That tiny motion tugs her skirt across her garter, and presses the vial against her thigh. And that little bit of pressure turns her moan into a scream. Her muscles freeze to adamantine hardness in the space of a single breath. Her mouth closes and her teeth clench through the drool still dribbling out her lips. She reaches. Down in the deepest core of her body, she feels the spark. Her hand trembles as she reaches for Skotia's, even now holding him aloft. But she does reach for him. She takes his hand, and pulls it off of her. Her next sniff catches the acrid stench of cigarette smoke.

And she screams.

Stone floor cracks under her heels where she plants her feet. Her spine straightens and then arches over backward in pain and in power as she tosses her head back and shrieks with the kind of foul primacy that could scare a beast like the Eater of Worlds into hiding. She howls in a horrible, shrill pitch which echoes through the halls and shatters every illusion of where she is and what she has to do. Nobody could miss her, not in all the planet. The noise she makes will haunt the dreams of hundreds of Azura tonight. Maybe more. But who cares? Fuck them. Fuck everything. Fuck--

"Aphrodite!!"

Bella crushes the head of a serpent statue with enough moss and grass grown over it in that way of reclaimed garden fixtures that it must have survived the bombardment of Empress Nero all those hundreds of years ago, and must have thought it had outlasted danger forever. It could not survive Bella. Her lungs fill with the name of the god of love, and she spills it through every corner of the Satrap's domain. Her voice is venom to crack stone, shatter glass, wilt flowers, rust spears, crumble warriors into dust. It's not enough. She throws Skotia away from her with a gentleness that belies all the rest of her crackling aura, and her deadly eyes.

"You bastard! You old twisted fuck!" she screams through a cracking voice and a face already filling with tears, "What do you want from me? What else can I give you?! What gets to be mine? What? WHAT?"

Her claws tear down a wall that looks too much like his face. Bella seethes. She hisses and shudders and pulls at the air around her face, held from touching herself as if by some invisible force. Her howls are cut short by sniffling gasps, this ragged, feral thing in fancy clothes that belong on people. That were put there by a hand that knows her better than herself. The Auspex shows that hand slipping away from her into shadows forever, and her ELF cuts through the night like a sword.

"I gave you my whole life! Every last fucking day of it! Fuck you! Fuck you and Apollo both! What was the point of stringing me this far along just to drop me on Artemis' fucking hit list, you miserable wrinkled bastard? Fuck you! I'm not going out pining like some horny useless slut! Let! Me! GO! If you think..."

The night cracks. It splinters along a thousand fractal lines spinning along a web of power with Bella at its center. And with a swipe of her claws she shatters the cloak of darkness into nothing, and the Endless Azure Skies come rushing back into view. Bella trembles with the effort of containing the rush of power trying to tear her body to pieces.

"Just try and stop me from protecting my family tonight. I'll kill you too, god or no."

Breathless Dead

Bella's stride is strong and steady, despite the darkness. Not gentle in the way an injured person in her arms might hope for, but quick and smooth enough to keep from jostling too much. She doesn't bother looking down; her eyes are needed elsewhere. In the blackness of the night, her Auspex burns like a deep red lantern. The night hides many things, but darkness is only an ally for denizens of the Anemoi.

"You talk like someone out of a romance holo. If you tried this shit on the Princess I bet she'd be tripping on her own feet trying to work your pants down right now. She's a sucker for this. Or she... look, never mind. Just drop it, would you?"

She snorts with irritation, but pulls Skotia a little tighter against her as she walks. Every few steps, she can't help but turn her head up and around to look at the rooms and hallways around her and see what her gleaming eye wants to show her. Her footsteps fall harder and heavier with each new glance.

She is home. Impossible, but it's true. These are the halls of the Imperial Palace. She knows that bust exactly, there's one just like... that is the one that leads to the Grand Museum, and Her Majesty's Domus Aurea a little ways beyond that. Redana's sprained her ankle again in training, and Bella needs to carry her swiftly but carefully to an infirmary while she insists she's fine, put her down, Bella, it's ok really, her nanites already healed it see?

But she doesn't put her princess down. She makes an excuse about protocol and behavior unbecoming of a maid, and she squeezes her Dany closer. Just not quite close enough that she might feel and notice how wildly her heart is hammering inside her traitorous Servitor chest. She has to force her arms not to tremble, and her palms not to sweat. But she does it. These halls, this moment, this one stupid excuse is all she has left for reasons to be this close. She must be safe. Proper. But the heart wants what it wants, doesn't it? She risks it, and pulls her precious princess fully into the softness of her breasts. It makes her best friend stop begging to be let go for a moment, at any rate.

...Nothing in Tellus would ever be so empty. The guards and servants alone would pack these halls to bursting even in the middle of the night. Finding privacy for even one moment of quiet angst was equal to Orpheus travelling to the underworld. Unless you knew a princess, and had things to clean inside her private chambers. And even then, the privileges afforded an Imperial Pet could never buy her so much... space. Her footsteps echo uncomfortably loud in the cavernous emptiness of these twisted nightmare halls.

She is home. And farther from it than she's ever been. There's a stranger in her arms, because he's too hurt to walk straight (the stupid fuck), and that's the closest thing she'll ever know to intimacy ever again. The Azura halls echo Tellus in a way that makes her wish the nepenthe tucked into her garter was for her. Bella's tail curls miserably around her leg.

"...Listen," she says, and her voice is tighter than it was before, "I like you. But your human. Royalty from... who the fuck knows, by the smell of you. You have a life to go and live after tonight. And you should live it. I'd stay away from the Armada if I were you, but just. Go where you'll be happy. That's a command from your Praetor. There's more than one thing on this planet that's out to kill me now, and it's more than you're up for to throw yourself at all of them."

Her steps aren't steady anymore, but they come much faster. Only decorum keeps her from breaking into a run. Bella is still a Praetor. Her duties demand a certain amount of poise from her, even in a moment like this.

"True love is a lie, Pretty Boy. I tried to love someone once, with all my stupid heart. She took that love and set it on fire, every day. Just for fun. And when that got boring she ran away to punish me for my audacity. I don't give a shit about love. I don't care about a single fucking thing except for finding Beautiful before her Rampancy takes her. I'm gonna save her. And then I'll die. You can't stop it. So don't throw away the one good thing I get to do with my life."

Sunshards

Well. Iiiiiiiiiii dunno about you, but. In my opinion? If you wanna know what I think? If, uh, I mean, you... do wanna know what I think, right? Course you do! Course! Right. Well. Well!

I think! Given all the, y'know, the everything, that one day's not askin' too much. Y'know? Just one little day. Let Yue and Hyra have this one single solemntary morning noon and night to drown in each other and leave the rest for figuring out later. Tomorrow when they wake up (late), there'll be time for new adventures. Tomorrow there'll be time for all the little things. Tomorrow there'll be time for friends. And for saying sorry to those friends, who happen to matter more than all the rest.

It's just, a friend's not the same thing as a girlfriend, is it? At least not all the time. Though I guess a girlfriend should always be a friend. But still. There are those people you'd do anything for, and your fluffy tail can't help but wag when you see them, right? Or, uh, the people at the end of the adventure who hug with everything you've got and cry for all you're worth 'cause you know you're about to have to say goodbye for a while and it hurts your heart to do it. But you do it, don't you? For you and for them, 'cause you've all got different lives to live.

But then there's the ones whose suitcases you sit down inside of to keep them from leaving you, aren't there? The ones where your whole world goes bursting into full color when they come in the door and you have to tackle them right then and there before they go away again. The ones you hug and cry with even harder at the end of the journey because you're saying goodbye together. And you wave together and you let everyone else go, because you decided you were gonna live your lives together after all.

Yue's never had that second thing before. And when she and Hyra finally locked together against all odds a whole bunch of other stuff happened (that you just got finished hearing about, you lucky devil!) and made it so she couldn't do any of the special Girfriend Stuff she'd read so much about. So it's not, y'know, it's not unreasonable for her to wanna have a day to start doin' all that before she gets back to all've the everything else. And besides. Besides! If she's gonna have a proper double-date with Rose and Chen she needs practice first, right?

And it's a day they haven't wasted, lemme tell you. First picnic, out under a little persimmon tree. Tea and little cakes and just a tiny bit of duck with crispy bits of skin cut up like little fries. All handmade, of course. And shhhoooooo goodf! Mm! Even if there was barely enough extra for guests, and um, ahaha, if we're being real honest for a second? That's proooooobably 'cause Yue didn't eat her whole share. Still though! Mmmf!! But yeah. First picnic. First time sharin' a sunlit spot with someone she could actually have a conversation with. First time wasting that first time with not sayin' anything worth hearing anyways. First time sittin' in the sunlight, with not a single bead out farming and bein' completely ok with that.

First time runnin' with a pretty girl by her side and getting to feel the wind in her hair and tugging at her skirts 'cause even though she's wolf-light, wolf-swift, wolf-fast, she's actually not a wolf for the first time she's actually gotten to move around like this since learnin' it was something she could do. And it's joyful, a treat among treats, to feel her sandals on the ground and glance over through a mop of frizzled brown hair and seeing the most beautiful girl in the world grinning at her and matching her step for... wait a second, where's she going? Hyra you jerk, you can't go faster than! Ohhhh, you're in trouble when she catches you!

First time stumbling into a room tired and sweaty and needing a bath... and feeling eyes on her when she goes to peel off her clothes.

"Um... d-d'you have to watch like that?"

"Does it bother you?" Hyra is smiling like a sphynx.

"N... no! But I, it's just, oh goshies, I'm all sweaty and gross..."

"I like you sweaty and gross. I should keep training you forever just to keep you looking like this."

"A-and besides! Y-y-you saw me naked for like a whole week! A-a-and you're looking at me like..."

"Yue."

"Meep!"

"I saw a wolf. A very pretty wolf, sure. But now I get to see you, Yue. I get to see the body you belong to, not something someone else tried to force you to be. Of course I'm gonna look! Unless you don't want me to~"

"N-no! I mean yes! I mean gosh, gosh!! I, I... I want you to look, and I, I want you to..."

"You think I need a bath too, is that it?"

"Ye, yu-- uhuh! I think we! I! Please?"

"You poor thing, you're shaking! Well. How about I help you finish getting out of those clothes?"

"...y-yes please."

"And then you,"

"Uhuh?"

"Can help me out of mine."

"adskfgjblbsdf!!"

"There we go, good girl~"

Yue learned a lot of things that night. Like, for one, Hyra's got a mole just above the left side of her waist that's perfect for kissing. And another one a little higher just beneath the collar bone. And that Hyra's tail wags when she runs her fingers down the magic spot on her spine.

Also, remember all that stuff I said before about kissin'? And how you never get your first one twice? Turns out that's not true! 'Cause there's all sorts of places a girl can be kissed. And the first kiss on her neck's very different from the one on her lips. And the one that comes after with the sucking that pulls her skin up and the bite of strong teeth after? That's even better. The line of tiny pecks down her chest feel like something she'd never even dreamed of.

And didja know girls can get licked and kissed across their tummy? And it's the best thing ev-- wait! Wait wait wait, breaking news! Thighs are even better for kissing! Right on the top, like that, like that! Right on... on the inside, and... oh, oh, ohhhh!

Yue learned a lot about kisses that night. About getting them and giving them, and the noises she had inside of her that she never knew she could make. It's a wonderful, incredible, amazing thing to have a girlfriend. To have somebody who loves you with all of their infinite heart. Someone you never have to say goodbye to, not ever. Not even then. It's amazing to give all of yourself to that person. Next time she'll try to learn how to take it back. Or if she's not up to that just yet, maybe she'll learn how many other ways there are to give yourself to a special girl.

The duel is, after all, about the duel. And there's always something new to learn. About technique. About your partner. About yourself and your secretest of secret hearts.

Breathless Dead

By rights it should be easy to force him aside. He's smaller and weaker than she is to begin with, and badly injured on top of that. But every time she strains against his arms, she's pushed back and pinned against the wall. Every time she pushes him away, he rushes back into the space between them with a desperation that disarms her before she can escape.

And every time, his hand. Reaching up. Touching behind her ear. Soft, soothing brushes with his fingers. As if she mattered. As if she wasn't a monster that just tried to burn the world. As if, even now, her comfort was more important to him than the universe.

Bella relents. Or maybe it's more accurate to say she loses. Her battle heat disperses unevenly though her body, and where everything had been thunder and crackling power just a moment ago, it fizzles into a drunken tingling of misfiring bursts. Her body drains of the power robbed by those delicate fingers, and with a sigh that's half a moan she leans back into the wall. She pulls an arm free and uses it to hold the dark stranger against her body in the night.

"All right," she sighs, "You win. I'll stay. I said, all right! Fuck!"

Her head is spinning. Her heart is fluttering unsteadily, and her skin is flushed and buzzing. Every breath makes even the pitch darkness blur as though she'd suddenly drunk several bottles of wine in the span of a second, but she can't stop herself from taking sniff after deep, greedy sniff of her pet's hair. And the perfumed sweat drenched into his skin, and, and, and!

And his blood. Slick, oozing, disgusting blood; she has to drag her tongue across roof of her mouth to keep from vomiting. And still she stands there holding Skotia tight in her embrace. And still she lets him hold her, and even lets him keep massaging her ear until he finally draws out the deep, slow purr from her chest until it's broken up again by how heavy she's breathing. This is what his courage has won him today. She listens to the brave, wet burble of his gasps. She feels his body cut like steel against her softness, and she feels him grow cooler tucked amidst her warmth. She feels the hot splash of his blood seeping into her dress beyond the capabilities of even Beautiful's planning to absorb, and she squeezes her hand tighter around his waist.

There is nothing of Mynx in Skotia. She's not sure if that's a bigger relief or a disappointment. If only there was time to figure it out.

Bella's pinky claw slides his undershirt with a whispered protest of fabric. She feels it brush the skin, but she is gentle so that he barely feels it enough to shiver. She slides the ruined garment off of his shoulders and, ah! Ah~

Even in the impenetrable depths of this dark night, he's pretty enough to take her breath away. She cranes her neck to be closer, to breath more of him in. His breasts are small, stiff, and supple under her palm. Her mouth waters at the smell of them, sweeter than ambrosia. Aphrodite flicks her ear, and Bella's head swims in sudden, dizzying desires to taste them. Suck them. Brush her teeth against them until the whole planet could track them in the dark just from the sounds of his moaning. It... if she's going to die tonight, then, then!

It would be a shame to die without ever fucking him. But so it goes. With some effort, she pulls away her hand to wipe the drool from her lips. And when she lowers it again, all her focus is on his torn undershirt, and tying it tight enough around the wound until she finally feels the flow of blood and then stop at long last under the knot she leaves. She stands there waiting patiently for him to slump into her arms, lifting him by the knee and the armpit to keep from hurting him any more.

"That was incredibly stupid," she says through an invisible smile in the black, "You moron. How bad does it make me look if I need my pet to save me?"

Her feet carry her all of a single step before his groan of protest reaches her ears. The kindest thing that you can say about Bella right now is that she lets that stop her, even with the weight of the ampule pressing uncomfortably against her thigh. She sighs loudly.

"What, modest all of a sudden? Nobody's going to touch you, I promise. Besides, I... it turns out, we're a lot alike. I don't know who I remind you of, but I've got a friend here too that makes me feel the same way. I've barely, mmmh why am I even telling you this? I've known her all of a week, ok? But there's something, something that makes that feel not quite right. Something's telling me I know her much better than that. But she's an Ikarani, if you know what that means, and I've got an hour, three tops, before her brain turns to divine dust and I've got no friends again.

She had a plan, but fuck that. It's dead now, any idiot could figure that out even without her sticking her neck out to warn me all of a sudden. I don't give a shit about that anymore, I just need to find her and... make sure she doesn't forget me forever. So that's what we're doing now. And if you try to stop me, I'll kill you right here. Got it? Good boy."

Breathless Dead

"Beautiful?! What's going on?"

Her voice is a butchered mess; all of its normal melody stripped away into a charred hoarseness that at once is trying too hard to be heard and not to shout at the same time. Normally she would cringe at her own lack of decorum. Right now, there's no time. Right now she is a sword pulled unexpectedly from the forge and quenched before it's ready. She's burning with the full fury of her battle rage and chilled through her marrow with that single chance meeting of the eyes, with no transition between these two states. She burns hot and cold at the same time, and in some parts of her body in the same place.

Her rushing blood turns to lead in her veins without slowing down to make way for its sudden horrible heaviness. Her stomach seems to have disappeared entirely in a sudden swoop that no change in gravity could hope to match. Beautiful is here, and something is wrong. That means the world has spun out from underneath her feet, and there's nothing left to even cling to.

Bella's legs turn on their own. What was meant to be a death charge becomes an uncertain step toward her friend instead. Her ears droop for just a moment, until she catches herself and scowls as she forces them back to attention. All of her attention shifts to Beautiful. She can't afford to miss anything. She can't, she can't afford to-

The Great Hall explodes in a volley of SP fire. It's not pointed at her, and in such a vast and open room the rapport is fairly muted, but even with all of that in her favor the sudden ringing in her sensitive ears is painful enough to make her stagger. The stench of the smoke belching out of the rifles gags her as much as fresh blood. The flood of bursting lights leave trails in her eye that take the Auspex precious extra cycles turning the mess into something she can still see through. It hurts. Every sense pounds against her brain and it hurts, there's another volley and it hurts and she's going backwards not forwards and it hurts and it hurts and it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts!!!

Bella howls. The world turns into smoke and evil shapes she doesn't need an artifact in her eyesocket to figure out. Her legs tingle with treacherous weakness when it's less welcome than it's ever been before. She squeezes her eyes shut and claws at her head and face. Her breath is wheezing, snarling, and wet with the notes of anger dripping off of each exhalation. Sense by sense, she forces the world to go dull. With the colors less sharp she can see better. With her ears blocked up she can think. With her nose focused she can breath the air and pick out the strongest, most important bits instead of wincing like a stupid kitten at the noxious stench. With her skin turning numb, she can burn hotter. Move faster. Fight harder. Now she can give even more of herself to the job.

...In the absence of directions, Bella should trust her instincts. Beautiful never said as much, but she was clear about it anyway. She trusted Bella's instincts. She could work with them. Which meant she was breathing in the same danger. Her lungs must be tingling with the awful sting of it, too. Something is here, something ancient and violent, and...

There's no sense to it, really. No reason for it to be true. The first time she met Beljani, she'd asked her what the secret was to turning her Rampant. She'd left Beautiful in her coffin the entire time she'd known she existed, and resisted waking her up until the last possible second. And Mynx was... somewhere far, far away. She hoped. She prayed, in fact. Artemis, if you give a single fuck about... nnnnngh. No.

It wasn't all pleasant. Most of it felt bad instead of good. And there was no good reason for it besides. But Bella can feel her connection to each of these girls wrapped around her throat, and it reminds her of a collar. Her fingers gently brush her neck, but it's not there. Artemis, you stupid bitch, this is her family. This is all you bothered to give her for a family, and now you'd let her watch them all get lost or eaten right in front of her.

No. No. No. Whatever love you have for your servants, O Goddess of the Hunt, show it here and now. Give her, give Bella the strength and speed and skill to take everything in the Great Hall and crush it beneath her claws. Make it all fall on her. Only on her.

There's not a word of prayer spoken aloud. Bella doesn't wait for a sign or a feeling that things will be ok. There's never time to wait and see if the gods have decided to accept her or sweep her from the board before she has to move again. The answer comes the way it always has: results. Only the outcome means anything at all. And if she dies? At least she doesn't have to live with it.

Bella's scream is primal and otherworldly. Even in the cloud and haze and chaos, it's possible for anyone looking at her (and who couldn't?) to see the white flash of her tail whip-flick with desire for the hunt. She hunches low and bursts forward like a thunderbolt, tearing massive gashes in what's left of the floor as she surges straight into the red.

Sunshards

The thing they don't tell you about your first kiss is that eventually it's gotta end. And when it's over, that's it. True Love's First Kiss is one of the Seven Ultimate Secret Techniques of the Heart (And Blade!), but it's a literal once-in-a-lifetime use move. The world's not gonna bend over to line up a perfect breeze to play with your hair and skirt and bless you with the perfect ray of sunshine like history's biggest spotlight while every person, fox, cloud, bird, and passing seed or leaf wafting through the skies turns and... stops to gobble up a lil' bit of your magic while it's there.

Y'gotta understand, this is a move that can topple empires when it's timed right. This is a moment that forges alliances forever or shatters them into a billion rainbow shards. It can turn a blinding, deadly snowstorm and turn it into a gentle spring rain and fill you with the power to stand up to your worst nightmares and even best them forever in a flourish of acrobatics that mark the end of a long and painful journey. If you don't believe me, ask Jessic. I'd bet you a floofy new tail she's got it on DVD.

But Yue just spent it on a prison escape. Well, that's not fair exactly, but the point is that it's gone and the world's pretty much the same as it's ever been now that she's just falling, falling, falling through the sky in the firm and delicious arms of Hyra of the Wolves. But then, if she could have kept her feelings from bubbling up out of her until lips found lips and her world melted into the warmest, softest, blinding light she could ever imagine... she wouldn't be Yue, would she? And Hyra would be slipping into the shadows right now to bide her time looking for the next big moment where she could steal somebody's everything again.

True Love's Second Kiss is a technique so paltry they don't even put it in the cheapo scrolls you can find on the bargain mat at the very end of a bazaar. But they probably oughta, y'know? How's it gonna be True Love if you only ever kiss the one time? How're any of these stupidface so-called swordsman and magicians able to sleep at night knowing they never bothered to tell trembling young maidens that the second kiss feels just as nice as the first?

And for that matter, the third. And the fourth. And the fifth. And the sixth, the One Where You're Finally Brave Enough To Try Slipping Your Tongue In Her Mouth might actually be better than all those others put together. And, like, sure. I get it. When you're fallin' and you're fallin' and you're fallin' some more and you take all those kisses and just kinda chain 'em all end to end like that, it just kinda turns into True Love's First Makeout Session, doesn't it? Careful Yue, or it's gonna turn into True Love's First Bra Unhooking and... sweetie? You're just not cut out to have that play out in front of such a big crowd. Save it. Let it be special. Private. Ideally in the moonlight by a waterfall, if you can manage. But that's just, like, my opinion.

But anyway, they come. The kisses, I mean. Light and sweet, then hot and heavy (wow, girl!!), and punctuated with sweet little nothings about her perfectly wonderful girlfriend and all the things that make her somebody's everything whether she's trying to be or not. It bubbles out of her like all the rest of it did, because Y-- oh gosh not again! Princess Yin's (why is that so hard?) stupid curse made it so hard to do this thing right and sooner like she wanted to so she's just been sitting and waiting and sitting and waiting and gosh darn it she's not gonna do it anymore! But also 'cause she can't help being who she is, which is to say a creature of sweetness and softness who fills every tiny hole she sees with happiness.

So after the kisses come the little touches and the squeezing. And after the little touches and the squeezing come the breathless smiles. And after the breathless smiles come the blushing and the squeaking because it's finally finally finally settling in just how bold and, um, lucky she's been. And after the blushing and the squeaking? You'd think it'd be shrieking, y'know, given how she's falling straight out of the Sky Castle down to the earth below without so much as a hot air balloon to help her.

But she's got Hyra. And she's got Rose. And she's got Chen. And... oh, right! Hahaha, sillyhead, she knows how to fly now! So this is just another first in a journey that's been stuffed so full of 'em even a pepper would blush at the idea. So she doesn't shriek at all, see? She laughs. Uproarious, joyful, rolling, delighted laughter that not even the winds of terbimal velocity (look it up, nerds) can snatch from everybody's ears.

"I'm leaving the landing to you!"

Ah, that most classic of lines. She falls, and she's safer than she's ever been. And when she makes it where she's going? She's got a whole bunch've hugs to hand out to all of the most deserving people in the world.