Phoe

Breathless Dead

Since the day she'd had the Auspex implanted, it had always shown her where to go. Omn had called it the Golden Path - a series of pulses of light that flitted across her vision even when she shut her eyes, always leading her across the fastest, most efficient path from one place to another. The more attention she paid it, the more details unfolded across her vision. She could will it into faint, ignorable specks or make it open a pattern so specific it told her exactly where, when, and how to place her feet to unerringly bring her victory. Or if nothing else, opportunity.

Bella is focusing now. One. Two. Three steps, and that's all there is. Just three steps. She turns her head, looking above and to every side. She frantically spins around, still holding Redana's wrist, but the terrible hydra is all she finds waiting behind her. Three steps, into the middle of this strange, awful hole. And then nothing. She feels ice fall into the pit of her stomach. No, but of course. There's no longer victory to be had. Her opponent is an immortal monster. Her mother. So this is where the eye of Hermes was leading her this entire time. Her mouth turns drier than the desert this planet used to be, and all her tongue can taste on the air is ash.

She'd been running from death since almost the moment she was born. Starvation and torture at the hands of the Kennel Master, or the hideous fate that waited for her inside the dark confines of the box. The humid, fetid bogs and jungles festering inside the Eater of Worlds. The dark and claustrophobic openness of the lonely floating grave called the Yakanov. In the end she fled from every single one. No god terrified her more than Hades, whose priest she was forced to murder. Whose priest she failed to save. Even now, with death a certainty ahead of and behind her, a cowardly servitor finds no hero's nobility quickening in her veins. Her heart pounds frantically against her fate. Too little, too late. The lord of the dead stands there waiting. A shovel over his shoulder. And three steps left to her for the rest of her life.

Two. She's long since run out of bile to cough up. Venom eats away her strength and replaces it with the sensation of ten thousand needle teeth clamping down around her insides with powerful jaws to guide them. Skin and organs split, and blood leaks internally. She can feel it pooling in her arm. Come on, is this really how she's gonna go out? She chokes back a scream, but it dribbles out as a whimper. No closure. No happy ending. Just the conclusion of her misery; the proof that she was first and only a wicked monster. No matter how hard she tried to be anything else. Too many sins to count, Bella. Pay up. You did save your coins to pay for the ferry, right? Or was even Tartarus too good for her, compared with eternity trapped inside the close and crushing dark?

One. This is it. The time she has to say goodbye. To say I... to tell Redana the words etched across her heart. To burden her princess with one last thing before the end. Or perhaps, one last chance to redeem herself. The Auspex is the eye of Hermes. The path must be telling her to stand her ground here. In falling, she could save Redana's life. That wouldn't... be so bad. Maybe then, at least, the gods would forgive her for this life she lived so impiously. If only she'd learned how to pray. She glances around one more time. No steps. No Apollo with his insufferable eternal smile. No Artemis in her crisp moonlight suits. No Hera to squeeze strength into her shoulders. Just a cigarette, where Aphrodite used to be. And Hades, all alone.

Bella squeezes Redana's wrist as tightly as she can. It's time you idiot, let her go! The ember of that cigarette butt burns as hot as any star. She twists her fingers deep into the skin, trying to claw herself free only--

Only she'd given up her claws. XIII's claws. And nobody trusted Bella with her talons anymore. Her heartbeat stumbles. Bella feels herself fall as if from a great height, tumbling over and over again into herself without her feet ever leaving the ground. Why? Why, why, why? Why had they taken her claws from her? What did she do to deserve mutilation like this? What did that little girl do wrong to deserve so much pain? Sagakhan had told her it was all to grow her perfected body, but that was already rotting into the sands. So. Then. What if?

Was it... for this?

"Redana, what the fuck are you dooIInG?!"

Bella's feet leave the ground. Her arm is pinned between hers and Redana's bodies, and the only thing she can think to do with the other is throw it tight around the Princess' shoulder and cling. No more steps. There are no more steps for her to take. No more steps, and nothing to do, except be held. And then be kissed.

She feels the warmth of Redana's lips as they press indelicately against hers. Her tongue tastes blood, and for once Bella has no desire to spit it out. She feels no nausea, even as her mouth finds the corner of Redana's that's been split almost entirely open and she's forced to contemplate the texture of a wound on her palate. She holds her eyes open, so she sees Redana's close. It's a private moment that belongs only to her. Their tongues dance, and the expression that paints Redana's face is... relief. Fire roars hot to replace the ice inside her stomach. Hades recedes farther, and farther, and farther away as two children of Tellus take to the sky as if on wings.

Bella is still watching her princess when she opens her eyes again. 'For luck', she says. Moron! Idiot! Stupid dipshit royal dumbass!! Heat colors Bella's cheeks as a fresh surge of pain crawls up through her chest. She snarls as she watches the ground pass below. She clings to Redana to try and hide a coughing fit.

"You still read," she sputters, "Too many fucking stories."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"Cat in the jungle. Ah. Jokes. Do I watch playback on mute? Mm, no. Can't resist. Besides, it's more instructive in the event of a loss."

Stub-clawed fingers glide over a series of switches and dials, clicking the row on the top-left of the main panel into the proper positions with a chorus of extremely satisfying clunks. The smooth palm and spotted fur of the hand glow in the harsh cockpit lighting, rippling with motion as they grasp a large lever and tug it forcefully into a neutral position.

Her spare hand takes a moment to pluck at the skintight jumpsuit clinging to her body like it's trying to merge with her. She shifts the fabric a bit so it pinches her tummy a little less, but her muscles tug it right back the second she shifts. She shrugs. The material's amazing at keeping sweat off her skin so she can't really mind it too much, as hot as it gets in here. Her leg stomps down on a foot pedal as two liquid eyes flit over information displayed across a dozen different screens and pop ups.

And in the jungle, Nine-Tails takes a single cautious step. The lithe frame of the mecha tightens its grip around the trident in its hands, while its eight free floating "tail" units hover quietly behind it, with only the occasional pink spark from the energy matrix that keeps them linked with the main machine.

"Systems check, all green. Input delay measuring at seven milliseconds; within expected parameters. Beginning first live combat test... now."

Mirror's face scrunches into a light frown. It tended to do that when she was happy, and in particular when she was happy about being presented with a challenge. In a less cramped environment she might also stretch her spine and stand up on her tiptoes, but inside the confines of her mecha all she can do is hunch forward in her chair to grip the joysticks tighter. The great secret of the Gods-Slaying Whip: it had no neural link of any kind. Consequently, that made her one of only a tiny handful of people in the known galaxy who might be able to pilot it at all.

But this was not the time for self congratulation. The value of the systems hadn't proven themselves yet, except on paper. Over a year's worth of obsessive thought, sleepless nights, and long arguments with her family, and so far all she had to show for it was what she referred to as a Pattern Puzzle. Each layer of the riddle unfolded to reveal a new dependency in the pattern, such that you couldn't simply brute force a bunch of colors together on a cube and call it good. Every piece needed to be arranged just so in order to get the shape of the puzzle on the next level to reveal itself, and even a correct seeming solution could only show her parts of what was underneath it. She wouldn't know if she'd done it properly until she got down to the core and received her reward. It reminded her of the way AI logic was woven out of such dense tangles of visual information that spoke to artistry almost as much as systems mastery, and how without any given piece of seemingly pointless data the entire thing would become so much inert sludge. Hence, the name. Satisfying.

"Layer one: disadvantage."

For as much as the... preliminary matches still had commentary teams, right? They didn't save that for the later, more important rounds? That would be a disappointment to learn. Regardless, while any hypothetical commentary team would doubtless be wasting infinite air calling this her home territory, the truth was that it (to use a popular human expression) 'hardcore sucked'. The true power of her Nine-Tails was in its adaptability, but that required space she didn't have in all this dense foliage for her tails to move about freely. Additionally, since her rig used camera feeds instead of pushing sensory information directly into her head, any sort of information dense battleground would naturally take her longer to process than a sufficiently talented opponent using a more traditional control scheme. The difference would be measured in fractions of a second, if that, but smaller windows had cost her more.

"Moreover, can only make assumptions. Moreover, minimal confirmation of enemy combat tactics. Moreover, determining position amounts to determining weapon capabilities."

Mirror nodded to herself. These would be good logs to have for later. She should install an audio recorder later if she found the time. But in the meantime, the shape of the Pattern was still becoming known to her. If the Lonely Star was a... what was the word again? In her native tongue it would be a [Far Seer] but with a human opponent it felt important to think in human terminology. A sharp shooter, perhaps? Regardless. If it primarily operated on the principles of long range, high precision marksmanship, then Valentina would respond to a threat-level response with a full power kill shot, ideally from the edge of her viable range. But if that tiny frame were focused more exclusively on maneuverability, she'd already be using the tree cover to slip in closer.

In either case the solution was to close distance and establish her Zone overtop of the Lonely Star's, but without knowing the exact size and shape of her enemy's Zone it would be impossible to properly manifest control. If she prepared for the wrong angle of attack then her own lightly armored unit would fall before it got a chance to gather any useful data. Unacceptable risk.

"Information wars cut both ways," she clicked her tongue while musing, "Must remember that."

This was the hidden layer of the challenge: victory was irrelevant in the face of learning. As far as the tournament was concerned, the only important thing was to qualify out of the preliminary matches and enter the main rounds where she'd actually be able to do everything she needed. A perfect record beforehand was excessive. If others mocked her for dropping an early fight... well, they mocked her plenty as is. Irrelevant. Of vastly greater importance was disguising the full capabilities of Nine-Tails. The less others understood the functionality of her tails, the greater her advantage would be when it mattered. As such, she'd already calculated she could only afford to use one third of her full capability in qualifications.

"Establishes a baseline response anyway. Important work."

In any case, it was a question of understanding enemies, understanding spaces. Understanding the biome reached a distant third. Based on publicly available information, it could reasonably be assumed that if Mirror took the river safely, she would win without question. At least, no one reasonable would question it. The answer to the riddle, then, was to establish reason and position at the same time.

...She's spent this long standing still in reasonably exposed space without being attacked. That's an answer in and of itself, really. But even still, one could never finish a puzzle using only negative information. Two tails shouldn't make for too big a strain on her concentration, right?

"Nine Drive System is active. Initiating full burn. Come and get me, if you dare."

The Gods-Smiting Whip shares no tactile data with Mirror as it first crouches low into the wet ground and then leaps high into the air on a burst of thruster fire, but that only makes the G-forces feel more potent as they force her back into her chair. It brings a knee up without her needing to, it twists it's back and arcs into a high flip as it clears the trees and hangs in the open air for three glorious seconds. Six tails follow as if on strings. Two more, hidden and waiting at the edge of the canopy. Mirror jerks her joysticks hard and her mech twists in the air, flourishing its trident with menace and purpose. Six buttons in sequence, and her hidden tails lock together like the barrel of an oversize rifle.

Her heartbeat quickens. This is what it truly feels like to fly.

Breathless Dead

She'd spent her entire life crafting that armor, and not even realized it. Every worry made it grow harder and more invincible, every doubt sharpened its claws. Fear wrapped it in thorns so it could keep her safe, and envy made it larger so that she could become a titan. It was supposed to make her perfect. In actual fact a god; finally making good on the promise she made in the darkness of the Yakanov. It was supposed to swallow her, the ultimate monster that every other monster had to run from. It was supposed to crush her into oblivion, until the name Bella vanished from lips across the universe, and even XIII would vanish into the ocean called Artemis.

It was perfect. She was perfect. Mere minutes away from accession. Tearing herself free was an act of insanity, one that had cost her the power of the gods and the paltry reserves stored inside her own body at the same time. Even now, her lungs burn as if the wet forest air was thick with SP smoke. Even now her legs tremble from the effort of supporting her body. Her spine longs to curl forward and never straighten again, not for all the pride in the universe. Her mutilated fingers tremble uncontrollably: naked lances of fire that scream at the barest kiss of air. The water pouring down is unbearable.

And yet.

Bella launches herself at Sagakhan, and it feels like she's grown wings. She soars over the sand, now covered with sodden leaves, and her feet barely touch the ground. One, two, three monstrous heads lash out at her as she comes. From above, and from either side. She reaches into the air, not knowing what to expect, and snatches at the sky with her bare hand. She disappears in a blink, reappearing at the top of the canopy of fresh trees, and. Oh. She's grown wings after all.

She plunges with the seeming of a spear hurtled from heaven. Sagakhan's heads pivot on a pin and snap at her with a series of furious hisses, but none of the fangs sink into her flesh. There's a burst of light, a flash of color she can't afford to notice right now, and unlimited attacks somehow turn into straight on thrusts and snaps that she can counter directly. Bella's whole body burns, but it burns with a rush of elation and a surge of golden power that feels lighter and happier than any sensation she can remember. Even with her sharpest claws removed, even without talons to replace them, the ones she's still got left are sharp and strong enough to carve deep wounds in Sagakhan's armored scales and spill her toxic blood in great hissing splashes that wilt foliage to nothing wherever it falls.

Bella rises and falls. She cuts circles around her opponent and flashes from corner to corner with a speed, precision, and sense of easy grace she couldn't have hoped to match as XIII. She is the true manifestation of the storm. She is the tool you send to fight the rainforest. She is the spear, the sword, the hammer, raining blows from above and below at the same time. She can be a weapon because she does not need to be a shield. Without the fear, she's lighter. Without the doubt she's stronger. Sharper, more precise, calmer. Free.

Her name is Bella. Named for her beauty. The Imperial Maid. A Praetor, chosen by no less than Empress Nero herself. She hops lightly out of the way of snapping heads, crushing tail blows, and claws larger than her entire head. She catches one deathblow between her hands, sinking half to her knees before she finally manages to throw it to the side. Suddenly all she can think about is Prion Paula. What a stupid thing to think about, when she's dancing on the edge of death with a monster beyond her power to kill? But she smirks, in spite of herself. Even laughs, in a brief sort of snort. And that feels... nice. Fuck it, then. Chan-barra-chan.

Ah, she's light. She's so light. What did she ever need that armor for?

Two heads roar in her face and snatch at her with deadly sharp teeth. Her saliva singes the fur on Bella's arms just from being this close. They bite down, and there's no time or space for clever dodging this time. Her shield is occupied elsewhere. All she can do is twist her body so the teeth can't get anything vital. She sacrifices a shoulder and her opposite elbow to keep her body safe. Her skin crawls and burns with the sensation of hot beads being endlessly pushed into it and rolled around by some giant, malicious thumb. She does not scream. She grits her teeth and wrenches her limbs free, and as she wheels around her foot crushes into one of Sagakhan's jaws. She takes the head in both her hands and wrenches it with all of her might, smashing it into the other one over. And over. And over again.

Until the scales split. Until the teeth shatter against each other. Until the bones grow soft and twin necks slump with the listlessness that hers long to, even now in the middle of her golden song. She stumbles back, and twists her neck to touch her lips to her injured shoulder. Suck, and spit. She wipes her lips clean and repeats the process on her arm. There, you stupid bitch. If cutting heads won't work, she'll crush them instead.

The smirk falls off her face immediately. The rest of Sagakhan's heads rises up and contemplate their fallen companions. The great Master of Assassins roars her displeasure, and crunches down on her own neck. The hydra lashes furiously, biting and tearing again and again and again until her useless, broken heads lie severed on the ground, skin and scale and muscle already dissolving down to misshapen bone. All around her is a graveyard made of herself. She gnaws it with a monster's zeal. New heads grow to replace the ones she ate herself. And she grows larger to accommodate them. Her teeth grow sharper. Spines rise and shiver along her back and at the tip of her tail.

But she does not grin. She does not laugh or taunt or condescend. She hisses and smashes her new club of a tail through several giant trees in a single catastrophic motion. And somehow, that's the cruelest thing of all.

"You called me your daughter," says Bella with enough venom to rot a hydra skull, "In front of Zeus almighty, you called me your child."

Her hands ball into fists. She rises as straight and tall as her body can manage, and stomps her foot into the ground.

"You disgust me, you worthless piece of shit. How dare you? How dare you! After everything you stole from me, how dare you say that and throw it all away?!

"Kill me if you can, I don't give a fuck. I'll come back, see if I don't. If it takes me three hundred years I'll find you. And I'll drag you with me. I will. Never forgive you."

Her shoulder burns. Her arm burns.. Bella squeezes her fingers again to keep from pulling her arms taught against herself. She snarls so she doesn't scream. Her eyes betray her, and wander away from the fight for the first time. Of course they land on Redana. Now her body burns with shame, too.

Sorry, Dany. This is gonna be a pretty short reunion. Whatever, it's not like she had much a future left anyway, after everything that's happened.

Her heart beats wildly against the thought. She punches her chest and hisses. Shut up, you.

[Keep Them Busy: 11]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Mira of the Fisher Clan, Whose Star Name is Whispered Promise
Mira Fishers || Whispered Promise
Mirror

The One-Day Defender
Up-and-coming fashion designer Mayze Szerpaws, see her work in La Plataforma
The Trickster

DARING +2
GRACE 0
HEART -1
WIT +2
SPIRIT 0

FEELINGS 3 (0-4)

Start at 1 and increase your Feelings by 1 each time you gain a String, someone gains a String on you, or you mark a Condition. You may also choose to increase your feelings any time you find yourself gasping or swooning over someone. Strings assigned during character creation don’t increase your Feelings.
When you open up to someone whose regard matters to you, reduce your Feelings by 2. When you secretly perform a loving act for someone, reduce your Feelings by 1.
If your Feelings track reaches 4, you can’t hold it in anymore. Tear off the mask and scream what you’ve been holding in, do what you’ve been afraid to do, and damn the consequences. You can give anyone present a String on you to gain a String on them. Stop when the consequences catch up to you, for good or ill.
Afterwards, reduce your Feelings to 0 and clear a Condition. It feels good to get it out, at least in the moment.

EW, FEELINGS
When someone offers you Emotional Support and you refuse to open up, increase your Feelings by 1 and choose 1 from the listed options for that move as if they rolled a 7-9. If they rolled a 10+, they know they got through to you; they gain the benefits of the 10+ result as if you had opened up.

THE MASK
When you seek to persuade an NPC of a lie about yourself, roll +Wit:
10+: Choose 2
7-9: Choose 1
# They believe a big lie
# The lie you have chosen is unexpectedly perfect, creating a new opportunity
#They give you the benefit of the doubt and remain convinced even if there is some evidence of your lie
Additionally, whenever a PC Figures You Out, you can give false answers. You must increase your Feelings by 1 at the end of any scene where you do this.

CENTER OF THE WEB
When someone approaches you to get something from you or threaten you, choose 1:
# Gain a String on them and they lose a String on you
# Ask them a question from the Figure Out a Person move
# +1 ongoing against them for the scene

DEVIOUS SCHEME
When others go along with your cunning plan, roll +Wit:
10+: Choose 2
7-9: Choose 1
# Produce just the right object
# Describe an unexpected weakness in an obstacle
# Appear right behind someone in a crucial moment

A BEAUTIFUL LIE
When you become Smitten with someone, say why, give them a String, and answer this question:
“What secret do you have that you think would make them reject you if they knew?”

I SEE THROUGH YOU
When you Figure Out a Person during physical conflict, you may additionally ask one of these questions, even on a 6-:
# Who do you want me to be?
# What are you most afraid of right now?

CONDITIONS

STRINGS
3 on Valentina de Alcard
1 on Solarel
1 on Crescent
1 on Smokeless Jade Fires

XP
[X] [X] [X] [] []

Appearance

Mirror is a member of the water-loving Fisher clan, and has spent a large part of her life bouncing around various science stations at the fringes of Hybrasil space.

Like the rest of her race, she is a feline humanoid with fur covering the majority of her body, except for her palms and the soles of her feet. Her fur is reminiscent of a snow leopard, a thick coat of cool white dotted all over with complicated black spotted patterns. Her face is unusually sharp and angled for a member of her family (who favor rounder overall head shapes), giving her something of a gaunt appearance that permanently makes her look like she's scowling. Her ears are large, wide, flat, and decorated with dozens of colorful piercings in an assortment of shaped and polished stones, none of which are particularly rare or valuable. The tip of her right ear is missing a large chunk from an old accident or childhood fight. Do not ask her which.

Her eyes are a vibrant aquamarine, and she's had them treated several times with [Falling Star Serum] to give them a permanently flowing, liquid quality. The hair atop her head is even whiter than her fur, and she's carefully grown it out for over a decade. She lets it hang in thick sheets down to her butt most of the time, but enjoys tying feathers into it to add color. While piloting, she also wears a headband to keep it out of her face. Her jet black claw-nails are kept cut short and filed down to blunt nubs.

Mirror's body is athletic and muscled as befits a typical pilot and guardian in her society, but there's a softness and a sort of fragility to the way she moves that along with her graceful and unsubtle curves that has given her a wildly effective side career as a model. Depending on the pose she strikes and the angle she's viewed from she can seem imposing, harder than crystal and stronger than the branch of a dwelling tree, or she can look vulnerable and meek, or playfully silly, or sultry and manipulative, or anything else the shoot or situation requires. As a model she'll wear anything and everything a job needs, but her own fashion tastes favor tight, legless skinsuits, heavy diving belts and metal clips, and necklaces made from the discarded teeth of various ocean predators, and her own designs go out of their way to cut out extra fabric to bare more of her fur patterns and as many parts of her body as she thinks is tasteful, which varies with the day.

She is considerably taller than the average height of her species, towering over her family by a full three and a half centimeters. This still makes her positively tiny by galactic standards.

Her mecha, the Gods-Smiting Whip || Nine-Tails {The Beast Who Gathers Power} or {The Hidden Reeds Where We Meet To Hunt}, is a speed-focused current gen model with a lithe frame and control nodes built into its head to resemble serval ears. A black power conduit runs down its spine to end in a tail, a common aesthetic conceit among Hybrasilian mecha.

Nine-Tails' armor plating is segmented around the joints to assure maximum mobility along all points of articulation. It is painted in deep earthen browns and shining onyx blacks along the head and chest pieces, with a creamy offwhite coloration across the limbs. It is equipped with a beam trident and, more unusually, eight free floating ornaments roughly the same size and shape as a standard issue beam rifle. It is the topic of intense debate among people who have seen her fight how the hell it is she actually controls them, but she does so with otherworldly deftness. Each of the eight ornaments {Sacred Tails} can be fired or swung independently, or combined to form new weapon configurations.

Personal Journal

Log 1: Freedom. At last.

Log 2: Feels about the same. Fish is better prepared. Not overcooked. I really don't mind either way.

Log 3: This isn't working. Current model is operating at suboptimal parameters. I can't match her like this.

Log 4: Frustrating.

Log 5: I can't stay here. Need new perspectives. Different approach. Different tech? I will travel.

Log 27: Human fashions are fascinating. Unnecessarily prudish. I can fix them.

Log 52: Mother, Father, Second Mother. Sister and Brothers. I will make you proud. I swear it on the stars, for you to hear some other day. I love you all.

Breathless Dead

There was. A name. There was a name. There was a name on her lips, on the day that she was born. She was screaming it as she was waking up. Or had she been falling asleep? She can't remember. A skull splitting pain pierces her brain like a drill. She can't remember. She can't! Remember!

...They wrote the name on her forehead so that she would remember. It was the most important name on her list of thousands. In desperation she reaches for her head, claws scrabbling across the blood smear where it ought to be, but all that's there are white hot lances of pain. The name. The name! Where is it? What is it?! Give it to her! But it's gone. It's gone. There should be a name and it's gone. And all that's left is pain. All that's left is longing. All that's left is --

flustered bewilderment and trembling hands when it was time to wash the same gym clothes she'd cleaned a hundred times before. The stillness of a movie theater that she could not in all her life imagine deserving to inhabit, emptied just for her and the girl without a name. The fluttering of violet-black butterfly wings in a garden too beautiful to pay attention to history lessons in. A bouquet of rose-scented perfume. The pounding of her heart as she snuck under the covers of the nameless girl's bed for the first time. The look of betrayal and hurt on her face when she finally got the medicine she needed forced down her throat. The tears in her eyes before she shut that closet door. The screaming match. The graceless but somehow perfect smile of a girl as her head shone like an angel's. She opened the Box and set her free and her smile was brighter than the sun's just before she fell and --

Bella opens her eyes for the first time in a lifetime. Not looking up from a pit or trapped inside the body of an assassin, but here in the middle of a blood-soaked battlefield and a strange desert planet she'd never known before. The face in front of her isn't smiling this time. Her eyes are older, and mismatched green and blue where they ought to be simple little oceans unto themselves. She's more beautiful than pretty, more tragic than heroic, and not half so wise as she ought to be for all of her adventures. But she has a name, something Bella could never forget even if you tortured her and whittled her down into nothing but a barely beating heart.

"REDANA!"

She screams and struggles against her body. Her hands around her Princesses' throat. Redana doesn't say anything in response; she can't with her windpipe rolling under Bella's thumbs. Her claws bite into the skin and she can only scream the name, again and again and again, and wrench backwards with all her might only to crawl further and further forward to a thing she can't take back. Redana, Redana, Redana! She'd been screaming it with all her strength back then. Redana, Redana, Redana! Calling for the only person who could save her.

And she came. After everything she'd said, she came. After everything she'd done, she came. All the lives she took, all her imperfections laid bare, the monster revealed where the Princess had only wanted a silly little pet, but even still she came. That. Idiot!

Bella squeezes her eyes shut tight again, and screams. It's a horrible thing to listen to, tortured and quivering and very, deeply human. Her body convulses with the pain of a thousand hot knives flaying her skin. Slipping under sinew and ripping, tearing. Popping. Her ears shudder and clamp shut to drown out the chorus of wet tearing noises and pitiful moans, but how can she drown it out when it all belongs to her? Her body longs to collapse. Her brain screams at her to sink back into her skin, just stop before she kills herself. She pulls harder.

The Diodekoi armor unfurls at her back like a flower. Folds of spikes and chitin unfurl in layer after layer, revealing the now black-stained muscle fibers still quivering and fighting to hold her in place. She wrenches with every spare speck of might left inside her body, and with one final explosion of pain, XIII and Bella part ways forever.

Her skin feels frozen in the cold rain. Her fur feels sticky and clumped, like her hair, soaked through with blood in every weave of its clumsy braid. About her body what had been pristine white robes have turned translucent pink that sticks to her skin and does nothing to protect her like her skin... no. Like the armor had. She lifts a foot and kicks the Diodekoi away from Redana's body, but the jerkiness and unfamiliarity of the motion makes her slip, and all she does is make it collapse on top of her.

"...Whatever. You. Obviously need it more than I do. Idiot."

She doesn't smile. Doesn't cry. Bella simply looks down at her hands. At the claws on her hands that seem less sharp and deadly than the ones she'd had just minutes ago, and all the less for the mutilated stubs her index and middle fingers ended in once again. She didn't even have any talons to cover them with, her only jewelry was the worthless gold bracelets about her wrists and arms, and the circlet squeezing against her forehead. She lifts her arms to put it straight, at the very least.

Her ear twitches. Her back arches. Bella pivots on her bare feet and she lashes it with both her useless hands to turn aside the thunderbolt that is Sagakhan's tail. She can't keep the wince off her face. Her wrist feels numb. But even so, she snarls and hunches low to the ground, as if about to pounce.

"You can't have her," Bella says, and her voice is soft and strong and finally hers again, "Redana's mine."

Breathless Dead

Those fingers look softer than they should. Longer and more perfect. But that is surely her hand. Her expression is all wrong, too. The silly smile and the intensely furrowed brow that comes from thinking too hard has been replaced with a look of grim clarity and righteous anger. Those mismatched eyes, the green and the blue, shine with divine understanding and mortal determination. That, then, is surely her face. The smell of her sweat is pungent and... familiar, yes. But she is missing the complex rose perfume she uses to cover it up, so every sniff tells her no, no, no. She's wrong again.

And this, of all things, is what confirms it at the last. The name on written on her skull burns in agreement.

Bella reaches up with one trembling hand to grasp Redana around the wrist. Her touch is soft to the point of weakness. Until the claws dig in. They pierce the skin and quiver as godly blood trickles down to her palm. Her eye grows wide, and then unfocused, and she pulls herself up and throws Redana down in the same motion.

She howls as an animal would: a beast with a thorn in its paw. Her claws become a whirlwind that tears gouges into the earth that will never heal, that crush rocks into dust so fine nobody would notice if they breathed it in until it choked them, that rip deep gouges from Redana's flesh that only manage not to split her open because the glowing staff has become a lasso to protect its master and catches Bella by the wrists in the nick of time. Even then, she cuts deep and with an eye for pain.

She can't help it. She can't help herself at all. There are two names carved into her flesh, one in ritual sacrifice and one in blood, and whichever one of them is closer becomes the only thing that she can see. Right now that's you, Redana. She switches to punching, and her fists leave holes in the sand where you roll out of the way. Each time she wrenches her wrist free with a spray of sand it gets harder to see, harder to dodge. The next blow catches your jaw and sends you spinning.

She leaps and pounces, inches from your face. Close enough to eat you. Her teeth are bared as though to do just that. Her spittle foams around the corners of her mouth, dripping pink from the blood that won't stop pooling in her mouth and splashing onto your face. Even now you can see the way her body trembles. She coughs straight in your face even as she pins your arm down and presses herself down on you, close enough to start smothering you in that hard, sharp, and spiny armor.

She can't see what she needs to cut right now to kill you. That's why this is sloppy. But that's fine. That's fine, right? If you forgive her, then it doesn't matter if it's messy. If you forgive her, then it's fine if it hurts. If you forgive her, then block her blows, little weakling! Idiot princess! Live so she can hurt you more! Struggle so she can savor it! If you forgive her, if you love her, then die, die, die and make the name on her head stop burning!

You can throw her at Sagakhan, and this whole story will flip. She'll return instantly to murdering her mother, and you'll instantly fade so far into the background that you'll stop existing. That's what it means to be a Diodekoi, and every second that armor powers her brings her closer to transforming into Artemis' divine avatar until the strain crushes her body like an ancient star. But before even that, Sagakhan's venom will kill her. The more she strains, the more her heart pumps lethal toxins through her, ones her body has no defenses for. She'll dissolve from the inside out before she figures out the riddle.

Unless you can make her stop. You'll lose your strongest weapon against the other monster here who has only not killed you yet because her daughter is doing such an excellent job of it at the moment. But Bella will live, if you can figure out how to pull Bella out of Servitor Candidate Number XIII. Tredecima is a past you barely even know about. How are you supposed to reach through those thorns and find her heart?

And while you're pondering that, take damage.

Sunshards

So, this is kinda funny, isn't it? I feel like the whole time I was on this adventure, somewhere in the back of my head I was worried it was gonna end. Sometimes the front of my head, too. I thought and I thought and I thought, and what I thought was that if I ended up back at my little cottage, that meant I failed. I must've messed up, right?

Well, here I am. In my little house, that I love so much and feel so trapped by. My sword's already in the umbrella rack and everything. Well, the ones that would fit, anyway. I had to get more creative with the-- sorry, that part's not important. I'm here. I'm here, y'know? My little journey's all done, and in the end I wound up home again. And all my friends are with me, drinking all my tea.

And I don't feel like a failure at all. Honestly, I can't think of anything more perfect. It's like it always had to be this way, y'know?

There's another funny thing, too. Just look at all my friends! My new family, really. These precious little sillyheads. They've all changed so much, and I've changed so little. Hyra's a princess now! With her own sunshard and a whole wardrobe change and honestly I swear she just glows all the time now. And Princess Chen who first of all turned herself first of all into a talented and super cool smartysmart who's so comfortable in her own skin she manages to make even cutie-bondage and getting kidnapped by foxes seem like something that happens on purpose actually. Not to mention she's graduated all the way to suits and she's a snow leopard now! And Rosepetal, who's so much softer than she thought she could be when I met her and who just looks so gosh darned happy about it, just amazes me every time I see her. She changes all the time, honestly, and I've gotta get her alone at some point so I can ask for pointers on makeup and costuming and especially how to have just soooooo much fun bein' tied up and squeezed like that. 'Cause honestly until all these foxes manage to traitor themselves back onto Cutie Fox Island I have a feeling there's gonna be a lot of this in everybody's futures.

And Sis is also a princess, which is a surprise, on top of bein' a super robot puppet master legend wowies. What am I, by comparison? I'm Yue. Just Yue, after all and everything. I guess I changed my clothes twice, that's somethin'. But then, I hear you sayin' it before I can finish. Don't worry, I know. I changed more than anyone in my way, didn't I? I look more the same than anyone I know, but from where I started to where I'm at now's a journey that takes a whole year to tell, plus a little extra.

I guess I... don't really need to explain all this, do I? I'm just happy. And I'm, oh. Shoot, there I go again. Ack, I'm sorry. I promised I wouldn't cry again! I, oh no, oh no, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry! Oh goshies, it, ah! I can't, can't, can't make it stop.

I-i-it's different this time, I, snffff, I promise. I just. I just. Um. I don't. This is... way harder than I thought it'd be.

I, ok, ok, ok. Ok. Yeah, I... ok. I can do this. I could tell you about what I think's gonna happen to me, or what I hope's gonna happen. I could promise you new adventures, and spend more time thanking all my dear, precious friends. I could surprise-sneak oooonnnneeeee last duel in with Hyra so I could beat the pants off her (and then again more literally when everyone else's gone back home~) and surprise her in this moment of perfect happiness with the traditional marriage necklace of the Terraced Lake.

But you already know, don't you? You knew I'd get here the entire time. Uhuh, that's right, you! Did you think I didn't notice? You've been watching this entire time, putting up with all my silly ramblings and my little Kat's ridiculous attempts at narration. Watching, cheering, reading, guiding, I dunno what to call it. But you've been there from beginning to end. And now I'm crying 'cause it's time to say goodbye.

So, good... no, no, no! Not goodbye, not goodbye at all! How about... see ya later? Yeah. I like that so much more. So, yeah. See you around, cuties! Next time I'll be the true demon swordswoman, I promise! I'm gonna show 'em all how much better that is to be than a simple princess. Fuhuhahahahaheeeee~! Oh, I'm excited. You're excited too, right? Maybe we'll even figure out how to make it back into space! Wouldn't that be amazing?

The great thing about stories ending is that it means you get to tell new ones. Try new things, live new truths. And I know, and I know you're gonna have so much fun through all of it! So I've gotta let you go, so we can get to it! Take care, ok? So long! Buh-bai! I love you lots! I--

"...Yue? Who are you waving to?"

"Oh. Well, nobody I guess. The world, maybe?"

"You're such a dork. You know that, right?"

"Uhuh! But you love me anyway."

Breathless Dead

Sagakhan is an impossibly complicated knot of life lines that blaze hotter than a bonfire with the pulse of divine light. No simple puzzle to be clipped short with a sharp set of claws, these: many of the lines cross jaggedly around nothing at all that she can see, while others form tightly clustered lumps that could each be a heart on a lesser creature. They are more numerous and more vibrant than anything else on the entire battlefield, even Redana.

Her words drip black-devouring-white, so unwholesome and powerful that they rattle XIII's senses and try to force her back up into the world of sight and sound and taste and touch, and reduce her understanding back to a mortal level where they couldn't terrify her half so much. But she snarls instead of quaking. Her fingers quiver with power and longing. She charges, before another word can be spoken. And two heads become three. Three heads become four.

You couldn't call what happens next a dance. Blood spatters everywhere from dozens of deep cuts made with suicidal abandon. XIII flashes everywhere; above, below, from every side, appearing and disappearing only to deal death to the newest name shining brightest on her skin. It is violent to a degree where even the gods might turn their heads. She trades shattering blows from a Hydra's talons for what would against any other creature be a mortal wound. Her armor chips and cracks on her neck, her shoulder, her left leg, her stomach. It holds. Her mouth fills with blood around a shattered fang. She swallows it without complaint.

She is beyond pain. Beyond all reason but the hunt. Where she bothers to dodge Sagakhan's strikes it is only in service to preserving herself enough to make sure the job is finished before she falls. Each strike, each moment where she freezes after she scours out a new line, each shower of blood is a scream. A defiance.

I. Am. Here, Mother. I. Am. What. You. Made. Me. I. Can. Not. Be. Raised. Anew. A. Beast. Can. Only. Raise. A. Beast. I! Am! The! Hunter! I! Am! The! Monster! Who! Hunts! Who! Slays! Other! Monsters! You. Will. Not. Erase. Me!

It feels like a battle that lasts an eternity. In reality it's over in seconds. The cuts turn out to be superficial, closing easily. Four heads become five. XIII only makes her mother stronger. Until at last she finds it: the opening at the left of her breast. Her claws drive into it with a thrust like a thrown spear. Her arm disappears into Sagakhan's flesh up to the elbow. Her claws close against the brightest cluster, and she squeezes.

She snorts. "Is. That. All?"

But she cannot see smiles. She misses the sardonic grins. Held in her moment of victory, she does not feel the skin close around her arm. And she is bitten. Again, and again, and again, and again, divine whips lashing an unworthy slave. Wounds that burn with venom. A tail smashes her full in the face with more power and fury than the largest sword swung by the strongest warrior ever to appear in the history of Empire.

XIII is free. XIII is flying. She crashes to the ground amidst the ruins of the black pyramid, and coughs in place of breathing. She head flops to one side, against her will. She feels pain. She wheezes. She smells blood, tastes it. She sees. She sees. The faceplate of her armor, already cracked in five different places, falls apart.

One eye is milky silver, tinged through the middle with murderous red. Her lips are unpainted and her face is covered in dirt and cuts. But that golden eye could only belong to Bella. She hisses as she struggles back to her feet, and her head snaps back into place with a heavy crunch. But her gaze stays on you, Redana. Her vision fills only with you.

The tears from her one good eye wash her face clean for her mistress.

Breathless Dead

Inside the armor, a Servitor. A best friend. A maid. A Praetor. A woman. Nothing more or less than that could be the heart of a Diodekoi assassin. Someone trained her entire life to be everything that anyone could need. Someone whose entire life depended on noticing every tiny thing about the world and especially the people around her. No detail could be worth overlooking. Each tiny stain and spill had a scent that stood apart from the intended order of the world, and it was unforgivable not to find them all and wipe them clean. Every person, even the godly humans with their superior genetics, gave off signals that hinted at their moods and needs. Things they weren't even aware of. But she was. She had to be. To know when to speak up and when to hide, to be able to appear from nowhere holding a tray of drinks for refreshments guests hadn't got around to demanding yet.

Years of perfection. Years of training to improve perfection. Years of effort and attention with a body tailor made by the best breeders in the Empire. And it wasn't enough. Her entire life was leading to a single point of failure, because she didn't even know the game she was playing.

In the darkness, a single golden eye struggles to open.

There is so much that needs to be done. Her eye fills with tears until it's as blind as XIII's. What has she done? What has she done? She shudders. She cries without reservation, because she sees her friend in front of her. She sees her sister in her arms, for the first time in her life. She holds Mynx close, as gently as she can, and brushes her palm across the cheek with a tenderness she'd always been afraid to show. Until now. Until now. There's no time left, she has to do it now. She has to say everything now.

"Don't go, don't go, Mynx! Don't you dare! I see you, ok? I see you! You got me! So stay. Stay! You can gloat for the rest of your life, I promise, but don't you dare leave me! Not like this. Not like..."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You never deserved anything I did to you. All those times I was angry at myself, and scared, and... it didn't give me the right. I was horrible to you. It should be me! It should be me, not you! It should be me, me!!"

"You were perfect. Better than me. It should've been you in charge. This whole time. I wish it was. Maybe then we wouldn't be here. Things would have worked out better for everyone. I'm nothing but a monster. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't see it until it was too late. Don't go, Mynx. Don't die. You're... the only one. Who can punish me the way I have to be."

But no word, no gesture, no sign or token of acknowledgement leaves the world of that eye. How could it? Bella is not a person. She's the beating heart of the assassin Tredecima, nothing else. She has no arms to move or voice to speak with. These things belong to the armor, to the body, and those belong to the hunt. Affection is unnecessary. Speech barely more so. XIII stares at the body in her arms without seeing. Mynx's voice is tinged pink. The waves of her breathing are shallow and more beautiful than anything she's ever witnessed.

But admiration is also unnecessary for the hunt. XIII kneels, and lays the broken body of the Toxicrene on a soft bed of scattered leaves, where she might at least be comfortable in her last moments. She was... not a name on the list. This is acknowledgement of that fact, nothing more. She takes her time to wipe her claws, her hand, her arm up to the elbow clean on the sands. XIII is a monster. XIII is a hunter. Bella's only function inside of her is to read the names written on her body. To choose the targets that come first. And so she does."

"SA! GA! KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"

The name glows on her back and on her chest. Where the blood drips and spreads across her, it soothes the burn of the other names, like ointment on an old wound. This is not a name that will help her erase herself. This is a name she must purge to prove that she is real. When it is gone, the blood whispers, she will be whole. It took two sisters to write this prayer upon her. Two sacrifices in the full favor of Artemis. Nothing less could buy a name as valuable as Mother's.

Her body is alight in golden light. Muscles spark with power, and she hunches lower, and lower, and puts herself on all fours to take the shape that will channel all of it. The claws on her hands and feet tear into the sand like flesh. Her teeth are bared in a full animal snarl. She cannot feel the other names on her anymore. Her eyes can't even see their lines. There is only one figure in the wastes, as large and radiant as a sun.

Mother is a tangled and complicated knot of lines. Her life is a puzzle that needs to be torn open in careful turns to solve and end it. This will not be a simple hunt. This will not be an easy kill. It may even break her to try. XIII licks her lips in anticipation. She bounds forward, potential exploding into motion all at once, and disappears from the sight of every eye upon her.

She comes. She hunts. She tears space apart wantonly for the crime of getting in her way. One tiny hole opens in the clouds, a bargain struck by one god or many. She doesn't know. Doesn't care. All it means is that, before it closes, a ray of sunlight creeps through to shine against her armor as she hangs impossibly in the sky. She gleams like a star in the night sky for a moment. Only for a moment.

And like a star, she falls. She is coming. She is here. She is Hunting. She. Is. Death. Are you ready, Mother? You, who court Zeus' favor so freely, ought not to have devoured your children.

Breathless Dead

XIII falls as a star should, the way a god must when they are struck down by some mortal drunk on hubris. Her body burns, hot enough even that for the first time she can't feel the names carved into her skin. There is only the sensation of pain, of being made of fire and sent crashing through the air by a sudden inversion of gravity. Her stomach squeezes from the weight of her descent. She tumbles head over tail, falling, falling, falling, burning: the roar of the wind around her is her only companion as she falls, with nothing to do but train her eyes upward to see where the upstart lioness will land even as her uncontrolled spiraling constantly tries to pull her sight away.

She does not scream or make a sound. Not even a grunt of surprise when she was suddenly struck with the hull of her own ship the Anemoi. She is poised. Perfect. If her role to play is to be a meteor, then she will strike the earth with idealized grace and composure. When she reaches up with her hand, it is only to wrench her body free from the spell of spiraling gravity and with her own raw strength force herself to flip upright. Even like this, she always finds her feet.

The first explosions catch her just before she lands. The impact drives her into the sands up to her knees with enough force to send shivers through her bones. She does not bend. When the rest of the rounds catch, she meets the endless ocean of bursting SP ammunition looking for all the world like a statue after the apocalypse.

The world shrinks. It squeezes the whole of her with random clawing, pinching, grabbing hands that push and compress her until she is in a Box too small and too painful to even fit herself inside of. Her straining eyes see only hot, blinding white light. The roar of exploding shells fills her ears and expands until it's the only thing she has inside of her. Roaring. Screaming. Shrieking. No mind. Pain. Pain. The cocktail of horrific scents layer themselves one atop another until they become a single miasma of foulness beyond description. The flavor pulls bile from her stomach just to cover it with new fire. It dribbles out her lips, and she is helpless to stop it. Each tiny break in the torture is only a trick so that the next new burst will ruin her straining senses all the harder. She is disintegrating. Shattering. Breaking.

Dying. She must be dying. Kill her. Kill her!

She squeezes her head with a wet, gurgling howl. She balls her hand into a fist, and smashes it into her face. The world shuts off in response. Black and cool where it had been white and hot. Silent where there had been nothing but torture bangs. The air with no scent. With no taste. She breathes it freely, and lets the gasses do what they will to her insides. She can't feel it anymore. She is aware of her own body only through the presence of the softly glowing names still on her skin. Where they itch, she is. Where they are dark, she is not. She is a creature in pieces, but that is enough to move.

And the Auspex is enough to hunt by. Slowly, the soothing blackness fills with gentle golden-glowing pulses and swirls. These are the movement of the creatures around her, their steps, their breathing, their hopeless words of encouragement and despair to one another made manifest into motes of light that she could snip in half with her claws, if she wanted. Where the gold pools thickest, there are softly shifting, trembling silvery lines in vague shapes she recognizes.

Ah, yes. Bodies. Or rather, the strings that hold those bodies together. All she has to do is put her claws to them, and they'll burst apart into nothing. The light will go away. Another name, another piece of her body will vanish into pleasant nothingness. And when she's purged them all, then she too... then she too. Nothing. Soothing, silent nothing. All of it, gone away forever. The ultimate treat for a perfect girl.

She bursts from the sands and flies up, up, up into the air high above the noxious, obscuring clouds of heavy SP smog, and doesn't even notice. She makes herself into a comet again, and falls where the brightest and sharpest lines gather. Her claws sing a clumsy song, but it's plenty for what she needs to do right now.

Not this one. Not this one. Not this one either. Pieces of her vanish and slough off in a brief sensation of wet, numbing relief. But none of them are her. None of them are Vasilia. They could be anybody; the only way to know who dies is to kill them first, and mark which part of her body disappears in response. No matter. She doesn't mind.

Another name falls limp in her crushing hands when she notices it. A golden chiming that ripples through through the entire world. More beautiful than the entire rest of creation. A name that burns more insistently than any other. Dangerous. Yearning. She spins and faces it, and the chiming of its soft footfalls draw closer.

XIII's mouth splits open in a savage, feral grin. Finally. Finally! The name she lusted for in her heart longer than any other! The one she must break ahead of all the others, the only one strong enough to see clearly in this world she's built for herself. Finally, finally, finally! To kill, to kill, to kill! The name she screamed herself on the morning she was born.

"Re. Da. Na..."

"Oh Bella," The voice swims around her head in melancholy greens and blues just like her eyes. She comes closer still, "Look what they've done to you. I never thought you'd fall this far. It's ok, Bella. It's ok. I'm going to fix everything, now."

[XIII expends a use of Bella's Clever Tricks to buy herself an Overcome. Tenacity Incarnate is active, so with Vigor the roll comes out to an 11]