Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

It is not a door in the air. It is also not not a door in the air. It is a sideways movement; it is the impression of speed; it is the sheltering of vast wings. It is limned in violet.

Ember steps before the assembly, the image of a conquering hero, a daughter of Ceron who has been affirmed in her belief that she is, in this moment, in her sphere, the very best. (The Ceronians aspire to this, yearn for this feeling: this mastery not of a skill but of a way of being.) She is also comic in how she carries Mosaic-Bella in her arms, her lover overflowing that embrace in every direction, but that too is part of the legacy she claims. Behind her come the Silver Divers, comes Dyssia, and comes a very confused and frazzled ex-Alpha of the Star Kings, lips held shut around the message she has been vouchsafed with.

“Did you think that would stop me?” Ember howls her victory, howls her insistence that all acknowledge her greatness. “I am the polestar of the pack, and not even phantoms and could-have-been moments can stop me! I am Ember, Alpha of the Silver Divers, and also apparently a princess, and a child of the gods! Your dominion over the people of this planet is over!”

Behind her, Dyssia gets an excellent view of how furiously Ember’s shaggy grey tail is wagging, freed from the confines of its tight “denim” disguise at last. Of all the possible heroes, Dyssia, how surprising is it that Ember was the one?

Breathless Dead

“Gods damn it all,” Ember says, staring up at the slate-grey sky. Lightning like lace; the deep roar of thunderbolts falling. The beat of huge wings. She lies in the cold mud of the battlefield; the last redoubt of Ceron falls. Next to her, the Star King groans. The stomach goes tight and tense when facing down an unacceptable outcome. All around her, the scents of chaos and broken retreat are thick clouds.

If she’d just been a moment faster with the Shield. If she’d managed to protect Mosaic. If she’d never insisted on coming down to this terrible planet to… but then wrongdoing would be unmet by champions. But shouldn’t champions get some sort of happy ending? Not like this, waiting for the thunderbolts to fall on the two of them in the slate-grey mud.

“No time for that, soldier,” Ember’s voice says, but not her voice: melodious, set to the tune of an unheard song, and unmistakably divine. A voice like Gemini’s. “Up and at them! Present arms!”

And Ember stands, and presents her arms in the midst of the tumult, and underneath the light of the Lantern the world flattens. The clouds are made of balls of cotton, and the mud strips of felt underneath her feet, and the warring armies little dolls with black button eyes. The Star King makes a noise of nausea on the ground, even as Ember lifts her eyes and sees the trees, growing upside down, their branch-roots shining violet and teal and white. She turns, and sees herself—

But not herself. Taller, lusher, skin shining. She smells of Mosaic’s favorite perfume and Delight and Victory and Olympus. In one hand she holds a wand; over one shoulder of her gleaming breastplate is a lion’s skin. Her ears are set with white jewels; her teeth are like pearls.

“Could have beens, ha!” She waves the wand, and other stages light up for a moment, places where familiar faces stagger under the stage lights, the relentless glow of the crystal trees. “We prefer what can be, don’t we, Dany? What will be. Me, and Bella, and Alexa and Dyssia and Dolce and Vasilly and Beljani and Epistia and Beautiful and all the rest aboard the dear Plousios, and what’s waiting for you— for us— on Gaia.”

Her tongue is like lead. “I… who are you?” The truth of her is Certainty on the nose.

“Call me the Shepherdess, Ember,” she says, and cups Ember’s chin with kindness, lets the silk pool on her wrist. “I am the future of the Princess Redana Claudius; we had to make sure that you make it, right? But it’s always tricky, doing something like this, and thank goodness we got to— oh, you still call it Portugal, don’t you? It doesn’t get the other name yet. But we got tossed into Time’s loom, here and in this place, and this is where I gave you what you needed.”

She presses her forehead to Ember’s own, and their scent is the same. “You were, and are, and will be again Redana Claudius, Nero’s daughter, Hermes’ daughter, Zeus’s daughter, the lover of Bella Hostilius Meowmeow, First of Her— no, still can’t say that.” Her laugh is Ember’s laugh, but older, gentler, a laugh to fall into. “You have also been Ember of the Silver Divers, just as we have been so many things. Shapeshifters, skinchangers us, always looking for the person we need to be.” Here, she winks.

Then she turns, gestures, and all the possible worlds narrow.

“Go to our Bella, Dany.”

---

A shadow blots out the sun; the new light in her hand seems almost cool in comparison. The Shield is slung on her back, and with the other hand she reaches out, distraught.

“Mosaic! My lady! Bella!! Whoever, whatever you are, just— just don’t—”

The Lantern she ties to her sash, nearly dragging her belt down with its weight. With both hands this small and brave knight lifts the demigod into her arms, and Ceron’s strength fills her.

“We have to find everyone else—“ And she looks around, and it was all just sand on the floor, and toy ships dangling from the branches, and a relentless stage light, wasn’t it? If you blink, Bella, you might just see a familiar savior waving one hand in greeting, in tribute, in promise. But your loyal Ember is already headed onwards, even as the Shepherdess kneels and offers a hand to the Star King.

---

Under the Lantern’s light, the Generous Knight is, at least for a moment, just a model made of clay and metal and paint, frozen in her monstrous apotheosis, and all the ruined fleets just toys. It’s better to think of them that way, isn’t it?

Ember’s hands and chest and, let’s be honest, face are full of a post-sweat, exhausted Mosaic, but her ears are still perky and her tail wagging furiously. “Dyssia! Take the Lantern, would you? Navigating’s… let’s find a way out of here!”

(Here in the dark, contrasted with the roots of Time above. Here in a place that is not a place, made false long enough to leave.)

---

There’s a set of stairs at the end. After the nightmare death worlds, after the party where Gemini was being forced to drink poison, after the place where all the suns were dead, after the place with all the plush animals surrounding Goldie, there’s just a set of stairs that lead down to a door clearly marked Emergency Exit. It has a steady, soothing green glow.

“See you all later,” the Shepherdess says as she opens it, and ushers the Star King out, and all the rest too, and she offers Bella a private wink as Ember bounds through the door, and then she lets the door shut behind her.

Behind them, Time remains.

Breathless Dead

Closing is impossible, at least until she sees an opening. What Ember does instead is watch, and wait, and keep moving at the edge of the Alpha’s sight. No flank can work here, either, not without a partner. But she is slowly tightening the spiral, coming close enough that she can be ready for that opening. When it comes.

“At the very least,” she says, ducking behind a transport that will be melted to slag within three shots, “be honorable enough to tell me what has happened! This weapon you play with: what is its renown, its lineage? Who was its maker, Star King? Who placed it into your hands?”

Traditional. Proper. Even though her body is taut, full of the tension of worry, her chest cannot help but lighten, her heart to race, as she tries to establish a good rhythm. Fight me as a daughter of Ceron, she is saying, even as she leaves Determination wet as a trail behind her where she has touched the world. Do not think you can get away without treating me as an equal.

Breathless Dead

“I am of the blood of Howl From The Ashes,” Ember says, and her voice is small and still like the crook of a scorpion’s tail. The words lie where she sets them. “She did not betray her pack, no matter the temptation.”

She strikes the Shield, the once, against the Lantern. Just at the side, where it shivers. Light erupts, coruscating, giddy with freedom, and the world shudders with fractured time.

And that is enough for her to vault up onto one of the lantern posts that line the Portuguese streets, and from there she launches herself at the Alpha. It is the Lantern that impacts the proud warrior in the stomach, sends her flying back, and Ember herself is just the counterweight, the straps of the Shield biting into her arm as she sends it careening through the rival pack.

She lands heavy on a transport; where the Lantern lands, the road fractures in a roar of splintered tar and stone. One cuts through her cheek, unprotected, and perhaps one of the watching Portuguese sees how the cut scabs immediately.

“We rise roaring from Bitemark!” She stands, proud against an entire pack, baring her keen teeth. “We come with a goddess at her back! And if you will not show me how to call them back, I will send us all there, too!”

[7 to Finish with Blood.]

Breathless Dead

It's not your territory. It's theirs. Easy enough to say, right? But not for Ember. Not for Ember, steeped in the ways of Ceron. Not for Ember, who knows that the pack's territory is whatever the pack may claim. It's their planet, not yours. No, the planet is already marked.

Her mind goes in different directions, then.

"Where is the honor and glory in making an enemy disappear?" She bares her teeth, gestures wide with the Shield. "Where are your trophies, Alpha? This is a degenerate weapon. Bring my pack back so that we can fight for this planet properly." Not free this planet; that would be alarming enough to justify leaving the Silver Divers and Mosaic wherever they have gone. "Clear your half-wolves from the board and come fight like women! Bring out your spears, your swords, your cords, your maces! Winner takes all, loser offers concession: that is the way of Ceron! Do it or I will break your toys and we will fight like savages, teeth on necks, to dissolution."

It is mostly a bluff. It is a deliberate choice to channel the howling of a hundred honorable predecessors into outrage. She risks being lost in it (as she always is). There is no Mosaic here to talk her down. Nothing but the groaning of the injured and the echo of her voice in the empty space.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"Aren't we going to get in trouble over this, Jade...?"

"What, do you want to turn around and hand them over?"

The priestess hunches her shoulders and dares a little pout, because the truth of it is that she doesn't. The goddess's smug smile says clearly that she knows that, too, and that she thinks her very special little priestess deserves treats for being so good and strong and brave. She chooses, too, to let the messages flicker across the walls of the temple, demands for the goddess and her cult to return to Akar to face judgment, along with the reassuring pings from Angela Victoria Miera Antonius and Nine Forests, letting her know that she is still flanked, that she is still safe.

"Well, where are we even going to go?" Dolly reaches up to brush back a curl of her hair, dragging the intricate harness along with the motion of her arm. It constricts, makes the motion more difficult, and makes her want to melt. "We can't go back to the Terenians yet, and we might start a war if we take two of their people back to Hybrasil."

"I think I know a few places," the goddess says, waving one hand. Her eyes are still half-lidded as she digests; she will need time to be quiescent, then... perhaps she will need to learn through action again. Let the yearning of the universe turn, for a while, to watch that little minx and her impossible dream, just to make them all hungrier again for the great goddess to return. "And we can drop them off on a colony world when they're ready. After we've had our fun, and they've been properly thanked for their service to the Holy Priestess."

Dolly's tail curls, tugging against insistent ropes, and she lets out a happy little huff. She follows the tug of the harness to turn ever so slightly on course, letting her goddess optimize the way forward. The stars are like bright raindrops on a dark windowpane, and she is held, and she is warm knowing that Mirror got her happy ending, after all.

"I wouldn't mind going back to Hybrasil, later," she says aloud. "See the trees again. See my sister again. Tell everyone how you defeated the guardian deities of Terenia in order to declare the victory of one of our own." Jade says nothing; she considers the contents of the message. It may be some time before some of Hybrasil's daughters can return; it may never happen again for Whispered Promise. But she looks at Dolly's warm round face, and she says nothing.

Dolly looks over at her wife, and smiles, and mimes the act of kissing the goddess's cheek. And the goddess, in turn, decides to inhabit the space in front of her Dolly, sitting on the altar, and tugs her in by the leash for a proper kiss...

Just like in "Pursuit of Faith: A Goddess Romance," a story as foundational to Smokeless Jade Fires as any myth, a story that she has memorized inside of her bones.

The idol wobbles in its course, but a panicked burst of comms from Nine Forests convinces Jade to tug Dolly back to where she needs to be.

That's the agreement they made, after all, on that first night together.

Breathless Dead

“Bring them back!”

She stands, alone, bereft of pack. Her teeth are bared, and her eyes are full of tears. She would be a morsel to be snapped up, but for the fact that she carries enough power to snap the foundations of their tower like twigs. But for the fact that she refuses to give in to her training and run. Not when there’s still a chance she can convince them to… to undo whatever they have done.

It’s not a killing weapon. That much is obvious. (Her shield flickers, the design changing from moment to moment: a laurel wreath crowned with stars, a Shogunate mon, a gaudy tricolor flag, the jaws of a terrible wolf, three hounds chasing each other around the rim, the rainbow surf, a gleaming pearl.) They would leave traces of the body, even seared instantly into ash. This is a weapon that makes someone be not here. So bring them back.

“I will level this city,” she growls, trusting in her training as a scout to sell the bluff. She hefts the shield, ears at attention, staring up at the descending huntresses. “Wherever they have gone, return them, or I will tear out your clan’s name from history!”

Maybe she can win this, but she doesn’t want to. She wants Mosaic back (what if they are out in space, scattered like pearls) and she wants her pack back (what if they are buried within the earth without even space to howl) and she doesn’t want them to call her bluff (they could lift the shield off her arm before she would use it in anger against a city full of Portuguese).

So she demands, and lets them look at what she carries, and she makes herself believe that she, alone, can frighten an entire pack into submission. After all, if she doesn’t believe it, how will they ever believe in turn?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

“My wish did come true,” Smokeless Jade Fires retorts, placing one foot on Angela’s arm. She imagines the vibration of the machine all around them; she tunes in to the flustered squeaks coming out of the cockpit locker. “I wasn’t ever in it for anything that could be bought, sold, or offered— nothing except the glory. And won’t that look wonderful? Eliminated in the semifinals, but immediately recruited by the victor as an integral part of the most famous, most elusive battle ever to be fought here. When they remember her, and all of her audacity, they will remember me.”

"Ai, is that all? You could do that with a periodical, you know,” Angela says, feeling the thrum of the Barn Owl all around, feeling the heat of the goddess coiling right in front of her. A challenge, a reminder.

“Of course it’s not all. I also made everyone watch, admire, covet, and adore the most beautiful girl in the universe,” Jade continues, radiating smug delight. A joy, pure and shining and divine. “And how she will be pursued! How she will be begged for answers! How she will be remembered in the same breath as Whispered Promise, as Mayze Szerpaws, as me. This is my miracle, Angela Victoria Mi—“

"You don’t have to say the whole thing every time, you know.”

“…but it’s your title. Your wholeness of self. How you have presented yourself to the cosmos. You really want me to be so intimate as to drop titles, Anj-eh-la~? Oh, how the zeal of the first Terenian convert finally emerges from the thickets at last—“

"If you say one more word I won’t let you watch her thanking me for the gallant rescue, imp.”

"IMP—“

"MMMMFFFFHH?!”

Breathless Dead

The scream's still ringing in her skull (even muted, it must still be witnessed) when she sends the first one flying back into their own pack. They've tried to make themselves more Pack with ornaments, studs and fangs and manes, but they aren't Pack. Look at how they get in each other's way as the Silver Divers take the plunge.

Ember likes swords. They're heroic. Romantic. A length of shining metal made only for battle. But she doesn't have a sword right now. All she has is the dervish-whirl, the momentum, the resonance that sends these half-wolves flying back when she strikes them with the Shield, and if they were not half-wolves, the trailing macehead of the Lantern would kill them. But they are half-wolves, and Ember flings herself into their midst.

Beside her, Goldie has trident-knives. She catches hafts between their prongs and twists; axeheads fall like leaves in the harvest. Beside her, Gemini has a needle of a blade which hisses as it splits the air; no one can pass by it without being stung. Beside her, Velvet Heart's caestus are spattered with Portuguese blood, and she howls defiance. Make it hurt, the lar said. Well, we can do that, can't we, girls?

Even so...

"Get out of our way!" The words spill out of her for those who cannot hear the command roiling off her. "Drop your weapons and run! None of this has to happen to you!"

Because they're pathetic, don't you think? Trying so hard to be wolves, to be Pack, aping the forms and the functions. Maybe that's her own weakness as a new member of the pack, relatively; to see herself when she drops the one standing and the one riding, and their obsolete electric-powered technology shatters on the pavement.

"RUN, idiots!"

But they're not running. They're closing in, bloody-eared and furious, and when the Alpha's pulling her punches, Gemini's the one who picks up on that, and now everyone's flinching away from risking the worst: an explosion of songbirds, a melting of serpents, a haggard cry coming up from the throats of these children.

So when the next one comes, Ember sends him straight through the glass doors of the tower, with a howl and a charge after.

Breathless Dead

The centrality is a surprise, is the thing. If Ember were, hypothetically, doing this sort of thing, attempting to conquer a people through subterfuge, hidden amongst the prey, she'd be up in the mountains, hidden in the forests, sprawling fortresses invisible in the wilderness. But not the Star Kings. Hiding in plain sight for those with eyes to see, a swirling maelstrom of sudden color and life in the middle of this world of sickness. It's daring.

Well. They'll see daring, won't they?

"This won't be able to knock out their entire network." Courage. The sharp tang of facing down a giant. Ears alert underneath hats. "But it will keep their eyes on us." Challenge. Acrid, heady, impossible to ignore. "Stoneribs, you will hold back half. Go to ground, watch for them to commit, then hit their weakest point." Cunning. A shiver at the base of the tail. "We will meet them where they dare to come out. And if they do not dare, we will walk up to that Engine and signal for its extraction, then deal with them without their arms." Eagerness. Bright, flowery, a twitch in the fingers.

So marches forth the anglerfish's lure, bag in one hand, art project in the other, flanked by women who move like the gods of this world. How far will they be permitted to penetrate into the heart of the Star Kings?