Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

“But you wanted to.” Redana clings to her sulk like a cat Servitor clinging to a life preserver in a swimming pool. “If I didn’t have this stuck in my hand you would have ditched me for the chance to go back home, you would have! And... I understand. You don’t want to be here. But I didn’t want to be there. Can’t you handle being out here for a little while so we don’t have to stay there forever?”

She looks at the command seal on the back of her hand again, even as the crabs surge upwards. “Can’t you trust me?” The comment isn’t really for Alexa. It’s not hard to tell.

“Look,” she adds. “I promise once I figure out how to take it off, I will. You can have it, if you want. Haven’t you ever wanted to give yourself orders? Lexi, focus on your history essay! Lexi, do not eat that cookie! Lexi, be better!” She waves her hand airily and somehow manages to avoid activating the seal on those nebulous commands. Then she stops, struck by a thought.

“Is that it? Will you stop hating me if I set you free?” Her grip on Alexa tightens. “Is that why you’re killing people, because you feel trapped? But I didn’t... I did ask, but... but I still care about you, and...”

A crab grabs her boot and starts trying to tug her down, and she throws her arms around Alexa’s head. It’s almost cuddly.

“And then I won’t be like Molech or my mother! I’ll be myself!!” It’s really something how she continues to come close to understanding. It’s also really something how her biceps are smushed up against Alexa’s face while she clings for dear life against the crab tide.

Sunshards

“Why, brute!” Rose from the River’s tone is easy, flowering into self-satisfaction. “I’m the space inside a bell, resounding; I’m devoted to neither place or possession, which fix one in place like nails. And you’d take my smile away, too? Am I not permitted even that?”

When she looks at the flustered demon of the buy-and-sell, her eyes are for a moment predatory, keen. Sensing weakness, a baring of the throat, an exploit in the system. “Besides,” she purrs, that smirk hooked like the sickle moon, “you might come to miss it once it’s gone, down the road.”

Cruel Thorn Pilgrim! She could have let the demoness gather what remains of her dignity, but instead she invites the serpent to imagine growing to care for her and her shameless smile! She might claim in the moment that she needed to follow up on Scales’ moment off-balance, to place a soft hand on the throat of her heart and threaten to squeeze, but she cannot hide from her deeper self that she was born a huntress. If she shucked the welcome chains of the Way off, she could toy with Scales like the hound plays with a ball, chewing on her proud horns and pinning her to ground, daring her to courage with one hand while grasping her tighter with the other. And when she was done with her toy, she would leave her no recourse but to return to her oversoul in shame or serve her new mistress until she threw them both into a prison neither could escape, having aroused the princesses to stop this dire threat. In that one moment of pressed advantage, the dread queen of monsters roils behind those wet, golden eyes.

It is only with intention that Rose from the River draws back from the temptation, letting the moment pass. She is a vessel for the current that moves the sun and stars. “Jewel of the lotus,” she murmurs to herself, the words as familiar as the path under her feet (and just as able to surprise). “aum shantae aum. Jewel of the lotus, aum shantae aum.” She glitters at the heart of the unfolded lotus, which floats unstained upon the waters as the pilgrim floats unstained upon the world, which lives for a thousand years and lives after its own death, which unfolds to seek the sun as the pilgrim’s own heart unfolds. She is the diamond at the heart of the lotus, which drinks the sun at noon and shines in the dusk, which is the footprint of the lightning which strides across the sky and the echo of the thunder’s call. aum shantae aum. aum shantae nemo padhome aum.

So fortified, the Thorn Pilgrim resolves not to torment the she-demon beyond what she may bear. Merciful pilgrim! How beautiful her devotion! As it is said,

The open hand may hold the world entire,
the closed hand not even a mite of dust.
The bindings of the pious woman
permit passage over the eight heavenly peaks.

Having tamped down the monstrous side of herself (for now; traveling with Scales of Meaning will be a test, but one she knows she can pass), Rose from the River jauntily swings her pole onto her shoulder and keeps pace with the undulations of the demoness. The path beneath her feet is uneven and sparsely coated with grasses. Silver clouds lie stately over the hillsides. The doves sing and the lambs of the valley answer. If Scales looked closely, she might begin to earn the monk’s pay. Which is why Rose from the River now chooses to ask, still impish, “So who is this outlaw you pursue? Yola the Bandit, who steals both flock and shepherdess? Frog-and-Scorpion, demon of the ford? Sairose, the rebel of Sky Castle?” An affected casualness, a quiet glee. “Or one from my orders? Perhaps the Elder of the Black Snake School, that irrepressible evangelist? Or is it the Thorn Pilgrim of the White Doe School, who dares openly defy the Threeshard Princess?”

Being charged with hunting herself? Now that would be a new and delightful game. Unfortunately, she knows already that it isn’t her; it’s the girl. Now to find out what Scales is willing to let slip about her.

Breathless Dead

“What? Maybe? Sure, I guess?” Poor Redana doesn’t know what to do about this. Now Alexa is upset and she’s not angry upset which is what Redana was braced for. Maybe she really does feel guilty about what she did on Baradissar? The affirmation is half-hearted and it doesn’t take an augur to see it.

She doesn’t sit down. She takes the huge spear in both hands and pokes at the crabs, using the spear’s butt, with that same exhausted half-heartedness. Alexa has given her a response she does not know how to use. If Alexa just killed Molech because she’s a broken war machine, then that doesn’t explain Bella at all.

“When I get it off, you’re going to kill me too, right?” A crab takes her moment of distraction to grab at the spear’s butt, and it holds the spear still long enough that its brothers and sisters begin to clamber over its shell to grab at it, too.

The heels of Redana’s overbuckled boots squeak as she is slowly pulled into the crabs, but she’s not really paying attention. “Because I don’t blame you. I’ll figure something out. Really.” Because she has to, doesn’t she? It’s all on her. Can’t fob it off to Bella anymore. Not anymore.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

You’re not used to this. You’re not sure that you should be used to this. This warmth, this opportunity to be vulnerable. You are a stone standing alone. The responsible thing to do is to step aside before you get a taste for being comforted and yielding your strength, or at least that’s what you keep telling yourself, isn’t it? But the words are sluggish and cold, your pride still numbed by the touch of whatever lies beyond the grave, and you are not strong enough to stop yourself from nuzzling closer.

“How dare he?” The words escape you before you can stop them. Your mouth is too hot. “When will he be satisfied? When will he relent?” Unasked: will he? When will Uther Pendragon step back, sated by whatever he is looking for?

And what will you do if he cannot be sated?

“...thank you,” you add. You half-heartedly gesture at the graves, but you mean more than that. But you still know better than to elaborate. To dangle hope in front of Robena. Hope for some unspeakable, unthinkable wonder. That you might be willing to stay. Because you will not. Not forever. You cannot let yourself rest in this warmth, this strength, these fingers on your head. There is too much that you must do, alone, to become... not alone.

Breathless Dead

“I’m not stupid,” Redana says, with surprising acid. “That’s not an answer. You think if you dance around it you can be clever. She is wrong, please! I got the message already. I know what you want to do to me.”

She holds up the Command Seal melded with her miraculous flesh. She figured out how to get it to meld. But she didn’t have time to puzzle out the other half of the instructions. Which left what? Cutting the whole hand off? Getting an Aírgetlam from her Magos to replace the failable flesh? Just so that...

“Molech gave you orders and you killed him.” Her tone’s flat. “I gave you orders, too. That’s it. That’s why Bella wants to hurt me and why you aren’t my friend. It’s because of the orders. And all this time I thought the Father of Theory was wrong. That just because I was a princess and you were servants...”

She clutches the hand close as if she was suddenly burned, eyes wet. “All I wanted was freedom, just like you. Except for you freedom was sitting with a pedestal up your butt looking out at an overpacked planet and not doing anything about it. Well, I don’t care. When I remove this you’ll try to kill me. Whatever, I don’t care,” she says, lying transparently. “But I just want to hear you say it, to not lie to me again. Go ahead and tell me you killed Molech because he gave you orders and there can’t be anything but violence between people who give orders and people who take them.”

Because the alternative is that it’s just her. That she’s bad and broken. That it’s her fault Alexa hates her and Bella hates her and maybe Vasilia and Dolce really are scamming her or something and she’s alone, really alone, and maybe she really was alone all along, that her feeling of safety around Bella was bullshit all this time. So it’s that there’s this rule of human nature. And all that’s still true and she is alone but it’s not her fault, it’s her mother’s fault for wanting a daughter in the first place.

She can’t look Alexa in the eye. Her heart’s loud. Shut up, heart. Stop pounding her head in. Is she feeling woozy? She promised she’d take it easy while walking off the fever. Alexa can’t notice her wobble, right? Stupid! She couldn’t even wait for a better opportunity to get the truth out of her murderous new bodyguard, not that her old one was really any different! “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Did she say that out loud? Will Alexa assume she’s talking about her? Well, well good! Dany’s done caring! Care-free zone! Do you think she cares? Haha, it’s hilarious how wrong you are! She’s tearing up for completely unrelated reasons!! So there!!!

Fellowship: The Heart

Clunk.

That’s the sound of the Very Important Lever being pulled. A knot, undone. The secret promise kept at the bottom of this world in a bubble: as long as the worst thing that could happen was its own self-destruction, it could not create anything worse. Wormwood Station’s speakers blare psychic yowling as everything starts to come undone.

Above, King Dragon narrows his eyes and rips out infrastructure to add to his hoard. He will not be allowed to take the entire station, now falling to pieces, but he will content himself with what he may take. Then he will remove himself from this accursed place and be gone.

Ailee — you can piggyback a way out. A tunnel that even Sasha could travel through, one that will serve as a substantial shortcut. The only problem is that you need to make good on your quest. Someone needs to be punished, but with rats milling about and pushing, shoving, trying to escape, it’s anyone’s guess as to where the Chief Squeaker herself might be.

If you want to ride King Dragon’s tail on the way out, he needs to be placated with vengeful wrath, and quickly.

Coleman — well, here it is. One of the signs of Last Call. Wormwood Station coming undone from its very heart. It’s going to make the lines just that bit more dangerous, and in the long run, it’s a blow to the entire Vermissian. Entropy has a chance to sink its fangs in now, as do Disaster and Sabotage. If there’s a solution, it’s beyond any one kobold right now. Focus on what’s important instead — Lucien running up in a scandalous little number dragging a very huffy Jackdaw along.

Good luck getting out of here, unless you throw yourself at a weak point (having figured out very quickly where the sort of leak that allows for the presence of Angels here might be, which you haven’t done yet) and cross your fingers. You might end up truly anywhere.

But that’s better than the alternative, right? What do you think happens if you stay here, anyhow?

Sunshards

The Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade kisses Scales of Meaning without splitting her scales as Rose from the River deftly retrieves it from her coils. A twirl about her wrist, a sharp strike on the ground, and it is a walking stick once more, one that Rose from the River uses to push aside a writhing tail which stands between her and her pack.

Wordless she passes by, ably hiding the gleeful mischief of the twist of her lips and the dancing of her eyes from the petulant demon. Her underwear is simple, black, snugly-fitting (especially as it clings to her hips); she is shameless in letting Scales stare, if she likes. She pulls her top over her head then, settling straps on shoulders and between fingers. Next her trousers, loose and comfortable, settling free over bare feet. Finally, she pulls her pack onto her shoulders, the sum of her possessions in the world.

This done, she walks past the demoness and makes for the road, only to stop at an appropriate distance and turn back. “Well,” she says, with mock seriousness, “are you not coming, sage-imitating demon? I thought you wanted to catch someone; are they sitting by the river? If they are, or if you set a trap for them, I do apologize for my haste. Or are they elsewhere, and you sit there dawdling like a little girl? The Accountant-Sage of Hell wouldn’t laze around like that, but the scales on your horns are so fine that I was nearly fooled! Some more practice in her mannerisms, perhaps some more training with the blade, and you might pass for the fearful one known as Scales of Meaning, little snake.”

She taps the side of her nose, and her smile slips out of her control. “Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me, little one. I’ll be the most circumspect of companions.”

(The Way does not technically have any proscriptions about being a little shit, as long as you know how to pull your punches. One does not mock the orphan or the widow about their loss. But Scales is a big girl, isn’t she? She can take it. And honestly, she’s in need of it. Look at that attitude, that huffiness and arrogance! Rose from the River is Activated.)

Breathless Dead

“My mom.” Dany’s tone is just sharp enough to not be properly flat. “Oh, no, I might get upset at that, Lexi. After all, I do everything my mom tells me. That’s why I decided that going into space to prove that humanity is ready to reclaim this amazing universe was a waste of time and that I should just sit in my palace like a good girl with my bodyguards all around me still pretending to be my friends. Yeah, if you told me something that made my mom seem like an overbearing...”

She trails off, not quite able to come up with an insult that’s both appropriately contemptuous and doesn’t make her feel dirty.

“It’d probably destroy our entire friendship,” she continues. “You know, the one where you don’t give a flip about me, just like Mynx or... the other one.” Her voice is raw for just a moment, and so she doubles down on the acid, picking up a crab and wiggling it as she speaks. “So don’t you do it, Lexi! Don’t break the dumb, innocent princess’s view of her perfect, perfect mommy! Everybody knows Nero is basically an Olympian already, and if you disagree with her, she’ll appear on the wings of the universe and give you spankies!”

Arguably, Redana is not handling what happened on Baradissar well at all. One might be reminded of a hedgehog[1]: bristles on the outside, but a belly as soft as cream within.

***

[1]: oddly enough, hedgehog-servitors make up a majority of culinary servitor roles. Something about their taste buds, or perhaps how cute they look in those tall white hats!

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Everyone knows, deep down in the quiet places of their heart, that death is not the worst thing that can happen to them. Death is understandable. Death is comprehensible. Death has a shape and that shape is your shape, in the end, in the earth. Death is huge and solemn and vast-mouthed, and it is final.

The unquiet dead deny that truth. They spit upon it. Whatever they will do to you, your mind whispers between its teeth, it will not be death. They will not be so kind as to kill you. The chill touch of their fingers promises something unspoken, unspeakable, shaped like smoke. That is why you walk through buying sheep from a local shepherd like a sleepwalker, eyes vacant, your smile never reaching them. The formless shape of their fury lingers on you like a shroud. It is the fear of seeing a pale face among the trees when you stand framed in your own doorway. It is the fear of a presence in the quiet hours of the night. It is the fear of that which is worse, in all ways, than death.

So when you induce the sheep to kneel by the simple graves, your hand is not steady as it saws through the neck and spills the blood freely onto the thirsty earth. It shakes as if frigid. And you know that this sacrifice must be enough, that they cannot, must not ask you for more, for the head of a king, because if you refuse them... you do not know what will happen. And that is the worst of it all.

Sunshards

Slate-grey rain runs in rivulets down slate-grey buildings. Far, far above, the sea roars and crashes. Puddles gleam in neon shine. The world is made of blocks and blocks, monolithic buildings in their rows stretching out forever, and between them lie the dank, rotten alleyways. Step onto one, and the noise of the roar of railtraffic and adgrams is cut off, and instead there is harsh-edged wind roaring between the crustscrapers, bringing with it the smell of trash and mildew and stagnant water. Above there is another street, and below there is construction work, and crammed in here there are stalls and vendors advertising fifteen-minute lunches and five-minute fucks to the vassals of the towers; even thirty-minute grid realignment and reconsecration, for the desperate or those secure enough to have their own servants go to get phones repaired. Inside those blocks, lidless eyes watch the coming and going of office chattel, and chronofuries stalk the halls murmuring their numbers: minutes spent in the relief blocks, minutes spent speaking to each other outside of meetings, minutes spent with hands left idle. Keeping those numbers low is a matter of survival and continued employment, which are the same thing for those paying off their training debts; the plastic bottles stacked under their desks are often nicknamed the Furies’ Due. This is the world, and there’s nothing more to be said about it. Not when the hunt is on. Not when any mistake could alert its prey. Not when rival kingdoms might have their own spies watching for it. The world simply is. No more, no less.

The sword of Scales may be long, but with a flourish, the Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade is still longer: a graceful glaive, its shaft as slender as a bamboo rod, made of bronze that gleams under the fickle light of the moon. Two-handed she takes it, sweeping, seeking to catch a serpent’s tail underneath a hooked edge, but more than that, looking to dismay the demon so certain of victory. It is as if the blade is staying still, and it is Rose from the River who moves around its axis: an illusion, one that Scales of Meaning will see through easily, but may still admire for its artistry.

But it is not the sword that Rose from the River loves most. If she was called upon to cast it away, she would, even if it tore part of her heart away with it. It is not this that would make Rose from the River turn her face away from the Way. Look again, assessor of worth. Find what would not be sacrificed; find what is worth sacrifice in and of itself.

In the light, he is a hero. His hair is like white gold, expertly made, and he is slim and elfin, the kind of vulnerable and sensitive soul that made the hearts of young boys and girls flutter. There is an ancient sadness to him, but that just makes him more amazingly crushworthy, and every day he receives letters and tokens thanking him for his service as First of the Radiant Knights. He is beloved. He is a hero. He shares the bed of the beautiful princess who saved him. He has risen from the long sleep of the tomb into glory. And yet when the crystals dim and the lights die, when he is the only one awake, when he paces in Yin’s suite, the breathless letters of thanks feel like bars on a cage. He has to keep it up. He has to be their hero. He has to be an upstanding consort-in-training. And all too soon, the lights go out again. And the world is a black rag choking him out.

There is no audience here. Rose from the River does not flourish to entertain anyone else. She does not care whether anyone witnesses her victory. (Not that she wouldn’t mind, mind you. Not that she wouldn’t mind.) She used to be a hero, a celebrity, beloved by an entire kingdom and its commanding princess. And now she is this: river-nymph, flower-faunus, beautiful and quietly inhuman. What can you offer to Rose from the River that the Radiant Princess could not, o demoness?

Scales of Meaning feints, then rushes in, looking to overwhelm her opponent with a carefully calculated push. Rose from the River, in turn, plants her blade in the yielding earth and vaults over the demoness’s head. When her pole is batted to one side, Rose does a somersault and hops onto that shining-scaled back for a brief and impudent moment, before springing off onto the grass. Scales of Meaning coils around the wonderful glaive and seeks to put the Thorn Pilgrim on the back foot, despite knowing that if Rose from the River can get hold, she merely need press her weapon still firmer to her opponent to win concession...

There. There it is. The glance upwards, suddenly distracted away from battle, glorious opponent and all, her eyes fixed for the span of a chickadee’s wingbeat on the great and glittering belt that spans the sky. The huff of breath is a traitor; the fleeting reverie an opening of the gate to her heart.

Once, there was a queen who owned a songbird, born to the cage. She fed it delicacies from far-off lands and bid it sing for its supper. It knew no want. Yet when the queen opened the cage door for but a moment, the songbird was out the window and gone forever.

It is winter, says the crow; food is scarce and the winds are cold. What is there to love in the world outside your palace? I sing anyway, says the songbird, free.

Rose from the River loves the beauty that lies hidden beneath the currents of the river, the beauty which lies gleaming in the feathers of the violet and lavender doves singing tu-wit tu-wu from the berry-bush, the beauty which lies languorous beneath the swell of the mountains, the beauty which shines down broken in a great arc across the sky. She loves this beauty in the manner of a child, wide-eyed and excited to see quite ordinary things made wonderful by their novelty. There is no overfamiliarity, no contempt of long regard, in how Rose from the River approaches this ancient and remade world.

To defeat her, o frightful and wonderful demoness, draw her in with revelations. Shine with the patterns of dusk and dawn. Hide your pride behind the veil of the aurora playing on the mountain peaks. Promise her wonders beyond the turn in the road, known only to demons, who remember what others blithely forget. Take on the aspect of the world unexplored, with its mysteries and soft beauties, and Rose from the River will step into the waiting coils despite herself, and take the gag from your grasp to fix between her teeth with her own hands.

Feign compassion for her, and win her heart as well as the duel, again despite herself. She has always wanted to be loved for herself.

Or do none of these things, out of pride and an unwillingness to win by the virtue of a love that you can no more catch than seize the moon in your coils, o shard of the glorious Pyre. To trick the Thorn Pilgrim so is to admit that your coils could never have caught her on your own, and your lips not ensnare her but that they shine with the light of the broken suns high above. To admit yourself insufficient to the task.

This, then, is a second question: victory by guile, or striving to succeed by your own merits, Scales of Meaning? Which would you pick, if offered the choice?