Tatterdemalion

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Vesna “Vixillusion” Valentine
Proprietor of Gensoukyo Gaming And Cafe
Mythos Eurasia Grand Championships, First Place

Handle: 3V.
Alternatively: Threevee, 3vee, Vixillusion, VixSticks, Vixvanity.
Star Sign: Scorpio.
Pronouns: She/They.

Cool +3
Clever +1
Tough +0
Quick +2

Origin: Gamer.
Once per mission, Boost a Quick roll. (That is, add a d6.)

TRAITS
Hey, I Know You!
When meeting someone new, you can roll 1d6. On 5-6, they know you, and your next Social roll is Boosted. On a 1-2, they know you, and your next Social roll is treated as having taken Serious Harm (reputational).
Well Traveled
Roll with Advantage (3d6, highest 2) when relying on knowledge of the station’s layout. Roll with Advantage when losing unspent Cash at the end of a session.

TALENTS
Paid (Hands) [Generic]
No further Burden from the Augment.
Plausible Deniability [Fixer]
Advantage on covering up, lying about or concealing dubious or criminal activity, either your own or others’.

Action Specialties
+1 Charm
+1 Bullshit

Generic Specialities:
Esports +2
Games +1
Motorcycles +1
Online Communities +1
Social Media +1
Station Layout +1

Assets
Trendy Wardrobe
Small Local Business
3V3D Printer
Motorcycle

Augments
RayZyr Gamer Hands of Glory (Rad Mod, Esports +1)

Occupation: Fixer 1
Burden: 1
Cash: 0
Prep: 0
Harm

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Heavenly Cytherean Machi!

The witch studies you a moment too long, her close-cropped hair refusing to succumb entertainingly to gravity. “You’re complicated,” she says, more to herself than to you. “Like a city. Influx of different cultures, different motives. Cascading? Possible. Hard to tell from a look. You’re definitely from Her, but cut, adulterated.”

Her eyes glitter. Too keen. She’s dangerous, this witch. “You should have clarity. You want to know what I know because you don’t know. You need an anchor point. Something to pivot on. Torn away? Added to. Cecylene: at a guess. How better to derail?”

She comes to a conclusion, and smiles thinly. “You are a distraction,” she concludes. “You’ve been hijacked, and everything you do with that mask on is going to further the agenda of Hell. So take it off.”

She takes a breath, and then slams her will into the command: bereft of ritual, without signs and tools, barely enough to tilt you unless you were already teetering: “Now.”

Do you? Does her cold read of you (perhaps only partially correct, not that you can be sure) rattle you? Does it fracture you further, or make you cohere long enough to send her spinning?

Whatever your answer, keep your head up: there’s more trouble on the way. Tangled-up hearts, emerging from the trees.

***

Piripiri!

Azazuka barely gives any thought to the offer— or, rather, she skips straight to acceptance. She really should be more careful! What if you staged all this to get closer to her, and the warlock was in your employ? What if you were a con woman who got lucky and snuck her out using your ill-gained skills, and you intend to drain her purse dry?

Or, hypothetically speaking, what if you were a spy who would gain a view of the Flower Kingdoms’ political games from within by being close to her, and would be required to push her towards the Red Wolf?

…ah. The Red Wolf. There is a method by which you can send word to her, and quickly, by supernatural means, in case of emergency. What is it? And how will you guide Azazuka past what looks like a dragon of dust arising from the town in order to get her somewhere with tea and seats and the means to contact the Red Wolf?

***

Giriel!

The glamour draped over the town comes apart. Your keen eyes see gossamer-strings snapping and wildly lashing like ship’s ropes suddenly cut. You’ve stopped everyone here from being controlled by one of the rakshasa: one that is evidently powerful, has had time to lay a spell upon an entire town, or both.

The problem is that you stumbled into it and took it apart without even really thinking about it. Anyone here could be the rakshasa, and if you tried to seek them out by magical means, you’d end up with all sorts of false positives.

Like, for example, the two familiar girls in front of you. One’s a knight (how better to prey upon dreams of glory and adventure?) and the other is a burly highlander (perhaps a goblin-queen, hiding her uncouth nature and freakish strength in plain sight) — but either could be a disguise. From this point forward, anybody could be the magician that did this, even that priestess trying feebly to comfort those frightened by the sudden dust dragon, and whoever they are? They have your number, for sure.

But you’re the center of attention, and everyone’s stopped fighting and is looking to you, except for those two girls, who might have a more immediate or pressing challenge!

Sunshards

Chen!

You are unwrapped.

Rose from the River takes her time with her work, but only so that she can linger over the power in this moment. Do you feel it too, Chen? The electric moment when her fingers are hooked in your top and she’s tugged just enough to make you feel it, and in that moment you know that she could pull it off, she almost certainly is going to, but she hasn’t yet, so all you can do is squirm there in anticipation, and she looks up at you and you can see the thrill of that moment running through her, too, and that moment she stretches out for long enough for you to say no, if you were to be frightened of that moment, if you were to change your mind, if you were to find the power and thrill and helplessness of the moment too much or too fast or too anything— then you could. Even after you said yes.

Because Rose from the River wants you, Chen. Make no mistake, she is doing this because she wants to. Why else would she look at you like that with her golden eyes, two fingers on one hand fidgeting as she drags her gaze over your skin, the faint hairs on your arms, the curve of your neck meeting your shoulders, the place where your stomach meets your skirt— and there she teases her fingers along your belly, too, light and graceful.

She touches you as if you were the hilt of a sword and she had you mid-flourish, you lucky girl. And she looks at you like a woman no stranger to intense obsession. Even only half unwrapped, that gaze is intense, as if she is trying to memorize your particulars, the things that make you you. An uncharitable mind would call it a built-in reflex, a shapeshifter’s mania; a charitable one would note how much attention she is paying to you, how she is trying to see you, not just as a canvas for a makeover but as a new girlfriend, someone who wants her loyalty and attention and prowess, maybe even someone who will not see her as a weapon, just as Keron has refused to do.

And when you let her finish, should you choose at every step to allow her to do so— oh, how she will look at you then, all of you, standing you up and raising your hands to your head, palm cradling your jaw, foot pushing your heels apart, looking at you in a way that any princess would yearn to be looked at.

She is a very old thing, Chen of the Northern Wind, and at the same time she is a very new thing; she has deep wells of experience, and at the same time, yearns for experiences she has been denied. The fact that you allow her to play this game with you means the world to her— she is not just entertaining a princess she met on the road, not this time. She is leaving herself vulnerable to you and your judgment by inviting you to share this story with her so thoroughly, by looking at you with such intensity in her eyes, by stepping into the role of antagonist to princesses she finds so comfortable and safe.

And even now she takes the power in the scene and uses it to pamper you because she can reassure herself that her interest in this story isn’t some hardcoded weakness meant to lure her into a trap, and because it lets her feel useful and desired and unselfish all at once, and because she wants you to understand the feeling in her heart when she first saw herself at that dance so long ago— and all those things are true at once, Chen.

You are the true power in this story, bright princess. The more you validate her devotion, the happier she will be, and the more likely she will be to be gentle (or clinging); the more you threaten revenge (if you can get it out, if your mouth isn’t already useless before she gets there), the more likely you can make her fingers skip a beat, can send an envious and needy thrill through this amazon, and the more you will signal you don’t want her to pull any of her punches. So what will it be, Chen? Will you melt into being the adoring and adored girlfriend, or will you try to play the part of the captured and enchanted princess?

***

Yue!

“A change of clothes, you say?” Rose from the River smiles a little wolfishly herself. “Very well. I’ll see if we have anything suitable for your idiom, ma’am. Daisies and flannel, perhaps.” Be careful what you wish for, Sun Farmer! She might even find some boots to go along with it.

“Less kibble,” she adds, smoothly (worryingly, not no kibble), “Go board, pillows, honey. And a CD player. If it is in my power, Yue the Sun Farmer, you will have what you want.”

She sets down the tray, turns to leave— and then stops! Oh, that teasing maid! The Countess definitely has her hands full with that one (in more ways than one).

“I feel… pretty,” Rose from the River concedes. “I have been statuesque, alluring, handsome, magnificent, but this?” She does a little spin, skirt floofing out, Mary Janes click-a-clacking on the floor. “This is pretty. And I think I quite like it, even though
Beauty is fleeting, a petal falling to earth;
only a bite of the heavenly peach may restore it.
Better then is the virtuous heart,
gold which will not tarnish with age.
How fortunate, then, to have both!”

And from the look she gives Yue, she’s not boasting about herself. It’s both fond and impudent, self-aware enough to know Yue will be flustered, graceful enough to not imply anything too untoward.

***

Hyra!

Off on one side of the throne is a recessed alcove for the handmaidens. It’s full of soft lounging pillows and smoky-glazed lanterns, and packed to the gills with handmaids peeking out from behind the curtains. The sort of place where a decadent countess could lounge with a handful of handmaiden in either hand and watch a private show. (Not that Keron necessarily would, but the implication is important.)

In the middle of that alcove, Rose from the River sits, surrounded by her weaknesses: a skimpy outfit, shiny ropes, and girls. Her fingers flutter uselessly at her own shoulders as a multitude of hands play with her: rubbing her powerful thighs, her taut stomach, the cups of her lacy top, tilting her face up for veiled kisses, stroking the petals in her hair. Pink and white: Rose from the River’s own flowers are blossoming in the seasonal colors.

What a pretty shrine maiden she is today! How lovely she looks in lace, the cherry blossoms caught swirling on her chest, and how bright the rose-pink gold of her collar and bracers, her earrings and necklace! How demure her cherry-pink veil! And how the ropes hold her fast, framing her like a cherry-viewing lunchbox just waiting to be opened!

A handmaiden turns Rose’s face to look over at you; another leans in close to whisper in Rose’s ear. You don’t need to be close enough to hear Rose’s helpless, needy whimpers as she breathes through several thick layers of fragrant scarves; the glazed look in her eyes is enough to tell you that the Thorn Pilgrim has been effectively neutralized, and that’s before fingers start tugging on ropes and making her squirm and shuffle on her knees, trying to find some respite from the delightful torment.

And that’s before the handmaiden who whispered in her ear, making sure Chen’s glancing over, pulls Rose’s top up just long enough for both girlfriends to die blushing. Squirming from side to side like that over a simple wardrobe malfunction is a little theatrical, though, don’t you think?

Breathless Dead

Bells ring out on the Rûm. The wonderful watchtower there has a story all of its own; it was beloved of an Azura of such dazzling wit and playfulness that, to this day, his watchtower remains as he left it, the old systems refusing to grind down. Rods of glass bob up and down as shining platinum gears interlock. The bells ring out as they have at their own ineffable intervals, across centuries, the silver and the steel, their tongues unleashed. A flight of birds rises from the roof of the Old Symposium, scattering feathers as they go, and the wind bears those feathers aloft, higher, higher.

Skotos takes the wrists of her stepmother in her hands. Her face is in the shadow of the shelves: the dishes and the jars still their trembling. Rusty whines, hops from foot to foot. Birds wheel over the Rûm. She cannot breach the surface, but she comes as close as she can in this moment, fingers outstretched towards the sky.

"...she couldn't have survived," she finally says to herself, freed by the wild possibility that tears through her. "Even then, I knew-- we might not have made it back in time." It takes much neglect to kill someone. But every moment they had delayed on that bridge was another that might have made them too late; her heart had been gripped by the terror of seeing Bella's face already, bloodless and frozen over, as her body drifted lifeless between the stars, possessed of strength enough only to accuse her princess of not caring, of being a minute too late to thaw her safely.

When she lifts her head, her eyes are the color of chips of ice, and she can't blink back the tears. "Was it pirates?" Her voice cracks like the splintering of a floe. "Did she ride on Cetus's mane? Did it come crashing down on Ridenki and she dived into-- even knowing how much she hated the water? How? How?"

How did her Bella survive? How can she, Skotos, the shadow, hope to find Bella? How can she, Skotos, the shade, hope to be forgiven? How can she hope for anything beyond those claws, punishing her for what another her once did? How can she stand beneath that violent disdain until she has repaid in full?

Her fingers squeeze until they go white, and she only remains dry-cheeked because of how much she has cried already today. There is the shadow of a mania in her again, a reminder of why she must be Skotos. A raw-edged desperation, opener of doors, speeder of feet, the strength to stand beneath the lash. The bells of the watchtower crash one more time and let the ripples of sound spread and diffuse into nothing.

"Where is she, Hera?"

Breathless Dead

Once upon a time, there was a girl who lost her shadow— but this can’t be that story. Skotos couldn’t possibly cause that much trouble all on her own. Especially because, in that story, it’s a labyrinth all the way down, and Dionysus dancing through the city of shadows making them all wise fools, and delivering from Hades’ summer house a handsome prince who was never born and thus never died[1].

“I would run out of things to bake very quickly. I only know so many recipes,” Skotos says. She doesn’t look the goddess in the eye. She’s gotten good at not looking anyone in the eye. “…but that’s not what you mean, is it?”

Skotos doesn’t consider that this is a trap. Not a cruel one, but a trap nonetheless. Catch and release. Beneath the sight of Zeus, blinded by the light shining off Redana Claudius. Given the opportunity to find a story small enough for her, so long as she chooses to remain simply Skotos.

Perhaps a delivery girl. Backpack topped by a flag, going on epic quests across the city, bearing a feast worthy of a queen (or your money back!). Or perhaps she would take care of the forgotten shrines of the city, keep the candles lit, sweep their gutters clean. She always did want to see those little acknowledgments of the gods kept neat and tidy. Or maybe— no, why would they even, they definitely wouldn’t look at a nondescript little thing like Skotos if they were interested in humans at all, anyhow!

Flustered, Skotos turns her attention to offering up the fruit. If one were willing to be generous, and tilted their head while squinting, it might even strike them as being almost a peacock’s tail, there on the plate. And she offers a silence that longs to be filled: a sheep-art, a cook-art.

[Redana attempts to Speak Softly with Hera. Deliciously, it is a 6. So here are the questions (writing prompts), anyway: what should Skotos be wary of when dealing with Hera? What can she tell Skotos about being Redana? And what does Hera want, how may Skotos provide? The rules encourage you to give me an unhelpful answer and a false answer; I am open to your own interpretations of the 6.]

***

[1]: Redana had considered that for a long time: a prince with gentle hands and the frailty and grace of the underworld, in that black suit jacket and the white bow tie, pretty-lashed and troubled at his mother’s own strange circumstances. Surely he would need a lot of holding, wouldn’t he? To keep the wind from blowing him away. And maybe he’d even need a thumb under his lashes to brush a beautiful tear away.

Breathless Dead

The honey here is black. It fights her spoon; she stabs it in several places with the blunted end, and then leverages up a chunk that she wrestles into the bowl. It is pungent, with notes of a spice she does not know. With the edge of the spoon, she carves it, the ventricle of some strange hive’s heart, into pieces which slowly begin to thaw, to slough apart. The lid of the jar, when tapped, melts back into place; she could juggle with it and risk not so much as a drop[1].

The butter is orange, thick, and just as pungent in its own way. She takes a knife, carves off slabs, and flicks them into the bowl with two fingers. They scatter in the bowl, fallen pillars among the dark humped shapes of the honey[2].

Beat until blended. Harder to do here; Skotos sets to it with gusto and a strong elbow. In the other kitchen, the butter was daisy-yellow and the honey was golden, and they swirled together until it was all one sweet shining sea. The pestle comes back colored like a bruise, and if this is a sea, it is one at sunset, and a storm on its way.

Then the eggs, overlarge, speckled, cracked one by one and then beaten again. Then the sour yogurt and the almost-familiar vanilla, beaten again. She probably shouldn’t be setting the bowl down every time she needs a new ingredient, but she never used to need to. When she reached for something, it was right there to hand; the whisper of lace and the click-clack of heels and the creak of the cabinets[3].

Flour, powder, salt: whisk them round. Skotos hums a far-off song, meaningless without its context, most especially to her. There’s no reason to sing the verses, even if she could get at them; there’s no one here to sing the high notes, clear as crystal.

Mix all together, pour out into the greased molds, set into the oven.

And now she’s the one who has to prepare the fruit, too. The ones to hand are red as rubies and have a white, firm flesh within, but the rind is thick all around, dimpled like the surface of a moon. She is obliged to dig at the rind with her fingernails and peel it away by hand before she can cut the slices and arrange them on a platter. Dark, bittersweet berries roll into the hollows left between slices. Finally, a last step, she takes another chunk of the black honey and squeezes it in her fist.

It drips from her fingers like the blood of a king, drizzled onto the fruit. Her lashes are wet and her body is warm. She is, for a moment, alive. And this is what she chooses to do, simply because it’s what’s in front of her. Because how can she hurt someone with honey cakes and a platter of fresh fruit?

***

[1]: just like in the kitchen back home, for all that the design of the jar is unfamiliar, with the smooth curves of an organ rather than faceted sides, good beneath the fingers.

[2]: as above, so below. The ruins of what came before are inescapable even in the kitchen.

[3]: here there is only Rusty, getting underfoot, leaning heavily against her thighs, sparing glances up at the infinite distance between him and the strange glories of the countertop.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Constance ponders this question with perhaps more gravity than it requires- or perhaps not. The heart, after all, is the heaviest of burdens, and is her role not that of its caretaker? She has been long out of practice, her own so long chilled. What is the role of the priestess? To deal with that which cannot be seen except in its motion, and to speak to the decisions that cannot be made alone.

"The squire if you would stay and learn to love the land as much as you would learn to love him," Constance says, carefully, her gaze not entirely on Tristan. "The knight if you would see wonders that have not yet been seen in this land- but never a hearth of your own." Tristan, after all, is a lover, which is to say, he is someone whose heart's desire is to fulfill those of others. So it would be best for him to know what he is getting himself into; two different roads with two different destinations. But she cannot make that choice for him, just as she could not make Robena's choice for her.

When Robena returns, should Robena return, she will find Constance there waiting for her, with her hair knotted about a comb of polished bronze, with her feet bare upon the earth, with a belt of pearls and bronze links set about a dress as green as the grass that grows on the Berkshire Downs, and a careful hope in her smile.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Azazuka!

Rain trickles down your shoulder blades. It’s not a sensation that you’re used to. Or, rather, it’s still a sensation you take notice of, rather than being beneath your notice. You are a young woman of means; you have always had umbrellas to hand, or else people to carry them for you. That’s why the chill trickle running down the small of your back is something that keeps your attention, even as the Hymairean girl does her best with a sword rather than shears. Tangled knots fall to the wet, twig-strewn earth.

Why are you smiling? For the same reason that she smiled at you. Because you faced the odds and won. Down there in the dark, you were helpless, but that was just a shrinking of the metaphorical cage. Now you’re out here, in the mud and the rain, and for all that it’s exhausting, it’s thrilling, too?

…that being said, once you get back to civilization, you’re going to get an inn suite just for the two of you, and bundle up in a big wool blanket, and shiver the rain away. Over tea. Yes. Tea, shared with—

She is a friend, isn’t she? You’d like her to be. But that’s mixing business and pleasure. If you are indiscreet, you risk handing her leverage in business dealings.

Even so, when she sets down the improvised razor and brushes off the back of your neck, a thrill runs through you, and the temple mantras all slip out of your mind for a moment. You bite your tongue and stop yourself from asking her not to lift her fingers.

She asks you if it’s all right, and not trusting your voice entirely, you nod. You don’t actually know how it looks, but there are all sorts of ways to fix a bad haircut. Wigs, even. What’s important right now is not getting your hair caught on any more branches.

Then, in the sky above, for a moment, there is a flash of lightning that illuminates the sky, and for a moment you see a cloud-herding god stark against the clouds; and in the moment of silence between the bolt and the peal, you hear afar off a tumult.

You don’t have the experience to understand the ominous portent, or to navigate the last mile-and-change out of the jungle. You’ll have to trust in Piripiri for that. And you can do that as easy as breathing.

***

Whisper-of-Rushes!

A mortal invokes symbols and means them. She needs you, and no god can ever quite resist being needed. So you stalk away from the hubbub, the clash of spirits that weave between the mortals that pay you homage, still wearing your reed breastplate and carrying a six-tongued thong. You appear before her, manifest in your breath, feather-haired and rice-toothed, eager to be back in the fight but unable to resist the invocation.

However, there are two… complications. The first is that you aren’t the only one who’s broken away from the battle, an intense clash that would shock the mortals if they had eyes to see the upper airs: Puddlefiller is here too, the vapid cloudy ditz, and soot-scaled Breath-of-Dust. And as for the witch’s news, well—

“Meddler!” It comes out a croak, and you scratch at the dirt with your taloned feet, your spindly legs shaking. “Heaven never understands what it’s like down here! The stars don’t understand plant-roots, soil-tilling, filling stomachs!”

“Only the love in the bowl,” Puddlefiller sighs. Stupid girl! Why does she never push her hair out of her eyes? “I think she’s Blue, I think. Maybe Red. Or Green? Maybe she’s all of them, but Blue the most. She’s wanting ever so much.”

“That’s not how they work,” you snap back. Really, you’re not sure yourself, but you take your chances that Puddlefiller is talking nonsense again.

“What if they’re a sign,” Breath-of-Dust frets. “What if there’s going to be another war? Then the N’yari will come in, and their maids will whisk away my gifts as fast as I can give them! No, no, I put so much care into showing them all how all things change, how all possessions are fleeting…”

“She’s a very good cat,” Puddlefiller says, rolling over and letting her head dangle over the edge of her clouds. The hair still doesn’t fall out of her eyes. “I think that’s why. She’s wearing two cat masks, so that’s doubled. Or squared. Which one is more?”

“Only the strongest god can have a hope of protecting our town,” Breath-of-Dust hisses. “That must be why the priestess told us about the tourney! The court has been stagnant, and Sapphire Mother of Lotuses must have a strong bastion here!” She slithers on her stomach back to the fray, which is quickly becoming visible even among the mortals.

“I don’t think so,” Puddlefiller yawns. “This whole thing has been so odd. What if the cat doesn’t have anything to do with the challenge? Maybe she’s juffffrrfff—!!!”

Your thong curls around her and lashes her pale limbs tight together as you cram more cloud in her dumb mouth. The second complication, which has been building all this time, is that the energy of the tourney, that desperation, and of the summoning, that confused anger, is a heady brew, and you are drinking deep. You knot snakeskin tight at the back of her head and toss her, helplessly wiggling, over one shoulder.

“You want answers, witch? Help me win, and I’ll make every spirit from here to the other shore give you the answers you’re looking for.” Competition thrums through your breath, and it’s only the offer of alliance that stops you from knocking her down into the rushes and letting them cocoon her up. “I’ll throw in the meddler, too; we’ll convince her to leave it out of her report~” You don’t know how yet, but you’ll figure that blackmail out when you get to it.

***

Uusha!

You’re not a witch. You deal with spirits, you have accepted their gifts, you are closer to them than any other knight in the Kingdoms, but you’re not a witch. And the witch you need is making sharp, mortified yelps as she’s carried away by a thing in the shape of a N’yari. In moments like this, all you can do is follow your instincts. And your instincts tell you that something in the shape of a N’yari has the heart of one, as much as it might try to deny it.

So you throw your spear.

It arcs well over their heads, and keeps going, and going, testament to how much you put into the lunge, how it shivered when it left your fingertips. It buries its head, quivering, in the earth far past them.

And when this N’yari-thing glances back at you, you stretch, hands behind your head, muscles taut beneath your armor. Lazy, proud, and implicitly challenging. I’ll let you try to get a better position, it says, and I’m not going to chase after you like a kitten— but I am coming, and if you try to really run away, everyone will know you’re a weak little flower girl.

You didn’t used to sympathize with that viewpoint. Then you watched the kings and queens of the Flower Kingdoms for over a decade. Now you might just understand the N’yari better. Not that you want to see them in charge, however. No.

Your Lady would not stand for that.

You trudge back to where the second witch (the brave one, the one that… mmn) is parleying with fractious gods. And— you glance back over your shoulder. The gods are manifesting in the middle of some fool tourney. Order must be maintained.

“Go down there,” you say. “Make them stop fighting. Gods and flowers. That thief will try to exploit it, otherwise.”

And when you fight that thief again, very soon, you don’t mean to let her have a way out again.

***

Victorious Vixen of Violets!

Drinking emotion is a very intimate experience. You can’t skim mild feelings off the top and hope to have anything but watery, non-filling dregs. No, you need emotions to be throbbing, burning, intense— and then you need time enough to sink your fangs in and drain those delicious feelings dry until they’re pale and hollow and helpless.

But an entire town, all feeling lust at the same time? Fanned up into an inferno by careful use of bellows and enchantment? That’s enough to bask in and lazily chew, teeth needle-bright beneath your veil, squeezing out some of the power you expended to get here in the first place.

Here it is, the first step, the first part of the story: how Kalaya Na was so much a cut above the regular stupid peasant that an entire village fought to try to become one of three chosen companions. Business partners try to beat each other senseless, mothers fight their children, and all of them want little Kallie so bad it aches: her approval, her fame, her kisses. You reel in a porter’s hopes and dreams with a subtle flick of your fingers and rip a bite away before he stumbles back into the melee to lose.

How sweet.

Three swords, three companions. That was a good touch. It’ll help the story spread. And once she’s famous enough, once she’s spent enough time with you— then the crown, then the unification, then the queen, and then her heart.

You will rule the Flower Kingdoms; you’ll use your puppet queen to make a paradise here for you and your very extended family. And it all starts here, with dear, sweet Kalaya earning her retinue and breaking the hearts of everyone rejected, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop you! Nothing at all!!

You let out a dainty giggle, hidden in your sleeve, and roll around finally, my broad shoulders will be useful for more than carrying baskets! in your mouth. It’s sweet. So, so sweet.

Sunshards

Cheeeeen!

The smile on Rose from the River’s face is practically crocodilian. Not because it has too many teeth, or because she’s literally a crocodile, but that’s the only comparison that quite fits the delighted, victorious curl of her lips, the thin veneer of wicked (almost foxlike) scheming over her shared delight, and the way it slowly spreads even as you do your best to melt right through the floor.

“Well, Princess Chen of the Northern Wind,” she breathes, almost buzzing. “I’m afraid you’re too late.” One hand strokes down a shirt collar, stops at a button. The fiddling with it is intentional, artful. Maddening. “I’m under the Countess’s spell. She made me look deeply into her eyes…” Two fingers tilt your hot face up to look into her golden eyes, the lazy blink, the black slits. “And now I must do her bidding.”

She presses the advantage. Her knees flank you, trap your legs fast between them, even as she half sits on your own knees, leans her weight against them. She cradles your burning cheeks in her palms, body close enough for you to hold if only your hands were free, close enough for you to rest your face in paradise if your face wasn’t in her hands. It is like being held loosely in the coils of a serpent, knowing that it could tighten its grasp at any moment.

“I must obey my mistress,” Rose from the River asserts, the rules of the game laid out. “Once you are under my spell, I am to prepare you for her. You must be stripped,” she purrs, and a second pair of hands runs teasingly down your front, tugging lightly on fabric, cupping your soft stomach. “You must be dressed as befits a slave-girl,” she continues, and slowly pushes your head down to make you take a long, panning look over her body, and also, incidentally, her clothes. And, if you just glance over to the side, the clothes prepared just for you.

“And then I must make you as helpless as I long to be,” Rose from the River continues, and she cannot hide that slight nervous fidget. This is where she risks her story being too flimsy, being laughable, coming apart. If she doesn’t do this just right, you will surely see right through all her showmanship, or else miss her attempt at vulnerability completely. “I will gag you until your pretty cheeks are packed and you can barely make a squeak. I will tie you fast until you can barely squirm, and even that will just make the ropes rub against you all the more. And then I will be allowed to do whatever I please with you until our mistress arrives to put me in my place.”

A deep, softly jangling breath. Then, sibilant, hopeful, intentionally seductive: “Are you under my spell now, Heiress? Or do you still have some daring escape up your sleeve?”

Because if she doesn’t give you the chance to say no, your yes won’t be meaningful. And how she hopes you’ll say yes, that you’ll play with her, that you validate her choice to play like this with you, choosing to try to be a girlfriend and not a monk, to hope that you will protect her from being just a weapon.

***

Yue!

Today, the seaweed-wrapped rice balls are brought in by someone familiar. She’s big again, but sleeker, and all dressed up in the sort of maid outfit that is definitely decorative, though it doesn’t exactly give a girl with a perfect girlfriend many places to safely look, what with that skirt and those stockings and all that frilly lace and both those heart-shaped cut-outs!

She sets the tray down, with the rice balls (each one with a fish surprise inside!) and the square salted crackers and the choco-cherry milkshake, and then she curtseys so low that really it’s a way of showing off how much control over her body she’s got.

“I hope your stay in the tower has been comfortable, Yue the Sun Farmer,” Rose from the River says, and it’s her again, so serious while pretending she’s not being a little sassy. When she looks up at you, there’s a twinkle in her snakey eyes. “It is the will of our lady, the Countess, that you be entirely comfortable while you train. If you have any complaints, please share them with me. After all, I did say I would look after you, didn’t I?”

***

A Photoshoot!

Here is another thing that happened that winter.

The Countess let slip that Rose from the River, now quickly becoming one of her best girls (if her sass was silenced before it could start), was a shapeshifter, with increasing control over her body, discovering new ways that she could be a girl. And there is only one thing that must be done when a mighty dragon princess discovers that she has a shapeshifter at her beck and call.

Cosplay!!!

Imagine it, the process by which Rose from the River experiments with herself, with finding the balance between changing herself for others and staying true to herself. The printed-out screenshots of Ydian she meditates over while Jessic excitedly shares her backstory, the way her hair brightens into white-gold and forms faux curls, her flowers doing their best to blend in; how her now-smooth skin turns from rich riverbank black to Martian garnet-red, complete with the intricate white MagiSeal between her shoulder blades; how she treats the costume with the reverence of the raiment of a holy order.

Pose after pose! Set after set! They can’t stay cooped up in the castle! They need to go to one of the compact shrines looking out over the kingdoms, lugging the camera the whole way, so that Jessic can get a shot of Ydian preparing to consult her grandmother’s ghost; they need space in the park for the shots of Ydian calling upon the Power of Mystic Mars, channeling it through her bow, declaring that this time, this time, Zeryn won’t get away…!

And, along the way, maybe some pictures of Ydian posing with a giddy princess and delighted children. Maybe a candid shot or two of Ydian smiling when she thinks nobody’s watching, reveling in the joy her performance is bringing to everyone else.

(Of course, then there are the pictures that Keron takes that evening, the ones she’s going to hold onto and make Jessic ask permission to see whenever she wants to look. The Fanservice ones: Ydian, topless, facing coyly away from the camera, one heel lifted; Ydian, captured by Zeryn along with this magical dragon girl OC she’s doing a crossover with, sharing a hopeless glance with the muzzled Jezzikyn; Ydian, offering the camera White Day chocolates in a dragon-shaped box with a coy blush. And those are special, too.)

Breathless Dead

The need of the hound is reflected into Skotos like a beam of light being shone into a house of mirrors. For the sake of Rusty, Skotos condenses. She is solid enough for gender, at least for a moment, and solid enough for regret— but not so much that she could pull her scarf out of Rusty’s mouth (her fingers would fall limply away, like smoke over water) or even enough to call back to Alexa (the words would turn to empty night in her throat).

“I’m not very good at solving things,” she attempts to warn the hound. “Really, anyone else would have been a better choice. Unless all you need are hands?” She considers this as the hound tugs her resolutely along. “Then I am a good choice,” she concludes. “I have hands. And everyone else has more important duties to carry out with theirs. So you should use mine.”

Satisfied that she is doing the right thing and being of service to everyone (for Alexa must fight, the philosopher must teach, and the students must learn, and she is stopping the hound from pulling any of them away), Skotos begins to look around her properly, self-aware of the hollow longing in her chest. Everything here is empty even as it is grand; there is no concentration of population, and so the drift outwards continues, just like Nero’s thesis states is the natural inclination of humanity. And yet here, there, still can be seen people devoted to some grand task of their own choosing.

Just like her, if you think about it. She devoted herself to a grand task, and all it cost her is—

She blinks. Her spirit exists solely in her face and her breastbone. Her feet are automatons marching stiffly onwards, lead on a leash; her hands are too limp to raise to her chest.

All it cost Redana Claudius was the life of her childhood companion, Bella. And Redana is strong enough to live with that; she is able to accept the sacrifices that must be made to pursue a high and noble vision, just like her mother before her. Skotos is not strong.

That is why, walking down the streets of a grand Salibean city, in the shadow of high spires, on the mosaic roads, to the tune of the musician who still lives at 1397 Excellence-of-Companions Tower whose composition floats out from their open balcony and continues for hours upon end as he reiterates and seeks some refinement of the piece both as a whole and as an interlinked piece with the rest of his body of work, under the gaze of a sentinel who has fought and refought a theoretical war in his own mind for centuries so that he may know every aspect of it from every angle and from his own self-exploration thus derive an entire science of battle, stepping over carefully-swept piles of broken glass that the hound swerves around, Skotos cries. Again. As she does whenever she is enough herself to express pain.

She cries for the wasted potential of who she could have been, who Redana Claudius will now become, who she was unworthy of being. (As if standing outside herself, she remembers wanting to kill the Toxicrine, the Privateer. Redana Claudius would not, could not have done so. Another failed exam in an unbroken string.) But more than that, she cries for Bella, alone, in the cold and thin dark, an abandoned toy that was left without reassurance of love— no, worse. Toys can’t feel pain or grief or loneliness. An abandoned girl, then.

Bella, who never got to see Salib.

Bella, who never got to see Redana come home like she’d promised.

Bella, who was punished for the follies of the only person who tried and innocently failed to love her.

A footnote in the story of Redana Claudius. An Act I tragedy to tug at the heartstrings. An asterisk in the grand story of Humanity’s Salvation. A thorn in Skotos’s heel. It hurts. It hurts and it has not stopped hurting. And that is why Redana must be Redana and Skotos must be Skotos.

By the time the hound stops, Skotos has become so raw that she has wrapped back around to being numb, the pain a humming static. She stops to rub the hound’s ears before opening herself back up to the world, to see where she has been taken, blind and deaf to the world for the pain.