Tatterdemalion

Sunshards

There is an art to walking on air. It is to step so forcefully that the air beneath you is forced into solidity for a moment. And, if you have already come so far? What is the difference, really, between a step and a leap? So don’t you worry, Rose from the River was never really in any danger—

But she follows Princess Chen.

The air is firm beneath her feet as she spins a net from her bindings, works it around a very well-tied fox so that it’s easy to sling her over one strong shoulder. The breeze runs its fingers through her hair as she spins about Chen of the North Wind, an accent to her dance, a backup dancer here to make the princess look good (and to swing a certain mischievous fox along with her, just to make Cyanis close her eyes and squeak and burrow closer).

She pulls the scarf from her lips and it becomes wrapped around her throat, rippling and dancing along with her, and she lifts her head and out comes the water-brook-song of her joy:

Love, come and dance with me by the river
and let the water brush over our feet!
I have tasted the world upon my tongue
but you alone I deem sweet!

How she smiles!

Do you see it, Chen?

White and shining, the flash of her teeth, the wrinkling of her flushed cheeks, the flaunting of her daring outfit? How she looks at you and joy just bursts from her?

By the time she sinks onto a sheep, cradling Cyanis in her net, she’s already starting to retreat back into herself a little. She is, after all, a follower of the Way; she has been rather delinquent, all for the sake of dreams and girlfriends. She will have to leave.

But you saw her, Chen, and you saw her too, Yue, and that is a treasure that you can never misplace, because it will always be in your heart, won’t it? Won’t it just. Rose from the River, freed from bondage, dancing on the very wind with a captured vixen over her shoulder, the image of a merry-making goddess doing the kind of dance that would tempt a sun out of hiding.

Breathless Dead

Bella!

Reality slowly bleeds in. Stairwells were involved at one point— no, not stairs, the slow curving slope of their ramps, just steep enough to make the climb difficult, hands groping in the dark. The floor is richly carpeted, the wall is black stone, and there is a rising odor of distant smoke. Here, then, is a maze of guest quarters and servant closets and salons, the shantytowns that spring up architecturally around any ballroom large enough, and one that would be not too difficult to navigate if there were lights, but there are no lights. Lights have died, and there is night.

Sight is a useless sense. Certainly your auspex can tell you his outline, but what good is that when you are entwined and entangled, as he half-pins you against a wall to stop you from bowling him over? No. Rely on the others. Rely on the sound of his ragged breath, the catch and hitch of pain that is being repressed and pushed down, how words come apart in his wet mouth and become pants and huffs of breath until he lashes them together as exhalations. Rely on the smell of blood, fresh, on his palm, trickling down his hip; the Azura’s strike through his side did not rupture any internal organs, but blood is seeping through his body’s attempt to seal the wound, hampered by a potent anti-coagulation toxin. No wonder he can’t make the words come. He’s not close to death, but only because Artemis pulled away the blow at the very last second.

If she had not, he would be dying in your arms, here and now.

Feel his false bravado, how he turns the pain into a clinging strength, how his muscles lock in place when you strive against him, how he shakes with the effort in a way that says he can do this all night, if you make him. How dare he care? How dare he refuse to give up on you?

He needs a lot of things: a bandage (until someone can wash the injury clean and allow it to naturally seal), a shirt (or this one peeled off so he looks like an Olympic wrestler, clammy after a grueling brawl), and someplace where he can sit down and catch his breath for a moment. He needs you to stop fighting him, or else he’ll break himself stopping you. And he needs to stop smelling just a little too much like a broken bottle left behind a long time ago. Doesn’t he?

Or maybe you want to take deeper breaths of his hair, of his sweat, underneath the blood. Redana used to make you think of unthinkable things when she was finished with her Olympic training, didn’t she? And after all that, after the dance and the violence and the way he’s holding you and refusing to let go, the way his hand is on your ear right now, even though he took the blow that should have been yours, even as you’ve torn at his clothes and played with him like a mouse…

Well, you’re allowed to feel many feelings all at once. And even if there’s much more important things to take care of, you’re allowed to have confusing thoughts about pulling open a room and rewarding him while the whole palace burns down around your ears. If you’re going to die, it would be a shame to die without fucking him, you might think—

But you should probably do something about the wound instead. You always have been on the side of those who need your protection (and your carry?), after all.

Breathless Dead

—and at the last moment, Skotia is there. Because he alone can see with the eyes of the gods, here and now; because the sound of Bella’s howl is like a knife slipped between his ribs, and he can barely contain old memories that do not belong to him, which insist, demand, plead that he be there for her; because the heroine must be saved from stupid selfless sacrifice by the hero, who values her pure heart but sees clearly what she does not. At the last moment, Skotia is there, and his fingers are around Bella’s wrist, and his heel becomes the axis of the world, as he pulls Bella from her course like a moon pulling a comet into its orbit, as he holds his ground and her unstoppable momentum yanks her to one side, away from the serpent’s hungry jaws just waiting for her, and as he turns, he pulls off his jacket and—

It’s not just a jacket. That’s the thing. Even torn by Bella’s claws, even unbuttoned and disheveled, the jacket belongs to Skotia, to the night, to the privacy of lovers, to the destroyer of kingdoms, to the ruin of man, to the one foe more implacable than Thanatos.

Skotia flings Empty Night into the face of the Azura assassin, and it unravels, floods the room from wall to wall, and there is no light, for

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent serpents of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the lawyers and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, senators of many committees,
Fleet admirals and sailors second class, all go into the dark,
And dark the eye of Apollo and Artemis, and the Auspex alike
I said to my name, do not be still
but let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the kindness of your God

and there is no light, for they are in a corridor and the lights have all been washed away, but his body is on hers and she is digging a groove into his back as she flings herself against him again and again, building to the strike that will break him like a wall and leave him in pieces as she bounds heedless to her doom, and he is murmuring her name as the skin splits under her silver talons, and the only way that he can say I love you is refusing to move, by saying she’s coming after you, by saying we have to run, and don’t worry, Bella, his undershirt was wet and stained before you began to struggle against him, and now that the SP’s a room and a scene and a hard transition away you can smell him more clearly, can’t you, the sweat and the blood and the desperation to try and protect you, of all people, as if he thinks that you’re something that’s worth protecting, and one hand cups your ear and rubs it gently as he refuses to allow you any other choice but relenting or destroying him.

[Skotia rolls a 10 to Overcome the threat of Thist.]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Customers of the Blue Snapper Inn!

Jumpscare!

That’s what it’s like to glance over at the door, with its cool, soft lanternlight, and see the shadow of Uusha filling it completely. She is bigger than the door, and her horns would catch if she did anything other than turning her head to enter. Her long limbs are wreathed in thorns, her silence is so vast it seeps into the common room, and the water pooling at her boots makes her seem like an animal that does not care if it gets wet.

Then she lifts her claws, unlatches her skull-helm, and lifts it from her head. It is tucked under one arm as she ducks inside, and for the first time, Han, you have the opportunity to see the face of the notorious Stag Knight.

Her silver-and-brown hair, cut boyishly jagged, is plastered to her forehead. Her cheeks are gaunt and her chin is strong, and her appraising gaze makes the whole room seem smaller. She’s handsome in the way that a mountain wolf is handsome, and just as dangerous.

“The spirit got away,” she rasps, without taking a seat. “What have you found here, witch?” No judgment there; she just needs to know if you have something worth her time, in more ways than one.

Piripiri, you recognize the arrival (peeking out from the back along with Azazuka). This is Uusha, one of the most dangerous potential threats to the Red Wolf. If you can find some way to sabotage her standing or goals, you should— not just because you’ll get praise from the Red Wolf, but because it will make the Dominion’s conquest of the Flower Kingdoms safer for everyone.

If Uusha decides to fight a long and losing war against the Dominion, as she is psychologically likely to do, then everyone loses: there will be wasteful expenditure of supplies, time and lives putting her down.

Also, she’s Big and Strong and Has A Voice Like A Grindstone and Is Old Enough To Be A Cool Aunt, for the record. Just in case anyone’s paying attention to that.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

“Okay! I’d like to try a little of everything,” 3V says, with a cheeky little grin. “A glass of rainwater, a shot of the Darjeeling, a shot of the Amontillado, and don’t forget the coffee~!” There’s no spoiled brat rattling off what they want energy here, nah, this is playful, an invitation to play along or shut down the bit with a punchline. But just because it’s playful doesn’t mean it’s not real, too. If she gets her shots, she’ll do them one by one, with the water as a palette cleanser. Life is too short to commit to one thing without trying everything else; you never know when you’re going to suddenly find out that you are an excellent Huehuecoyotl, after all.

Now that she’s not one-on-one, 3V sits back in her chair and nests her beetleshell-emerald fingers over her abdomen, one leg cocked over the other, sunglasses still resting on her brow, the figure of casual relaxation, but she’s focusing her attention on her host. The fists. The tightness in the voice. The way she didn’t react to the hissed intake of breath from 3V. (She’s familiar with the poem, but not its history. Or even really that first stanza, full of a memorial for the dead; everyone’s here for the Inferno, and everyone’s here for the second stanza. Molech, Molech!)

“That’s got to be a project, keeping the drinks cabinet that full,” she points out. “Because here you don’t have ‘Dash to grab you something from the store.” An opening gambit, a vulnerability deliberately exposed: if Ferris has mellowed out in her old age, she’ll hare down the invitation to talk about her drinks and why she moved out here; if she’s still got her finger on the pulse, reading the news like an ex’s profile, she won’t be able to resist making a comment about RoofDash’s recent failed unionization effort and its $20k fine for wage theft (in and of itself a fraction of what was owed, and paid to the government rather than to the workers).

And the really sad thing is how fucking convenient ‘Dash is anyway.

Breathless Dead

It is inhumane to keep an echo in a cage too small for it. Echoes, after all, are creatures of wide spaces, grand vistas, imperial opera houses. They aren’t made to be crammed into a ballroom one after another, until they’re biting and clawing at everyone, too distraught to be safe. The ear, overwhelmed, rebels; the breakdown in communication causes riots in the feverish brain, even for those looking down and away from the arcing, spitting ELF lines. Even so, in the midst of the chaos, the Alcedi make a ring of death around their princess, proof against any mortal assault.

A shame, then, that Bella no longer may be counted as a mortal foe. She is become a thing that no spear may pierce, and around her there is ruin and catastrophe, and death without intention. The spear-ring breaks when a pillar collapses around them, struggling to reform, and as Redana calmly calls out orders that cannot be properly heard over the tumult, a stone table is sent carelessly end-over-end, hurtling towards her at desperate speeds. Not, of course, that Bella intended such a thing to happen; she simply did not care to see what happened to the table she tossed aside.

The table smashes through the far wall and into the corridors beyond. Redana lies on the floor, wreath fallen almost carelessly past her head.

Skotia lies on top of her.

“You’re being played, your highness,” he breathes in her ear, the dulcet words cutting through the chaos like the spear after it leaves the fingertips. “The Imperial Assassin, Sagakhan— she plays a dangerous game.” Nuance, pared down into words with their desperation cloaked by chivalry. “The flame is roses and the smoke is briars.”

He half-heaves himself up, leaning on one elbow. He leaves a dark, wet stain on the side of that beautiful white dress. Haven’t you noticed it’s dangerous in here?

“I’ve got her,” he mouths carefully, knowing it’s understood. “Save yourself.” Then there is an arm hooking under his shoulder and he is tossed aside by an Alcedi veteran, landing roughly in the remains of a mural. The Imperial Princess accepts a hand to help her to her feet as her retinue closes ranks around her once more.

It remains to be seen whether Redana will accept the command of a handsome stranger; it remains to be seen whether she, alone, recognizes him. Or perhaps, once she is in the dark, and she hears the snap of the growing flames, only then will she know the remembered eyes, the taut voice, the hair falling loose at his jaw.

And it remains to be seen how Skotia can possibly fulfill his oath without dying in the process, as Bella gives full throat to her rage.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

What’s the purpose of grilling someone over a messenger client when you’re going to meet up anyway? That’s the sort of courtesy that you extend to a friend, not to someone you’re meeting for business. Different registers, different modes and different codes. Besides, showing up without having done any reading into Ferris’s e-footprint would have been rude. Slapdash. “Explain to me everything that I should have figured out on my own time, so I can waste at least half of the time we have together.” Ych. No, thank you. (The comma there might not be grammatically correct, but it’s a comfort to place.)

[Rolling for Investigation, barely scratching an 8. Fortunately, you have to match rather than beat target numbers in HWI.]

You know, the hardest part of the investigation was figuring out how to talk to her without sounding like an overenthusiastic activist on her first social media account. Either that, or someone who’s given up hope already. How does the saying go? Take it easy, but take it? That’s got to be the trick. Someone who understands but isn’t here to chat her ear off. A messenger, not a vizier; a support, not a carry.

When she feels like she’s reached some sort of tipping point, some sort of watershed where she’s running downhill in the opposite direction, 3V lets herself in with the casualness of a cat that knows it is allowed to come and go as it pleases. (And all places are alike to me. / Now I will go out again and listen to the dark voices.) The sliding door catches a bit, squeaks.

“Well! You’ve got a bit of a view from up here,” Vesna says. (Not the first acknowledgment she’s made of Ferris. There was an inclination of the head, a gesture of the fingers— I’ll be there in a moment. Ferris has got to understand the importance, right? How does she stay here and not have the weight of it crush her?) “Thank you so much for the invitation to come out here! It really is something, isn’t it? The whole of it, the view and the climb and the poetry.”

She still has terrible posture when she’s trying to get comfortable, socially. She leans forward on the seat opposite Ferris, sunglasses perched precariously on her forehead, elbows on her knees. “So! Mind if I record? I can switch over to long scratch, but you’ll have to slow down for me. I really should have questions, but I don’t want to tell you where you’re going with this, especially since you sent the first email! I’m all ears, then! Virtual or otherwise.”

The long scratch (she knows already that Ferris absolutely is going to ask her for it) is going to be bad. She’ll be lucky if she can decipher it later. But she’s done the research already, knows well enough to ask and well enough to have a pulp-paper spiral ring in one pocket with a chewed-cap blue sitting neatly down the spine. Like a real reporter, even. Look at me now!

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

3V feels the necessity of this being important with a sensation like her bones trying painlessly to push their way out through her skin. It’s as if the importance this mountain, this view demands has made itself suddenly known inside of her and everything else is being displaced, like tipping a fridge into a bathtub. Because if this isn’t important, then the effort of bringing all this up here was wasted, and (even more importantly) 3V herself would have proven herself to have no ability to appreciate something that generation after generation was moved by, would have let a world of virtual mountains and skyscrapers and designed-not-emergent environments cauterize her sensitivity to a really, really big rock.

So she walks back and forth, rocks on her heels, and tries her very absolute hardest to let this feeling have some time to breathe for her. To follow that slight stirring of meaning, scrambling and scrabbling after it, hand outstretched. Metaphorically. Mostly her hands are in the pockets of her Nice Coat. Sunglasses and a faux-fur ruff are unusual accruements for a modern shaman-heroine, but she’d like to think she makes them work.

The hike’s part of it. An inextricable part of it. You’ve got to have a journey, says the motorcycle-psychopomp of Aevum. (Aevum! Aevum! Aevum whose soul is electricity and banks, whose poverty is the specter of genius! That’s a grisly connection to be making, isn’t it? And honestly not the most accurate one. Molech’s not the city, but an idea. An egregore, and not the kind you farm midgame.) That’s part of the weight and necessity for meaning to be found here, because the journey adds its own hunger to it.

Ah, but this is all so pretentious, isn’t it? Like her high school poetry journal, all tarot and gods and glass cities on the moons of Jupiter, just far enough away that she could make the argument they’re not seen because the telescopes look right through them. Before she got big into a different sort of consolidated legendarium. Anyway, that’s why the thought of writing poetry about this flits through her for just a moment before being dismissed with a shrug.

She skirts the poem instead, and stares into the vast world stretching out above, and don’t you worry, she’ll go knock and get herself let in soon enough. It’s really up to her host whether she, used to her isolation and yet yearning for a connection, is interested in coming outside and interrupting Vesna trying to let this moment breathe her breaths, or trusts her well enough to wait until 3V’s felt it pass and gets itchy to move on. Meditation’s nothing if there’s not constant motion and meaning-creation to let the animal mind chase until everything becomes a white heat.

Breathless Dead

Skotia takes a moment to recover from that kiss. How could he not? It stole his breath, his sense, and his composure all at once. His lip throbs a one-two beat, an ache that sends his mind reeling. Bella is strong, fierce, and possessive. No small wonder that the loss of the imperial princess hurt her so much; she is desperate to hold onto the things she has.

The hiss of ozone makes old memories stir in his head, and for a moment his blue eye is cold as ice as it sketches the paths of lightning. The Ianuspater does not judge Skotia the way that it would judge Redana Claudius, and so its impression of the room is different. After all, Skotia is an agent of love— and that is what unfolds for him. The red strings, the tapestry of desires and needs and bindings that hold everyone here.

Skotia, the dark stranger, marked by the maid of Tellus, sees as no one else here can. He sees not just the clash of arms but the hearts that beat underneath each blow. He sees the great well of gravity that Bella has become, and knows he is tumbling fast into it. And he sees clearly the shape of the war of assassins, for they too work in desire…

[Miraculously, Skotia managed a 10 on Look Closely. So tell us about the war of assassins, and how it could hurt or help Skotia’s quest to make amends, about what secret lies hidden or askew in this scene, and— if you have the time— of Princess Redana and what she will do next.]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Piripiri!

Now comes the wait. The message will have to be relayed to the Red Wolf, after all, and perhaps she will not be available immediately: after all, you have used the white lotus. What is more interesting, however, is how Azazuka watches you carry out this rite.

“You’re sending a signal, aren’t you?” She’s clever, but not sharp or clued in enough to know who. You may want to give yourself plausible deniability, to obfuscate the connection between you and the Red Wolf, the handsome face of the Dominion.

Or did you choose to do this beside her on purpose? Were you, perhaps, whether you knew or not, intending to show off a little? Certainly she seems more interested, leaning closer; is it not enough for you to be a duelist and a merchant, but also a daughter of dragons, a worker of little miracles?

How exciting you must be, heroine! How better to win a girl’s heart?

Oh, perhaps you will argue: I needed to make sure she is not in trouble. Or perhaps you will say: it is not right for the weak to fend for themselves. Maybe even: she is my gift to the Red Wolf, and I do not want to misplace her.

But she is looking at you, daughter of Hymair, and perhaps you do not recognize the danger that you are in: the danger of being entirely too winning for your own good. For when has Azazuka ever seen a thing and been denied it, save for that which was deemed too dangerous for her? And how could she ever think of you, her savior, as dangerous?

***

Giriel!

The leaves resolve, for a moment, into the form of a high tower, caught as it crumbles. Disaster. Ruin. Woe. Everything about this is going to go wrong— even for Ven.

Another sign: now the tower is a banner. War. Soldiers. The Dominion, possibly— but you know that it is much more likely to be the General.

A third sign: the petals of the red dahlia mixed with the snapdragon: in its darker meaning, then. Deception, lies, betrayal. What else do you expect from the Broken King? The way the stems lie together, there in the center: cross-purposes.

Put them all together: Ven, herself, is doomed to betrayal, or means to betray. The General— ah. You remember, now. He knows Ven has a prize (the daughter of a revolutionary, some god of the Flower Kingdoms) and means to seize it, seize her, whether Ven offers or no. Perhaps Ven knows and means to betray her Hellish master over the matter of a simple priestess, but it is more likely that Ven simply hopes to keep the priestess away from Hell for her own reasons— and will not succeed.

If you do not save Melody of Silver Bells, Melody will find herself one way or another trapped beneath that sea of war’s flotsam and jetsam to suffer. But Ven does not want to give Melody up, does not intend for Melody’s veil to join that twisted blue rope wrung between the General’s fingers. That might save her from the worst of Han’s fury, then.