Tatterdemalion

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

“Actually,” 3V says, drumming her glowing fingers on her knee for a moment, “I’m also interested, personally, in a question I’ve been mulling over all day. It ties in to what you suggested just now. What is the value of climbing a mountain?”

She picks up a strawberry. If she’d bothered, it could have been an incredible experience, her fingers giving her feedback on every ridge and seed, unconscious thought turning every impulse in her arms into a blurred jab of a finger. But if the haptic feedback is too overtuned, it gets distracting; she doesn’t need to know what the pockets of her coat feel like, the shape of bits of fluff, as intimately as she knows her face. That’s always the way of it, isn’t it? The features get slapped on there so that you’ll feel they’re worth buying, better than yours, when really she just needed the split-second APM and perfect keyboard control so that she could focus on all the parts of winning Mythos that weren’t dependent on her reflexes: fleeting alliances, which realms to tackle in which order, anticipating everyone else’s builds and disrupting the blessing meta. So it’s just a strawberry. Sticky. Wet.

“I have climbed a lot of mountains. Well, mostly the same mountain, repeatedly. The Weirding Wall keeps contracting over the course of a match, and it’s usually Olympus at the center where the last champions end up. I have clambered up that mountain dodging lightning bolts and astra and the final minion waves enough times that if I close my eyes, I can see it, more real than real. I have been to the very top at the end, and seen the blue fires licking at its base; I’ve been to the very top at the beginning, even if it meant I was throwing, and seen Elysium and Eden and Tir na nOg and Mictlan stretching out in every direction, Aaru and Yomi and Valhalla. Mythos swept the last VGAs for design and Graphical Experience. And if Mythos is too high stress, there’s always Wanderhearth for just climbing and enjoying the company of characters and listening to the birdsong on the wind, or Hyperborea Online if you want to play dress-up while climbing a mountain and then probably swordfight and kiss a princess up there.”

She pops the strawberry in her mouth. It does not burst and pop in flavor. It squishes. “There’s no emergent loop in climbing a mountain except for the one where you alternate which leg you’re moving, and you can do that without thinking about it. You have to be lucky for anything interesting to happen, and there’s no achievement or easter egg up at the top. Well. I mean. Other than getting to see Howl, I suppose. So why’s it worth doing, when I could do that and have an experience someone carefully curated for me, optimized so that I would have a good time?”

She looks Ferris in the eye, signaling: here it is, even if you didn’t get any of that, here’s what I’m building to. “And if I’m not sure what the value is in this big hunk of rock, how am I supposed to convince anyone in Aevum to log off and come out here?” Don’t worry, she hasn’t forgotten, she’s got her own theory formulating, but she wants Ferris’s thoughts.

Breathless Dead

There’s a certain little voice that sometimes devils readers of adventure fiction, belonging to a quite wicked imp of practicality, and it says: you would not survive this. You are not a protagonist, little reader: the hero will only escape because everything aligns just so. Redana Claudius was not often bedeviled so. Skotia, however, for all that he is a creature of romance— he knows this voice. And the voice is saying: if you fight this monster, you will die. Your concentration will slip at a vital moment; you will fail to dodge a falling pillar; you will be backhanded through a mural and off a cliff to your death. This creature is too dangerous for Bella, killer of princes, so what do you think you’re doing?

Paying for the last kiss he’ll ever give her, is what he’s doing.

His palms are dry. His heart aches in his chest. He is shaking as he draws his sword with a duelist’s flourish, one wrist beneath the other, tip at attention. His feet find their marks with rote ease. An ELF cracks out and he flicks it away as if training in the courtyards of an imperial palace.

Bella is screaming at him to move. But that, too, is part of the story. It’s about his character. The lothario promises everything and then proves himself false, a coward, selfish. The true lover allows his love to carry him into the maw of Leviathan, and then— well, it depends on what sort of story this is, isn’t it? Maybe he’s only here to die in front of Bella, to save her and her Beautiful, to make amends, and maybe at the end she’ll realize that her Redana— but no. He’s past that now. All he is is a desperate gamble by a selfish princess to do one thing right for her oldest, dearest friend.

Nobody in those stories had the decency to mention the dryness at the corner of his eyes, the right clench of his asshole, the neon throb of ELF weapons in the dark pounding in the back of his head. Fuck.

(The look on her face, confusion and trepidation that she hadn’t recognized when she reached down into the box— the look on her face, pale, eyes lidless wide, her hand trembling as she hissed through bloodless lips at her princess— the look on her face, hidden in the dark but obvious enough, the longing for someone who was right for her, who could give her a love untainted by failure and failure and failure—)

“Avaunt.” The world narrows to the dark and the light. His body is moving to parry another shot before his mind has caught up. The blade throbs from tip to insulated hilt. “I will kill you if you touch her,” he says, and he means it, even if he doesn’t know if he can. How’s this for a storybook, dearest and best of maids? How’s this for the Maneater, the filler of graves, the doom of cities? How’s this for choosing you? “Avaunt!” His voice is too small for the heart it carries; it cracks beneath the weight.

And this is the moment. This is why Aphrodite raised him up from the shadows to be the prince of the night. For this, and this alone; and all outcomes, then, are part of his song. End of the line! Curtain fall! And what are you in the dark, Skotia, in that heart of hearts, standing so small and pathetic in front of a living nightmare, while you stand between the protagonist and her doom?

Not a coward.

Not with Bella on the line.

He digs his heels in and screams his defiance in the face of death herself:

“Av—!”

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Giriel!

Uusha flinches away like a wild animal. For a moment, her breath is panicked. She isn’t used to being touched like that. Not any more. She rides that panic like a wild horse, however, and while she moves in such a way that she could backhand you, she doesn’t. She could have, her animal heart wanted to— but Uusha of the Holly is not an animal. She is a knight. And she is in control.

The more important thing is that you derailed her train of thought just long enough. If she wasn’t suddenly focused on you, she might have noticed the cresting wave in time.

Not all of them are demon snakes, horned and brass-scaled. Just some of them, hissing their snake-songs, commanders of the host. Every other snake is a more regular, ordinary snake, green or yellow or black, red or purple or mottled brown. But this is the Flower Kingdoms, and some of those snakes are as big as horses; some of those snakes are venomous enough to wilt grass where they breathe; some are descended from spirits, heavy and mossy and earthen, stone-eyed or rain-slick; and they are a river that has burst its banks, and will drag you down beneath the waves, and bury you underneath their bulk.

Behold, the Serpentine Hunt, led by the Messengers of the King, and you the prey.

Uusha performs an incredibly impressive vertical leap and swings herself into the branches of a tree to get a better vantage point, but that leaves the rest of you high and dry. Some of her retinue breaks, screaming, panicked into the jungle— doubtless playing right into Ven’s hands.

***

Han!

This would be a very bad time to find out you have herpetophobia.

***

Piripiri!

Oh by the wandering stars it’s more snakes. Azazuka jerks her ankles up and screams as the tide thunders towards you, likely because of her last experience with demon snakes.

***

Fengye!

This was a fortress, but (for a time) a secret one. These stables were not used by raiders on their foreign mountain ponies, but by outlanders here to meet with the cannibal-cult who raised these walls. The rotten wooden sheds have long been in the shadow of a horrible place, and it has seeped into them.

On first inspection, there’s nothing here— but if that were the case, why would the hair on the back of your neck stand on end when you gaze into the depths of the stables? Then, and even Kalaya Na can see this, two pale lights wink into view, and a horse emerges from the stables to challenge you.

No.

The shape of a horse emerges to challenges you. There is nothing there except for the marsh-lights, one to either side of the head. It consists of the motion that a horse would make, if it were agitated, if it were one of King Salamedes’ fabled flesh-eating horses.

This is one of the Hlungta, the Horses of the Children of Adorjan. Its presence suggests that Ven may have called up something that cannot easily be put down. Something that is dangerous, incredibly so, even more than the horse (which might take one of your arms off).

Here, then, is the danger and the opportunity: the Hlungta will maul you if not placated, and you risk attracting terrible attention if you choose to ride it; but there is no finer mount from here to Chiaroscuro, and perhaps you want to be a doomed distraction for the sake of Kalaya-phraya.

***

Kalaya!

There’s something there that makes your eyes kinda hurt when you try to look directly at it, because they’re telling you that there’s nothing there but also, it’s moving, and there are two pale lights higher than your head, and you can hear it breathing, wet and hoarse.

Why don’t you break and run from this phantom?

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

“Well!” 3V says, cutting through what might have been, in the (flesh-and-blood) hands of a much less capable person, a nightmare of an awkward moment. Her smile’s too self-aware of what’s about to come out of her mouth, and she’s inviting Ferris to laugh along with her, not at her. “I’m afraid that most of what I’ve got to work with is a bit ridiculous. 3V’s silly, sure, but Ms. Valentine isn’t that much better.” A lifetime of getting little chocolate kisses and jokes about how won’t you be my Valentine, and laughing at February every year to avoid cringing at it.

You’ve got to control the moment. You’ve got to project both magnanimity and power, and how better to do that than making them laugh? So what if it’s an audience of one right now? Everybody’s acting, darling. (Daaaaahling.) Because the price of not doing that is being awkward.

The real trick is finding the sincerity, too. You know how many people can’t hack that after mugging for the stream over and over and over again? It’s always got to be the sincerity. And she’s sincere in wanting to make Ferris laugh, a little bit, at ridiculousness and the dumb little dance we hedgehogs have to do.

“You could just use Vesna, but if we go to drinks and first names in fifteen minutes? I’m not that easy, ma’am.” A wink, a sincere grin, a lift of the shot glass and a-down it goes.

And that buys her just enough time to wonder why a woman doing her best to live a life free of the culpability that everybody else buys into would want to talk to her. Friend of a friend situation? Or because she represents the journalists, because she’s the one who was willing to drop everything, leave the keys under the proverbial mat, and climb a mountain just to speak with her? Because it’s very obviously not watching her old streams. Hell, maybe it’s just the novelty of seeing someone who used to be somebody, too, getting involved with the real activists and the shit-kickers.

“What do I want?” 3V muses out loud, once the moment’s passed. “Well! I want to have a good time. Meet interesting people. Make a fuss about things that deserve to be made a fuss about. Sleep at night knowing that I dug my heels in where I should.” That’s still surprisingly tender; she bounces after it with the giddiness of someone playing with a knife against their skin. “I run a little place on Aevum because it’s fun. I could be making a lot more money if I wanted to encourage people to get into a game designed to find people with gambling addictions and fleece them for a bunch of digital pictures, but it wouldn’t be fun. I climbed a mountain today because it was there and people for centuries have thought it was a pretty big deal, so I might as well, right? And I’m going to jazz up what you tell me so that folks who can’t climb mountains or even take enough time off work to come out here can be entertained for a little bit, and feel things for a little bit, and maybe somebody smarter than me will have a realization and realize there’s something that they can do with your way of looking at the world to improve things. I think we owe it to everybody else to make things better, and we owe it to ourselves to chip in, because otherwise the only thing left is deadening the part of you that cares, y’know? I can’t bring down capitalism, and I’m definitely not strong enough to be as hardcore about avoiding consumption as you are, but… like, the alternative is rolling over and ignoring how shit things are for other people and climbing mountains because you can put the pictures online or because it’ll convince you that you deserve your managerial job. When really, the mountain’s here to be really, really human at.”

This time, the tea. Down in one long gulp. Roll the taste around before it’s gone.

“I wish everything worked like that, you know? Just! Everybody rolling out of bed and asking themselves what would be fun to do. And maybe, if we all promised to be cool about things, it’d even work.” Her smile’s tinged with a bit of self-criticism, trying to establish itself before Ferris can express it. “But some people just want to see Number Go Up, or proof that they’re special and don’t have to play by the same rules. Gotta have moderation one way or another…”

Breathless Dead

”No!”

Skotia’s vehemence rings out dangerously in the dark, his fingers curling tight on Bella’s dress. He is firm against Bella’s softness, his muscles taut against her skin. He’s not blushing any more, the way he lit up when accused of talking like a character, a barb that hit squarely and left him acutely embarrassed. No: he burns, but not with embarrassment. With passion. With pain. And with indignation.

“I’m not giving up on you, and she didn’t either,” he says, one arm around her shoulders, forehead resting against her cheek. His breath is only a little ragged. “Isn’t it obvious, Praetor? She wanted to save you. She was stupid and selfish and impulsive, but she left because she thought the whole universe was the only thing big enough to give you, to give her loyal kitten.”

One hand crawls up his neck towards his face, but he almost playfully nuzzles it into Bella’s neck, the way that Redana might have when they were both so small. “Besides. How was she supposed to give that love back, even if she’d been smart enough to see it? Her holos were full of slave-girls and servitors being saved from cruel masters who wanted to force them into bed by the heroes and heroines. How could she have ever touched you and known that it was because you wanted her, not that it was only because she wanted you?” Skotia’s voice isn’t entirely his voice any more; there’s a quality to it, an antique, like listening over long-gone radio waves. It’s not just Skotia talking. “She probably dreamed of you every night. Of how it hurt when you struck her, how she never thought you would; how betrayed you looked, stuffed in that closet, and how much it hurt to leave you behind; that you must have thought her stupid, and that maybe she was. No, that she definitely was. And that you knew it now, too.”

One hand finds hers, wraps around her fingers, holds it close to his throat. Close enough to choke. He simply trusts, despite everything, that she will not. “Because you were always the clever one, Bella. The elegant one. The pretty one. The one who could fill out a dress. Do you think she never compared herself to you? She, small and artless and flat, an athlete who could never live up to her mother’s expectations, living beside someone who effortlessly, seemingly effortlessly, fit into her social role and found happiness in it? She wanted you and she wanted to be you and she wanted to be good for you, and she couldn’t be any of those things, so she ran off to make a universe where maybe she could be. And when I look at you? I can see it, Bella.”

In the dark, his eye gleams for a moment, a sea-blue. In the dark, his lips on her neck are just like the princess’s. In the dark, he smells of cigarette smoke mingled with a familiar cologne. In the dark, he could be her, except that he speaks with a clarity and cleverness that she never had. But he’s just as idealistic, in his own way.

“You deserve the kind of love she couldn’t give you. You deserve the kind of life you could never have at her side. And you deserve love. So, no, my Praetor. Tonight, by the stroke of midnight, you will be reunited with your lover, no matter what it costs Skotia of Paris,” and there, the deep cut, the joking reference to The Golden Apple, to Bella in the garden reading out loud to a princess burying her face in a pillow as her purr accentuated the passion, and there too the martyrdom, the tossing-aside of his own feelings, the same impulse that led to the splitting of pancakes in bed, “or may Aphrodite open my ribs and remove my beating heart for my failure to beauty, love, and truth.”

And he nips at her neck, the hand tossed around her shoulder reaching down to pull her dress to one side, and in the dark it could be Redana, couldn’t it?

“How’s that for a holo, Bella?” And in the dark that could be Redana, too, making a dumb joke that makes those fluffy ears burn and makes fingers want to knead an apron, that send lightning down that perfect spine to the very tip of that white tail.

Sunshards

rosepetal. rosepetal rosepetal rosepetal.

That’s not a name for a warrior monk. That’s not a name for an ancient monster, capable of shattering mountains. That’s the name for Rose. Simple, pretty, and diminutive. rosepetal. Rose’s body is a flurry of lightning from head to toes, flashing up and down her body as her future fills with Chen. And that’s not all that’s full of Chen: her head is full of Chen and that playful, youthful energy, that quality of princesses she found so disagreeable because of how enticing it always was; her eyes are full of Chen, that feline smile, that beautiful round face, those dark bangs, that adorable frilly dress; her mouth is full of the taste of Chen’s breath, her lips, her desire to keep Rose close.

Here, then, Rose fails, as so many monks before her have: seduced away from the highest good by a sublime and private love. Here, then, the Way is once again thwarted by the power of the heart. Here, Rose from the River, who wraps her power right around her and gives the universe her leash, is finally defeated by a princess, and what’s a name but a sign of the heart?

The HUNTER-Class 猎犬.

First of the Radiants.

The Briar Pilgrim.

Dòu-zhànshèng-fó.

Rose from the River.

rosepetal.

Rose.

Rose’s fingers are nimble, and she is still strong; she pulls Cyanis across the grass, works at the knots. But, ah, it’s not that easy, is it? Not with Chen on top of her, touching where she pleases, pinching, kneading, stealing kisses; the fingers fumble as Rose groans and tries to wrap her thighs around Chen, who pushes them aside like two halves of a tree’s trunk. And, ah, here is Chen murmuring into Rose’s neck that Rose must be taking her time on purpose, that she’s got such clever fingers and why isn’t Cyanis untied yet? But every time she says something, the task gets longer and more complex as poor Rose finds things to think about that very much are not the net trapping Cyanis.

But only an ingrate and a very silly fox indeed would complain too loudly. After all, Chen’s the one who’s making Rose let the little fox go, and Chen’s the one who’s doing a very good fox job of filling Rose’s heart with desire. Patience, Cyanis, patience! Every time Rose loses track of the ropes, it’s further proof that you’re about to get away scot-free! And besides, think of this excellent new marketing opportunity! Someone is about to need a new wardrobe with a rosepetal theme, and you can absolutely talk Chen into loaning out her handmaiden to cover the costs!

Not that you would ever take advantage of that to get even with someone who tried to send you to cutie jail, Cyanis, pure and innocent maiden that you are. You definitely would not pounce on an opportunity to tease a big buff girl who used to have power over you, with her girlfriend’s complete permission, it’s just that you have licensing fees to pay and shipping and handling isn’t free and after all that time cooped up in the Sky Kingdom you’ve got to turn around all this unexpected windfall!

The chances of you getting even with Rose definitely are not increasing the longer it takes for her to— she’s a sword sage and a dancer and all that, how did she manage to pull those ropes tighter??

What ends up happening is that Rose finally undoes the net and your bindings with her teeth, with Chen lying on top of her, stroking her cheek with the back of one hand and smiling like a girl who just had all her wishes come true. And when Rose looks back up at Chen? She’s helpless. She’s got it so bad. She can’t even get through the warning without breaking into deep, throaty laughter because Chen’s running one finger down her neck, and here the former Equal of Crowns squirms, drumming her heels on the grass and doing her very best not to buck Chen off.

The second you leave them alone, they’re going to start making out furiously, and they’re definitely going to need some new clothes once they’re done. A smart fox would get on that, chop chop!

[Rose gives into desire. She’s all yours, Chen. <3]

Sunshards

This maneuver has many names: the Elephant and the Mouse, the Corp and the Startup, the Mother and the Girlfriend. Each is, in their own way, the same: a powerful, fearsome force of nature brought down, defeated, by something small and weak. So it is with Rose from the River and Chen, the former finding herself sprawled in the grass, the latter petulant and teasing and possessed of many secret and powerful kisses.

Yes, even though Rose from the River has played with Chen, has made her sing (oh-so-muffled) and has been shown off in front of her, those sorts of kisses are still new and frightening and wonderful. For a moment, this beautiful handmaiden looks up at Chen with the fear of someone who is walking out over the abyss; the fear of someone who doesn’t know where this is going.

But Chen can feel it, can’t she? The powerful thump-a-thump of Rose’s ancient heart, beating so excited, a reassuring counterpoint to that look of helpless awe. And then— ah, there! The once-fierce warrior turns her head and burns with the fire of being cared for.

“I was enjoying the view,” Rose from the River says, almost managing to assert herself in the face of the princess who, by the stars and the shattered suns, cares about her. (Would it be such a bad thing to make the Way wait for her for a few decades? Yes, it would; she must be free, must be its tool, must be an instrument of the common good of everything. But universal eudaimonia seems to fade in the light of Chen, here, hot and vital and full of desire for her.) “How could I not stare? Beauty demands attention: the sunset on the mountains, the breaking of the waves on the shore, the dance of Princess Chen.” And all three are part of this world that she is so, so lucky to be in.

“…you are dangerous, you know,” Rose from the River adds, changing the subject— but only after she has leaned forward and stolen a kiss from Chen. (A traitor’s kiss, a burning sin, so sweet and precious.) “All of you princesses are. You represent the temptation to temporal power and the indulgence of personal aesthetics above the common good, empowered by the Sunshards themselves. Why do you think I have to defeat Princess Qiu and scatter her shards?”

Two hands explore Chen’s lower back, pull her closer, firm and teasing and saying: Princess Chen, I need you. Stay with me. But what Rose from the River says is: “I am a Pilgrim of the Way, princess. I have duties. A fox to see to prison. A universal good to pursue. Do you think I am weak enough to stay just because of a beautiful, clever, brave girl? Do you think I am that easily beguiled?”

But you can feel her underneath you, Chen. You know what she wants you to answer. She wants you to take the responsibility of being strong and helpful and unassailable away from her. She wants to trust you like Jessic trusts Keron; she wants to be a girlfriend rather than a great and terrible monster who can only do good in the world through the monastic life. And if she makes that choice herself, she will think herself selfish and terrible and unworthy of you, and so she is silently pleading with you to tell her that she is weak, easily seduced, and an ordinary girl, one who needs a princess to look after her and keep her safe.

Rose from the River is spending a String on you, Chen. If you immediately do something to claim Rose from the River as yours and validate her desire to be a handmaiden, take an XP and Entice her hard.

Of course, you don’t have to. You can choose to be offended by the fact that Rose from the River is looking for an excuse to choose you, rather than making a grand proclamation of how much more you mean to her. You can be hurt, even, that after all you went through at the Sky Castle, that she’s still struggling with how much she wants you but feels she can’t just decide to be with you, that turning her back on the Way out of caprice would be a failure state for her as a person.

But she could be yours. All yours. All you have to do is accept what she’s telling you with her body, to play along with the stories she tells herself in order to make sense of herself as a person, to lean into the Monastic Erotica genre and tell the blushing, helpless monk that she is doomed to be a simple handmaiden for the princess she’s falling so, so hard for. Just do that and she’s yours, Chen.

You could even make her let Cyanis go, just to rub in how you’re making her choose you and to reward a good girl for helping Hyra, and it would turn Rose from the River on so hard. While we’re sharing.

Breathless Dead

I’ve got a friend here too that makes me feel the same way.

Thank Nyx herself that the passage is too dark to allow the look of Tragic Heroism that works its way across Skotia’s face to be noticed. How his eyes fluttering shut might be mistaken for exhaustion or a flinch at his injury being jostled. No, it makes sense. Whatever he might have been thinking, whatever is passing between the two of them here, it’s for her sake. It’s an apology. It’s not for him.

He must make things right before the end of the night; he has to carve this love into the very stones of Salib, in honor of Hera and Aphrodite. Only once he’s fixed what Redana broke by running, only once Bella gets her happily ever after, does he get to rest. And he won’t do it next to Bella. That’s not part of his story. You don’t get a gift-wrapped servitor as a reward for making things right.

“My Praetor,” he says, bleeding from a far more grievous wound with a brave face and only the thinnest strain in his voice, “I have always and ever been a slave to true love. I swear by my name that you will be reunited with the Ikarani. It is the least I can do as a pet— but you will need your hound.”

There’s a firmness there. The kind that Bella would use to tell the Ikarani she would be needed in turn. “There is someone here who will kill you if she gets her hands on you. She is not permitted to kill me. You might not like your pet saving you, but I am not going to let you die tonight. It’s the least I can do, my Praetor…”

Carried as he is, he can trace the scars of the whip on her back, long-faded but still there. The punishment for the failures of a princess. Each and every one deserved to be taken in turn. “You have been punished for someone else’s sake before,” he dares. “Let me protect you this time. I can take it.”

His side hurts. It hurts like nothing else has ever dared to hurt him. But he only has to stand up under it tonight. If he fails here, he will carry that failure for the rest of his life. That is why he throws himself here before her, tells her to use him as a shield. It’s the only way he can make things right.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Princess Ven of Snapdragon, Prince of the Brass City.

Everything is fucked.

The low-class bitch, that smarmy little cow? Gone, and Azazuka— intended as another of your suborned vassals— gone with her. Failure upon failure from the Laema. What you did to her and her useless demons— banishment into the Mirror-Forest— is justified. Let them wander lost and confused, let their own reflections trap them in the branches to take over their lives. If they get out, and if they are the same demons who you cast into the forest, well, it won’t be for some time. And you need time. You have to have time.

The rain has relented for a moment, but the air is thick as water all the same, and it’s clear that the wind-gods are heaping the clouds up higher and higher. Tonight, there will be a storm, one to break bridges and wash away roads. Here you stand, staring out at the growing dark, running the same circles in your head over and over and over.

Your fortress is exposed now. Ultimately, it’s an appropriate trade. You have your bargaining chit, after all, a treasure worth more than all of Kingeater Castle. It’s just that your mentors wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t be able to take an appropriately long view of the situation, would demand her be handed over instead of exploited properly. But you’ll have time, and you’ll have your leverage, and you’ll have someplace better. It won’t matter that this castle is perfect for your work; you’ll have Lotus of Tranquil Waters to hand, and her mother to control.

…you just need to make that decision of where to go. To have the Maker of Images finish your proof that you hold Lotus. To tie up the loose ends. You’re almost done with this place, and then you can abandon it. Or, even better, you can make it a trap. Let the Sapphire Mother throw some brave knights at this place, let her send them to their doom.

You just need time.

In for a leaf, in for a tree.

***

Kalaya and Fengye!

You can see it now.

It’s a low, humped shape, black against the dark clouds: Kingeater Castle. An ancient and accursed ruin, intimately connected with dark cults of the Broken King. Thunder rumbles, ominously close, and the air all about is suffocatingly thick. The stars are not visible behind the black and roiling clouds, which threaten at any moment to unleash a storm that will make the afternoon’s deluge look like a pleasant sprinkle.

The two of you are now officially close enough to be in need of a plan, and hurry: it’s almost night, and you definitely don’t want to be out here after sunset. It will be much more difficult to avoid snakes then.

***

Uusha’s Funtime Gang!

“Tell us more about the defenses,” Uusha commands. Not that you’re in the inn any more, oh no. As soon as the rain started to relent, she gathered the lot of you and told you that everyone was going to the Castle: Piripiri, Azazuka, Giriel, Han and even the fidgety priestess. And, huh, what do you know, when Uusha decides something, somehow that’s how things end up. So here you are, the six of you, surrounded by Uusha’s Hard-Ass Retinue of scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells, pushing hard into the jungle.

Torches are lit and carried all around you by said scoundrels as night begins to fall; despite the danger to you all, Uusha intends to risk marching through the jungle at night in order to find the Castle. (Not that it’s easy; it would take a miracle to just stumble across it, and even Piripiri’s directions will only give you a chance of finding it in the thick tangle.)

“What are we likely to find when we march through that empty gate, cosmopolitan?”

She’s got you going hard, and somehow she’s the one that’s still not out of breath. You might need to take a moment to catch your breath to answer, Piripiri; Azazuka is doing her best not to complain, but she’s flagging, and Victorious Vixen of Violets has somehow talked a burly half-N’yari girl into carrying her.

Giriel: something is wrong. All of the little gods and spirits are hiding or absent. In their absence, the growing twilight is more and more oppressive; sounds don’t travel like they should, and there’s a bleakness to the jungle that even Uusha’s scoundrels are picking up on. They’re scared of something.

Oh, and Han? This is great. Uusha didn’t try to posture, she just gave you a wry smile and said she’d be happy to join in (in a low and slightly scratchy voice that suggested she actually was interested in seeing your attempt at doing just that), and now here you are, surrounded by a bunch of badass punks. With tattoos! And all of them seem quite happy to show off how much stamina they’ve got as they keep up with you! This is a crew that could take on demons or N’yari and they’re all the groupies of a woman who took you seriously and didn’t try to tame you.

You should be listening to Piripiri, but, uh, Crazy Daveen just asked you what the heaviest thing you’ve ever lifted was, because he once picked up an entire bull, complete with saddlebags full of goods from Gem, and you definitely can’t beat that. And now everybody (who isn’t listening to the tactical talk, and who includes that priestess tagging along) is looking to you for an answer!

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

“Of course! If I didn’t want to come out for a lecture, why would I come all the way up here? Although…” 3V drums on the arm of her chair, lost in a moment of consideration. “That’s not all I’m looking for. After all, complaints about the world are a dime a dozen. There’s plenty to criticize, and, hell, the newspaper seems to be in the business of finding more things and digging them up, exposing them to the light, riding a wave of other people’s fury, helpless as our own, on the hopes that maybe we’ll lift it up to the feet of someone who can actually do something about it.”

A sip is taken: the espresso first, a jolt of stimulants to the system. “But you’ve been through all this already. You’ve seen some of what works and what doesn’t. You might even have some answers. Not, mind you, that I’m assuming you know how we can unfuck things, otherwise you’d probably have done it yourself, but— well, if you’re trying to make yourself heard, I’d love to hear some of your experience and not just, agh, you idiots, watch out, who’s driving this thing?!

“Or you could, you know, just tell us what we’re about to crash into. *Reclusive Scientist Predicts Social Collapse! If We Don’t Stop, The Consequences Could Be Severe,*” 3V says, with a flourish and a grin that’s really an attempt to gauge approval.