Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

Dolce!

It’s a surprise when you almost literally run into her, because there she is: fist raised, about to knock, and how she reacts to you! It’s one you’re familiar with: the way her eyes go wide and her mouth goes thin, the way she freezes up and goes stock-still before awkwardly shuffling backwards a half-step; the way her eyes light from you like they were burned.

She’s been a bad girl, and she’s scared of you. You! She’s trying very hard to be tense and firm and unbreaking so she doesn’t start crying. Even odds that she’ll just start bawling in the middle of trying to speak. It took all of her courage just to be here, in front of your cabin, saving you the trouble of going to seek her out.

“Sir,” Redana says, and spreads her feet like a sailor, staring determinedly at a point somewhere past your shoulder. “I am here to tender my resignation from the post of ship’s champion, sir. As a result of my behavior in said post. Sir.” She’s on the thin ice, waiting for the crack, waiting for a rebuke.

From you, of all people. Just because she was so worked up, she thought her options were to kill you or to stop existing. Because she was upset about Bella.

***

Vasilia!

“vaaaaaassssssiiiiiLLLYYYYYY—“

There’s nowhere to escape from being tackled into a hug by Redana moving at high speeds. Not unless you were to turn and run away, but you don’t do that, do you? Not to the princess.

“I saw the whole thing!” She blurts out, hugging you like she’s trying to snap you in half, face half-buried in you. “You, and Bella, and the tree, and the knife, and the bed, and—!!” She shakes the hug from side to side, which shakes you from side to side, and then she looks up with those big, tearful mismatched eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell me? All I heard about that day on Ridenki was that you had a fight, and of course you had a fight, Bella was being beastly, but I didn’t, and you wouldn’t have even been there if she didn’t want to do it to me, and I just— you know how to do ships and I don’t, and you’re so cool all the time, and, I’m sorry for not finding out earlier!”

She’s making a scene about, well, that, and her voice is carrying, and if you don’t reroute her somehow there’s going to be rumors. Well, more rumors.

***

Alexa!

The letter you receive back is short, and wrapped in a thick black cloth. When unwrapped, it simply states, in Redana’s hurried cursive, with as many swoops as Ti-jm’s hand but at much higher speed:

Why don’t I just order you not to follow any of his orders?

I know it would put a lot of pressure on my command seal, maybe even burn it off, but if I can use it for that then good. I don’t want it anymore.

I don’t want to overthrow or kill him. You know me. I hate killing people! I just want him to leave you the fuc depths alone! So let’s just figure out a way that you can spend the rest of your life away from him!!

Or I could just change my name to Molech and trick you into thinking I’m him, and take back all “”my”” orders in order?

Ti-jm has BEAUTIFUL handwriting and I am very jealous, please tell her how pretty it is!

- Your Friend(?), Redana

P.S. if it’s on sight, maybe the blindfold will work? I miss you already!

Sunshards

You’re the first person, Chen. Did you know that? Of course, you got here out of luck; if Yue was here, you would have been beaten to it! Nothing can stop that girl from giving hugs to big scary monsters so that they’ll stop being so scary. But you’re here and she isn’t, and you’ve got a different reason to look at her when she’s at her most monstrous, a thing of thorns and scales and power and fury, and still choose her, still try to hold her, still refuse to give her up: it’s because you love her.

So Rose bellows through a mouthful of teeth that could take your arm off, and she lashes out with her sword in a way that means you can feel her muscles rippling beneath you, like a bed of snakes, but she doesn’t reach up with her claws, and instead your words trickle into her like water reaching the roots of a flower, and she drinks, because that is her nature. She is a thing of flowering wood, here and now, growing and learning, pliant and yearning.

The heart is a flowering rose,
its roots spread wide and thirsting.
Good counsel will see it bloom;
a cruel word, see it die.

Her transformation is slow. It always has been. She doesn’t just let all the thorns zip back into her, she doesn’t suddenly shrink and pop into your arms all smooth and soft and pretty again. The thorns sink slowly, becoming nubs, then simple patterns on her skin; she diminishes with a creaking like a tree in the wind, and her steps become slow and clumsy. Then she topples, felled, onto her knees.

Her hands slowly reach up and hold you close, her sword again forgotten. She lowers her head, breathes in deeply, shudders. Her face is wet.

“I’m here,” she says. Then she says it again, loud enough to be heard. “I’m here.” Her fingers stroke the back of your head. She shudders again. “I’m here. You’re here. You won’t let me hurt anyone.” Her nails scrape the back of your scalp, almost possessively.

Then she hesitates. She is underneath the gaze of the Pyre of Inspiration. This is not the time for words she does not mean. Her other hand drifts along your ruined, bramble-torn dress; a host of regrets and sins roar in the back of her head. Then you hiccup. She blinks back tears and finds herself smiling through dry lips, undone utterly.

“…I love you, Chen.” Rose says. “You didn’t run away.” Not from the skill and power of the Thorn Pilgrim. Not from the sensual promises of Rose. Not from Rose from the River in all her pain and fury. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

She finally looks up, meets the eyes of Scales of Meaning and the Pyre of Inspiration, holds you closer. And there’s both embarrassment and resolve in those golden eyes, isn’t there? Rose from the River, being saved by her hiccuping, clinging girlfriend; changing from a monster of ancient wrath that could challenge the Pyre to a very disheveled little concubine, hugging you close with all four of her arms. Go on, those eyes say. I know you could make fun of me forever, but touch one hair on her head and I’ll show you.

She’s so serious, she’s not even squirming thinking about all the ways Scales of Meaning could cash in her remaining service time with a silly little princess and a mostly-naked monk. Usually that would wreck her, imagining being forced to tie you up oh so apologetically, kissing you tenderly before silencing you and then being tied up with you before the throne of the Pyre. But you’re here and you’re saving her, and she’s here and she’s protecting you, and that means so much more to her. Because you came back, Chen. You saved her. For the first time, you came back.

When she exhales, she breathes out smog and acid smoke and burning batteries. When she exhales, she breathes out hate, and shivers as if suddenly cold under your hands, and you squeeze her tighter until she feels like she could burst like fireworks forever across the sky, lights gleaming off the Sunshards.

And that’s how she knows, isn’t it?

[Rose chooses to open up to Chen, the best girlfriend in the whole wide world (sorry, Hyra). She clears ANGRY and receives an insight.]

Sunshards

Rose crumples into a shuddering heap of torn silk, the Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade clattering to the ground, forgotten. The world around her fades away as her blood boils from within, scorches her veins, her teeth lengthening, the slit of her eyes widening until it swallows everything, as she sees the parade. Not that of the Pyre of Meaning, not this time.

First comes King Oja, borne on a motorized throne, his mask hanging to his knees. His dark hands are speckled with age— no, they are thin claws beneath his gloves, folded on his lap. Tear him open and you could sort the few remnants of what he was born with out from the replacements, organs born from the same nano-alchemy that created Rose. (Rose tears a gouge into the ground, blind.) So fragile. So vulnerable. Dragon curled on his hoard of numbers and papers and dirty little secrets, leaning on his cane, his face small and pinched when his attendants lift the mask from his face, his white curls cut close to the head. So many enemies! Anarchists, communists, union organizers! Abolitionists, activists, assassins! Kill him and his dead man’s switch goes off; kill him and the other kings tear themselves apart over the secrets poured out of his hoard.

It— no, she, she meant to scare him. She’d meant to show him that nowhere was safe. She’d meant all kinds of things. When she stood beside him wearing a mask beneath her mask, helped him with the buttons he could no longer undo, she told herself that she would force him to rescind his orders to hunt her and harry her, would make him understand that if she wanted him dead he would be dead, only too late to realize that it was what she wanted, now that she stood in front of the man who had commissioned her, the man who had used her as his hunting-hound, the man who wanted her to stay a pliable animal without volition, taking on shapes and identities pressed into her like a mold, a monster in the dark that would never turn on her handlers.

He had been paper-thin under her claws, her drooling jaws; he had choked on the scream, and when his bodyguards broke the door open they found her there, as his hoard of secrets poured out electronically, if you are receiving this message—, and she should have been covered in his blood, drenched in it, but there wasn’t enough, he was so dry, like biting through a wasp’s nest, and she licked it from her lips as she stood before them and flexed her claws. (Her eyes dart from side to side, but they are all black, impossible for even the Scales to read.)

With Oja come the Burrowers, with their riot shields and their pristine labcoats, with their designer drugs and their loan collections, with their memetic jingles and their sonic dispersal units, with their sweatshop heels and their steel-tipped boots, and with them the prison laborers, shaved and barcoded and muzzled, staring hatefully at her, betrayer, skinthief, tool, stealer of kisses in nightclubs, the king’s relentless hound, hated by those she’d never saved.

Then, the Eight Trigrams Coffin. Huge, its energy flows aligned to ground and dissipate anything that could rouse her to wakefulness, its mouth open and empty and hungry. And riding inside of it, hair flowing down her bare shoulders: Yin. The Radiant Knights carry it on their shoulders, just like they carried it into Yin’s armory, a weapon— but not for such a well-behaved knight, never again, don’t you worry, First. But she never destroyed it. Never let First destroy it. Too useful.

The spotlights are all on Yin as she stares at Rose and purses her lips. Then, she says: “Fine. Be a girl if you want, First. But be my girl.” (“That’s not my name,” Rose drools through her fangs.) “All this nonsense about the monks of the Way— you don’t know what you’re talking about. You need me to explain. Don’t you get I’m doing you a favor? Don’t you remember who pulled you out of here? Do you want me to put you back?”

(After she’d snapped it, one hand on First’s chest, teeth bared, the look on First’s face had jarred her back to shame. She’d teared up before he could, every part of him frozen and screaming as she bawled and asked why he’d made her say something that awful. This Yin does not.)

Behind Yin looms an allegory in the form of a space elevator. Do you know how to escape from orbit, Rose from the River? Unburdened. You must shed everything that weighs you down; you must be content to serve everyone with your strength, to surrender all the things that bring misery through desire: possessive love most of all. You must be free to walk away and leave everything behind if you are to play your part in bringing about universal happiness, whether that be the joy of fighting or the collar of a princess. You must turn yourself into a mirror that reflects the world for a time and then is gone, like the rose that grows from the mud of the river, swept away on the current, rootless, unwilting, glimpsed by many to their delight, never selfishly held.

Because you are a monster, Rose from the River. And the only way for a monster to be a good girl is to learn the Way, give up its selfish desires, and work towards the happiness of everyone without complaint. But you failed, Rose from the River. You have let yourself be bogged down. You compromise because you cannot overcome your desire to be beloved. (“I want to be loved,” Rose admits, small, broken. “please. let me be hers. just for a little while. let me be small and helpless and loved. she knows what I am and she loves me anyway, can’t I have this, please?”)

Once there was a king who gave stock options to three vassals. (“no. stop. please.”) And one used them as collateral to get an interdepartmental loan, and enriched his corporation thereby, and was promoted to manager. And one cashed them in in order to buy a better class of consumer goods, and through this proved the largesse of his king, and was promoted to assistant manager. And the third clung selfishly to them in fear of poverty, not trusting in her king’s largesse, and when the time came to account for them, she was found to Not Meet Expectations and had the stock options and her annual bonus revoked.

What will you do with your strength, Rose from the River? Will you hoard it and refuse to use it simply because pretending to be weak makes you wet? Or will you act under the direction of universal eudaimonia? Will you reach paradise through violence?

…

Scales of Meaning makes the mistake of coming too close, and Rose from the River is a sudden blur, and the sword in her hands protests as she twists it into its blade again. She is sobbing, fighting blind, lashing out at the world that she is unworthy of, that demands so much of her to be a good person.

She came so close. But Rose needs help. She can’t fight this battle alone. Which is to say, she shouldn’t; she can defeat the Scales of Meaning, she can overthrow the Pyre, but like this? Her skin like scales, her eyes dark, her hair lashing and digging at the ground, tears falling from her chin, veil dangling from one ear, clothes sloughing off of her as she becomes more serpentine, more thorned, more a monster to rival the Pyre herself? No. Please, no.

Only two ribbons hold her above an abyss. Imagine them: a pale blue-white ribbon, the lace digging into her wrist, soft and insistent and holding all of her weight, and braided around it, a simple brown ribbon, as a country girl might use to tie up her curls.

[Rose hits a 12 to Fight against the Scales of Meaning: inflicting a condition, stealing a String (perhaps because she can tell Rose is barely holding herself back), and opening an opportunity for aid once again.]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

The problem is that the human body learns early that you have a regular bed. It is easily lulled to sleep by familiarity; give it the same pop singles it knows and loves (Those Firm Pillows, That Creak In The Frame, That Total Lack Of Ambient Light) and it’s out like a light. But oho. Ohoho. You take those things away? Then it reverts back to its oldest script: Wake Up Every Three Hours To Make Sure You Are Not Going To Be Eaten By A Lion. Presumably, lions only attack during the fourth consecutive hour. Catch them with a stopwatch and a pair of binoculars out in the brush, waiting for that fatal mistake.

3V is doing just fine meandering around on the porch a full eighteen fucking minutes before her alarm is set to go off thank you so fucking much for asking. This is great! This is great. Nature. Wow. There’s so much of it. And so much to look at!

She has earbuds in within four minutes.

Nature is great! Nature is nice. Nature is very big, and if she wasn’t worried it would look like she’s trying to make a run for it, she’d go on a walk. (In fact, she does so anyway, but just within sight of the house, hands in her pockets, melodrama pop blaring in her ears, eyes fluttering closed of their own accord.) But nature doesn’t have any meaning signifiers. Humans? They’re all over cramming those things in basically anywhere they can. Take a walk through Aevum and see the change in meaning from neighborhood to neighborhood. Places where you’re not allowed to go inside, and places that are begging you to come inside (just like— ahem.); places that have been manufactured for the perfect view, and places that just stumbled upon them if you know where to look; places that have stuck to their original design and places that have had the stamp of living change them and places that say Excuse Our Mess, Safety Is Everyone’s Priority; places that everyone knows is a great time and places that you have to find for yourself and places where you can pull off the road and take your helmet off and think while you watch traffic go by and places where you can get the perfect Hawaiian-Japanese combo breakfast.

This is beautiful, but part of 3V is already itching, saying: go, go, go. You’re a creature of the city trying to cram the majesty of nature into your skull, and you want to be meandering around Aphrodite and finding new places to snack before you retire back to Gensoukyo and sprawl in one of the booths with coffee and biscuits and wifi.

She’ll be fine after breakfast, though. That’ll weigh her down enough that she’s not quite so antsy.

What’s on the news, though, when she finally pulls the phone back out and demands service and glacial loading of pictures? What’s trending? Who’s the Main Character of the day?

***

3V doesn’t spit her drink out. (Well timed, Yellow. And good distraction; 3V was starting to get jittery over the implications of what you were telling her, drumming fingers on the table as fast as if she were executing a macro.) She makes a little “hrk” sound as she tightens up, though. Immediate… discomfort? Shyness? Panic?

She sets the coffee back down, neatly, hand not shaking at all. (Another benefit of the hands. You could do surgery with the things, provided it was an emergency and you were being coached by a professional and you held the manufacturers free of any liability for the results.) “Now, when you say we,” she says, playful, making herself look Yellow in the eye before glancing away, “do you mean womano-a-womano, or do you mean all of November? If it’s the former, I think the rest of you might get… jealous~ If it’s the latter, though, I might not be able to keep up with the need to prove I’m Player 1 with all of you. I might be The Best, but even BigWinShot only did his 48-hour marathon of wins the one time.”

Does she entirely know what she’s doing? What she wants? She fends you off and then beckons you forward, unable to hide her reflexes but with a face so coy that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

Breathless Dead

In the stories, heroes are always doing things in a swoon. It’s a lot less fun when it’s happening to you. And this time, there’s not even the blessing of Dionysus to make everything vivid, important, or comfortably blurred.

She keeps losing herself in the dark. The journey through the Anemoi is fragmented, like the broken mirrors; suddenly she will see a lantern, and be struck by the knowledge that she cannot remember what she has done since the last light she saw, only that she has been moving forwards, forwards, forwards. Then she moves past the light, drawn on by that faint scent, and the dark rushes in to drown her again. In the dark, she is numb. In the dark, she is the aching, and the aching cannot hurt, it only is.

And then she is by the bed.

She sits down and stops moving. And now that she’s stopped, she can’t start moving again; and now that she’s stopped, she can hurt again. And the shape of the hurt is Redana, but it is also Bella in the arms of an insect, and it is also the scar torn across a galaxy, the list of names, the lights going out one by one, the dark pouring into the absence, and the light pouring into the dark, searing pink forever and ever.

She doesn’t find the film reel. Not at first. She lays herself down on the bed and she wraps her arms around a pillow and she buries her face in its softness and she breathes in deep until her whole head is full of the roses and the soap and the sweat and she convulses there without tears until she drowns in the dark and sinks deeper, deeper, and deeper still. She does not dream.

When she wakes, she doesn’t stir. Not yet. She clings to the pillow in misery and shame at her weakness. Bella may have held Skotos in her arms, but her touch lingers on Redana: her chin and her ear and her thigh, dirty, sullied. Like father, like daughter[1]! Give her a mask, let her think there won’t be consequences, and what does she do? She drools all over the forbidden fruit of her childhood, tries to trick her into bed, because that’s the only way Bella would ever share herself with her hated owner now.

In her mind’s eye, she sees Bella on Barassidar, sneering, furious. That’s what she’s earned. That’s all she deserves. And Bella gave her heart to someone else, someone who could be honest with her, someone who isn’t a greedy little slut. Redana grinds herself against the pillow despite herself and lets out a sound like a dying animal, gripping the pillow tighter so that her treacherous fingers do not defile Bella’s bed further.

The Redana who eventually sits up and sees the film reel waiting for her is a miserable little creature, stewing in how much she misses someone she doesn’t deserve, hiding in that pain to stave off the deep, crushing sorrow that laps at her ankles, vast enough to drown a god. If she tries to think about it, if she tries to think about her mother (and how silly old Iskarot was correct the whole time) she will be pulled back under. So she clings to the reef of Bella to stop herself from drowning, though it cuts her like a knife.

When she takes a seat on the bed by the note, she pulls her legs up to her chest and stares, flatly, at the opposite wall as it turns from monochrome to polychrome. And when Bella lights up the screen, Dany lets out a miserable groan and pulls herself tighter into herself, peeking up over her knees at the larger-than-life Servitor. And the first recording is easy enough to discount as performance. A fake smile plastered on with the makeup, a new dress for playing with her detested owner; nothing more.

But it’s the second that starts to prise her out of that shell of misery. The indignation of hearing what Bella really thought of Batrachomyomachia Untold! It’s compelling, Bella, and you said you liked them! And that’s enough real feeling that when Bella freaks out over Zahar, Redana lets out a croaky little laugh. There she is. The prissy, easily scandalized Bella who sometimes snuck out from behind that cheerful professionalism. The one that Mynx loved drawing out just to entertain her.

Which means that expression of longing and nostalgia while Bella holds Cloudcuckooland in her hands slips between Redana’s ribs and spreads like venom, until her throat closes up and her eyes are hot. Because Bella’s not acting, and Dany doesn’t know what that means.

So she keeps watching. She watches Bella at prayer for the first time, guilt crawling up her spine over the intrusion into Bella’s privacy; she watches Bella treat a mouse with the same incredible confidence and gentleness that she treated Skotos with, and her heart strains against her ribs; and she watches Bella, more disheveled than she’s ever been in Redana’s life, sing herself to sleep.

And by the third verse, Redana is croaking, trying to sing along, her eyes stinging and her cheeks wet, as if Bella could hear her. The thought occurs to her: she could steal this, cut it out. Put it on a loop. Make Bella sing that perfect song that means home over and over again. And she shouldn’t. But she could. She could keep this even when Bella goes off with her Beautiful, a memento of the way things used to be, a secret meant for her and only her.

Then the horror of— whatever it was. Vasilia. The tree-man. Violence. But violence like the violence against the snake-lady. Violence against a monster. Violence that Bella wields like a knife. She doesn’t understand what she’s seeing. She doesn’t want to understand. But every move Bella makes makes her more ashamed of lecturing her on the Eater of Worlds, back when she was horrified by the death of a monster, back when she thought Bella was tainting herself with the kill, ruining something innocent and perfect and precious, ruining the girl at the beginning of the reel. But that was the mask, wasn’t it, Bella?

You were always ready to kill if it meant protecting someone else. Your princess. Your pet. Your Beautiful. Never for your own sake.

When the reel runs out, Redana sits there and doesn’t move, and doesn’t speak, and doesn’t cry. And she does this for a long, long time. The lights overhead are relentlessly soft; the ship groans as tension presses somewhere in its ribs. And that is really all there is to see.

***

[1]: Diana’s shape and habit strait she took,
but soften’d her brows, smooth’d her awful look,
and mildly in the hunter’s accent spoke:
“How fares my girl? How went the morning chase?”
To whom Callisto, starting from the grass:
“All hail, dear Diana, whom I prefer
to Jove herself, tho’ Jove were here!”
The God was nearer than was thought, and heard
well-pleas’d herself before herself preferr’d.
Jove then salutes her with a warm embrace;
and, ere she half had told the morning chase,
with love enflame’d, and eager on her bliss,
smother’d her words, and gagg’d her with a kiss.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Ven!

Your masters cannot exist in the world.

If the General attempted to march out in his glory into the Flower Kingdoms, the world would reject him utterly. This is the secret of demonology, the reason that the great lords and ladies of Hell need you. Even a pact would not suffice for someone as great as he; the earth would burn him, the air deny him, the flows of essence divert themselves around him, and when he fell not even the mushroom would eat his wretched body. This is what it means to be a splinter of the Broken King. It means you can never go back. It means that your entire war is meaningless, but you’ll never admit it.

But Kingeater Castle is a place where the world bleeds into Hell. It does not play by the same rules. You knew that when you took possession of it; it meant that you were at the peak of your power here, that you could call upon your masters’ legions and servants almost effortlessly.

But it also means that the General (why did the bitter old bastard choose now? why now?) can act here more directly. And he chooses to ruin everything.

He takes Kingeater Castle by its foundations, by its walls and its parapets and its angles, and he pulls.

The sound of an entire castle being pulled into Hell is indescribable. If you were forced, you would say it was wet. Uncomfortably wet, hideously grating, and loud enough to make your ears ring—

And it collapses all around you. You are swept on a wave of broken violence and the trash of death as towers crumble into the Wrack-waste, as your schemes crumble because of a monster with the patience of a child.

And he’ll blame you for making him lash out. He’ll subject you to court-martial and punishment. You’ll have to hope that the Green Sun and Whirling-in-Rags care to save you from the same fate as all the priestesses you sent here, buried under the waste in their cells.

A wave crests and sends you tumbling, tumbling, back down into Kalaya’s arms; you painfully end up in a trough in the sea, pinned underneath her, and she’s staring down at you, you, you warlock.

Your eyes are hot pinpricks of pain.

“Get! Off! Me!” You scream at her, even as the sea writhes beneath you, tries to pull you under; one of your feet is already caught under the crush. “You— you stupid bitch!”

Why does she have to see you like this? Why couldn’t she just leave you alone? Why are you crying? Why do you hurt? Why do you hurt? Why do you hurt?

You dig your nails into her arm, because you are sinking. You dig your nails into her arm, because you hate her. You dig your nails into her arm, because she’s in your way. You dig your nails into her arm, because she won’t let go of you.

***

Han!

Melody screams.

It’s the kind of high terror that you’ve never heard from her before, and hopefully never will again. She screams as she runs, stumbling, frantic, across the thrashing waves of a sea of trash, trying not to be crushed by falling stone. And behind her, the ugliest demon you’ve ever seen swings its attention over to her.

It’s the biggest fucking thing you’ve ever seen in your life, like a millipede that chews its way through mountains, draped in a patchwork soldier’s regalia with a thousand sleeves. It wears a serene white mask even larger than you, and thick hairy insect mouth parts are thrashing, just visible beneath it as he bellows in a chorus of voices: “Traitor! Collaborator! Revolutionary! Blasphemer!”

A blue rope lashes out and catches Melody around her chest, knocking her on her cute little butt, and it begins dragging her back towards it over that terrible sea, tearing her blue silks as she sobs in terror.

And you, in the air, in your element: you are resplendent. You do not know that it is impossible to win a battle against such a foe; and therefore, for you and you alone, it might not be.

***

Piripiri!

Uusha is a whirlwind of violence.

All around you, on this sea which threatens to drag you under if you stay still, Wrack-dolls are bursting forth from the waves, shambling towards you, and all around you they find themselves flung aside, arms ruptured, legs severed. In one hand she has her great double-ended spear, which she treats as if it were as light as a ribboned wand; how strong she must be, how capable. In her other she has your umbrella, which she uses to fend off grasping hands with sickening cracks of their, for lack of a better term, exoskeletons. It is possible she could fight any of your teachers to a standstill; it is even possible that she could overcome them.

This is very important, because it means you have your hands free to catch the snake falling from the sky: the daughter of the Laema, thrashing helplessly in her bondage, landing perfectly in your arms. Her hair clings to her skull, her scales slick and her chest heaving, as she looks around with panic and confusion. Apparently she wasn’t found after your escape. How lucky for her that the ropes suspending her were severed in the fall and she’s not being dragged down to the bottom of the waste!

…you could easily hide that you collaborated with a demon to escape, you know. If you dropped her and let the Wrack-waste swallow her. There will be awkward questions from everyone: the witch, Uusha, Azazuka. And you don’t even know her name.

The demoness, daughter of a power of Hell, born into a world that has no love for mortal kind, shivers just like a human in your arms, and nuzzles into you instinctively, like a submissive looking for reassurance from her mistress.

***

Giriel!

“GRAAAAAAAAAAH!”

The noble girl breaks an already broken spear over the head of a Wrack-doll, sending it tumbling down a wave, but then the equal and opposite resistance sends her stumbling back, landing on her rump by your feet, and there’s still more wading through the Waste towards you.

Well, here you are. Again. But this time, it’s in the flesh, which makes everything so much more dangerous. You didn’t have to worry about keeping your weight fleeting on the surface of this rubbish heap, or dodging falling rubble, or dealing with an army of angry dolls who want to drag you down beneath the waves.

And you could run, you could dance your way across the silver waste for five days and find yourself back home, but Uusha and the Hymairean are nowhere to be seen in the chaos. This is the worst of your challenges yet: do you have the strength to face it?

***

Fengye!

You can see it all, even as the demon horse bucks beneath you, torn between its rider and the whistle of its owner, who will come to find the horse if it tarries. You can see the dragon, curling on herself in the sky; you can see the priestess, who panicked and ran when the sky opened up and began to rain down stone, now caught by the General; you can see the knight and the warlock, beginning to sink beneath the Wrack-waste; you can see others, too, catching snakes from the sky and fighting off the Wrack-dolls and dodging collapsing towers.

You have the view of a commander, and you have the scepter. You may, in your role as the General’s aide-de-camp, give any order and it will be carried out by his host, so long as he does not countermand it. All the authority of the General is in your hands, so long as his suspicion is not aroused, and all power save that necessary to stop someone from being crushed by a collapsing castle turned inside-out.

What do you do, Fengye, in this fleeting moment of power?

Sunshards

The Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade flashes into Rose’s hands, but it does not become a sword. Instead it is a long, pale staff, a tool first of defense. And this is how Rose fights: with a swirl of her hips and a spin of the staff, fending off the hurricane with stave-butt and footwork, yielding ground.

It would be easier if she met power with power. All of these perilous blades, torn aside, scattered to form a wasteland around the two of them. It would be easy to redirect every one of them into the earth, to dig long scores through the streets of Ys, to disarm the Secrets of the Stance decisively. But that’s not how our dear Rosebud fights.

The storm is all around her and she diverts it only slightly, like a spur jutting from the surface of a stream; the storm is contained about her, and the space of safety grows claustrophobic and tight, inconstant and flickering. She sways reedlike, becomes the water that trickles through the gaps, silver staff flashing beneath her dark fingers. But she can’t do anything more, or won’t do anything more. She remains passive, acted upon, like water, which molds itself into new shapes.

“Love is nowhere it is sought,” Rose murmurs, her voice as delicate as a hope, her breath only faintly stirring her veil. “Dig up the mountains, dive in the rivers, count through a hoard, but you will not find so much as a speck of love. It cannot be bought or sold, has no mass or volume, and defies the one who goes looking.”

Yin, her face lighting up as he makes adjustments, as he sharpens his cheeks and lids his eyes, as he makes his hair as fair as gold. Yin, snapping at him, furious that he would dare to pick her up, bring her in for the kiss he thought she wanted— but only on her terms, with her dignity, at her time.

A sword flickers through her silk, kissing her side with that wicked edge, and the noise that is squeezed out of her is one that she learned from Yue. The space grows tighter all around her; she is backed up to the very throne of the Pyre. She wriggles like a maiden trapped as silk is slashed, ties undone, her top giving way on one shoulder. But that’s enough to distract the Secrets of the Stance for a moment, just a moment, unable to tear her eyes away from the firm muscle and the softness revealed by her plunging top.

And the Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade raps her knuckles hard enough to make even her, the wrath and rage of a demon queen, hiss through her teeth. And Rose twirls, her slashed belt trailing like a tail, and hems in the Secrets of the Stance with one, two, three— now those black blades are trying to knock that shivering sliver of moonlight aside, keep Rose from driving it somewhere soft.

“It comes like catastrophe out of clear skies; it tumbles to your feet in a flutter of scarf and silk. It disarms you, blade by blade, until you are helpless.” Clack! Crack! Clang! Two swords bounce where they hit the ground. Rose sets her staff and lifts herself up, throws one billowing leg over the shoulder of Secrets from the Stance, flips her head over heels while sliding down its length, and Secrets from the Stance bounces, too.

But then she sets her feet under her and flings herself at Rose again, and Rose is on the ground fending off those wicked edges, one, two, three, each one met by the length which does not yield underneath them. What could hope to change the sword fallen from the inconstant moon except for its own heart?

What could hope to change Rose, but her own?

“Then you are caught in a net.” Rose sweeps one leg out, forces Secrets of the Stance to hop up and put all of her weight on the staff, all the better to send her up and over Rose’s head, already turned to face her when she hits the ground, just enough time to get up on one knee. “But the net clings to you, grows with you; when it catches on a nail, you cry out as it digs into you, but for its sake, not your own. Then one day you find it is not a net but the finest gown.”

Her parries are executed with the sort of precision that even Chen, the prodigy of swordplay, might be impressed by. Each blow is met as if the handmaiden were attempting to 100% a rhythm game unearthed from the deep places of the world. And in her fury, Secrets of the Stance pushes harder, and that is all the opening Rose needs. She twists, spins upright, knocks two more swords away, and in that moment both know: the opening is there. Rose may bring her staff down on the head of Secrets of the Stance with a terrible crack, and it will not be the staff that yields, and Secrets of the Stance will deserve it.

Rose lets the opening pass; she steps back, her footfall as dainty as if she were stepping across a lake on the heads of lotus blossoms, and she bows dangerously low given the state of her precious outfit, the Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade held out to one side.

“Love came upon me like a thief in the night; it took my path, my quest, my dignity, and used them to line its own pockets; it bound me fast and locked a collar at my throat. Love has taken everything from me, and I am its helpless slave. It has turned me from a tool of universal beneficence willing to sacrifice my own happiness for the sake of all existence to a selfish creature whose whole world is a laugh, a smile, a choice repeated every heartbeat. If you are unwilling to surrender these things likewise, if you value your dignity and power over the smiling joy of the beloved, then small wonder Love eludes you no matter what you tear apart to find it. Look then in the atom, if you like, if you will not surrender yourself.”

Rose straightens, and holds the staff out in front of her, set firmly on the ground, and lets the wind set her ornaments to gentle chiming. And under her veil, she smiles, trusting in the Rosebud that Chen sees.

[Rose rolls a 6. Instead of acting with Daring to boost it to an 8, she acts with Grace, and spends her String on Secrets from the Stance immediately to add one to the roll. She chooses to inflict a Condition by refusing violence against Secrets from the Stance, and creates an opportunity for an ally— who, she does not yet know. Secrets from the Stance chooses an option against her in turn.]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

The crowdfunding is the easy part. Download the screenshots, get a really good picture of Persephone, make her the new face of the regular donation drive. Hey, really hate to bother you, but…

We’re committed to being the only journalists who’ll get right in the line of danger to get you the truth, but…

Any little you can give really helps. And we appreciate it so, so much. Thank you.

You learn a little bit about what a good begging post looks like when you’re a celebrity, even a minor one. 3V, please. Can we get 1000 retweets for my boy Jackson? 3V, please. Shoutout for Megan Nbana, she’s fighting and being so strong but she needs a little help. 3V, please. We’re trying to get out and move in together, but we need a little help. 3V, please.

(It’s one reason she’s involved. You listen long enough, you either go numb or you have to do something. Maybe it’s not dismantling healthcare singlehandedly, but it’s something.)

But there’s only so much time she can waste on that. Okay, not waste, it’s objectively a better use of her time, but the entire time that terror’s rearing in the back of her head. Fucking Proverbs! Ha ha fucking ha! Cowards! You string twenty-seven people along, each of them thinking they’ve got a shot— well, no, not WhiteEagle44, but that’s just some internet comedian’s banter, imitating her, taunting him like Bugs Bunny and the bull, doing their best to make him regret the weird lumpy potato of a dick he sent a 3D print code for. And Novembers, but they don’t count, she knows she’s definitely being ribbed by those clever chucklefucks before she even opens their messages.

Options: just delete it. Delete everything. Leave twenty-six people (the ones who got past the “collecting cringe for the montage” stage) ghosted. Then hide underneath a desk until she’s convinced none of them will try to doxx her. Or, worse, they might try to reach out via social media, ask what they did, beg her to explain, refer to conversations she’s got no context for, and—

She relaxes her jaw. She relaxes her jaw. The red diodes on the sides of her hands fade and blink out.

Options, continued. She tries to get to know them. Maybe there’s actually someone… you know, somebody who isn’t star-struck, and doesn’t expect her to move in with them after three dates, and who’s better than variable-speed fingers with precision inputs and a phone on incognito, and isn’t hiding all of their red flags until she’s in too deep, and who won’t figure out that she’s a futureless has-been doing nothing but chasing interesting diversions, and—

Absolutely not. That leaves the need to write a message to each one, explaining (without the sterility of a form letter) the situation, how very sorry she is that their chains got pulled, and that she hopes they’ll have better luck with their other matches. Let her do the job the spineless motherfuckers flaked on.

…later. That’s a later job. She’s got to get back to Aevum, can’t juggle that and travel. And then she’ll need to keep on top of the donation drive and handle November’s sitch and set up a special event of some sort for the cafe next week and turn her interview into a published article and keep the archival experts in the loop and, really, it might be a bit, but that’s fine, actually, as long as she intends to let everyone down easy (for which she will need all of her attention and intelligence) it can’t hurt to let it simmer a day or two. It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. She can fix their fuck-up and go back to being perfectly fine and happy as a permanent bachelorette.

She’s fine.

***

“Well! Good to hear from you, Yellow!! You’re lucky I got my hands on this, I nearly didn’t (long story, I’ll tell you the whole thing later!!) but! Yeah! Let’s get Thai at the Thai Go in Laozi, up in your neck of the woods! Not a date, don’t worry (tell Blue that she is hilarious!)!”

Sunshards

Finally, Rose finds herself in the middle of the tableau she had watched from afar, on a dark hillside, on a night both not so long ago and unfathomably long ago. Rose stands beneath the regard of that woven-wire mask, in the middle of that crowd of attention, wearing the outfit of her dreams. And if all she had to hold onto was the promise that all would be well if she closed her eyes and trusted in the quiet voice of the Way leading her to the greatest happiness for all people, she would be doomed. You can’t hold universal happiness in your arms; you can’t imagine its smile, the way it hums to itself when it thinks no one is listening, the sparkle in its eyes when it talks about wanting to be a snow leopard. All you can do is tear yourself in half between the guilt of having desires and the fulfillment dangled in front of you. Rose from the River, Pilgrim of the Way, would be terrified of how badly she wanted to be forced to watch a city fall while being told how she was too pathetic to save it, displayed as a humiliated pet by a strength even she could yield herself to.

But little Rosepetal wants something even more. She wants to hear the relief in her Princess’s voice when the city is saved. She wants to be reassured that Chen never once thought of commanding her to be an unstoppable demon warrior. And if she’s going to be humiliated into the dirt, she wants Chen to do it and then cuddle with her afterwards.

So for Chen’s sake, and for the sake of the Pyre herself, Rose steps forward, despite the pull of the digital shackles telling her to go into standby, pinching and squeezing the parts of her bones that haven’t changed enough yet. Yes, for the sake of the Pyre, who can’t find an ocean big enough to fill the hole inside her, and so Qiu holds her by the emptiness and won’t let her go.

“I was not happy,” she says. “I was controlled and so I was not happy. I broke free, and I was not happy. I had a hollow place inside me that I could not fill with my own hands.”

Her hands, gentle, soft, take the hand of the Scales of Meaning, and the hand of Secrets of the Stance, and between the two she kneels, and the soft shivering squeeze she gives to both of them is her gift to them. Her body aches and roars for her to stop. But this is also a way that she can be strong.

Strong enough to hold her Chen safe, and not be feared for it.

“You are unhappy, my Leaseholder. And none of your hands can fill the hole which Qiu holds you fast by. I have tried feasting, I have tried fasting, I have tried following orders, I have tried to carve myself into an acceptable shape. Nothing satisfied my aching. Not until I was loved.”

It will not work. But what else can she do? It is better to do something that is right than to rage, or yield to despair, or bargain.

“My love saw me and loved me for my strength and for my weakness. When she looks at me, she doesn’t see a weapon or a monster; she sees a woman. The woman I want to be. She thinks I can do anything, but also that she can make me small and helpless with a touch, a word, a promise. And the way she wants me fills me up and makes me whole,” Rose says, and her voice is soft and sincere and not boastful at all. Would Scales of Meaning even recognize her now?

“My love is small and tired and loves this city. Every part of it. It is her childhood, her mother’s joy, and her hope to stand against Qiu.” She knows what she has to say. For her Chen. For her love. She has to be good for Chen. “Destroying this city will not make you happy. Following Qiu will not make you happy. Only the love of another, freely given.”

And she offers the Pyre her hand.

“Let me help you find it.”

[Rose attempts to Emotionally Support the Pyres of Meaning, but her lingering guilt makes it a 7, thank you Annie. The Pyre has to choose: if they validate Chen’s love, Rose marks XP; if they deny it, Rose takes a string on them.]

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

In the depths of the Forest Sauvage there is an old, tumble-down ruin. On either side of the moss-choked walls, there runs a river, cold and clear and singing even in the deeps of winter, and this river winds its way to a wide lake, mist-shrouded, reed-fringed. On the far side of the lake there is Bywater, whose people take to the water in coracles with nets; but there are fish within that they have not caught, nor can they. On the side that abuts the forest, there is a place marked by a circle of stones standing on their ends, each one the height of a man, little more. Each is placed so that their crown marks a star and a day; each is faded and worn by the rain and the wind. They stand lonesome.

A ways, a ways, there is a cottage; thatch-roofed, stone-walled, surrounded by a wild garden, by fruiting trees that spring up in orchards, by bees and their hives. The windows are shut, the door likewise; the girl who opens them in the morning is Beth Hooper, here for the season. The three cats have to be fed, after all: Tybalt, Palug, and the third who refuses a name, big and heavy and insistent on her dominion over the cottage. The bees have to be tended. The garden must be weeded. It would not do for the Lady of the Lake to come back and find her affairs out of order. All year she was here, after her outing last winter, and it was Brigid who saw to the house then. The Lady's got business across Britain, she does, in far-flung places; why else would she leave her perfect little house?

And on the Bristol Avon, there's a lady with her hair loose on her shoulders, and she's on her own coracle with her own oar. And she's got a fair sword naked in her lap, and she's not wearing samite. That's for queens. Constance Nim, daughter of the Bristol Avon, is no queen; she is a fixed point waiting for a wandering knight to return. And she no longer can carry this sword, terrible and wonderful and heavy enough to slip beneath the water. That was the old way, with the swords of bronze, and her mother still remembers.

It's heavier still when she lifts it. As if it doesn't want to go. But she throws it as hard as she can, and before it can strike the water, there comes an arm and an hand above the water to meet it, and catch it, and so shake it thrice and brandish it, and then to vanish away both hand and sword in the water, and there's our Constance left behind with nothing for it but to row against the current, to row home and tend to her cats, to guard what she can against the dying days of Uther and know the spring's on its way again.