Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

This is the very first time she’s ever lost. It’s cruel to give it to her after such a victory. But that’s what Sagakhan, the Master of Assassins is, isn’t it? Cruelty underneath the pretension of impartiality. Cruelty found in the complete absence of kindness. Cruelty because she is in no way required to be kind, because she has no obligation to it or reward from it. It is a horror that Redana Claudius has never truly seen before. Not like this. Not with such a loss.

(Platitudes about all soldiers being equal in death, about how everyone was at risk, they are drowned beneath the roaring of her heart in her ears.)

The cunning thing would be to run. Harry her at range, despite her incredible speed, her cutting of distance: be faster, lead her on the chase, buy time for everyone else. But she does not. Because Alexa’s head is still there, staring upwards at the relentless storm. Because Alexa was here in this battle because of her. Because Alexa was kind to her when she did not deserve kindness. Because she can hear the furious groan coming from the lips of the Coherents, a deep rumble growing in power, swelling, becoming a roar. And she is one of the Coherents, a member of her mother’s imperial cult, a sailor of the Plousios, and so that death-groan comes from her, too.

This time she does not come at Sagakhan with a sword. She spins, her skirt like the petals of a flower, and the terrible shape in her hands is for a moment obscured by her body. Then she slams the sledgehammer into the side of Sagakhan’s head, carries the momentum through, spins again, smashes a hip on the second approach. Again, again, again, rising and falling, Coherent hammerwork, an elegant dance, cold-burning fury.

Sagakhan will live through anything. Therefore, nothing is off the table; a hit anywhere counts. Sagakhan will live through anything. Therefore, no swordplay can stop her from closing the gap and killing Redana again. Sagakhan will live through anything. Therefore, the only way to stop her is to keep her off-balance and staggered. The shape of the hammer is light in her hands, impossibly light; it yields too easily to the strain of her muscles, falls like a meteor, allows her to chain attack after attack together. She does not stop, she does not relent, she sets her shoulder to the work as if she were performing before the Coherents as they made art out of the labor, sang their work-shanties, proved themselves both hard workers and more than just laborers.

Sagakhan tries to say something. The next blow takes her full in the jaw, shatters bone, caves teeth in, and the Shepherdess does not laugh as she does it, because she is not the Nemean. Her wrath is not a jovial sadism, a desire to meet challenges and tear them open. She does this because you have left her no choice, Sagakhan.

But she doesn’t let it disrupt the rhythm of blows, either.

The war-chant grows. Do you hear it, Sagakhan? Do you hear the name on their lips? The name drawn out of breathless lungs and between hot teeth? It’s not that of Redana, this champion of the cult, this avenger of the dead. It’s that of the beautiful woman you killed, strong and kind and surprisingly gentle, who gave the best hugs and didn’t deserve this, fighting a useless battle against a shitty old woman buying an extension for her miserable life, garden by garden.

The tears running down Redana’s cheeks burn. But she doesn’t stop. She doesn’t sob. She lets them flow freely, from cheek to jaw, and puts her hips into each swing.

This won’t work forever. Sagakhan is too skilled, too clever, too ruthless; eventually she’ll find the rhythm, she’ll twist to make a blow too soft, she’ll throw a Kaeri in the way of a blow. Then things will be bad. You can’t overcome a foe like this just through righteous fury. Something needs to change. Someone needs to join the fight. Redana doesn’t know who. All she knows is the work, the swing, the relentless advance.

Alexa. Alexa! Alexa!

[Redana keeps Sagakhan busy through the power of incredible violence and an 8.]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Giriel and Kalaya!

As signs go, it’s rather vivid— the culmination of smaller ones, such as flowers that symbolize marriage crowding on one bank, two crows raucously cawing as they chase each other (with a songbird caught between them), and a fox trotting along with the tail of a snake poking jauntily out of its mouth and roses draped around its shoulders.

They come into view suddenly, as the current moves the vast barge along: a stag and a monitor lizard, both unusually large for their species, chewing on the leaves of a Bride’s Lily. A brightly-banded venomous snake coils around the roots of the flower, hissing angrily at each in turn.

The stag suddenly startles. It drives its hooves down on the earth with terrible force, trying to crush the snake with a panicked fury that could shatter bones. The poor plant sees the worst of it, and in between stamps, the monitor lizard grabs at the flowering lilies and yanks the tiger’s share of it out of the earth, slithering off with its prize as the stag finally brings one hoof down on the snake’s head, then charges blindly into the forest after the lizard.

Giriel, the meaning is fairly clear (aided by the expansive gestures of the minor functionary spirits who have been arranging these signs for Kalaya). It is an excellent lens through which to view the other omens: the conflict between Uusha and Cathak Agata will eventually lead to the marriage of Agata and Kalaya, likely to gather Kingdom support, whether Kalaya likes it or not. It will also lead to the death of the warlock at Uusha’s hands.

Then, before you can explain all this to Kalaya, something almost as shocking happens: the clouds part. Just for a moment, the rain relents, and your keen eyes can catch sight of a bright star on the horizon. The flickering red light of Mars suggests that this is a war-fate, decreed by the General of Heaven, favored star of the Dominion. Venus’s opinion on all you have divined is a question for further study.

Bluntly: the Rakshasa’s power to twist and change fate might be the only protection that Kalaya has from Mars’ declaration, unless she was willing to run away and join Ven in the demon city, which is extremely unlikely. Right? And the roses on the fox! Kalaya might have an ally here— Venus might be satisfied with a tragic ending to their story, but Bright Rose Aching (as a more local god, and Kalaya’s patroness) might not be.

Oh, and Giriel? Agata doesn’t know this. While you’re naturally going to blurt all this out to Kalaya, you’re going to have to decide how much from what you’ve just seen you’re going to tell her. And you don’t have much time, either— you’re arriving at Tuberhybrida tomorrow, on the hinterlands of Chrysanth, where Kalaya, Han and Lotus will all be leaving.

***

Piripiri!

Uusha’s listening, yes. But you’re running a risk here. Not a physical risk, but one of the heart: if Uusha feels that you are making excuses for your service, you will be judged. For not being her, for not fighting back, for accepting the Dominion yoke meekly. Bringing up your family’s a good way to not be hated, incidentally.

***

Emli!

This is incredibly awkward. You are vaguely aware that your mistress has a very messy love life, but you are neither judgmental or assertive enough to have opinions on that. No, mostly you’re just flustered that guests are upset and that Han is blowing it, and more pressingly, that you might end up in trouble if you don’t say something. After all, anybody could come in and find you not defending the lady’s honor!

“There must have been a misunderstanding,” you say, smoothly, trying to slip it in while navigating the dire straits of being a good girl. There we go! You didn’t interrupt them, you defended the honor of your owner, and most importantly, you offered the priestess something she can cling to that doesn’t make it anybody’s fault. Because everything is much more pleasant when nobody’s getting blamed for mutual misunderstandings!

Your eyes flicker over to Han. You really wouldn’t want to be the person who made the priestess upset. Han looks like she’d declare war on the entire Dominion if she thought the Empress was responsible for breaking her heart. It’s really cute! It’d be nice to have someone look at you like that, you know? To think you were that important. But it’d be flustering and confusing, too, so it’s more comfortable to keep that as an idle fancy.

“Yes,” Lotus says, catching the line you threw out into the water for her. “Maybe it was just a misunderstanding?” She nervously wrings her fingers as she looks to Han. Come on, Han! She needs to hear it! You can defuse this entire uncomfortable situation by letting her think it was nobody’s fault, because it’s so much easier when it’s nobody’s fault and nobody has to be blamed, and also you won’t get disciplined for fomenting insubordination, so take it, Han! Nobody will end up getting spankies if you just let it go!

But she’s not going to, is she? She’s stubborn. And despite the risk of being punished, part of you can’t help but admire it. You always fall in love a little bit with your guests, and this scrappy, passionate Flower is no exception. She’d be less herself if she did. So even while most of your thoughts are clogged up with figuring out where to divert them— baths again? The gardens? Maybe tactfully suggest that Han could escort her, no, if the mistress is aiming for Lotus then that would get you in so much trouble— your heart flutters like a bird that knows Han’s just going to keep making things messy.

Sunshards

Harmony creates harmony.

Rose can’t help but smile when she catches today’s Daily Affirmation on Omets’s phone screen, before he stows the phone back in his robe so that he can accept the plate with biscuits and a strawberry dipping sauce. Everything is coming together. Everything is right, here and now. That’s what it means to live under one lonely sun in the long and beautiful twilight, in the shadows of the elevators.

Below, foxes are exploding out of the ship, which has navigated smoothly next to a little fishing jetty. The ship’s boarding ramp hasn’t been dropped, but they don’t need it: they swing down on ropes, float down on umbrellas, push each other into the shallow water, dash madly onto the grass, roll around shamelessly while scream-laughing, scamper up into trees to yell at their rivals, and scheme about what comes next. There’s rivalries to avenge, cuties to help, mischief to be done.

She sets down another plate next to Chen’s cup and curtsies. “Here you are, my Princess,” she says, almost formally enough to hide the fondness in her eyes, the pride swelling up inside her at how wonderfully her little Chen has done. In the light of the sunshard, her dark skin is vibrant, rich, shining. In the light of the sunshard, you can almost see the string wrapped around her little finger, leading to Chen’s delicate hand. In the light of the sunshard, she is simply Rosepetal, the Princess’s girlfriend, competent in her own way but not the kind of monster that could be used to shake heaven and send the gods rattling from their thrones.

Inside, her whole body is dreaming while awake. She inhabits it, she feels it, she knows it. It’s her finest creation, and her blood sings a song of love, of freedom, of finding a place to rest her head and stay. The world is big and has many problems, but how wonderful that she is allowed to be more than a tool in a toolbox for fixing them. How wonderful that she is allowed to be the love interest in this story, rather than the wandering ronin. How wonderful that she is loved, and wanted, and herself.

There’s a thump from outside the observation cabin, like one fox falling off the shoulders of another onto a third. Rosepetal notices, and she notices that Chen notices, too.

“If that’s everything, your radiance,” she says, eyes hidden under fluttering lashes, “may I return to my quarters to change?”

They’ll let her get that far, now that she’s brought it up, just so they can raid her closet in the process. She knows it, Chen knows it, Omets probably knows it, and only Prim, Quick Ji and Blackleaf think nobody knows. And only Chen knows how Rosepetal’s strong heart is beating hard, carrying her joy out to circulate through her limbs and her face, how she knows that she can walk into an obvious fox trap because someone will always, always come for her.

She proved it. And now Rosepetal never needs to worry again about being forgotten, about being abandoned, about falling back into the dark. Not with her own little sunshard shining her light through her life, every day, every night, filling her up.

“I’ll be some time,” she adds, demurely. Take your time, Chen. “Unless there is any other need you have of me?”

Breathless Dead

Redana vaults over Alexa’s shoulders. She seems as graceful as the bird on the wing, her movement as effortless as keeping those wings outstretched; it would take a moment of frozen time to appreciate the strength that holds her limbs in close and her torso straight as she flips nimbly over Sagakhan and continues her ascent. The Master of Assassins may try to follow, but Redana is light of foot and Alexa is in no mind to allow her free passage. Every moment that Redana might delay is one where Alexa will bear the responsibility, the price, and so she rockets up towards the tip of the pyramid.

She sweeps up a fallen spear in her wake, spins it from hand to hand. It fits perfectly in both when she drives the spearhead between the stones, and she is already leaping, vaulting, dashing up the shaft, and from the butt she jumps even higher, as if trying to reach the upper sky, as if trying to reach her uncle’s domain. She ascends from the chaos all about, radiant. Then she twists about, faces what lies below, vast, monolithic, defiant.

For a moment, her light flares around her like two great wings, and she draws the string of her awful and wonderful weapon back to her cheek. For a moment, she hangs in the air, a beacon, shining bright and beautiful and holy, her face set with the serenity of determination, and the world holds its breath for her. For a moment, her mother’s love radiates outwards from her in vast mandalas, the shapes interlocking, the words pregnant with meaning, the colors shining like her uncle’s waves crashing against the ships of the Grand Armada.

She releases the string, and her rebuke of this black blasphemy shrieks downwards, strikes the stones, and does not stop. It stops for nothing. Not even the sand will stop it. The light’s fingers worm through the cracks, and as if great hands, they leverage the stones apart, one from the other.

It takes a moment for the roar to catch up with the wave of light that sweeps outwards: a roar that is the half-understood word, an exhalation of divine breath, the sound of shackles snapping and stones slipping free, the shape of the name of Alexa’s heart. Who else could be the dart? Who else could shine so, could set shoulder to the work, could ever hope to take apart such an edifice?

It’s simply a convenience, to tell the pyramid that it has already met Alexa and been found wanting. That’s all it is. Assertion. The weapon of Hermes’ daughter is meaning, and the collapse of the black pyramid is art, is a showpiece, is Redana’s final word on the meaning of Alexa.

Do you see, dear heart? Do you see it? It’s for you, because it is you, and because you are the answer you were looking for all along.

And now she tumbles back down to ride the stone rain to earth. Even lightless, even with her wand shoved through her ponytail, even with the petals of her skirt flaring about her hips, she’s impressive as she falls like a cat, tumbling into place, hopping from one stone to another, glowing like the Imperial Princess making her way through the obstacle course in the gymnasium with her loyal Bella timing her and keeping track of the score. Even now, she’s grinning and long-limbed and a wonder to watch.

Here she is. Here she is!

[Redana nails the Finish with Blood with a 12.]

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

Yellow.

That was the trick. That was the only way you could have done it. A needle-thin bridge to cross, and you’ve done it. You made Vesna Valentine feel comfortable with being wanted.

She’s so loud in her own head. So worried about reciprocation. Whether she’s giving as much as she’s taking. Whether she deserves the attention. And you unfold her like a flower and her brain shuts off. She shivers. She smiles like a dope. She lets you touch the old scars, the signs that once her hands were flesh and bone. She doesn’t tell you whether she regrets the necessity of improving on her body, whether the new flesh paid back its cost and more, but she lets you touch, she lets you explore, she tries again and again to be unselfish before you train it out of her, for now. For now.

She curls around you and wraps those hands fast about you and falls asleep with her head in your collarbone, legs entwined, falling fast. She’s smaller when asleep. You made your way in, November; now you must figure out what to do now that you’re inside.

Maybe this is why she tried to keep you at arm’s length. Maybe she knew she’d end up helpless.

***

Sirius Drinks!

On the one hand, getting hit on. On the other hand, she’s got a pretty good excuse right now for not following up.

November, which shade of you attends the furry bar with 3V? Call it a date. Your choice of color. Be prepared for awkwardness and 3V being weird about the last date.

Sunshards

The knee lands between her shoulders when she tries to push herself up off the deck. She hits the deck with plenty of padding, but the wind’s still knocked out of her long enough for the three to get to work. The lithe one, Prim, grabs her ankles and folds them back, lashing them crossed over each other before securing her legs again and again: shins, knees, thighs, making it impossible for her to so much as think about squirming free. With her feet like this, she can’t even hop; she’ll have to be carried. Quick Ji wrenches her wrists into the small of her back and cinches them securely together, before wrapping more rope around her arms, over and under her chest, forcing her shoulders back and emphasizing her heavenly mounds.

Blackleaf just waits. She sits and waits for Rose’s head to jerk up. “You! Ungrateful, wicked—“ That’s all Rosepetal gets to spit out. Then she’s got lace crammed in her mouth, and satin, and silk, and the strong taste of foxes. The pairs pulled over her head add the smell of foxes, too, and she’s mewling and struggling and trying to speak, to be heard, even as Blackleaf pulls the first of many scarves over her well-packed mouth. She doesn’t get to speak. She doesn’t have to. All she has to do is whine uselessly and give pleading, humiliated looks upwards.

And then they’ll bring Chen out, hopping so cutely, her ears perky and her tail twitching, and Chen will get to see her like this, and they’ll be tied back-to-back, or with Chen’s limbs wrapped around her Rosepetal so that Chen can get a front-row seat to her Rosepetal’s humiliation, helplessness, and objectification. Desirable, owned, used as a bargaining chip. Teased by four victorious foxes, forced to watch as Chen’s plan falls apart, as they rub it in that she could have stopped it, tear her top open, show off to everyone what a big girl Rosepetal is, as Chen does her best to tell the foxes off and mmmphs indignantly on her behalf and gives her reassuring looks papering over her own dismay, because even in the midst of failure she wants to keep her girlfriend’s heart safe…

Rosepetal stands up, and foxes tumble, and somehow end up in her arms. (Even if she had to catch Prim in the crook of one leg and then kick her up like the football.) “Girls,” she says, calmly, even though they can feel her heart racing, it’s impossible for her to hide it from them, the foxes have always known what she wants better than she does, “you can betray me afterwards. I promise. I’ll even give you suggestions.” Now she can tell she’s got their ears perking, their squirming more perfunctory. “But for now…”

All three scream as they go flying into the pool, hitting the water flailing and shrieking and vowing vengeance upon treacherous maidservants. And Rosepetal is all squirming and melting inside over the thought of four vindictive foxes taking her up on her offer, especially if Chen will have to come save her, but she still knows her part in this play.

“Honored guest,” she says to Omets, sternly, “we will be docking at our destination shortly. I must ask that you retire below decks to meet with the captain, as we are clearing the deck for our entry.”

No fight. No opening for the other monks. No simpering or wringing her apron. Rosepetal lets just a flash of her old demeanor through, a reminder that she has chosen to be just a maid. She is tall, and she is in command of her space, and she has just flung three foxes like they were even lighter and fluffier than regular foxes. Do not think you can brush her aside so easily!

[Rosepetal hammers her Defy Disaster with a 10. The foxes will have to wait their turn like good girls.]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Piripiri!

“Don’t give me that,” Uusha says, and straightens under her own power. Her muscles are taut and trembling with the exertion. “If she’d grabbed your bound wrists and ignored your squeals, that’d be different. That would be different. But you were unbound, everything was war and chaos around you, and the witch barked out orders because that’s what witches do. She made that call because I couldn’t drag you off to fight that rotting knight. So let me cut to it.”

Her eyes are piercing. Wickedly so. Her body is as tense as a held bowstring. When she speaks, it’s with authority, as if being lectured by an older relative. “You serve the Dominion. Don’t fish for sympathy here, in this room, knowing what happens to me next. You can punish me, let me accept your anger and crush it between my teeth, or you can go and let it fester until your heart’s gone rotten with it, but I won’t pretend that you’re uniquely wronged. Unless you intend to tell me that your owner means to let me go and leave my home, it’s just a cut. Just a failure on her part, and thus mine, and that’s the only reason I’d even offer to be your whipping girl.”

Is she right? What is her likely doom, Piripiri of Hymair?

***

Han!

“I should go apologize,” Lotus says. She sits with her hands in her lap, her body like a flower at night with its petals folded in on themselves. “I can’t believe I— that I made you think— I led her on, Han!”

Emli pours tea into a steaming cup in the Ember Stateroom, where you ended up pulling Lotus (running into oh-so-helpful Emli on the way). The tea tray slides up in front of the two of you as Emli loudly does not offer any commentary on whatever you two might be talking about.

“I just thought she was being nice, and— and now she’s going to think you’re not nice just because I made her think— and I wasn’t doing it on purpose, you know that, right?”

When she looks at you, she’s trembling and so, so vulnerable. Like a flower being torn at by the wind, almost pulled from its stem. “Right?” She whispers, hands not moving from where they sit, clenched, in her lap.

Emli gives you an expressive Look that you are completely and totally unable to decipher, but it sure is saying something super loudly. What do you assume is it saying, o dragoness, o guardian of little petals?

Breathless Dead

Redana is—

She’s not the Nemean. But she’s big. Maybe even a little taller than Bella, though the heels are definitely doing a lot of the heavy lifting there. She looks older, more mature, more sure of herself right now. When she smiles back, it’s as someone who is comfortable in her own skin, who isn’t second-guessing herself. There’s magic here. And it’s beautiful, isn’t it?

“We have to take out the Pyramid,” the Shepherdess says, her gaiety tempered by the battle raging all around. A victory’s been won here, but there’s more to be done. “Alexa, do you think these shining arms of yours can tear it down and leave no stone standing on another? I’ll keep the Gardener off your back while you work.”

The impossible shape in her hand twists and writhes into the shape of that long and terrible bow with which she harried the tyrant. Her fingers brush against the string, which quivers with a dreadful note, a promise of battle.

“Once that is done, my uncle’s shackles will fall away, and perhaps these breathless dead all around will be allowed their rest. And then there will be nothing standing between me and Bella. And after that… well, I suppose we’ll all find out together. Shall we?”

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

On Aevum.

There it is. Disarmament. There’s no risk of being reviewed. Not after sharing something like that. Something hard and stiff and tense as a held bowstring relaxes, melts, inside of Vesna. She’s been holding it since Yellow— since November made her offer. How sore it is. How incredible the relief of letting it fall slack.

“Exactly,” she says. “It‘s that same feeling you get from the really good open world games: that you walk into a place and it’s both imbued with meaning and begging for you to interact with it. That the indents in the carpet mean something. That there’ll be a reward if you pay attention to them, even if it’s only in your own heart. This is a place where people are encouraged to do that. Where they can be themselves with friends, where they can poke around and get to know the place, where I don’t keep too many secrets back here.”

She sneaks Yellow a glance and smiles like, say, a fox might. “But of course there are secrets. It’s just that most of them are upstairs…”

***

Concerning the Park.

Maybe? Maybe? As if that’s not 3V’s goal once she gets the whole Dating Disaster squared away. Hitting up the forums, asking around on social media, doing her best to try to get in contact with the kind of people who know better than she does how to get this treasure trove reproduced and maintained.

There’s definitely more story here, some hitch, some intellectual property snag that will hit before the end of the project— but that’s for later. Right now, 3V is back in town, she’s dating an android harem, and she’s on the Move to find more interesting things. So what’s good? What’s the new place to eat, what’s the underground scene, what’s the latest station attraction?

Sunshards

A challenge. Thrust and counter-thrust. He asks: what is Chen’s hospitality? And moreover, he asks: is this labor worthy of you, Rose? Or are you uselessly flailing at a skill you have not mastered?

Rose cedes a small victory to deny him a grander one: she moves slowly, attending to one thing at a time, so that at least she can say she’s handled one thing. The mop dips into the bucket and she attends first to the tea, lest it stain. Her movements are deliberate, controlled, her chin raised as she wipes the deck clean.

But she is not perfect. She does not do everything with a bounce and a nimble flourish of her apron. If he continued, he could lead her from task to task, if he wanted. Walk her into a trap. Or just make her say something she shouldn’t.

Her shoulders rise and fall as she mops up the ash with the patience of a glacier. She steps over one carelessly askew leg and snorts through her nose. Let him speak, then. Or play some mischief on her. She refuses to be goaded so easily.

Such is the patience of both a maid and a monk.

[Rosepetal rolls a beautiful 2 on Figuring Omets Out. Do as you will.]