Tatterdemalion

Huntresses of Hybrasil

The party starts by lighting candles. Dolly insists. Frazzled, fortified, her hair a mess, she steals the blowtorch and turns it to the careful task of lighting candles before the altar. Little bits of magic and mystery in a universe that is full of them. The closest thing to having little stars brought down to earth. Candles and a little whispered prayer of thanks.

Then someone gets the footage of the fight up and running, and she's bouyed up by her friends and her goddess's cult and the drink in her hand, which fizzes, which is a lovely pale green, sort of like this lichen that she knows, it's a mountain lichen, it grows on tree roots and there's a sort of symbiotic relationship, Angela, it protects pine tree roots from the wind and the merciless sunlight and in return the lichen drinks up a little bit of life through the roots like through a straw, Angela, like this, sssssllllppp, and one day she's going to take you back to Hybrasil and show you, up on the mountains, the lichen that this drink is like, and Jade will be with us, too, she's coming right back, Angela, I lit candles and that's magic. She'll see the candles and she'll guide by them and she'll be right back with us, you'll see.

(This party feels like something that is happening to someone who happens to be Dolly. She veers between awareness of her body as the drink starts going to her head and feeling like she's watching herself from the eyes of the battered, broken idol, which needs a name, Jade jumped into this whole thing without ever giving it a name because it was just an extension of her own body, but it's, like, both their bodies, and a secret third thing, and it needs a name. She'll think of a name later. Or she'll ask Jade, once she's back. Look at this sillyhead, nuzzling into Angela's arms and melting with the relief that she's still not alone even when Jade's... walking. That there's light, and friends, and people all around her, and they won, they won, they beat the Red Band, she hides her face in one hand and starts madly giggling, tail lashing, so close to the crash, but Ksharta's there with a plate of, ooooh, shrimp, and she starts stuffing her face with the shrimp, sucking them right out of the crispy shell, gesturing with them as she tries to explain to Nine Forests how she wants constellations painted on the, the, the Confambulation, no, that's not the right name, but constellations and rivers on her legs, the underworld rivers, the scorpions and the crystalthinks and the dark water, to show that they're wading through, and wasn't that the kind of fight where new paint's needed, anyway? Where it's gone from one thing to another. Where it's a new being. Where they're new and weak-legged and shining.)

---

It is the freedom of gods. It is the freedom of self. It is the freedom of the howl of I Am. The rites cool the anger of the foam-mad goddess, and when she is given wine, she finally accepts. She speaks blessings over the spirit of the jackal and runs with it, through the black trees and the soft earth, in the deep womb of Hybrasil, and she knows that the freedom of defiance is a wonderful and a terrible freedom.

And it is one of the roads that unfolds before her in potential: the blue road. The road of piracy and terrible star-flashing freedom. There are other roads, too: the road of service to Hybrasil and a temple built with deep foundations upon her surface, or the road of kingdom-founding, roving until she finds a new garden-world to gift to her bride as a jewel in her crown, and another sister to Hybrasil herself. But she does not have to choose a road yet.

Not when there are candles shining on her red road, and the sound of revels, and her Dolly's laughter. Not when she has yet to prove herself the mightiest of all gods, or at least the most determined. Not when she still has to brush Dolly's hair and reassure her that she did well, and not when she still has to think about the perils of the contest.

Not when she still has to test herself against a God-Taming Hero.

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Hsien!

“Pathetic,” Lady Foxfire says, sweet and bubbly and, underneath, a little sour. Like poisoned lemonade. If she ever got stuck inside of a vending machine, that’s what she would be. You, on the other hand, are just a poor little meow meow. “From what I heard, you were almost making something of yourself, kidnapping girls and tossing them off buildings, coming up with schemes— and now you’re cowering like a kit. Can’t even get your side of the story out!”

But it wouldn’t. Not really. This isn’t really real (you can tell your panicked heart, and see where that gets you). Her smile’s as sharp as a knife, and her nails are the same.

She reaches out with the confidence of a woman who knows the world should revolve around her, lifts your chin, and traces your lower lip with her thumbnail in a way that would be flirtatious if she wasn’t, in a way, your mother. “You’re going to make me embarrassed, you silly little thing.”

---

Shifu!

Here’s the compromise you manage: that Izi does take that photo, having not correctly interpreted the begging body language of an elephant, but she hasn’t sent it to anyone. Yet. It’s just there, on her phone, with the potential to ruin your life.

Oh, by the way— the Vermillion Princess seems to be trying to get your attention. Izi and Joshua haven’t heard it yet, probably, but you’ve got big ol’ ears, and those are some insistent mmmmphs coming from Joshua’s room, and that would be even worse for Izi to find out…

Huntresses of Hybrasil

they took her apart

falling star

love her so much please don't leave me

the scorpions flood the banks she may not pass

set her skull on the apple-tree

Dolly shrieks, thrashes, as her torso simulates crumpling underneath the merciless, relentless hand of Jacinta Niares. Nothing she has done with her goddess has been this painful. And as plating ruptures and systems give way, her connection to Jade frays and what comes through her burning hand is fragments of divinity, the experiences of her goddess unfolding in her skull, the impossible things that have happened on the other side of existence where all the ancestors go, her fangs vibrating, reduced down to a skeleton that the bandit-and-pirate gods hang on a tree, drowning in the rivers that challenge even the gods when they go down into the deepest mystery of Hybrasil, cognitovenom blossoming over her skin.

And then the pressure lifts, though she can't see through the tears. Her throat is raw and her mouth is empty and her chains lie slack. Jade is screaming, howling, in mourning as the jackal crumples away beneath the weight of a dark star, firing blindly until its guns crunch and crumble away. But for a moment, there is relief from the agony. For a moment, she can feel her goddess's hand still on her arm, which is burning pitch and she will be a skeleton, too, down there in the underworld they will be sign and signified. And in the underworld the spirit of the jackal, which is something like a real jackal, because even machines can dream if they are loved, will burn as a sacrifice to Smokeless Jade Fires.

And Jade hurts to see her jackal-drone destroyed on her behalf, so much that it is like broken glass in her lungs, and that is why Seven Quetzal raises her burning hand in greeting and defiance. Everything that Jade has left pours into that hand, the final generators about to pop, and something more, something that both of them know is divine.

For the first time, a choked, tearful, tiny voice rasps out of the speakers of the idol.

"nehuantil, you bitch."

[Both together,] the goddess and the high priestess drive a lance of starlight (ion) through (into) the terrible hand and the arm which carries it and the cockpit where Jacinta Niares sits.

The arm flops down onto her chest, the fires slowly banking. Dolly sags inside of her cockpit, the overlay of the temple gone.

"I'll be here," she promises, unsure whether she's still broadcasting. "You can find your way back out because I'm here, Jade. Out of the dark, and, and the dead, and over the rivers, and..." Her eyes are closed. They hurt too much to stay open. "...you'll come back for me. I know you will. I. I love you, too."

She wants to flop over and cry until Nine Forests lifts her out of the cockpit. But instead she forces herself to her feet, onto a pelvis which feels like it's going to give way any moment, bunches her hand into a fist, and, with a raw howl that surprises herself coming out of her throat, punches the ion-lockedThe Roar in the face as hard as she can. tlacpac, nehuintlani; in the black forests of the underworld, with a love-choked howl, the Bride-Blessed Star punches Mu Ysha in the face as hard as she can.

[Last Harmony, -String, 10 flat on Fight.]

Breathless Dead

No mind and all mind are two sides of the same coin. In this moment, she is everyone, and as a result, she is (again?) no one.

She is strong. Being the Silver Divers allows her to understand that just because Ember is one of the smallest of the pack does not mean that she is weak. All of the pack is strong— and the one still groveling at Gemini’s feet is surprisingly strong for her size, is a wound-up spring waiting to go off in bursts of speed. But the pack’s strength is wrapped up in chains and their own scarves and all the flexing muscles of her other bodies can’t break them free.

She is… embarrassed. Not just because so many of her are naked, as if giving an eyeful to some peasants isn’t something they’d do anyway— but only on their terms, and without surrendering their trophies, their veils and their scarves. All of them are aware that they’re not in control, a sea they swam through on instinct that has suddenly receded. They are used to this, yes, but only as part of the pack’s games of dominance and submission, the ebb and flow of control amongst themselves, and to have that power pass into the hands of these little creatures has made most of them either blushingly meek or impotently fuming and struggling.

All of her will eventually come to the same conclusion that Ember has: that Mosaic must be at the top of that struggle for power, and she will not step down from that vaunted position; power is hers, and will be shared only as she pleases. By tomorrow, Mosaic will be revered by the Silver Divers, and Ember will become something like a Speaker for the Tyrant, a messenger mediating between the demigoddess and her hounds. Little Ember will be surrounded by the veils of her new self-proclaimed allies, each one attempting to curry favor with Mosaic’s Toy. By tomorrow, collars with moon designs worked into them will proliferate among the ranks of the Silver Divers, and her keys will pass from hand to hand within the pack, entrusted with unknown others until such a day as the object of her collective worship changes.

She is also rendered completely unable to communicate in a way that adds to the meekness of many of her. It is one thing to have a mouthful of cloth and drool— a very familiar thing, at that. But to have their scents bathed away? The air is full of helpless grunts and moans as the Silver Divers find themselves alone together, unable to plan or plot or reassure each other right beneath their captors’ noses. All they can do is trust in their emotion, their eyes and their struggles and their incoherent noises, and hope that their sisters-in-arms will understand roughly what is meant.

The only bond that little Ember can trust, truly, is the one that connects her to Mosaic. Without it, red and thin and shining, she would be lost in the pack’s sensations; she would be trapped in sensation and convinced that her adventure was over. But Mosaic loves her little adventures, and Mosaic loves to watch her run. That is enough for Ember to trust in as all of her bodies squirm and flush and squeak and shiver and huff and hop and sulk and flutter and struggle, learning a new lesson in power and control.

A tiny, muffled whimper rises up from the figure of the punished knight, but she does not rise. How can she? She bears the chains of an entire pack, and her face upon the ground hides the absolute mortification she bears for them. She flexes, strains, but it is impossible for her to move or to open her mouth. Even her scent is silent.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Jade is screaming. The bindings are pulled taut. She is suddenly stiff, frantic. Her models of the universes are collapsing, leaving behind only hunger and the darkness of the underworld. There is no path to victory. The roads are gone. The roads are gone. How could they have thought they could win this? With, what, with a hunting lodge's worth of weaponry, with a few clever tricks, with a girl who barely understands piloting? Now, competitive gardening, if they'd done that, haha, if they'd...

Jade wraps her arms around Dolly and yanks. They tumble to one side, helpless, her claws in Dolly's fur, holding her tight. Unwilling to let go. The world is ending and if she cannot stop the apocalypse she will bury herself in Dolly until the world stops existing.

The void swings down, and Dolly and Jade both jerk, roll, pathetic little meowmeows, trying to buy themselves another second together. Just another. Dolly buries her face in Jade's hand, flails with the other, undignified, defeated, undone. Desperate not to be ripped out of the idol's heart and paraded before Valynia, who'd tease her, who'd punish her, who'd make her regret turning her down. Or, worse, kept as Jacinta's trophy, an even worse end (because at least she'd guiltily enjoy Valynia's attention and hot-mouthed affections, but Jacinta is overwhelming).

"Dolly, I promise, I love--"

[Dolly and Jade burn another level of Harmony to attempt to Defy Disaster with Daring. 2.]

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Hsien!

The cameras swing towards you and flash: white, green, silver. Above you, the towers of Sky Gate City are impossibly tall: white, green, silver. Mist curls around your feet and the tip of your tail: white, green, silver, black at the tips.

"I'm here live with Tail Seven," a reporter says, her teeth white, green, silver. She thrusts a-- a microphone. It's a microphone. White microphone. Gnawed on. "She's here giving her first interview after her crime spree! Somehow, despite the property damage, the theft, the trespassing, the cyberbullying, and the actual kidnapping of a virgin, nobody seems to have caught on to her real motive. So, Tail Seven, I've got to ask: how do you do it? This is your first time lying, deceiving, bamboozling, and otherwise hoodwinking mortals independently, but you're already taking to it like a pro! Is the trick that you have to convince yourself that you're telling the truth first? Is it true that the vending machine proposed already? What do you have in store for your captive princess now? Have you figured out the joke yet?"

The cameras are flashing, flickering, white, green, silver. The snaps are deafening. Everything you say can and will be used against you in court. The reporter is wearing sunglasses at night, like an anon message. If you do not defend yourself, someone's going to make a callout post.

[Shift: -Superior, +Danger.]

---

Shifu!

"Do. Not. Move." Joshua says, sounding like he's just seen you press a button that's going to make everything explode like in the martial arts movies he watches on the weekends. He's backed up onto a desk, glasses askew, shooting extremely worried glances at the floor underneath your hooves.

"What the fuck," Izi says, clinging to her unplugged mouse with both hands, in the middle of a floor kabedon between said hooves. They are hooves, right? There's vestigial toenails but they're still part of the same column. She looks like she can't make up her mind between being pissed at you and being terrified and is settling for staring at you with the biggest eyed expression she's ever managed.

Behind you, desks have overturned, monitors have crashed to the ground, towers have come catastrophically unplugged, but it's hard to really get a good look behind you because of the big orange floppy ears. The ear-to-head ratio is amazing, isn't it? That and having a trunk. Trunks are cool. You could probably help pick things up with a trunk.

Izi's hand slowly reaches down towards the purse where she has her phone.

[Shift: reject influence or mark a condition.]

Breathless Dead

"Gemini."

It's not so much a greeting as it's a statement of fact, breathlessly muttered by a bleary-eyed puppy. That is Gemini. Gemini is who is speaking. You are Gemini; I am not Gemini. That is the level that, for a moment, Ember's brain is working on. But she is a daughter of Ceron, and a particularly healthy one at that. She took very well to the genemods, bears incredible stamina, and has never broken a bone in all her time among the pack. So it is hardly a surprise that she is able, once Gemini moves her foot, to shift Sagetip's heavy body onto the street beside her.

She sits up onto her knees, and then dives back down to the pavement, pressing her aching head against the cool stone. It is damp with the breath of dawn.

"Honored scentmistress! I have acted as honor and love demand, but I know I deserve no mercy for my crimes!" No mercy. Gemini's love is merciless, a scythe with which she could defeat entire armies, were it necessary. Her love is a net, a gag, the smoke from a fire. "I only ask that you be mindful of Peril, which is present, which I tried to warn our pack away from!"

Peril, whose name is Mosaic. Peril, who even now defeats Taurus (that there could be any other outcome is alien to Ember's mind). Peril, who would kick Gemini into the ocean tied to a crab if she doesn't think that Ember's punishment isn't amusing or cute enough.

Ember does not rise. She remains prostrate, tail drooped, ears low, willing to remain her all day if that is what her honor demands. After all, she's been trained very well.

In the distance, the low moans of the Silver Divers, the clink of chains, the cheers of the people of Beri.

Breathless Dead

Ember tumbles out into empty air.

Her eyes are trailing tears as she cartwheels. Her nose is full of not-scent, burnt and acrid and hideous. The starchoked sky spins overhead, blurred with pain. She clutches Sagetip to her chest as tightly as she held Mosaic.

She's used to losing, see. It's just that Mosaic is important enough that she needs to make sure they both lose, her and her clever battle-sister. It's just that she's used to being punished and having to power through torment to make her stronger. It's just that she's not the smart one, and all she can do is go forward.

Or, in this case, forwards, to the side, and then down at increasing velocity.

Above, a retort. The sharp kind (are there soft retorts?). A flash that is just another streaking star across her vision. If she could make a sound without wanting to throw up because there's SP smoke choking up her lungs, she'd make some sort of victorious squeak and--

The ground hits her like Waverunner tossing her off a cliff and into the sea, but it doesn't part for her. It's just the ground. She hugs Sagetip to her chest, limbs locked painfully tight, a smoking barrel still pressed between them, and hopes that eventually the sky will stop wildly spinning like one of the tops that the kids here like to play with, wobbling, that's the word, wobbling in looser and looser circles around the tip.

[Ember marks damage to her Sense in a senseless action.]

Breathless Dead

Ember teleports onto the roof.

Well, no, she doesn't do that. She just knows, in the Apollonian flow of no-thought, where she needs to go, where she needs to grab. Her handholds might as well be slathered in yellow paint. Her nails dig into windowsills and she flings herself across the little roofs of Beri. There is only one place where this can happen, after all, only one tower jutting up into the sky: the belltower.

From here, the people of Beri call out the hours of their lives. From here, time is stretched out, measured, and cut into strips. From here, a sniper (an ally of Mosaic, or else Sagetip wouldn't be ambushing her) could take down the chariot. And from here, Sagetip can instead unravel the entire defense with her pistols.

A shot goes off; it stings. Ember rolls into it. She is so good at running. Every obstacle course, every punishment for not being good enough on the obstacle course, has pushed her into this moment, into this jump across rooftops. Another shot, and this knocks her into the alleyway between the tailor's shop and the chandler's den, but she bounces between the two walls and uses it to approach the belltower from below. The third shot catches her on her arms, raised above her head. Each one is a blossoming flower of pain with tentacles for petals.

But she's inside, and climbing. She grabs a plate left here by a bellringer; a shield, a discus, an unexpected advantage. She pulls off her focale and, as she bursts through the door, tosses it as a distraction, a moment of uncertainty, a way to hide the way she scrambles, all the better for diving at her from an unexpected angle, knife out and ready to cut away her battle-sister's bandoliers.

[Keep Them Busy of 8.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Memories bleed through, or dreams, or phantoms. Shapes that Dolly never dreamed up. Faces that are half-familiar from cartoons and cultural landmarks. The terror of Night and Hunger looming over the ball court. Other kittens might be thrown into distraction and doubt by the images that Smokeless Jade Fires imposes on the enemy, on the dizzying weight of myth-as-memory.

Here's a truth: Dolly has almost always known that her older sister was working on a pattern for drones, and that was the seed that became Jade. Here's another: Dolly believes.

She believes that her goddess is more than what she was. She believes that there is holiness in her, and that the part of her that is real and true descended into the pattern to be born. She believes that she is in the hands of something that is inexplicable and wonderful. It is startling, sometimes, to be reminded that Jade is still young, that she is still flawed, but the Hybrasilians have never expected perfection from their gods. They have simply expected them to be beyond the ordinary world, to be attuned with the universe, to demand sacrifice and adulation and adoration from a position of power. And in return, Jade gives her everything.

She gives Dolly this: the experience of fighting with a pirate. Of being the heroine, despite the transformation of her jumpsuit into something befitting the slave-bride of a goddess. Of being guided through a dangerous dance, the margin for error still incredibly tight. The kind of thrill that an ordinary Gardens would never have tasted. Of kissing Jacinta with her claws over and over, still untouched, still inviolate, helpless and not helpless, exposed and hidden, silenced and heard, fighting for herself and for her goddess, flickering between augmented reality and remembered myth--

And then Jade guides her into the jump, the push of magic at her back as the thrusters flare, and a thrill runs through her at how Jacinta can't see the way her skirt hikes up and how there's nothing underneath, even as she brings her leg in and delivers a punishing kick to the side of Jacinta's head, even as the jackal strikes from behind, a second Dolly (is that really how Jade sees her, that pretty?) raking her claws down Jacinta's back with small arms fire.

"Disappointing! At least Valynia knew the real prize! Twice now your band has failed to steal the heart of a bride more beautiful than Caloa! I am invincible, insatiable, irresistible, and-- I admit it-- my service would be nothing if you did not have the love of Seven Quetzal alongside me! But it is mine, she is mine, and I will see you and your little space dogs groveling at her perfect feet to adore them and beg her forgiveness for your lewd and disgraceful courting!"

And Jade manages to turn the hands flying up to her face into a stroke along her skull, chest out, hips cocked, allowing the camera to stare at her pose in the middle of a battle and imagine the priestess within, and once that is imagined, it's only another step to imagining her peeling out of her jumpsuit, is it not? A prize, dangled before entire worlds. Her wife's heart, racing as she imagines everyone's eyes on her, exposed and helpless and still above a pack of pirates kissing her feet, and Jade can't help but give her a kiss.

[10 - inflict a Condition, take a String, open an opportunity for the jackal.]

---

Stubbornness has always been her virtue. A refusal to admit when she's been beaten, to admit that anyone could beat her down hard enough that she won't bring it back around. What good is an adversary who throws in the towel and gives up? What's the good of a whetstone that cracks in half?

The noise that comes out of her mouth when she sees the opening is inhuman. It's half-Hybrasilian, a wild yowl of gambling it all on one shot, of a body that's throbbing with feedback, fingers so stiff that she almost can't pull the trigger. (An old, vestigial gesture, but one that has remained, one tied to the intent to fire.)

But she does. The roar, the splashback, is almost overwhelming, and the Barn Owl barely stands against the firing of its own weapon. But she digs her heels in and lets her howl out and, for a moment, she is almost like the brat of a goddess chasing a battle almost impossible for her to win.