Tatterdemalion

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Don't worry, Whispered Promise. Smokeless Jade Fires has the lilt to return and then some in her reply. "Greetings and defiance, champion of Yourself! I will not insult you by insisting on a surrender you will not offer. Let me offer a game, instead! A prize for each of the first three blows!"

Cloak against cloak. It is draped across Dolly's shoulders and cinched over her face, gossamer-thin. This is the sort of game that huntresses play in order to hone their skills, their stealth, their maneuverability. Ghosts hunting ghosts. The best rely on tricks to draw each other out: distractions, feints, dirty tricks. Jade purrs and feels her hair standing on end, excited. This has to draw out the huntress inside of Whispered Promise. How could it not?

"A shame you didn't stay longer; you left just before my glorious return. I could have offered you divinations and blessings from the underworld, and reassured you that it is no shameful thing to lose to a goddess! Just ask the lovers I have gathered in my wake! Angela Victoria Miera Antonius, Ksharta Talonna-- how they have come to accept the weight of the divine!"

Jade works from the ground: mines, solid-shot jackals lurking in alleyways, the gentlest shifts in weight distribution as Dolly daintily takes step by step. Too much risk flying above, not when attention to detail and awareness of their surroundings will be key in flushing out Whispered Promise. Then the game can really begin, and there will be joy in the fight, such that not even she can deny it!

---

Missiles!

Angela does not strike her forehead, though the impulse runs down her arm. Mecha pilots learned quickly to tamp down on certain instincts, certain moves, when connected to such a powerful frame. This is going to be very difficult without some way to flush out defensive instincts, to force Marcina to flinch. Loud, explosive, disorienting missiles would do the trick, whether or not Marcina logically knew that they couldn't pierce the armor.

There's no way that passion wins this battle. There's no way to make it look particularly good, either. It will be constant maneuvering, staying out of range of that sword, waiting for one of her possible targets to open up for a short snap of autocannon fire, whittling away at the behemoth. One mistake and it will risk being over. If only she had experience with the sort of action games that rewarded such methodical, careful play...

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"I wish I could help her," the melancholy young woman says, wrapped in the arms of the sacred, watching as their shared body is healed. The body that they have presented before the entire universe, so often damaged, so often repaired. "But I invited her in, and she stayed outside. And I waited for her to come in, but..."

"Then we will repay her by finding her heart," Smokeless Jade Fires says. She has not stepped away from Dolly for hours. She notes the exhaustion in her bride's stance, the stress in her shoulders, and she wraps herself around her love to protect her from the whole world. "Only then can you open it and help it to... do whatever it is that plants do when you touch them."

"...what?" Dolly scrunches up her face. "I... are you thinking of ferns? The ones that curl up when you brush a claw against them? Because most plants don't really do anything at all when you touch them."

"No. Plants grow better when you touch them." It is a statement of fact. "I remember watching you care for them. Your magic is a little thing, but it is something I will never have." Dolly's eyes are wet, suddenly stinging. "I cannot do anything but challenge Whispered Promise to fight. We can tear each other open and wet our teeth with each other's hearts, but you can touch her, dearest." "I couldn't last night." "That is because you were not touching her," Jade continues, stubbornly. "If you really had, she would have bloomed. I know this."

"Girls aren't flowers," Dolly murmurs. "And maybe all I touched was ice on the river."

Above them, their shared body waits to be touched, so that it can curl around them.

Breathless Dead

The growl rises in Ember's throat like a building wave about to crash upon the shore. She scrabbles against the wet floor, strains until she feels like she's about to burst, fighting just to stay halfway upright, pulled onto her knees against the strength of the Azura's coils. The glare that she gives the technoarchaeologist is sharp, defiant- but she does not snarl. Her heart is racing too hard for her to pretend to be tame and docile, but she is still one of the Silver Divers. Just because she blew her cover doesn't mean she can't veil herself behind the pieces.

"I am Ember of the Silver Divers, the servant of Lady Mosaic, and I was born from the sea, Azura. This ruin is holy to Our Lord of the Deep Places. Can't you smell it in the salt? He is our god, and he has meant for us to be here. You must set me free to seek out the mystery of this ship, or it will never be free from his wrath." Eyes, deliberately widened. Tail, slowly brushing against the tiles. Zealots are underestimated. Trap her in truths. Earnestness blooms around her, unsubtle. "Into the deep it descended," she says, her voice lowering, husky. "Out of the deep it is offered. Deeps and deeps. His song echoes in the halls. The oil-slick on the walls is the stroke of his fingers. Set me free and I will consecrate this ship. Cage me, and the Lady will break anything that stands between us."

Breathless Dead

The song pours out of Ember's throat: inexplicable, irresistible, irrepressible. It spills, sloshing, syllable-foamed, to pool in lungs and hearts. It doesn't matter that she's singing it (almost) alone. A taut chain's as good as a staircase, and the tide must turn, it must turn now, she knows it in her bones and her heart and her nose, even as Corvii chase after her.

...my Bonny’s down beneath the mast
counting grains of rice
sorting good from sour salt
and executing lice...

She needs to be on this ship. It's freedom. If she makes it up, if she just avoids being knocked down (not that she's making pursuit easy, she moves like she was born in the treetops, alternating between running and swinging herself beneath by her arms), then heaven will break open, the heart of this old wreck will stir, and something, Mosaic, something will happen that is a miracle. All she has to do is be there. To be ready. To welcome her lover aboard, to somehow escape from beneath the sight of this terrible eye, to be free of everything except love and wonder.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Dolly's on the floor.

Not passed out, mind you. She's a lightweight but not that much a lightweight. She's got a teal green drink in a cocktail glass in one hand, but she's got a card in the other. Six Stones is already out of the round of Bride!, having drawn double Huntmasters. A fan sent her the deck; she's the Bride, #8, with Jade as the Goddess and so on, down to the Jackals, #1. It's a light game for a small circle of friends, a good game for jokes and sips of fizzy drinks and laughter.

But she sets the cards down and uses the couch behind her to unsteadily lurch her way back up onto her feet and, with a swish of the tail that nearly knocks the deck over, makes her way over to the bloody-fingered pilot hissing out sentence fragments. Her hands close over the incredible mech-piloting fingers of Whispered Promise.

"Shhhh," she says, low and calming, the way she used to talk to her plants in the greenhouse. "You don't have to tell me now. Wait." Her gravity is irresistible; she draws Mirror down slowly into the ring, manages to move her glass with a minimum of mess using the tip of her tail, pulls her down with gentle hands and a thumb rubbing the undersides of her fingers in a gentle, soothing pattern.

"I suppose it's my job to handle this sort of thing," she continues, and flop, her frizzy-curled head is on Mirror's shoulder now. "But I don't want to. I've had. A day. All bad positions and intense dodging and freaky invisible guns and having Jade go down there, again, on the roads, and... you can tell us both when she's back."

She slips the card into Mirror's hand, draws another from the deck, doesn't move her head from the shoulder. It's like being smothered by a very slow-acting pitcher plant. "Have you played before? It's fairly easy. The card rules are in the bag-- thank youuuu, Nines. <3 I think we should accuse Angela of being the Pilot. Both of them haven't been played, and- ai, ai, ai, pbbbbbt." She sticks her tongue out at Angela like a kitten, doing a silly squint.

But her hand's still on Mirror's, warm, clinging, and there's a superstitious healing purr in the back of her throat.

[8 on Emotional Support. Open up or explode.]

---

The road to the realm of the living is long. When she returns, it will be late. Dolly will be bundled up in a blanket, snuggled up next to Angela Victoria Miera Antonius, slowly blinking, trying her very hardest to stay awake so that she can smile and close her hands together in salutation.

And Angela will smile as Dolly lifts her chin up and smiles like the world's all set to rights, and she puckers up for an invisible kiss, Jade's hands in her hair and on her shoulders and stroking down her back, kisses of victory and love and you-stayed-up-now-go-to-sleep. Kisses just for the two of them, victorious, loyal, all-but-unseen.

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Hsien!

You have never seen Alice in Wonderland. This is almost certainly the case. You're not familiar with the whirling chaos of a dream collapsing, of the chaos of a deck of cards suddenly rising up and crashing over your head, of all sorts of strange and chaotic things swirling about you, and it is while your mother screams at you through a mouthful of fangs, her eyes yellow fires, ordering you to spit her out right this instant you little brat, that something flings itself at you--

--and the back of your head hits the pavement. Above you, the towers stretch into the clouds, holding up heaven (metaphorically, perhaps literally). It's doing a misty late evening rain, dusting across your face, your cheeks, your lips, the bit of blood in your mouth. This is an experience that demands you make a gifset about it, combine it with just the right bit of poetry, and feel satisfied for making art.

Above you is something like a wombat (which, thanks to Tumblr, you know is an animal that has square-shaped poop and uses its ass as a defense). It has no head, no neck, nothing but body. It has wings like a pigeon, four of them, sprouting off its grey-furred, rounded body. Three pairs of clawless paws knead on top of you as it settles in, and the weight of it is like a building falling on top of you. The density is just incredible.

But at least the vending machine is gone, and it's raining on you, and above you, you can see the police aerocraft making its final approach to the nearby HOUND Rapid Response Center. The world is still beneath you, and the clouds are grey-green, and you're definitely going to need someone's help getting this weird little critter off of you, unless you want to try something audacious.

---

Shifu!

"Well..." Izi says, drawing it out, clinging to the first instinct that she can find, which is to conversationally maneuver until she can find a place where she's strong and forceful again. "You did just ruin my raid. And turn into an elephant."

"Izi," Joshua begins, "if you don't delete the picture off your phone then this place might get shut down and there will be no place for raids to happen, and who's going to open up a new place this close to the skating rink?"

"Fine. Explain to me how you turned into an elephant and I'll delete the picture," Izi says, going for concessions. "And I want a real explanation. If I'm not satisfied, I keep the picture. And you don't have the guts to ban me, before you say anything, Chan!"

---

Rain!

A vending machine tumbles through the ceiling. Not in a way that it breaks through, more like someone just happened to push a precariously-placed vending machine off a ledge, but it's a vending machine trailing a power cable and increasing in speed as it tumbles down towards you, and things might have gotten dicey for a moment there, but Bai tackles you right off the bench and onto the floor, wrapping her arms around you as the vending machine breaks the bench in half with a horrible noise of crunching and smashing glass and, far away, a shrill scream.

Bai is on top of you, breathing heavy, and... are you completely in control of your powers right now? You're not about to sink through the floor, right? It'd be really easy in a moment like this.

Breathless Dead

From indignity to indignity; from failure to failure. By all accounts, the Silver Divers are a broken-down pack of whimpering, cringing has-beens. They shy away from Corvii, keep their heads down low, work diligently and without complaint, and if the Corvii made halfway decent supervisors instead of simply being sadistic bullies, they'd be aware that the Silver Divers are one command from Mosaic away from repurposing trench shovels and chains. It doesn't matter why Mosaic told them to stand down (to avoid the entire town being caught in a lethal crossfire, or simply obliterated from above), only that they have their orders. Be good, be beaten, give the unkindness no excuse to single you out. Be ready. Be ready.

The cruelty, Ember ponders as she hauls, is inefficient. Before the arrival of the Corvii, they were already making good time. Morale was high; villagers were even beginning to have the courage to socialize, to joke, to sing howling Ceronian songs alongside the pack. And Ember was the liaison, the mediator, the messenger between Beri and the pack and the demigoddess; she was embarrassed and unsure how proud of herself to be for what she'd done, the betrayals she'd had to choose between, the moon-swirled collar she was proud to wear. There was joy in the work, those first few days. The circle of her pack was expanding, and labor was a chain to bind them all together, too.

And now look at them. Slow, quiet, miserable. Useless. Fear smothers joy beneath the purpleblack acrid flighttense. Eventually the work will be done, and it will take longer and be worse. There are more accidents. And that is why Ember, still hauling, still carrying small messages where she can, has a scream building up inside of her that is harder and harder to clamp down on. Her teeth ache with violence. How dare they come and defile the work? How dare they come and make the burn of her muscles and the unity of labor unclean? How dare they stamp out the songs?

It is more difficult for the villagers. They do not know how to pretend. They do not wrap the knives of their selves inside cloth; all they have are forks and spoons meant for not-battle, for tilling earth and spearing crabs and mixing creams, the sorts of things that the Silver Divers need other people to worry about. They do not have the pack to take comfort in, even in pretended distance. (It is pretended. Ember believes in that with her whole heart. Her pack has to understand her why: they have seen her in battle and in victory. Nobody can look at Mosaic and not understand. Nobody.) The people of Beri are going to break, and Ember yearns for the command to rise up and be Pack again, fighting for honor and justice and to defend the innocent.

And Mosaic waits.

And so Ember waits, and watches, and hopes, putting all of her faith in Mosaic, and trying not to wonder why, when their eyes meet, Mosaic always looks away first.

Mosaic has to have a plan. She has to know what she's doing. That's... that's what it means to be in charge, to be touched by the gods, to be her. Because Ember's put her everything in Mosaic's hands, and she has to trust that it was worth it and Mosaic is going to know what to do. That's what it means when you give all of yourself over. That's what it means. And if she is a knife in the ribs, she does not mean to be, but she cannot be anything else, either. She cannot stop herself; she would die looking to Mosaic. Unwilling to yank that trust away, even at the last second.

So she is ready, Mosaic. She and her pack have made of themselves knives wrapped in linen. Blunt and innocuous and easily overlooked and yet still, underneath, the handle and the blade remain. At your call, Alpha. The Silver Divers are yours, and so you are theirs, too.

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.]