Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

There's two very good reasons that Taurus is speaking to Ember about this. One is that Ember (even as weirdly as she's been acting lately) is the proper link on the chain of communication. Telling her about the resignation is just as good as handing it into Mosaic personally. It is simply understood, and neither one of them has to acknowledge it out loud at all.

The other very good reason is that Ember gives fantastic hugs. She has a tendency to lift feet off the ground, arms wrapped around tummies, tail wagging furiously as she nuzzles into her newest oldest packmate.

"If your time comes around again," she says, eyes shining with enchantment and love, "it will be because you heard her call now. This is the most honorable thing to be doing, really! When you think about it! And- if I am, it's only because! I had you to vouch for me! You believed in me when I was lost, and alone, and sad, and you introduced me to this pack, this sorority of engineer-knights, and together we will show the entire universe the glory of the Plousios! You and me and Gemini and Plundering Fang and Shadows Calling and, and everyone!"

It is, frankly, impossible to be too sad in the face of that smile. Forlorn, maybe. Wistful, certainly. But Ember pulls her friend Taurus into the pack so that everyone can rejudge her, can measure her up as not-Alpha, can congratulate her and challenge her and smell her and how her scent has changed. Leadership will always have been with her, but the next chapter? That's for her to make, her and the whole of the Silver Divers. And if Ember is a bit more waggy and enthusiastic than usual, it might just be because she's going to remember the heart of the pack for the rest of forever! Nothing could erase something like that from her head, not even the fabled River Lethe!

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Dolly’s hands are folded neatly in her lap, ankles just as neatly together. When she shifts, which she is doing her best not to do out of concern for the huntress that carries her, she keeps them together. Her eyes linger on Whispered Promise’s face, but her lips are shut. Her jumpsuit clings to her curves, and who is to say whether Jade has adjusted it for her, or whether she knows herself dressed in tatters barely clinging to her frame?

”Well, Dolly? Are you?” Jade leers over Whispered Promise’s shoulder, looking insufferable. She has pivoted like a predator-goddess. If she cannot defeat her rival, she must act as if their alliance is obvious and effortless. It is almost enough to make Dolly roll her eyes. Almost. But Jade is supporting the back of her head, and her nails are running along the sensitive scalp, a reward for a good girl.

“Mmhm,” Dolly says, nodding. And then, because it’s just the two of them, and because she’s defeated, and because it was Mira who saved her from the Red Band: “‘h hhnnssn’d,” she continues, squirming a little in those warm arms, lips pursed, wrists unable to rise from her lap (not without tugging on a very particular rope). “‘h pmmss, Mrrr’h. mh n h’gfffsss,” with a demure nod to Jade, whose grin‘s corners are close to literally meeting at the back of her head. Then she lifts her head — Jade lifts her head — and shamelessly — wonderfully shamed — she nuzzles right into that milky river running down Mirror’s front.

And then they step out into the revelry. Streamercrackers pop overhead, raining ribbons down on the crews for batting hands and snapping jaws. Members of the cult, with knowing smiles, crowd in to congratulate the blessed huntress who was given the gift of victory by the goddess (who must, naturally, be smiling upon the victor), and to play with the curls of their priestess. Further muffled squeaks and purrs are difficult to make out over the popping, the laughter, the music playing out of portable speakers. Even when Jade hooks a little finger under that rope and gives a wicked little tug, gleeful in how Dolly’s eyes cross for a moment as she tries desperately not to embarrass herself in the middle of the revelry.

Of course, that’s only the start for Dolly. She doesn’t yet know that Nines has obediently set up a pole inside of the tent, or that Smokeless Jade Fires intends to seal her alliance with Mira Fishers by having her bride perform for both bands of huntresses. She has no idea that once the flaps are closed and they have some privacy, Jade will try using holoemitters to show the chosen elect the regalia of the high priestess, as well as the reason for her silence.

You will be shown this, Whispered Promise, as a sign of alliance and as a gift to you. You will be shown, Seven Quetzal, as a reward for your loyalty and as a punishment for losing. You will writhe around the pole, linked to it with chains of shadow, gagged in the colors of the goddess for the fortunate to see, showing off the flexibility and the obedience that you have displayed for the entire tournament. And you will meet eyes with Whispered Promise, who laps at melting ice cubes, and let out the kind of groan that will have Angela Victoria Miera Antonius looking away with her darkening cheeks in one hand.

Your dream will come true, Dolly. You will be as objectified tonight as if you were in the hands of the Red Band, but you will be safe in the hands of your goddess and your new mistress. And your performance will be remembered by everyone fortunate enough to attend.

You dreamed of this once, little gardener, beneath the sheets, tail swishing, fingers tapping on the keys. But you do not know it, not yet.

You will shine as your goddess sees you shine, dearest.

[The performance will be an 11 to Entice. Those present who are appealed to may offer strings and reactions to the Bride of the Goddess.]

Breathless Dead

Poor, poor Ember! The ink painted onto her has somehow not run, but the rest of her is a mess. After a certain point, sweat evaporates; her fur is matted and curling in strange patterns, and she smells like the ghost of a fire. (See how even her sisters offer her a wide, reverent berth.) Stripped out of her safety jumpsuit, her nudity is more striking than it is alluring; cunning eyes might note the ring of coral still on her finger. For a moment, her gaze passes over the desperate Magi, seeming far distant, her mismatched eyes pale.

Then her eyes focus on the figure before her, one coiling upon herself defensively even as she rubs her ringed fingers together. Her ears perk up, and she flashes that irrepressible smile that drew in the attention of Mosaic herself, tail wagging delightedly. "Oh, you silly darling," she says, her voice shifting to lovingly mimic the Azura's own. "There's no need to be worried! We are the loyal crew of the Plousios, and for those who respect our traditions, walk our corridors, and join in the labor, we welcome you with open arms!"

(And perhaps this will now be so. After all, Ember- the favorite of Mosaic, the Speaker for the Tyrant- is speaking, even as her sisters approach and help her with her honors, hiding her away from that lascivious serpentine gaze. Armor and silk, pearls and silver earrings, a sword returned to her side.)

The Ceronians close ranks around the Azura, smiles hidden but for the light in their eyes, as Ember approaches and cups the Magi's chin. "Your wish is my command," she says, all the more terrible for the earnestness, the sincerity, even as gloved hands trace her scales. "Come with us, o honorable scholar, and we shall open the secret side of the ship for you, once we have initiated you into the Crew." The way she says that makes it sound like she speaks of a priesthood, and it may yet be, one day hence.

When the Silver Divers leave the engine room to follow Ember into the hidden passages of the ship, the concealed compartments and the service tunnels, they do so carrying a squirming Azura, each one contributing to the lifting of the tail. Did you not know, Merya, what it is to ask the hospitality of the Daughters of Ceron? What it means to ask to be their guest? Did you not think to ask the people of Beri how the Silver Divers treat those who have fallen into their grasp?

Ember has no doubts. Memories overlap in her enchanted mind, but she still remembers with flustered fondness how she was initiated into the pack, and trusts in her new friend Merya to pass the trials just as winsomely, with just as much stamina and endurance, and with just as much submission to Taurus and Gemini- and to Ember, who speaks for Mosaic.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

The soft mumble of Dolly's voice is only for her goddess and the knight. It is a shared bounty spread out between the two, and Smokeless Jade Fires is generous in this moment. But of course she is; Dolly's beauty is a token of esteem, and one that the two of them particularly enjoy flaunting to the elect. One stray curl bounces down between her eyes as she holds as still as she can, her dress sliding off her shoulder with aching slowness. She is, perhaps, even happier than if she had carried her goddess to victory.

"As I deem fit, Whispered Promise," Smokeless Jade Fires says, with a sway of the hip that almost produces an audible squeak from her priestess. Despite the fact that Whispered Promise has seen her nude, this is much more embarrassing, and thus much hotter. Her hands twitch with the urge to fly up to her face, to hide her expression and her plight. "If you desire negotiation, then you may ask permission from my high priestess to discuss matters further in our shrine. I may not have humbled you today, but she is still the one who speaks on my behalf, and the one who chooses who gets to speak." Even through her delirious, giddy mortification, Dolly still recognizes that her goddess does not sound petulant or sulky; she is treating with the Fisher as if bantering with an equal.

"But I have a feeling," she concludes, with an exhale that carries both mild regret and an irrepressible enjoyment of the fight, with the knowledge that she fights like a hunter, every time, "that Dolly will be more than happy to hear you out, if you can find the words..."

Breathless Dead

Ember hums happily, a half-remembered work song— which must be from Ceron, some round which ripples through the pack, yes. For it is the Ceronians who keep this spacefaring pleasure-palace alight. So what if there is so much to do that only a few of her sisters have come to join her in caring for the cavernous heart of this paradise, this oddly quiet furnace?

Head out of the clouds, Ember! Your lover needs you to focus! The right hand of the queen takes her time and carefully dons her ceremonial (and practical) armor, all green-grey metal without ornamentation. In Hestia’s heart, ornaments cannot survive; gilt would run, crystal would crack, and any carving into the surface of the material would be an unacceptable weakening, a stripping away of what might be a crucial layer of protection. (And yet it is not heavy enough to make her steps ponderous, and she moves fluidly in it. Mighty are the works of the craftsman, wise are the chemists and the engineers.)

Her tail wrapped around her stomach, she enters into the shrine with a polite bow of her head, a breath of praise and worship on her lips. It is not dark here, not anymore, not with the molecular bellows pumping hard. The walls are the color of predawn, and the gases that drag along the walls writhe like Azura coils, and the fusion spark’s steady light casts shifting, unreal shadows on all sides. But that’s all right. The spark’s what she’s here for.

The fuel is shaped into cubes, broken off one by one, and offered to the flame. It flows as creamy and white as butter once it leaves her fingers. She almost loses herself in the way that it runs down the gutters. Soon it will all be consumed, and the engine will be the purest light, the purest heat. Soon it will all be gone, and only energy will remain. But that’s too soon. Toss the last of the fuel into the pillar, stretching its limbs across the top of the sphere, and run, Ember, run!

Mosaic could have done this easily, if she were not battle-weary. (They say she threw all of Beri, and the thought isn’t real to Ember yet. She still imagines houses being pried up and being tossed one by one; no one has yet explained to her exactly how she has underestimated the woman she faithfully explores.) But it is to her consort’s credit that the gates do not stick as she hauls them open, and down the gutters run white serpents with tongues of fire, almost seeming to flick at the air as they vent— no, they tear the air down and rip out its vital gases, gorge themselves on heady chemical mixtures.

She laughs as she makes her way towards the exit, skirting the peril zone, averting her eyes from Hestia’s Spindle as it builds, reaction by reaction, into awe and splendor. If she were to look now, not even her faceplate’s automatic tint would be able to protect her from its divine glory. Her face is glowing, sunburnt, shining with sweat. Her body has aches running from her crest to her heels.

When she emerges, she must go from that wild run to a dead stop; she must stand and wait, armor groaning and sizzling, for it to drop to a safe temperature for removal. Until then, she will stand awkwardly still and bask in the applause from her sisters and that oh-so-friendly magi, aware that her touch is death until Hestia’s glory has passed from her shoulders. And she will hum happily, the words so close to the tip of her tongue, words that mean exertion and pack and peril. If only she could remember.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Jade’s laughter is a hop and a skip away from being frenzied. Like a real person’s recorded voice, it strains against the limitations of the medium. There is spittle in that laughter, but also relief.

She was never offered this among the gods. And Dolly is stiffening under her hands because doesn’t really know what a knight is. (Armor, service, dedication, savior, dragonslayer, wins the princess, round table, all connections flashing through Jade as she reaches for them.)

“Then defeat me, Sir Promise! Only by overcoming the gods can you win the right to face the Dragon!” And this is what she can do. This is her magic. Transforming the world through her words and will. Making it right and good and soft for her Dolly, and judging the wishes of those who pray to her.

She has already won what she wanted to pry out of Whispered Promise from the very first moment they met. She has won the respect of that slinking, impudent, unreadable trickster. And when she becomes the Road to the Kingdom, she will be—

She will make everyone happy. Oh, Dolly will have to learn what a knight is, but they’ll have plenty of time together as honorable runners-up. Plenty of time. Together.

But that doesn’t mean she’s going to make it easy. A knight has to be challenged, don’t they? Yes. They do. She has decided this, and so it is law. A fair fight. And how Dolly squeals when the swords nip at her! Shh, Dolly dearest, and you, o watching knight, behold the gift of the goddess drawn across that squeaking mouth, and the shiver as the blindfold is raised and her eyes meet the intense gaze of the knight who fights her goddess with respect.

Now all that is left is to punish that impudent hand before they are done. (She is a hunt-goddess. She cannot help it. She must have her trophy, after all.) So she lunges— or, rather, she lunges Dolly. Their body-mecha crash together as Jade reaches for the hand that desecrated her altar. Give it to her, Whispered Promise! Let her know that you were properly chastened, and your jibes about spanking kittens shall be magnanimously forgiven!

Breathless Dead

"Welcome!"

The Knight, from above, makes a bold gesture, a sweeping of the arm, an acknowledgement of the great worthies of the universe, and chief among them the Lady of the Plousios, the Queen Under Heaven, Mosaic Regina. Her eyes are alight, quite literally, and her raiment glimmers as she smiles proudly, her own guest shyly coiling behind her. "Hestia bless all of you, friends of Our Lady, and may you find your true dream here aboard our pleasure-palace! Our hearthflame is sparking and soon will be properly kindled; our Corvii are working the molecular bellows like Hundred-Handed Cottus! We have musicians ready, a chef stolen from the finest kitchen on Bitemark, and enough champagne to fill the Cocytus!"

She jumps down from her vantage point, leaving the friendly Magi behind, so that she can bound up to her love and... "Well met, fellow knight," she says, bowing low. "I am Ember, a humble servant of the Lady Mosaic. And you are doubtless the flower of Azura chivalry, a sword's blade folded a hundred thousand times. If it would please you, I invite you to our dueling grounds for a sparring match; I would like to test my meager skills against your own, developed over the course of a lifetime." Her tail wags eagerly, and the ring on her finger is beautiful as she presses her hand against her chest. "But I dare not monopolize your time amongst the wonders of our vessel. Come in! Come in! This is the place where dreams are true."

Huntresses of Hybrasil

What!? This is impossible! How are you doing this?! I am invincible! Curses! Curse you and curse your entire clan! I will have my revenge!!

To her credit, Smokeless Jade Fires says none of these things. She is young enough, enough of a kitten, to be able to accept when something is impossible, and then to see how it is done anyway. Her divinity is not calcified, and she can see the shape of Mirror's movements in her cognition.

"No," Dolly says, and her voice is small. "We never had to fight in the war. This is as close as we can come, and I hope-- I hope we never do. I tasted what it's like to fight for real, in that last match, and it's awful. This shouldn't be a war. And even having a wish at the end... no, I suppose that's why everyone else showed up. It would be awful if we took it from you or your opponents, wouldn't it? Even if we gave it away to second place, Jade..."

Then she hisses, because Jade can only do so much to shelter her from the feedback of an explosion rocking her hip, her breastbone, her ankle twisting. She nearly crumples under the precise fire of the tail, which is tracking her every movement before she makes it, because Whispered Promise knows what she's going to do before she does it.

"Even if I would let you lose, dearest one," Jade says, fierce pride for the both of them burning in her voice, as she whistles for the jackals to race down the alleyways, their one hope shattering the iron focus in those watery and pale eyes, "do you think I can lose to the likes of this trickster, my bride? This god-defying warrior? Who denies my offers, who lords her age over us, who... no! Push your buttons, pull your levers, but know that I will not submit so easily!"

For the sake of her goddess, Seven Quetzal throws herself into the punishment of tails without any complaint that manages to escape her well-trained lips, and for the sake of her bride, Smokeless Jade Fires desperately tries to find another impossible victory, another miracle that she can use to prove that she deserves Dolly's love.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"Kittens?"

The sudden flash of the spear pierces one of the tails through its engine. Even furious, Smokeless Jade Fires knows better than to try and go for the kill; the punishment would be immediate. Even here, seeking to dismantle the tails one by one, to peel back the defenses of the Fisher, Dolly's footwork is frantic.

"How dare you mock my recent birth?! Impudent, disgraceful little thing!" A low swing, an attempt to throw Mira off-balance long enough to harpoon another tail, or best of all to trick her into firing on herself. "You are infuriating! So smug, so teasing, thinking that you are better than me because you have nothing to prove!"

"What is your wish?" Video linkup accepted. The headband of her ornate headdress is over her eyes, cloth draped around the hollow of her neck, lines of vibrant cobalt the net that she is hopelessly caught in. False but more real than real, a look offered at the bride of the goddess and how she fights, or rather, does not fight. In her hands, the lance is a long dancer's pole garlanded in sashes. She is bare-chested, adorned in gold, unable to reveal fluster without the use of her ears or tail. "All we need is... all I want is for everyone to see her for who she is."

"And everyone will see Dolly wreathed in my glory when we overcome you, and the Zaldarian, and everyone will have to admit that the goddess born from stone is more than an accident of weave-programming!" For a moment, she is visible behind Dolly, teeth and eyes and claws in multitude, a sudden shock of blue jade fire. She vaults, kicks one tail into another's flight path.

"We do owe you, Whispered Promise," Dolly says, her skirt settling as she lands, braids wild about her shoulders, already moving into the position demanded by the pull of her goddess's strings. "If you apologize, we can, I can... we do still owe you. I don't want to crush your dreams."

"For your rudeness! For distressing my wife! For treating the hunt and the contest like a puzzle to be solved and passed through untouched! All of it, [God-Wrestling Trickster]!"

Dolly leaps, and twists in midair, and her feet fly at the screen as their idol kicks the Gods-Smiting Whip in the chest- and does this force the One-Day Defender to stumble back into a hidden mine, or is this exactly where Mira wanted them?

[8 to Fight. Take a String, seize a superior position, if you please.]

Breathless Dead

"Ha! This wonder of the cosmos has been through worse! I would like to see them try to overcome us, and--"

The spirit of the Plousios is interrupted by the hand gripping her jaw, squeezing her cheeks, pulling her close. Her tail ducks between her legs as she instinctively whimpers and lowers her ears, looking as small as a Pix, indicating that she is no threat and does not intend to start a fight. Her eyes widen as the implications of what is being threatened sink in. A dilemma. If she downplays, acts humbly, she simply makes herself seem more mysterious, more of a prize. If she boasts, she makes herself seem worth the terrible risk.

"Against the gods themselves man contends in vain," she says, meekly, piously. "Our Lady is the daughter of Artemis, the moonclad huntress, and she is crowned with their favor. To try and claim me is to invite your own destruction, o my honorable guest. She would do anything for my sake," she says, so earnestly that it might even be true, "and that is if I am not forced to protect you from yourself, sagacious one." She reaches up and places one hand on the Magi's wrist. It is a soft grip, until the Magi attempts to shake it away. It's incredible how she can ooze the charm of a humble, tamed Ceronian and still display the swordgrip of a knight, isn't it?

"As for kindling the hearth: certainly! I am sure our learned ones and mystics will be certain to help you!" She waves one hand down a brightly-lit corridor[1], beaming the sort of smile that won over Mosaic's heart in the first place. "After all, that is a holy act, one that must be carried out with proper consultation from the gods, with sacrifice and divination, with the offering of jewels to the flame and other such sacred acts!"

---

[1]: The damp drips down from the lichen-blackened walls. Tiles are missing underfoot. There is a suggestion of scuttling up high in the yawning dark. Sour salt lingers on the tongue. This deep within the ship, it is almost as if it is still down there, beneath the heavy waves, and that all around is crushing death, and only its hallowed walls hold the flood at bay.