Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

The scream's still ringing in her skull (even muted, it must still be witnessed) when she sends the first one flying back into their own pack. They've tried to make themselves more Pack with ornaments, studs and fangs and manes, but they aren't Pack. Look at how they get in each other's way as the Silver Divers take the plunge.

Ember likes swords. They're heroic. Romantic. A length of shining metal made only for battle. But she doesn't have a sword right now. All she has is the dervish-whirl, the momentum, the resonance that sends these half-wolves flying back when she strikes them with the Shield, and if they were not half-wolves, the trailing macehead of the Lantern would kill them. But they are half-wolves, and Ember flings herself into their midst.

Beside her, Goldie has trident-knives. She catches hafts between their prongs and twists; axeheads fall like leaves in the harvest. Beside her, Gemini has a needle of a blade which hisses as it splits the air; no one can pass by it without being stung. Beside her, Velvet Heart's caestus are spattered with Portuguese blood, and she howls defiance. Make it hurt, the lar said. Well, we can do that, can't we, girls?

Even so...

"Get out of our way!" The words spill out of her for those who cannot hear the command roiling off her. "Drop your weapons and run! None of this has to happen to you!"

Because they're pathetic, don't you think? Trying so hard to be wolves, to be Pack, aping the forms and the functions. Maybe that's her own weakness as a new member of the pack, relatively; to see herself when she drops the one standing and the one riding, and their obsolete electric-powered technology shatters on the pavement.

"RUN, idiots!"

But they're not running. They're closing in, bloody-eared and furious, and when the Alpha's pulling her punches, Gemini's the one who picks up on that, and now everyone's flinching away from risking the worst: an explosion of songbirds, a melting of serpents, a haggard cry coming up from the throats of these children.

So when the next one comes, Ember sends him straight through the glass doors of the tower, with a howl and a charge after.

Breathless Dead

The centrality is a surprise, is the thing. If Ember were, hypothetically, doing this sort of thing, attempting to conquer a people through subterfuge, hidden amongst the prey, she'd be up in the mountains, hidden in the forests, sprawling fortresses invisible in the wilderness. But not the Star Kings. Hiding in plain sight for those with eyes to see, a swirling maelstrom of sudden color and life in the middle of this world of sickness. It's daring.

Well. They'll see daring, won't they?

"This won't be able to knock out their entire network." Courage. The sharp tang of facing down a giant. Ears alert underneath hats. "But it will keep their eyes on us." Challenge. Acrid, heady, impossible to ignore. "Stoneribs, you will hold back half. Go to ground, watch for them to commit, then hit their weakest point." Cunning. A shiver at the base of the tail. "We will meet them where they dare to come out. And if they do not dare, we will walk up to that Engine and signal for its extraction, then deal with them without their arms." Eagerness. Bright, flowery, a twitch in the fingers.

So marches forth the anglerfish's lure, bag in one hand, art project in the other, flanked by women who move like the gods of this world. How far will they be permitted to penetrate into the heart of the Star Kings?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

If a ping on a console could sound self-satisfied... well, it's not just a console. It's an entire symphony of little feedback noises, played in harmony to mimic the opening of White Panther, Green Dragon. Dolly spins around, dives at the machine, and snatches out the glove, hugging it close to her chest.

"Good girl," Smokeless Jade Fires says, and her smile is the smile of the huntress that has devoured a flock of birds. "Now, I believe... what have you been up to? Turn around, present." The priestess turns in the almost-dark, the lights of emergency panels and buttons flickering, enough to see the shapes of two panicking technicians and a sword flying out of the hand of her adversary. "Well, then. Here's your opening. Go, now, and don't stop until you see our Angela."

The glove Dolly sticks down her front, because she's going to need two hands to pry the ruins of the door open and then to run with both Sam and Tall. She'll hurtle down that almost-night corridor like a shot! And then, whatever happens next, it will happen with them under her cult's protection! Because that, that is the power of the high priestess of the goddess!!

Smokeless Jade Fires burps alien codesong, and licks her lips. She will have to figure out what this is, and whether to release it from the crucible of her star-stomach. Not with that insufferable trickster-engineer, though. With someone who knows how to treat a victorious goddess appropriately. And... well, now that matter is decided, she can focus her attention, her mind of blue razors, to exactly how she is going to reward her Dolly.

Gleaming, sharp and aching with love, she races along the walls as Dolly shoots out of the room like a spear, made of angles and lines, luxuriating in how she can show off. And if this sword-wielding maniac didn't want a shoulder to her hip, she shouldn't have been threatening people with the aforementioned swords!!

Breathless Dead

Unwashed bodies. Toxins. Animal fat. Toxins. Sewage. Toxins.

How do these people live on this planet? No, scratch that: how do they live on this planet without toxin filters in their respiratory systems?

The air is choked with the chemical byproducts of the reactions they use to power their machines, the reactions that their factories use to make crude polymers as basic as the materials she could make in kindergarten, and the reactions that they put very directly into their own lungs. And that man had been offended that she slapped the stick of burning tar out of his hand!

They don’t have anything between them and this world that they have made for themselves. No wonder their lifespans are barely one century long. The moment they’re born, they start the process of poisoning themselves. This would be an unpleasant enough world to live on as a Ceronian, but the Portuguese…

Ah. This is what Cash Money saw, isn’t it?

She shadows Mosiac, as if trying to throw her body between this world and someone who should remain unblemished by it. The large sack for the Lantern is heavy in one hand, gripped death-tight by the shoulder straps, and the Shield strapped to her arm is covered in a canvas sheet to disguise it as an example of Portuguese artwork.

The pack moves with her, badly suppressing the urge to whine, to flinch, to growl. Tension and Unease are draped about them, stringent underneath the toxin air. This world is worse than walking through the Underworld, because at least then, you’re dead. How can the Star Kings stand to be here? Advanced filtration?

And more importantly, how can they witness this without joining with Cash Money to try and save as many of the Portuguese from the slow death of poison, of rot in the lungs, of creeping cancers? How can they not give these creatures ships— no, not ships, not yet. Not when they’d just spread this way of life. They would need engines along with the ships, and medical intervention, and maps. Maps to places untouched by toxins, places where they could run with fresh lungs and jump over rivers and learn what living is. Because being crowded into one overstuffed and dying world…

That can’t be living.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Smokeless Jade Fires answers with laughter, and with her teeth. They are as sharp as thought, as intention, as domination. They are birds; she is the thing that cats do dream of. They are spirits; she is that which demands submission from the other side of the world. This was an inevitability, a weight that deepens with each passing flick of the wrist and gnashing of the jaw.

Yield! Bare your throat! Submit!

Do you not understand what you face, little birds? The predator heart of the hopes of all Hybrasil! The goddess in the five boxes which are opened, one by one, to bring about a happy ending! The power that Dolly puts her hope in day after day! The power that Whispered Promise entrusts with her worldweaving!

She burns and she burns with the name that is Smokeless Jade Fires, until she receives the submission that she craves.

---

"STOP THAT!"

It's shrill, angry, and more than half a yowl. It's a bluff from a small, well-rounded kitten. It's the flailing of a paw when you're trying to fend off a sibling intent on bowling you over. And it's the only card that Dolly has got in her hand.

"Were you raised in a nest? Just s-stop it with the cutting, and the hacking, and-- do you have any idea how expensive this equipment that you're going to just chop into is? The, the... back me up here, I, uh, I don't actually... it looks expensive? Right? Difficult to source? Do you want to try using your words, or, maybe? Asking? Put it down! Don't-- I said quit it!! Why are you like this?!"

She spreads her arms, looking from Sam to the Tall One to the figures in the background, the picture of an aggrieved High Priestess dismayed by a lack of decorum and appropriate behavior. The only thing she has left to be, because explaining ferns--

"I expected better from someone who wore that fantastic Syzerpaws dress!!"

Huntresses of Hybrasil

The panic reaction is entirely instinctual and physiological.

The way that she tenses up, tail bushing, is meant to make her look bigger and more dangerous to a threat. The strangled yowl that escapes her throat is a similar warning: teeth bared, a fierce huntress ready to bite into this challenger. The way that she clings to Sam is a memory of safety in numbers, in the camaraderie of the hunt.

But because she is also a person, Dolly eventually manages to squeak out: "...I didn't think they'd do that."

---

What ARE you?

The goddess cannot let this challenge, this lacuna in her understanding, pass her by. She shifts her position in the swirl, tosses out pistons, attempts to crack open what is increasingly barred to her (and barring her way to extraction). What ARE you? What ARE you, you thing of ghostwhispers, you unquiet spirit, you thing that has entered this place?

Are you a kind of thing like me?

This thought excites her, haunts her.

Are you a kind of thing that is born of the place where the clever stone meets the embodied spirit? Are you some (obviously much more pathetic and not-divine) peer? Her teeth are bared in interest, her focus sudden and all-consuming. After all, Angela's coming with the extraction, and Dolly will be sure to scoop up the glove, so she can continue to issue her demand for an identity.

What ARE you?

Breathless Dead

The Lantern is heavy bronze, worked in repeating spirals like the death of clouds. The power that thrums through it is enough to make the hair on Ember's arm stand on end, grey and shivering. The Shield is, in comparison, horribly light. The platinum that traces through it is like the hungry roots of a tree, stark against the dark metal. It will become more and more difficult to hold later on.

They are a necessary pair. The Lantern's fire draws in the howling energy of weapons such as the Star Kings are rumored to hold, bending their arcs in flight to smash the fragile casing apart. The Shield, linked by cable (secured to Ember's shoulders), traps the fire, flickering and hissing across its face, until the bearer is ready to return it.

Limitations? What is not limiting? The weight, the inability to draw her sword, the need to interpose the Shield between fire and Lantern, the way that any reasonable Ceronian would give the order to cease fire after the first return salvo-- but it will deny the Star Kings their preferred means of battle. Their mighty weapons will be tossed aside if Ember can do her part, and if she is fortunate and thoughtful, she might be able to bring down any fortification in their way.

Particularly if the Silver Divers can seize some of the weapons in turn, and use them to prepare the Shield's vastest roar.

The photographs sourced from the Syfenno were very helpful in turn. The light armor of the Divers has been hidden beneath red-and-black checkered tunics and rough blue trousers, their ears beneath hats-- some shapeless, some wide-brimmed. This is what wilderness women among the Portuguese wear, is it not? They will blend in, even with the scabbards at their sides, surely.

Breathless Dead

"Star Kings," Sagetip sniffs. "It's all psychology with them. And the weapons, but those can be circumvented. It's the superiority that makes them dangerous. Breaking their opponents' will to fight, acting as if they are invincible, and cluster bombing an opponent: that is where they get their reputation as warriors."

Ember is half listening, and half imagining the Portuguese, and more than half angry at the thought of a bunch of... and here she imagines the people of Beri, but in loud orange and green outfits... a bunch of people, stuck on that planet, stuck in a system where they have to spend their whole lives trying to scramble their way to the top, instead of there being enough for everyone. Poverty and being trapped and the only way out is through the Knight and what if they just--

But she has to think of the ship first, doesn't she? Like Mosaic. And how could she, leader of a pack, go in and fix it? It's not like she can trust everyone in the pack to behave, anyway. Oh, sure, they'd go down, they'd have fun, they'd declare themselves here to save the world, but... they can't. Not here. Not now. And it keeps stabbing at her, like a needle. That she has to do the right thing for the pack and the ship and her girlfriend. Not for the Portuguese (staring at her in her mind's eye).

Get in. Scatter the Star Kings. Get the materials they need. Get out. You can do that, can't you, Ember? Without getting in trouble? Without needing to be dragged back out? Without trying to slot into the perfect position that will be vacated once the Star Kings are gone? For everyone (except the Portuguese)?

Staring at the simulacrum of their world, it's hard to be sure.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

One thing more. One little twist. She's allowed this, isn't she? You knew who you were working with, Whispered Promise. You knew what laughing, petulant deity you were working with. To call upon the powers of the underworld is to recognize that power.

When the transmission cuts off, it cuts to the burning skull of a goddess, made of the leaping, giddy flames, the color of unclouded jade. The burning jaw contorts into a gleeful nip, a way to show the entire universe that this, the coup of Whispered Promise that will be remembered for generations, that will turn entire worlds on their fulcrum...

It could not have been done without the intervention of a goddess.

Then she turns her eye away from Whispered Promise's plummet (because she knows best of all not to intrude on a moment that is sacred in such a way), and she sets her labyrinth awhirl, drawing the strings of wild speculation being yowled out into the universe and sending them scattering where she will. Ten Things You Need To Know About Mayze Szerpaws. Szerpaws Revealed (Live Reaction). What Does This Mean For The Consortium? Nothing- absolutely nothing- will be allowed to pass through here that does not pertain to the Revelation of the Trickster.

Well. One thing. One string, tugged. One screen, flicked on.

"Come and fetch our Dolly, Angela Victoria Miera Antonius."

---

Dolly sets her jaw, insofar as she knows how to do it.

"...fuck," she says, and there's an adorable lilt to it, even now. "Goddess damn it all. I thought... fuck!"

Then she begins trying to move one of the server racks in front of the door, puffing, trying her best to buy time. What's the worst that they could do to her, anyway? Nothing they can accuse her of is anywhere as bad as letting Mirror's dream be shattered in this moment. Nobody gets to see Solarel and Mirror, not now, not until it's all over.

That's the promise she made to Mirror, after all.

"We are about to have company, so give me a hand here! We can't let them interrupt her! Please!"

[Dolly immediately pulls on that String.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Her fire does not give off smoke.

Here, in the center, in the shape of this which is a name, she burns, and her fire does not give off smoke.

Here, in the center, in the shape of this which is a name, she plucks a string, and she burns, and her fire does not give off smoke.

Here, in the center, in the shape of this which is a name, she plucks a string, and the reverberation pulls every block into place where she wants it, and she burns, and her fire does not give off smoke.

Here, in the center, in the shape of this which is a name, and the name is Smokeless Jade Fires, she plucks a string, and the reverberation pulls every block into place where she wants it, and she burns, and her fire does not give off smoke.

---

Her heart is racing. Her prey instincts, honed by evolution to keep her save from behemoths and hungry birds, yells at her to go and hide under a desk. She's been seen, she's been made, she's been spotted, she's been striped. It's all going to fall apart, and she'll have failed to keep Jade...

To keep her safe, in turn. To protect her as she protects her priestess.

It's like it's somebody else who moves her hand, who presses one finger against Sam's lips. But it's her that manages to wink. A plea from a place of weakness, but presented from a stance of strength. Those alien lips (like Angela's) are soft, warm. Breath mists against her fingerpad.

Won't you be a good girl and keep quiet for me, Sam? It's an actual question the way that Dolly's body asks it; a request. Not a declaration the way that Smokeless Jade Fires would make the question. And some Terenians like a soulful gaze from a voluptuous, soft Hybrasilian. (Actually, according to network searches, that number is much higher than you'd expect. Not that Dolly knows. But Jade does.)

[11 on either an Entice or a Defy Disaster, dealer's choice.]