Tatterdemalion

Huntresses of Hybrasil

"Aren't we going to get in trouble over this, Jade...?"

"What, do you want to turn around and hand them over?"

The priestess hunches her shoulders and dares a little pout, because the truth of it is that she doesn't. The goddess's smug smile says clearly that she knows that, too, and that she thinks her very special little priestess deserves treats for being so good and strong and brave. She chooses, too, to let the messages flicker across the walls of the temple, demands for the goddess and her cult to return to Akar to face judgment, along with the reassuring pings from Angela Victoria Miera Antonius and Nine Forests, letting her know that she is still flanked, that she is still safe.

"Well, where are we even going to go?" Dolly reaches up to brush back a curl of her hair, dragging the intricate harness along with the motion of her arm. It constricts, makes the motion more difficult, and makes her want to melt. "We can't go back to the Terenians yet, and we might start a war if we take two of their people back to Hybrasil."

"I think I know a few places," the goddess says, waving one hand. Her eyes are still half-lidded as she digests; she will need time to be quiescent, then... perhaps she will need to learn through action again. Let the yearning of the universe turn, for a while, to watch that little minx and her impossible dream, just to make them all hungrier again for the great goddess to return. "And we can drop them off on a colony world when they're ready. After we've had our fun, and they've been properly thanked for their service to the Holy Priestess."

Dolly's tail curls, tugging against insistent ropes, and she lets out a happy little huff. She follows the tug of the harness to turn ever so slightly on course, letting her goddess optimize the way forward. The stars are like bright raindrops on a dark windowpane, and she is held, and she is warm knowing that Mirror got her happy ending, after all.

"I wouldn't mind going back to Hybrasil, later," she says aloud. "See the trees again. See my sister again. Tell everyone how you defeated the guardian deities of Terenia in order to declare the victory of one of our own." Jade says nothing; she considers the contents of the message. It may be some time before some of Hybrasil's daughters can return; it may never happen again for Whispered Promise. But she looks at Dolly's warm round face, and she says nothing.

Dolly looks over at her wife, and smiles, and mimes the act of kissing the goddess's cheek. And the goddess, in turn, decides to inhabit the space in front of her Dolly, sitting on the altar, and tugs her in by the leash for a proper kiss...

Just like in "Pursuit of Faith: A Goddess Romance," a story as foundational to Smokeless Jade Fires as any myth, a story that she has memorized inside of her bones.

The idol wobbles in its course, but a panicked burst of comms from Nine Forests convinces Jade to tug Dolly back to where she needs to be.

That's the agreement they made, after all, on that first night together.

Breathless Dead

“Bring them back!”

She stands, alone, bereft of pack. Her teeth are bared, and her eyes are full of tears. She would be a morsel to be snapped up, but for the fact that she carries enough power to snap the foundations of their tower like twigs. But for the fact that she refuses to give in to her training and run. Not when there’s still a chance she can convince them to… to undo whatever they have done.

It’s not a killing weapon. That much is obvious. (Her shield flickers, the design changing from moment to moment: a laurel wreath crowned with stars, a Shogunate mon, a gaudy tricolor flag, the jaws of a terrible wolf, three hounds chasing each other around the rim, the rainbow surf, a gleaming pearl.) They would leave traces of the body, even seared instantly into ash. This is a weapon that makes someone be not here. So bring them back.

“I will level this city,” she growls, trusting in her training as a scout to sell the bluff. She hefts the shield, ears at attention, staring up at the descending huntresses. “Wherever they have gone, return them, or I will tear out your clan’s name from history!”

Maybe she can win this, but she doesn’t want to. She wants Mosaic back (what if they are out in space, scattered like pearls) and she wants her pack back (what if they are buried within the earth without even space to howl) and she doesn’t want them to call her bluff (they could lift the shield off her arm before she would use it in anger against a city full of Portuguese).

So she demands, and lets them look at what she carries, and she makes herself believe that she, alone, can frighten an entire pack into submission. After all, if she doesn’t believe it, how will they ever believe in turn?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

“My wish did come true,” Smokeless Jade Fires retorts, placing one foot on Angela’s arm. She imagines the vibration of the machine all around them; she tunes in to the flustered squeaks coming out of the cockpit locker. “I wasn’t ever in it for anything that could be bought, sold, or offered— nothing except the glory. And won’t that look wonderful? Eliminated in the semifinals, but immediately recruited by the victor as an integral part of the most famous, most elusive battle ever to be fought here. When they remember her, and all of her audacity, they will remember me.”

"Ai, is that all? You could do that with a periodical, you know,” Angela says, feeling the thrum of the Barn Owl all around, feeling the heat of the goddess coiling right in front of her. A challenge, a reminder.

“Of course it’s not all. I also made everyone watch, admire, covet, and adore the most beautiful girl in the universe,” Jade continues, radiating smug delight. A joy, pure and shining and divine. “And how she will be pursued! How she will be begged for answers! How she will be remembered in the same breath as Whispered Promise, as Mayze Szerpaws, as me. This is my miracle, Angela Victoria Mi—“

"You don’t have to say the whole thing every time, you know.”

“…but it’s your title. Your wholeness of self. How you have presented yourself to the cosmos. You really want me to be so intimate as to drop titles, Anj-eh-la~? Oh, how the zeal of the first Terenian convert finally emerges from the thickets at last—“

"If you say one more word I won’t let you watch her thanking me for the gallant rescue, imp.”

"IMP—“

"MMMMFFFFHH?!”

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.