Tatterdemalion

Breathless Dead

Redana almost hisses at Bella that she’s going to screw this up. This is… how can she possibly be expected to follow up that? That dismantling of Mynx’s walls, keystone by keystone, questions that must have been considered ever since she came back to herself on this side of the Lethe: how is the brash, energetic, foolhardy princess of Tellus going to follow up bringing Mynx safely to ground? How can she possibly be entrusted with this?

But Bella has entrusted her with this. That fact is undeniable. There’s no squirming out from under that! If Mynx tries to rebuild herself now, she’ll break strange, won’t she? Like a tree with crooked branches. (Now there is a memory.) Bella gave her this, and it has to be because Bella knows that only Dany can bring Mynx safely down.

“I? I! Am! Yes!” Ember throws her head back and laughs like only a Ceronian alpha can, the mocking laugh of glorious victory. “You’re all ours tonight— you know that, right? Answer!”

“Y-yes!” The gasp— there’s something of Redana there, of a squirming and flustered princess. It’s difficult not to look away bashfully when presented with yourself, you know? But this isn’t Redana. The gasp is in the process of becoming something new.

“Look at both of us. You might think you know us, but we’ve both changed so much from those days in the garden. The person you’re pretending to be right now doesn’t exist any more. Does she?”

“…no?” She’s lost, starting to drift. There’s empty air under her feet, and she needs a wolf to catch her.

“So the masks you have are obsolete. The Bella you could be is out of date. So is the Redana. There’s no more need to pretend to be those girls, is there?”

“No…”

“There’s no more need to hide yourself. You’re going to be a good girl,” the Ceronian princess rumbles in a way that is all the more sincere for how important it is to her. “And you are going to let all those ancient masks drop so we can see the beauty underneath, aren’t you? Answer!”

A nod. A growl. A squeak. “Yes!! Yes!!!”

“Because there’s no need for bodyguards anymore, not when I look like…”

Her vest hits the floor, followed by her bandolier, followed by her bra.

“This.” Gaze upon the body of an athlete, a scout, a warrior, o Toxicrene! Scent her, know how her corded muscles would feel, and let your eyes trace the augmentations to her teeth. She is not the princess of Tellus any more: she would be able to fend off assassins herself. And she would be quite capable of tying a silly little Toxicrene in knots.

“So we’ve no need for a bodyguard any more, right?” She stretches theatrically, flexes her arms, smiles in self-satisfaction.

“No more…”

“Which means that you are bound instead to be yourself. Bella will demand it, won’t she? Answer!”

“Yes! She will!”

“And you and I both know what she’s like when she’s like this. I don’t see any way out of it. You’re doomed, Mynx. Doomed to deal with Bella here until she’s satisfied, and part of her satisfaction…”

The Ceronian princess throws her arms around the Toxicrene, giving her a faceful of hot breath, glistening teeth, and a tight grip. Forehead to forehead, who the princess was and who the princess became.

“Will be tossing you to me. I fought my way up from the bottom of the pack, and I will not spare you any mercy, girl.” Need and Lust and Amusement soak into Mynx’s skin. “Now. Are you ready to be one of the priceless treasures of Ceron, just as you are, no title and no mask?”

“Please, yes…”

“Even knowing how much I know about lusty Ceronian pirates and what they do to the beautiful ladies in their clutches~?” Her tail betrays her excitement at getting to play this role for a night, at flipping the tables around.

The look that Mynx gives her is too much. Redana bites, growling, tail wagging, digging her nails into Mynx’s fiendishly soft skin— and then pulls back, panting, grinning, a wicked creature only barely held at bay by the fact that Bella is staring at the two of them, has her on a leash of loyalty, and it’s not yet time to let the Hound of Mosaic loose.

“Yes. Or. No,” Ember growls, eyes hot.

“Zeus’s sake, yes!”

“Last one. Did you know that the Princess thought of you as a friend the whole time she grew with you?”

“…no,” the Toxicrene admits.

“Well, now you know. And now,” Dany leers, “you’ve one more question to answer. Here, since it’s probably slipped your silly little mind— let me help.”

No talking. Not a single word. Just the body. The pirate queen works that ruined dress back between Mynx’s lips and circles behind her, clamps one palm over her mouth, presses her body against Mynx’s back, and lets out a growl straight from a romance novel. “Now. Answer her…”

Return to Thellamie

Mayzie!

You duck into the midst of the melee before you really think about what you are doing. Your thoughts haven’t bothered trying to catch up, to explain that the reason you’re even working at the Chrysanthemum is because you can’t say no to an opportunity to help, because you can’t say no to a friend who needs you, because you’ve got to keep paying the rent, and how envious you are of Eclair leaving all this behind, how she left you behind— all this to say that you are acting on instinct and you will be angry at Eclair later for making this demand of you and not understanding why you would duck underneath a blow from a fighting woman in order to grab Eclair’s tablet and skid across the floor.

You get a round of applause and whistles from the crowd, who, like idiots, are assuming that this is some sort of incredible new experience from the Chrysanthemum. To be fair to them, Yaz has been funding pop-up scenes with actors in the corridors, but to be unfair to them, you are under no obligation to be fair. Idiots! Buffoons!

You uncouple the stylus from the tablet. Words are hard when you’re this worked up, so in your freehand you start stream-of-consciousnessing this. These two idiots are fighting. Why are they fighting? Probably because Eclair is a wanted criminal. She probably attacked the goddess because this Timtam dared her to or something. They’re still doing fight things. This Handmaiden should have a better outfit.

Outfit. Yes. Something with lots of tassels that flow from the sleeves. Make her look like a hawk, like a soaring dragon, and cut the skirt into sections that would flow around her like this…

There’s room enough in the notepad program for you to start sketching. You definitely are going to miss writing some of this down.

---

Yuki!

The noise behind you is a roar. It rattles the floorboards. It is a physical feeling of sound, wet and overwhelming and furious. You have done something which you should not have done.

Luckily, the Fellowship of the Deerboy is going to buy you time. Time to get close to this woman who’s…

Radiant?

---

Hazel!

She drinks your light, this woman. It soaks into her, makes her skin radiant where the lantern lights shine down on her, and with a delighted groan she accepts what you have given her. Her grip is so tight.

“Pure,” she murmurs, giddily. “Pure and bright and soaked. Your light is beautiful, Golden Faun, and it is striving, growing, shaking, verdant light.”

When she laughs, you can hear an echo of your laugh inside of it.

“Come with me,” she pleads, turning her full attention onto you like a hot lamp above butter. She is sweet and rich and floral, and she is full of wonder and joy and life. “I will show you fields of flowers— arboreal wonderlands— the end of death— I will make you the King of Thellamie— together we will transform this world~!”

“I don’t think so,” Princess Sulochana Arju says, wrapping her coils around you protectively and holding a heartblade to this woman’s chin.

Hooray! You have been saved(?).

Return to Thellamie

Olesya!

The light sweat on your skin is pleasant. So is the burn of muscles properly used, given a chance to prove themselves.

Two ashiqs against your hand-picked huntresses. They should have known you had their scent, that they were going to lose, but they fought anyway, and squirmed like serpents after being skewered on heartblades.

The Faun’s here. In this city. They didn’t need to say anything to tell you that. The hunch you had about the empty spot in the sightings was right. Already, beautiful Juniper sends an update through the Huntchat. The entire hunt will be converging on this city soon, but the Khatun expects you to find him first.

Think, Oly, think. Try not to get distracted by every vendor’s sales pitch, every wafting perfume, every creak of the bridges, the knowledge of how people are moving all around you and tracing out where they will be and how you could maneuver around them to get an arm around their neck and—

Juniper touches your arm and the thoughts melt like butter. You crush her into a one-armed hug, into the feeling of her against you, and your pack nods approval. This is the way it has to be. If the Khatun— if your mother— thought she was a distraction, she would be removed. So you have to do this.

“Where are we going?” she squeaks. You can’t tell her that you don’t know. Everyone expects you to know. You stared at maps of the city on your tablet for hours as you walked. But cities are so different than the clear, crisp peril of the Outside, where need and desire are your guides.

You cannot just want the Faun enough to have him land in your lap.

“To the Lodge,” you say, with the commanding certainty needed of the next Khatun. “From there, we know.”

One of the two ashiqs (…Keli? you think to yourself) makes a disparaging noise, before squealing as she’s hoisted up on Mekesh’s shoulder.

---

Handmaidens!

Oh, you dear little sillyheads, there is only one thing wrong with Injimo’s plan right here. And that is that the Architect-Knight’s hair has become her armor. She grew it out over centuries, and isn’t that a mystery how she’s survived that long? But she is bereft of her apron, bereft of the necklace that her locket hung upon, and where she’s hidden it on her body— well, good luck finding your way under that curtain of hair.

But let’s watch Injimo for a moment navigate an increasingly complex battlefield. In her left hand, the Architect-Knight bears her heartblade, a massive black broadsword that might be used as much as a shield or a trowel than as a sword, but in her right she has her long-handled hammer, a tool of creation and destruction forged under the breath of the Dark Dragon.

With her left hand she swings her revenge, her fury, her contempt; with the right she raises walls and collapses them. Oh, Injie, you’re fighting the terrain as much as you are the Knight herself.

And that’s why you are so spectacular a fighter, to get in close and impale her right in the breastbone with a heart shaped like a spear. The Knight roars both pain and… admiration?

"Fierce my foe / fast-falling
lunging-lance / lightly-lifted.”
Her voice is hoarse with the pain of Injimo’s heart lancing her chest. But she still stands, a titan, her massive knuckles white on the handle of her hammer.
"Captive I cannot / consent to call
Myself in misery / mighty my merit.”

The hammer she lifts, impossibly. And a door she makes, right there in the floor.

---

Eclair!

“You are an idiot,” Mayzie says, with more emotion in her voice, raw and strained, than you have ever remembered her deploying. “You can’t come to me now, when I’m not even hot enough to work out front, accuse me of getting involved in your maid sex-death-crime game, and then you— years, years after, you confess to me now, so drunk that you don’t even…? Eclair Espoir—“

An entire rug made out of hair falls through a door on the ceiling, taking out several tables on the way down, shaking plates and lamps everywhere. (Naturally you stop one of the shot glasses from falling off the table.) Mayzie is screaming and halfway onto the table herself.

"Fucking falls / fuck this floor,” the rug groans, and then lifts a very large hammer and smacks it into the floor. A door opens in the floor and the rug tumbles limply through, accompanied by more tables and an entire drinks cart. Screams resound from below.

And giddy fangirl screams break out as a woman tumbles out after. “Oh my god,” a Serigalamu woman at the bar shrieks, “it’s Heron’s personal trainer!”

Immediately the personal trainer in question is swarmed by guests who want to know if Heron is coming— which of her many dastardly foes was that— is she going to be giving out autographs tonight?

Mayzie slowly comes to the realization that she has grabbed for your hand, and suddenly lets go as if you were an unexpected hot coal in the middle of a batch of plums. “Eclair Espoir,” she says, hotly, shakily, with that determination you remember well, “I am never going to forgive you!”

So this investigation is going well.

---

Cutie!

The woman in oranges and yellows and reds draws back her scarf just a little bit, just so that her incredibly hazel-colored eyes are visible to you. She breathes in like she’s been holding her breath on a bet, and then she

exhales

and places a hand on your hand.

“Oh,” she says. “You are so cute, aren’t you?” You are so cute. You’re Cutie! “Oh, you’re— look, it says Cutie on his name plate! Yes, you are, aren’t you?” You are. She says so. You must be—

But she half-turns when there’s a crash from a higher level, and her eyes and her attention are no longer fully on you. Like, an incredible, jarring crash, and part of you blinks and becomes aware that the other part of you is trying to swim through a fog of floral cotton candy. Call it the part in parentheses. And that worry, that sharpness—

Well, for once it might be right in ringing the alarm bells.

She has a very firm grip on your wrist.

---

Yuki!

Tall Yakuza has her hand on Hazel’s wrist. The look on Hazel’s face isn’t something you want to see on a friend’s face.

I mean, you should be polite. You should let Hazel know how stormy your expression is, first. And how you feel about how he’s dressed, the way he was acting before he went funny and then went not funny with the woman holding his wrist.

And then you should be aware of the fact that the Suit is leaning her elbow against the table, cutting off your view of Hazel for a moment as she cranes her head upwards, towards that awful crashing noise from upstairs.

You should be aware that there is a pale, ghoulish light reflected on the inside of her starglasses, visible for just a moment.

And Sulochana is making her way around the table, to your right, and the Suit’s head cocks like a bird. You should be aware that the Suit is adjusting her footing, turning around, pivoting towards Suli, and those are real flowers coming out of her suit and those are contraband around here, so you could make a fuss about that, if you wanted, but this big jerk is between you and the face Hazel is making and you aren’t going to stand for that, are you, Yuki Edogawa?

Return to Thellamie

Eclair!

"What do you... Ecky, all the maid-knights are dating. Everybody knows that. If a maid in a suit of armor shows up with a bunch of Khaganate treasure and goes daaaaaahling, I would just absolutely adore buying accommodations for a compatriot, and then a super-intense maid - who's still wanted by the Civils, by the way, let me just remind you of that - rolls in and starts asking a bunch of questions about her? This is kink. This is absolutely kink. I don't know what the game is or what win condition you're working towards - and before you ask, I don't know where she is, either, she said she'd be back at the end of your stay - but I do know what kink looks like. I work at the Chrysanthemum, for Civelia's sake."

Maybe it's the drink talking, but she is emotionally compromised about this. Perhaps Timtam has somehow compromised her. That's why she's looking so intently at you and then looking away, more than once. Yes. You have discovered one of Timtam's agents in the Chrysanthemum. She's working with the enemy. What was she promised? Power? Money? Probably money, from the looks of her. You must grill her for information.

"Maybe it's a chastity thing?" Mayzie says, giving you a Look. "I would have noticed a belt, but I know some people do it just with willpower and that's the sort of thing you would be into..."

---

Handmaidens!

The Architect Knight stomps back into the Stacks wearing wooden armor after several hours of Rootwalker... gardening? She's got more than her hammer: she's got a plumb line and a ruler. Very dangerous tools of architecting. But the Heartcompass she's got might be the most dangerous of all.

She's intending to do... architecting. All over the Stacks. She's got Rootwalkers as a workforce (despite Injimo doing her best to trim their numbers, pulling roots right out of spines). No idea what her plan is, though. She used to work for Queen Aria, but thankfully that deeply unpleasant incarnation of Yana is long dead and buried.

You know, in the woods.

---

Yuki!

You catch up to these two right at the line to get into Cafe la Faune. You can slot into line right behind them.

The tall, dark-skinned woman is breathing in and out, deeply, as if enjoying some sort of perfume or deeply enjoying the ambience. (It... does smell nice around her. Really nice. She must have a really expensive perfume.) Her ears are very still.

But it's the woman in the suit who notices you. "Hey," she says. It's not a friendly hey, but it's holding a little friendly mask up in front of itself, trying to pretend that it's friendly with all the ardor of the lead in a school play. "You know that this, uh, cafe isn't closing, right? No need to run all the way over here."

She was watching you. She noticed you, specifically. She is wearing those starglasses, but she is still Looking at you.

Her breath is sweet. Cloyingly sweet. You can tell that even over the lovely smell of the other woman's perfume. Like sugars breaking down. Like nail polish remover. Like the death of honey.

The flowers are shifting, ever so slightly, whenever she takes an irregular breath.

"You, uh, you girls big Fawn fans?" She smiles like a shark.

"Faun," says the other woman. It's soft, lyrical, pleasant. Much more pleasant than the shark. Breathe deep. Relax. Stop worrying. "It's the Golden Faun. Darling." She takes another deep breath. The light glints oddly off her lips.

---

Cutie!

You have a very important job here for the dinner rush. You need to go outside for ten minutes and invite guests in, and then you'll swap out with Staxy who does such a fantastic drag performance of... well, of you. The other you. The sparkly idea of you that everyone's actually here to see.

And it is when you step out to do this vitally important task that you will notice that Yuki's here, and also that there is a tall woman in a dress like autumn who Looks at you when you come out. Like, everyone is looking at you, cheering a little, taking pictures on their tablets... but she Looks, and she breathes in, and she breathes out.

But also, Yuki?! Here?! How do you feel about that?

Breathless Dead

Look, three things are halfway salvaging this. There are three factors in play which make it so that it is theoretically possible that the Toxicrene will look up and see a ravenous, unleashed Ceronian ready to punish her at Bella’s command.

Firstly, as mentioned before: Redana looks at Mynx and sees someone a lot like she used to be, which means that her experience right now is that she is imagining what it would be like to be in Mynx’s place, which is why she is ramrod-straight, ears at attention, fixated and intent. And why her tail is trying to fly away.

Secondly, though: she is aware that this is of vital importance to her Bella, her wife. Memories of Mynx have come swimming back, along with the sorts of things she did in order to try and catch Mynx before. If she doesn’t sell the fantasy, if she can’t keep Mynx off-balance, then everything falls apart, the assassins are lost, and the grand adventure falls apart in the featureless dark between blue stars. She cannot break. She cannot corpse. She cannot give Mynx reason to start reasoning again. Not with Bella doing such a fine job.

Thirdly, she can smell Bella from where she stands. The desire on her face is not faked. The twitch of drool at the corner of a lip, the intensity of her eyes, the tension in her muscles: all of these are quite vividly real in the eyes of the Toxicrene. It’s just that they’re not directed at her. But in the heat of the moment, that’s so hard to judge, isn’t it?

Backed by the pack that so effortlessly defeated the pseudoprincess, Ember must look like the terror of worlds and palaces alike. She is adorned in finery which fails to cover her straining muscles, her shining eyes, the way her leg flexes as if to pounce for but a moment. She is a pirate and a queen of pirates, and she bares her teeth and bites the air on cue.

And we all know what pirates would do to princesses— don’t we, Mynx?

Return to Thellamie

Silence fills the barrow. A tense silence, the kind produced by women considering a hundred horror stories from their childhood, weighing them on the mental scales, and coming to the conclusion that while they absolutely cannot start a fight, there's no need to say it out loud, just in case not saying it somehow produces an advantage in this knifematch of wits.

"So where are you headed?" Juniper asks, as Olesya casually cleans under her fingernails with a skinning knife.

"Nowhere much," Seli says, as Keli carefully considers at what point knockout powder mixed into wine becomes an attack, supernaturally speaking.

---

Cair!

The undead are gardeners.

Which isn't a complete surprise. The ones that are most intact have flowers sprouting from rents in their flesh, their scent sickly-sweet. The skeletons are more obviously puppets of vine systems, fruits rattling in their ribcages like organs. The light of the Poison Star glimmers in empty eye sockets. And everywhere, they are pulling up flooring and putting in earth. They pull treasures off shelves and use them to dig furrows; they let seeds fall through fingerbones in their wake.

At least they aren't sprouting with unnatural speed. Yet. But this is a concerted invasion and attempted subversion of the Stacks, and Heron, once again, just to underline this, isn't here. If you've got a bedroom or an alchemy lab or something of the sort, you might want to do some quick cleaning before it's full of plant-based renovations.

---

Kalentia!

The veil lifts, and on the other side is a devastatingly beautiful woman. The contrast between her black hair and her white skin is so vivid that it makes the backdrop of a Lunarian mansion look tawdry. Her lips are as red as the first primordial redness that was squeezed free from Sayanastia's jaws. Her teeth might as well be polished jet, and her eyebrows are elegant brushstrokes.

Her eyes are mirrors, reflecting your face in jagged facets.

"Yes," she says. "I am approval, directed towards this signing of a contract. You are concordance, our colors similarly aligned appropriate to the maturation of fortune. I am anticipation, directed towards the fulfillment of all contractual obligations." She cuts the air open with the flick of a wrist, the opening of a fan.

Behind her, the Lunarian looks like she's dead. Her heart's torn out of her chest, seeing this again, and she hasn't realized that she's (emotionally) bleeding out all over the floor. No, wait. This is the Outside. There is literal blood trickling down the joints of her perfect emerald-green armor, staining the pink of her robes a dark, unwholesome red.

---

Eclair!

"You Maid-Knights have such weird ways of going out on dates," Mayzie grouses. With one hand, she doodles on a napkin; with the other, she swishes around the sake for this course before downing it in one shot. "Like, when I take someone out on a date, I usually like to be around them. That's the entire point, right?" She stares at you, as if daring you to say something. There's really nothing to be said, though, and that seems to irritate her more, that you didn't know the thing that's supposed to be said here.

"If I. If I had a girlfriend that was willing to drop that sort of cash? On me? And then she just disappeared and let me eat alone? Well, okay, I'd still eat- oh my god that's the soup course."

The rich scent of goblin-crab soup fills the booth, and Mayzie eagerly accepts it, not even waiting to get it on the table before she's raised it up to her lips to start sipping the broth. It's hot, it's goblin-crab, the meat's in a perfect rainbow of colors, and you get the third course sake along with this.

Do you think she's got a point, Eclair?

Do you let yourself imagine, for a moment, Timtam looking you in the eyes as she lowers the bowl demurely from her lips?

---

Yuki!

"--Cafe la Faune?"

A snippet. Just a moment. The right words at just the right time, as you're heading out to actually, properly, do a search. You come to a stop so hard that Suli nearly bowls you over and has to steady you on your feet with her tail. You look over a railing and see several people talking on the ground floor.

A young Kel woman in a bunny suit is giving directions (only partially audible now) to two people. One's tall, wearing a gown that has every single color of autumn somewhere in its swirls, her curls bursting out of the red scarf hanging over her face, while the other...

A shiver runs down your spine, watching this woman crack her neck in a way that's just a little bit the wrong way. She's wearing a fashionable Kel suit, the kind with buttons all down the front, but for some garish reason she's cut a hole in the front to let an entire bouquet of flowers peek out (which is tasteless, even in the Chrysanthemum, where flowers are very carefully regulated - just imagine if those were real!). She's got golden-rimmed starglasses hiding her eyes, and she's got her large hands stuffed in her pockets.

The yakuza vibes are smothering.

One petal floats down from her bouquet and curls, just a little bit, in the organic way that fake petals don't usually do.

The tall lady bends down, and for a moment the view of the Kel woman is blocked. Then the two are continuing on up the stairs, leaving the Kel woman to sway on her feet slightly, cheeks flushed... eyes glazed over.

But before you can continue, on the landing in front of you an entire opera audience starts pouring out, and while the employees are doing their best to keep people moving, it's still going to be hard going through the crowd.

---

Cutie! Perfectly Safe Cutie! Nothing To Worry About!

"I'm amazed that nobody's tried to actually catch you," Alcideo says, while rubbing a perfect circle in that ear. There's two meanings to that. He's so clever, isn't he? One conversation for you, another for anyone else who might be sneakily listening. "You're doing such a good job, you know. Like, back when I was starting out, I was lucky if I got tips at all. But then again I was just the Coat Guy. You can imagine how often people notice the Coat Guy."

"Did the diner back home have drink service? I used to do that. I can do a mean mixer, but nowadays people want to see more of me than my forearms, haha." His laugh is as rich as chocolate. "Don't worry about a thing, Cutie," he adds, a little quieter, his smile extremely genuine. Genuine enough to melt that chocolate. "You're doing good. And you'll see Yaz right after shift's over for encouragement."

That should really have a capital E. Encouragement. For some employees, it's remedial training. For others, it's a reward. And for you, given half an hour of Yaz's undivided attention after a shift (except for the attention she needs to look over Alcideo's shorthand notes on how you're doing), it's definitely a reward, isn't it?

Just gotta handle the dinner rush and then Yaz will personally tell you that you are a good boy, because Alcideo can see that you are a good boy, can see how seriously you take this, can see how you've got a knack for this. Maybe you'll be able to ask her for long riding trousers or something tonight.

Everything is fine.

Breathless Dead

Well, firstly, like, you have to understand, there's differences, right? Sure, admittedly Mynx looks like Redana's memories of herself, only all manhandled by a bunch of uncouth Ceronian braves and tossed to Bella, likely to be imprisoned and brought back to Tellus by the Praetor, and Bella back then probably would have insisted on securing the prisoner personally, working through her complicated feelings of desire and resentment with every restraint, every unnecessary humiliation, every article of clothing removed to ensure that Dany wasn't hiding anything she could use to escape, ending the runaway princess's dreams of adventure with lock and key and well-secured muffling, and maybe by the time they'd gotten back to Tellus Mommy would have decided that actually Bella made a better princess than Dany did and that she was changing their places so that Dany was the maid and Bella was the princess, and Bella would probably need to make sure she was on a short leash just so that she wouldn't try to escape, and, and Bella would have Notes on her wardrobe and the need to make sure she wasn't hiding anything, and then after several months of tension Bella would kiss her so hard that it bruised, and they'd tumble into bed and Bella would start telling her that all that time she wished that she had permission to touch her oblivious brat of a princess like this, and aren't you being so loud, princess, didn't you learn that a good maid is thoughtful and demure and holds her tongue, and...

Sorry, what was the question?

Right, so. As Ember, Redana's already incredible imperial physique was funneled into being a perfect Ceronian knight. She looks like the princess's sister: a little taller, a little leaner, sharper of tooth. There is a distinction between the person she was and the person she became. And usually this is where you'd say "and it's impossible to tell where that change began," but it's absolutely when she crossed the Lethe and joined the daughters of Ceron. If she never had, she'd be like Mynx now: small, fair-skinned enough for her blush to be radiant, panting, (poisonous) drool beading on the lips she can't reach, squirming as if that will save her from Bella, not when she's in Bella's clutches, Bella never lets go once you're there, she'll toy with you and grip you tighter and all that wicked huntressness will come out in a way that's so, so hot, and come to think of it this is probably a balancing of the scales over what happened in the depths of the Eater of Worlds, so it's okay that her tail is thwap thwap thwapping against the back of her own thighs, bared by her Ceron-Pattern Tactical Shorts, it's obviously just because she's proud that she caught the Princess and is going to get headpats and Bella will do that thing with the ear and she'll just have to stay upright with knees turned to jelly in front of her pack and...

Oh shoot Bella's looking at her now.

"We," she says, and her voice cracks into a squeak, and she overcorrects downwards. "We, uh. The Princess is ours." What is she doing. "As you ordered." Why is this doing it for you, Dany. "Made sure not to, uh. Rough her up. Too much." The head is right here, Bella, with the associated triangles. It is so ready for headpats, Bella. And an evil laugh maybe?? Possibly?? For her??

(Not that that's going to happen. She's only interested in Mynx because she's needed for the plan. There is no chance that she is going to be distracted by sexy impromptu "captured-the-princess" roleplay. Get your head in the godsdamned game, Redana. And stop wagging your tail clean off your thighs.)

Breathless Dead

We hunt.

We are not the Assassins, not the perfect killers shaped like one death. None of us contains that inside of ourselves, and that's why we don't burn out and die after the perfect climax of that one death. No. We are Ceron. We are nothing when we are alone, but when we are together.

Oh, when we are together.

The Assassins are brittle. They shatter. We are like a school of fish; we scatter and then reform. We reformed around Bitemark; we reformed around Bella-Mosaic's hand; we reformed around her Ember; we reformed around her ship. We take new forms, new shapes, new plans, new deaths; none of us is as perfect as all of us.

It takes us days to prepare for this one. We gather our panoply around us: our own maps of the ship, our Princess Alpha's knowledge of the side passages and the worker's tunnels, our nets and our syringes and our wooden paddles. The Summerkind swarm and the Pix nervously try to scout our meetings. We silence them, overwhelm them, imprison them; there will be no chattering of silly vulpine voices warning the quarry.

When it begins, it is almost silent. We move in our teams, clearing deck by deck, tunnel by tunnel, room by room. We come together in knots around the prey of Beri and Piximander; we study their scents and their reactions and the taste of their lips, and then we release them. There will be no hiding from us, not in the herd, not in the bones of the ship. Our best engineers are drumming and listening for the spaces in the echoes; no hidden chamber will remain so. No secret ally will remain so. No disguise will remain so. We do not rest until we find a weakness; we do not rest until the pack is satiated.

We are Ceron, and we are the thousandfold conquerors.

We hunt.

Return to Thellamie

The air is full of small noises, but none of them are speech. The groan is everywhere. Even stone moans like a maiden when it is gripped tightly, possessively enough.

Stones tumble forward. Branches, leaves, flowers, skulls turn towards the commotion. Through it steps a mass of wild, tangled hair holding a massive long-handled hammer, kept in pristine condition for her hands again.

She strides confidently through the vine-choked streets, bare feet sure on the root-buckled tiles. She does not turn her head to the left or to the right, not even as jaws clatter like the trilling of birds. White fingerbones scrape against bark; everywhere there is an unclean light.

She is awaited at Chivalgard. Even though the roof is now a tangled nest of branches, she walks half in now and half in then.

Her Queen is even waiting for her on the throne. There is a mass of flowers at her breastbone like a bouquet pinned to her tabard. Her hair hangs lank like moss. Her eyes burn.

The Architect-Knight sinks to one knee, hammer held half an inch over the root-broken floor. Behind the Queen another woman takes one step forward, her hair all thick fragrant curls, her skin of ebony, her ears blooming on her head. The silk of her dress hangs in folds that do not hide her shaped curves.

“We thank you for your assistance,” Walking Elm says, her breath perfumed with honey and flowers that do not die. “We are so looking forward to working alongside you. We will remember and reward you when we are in our queendom, forever and forever, forest without end. And may it be so, and let it be so.”

“You heard the lady. Arise, my loyal Architect.” The pitcher-lungs contract, forcing air out between Queen Aria’s teeth. Her claws, still as hard as diamonds, scratch on the armrests of the throne. “We’ve got a fucking door to build.”

“Language,” Walking Elm says, as mild as parsley, and boops Aria Thendragon on the nose.

---

Poor Befuddled Bemused Bamboozled Hazel!

The good news is that your clothes were put in a chest which you got to make your own tumbler code for, along with your tablet and all the other important things you have.

The exciting news is that you have booty shorts with golden sequins.

Cafe la Faune is staffed primarily by pretty boys, and girls who are enjoying presenting themselves as pretty boys, and all of them with fake golden antlers on their heads. It’s a pop-up cafe, which means it is wildly in demand, and you are hustling to keep up.

Take trays to tables. Arrange the plates just so. Light the dessert that is meant to be lit on fire on fire. Pose for photographs (and guests keep tucking money for this into your clothes??). You’ve seen Ouran, probably. You know what the deal is.

Anyway, you’re on break, which means you can take a seat in the actually quite nice employee lounge just off the kitchen, and—

“Hey, you’re doing great out there,” Alcideo says with a grin. He reaches to you and gives you headpats, just like Yaz promised he would, and it feels magical, just like Yaz told you it would. (He’s timing his breaks with yours, which is, I promise, already employee gossip.) “This can’t be your first time doing this, right?”

---

Yuki!

Scroll up. Go right ahead. Reread that bit where I told Eclair all about the Chrysanthemum, and then reread Hazel’s just for kicks.

You’re enjoying the spa. Steam rises from the stones, and Sulochana shivers in delight as she drapes her tail across your lap.

“And you’re sure you haven’t heard anything more from him?” She stretches like a cat. She really, truly does intend to help you find Hazel, but you’re staying at the Chrysanthemum, and you’ve just got to stay in character, and she needs this. This moment where she is at peace, and full of enjoyment, and here with you.

Pasenne is pressed up on the other side, her serpentine hip rubbing against you, as she ladles out another cup of water onto the stones. She’s more confident than she’s been the whole trip, eyes closed, tail swaying circle eights as she, too, basks in the warmth.

On the other side of the private spa, Timatheo is lounging like butter, a towel heroically clinging to his narrow hips. Magasha does not have any sort of towel, and is slowly sinking deeper into the Nagi couch provided. But Anka Arju-Wajz is standing outside at the door, keeping watch for… well, ostensibly assassins, but also for the off chance that someone might have word of the Golden Faun here.

Suli doesn’t want you to get up, but she could stay here innocently for hours. And you’d clear a Need if you linger and enjoy yourself when you should be out searching for Hazel…

---

Handmaiden Team Vespergift!

The problem (which is going to take you enough time to catch up with everybody else’s timeline, so on and so forth) is that Vesper Victoria’s is stuffed full of side quests.

The cathedral’s archives on maid-knights and how to handle them are woefully mishandled in categorization. The wards against misfortune are undercharged because someone rerouted all the mystic squares to kill any trace of a plant in the building. The Paladins are having a bodybuilding contest that they refuse to postpone. And on top of all of that, you’re getting weird fragmented messages from Cair. Some sort of code? Interference in the Stacks? It is a mystery.

---

Cair!

The doorway’s fortified with vines now, even if you could get to it, and the undead are seemingly endless.

It’s a pretty simple magic, just a devastatingly effective one. The light of a Fallen Star is suffused into the walking dead, supported by a living plant network which provides them with strength and compensates for missing body parts. And an entire dead city’s worth of them is pouring into the Stacks.

This super definitely isn’t your fault though, probably.

---

Kalentia!

Nothing says “medical kidnapping” like being pulled into the Outside. The real Outside. The Outside that is cobbling together your memories of home with the Lunarian’s own: white paper walls, red lanterns, curtains carefully frozen in a windy sigh, murmurs from behind closed doors.

At least you’ll be able to cobble together a temporary suit of armor for her if the Mirrorfolk do not get you. Maybe they won’t drag you into the deep dreaming of dragons like Tsane once told you they would. Maybe they’ll just tie you up and mildly distress you if you impress memories of your past deeply enough upon them. And, hey, the Hero’s Shadow is still here somewhere; they totally wouldn’t let anything too terrible happen to you as you stumble through a nightmare maze of nostalgia. Probably.

---

Eclair!

“Maid-knights. Bah.”

Your gaze swings off the blushing, stammering brunette in the corner of the sauna (match retreat of interviewee scoot for scoot) to the young woman switching out the Morning Tea cart for the Elevensies cart.

She’s got glossy black hair, all tied up with a floppy bow. She’s wearing a deliberately maid-like outfit herself, though the skirts back home aren’t nearly so bouncy. And she’s familiar: short for her age, resting witch face, almost good enough to blend into the background with a quiet sardonic murmur.

Ignore the girl who’s twirling her hair around her finger and displacing water every time she takes a breath, squirming with the force of what was, previously, your attention. You’ve just recognized Mayzie Sighs: orphan, flower fetishist, former friend before you set out into the Outside. And you can see the wheels turning right underneath her triangles, too.

The trick isn’t figuring out if she knows things. She’d have solved the investigation by now if she was on the case. The trick is getting her to reveal whether she’s secretly in league with Timtam in order to destroy your life because when she said it was okay that you ate her lemon bun that one time it really meant that she wasn’t okay and she’s been planning her elaborate revenge this entire time, or whether she’s just sour over you leaving.

You know. Low stakes.

Return to Thellamie

Eclair Espoir!

Oh, darling. You’re in one of the premier houses of pleasure in all of Thellamie, you’ve got a full pass, and you’ve got girls tripping over themselves to try and win a tip and a smile.

You get to tell us how you relax when you have the time, the means, and ample assistance. And you get to tell us if your iron will is beguiled into forgetting, if only for a moment, the troubles that weigh upon your shoulders.

Yuki would likely have been suspicious (and even Hazel started to suspect) if this were the Golden Lotus. But that doesn’t mean anything to you, so forget I said anything. Go ahead. Take the time that was purchased for you.

---

Yuki!

The rich scent of wine fills the barrow as Pasenne pours. Sulochana offers a glass to Heron first of anyone, hoping that this will be appreciated. It fits her cover, too, to curry favor like this.

---

Hazel!

“Auntie was right,” she rumbles, pinning you to the floor with a glance. Try to focus, and you’ll notice glimpses through the smoke that suggest she’s a notably Avel Nagi, all fuzzy triangles and shaggy sideburns, and her voice has a similar lilt to the local accent. Is it a lilt when it’s already so low? “He’s desperate.”

She leans down on her desk, resting her elbows, almost bringing herself down to your level. Almost. “Here’s my first gift, Hazel Valentine Fletcher: you’re going to sit down and not talk.”

And you might think that sounds ominous and villainous, but let me assure you: those italics up there? That’s when her voice drips with the spiced honey of Crevas. A coil slips beneath your legs as the strength goes out of them, and you’re lifted to a nice seat right in front of the desk, in front of the sweet smoke, in front of those glittering eyes.

“Now. We could make you a guest, but you would stick out like a broken scale, and more than that— you’d fret, wouldn’t you? Auntie tells me that you are polite and helpful.” From across half of Thellamie, Amali says something in agreement. “And you wouldn’t know where to put your eyes, would you? Let alone your hands. We usually see boys like you being dragged in by friends, sitting so neatly with their hands in their laps, squirming and just waiting to go home away from the threat of Heron’s gift to us all. They’re tough nuts to crack, unless you know the right way to handle them.”

A nail lifts your chin. Another nail traces your cheek. “But put them in a pretty little outfit, give them a job to do, and all those worried little thoughts just melt away. And you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Hazel Valentine Fletcher? Little Hazy.” Her chuckle comes from somewhere deep down in those coils. No talking now. Don’t forget.

“You want to serve. And the Chrysanthemum accommodates those who want to serve as much as it accompanies those who want to be served. Until this whole mess is taken care of outside. You can hide in here, in plain sight, and I promise that you will be told what to do, and you will be praised for it.”

No need to turn around and see Alcideo blushing. Or Amali looking very satisfied, for that matter. No need to look away from Yaz and what’s she’s offering. It’s not exactly seeing all of Thellamie, but all of Thellamie will come to you, and you’ll be safe until I need you next. Just sink into those eyes in the smoke, those eyes so delighted at finding a natural.

“Now. I will let you talk. A little. When you are done, I will let you know. Does your heart want to work for us, Hazy? Would you like to help the men and women who come here to have a wonderful visit? Would you like to be looked at and wanted without being hunted?”

---

Kalentia!

The hammer blows reverberate through multiple levels of the Stacks. Boxes tumble down; careful dioramas collapse. Then there is silence.

A flower pokes up through the floor tiles some distance away and blooms unnaturally quickly. It is as silent as the roots that slither between the walls.

The Hero’s Shadow lifts themselves up onto their haunches. Their eyes are mirrors, but they seem darker now. “You are the most a Princess,” they say, amiably. “This is perilous.” That purr in their throat suggests that the peril is dangerously interesting. “Where do you think the Warrior is? That is perilous.”