Thanqol

Sunshards

Chen!

+So to summarize, you don't really have a strong relationship with anybody yet,+ thought Jessic. +And that makes sense. You're very young and you're also very offline so you don't have history or long distance relationships to call on. You're engaged in a clash of hearts with people your heart is pretty ambivalent about. No wonder you're finding it hard.+

She shifts about, lying down flat across the bench. +And this isn't a problem that's unique to you. Kikil, for example - you're scared of her, right? That's her rep. If you came to blows tomorrow then she would be spooky and mysterious because while you don't know her you do know fear and how you relate to it. It's, like, a handle on her. A sign of how you're supposed to relate to her. And so even if you'd never exchanged three sentences before you'd be able to go into that fight knowing who you were meant to be. And that's what I think this problem really stems from, Chen. You're trying to get under everyone's masks as soon as you meet them. You're not engaging with the stories they're trying to tell you.+

She looked off at the distant arena. +That handmaiden you came with, Yue? She's the opposite. She just buys into everyone's narratives so sincerely that she throws them off guard. They buy into hers in exchange. And if you feel like you're being trapped by other people's expectations, consider that they're trying to support the narrative they think you're telling them. Before today I assumed that your narrative was the unstoppable pure-hearted prodigy and would have proceeded based on the idea that's who you wanted to be.+

Rose!

"Oh?" said Keron, eyes filling with a terrible amusement. "Princess Chen? You think she can save you here? More importantly, you think that when she does she'll find anything other than a perfectly trained slave dancer?"

The handmaiden behind you twists your arms, sending you to your knees before the Countess. She uncrosses her legs and then bends forwards, a long fingernail tracing your ear all the way down to your chin, which she tilts upwards so she can see your eyes.

"You silly little thing," she said, putting her hand on the vein in your throat, "I can hear your heart pounding," her hand slid up to cover your mouth, "I can feel your breath panting," she seized your chin and pulled you up, close, until you were inches away from her. "I can feel your body trembling. You wish you weren't Princess Chen's, don't you? You wish you were mine, you lust-crazed slut. You wish you were mine - and you're too much of a submissive to act on that wish. You won't be mine until I drag Princess Chen in here and make her tell you that you both belong to me, will you? Because you would never disobey your mistress no matter how much you want to."

She flicked you away, sending you sprawling into the arms of the waiting handmaidens as she leaned back in her chair. "So what to do with you until I pull your ownership from Chen's whimpering lips? I suppose I can keep you here. Stay, watch, learn - and that way when your true mistress claims you at last you'll be properly trained. Girls, chain her to the wall, and gag her."

[Keron spends that string: Mark XP if you do what she tells you]

Yue!

You're running. You're running! You're running like it's flying and everything is perfect except you have no idea how to slow down without crashing nose over tail. It's scary and wild and amazing, like the first time getting real speed out of a bike, and maybe if you never stop you'll never have to.

Hyra insisted on this after all the externalities of breakfast and bath were resolved. "Learning how to be graceful has nothing to do with the body you're currently wearing," said Hyra. "Even if you're in a body that's miles away from your ideal one you need to be able to carry yourself like your ideal self. That way when you finally transition into your true self physically you'll have already transitioned mentally!"

And with that the lessons of the previous day had resumed. No swords yet - Hyra wasn't so ambitious she was blind to the fact that you didn't yet have your paws under you. Right now was just about speed and agility. It had started with a gentle jog but now you were flying around the walkways of the Sky Castle. To your left was the infinite vista of the Nine Kingdoms, to the right where the spires and flags and kites of a city made to catch the wind. You are running, and you've left Hyra in the dust, and this enchanted world is flashing past your eyes in every direction.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

So it ends.

[Bold: 10]

Should she have shown it mercy? Should she have spared it in its majesty as she might wish that someone would spare her? Would one act of kindness undo a lifetime of hunts? Would an act of gentleness here at the edge of her life somehow indicate that she had learned, that she was ready for change? Or would it be a promise unkept, a larder unfilled, a quest failed?

A priest might know. Robena knows how to hang the deer, cut the throat, drain the blood, flay the skin, remove the organs, sever the antlers, clean the body, and mount the remains on horseback for transportation. Does doing what she knows represent an unrepentant failure to change her ways? Perhaps. But she knows no other way to be. She has lived her life as a knight and to discard the rituals and skills she developed as a knight would be to face death as helpless as a newborn babe. The blood washes away in the pool the deer hoped to drink from. So it ends.

She does not know the rules or the rhyme of these faerie folk, the prophetic nymph whose colt moves with the grace of a unicorn, the enchantment that turns dead women to mist and stars. She knows now that her simple struggles now take place against a stranger background, playing in tune to a song she doesn't know the steps to even if she had the feet to dance. If she had her time again she might not have been a knight. Being a knight, all she can think to do in this moment is conduct herself as a knight ought.

And if she can conduct herself as a knight ought then that, at least, will be change real and true. A sage, a prophet, a mystic she shall never be. But a knight? Perhaps she can manage that. If she is lucky she shall have a few more days to be so.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Some possessions go awry when spirit and host want different things. Some go awry when they want the same thing. Some truly terrible ones go wrong when they want for each other.

But for the Maiden of Serenity, choosing but one craving would be a misery. Of these three she has woven a terrible pattern and cast it in stars that shine behind stone eyes. To unpick it in words shall take the remainder of these many pages, but to lance through it all as the Rakshasa does here requires only a mirror. No ordinary mirror, for it is no ordinary mask she wears. What Six Sounds Starving reveals cuts through that defense and shows spirit and host each other and themselves, and by whatever tangled calculus that the Maiden has set in this entangling, this is sufficient.

Who is seeing what? Who is seeing who? Are they overcome with vanity or yearning or separation? Which of them desires this enough to stand frozen still as the fae approaches, and which of them resisted it enough to don the mask in the first place?

A flash of teeth. An exchange of venom[1][2][3][4]. A little chaos sinks into a closed and flawless system. Faerie-bite detected; updating cravings. Why does this count as beyond the world when it could so easily be made a part of it?

The mask, that glimpse of skin as smooth and brown as the flooded river, is pulled back down over those twin fang marks. It descends so swiftly those bites might hardly have been seen to be there at all. Just as swiftly comes the firewand - a flawless and ornamented thing from distant lands, a short and wide metal pipe blocked on one end with a thin cloth like a party favour, keeping the alchemical powder within from spilling. A spark and it will burn forth in a pillar of enchanting and enchanted fire. A spark is not needed for its purpose - it strikes the mirror with its heavy base and breaks it.

"You," said Zhaojun, still elegantly, doing her best to sway in time with the pulse of the venom[1][2][3][4] in her head. "Have done something unwise."

[1] do we call it venom when it spreads and grows and multiplies like a disease harrowing the host?
[2] do we call it venom when it changes and shifts and empowers and undermines like the transformative power that makes maidens from monsters?
[3] {forbidden}
[4] do we call it venom when it is welcomed by a trapped and suffering soul like monsoon rains upon the desert of the mountain platau?

Breathless Dead

Redana!

The walls are coming down. Dionysus is behind them all.

Things of safety and security are no longer so. Things of danger and peril shake under your shadow. The panels of the ship open like flower petals chasing a solar bulb around the room and behind them all is painted masks and whirring machinery. You have come through revelation into madness and the ground you walk on is unstable.

Your shadow spreads out from you like a wildfire. It steps around behind you and breaks and burns when you aren't looking. It hangs immanent in the world and like never before you have yourself to fear. The Laughing God smiles at you with a frowning mask and fills your pockets with matches.

Above all, this feeling demands action. If you do not act you will crash. If you do not swim you will cease. If you do not fix yourself you shall break the world as is your right as Empress.

Alexa!

"Got it," said Ramses without a second's hesitation. "Have you settled on a new name yet, or is the journey still ongoing? Or would you prefer to move on from the topic for now?"

There's a practiced, almost ritual cant to those words. The Coherent of the Order regard remaking the self as a holy ideal and there's a practiced gentleness and lack of push to Ramses' speech here. It occurs that if anybody in the whole galaxy who would hear you out it would be they.

Vasilia!

"Who else would make my coleslaw?" said Iskarot, sounding genuinely baffled as his head came up from over the fridge's torn out insides. Then, without switching a beat, he went on about the fridge: "Behold. See the improvisational nature to the periweave lattice? This model was manufactured two hundred and fifty years ago following the removal of the human population to Tellus. These components were manufactured by craftservitors who were overcome with passionate emotions; despair, confusion, so forth. Exactly the wrong energy to maintain something that is required to be as steadfast and immobile as a refrigerator."

He leaves the thought there as he continues to work, seemingly heedless of the awkward silence left in his wake. Magos Iskarot is not, it seems, particularly talented at small talk.

Dolce!

Your plan starts falling apart almost as soon as it had begun. The next day you missed up the timing and arrived at the day care after everyone had left on a field trip and suddenly you found yourself without fuzzy defenses. You're accustomed to Hestia quietly shielding you with a cloak of mundanity but you've taken a hesitant footstep into some entirely different world. Zeus lives here and you can feel the crackle of her momentum, her impatience, her excitement.

You have had some time to think and plan but you will have no more. The gods are hungry.

Bella!

"Of course I'll help you!" said Thist with a wink. "I'm your attorney!"

You feel a strange kind of safety with that. You know that look on Thist's face: that's contentment. You're not quite sure what it's like to feel that emotion but you know people who are experiencing it aren't threats. All their desires are satisfied and there's nothing more they can think to ask. It's the emotion that comes right before you're about to be dismissed, the emotion that means you did something right. But Thist isn't a superior and her contentment doesn't come with a dismissal - instead her posture and mannerisms become servile and obedient.

It's an alien transition, as alien as the Azura herself. Normally there is a master and a servant, and when someone is confused about which one they are things End Badly. But here Thist played a threatening role right up until she got what she wanted and now she's genuinely demurring and looking to do what you want without resistance. Like it's the most natural thing in the world and not a weird bargain you came up with just now.

"Not a lot of call for wine these days, since the humans went," said Thist, slithering out of her chair and moving fluidly over to the door. "There's plenty just lying around in the old buildings though. Aldin! Go find some human wine for my client, that's a good girl, and pick me up some strawberry bread while you're at it." She closed the door and sidled onto an ottoman where she could stretch out across from you. "Who are you looking for, and where do you want to go?"

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

The priestess makes a blade of her sash. The noble ladies of the Flower Kingdoms make blades of their umbrellas. The Gods of Heaven make blades of their foes.

And isn't this the true nature of divinity? Taking a maiden and making her into your foe, your slave? How many tormented souls have screamed at the injustice of Heaven and risen up against those who had lost Heaven's mandate? It is time for a triumph of lesser cravings. The mud hungers for an embrace! Zhaojun gives it a priestess, sprawled again to have the sweetness of her legs and breasts stolen behind the crudest of veils. Her shoe hungers for the reversal of the laws that consign it to the lowest of garments. She grants its wish as it steals a lightning kiss from the Crane's lips. This is what it is to incite a heart. To deny, and to make them wish they had the strength to deny in turn.

She denies each strike, each kick, each desperate swing. She denies even the rain from brushing her mask, for her umbrella is still held as steadily as a teacup despite each swirling step and twist and flow. What is love if it is not unequal?

"A stone in the corner of the board is useless, little priestess," said Zhaojun. "It controls no territory. It influences Heaven not. The periphery has no value. Did they tell you otherwise? Did they tell you Heaven's eyes wandered this far? Heaven's eyes wander not. A realm this far from true civilization, true virtue, true skill is the administrative province of the weakest and the most corrupt. Do you think a true priestess would have required my aid to stand against these pathetic beasts? I am offended," she curls her finger under Crane's chin, "almost too offended for words."

"But," she said, straightening in a smooth motion that sent Crane onto her back, "Even the periphery has a center. And you, again, are far from it. Do you think a true priestess would not have claimed power and not yielded her lands to foreign conquerors of a dozen different flags? The true power in these lands lies not with the natives. It lies with those who have come to conquer them. So if I am to achieve my mission it is they I must negotiate with, not you. I do not know yet what this Rakshasa will have to offer me but she, at least, will be a valuable stone."

Sunshards

Chen!

+Qiu wants those shards so that people care about stopping her,+ thought Jessic. +If you didn't care about them she'd steal the moon instead, or make the rivers flow backwards, or just stand outside people's houses yelling HEWWO! until someone came to fight her. I can't get too much into that because it's personal to her, but that's the way she can approach friendship and it took a lot of work to even get her this far.+

Princess Jessic opened her left wing and used it to gently fan the eerie blue fire, causing it to burn brighter and warmer. +Speaking of friends, Chen, do you have any actual friendships amongst the Princesses? Any romances? Any, mmm, strong emotions? I ask because it seems like you don't feel like you've got anyone you can really trust in this game.+

Rose!

Keron's eyes rake across you, Rose, and then switch to looking at Thian. "It seems," she said, "like she still doesn't understand her place."

Crack! The smack across your behind comes, swift and firm. Immediately following the jolt, Thist takes you by the shoulders and straightens you up, holding your posture in place. "Good girls," she murmured in your ear, "try their best to keep quiet when they're punished. And you're a good girl, aren't you?"

Keron stands smoothly, and oh, when did she get to be taller than you? She looks down on you and her voice is as unyielding as silk rope. "Listen, little Rose. Your mouth is for one thing: pleasing your mistress. You will not use it for anything else unless you wish to be punished. Am I understood?"

Yue!

"That's," said Hyra, lingering on the taste of the words - on the relish of being able to speak them again. "My girl."

*

She's up early. Good nervous system, as the saying goes - the kind of deep, instinctive intelligence and discipline that can pull her out of bed and to full alertness instantly. Although perhaps you might be capable of similar feats, Yue, were you nursing slightly fewer bruises. Turned out that the bruises shapeshifted with you which hardly seems fair.

It's after you've woken but before you've summoned the willpower to get out of bed when Hyra walks back into the room, scratching the back of your neck with the pinpoint precision of someone who has spent weeks thinking about all the places she couldn't reach to scratch under her own power. "Hey, beautiful," she said. She's got her phone in her other hand and it buzzes intermittently as messages come in. "You sleep okay?"

She is benevolent enough to not make fun of your response or lack thereof. It doesn't count as quitting if you haven't started yet! "Don't stress too much, cutie, this is actually my kind of curse at this point," she said. "You know, I was trained by Princess Jezara in the Western Plains? She taught me everything - magic, swords, even a little bit about shapeshifting magic. I reckon I might get... maybe not a fix, but a something with a few days of research. But you know what I got for you right now?"

She takes one of your paws in her hand and a nail-paint brush in the other. She paints one claw a bright red, and then a delicate series of dots all across it. "This isn't much of a spell," she said. "But it will let you digest things like chocolate and coffee with no problem. This is important because I've cooked breakfast, and it's chocolate chip pancakes, and you look like you could use the coffee."

Breathless Dead

Redana!

Mynx is more demure and maidlike than you have ever seen her. Her hands are folded in her lap and her eyes are vague and downcast and she's speaking with the calm of someone terrified beyond comprehension. This is the confession of someone who knows this truth may be their death.

"I last saw her on the Yakanov, after she defeated Demeter's scion and saved you and the station," said Mynx. "She was so overwhelmed with rage and grief she might have killed me there. I ran away. I still don't know what I should have done."

Alexa!

It takes you a minute to recognize Ramses, the Coherent warrior you danced with on the Yakanov, as he comes in. He's changed his gender since the last time you saw him, hair cut short and sharp and swept across his face from right to left. He's crisp, handsome, bright, bare chested and shining with fresh Alcedi tattoos in swirling triangle patterns. He crouches down and puts a heavy tray of Demeter's tubers roasted and mashed along with a selection of defeated battlecrab parts.

"Didn't know if you ate," he said, stepping into the bath, still clothed, and flopping dramatically down on the opposite side of the tub from you. "I figured you didn't, but I also figured the Pallas Rex didn't lose fights to fucking Murvle and Teck-Joe, so what do I know? You made it out in one piece?"

Vasilia!

"Greetings, former Captain."

Of all the houseguests you were expecting, Magos Iskarot was not one of them. Less so that he was carrying a large container of coleslaw in his hands, which he shoves into your arms brusquely.

"I understand you are now irrelevant," said the Magos, pushing past you into your quarters without waiting for an invitation. He looks around, eyes whirring beneath his hood. "I have come to pay my condolences." He opens the door of your fridge and starts digging around. "I am more relevant than ever," he adds. "I am now an Archmagos. Primary Evoker. Very important."

He rips a bunch of cables out of the back of your fridge and tosses them on the ground. "Idiocy. You let this death trap live in your house? What is wrong with you?"

Dolce!

Claiming the Captaincy at this moment a bit like throwing one's hat into the ring.

The Alcedi ritual warfare is reaching it's final stage. There are perhaps twelve champions left of the great contest, each surrounded by a ceremonial band of twenty warriors. They stalk each others through the halls of the Plousios and they will have absolutely no problem about hunting you at this stage of the contest. You're not sure you know enough of the ritual practices of these warbands to engage with them on proper terms either. This is God shit, and high technology God shit too. Just because the Alcedi didn't have functional starships when you met them did not mean they did not have an extremely powerful set of secret rituals that would allow them to draw the attention and blessings of the Gods in times of crisis. These were once the personal guard of Emperor Molech and their secrets are crafted by Imperial hands.

Speaking of, the severed head of the Emperor is still serving as your ship's Navigator. You... probably want to make sure that A) The Alcedi don't discover that, and B) You win this Captaincy contest, because otherwise they will discover that.

It's a hell of a first day challenge. Where do you start?

Bella!

"These coins aren't mere precious metal," said Thist, holding one up to the light. There - right in the centre - a glittering golden dust moving and twisting inside. "See there? That's Sulloi the Marid, greatest of the djinn, bound by the Shah Cyrus XC."

She took out a second coin and tapped the first one firmly against its centre - once, twice, three times. On the third tap the golden dust of the first coin flowed smoothly into the second one. The silver of the coin shrank a little and the golden dust in the centre expanded slightly, and the numbers around the ring rippled and changed from 1's to 2's.

"These coins are actually miniature containment rings," said Thist. "They imprison an immensely powerful spirit, broken into billions of fragmentary pieces. Each coin holds a thousand shards and a fully charged one is the equivalent of having a single hand at your service."

Thist took out another coin. This one glowed with a radiant golden light, shimmering and flowing like the sands of time, bound in a thin ring of silver. "Sulloi, bring me that book," said Thist, and sure enough the golden energy flowed from the coin, picked the book off the shelf, and carried it across to the Azura lawyer. This, it must be said, is a miracle. Nothing in Nero's empire works like this, no Imperial technology has bound a spirit like this, in all your studies of the Azura you read a little about their ambition to bind the Djinn but there was no indication that they'd ever succeed.

Thist smiled, waved the coin, and then another and slid them across the table to you, along with a purse full of empty containment rings.

"All yours," she said, holding her cigar up to her lips and taking a contented puff. "Two thousand daric, I'll round up the cost of your ship's salvage as a personal gift. But don't underestimate the Azura, Reacher." And although she was relaxed and poised, eyes half-lidded in the pleasure of the smoke, her voice was not that of a creature unused to power. It almost seemed like someone else's voice entirely. "The Order of Hermes, as I see it, have violated the Shah's airspace causing the redirection of the Shah's mighty air force, damaged the Shah's pavement requiring the work of the Shah's stonemasons, and have inflicted great personal injury on the Shah's newest servant, requiring the effort the Shah's legal council to identify and remedy. And if the Order of Hermes forgets its place then they will see what happens when the Shah unleashes the Marid upon their fleet."

Thist blinks and shakes away the smoke haze. You're not feeling any effect but your Auspex suggests that whatever she's smoking has some intoxicating interaction with Azura biology. A smile makes its way back to her face, gradual at first but then increasingly genuine.

"Hey, thanks for understanding," said Thist, and the body language seemed to convey embarrassment. "I'm cool, don't worry. But watch the language, yeah? Lot of proud people 'round here and the senth definitely doesn't help. Awful stuff," she taps the stub of the cigar out in her ashtray. "And the Party's even worse. You're a long way from home and there's a lot of stuff here that won't work like you're used to. I'll help you best I can - that's what Zeus and the Path demand - but keep your eyes open and walk softly. The Endless Azure Skies are a lot of things but they're definitely not safe, not these days."

Sunshards

Chen!

You're being lowered. Soft and as gentle as the earth's gravity after too long in space. You're held for a moment, horizontal, then set down on bench. There's a crackle of lightning and a fire starts burning nearby - an old piece of metal evaporating in a strange azure fire, fragments flaking off and evaporating into cosmic black sparks. Autumn falls at bay for a moment, settling down at the edge of the blue firelight like a wary hound.

+Everything I've seen of you today has been perfect Princess behaviour,+ thought Jessic. Her thoughts were alert but dispassionate, an eagle's curiosity. +You charmed me, defied Keron, stole a heart and bought great happiness to my people. I would disagree that you were a bad Princess, strongly. Does knowing that change how you feel?+

Rose!

"Countess Keron!" a handmaiden squeaks in surprise. There's a sudden rush as everyone gets to their feet and bows - and you are pulled to your feet and made to bow too, Rose - but some signal passes and everyone relaxes and returns to their duties. Keron takes a chair, reverses it, and sits facing you as you are pulled back to your chair for another round of hair brushing as two more handmaidens take your hands and begin working magic on nails that never truly learned how to not be talons.

The Countess' eyes are fire and her heart is hard, but in this place she too is somehow softer. As she sits handmaidens detach pieces of armour from her shoulders and back, gently kissing marks where leather straps have dug into her skin. Her command here is certain and because of that she has no need to impose it. Instead of the dominating mistress you saw earlier now she has a certain arrogant, casual satisfaction - something that you might have recognized on your own face not so long ago.

"I was right," said Keron. "You do clean up nicely... but you're nowhere near worthy of being presented to a Princess. You've got a lot to learn about manners, etiquette and obedience. Thian, have Rose pour me some tea."

Thian takes you from behind like a dance instructor, one hand on your hip and the other on your wrist. She half lifts, half-guides you just so and teaches you how to walk to across the room, her legs swinging in unison with yours. She guides you like a puppet through the steps, hands soft and cool against yours, control invisible as she guides you through the curtsy, the pour, the stirring, steeping, sugar, and teaches you how to fall to your knees without spilling a drop so that you might offer your gift to the Countess with the proper respect.

Yue!

Curses can be terrible things. They're all the pain and hurt of a heart in turmoil, sharpened and thrown like a knife. But they're also magical things, and magic has certain laws - the chief of which is, as it ever is, that love conquers all.

It's not a wolf you hold in your arms as those words sink in. It's a girl. A beautiful girl with red eyes and long wet hair and a smile that's like the sun trying to fit all its light through an upstairs window at sunset. It's the face of a rogue who doesn't have a trick for this, it's the face of an enemy you disarmed at last. She leans in to kiss you and hold you tight and you know the wish in her heart and it's much the same as yours.

And you try to hold her back... and you can't. Not easily. Not with these paws.

Because you see, Yue, while love is powerful, curses are cunning - and this one has slipped right off Hyra and stabbed itself into you. And somehow in that moment where the only thing you could see was Hyra you didn't notice that you, yourself, had been transformed into a wolf in her place.

What kind of wolf are you, Yue?

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Robena was in no mood for heroics today.

The traditional form of the hunt in the English way was an eight part quest involving the glorious pursuit of the hart until it could run no longer, at which point it would halt and bay and a knight would move in with a sword to slay it in heroic battle. She knew, though, that was not the only option. The Germans had a style based on stealth and patience, advancing slowly and cautiously over ground, using their horses as cover until they were close enough to fire with arrows. And would that not be such a wonderfully relaxing method of hunt on a day when she ached so? Wouldn't it be suited to her horse's temperament, and her own? Wouldn't it guarantee a bounty of meat, to win with stealth and cunning, and would not the meat be all the sweeter when its life was taken unsuspecting?

Robena stares at her horse who chuffs his vote. If this was to be her last time hunting a hart on this earth, why could it not at least be an easy one? Perhaps even Constance would agree it would be kinder to kill gently -

She stops, her face like iron, and she stares the Devil Sloth straight in his equine eye. No! "Set the hound relays," she said, "and ready the horses for chase. We hunt par force."

This was not an easy decision. Even after she had made it she felt tired. Even after she made it she felt like listing into second and third place in the ride, 'accidentally' giving up her position. She resisted, step by step. Xristos bled three days and nights before the chalice was full, and the hart likewise had no easy chance to avoid suffering. Even if she had dishonoured herself she would not dishonour them, as she had dishonoured Constance.

Breathless Dead

Redana!

If Mynx had a desire in all this it would be to avoid having to talk about this. She squirms and shifts under your gaze in a way that you only have ever seen when questioning her about a mysterious wound she somehow acquired in the line of duty. But her heart weighs the scales and comes to the exhausted conclusion that she, shield and guardian, has to protect you from your own aching heart.

And so she speaks.

"Do you know the meaning of life, Redana?" said Mynx. "I do. It is to die in someone else's place. If I close my eyes and let my mind wander that's what I come back to. When I imagine where I'll be as an old lady it's dying in the place of an old lady. It's, just," she twitches her tail. "I'm not talking about me. Bella's not like that. She was made differently. She was made to be perfect, to be the best. The fastest. The strongest. The smartest. The most beautiful." Again Mynx shifts, hands in her lap in a demure maid's pose. "And you have no idea how scary that makes life for her. Because being the best isn't worth anything, Redana, and doesn't and has never given her control over anything. When she fails it's always for reasons outside of her control but she has to carry the consequences anyway."

She took a breath and, at last, made eye contact. "And she has carried so many consequences. All of palace security's consequences fell on her. All of the household staff's consequences fell on her. All of your failings fell on her. All of my..." she blinks for a moment. "She has all of the responsibility and none of the power, Redana. And she's in so much pain because of it. The only thing she can control is herself and time and again that's not enough."

Her voice, her ears, her head have all dropped. "I can't say she doesn't hate you, Redana. I can't say she doesn't hate me either. And I can't say she doesn't deserve to. Here I am, warm and comfortable here with you, and Bella... I could fail here so easily. I could just... give up and go with you and defend you and fulfill my purpose. It'd be easy and I'd love it. But Bella doesn't have that option. She's trapped between perfection and powerlessness and nobody has ever once supported her when she needed it, the way she needed it. So if I go with you I'm letting her down, just like you did."

Her voice is sore and her eyes are wet and her fists are clenched so tight her knuckles are white.

Alexa!

"Forgiveness?" said someone who was probably the Magos. "Forgiveness is unnecessary. I hold no grudge. You are beneath my notice. You are merely a stranger to me."

And then (s)he gestured coldly and the Coherent cast you down a shaft to land upon a heap of garbage.

Vasilia and Dolce!

You meet in the kitchen. The pasta is boiling. Hestia tastes it and holds up three fingers; not quite yet.

She is there for both of you this time. Salt, too, is there for you. And pepper. It's not a meal that'll change your life, but it's quick, it's warm, and it'll fill you up and give you time to talk.

Bella!

"Oh, you're from the Reaches!" said Thist, smiling brightly and immediately rummaging around in a drawer. "On behalf of Xerxes CVI, The Violet Sunbeam That Kisses The Graves Of Her Foes, Shah of the Endless Azure Skies, welcome to civilization! I've got some pamphlets - ah!"

Thist scatters an array of beautifully illustrated pamphlets across the table in front of you. Stark, simple colours and shapes that captures the imagination with landscapes and laws in a way a lesser bard might need great battles and heroic deeds to achieve. These hold up, even to Imperial eyes, and have titles like SUMPTUARY LAWS, THE PATHS AND THE ARISTEIA, LANDMARKS OF GORGAN.

"Those'll cover the other basics, but here in the Skies we trade in coin," Thist held up a single, round piece of metal, stamped with a sun-and-mask icon. "This is a daric. One of these is worth about a kilogram of flour, ten of these will get a fine meal prepared for you or ingredients for three of your own. Accommodation is... ah, you won't have any trouble finding places to sleep here, put it like that. Eighteen hundred daric is enough for a woman to live in modest means for about two, three months, longer if you're cautious with it. Not that you'll need to be - if we work together, I can develop a legal case before the Senate that'll extract tribute from the Order of Hermes for their negligence towards your safety and the insult they have cast before mighty Xerxes and all that. You'll get a cut, of course!"