TheAmishPirate

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Oh no you dont.

Red Wolf’s a shamelessly handsy viper, sure. Touches everything and everyone like she owns it all. But you wanna know who she doesn’t own? Lotus. Her charge. Hers. So what if she didn’t actually see her doing anything? Don’t trust that snake even for a minute. She can take her oh-so-innocent smiles and stuff ‘em.

The deck planks shudder under her unrelenting advance. She doesn’t even look at Lotus. She won’t give the enemy a hint of an opening, a moment to rally her defenses. There is an angry dragon, in your face, and that’s what you’re dealing with now. (Nevermind that she has to crane her neck up to look her target in the eye. Or that said target keeps hiding behind her stupidly perfect hair.)

“I’d find it a hell of a lot better if you got her a veil. Personally.” She growls out a challenge. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you; you don’t rottin’ touch a priestess.”

[Activating Shameless: Giving Red Wolf a string on Han to ask her the question: What do you hope to get from Lotus?]

[Also rolling to Defy Disaster with Spirit, to attempt to cut through Red Wolf's blame-shifting techniques: 5 + 4 + 1 = 10]

Breathless Dead

The Deodekoi catches her by the throat. She cannot resist her. Blood, breath, life flow beneath those claws and only fragile skin stands in her way. She picks her up and hits her with a planet. She squeezes, past blood, past breath, prying from her soul yet deadlier weapons. The auto surgeon’s bands lash so tight around Vasilia she cannot move. She cannot scream, and her lungs will burst. Her blood is fire. All she can smell is her, her, her, and no one else. No one else was allowed so close. Snarls and silence fending off the bright Alcedi. Keep away! Keep away from her treacherous, useless, poisoned heart! The long nights alone, and always alone, for she must be, she must try to get used to it, in case, in case,

Eyes rolling back

Helpless to

Can’t move

Ah-!

Bella squeezes tighter. Bella cuts off air and adrenaline. Bella raises her claws, heedless of the pathetic swipes of her prey.

A spray of mud flies between them, straight for the eyes of Bella’s helmet. Vasilia does not see the strike that bats it away.

She smells it.

A pod concealed in the mud shreds to atoms, and a burst of cloyingly sweet chemicals - cheap imitations of Demeter’s work - diffuses through the rain around them. The pressure releases, just by a hair. Enough to gasp, and see a shadow-grey figure standing over her. They duck a spear-thrust from behind them, sweep out their assailant’s leg, and a Kaeri bowls headlong into Bella, flying much too fast to turn aside. In place of a nightmare, a soft, familiar weight falls on her chest, wrapping his arms around her as far as they can reach. And a voice strives to rise above the chaos of the melee:

“Jump!”

Her arm falls and strikes the earth. And she goes tumbling weightless through the air, a flurry of Kaeri racing to follow, and her Dolce hanging off her. Alive, for the moment.

[Rolling to Overcome: 3 + 3 + 2 = 8. Spending a bath bomb from Dolce’s supply of household tricks as a Price for acting against a threat to the world. Taking the partial success.]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

No answer? Hardly. You’ve told her exactly who you are, honored scribe.

You are healer, of long-borne aches, of troubles too small to bother anyone with, of everything your hands touch. Everything she lets you touch. And it’s so hard. It’s so hard to keep holding her secret hurts in scarred hands, when they could be gone forever the moment she hands them to you. It’s so hard to remember the lesson burned into her by a lifetime of learning. Your heart is dangerous. Alien. You must never show it. Everything is on you. You’re strong enough to do it all. It doesn’t hurt that badly. It doesn’t. It. Doesn’t…

You are guardian, of this moment, of this little bubble of creation big enough for two and two alone. Nothing may enter without your leave. Nothing will slip past you for some less honorable soul to steal. A total authority that cannot be resisted, and yet, an authority that she does not resent. For instead of secrets, you draw groans, you draw sighs, you draw soft, needy whimpers from her lips. They travel no further than you, living only in this quiet you’ve created for her. Not even Emli, clinging close to her side, hears a whisper of them. When you leave, you will take them with you, and will she even remember speaking them?

You are strong, enough to reduce a dragon to a blissful nothing, to take on the thinking for two. It will take her hours for her body to process what you’ve done to her. It will take her days, months, maybe years for her heart to process what you’ve done to her. Even this evening, as she lies in a half-dreaming daze, she will remember the warm fog that descended on her and wonder.

And yet, you are just not strong enough to stop her eyes from flickering open. Her head from lolling over. Her gaze to meet yours, with hardly a breath between the two of you.

“Hey. You. M’gonna. Gonna find you. And. Get you back. Show you good. Time. Tea. Yeah…”

And what a heroic effort it took to say that much. To take her heart and push it to the surface, hold it up on trembling limbs long enough to speak, before succumbing all over again to your command.

The last of her energy leaves her. She is nothing more than exhausted. She cannot comprehend the wordless command you finally give Emli. Her trained hands accept the precious bundle, working without thought through soothing patterns of touch and skin. Attendants bring her cups of cool water, and she lifts them gently to Han’s lips. As you are helped away, you see the mighty dragon, she who rebuked the General himself, nuzzle into the slave-girl’s neck, too safe to remember worry.

For now, for once, she is safe.

[Han opens up via submission, and clears Hopeless.]

Breathless Dead

Behold, the peril of mixed loyalties.

Just a few short months ago, she believed herself cursed, doomed to the whims of Zeus. A creature shorn clean of her past, with no future to look forward to, knowing only a never-ending present of causes to sacrifice herself for. A viewpoint of such pride that she surely would have been struck down for her hubris, were her heroic antics not endlessly entertaining to the Thunderer. A viewpoint that was thoroughly dashed when Zeus finally took her at her word, and left her in the hands of her sister Hestia.

Under the tutelage of Hestia, she was granted a taste of a life she was never permitted. A bright star rises to a new dawn. A golden child climbs to the highest pedestal, for all to see her glory. Lionesses must heed the hunt, not waste their mornings with tea and toast. In the glow of the hearth, she was granted a second chance, a fate that led not to destruction, for her and all who she loved. She could not stay. She cannot not say why. But here she stands, contending for Zeus’ favor, and by some miracle she might just pull it off.

The clouds of Kaeri are ready. They have not noticed a flightless visitor take his place in their whirling formations. Vasilia clutches her sword in her hand. The battlefield tilts downwards. She falls to the horizon. In a moment, she will pivot to the Kaeri, and the sword will continue. It cannot harm the Diodekoi. But it can set her ears ringing. Draw her attention away from their unprotected lines.

Except.

The innkeeper humbles themselves before any guest. The fireplace burns with a soft light, for all to rest in peace. The homebody speaks in a quiet hush, not seeking to be anybody more than they are.

But those truly vying for Zeus's favor have all eyes on them already.

[Rolling to Keep Bella Busy: 2 + 1 + 2 = 5. Uh oh! Marking Vasilia’s sword off her sheet as the price for acting against a Threat to the World.]

Breathless Dead

A skirmisher stops moving when they are dead or dying. They fight in flight as hummingbirds, consuming the ground and the open spaces at a rate just barely capable of sustaining themselves. To think is an exercise in multitasking, a tradeoff in time. Slower to the mark, in exchange for living longer if you can still reach it.

The Garden grows still at the dodecahedron’s roar. They recognize their own. An apex predator. The cannons grow silent, to better hear their first footfalls. The phalanxes freeze, digging deeper in a vain hope of delaying the violence that stopped the unstoppable. Dolce and Vasilia keep moving. The broken body of Princess Epistia bends as bodies should not. Dolce and Vasilia must keep moving. The hoarse cry of their friend meets the sickening crunch of a kick disintegrating ribs, and they cry no more. Dolce and Vasilia cannot stop moving.

She sees the most dangerous threat on the battlefield, sees the loss of their greatest fighter, and sees no one else this far or this free.

He cannot see his Champion, or anyone else remotely qualified. He’s not even qualified. But he is the Captain.

“Dammit. Dammit.” She swears, as they send a pack of Kaeri tumbling off the field.

“...do you see anything?”

“I see that we don’t stand a chance if she’s allowed to run free.”

“Then. We. Have to stop her.”

“We’re no better than Epistia in single combat.”

“Do we have to be better?”

“I certainly hope not.”

[Rolling to Look Closely: 6 + 6 + 2 = 14. How can they, with primarily close-range weaponry, fight her and not instantly meet the same fate as Epistia?]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Emli gazes up at Han, eyes filled with half-lidded fire. Han gazes back at Emli, and there is nothing but fire. Everywhere. All around them. The exits are blocked. None of them will escape. She will die, taken tragically before her time, and she won’t have the dignity of proper last words, for all her thoughts are and ever will be: Screaming.

Is it any better when the slave-girl shows her mercy, and changes the toipc? It is worse, actually. She speaks of a world Han could never afford to enter. She touches that hated thing with honor and reverence. Moments ago, Emli stood within a scaffolding of a person that stood fast, no matter what mysteries were yet to be discovered. Now that, too, is gone, and Han cannot identify the pretty, girl-shaped creature running a hand along her bare side.

You ought to thank the slave-girl, scribe. A better distraction you couldn’t have asked for.

She recoils, from fear, from shock, from the terror of the unknown, and her head lands precisely where you commanded it to. You reach over so naturally, so easily, that she would have sworn you were as a statue until your fingers were already working through her hair. Now it is too late. For her. For you.

Before she can speak, you are drawing out the cost of a week’s worth of forced marching, of foraged meals, of sleep pried from knobby roots and hard earth. You break apart trigger points, one after another, and she cannot relax more than this, and yet there goes another, come to shatter her thoughts anew. Your fingers glide through her hair, maneuvering so carefully through the knots that they may have never even existed. Long, smooth, steady brushes, gentle pressure sliding down her head, tickling the back of her neck as you pass.

But though she shivers under your fingers, though a haze threatens to swallow her mind, her body is a mass of tension, a coiled spring. The sound stirring in her throat might as easily be a growl as a purr. You tease a knife by the blade. You only continue because this dragon permits it, and she has yet to settle her mind. She has questions, scribe. She is so full of questions she might burst, and you sit beside a bomb.

Why are you touching her?

What are you going to do with her?

(What does she want you to do?)

”Who,” she blinks sleepy eyes. “The hell are you?”

How will you answer her?

[Rolling to Figure Out A Person: 3 + 1 - 2 = 2]

Breathless Dead

What do you do for the girl who is everything?

“Absolutely nothing” goes one school of thought. Why in the name of all that is good, decent, and sensible are you getting involved with a girl like that in the first place?! What are you to the universe? Could the sum total of your life cause even an atom to drift out of its place? Are you surprised that the tales of those who follow after Zeus earn their glory in blood and agony, and only sometimes that of other people? Flee. Run, if you can. Placate yourself to those mad enough to play in her domain, and spend your days under the care of gentler hands.

The barest hint of Zeus’ aspect recognizes its own. Sparks finer than hairs dart out to lick at Vasilia’s armor, punching her skin with a hundred burning needles. To stand before her, just to stand incurs a cost. Forwards or backwards, she will pay greater still. “Y-Yes. Well.” Why is she here? Why must it be her? Why must it always be her? Why, after everything, does she keep doing this to herself? “If I could not distract your eyes from the nearest skirts for even a few moments, what good would I even do with your lightning?”

Why does she do this, for the girl who is everything?

Because only the ones who show up get to play a hand in what happens here. And the only thing worse than the Master of Assassins remaking the galaxy in blood and bark is letting her do it by default.

Silence should not fall on the galaxy, on everyone, just because it put the work in.

*******************

“I admit. I am…not the best suited, personally, to stand in command over your daughter.”

He hears the shell-shocked voices, giving their report. He sees the wall of empty tables around her in the cafeteria. He turns to stone when her attention falls on him. Wolves and plants both will hunt him in his dreams tonight.

“But I am not alone here, and neither is she. She is young. She is learning. And if I can do nothing else for her, I can give her the space and allowance she needs. Maybe someone better than me can help her find her voice, and what might she sing then?”

“But this?” Bodies lurch across the field, three times maimed, and still it is not over. “How can this be…what else can this be, but, but…” He shakes his head furiously. “I don’t know how to even speak of it. This is much, Lord Hades, and I already have not spoken as carefully as I ought to have, and I apologize.”

So, perhaps. The better thing to say would be as little as possible.

“I understand that you have done more than enough already. I ask nothing more of you.” With a whisper of steel, his sword appears in his hand. “We will still lay them to rest, though. Not for any blessing. But because someone ought to.”

*******************

A word, then, for the battle, and the roles of Princess and Captain.

No one may stop the garden of Demeter. But only Epestia may be capable of slowing it down without joining their ranks. If the hands of Demeter are greedy enough to try and take her for her own, they will be reduced to nothing by the fury of Ares. How dare she? How dare she?! He will not let go of his precious prize so easily. Not here. Not today. Not in his own domain. As her allies contend with the Kaeri and plovers, Epestia will collect from the gardens of Demeter for every inch of ground, and the distance between them will serve them all.

As to the Captain and his second, they are skirmishers to the core. Fast, quiet, capable of gravity-defying maneuvers without a breath to give them away, their place is not in the front. As the clouds of toxic gas build, they dart under their stinging cover to find their targets. Exposed power cables. Allies in peril. Anywhere fates hang on a knife’s edge, it is their solemn duty to fly in unannounced and deliver a fatally unexpected kick.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

The last bathhouse Han attended had been a humble roadside affair, one of the last gasps of ‘civilized folk’ before entering the Highlands proper. The activities of the Vermillion Beast had taken a little money from hands less deserving, and she decided to treat herself. It was simple, as simple as she remembered it, with fine floral scents dancing through the air, steaming pools, a kindly family who ran the place, and a fine, hearty meal afterwards. She’d spent a night in welcome company, washing away the concerns of her journeys, and went to bed completely happy.

Here, there were more soaps than she knew existed, and that was before she even stepped foot in the tiny tub. Not even the order of washing, scrubbing, and rinsing was the same. Despite the best efforts of the attendants, no explanation rang anywhere close to familiar for her comfort. And so here she sits, asking nothing of the numerous servants buzzing about her. Asking nothing of the pretty girl hanging off her arm. It is impossible to see her hands through the water’s surface, but judging by her posture, they are folded chastely, stiffly in her lap. She holds her heart tightly against the ministrations of luxury, heedless as it burns, it pierces, it hangs heavy in her grasp.

Emli asks the question. And that’s when her eyes meet the scribe’s.

So full of anger and worry. Does she even have a thought to spare, to why her eyes rest so easily on yours? The barest push, and she stumbles out of herself to see your arms, walking slowly, leisurely down their length. So lithe, so smooth, the arms of a scribe faithful to her work, positively glowing with delicate care. And then. And then!

When you draw her eyes upward once again, she looks at you as if you’d just asked her to steal your wallet. You wanted her to steal your wallet. Now she has the little pouch clutched in her hand, and what are these shiny round things it's filled with? Co-oyens, you say? Just what is she supposed to do with these? Just what are you asking of her, you, you, whoever you are?!

A yawning, empty chasm stretches between them. To leap across it risks falling into its unfathomable depths. To make the leap rewards her, it will give her, there’s, the scribe will, what? What?! What does she want with her? What will happen if she accepts? What is she agreeing to? Why is this even being offered, whatever this is? Why is she looking at her like that? Why?! So many questions. No hope of answers. She knows so little. She aches so terribly.

Amidst it all, what little she knows - really knows, deep in her soul - stands in shining relief, as lights in a fog. Danger lurks before her, yes. But not malice. Only a (beautiful) scribe, with a steady voice, promising something simple, on a day when everything has been so, so complicated. If she would just take one, little leap. For her.

She intends to drift over, casually, but such is impossible even for heaven’s favored ones. A push, and she floats slowly across the pool in the sight of all, coming to rest beside you, honored scribe. (Sitting, with your arm looming perilously behind her. She watches it, out of the corner of her eye, as if it were a snake.) “Sure are banking a lot on your ‘Lords of the Dominion’ not being complete wilting jerks.” She fires back, in this completely casual and normal discussion of philosophies, between two people just sharing a bathhouse. “Fresh out of luck if they don’t really care about you.” And maybe she would’ve said more, had she not been suddenly and profoundly aware of Emli pressing warm against her, following into the open space beside her.

One, little leap. And she is surrounded.

[Han will give into desire, despite having no clue what she's given in to.]

Breathless Dead

There is distance, but not enough.

The corpses move slowly, with an inexorable momentum. They cannot maneuver. They will not form complicated battle lines, or strike with technique immaculate. But they will reach. They will grasp with hungry thorns. And only one of them needs to take hold of you. There is distance, but not enough.

She’d filled her hours with pasta mistakes. Hestia taught her the ways of kitchens, homes, and comfort, and she survived on nothing but her lessons. She fled down paths of long-forgotten memory, chasing after a girl she knew, a girl she was, a girl she never reached. Once more she found home, held close to a heart she feared she’d lose forever. And today, in the driving rains, she feels the thorns burning her skin, the grip of the goddess breaking her down piece by piece. There is distance, but not enough.

The Master of Assassins cackles to have pulled such a trick. She throws her head back, too drunk to even see the ants formed up against her. Too far gone to count the bodies she will expend, for the weary work of finding more will belong to the Master of tomorrow. She stands, untouchable, atop her stone altar, so flush with divine favor that none, not even the heretic, might touch her.

There is distance, but by thunder it will not be enough.

“Zeus!” Her voice peals across the field, to meet the mad laugher of the Master of Assassins. “Who raises thrones and tears them down! Who casts her lightning, and obliterates her target without fail! Who stands atop the peak of Olympus!”

“Are you seeing this shit?!”

“She comes groveling to you, pretending to be outnumbered and hard put-upon, when all along she has such a host in her back pocket! She cries faithfulness to her office, when all along she plans to murder the very daughter her leige commanded her to retrieve! Your very daughter! Let her deny it before you, if she dares! If this is the sort of person you want carrying your favor, then let it be so! Your favor is yours, and you need answer to no one for how you spend it.”

“But we have not forgotten you either! I have not forgotten you! How could I?! Incorrigible meddler! Insufferable in your generosity! She of loudest, and most ill-timed laugh!” And lest you think she could exhaust your titles in such a short span of time, hold off the enemy for a few weeks and see how far down the list she can go! “We have no fancy tricks! We have no scheme to fall back upon! We throw our courage to the sticking place, and if that not be enough, then let no one say we held back a whit!”

“If she is to carry your blessing, then let it be so. But if you’re looking for an instrument, to show that no one may play lightly with the Thunderer’s favor, well!” Her hand traced the grip of her pistol. “Here are two, hanging from my belt, that will not put you to shame!”

No one hears the Captain, exchanging his own quiet words with the gods. But that is fine; the one he prays to prefers the quiet anyway. “Lord Hades, this is wrong.” His voice buckles beneath the horror, but he must carry on. “Please. Allow us to set it right. We will put them to rest. All of them. Only, let us do it properly. Let us carry the courage, the memory of all who have come before us. Let their hearts stand alongside our own, that whatever terror may strike us in the task, we will not break before it.”

For that, then, is the order passed down to their legions. The garden of Demeter, however fearsome, is slow, too many to achieve any complicated formation. It will fall, then, to the Kaeri, and the Plovers, and whatever other horrors she possesses, to be the hammer driving them against the anvil of Demeter. Do not forget which way you face. Do not let them take you where they want to. Stand strong, and show them the limits of fear.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

The dragon-blooded servant slips her glove back on, carefully slipping the fabric over the ugly slash across her palm. The scribe testified to perverse blood sacrifice to dark powers. The Red Wolf handed down a judgment without a second thought. But where explanations, counter-points, the fatal blows to misunderstanding might fall, she speaks only silence.

The Legionnaires were not in the business of mercy. The fell on one and all, not caring for the weak, the injured, the unarmed, the innocent. Every act of rebellion was met with more chains, more humiliation, a faster march, yet the muffled whimpering of the priestess silenced her where these punishments could not. How long they spent trudging through the rain, she could not say. But where explanations, defenses, the vouching of character, given at risk of punishment, where these and more might have prevented it all, Giriel spoke only silence.

Han stands in the Chamber of Harmonious Arrangements; deaf, for a moment, to the gentle pleas of Emli. They truss up Giri in Dominon reds, bind her under the law of a land not her own. The injured dragon-blooded lays her hands on Melody and rushes her out of sight. Heat rises, building in her chest, washing through her face, her eyes, her heart, and all is red, and all is choking. But where rescues, defenses, the bold warnings to seize not what is hers might ring out, she speaks only silence.

Even if she has to tear herself to pieces, she will speak only silence.