TheAmishPirate

Breathless Dead

“Darling. Why…?!”

“She’d have got you again. I couldn’t…you shouldn’t have to…”

“Was it better I should watch you die?!”

“...ah. Sorry. I, I didn’t-”

“No. No more. We’re not splitting apart again. Not now. If this is-”

“We can do this.”

“...”

“We can do this, Vas.”

“...then we’ll do it together, dear heart.”

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

The first steps of XIII cleared the field. The sound of her approach slaughtered plans where they stood. Lines shifted. Friend and foe clamored in retreat. Those creeping plants, those breathless dead, remembered the shape of fear, and scattered to new ground. The eye of Ares found better game, elsewhere. No one will stand between them, now. Nothing stands between the Diodekoi, and her prey. They will fall, and they will fall, and what sweetness it will be! Names and bodies growing cold against her! Thank you, Artemis. You kept her path clear. She is here, for her treat. She is a good girl, in the end.

Down, down, down. To doom. To death. With a glaive in her hand and a sword in his. With her body before his. Let her take a fraction of the pain. Let her lifeblood buy her husband a breath of peace. She winds up for a swing. One, last, fruitless resistance.

XIII leaps. As does Dolce, right on time.

The sheep flies from his wife’s back, equal and opposite reaction dropping her low. The claw meant for her heart drives through her side, piercing armor twice over. But he’s away. But he’s close. So close. XIII twists, pivots off the air, body bending like a bow at full draw, to spear the little stormcloud-

*BOOM*

And Vasilia’s strike lands upon the desert floor. With a strangled gasp she kicks herself off those hungry claws, vanishing into the dust cloud. She hears no shredding, no screaming, and knows her husband broke clear. She does not hear XIII’s kick, splitting the sandstorm in two. She feels her ribs crack. Then-

Silence. Chaos. Silence. Chaos. Dunes explode to dust, one after another, as she passes through them. Enough gravity not to bounce off into the sky. Not enough that her body will break. Barely. XIII is coming. Blinking closer with each silence. Coiled to pounce if she runs. No escape. No retreat.

“Vas!”

A voice shouts from behind her. Not alone.

The swipe. The strike. Thunder claps twice. XIII digs a ditch twice her height, and sand rushes to fill the wound. Vasilia vaults a hair’s breadth from destruction. Her glaive missed. The blast of sand and grit could not. XIII eyes blink themselves clear. Her ears catch the shifting of the wind. Divine sense tell her where Vasilia must be, where she will be. But for Dolce, he simply knew. XIII must leap after her. He was already there.

For an instant, two fields become one. They split, and only they know their direction. Again, the swipe. Again, the glaive. Wound. Vault. And again, the pair meet. Faster. Faster! See the trench they carve in their wake, the desert pockmarked by thunderbolts. The air resounds with the staccato of the Armada’s cannons, violence to split a planet in two. And still they fly! In patterns impossible to predict, two souls fly, untouched! As one, outrunning a nightmare!

“E. Nough.”

XIII spins, once. Her heel strikes the earth.

Vasilia’s swipe passes through open air. Dolce scrambles to land, but finds nothing. Beneath them, a yawning crater. A grave, big enough for two. Big enough for an army. Big enough that he will not find his feet before she is upon him.

He gets his sword up. She cares not. The sound, ah, the sound it makes, when her strike meet his guard. A chime so sweet, like a fork against a dripping wineglass. The steel holds. His arm does not. Pop. Crack. Go. Away, little lost sheep. Scream, that she will find you easier. She must kill your shepherd, first. See, even now, the lioness’ glaive whistles towards her. Too slow. Much too slow.

This, then, is the hunt. This is the difference between predator and prey. All that she is, bent to one, transcendent moment, where nothing stands between her quarry and her overwhelming strength. XIII moves as if she has her own rail - no. XIII does not need to move. The world is simply beneath her. And between the world and a god’s hammer, a fragile little thing of blood and bones.

Down, down, down. Down into her stomach. Down to the grave. Falling with her. Because she will bounce. She must not manifest any weight, or else she will shatter. Off the ground. Up. Into the claws. Too close to swing her bothersome weapon. Too fast to dodge away. Nothing more than an offering upon the altar of the hunt. Shoulder. Legs. Back. Arms. The thunderbolts run red. All her breath is screaming. The claws drive her into the sand. Her weightless body sends her back into them again. XIII strikes for the kill. The blow falls. Heavier than it should. Faster than it should. Pulled, by a moment of terrible gravity that draws the surrounding sand to Vasilia’s battered body. Her will screams for her heart. But an arm, not a ribcage, splinters.

Fourth Form: Atmosphere Surrounding. Reversed.

Hunger of Styx.

XIII excavates her shoulder. XIII tears wide the hole in her side. XIII ruins her hand. By her choice. By her offering. For the price of a heart still beating, Vasilia hurls the blows of the Deodekoi into her body. They fall heavy, but off the mark. Wrong targets. Wrong angles. Every inch of flesh, every unbroken bone, is another hit she can survive. When her leg hangs useless and shattered, she drives it into the ground, and XIII’s claws meet an iron-hard cast of sand. Just enough to pad the blow. Enough to keep her conscious. Enough to command the rail. Enough. Enough. Enough.

One extra step in a hundred. A fraction of a second where eyes must clear. A feather’s-worth of force absorbed by sand and tattered armor. They don’t have to win. They can’t win.

All they need to do is hold long enough.

A spear haft comes tumbling down the crater wall, and her hand darts out to grab it. Away, in the light, Dolce feels a tug on a string, and pulls with all the strength left in his body. His wife comes soaring, weightless, out of the crater, out of the grave, in a glittering arc across the gray clouds. He gets her high enough, before XIII reaches him. Then he is flying too. His leg, nothing but agony. If it is even there at all.

Two stars fall, and they fall at the feet of the Anemoi.

Together.

[Rolling to Keep Her Busy: 6 + 4 + 2 = 12. Damaging Sense as the Price for acting against a Threat to the World.]

Breathless Dead

An Empire reaches across the infinite expanse of the stars, and plucks up a little lost sheep. He squirms. He struggles. He swings his needle of a sword. He changes nothing. He moves nothing. He does not move, save where the Empire moves him. His ribs, at an angle too sharp to maintain. His body, skipping across the desert. His thoughts, torn from his rattled head and left strewn on the sand with his blood. No more. No moving, now. They want him still, while they peel him open. They do not care to hear him scream. If his voice mattered, they would have sent someone who could listen.

An assassin falls to the ground, and an Empire sighs in annoyance. What now? If she hadn’t wanted to breathe the poisoned air, she should have stood someplace else. Or tried not to breathe. Did she think of that? Did she think to put in a little effort, for once? Didn’t she realize how much trouble and expense they’d gone through, to strip away everything that couldn’t be useful? Good girls say ‘thank you’ when they receive a gift. Good girls get up. Get up. Get up. We took out all that could’ve held you back. Why did you decide to stop? Get up. Get up.

A little lost sheep flops over on the wet dunes, coming to a halt beside his death. The toxic gas sends him coughing. The coughs break him anew. But inch by grasping inch, he pulls the remnants of his armor over his mouth; just enough of a barrier to let him breathe. Still, he watches her. He never stopped watching her. He couldn’t stop. Not then. Not now. Not when he has his answer, at last. Not when he sees, at last, who taught her to hurt like that.

Through the wool, through the fire in his flesh, one voice speaks against the omnipresent rumble of Empire:

“Your name…is Bella.”

And he is gone, snatched up at terminal velocity.

Get up.

They’re escaping.

Get up.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

You think she notices the heat? Her heart screamed hot enough to melt a demon’s hands to dust. Right now, in this moment, she can hear nothing but its howling.

How dare you. How dare you?!

It’s one thing to know you’re dealing with snake. To know that nothing they say is anything close to the truth, and nothing they say will ever be so solid that you could finally rip off their veil of decency. To know that everything you’ve ever known and loved means so little to them that they would burn it all rather than deny themselves anything. In a week, they will not even remember the ashes. That’s one thing. It’s another when they do it to your face. To someone you. You…

Her heart roars so loud, that all the world might be silence. And the only thing. The only thing holding fast the floodgates of Essence, is the tiny, scared girl at her back. Standing too close to keep from being burned.

Han lets out a long, deep breath.

“We’ll have to get back to you on that.” A maelstrom held behind a thin wall of ice. She turns, away from the trap, and allows herself to be led away. “We’re busy.”

Not yours. Lotus chose her. And didn’t that bring a little smile to her face? It also brought, behind Lotus’ back, a most expressive gesture for her host. Hopefully, it wasn’t too parokeyl for the great Red Wolf to understand.

Breathless Dead

.7 seconds.

The impact knocks the breath from Vasilia’s body. But sand gives way more than hard earth, and her armor absorbed the worst of the damage. Her injuries thus far are minimal. No disruption to blood pressure. Nothing to stop the adrenaline from pumping.

She moves fast. Her eyes must move faster. She’s trained herself to see the whole of her opponent, the consequences that must follow after them. What moves are they making? How long for the follow-through? What options will it give them? Where are they strong? Where are they weak? What territory is theirs, and how might she enter it anyway? She will act on instinct so polished there will be no gap between decision and movement.

Her style is loud and bombastic. She thrives on drawing the eye, that she might strike where it is blind. She is accustomed to fighting through pain. She knows her husband is not.

.7 seconds.

In .7 seconds, Vasilia will rise from the impact crater, and draw Bella’s ire.

Time enough for Dolce to finish running the numbers, pluck up a broken spear tip, and hurl it at Bella’s thorned helmet.

He does not expect it to hit. But he knows it will reach her in time.

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]