TheAmishPirate

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Han stops stirring. Flicks the spoon dry with a violent snap of her wrist. “Wouldn’t that just be rottin’ convenient.” Her eyes flash. “Like when she tied us up - tied a priestess up - and threw us all naked in the brig. Or when she put us in chains and marched us gods only know how far through the jungle with legionnaires taking smacks at us when they got bored. Or how about this?” She yanked her robe down to the collarbone. An angry, forked welt still stood out against her skin, encircling her neck. “They see us come out of a portal to hell, only me and Uusha get shot, and the actual demons get off without a scratch?!”

Days of pampering, of spoiling, of tender, loving care had only covered up the white hot spark deep in her chest. Now, it burned, bright and free.

“Bud. C’mon. For someone who runs as tight a ship as she does, how’re there so many ‘misunderstandings?’ Why does she get off clean every time? Why do they always work out exactly how she’d want them to?” She looks Lotus square in the eye. Holds her gaze, in the awkward silence that follows.

“...well?”

(The fire in her voice falters. All that heat, and none of it directed across the table. A demand shrinks to a question.

Please, Lotus. Tell her you see what she’s saying. Tell her you don’t think she’s crazy, or paranoid, or confused, or just doesn’t get it. Don’t push her aside for a comfortable lie. Not you. Not after all you’ve been through together. Please.

Can’t you trust her over Red Wolf?)

Breathless Dead

The stars lie smoldering where they fell, in crumpled heaps against the bulk of the Anemoi. See, if you can, the red smear along the black prow where Vasilia rolled, before coming to rest in a deep divot; a memory of a meteorite obliterated on the journey here. The travel across a few hundred yards of desert wounded them far graver than a few hundred thousand miles of Poisidon’s void. There they lay, ripe and ready for the picking. Ready for XIII. Blood drips down around her, falling the long, long way to the sand below, as it pools out of reach of their rails.

The lioness, first. Crack the shell of sand and debris. Drink the juicy center within. The sheep can’t run far, now. All that’s left to see is which will be bigger: the crater when she takes off, or the crater when she lands?
CRRRACKKKK

She drives Vasilia into the hull, the metal buckling beneath her, until she finishes what the void started. Up. Up. Up. Floor after floor crumbling on impact, until the fifth deck finally proves too much. Until she finally comes to a halt in a ruined heap. At the new entrance to the Anemoi, XIII crouches low, and waits. Listens. Listens for that heartbeat, so frantic, so fragile. How much more, little one? How much more? You must not burst on her now. Not before she’s had her treat.

She does not even look as the weighted line sails past her shoulder. Not this time. No escape this time!!! Her ears caught you the moment you pulled yourself off the hull, little sheep. She felt the air stir as you sailed into position. To save Va-sil-a, and not yourself. You cannot hide a thing from her. She is not playing. She is a good girl. She is the hunt! You are her prey! She plucks the wire from the wind and pulls, savagely, without ever wondering why the wire, this time, was stripped bare.

Dolce shifts his ravaged body. A connection is made. A charge that once flickered in the depths of his armor finds a path. Down a wire. Up a claw. And through an assassin. A pale excuse for lightning, but even imitators can have teeth. Not enough to wound her. Not enough to stop her from pulling him close. Not enough to move her spiked heel out of the way, before it runs through his stomach.

But enough to scramble her nerves. Enough to hold her in place for the space of a few breaths.

Vasilia lifts her head. A waterfall of bloodied sand flows from behind her, discharged at the last to cushion the impact. “They gave you divine armor,” she coughs, bile and blood. “To withstand your own hits.” Her arm trembles, and her glaive rises. “For insurance against shrapnel.” A knot of shattered ship rises with it, a massive chunk of hull plating for a hammerhead. “And because you’re too wired to take a punch.”

The rail screams. Vasilia is gone. Through the holes in the ship she punched with her own body, she falls. With the rail carrying her weight to the fullest, she falls. Twisting, winding up, gravity pulling a body she can no longer move, she falls. Straight to her. Straight above her, at the last. Sparks dance between them. They fly from the Deodekoi’s twitching armor, muscles straining to obey. Straining to move her somewhere, anywhere, out of this hole, away from the strike that fills her entire world.

Too late.

A hull-clad hammer strikes the Deodekoi. Holy armor flies off its feet. The cat within follows a split-second later. Red-hot brands that had merely brushed, now press in. Hard.

And.

Vasilia.

Falls.

The Anemoi above her. The desert below. Pivoting. The sun at the center of a galaxy, drawing a meteor around her, with which to strike down the instrument of the gods themselves. To her right, the piles of SP rounds. To stun, to incapacitate, to spare, to make her someone else’s problem, to let her go, to let her go, to let her go. To her left, the high explosives. To go supernova. To burn brighter than ever before. To kill. Impossibly, in the end, to win.

Behind her, Dolce. Falling limp. Falling silent.

She freezes.

XIII falls.

The meteor burns through the atmosphere at terminal velocity. The heat ignites the poisoned shells moments before impact.

A thousand miles away, an explosion. Here, so close, so terribly close, her body wraps around Dolce’s. A glaive drops. Fingers grip wool.

eyes

flutter

c l o s e d

[Rolling to Finish with Grace. 2 + 6 + 2 = 10. Damaging Wisdom to pay a price.]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

“No thanks. I already ate.”

Seriously, Emli, you didn’t have to bring up a plate of those snappy little cookies too. Yeah, yeah, glare at her all you want, she’s still gonna put the honey in Lotus’ tea herself. Give yourself a break sometime, huh?

“The hell’ve you got to apologize for?” She growls, the spoon never once clinking against the cup as she stirs. (More sweet than is proper. Not so sweet it drowns out the taste entirely. Exactly how she likes it.) “You didn’t make her do anything, bud. She came at you cause she wanted to, the bi-” She grunts, tasting fire. “-g jerk.”

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.]