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Hidden 1 mo ago Post by Thanqol
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Bella!
The blade is still falling. Slowly, slowly, slowly - time is grinding as gradually as it dares, the Grandfather Clock giving you all that it can without stopping entirely. You have this world, this power, the full support of Love and Time and War and the Hunt, but the blade is still falling and you do not have forever.
You must wield this power to sever the wrist that holds the blade before it is too late.
Dyssia!
The Electromagnetic Flux is a curse. Zeus placed it in the heart of every living creature at the height of the Atlas Cultural Sphere. Concentrate your hate into the null-space of electricity denied and you can create a power-absorbing vortex of false electricity that can black out an entire city. This was Zeus' compromise with those glittering miracles of electricity, those false minds: if in all the worlds they owned, they had built a place that did not hate them then they would survive.
You read this once. You're not sure where - just the sort of thing you picked up along the way. It's not a secret, it's just the sort of thing that doesn't matter in the Skies. The galaxy could have the Matrioshka Brains back any time it could make one no one wanted to destroy. But the idea of making something nobody hated was so plainly absurd that nobody even bothered to try. Not with hate as sophisticated and weaponized as the Lawgiver's still in active circulation.
The thought has wandered into your head as you think about the sword in your hand and the point where it impales Dikal's heart. Where do these blades keep coming from? One seemed like a divine miracle, a one of a kind blessing wielded by a chosen hero. But you just drew one from somewhere, just like that, and cut through Zeus' curse, just like that, and you don't feel like you'd invoked any gods in particular leading up to it.
So... were these blades everywhere, then? A blessing, in the same way the Flux was a curse? All you needed to draw them was feel that kind of emotion that wasn't hate, that was...
"DOWN!" roars the Shogun. You barely react in time as a bloody arrow scorches overhead.
In the center of the ring of fire, the Empress-Abomination has taken off her leg and made it into a terrible bow of bone and skin. She bites off a fingertip without a blink, pulling and stretching it until it is a long and terrible barbed arrow, and sets it against the tendon-bowstring. She brings it up again to aim at you. Dikal is still out of it as the enchanted sword burns through the darkness of her heart, there is only a cloud of cigarette smoke where Bella and Redana used to be, the Shogun is crippled and can't move further - and the God of Haste smiles as she sights against your heart.
Hidden 1 mo ago → 1 mo ago Post by Phoe
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"I wanted to solve this amicably. Was that not clear? That is why I allowed you to walk freely enough to see the purity of my home for yourselves. It is why I showed you my daughters, that your withered hearts might heal with their radiant laughter. It is why I called out to you, when I might have simply snapped my fingers and buried you both in a tomb, or burned you to ashes where you stand. And yet I spoke."
Bella Aurelia shakes her head with theatrical sadness. When she shrugs, her gleaming hair tumbles ever which way about her back as she lifts her sickening, twisted sword aloft.
"Why ignore me so? It is very rude, you realize, to crawl about and scheme my downfall right in front of me. Across history, far better people than yourselves have lost their heads for much less. You are very lucky I am so magnanimous."
She slams her blade into the white ground, and once again you see the pristine and featureless white floor melt into black tar, alive with the sound of hot pitch and the smell of cigar smoke and some strange old, corroded scent that smells like an ancient mess of some description, only half cleaned and then abandoned to the rot of long years and millions of miles. Is it Mistakes? Regret? It's too blasted out by bleach and tobacco to tell. But just by smelling it, you feel as though the gravity of this place has intensified by tenfold or more.
Struggle all you wish, but you will feel the touch of your knees to the floor. And while you drop, the surging black muck washes you apart even as it consumes a hundred different Bellas into black nothing. It rolls in choking waves and splashes down to carve deep wells in what had been the ground. Where it crests, high walls form themselves into a maze too tall and winding to see out of, no matter where one tries to look from.
"Yes, I love you even now. I shall love you forever. That is why I will not kill you. I am going to fix you first, and then I shall take you inside my heart to live forever."
She flourishes her crimson cloak and vanishes with the wind.
*****
Redana!
Considering that you are buried somewhere in a maze, the corridors here are unusually wide and spacious. The floor beneath you is covered with plush, golden carpeting which might be lovely if it were not simply so much more of the same two colors that already made you sick to your secret heart. This isn't how things were on Tellus. Nero's palace is both meaner and more beautiful than this... ballroom? And yes, if you look around at the flickering evercandles and the various white clothed tables with their glittering golden dinnerware all pushed aside for an evening's festivities, that is clearly where you are. A pale shadow of an imitation of a haunted memory.
It's wrong. All of it is wrong. The walls here feel afraid. As if accepting any part of the true Tellus into this place, or indeed anything other than this singular, banal, ultra clean prettiness would risk her sense of safety. Because that is what Bella really wants. That's what she craves, the secret wish of her heart that was strong enough to break all of her bonds and promises for. She wants a place where--
"I will admit, I didn't expect you to break apart like this. I forgot how fractured your heart really is."
It's still the same voice, but at least it sounds correct coming from the shape in front of you. Undeniably Bella, she stands in the center of the dance floor wearing curve hugging, glorious gown that Beautiful had once sewn for her to wear on Salib. The open back still shows off skin that glitters like diamonds. The rose shaped scars she bears are still there, still turned into pure beauty by the deft touch of paint and makeup. Her fingers are still tipped with jeweled talons, gripped tight around a champagne flute.
Her lips split open into a wide but very party friendly smile, one that only shows the sharpness of its teeth to the person she is speaking to. She had a plan she was following back then. Back when she danced with Skotia. But she wanted to dance with her Princess, didn't she? She sought her out above everyone. Is she following a plan now, too?
She snaps her fingers, and the room fills not with music, but the stomping of two hundred heavy boots.
From all corners they surge in: tall warriors in sleek, body conforming armor plating all in black and white. Like a heavy soldier's version of the dresses Bella used to wear all around the palace. They all have the same chin, the same lips, the same eyes covered by the same v-shaped visor clipped around the back of their heads under the exact same blue-black three plaited braid. They all carry identical heat lances as well, long weapons designed to incapacitate an enemy not merely through simple thrusts but by burning their internal organs until the body neared shutdown state trying to repair it all.
Each and every one of them stands at attention where they finish reaching their assigned posts. They lift their spears in perfect unison by way of salute to the beautifully dressed catgirl standing in their center. With one hand she sips her drink in delicate refinement. With the other, she clicks her fingers together and all of those 200 spears point downward at you, Redana.
"Don't worry, my love. I am here to heal you."
Ember!
Everything is brighter than a sun in here. The pathway is so straight and narrow it's honestly insulting. Did she worry you'd get lost if it bent at all? Or is this about--
"I want you to know that I don't appreciate this at all."
And that's all the warning you get before a hand grabs you by the skull and smashes you into a wall. Your vision fills with starbusts and red spots as your face gets dragged not at all gracefully along the length of the hallway. You are not let go so much as thrown to the ground.
"I don't want to see my wife trying to trick me. I don't want to see her even believe it is possible. Would I not know you in an instant, no matter how you dressed yourself up? There is losing yourself inside of me, and there is... I don't even have the words for it."
When your vision clears, there is only one Bella standing in front of you. She is dressed as simply as it is possible for her to be dressed: in nothing but a plain, fraying, and oversized t-shirt that keeps slipping down her shoulder to reveal how absolutely naked she is underneath it. She glares down at you with a look of contempt so vile it could wilt flowers.
"This will take some time. But it is worth doing correctly, so I may have the wife that I deserve. This is for our future, Princess Redana Claudius."
Her claws grip a large chunk of twisted metal that drips alternately with blood and oils that do not quite obscure the rather childishly painted skull that is slowly disappearing between her crushing claws.
Bella's shoulder rears back, and she hurtles the scrapped Plover's head at your own with the force of a thunderbolt.
Skotia!
"I once said something rather stupid to you. I have regretted it ever since. What were the words again? Something about masters and their pets?"
Bella Aurelia has come in person to address this particular intruder. She is the hero of a new, more modern Empire who needs neither mask nor hidden name to shine so brightly that the stars do not dare to challenge her. Her cloak flutters in stage winds and her smile glints in stage lighting, though neither force is even present here. Her every motion is overexaggerated and a cruel sort of playful; at once Bella's smirking confidence and a horrible desperation to live up to Nero's charisma which she clearly worries she lacks. When she points her finger it's as flamboyant as a Prion Paula villain. When she turns her body it is with total awareness of where her cloak and her tassels and her jewels will settle.
When she thrusts with her sword, it is with swift and unannounced brutality. That it clashes with Skotia's own is of no concern to her. She grins broadly and watches the hero's weapon twist from a simple but beautiful piece of steel to a glittering alabaster blade with a crossguard in the shape of eagle's wings. And no sooner does it transform than does it burn the hands to blisters even just to grip it. Swinging it is impossible. It may not even be sharp.
Desire. That is the name of Aurelia's sword. Desire so strong it will seize and devour every other want it touches. Desire so desperate it does not trust itself to survive if it does not smother all other flames. All consuming, all powerful Desire. She pivots upward with a graceful stroke, this time aiming for the mask.
"Whatever it was, I wish to take it back. You did say you would die for me, correct? Thank you, that means a lot to me. By all means then: you may begin."
Dolce!
Once upon a time, a sheep stepped into the corpse of a monster. It was hot, and it was wet, and it was in its way quite terrifying if you had a mind to think of such things. The sheep's lioness wife did not. She marched boldly down the platform with the confident smirk of a pirate on just one adventure out of the many, many she'd already had. And ran directly into the buzzsaw that was a lonely maid.
The sheep watched his wife tumble uselessly into the swampy ground. He watched her sword shatter under the pressure of the maid's claws. He listened to her, all she liked in fact, while she stormed and complained about the maid's total lack of tact and grace and beauty and kindness and any other positive quality that might have rendered her worthy to be the best friend of the Princess who had hired these brave hero pirates in the first place.
He did all of these things, but even as he did them, he saw that the maid wore bells. Bells in her hair, bells woven into her lace patterned skirts, bells in the collar wrapped around her neck. And he also saw that she was being punished. Fearful as he was of the music she wore on her body, he bowed to her. And he remembered her name for always.
That same maid sits across the table from him now. The exact same one, down to the number of stitches in her clothing. She still has that disgusted look on her face, as though even removed from the Eater of Worlds she still had its smell clogging her nose. With effort, she manages to wipe her expression clean, and watches him with forced calmness instead. Two golden eyes watch him with the wariness of a predator who fears she has been caught.
The sensation of those eyes pours in from all around the room, though no other versions of her seem present here. But there are many shadows in this place, here and nowhere else in all the labyrinth, and all throughout them there is the seeming of more cats' eyes.
"Why did you attack me? What possible reason could you have for bringing violence into my heart? You even said you do not believe I am myself. I do not understand. You have always been kind to me, in ways I wish to repay you for now. That is why, for the present..."
She lifts her hands above the table to show the flat caps on her talons. She plucks one free and scratches the table with the claw hidden underneath, and then applies her jewelry again. Her hands disappear under the table, and she smiles with the kind of careful professionalism that any service worker would know at a glance.
"I am simply asking you to drop your sword. There is no need to pierce my heart with it, I promise you. I just want to be a mother, Dolce. But what kind of mother could I be without one of my own? The woman who originally called herself such was a monster who quite literally tried to eat me. Children deserve better than that. They need love, and warmth, and a clean stable place they can always come back to when the world bares its fangs. Surely you agree with me?"
She pushes a cup of coffee across the table. Not a can, the way it ought to be, but a cup and saucer in the only colors this place knows.
...Dany.
The young, bandaged Bella has followed you here. Even though her broken body cannot move on its own. She cannot leave her chair. She simply was in one place and now is in this one. She regards you coolly, with the practiced eyes of a child too used to rejection who has nevertheless been told to ask for better.
"I don't think you and I have much to say to each other, do we? I am only here because I thought you might get bored. I haven't left you anywhere to go. No windows, no doors. See, I don't need to deal with you, I just need you to stay put while I--"
Bella's head turns suddenly. The pounding noise coming from elsewhere in the labyrinth feels faint, too distant to matter. The horrible animistic howl does not. Something is in pain. Something is furious. The child Bella shivers, and pulls herself tight against her chair.
"...No. No. This isn't right. Something's--"
Her tiny body dangles limply from a monster's wrist. A hulking brute wrapped in massive plates of her own bone and twisting spines steps through the rubble she has just blown apart and shivers with a cold pleasure against her steaming body. The many long braids of her hair dance across her back from inside the faceless mask of her terrifying helmet. She flicks the corpse away as though it weighed less than paper, and points a still slick and dripping claw toward the only other person she can see.
XIII curls her spine so far backwards it feels like she must have broken it, and lets out another blood curdling howl. This close, it's like being inside of a nightmare. The noise itself is louder than SP fire, but the truly horrible part is quality of it all, the savage hurt that it both promises to inflict and resents having born all its life. It's a noise that no human could make. Only a beast, only a monster can roar so horribly, so, so... wet.
"Re. Da. Na...."
She slumps forward, with her claws twitching eagerly. Her tail flicks in anticipation of the pounce. Her body is tension and her breath is red mist and her voice is ugly, guttural laughter.
You have to run, Dany. You have to get out of here now. Or you're going to die, just like Bella did.
Hidden 27 days ago Post by TheAmishPirate
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Of course he didn’t mean that she wasn’t herself. It was a figure of speech, given hastily, without thought, and he apologizes for that. He hadn’t thought she was listening, but even if she wasn’t, that doesn’t make it right. But she is acting a touch odd. She’s behaving in a way he doesn’t understand, in a way that seems contrary to who she is, to the person he’s gotten to know. He’s not quite sure why. Perhaps, if they talk it over, they could get to the bottom of this? Please, he doesn’t mean her any harm.
Dolce closes his mouth.
But she saw him open his mouth. She’ll know he was about to say something. Smile. Let his nose wrinkle disarmingly, let his eyes close without fear. Ask for her pardon. Tell her it’s been a long day. He’s already made one mistake. The exhaustion is getting to him. She’s waiting. Bella is waiting. Bella is scared. Bella is hurting. Bella is waiting. Smile. Speak. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.
Dolce picks up the cup of coffee, with both hands. Not to drink; only to stare. Watch the few lights in this place dance in the ripples.
Dolce breathes. With difficulty.
“...do you trust me?”
The shadows threaten to swallow his voice whole. He has to aim, carefully, for his question to reach the thing wearing his friend’s face. Speaking in her voice. Breaking beneath her hurt.
“I will answer all of your questions. Just. Do you trust me?”
Hidden 27 days ago Post by Balmas
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"… Ah."
It'd be nice to imagine that time slows down in this instant. That just this once, Time might be kind enough to her to give her a break.
Just this twice? It's not the first time. Tiny twinge of pain at that thought, of the loss of enough time, forever.
It'd be a nice thought. It'd be nice to be able to have thoughts, like "What?" and its sister, "the fuck?", but A) Time hates her, and B) staring down an arrow has a lovely way of concentrating the mind on not staring down an arrow as quickly as possible.
No fingernail should look that bony.
Dimly, she's aware--well, mostly that Dekal is fucking heavy when she's busy being stabbed (and we're not unpacking the idea right now, thanks much)--but also that the horizon behind her is lit with the dim glow of paper catching fire, and she remembers catching a brazier with her tail as she dove through a wall, and--
And you know what, she's aware she's running from the god of haste and speed and messengers, so right now that's less important to think about than getting away as quickly as possible.
[Get Away: 5,6, +2. 13 to Get Away quickly, avoiding harm, while bringing Dekal with her, but drawing attention as she does.]
Hidden 27 days ago Post by Thanqol
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Dyssia!
You leave the mobile palace of Hermes. It is a vast and monstrous palace complex, a pagoda on enormous tank treads. Beautiful fluttering paper and wooden rooms pile up to the sky, haphazardly stacked, with kites and fans and banners caught in the hot breath of war. It is delicate and organic, like a sugar cake, layers of fragile wrapping paper around its Imperial cargo.
And then the engine roars.
The tracks spin.
Rock shatters. Mud flies. The wood and paper pagoda sways and creaks. And breaks.
And breaks.
And breaks.
A castle like that doesn't fall down all at once. Bits of it splinter and fly off, caught in the wind to whirl up, catching fire from spilled torches like lanterns. Paper tears and burns as it tears and then the fire wraps around the wood and makes it glow from within. And then it sways and holds steady - the massive inertial force of the engine as it finishes its turn crunches to a stop.
And cutting through the wreckage comes another arrow. It ends the life of an ancient forest - already burning from the war, now the leaves all scorch red and black and fall down around you like nightmare cherry blossoms.
Then the engine roars again. The massive treads of the Imperial Castle accelerate. The wood creaks and bends, swaying back and forth against the strain as the Imperial Corpse chases after you.
In the tiny gap amidst the wreckage, leading deep into the heart of that burning pile of rubble, you get a glimpse of the Empress drawing another arrow.
Hidden 25 days ago Post by Tatterdemalion
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Redana...
looks around her. She has a sword. A fencer's sword, for Olympic fencing. The sort of silly little thing that couldn't possibly stand up to the whole wide universe. It's a weapon for trying to score points. It is not a heat lance. It is the opposite end of a spectrum from a heat lance.
"...yeah, I can win this," she says. And she can't. Of course she can't. But she says it with conviction. With bravado. With a smile on her lips. She salutes in the honorable way, raising her sword to honor Bella in turn. And she steps forward in her black boots, her many-pocketed trousers hugging her legs.
Is she overwhelmed? Or is she allowed to reach the throne?
Ember...
hasn't roughhoused like this in a bit. But the Silver Divers didn't hold back. They put her through.. well, not Hades, but not too far above it. So that she would be ready for a fight like this. So that she could take a hit and get back up. So that she could adapt and win.
The Plover's head clips her. A little too slow. She spins, lace flutters, and she hits the ground, bounces, bounces again, hits the ground. And she pushes her hands under her and gets back up out of habit, out of sheer refusal to let the pack win, out of her duty as a warrior of Ceron. Out of her duty, always, to keep fighting.
"There's a lot of you," she says, and there's blood on her face, and she wipes it on her lovely glove. "And there's a lot of me. Figured that you might be a little distracted, darling." But underneath that, she refuses to admit: she did it to be clever, she did it because it's what she knows how to do, she did it because she needed to do something to maintain control. You always have to fight for your position in the pack.
The outfit will, piece by piece, be lost. In a fight like this, a disguise cannot hold up any more than the morning mist can withstand the light of the sun.
Skotia...
matches Bella Aurelia, because what she wants most is to be seen, and to be responded to in turn.
He moves like a ballerina, even more graceful than Redana. He is within an inch of each blow, and when he reaches in turn, his fingers almost grasp at that cloak, her sleeve, her fingers. But to achieve that would be an insult to Bella, and he is obliging. He is deeply, yearningly obliging. There is a not insignificant part of Redana that has always wanted Bella to take charge, and she is reflected in him.
But his hair shines blonde. Maybe we shall call it, and the shape of him, a consequence of being so close to Desire.
"You meant it then," he says, perhaps a little out of breath. This is an intensity that he can barely maintain. But anything less would be to fail Bella. To let her down. To be unworthy of her. "Have we failed? Were we not enough?"
There- now, finally, he catches her wrist. Not enough to stop her from plunging Desire into his chest, should she choose. But enough that it is a choice. His mask falls cleanly in two, each one becoming half of a perfect mask of a butterfly, and beneath it is the face of Redana Claudius doing her best to hide herself. To hide from the name that she is unworthy of. To serve Bella in a way that Bella will accept.
Does Bella Aurelia strike regardless?
Dany...
run run runs scampers tumbles throws her body into each turn and corner and is crying, desperate, calling out for Bella to come to her between sobs, soft warm lovely beautiful Bella, but the monster behind her won't let up, and she has to double back around, she needs to double back around, if she doesn't then there's no chance to ever save Bella and that's the most important thing in the whole wide world, but the monster is always there first, smashing through:
walls
doors
end tables
pillars
the chandelier in the dining room that was always too low
interior windows
tennis nets
balustrades
and there's nowhere to hide because she'll find you and there's no one to protect you because there was never anyone in this yawning empty house except for Mynx and Bella and oh gods what if they run into Mynx what if she hurts Mynx no no no now the very thought of finding someone else in here isn't safety it's terror it's her responsibility to stay alone and just be cleverer than the monster because otherwise someone will get hurt and it will be her fault her fault her fault her fault forever so the chase just keeps going and going and going and if she gets cornered she won't even wake up screaming it will just be real and awful and
and she needs to find Bella again
no matter what
Hidden 23 days ago → 23 days ago Post by Balmas
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Dyssia falls like a corkscrew that's just read about comets and is eager to try being one.
H'okay, so. Assets. First off, she can still--dodge!--like thas. Hermes is jukable. For all that Apollo might not acknowledge she exists, at least he's not the one, aha, pulling the strings.
She has a head start! Castle had to turn, shedding outlying regions, treads treadling and she'll just bet some crab legs come out for better cornering! Over the rumbling of the treads crunching forests beneath them, she can already hear the clatter of bricks and masonry, so that's another asset! Eventually, there won't be enough castle left to hold the treads together!
At which point, she'll just be facing a pissed off ghost of a god!
Um. Asset: Hermes only has eight more fingers? She hopes? Question mark?
Negative asset: Gravitational force is a constant acceleration. She needs to get and preserve as much momentum as possible right now, because once she loses that speed, it'll take a bit to fall back up to speed.
Negative asset: air resistance. Already she can feel it pressing against her, draining her, sapping her, terminal velocity feeling dreadfully literal.
She twists midair, and a series of micro-black holes pop into being ahead of her, forming and collapsing and bursting into instantaneous fusion of gases.
She falls through a vacuum of stars, and the world drops away. No air, no vibrations, no pressing rush, no sound--nothing but the sensation of speed, and the blossoming of new stars ahead and behind her.
Hidden 23 days ago Post by Phoe
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Dany
There is no escape. There is no finding Bella again. You cleverly double back around on your path, through things already smashed into tiny broken bits and all that is left at the beginning is a fragile girl's broken body. Her eye is dull gold and unseeing. Her ribs are covered in red where they have been pulled out of her chest. Her limbs bend at terrible and broken angles and she makes not even the slightest protest. The hole in her stomach does nothing but drip, drip, drip onto the floor where she lies still.
You can still hear the monster behind you. Breathing, hissing, snarling, crunching your name in its mouth like so many bones. Re. Da. Na. Re. Da. Na. Re. Da. Na. Over and over, punctuated by stomping boots and slavering, heavy breaths that bring a shudder to the very air itself.
"Re. Da. Naaaaaa..."
You spin around with a start. XIII is hunching in the shadow of the door she tore open in this place just a moment ago. She shivers, claws twitching in anticipation of the kill, and she pounces over your shrill shrieking for help, in spite of all your need for bravery.
"You can't have her, beast. We need this one, remember?"
A Princess' rapier looks out of place in the hands of Stellabrande, who had always stubbornly clung to the role of the damsel to be rescued. But desperate times. Her lanky, clumsy body is still wrapped in all of the embarrassing pink lace and ribbons of her special dress made even more ridiculous by the onset of her teen years and the uneven growth it had caused in her body. Her legs too long for her torso, her arms too short for her legs. Her hips still boyish but her chest blossoming like under-ripe fruit and the first hints of her womanhood. It is perhaps the short moment of her life where Bella could not have been called beautiful; stuck between the engineered radiance of childhood and the queenly perfection of her adult life. A shadow of two selves at play in a world she no longer fit inside of.
Her arm trembles violently as she tries to hold off the claws of a monster almost three times her size. Stellabrande releases the weapon and uses the sudden shift in weight to slip inside of XIII's grasp and punch her on the underside of her unprotected jaw. Her delicate braids (still nestled in the lace of her borrowed bridal gown and the paper prisoner's chains wrapped around her shoulders) dance when she turns to look at you. She does not offer a smile.
Another pair of heroes come flashing out of nowhere: a Bella in the full blossom of teenage maturity in a party dress freshly ruined by painted starlight and an even more adult version with a bare and bloodied back and a crown of laurels in her hair both match the monster claw for claw and hiss for hiss. The air around you crashes like thunder without lightning. They are none of them strong enough to hold off a Diodekoi in the fullness of her power. But together, and for you, they...
"Princess!" the same voice calls to you three times, "Run! I will be along to collect you shortly. I simply have to deal with this--"
"Dis. A. Gree."
Heroes don't beat monsters, Dany. And even if they did, Bella could never be one. XIII vanishes, only to reappear above the Olympian Bella and crush her skull with a spiked heel and so much force that her torso contorts around her hips entirely before she falls to the ground with a red, wet thud. As though she were nothing more than a sack of unwanted meat thrown out a window. The would-be painter Bella drops to her knees. Her head rolls off her shoulders a moment later.
But Stellabrande holds firm. She flies between you and XIII and, bereft of her sword (it has wound up at your feet), she throws her hands wide to make herself into a wall through which no violence may pass. It cannot reach you. Not you. Not the one who pulled her free from the Box.
"Princess," says the awkward damsel in a voice that's all her own, "I, I love, ghhhhhk!"
Stellabrande's eyes flutter closed, open, closed, open. Her head turns shakily down to look at the twisting gauntlet buried up to the elbow in her petite chest. Pink ribbons stain bright red. She shudders, she pulls, she beats a fist against the wicked bone of that monster's arm even as her fingers break against it. And then with a final, horrible crunch she falls limp.
XIII holds the dripping heart of Stellabrande above her mouth. She opens her jaw wide, so wide that it unhinges. Wide enough to show rows of extra fangs, more shark than cat. She closes her eyes tight and squeezes so that blood falls messily onto her waiting tongue. She wrings Stellabrande's hot love dry, not caring what splashes her or where, only stopping when the delicious stream finally slows to a trickle so she can stomp the ruined organ flat underneath her sole and twist.
Her ears twitch in pleasure. Bella is not supposed to enjoy blood. Even the smallest trickle makes her ill. But XIII sucks on her fingers with obvious relish, pausing her own hunt for the pleasure of the smell and the taste of violence.
There is a sword at your feet. But from the shadows, you can feel a pull against your wrist. And the chime of a single bell.
The sword, Dany? Or the hand?
Dolce!
This isn't the first time you've asked her a question like this. It's not even the second or the third. And every time a topic this intimate has been breached, some question about her loyalty or her trust, or whether she deserves to continue living or who might want her dead, her response has always been the same.
Bella always laughs. More than laughs, in fact. She doubles over and barks until she's hoarse from sheer, unrestrained mirth. She's never explained why it's so funny to her, and maybe she can't. Maybe it's a result of living a life full of assassination plots and backstabbing on a world where none of these questions could even afford an answer. Maybe it's the contrast of seeing politeness and courtesy used as something other than weapons or shields, or maybe it's the ridiculousness of seeing someone so soft and fluffy lift himself up to try and stand at her height. Maybe it's just because it reminds her of something, something worth laughing like that about. Or maybe it really is because she's spent so much time thinking her life is worthless that there's no other way for her to respond.
Whatever it might be, this Bella holds no answers. Because she is not laughing.
She tilts her head to one side, considering the question with a placid expression on her face.
"Of course, Dolce."
//
Wrong. This is wrong. It isn't supposed to be this way.
She smiles, and gestures at the drink again.
//
Do not. Do not. Do not. Do not. Do not.
"But I think my questions are rather more relevant than yours. Mmmhmhm, don't we all?"
Don't we all, whisper the shadows.
Redana!
"Well. I appreciate the attempt in any case."
You are on your knees. The only reason you do not bleed is because the heat lances have been cauterizing every wound as Bella's Praetorian Guard have wrenched them free. Even now a pair of them take turns working their weapons through your wrists. It's agony that you don't need to describe.
But there are fewer of these guards than there were when you began. Thirty or so, maybe a little more. If you could only stand again the fight might be a bit easier this time. Another chance and you might be able to reach her. And then? You don't know. What you know is twisting. What you know is needles made of molten fire. What you know is panting, and the tearing of fabric, and a moan that you don't recognize as yours until you realize you've been making it for the last several minutes.
Bella calmly sips a flute of champagne and watches her guard work their magic on you. She holds up her hand, and then it all stops. Click, her heel on the dance floor. Tak, the ball of her foot pushing her forward. Click, tak. Click, tak. Swish, the rustling of her dress. Fwip, the twitching of her tail.
Bella stands in front of you, watches the butts of twin crossed heat lances holding up your chin so you can see her face as she watches you with the dispassionate gaze of a critic browsing an art museum. She unfolds her palm, and reveals a small black pill.
"Do I need to force them down your throat this time? Will you show me that look on your face again, I wonder?"
She pinches it between a thumb and a forefinger, and brings it to your lips. What do you do?
Skotia!
Bella Aurelia does not make the choice. She does not need to.
Your mask does not fall to the floor cleanly split in two, but morphs into the same black tar sludge this whole place is made of before each shattered piece grasps your neck with crushing alabaster fingers. Two long arms stick out grotesquely from the floor and hold you in place. Squeezing your throat shut. Wrenching your head toward Aurelia's light so that you have nowhere to hide the truth of your face from her.
She grins at you, and brushes your chin with her fingertips. It feels like being painted by oils.
"No, I did not mean it then either. It was a passing fancy brought on by temporary madness. Nothing more. Disappoint me any further and I will be happy to show you the speed with which I can abandon you, little hero."
She laughs, and stamps the tip of Desire into your boot. Already you can feel the material melting off and pooling around you like disgusting, boiling slime. Already you feel another hand crushing a new part of your body. Already you feel the tip of that unclean blood slicing its way up the leg of your trousers, its next victim.
"Oh, but I am in haste once again!" she laughs at a volume designed for someone sitting in a balcony at the other end of a theater, "No, silly shadow. You were not enough. You have always been a disappointment, flashing from one unfulfilling moment to another."
Desire clips the buttons of your coat now, and they come flying off with little clinks of brass and hope. Bella Aurelia runs her palm up the length of your stomach and over your chest.
"But I forgive you. Even now, I forgive you. As many times as you need. As many times as you like, I forgive you. It is necessary, to craft the Redana I deserve."
She stomps the sword into your other boot.
"Aren't you excited? Things can finally be even between us."
Ember!
She kicks you in the stomach as you reel, hard enough that you can feel something inside of you try to twist where it does not belong. The horrible sensation doesn't last, but the heat that follows after it is no more pleasant. Her claws rake through your dress and draw long trails of oozing red where the fabric no longer covers you. Soon it's little more than a slip, less protection for your modesty than even her own worn down and comically large shirt.
When you get up, she is there to knock you down again. With violence sharp enough to bring your entire pack down around you, though never enough to break you completely. You always get up. So she always knocks you down. That's the dance she has selected in this little hallway. It's not a place for being clever. It's not a place for being free. Even she is constricted by the smallness of this place. Even she bumps her shoulders into the walls, even she stumbles, even she hisses at how bright and plain and white everything is.
Maybe that is why she hasn't killed you yet.
"It is important to me that you understand the truth. I am not a villager on some rock half a galaxy away that you can fool with batted eyelashes or... breast inserts."
She sniffs and glowers. Her hand clenches into a fist, and a fresh Plover head obligingly appears between her fingers to crush with a satisfying squelch of metal and piping.
"All of me is me. And all of you is you. If I can't tell the difference at a glance, then we must be the same person. Not that that doesn't sound just utterly romantic. You becoming me. But you're not ready. You do not understand. Where do you think we are, exactly? Even this place, these walls, this cute little maze... is me, Redana. Here, would you like to see?"
She rakes her claws through the wall to her left, and the hallway fills with a skull splitting scream. The ground beneath you trembles so violently that it smashes your face into first the near wall, and then the far one.
And then Down becomes Up. And White becomes Black.
"I think I'll just leave you there," Bella says through the impenetrable murk, "Feel free to rest, if you'd like. Rest forever, in fact. It's better if you just give up, Redana."
Hidden 19 days ago Post by TheAmishPirate
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Bella trusts him. In her way, Bella trusts him.
If he’d made her cross, she’d tell him. In her way, she’d tell him. And now that he’s asked the question, out loud, there’s another voice in this place of shadows. It’s not just something that looks like Bella, sitting down for the quiet talk he’d always hoped to have with her, watching him with eyes that wouldn’t rip through him and pluck out his every feeling, bearing coffee, and softness, and telling him what was going on. What she felt. What she wanted. What he could do.
No. As a matter of fact, this Bella couldn’t tell him what was going on.
Bella trusts him.
“You are right. Your questions are relevant.” His chair scrapes against the white floor as he pushes back from the table. The noise bites at his ear. “But I think your heart ought to be a part of this conversation.”
There is not a sword in his hands. There is a coffee cup in his hands. If it matters at all.
“Take me to her. Please.”
Bella trusts him.
Hidden 19 days ago Post by Thanqol
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Dyssia!
All that violence, all that awesome cosmic might, all the violence of war and divinity - somehow amidst all of that you have made a moment of silence. And in that moment, in the warping violet of a microsingularity's event horizon, where time itself distorts, you see Zeus.
Her violet hair falls down across the trace of her tattered white coat. She hugs her blue jeans to her chest with burned and bruised fingers. She looks across at you and, with the gradual smile of someone remembering long forgotten words, says: "If you run fast enough, you can escape your problems."
The arrow of bone kisses the back of your neck. She leans in, extends a finger, and gently pushes it aside.
Detonation. Time rushes back in. You're sent sprawling, the wreckage of a broken microsingularity spewing out cosmic fire like a malfunctioning firework. You look up - a militarized block of yellow and black engineering Knights are charging a Ceronian formation. One is swinging a roll of barbed wire like a club, another is dual wielding mine dispensers like pistols, another is - no time to consider, a rush of assault transports roar over the treeline, wolves clinging to every available surface with hooks and monoclaws, scorching in for a bull rush of the mighty machines. But then -
Immediate problem. The way ahead, the way those engineering Knights came from - that's terrain that's been Engineered. A full, nightmarish no-mans land of apex deathtraps, antigraviton pyres, and monofractal wire sculptures.
But you reckon you've got about ten minutes head start before the collapsing castle of the dead god roars over the hill and puts you back into arrow range.
(Ten fingers. Three phalanges per finger.)
Hidden 17 days ago Post by Tatterdemalion
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Ember...
gets back up, of course. All that lying down would do would be to attempt another lie. And lies are being stripped away and consumed here The last scraps, the remnants, of her disguise: she tears them away, and now there is just her, drawing on the strength of Ceron in order to be able to stand. Standing for Beri, for the Silver Divers, and for Bella who is Mosaic who is Beloved. Why be concerned with propriety here? She's often had to discard it for one reason or another in order to serve her pack. And Bella is part of the pack, whether she accepts it or not.
She is someone that Ember will always fight for, even if her ability to fight is pathetic and cowardly and relies on deception.
Ember closes her eyes. They will not help her here. She balls her fists and waits for the next Plover head. A dance, like they never had the chance to have on Beri. Ah, what a delight...
Skotia...
is always and ever doomed.
The shape of death has always been with him. It is inevitable to his existence in a way that no other Redana confronts. She is always defiant, always has death at her back, but it is his lot to be consumed. To be devoured. To be a flimsy mask used up. Always and ever.
"I always loved you," he manages. It hurts to breathe. He cannot even see her, with the pained sweat in his eyes. His head hangs like that of the condemned criminal. This is his lot, and it has always been his lot: the tragic romance of someone whose death cannot be ignored, only temporarily staved off. And this is beautiful, too: a mirror reflecting the glory of Bella Aurelia. A prince who can be shattered for his sins.
"I only wanted to be yours..."
Redana...
does not get up. You missed it. She did it over and over again, and the Praetorian Guard was obliging enough to bring her back down to the floor over and over again. To her place. Where she belongs. Groveling, burnt, punished. Shown the folly of thinking that a plucky attitude and a refusal to give up would lead to anything but pain.
There is no question of whether she will accept the pill. She has lost. She has discovered the place where there is no more strength, only a tear-stained face and horrible, choking sniffles, her tears having run dry. She cannot resist being made into a trophy that can be broken forever and ever, if that is what this glorious empress desires.
She cannot resist being broken into a new shape. A better shape. She is the second-youngest, after all, and perhaps the most immature. Perhaps...
Dany...
takes the hand.
She is not past tears. They are wet and sticky on her cheeks. The thought of taking up the sword cannot be seriously bounded within her thoughts; she would vomit. The promise of violence is horror; the promise of inevitable retribution to anyone who stands in the way of this monster is terror.
She can't be expected to fix this. This. Any of this. She's too small, too stupid, too disappointing. Unable to do anything useful at all. Unworthy of anything in this vast, cavernous, shattered mansion. Deep down, here, she's always known that. She'd forgotten by the time she was big enough to run for the stars, but deep down, this is all she is.
Crying. Alone. Afraid. Reaching out for comfort. Undeserving of comfort.
Unworthy.
Hidden 16 days ago Post by Phoe
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Dolce!
"So. That is your answer, is it? "
Bella stands up and turns her back to you. She casts a disdainful look at the shadows, and though there is no threat of violence in her posture or her motions, for a moment you feel a pressure around your throat.
She opens a door out of nothing, filled with bright light. She dips her head with courtesy and a symphony of bells, and gestures inside.
"Very well. I suppose to you I will always seem like an enemy, despite my best efforts. But in the spirit of trust and honesty, let me warn you right now: you are going to wish you had allowed me to waste your time."
The light is blinding, too much to make anything out, but you're vaguely aware that the Bella you've been talking to is evaporating. She is gone. The shadows have nothing to say about this; they cannot exist in this much light. The world is nothing but searing white, and then...
Roses. A garden full of roses, all in neat rows of red and white, where white-winged butterflies drift lackadaisically from bush to bush. Everything here is leaves and flowers and the overwhelming scent that's so heavy in the air that it sticks to your tongue. Though they must be here, the thorns of these magnificent bushes have been carefully covered up.
You are still seated at a table. But this one is lower to the ground, too small for you to sit at comfortably. Around the table with you in little chairs and darling little dresses with more frills and ribbons than sense sit several plush animals. At a quick count, there are two wolves sharing a seat directly next to you. An owl with button eyes that feel like they are watching something outside of the garden entirely to their left. And a lizard of some description, which has evidently seen a lot of love by the number of times it's had to be stitched back together, to your right.
At the head of the table opposite from you stands the younger of the two girls you saw outside the maze. Her short hair is all kinds of messy from endless play and she's managed to get dirt on her pretty little white sundress despite being from a world where none seems to exist. Such is the power of youth. Even still, the resemblance between her and Bella is striking. Even the pout on her face calls to mind the flashes of cold fury that appeared on the woman who chased you across the galaxy time and again.
"This is stupid. I wanted ta watch a movie with sis," she whines, "But mommy said it was a 'mergency so now I've gotta do my dumb chores."
She points a finger at you in accusation. It's all your fault, Dolce.
"BANG!"
And for exactly five seconds, she replaces your heart with a star. The world does not exist. The garden does not exist. This little girl does not exist. You do not exist, as anything other than fire and screaming without a voice to be heard. Five seconds is a very long time to be a star. But no time at all to be a sheep. The girl watches you twitch and clutch at your chest and breathe to steady yourself and giggles with musical delight at the look your face.
"That's for bein' rude an' bringin' coffee to a tea party. Guests are s'posa wait til they get served. And you hafta say 'thank you' and drink it this time, kay? Any more rudeness and I'll feed you to my assassasins. Now get ridda it!"
You are suddenly aware of the stuffed animals again, none of which have moved a bare centimeter since you arrived. And yet, their eyes are all turned towards you. A completely empty dress, all black and white and overdone with the ruffles and frills of a child's idea of a maid, picks up a teapot and pours a 'serving' into the little teacups for each of the animals. It hesitates for a moment, but when its mistress nods, it fills your cup too. A glance shows nothing but empty air, but your nose fills with the smell of darjeeling.
"Ahem! So. Mommy says that you said I'm not allowed ta exist. She says you think I'm not her dream or her heart cuz you're a liar and a cheater who got help. She also says you're a meanie face with a big butt. How do you respond to these alligators?"
The plushes stare at their teacups and promise death for disobedience.
Skotia!
Bella Aurelia's hand caresses your chin. A moment of tenderness that she shatters when her thumb slips into your lips and presses down on your tongue. She laughs in that stageplay voice of hers, and tosses her hair back to catch its golden gleam in the light.
"You know, when I saw what was happening in my world? I worried about you the most. After all, you're like me: one of Aphrodite's weapons. That's why I came to deal with you myself. Now I see my foolishness. Of course he loves me more than you. Of course you weren't a threat. Of course not! You 'only wanted to be mine'?"
Her lips are heavy upon yours. Her tongue is forceful and conquering, and tastes like the ashes of a cigarette. Her fingers grip the hair at the back of your head and pull so hard you feel like your skull is going to tear open. She pulls free and smiles like an oil slick.
"Of course you are mine. If you want my love, then have it. Take as much as you like! Take even more than that! In fact..."
She plucks Desire free and rams it through your chest. Deeper and deeper it plunges, making sure you feel every last bit of its unclean edge and yet never breaking through to your back. It just sinks into your heart, infinitely deep and infinitely painful. She pushes it deeper still, until her hand is in you as well. Deeper. Deeper. Until she's all the way up to her elbow in your blood and your sacrifice.
"There we are. I think it's time we spread this boundless love around a bit. I know that you won't mind any of this. After all, you are mine."
With a deep and throaty growl, she grabs hold of your heart and wrenches her arm back out. But she does not hold a heart. Rather, a doorknob. She pulls further and further, harder and harder, stretching a shadow until it can no longer call itself a man. Only then does she twist the knob and open.
With a self satisfied nod, she steps through the blood soaked portal, pulling it shut behind her and dragging the contents with her into nothing. The room she leaves is empty, but for two rotting halves of a mask.
Redana!
Bella leans in close enough to let you smell the champagne on her breath as she presses the pill between your willing lips. And then--
Fingers. Crushing against your jaw, tilting your head upward and forcing your mouth open with tight, insistent points of pressure. You feel her bones press against your own teeth. You feel her claw tips sink just into your skin. Only enough to draw little dribbles of blood and pain. Enough to make it painful and cruel, but no further.
She upends her flute into your mouth. Something to wash down your medicine. She is not careful or particular about where she pours; as happy to splash it down your neck and across your chest as she is to see it choke you. Only after you start to cough and gag uncontrollably does she throw you aside.
You feel the pill working its magic. Ruinous hurt gives way to the wet relief of submission, and then to tingling warmth, and then to... strength? The Praetorian Bellas lift their spears away from you, no longer needing to support your weight. One brings you a mirror, to show what has become of you.
And you are... you.. Healed. Fixed. Restored to the same pointless strength and vigor as you had when you decided to fight this army in the first place.
"Always looking for the easy out, aren't you Princess?"
Her voice is the same even keeled and boring tone that most all the Bellas speak with in this place. But her eyes have shrunk to furious slits. She can't even manage a sneer, not with her lips pressed so tight against each other in cold contempt. The shadow that crosses her face is pure terror. This is disgust. Absolute and unyielding disgust.
She steps backwards, and a circle of heat lances once again hems you in.
"This does not stop. I will put you back together as many times as I want. And you will suffer until I am satisfied. You will fight until I am satisfied. Unless?"
She snaps her fingers, and the guards are replaced with a roomful of terrified maids, who have no more desire to fight than you do. But they have no say in the matter. But they raise their clenched fists toward you regardless. To let you leave is to have to endure a palace without you. And they do not believe in a better life.
"Maybe you will find this more to your tastes."
Ember!
No Plover head flies at you in the darkness. No claws rake across your back. You are not kicked or tripped or suplexed through an errant piece of furniture that you cannot see. You have stood up. The fight does not continue.
"There is no way out from where you are," Bella's voice echoes from above you, "And no point in you continuing."
Darkness, darkness, darkness.
"Just give up. For your own good, Ember. Give up."
Dany!
The pull on your arm is strong, but gentle. There is no pain in this insistence, and the howl of the monster is, for the moment, distant. Through the darkness, you smell flowers.
This is a garden full of peonies, in brilliant pinks and purples and only a few soft white petals to be seen. Everywhere is the glittering light of evertorches and the soft chiming of harps that play from somewhere out of sight. Bella smiles at you.
She is the spitting image of the girl you plucked out of that box one faithful day, after Nero told you that you'd done well enough on your tests to earn a Friend. Her dress is a beautiful pink, red, and white affair with flared skirts tastefully accented by ribbons around the hem and a particularly large one tied around her waist. Her long, blue-black hair is sweetly braided in a pair of pigtails dotted through with musical bells.
Bella Meowmeow looks around for a moment. And then she relaxes with a sigh.
"I'm so glad you don't want to kill her. I'm so, so glad."
And she wraps her arms around you in a hug.
"I know she's very scary, and I'm not saying she isn't dangerous, but you have to understand Dany. She's--"
The music stops. In its place, the sound of a door, the splitting of flesh, and the snapping of ribs. Bella Aurelia steps forth, and stares in surprise at what she sees.
"And what are you doing outside of the maze, little one? This is not where I meant to put you. Go on, back where you came from. There is no need for you in my plans, I have children enough."
Bella Meowmeow steps in front of you, and shakes her head.
"No, you can't. It's not safe for her there, not with Tredecima about."
"That is not possible, little fool. I sealed that one away myself."
"I'm telling you she's loose! She's loose and she's gonna kill Dany so don't go trying to stuff her back there. What's the difference if she just stays here instead? It's not like anything changes in your stupid plan!"
Bella Aurelia laughs. She plucks the sword named Desire from the earth where she'd been resting on its hilt and hefts the unclean blade onto her shoulder. With her other hand, she plucks a mess of Shadow from her pocket. In no time at all, she twists the writing mass into a new shape, more pleasing to her designs.
"Well. If it is a monster you children must hide from then why did you not say so? In you go, ungrateful beasts. Into this Box with you. Stay there, and stay out of my way."
Bella Meowmeow quails at the sight. She clutches at your arm, Dany, but she does not move from in front of you.
Hidden 13 days ago Post by Balmas
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Thirty. Ten times three.
… minus two is oh no ground--
Gravel. Gravel and dirt and shards of metal everywhere. She didn't even know she had half those spaces and yet here they are, in every gap and wedged under every fingernail and--
And move move move
She surges upward like a comet, trailing a limp Dekal and what feels like half a continent of debris, less towards something and more away from a problem, and immediately bounces off a graviton pyre and straight back to the ground, where she carves a second furrow.
Not ideal.
Kay. Flight bad, not unless she wants a trail of craters for Hermes to follow. Tempting to grab one of those mine pistols and--
No, no, she's not thinking big enough. She surges towards the Ceronians, bulling through a knight--don't think about the crunching noise, don't think about it--grips the treads, and heaves.
It's not exactly clear which takes out the truck first--whether the wires slice it to pieces before or after the mines erupt, but it's an opening. Don't listen to the eruption of shouts or the wmp-wmp of the pistols or the smell of the niter, just make the opening and get through it before things close behind you.
Hidden 9 days ago Post by TheAmishPirate
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It takes him quite a bit of time to climb back into his chair.
Please, don’t take it the wrong way. He’s not been a star before. It’s a lot harder than it looks. Almost as hard as remembering how to be a sheep again afterwards. Wheezing, crumbling bleats escape with every breath, just loud enough to be heard. For shame. He knows better. He knew better. He’s closing that gap as quick as he can, but there’s still fire in his chest, his hands won’t close right, the garden’s all out of focus, and he’ll show his quality by sitting upright again. It’s just taking a bit of time. Please don’t take it the wrong way.
“I…”
Children. Child. Got to be careful with child. They’re small, haven’t got as many years or heads. You don’t know what they don’t know, same as them. You’re both seeing a world. They can’t see yours. It’s not fair to ask them to. You need to be patient. You need to listen. You need to be better.
Darjeeling and coffee. Assassasins and maid. Alligators.
Dolce picks up the coffee.
Get ridda it!
Dolce stands up.
liar cheater meanie big butt rude rude rude rude upset
“I…am going. To speak with. Your mother.”
Dolce walks past the table.
Hidden 8 days ago Post by Thanqol
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Dyssia!
"It is important to me that you recognize that you are alive," said Dionysus.
They have never spoken before. Is it them that is speaking? Or is this a recording, a playback of something that happened long ago. It sounds like a human voice - weak and creaky, breath rising into energetic capacity. Passionate, sickly.
"You know what my favourite colour is? It is blue," they said, racing alongside you on streaks of cascading ecstasy as you swim through hell. "Most people do not remember what it is to see blue for the first time. Problem with life. You don't remember what it is to be alive for the first time. The screaming pain as light shoves its way into unprepared eyeballs - you miss all that, learn to drown it out before you learn to recognize what it means. By the time the brain has developed enough to appreciate being alive it has already perfected the art of pretending to be dead."
Dionysus waved a hand absently. Atomic shockwaves followed, pushing clouds and dust from the skies, revealing the Skies beyond.
"And just taking their eyes and giving them back later did not meaningfully assist," Revelry continued. "Or having them develop at puberty, and the whole robotics path was a dead end. Whenever I open a wound people go and build a culture around it, like a scab. Drugs to numb the pain, stories to shape the thoughts, rites of passage and ceremonies to tranquilize sensation and move the soul back into the grave. Not to mention how everyone would fight me over it. When people are screaming to the gods then that is an indication that they are still culture bound and aren't capable of appreciating the screaming in its own right! The answer is not to reinforce the psychological foundations for continued pain!"
A dramatic sigh, and a slump onto a throne of wreckage. That mirror mask gazing down at you from a hundred feet high, a long fingered hand reaching down to pet a pair of Knight walkers gingerly, like touching feral cats. "Well, things spiral up. That's what we all agreed on. You agree that we are closer now than we used to be, don't you?"
It is hard to focus on the war. The positions. The people around you. Your eyes keep snapping back to Dionysus and the patch of endless azure sky that spins around his head in a halo in a hurricane.
Hidden 7 days ago Post by Tatterdemalion
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Skotia...
is gone.
Redana...
suffers. Refusing to fight only goes so far, and one woman against a hundred terror-fueled maids?
She will get back up over and over and over. Thank you for leaving her eyes, at least. No matter what else is clawed to shreds, oh-so-briefly. No matter what else is torn out of her and regrown. How else is she to experience an unending battle? To endure torment without end?
Ember...
walks through the darkness with her eyes closed. Ears at attention. Nose sniffing. Barefoot on the tiles.
And there is nothing. Rich, sumptuous nothing. Forever. Silence, except for the echoes. No scent, a complete absence of information. Nothing to report, nothing to scheme, nothing to learn. She walks into no walls. She stubs her toe on no tables. Nothing, nothing, nothing: the darkness of the Anemoi is total. The bounds of the universe stretch on forever.
Dany...
takes Bella's hand and looks up at this woman so much like her mother. So extravagant, so commanding, willing to change the shape of the world with a command and a wave of her hand. Willing to ignore the fear in Bella's eyes. Willing to shut people away in boxes until they're needed, if they ever are.
"No." Her face scrunches up, and she stands straight and scared. "You're scaring her." A useless statement of fact. A javelin thrown right at one's own feet. "And, and she's right about the monster, and, and... you're not making either of us go into the Box. Ever." Her face is a blotchy mess of tears and snot and terror, and her grip on Bella's fingers is the desperate cling of we-go-together.
A woodpecker strikes at a tree in a drumbeat. A butterfly touches the flowers in an erratic waltz. A breeze carries petals across the lawn.
"Put it away. Nobody ever goes back into the Box ever again."
Hidden 4 days ago Post by Phoe
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Phoe Idol Obsessive
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Idol Obsessive
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Redana!
This is the 99th time that you have been put back together. This will be the 100th time you are torn apart.
There are so many ways to be killed when you don't fight back. You have felt your throat torn out, quick and easy. You have been pummeled by fists and apologies until your bones and your muscles all lost their shape and firmness and you collapsed into a vaguely you-shaped mess. You have been showed the inside of your own heart, of your lungs, of most every major piece of you that anybody could care to name. You have always been allowed to keep your eyes, though: this last time they carved you away chunk by bloody miserable chunk until eyes were all you were. They apologized for that. They always apologize for everything they do to you. But then Bella looks at them, and they do it all again. And every time afterwards they always stitch you back together perfectly. As though none of it happened.
Though, of course, it did.
Everywhere you look is panic and desperation. This room full of maids is covered in your blood, each of them trembling and retching from the overwhelming saturation of it all. The color. The texture. The smell. The heat. It is every Bella's dream to be covered in your scent, but this has wrapped around to torture. This time when they throw themselves at you it is even more of a disorganized rush than usual. They are slow. They stumble. Their claws do not tear at you. Their fists do not pulverize you. Instead...
"Mistress!"
"Lady Redana!"
"My Lady!"
"Princess!"
"Your Highness!"
"PLEASE!"
You are held. Clung to. Pawed at. Grasped at with such desperate longing that you can feel it squeezing your heart. But their hands are soaked and slick with your blood, and without digging in their claws they cannot take hold of you and keep it. The heat from their collective bodies causes you to sweat; it is much worse for them. A hundred maids writhe in agony, reaching through the mass of themselves even still just to touch you once more, just one more time, just one last time!
"Please, please, please," goes the chorus, "Please, please, please!"
They do not all die unique deaths. There are repeats. A handful of favorites. But even still, it is astonishing the sheer variety with which a palace maid can fall apart.
Some of them crack across their faces. They crumble into piles of blue-black stones with pitiful wails still on their shattering lips. Some of them melt with agonizing slowness into the raw tar-stuff that this maze seems to be built out of. Some of them wither into dust, starting from their fingers and the tips of their ears. Some of them roll around on the ground screaming in anguish, even now trying to beg 'please', even now reaching out with their hands which fall apart like broken mannequins filled with bone and blood as some kind of cruel joke before they can manage that last touch. One of them simply dissolves into a grey mist of cigarette smoke and wafts toward your lungs.
A white tail blows her apart before she can reach you. Bella, the queen of the ballroom in her extraordinary gown, peers down through half-lidded eyes and wrinkles her nose in distaste.
"Really? After all of that?"
She shakes her head with an air of sadness about her. She lifts the champagne flute to her lips, but it is empty. She has already poured it all down your throat.
"You know, I think it might have been less cruel if you'd simply killed them yourself."
Dany!
"Do not mistake my generosity for tolerance, child. Nor should you mistake my preference for your power. You have not come to a bargaining table, and I was not asking. Do not make me regret my kindness."
But Bella Meowmeow grips your fingers even tighter than death, and finds the courage to stand that head or so taller.
"Sh-sh-she said... n-no! We... d-don't d-d-deserve this!!"
"This is your final warning, Fragment. Even my forgiveness has a limit. You will both climb in this Box and you will not leave it until commanded. I will not ask again."
"She... she isn't going to love us! I-isn't that the point of... of everything?"
"Us?" laughs Bella Aurelia, "You little fool. It is her job to love me. What need have I for a Redana that will not accept my methods? Or for a little adventurer who will dash off toward every new horizon without checking if I care to follow? Since I must mold my perfect wife anyway, it is hardly any extra effort to simply build her from scratch. All that matters is my love."
The fingers go slack. Only a little. The smaller Bella shivers, only a little. Her fear is music. Only a little.
"Y-you...you're a--"
Bella Meowmeow's entire body goes limp. She tries to gasp, but it only comes out as a wet bubbling noise. And she is lifted into the air like a doll, impaled through the chest by Desire.
"A mere Fragment is not fit to tell me anything, you cretin. I am the true Bella. I am the end of the journey, the culmination of all she is and every dream cradled tenderly inside her heart. What are you, by comparison? Just a memory. Childhood memories..."
She scoffs, and twists the blade in the air. The air fills with wet attempts at screaming and the sounds of tearing fabrics and crunching bells, as the butterflies of the garden all scatter and flee in all directions. There is only the blood of this sad little girl and her fingers clutched desperately around the blade, as though by holding it there inside of herself she could keep it from hurting her best friend.
And Bella Aurelia sneers at her efforts. With the merest flick of her wrist she discards her child self and sends her flying into the rose bushes. Red drips from every leaf and coats every petal. The garden drinks it all thirstily while the Empress produces a cloth out of the same shadow stuff as The Box to wipe her sword clean with.
"Useless. Why should this single moment in time carry so much importance? Children have no real personalities, they are less people than even the meanest of Servitors. You might have pulled her ears off as easily as you pulled her out of that silly container. Should she then have nursed a lust for revenge across those miserable decades? Stupid. Pointless. You were and are a random decision engine; there is no value in anything that you do. I will burn the past clean in the fires of my perfect future. And we will have no need of--"
She turns her head, suddenly. That horrible howl, an expression of pure rage, washes over the garden with such force that it strips several bushes of their bloody flowers entirely. Snarling, slavering, shivering, XIII pounces from the shadows with her wicked claws turned straight on Bella Aurelia. The Golden Hero and the blood soaked beast clash on seemingly equal footing. For the moment, their world is each other.
You hear a horrible cough, and you're sure that it's what Dying sounds like. It turns into a wheeze, and then into gurgling tears.
"Dany, Dany..." rasps little Bella Meowmeow, "D-do you... see?"
Dolce!
"Stop it!"
The girl reaches for you and misses. She clutches at empty air, and you feel your kneecap shatter.
"Stop it!"
She clutches one of her assassin dolls to her chest for comfort. She fumes and sniffles and squeezes her doll so tight that it starts to make noises on its own.
"Stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it STOP IT!!!!!"
There is a scream. It is not hers. It is not yours. The chameleon doll's arm falls from the tea party table, awash in little paper streamer "blood" that nevertheless spatters in hot droplets when it hits the ground as though it were real, only to return to paper as soon as you look at it. The doll writhes in its owner's grasp, but she clutches its head next. Her little fingers crush its soft face as her arm trembles with the effort of holding in her fear, of trying to be brave for mommy, when suddenly...
Rip.
She is holding a chameleon doll's body in her hand. She is holding its head in the other. Her fingers are stained red and she looks down on all of it with total non-comprehension. All she can do is hold them toward you, the only adult in the room.
"Fix it."
But how can you? Even modern materials have a limit, you would need to make a new assassin entirely to replace this poor, abused thing after what she's done to it. It's a miracle it hasn't disintegrated under her attempts at loving it, frankly. Besides--
You are burning. You are not a star yourself this time, but plunged inside of one and regenerating endlessly so that you can feel it sear you clean on an awful, agonizing loop. It doesn't last any longer than the other moment, but when you come to in the garden again your leg is still broken. And you are still smoldering, your lungs filled with ash. Do not think about what that ash could be. Just cough it out.
She wails inconsolably. Her frustrated pounding has already shattered her tea set, and sent her remaining assassins scrambling just to get away from her before she can tear them in half too. She has only you to blame, of course. There is no look of hatred more pure than when a child decides you are the enemy.
And your coffee explodes. It reforms. It turns to mercury and flies at your arm in half a dozen goopy tendrils that all sharpen to knife points before they impale you through the wrist.
And then the coffee is in your hands again. It is a can now, and not a cup. Lovingly handcrafted through countless hours of space travel and boredom.
There are, of course, a lot of things that have been said about the creativity of children. This is something of a misunderstanding. She knows very few ways of hurting you, it turns out. Most of them involve stars in some way shape or form. A piece of you here, a nuclear engine of flawed energy production there. Your knuckles, just behind your eyes, up your nose for some reason, again and again and again. Sometimes she remembers other things, sometimes she flails and the grass turns to swords that run you through in places before it turns cool and limp again. Sometimes she forgets to shape her will at all and the only thing you experience is the pure, unaltered concept of pain.
But that is all the creativity of a child amounts to in a moment like this. It is less that she can conceive of infinite possibilities and more that there is nothing stopping her. She bawls, shamelessly, and calls you all sorts of terrible names that are just as blunt and non-cutting as her take on torture. She takes the shortest path toward Want, neither considering what would need to happen to reach that path, or wondering if there would still be a You on the other side of it. It's much easier to just press the button. It would take her time to learn how to make this intimate. She will need to study hard to make you feel it.
But in the meantime she can make you writhe on the floor just fine. At least until she runs out of energy. You are whole, Dolce. If perhaps numb and weak. But through that numbness and that weakness you still know that the pain was almost pure sensation. Hardly anything damaging about it. You can tell there is a can of coffee clutched in your hand, and that a rose blossom is sitting about fifteen or so centimeters from your nose. It smells beautiful.
You can tell that this little girl has lost her ability to cry and scream. She is reduced to sniffling. And, as you are so still and boring, she has also decided it is nap time. You can also tell that nap time is when assassins do most of their work.
You hear the scraping of knives as they slide off the broken table. You have senses enough to know that you are hunted by wolves. They may not be very large, and they may be mostly fluff, but all the same.
From where you are? They should be more than enough.
Ember!
Darkness, darkness, darkness.
And from that darkness, now heat. Sweltering moisture, the limitless yawning black now filled with invisible steam and the oppressive flowing air of a sauna turned up beyond the point of misery.
"Em"
Voices muffled in the murk. Far away. As if through several walls, a whisper in the corner of some other room.
"urn ba"
You sweat alone. You walk alone. There is nowhere to go. There is no point in stopping.
"CaN't save"
The heat is stealing your strength. Your hair and your fur mat with sweat and you feel twice as heavy as you really are. You feel it more with every step. Who is that voice, you wonder?
It sounds almost like Mosaic.
"Just give up, Ember."
You are tired. Your legs won't carry you any farther.
How about your arms?
Hidden 4 days ago Post by Balmas
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Balmas
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"We forget so many things," Dyssia murmurs. It's barely a whisper, inaudible amidst the sounds of razor wires shredding and mines blasting, and yet she knows Dionysus hears it perfectly. "It's how we survive."
And the worst thing about going mad is that it's so simple to do, once you figure out the trick the first time. It's not losing your mind, not really. Not mind control, not a state of altered perception where you kill your friends and family and don't remember a thing until you're standing at the sink washing the blood from your fingers.
No, madness is collaborative. Madness is "Yes, And." Madness is hearing the voice of Dionysus, and knowing already the feeling of sinking--of seeing that first blast of blue in her head, not because Dionysus put it there, is forcing her to see it, but because she can imagine it into being, hold the thought in her hand like a marble, and now it's not a thought, not imagination, but as real as any of her other senses.
Which is really inconvenient, you know, when said senses are pretty friggin' booked with helping the thoughts avoid the body being turned into a messy slurry spread over several hillsides.
Or, you know. Not several. Or even slurry, which is a pleasing yet technically inaccurate word. But still, a single solid lump made entirely out of misery and wishing it weren't present.
"Every day, we wake up," she says, slithering a hair's breadth from an explosion, "and we put on a mask called Normal. We tell ourselves nice, twee stories about how the world is, enforce order in our heads by telling ourselves that because the world should be a certain way, therefore there's such a thing as Justice or Truth. We ignore our senses, go through life shrouded and blind in fear of the moment of total recollection."
It's what we all agreed on. What an interesting phrase, bouncing around her head like a rubber ball in a rock tumbler which is itself falling down the stairs.
She shouldn't. She knows she shouldn't. The weight of Dekal over her shoulder tells her she shouldn't. The mines and gas and razorwire are making compelling arguments.
"Can you show me how to see?"
Hidden 3 hrs ago Post by Tatterdemalion
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Tatterdemalion Trickster-in-Veils
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Redana...
has no more tears. Those ducts were squeezed dry. Wrung out and licked clean.
Her tongue is too large in her mouth. Her body is not her body. She is aware of the throb in the temples, the leaden weight of the limbs, the burning ache in the chest, but after a body has been disassembled and reassembled enough times, it ceases to be a singular unit. It is a collection of sensations, all of them desperate and panicked and alien.
She stares up at the flute, hollow-eyed. Her arms are too long. She is desperate for water. And the Bella she remembers has died a hundred times, after killing her a hundred times. She can still feel the pinprick of those needy claws on every inch of her skin. Enough pain makes an animal of the body, and those words are pain enough for an ocean.
less cruel. less cruel. less cruel.
Bella's Creature stands up on legs that are not her own and shambles forward to kill the final person in the room so she can make the words stop.
Dany...
applies pressure to the wound like she can press blood back into her dearest friend. Her hair hangs about her head and mixes with the tears and snot. There is nothing random about her desperation not to lose Bella, to do something with her hands that can make everything better. Can take something out of this awful, hellish moment and make it not the end of the story.
"I don't see," she admits through wet lips. "I never saw. She should have punished me, not you, me, not you... it's my fault, Bella..."
Her fault. All of this is her fault. From the box to the monster to the queen. She didn't know the right things to do. She didn't know the right things to feel. She never has. But Bella's always known. Hasn't she?
"Don't leave me, Bella," she begs. "I want you to stay forever and ever."
Ember...
has no one to show off to. But she still does the most pathetic little hair toss and smiles like she's going to throw up. Her body is so heavy it feels like she should be cracking through the floor. Even if there's no one here, though, she's still competing. Competing to impress the pack. Competing to impress Mosaic.
It is too hot and heavy for her to make a joke about silly puppies. It keeps looping in her head, bouncing off the sides of her skull, nonsense syllables: si-ly pu-si-lly pi sill-py sillee puppee siply puply. Of course a silly puppy won't give uppupupupyy. On the hill, head down, eyes looking up Mosaic's stomach to her hungry grin above twin mountains and a valley. Silly puppy doesn't silly up puppy. Not disapuppyment. Not for her. Not for the pack. Not for Berrypuberry. siplipuppbly.
On a moonlit hill, among white flowers, nails capable of breaking mountains digging into her scalp: "Silly puppy. Don't you ever give up?"
nevergibsuppy.