#cup of trembling

[cupoftrembling]

Alterity

Jamais vu.

Jamais vu is not a new concept, the idea of knowing without knowing. To know which way the sun rises, without ever once seeing the dawn, that is jamais vu. To hear the child’s melody on the air is jamais vu. To know where, just right, to sneak the knife in is jamais vu. Every culture across the Askaven Continent is aware of jamais vu. Of course, there are different reasons why one experiences it. Some theorize that there is a collective weft of the mind that connects each and every one of us. The idea is that, when we think something, it joins the Grand Weft of Isosa. A weft that we all have access to and can pull resources from. A memory bank that allows, across time and space, a connection between one another. 

Others think that at every moment we constantly extrude harmonic striations; the way our bodies interact with the air sends out signals to anything and everything, constantly displaying our true intentions to one another. Those who follow such ideas say that jamais vu is just us picking up on the harmonic resonance of one another, intuiting one’s desire as our own. When I focus and know, beyond knowing, the story the man who sits in front of me was told by his father when he was a child, it is simply me picking up on his body language and pheromones at any given point. That these jamais vu’s are just biological impulses that we are, to one degree or another, receptive to.

I am not here to debate the merits of which theory is correct.

Because they all call the experience jamais vu. A Mariposian word. At the center of this concept, like at the center of all things, is Mariposa. Derived from the name of a fallen angel of Auleen, the words “jamais vu” have infected the very discussion of the topic. Whenever I broach one of my contemporaries, how few they are indeed, they discuss the merits of the different social philosophies surrounding jamais vu. But the language, it does not matter. Empyrial, Mariposian, Celestial, Eastern, Algeran. Each of them talk about the concept using the cage of language that is jamais vu. 

“Why?” I ask them, hands wrapped around a leather bound journal. “Surely, your own tongue must have the words for jamais vu?” I plead with them, my eyes wet with concern and with frustration.

They blink back at me, their own eyes glazed over with some sort of deep understanding. As if whatever words, whatever concept, has been kept from them, locked away in the vault by the supplanting arcane taradiddle. “I’m sure there are.” They rationalize, “But what else could it be but jamais vu?”

Jamais vu: A thief of a concept that makes a home in places it is not welcome. They know, without knowing, that the Mariposian word is the most accurate, most well conceived word for what we experience every day. 

What Reva experienced on that boat, in the cold, salt brined waters off the coast of Ashosh Ai could only be described as jamais vu. 

There were four people on that boat that dreadful day. Reva was the abjur of the group, the one specialized in defensive and negative magics. Herah was the muscle who wore a scar across the bridge of his nose. Formen of the Wastes was a prevoker whose own magics suffused sinew and bone. And Mirabell was the pretty little skald from foreign shores.

And then there was Dawn.

She sat at the back of the boat, hand on the rudder of their all but silent vessel. Salt soaked water stuck to the edge of her brow, slicking her blonde hair back tight against her scalp. Each of these thieves were all dressed in Dawn’s favorite shade of purple, mirrored in outfit by their patron. She wore a grin, pernicious and deceptive, wide on her face. It didn’t sit right to Reva, who had seen that smile several times. It was almost as if her mouth was too wide, or too deep, for her face. Ravenous, as the Wolf had often been described to be. Her teeth too sharp, her tongue too dextrous. Dawn’s mouth was something to fall into, to be ensorcelled by. 

Dawn’s other hand, the one resting on her slacks, had a single, plain gold band around her ring finger. She fiddled with it with her thumb. A wedding ring, a Mariposian practice. Dawn was not married, or if she was she gave no care or concern for her wife, as Reva’s own experience had shown her. But the noise that Dawn made as she rubbed that ring drilled a thought into Reva’s mind. It was louder than the engine, louder than the crashing of waves, louder than the prattling rainfall. It was a clear moment, obliterative of any other thought or sense that might have been had.

It was a sunny day in Mariposa, and the air was thick with the smell of lavender berries. Dawn was walking, hand in hand, with a woman who Reva had never seen before. Long, auburn hair and skin that smelled like an old book. History. She knew, beyond knowing, that this unfamiliar woman usually wore her hair up in a small, tight bun, but that Dawn liked it down. Dawn reached down to a stand, picked up an apple, her daughter’s favorite, and placed it in a small, handspun wicker basket. She was smiling in a way that was not her own smile, a smile that looked unfamiliar to Reva. Something natural, something more akin to the human form. The woman smiled back. And then, she was gone.

But Dawn, she remained smiling the same way that she had, moments before the not-quite-a-memory had wormed its way into Reva’s mind. Her eyes had narrowed, as if she was aware of the abjur’s intrusion into something private. Her thumb was now as far away from that ring as possible. “Got something on my face?” She half joked

“Yea, that look you give me.” Reva brushed off the memory. It was something she wanted to imagine, something that she felt she wanted. Perhaps that was Reva’s future she was picturing. It was almost convincing enough, like a hand on the back of your neck or a sword over your head you can almost swear isn’t there. Reva smiled as the boat glided through the water.

Dawn smiled back and looked towards the shore, only moments away. With her ringed hand, she reached into her vest and drew her revolver. Snubnosed, and easily concealable, it was not a model you or I would be familiar with. Completely bespoke, made by the perilous thief herself. It had a silver frame with pearl handles. The cylinder of bullets inside of it, much like the revolvers of the weaponsmiths of Mariposa that had inspired it, dripped with a sort of chill. As if anticipatory, they made no noise. They did not hum like the acausal bullets of other guns. A weapon, silenced. A breath, held.

The boat hit the shorebank, jostling Reva from her seat. She lurched forward and caught herself on the rope handle of the craft. Only one person stood on the shore:  a tall, stout knight with hair interlaced with the flowers of summer. He looked regal, in the same way a blade might. He eyed the party with suspicion. Formen of the Wastes took a step off the boat and, noticing the sentry, raised a long rifle to meet his eyeline. The Wastral looks through the slits of his wide helmet, eyes wide and jittery from the ampule of Auleen’s Blessing he had hidden in his nose. He tells himself it was to calm a shaky hand, and I am sure at some point he had been correct.

Dawn raised her hand and placed it on Formen’s barrel, lowering the rifle to the ground. “Friend, not foe.” She smirked. “At least, as friend as we get.”

The sentry rushed towards the landing party. Mirabell stretched her legs and caught a dirty look from Reva. Mirabell had too long of fingers to be human and that smile she wore looked a bit too wild to be anything but trouble. She looked like a mockery of the human form, flesh stretched out over too much body. She dug her toes into the sand underneath of her and sighed a breath of relief.

“Ah, good to be home.” Mirabell's grin grew wider as she stretched her arms behind her head. Reva hears a sickening crunch as bones settled back into some new, terrible shape. “Been too long, Ashosh Ai.”

The Sentry descended on them,  pulled his plumed helmet from his head, and furrowed his brow. His eyes were like Mirabell’s, constantly sparkling with a light not quite there. “Mrs. Allcott, you’re late. You’re almost three hours late” His voice was somber, as if at a wake. Reva draws her pistol for a reason she can’t quite place. “I’ve put a lot on the line here just-”

“Brightwind, it's me you’re talking about.” Dawn took a step towards the man and placed a reassuring hand, the one with the ring on it, on his shoulder. She smiled wide in a way that always made Reva weak in the knees. “I’d never put you in a position where I’d let you down, right?”

Reva turned towards the castle behind the shore as her employer and their contact began to talk. Herah was standing off to the side, observing the treeline just above the shore.

“You good?” Reva raises an eyebrow, quietly joining him. Herah was a tall, wide man. Short, cropped hair kept tight to his scalp. Burned onto his arm, right where his shoulder meets neck, was a small flower. Segmented in seven different petals. The symbol of Mariposa’s merchant army, employed for any sort of conflict the kingdom would ever need. She never asked how he got the scar on his nose.

“I don’t like how exposed we are right now. We should have landed up the coast a bit.” He motioned towards a small bay further up the shoreline. It sat in the castle’s shadow, the brickwork looming against the sun. Somewhere, above them, they could all hear a song. Mournful, cruel, with notes disharmonic and dissonant. Reva fought the urge to cry, yet a single, lonesome tear rolled down her cheek. “Any Tom, Dick, or Harry could stumble upon us and alert the whole island.”

“It's closer to the castle than we are.” Reva shrugged. “Maybe Dawn knew it’d be more guarded.”

“I like Dawn and all,” Herah glanced down at his companion. “But something tells me she didn’t think through the plan that hard.”

“She hasn’t gotten us killed yet.” 

“That she hasn’t.”

A moment passed. The wind whipped and howled, stirred into frenzy by the storm on the horizon that never seemed to get closer. The singer shifted melodies, the lyrics now about Reva’s childhood, about being lost and scared. This she knew, even if the words were foreign to her. About being stuck in the underbrush, about it getting dark and no one coming to find you.

“Do you think we’re actually after a panpipe?” Reva rubbed her arms, as if to stave off a chill. Herah looked at the woman with confusion. The air was damp and heavy with wet, hotter than the Cambion Coast. “I mean, seems pretty banal.”

“I try not to think about what we’re here to do.” 

Reva raised an eyebrow. Behind them, Dawn laughed loudly, as if hearing the best joke ever told. Nobody buys it. “Is this a special case?

“No, it’s not.” Herah sighed, eyes skirting downwards. “We’re here to take something of value from someone who values it. It makes me sad to think about it for too long.”

Reva smiled and clapped the mountain of a man on his back. “You’re in the wrong profession, friend.”

“Can’t help what I’m good at.” He smiled back at her.

“You can, though.” Reva’s smile dropped, just a bit. It is softer now. Sadder, almost.

“Yeah, but.” Herah looked out towards the sea. There was a storm out there, somewhere. A roiling, boiling thunder that kept the sky alight. He could feel it, he just couldn't see it. He shuddered off the thought, letting it roll from the back of his neck. “This is easier. More right, I guess.”

Reva frowned and looked down. Herah placed a large hand on her shoulder. 

“It doesn’t feel right.” Reva chided, feet kicking an errant shell. 

“Chin up, Rev.” Herah’s thumb rubbed where Reva’s neck meets her shoulders. It is the same motion her mother used to do, years ago. Comforting. It is not something he had ever done before, nor was it anything he’d most likely do again. “Maybe I’ll steal you something shiny, something just for you.”

“It's time.” A gruff voice came from behind them -- Formen. His long rifle was slung over his shoulder. His clothes were long and flowing, like clouds that flew too high. His helmet wasImperial make, Reva noticed the moon with the sword driven through it that he tried to scratch out, but whether he had it  because of his background or because the Western Wastrals trade almost exclusively with the Empire of Night was unknown. The cloth that wrapped around his hands was black and red, fabrics intertwining and woven together to make something that kept out the cold but wicked sweat away. He looked good standing on the sand, steady, as if he was born for it.

“The boss want us?” Herah raised an eyebrow.  Formen nodded. The storm would have to wait. “That’s all I’ll need to hear. Reva, come on.”

Reva nodded in return. The sentry had replaced his helmet at home point, and was now standing next to Mirabell, who’s smile was wide and childlike, right where the sand turns to grass. Dawn was a couple steps behind, gun drawn, wheat blonde hair slick with the salt of sweat and the sea. A small path unfurled in front of them, through the thick brush and unnaturally dense trees. A small, stone arch demarcated the trail. Reva walked, feet already feeling heavy and worn. She fought the urge to catch up with Dawn, to walk in lockstep with her. It made her feel childish whenever she did, as if she was a little lost dog following around its master.

Brightwind put his hand up and the group stopped with him. He looks back and grins. Past the helmet, past the visor and the mystery of whoever this man was, Reva recognized something. Something primal, something pure.

Pride. 

“Stick to the path, friends. To where I step.” He said, tongue uncoiling like a snake between his lips. “There are old things here. The Sundance Throne is an hour walk from here, and the ceremony has already begun.”

“You hear the man, right?” Dawn looked back at her thieves, her perilous cadre. “You wanna live long enough to get paid, you gotta respect this place. It sure as shit don’t respect you.”

The thieves all grunted in approval and, in a moment, were swallowed by the wilds.

If you’ve never been to the Sundance Throne in its prime, I pity you.

Imagine, if you will, a castle nestled deep in some primordial forest. The stones interlaced with flowers and vines, the arches tastefully decayed. Banners that ripple in slight wind, heralding pristine monarchical traditions that predate the very sands of time. On the air, fruit and song and revelry carried like pollen, like breath. It was infectious. It was an Avalon of a better, more right age. An age of gallantry and of knights, in which rule did not need maintaining and all was right and in its own place. 

It was like a place out of Reva’s storybooks, the ones her mother read to her as a child. She would sit on her mother’s lap, light flickering slightly overhead as she read to her. The only scion of a minor corporate noble in Mariposa, Reva would have needed to be well versed in the world, even the parts of it that never have been true. She would ride on her nursemaid’s shoulders like she was a grand steed, strike the head cook in the back of his head with a rolled up piece of paper as he had his smoke.

She placed a hand on one of the stone bricks of a dilapidated archway as they exited the forest. It was like the archway that demarcated her old chateau in the countryside. If she looked hard enough, cared to scour over every inch of the brickwork, she knew she could find her old initials somewhere on here. Faded, time worn, but still there. 

Dawn looked at Reva with pity first, and then slight annoyance. In her hand, just hidden by her sleeve, was her snubnosed revolver. Her thumb was on the hammer of the weapon. She had no illusions of what this place could be. But she was not a cold woman, nor a cruel one.

“It's beautiful.” slipped from Reva’s mouth in a moment of un-vigilance. “How long has this place been here?”

“No idea.” Dawn shrugged, voice modulating in odd ways. “You ask the queen of this place, she’d say forever.”

Formen grunted. “I’d rather not ask her a thing.”

There was a slight pause, pregnant and awkward. Reva coughed. “Right.”

“Always the serious one.” Dawn smirked, hand still pressed tightly to her revolver. “Can’t let the pretty girl have a bit of fun?”

“Fun can be had after the job, miss.”

Their guide had put his helmet back on, but Reva knew the weight of the gaze of the glaring eyes beneath. They were the eyes of the Queen of this place.Judgemental, right, and true: this Reva knew without knowing. He quickly disappeared into the oncoming crowd.

Reva was surprised to see this many bodies here, on an otherwise deserted island. From the beachfront, the castle looked dilapidated. Banners flew and waved, but they were tattered. And the wilds had long overtook this place. Here, now in the shadow of the Sundance Throne itself, this all remained true. But there was a certain air of pageantry to the decay now. The vines that, from the distance of the shore, looked as if haphazard and random now had the arrangement of parade streamers, brightly petaled flowers almost looking like triangular banners. The heavy canopy disguised the equally dilapidated, and yet still inhabited, stone and thatch buildings underneath them. 

And the people --

Maybe hundreds were approaching this grand, stone circular stage. It reminded Reva of the sacrificial circles of the Orcish Hinterlands. Places that the old and ancient Orcs once had inhabited before turning to Isosa worship, now used only during holidays and ceremonies. However, over the years, the sacrifices became more and more symbolic, with men and women throwing pieces of burning memories into the center of the circle.

These, however, looked just as active as ever. In fact, it was the only structure in the square that had no vegetation across it at all. Even the grass that creeped along the party’s feet, the grass that made Reva wish to take her boots off and feel it between her toes, thinned and disappeared as it approached the stone structure, replaced with the sandy shoal that this island was no doubtidly made from. Reva knew, beyond knowing, what rituals were performed here. And for who they were performed on. 

She pretended her shudder was from the sea air.

All manner of folk were here in the Sundance Throne, from all corners of the Askaven Continent. Long fingers, straw hair, big pointed grins. There were Orcs and Humans and Elves and all manner of things which are not those. Long, slender things who look almost like you or I. Things that hide between blades of grass. Things who hide between bolts of lightning.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Mirabell grinned her toothy grin. Her shoes were still off and the blades of grass wrapped themselves around her toes. She looked back at Reva and grabbed the abjur’s hand. “Not another place on the continent like it.”

Reva clenched her fingers around Mirabell’s. They felt like worms, writhing around beneath her skin. “Maybe not another place like it in existence.”

“Maybe,” Mirabell continued. “Just maybe, I can show you around after the job is done.”

Reva looked around her. Her companions, Dawn, had left. Formen, most likely, absconded to some high tower or parapet to look over the courtyard. Herah and Dawn folded into the crowd, becoming like them. Even now, with how intimately she knew her employer, she would not, could not, be able to identify her. She has become, for this moment and for what felt like forever, a stranger. She steeled herself and, delicately, looked at Mirabell.

“This place is your home?” Reva asked, the question heavy on her tongue. Her throat was dry. Mirabell wrestled down the need to flee, to grab her something to drink. “This queen is your queen.”

“Aye.” Mirabell responded, thumbs rubbing across Reva’s palm. Her brogue is heavy, thicker now than it had been. The crowd of almost people and never-weres envelop them as they walk. Their bodies are warm to the touch, radiating that sickly sweaty heat. Somehow, somewhere, trumpets began to blare. “You’re wondering why I would steal from her.”

Reva nodded.

Mirabell looked over across the courtyard, past the canopy of trees, past the banners and flowers and the birds with human eyes. She saw it, dear reader:The Sundance Throne, the castle of Queen Titania. And, from its tallest spire, a voice echoed across the island. It sang an old song, older than words, but not older than stories. A single, lonely aria of all that you've never wanted to hear.

“Because I love her.”

Reva raised an eyebrow. “An odd reason.”

“This queen, like all queens I suppose, is more than an individual.” Mirabell gripped Reva’s hand that bit tighter. “She is, she can be, everything we can aspire to be. The limit of our bodies is the limit of hers. And when she is resplendent, like the sun, that is wonderful. There would be wind in our sails and beneath our wings.”

“But when she isn’t…”

“Exactly. I love my Queen, but she will kill me.” Mirabell glanced downwards. “She will kill all of us.”

“How?”

“The world has changed, and she has not. Or maybe she has, and I just have not noticed. We are not creatures made for this place.”

Reva smiled, a single tear rolling down her cheek. An effect of the song, an effect mirrored in her companion. “You can be, though. You can break yourself into shape.”

“What do you think I’m trying to accomplish here?” Mirabell laughed slightly to herself. “I wouldn’t have agreed if I did not believe I could.”

Reva nudged her companion with her shoulder. “Are you our secret benefactor?”

“Hah!” She smiled. The wind was cool between the two of them. Mirabell remembered  the first time she had met this ‘secret benefactor’. The smoke filled room, the velvet cushions, the mournful piano that echoed through the manor. A single, plain gold ring on a long finger. Mirabell touched it to her lips and Reva’s mouth tastes like datura and ash. Mirabell let go of her hand. “Maeve I am not.”

“So you’ve met her?”

“Once. She was beautiful. Hair like fire, with these long satin white gloves that extended past her elbow.”

“She sounds resplendent.”

“She is.” Mirabell sighed. “We’ll meet her after this job is complete. In Mariposa.”

Reva smirked. “From one Queen to another, huh?”

“We live in a world of Queens,” Mirabell looked towards the horizon, where the sun meets the storms. “Queen Mariposa, Queen Titania, even Isosa above us. There are the common, and then there is the uncommon. Masters and slaves.”

“What about us? Those would spit in the eyes of the Queens. The servants who swipe the silverware from the table.”

“We hope and we pray that no one knows us enough to categorize us as either or. That is where we die, Reva, when we are known.”

A small, faint crack of lightning echoed across the sea. Reva flinched. Beside her, a man with vines woven between his beard glared at her. His eyes were like diamonds, cold and hard. White, as if he was blind. His hair was thick and braided with moss and lichen. He looked like an old yew tree, standing tall on a hill above large, rolling cliffs. On his hip, a broad sword of white stone. On his back, a titanic bow, hand bent from that ancient tree. There was no string, and no arrows either. On his hands, Reva knew, there was blood. This man glared at her, acknowledging her flinch. Reva knew in his eyes that she was an outsider. That no true son of Ashosh Ai would flinch at the storm.

And that is when the sky, grand as she was, opened her mouth.

“Children of Ashosh Ai! Those who love me and are loved in return!”

The voice of the sky was sharp, cutting through the air like ozone and blood. Reva’s head snapped towards the source of the noise but she couldn’t quite find what caused it. 

“For years, my outrider knights have braved the dark places of this cruel world.”

The man in front of Reva grunted, stepping between Reva and the stage in front of her. He was tall and broad, rolling hair cascading in curls down his shoulders. His bow rested on his neck like the plow of some grand draft animal. In his beard, the flowering vines blossom. He glared down at Reva, moisture clinging to the hair around his mouth. The sun haloed his head and it was as if the fire itself surrounded him.

“You’re not supposed to be here.” His voice was coarse, like loamy sand. Reva, truly, had no idea what he meant by that. “Who do you report to?”

Reva swallowed hard and tasted the bile rising in her throat. “Um.”

The sky continued to speak: “To shine my light deep into the untrue alcoves and hidden enclaves.”

The man took another step toward her. Around his neck, a small knot of wood. Between the ridges and lines of the plant’s matrix, a small light glows. Red, like autumn leaves. “You’re not an outrider. I know all of them. So, you have to be one of their crewmates, right?”

Reva cannot tell if he’s merely goading her or playing some sort of cruel joke. His face, old and scarred, was not jocular. His hands were the perfect size of Reva’s neck. He could, would, crush her in a moment. Not a magick in the world would save her. This she knows.

“To carve truth into a world of lies.”

“I’m with Vanglorious.” Reva stammered the first name she can think of., the knight she entered with. 

The man in front of her smiled. “No you ain’t.” He took another step toward her. “I know his crew. Good neighbors, one and all.”

“To cleave peace from war.”

“New hire.” The words roll from off her tongue, possessed by the spirit of knowledge never known. “After Bittersmith ate it outside the Cambion Coasts.”

“To fulfill our purpose in this cruel place.”

“I could call him up. See who’s bandying around his name.” He gripped Reva’s hand tight. She felt her bones starting to buckle, a small hairline fracture around one of her carpals. Her skin blooms with immediate bruising. 

Reva’s eyes narrowed. “You should do that.” She drew her gun.

“Ser Yew, please forgive me.” Mirabell whispered as she, too, freed her weapon, a small wooden knife from her sleeve. It was sharp as iron and it slipped in between where Ser Yew’s ribs would have been. Mirabell twisted the t-shaped handle as the knight’s hand gripped her back in an approximation of camaraderie. He didn’t cry out, doing so would be an insult to his station. He just gripped Mirabell like she was an old friend and locked eyes with her. She smiled warmly.

The sky cracked with violence. On the curl of its lips, the voice sharpened to a razor’s edge. “We have company.” The crowd turned to face the unwelcome. In their eyes, the flash of lightning. Like the eyes of animals caught in a beam of light. All individuality, all sense, all compassion wiped clean in a moment. Ser Yew drops Reva’s hand. Mirabell twists the knife up, driving it so far deep that her fingers themselves pierce his skin.

Behind her, another set of fingers lace through Reva’s other hand. The skin is calloused and bitter. A mechanic’s hands, a thief's hands --Dawn’s hands. Mirabell locks eyes with Reva. In a moment, all of what might be flashes before her eyes. Smokey rooms and a panpipe in the hands clad in scarlet. A place for peace. She can give Reva nothing but this. 

“Run.”

Mirabell was torn limb from limb. The crowd descended on her like wolves on a lamb. Verdant viscera and bone and sinew and gore splattered on their muzzles. Hands. Claws. A flash of white teeth marred in the violence. Biting and tearing. Reva tried not to see it. Tried to shut her eyes to it as she flees through the flood of the crowd, all clamoring to sink their teeth into Mirabell’s flesh. She tried to block out reality, keen her mind on her footfalls in front of her, to what place might approximate safety here. On the hand in her hand. Tight, desperate, and together.

She failed, every time.

Dawn slammed the door behind them, chest heaving from exertion. Reva threw her hands to her knees. Her chest burned, lungs coiled in knots from the running. Her hands trembled, dousing her pants in Mirabell’s blood. Green blood. Reva always hated being right. The room they found themselves in appeared to be empty, a boon, and limited to only one entry, a bane. It seemed to be a small mess room, with windows looking out towards the courtyard. A tapestry hung on the opposite wall, a burning tree emblazoned in its heart. The courtyard out the window was the same that Reva thought she was in just moments ago. The crowd was restless, even from this distance that much was clear. Queen Titania had disappeared, along with her entourage.

“How, ah.” Reva caught her breath. “How long were we running for?”

“Not sure.” Dawn lied. Forty-three minutes almost exactly. “Fey magic, makes time pass funny.”

“So they are fey.” Reva shot Dawn a look. From outside the door, she could hear running, faint shouting. They were looking for her. Looking for them. They will do to Reva what they did to Mirabell. Rip her flesh from her bones, floss their teeth with her hair. She will be made nothing. Rewa locked her eyes with Dawn’s, her glare knife sharp.  This woman is her killer. Reva shoved her harder than she intended to. “You should have told us this, Dawn.”

Dawn glared back at her. They should have made it to the center of the castle by now, they’re just wasting time now. “Yea well, would you have gone otherwise? Gotta be worth all the coin I was gunna give you.”

“No.” Reva sighed and followed Dawn’s eyeline. “Babe, you can’t just lie to me like that.”

Dawn crossed the room and looked back at Reva over her shoulder. “I can, though. At the end of the day, you came with. I didn’t hold a gun to your head.” Dawn motioned over to the crowd. “You wanna see if they’re any nicer than me?”

Reva broke their gaze. “I don’t, no.,” her mouth thinned into a hard line. “But we’re only making it through this if we’re a team, Dawn.”

“Yeah.”

“And I deserve some answers.” Reva crossed the room to be next to her employer. Not her lover, not her friend. At least, not at this current moment. “Who hired us?”

“A noble out of Mariposa.” Dawn shrugged. “I don’t know any more than that.”

More shouting from outside the door. A bit closer now. Reva’s hands began to shake. “What are we stealing?”

“A panpipe.” Dawn replied. Her eyes were focused on the door. “I didn’t lie ‘bout that.”

“Do you know why it's special enough to get Mirabell killed?”

Dawn blinked. “No.” She lied. 

Reva sighed. “You’re in the dark as much as we were then, fuckin figures.”

Dawn raised a hand to the nearby hanging tapestry. Her fingers traced along the flames of the burning Castle Elphame like they had along the bumps of Reva’s spine. Her face was inscrutable, but her touch was gentle, as if the threads were woven braille, a message only her hands can parse. Reva’s eyes softened at the sight, her shoulders untensing. This was a side of Dawn that Reva knew. Dawn’s fingers reach Durandal. Here, he was depicted in a small, almost childlike manner. In his hands, he was holding a silver blade, like a shard of moonlight. His fingers bleed, as do his eyes. Next to him, his adversary: The Wolf. Her head is shaved, her eyes covered in soot. She is smiling with thousands of teeth. Behind them both, the Wyld burns. The death of all fey. This was a tapestry depicting the Fall of Elphame, the time when the fey lost their immortality. A child’s story. 

“This must be The Blade Awoke.” Reva remarked, off-handedly. “Titania’s daughter who became her son.”

“Durandal.” Dawn said. “You’ve heard the stories then?”

“Don’t quite think they’re just stories anymore.” Reva cast another quick glance at the window. “A fey believed so strongly in a cause, that he broke his name to serve his mother. He became a weapon to stop The Wolf.”

Dawn chuckled. “Didn’t work, did it?”

“No, but,” Reva smiled “I think it's a sweet story. To believe, so strongly, that you might change who you are.”

“You see love here?”

Reva reached over to put a hand on Dawn’s shoulder. “Who wouldn’t?”

Dawn  couldn’t decide if she wanted to smile or frown. She produced a knife from her scarf and tore it into the fabric. Her knife cut through the strands of history, excising Durandal from the story. 

“What are you doing?” Reva says in a half-laugh, as if forgetting where they are.

“I dunno,” Dawn lied. She kept cutting, tearing fabric away until just the Wolf remained. She now burns alone, fighting an enemy long defeated. Blades raised with nothing there to cut or rend. “I wanted to do it, so I did. Keep a little souvenir here. Of love.”

Reva frowned. Is she making fun of her? Dawn was a lot of things, but cruel she was not. At least, Reva wanted to believe that. She tried to reach across to Dawn, to see what she might be thinking. What she might be feeling. She attempted to force a jamais vu, mind keening on a singular want and desire. To know Dawn better, to attempt to bend this woman she loves into a shape Reva can understand. There is nothing for her efforts. All she sees is Dawn and the mystery woman on that sunny spring day in the Mariposa market. The same vision she saw on the boat. Dawn narrowed her eyes. Her thumb rubbed along her ring in her closed fist. She could feel the intrusion on the back of her neck, like a shiver before a rumbling storm across a city. So her mind shifted, directing the attention to what she wanted to be seen feeling.

“You’re a weapon, aren’t you.” Reva chided. She was being metaphorical, her disappointment in Dawn’s intrusion dripping from her words.  “I attempt to bridge the gap, you cut me away. You were made to hurt.”

“No, I’m not.” Dawn placed her hand along the fraying fabric of the tapestry. Durandal used to be there. And now, he is not. She holds him in her hand. “It was something I chose to be.”

“You can choose to not be it, too.” Reva considered the gap between them once more, but thought better of trying to bridge it once more. “If you wanted to.”

“We have a job to do, Reva.” Dawn looked back at her and smiled in the same way she once did to her wife. The same way she had in the memory Reva had plucked. “We can talk about what I want to be once we’ve survived and we’re rich.”

“Ah,” Reva refocused, remembering with sudden clarity exactly where she was.  The voices are distant again. They do not know where they are -- yet. “Yeah.”

“Come on.” Dawn sighed going for the door. Towards the unsafety of the castle. “Maybe we can meet up with the others.

Reva always follows her.

In front of them, Herah’s blood pooled as he slumped against the credenza. Muddy red and brown fading into the threaded gold of the carpet. He was frowning, his face permanently held in slight puzzlement. Reva had never seen him frown before, or if she had all thought of it was obliterated from her mind by what was before her. In his hand, a small gold idol. Many hands and all sharp angles. Something shiny, just for her. Reva brought a hand to her own mouth, blocking a silent scream.

Above him, Vainglorious Brightwind, Third Outrider Knight of Queen Titania the Eternal. His armor shone with all the fierceness of the Sun, like he was something out of a storybook. It caught light that wasn’t there, refracting the gilded bricks and fabrics of the Sundance Throne. He lifted his alabaster cape towards his blade and cleaned Herah’s blood from it. His helmet, which had bornDurandal’s likeness on the front, was discarded at his feet, the solemn visage shattered by Herah’s errant gunshot.

“Brightwind…” Dawn sighed. In her hand is her silvered revolver. A frail thing. Her fingers gripped tight around the pearl handles. Knuckles white.

“Don’t you ‘Brightwind’ me, Allcott.” 

“You’ve killed my employee.” Dawn motioned towards Herah’s chilling corpse. Reva raised an eyebrow in disgust at Dawn. An employee? The tattoos on Reva’s hands began to glow white hot. 

Brightwind laughed, hollow and shrill, like he was trying to hide it from some prying ears. “My Queen ordered this man dead personally.” His gloved hand struck his chestplate. Right over his heart. Maybe he saw Dawn looking there. Maybe he saw the errant twitch in her fingers. Maybe, just maybe, he felt it on the wind. But here, even beneath that armor, his heart was exposed. Imperiled. “You know what she would do to me if I were to disobey.”

Dawn centered her pistol, leveled at his chest.  Brightwind’s hands trembled.“Yeah, what I’d do to you would be a blessing, right?

“Don’t be like that, Allcott.” Brightwind took a step forward. The hammer on Dawn’s revolver clicked.

“Like what?”

“Unreasonable.” Another step. Herah’s body was reflected in his shining armor. Titania gave that armor to him, years ago, for leading her people from the Wyld to wherever new hell this place was. Vainglorious kept it polished to a mirrored sheen. Even if the light got too bright, even if the sun reflected off it in his eyes. He would never stand to have it sullied. “She was behind me. What else was I supposed to do?”

“You respect your queen enough to kill for her,” fell out of Reva’s mouth,  “But not enough to keep us from stealing from her.”

“Leash your pup, Allcott.”

Reva’s vision flashed red. “What the fuc-”

“You don’t get to call her that.” Dawn cut her abjur off. “You’re no better. Reva’s right, you jumped at the chance to betray her, you know, as long as your ass wasn’t on the line.”

Reva met  Dawn’s eyeline, twisting her foot into the carpet, like a viper coiled to strike. It was in the way the light moved around Dawn. It was not passing through her, it was not blocked by her. In this moment, Dawn cast no shadow. She was not radiant. She was not a queen. She would not need servants to kill. This Reva knew.

“I don’t know what-” Brightwind began.

“What I mean?” The side of Dawn’s face is obscured by her revolver. “I mean that you’re a coward. And I don’t do business with cowards.”

And Reva knew --. 

She ground her foot against the fine carpet below her, the one sodden and heavy with her friend’s blood. Her tattoos were white hot, glowing like molten metal through the veins of a crucible, and her fists ossified into steel. The muscles of her leg contract and tear, hardening as well. Her veins contracted, slowing her blood flow to a crawl under the pure pressure of transformation. Brightwind was maybe thirty feet in front of her. He kept  his eyes on her mate, on the woman holding his death in front of him. She was gleaming, this Reva knows. She was what Reva will disappear into.

She crossed the distance before Dawn could pull the trigger. The thief blinked and, in a moment, Reva was not beside her. Dawn was surprised when she saw her employee in front of her, blocking her shot. No longer is his heart exposed, no longer is his death clean and known. Reva ruined this. Dawn fought the urge to shoot anyway, swallowing down that disgust somewhere deep. Reva’s fist made contact with Vainglorious Brightwind’s chestplate. Though it may be infused with ancient and gleaming magics, bronze will forever remain no match for steel. The breastplate dented like the hull of a sinking ship. A small, sharp gasp shudders past his lips. His feet slipped from underneath him. His blade fell from his grasp. It hit the floor with a clatter that echoed through the halls of the Sundance Throne, heard by all except Dawn, Reva, and Vainglorious Brightwind.

Behind them, Dawn lowered her pistol slightly. Not enough to not be ready if she was needed, but enough to hesitate if she ever was. Enough to miss any shot she might have taken. Reva, on the other hand, remained a blur of violence. She reared her fist back again, skin broken and bloodied from the contact with the metal plate. Clang. She struck him again, another dent in Vainglorious’ armor. Blood flew this time, immolate as it soars through the air. Brightwind stumbled another step back, feet pulling the carpet runner up like waves on the shoreline. His chest was heavy and bruised, blood pooling around a broken rib. His body was not mortal, it was not physical. This is what Titania had promised him, that this armor and this purpose would make him perfect. 

And yet, why does it ache? 

He could not take another blow. Her fist glowed like fire, her eyes ablaze with rage. He twisted, pulling his broken torso back as he stumbled away at the last moment, and her fist sails past him, carrying her in cruel momentum. She tumbled forward, curling her body so her eyes were still locked on the knight’s in front of her.

“Shit.”

Behind the two of them, Dawn cursed. The ravenous crowd had found its way into the castle. Two of them, mouths and hands stained with Mirabell’s gore, began to lumber towards the three of them, their eyes glowing like an animal caught in firelight, senseless and lost. In their hands, cruel and jagged blades. Even I could not be sure they could tell friend from foe. She glared at Reva and Vainglorious, locked in mortal peril. Reva dropped her weight, arms braced at either side of her. Reva’s fist, iron and stalwart, dripped crimson. It, for a moment, made Dawn’s breath hitch in excitement. It was something so human, to her at least. To raise arms to defend what you love, enough to break yourself for it. Dawn fought a smile as she leveled her revolver against the interference. This was not her fight, but it was one she could ensure they had alone.

Dawn broke into a sprint, blowing past Reva and her knight-errant. Reva bore her fist again in front of her. “Come on, Brightwind. You’re mine.” The words dripped from Reva’s mouth like rabid spit. They froth as they escape from her lips. She lunged forward, hand grasping for Brightwind’s neck. There is exposed flesh there. Something weak, something to break. She would grab him there, crack him open like a crab. Reva, beyond anything, knew that the coward was squishy down to the core. 

Three gunshots rang out. Dawn knelt, elbows braced on her thigh. A soldier’s stance to eliminate sway. Pure instinct, beaten into the circuits and servos of Dawn’s very logic. It felt right to hurt, to kill. Two landed dead center onto one of the revelers, the one with straw hair and a sea breeze scent. He dropped to the floor, dead before his mind could comprehend what had happened to him. His companion, a skinny little redhead redcap, brandished bloodied blade and was missed by inches. The redcap let loose a scream and looked down at his erstwhile and new friend, seeing the wounds burn and sizzle from the projectiles. He was made for this moment. To hurt his Queen’s foes.

Brightwind raised his arm to block Reva. Her fist made contact with his vambrace at the moment that Dawn fired another shot and the metal crumpled instantly. Reva’s fist continued it's trajectory, pinning Brightwind’s now useless arm against his sternum. The two of them fell to the floor, legs locked between each other. Their breath was heavy, labored. Reva straddled the knight, teeth bared and hand holding his own arm to his throat. Not enough to choke him, but enough to make his breath shallow and pained. Dawn turned around to see another three knights emerge from where they came from. A large man carried a censer like a flail. He had to lean down to make it through the doorway, barely squeezing through. Behind him, two thin, armored forms with spears that stab and bite. 

Dawn cycled her revolver, acausal bullets off gassing their alchemical memories. She still had three shots worth of energy left in the chamber, but the man before her lumbers and takes up the whole hallway. Her thumb ran the rounded edge of the cylinder as she assessed the brute. He wants to luxuriate this, to crush them at his own leisure. To enjoy every feeling of bone snapping against metal. She has the time to reload. Brightwind locked his legs behind Reva’s back and flipped the two of them over towards Dawn. His arm was shattered and useless -- He would not last in a straight up fight. Reva’s hand still clung onto his neck guard. She pulled him in close and ripped the bronze from off his body, rivets and leather tearing uselessly. Her fist lost  its hue, hand purple and bloody. Her teeth began to glow white with fire. 

His neck exposed. 

Her teeth finds purchase  in its side. 

The large man was above them now. Reva could not see him, eyes shut in rapturous enjoyment. Vainglorious’ blood tasted like clipped grass and white wine, earthy and intentional. She hated how much she enjoyed it. Brightwind let out a garbled scream like an Ortolan drowning in armagnac. Dawn’s pistol leveled at the brute above her lover. The hammer clicked-- a single shot. The man fell to the floor, blood pooling between his eyes. His companions dropped behind him. He is meat now, to be used as a shield. Dawn continued to fire. Flesh tore away from his corpse in chunks. Red and brutal, they flew through the air. The backblast coated Dawn’s face in soot and sulfur. Sparks from metal striking the acuasal bullet screamed in immolate joy, striking her cheek. She did not feel it. 

She would not let them take Reva. Not while Brightwind still lived.

Reva pulled away, ripping sullen flesh away from Brightwind’s neck. Green arterial blood shot across glittering golden bricks.The viscera caught in the light, and the hall was filled with a momentary sanguine constellation. Vainglorious Brightwind looked up at Reva Ambrose, only daughter of Misha Ambrose, and watched her swallow. His own green blood stained rivulets down her mouth and the front of her shirt. He brought his hand to his throat to staunch the blood, but there was just too much of him gone, too much missing to keep himself together. He, in that moment, became the first to recognize her for what she really was, that borrowed hunger in her eyes. 

And then, at last, he was gone.

The knife in his hands fell to the floor, discarded, useless. In another world, Reva would have hesitated just a moment longer, and his knife would have found purchase in her heart. The two of them would have been intertwined there, raw and bloodied on the floor. Viscera and lifestuff mixed together on millenia old tile and stone. 

This, dear reader, this Reva knew.

And then, she heard it: Dawn firing off another salvo from her service weapon. She was standing over the hulking beast of a corpse not six feet from Reva. Her nonfiring hand dug  into the neck of something tall and thin and hateful. His companion lay crumpled,  riddled with holes. The side of her dominant arm was covered with soot and burns, backblast of repeated shots from her revolver. Her quarry looked up at her like Reva had done numerous times. Reva sees, in that moment, herself in the kneeling man’s position. In wood lined rooms on the road, on silken sheets, in dark pulsing drumbeat backrooms of bars and clubs. Pleading, doe eyes wet with tears and exertion. Dawn raised her thumb to cup the man’s face. It is gentle, almost. Tender. And then Reva sees the bruising around his neck from where Dawn’s boney fingers crushed his windpipe. She places the barrel of her revolver against his forehead like a kiss. He lets out a scream as the hot metal burns his flesh. Dawn narrows her eyes. 

She pulled the trigger.

And the man fell to the floor, spent.

There was a moment where the gunshot echoed throughout the hallway. Another, where only their two ragged breaths can be heard. Reva stared at Dawn. Her gaze stays low for a long time, locked on the man beneath her, before she turns her head towards Reva.  She half expected her lover to be dead. She saw it, in her mind's eye, that vision of another world like a shiver on the back of her neck. Jamais Vu. The two of them, intertwined in violence on the cold stone of the Sundance Throne. Reva was not dead, though. Her hand was bloodied and bruised. Her mouth dripped with blood not hers. In her eyes, something wild and wolven. But, she was not dead.

The two stared at each other a moment more. Wind whipped outside as a storm began to batter the island of Ashosh Ai. Dawn’s revolver hung by her side, still gripped in Dawn’s white knuckles, her face inscrutable. Blank, like the woman that Reva had known for six years was not there. As if replaced with a simulacrum that Reva might never have known. Another insidious thought crept her way into Reva’s mind. Was that really Dawn? Not the Dawn in front of her now, but the Dawn that she had known. Was she the illusion?  Doubt crept, as the cold light of violence obliterated those falsehoods, , replaced Reva’s lover with an automaton of cruelty.

“That’s my Reva.” Dawn said in a voice mechanical and unlike hers. There was no odd modulation, it’s too light and too smooth to be Dawn’s voice. She smiled, but only with her mouth. Small flecks of blood covered her face, but Dawn bore no wounds. It was as if the thing in front of her is a hallucination, unscathed by violent reality. She took a step forward and if Reva had the energy to move back she would have. She climbed down from that massive corpse in front of her and placed a hand on Reva’s neck. Her fingers were cold, and Reva knows this was how they had always felt. She rubbed her thumb along Reva’s lower lip.

And Reva Ambrose began to cry.

“How long are you going to give me the silent treatment?”

This was the first thing that Dawn said to Reva in hours. They had reached the entrance of Titania’s throne room some 30 minutes ago. It was a set of gold doors with no handles and no locks. The tops of them disappeared into the darkness, leaving Reva with a sense of unease. By her internal map, the one that she knew not where it came from, they had reached the top of the Sundance Throne. There was no more ‘up’ to go. And yet, these doors crawled onwards. Anything could be up there. There could be infinite layers to the world, yet uncovered, yet unexplored. This was not how her storybooks ended. In them, there would be a queen beyond these doors. A queen to depose, to unthrone, to usurp. The cruel and wicked tyrant dashed upon the blades of the right and true. 

Reva and Dawn were not right, and they were not true. They were thieves in the night. They were never to be known, this was never to be an event that would have been written about. A thing was to disappear and those who steward it would be none the wiser. 

Nobody was supposed to die.

But now, this was an event. This moment, where Dawn was fiddling with the lock on a door that had no lock, was to be recorded by someone. It would be pondered and examined and studied. There would be a motive that would be ascribed to the dead and cause ascribed to the actions that followed it. She knew, beyond anything else, that these actions, this perilous theft, would change history in some way. That if the world was to reset, if the Celestial Civil War was to happen again and again, this moment would somehow become fixed in reality itself. That Mirabelle and Herah and Brightwind would always die on this cold, shale island in the middle of nowhere. Try as she might, she may never have been able to save them.

She looked down at Dawn. The lock in front of her is not real, but a simulacrum, manifested.. She had seen Dawn do something like this before, a way to interface with the underlying magick of whatever bound the doors shut. Turing abstract fundaments to reality, making the complex magickal code underneath them simple. Dawn had said before that it requires an intense concentration, that Reva was never to speak as she was performing this lockbreaking. Either Dawn was worried about Reva’s feelings so much to usurp such concern or she never needed the concentration to begin with. 

“I’m not.”

“You’re lying to me.” Dawn chided. “Come on, babe. I think we’re beyond that.”

Reva chuffed and clenched her fist absentmindedly. Her two fingers are broken, the rest of her hand is bloodied and bruised. But she survived, and Brightwind did not. “How do you mean?”

“I’ve seen you.” Dawn looked back at her without turning her head. Purple iris shining through past bottle blonde hair. “The real you that I think you’ve kept locked up.”

Reva narrowed her eyes. “How do you mean.” She repeated herself, firmer.

“You’ve never turned your teeth to violence like that. Usually, you keep those for me.” Dawn chuckled, turning her eyes back to her task. “You were radiant.”

“I don’t feel radiant.” Reva looked down at her feet. Her boots were covered in green blood, as was the front of her pants. She felt heavy, wet, soaked and sodden with blood. “I’ve never done that before.”

“You haven’t?”

“No.” She paused. “I saw something. In here.” She tapped absently against her temple with her broken hand.. She winces in pain when the ruined bones make contact.

“What’d you see?”

“I saw Brightwind, um, Vainglorious. I saw him bleeding you dry. I saw him killing me, and then you. And, in that moment, I knew what I needed to become.”

“A set of teeth?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Reva crossed her arms and looked at the door they came from. There were no footsteps, no one would dare to venture this close. The castle’s defenders had to have known where they were, how close they were to their prize. There was no escape, no way out. And yet Dawn continues to press forward.

“Durandal.” Dawn looked back again. Her voice was cold. Mechanical, like the projected lock in front of her. “He did something similar.”

“That’s the story.”

“It's truth. He carved himself into a blade, for the love of his mother.” Dawn looked down at the door again, at her own reflection in the glittering gold. “He changed who he was, fundamentally. Shifted from female to male, broke his name in half.”

“His name?”

“The names of Fae, their true names -- they’re powerful.” Dawn recounted. “If we steal one of them, we could make any fae do anything. Even Titania. We can compel them to unmake themselves.”

“Is that what we’re stealing here, Dawn?” Reva stepped forward, in her eyes she could see that power. Rending the very being asunder, unmaking who they are at their conceptual level. It is what Dawn is attempting to do to this lock, what Reva did when she tore Vainglorious’ throat in half. What happened to Mirabell. “Are we stealing Titania’s true name?”

“I’m a thief, not a revolutionary.” Dawn chuckled. “I’m not in the queen toppling business anymore.”

“Then what are we doing here?” Reva took one more step forward. Her fists are clenched.

Dawn turned around now, facing Reva. She was on her knees, looking up at her former lover. Dawn knew this now. No matter what happened, no matter who survived. The two of them are never to touch each other in love, ever again. “Are you threatening me, Reva? You going to bare your teeth like you did to Brightwind?”

There was a pause. A beat. The air in the room went cold. Reva felt the pieces of Vainglorious fallow in her stomach, the salty brine of his blood in the back of her throat. She felt her teeth grow long and grow sharp, glow white hot with the Wolf’s Rage. And she knows, now, what she is channeling. Wolf magic. Chaos and entropy upon her lips. She took a moment, and breathed. She forces a Jamais Vu, not with Dawn this time, but inwards. Hunting for the capability, to see if there was any part of her who could turn those fangs upon Dawn, the woman she loves. 

She never finds it.

“No.”

“Then stop wasting my time.” Dawn turned back around, a look of disappointment on her face. “And fucking let me work, Reva.”

There was another moment of pure silence.

“Who is she?” Reva asks. She regretted it the moment it slips her lips, as if that question, so implied by every interaction, was never to be asked.

Dawn did not turn back around. “Who is who?”

“When I turn to you and focus, and you rub that ring and shut me out, I see a woman. Black hair, messy bun. Spring’s day in Mariposa.”

“Oh,” Dawn said plainly. “Her.”

“You owe me that. Who is she?”

Dawn looked more intently into the lock in front of her. The ring hummed a tone that sounded like spring on the wind. Reva did not need to force a connection to know what she was thinking of. Reva can see Dawn’s reflection in front of her. Before, all she could see was her own reflection. Dawn’s had been absent. Now, the two of them are visible. “Yeah, ok. I can give you that.”

Reva crossed her arms. “Who. Is. She.” She asked now, for a third time. The irony was not lost on Dawn. The compulsion of threes. 

“That woman is my wife, ah, ex-wife.”

Reva sighed, letting her breath slip from between her lips. That’s what she had feared. She walked to the window and looked over the island. The crowd was ravenous. They churned like the waves on the sea below them. Torches and swords are held aloft, making them look like glittering stars in the void. The moon looked at them from above, hanging hungry over this tableau. It was not night, not moments ago, but the Lady of Hounds will not be denied. 

“You don’t sound too sure. You’re still wearing her ring, after all.”

“We never got divorced.” Dawn paused her ministrations with the lock. “I think she thinks I’m dead. Or wishes I am.”

“I could have forgiven that, Dawn.” Reva looked over at her shoulder. “I always kinda figured I wasn’t your main girl.”

“How’s that?”

“When you kiss me.” Reva breathed. “I can always tell you’re trying to kiss someone else.”

Dawn looked up at Reva, dropping the lock entirely. “And you’d be ok with that?”

“I liked you, Dawn.” Reva looked back at her. In her mind, she pictures this a romance storybook. Where the grand gesture of love might save the day. “You’re brilliant and radiant. I didn’t care in what way, I knew I needed to have you.”

The corner of Dawn’s mouth twitched. She isn’t sure if it was a smile or a frown. “You’re nothing like her, you know.”

“Then, what was she like?” Reva glared at Dawn out of the corner of her eyes.

“You don’t wa-”

“You don’t get to tell me what I do or don’t want.” Reva interrupted. “What was she like, godsdamnit?”

Dawn flinched, just for a moment. “I knew she was the brilliant one. Smart as a whip, with eyes that glittered like diamonds. She was ambitious to a fault. That, if the need arose, she'd hurt me if she had to, and I wouldn't be able to fault her. That woman reminded me of someone I knew once.” The words escaped out of her, as if compelled. “She saw through me immediately. Saw through the illusion and the half truths, knew me in a way I hadn’t been known for years. I became her assistant, and we made great things. Beautiful bits of knowledge that have never nor will ever be replicated.”

“So what happened?”

“Later happened. I knew I was falling in love. And I knew that if I loved her, I couldn't, wouldn't, be the thing I promised to be. I'd like to think she wouldn't fault me, but I dunno.”

“You’re right.” Reva looked back at Dawn. She did not think Dawn would look up from her task for this conversation. She knew, beyond knowing, that she did not have that respect for Reva. To be wrong angered her. “I sound nothing like her. Why were you even with me?”

Because Reva was a self pitying pissant. Because Reva was a silly girl who still believes in things like love. Because she was everything like Dawn and nothing like Blair, like Her.

“Because I hate you, and you love me.” Dawn’s voice was cold, but it was not distant. It was not mechanical. It was, for good and for ill, unmistakably Dawn, hard, and hoarse and real.. “We need each other. And that type of thing neither of us could ever give up.”

The lock clicked. It fell to the ground and then disappeared into star stuff. Dawn, still looking at Reva, stands up, shakes her shoulders, and then looks towards the door. It appeared as if nothing had been done to it, but as  Dawn raised her finger to it and pushed, it gave way, opening as if some grand giant had compelled it to do so. She disappeared within. 

Reva did not move, not for what seems like ages. There was a part of her that wanted to peer into that vault. To see what gilded treasures Titania had hoarded away for centuries. Gold stacked to the ceilings, swords and weapons with names of yore, maps to hidden islands where adventure might yet be found. It was, I am sure, magical to imagine what is in there. And so, unburdened by truth, she continued to stand. 

Dawn and I, however, are not so liberated.

The room itself was barren. The coffers of the island had long run dry. Everything on this island served not out of coin, but out of devotion to their lady. Not even cobwebs remained, the spiders that lurked here having long died of eternal starvation. There had been no living being that had stood inside the vault in years. And, at the center of a worn piece of marble fashioned into a pillar, was a small panpipe, standing upright and  leaning on nothing. It was wooden, strapped together with vines that smelled like apricot wine. It played the tune of a better story.  A kinder one. Dawn raised a hand to it and cradled it gently. It was warm and it felt like love. With her other, she pulls out a small tapestry piece.

Durandal.

It was soaked through with blood and crumpled, but Titania’s son no less. She places the pan pipes within her scarf. And she pauses. A thought crosses her mind. She hefts Durandal in her hand like the cloth weighed more than gold. On his face, now smattered with red and green blood, was woven a brutal scream. A challenge, for a wolf at his door. She smiles warmly, and places him on the pillar. 

Reva saw Dawn exit the vault and sighed, eyes closed in contemplation. She opened them and sees Reva, a look passing between them. Dawn’s cheeks were stained with tears but she was smiling, clasping the pan pipe to her chest in both hands. Reva was smiling as well, for no reason in particular. She doesn’t know why she smiles. Dawn looks down at her ring on her finger. That solid gold band that kept Reva from Dawn, the real Dawn. The thing that obscured so much. She moves to take it off.

And then it happened.

Reva did not need to force it this time, and the weight of absolute reality hits her. There is a library, far beyond the horizon, with books that stretch until forever with every kind of knowledge you’ve never wanted to see. At the center of that place, a star, unburdened by time. And at its entrance, a woman with blonde hair stands. Her nose is not crooked and her hair is not curly and her eyes are not purple but it is Dawn. Her natural curls straightened to a painful degree and with her hands nailed behind her back. Her clothes match her eyes, a deep and true azure. Like waves one would get lost in.

A woman with floor length black hair stands in front of her, leaning on the counter and she is smiling like Dawn was smiling at Reva. It is a smile wide enough to get lost in. And in every moment, Reva knew this was what Dawn was protecting, this memory of this woman. What she had kept Reva from at every turn, distracting her with sentimentality and affection. Whenever Reva had leaned in for a kiss, this is who was kissing Dawn back. She leans over the counter, grabs Dawn by her lapel, and plants a single, toothy kiss on her cheek like a maiden sending her knight to war. When she pulls away, there is a mark that will never be washed off.

Reva had seen what she thought Dawn was, in that hallway with Vainglorious. That violent thing, carved from many shaped cruelties and inflicted upon reality. Whether or not that was Dawn at all was irrelevant. Reva knew this to be her lover, now. No longer was she this brilliant woman. No longer was the edge of Dawn’s body the edge of Reva’s mind. And yet, she was standing before her, the grand illusion of Dawn becoming ever so close to shattering. In this light, her skin looked real, with veins and blood and secrets buried just beneath the surface. If Reva tried, if she looked deep within her mind's eye, she could see Dawn’s heart in this very moment, reflected in that black haired woman’s eyes.

This radiant truth scared her.

It scared her because no longer could Dawn be a construct, no longer could she contain Dawn within herself. She would not be the blade in the night or the perilous thief or her lover or any other sort of childish and selfish thing that Reva might need. As the toothy mark on Dawn’s cheek grows ever wider, as the gaps between the then and the now come to a screaming collision, Reva turns away. The room grows cold. Dawn’s ring stops just before her knuckle. Her tears dry up. Behind her, there is the past. The comfortable reality Reva thinks is the truth. Where Dawn would brandish blade and they might be in love. She sees it now. In the market places of Mariposa, in the face of a woman that would never look like her. This would be her future. She could carve away everything from the tapestry of life to make it so. She would become the knife and cut away the present and past to make way for this future.

“In this, I find you.”

Reva never sees it coming.

So lost in this reality was she did not hear the voice of the Queen of All Fey. She did not feel the creeping hands behind her, twelve of them, ghosting her legs, up her body, and wrapping themselves around her very neck. The fingers were as sharp as lightning and gentle as every lover Reva had ever felt. This is what Titania lived in, what drew her to Reva Ambrose. The overwhelming, intoxicating and unbearable reality of the past. Reva did not hear her own bones snapping, or feel the blood pooling in her lungs as the fingers crawled down her open, gormless mouth. All she could hear is a child that is not her’s asking for another apple. She does not feel them tearing and ripping and biting and laughing and rending. All she can feel is a wife that is not her’s talking about the weather. And, in a moment that felt like forever, Reva’s strings snapped, and her body falls limp.  And in her glassy, bloodshot eyes, Dawn could see what she is seeing. She could see her own ex-wife infecting Reva’s final thoughts. Dawn didn’t even see herself.

All Dawn could ever have done is run.

Dawn emerged onto the beach just as the storm began to batter the island.

In front of her, Formen of the Wastes. He stood against the boat, rifle resting on the ground next to him. The waves were choppy, but there was no sea that would keep Dawn on this island. She was dripping with blood, and her revolver was running hot. She ran so fast, and so far - thirty nine minutes, fifteen seconds.

“Boss.” He nodded.

“You’re still alive.” Dawn sighed, relieved. From the sky, the queen of this place begins to scream. The clouds roil, the monstrous seas churn. “How?”

He shrugged, his rifle scraping slightly against the boat as it floats against the shore. “I didn’t let anyone get anywhere near me.” He looked up to the castle. It looked so still down here. He couldn’t hear the roiling crowds. “I saw Mirabelle eat it, but I lost track of everyone else.”

“Gone.” Dawn looked back at the castle. “We need to leave now.”

“Shame,” was all Formen could muster. Dawn glared at him out of pure instinct. There was a part of her that understands his blaise attitude, a part of her she wants to think is true. “Hopefully they took some down with them.”

Dawn approached the boat. “They did, they were absolutely beautiful” She looked down at Formen’s rifle and met the eyes of her reflection in its barrel. “At least they died for something.”

“Not like us, huh?” Formen shrugged, picking up his gun and loading himself onto the boat. “Getting rich for nothing?

Dawn followed him onto the boat as well, and would not say a word until the island disappeared into the distance.

[ghostmothart]

Thanks @glassbeakers for letting me paint your gorgeous boy, Remiel. <3

Also one of the main characters in the webseries, @cupoftrembling, which if you want to know more about this guy and what his deal is, you should check out and read some of Madeline's fantastic writing.

[introspectivememories]

tim puts bloodstained gloves into his microwave and bernard's chef-senses start tingling

[2129888]

hm. okay

[the-tortured-apollo-department]

I'm reading "The Dialogue of the Gods" by Lucian of Samosata, and there's this part where Zeus captures the one who will be his new cupbearer........

So Ganymedes tries to convince Zeus to take him back home, and when he realizes that the old man won't let go of the bone, he asks: "Oh but who will play with me? In my house i have playmates my age"

🥹🥹🥹

Nobody prepared me for this my friends. In my mind i was aware that Zeus had taken Ganymedes still young, but NOW i realized 💔

And Zeus response was that he could play with Eros 🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠

[frugalkubal]

I just got the latest hero they added. Fantastic character design . (⁠✯⁠ᴗ⁠✯⁠)

[peacemorrison]

i miss them

[millenniummmbop]

.

[zerzurianspy]

OKAY hear me out sniper is sex-repulsed and he simply hates the idea of having sex and avoids this topic in a conversation he prefers not even thinking about sex(🤝🏽🤝🏽🤝🏽) and everything related to it however he is completely okay i mean he does not have any trauma he is just disgusted by it

AND spy is an asexual with a neutral attitude BUT has a very complicated relationship with sex he usually uses it to get closer to women he is in love with because he realises that most of people experience attraction and some even can't remain in a romantic relationship without doing it so he just does it to create a bond and still he is not okay because HE IS the one with a trauma yes i think he might have experienced SA when he was a small child + he had quite strict father who was too stern towards him so he as a very scared and helpless boy could not tell about the things that happened to him because this was typically the situation where the rapist was a family friend who would never be suspected and little spy understood that so he had never told his parents as he feared that he would be punished for his 'lies' (however his father actually WOULD be concerned and would probably kill his 'old friend' because he was not a monster and he knew that a child would not just make up such thing or create such a detailed image of it so the boy was just too frightened by the event and his father's strict behaviour so he could not trust him fully and that is very sad) so he does not feel anything towards it bc sex is just another way for him to get along with people or manipulate them but i think he felt something only once towards scout's mother ;)

(i think spy realised that his father wasn't so scary only when he grew up and he also realised that he COULD tell and it would be ended quickly so yea)

[iryght]

A quick sketch because I was in more pain then expected and couldn't finish or make something more interesting.

[cupoftrembling]

Please

Among the continent of the Shattered Planes, as has been increasingly obvious in my correspondence, the most abundant religious force is the Pantheon of Isosa. This is because, for a multitude of reasons, it is an objective fact. There is no mystery in its worship, no interrogation of why people believe it to be true. They simply have to open their eyes, see the shattered moon that hangs like a watchful eye over their homes. They simply have to look at the tears in the firmament, the stars and constellations that entropy has wrought. They simply have to speak to one of the many spirits or angels that were there at the dawn of time, who fought on either side of the Celestial Civil War. They have to just look at the smile on an old man’s face, or eat a warm meal, or share a laugh to know, somewhere, of the impermanence that The Wolf crept into reality. 

The days pass, and it is all her fault. There is no need to wonder if it is true.

However, this is where I disagree with my contemporaries. Dr. Sutioni or Dr. Mya argues that this blatant fact has led to the dominance of the Isosian religion among the various, pious nations of the Askaven Continent. From the Western Wastes, where Wolf Apostates roam under their godhunter’s watchful eyes, to the forests of the Coalition of the Eastern Kingdoms. Even the Empire of Night, with their Adherence to the Everyman, is a form of Isosian anti-theism. They both argue in a cohesive faith, shared by each of these groups.

But look at the worshipers of the Eastern Kingdoms, who’s faith is so commingled with the state that even their kings claim a divine right to rule. Look even further, to the sects and mystery cults of the different divines within the forests of the kingdoms. The Friends of the Lady of Hounds, the Handmaidens of the Winter Queen, Qoonla’s Lovers. The Wolf Apostates border on atavism, more akin to relic-worship of whatever shards left over from the Celestial Civil War they can find buried among the snow of the Western Wastes. The nomadic orcs of the hinterlands have no structured religion, aside from whatever paladin covens they host, instead focusing on a stronger sort of familiar Lare. Even the strongest sense of a state religion focusing solely on the Isosian pantheon places itself as its opposite, the Adherence to the Everyman. More a philosophical guideline in the Empire of Night, the Adherence is a set of strictures and rules to tradition. To list them all would bore even me, but a common throughline throughout all of them is a form of disgust so obsessive that it borders on reverence. A preoccupation with the wrongs of the gods and their followers that were committed on the ‘every man.’ Humanity becomes divine and perfect, and the tools made by them become even moreso.

These are not the hallmarks of an organized religious force. Each of them are about Isosa and her coven in one way or another, but few are informed by her. The dedicated Isosian faithful are demonstrably fewer than the combined adherents of the other doctrines or philosophies. They keep to the wilds or to select, divided neighborhoods. The cities and outposts that Isosa has dominion over tend to be smaller, isolated affairs, who strive to be self-sufficient in all things. It is demonstrably harder to have the same sort of order and communal understanding that these adherents claim in larger settings.

There were few, if any, Isosian enclaves in the lawless monarchy that is Mariposa. Records indicate that a few neighborhoods banded together under the goddess of order during the reign of Queen Mariposa the Maddened. However, due to citysickness and general apathy towards growth by the faithful, those dissipated within one generation. Their temple, nestled deep within the Upper Wards, still stands. 

The House of Swinging Trees was a tall, granite building, with a relief of alms being given by Isosa to humanity. It was all harsh edges and awkward lines, each converging towards the sky at slants. Made from holy geometry and mathematical precision. It sat in the center of a large and meticulous garden, with stones lining the center of a massive Babylon Willow. The grass that lay between the stones was some of the only for miles, an enclave of natural beauty in the iron and stone city of Mariposa. As if someone had raised the building from the ground, as if someone had hewn this place from the world itself. 

This was what Remiel had been looking for. 

He stood in front of the House of Swinging Trees for what felt like too long. It was just before night time, at the edge of winter. On his back, his loaned greatsword rubbed against a heavy bookbag. A gift, stuffed with knowledge, all of it leading him here. It dug into his shoulders, made his neck strain and hurt. If he wore one or the other, perhaps the awkward pain would not be here. But Remiel felt unsure whether he’d need knowledge or the blade and, one to loath uncertainty, brought both.

At the gate, made of pyrite shined to look like gold, stood an ashen orc. He was wearing no clothes of the scholar or theologian, no bag or book of hours. Under his arm on a single point sling was a shotgun. Remiel could hear its bullet singing to him, feel its call on the back of his neck. The orc was young, then. And the blade looked so large in the child’s eyes. The man in front of him wore a bruise under his eye, and several scratches across his face. From his neck, a single, silver broken fang. He glared at the paladin, rolling his eyes in displeasure.

“Need something, sir?” The orc grunted, words escaping from beyond his silver capped tusks. Between his lips and between his teeth, a cigarette. It smelt of sawdust and datura. “Temple’s closed, if that’s what you’re looking for. Healer is out sick, if you can believe it.”

“Oh um,” Remiel grips the strap of his book bag a bit tighter, as if that might protect him. “Are they alright?”

“Huh?” The orc raised an eyebrow. “How would I know?”

“You work, um, here, right?”

The orc narrows his eyes a bit. “Aye.”

“Well-” Remiel pauses for a second, and then thinks better of pressing the matter. “I guess, yeah, I guess it really doesn't matter. I just heard that you guys have a really good library.”

“We aren’t a charity case, kid. You want books, go to Sans Bernadine University.”

Remiel raised an eyebrow in shock. “Didn’t you hear about it?”

The orc chuckles to himself, shaking his head and crossing his arms. “Yeah, I did. Smelt it too.”

“Yeah, real pity about it.” Remiel frowned, knuckles white on his bookbag.

“Real pity.” The orc states dryly. “So, sorry, guess you’ll have to come back some other day.”

The paladin took a step forward, puffing out his chest in a show of strength. “No, I don’t think I will.”

He was face to face with the orc now, each standing heads taller than an average man. The orc scowled and took his cigarette from out of his mouth. “Yea? And why’s that, tough guy?”

“I am a paladin of Isosa.” Remiel continued, hand moving towards his sword like his rector had taught him. Words fail you, Remiel hears on the shivers of his neck, sense fail you, faith in steel. Remiel bites back the thoughts and hopes, beyond hope, that they are wrong. He speaks again. “And I need to know everything you know.”

The orc looks back at the sword on his back, and then back at the almost soft face in front of him. “Huh, real paladin.” This is all the orc can say.

“Can you please just let me in.” Remiel narrows his eyes. “Please.”

The orc smiles, drops the cigarette from his lips, and snuffs the flame out with his heel. “Sorrow is going to want to hear from you.”

The inside of the House of Swinging Trees was just as cold as the exterior. Granite floors and more pyrite light fixtures. It was lit entirely by candle and by wick, none of the halogen lights of most of the Mariposian homes of the day. Most of the electricity in the city came from large, crystalline bullets in power-factories along the coast. The bullet technology, the trapping of emotions and memories into physical, powerful forms, were considered anathema by the most militant of Isosian followers. They did, however, make an exception for weaponry. There were few arms more effective than the bullet powered firearm, and there were always causes for their use.

On the table next to Remiel were at least half a dozen of these firearms. Their handles and stocks were made from pure alder wood. Harvested in the depth of summer, the season supposedly closest to what the Fractal Fields of Isosa were. These weapons, they are true. They seem more real than the table around them, more situated in their place. Shotguns, pistols, small arms adept in the city style close quarters fighting that one would be familiar with here in Mariposa. There were no long rifles, no things of distance. Remiel had, at one point or another, thought of trading in his long, curving blade for such weapons. He had gotten into a scrape or two here in Mariposa, and while his sword is an effective mark of his station within the paladin’s of Isosa, it did not suit itself for the alleyways that Mariposian combat, often getting caught on the walls and bars that made up the city. He would rely on his words and, when those failed, the gifts his faith and birth had given him. And, throughout this, he felt loath to give up the sword. 

The pistol besides his hand did seem all that more alluring, however.

On the table, next to these weapons of war, were books. The very thing that Remiel had been seeking. The dust covers were still on them, and it had been clear that they had never been opened by the inhabitants of the House of Swinging Trees. The room he was sat in had a window on the far side of it. Through it, he could see the courtyard with the Babylon Willow. He saw a small cambion man, blue with tall, straight horns, pruning a hibiscus bush. His clothing was a white skirt, with the little laces on the edge of it. On his head, tucking in his braided, brown hair, was a large sun hat, keeping the dusk sun from his eyes. The area of the city they were in was not as tall and grand as some of the others, as ambassadors and other men of power tended to like this neighborhood for its simplicity and safety. In the distance, one could see the whole of Queen’s Court, with its titanic skyscrapers covered in equally as mighty rose petals. One could see the sun setting behind the Concordat of Miracles, see the feral angel straining in vain against the iron nails driven through its wings. Out there, that is Mariposa. Towering and true. Above it, Imperial Warballoons cover the city like a dense haze, with little mechanized men flying between them. Green and gold banners hang from the edge of the balloons, each denoting a crescent moon with a sword driven through them, lest Mariposa forget who now rules it.

But here, in this temple, this could not be Mariposa, not really. The House of Swinging Trees was grand, certainly, but did not extend as far as the buildings around it. The gardens were manicured and delightful, each fit to burst with fruit that did not taste like sickly sweet perfume. Each of the blades of grass are the same length. Each of the doors are the same size, just a bit too short for Remiel to comfortably fit in. Each of the people housed here are all the same amount of driven, keen and sharp in their direction.

They’re all so like his home growing up. A little cabin in the fields somewhere in the Eastern Kingdoms. Always with three logs burning in the fireplace and small bushes in front of the windows. There was a scent of aspen on the breeze, despite there being no such forest near by the rolling fields of barley and grain. His father had described it as paradise after the hell of the Ibi-Vujčić Conflict. Where that was fire, this was calm, where that was storm, this was peace. He would sit in the dirt for hours, marveling at the sapphire beatles sitting on the leaves. Remiel once, and only once, saw Ferdinand, his father, reach his hand towards one of them, as to join them in their commiseration before his mother placed her hand on his shoulder. The beatles flew away, the moment over. They even had a babylon willow shadowing the house. Remiel would sit under its branches, trace his hands along its weeping branchlets like parting water. The leaves were always dryer, like it was a land of always autumn. A secret, private little enclave, just before the winter made them hunker in. Remiel never remembered the winter ever arriving, or the sweltering heat of summer. It was always in that secret liminal space, incapable of moving beyond or backwards.

Remiel placed his hand on the cold stone of the windowsill. There was no insulation between the walls and the outside, as it was made entirely out of stone and faith. The building was drafty and inhospitable to any of those not touched by Isosa’s constant contentment. Remiel felt a shiver fall down his spine. There was a biting, and blood in the mouth, and a shattering. And then it was over.

“It is quite a view.” A voice came from behind him. It was not a cold voice, but distant. Authoritative. It sounded, for only a moment, like his mother’s. He spun around, half convinced it was her. It was not, dear reader. She was shorter, first of all. Her skin was green and from her this infernal heat arose. Her tail curled around her right leg like a snake, a sign of piety and respect. Her horns were backswept and her hair was in a bun with a silver spear through the back of it. She smiled plainly, leaving dimples in her cheeks and no creases in her eyes. A cambion. Remiel fought the urge to look disappointed, a battle he did not win.

The woman winced in a sort of ego-pain at the paladin’s face, quickly dropping the smile. Remiel noticed her discomfort and brought his hands in front of him, fingers splayed in some sort of deference. “Oh my god, I am so sorry, miss. I j- I just thought you were someone. Someone I knew, someone else.”

“Ah,” The woman regained her smile, placing her hands behind her back. “No offense taken, paladin. I would, too, be disappointed if I thought I knew someone in this city, only for the truth to rip such comfort away from me.”

Remiel let out a sigh of relief, clearly believing whatever this woman was saying. She stood tall, with an impeccably straight back. Her hooves clopped against the floor, her gait was measured and disarming in its grace. “Your doorman, Clovis. He said you were the Abbess.”

The cambion nodded. “Mother Superior Brightwind, but please, Sorrow will suffice.”

“Brightwind?” Remiel repeats. “I know of a Vera Brightwind in Varak, I met pilgrims traveling to her abbey.”

Sorrow sucks air in between her teeth. They are sharp and the air tastes like holding onto a rosebush so hard you bleed. She exhales such violence and looks towards the floor. “My half sister. When my father remarried, he moved to the hinterlands.”

“Is religious leadership in your family then?” Remiel asked with a genuine curiosity.

Sorrow blinked once, and then twice. She was not used to personal, prying questions. It was not in the nature of her order to truly care. “My mother ran a paladin school in Karnata, before it's fall.”

Remiel smiled. “I see, you come by it honestly, then.”

“Truthfully,” Sorrow responds in a moment of un-vigilance, looking out towards the city. She stares at the space where the Sans Bernadine tower once stood, now a smoldering ruin. “This is a relatively new position.”

“I heard stories of the House of Swinging Trees from my rector. I thought it was abandoned years ago.” Remiel follows her eyeline, looking at the Concordat of Miracles. Both think they are looking at the same thing. “I’m really impressed by how you rebuilt it.”

“I’m.” Sorrow’s breath caught in her mouth. “Thank you, Ser Fey.”

Remiel looks back at her. “Remiel.” He pauses again. “Please.”

“I’m not too used to a paladin complimenting me, is all.”

“Yeah,” Remiel looks back out the window, this time looking at the now setting sun. “I don’t think a lot of people get compliments from us."

“That is my experience too.”Sorrow looks back at him with a face unreadable to me. “Why are you here, Ser Fey?” Sorrow asks what should be a question, but the words in her mouth can’t help but form a demand.

Remiel looks at her and frowns. He paces back towards the table and begins to flip through a book awkwardly. “Have, um, you heard from Isosa. At all, in the last couple years?”

Sorrow looks at the pages he is flipping through, unable to tell what he is looking at, if anything at all. Her fists ball in absent flame for just a moment. Is it a challenge? Is this an inquisition? Has someone questioned her faith? The air lionized with truth, she can feel Remiel’s magic begin to worm it's way into her mouth. It tastes like apricots and, somewhere distant, Remiel’s eyes glow.

“No.” Is all Sorrow ever could have said. She is not strong enough to lie.

The aura of truth fades, and so does the light in Remiel’s eyes. “None of the leadership I’ve talked to. It's been about twelve years since anyone mortal has heard from her. Same for the angels.” Remiel lets out a sigh. He hates using that. It is like holding a breath in his stomach, in his veins. To force a compulsion, it is like having air in your blood, or a dagger at your neck. “That's why I’m here, in Mariposa. It’s like she’s just gone.”

Sorrow blinks again. She fights the rising feeling of relief in her. Her mother always told her of hearing their goddess’s voice, guiding her, showing her the Grand Weft. Sorrow had never heard such things, not even in her childhood. When Sorrow looked to the sky, pleaded for some sort of guidance, she heard nothing. Only sweet, mortal silence. How lonely, how dreadfully lonely, Sorrow thought. She felt the bile of anger, or maybe resentment, rise in the back of her throat. Remiel stood before her, gleaming and resplendent in Isosa’s light, locs braided so tightly that it must have been divine. There must not have been a moment in his life that he had ever felt so alone, where the comfort of Isosa’s voice was not there to guide him.

Sorrow clenched her fingers a bit tighter, the room got just a bit hotter, and a bead of sweat began to roll down Remiel’s brow. He was everything she had ought to be. Servile and guided, never left in the abyss of having to make his own choices, or live with his own mistakes. To choose between a daughter and husband would have been no choice to him, even as the flames of The Wolf licked the back of his neck. He would not look at his daughter's eyes and wonder if he made the right choice. He would simply know, and that would be all he could ever need.

And then, she remembered. 

He was just as lost as she was. He heard no divine choir or voice. Isosa had condemned them all, the powers of the church, to that cruel silence. His hands gripped the table, he had sought Sorrow out on his own, just as unsure as she was. There was no guidance here, no path to follow. A commiseration of grasping in the dark. A concordat of loneliness. And then her hands relaxed in un-vigilance. But the room still felt just as warm, burning in absent flame.

“Sorrow?” Remiel asks in genuine concern. He takes a step towards her, hands out in front of him like she was a wild animal. The room is spinning, the world is spinning. “Hey, hey, are- hey are you ok?”

“Huh?” Sorrow responds uncharmingly. She grasps the bookshelf next to her. “No, I'm ok.” She sucks in air. “Why?”

“You look like you just saw a ghost.” The paladin responds, stepping towards her again. And, on the back of his neck, he sees her for how she really is. Knees are bowed, the wind blows through her, her hands shake and try to find purchase. A cruel part of Remiel knows she is weak, and a voice that sounds like his mother almost commands him to excise the weakness from his church. These voices are ghosts, dear readers, shivers of a dying world. Remiel sucks air in through his teeth and forces these ghosts back into the past. “I just wanted. To make sure.” His voice is similarly shaky.

“Citysickness gets the best of us, I’m afraid.” Sorrow lies. Does he know? That she, for a moment, doubted him? Resented him? Had that moment of unvigilance disguised his aura of truth from probing her mind yet again? Did he feel her call on that absent flame? She sees the bead of sweat on Remiel’s brow. “Please, for my own sake, pay it no mind.”

Remiel nods, and the perspiration falls from his brow. “Then I will, Miss Brightwind.”

Sorrow lets her borrowed breath out, centers herself, and is relieved. “You mentioned Mariposa. Why here?”

Remiel takes the sword from off of his back, rolls his aching shoulders, and then places a heavy book on the table next to him. His bookbag swings lightly against his hip. It is a worn, orange covered text, with gold lettering just barely starting to fade. It is a worn copy of Contemporaneous Reports of the Celestial Civil War from its Veterans by Dr. Blair Allcott. “This text, it guided me here.”

Sorrow walks to the table, footfalls more sure now, and places her hand on the cover of the text. It was… academic. There were no other words that Sorrow knew on how to describe it. And she was equally unsure of why a Paladin of Isosa would care for it. “What… did you find in it?”

“Truthfully, not much. An interesting read, but most of the discussions were, um, really dry. And not at all really relevant to Isosa’s disappearance.” Remiel flips the book open, skimming through the well worn pages. A faint smile on his face, a wind from the west. His father has it open on one knee, Remiel on the other. Better times. “I couldn’t use any of the techniques in the book, but it led me to Dr. Mya.”

“The author?”

“Yes! I met her, she’s a delightful woman.” Remiel beamed this smile so warm it almost made Sorrow blush. He flipped through the pages again, until the book was back on its front. He frowns, and the room goes cold. “Unfortunately, her research has been destroyed.”

“The Sans Bernadine riots.” Sorrow blinks. “I’ve… heard about them.”

“Yea, she told me they were all in the spire when it went up in flames.” Remiel sighed. “All that knowledge lost, all that work destroyed. Centuries of books. It’s a shame.”

Sorrow stares blankly. Does he know? If he does, the only way to survive is to strike now. Strike true, Sorrow. Trust not your senses, trust not your eyes, faith in steel. These are the words her mother taught her. The maxim of the Paladin’s of Isosa. She could get one, maybe two shots in before he would be on her. But, ultimately, he would break her, dash her on his sword. And he would be right to. She was there, at the burning of the spire. She tasted his work turn to ash on her tongue. He smiles at her, and she did nothing to stop them. Kill him, he threatens Order. Past the window, she sees the feral angel, and thinks she hears her voice. Anathema, he is as lost as you are. 

“It is a shame.” Sorrow responds blankly. Her hand trembles. Her fingers reach for her trigger. He knows.

“Yeah,” Remiel sighs, not even noticing his companion’s trembling, doesn’t even feel the knife at his throat. “But, it wasn’t all fruitless.” He looks up at her, beaming smile. It is radiant and scouring and even Sorrow could not interpret it as something it was not. “I spoke to her, I think I have an idea of what we need to do.” All Sorrow can do is look at him, her eyes squinting against his radiance. He hurt to look at but there was nothing else she could have done. He was resplendent, she knows this. Next to him, she is dim. Behind him, the sun halos his hair. In her mouth, all she can taste is apricots and pride. 

She fights the urge to retch.

“What do you need of me, Ser Fey?”

“The first step is to get a relic of Isosa’s, something she personally touched.” Remiel produces a small journal from his bookbag. Green leather cover, with a small, segmented chrysanthemum embossed on the front in gold. It is new, there is no crease in the hardened leather from use. It cost thirty-six Imperial Thalers, from a small hawking stand somewhere in the Upper Wards of the city. Remiel produces a small pen from his pocket and flips the book open to one of the first pages. His speech becomes clear, his eyes dart between the illustrations on the pages. He is focus, assurity. “And something that had met her before. An angel, maybe. A construct from the war. Something sentient, but not mortal.” He looks down at his own hand, at the pores in his skin. His light fades, just a moment. “I’m, uh, not sure why, but it can’t be mortal.”

Sorrow narrows her eyes and takes a step closer to Remiel’s field notes. There are two sets of handwriting. One is in cursive, with long, connected continents that make the words flow together. It is nigh unreadable at its face, but Sorrow is sure of the contents of every stroke, almost as if the words are laced with some sort of acausal magicks. Meaning is imprinted on the lines of the text, imparting knowledge through observation, but not recognition. It could have been written in celestial script, and Sorrow would have always known what it had said. The other is in shorthand, with scratchy acronyms and unsure handwriting. It is shaky, and doesn’t follow the lining of the paper well. Despite being written, ostensibly, in print, it is much harder to interpret content or meaning. The two texts weave together, adding on and commenting on various different drawings, both equally made in each style. Dissections that look as if they were pulled right from the air, and cosmology that is so convoluted that even a religious woman like Sorrow can not understand them. They are, somehow, in synch at every moment. 

Remiel brings his pen down to the page and adds more shorthand script, describing, what Sorrow can only imagine, is whatever content he will glean from this meeting. He dates the top of his notes, sixty-third day of the Third Year of Queen Mariposa the Negligent, and looks back up at Sorrow. It is an expectant look, a look of directionlessness. It is a look familiar to Sorrow, every time she looks in the mirror. He needs her guidance, her grace. Sorrow smiles a bit. It is a litigious grin. A grin made famous by the first queen of Mariposa. A grin dotted on every mural of Queen Mariposa the Litigious, right as she tricks Isosa into letting her guard down. It is the grin of the knife up your sleeve, it is ‘fucking the other guy before he fucks you,’ it is knowing beyond all knowing that the man in front of you must die.

Remiel looks up from his page and does not know. The smile in front of him is genuine, it is guiding. It is all teeth. He smiles back. He thinks of a joke his classmate had once told him, about the smiling abbess. It’s a common joke shared among the orders of paladins. About a ruler with fangs being the only thing that could make an abbess smile. “Everything ok?” He responds, half in jest

“You said it can’t be a mortal.” Sorrow leans forward, eyes shadowed and glowing. “What about a hound?”

And Remiel understands.

Autumn is the season of treachery.

It is the season of guile and of luck. A cantankerous superstition that is held by almost every society on the Shattered Planes. During the Celestial Civil War, the Autumn Court of the Wyld joined with the Wolf in rebellion against a court structure that had long reviled them. It was a simple choice, really. Before the Wolf’s Rebelion, there was only one option. Calm servility under the boot of the fey queens. When war broke out, there was something inviting in the flames of The Wolf. It is only fitting, then, that the element most associated with the Autumn Fey was the treacherous fire. The Summer Court had crackling lightning, the Winter Court’s ensnaring frost, and the Spring Court with their regressive amber. But the Autumn Court, they were hoisted the element of change, forced to mantle a raw, possessive magick even before it was associated with the Wolf.

This is why I balk when scholars attribute the hatred of the autumn season with its fey counterpart. Even before that rapturous flame consumed the Autumn Court, before the cruel hands of the clock had started to tick, the queens and regents of the Wyld had long reviled the autumn season. They were the tricksters in the fairy tales, hucksters and gamblers with stolen names and currency. Their Alder King was shrouded in mystery and in myth, with no face nor identity whatsoever. They were the boogeyman that scared the fey children who were never supposed to grow up. Their fall was predicated on that history, not the other way around.

This fear of the autumn, of the dying of the light, replicated itself across the survivors of the Celestial Civil War. In the Eastern Kingdoms, autumn was a time where no work was supposed to be conducted. Harvest is to be conducted late in the summer and then you are not to leave your doors until the first snowfall. To such an end, social philosophers skilled in accelerationist magicks spend countless days channeling power into the land. Either to keep them from falling or to hasten their fall. They do not allow them to change from green to orange and the sky is filled with stars or snow. And, in the autumn of the 89th year of Queen Mariposa the Licentious, the Economic District burned to the ground. I saw it light up the horizon, flames stretching far and wide into the pillaring skyscrapers that once dotted its land. 

This is where Callan knew he could find her. 

This is a place once kissed by the Alder King’s treacherous season; it is known that tricksters follow tricksters. The ruined buildings and burned out homes smelled familiar to the outrider knight. The moon hung low in the sky and the air was still, somehow after five years, laden with smoke. If a witch could not be found here, out of all places in Mariposa, then she could not be found anywhere. Callan ran his hand through his hair, shaking the soot from it. It was longer, now, than when his queen had shaped it for him. He had grown it out absentmindedly over the last few months. Let it run wild and fallow. It was a mistake, something that had simply slipped his mind. If he had cared to will it to not grow, he could have. He balled his fist in the flaming scarlet hair, fingers interwoven in his braid. He’d have to cut it before he saw his queen again. Make it more in line with what she wanted it to be. She had given him that hair, it was not Callan’s to change. But he wouldn’t have to change it yet. He could grow it longer. Or shave it all off. He grips the hair a bit tighter, as if his hand was engulfed in a heatless flame.

Besides him, squatters sit in a burned out building. The wall was broken behind them, revealing the rest of the home and, further, the alleyway. Their garb is long and flowing, with their limbs bound in tight fabrics. Their long cloaks were adorned in round bits and bangles that sounded like rumbling thunder when they moved. They made a small, smokeless fire in front of them. They cradled it in their hands like a child and, behind their masked faces, Callan can see an equal amount of glee. They chanted in woeful prayer, litanies against the cold. The flames responded in kind, crackling and breaking in tune. These were the apostates of the Wolf, this Callan is certain of. They were once relegated to the Western Wastes in exile and rarely left it in fear of sectarian reprisal. They are the tricksters of the Isosain, the boogeyman that lurks in the heart of every man. The fall that was the consequence of pride.

Callan looked at them with an unknown feeling in his chest. Pity? Pride? Recognition? He is not sure, and as a consequence neither am I. And both of us revile such uncertainty. If there is a mystery, it must be revealed. If there is a secret, it must be uncovered. We are both cowards in that way. Callan took a step towards them, his figure shadowed in the crumbling doorway. He placed his hand against the ashen wood, flames of autumn reigniting deep in the heartwood for but a brief moment. The apostates, shocked by the sudden intrusion of a stranger, clasped the fire closer to their hearts. Their clothes did not singe, but their skin began to blister and burn from the flame. There were no enemies here in Mariposa, but reflex is reflex.

“Ahoy.” Callan raised a hand in sympathy. A single, lick of flame darted between his fingers. “Friend, not foe.”

One of the apostates lowers his white mask, revealing a stubbly chin and toothy grin. He lowered his hood, his ringed fingers gliding across the fabric with the delicate grace of a dancer. He was, once, back in the Eastern Kingdoms, before one poisoned word drove him west. “You’re a part of no Da’as.” The man motioned to Callan’s clothing, to the large fur coat that hung off his back.

Callan nodded and took a step forward. “I am not.”

“I didn’t know fire was popular outside of our Da’as.” The man’s companion added, visibly relaxing somewhat. “Poor publicity, I suppose.”

“It can be popular in the east, if you look close enough.”

The man with the stubbly chin smiles. “If you go east far enough, you eventually find yourself west.” 

Callan narrows his eyes somewhat. “I’ve never been one for the horizon.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“You ever thought about heading to the wastes?” The man’s companion responded, unaware of whatever innuendo was shared between those two. His teeth were blunt, as were his words. His hands were clumsy and unken to fire. But he had kind eyes, and that crease where his smile folds his brow. “I know Isosian’s are not too friendly to fire.”

“I fear only one, and that is not Isosa.” Callan smiles at the man with blunt teeth. “But I will say, I understand the sentiment.”

“Come, sit for a spell.” The man with the stubbly chin slaps the floor next to him, kicking up ash and dust. “I’m Jiro of Da’as Cerena, my forward friend is Martine, of the same.”

“Martine? Mariposian name, no?” Callan sat down across from the fire. “How does it feel to be home again?”

“Ah, I am not home, though.” Martine rubbed his palms together furtively. “I am an outcast even in this place.”

“And yet,” Callan adds his warmth to the fire. “Here you are.”

“You’ve yet to introduce yourself, stranger.” Jiro asks.

“Where are my manners!” Callan smiles. “You may call me Callan.”

Jiro nods. “Pleasure.”

“Charmed!” Martine beams. “What brings you to the Great Butterfly, my friend Callan?”

“I am but a tourist, a visitor here.” Callan gesticulates with his free hand. With it the flames dance and flicker, as if following some sort of conductor. “I could ask the very same of you, my new friends. Mariposa is far from the wastes. I’m sure such a trek was perilous for you.”

“Our wayward brothers, the Isosian’s bothered us very little, actually.” Jiro stares into the fire. He leans against the half broken wall behind him in a show of relaxation. “We had more trouble with the terrain than we did with the lash.”

“Our Da’as moved with us.” Martine reaches inside his cloak and pulls out a smoked peach. He breaks off a piece with grubby fingers and hands it to Callan, across the fire. Callan, unaccustomed to gifts, does not take it. Martine shrugs and brings the dried fruit to his lips. After a moment, he continues. “Cerena values hospitality, if you care to stay with us for a spell.”

“I’ve heard all the wastrals keep such virtues.” Callan nods, closing his eyes slightly and taking in the sweet smoke. This wood had been burnt many times before, by many transients. Its bark was coated white with ash and soot. But yet, it still manages to light just the same. Its heartwood is a deep, burnt orange. Like autumn had seeps deep into its being. It looked like a sky on fire, like a birchwood in the throws of a fall. “If I am to stay with one, I am to stay with all.”

“There are no Isosians here, friend.” Martine sits up a bit tighter, eyes catching sparks like fireflies. “What is there to be afraid of in a hot meal?”

“It is not the heat I fear.” Callan chuffs. “I just do not need such comfort at the moment.”

“Perhaps that is what we seek in Mariposa proper.” Jiro traces his finger along the ashy dirt. The heat of the fire suffused them. Warded them from the cold. It was spring, now, in Mariposa. And yet, after the autumn fires, the Economic District was laden with that sodden chill. The air was thick with that dampness, as if the world itself was attempting to douse the absent flame with tears overflowing. The everburning wood was thick with wet. It was suffused with that lung sticking petrichor and the clouds hung low and dark in the sky. 

And yet, even here, transients huddle. Mired in cold and wet rain, they congregate here. Callan looked at his companions, if not in name then in circumstance. Their shoulders were covered in dew, their cloaks were soaked through. But they had traveled miles towards Mariposa on sore feet and a dream. What was Mariposa to them? Callan could not know. To him, Mariposa was an iron cage. A task to be completed and then never thought of ever again. Overhead, the jackboots float their mechanized balloons across the air like lead dandelion seeds. Each with a gun and a will to kill. These facts prevented him from knowing.

“The people who rule this place hate your faith.” Callan grits his teeth. “Hate you. This is not comfort.” 

“No.” Jiro smiles, his eyes cast low towards the flame. “But it might be one day.”

“No matter how many times the flames go out.” Martine smiles, too, looking at Callan bright and beaming. “We can always rekindle it.”

Callan brings his knees to his chest. If Lucius could see him, if anyone of the Primrose could see him, would they laugh? Would they chide him? Would they join in? He gritted his teeth, trying to grind the uncertainty out of his fangs. “Would it even be the same fire?” He asks, voice low under the crackle of the flames.

“That doesn’t matter.” Martine leans forward somewhat, as if to hear Callan all the more clearly. Like it was some secret the two needed to share. “As long as the fire burns.”

“Apostasy.” A voice comes from the warped doorway. “I will stand no more of it.”

All three whip their heads towards the voice. It was still, like a nail moving against glass. Each modulation made some deep part of Martine and Jiro flinch. Like a child from a nun’s ruler. They covered their hands, dowering the fire in a moment’s notice. The coals sputter and sizzle, keeping the flame deep in their hearts. The woman in the doorway with the voice that sounded like breaking glass held a gun in her hands. A revolver. A long, fanged barrel, mouth open and dripping with heat. Her finger was over the trigger, thumb on the hammer, both trembling. Her skin was this infernal green and her eyes glowed with a familiar, golden hue. She was an abbess, something about that gun made it eminently clear. It was more real than she was. It was the absence of flame, whereas fire is shifting and impermanent, that gun was sure and true. It was all hard edges and secant lines.

Behind her was a towering man. On his shoulders were a sheath and a bookbag, his hair woven tightly in locs, tight to his scalp and coming up around his shoulders. His dress is plain, for Mariposa at least. A white, billowing shirt. Skin like smooth, polished obsidian. Hair smells strongly of apricot and honey. He looked like he was pulled straight from a bodice ripper. He looked at the woman next to him almost like a lost dog. He looked like a paladin, of this they are all sure. It is in the way the sun seems to halo his head, in the way that the clouds part but the oppressive wet does not. He did not look at the men on the ground in front of him, as if they didn’t even register in his vision. Callan knew, however, that he was under this paladin’s intense scrutiny.

Callan stands up, dusts himself off. This is not his fight. For a moment, he thinks to give Martine a compassionate look. A thanks for the peach, if only in offer. He fights the desire, but it is still there. He continues to look at abbess and smiles a litigious smile. “I was unaware there was a contingent of Isosian’s here.” 

“Would that have changed your behavior?” The paladin responds. “We’re a response to the Wolf, not a threat to keep good behavior.”

The abbess glares at the paladin. “Remiel.” Her voice is condescending, barely contained disgust at how wrong he is.

“Is that your name?” Callan interjects. “An odd one.”

“My mother picked it.” Remiel looked at the abbess again, almost bashfully, answering the question implied. “Beyond that, I’m not sure.” 

“It's an old name, in an old language.” Callan shrugs. “I’m surprised a learned man does-”

“That is enough, Callan.” The abbess’ voice is steady, authoritative. She speaks and the world needs to listen. “That is enough.”

“Right,” Callan bristles. He motions to the men behind him. They are scared and in their hands are guns. “I take it you’re here for these two.” 

“I am not.” The abbess responds. “But I am unsurprised that dogs congregate.”

Callan raises an eyebrow. His hand moves towards the hilt of his sword. 

“You two.” Remiel raises a sword at the wastrals behind Callan. They raise their guns in kind, fingers trembling. Their feet are unsteady, the recoil from their shot would knock them to the ground. In another world, if they are to fire, they would certainly miss. “I need you to leave.”

“Remiel?” The abbess snaps her head towards the paladin. The wastrels back towards the broken down wall behind them. In a moment, they are gone. 

“I don’t want to fight if I do not have to.” Remiel glares at the abbess but for a moment. Authority. It is pure and boring. For a moment, he is his mother. And order must be restored. Never questioned, never flinched. He has a ruling and he will be listened to. “Do I have to fight?”

“Only if I have to.” Callan responds. In that moment of distraction, of petty un-vigilance, he has drawn his sword. In his other hand, a curved staff topped with a carved, dragon’s head. The abbess curses under her breath. “Two on one doesn’t exactly seem a fair fight.”

“Isosa is not the goddess of fairness.” The abbess sneers. “I am not surprised you fail to grasp such a distinction.”

“Is- is this the one we’re looking for?” Remiel asks. His hands are gripping his twisted greatsword, one hand on the hilt, another choked up on the blade, just below the parrying hooks. A duelist's stance, to control the blade tighter in the close quarters. Callan knew Remiel was no amateur. It was instruction beat into him. “Sorrow, please tell me this is the right person.”

“He’s the hound you need.” Abbess Sorrow responds. “Trust not your eyes, trust not your senses.”

Remiel closes his eyes. He breathes in through his nose. Out through the mouth.“Faith in steel.”

It is Callan that strikes first, while Remiel is busy focusing himself. He brings his curved sword down against the flat of Remiel’s blade. Sparks fly as metal clashes, steel grinds against steel. There is an ear-raking sound and Remiel’s bladepoint heads down. Soot is kicked up in the air. The room grows warm in absent flame. Sorrow takes a step back from Remiel and smiles a litigious smile. Callan rears his other arm back, drawing the staff like a viper. His muscles contract, tighten like a piano wire. 

His foot shifts underneath him, twisting backwards in a moment. Soot and ash and flame kick up in its wake, throwing that pyroclastic flow into the air. He thrusts the head of the staff at Remiel’s throat, an attempt to knock him off guard, disarm the paladin before he can retaliate. This is what Callan has on Remiel, surprise and guile. The tools of the autumn fey. Sorrow can not see through the obscuring smoke. She believes that Callan’s blade will find Remiel’s heart. And that would be just. Anathema.

Remiel can see.

His eyes do not follow Callan’s blade, it is not the deadly weapon in this circumstance. It is in how his muscles contract. Remiel can see the strands that make Callan, sees them tighten, sees the way energy flows in his body. He sees the nestle of flame in Callan’s heart, sees how it channels that fire. He knows the sword is to parry. The sword is the distraction, the rattler on the tale. That cane, that is where death is. That is the object that will unmoor him. It will open him up to what actual hatred this Callan has in his mind. The soot obscures his eyes, burns the edges of his retina. Trust not your eyes. The cane is moving faster now, it would be easy to bring his sword to Callan’s feet. This is what his rector would have done. Callan has left himself open to a brazen counter attack. He has no faith his opponent would be bold enough to go on the attack, let alone a paladin of Isosa. This is what would unmake him. Trust not your senses. This is what his mother would have done. Pressed the attack, take that giant greatsword and unmake Callan right now. 

Faith in steel.

Remiel breaks his grip from his sword’s ricasso just as Callan’s cane passes it. He can feel the hot wind from the staff, feels it cut the air to ribbons. At the same moment, he twists his other shoulder, following the bladepoint into the ground. It brings Callan’s blade with it, locked in rapturous sound with the parrying hooks of his blade. His hand grabs Callan’s at the same point his blade’s edge hits the soot. He drops the greatsword, the one thing a paladin is never to do, his bookbag hitting his lower back. His hands divert Callan’s cane away from where it would strike. He thinks to throw the man, to continue his momentum and force this man to the ground. But something about how the energy flowed around the pirate, something about that ungodly heat and warmth that leaks from the edges of him, makes him reconsider. 

Callan’s hair stands on edge. The trick his mentor had taught him, the trick that had forsaken many other bladesmen, had failed. His cane flies through the air, now shunned from the kill it so desperately needed. His blade knocked loose from his fingers. His eyes lock with Abbess Sorrow, smiling a familiar smile. It is the smile of Queen Mariposa the Litigious and it is a smile that Callan wears well. In her hand that baneful revolver. She is cycling the cylinder with her thumb. Waiting. Expectant. Like these two are carrion. Like these two are meat.

And Callan refuses to be meat.

He does not know it, but that is the only thought that writhes through his head. How much, at that moment, even beyond Remiel or even beyond Maeve or even beyond his target, he wishes to kill this woman smiling his smile back at him. He knows, for a moment, what it is like to hate the autumn The deception, the guile, the backhanded smile. That is all he has known the autumn to be. And, dear reader, he hates how good it makes him feel. It is a feeling that starts in his heart, a feeling that starts in his gut and in his muscles. It radiates to his fingers, to the tip of his nose, something coiled at the base of himself, desperate for release. Remiel’s back is turned towards his abbess and her hungry, hungry eyes. The air catches fire.

“I knew it.” The abbess smiles.

Arcs of flame smolder between Callan’s fingers, following odd lines and trajectories of travel. They are like birch leaves in fall. White spats of superheated air crackle and singe near the heads of his fingers. His hand lets the sword fall to the ground, knuckles white and fingers balled in flame. They are close now and Remiel can see Callan’s face now. The teeth barred, breath hot and heavy. He looks like he needed to bite Remiel, looks like his teeth grow long. His neck, now exposed from the long of his lapel, looked raw and worn, as if it was held by a cold iron choker. Like whoever held the leash held it tight. Callan is rabid, of this Remiel is sure. The paladin’s feet move backwards, kicking up the dusty ash of the floor. 

Callan swipes to the left, the paladin slides to the right. Flame barely misses the tip of his nose. Licks of burning air fly off the edge of the fire, illuminating Remiel’s dark skin like starlight. Dusk and embers whorl around the two of them, caught in the updraft of their conflict. Remiel eyes his discarded sword. Callan eyes Sorrow’s gun. She has leveled it at Remiel’s back and at Callan’s heartflame. Her finger is off the trigger, for now.

“Tired paladin?” Callan asks through ragged breath. Fire takes its toll and the air was laden with ash. 

“Maybe.” Remiel’s shoulders heave, the bookbag on his back feeling heavier than usual. His sword is next to Callan’s feet, if he goes for it, Callan can strike him. End him. “You don’t look perfect yourself.”

“The city, it chokes me.” He sneers. “Nothing more.”

Remiel raises an eyebrow. What did he mean by that? Nowhere, not in any scriptures, did Mariposa stand at odds with wolfkin. If anything, this leaden city would embolden agents of chaos. He thinks for a moment to look back at Sorrow, to look for guidance. An unseen fire cracks behind him, the cycling of Sorrow’s gun. 

A round wizzes past Remiel’s ear, the air boiling in its wake. The paladin’s skin is warm, almost singing from the momentum of the round. It is like an absent flame, all the oppressive, destructive heat of fire with none of its warmth. None of its purpose. Somewhere, birds fly from their perch. Somewhere, a heart stops. It is the death of all things and it hits Callan square in the shoulder. His eyes grow wild and the force of the shot throws him to the dusty floor, feet tumbling over his torso. The fire, for a moment, dims. Remiel whips his head back towards Sorrow.

“What was that?” He shouts over the ringing in his ears. He stands from his half lurch. In a moment, and without Remiel noticing, his sword is back in his hand. “Sorrow, what did you just do?”

Sorrow canters her wrist, gun tilting at an odd angle. Air sublimates off of its barrel. It is shimmering with that dreadful, baleful heat. Remiel, for the first time, sees it. Sees that gun in her hand. Sees how it catches the light. It is a weapon made of broken glass, dripping with absent flame and refracted light. On the edges of it, rending jagged glass shards stick into the hands of the user. It is a weapon made from the shattering of hope and it is more real than she is. Her hand drips with blood. It is the only thing that is not burning.

“He would strike you again.” She replies. Her feet are shoulder’s width apart, her torso is tilted slightly. It is the stance of a killer. “I would not stand him to do so. Move.”

“You don’t have the authority to tell me that, Sorrow.” His voice is low, furtive. He tries not to sound like a petulant child.

“You waste your time, paladin.” She lilts at the end of her sentence, drawling his title into singsong mockery. She levels her gun towards him again. “Even now, he plots behind you.”

“That’s you, isn’t it.” He motions towards the gun in her hands. “That’s the real you. Whatever’s standing in front of me, that’s just the thing that shepherd's you from place to place.”

“Is it so bad to be something?” She places her free hand under the grip of the revolver. When he moves, that is when she will shoot. Her hands drip with absent flame. She can see it in his eyes, he is lost. He is what will make her lost again. This is just. Anathema. “Remiel, please. I need you to trust me.”

“You burn, Sorrow.” Remiel levels his sword against her, point lining up with the barrel of the pistol. “You’re burning already and you don’t even know it.”

Sorrow sucks air in. Her eyes go wild. Her hands tremble. 

The air catches fire. 

She is faster than Remiel is. The crack of heat lighting shatters outwards from that gun, gold and amber aurora flashing from where the bullet meets the frame. The air is thick with fire and with heat. The bullet crawls its way into Remiel’s torso, tearing and rending away skin and muscle. Remiel does not feel it. Trust not your senses. He is movement, he is momentum. His sword is in both of his hands and Remiel has broken into a sprint. He will spear her, dash her against his blade. He does not feel it, he can not feel it. He does not feel the bullet rending him, does not feel his muscles separating from each other. His heart beats fast, faster than it has in years. His skin is no longer diseased and he can not feel whatever was clawing at him. 

He can not feel it.

The round misses his heart by inches. The recoil of the shot throws Sorrow’s hand into the air, obscuring Remiel in the barrel of the gun. He is fast, but he has momentum. Inertia will kill him. She feints, jerking her body left but moving right. He will move past her, of this she is sure. As sure as the gun in her hand. She cycles the cylinder, rotating the bullet into a stronger position. Energy crackles in her hand. She will have killed a paladin and then a wolfkin. She is strong, and that is purpose enough. 

True to her thought, Remiel shoots past her by inches. Her mouth twists and contorts into that litigious grin without her even knowing. She wears, now, the mask of Mariposa. Every bit of hatred and scorn that this city has ever had is in Sorrow. Sorrow wishes she hated this feeling, she wishes it did not feel so good. She levels her gun against Remiel. He is in her sights. He kicked off an errant piece of architecture, forcing his body back towards his murderer. He is fast, but he is not fast enough. Sorrow sees it, sees the glowing amber blood drip from his skin. Sees his heart beating fast in his chest. She knows where she needs to shoot. She moves her finger over the trigger. It cuts her. She bleeds. This is just.

And then, fire.

There is fire between the two of them. Remiel is lost in its conflagration. There is heat and purpose in this flame. It is orange and yellow like birch trees in autumn and Sorrow knows. She looks to her side, her grin leaking from her lips. It is Callan. He is on the ground, shoulder dripping soot from his wound. It leaks out of him like magma, like some great wound in the earth extolling fire as virtue. Hair is in his eyes, and she can see now. See past the soot and the ash, she can see him. His hair is not the color of autumn. It is the color of blood. His hands are wrapt in fire. His face a familiar, Mariposian, grin. An infectious thought crosses her mind. It is luminous. Like a lighthouse at sea. It forces any sense or sensation from her thoughts. It forces her to think how much better it looks on him than on her.

Remiel crests through the flames at a speed that could break bones. Flames dance from off of his skin and off of his clothing, desperate to grab hold of him and tear him down. He hits Sorrow at that speed, the heat of the flames clinging to his skin. She feels a rib crack under the pressure. His breath is hot and damp and smells like rotting fruit. His voice carries that sickly sweet smell of decay and putrefaction. A corruption of the divine. She knows, past the pain and past the violence, what he truly is. He is the death of all things. Of divinity, of peace, of order. In Remiel, she sees what would cause her ruin. Her head is thrown back as they make contact with the wall behind them, and they keep going. Crashing through decaying and burnt wood, the dust and char fills her lungs. 

They hit the ground together, his sword run through her shirt and the edges of her stomach. A glancing wound. A goring wound. She looks up at him and sees the auburn hue in his eyes shift from gold to green. His teeth are long and sharp like rows of delicate knives. In him, Sorrow sees a wolf. She grimaces in pain and in disgust, hand grasping for her gun she dropped three feet back. It shakes and rattles, like it tries to return to her. 

“Anathema!” She cries out, blood and spit mixing in the back of her throat. “I lay on you anathema!” She tries to spit in his face, but her lips are too dry. 

“You can’t do anything to me Sorrow.” Remiel responds in a voice too sure to be his. “I just fucking hate you.”

His blade twists in the dirt, tearing at Sorrow’s skin and muscle. He thinks she is run through, that she will bleed her last out on that blade. That is why it is curved, that is why his blade mimics the stag’s horns. It is not to resemble his goddess, it is to rip and tear and bleed and break. Sorrow grimaces and winces. She feels his own ichor drip out onto her, staining her shirt and mixing his blood with hers. It feels like acid in the veins, like a cruel burning without heat or warmth. She fears, dear reader. In his eyes, Sorrow sees the same hatred she shown him. Revealed, now. He is sharp, razors keened and honed to an edge. Remiel is a blade now, and nothing else. No longer obscured or hidden behind some litigious grin. In his eyes, she sees oblivion, and she would deserve it. It would be her place.

Sorrow refuses to be that subservient ever again.

She rears back her head and strikes Remiel against the nose with her brow. Ichor and sickening bone-crack splatter from Remiel. It drips into his mouth, frothing with spit and rage already. The pain pulls him back, makes him understand that he is a body with meat and with sense, not a weapon. He reels back, hands dropping his sword and gripping his now broken nose. His bookbag slams against the back of his knees. This is when the pain in his shoulder returns to him. Remiel falls to the floor. Sorrow scrambles backwards, brow now covered in blood and gore. It runs into her eyes, staining her verdant green skin a dark, muddy brown. The blood looks duller now, less real, than it did flowing out of the paladin. Like whatever had imbued it with such purpose left it when it had left Remiel. 

He glared at her, from his place on the floor. From behind his fingers. Dust and ash mixing with his blood, cascading onto his face like a death mask. That visceral disgust might be gone, but not its purpose. She had attacked a member of Isosa’s holy order with no due purpose. Sorrow Brightwind is a threat, as is her Order of Broken Fang. Remiel bites his lip to stifle his moans. A failure. No steps further. He reaches a hand towards her, towards the hilt of his blade.

“Get out of here.” A voice comes from behind Remiel. It is Callan. He is gripping his shoulder, still leaking magmatic blood. His wound is sizzling, steaming from the wound. As if whatever had shot him was still burning. In his other hand, limp at his side, is his sword.“Before I and my friend find it more fun to hunt you.”

“I will burn you all.” Sorrow scrambles backwards, lurching towards the burned out door behind her. “Anathema. I lay on you all Anathema.”

“It wouldn’t be the first.” Callan smiles. “I will be interested to see if, this time, you succeed.”

Somewhere, overhead. A lighting bolt crackles. For the first time in five years, it rains in the Economic District of Mariposa. Between the moment of lighting and thunder. Sorrow is gone. Squirreled away somewhere into the ash and dust. Remiel sighs and begins to sit up, his shoulder tense and swollen. He brings his free hand to the bridge of his nose, feels the pressure of blood coagulating just underneath the skin. It is building. He is himself again. His disgust smoldered out into mere, and infinitely more harmless, anger. Anger, dear reader, anger is actionable. You can understand what angers you. Change either yourself or the world. Disgust only allows you violence, senseless and all encompassing. In disgust, you must destroy what disgusts you. 

Faith in steel.

“Ah, ah.” Callan coos. “Easy, now. Move the wrong way and you might rip something.”

Remiel sighs and keeps his hand pressed tight against his wound. “I’m uh, pretty sturdy.”

“Hells, I can see that.” Callan grins, this time with a genuine smile. His brogue is thick on the tongue. “With how fast you move, I’m quite surprised. Can’t knock you down, can I?”

“Are you going to try to?”

“No, no.” Callan shakes his head. “Something tells me I couldn’t. A gun like that would kill any regular man.”

“You’re, um. Not a wolfkin.” Remiel looks down at the floor, eyes glowered in dejection. “Are you?”

“You’ve been had, I’m afraid. Been the butt of the lark”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too.”

“Chin up, friend.” Callan sits down on the floor next to Remiel. He twists fire from his wound, drawing it deep from inside of him. Remiel wants to flinch, to run away from such a flame. But, to him, all it feels is warm. “She wore that grin almost as well as I do.”

“I’m uh. Sorry I tried to kill you.”

Callan tuts. “No you didn’t. If what you did to me was trying to kill me, you’d have looked like how you treated the good abbess there.”

“Yeah,” Remiel laughs shallowly, then sucks air in through his teeth. He holds his side tight, clenching some torn muscle used up in whatever magicks Remiel had used to keep himself alive. “Oh, uh. Ow. Don’t- Don’t make me laugh.”

“Noted.” Callan nods. “You did say you needed me for something.”

“I uh.” Remiel removes his hand from his shoulder. The bleeding shouldn’t have stopped yet, Callan thinks. And yet, when he draws his hand back, he is leaking no more. “It's personal business.”

“Far be it from me to pry.” Callan shrugs, reaching into his coat to draw some flask with his good hand. “A man has to keep his own secrets.

There are several moments of silence, as the rain pitters onto the burned out rooftop above them. The wind is not whipping, and the rain is light. A nuisance. Remiel looks over to his companion. “You haven’t talked to Isosa before? Have you?”

Callan blinks twice. “No.”

“Damn.” Remiel sighs as he moves to get up. He winces in pain. Callan looks at the paladin’s shoulder. Healed, already. No more of the sickly sweet ichor that filled Callan’s mind with thoughts of home. His thin, white shirt had been torn open with the bullet, damp with his blood and sticking to his skin. The wound looked closed. Tender, but closed. The flesh around it, however, looked diseased. Thick tendrils of black miasma warped and weaved like roots. Remiel notices Callan’s gaze and moves to cover it with his hand. The pirate looks down at the floor, bashfully.

“You looking for your goddess?” He responds after a slight moment. His own shoulder is not as lucky. The bleeding has stopped, but his arm hangs limp.

“You might not be my target, but that fire doesn’t mean I should trust you.” Remiel mutters. “Sorry.”

“Meant nothing by it, friend.” Callan shrugs with one of his shoulders.

“No, no, eugh.” Remiel pinches the bridge of his nose out of reflex, then flinches away when his hands make contact with the break. “Sorry, I’m just-”

“Worn out?”

“Tired, yeah.”

Callan sits on the floor next to Remiel and starts up his fire, for just a moment. It dances like a friend, flickering shadows cast against the now sodden walls. The fire crackles with moisture and air shimmers with heat, refracting all that is in front of them.

“I’m here, hunting for someone too.” Callan starts back up again. “A witch who’s stolen something from my lady.”

“Not much to go off of.” Remiel shies away from the fire for a moment, his torso turning slightly away, as if a child running from a large dog.

“I’m afraid not.” Callan sighs, his breath shaky. To keep this fire up drains him. But Remiel looks as if he needs the warmth, shuddering in the cold as he is. His grin grows wide, and Remiel does not see. 

“I certainly will not stand in your way.”

Callan knows what to do. 

“When I was younger,” Callan starts, hands held out in front of him, warm in its embrace. “I understood that was all fire was.”

“Hm?”

“Distortion. When fire, true fire, warms, it distorts the air around it. Refracts it in ways that are untrue.” He pauses for a moment. “Fire was guile, it was trickery.”

“Huh.” Remiel leans forward a bit. Was this the first time he’s been close enough to fire to truly see it? The rector was warmed by steam, his home never needed to keep out the cold. The fireplace had always sat empty and whatever food they needed, his mother had always provided. He had heard stories of it, been taught to fear it. But he had never seen it. He moves his hand to his shoulder again, feels the pulse of his heart in his reforming wound. “Fire was destruction. For- for us.”

“Is that right?”

“Fire marks decay, it marks entropy. The breaking of things down from what they were. A transformation.”

“Do you see that right now?”

Remiel pauses for a second. He knows, somewhere, that there is a transfusion here. Part of whoever Callan is was being destroyed in order to create this fire. He could see, if he looked hard enough, the channels of energy along Callan’s veins. He could see the fire burning in his stomach. Consuming him. A wretched thing. A thing of the abyss, of entropy. These are things he can see. 

Trust not your eyes.

Callan can see the fire dancing within them, like a child looking at the stars for the very first time. Remiel’s face is lit up, the shadows grow longer. They are enrapturing, they are obliterating. Upon them, they are the death of all sense. Remiel moves his hands towards them, as if Prometheus grasping for its warmth. Callan’s grin grows just that bit wider, catching the rest of his face ablaze in its glory. A moment, Remiel thinks, a moment could not hurt.

“No.”

[ghostmothart]

I realized I'm waaayyy behind on posting up art here, so I'll be posting some paintings the next few days <3

Some quick (ish) environment paintings inspired by @cupoftrembling, a super cool anthology short story series by @poetictea

[jinseinomerry-go-round]

every time my upstairs neighbors do anything its like a rhine rift valley simulator im just waiting for the day they break through the ceiling

[ordinarydanette]

BRAZIL DOESN'T MAKE GOALS ON THE FIRST ROUND AND TODAY IT WAS THREE ALREADY

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,

yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!

Yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier

mi oromardi lisse-miruvóreva

Andúnë pella, Vardo tellumar

nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni

ómaryo airetári-lírinen.

Sí man i yulma nin enquantuva?

An sí Tintallë Varda Oiolossëo

ve fanyar máryat Elentári ortanë

ar ilyë tier undulávë lumbulë;

ar sindanóriello caita mornië

i falmalinnar imbë met, ar hísië

untúpa Calaciryo míri oialë.

Sí vanwa ná, Rómello vanwa, Valimar!

Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar.

Nai elyë hiruva. Namárië!

"The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" - J.R.R. Tolkien

[diffenbachiae]

green wood cup and trembling crust :)