Fantasy 𝙂𝙇𝙊𝙍𝙔 𝙏𝙊 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙀𝙑𝙀𝙍𝙇𝘼𝙎𝙏𝙄𝙉𝙂 [be_l_l_e & starboob]

[starboob]

As they traversed the dominion of the Everlasting, the former exile yearned for her solitude. Realm after realm, season after season, Casmira was forced to accept what she had always known—life had moved on and it never cared to stop for her. That truth was there in everything withheld gasp or suppressed glimmer in her eye. It was there, screaming reminders of her irrelevance.

The Imperiess ground down on her jaw and kept her dark eyes trained forward, refusing to succumb to the overwhelm blooming within her. Her nails carved crescents into her palms to root her in place. ‘Soon,’ she reminded herself. 'Soon you will no longer be faded.'

Casmira would have been content with the pretend solitude she could imagine in Theoren’s suffocating silence, but of course it was when she found contentment that the other decided to break the spell. Smoothing over her sun-bleached skirts, she tilted her head up, somewhat surprised Theoren had even bothered to listen earlier, let alone commit her request to memory. She nodded. “Then let us make haste.”

For the Imperiessa, finding the priestess was a menial task that took only a dash of concentration. A blink of a journey later, they were at a temple built into the massive trunk of an oak that made even Imperiess Theoren seem small. It was no longer alive and also not dead, simply frozen in its prime of life.

A priestess awaited their arrival with her head pressed firmly to the ground and rose only when addressed. “Long have we anticipated the return of the Whisper. Welcome.”

It had sent her pathetic heart aflutter to hear the recognition. Had Theoren not been beside her, she might have lost herself to the headspin, but such weakness she would not reveal. Of course she had been recognized. She was Imperiess Casmira.

They were led into the temple and taken up through its inner tiers. It was a quiet temple, sparsely populated and yet the air within was electric, prickling the Imperiess’s skin. Or perhaps that was her own anticipation for the power to come. Her mouth watered imagining the surge.

Within one of the branches, a chamber had been carved into the wood. The walls were covered in runes so old Casmira even had trouble recalling their purpose. Attendants were already on their knees waiting beside a pool of glowing crystal water that brightened the room. Like a well rehearsed dance, Casmira dropped her robes and the attendants bolted from their knees forward, taking her hands and helping the Imperiess into the pool. As she settled into the waters, her hair fanning out around her, the attendants unsheathed the bone knives on their hips and began carving runes into Casmira’s skin. Blood bloomed in the water, spreading as more runes were added. Casmira sighed into the attention, her mind flashing with memories of the first time. Every inch of herself was steeled over to endure it all over again. Anything for her throne.

While the preparations were being made, the priestess turned to address Theoren. “Are you to oversee the restoration or should you like to visit the priestesses? This will take some time as you well know."

 

[be_l_l_e]

The priestess may as well have been silent.

Theoren watched the pool a moment longer, eyes settling on Casmira's face like she was studying a sculpture made of sand. At last a priestess' hand passed through her line of sight, and a spell was broken.

She left the oak without another word.

***​

The rock shattered, and Theoren stepped back until the last pebble had ceased to roll. She sheathed her sword, and turned, and fell. Graveled granite bounced against her weight slamming into the earth, and beneath her she felt the grinding of the stones into dust. The rock was dead.

She lay there. The evening passed into night. She traced alien constellations through the stars; Lecius the Dancer, and Pasha the Snake. Each brought to mind a memory of a memory - an old crone's wrinkled hand guiding her eyes through the heavens as she lay in an old stone pool in an empty town. She remembered the touch of that hand; rough. She remembered only once having seen that crone's eyes, not in the way they twinkled with the reflection of the stars but in the way they shrank when they reflected with her in the darkness. Only once, and then... she had never seen the woman again. Whose fault had that been?

Fault. That wasn't her word. Where had it come from?

Her mind drifted, unable to anchor itself on the mystery, and soon she found herself rising from the stony bed. Her armour promised her relief as the sharp stones fell away from it, and she welcomed the relief, and breathed in the crisp night air. Time. There was still time in that scent, time to do as she pleased, before she needed to return to guide the Whisper home.

Not guide, though. Casmira could find her own way back to the halls of the Everlasting. No, not guide - there was no obligation at all. It was a compulsion. Hers, or hers? The Allseer had planted many seeds. Theoren let them grow.

Day rose on this realm.

She returned to the oak tree, and sat on a knoll of dying grass to wait.

 

[starboob]

To return to her glorified state, the Imperiess had to be broken, stripped of skin and veins emptied. All the old dregs of her power, the last of what she had kept within her desperate claws, had to be drained to make room for fresh, raw divinity. The priestess and her attendants worked deftly on their Imperiess, reaching into the depths of Casmira’s mind to resurrect her former self.

An axe wedged into Casmira’s skull, cleaving it in two. The priestess then poured the molten core of a star into the split, burning away all the accumulated impurities from the goddess's exile. Star stuff creeped over her mind and seeped into her veins until nearly everything of her former self had blistered and melted away, leaving only her clean bone and the spirit that clung to it. For the briefest glimpse, Casmira did not exist.

And then she did again.

The priestess wove her fingers over the Imperiess's skeleton. New organs formed behind their protective cages and tissue wound itself over that. As her nerves grew back, as her vocal chords snapped into place, she screeched, sending the birds away. Each anguished pump of her still growing heart sent dull throbs through her.

No matter how hard her body thrashed or convulsed, no matter how many times she screamed until her throat bled, the priestess did not stop. The work continued. From her puny form, Casmira grew. Her talons pushed through her nail beds, her horns broke through her skin. She coughed out her useless set of teeth in favor of a mouthful of incisors. Wings sprouted from her back at the same instance her face broke, tearing itself apart as the dragon’s snout pushed through. As the dragon thrashed, shaking the last remnants of her skinsuit, the entirety of the tree shuddered and leaves helicoptered to the ground.

Her back arched into the ceiling, cracking the wood against her titanic size. The chamber could hardly contain the dragon, the priestess, and her attendants. Though that was quickly solved as Casmira swallowed the two attendants whole to sate her hunger. As thanks, the priestess was spared, though she may have fallen to her death anyway when Casmira launched through the oak branch like it were made of popsicle sticks. She cared not for the expendables. She was greater than them all.

Her massive body burst through the canopy as she flew over the forest. Fire bubbled up from her belly then shot up her throat as she hosed this gray world and turned it orange. And though the path back home lit brighter now that godblood flooded her veins, Casmira flew away from it. (And Theoren.)

She had her power back, after all. And her escape would serve the Everlasting, if only by giving her vision a chance at success.

 

[be_l_l_e]

As the world burned, Theoren slowly rose, bracing herself on her blade. Dark wings had bathed her in their ash-tinged wake only briefly, before the great beast - reborn - had scattered itself to a great distance. Now the trees were licked by orange flames while black charcoal dust fell like snow through the forest, and Theoren's skin glowed with the embrous luminance of the fire.

She strolled forward. The great oak was a stump, but still it nearly dwarfed her (or perhaps not, because it still burned, it still crumbled; charred bark coated in cold white ash fell away with slow creaks and lost crashes amidst the rest of the debris; the stump still shrunk, as Theoren never would). Picking through the remnants of the great temple was a slow task, but Theoren was nothing if not slow: methodical, deliberate, unbothered. Little remained of what it had once been; the temple was wiped away here, even if the memory of it - the strain of time which contained it - still existed so near, only moments - hours? - in the past.

She heard a noise that was not crackling flame or shifting debris; a groan, a gasp for air with too little oxygen to become a breath. She moved towards the noise. The tip of her blade peeled away a slab of blackened wood, and found more soot - but beneath it was a thing that moved, a grey form. Her eyes fell to a curve upon the form, and then she saw the pattern of the soot on skin - and then eyes flickered open, and she found the face, the movement, just as the priestess recognized her.

"Fi-" the priestess began, and coughed. Theoren waited, her blade the only thing holding the blackened slab of wood off of the priestess's body. She watched how her chest was wracked with each cough; saw the bones there, beneath the flesh. Burn scars tingled freshly on the legs and arms, which had tried to protect the body and the face, or had searched blindly for a way out of the rubble and found only fire and heat in their path.

"Finally," the priestess sighed, when the coughing had subsided to a burr. "I - I have served -"

"And been rewarded. Generously," Theoren said.

The priestess nodded, tried to shoo away the response. "Yes, yes. I - I am rewarded even - oh, lords, finally... finally... all of it is not for not, all my misdeeds -"

"Doubt?"

"No! No - but." The priestess met her eyes, shrunk. "I did. I did. Guilt! It... corrodes. Corrodes faith."

"Hmm," Theoren said, bored. She began to let the slab of wood fall back, to give the priestess her burial.

"No!" she said, and it wasn't a scream, because those lungs were too full of ash and soot and scar to muster all the noise. "Please. You - must." She pointed to her throat, and moved her finger across it. "Please. I must - I cannot -"

Theoren frowned, and studied the flesh. The bones which braided through the skin. The softness, where it was still unscarred - too soft. Too pure.

And though all the world smelled of fire and smoke, perhaps through it she smelled the runes, too. Runes of the flesh, sizzling, unbroken.

"Please," the priestess begged, as her body clung to life, as it had for far too long. As she had willed it to, with stolen runes, so she might see this moment, now, and know that all her guilt - all her sins - had served their purpose.

"Greedy bitch," Theoren sneered. She flipped her blade, let the slab of wood it had upheld be shattered. Then she crouched, and put a hand out to grab the woman by the legs. Her gauntlet wrapped around the naked flesh, and as she rose the woman dangled, too weak even to struggle. Wetness, pooled at the corners of her eyes, cleared paths through the ash across her forehead and gathered oily in her hair. She brought the woman close, peered into her face. Not a wrinkle or a crease. "How much have you seen?"

The priestess spoke through tears. "Centuries."

"And that wasn't enough?" Theoren laughed, dropping her hand for a moment as she considered the thought. She could feel the woman wince and struggle briefly as her head hit the ground. Then she raised her again to dangle. The woman gasped, breathlessly. "Of all people. How dumb are you, hm? Centuries to see what your world was built for, and you only found more ways to doubt."

"No. No, I - I always served. Even through doubt. I prepared this world! I built the paths, I cleansed the corruption, I -"

"You built this world?" Theoren's laugh was hearty this time. She squeezed on the woman's legs, crippling them. To the woman's credit, she did not wince, or cry out in pain. But perhaps the spine was already broken. "Die at its hands, then."

And she let the woman tumble back atop the pile of debris, to breathe smoky ash and freeze under midnight air and be fed upon by the gulls in the hours that came after, and someday - someday - to die, when magic died, or a stranger came with a blade, or when the realm itself was ended, cast out into the void.

 

[starboob]

Blistering orange turns to scorches of rich black in a matter of hours. The skies rain ash, matching the color of the Great Dragon who soars high above it all. Her flames march over the lands and eat until they cannibalize themselves.

A calm settles over the new graveyard. Whatever this realm had been, it is no more.
And still Casmira finds no answer. No escape. (No intervention either.)

Onto the next, she supposes. Through the timeslip she goes, her long body slithering through the only exit she will ever be allowed. Casmira knows. She knows. This power has only broadened the boundaries of her prison. It is an illusion, all of it. The borders may be blurred and she is still limited. Still shackled with a wider reach. And that reach could be reeled back. At a moment, it could all be gone. This small laughable slice of freedom could all be gone. (Could all be gone, again.)

Through to another realm. Through more flames of her destruction. She could free them like this. If only she were naïve enough to believe her actions were born of benevolence and not her own growing boredom. But it’s a comforting lie. She could free them all like this.

Casmira sighs. She twists a writhing king in two, dropping his two pieces into the moat he once used to torment his subjects. (How trite.) The peasants may chant, but none of that reaches Casmira. Is this all there is?

With a grumble of frustration, she flies through the last slip home.

***​

The Halls of the Everlasting exist at the edges of substance and nothing, where time is and isn’t. An ever changing abstraction that would melt the minds of lesser beings if ever they lost their way and somehow found themselves in these haunted halls.

Statues made of cosmic dust dot the hall, scattered about with no apparent order or pattern. Within each ghostly statue, glimpses of the past play quietly on a loop. One statue for each Imperiess and her legacy, lessons for the Imperiessa who follow. (A statue for each except the First, whose mysteries have made her folklore among the Imperiessa who have followed.)

When Casmira lands within this great hall, she sheds her wings and scales, smoothing herself back into her usual prim figure. Dots of light like miniature stars gravitate towards the Imperiess’s naked figure and weave new flowing white robes onto her body. The ground beneath Casmira’s feet ripples as she steps forward. It is peaceful. It is Ceridwyn, naturally, who ruins this peace with her gravely cackle.

“My oh my! I thought we were finally rid of you.” Ceridwyn’s pearly grin is the first thing Casmira is meant to see before the rest of the Imperiess comes into view, outlining the ample curve of her hips and spirals of copper colored hair that fall over her chest. “Had I known Theoren had been sent to retrieve you, I would have offed her myself.”

“Ceridwyn, be realistic.” Casmira rolls her eyes, crossing one arm over her waist and bringing up her other hand to inspect her talons. “Your 'strategies' only remain successful, because you choose bigger fools to be your foes. You are the Allseer’s malformed lap dog and that is the sole reason for your continued existence. Do you really think you could stand toe to toe with the Butcher?”

“Ah, I thought I smelled eau de Lickass.” And there is Forsythia’s wine bottle, coming to interrupt them. (Naturally that is the first of “her” to appear.) Pieces of her come in and out of existence like she can’t decide where or how to appear and in what order. What a fucking mess. “How does it feel being the most pathetic of us all?”

Ah. Home. How bitter it is to be returned to a worse torment than isolation. Casmira is not the least bit impressed. All the time to change and these so called goddesses remain as stupid as they were when she last saw them. "Hilarious. Haha." She rolls her burning eyes, her words dripping with acidity. "Where are the others? Let us get on with the circus so I can return to my proper station."

 

[be_l_l_e]

The Allseer had never given Theoren a gift, but Theoren did not resent her for it - she had no gifts to request. Power - power of the sort Theoren could claim - had a strange effect on desire. Now, she moved by inclination, swept along as if by the winds, never wanting, never seeking - only moving, as if to move in any other way was unnatural. Because what could limit her!

Demertu loved to claim that a cage was the truest form of freedom, but she was starved for new ways to mix her words.

The priestess attending her disappeared quietly. She was young - new, perhaps - but already well trained. Silent, quick, invisible - and fearless.

Priestesses were never shared; jealousy and infighting rarely ended with the priestess at its center preserved. The Imperiessa might deign to trade a priestess for a favour or a new machination in the never-ending plot, but these tainted priestesses rarely lasted long, as likely as they were to be a trap as a spy.

"Wait," Theoren said, and felt the priestess freeze at the end of the shaded corridor which led out of the chamber. Theoren turned on the pedestal, the swirling teal waters sloshing at her feet, and faced the priestess, who - to her credit - hesitated only a moment before tiptoeing back into the light. She was a pale thing, who knew only the simple postures, which let too much of the light stick to her cheek.

Much of what made an Imperiess limitless was constrained within the Halls of the Everlasting, hallowed by proximity to the source. It became easier to trace the chains of cause-and-effect, though they overlapped and winded back across themselves like twine around a hare's neck. Some of the Imperiessa thrived in this social cramping, hiding plots within plots and finding the rare lanes which could still afford an inch of movement - then leveraging them into cascades of quiet disaster, undoing eons of growth and infestation.

Theoren couldn't bother with the subtlety.

"No," she said, finishing a thought. She rose from the water, her flesh-grafted armour sifting effortlessly back to a solid as it drained the salving fluid it had soaked in. Theoren found the priestess from her new angle; she hadn't flinched. "I'll keep you, after all."

Theoren watched for a reaction - long enough that the priestess would know what was being sought and not found.

She saw an almost-quiver of the lip, a desperation by some impulse to break the silence. Instead the priestess held her pose.

"I think I've seen you before," Theoren said, finally. "Three thousand? Ten thousand? How long do you think it'll be until I see you again?"

The priestess was calculating. Theoren could see it on her brow: Is this the exception? Does she want -

"Speak, or I'll kill you."

The words didn't spill out - she was a priestess, not a peasant. And what a strange accent - Theoren found she couldn't place it, not within all her lingering memories of priestesses from eons past.

(she didn't remember this priestess, of course - that was the lie - but many others were there, at the edges of every moment - that was the truth)

"Do you wish to see me again? When?"

Theoren crooked her head. "Eternities are long. I've seen every priestess die in every manner every time." She smiled, and leaned in. "There's nothing I haven't seen."

The priestess didn't speak again, but Theoren noticed that her pose had broken. The way she held her hands now, the way she arched her back, the way her stomach shrugged off to the side - it was all shifted just out of place, like a row of beads with each one twisted to a different angle.

"Sit there," Theoren said. The priestess moved - perhaps with more haste than was appropriate - and sat on the pedestal where Theoren had been a moment before. Her toes dangled well above the waterline.

Theoren marveled that the priestesses did not waiver even in the face of death.

"Now I can find you again, when I return," Theoren smiled. "Maybe this time I will see something new."

Theoren left, and wondered why she was leaving - and then why she had been there in the first place. What was that room? Had she known it before?

It seemed not to matter, whether she could replace this memory with another, as both seemed to fade at once. She tried to cling to them, and even then she wondered why - the memories were barren, cold. She scoured them for something of herself and found only her reflection: actions that could have been hers, thoughts that could have been hers (were those thoughts?), a body that glistened like her own.

***
Elsewhere, in the Great Hall
***
​

"Casmira!"

The word was flung forth with a warmth that melted frigid vacuum, and the hall grew tangibly fuzzy as Bishii arrived, gossiping priestesses flitting in and out of the processional behind her. The Imperiess' hands were both outstretched, palms open, beckoning an embrace.

"I'm overjoyed that we can finally meet. Please, call me Bishii. The girls have told me so much about you." She gestured to Ceridwyn, and the formless mess that stood-in for Forsythia. Leaning in as she reached Casmira, her eyes glittered, and her smile grew conspiratorial, but her voice didn't fall below its usual presence. "It's always a pleasure to have a new face. Even if it's an old one."

 

[starboob]

Oh, how Casmira loathes and loves this beautifully wretched place all at once! It must be her horrible talent to endure it all. Already a headache buds at the top of her skull and a dull persistent ring whirls in her ears. ‘These flies are not worth the trouble,’ she has to remind herself.

Though the urge to flambée her present company crawls up the column of her throat, she swallows in favor of using the newest arrival as a distraction. The elder Imperiess—if they are going by ascent order—clicks her tongue. The sound bounces off of everything that is and isn’t, creating an odd broken staccato of noises. The embers in her eyes burn as she assesses this new Imperiess (new to her, at least), but it’s the sly quip about her age and exile that puts a pause to scrutiny. Carefully, she lifts her gaze.

The audacity of this whelp.

She can hardly tell whether she admires it or not. That the Imperiess still stands is the only indication that the dragon is not wholly offended. (Ceridwyn seems eager for the possibility.)

“I do hope those idiots have not wasted you.” Though no one can be trusted in these hallowed halls, Casmira sees no reason to push the other away so soon. Not when there is still so much to learn about her. Not when she finds herself in need of intel and allies. She will have to start her plans anew, after all.

While she does not close the distance between them, she does not create a chasm either and that is the closest this “Bishii” will ever get to receiving a hug from the dragon. “They are not the company you should want to keep.”

“Do my ears deceive?” Ceridwyn glides forward, inserting herself exactly where she is not wanted, as per usual. “Casmira, responding appropriately?”

“We had a wager you’d never been properly socialized,” Forsythia explains, just as the rest of her form finishes glitching in. She’s lying languid on her couch, a sleeping priestess on her breast. “Looks like that is another bet lost, dearest Ceridywn. I thought you were the cunning one?”

Though tempted to ask what other bet “the cunning” might have lost, especially considering that her hair is quite literally on fire now, Casmira ignores them both, keeping her attention on the youngest of the group. “I do hope you are not one of those gossip and drama obsessed bores." The procession of priestesses when Bishii first arrived does not fill the Imperiess with hope, but exile has made her patient and perhaps this little thing will surprise her. "Why does the Allseer keep you around, Bishii?”

*** Elsewhere, in the Great Hall! ***​

"Lost, Theoren?" Lysandra emerges from the shadows and arrives right beside the other Imperiess. Her cane clicks against the tiled or wooden or stone surface of the halls. “Or just waiting for the next priestess to terrorize? You have such odd appetites, you.” The elder sighs, creating a ripple through the atmosphere. “I wish you were more useful. You should have killed her.”

 

[be_l_l_e]

Everything Bishii did was almost physical: her tuttering laugh, the gentle sway of her hand through heavy air, the way her eyes drifted like dandelion petals over Casmira's body. It was a promise: a promise of shuffling the others away, and a promise of closeness, tenderness, embrace.

"You will be refreshing - it's been far too long since we've had someone who could hold their own and hold a half-decent conversation."

Behind Bishii, the priestesses were always buzzing with whispers and titters of laughter, though they peaked suddenly as Bishii finished speaking, and Bishii smiled.

"As for why our holy matron keeps me around, well, I wouldn't presume to know. Maybe I'm just... helpful."

***
Elsewhere, in the Great Hall
***​

Theoren prepared herself to march on in silence until Lysandra grew bored and disappeared, but instead she spoke.

"Careful, Liz. I've saved my quota, but I could always add another body to the count..."

 

[starboob]

Casmira catches the promise in the air and crushes it between her finger, insulted she's even affected by another Imperiess's charm. (Of course, the catching and crushing of the intangible promise is all within her chest, her mind, figurative. What she really does is sear Bishii with a glare. One should note, however, that psychologists in some inconsequential slip would have diagnosed the goddess with RBF. That is to say, it's not personal.) The elder steels herself, privately chastising her momentary vulnerability, for letting one such as the other have any effect at all on her.

Silly and tittering as this one is, she has not ascended for mere amusement. Nor because she is merely helpful. Casmira must remember what it means to be surrounded by her peerless sisters once more. (Which only means this is real, she is free. Or something like it.)

With a roll of her wrist, she banishes the two other Imperiessa until it is only herself and Bishii (and her priestesses). "If you wish to last long, resist the temptation to be too helpful, for you might find yourself tucked away." The whisper nods her head towards a direction, beckoning the younger to walk with her. "Rest assured, I do not intend to drown you in unsolicited advice. I simply wish to protect you from the fate that befell me. I would only wish it on my enemies." Such as Theoren. "So until we are enemies, I wish you no trouble."

Casmira looks down upon Bishii, offering her a test. "Tell me, Bishii, of our sisters, past and present, who do you follow and where do you wish to go?"

*** Elsewhere, in the Great Hall! ***​

"Ah, so she speaks today! May I show my thanks?" The elder of the two stoops into a low sweeping bow, exaggerated and impressive all at once. When she tips up her chin, her grin stretches back to her ear, grotesque and unnatural. (But that is all of Lysandra, to be fair.) She chuckles for both of them, knowing Theoren probably had the impulse stamped out from her long ago. "You need not threaten me, dear one. I only mean to warn." Lysandra pauses her step and taps her cane against the ground that is and isn't. "Do you not sense it?"

The crone gestures around them. "The Everlasting has been exposed and you bring home traitors."

 

[be_l_l_e]

It's like a mask falling away - like a third Imperiess, disappearing with the other two, when Casmira flicks her wrist. In its place, stands a new Bishii, suddenly two shades greyer than before, in a body that fills the same space but moves in new ways. She shrugs, and dust cracks off the old form.

"Too helpful. I know what you mean." Bishii falls in step beside Casmira, her voice almost unaffected. "I should be fair with you, sister, and give a warning: the consequences of my helpfulness seem to... attach themselves to those I help. I sometimes wonder if the Allseer's plan for me is some Sisyphean comedy, always starting over, slowly perfecting my role until I finally have the right partner for the dance." She shrugs again at that, carefully not casting Casmira a glance upwards. "If I'm honest with you, sister - I'm weary of following old paths. I suspect we've been stagnant for too long." Now she does share a glance, eyes locking then rolling behind them, to the emptiness they've left behind. "The current batch is growing... stale. The same pyrrhic plots. The same wretched humours. Even Theoren will run short on bones to break, and Demertu finds fewer and fewer fresh minds to bore." She titters again, but it's different - maybe only because the priestesses behind her are so hushed, so attentive, that the echo hardly follows. "You'll excuse a bit of arrogance, won't you? But I think a new crop has been tended, and soon at hand we'll reap what we've sown."

***
Elsewhere, in the Great Hall
***​

Theoren knows how to laugh, in her own silent, snuffling way, with a glimmer of the eye that hints at some sadist's pleasure.

"She's like a cripple. But... if she frightens you... maybe I should come, to guard you in your chambers..."

 

[starboob]

Hmm. Casmira never takes her eyes off the path forward, yet she sees this second Bishii perfectly. The one beside her now she so far likes and wishes to trust and yet, she wonders. And yet she knows better. A warning exists in the other Imperiess's words, delicate as honeyed poison or the brush of a butterfly's wing. It offers both the temptation to play the game alongside her as it does play against her.

(Why not a little of both?)

As the younger goddess brings up an ancient contention, one she has grasped and wrestled with on her own, she decides to entertain her for a little longer.

The great dragon clasps her hands behind her back, lifting her chin towards the cosmos that exist everywhere around them. Constellations the Everlasting has written twinkle, providing some illusion of guidance in the tragedies and inspiring hope from the comedies. "It matters not who is on the board so long as the Everlasting persists." Her answer is polished, well rehearsed and delivered believably enough, but Casmira is not so disappointing as to be truly sincere. The glint, the slightest crease at her eye reveals as much, reveals a hint of the visionary, the harbinger she seeks to become. "But are we not be everlasting as its servants? As its gods." Her fangs flash with her smile. "Perhaps new adversaries are what we need to remind us of our strength. Or who is strong, still, among us. The weak, those of us who have grown stale, ought to be culled from our ranks."

*** Elsewhere, in the Great Hall! ***​

The pure, the crone, laughs again, perhaps this time showing off that she can and does and delights in the feature of this body. "Oh, Theoren, you are too kind, but you know she has no interest in old things like me." Lysandra may not know Casmira as well as Theoren, but she knows the dragon enough to suspect her eyes will always be trained on the next golden age. That she will be ever determined to be the leader who brings them there, for a chance at the Allseer's praise, fooling herself into thinking the Allseer still has the capacity to care. "Or you. Ignore my warning if you wish, but change is coming and you have brought it here." Even if by the Allseer's order. Even if for the good of the Everlasting. Is it for the good of the Imperiessa? Lysandra tuts. She has her doubts. "The Allseer wishes to see you."

 

[be_l_l_e]

"A shame," Bishii sighs, as her priestesses murmur. Their voices disappear into the abyss before firm syllables can travel to distant ears; are their words for anyone's benefit, or do they utter them only for the sake of sounds? Bishii herself seems deaf to them; her choir a response but never a trigger, always lock-step with her own plotted rhythm. Is every dance a partnership? "But, then again - if eternities didn't end, our own paths would never have crossed. And it needn't be the end - your own exile has only made you stronger, I'm sure. More ready for this moment. Sharper, like an old blade whetted by the sands."

Is it a chuckle that follows?

"And who knows how wonderful our new sisters-to-come might be!"

***
Elsewhere, in the Great Hall
***​

"Little errandgirl," Theoren snarls, without much force, and marches off. As the halls twist and their doors open on ever newer realms within realms, the geometry of her path can say nothing of her destination; neither can her mood. But they both know, Theoren and Lysandra, where all paths lead.

Still, Theoren tests the boundaries. Eons etch patterns onto even diamond molds, and Theoren has wondered if she might know - somewhere beneath her mind, somewhere where words are shadows and laws are streams - the ways that destiny ebbs and flows between hills and holes. And there is that corrupt truth that lingers in every mind: she must be fallible.

Theoren tracks her way through an old cave. Salty waters drip from long, stony tongues:

drip.

drip.

drip.

The light of day emerges, and Theoren pauses in the mélange of shadows that fester at the cave's edge. She stares out over mud-strewn moors and gray skies, sees a distant gull perched on a crag, returning her gaze as she stares; the gull hungry, Theoren dull.

Theoren tries to imagine that gull's life but it is flickering; gulls, like priestesses, are transient, ephemeral, interchangeable. They are the same from one generation, one century, one millennia, to the next.

As are moments. Theoren retraces her steps and finds her legs have never moved. She imagines the walls of a cave and finds one wall; she places her hand there on the cave-face beside her, and through her gauntlet feels the coolness of a million miles of smooth, mist-dampened stone. Behind her drips one endless stalactite, echoed through an infinite mirror.

How many gulls have died, since Lysandra gave her warning? How many stalactites have dripped, since Theoren last stepped out on this world?

Casmira knows the passage of time, Theoren decides, just as she has begun to imagine that exile would not be so bad.

She steps into the light, and crosses a field, and when she reaches the hill - she rises.

The smell of blood still lingers in the cloud-darkened air, and a dying gull - wings mangled by a struggles with its brethren - croons lowly as death comes slow.

The priestess smooths mortar over a low wall. Her hands and face are flicked with grey paste, and in places it mats her orange robes. As Theoren approaches, she does not cease her work.

"Her bidding is done," Theoren pronounces.

"Glory to the Everlasting," says the priestess. She turns to lift a brick beside her; it moves with effortless grace, and Theoren traces the hints of muscles along the priestesses shoulders, built for the lifting of this weight.

"I destroyed this place," Theoren says, studying it. The bodies and black robes are gone, but she smells ash in the air. And there, in the rubble - a hint of black stone. "Now you rebuild it."

"It will be rebuilt," the priestess agrees. "Perhaps by me."

"You'll die here?"

And the priestess does not pause, even as she trades her trowel for a loose hand, but she does cast a glance towards her goddess, and Theoren ravages it like a hyena with a scrap of flesh.

"I'll forgive a presumption," she says, when there is nothing left to sate herself on.

Then the priestess does something strange.

"My name is -"

"Nihiliri."

"I am the one who travels two years across the moors and comes to the temple of the Butcher when it is no more; there I send the Butcher back to the hearth, and I plant new seeds to grow roots in blood and stone."

"And then to die."

Nihiliri shrugs off the addendum. "Like the rest."

And Theoren tries to remember a mind that would feel kinship with the bearer of that phrase.

Corruption?

But eventually Theoren finds a rock only half-shattered, and brings it where she can imagine a new wall. She works slow, her gauntlet mangling and crushing some of the few rocks she can hold. But slowly, something resembling the wall in her mind begins to form. And it will always form, always grow.

 

[starboob]

"New sisters." The dragon hums, staring far off into the starry skies as if history will reveal itself to her before it has been written. She tilts her head over this concept and turns to Bishii. "Perhaps we alone shall be enough. A distribution of power could very well be the problem." Not that Casmira would ever share power. Not that she believes the Imperiess beside will not stab her, smiling, if the opportunity presents itself; if it suits Bishii's own ambitions. She expects this. She craves this. (She misses this.)

Silence soon fills the space between them, though the procession of priestesses still murmur behind them, following their mother hen. Unlike with Theoren, this silence is not oppressive. Unlike her eons of isolation, this silence is not lonely. To walk comfortably alongside another is something of a novelty and the weakness that has sprouted during her exile yearns for it. She must crush it, else those like Bishii will be her poison. And she will, but for now... she relishes.

Perhaps the holy matron knows when to save her servants, for the stars split the pair before the former exile can learn to crave what Bishii offers and brings Casmira to the mouth of the Sacrosanct. It is small, today, and the ghostly blue that haunts the entrance is no larger than tip of her thumb. Haunting blue tendrils, like fingers, grasp for the hem of her billowing white robes, a demand without words. (It would be just like the Allseer to taunt her, to force the reminder of her place.)

It takes barely a flex of her power to make herself small, small enough to be no bigger than a particularly large house spider. While she holds her composure at the entrance, one step forward has winds running through her head. The winds reach down to her heart, battering it with each step she takes her closer to the incorrigible.

"Incorrigible?" The Allseer's approximation of a form is bug-like and half her body is made entirely of eyes of various shapes, sizes, and types. The alien of herself appears just around the bend of the many floating boulders within her sanctum. Casmira doesn't wish to see. The Allseer ensure she does, stinging her eyes with her monstrosity. "For my self-proclaimed paragon, I expected more." The Allseer titters, mimicking Bishii too perfectly to be coincidence. (She doubts the Allseer knows much about coincidence anymore.) Casmira stiffens. The Allseer attempts a smile, stretching her lips too wide, and continues on. "Well, that is untrue. I have no expectations for you. I already know who you are, Casmira."

"And I am here to serve."

"All the opportunists are." The creature, the holy matron, crawls over a boulder until she is at the top, looking down on Casmira. "And I have found a usefulness for you yet."

She holds her breath. Her blood cools. She exhales. "I thank you for finding my purpose. What is your bidding?"

"Ah! Eager as ever!" The Allseer claps her many hands together, wet slaps echoing through the chasm. "We must wait for Theoren. She will arrive as she is meant to. She knows this. Surely, you no longer mind waiting." Another inhuman smile and the Allseer turns. "Demertu may be around here, if you wish for company."

 

[be_l_l_e]

But Demertu is not around. She has found Theoren; Theoren has found her; they have found each other.

Eons have aged away on a distant world, but if Demertu has noticed - surely? - her mind draws her tongue elsewhere.

"Do you see it, Theoren?"

Theoren studies the Imperiess. She studies the walls of this corridor in which they've crammed themselves, Demertu travelling who knows where; Theoren's destination clear. Both are flat, and pallid. Theoren realizes that Demertu looks aged. Has she always looked so? Is this change intentional?

She can't be sure it's not her own disinterest that has veiled the eldest Imperiess' true form for so long. Old.

But even now, she strikes her the same as before: like a younger sibling, annoyingly taller and smarter than you.

Theoren pictures herself reaching out across this cramped corridor, pushing herself off the wall to jolt towards her target with a ferocity it can't outmatch. She could wrap her gauntlets around that neck, and twist or squeeze or rip, and she could be free of this feeling forever.

But Demertu doesn't strike her as scared, even as Theoren lingers on her silence, even as she traces the path of Theoren's eyes across the space between them and finds where they have fallen: below her chin, above her breast. The Imperiess doesn't still herself for sudden action, doesn't try to draw Theoren's attention elsewhere. What's her plan? What's her escape? Does she know something I've missed - is what she's seen an out? Or does it only dwarf this moment?

Theoren doesn't kill her. She doesn't allow herself to recognize why.

Instead, she shakes her head.

Demertu nods, and glances askance. "Sometimes I think too much."

Theoren tilts her head, approximating half a nod. But Demertu's eyes catch hers, and say the rest: Sometimes you think too little.

"Glory to the Everlasting," Demertu says, and Theoren holds the words strangely in her mind, struggling to fit them into a familiar hole, long after the other Imperiess has slinked away into long shadows.

***
​

The Allseer demands nothing of Theoren's entry, except at the last moment - long after the spindly whispers and glazed eyes of her form have beckoned Theoren into the depths of the hall - the Imperiess rounds a corner and finds herself abreast of Casmira.

The two of them, side-by-side. This is new. And old.

 

[starboob]

What is she to do other than stand and wait. Certainly the option to pace exists, but she has spent her centuries pacing, carving out canyons with imprints and turning beige sands red with her blistered feet. And now she waits, still with shoulders squared, staring straight across the Sacrosanct. Unblinking. Like a statue. As if her grand purpose is to stand. Is to wait.

If this is what the Allseer wishes then so be it. It’s the last laugh that matters.

And there is no pretending that the Allseer cannot know the truth, the one truth, rooted so deeply in Casmira’s heart that the bloody muscle would have to be ripped from her to be rid of it. If she were to make sense of this moment, she would decide that allowing her to simmer while she waits for Theoren, of all the goddesses, is only a way to ripen her potential. Yes, that is what this is.

And that is why it is a saving grace that it is not Demertu who wallows here, for she would bore the truth right from Casmira’s heart and soul with some inane quandary over the strengths of elephants and ants or trolleys or whatever it is only her dull mind would bother to think. She would rather have larvae feast on her own brain while she lives and breathes than discover the endless length of the philosopher's tongue.

Instead, in the quiet of her thoughts, in the quiet of the Sacrosanct, she dares to imagine, like a challenge. Like the first step in a dance, to see how the other side responds. So she imagines. Poises herself as the Allseer. Creates an Everlasting without need for pesky Imperiessa and their egos. (Too many that burn like supergiants anyway.) In this vision, she uses Theoren’s spins as a whip and Keiro kneecaps as shoulder plates. Bishii’s rib cage will become her chest plate. She will break this empire and rebuild it anew. She will kill the past.

The Allseer does nothing. Nothing perceptible, at least. But eons before, she had done nothing until she did. Casmira knows better than to take this silence to mean anything. It could be everything. This does not stop her from spinning more fantasies in her head. Exile has done little to change her.

Perhaps she is left waiting for another century before Theoren arrives, but centuries pass like seconds now that she has felt the weight of myriads. “Lovely for you to show,” is all she says in greeting, then tilts her chin up, “Allseer!”

She was fortunate upon entrance that the Allseer had been waiting for her. She knows such fortune will not come twice. Shouting will bring that monstress back. It always does.

No seen form of the Allseer arrives this time. Her arrival is only known by the sudden heaviness in the air. (It’s only then that Casmira holds her breath, her talons just barely biting into her palms.) It's not enough to bring the Imperiessa to their knees, though the possibility is there on the backs of their necks. Unseen ice hands squeeze with the affection of a threat.

“My two faithful.” The words are not so much heard as they are simply known, like forgotten memories. “Side by side, just as it was and as it will be.”

Something in Casmira’s stomach churns.

“The Everlasting calls you both to service to change the tide of war.” Clouds part in their minds, showing a young beauty. A babe. A howling little whelp. (This is beneath them. This is an insult.) “Do you recognize her, Casmira?”

Her brow pinches together. “The emperor's daughter.” The answer comes to her easily, though she is not certain she knew it before. “If she lives, she will restore the faith of the Everlasting in this dominion. She will destroy their false idols.”

“Protect her. Ensure her father’s victory." The Allseer tuts. "Resist the urge to scorch the realm this time.”

 

[be_l_l_e]

Theoren sees that face as both a memory and a premise, but it is the same face.

Is it? Or is that a different speck of dirt, a different blot upon the line of her chin?

Or is it in the eyes that the recollection is lost, eyes that have been hooked by another line and towed in with a different catch?

Differences aplenty - but now she tries to find something to re-anchor the memory. Something to affix herself to her own past.

And she studies the eyes, again. There is something constant between the old eyes and the new. A blindness, a calm before the storm. It is a look Theoren only sees in premonitions; when those eyes affix upon her in memory, the blind have been made to see, and the storm has raged.

Theoren does not remember leaving the Sacrosanct, but she finds herself beyond its confines, returned - again - to the halls of the everlasting.

The Imperiessa are easy to pick from the priestesses, but in this moment there is one who is neither.

There, beside the towering statue of Corrin, the Tyrant, stands golden Gilgala, nearly a statue herself, but with timeless auburn skin cast in the floating hues of almond pastes and chestnut groves. Golden hair flows over golden armour, the curve of her breastplates glinting with the sheen of desert light. Behind her shimmers a gilded imperial half-cape, and at her hip a priceless hilt promises a righteous and holy blade within the scabbard that trails behind her thigh.

And beside her is a monstrous thing - human, but with the height to rival Gilgala's shoulder, and muscles that threaten to burst from strain-paled skin. She has the face of a mountain creature, but her eyes are stony blue, and when they turn between grey Corrin and golden Gilgala, there is room for something more than wonder, fear, and awe.

Blaspheme.

"And this is all that remains of her," the more-than-human says. The reverence of a lifetime still trapped by memory lilts in her voice.

Gilgala shrugs. "And her living corpse, on some distant moon."

"Where you vanquished her."

Gilgala nods once, with the humility of an eternity behind her.

"Let's visit her, Gilgala."

Theoren squints at the insolence.

Gilgala approximates a laugh - three deep, regal sounds - and her arm settles around a shoulder of the other. "Perhaps you will be fortunate, Abani," she says, as her eyes settle upon Theoren and her lips unfurl into a distant smile. "I hear the dead are... not so dead, of late."

Abani's stone-blue eyes follow Gilgala's silent, forceless guidance, and fall upon the Imperiessa.

"The Butcher," she says in hushes, but her eyes flutter to Gilgala as she takes in the other. "And...?"

 

[starboob]

"This is a waste." Casmira addresses the air in front of her and speaks loud enough for the audience who happens to be around her. The muscles in her jaw tighten, refusing to meet the eye of the Imperiess and her pet abomination.

This is a distraction. This is not their purpose.

If Gilgala wishes to flirt with dead things, if she wishes to fuck dead things, is it on Casmira to stop her? Is it on Casmira to care? No. It is her purpose to go after this little infant. And here Gilgala is, on her pedestal, standing between their path.

Whatever title Gilgala has or had—Casmira cannot bother herself to remember the details of the inane—she will always stand out as cheap. (Or is this only because she is bitter she once played her villain and knows the taste of that blade down her throat?) A golden idol, worthless.

Casmira takes a step forward. Or she starts, then stops, her coal colored eyes turning to embers at the slight. Brat.

She hides her sneer in a smile, letting it slip into her tone instead. "Do you wish to be reconstructed from cinder, Gilgala? It may do you some good. Perhaps, this time, the priestesses can create a more amusing coward." Her smile has too many sharpened teeth to it and they grow, become sharper, as the threat stretches back to her ears, as inhuman as the not-human, as the Imperiess, as the Allseer herself. Her pointed ears twitch. "I tire of your fool's gold."

Her eyes flicker over to the abomination, Abani, grazing over her with the razor edge of scrutiny. History comes to her slowly, sussing it from her gangly sinew of limbs. Awkward in her not-quite-human, not-quite-anything posturing. Her smile drops. "You." She pulls her reformed scimitar from its scabbard on her hip. "End your misery." She presses the tip of her blade to Abani's stomach, enough that an inch sinks in. "Worthless revenant."

 

[be_l_l_e]

Gilgala's response is a flourish - it bursts from the scabbard with aplomb, just slowly enough to give the light time to glint across the blade, each inch in turn. The sword swings through the air, an unmistakeable twirl - precious milliseconds wasted, golden strands of hair suspended in slow orbit with the sudden jolt of movement - and then it all settles; the body goes still - just as Gilgala's flourish swipes Casmira's scimitar down and away. She pauses, posed, and lets a grin dance beneath her cheeks.

Abani - separated from Casmira by Gilgala's presence - wipes a pale hand across her wound, pushing blood from the pierced muscles. The hand drifts up, bloody fingers finding her mouth. She almost hesitates, as if she wants to savour the memory of blood for just a moment longer - and then she smears her bloody fist across her lips. Once the taste is breached, she laps quickly at the rest, a smile growing. "Oh, Gilgala... so long... let me..." she says, struggling. "Let me -" she repeats, reaching for Gilgala's arm, reaching around her, reaching towards Casmira, towards the blade -

But Gilgala draws one hand from her hilt for a moment, and stills Abani with a touch to her grasping fingers.

Her eyes never stray from Casmira.

"Casmira," she drawls, "Once, The Whisper on dying tongues. Did you ever meet the poet Shashutra? She wrote a wonderful play for you. I've forgotten most of it, but I'm sure it had a wonderful ending - she excels with finishes."

Theoren has grown bored, and the path beckons her. She heaves a shrug, feels it shake. "We have business, Gilgala."

"Oh?" Gilgala says, as if she had forgotten Theoren was there. She slides a long glance between the two Imperiessa, but finally she withdraws her sword, resheathes the blade. "Sure. As do we. But let's finish this another time, yes?"

 

[starboob]

It is rare that Casmira finds relief in Theoren's presence. (This is not entirely true. It is only recently true.) But when the Butcher keeps her out of another fight, she does not protest. She only waits until Gilgala's blade is back hanging on her hip before she does the same, stepping back and flipping her own into its scabbard. All she says as they part from the other Imperiess is, "The pleasure will be mine."

Then they are back on the Allseer's predestined path.

Perhaps it is urgency, perhaps it is not worth wondering about, but they need only pass through the single timeslip. They arrive among darkened, angry clouds. Bright white light jumps and pulses through them, followed by reverberating claps of thunder.

Just over the edge of one cloud, far below them, is a great city under siege, surrounded by an army that outnumbers the city's population five to one. Yet its walls are unyielding. Even with the surrounding fields burned, establishments razed, those behind the walls seem unbothered. Colorful houses defy the apparent war, seeming to mock those who are outside the walls. They are so tightly clustered together that the streets barely even seem like veins of the city. High up, within the inner rings, a palace sits on the hill; though as far as palaces go, Casmira finds this one plain, lacking in originality.

It is a wonder whether they are even needed. Yruson seems to fare on its own. Though as she listens to the bustle below, ears twitching to attune themselves to the individuals within, mothers and fathers beg with ration supplies for more grain. More flour. More bland nothing. Yruson's legendary stores are running low. They have months, if that.

This is rather boring. The air hardly smells of blood. It is fetid and she'd wager poor hygiene has done more to devastate this city than the siege itself. 'Why are we saving these animals?'

Right. To bring them into the Everlasting's fold. She rolls her eyes.

Truthfully, this seems an assignment better suited for an Imperiess like Gilgala. Not that herself and Theoren are incapable of changing the tide of a war. Even a fledging Imperiess could accomplish this task. War is easy, at least the way mortals do it. It reeks of insult. (What has Theoren done to earn it?) "Do you—"

Abruptly, her eyes narrow to fine slits, zeroing in on the palace.

It takes the out of practice Imperiess longer than she will ever admit to notice that the air of this dominion is stilted. Off. Too thick or not thin enough, Casmira does not know, but despite it being all she saw in the Allseer's vision, the notches along her spine prickle. "Yruson is ruled by an emperor."

An empress sits on the throne instead.

 

[be_l_l_e]

Theoren has known Yruson, but she has known a thousand sallowed streets, and has watched a thousand of them fall a thousand times. When she looks down, she sees not bricks but dust - the dust she herself has wrought from each of those stones, a thousand times before.

She remembers a different stone, fresher, firmer - and it still lies straight in the base of its wall, on a world whose grey skies wallow in the murk of gulls, while the black stormclouds over Yruson pelt city and Imperiessa alike in thick globlets of rain. The water pools at the seams where flesh merges with metal, and Theoren's armour glistens in the flashes of lightning.

She kicks at the clifftop, sends a shower of rocks spiraling down below, while beside her, Casmira seems to bask in the revelation of a fresh, new world. Theoren lets her preen.

"Yruson is ruled by an emperor."

Theoren shrugs, but the tone - and the fact that Casmira would waste her words on a fact so self-evident - catch her for a moment. She turns her head, affording Casmira's confusion just a smidge of an investment in her own time and effort. Casmira doesn't bother to meet her eyes, instead staring - peering - into the heart of the city below.

"A problem?"

 

[starboob]

Casmira does not immediately answer Theoren, foreign doubt creeping over her bones, reminding her that she is out of practice. Blasphemous thoughts reminding her she is not the Imperiess she once was.

Because she is better than that fool, another voice bellows from the pit of her pride.

She lifts her chin to the blue skies and inhales the burnt air, taking in histories through the whispers of the winds, the messages and secrets passed through the trees and turned over oceans. (Perhaps this piece of the Everlasting does not ascribe to gendered language?) But her first instinct had been correct. She is a paragon, of course it was.

Certain of herself, scales lap over her arms, down her legs, and over her torso. "Quite so." It's sloppily done work, whoever has tampered with this realm. Like tearing out a page of a book and haphazardly gluing in a completely wrong end. The sharp point of her talon traces plumes of smoke that rise without dissipating, going up then down in a ceaseless pattern. "This realm is a trick."

Chills prickle along her spine. Who or what has the audacity to interrupt the will of the Allseer? (And are they Casmira's allies or foes...?) "Do you feel it now, goddess?"

 

[be_l_l_e]

Theoren raises an eyebrow at her old, mad friend.

"A trick?"

Theoren reads Casmira's expressions like the flicker of a candle through a glass pane, even as her face transforms from almost-human tones to a creature of draconic fury. But she sees no uncertainty, no hesitation - not even that which had lingered in her voice a moment before.

She isn't sure if it's stupidity or overconfidence. She isn't sure why she cares.

Paranoid. She hadn't imagined it would blossom so soon: the madness of a goddess scorned. Betrayed once, undone once, now Casmira can only see opportunities to be betrayed again.

It's a pathetic, broken image in front of her - someone so lost in a desperate pursuit of change and novelty, that she would forget an eon of certainty before.

This world hasn't changed, Casmira, she thinks. You have.

"This is the will of the Everlasting," Theoren reminds Casmira, but her voice comes out more as a chide than she had intended, and she fears her implication is lost.

 

[starboob]

"You are an old dog."

Casmira rolls her eyes at the same moment wings sprout from her back with a wet rip. Flecks of flesh explode from her shoulder blades, some hitting Theoren, most falling through the clouds they use as a platform. All of it turns to ash and blows away with the wind. If she cannot see what is right under their noses, cannot differentiate between what the Allseer showed them and what is staring right in front of them, then the Everlasting is truly damned and Theoren is its dull blade.

So be it. Then let Casmira be the whetstone.

It is sad, she supposes, to see her old rival succumb to the bitter fate of irrelevance. And when she recognizes her pity, she releases it, reminding herself that she does not care for the goddess anymore than she cares for the worms turning over mulch. If Theoren is so rotted, she is no longer worthy of the care once afforded to a rival.

The next time she speaks, her lips do not move. Instead, the words come out from her chest, crisp and clear. "Worse, you risk becoming a rat bound to its maze."

She does not stay for Theoren's rebuttal. She has no time for worthless tools. She dives towards this hollow city full of its imitation people. Though tempted, she bates her flames, remembering the Allseer's warning. Even if she is convinced of her truth—the truth, she must show her diligence if the Allseer is to trust her again and send her on assignments without useless babysitters (Theoren).

Once she's close enough to the castle, she spirits herself inside, landing with her knee bent in front of the empress on her gilded throne. The empress is a statue, her eyes hollow; vacant. When Casmira stands, easily meeting her eye line, her head twitches, jerking as it meets the goddess's gaze. (None of this convinces her that this is the will of the Everlasting.) Her smile stretches back too far. "Goddess," she dips her chin. "To what does Yruson owe this pleasure?"

"The siege. I come to help, to protect your daughter."

The empress is silent. Her head tilts (a quarter inch too far; it's more like a neck snapping). "The. Siege." She speaks with the effect that she is testing the flavor of the words, deciding whether or not she likes them. She blinks, shifts, then pulls her lips into a smile. "Oh, that. My son shall quash them. I sent him with the bull. I had hoped, goddess, that you might be here instead—"

"Your son?" Her eyes narrow, cutting into the approximation of a woman. Her pointed ears twitch, picking up on the near imperceptible hum of machinery hidden within the throne. (Machinery three hundred years too advanced for Yruson.) "What of your daughter?"

The empress throws back her head, cackling like lightning. "The daughter of Yruson does not exist. Unless you count mysel—"

The android's mechanical head lobs over to the side, bouncing down the steps. Casmira's spins her blade back into its scabbard, ready to return to Theoren. The, 'I told you so,' is ready on her lips until the whole realm shakes. "Oh shit."

***​

Meanwhile, in the clouds, the clouds that once supported the great Butcher, glitch. From soft pillowy fluffs to hardened steel cables. They writhe and worm beneath her heavy feet, unbothered by her weight. They wind around the Imperiess's feet, crawling up to her ankles, tightening around them like they might try to crush her armor skin.

 

[be_l_l_e]

Theoren is wiping the glob of ichorous flesh from her cheek, dark blood smearing and melding into dark skin, when she feels the shifting of the clouds beneath her. Too quickly - too soon - great cables unfurl and grab her by the ankles. She tries to stomp them out, but they are tricky. Fast. Before she has gained a new footing, they have her firmly by the thighs, jutting plates of armour forming purchases for the machining tendrils. The tip of one appendage has already reached her wrist, but she yanks it away soon enough to keep herself free - just barely.

And then her sword is in action, slicing. The air screeches with the shear of metal on metal, though it is unclear, for a moment, which is giving way to which.

After a second, her sword is free. It has glanced across the surface of the chord around her right leg, leaving a scoring mark on the metal. But the machine has pulled away, positioned itself to survive the blow with only a friction-burn on its outer plating. She heaves again, this time leveraging her sword into the base of the chord near her feet, trying to pull herself free. She needs to free herself soon, before the chords can restrict her movement entirely. That is clearly their goal.

One, two - she throws herself forward. The chords stretch, but don't gasp under the tension, holding firm, pulling her back into place. With her free hand, she reaches down, and tears at the plating. It gives way to a mass of smaller chords within, dozens of tendrils building up the strength of the whole machine. These spark at the touch of her blade, but each one sheared winds itself around another end, reforming as quickly as she can separate them.

So far, she has been trying to preserve her own legs, wrapped beneath the mass. Now she reconsiders.

Slash!

The blade cleaves the chords cleanly, and then strikes her own armour. Here it should stop - the sharpness of her blade is no match for the firmness of her armour, for its gentle curve tailored to diffuse the power of a blow and bounce the assailant's weapon harmlessly away. But the metal of her outer skin is stressed and cracked under the pressure of the chords, and it shatters at the blow. Flesh spurts and parts beneath; bone melts like fat on a carcass. The chords strangle themselves trying to rebind, some of them sloughing off her upper thigh in desperate grasps for lost connections. Now she has momentum, and purchase of her own; she heaves with the blade as fulcrum, ripping up some chords at the base of her other foot. Almost free.

The chords re-wrap as quickly as before, now around the tip of her blade. They don't gather long, and when she swipes the blade up and away, only a few chords dangle briefly from the point before limply tossing themselves back into the morass. With a moment free, she jumps - open air embraces her - and the chords fight gravity as they chase her down the column to the ground below.

Finally, she thinks. A challenge.

It has been a long time, but she remembers weapons like this, creatures who reach and tear and engulf. She only needs to know what land, what thing, is not machine. Where she can find firm purchase, leverage -

Chords entangle her by the shoulders. She swipes broadly in an arc behind her, severing them - but there are more chords waiting for her blade, and for her wrist. She twists, and kicks out, and for a second she is free again, before the chords grasp her by the ankles too. She dangles there, still falling, like a marionette. She stretches out, but the chords are too loose now, and can't be brought to any tension. They're like wraps of seaweed, and within them she still has total movement, total control - except that she cannot rid herself of their grip. Every moment, new chords sprout, or rush up out of the abyss to grip her again. Finally, but perhaps too late, she throws herself into a spin, the chords on each of her limbs entangling themselves around each other, building tension by friction, one against another. But soon the chords merge, one giant limb, grasping her by every makeshift handle her body can offer up.

And still she falls.

​