Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Wake up,” Agate said.

Mokou woke into half-awareness that turned over into bleary self-accounting. Her body ached with bruises from travel and combat. She was still tired. Her neck was stiff from falling asleep on Agate’s shoulder. At least she wasn’t cold — pressed against Agate’s back, the warmth of their bodies and their insulated garb had warded the night’s chill. She braced her hands against Agate’s hips and pushed herself upright with a groan.

There was a city around them. Instinctual awareness filtered up through her bodily accounting. The urban soundscape unfolded around her in textures of muted conversations, footfalls, distant sizzling.

The scent of Agate’s fur gave way to the scents of the city. Fresh construction and fresher cuisine. She blinked her eyes open. The stars above were dim, their glow diminished by artificial lighting. The lights came from tall buildings flanking them and a monumental edifice several blocks away. Agate had stopped on the side of a boulevard beneath the open sky.

Lampposts lined the boulevard, though most were dark, their lanterns shattered. Swept glass heaped in piles along the street at regular intervals, tended to by workers in uniform. Something like uniform, at least — each was personalized to some degree. Small groups of others made their ways along the boulevard and down its tributaries — grocers, couriers, pilgrims, refugees. Not as many as the streets could hold, but still more than Mokou expected given the hour of night. She was surprised Agate hadn’t woken her sooner and dumped her off in the outskirts.

“You can walk?” asked Agate. It was just barely a question and not a demand. This, too, was a surprise.

“Should be good, yeah,” Mokou replied. “Thanks again.”

Agate lowered herself to help Mokou dismount. Mokou slid off with a groan. There was hardly a part of her lower body that didn’t protest at the motion. Her shins throbbed, her thighs ached, her hips were a mess, and on top of it all she was saddlesore. Or, she was as close to saddlesore as she could get without a saddle. She couldn’t remember the last time she had ridden bareback. She held herself upright with a hand on Agate’s flank and shook out her legs stiffly.

“You are certain?” asked Agate, looking coolly back at her. “Do try to muster the dignity to enter the Heptagon under your own power.”

Mokou snorted. “You can’t get hung up on dignity when you’re immortal. I’m good.”

Agate raised her eyebrows, but did not directly comment. She turned forward and gestured towards the largest structure ahead of them, standing at the end of the boulevard. “The entrance to the undercity is within. I have a workspace in the upper Chrome Ward.”

Mokou lifted her hand from Agate’s side. It certainly sounded like another invitation. Agate had interesting ideas about treating her better. Beneath the ache of her hips was a deeper, rekindled hunger. It had smoldered in her through decades of deadened desires. The hasty, rough kisses in the canyon had only been enough to pierce the accumulated layers left by those decades. It wasn’t enough to sate that burning hunger, much as she’d tried. Only enough to give it a path back to air and fuel.

It was almost embarrassing, but then, you needed dignity to be embarrassed. It wasn’t dignity whose absence she most keenly and soberly felt — it was touch, pleasure. It had been far too long. More than embarrassing, it was frustrating. The logistics — emotional and ergonomic — seemed complicated. Did it have to be her?

“Lead on,” said Mokou. Frustration was still something to feel. She’d have to see if it was enough to keep her from slipping back into another dead decade.

Agate led on, hooves clicking on the stone street. Mokou fell in behind her. Snatches of ghostly movement flickered in her periphery, skulking in the shadows between buildings. The urban environs apparently hadn’t dissuaded Tabi from following along.

The buildings they passed were mostly stone, with facades of wood and painted stucco. These facades had suffered in the storm, but a few were already freshly patched. Their heights varied between one and three stories, and the stories themselves followed no fixed rubric from one building to the next. The ground floors seemed largely given over to commercial or culinary purposes. Most were dark at this hour, but a few showed signs of light and life.

Bursts of laughter and conversation rose from a walled plaza. Scents of frying food and spices wafted from doorways. Mokou’s stomach growled. She considered asking Agate to stop for another meal. Something in the hindren’s silent demeanor stilled her tongue. There was no telling how Agate would react to the chefs in this city.

The edifice they approached loomed higher than the canyon walls, crowned in light and clad in chrome and concrete. Somewhere between a fortress and a dam. The boulevard rose beneath them and fed into a grand archway at the base of the monolithic structure.

They passed through the archway. The grand structure’s interior was well-lit, opening into an enclosed entrance plaza. Booths and shops ringed the plaza. The crowds, such as they were, were as varied in composition as those of the Stilt, while being livelier, cleaner, and better-fed. Certainly, the crowds lacked the holy city’s heat-addled undercurrent of religious fervor, but then, so too did they lack the songs. Small gaggles of folk went here and there; they crossed the polished stone floor, queued at the few late-night shops, and circled around the dry fountain in the plaza’s center.

Before the fountain stood a welcoming party, dressed the most distinctly of any group in the plaza at this hour. On the left was a blindfolded woman in a hooded crimson shawl atop layered robes hemmed in gold thread. Her skin was tan, her expression faintly bemused. She stood with a still poise, head slightly bowed. On the right was a dark-skinned woman with angular, graceful features. Her emerald hair matched the hue of her asymmetrical chef’s coat. Her right arm was entirely chrome. She looked up in animated conversation to the central member of the group.

The third figure was nearly twice the size of the other two, standing taller than the geometric centerpiece of the fountain behind her. She looked almost more beast than woman. Thick horns linked with decorative chainwork rose from her brow. Her tawny-furred face was graced with a bestial muzzle and framed in a luxurious white mane. The rest of her body was concealed by a massive cloak cascading from shoulder to ankle in tassels of gold. A sharp pair of black leather boots were visible beneath its hem.

Her piercing, slitted gaze lifted from her companion to take in Mokou and Agate’s arrival across the plaza. She broke off her conversation. Her snout split into a wide, fanged grin. She started to cross the intervening distance with a decisive stride. Her companions followed at the paces they could manage.

Agate shifted her pace to position herself a touch more directly in front of Mokou. It was difficult to tell where the hindren’s attention rested, not least because Mokou wasn’t particularly focused on that. Mokou’s attention was locked on the massive chimera approaching them. Between strides, her cloak parted to reveal glimpses of her garb beneath — a ruffled dress shirt of red silk embroidered in gold thread, and a pair of voluminous black trousers tucked into the tops of her boots.

“She’s got pants,” Mokou muttered softly. Expensive pants.

“What?” Agate replied in hushed tones, swiveling an ear back towards Mokou before returning it forward. “Yes.”

“Agate Severance Star!” called the immaculately-tailored chimera, fifteen paces away and still approaching. Her voice was deep, rich, commanding.

“Baroness,” Agate nodded in reply. She closed the remaining distance and extended her hand in greeting.

The Baroness knelt. The chitinous gleam of a scorpion’s tail rose in counterpoint behind her. Two massive claws parted her golden cloak, clad in a pair of red and black gloves split in their coloration along the digits. She cupped Agate’s offered hand and turned it to kiss its back. “Welcome back.”

“A pleasure, as always,” said Agate. She tapped the side of the Baroness’s claw and stepped past her. “You’ll excuse me — Ki!”

“I have already turned off my bioscanner, chef,” the emerald-haired woman called back.

“Clactobelle passed on your warning,” said the blindfolded woman. The two of them had nearly caught up to the Baroness.

The chimera stood with a rustle of golden tassels. She turned her full regard to Mokou. Her sharp grin returned. “And you, unless I miss my guess, must be Fujiwara no Mokou. Baroness Farouun, at your service.”

She extended a claw down in greeting. It was bigger than Mokou’s head. Her presence, this close, was humbling. Mokou found herself again conscious of the state the last few days of hard travel had left her in: sweat-soaked, dirt-scuffed, unkempt, sore.

“That’s me,” said Mokou. She returned the handshake with a loose clasp around the basal joints of two of the Baroness’s clawed digits. “Big one, aren’t you?”

Big one? She could tack “aimlessly horny” onto the end of that self-conscious assessment. How long had it been?

“That I am, Ms. Fujiwara.” Farouun laughed softly. She clasped her other claw over Mokou’s hand and shook. Despite how her claws dwarfed Mokou’s hand, it was a surprisingly delicate shake — almost effete. As though she was restraining herself with an overly cautious lower estimate of the amount of strength it would take to break Mokou.

“Just Mokou is fine,” said Mokou. She put a little more force into her shake. The Baroness reciprocated. It still felt restrained.

“Then, Mokou, allow me to welcome you to Kitchen Heptagon. Per our custom, you may drink of our freshwater and quench your thirst. Food, lodging, knowledge, shade — our every amenity is available to you.” She released Mokou’s hand. The other two women took up position on either side of her as the Baroness stepped back into a bow.  “We hope it is to your taste.”

It was almost too much. All this pomp pointed at her felt entirely misdirected. These people didn’t know her. What part of her nature or being warranted this flattery?

“You treat everyone like this?” asked Mokou. Not that it wasn’t nice. She tried not to let her cynical doubts cloud her voice or her face. She didn’t particularly know how successful she was at it.

“The Heptagon’s amenities are for all who come to us with open hearts and empty stomachs,” Farouun replied. Her claws parted her cloak once more into a gesture of expansive admission. “But as for personal greetings, well… I make time when I can.”

“She has a busy schedule,” said the blindfolded woman in red, somewhat apologetically. Her voice was smooth, with a practiced diction. “But not so busy to pass up a former Challenger returning with such an interesting guest.”

The Baroness grinned and her voice rumbled out warmly. “Allow me to introduce Seeker E’Beth, our master of ceremonies, and Bajiko Ki, the Carbide Chef Ekuemekiyye.”

E’Beth, the blindfolded one, extended her hand to Mokou. She was a powerful esper, by Agate’s description. “A pleasure, Mokou.”

“Nice to meet you,” Mokou replied, returning the handshake. Sure enough, it was an esper’s touch — hardly any meat to it. E’Beth’s smile faded slightly. Mokou cursed internally, released her grasp, and started thinking about her forms again.

“Fascinating,” said Bajiko Ki, looking Mokou over with a calculating gaze. “The other Carbide Chefs will be dying to meet you, I’m certain.” Her voice held traces of an accent — Ekuemekiyyen, presumably. It gave her words a deliberate air. She held out her chrome arm for her own greeting.

“Well, I know a farmer girl up north who’d be dying for your autograph,” Mokou chuckled. The Carbide Chef’s bionic grasp was cool, precise, and openly strong. It was, finally, a satisfying handshake. “Assuming they made it, at least. They were pretty isolated.”

“To the northwest, in the border canyons, yes? I can pass along their location to our caravans.” said E’Beth.

“Thanks,” said Mokou, appreciation edging out her unease. The esper was quick at piecing together geography from snatches of memory. Perhaps Agate was thinking more precisely about their route over the last week.

“Were you able to investigate the extent of the storm’s damages to the surrounding countryside?” Agate asked Bajiko.

“Only cursory as of yet,” Bajiko replied. “The bulk of our labor has gone towards our own repairs. You’ve most likely a better grasp of it than we.”

Farouun nodded in sympathy. “The harshness of your travels is writ clear on your bodies. Fortunate that you have arrived safely.”

Mokou shared a brief, neutral glance with Agate. They had done more damage directly to each other than the trail had. With an esper in the room it could hardly be a secret for long. Hopefully that esper had tact.

Agate cleared her throat softly. “The road was long and sharp. I will give a report tomorrow.”

“It was bad,” Mokou nodded.

“Of course,” the Baroness rumbled. “Let us not keep you from your rest. E’Beth, would you see them to lodging?”

“My pleasure,” said the esper. “You must have questions, Mokou. Ask as you like.”

Agate began to turn away, towards the interior plaza’s southern exit.

“Yeah, actually, hold on,” said Mokou. Agate stopped and let out a slow breath and a flicking of her ear. Mokou pressed on with her question. “You said I could drink your freshwater here — even with water rationing?”

“Absolutely!” It was the Baroness who answered. Another fang-bedecked grin split her furred muzzle. “It’s municipal.”

Bajiko Ki indicated over her shoulder at the dry fountain in the plaza’s heart. “At our current level of rationing, we have disabled our surplus circulators — the water features — and temporarily reduced the ward budgets for manufacturing and sanitation. Personal allowances are unaffected.”

“Personal allowances?” asked Mokou. “Water is money, right? You just… give it away? To anyone who shows up, anyone who lives here?”

E’Beth nodded and smiled. “It’s municipal, after all.”

Mokou raised her eyebrows and let out a half-whistling breath. It sounded like what she always told herself she’d do if she ended up with more wealth than she knew what to do with. It sounded too good to be true.

“Rest well, the both of you,” said Farouun. She bowed deeply, turned, and strode off purposefully. Her scorpion tail swayed behind her.

Bajiko Ki smiled and gave a curt nod. “We’ll be in touch. Let us arrange lessons soon.”

With that, she set off after the Baroness.

“Nice to meet you,” Mokou called. She turned back to Agate and E’Beth and adjusted her pack’s straps. “Agate, you’ve got a place here?”

“Chrome Ward,” Agate sighed. “You are capable of asking questions and walking at the same time. Shall we?”

Chapter Text

The interior boulevards traced the Heptagon’s circumference. Lounges, shops, and pantries lined the outer curves. Sloped hallways rose from their inner curves, opening into glimpses of stands. It was surely the arena, but it didn’t feel exclusively like one. It was a structure devoted to many purposes, well-lit and well-traveled.

Again Mokou found herself following behind Agate. E’Beth, the esper, walked at Mokou’s side. They were heading lower. Mokou was too tired to focus on sightseeing, conversation, and maintaining her mental barrier of martial arts at the same time. She let her barrier slacken for the sake of her remaining focus.

“How old is this place?” she asked.

“The Baroness and her Chefs founded Kitchen Heptagon nearly seven years ago,” E’Beth answered.

“Makes sense,” Mokou nodded. She drew in a deep breath as she walked. It brought the scent of meat, woodsmoke, herbs, and marble. Surprisingly clean, overall. “Still got that new city smell.”

“I suppose you would know.” E’Beth chuckled softly.

Beneath these scents, moisture crept into the air. Its presence strengthened the deeper the boulevard dipped beneath the level of the earth. They reached a broad T-intersection. To the south, ahead of them, the boulevard rose again as it continued its arena circuit. To the east, connecting perpendicularly to the boulevard, a terraced thoroughfare descended further and steeper into the earth. Wide steps between courtyard-sized landings ran down the center of the thoroughfare. The steps were flanked on both sides by a series of switch-backing ramps connecting to the landings. Agate turned onto this thoroughfare and led them down the stairs.

“Pardon my curiosity,” E’Beth said, “I can certainly believe it from the weight of your psyche. But to look at you, I certainly wouldn’t have thought you were from a time before the Eaters. How is it possible?”

Agate glanced back over her shoulder at Mokou. Her gaze was cool and unreadable, but her intent was clear enough. Keep it a secret. Don’t overthink it.

“I’m immortal,” Mokou sighed. “Wait, though. How did you see me through the blindfold?”

“Ah,” E’Beth blushed slightly. “I share in the Baroness’s vision.”

Mokou mulled on the implications of that casual admission for a moment. She could only guess at the level of psionic power it required to borrow another’s senses. Not only that, but the composure necessary from both of them not to let it show. That required an intense amount of trust. Perhaps she’d have to update her rubric for what it meant to be one of those baronies.

The esper continued. “Immortal?”

“I have verified this to the extent that it is within my power,” spoke Agate, her tone carefully neutral.

“How is it expressed?” asked E’Beth.

Mokou looked up at the shadows of the arched ceiling overhead. She let out a breath. “Rather not get into it for the moment, if it’s all the same.” That much was true, at least.

“Of course,” E’Beth said, graciously. She fell silent. They continued their descent.

Was it really that simple? Did this esper actually have tact?

They reached the bottom of the thoroughfare. It opened into a tremendous cavern, echoing with the sounds of flowing water, creaking machinery, and hundreds of bustling, hushed conversations. Electric lights hummed in the criss-crossing streets. Habitations lined the streets, poured from sturdy concrete or hollowed from the shale. They climbed the cavern walls like swallow’s nests, lanterns winking in the windows. The cavern’s shadowed ceiling was dotted in constellations of glowing fungus. They ran from north to south, mirroring the flow of the great canal splitting the heart of the cavern.

The sight filled Mokou with a sense of muted nostalgia. Some bygone place had doubtless prompted that feeling, but its memories remained buried. Above the nostalgia was an exhausted dread. How much farther did they have to walk tonight?

Agate led them further into the cavern. The thoroughfare continued east towards a long, flat, stall-lined bridge that crossed the canal. Several blocks and a plaza separated them from that bridge. The streets were busier down here — perhaps the time of day mattered less to a city sequestered from the sky. They flowed past grocers, travelers, porters, and pilgrims. The business of these lower crowds held much the same character as the business above, though as many cartloads held goods of a technological nature as held food.

She sped her pace slightly to keep closer to Agate. The hindren seemed unfazed by the crowds. It was a bit remarkable, the way they melted around her. Mokou had lived in cities before, but she had never quite gotten used to the press. Maybe people gave you more space when you had another pair of legs.

Girding the city’s bustle were a host of janitorial workers. Mokou made note of them in passing. They looked well-equipped and garbed in sturdy coveralls. Like the workers above, the uniform coveralls were simply a starting point for personal customization, and the body types filling those coveralls were anything but uniform. They ambled the streets in quietly chatting groups of two to four, cleaning where opportunities presented themselves. The thoroughfare and its connecting tributaries looked well-kept for their efforts. In Mokou’s experience, most of the time a clean city simply meant they’d pushed the messes out of sight. Here, she wasn’t so sure.

“You’ve been getting refugees, yeah?” asked Mokou, scanning the crowds. She’d been bracing herself to see people living on the street. Thus far, it hadn’t been necessary.

“We have,” E’Beth nodded. “Much of my organizational efforts over the last few days have been devoted towards getting them housed. I’m not alone in this effort, thankfully. I imagine we’ll keep at this work as they continue to arrive over the coming days.”

“Glad you’re getting any at all,” said Mokou. “Storm wiped out as much of the forest as we could see. We only made it because we found a way underground in time.”

“I can only hope others were as fortunate,” E’Beth said, somberly.

“Good you’re taking them in, though,” said Mokou. After a few paces, she sighed. “I say ‘them’ — ain’t like I’ve got a home right now either. Storm didn’t change that one way or the other.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said E’Beth. “If there’s anything we can do to make the Heptagon be a home for you, you need only — oh, hello.”

The esper trailed off mid-stride and looked back, tracking something. A hubbub rose behind them as they crossed the plaza before the bridge. A flickering streak of tabby fur scampered through the scattered crowds and lodged itself into the nearest pylon of the bridge’s railing. Tabi had caught up.

“How long has that been following us?” asked E’Beth. Her sightless attention fixed on the pylon, and Tabi hiding within. “Did it come up from the Beast Ward?”

Agate sighed. “Noticed it, have you?”

“That’s my cat,” said Mokou. She stepped to the pylon and squatted down to her haunches. She stuck a coaxing finger out towards her pet. “Come on, Tabi.”

A ghostly claw swiped out of the pylon and passed through Mokou’s finger. She shivered and grimaced.

“Your… cat.” E’Beth’s tone was unconvinced. “Are you aware that your astral tabby has psionic capabilities?”

“We have observed it opening space-time vortices,” Agate said. There was an edge to her dry tone. “She has named it after an archaic form of footwear.”

“Her name doesn’t just mean socks, alright?” Mokou retorted back over her shoulder.

“Ah, yes, it could be a journeycat,” Agate scoffed.

“Or it could mean, like, times,” said Mokou. She rose and turned to face the other two again. Tabi hadn’t emerged from the pylon past fitful swipes.

“Times?” asked Agate. She rubbed the center of her brow in a gesture that betrayed her exhaustion.

“Like, in an iterative sense,” Mokou clarified.

“I see,” said Agate. “As in, ‘how many times over the last two days has this tabby prevented me from sleeping?’”

“Yeah, you nailed it,” said Mokou.

Agate exhaled in frustration, turned, and kept walking.

“How long have you had her?” asked E’Beth. The two of them followed after the hindren. E’Beth’s demeanor had taken a cautious edge.

“About a day,” said Mokou. “She was hunting us before then.”

The bridge hummed with a constant soundscape of steady mechanical motion and churning water, the source of the cavern’s airy echoes. The view over the canal revealed water wheels, turbines, and pumps attached to the canal’s concrete banks and festooning bridges to the north and south. Electric arclight glinted on the briny waters and made pools of light for tireless engines to spin through. All these glimpses she caught between the wooden stalls that lined the bridge. Again, that formless nostalgia snagged at her — city sounds and spiced food in the humidity of a cavern.

“If you would like help in training her, you might wish to visit the Beast Ward,” said E’Beth. “Three strata down, to the southeast.”

“What, she’s not hunting us anymore, is she?” said Mokou. Tabi slipped between the guardrail pylons and stalls in her periphery, occasionally drawing out surprised exclamations from vendors and pedestrians as she passed.

Agate looked back over her shoulder. “What is the material difference between the tabby’s current behavior and its previous behavior of pursuing us until we expire?”

“You just gotta toughen up,” Mokou scoffed.

The hindren glanced away briefly, tracking Tabi’s motions before meeting Mokou’s gaze once more. “It seems to be crossing running water with no difficulty.”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” retorted Mokou. “How come you keep calling her ‘it,’ anyway?”

“You were the one who imposed a gender upon it.” Agate turned forward once more.

E’Beth bowed her head briefly in concentration. “Tabi is ambivalent on this.”

“Hey, you can read my cat’s mind!” said Mokou. Maybe there was benefit to an esper’s presence after all.

“Ah…” The esper trailed off, her head tracking Tabi’s silent pursuit. E’Beth opened her hands in a low shrug. “Well, there’s not much to go on. It’s not like she’s got a developed cultural sense of gender. She at least recognizes Tabi as a name. It’s mostly instinct and hunger and anxiety in there.”

Mokou felt a pang of guilt for bringing the cat down into this city. The atmosphere was starkly opposite from the brooding, silent ruin back beneath the glass-battered groves. “Hungry, huh? Me and her both. Agate, you mind if we stop for a bite? All these food stalls are killing me.”

They had reached the midpoint of the bridge, where it widened on both sides with observation decks. The decks were clear of stalls and, consequentially, sparser in traffic. Agate glanced back at Mokou in acknowledgement.

“Wait here,” the hindren said. She strode purposefully towards a stall on the other side of the bridge, across the midpoint.

Mokou sighed and rolled out her neck. She ambled to the closest observation deck railing and leaned back against it. E’Beth followed her and rested her elbows on the molded stone.

“She’s just walking, all the time,” said Mokou. “Never lets up.”

“We’re not far from her space here,” said E’Beth. “I tried not to let our welcome become too long-winded, for her sake. She’s rather anxious to sleep.”

“Yeah, I gotcha,” said Mokou. “Doesn’t take a mind-reader to figure that one out.”

She watched Agate. The stall she’d selected was painted in a monochromatic color scheme, with the exception of its mascot: some sort of yellow cartoon tick with its mandibles plunged into a donut. The stall’s proprietor looked vaguely amphibian and greeted Agate warmly as she approached. Mokou couldn’t see Agate’s expression from the angle of her somewhat distant vantage, but it seemed like the courtesy was returned. More than courtesy, even — something Agate said prompted a laugh from the stall owner.

A pang of jealousy filtered through Mokou. Agate had jokes? Where did she keep them? Who did she keep them for?

After a brief exchange, the stall owner folded wax-paper wrappers over three donuts, still steaming from the fryer. Agate accepted them, gave a parting nod, and made her way back across the bridge’s central plaza. Her pace was faster when she didn’t have two-legged followers to accommodate.

“Here you are,” said Agate, parceling out the pastries between the three of them. “The titular ‘VP Donut’ of VP Donut.”

“Excellent choice,” said E’Beth.

“Thanks,” said Mokou. Her stomach growled at the scent of the fried dough. She could tell through the paper that it had a crispy exterior, but any visual details of the donut were utterly obscure. It looked like a lightless, donut-shaped hole in the world. She had seen something like that in Irula’s kitchen, back in the desert. “V — that’s, what is it, vanta?”

“That’s right,” E’Beth nodded. “The dough is made in large part from vanta petals.”

“Mmh,” said Mokou. The donut’s cake interior had a light texture, subtly sweetened and a bit smoky from its central ingredient. A cavity in the heart of the pastry released its filling as she bit into it. The filling, in counterpoint to the cake, was bright and savory-sweet, with an almost citrus-like acidic bite. The more it lingered in her mouth, the more it started to tingle alarmingly — like licking batteries. She lowered the donut and looked at the bite she’d taken. The filling had a soft white glow to it, and its pulsing crackles traced out the hidden contours of the cake. “Hmm?”

“Spark tick plasma,” said Agate. She blew on her donut softly to cool it. “You’ve found the P. I take it you wish to eat it here.”

“Mmhm,” Mokou nodded, then swallowed. “Nice place for it.”

Agate tilted her head back slightly to look up to the cavern ceiling and sighed. “This is self-evident.” A bit of grudging acceptance filtered through her tone. She stepped forward to the railing and took up a position on E’Beth’s other side to eat her own donut.

Mokou turned and looked out over the canal again. With her next few bites, the tingling spread from her mouth to her gut. It started to radiate out from there into the rest of her body. It felt like the moment before getting struck by lightning, but spread, leisurely and jam-like, through time. Lightning, or the wrath of a vengeful spirit.

And there it was — the lights of the city, the electricity in her body, the moist cavern air, the lurking presence of Tabi. The memory shucked off its veil of obscurity and rose within her.

“Mm!” she grunted, snapping the fingers of her free hand as she finished her current mouthful. She swallowed. “Former Hell!”

“What?” asked Agate.

“Oh, you remembered whatever it was! Congratulations!” said E’Beth. “What is that?”

“Yeah!” said Mokou. The excitement she felt over her resurfacing memories outweighed her annoyance at having her emotions probed. “This whole place was just reminding me of it. It was a big ol’ city, deep underground, full of devils and youkai and vengeful spirits. If I remember right, it was the former capital of Hell, before they ran out of budget and had to move operations elsewhere. Had some good fights down there.” She sighed wistfully. “Good times.”

She could sift through these reminiscences all week. Maybe longer, if she was lucky.

“Hell?” asked E’Beth.

“Reportedly, an infinite afterlife of ‘karmic punishment,’” said Agate. “She’s brimming with these cryptic supernatural anecdotes.”

“Kitchen Heptagon reminds you of an infinite punishment plane?” E’Beth asked, her tone mixed between confusion, concern, and faint dismay.

“I mean, it wasn’t Hell anymore when I visited,” said Mokou. “And anyway, it’s not like, one to one. The infrastructure here looks in way better shape, for one.”

“Where else can you be stalked by an astral tabby in an urban setting?” Agate dryly remarked.

“No, see, that one’s dead on,” Mokou said, gesturing with the stub of her donut. “Met some real creepy cats down there. You got any more blood for Tabi?”

“By all means,” Agate sighed. She beckoned her hoversled and pulled free a half-full waterskin. “This should last the beast for at least a week. You may as well have it. When have I ever needed to fire my pistol seventy-five times?”

“I’ll try to find out what else she eats, alright?” said Mokou. “But thanks, really.”

She reached out and accepted the waterskin. A jolt of electricity jumped between their hands. Mokou hissed in surprise, but kept her grasp on the waterskin. Agate pulled her hand back and shook a wisp of smoke from her black glove.

“That, I estimate, could have accounted for a single shot,” the hindren mused.

“Some fuckin’ donut,” Mokou grunted. She could imagine already the difficulty of sharing that promised bed if they shocked each other every time she rolled over in her sleep. Hopefully, it was a big bed.

She uncapped the waterskin and fed a dram of blood to her cat. The waters rolled beneath. She stood again. They moved on.

Chapter Text

Several blocks from the eastern end of the bridge, the cavern dipped into a smaller chamber, insulated from the echoes of the rest of the ward. This hollowed cul-de-sac sported several structures of wood, stone, and tin, half-in and half-out of the cavern walls. Humming cables snaked along the shale and fed into them. Agate stopped outside the building at the end of the cul-de-sac, a wide, single-story workspace sporting two entrances, a door and a large vertical shutter.

“This your space?” asked Mokou. It was a relief to be at the end of the road, for now.

“Yes,” said Agate. She fished a key from one of her saddlebags and bent to open the padlock on her shutter. She lifted the shutter briefly to usher her hoversled inside. The glimpse Mokou caught revealed shadowy machines and clutter. Agate closed the shutter again and moved to unlock her front door.

“So,” Mokou cracked a tired grin. “You gonna invite me in?”

Agate opened her door. She paused in the threshold, turned back, and blinked.

“No,” she said.

“What?”

Agate stepped through the door and shut it behind her.

“Hang on, what?” Anger spiked through Mokou’s tone. She strode forward and pounded on the door. “What do you mean, no? What the hell was all that, then?”

E’Beth cleared her throat behind her.

Mokou ignored it and kept pounding. “Come on!”

The door opened; Agate’s sliver of unobstructed face peered out at her.

“Mokou,” she said. “Your cat has kept me awake for over forty-eight hours. Take it somewhere else.”

Mokou’s face twisted into a scowl of disbelief. “You call this treating me better?”

“Is it unreasonable to ask for the same courtesy?” asked Agate. Her voice was quiet and level. “I cannot sleep around your cat.”

“You just gotta learn how to work past it,” Mokou said. Anger boiled amidst her weariness.

“You expect me to learn under these conditions?” asked Agate. She sighed. She opened the door a finger’s-width more to look past Mokou. “E’Beth.”

“Go ahead, Agate,” said E’Beth.

Agate took a breath, as though she hadn’t expected how quickly the response came. “When Sheba visits, what is that establishment she favors?”

“That would be Moondrop Inn,” said E’Beth. Her tone was knowledgeable, almost placative. “I believe they still have vacancy.”

“Take her there,” said Agate. “She’ll like it.”

“The fuck do you know what I like, Agate?” Mokou growled. “You even bother to learn?”

“It’s a nice place, Mokou,” Agate replied, voice still infuriatingly level. “You know where I live now. Good night.”

Agate shut the door and latched it, leaving Mokou alone in a foreign city in the middle of the night. Mokou kicked the wall. She turned away, blinking back tears and biting back bile.

What had she been expecting? Better than this, certainly. If Agate wanted her to have a good night, it was a miserable start. What were any of the scientist’s promises worth? Were any of them even promises after all, or was Mokou the fool for reading promise into them?

She fished in her pouch to roll herself a smoke.

“It really is a nice inn,” said E’Beth, softly. “We’re not far. It’s only about ten minutes away, on the edge of Garden Ward.”

“Sure,” Mokou croaked.

She had been ready with that recommendation. She had planned this. So, after all, Mokou was the dupe for wanting to believe in the first place. An all-too-familiar sentiment lanced its way through her on pathways so old they were practically reflexive. It made her want to die.

E’Beth lifted her hand before her, as though poised to reach out. Her voice came gentler, but with urgency. “Mokou, if there’s anything we can do — anything I can do—”

“Don’t worry about it,” she mumbled around her cigarette. She walked past the esper, back out of the cul-de-sac. She wasn’t alone. She couldn’t even be alone with these thoughts, there had to be an esper here. She lifted her finger to light her smoke. Rather than a flame, her fingertip conjured a focused arc of electricity. It blew off half of her cigarette. She leaned roughly against the cavern wall and drew from what was left of it.

“Know what you could have done, though?” Mokou asked. Plumes of smoke followed her every word. “Maybe given me some warning she was gonna ditch me at the door?”

“It’s—” E’Beth sighed. She stepped next to Mokou and bowed her head. “I’m sorry. But neither of you wanted me in there. Gleaning intents in the face of that would just be intrusive.”

“You’ve been in my emotions this whole damn time,” Mokou growled.

“That’s not something I can strictly help,” said E’Beth. “I’ve made it a part of how I navigate. Emotions pop out. They’re not always enough to get intents from.”

“Well, don’t worry, you don’t have to have mine popping on you much longer,” said Mokou.

E’Beth turned to face her. Again, the undercurrent of urgency in her tone. “What do you mean by that?”

“You tell me,” she muttered.

“Mokou, I’ll tell you that I don’t want to leave you alone tonight,” the esper said.

The thing she always forgot about feeling frustration was every painful and antagonistic thought that crept in after it. Now it had evoked pity from someone. Pity was exactly what she wanted to avoid. She let out a smoke-laden sigh and leaned her head back against the smoothed shale. “I mean… you can see me to this inn and I’ll get out of your hair. This is an average night, E’Beth. You don’t have to make me your problem.”

E’Beth took in a breath, then released it. “Do you want me to talk to her tomorrow?”

“You can do whatever,” Mokou grunted. She lifted herself away from the wall and looked out into the cavern. “Which way’s Garden Ward?”

Chapter Text

Where Chrome Ward was nestled just beneath the surface, Garden Ward lay deeper still. By Mokou’s uncertain estimate, they had passed beneath the level of the canal. Evidence of its silent passage overhead showed in the humidity around them, the condensation on the shale, and the drips and pumps of countless irrigation spouts feeding a subterranean jungle. Domed structures of brick and overgrown concrete poked up from the shadowy canopy, while more domiciles of hollowed stone ringed the walls of the low cavern.

Moondrop Inn was one such structure built into the cavern wall. Its facade was two stories of wysteria-choked white stucco, while windows on the cavern wall above it betrayed even higher rooms. Its position on the down-sloping street gave it a commanding view of the rest of the Ward.

“Would you like help getting settled in?” asked E’Beth. The walk had largely been a quiet one. Mokou was too consumed in her own foul mood to be much for conversation.

“Think I got it from here,” said Mokou. Doubtless there were other arrivals worse off than her that the esper could busy herself helping. It couldn’t be too complicated a process. That antagonistic part of her thoughts told her that if she couldn’t figure out how to get a room at an inn after this long, she deserved to sleep on the street.

The esper cocked her head slightly. “I’m getting some mixed signals,” she said.

“Well, then listen to what I’m telling you,” said Mokou. She raised a hand to tap her fingers against her temple. “The less time you spend in here, the better off you’ll be.”

“Mokou, I have to make you my problem when you’re projecting that problem all over me. And this is listening. I’m sorry that circumstances are out of your control, but don’t take that out on me. I’m trying to help.”

Mokou shut her eyes and took a breath. “I know. You’ve helped already. I’ll be fine.”

E’Beth sighed again, her mouth set in soft concern. “Let me at least show you where you can find me. If you need anything, if you have any questions, I’d like to keep helping.”

“We just got here,” Mokou said. She pressed her eyes shut again, harder. “How much more am I gonna have to walk tonight?”

“I don’t mean to walk there,” said E’Beth. She offered out her hand. “I mean to share the way with my gift. If you’d like it.”

Mokou’s face ticked towards a scowl. “Can’t you just tell me, then? I can get the directions later.”

“I’m in the Office of Ceremonies. Are you going to remember that?”

Mokou thought about it and shrugged. “Fair point.” She took up E’Beth’s hand and looked away. “Do your thing.”

It was not that her touch shifted. It was that her touch was a bridge over which her memory entered Mokou’s mind. It was a memory bereft of sight, but rich in haptic motion, scents, and sounds. How many times had this esper walked these streets? Enough times to develop a map of muscle memory — and something beyond muscle memory, something ineffable and new.

The rosy glow of emotions lit the streets in this foreign memory. She was remembering E’Beth’s love for this city. There was comfort in that feeling, but it wasn’t strictly Mokou’s comfort. She didn’t know this place. At the end of the implanted memory — strange, that a memory would simply end — was the sense of a statue-filled hallway in the arena above.

She let go of E’Beth’s hand and almost unconsciously stepped back a pace, one step closer to the inn. The memory lingered, solid, self-contained, saturated in senses she had no access to on her own. It was not merely the esper’s own love in her memory. It was an emotional gestalt of everyone passing in the streets who had found something that made them happy and fulfilled in a hard land. And here Mokou was, wanting to die in the middle of it.

“Well,” she said. “Think my feet know the way there now. Thanks.”

E’Beth bowed her head in acknowledgment. “Live and drink, Mokou. Stay safe and keep in touch.”

“Sure, sure,” Mokou waved. “Could use a drink about now.”

“Ah,” said E’Beth. “They just installed an automated brewer here, I believe.”

“Ah,” Mokou replied. She didn’t particularly know what that meant. It sounded complicated. “Well, thanks. Live and drink.”

E’Beth gave a parting smile and turned away, climbing the street back to the upper wards. Mokou crossed the threshold of the Moondrop Inn. A small bell rang above her.

The interior walls of the lobby were wood-paneled, while many geometrically-patterned rugs cushioned the smooth stone floor. To her left was a small lounge; klines and plants sat in spacious arrangement around an embering hearth. To her right was a counter that sequestered off an officious little space and a door into backrooms. The room stretched deeper than it was wide, dimly lit by shuttered lanterns. It smelled faintly of sandalwood.

Resting on the countertop was a robed and shawled woman with a catlike smile on her sleeping face. She had fallen asleep on her arms — one hand pinned beneath her cheek, the other resting on the back of her head. Her skin sported patterns of mottled contrast between lighter and darker tones, and by the lines in her face she looked to be middle-aged. Her hair was a deep blue-black color, kept short, but curly. Most of it was covered by a black cap topped by a square panel about half as wide as her shoulders and angled diagonally up. The bell over the doorway had done nothing to rouse her.

“Hello?” said Mokou.

The woman’s eyes fluttered open briefly. In the dim light of the lobby, her irises almost looked black. She slid upright and yawned. “Good morning.”

“Is it morning?” asked Mokou.

“It’s probably morning,” said the woman behind the counter. “That’s a good head of hair on you. How long did it take you to grow that?”

“Uhh,” Mokou sucked air through her teeth. “Don’t ask me that. Haven’t had a chance to cut it.”

The woman raised her eyebrows and gave a soft hum. Mokou’s response hadn’t shaken her faint, sleepy smile. “Are you looking for a hairdresser? I’ve got a few I can recommend.”

“I’m just looking for a room,” said Mokou. She was growing a bit concerned that this was actually an inn.

“And I’m Fasola,” she replied. She tipped the square brim of her cap. “Spicer Fasola — got my certification last month. We’ve got rooms! Just you?”

“Just me,” said Mokou. The cap had an academic air to it. Was it a graduation cap, or some kind of cap of office? It reminded her, vaguely, of Keine’s favorite hat. The silly little thing. “Plus a cat. Name’s Mokou.”

“You, or the cat?” asked Fasola.

“Me. I’m Mokou. Fujiwara no Mokou.”

“Lovely name. Ekuemekiyyen?”

“Japanese,” said Mokou.

“Huh,” said Fasola. “Well, Mokou, welcome to Moondrop Inn. Just a few questions for you and we’ll get you a bed, okay?”

“I’d appreciate that,” said Mokou. “Been walking all day and most of the night.”

Fasola nodded sympathetically. “Bad time for it, I gather.”

Mokou shrugged. “Could be worse.”

“Is this your first visit to Kitchen Heptagon?” asked Fasola. She started to rummage under the counter for a ledger and writing materials. She laid the ledger out and cracked it open to a bookmarked page.

“Yep,” said Mokou.

“Ooh,” Fasola hummed, rummaging for something else now. “I almost never get to issue the ration cards to first-timers. Usually it takes a few visits for folks to find us. How’d you hear about us?”

“Uh,” Mokou grunted. “You, uh. You know Agate?”

Fasola’s eyes traced up and down Mokou’s figure as her smile flattened against her face. She leaned onto an elbow and let out a slow sigh through her nose. “Do I know her,” she muttered. “Y’know, I appreciate her endorsements and all, but I wish she’d send me anything but jilted lovers. Sweet young thing like you, too.”

“Oh,” said Mokou. She huffed out a breath and planted a hand on the counter. “This is a habit for her, huh? Dump a gal and send her here as a consolation prize?”

“Habit’s a bit strong,” Fasola shrugged. “Pattern, maybe. I’ll say you’re at least not the first. She’s a public figure, you know? You’d think she’d give a little thought to her image.”

“Fuck’s sake,” Mokou muttered. She hadn’t pegged Agate as being much of a player. If that was how it was, at least she hadn’t gotten particularly invested. This was just being stood up for a fling. She’d been stood up before.

It didn’t particularly make her feel less used.

“Tell you what,” said Fasola. “We can sort out your ration cards tomorrow. Let’s get you a room. You’ve got a pet, you said. Smoking or non-smoking?”

“Smoking,” said Mokou. “Heavy smoking.”

Fasola nodded. “Window room, got it. Spontaneous combustion?”

“Spontaneous? No,” said Mokou.

The innkeep traced her finger along a chart in her ledger. “Quantum jitters?”

Mokou frowned. “The hell are those?”

“You ever noticed space-time ripping open around you when you try to do things?” Fasola answered.

“No,” Mokou rubbed her chin. “But I think my cat can do that.”

“Mmm,” Fasola ticked something. “Well, try not to let it do that on the premises, if you can. Might end up with a repair fee. Does your room need to be EMP-insulated?”

“Probably not,” said Mokou.

“You mind stairs?” asked Fasola.

Mokou’s feelings towards stairs had historically fluctuated between ambivalence and a sense that they were a sort of necessary evil, generally based on how badly she’d been neglecting herself at the time. She’d been in worse shape before.

“They get me where I’m going,” she said. Maybe she’d regret that answer come the morning, considering how much she’d been hiking over the last week.

Fasola nodded. “Phasing or non-phasing?”

“Uh,” said Mokou. “Me? Non-phasing. Cat? Phasing.”

Fasola ticked another box. “Doesn’t look like you’re aquatic. Amphibious? Need a humidifier?”

“Nope. Seems plenty humid down here to me,” Mokou said.

“Really? Can’t stand how dry it gets when we have to ration like this.”

Mokou shrugged. “Listen—”

“Allllmost done, hon,” Fasola hummed, sliding a referencing digit along the page.

“—How much is it per night?”

“Ehh,” Fasola looked up and blinked with a smile of faint confusion. “Minimum personal allowance for a non-amphibious gal your size is probably gonna be eight drams a day. We can sort that tomorrow.”

“No, I mean—” Mokou raised her hands in front of her in a gesture that sought clarification. “How much do I have to pay you to stay here?”

Fasola blinked. “Why would you do that? I don’t need your water.”

Mokou blinked in return.

Fasola glanced down to the next column of her ledger, then back up. “Warm rocks?”

“Warm rocks?”

“Yeah, warm rocks? In your room, warm rocks? Do you want them?” Fasola waggled her pen between her fingers. “Usually we reserve ‘em for our reptilian guests. You don’t quite look it. No offense. But if you want ‘em—”

“I think I’m fine with a bed, thanks,” said Mokou.

“They’re nice rocks,” said Fasola. “One last question: how long would you like to stay?”

“I don’t have to pay?” asked Mokou.

Fasola shook her head. “You really don’t. You find anyone down here trying to take your water just because they have a bed and you don’t, you kick their ass for me, alright?”

Mokou nodded, haltingly at first, then more emphatically as Fasola started to nod along with her.

What was it Agate had accused her of, back when they had traded blows in the canyon? That she had one foot out the door already? Now she wanted to prove her wrong out of principle.

“I’m here for lessons,” said Mokou. “I don’t know how long that usually takes. Uh. Do you do month-to-month arrangements?”

“Absolutely!” Fasola flipped to an indexed page that looked like a series of calendars and traced through a month’s worth of dates. “Month-to-month gives you plenty of time to get a housing assignment if you start getting sick of us. Took me about about two years to get my spicer’s cert, but then, I had the Inn to run.” She shut the ledger, stowed it, and yawned. “Need my beauty sleep, too.”

“Wait, don’t fall asleep,” said Mokou. “Where’s the room?”

“We’re getting there!” Fasola huffed softly and fetched a key from another drawer beneath the counter. She stood and stepped around the counter to join Mokou, giving Mokou a better vantage of her overall appearance. The innkeep wasn’t quite as tall as Mokou. Beneath her white quilted shawl, her layered black robes caught the light with shining vertical panels of monochromatic scales. The same scales decorated her boots, which looked soft and closer to slippers, philosophically. The skin of her legs visible between the top of her boots and the hem of her dress looked vaguely chitinous. Fasola put up a sign that said she was away from the desk, then looked around the lobby. “Where’s your cat? I wanna see.”

“She’s shy,” said Mokou, apologetically. “Probably hiding in the walls. Don’t think Tabi’s a city cat.”

“Ah, well,” Fasola sighed. She started to idly spin the key around her finger. “Let me give you the tour. Quick-like.”

Fasola led her down the lobby. Perhaps her shuffling pace was quick by her own standards, but after a week trailing behind Agate, it felt like more of a respite. The lobby connected to a carved stone stairwell leading upwards, a hall full of doorways, and a spacious dining room. Fasola pointed out the last of these. It was dark within, with three rows of long tables and more seating around the edge of the room. Back in a corner, a strange assemblage of tubes, gears, and coiled pipes caught the light. Swinging doors led into what was presumably a kitchen.

“We do two meals a day here, morning and evening. Any dietary restrictions?”

“No,” said Mokou.

Fasola nodded. “You think of any, just let us know. We’ve got options. On top of that, plenty of places to eat around here if you get hungry in the middle of the day. Or night. If you don’t wanna go out, well, the automatic brewer’s over there, and we’ve always got some dolmas you can scrounge in the kitchen. Auntie’s recipe. You hungry?”

“I ate on the way in,” said Mokou.

Fasola nodded again. She turned and clapped Mokou on the shoulder.

“Chin up, huh?” she said, meeting Mokou’s gaze. “Auntie always said there’s two cures for heartache: time and dolmas.”

This close, standing in the doorway, her scent came clearer to Mokou. Sandalwood, and something like cinnamon that snagged at her senses and made her subtly conscious of her own exhaustion. Mokou blinked to keep herself awake in the presence of such a sleepy demeanor and comforting scent.

“That, uh—” Mokou cleared her throat. “Thanks, but that hasn’t been my experience with time or dolmas.”

Fasola kept her gaze on Mokou. Her expression wrinkled around her eyes, as though she was halfway between laughing and crying. A snorting breath turned into a laugh that split her face along previously-unseen mandibular seams. Her catlike smile had concealed spiderlike fangs.

“So somber!” Fasola laughed. “So jaded! Listen, hon, some folks, they beat a Carbide Chef and they let it go right to their heads. They think they can just do what they want. You don’t worry about them.” She lifted her hand from Mokou’s shoulder to pat her cheek. “Plenty of crabs in the cavern, you know? Pretty young thing like you, they’ll be all over you, just you wait.”

Mokou sighed. “Sure.”

“Maybe do something with all that hair—”

“It was my cat,” said Mokou. “She didn’t like my cat.”

“Didn’t like your cat?” the innkeep gasped. She leaned back and crossed her arms. “Honestly!”

Mokou chuckled bitterly. It was nice to have someone to complain to. “She said she was going to treat me better, and then, boom. Ditches me at the door.”

“She said that? That’s a new one.” Fasola’s eyes narrowed and she set her jaw in thought, looking off to the side. “Your room’s upstairs. Let’s get you and your cat settled in, huh?”

It was up two flights of stairs. Each flight connected to a small lounge area at the junction of three hallways. The lounge on the third floor had a hookah on a low table. The hallways to the rooms were carved from stone and dark at this hour. Fasola pitched her already-soft voice even softer.

“This closet here’s got cleaning stuff. If you need help keeping your room clean, just ask, and we can come through once or twice a week. Next laundry day is… not sure, actually. Rationing, you know? I’ll find out for you.” Fasola eyed Mokou’s recycling suit. “Dunno what the laundry process on that fancy suit’s like, anyway. Might want to ask around in Chrome Ward.”

Mokou held out her arm to show it off half-heartedly. “She made this for me.”

Fasola raised her eyebrows and cracked the seams of her mouth to loose a quiet, low whistle. They walked a bit further down one hallway and stopped in front of a room. Fasola handed the key to Mokou. “Here we are. Room 3-9. Great view of the ward once the sun’s up.”

“The sun?” asked Mokou. “We’re underground. Don’t tell me you’ve also got a bird that ate a dead sun god down here.”

“Okay,” Fasola blinked. “We don’t. We have a big light on a rail.”

“A rail?” asked Mokou. They had rail?

“You’ll see what I mean,” Fasola grinned. “Or, maybe you won’t. Close your blinds if you want to sleep in.”

“Alright,” said Mokou. She unlocked her door and opened it into the suite. The architecture reminded her a bit of Irula’s subterranean bedrooms — hollowed from the red shale, smoothed and rounded, with plenty of rugs. A painted vine pattern crept around the upper trim of the room. Glass was mounted in the plastered window frame. There was a bed and a cabinet against the wall, a small table with an oil lamp, two chairs, and enough floor space left over to fit her forms. Against an interior wall was a sink and a short counter. On the other side of that wall, partitioned into its own room, was a simple commode.

“You need anything else, you just let us know, alright?” said Fasola. “Food? Medicine? We can run some up. Trouble sleeping? Got my glands.”

“Your… glands?” Mokou turned back to eye her in confusion.

Fasola tugged down the puffy shawl from around her neck and tilted her head to the side. Her neck sported a series of gill-like slits that rippled with her breath. Faint wisps of glittering brown vapor rose from them.

“My glands!” said Fasola. “Knock you right out. Make this suite nice and dreamy. If you need that, I mean.” She shuffled her shawl back into place.

“Think I’m good,” said Mokou.

“You sure?” asked Fasola. “They’re nice glands.”

Mokou sighed. “Fasola, take your glands outside.”

“Alright,” Fasola raised her hands. “Talk to you tomorrow, friend Mokou. Unless it’s today already.”

“Sure,” said Mokou. “Goodnight. Thanks.”

Fasola shut the door. Her footsteps shuffled off down the hall. Mokou spun briefly in place, taking stock of the room and herself. She shucked her pack and her carbine, setting them on the table. She peeled herself out of the suit, bracing for the reek of the last few days of travel. It wasn’t as bad as she feared — more of a funk than a reek. The suit was a thirsty thing. It wicked away her body’s moisture before it could ripen. She heaped it onto an empty chair.

Tabi poked her head up from the floor beneath the chair and gazed at Mokou silently.

“No portals here, alright, Tabi?” said Mokou.

“Aaow,” Tabi softly replied.

“I’m serious,” Mokou sighed. She went to the basin and ran a bit of hot water. She splashed it on her face and a few other strategic areas, silently grateful for the miracle of plumbing. She toweled herself off, then crossed the room to open the window a crack. The humid air and quiet sounds of the ward filtered through.

She sat on the bed with a heavy groan. She slipped herself under the covers, feeling the fabric on her bare skin — a reprieve from the clinging suit. She stared up at the shadows on the rock ceiling.

All the momentum of the last week of relentless travel, and that feverish, timeless struggle through the desert before, crested over her and crushed her against the bed. Her eyes wavered closed.

“Well, Keine,” she mumbled. “I made it.”

Chapter Text

A dream, and a vivid one. It was to be expected — certain psychal compounds lingered in the body until the next sleep cycle could render them easier to metabolize.

The world was glassed over and she sifted through its shards with her bare hands. There was no pain to pierce her detached and dazzled melancholy. Gradually, through the clinking, steady rhythm of her purpose, she sensed where the dream had placed her. Structures beneath the glass around her lay in freshly-familiar orientations. That nameless ruin in the Moon Stair, lost to history and memory, resurrected itself through her unconscious imaginings. If it had to be anywhere, it may as well have been here.

The purpose of her excavation still eluded her — but then, where purpose and logic defined Agate’s waking life, the same did not always translate into her dreams. Often, as tonight, she merely guided her dream-self from a core of hazy sense and reaction. At times, it was liberating. Tonight, it was as dreary as it was vexing. Until, of course, she uncovered something.

Beneath the glass she glimpsed a splash of white fur. Beneath the white fur, the skin of a cheek, tattooed in circuitry. Perched on the cheek, the pane of a pair of goggles, protecting from the heaped and shifting glass an eye she knew. The eye swiveled to meet her.

Vexation evaporated into a stinging dread. Agate sent herself the directive to reverse her efforts. She slid the glass from the tenuous, excavated piles back into the depression she’d made to bury again what she’d found. To bury the conversation she knew was coming. The impulse came too late.

Q Girl, beloved pupil of the Barathrumites, acclaimed author and tinker, former research partner of Agate Severance Star, sat up from the earth and shook herself off. Glass tinkled from the quills across her back. Her hair shone in the half-light of the ruins, a rainbow in every violet of the spectrum. She turned her ursine face to follow as Agate lurched upright and stepped back.

“What’s gotten into you lately?” asked Q Girl.

“Be more specific,” Agate replied, helplessly. How many times had this exchange played itself out in her memories, her dreams?

The servos of her exoskeletal bracing hummed softly as Q Girl opened her palms. “This is dangerous stuff, Agate. The penumbra calculus? If the Eaters banned it, I don’t have to tell you—”

“Then don’t,” said Agate. “You know as well as I.” She turned. She left the glass-flooded clearing. Perhaps she could pre-empt the inevitable course of this conversation.

She passed beneath sheer crystal faces, sky-glass shattering softly underhoof. The sky was dark and empty. She ducked under a marble archway. Across its threshold, she found herself once more in the clearing, in the company of a half-buried Q Girl. This dream was toying with her.

“I thought,” Q Girl began, “I thought a little vacation would be good for you! Would be good for — us. Would get you interested in something else.”

Here it was. That old headstrong rebuke, its sharpness amber-frozen on her tongue. Nowhere to direct it but outwards.

“I never took you for a coward,” said Agate.

“A coward?” Q Girl replied. Though the dream had changed the venue, her tone was as muted as it ever had been.

“What else am I to call it?” asked Agate. “This is the calculus by which the Eaters broke the world. Barathrum would have us avert our eyes from the fracture lines. I should have known you would take his side in this.”

“That’s caution, Agate,” said Q Girl, her anger working past its internal delay. “Caution, not cowardice. You know as much as I do about that calculus. You aren’t scared?”

The crystalline canyons and their glassy ruins sank into inchoate rainbow smears in her periphery. The distant, churning howl of broken spacetime bubbled up into audibility. Every faculty she kept within the dream sought to claw her way out of it. It was far too slow a process.

“If we cannot master our fears, we may as well be beasts,” Agate plunged on, talking in spite of the hurt spreading across the expression of her conversational counterpoint. In spite of her own desire to be done with this exchange’s endless retreads. In spite of the dream-land’s fast-approaching sundering. “From our shared base of knowledge, then, you conclude that I should abandon this course of inquiry?”

“Yes!” said Q Girl. “I can’t help you with this, Agate. Nothing good will come of it!”

“I see,” said Agate. The rainbow blur of the land flowed up into the empty sky in a prismatic slurry. Sucking vortices yawned, ringing the horizon with whirling, hungry glimpses of elsewhere, filling her ears with their roar. Flickering through the gaps, as though animated in shifting mosaic, was the impression of great, staring eyes. She could no longer tell whether she was sinking or floating. None of this stilled her tongue. “You would have me wallow in fear. Then our conclusions are irreconcilable.”

Q Girl’s eyes shone with the onset of tears. A billowing rainbow curtain of light swallowed her next words. A small mercy, before the rest of that bitter exchange played out.

Agate woke.

This was her bed in the Chrome Ward. The quiet hum of electricity and the appetizing scent of her overnight stew suffused the atmosphere around her. Her body was a touch sore, but rested. The prototype clock across the room suggested by its burnished face that it was afternoon.

The dream already sluiced itself from her mind — vivid, but fleeting. Judging from the cocktail of unsettled regret and irritation within her, she had a good idea what it was about. That conversation again, most likely. No failed line of inquiry clung to her quite like that one. She rubbed a finger along the fabric of her blanket.

She needed to talk to Mokou.

She hadn’t thought the simple statement of a boundary would lead to such an adverse reaction. It betrayed an alarming lack of patience for someone who was ostensibly immortal. Had Agate been unclear? It was already enough she had to keep Mokou from being devoured in the wilds — did she have to be shepherd to the immortal’s volatile emotions, too? Was it even worth treating someone better whose response to a “no” was to lash out at nearby structures? What words would have kept her back from that extreme while still leaving room for Agate to sleep?

But such considerations could wait until they next spoke. A number of other tasks demanded her attention today. Repairs, reports, resupply, and perhaps a bit of cleaning when time permitted. She had been abroad long enough for a thin layer of dust to accumulate across the surfaces of her workspace. She slipped out from beneath the covers and set her hooves on the stone floor.

From her wardrobe she selected a clean dress shirt and buttoned herself into it. She rolled up the cuffs of her sleeves to prepare herself her afternoon repast. Moving to the open kitchen, she dispensed a bit of hot water for tea, then checked her stew. Before she had gone to bed, she had started the neutron cooker on an old recipe. It centered around spark tick chitin for the electrical convenience, starapples for the sake of recuperating her bruises, and aloe volta leaves to unify the other ingredients. It was hot, tender, and ready. She served herself a portion of the voltscht.

She was just settling down to enjoy it when there came a knock at the door. It was a quiet knock, polite in volume and intensity if not in timing. Agate rose and weaved past her dining table, down the entry hall to unlock the front door. E’Beth stood outside, sporting her customary blindfold and a fresh shawl over her red robes.

“Chef,” the esper nodded in greeting.

“Chef,” Agate nodded back.

“May I come in?” asked E’Beth.

“Certainly,” said Agate. She turned away from the open door and returned to the kitchen. “Would you care for some voltscht? I was just sitting down to it myself.”

“I’ve already eaten, but I’d love a taste,” E’Beth replied. She slipped out of her boots and joined Agate in the kitchen to serve herself a smaller portion.

“You are here for an ecological report, presumably,” said Agate.

“If you have one ready, yes,” said E’Beth. “But that wasn’t the primary purpose of this call.”

Agate sipped her tea. It had steeped a tad overlong, but the bitterness made for a good contrast to her sour-sweet voltscht. “The immortal, then.”

E’Beth nodded and sampled her own bite of stew.

“I can’t tell you much of certainty or specificity,” Agate continued. “She seems to have outlived both such considerations. She predates the Sultanate, which gives us a minimum bound of roughly eight thousand years. I am inclined to place it higher.”

“How much higher?” asked E’Beth. A touch of awe slipped through the esper’s composure.

“Let’s call it, conservatively, a margin of two to six thousand years higher.” Agate paused to allow the weight of her calculation to reach E’Beth. She took another bite of stew. “But higher still would not terribly surprise me. She talks of places and cultures lost to the historical record.”

“Could she be from offworld?” asked E’Beth. She had finished her own portion of voltscht and now sat with her chin resting on her clasped fists, elbows on the table in a posture of unbridled attention.

“It’s within the realm of possibility,” Agate tilted her head in acknowledgment. “One such lost culture she mentions is a lunar empire, which… on our moon? Strikes me as unlikely. But if it were another moon, and she a terrestrial transplant, then perhaps…”

“You don’t suppose it’s…” E’Beth trailed off in concern.

“Moon King Fever? She claims her condition renders her impervious to disease, but I have not verified this, and thus I cannot discount the possibility.” Agate set aside her finished stew bowl and opened her palm in a gesture of admission. “With that said, from my other observations, I’m inclined to believe her claim of immunity.”

E’Beth’s head sank into a contemplative nod as she slackened her wrists slightly. “Where did you find her?”

“Irula’s kitchen, of all places,” said Agate. If all had gone according to plan, she’d still be there, perhaps with another polemic to her name by now. The last week had gone anything but planned.

“Oh, how are they keeping?” E’Beth smiled.

“As well as ever,” Agate answered, pleasantry for pleasantry. “They brought in Mokou from the desert several days before my arrival. She’d evidently been fobbing around the Sunderlies for some time before setting herself towards crossing the Moghra’yi.”

“Goodness,” said E’Beth. “Why?”

Agate sipped her tea. “A fringe hypothesis. You can ask her the specifics yourself. I take it you delivered her to the Moondrop Inn?”

“I did,” E’Beth nodded. She rested her arms on the table and leaned back in her stool. She sighed, then turned her head back to the doorway. “You left her in a bit of a state, you know. You could have—”

“I could have done any number of things, yes,” Agate preempted her moralizing. “Sleep deprivation tends to rob one of niceties. She’s suffered worse than refusal. I’ve picked up something of a masochistic streak in her.”

The esper winced. “Agate, there’s masochistic and there’s suicidal. And even then — if it was refusal that would be one matter. What happened between you before your arrival?”

Agate ran a finger along the rim of her mug and sighed. “We had an altercation. One I intend not to leave unsettled.”

“An altercation,” E’Beth echoed, flatly. “I stayed out of the details, but I can tell you that, on top of everything else, she felt you were leading her on.”

“I’ve led her all the way from the Six-Day Stilt,” Agate replied. Her heart subtly sped to recall their bodies pressed together, her hands tight around her wrists, the scrape of her teeth against her lips. She stood from the table and bused her dishes and E’Beth’s empty bowl to the sink. “It was a heated altercation. If we’ve no further matters to discuss, I’ll see to her shortly.”

She had felt the shift within herself, within her regard towards Mokou, back in the canyons. There was space and potential for it to grow into something new, something mutual. In order for those feelings to come to fruition, it was necessary that misconceptions be cleared away. That task was sensitive enough to take priority today.

“That was all I came by to ensure,” E’Beth nodded. “Thank you for your time. And the stew. It was delicious, as always.”

“Thank you for your diligence,” Agate replied.

The esper stood and pushed in her stool. She paused briefly on the workspace floor, halfway between the kitchen and the entrance. There was, indeed, one more thing snagging at Agate’s thoughts. It seemed the esper sensed it as well.

“Go ahead, Agate.”

“E’Beth,” Agate replied. She turned from the wash basin, cleaning her hands upon a cloth. “Have you heard of magic?”

“Magic?”

Agate sighed. “Not psionics, nor genetics, nor thin world manipulation. Spontaneous effects in flagrant disregard of any known natural law. Magic. Wizardry.”

E’Beth tilted her chin up in consideration. “I’d be willing to say some of the Chefs Oth’s dishes apply, but I don’t know that they’d agree with me. Other than that, only really in folklore. Why?”

Agate set the cloth aside and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “She’s magic, E’Beth. I intend to find out what that means.”

Chapter Text

The Garden Ward’s subterranean sun was over halfway along its molded arc across the cavern ceiling when Agate arrived at the doorstep of the Moondrop Inn. The light shone through wisps of vapor and moisture rising from the canopy. The streets were busier when lit by the great lamp; she wore her noise blockers. Moondrop, fortuitously, stood on a backstreet rather than a tributary. Less traffic meant less noise.

The bell jingled overhead as she entered the cool interior. The downstairs lounge was empty. Muffled conversations and the clink of cookware drifted from the back rooms. Behind and partially atop the counter rested the innkeep, Fasola, asleep. For as long as Agate had known her, it seemed to be her preferred state. When it came closer to mealtime, she would rouse to help in its preparation (or, Agate suspected, more often in its finishing touches). For now, the afternoon was young. She was sleeping in a graduation cap.

Agate stepped to the counter.

“Fasola,” she said.

“What! Hello!” the innkeep sputtered upright. She blinked her eyes into focus. Her befuddlement gave way to a muted sort of panic. “Aaagate?”

“Congratulations on your certification,” Agate said.

“Thanks! Means a lot!” Fasola replied. She straightened her cap in acknowledgment. Her eyes darted across the empty lobby, then back to Agate. Her smile had a desperate tightness to it. “But oh, dear. I was not expecting to see you.”

“Why not?” asked Agate. “You accommodated Ms. Fujiwara, did you not?”

“Well, sure, but—” Fasola leaned back in her chair and again scanned to either side, as though checking for eavesdroppers, or for potential exits. “I mean when she said you sent her, I kind of figured it was like — I mean, the other time — I mean, you don’t usually follow up like this!”

“Like which other time?” asked Agate.

Fasola sucked in a breath and leaned forward. She clasped her hands together, elbows resting on the counter, then pointed her hands, palms together, towards Agate. “This is what I mean, Agate.”

Agate flicked her ear. “Do you no longer wish for my recommendation?”

“Oh, no, no,” Fasola raised her hands, still with her desperate smile. “I know we run a quality establishment here. I’m just saying, Agate, that a stay here is not a sufficient replacement for the emotional effort it takes to break it off with someone proper!”

Agate shifted her gaze from the innkeep down the lobby to the stairwell. She had not come here to talk to Fasola.

“What gave you the impression this was a breaking off?” Agate sighed.

“Oh, I dunno, maybe the poor gal herself? Never seen a guest so gloomy. You’d think her world just ended!” Fasola leaned forward and pitched her voice quieter. “Listen, maybe it’s none of my business, but I gotta say — she’s a bit on the young side for you, don’t you think?”

Agate pressed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose. The optics, it seemed, were exhaustingly against her. “You are welcome to ask her that yourself. If anything, the inverse is true. Have you seen her today?”

Fasola blinked. “Inverse…?”

“Is she still in her room?” asked Agate.

“As far as I know, yeah,” said Fasola. “I’ve got her ration cards set up for her, but she hasn’t been down to pick ‘em up yet.”

“You were asleep,” said Agate, flatly.

“Need my beauty sleep, alright?” Fasola protested. “I told her to get at me.”

Agate sighed and crossed her arms. “Shall I bring them up to her?”

Owing to the structure of Fasola’s mouth it was difficult for her to sport anything but her usual catlike smile. Her tells generally expressed through the language of her eyes. Agate’s offer prompted them to narrow. “Why do you want to see her?”

“I wish to speak with her,” said Agate. “There is work to be done. I would have her involvement.”

Fasola’s eyes narrowed further. She tilted her head subtly as she looked up at Agate. “You gonna treat her better like you said?”

Agate’s ear flicked. What, precisely, had Mokou told her? “If the effort is mutual, yes.”

Fasola held her regard for a few breaths, then nodded slowly. “She’s up in 3-9. You just tell her I’ve got her ration cards ready.”

“Thank you; I shall,” said Agate. The innkeep’s precaution spoke of a lack of trust, but it was understandable. A less scrupulous person might use those cards as leverage. Fame compounded that leverage. Agate had no interest in such manipulation. She turned to make her way to the stairs.

“A cat’s no reason to dump somebody, Agate,” Fasola’s voice followed her.

“For two days, as it tracked us, I could not sleep, Fasola.” Agate paused and looked back over her shoulder. “It’s an astral tabby.”

“A what?”

Agate turned away in lieu of a response. Behind her came the soft slap of the innkeep’s arms on the countertop and the rustle of fabrics. Fasola hauled herself forward, half-over the counter, to call after Agate.

“She has a what?”

Agate climbed the stairs. On the second floor lounge, a few guests chatted quietly about the results of another ward’s election. Their conversation lowered, then rose again, as Agate climbed past them. The third floor lounge was empty. Most inhabitants of the inn seemed to have business elsewhere in the Heptagon at this time of day. She crossed the lounge and followed the hallway down to Mokou’s room. She found the door to 3-9.

She paused to brush a bit of dust from her thick lab coat and adjusted how the tails hung. The Heptagon’s conveniences ensured she could walk the streets with a lighter kit — her hoversled she had left docked at the workspace. All she kept were her essentials, stored within her saddlebags, sheathed at her sides, or waiting in her bit locker where it rested on her back. She stowed her noise blockers in a hip pouch. No sound came from within.

She knocked.

A muffled curse sounded through the door, followed by a thump and a perturbed meow. After a moment, there were the sounds of footsteps. A pause, under which came the faint shuffling of fabrics. More footsteps, approaching the door. Another pause, then the sound of a chain lock and a deadbolt. The door opened and stopped on the fastened chain. Mokou peered out of the gap, clad only in her red trousers, suspender dangling loose from her hip.

“Your ration cards are available at the front desk,” said Agate.

Mokou’s eye swept up and down Agate’s body. The crust of sleep still clung to the corner of her eye. She said nothing, made no other move.

“May I come in?” Agate asked.

Mokou shut the door. The deadbolt slid into its locked position.

Agate’s ear flicked. It was petty, but perhaps to be expected. She turned and strode back down the hallway to the lounge. She seated herself along the reclining surface of a kline. She waited.

Had she made a pattern of this?

Patterns could only arise from the chaos of social noise. Prospective suitors, hopeless admirers, erstwhile research partners. They would come to her with expectations woven purely from her name, from what they thought they knew of her. These expectations would inevitably snag upon something irreconcilable. They did not want her. They wanted their convenient fantasy of her — perfectly accessible, sharp edges filed down. She would disabuse them of this fantasy. She would send them here, with its niceties and conveniences. And then, generally, they would no longer trouble themselves with her.

This was efficacious. This was success. Success came at a cost.

Mokou hadn’t known her name. Nor had she known what patterns might embellish it.

It was frustrating to have nothing to occupy herself, doubly so when there were other tasks to attend to. Eavesdropping on the conversation in the lounge below was hardly satisfying; one of its members was possessed of a gratingly vacuous analysis and the other hardly saw fit to correct them. What was keeping Mokou? Her forms, perhaps? Agate certainly wouldn’t have minded the opportunity to observe them again. Especially if their future held more physical conflict.

After some time, she heard the sound of locks opening from down the hallway. The door opened, then closed, then locked again. Mokou’s sneakered tread whispered across the hallway’s long rugs. She stopped at the entrance to the lounge and eyed Agate impassively. Agate returned her gaze.

In complement to her suspendered red trousers, the immortal had donned the sleeveless black shell she’d picked up at the Stilt. The mirrorshades Agate had made for her dangled from a belt loop at her waist. The carbine was slung over her back. One hand she clasped around the carbine’s strap, the other she kept nonchalantly in a waist pocket.

Mokou sighed, slung her carbine from her back to prop it against a side table, and heaved herself into an armchair across from Agate’s kline.

“Anyone ever tell you you’ve got a cop knock?” Mokou asked.

“What?” Agate replied. “What is a cop?”

Mokou tilted her head back and breathed out through her nose. “They were people who killed you if you didn’t have money.”

“What, like bandits?” asked Agate.

“Yeah, but like, with state backing.”

Even these needlings were a glimpse into other times, other worlds, other lives. Many of those glimpses seemed worse. “Is there some other way I should knock?”

“Just—” Mokou sighed. “Not like that.”

“Unhelpful,” said Agate. The fur on the back of her neck prickled. Between the immortal’s feet, the astral tabby poked its head up from the stone floor. It fixed its silent, sinister gaze upon her. It was easier to push past with a full night’s sleep.

“Yeah, well, I just woke up,” said Mokou. “What did you want?”

“I gather the councils have assigned work groups to repair the condensers and other critical fixtures damaged by the storm. I intend to join them, so that the Heptagon may lift its water rationing as soon as possible.”

Mokou blinked with her dull gaze. “What’s that got to do with me?”

“This is an invitation,” said Agate.

“I don’t know the first fucking thing about fixing a condenser, Agate,” Mokou sighed. “What, do I gotta work here to get food and water and all that?”

“No,” said Agate. A portion of the tension in Mokou’s bearing dissolved at the answer. Agate pressed on. “But what else will you do? There are other tasks involved besides condenser repair. If you’re able, it’s common courtesy.”

“What else? I dunno,” said Mokou. She gestured at the hookah on the lounge’s central low table. “That looks like a nice start. Then, probably wait around for dinner. Maybe take a walk, maybe just lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. Matter of fact, yeah, fuck walking. Been walking too much lately.”

Agate’s ear flicked. “How unrelentingly tedious.”

Mokou gestured vaguely at herself, held her hands up in a shrug, and let her arms fall to the armrests. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned how to do it’s kill time.”

“By staring at the ceiling?” Agate scoffed. “You could write a letter, or train that beastly Tabi of yours.”

The cat meowed at the mention, perhaps with some feline equivalent of indignity.

“Yeah, I could do any number of things,” said Mokou. “And they all sound like lesser gradients of work than fucking work. Besides, it’s a new ceiling.”

Agate gestured at the carbine. “Why do you have your gun if you intend to lie in bed for the rest of the day?”

“I’m not leaving my gun in my room. Why do you have your gun?” Mokou retorted. “And your sword! This is a city!”

“This is Qud,” Agate answered. “There are dangers that do not discriminate based on urban density. Mine was not a critique of sensibility, but of your own standards.”

Mokou drew a knee up to rest her thigh against the inner armrest. Agate noted, with mild horror, that this posture left the sole of her sneaker resting on the seat cushion. The immortal glanced off to the side. “Figured you were gonna try to get me to walk somewhere again.”

“Currently,” Agate sighed, “roof access is limited to members of the work groups for general safety. I thought the view might interest you.” She had surmised as much while Mokou had paused for sightseeing in the Chrome Ward. The Heptagon’s height gave its roof an unparalleled panorama of the surrounding landscape. Perhaps she should have asked last night.

Mokou’s gaze flicked back to Agate, then away in contemplation. She pursed her lips slightly and subtly tilted her head this way and that. She gave a shrug of admission. “Why? To be honest, I figured we were done.”

“What gave you that impression?” asked Agate.

Mokou let out a snort of disbelief. “The door you shut in my face?”

Agate lifted a hand in advance of a rebuttal and found herself wanting. It was a fair point. She let her hand fall. “I carried you here.”

“Yeah, and a few days ago you were like ‘once we get here, that’s it,’” said Mokou. She leaned her head back against the armchair and slid down in her seat. “Kinda just figured all that talk in the canyon was to get me to shut up for the home stretch. Sure didn’t help being told you just do this, y’know?”

“Be that as it may,” Agate sighed, “my previous statement was based on incomplete information. We are not done.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Mokou scoffed.

Would that her responsibility permitted her to consider them done. To wash her hands of this would be grossly negligent to the ecological and social spheres of Qud, not to mention the scientific and historical record. But it was not merely a duty, self-imposed or otherwise. Mokou was fascinating. More than fascinating — her depths were alluring.

Agate had made a commitment. She would never chart those depths if she continued to be slipshod in that commitment.

“Yes, I was brusque,” admitted Agate. “I am now refreshed and prepared to once more bear the hungry attentions of your cat. I needed that space, Mokou. I anticipate I will continue to do so until you can teach it not to see me as prey. Your response was to kick my domicile.”

“Then just—” Mokou touched her hands to her temples. She dropped them forward as she levered herself to the edge of her seat. “Tell me that, Agate.”

Agate took in a breath and pressed her eyes shut briefly. “Must I justify my every action to you?”

“Look, chief, I just met you,” said Mokou. “I’ve known people like you, but I don’t know you. If you don’t clue me in on your little schemes then I can’t tell what’s going on in your cryptic fucking mind palace.”

“My little schemes?” Agate scoffed.

“It’s not even everything!” Mokou continued. “Literally just if it directly affects me. I know I’ve got a temper. But what am I supposed to do when you leave me in the dark and then provoke me over it? Just swallow it? Fuck that.”

“That wasn’t my intent,” said Agate. She had surely been compromised, if this was the result. Perhaps changing plans was as agonizing to the immortal as it was to Agate. “I’m sorry.”

The immortal blinked back at her. “What was your intent?”

“I wanted to sleep.”

Mokou took in a slow breath. She heaved herself up from the chair with a groan. She picked up the carbine and shouldered it again. She stepped past Agate’s seat and towards the stairs. Agate rose and turned to face her. She started to follow Mokou, but the immortal paused before she began her descent.

“I’m lost, Agate.” Mokou said. She hadn’t turned back. “It’s a whole new culture to learn, a whole new landscape to navigate. It’s always some shit and I’m always in it. I’m gonna muddle through with or without your help.”

“I don’t fancy your chances out there without me,” said Agate.

Mokou rolled out her neck and sighed. “It’s not about chances. On a long enough timeline, it all evens out. Just a matter of how many tries.”

That was a bleak accounting. It left far too wide a margin for the consequences of unmitigated failure. It wouldn’t do.

“I would like to help,” Agate said, softly.

Mokou turned a quizzical glance back over her shoulder, eyebrows raised. She took in a breath. “Cool. I’m gonna pick up my cards.”

Chapter Text

By the time they reached the lobby, Fasola was asleep again. It was unsurprising.

Agate followed Mokou as she ambled to the counter. The immortal rested her elbows on the counter and spoke. “Morning.”

Fasola’s eyes fluttered open in languid confusion. She rose and stretched in her seat. “It’s morning already?”

“I dunno, we’re in a cave,” said Mokou.

“It is afternoon,” Agate crossed her arms and sighed.

“Well then, afternoon, friend Mokou,” Fasola replied. Her gaze flicked from Mokou in front of her to where Agate stood to the side. “Huh. You patch things up?”

Mokou turned her head to glance at Agate. She held her gaze for a moment, eyes unreadable. Agate returned it. Mokou turned back to the innkeep and shrugged. “Close enough.”

Agate’s ear flicked, while her heart lurched. ‘Close enough’ was harrowingly imprecise. She had built and used enough explosives to know this. Clearly there was still more that remained to be said.

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” said Fasola. She pulled open a drawer beneath the counter and extracted several of the Heptagon’s ration cards. They were made of stiff paper — recycled several times, but still sturdy enough for regular use. Each was a different color and bore clear iconography to denote a different rationed service or good. Different cards sported their own arrangement of boxes, to be punched upon fulfillment. Fasola fanned three different ones out on the counter and continued. “Okay, I got as far as ‘Mokou’ before I decided I didn’t want to misspell the rest. Is it all one word, or—?”

“No, it’s like — here, I got it,” Mokou sighed and took up the pen.

“Oh, you can write! Lovely. Saves me work,” Fasola beamed.

Mokou paused briefly, pen hovering above the rightmost card. It sported the light blue color and iconography of a water allowance card. Mokou seemed to be marshaling her thoughts. “This one’s for water?”

“Allowance card, yep,” Fasola nodded. “There’s a few civil canteens in every ward where you can get your allowance filled. It’s mainly if you’re saving up for something big. Our automatic brewer took us about a year to save up for.”

“What, not for drinking?” asked Mokou. “You just fill your canteens at the canteens and sit on ‘em?”

“I mean, you can drink it if you want,” said Fasola. “But we got water coming out of the walls here. Only so much you can drink in a day. It’s structured to be a few drams more than that.”

Agate cleared her throat. “That said, if water rationing grows more severe, then yes, you may need to drink it.”

“Don’t people, I dunno, make runs on the canteens, then?” asked Mokou.

“Every day,” Fasola shrugged. “It’s what they’re made for. They got the capacity.”

“Then what’s to stop them from just leaving with everything they’ve saved?” asked Mokou.

“I dunno,” said Fasola. She glanced meaningfully at Agate. “Courtesy, maybe. Everything they need’s right here. It’s a nice place.”

“Huh,” said Mokou. She filled out the rest of her name on the allowance card.

Her pessimistic queries reminded Agate of her own questions when she had first arrived at the Heptagon. Life as a pariah had not prepared her to immediately accept a society structured towards abundance and generosity. It had seemed unthinkable that such a structure wouldn’t immediately collapse from the abuse of its constituents. She could only imagine what depths of human nature Mokou had borne witness to in her time, what deprivations and predations she had suffered.

“The Heptagon’s systems are structured with the resiliency to withstand any given individual abuse,” said Agate. Every time she returned, she expected it to feel harder to return once more to the unforgiving wilds. Perhaps each time it was. “Furthermore, they are structured to limit the severity of such abuses in the first place.”

“If you get sick of us, you can always join a caravan,” said Fasola. Again, she turned a pointed little glance and a raise of her brows towards Agate. “But ultimately, if you want to run off and be a hermit somewhere, there’s nothing stopping you.”

Fasola’s glances seemed to be implicating Agate in something exhausting. She would not rise to it. Perhaps such implications would sink home were Agate some sort of freeloader — were her name not emblazoned in the Heptagon’s Hall of Legends. What she chose to do with the water she’d accrued was her own affair.

“I’m not a hermit,” Mokou sighed.

“Oh no, no, I wasn’t saying you were, hon,” said Fasola. She turned her gaze back to Mokou and gave her a once-over. “But I mean, if you hadn’t said…”

Mokou met the innkeep’s gaze with a look slightly too tired to be a glare.

Fasola raised her hands in a feebly defensive gesture. “It’s the hair! Sorry!”

Mokou’s pen hovered over the next card. Its color was a purple gradient of natural dye. The same amount of boxes on this card stretched across months, rather than weeks. “Which one’s this?”

“Clothes!” said Fasola. “You see an outfit in a boutique you like, you can just go in and get your card punched and get it.”

“What if you’re out of punches?” asked Mokou.

“You can purchase it as per usual,” said Agate.

“Or wait for it to show up in the secondhand markets,” Fasola nodded.

Mokou gave a small smile as she signed the card. “Fashion ration. Got it.”

“Fashion ration!” Fasola giggled. “You’re a delight, hon. Agate, where’d you find this gal? She picks up the lingo so quick!”

“The Stilt,” Agate replied. “The kitchen of the chef Irula, to be precise.”

“Ahhh,” said Fasola. She gave Mokou another once-over and nodded appraisingly. “This is what’s in vogue over Stilt-a-ways, huh? Not bad.”

Mokou thumbed at a suspender strap and chuckled softly. “This is just the kind of thing I tend to wear, really. Got lucky they had something I liked.”

“Well, poke around the tailors here and you’re bound to find something else you like,” said Fasola.

Mokou rose slightly from her hunch over the cards to return Fasola’s gaze. “Been meaning to ask, where’d you get your hat?”

“Oh, this?” Fasola’s smile widened with self-satisfaction and a bit of pride crept into her tone. “Guess you wouldn’t know, and I don’t mind telling you. It’s the hat I got for my spicer certification! I worked hard for it. I’m gonna be wearing this baby for months.”

Agate’s cooking techniques were largely self-taught. She had never participated in a formal ceremony enshrining her skills, nor felt it necessary. They were self-evident. Still, among those chefs who took part in the Heptagon’s graduation ceremonies, she was given to understand that few wore the hats past the ceremony itself. Fasola’s fashion decision was perhaps a touch idiosyncratic, but then, Qud was a land that fostered idiosyncrasies.

“Well, hey, congratulations!” Mokou smiled. Her posture at the counter had loosened and softened. “You’ve earned it. It’s cute.”

This was perhaps the first time Agate had heard such a cap described as ‘cute.’ Was the innkeep simply Mokou’s type? Or was the immortal attracted to impractical headwear?

“Oh, psshh, listen to you,” Fasola chuckled, waving off the compliment — the flirt, more accurately — with a tone of appreciative dismissal. “If you want your own, you’ll have to work for it like I did.”

“You likely already possess the requisite skill base,” said Agate. A spicer was one who could reliably tease three distinct metabolic effects from their chosen ingredients without the meal destabilizing from interference patterns or cross-contamination. Considering Mokou’s meals, she had almost certainly done so from Agate’s ingredients, regardless of her ignorance of the resultant possibilities. Agate had brought her here to remedy that ignorance. She found herself already anticipating that day.

A deeper emotional consideration lodged itself in Agate’s thoughts, refusing to easily subsume itself into the background. This was a free society. Mokou could associate herself with whomever she chose, could romantically pursue and entwine herself with whomever was so willing.

She had no particular incentive to make Agate one of those choices.

Did they have any shared interests? Any unifying goals, any points of solidarity? Culinary skill was a start, but was it enough by itself? She would simply have to treat her better while she found out. Such was her resolution.

“And she knows how to spice!” said Fasola, approvingly. “Got your start early, huh?”

Mokou loosed a short and slightly bitter laugh. “You could say that, yeah. What’s this last one?”

The last ration card was the soft brown of unbleached and recycled paper. The punch boxes were color-coded in longer or shorter weekly groupings according to severity of water rationing. Agate stepped forward and leaned in next to Mokou. She tapped the card.

“This is the most important one,” she said. “Your hygiene ration. This gives access to the Heptagon’s public baths.”

Mokou turned to meet Agate’s gaze. There was a gleam in her eye. “You got baths?”

“Yes,” said Agate.

“Honest-to-god, hot water up to your shoulders, soap and shampoo baths?”

“Precisely,” said Agate. The immortal understood.

“Oh, thank god,” Mokou muttered. She bent again and signed her final ration card.

“But therein lies the complication,” said Agate. “Were it not for the current level of water rationing, you could bathe every day. But currently, all public baths are operating on reduced scheduling, and the rationed limit is lower. Four per week.”

Mokou mulled on this. “Four baths a week still sounds like plenty, honestly.”

“As a further complication, since not every bathhouse can be open every day, attendance is higher at the ones in operation on any given day. More crowds means more risk of transmissible contagions. This is ultimately a matter of public health.”

“Think I get it, but—” Mokou shrugged. “I can’t catch those, remember?”

“Some of us do not enjoy such luxuries,” Agate replied. “If you have ever seen the effects of a glotrot outbreak, I’m sure you might sympathize with us mortals.”

“I get it, I get it,” Mokou held up her hands and winced.

“Come on, Agate,” said Fasola. “You’re not gonna catch glotrot from the Heptagon’s baths unless you’re drinking the bathwater, and even then. Worst you might get when it’s crowded like this is fickle gill, maybe.”

“That risk compounds so long as rationing continues,” Agate replied. “And should it grow worse—”

“Quit trying to scare the gal, it’s not gonna get worse,” said Fasola. After a moment, she frowned. “I mean, it’s not, is it?”

“That is what I aim to ensure,” Agate sighed. She leaned in closer to Mokou and lowered her voice, though the effort was somewhat fruitless with Fasola in such proximity. “Ultimately, it means less privacy. I meant what I said in the canyons. Ask me again when we have both found the opportunity to bathe.”

Mokou raised her eyebrows at that. There was a different sort of gleam in her eyes now — appraising, hungry, faintly incredulous. “But before we can bathe, we have to fix the Heptagon’s water supply.”

“Precisely,” said Agate. “We have successfully traced out the underlying logic of this endeavor. Of my ‘little scheme’, as you so whimsically put it.”

Mokou puffed out a heavy breath. “Alright, shit. Got nothing else to do today. Let’s get to it.”

Agate nearly made to pull back but stopped herself. That was the particular phrase the arconaut, Maun Muur, had taught her to initiate the water ritual. Was that how Mokou meant it just now?

“What?” asked Mokou. Some of Agate’s uncertainty must have bled through to her expression.

“Nothing,” Agate said. Coincidence, most likely. A date was one matter. The water ritual was a far weightier commitment. Weighty enough to have kept it from her consideration. She straightened herself and stepped away from the counter. “Shall we?”

“Need to grab some things from my room,” said Mokou. She pocketed her cards and stepped back herself.

“You’re going out?” asked Fasola. “Let me pack some lunches for you!”

Fasola bustled off into the back room and its connected kitchens, while Mokou walked back to the staircase. Agate was left alone in the lobby. There was a quiet sort of satisfaction brewing within her. She had articulated herself well. If that was all it took, it was not particularly onerous.

The fur on the back of her neck rose. She scanned the lobby for the source, and found it roughly two paces away. Lurking in front of the counter, haunches sunk just below the level of the floor, was Tabi. The cat’s baleful gaze focused silently upon her. The lobby was otherwise empty.

“Stayed down here, did you?” Agate muttered.

After a moment, she bent her front legs to crouch closer to the tabby’s level. She met its gaze unflinchingly. She held out her free hand.

“Wheatgrass,” she whispered to the tabby.

The cat gave not the slightest glimmer of recognition, nor interest in her offered hand. Agate’s ear flicked. She stood again. Perhaps it was to be expected. She crossed her arms and waited for the others.

Shortly, Fasola returned from the backroom. She set two small wooden meal boxes on the counter and paused. She glanced below her side of the counter.

“Whose tail is this?” she asked.

“That would be the astral tabby,” Agate replied. “She has named it Tabi. I am given to understand it is a name flush with meaning and fluid interpretation.”

“Tabi, right,” said Fasola.

Tabi stepped forward into the center of the lobby with an untroubled air, raised a paw to groom itself, and idly let slip its complement of serrated claws. It dropped its paw again, then turned its gaze towards the innkeep.

“Oh, hazel,” said Fasola. “Those are some claws. Kinda gives you the creeps, doesn’t it?”

“Harmless, so long as it stays within its natural phase-state,” Agate replied. “But, yes.”

She was concerned at the prospect of bringing Tabi into an active work site. Before she could mull on this concern overlong, Mokou descended the stairs. She had her pack with her in addition to her carbine.

“Fasola!” she called. She crossed the lobby to rejoin Agate. “You mind watching my cat while I’m out?”

“Do I mind?” asked Fasola. A bead of sweat slipped down her temple. Her gaze flicked between Mokou and Tabi. “You could just leave her in your room, couldn’t you?”

“Sure, but there’d be nothing keeping her there. Here.” Mokou set a stack of her starched seals on the counter and patted them. “Anywhere you don’t want her getting in, just put one of these up.”

The circuit of Fasola’s gaze widened to encompass the stack of seals and Agate. “So you could… put ‘em up in your room?”

“What, and keep her cooped up in there?” Mokou replied. “It’s just for a few hours. Work site’s no place for a cat.”

Fasola cast her gaze desperately towards Agate, perhaps looking for support. Agate shrugged in response. “I can attest that the seals work as phase-blockers,” she said.

It was encouraging that Mokou seemed to be giving thought to the scope of potential disruption her tabby carried. This imposition was sensible. Perhaps there was a hint of petty satisfaction Agate could take in it, but that was merely a side benefit. Some of the innkeep’s insinuations had been rather pointed.

Fasola riffled through a corner of the stack with her thumb. She sighed in resignation. “I’m not even gonna ask.”

“Great!” said Mokou. She turned to kneel down before Tabi. “You stay here, alright, Tabi?”

“Rrrrt?” Tabi replied.

“I’m serious,” Mokou insisted. After a moment of silent eye contact between her and the beast, she nodded, then stood. She scooped up the lunches from the counter and inclined her head in farewell as she made for the door. “Back in a few. Thanks for the meal!”

“Live and drink, Fasola,” Agate nodded in turn.

“Yeah, live and drink,” said Fasola, wanly. She gave a small wave as Agate turned to follow Mokou out into the street. Tabi remained within.

The door shut behind her with a jingle of its bell. Mokou paused on the street, lunches crooked beneath an elbow, to fish for her mirrorshades and don them. She grimaced up at the great lamp over the Garden Ward that flooded the inn’s facade in artificial sunlight.

“Good god, that’s bright,” she muttered. She turned back to Agate, waiting for her to take the lead. She nodded at the inn. “That’s Sheba’s favorite spot, huh?”

“So I’ve heard,” said Agate.

Mokou mulled on this for a moment. “How do either of them manage to check her in?”

Agate gave a faint, wry smile. “I have never determined this.”

Chapter Text

Their path to the roof took them back up through the Chrome Ward. The way felt familiar to Mokou — far more so than a single tracing should have left it. E’Beth’s implanted memory imbued the subterranean city streets with a sense of undeniable deja vu. Mokou still hadn’t quite resolved herself on how to feel about it. Certainly she could feel the utility of the gesture in every cobble passing beneath her tread. There hadn’t been any malice in E’Beth’s psionic extension of help. But at the same time, the way it settled in her psyche danced around fraught memories from her time in Oth.

In that city across the desert, as in so many places and times before it, there were those who thought the best way to understand power was to find out exactly how much they could hurt someone with it. The structures of that esper-led city did little to rein in the private excesses of its psionic castes so long as those excesses never troubled the state. E’Beth had no way of knowing that context without being the sort of esper that blew past boundaries, the sort of esper that made those memories so fraught in the first place. She didn’t seem to be such an esper. Maybe she wasn’t from Oth, or maybe she was just a nice person.

Perhaps the people of this city had a different outlook on power.

They certainly liked street food more. They were just giving it away around her. This walk was going to kill her. There was nothing separating her from countless mysterious fried things but Agate’s momentum. At least she had a lunch already, but considering Agate’s pace there was no telling when she’d have the opportunity to sit down and eat it. It was hard to know if she could even speak to Agate — the hindren had donned her noise-blocking headphones before they had reached the crowds and bustle of the main thoroughfares.

As she was still working out what she might say, her stomach growled. She felt it more than heard it — the noise was lost beneath the dozens of other conversations saturating the streets around them.

Agate glanced back over her shoulder. “You are hungry?”

“Uh, yeah,” said Mokou, taken slightly aback. She gestured with the boxed lunches. “Where were you planning on eating these?”

Agate slowed her stride. “Anywhere, really. I already ate.”

“What, do you not want yours?”

“I was saving it for later,” said Agate. She had slowed enough for Mokou to draw up next to her. “Do as you like with yours. There will be food at the work site as well, once the shift is done.”

Mokou had known Agate’s hearing was sharp, but not that sharp. Her acuity was impressive. That sort of talent used to make someone a legend. Maybe it still did.

Mokou steered them towards a bench in a quiet corner of the plaza across the central bridge. The creaking of waterwheels and humming of turbines drifted under the sounds of chatter and bustle. The streets were busier, perhaps owing to the time of the unseen day. But there was still a sense that suffused the crowds, coloring the way they coursed the thoroughfares, that the city was nowhere near its capacity. Whoever built it had built it with room to be filled, to grow.

Mokou sat at one end of the bench, giving Agate room to seat her whole lower body in the remaining bench space. She handed off Agate’s lunch, then opened her own. The box’s interior was split into several compartments in a fashion reminiscent of, but still distinct from, a bento. The primary compartment held jam-smothered strips of goat meat over savory wafers of unleavened bread. Another held a lidded serving of cold soup, while the third held a rack of dolmas.

She retrieved her chopsticks from her bag and tucked in excitedly. One bite of dolma lifted her mood instantly. Whoever Fasola’s aunt was, if this was her recipe, then she probably deserved a bit of self-importance in her folksy sayings.

“The dolma is to your liking?” asked Agate. It was still a bit strange, hearing her attempt small talk.

“Damn good,” said Mokou. “Feels weird to be eating it by myself, though.”

“It will keep,” said Agate.

“Really? I’d think the bit under the meat would get soggy if you leave it too long,” said Mokou.

“The matz?” Agate clarified.

“Matz, right,” said Mokou. The unleavened wafers still held a nice crispness that meshed well with the meat and jam.

Agate huffed out a soft breath. “I’ve had that recipe of hers. Its metabolized effects do not permit me to do this.” She stood from the bench and walked past where Mokou sat. Mokou’s hair lifted softly from static energy as Agate crossed to her goal: a nearby pylon that stood roughly waist-high, bedecked with sockets and topped with a metal handle. Agate grasped the handle. Electricity coursed from her body and into the pylon. After a few moments, Agate’s surge tapered off. Small green lights winked on around the pylon and a soft hum could be heard from within.

“What is that?” asked Mokou.

“A public charging station,” said Agate, returning to the bench and folding her legs back beneath her. “It is fully charged once more.”

Mokou had seen a few of the pylons in passing and in various states of use. They had looked cryptic and a bit intimidating to her. This neighborhood of the Heptagon seemed to have a fairly developed level of general technology. Maybe this was where the tinkers congregated. The sort of public with enough devices to require public charging stations wasn’t the sort of public Mokou generally found herself a part of.

“Your pace is all out of whack,” said Mokou.

“What?” scoffed Agate. “Because I fed myself before I had any indication of what the day might hold?”

“No, because you never stop,” said Mokou. “We just got here! There’s no decompression time, you know? You’re just immediately like ‘time to work!’ — we don’t even have to. What happened to taking in the sights?”

“This is sightseeing,” said Agate. “If you don’t wish to join me, your presence is by no means obligated.”

“No, I know,” Mokou sighed. She popped the lid from the soup serving and sipped it. It was herbaceous, bubbly and a bit sweet, straddling the philosophical line between a soup and a drink. “I get why we’re here and all. I’m not backing out, I’m just saying — your pace.”

“My pace,” said Agate.

“It’s wack.”

“Noted,” the hindren nodded with the dubious air of someone already filing the note as inconsequential. “Our lives are brutish and short. This is how I have chosen to fill my allotted span.”

“Hmm,” Mokou grunted in acknowledgment.

“Mortals, you may recall, do not have the luxury of an indefinite timeframe.”

“I get it, I get it. You just walk like you’re gonna burst a blood vessel, is all.”

Agate huffed out something like a chuckle in response.

They watched the people of the Heptagon stream through the plaza, going about their various days. Agate opened her own lunch to sip from her soup as Mokou neared her meal’s completion. Mokou cleaned off her chopsticks, then closed her empty lunch box. She patted the box in indication.

“We gotta bring these back to the Inn?” asked Mokou.

“Not necessary,” said Agate. “It’s a standard serving dish in the Heptagon. Any recycling bin will take them.”

Mokou stood and stretched, then nodded to Agate. “You ready?”

Agate simply stood and stepped past Mokou. She gestured to a bin in passing. Mokou recycled her lunch box, then fell in behind Agate.

Their path took them back up to the arena’s interior, still in the emotional footfalls of E’Beth’s memories. They climbed past the level of the surface, then higher within the arena’s enclosed boulevards. At an upper crossroads, signage pointed one way for roof access and another for something called the Hall of Legends. Agate took the path to the roof. Her lead split from Mokou’s implanted recollection, nearly at its culmination. Mokou slowed her stride to cast a glance down the route to the Hall. There was a statue-flanked archway some ways further along, but she couldn’t see beyond it without straying from Agate’s wake. E’Beth’s office was somewhere down there. Mokou sped her stride again and caught up to Agate, walking by her side.

“What’s the Hall of Legends?” asked Mokou.

“It is where champions of the arena are…” Agate trailed off. She glanced sidelong at Mokou. “Commemorated.”

Mokou snorted. “You were about to say ‘immortalized’, weren’t you?”

Agate gave a shrug as faint as her smile. “A week ago, I would have. It seems to have gained a different connotation since then.”

“That’ll happen,” Mokou chuckled.

They came to a stairwell that extended in both directions. Stairs up led to the roof, while the stairs down presumably connected with other passages inside the arena’s superstructure. At the top of the stairwell, it opened into a wide observation room, almost shadowy from the glare of afternoon seeping through the windows. It held a loose collection of benches and a few decorative plants. Two sets of double doors on opposite sides of the room led to the exterior. One exit was cordoned off, while the other had a desk positioned to one side of it. A bookish, feathered individual in coveralls and a hooded headwrap waved them down from behind the desk.

“Ah, sorry, friends, but access to the roof is closed to the public while repairs are underway!” said the secretary. She adjusted her spectacles over the bridge of her shapely beak as they approached.

“We are here to assist with the repairs,” Agate replied. “There is room on this shift, yes?”

“Oh! Absolutely,” said the secretary, reaching for a folder full of paperwork with a practiced smoothness. “I didn’t realize you were back, Ms. Star. I should have your information already. But I don’t believe I’ve seen your companion before.”

“I’m new in town,” said Mokou. She stepped to the desk and extended a hand in greeting. “Mokou.”

“Yun,” replied the bespectacled mutant. Her hand was wide and soft with downy brown plumage. “Shift secretary for the afternoon repair group. Live and drink, friend Mokou. You’re also here to work?”

“Guess I am,” said Mokou. It wasn’t her first choice of what to do today, but now that she was here, she was curious how this society connected people to work. “What’s the process here?”

“Pretty simple, just a few questions to go over,” Yun answered.

“Do you require my assistance?” asked Agate. There was a hint of obligation in her tone, almost grudging in its courtesy. She clearly didn’t want it to be necessary to have to help with something that was evidently simple. She looked antsy to get started. Still, it was an offer. That probably counted for something.

“Think I got it,” said Mokou. “Go do your thing.”

Agate nodded and strode through the double doors, out into the afternoon sun.

“This is your first time working at the Heptagon, yes?” asked Yun. Her voice had dropped to a soft-spoken register once they were no longer across the room from each other.

“Yep,” said Mokou.

“Could I ask where you’re staying?” asked Yun.

Mokou frowned. That was sensitive information. If she went around telling people where she lived then people could just find her. “Why do you want to know?”

“If you plan to keep helping with repairs, we can send along some work clothes for you in the next few days.”

“Something wrong with what I’ve got?” asked Mokou, holding her arms out slightly in demonstration. It felt good to have them bared after spending a few days in the constant confines of Agate’s suit.

Yun sat up in her chair to look over Mokou’s outfit, from shell to trousers to plastifer sneakers. She shrugged. “Looks fine, but it’s dirty work sometimes. Plus it keeps us from thinking someone’s wandered onto the work site.”

“Gotcha,” Mokou nodded. If that was the only reason they wanted her location, then free coveralls outweighed privacy concerns. “I’m staying at the Moondrop Inn. Garden Ward, I think?”

“Ooh, Garden Ward’s lovely,” said Yun. She made a couple short entries in a notebook. “So, we’re in the middle of roof repairs currently. Do you have experience working with condensers?”

“No,” said Mokou, feeling a bit self-conscious. “Do I need to?”

“Not at all, we have people for that,” said Yun, reassuringly. “It’s not just the fixtures that need repairs — there’s some structural work too, and a lot of cleanup. Do you have experience with roofing? Shingles, carpentry, that sort of thing?”

“Fixed plenty of roofs,” said Mokou. It was difficult to get a full grasp of the scope of the arena’s roof from inside the observation room. “Usually not this big, though.”

“Excellent! Can you pour concrete?”

“Think so,” said Mokou. “Probably done it at some point.”

Yun nodded, taking more small notes with each of Mokou’s answers. “Good, good. Now, I notice you’re armed. Are you willing to use that in defense of your fellow workers?”

Mokou raised her eyebrows. The casualness of the question’s delivery belied its weight. She didn’t even know these people. Still, she was no stranger to wielding violence to protect strangers. “Sure, done that before. You, uh, expecting any heat just for roof repair?”

“Not really. It’s been pretty quiet since the storm. Still, you never know.”

“What if I had said no?” asked Mokou.

Yun shrugged again. “We have people for that, too. This is just to figure out where best to fit you in — what you’re willing to do.”

“Gotcha,” Mokou grunted.

The secretary tapped her pen against her chin. “This might be a long shot — can you blow glass?”

“Probably a bit rusty, but yeah,” said Mokou. Immortality gave her ample time to pick up new trades, and ampler time to forget them again. Glassblowing she had at least most recently practiced sometime in the last few centuries. There was a cottage industry of it back across the Moghra’yi, in the holds adjoining the Fuming God Sea. She had been able to refresh herself there. “What does that have to do with roof repair? Some windows break or something?”

“It’s more to do with the condensers, actually!” said Yun. “If you can shape it to spec, you can still help fix them directly! Plus, there’s just a lot of glass to recycle. Speaking of: can you push a broom?”

“Yeah,” said Mokou.

“Great,” Yun hummed. “One last question: what made you want to sign up?”

“It was Agate’s idea,” Mokou shrugged.

“It was?” asked Yun. Her brow furrowed. “When did you say you got in to town?”

“Last night,” answered Mokou.

“Last night?” Yun turned in her seat to glance back at the closed double doors, as though she expected to catch a glimpse of Agate through them. She turned back to Mokou, still sporting her furrowed brow. “It’s your first day in the Heptagon and she wants you to work?”

“That’s about right,” said Mokou.

Yun’s expression scrunched further in disbelief. “What a weirdo.”

Mokou laughed. “She’s relentless. I feel like I’m here from inertia.”

“What, she’s not even letting you go sightsee?” asked Yun.

“This is sightseeing, apparently,” Mokou’s amusement settled into a faint smirk.

Yun lifted her shut beak in consideration, then turned over her feathered hands in a gesture of admission. “I can see it. View’s lovely from the roof. Still, that’s sure not my idea of an itinerary.”

“Tell me about it,” said Mokou.

“Maybe when we’re off shift,” chuckled Yun. She closed her notebook and straightened up in her chair. “Anyway, we’ll probably have you take it easy with some sweeping today. I’m afraid it’s not particularly glamorous work, but it needs to get done.”

“Ahh, it’s fine,” Mokou waved it off. “It’s meditative.”

“That’s the spirit,” Yun clacked her beak happily. “Any questions on all this?”

“Mm,” Mokou grunted. “What’s the pay?”

“Pay?” asked Yun.

“Yeah, pay? For work?”

“You mean like…” Yun’s expression tightened from confusion to faint distaste. “Wages? We don’t do wages here.”

“What do you do?” asked Mokou.

“The work, as it needs to be done, when it needs to be done,” said Yun. “By whoever can and will.”

“How do you get ‘em to do it, if there’s no money involved?” asked Mokou.

“I mean, it piles up otherwise. People don’t get what they need. That’s the whole point of the work, so that everyone can get what they need,” Yun answered.

“Ah, yeah,” Mokou nodded. “That’s pretty classic. Don’t see it too often, though.”

“It’s a shame, isn’t it?” said Yun. “It’s been working well for us these last seven-odd years. You’d think it would be more popular. Was there anything else you wanted to ask about?”

“Not that I can think of,” said Mokou.

It really was that simple, apparently. Not even any paperwork, but perhaps they just delegated that to their secretaries here. The grander philosophy behind their arrangement seemed like a good balance of utility and altruism. She imagined that if the Yamas still kept their ledgers in the courts of paradise, this was the sort of work that looked good in them. Not that Mokou would ever face that final accounting.

“Well then!” Yun clapped. “Just go on through and look for Nashimir, the forewoman. She’s probably about to give her speech. She should be by the crab.”

“The crab?” asked Mokou.

Yun waved to the double doors. “Yeah, go on through, you can’t miss it.”

Mokou gave a parting nod, with only a bit of uncertainty. “Well, thanks, Yun. Live and drink.”

“Live and drink!”

Chapter Text

There was a crab on the roof.

Around the crab was an undoubtedly stunning view, but the crab demanded Mokou’s attention with its very presence. It was massive, the size of a house. Its carapace looked like segmented slabs of igneous stone. The livid glow of magma seeped through the seams of its plating when it shifted. It remained largely in one spot, occupying a wide upper plaza like a living shrine.

A small crowd of workers was gathered in the plaza around the crab, waiting and chatting quietly amongst themselves. They numbered perhaps no more than thirty, with the diversity in body shape Mokou was coming to expect from the Heptagon’s populace. She joined Agate where the hindren stood at the back of the press. Even from the back of the crowd, she could feel the heat radiating from the crab.

“How the hell did that get up here?” asked Mokou, quietly.

“Airlifted,” Agate replied.

Small currents of shifting conversation rippled through the gathered workers. More than one glance darted back to where Agate stood, pawing at the plaza concrete with a hoof, arms crossed in silent waiting. Those ripples quieted from an arrival at the front of the crowd. A burly mutant stepped out from behind the crab and cast a steely gaze over the assembled workers.

She was taller than most, and accentuated that by standing on the concrete lip of a raised planter bed so that all could see her. Her coveralls were tied off at the waist, while her upper body was clad only in the rusty chitinous plates of an inhuman carapace. One hand, propped on her hip, was clad in a thick work glove, while the other ended in an oversized pincer. Her hair waved in the furnace heat roiling from the crab, but she barely seemed to sweat. Once the crowd fell silent, she spoke in a gravelly voice that carried over the plaza despite the open sky.

“I see some new faces today!” she called. “That means you all get the speech I know you’ve heard already.”

A few canned groans sounded from the crowd.

“Hey, if you don’t like it, then vote me out!” the carapaced woman continued. “I’m Nashimir, I’m the forewoman. That means I’m first on and last off. If you run into a problem you can’t solve with your buddy, you find me. If you need to know where we need you, you find me. And that means I’m your liaison with our special guest here!”

Nashimir the forewoman thumped her claw against the crab’s nearest stony plate. The crab loosed a low hiss like a pressure valve. Nashimir cast an appreciative gaze up the side of the crab as she continued.

“This here is Hibnicrab Pharmazocrab! To you lot, that is. To me, owing to the special bond we share, she’s Big Pharma! She’s up from the Beast Ward to help us work through all this glass. This isn’t her usual gig, so show her a little respect. What’s her usual gig?” Nashimir pointed forward with her claw and swept it across the crowd to accompany her gaze. “Big Pharma heats your pipes. Big Pharma cleans your streets. Big Pharma guards the lower wards from things meaner than any of you cusses. The sooner we fix up this roof, the sooner we can all get back to the usual. Understood?”

There was a ragged chorus of assent from the assembled workers, in the manner of a crowd familiar with the routine.

“But ‘sooner’ doesn’t mean ‘sloppy’! That means only go near the edge if you’re harness trained, and no dumping over the sides! Any other questions, just find me.”

Nashimir cocked a half-smile and took in a deep breath.

“Afternoon repair crew! What are we?” she bellowed.

The workers called back in tighter unison, with far more sudden spirit than before. “Safe! Thorough! Sated! Comrades!”

Mokou glanced sidelong at Agate as the call rang over the rooftops. The hindren recovered from a wince, ears swiveling forward again.

“Damn right!” The forewoman gave a fierce grin. “Buddy up and get moving!”

The crowd of workers dispersed purposefully. Mokou turned to Agate and cast her an appraising glance.

“Are we buddies?” she asked.

Agate glanced back. “That may depend on where our skillsets are required.”

Mokou raised her brows and let her lip crumple a bit. “You don’t want to be buddies?”

Agate frowned, taken slightly aback. “It’s a matter of—”

“Unbelievable,” said Mokou. “You drag me out of bed and then you don’t even want to be buddies.”

Agate’s exposed cheek reddened. She glanced away. “Let us speak to Nashimir.”

Mokou grinned. It was almost too easy. What had her so unbalanced? “You got weird ideas about dating.”

“Agate Severance Star!” called the forewoman. She hopped down from the planter bed and crossed the plaza to them. “Perfect! Here I was hoping we’d get someone else for the condensers. You better stick around long enough to get meal rotation this time.”

“I shall,” said Agate.

“I’ll wait warmly,” said Nashimir. “Who’s this?”

“Mokou,” said Mokou. She held out her hand in greeting, then nodded her head towards Agate. “I’m her buddy.”

Nashimir reached forward to Mokou’s offered hand with her crab claw. Mokou felt a spike of uncertainty. The forewoman clasped it around Mokou’s digits and shook — firm, yet surprisingly delicate in its precision. Reassuring. “Nashimir. She brought her own buddy today! That’s great! Saves me work.”

Agate’s ear flicked. Her cheek had yet to cool. “Point us at the nearest ailing condenser.”

“Not so fast,” said Nashimir. “Mokou’s new. What did Yun say, Mokou?”

“She said I’d probably be pushing a broom,” said Mokou. This forewoman seemed to like delegation. It was sensible.

“Great, we got plenty of those,” Nashimir nodded. She rubbed her jaw with her gloved hand and looked off past the both of them, over the rooftops. “Let’s get you a cart and some shovels too, and you two can clear the way to the cluster at the southeastern observation rotunda. We’ve almost broken through already. Once you’re through, you can see how the condensers there fared.”

“Sounds good to me,” Mokou grunted. “You good with that, buddy?”

Agate returned a cool gaze towards Mokou. “I have a name.”

“You good with that, Agate Severance Star?” Mokou repeated, grinning again.

Agate crossed her arms and looked away. “The task is acceptable.”

Nashimir equipped them and sent them along to their destination. The Heptagon’s roof was ringed by a long walkway, raised over the level of the lacquered shingles. It linked observation chambers like the one they’d emerged from and rooftop plazas like the one housing the magmatic crab. Day-dimmed lanterns spaced themselves regularly atop the walkway’s railings. Glass glittered in the shingle grooves they passed over. Previous efforts had clearly focused first on clearing the walkway.

The shape and construction of the roof kept her attention from the vista surrounding them. It glimmered in her periphery, creeping in where her shades didn’t guard. The western landscape remained glassed. Over and beyond the winding, glittering bluffs, the barren canopy of the flower fields stretched skeletally upwards to the empty cerulean. She had walked beneath that canopy with Agate. Seeing it from above, filling the horizon, was its own flavor of melancholy.

Weather never had the decency to stay where it was expected.

The day, at least, was clear and bright. Perhaps too bright, since the surrounding landscape was extra-reflective. Sounds of other workers carried faintly over the breeze.

“The roof,” Mokou started.

Agate glanced at her, waiting for her to continue.

“I’m looking at all this glass, all this space,” said Mokou. “I’m still shaky on what a parasang is, but this roof — this whole thing, this arena — it’s about a parasang, right?”

“Roughly,” Agate nodded.

The cart’s wheels rolled over the walkway’s planks, transferring vibration into Mokou’s forearms. She had to start steering the cart around piles of swept glass along the walkway, spaced almost as regularly as the lanterns.

“Kinda seems like there’s not enough people for the size of the job up here.”

“There are other shifts,” Agate replied. She loosed the topmost button of her high-collared lab coat, then started on the next few. “The afternoon shift is often the least staffed.”

“Huh,” said Mokou. “Why’s that?”

“The heat,” said Agate. She finished unbuttoning her coat, slid it from her body, and folded it over an arm.

“Makes sense,” Mokou grunted. “Still seems like not enough people.”

“The Heptagon has something of a chronic, low-grade labor shortage. It’s most pronounced in times of extremity such as these.”

“Rough,” said Mokou. She pushed the cart along a few more paces. The walkway was wide enough for Agate to keep pace at her side, even given the intrusion of the occasional glass pile. “Yun thought it was weird I was working right away. You’d think they’d be happy for the help here.”

“Perhaps they think that it’s a poor host whose guest is put to work,” Agate sniffed. “Needlessly obstructive sentimentality. Still, their aversion to coercion is commendable.”

“If I had known all that I’d probably feel guilty if I wasn’t doing something to chip in,” said Mokou.

Agate mulled on the statement for a few paces. “Guilt is a sort of coercion, granted.”

“Beats a boot to the neck,” Mokou chuckled grimly. “Like, I’d probably still be staring at the ceiling, but I’d be feeling bad about it, you know?”

Agate cast her a glance with a faint frown. She sighed. “I do not.”

Chapter Text

Glass rolled in chiming tumbles before the bristles of Mokou’s broom. Agate’s shovel dug into the swept drifts and transferred them to the bed of the cart. Bit by bit, they cleared the walkway.

Mokou straightened, wiping the sweat from her brow with her forearm. She cast her gaze along the rooftop path to the southeast. The rotunda was in sight, but the way was still obstructed. She propped her hands on the handle of her broom and looked back at Agate.

Agate had rolled up the sleeves of her shirt and unclasped the top few buttons. Her lab coat draped over the cart’s handles, safe from the ground. Muscles worked subtly beneath the fabric of her dress shirt and the fur of her hide. She was sweating, too.

Mokou had seen it in the desert, in that nameless ruin, on the banks of the glass-choked river. There was a real person beneath the facade of perfection, one who bled and hurt and sweat.

Agate slid another shovelful of glass into the cart, then returned Mokou’s gaze. Her expression was of a sort of flat expectancy.

“What?” asked Agate.

Mokou cocked a smile and shrugged. “I’m still hung up on the buddy thing.”

Agate’s expression flattened even further. “What are the ramifications of ‘the buddy thing’?”

“It’s not nothing!” said Mokou. “You were really about to just let us work in different places today? Is this a date or no?”

Agate sighed and shoveled up another scoop of glass. “I wanted your company. That does not presuppose a date, but if you wish it to be, neither does it preclude it.”

Mokou scoffed in disbelief. “That’s what I’m talking about, though. How are dates gonna work out for us if you can’t even let yourself be my buddy?”

“Would our natures be fundamentally, materially altered should we declare each other as ‘buddies’?” asked Agate.

“Are you really trying to measure, like, friendship? Camaraderie?” Mokou countered.

Agate rolled her eyes, but smiled faintly. “I am merely suggesting that now you’re the one needlessly categorizing.”

That brought a chuckle from Mokou. It was either a deflection or an encouraging sign she was giving some thought to longer timescales. Possibly both. Still, something bothered Mokou.

“All this presuming and precluding talk,” said Mokou. “Kinda half-hearted for you, don’t you think?”

The shovel bit deep into the glass pile from Agate’s thrust. She grunted softly with her lift, then dumped the glass-load into the cart. “You are an unknown factor, Mokou. I am being—” The crunch of another thrust. “—accommodating, to that uncertainty.”

Mokou burst out laughing. It had to be one of the strangest sorts of accommodation she’d heard of.

“What?” asked Agate. Her ear flicked.

“Nothing,” said Mokou. She gripped her broom and began to sweep the walkway, still grinning.

“Make of it what you will,” Agate sighed.

Within the hour they had cleared the way to the rotunda. The platformed structure extended from another rooftop plaza. Sky-glass coated plaza and platform alike. Raised beds sported clusters of condensers — chrome and glass machined into echoes of arboreal arrangements. They were damaged. Where the condensers met the storm, the storm won. Sky-glass had the advantage of gravity.

Still, the storm had broken over this island of red rock. Compared to the canyons of the western approach, the fallen glass along the eastern stretch of the Heptagon’s parasang settled as a sparser, patchy layer. It took less work to clear away. Mokou found it easy to match Agate’s silent pace, to fall into the meditative rhythm of manual labor.

In another half-hour, the two of them had cleared a central space in the plaza and paths to each condenser cluster. Underneath one such cluster, Agate set aside her shovel and donned her tinker’s gloves.

Mokou watched her go about the diagnostic process. After a moment, she refreshed herself from her canteen, then winced at the recycled taste. “Should’ve gotten my ration filled.”

“There’s no guarantee the water you fill from the Heptagon’s civil canteens isn’t recycled,” Agate grunted. She hunched before a condenser’s base panel, rooting her arm within.

“Really?” asked Mokou.

“It’s much the same process happening within your suit, but scaled up to municipal proportions,” said Agate. As she spoke, she twisted a valve somewhere within the condenser. “The taste, thankfully, tends to be diluted thanks to a diversity of sources.”

“Yeah, guess you get a lot of different types here, with a lot of different… wastewater,” said Mokou.

“That is not what I meant by diversity,” Agate sighed. She extracted her arm and flipped a power switch on the side. The subtle tones of the cluster lost one humming voice. Agate rose and moved to the next stricken condenser. “The Heptagon’s water, broadly, comes from four sources. Giant water weeps account for the bulk of it. Their water is pumped from Spore Ward to the rest of the Heptagon’s water grid.”

Mokou followed Agate a few paces along the cluster’s bed. The transplanted soil underfoot was spongy, almost muddy from spilled moisture. The sky-glass they’d cleared away was speckled through with rounded shards knocked from condenser arms. “They come in giant size, huh?”

“Yes. It takes a high fungal concentration to support a giant weep.” Agate levered the next panel open to access the condenser’s innards. “Further freshwater is reclaimed from canal desalination. This reclamation accounts for roughly the same amount of tertiary production as the municipal recycling.”

“Tertiary,” Mokou nodded. She hunched down behind Agate to try to catch a glimpse of what her hands were up to. She seemed to be in her element. “What about secondary production?”

Agate rose and powered down the condenser. She rapped the panel with an indicative knuckle. “These. The rooftop condensers.”

“Shit,” Mokou grunted. “Storm really did a number on ‘em.”

“I expected worse,” Agate mused. She cast her gaze over the rest of the cluster. “From a cursory analysis, the internals are largely undamaged. Repairs would be a far more considerable task were that not the case.”

“How can you tell?” asked Mokou.

Agate glanced back at her with a neutral expression. “Years of experience. This is what I do, Mokou.”

She unslung her bit locker from its perch on her back and entered something into an interface summoned out of one of its chrome faces. She set it on the concrete of the bed’s lip, where it began to hum and print out another inscrutable device.

“How do you know all this stuff about the Heptagon’s water?” Mokou pressed on.

“It’s a matter of public record. I like to find out how things work. The underlying material conditions,” Agate answered. She met Mokou’s gaze again. “You know. Quantifying.”

“Sure,” Mokou sighed. It was a fair enough answer for a simple enough impulse. She could see how that impulse repeated through the breadth of the scientist’s inquiries. It was only her conclusions that didn’t mesh with Mokou. She seemed to believe that a narrow conclusion was a precise one. “Just make sure you leave enough room for the immaterial conditions.”

The hindren blinked slowly. She took a breath and looked to be weighing speaking further. She frowned faintly. “This is what I mean when I say you are an unknown factor.”

With that, Agate turned away and continued on to the next condenser in the cluster. Mokou stuck her hands in her pockets and followed.

“What have you been doing to these condensers?” asked Mokou.

“Disconnecting them from the water and power grids. A necessary precursor to servicing.” Agate grunted again as she worked the inner valve.

“Something I can help with?”

Agate paused and glanced back at her. “Presumably. Come here; observe.”

She shifted over to grant Mokou enough space to access the panel, too. Mokou ducked in next to her.

“Your antlers are in the way,” she muttered.

Agate huffed in response. Wordlessly, she grasped Mokou’s wrist — firmly, but not painfully — and guided her hand into the panel’s depths. Mokou’s fingers found the valve.

“You feel it?” asked Agate.

“Think so,” Mokou nodded.

Agate’s gloved grasp slid up the back of her hand. The hindren’s digits fanned to the side along the curve of the valve. She nodded in return. “This is the water shutoff valve. Turn it to the right to shut off the water.”

The last time Mokou had been this close to Agate, the both of them had been clad in obstructing gear — Mokou’s recycling suit, Agate’s reinforced traveling coat. Their respective layers were much lighter today. This close, she could smell Agate’s sweat, teased forth from the day’s exertions and heat. The subtle musk of her scent was mildly, yet pleasantly distracting.

“Right to shut it off,” Mokou confirmed. She grasped the valve and gave it a few turns until it wouldn’t turn anymore.

Agate extracted her hand and rose to her hooves, shifting a step to the side. She tapped the switch on the condenser’s exterior. “The power switch is here.”

“Figured,” Mokou grunted. She switched off the condenser, then grinned at Agate. “Been kind of a depressing date so far.”

Agate’s ear flicked. “You continue to insist this is a date?”

“Hey, you’re leaving yourself open to it,” said Mokou. “These are the risks. Just means it’ll be easy to top you.”

With a dubious stare and arms crossed, Agate looked her up and down. “Top me?”

“Datewise,” said Mokou.

Agate huffed out a single laugh in disbelief. “I shall await the effort with bated breath.”

Chapter Text

The final condenser of the cluster powered down as Agate flipped the switch. Absent its hum, the only sound in their section of the plaza was the breeze. She straightened, then cast her gaze over to Mokou. The immortal stretched, elbow bent over her head, as she looked out over the plaza. She seemed to be in high spirits, relatively. It was encouraging, if slightly irritating, considering the liberty she felt to needle Agate.

Mokou glanced back at her, seemingly conscious of Agate’s gaze. “We gonna hit up these other clusters?”

“In a moment,” Agate answered.

Her bit locker chimed. The telemetric visor had finished printing and could now be assembled and powered. Hopefully its non-biological specialization would allow it to avoid the same fate reserved for VISAGEs in Mokou’s presence. She retrieved the locker and the print and set to final assemblage.

The immortal glanced at her again, quizzical. “This gonna take long?”

“Not long,” said Agate, slotting a lens into place.

Mokou’s attention rested on Agate’s craft for a few moments. Only a few, before she turned away and took up her broom again. She swept the plaza.

In a few minutes, the technoscanner was assembled. Agate slotted in a solar cell and approached Mokou.

“Here,” she said, offering the visor to Mokou.

“What, it’s for me?” The immortal eyed the visor with a regard somewhere between those reserved for aged viscera and live ordnance. “What is it?”

“A telemetric visor. Something to remedy the shortcomings of your technological knowledge base. It may help you with condenser diagnosis.” She shook her extended wrist to repeat her offering gesture.

Mokou kept her hands around her broom handle. “That’s fine. I’m just gonna keep sweeping.”

“You wish to help with the condensers, yes?” Agate pressed on.

“I’m helping to switch ‘em off because it’s easy,” Mokou sighed. “I don’t want that gizmo.”

“You object to these means again?” asked Agate. “Biometrics do not enter into it. This is hardly — how did you put it? — ‘the math old dead assholes made to justify what they thought counted as alive.’ It collates solely in the realm of the technological.”

“Sounds like it still is,” Mokou grunted. She waved off Agate’s proffered visor. “No, it’s just… That’s all just sumafo to me. It’s wasted.”

“Come now, this again?” Agate scoffed. “I guarantee you this is not a ‘sumafo’. The function is simple; merely point it at a device and read the information it gives you. This visor demystifies the digital.”

“Still kinda sounds like a sumafo!” Mokou maintained. She backed away and gestured with her broom. “They need people to sweep. I’ll sweep. Save your visor for someone who didn’t live through an extended iron age.”

“Elaborate,” said Agate.

Mokou sighed again, heavier. Her tone was more pointed when she answered, more precisely enunciated. “I’m saying I lived in a bubble of meticulously-maintained agrarianism. Good steel was a luxury. Anything harder was a literal miracle. Imports were a bitch. All that technological context the world on the outside lived through? We got none of it in Gensokyo.”

It was a depressingly familiar description. The immortal could have been tracing out the shape of Bey Lah — the Bey Lah of Agate’s childhood. Humble, petal-bedecked dwellings of mud and brinestalk, sheltering whispered gossip and anxious stares. Those memories were decades old, from well before its present leadership’s fledgling steps towards modernization. She had never returned, never looked back. Mokou’s excuse came off as all the more pathetic for the memories it evoked.

“Then grasp that context for yourself,” Agate scoffed. “Tear it from the world if you must. Do not wallow in your own limitations.”

Mokou scowled back at her, rearing back from her habitual slouch in a vain attempt to surpass Agate’s eye level. “You think you’re above this work?”

“The condensers are my priority,” Agate replied, returning her gaze coolly down. “Do you wish the people of the Heptagon to remain in restricted rationing?”

“Do you want your deer knees all slashed up when you’re down on ‘em fixing the damn things?”

Agate sighed. It was a rebuttal far more salient than the immaterial assertion it served. Agate had cleared the way here at Mokou’s side. Surely she didn’t need to be reminded of that.

“It pains me to see you limit yourself,” Agate said, softening her tone as much as she could.

“Well, sorry, but I guess you’ll have to keep hurting,” Mokou replied. She pointed a thumb back over her shoulder. “I’m gonna work my way over to that cluster and shut ‘em off. You can get the others.”

“As you like,” said Agate.

The immortal hadn’t been describing Bey Lah. She’d been describing somewhere else, lost to history.

What sort of place was her Gensokyo?

The sun dipped lower, drawing closer to the horizon than the sky’s zenith. Glimpses through the visor confirmed Agate’s initial assessments — most of the damage was surface level. By the time she’d powered down the last of her clusters, the first hues of sunset tinged the sky.

She walked, carefully, over the broken glass to the rotunda’s overlook. She rested her forearms on the railing.

To the east stretched parasangs and parasangs of Qud. Canyon flowed into field, field blossomed into jungle. Overgrown relics of architectural antiquity pierced the distant canopies, their shattered foundations choked with gutted machinery. The Spindle pierced the northeastern sky. The very tops of the peaks ringing the Spindle’s base wavered over the horizon. And further to the east, twice again as far, hidden beyond the verdant horizon: the Moon Stair.

The Heptagon truly had an unparalleled view of the eastern valley. They would berth here for as long as they could, but already Agate’s gaze traced along paths she knew for passage east through the wilds.

She turned to cast a shielded glance back across the plaza, glittering in the early evening. Mokou swept, alone, some thirty paces distant.

What sort of privilege of context did Mokou think Agate possessed? Every relic she’d dredged from the depths of Qud was one whose purpose and function she’d had to deduce for herself. The cultures who made them were long dead.

What kept Mokou from the same deduction? Every surviving relic still upon or within the earth was one whose creation the immortal had lived through.

“Mokou,” she called.

Mokou glanced up, sliding off her shades and clipping them to a suspender strap.

Agate inclined her head backwards in a beckoning gesture.

Mokou shrugged, slung her broom across her back, and kicked off the ground. The motion sent her sailing gently across the glassed plaza. She touched down next to Agate, joining her at the rotunda’s edge.

“The view,” Agate nodded.

Mokou looked.

The immortal stilled herself save for deep breaths and the tracking of her eyes. Sunset painted the white cloud of her hair a fiery orange. Her posture was the very picture of nonchalance — and yet so serene as to approach an almost monastic emptiness. The trousers cut her a rather dashing silhouette.

She let the immortal keep her silence. Orange guttered to red. Shadows from the plaza’s condensers crept to join them at the rotunda’s edge.

“Storm never made it out there, huh,” Mokou said at last. There was quiet relief in her voice.

“I thought it might hearten you,” said Agate, stepping closer to her side. She grasped Mokou by the chin, tilted her head up, and kissed her.

Mokou’s lips lingered against hers, warm and soft. She slid the broom from her back and propped it against the railing. When she pulled back, her gaze played over Agate’s face. She smiled faintly. “Date’s better already.”

Agate rested an arm around Mokou’s shoulder. She cast her other hand out to the north-northeast, along the spine of the Heptagon’s canyon range. “Out where the canyons rejoin the fields, there’s a slot that holds the village of my people. One square parasang spared, by my estimation, from the path of the storm. A mercy, for I’m not certain how many of their structures are more durable than brinestalk.”

Mokou followed the line of Agate’s gesture with her gaze. She said nothing. It was an anticipatory sort of silence.

“Up until the last decade or so, that parasang — one village and its fields — had nothing to defend itself with save for scrap iron and archery, secrecy and isolation. Isolation tended as fastidiously as the lah fields, generation to generation. Trade was strictly guarded through the office of the Hindriarch, the village elder. I was born there. They would have had me content myself to sewing, to hunting, when the fields around us teemed with the entrancing relics of all the worlds that died before us.”

“When did they exile you?”

“I was twelve.”

Mokou leaned forward onto the guardrail, slipping from under Agate’s arm. She looked away.

“Your brain was still all pliable and inquisitive and receptive,” said Mokou. “You pick up things easy when you grow up with ‘em. Twelve? Good god.” She grimaced and fished for her pouch of smoking materials.

“The Hindriarch told me,” Agate recalled, “that I had closed my heart to the village’s well-being. That I had given myself over to the old hungers. That my name, henceforth, was as salt to my people, that henceforth no longer were they my people.”

“What, to a twelve-year-old?” Mokou loosed the question with a plume of aromatic smoke. It drifted on the westerly breeze, out over the shingles below.

Agate nodded. “The name was as salt to me, too. I forged my own, later. They sent me off into exile with a passing tinker willing to take me along.”

“See, you grew up with it,” said Mokou, gesturing with her cigarette. “I’m done growing, Agate. You never had to wait for the weird gadgets to pass into fantasy. They were always a part of your world. You know how many millennia I spent in Gensokyo?”

“No,” said Agate.

“Neither do I, exactly, anymore,” said Mokou. “It was that long.”

Agate watched the breeze play at the immortal’s hair, and tease her cigarette’s plume eastward.

“What was Gensokyo?” asked Agate.

Mokou took a long drag of her cigarette. She reached forward and shaped out a dome beneath her hands. “It was a self-contained system. A little bubble of Japanese countryside, ringed by the Barrier. Kept all the outside world’s sense out. Kept all of ours in. Great Something Barrier.”

“An arcology,” Agate suggested.

“An arcology of fantasy,” Mokou replied. She snapped her fingers. “Hakurei! Great Hakurei Barrier.” She lapsed into brief silence, her gaze on the horizon’s purple clouds. “Knew a lot of gals by that name, over the years.”

“Fantasy,” Agate stated, levelly. “An arcology for… youkai?”

“Exactly,” said Mokou. She turned back towards Agate to meet her gaze. “They feed off human fear. The world wasn’t afraid of them anymore. So they got everyone who still was and squirreled them away. Spirited them away, I should say. Passed them into fantasy. One little village for a few thousand humans, and the whole damn rest of it to be a youkai’s paradise.”

The conditions of what Mokou described remained unclear to Agate’s reckoning. “Sense, you said — what do you mean by that? Sensory input?”

“Not just that. I mean the Outside’s sense of… morality, of possibility, of reality. Their common sense. It couldn’t penetrate. Ours couldn’t reach them either,” said Mokou. “The Barrier… you couldn’t see it. You didn’t have to. Only way things got in was if they lost their place in the Outside.”

“How is such a thing possible?”

Mokou shrugged. “What, you think I made the damn thing? Just got caught under it, is all.”

Mokou’s account gave shape to a staggering undertaking, vanishingly difficult by the measure of any science known to Agate. It was a cryptic glance into the convoluted histories of the Eaters — or perhaps of those who came before. If it were true, it would explain many things about Mokou that resisted other, more conventional explanations. The immortal certainly didn’t seem to be lying. Agate could hardly verify her account, only take her word for truth. But what was the truth, when truth was fantasy?

Millennia, kept in carefully-cultivated isolation? Barred from reality itself?

“You aren’t a youkai,” said Agate. “You never tired of Gensokyo’s confines?”

Mokou shrugged. “All in all, it wasn’t a bad place to die. Not about to pretend I didn’t get stir crazy every now and again. But…” She cast her gaze across the canyons, where shadows deepened. She finished her cigarette, then loosed the plume into the evening air. “Kaguya was there. And later, Keine was there.”

“I see,” said Agate.

“With Keine—” Mokou started. She paused, blinked, and took a breath. “I could’ve faced anything with her. With Kaguya…”

The immortal sighed.

“As long as I know where she is, I can bear it.”

It was all deeply worrisome. But it was perspective, too. Mokou’s technophobia was perhaps a touch more understandable in the face of multiple millennia shut off from it.

“This telemetric visor will help you bridge that context gap,” said Agate. “I was able to do so without it. It has been a difficult process, but worthwhile. This visor will ease that process. An avenue now open to you.”

“You’re still trying to push it on me?” Mokou’s gaze flicked back to Agate and wrinkled.

“Yes,” said Agate. “Get with the times.”

Mokou held her gaze on Agate. She huffed out a brief laugh. Finally she reached out and accepted the visor from Agate’s grasp. She flipped it over between her fingers a few times, then stuffed it into a pocket. “No promises on that last bit.”

“Acceptable,” Agate chuckled softly. She looked the immortal up and down. Arclights hummed to life along the railing, casting her anew in electric light. The great cascading plume of her hair caught the arclights’ stark radiance. A lovely sight.

Many questions still churned within Agate. One was most prominent.

“What is Kaguya to you?”

Mokou let out a long, hissing breath, returning her hands to her pockets. “Question like that’s gonna make me wish I still had something to smoke.”

“In your own time.”

The immortal turned her gaze up to the darkening sky for a few breaths, leaning on the railing. The evening’s first stars were dimmed and indistinct from within the Heptagon’s arclight corona.

“You know, I saw it when we fought,” said Mokou. “You had a moment, there, where you were thinking: I gotta kill her. Maybe you thought I didn’t see that, but I know what that looks like. And then you choked, and what happened, happened instead.”

Agate’s pulse sped slightly at the fresh memory, not even a day gone. Her slumbering blade sweeping into Mokou’s gut; that moment of weightlessness at the apex of Mokou’s throw; shattering wood, shimmering force, muscle and sweat. That first taste of her lips.

“Do you regret what happened?”

“No, no,” Mokou glanced back down, returning her gaze to Agate’s. She grinned. “Kinda looking forward to seeing how it might happen again.”

“Likewise,” Agate admitted.

“Point is. That right there? That little moment?” Mokou’s grin was fixed. “That’s an extremely niche emotion. You get to my age, you start to appreciate niches like that.”

Agate said nothing. She sensed more was forthcoming.

“Kaguya…” continued Mokou. Her grin and gaze hollowed as she looked away. “She’s been at this a lot longer than I have.”

“I see,” Agate muttered. That was her answer? It was maddeningly evasive. What had Agate expected? Something more in-depth, perhaps, but then, if the depths spanned millennia, how to sieve anything from them? Mokou’s answer said more about the trifling time between the two of them than about that looming lunar specter. It was an alarming conclusion.

A bell echoed across the western roof. Mokou turned in its direction.

“Trouble?” she asked.

“No,” said Agate. “The common meal. Come, let us eat. We will speak of this after dinner.”

Chapter Text

Workers gathered again in the plaza of the great magma crab for the common meal — the promised food in the company of all who shared a four-hour work shift. Agate sat apart, on the furthest bench she could find. She had the Moondrop’s packed meal for her own repast. Despite the soggy matz, it meant she needn’t waste time in line or suffer the fawning attentions of whoever had drawn meal rotation this shift. For the moment, as Mokou filtered through the meal line, Agate was left something like alone with her thoughts.

It was an imperfect solitude. Workers trickling in from their day’s labor filled the plaza with their chatter. The volume was difficult to filter out. Anywhere from eight to twelve distinct currents of conversation at a time flowed through the dispersed workers as they joined the line or deposited gear or found places to eat. They talked of the shift’s tasks and the tasks of shifts to come; they talked of the food; they talked of the crab. Material things, simple aspirations, uncomplicated emotions ignorant of the immortal among them.

What had Mokou meant by her answer?

There were only so many ways Agate could interpret it, and she liked none of them. The simplest explanation: something in her nature reminded Mokou of this Kaguya of hers. Her first instinct was to find that part of her and excise it. She well knew the fruitlessness of that instinct. It was not simply a lack of information that made it fruitless — she had only Mokou’s secondhand accounts to flesh out her partner in eternity. It was also that in years past she had already followed that instinct down into all its wracking anxieties and searing appeasements. No longer would she minimize herself for anyone. But nor would she allow herself to be distorted by another’s projections. Whether those projections were conscious or not was immaterial.

The forewoman’s rough bass was simple to discern in the midst of the plaza’s conversations.

“Mokou! How was your first shift?”

“Fine,” replied Mokou. The both of them spoke across the plaza from Agate, shuffling along the serving stations. “Made it out to the condensers and shut ‘em down.”

“How’d they look?”

“Busted to me, but Agate said it wasn’t too bad,” said Mokou. It sounded as though she was matching her own vocal register to her conversational partner, as best as she was equipped to. Her voice was distinct in its own right, fried and low, accented by the faintly lingering touches of an unfathomable trail of tongues alive and dead. A signal in the conversational noise.

“You and her,” Nashimir began, leaning down behind her into a posture of confidentiality. “You run into any problems?”

“Oh, no problems,” said Mokou. As she looked back over her shoulder to the forewoman her distant gaze seemed to briefly sweep over Agate. She flashed a grin. “We’re buddies.”

Buddies, again. This insistence surely translated into some way that Mokou felt at liberty to treat her. But how? And why?

Was she ever buddies with her Kaguya? Or were they too far gone? What sort of pattern had Agate found herself in?

There was no way to know. She simply didn’t have enough information.

“That’s good, that’s good,” said Nashimir. “Hey! My wife said you can blow glass. You oughta meet Big Pharma!”

A brief pause, absent the immortal’s voice. “Your wife the crab, or…?”

Nashimir laughed. “No, but maybe someday. My wife’s Yun! She checked you in.”

“So why do I gotta meet the crab?” asked Mokou.

“So you can see what we’re doing with all this glass!” Nashimir answered.

The next stretch of pilfered conversation had the forewoman lead Mokou through several observations on the dietary capabilities of great magma crabs. All of it was information Agate had already gleaned from observations in her own travels or was information she had readily surmised. She relaxed her auditory vigil.

Agate finished her bowl of the Moondrop’s convalessence soup. The gentle, herbaceous carbonation radiated its coolness from her stomach through her body. It was refreshing; the day’s heat lingered past nightfall. Its regenerative expression would soothe what aches remained from the road and what new aches arose from the afternoon’s labor.

Mokou was still absorbed in her distant conversation. As Agate looked across the plaza, a member of the work crew detached themself from the serving line and approached with a serving box. The worker’s gait began hesitantly, but gained in certainty as they crossed the plaza to where Agate sat. Agate watched them silently from her bench.

“Um,” the worker began, drawing up in front of her. Whorls of delicate sandy scales framed their cheeks and coated their neck. A pale blue rose was pinned to their coveralls, over the breast. Their box held a skewer of grilled salthopper and a serving of lagroot poi. “Live and drink, Ms. Star.”

“Live and drink,” Agate replied, with a faint nod. “You have the advantage of me.”

“Timokat!” the worker answered, giving their name. “I thought — well, it’s my turn to cook for the crew, and it looked like — well, I’d hate to see you go without!”

Timokat thrust forward the box with a touch more decisiveness than their stammering belied. Color rose to their cheeks. Agate coldly eyed the offering, face neutral. She had hoped to avoid this sort of thing — this breathless, admiring imposition — but here in the heart of her fame it was practically inevitable.

“I brought my own repast,” said Agate. “Your concern is unnecessary.”

There were more eyes upon her than merely Timokat’s. Other groups of workers lowered their own nearby conversations to turn their attentions towards her. Each furtive gaze was saturated in unspoken social expectation. Under the slight lull in the conversational melange, she could again catch the forewoman’s rumble, over by the crab: “Hang on a minute. Might need to look into something.”

“Um!” Timokat said. Their grasp trembled softly around the box. “You don’t even want to try it? Hibnicrab helped with the grilling, and the poi is fresh!”

Agate’s gaze flicked from the approaching forewoman to the grilled offering before settling on Timokat’s face. She sighed.

“What do you want me to be to you?”

“What do I—?” Timokat’s blush deepened as their eyes widened, but still they held forth their dish. “Um! Honest? Be honest. A-as brutal as you have to be, really.”

What sort of person did this stranger think Agate was? What sort of brutality did they assume she was capable of? What did any of them ever think? They didn’t know her. They never did.

She accepted the dish wordlessly.

“Ah! Th-thank you,” Timokat stammered. They clasped their emptied hands before them anxiously. “And, I mean — if you like it, maybe, someday, you might consider taking… a pupil? Another pupil.”

Agate paused with skewer motionless in hand. Give them the slightest encouragement, and they took it as liberty to overstep their bounds. She should not have expected it to be ever otherwise.

“You are asking to be my pupil before I have had a single taste of your cuisine,” said Agate. “Reconsider this.”

“Sorry, Ms. Star! S-sorry,” Timokat said, falling back a pace.

“Timo!” called Nashimir. “You served yourself yet?”

“Oh!” Timokat jumped slightly, then turned to their arriving forewoman. “I-I was just making sure Ms. Star got a serving first.”

“She brought her own lunch,” said Mokou. She sauntered in a few paces behind Nashimir, empty skewer bouncing between her lips with each stride. She nodded to Timokat in passing as she made for Agate’s side. “Thanks for the food. I liked the meat. Kinda rabbity.”

“Thank you?” Timokat replied, uncertain at the interruption, or perhaps the unfamiliar point of comparison. Their slitted gaze returned to Agate expectantly.

A pang of amusement played through her. The eon-spanning perspective behind Mokou’s humble compliment gave it a weight well beyond its understated surface. For the moment, of those around her, knowledge of that perspective was Agate’s alone.

She dipped a segment of salthopper meat into the poi and sampled it. The seasoning was simple, straightforward — far less obtrusive than its chef. The grilled meat was still juicy. It made for an agreeable texture when paired with the pleasantly gritty sauce. She set down her skewer as she finished her mouthful.

“Who taught you?”

“Ah!” Timokat nearly choked. “I-I took a few lessons from Helphon! Xe always… spoke very highly of you. But mostly I just try things on my own.”

Agate nodded. She had parted ways with Helphon, that lotus-capped cuisine, several years ago. Of her erstwhile pupils, xe had never particularly given her cause for regret. She could sense echoes of xyr tastes in this dish. Only echoes — perhaps those lessons were too few to delve in-depth into spicing philosophy. Still, there was potential.

Others in the Heptagon could cultivate that potential. Timokat could cultivate it themself, given the baseline elevation of kitchen consciousness here.

“Adequate,” said Agate.

Timokat sighed like an unwinding coil-spring. They bowed several times. “Th-thank you, Ms. Star! Thank you.”

“Hey,” said Mokou, seating herself next to Agate on the bench. She leaned forward into Agate’s periphery and pointed at the meal. “You gonna finish that?”

Agate passed the box and its remaining serving to the immortal.

“Timo,” Nashimir grunted. “Get some grub. You did good today.”

Timokat bowed again in acknowledgment. Tears beaded at the corners of their eyes. They withdrew to the serving line with a slightly dazed gait. Nashimir watched them go, then turned a concerned glance back to Agate. Agate met her gaze, waiting to see if the forewoman would leave this newest social expectation unspoken.

“‘Adequate’?” asked Nashimir.

“Could be spicier,” Mokou offered around a mouthful of salthopper.

“Timokat will survive without my direct tutelage,” said Agate. She glanced to Mokou. “Salthopper is rabbit-like, you say?”

“Little bit,” Mokou nodded. “This is a bit juicier, a bit buggier. Kinda like it better, actually. You know they grilled this on Big Pharma?”

“So I was informed,” said Agate.

“Easy now,” Nashimir turned her cautionary gaze from Agate to Mokou. “You just met her.”

“Hibnicrab, sure,” Mokou corrected herself. “Giant crab made out of magma that eats glass. You’re really telling me you don’t have youkai?”

“Anyone can eat glass, Mokou,” Agate replied.

“Youkai?” asked Nashimir, with a tone of edged uncertainty.

“She means no disrespect by it,” Agate sighed. “But again, the great magma crab is hardly supernatural. Vitalized geology is subject to the same natural pressures that shape the rest of us.”

“The hell natural pressures shape a magma crab?” asked Mokou.

“Carcinization!” Nashimir barked, louder than was necessary. She pounded her carapaced chest with her claw. “Happened to Big Pharma same as it’s happening to me. Could happen to any of us. But until it happens to you, it’s the special bond we share. I’d thank you to respect that!”

“Sure, sorry,” Mokou held up her hands before her placatively. “I’m just saying, rocks and magma coming to life in the first place—”

“Why do you insist on projecting your fantasies over reality?” asked Agate. “Why are you trying to make things into what they aren’t?”

Mokou scowled at her. “You fucking kidding me?”

Before Agate could reply, Nashimir interrupted with a clearing of her throat. She frowned down at the both of them and spoke once their attentions were upon her.

“Listen, you two. My job is to keep this cleanup operation running smoothly. Whatever this is, work it out between yourselves. Don’t work this through on the rest of my crew.”

Neither Agate nor Mokou spoke. Nashimir’s stern gaze swept between the two of them for a few breaths.

“That’s all,” the forewoman concluded. “We’re done for the day. Hope to see you tomorrow. Thanks for your hard work.”

With that, she turned away to attend to the rest of the workers. Nashimir’s concerns were understandable, but all the same, it wasn’t as though Agate sought out such interactions. They were foist upon her. At the very least, no one else seemed to be of a mind to bother her.

Conversations wound down with the meals they orbited. Talk turned to farewells, airy compliments, recommendations for libations and further cuisine. Workers trickled out of the plaza in twos and threes, back to the city below. Mokou mopped up the last of the sauce with the remaining grilled meat. She finished the serving and worked at her teeth with the skewer for a time.

“This ain’t about the crab,” Mokou eventually stated.

“I asked you about Kaguya and you told me nothing of her.” Agate turned to her to fix her with an inquisitive stare. “What did you mean?”

“Didn’t tell you nothing, did I?” Mokou huffed out a long breath. “What can I tell you, Agate? Where can I start?”

“You can start with an acknowledgment of the objective wretchedness of comparing me to the woman who is — by your own account — the worst person in your life.”

“See, you say nothing like that’s nothing.”

“What did you mean?”

Mokou turned her gaze skyward. The night breeze tousled her hair. Conversations in the plaza around them dwindled one by one as workers finished their meals and dispersed in camaraderie and farewells. At length, her gaze returned to Agate. It was not that her eyes were dull — it was that she had been honing the tiredness within them for her entire existence. It gleamed.

“It doesn’t map like that,” she said. “Worst, best. Enemy, lover. Virtue, villainy. Those are all just concepts people made. They won’t live past people. We will. We are, always already.” She looked away, gaze drifting across the plaza, over the last of the workers filing to their homes. She met Agate’s gaze again. “Me and Kaguya, we aren’t people anymore.”

The depth of violence in her quiet, level assertion silenced any response Agate might have mustered. Mokou held her hands before her like bookends.

“People end. We don’t. When you don’t end, you can just fill up that whole stretch with… whatever, you know?” She turned her palms upward into an open shrug, or a supplication. “Anything. Anything and everything. It doesn’t even matter what. It can’t; mattering’s for people.”

Mokou looked away again and sighed.

“She’s the one constant. We’ve been a lot of things to each other. Gonna be a lot more. If you’re a point of comparison it’s just because there’ve been a lot of points.”

Agate’s pulse quickened. Blood coursed with her disgust, her anger, her sympathy, her burning curiosity, carrying the emotional melange from the seat of her logic to the extremities of her body. She stilled her composure to ice.

“I am not your Kaguya.”

Mokou glanced back at her. She loosed a brief chuckle. “I get it. Cranky because it’s not about you.”

Agate grasped Mokou by the jaw and turned the immortal’s face towards her. She studied Mokou’s handsome features, her wincing expression. This was the face of eternity — yet human, all too human. Perhaps Mokou’s supposition held a grain of truth. But in the space between two immortals, what else did Agate have but her ego? She loosed her grasp. “How do you imagine most dates go when you keep talking about the other woman?”

“You’re the one who keeps asking!” Mokou scoffed. “You want to know something about her? Sometimes she’ll decide to fuck up someone’s life just to see if she can do it so bad that they twist themselves up into swearing eternal vengeance on her. She told me it’s for novelty. Enrichment.”

If a being like that had truly held the levers of state power nearly five thousand years ago it would certainly explain several of the legends that had risen around the Third Sultan. In Mokou’s tone was the effortless and exhausted certainty of a first-hand account. For what bitter purpose did she seek Kaguya? It couldn’t be as simple as vengeance. How could vengeance alone sustain itself into eternity?

“Enrichment. For that niche emotion?” asked Agate.

“Exactly,” said Mokou.

“That emotion you sought in me?” Agate continued, heat rising in her voice. “That emotion you provoked in me?”

“Hey, you’re the one who hauled off and slapped me!” Mokou answered.

“For which I have already apologized.”

“Sure,” said Mokou, waving her hand in dismissive admittance. “Point is, that was a reaction! I didn’t go seeking it out, that’s what Kaguya does!”

“Oh, so you’re merely an opportunist, rather than an architect,” Agate rebutted. Her ear flicked. This dissembling was pathetic. Why was she helping her find this woman? “That’s what you do, Mokou. You just did that.”

Mokou opened her mouth for a response that never formed. Something in her gaze shifted, crumpled. She looked away, hiding her shimmering, haunted look from Agate beyond a glance. She stood from the bench and took a few paces away, hands in her pockets.

“Sorry,” she muttered hoarsely. “I’ll be back, gimme a minute.”

Agate stood and stretched out her hand, torn between uncertainty and the impulse to go to her. Had she understood? “Where are you going?”

Mokou heaved a deep sigh. She drifted up off the stones of the plaza. Spinning gently in midair, she cast a glance back to Agate before looking up to the night sky. “Gonna get some air.”

Then she rose past the glow of the arclights and into shadow. Agate was left alone in the plaza.

Chapter Text

She couldn’t see the stars from the roof. The corona of electric light blocked them from her. Mokou flew, hurrying herself upwards. The lights and sounds of the arena and its city fell away beneath her. The land to the east was in shadow. Firelights of scattered villages pierced the mutant canopy. To the west, the land glimmered like a shattered mirror in the night. The dry night wind caught at her streaming hair and the fluttering fabrics of her garb.

Above her, at last, the abyss of the sky filled with stars. A stellar tapestry for the broken moon. It hung, trisected, leering its dead light upon her. The rifts in its surface went all the way through, carving its static face into a beetle’s jagged elytroid suggestion. Each lunar segment clung doggedly to its fellows, perhaps out of long-dead habit. Perhaps someday habit would fail, and the moon would split again, taking flight to kinder heavens.

She had seen the war that slew the moon. That war had killed her, again and again, as she fought to keep any scrap of the home beneath it. But then, Kaguya had fought, too. It was her home as much as it was Mokou’s. She remembered searing curtains of rainbow light battering against the winds of atomic purification. Immortal blood on her lips. Kaguya, resplendent, harrowed, shining. She had loved her even as she knew they could only fail.

That was an old memory. The land forgot the scars of that war. The land had never been its true front. The world moved on. Mokou had tried to do the same. But even in a new land, she was only ever herself. She wanted what she wanted.

Had she made a pattern of this?

If she had, she could tell herself, it wasn’t to the extent that Kaguya had. She didn’t need to — not while Kaguya filled that pattern. If she had, it wasn’t a pattern of intent. That made her all the more uneasy.

Perhaps they had been too long apart. Perhaps she’d been so bent by the weight of the ages and her eternal counterpoint it was bleeding into the ways she related to the transient folk of the world. But how was she supposed to resolve that? Just because Kaguya was an inevitability didn’t mean she was here, now. The freshest lead she had was a scrap, a rumor, a name from bygone millennia. Every statue she’d found since then only raised more questions.

Perhaps she was simply looking for what she used to have where it wasn’t, like Agate said.

But there was something there. A spark, a flame, burning beneath the ice. Agate wanted to get closer to her, that much was clear. Mokou certainly didn’t mind the attempt. She took novelty where she could find it, and that many legs on one partner still counted as such. What else was clear, and growing clearer, was that it wasn’t just novelty. There was a drive, a decisiveness, a momentum to the scientist that appealed to Mokou. The gods knew how hard it was for Mokou to muster all those on her own. If it wasn’t for Agate, she’d probably still be dying her way through the desert.

If Agate wanted to get close to her, she had to know what kind of woman Mokou was. She’d find out if she didn’t already know.

Hanging in the sky, bathed in the light of the broken moon, she fished in her pocket for herb and paper to roll herself a smoke. She emptied the herb pouch into the paper, creating a roll heftier than usual. Her usual roll would have left her with a useless remainder. She silently thanked Lulihart’s generosity, that their gifted herb had lasted her from the Stilt. She tucked the joint in her lips, shielded it from the wind, and lit it with a conjured flame. She drew.

The other thing about Agate was she was strong. The thing about strong people was that they were fun to fight. The thing about fun was that Mokou needed it desperately.

She hoped Agate didn’t feel bad about fighting her. She wanted to do it again.

Smoke streamed from her lips and nostrils, carried off by the winds over the canyons.

She knew when something was eating at her. This was eating at her. They used to have a perfectly good way to resolve all these sorts of feelings back in Gensokyo. It would be so much simpler if Agate could fly. Then she could just duel her. But the world had forgotten those ways. People had moved on; people had changed.

People could just eat glass now?

What the hell?

She should have asked Agate about that. Hadn’t she tried to get Mokou to eat lava back in the desert, too? She wasn’t about to make that mistake again.

Fluttering moth wings interrupted her thoughts.

“Oh!” came a buzzing, piping voice on the wind. “Miss Mokou, hello!”

Mokou spun gently to greet the glowmoth. “Hey. Clactobelle, right?”

“That’s right!” said Clactobelle. She glided closer to Mokou, then flitted her wings to hold her position steady a few arms lengths away. Glimmering motes of dust shook down with every hovering flap. “Lovely night to moongaze, isn’t it?”

“Good as any,” Mokou shrugged. It was hard to tell where the glowmoth’s gaze focused — whether on her or the moon.

“What brings you up here tonight, Miss Mokou?” asked Clactobelle.

“Just getting some air,” said Mokou. She took another drag of her joint. “Hey, you know about, like, ingredients?”

“Oh yeah!” said Clactobelle, weaving from side to side to keep steady. “I know all about those! Ask me anything!”

“People can just eat glass?” asked Mokou.

“Sure! The Baroness does it all the time!” Clactobelle buzzed. “Have you ever tried mirror dust before?”

“Can’t say that I have,” grunted Mokou. That was an ingredient? It sounded like some sort of nightmarish designer drug. “What is it?”

“It’s an extract from quartziferous mirrors! Adds a nice crunch to a dish, makes you very shiny! One of my favorites. I’m happy to give some recommendations if you’d like to try it yourself.”

“Huh. Might take you up on that,” said Mokou. Either people had changed, or glass had. Possibly both. One way or another she’d find out. “Had another question about something else, though. Unrelated.”

“Shoot!” said Clactobelle.

“Yeah, it’s about that,” said Mokou. “You ever heard of spell cards? Danmaku?”

“Danmaku?” Clactobelle lifted a forelimb to scratch the fuzz behind one of her antennae. “And it’s not an ingredient, right?”

“Right,” Mokou nodded. It was a dim hope she’d be able to bridge the gap of historical context with this talking moth. “Maybe, uh, how would you say it — curtain fire?”

Clactobelle’s antennae perked. “Oh, like artillery?”

“Uh, yeah, kinda,” Mokou nodded again. “Y’all have artillery?”

“We do! We don’t have to use it very often, thankfully. They’re pretty old, and too big for me. The Baroness says we could mothball them if a chrome pyramid ever moved in, but so far one’s only come by to challenge the Chefs Oth!”

“Huh,” grunted Mokou. It wasn’t surprising that this land had chrome pyramids. She’d never been certain where those great machines came from. They had showed up back in some too-bright bygone age and never really left. That they could cook was news to her. “Well, it’s true that nothing does danmaku like a chrome pyramid.”

“No kidding!” Clactobelle nodded. “E’Beth told me about that match, it sounded scary! Do you know what the Baroness means by mothballs? Because I don’t think I have those, and it sounds like the kind of thing I should know about.”

“Mothballs…” Mokou mused. “What, like camphor? Maybe rubbing the guns down with camphor keeps rust off?”

“Oh, ew, I don’t like that stuff. Well, I didn’t want to use them anyway. What does all that have to do with spell cards? What are those?”

“Something we did back where I used to live,” said Mokou. Old spells dislodged themselves in her memories as she reminisced, old rules for past spectacles. “Kind of a game. Set up a big pattern of shots and make someone else dodge ‘em. Pretty fun.”

“I see,” nodded Clactobelle. She groomed her antenna uncertainly between her forelimbs. “Where does the camphor come in?”

“Huh? It doesn’t. Here, it’s like…” She squared herself up in the air before Clactobelle, joint clamped in her teeth. She tapped her chest. “Shoot me.”

Clactobelle released her antenna and cocked her head. “What? Is that okay?”

“Yeah, go ahead. Try and shoot me.”

“Well, okay, Miss Mokou. Here goes!” The glowmoth’s eyes flashed. A lightning-quick ripple of energy burrowed into Mokou’s chest and seared its heat across the surface of her skin.

“Hnnngh!” Mokou gasped through her gritted teeth. She flapped the untouched fabric of her sleeveless turtleneck to try to cool off her burning chest. It felt like the moisture in her flesh was trying to vibrate out of her. “Fuck! What was that?”

“My microwave eye beams, Miss Mokou!” Clactobelle replied. She flitted softly, side to side, still fixing her insectoid gaze on Mokou. It was easier to tell now that Mokou had seen the beams come out. “Did you want me to try again?”

“Way too fast, Clactobelle,” said Mokou. The stinging pain subsided to a dull throb. “Couldn’t even see it. We had rules about that sort of thing.”

“I don’t think I can go slower!” said Clactobelle. “You can’t see microwaves?”

“No, I can’t. Okay, then like, you gotta telegraph it,” Mokou winced. She drifted backwards against the wind to give herself a bit more space.

“What’s a telegraph?”

“Okay, never mind that. You gotta give hints that it’s coming out. Maybe flash your eyes a little more, or make a noise.”

“But then you could dodge it more easily,” said Clactobelle. “Why would I shoot if you’re just going to dodge it?”

“Because that’s the game!” said Mokou.

“Ohhhhh,” Clactobelle buzzed. “Weird game, but I think I get it! Let’s see…”

The glowmoth steadied herself in the air and adopted a poise of deep concentration. A soft glow built within her compound eyes as she started a low, crescendoing hum.

“Mmmmmmmmmm — brreow!”

Mokou spun herself just enough. Heated air gusted over her bared arm from the grazing passage of the microwave beam.

“Yes!” Mokou pumped a fist in the air. “Like that! Again!”

“Brreow!”

Just before the shot, Mokou swung herself across the path of the beam. It grazed past her opposite shoulder. “Yes! Exactly!”

“Brreow! Wow! You’re very acrobatic, Miss Mokou!”

“Thanks! You’re a good shot!” Mokou replied. She drew in another lungful of smoke between her weaving dodges. Clactobelle had a consistent rhythm. Good for working up a sweat.

“But, um — Brreow! What’s the point for me if you keep dodging?”

“Hahaha!” Mokou laughed. Clactobelle was a quick study. With every technique she listed, Mokou dodged another beam. “You add more shots. You come from more angles. You give ‘em more to think about. You try to make ‘em slip up.”

“Hmm.” Clactobelle let her eye beams fall slack as she considered this. Faint disappointment entered her buzzing tone. “I don’t think I can do that, Miss Mokou.”

“Mmm,” Mokou grunted in acknowledgment and stilled herself in the air. “Would help if you had magic.”

“I don’t know magic, Miss Mokou,” said Clactobelle. She gasped. “You’re an immortal wizard?”

“Mmhm,” Mokou nodded. “That’s why we called ‘em spell cards. You bundle up a bunch of magic shots, you make it about something, you give it a name, you throw it at ‘em.”

“Maybe if I had a chain laser,” Clactobelle rubbed at her fuzzy moth chin. “Or time-clones, like the Chefs Oth…”

“You wanna see one? I can show you what I mean.” Mokou drifted back, to give herself a bit of space and height.

“Oh, would I!” said Clactobelle.

“Alright, let’s see.” The old bullet arts flowed up within her. She pulled what last she could from the butt of her joint and held it before her. She ignited the stub into a conjured flame, then pulled the flame into the shape of a card. “Possessed by Phoenix!”

She flung the flaming card upwards, where it burst over their heads. Streamers of magic fire descended towards Clactobelle, weaving into a new shape. A cage of flames in the guise of a great headless firebird encircled the glowmoth.

“W-what is this?” asked Clactobelle. With every flap of her wings, the flaming avian simulacrum mirrored her.

“Magic,” said Mokou, over the roar of the flames. It had been far too long since she had last evoked one of these. It felt good. “It’s an art, an old art. Anyway, you’re gonna want to start dodging soon.”

“W-what? Aaaaah!”

Twin gouts of bullets opened, one on each wing of the firebird. They scattered out livid spheres of energy like flak, targeting the glowmoth prisoner between them and everything around them. Clactobelle surged forwards, carrying the cage with her through the cloud of projectiles.

Mokou spoke up. “No, you’re going too fast, you’re not leaving yourself enough room to—”

“Aaaaah! Aaaaaaah!”

The bullet-gouting wings dragged furrows of delayed bursts through the sky in Clactobelle’s tumbling wake. In moments, they detonated, sending waves of light through the sky around her. A bullet splashed into her, scattering across her thorax like spectral confetti. Then another. Then another. The screaming glowmoth was insensate to the harmless impacts. She kept tumbling. Mokou followed her down.

Watching Clactobelle struggle through her spell card, she was struck again by Agate’s accusation. Was she trying to force things into familiar old shapes? Make things into what they weren’t? It was a bitter consideration. But she wasn’t — this was who she was, this was how she’d lived. If they wanted to know her, they needed to know this. It wasn’t her fault people forgot danmaku tactics.

She sighed and let the spell card gutter out. The firebird dissolved into shadow; the bullets faded. It wasn’t the same. This wasn’t really who she wanted to duel. She drifted below the glowmoth, calling out with a calming voice over her screams. “Clactobelle! Clactobelle. Stay with me here.”

Clactobelle tumbled with a shock into Mokou’s outstretched arms. “Oh! It’s over. How did I do?”

“Well,” Mokou said, “If I was going hot you’d have been creamed at least six times over, so, you know. Could be better.”

Clactobelle fluffed her wings softly. She was lighter than a dog her size would be. “Oh. Well, I bet I could take that! I’m tougher than I look. I made it to the end, right?”

“Nah,” Mokou grunted. “I stopped it early. Normally goes on for about another minute.”

“Oh,” said Clactobelle.

“There’s like, four more stages to the bullet patterns.”

“Oh,” said Clactobelle.

“So first off, we probably gotta teach you how to bomb,” said Mokou.

“Bomb?” asked Clactobelle. “What, like grenades?”

“Probably should’ve said counterspell, but that’s one way to do it, sure,” Mokou nodded. “Whatever works for you, you know?”

“I see. Have you gotten enough air, Miss Mokou?” asked the glowmoth in her arms. “I believe I’ve gotten enough air myself.”

“Yeah, alright, let’s head down.”

She had left Agate waiting. She had left things unsaid. She sank gently from the moonlit sky, back to the city beneath.

Chapter Text

Mokou’s sneakered tread set down back in the plaza she’d left minutes ago. Clactobelle had shifted to a perch on her shoulder. She had felt Agate’s gaze tracking her as soon as the roof’s lights caught her. The hindren waited a dozen or so paces from where the lingering forewoman comforted the magma crab.

“What in the blazing luma was that?” Agate demanded.

“Spell card,” said Mokou. She grinned. It had certainly caught Agate’s attention.

“Miss Mokou was showing me magical artillery techniques!” Clactobelle piped up.

“Could you give some warning next time?” Nashimir called. “Just had to spend the last few minutes convincing Big Pharma we weren’t under attack when I didn’t even know for sure myself!”

“Oh, I was definitely under attack, but it was fine!” Clactobelle called back.

“They were boffer shots,” said Mokou. She brushed a bit of moth dust from her hands before scratching the back of her head. “Sorry for the fuss, though, chief. What are you still doing here?”

“I’m here because you two knuckleheads are lollygagging in a work zone! What part of first on, last off don’t you get? Even my wife’s gone home!” Nashimir’s scowl faded to a more gentle expression after a moment. She thumped Hibnicrab’s carapace with her claw. “Plus, somebody’s gotta keep her company until the night shift shows up.”

“Well, we ain’t gotta stick around,” said Mokou. A bit of useless guilt settled in her, alloyed with resentment. This was an art. These people didn’t understand. All they saw was the danger. “Come on, Agate.”

“That was magic?” asked Agate, voice tinged with awe.

“Gensokyo specialty,” Mokou nodded. She set off for the observation chamber adjoining the plaza, with its stairs back down into the rest of the city. Agate fell in next to her, matching her pace agitatedly. “Most everyone had a few they could trot out.”

“She said it was a game!” said Clactobelle.

“You made a game out of… artillery combat?” asked Agate. Incredulity edged out the awe in her voice.

“Basically everyone I knew there was a wizard, Agate,” said Mokou. She clasped her hands together into a forward stretch, groaning faintly, warming down from her flight and the day’s work. “Guess it’s fallen out of vogue these days.”

“Clactobelle, she used magic on you?” asked Agate.

“Yep!” said the glowmoth.

“Did it hurt?” asked Agate.

Clactobelle shifted her perch on Mokou’s shoulder and fluttered her wings for balance. “You know, for a second there, I really thought it would! I really, really thought it would. But it didn’t!”

“It’s just practice,” said Mokou. “Art takes practice.”

“I see,” said Agate. She lapsed into a thoughtful silence.

Mokou paused outside the threshold of the observation chamber. She glanced sidelong at the moth weighing on her shoulder. “Clactobelle, me and Agate gotta talk over some things. Can you find something else to do?”

“Oh! Of course!” said Clactobelle. She hopped from Mokou’s shoulder up to the shingled roof. She waved a chitinous forelimb down at them. “It was lovely to meet you again, Miss Mokou! I want to learn more about danmaku!”

“Anytime,” Mokou waved back. “Live and drink.”

“Live and drink!”

“And you too, Nashimir, live and drink!” Mokou called back.

The forewoman’s gravelly tone carried over the plaza in return. “No artillery if the job doesn’t call for it, alright?”

“Fine, fine,” Mokou muttered. It was understandable. Those to whom magic was a mystery tended to get antsy around it, especially when it intruded on their everyday responsibilities. She’d have to find better space to practice. She opened the door and held it for Agate, gesturing her inside.

The low-lit observation chamber held no one but the two of them. The secretary’s desk sat empty, awaiting the next shift’s staff. Agate turned her critical gaze towards Mokou. She met that gaze and returned her own patient expression.

Agate spoke at last. “What am I to make of you if your response to a concerned critique is to fly off and mope?”

Mokou shrugged. “You asked me something I had to think about, I went off and thought about it.”

“Summoning a holographic, exploding firebird counts as thinking to you?” Agate asked, with a flick of her ear.

“What, you think it’s instinct?” Mokou scoffed.

“Have you offloaded, spider-like, your mental processing capacities into aerial bombardment patterns?”

“Come on, Agate,” Mokou sighed. “Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it. We gotta talk about this here? There’s no atmosphere.”

“The privacy is convenient, for the moment,” said Agate. She glanced around the room even as she started for the stairwell. “Is there some place you would rather discuss this?”

“I dunno, you know this place better than I do,” Mokou replied. But then, something else had piqued her curiosity before the shift. “Actually, yeah. It’s a date, right? Why don’t you show me the Hall of Legends?”

Agate stopped up short and stared at her. “It’s not what I’d call private…”

“Even at this time of night? Is this gonna be so sensitive? We can keep it down.” Mokou tucked her hands in her pockets and cocked her head towards Agate with a grin. “You embarrassed or something? What, is it a plaque? A portrait?”

Chapter Text

It was a statue. One of perhaps a dozen, lining the airy marble hall. The statue itself was marble, lush with pigment where color intruded on its monochromatic subject — the stone-coiffed hair, the shock of glowcrust, the delicate slate-blue of a single extended rose. The sculptor had severed stone from the whole until what remained evoked a timeless pose of stoicism. Four dishes orbited the plinth, armillaries of cuisine in kinetic simulacrum. This constant motion undergirded the hall with metallic whispers. The chrome plaque read:

AGATE SEVERANCE STAR
EYELESS KING CRAB BATTLE
MAY YOUR NAME LIVE FOREVER

Further down, the plaque listed the represented dishes. All involved crab. Despite the inherent aggrandizement and pomposity of a victory statue, it was an impressive likeness. It captured her poise, her sharp style, her toned mutant physique.

Mokou glanced to Agate to find the statue’s stoicism mirrored in her companion in the hall. Agate’s arms were crossed, her stiff collar and glowcrust obscuring her expression. She glanced back at Mokou, turning her head just enough to show a touch of heat on her exposed cheek. She glanced away again.

Mokou loosed a silent chuckle. “What? It’s a nice statue.”

“Pay your compliments to the sculptor, then,” said Agate.

“Really!” said Mokou. “Whoever it was must’ve liked your jawline too.”

“Is there a purpose to this flattery?” asked Agate.

Mokou scoffed. “I dunno, are you fishing for more compliments or can you just not take one to save your life?”

Agate met her gaze again and held it for a few breaths. Her critical expression softened. She gave a quiet sigh. “My experience with compliments is that they are invariably vessels for ulterior motives.”

Mokou raised her eyebrows. Agate’s prickliness was an understandable sort. It was still a bit absurd when they were standing in front of her statue. But the hall was otherwise empty of sightseers — there was no one else this display was for, tonight. Mokou hitched her hands behind her head and turned to saunter around the plinth in counter-circuit to the rotating dishes.

“It’s not that complicated, chief. You’re good-looking. I’m a dyke. Been one my whole life. Don’t see that changing anytime soon.” Mokou stopped in her stride briefly and looked up to the shadowed vaults above. “Maybe if there stop being women, you know? But that’ll probably just make me a different kind of dyke.”

The soft click of Agate’s hooves sounded on the stone floor behind her. “I would better trust your self-professed simplicity had you addressed my concern.”

“I’m working my way there, alright?” Mokou countered.

“What do you want from me?” asked Agate. “What do you want out of me?”

Mokou sighed. She dropped her hands into her pockets and turned back to face Agate. She continued her slow circuit of the statue with backwards steps. Which question did Agate want her to answer? Which concern first?

“I don’t want another Kaguya,” she said. “I don’t need that. Not as long as I know she’s out there somewhere. I don’t want to do what she does. To people. To you.”

Agate frowned in consideration, still following her circuit. It was not an expression devoid of sympathy. “Were you one of those people? One of those twisted into eternal vengeance?”

A few breaths, a few paces. She was and she wasn’t. It was all so long ago that what remained to her was closer to story than memory. A story she’d dredged from eternity for her own sense of coherence and continuity, such as it ever was.

“It’s… complicated, right?” she said. “I don’t know what her intentions were. I don’t know if she even knew me, at first. She just set up the conditions that let me do it to myself. She isn’t even always like that. Cycles. She’s got cycles.” She held up a hand before her, palm out, and traced a glacial orbit in the air. “Like history has cycles. I just met her in one of those cycles.”

“Is it still vengeance you seek?” asked Agate. She was really starting to care, wasn’t she? Really starting to make Mokou her problem. Maybe she already had.

There was a part of her, she knew, that would always seek redress. The crime had never been forgotten, could never be resolved. The vengeance she sought was for her entire existence. But at the same time that vengeance was only part of the melange.

“It is and it isn’t,” Mokou shrugged. “Vengeance only gets you so far on its own. For me, at least. You should’ve seen the gal she hit before me. Now that gal had some sustain.”

“How many have there been?” asked Agate.

“Couldn’t tell you,” said Mokou. She glanced away, breaking Agate’s gaze. Dishes in spinning chrome whispered past. “You might’ve guessed we don’t always keep in touch. Maybe she picked up some more while I was frozen, maybe not. Hey,” she flicked her thumb towards the statue. “Been stuck behind this for the last week, so I gotta say: that sculptor did a real nice job on your ass.”

Agate halted with a choking scoff. She recovered her composure swiftly, ear flicking. “Your art critique is noted. Tell me what you want from me.”

Mokou chuckled softly. She bridged the pace between them and reached forward to clasp Agate’s hand. Beneath the warmth of her soft fur, it was calloused, yet not unyielding. “I want to thank you.”

“For what?” Agate glanced down at the gesture, then met Mokou’s gaze with a clinical expectancy.

“For getting me here. Seems like a nice place. Wouldn’t have been the same trip without your help.”

Agate’s gaze flicked away. “It was a promise to a friend and colleague.” She squeezed Mokou’s hand in her clasped palm. Her gaze returned, ever stoic. “Was that the extent of your wants?”

As long as she was asking for Mokou to lay out her desires, there was no reason not to oblige. It was refreshing that she’d ask. There was that momentum again.

“Not quite,” said Mokou. She grinned. “I really want to fight you again.”

Agate blinked. Mokou wanted to fight her again. That did not seem to be a course conducive to health and longevity. What a strange thing to confess while holding her hand.

“Why do you wish to fight me?”

“You’re strong!” said Mokou. Still she grinned, reciprocating a squeeze of her hand. “You’re good at fighting! I want to see your techniques!”

“These are sufficient pretexts for violence?” asked Agate.

“For me, sure,” said Mokou. She released Agate’s hand, opening her own in a small shrug as she stepped back. “I’m a violent person, Agate. Been through too much to tell myself anything else. I’m good at fighting. It’s fun. Or like, it’s the kind of thing I can find the fun in after this long in it.”

“I imagine it helps when one can largely escape the consequences of said violence,” Agate noted.

“Some of ‘em, sure,” said Mokou. She buried her hands in her pockets once more and hitched her step around to resume her circuit of the plinth. “I’ve read about the stars, you know. All kinds of things, over the years. I’ve read about the forces that people say keep ‘em together, keep us circling around ‘em. Gravity.”

“I am familiar, yes.” It seemed Mokou’s incuriosity towards mathematics was not similarly directed towards astronomy. Perhaps it was a matter of application. She followed in Mokou’s leisurely footsteps.

“Violence,” the immortal continued, “it has its own gravity well. It pulls you in no matter what you do. It’s just part of the world. I know you feel what the world demands of you. I see that in you. It interests me.”

It was a resonant metaphor. Perhaps in a kinder era, in a more peaceful land, the world would not demand violence of her. This was neither. This was Qud. Broadly, the violence Agate had honed through her life was wielded for the purposes of survival, of escaping further violence. There had been exceptions, of course. The statue they circled was raised to honor one such exception. Down in the arena those years ago, she had wielded her violence for the sake of transcendental cuisine.

“Violence interests you?”

Mokou nodded. “It’s another form of expression, you know? You see sides of folks you might not otherwise get to see. Might as well find the beauty in that while I’m down in the well.” She looked upwards and took in a slow breath. “And I’ve been down here since the moon was whole.”

Intellectually, Agate had known that the moon was not always so. It was a logical enough conclusion that a fractured thing must have once, in its orbital history, cohered. Emotionally, it was the only moon she had ever known.

“How long ago was that?” asked Agate, already knowing the futility of expecting precision. “Roughly.”

Mokou loosed her breath through her teeth in a low hiss. “You get past ten thousand and it all just starts flowing together. Think I had a good few thousand before it broke. Been even longer since then. Could be anywhere past that, you know?”

“Anywhere?” Agate pressed. Her estimates truly had been conservative. “Could it be, say, past one million?”

“Oh, god,” Mokou halted. “A million? I don’t think it’s been a million. Not unless I was in that glacier for a whole lot longer than I thought.” She put a hand to her chin and stared off with a harrowed expression. “Shit, maybe. No. But maybe.”

“Mokou,” said Agate. She stepped past her in a wider arc, stopping once more before the plaque and turning to face her. “I have survived in Qud because I know when not to fight. You have been practicing violence for a period of time several orders of magnitude longer than my paltry decades. Why on earth would I fight you again?”

Mokou dropped her hand, stirred from her reverie on the ages. She eyed Agate with an expression of disbelief. “What, you’ve never heard of sparring?”

Agate pressed her eyes shut and sighed. “If you wish to spar with me, then specify so, please.”

“Alright, I want to spar with you,” Mokou laughed. “I want to duel you, but you can’t fly. I’ll settle for sparring.”

“Duel me?” asked Agate.

“Yeah, with spell cards.”

“My gyrocopter backpack is in storage,” said Agate. “If you mean to expose its fuel tanks to sorcerous fire, I shall require a more compelling justification than your own entertainment.”

“Gyrocopter backpack?” Mokou echoed. Her brow wrinkled in recollection. “Knew a gal who used to duel with one of those, actually. Dodge well enough and it ain’t out of the question.” She stepped closer, drawing up to Agate’s side. “Not gonna push you or anything. You asked what I wanted. If you’re gonna indulge me, it’s better if you want to.”

Agate did not respond. From the rooftop, for those few seconds, it had seemed as though the immortal had filled the sky with fire. Illusory fire, by Clactobelle’s report, but by Mokou’s intimations she could read that this was not standard to a spell card. To want it was to willingly hurl oneself into the flames. This was Mokou’s entertainment.

Mokou leaned forward and rested her hands on the plaque. “You know what else I want? I want to know what the fuck your statue is about. You cooked a bunch of crabs? What kind of crab is an eyeless king crab?”

She was a stranger to this land. The Moghra’yi devoured word of Kitchen Heptagon’s matches. It fell to Agate to explain her own fame. Perhaps that was for the best. She could ensure minimum distortion.

“It is a record of my victory in the arena of Kitchen Heptagon. Eyeless king crabs were the theme ingredient. While not as sizable as Hibnicrab Pharmazocrab, a fully-grown eyeless king crab stands roughly the height of the statue and the width of the plinth. Choraler Jathiss and I accounted for three each.”

“You fought giant crabs,” said Mokou. Red eyes fixed on Agate, rapt. “You fought giant crabs in an arena.”

Agate nodded. “Yes, and then butchered and cooked them, all in under an hour. After sampling the courses of myself and the courses of Choraler Jathiss, the Carbide Chef Six-Day Stilt, the judges recognized the perfection of my methods.”

“This is exactly the kind of thing I am dying to hear about, Agate,” said Mokou. “You’ve been holding out on me. You want me to see you as your own person? Tell me about the legendary shit you’ve done.”

That was the precise concern that had prompted Mokou to fly off and unleash magic on the Heptagon’s action commentator. Was she so out of touch with the flow of the mortal realm that she needed that help? It was an admission as telling as it was insulting as it was concerning.

“The statue features a fair facsimile of my courses.” Agate gestured to the circling decorative armatures. “I thought these, at least, evident. Far be it from me to collapse your interpretation of the piece.”

Mokou tapped the plinth where it held the inscription of her second course. Her eyes had gained a faintly feverish glint. “This says ‘Phase Sashimi’ here.” As the dish’s representation arced past, she pointed to it. “Sashimi! You made sashimi! That’s one of ours!”

Her words sent a thrill down Agate’s spine — the thrill of historical inquiry. She had known, of course, that the dish was ancient, its origins obscure. Records from before the time of the Eaters were scattered, dissolute, fragmentary. Here was a window through the eons. Perhaps a bridge.

“Yours from Gensokyo?”

“From Japan! Gensokyo was landlocked, but every once in a while you’d get some ocean fish in under the Barrier and it was just heavenly. Back when there were oceans.” Mokou’s gaze of shimmering reminiscence settled back into the near present. “Come to think of it, where do your crabs come from?”

“The middle caverns. They’re terrestrial. Cave-adapted.” Agate answered. These were not the petty admissions of one who had lost track of her own personhood. These were vertiginous glimpses down the churning maw of history. She reached forward and settled her grasp over Mokou’s hand on the plaque. They remained shockingly soft, a side effect from her most recent resurrection. “Much knowledge, culinary and cultural alike, was lost within the injunction that ended the age of the Eaters. Your people made sashimi. We never knew.”

Mokou gave her a faint smile. “Hell, I wouldn’t have been too steamed if you’d said it was one of your originals. I mean, I probably would’ve teased you some, but the form factor’s pretty simple. Easily the kinda thing that keeps cropping up and getting reinvented, you know? Like crabs.”

“The simplicity is key,” Agate nodded. “There is no finer vector for the delivery of the pure sensation of the crab. It is key also, I would venture, to the dish’s culinary longevity.”

“Time really grinds down complexity,” Mokou nodded back. The statue’s chrome platter of phase sashimi orbited past them once more. Mokou clasped Agate’s hand and followed the dish in a fresh circuit of the plinth. Mokou kept pace with a quickened stride — a counterpoint to the leisurely tone of her explanation. “Your take on it here — it’s drifted a bit, you know? You’ve got this bed of rice for it. Traditionally, we had the rice on the side, if at all, with this kind of serving. We had shorter-grain rice, too. But drift can be interesting.”

“The bed is not rice,” Agate clarified. “I served the sashimi atop steamed swarmshade grubs.”

“Ah,” said Mokou. “You know, I thought the shape wasn’t just a matter of grain. That explains it. Guess rice is harder to get here.”

Agate snorted faintly. “At the Heptagon? Certainly not. I chose the grubs for a neutrality with body. It was the optimal canvas for the crab.”

“That’s some drift,” Mokou muttered. She lapsed into silence and slowed her steps. The dish outpaced them. She cast an unreadably brief glance at Agate, then returned her gaze to the statue. “Here’s what’s still tripping me up, Agate.”

“What?” Agate replied. Her excitement faded a touch from the conversation’s shift. It had been refreshing to trace out a pillar of her culinary thesis to one with such an unexpected depth of context.

“They built a statue of you. For you. For this victory of yours. But it’s like everyone I’ve met here keeps asking me about you like you’ve already chewed me up.” She let her statement stand for a few paces. She placed her free hand over her breast in indication. “Now, me, I don’t really give a shit about that. Whatever pain you might have waiting for me down the line, I guarantee I’ve felt worse. I guarantee I’ve already been put through worse. It really doesn’t matter what you can do to me.” She let her hand fall again. “Guess I just want to know why they’ve still got the statue up if you’re really like that.”

Agate stopped. The motion brought Mokou to a halt as well. It seemed their conversation had returned to the petty admissions. Illuminating, but exhausting. “Do you start every prospective relationship with this sort of egregious self-debasement?”

Mokou gave her a tired shrug. “Been a rotten couple centuries before this.”

Agate lifted Mokou’s clasped hand before her. She considered its warmth, considered its strength, considered what gestural evocations slumbered within its digits. She released her grasp and met Mokou’s gaze. “I have only ever been myself. Others come to me and wish me to be something else for them. Their own truncated and distorted image of myself. I cannot be that. I will not be anything I have not made myself into.”

“Hm,” Mokou grunted. She looked off in thought. “Statue’s bigger than a few broken hearts, that it?”

“Bigger to whom?” asked Agate.

Mokou shrugged. “The Heptagon. You. Whomever you got.”

“It is a monument to culinary achievement,” said Agate. “The Heptagon raised it in recognition of me. I would have triumphed regardless of whether or not a statue was on offer. I have committed nothing so heinous as to cause them to decommission it.”

“You killed anyone?” Mokou flicked her gaze back for a moment. Her tone remained flat, casual.

“No one unsanctioned by the Heptagon’s ceremonies,” Agate replied. “Nor anyone relevant to my interpersonal history.”

“Killing somebody’s pretty interpersonal,” Mokou muttered.

“These people,” Agate continued over the correction, “see my statue and subsequently decide this, alone, tells them enough about me to pursue me. They do not know me. It falls to me to educate them, to clear away their illusions of me. What remains for them is the heartbreak of disillusionment.”

Mokou raised her brows but said nothing, still seemingly lost in thought.

“Now as for you,” said Agate. “Your attitude will not do. I take umbrage at your earlier assertion during the common meal. You’ve made no particularly compelling arguments against your own personhood.”

Mokou glanced back at Agate, then returned her tired gaze to the statue. After a few breaths in silence, she nodded at it. “You were gonna say earlier that they immortalized you. That’s what they do here, isn’t it? Make you a part of history?”

“Yes,” said Agate. Her ear flicked. Was this simply a feint to avoid addressing her statement? “That is the compact of the arena. The promise of Kitchen Heptagon.”

“Mm,” Mokou grunted in acknowledgment. “Then I hope this place sticks around for a while. Paint job like that’s gonna need touching up. These spinny bits with your dishes on ‘em have gotta take regular maintenance. They seize up and you lose the whole kinetic feeling. And marble? That only gets you a few thousand years before all the detail work starts crumbling.”

Agate advanced a step towards her. “Mokou, I am keenly aware of material impermanence. This is Qud. I have excavated my share of monuments.”

Mokou smiled faintly, her gaze still on the statue. “Glad I got to see it like this first. Seen too many things worn down.”

“Why don’t you think you’re a person?”

The immortal shut her eyes. Her expression tightened. She sighed, then opened her eyes to meet Agate’s gaze. Again, Agate found her regard returned with the weight of untold ages.

“Makes it easier,” said Mokou. Softly, edged with pain. “People shouldn’t have to be like this.”

Be, she said. Not live. Did she not even consider herself alive? Where could one even begin in relation to such a dire, self-annihilating outlook?

“That is not an acceptable justification.”

Mokou shrugged. “It’s the one I’ve got. Held up so far.”

“If you can’t even see yourself as a person, how can you begin to see that in everyone around you?” Agate stepped closer still, drawing herself up over Mokou’s slouch.

“That’s easy, you die,” said Mokou. “That’s the difference.”

Agate scoffed. “If death is your necessary condition of personhood, then you’ve tallied up far more of it than the rest of us.”

Mokou blinked. The rejoinder took a moment to land on her. She barked out a laugh and clapped Agate on the shoulder. “You know, I think if you were really such a nightmare, you wouldn’t be so hung up on this.”

Agate caught Mokou’s intruding hand and pulled it between them, clasping her fist around it. “You are limiting yourself.”

“Maybe so,” said Mokou. She took in a deep breath and slipped her hand out from Agate’s grasp. “Spend enough time around people and you start seeing patterns. Bubbling up and repeating. People change, and maybe some of the patterns change with them. Others don’t. They’re still people.”

Agate let her continue. The immortal slipped her hands into her pockets and led the two of them towards the nearest wall. She leaned against it, positioning herself at the midpoint of a pair of portraits commemorating defeated Challengers of matches past.

“I’m learning about the kind of person you are, Agate. I want to learn more. You’re pretty distinctive. The more I learn, the fewer patterns you match to. The more the patterns become your own.”

This speech of hers sounded as though it was working towards something like an apology. Agate crossed her arms and gave a faint nod to continue.

Mokou smiled at her. “Point is. I’ve got patterns, you’ve got patterns. Once we see the way they move, we can avoid ‘em if we need to. You know — go away from the bullets.”

Agate blinked. Bullets? “Were you planning on shooting me? Need I remind you who made your gun?”

Mokou scrunched her brows and held her hands before her in a vague shaping motion. “No, I mean like—”

“Spell cards,” Agate realized. “You were attempting to explain interpersonal relations through the metaphor of wizardly artillery.”

“Exactly!” Mokou snapped her fingers. “Sometimes it’s about going away from ‘em, and sometimes it’s about getting as close as you can to ‘em without getting creamed.”

“I am not a wizard,” Agate scoffed. “Have you also offloaded your emotional processing capabilities into these spell cards?”

“It’s all about the emotion, Agate!” said Mokou, eyes and voice shining with sudden passion. “It’s about telling them who you are and where you came from! You put enough wizards into an enclosed space and that’s what you get! You get the most beautiful violence I have ever seen.”

When this passion seized her it was as though she became a different person — a person who might more readily admit to being such. Agate had seen it seize her before. So, too, had she seen it gutter out again. What sparked it? What sustained it? What fueled it?

This was an opportunity for scientific observation of ancient magical practices. Observation always held risk — she knew this. The risks here were not simply physical, nor simply metaphysical. There were emotional risks in this entire venture.

Still, with or without the passion, it seemed as though Mokou was willing to make an effort.

“My gyrocopter is due for servicing,” said Agate. “I could use the flight practice.”

“Aw, hell,” said Mokou. Shimmering gratitude joined the passion in her gaze. She reached forward and gently clasped Agate’s hands, encircling them with the warmth of her touch. “That means a lot to me, really.”

“Sparring is also acceptable.”

“You’re spoiling me. Hey,” Mokou squeezed her hands. “You know what I’m gonna do?”

“I rather don’t, in general,” Agate replied, truthfully.

“I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do,” said Mokou. She smiled. “I’m gonna remember tonight. This date, this hall, that statue. Long as I can, just for you.”

Agate’s heart sped as she calculated the weight of that promise. It was dizzying. They had scarce met a week ago. A week and a single good night were enough for Mokou to carry the name of Agate Severance Star forward into her own personal eternity.

How could she have been so naïve as to cede the ontological date-space of this time together? Now it was Agate’s half-hearted hesitancy engraved into the immortal’s memory — not perfection. Perhaps it could yet be salvaged.

Agate pulled Mokou against her body and kissed her deeply. The immortal tasted of smoke, with underpinnings of the common meal’s grilled meat and savory poi. Perhaps next time she’d make that taste an accent of her own. Agate pulled back at last, letting the two of them softly catch their breaths.

“You have hardly seen the Hall. It bears more names than mine alone. Come,” Agate led her away from the wall. “I will give you more to remember.”

Chapter Text

“One more time. She was your ex?” asked Mokou. The cobbles of the Garden Ward passed beneath her soles, already too familiar. Her head swam from the details of dozens of matches she’d never witnessed. Those other chefs would be lucky if she remembered their monuments past a century. She hadn’t promised them anything. Her promise was for Agate.

“We were research partners,” Agate answered. Her tone dipped into faintly pained wistfulness. She let out a soft sigh. “There are few relations in this land more intimate than the pledge to cut through ignorance together. Our courses, however, became irreconcilable. The pledge could not survive this. That was years ago, before my victory.”

“And she was one of your judges,” Mokou said. She had almost heard regret in Agate’s tone. Just how badly had this research partner of hers been disillusioned?

“Yes,” said Agate. “As I already told you.”

Mokou slid her hands from her pockets to hold them up in a defensive gesture. “I’m just making sure I get it right. I don’t know two thirds of those people.”

After a moment, Agate nodded. “Very well. Again, I submitted my culinary efforts to a panel of three judges. These were: Sheba Hagadias, librarian of the Stilt; Asphodel the Lovely, high-ranking member of the Consortium of Phyta and self-proclaimed Earl of Omonporch; and… Q Girl. Protégé of Barathrum the Old, tinker, author, mathematician — my erstwhile research partner.”

Mokou raised her brows. This telling traced out a bit more of the social context of her victory. “Well, Sheba likes you, at least. But between the Consortium and your ex—”

“The ruling was unanimous,” said Agate. She turned her head towards Mokou and gave her a smile of cold self-satisfaction. “My methods are perfect.”

Mokou chuckled. She was finally starting to get some idea of what Agate meant when she said that. Maybe if she’d been there to see it, she could start to believe it.

They drew up at last before the floral and stucco facade of the Moondrop Inn. Lanterns lit the mutant iridescence of wisteria. Something like wisteria, at least — some distant, subterranean descendant of it, hardened of cultivar. Its floral hue matched the dyed gleam of Agate’s hair, framed in cascading purple blossoms. That was the kind of gleam she remembered.

“Well, here we are,” Mokou said.

Agate met her gaze and gave a faint nod. A bit more tension had crept into her posture. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You don’t want to come up? Bed’s probably a bit small for you, but…” Mokou trailed off with a shrug.

Agate sighed, her gaze drifting across the facade. “I still cannot sleep around Tabi.”

“You’re fresh,” said Mokou. “You don’t want to tackle that tonight?”

“Do you wish to explain to the forewoman that your pet is the reason why the woman who can repair her condensers didn’t sleep between shifts?” Agate replied. She crossed her arms as her expression grew into one of troubled concentration. “I can sense it from here. It seems an astral tabby’s ‘soul attack’ cares little for intervening structure.”

“See, you’re getting it!” Mokou pointed triumphantly at her. Maybe there was hope for her yet. “But alright, suit yourself. I’ll see you tomorrow. And hey—”

She stepped forward, placed her hands over Agate’s, and kissed her. The kiss was brief and shallow — just shy of being able to overcome the coolness the glowcrust imposed over its closest section of lip. Still, it was enough to show a bit of affection to cap off the night. It was nice to have someone to kiss again. She pulled back and smiled.

“Thanks again. Been a nice night.”

Agate shifted her hands to return Mokou’s grasp with a soft squeeze. “I shall be clear when next we date. Live and drink, Mokou.”

“You too, Agate.”

Agate gave a parting nod, turned, and walked off, hooves clicking smartly on the boulevard’s cobbles. Mokou watched her go for the brief window of time it took for her to round a corner and disappear from view.

Mokou passed through the Moondrop’s front door. The bell jingled softly overhead.

“Oh good,” Fasola weakly sighed. “You’re back.”

The lights were brighter than usual, despite the late hour. Seals papered the desk and the walls of the lobby’s office nook. Seals papered the chair behind the desk and the door into the back rooms. Seals papered the innkeep’s hat. Dark bags had crept in beneath her eyes.

“Hey! How was Tabi?” asked Mokou, sauntering to the counter and leaning her elbows on it.

Fasola slid forward in her chair and dropped her voice to a whisper. “She’s in the walls, Mokou. She’s in the goddamn walls.”

“She’ll do that,” said Mokou.

“I haven’t slept, Mokou,” said Fasola. She blinked wearily up at her. “She comes out of the walls. Think I’m starting to see why Agate almost dumped you.”

“Hey, we made up,” said Mokou, a touch affronted. “I appreciate you looking after her.”

“Well, I’m glad, because I’m not doing it again. Your cat’s not very personable.” Fasola lifted herself from the desk and clasped Mokou’s hands with her own. “Please take her back.”

“Alright, alright,” said Mokou. It seemed Tabi was consistent so far in her inflicted malaises. Not only that, but she could even keep Fasola from sleeping. Mokou felt a touch guilty that she had dropped the care of a youkai on the innkeep without much warning, but then, Fasola wasn’t defenseless. She had her glands, didn’t she? Mokou raised her voice a touch to call for her cat. “Tabi!”

“Rrrt?”

Tabi poked her head down from the ceiling, then slipped out of the stone. Fasola yelped as the cat landed on her hat. The innkeep’s body scrunched up in tension as she drew in a sharp breath. Tabi wobbled for balance atop the platform of stiff cloth.

“This is a nightmare,” Fasola whimpered.

“Tabi, come on,” said Mokou.

Tabi hopped from Fasola’s hat to the countertop. She landed in an uncertain stance, as though not entirely expecting the countertop to behave with the solidity it did. She recovered fluidly and started to groom her paw.

“You see what I mean? Been like this the whole time you’ve been out.” Fasola sighed heavily, adjusting her hat.

Mokou flicked her wrist into an upward point. “You missed the ceiling. Rookie mistake.”

“Noted,” Fasola grumbled. She rummaged in the desk drawer and withdrew a folded letter. “You got a letter. From Bajiko Ki.”

“Oh?”

Fasola tossed it towards Mokou, then settled back in her chair with a soft groan. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but still. What’d you do to get her attention?”

“Think I just kept living,” Mokou shrugged. She picked up the letter and turned it over between her fingers. Quality paper, dyed a vibrant green, sealed with wax embossed in a stylized crest: an axe over a fan of leaves. She tucked it into her pocket. “Not like I’ve got much choice in the matter.”

“What?” asked Fasola, blinking blearily.

“In living.” Mokou crouched to beckon her cat to the lobby floor. Tabi hopped down and started threading herself through Mokou’s ankles, purring. She clenched her teeth at the sensation, then mastered it. She stood again and met the innkeep’s gaze.

“I’ve been watching that little cuss all day for you,” Fasola sighed, nodding towards Tabi. “Least you could do is not talk in riddles around me.”

“What? How am I riddling you?” Mokou replied.

Fasola’s tired eyes narrowed. “You and Agate have been real coy about your age. Maybe it’s none of my business, but she said I should ask you. How old are you, anyway? ‘Cause if it weren’t for the hair, you wouldn’t look a day over twenty.”

Fasola looked cute when she was tired. But her attitude was soaked in dismissal — that grating, false read on Mokou’s age based solely on what the elixir had done to her. Mokou shook her head softly. “Older.”

“Twenty-five? Twenty-six?”

“Way older.”

“Two… hundred and twenty-six?” Fasola ventured. The accusatory dismissal in her tone gave way into uncertainty.

“You remember the last ice age?” asked Mokou.

“Nnno? Not personally,” said Fasola. She blinked with a fixed smile. “Do you?”

Mokou nodded. “Start and finish. Middle’s a bit of a blur.”

“Oh,” said Fasola. Over her frozen smile, her gaze cycled through confusion, shock, then a resigned acceptance. “Okay.”

“Have a good night, Fasola.”

The innkeep pressed her eyes shut. “Please, I just want to sleep. Go feed your evil cat.”

Mokou sauntered away, Tabi at her heels. The lights were low in the rest of the lobby, the stairwells, and their connecting lounges. No one was about. She idly wondered how many neighbors she had on the third floor, and how many of those her cat might be tormenting out of a good night’s sleep. Was that the sort of behavior she could be trained out of? How much experience did the people of the Heptagon have with training astral tabbies? Assuming, of course, that Mokou had coaxed merely an astral tabby into following her around. She had her doubts.

She reached her room at last, unlocked it, and stepped inside. She snapped a quick spell at the lamp, igniting it. The room was quiet and still. The recycling suit, draped over one of the room’s two chairs, had aired itself out. She’d had the foresight to leave the window cracked. The waterskin of blood hung from the back of the other chair. It was all as she’d left it that afternoon, but then, she hadn’t much to leave.

“Rrroww,” Tabi complained.

“Yeah, I hear ya,” Mokou muttered. She retrieved a small bowl from a shelf near the sink, set it on the floor, and poured a dram of blood into it. Tabi bent to feed, lapping between contented purrs. Mokou sloshed the skin thoughtfully. “You can thank the deer lady for this one. Probably no one we know.”

She hung the skin back on the chair, then sat in it. She pulled the letter from her pocket, broke the seal and unfolded it. The wax had trapped a faint herbaceous scent that rose to her as she scanned the contents.

Hail, Chef Fujiwara no Mokou,

It would be my distinguished honor to instruct you in the ways of the Carbide Chefs. Below is my availability over the next two weeks. I do my best cooking at night. Please respond at your convenience.

I hold my lessons in the arboretum in the arena’s southern wall. Find me there. Come in readiness to cook. Unveil your ages of practice.

Yours in chrome,

Bajiko Ki, Carbide Chef Ekuemekiyye

By the included snippet of calendar, Mokou could reckon it was around the start of the month they called Tuum Ut. Most of the chef’s limited availability was indeed at night. It made her feel slightly less self-conscious about the way her sleep schedule had drifted away from the rhythm of the sun. She had a feeling it would only skew further the longer she spent beneath the earth.

A response could wait for the morning, such as it was down here. She tossed the letter onto the table. She rose, slipping off her suspender straps to strip from her fabric shell. She crossed to the window, discarding her top on the floor. She opened the pane the rest of the way and leaned her elbows on the sill.

Quiet streets sank into the shadows of the subterranean canopy beneath her. Sparse nightwalkers flitted between pools of lamplight. Soft city sounds rose to her overlook. Already she could feel the tendrils of all these fleeting lives snaking around her limbs, promising to anchor her, to engross her. Wasn’t that the point? Wasn’t that why she came here, to learn?

Where else would she go? Did this new House of Eternity still stand, somewhere in the east? Here was where her desperate investigations had dead-ended. Perhaps it was best to let them, for now.

She wanted to smoke. She was out of herb. She wanted to pet her cat. Her cat was a ghost. She stared out the window. The cavern’s faint drafts played over her bare skin.

Snatches of drunken labor-song rose from a handful of workers passing along the thoroughfare. The sight of them sauntering along reminded her she had coveralls coming. That anticipation brightened in her. Maybe Mokou could pretend she was one of them, at least for a little while. The thought let her keep silent that part within her that told her that most everyone in the city out her window would be dead in a century at best.

She turned away to prepare herself for bed. A quick refreshing at the sink, a dousing of the lamp, a doffing of the trousers, a piss in the dark. By the time she finished this, Tabi had already curled up beneath the foot of the unmade bed, asleep. Mokou slipped beneath the sheets with a heavy sigh. They were soft around her. She stared at the shadows on the rock ceiling.

“Y’know, Keine,” she said to the quiet dark. “For a while there, I couldn’t remember your face.”

The memories she had needed most had worn down the fastest, bit by bit with every recall. Memory was a lathe turned against all those details, built up over the thousands of years they’d shared. That they’d returned to her was nothing short of a miracle. Miracles, like everything, had expiration dates.

“But I remembered that one gal who fought me with a fuckin’... gyrocopter backpack.”

The curtains wisped in the breeze. City light sapped through their gauze to shift the ceiling’s shadows into new eddies. The smoothed shale held its silence.

“Y’know, Keine,” she yawned. “This new gal’s got a statue.”

Tabi’s soft snores filtered up to her. Her eyes grew heavy.

“Why’s it always the gals with statues?”

Chapter Text

A few minor errands had bent the direct path back to her workspace into a more meandering one — a quick stop at a canteen, a few messages left for the coming days, a passing gander at the junk shops’ rotating displays. But at last Agate returned to her darkened domicile in its quiet cul-de-sac in the Chrome Ward. The gentle hum of dormant power and the faint smell of dust greeted her.

She cleaned her hooves on the entryway’s catch-rug and kindled the lights to partial intensity. The half-light was a simple compromise between the demands of her sleep schedule and those of the bit of energy remaining in her. Sleep would come when she willed it — a skill honed in the wilds, accessible to her once more outside of the vexing radius of the cat. Still, there was no sense in making the effort harder than necessary.

Her gaze swept her quarters in assessment. She still needed to do something about the dust, but that task was less critical. A few projects stashed in corners and lockers pled for her attention, but the requisite effort to extract and resume them did not appeal. The servicing of her gyrocopter deserved more time and attention than she could afford while still gaining a reasonable amount of sleep. She’d already checked her ongoing fermentations before she’d left that afternoon. Her gaze fell at last to her hoversled, docked faithfully where she’d left it. A bit of organization now would save trouble in the future.

Re-organization, rather — she had kept it in perfect access and arrangement. By Mokou’s account, the cat had sown chaos into it. Agate’s re-packing had been a hasty one. She hadn’t found the time on the road to do better than merely functional. She ushered the sled into the center of the workspace, where she had a bit of room on the tables to unpack.

The first order of business was to start a hot cider nightcap. From her hoversled’s liquor reserves, she pulled free a bottle of cider from a brewery in the Garden Ward, picked up on her last visit to the Heptagon. It mulled well. She started it simmering with a spice packet, then returned to clean out the empties.

Stashed amongst them was the empty bottle left from Mehshruul End’s care package. She regretted not purchasing more while she had the opportunity. It was as yet uncertain that they had survived the storm. Word from the western canyons would have to wait for the return of caravans — or the arrival of more refugees. But then, she’d expected the bottle to last slightly longer. She hadn’t expected Mokou to drink nearly the entire thing.

She set the bottles by her stove to await sterilization later. She stirred the cider and tried to imagine how the spices and heat would translate into the End’s brew.

Her hoversled’s spices were nominal. Fresh, more perishable ingredients she transferred to her workspace’s larder. She noted which preserved goods needed restocking — more of them than usual. She was accustomed to traveling alone. Best to provision for two when the wilds called again.

Next came her junk drawer. It was lighter than usual — there’d been little in the way of scrap to scavenge along their course from the Stilt. The most significant weight it held was that of her VISAGE. Even days after its destructive malfunctioning it smelled faintly of fused metal, smoke, and ozone.

How was she supposed to know the damn thing would fry itself on Mokou’s liver? It was almost pathetic. It could file away scans on star-metals, on girsh, on antimatter reactions, on any number of oddities and horrors from the depths of the earth or the distant cosmos, all without complaint — but scan a single dram of dubiously extraterrestrial origin and it fell to pieces. It beggared belief, yet she had witnessed it firsthand. The immortal’s very presence closed an entire informational avenue to her. After all her effort to master that path, she would simply have to do without it.

In the morning she could make a more concerted effort at salvage. It promised to be a delicate process. She emptied the drawer, piece by piece, on the table next to her bit locker. By the time that was done, so was the mulled cider. She poured herself a mug and sipped it, turning her regard to the hoversled’s folio storage.

Still at the top, sandwiched in oilskin, was her nascent polemic. She pulled it free of its protective wrap and spread the manuscript over a clear bit of table. Her gaze scanned over the few paragraphs she’d managed before Mokou had pulled her back eastward. It had barely been a week.

The words still rang true, but the truth was hollow. She wrote them to grapple with the culinary fate of a city. What was one city to a woman who had seen countless of them rise and fall? What did a petty little polemic even matter within that grand perspective?

It was just another thing of hers she’d broken.

Most vexing of all was the fact that it wasn’t even a matter of intent. Mokou’s mere existence did this — as a matter of course, as though she were the incarnation of some heretofore unknown natural law. Perhaps it was her gravity, as Lulihart had warned her.

Agate knew how it felt to share that gravity with another. Some orbits had been kinder to her than others. One such had judged her in the arena, those years ago. She had torn herself from that orbit for the sake of forbidden knowledge. All she had gained for it was heartache.

But Mokou’s pull was another caliber entirely. Agate could only hope no more of her possessions would fall prey to the gravitational shift. She could not afford to lose herself in this. Nor could she possibly leave Mokou alone. That was clear, and only growing clearer. How could she bolster her own presence before the eternal?

Not for the first time in her life, she found her thoughts turning to that most dire ingredient. That old temptation, that taunting omnifluid trace of the penumbra calculus. Neutron flux. Its risks were severe — calamitous, in trained and untrained hands alike. Training merely reduced the certainty of fatality. It was a frustratingly literal conclusion to an interpersonal matter, but the more she considered it, the more it pushed out alternatives. The surest way to bolster her own gravity was neutron flux.

It was a gnawing, weighty consideration. Every opportunity she’d found to directly test her knowledge with the substance was one she’d inevitably quailed from. Some of those opportunities had been costly indeed. But still, that insinuation needled within her: how could she call herself a Carbide Chef if she’d never cooked neutron flux?

Neutron flux had never broken her scanners.

She finished her nightcap and returned her sled to its berth. That was enough unpacking for the time being. All that remained was to prepare herself for bed — routine hygiene, disrobing, dimmed lights.

She settled herself beneath the covers. She willed sleep to come. She could only hope to be spared another dream about Q Girl.

It was a fruitless hope.

Chapter Text

The air was thick in the arboretum. Sunset’s fleeting rays teased out the iridescence of its resident flora. Each breath was heady with half-familiar scents of flowers and herbs. Mokou recognized a few, and thought she recognized far more. Somewhere in these meandering, verdant rows was presumably a kitchen.

As the work crew had given her the day off for her lessons, she’d had the day to herself to wander the city. A boutique in the Chrome Ward had sported some eye-catching synthetic fashions she’d availed herself of, though it had taken her all afternoon to find one with pants. Passing fronds whispered against her new trousers and hooded vest. The black trousers were low in the crotch, tapered at the calves, and were festooned in straps and pockets. The vest was a deep crimson, with low, open armholes, a zipper up the middle, and a wide hood that had nevertheless proved insufficient to the task of containing her hair.

She kept her thoughts to the immediate past to keep it from being snatched away. The humid scents of the surrounding greenery threatened to send her down innumerable warrens of rabbit-holed memories. At every bend in the cobbled path were clusters of cultivars from half the world away, from fifty lifetimes ago, from utter unfamiliarity. It was life, concentrated, cultivated.

“Hello?” called Mokou.

“This way, Mokou,” came the reply through the trees.

The path opened into an airy break in the greenery, halfway between plaza and kitchen. Electric lights hung from a tall overhead trellis. Nested arcs of counters held ovens, ranges, griddles, steaming towers and stacked baskets. In the heart of it, taking a bit of last-minute stock, stood Bajiko Ki.

Her outfit looked less officious than the last time Mokou had seen her, on her arrival to the city. Still, she cut a sharp figure. Her wide-shouldered, sleeveless tunic sported asymmetrical panels dyed in hues as lush as the surrounding greenery. A half-apron cinched it above her waist. Below, she wore a darker skirt whose stiff pleats ran down its length to the hem at her booted ankles. Around her shoulders was a netlike scarf, woven loosely from wide strands that shone like silk. She nodded in greeting as Mokou ambled into the lamplight.

“Chef.”

“Hey,” Mokou nodded back. “Nice arboretum. Really gets me fired up.”

“Thank you, I feel similarly of it,” replied Bajiko Ki. She glanced up and down Mokou’s body. Her gaze lingered on her footwear. She raised her brows subtly. “Your sneakers are extradimensional, are they not?”

“Yeah, apparently,” said Mokou. “From a plane called ‘The Colossal ♀’.”

“Phenomenal,” said Bajiko. “Perhaps you’ve found the Baroness’s home plane.”

“She, uh, extradimensional?” asked Mokou.

Bajiko cocked a faint smile. “A jest. Welcome to my kitchen. Make yourself at home.”

“Oh, you don’t want me to do that,” Mokou chuckled wryly, circling the outer counter to join Bajiko. She’d died in far too many homes over the millennia. But then, a place never really felt like home until she’d died there. “Leaves a bit of a mess.”

“There’s time in the lesson for dishes,” said Bajiko, pulling down a few saucepots and laying them out on the range in front of her.

“Dishes, sure,” Mokou muttered. She cast her glance around the open kitchen, familiarizing herself with the layout. It was neat and well-kept, nearly as spotless as the chrome gracing the chef’s body. She slid open a few drawers and poked in low cabinets.

Bajiko watched her exploration with a subdued curiosity, arms clasped behind her back. “What do you hope to accomplish with my tutelage, Mokou?”

“Learn more about cooking here, I guess,” Mokou shrugged.

“Learn more,” Bajiko noted. “Let us establish a baseline from which you can reach more. How much cooking experience do you have?”

“Ahh,” Mokou winced. “Roughly? Real roughly? Let’s call it… between twenty and fifty thousand years.”

Bajiko’s still posture deflated. She unclasped her arms and lifted her non-bionic hand to rub at her temple. She laughed in disbelief. “I should be taking lessons from you.”

“If you want,” Mokou said. This could be its own opportunity. The lush surroundings reminded her that she’d left one particular errand unfulfilled. “You can pay me in whatever you have that’s good to smoke.”

“Certainly,” Bajiko nodded, still not quite composed. “Er — poison or non-poison?”

“It’s all poison, isn’t it?” said Mokou. “Like, that’s the point.”

“Yes,” said Bajiko. “But it is a matter of strength. Potency.”

“I’m not picky. Different strengths for different moods.”

“Some of the strains here could kill you,” said Bajiko.

“Yeah, you want me to be at home or not?” Mokou shrugged. At Bajiko’s impassive look, she sighed and continued. “Here’s the thing: I’ve never been in Qud before. I cooked something for me and Agate a little bit ago that had us both growing claws. Cooking never did that for me before. It’s like magic, but it’s not a magic I know.”

“Magic,” Bajiko repeated. She laughed, straightening with a wistful look. “It certainly felt that way when I first arrived in this land. It still does, down in the arena. Can magic become rote?”

“Absolutely,” said Mokou.

Bajiko’s gaze turned from its wistfulness to an appraising air. “You sound sure. What do you mean when you say magic?”

“Oh, uh,” Mokou pulled her hands from her pockets and pressed them together in front of her. She dredged up an improvisation on the freshest bit of spellwork she’d practiced, miniaturized from card to cantrip. “This.”

She opened her palms and a firebird sprang forth, the size of a robin rather than a rukh. It winged around Bajiko in easy circles. Bajiko’s wondering gaze reflected the flames of its body as she tracked its arcs with her mechanically-refocusing irises. On the last cycle, Mokou guided the bird to veer into the firebox of the nearest oven. It burst within, igniting the fuel into a healthy little blaze.

“I see,” Bajiko mused. “You mean magic.”

“I’m a wizard,” said Mokou. “You should’ve seen me the other night. Fought your moth. She did alright.”

“Is that what Clactobelle was talking about,” Bajiko said. “She’s an excitable one, but I see now that was her diligence speaking, not some flight of fancy.”

Mokou nodded. Truthfully, the moth had done miserably, but it was nothing a bit of practice couldn’t cure. “How long you lived here?”

“Seven years in the Heptagon,” replied Bajiko. “Seven more years in Qud before its founding.”

“I’ve been here about two weeks. See? That’s fourteen more years you’ve been cooking with all this wild shit than I have. Hardly any of this stuff makes it across the Moghra’yi. I’m just winging it out here.” Mokou grinned at her. “What are we making tonight?”

“Ceviche, and whatever you have to match,” said Bajiko. She turned and led Mokou to the pantry. Baskets, urns, and jars lined the open shelves, brimming with ingredients both fresh and preserved. Bajiko gestured across them in sweeping encouragement. “The arboretum’s pantry is yours to peruse. Ask away.”

Mokou poked through the collection. Herbs, fruits, vegetables, roots, greens, nuts and berries. Some were familiar to various degrees; most were not. “You grow all these here?”

“Much of it, yes,” Bajiko nodded, selecting her own ingredients as they conversed. “What isn’t grown here comes from the undercity’s gardens. Were it not for the glass storm, we’d have more ingredients from trade or forage, but by design we’re largely self-sufficient.”

“You do a lot of preservation work?” asked Mokou. “Got some plants here I haven’t seen in a long time. Something like ‘em, at least.”

Bajiko smiled. “In the Holy City of Ekuemekiyye, I was a horticulturist. Many of these seeds crossed the desert with me. Years though it took me, I am proud to have built them a home.”

Mokou plucked a sprig of mint from a basket and took in its scent with a deep breath. It filled her with an effervescent sort of hope that bubbled its way out of timeless nostalgia — bygone summers of forage and sweetness and vibrant life. It was a scent, a sensation, that had grown rarer the more time had gone by. She couldn’t quite put her gratitude into words, so she kept smelling the mint.

“You appreciate these labors of ours,” said Bajiko, nodding into a faint bow. “I am glad.”

“Helps with the baseline, you know?” Mokou replied. “Some of these are real old. Older than me. Good to see ‘em carrying on.”

“I should note that mint grows elsewhere in Qud, should you know where to forage,” said Bajiko. She had finished her own selections, filling a basket to brimming. Mokou wondered at their spice profiles. “As do many of the old spices. Saffron, sesame, cinnamon, sage…”

Every familiar name was a tiny shot of relief. Mokou sighed. “Thank god. I know a lot of recipes I just can’t make anymore, you know? Sometimes I can fill in the gaps, sometimes not. Gets fucking exhausting. The fruit out here is so… spiny.”

It was far more than exhausting. But even grasping the scope of all that had slipped past her was exhausting, let alone articulating her true feelings on that loss. Easiest to leave it at that, if her mind would ever let her.

No one in this city knew the taste of summer.

Bajiko nodded. “What surprised me, when first I came here…” She hung her basket from her elbow and took a deep breath, sweeping her hands up in a cyclical motion before her chest. “The air is so clear! But the plants, they can really try to kill you. Actively.”

“Tell me about it,” Mokou grumbled. The squealing of tumbling pods replayed in her memories, fresh, sharp and violently truncated. Slightly more pleasant than old, dire ruminations. “Had a nasty run-in with some lah on the way in.”

“Fascinating things,” said Bajiko. “You must have heard all about them from Agate Severance Star.”

Mokou scoffed out a short laugh. “She just made me read her book. Didn’t even tell me how to cook the damn things.”

“You can cook them any way you like,” said Bajiko. The cyborg chef nodded in passing towards a container of fleshy petals still on the shelf. The label read ‘Lah’. “Take some. They’re meaty. But it’s not simply the taste and the texture to manage — it’s the effects.”

Mokou fished a few petals from the jar. They were indeed meaty, as well as plump and pungent. She jogged her memory back to the night in the barn in the desert canyons, and what Agate had said of them. “Fear, right?”

“Precisely,” said Bajiko. She glanced back over her shoulder. “Take more than that. I expect the Baroness shortly.”

“Oh? Thought this was a private lesson.” Mokou bent to retrieve a spare basket and began to fill it with more of the lah petals. It was news, but not surprising news. It didn’t particularly make a difference to Mokou whether she had an audience or not.

“Is it an issue?” asked Bajiko, raising her brows in concern. “I could hardly keep her from the chance to see an immortal’s technique. But if you wish—”

“No, it’s fine. I get it—” Mokou straightened and cut herself off with a gasp.

Before her, the pantry’s rows revealed two full shelving units stocked with bushel upon bushel of meticulously organized varieties of pepper. Plump and verdant peppers, long and lobed peppers, gnarled and seething peppers, fresh, dried, flaked and milled. A cultivated, eye-watering slice of paradise, made open to her.

“Ah,” Bajiko Ki smiled. “The jewel of my preservation work.”

“This is beautiful,” Mokou’s voice wavered. “What — peppers. Stuffed peppers. What’s good to stuff here?”

Bajiko set her basket on a counter in the kitchen and rejoined Mokou, standing at her side in contemplation of the pepper shelves. “What is your… preferred mood?”

“It better kill me.”

Bajiko nodded solemnly, almost reverently. She reached with her arm of fluted chrome to a central basket and withdrew a juicy-looking specimen a bit fatter and longer than Mokou’s thumb. The hue of its flesh swam between crimson and deep orange.

“This one, they laureled me for in the Holy City. It is my most treasured hybrid cultivar. In the desert, I did not know if a clime awaited me that could support it. I resolved to make what I could not find.” She offered it to Mokou. “Here: the Breath of the Gods.”

Mokou took in its scent. Smoky-sweet, biting, enticing. The oil that wafted faintly from its surface stung her nose and tear ducts. She shivered in anticipation.

“I,” Mokou breathed, “would kill someone for this pepper. Thank you.”

“Unnecessary,” Bajiko smiled. “But appreciated.”

Her smile read as a knowing one to Mokou. She had only heard rumors of what life was like in the arcology of Ekuemekiyye. Perhaps Bajiko considered it unnecessary because she already had.

Mokou smiled back. “Alright. I can work with this. Let’s get cooking.”

Chapter Text

“Walk me through this,” said Mokou, knife sinking through stunions. “That’s vanta you’ve got there, yeah?”

“Correct,” Bajiko nodded.  “Vanta petals are one of the central spices of my Nightshade Ceviche. Have you cooked with them before?”

“Never cooked ‘em. Smoked ‘em, though,” said Mokou. “Kinda feels like your lungs are freezing. Told it makes you, uh, slipperier? When you cook it.”

“Slippery, perhaps,” Bajiko mused. “I would say it lets you sink better into the shadows. As an ingredient, it is consistent. Reliable. Solitary. Some would say simple — I would say there is beauty in simplicity.”

“Simple lasts you longer,” Mokou nodded. The way Bajiko spoke about vanta petals could have been about an alchemical or magical reagent, had this not been a kitchen. Even then, she’d done a fair bit of magic in kitchens before. It was nostalgic. “You know Irula, out by the Stilt? It was them who called it slippery.”

“Ah! I know them,” Bajiko’s expression brightened. “They competed well. Not well enough to best me, but well.”

“No shit?” said Mokou. “Was wondering why they had a portrait up in the Hall of Legends.”

“Now you know. My ceviche secured my victory.” She scraped the bulk of the diced petals into a large mixing bowl, followed by a quarter of the stunions Mokou had chopped and a fistful of dried peppers. Next onto her cutting board was a pair of ominous glands. She began to trim them. “But then, I had many nights out on the hunt to refine it. It centers a triumvirate of independent reactions, each distinct, yet balancing the others.”

Mokou eyed the glands dubiously. The specific anatomy and sourcing was unfamiliar, but their purpose was clear. “Those are poison glands.”

“From the gallbeard, yes. That was the theme ingredient for Irula and me.” Bajiko nodded towards a pair of pale fish on the counter. “Clean those ghost perch, will you?”

“You’re putting poison in the ceviche?” asked Mokou, hands paused over the perch. Smoking it was one matter. Eating it was another. Dying in the kitchen would probably raise too many inconvenient questions.

Bajiko met her gaze impassively. “It cooks out.”

Mokou returned her impassive stare. She shrugged. She retrieved a bowl for the offal and started to scrape the scales from each fish. “What kinda things you hunt out there? Gallbeards?”

“On occasion,” Bajiko spoke, her tone rising slightly as she concentrated upon her gland trimming. “Mainly, I am hunting fascists.”

“Eeughh,” Mokou nearly spat. “You kidding me? You still get those?”

“No jest,” Bajiko somberly replied. “The Putus Templar, they are called — the Sons and Daughters. We chip at their hold where we can. We deny them influence and material. Of mutant life and society, they seek to eradicate all that they cannot enslave. It is a senseless, hideous goal.”

“That’s so distasteful,” Mokou growled, slitting the belly of the second perch. “They looked around lately? That ship fuckin’ sailed. There’s no going back.”

“You and I, by their metrics, we are True Kin, untainted. They see us only for our genomes, for what we could breed them. Myself, I have slain too many of their ilk for them to attempt to court me. You, though…” She sighed. “They might try. I do not wish to speculate. Their strength is greater in the east. Be wary.”

Agate had warned her, vaguely, of exterminationist factions within Qud. Likely she had been referring to these Templar. Of all the cultures and beliefs and ideologies lost to the relentless flood of time, why couldn’t it have been that one? What was it in people that drove them into making the same mistakes, the same cruelties, time and again?

Bajiko’s knifework whispered over the silken whirring of her arm servos. “Ah. But I have darkened the mood.”

“Nah, I appreciate the warning,” Mokou sighed. It seemed Agate had her reasons for the complex she’d been growing over Mokou’s liver. A bit of secrecy was warranted. She didn’t want to share eternity with a fascist. “But really, you eat poison before you hunt fascists? Seems counterproductive.”

“It cooks out!” came the Baroness’s booming rumble. She approached from a path to the rear of the kitchen clearing, opposite where Mokou had arrived. Mokou had hardly heard her come in. She wore a waistcoat of silvery silk, black trousers, and calf boots. A cravat poked out from beneath her mane. Its ruffles matched the cuffs clasped around the wrists of her lacquered claws. Her arms were otherwise bare, showing off her furred musculature. She rounded the open kitchen and drew up across the counter from them. “Good evening, Mokou.”

“Hey,” Mokou swallowed.

“I do hope it’s not an imposition to sit in,” said Farouun, inclining her head down graciously into a faint bow. Her tone was genuine.

“Yeah, no, you’re fine,” said Mokou, making a soothing gesture with her offal-slick hands. Realizing herself, she wiped them off on a kitchen rag before moving to de-bone the cleaned fish.

“Much appreciated,” the Baroness purred, pulling up a stool and settling herself down attentively. “How are you finding life in the Heptagon?”

“Can’t complain,” said Mokou. The part of her that told her an audience didn’t matter had been the enemy. Now there was an enormous, betrousered chimera watching her cook. That was anything but immaterial. She pruned ribs from the perch meat and sweated in the verdant humidity. “Got water, got food, got clothes and a place to sleep, got things to do. Ain’t even gotta pay for any of those.”

“That’s by design,” said Farouun. She leaned forward. “But is there any greater ambition we might assist with? Any dream of yours?”

What did she dream about?

She dreamed about the House of Eternity. She dreamed of its lunar princess. The beauty that inflamed her and the hands that had undone her, in so many ways, in so many times. The loneliness that crept into her unearthly gaze when she thought herself unobserved — the way it lingered even after being caught with it. Kaguya knew the taste of summer. She was distant, now. But Mokou had time to shrink that distance. Nothing but time.

Something kept her from voicing it. Maybe it was trust. They’d given her no reason not to trust them — but she didn’t strictly trust herself with an answer. Either way she knew where it would drive her: out of this warm kitchen.

“I dunno. I’ve been through times where none of what you give was guaranteed,” Mokou shrugged. She gestured around the kitchen with an aimless spin. “Right now? It’s this. Learning to cook all over again.”

It wasn’t quite a lie. She saw the value in these lessons. This was knowledge that would help her when the time came to keep moving. She tried not to feel guilty over it.

“Would you pass me a third of that perch?” asked Bajiko.

Mokou nodded and slid a portion of fish to Bajiko. Bajiko added it to the mixing bowl, then unstoppered a glass bottle full of faintly cloudy liquid.

“What’s that?” asked Mokou.

“Acid,” Bajiko answered. She splashed it over the mixing bowl. Its contents sizzled on contact.

A pang of uncertainty played through Mokou. Apart from her augments, Bajiko certainly looked human — the old kind of human, Mokou’s kind of human. Maybe she had an iron stomach. The only cause she’d given not to trust her was in her choice of ingredients.

Bajiko covered the bowl with an apertured lid. With a flick of her chrome wrist, blades extruded from her fingertips. She stuck her hand through the hole in the lid. A wet buzzing sounded from within the bowl. After a few shifts in her angle, she pulled her hand free again. Her wrist spun back down into its standard position. She cleaned the juices from her hand and retracted her blades.

“Now we let it sit. Shall we start your dish?”

“Sure,” Mokou nodded. “Now, it ain’t like I’ve got a set procedure for this one. I’m just going with what looks good.”

“And what does look good?” asked Farouun. “I see lah, gaster, and a good grip of different peppers.”

“Yeah, I was gonna use all that stuff to stuff these fancy peppers. Here, mince these.” Mokou slid the basket of lah to Bajiko, taking the basket of peppers for herself. As she arranged the Breath of the Gods on her cutting board to prepare them for stuffing, she took a bite from a runtier one. It flooded her mouth with delicious pain, tightened her sinuses and slapped tears into her eyes. “Mmmmh,” she groaned, then swallowed. “Oh my god. Where has this pepper been my whole life?”

“Up until twenty years ago, it was only a dream,” Farouun laughed. She looked fondly at Bajiko. “She works wonders, my Ki.”

Bajiko smiled back. “Keep an eye on those peppers of mine. She’s liable to filch some.”

“Can’t blame her,” said Mokou, sniffing through the aftershock.

“I’ll leave enough to stuff,” grinned the Baroness. She eased back in her stool, holding one hand to her chin and the other out in a philosophical sort of pose. “You’ve given us the form factor. What do you intend to evoke with it?”

“What, it’s not enough just to have an excuse to eat hot peppers?” asked Mokou. In Farouun’s question, she caught that same breath towards underlying systems, interlocking and hylozoistic. This was what she came here to learn. “What are my options?”

“Fear,” said Bajiko, passing back a bowl of minced lah. She set down the bowl and tapped the jar of ant gaster. “And fire.”

Mokou nodded thoughtfully. “Pretty broad categories, there. We talking, like, anything to do with ‘em?”

The Baroness cleared her throat with a rumble. “‘Lah, as an ingredient, seeks out symbiosis as eagerly as its feral form seeks flesh. This impulse can be cultivated or discouraged as the context of your meal demands. Whether the final metabolic expression be offensive or defensive, active or passive, synergistic or stand-alone, always it remembers its roots.’” She leaned back and stroked the fur of her mane. “The author’s foreword of The Blood and Fear Cookbook, if memory serves me right. I may have fudged a word or two.”

“No shit,” said Mokou. “It sounds like Agate, anyway. I only read the first one.”

“What, she never told you any of this?” asked Farouun. “She loves lah.”

“I mean, we kinda just met,” Mokou shrugged. With her peppers cleaned and ready for stuffing, she lit flames beneath a pair of saucepots, one to cook the filling, the other for frying oil.

“Agate Severance Star speaks aptly of cultivation,” Bajiko nodded. “It is not simply how you treat it, but what you add to it that determines the resultant nature.”

“So, what kind of metabolic expressions are we talking?” asked Mokou.

Bajiko roughly strained her own blended mixture into another bowl as she spoke. “Lah can shield your mind from terror. So, too, can it turn you into a conduit for that same terror. How often do you find yourself setting things on fire?”

“Oh, all the time. I’m an accomplished arsonist.”

Farouun’s expression rose into worry. “Oh?”

“Relax,” Mokou sighed. “All of ‘em had it coming. Why do you ask, though?”

Bajiko started a marinade bowl for the remainder of the perch and stunions. “Should you form the right symbiosis between the lah and the gaster, you could potentially make a batch of stuffed peppers that allow you to strike terror into everyone around you whenever you burn something.”

“That’s how it usually goes, though,” said Mokou.

Bajiko shrugged softly. “More so. Like a radiant pulse.”

That was magic, plain and simple. On top of that, it sounded like tremendously useful magic. And on top of that, it was magic that she could eat without regrets. Potentially without regrets, at least — quite a bit of acid and poison both had gone into Bajiko’s ceviche-in-progress.

How did this plant — this staple crop, apparently — grow to be so entwined with the phenomenon of fear? Maybe it was some kind of youkai plant. They used to have those. What would they have made of it back in Gensokyo?

“Well shit,” Mokou grinned. “So how do you get it to do that?”

“Experimentation,” said Bajiko. “Like so.”

Chapter Text

The filling cooked in short order. Lah and minced peppers simmered in the gaster of fire ants and Mokou’s selected spices. She spooned it into each of the prepared peppers and resisted the mounting urge to rub her eyes from the stinging vapors. As she assembled the stuffed peppers, Bajiko dredged and breaded them. The Baroness watched from her lofty vantage.

“Moon and Star, but she’d be a force in the arena. Don’t you agree, Ki?” asked Farouun.

Bajiko gave a faint smile and merely nodded. The chrome of her eyes reflected a calculating gleam.

“I’m literally just stuffing peppers. It’s not that complicated,” said Mokou. The attention was making her antsy.

“Even in this act, your economy of form and movement is… humbling. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said you’d been cooking in this kitchen for — ages,” said Bajiko. Her faint smile spread into an appraising grin. “There is beauty in simplicity.”

Farouun leaned forward, the stool creaking under her. “Is it some sort of special technique?”

“No, I just don’t like to move more than I have to,” Mokou replied. This was flirting, now, unmistakably. Was this a lesson or a pick-up venue? She didn’t mind the attempt, distracting as it was. Maybe the Baroness and her chef weren’t as hung up on hygiene as Agate was.

But then, Mokou had bathed. It had been a busy little spot close to the Inn. Owing to the crowd her efforts had been a touch cursory, but that she’d done it at all was its own small victory. Had Agate? Was it really just crowds keeping her from it?

She really didn’t like other people, did she? That was a familiar outlook. It had tipped over into outright misanthropy a few too many times over the millennia of her own life.

Oil sizzled in a bubbling ring around Bajiko’s chrome finger. “The oil is ready.”

“Ah, nice. We can start some of these frying. What’s left on that ceviche, anyway?” asked Mokou.

“Very little. When your peppers are closer I will begin the final mixing. It is best fresh. For now, the perch marinates in the gentler spices — salt, chili, sumac.”

Mokou glanced at Bajiko and narrowed her eyes. “What kind of sumac?”

Bajiko returned her gaze impassively. “Normal.”

Normal could mean anything by now. She’d never had much experience with the poison kind back in the old world. Maybe it had died out, or maybe all sumac was the poison kind now. If, on top of everything else, it ended up poisoning her too then the best she could hope for was that it would be over quickly.

She missed the old world’s ingredients.

“Alright,” Mokou sighed. “Hey, this might be a long shot, but — y’all ever heard of chickens?”

“I don’t believe so,” the Baroness rumbled.

“Chickens…” Bajiko mused. “Livestock, yes?”

A spark of hope flickered through her. “Yeah! Birds — good eating on ‘em, and they give eggs, too. Uh, two legs, about yea big?”

Nothing in the chef’s neutral expression told Mokou that her words had connected to any personal experience. The spark guttered.

“It sounded a bit familiar, but…” Bajiko shook her head softly. “The Holy City had a gene bank. In my grandmother’s time, there was a great scandal — the section of the priesthood responsible for its upkeep and repair had been pocketing those resources instead. Whole sections were lost to corrosion. Livestock sequences especially fell prey to this neglect.”

“Man,” Mokou planted her hands on the counter to hiss out a sigh. She told herself there was nothing she could have done. It was the world away; she hadn’t known. But if she had known that chicken was on the line— “Fuck. Y’all didn’t have a breeding population or anything?”

“No,” said Bajiko. “It was information storage only. Access was gated to the higher castes. If it is any consolation, those priests were sacrificed.”

“Mm.” Mokou lifted herself up again and ran a hand back through her bangs. She let out a heavy breath. “Not much of one.”

“The things you must have tasted,” Farouun breathed. “What is chicken like?”

The tense she’d used betrayed her as an optimist. Mokou appreciated the gesture. “Oh, everything. Kinda like dawnglider, but a bit more neutral. Less gamy, less spicy. You could do just about anything with it.”

“I can only imagine,” said Farouun. Her bestial guise shone with an expression of curiosity and sympathy.

Shortly, Mokou fished the last of the peppers from the frying oil. Bajiko splashed her first mixture and another shot of acid into the ceviche and tossed it. As it settled, she set out a pair of plates and a platter, then scooped artful and proportional servings of ceviche onto each. She gave an encouraging nod towards Mokou to join her own efforts to the plating. Mokou ringed the mounds of ceviche with her stuffed peppers. Both of the meal’s components still sizzled softly.

“Dinner is served,” Bajiko announced. In her voice was the pride and satisfaction of a meal well done.

Mokou picked up one of the plates and took in the overall scent. The ceviche had a biting aura that meshed intimidatingly with the spice of her peppers. It smelled as dangerous as it smelled enticing. “This is really okay for me to eat?”

“It cooks out,” Bajiko answered, a hint of exasperation creeping in behind the pride.

“Sure, Bajiko, but—” Mokou circled her fingers around the ceviche. “This isn’t cooked.”

A noise like a purring landslide sounded from the Baroness — a chuckle, strangely resonant. “It’s all in the acid. You may be surprised,” she said. She leaned down to scoop up the platter in one massive claw to place it before her on the counter. The amount of food on the platter could have fed another six people, had they been Mokou’s size. With her other claw, she gestured towards neighboring stools. “Come, sit. Let us eat.”

“Not sure if getting poisoned is gonna be much of a surprise,” Mokou muttered. Still, she’d try anything twice. She followed Bajiko around to the other side of the counter and sat at the empty place left between the chef and the Baroness. She glanced between the two of them. They seemed to be waiting on her to take the first bite. If it weren’t for that decorum, it could have been an oni’s banquet.

One of these she knew wouldn’t kill her immediately. While instant death had its own quiet appeal, her peppers might get cold by the time she revived. She popped one into her mouth. Beneath the raging spice, she savored the perfect breading, the juicy filling, the textural interplay. Doubtless it was the spice that brought forth her tears.

“Fuck,” she grunted. “Nailed it.”

“Wholeheartedly agreed,” Farouun purred, having sampled her own serving.

“You’ve truly accentuated the strengths of my cultivar,” Bajiko spoke after her own mouthful. “It’s an honor. Though, I’d say there’s room for more heat.”

“I hear you,” Mokou chuckled.

“And the lah harmonizes expertly with your other selections,” Farouun noted.

Bajiko nodded with a faintly sly smile. “I must admit to some professional satisfaction in being your gateway to lah. I must thank Ms. Star for leaving the opportunity open.”

“Hah!” barked Mokou. She could already imagine the sheer irritation. It was a tiny distraction from the ceviche.

A massive claw patted her on the shoulder.

“Do you have a health concern, Mokou?” asked Farouun. “I can attest to its safety.” In demonstration, she scooped up a serving of ceviche with a long-handled fork and swallowed it. She squeezed Mokou’s shoulder in encouragement.

It would perhaps have been a more effective demonstration if not given by a chimera twice her size. She glanced at Bajiko, waiting for some sort of clue. Bajiko nodded softly, then sampled her own mouthful.

“I mentioned a triumvirate of independent effects,” she said, once she had swallowed. “The gallbeard gland metabolizes, in part, into a full-spectrum immunity to conventional poison.”

“Gallbeards… those related to flamebeards?” asked Mokou, remembering the curry the night before the glass storm.

“Quite so,” said Farouun.

Agate had said the curry rendered her immune to flame. So, too, had it given both of them the power to loose a gouting plume of it from their mouths. “Oh, shit, is this going to give me a breath attack? I love breath attacks.”

“This will give you two breath attacks,” said Bajiko. “Acid and poison both. This renders you immune to many anti-personnel agents commonly used by the Templar.”

“Makes you your own anti-personnel agent,” Mokou whistled. “But how’s that acid treating you on the way down?”

“Neutralized by the vanta,” Bajiko smiled.

Mokou scooped up a generous portion of her ceviche and tasted it. The unparalleled tang hit her first, carried by the delicate perch. Then came the numbing of the vanta, blooming frostily through the spices. And the spices were unreal. Her throat tightened. This was a level of pain she respected deeply. She swallowed and the numbness radiated through her.

“Oh my god,” she moaned. “If I die, I die.”

“This pairing is exceptional,” rumbled the Baroness. Already nearly half of her platter was accounted for. “Thank you for the chance to partake.”

“Anytime,” said Mokou, following with another pepper. Spice mounted on spice. It was such a wonderfully present and undeniable sensation. But simultaneously mounting was a curious, unprecedented tingling spreading from her jaw to her cheeks. It felt like a mouth around her mouth was watering. The feeling only strengthened from every bite of ceviche. New glands swelled inside her. With them, new reflexes — novel ones, at least, familiar from previous meals but still unpracticed.

This was quite the cooking lesson.

The rest of the meal passed quickly in reverent silence. Mokou leaned back from her empty plate and sighed in contentment. Wisps of acrid vapor rose with her breath. Arboreal silhouettes framed the night sky, its few stars softened through the mist and the greenhouse windows. The shadows in the arboretum felt comforting. She had lived after all.

“With no specific training, no specific recipe, you’ve improvised a tremendous partner dish to a meal you’ve never had before,” Bajiko said, admiration evident in her tone. Shadows seemed to cling to her, too, despite the pool of lamplight over them. “Having never tasted gallbeard gland before, even.”

“That was some top-notch ceviche. I can see how it cinched you the win,” Mokou noted. She rubbed her chin in thought. “Hell of a coincidence though, yeah? Just so happens to be the dish that beat my buddy Irula?”

“Is it unusual?” asked Bajiko. “I make this all the time. It was only one of my several courses — I had developed the recipe years before the match. It saves time.”

“Huh,” said Mokou. “Sounds a little unfair when you put it that way.”

“There’s something to be said for home advantage,” mused the Baroness. She grinned down at Mokou, fangs gleaming in the acid haze. “But the longer you cook here, the less that applies.”

“Take any advantage in the arena,” said Bajiko. “Expect any ingredient. A diverse repertoire is invaluable.”

Mokou chuckled softly, the breath letting out a poison plume. “What, one dish and you already want me to compete?”

Farouun clasped one claw over her breast and opened the other before her in a theatrical pose. “The immortal cuisine who graced the Heptagon! The drama of it, the romance! I can hear E’Beth’s announcing already. We simply must have you, Mokou.” Her starry gaze turned back down to her and softened into a self-conscious look. “If it’s no imposition, of course. In your own time.”

“We don’t even know if mine did anything,” said Mokou.

“It’s not simply effects you are judged on,” Bajiko replied, standing and clearing the empty plates before her and Mokou and taking them to the sink. “The taste was a caliber worthy of the Heptagon. If our lessons open you to the possibility of this land’s ingredients, I’ll count them a success. You were aiming for the suggested symbiosis, yes?”

“The fear-pulse? Yeah, it sounded handy,” Mokou said. “Easy enough to test if you’ve got anything I can burn.”

Bajiko nodded and withdrew a piece of firewood from beneath a spare stove. She passed it to Farouun, who rose and turned to face the empty darkness of the kitchen clearing. Mokou stood as well and mimicked her facing. The chimera nodded down to Mokou, then tossed the firewood in an easy arc towards the middle of the floor.

Mokou conjured a lance of flame and flung it, deftly spearing the log in the middle of its arc and setting it ablaze. At the moment of ignition, she felt a wild thrill race through her, spilling out from her throat in an almost reflexive cry — almost a roar. It emerged with an unexpected resonance. Generally it took her conscious effort to approach such an unearthly timbre. Conscious effort by way of magic.

The Baroness yelped softly next to her and stepped a pace away. It was a reaction as unexpected as her own roar, yet both on reflection settled easily into an instinctive sort of logic. Of course she had frightened the Baroness — that was the purpose of the meal, to instill fear. Maybe this was how youkai felt. She hadn’t even tested her glands yet.

“That really got you?” Mokou laughed.

“I wasn’t expecting such a powerful reaction,” Farouun admitted with her own sheepish chuckle. “On your first try, no less! You’re a true talent, my dear.”

“Well, thanks,” Mokou scratched the back of her head and smiled at the praise. “You want me to get that platter for you, or—?”

“Ah, no need,” the Baroness rumbled. Her claws dipped to the lowest button of her waistcoat and unclasped it, then worked their way up the line. The motion completely derailed any other consideration Mokou might have thought to bring up. She was disrobing — Why? The next few buttons unclasped seemed to vent their own acrid poison, first as wisps and then as faint clouds. Farouun’s claws stopped halfway up her torso, leaving her waistcoat half-unbuttoned.

Beneath the parted fabric, lips rolled back from an unveiled maw, bisecting the chimera’s torso with great fangs. She took up the emptied platter and brought it to this body-mouth. It disappeared within to the sounds of rending metal.

Mokou realized she was staring. “Uh,” she managed. “Am… I getting one of those?”

“This?” Farouun laughed, patting her belly beneath the lower lip. “No, I’ve had this. But the breath wreaks havoc on fabric.”

“You can get the cutting boards, Mokou,” said Bajiko. She took in a deep, contented breath and sighed. “Always smells like the old arcology after my ceviche. Bracing.”

Mokou nodded. Not that she minded the task, but she certainly couldn’t get out of it in Farouun’s fashion. It had been a very interesting lesson. She tore her sight away from the fangs and made to join Bajiko at the sink.

“You know,” Bajiko continued, “there will be a match soon. I invite you to watch. I will, of course, be busy that evening, but otherwise I am happy to set aside more time for these lessons. There are many more plants to show you.”

The hospitality and the meal’s satisfaction washed subtly over Mokou. She was starting to see why Agate held the Carbide Chefs in such high esteem. “I’d like that,” she said.

“Then we shall see you there,” Farouun rumbled. “And, sincerely, if there is any accommodation you need, you have but to ask.”

“In that case…” Mokou trailed off.

Again, that bittersweet dream calling her to the east. But again, she staved it off. It would keep. It always kept. She met the gaze of the Baroness with raised brows.

“Can you watch my cat while I’m at work?”

Chapter Text

Agate sat on a bench in a small park in the Temple Ward, eating flatbread and lox. The lox was passable — a concession to time and convenience she’d picked up on her way to the park. The park was a terraced garden housing a shrine to a Mechanimist tzaddeket. The bench was wide enough for her lower body. Vine-wreathed fencing gave the bench a touch of privacy while still providing her with a commanding view of the street below. She’d left a message there. She would see precisely when it was received. The choice of locale had been informed as much by logistical reality as by sentimentality.

It was a slow day on the street, and, consequently, a slow day at the pickle barrel on the corner. This was convenient. She’d seeded it with enough quantity that her message could survive a bit of take-a-pickle leave-a-pickle whittling. Her timing was such that it should not come to that. Her intended recipient was a creature of routine.

Agate finished her lox. A few pilgrims passed on the street below. Snatches of distant song rebounded from the cavern ceiling. A glowcat yawned and shifted in its sleep, perched across the shingled spine of the shrine’s lacquered dogthorn roof. Movement drew Agate’s attention to the street once more. Rounding the corner — well within her predicted margin — came the familiar arachnoid bulk of Choraler Jathiss, the Carbide Chef Six-Day Stilt.

The Chef’s figure was unmistakable, taller than most passers-by on her midmorning walk. Most others on the street similarly were not graced with her twin spider heads, her surfeit of limbs, her speckled tarantula fur, nor her fluid, unhurried, untroubled gait. She stopped — as expected — at the pickle barrel to check its contents. Such was her habit for every barrel along her route, and many of the Temple Ward’s other communal fixtures. She opened the lid. Even if Jathiss hadn’t been at a distance, her expressions were difficult to read, but her hesitancy was writ clear in her bearing.

Jathiss fished free a pickled dreadroot. She sampled it, first with her right head, then her left. Her posture shifted from apprehension to active scanning. Agate smiled faintly to herself. She straightened a touch in her seat, tilting her head for a better vantage. It was impossible to say precisely where the gaze of the Chef’s many eyes fell from half a block away, but the broad sweep of her attention stopped at the park. As expected. Jathiss replaced the lid and made her way to the steps at the park’s base.

Agate leaned back on the bench, spreading her arms across its back to wait for the arrival of Jathiss. Soon enough, Jathiss mounted the stairs into the park. The Chef did not immediately acknowledge Agate’s presence. Instead, she followed the path forward to the shrine. It was a more recent addition to the park, having been raised within the last year, after its subject’s untimely demise. Jathiss knelt before the altar of whorled quartzite, upon which rested the tzaddeket’s portrait: a woman in wreath and plate, rendered in divine androgyny and vivid hues — the gold of witchwood, the blue of carbide, the red of a martyr’s wounds.

Jathiss bowed her heads and voiced a low, archaic prayer. Agate gleaned it effortlessly from across the park.

“Rest thine essence within the Kasaphescence. Thy vigil is done.”

Jathiss remained in silent contemplation a touch longer. She rose, adjusted her pilgrim’s shawl, then turned to where Agate sat. She approached.

“Chef,” Jathiss nodded both heads in unison, drawing up a few paces before her.

“Chef,” Agate nodded in return. “You received my message.”

“Who else would leave so audaciously brined a dreadroot in our pickle barrels but you, Agate?” replied Jathiss. “You wished to speak with me, then?”

Agate gave a faint smile. The oft-vexing ambiguities within the spoken social realm became invigorating challenges in the language of pickles. “I did. Come, sit.”

She gestured to a broad mossy shelf in the closest terrace wall. The bench would not have seated the both of them. The gesture was largely unnecessary — Jathiss full well knew the intended purpose of the structures built within the terraces. She was this park’s architect.

“You would be welcome to join me on my walk,” Jathiss noted, settling her bulk on the moss. Soft-spoken though she was, her voice always carried a resonant harmony with itself; each of her throats held subtle differences.

“I would rather we speak away from prying ears,” said Agate.

Jathiss nodded. Her sixteen spider eyes, lustrous as polished onyx, took in Agate’s state. “What happened to your antler?”

“A misfire,” Agate answered. She reached up to rub the molded circuitry filling in her damaged antler. It was fortunate that only her antler had been damaged, and not her glowcrust — or her face. “While sheltering from the glass storm, a barkbiter accosted me and my traveling companion. My own energy bolt was reflected back at me. I hypothesize this was due to the glass embedded in its hide.”

“Reflected?” asked Jathiss. “I thought mirrorbears were a myth.”

“They are a myth, Jathiss,” replied Agate. “One anomalous observation is hardly grounds for dredging a species out of the realm of cryptozoology.”

“As you like.” Jathiss cocked one of her heads to the side. “Your traveling companion. Bird chatter tells me she broke Eschelstadt II’s nose.”

There truly were no secrets in the Heptagon, it seemed. In retrospect, that may have been the first moment she felt a spark of solidarity with the immortal. But then, she had more tact than to say as much to her present company. “So she did. It was Sheba who spared her from the paladins’ justice.”

“Mmm,” Jathiss hummed worriedly. “I shouldn’t approve, but I trust Sheba’s judgment.”

“As well you should,” said Agate. “She kept your superiors in the faith from making a dreadfully shortsighted mistake.”

“An assault upon the voice of Shekhinah is an assault upon us all,” Jathiss countered. “You went to the Stilt with a purpose. I had hoped it wouldn’t be this.”

“I merely pointed her to the library,” said Agate, raising her hands innocently before her. “That was the extent of my involvement in the matter. Her actions are her own. My purpose was hardly ecclesiastical.”

Jathiss sat with this answer for a few breaths. It rankled somewhat that the Choraler’s first conclusion was an accusation. Agate had no interest in sending assailants after church officials — that was how mere unwelcome grew into animosity. It rankled more that the Choraler seemed so defensive over the upjumped blowhard currently mantled as the highest priest. Perhaps his only policy Agate could find no fault in was his support of the cathedral library.

“I suppose so,” Jathiss sighed at last. “I hadn’t expected you back so soon. You had spoken so direly of the state of Stilt cuisine. I thought you were acting on your ultimatum.”

Either you do something, Agate had said, or I do something.

Hardly a month ago, now. It felt like another lifetime. This was part of why she sought the company and counsel of Jathiss.

“You said it was all the same to you,” said Agate. How the Carbide Chef Six-Day Stilt could content herself with leaving these pretenders infesting the city she championed was beyond Agate.

Jathiss clasped both sets of her hands together. She turned the palms of her upper hands upwards, arachnid digits interlaced in a tight shrug. “These things fall where they may.”

Agate’s ear flicked. “They’re still falling. I’ve seen their kitchens firsthand. Mark my words — another year uncorrected and this new crop of Stilt chefs might feel at liberty to start charging for meals.”

Jathiss closed her shrug. Her pedipalps stilled in consideration. It remained to be seen if this prediction would rouse her from her lassitude, but Agate sensed cracks. The Chef returned her focus to Agate. “Where have they fallen for you?”

“Well,” Agate sighed. “I started a polemic. I don’t know that I’ll finish it. My efforts have been diverted, quite by chance, by an entirely unrelated finding. One who so happens to carry staggering implications in the fields of history, metaphysics, cuisine, and potentially even near-orbit astronomy.”

“Your traveling companion,” Jathiss ventured.

“Yes. The immortal, Fujiwara no Mokou.”

Jathiss said nothing, her countenances twin masks of arachnid patience. She was, as always, an excellent listener. Agate leaned her upper body forward and rested an elbow on the arm of her bench. She clasped that hand beneath her chin.

“What she represents, what she embodies, is a challenge to the foundational logic of my worldview. I’m shaken, Jathiss.” If she were honest with herself, she was more than shaken. It was easier to see when laying it out to another. It certainly didn’t uncomplicate matters that these challenges seemed to be wrapped up in burgeoning feelings. “It’s not that I don’t care any longer for the direction of cuisine at the Stilt. It is only that she forces me to fundamentally reassess my priorities. I simply don’t know when I’ll next find the time.”

“How does she challenge you?” asked Jathiss.

“She weaves fire into such complexity of form and purpose as to render the average pyrokinetic brutish and fumbling by comparison!” Agate replied. She drew her hands before her in a grasping, pleading motion, as though she could pull the hidden sense from her own observations. “She can fly with no wings, no telekinetic spark, no visible tools! Her culture — the culture she outlived — they made sashimi!”

Jathiss took all this in with an enviable calm, bowing her heads slightly in thought. She looked up again after a few breaths. “None of this I would imagine as incompatible with your worldview.”

“It’s magic, Jathiss.” She clasped her hands to her breast, the fire of enthusiasm washing through her. “This is no backwoods chicanery, no waterpipe daydream. This is an undergirding cosmic force of whose expression and harnessing I and everyone I’ve known have been heretofore ignorant.”

More than that — it was eternity, lodged there in her body. Agate felt a pang of remorse. She wished she could speak openly of this deeper truth, but there was no guarantee of confidentiality with the company Jathiss kept. For now, that confidentiality was safety.

“She hails from a time before the Eaters, yes? Could this perchance be some form of advanced technology?” asked the humble Choraler.

If it were technology, her VISAGE would have certainly flagged something. There had been nothing but that vexing Elixir.

“Doubtful,” said Agate. “The woman wouldn’t know a condenser from a carbonizer. The most salient explanation remains — at her own word — magic.”

“Magic,” Jathiss repeated in stereo harmony. “That’s quite exciting. You’re struggling with this?”

“I am,” Agate sighed.

“Hmm,” hummed Jathiss. “Perhaps next time, you could leave a touch more room in your worldview for the numinous.”

Agate had hardly pegged Jathiss for the sort of zealot who took every crisis of faith as a recruitment opportunity. Had that assessment been wrong? She loosed a scoffing breath and stood. “I thought you’d spare me the attempt at proselytizing.”

Jathiss laughed softly. “Come, now. I know better than to try.” She followed Agate’s motion, rising from the mossy shelf to lay a hand down on Agate’s shoulder. “And I know you. I have witnessed your resourcefulness, your adaptability. Whatever form that takes when you meet these challenges, I know you’ll be stronger for it. And I know its shape will be your own.”

The hand of Jathiss — claw-tipped and tufted with speckled fur — was a comforting weight, just as her words were a balm to Agate’s doubts. Both her fleeting doubts of the Choraler’s character and her deeper doubts of her own future course. There was certainly wisdom in her counsel. Wisdom that reinforced quiet little conclusions of her own.

“Jathiss…” she sighed. She rested her digits on those of Jathiss for a touch unobstructed by the nanoweave fabric of her coat. “You have never cooked with flux, yes?”

Jathiss’s hand squeezed her shoulder, perhaps in reassurance, perhaps in concern. “Never,” she said. “It is beyond the means I desire for my craft. I leave the handling of flux to my fellow Chefs. Have you?”

That attitude continuously perplexed her. Among the titans of culinary ability and the infrastructure of the Heptagon, Jathiss had perfect access to the means to mitigate the risks of neutron flux. She simply refused them. If it was fear, Agate could understand — in truth, it limited her in this regard. Considering the ingredient’s volatility, it was a healthy fear. But more than fear, it seemed, what drove Jathiss’s attitude was the desire for some self-imposed limitation.

Still — she was a Carbide Chef.

“Never directly. I’ve considered it,” said Agate. She strode forward at a thoughtful, languid pace, slipping out from the Choraler’s grasp. Jathiss fell in at her side. Boughs of subterranean starapple vaulted this layer of the terraced park, passing overhead. “I am considering it once more. My previous opportunity — I had thought it might illuminate the contours of the hole in mathematics. But ultimately, the risks were too great to proceed.”

“That was years ago, was it not?” asked Jathiss. Her tone was a touch grave around the topic Agate skirted — the penumbra calculus. “When you and Q Girl — ah, but if you’d rather not speak of it…”

Agate crossed her hands behind her back and sighed. It had certainly been weighing on her of late. “It was already too late between us. She simply balked at the risks before I did.”

“The risks.” Jathiss bowed her heads subtly. “One in ten,” she intoned.

“One in ten,” Agate echoed. She gave a bitter little smile.

“What renews your considerations?” asked Jathiss. “Have you grown prescient since last we spoke?”

“I have not,” said Agate. She had neither the precognitive spark of the Chefs Oth, nor the genomic vintage of the Chef Ekuemekiyye necessary to medically induce the same capacity. She had only a trained mind and steady hands. Nine times in ten, that was enough. That probability was unacceptable. How could she put it? “Call it a glimpse into eternity.”

“I shall pray for your safety, then,” said Jathiss. She paused in her stride. Their stroll had brought them before the memorial shrine. “I don’t wish to raise a shrine to you, too.”

Agate stopped with her and huffed out a laugh. “Safety is my primary concern. I have no intention of becoming a martyr.”

Jathiss gestured softly towards the tzadekket’s portrait. “Neither did Abishem. Yet her last defense allowed the evacuation of the Opal Cathedral. Where intent fails — where intent becomes subordinate to the material — then what remains is the grace by which we endure it.”

Agate considered this as she considered the shrine. It was easy to resent it, and she had, initially. This park, where she’d shared many conversations with its architect, had once been a secular bubble in the Temple Ward — a place to simply be, and watch, and rest. Then its purpose, its intent, narrowed around an encroaching faith. A faith whose holy places hardly welcomed her.

But if it had to be given over to Mechanimist purpose, it was better to be this — an expression of the living faith, not one clinging to the dogmatic, musty legacies of dubious and historically conflicting patriarchs. It certainly helped that the tzadekket had taken a good few Templar with her. Agate could extend a grudging respect to that. Grudges did not strike her as particularly graceful. But then, she was hardly contending for tzadekket status. She had her own aspirations and she would meet them by her own merits.

She could simply recognize where those merits reached their limits. Alone, she had plateaued.

Mokou could wield that prescient spark with the proper chemicals. Flux would toughen her up. But then, her gravity hardly needed the help.

“I cannot promise grace,” said Agate. She took up the Choraler’s hand and bent to place a kiss on the back of her palm. She rose again and met her gaze with a smile. “I can only promise perfection. Thank you for your time, Jathiss. Live and drink.”

Chapter Text

Meal rotation had come for Agate. Certainly there were others in the proper queue ahead of her, but queues tended to deform around her. Such was the burden of fame, but this particular manifestation did not trouble her. She’d had ample warning to prepare. It was only natural they’d wish to sample the cuisine that had bested their Heptagon.

What repairs remained on the rooftop condensers could be trusted to tinkers of even baseline competence. Surely this let the forewoman feel at liberty to reorder the existing rotation. A send-off, before Agate moved on. Her expertise was best put towards other tasks.

“Take whoever you need!” Nashimir had told her.

She took Mokou.

So it was that the immortal puffed into the work site’s temporary rooftop kitchen rolling a pickling barrel. Agate eyed it curiously, pulling herself away momentarily from setting up a row of cookers. Mokou lifted it upright with a grunt, then straightened, wiping her brow with the sleeve of her standard-issue coveralls. She met Agate’s gaze and grinned.

“Got it from Bajiko! Pickled Ekuemekiyyen greens!”

Agate raised her brow in interest. “What do you plan to do with them?”

“Burning noodles! Something like ‘em, anyway. Recipe from, uh…” Mokou snapped her fingers a few times. Finally, her expression brightened in recognition. “Sichuan!”

She’d never heard of the region. Judging from the dish’s name, it sounded spicy. She was intrigued, but mildly concerned. “I brought you on to assist with preparation of the common meal. Your burning noodles will not interfere with my hoarshroom curry, yes?”

Mokou puffed out a dismissive breath and thumped the barrel lid. “Nah, it’s dead easy and scales up like a dream. Got all afternoon, right?”

Agate frowned, faintly but sternly. “It is not simply a matter of labor time, but of metabolized effects.”

“Mm,” Mokou grunted. She dropped her other hand to join her first in drumming aimlessly on the barrel lid. “Was gonna use vanta dough for the noodles. Think that’s about it. Should be fine, right? Vanta and greens stay out of the way.”

“Aptly put,” Agate nodded. It seemed Mokou’s lessons were already bearing fruit. Her frown ticked up into a smile. “Very well. Once my curry is underway I shall gladly assist.”

So began the methodical work of chopping ingredients. Softly glowing hoarshrooms, plump petals of lah, alliums for flavor, all in prodigious quantity. Glances across the kitchen revealed Mokou to be mixing a jet-black noodle dough on the drier end of the moisture spectrum. It clumped around her fingers, gradually drawing ready for flattening.

The day was too hot to sustain much in the way of idle chatter. Broad canvas awnings provided a bit of relief from the sun. Hibnicrab was a tolerable distance across the plaza, such that the furnace heat of her body had largely dissipated by the time it reached the kitchen. Agate was grateful to be here, set to the task of cuisine, rather than tasked to join the workers attending the great magma crab’s glass recycling efforts.

Agate was roughly three quarters of the way through preparing her batch of hoarshrooms when the immortal next spoke.

“Oh, shit,” Mokou cursed with an air of casual remembrance. “Did you want, like, help with your curry?”

Agate gave a cold, wry smile. “Considering it must be made for the several dozen laborers currently on this shift, yes. That was my intent when I invited you.”

“What, just me?” asked Mokou. “Could’ve brought on other folks to pitch in. Bet Timo would’ve jumped at the chance.”

“Entirely unnecessary.” The last thing Agate wanted in her kitchen was a fawning, star-struck sycophant. What she wanted was to cook with Mokou. She hadn’t had the chance since their travels had ceased. The Heptagon’s preponderance of other dining options often made arranging such chances redundant. “I have the utmost confidence in our bulk cooking abilities. Another dish does not change this.”

“Guess I got a bit caught up in it,” Mokou said. Her almost sheepish tone shifted into a nostalgic fondness. “Haven’t had a chance to make burning noodles in a good while. They were perfect for potlucks at the old shrine, or lunch for the kids at the old school. Used to fix ‘em all the time with my wife. She had a bunch of recipes she brought over from the mainland.”

Her wife, the pickle-lover. Agate could hardly grudge her for her enthusiasm if it opened an opportunity to taste a dish otherwise lost to time. She set aside the sliced hoarshrooms to start her preparations on the lah petals. “What sort of flavor profile is it?”

“Oh, it’s a classic,” Mokou replied. As she spoke, she let her first batch of dough rest and began mixing another batch. “I mean, traditionally, it’s alkaline noodles, chili oil, and pickled mustard greens. Maybe Keine’d give me guff for using the wrong pickled greens, but these are… close enough.”

“What, you married a pickle-stickler? I would hope she would give you credit for your skills in scavenging,” said Agate.

Mokou chuckled softly. “No credit until we find out how it tastes.”

“You don’t already know?” Agate’s ear flicked. It was one matter to test dishes on one another with the privacy of a campfire on the road. It was quite another to field untasted combinations in a public venue. She would be more perturbed had she not already sampled the immortal’s prior improvisations. “How is it supposed to taste?”

“Savory, with a bit of numbing spice.” Mokou finished her kneading, wiped off her fingers and gestured to the covered bowls holding her dough batches. “These need to sit for a bit. What am I chopping for you?”

“Take the alliums,” Agate replied. Mokou’s willingness to help soothed, somewhat, the uncertainty her improvisations couldn’t help but provoke.

Between the two of them, they soon had the curry ingredients prepared and portioned into the cookers for their slow simmer. By the time that was done, the dough was ready for the next step. Mokou readied a rolling pin to flatten her batches into noodle-width sheets. She started on the first one. Agate looked on in growing perturbation.

“Please,” said Agate. “You don’t have to work like this. There is a pasta maker somewhere in this kitchen. I will avail you of it.”

“Oh shit, really? That’d be tremendous.” Mokou set aside the pin and wiped her forearm across her brow. “Saves me a lot of trouble.”

Her response was a small relief to Agate. Evidently pasta makers skirted beneath the threshold of the immortal’s technophobia. “Time, as well. If you expect me to let a dish pass untasted beneath my stewardship, you are mistaken. I have a reputation to uphold.”

“Don’t worry, you get first crack at it.” said Mokou. After a moment, her brow wrinkled in consideration. “Didn’t realize the common meal was such a big deal.”

“This is Kitchen Heptagon,” Agate replied. “Every meal, reputations are on the line.”

A brief search produced the pasta maker from one of the storage areas. As multiple shifts of workers tended to cycle through the same work zones, even a temporary kitchen such as this rooftop venue inevitably accumulated the tools necessary to create top-notch cuisine. Such a practice minimized failure from infrastructural neglect wherever possible. Agate deployed the pasta maker for Mokou. Mokou’s appreciative smile turned into a teasing grin.

“Which reputation? The one where you’re a heartbreaker, or—”

“Enough talk. Make your noodles.”

The beating sun crept lower, seeking new angles of ingress as afternoon turned to evening. When the canvas shade lost its protective angle against the setting sun, Hibnicrab’s bulk compensated. Quietly, gradually, with sifted spice adjustments and careful orchestration of the burners, the common meal took shape. Scents of simmering curry and chili oil saturated the heat of the rooftop plaza. Sounds of hungry appreciation punctuated the idle chatter of the magma crab’s attendant workers. Agate sweated in her coat and awaited the first batch of Mokou’s burning noodles. From across the plaza came the heavy and steady stride of the forewoman.

Nashimir’s stride carried her into the kitchen. “Smelling good, ladies,” she said.

“Thanks, Nashimir,” Mokou replied, stirring her selection of spices in their cookpot of hot yuckwheat oil. “I bathed.”

She had? That was a pleasant surprise. Agate had assumed it was one of Mokou’s lower priorities.

Nashimir hissed out a clipped and cursory laugh. “The good news is, you’ll be able to do a lot more of that soon. But I meant the cooking.” She stopped next to Agate and draped a carapaced arm around her shoulders in a posture of confidentiality. “You got a minute to talk?”

Agate glanced to Mokou. They would likely be serving within the hour, and she still hadn’t sampled Mokou’s offering. It made her restless. Mokou, at least, seemed to sense this. She returned Agate’s glance with a nod.

“Little bit longer on the chili oil,” Mokou assured her. “Gotta let the flavors incorporate.”

“Very well,” said Agate. She led the forewoman aside, out of earshot from the others in the plaza. They stopped just outside the magma crab’s shadow.

“So this is it?” asked Nashimir, her usually-forceful voice subdued and low. “Can’t persuade you to stay on for the rest of the roof job, can I?”

“I made it clear from the outset I was here to see to the condensers. You said yourself they would be fully operational by the end of this shift. Was this assessment of yours premature?”

The forewoman shook her head. “Even if it was, the night shift would see it through. No, I said it and I stand by it.”

“Say I stay — what would you have me do?” asked Agate. “Blow glass? Replace shingles? My skills are highly technical. I could be calibrating the hydroponics, or outfitting the militias. There are any number of other needs to which I am better suited.”

“No, I hear you,” Nashimir sighed. “And I’m not gonna keep you. You do what you have to do to make it right for yourself. You do that and you’ll be doing right by us. Just been nice having those skills working for my shift, is all.”

“Thank you for your understanding,” Agate nodded curtly. Another one trying to get her to stay. Pointless sentimentality, given the labor needs of the city.

“At least I got a meal out of you this time!” Nashimir laughed. She glanced past Agate, towards the kitchen, and her expression softened faintly. “Speaking of. What about your buddy? She changing shifts too? Been a big help, but I know she’s been taking lessons from the Carbide Chefs and all. Those kinds of lessons are usually for folks looking for bigger things.”

“To my knowledge, she has no plans to change shifts,” Agate answered. “Her decisions are her own. You’re welcome to ask her. All her lessons indicate to me is that you would not regret advancing her position in the common meal rotation, either.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Nashimir. She clapped her claw-arm on Agate’s shoulder with a rough enthusiasm. “You can get back to it. Find me if you need me, I’ll be around.”

Agate returned to the shade of the kitchen in time to see Mokou shaking the moisture from a serving of light-absorbing noodles with a strainer. Mokou’s expression brightened with excitement.

“Just in time! Let me put one together for you.”

Agate watched in interest. As promised, the assembly of the final dish was simple: into the noodles she mixed several scoops of her oily chili sauce with a scoop of sesame oil and a scoop of soy sauce. The oils gleamed darkly over the now-revealed contours of the wide vanta noodles. Atop them, she garnished it with a diced helping of the pickled greens, a dusting of crushed sesame and uuyr seeds, chopped green shoots of young stunions, and a sprinkle of salt. She made two bowls, one for herself and one for Agate.

Mokou nodded in satisfaction, producing her bone utensils — chopsticks, she’d called them. “Now you just mix it up and enjoy.”

“This…” Agate began, but silenced herself with a sampling. Every element of the burning noodles balanced perfectly. The Ekuemekiyyen greens carried a pungent tang — memories of a faint toxicity blanched out by the pickling process. The savory, rich spices augmented this, followed by the tingling, alkaline bite of the vanta noodles. The subtle crunch of the seeds and crispness of the fresh shoots lent more textural variety. Her worries had been baseless.

“... This is exquisite,” she finished.

“Mm,” grunted Mokou. Her own expression had shifted through a complex milieu as she tried — excitement into appraisal into a sort of muted nostalgia. “This… isn’t really anything like how I remember.”

“I would proudly serve this,” Agate countered. “Is it not to your liking?”

“Oh, no, it’s good and all,” said Mokou. She gave a faintly bitter chuckle. “But it’s not really burning noodles. It’s a whole bunch of little things, you know?”

“Little things?” asked Agate.

“Any pickle’s gonna be bound by its local specifics. These greens aren’t mustard greens. They aren’t Sichuan mustard greens. I mean, it was always tricky to get those, but…” Mokou sighed. She tried more of her noodles and chewed thoughtfully, staring off into the open purple sky. She spoke again before she had finished swallowing. “S’posed to be peanuts in here. And your soy sauce is wrong. I mean, it’s fine. But it’s wrong. And all this adds up to make me feel a way about calling it burning noodles, you know?”

“Call it what you like,” said Agate. Was she so caught up in burdensome nostalgia that it kept her from truly savoring her own new creation? That would not do. “But have some respect for the meal. If you served this in the arena, you’d give the Chefs a run for their title.”

“What, you too?” Mokou cocked a smile of disbelief. She chuckled again, with less bitterness. “Well, I know you mean that. Alright. Let’s see how it pairs.”

Agate found a stack of deep double-compartment serving trays and laid out a pair of them. The bowl nestled into one half, while she ladled curry into the other half. After a moment’s consideration, she drizzled a crescent of the chili oil over the curry and tucked a tiny edible bloom into the corner. She did the same for Mokou’s tray.

“Cute,” said Mokou.

With the taste of noodles still fresh in her mouth, Agate sampled her curry. As expected, the richness of her curry meshed flawlessly with the noodles’ savory profile. Not only that, but the moistness complemented the dry noodles quite well. A successful pairing.

Mokou made an appreciative noise as she tried the curry. “Mm. Damn, that’s good. We did alright.”

Agate nodded, smiling. Already she could feel the hoarshrooms’ soothing chill seeping into the joints of her fingers. “Repeat this forty more times and our common meal will be a triumph.”

“Easy,” Mokou chuckled.

Shortly, the two of them finished their own test servings. Agate shifted her efforts towards preparing the kitchen to host serving queues. Mokou readied batches of raw noodles by her boiling tanks.

Mokou raised her voice to call across the plaza. “Nashimir! Grub’s ready to go whenever!”

“Great!” the forewoman called back. She waved her claw towards the bell stand by the kitchen. “Give that sucker a ring!”

Mokou glanced at Agate. “You want to do the honors?”

“Go ahead,” Agate gestured encouragingly, then donned her blockers.

Mokou ambled over to tug the bell rope. Ringing bronze pealed out across the shingled roofs and walkways, trailing the wave of arclights igniting one by one along the Heptagon’s circumference. The sound would summon the shift’s far-flung workers. For them, it was an invitation to the end of the day’s labor. For Agate and Mokou, it heralded a coming escalation of their culinary efforts. Already the closest groups of workers to the plaza approached to be served.

“What’s this curry do, anyway?” asked Mokou, returning to Agate’s side behind the counter.

Agate lifted a frost-wisping hand and cupped it to Mokou’s cheek. The immortal yelped in surprise. Agate smiled teasingly. A fine opportunity this had turned out to be.

Chapter Text

Bit by bit, the plaza came alive with the chatter of workers returning. A minor production bottleneck had revealed itself: the noodles themselves. Each serving had to be purpose-made for maximum effect — if made in bulk, the risk of overcooking them was too great. For the first few groups of two to three, this was not an issue, but as the volume of workers increased, so did the wait times. Then, of course, there were the specialty orders.

“Yeah, a quadruple serving,” said Nashimir, leaning over the counter. “For Big Pharma.”

“Already underway,” Agate replied. She set a pair of finished trays next to the forewoman and leaned past her to call out to a waiting pair of workers. “Order up!”

The workers retrieved their meals with thanks. A grumbled complaint filtered up to her from the queue. “Wonder what the hold-up is.”

The complainer faced a quick reproach from the reedy voice of Timokat. A certain defensive certitude had chased out their usual breathlessness. “You can’t rush perfection!”

Mokou raised her head from the steam of her boiling tanks. “Timo! You up for noodle duty?”

“M-me?” asked Timokat.

Agate’s ear flicked. She stepped hurriedly to Mokou’s side and pitched her voice low. “What are you—”

Mokou clapped a frigid hand around her bicep and gave her a concerned look. “C’mon, it’s just boiling noodles. More hands here will speed things along.”

Agate sighed. There were only delays because Mokou had introduced her own dish to this effort. Still, it was worth the inconvenience. “This is your dish, I suppose. Commandeer them if you must.”

“That’s my buddy,” Mokou grinned. She shook out the magma crab’s quadruple serving into a large ceramic basin and handed it to Agate.

Agate stepped back to her assembly space with her prize and raised her voice as she set to work on its sauce mixtures. “Yes, Timokat, you. Scrub up and follow Ms. Fujiwara’s instructions precisely.”

“Of course!” said Timokat, pulling themself out of line and hurrying to the kitchen. Even as they prepared to cook, their gaze kept snapping back to Agate with an unmasked awe. They hardly seemed to be listening to Mokou’s instructions, giving cursory nods and mumbled acknowledgments at every directive.

“Alright, so you pull about yea much for each serving. Cook ‘em for about a minute — you want ‘em still a bit toothsome. Fish ‘em out, shake out the water, and bowl ‘em up. Watch me if you need. We’ll handle the rest.”

“Uh-huh,” Timokat nodded, still a touch frozen.

“Timokat!” Agate spoke. “Untold generations have carried this dish out of Sichuan and into this precise moment in history. You will not pay it — nor Ms. Fujiwara — the disrespect of your inattention.”

Slack fled from Timokat’s posture as they puffed up their coverall-clad chest. “Y-yes, Ms. Star!”

Mokou laughed softly and patted Timokat on the back. “It’s noodles. Don’t even worry about it.”

She had made herself as clear as possible. They would follow by their own efforts, one way or another. She put the final touches on both the quadruple serving and the forewoman’s standard order, then passed them off to Nashimir. “Order up.”

Nashimir scooped up the trays. Her silent gaze traveled from Agate, over to where Timokat and Mokou started more batches of noodles, then back. She smiled and nodded. “Thank you, chef.”

The next few batches came out much quicker. She had braced herself to suffer an interloper in her kitchen, but she could grudgingly admit that Timokat held their own. And thankfully, they’d been too busy with the noodles to engage in more sycophancy. As the last traces of sunlight seeped from the sky, every member of the afternoon shift had been served. The plaza’s conversations tapered as the workers therein found themselves more occupied with savoring the meal.

“This is — this is phenomenal,” said Timokat, reverently watching the steam wisp from a forkful of fresh noodles. “They dip so well. The flavors of the curry, together with the noodles — what did you call them?”

Agate turned a quizzical gaze towards Mokou. “Did you settle on a name?”

“Yeah, I was thinking…” Mokou tapped her chin in thought, pausing briefly from scraping together a second helping from the remainder. “‘Blackflame noodles.’ Heptagon style.”

“This is your recipe?” Timokat asked Mokou, a bit of shock in their tone. “I—I thought maybe Ms. Star was just delegating, or — or maybe you were her pupil, or—”

Mokou laughed. “Nah, she’s full up.”

“Um—” Timokat stammered. “Are you accepting pupils?”

“Mm,” Mokou grunted around a mouthful of curry. She swallowed leisurely, then rolled her head softly from side to side in consideration. “No offense, but it’s about thirty years too early for you to study under me.”

Timokat blinked. Resignation settled over their mien. “Oh.”

“Thanks for chipping in, though. It was a big help,” Mokou said. There was genuine warmth in her tone. She patted Timokat on the shoulder in a shooing motion. “Go eat before it gets cold.”

They cast a glance to Agate — perhaps seeking an appeal, most likely approval. Agate closed her eyes and nodded. “You served well. Enjoy the meal.”

“T-thank you! I will!” Timokat bowed to both of them and withdrew from the kitchen, seeking the gathering of their peers. Agate caught Timokat’s hissed enthusiasm as they sat amongst them, halfway across the plaza. “Did you see? I cooked with Agate Severance Star!”

“Thirty years,” Agate mused. She cocked a half-smile. “That’s a phrase with some utility. I may avail myself of it.”

“Honest assessment,” said Mokou, without a trace of jest in her tone. “They earned as much.”

Into the satisfied lull, Nashimir mounted a planter bed to address her gathered workers. Hibnicrab loomed behind her, noodles sizzling in the grip of her tremendous pincers as she fed herself strand by strand. The forewoman’s carapace gleamed with the artificial glow of the arclights and the magmatic backlight. Her voice rolled out across the plaza, harsh but proud.

“Comrades, we did it! Every last condenser is back at full capacity! Sure, the other shifts helped — but we were the ones who brought it home! You can expect an official announcement lifting the rationing in the next few days. And that’s thanks to you lot! So all of you better feel good about your part in it.”

Cheers rose from those of the crew who didn’t have their mouths full, and scattered applause sounded from those not occupied with utensils. Nashimir beamed, sweeping her gaze across them and waiting for them to settle once more.

“The next few days should see the last of the glass rendered down, too! That means the roof reopens, but it doesn’t mean the job’s over. But it does mean, between that and the condensers, that our special guests will be moving on. So consider this fine bit of cuisine a send-off — for Big Pharma, and for Agate Severance Star!”

At her side, Mokou’s head jerked softly, mid-bite. She swallowed, then slowly turned a confused gaze towards Agate, as though she hadn’t heard properly. Agate glanced back briefly, then flicked her gaze back to the forewoman. Was it such a surprise?

“So let’s make it a proper send-off,” Nashimir continued. Her fierce grin widened. “Afternoon repair crew! What are we?”

The workers’ cry rang out over the arclit plaza.

“Safe! Thorough! Sated! Comrades!”

It was never the sort of thing Agate found herself parroting. To have it directed at her, for her, was just more needless sentimentality. Another glance to her side revealed Mokou similarly silent, finishing her seconds. Perhaps her feelings mirrored Agate’s own — though, she recalled the immortal chiming in during previous shifts. Perhaps it was such a surprise.

Something prickled at the back of her neck. A sense of being watched, but beyond the mundane regard of whichever workers happened to be looking her way. Agate suppressed a shiver.

“Damn right!” Nashimir called. “Now eat up! And I hope you all enjoy your commemorative roof repair glass bottles, courtesy of Big Pharma!”

Another cheer swelled up and collapsed into pockets of excited chatter. Under it sounded the click of Mokou’s chopsticks together over her empty bowl. Once again her gaze fell upon Agate as her confusion resolved into a frown.

“You’re leaving?”

“I am leaving the afternoon shift, yes,” Agate replied. She crossed her arms. “My chief priority was the condensers. We have seen to them. My skills are best applied elsewhere.”

Mokou flipped at the breast pocket of her coveralls and extracted her rolling papers and herb pouch. She started assembly of a handroll. The emptiness of her practiced motions snagged at her frown. “What happened to being buddies?”

That was ever Mokou’s conceit. Agate sighed. “Does my leaving preclude buddy status?”

Mokou flicked a dull glance over to her. “Work buddy status, yeah.”

Agate said nothing. She hadn’t thought the specifics of her own scheduling and labor distribution would be so affecting to Mokou. Perhaps that had been a miscalculation.

Mokou tucked her roll in her mouth and her hands in her pockets and ambled out the rear of the kitchen tent, away from the boisterous shift. Agate watched her go for a moment, then, with a quick scan to ensure no one meant to interrupt her with congratulations or well-wishes, followed.

She found her in a pool of shadows between the radii of the rooftop’s electric lamps, blending with the chiaroscuro of metabolized vanta. Agate stopped a few paces behind her, at the edge of the light.

Mokou loosed a plume of aromatic smoke into the night sky, but otherwise kept her silence.

The fruits of their repair efforts since their arrival opened an opportunity. One of which Mokou was most likely ignorant — one that Agate had been quietly anticipating since she knew she’d be returning to the Heptagon.

“With water rationing lifted, the baths will be back to their full operational schedule,” said Agate. “There’s a particular establishment I favor down in the Pipe Ward whose unrationed operations include private rooms. Does this interest you?”

Fabric rustled and hair whispered as Mokou glanced, briefly, back over her shoulder. “Private baths? Didn’t think you still got those. Sounds nice.”

Agate stepped closer, catching the shock of Mokou’s hair in the soft teal luma of her glowcrust. “My leaving distresses you?”

“Ehh,” Mokou shrugged faintly. Still she stood with her face upturned. “Nah. I get it. You can do whatever.”

It was not the first time the immortal had directed that particular phrase at her. This time, at least, it was merely a tired delivery, rather than one of reproach. Perhaps this time she meant it. “Then what is this?” asked Agate.

Mokou sighed.

“You stuck up for the dish. I appreciate that, but…” Another drag of her cigarette, another cloud loosed. “S’just another one of her recipes I can’t make right anymore.”

“Not even a fair approximation?” asked Agate.

Mokou glanced back over her shoulder. It was a tired glance, drawn like gauze over a deep, underlying grief. Did she consider this meal a failure? Evidently a failure still merited seconds.

“Me and Keine — we used to stargaze, y’know? See how they move. Where they’ve been, where they’re going. I sleep underground, here. Even if I didn’t, it wouldn’t matter.” She made a vague, sweeping gesture with her cigarette, encompassing the line of arclights, then the dull sky. “You can’t see the stars from here anyway.”

Kitchen Heptagon was one of the few places in Qud with enough infrastructure to create light pollution. It must have been an equally rare phenomenon in the land she’d shared with her wife. What sort of grief could turn even this marvel of civil engineering, even this quiet culinary triumph, into ash?

Agate stepped to her side and rested a hand on her shoulder, speaking with a wry sympathy. “Such is the price of private baths.”

“Doesn’t have to be,” Mokou grumbled. All the same, she reached up and clasped her hand over Agate’s, matching chill for chill.

Again, the prickling of sourceless attention. Psionic attention. Someone was searching for her — and had found her. Several paces behind them sounded the whirling, sizzling pressure-pop of an esper shifting herself through space. Agate turned and took in a familiar shade of crimson.

“E’Beth,” she said.

“Oh, good,” said E’Beth, slightly out of breath. “You’re still here. Both of you. We’ve had some cancellations. Sorry for the brief notice, but — could you judge the match tomorrow?”

Chapter Text

“I thought you were going to, like, dress up,” said Mokou. She had met Agate in a quiet, carpeted hallway in the upper half of the arena. The hindren wore yet another of her innumerable collection of thick, long-hemmed, high-collared coats.

Agate returned her gaze with a faintly affronted frown. She swept a hand up in front of her chest. “I wore this coat when I bested the arena.”

“You did?” Mokou stepped around her, taking in her overall ensemble, such as it was. Beneath her spotless white coat, Agate’s lower body was unclad, as seemed to be her habit. This evening she had foregone her usual storage pouches and saddlebags. Her only accessories were her holstered pistol, her sheathed blade, and a slate-blue rose pinned to her breast. Traces of rose-scented oils rose from her fur. Mokou completed her circuit, standing between Agate and the doorway into the arena to give her a final once-over. “How can you tell? It looks like what you always wear.”

“Proper personal protection equipment is appropriate for any venue,” Agate rebutted.

“Sure. I wore a suit,” said Mokou, tapping her own chest. It was black silk, with a deep red waistcoat. The slacks fit more snugly than her usual trousers. Threaded around her collar was a bolo of tight braided leather, the cords capped and clasped with fiery brass. “Took me all damn day to find one in the secondhand markets.”

Agate scrutinized her in return, gaze sweeping from her sneakers to her tied-back hair. “It certainly suits you, but your hair—”

“Look, I did what I could on short notice,” Mokou scoffed. “It’s almost starting, right? C’mon.”

She opened the recessed door and stepped through, with Agate close behind. It led into a chrome-walled booth wide enough to hold a long table and still have clearance on both ends. The table, draped in black satin, looked wide enough to comfortably seat five to a side, though currently it only held seats — and fixtures — for four. The red-robed E’Beth sat at the far left end, her back to the door, chatting softly with a perched Clactobelle. To her right were three empty places. The far right seat was a low, elongated stool designed for more legs than Mokou had. The middle seat was an empty chair. The third seat, closest to E’Beth, was a stack of two chairs. Perhaps they hadn’t finished setting up.

“Oh, wow,” Mokou breathed. Even from the booth’s entrance, it held an unparalleled view of the arena. Stands winged to either side of them, already filling with the varied folk of the Heptagon. Across the way was a massive tiered structure topped by a throne and split down the center with a chrome staircase. The staircase opened onto the arena floor — polished black glass and twin, opposing kitchens bustling with uniformed assistants. She’d gained a peek or two down into the Heptagon’s heart while she worked the roofs, but it left another impression entirely to be in the best seats in the house.

E’Beth turned in her chair, casting her attention back to their entrance. “Welcome! You’re right on time. Quite the spectacle, isn’t it?”

“Whole lotta marble,” Mokou whistled. “Wait, spectacle? You’re blindfolded.”

Agate scoffed but said nothing, stepping past her to take her place at the table.

E’Beth, for her part, laughed at the comment. She gestured to the stands on both sides of the booth with sweeps of her arms. “For me, it’s the temperature of the crowd. The taste of anticipation is electric. Make no mistake, this is the soul of Kitchen Heptagon. This is our purpose here.”

She hadn’t expected such a thorough and grandiose answer. It caught her off-guard for a moment, still adjusting to the scope of the crowd outside the booth. She thought of the buoyant emotional gestalt that suffused the directional memories E’Beth had given her. Trying to scale that foreign feeling up to an entire packed arena of people made her head spin. “What, not feeding all these folks?”

“Any moderately successful village can feed its populace,” said Agate, settling herself at the table. “Kitchen Heptagon distinguishes itself in the degree to which it enriches the consciousness of its people.”

“Alright, then I can’t wait to see it,” said Mokou. She strode to join the rest of them at the table, reaching for the stacked chairs next to E’Beth. “We waiting on anyone? Still setting up? I can—”

Mokou lifted the stacked chair from the one below. The texture was wrong. The back felt like no wood she’d ever known — far too much give. This was her first hint that she’d made a mistake. In the next instant the whole seat shifted in her grasp, almost liquid in the swiftness of its transmogrification. The rods of the chair back swelled into limbs, the ornamental top unspooling into a shock of hair, squishy wood-stuff flowing into a scaly simulacrum of cloth. Mokou stopped herself mid-lift. In her grasp, clasped by the biceps, was—

Herself.

Mokou blinked. The Not-Mokou blinked back, the subtle motion bolstered by nictitating membranes. Then grinned with too-sharp teeth.

“Hello there.”

“Gyuh!” Mokou let go and stepped back a pace in shock. The wrongness of a false reflection gripped her. The shapeshifter dropped back to the cushioned seat.

“Ah,” said E’Beth. “Mokou, this is the third judge for tonight’s match: Cheotl Pipapoqui, poet and mimic. Cheotl, this is Fujiwara no Mokou — and I’m certain you’ve heard of Agate Severance Star.”

“Live and drink,” said Cheotl, glancing between the two of them and nodding in greeting, still sharply grinning. “I simply love that statue of yours. And you must be the immortal! I’d heard the rumors.”

“Guess word gets around,” Mokou grumbled.

“Live and drink,” Agate nodded back. “Do forgive my companion, she may have outlived tact. Sit, Mokou, please.”

“Fine, fine.” Mokou pulled out the unoccupied chair between them and sat with a soft groan. “Sorry. Nobody’s gotten me that good since that tanuki I used to date.”

“Since the what?” asked Cheotl.

“Never mind. Long story,” Mokou sighed. More bittersweet, distant memories. “Just feels weird apologizing to someone who’s still wearing my face.”

“It’s a nice face! It has a sort of classic mystique, I have to say,” Cheotl replied, massaging their cheeks with their borrowed hands. They looked back to the entrance and gasped. “And you even brought a cat! That’s delightful.”

Mokou followed their gaze and saw Tabi slinking her way through the wall next to the doorway. The tabby advanced hesitantly, looking this way and that at the sounds seeping into the booth from the assembling crowd. “That’s Tabi. Found her in some ruins out west.”

“She looks like an evil little cuss. Love it.” Cheotl chattered their teeth back at Tabi. Past the initial shock and the ensuing awkwardness, Mokou found herself warming to this poet. Still, a part of her found them a bit over-familiar. What could be more familiar than outright imitation?

Clactobelle piped up from the booth’s railing. Her antennae swept back in a tense posture. “I don’t know about evil, but she makes me very nervous!”

E’Beth cleared her throat. “I don’t believe she can harm you, Clactobelle. Mokou, how would you like to be introduced tonight?”

“Introduced?” asked Mokou. “Like, to the crowd?”

“The crowd, and to the Heptagon at large. We pipe down the signal to the rest of the city,” said E’Beth. “And to any in the rest of Qud tuned in to our weirdwire broadcasts.”

“Hmm,” said Mokou. Word of her nature was evidently already circulating among the Heptagon’s populace. This would dredge it out of rumor and into fact. Who else was listening? For that matter, how did they pipe a signal? “Listen, I don’t know how loud you think I can yell, but—”

Agate tapped the base of a device on the table in front of Mokou — some sort of grilled cylinder on a stand. There was one for each of them at the table. As she spoke, she fished her noise blockers free from a breast pocket and affixed them to her ears. “This is a microphone, dear Mokou. A simple switch activates it. When you speak into it, your voice is carried through the Heptagon’s loudspeakers. Yelling is unnecessary.”

“Back when I’m from, you couldn’t really get these,” Mokou replied. Seeing Agate don ear protection, she idly wondered if she needed to be concerned herself over these microphones. They sounded vaguely familiar — most likely from that harsh, gleaming time after the fall of her old home, but perhaps she’d seen a few before then. She couldn’t shake the feeling it was all veering towards sumafo again.

Clactobelle’s reedy voice interjected. “I would like to suggest, as a title, ‘Artillery Wizard’.”

Their abortive danmaku duel was fresh enough that the forewoman still gave Mokou the occasional disapproving look over it. Public safety seemed to be a real concern here. “Gimme one a bit less incriminating.”

“Wait, that firestorm was you?” asked Cheotl.

“Yup,” Mokou nodded.

“Huh,” said Cheotl. They rubbed their chin thoughtfully. “When you’re from — when was that?”

Mokou sucked air through her teeth. “Long time ago. Like, the iron age.” She tapped the inert microphone. “Sure as hell couldn’t get one of these from a blacksmith.”

“The iron age…” Cheotl repeated, with a touch of awe. They traced out an arc between their forefingers. “Does ‘Witness to the Age of Iron’ strike your fancy?”

“Oh, that’s quite good,” said E’Beth.

“Accurate, certainly,” Agate sniffed.

“I like it!” Clactobelle buzzed.

“Sounds a bit self-important,” said Mokou.

“I’d say it’s warranted!” said E’Beth. “So much of our knowledge of that era is gone. To have just a glimpse of it — the cultures, the practices, the Chefs — that’s something to be treasured. That’s part of why I wanted you here.”

Sometimes she feared that glimpses were all she could offer. No one around her had soaked in those ancient contexts. She’d barely soaked in them herself. So many centuries she’d spent beneath the Barrier — only for the world to have blown past her when it all fell away. What did she know of the chefs of the iron age?

What did she know? Again a tickle of obscure familiarity rose within her, lodged outside her immediate consciousness like a bit of gristle between molars.

“Well, alright, you’ve talked me into it,” said Mokou. “When does this thing kick off?”

“Momentarily!” said E’Beth. “The assistants have finished their preparations down below. If the three of you are ready too, I’ll start the opening ceremony.”

“We have to do anything for that?” asked Mokou.

E’Beth shook her head. “I have a speech to lead with. Once that’s over, simply speak as you would naturally.”

It sounded simple enough. Mokou felt as ready as she was going to be for an unfamiliar spectacle. Even a bit excited. Too often, familiarity led only to emptiness. She nodded, and her fellow judges followed suit. Down below, the assistants’ activity paused — a lull that spread slowly through the assembled crowd. This lull amplified as E’Beth switched on her microphone. A subtle sonic presence filled the arena, followed by a song: stately, synthesized, emanating from a nearby bandstand of musical automatons. The esper leaned forward, a smile spreading on her face, and spoke.

“Seven years ago,” she began, her voice echoing around the stands over the brassy tones, “a woman’s fantasy became reality in a form not seen since the time of the Eaters: a cooking arena in the heart of the Glass Crater. Kitchen Heptagon!”

All eyes in the arena turned to the sky above the throne dais, over the level of the roof. Mokou caught a flash of movement there. It was the Baroness Farouun, arms stretched wide, standing astride a hoversled in slow descent. In the last rays of sunlight, her mane glowed and the mantle around her shoulders scintillated like a river of stars. She sank out of daylight and into arclight. The overwhelming brilliance subsided enough to make out that her mantle was ringed with tasseled tiers of polished glass, as though she were wearing a chandelier. Beneath it she was no less richly attired — whorls of lapis traced ammonite shell-patterns down panels running abreast of her lapels. Sharply-creased slacks, spats, and dress shoes rounded out her ensemble. They were a touch antiquated in style, but she made it work — and being a touch antiquated had never particularly bothered Mokou.

E’Beth continued, fully in her element, caught up in reverent enthusiasm. “That woman was the Baroness Farouun, and her means were gained by the betrayal of her three greatest competitor-barons, who perished. The motivation for spending her truly obscene water wealth to create Kitchen Heptagon was to encounter new original cuisines, which could be called reflections of the true creation.”

Farouun landed at the foot of the stairs leading up the dais. She dismounted the sled with a flourishing twirl, arms outstretched, basking in the arena’s lights and casting dazzling reflections every which way with the motion. She halted her spin to face the stairs and mount them, but not before she plucked a glowing hoarshroom from a display basket.

E’Beth continued her narration. “To safeguard the honor of this ideal, she called to her four chefs of great power, and she bid they be named her Carbide Chefs, the invincible artists of culinary skill.”

Baroness Farouun swept her free hand to the banner-bedecked wings of the dais as she climbed. No microphone caught her roar — none was necessary. “Carbide Chefs, awaken!”

The entire dais began to vibrate subtly. Internal platforms buoyed by some unseen artifice rose, one for each banner, two for each half of the throne complex, separated by the staircase. Four figures in all rose into shadow and readiness. E’Beth began to name them.

“Carbide Chef Ekuemekiyye is Bajiko Ki!” Arclights crackled to life under the far left sconce and cast Bajiko in stark relief. There was hardly a trace of the warmth that filled her kitchen in her regal, almost motionless bearing. She could have been a statue in her officious emerald chef’s coat, somberly regarding a dreadroot clasped in her arm of fluted chrome.

“Carbide Chef Phyta is Emberlily!” The next sconce lit up, revealing what was evidently a slynth. A humanoid plant, Agate had said, though she’d neglected to mention the four arms. Her chestnut coat was tailored to accommodate her extra limbs, lower arms honing a butcher’s cleaver, upper arms crossed over her chest. And were the hands of her upper arms burning? Her wide, verdant face sported a mouth like a fly trap set in a faint grimace. All in all, this Emberlily looked to be a prime example of the new forms that had risen in this new land.

“Carbide Chefs Oth are Imet, Whose Broth Is Causality!” Strange shadows awoke in the next illuminated sconce in the sequence. Even from across the arena, Mokou could sense a deific power coiled within the dark-skinned esper’s mortal frame. Their psyche, unified into a single body, kept their boots from touching the platform and suspended a ladle in midair above their outstretched hand. Their expression was unreadable behind a pair of round-lensed mirrorshades. A bleached white duster, a tall chef’s cap, and a fine waistcoat completed their ensemble.

At her side, a subtle noise — a rubbery creaking — caught Mokou’s ear. She glanced away from the spectacle for a moment and realized its source. Agate had rested her hands, one over the other, on the table before her. The creak came from the stretchy black fabric of her gloves as her grip tightened. Perhaps a reaction to a rival perfectionist. Before Mokou could think much more of the gesture, the final sconce lit up. E’Beth announced its occupant.

“And Choraler Jathiss is Carbide Chef Six-Day Stilt!” The final sconce held a massive and muscular two-headed spider creature. From the waist down her speckle-fuzzed body was that of a giant tarantula. In contrast to her more richly-attired fellow Chefs, all that graced her upper torso was a slate blue shawl, of the sort popular at the Stilt. That and two different hats were her only garb. She loomed with heads bowed in silent prayer. This, evidently, was Jathiss — over whose name Agate had brought them to blows.

“Holy shit!” Mokou hissed. “She’s a giant spider!”

Agate shushed her sharply while Cheotl snickered. Immediate shame gave way just as quickly to slight relief; Mokou hadn’t yet turned on her microphone. Most mercifully, it hadn’t seemed to perturb E’Beth’s ceremonial flow.

With the Chefs illuminated, Farouun crested the dais to at last reach her throne — etched alloys and lustrous stones in a composition and scale as chimeric as the occupant it awaited. She turned back to the arena, casting a fond gaze over its totality. Lifting the hoarshroom to her snout, she savored its scent, then took a lascivious bite. Its glowing juices ran down the fur of her chin. In moments, a teal glow seeped through the fabric of her finery as her organs illuminated. The glass-bedecked mantle shone with a new hue.

There was yet more to E’Beth’s preamble. “The Kitchen Heptagon is where these legends test their skills against challengers from across Qud and beyond. Both the Carbide Chef and the Challenger have one hour to explore the theme ingredient of the evening. Using all their senses, skills, beliefs, and abilities they shall demonstrate their unparalleled artistry in destruction and recreation to the Baroness and her honored metamours and celebrity guest judges. Should the Challenger win, their deeds shall resonate through the fabric of this world to be preserved forever.”

E’Beth’s diction was clear and practiced, yet that practice hadn’t dulled her enthusiasm. It was an enthusiasm born of sincerity. She called this the city’s soul, and her words carried the weight of true belief. A scant seven years and already the people of the Heptagon had their sights set on eternity. Perhaps there was some aspect of the proceedings still hidden from Mokou. Then again, perhaps spectacle alone would anneal truth into the esper’s speech. Already it felt like an evening Mokou wouldn’t soon forget.

Farouun had finished her hoarshroom and now withdrew a microphone from a compartment in her throne. “My loves,” she rumbled, filling the arena with her luxurious bassy tones. “The Heptagon calls for you. Give us taste, novelty, excellence, and eternity shall bear witness. Face my beloved Chefs.”

Was that a wink the Baroness sent to the judge’s booth? Mokou’s eyes had always been sharp — another consequence of the Elixir — but when she sat an arena apart she couldn’t be certain. How much did they already know of her nature? If it weren’t for the fact she was getting a meal from this she’d be tempted to feel used.

E’Beth’s speech rose to its fervent crescendo along with the brassy musical accompaniment. “We peddle in reputations, for here, legends are reforged. Best our Carbide Chefs and write your name in the cosmos. For here, we are gathered to truly test the limits of edibility and reality. This is Kitchen Heptagon!”

The crowd roared. Farouun spread her arms and bowed, sending dazzling reflections across the stands from her glass mantle. The gesture couldn’t help but be flamboyant from the scale of her body. She rose again and made to speak, lifting a claw to her chin thoughtfully. Silence fell over the crowd.

“If memory serves me right,” said Farouun, “Just yesterday evening our work crews completed repairs on the Heptagon’s condensers. That can mean only one thing.” She flung out a claw theatrically as her voice rose in triumph. “Water rationing is over! Tonight is a celebration!”

The audience roared in excitement and approval. The Baroness beamed back at the reaction, waiting for the stands to settle once more.

“In fact,” she continued, “several who put in that work join us in our position of honor tonight! E’Beth, my love, who are our judges?”

E’Beth took up the cue with a grin. “From furthest to closest, our guest roster tonight includes former Challenger and honorary Carbide Chef Agate Severance Star.”

Agate switched on her microphone and spoke with a courteous nod. “A pleasure, as always. I am certain tonight’s offerings shall advance kitchen consciousness.”

A quiet, nervous thrill built within Mokou as she realized her introduction was next. She flipped the switch on her own microphone in anticipation.

“Next,” E’Beth continued, “we have Fujiwara no Mokou, witness to the Age of Iron.”

“Hey,” said Mokou. Her voice echoed through the speakers ringing the arena. “Uh, glad to be here. First time guest. Representing the afternoon rooftop repair crew.”

A cheer rose faintly from a distant section of the stands, centered around the familiar, transposed bulk of a great magma crab. Mokou pointed and gave a nod of acknowledgment.

“And finally,” said E’Beth, “next to me is Cheotl Pipapoqui, acclaimed poet and mimic.”

“Hi there!” said Cheotl. They pointed towards Mokou. “I’m stealing her face, but I did just give her a title. Also, to be clear, I didn’t work on the condensers or anything, I just put words together nicely.”

“Probably confusing, you copying me and all,” said Mokou.

“Probably,” Cheotl nodded. They cast their slitted gaze around the booth before settling on Tabi, hiding beneath Mokou’s chair. “Here, how’s this?”

A faint slithering accompanied the shifting of their body — human limbs shrinking, faux-fabric unraveling into fur, all with the same strange, quickened fluidity. Cheotl hopped up onto the table in the guise of an astral tabby, then curled up in front of the microphone.

It wasn’t a perfect replication — Cheotl still seemed fully corporeal, and the claws lacked a certain impact. But still, it was better than having to look at that same imperfect reflection applied to herself. “Sure,” said Mokou.

E’Beth laughed softly. “I, as ever, am your host and color commentator, Seeker E’Beth. And finally…” She trailed off encouragingly.

After a moment, Clactobelle fluttered in surprise. “Oh! And I’m Clactobelle, your action commentator. Sorry. Miss Mokou brought an astral tabby with her. I’m a little worried about it but I’ll do my best out there.”

“I know you will, partner,” E’Beth nodded. “That’s all of us up here tonight. My Baroness, who might our challenger be?”

Farouun paced languidly to the head of the stairs, taking up the cue with a grin. “A cantankerous survivor. A deep delver, an oathbreaker, an exile. And, as rumor would have it, an accomplished chef. Ask anyone who leaves her kitchen at the Six-Day Stilt — if you can find it. Indeed, you might call her a force within the Stilt’s underground culinary movements.”

Mokou felt a pang of regret over her hasty exit of that city. Evidently there was far more to it than its shifting tents and grand cathedral. She’d have to visit again someday — maybe once the head priest died.

“I sent her an invitation many weeks ago,” Farouun continued. “And now, by way of the deep roads, she has finally arrived. My loves, please welcome this carapaced cuisine. Enter Kitchen Heptagon! Freia-Lann Saltfoot!”

Two parallel lines of arclights thrummed to life from the base of the announcers’ booth, through the center of the arena, to the foot of the stairs. A fanfare rang out from the bandbots. The booth vibrated subtly as a massive set of chrome double doors opened beneath it. Mist spilled forth into the arena. Mokou rose in her seat and leaned over the table for a better vantage of what was happening beneath her.

A stocky figure strode out of the mists and into the heart of the arena. Spiky, interlocking pangolin scales flowed down her back and into a thick, dragging tail. Over these were fastened strategic straps of storage netting, carrying various survival implements. A long-barreled sniper rifle she had slung over her brawny shoulder, while a pair of daggers were sheathed at her hips. By way of clothing, she sported battered goggles raised up around her forehead, pocketed canvas shorts, and well-worn sandals. Most striking was her tremendous assortment of tattoos — broken chains, rings of salt crystals, defiant glyphs across the digits of her hefty claws. Perhaps they were meant to draw attention away from the old brand seared into her shoulder, evidently marking her as an oathbreaker. Her stride was unhurried, though she cast wincing, heavy-lidded glares at the brightness of the surrounding arclights. Farouun descended from the dais to meet her on the arena floor.

Was the Challenger even wearing a shirt? It didn’t seem so. Mokou settled back in her chair and plucked at a lapel. “Feelin’ a bit overdressed, now.”

“Despite what Farouun might lead you to believe, there’s no particular dress code,” said E’Beth. “Still, we appreciate the effort!”

Agate nodded. “And, scruffiness of the challenger aside, prizing mobility during the match is a sound strategy.”

Challenger and Baroness met in the central clearing between the opposing kitchens. Farouun knelt with an outstretched claw, clasping that of her guest’s in a warm greeting.

“Freia — may I call you Freia?” Farouun rumbled into her microphone before tilting it for the Challenger’s response.

“Aye,” she grunted.

“How was your journey from the Stilt? The deep roads can be treacherous.”

Freia shrugged. “Trawled trash and whacked shale. Slipped a few beasties, slew a few more. Kept a body from th’ damned sun.” Her voice was a touch low, gravel-fried, and carried a thick accent, though from where Mokou couldn’t place.

“Most likely kept you from the glass storm, as well,” Farouun nodded.

Freia’s eyes widened and she glanced around in disbelief. “Glass storm? This far o’er th’ fields? Tha speaks true?”

“Indeed. It brought about a stretch of light water rationing. You can thank the quick work of our repair crews that we’re no worse the wear for it.”

“Ach, well, condolences. Or, congratulations it’s done. Whiche’er.” Freia crossed her arms impatiently. “A body’s not here to gab weatherwise. Not when the kitchen calls.”

“So it does. Now, Freia—” Farouun rose and shifted to Freia’s side, facing the dais. She swept a claw across its bannered sconces. “Before you stand my imperishable Chefs. This honor falls to you. Choose.”

“Which is it to be?” asked E’Beth, her diction picking up in speed but staying clear. The bandbots drummed a steady crescendo beneath her. “Will Freia-Lann face Bajiko Ki, our Carbide Chef Ekuemekiyye? Or does she tremble to face a cybernetic master of poisons? Will she challenge Emberlily, our Carbide Chef Phyta? Could we keep up with a pair of speed demons like these? Might she possibly test herself against Imet, the Chefs Oth? It would have to be quite the test to stand a chance against Imet’s seven undefeated years and nine undefeated fugue-selves! Or will she go head-to-heads against the Carbide Chef Six Day Stilt? To prove, between Choraler and exile, who best champions the holy city of the Mechanimists!”

The bandbots’ drumroll snapped to a halt. Silence fell. Freia took a step forward.

“Mark this, then:” She whipped a clawed digit towards her choice. “Jathiss! I’m for thee!”

Jathiss lifted her heads and untwined her claws from her silent prayer. She gave a curtsy in acknowledgment, then rippled her digits with an anticipatory flutter as she made her way to the central stairs. Another fanfare accompanied her descent, reminiscent of the songs that wheeled around the distant Stilt’s hub cathedral. Farouun met her at the base of the stairs, welcoming her down to the floor of fused glass with a tender claw-clasp.

“Jathiss, my love,” Farouun’s purr carried through the speakers. “Let this be a spirited match.”

“As ever, then,” Jathiss replied. Her voice was remarkably gentle and subtly harmonized. “May the ground shake but the Kitchen Heptagon never tumble.”

Farouun ducked down to deliver a pair of kisses to Jathiss, one to each head’s pedipalps. With this parting gesture, she climbed back to the throne. Jathiss took her position opposite Freia with a respectful nod of her closest head. The other tracked Farouun’s ascent. Just watching the chimera climb up and down the stairs in her heavy glass mantle was nearly enough to get Mokou’s calves aching in sympathy. At the head of the stairs, Farouun turned to face the chefs below. She spoke.

“Much weighed on me as I sought tonight’s theme ingredient. The glass, raining from above. This grand shell of ours, protecting us. How it bristles with such delicate, yet vital things. The water rationing — how dry it’s been, these last weeks! I held it all within my ponderings, I saw the roundness of its whole.”

As she continued, each step of the staircase rose fluidly to the level of the throne platform, forming an extended walkway. Mokou’s vantage in the booth opposite the proceedings gave her a clear view to the figures emerging from doorways behind the throne: chain-mailed workers leading a pair of enormous whale-like beasts. They dragged themselves forward on splayed fins while strange vapors seeped from their gill-slits. Farouun lifted a clawed finger to tap the side of her chin in a gesture of thoughtful triumph.

“And so I thought — of course! It could only be that ingredient. Since our dear Challenger was below the earth for the glass storm, why not give her a taste of what she missed? We unveil it to you now! Tonight’s theme ingredient: URCHIN!”

A gong crashed as the crawling fishbeasts reared up at the edge of the throne platform, flanking Farouun. Their underbellies shuddered with strange effort. Their maws gaped, revealing glimpses of a glittering morass of spines within. Their shuddering peaked in synchronized spews of urchins the size of prize pumpkins and gobs of shimmering ejecta. At the apex of their wet firing arcs, Farouun lifted her upraised claw to the heavens and roared.

“LIVE AND COOK!”

Urchins crashed down on the black glass floor. Clouds of blue-brown gases roiled from them in glittering waves. Challenger and Chef scrambled away, breaking to their respective open-air kitchens. Already the beasts on the dais swelled with another volley. To the best her memory could serve her, Mokou had never seen anything quite like this. It was a spectacle so entrancing that she barely had time to simmer in her own thoughts.

Refreshing.

Chapter Text

“Bang a gong, we are on!” said E’Beth. “Kitchen Heptagon is sealed, and our contestants tonight now have one hour to take these fresh specimens raining down upon them and transmute them into a legendary meal for us to enjoy!”

Even allayed by Agate’s blockers, it was a touch disorienting to hear the delay between the esper’s voice down the table from her and her voice as echoed and amplified by the arena’s loudspeakers and acoustics. At her side, Mokou squinted towards the dais, occupied by the piscine leviathans, before giving voice to her own curiosity.

“What the hell are those?”

“Urchin belchers,” Agate replied. The disorienting effect was worse for her own amplified voice. Still, there was no better way to ferry her voice to the Heptagon’s masses. It was a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things — such was the price of technological enlightenment. It simply required a bit of extra focus on her own words and diction. “Large fishes one may find in grottoes beneath the earth and in deeper stretches of the Svy and Lake Hinnom.”

“These particular belchers are up from the Beast Ward,” said E’Beth.

Cheotl raised their head from their position of feline repose. “You want a closer look?”

“Closer look?” asked Mokou. “You mean, like—”

“That will not be necessary,” Agate hurriedly told the mimic. None of them needed an urchin belcher in the booth, emulated or otherwise.

Down below, the arena’s assistants donned gas masks broken out from gear storage to ward against the urchins’ spreading emanations. Freia-Lann affixed a filtered mask of her own provenance, contoured to her snout’s specifications, while Jathiss made for her side’s protective equipment storage station. It was heartening to see the Carbide Chef making use of such gear — gas masks were evidently low enough tech to not conflict with the strictures of her faith. More than heartening, though, it was thrilling. To see Jathiss in her role as the Heptagon’s chosen champion was a privilege.

“The hell kind of urchins are those, anyway?” Mokou asked. “They never used to get anywhere close to that big. These things are monsters!”

“They’re really quite standard specimens,” said Agate. “The coloration of the carapace shows which variety it might be: drowsing or addling. The difference lies chiefly in the effect of their gases.”

“Not taste?” asked Cheotl. “It sounds like you’re the expert, here.”

“The difference in taste is far more subtle,” Agate replied.

The belchers spat forth another volley. Pots scattered and cabinets splintered under the barrage’s wider shots. Several urchins landed closer to the mark: Freia-Lann curled beneath her scaly carapace, letting the urchin split open across her armored back, while Jathiss lifted a long fullerite-tipped stake to spear her own urchin from midair. Gas and ichorous ink billowed and sprayed down on the both of them.

“How many of the damn things are those belchers even carrying?” asked Mokou. Her curiosity was encouraging — the more she learned of Qud’s threats in a controlled environment, the better she’d fare outside the Heptagon’s walls. There was no telling when that might be — or whether Agate might have the chance to accompany her.

“They could go all night if we let them!” said E’Beth, with a touch of pride.

“Pretty nasty pattern,” Mokou mused. “Each wave doesn’t look that dense, but between the shot size, the spread, and the gas coverage, it really creeps up on you. And the poor bastards down there have to cook in it.”

But then, naturally, Mokou’s curiosity filtered through her own lens of unfathomable experience. And an indelible part of what dictated the focus of that lens, evidently, was her history of wizard artillery. It was perhaps as charming as it was concerning.

“The match promises to be a touch unorthodox in its prescribed structure,” Agate nodded. “In the standard flow, there’s a subdual period for the theme ingredient. Here, it seems, subdual will be an ongoing process so long as the belchers are active.”

Fluttering preceded the glowmoth’s return. Clactobelle’s antennae sheltered beneath a brightly-painted hardhat, while a filtered veil ringing its brim protected the rest of her cephalothorax. “E’Beth!”

“Go ahead, Clactobelle.”

“I was able to ask the Challenger and the Chef about their opening strategies!”

“Do tell,” Cheotl purred.

“Miss Freia said she saw a few urchin belchers on the way over and that they were no problem. She said she was going to catch the urchins!” said Clactobelle. “I’m paraphrasing, but that was the thrust.”

“Catching them?” Cheotl flicked their tail from side to side in consideration. “Is that such a good idea?”

“Urchin meat is deceptively delicate,” said E’Beth. “Excessive shocks can lessen the natural flavor. In all likelihood, the flavor of the one that broke on her back is already a bit spoiled.”

Clactobelle nodded and continued. “Miss Jathiss also said she was going to catch them! But she winked when she said it. At least, I think it was a wink. It can be hard to tell when Miss Jathiss is winking.”

“Is spearing them much better?” asked Mokou.

“Less surface area for the impact, maybe?” Cheotl offered.

Agate’s ear flicked at her fellow judges’ facile speculation. Already Jathiss’s movements and quiet directives revealed a deeper facet to her stated strategy. More of her assistants armed themselves with stakes, yet the Chef wove herself between their positions with purpose. “She clearly doesn’t intend to keep spearing them. Observe. That’s her webbing.”

“Ohh, you’re right!” said Cheotl. “Like a net, then! Spinnerets look awfully handy. Maybe I should grow some.”

“Might help you, but what about Freia?” asked Mokou. “How’s she gonna—”

The Challenger squared her stance beneath the next volley and spread her arms in readiness. She let out a muffled, defiant yell and caught the central urchin of the spread. Her tone climbed from defiance to pain, then ceased abruptly under a point-blank gust of sleep gas. She tipped gently backwards onto the curve of her carapaced back, still pinioned. A trio of gas-masked assistants approached to gingerly extract the urchin and shake her awake.

“Ah,” Mokou muttered, rubbing the back of her neck. “Poor bastard.”

“That reminds me,” said Cheotl. “E’Beth?”

“Yes, Cheotl.”

“Have any Challengers died before?”

“Ooh, good question,” cut in Mokou. “Seems inevitable, right?”

“Unfortunately, yes, it’s a distinct risk for anyone in the arena, but especially for Challengers,” said E’Beth. “Since the Heptagon was founded, eight Challengers have lost their lives during a match.”

“Little over one a year, huh?” Mokou rubbed her chin. “Is that a lot?”

“It’s not as many as I was expecting,” Cheotl answered — an irksomely inadequate address to the question Mokou had posed.

“Roughly translating to a six percent fatality rate,” said Agate. “Though the actual distribution is more front-loaded.”

“Those early years were a bit more… chaotic,” said E’Beth, her voice tinged with a sheepish regret.

“They died in the name of advancing kitchen consciousness,” said Agate. “We should all hope for as lofty an end.”

The faintest sigh prompted her to glance at Mokou. The immortal’s expression was faintly sour but otherwise unreadable. All, Agate corrected herself, for whom an end applies.

The Baroness’s voice rolled out across the arena. “Fifty-five minutes remain.”

Jathiss had finished her weaving. Her assistants hoisted their stakes, and a canopy of thick silk rose from the glittering clouds to shelter her allotted stretch of kitchen. A well-timed maneuver — it bowed under the latest volley, then sprang back to its initial relaxed curve with the urchins deftly trapped. Doubtless it was a gentle enough catch to preserve the meat’s delicacy, for it hadn’t even disturbed the urchins enough to provoke their gases. Jathiss readied her stake to harvest them, sounding off more commands to her assistants.

“Masterfully done!” said Agate. She clenched her fist in emphatic zeal, elastyne creaking in her grip. “It’s not often a match gives the Choraler such a pronounced opportunity to showcase her architectural talents.”

“That was her strategy? A giant web?” Clactobelle groaned. “Ohhh… Well, I’d better get back to it.”

“Stay safe down there,” said E’Beth, softly.

“Yeah, keep your head up,” said Mokou, waving to the departing glowmoth. There was a subtle energy to her voice — she was engaged, even enthused, with the proceedings. How long would the fire last this time? She sat up slightly in her seat to peer down into the softly roiling gases below. “Looks like Freia’s managed to stockpile a few, too. Don’t envy her method, though.”

“She’s got plenty of piercings already, what’s a few more?” Cheotl said.

Even from the height of the booth and through the density of fumes, Agate could see the way Freia-Lann swayed on her feet. A turn of the Challenger’s head to bark out muffled orders revealed a crack in the pane of her gas mask. Crude as her strategy was, her dogged tenacity was admirable. And certainly Agate was grateful to her — she’d picked Jathiss, after all. While every Chef was illuminating to witness, Agate could recognize a particular fondness within her towards Jathiss. A chance to observe her techniques was ever a chance she’d relish.

“Hang on, she’s already starting on a dish,” said Mokou. “Anyone catch what she put in that saucepot?”

E’Beth nodded. “Clactobelle should have the details in just a moment, if — ah.”

Wisping gas parted over a counter to reveal the slumbering form of Clactobelle. She had alit there, scant paces from Freia-Lann’s stovetop, presumably to interrogate the Challenger, before falling prey to the drifting sleep gas. Despite the filters, her veil was not as hermetic as a gas mask. Freia-Lann scanned the belchers for signs of another volley, then darted to the glowmoth’s side. She took up the microphone, gesturing hurriedly to the saucepot.

“Gland stew, dreambeard and mazebeard! Little gob-gladdener for us and us’s helpers. Keeps the spine-fogs at bay!”

“Ooh, so it’s not for us?” said Cheotl.

“Evidently not,” Agate replied. She slipped a trace of approval into her tone. “It seems you have a strategy after all, Ms. Saltfoot.”

The microphone captured the subtle grunt of breath catching in Freia’s indignant throat. She pointed a blunted claw to the booth. “Strategy, aye! Us’ll stoppen up thine gab with urchin, dishwise!”

If the Challenger was this brittle, perhaps she’d crumble before the end of the match. It was a touch at odds with how she’d been introduced. Agate allowed herself a small, superior smile. “Carry on, then.”

Freia choked back any direct response. She looked instead down to Clactobelle on the counter. Freia softly shook the slumbering glowmoth to hand her the microphone. “Waken tha. Thine speakstick. Off wi’ ye.”

“Oh? Oh! Oh no! Thank you!”

Mokou leaned over to direct a nudge into Agate’s side. “You know her or something?”

“Her name circulates in my professional circles, but I am yet to have the pleasure of her direct acquaintance — personal or culinary.”

Another barrage of urchins crashed into the kitchens below, splintering cupboards and snarling catch-strands. Frenzied culinary activity followed in flurries and spikes.

“So you don’t know her,” said Mokou. “Why you talking at her like that, then?”

Agate scoffed. “In case you overlooked the implications, this is a battle for the very soul of Stilt cuisine. The outcome of this hour of effort reverberates far beyond the walls of this arena. Such responsibility should not fall upon the unready.”

“Sure, but you’re acting like that’s her when you haven’t even tried her food yet,” Mokou replied. It was a fair point. Before Agate could concede it, another of Mokou’s nudges pressed into her. “Hey, we were out there, how come you never took me to her kitchen, huh?”

“Firstly,” Agate sighed, lifting a single digit to count off, “I had intended to pay her kitchen a visit in the course of my research, but she had already closed it for her journey to the Heptagon. Secondly,” she lifted a second digit, “you punched out Eschelstadt II.”

Most opportunities for direct observation had been lost when they’d left the Stilt — but not all. One had now come to her. Perhaps she needn’t shelve her polemic after all. It was a bittersweet consideration; she couldn’t help but bristle at teetering vacillations of feasibility.

But then, there was a chance the outcome of this match might render her polemic unnecessary. That would be quite the coup.

Cheotl cast a curious gaze down the table. “How long have you two known each other?”

“About four weeks,” answered Mokou.

Four weeks. It was difficult, sometimes, to believe that span when its impact on her own considerations and trajectories was so outsized. That impact showed no signs of lessening.

“I would have never guessed,” said Cheotl.

“E’Beth!”

“Yes, Clactobelle?”

The glowmoth sounded out of breath. “I asked the Challenger how many dishes she had planned for us tonight! She said five!”

“Ambitious,” Agate nodded approvingly, though Mokou could sense a hint of skepticism in her tone.

“Five dishes in an hour. That a lot?” asked Mokou.

“Considering the effort she’s already spent on a dish we won’t even be judging, yes,” Agate replied.

“Thank you, Clactobelle,” said E’Beth. “What about the Carbide Chef?”

“Well, I tried to ask Miss Jathiss, but she didn’t understand the question!”

A glance at Jathiss’s half of the kitchen arena revealed her weaving atop the canopy. Though the canopy needed repairs, Jathiss seemed uncertain and chaotic in both her webwork and footwork. She stumbled too close to a captive urchin, provoking a jet of shimmering blue fog from within its spined carapace. Assistants below flapped at the gas clouds with tablecloths in vain attempts to hasten their dissipation.

“Masks or no, she’s been down in the addle-clouds for some time now,” noted Cheotl. Their tone grew somber, resonating oddly from their feline frame. “Dim through the misty panes and thick arclight…”

When it became clear there was nothing else forthcoming from their impromptu recitation, Mokou spoke. “The hell’s in that stuff, anyway?”

Agate cleared her throat softly. “An addling urchin’s aerosolized emanations contain a psychoactive compound that attacks visual and spatial processing — a temporary effect, thankfully. A similar compound occurs, as you may have guessed, in the glands of the mature mazebeard, which can be prepared into full-spectrum metabolic immunity.”

“Guess Freia’s dish is already paying off, then,” Mokou nodded. “Not just for her, but her whole team.”

Cheotl rolled onto their back and batted idly at the air beneath the microphone. “Have you ever tried to be gas? The textural interplay seems so wonderful. I can usually get the visuals, but the solidity’s another matter. There’s got to be some kind of trick to it.”

“I don’t usually try to be vaporized, no,” said Mokou. Generally it happened to her whether she wanted it or not. For a moment, her thoughts were elsewhere, down warrens of reminiscence, each one terminating in split-seconds of time-dulled excruciation. With the discernment of a vintner, she sifted through the subtleties that separated the brain-cooking shock of a pyroclastic flow from the full-body atomization of Lunarian ordnance. Consciousness, mercifully, could never withstand such extremes.

It was only the Baroness’s stately tones that brought her out from the past and back into the booth. “Forty-five minutes remain.”

“I also have a little bit of information about those dishes,” said Clactobelle.

“Thank you, Clactobelle,” E’Beth replied. There was relief in her tone — how much of Mokou’s dire memories had she picked up? Enough to be grateful for a distraction, evidently. “What can you tell us?”

The glowmoth nodded politely, keeping watch for any signs of Tabi. “Well, before I came back up, the Challenger was working on some doughs, and it looked like she’d gotten some roe from a few of her catches. From Miss Jathiss’s side, she’d started some rice, and her assistants were working with spine fruit.”

“Of course,” said Agate, a hint of triumph in her tone. “That will be for Hot and Spiny, I’d wager. Her rendition is exquisite.”

“Hot and Spiny,” Mokou muttered. The name was freshly familiar. “We had that at Luli’s, yeah?”

“Indeed,” said Agate. “If any dish exemplifies Stilt cuisine, it is the Hot and Spiny. Any kitchen you might patronize in the Stiltgrounds will have their own version, though whether that version has any merit beyond baseline sustenance is hardly guaranteed.”

“These broadcasts reach the Stilt, right?” asked Cheotl.

“That’s correct,” said E’Beth.

“So they can follow along at home!” Cheotl purred.

Agate sniffed in response. “They can try. Frankly, considering the state of Stilt cuisine, this battle is long overdue.”

Mokou tore her eyes from the spectacle to cast a glance over to Agate. She was smiling — a cold and faintly superior smile, but still, she seemed to be enjoying herself. Mokou had rarely seen her in such high spirits. She knew Agate cared — they’d come to blows, in part, over the state of Stilt cuisine. Perhaps this battle would give Agate closure. Was that too much to expect from two competing multi-course meals?

“E’Beth!”

“Go ahead, Clactobelle.”

“I was finally able to ask Miss Jathiss about her course plans! She’s also planning five dishes, and as for Hot and Spiny, she said just wait and see. But I can tell you, I’m smelling a lot of ingredients from the Palladium Reef from her side! Under the sleep gas, I mean.”

More urchins sailed down into the clouds, impacting into Freia’s kitchen with a crunch of keratin and a cacophony of crushed saucepans. Mokou winced in sympathy. Even from up in the booth, she could hear Freia’s shriek of frustration.

“Ngaaaaahhh! Still five!”

“Oh dear,” said Clactobelle. The commotion had drawn her attention, too. She turned back to the booth. “I can also report that — aah!”

Her attention returned just a hair too late. Tabi leapt through the tablecloth to pounce on the glowmoth. Clactobelle half-fell, half-fluttered off the railing to escape back down into the arena.

“Sssst!” Mokou hissed. “Tabi, no! Clactobelle, she can’t hurt you.”

Tabi landed halfway through the low front wall of the booth, beneath the railing. She poked her head back out and meowed in frustration.

“Rrowww!”

“What did you expect? You’re a ghost,” Mokou sighed.

“Oh, you’ve never pet her, have you?” asked Cheotl.

“Nope,” said Mokou. “Can’t.”

Cheotl wriggled atop the table — mostly in the manner of a cat, but with a subtly gelatinous undercurrent. “You want to see what it’s like?”

Mokou lifted her hand before uncertainty gripped her. “It’s not gonna be the same, though.”

“Only from lack of practice. Astral tabbies make for rare models.” Another, more enticing wriggle. “I’m seeing what it’s like, too. Humor me. ”

“Fair enough,” said Mokou. She ran her hand through Cheotl’s well-emulated fur. The poet was slightly cooler to the touch than an average cat, but still soft and fluffy. “You even paying attention to the match?”

“Sure I am,” Cheotl purred. “Look, Freia’s trying to solder a roast back together.”

“The Heptagon is of course stocked with kitchen-grade soldering irons, but it appears the Challenger has brought her own,” said E’Beth. “Best of luck to her.”

Indeed, Freia stooped busily over a mangled dish, sweat dripping from the band of her goggles and strange vapors wisping out with her shallow breaths. Mokou wouldn’t have thought she could eat solder, but then, she’d been surprised by a few meals since her arrival at the Heptagon. The longer she stayed here, the more edibility started to turn conceptually abstract. “Sort of a Kintsugi approach, huh. Very zen.”

“Kintsugi — what is this?” asked Agate, piercing gaze resting upon her.

Mokou cocked her head to focus her recollections. “Oh, uh, it was a pottery repair technique. You fill in the seams between the pieces with gold.”

Cheotl perked up. “Oh, that sounds lovely! Like it celebrates the act of repair itself?”

“Yeah, something like that,” said Mokou.

“That’s quite the sentiment! Though, I don’t believe it was one the Challenger was consciously expressing,” said E’Beth.

“Sure, just reminded me of it, is all,” Mokou chuckled.

Once more Farouun’s proclamation filled the arena. “Thirty-five minutes remain.”

Agate’s attention had stayed on Mokou. “And what of zen, then?”

“Mm,” Mokou grunted. “Don’t think I have time to explain that one.” Her own fault for dredging up those ancient contexts.

“Time or not, that perspective of yours is precisely why I invited you to judge,” E’Beth smiled down the table. “I’m grateful you’d share any of it with us. That goes for all three of you, of course.”

“It’s a hell of a thing you’ve set up here,” Mokou replied appreciatively. She swept her free hand lazily across the arena. Assistants stirred pots, minced meats, and sieved flours, heedless of the ongoing barrage. The competitors were dynamos in the arena’s twin centers. Dishes she could only guess at circulated between staffed stations, components of an as-yet-unglimpsable whole. “Really enriching stuff. And I’m even getting a dinner out of it.”

“Yet something’s bothering you, is it not?” asked E’Beth, innocently.

“Oh, it’s just a little thing,” said Mokou. “Back of my mind, really. Surprised you even picked it up. It’s just  — the Challenger, apparently she left the Stilt before us, and she just shows up, what, today? It only took us about a week to get here.”

Granted, a week at the hindren’s death-march pace. But that week was already weeks ago. More than enough time for her legs to recover.

“A week, overland,” Agate answered. “Ms. Saltfoot took the deep roads. Beneath Qud, one can hardly expect conveniently contiguous caverns between any given surface points. There are no landmarks for orientation beyond what one makes for oneself. Subterranean travel is a sustained effort in three-dimensional navigational awareness, rife with backtracks, unplanned climbs, and direly-calculated delves. This is all to say nothing of the ecosystems themselves.”

“But there’s roads down there?” asked Mokou. “Deep roads?”

Agate sighed in response. “There are suggestions. It’s a considerably optimistic bit of nomenclature. Four weeks is good time. Ms. Saltfoot seems one accustomed to the rigors of subterranean travel.”

“I believe it,” said Mokou. “Good set of claws on her.”

“Naturally! She’s a mopango,” said Cheotl. “They’re practically built for spelunking. See?”

Fur rioted beneath Mokou’s grasp. In its place, scales swam up, thick, rough, almost fleshy. For a moment she feared her hand would be caught in the shifting. She yanked it back. The poet’s burgeoning form rolled off the table and back into the chair, suddenly filling it with the bulky frame of the Challenger. Their wide, copied tail draped across the tablecloth.

“Little more warning next time?” Mokou managed.

Cheotl grinned and lifted their new, spade-like claws in an easy shrug. They’d even managed to approximate the tattooed knuckle-glyphs. “I got bored.”

Now that Mokou had a closer vantage to Freia’s body markings — or something close enough to them — another question jostled itself loose. “How’d she get the brand, anyway?”

Agate scoffed and bowed her forehead to her hand.

“What, is that a rude question?” Mokou bristled. “Soon as you clap eyes on her, it’s right there! I’m just curious what the story is.”

Cheotl, at least, was willing to indulge her curiosity, politesse be damned. “Branding like that is something they do in some of the holds of the northern salt pans for breaking the water ritual. From what I’ve heard, she did in a water baron she was bonded to.”

“And the Baroness still invited her, huh?” Mokou whistled. “Pretty gutsy.”

“Well, that was some time ago. It’s hard to work your way back from that kind of stigma, but she’s come this far already. If she gets the win tonight, that’s bound to help, too,” Cheotl replied, sounding more bemused than sympathetic.

Mokou considered their words briefly. It seemed there really were consequences to the water ritual. She’d have to keep in mind not to bond with anyone she might have to kill later.

“E’Beth!” Clactobelle’s voice came over the speakers and not, as seemed to be her habit, from a trip to the booth. Tabi had really spooked her, the poor thing.

“Clactobelle, what is it?” E’Beth replied.

“Well, I mentioned Miss Jathiss using Reef ingredients. I can now tell you she’s got junk dollars stewing in an acidic algae broth!”

“The Reef,” Mokou tapped her chin. “What was it — the Palladium Reef? Whereabout’s that?”

“Further to the east, across the Svy and the jungles of Qud,” Agate replied. “It borders Lake Hinnom and… the Moon Stair.”

“The Moon Stair…” Mokou muttered. Just how much farther to the east was that? The Svy, she’d heard, was a river, but even that wasn’t visible from the Heptagon’s roofs. Somewhere past it, if her only lead was any good, Kaguya waited. What would she make of this spectacle? If there was one thing she knew about Kaguya after all this time, it was that the princess rarely got enough enrichment. She’d have to keep waiting. Mokou was in no hurry to leave. “That’s way out there, right? Thought this was a fight about Stilt cuisine. They use these kinds of ingredients often?”

“It’s hardly out of the question,” Agate replied. “The Six-Day Stilt is the trading hub of the eastern Moghra’yi. Caravans bring in goods from west across the great desert and from east out of Qud’s various climes, reaches, and depths. To truly express its culinary trends, one must be versed in the ingredients of dozens of regions.”

“Did you have anything more to report, Clactobelle?” asked E’Beth. “Where are you?”

Distress mounted in the glowmoth’s reply. “Oh! Well, no, only that — I’m in trouble!”

“There!” Agate pointed down to a chaotic snarl of sticky silken canopy. The strands shook with Clactobelle’s feeble struggling. Already the belchers on the overlooking dais tensed with another salvo. “She’s caught!”

The only person in this city who had faced her danmaku was now immobilized under a heavy barrage. “Oh, shit!” said Mokou.

Chapter Text

The catch-canopy bowed under the impact of another clutch of urchins. Clactobelle shrieked, venting her fear through the arena’s sound system at a level beyond what the speakers could accurately transmit. Agate winced, grateful for her noise blockers. She switched off her own microphone and leaned back to direct a clipped query down the table.

“Could we cut her mic?”

Mokou whirled on her, half-rising and casting an incredulous hand down to the glowmoth’s predicament. “What the hell? We can’t just leave her down there!”

“We are not leaving her,” Agate placed a hand on Mokou’s shoulder to press her back into her seat. From their vantage in the booth, Jathiss’s actions were clear: the Chef mounted a countertop as a first step back atop her canopy.

“Clactobelle, try to stay calm,” said E’Beth. “Help is on the way.”

Clactobelle stilled her struggles, though it was Agate’s guess as to whether it was from the esper’s soothing tones or from the sensed approach of the webs’ architect. The situation seemed well in hand. What concerned her more was that she had lost track of the Challenger’s movements. Metal flashed within the gas clouds.

“Is that her gun?” asked Cheotl.

The vapors whipped away from the rising Freia-Lann. She leveled her rifle at the dais. The Challenger loosed a harsh cry. “Covering fire!”

A shot echoed through the arena. A belcher flinched, then bellowed in pain; blood blossomed from its underbelly. It wavered uncertainly on the edge of the dais. Uniformed handlers hauled back on the belchers to keep the wounded one upright and to lead the other to cover. Farouun, mere paces away from the target, hadn’t moved from her throne. Freia-Lann tucked her rifle to her chest and sprinted towards the base of the dais.

“Look at her go!” said Mokou. “Shooting a belcher — is that allowed?”

“It’s certainly a risk for anyone directly involved in the proceedings,” said E’Beth. “If nothing else, she’s stopped the urchin barrage.”

At the base, the Challenger dropped her rifle and shifted into a solid stance. To Agate’s mild chagrin, Freia-Lann spat on her palms and rubbed them together. This done, she punched her claws into the concrete. Scales shifted and clacked with the movement of underlying muscles as Freia-Lann began to haul herself upwards.

“And — climbing out of the arena? How about that?” asked Mokou. The unfolding action seemed to have her transfixed, still half out of her seat.

“A few have tried, though Freia’s having an easier time of it than those previous Challengers,” E’Beth replied. “When, for whatever reason, competitors leave the arena during the match, they have a one minute grace period to return before disqualification. Usually, a move like this signals a forfeit, but we’ll find out shortly.”

Freia-Lann reached the middle tier. Its sconces were dark, their Chefs elsewhere. With hardly a break in her stride, she launched herself at the next wall. Blood dripped down the concrete from the belcher teetering overhead.

Farouun stood from her throne to consult a timepiece. Her voice boomed. “Thirty seconds, Ms. Saltfoot.”

“She’s already suppressed the urchin barrages. Further out-of-bounds action is a tremendous risk,” said Agate. What prompted it?

“Maybe she’s going after Farouun,” Mokou mused. “Like, what’s one more baron?”

Agate judged the possibility of an assassination attempt to be remote, but it would prompt such a risk. Considering the Baroness’s physique and her coterie’s capacities, the chances of success were equally remote. Ultimately, it would make for a rather ignominious end to the match, especially after all the effort spent on her dishes.

“Fifteen seconds!” said Farouun, unflapped by the immortal’s speculation. She took a few paces out from her throne, closer to the edge.

Freia-Lann hauled herself over the top lip of the dais, scant paces from the wounded belcher. She scrambled up to a low stance, gaze darting between the beast and the Baroness. She drew her daggers. The belcher roared, shaking free of its handlers to charge the Challenger. Freia-Lann curled down upon herself, rolling under the belcher’s striking maw.

“Ten seconds!” said Farouun.

“It’s not worth disqualification!” Cheotl wailed.

The Challenger skidded to a stop just before Farouun. Freia-Lann spared a glance upwards. The Baroness’s microphone caught her bark.

“Us just wants to grill!”

Freia-Lann whirled back to face the belcher. With a hoarse cry, she charged the rearing beast. Her daggers plunged into its underbelly. The force of her assault drove both beast and Challenger over the edge. They sailed into midair.

“Oh my god!” cried Mokou, falling back in her chair in astonishment. “Is that allowed? Is that legal? I don’t care!”

“Five! Four! Three!”

The belcher crashed to the ground. Life fled its body with the impact. Freia-Lann rolled from its belly, planting her sandaled feet back on the fused glass of the arena floor. Farouun, above, snapped shut her timepiece, then nodded.

“Twenty-five minutes remain.”

“She’s safe!” cried E’Beth. “With one belcher fallen prey to the Challenger and the other retired, the submission phase is finally over! That makes it the second-longest in Heptagon history, next to the battle of Theme Ingredient: Yempuris Phi.”

As the verdict reached the Challenger, she raised her bloody daggers into the air and screamed in triumph.

“Ahh,” Cheotl sighed. “Grace hasn’t yet abandoned her.”

“Is this how it usually goes around here?” asked Mokou. “Because all this — it’s great. I’m having a great time.”

Agate glanced across at the immortal. There was a genuine smile on her face — perhaps the widest Agate had seen her sport in their time together. Agate lifted her hand from Mokou’s shoulder to brush her cheek. Mokou started softly, then met her gaze with a curious expression.

“They do tend to be quite lively,” said Agate. She allowed herself a self-satisfied smile. Finally, a worthy date. “Pay attention and you may even pick up new tactics.”

“New tactics?” Mokou replied. “Gotta be pretty damn fresh to be new to me. Like what?”

“When Agate competed, she made critical use of a flamethrower,” said E’Beth.

“That ain’t new,” said Mokou. After a moment’s thought, she laughed. Her merriment settled into another smile she flashed at Agate. “Damn, though. Wish I’d seen that.”

The arena’s activity only intensified after the fall of the belcher. Its settling carcass was given over to butchery, while the last urchins were harvested from its innards and from the canopy. Free from the threat of barrage, both sides felt at liberty to turn to more delicate constructions. Jathiss freed Clactobelle from the webs. Soon enough, the glowmoth resumed her feverish, flitting reports. There was far more to keep track of in the latter half of a match.

“E’Beth!”

“Go ahead, Clactobelle.”

“That acidic algal stew Miss Jathiss was working on? Yeah, she’s adding esh nests to it!”

“Oh, she’s spoiling us,” said Cheotl.

“Esh nests? What are those?” asked Mokou.

“Nests of the white esh, a waterfowl endemic to Lake Hinnom,” Agate answered. She couldn’t help but agree with Cheotl’s assessment. “Only a specific subset are sought after as a luxury ingredient. Under the proper conditions, subterranean esh will construct their nests from arsplice hyphae. Though this prevents the hyphae from fully fruiting, the flavor remains unparalleled.”

Mokou nodded appreciatively. “Back in the day, we had swallows that built nests like that. My wife was always looking out for ‘em. Very rare, capstone of any mainland banquet. Sounds like Jathiss knows how to make a gal feel welcome at a feast. And I don’t even have to pay to get this kind of treatment?”

“Absolutely not,” said Agate, making certain the microphone captured her every syllable. “Should you meet any chef who charges for their meals, know that they have betrayed the very soul of Stilt cuisine. Indeed, the very soul of Qud’s hospitality. Kill them.”

If only she could see the looks on the faces of every pretender at the Stilt when the broadcast reached them. A bit of fear would discourage those practices from taking root.

“Woah, you can advocate violence on here?” asked Mokou.

“All views expressed by celebrity guest judges are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Heptagon,” said E’Beth. “With that said, Agate, would you care to clarify that?”

“Naturally,” said Agate. “This is foundational. Food is necessary for life. Anyone who locks this necessity behind economic strictures is one who is denying life. I am merely advocating for meeting violence with violence.”

“Well, when you put it that way, then by all means,” Cheotl laughed.

“She’s right, though,” said Mokou. “I’ve lived through that. When that’s all anyone knows, so everyone does it. Hell, I’ve done it. You lose people. Every day I remember it’s not like that here is another day I get to feel a tiny miracle. That’s fragile. If you let that kind of practice get a foothold here, it’s gonna kill that miracle for everyone.”

“Well said!” Agate clapped her on the shoulder. Was her reminiscence prompted by guilt over Agate’s interrupted polemic? Was it simply a matter of solidarity? Either way, it was an unexpected bit of validation that imbricated nicely with her corrective aims.

“Thanks,” said Mokou. She grinned over at Agate. “Anyone you had in mind? Happy to pitch in.”

“Not at this present juncture,” Agate replied with a cool smile.

“Thank you for clarifying, Agate,” said E’Beth.

“Fifteen minutes remain,” Farouun announced. She had returned to her throne, leaning against one arm to rest her head on her claw. If Agate’s advocation perturbed her in any capacity, she certainly didn’t show it. Such a reaction was unlikely regardless — Agate knew her appetites. Doubtless, Farouun understood.

“E’Beth!” Clactobelle clamored once more.

“Yes, Clactobelle?”

“Miss Freia wanted me to tell you up here that Miss Jathiss isn’t the only one who can cook with luxury ingredients! Notice the grilled belcher’s skewers: those are the spines of an urchin cherub she’s using!”

“And she’s still alive?” Cheotl asked in awe.

“Evidently,” murmured Agate, narrowing her eyes upon the Challenger’s grill. Between the fish-flesh and skewered vegetables, the spines gleamed. Opaline, perfectly-molded, still subtly wet amidst the roaring flames. A prize of this caliber was proof that Agate had underestimated her. “A salt-aspected urchin cherub, it seems.”

“A cherub,” Mokou said, in flat disbelief. Agate could feel the immortal’s querying gaze upon her. “We’re talking, like, Celestial emissaries?”

“Imagine a perfect urchin,” said Cheotl. They brought their claws together to rest on the tablecloth. Clawflesh flowed together into a mass, bleached and rounded and prickly, modeling in time with their words. “Sphericality, the harmony of each erupting spine. Pumping gallium undiminished by the ages. I can’t quite get it. But it’s like this.”

“Uh huh,” Mokou nodded towards Cheotl’s bodily model, then flicked her gaze back to Agate, querulous now. It was a look that promised further interrogation, later.

“You’d have to ask the Eaters their purpose in beckoning or molding such beings in the first place,” Agate sighed. “Failing this course, one must simply accept the Cherubim as one of innumerable possible threats along the deep roads. Taking such an encounter into account, four weeks is astonishingly good time between here and the Stilt.”

“Downright miraculous,” Mokou insinuated.

“Call it what you like.”

“Miss Freia also said the spines were edible! Or, that they would be when she was done with them,” said Clactobelle.

“Functional and tasteful. Thank you, Clactobelle,” said E’Beth. “You can probably come back now.”

“No, thank you!”

In the final stretches of the match, the grander picture came in focus. The pulse-pounding brutality of subdual had passed, and what bloomed from it was the intellectual and organizational labor of dedicated cuisines. The Challenger looked pressed and antsy, but hardly out of control. She’d plated two dishes — a chilled dessert and and a bread-and-pâté appetizer — and now funneled her efforts towards a central course of stuffed lagroot-dough pasta. Jathiss, meanwhile, was well on track to achieve her promised five. She’d plated three already: her stewed esh nests, a rice bowl offering, and her main course, still steaming in its plating of opened urchin shells.

“There, you see?” Agate gestured, allowing herself a hint of gloat. “Hot and Spiny, as I said.”

“I’ll be damned,” Mokou muttered. “Hell of a presentation factor.”

“It really just cries out ‘urchin!’, doesn’t it?” said Cheotl. They had shifted forms once more, alighting on the guise of the absent glowmoth. Mokou had absently taken to petting them again. Agate could only hope it wasn’t a habit — in most sectors of the Heptagon, it was relatively harmless, but should the immortal attempt the same on one of Cheotl’s feral kin in the wilds, it would involve considerably more grappling.

Farouun rose from her throne and strode to the edge of the dais, channeling her hunger into an anticipatory pacing. “Five minutes remain.”

“Something I’ve noticed,” said Mokou, “Freia ended up with more roe, seems like. She’s been making good use of it.”

“That’s the luck of the catch,” said E’Beth. “Though, speaking of catches, you could also say that Jathiss ended up with more meat. Her canopy made for a much softer landing. Either way, there’s no way they’re getting more before the time is up.”

“Those are her buns coming out, yeah?” Mokou nodded down towards an oven on Jathiss’s half. “That’s the one of hers with roe in it I’ve seen so far. They look so soft… Almost like sweet bean buns.”

“The softness in this particular dough owes to the added gel,” said Agate. “Sourced, I believe, from her own glands.” Jathiss was fond of the technique. Agate considered herself fortunate for her previous opportunities to partake of it. The Choraler’s sentimentality was warranted — though it hadn’t availed her against Agate in the arena. How would it fare this time?

“That gives me an idea,” Cheotl buzzed. They rolled onto their back and extended their moth legs upwards. Fur flowed up each forelimb, glittering, emulated, its texture hybridized between a glowmoth’s downy fuzz and a tabby’s mottled coat. Each chitinous tip ballooned into a tabby’s pawpads. They clamped Mokou’s arm to prevent its retreat. “Behold! The strengths of both, the weaknesses of neither, and above all! Soft, beany paws.”

“Oh, sure, very nice,” Mokou managed, her pets frozen. “Agate, you said her glands?”

“Yes. Her slime glands,” said Agate. The Choraler’s dedication to personally sourcing her ingredients when she could was admirable. “The taste is quite mild once desalinated. Though, the potency of its virginal expression has its own appeal.”

“Alright,” said Mokou. With her free hand, she patted at her jacket pocket. “Y’all mind if I smoke? Think I need a smoke.”

“Go ahead, Mokou,” E’Beth nodded.

“Two minutes remain,” announced Farouun.

Jathiss artfully plated her black-doughed steaming buns. The Challenger, meanwhile, left her pasta briefly straining to demonstrate her intended skewer garnish to a pair of assistants.

“Is Freia going to make it?” asked Cheotl. “That’s a third dish from her — wait, a fourth? She’s still promising five, last I checked.”

“It’s no great shame to have to jettison a dish and rein in one’s ambitions,” said Agate. “There’s only so much one can plan for.”

Mokou shot her a curious glance. “Did you have to cut any dishes when you were down there?”

“Of course not,” Agate replied. “My methods are perfect.”

“Both chefs are really in the thick of it in this final stretch,” said E’Beth. “They may not have your methods, Agate, but they’re truly showing us the depths of Stilt cuisine tonight!”

“And the heights,” Mokou exhaled a slow plume of smoke. “Still thinking about that dive Freia took. Didn’t slow her down one bit.”

The Baroness’s rumble cut across the arena. “One minute remains.”

“Jathiss has just about wrapped it up,” E’Beth noted. “A few last-minute tweaks and she’ll have all five out.”

Even as E’Beth spoke, the Choraler finished her tweaks. Her time management had been masterful. She bowed in gratitude to her assistants, then ducked her heads before her dishes in silent prayer. It was ever her habit to conclude her evening’s efforts with prayer. She had done so when she had faced Agate, as well. More of her sentimentality.

“She’s praying with time on the clock?” asked Mokou. “Pretty gutsy.”

“Call it guts or humility — that’s our Choraler!” said E’Beth.

“Thirty seconds remain,” Farouun called out. The circuit of her pacing tightened.

Compartments in the throne dais slid open, releasing the Heptagon’s magni-drones. They began their slow descent to the arena floor, conveyors of culinary detail to the ringing crowds. All attention now focused upon the Challenger’s section of kitchen. Freia-Lann barked out orders through her feverish ravioli rearrangement.

“She really likes cutting it close, doesn’t she?” Cheotl mused.

“I bet she’s got this,” said Mokou. “But, I mean, I’d be happy with what she’s already got down. Fine either way.”

Agate scoffed. “Come now, you can’t be so half-hearted and expect to conquer the Heptagon. Finish what you plate.”

“I’m not the one down there!” Mokou scoffed back. “I’m up here, and I’m hungry.”

“Fifteen seconds.”

The bandbots struck up a drumroll, heralding finality. Freia-Lann ladled a creamy roux over her last plates with a precision born of desperation.

“More to the point, we’d be denied half of this dish’s urchin theming if she abandons the roux. There’s roe in it, remember?” countered Agate. As the bandbots’ drumroll mounted, she braced herself for another gonging.

“Been a lot going on, alright?” Mokou grumbled.

E’Beth leaned forward excitedly. “The way she’s sweating, she’s gotta be glad water rationing lifted! Last dollops, here—”

Farouun’s booming voice cut through the clamor of the crowd and E’Beth’s steady announcing. “Five! Four! Three! Two! One!”

The bandbots gonged. Freia cast her ladle aside and lifted the sweat-soaked band of her goggles to wipe her brow.

“—and she makes it! That’s it!” cried E’Beth. “The Urchin Battle is over!”

Agate released a steady breath she’d hardly been conscious of holding. The tension of competition dissolved into the anticipation of tasting. Soon, the booth would traverse the arena to join the throne dais. The arena’s loudspeakers quieted to provide a moment of peace before Clactobelle’s interviews.

“That was tremendous, really,” Mokou laughed, leaning back in her chair. “Thanks for having me here.”

“Thank you for being here!” said E’Beth. “All three of you — and it’s not over yet!”

“Save your gratitude until you are no longer burdened with the task of judgment,” Agate nodded. “This may be a close match.”

“I just pick whichever one I enjoyed more, yeah?” said Mokou. “I’m not worried.”

“You’re free to develop your own rubric,” E’Beth nodded. “It’s as much a celebration of pure subjectivity as it is of cuisine. And speaking of subjectivity,” The esper grew serious as she marshaled her thoughts into a request. “Please feel free to refuse me this — it’s a big ask, and it’s just for my own inner records of the ceremonies. During the tasting… do you mind if I tap in?”

Chapter Text

E’Beth was quietly ecstatic. The deprivations and cancellations brought about by the glass storm had materially dampened the Heptagon’s spirits. She had felt it in the people around her every day of the last few weeks. Even the Baroness wasn’t immune. Nothing restored E’Beth’s sense of normalcy like hosting a match — to the degree that anything in her home was normal. Tonight’s return to form was already everything she could have asked for to break the last month’s melancholy.

Best of all, all three judges had given their consent to E’Beth’s request. Each of them had their own reasons to turn her down, but none had felt it necessary to invoke them — feelings not even shaped from the social pressure of another’s agreement. Such pressures made for cloying, hollow consent, not fit to accept, but this was the genuine article. She’d been most surprised that Mokou, who wore her distrust of espers on her sleeve, had agreed. Surprised, but grateful. She could tell some consideration or memory or perspective was still lodged in the immortal’s mental processes, deeper than her surface concerns of travel times, arena procedures, and supernatural influences. It had been working its way slowly to the surface all evening, like a freshwater spring, or an asphalt geyser. E’Beth wanted to be there when it emerged. Until it did, she could bear the grisly tangents infesting the immortal’s memories.

Their booth rumbled along the rails of its half-circuit. The dais reassembled its central staircase. Clactobelle was below for the post-match interviews, circled by the drones. She landed next to the Challenger, who had busied herself scrubbing pots.

“So,” Clactobelle buzzed over the loudspeakers, “how did you do?”

Freia shrugged. “Us did as fine as a body could do.”

“Maybe better!” said Clactobelle. “You made a lot of each of your dishes.”

“Errr,” a bit of fluster seeped into the Challenger’s tone. “Yon Chefs. Always blustering about, never time to sup. A body’s heart goes out. Us made enough for Jathiss. For thee and the Seeker, too, when the tasting’s done.”

“Oh! How lovely, thank you!” said Clactobelle. She looked over Freia’s full servings. “But, remind me, your first course, the mixed drink — did it end up with any urchin in it?”

“Hrrk,” said Freia. She turned her back to Clactobelle and hunched over the rest of the sink’s dirty dishes.

“Thank you for your time!” Clactobelle bowed. She flitted across the arena to where Jathiss helped her assistants strike the canopy. “Miss Jathiss, how are your dishes tonight?”

“My labors tonight have granted me the utmost satisfaction. It is only my wish they do the same for our judges,” Jathiss noted in pleased harmony.

“Miss Freia apparently made enough for you to sample her courses too!” said Clactobelle.

“Her magnanimity is humbling,” replied Jathiss, with a bow of her heads. “It’s not customary, but it’s appreciated nonetheless. Had I known her aims, perhaps I would have found time to reciprocate.”

“It’s a good thing you didn’t eat me when I got stuck in your web, or you wouldn’t have had room!” Clactobelle laughed nervously. “Um, but thank you for not eating me.”

“My fault for addled weaving,” said Jathiss. “Do be careful next time.”

“You don’t have to tell me thrice! Well, good luck!” buzzed Clactobelle. She took off back to the booth, ready to relay the specifics of each course to E’Beth. The match’s hardships hadn’t truly impacted her lepidopteran cohort’s mood. She, like E’Beth, was simply glad to be back in action. Still, E’Beth could sense Clactobelle’s mounting skittishness the closer she came.

“Is there—” E’Beth turned her address to Mokou. “Can you handle Tabi?”

“Ah,” Mokou grunted, patting at the pockets of her dress jacket. “Got a dot sight she’s wild about. Shit. Not on me, though. Agate, can you—?”

“Not without my bit locker,” Agate sighed.

“Light? She likes laser light?” asked E’Beth. “Simple enough.”

With a flaring of her psyche, she coaxed a bit of ambient light into a photonic ball. All it took was a touch of subtle concentration to sink the ball to the level of the carpeted floor and direct it in a miniature orbit. Muffled clacking sounded from beneath the tablecloth, accompaniment to a spike of predatory instinct. Within moments, Tabi skittered out to chase it. The action hadn’t just drawn Tabi’s attention — she could sense Mokou focusing upon her as well.

“Oh, thank you!” said Clactobelle, landing on the nearby railing. “If I can see her, she doesn’t make me so nervous.”

“Of course,” E’Beth smiled.

“Hey, Clactobelle, you tell her about danmaku?” asked Mokou. “Look at her, she’d be a natural.”

“I did!”

E’Beth flushed slightly from Mokou’s sustained appraising. There was an experiential weight, a tremendous inertia riding Mokou’s psyche — it contoured her attention against anything that managed to hold that attention. E’Beth held it now, and found it subtly daunting. “She did, but — my difficulty would be in reaching that level of saturation, Mokou.”

“Ahh, c’mon, I bet you’d do great,” said Mokou. At least better than Clactobelle, was her unspoken thought. Rude, but best left unremarked. It would only hurt Clactobelle.

“If you carry doubts, I intend to test her danmaku soon. Expect a thorough report,” said Agate. Her attention, by contrast, was a scalpel held always in readiness. E’Beth knew how to avoid the edge. She had felt it cut through the confusion and chaos of the arena those years ago to clear a path to her victory. It hadn’t dulled. Such a promise, coming from Agate, had substance. E’Beth could already feel that promise feeding into Mokou’s excitement and anticipation.

She hardly knew whether to feel more sorry for Mokou, to have her danmaku subjected to such rigorous and pointed attention, or for Agate, to be subjected to the danmaku themselves.

“I’d appreciate that,” E’Beth laughed, before turning back to Clactobelle, and to business. “You’ve confirmed no urchin in the Challenger’s opening dish, then?”

“Confirmed, unfortunately!” replied Clactobelle.

The booth rumbled along. They conferred, briefly, over the details of the remaining courses and the best ways to showcase them. The bandbots struck up the hymn that heralded the tasting ceremony. Farouun, below, hefted the feasting platters of the Challenger and Chef alike to ferry them up to the arriving booth. The drones fed the visuals through their projectors — a regular practice E’Beth had to take on faith until she could sense its impact filter over the tantalized crowd. Of course, her narration played no small part in feeding into that tantalization. She rekindled her microphone and spoke.

“Challenger Freia-Lann Saltfoot opens our Urchin Battle feast with the Spur Margarita. Spine fruit liqueur, aloe pyra tequila, a splash of acid and a rim of salt makes for an aperitif that is unfortunately disqualified from judgment but which is, she assures us, metabolically critical. Next up: Urchin belcher kebab with stunion and fried banana, served with tartbeard-blaze dipping sauce. A taste of perfected urchin runs through every grilled morsel of this sequence. For her main course, she offers urchin-mushroom lagroot ravioli topped with a roe-cream sauce. This dish showcases the subtle specificity of drowsing urchin roe. Winding down her courses, we come to her Miracle Bruschetta. Dread-flour focaccia makes a toasty platform for addling urchin pâté, roasted timemato, and pig cheese. She concludes her four eligible courses with dessert: Roe-custard affogato. This creamy treat is a sophisticated canvas for the depth of addling urchin roe.”

It wasn’t just the crowd her words affected — the judges at her side had started the evening with an appetite, and it only grew with the impending arrival of dinner. The Baroness mounted the dais’s chrome steps with her stately confidence, platter balanced on each of her massive claws. Freia and Jathiss followed behind.

“Carbide Chef Choraler Jathiss offers five courses to the panel tonight. She opens with Bop Bowls, a sizzling rice bowl featuring sliced bop, urchin meat, fermented tongue, and a perfectly poached cryptogull egg. Her next appetizer escalates the Reef theme into inspired decadence: Esh nests and junk dollars stewed in acid-algae broth. The focal ingredients have simmered to tender perfection in the broth — urchin theming arrives through the junk dollars. Her main course tonight is Hot and Spiny, urchin style, served in the shell. A bold and fiery take on the Stilt signature. For a refreshment course to accompany dessert, she offers urchin ink-qudzu tea. The long steeping has mellowed the flavors and allowed them to harmonize. Finally, dessert: dreadroot-gel sweet buns, psychal-roe filling. The savory filling contrasts expertly to the ink-dyed sweet dough, wrapped up in a third-eye-opening presentation.”

The booth completed its half-circuit of the arena, coming to rest in its berth at the back of the upper tier. The throne had already been shifted to one side — closest E’Beth’s place — and furnished with a dining place. Farouun deposited the platters on staging tables. E’Beth didn’t need sight to sense the grin on Farouun’s face — not when joy and anticipation buoyed her lover’s every synapse. She brushed her psyche for a tender, quick exchange.

Good to feel you in such high spirits again, E’Beth sent.

Farouun’s reply, as warm as the roots of her mane: It’s mutual, my love.

E’Beth grinned and rose from the announcers’ table, taking up the microphone with practiced care. She strode to her Baroness’s side. This was the moment of magic, when the two of them held a city’s attention along the leyline of ceremony. In such moments, they created the conditions that could reforge legends. This was her home.

“The Challenger, Freia-Lann Saltfoot, has emerged from her subterranean sojourns to test herself against the Heptagon. Her selected opponent is the Six-Day Stilt’s tireless champion, our very own Choraler Jathiss. Now, under eternity’s eye, we shall know whose efforts best represent the cuisine of the Moghra’yi’s holiest of cities. It is the moment of truth.”

Farouun took up the microphone from E’Beth, her claw brushing gently over E’Beth’s offering hand. “My loves,” she rumbled. “After the cooking comes judgment. Prepare yourselves. Freia! Your dishes, if you please.”

“Aye,” Freia nodded. A trace of sweat had returned to her brow after her ascent of the dais steps. It wasn’t merely exertion — a portion of it was certainly nerves. E’Beth could sense as much, though she kept what distance she could from Freia’s psyche lest she inadvertently tap into the Challenger’s psionic migraines. Silence fell over the arena as Freia made to serve her aperitif. As she did so, Farouun returned to her throne and E’Beth returned to her seat. She began her communion.

It took focus and a delicate balance to tap into the psyches of three beings at once. Had they been espers themselves, their sparks could have eased the assemblage, but that ease held its own risks. Any gathering of psions had the potential to attract hungrier attentions — but the Elder’s agents had no foothold in the Heptagon; the risks were minimal. She stilled her own ego, subsuming herself into the flow of connection. Where Jathiss wove her wonders in silk, E’Beth wove them in the psychic aether itself.

Over the aetheric threads, new presences bloomed within her mind. The mercurial wit of Cheotl — a lightning net stretched through a river of words and forms. The clarity and severity of Agate — a crystalline knife carving space from the world. Mokou’s ponderous embers — sparks from a millstone grinding its way through a mountain range of softly rotting memories. It was a challenge to keep her connections balanced over the slumbering presence of untold millennia of experience, like tethering a pair of ray cats to the Spindle. Still, even untouched by psionics, the judges held tremendous forces of personality. This, too, eased the process. They had hardly noticed the linkage. E’Beth was a guest — here to look, not touch.

“Er, this drink—” said Freia, setting a conical glass before Cheotl as she worked down the table. “For tha, all sembled bugwise… might be a tad strong.”

“Let me slip into something more appropriate, then,” Cheotl buzzed in reply. Through E’Beth’s connection, she caught the joyful rush of shifting form. The poet shifted the target of their mimicry from Clactobelle to Farouun — glowmoth to chimera, fuzz into fur. The chair creaked under the sudden redistribution of its occupant’s mass. Flattered titillation filtered softly from the Baroness’s neighboring psyche. E’Beth found herself blushing from the secondhand sensation. “Better?”

“Aye,” Freia nodded in satisfaction. As she served to the other judges, she glanced between the two of them. “Mind thine coats. Best to have ‘em off.”

Agate nodded silently and began to unbutton her coat, her reaction one of gratitude at the forewarning. By contrast, bemusement and curiosity sparked in Mokou. “What, just for one drink?”

“Up to thee,” Freia shrugged.

“Alright,” Mokou shrugged back and unbuttoned her jacket. She took a deep pull of the drink. Echoes of its crisp, burning salty-sweetness flowed along E’Beth’s connection. Mokou sighed, her bemusement shifting into a different sort of gratitude. “Damn good. Y’know, I never got the chance to try the booze out there before we left the Stilt. You make this yourself?”

Freia nodded, flushing slightly. “Th’ pyra-proof, aye. Th’ liqueur, nay. Us brought it from Chugs-on-Fire, a Stilt still. Lovely taste, though usn’t be the type what can bear quills.”

“A shame it doesn’t count,” noted Cheotl, their own thoughts percolating with anticipation. They could always take new forms, but it was much rarer they be given one.

“As for the urchin… us forgot,” said Freia, sheepishly.

Mokou finished her drink with another appreciative noise. “Well, you’re not losing points from me over it. Honestly, if you’d have put urchin in this cocktail, I probably would’ve attacked you.” After a moment, a new bodily awareness filtered through her, turning her appreciation to growing confusion. “Wait. Quills?”

Stiff, keratinous spines sprouted from the bodies of each judge and the Baroness in motley synchronicity. Their reactions muddled together in E’Beth’s reckoning — wonderment, shock, delight, predictive satisfaction, all faintly undergirded by pained nostalgia. It was a bouquet as complex as the profile of the drink that provoked it. The pain left her curious, but it was difficult to immediately discern the source of any given component of the judges’ reaction.

“Aw, hell,” said Mokou. She glanced from side to side at her freshly-quilled shoulders and the fabric stuck between them. “Guess I should’ve done my shirt, too.”

“The Heptagon’s tailors always appreciate the work,” Farouun chuckled. She had shucked only her glass-spangled mantle; spines still pierced the fabric of her dress jacket.

“Alas, had you been able to grow your own set, you could have avoided a bit of pain during the match,” said Agate, breaking her silence. Hers, E’Beth could now discern, was the pained nostalgia. For good reason — the aperitif had caused Agate to grow a set of quills much like those sported by her former research partner, Q Girl. There was history in that old association, and heartache. E’Beth tried to skirt around such ruminations and Agate, for her part, wasn’t dwelling on them. Not when she had a match to judge. “But then, an effect like this will certainly ease your next course’s ingestion, will it not?”

“Aye!” said Freia. She doled out her kebabs. “Quills for quills! Eat up!”

Silence returned to the dais save for the crunching of grilled vegetables and cherubic quills. Appreciation and satisfaction saturated the emotional landscape.

“Oh, yeah, I was a little worried about eating the skewer, too, but it turns out it’s fine,” said Mokou, gesturing with her half-eaten kebab. Idle curiosity rose within her. “Reminds me, though. What happened to that soldered dish you were working on?”

The idle question provoked a spike of anxiety in the Challenger. “Soldered dish? Nay, nay, us said…” Freia gestured at the plates of kebabs arrayed before the judges. “Splattered fish! ‘Tis to thine liking, aye?”

Her response in turn provoked Agate’s skepticism. “You call it ‘splattered’ despite the fact the belcher landed largely intact. Despite the fact it is self-evidently — and, might I add, expertly — grilled.”

“‘Tis a Sunderlies appellation!” said Freia. Her anxious spike leveled into a plateau.

“The Sunderlies?” asked Mokou. Memories sparked within her — vivid snatches of distant lands. The memories were fresh; she was only recently come to Qud. “I kicked around there for a good couple centuries. Karst. Danneskjold. Oth. Athenreach. Gotta say, ‘splattered fish’ is a new one to me.”

Freia scoffed, sweat dripping from her brow. “Karst? Nay, ‘tis Wenniswoolen!”

“Wenniswool, huh? Guess they got the cliffs for it up there,” Mokou muttered, fleeting doubts snagging at her.

Cheotl gave voice to their own thoughts. Though they had no psionic gift, they managed to weave together their own pity, Agate’s disbelief, and Mokou’s sympathy into their overture to Freia. “You’re not going to save face like this. You don’t have to, we all saw how you cooked down there. We all saw what you were up against. Like Agate said, there’s no shame in scrapping a dish.”

Freia heaved a defeated sigh. “Aye, fine! Scrapped it, us did. Ran out of us’n’s own solder midroast. All a body could find elsewise was starapple flavor. Wrong palate.”

“Alas,” Agate nodded at the admission, “the water rationing curtailed manufacturing allowances. Regrettable that such shortages reached even the arena’s stores. But — to the dish at hand. These are genuine cherub quills. How did they come to form the structural centerpiece of your kebabs?”

“T’were about eight strata ‘neath Moghra’yi where us found the urchin,” said Freia.

“Eight?” A flare of disbelief washed out any conciliation that had accreted within Agate. “Far too shallow for the Cherubim. Without embellishment, if you please, Ms. Saltfoot.”

“Aye, and glass storms ne’er fall on the fields! T’was eight! How’s tha think us felt, roundin’ a corner to come gob-to-spine wi’ the salty bastard?” Freia’s indignation gave candor to her answer.

E’Beth deepened her focus on her link to Agate, bolstering the strand enough to send a message through. She’s telling the truth, Agate.

A flicker of acknowledgment accompanied a deeper sense of rising unease within Agate. That’s worrisome, she responded. Aloud, she returned to her questioning. “A cherub’s spines are a hard-won prize. How did you manage it?”

“Weeell,” Freia drawled, slipping a dagger from its sheath to clean a bit of concrete from her claw, “just ‘twixt us, a body could’ve taken it. So happened, though, a damn rhinox plowed the thing a few caverns over.”

“A rhinox,” said Agate, flatly, her tone masking her continued unease. “Quite the lively stratum you found yourself in.”

“Th’ whole damn stretch felt wrong,” said Freia. “Couldn’t leave fast enough. ‘Fore us did, though, us scooped up these castoffs. Could fetch a fair price, or make f’r a fairer meal.”

Agate nodded, her concerns settling once more from the anomalous to the material. “Then you’ve chosen well. Such hospitality has been direly lacking at the Stilt of late. Your main course, if you please.”

Freia served her main course: plump mushroom-and-urchin-stuffed ravioli, drenched in a rich roe sauce. Each judge’s dish held four; the Baroness’s held a double serving. It warmed E’Beth knowing that the Challenger had also made enough for Jathiss, Clactobelle, and herself. The judges’ reverent sampling of the ravioli only heightened E’Beth’s anticipation.

“Oh, this is wonderfully balanced,” said Cheotl. They gestured over their remaining ravioli with languid, circular claw-strokes. “Like a quatrain where every line is the same, but peppered with different punctuation. The absolute confidence, I appreciate.”

“Each ravioli’s a lodestone of relaxation,” said Mokou, stifling a satisfied yawn. “Is that the drowsing urchin roe?”

Cheotl grinned down at Mokou, tickled by the turn of phrase. “Lodestone — nice imagery. I ought to steal it.”

“Written a few poems in my time. ‘Course, I’ve forgotten most of ‘em by now,” Mokou replied. Her own grin, flattered and melancholy, faltered into confusion as the dish worked its course, overriding previous metabolic expressions. Her freshly-sprouted quills began to retract themselves back into her tingling flesh. The same effects played out across the other judges — but in Mokou they evoked a soft disappointment. It was the somberness left by fleeting novelty. She glanced between her arms — held before her, once again smooth, draped by tattered, holed sleeves — and sighed. “Ah. Just when I was gettin’ used to the quills.”

“They served their purpose,” said Agate. Hers was only to feel relief — one more painful association out of mind. “The uniformity here is quite admirable. It accentuates the textural interplay of your components.”

“Kindly to say it, tha,” Freia nodded. “Us’n’s got bruschetta next. Ready thine gobs.”

Her penultimate course was almost dainty in its proportions — even, in a relative sense, for Farouun’s serving. E’Beth shared in Agate’s assessment: thus far an expertly-considered showing. Considerate, as well; more than one Challenger had tried to gain victory by filling the judges up before they could reach the Chef’s courses. Freia had certainly cooked enough to attempt such a strategy, but likely dismissed it as the coward’s path.

“Mmm,” hummed Cheotl around a mouthful of dreadroot focaccia. “You’ve been layering on the Ibulian dishes in your run. That’s a bit of a rare treat. Are there many other chefs in the Ibulian tradition at the Stilt?”

“Usn’t the only ones what serve it,” replied Freia. She gave a confident grin. “Though, ‘twixt us, tha won’t find better if I’m in the kitchen.”

“I believe it,” said Mokou. Beneath the savory taste of the addling pâté, distant considerations of culture and geography shifted like subduction plates. And deeper still, the organ-rich palate hinted towards a molten core of taste-memory, utterly foreign to E’Beth, terrifying in its gravity, perfectly obscure. It was memory beckoned and defined by the absence of that taste — E’Beth could scarcely tell if Mokou realized the recall herself. What was that? It was almost a relief to hear her speak instead of geography. “Ibul? Is that where this kind of stuff ended up? Huh. Used to be from, where was that…”

Whatever she next uttered was snatched away by the simultaneous dilations of four different servings of roasted timemato. The quadruple epicenters blossomed around E’Beth, washing over her in asynchronous temporal waves. Mokou’s reminiscences compressed into accelerated blips of syllabary while her emotions smeared into a relativistic and semantic blur. It wasn’t entirely unexpected — E’Beth had anticipated a possible slow-time burst once she had seen the menu. It was partly this anticipation that kept her connections from breaking outright. That, and practice.

Among the gifts of Imet, the Chefs Oth, was the power to bend and weave the flow of time. To stand at their side when this gift unfurled was to be a glacier in witness to days upon days of its own thaw. E’Beth had felt and channeled mental links under such conditions before — and the fruits of the present course could hardly reach the level of a being like Imet. Still, practice hardly made the experience more coherent, and opportunities for that practice were rare regardless. The glimmer of their commingled egos made for far too tempting a target to hunters of her kind. They’d last chanced it to break the glass storm. This linkage with tonight’s judges was mere frivolity in comparison.

In the meantime, she would simply wait it out. To her, at least, it wouldn’t be too long a wait.

An illegible response came from Agate, though as the temporal bubbles digested down it gradually resolved. Quadruple into triple into double speed, before sliding into normalcy at the tail end of what had likely been a lengthy rebuttal. “—no guarantee of continuity between those bygone traditions and Ibulian culinary practices. It’s just as likely that they spontaneously emerged from similar material conditions.”

“I guess,” Mokou said, with a touch of sourness. “But like, that many in one place? Hell of a coincidence.”

“Granted,” said Agate. That she had kept up at all was impressive — but then, she’d only been next to Mokou, and the hindren’s hearing was as sharp as her mind.

“Er…” Freia began, fretting her claws against each other. “What was that? Our bruschetta quickened th’ lot of thee a touch too much.”

“Oh, was that what that was?” asked Mokou. She sighed heavily. “I don’t really want to repeat myself. What’s for dessert?”

“Suit thineself. ‘Tis a pudding,” said Freia.

She served her final course. E’Beth felt some residual disappointment at missing whatever historical context Mokou might have granted, but such was the flow of judgment. She could always ask Agate later — though Agate tended to be even less enthusiastic about repeating herself. The disappointment faded as she began to absorb the judges’ satisfactions.

Cheotl purred. Their satisfaction mingled with surprise over the flavor palate. “There’s roe in this? It’s so sweet and creamy.”

“You know what they say,” said Mokou. “Eggs for eggs.”

“Who says that?” asked Agate. The dish hadn’t surprised her, but Mokou’s saying sparked curious incredulity.

“She says it,” said Cheotl.

“It’s one from back where I’m from,” said Mokou. Flickering greenery and erstwhile meals bubbled up within her, each memory of bygone biomes and their bounty steeped with a contagious melancholy. To witness those glimpses was enough of a privilege that E’Beth could bear the mood. Mokou stirred the thick-brewed gocoa extract into her custard as she considered how best to explain the ancient saying. “Means if you want the most out of roe, you pair it with eggs. Oh, wow — that’s a really bold aftertaste you set up on this one.”

“Aftertaste?” asked Freia. Another anxious spike.

“Oh, yeah, I’m getting it too,” said Cheotl, nodding contemplatively over the last few spoonfuls. “It’s like it lulled us into thinking it was sweet, and now out comes the… savory, the bitterness. A dessert mimic!”

“This is no mimicry,” Agate opined. “This, I wager, is the affogato’s true nature reasserting itself. I had my suspicions with the previous course — just enough addling pâté to cross the threshold of palate inversion, yes?”

Freia’s expression soured in frustration. “Aye. T’weren’t supposed to flip again so soon. Tha spent o’erlong gabbing o’er it.”

“Still totally works like this. Very novel flavor,” Mokou spoke around her last bites as one finally sating a deep craving.

“Indeed, if you only needed serve to one judge, it might have better aligned with your plans. The timemato dilation certainly interfered with the timing. One can’t account for everything,” said Agate. This critique, E’Beth knew, was couched in genuine appreciation. After a moment, she voiced her final thoughts. “An impressive and bountiful showing, Ms. Saltfoot. Regardless of outcome, allow me to simply say: should you intend to return, then I shall content myself knowing that there are others unwilling to let the light of kitchen consciousness die in the Six-Day Stilt.”

Freia’s expression loosened and warmed into a faint blush. She hunched into a series of bows for the judges, ending with one to the Baroness. “Thankee. Glad t’ feed thee.”

Farouun extended her claw to the Challenger in languid recognition. One brush of the bounds of her psyche was enough for E’Beth to know the sheer delight the evening’s proceedings had instilled in her lover. “Freia-Lann Saltfoot. I asked for a spirited match and you have surely answered. But is this spirit enough to best my Choraler? Let us discover this together. Jathiss! What compositions have you woven for us?”

The Choraler answered with the scents of fermented reef-meats and sizzling rice. They tantalized the judges while the Heptagon’s assistants cleared away the Challengers’s empty plates. When Jathiss’s rice bowls at last were served, they sparked strong reactions.

“This is already so luxurious,” said Cheotl, brimming with satisfaction. “But then the rice just takes it over the top.”

“Y’know, rice used to be a staple,” said Mokou. The bit of grousing couldn’t dampen the way the flavors hit her. “Damn, but you’re doing it right. Damn. Best rice bowl I’ve had in a good while.”

“Any speculative linkages to forgotten culinary practices to ascribe to this particular offering?” asked Agate, curious in her own barbed fashion.

“If you want me to narrow it down, we might be at it all night,” Mokou scoffed. “The second a culture discovers rice and discovers bowls, boom, they’ve joined themselves to the timeless and storied tradition of rice bowls. This one’s got a nice funk.”

“Thank you,” Jathiss bowed. “The fermented tongue in particular should let you better appreciate my next dish. The broth can be a touch harsh on its own, but it harmonizes quite well with a proper protective layer.”

“Protective… layer?” asked Mokou. Her voice thickened, almost slurring as she spoke, a telltale sign of the same change swelling within the other judges. The tip of her tongue slipped, unbidden, past her lips. “What’s…?”

Farouun’s intent brushed inquisitively against her psyche. Beneath the inquiry — an undercurrent of mischief. A demonstration, love?

As you please, E’Beth coyly replied. She rose from her seat and stepped clear of the table, focusing herself more strongly upon her ongoing connections in anticipation.

“Observe,” rumbled her Baroness. Farouun parted her maw — her upper maw, not the one she kept clothed by habit — and whipped forth her freshly-bolstered tongue. It slapped solidly against E’Beth’s chest. Even expected, it nearly drove the wind from her lungs. The next instant, Farouun recoiled her tongue, hauling E’Beth off the ground and into her lap, where she caught her. Heat rose to E’Beth’s cheeks. Farouun’s voice thrummed through her as the Baroness concluded her demonstration. “The preferred hunting method of the Reef-bound tongue tyrant, whose gift — for the moment — is our own.”

“Holy shit,” said Mokou. Possibilities bloomed within her in concert with her wonder. She flicked a glance towards Agate.

Agate answered with a coolly-upraised eyebrow. “Tongue me at your peril.”

“Lighten up,” Cheotl giggled, possessed of no small portion of their own sense of mischief. “Water rationing’s over! You can do laundry and bathe whenever you please again.” As if in punctuation, they slapped their tongue against the side of Mokou’s head, provoking irritation from the immortal and a chagrined resignation from Agate.

“Your next dish, Choraler, please,” Agate sighed.

Jathiss began to serve her stew. Farouun offered her claw to E’Beth to help her out of her lap. E’Beth kissed the claw, then accepted the assistance, returning to her place with the judges at the announcing table. She was a touch inured to specialty ingredients simply from years of proximity and familiarity; Agate’s reactions echoed the sentiment, but so, too, did they echo the satisfaction of seeing those ingredients handled with the consideration and expertise they deserved. On top of the cultural disconnect, Mokou was still too bewildered from the effects of the first dish for the esh nests to particularly awe her. This left Cheotl to absorb and express the full luxury of the Choraler’s offering.

“This is — if I were working right now, I would devote some choice words to this,” said Cheotl, after their first mouthful. “The way the nests almost dissolve on my tongue? This is odeworthy.”

“Thank you,” Jathiss bowed. “My fellow choralers can sing the desert into bloom. With this broth, I can do the same.”

“That’s lovely,” Cheotl purred. “And the presentation? The junk dollars nestled away in there? It’s such a clever reference, as well!”

Mokou nodded. Her bewilderment resolved into a complex, bittersweet feeling, not quite longing and not quite affront. An ancient association bubbled up within her, freshly simmering despite its age, alien to E’Beth. “Clever, yeah. It’s — it’s the Swallow’s Cowrie Shell, right?”

Not a single spark of recognition met her question. Mokou’s memories flickered, glimpse by glimpse, into E’Beth’s ken through their connection: disjointed things, sensuous and tender yet steeped and bracketed by carnage and mayhem, all centered around another, a woman of terrible beauty.

A woman who bore a striking resemblance to many popular depictions of the sultan Polyxes.

Mokou continued with a desperate nonchalance. “Come on, we got any mythology students here? One of the Five Impossible Requests?”

That was evidently enough for Agate to recognize it — and to definitively rule it out. She cleared her throat. “To ‘check your esh nests for junk dollars’ is a phrase coined in the wake of a particularly notorious and slipshod wholesaler active in the Stilt several decades ago. While initially quite literal, it can be applied to any situation in which a routine bit of care might save you from unfortunate surprises. Not, I would venture, a mythological reference.”

“Mmm,” Mokou grunted. She let out a slow, contemplative breath, consciously settling and reordering her emotions. Part of what spurred the effort was a self-conscious consideration of E’Beth’s presence. “Y’know, all night I feel like I’ve been trying to give a bit of history for all this and failing miserably at it. Probably feel worse about it if all this food weren’t so damn good.”

“It’s a rather steep contextual divide between your attempts and your audience, in fairness,” said Agate. “Not insurmountable, but difficult in the time we have tonight.”

“Yeah, well, my wife was the teacher, not me,” Mokou sighed.

“Don’t be surprised if we have followup questions,” said E’Beth, laughing softly. It was a laugh more to try to put Mokou at ease, though perhaps she needed it herself. They’d been sordid memories to stumble into, impossible to feel any one way about. The more glimpses she caught into the immortal’s past, the more questions she was left with. The terrible beauty — was that her wife?

“I’ll be around,” Mokou replied. She turned a question to Jathiss. “What did you mean by ‘singing the desert into bloom,’ anyway?”

“Plant-speakers, burgeoners,” said Jathiss. “Algae from the Reef — that which blooms from the Eaters’ seeping — can bolster such a gift, or foster it in we who lack it. Do you not feel it? The mind’s awakening?”

The judges murmured to the negative. If the stew had so affected them, E’Beth would have known instantly. Instead, she sensed only their disappointments. E’Beth herself felt a pang of sympathy; such missteps were rare for the Carbide Chefs.

“Oh,” said Jathiss. “Dammit. My fault for addled brothing. Well. Are you ready for my main course?”

“Sure, hit me,” said Mokou.

Jathiss bowed, then took up her servings with reverence and care. She laid the urchin shells out before the judges, spines blunted for safety and convenience, cavities filled with steaming delicacy.

“Ohh, look at this,” marveled Cheotl. “It’s hot, it’s spiny. Even before we’ve had a bite, it says it all.”

“Can’t say I’ve had Hot and Spiny too many times, but that’s a lovely heat you’ve put on it,” said Mokou. The Choraler’s chosen spices served to soothe any residual disappointment within her. “This kind of thing is the basics of Stilt cuisine, right?”

The question sparked a righteous fervor within Agate. “More than the basics, this is the core. The foundation of Stilt cuisine. Trust an architect to know her foundations. What she’s built upon it here — the subtle potency of the theme ingredient within it, how she’s woven it into the classic flavor profile — it merits that trust a thousandfold.”

Even unlinked, E’Beth could feel the depth of gratitude radiating from the Choraler at the praise. Jathiss bowed again, deeper. “You flatter me, Chef.”

This, in turn, brought about a contextual shift within Mokou — or rather, a confirmation of one already underway. Damn, guess she really is the one. How’s that for impartiality?

Part of why I’m here is to help account for that sort of thing, Mokou, E’Beth sent her in response. Hesitant as she was to tip her presence, it was worth it to allay such concerns.

Mokou jolted subtly at the open contact and acknowledged it with a glance downtable. She said nothing and felt a sort of resigned acceptance covering over deeper feelings — resentment born from memories of old cruelties suffered across the great desert. E’Beth’s reticence had been warranted.

But then, the immortal’s concern was most likely misplaced. Such as E’Beth could glean them, Agate’s feelings towards the Choraler were certainly complex. Erstwhile competitors, peers in culinary advancement, occasional lovers — this was the city for it. But fortifying all these connections was Agate’s pronounced sense of professional respect. It set her apart; E’Beth often suspected it kept her apart.

By the standards of her city’s ceremonies, it was distance enough to judge.

“Something tells me the next time I visit the Stilt I’m just gonna be disappointed,” said Mokou, slights already forgotten. “This is so damn rich — and you really can’t beat that price. Next time someone tries to charge me for a meal I’m gonna burn their kitchen down.”

“Even the humblest pilgrim needs to eat,” Jathiss nodded. “Meeting that need is a sacred duty. It is my joy to fulfill that duty to the utmost of my means and skills. We must not settle for eating when we can be eating well.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Mokou laughed. Some grudging part of her now seemed to grapple with the thought that Agate’s tastes were justified. E’Beth took it as a sign not to worry about the two of them unduly affecting each other’s judgments.

“I have just the thing,” said Jathiss. “Please, refresh yourselves upon this tea.”

She took up a tray of solid ceramic mugs and served them to the tables. Earthy and metallic scents wisped up from the tea. The steam shimmered with soporific motes as reclaimed strands of sleep-gas-infused silk dissolved in the inky liquid heat.

E’Beth hardly heard the judges’ reactions. One taste of tea flooded Mokou’s psyche with heartache and wonder, nostalgia and grief. All these emotions crested over waves of memories — another woman, silver-haired and inconstantly-horned. Even bereft of deeper personal context, E’Beth caught the full potency of Mokou’s reaction. It brought the both of them to tears.

“You made a miracle, here,” Mokou breathed at last. “Tastes like… Tastes like Keine’s kisses. How they used to taste.”

“Keine?” asked Cheotl.

“Her wife,” Agate replied, with a surprising amount of sympathy. She was processing her own contextual shift. This was her wife. “The teacher.”

“You had a wife whose kisses tasted like this?” asked Cheotl.

Mokou gave a sad chuckle. “Well, not all the time, and not exactly. But — close enough.”

“Lucky,” Cheotl whistled.

Mokou leaned back in her chair, savoring the last of her tea with a wistful sigh. “You don’t know the half of it. Thanks for this, Choraler.”

Jathiss bowed in somber appreciation. “Your interpretation is humbling. I will happily pass on the recipe to you.”

“That’s a rare honor, Mokou,” noted Agate. A faint frisson of jealousy undergirded her sympathy.

“Hey, then I really appreciate it,” said Mokou. “I’m ready for second dessert.”

At last, Jathiss served her sweet buns. Her tone was nearly coy as she set the final plate before Agate. “When last we faced each other, you never had the chance to try my buns.”

Agate smirked, but warmth still rose within her. “You’ve certainly left your kitchen in a better state this time.”

“My own means were sufficient,” Jathiss replied.

The buns themselves were masterfully presented. The inky blackness of the dough gave way to a glittering, glistening filling of urchin roe and psychal gland paste like miniature nebulae in deep violet.

“The psychal filling is such a treat. You never know what you’re going to get,” Cheotl purred. They leaned back in their chair and sighed in satisfaction, waiting in contented sleepiness for the secret to spark. Two full courses heavy on drowsing urchin byproducts were finally catching up to the judges.

“There’s such a harmonious balance between the sweet and the savory in the flavor profile,” Agate nodded appreciatively. She stilled herself; her body had been quickest to digest the psychoactive elements of the sweet bun filling. E’Beth, riding her psyche, caught it too: machinery in must and darkness, the glacial drip of water on serpentinite, the radiant chill of an obscured cryotube. A ruin, somewhere far to the east and many strata deep. One of countless peppering Qud, nameless and all-but-forgotten. Agate’s surfacing thought was a self-conscious directive towards her psychic guest. Write that down if you’d like, Agate sent; I certainly intend to.

Cheotl’s serving fired next. Snatches of gossip, corroded and fitful. It seemed that some group had cast doubt on the beliefs of a highly entropic being — but names, faces, the doubts and the beliefs, all specifics had been abraded away. Even this thirdhand proximity to such existential retaliation chilled E’Beth. She’d spent a good portion of her life before the Heptagon escaping the clutches of high entropy — this gossip could only be a painful reminder to her.

You get much more out of that one than I did? Cheotl asked through their connection.

Not much, E’Beth replied.

Well, gossip’s gossip, Cheotl sent back.

Still, watch yourself around that sort of attention. E’Beth envied how the poet could catch such a glimpse and still be so lackadaisical. It was their life to lead, but the wrong being could easily claim that life as its own. She couldn’t mull on it overlong; one last reaction remained among the judges.

“It’s just as soft as I hoped,” said Mokou. Her voice wavered on the verge of a daydream. She had paced herself slower on this final course than the rest. Part of that pacing was certainly a consequence of the urchins’ soporific compounds. They pulled harder on Mokou than the others. “Reminds me of… hmm…” A yawn annihilated the attempt. She slipped into slumber at the moment the psychal compounds ignited within her.

They burned as a memory, dislodged and revived. This was what E’Beth had sensed deep beneath Mokou’s waking and calcified psyche. It was loose — but it was no glimpse, no geyser. It was a sinkhole, and E’Beth had just tapped through the crust. The arena, her links, her Baroness, all those thrumming emotions tore away from her as her ego tumbled into the immortal’s reverie.

Chapter Text

Sight — such a quaint sense, unpracticed and not her own.

An angular gateway of red-painted wood. Under and through it, a pathway of worn square stones. At the path’s terminus, a peaked-roof shrine in uncertain repair. And swallowing it all, a forest of the Long Before — plump and stately trees, adorned in leaves greener than green.

Then sound — an insectile chorus texturing the air in buzzing, shimmering, otherworldly waves. Leaves rustling as a gentle breeze cut the heat. Heat that suffused air so thick and delicious she could practically taste it.

“Guess Reimu’s not around, huh?”

A young woman’s voice, behind her. It had startled E’Beth, but not her host. Here, E’Beth was bereft of the psychic senses by which she oriented herself around others in the waking world, in the present. This was not her body — she was a spectator. It was almost claustrophobic.

“Guess not,” answered her host — Mokou, of course. Her gaze swept the grounds, its stone lanterns and half-fallow gardens. “Bet there’s something up again. You know how it is.”

“Something up?” asked the voice. The language was not one E’Beth knew — but it was known to Mokou, or had been, once. Semantic intent suffused the psychal-conjured daydream. “Now that you mention it, you’re looking kinda… glittery, Mokou.”

“What? Glittery? You got heat stroke or something?” Mokou replied. She turned to take in the other’s state, revealing her at last. She was young indeed — E’Beth guessed she had hardly two decades to her name, though they were decades in a softer and gentler land than Qud. Spectacles and a ribboned, wide-brimmed hat framed her face, while the collar of a black cloak rose to her jaw. The cloak was a matter of concern to Mokou. This was summer.

Even divorced from her own body’s senses, E’Beth could tell: this girl was an esper. The power of her psyche was a markerlight in the emotional void. Glimmer wreathed her, raw, undiminished, unhidden. Did this age allow her to show it so openly? Her gaze was probing, shining with curious wonder.

“You look fine to me,” grunted Mokou. “Anyway, you’re lucky I found you, Sumi. You gonna wait around for her?”

“Uh, yeah,” said the girl, Sumi, breaking off her gaze to glance off to the empty shrine. Her wonder had turned into a vague irritation. “I’ve been through the Barrier plenty of times, Mokou. I can handle myself. I have a gun!”

Mokou turned away, striding to the shade of the shrine’s front steps. She scoffed faintly. “That chintzy thing? One bullet ain’t gonna cut it around here. Why don’t I wait around with you?”

“If you want. It’s just Reimu-cchi’s shrine.” The memory carried even the sensation of Sumi’s lingering, unseen attention on Mokou. But then, it wasn’t merely sight that the girl probed with. This was a memory, was it not?

“Exactly. Even money whether it’s her or some youkai who shows up first.” Mokou eased herself down in the shade and patted the steps next to her. “Been a minute. What’ve you been up to?”

Sumi twirled her cloak out of the way and sat next to Mokou. Sighing, she placed a hand to her brow. “I’ve finally escaped the prison of high school only to find myself in the larger prison of modern society. It’s vexing, Mokou, all too vexing.”

Heat rippled off the sun-baked stone path. Mokou squeezed her eyes shut. Only blackness for this frustrated window of memory. Blackness, and the glimmering in E’Beth’s psychic periphery. “So you keep popping in to this prison? Gotta be better ways to spend a summer, kid. Ones that don’t end up getting you eaten.”

“Ah, well!” said Sumi. Fabric shuffled as she slipped a square device from her pockets, thick black glass in a slim plastic frame. Light mantled within it, waking in her grasp. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been trawling the dusty corners of the Net and found something wonderful. Something old. A secret, long-forgotten by those high-school boors I’ve now surpassed.”

The sight of the device provoked a vague unease within Mokou. E’Beth couldn’t help but mirror it simply from her knowledge of her own time’s threats. “Thought that thing didn’t work in here.”

Sumi’s eyes glittered in triumph. “If I were streaming, no. But this time, I’ve loaded my sumafo. You can cook, right? You’ll like this.”

As she spoke, a tinny fanfare emerged from the sumafo. She held it out before Mokou. The lighted pane resolved into a window elsewhere: a torchlit arena — a kitchen arena. And over it, the mantra of ceremony, echoing out from the unknowable past: “Nearly a decade ago, a man’s fantasy became reality in a form never seen before.”

“What…?” Mokou breathed.

E’Beth’s psyche spun with the vertigo of aeons. What miracle had revived this memory from the immortal’s senseless past? Of this era, not even flinders remained, yet here it was, hale and vivid as life. Her mind raced to preserve every detail she could.

Too late, she realized how far she’d slipped from the cause and context of Mokou’s bygone bewilderment. She hadn’t realized the camouflage that had given her.

You!

Piercing intent — a searchlight of the psyche.

E’Beth was a shadow within another’s memory. How could a memory speak to her? How could a memory catch her out?

You! Sent again from Sumi. Raw, unfiltered power. Had she never connected with another esper? Another of their kind? You’re like me, aren’t you?

The desperation, the sheer vulnerability astounded E’Beth. In her own time, such vulnerability was a target. Could she respond? In the face of a plea from out of the isolated depths of alienation, could she possibly not? What would it change?

The course of Mokou’s memory still locked her attention to the living glass. “To realize his dream, he started choosing the top chefs of various styles of cooking. And he named his men the Iron Chefs, the invincible men of culinary skill.”

E’Beth gathered her own intent. Even as a shadow, her will remained.

Yes.

The sight of Sumi’s expression was as impossible as it was unnecessary. The young esper’s psyche lit up in elation and wonder. Who are you??

E’Beth, she answered. I am not of your time. My mind wanders back through the ages.

A psychic presence from the future? came Sumi’s racing response. Astral projection, perhaps? What wisdom do you bring, E’Beth from another time?

She wasn’t prepared for this. The threats of this era were surely different; surely their wisdoms, too, carried their own time-lost flavors. It was utterly impossible to say which seeds of the past sprouted into which fruits of the now, be they bitter or sweet. What could she possibly say? What she found was as much solace as it was a warning.

There will be others. More than you will ever know. You aren’t alone. Live and drink, Sumi.

A rush of relief and gratitude flowed through the connection, powerful enough to destabilize it. Thank you.

While the connection lasted, E’Beth sent one last query, fueled by the sumafo’s flickering glimpses. Names, filtering in through her host’s borrowed awareness. The Iron Chefs. Who were they?

The Iron Chefs? Sumi replied. The connection’s instability scattered any transfer of emotional nuance. What was left was a young girl’s hurt. Just men.

The connection broke.

Mokou’s own building emotions itched at E’Beth’s psyche. Uncertainty into dread, dread into horror. “What devilry is this?” asked this memory of Mokou. Her gaze snapped from the sumafo to Sumi. “You witch, you’ve trapped them in there!”

Sumi blinked, then giggled. The esper girl’s expression of shimmering wonder turned to a wild-eyed triumph, her giggle to a cackle. She pulled back the sumafo and sprang to her feet. The lining of her cloak flared with crawling runes as she swept it around herself.

“That’s right!” she crowed. As she spoke, she rose from the ground with a flaring of her psyche. “I, Usami Sumireko, founder of the Secret Sealers, foremost psychic of our age, have sealed away the illustrious Iron Chefs! Here, in the devilish encapsulation of all modern woes, in the core of my sumafo’s memory! Come and free them — if you think you can!”

Chapter Text

“I SAW THEM.”

Mokou’s chair clattered to the floor behind her. The echoes of her waking bellow rang through the arena. Her mind raced with freshly-engraved memory.

Agate unclenched herself from her wince. Her ear flicked. “Who?”

Plates clattered as Mokou planted her palms on the announcer’s table. “The Iron Chefs!”

“It’s true,” said E’Beth, voice wavering and dazed. Mokou could no longer feel the esper’s presence within her. Her psyche had retracted by the time Mokou had awoken from her daydream. How much had she seen to be able to voice this confirmation?

“The first esper,” Mokou plunged on, feverishly sorting what she’d felt, so long ago, into words, into order. Shaping her hands before her, clawing for the truth. “She trapped them. In her sumafo — black glass that came to life in her hands, glowing with the light of another world! Forced to — to play out their greatest battles, again and again, until she grew tired of them. I saw them. I couldn’t — I couldn’t free them.”

“She was the first?” E’Beth asked. “Usami Sumireko?”

Mokou whirled to face the esper down the table. “You saw her? You saw them?”

“I… I did,” said E’Beth. She sounded haunted.

“She was the first I knew. So long ago, now,” said Mokou.

“What became of her?” asked E’Beth. There was a note of urgency in her voice. It felt misplaced, too late by countless millennia.

Mokou could only shake her head in the silence of the arena. That age was buried beneath the landfill of history. That a single summer’s afternoon had dug itself back out was a miracle. So much more was lost from her conscious recall, compacted and fossilized. How could she possibly keep track of the ultimate fates of every being to cross her interminable path?

Through the tattered fabric of her shirt, she felt Agate’s hand rest upon her shoulder. The hindren gave a squeeze, perhaps in reassurance, perhaps in solidarity. Agate couldn’t know — but she’d been trying, hadn’t she? When she hadn’t been needling. That she kept her silence now with Mokou showed considerable restraint. Countless questions must have been bubbling within her — within everyone present. How many of those was Mokou even equipped to answer?

“Remarkable,” Farouun rumbled softly, leaning back in her throne. Her gaze upon Mokou was piercing, curious, hungry. “To think such truths would be unearthed from this battle. I could not hope for anything more. But now I must ask you: whose truths spoke in greater fullness to the yearnings of your soul? Those of the Challenger? Or those of the Choraler? Decide amongst yourselves.”

Assistants cleared the empty plates, while Freia and Jathiss descended to the arena floor to await the verdict. Chatter spread once more through the stands. Cheotl righted Mokou’s fallen chair behind her, though their Baroness-guise had started to drip in places. Agate’s touch lingered. Mokou released a heavy breath and tried to loose some of her own tension with it.

It was an earnest relief to have a task again after such a disorienting awakening. The prospect of judgment was not a particularly challenging one. A touch of guilt played through her over how easy it felt — Freia’s showing was a strong one and a novel one, and on top of it, Mokou appreciated her style. But her courses simply hadn’t touched the depths that Jathiss had. After all that had accreted in the wake of her existence, after all she’d lost and all that still clung to her, how could she help how her interpretations fell upon the courses she’d been served?

It was Jathiss, it simply had to be. She was starting to see what Agate saw in her — starting to know what to look for.

Agate reached past her to switch off their microphones, then leaned in closer. “You saw the Iron Chefs?” she hissed.

Mokou sighed. “Barely. It didn’t feel right, watching them like that. If I remember right, she had others in there, too. That’s when it even worked.”

“I would be remiss in my scholarly duties if I did not counsel you to record what you do remember at your earliest convenience,” said Agate. “It may just be vital to our culinary history.”

“You had other opportunities to see them?” asked E’Beth. The esper had risen from her seat to stand across the table from Mokou. Her hands softly trembled where they clutched the tablecloth.

Mokou squeezed her eyes shut. She tried to chip out related memories hinted at by her revived familiarity. “A few, I think. She’d come visit. She was… a friend.”

“She — she trapped people in a device she herself called devilish — and you called her a friend?” E’Beth sputtered. She’d gleaned a rather specific detail, then. Just how much more of the memory had she seen?

“I’ve been friends with a lot of difficult people, E’Beth,” Mokou replied. “I’m not gonna fault someone for going through something. Never seemed like Sumi had too many other folks in her own life.”

E’Beth’s grasp loosened on the tablecloth. She straightened and let out a soft sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m keeping you from a decision here.”

“Oh, but it’s Jathiss, right?” asked Cheotl.

“Jathiss,” nodded Mokou.

“Jathiss,” Agate concurred.

“Freia did great, but…” Cheotl shrugged.

E’Beth smiled faintly. “I understand. Thank you. If you’ll all please wait behind the Baroness while we announce the verdict, we can bring this ceremony to a close.”

Farouun rose from her throne, donning her glassy mantle over her punctured suit. At her motion, lights dimmed across the arena. She nodded to the judges, then strode to the top of the central staircase. Mokou rose with her fellow judges and took up position in a line behind the Baroness. Silence fell once more.

She’d thought the view from the booth was something to remember. That had been impressive — this was commanding. The dais she stood upon held the attention of every being in the stands and every chef in the arena below. For a society as dedicated to providing for its every member as she’d found this city to be, it was curious that it had gathered itself around this architectural paradox, this axis mundi of culinary authority. After the meals she’d been served, she was willing to forgive a bit of dissonance.

Farouun held a claw out before her, palm-up, as if to hold the atmosphere itself. Her voice flowed out across the stands. “My loves. This night of nights is one for the annals. A night of memories and dreams, struggles and triumphs. Challenger, Chef, with your vibrant deeds you have cut through confusion and defied the call to slumber. But we must announce the verdict.”

E’Beth’s robes flared around her as she stepped out from behind the Baroness and launched herself from the dais. She floated down to the tier below as a melodramatic run of synthesized piano poured from the bandbots.

“Challenger Freia-Lann Saltfoot surfaced to face Carbide Chef Six-Day Stilt Choraler Jathiss in a cloudy duel over the theme ingredient of Urchin! This culinary conflict even clapped the rust from a glimpse of the Iron Age! But such is our ceremony: one must be victor. Who takes it? Whose cuisine reigns supreme?”

The bandbots ceased their strains. E’Beth disappeared past the lip of the upper dais. Farouun stood as still as a monument, waiting for true silence. Her claw snapped to the arena below.

“CARBIDE CHEF CHORALER JATHISS!”

Beams of light snapped to the Choraler’s position on the arena floor, setting her spider fur aglitter with radiance. Her twin heads surveyed the applauding crowds, then bowed into a silent prayer. Mokou found herself applauding, too.

“Incredible!” cried E’Beth. “Jathiss wins, and eternity bears witness! Who can say what the next match might bring?”

Down below, Jathiss closed the distance to give a sporting handshake to Freia, who accepted the outstretched claw. A brief exchange passed between them, inaudible from Mokou’s perch. It closed with Freia gesturing invitingly to the counters where she’d set out the extra servings of her courses, meant for the crew and for her victorious opponent.

Farouun turned and grinned down at the three judges, casting her gaze from Cheotl to Mokou to Agate. She knelt for a series of heartfelt handshakes. Her voice was pitched not for projection but for personal conversation. “Thank you for the pleasure of your presence tonight. It has been illuminating. If there is any further hospitality I can grant you, you need only ask. And otherwise…” she gave a wink. “I’m certain we’ll be seeing more of each other soon.”

The grasp of her claw was warm, and firm, and enveloping. The wink bordered on lascivious. Mokou had a pretty good idea of what that hospitality might encompass, though the specifics were an enticing mystery. If the arena was this lavish and stately, what might the Baroness’s personal quarters look like?

Before she could reply, Cheotl pre-empted her with their own farewell shakes. “Thrilled to be a part of such a historic match. Always a pleasure, Baroness, and it was lovely to meet the both of you.”

“Hey, likewise,” Mokou replied. She braced herself for yet another surprise texture from the mimic’s handshake, but found it nearly identical to Farouun’s shake — a fresh impression, perhaps. “Bring one of your chapbooks next time, yeah?”

“Sure thing!” Cheotl beamed.

“A pleasure indeed,” Agate curtly nodded to the poet and to Farouun. She threaded her arm around Mokou’s and pulled subtly away from the gathering. “You’ll excuse us. My colleague and I have much to discuss.”

“Colleagues, huh?” grinned Mokou. A new one from Agate. But then, there was her drive again. It spared them both any directionless milling now that the match was done. She gave a parting wave to Farouun and Cheotl. “Lead on.”

Agate led them towards the exits at the rear of the dais at a pace considerate of Mokou’s place at her side. When she judged them out of earshot, Mokou spoke again.

“After a feast like that, I gotta say, there’s one thing on my mind, and it ain’t building a seminar.”

“Do your singular considerations hold space for a private bathing room at the Pipe Ward’s Vapor and Salt?” Agate replied. “I’ve arranged one.”

“Oh, that’s just fine,” said Mokou, drawing her arm into a firmer squeeze against Agate’s. “But listen, being blunt here — are we gonna smash? Because tonight it feels like I’ve got options for the first time in a while. If you’d like to be one of them, well, that’s just fine too.”

Agate snorted faintly. “You would spoil yourself the suspense? What happened to your talk of cultivating an aura of mystery?”

“Just want to know if I should be getting my hopes up, is all,” said Mokou.

“You should temper that presumptuous outlook,” said Agate. After a moment, the wrinkling of her brow relented. “I will admit to a certain anticipation towards the possibilities opened from mutual hygiene. But for matters of intimacy, what good is so mechanical a pledge? Any number of factors might arise to complicate it or invalidate it. Certainly I’d like to — but what if I change my mind, Mokou?”

Mokou considered this for several silent paces. The sentiment was encouraging, while her hesitancy was certainly understandable. Especially after Mokou had kicked her workshop the night of their arrival. She’d been in a dark mood then, worked up and worn down. It still wasn’t much of an excuse. To Agate’s question, she simply shrugged. “I’ll live. I can promise you that.”

Agate shot a glance at her, brow lifting with a cool, dubious air. “Easy to promise an outcome you have no choice in.”

“I mean I respect it, Agate. I’ll be good.” She returned Agate’s glance with a grin, eager and perhaps a bit taunting. “You’re lucky I really want to see these baths.”

Agate halted her stride, bringing them both up short of the exit threshold. She turned more fully towards Mokou and cupped her free hand under her chin. The smooth elastyne of her gloves masked the warmth of her touch. She leaned closer, bathing Mokou in her fungal glow and giving her own hungry smile. “You’re lucky I know you can clean up.”

A breath passed between them, still carrying the rich scent of the savory buns. Mokou drifted closer to her lips. But then — boots at a jog, and the esper’s voice.

“Mokou!” called E’Beth. She stopped a few paces away, stooping slightly to catch her breath. As she rallied, the spectral head of Tabi poked up through the floor between her boots. “You forgot your cat.”

Mokou pulled back from Agate and sighed at the interruption. For an esper, this was a considerable failure to read the room. “Tabi’s a free spirit. Was that all?”

“No, no, and I apologize for the interruption,” said E’Beth. She straightened, and her robes and shawl seemed to shift themselves back into order — doubtless a bit of psionics, though it was impossible for Mokou to tell when she flexed her psyche. “But I had to ask. About… the memory. Your memory. What was that? I’ve had my share of psychal gland, but I’ve never felt one with a pull that strong.”

“How strong was it?” asked Mokou. So, too, was it impossible for her to know what the other had felt by her own means. “You saw her, yeah? For me, it was almost like reliving a memory. ‘Cept I couldn’t do anything but watch it unfold again.”

“I was there,” said E’Beth. Her hands fretted together as she softly recounted it. “Riding you, almost. I felt what you felt. I saw her. But, Mokou — she saw me.”

“What?”

“She saw me and she connected to me. Briefly, but all the same, we were able to exchange thoughts.”

The esper’s words had dizzying implications. Nothing in the memory had struck her as discordant with the course of her prior existence. But she had nothing to reference that against — in the first place, she’d lost that memory and countless others. Had it been true then, and she’d simply lacked the means to grasp it?

“Don’t tell me all this. You’re gonna bake my damn noodle.” She shut her eyes tightly and leaned against Agate, loosing a troubled breath. It was too much to take in. One thing was certain: she wasn’t about to forget this dinner any time soon. “You worried you changed something or what?”

“I’m not sure,” said E’Beth. “I don’t know that I could have. I suppose I asked just to try to make sense of it. She said the Iron Chefs were… just men.”

Mokou shook her head. “Then they went the way of all men. Ain’t a lot that can change that.”

“From my perspective, neither of you left your seats,” Agate noted. “I wouldn’t have anticipated such an anomalous effect solely from vivid qualia.”

Any irritation Agate may have felt from the interruption was absent from her voice. There was only inquisition. She’d been tossed a puzzlebox to pick at. But then, she didn’t have the full picture. Mokou set her jaw in consideration, then addressed E’Beth. “You saw the shrine?”

“I did, yes,” E’Beth nodded.

“That was a place where the Barrier was… porous. Stuff could slip through from the Outside. Books, gadgets, trash. People, sometimes. Wasn’t a place constrained by traditional sense. If I had to guess…” Mokou stepped forward and clapped the esper on her shoulder. “You just about got spirited away.”

E’Beth started in confusion. “I… didn’t realize that was a possible risk.”

“Most folks don’t.” Mokou squeezed her shoulder encouragingly, then patted her cheek as she pulled away. “There’s a dinner for you, right? Don’t keep Freia waiting. It’s eat or be eaten out there.”

Chapter Text

This was the Heptagon as Agate remembered it: cataracts in miniature gracing the crossroads of its inner arterials, the air itself lush and redolent with the stuff of life — water. With rationing lifted, the surplus circulators could flow as they were built to flow. It made for a much more pleasant walk down to the Pipe Ward.

“I don’t believe it,” said Mokou, staring up at a circulator’s cascade. “After all we did to fix up the condensers, they just — they’re just pumping it out the damn walls?”

“Precisely,” Agate nodded. She stepped past Mokou, approaching the cistern at the base of the streetside cascade. The fine spray of falling water beaded on her coat breast and on the tips of her fur. It moistened her breath, a contrast to the dry canyon air of the arena.

“That’s money,” said Mokou, incredulity still clinging to her tone. “Hell, never mind money, that’s water. You need that to live.”

“Come here,” Agate beckoned. “Stand in the mists. Is it not pleasant?”

Grumbling, Mokou joined her at her side. After a few deep breaths, her posture loosened slightly. She opened her palms out in a gesture of admission. “Suppose so.”

“All who pass along these thoroughfares experience this pleasantry every time their path crosses an active circulator. It’s a matter of atmosphere.”

“Atmosphere?” Mokou parroted, raising her eyebrows in a sidelong look. “That’s an awfully holistic concept for you. Downright interpretive.”

“Hardly,” said Agate. “I’ve seen the blueprints. All major arterials contain at least one mood-boosting circulator. These are the subtle touches that make the Heptagon what it is.”

“I’ll be damned,” said Mokou. “Pipe Ward’s a ways down, yeah? What’s the best route?”

“Via service elevator,” Agate replied. “This way.”

Cooking scents filtered from every kitchen along their route to the elevators. More ambitious denizens of the Heptagon already turned their efforts towards replicating the match’s offerings. Had she not been striding so purposefully, doubtless they would have already been accosted by chefs seeking specifics on the flavor palates of dishes of Challenger or Chef. No one did, but hushed and excited conversations sprung up in their path and their wake.

The elevators linked several levels of the arena to the strata beneath and their variegated wards. Folk waited at the banked doors to cycle with more folk — shifting workers, chattering spectators, travelers seeking rest and accommodation. Owing to Agate’s size, their movements left her a healthy bubble of personal space. In a standard day, this bubble would be considerately empty, but tonight, Mokou lounged within it, close and warm. Agate found the immortal’s presence welcome. It was not often she found this with another.

The doors opened with a chime, permitting the previous occupants to file out and the two of them within. A wide chamber of burnished steel and descaled mangrove paneling welcomed them. Agate backed herself into a central position. Mokou released her arm to lean her back against Agate’s flank, resting her elbows familiarly on Agate’s central-lower back. The doors closed. The elevator shuttled them down through the Heptagon’s layer cake of municipal purpose. Mokou hummed tunelessly in the quiet. Another soft chime heralded their arrival at the caverns of the Pipe Ward.

Agate led them out the elevator doors and along at a pace that accommodated Mokou’s gawking. Like all the Heptagon, it was a marvel of civic engineering. Though less airy than other wards, the corridors bubbled with sealed glasswork and hummed with brass junctions. Fine metal grating chimed underhoof and mist softened distant intersections. Here was the heart of the Heptagon’s recycling capacity. Beneath the lingering energy of the match’s broadcast, the workers they passed looked in most part relieved. As water rationing lifted, so too had the pressure of necessary production.

She had played a part in this relief — the both of them had. There was a concrete satisfaction to that knowledge. The only impurity alloying her enjoyment of that relief was that damned cat in the walls, tracking them. At least Mokou seemed to be unaffected.

At length, the corridors opened, spilling into the base of a subterranean chasm. Pipes and scaffold-paths climbed the rock walls up into gloom like creeping vines, while faint sounds of higher wards drifted back down from above. Their destination was not above. It lay instead a short ways along the chasm floor, where steam roiled from the mouth of a side cavern. More of its details resolved from the mists as they approached. The natural aperture’s stone had been smoothed, carved, and clad in lacquered star palm to form the facade of Vapor and Salt, a public bathhouse.

Once an earth-vein for magmatic circulation, now brass capillaries festooned its igneous walls for the flow of water. The interior sported a small lounge and commissary, leading to steaming pools at various degrees of salinity. Further back, an archway led to the sequestered showers while doorways led to the private bathing chambers. The hostess on staff uncoiled herself from her nearby perch as Agate and Mokou entered.

“Ms. Star, welcome,” the hostess nodded graciously — a dawnglider by the name of Yacotzal, prosthetic limbs of her helping hands clasped before her. “I trust you enjoyed the match?”

“Vigorously,” Agate replied. “Our bath is ready?”

“Shortly,” said Yacotzal. Soft pneumatic hissing accompanied her sweeping gesture to the lounge. “You may rest or use the showers while we complete our preparations.”

Mokou eyed her in brief and understandable uncertainty. The attack in the desert was not so long ago — flames roiling in marble’s shade, the raging vortex of her unveiled sorcery. But she seemed at last to accept the dawnglider host’s presence. She looked instead to the bottles lining the commissary’s shelves. “Y’all have a drink menu?”

“Ah, Ms. Fujiwara, yes?” Yacotzal slithered to the ledger that logged attendance and concession use while she listed their offerings. “We have mineral water, juices, and a selection of ciders and wines both local and import, though import selections carry a small fee.”

“Did you find any success in procuring a bottle from Mehshruul End?” asked Agate, levelly trimming the hope from her tone.

“Alas,” Yacotzal shook her head apologetically. “It practically flies out of the caravans’ stocks. One can never anticipate when the westbound ones return these days. Might I punch your ration cards?”

“Oh, sure thing. Got it here somewhere,” said Mokou, patting at her jacket pockets in absent search. Agate’s hygiene card was already in hand. She offered it to Yacotzal, who punched it promptly. Mokou fished hers out at last. “Shame you don’t have it, but it’s good to hear they made it through the storm. Nice folks out there. You have any of that cider from, where was it — local place, Garden Ward — Red Tuilimas?”

Agate raised her brows appreciatively. Mokou had independently pre-empted her backup selection. It seemed she’d been branching out on her own these last few weeks. Certainly, Agate could have told her about that particular establishment, and any number of others — but where was the sense of personal enrichment in spoonfed recommendations?

“We do, yes. Excellent choice,” Yacotzal answered. “Would you like it sent to your room, or will you have it now?”

Mokou opened her mouth to answer, but hesitated. She glanced at Agate. “Was kinda feeling a shower first, actually.”

Agate nodded, mildly relieved — the sooner Mokou was cleansed of the crust of Cheotl’s tonguing, the better. “To the room is sufficient. Thank you, Yacotzal.”

“Yacotzal,” Mokou repeated. She offered her own hand in greeting, which Yacotzal met with a feathered wingtip. “Good to meet you. Place looks lovely.”

“Thank you, Ms. Fujiwara,” the dawnglider bowed her crested head. “You won’t find warmer rocks anywhere in the Pipe Ward.”

“Just Mokou is fine,” said Mokou.

Agate led them back towards the showers. Textured runners of vulcanized rubber gave traction between the pools where otherwise there would be slick rock underhoof. The frontal pools were uncrowded, though surreptitious and excited conversations still rippled through the bathers as they passed. Some modicum of this was inescapable even on an average day. Public appearances only exacerbated this. At least it was all flattery — immaterial, unthreatening, already reconstituting the night into legend.

She doffed her coat at the shower hooks, hung it, then began to unbutton her shirt. It was what she’d bested the Heptagon in. The poor thing was shredded. She’d have to make time for a tailoring visit tomorrow. Mokou, at her side, slipped from her relic sneakers and suit jacket. Mokou’s shirt had fared just as poorly, but she stripped the tatters from her body seemingly without a care towards their state. Either she bore little sentiment towards it or she was deeply accustomed to wearing rags. Agate had rather appreciated the effort Mokou had put into her ensemble; it would be a shame should Mokou be content to simply let that effort coast into disintegration.

Agate felt the immortal’s gaze lingering on her unclothed body. Habit and practice kept this particular stretch of her body — her breasts, her fore-abs, the vertical plane of her upper back — concealed. The uniformity of her dappled fur was broken by the tracery of a handful of scars and shaped by underlying musculature. A glance of confirmation revealed a faint but contented smile on Mokou’s face as she took in the details. Agate returned it confidently, sweeping a hand in demonstrative gesture down her upper torso.

“One less mystery for you,” said Agate. Arcing chrome grooves in the ceiling made runners for hanging strip-curtains of chitinous crab molt, demarcating each spout along the wall into its own nook. She strode to an open shower and drew the curtain closed behind her.

“I was wonderin’ if you kept more fungus in there or what,” Mokou grinned, stepping into the stall next to her. Her voice came clear from behind the softly-clattering curtain. “You need me to scrub anywhere? Have to imagine you’ve got spots you can’t always reach.”

That was a sensitive question, asked none too delicately. Agate grasped the shower handle and beckoned a spray of warm water on herself. “I have my own techniques.”

Mokou laughed over the hissing of her own showerhead. “Sure, I don’t doubt it. You’d have to. Alright, forget need. Colleague to colleague. You want me to scrub anywhere?”

Agate sighed. The waters streamed through the fur on her back. This shower was the start of her ardently-awaited relief. She had toiled for this. She didn’t need to be subjected to Mokou’s patronizing attitude. But then, it wasn’t, truly. It was an offer to share in that relief. Mokou had toiled, too.

Just so long as Mokou didn’t get ahead of herself. These were the public chambers of a municipal institution. She tugged aside the curtain partitioning their stalls. “You read the posted etiquette?”

Mokou held her hands out from under the shower stream in a sage-scented gesture of sudsy reassurance. “Sure, it’s straightforward enough. I said what I meant.”

“Then yes, thank you. You may wash my underbelly.” Agate turned in place to bank her hindquarters closest to Mokou’s stall. Even with her techniques, that particular region took the most effort to clean.

Then came Mokou’s touch, warmed by the waters. One hand she braced against Agate’s rear hip, the other she plied through her dampened fur at the niche where thigh rejoined her underside. She worked with a steady and deliberate pace across Agate’s underbelly, leaving her nicely lathered. Her touch conjured memories of the care with which she’d bandaged Agate’s thigh that night on the glassed river. There was that same economy of motion arisen from an action countlessly repeated. This application held a far more pleasant context.

While Mokou scrubbed her hindquarters, Agate soaped herself along her front. In the wilds, with its slime bogs and tar fields and scent-tracking beasts, hygiene was a more demanding task, and one that most always had to be met with spare drams of freshwater or the happenstances of brackish streams. A shower like this was a sweet indulgence. Perhaps Mokou sensed as such; perhaps she indulged her when she lathered down a hindleg, along a flank, over the base of her tail, humming all the while.

Their efforts met at her midsection. Agate caught a lathering hand in her grip and gave it an appreciative squeeze. She repositioned herself again to better rinse herself off. “Come here,” she said.

Mokou shifted herself in front of Agate with eyebrows inquisitively raised. Agate gathered Mokou’s hair into one thick bundle and pulled it forward over Mokou’s shoulder. Grasping Mokou gently but firmly by the shoulders, Agate spun her to gain access to her freshly-exposed back. She returned Mokou’s ministrations then, lathering her back, feeling the subtle little hairs that bloomed from her ageless flesh.

“Ahh,” Mokou sighed. “That’s nice.”

No scars illuminated the canvas of her back. Her body kept the secrets of its past. So much of her was still a mystery, cultivated or no. She could eat all the glands of every memory eater in Qud thrice over and it wouldn’t be a torch’s light in the dim obscurity of the immortal’s span. How could Agate hope to pierce it with the time she held?

But still, what an enticing unknowability.

“Ms. Star? Mokou?” came Yacotzal’s soft voice. “Your room is ready.”

Chapter Text

Steam wafted from the chamber’s central pool. Peptic loungers and a low table stood to its side, already stocked with their effects. Pipes circumscribing the walls glinted in the warm light of oil lamps. Agate strode to the ramped pool entrance and began to lower herself into the blissfully hot water. Mokou beelined first for the cider and its two provided glasses, taking them up before joining her.

“Dig the vibes,” said Mokou. She seated herself on the lip of the pool, dangling her legs into the water as she filled the glasses.

Agate let out a slow breath, acclimating herself to the heat, wading to a submerged ledge to rest on. The waters rippled over her flanks. “What?”

“It’s a nice place, I mean,” Mokou chuckled. She offered a softly effervescing glass to Agate.

“It has its charm,” nodded Agate. She accepted the glass, but held it cocked at arm’s length for a moment. “To a match well-judged.”

“Live and drink, eh?” Mokou answered, clinking her glass against Agate’s.

The chilled cider made for crisp refreshment. It was perfectly satisfactory, though had it been a bottle from the fungal boughs of Mehshruul End, it would have been transcendent. Still, Agate could hardly complain about the course of their evening’s date thus far.

Mokou’s toasting accounted for half her glass. She loosed her breath in an exaggerated little hoot, then slipped herself down along the ledge near Agate. “Hoooh! God, that’s good. A bath. A real bath.”

“One of the many boons of public infrastructure,” said Agate. She took her own glass at a more leisurely pace, though considering Mokou’s habits, she felt a bit of pressure. Such a pace might shrink her share of the bottle.

“And this is all just a side benefit, yeah? This isn’t even what they made the place for,” said Mokou. She glanced upwards at the cavern ceiling, as though she could pick out the arena through the intervening strata. “Hot damn, what a match. What a meal. I oughta take some lessons from her next.”

“Arrange that soon,” advised Agate. “Her schedule fills swiftly as Ut yara Ux approaches.”

“Ut yara Ux?” asked Mokou.

“Midyear festival,” said Agate, shifting her hindlegs out from where they rested under her to float them to her side, from the shelf into the deeper water. “Quite the occasion here. It’s coming up at the end of Uulu Ut.”

“That’s how she cooks when it isn’t for a festival?” Mokou whistled, pouring herself another glass. She gestured with it towards Agate in a vaguely accusatory manner. “You sure you didn’t tell her about the Five Impossible Requests?”

Agate scoffed. “It is impossible I could have done so. You barely told me of them yourself.”

“Didn’t I? Shit. The Swallow’s Cowrie Shell was — you know cowrie shells? You still get those?”

Agate shook her head. “Not to my knowledge. A type of urchin, one presumes?” She extended her glass for a refill.

Mokou obliged with a pour of the bottle and a shake of her own head. “Think they were mollusks, actually. Made lovely little shells. Very valuable — lotta folks even used ‘em for money. So for this suitor, Kaguya asks for a swallow’s nest with a cowrie shell inside. Sounds almost reasonable, right?”

“It certainly sounds easy enough to counterfeit, if not,” said Agate. “Perhaps she requested it of her least competent suitor.”

“Oh, probably. Think this was the one who died. Clincher was, she wanted the edible kind.”

“Of swallow’s nest? They weren’t all edible?” asked Agate. She frowned. “What was the point of calling them ‘swallows’ if their nests weren’t edible?”

“Most things weren’t edible, Agate,” Mokou replied. Her expression wrinkled into uncertain recollection. “Not just the nests, though. If I remember right, she wanted the poor bastard to get the edible kind of cowrie shell, too. That one, I’m pretty sure she was making up.”

“I see,” said Agate, sipping her cider. It seemed Mokou was still of a mind to talk history this evening. It was as fascinating as it was maddeningly roundabout.

Mokou slipped deeper into the pool and sighed, half in relaxation and half in melancholy. “Damnedest thing, you know? But I think I remember the story better than I remember my own damn life.”

“I understand your insistence, at least,” offered Agate, perhaps a tad hurriedly, but then, certainly by now Mokou had supped her fill of melancholy this evening. Had it been an intentional reference on the Choraler’s part, that would lend support to Mokou’s theory that this Kaguya of hers had a direct hand in steering Qud’s mythological landscape. As it was, though, she’d have to seek that support elsewhere. Perhaps this pattern-searching was its own form of enrichment. “It’s not often a dinner presents you with such cosmic coincidence, I would imagine.”

“Not often,” admitted Mokou. “Shit, though. On the strength of that esh nest dish alone, I’d let her marry me.”

Agate chuckled. Jathiss would likely be flattered by the jest, but of the two in the private bathing chamber most likely to face such a proposal from the Choraler, it wasn’t Mokou. Still, perhaps Mokou could do with someone new in her life over whom to wax fondly. Agate shifted again on the ledge, rolling slightly against the pool’s lip and freeing her forelegs, giving more of her body over to the saline buoyancy of the waters. Mokou’s gaze rested upon her, reassessing.

“And you beat her,” said Mokou. Her tone was intrigued, tinged with a healthy respect. “You went up against her and you beat her.”

“Of course,” said Agate. Her glass clinked softly on the stone cavern floor as she set it next to Mokou’s. She stretched her upper torso out along the lip of the pool and folded her arms beneath her as a resting cushion for her forehead. She shut her eyes. “Because my methods are perfect.”

Mokou laughed. The surrounding pipes softly chimed with sympathetic tones for a moment after her laughter subsided. “That’s what it takes to win, huh?”

Agate’s ear flicked. “Others have won without them. But I have never been one for scraping past with thinner margins.”

Mokou sat with that answer in silence for a few breaths. Water gurgled through the pipes and lapped at the pool’s edges. Steam condensed and softly dripped. Muffled conversations and spattering showers filtered through the surrounding cavern walls.

“Your perfect methods,” said Mokou at last. “They make you happy?”

A strange question. Her methods brought her many things; survival, structure, acclaim, victory, progress. They granted her a framework by which she could navigate and outwit a world, a materiality that vacillated between apathy and hostility towards her. Was this not happiness?

If it wasn’t happiness, then what barred her from it?

“They give me standards,” Agate replied. “The world does not always meet them.”

Mokou chuckled, almost closer to a toneless exhale. “Agate, look at me.”

Agate raised her head and looked at Mokou, sitting not a pace away along the circumference of the pool. “Sitting” was perhaps strong — Mokou was submerged up to her neck, which craned obtusely backwards to rest her head on the lip of the pool. Her handsome face was flushed from heat or drink or both, and a faint, almost hollow smile fixed itself upon her lips. Her eyes were clear. Some facet within them still shone with an inescapable weariness.

“I don’t have standards,” said Mokou. “Do you think I’m happy?”

Another strange question. “What are you getting at?”

Mokou sighed, as though she were explaining something far too basic to warrant the explanation’s effort. “I mean whatever makes us unhappy probably runs deeper than standards. So I figure, why have ‘em?”

Agate held her gaze through the few leisurely breaths she spent in assessment. Perhaps she had underestimated Mokou’s appetite for melancholy. “Why do you say that? You have standards, demonstrably. What do you call it whenever you can’t replicate one of your wife’s recipes?”

Mokou was the one to break off her gaze, glancing away into the low-lit corners. An expression of faint frustration replaced her smile. “That’s different.”

“How?” Agate countered. “Clearly your time with her was valuable enough that it shapes your wants to this day. Are these not standards?”

“That’s — that’s wifing. That’s wife things. That’s outside of the material. Ineffable.” Mokou’s hands rose from beneath the water’s surface, dripping into a balancing gesture. “I mean, sure. I’m just saying, there are standards and there are standards.”

What on earth was she talking about?

“You ever had a wife, Agate?” Mokou continued.

“No,” said Agate. Her manifold pursuits left her little time to dedicate to the interpersonal. She was a bachelor of science.

“You oughta try it while you still can. It’s nice,” said Mokou. Water splashed softly as she rose enough to pour for the both of them.

“In regards to your earlier question,” Agate cleared her throat, rising enough to accept her freshened glass, “you certainly seem happier today than I usually see you.”

“Yeah, well, we all have good days,” Mokou smiled. She chimed her glass against Agate’s. “Here’s to ‘em.”

“Hear, hear.” Agate drank the toast. The cider warmed her. Residual tensions that had accumulated over the last few weeks steadily melted in the water’s heat. It had been a good day. It was heartening to see that her traveling companion was not so calloused as to be inured to the occasion. Her presence had been downright enjoyable. “And, regardless of my methods — thank you for the scrub.”

“Mmhm,” Mokou hummed into her drink. “Nothing wrong with helpin’ a buddy out.”

“Are we?” asked Agate. This persistent refrain. “Buddies?”

Mokou eyed her neutrally over the rim of her glass. “Reckon that’s up to you.”

“You are still upset that I’m changing shifts,” Agate surmised. She should have guessed that the matter wasn’t settled. One date wouldn’t have changed that.

“It’s more like—” Mokou’s eyes wandered as she marshaled her response. She sighed. “I only joined that because you brought me into it. I barely know those people. Like, sure, it’s nice having something to do with my hands, but… it’s hard for me to care otherwise.”

“You could change shifts with me,” said Agate, though the suggestion had hardly left her mouth before its dubious nature struck her. She shifted further upright, bringing her legs back beneath her to cool the rest of her body a touch.

Mokou waved her off. “Nah, you’re doing more technical shit, right? That’s not my thing. I’ll stick it out for now. It’s just—” Mokou glanced back at her, then sank back slightly against the lip of the pool. “Was just nice having a place where I knew I could see you.”

Agate’s face flushed. Perhaps it was the cider. “You know where I live.”

“Yeah, but are you ever there?” asked Mokou.

“Yes, regularly,” said Agate. There was something unbalancing about her prolonged attention. “You want to see me?”

The immortal laughed. “Sure I do! Is that so unexpected? You’re a weirdo, Agate.”

“Weirdo?” Agate scoffed. Part of what made it so unbalancing was that Agate never knew when it would slip into outright condescension. “You’re one to talk.”

Water sloshed around Mokou as she leaned forward, opening her hands in a vaguely exasperated gesture. She grinned. “What? I like weirdos. They stick with me.”

“As does—” Agate reached forward and caught her unoccupied hand to pull her towards herself. “—a smorgasbord of grime commensurate to your excessive hair. Come here. You’re all tangled.”

Mokou raised her brows into an expression half of surprise and half of acceptance. She let herself be pulled from her spot on the ledge to drift until her side nestled against Agate’s submerged lap. Mokou rested her elbows over the lip of the pool, while her floating legs pointed back into the center of the waters. Freed from her former seated posture, her hair spilled down her back, out around her body and over Agate’s thighs, coiled and drifting like bleached watervine. Agate set her glass aside and threaded her fingers into a central strand. She slid her way methodically down the whole length, teasing loose tangles and knots where her fingers found them.

“How long you been waiting to do this?” asked Mokou, loosing an amused breath.

“Since it became clear you were unwilling to take matters into your own hands,” Agate replied. She should have retrieved the grooming kit from the room’s storage before she had entered the pool. It was too late now. She’d simply have to commit. But then, direct touch brought its own discoveries. For one, her hair wasn’t nearly as dirty as Agate had feared. Tangled, certainly, but the shower had done her some good. The texture of her hair was remarkably fine, yet every so often Agate’s fingers would chance upon a scuffed or sun-broken stretch of strands. Where her skin was silent, each lock of her hair hinted at the deprivations and rigors of her travels.

Mokou began to hum again. It started as an aimless little tune. Just when Agate thought it might go somewhere, Mokou cut herself off and glanced up at her. “You know any drinking songs?”

“I can’t say it’s part of my usual repertoire,” said Agate.

“Trying to remember an old one,” Mokou elaborated. She set her jaw in concentration, reaching for the bottle to pour another round. “Something like, da da dahh, da da dahh… Where was that from?”

“Are you asking me?” asked Agate. “I haven’t the faintest. How old?”

“That’s what I’m trying to remember, if it was before or after the ice,” Mokou grumbled. She lapsed into buoyant silence, finishing her pour. Agate continued to finger-brush Mokou’s hair. She made a note to herself to put a bit of extra attention towards clearing the pool’s fur catch when they were done with the room for the evening. Such was common courtesy, the grease of the Heptagon’s social axles.

Mokou rose suddenly with a triumphant, sharp breath, flopping herself nearly back into Agate’s lap to gain a better singing posture. As her only preamble, she passed a glass back to Agate, waving her own in a tempo like a drunkard’s gait. She lifted her voice lustily in joyous song.

“There’s the cinder grown upon a bending bough,
The cinder sown within the field.
Stoke them rightly, fan them for a little while,
Ere long, thy cinders shall be grown to a fire!”

Her low and rasping register resonated through the chamber’s brassworks, through the meat and bone of Agate’s body. She’d never heard Mokou’s voice given over to song before. It was so striking that she paused her ministrations for a moment. Mokou plunged into the next verse, echoing the melody of the first.

“A fire as this should ne’er be drunk alone,
The sweetness warms thee to the bone.
For the sweetest fire’s the brightest company,
Fill thy cup, let the sweetness make us merry!”

It was an old tongue and a foreign one, but not so much of either as to be unintelligible. The melody was whirling and infectiously jaunty. Mokou sang with a surety and tone so practiced as to approach the absolute absence of ego. From the way her body tensed against Agate in preparation for the chorus, it promised to test the upper bounds of tavern talent. Agate teased more tangles from her hair as she sang and found herself wishing she was more familiar with the tune.

“Drink for bounty, for life, for an end to present strife,
Should thee yearn for thine home, drink for many safe returns,
Drink for friends far and near, grant them all a flagon of cheer,
One more round, take thy fire in hand!”

Their private chamber echoed with the smoky tones of another of Mokou’s seemingly-effortless masteries. Despite the fervent energy of her performance, she’d managed not to spill a drop of her cider. Her adroitness was impressive. What kept her from singing more often? There was naught between the two them but a bit of air, a bit of water, and Agate’s hand in the wet curtain of Mokou’s hair. She took a deep pull of cider and threaded her hand deeper, tracing her touch down Mokou’s back.

“Burn the sorrows from thy face! Burn abundant, burn a trace!
Burn the harvest’s sprightly dew til thy dreams be fain and true!
Live and drink, live and drink, til morning dare not think,
And may the sun wake thee gentle with light!”

Her final held note dissolved into triumphant cackling. She toppled backwards against Agate, slipping lower until her head nestled between her breasts. The motion nearly trapped Agate’s hand — she repositioned it deftly around to Mokou’s belly, breaking up a pair of tangles on the way.

“Quite the spirited tune,” Agate chuckled. “Bucolic, even.”

“Oh, yeah,” nodded Mokou, after another mouthful of cider. “There’s another like, five double verses where they went through more metaphors for the brewing process, but like fuck am I about to try to remember ‘em.”

There was her fire again, sparked this time by a bygone drinking song and fed fuel by reminiscing over its musical structure. “Double verses, but single choruses?” asked Agate.

“It let the first half of folks get a drink while the other half picked up slack, but, you know, you were gonna leave me hanging anyway. And the more ambitious ones could even try some harmonies on the second one. Shit!” She punched herself lightly in the thigh, the impact further softened by it being submerged. “No, I forgot a chorus. It was double choruses, too. Then that last hurrah, then if anyone had some brass or a flute or two you let ‘em go hog wild so everyone can go get another round.”

“Practical,” said Agate. “From the dialect and the particular alluded crops, I would assume it to be pre-Gyre, yes?”

“Sounds about right,” Mokou replied. “Gyre — that was, uh, that wheat blight? Hit around when the water crisis did? About a thousand years back?”

Agate nodded. “Yes, accompanied by pandemics of glotrot and ironshank and surges in the Girsh and svardym populations.”

“Damn,” Mokou whistled. “The blight was bad enough. Lucky that other shit never made it across the desert. Though, come to think of it, a few years back I heard it was all kicking in again. But then I didn’t hear anything more about it, and now I’m here and everything’s, like, fine. So what gives?”

“To my understanding, it was staved off by the efforts of a mercenary warden under the employ of the Barathrumites. I’ve always meant to ask her on the specifics, but thus far circumstances haven’t permitted an interview.”

Mokou perked up in interest. “Oh, was that what’s-her-face? The incident resolver, back at the Stilt? Esther?”

“No, I doubt you’ve met this one. Mara. Rather distinctive; she has a somewhat similar body plan to the arconaut we met in the glass storm,” explained Agate. It wasn’t simply a matter of schedule, but of allegiance, too. That warden’s bond with the Barathrumites ran considerably deeper than a merely mercenary affair. Of all Agate’s former relations, she especially tried not to involve herself in the life and relations of her erstwhile research partner — but by all accounts, Q Girl and Mara were happy together.

Small wonder the warden would be chilly in light of how Agate’s own bond had frayed. Rather, in how Agate had frayed it — she’d by no means been a passive actor.

“Ah, probably not, then,” said Mokou, settling back against Agate. Agate’s body resonated in the heat of the pool as the immortal spoke, slipping down into her customary fried register. “Glad we didn’t get another blight, though. You’ve got a festival coming up. I like to hear that kind of thing. Means folks around here still have things they want to celebrate.”

“What does that have to do with the blight?” asked Agate.

Mokou lifted a hand out of the water into a gesture that couldn’t commit to being a shrug. “Ah, well. The folks who wrote that song, y’know, they used it to pass along knowledge. To celebrate the harvests that knowledge brought ‘em. A few bad years and suddenly the crop just doesn’t work right anymore. No more harvests to celebrate, no more reason to keep that knowledge alive. No more festivals. I like festivals.”

She sighed heavily. Agate kept her silence, sensing more from Mokou’s brooding tack. She’d thought her own ruminations on past relationships had been bleak, but this was another caliber entirely.

Mokou continued gloomily. “Then soon enough it’s ‘The local wizard has put a hex on our crops!’ and then it’s ‘We can’t burn the local wizard to death!’ and then there’s nothin’ for it but to move on.” She finished her glass and set it aside. “The fuck would I hex their crops for, anyway? I like crops.”

This was dire. “Mokou.”

“Mm?” Mokou shifted her head back to lift her gaze to Agate.

“You wish to keep this a good day, yes?”

“Oh, I’d like to,” said Mokou.

Agate slid her free hand up from Mokou’s belly to cup her chin. She tilted Mokou’s head enough to lean in for a kiss. She brushed her lips against Mokou’s, parted for a breath, then pressed in firmer. Mokou hummed softly and relaxed against Agate, opening herself into a deeper kiss. Agate basked in the warmth of their bodies, the heat of the water, steam in their breaths and cider-spice on their tongues. She pulled back after a luxuriant handful of moments.

“We’ve a few drams left in that bottle. How does the harmony go?”

Seeing the gloom banished from Mokou’s expression by her rekindled interest was reward enough.

Chapter Text

The quiet of the Chrome Ward cul-de-sac absorbed their entrance. Agate’s hooves clicked on the shale cavern floor while Mokou’s sneakered tread whispered at her side. Their gaits, Mokou judged, were merely loose, not quite into unsteady territory. Her hair was the cleanest it had been since before the desert. The aches and complaints of her body had melted in the baths. She still felt pleasantly buzzed despite the somewhat long walk from the elevators. The course of the evening looked very promising. All in all, it had to have been one of the better nights she’d spent in a cave.

Agate unlocked the door to her workspace — maybe a hair slower and more deliberate in her actions than usual, but no fumbling. She was good with her hands. A bit of drink hadn’t dampened that. Mokou caught her singing under her breath.

“Drink for bounty, for life…”

“It’s an earworm, isn’t it?” Mokou snickered. She hadn’t expected Agate to pick up the song, but she’d been pleasantly surprised at her ear for harmonies. For that matter, it proved Agate could have fun. For the last few weeks, Mokou had never been quite sure on that.

“I should hope not. They have those across the desert, do they not?” asked Agate. “Earworms? Cherrydotters?”

“What?” Mokou replied. “No — I mean yeah, they do, but no, I just meant it’s catchy.”

“Mm. Yes,” Agate nodded. She opened the door to her workspace, but paused in the threshold, casting a glance back over her shoulder. “Coming?”

“Sec,” said Mokou. She spun on her heel and crouched down to face Tabi. She’d been a good sport all night — out of sight and mostly out of mind. Hopefully she could keep it up a little longer. “You wait here, okay, Tabi?”

“Mrow?” Tabi answered. If she had any sort of expression at all, it looked vaguely anxious.

“Hide in the walls if you want,” said Mokou. She could hear Agate from the doorway behind her move deeper into her workspace. “Just stay… out here. Make sure nobody comes in.”

Tabi blinked. “Rrm.”

“Nobody,” Mokou reiterated. Not that visitors were likely at this time of night. She just didn’t want Tabi watching. From behind her, she heard the sounds of Agate’s approach. A chilled waterskin plopped onto her shoulder accompanied by a saucer offered into her periphery.

“Here,” said Agate. “A bribe.”

More blood, presumably. How much did she keep stocked? She took both and poured out a dram for her cat. “I don’t think she understands bribes, Agate.”

“Incorruptible. The perfect sentry,” Agate dryly replied, heading back inside.

She did have jokes. “Alright. Coming,” said Mokou. She turned away from Tabi’s hunched lapping and followed Agate into her workspace, shutting the door behind her.

The entry walkway connected to an orderly and open kitchen, a dining zone, and, in the back corner of the chamber, a bed-platform. There were hardly any internal walls; heavy curtains ringed the bed-platform but were presently drawn back. All of these purposeful living-demarcations ringed and overlooked a central work-pit, as though carved out from the original purpose of the chamber. The pit was dim and cluttered, though the clutter was largely confined to its corners and to the surfaces of its tables. The pit’s shutter to the exterior looked wide enough for a chariot and a half to pass through. It was quite a bit more space than her room at the Moondrop, but then, Agate seemed to be doing a great deal more with it. She had all this to herself?

“Are you hungry?” asked Agate. Having shed and hung her lab coat, she was already striding to the kitchen. Had she put a bit of strut, a bit of sway in her gait?

“I could eat,” Mokou replied. She’d had long enough to sit with the evening’s feast that her mouth was bored again. “Something light, I think.”

“I was intending as much,” Agate nodded. Immediately she busied herself in her pantries, pulling down jars, a pot, and a mixing bowl.

“Anything I can help with?” asked Mokou. She couldn’t help but start to poke around the edges of the kitchen space, taking stock of its layout and gadgetry. Agate’s camp kitchen was impressive enough, but here she took every advantage of a stationary setup. It was a formidable installation, but then, it would be more surprising if it wasn’t.

“No, no,” said Agate, filling the pot with steaming water from a heated spigot, then salting it. “On our last date I made the error of letting you off for the night without a taste of perfection. I’m correcting this now.”

“Ohh, gotcha,” Mokou grinned. She sauntered to Agate’s side and rested an elbow on the bridge of her rear hips, tracing the index of her free hand down her spine. “Well in that case, how much of a nuisance can I make myself?”

Agate shot a glance back over her shoulder, coupled with a cold smile. “What, competing with your cat? You can certainly try.” She punctuated her remark by flicking her tail into the back of Mokou’s head.

“Tabi wasn’t the pussy I was thinkin’ of, Agate,” Mokou laughed. Agate gave a faint, disbelieving scoff and turned back to her cooking. Mokou merely grinned wider. She switched which arm she braced herself upon, trailing furrows with her palm and fingers the rest of the way along Agate’s spine, down over the drooping arc of her tail. With a parting squeeze to her tailtip, Mokou slid her hand over to gather a handful of Agate’s rump into a harder squeeze. This provoked an equally faint noise of appreciation from Agate, but Mokou was in no particular rush; a leisurely pace let her keep an eye on the meal’s preparation.

It looked promising. The water rose to a boil, awaiting a nest of pungent-doughed brown noodles. Agate had drawn a few lengths of tongue meat from a pickling vessel and now sliced them into strips. As her knife pattered against the cutting block, she brushed her tail beckoningly over Mokou’s wrist. It was almost a grasping motion — though when translated through what little articulation and strength were available to her deer-like tail, it was rendered closer to scooping. Without her tail in the way, the heat of her nethers radiated against Mokou’s skin.

“I’ve always found the Choraler’s compositions to be—” Agate’s breath hitched infinitesimally as Mokou brushed her palm across her folds. “—inspiring. Don’t you agree?”

“Oh, sure,” said Mokou. There was some unspoken cultural weight in the way she’d said “inspiring” that Mokou couldn’t quite parse, but she was too preoccupied to give it much thought. After all, Agate knew how she felt about the evening’s dinner.

Of far more immediate interest was the chance to explore a new partner. The novelty of the now seeped up through her fingertips, brushing aside the countless ghosts of old lovers. Every detail refined her presentness: the layout of Agate’s body, the intimate gradients of her scent and heat and texture. She was wet and inhumanly capacious, but then, Agate wasn’t human — nor, most likely, was she youkai. One thing was certain: her composure was legendary. From her bearing, Mokou could have never guessed someone was three fingers deep in her if they hadn’t been Mokou’s fingers. Evidently this still wasn’t being a nuisance.

“Though, were I to level any critique towards her spread—” said Agate, spooning a bit of mystery sauce into the mixing bowl with the tongue strips, her voice level yet fond, “—it would be the pacing.”

“Pacing?” asked Mokou. “Like what, the texture? The taste? Those had a good flow, though.” That was a moderate understatement to how the meal had struck her, but then, her focus wasn’t on articulate food critique, and only half on Agate’s cooking. Agate, it seemed, was always trying to do everything at once; her drive and willpower made that attitude almost infectious. Tonight Mokou found herself wanting to resist that attitude as much as she could. She focused instead on the rhythm and heat of kneading her fingers into Agate’s nethers. The novelty of it deserved all the attention she could devote to the effort.

“Naturally, they were superb,” Agate nodded. The noodles went into the boiling pot, and a glowing plasmatic slurry went into the mixing bowl. Her cunt grew wetter, though Mokou couldn’t tell whether that was from her touch or whether Agate simply felt that strongly about the Choraler’s courses. “But by pacing I mean as a matter of metabolic manifestations. We had little time to embody her courses. After all, it was the gastrophysicist An‡helme who said ‘Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you what you are.’”

Mokou stopped for a moment, agog. “Agate,” she said.

Agate glanced back over her shoulder. “Yes?”

“Nothing, I’m just—” She gestured vaguely towards Agate’s rump with her free hand. “Practically got a hand in you and you’re quoting some — is this not doing anything for you?”

Agate laughed softly, directing more of her regard behind her. “Pleasure is pleasure, Mokou, whether that stems from cooking or from more carnal roots.” With this last statement, she squeezed the muscles of her nethers around Mokou’s fingers. “It’s certainly appreciated. If you really wanted to be a nuisance, you’d be poking around my belongings.”

“Alright,” Mokou laughed, straightening briefly to shift further behind her. “Why don’t I just be a cunt instead?”

“I’m nearly done here,” Agate replied, gesturing to the noodles. A flicker of consideration crossed her expression. “Give me your hand.”

Mokou offered her free hand to Agate. Agate wordlessly refused, and instead turned her whole body towards Mokou. The motion dislodged Mokou’s occupied hand with a slick whisper. This one Agate grasped by the wrist, pulling it up to her face. She licked Mokou’s fingertips, still wet with her own juices.

“Hmm,” Agate mused, withdrawing her tongue and working her jaw subtly. After a moment, with her other hand, she sampled the sauce of her mixing bowl. Eroticism seemed, if anything, to be a secondary concern to simple tasting. She released Mokou’s wrist and nodded in satisfaction. “Yes, that should pair nicely. Proceed.”

Mokou let her hand fall.

There hadn’t been a scrap of self-consciousness. Already Agate returned to the task of preparing her dish. This was beyond idiosyncratic, beyond even eccentric. She was in a caliber entirely of her own. Not in all of Mokou’s long millennia had anyone treated her this precise way. She simply had no other course but to eat her out.

Was this what she meant by perfect methods?

Mokou braced her hands on Agate’s ass, fingers threading through her fur. She bent in closer. Agate lifted her tail in anticipation. The scent of her unveiled cunt caught Mokou fully on her approach — earthy and hot, with faint but sharp overtones of sweat and spice. How long had it been since she’d last been able to take this sweet measure of another? Agate’s folds glistened and Mokou plunged herself in.

Agate sighed in bodily satisfaction. It was finally a sign that Mokou’s efforts were accomplishing something — a sign she could trust. The taste of her cunt ran like silk over her tongue, savory-sweet. This was the raw stuff of life and she buried herself within it. The carnality, the proof, the presentness all ignited the need in her own cunt. This time she savored it. Soon enough she could sate herself. For now, she simply pressed her face harder into Agate.

It was almost — almost — too perfect, her cunt. As Mokou drew her tongue across deeper flesh she finally recalled what it was. An old trend, from that bright time before the ice. Agate’s cunt was designer, wasn’t it? She hadn’t thought any of that infrastructure survived, but here was living proof to the contrary. It was heartening, and a touch nostalgic. She wanted to ask about it, sometime when her tongue wasn’t occupied. There was no hurry to free it up.

Over the sounds of their quickened breaths came the sounds of Agate’s cooking: the dripping of strained noodles, the whisk of stirred sauce, the sizzle of plasma. She shifted her hooves a bit more often to access other cabinets and fixtures now that the dish drew closer to readiness. Mokou shuffled along with her to keep her tongue in unbroken contact with Agate’s nethers. She had missed this — marking time only by their shared pace and mutual pleasure. Already Agate’s pace was poised to desynchronize yet again. Mokou wasn’t disappointed; the scent of sublime seasoning crept into her awareness with every surfacing breath she took.

Finally, Agate backed herself into Mokou’s face with one last emphatic step. Mokou gave ground to the motion, which Agate took to pull away and maneuver herself around. Mokou straightened, licking the juice from her lips, meeting Agate’s gaze. Agate’s glowcrust lent its shine to an expression of burning, sultry triumph.

“My latest creation,” she announced, hefting a pair of steaming bowls in her grasp. “Agate Severance Star’s Fulgurating Amuse-Bouche. Sit. We eat.”

Chapter Text

“Oh my god,” said Mokou. She lowered her chopsticks and closed her eyes, simply taking in the taste. It was bold, pungent, and mouth-wateringly savory, tingling on her tongue with building current.

“Thoughts?” asked Agate, sitting across the compact dining table from her.

“Mmm,” Mokou hummed, then swallowed. “How long you been working on this one?”

“The sauce I formulated some months ago. I’ve been iterating on constructions for the yuckwheat dough for the last several weeks, though the confluence of form factor and additional ingredients came to me on our way back from the Pipe Ward.”

“Form factor, huh?” Mokou replied, grinning. She clasped another coil of noodles. They crackled at the shifting contact. “You really liked my noodles yesterday, didn’t you?”

“I did, yes. That was certainly a contributing element,” Agate nodded. It was heartening, the way she stuck up for that dish.

“My thoughts,” said Mokou. She popped the coil into her mouth and chewed languidly. Energy built within her, coursing out from her gut, redoubling against the current left in her mouth by the noodles. As she swallowed her latest mouthful she couldn’t help but notice the way her tongue brushed against her teeth — the same oozing thickness brought about by the Choraler’s rice bowl, but this time accompanied by a fresh pair of flanking nubs, just shy of tongue-tips in their own right. Curious. Exciting. Perhaps she’d started in on Agate too soon. She gestured down to the bowl at last. “This is. Maybe. Maybe. The best thing I’ve had tonight.”

Agate’s response was a mere knowing smile. She almost looked to be getting more satisfaction from that appraisal than from anything Mokou had done with her hands or her tongue. Of course the idea was to give her satisfaction, but that didn’t make her appraisal less genuine.

“I can feel—” Mokou continued with circular motions of her hands, “—the lightning. The body lightning. Electricity. But I haven’t quite worked out what you’ve done to my tongue. Didn’t get a chance to figure out how to work it before Jathiss’s appetizer wore off. This one feels different, anyway.”

“Yes, precisely my critique,” Agate nodded. From her tone it was clear her own tongue had thickened again too. “The electrical generation is just a bit of utility. But through the sauce I’ve been able to establish a metabolic trigger between the yuckwheat base of the noodles and the pickled tongue.”

Mokou swirled up the last of her noodles and lifted them to enjoy. She paused to pose a question first. “A trigger?”

Agate’s steady gaze cooled with whatever didactic spirit possessed her when she deigned to explain things. “The Choraler’s Bop Bowls granted us a more straightforward expression of the mutation. One can muster it at will, but there’s a refractory period, so to speak. The limits of our physiologies and metabolisms tend to restrict overall tonguings into the range of two to six times over the course of an hour. However, with a bit of culinary encouragement and extra energy, one can divert the refractory period down another metabolic pathway entirely. Thus coupling it to a trigger.”

“Oh!” said Mokou, brightening with recognition. “Right, no, I did something like that with fire and fear when I cooked with Bajiko.”

“Ah, yes,” Agate’s ear flicked. “She mentioned fostering your introduction to lah.”

Mokou gave an innocent smile. Had to keep her head from getting too big. Still, the implications were just as electrifying as the dish itself. She stood from her seat, gathering up their empty bowls. “No lah in this one, though, yeah? So what’s the trigger?”

“I will demonstrate momentarily,” Agate smiled back, calculating and cryptic. She stood and called back over her shoulder as she made her way across the workspace to her wide bed. “Your attention to the dishes is appreciated. There’s something else I must prepare.”

Mokou deposited the bowls in the kitchen’s washbasin, then gathered the rest of the sparse dishes Agate used for preparation. The angle of the washbasin was precisely the wrong one for Mokou to be able to sneak any glances back towards the bedroom. Her only clues were what faint sounds carried over running water: the jingle of buckles, the crinkle of plastic. The mundanity of dishes wasn’t enough to stifle her anticipation.

Not that the dishes didn’t do their damnedest. If she thought of how much time she’d spent doing dishes over the course of her life — well, she couldn’t let herself think like that.

“Alright,” she said at last, shutting off the water and toweling off her hands. “Can’t promise they’re as clean as you like, but that’s done with.”

Turning, she could finally take in what Agate had prepared. Affixed between her front legs by way of an elaborate harness was a rubbery phallus, studded with abstract pleasure-nodes. The harness itself threaded back along her lower body. She held, with a casual air, a large jar of honey and a stir-stick. Her tarp was spread over the bed. What exactly was Agate expecting?

“Timely. Thank you,” said Agate. She dripped a bit of honey from the stick onto her outstretched tongue, withdrew it, and swallowed.

Three tongue-tendrils erupted back out of Agate’s mouth, whipping across the open chamber. Their sinuous cords latched onto Mokou. Two encircled her wrists while the central tongue coiled round her waist, each contact carrying a static pop. Before the shock could even register, Agate retracted her tongues, pulling with the grace of an expert angler. Mokou was yanked from her feet. The power and force and sudden speed left her feeling weightless. The next instant, Agate caught her, thighs braced in the crooks of Agate’s outstretched arms. Tongues slipped off, leaving Mokou to cling to Agate’s upper torso.

“Honey?!” Mokou panted.

“Honey,” Agate confirmed. She turned and deposited Mokou onto the covered bed in a crinkle of plastic. “You may have additionally noticed the tensile strength and range is considerably greater than what the Choraler’s appetizer gave us.”

“Three of them?!” Mokou fumbled her pants off. This was one hell of an escalation. But more than that, it was a promise — to a sensation she’d never felt, a form she’d never held before. That promise stoked her need. “Give me some of that.”

“Is that any way to ask?” replied Agate.

“Oh, come on,” Mokou hissed.

Agate gave a cold smile. “Open your mouth.”

Mokou opened her mouth. Agate stirred up another dram of honey, shepherding its viscous strands with steady rotation of the stick. She held it out over Mokou’s face and let the honey drip down. It dripped first on her lip, almost tauntingly, before the flow corrected to her mouth. The instant the honey-strand slid down the back of her tongue it provoked a new tingling sensation: tongue-pressure, an autonomic response poised to flood her mouth with mutant saliva.

She swallowed. The pressure swelled, turning her tongue’s fresh nibs into a trident’s tines. There was nowhere to vent it but out.

Flesh burgeoned wildly past her lips. Sensile vines of nerve and muscle splatted against Agate’s chest, antler, and ceiling. Her tongues wrapped instinctively for purchase where it could be found, slipping under Agate’s tattered shirt, filling her senses with the taste of glowcrust, fabric and fur. The next instant, they began to shrink back in a curious resorption. Agate stood fast against the pull of her retracting tongues, though a few of her shirt’s buttons unfastened.

Agate swiftly stored the honey stick then caught Mokou’s central tongue. She grasped it firmly, letting it pulse through her grip on its way back into Mokou’s mouth. “Your aim could use work.”

Mokou panted in disbelief. Her tongue subsided to its usual quantity and something like its usual size. It was still a bit tender from Agate’s hold, but not, seemingly, from the explosion of growth. “When — would I have been able to practice?”

A faintly amused huff came from Agate. “That is, after all, what the tarp is for.” All the tongue-slime that had rubbed off in her grasp she now smeared down the length of her harnessed shaft. At her touch, it buzzed and twitched.

“Thought of everything,” Mokou chuckled. Even as she grappled with all the new avenues granted for her tongues, the artificial shaft dominated her attention. It seemed to have a mind of its own. “What’ve you got there, anyway?”

“Silicone and circuitry,” Agate replied. “Jacked to draw power from the electrical generation, which fuels its internal motors for vibration and articulation. Much the same principle as my tinkering gloves.”

“You made a cyber-dick,” said Mokou. She shifted her hips up and closer to Agate’s heat.

“Aptly summarized,” said Agate, sliding her hand, still wet, beneath Mokou’s bare thigh.

“That’s tremendous,” said Mokou.

Agate paused, her expression shifting to mild concern as she withdrew her hand. “Overly so? Partners of your genotype are something of a rarity to me.”

“Figure of speech,” Mokou assured her, half in exasperation and half in need. She reached for the shaft’s textured tip. “It’s fine. Give it to me.”

“What sort of way is that to ask?” taunted Agate, shifting her hips to leave the shaft just out of reach.

“Oh, come on,” hissed Mokou. “It’s gonna dry out! You get off on this? Gatekeeping the cyber-dick?”

“I get off on another vibrator attached to the rear of the harness,” Agate replied.

“Pretty brainy,” said Mokou. She returned Agate’s calculating smile with a fierce grin. “Don’t even need me here, then.”

“Are you always so dramatic?” Agate scoffed. Even as she spoke, she stirred up another dram of honey.

“I’m just saying, I’m real interested in that gizmo. You’ve got a willing test partner right hmmf—”

She was silenced by another trio of tongues erupting from Agate. The central tongue plunged into her mouth, coated with the mouthwatering taste of honey. The flanking tongues caught her ankles and pulled, lifting her legs until her heels rested on Agate’s shoulders. The new position gave Agate all the clearance she needed to drive her piece into Mokou’s cunt. As though immediately sensing the need of its new berth, it started buzzing inside her. She moaned, muffled by the hot bulk of Agate’s tongue.

When her tongue slid free, Mokou’s nearly followed it. What honey her intrusion had left in Mokou’s mouth wasn’t enough to trigger her own growth, only enough to leave her with a throbbing, tingling anticipation. She tried to disperse it by squirming her body, by flexing unrelated muscles, by dropping her legs to hook around Agate’s waist — a position of less strain. None of it sated the sensation in her mouth. Even as Agate’s precise and rhythmic thrusts built a mounting pleasure within her, she found herself wracked with a new need.

“Fuck!” she gasped. It was a marvel. Here she’d been thinking she’d felt every human need. Instead, Agate introduced her to another one. These were humanity’s tender, writhing needs in this new, mutant era. “Honey! Please!”

“Hmmm~” Agate hummed approvingly, already poised with her own fresh mouthful of honey. She dripped down another dram on Mokou. Nearly all of it made it into her mouth or onto her outstretched tongue, testament to Agate’s control in the face of her shaft’s buzzing tempo. Agate swallowed just before Mokou did. Agate’s whipping tongue-bundle preempted her by a heartbeat, snaking through gaps in her tattered shirt to constrict teasingly around her breasts. Her central tongue again made for Mokou’s mouth. The contact knocked awry the flanking tongues of Mokou’s own eruption; they spilled out to either side of her, trajectories spent before they could find purchase.

But her central tongue was another story. All its exuberant force loosed at the precise right angle relative to Agate’s tongue — had she planned this? Aimed this? Mokou found herself coiling the full length of her tongue along Agate’s at speed. They found purchase against each other, redoubled sensations flooded with residual sweetness, delaying their retractions to an aching slowness. The electrified mutual tightening of their coiled tongues lifted Mokou from the bed, drew her closer to Agate. Agate braced her, held her, tasted of her, fucked her with all her strength and precision. Just as the heating shaft buzzed in her cunt, so could she hear another buzz sing out its electric harmony from Agate’s cunt.

She wrapped her arms around Agate’s upper body and squeezed her thighs hungrily against her. Their tongues slipped apart for a moment even as their lips pressed together. Mokou shut her eyes to the glow of Agate’s fungal mask and gave herself into the kiss. She moaned again and found Agate reciprocating with her own hums. It heartened her to hear. That little spark of reciprocity tipped her over into climax. She broke off the kiss, clinging to Agate, forehead pressed to the cushion of her cheek’s glowcrust, barking out her pleasure as her cunt spasmed. Quick, but weighty — a promise of yet higher peaks.

“Keep — going,” Mokou growled.

Agate’s answer was to bring her into a honey-laden kiss.

It was intoxicating, incomparable, alien. Pure, painless, vine-flexile growth, burgeoning and swelling and sticking and twining. All the while, the buzzing filled her, driving her into climax upon climax. Her first had come upon her as she clung, shuddering, to Agate; her second came upon her in darkness, encased and muffled by Agate’s bouquet of tongues. Her third was monumental — by then she’d grasped how to arc her own tongues back to lick past Agate’s cunt. Between the taste, the thrum of its embedded vibrator, and the sudden shock of the lightning in their bodies bridging through the wet contact, climax jolted through her stronger than ever. It was as though erogeneity had written itself into the elasticity of her tongues. From Agate’s shuddering, half-muffled cry she must have shared in that one. By her fourth she knew that her voice would have been raw had her throat not been coated and re-coated in honey.

This was newness, this was change. This was the mutation that had flowed and still flowed through the world and the cosmos. She’d thought it always flowed past her, but tonight, it flowed through her. It was shining and tactile proof that she, too, was mutable.

Even if it could only be one night at a time. Hadn’t it always been so?

When she wearied of the taste of honey, when her energy was spent, Mokou lay back at last. She let her legs dangle over the side of the bed, her hands idly resting on her belly. Agate settled next to her on the bed, catching her breath. Agate unbuckled her harness idly, strap by strap. It was an unexpectedly tender pose from the scientist, unwinding and recuperative.

Mokou knew she’d feel this tomorrow — the satisfying ache, anchoring her to her own existence. Her head still spun and her cunt throbbed with her every slowing heartbeat. The night had been illuminating. Every time Agate said her methods were perfect — she’d meant that. Mokou couldn’t even grudge the conceit.

“Thanks for that,” she sighed at last.

“It was my pleasure,” Agate replied. She slipped the harness out from under herself and deposited it elsewhere on the tarp with a jingle of buckles.

“That was… that was really something. Don’t know that I have the words.” Mokou took a few deep breaths, feeling out the way her body settled back down from fevered exertion. “That was a new one.”

“High praise,” noted Agate. Her fingers brushed through the hair by Mokou’s temple, breaking apart dried strands where honey or spit had stuck them together. She really did have a tender side. Now Mokou was privileged witness to it.

“Reckon I’m gonna remember this one for a good while, too,” Mokou softly chuckled.

Agate’s brushing hitched in brief surprise. She resumed quickly, trying to recover her composure. “Do you often promise that?”

“Mmm,” Mokou grunted neutrally. The nature of memory made that hard to say. After a moment, she shrugged. “Don’t know how to gauge that. One way or another, you’re good at cutting through the malaise.”

“More of your flattery,” she said, quietly. She didn’t stop brushing. Between strokes, she kissed Mokou’s forehead. She pulled back, her expression warmer than her standard mien but all the more striking for the gravitas held in her eyes. “That’s a weighty promise.”

Mokou smiled back. “I’ll try to be good for it.”

“Good,” Agate nodded, settling back. “I shall hold you to it for as long as I am able.”

Something on the shale ceiling caught the room’s low light. A glistening sheen whose refractive outline shifted with Mokou’s breathing. One of her tongues had left that there. The same residue was all over the tarp, Agate’s fur, and herself. Nothing she’d done in this land thus far had left her with such a cocktail of textures as that now drying on her skin. “Think we took the bath too soon.”

“It is precisely because of that bath that we could engage in this so vigorously,” retorted Agate.

Maybe that made more sense to Agate. She didn’t have the energy to do anything but let it go. She groped for where her pants had ended up and the smoking materials left in their pockets. “Think I need a smoke. You mind if I smoke?”

“Ah.” That stopped Agate’s brushing. She caught Mokou’s hand against the bed, using it to lever herself upright. “Yes, actually. There are many sensitive electronics in here. I may have an acceptable substitute. A moment.”

With that, she rose from the bed and disappeared from the range of Mokou’s vision. Mokou heard her hooves click down to the work-pit. Next, the jangle of rummaging through storage drawers, then plastic clicks bracketing a cryptic scraping. At the sound of her return, Mokou at last mustered the will to prop herself up on her elbows. The sight of Agate struck her.

The sheen across her fur glittered in the soft light of her own glowcrust, whorls and streaks traced through it from the trails Mokou had left on her. Her expression hadn’t particularly softened from her usual severity, but then, that had its own charm. So, too, did seeing her unclothed. She held something like a pen by its bulky power source — a vape-stick. Agate offered it to her by the mouthpiece. Mokou rose enough to clamp it in her lips. She kindled the power and drew in a surprisingly fruity breath.

“You vape?” asked Mokou, billowing vapor riding her question. “You don’t seem the type.”

“Only rarely. In truth…” Agate began. She grasped Mokou by the forearm and hauled her upright. With the bed clear, she began to fold up the tarp. She raised her voice slightly over the crinkling of plastic. “That particular vape belonged to Q Girl. She left it here several years ago. I haven’t found the opportunity to return it.”

“Huh,” said Mokou. She leaned back against the handrail and drew another deep pull on the vape. Agate hadn’t been searching that long. She’d remembered where in the clutter exactly that her ex’s vape-stick had languished for several years? Maybe the number-doing there was mutual. Releasing her cloud-laden breath, she stretched out her back and shoulders. The motion provoked a shiver — another aftershock from her nethers. She’d kept one eye on the curve of Agate’s ass, the play of her unclothed musculature as she cleaned the bed. Maybe part of why all these gals were so torn up that Agate had broken things off with them was that they weren’t getting it this good anymore. “Wonder if she’s still waiting on that severance package.”

Agate stopped and turned a querulous eye towards her. “Must you?”

Mokou raised her hands into an innocent shrug. Agate was the one offering ex-artifacts to her. “You don’t wanna talk about it, we ain’t gotta.”

“No, no, it’s simply—” Agate sighed. She resumed her folding, lifting the flattened bundle from the bed to place it off to the side. She touched her free hand to briefly rub her forehead. “Her home is quite secluded. Grit Gate is some ways to the southeast and several strata down. Considering this and our parting terms, we may all be waiting yet for that opportunity.”

“I get you. We, uh—” She turned her shrug into a short gesture to show off the residue on her forearms. “We sleeping like this?”

“Absolutely not,” said Agate. “There’s a shower I’ve rigged up down in the corner of the workspace.”

“Your techniques!” Mokou gasped.

“Precisely. Go and make use of it. I will join you there shortly. Then and only then may you share my bed.”

“Lookin’ forward to it,” grinned Mokou. “Don’t let my cat keep you up this time.”

Chapter Text

Murky, clinging shadows around her. Shadows which occluded architectural suggestions of vaulted academia — not quite a lecture hall, not quite an operating theater. She stood on its stage. Unbound folios choked and muffled the darkened chamber. No echoes met her straining ears. None of the expected metabolic clarity illuminated this dream’s cryptic venue. Agate had never been here.

But where visual clarity faltered, emotional clarity shone through. The fur on her scarred hackles bristled with steady, low-grade anxiety. From the sourceless shadows of the surrounding seating came the unmistakable sensation of being watched. If she could ascribe any intent, any emotion, any desire to that attention, it would most precisely be — hunger. But she could not face it, nor find its source. Her own attentions were demanded elsewhere. She was not alone on the stage.

“Quetzal, quetzal, quetzal!”

Dust and papers scattered from the shuffling claws of Q Girl. Sweet vapor wisped from her snout and its dangling vape-stick. All the psychal vividness denied to the surroundings fulgurated from her hunched, ursine figure — the rainbow shock of her hair, the gleam of her goggles’ lenses, the soft whirring of her exoskeletal servos. Such enthusiasm in her voice — how long had it been since she’d last heard that? Bittersweet, to hear it again.

Agate caught a drifting paper from its gentle descent, tearing her attentions from Q Girl to scan its contents. Line upon line of gibberish graced its graph-gridded surface. She could read its every figure, every character, with perfect clarity; it simply would not cohere. Could not cohere. Even as her own attention struggled on the page, that hungry attention from the stands sharpened upon her. Was this a lecture? A demonstration? Or an exhibition?

“What is this?” she asked.

Q Girl glanced up from her sifting, more papers clasped in her long, slender claws. She spread them out atop a wide hardwood desk. “Agate!” she said. Such joy in voicing her name — a tone she hadn’t heard since they were research partners. Hadn’t she forgone the right to hear that, those many years ago? “Look at this!”

“I am looking,” said Agate. She stepped closer, waving the offending paper. “It’s meaningless.”

“No, no!” Q Girl countered, snatching the graph paper from her grasp to plaster it amidst the others arranged on the desk or pinioned to the gathered corkboards. “Don’t you see? This is the Final Theorem!”

“The Final Theorem of System Star?” Agate breathed.

Her own words sent a thrill of illicit discovery down the length of her spine. She stepped closer, craning in for a better vantage, helpless against the movements of her dreaming self but enticed by what still eluded her senses. Never mind that it was a dream — this was her namesake.

System Star. Few theorems of theirs had survived time and Injunction and the creeping dissolution brought by proximity to the penumbra calculus. Those few which survived had always enraptured Agate with their elegance, their severity. Yet the Final Theorem of that bygone mathematician, by every indication, was not among them. To surface now in a dream, in a murky and fleeting byproduct of metabolizing mutagens, was flatly impossible.

“I don’t—” said Agate, her voice softly strained, “I don’t see it.”

“Quetzal! Look, it’s quite simple,” said Q Girl. She slid a paw around Agate’s bicep to pull her to another perspective. Her grasp was warm, firm, yet — perhaps it had been too long, perhaps her dream conjured an imperfect touch — too firm. Wrong. And her unbridled excitement — about this? The foundations of the penumbra calculus? Where was the caution that had driven them apart? “See? It looks to be a rather ingenious pocket system.”

Agate blinked at the reams of nonsensical figures, the spiderwebs of impossible causality. Nothing she read adhered to any logic she was versed in. This was no calculus she’d ever seen. Still her hackles rose from their unseen audience. And yet, still the chaos allured, promising almost to resolve into some grand new pattern if only she could grasp some underlying tectonic perspective shift.

“There’s something missing.”

“Oh, quetzal, of course!” Q Girl laughed. Quite abruptly, she hauled herself onto the desk and laid down atop it, as though it were a gurney. She began to unzip her plastifer jerkin, revealing the soft white fur of her chest. “Ready when you are.”

“What?” asked Agate.

Cognizant, now, of the cold and reassuring weight of a vibrodagger in her grasp. As sharp as the attention from the shadows.

Such a blade, Agate knew, could part flesh and bone with the same effortless grace as it could part granite and azzurum. Even the stalwart and rarefied metamaterials of the Eaters fell prey to its perfect edge. She had hewn down any number of Qud’s horrors with such blades of her own make.

But this was not a horror before her.

“The piece you’re looking for,” Q Girl continued. With vape-stick clasped between her clawtips, she tapped her breastbone encouragingly. “You’ll have to cut it out of me.”

Already Agate’s hand rose, holding steady its purring blade. She watched it, numbly. It was a nightmare she’d found herself in after all. It should not have been so unexpected. She’d already torn out the poor thing’s heart once. Perhaps her subconscious had found it unsatisfactorily metaphorical. Q Girl met her gaze with an expression of unflagging cheer.

She slid her free hand forward, tracing a line of touch along Q Girl’s sternum, parting the fur gently. It was soft — too soft. The fur she remembered carried a subtle, stiff proto-quill rasp that was absent to her touch. Yet another detail that didn’t line up.

With all her will, vibrodagger poised aloft, Agate stopped herself. Q Girl cocked her head quizzically. Agate narrowed her eyes in response.

“Who are you?”

Q Girl blinked. She let out a tiny chuckle, then dissolved into a small landslide of graph paper. Sheets billowed from the desk and skittered at Agate’s hooves. She nearly leapt backwards, heart lurching at the sudden transmutation.

Applause sank down from the shadowed seating. The sound shook Agate. She could peer, at last, out of the bubble of staged clarity and into the murk and movement around her. For nearly every seat there was a pair of hands. Most clapped. Some hung limply in midair. None were accompanied by bodies; forearms extruded solely from spatial distortions, tears in the fabric of the dream. Yet, “tears” was not quite accurate — rather, they were tears as an expert tailor might make in bold statement. The corners of each rift tapered into red ribbons.

“Well spotted, my dear, well spotted!”

A voice, unfamiliar, low, subtly resonant, cut through the applause and at once Agate knew the source of that piercing attention. It came from one of the aisles, where a figure rose from her seat into looming half-light. Cascades of golden hair trailed her through the passing shadows as she slowly approached the stage. Elbow-length white gloves adorned her arms, held in a pose of bemused consideration. A long purple dress —  perhaps some antiquated nightgown? — draped her considerable height, sheer and diaphanous yet betraying nothing of her underlying physique. Her angular face held a faint smile that felt all the more dangerous for its inscrutability. She exhibited no obvious physical mutations, though perhaps she was an esper, judging from the piercing strength of those violet eyes.

Whoever it was that Agate’s dream had conjured, her presence was uncanny and unparalleled. What was she doing in one of her Q Girl dreams? Surely Agate would have remembered had she ever taken a lover like this.

“Really, you saw right through it,” the figure continued, almost in a pout. “Deceit is far too accessible to me. Perhaps I’ve lost my edge.”

“Who are you?” Agate repeated. Her hackles bristled with every step of the stranger’s approach. The dagger still slept in her grasp, purring softly with its unquenched promise. Asinine, to consider that there’d be an architect to this nightmare beyond her own metabolically-seduced subconscious — yet that seemed to be this one’s claim. A claim so bold made it a tempting prospect to blame her for Agate’s present turmoil. Yet ultimately it was a claim by a dream. Immaterial.

“We wouldn’t want to be rude, now would we? A name, a name.” The figure stepped into another pool of shadows and emerged scarcely three paces from where Agate stood. The applause peaked as she dipped into a suggestion of a curtsy. She rose again to what seemed her full height, nearly a head taller than Agate. Her gaze flicked to the vibrodagger. She grinned suggestively. “Why not cut it out of me?”

“Why bother for a mere phantasm of indigestion?” Agate countered in a growl. The proximity only bolstered the harrowing sense of unfamiliarity. Not in all her travels nor her historical excavations had she seen the like of this interloper. Agate raised the dagger in a defensive, bracing stance. This was bait. Her dream had certainly done a stellar job of inventing a locus for her ire. Her present bubble of lucidity was only strong enough to resist that lurking, violent intent, but not strong enough to wake her.

A pout, again — almost theatrical in its facetiousness. “Really, now. They say great truths visit us in dreams. Like this—” A whip-quick motion sent the stranger’s gloved hand plunging into a fresh, ribboned distortion and out again with her prize: one of the stray papers of the scattered Theorem. She read over it languidly. “Sharp mind. You nearly had this one.”

“It’s nonsense!” said Agate.

“Of course, but if I hadn’t taken some liberties with the corpus, well… you may have found yourself in an entirely different sort of trouble. Good thing I found you.” She grinned again, with no less predatory an air. Folding the paper in her grasp, she tapped its spine idly against her chin as one might a fan. “Ah, but I’m being rude, aren’t I? Agate Severance Star.”

The sound of her own name on this intruder’s lips pierced the bubble of lucidity. Her harrowed instincts took hold in the stifling darkness, the crowd of corkboard. Her intent narrowed upon the blade. She charged, snarling, vibrodagger drawn back. Excitement flashed in the stranger’s eyes. Her grin widened. Agate thrust the blade into her sternum.

The tip slipped past the fabric of her dress and hit the skin beneath.

The blade shattered.

It did not follow, even in the logic of dreams. Her lightning senses drew out the moment in glacial procession — the shock of faltering impact in her fingers, the twinkling of alloy shards, the laughter from the intruder, the sudden gust of gravecloth must. Impossible, that her perfect intent had failed.

A vice-grip clasped around Agate’s wrist, forcing the hilt from her grasp. She found herself yanked forward as the intruder danced away, still clutching her wrist.

“What a delightful reaction!” laughed her nightmare captor. She swung Agate across the paper-strewn stage as though it were the floor of a gala. “Oh, I so rarely find such opportunities these days.”

The scattered papers were slick underhoof. The wheeling was intense. Agate sputtered in protest. “Are you — is this — dancing?”

“Why not?” asked the stranger, her deep voice gaining an almost musical lilt.

Despite the whirling, Agate could feel her lucidity returning. It brought her no comfort — in a standard night’s dream, the closer she came to her conscious faculties, the more tenuous became the dream’s ongoing stability. Yet tonight, the nightmare continued. Lucidity simply meant she could precisely gauge how powerless she was. “I stabbed you.”

The stranger laughed again. “It was a sterling effort, my dear. A little secret, though? I have no weaknesses.” She cocked her head subtly to the side and a certain measure of fondness crept into her expression — the sort generally reserved for precocious pets. “Still, I’d say you’ve earned my name.”

“Then tell me!” Agate hissed. Anger barely outpaced her own fear. It was all she could do to keep her hooves beneath her. What terrifying strength!

“How might you say it…?” she trailed off, slowing the whirl to a waltz. Her regal gaze gained a wistful sheen. “Call me… Eightfold Violet Clouds.”

If there was any import, any symbolism, any meaning to the name, it was beyond her dreaming mind. As it was, it meshed seamlessly with the gibberish flooding the vortex of pages around them. The strongest emotion it evoked within Agate was a vague protective jealousy over the concept of trionyms. But stronger still was her own distress — this intruder still clasped her unshakably by the wrists.

“Eightfold Violet Clouds?” Agate repeated. “That tells me nothing of who you are.”

Clouds’ expression flashed into one of mocking triumph. Her grip tightened. “Ask yourself not who I am but what I am.”

A figment of dream-stuff, was she not? Waking would certainly dissolve her. Never mind that this figment was powerful enough to pose an obstacle to waking. Certainly it couldn’t last. Morning would come. Until then, Agate could endure the fear.

For it was fear, was it not? The numb dread in her breast, the needling in her arms? Of course it was fear. This was a nightmare.

“From my initial observations…” Agate pulled herself closer to her captor — pulling away was fruitless. Closeness brought again the fleeting must of the grave. The fear could not quash her spark of defiance. “What you are, Clouds, is someone who won’t leave me to dream in peace.”

Clouds slowed her spin as the papers settled around them. She halted with her back to the silent stands and Agate’s back to the stage’s corkboards. Darkness had crept in around them, obscuring and thick. Her grin faded as she lowered her arms, shifting her loosening grip to Agate’s fingers. What expression remained was a faint, bittersweet smile. For a moment, her eyes flickered like a faulty screen display, violet to a glitched golden-orange, then back. And in those eyes, locked to Agate’s transfixed gaze, deeper than mere color — a familiar emptiness, ageless, weary, burdened with regret.

“Sometimes a dream is all you have.”

Her touch was cool beneath the silken fabric of her gloves. Her grip was firm — no longer painful in its strength, though perhaps that was only a consequence of Agate abandoning her attempts to wriggle from it.

Agate clenched her teeth. “This one is mine.”

The bittersweet smile disappeared from Clouds’ face. Irritation and disappointment flickered through her gaze. Agate’s hackles bristled as subtle sounds fluttered behind and around her. With an unreal certainty, she knew the nature of the stage had changed. Just outside her narrowed vision, piercing attention eyed her, yet she could not break her gaze from the being before her. Clouds sighed. “I had hoped you’d be a touch sharper. Very well. You’re welcome to what’s left of it.”

She released Agate’s fingers with a trailing brush. It lingered just long enough for her remark to truly sink in. Agate’s ear flicked. The insult was as infuriating as it was unsettling — sharper? What had she missed? What had she failed to consider?

Then the contact was broken. Agate could move again. She retreated a few paces only for her breath to catch in her throat. The motion brought the corkboards into her peripheral vision — but where before they had been festooned in twine-linked papers, now giant eyes covered each face, singular, unlidded, unblinking, gazing at her from more ribboned rifts. Eightfold Violet Clouds stepped forward, bridging the gap between them. She reached out to Agate’s chest and gave an effortless push.

Agate had thought herself planted solidly on her own four legs, yet the force of it drove her backwards. Behind her came not the clack of her hooves, but the whisper of folded space. Her hindlegs found no purchase. The floorboards had simply vanished from beneath her, sending her tumbling back into an eye-swollen corkboard. A wet, numbing softness enveloped her hindquarters, like the embrace of a jelly from the deep caverns. It pulled her in, deeper, stronger. The great ocular membrane closed over her, blotting the last light, stifling her desperate thrashing.

She fell, unfeeling, into darkness.

Chapter Text

Agate woke only with a truncated moan, levering herself upright in her bed. Not a scream, though she’d desperately wanted to. In the wilds, giving in to that want was a liability — any sound could betray one’s presence to predators. Already what she’d managed this morning was a compromise, but then, civilization permitted such compromises.

A nightmare. That much was clear from her pounding pulse, the sweat in her fur. Fleeting, jostling imagery slipped through her mind: eyes, hands, quills, parchments. A garbled theorem, a broken blade. Another painful dream about her — wasn’t it? No surprise. Her own fault for digging up the vape-stick. But then, hadn’t there been another? A fearsome presence, yet already it slipped from the certainty of memory. Her only clue was physiological. A mere nightmare couldn’t account for the numbness lingering in her chest.

An indignant, chattering meow sounded from the bed behind her. She glanced back to the depression her sleeping body had left in the bedding. Square in the middle of it, uncurling with a reluctant and resentful wakefulness, was Tabi. Agate glared at her in disbelief, an expression the cat seemed to return.

How long had the beast been phased into her?

“Hey, you’re up,” said Mokou. She sat at the dining table, clad in her smallclothes, an unbuttoned dress shirt, and the technoscanning visor Agate had made for her. She’d seemingly been using it to scan the contents of Agate’s workspace. A heartening gesture. Her expression of faint puzzlement faded into one of sympathy as she glanced to Agate. “Bad dream?”

“Yes,” Agate muttered, rubbing the non-fungally-obstructed side of her forehead. The nightmare must have been deep indeed if Mokou had been able to leave the bed and pilfer a dress shirt without waking her. “Illustrative, I must say, of why I avoid sleeping in the presence of astral tabbies.”

Mokou lifted the visor and nodded thoughtfully. “It’s that spiritual malaise. Now you know what to expect.”

“Wh—” Agate started. She closed her eyes and took a few centering breaths. It did very little to soothe her emotional state. She snapped her eyes open again and gestured irritably towards the cat. “You let a known hazard lodge itself inside me while I slept?”

“Yeah, let me just move her for you. My ghost cat.” Mokou rebutted with a clipped laugh. She levered herself up from the table and paced closer to the bed. “You’re gonna have to get used to her eventually. I got my own techniques. They can help.”

Agate shifted closer to the edge of the bed. Doubtless Mokou meant her spiritual techniques. Agate still felt dubiously towards them. A barbed response rose within her. It rose effortlessly through the clinging, anxious murk of her nightmare, but hit more resistance from the memories of the night before. She bit back the response fully at the sight of Mokou. Handsome, casual in her undress, as fresh as she could be from their night together. The constrictive marks left by Agate’s tongues had faded from Mokou’s skin overnight. Her expression was one of genuine compassion. It wouldn’t do to dismiss such compassion. Certainly not after what they’d shared. Certainly not after the promise she’d made.

“Does she do this to you?” asked Agate.

Mokou blinked, then shrugged. “Hard to tell. I get nightmares more often than not, but that’s nothing new. Don’t think Tabi does much either way.”

That was a concerning answer, but at least it was honest. Agate sighed. “Even with your techniques?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Mokou. “Probably be way worse without ‘em. I’ve just—” she broke off her gaze and turned away, resting her arms on the guardrail overlooking the workspace. She loosed her own sigh. “When you live like I do, when you have to live like I do, things just add up. And they keep adding up.”

Agate considered this. Her own time and travels in Qud had certainly shaped her habits. Warped them, even. Mokou had lived through countless lands and countless ages before this one. It was unthinkable they hadn’t done the same to her. At the very least, Mokou was admitting it to be living. That was heartening, in a way, yet the fact that this minimum was heartening made it concerning. She heaved a breath and rose from bed. “I’m making breakfast.”

Mokou turned back to her in surprise. “You just had a pretty bad nightmare. Why don’t you take it easy? I can—”

Agate held up her hand. “You are in my home. We have shared in carnal exploration. I am making you breakfast. These are the facts of the matter.”

“Suits me fine, then,” Mokou laughed. “But if you don’t want my help with anything, I might really start to poke around down there.”

“Your visor should warn you of anything particularly volatile,” Agate sighed. Donning a fresh shirt, she strode to the kitchen to begin cooking. Perhaps she was being stubborn in refusing Mokou’s help. That didn’t change that this was still one of the most effective means available to show her gratitude for the night they’d shared. That, and the work of cooking would hopefully scatter the nightmare’s lingering mood.

One thing was certain: Mokou had taken to that recipe immediately and wholeheartedly. By the time they had wound down for the night, she had surely grasped what it meant to embody it. Agate was beginning to understand precisely how much the immortal valued novelty.

That understanding introduced a bit of pressure into her breakfast planning that would have otherwise been absent. She’d done well enough last night, of course. But how long could she expect to continue being able to surprise Mokou? Of course Agate had standards in her creations, of course she sought to innovate wherever possible — that was all, ultimately, mortal effort. What would it take to sustain that effort into the sort of timeframes Mokou inhabited? To know that, she’d have to know just what those timeframes were. As yet, she had only the faintest grasp on them, and no clear path towards strengthening that grasp.

It was not quite so pressing a concern as of yet. Qud still held its share of mysteries to her — mysteries not yet entangled with those posed by Mokou’s existence. Mysteries to Agate were likely mysteries to Mokou as well, given the latter’s predilection towards ‘keeping her head down.’ Mokou’s capabilities might even grant the both of them the means to better illuminate those mysteries.

Perhaps for breakfast she could try her hand at the broth that had vexed Jathiss in last night’s match. It would make for an agreeable followup. As she began her preparations, Mokou called across the workspace to her.

“Hey, you’ve got some serious brewing gear here!”

“Naturally,” Agate replied.

“Any room in ‘em?” Mokou asked, sounding hopeful.

Agate turned from the counter to cast her gaze back into her workspace. Mokou stood by the chrome cylindrical canisters of her brewing complex. Her gaze, behind the tinted glass lens of the telemetric visor, was as hopeful as her tone had been. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m thinking about shoyu,” replied Mokou. “The sauce, you know? The kind y’all make from soy… I mean, it’s fine, but it ain’t the kind I used to get.”

Agate placed a hand on her chin in consideration. “You wish to recreate the recipe? You wish to use my equipment to brew shoyu?”

“Exactly!” Mokou clenched her fists excitedly. “All kinds of things I could make if I had the right sauce. We could be sauce buddies!”

It was intriguing. She could readily grasp ascribing a relational label to an endeavor of such historical culinary merit. “Yes,” said Agate. “We certainly could. I will gladly free up space in the brewer.”

“Yes!” said Mokou. “I can taste it already. This is gonna be great.”

Of course, it wasn’t solely novelty that she treasured. There was clear room in her heart for restoration, for renewal, for familiarity. Then the consideration became how, precisely, one became familiar with her. There was little telling how fine a balance it would take to jump from the novel to the familiar. Still, that was its own worthy endeavor. It would spare her the indignity and disregard of the middle ground. She gave Mokou a smile, then returned to her breakfast preparations.

Agate set two bowls down on the dining table. An herbaceous, briny scent faintly rose from them. After the previous night’s rich and saucy and bold offering, she’d contrasted it with a subtle savory porridge, tajine-style, that accentuated the delicacy of algae.

“Smells good,” Mokou noted, settling into her place at the table. At some point during Agate’s preparations, she’d wandered back into the bedroom to don her pants once more and prepare for the day. None of those preparations had involved asking about Agate’s borrowed shirt, and at this point it seemed dubious to expect such a question. Mokou tried a spoonful of the algal tajine and hummed in appreciation. “Tastes good too. Damn good.”

“Thank you,” Agate replied, nodding graciously. The taste was precisely as she’d calibrated it to be.

After a few more bites, Mokou spoke again. “Still kinda odd to me to ask this, but — what’s it do?”

“Ah,” said Agate. “Well, I’ve had algae on the mind since the Choraler’s stew. With the proper coaxing, it can ignite a temporary psionic affinity for spontaneous plant growth — singing the desert into bloom, as she said. It is my… hope that this porridge does so as well.”

Mokou raised her eyebrows slightly. “Your hope? Sounds a bit imprecise for you.”

“Yes, well,” Agate sighed, flicking her ear. Compared to the welcome clarity and fervor that had gripped her last night, it was imprecise. She strived for that clarity whose lens laid bare the deepest culinary secrets and marshaled them into order and practice. “Inspiration is fleeting. One must coax it back with experimentation.”

“Mm,” nodded Mokou. Her gaze wandered idly with her next few bites. “Hate to say it, but… I don’t think I’m getting that.”

“Alas,” grumbled Agate. That was the trouble with experimentation. Sometimes it simply didn’t work.

“Looks like you didn’t beat her this time,” said Mokou, grinning — was it a taunting grin, or was Agate reading too much into it?

“Please, Mokou,” Agate replied. “The powers slumbering within Qud’s ingredients are volatile and fickle. Experimentation is the path to tempering that fickleness into reliable tactics — into survival and beyond.”

Mokou’s grin subsided into a smile of faint interest. There was some unreadable undercurrent to the appraising look Mokou fixed across the table. “Sure,” she said. She rolled her wrist, palm up and open, as though winding her thoughts along an invisible spool. “But last night wasn’t survival. I’m just saying that ‘proving you’re better at food-sex than Jathiss’ is a weird motivation to have to fuck someone.”

Agate scoffed in response. “You thought it was about beating her? She inspires me. It was a display of mastery and self-expression for its own sake.”

“Sure, sure,” said Mokou. “Then I hope you can let yourself believe that, or at least act like it. Lighten up a bit. I’m fucking you, Agate. I’m not fucking Jathiss.”

“Certainly you aren’t, or you wouldn’t find cause to boast of that state,” Agate retorted.

Mokou simply raised her brows. “What, I’m missin’ out? You know, you were real sweet last night. What happened? What’s up?”

Agate sighed and let her expression relax — attempted to release the tension that was gradually but steadily building in her body. It was no fault of Mokou’s. She already regretted the barb. As best she could tell, Mokou was trying, in her own way, to reassure Agate. To soothe her evident insecurities. What vexed most was that none of Agate’s grappling with familiarity and the sustainability of her own efforts even made for novel insecurities. She’d felt them before; urshiib such as Q Girl could live for centuries. Back during their time together, Agate had been even less equipped to grapple with them. Regardless of how she’d developed herself since then, Mokou’s timeframe posed another magnitude entirely.

Of course, all these were merely emotional considerations. None had yet crossed the threshold into compromises. The true source of her tension was that ever since she’d woken, she’d once more been bearing the full brunt of Tabi’s ‘soul attack’. Even now the beast stared piercingly at her from halfway out of the floor.

“I am sorry,” said Agate. She rose, gathering the dishes to bus them to the basin. “It’s your cat.”

“Still?” asked Mokou. Her tone was mostly exasperated, but there seemed to be an undercurrent of concern. “Really, there’s techniques.”

“What concerns me more about Tabi is the tactical liability she represents,” Agate replied.

“Tactical — what? How is she a tactical liability?”

“To illustrate, let me relate to you an experience I had some four years ago,” said Agate. As she spoke, she prepared a pot of strong tea to close out breakfast. “My travels intersected with a dromad caravan, searching for new routes along the deep roads. I accompanied them for a time, for there is safety in numbers. One day, along a tight stratum of serpentinite, a cupola detached itself from the cavern ceiling and engulfed one of the guards.”

“A cupola?” asked Mokou.

“A gelatinous cupola,” said Agate. “Named so presumably for their vague architectural resemblance. An extremely ravenous sort of ooze common at those depths. Its primary mode of predation is to swallow its prey whole and start digesting them immediately. Imagine as though corrosive pseudo-fluid filled, floor to ceiling, your room at the inn.”

Agate set the tea tray down on the table and suppressed a faint shiver. Her own description had beckoned the chill. It was something like a memory, but nebulous, shapeless. Not of the time she now related — the cupola had never engulfed her on that occasion. She’d braved the depths of Qud enough to have her own share of hostile engulfments, but it didn’t feel like any of those. Why was the sensation so freshly familiar?

“But like,” Mokou made a shaping motion with her hands. “With a little extra dome on top?”

“Precisely. As though mimicking a dessert mold, but in greater scale.” Agate settled herself once more on her lounging stool and resumed her narrative. “The guard — Niqq, his name was — had the presence of mind to use a shade oil injector. A cupola cannot contain and digest you if you no longer share a phase-state, after all.”

“Oh, yeah, the things that shoot you full of compressed ghosts?” asked Mokou, with utter, blithe sincerity. “The one Tabi got into.”

“That’s not — yes, she did, but it is not ghosts,” Agate sighed.

“It’s not? Oh. Well, lucky he had one, anyway,” said Mokou.

Agate tilted her head with a faintly dubious expression. “Normally, yes. Unlucky, then, that after phasing his way out of the cupola’s embrace, an astral tabby hiding in a nearby wall chose that moment to pounce upon him.”

Mokou glanced away, breaking Agate’s cool gaze to look instead at Tabi. She mulled on her own thoughts, but did not share them. Tabi’s own gaze remained unsettlingly upon Agate. Perhaps she’d found evidence of an underlying behavioral commonality, and shade oil was an astral tabby attractant.

The tea had steeped. Agate took the pause to pour for the both of them. She sipped at hers, set down the mug and steepled her fingers. Memories of carnage rose within her, called forth by the recounted memory. “Niqq was rent to pieces before my eyes. His medically-altered phase-state rendered us incapable of assisting him. Incapable even of granting him the solace of touch as he bled out.”

Mokou nodded slowly. “Plus you still had the cupola to deal with, right?”

“Our blades spilled its nutritive vital essences across the floor,” Agate sighed. She softened her gaze. “I imagine now, down along the deep roads, a small grove of brightshrooms wreaths a cairn of piled stones. Perhaps it’s a waypoint for other caravans.”

Mokou glanced back to Agate and gave a melancholy smile. “You been taking poetry lessons from Cheotl?”

The softness leeched from Agate’s gaze. “I am an author in my own right, Mokou.”

“Right, right,” Mokou replied. “What are you getting at with this story?”

“There are any number of risks in Qud that can be mitigated by changing one’s phase-state. It was an unlucky confluence, four years ago, that spoiled that tactic. In encouraging this beast, you have ensured one element of this confluence follows us at all times. I have no guarantee that your Tabi doesn’t see me in the same light that other tabby saw Niqq. Until such time as I have that guarantee—” Agate planted her palms on the table and steeled her expression. “I am tactically limited.”

Mokou mulled on this in silence, her contemplative gaze settling again on her cat. Tabi had at last lost interest in her silent harassment and had instead curled into grooming herself. Her unsettling presence remained as undiminished as ever.

Mokou frowned and met Agate’s gaze once more. “So you phase the other guy.”

“What?” asked Agate.

“Whoever’s trying to get you, you stick ‘em with the phase juice instead, let Tabi sort ‘em out. Easy.” A flicker of concentration passed over her features. “Ain’t that what you did in the arena?”

“Yes,” Agate nodded. She had graced the arena with such tactics those years ago, and had employed them many times since. “But I did so with my dart gun. The one your cat was so destructively fixated upon.”

“So, what?” said Mokou.

Agate sighed — perhaps a touch sharper than intended, but it was hardly unwarranted. “So, this is the tactical compromise she represents. So long as her untrained instincts instill her with greater adversarial intent towards my own equipment than a phased hostile, that avenue, too, is closed. We need that avenue open so long as we cannot use shade oil ourselves.”

“Alright. I get that you’re worried about this, but what do you mean, we?” asked Mokou. “She loves me.” She leaned down to bring her face closer to the tabby and dropped her tone into something saccharine. “You love me, don’t you, Tabi?”

“Rrt?” Tabi chirped, pausing mid-lick.

“This is simple enough to test,” said Agate. She rose and made her way down to a medical locker in her workspace, where she retrieved a shade oil injector. She strode back to the dining table and offered it, plunger-first, to Mokou.

Mokou eyed the injector, then flicked an inquisitive glance to Agate. “A little post-breakfast experimentation, huh?”

“Science is for any time of the day,” replied Agate. “If, naturally, you are willing.”

“This is shade oil? If it helps you breathe easier around her, I’ll give it a shot.” Mokou took the injector and, after a few breaths, applied it to her thigh. She capped the spent injector and set it on the table. “So, what, does it just — oh, hang on. Woah.”

“Owing to your genotype, you should be able to muster the phasing effect at will. I presume you’ve now felt out the mechanism,” said Agate. She settled back into her seat to better watch the effects as they manifested.

“Yeah, definitely. Think I’ve done some of these before, actually. That was a while back.” She glanced curiously over towards Agate. “What’s it do for your, uh, genotype?”

“It induces more of an involuntary phase-flickering. It’s a touch inconsistent and imprecise, but recurrent. Useful when all you need is an inevitable phase shift. I value it considerably more as an ingredient.”

“Like your phase sashimi, yeah?” grinned Mokou, seemingly proud at having remembered the details of a match she’d never witnessed.

“Precisely,” Agate nodded. “Now, let us see if your cat intends to make the same of you.”

“She doesn’t even have thumbs,” Mokou laughed in confident dismissal. She took in a deep breath. “Well, here goes.”

At that, she stood and adopted a look of concentration that presaged her fading from corporeality. The same translucent shimmer that characterized the astral tabby spread through Mokou’s body. Tabi’s gaze snapped up from her grooming efforts to lock onto Mokou.

“Mrrt? Rrow?” the tabby chattered, posture unfolding. Agate’s pulse quickened as her instincts extrapolated the violent potential of Tabi’s every movement.

“Yeah, it’s me,” said Mokou. Her voice had taken on a strange empty quality, almost an echo of herself — much of its vibrational properties were confined to another phase-state, after all. Mokou hunkered down, closer to Tabi’s level, and offered her hand with digit outstretched. Tabi stepped forward tentatively, then rubbed her face against Mokou’s finger. A ghostly purr swelled quietly within the tabby. “Theeeere we go,” said Mokou, soothingly. “See? It’s fine. You’re stressin’ out over a finicky technique you don’t even really use.”

Agate would not allow herself to relax just yet. “I use it in my cooking to attain the stronger, voluntary expression. The expression you are presently embodying.”

“Alright, alright,” said Mokou. She brought her other hand forward to tousle behind Tabi’s ears and down the scruff of her neck. “Wow, she’s soft. Have we at least proven she loves me?”

“If you can make it to the end of your phase shift unmauled, perhaps,” Agate muttered. It was at least an encouraging sign that Mokou might not be so tactically limited.

“Not much longer, then. I can feel it running out,” said Mokou. Under Mokou’s continued scruff ministrations, Tabi flopped onto her side. Then, still purring, she rolled onto her back, paws upraised and seemingly limp. The motion provoked Mokou’s tone to climb in disbelief. She slid her free hand towards Tabi’s exposed belly. “Look at her. Oh my goodness.”

Agate did not have the most experience with navigating feline affections — less than Mokou, she’d assume as a matter of course —  but still, the immortal’s action seemed wildly incautious. Agate’s pulse spiked in anticipation. “Mokou—”

Mokou’s hand touched the astral tabby’s belly. Tabi clamped all four of her paws against Mokou’s wrist. Claws unfurled, the sound whisper-soft and wet, nearly lost beneath the purring. Mokou grunted in shock. Her face paled. As color fled her cheeks, so too did the ghostliness of phase shift. The injected shade oil ran its course, returning her body to materiality.

But not her hand. Severed, it remained trapped in Tabi’s purring clutches.

“Kill me,” groaned Mokou.

“No,” said Agate. Her hooves pounded over rock and cobble. Her body flowed past surprised streetgoers. Mokou pressed against her back, her passenger-weight lighter by a hand. “Keep pressure on it.”

“Oh my god, it’ll be faster if you just kill me,” said Mokou.

“Absolutely not!” Agate replied. “We are moments from the Chrome Ward clinic. They have the means to repair you.”

Mokou loosed a long and pained sigh, jostled in its modulation by the pace of Agate’s galloping. “Still don’t think we’ve disproved that she loves me,” she grumbled weakly.

“She’s certainly quite enamored of your taste,” said Agate. She couldn’t help but feel some guilt over the result of this experiment. While Tabi’s behavior avoided her most dire projections, this was still a suboptimal outcome. The beast showed a lack of restraint that paired in a most worrisome manner with her grisly appetites, but then, all that was to be expected. “Perhaps she’s a youkai after all.”

“If she wasn’t already, I bet she will be. Not like I can get the damn thing away from her now,” said Mokou.

“Not before we restore your hand, presumably.” Something in this line of inquiry jogged loose a phrase from within her memory. It bubbled up, bereft of context and vocal timbre. Disturbingly so — Agate prided herself on her memory’s precision.

Ask yourself not who I am but what I am.

From a dream, perhaps? It felt fresh enough, and their details slipped from her all too readily of late. Was it possible the immortal’s reminiscences and suppositions had so engrossed Agate that she’d dreamt up one of her youkai? She was grateful that her present responsibility required she run — it kept a shiver from seizing her.

There were still too many unknowns. But then, the one who rode her now had answers to some of those unknowns. To depend on Mokou’s knowledge was its own vulnerability, but one that might prove necessary.

She galloped on to the clinic.

Chapter Text

“Thanks again for the lift,” said Mokou. They had come at last back to the Moondrop Inn’s floral front door. The lift had only been to the clinic, but the speed had been refreshing. Even if she’d been bleeding out at the time. “You sure you don’t want to come in?”

“Quite sure. Please have that beast trained at your earliest opportunity,” Agate replied. Her ear flicked as she scanned the surrounding facades for signs of the lurking Tabi.

“Don’t think I can train her out of being a youkai. But maybe I’ll go through fewer hands,” Mokou grumbled. She made an encouraging gesture with her freshly-grown replacement. “Still, you slept around her! That’s progress.”

“Granted,” said Agate. “I would still prefer you develop some means of preventing her from seeking out phase conflict with us.”

“Sure, sure,” Mokou replied. “Meantime, you just let me know when you’ve picked up the stuff for the sauce.”

“Of course,” said Agate. She stepped closer and tipped Mokou’s chin up for a parting kiss, cool and luminous. It was a pleasant bit of affection with a pleasant bit of tongue — a whole lot cleaner and more subdued from the ones they’d shared the night before. Agate pulled back and nodded farewell. “Be seeing you.”

“Yeah, live and drink,” Mokou grinned. Once more she watched Agate go. Dancing bits of ash flaked from the back of her jacket in her wake. She’d probably catch on to it sooner or later. It certainly beat a bloodstain for the sake of laundry effort.

The bell over the doorway chimed at Mokou’s entrance. Judging by the scents and traffic in the entrance hallway, breakfast had just ended. Small knots of guests chatted amongst themselves in satisfied tones, moving leisurely along their various ways to whatever purposes filled their fleeting days. Some seemed to recognize her from the match as she passed — fame spread fast here.

It was a shallow and one-sided recognition, anyway. These people didn’t know her, and she didn’t know them.

She made her way to the dining hall to see what refreshments she could scavenge. A few groups still dotted the mostly-empty tables — slow eaters, late arrivals, or long conversers. Fasola threaded amongst them, cleaning up from the service. She seemed a bit peppier than usual, and still proudly wore her spicer’s cap. On Mokou’s entrance, Fasola caught her glance and bustled over, beaming widely.

“Judge Mokou! We missed you last night. And this morning! Can I get you anything? Dolmas?”

“Don’t worry about me, Fasola,” Mokou answered. “I ate back at Agate’s.”

Fasola raised her brows and hummed through her catlike smile. “Suit yourself. Agate’s, huh? Is that where you stayed last night?”

“What, I gotta report it?” Mokou half-scoffed. “Who’s asking?”

“Just being a busybody, hon,” Fasola laughed, sidling closer and briefly pitching her voice into a more surreptitious register. “Personally, I was betting on the Baroness. She likes having judges over, I hear. But hey, Agate’s! Guess that means the two of you have really patched things up, huh?”

There were dimensions to where things stood between them that she hadn’t quite felt out yet. Things had changed, certainly. “You know, she had me help out in some kind of experiment this morning.”

“Oh, yeah? No wonder you missed breakfast. You’re already experimenting. How’d it go?”

“Lost a hand,” said Mokou.

Fasola winced. “Oh. I think she does better, usually.”

“It grew back. Guess you could say it’s already patched up.” Mokou flexed her new hand in demonstration. It was uncalloused, and still a bit tender. She was more than practiced at feeling out a fresh body, but usually it wasn’t so localized, so asymmetrical. The real novelty had been floating in the clinic’s bubble-tank while its juices knit her hand back into wholeness. They didn’t even make her pay for the service. But it hadn’t lasted long — barely fifteen minutes had passed, hardly even time for a soak, before her hand was back.

On the whole, it was probably less messy than having Agate kill her. Doing it herself wasn’t a habit she was looking to pick back up.

Mokou shrugged, picking back up from Fasola’s silence. “Was still a pretty nice night overall. Anyway. How about you? You’re in a good mood.”

“How could I not be?” Fasola laughed, reaching forward to squeeze Mokou’s regrown hand reassuringly. “We had a match! Defended the home turf! And once again, the Moondrop Inn is the place where judges stay. Judgeholm.”

“I didn’t exactly advertise y’all up there,” Mokou chuckled back. To see the innkeep with this much energy was rare enough that it made her mood all the more infectious.

“Word gets around,” Fasola winked. “And to top it all off, I got my best night of sleep in weeks.”

“Happy for you,” said Mokou. She genuinely meant it, but she couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilty suspicion. Fasola losing sleep sounded like another consequence of living around Tabi. After just how much of her hand Tabi had eaten, there was a strong chance that unsettling aura of hers was only going to get worse.

Fasola’s squeeze shifted up to a pat on Mokou’s shoulder. “Thanks, hon. You should take it easy today! You know, if you lose a hand, they let you take the day off work!”

“They let me take the day off whenever,” replied Mokou.

“Yeah, but still! Ah—” Fasola turned to acknowledge another guest’s hail, then gave Mokou a parting smile. “Duty calls.”

“Sure, sure.” Mokou waved her off amiably, taking the opportunity to head towards the corner where they kept the automatic brewer. It was high time she figured out just how the damn thing worked. She could do so readily if she used Agate’s visor, but something kept her resistant to the idea. Even as illuminating as they were, she was tired of reading the thing’s dry technical readouts after an entire morning spent poking around Agate’s devices.

Only, today there were two brewers.

She didn’t remember Fasola talking about getting another one. Nor had she paid enough attention during her previous meals in the dining hall to be able to place which one came first. Yet there they stood in twin uniformity, all gleaming chrome and coiled piping and ominously tempting levers. On a nearby counter, a basket of aromatic beans and fresh fruits sat circled by spare mugs, presumably for feeding the brewers and catching their products.

She really should have just donned the scanner. But now it was a matter of pride — listening to Agate had gotten her dismembered. Granted, these bizarre contraptions probably wouldn’t take a hand off if she used them properly. But that was the point: there was no fundamental reason why she couldn’t just figure it out herself.

She grit her teeth and grabbed a lever.

The lever squished.

Chrome dulled and billowed into tendrils of hair, pipes deflated into fabric facsimile, gearworks plumped into flesh and features. Her features, sharply grinning.

“Hello again,” said Cheotl.

“Gyuh!” Mokou dropped the lever-turned-hand and hopped back a pace. “The hell are you doing here, Cheotl?”

“I’ve been here the whole time! Years, even.” Cheotl ran their thumbs beneath the lapels of the suit they’d mirrored from Mokou. “I’m a long-term guest.”

“Guess I’ve missed you,” Mokou grumbled.

“Easy mistake,” said Cheotl. They picked up a mug and gestured with it towards Mokou. “Can I brew you something? Gocoa?”

“Uh—” A bit of uncertainty stopped Mokou. “Can you? When you’re, uh, a brewer?”

Cheotl snickered. “Maybe if I tried really hard on those internals. No, I’m using the brewer.”

“Then sure, love some,” nodded Mokou. If someone else wanted to do it for her, that was reason enough to abandon her pride. Maybe she could still learn something from observation. “Thanks.”

“My treat,” said Cheotl. They fed a few of the roasted beans into a hopper on the brewer, but paused in the middle of reaching for the lever, looking at their own mimicked extremity. “Hey — new hand!”

“You noticed?” asked Mokou.

“I’m a very practiced noticer,” said Cheotl. They resumed the brewing process, manipulating the machine with practiced motions. “Part of who I am and what I do.”

“Poetry or mimicry?” asked Mokou, sidling over to rest her elbows on the counter to gain a better vantage on the process.

Cheotl glanced over and grinned. “Both! Let’s see, we’ve got this perforation pattern around the wrist… Did your cat do this?”

“She sure did,” Mokou grumbled. Not just a noticer, but a keen deducer, too. “Tried some shade oil over at Agate’s. My own fault for gettin’ too greedy with the pets.”

“Ahh, but a small price to pay for the love of a pet,” Cheotl sighed. The brewer dinged triumphantly, then a lower spigot loosed a dark, steaming, aromatic fluid into the mug Cheotl had loaded. Cheotl took up the mug and offered it to Mokou. “Here you go. Gocoa, nice and hot.”

“Thanks,” said Mokou. She accepted it and took a tentative sip. It was rich, acrid, and hot enough to burn. Just the sort of thing she wanted. Still, something in Cheotl’s reply stuck with her. How much of that price was being paid by everyone around her? “Say, you’ve been here a while.”

“That’s true,” said Cheotl.

“You noticed, uh…” It was tricky to figure out how to precisely give voice to her suspicions. But then, she’d been out of practice when it came to youkai. “You maybe noticed the atmosphere changing around here lately?”

“Hmm,” Cheotl hummed thoughtfully. “Like, gloomier, maybe?”

“Yeah, exactly,” said Mokou. On its own, it might be nothing, but it might just as easily be signs of a youkai infestation.

“Yeah, then I’d say so,” said Cheotl. “Seemed that way for the last few weeks. I figured it was water rationing. It’s rare we suffer such an imposition. Why do you ask?”

Mokou took a longer sip of her gocoa, then sighed. “Well, I think it might be my cat’s fault. We spent the night at Agate’s, but she had a pretty bad nightmare that she blamed on Tabi. Just trying to see if it’s happened to anyone else. You had bad dreams?”

“A few,” Cheotl shrugged. “But what does it matter? Dreams are dreams.”

“I mean — that’s how it starts, sure. Just might get nastier.” Perhaps she should start looking into finding her own place before it was too late. Someplace where her cat wouldn’t be putting so many people in danger.

This city had real gravity to it. Already she felt herself making a life here. She just didn’t want that life to come at the expense of the kind souls around her. Perhaps instead, she could spend more time with Agate. Give the density of spiritual hostility time to disperse. Toughen her up for the road, whenever the road might come.

Kaguya was waiting, somewhere out there. She could keep waiting.

Cheotl clapped a hand on her shoulder and grinned reassuringly. “I’ll keep you abreast. I’ve always wanted to live in a haunted house!”

“Cheotl!” called Fasola. The innkeep shuffled over to deliver her reprimand. “Don’t mimic the brewer during meal hours! We’ve been over this!”

Cheotl’s grip shifted subtly against Mokou’s shoulder, accompanied by a soft slithering sound. Mokou glanced back to find another Fasola gripping her, grinning back at the approaching original. “You said breakfast was over ten minutes ago!”

“There’s always stragglers! You know this!” The real Fasola drew to a halt a pace away from the both of them and sighed apologetically. “Sorry about this, Mokou.”

“No harm done,” Mokou chuckled. The chuckle carried its own pang of melancholy. Fasola was exactly the sort of person she wanted to guard from the sorts of threats that youkai could pose. Cheotl too, for that matter, though their present behavior cleaved closer to youkai than otherwise. These were the people she was supposed to be protecting. “I’m not the one trying to tell a mimic not to mimic.”

“See? She gets it!” Cheotl laughed.

“Yeah, and a few weeks ago I would’ve said she was wise beyond her years,” grumbled Fasola.

“Definitely not. Think I plateaued pretty early on that one,” said Mokou. She knew a lot of esoterica, a lot of trivia, a lot of ephemera, but genuine wisdom was its own beast to cultivate. Enlightenment — true enlightenment — was ever out of her reach. The Elixir shackled her to this existence as surely as any earthly desire. Even if it didn’t, there was nothing waiting for her. She’d seen the war that shattered Heaven. Still, there had to be something in what she’d picked up over the years that might at least help her cat settle down.

“And how long ago was that?” asked Cheotl. There was a hint of something in their gaze — curiosity, or maybe concern, or maybe compassion. A familiar sort of blend from those who glimpsed her nature.

“Don’t ask me that,” said Mokou. Already she could feel her mood starting to sour. “Can’t tell you.”

“We’ve got a regular mysterious stranger staying here, Cheotl,” said Fasola.

“See, I was tempted to say hermit,” Cheotl replied.

“Oh, so it’s not just me!” Fasola laughed.

The more she thought about it, the more that getting her own space away from people sounded appealing. Half the people here already thought she was a hermit. Why not give them a real reason to think that? Then again, if she wanted them to stop thinking that then maybe she could just get a haircut instead.

Before she could say anything, the distant chime of the Inn’s front door sounded. Fasola’s eyes widened as she turned to leave. “Busy, busy! Bet that’s the mail. You two be good.”

Mokou watched her leave the dining hall. She turned her gaze back to Cheotl and nodded towards the door. “She’s been having trouble sleeping, too.”

Cheotl’s expression sank into concern — an imperfect bit of mimicry, or perhaps a creative liberty. The form of the real Fasola’s mouth rendered her resistant to forming frowns. “You think it’s a pattern, then?”

“Yeah.” Mokou nodded slowly. “Been a while since I’ve seen it, but it was the kind of pattern I was real good at noticing. Just usually wasn’t my own damn pet.”

Cheotl seemed to think about this, mirroring Mokou’s slow nod. “Guess when you’re stuck with the same pattern for long enough, you’ve got to look for other ones.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mokou.

The mimic took up Mokou’s free hand, the regenerated one. “Your body, I mean. It’s a new hand, but it’s the same hand, every time. Right?”

“Right. My template doesn’t change,” said Mokou. It was something of an unexpected tangent, but it seemed to be the sort of thing Cheotl noticed. “I’m eternal. You picked that up?”

“It stands to reason, doesn’t it?” replied Cheotl. “If you’ve been around since the iron age and you’re still in the shape you’re in, you’d have to be. A plateau. Unchanging and perpetual.”

“You’re a real sharp deducer,” Mokou grumbled. “What are you getting at with this?”

“Oh, nothing, sorry, it’s—” Cheotl squeezed Mokou’s hand in a sympathetic gesture that accompanied a full-body shiver. “That’s just so claustrophobic! The same body, day in and day out! How do you manage it?”

Mokou shut her eyes and let out a breath. She took a slow sip of her gocoa, cooler now. She should have expected more of these sorts of questions coming as word of her nature spread. The sort of question that approached her like she was nothing but a spectacle. It never made it easier to know how to answer. Not an hour ago she’d been begging for Agate to kill her. It wasn’t even over a new pain. “Think I’d rather not say, Cheotl.”

“I understand,” said Cheotl. “But if you ever change your mind, I’ll be around. You’re a very compelling person. Think I’ve got a poem brewing.”

“Just give me some warning if I’m about to grab you again,” Mokou sighed.

“Mokou!” called Fasola, from outside in the entry hall, but coming closer. She called again from the doorway of the dining hall. “Mokou! Oh good, you’re still here. Your cat was hunting the mail snail.”

“Sorry. Lost track of her for a bit,” Mokou winced.

Fasola handed a bundle of correspondence to Cheotl, then a much smaller assortment to Mokou. “The usual for you, Cheotl. Mokou, you’ve got one from Jathiss. And Sheba! Who’s next, Eschelstadt II?”

“Hope not. Thanks,” said Mokou, accepting her letters and lifting her mug in acknowledgment. It was the perfect excuse to withdraw. “For the mail and the gocoa. I’ll take Tabi out of your hair.”

Chapter Text

She spread the letters out on the table of her room. Three of them; more than she was expecting, but each name was a welcome sight. It wasn’t always so bad that others knew how to reach her. She rolled herself a smoke as she pondered which to open first.

“Rrr,” Tabi complained at her feet.

“Don’t give me that,” Mokou sighed. “You had — you had so much of my hand. You can’t be hungry. If you got indigestion it’s your own fault.”

Tucking the smoke in her mouth, she unscrewed the battered tin tube that held her first piece of correspondence and slid out the furled and wax-sealed roll of parchments from within. Despite the parcel’s days — perhaps weeks — of travel, the tube had trapped the faintest whiff of the Stilt’s library. As she read, she found herself again cursing the impulsiveness that had robbed her of more time amidst its stacks.

To my immortal correspondent Fujiwara no Mokou,

I hope you are keeping well, and that your travels have borne you safely to Kitchen Heptagon. It is a curious place. Knowledge is but one of its manifold bounties. I admit (Here the script changed into a tighter, smaller hand, most likely that of an assistant scribe. Faint circular discolorations mottled the margin to mark where drool had pooled.) to some anxiety towards your safety, given word of the glass storm in your whereabouts. I have comforted myself in the knowledge that Agate is a seasoned wayfarer. You are safer in her charge.

Safer, except when her whims opened Mokou up to dismemberment. The worst part was that it was only going to take that much longer for Agate to be able to relax around her cat now.

Should you meet her, give my regards to Choraler Jathiss. With luck, you might find yourself in position to judge one of her matches! It’s an unparalleled experience. But I digress.

My investigations into the House of Eternity are yet to bear fruit. Rest assured, you will be the first I inform should I uncover anything of substance. But in the meantime, don’t think I’ve forgotten about our interviews! Time and distance may hinder us, but such hindrances are ours to overcome. Included you will find a list of my continued questions, as well as spare parchment for your answers. Fill them as you like. The message tube will find its way back to me as the trade routes allow.

Your sister in chromium’s heart,

Sheba Hagadias, Head Librarian of the Six-Day Stilt

It was sweet — a dry, scholarly sweetness. She scanned over the questions briefly to start herself thinking about them. Something about the format and the intent of the exercise tugged at an old nostalgia. It felt almost like when she used to help Keine with schoolwork. Something for future generations. She smiled and set it aside.

The next was a bundle of bark sandwiching a message scrawled on hide. As she freed the letter, a dried apple blossom tumbled to the table, releasing its faint floral scent. It brought a smile to Mokou’s face, and her heart nearly leapt from the scent’s most recent association. It was a blossom from Mehshruul End, that hideaway in the fungal canyons.

Traveler Moko, the letter read in an uncertain but earnest hand.

First thank you for the leter and the Picklegreens, you say they are from Bajikos Garden well they are too Good too eat & I will love them for Some Time.

Second Thank you for the Cat Girl shes been a Great help, Pa was hurt Bad by the glass but well Maun Mur got to our End with her Prickleboons she says MS STAR gave them, Just in Time. Pa is back on his Fete now I only wish the Prickleboons could help the Trees as they are still in a State.

Maun Mur she says such funny things, Some things also Realy Quite Incredible about you. She says she Loves me, well I have Heard That Befor but she is swete and such a Help. She sends her Best too. Waterkith??

I do hope Lifen the Big City is all you have Dreamed. I do Envy you Some Times as the glass left them Hard at our End but well do not worry about that Promise or about this Daughter, I am doing as Well as Ever or Better evn Aside the glass. Youve done so much for us. Live as you Will at the Heptagon. Our Best to you & esp to MS STAR .

Seeqat

A few hearts flanked the signature. The news was about as good as Mokou could hope for. It was impossible to tell the sentiment — whether Seeqat had meant it to be guilting or to be absolving — but one way or another it read as her honest thoughts. Certainly, Mokou had made her promise to return under an altered state of mind. She’d found worse reasons to break a promise. There was still part of her that didn’t want this to be a cycle where she went around breaking promises. But yet another part of her told her that this one might be a long time coming.

In the meantime, she could tell her about the match in her reply.

The final of the morning’s letters came from Jathiss, according to Fasola. It was of quality paper, dyed a slate blue and sealed with a wax stamp: the Stilt cathedral in silhouette, nestled in a thick, horizon-spanning spider’s web. Compared to her other letters, it didn’t smell like much of anything; perhaps it simply smelled of the Heptagon itself.

Honored Chef Fujiwara no Mokou, the letter read, in a script as florid as it was precise.

Bajiko informs me you have been seeking lessons from us. She speaks highly of your progress and your skills. After this month’s Ides sermon, I have an opening suitable for a lesson. I hope it is one you share.

The bit of indirect praise lifted her spirit. Not only that, but half of the effort of scheduling was already done for her. She’d picked up a calendar the other day. It told her the Ides were only a few days away.

My kitchen abuts the temple of Temple Ward. You are welcome to attend the sermon if you so desire, but do not consider it an obligation. I shall be closing it with a choral performance which may be of some interest.

My hearts burn to see your craft. Let what wisdom I possess bolster your own. Reply soon.

Humbly yours,

Choraler Jathiss, Carbide Chef Six-Day Stilt

The letter, and its promise to cook together with a chef of the Choraler’s caliber, called for an immediate response. She was mildly curious about the sermon, too. It paid to keep tabs on what the local faiths were peddling. Any time she let that habit lapse was a time she was liable to end up on the wrong end of a witch hunt. And doubtless there were some truths squirreled away in Mechanimism’s dogma — after all, it had broad enough appeal to bring in giant bears and spider-women.

As long as no one expected her to apologize for breaking the head priest’s nose. All she regretted about that was that it curtailed the time she could have spent with Sheba.

She settled herself down into a cloud of idle smoke and started drafting her replies. Her feelings would reach them all eventually.

Chapter Text

The list was deceptively simple. Ingredient quality was still paramount, of course, but Agate already had suppliers in mind. Soy beans were readily available; salt was almost mindlessly so. Procuring samples of suitably enzymatic mold for the proper fermentation was only a matter of paying a visit to the Spore Ward.

The true obstacle was wheat.

Wheat; outshined and outlived in this era by its mutant cousins; ravaged by plague and Gyre; believed extinct at several points in the historical record since the reign of Resheph a millennia ago. Plain, simple, vulnerable wheat. Agate had never tasted it in her life prior to the Heptagon’s founding. Their painstaking conservation efforts had coaxed a few of the hardiest cultivars back into existence. Despite this, yields were low and losses high compared to other staples.

Wheat was a rarity. This was the city for rarities. Its economic structures guaranteed health and plenty to its people and even, to some degree, luxury. But there were luxuries, and there were luxuries. Wheat fluctuated on that boundary.

This procurement request was beyond the purview of kippers and middlemen. This required she consult with true specialists. In this field, she trusted one name at the Heptagon: Emberlily, the Carbide Chef Phyta. Emberlily handled many such requests for goods and ingredients with limited or controlled supplies. She was a fearsome haggler with a deep mercantile streak, doubtless a trait nurtured by her roots as an ichor peddler within the Consortium of Phyta.

Emberlily’s office neighbored the upper arena’s arboretum and shared its clime and design. The humidity hit Agate as soon as she stepped through the doorway. A vinewood tree provided the tangled shade of its canopy to the chef’s glass-topped working desk. Several fans directed cooling currents towards her seat. Her only garb was a cropped, sleeveless tunic of loose mesh, the better to expose her plant-flesh to sun and circulation. Her fly-trap face split into a welcoming grin as she looked up from her tablets.

“Agate Severance Star!” she called. “Come on in. What’s your pleasure?”

But there was another figure in the verdant office. A duster of refractive black elastyne obscured their slight frame. A tight, flat-topped cylinder of black hair rose from their head, ringed by the crystalline symbiote-circlet of a psychic meridian. Turning, the chamber’s greenery swept through the reflection of their mirrorshades until settling on the framed subject of Agate. Imet, the One who was Nine, the Carbide Chefs Oth, just so happened to be in the office of procurement, too.

Their presence was not wholly unexpected, considering their intimate connection to the Carbide Chef Phyta. But still, it jarred Agate. She felt unready. She did not often seek out Imet — her secrets were ones she’d rather keep her own, but their gifts made that desire moot. Had she known they would be here today, she’d have most likely prioritized the other items on the sauce list first. What were they doing here?

“Chef,” Imet nodded.

“Chefs,” nodded Agate in return, then nodded again towards Emberlily. “Chef. A procurement request.”

“You and the ‘mets both!” Emberlily replied. “Run a procurement office, get procurement requests. Go figure.”

Now Imet grinned as well, a confident spiral arm of pearly teeth against the galactic midnight of their skin. “Something on the winds told me I’d better get here now lest someone requisition more wheat than she needs. Without even a thought to my pastries.”

Then it was no coincidence. Their insinuation rankled — she planned to obtain no more or less than what Mokou’s recipe called for. Had the wheat yields suffered? Or was this something else?

“You want wheat too, huh?” asked Emberlily. “I can’t hope you’d settle for yuckwheat.”

“I cannot,” Agate confirmed. She stepped past Imet and produced the slip where she’d recorded the ingredient quantities for Mokou’s shoyu. She pressed it to the desk before Emberlily. “This details my requisite bushels. Is this an issue?”

Emberlily’s grin faded into a thoughtful but faint grimace as she scanned the slip. She nodded a few times, then picked up a nearby tablet to reference. “Aye, think I see the shape of it, of what you’re going for. Interesting.”

There was still hesitancy in her voice, uncertainty in her expression. Agate tapped the slip with a digit. “All of it is necessary for a fermented base. All of it will be used. This is a restoration — this recipe is older than the Sultanate.”

“This many bushels? Small wonder,” marveled Emberlily. She met Agate’s gaze, uncertainty replaced with concern. “Can your brewers fit all this?”

“They should. Should they prove insufficient, I shall requisition more. Furthermore,” Agate withdrew the slip and tucked it away once more in her breast pocket. She took a deep breath. Now came the crucible of negotiation. “In exchange, I am prepared to supply eight carbines for the purposes of equipping the militias.”

“Strong opener,” Emberlily whistled. “You buying wheat or setting up a coup?”

“She’s buying wheat,” said Imet, their face once more a mask of neutrality.

Was it caution or jesting that prompted the question? If it was a jest, it was a dangerous jest. There were enough rumors that clung to her name without coup-mongering heaped upon them. People had reason enough to fear her. Perhaps the nature of fear was always to distort its subject.

If it was caution, it was an insulting caution. Were Agate possessed of the desire to institute a coup, she would hardly announce it to the city’s founding luminaries. She found no cause enticing enough or grievance severe enough for such a desire to take root against the Heptagon’s current system of self-governance. She would simply have to bear it either way. Were it not for the presence of Imet, she could bear it in mental privacy.

Agate sighed. “Come now, Emberlily. Is this miserly deliberation really necessary?”

“If yuckwheat was your aim, no,” said Emberlily. “But every chef in the city’s waiting for their chance to cook with the old sweetgrain. It’s not even your focus here, is it?”

“It is not. But what better opportunity to demonstrate its supportive versatility of palate?” asked Agate.

Emberlily raised her upper hands into a quick shrug, the motion fanning the ghostly flames that perpetually wreathed them. “Sure, I understand — just don’t come complaining if there’s a riot.”

“This recipe’s one from Ms. Fujiwara, no?” asked Imet. That it was a question at all on the espers’ tongue was its own polite little lie — perhaps one solely for the sake of their partner, but then, it was an easy inference regardless. The point was that Imet never had to infer. They could simply snatch the truth from her psyche.

“Yes,” said Agate, turning a cold and tight smile to the Chefs Oth. “One of her recipes that I am sourcing, supplying, fostering, and advising. Who knows? It may just give me the necessary edge to break that winning streak of yours.”

Imet laughed. “Well then, I can put off my pastries for that. Just promise me two things.”

“What?” Agate replied.

“First off: when it’s done, I get a bottle.”

“Me too,” Emberlily interjected. “That’s my requirement too.”

Agate gave a faint snort. “If you supply me with the amount I request, there should easily be enough produced for a case each. What is your second stipulation?”

Imet’s grin returned with a taunting cant to it. They leaned in closer, hands clasped behind their back, mirrored gaze pointed up at Agate from beneath. “You keep dreaming.”

It was a taunt leveled from out of their unassailable prowess and unshakable confidence. Yet it was packaged in a carrier wave of psionic intent — one that illuminated the complexities of their sentiment. Absent was the desire for base demeaning. In its place was their zest for challenges, and their desire to incense her to fiercer competition. It kept the taunt from landing as outright insult upon Agate.

But then, absent too was any indication of whether Imet considered her challenge as a viable threat to their record. Absent, or withheld.

“I intend to,” replied Agate. Her own cold smile reflected twofold back to her from the esper’s shades. “They say great truths visit us in dreams.”

At this, Imet’s grin faltered. They pulled back and cocked their head slightly, as though trying to catch the sour note in a symphony. “Where’d you hear that one?”

Where had she heard it? It had simply bubbled its way out of her, fully-formed and sourceless. This question was no lie — the answer was a mystery to herself, and thus, to Imet as well. It was unsettling. To her, of course, but more interestingly, to Imet. That which unsettled the esper could prove to be an edge.

Despite this, the words felt familiar. “I believe it came to me in a dream,” said Agate at last.

“Then you know you can trust it,” said Emberlily. She made a few decisive notations on her tablet, then stood. She reached across her desk with her cooler lower hands to shake Agate’s hands in transactional ceremony. “You’ve got your wheat, Agate. I hope to celebrate your success.”

“Thank you,” Agate replied. She gave a curt nod, withdrew her hand, and turned to leave. “You will have your chance. My methods are perfect.”

“I’ll be hotly waiting then, love,” said Emberlily. She settled back into her chair. Her next words came at a mutter, almost certainly pitched for herself. “But that much wheat. What’s next — flux?”

Agate stopped in her parting stride. Her pulse quickened. This was an opportunity, an opening. The edge granted by neutron flux was one honed by ultimate gravity. She needed every edge she could find. Perhaps it was time.

She’d already bought something for Mokou — something big. Why not something for herself?

“I am prepared,” Agate said, “to produce an additional three laser rifles for the militias in exchange for one dram of neutron flux.”

Chapter Text

The cathedral’s facade swelled from the face of the deep earth to soar to the cavern ceiling. As with the cathedral at the Stilt, it was molded cleverly to obscure the distinction between nature and artifice, to bolster existing forms. In contrast to that distant desert edifice, though, the Temple Ward’s focal structure rose with repeated motifs of interlocking prefabrications, smooth and sweeping. Sconces up its height sheltered a pantheon of vibrant light-sculptures.

All that was to say nothing of the sound.

“Enchantment! It knows no other name!”

Amplified echoes of the sermon within rolled across the plaza to reach Mokou. Yet there were no visible speakers — something in the structure itself caught it and redoubled it. The words were legible as more than mere tones of speech now that the cathedral’s facade was in view. They had little competition from the sparse gatherings of picnicking pilgrims in the plaza itself.

“Shit,” Mokou muttered. “They’ve been going for a while now, huh?”

“I’ve heard this one,” Agate quietly replied. “You aren’t missing much.”

“Anything like, uh — ‘Death to the Ageless Ones! Death to Wizards!’ That kind of thing?”

“There, they permeated Her roiling membrane—”

Agate shook her head and continued her stride across the plaza. Mokou kept pace with her, hands in the pockets of her black trousers. At least it didn’t sound like Jathiss preaching. It made her feel a bit better about being late. She hadn’t meant to miss the sermon, but it had been another day where it was hard to get out of bed. If Agate hadn’t dropped by, she might have missed the entire service. Though she still wasn’t sure why Agate was going.

“They gonna let you in?” asked Mokou.

“Why would they?” Agate replied.

Mokou shrugged. “I mean, you’re sweet on Jathiss, right? She send you an invite too?”

Agate shook her head again. “Any mutual regard between the Choraler and myself is hardly enough to make me welcome in Mechanimist holy places. Additionally, their dogma holds no appeal to me.”

“—And exploded from within, colliding matter into machines which passed through Her naked womb.”

The words of the sermon practically thundered now that they stood before the cathedral entrance. A peek through the cracked doorway revealed it to be in full attendance within. Mokou paused and pulled back a step.

“Don’t want to go in and interrupt it while it’s still going,” she said.

Agate leaned against the wall, her hindquarters settling along its length in parallel. She gave a cold smile of acknowledgment. “There will be a brief recess between the sermon and the choral performance.”

“Rejoice! The Joining is through! Their union is consummated!”

Jubilant cries of the faithful sounded out from within, marking the sermon’s evident end. Agate nodded towards Mokou, still smiling, and gestured her towards the entry doors.

“The plaza’s acoustics are more than adequate for me, but inside, it’s unparalleled. Enjoy the performance — and your lesson.”

“Thanks, Agate,” Mokou smiled back and entered the cathedral. Of course — she was here to listen to Jathiss, too. It certainly tracked with what she knew of the two of them.

The interior was no less impressive. It dropped the dazzling light sculptures to redouble its focus on broad geometries repeating through its interlocked structures. But beyond that, their very arrangement strived towards a sister purpose: the molding of sound. How many people had it taken to create? To bring from one woman’s dream into the material? For that had been what she’d heard — that this cathedral was one of Jathiss’s designs.

Mokou had built more than her share of things in her time — barns and shrines; saunas and studies; grill stands, homes. But a cathedral? That took an architect. Now that would be a skill to pick up someday. Or maybe she already had and had just forgotten.

She made her way in through the milling pilgrims and quiet conversations. Down the aisle a few rows and halfway along, a familiar shock of pale mane caught her eye. It was the Baroness Farouun, and a tasseled jacket-robe adorned her bulk rising over the gathered faithful. As Mokou drew level with Farouun’s row of seating, the chimera noticed her and beckoned her over, patting the seat next to her. Mokou sidled along the row of benches to her.

“So good of you to join us!” Farouun grinned, giving her a vigorous handshake. It was a stronger and firmer grip than previous — she’d crossed over into the next echelon of displayed handshake strength. It still didn’t feel like enough.

“You saved a seat for me?” asked Mokou.

“The best acoustics,” Farouun replied with a winking whisper.

“Thank you. Lovely cathedral,” said Mokou. She settled herself down next to Farouun, feeling rather small from the closeness. Perhaps it was easier to save seats when you were chimera-sized. “Take it you’ll be sticking around for this lesson, too?”

“To see what you and my Jathiss cook up together? I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” laughed Farouun. “Ah! Here she is.”

A hush fell over all assembled as Choraler Jathiss mounted the central dais. She wore a similar shawl to what she’d worn in the arena, but this one had a bit of extra silver trim. Fresh wreaths of pale blooms adorned both heads, while in one of her four hands she held a chrome orb the size of a small melon — perhaps a ritual implement. Her twin gazes swept the audience, her dark eyes gleaming. It was difficult to tell her expression, but then, Mokou had only rarely had prior reason to try to judge the expressiveness of arachnids.

“I thank you all for joining us,” Jathiss spoke, her voices crisp and resonant in the airy chamber. She bowed. “Your presence honors the Fathers. So, too, does it honor the Kasaphescence — the plasmatic mother, beauty-and-awe manifest, the chrome heart and womb at the center of creation. Friends, allow me to close this service with verse XIX of the Canticles Chromaic, the Song of Ben-Charonium. Follow as you can; all songs are a gift to Her.”

Around Mokou came the rustle of books as the faithful in attendance turned their copies to the appropriate page and verse. Mokou glanced around to see if there was a spare stored anywhere in range of her seat. Her search was interrupted by the lowering claw of the Baroness, bringing her own copy down to Mokou’s level while affixing a pair of spectacles to her snout with her other claw.

The silence of anticipation fell over the congregation.

Jathiss lifted her unified gaze to the cathedral’s apex and sang.

“Our jungle is but Her garden.
Our lake is but Her drop of rain.”

Sublime harmony filled the space, doubling and redoubling. It was breathtaking. The sound of it — languid yet exultant — filled Mokou’s entire body. It was a song, a sound, that she could lose herself in. Jathiss drew the verse’s opening couplet to a shimmering end, then gestured softly before her with the orb. On this cue, the congregation echoed the phrases back. Hundreds of voices traced the harmonic arc blazed by her twin leads. From where Mokou sat, the most powerful among them came from the seat right next to her, where pealed the contrabass thrumming of the Baroness.

The response came to its own moratorium. The last echoes filtered down from above. Jathiss met the silence with the next couplet of the verse.

“Our desert is but dust in Her hands.
Our wind is but Her eternal breath.”

This time, when the lead cycled to the congregation, Mokou found herself lifting her own voice to join the chorus. It was a new song. She wanted to feel it not just in her body but in her lungs, her throat, her palate, rising from out of her. Another small way she could pretend to be a part of this place and these lives for a little longer. Her idle thought, as she crested the second line, was whether Agate could pick her voice out from the throng.

Jathiss took up the lead again. Her crystalline harmonies soared into the final couplet.

“Our sun is but Her luster.
Our lives are but Her dreams.”

This was faith, powerful, thrumming, almost tangible. The gods of her old home would have feasted on this. Especially so since the faith resounding around her was the fruit of the material world — bitter and fleeting and uncertain, where every miracle was hard-won. With this much energy behind its worship, it was no wonder she’d heard of so many Mechanimist schisms. Faith was no good if it wasn’t lively, after all.

And she could sense every bit of that liveliness, that passion, reflected in the Choraler. This was a woman in her precise element, doing exactly what she wanted to do in the exact place she’d built to do it in. That was its own little miracle. If this was what Agate saw in her, it was easy to see it too.

The last notes of the song left Mokou’s throat. The last echoes sank from above and faded from her body. Still, it stuck with her — a subtle electricity, though not quite as literal as the sort Agate’s cooking instilled.

“Beautiful, my friends, beautiful,” said Jathiss at last. She bowed her heads briefly in gratitude. “This concludes today’s sermon. Food shall be served in the plaza shortly. If your Ides takes you elsewhere, then go in peace, and walk with the Fathers.”

The faithful rose to disperse in their own times and fashions. From the general timbre of chatter, the unifying mood seemed to be one of mildly dazed reverence and gratitude. The Baroness grinned down at Mokou, her heavy claw patting Mokou’s shoulder.

“Well! How did you like my Jathiss’s little performance?”

“Beautiful! Beautiful stuff, really,” Mokou replied, smiling back as she sidled out along the pew. “You a Mechanimist?”

“Not myself, no,” Farouun replied, sidling alongside her with a much more delicate tread. “But they’re valuable trading partners. It’s remarkable the goodwill you’re afforded when you sponsor a cathedral.”

“I bet,” Mokou whistled. If it came down to mending things between herself and the Mechanimist priesthood, that method was a bit outside her means.

Maybe not outside of Kaguya’s means. She’d always been better at keeping her savings in order.

Pilgrims threaded around them where they stood out in the central aisle. Mokou flicked her wrist, pointing between herself with thumb and Jathiss with forefinger. “Oh, yeah, the food service — that on us? We doing that?”

“No, no!” Farouun laughed. “The cathedral’s chefs have been hard at work while the priests have been preaching. The time is yours for learning.”

Mokou bowed her head in relief. She stretched her hand towards Jathiss and stepped aside to give the Baroness berth. “Lead the way, then.”

Chapter Text

Jathiss led them down arched inner hallways to another wing of the cathedral. These fed into a long cloister flanking the plaza, while large doorways all along the cloister’s inner wall held passage into a row of ensconced kitchens. Robed chefs bustled in and out, carrying covered serving troughs to the plaza’s banquet tables, chatting with their fellows and murmuring greetings to Mokou’s little lesson group as they passed.

Of course, there was nothing little about the other two women with her today. Nor the fixtures in the room they’d arrived at. Nor the room itself, polished walls all aglimmer in the reds and cyans of quartzite and capped with fluted ventilation arches and drip-catch canopies.

“Welcome to my kitchen, Chef,” Jathiss swept her multitudinous arms to usher them inside.

Mokou whistled softly. At first glance, the ovens and counters looked to be a good few handspans too tall for her to comfortably use — at least not without a stool. But on further inspection, the room held fixtures in a variety of scales, including ones better suited to human size. It made sense, considering the diversity of converts under the Mechanimist banner. Not only that, but most of the cookware and tools held a comforting familiarity. All of it was solid, uncomplicated, unpretentious — the sort of tools she had in her old home.

“Thanks,” she said at last. “So all these other rooms along here are kitchens like this one?”

“Many of them, yes,” Jathiss replied. “Further in and below we have larders, breweries, cold stores, abattoirs and the like.”

“Could feed an army from this building, huh?” Mokou marveled.

“I should hope it never comes to that,” said Jathiss. “To feed the Ward is purpose enough.”

“At the present juncture, I would happily settle for merely feeding the three of us,” said Farouun. She swept into a corner of the kitchen, where a chimera-sized hammock of fat silken threads hung between mounted hooks. She settled herself into it, the better to cast her eye over the proceedings.

“You never bring enough snacks for yourself,” Jathiss tutted. She took her own position at the tallest stove. “Chef Mokou. What do you hope to learn with me today?”

“Oh, well…” Mokou let out a slow breath. She pulled her hands from her pockets to wave them in a gesture of open-palmed inquiry. “What have you got?”

“Life-stuff!” Jathiss replied with her own sweeping indication of her kitchen’s pantries. “Bajiko, I know, taught you of Qud’s plants and their effects — the boons of our gardens. But the animal world has its own boons. Game, livestock, the gifts of our bodies. There is harmony to be found within and between these spheres.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Mokou. She made her way closer to the heart of the kitchen, still slowly taking in the measure and layout of its fixtures. “What can you do with these boons?”

“Ahh, on the practical applications already?” Jathiss chuckled approvingly. “I can see why Agate is so taken with you. They can be woven into the very flow and recuperative powers of life-force itself.”

Mokou raised her brows. Just how much had Agate been talking her up to others? But that was a thought for later. What truly ensnared her attention was Jathiss’s last claim. It was as lofty as the neighboring cathedral’s arched ceilings. “Like medicinal cuisine?”

“Certainly, that’s a common expression. The right meal can grant powerful succor and healing for the day to come. But it can do so much more, too. It’s — difficult to explain in mere words.”

“Well, I’m here to learn,” Mokou grinned. “What’s on the menu?”

Jathiss gave a little shimmy of both sets of her pedipalps. It might have been something like a returned smile. “I’ve been testing out some recipes for the festival! I’ve had a broth building for most of a day — it should be just about ready for my ramen.”

Mokou clapped, her heart leaping in her chest. Of all the unexpected windfalls, this was too sweet by far. “Ramen! Oh, shit, I haven’t had a good bowl of that in ages! You know ramen?”

“It’s one of my favorites!” Jathiss replied. As she spoke, she busied herself with pulling out ingredients and cookware for use. “Though it came to be so quite by chance. Nearly a decade ago, I came across the base recipe detailed in an ancient cookbook donated to the Stilt library by a roving arconaut. The foundations of it sang to me. I find it a consistent delight to build upon. But — how did you know of it?”

“It’s one of ours!” answered Mokou. She tapped her own chest proudly. “Way back in the day — way back — my people created ramen.”

Jathiss halted her efforts, evidently stunned. “By the Fathers,” she murmured. “Agate must have felt this when you claimed sashimi.”

“Sashimi was one of yours, too?” asked Farouun, awe tinging her deep rumble.

“Yep,” Mokou nodded. She reached up to give Jathiss a reassuring pat on her lower shoulders. “Listen, you already made my day with your end of the menu. I really appreciate you keepin’ the fire burning on this one. Though if you read about it at the library, guess I’ve got Sheba to thank, too. Oh, speaking of — she sends her best.”

Jathiss seemed to recover a bit of composure at the mention of the librarian of the Stilt. “Ah! I should have known you two were in correspondence. You know, she tried to deputize me for more interviews.”

“Did she, now?” Mokou replied. “I mean, I don’t mind. It’s for a good cause.”

“Oh, no, I turned her down,” laughed Jathiss. It was a curious sound, one head softly laughing while the other spoke. “I love her dearly, but I’m afraid my own duties keep me far too busy. And with the festival coming up? It was challenge enough to find time for this lesson.”

“My love, I’ve seen you delegate,” said Farouun, teasingly. “Someday I hope to see it from you outside the arena.”

“I simply do what I can,” Jathiss deflected. She checked the flames of her cooking ranges, adjusting for boils and simmers as appropriate. It was fascinating to see so many limbs in motion and concert. Still, a bank of her eyes stayed on Mokou. “But as for what I can do in our lesson… What might I teach about ramen to one who was born into it? To one who walked with the Fathers?”

If there was one thing Mokou was gathering about the Carbide Chef Six-Day Stilt, it was that she was humble to a fault. Sure, it was good to cultivate a bit of humility, but not if it made Jathiss second-guess the lesson. Not if it jeopardized the reason Mokou got out of bed today. What did the chef’s Fathers have to do with ramen, anyway? She couldn’t speak for them, whoever they were, but she could speak for herself. Maybe this was a test of her own humility. “Listen, the whole point of ramen is you never run out of ways to make it. After all this time, there’s bound to be something new about it. Had some healing bowls of ramen in my day, but something tells me this one’s gonna be on a whole new level. Try me.”

“Very well,” said Jathiss. She let out a slow breath, perhaps to settle her nerves. “Much of what we’ll be assembling today I’ve prepared ahead of time, but I’m always willing to share the process of that work.”

“This a recipe you’ve made before?” asked Mokou.

“Only variations,” Jathiss replied. She hefted a sack of flour — real wheat flour, by the look of it — and began to portion it into mixing bowls. “I have a good idea of what the end result will be, but until it’s all together, there’s always a chance that good idea is simply wrong. Still, one mustn't stagnate. By Ut yara Ux I’ll have it.”

“Nothing like ramen for a festival,” Mokou nodded approvingly. “Except maybe dango. Y’all still make dango?”

“Dango?” asked Farouun. “What manner of dish is it?”

“Little treats,” said Mokou. She tried not to let her disappointment at the Baroness’s unfamiliarity drag her mood down. There were only so many things that could survive. “Dunno how glutinous the rice you get these days is, but you take some rice flour, the stickier the better. Mold it into dumpling dough, boil ‘em up. Dead easy. Used to make ‘em for… Moon viewings. Jugoya — uh, Fifteenth Night. The Mid-Autumn Festival.”

Back under the old moon. Back when bites of chill wove themselves into the sweet air to herald the coming winters.

“Autumn…” Farouun rumbled in thought. Another reaction that told of unbridgeable contexts lost.

Jathiss, in contrast, began to hum idly from one of her heads. It was a melancholic little tune, unexpected as it was lovely.

“What song is that?” Mokou asked the arachnid chef.

“Oh! Verse XVIII of the Canticles Chromaic, the Song of Beth.”

Jathiss stilled herself, readying the song in question. When it emerged from her throats, it rose into the kitchen’s lofty ceiling.

“O curse the wretched spectres!
Who yet possess Her children.
O curse the autumn rains!
Which eat away their shine.
O praise the Argent Fathers!
Who sired all Her children.
O praise the Kasaphescence!
Which watches over mine.”

The last notes subsided, replaced once more with the simmering of stockpots, the distant chatter of chefs out in the plaza. Still, the beauty of her impromptu performance lingered. Clearly the kitchens had been structured with acoustics in mind, too.

“Beautiful,” said Mokou.

Jathiss bowed her heads graciously. “It’s one of the oldest songs in the Canticles. I’ve always wondered what was meant by the autumn rains. They were celebrated, once?”

“It was more the season itself. It was a time of… harvests. Preparation for the cold. You got such a lovely moon that time of year. That’s what we celebrated.”

Memories of ancient autumns bubbled up within her. Clattering bamboo and rabbitsong, all bathed under the light of a moon yet whole. Bittersweet, but cherished. Yet the time they preserved was so far gone that the people of this age only knew its blessings as curses. Strange, too, that the faithful of such a parched land would curse the rains.

Jathiss thunked a sack of rice flour onto the countertop next to Mokou, interrupting her reminiscences. The arachnoid chef patted it proudly before opening it. “Well, we certainly celebrate our harvests here at the Heptagon, and some of us still dote on the moon. Let’s have a little festival of our own today! In honor of the Ides, perhaps — the Fifteenth Day. Will your dango require anything else?”

“Oh, depends on the flour.” Despite the weight of her melancholy, Mokou found herself warmed by the gesture. She dipped her finger into the open sack and lifted it to her mouth to test it. The subtle sweetness was there, but the texture was hard to determine without giving it a good kneading. “Main thing really is making sure it’s sticky enough. That’s just for makin’ em. Beyond that, we’re in a cave, and it’s day. Hard to be moon-viewing dango when you can’t view the moon.”

“I believe I have something to help on both counts,” said Jathiss. She turned to a nearby pantry; it took a lot of floor space to give her the necessary clearance to turn around, but the kitchen was designed with that in mind. It reminded Mokou of the layout of Lulihart’s kitchen, back at the Stilt. A fresher memory of another kitchen built by and for the many-legged. Jathiss turned back towards Mokou with the prize of her search: a spool of thick, shimmering silken strands, much the same circumference as those comprising the Baroness’s hammock. “Phase silk!”

“Woah,” said Mokou. It had a lovely texture that caught the light strangely. She wasn’t quite sure how it would address her concerns, but then, this was supposed to be a lesson. “That’s edible?”

“Edible and freshly harvested,” hummed Jathiss. “I can personally attest to its quality; I wove it myself.”

Mokou raised her brows silently. She remembered Agate mentioning something about the Choraler’s glands back during the match — how she’d put some of her own slime in the dessert buns. Those dessert buns had given Mokou such a vivid glimpse of her old home. Granted, it wasn’t the slime that did that, but who could say if she’d have dreamt up the same memory without it? But this wasn’t slime, it was silk — and it certainly looked more appetizing.

“That’s one way to make it sticky,” Mokou nodded at last. “You like cooking with, uh… your own ingredients, huh?”

Jathiss bowed in acknowledgment. “Yes. It’s the highest honor I can imagine, that my own essence might bolster others. That I might willingly nourish those around me, those I love and care for and those I know not alike.”

“That philosophy is part of what makes her a Carbide Chef,” Farouun rumbled proudly and fondly.

It was an interesting outlook, but Mokou wasn’t sure how well she could put it into practice herself. On those occasions when they’d been bored enough to try, Kaguya always said she was stringy. Her body really only had one ingredient of note. Still, it was one hell of an offering.

She wasn’t about to offer her liver to just anyone. Not in this cycle.

Surely there were other paths to becoming a Carbide Chef.

“Well,” Mokou grinned. “That’s who I’m here to learn from. Let’s get cooking.”

Chapter Text

The doughs rested. A small array of pickling urns, tureens, and pots lined the countertops, laid out by Jathiss for Mokou’s perusal.

“Boar belly, slow-braised all morning in a marinade of soy and sesame,” proclaimed the Carbide Chef.

“My god,” Mokou breathed. The savory scent unfurled from the steaming cuts. She gave one a tentative prod. “Look at that jiggle.”

Jathiss nodded in recognition of the praise, then unveiled her next pre-prepared delight. “Starlic, whole clove, roasted in the husk.”

Mokou peeled away the blackened husk to reveal the glittering flesh and sharp biting scent of mutant allium. “Broth finisher?”

“Indeed,” said Jathiss. “And finally: Salt kraken roe, soft-boiled and brined.”

Each ovoid was a bit larger than a goose egg, almost opalescent beneath the rich stain of the brining marinade. She couldn’t help but wonder at the taste, but that mystery would resolve soon enough. “That’s big roe,” Mokou marveled.

“You crossed Moghra’yi — did you ever see a salt kraken?” asked Jathiss.

Mokou shook her head. “Don’t think so. Must’ve missed ‘em.”

Jathiss chuckled softly. “You would know if you had. Some say the cathedral at the Stilt was hollowed out from the petrified remains of one. Myself, I doubt it, but not for lack of their size.”

“That’s a whole lot of growing, then,” Mokou whistled.

The Baroness spoke, her voice steeped in a gentle awe despite her giant frame. “To see one churning along, you’d hardly think the Eaters of Earth disappeared.”

“You ever had ‘em as a theme ingredient?” asked Mokou. “Would one even fit in the arena?”

“Ahh…” Farouun sat back in the hammock, stroking her mane with a faraway, thoughtful look. “They would fit. In the subdual phase alone, the damage to the arena would be immense, but they would fit. We haven’t yet held a Salt Kraken battle… But a woman can dream.”

It was always good to see that no matter how much the world changed, people still had ambitions, still had dreams. Mokou gave her a smile. “Well, you’ve got a hell of a repair crew. I bet they could take it.”

“Your praise means a great deal,” said Farouun.

Mokou nodded in acknowledgment. It was nice to be appreciated — all the more so, considering the city. It was a city welcoming to the point of being hard to grapple with, sometimes. As she spoke, she turned her efforts towards gradually hydrating the rice flour. “Lot of folks out there never even figured out you gotta feed the people who do the work. Y’all really aren’t skimping on that front. Some of the meals I’ve had on shifts here? Hot damn.”

“If we could not feed our people, if we allowed them to go hungry, we would be nothing, have nothing,” said Jathiss. The full weight of conviction rode her gentle tones. It heartened Mokou to hear.

“We better get this ramen sorted, then,” said Mokou. “So you’ve got all this great stuff whipped up. What happens when we put it all together?”

“Well, that’s part of what I hope to determine!” Jathiss brightly replied. “I haven’t yet tried this specific combination. Your dango gives us even more to account for. Is the flour working for you?”

Mokou gave her dough a squeeze. “Oh, yeah, it’s plenty sticky. This’ll do fine.”

Jathiss’s pedipalps fluttered. “Ah! Wonderful. So you won’t be needing my phase silk?”

“Now, hold on, I didn’t say that. You’ve got me curious. Bet I can find a way to work it in.” She needed to learn this land’s ingredients. From the sound of it, this one probably had something to do with the ghostly mechanisms of phase shifting. Hopefully this time it wouldn’t cost her a hand, but then, it seemed that hands were cheap here.

Mokou took the spool of phase silk and pared off a sliver. It clung to her fingers, subtly tingling. She brought it to her mouth and tasted it. The palate was subtle, savory, almost buttery, while the texture was just as sticky as she’d guessed from the touch of it. After a few moments spent gently working it around her mouth, it almost seemed to melt. The tingling effect was even more pronounced where it suffused her mouth. Perhaps if she found herself caught in a web of the stuff, she could just eat her way out.

“That’s good,” Mokou nodded and sliced off a good grip more of thicker silk slivers. This kitchen’s knives were a joy to use — good steel well kept, solid enough for a giant spider-woman and more than hefty enough for her. “Bet that seasons up, sweetens up real nice.”

“Yes, it’s quite good in confections,” said Jathiss. “Are you thinking of sweetening it?”

“No, I’m keeping it as-is. Just gives me ideas for other stuff I might want to make later. Let’s try this.”

Mokou turned out the dango dough from its mixing bowl and sliced it into small, equal portions. These dough portions she began to shape into spheres, but first, she hollowed a cavity into each and embedded the phase silk cross-sections within them. Then she folded the dough back over the pockets to smoothly seal the silk inside.

Jathiss watched the whole process intently, with the full complement of her many-eyed focus. “How many do you plan to make?”

“Usually, you make fifteen of ‘em.”

“Ah! Fifteen each?” asked the Baroness, peering with an eager, hungry look from her silken perch.

“Ah—” Mokou began, before considering her audience and their appetites. She’d seen Farouun’s preferred portions. Jathiss was only a touch smaller than the Baroness. If she told them that real moon-viewing dango usually sat out a while for display it might break their hearts. It was all already an approximation. Perhaps it was better to scale up and immediate. “Uh. Yeah, fifteen each.”

“Marvelous!” said Jathiss. “Let me help.”

With Jathiss’s help, they soon had the rest of the dango dough balled up and ready. All through the process, Mokou felt the attention of the other two women on her, taking in how she cooked. For her own part, she found it fascinating to watch Jathiss roll dumplings between her clawed, furry hands. The diligence in her motions was the same as a spider bundling its prey.

“Alright,” said Mokou at last, when all the dango were ready. “Now we boil these for a bit. They’ll float once they’re close to done. Let’s get those noodles going! Tell me about your process. How do you get it to do what you want?”

“Well, often times… you don’t,” Jathiss softly laughed. As she spoke, she spread out sheets of the noodle dough with her lower arms and readied a large guillotine blade over the sheets with her upper arms. “To grasp cuisine in Qud, one must recognize that every ingredient has a life of its own. That life often runs contrary to one’s own wants.”

The blade rocked across the folded sheets steadily. With every slice, Jathiss shuffled the sheet along to form another row of noodles to pare off. Listening to her speak, Mokou was again struck with the feeling that the chef was tracing out magic in the language she had available to her. For where there was life, there was magic.

“But you can… coax it, right?” asked Mokou.

Jathiss considered this. “Only down those paths the life wishes already to tread.”

“When you’re doing that…” Mokou began, thinking back to her lessons with Bajiko, her arguments with Agate. “... You’re guiding your thoughts, right? What sorts of things do you think about?”

“Hmm,” Jathiss hummed in thought. It brought a brief pause to the rhythm of her slices. “I suppose I most often find myself welling with thoughts of… gratitude, of reverence to the life that has gone into the meal. That which has given of itself for my sake.”

“Mhm,” nodded Mokou. That certainly tracked with what she knew of the Choraler, but it could hardly be a universal outlook. “Can’t imagine Agate thinking the same thing, exactly.”

Jathiss cocked her closest head in a quizzical pose. “Can you not?”

“Well, I mean…” Mokou shrugged. “You probably know her better than I do. Just seems like she has other priorities.”

“Perhaps.” Jathiss let out a slow breath and resumed her dough slicing.

“As an observer — though by no means an impartial one—” rumbled Baroness Farouun, reclining in her hammock and offering her claw palm-upwards in a contemplative gesture, “—the difference in their philosophies does strike me. My Jathiss, I would wager, approaches cooking as a chance to build upon the foundations of her ingredients. Agate, meanwhile… Hers is a fearsome technique. Hers is to hone in on all that is necessary for victory, seize it, and to annihilate all else.”

“I would have said she prunes judiciously,” said Jathiss, bowing her heads at the praise. She bundled up the sliced noodles and dropped them into a waiting boiler.

It was certainly a theatrical way of putting it, but then, the Baroness practically oozed theater. Besides, from all the meals Agate had made her, Mokou could see it. Even the facets she’d called minor utility bent that purpose towards something vital.

“Must’ve been one hell of a match, when she challenged you,” said Mokou.

Jathiss laughed. “Let’s plate these, and I can tell you about it.”

Chapter Text

The meal was ready at last.

“Marvelous,” said Farouun, taking in the scent with a deep breath. “I’m famished.”

“Please, be seated, and we’ll fix that,” said Jathiss, gesturing to a large table in the back of the kitchen — a dining nook, almost, but giant-sized. Canvas seats set in ovoid frames dangled from storage webs above the table, sized for a range of potential body plans and sizes.

The Baroness arrived at the table first, where she reached into the rafters overhead and pulled down a seat for herself and one for Mokou. This latter she held in place for Mokou. Mokou nodded graciously and sat. As Farouun released her grip, the seat’s web-tether retracted towards the ceiling, lifting Mokou smoothly to the level of the table.

Jathiss took up the afternoon’s dishes and ferried them over with an air of ceremony that hearkened back to how she’d served them the night of the match. Given the scent wafting from the bowls, Mokou considered that ceremony perfectly justified.

Islands of liquid fat floated in the golden broth. Between the thick noodles, the tender sliced boar meat, and the soft-boiled roe, it promised to be as hearty a meal as she’d have all week. And that was all before taking the neatly-stacked dango into account. By no means had Mokou assembled a small meal for herself. But when plated next to the gargantuan servings for the other two women, it seemed diminutive. That sort of trick of the eye was liable to get her overstuffed. There were worse fates.

Mokou ran the tips of her chopsticks over the sliced boar, dipping it deeper into the broth. She sighed in satisfaction. “We did good.”

Jathiss bowed her heads in a silent prayer over the meal. Farouun, it seemed, had enough restraint to wait for the prayer’s conclusion before she dug in. But she did, at last, with gusto, loud slurps, and growls of appreciation. Such sounds were the hallmark of a quality ramen. Mokou had her own proof as she caught her own taste of the noodles.

The smooth texture and rich taste upon her tongue brought a rush of potent and utterly uncomplicated nostalgia. Certainly, the broth was different owing to the drift of ingredients, but the core of ramen shone in that difference, that variety. It brought tears to her eyes, even before she’d had a taste of the boar cutlet.

“All acts of creation honor the Kasaphesence,” said Jathiss. She spoke with only one throat — the other was occupied by the meal, pedipalps guiding noodles into her obscured mandibles. “When the currents of the arena serve me a loss, such is my balm. It’s a matter of faith.”

“Mmm,” Mokou nodded, more to show she was listening. She scissored open the soft-boiled kraken roe and let its creamy yolk mingle into the bowl.

“I know Agate would disagree with me — her efforts were for herself, as the Heptagon’s laurels reflect. But so, too, do I know this. In creation, the honor is Hers whether such is the intent of the creator or no.” The chef fell briefly silent. She used the pause to switch which of her heads ate and which recounted. When she resumed her tale, her voice was hushed with a quiet awe. “That night, with four dishes alone, Agate attained perfection.”

“Truly,” Baroness Farouun rumbled in agreement. “It was the stuff of legends.”

“She told me about it,” said Mokou. “You fought giant crabs, yeah? For the thrill? The spectacle?”

“For… the ceremony,” said Farouun. “The art. As you witnessed yourself, Mokou.”

“And for the sake of life and its course,” Jathiss added. Another pause as she gathered her thoughts. Mokou was perfectly content to give her all the time she needed to talk as much as she wanted. Conversation came second to ramen this magnificent. Jathiss spoke again. “There comes a time when an eyeless king crab grows so large that it can no longer molt under its own power. Their body becomes a prison.”

“Mm,” said Mokou.

And now, into the melange of her emotions aroused by the lesson, the welcoming kitchen, the powerful ramen, Jathiss’s words had injected a deep current of pained sympathy. She knew that fate all too well. At least for this fleeting moment it was a prison with gourmet meals.

“Those six we faced in the arena had crossed that threshold. Doomed, magnificent beasts. Agate and I helped them pass.”

Jathiss paused again for a long, solemn sip of broth. Mokou mirrored the motion. The conversation had taken a melancholy turn, but a newfound respect filtered through it — a context shift. They put in far more thought towards civic-mindedness and ecological health than Mokou tended to expect from bloodsport arenas. Jathiss set her bowl down and continued.

“Of course, I can’t speak to her true intent, nor to the taste of her courses, only to her efficacy. Her movements, her tactics, her dishes… they were unparalleled. Nigh-on overwhelming. I’ve felt my share of losses before and since, but none have felt so hard-fought. That struggle, that triumph, that is the Kasaphesence’s oblation.”

“Are all your matches… how would you say it… missions of mercy like that one?” asked Mokou. She kept her tone as neutral as she could, trying to keep the hope from her question. It was a bitter, useless, cruel hope, one that had worn canyons through her thoughts over the millennia. If they showed such considerations to crabs, then maybe — but no, for her, it simply didn’t apply. The Elixir saw to that.

She could at least recognize the cruelty of that hope when ramen was in front of her.

Farouun cleared her throat with a phlegmatic richness brought about by the broth. “Would that they could be. Only so many beings in Qud molt. Still, we endeavor to give every theme ingredient the honor due to it.”

“Mmm,” Mokou nodded. Any further words scattered as she ate her long-awaited first slice of the boar cutlet. Bands of fat nearly dissolved in her mouth, while the meat held just enough give. The marinade was unreal. She sat with the taste in reverent mastication, bolstered it with a sip of broth, a crushed clove of roasted allium. A few tears slipped free from their beading reservoir and rolled down her cheeks. This was why she’d gotten out of bed.

When she’d suitably recovered from the taste, Mokou posed the question that had bubbled up through the melancholy, the reverence, the nostalgia. “Highest honor is to end up on a plate, that it?”

“Yes!” said Jathiss, ardently. “Were the opportunity reversed, they would hardly spare us the same consideration. These are the currents of life. We have made a raft of our artistry to navigate them.”

“It’s eat and be eaten,” said Farouun. “The Heptagon stands for those who feel that this philosophy should not be approached unceremoniously.” Her gaze wrinkled with worry. “Is this a moral concern, Mokou?”

“Oh, no, no,” Mokou lifted her hands to allay Farouun’s concern. “You’ve perfectly justified it with the ramen alone. I just like picking at things, is all.”

Jathiss chuckled softly. “A bit like Agate in that regard, I’d say.”

Mokou found herself flushing slightly at the comparison. “You know her better than me,” she grumbled. There was a clear difference in her mind between picking at things and quantifying. If they ended up at the same destination it certainly wasn’t because they started in the same place. She banished those complicated considerations with a long pull of broth. Savory sediment swirled over her tongue. Conversation lulled. The three of them, she, Jathiss, Farouun, approached the bottoms of their respective ramen bowls.

“So what’s this one doing, anyway?” asked Mokou at last.

“I’m not certain yet. Ah!” Jathiss set down her empty bowl and took in a few deep breaths. “Can you feel that?”

A sort of aimless, sourceless energy was spreading through Mokou. Even with how many meals she’d had in Qud, she still couldn’t always tell what they were about to do to her. “What is that?” she asked.

“The boar,” answered Jathiss. “Rooting about for a linkage. We have one waiting — quickly, the dango!”

With that, Jathiss took up a quartet of dumplings from her stacked display and brought them to her mandibles to feed. Farouun grasped a hefty clawful of her own and followed suit. Mokou took one of her own, but paused. Partially for a chance to savor the ramen now that it was done, and partially for clarification. What Jathiss called a linkage, Bajiko in her lessons had called a symbiosis. “We’re getting it to do something with the phase silk in ‘em, yeah?”

“Merely encouraging it,” said Jathiss. “If it takes, we may have ourselves a recipe! Though, perhaps not for the festival. That would be quite a bit of wheat and rice flour alike…”

“Could do a limited run,” offered Mokou. The melancholy rose inside her again with her own suggestion. Another reminder of how the foods that used to be her staples were today’s luxuries. Yesterday’s ceremonies called for them, but the call resounded from the chasm of obscurity. They were not the ceremonies this city enshrined. But still, even if the season was wrong, the mood was right — autumns always used to get her feeling this way. Something about the moon, or the old certainty of oncoming winters.

She bit into her dango. It was subtly sweet and perfectly chewy before giving way to the pocket of phase silk filling. As she pulled it back from her mouth, the filling stretched out in drooping, shimmering strands. It caught her by surprise. The strands tingled against her free hand’s fingers, raised to catch them before they fell on her clothes. She gathered them up to join her first bite, then popped in the remainder of the dango to follow them.

It was good. Strange, a touch unorthodox, but good. It might not have been suited for moon-viewing dango, but maybe it was perfectly suited for a Qud celebration. “What’s the occasion for the Ides, anyway?” asked Mokou, once she’d finished her first dumpling.

“Ah, just a minor celebration,” Farouun replied. She seemed to be enjoying the dango quite a bit, though she hadn’t yet brought out the belly-maw. “A way of saying, ‘You made it halfway through the month! Well done!’ That can be no mean feat in this land of ours. We do our best to make it one at the Heptagon, naturally, but, well…” She made a vague upward gesture and chuckled ruefully. “Tell that to the glass storms.”

“Mm,” Mokou grunted. A monthly celebration of survival — and here she was still wanting to die on it. Good food and good company could quiet that ancient impulse, put it out of mind for a time, but never truly silence it. It had been a part of her for too long, now. “Well, good enough a reason as any for dango.”

“I would eat these for any occasion!” laughed Farouun.

Mokou grabbed another one and hefted it softly in brief contemplation. Even after just one, she could already feel the meal’s energy shifting inside her — a new companion, far more immediately appealing. Enticing in its mystery. She still couldn’t tell what it did. “How many until it really kicks in? That was a lot of ramen. Might save some of these for later.”

“That shouldn’t interfere, certainly,” said Jathiss. “Don’t push yourself. A little bit of phase silk goes a long way.”

“That’s how they used to be served back in the day anyway,” Mokou chuckled. “Leave ‘em out for a bit. Let ‘em soak up the moonlight. You feeling it yet? Any better idea on it?”

Jathiss nodded. “I have a good guess. We can test it in the weaving room, if you’d care to join me once we finish.”

The weaving room sat a few chambers deeper from the kitchen in this wing devoted to the cathedral’s labors. It was a split-level chamber. A wide path ran the outside of the room, sporting a few looms, wheels, and storage shelves for bolts and spools of cloth, spare shuttles and the like. But the central feature baffled Mokou — a circular pit sporting short poles affixed to the floor at regular intervals.

“I do a lot of thinking here,” said Jathiss. She strode to the railing that ringed the pit, then followed it to a break where a ramp led down into the pit. Mokou trailed behind her. Farouun took an opposite tack, making her way to the storage section and producing an inventory notebook. Jathiss wasn’t the only busy one, it seemed.

“I bet,” said Mokou. She leaned her elbows on the railing and tracked Jathiss’s movements in the pit, but the chef simply drew up next to her. Owing to the pit’s depth, it brought her at eye level to Mokou. Mokou gave her a faint smile and a raise of her brows. “How were you planning on testing that recipe?”

“Like so,” said Jathiss. She reached under the hem of her shawl and produced a flat, padded satchel from some unseen bit of personal storage. She opened it to reveal a small collection of injectors, their reservoirs full of cryptic substances in a rainbow of hues. Among them, Mokou recognized the subtle shimmering of shade oil. It was one of these that the Choraler grasped and slid from its band. “Do you have your own? If not, I’m happy to share another.”

The offer caught Mokou off guard. Did everyone in Qud just have some of these tonics in reserve? If not, then she could see again part of what Agate saw in her. Preparedness, maybe, or a shared taste for inquiry. But at the same time, it sparked caution in her. “Ahh, be careful with that. My cat’s around here somewhere. Tabi can get… territorial.”

“She’s here?” asked Farouun, looking up from her ledger to scan her surroundings. Her tone held a gentle excitement that nonetheless carried across the room. “She’s always such a perfectly polite little creature when she stays with me.”

“Yeah, but you probably ain’t shared a phase-state with her,” Mokou grumbled. She raised and waggled her newest hand. “She took my hand the other day when Agate gave me one of those.”

“Oh, dear,” Jathiss tutted, scanning the room herself. “Your warning is appreciated, but don’t fret for my sake. The webs will keep her away. Tabbies aren’t fond of them.”

“Webs?” asked Mokou. Realization dawned. “That’s what the pit is for!”

Jathiss nodded with an air of quiet satisfaction. “Precisely. For mundane silk, the poles help keep it organized and easy to spool. For phase silk, we can anchor walkways over them for ease of harvestry — when I don’t harvest it myself, that is!”

“So this is how it’s made,” said Mokou, grinning. “I’ll pass on the shade oil, but don’t let me stop you from doing your thing.”

Jathiss folded away her tonic satchel and clasped the shade oil injector before her between her upper hands. She bowed her heads in a brief, silent prayer over the injector, while on her other end, her spinnerets unfurled from the rear of her abdomen. Shining, delicate silk fluttered between them in the current made by her rhythmically bobbing abdomen before she anchored the strands to the floor of the pit behind her. Her prayer done, she uncapped the injector and stuck it into the fuzz of her upper torso’s belly. Then she waited.

After a few breaths spent silently swaying, her whole body flickered into ghostly translucence. On this cue, Jathiss advanced, step by step, dip by dip, the start of a halting circuit of the pit. Phase silk wove behind her into low, shimmering canopies. A few steps and she flickered back, bringing a pause to her movements and twin sighs of satisfaction to her throats. It was an arrhythmic, staccato dance. Mokou ambled along after her, watching in fascination.

“What was the occasion that prompted Agate to give you shade oil, if you don’t mind me asking?” asked Jathiss, her harmonious voices flickering between phased ghostliness and material richness as she wove.

“She just wanted to see what Tabi would do, I think,” said Mokou. “‘Science is its own occasion,’ or something. She doesn’t like Tabi too much. This one spooked her. Can’t really blame her.”

“The Beast Ward has many qualified trainers,” Jathiss noted. “I’m certain one of them could help curb your cat’s impulses.”

“Yeah, I’m looking into it,” Mokou sighed. Training Tabi really was a pressing priority. Not for Agate’s sake, though she’d raised some good points, but for Tabi’s. Since the mauling, Mokou had been a bit spare and distant from the beast. Hand or no hand, that wasn’t fair to her. Certainly Mokou had paid steeper prices for love before. The problem was simply starting. Doubtless she could ask and get names and directions, but asking, too, was starting. She pushed it from her mind for the moment — something else had been bothering her. “Say, all those injectors are, uh… Eater tech, yeah? Thought the tenets of Mechanimism didn’t like you using those.”

“The burden of chrome,” said Jathiss, flickering still, dancing between solidity and ephemerality. “The voice of Shekhinah preaches that as the old relics burden us with their weight and purpose, so we burden them with our guilts and complexities. These can be cleansed, whether in pilgrimage, in homage to the Well, or in service to our fellow souls. This weaving? This is service. This stocks our larders and fills our bellies.”

Mokou nodded in consideration. “The voice of Shekhinah?”

“Eschelstadt II,” Jathiss replied. Had her tone grown a touch cooler? “I understand you’ve met.”

“Ah. Yeah,” said Mokou. Best not to relitigate it. She focused instead on the matters of faith traced out by Jathiss’s words. “I get it, though. Me, I think just about any tool wants to be used. But how we use it shapes its character. It’s all a matter of knowing when to put it to rest. Seems you folks have a good process for that.” She pulled a hand from her pocket to scratch her chin, then flopped it forward in a vague weighing motion. “Still, bet you can bear a lot more of that chrome burden when you’ve got a cathedral to your name, huh?”

Jathiss danced forward again, warmth returning with her motions. “Perhaps. These tonics hardly weigh a thing. Shade oil grants means to me which harmonize with and bolster the fruits of my body. Such that they can be greater than themselves, and go on to serve others. Certainly I could do the same with a different preparation of phase silk, but that would be its own recipe, and hardly guaranteed. It’s only practical, I’d say. Only—” Jathiss chuckled and leaned in conspiratorially over the railing, voices pitched low, “—don’t tell Agate I said any of that.”

Mokou laughed. “My lips are sealed. Still good to tell her about this recipe, though, right?”

“By all means! And I can finally tell you what it does,” said Jathiss.

“Do tell,” said Mokou.

“This recipe—” Jathiss began, interrupted by another return to corporeality. She shivered and steadied herself with a deep breath, then continued. “This recipe suffuses your body with a recuperative burst of vital energies whenever you phase back into our material plane.”

“No shit!” said Mokou. “Damn, you’ve been really feelin’ it, then, haven’t you?”

Jathiss merely nodded, still swaying to her internal rhythm.

“And we made that!” Mokou laughed again, thumping the railing in satisfaction. “We made the boar do that! That’s some silk you got there.”

“Now that you know, would you like to feel it for yourself?” Jathiss asked. She doubled back in a tighter circuit within the pit to bring herself abreast of one particular patch of her silk, slightly less lustrous than its neighbors. “This webbing here, we can’t use. Jump in — we can look for the moon together.”

Mokou raised her brows. It wasn’t every day that a giant spider invited her into one of her webs. It probably should have been more worrisome, but then, Clactobelle had fared well enough when she’d fallen into one in the urchin battle. And if Tabi, wherever she was hiding, decided to claw her again, at least it would hurt less on the way back. Above all, though, she was curious. She wanted to feel it for herself, now — how she could embody the meal’s effect. She hopped up on the railing and kicked herself into the air, floating slowly over the pit and the patch of silk. The Choraler’s many eyes tracked her with an onyx gleaming.

“Oh,” she said. “I had heard you could do that, but seeing it is quite another matter. It’s…”

“Magic,” Mokou grinned. “I reckon it’s just a different branch than what you’re already doing here with your cookery. Mine’s older, but magic’s magic.”

Mokou released the effort of her flight and dropped into the phase silk below. The web caught her, cushioning her fall. Heavy strands clung to her limbs, and the ghostly energy of phase shift seeped through her where they touched her. The sounds of the room grew muffled and the walls grew hazy. Tabi still hid.

“You think our cooking is magic?” asked Jathiss. Her relative solidity switched polarity — now the chef was a ghost when she was material, and solid when the shade oil flickered.

“Call it a good guess. Can’t prove it yet, but then, that ain’t really the point when it comes to magic.” But then, neither was it purely a matter of accepting it on faith. Either way, Jathiss seemed a touch more receptive to the notion.

“Fascinating,” said Jathiss. She glanced towards Farouun, whose own attention stayed on Mokou.

“If you publish a cookbook, I’ll be the first to buy it.” Farouun grinned and swept her hands in a dramatic arc. “I can see it now — Chef Fujiwara no Mokou’s ‘The Magic of Cooking’!”

“I’ll think about it,” Mokou chuckled.

“I don’t suppose you apprised Agate of this hypothesis of yours?” asked Jathiss.

“Yeah, but I don’t think she was having it.” Mokou wriggled her limbs and found them good and stuck. “Where’s, uh… where’s the moon?”

“Yes, of course. At this time of day, it’s right…” Jathiss, sharing a phase state with Mokou for the moment, danced forward a few steps and pointed into the floor. “... There!”

Mokou craned her neck as best as the webs allowed. It still looked like hazy floor to her — opaque, still a visual obstacle, if not a physical one. “Really?” she asked. “Just looks like floor to me.”

“Ah. It does, does it?” Jathiss hummed in faint disappointment.

“Yeah. Guess I’ll take your word for it.” Mokou couldn’t help but echo that emotion — Jathiss’s cryptic offer was half the reason Mokou got herself stuck in the first place. “Wait, you can see through floors when you’re phased? How?”

“I would guess it’s due to having fourteen more eyes than you,” said Jathiss. “But even then, I can’t, really. It’s a sort of… phase-state far-sightedness, as best as I can put it. Objects at extreme distance seem to bleed through — stars, the sun, the moon. I can tell you the top of the Spindle is… there.” She pointed almost straight up, oriented northeasterly. Her gaze dropped back down to where Mokou remained in her webs, her eyes shimmering with something that might have been sympathy. “When these energies infuse my body, this room becomes my observatory. If only it did the same for you! I do apologize.”

“There’s a lot my body can’t do,” Mokou sighed. Disappointment suffused her as surely and thoroughly as the phase silk’s material shifting. It steered her thoughts back down darker paths. “You know, what you said earlier, about the crabs? Stuck in their own bodies?” She wriggled again, trying to pull an arm free to find her smokes. The webs held firm. She gave up and hung limp again. She turned her gaze to the hazy ceiling, but neither the Spindle nor the stars revealed themselves. “I felt that. I been in this a long time. It can’t change, not really, not fundamentally.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but your body doesn’t usually heal you when you phase in, no?” Jathiss offered. Her tone remained sympathetic despite the pushback. The pushback itself was welcome — familiar, even. No wonder Agate liked this one.

“Sure, but tomorrow, it’s back to normal,” Mokou countered. “All this gonzo cooking stuff — it’s fun, don’t get me wrong. Very interesting, very enriching. But it’s temporary. At the end of the day, it’s just changing the prison’s decor.”

“Did my efforts displease you?” asked Jathiss. She loomed suddenly in Mokou’s lower periphery, her presence radiating solidity in the ghostly plane.

“Hm? Oh, no, no! Best ramen I’ve had in a hot minute,” said Mokou.

“But you haven’t felt it. Here.” Four powerful claws grasped Mokou by the shoulders and thighs. Shimmering silk stretched, then snapped away from Mokou’s body and clothes as Jathiss hauled her out of the tangle. The phasing energy of the webs lost their conduit to her being just as Jathiss’s latest shade oil flickering ran its course, bringing them both back to solidity.

There it was — a burst of pure vitality pulsing through her body in one sacred moment. It made her gasp in surprise.

“Oh, damn,” she breathed. “Yeah, I felt it. That’s good.”

“We made that!” said Jathiss. She lowered Mokou to an unwebbed patch of floor. Her upper hands brushed clinging strands out of where they’d tangled in Mokou’s hair, while her lower hands squeezed her shoulders in reassurance. “It may be fleeting, but it’s ours today! My best counsel is to cherish it while you have it. To do any less would be to dishonor your ingredients.”

Mokou returned her attentions with a melancholy smile back up at her. “Can’t pretend I haven’t heard that one before, but… Can’t pretend it doesn’t always bear repeating, either. I’ll do my best.” She planted her hands on the small of her back and stretched out her back muscles, then rolled out her neck. The city and its labors made it easy to stay in better shape than her average; she hadn’t particularly needed the healing. But even the little aches had fled for the moment. And with them, the dark thoughts. She sighed in satisfaction. “Tell you what, though. A little bit of decor can go a long way.”

Jathiss bowed her heads. She took up Mokou’s hands in her speckle-furred claws. “Then it is my only hope that my lessons can help you find new decor. Live and drink, Mokou.”

Chapter Text

“If that’s what you need her for, then by all means, she’s yours,” said the forewoman, Nashimir. The common meal’s bounty of croc meat kebab dripped as she held it poised over her plate. “Assuming she’s willing, of course. You want me to ask her?”

“Unnecessary,” Agate replied. “I am quite certain she’ll join me.”

“Alright. Job ain’t too big for the both of you, yeah? Might be able to free up some of the rest of the crew, send ‘em along with you tomorrow.”

Agate shook her head. “Simple repairs. Two shall be enough. Company would only slow us down.”

Nashimir grinned. “That’s buddy power. Alright, then get it done!”

Truthfully, the task was well within her own solo means, but Mokou’s company would open up its own opportunities. Agate gave a curt parting nod of acknowledgment, then turned back towards the rooftop observation chamber. She crossed the plaza towards the structure. Perched atop its shingles, silhouetted against the late sky of jeweled dusk and underlit by the plaza’s arclights, was the immortal herself. Her gaze was on the moon. Before her was a small plate of white-doughed dumplings, stacked in a frustum. The sound of Agate’s hooves drew her attention back to earth. She smiled down at Agate, then patted the shingles next to her in invitation.

She had likely flown up there — there was no ladder. Ladders disagreed with Agate’s ergonomic needs, anyway. Agate flicked her ear. She shifted her weight to her back legs, then sprang forward into a sailing leap. She landed deftly on the shallow slope of the observation chamber’s roof, hooves clacking on shingle without a crack to the lacquered ceramic or a loss of purchase. Right next to Mokou, who recovered quickly from Agate’s sudden arrival.

“What are you doing up here?” asked Agate.

“Moongazing,” said Mokou. She picked up a dumpling and offered it up to Agate. “Here.”

“Thank you,” said Agate. She plucked it from Mokou’s grasp. It was squishy and a touch dry. By the texture, the dough was rice flour. “The fruits of your lesson, I presume. What is it?”

“Dango,” Mokou answered. She popped one into her mouth and spoke around it. “Li’l rice flour dumplings. I put some of her phase silk in these.”

Agate sampled it and hummed approvingly. Mokou had skillfully harmonized the flavor profiles between dough and filling. She could taste Jathiss in every bite. “I trust the Choraler’s lesson illuminated more clearly the breadth and depth of Stilt cuisine — and why she is its champion here.”

Mokou laughed. “I get it now, really. She’s a damn force of nature. If I was there when we tussled a month ago, I would’ve kicked my own ass.” She patted the shingles next to her again. “C’mon, have a seat. Moongaze.”

Agate settled herself down at Mokou’s side. She accepted another dango from her and looked up at the rising beetle moon. “It is the same as I have ever seen it,” she said. “What prompted this moon-doting?”

“Ahh, just had it on the mind. Used to make these for an old lunar festival. The moon had phases, you know? As more or less of what you could see of it from down here was lit up.” She held up a dango to the night sky. “When it was full, it was like one of these hangin’ up there in the sky.”

That was one more cryptic utterance of Mokou’s unveiled. According to her anecdotes, that corresponded to the peak of her deceased wife’s fluffiness. Agate chewed her dumpling in contemplative silence, feeling the phase silk’s energies spread through her.

“Well, the moon might not respect phase anymore,” Mokou tossed the dango up into a lazy arc and caught it again with a flourish, “but these do!”

Agate gusted a breath out of her nose in faint amusement. “It’s quite good. Subtle, yet tasteful.”

“Thanks. Made some killer ramen to go with it, but we ate all that. Maybe she’ll have more come the festival.” Mokou glanced back towards Agate quizzically. “Anyway, what about you? What’s the occasion? Thought you were off the shift.”

They had arrived, circuitously, at the reason for Agate’s evening call. She could have demanded it from the start, but Mokou’s idiosyncrasies seemed to respond better to the social lubricant of casual conversation. It was time she could afford to take — she’d already cleared all potential obstacles but Mokou’s own assent.

“The occasion is a critical matter for which I would enlist your aid. The word from today’s caravans is dire: no transmissions from Kitchen Heptagon have reached the Stilt in weeks. This includes the battle we judged. By the pattern of other broadcast silence, we can determine that the fault lies somewhere along the weirdwire repeater network in the western canyons. This fault must be pinpointed and repaired.”

“Shit,” Mokou grunted. “Can’t have that. But, uh… why me? Weirdwire repeaters sure sound like sumafo to me. I doubt I’ll be much good for repairs.”

“Certainly,” Agate nodded. “I anticipate doing the bulk of repair work. But company is safety. Furthermore, these are remote and sparsely-populated installations. The potential for collateral damage is low. You may unleash your danmaku to your heart’s content.” And Agate could study them, at last. The thought gave her a thrill of scientific inquiry.

Mokou’s quizzical look shifted entirely into one of fiery excitement with a hungry grin. “Yeah? About goddamn time. Here I was starting to think you forgot. When do we leave?”

Agate returned her fire with a smile of cold satisfaction. “Rest well tonight. We leave in the morning.”

Chapter Text

The western flower fields passed below them, riotous with new growth. In the weeks since the glass storm, foliage had bloomed from nurturing husks. Trees merely wounded and stripped in the deluge had grown new coats while livid scars faded. Lahblooms armed themselves with fresh tumbling pods as their shadows passed overhead. Still, at every break in the canopy, the meadows beneath glinted.

The air was bracing and fresh. The winds were favorable. All these factors alleviated the inherent and insurmountable unpleasantness of using a gyrocopter backpack.

There was simply no dignified way to employ it. Agate had tried more compact designs, but they left her hindquarters dangling. Her present build featured a long tail brace that ran the length of her spine and more, ending in a set of stabilizing wings. A sturdy yet breathable plastifer mesh supported her underbelly and distributed her weight evenly along the brace, leaving only her legs to dangle. A tiered pair of contra-rotating blades rose from her upper back. This left the backpack portion for fuel storage and the lifting blades’ apparatus and motors. It was practical, functional, sturdy, torqueless, reliable for low-impact flight, but…

But there was the din. The incessant, cacophonous sawing of pulverized air and internal combustion, mere handspans from her sensitive ears. Her strongest noise-blockers kept it barely tolerable, but rendered spoken conversation impossible. Not for the first time she found herself envious of her traveling companion’s gifts.

A glance to her flank revealed Mokou tranquilly following in the slipstream. She wore the recycling suit once more — water conservation was less of a concern on this trip, but it was likely still her best protection. Her hair streamed out behind her as she flew along. She’d certainly ignored Agate’s advice to procure a helmet, to Agate’s continued chagrin. Mokou’s ensemble today sported a surprising new addition: a scarf woven of inedible phase silk. She must have made quite the impression with the Choraler during their lesson. Her expression was difficult to read behind her shades and her scarf, but Agate’s attention prompted a casual wave from her.

No further communication attempts were forthcoming. Agate returned her attentions to the route ahead.

Before the high salt sun had risen, their flight brought them to the canyons beyond the flower fields. The repeater network was nearly due west from the Heptagon — many parasangs to the south of Mehshruul End, and their initial path from the Stilt. Each repeater stood atop the ridgelines of the canyons’ labyrinthine shale, spaced to be in relay range of its neighbors, if not always visual range. They touched down at the first of them, a skeletal tower of metal girders and chrome antennae. Hardened panels guarded its telemetry console.

With solid ground beneath her hooves again, Agate unlocked the tail brace and spun down the primary blades to stow them. Quiet, in all its relief, returned. She slipped the blockers from her ears, taking in the sounds of the desert canyons: the wind, the rustle of leaves, the nonsensical chatter-calls of distant glowcrows. And Mokou.

“Bit loud, isn’t it?”

“There is little I can do about that,” Agate sighed. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“You could learn to fly,” said Mokou. She unwrapped her scarf from around a suspicious bulge on her back — her hair had concealed it in flight. The bulge was Tabi, bundled between the layers of phase-silk fabric, who dropped to the dirt with an indignant chirping.

The sight of it shocked her too much to even consider replying to Mokou’s suggestion. “Why did you—”

“You like it?” asked Mokou, threading a length of the scarf between her hands. “Jathiss gave it to me. Little bit of new decor.”

“It’s phase silk,” said Agate. “You swaddled an astral tabby in the stuff and then positioned her directly atop your spinal column. Are you mad?”

“It’s fine,” Mokou scoffed. “She’s already phased! I tested it yesterday — and she likes this better than my seals. How else was she gonna come along?”

“You could teach her to fly,” Agate grumbled. Still, that she’d tested it at all was heartening. Fascinating, as well. The phenomena of phase states yet held secrets to unfold.

“Don’t think she’s got the brains for it, honestly,” said Mokou, glancing down at the sulking beast. “Or the discipline.”

“How would you know?” Agate countered. “Discipline can be cultivated. Have you attempted to do so in her?”

Mokou’s mirrorshades obscured what was undoubtedly a glare. “I’m working on it, alright?” She flipped the end of her scarf back over her shoulder and clapped her hands together. “What are we up to here, anyway? This the one in trouble?”

“From a cursory examination, no,” said Agate. She turned away to approach the repeater’s console, shooting a sidelong glance with upraised brows to Mokou as she passed. “Did you bring the technoscanner? That will banish uncertainties while I check the diagnostics.”

“Ooh, good call,” said Mokou. There came the sounds of her unslinging her pack for a quick rummage, the click of collapsing her mirrorshades, then the soft hum and chime of the telemetric visor’s boot sequence. “Yep, says this one’s fine. Scanner’s givin’ it a solid 752/800. Guess that’s good?”

“It’s acceptable. That number is a representation of its overall structural integrity. Though, look out — it’s from an algorithm.”

“Oh, come on,” Mokou scoffed. “All I’m saying is you just can’t go basing all your decisions off of ‘em. Too many algorithms and it poisons your brain.”

“Certainly, informational limitations are tactical limitations. It is an avenue, one of many. This is why, as we speak, I am verifying that information.” As she unlocked the console’s protective case, she found herself smiling. Mokou was as lively a traveling companion as ever. There was an invigorating frictiveness to their conversations that she’d found herself missing during the flight.

“Alright,” Mokou grunted, accompanied by the sound of her unslinging her carbine. “I’ll keep lookout then. That’s what buddies are for.”

They were “work buddies” again, it seemed. Unless the domain of sauces was so potent it extended to field repairs. They’d certainly laid a promising enough foundation for the shoyu in the last few days, now that the wheat had come in. Most everything they’d been able to source with what Mokou considered traditional ingredients. The satisfaction of it still lingered.

But it was more than satisfaction. There was a sense of intimacy she’d found in the process. To begin fermentation of the soy beans — the true stars of shoyu — yeasts were necessary. She’d harvested them from the highest quality source she knew of: her own glowcrust. There could be no half-measures in this endeavor.

Such thoughts occupied her intellect while the routine of diagnostics occupied her hands. It was simple enough to verify the techoscanner’s readings.

“We gonna have to check each of these?” asked Mokou.

“No,” Agate replied. “I’m running a connectivity test. It bounces a diagnostic pattern through the local nodes. Operational repeaters will echo it back. By silence, we shall root out the broken ones.”

“How long’s that gonna take?”

“A moment,” said Agate.

Already the console’s diodes lit with the blinking statuses of its neighbors. A small cluster of names remained dim. Agate reached into a saddle bag and retrieved the node map — sturdy paper printed with rippling ribbons of representative topography and studded with repeater locations. It was somewhat sensitive information, but their task granted them access to it. The dim names shared geographical proximity. Perhaps the storm had intensified over that stretch of canyon, or perhaps…

There was something strange about the pattern’s echoes. The dead nodes would tell.

Agate angled the map towards Mokou in demonstration. “Three in all have failed to report. The closest is roughly a parasang to the northwest; the others, not much further. Shall we?”

“Lead the way,” said Mokou. “Just let me — Tabi, Tabi, c’mere.”

Shortly, with Tabi captured in the scarf once more, they were aloft. Back into the oppressive chop and thrum of combustion-powered flight. Still, conditions were favorable for it. The day’s heat bounced from the red shale and glittering glass beneath them and rose as buoying thermals. The same terrain that had taken them days to cross by hoof and foot took mere hours by air. It was just so damnably convenient.

Doubtless when their travels pulled them again to the east, she’d have need of it. But that remained over the unscheduled horizon — all the more so with a sauce to tend back at the Heptagon.

Within the hour they’d arrived at the first of the silent repeaters. The cause of its silence was immediately apparent. The tower of girders slumped to the side, shattered at the base. Shreds of its antennae littered the ridge, mingled with the glass. The housing was charred and partially melted.

“That ain’t good,” Mokou muttered. “Lookin’ at a 150 here. Scanner says internal power, broadcast transmitter, and signal receiver are all shot. Must’ve taken a pounding during the storm.”

“Perhaps,” said Agate. She strode forward to give a closer inspection to the wreckage, slipping on her protective elastyne gloves. She’d seen the aftermath of when power units suffered catastrophic failures, and the repeater had certainly suffered one. Even a cursory analysis made that clear. That was cause for some chagrin, but something deeper bothered her. “From the glass layer, I wouldn’t have said the storm fell any harder here than over the rest of the local network.”

“Sure, sure,” said Mokou, giving her own glance over the repeater’s surroundings. “But sometimes a really big one comes down and—”

“One lucky shot, then?” Agate preempted. She pulled a sturdy prybar from her toolkit and jammed it into the fused access hatch of the power unit’s housing. She heaved herself against it with all the force granted from her muscles and all the leverage granted from her powerful legs. The hatch started to give. Char flaked from the housing.

“Yeah, why not? You don’t sound convinced.” Mokou ambled in a circuit behind the repeater, picking her way over fallen girders. “You need any help with that?”

“I nearly have it,” Agate grunted with another heave. “It’s not out of the question, but… Call it a hunch.”

Steel groaned in protest as the hatch sprang open. The stale scent of scorched lithium escaped. The internals were a cryptic mess of slag. It would all have to be gutted before they could install a replacement power system.

“Any glass in there?” asked Mokou. Now that there was little risk of being struck by a hatch, she drew closer for a better look inside.

“If there is, it’s all melted into this mess,” Agate answered. She hunched down to better examine the inner roof of the housing. Ruptures in its concavity seemed consistent with an internal blast. No sign of an entry point for Mokou’s theorized “big one,” but an internal blast would likely have blown back out such a puncture. She pulled back and drummed her gloved fingers against the rim of the hatch in frustration. Char dulled the sheen of elastyne on her fingertips.

Char on the housing?

“Mokou. What do you make of this soot?”

“Hmm?” asked Mokou. She lifted off her visor and peered at the housing’s blackened coating. She ran her finger through it, then rubbed it between her thumb- and fingertips. “From the power unit, right? Uh… this okay to touch?”

“Yes, but don’t ingest it. Why this pattern, though? If it failed during the storm—”

Mokou snapped her fingers, then waggled her forefinger at Agate. Realization kindled in her gaze. “It would’ve been all scuffed up, right? But this burned clean. It’s an even layer.”

“This unit failed after the storm.” Agate clapped her clean hand on Mokou’s shoulder. The gravity of her deduction weighed upon her tone. “This was sabotage.”

Mokou loosed a slow breath. She stowed her visor and donned her mirrorshades once more. “Shit. I’m gonna take another look around.”

“Please do. I’ll see what I can find here.”

This changed the scope and urgency of this repair task. Now it was an autopsy — and the culprits were still at large. Now that she knew what to look for, the signs were obvious. The right volatile compounds in the right locations could cook a high-capacity battery as surely as any stray sheet of sky-glass. Shaped charges of high explosives could weaken the broadcast array’s structural girders. And the storm’s shattered coating concealed tracks even as it gave plausible deniability. This was a sophisticated attack upon public broadcasting infrastructure.

“Someone’s got boots,” Mokou called, after several minutes of inspection. “Heavy ones. Hard to tell where they went.”

The call pulled Agate from the sabotaged repeater and into the shade of a battered dogthorn, where Mokou stood over a bootprint. Heavy was right — the print was human-sized, but from the weight of its wearer’s gear, the dirt beneath was well compacted. Only the oily branches of the dogthorn had sheltered this patch of earth from the obscuring glass surrounding it.

“From the depth of the print… Fullerite. Ayvah.”

“Who wears fullerite?” asked Mokou.

“The Putus Templar.” Agate drew her pistol and checked its charge. “I wager we’ll find a similar tale at the other two broken repeaters. This print is fresh. They are close.”

“Goddamn fascists,” Mokou spat. “In these canyons? Gotta be a million places to hide.”

Her pistol checked, Agate holstered it. She drew her vibroblade to give it its own inspection. “We can triangulate a search region from the broken repeaters, at least.”

“Nah. I know how to get their attention.”

Agate shot her a quizzical look.

Mokou grinned back at her. There was her flame again.

“You remember your promise?”

Chapter Text

Blades churned overhead again. Her scalp tingled around the base of her antlers, a sympathetic reaction from proximity to forceful movement. Mokou floated placidly some thirty sky-paces away, hair tousled by the southerly breeze. The immortal’s gaze, such as it could be determined from the cant of her neck, roamed across the canyons below as she drew from a handroll.

How had Agate let herself agree to this?

Certainly, she’d promised her participation in such a duel. But her understanding, from what Mokou had told her, was that this was recreation. They’d come out here with a task to do, and the task was unfinished.

Granted, she could follow the logic: repairs were chancy while the saboteurs were still at large. Replacement parts would take some time to print. The spectacle of an aerial duel was likely to draw out their scouts. Still, it felt premature. Perhaps that feeling was irrational. Perhaps it was simply cover for nerves.

Mokou was saying something, lost beneath the roar of her backpack.

“What?” Agate called.

Mokou stopped. She blew out a heavy plume of smoke, then cupped her hands around her mouth. Even with her voice raised, it was merely noise.

“I can’t hear you!” replied Agate. She switched on the auto-stabilizers to free her hands while keeping her position in the sky. She signed as she called. «Do you know sign language?»

Mokou dropped her hands from her mouth to better communicate with them. She hesitated briefly, jaw set in concentration, before signing her reply. «Dozens.»

That was a relief — now communication was possible in calm skies. It was an impressive collection to boot. Perhaps some were precursors to Qud’s most common sign family. It made her wonder how many of those were in Mokou’s active recall. «Repeat what you spoke.»

A rather martial set of signs emerged from Mokou with an utterly casual air. «Shooting you. Ready?»

Now it was Agate’s turn to hesitate. This was, after all, why they returned to the air. «Do you need me? It’s spectacle.»

«Yes!» Mokou signed emphatically. «It’s a duel! I can’t duel myself.»

Agate sighed. Then it was an antagonistic discourse, after all. She gripped her controls once more, and nodded her readiness.

«This is an ancient art. Pay attention,» Mokou signed. Her motions carried both deliberateness and fluidity. «It’s about an old mountain. A very important one.»

As her words ceased, flames wreathed her hands and traced into a square frame before her. She grasped it, then flung it forward with an incantation loud enough for Agate to parse it over the gyrocopter’s din. Wings of fire unfurled behind her.

“Hourai! South Wind, Clear Sky! Fujiyama Volcano!”

Several things happened at once. The card erupted off of Agate’s flank into a geometric sigil-frame that flooded with staggered waves of roiling conflagration. Agate tugged her sticks to strafe away from the blast. But the card had barely left Mokou’s hand before she chased it with a spread of blisteringly fast fire, tracking Agate keenly as she dodged. Then another card swept along the cone of fire and burst, gobbling up another stretch of sky.

The heat warped the air currents around her, demanding even more care in her flight. The rapid-fire stream relented for a split second. In that moment, she realized precisely how trapped she was. All the while, Mokou had been weaving a third pattern of fire — a great cage of fireballs arcing down around her like magmatic ejecta. They fouled the arc of Agate’s escape and the speed of her dodges.

Of all the times to have an oil tank strapped to her back.

What did she know? Nothing — this was magic and magic shouldn’t exist. What could she do? The stream of withering fire scythed just past her hooves — she hardly had time to think, let alone observe. How long would this last? Every passing moment compounded the immortal’s density of fire. It was too much. There was no way through.

A fireball struck her squarely in the chest. Her nanoweave coat scattered the flames before they could find purchase, but the impact sent her into a tailspin. The scent of flash-seared hoarshroom met her nostrils as she sucked in air against the g-forces. The ground whirled, rushing up beneath her.

Eight paces from the ground, she corrected her dive. Steadied in midair, she could at last see that Mokou had the courtesy to call off her attack. Dust kicked up around Agate as she settled herself back on solid ground atop the ridge.

The blades spun down and stowed behind her. She needed silence. She willed her pounding pulse and her desperate breaths to steady.

A plume of smoke and the soft crunch of glass under sneakered tread heralded Mokou’s return. “Could’ve been better, that try.”

Agate rounded on her, drawing in a sharp breath. “That was live fire! Do you hear this?” She shook her shoulders, feeling the slosh of liquid weight behind her. “That is the sound of one hundred and twenty drams of highly flammable gyrocopter fuel attached directly to my personage! Do you want me to die?”

Mokou’s neutral expression sank into a saddened frown. She cupped her hands before her in an almost apologetic posture and took a slow breath. “You’re strong. I wanted to respect that. It’s the best way to learn.”

“Blown fuel tanks are agnostic to personal strength,” Agate countered. “Do you wish to return to the Heptagon with the report that while the Putus Templar sabotaged their repeaters, you killed Agate Severance Star?”

“No! I’d probably just skip town if it came to that. You just—” Mokou sighed, clasping her hands into plaintive fists. “You were dodging too much.”

“Too much?” sputtered Agate. “Any less and your blasting cards would have claimed me!”

“Juuust a bit too much,” said Mokou. “It’s about… moving without moving.”

“I thought it was about an eponymous mountain,” Agate scoffed. Fujiyama, she'd said — was she named after it? Was it named after her?

“It’s about the mountain, too.”

“How long did you expect me to endure that barrage?” asked Agate. Her pulse was at last catching up to her will. It was difficult when Mokou’s every answer tested the bounds of her credulity.

“That one goes for about sixty-nine seconds. Lot of the ones I came up with did.” She scratched her head, as though drawing up memories from her scalp. What she produced instead was a critical rebuke. “But that’s only if you let me. I was all ready to dodge too, but you weren’t even trying to stop me!”

“How was I to stop you?” asked Agate.

Mokou laughed in disbelief. “Shoot me back! Bomb if you have to! It’s a duel, Agate.”

Agate pressed her eyes shut and massaged her temple. These tactics were from an ancient and entirely foreign paradigm of bellicose wizardry. For the moment, the paradigm escaped her. “Mokou. A Templar warband stalks these canyons. I need us both at full strength. I am not going to throw grenades at you.”

“Suit yourself,” Mokou shrugged. “Just might be hard for you if you don’t come at me with everything you have.”

Her words incensed Agate’s pride. She knew her limitations — the volatility and inelegance of her flight, the material, mundane lethality of her defenses. It stung all the more to know that in this moment she had no choice but to wallow in them. Still unclear was the path to surpass them. She reached forward and grasped Mokou by the arms, bowing her head slightly to match the level of her eyes. “I have no magic.”

“You’ve got frameworks,” said Mokou. “You know sign language. That could help.”

“Magic is sign language?” asked Agate. The spark of hope and inquiry pushed back her disbelief. Her grip relented slightly.

“It’s…” Mokou scratched her chin in thought. “It’s a language and it isn’t. It’s life like language is life. It’s your body and your soul in precise intent. Except when it isn’t. Sometimes you don’t have those, y’know. But sign language is like that. And you build on what you have. That’s something you have. You know what else you have? Cooking.”

“Come now, this fringe insistence again?” Agate scoffed. Yet even as she scoffed, she turned over recipes in her head. Perhaps a rubbergum risotto to mitigate fall damage, with magmatic garnish for flame breath and its accompanying immunity. Mokou had rendered a volcanic eruption in her chosen medium; Agate had eaten lava.

Now it was Mokou who grasped her arms back. “I’m telling you, it’s magic here. You can build on that. You’ve already been building on that. Now are you ready for round two? We ain’t gonna lure these bastards out on the ground.”

Chapter Text

The first time, Agate could justify it as fulfilling the spirit of scientific inquiry. This time, she could still justify it as such, for what was science without consistency and repetition? But now that she had faced the flames, that justification had gained a distinct undercurrent of lunacy.

She’d siphoned off as much fuel into her hoversled’s storage as she could spare, leaving herself purely with maneuvering fuel. The lighter load was more responsive, and potentially less hazardous should the worst happen. Still, dangling in the sky, facing down Mokou as she was, she couldn’t help but feel anxiety build in her gut. She wanted Agate to shoot her? That would leave her with one less hand for the gyrocopter’s controls.

«Volcano again?» queried Agate.

Mokou shook her head. «I had a bunch of these. Need to air them out. Freshen them.»

That did little to assuage her anxieties. She at least had started to see the pattern of the last one. Perhaps Mokou’s next offering would be slower.

«Old legend about—» Mokou paused, frowning in concentration. «Dawngliders.»

«Dawngliders?» Agate repeated for clarification. Had Mokou been studying more of Qud’s mythology than just that of her favorite sultan?

«Fire Birds,» replied Mokou, spacing out the elements of the compound sign until it was clear they were meant as separate words. For good measure, she then spelled «PHOENIX. Their feathers are powerful medicine. Tail has the best feathers.»

«You never saw one,» noted Agate.

«Not the point,» signed Mokou. «It’s about medicine. Get better, okay?» She traced another flaming card before her, signaling the end of conversation and the beginning of her attack. Agate gripped her controls in readiness.

“Inextinguishable! Phoenix’s Tail!”

Where before, the card had been a weapon, here it was something else. Its burning frame expanded and flowed over Mokou’s body, garbing her in the form of a firebird. Agate recalled the glimpse she’d caught of the great burning roc Mokou had summoned into the skies of the Heptagon, desperate for a hint of the oncoming barrage — was it the same attack? But immediately, she was disabused.

The tail grew, waving and undulating before her. Each wave cast out a scattershot tapestry of fireballs, cresting before her, promising to spill over her. Heat licked at her cheek. They were slower than the last card’s, yet that was little relief. What they lacked in speed, they compensated for in chaos and inexorability.

Nearly too late, she saw the feint. The first wave of fireballs was a smokescreen. Another curtain, just as chaotic but quicker, flooded past them and rushed to every side of her. Then another. There could be no drastic motions in this oppressive heat. Nor could there be retreat. There could only be precise, harrowed taps of the sticks to try to weave through the eyewatering curtain of fire. Perhaps this was her “moving without moving.”

If it weren’t for the gyrocopter, she could likely hear the shots coming. More and more it revealed itself as a tactical liability in this domain.

The next wave spat forth a deadly corral of fireballs, too close for her to skirt around it. In desperation, she tucked her shoulders in towards her chest and her legs up under her belly and aimed herself ramrod-straight towards the space between the central shots. There was the slimmest glimpse of air between their furious coronas. Certainly not wide enough for her, but if she charged through, the flames might find less purchase on her. She darted forward, hardly daring to breathe.

The roiling flames washed over her arms, her flanks, then passed, leaving — nothing. She’d felt the heat, but no pain. Were they illusory? She’d certainly felt the last card’s impact. But then, Clactobelle had reported from her duel that the shots didn’t hurt. Had Mokou been considerate enough to switch to boffers?

The thought blunted the edge of her racing anxieties. If the potential for grievous bodily harm had lessened, she could even start to see the fun in it. There was a rhythm to the chaos, and for the next few seconds, she slipped into it. She slid along a slant of shots like hugging a canyon wall, then tacked back across its rear to avoid another wave. Another corral buoyed up before her, with another gap in its onslaught. She steadied herself again, then angled towards it.

The gap filled.

There was something bigger back there, the size of a mature starapple tree’s canopy. A new projectile entirely, aimed right at her. The corral was bait and she hadn’t even seen the hook. She could only think it was well played.

The shot hit her. Impact shocked the breath from her and knocked her hands from the controls. The gyrocopter’s blades seized up. She fell.

These weren’t boffer shots at all!

Agate mastered the shock and the pain. Her armored coat had once more protected her from the worst harm. A glance up showed the blades and rotor still in their proper alignment. She flipped the emergency restart switch, then flipped it again. The wind rushed past in the silence of the motor. She grasped the manual start ripcord at her hip and pulled it. The engine coughed. She pulled again. The ridge loomed below.

The blades whirred back into motion just in time to soften her impact. Not to prevent it outright, but it seemed to have staved off any broken bones. She picked herself up from the earth as the dust settled around her. She sat back on her hindquarters and took deep breaths.

The canyons glittered below her in the midday heat. Absent were the sounds of fauna. Perhaps Mokou’s danmaku had frightened them out of the area.

Mokou landed softly next to her. “Better, that try.”

Agate sighed. “How long does it take to learn to fly?”

“Depends,” Mokou shrugged. “Mainly on how long it takes you to learn magic, but I’ve known gals who pick it up first. Could be a year, could be a decade. Could be the rest of your life.”

“I feel that will be substantively shorter if I must keep relying upon my gyrocopter.” She tried not to let the bitterness reach her voice. The timeframe was hardly surprising.

“You’re picking up the defense pretty quick,” said Mokou, patting her on the shoulder. The pats turned into a gentle dusting.

“I can do more,” mulled Agate. “If not with phoenix tails, then with dawnglider tails. Fire resistance could nullify a good portion of your shots.”

“See? That’s tactics, that’s innovation,” said Mokou. “Just a matter of offense. When you don’t have to do the big dodges, it means you don’t have to spend as much time getting your aim right. You can really light up on the other gal. There’s no honor in timing her out. I mean, unless that’s the point of the card. Pulled one of those on Clactobelle, actually.”

“Given the circumstances, shooting you still seems ill-advised.” The coaching was unexpected. She certainly appreciated what Mokou was trying to do with it. It wounded her all the more to ask what she had to ask. “When you dueled Clactobelle, did you not use — boffer shots?”

“Yeah?” Mokou’s expression turned into a lopsided wince. “Agate, she’s a bug. No fun in crushing a bug. You want me to treat you that way? That’s no fun.”

“I am saving my munitions for the fascists!” Agate hissed. “Why not use your live fire danmaku against them?”

“Oh, no, no,” Mokou shook her head. “Thing about a spell card is: there’s always an out. Always a way through. You just have to find it. I don’t give those to fascists.”

Agate considered this in light of the patterns she’d seen. That first too-small gap she’d slipped through. “The fireballs you cast. You wrapped them in a holographic — an illusory sheath, did you not?”

Mokou grinned. “Yeah, for mindgames. I saw you figure that one out. Liked it, did you?”

“It was devious,” Agate’s eyes narrowed. If nothing else, this exercise illuminated more about her traveling companion’s capabilities. It wasn’t merely that she wielded tremendous firepower. She’d welded it to unexpectedly sophisticated tactics. As if this wasn’t enough of a feat, none of it had detracted from the overall aesthetics — if anything, they were in service to the aesthetics. Something more, though. “I must admit I still lack the cultural context behind these cards.”

The grin Mokou sported faded into a thoughtful sort of look. She turned away and stepped a few paces over to the bent and stunted trunk of a dogthorn, where she seated herself. She pulled a rag from one of her suit’s pouches and began to wipe the dust from her mirrorshades.

“Danmaku are like… dumplings, Agate.”

“What, round? Stuffed? Wrapped?” Agate pressed.

“I mean,” said Mokou, “they go with anything. They go with anything because you can put anything in ‘em. But what you put in ‘em depends on your region.”

“I see.”

“People are regions in this metaphor, Agate,” said Mokou.

“I gathered, yes,” said Agate.

“I mean, regions are regions too, here. People come from those.” Mokou stowed the rag and donned her mirrorshades again. She craned her neck to the sky and sighed. “Point is, when you build a spell card, you’re putting in stuff that speaks to where you’re from, what you’ve been through, what you care about. What means anything to you. You do that with dumplings, too.”

“Like the inspiration for a dish,” said Agate. She rose, and strode slowly towards the canyon rim, past where Mokou sat. She imagined what the patterns must have looked like from the ground.

“Sure, why not?” Mokou nodded. There it was again — a trace of kindled excitement in her voice. Fragile, though, and muddled with uncertainty.

Agate glanced back over her shoulder at her. “When was the last time you made a new card?”

The question prompted a heavy breath from Mokou. She shook her head. “Hard to work up the enthusiasm when you’re the only one who knows how to do it. Or what the fuss is all about.”

“Then—” Agate drew a halting breath. Once more, she mustered the will to voice this infuriatingly humbling request. “In your storied repertoire of wizard artillery. Do you have anything… easier?”

Mokou laughed for several seconds. She stood and ambled to Agate’s side, patting the flank of her lower torso as she passed. “No.”

Agate suppressed a grimace. Perhaps she should have expected such an answer. “Nothing?”

“Lot of folks used to say I was extra about it. But you just—” She grasped Agate’s shoulder and squeezed for emphasis. “You can’t be half-hearted about this stuff! You know?”

“Of course, of course,” said Agate. She could empathize with that sentiment, at least. Still, it was frustrating to run up against when she was trying to learn.

The two of them watched the canyon below for a time. Signs of renewed Templar presence or attention remained absent or obscure. They had yet to be flushed out, it seemed. The peace was good for Agate’s nerves.

“Oh, shit!” said Mokou, suddenly, then fell silent just as suddenly. She’d pressed her hands together before her mouth. Agate held her own silence, waiting for Mokou’s thought to complete itself. After a few moments, Mokou continued. “You know who made some easy cards?”

“Who?” asked Agate.

Mokou turned a smile towards her — one of the purest, most loving smiles that Agate had seen grace her face. “My wife.”

“Keine, yes?” Agate clarified. The strength and profundity of emotion took her aback. “You remember her cards?”

“You kidding me? The number of times I faced ‘em, she might as well have shot ‘em right into my heart,” Mokou sighed wistfully. “You just don’t know somebody until you’ve threaded her danmaku. And I knew her real well.”

Gazing down at Mokou, Agate suppressed a frown of concern. This was an art, Mokou rightfully claimed — a lost art. Since the fall of the birthplace of that art, had the immortal known anyone else on that level? How could she have?

If magic was a language, Agate had not the tongue to truly know what Mokou’s spell cards could tell about herself. Nor did Agate have spell cards of her own to provide a reciprocal exploration. Still — that was the goal of these observations, was it not?

“If you wish to show me,” said Agate, “I am willing.”

“Hell, thanks,” Mokou replied. Her fond smile lingered. “You’re a real scrapper. Just keep that back-at-it attitude, yeah? If I have to keep fluffing your ego every time you catch a bullet, it’s gonna take all the fun out of it.”

“You certainly aren’t making it easy,” Agate sighed.

“Come on, that’s what we’re about to do,” scoffed Mokou. She cast a smoky look over the rim of her shades. “Rather fluff something else anyway, you get me?”

Agate returned her look with a faint raise of her brows. She donned her blockers, powered up her gyrocopter, and rose aloft. Better to move decisively. Second-guesses led only to catastrophe.

Before a minute had passed, hovering at level altitude, Mokou joined her. She took up her favored position across from Agate, facing her down. Likely the brief delay was due to time spent in recall. She’d claimed to remember this card, but none of her own cards had prompted such delay.

«My wife,» Mokou signed at last. «She was a historian.»

A teacher, too, from what Mokou had told her. Perhaps this resurrected spell card of hers was didactic in nature. Agate nodded, gripping her controls with the sure traction of elastyne.

Mokou continued. «This was the history of our home. The best I can tell it.»

Behind the reflective mask of her shades, she adopted an expression of deepening concentration. A bead of sweat rolled down from her brow. She pressed her palms together and held them there, vibrating with effort, until blooming darkness pushed them apart. The darkness was fluid — ink? It spilled out from between her hands, shaping itself into dripping tubes in defiance of gravity. She grasped them like the rollers of a scroll and pulled, unfurling an inky swathe before her. Drips shook loose from the motion, igniting in tiny blossoms of flame as they fell. The impossible liquid scroll bloomed with light, burning and red.

“Pseudo-History! The Legend of Gensokyo!”

Energy swirled around Mokou, coalescing into three distinct nodes, each spinning and spoked like a wheel. These spokes cast out languid spears of light in all directions; energy flowed like sap into the crystallized amber of violence. They wove a grid — or a cage.

Agate slid herself just so in anticipation of the first spearpoints, already noting how those cast from further nodes would intersect with her flight path. Safety, it seemed, was only a matter of predicting geometric interference patterns.

Mokou floated at the heart of the pattern with her ink-spattered hair whipping wildly. Suddenly, wave upon wave of shots scythed out from her. Each shot was nearly as wide as her waist, swift arrowheads to the cage’s methodical spears. Radiating spheres of them, a staggered procession of sawtooth supernovae.

This was the history compiled by her long-lost wife of their long-lost home. A history of magic, of secrecy, of awesome beauty. A history of utter lunacy.

This was easier?

She lasted seven waves. On the eighth, she found herself penned in against the sizzling beams of the grid. She had no room to dodge. Red glare filled her vision as the eighth wave struck her.

For the third time, she fell. The kaleidoscopic tapestry of the glass-strewn canyons and the sky’s scattering danmaku spun around her in her unwilling dive.

But this time, among the chaos, she saw it. From the canopy of a neighboring ridge to the north, it glinted: the unmistakable refractive profile of Templar optics.

She hit the ground. Hard.

Chapter Text

Heat wavered in Mokou’s scope along the open stretch of canyon separating her stand of foliage cover from her targets’ vigil. There were two of them, guarding a fortified cavern mouth of carved stone. Dusty steel plate clad them from head to toe and hung from their arms in the shape of rhombus-etched kite shields. Blue metal swords — carbide, most likely — sat in open sheathes at their belts next to a clutch of grenades. Their postures were bent, but their bearings were alert after the arrival of the scout Mokou had tracked.

That alertness made a stealthy approach that much harder, but stealth was never really in the cards. Their armor looked sturdy enough to catch a few bullets; doubtless they’d find cover before Mokou’s carbine could punch through. They didn’t appear to have guns of their own, at least. One way or another, it would probably boil down to hand to hand combat. The biggest problem was their grenades. There might be anything packed into them.

She hummed softly to herself to take her mind off the heat and the wait. It only helped so much — she could remember the melody, but not the song. That was the sad case for most of the songs she’d heard in her life. She was used to it.

The sound of hooves almost startled her. They sounded close — she hadn’t heard Agate’s approach. Mokou rolled onto her back, pulling herself away from her bipod-mounted carbine to glance behind her. Agate rounded a witchwood trunk, hoversled in tow. She nodded down at Mokou before crouching to join her.

“How’s the leg?” asked Mokou, voice hushed. The Templar were far enough away that even a normally-pitched conversation was unlikely to reach them, but it still didn’t pay to advertise themselves.

“Fine. I took salve,” Agate replied, just as quietly. She looked away, down-canyon towards the guards.

“And your gyrocopter?” asked Mokou.

Agate sighed. “Repairs are in order; they can wait until we can afford a higher profile again.”

“Mmm,” Mokou grunted, rolling back onto her stomach and taking up the scope once more.

Agate had seemed quietly relieved at the excuse to stop facing Mokou’s spell cards, though she hadn’t said as much. Hopefully she hadn’t been scared off from further practice. She’d done a little better than Mokou was expecting, though she’d have done even better if she hadn’t been needlessly holding herself back. Full strength was just a resurrection away. Still, Mokou felt no small satisfaction that her plan had worked — so well that Agate had sent her off with some tracking gizmo so that she could catch up once she’d recovered from the crash.

“How many Templar?” asked Agate, producing her own spyglass and fixing it upon the cave entrance.

“Three confirmed, including the one I followed. Pretty sure they didn’t spot me. That one went in the cave. No one’s come back out yet.”

“It’s likely their base of operations, then. Those guards are mere squires — that’s a bit of luck. They’re the most lightly-equipped of the Templar battle hierarchy.”

“Light?” Mokou replied. “That’s full plate! Would’ve killed somebody for a suit like that back in Gensokyo.”

“I don’t doubt it — but it’s only steel.” Agate dropped her voice to a sudden whisper. “Silence.”

Motion from the shadows of the cave. The fluttering white fabric of a tabard, seemingly hovering in the darkness. As its wearer stepped from the cave, the afternoon sun revealed them to be another armored figure. In contrast to the squires, this knight’s armor was formed of barely-molded slabs of jet black material. It looked heavy as sin, but the Templar knight wore it with trained ease. The squires saluted and snapped to attention.

Mokou glanced over at Agate to find she had stowed the spyglass in favor of a very precisely-shaped hollow listening cone that she held to her ear, bell pointed towards the Templar. Mokou turned her attention back to her scope. Everyone in the distant group was wearing helmets with enough coverage that lip reading was impossible. Still, it was better to keep them in her carbine’s sights.

After a brief exchange, the knight stepped past the squires and slowly turned their gaze in a survey of the surrounding canyon. Mokou stilled herself and hoped the two of them were hiding well enough. If her scope caught the light, maybe they would write it off as more leftover glass. Heat mirages wavered up from the knight’s helmet and pauldrons. They completed their survey and turned back to the squires. They said something else to the squires, then retreated back to the shade of the cave and disappeared within.

Agate collapsed the cone and stowed it. “They’ve taken slaves, but haven’t moved them — most likely this lair’s rightful occupants. Their mobile force is still out on mission.”

“Man, they’re just giving us more work,” Mokou groaned. “Whose lair is this, you reckon?”

“Judging from the carvings at the entrance…” Agate let out a slow, contemplative breath. “An anchorite commune. That is, a hermitage.”

“And they just barged in and took over, huh? That’s low.” Mokou rose to a knee and began folding up her carbine’s mount. “Their force is split. Let’s roll these assholes now and then roll the other assholes when they get back.”

Agate eyed her coolly, but not dismissively. “The timing may be chancy. There’s no guarantee their mobile force isn’t already on the way back.”

Mokou shrugged. “So we roll ‘em fast. What’s to quibble?”

“The approach, mainly,” said Agate. Her gaze leveled off to the posted guards again. “If they raise an alarm, resistance mounts further inside. If it mounts stiffly enough, we may find ourselves flanked by the raiding party’s return.”

“So we mask our approach. Get up to the ridge, maybe, then drop on ‘em. Hard to find much else for cover.”

“We mask my approach.” Agate’s gaze returned to Mokou, this time carrying an air of appraisal. “You look human enough by their standards. You should be able to approach unmolested.”

“You want me to be a distraction?” asked Mokou. She let out a soft chuckle. “You’re pinning a lot of hopes on me, considering I couldn’t even keep you from cooking those noodles the other night.”

“I should hope you aren’t trying to fuck them,” Agate replied, letting loose something halfway between chuckle and scoff. “Come now, after that grand sorcerous display, you’re going to claim performance anxiety?”

Mokou grinned and slung her carbine over her back. Her last flirt had been so coldly rebuffed. This pushback was a bit more like it. “I’ll give it a shot.”

She left the stand of foliage by a more roundabout route so as not to spoil Agate’s location. Red shale-fed dirt, withered scrub, and shattered glass passed beneath her steady tread. After a sufficient distance, she oriented herself back towards the occupied lair. The afternoon heat was worse out of the shade. It made her wish her hat hadn’t been shredded by lah pods those weeks ago. She’d meant to pick up another in the Heptagon’s boutiques, but it was a bit of a challenge finding one her hair could fit into. Maybe she could finally get that haircut she’d been putting off when they got back to the city.

It wasn’t enough to get out in the wilds again; all the little baubles and petty considerations of society still clung to her. They had their place and their gifts, but both that place and those gifts were parasangs away. There was a greater duty that society placed her in now, anyway. She was back in the well.

The guards had tensed the moment she’d come into view, gauntleted hands drifting to the blades and ordnance buckled round their dusty rhomboid-adorned tabards. Mokou held her hands out before her, keeping the pace of her approach to a steady amble.

“That’s close enough, sister,” the squire on the left called at twenty paces. His voice was young and unaccustomed to the need to raise it. His accent lent key syllables a certain wetness.

“I am peaceful,” Mokou lied.

“Hey, Cadoc, did we miss a hermit?” spoke the other squire, punctuating it with a brutish laugh.

“What did the knight-commander say about names in the field, Aphne?” the first squire, Cadoc, retorted.

“I’m human,” said Mokou, keeping her hands raised. These were a couple of dipshit kids, barely men at all, caught up in something bigger and uglier than them. She’d seen their kind time and time before. Now she knew their names. She hadn’t wanted to know that. She resolved to forget them as soon as she could. “True kin.”

The squires paused at that. They glanced at each other, then back at Mokou. Their hesitancy choked out any potential reply. Was it really such an unexpected claim out here? That wasn’t good. She needed to keep them talking. There was no telling how long Agate’s approach would take.

“Can I come in?” asked Mokou.

“State your business,” said Cadoc, grip closing on the pommel of his blade, stance lowering in readiness to draw it.

“It’s a very famous hermitage, isn’t it?” Mokou replied. Agate’s guess sounded like a good one. Maybe she could play the tourist. “Always wanted to see it for myself. Is it a bad time?”

“It’s closed,” said Aphne. His stance wasn’t quite as hostile as his fellow squire’s, which meant his instincts were worse.

“Isn’t that the idea? They’re anchorites,” said Mokou. “You boys new guards or something?”

“That’s none of your business,” said Cadoc.

“Not even a peek?” asked Mokou, stepping closer. “I won’t be any trouble. You could be my escort if you don’t believe me.”

Aphne glanced over at Cadoc, then back at Mokou. He stepped forward. She heard the licking of his lips through the grille of his helmet. “You want to see inside? I’ll take you inside. Take off your gun. Slowly.” He unhooked a grenade from his belt and waggled it at Mokou. “Don’t try anything.”

Mokou slowly reached for her carbine’s strap and lifted it from her body, keeping her hands well clear of the grip and trigger. She held it out dangling before her, then set it carefully aside. As she rose, she caught a glint of metallo-prosthetic antler up on the ridge, past the field of view of the squires. Agate had made good time.

“You boys been busy, huh?” asked Mokou, hands still raised placatively. She stepped slowly forward to meet the approaching Aphne. Now that she’d set aside her gun, he had stowed his grenade again in favor of a grip on his blade.

“Guard work, sister, just like you said,” Cadoc replied.

“Yeah? Guess they don’t let you do the fun stuff.”

Aphne’s gauntleted fist closed around her wrist. He tugged her forward roughly and she let herself be tugged. “We might get an advancement with a prize like you.”

It wasn’t just that they were caught up in it, then. They’d bought in, too. That made it easier, but it didn’t make it any less depressing. Mokou sighed as Aphne pulled her closer towards the lair’s entrance. “Don’t suppose you boys feel like surrendering? Bet I could get you a workers’ tribunal for destruction of public infrastructure and attempted slaving back at the Heptagon.”

Aphne just laughed. His grip tightened. Cadoc drew his sword and advanced. “Sister! You’ve fallen in with that den of degenerates? They would have us killed and eaten! Remember Ludrig!”

“Remember Ludrig,” Aphne echoed. He tugged her again, only to find himself stopped up short.

Mokou planted herself solidly in her tracks. They had their chance. “Degenerates are my favorite people. And I ain’t your sister.”

Mokou raised her free hand and snapped out a spell. A burst of disciplined intent combusted the air in Cadoc’s lungs. The squire toppled forward in silent, agonized asphyxiation, dropping his sword to claw at his helmet. Mokou drove her heel into the unarmored crook of Aphne’s knee. She reversed his grip on her wrist, wrenching his arm into a submission hold. While she still had momentum, she seized his other arm and kicked him into the dirt. Steel clanged dully as she kicked his helmet repeatedly.

Rubble clattered down softly from above. Mokou glanced up the cliff face to find Agate rappelling down by means of a grappling hook. The guards would be dead by the time she landed. Mokou flicked her gaze to the burning one. He’d popped his helmet off to reveal a pale mask of panic. Eyes bulged and watered. Every gasp fueled the furnace she’d planted inside him. She looked down to the one she’d pinned and dazed. She reached down to the sword at his waist, drew it, and levered it over the lobster-tail seam at his neck.

A flash of movement caught her eye. A grenade. It whipped past her and burst. The next blink and she jammed the blade down through meat and bone. It was a continuity of motion and intent, but the world around her was disjunct.

Agate stood over Cadoc’s body, wicking the blood from her blade into a storage phial. Mokou glanced behind herself and saw no blast marks marring the canyon floor. She had simply lost time.

“...the hell?”

“Stasis grenade,” Agate replied. She bent and plucked the other grenade from the dead Cadoc’s belt. “Lucky. This one is poison.”

“Mm,” Mokou grunted. “Guy damn near figured out how to bomb.” She stepped off the back of the dead Aphne and stripped his corpse of grenades. Two bodies left in the sun, cooking in their own steel shells. Two more notches on her belt — and she’d worn her way through more belts than she could count in her time.

Agate frowned at her in faint concern. “Retrieve your gun. They likely heard the blast within.”

Chapter Text

I

The hermitage’s subterrene sanctums were a nonsensical maze of hollowed-out shale and doorways into nowhere. Many of those doors had been smashed open. Haphazard scatterings of furniture cluttered the rooms — some doubtless knocked awry and upended during the Templar raid, but others evidently left as the rightful occupants desired them. Smoke-black sconces sheltered torches, giving them roosts to cast forth fitful light and shadow. Tabi looked happy in the gloomy atmosphere, at least.

It was slower going than Mokou liked, but they had one advantage: Agate’s ears.

“Two approaching down the north hallway. Knights.” Agate spoke softly, priming a grenade as she posted herself at the doorway.

Mokou nodded and took up the opposite posting, carbine held at the ready. Armored silhouettes flickered in the torchlight, growing as their subjects approached the hallway’s bend. The Templar knights rounded the corner. Their blades, shields, and heavy plate armor all looked to be made of the same matte black material — fullerite, most likely. Agate threw her grenade down the hallway.

The knights spun towards it, sheltering behind their shields. The grenade burst between them. Snap frost engulfed them, freezing them in place. Mokou aimed her carbine down the hallway and squeezed off bursts of fire. Armor sparked as her bullets ricocheted from it.

“You froze them!” Mokou cried in complaint.

“Yes!” Agate replied. She leveled her energy pistol against the helpless knights and fired off her own barrage. Her shots looked to be scoring better hits, digging into the plate instead of rebounding. “Now we have them neutralized until they can thaw!”

Mokou growled in frustration. She’d dumped half her magazine down the hallway to no apparent effect. “You’ve got me neutralized, too! You know how hard it is to burn someone when they’re frozen solid?”

That facet of thermodynamics had left her lodged in a glacier for an intolerable number of millennia. It almost drove her to pity towards the poor bastards. More than that, it made her angry she couldn’t kill them faster and put them out of their combined misery.

“Aim for the eyes. The armor is weaker there,” said Agate.

Mokou took a breath to steady her aim. She drew a bead on the leftmost knight’s helmet, then fired. A few raps of the trigger emptied her magazine. Each burst produced only sparks, no solid penetrations.

“Your gun’s too weak for this!” Mokou cursed. She stowed it and drew the longblade she’d pilfered from the dead squires. “I’m going in!”

“What? No! You’ll freeze too if you approach them!”

Mokou gritted her teeth and conjured a wreath of flames around herself. She picked up speed down the hallway. “I’ll be quick.”

The cold mounted as she charged the knights. It bit into her even through her stinging mantle of flames. What the hell was in those grenades that they froze their targets this quickly and this thoroughly? She spun in under the closest knight’s frozen guard and stabbed the sword upward. The tip punched through the mail under the knight’s armpit, knocking a stiff gasp from her. That was a deathblow. Blood spurted down the blade and froze in a blink. The sword was stuck inside her.

Mokou could feel her movements slowing in the cold. She grabbed at the dying knight’s gauntlet to try to wrench the heavy black blade from her grasp. It was frozen shut. The metal was searingly cold — Mokou could feel it through the light gloves of her stillsuit. Muffled tones of fury sounded from the other knight. A few of Agate’s shots had scored him, but he was clearly still alive and still a threat.

“Mokou!” Agate cautioned. She’d stopped her fire when Mokou had first charged. She had now approached a few paces, but stayed outside of the frosted blast zone.

“Company?” asked Mokou.

“No—”

“Then stow it!” Mokou barked.

Every breath brought painful chill to her lungs. She couldn’t stand in this much longer without burning herself. She gathered her strength and shifted her stance. She raised her arm over the living knight.

“Heaven Sundering Fist!”

She drove her hand down onto the crown of the Templar’s bucket helm. There was a terrible splintering noise. Pain shot up her arm. She stumbled backwards, clutching her hand. The shock broke her concentration. Her flames guttered out, snuffed by pain and chill. She felt the cold seize at her limbs greedily. Like the glacier—

A pair of strong hands grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her back into the warmth.

“What in the blazing luma were you thinking?” asked Agate, her voice at Mokou’s ear. “What did you hope to accomplish, striking fullerite barehanded?”

Mokou hissed out a delirious laugh. “That!”

The frozen Templar she’d struck collapsed inwards. Blood spilled from the seams and joints of the plate, froze in mid-gush, then shattered again under the armor’s weight. Fullerite clattered to the cavern floor, spilling out shards of former human from its openings.

Agate stopped pulling her, halting from the spectacular result of Mokou’s strike.

“How…?”

“You just… gotta be harder than the fullerite,” said Mokou. Her chuckle sank into another pained hiss. “Fuck, though. I’m rusty.”

Agate sighed, evidently recovered. She turned Mokou to face her and took up her wounded arm. “Let’s have that glove off. You disassembled him. That’s what you call rusty?”

Mokou winced as the glove came off. For a moment she feared it was the only thing keeping her hand in shape. It wasn’t quite as bad as she’d feared, but she’d still done a number on herself. “If I wasn’t rusty, I wouldn’t have shattered my damn hand.”

“I see. Bite this,” said Agate, passing her a fragrant strip of witchwood bark. “We’ll need to properly align your hand bones before we can apply salve. It will not be pleasant.”

“Mnngh,” Mokou grunted, clamping the bark between her teeth. The taste of it numbed her tongue; the numbness spread out from her throat as she swallowed. It was weak, but it was something to focus on that wasn’t her broken hand. Agate took up Mokou’s hand and began assessing the break with her touch.

It was something to endure. She’d broken her hands more times than she could count. This time it was at least for a good cause, and someone competent had taken it upon herself to fix it. Ultimately she was well beyond practiced at ignoring the messages from her body.

“Hold still. There.” With those words, Agate angled an injector into the back of her swollen hand and applied it. Relief poured into her with the medicinal payload. The swelling subsided before her eyes.

With her free hand, Mokou pulled the witchwood from the grip of her teeth. “Ain’t we gotta immobilize it or anything?”

Agate shook her head. Eddies and trails of dancing lights followed the motion from her glowcrust — from the witchwood, no doubt. “Give the salve a few moments and your bones will be freshly-knit. You should keep more on your person.”

“You got any to spare?” asked Mokou. How many times had Agate done this for herself?

“Yes,” Agate sighed. “Just promise me one thing.”

“What?” asked Mokou.

“Don’t break your hand on every Templar in this hermitage.”

Mokou grinned at her. “Get me one of those swords and we’ll be gravy.”

II

This was a kitchen. Shelves of natural rock and pantries of old wood held crockery and cookware and sacks of bitter grains. It looked to be a few weeks disused. Nothing was spoiled, nor was it particularly ransacked. Evidently the Templar had other means of provisioning themselves. It stood to reason — if their favored target for persecution was mutation, they’d have to reject ingredients that might foster it within them, even if it was only temporary.

Among the stores in an open pantry was a basket of dried vanta petals. It gave Mokou an idea.

“No one’s around, right?” asked Mokou. They hadn’t run into another patrol for a good fifteen minutes.

“Not that I can hear,” Agate confirmed. She shot a quizzical look at Mokou.

“Let’s make something real quick,” said Mokou. She sheathed the heavy fullerite blade she’d pilfered and started searching for the right size of mixing bowl. It was a relief to put the blade away. Her hand was still a bit tender, and the shock of swinging the slablike sword into more of the stuff it was forged from didn’t help the recovery process.

“What happened to ‘rolling these assholes now’?” countered Agate. She remained at the doorway, keeping watch down the adjoining hallway. “We still have little idea of when their mobile force will return.”

“That was before I saw what it was like in here. We could lay all kinds of ambushes if we need to. Besides, we need something we can both use.” Mokou found a suitable bowl, then dusted off a cutting board on the kitchen’s central table. “You ever had Bajiko’s Nightshade Ceviche?”

“Yes. She gave you the recipe?” Agate turned, brows raised in faint incredulity.

Mokou grinned back. “We made it together, didn’t I say? Last I saw your stocks, you should have what we need. It’s quick. Takes, like, twenty minutes.”

“Shall I time you?”

Mokou scoffed. “Pitch in and you won’t have to. Let’s get some breath attacks.”

Agate’s cold storage held an iced ghost perch and a fresh gallbeard gland; Mokou had remembered correctly. The vanta she took from the kitchen’s stocks. Not that Agate didn’t have her own supply, but no one else was using it here. Besides, they were taking care of the hermitage’s fascist infestation. This was something like payment. Mokou set to work on the recipe, with Agate claiming the spot across the table from her.

As soon as Mokou started cleaning the ghost perch, Tabi made herself known. She stuck her head out of one of the pantries behind Agate and meowed loudly. The sound made Agate tense visibly. Seemed she still struggled at picking up Tabi’s immediate whereabouts when the cat stayed inside the walls.

“You want some?” asked Mokou, parroting the tabby’s tone.

“Aaooww,” Tabi retorted.

“Can you even eat it?” asked Mokou.

“A noise like that will give away our position,” said Agate in a hushed voice. Neither her complaint nor her discomfort distracted her from her task of preparing the edible portions of the gallbeard gland.

“Well, here, then let’s shut her up.” Mokou slid a handful of perch offal into a smaller bowl and passed it to Agate. “Squeeze some shade oil in there or something, maybe that’ll do it for her.”

“You don’t know?” Agate scoffed.

“Ghost cat ownership is still a very new thing to me, okay? She’s been making do pretty well out there.” She tried not to think too much about how Tabi managed it. The gods only knew what she got up to when Mokou let her loose.

Agate set aside the gland work to fish out a shade oil injector from her tonic pouch. As she squeezed its contents into the bowl of offal, she fixed Mokou with a critical stare. “That is utterly emblematic of your worst tendencies. As though a thing’s newness absolves you of the responsibility to learn about it.”

Mokou snorted dismissively. What the hell did she know about her worst tendencies? “I’m learning right now. Fuck off with that.”

Agate raised her brows. She silently set the bowl behind her, one shelf beneath the level of Tabi’s pantry-lodged perch. She took up the knife again and resumed pruning the poison gland.

After a moment of sniffing, Tabi hopped through the shelf to land at the one below. She lowered her head to the bowl of offal and started to feed.

“She likes it,” Mokou muttered. “It’s a miracle.”

Agate’s ears swiveled away from the sound of the cat eating. She glanced at Mokou, then at last spoke. “You’ve been… sharper today.”

Mokou sighed. “You come at me with that talk about my tendencies, of course I’m gonna be sharp.”

“I was merely stating that incuriosity is a liability,” countered Agate. Her ear flicked.

Mokou bit back a retort at the sight of Agate’s ear motion. She set her knife down silently and shot a glance towards the doorway, then back. «Enemies?» she signed.

Agate shook her head.

Mokou let out the breath she’d held. She took up the knife again and scraped the finer-cut portion of perch into the mixing bowl. The atmosphere was completely different from the last time she’d made this dish. Largely, that difference was for the worse. Maybe she’d gotten too used to the Heptagon’s cushy fixtures. She’d certainly been spoiled by Bajiko’s pepper collection.

“You know what it is, Agate?” she asked. She wiped her hands of the mess the perch left. “What it is is, I’m killing people again.”

Agate’s gaze sharpened. “We are in the midst of repelling a Templar incursion. Don’t tell me you’ve developed some moral compunction against it. Fail now and they take the denizens of this hermitage to their slave pens.”

“No, no, god no,” said Mokou. “But that’s the thing, right? Like, normally, you gotta worry about the poor bastard’s family, or friends, or whoever else they’re leaving behind. But if their family’s any good then they’ll be glad of one less fascist in it. If they had friends, those are a fascist’s friends. Fuck ‘em. It’s free, right?”

“You’ll hardly be popular with the Templar,” Agate dryly noted. She slid the gallbeard gland prunings to the mixing bowl. “Why is this a concern, then?”

“It’s about the mindset, you know?” said Mokou. But then, there wasn’t any particular way Agate would know — she could only think she knew. It wasn’t as though Mokou had told her. The mindset was one steeped in ancient bloodshed, long millennia removed. “Lemme tell you something. A little after I got this way — about a few centuries, I think — I spent a good three hundred years or so just slaughtering on the spot anyone unlucky enough to run into me. Man, beast, youkai, anyone. Indiscriminate. None of those people were fascists. We didn’t even have those yet.”

As Mokou started dicing the vanta petals, Agate did the same to a quartet of shapely stunions. Her brow furrowed in calculating concern at Mokou’s reminiscence. “Why?”

“Why?” Mokou echoed. She sucked in a breath. It had been so long since the why of it. “Think it was a way to send a message to the world. A way of showing, like… It couldn’t digest me. That the effort would just make it sick. Break it.”

“You’re uncertain of this?”

Mokou laughed. “I have to be. Been long enough now that it’s not like I remember exactly what I was thinking at the time. I can give you a vibe.”

“And your vibe was indigestible,” Agate worriedly confirmed. She’d made quick work of the stunions. The greater portion, minced, went into the bowl, while the larger cuts she reserved.

Mokou nodded. “Ultimately? It amounted to a whole lot of practice. So now, I’m good at this. I’m really, really good at this. You saw me.”

“Certainly,” Agate replied. Her frown had grown no less calculating. “You seem, at least, possessed of some amount of restraint. I’ve seen you employ it.”

“Sure,” said Mokou. “Lose that restraint and people start to fear you. Fear pushes you away. Don’t mind fascists feeling that way about me, but normal folks? Gets lonely.”

“If you can reason your way through this self-reflection, why this worry?”

“Because I’ve lost context,” said Mokou. She shuffled her vanta mince into the bowl, then took up the sturdy phial of acid Agate had provided. She unstoppered it and drizzled the dram over the mix. She watched it sizzle down into an even foam of no distinction. “If I don’t know what I was thinking back then, how do I know when I’ve found myself thinking that way again? I mean, I’ve tried not to let it get that bad, but… ultimately, I haven’t backed off that much. And here I am, killing people again. But they’re freebies.”

Agate said nothing, merely rubbing the fur of her chin as she regarded Mokou with her cool gaze. Cool — but less fearful, lately. That was nice.

Mokou shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ve got your anxieties, I’ve got mine. Anyway — who the fuck was Ludrig?”

Agate blinked at the sudden change in conversational tack. “What?”

“The squires out front. I offered ‘em a tribunal back at the Heptagon, and—”

“Ah. Yes — Warmonger Joffroy Ludrig. He was, I recall, a central figure of the Battle of Theme Ingredient: Man.”

“Yeah?” asked Mokou. She gave the ceviche marinade a stir to check the consistency. It was just about ready. “What happened to him?”

“I believe Bajiko Ki claimed his body for her dishes. That evening’s judges were the Wardens Esther — you’re acquainted — Earl Asphodel of Omonporch, and…” A faint undercurrent of pained wistfulness entered Agate’s expression once more. “Q Girl. By all accounts, he was delicious.”

It seemed like the Heptagon had its share of regulars. And that he really was killed and eaten. Plants and bears ate people all the time — but what really surprised her was to hear the Stilt’s wardens on that list. They hadn’t seemed the cannibal type. Maybe eating people wasn’t such a big deal in Qud. It was a familiar outlook, at least. And it gave her a better idea of what Bajiko did with the Templar she hunted. Another facet of this recipe revealed itself to her.

Mokou gave a shrug of admittance. “Waste not, want not. Let’s cap off this ceviche.”

III

«Ten,» Agate signed. Her face was a mask of concentration, her signs precise. Caustic vapor wisped up from her cervine nostrils, proof of the ceviche’s potency. She stood braced against the wall, just outside the open doorway to the hermitage’s assembly cavern. «Four knights near the entrance, three gunners covering. Central commander with entourage. One bannerman, one squire.»

«How can you tell?» Mokou queried. She stood behind Agate, which left her some ways from the doorway. Even if she was in the right position to do so, sneaking a look was a bad idea when there were guns on the entrance. From the timbre of the Templars’ clipped conversations carried from the chamber, they were on high alert.

«The kits sound different,» Agate replied. «In order of heaviest to lightest armor: commanders, then knights, then bannermen, then gunners, then squires. A warning: the commander’s entourage is normal.»

At least, “normal” was her best guess as to what Agate had signed. There was a certain unfamiliar construction to it, a bit of extra active mustard on the proverbial sausage. «Normal?»

«Astrally burdened,» signed Agate, as though that explained it in the slightest. Faced with Mokou’s uncomprehending head-shake, she frowned and continued. «Their bracelets. Reality-altering effects do not affect them. Mind your magic.»

Mokou lifted herself carefully from the ground to fly silently over Agate and the doorway before landing on the other side to better breach with her. «Magic is normal.»

Agate raised her brows. «Best of luck testing. You have a flashbang grenade. Flashbang the knights. I will pulse the gunners.» She capped her last statement with a pat to one of her own grenades.

«Let’s do breath attacks too,» signed Mokou. The local signs for “breath” and “attack” flowed into each other neatly. Perhaps it was a common subject of discussion.

Agate nodded in confirmation. «Yes. Once inside the room. Our surprise.»

«Breath attack buddies.» Mokou grinned acridly and readied her flashbang grenade.

A small plume of vapor marked Agate’s silent sigh. She slipped on her noise blockers and readied her own grenade. One hand plucked the safety pin while the other held the arming lever squeezed shut. With the digits of her pin-plucking hand, she counted down from three.

A glance through the wide doorway was all Mokou had to take in the chamber — smooth, soot-blackened shale, scattered cushions, wooden tables, Templar in the expected locations. A glance was all she had to aim her throw. It was enough. Her flashbang bounced up between the closest formation of knights while Agate’s arced over their helmeted heads to the firing line behind them.

“Grenade!” came the urgent cry from the Templar — too late.

Agate’s grenade arced its electromagnetic payload through the gunners’ armaments. The flashbang’s blinding burst stunned the knights, who staggered backwards, raising their shields haphazardly. Mokou’s mirrorshades warded off the worst of the blast. She charged into the room, blade in hand. She slashed down on the hand of the closest knight, battering his sword away. The opening let her plant her palm against the grille of his helm. She poured fire inside. A low, angry buzzing sounded next to her — Agate’s blade, vibrating its way through the breastplate of another knight. She’d closed the distance in a single leap.

“Fly the banner! Gunners, gas out!” the commander bellowed. Her voice was harsh and phlegmatic, carrying over the tumult of the melee. She strode towards the buckling line of knights, whirling her sword — its blade a handsome green-glinting alloy. The gunners lobbed a volley of grenades just behind Agate and Mokou, which hissed out a noxious vapor.

But then, it was no more noxious than what was already fermenting in her new glands.

“Now!” Agate hissed.

The two of them sucked in a deep breath. In her gall-bolstered lungs, the gas from the grenades felt a bit like heavy spice. Uncomfortable, but tolerable. Mokou flexed her glands and filled her mouth with an acidic, poisonous blend, ready to be aerosolized. She drove the burning knight in her grip to his knees, then spewed the angry mixture in a great cloud across the Templars’ further ranks. Agate’s breath-clouds thickened the attack. Vapors sizzled against the cavern floor and fullerite plates. The Templar started to cough.

“Hold fast!” cried the commander. She joined the line and locked blades with Agate. The knight in her entourage waved his banner in the swirling gas. The pulsing sight of it, and the commander’s presence at the forefront, rallied the knights. Mokou fell back a pace, dodging the blades of the two surviving frontliners. If she wasn’t careful, their counterattack might separate her from Agate, or flank them. “Squire!” the commander continued, “Bring out Caridam!”

The squire hadn’t engaged with the rest of them, Mokou now noticed. He had fallen back to the stone shelf where the firing line still desperately fiddled with their energy guns. At the commander’s order, he slung free a wood-paneled box and started doing something with it. Mokou couldn’t track his actions for long — there was still the matter of the knights after her. Loath as she was to admit it, they were much easier to kill when they couldn’t fight back, and they sure as hell couldn’t fight back when they were frozen solid. Their movements in this melee, if anything, had only quickened. This despite the caustic atmosphere and the weight of their arms and armor. There was something else at work here.

Millennia of combat instincts drove Mokou into a sideways duck. A ghostly blade slashed from behind into the spot where her neck was.

“The hell?” grunted Mokou. She wheeled until her back was to Agate’s flank to face the new threat.

“Wraith-knight!” said Agate, voice thrumming with alarm.

It was a goddamn wraith, alright. Dead blue soul-light drifted over the cavern floor in human guise. Twin hateful gleams shone from the deep shadow of its helm. A tattered rhombus tabard hung slack from the ghostly facsimile of its armor in life. The shine of its blade seemed to needle at her very psyche.

“That’s right, mutant!” the commander spat. Sparks flew from the clashes of her blade against Agate’s. In the poison air, her voice had sunk from harsh to shredded. “Tremble at her blade, tireless and indestructible! Know that your end comes by my fearless knights — I, Dastance Chrinemand, Warmonger amongst the True!”

Agate sneered in return. “Save your breath, fascist. En garde!”

With that, she slid her buzzing blade through the basket hilt of Dastance’s sword and wrenched it from her grasp, flinging it across the room. It was a potent maneuver, Mokou couldn’t help but notice. Agate launched into a fluid dance of lunging swipes, carrying that same skilled effort across the line of knights until the swords had been struck from each of their hands. All of them, save for the wraith-knight, steadily advancing towards Mokou.

“Assholes!” Mokou growled. All she could do was dodge the silent wraith’s blade — it simply passed right through Mokou’s solid fullerite sword. “You weaponized wraiths? Bad idea!”

“You can’t harm it,” Agate called back urgently. “The source is—”

“Phalanx!” Dastance barked. She and her knights leveled their shields forward and rammed them into Agate, driving her back on skidding hooves.

Mokou concentrated. She didn’t need Agate to tell her. The instincts that kept the wraith’s blade at bay weren’t purely martial, after all. There was a distinct occult undercurrent demanding her focus. There it was — the faintest soul-tether on the revenant, trailing through the miasma. All the way back to — the little bastard hunkering at the back of the assembly chamber, and the box in his hands. Of course.

She couldn’t reach him without going through the whole damn warband. Flames in this subterranean miasma might burn through all the air in the room, and Agate wouldn’t like that. She couldn’t get a clear shot while the wraith stalked her.

But then, she knew wraiths.

“You don’t harm wraiths, Agate.” She flipped open a hip pouch and leafed out a small stack of ofuda, fanning them out in her grasp. “You exterminate ‘em.”

She flung out her ofuda in a shotgun spread. The slips plastered themselves to the wraith and sizzled hungrily. The first sound escaped it: a horrible, distorted shrieking, almost machine-like. The sword slipped from its clutches and wisped into spirit-smoke as it scrabbled at the starched parchment melting its way into its ghostly helm. It rose higher into the chamber, as though verticality could let it escape from Mokou’s spiritual attack.

The Templar slackened their assault on Agate, gazing at the writhing wraith in horror and despair.

Mokou knew this feeling, too. She’d reclaimed the fight’s momentum. She flung another ofuda, arcing it perfectly through the acid haze and armored press to slap against the squire’s box. He shouted in alarm as it sparked and shorted in his grasp. The wraith’s dissolution sped exponentially.

“Caridam! No!” called out Dastance to the wraith. Her next words became a choking gurgle; Agate’s blade pierced her neck through.

“Warmonger,” Agate coldly noted, “Know that your doom was writ by the hands of Agate Severance Star and Fujiwara no Mokou.”

Agate slipped her sword out sideways, buzzing silkily through meat and gorget alike. An arterial spray trailed the freed blade. Life drained from the warmonger’s mortal wound. The next moment, Agate braced the dead fascist, hunkering behind her body for cover. The gunners had reawakened their guns with a furious counter-salvo.

Mokou hurled herself against the three knights still standing, twirling her body through the energy bolts. She brought her blade crashing into the helm of the bannerman, lodging it there and cracking the helmet along the crown. With any luck, the fascists would be hesitant to fire into a melee of their own living frontline. But then, these were the same gunners that had dropped anti-personnel agents into that same frontline. She couldn’t count on luck. She could count on her fists.

She wrenched the banner from the bannerman’s faltering grasp. There was something unsettling about the way its rhombus-emblazoned fabric rippled in the cavern’s still air — almost as though it breathed. It wasn’t merely the commander’s presence that spurred the Templar to their ferocity. Something about this symbol stirred them, too. She spun the banner’s pole violently, whipping the sturdy shaft between the remaining knights’ helms in a flurry of ringing blows.

One of them tried to punch her. She caught her arm and twisted it in the banner’s fabric, spinning the knight in front of her into a human shield. Mokou mounted the pressure of her grapple. The weight and articulation of the captive knight’s plate were Mokou’s weapons, now. With a burst of leverage, she broke the knight’s arm just below the shoulder. The knight screamed. Mokou kicked her into her fellow knight. Energy bolts whipped past her.

As the other knight stumbled from the impact, Agate shot the helmet from his head. He stood, dazed and blinking, face and eyes red from the fumes. Mokou leapt on him, wrapping the banner around his neck. She swung to his far side, using her weight to bear him to the ground. The shock of his armor and weight landing on her hurt, but it was that or risk being shot while exposed. She dragged him a few paces forward along the ground, kicking and struggling, to where Agate still crouched in corpse-cover.

“They’re gonna try to—” Before Mokou could even finish her warning, Agate fired several shots into a gunner attempting to reposition along the outer circuit of the assembly hall. “—flank us.”

Agate eyed her silently. She reached over Mokou, placed her barrel to the head of the grappled knight, and fired.

“Oh, come on, I had that one,” said Mokou, releasing the banner. Two gunners remained, plus the squire. Their shots sizzled into the cavern floor and the corpses of their fellows.

“Your hold was sloppy,” Agate countered. When she spoke again, an undercurrent of wonderment entered her tone. “You know, before today, I had never seen any attack have the slightest effect on a wraith-knight Templar. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by anything, anymore.”

Mokou shrugged. “Spiritual enemy, spiritual countermeasures. Ain’t my fault no one else remembers how to do this shit.” She rolled the dead knight off of her legs and against the dead commander, bolstering their makeshift bulwark. She shimmied forward, repositioning herself even closer to Agate in cover.

Agate checked her pistol’s charge. “Still, I hope your spiritual countermeasures didn’t damage the wraith-knight’s vessel too much. Valuable photonics can be salvaged from them.”

“Probably fine. S’just less haunted now.” The biggest threats were dead. What remained was mop-up. “Got an idea. Pay attention.”

IV

Agate knew eigenrifles. She had reverse-engineered the knowledge of their construction years ago. She had succeeded in that effort because she understood the underlying properties of physics and mathematics that allowed an eigenrifle to convert the energy of its power source into a weaponized vector of deadly force. She had even successfully miniaturized the design; her own pistol was proof of this mastery. Thanks to this knowledge, this experience, she knew that in trained hands — such as her own, or those of the gunner-knights firing upon them — it was a devilishly accurate weapon.

None of that knowledge or experience could explain what she witnessed.

“This is what I was talking about, Agate,” Mokou explained. She hovered over the cavern floor, drifting languidly closer to the gunners. With every shot, she flinched her body just precisely enough that the dot vectors seared past her harmlessly.

“What are you doing?” Agate hissed. She lifted herself from cover just enough to snap off a few shots at the Templar. They’d found their own cover behind a stone screen of sturdy speleotherms. One of the gunners returned fire at Agate, while the other stayed focused on the inexorable Mokou.

“What do you mean? This. Moving without moving.” Another perfect dodge.

Agate considered herself an acrobatic person, an agile combatant. She’d cultivated that prowess over the course of her travels and training and it had served her well. The metabolized vanta bolstered it yet more. After all, the surest method of survival was to simply not get hit in the first place. But Mokou seemed to have taken that philosophy into an entirely different echelon of practice. She’d now avoided a statistically improbable amount of fire from directed-energy weapons at close range.

“Kill them!” Agate replied. “Every moment you delay lets them refine the vector calculation!”

“No, exactly!” Mokou snapped her fingers. “So you calculate right back, harder! It’s math — spell cards are math!”

“These are not spell cards!” said Agate.

“Obviously not, you couldn’t burn out someone’s lungs in spell cards. God forbid I try to find philosophical commonalities between different tactical situations.” Mokou sighed. One of the gunners toppled out from behind cover, choking, gasping, writhing on the cavern floor. The squire ceased his cowering and took up the gunner’s eigenrifle to restore the depleted volume of enemy fire. Mokou adjusted to the change in pace and accuracy with what seemed to be utter nonchalance. “We called this grazing.”

Grazing?

“Ayvah,” Agate muttered. “I should have known.”

“What?” asked Mokou.

“You’re a grazing hedonist.”

Mokou merely shrugged. Factional relations seemed, naïvely, of little concern to her — yet in the wilds of Qud, they were the difference between friend or foe, life or death. Perhaps she simply didn’t know. Perhaps she had enough firepower she considered it an unnecessary concern.

It felt counterintuitive to consider Mokou’s spell cards as an expression of her restraint, yet despite Agate’s feelings and intuition, they were. There was no way out of a wizard deciding to set one’s lungs on fire, after all. But the revelation that they were math intrigued her. Mathematics were among her many specialties. What sort of functions might she apply to her own spell cards? Assuming, naturally, she was able to breach the realm of magical mathematics. These were considerations better saved for when she wasn’t under fire.

Agate partially slipped her blockers free. Under the report of the eigenrifles, she could faintly detect the whine of their power cells. The remaining gunner — the better marksman — had three shots left in his currently loaded cell. Agate readied herself to break cover. But there was something else — from a cavern deeper in the complex, two chambers over, came echoing shouts and the clashing of steel on steel.

“The hermits are staging an escape!” said Agate.

“Great!” said Mokou. Another dodge — a graze. “Saves us trouble.”

“Hardly — they’ll get themselves killed!”

The gunner released his spent cell. Agate sprang from the cover of the dead commander, over a broken, half-melted table, and rushed the vector-scored stalagmites. Her hooves pounded on the cavern floor. The plan was simple: round the stone column, then thrust. Her senses narrowed upon it. But within that narrowing channel, something lifted her hackles. A killing intent.

She ducked her shoulders mid-gallop. The squire’s shot scorched past her back.

“Just like that!” Mokou cried.

Agate had no intention of allowing another. She skidded around the speleotherm. The gunner slapped a fresh cell into his eigenrifle. Agate grabbed its barrel and forced it aside. She thrust. Her vibroblade slipped past the fullerite flakes and leather of his cuirass, the muscle and bone of his ribcage. A kill.

Mokou landed next to the squire, opposite Agate. “Gimme that,” she said, wrenching the eigenrifle from his hands. She rammed the butt of its stock against his upraised arms. The squire scrabbled backwards.

“Mutants! Stay back!” he cried. He still weathered Mokou’s blows with one arm. With the other, he withdrew an injector and slipped it past the seams of his steel plate.

“Shade oil,” Agate noted to Mokou. Under ordinary circumstances, a fearsome tactic — summon a wraith-knight, then phase into safety while the Templars’ vaunted dead set to servile butchery.

“That’s right!” the squire desperately laughed. Phase-shifted ghostliness spread through his being. “You’ll never catch me now, degenerates! Once our mobile force returns—”

“Tabi! Psst psst,” Mokou called. The unsettling beast poked her head down from the cavern ceiling. Mokou turned her gaze back to Agate. “You know, I did teach her something.”

The squire turned his gaze to the tabby in horror. “No—!”

“Yes!” Mokou cried. She grinned wickedly and pointed at her quarry. “Kill!”

Tabi leapt, claws outstretched.

Agate grasped Mokou by the bicep and hauled her away, towards the rear exit of the bloody, acid-bitten hall. Every further moment of delay could bring another dead hermit. The sounds of ghostly carnage followed them. Just when Agate had acclimated herself to the creature’s presence. Now she had a kill command. She grit her teeth. “Why did you teach her that?”

“It was easy. And practical! See? Sometimes the other guy just sticks himself!”

Blood congealed in spatters across Mokou’s stillsuit and down the wild strands of her hair. Her grin hadn’t faded. She was in high spirits. Was this what it took? Was this the mindset?

V

Sounds of conflict had silenced by the time they reached the deepest chambers — both those of the hermit uprising and the phased squire’s feline undoing. What replaced them were the sounds of low droning and chanting. By this, Agate’s ears told her that the hermits had triumphed. Despite the Templar warband’s considerable numbers, the size of the hermitage must have stretched them thin.

Rounding the last bend of stone corridor, the two of them emerged into the largest cavern thus far. In the chamber’s closest half, a natural cistern filled most of the space. Past that, a broken dogthorn stockade had bifurcated the room before the hermits’ revolt toppled it. The chamber’s back half was barren rock punctuated by a scattering of fur piles and worn bedrolls. The air smelled of blood and unwashed bodies.

Across the reservoir stood a gathering just shy of thirty figures in rough semicircle, backs to the chamber entrance. Their heads were bowed as they chanted nonsense syllaberies. Grimy hides swathed them, or scrap-festooned lamellars, or mantles of repurposed refuse. All in all, a motley mosaic emblematic of hermit-kind.

At Agate’s side, liberated eigenrifle slung across her shoulders, Mokou slowed her pace to a casual saunter. She scanned the room slowly. “Where are the hermits?”

Agate shot her a disbelieving stare. She swept her hand across the wild-haired flock of them in silent indication.

Mokou stopped in her tracks. Her expression soured, muscle by muscle. She opened her mouth. “That’s — those are—?”

“Hermits,” Agate confirmed.

“That’s what everyone’s been—?” Mokou let out a sharp breath, tilting her head back to gaze at the cavern ceiling. The motion brushed the ends of her hair against the cavern floor. “Why are they like that here?”

“Templar captivity imposes its deprivations,” Agate noted diplomatically. Though, that excuse could only carry so much water. Most other hermits she’d met in her travels hardly made hygiene a priority. “Is there some other way they should be?”

“Mine were — mine were so different,” groaned Mokou. “Thought everyone was just talking about — mine were like, immortal Daoist mountain wizards.”

“Then you should have specified ‘immortal Daoist mountain wizards’,” Agate countered with a faintly amused scoff. “Now what is ‘Daoism’, pray tell?”

Mokou sucked in a breath through her teeth, then shook her head. She resumed her tread around the freshwater reservoir. “I’d tell you, but it wouldn’t be right.”

Another one of her vexingly cryptic answers.

As they approached the gathering, the chants rose into keening cries that reverberated in the cistern air. It now became clear what they gathered around: four bodies of their comrades lay on the cavern floor, side by side. These were rites for the dead. Those four, and the survivors, had accounted for three Templar — two squires and a knight. Agate and Mokou passed their heaped bodies.

“Maybe we should leave ‘em to it,” said Mokou, quietly.

“They may have information on the remaining Templar forces,” said Agate. Their presence had already interrupted the rites to some degree. There was nothing for it now but to see it through. As the hermits’ keening subsided, Agate raised her voice. “The warmonger is dead. Their mobile strike force still stalks the canyons. Did any of you see them?”

The closest few hermits cast leery glances back at the two of them. One of them muttered a name: “Kyy-Syrem.”

The press parted slowly around this Kyy-Syrem, a hermit who cut a wider figure than eir fellows. A coat of natural quills pinioned stinking hides haphazardly to eir orbit. Mosses colonized the spaces between. Thick horizontal horns and drooping furry ears split the tangled green mats of eir hair. Fur-tufted boots clad eir stocky, sloth-set legs, and ey clutched a steel vinereaper still wet with fresh blood. That same blood spattered the most valuable item of eir ensemble: a jewel-studded mask in the frowning, stylized guise of the beetle moon.

“Looks more like an oni than a hermit,” Mokou muttered to herself. She held the eigenrifle tucked away under the crook of her arm while she rolled herself a smoke.

“What on earth is an oni?” Agate asked her, pitched just as surreptitiously for all the good it would do. Kyy-Syrem’s approaching pace was glacial.

“Mm? Oh, devils local to my old stomping grounds. Good drinking company.”

Agate scoffed. “You went drinking with devils enough that you can tell me of them, but not with Daoists?”

“No, I drank with both of ‘em all the time.” Mokou drew on her handroll, then loosed a puff of fragrant smoke. It could only improve the overall nose of the cavern air. “Just, oni are oni, but it wouldn’t be Daoism if I could tell you about it.”

Agate flicked her ear. This conversation threatened to trap her in fruitless circuitousness. She turned her address instead to the hermit, who had finally joined them. “You saw the mobile force?”

“Heard them first,” said Kyy-Syrem. Eir voice was low, and thick with disuse. “Eight so. Half’n be the little chrome blink-shits. Rest’n be heavyshell types. Choppers, shooters.”

“The little ones — their robotic infiltrators, yes?” Agate asked for clarity.

“Aye,” ey replied. “Blinked inter the anchorholds, they did, all aquivered with violent ilk. They did seized onter my person with force of arms. Then blinked outer the anchorholds, t’this sodden stockade. In, out, in, out, stolen us all from our cells.” Ey scratched a claw through a tangle of hair in thought. “Ten years I did spent in holy cellitude. Bastards best not’n scuffed my murals.”

“Then we shall account for the remaining Templar on their return,” Agate said. What threat they still posed was largely logistical — and countering that mobility was merely a matter of destroying the infiltrators.

“Thankee,” grunted Kyy-Syrem. “And thankee f’r the warmonger slayn. I did relishn’t the deed m’self.”

“It was well within our capacities,” said Agate. She crossed her arms before her. “Given this, you took a tremendous risk with your escape. We were already on our way — why did you not wait?”

Mokou cast her a sidelong glance across the inner plane of her mirrorshades. “The hell kind of question is that, Agate? Would you have waited?”

“I did heard yon tussle,” said Kyy-Syrem, rotating eir head from side to side in a mysterious gesture. “Twas the best chance in weeks f’r I and mine. Hadn’t any guarantee of thine liberation.”

Agate sighed. Freedom was reason enough to give one’s life, she supposed. They were only fortunate that the cost wasn’t steeper. “Then allow me to guarantee it for their remaining forces.”

Kyy-Syrem nodded in silent gratitude. Agate turned away, roving her thoughts over potential tactics while her gaze settled upon the waters of the cistern. Perhaps a hidden mesh of EMP mines at the entrance.

“Yeah, don’t worry. She’s got some pretty good techniques,” said Mokou. “You spent ten years in a cell, huh? Wouldn’t’ve guessed it, from how you keep up with a chat.”

“Thankee,” said the hermit, nodding again. “I did practiced many most days ‘pon the idol.”

“Ohhh, yeah?” Mokou replied. Agate could detect hints of forced politeness in her tone. “A good idol brightens up any cell. Who’ve you got in there?”

Kyy-Syrem’s answer resonated with reverent tones. “The Ultramarine Shell. The Viridian Scales. The Robe-in-Amaranth. The Rainbow Specter. She of Many Colors — Polyxes.”

“Oh,” said Mokou. Gone was any trace of politesse. In its place, she’d grown terribly quiet. “Yeah?”

“Ten years I did spent in devoted contemplation of her. I wish now only f’r the ceasement of these troubles such’t I can resume it.”

Mokou started rolling herself another cigarette. The first she’d rolled was still merely halfway smoked. “Hey. Friend. You want to know something about that sultan of yours?”

“Yes, greatly,” Kyy-Syrem eagerly answered.

“Mokou,” Agate began. “We should prepare our ambush for the—”

A tiny noise from the pile of Templar bodies. The pulling of a safety pin. Disproportionate in its decibel level for the surge of adrenaline it sent through her.

“—Grenade!” she cried. Her gaze shot to the pile. The battered knight had only been feigning death. With his last remaining strength, he raised a grenade — high explosive. Agate’s legs tensed under her, preparing to spring.

Mokou reacted first. Herb scattered as she flung herself forward into the air. Her body blocked the grenade’s thrown arc — metal thumped against plastifer. She caught it and tucked it to her chest. She slammed herself into the knight, pinning the grenade between them.

Agate jumped to the side, interposing herself between the hermits and the blast. She sparked her force bracelet to life.

The grenade burst. Pressure washed over the summoned wall of energy. Through its lattice, Agate saw Mokou’s body tumbling through the air. Blood and reclaimed water spiraled after her from the hole blown into her torso through her stillsuit. The hermits cried out in fear and shock. Agate dropped her force bubble.

“No!” shouted Kyy-Syrem. Ey lurched forward before Mokou’s body even hit the ground. “Brave friend, no!”

“Hold!” Agate barked. She barred any further motions past her position with an outflung arm. From her prior observations there was no telling when the pyre of her resurrections would ignite.

Mokou’s body splatted to the rock floor, one foot in the cistern’s waters. Muffled pings of broken stillsuit internals rose above the ringing in Agate’s ears. The meat within was silent — for a few breaths, could the lungs still draw breath.

“Oh,” the hermit mumbled miserably. “She did perished by way of th’ bastards b’fore she could told me her something. Ten years and never a something.”

Mokou’s body burst into flames.

The hermits gasped in shock. This resurrection was furious in its confined intensity — as though the fires poured themselves into the mold of a human. Steam jetted from the tears in her stillsuit and wisped up from the cistern’s waters bubbling around her heel. Her body shuddered from the force of it. She jerked upright, coughing, and the flames sank into her flesh. Perfect, unblemished, bare through the gaping hole in her stillsuit’s chestpiece. She sucked in a deep breath.

Mokou coughed. “You missed one.”

Agate lowered her arm. She strode to the blasted pile of dead Templar for a closer examination, though it was largely unnecessary. “That seems to have accounted for them.”

“Uuuh,” groaned Mokou. She patted at her chest only to find the blast had claimed her breast pockets. She dropped her search pattern to sweeps of the cavern floor. “Fuck. Anyone see my smokes? That was a really nice blend. Fuck. Fuck.”

Kyy-Syrem sank to eir knees. Awe had sandblasted away all sorrow in eir tone. “O, by the Face of the Earth. O, by the Scepter and Scales. What I did seen in the here an’ now is truly a something. Prithee, friend — artee bein’ Polyxes, reborn?”

Mokou froze on her hands and knees. Only for a moment, before a ghoulish laugh spilled from her. “Am I? Am I her? You tell me, friend.”

“Mokou—” Agate cautioned — though perhaps she cautioned the wrong person. Kyy-Syrem’s line of questioning could only further inflame the immortal’s mood. They could ill afford such emotional compromises while there was blood yet to be shed.

“T’give thine life f’r I and mine — our hermitage’s liberation,” Kyy-Syrem pressed on, oblivious to such concerns. More of the chamber’s gathered hermits adopted similarly reverent postures. “Then — then t’leap from outer death’s gnawsome jaws? O, ‘tis too belike her.”

“Friend,” said Mokou, rising to her feet. She patted the dirt and ash and soot from the battered knees of her suit. “My friend. Why don’t you show me your murals?”

Kyy-Syrem shuffled forward, quills clacking as ey nodded. “T’would be honored on me.”

“The mobile force,” spoke Agate. It was ever the nature of compromises to compound on themselves.

“I’ll catch up,” Mokou lowly countered. The look she leveled at Agate was empty of nearly anything. “Gotta check something.”

The look alone dissuaded her from further argument. She said nothing, but strode to the cistern’s exit. She cast a parting glance over the chamber — the awestruck hermits, the dead, the living, the undying, the blood and ash, the water shining ghostly reflections across the shale.

A strange feeling tugged at Agate — as though by some rudimentary organ she could sense history in the making. Perhaps a passing whim of conscious analysis, of heightened adrenaline, of neurochemistry, digestion, or the damned cat. Too many potential outcomes. Too many confluences. It made her uneasy.

Unease would not bar her from laying mines.

A glint in the threshold caught her eye as she turned away from the cistern. The mirrorshades she’d made Mokou, flung away in the blast. Still intact. She bent and retrieved them. She could trust in her own craft. She would be ready for the Templar. She could only hope the same of Mokou.

Chapter Text

She was in the mural room and it made her sick.

It wasn’t the smell. It smelled like a decade of unwashed solitude, stale by a few weeks and aired out by the broken door. Mokou had smelled worse. Mokou had been responsible for worse, back in times where she’d let it get bad enough. Or times when the world gave her no choice.

It wasn’t the murals themselves. The craft of them was compelling. Loose, exaggerated proportions and perspective made for a dreamlike panorama, larger than life. Stretches of minuscule supplicants and onlookers gazed upon the Third Sultan as time after time, in hue after hue, she returned serenely from the grip of death. Her repeated resurrections cycled a rainbow around the cell’s circumference. And in the center of it all, golden in the last rays of evening dripping from above, the idol: Kaguya, upended, serene.

Kyy-Syrem had a vision. Ten years had gone into that vision, festooned the walls with it. The room was beautiful.

The beauty made her sick.

“Up thar be the hole,” Kyy-Syrem pointed to the hollow apex of the cell’s cupola. “By which means the sun icummen down and I do eat it. By means also which the paint icummen down and I do not eat it.”

“Mm.”

Ten years. Ten years, at least, that this hermit had dedicated to a woman ey didn’t even know. That was nothing to Mokou. She’d spent longer thinking about Kaguya than all the time anyone in the history of this hermitage had lived, combined.

It wasn’t nothing to Kyy-Syrem. Not to any of these transient folk. That was time ey wouldn’t get back.

“This one,” said Mokou. She pointed at a central panel. Kaguya emerged gloriously from a golden basin, the obsidian luster of her cascading hair fanning behind her, all bathed in strange amber moonbeams. Framing the floor were windowed spires, gazing smallfolk. “What’s this one?”

“This one.” Kyy-Syrem shuffled to her side and spoke from behind eir frowning mask. Eir tone shifted into one of clear recitation, but from what, Mokou didn’t know. “At midnight, under a weird and amber sky, the people of New Telep saw an image on the horizon that looked like a bowl bathed in amber. It was Polyxes, and after she came and left New Telep, the people built a monument to her, and thenceforth called her the Bowl of Amber.”

“Mm,” grunted Mokou. “New Telep — that a city?”

“It were,” nodded the hermit. “East an’ north, yonder th’Spindle.”

“Were?” asked Mokou. “Nobody live there anymore?”

“Earth did swollered it inter the mountains. Only souls there now be wicked hermits.”

“Wicked hermits?” Mokou had known the type — rather, she’d known a type. If the denizens of this hermitage constituted virtuous hermits, there was no telling what wickedness looked like now.

“The Polyxesian Order. Th’ruin entire does bristle with ‘em, armed t’the gills with energy cannons. They do turn ‘em on beastie and thief and pilgrim alike.” Kyy-Syrem scratched at eir chin beneath eir mask. “Afore mine sealing here I did thought to join them in worship. For mine faith-whim I was near undid. They do given over themselves too deep to it, I think.”

Of all the times to be herbless. “Cult?”

“Aye.”

Maybe ten years was nothing to Kyy-Syrem, too. Eating only sunlight. Drinking only the dew. Talking only to an idol in stone. Wanting nothing more but to get back to it. This wasn’t too deep.

It was the irresponsibility of it all. It made her sick. Kaguya had seeped her way into yet another land’s mythical fabric and now she had cults killing in her name. A new name, but always the same face. Mokou could already imagine, ardently, just how Kaguya might absolve herself of this one. Nothing stuck to her. Nothing could.

Not even with her own eternity had Mokou managed to.

“The bowl,” Mokou gestured. “Was it like this? Anyone see it?”

Kyy-Syrem shook eir head. “Nay, none alive. Twas a liberty I did took.”

“Uh huh,” said Mokou. She scanned the other panels. Each time, a new knickknack accompanied her resurrections: a robe, the bowl, a spiral shell. Motifs in the pattern, repeated again and again and again. At least she’d gotten a little bit of new material this time — the shuttle of a loom, a jeweled halberd. All under the changeless, broken moon, one for each and every panel. Her gaze settled at last to the jewel-studded mask obscuring the hermit’s mien. “Your mask. What’s it mean?”

“Mine mask be’n a moon mask. Its light do be sweeter’n that of the sun, tho’ not half’n so filling. Also…” Eir tone grew almost bashful, as though Mokou’s question had touched upon some private vanity. “‘Tis a symbol of her. Minor-like, but I do keeps it close to me.”

“You’re saying folks associate her with the moon?” asked Mokou, feverishly.

“Minorly. Each time she did revived t’were under the moonlight,” answered Kyy-Syrem.

Kaguya always loved making patterns like that. It wasn’t as though she needed to time them for any other reason — and her power made it effortless. The more Mokou heard, the more her certainty built.

“You know why that is?” asked Mokou.

“Nay. None alive know. ‘Tis one of the holy mysteries. A small one.” Kyy-Syrem let out a soft gasp. “Friend — knowen thee? Be this thine something?”

“Oh yeah. Let me tell you something about Polyxes.” Mokou grasped Kyy-Syrem by eir broad shoulders, heedless of the pricking of eir quills. “She’s from the moon. She’s a princess from the moon.”

“What?” Kyy-Syrem breathed.

“Uh huh,” Mokou continued. “And she’s old. Way old. Older than the Spindle, older than the sultanate. Maybe even older than humanity.”

Not as though Kaguya had ever told her one way or the other. She always seemed to take some kind of perverse satisfaction in letting the ambiguity ride.

“What thou sayen…” The hermit’s voice had grown hushed. “Haven thee proof?”

“Proof?” Mokou laughed. “I knew her before all this. And I know what she’s like. I don’t need anything else.”

Kyy-Syrem’s quills bristled under Mokou’s grasp. Ey seemed to fill out from within, rising from eir hunched posture. “Needn’t thee? Needn’t thee anything else? For rank heresy?”

Mokou released her grip on the hermit’s shoulders. Ey’d become too sharp to keep touching. Her own tone grew fiery to match eir escalation. “What, like you knew her.”

“The moon!” Kyy-Syrem barked, gesturing at eir mask. “F’r her resurrections! The vinereaper!” Ey brandished eir crescent-bladed steel implement, still stained in fascist blood. “F’r the kind farmfolk who did found her as a babe! The paints!” Ey swept both arms in a spinning gesture to encompass the whole mural-adorned cell. “By which means I do meditaten on her glory! Aye! I know her!”

“You know an idea of her that she injected into your culture to get what she wanted from it,” Mokou spat back. “It’s fiction. She made it up! She does this all the time!”

“An’ thou, ingrate, thou did seen bygone Polyxes do this?” Eir booming voice shook droplets of condensation from the ceiling to puddle in a shallow trough around the idol.

“No, I didn’t,” Mokou growled. “I was stuck in a fucking glacier! You ever been stuck in a glacier? It’s a whole lot less fun than all this! But she’s out there. You hear me? Alive. And I’m gonna find her!”

“Thou didn’t even seen it!” Kyy-Syrem’s quills clattered with the shaking of eir body. “Heretic! Slime! Tarnishn’t thee no more her name! Fie thine flailing ‘gainst the love which mine cell I did adornen!”

“Oh, love? You call this love?” She felt the fever and bile soaking her retort. There was very little she could do about it now. “How long have you loved her? How long have you loved this idea of her?”

How many more in this land had she bent into that love over the centuries since her reign? Why did she keep doing this? She had to see what it did. She had to know.

“Mine life entire!” said the hermit. Beneath eir fury, ey sounded close to tears.

“You don’t know shit about her. I’ve seen through all those ideas she puts up around herself. I’ve seen her inside them. I’ve seen inside her. I’ve seen her insides. You know how long I’ve—” She clutched at the sides of her head, grasping handfuls of her own hair with every question that spilled from her. “—How long I’ve loved her? How long I’ve hated her? How long I’ve known her?”

“Nay!”

Mokou pressed her forehead against the brow of Kyy-Syrem’s mask. Eir eyes twinkled back in fear and umbrage from the depths of its sockets.

“My. Whole. Life.”

She found herself locked into the dreadful pose for several ragged breaths. Acrid wisps jetted out of her with each of them, breaking on the lacquer of the frowning moon. Tears beaded behind the hermit’s jeweled mask.

“Stoppen,” Kyy-Syrem croaked. Eir heavy hands rose and pushed on her shoulders. “Leaven me.”

Mokou raised her hands as she backpedaled. A gesture of warding, burgeoning up from the dismissive disgust inside her. “I’m going. Need some fucking air. Nice murals. They really made me think.”

Kyy-Syrem curled up upon emself, hunched miserably at the idol’s side. “Thou be’n the worst soul I did met all week.”

“You won’t hear from me again.”

The shattered frame rendered impossible her intent to slam the heavy door behind her. She settled for wrenching it closed. She stood in the corridor, breathing heavily. Her pulse thundered and her stomach churned. She shouldn’t have checked. She shouldn’t have gone into that room. She shouldn’t have seen that — it wasn’t for her.

But she’d known that room. She’d known what it was like to be in that room, to make that room. It wasn’t right, that Kaguya had put someone else in that room. She had to know she was doing it.

None of these feelings were new. None of them were getting her anywhere.

Agate was waiting. They still had Templar to kill.

Mokou shouldered the cell door back open.

“But just one more thing—!”

Chapter Text

Agate pressed her hand to the punctured breastplate of the warband’s last Templar and pushed, sliding his body off of her vibroblade. Fullerite armor thudded against the canyon floor, kicking up a small cloud of dust. She powered down the blade and wicked the blood from it into a waiting phial. For all the Putus Templar’s obsession with the genetic purity of their bloodlines, it was all the same to a biodynamic cell. Biodynamic cells feasted just as merrily, just as steadily, just as equitably on Templar blood as on the blood of the beasts and mutants targeted by Templar crusades.

Relative peace returned to the desert canyons. Faint sizzles arced from the sparking wreckage they’d made of the warband’s robotic infiltrators. The warband’s organic members no longer sucked at the evening air with death gasps. Agate’s pulse wound down to a calmer baseline. All that disturbed the still now was the clanging of blade against plate. Mokou stood over her final target’s body, steadily hacking with the deceased warmonger’s crysteel cutlass.

Agate cleared her throat. “Well fought. We should report our success within.”

“Mm? Ah,” Mokou seemed to realize herself. She stabbed the cutlass into the earth and seated herself on the dead knight beneath her to catch her breath. She waved Agate towards the darkened entrance to the hermitage. “Go ahead.”

“There is also the matter of salvage and loot—”

“Sure, sure. Think I can get these. I, uh, I just can’t go back in there.” Mokou sighed, balling her fists atop her thighs.

What did she do?

“You didn’t—”

“No, no,” Mokou waved away the grim concern. “Nothin’ they can’t sleep off. Just wore out my welcome.” For a moment, her hand made for her customary smoke storage, before seemingly recalling its destruction. She dropped it back to her thigh.

This wasn’t merely Mokou being sharper — now she was practically guttering. Agate had some guess as to how she might have accomplished such a dramatic depletion of hospitality, though the speed with which she’d done so was astonishing. “I thought I warned you that your mythological pet hypothesis was a fringe one. Not everyone in Qud is as receptive as I am. Not all are so tolerant of the margins.”

Her response rekindled Mokou’s fervor. She drove her fingers into her palm emphatically. “She was here, Kaguya was here. Ain’t a doubt in my mind.”

“What, in this hermitage? It couldn’t be contemporaneous to the reign of Polyxes, the erosion patterns are all wrong. Did they have a reliquary stashed away in there somewhere?”

Mokou let out a heated breath, tinged with acid residues. “I mean here, in Qud. You know what I saw in there? Rainbow theming. Moon theming. I saw her requests. She’s got… she weaves these motifs. She picked up a few more. She always does. But there’s a core here and she’s written herself all over it.”

“Well, extraordinary claims, as they say.” Agate stepped closer to Mokou, drawing up before her. From a side pouch, she retrieved the mirrorshades, cleaned and readjusted. She handed them down to Mokou. “You dropped these.”

Mokou’s brows rose as she accepted the eyewear. She turned them over before her, confirming their unmarred state. “The fuck did you make these out of?”

“Less what and more how. When properly coaxed, alloys of sufficient purity can withstand more than their share of punishment,” said Agate.

“Shit, you a blacksmith, too?” said Mokou, donning her shades once more.

“Merely studied in materials science,” Agate replied.

“Well, either way, I appreciate it. Lotta folks out there just don’t give any thought towards building something to last.” Mokou stood with a soft groan, planting her hands on the small of her back and levering them against her spine in a stretch — a casual motion, yet the gaping hole in her stillsuit’s chest made it a somewhat revealing display of her physique. Mokou’s delay meant there hadn’t been time for repairs before the ambush, but her grazing proclivities had rendered the concern moot. Noticing Agate’s attention, she finished her stretch and flapped a chest panel’s ragged edge as though it were a suit’s lapel. “Maybe you should’ve put some of ‘em in this.”

“Perhaps. I didn’t think you’d be jumping on grenades,” Agate sighed. She reached forward and ran her gloved fingers around the hole’s ragged circumference. She felt only mild chagrin; it could still be repaired. Still, the list of repairs had grown considerably. “To the extent I’ve already modified it, further alterations will be costly in rare bits — though, the haul from this warband might cover it nicely.”

“Right,” Mokou nodded. “Hell of a haul, too. Guns, swords, boots — most everyone likes boots, yeah?”

“Those are the priorities, yes. Ideally, we haul everything. Fullerite has a myriad of uses both in and outside of warfare. It’s rather in demand across Qud’s mercantile networks.”

Mokou lowered herself and began, with some effort, to strip the dead knight of arms and armor. She muttered around the strain. “Shit, that’s heavy. Everything’s a pretty big ask. Unless — hey.” She looked up, past Agate, and pointed to the hoversled, arriving from the hermitage’s entrance where Agate had docked it for the ambush. “Make me one of those gizmos.”

“Certainly, that will help,” said Agate. Her hoversled drew up next to her and she opened a compact chamber along the side. From within, she drew a pair of tightly-compressed bundles of rigging, straps, clips, and ropework. They could unfold into full-body storage harnesses — though as she spoke, she detached the hindleg portion of rigging from one of them. “As will these. Have you worn molly netting before?”

“Maybe. That it?” asked Mokou.

“Yes,” Agate handed the truncated harness bundle to her. “Shaped rigging that allows one to distribute one’s load more efficiently across one’s body. If it’s unfamiliar to you, I can assist you in donning it.”

Mokou shook out the bundle until it dangled loose in her grasp. She rotated it back and forth in aimless inspection. “Sure.”

“Put your legs through these,” said Agate, kneeling and spreading lower loops of rope for her. It wasn’t merely Mokou’s inspection that was aimless, it was her entire bearing — a subtle distance in her mood and actions. Seeing what she’d seen in the mural room had affected her for the worse, by Agate’s assessment. With any luck, that aimlessness could be banished by task and purpose. For the moment, that purpose was securing utility rope to her body.

“Ohh, I’m seein’ it,” said Mokou, bracing herself on Agate’s shoulders as Agate tightened loops snugly around her hips and upper thighs. With the lower harness secured, Mokou shuffled her arms and chest into the upper bands. Agate rose again and reached behind her, looping forward thicker rope braces diagonally across her chest. Mokou glanced down at the ropes partitioning her breasts and raised her brows. “Ain’t gonna chafe, is it?”

“If anything here might chafe, it’s the exposed stillsuit internals,” Agate tsked, loosening the chest straps enough to match the former thickness of her suit’s chest panels. A gesture spun her hoversled in place to better access another drawer. “Molly netting is designed to potentially be worn bare. This particular style is mopango in origin, though I’ve made some modifications.”

“No shit?” asked Mokou. She cocked a faint grin. “Is this schlepping or shibari?”

“What is this, now?”

“You’d like it, it’s an old style of — look, I’m just saying it’s been a while since the last time I met someone as willing and ready to tie up another gal as you. It’s fun. I just—”

Agate tugged on the chest harness to pull it away from her skin. With her other hand, she retrieved a can of Fix-It spray foam from her hoversled’s drawer, unscrewing the cap as she brought it closer to Mokou’s chest. She depressed the nozzle, spraying its repairing compound along the jagged edge of the damaged stillsuit. Replacement panels wove themselves out of nanite foam and met beneath the rope crossing. “No more chafing,” she noted, letting the harness snap back against Mokou’s freshly-armored chest. She felt spirited enough to flirt again, it seemed. That was an encouraging sign. “You need to bathe.”

“Whoof!” Mokou yawped, shaking her body out of the sensation of foam contact. As the spent foam sloughed and faded from her suit, she slapped her chest panels. “Surgeon Hegemon comin’ through again!”

“I’d still like to take a deeper look when time permits, but it serves. Focus on stripping them for now. Then we can worry about hauling it elsewhere or stashing it.” As she spoke, she donned her own molly netting — a much faster process, owing to practice and familiarity.

“Anywhere you had in mind?”

Agate gave her rigging a final adjustment and rubbed the fur of her chin, gazing along the surrounding ridges. “Since the hermitage is out, we should set up at a repeater. There’ll be no telling how many more nodes their mobile force struck today until I can run another diagnostic. That, and — we can call the Heptagon for assistance. This repair job has grown far greater than I anticipated.”

“Maybe they can send a caravan. Just don’t tell Nashimir I caught a grenade on the clock,” said Mokou. She crouched to resume her looting of the dead. “Hell of a first day. Busy, busy.”

Agate turned her gaze back down to her and smiled. “Not so busy that we can’t try a bit more danmaku later.”

Mokou met the smile with a grin of her own, wide and warm. She plucked the grenades from the dead Templar’s belt and waggled them. “Maybe you’ll figure out how to bomb this time!”

Agate chuckled. She turned away and strode back into the liberated hermitage.

Perhaps that distance within the immortal could never be bridged; perhaps the darkness could never be illuminated. But for tonight, at least, it was at bay. It would have to be enough.

Chapter Text

They floated back to the Heptagon two weeks later, on the morning of the 1st, if Mokou remembered the calendar right. That they’d managed to get off the ground in the first place was its own minor mechanical marvel. Swords and guns bristled from her body straps and stuffed her pack. Shields stacked atop her whining hoversled while boots and gauntlets dangled around the rim. Agate had fastened curious copper orbs that floated of their own volition to each corner of her own well-laden sled, held there by light but sturdy netting that filled out like balloons with the orbs’ upward yearnings. An even bigger swathe of netting held a jumble of cuirasses and helmetry, which Agate had suspended beneath herself with thick cables, relying on the lift from her gyrocopter backpack to haul it from the ground.

They had managed to bring back almost everything — a few pieces of arms and armor they’d left with the workers who’d come to relieve them, for protection on their own way back. Mokou hoped for their safety. Their company had livened the camp and sped the task, though she suspected that half of them volunteered just for Agate’s cooking. Best of all, Nashimir had stayed at the Heptagon, so there was no one to yell at her for practicing her spell cards.

Because it felt good to flex that power again. It felt good to have a sparring partner, even if she still couldn’t bomb. It felt good to see the awe and wonder in the onlooking eyes of her shift-mates — intermixed with just a frisson of fear. It almost got her in the mood to start making new ones again. She had a few more millennia’s worth of experiences to translate into them since the last time she had reason to make any.

These feelings buoyed her all the way back, despite the weight of her spoils, and the murals. Beneath her, canyon trails turned to roads turned to the main thoroughfare feeding into the arena. Colorful bunting slung criss-cross from stucco facades in anticipation of next month’s festival. At Agate’s direction, they made for an open plaza ringed by a shaded bazaar just off the extramural main drag.

«Right here?» Mokou queried. «Why?»

«Good handcarts,» replied Agate, hovering in place over the plaza. «Get one and park it below me.»

Mokou nodded and began her descent past billowing fabric shades and dust clouds whipped up by Agate’s gyrocopter. Her sneakered soles touched the plaza’s stones; slight relief came to her magical reserves to no longer keep her load aloft. She scanned the shaded stalls for likely cartmongers. A familiar figure swathed in a deep green tunic peeled herself from the shadows as Mokou’s gaze passed over her. Sunlight glinted on chrome bionics. She had a cart.

“Chef!” Bajiko Ki called in greeting, raising her voice over the chop of propellers.

“Bajiko!” Mokou called back, grinning. She beckoned the cyborg chef with subdued waves, swords clattering against her with every motion. They soon had the cart’s open bed positioned beneath the netted armor load dangling from Agate’s underbelly. She lowered herself delicately, guided from below. The cart’s suspension creaked as it took on the full weight of dead Templar kit, but it held. Agate landed a short distance away and detached the cargo cable, letting her gyrocopter spin down into silence.

“Chef,” Agate nodded to Bajiko.

“Chef,” Bajiko nodded back.

“How’d you know we were gonna be here?” asked Mokou. She started to unstrap the most obtrusive swords to add them to the cart’s load.

“Something on the winds,” replied Bajiko, smiling faintly. “I must congratulate you both for your victory and for the restoration of our broadcast network.”

“Hey, your ceviche helped seal the deal,” said Mokou. “Poor bastards ended up only gassing themselves.”

Agate sniffed. “Yes. A shame the Urchin Battle couldn’t reach the Stilt live, but a rerun should have the desired effect. Still, it’s concerning to see the Templar in such numbers this far west.”

“They gained perhaps a month of our silence. They paid in blood,” said Bajiko. “Let us hope they think twice before committing such numbers again.”

“Better hope they weren’t trying to buy anything with that month,” noted Mokou. With her arms freed, she opened her scarf and loosed Tabi from its folds. The cat scampered immediately under the cart and sank into the cobblestones.

“Mm,” Agate hummed in concern and stroked her chin. “I had assumed it was merely an opportunistic strike against the Heptagon’s mechanisms of cultural influence. Let us indeed hope it was nothing more.”

“They certainly ain’t gonna tell us,” Mokou chuckled darkly.

“Did you salvage any chrome, by chance?” asked Bajiko, a bit of hope tinging her neutral tone. “I wanted first pick, before the gutsmongers found you.”

Agate shook her head with a tight frown. “The warband was particularly light on implants. What few I found were too deeply entwined to withstand extraction. Perhaps their cybernetics stores in the homeland are running low.”

“One can hope — though I’ll miss the convenient supply, if so,” said Bajiko, with a wry yet subdued smile. “Well, may the handcart serve you in distributing the bounty. You know where to return it.”

“I do. Live and drink, chef,” Agate replied with a curt nod. The coldness in both their demeanors seemed to amplify when faced with the other.

“Live and drink,” Bajiko answered. A silky, mechanical whirring sounded from the forearm of her chrome prosthetic as a hidden storage compartment opened and deposited its contents in her waiting hand: a letter. She handed it to Mokou with a smile. “For you, chef. Don’t worry — your reply will find its way back.”

With that, Bajiko bowed to the both of them and strolled from the plaza. Mokou turned the letter over in her hands. The paper was thick, sturdy, and bleached an eggshell white. The face was blank, while the flap side had a wide seal of deep purple wax. Agate drew in a quick, sharp breath at the sight of it. The seal’s pattern looked to have been made by pressing the cylinder of a revolver into it — though it was a cylinder with seven chambers. Mokou unsealed it, loosing the faint scents of baked goods, spices, and gunpowder.

Mokou, said the letter’s flawless calligraphy.

You’ve been the talk of my Chefs and my Baroness lately. To sate my ego, I must have you in my kitchen. There’s a thing or two about cooking I can show you.

Under the throne there are seven chambers. I’ll be waiting in the seventh. No pressure. However you want this to go down, just think about it, hold this letter to the sky and blow.

Imet

The esper had taken notice of her. That was probably inevitable. Especially with the company she’d been keeping here. The prospect of having her innermost thoughts probed didn’t appeal to her. Especially considering the overall state of them since she’d seen the murals.

“Hm,” said Mokou.

“Hm?” said Agate.

“Hmm.”

“Mokou,” said Agate. She rested a hand heavily on Mokou’s shoulder. She leaned close and tapped the letter. An edge crept into her tone. “This is an invitation to take lessons from Imet, Whose Broth is Causality. The undefeated. This does not happen.”

“I get it.”

“Yet you hesitate. Do you?”

Mokou sighed. She patted her belly on the side of her liver. “What happened to our little secret? Because the second I go in there, it’s all out on the table.”

Agate shut her eyes in a pained frown. Her grip tightened subtly on Mokou’s shoulder. She took in a deep breath, let it out, took in another. Her free hand rose before her, fingers upraised, before she clasped them into a fist. Mokou had never seen this level of externalized deliberation from her before.

“Mokou,” she said at last, opening her eyes to fix an intense stare on her. “You have tremendous talent already. You could attain any certification you please from these people, all without setting foot in Imet’s kitchen. All whom the Heptagon certifies gain such laurels without doing so. It is not done. This opportunity is unprecedented.”

“Lot of things have never happened,” said Mokou. “Doesn’t make ‘em good ideas.”

“You aren’t — surely you aren’t holding yourself back from this just for the sake of my request,” said Agate. She stepped directly in front of Mokou, hands on both her shoulders now. “Imet is offering you a personal glimpse of their techniques. Their unsurpassed techniques, which have earned them victory upon victory upon victory in the arena. That is a foothold, Mokou. If I barred you from it under any pretext I would be wronging you grievously.”

“What happened to all those implications? Those ramifications?” Mokou retorted. It wasn’t only because of Agate’s request that she felt this hesitation, of course. Still, it surprised her how retroactively important it had felt.

Agate sighed, pulling her face back a touch from her posture of surreptitious counsel. “It’s… hardly the only potentially apocalyptic ingredient that comes into our line of work. If I were to trust anyone else to handle it responsibly, I would trust the Carbide Chefs.”

“I get that,” said Mokou. “Just don’t always get along with espers. Lot of times it ends up they don’t like what they see in here and then they take it out on me.”

Agate’s brow rose into a quizzical look. “You’ve gotten along with E’Beth. And the arconaut.”

“They’re—” Mokou waved her hands abstractly. “Nice, I dunno.”

“Imet is… responsible. Judicious in their use of power as it intersects with the wills of others. Is this what you mean by ‘nice’?” asked Agate.

“Close enough,” Mokou grumbled.

“There you are, then,” said Agate. She leaned in closer again, lowering her voice just a hair — not that the plaza was particularly busy that they might be overheard. “I trust your glimpse into their techniques will be very illuminating. Bounteously so.”

“You askin’ me to spy on ‘em?”

Agate patted her shoulder and pulled away, making for the handcart’s handles. “Information wants to be free.”

Mokou let out a clipped laugh of disbelief. “You’ve already spoiled it by asking, though, you get that? It’s all gonna be out on the table.”

“Without spoilage, we would not have wine. Besides,” Agate cast a cold, cryptic smile back to Mokou as she hefted the handcart. “I may have breakthroughs of my own, soon.”

In the light of midmorning, Mokou could clearly see the bag under Agate’s unencrusted eye. She’d seen how the hindren had slept for those two weeks in the rough with Tabi’s constant company — fitfully, and with frequent nightmares. Whatever breakthroughs she hinted at probably needed a good night’s sleep before they could be trusted.

“Well, alright,” said Mokou. She put her acceptance into the forefront of her thoughts, raised the letter before her, and blew. A small cloud of glimmering dust rose from the page and whisked itself into the sky, disappearing over the rooftops with an arena-bound heading. Mokou blinked. It sure looked like magic. But then, there was that thing a few espers had, back across the desert—

“Imet’s a windweird, ain’t they?” asked Mokou. She folded the letter and tucked it away in a spare pouch.

“Among their many psionic aptitudes, yes,” Agate nodded. She hefted the handcart into slow motion, making for the plaza’s exit to the main thoroughfare. “But their telepathy is your chief concern, yes? If it troubles you, try to busy your thoughts. Think of… what you might do for the festival of Ut yara Ux, perhaps.”

“I mean, I always do. You just made it sound like keepin’ busy wasn’t gonna be much help with them,” Mokou grumbled. She fell in beside Agate. After a moment, she realized what Agate had suggested. “Wait, what are you doing for the festival?”

“I’ve been far too busy to concern myself with such matters,” replied Agate. Her ear made a stunted flick, constrained by her blockers. “It’s always… loud.”

“You aren’t doing anything. Why do I gotta do something? Wait.” Mokou craned her head towards Agate, clasping her hands behind her back and putting on a saccharine smirk. “You don’t have a festival date. You fishing for one? Because I’m not doing anything.”

“You wish to see the festival?” Agate sighed.

“Why wouldn’t I? You know what — you’re my festival date, now. I decided. Let’s make a time of it.”

Agate huffed out a faint laugh. “Very well. Then I shall wait with bated breath.”

“That’s the spirit,” Mokou nudged her flank with an elbow. She drew in a sharp breath and traced out an arc before her with her hands. “Hey! Hey! What if we do a danmaku showcase?”

Chapter Text

Agate stood on a subterranean switchbacking terrace and gazed out upon the Beast Ward below. The cavern rang with birdsong, ape hoots, and mollusk crooning. Arclit corrals and torchlit watering holes shone through gaps in the gnarled canopy, while its pale branches parted around residential rises and the great swaying shells of saltbacks. This was the heart of the Heptagon for intensive matters of husbandry, ranching, herding, and beast-training. Her hand rested on the hilt of her sheathed blade by prudent habit. It was not a place to go unarmed.

The fur on the back of her neck prickled from beastly attention nearby, but then, that was an expected animus.

The task foisted upon Agate was a relatively simple one: watch the cat while her owner trained with the Heptagon’s undefeated champion. Onerous, but not entirely unexpected. Perhaps Tabi had burned through the goodwill of any other prospective short-order catsitter. She’d certainly burned through Agate’s. But then, if Agate let anything stand in the way of Mokou’s lesson, she’d be a hypocrite. What was one more day subjected to an astral tabby’s predatory glare?

She’d had no luck discouraging that instinct over the last two weeks in the wild. But then, she was no tamer of beasts. The situation called for professional assistance. At last, she had the opportunity to seek it. The problem was choice.

As she mulled on this problem, something caught her eye further down the terrace. The graceful silhouette of an unexpected figure, pausing for a breather next to a circulator’s mists. No telling how long that pause might last. Agate leapt over the railing. In three decisive bounds, she landed on the lower terrace level.

“Jathiss,” she greeted.

“Agate,” replied Jathiss, her tone gentle, her bank of eyes blinking in a wave of surprise. “A pleasure to see your safe return.”

“Thank you,” Agate nodded. “You’ll doubtless also be pleased to hear that the Heptagon’s broadcast range once more includes the Stilt.”

“So I gathered!” said Jathiss. “I believe we’ve already re-broadcasted the Urchin Battle. You’d have to ask E’Beth for the specifics. Still, what heartens me more is your victory over the Templar.”

“As I told you, I have no intention of becoming a martyr.” Agate stepped to her side, then past her to stand closer to the soothing radius of the mist. “Failure was neither an option nor a consideration.”

“Is that so?” asked Jathiss, turning to keep face of her. “By my reckoning, any Templar encounter one can walk away from is a success. Easier for you and I, of course. But to rout them so utterly is a level beyond success. Chance always enters into such efforts.”

“If anything, it was an inevitability,” Agate sighed. She rubbed a fingertip idly along the spherical pommel of her blade. “Such seems to be the nature of engagements when one’s comrade-in-arms is an immortal.”

“She had the bearing of a battlefield maven,” noted Jathiss.

“She has it still, I assure you,” said Agate. “Her seals — ofuda, she calls them — did she show them to you?”

Jathiss shook her heads. “I haven’t had the opportunity.”

Agate held Jathiss’s sedeciscopic gaze with steady intensity. “With a scant handful of them, she exorcized a wraith-knight.”

“What?” Jathiss breathed.

“I saw it shrieking at its own dissolution. At the overpowering force of her sorcery. Then, gone. Spiritual countermeasures, she said.”

“A wraith-knight, banished by ink and parchment.” Jathiss’s pedipalps fluttered in consideration. “If it were anyone but you telling me this, I might think it fantasy.”

Agate reached forward, taking up the Chef’s lower pair of hands in her own grasp, halting their fretting for the sake of her emphasis. “But it is fantasy! That’s the crux of it! Concrete, practiced, material, spontaneous fantasy!”

“To think,” Jathiss chuckled wryly, “this is what it took to rouse your interest in matters of the spirit. But I ask you, Agate, the words of Shekhinah — are they any less concrete?”

“Come now,” said Agate, flicking her ear. “I have never denied the power of your creed. But it’s social power, is it not? Words may sway the hands that hold the phylactery. But I’ve never, not from all their talk, seen your preachers accomplish what Mokou did. Her power purged the ghost from the machine.”

And despite the privilege of her direct observations, here she was, no closer to dissecting how it worked.

Jathiss let Agate’s observations settle over her impassively, thoughtfully. Agate would not mince words over her feelings towards the Choraler’s institution; she never had. If she’d gone too far this time, Jathiss gave no sign. “Do you mean to claim that hers is, what, anti-social?”

“She’s no hermit, if that’s your question,” Agate replied. She rubbed her thumb through the fur of Jathiss’s claws. “There’s no room in your congregation for one such as me. I mean that she stands as undying proof of a spiritual power that does not necessitate I cut off everything I’ve made of myself. An outsider’s power, stemming from unknown laws.”

They were her honest thoughts. For as much as she respected Jathiss as an artist, an architect, a Carbide Chef, and a friend, her faith would always impose distance between them. By Mechanimist metric, the burden of chrome upon Agate must be intolerably weighty. She felt none of it, nor did she feel its associated guilt. The fact that so many in Qud sought to feel it was a source of continued bafflement. Another reminder that the outlooks that had exiled her from her birthplace were hardly unique to it.

Jathiss softly sighed, some unreadable sentiment flickering through her gaze. Stepping closer, her upper hands slid around Agate’s forearms. “I wonder… Is it so entirely unknown? She said the way we cook is magic. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.”

“I don’t care for that explanation,” said Agate, glancing away with a furrowing of her brow. “It strikes me as obscuring to the underlying properties. If it were true, I feel as though I would have known.”

“But she is a wizard,” noted Jathiss. “Perhaps our practice is a point of entry. I might trust her to know.”

Of course, it came down to trust. What did Agate trust Mokou to do?

“She caught a grenade for me — for the hermitage, really. Then simply… burned herself back to life, and got up.” Agate squeezed Jathiss’s hands. They were an anchor while vivid memories held her. “I’ve been sleeping poorly out on repair these last two weeks. Seeing that didn’t help the matter.”

How many times would she have to see it again? She was no stranger to the sight of death, the practice of it. But it felt different when it was Mokou. When it was someone about whom she felt—

Jathiss shifted a hand to press into Agate’s chest. She held it there for a few breaths, warm and measuring. “Your heart is unsettled. I thought it sturdier in matters of the blade. Was it so terrible? The flame of her self was never truly snuffed.”

The cat had caught up again. She could feel it. It made her pulse stubborn to accept the Choraler’s soothing touch. “Knowing that and seeing it tested are quite different matters.”

“I certainly wouldn’t want to see a hole blown into a fellow saucier,” said Jathiss. She pulled her hands back, pacing to the nearby railing to look out over the open cavern. “I’m afraid the Beast Ward isn’t the most restful of neighborhoods.”

“I don’t intend to rest just yet,” Agate replied. “What brings you here today, anyway?”

“Oh…” Jathiss let out a soft chuckle, clasping her lower hands behind her back. “Putting off an errand, I suppose.”

Agate smiled. It was that candor of the Choraler’s that she always appreciated. She ran her fingers through the fur of Jathiss’s abdomen as she stepped to her side. “What luck, so am I. Care for a dalliance?”

Jathiss laughed. She half-turned to glance at Agate, then further behind her. Likely Tabi was just in sight; Agate had found it easier to detect her in the time spent subjected to her predatory attentions. “Ah, I believe I can guess at yours.”

“Mine, at least, will keep,” said Agate. She inclined her head towards a marked doorway in the cavern wall to the side of their terrace. It led into one of the many municipal rest chambers peppering the wards, each with its own amenities — beds, cushions, recliners, warm rocks, and the like. “No one that I can hear has claimed that warren at the moment.”

“Well, then,” said Jathiss. She hooked an arm around Agate’s elbow and made for the doorway. “That may be just the refreshment I need.”

Chapter Text

It was one of the nicer warrens Agate had encountered across her visits to the Heptagon, and freshly cleaned. Its centerpiece was a circular bed, large enough for the two of them. Ample clearance ringed it along the hardwood floor. It was served by its own view of the Beast Ward, courtesy of the open outer wall and the private balcony it held. Vines wreathed the walls and twined the stone balustrades, lending an herbal freshness to the air. Somewhere in those walls was Tabi, but Agate could put her out of mind for the time being.

Of course, after a few minutes of effort, the room had a new centerpiece: Choraler Jathiss, suspended over the bed. Her own thick silken cabling wrapped around her muscular body and anchored her to the stone ceiling. Agate stood beneath her, coat doffed and sleeves rolled up, drawing out more silk from her spinnerets. These threads she gathered to bind and truss the multitude of Jathiss’s limbs.

That was a convenience Agate always appreciated in their dalliances: she provided her own props for erotic immobilization.

Soft noises of satisfaction came from Jathiss as Agate worked. Moving around her, positioning her limbs just so. Her lower hands Agate bound together behind the small of her back, while her upper pair of arms Agate pulled further back.

“Lift and tuck your rear legs,” Agate instructed. Jathiss drew them up into the niche between her thorax and abdomen. Agate guided Jathiss’s hands flush with her tucked-in rearmost femurs. “Now hold. Good?”

Jathiss clasped her hands to her legs and nodded. “Good.”

Thus confirmed, Agate teased forth another length of silk from Jathiss to bind her hands to her legs. It was steady, thoughtful effort to find the right balance of strain and slack, tension and give. That effort was assisted by the fact that the Choraler kept herself in excellent shape — and that neither of them were strangers to it.

Agate took a circuit of her suspended partner to ponder her next articulation. As she walked, she spooled up the slack of Jathiss’s freshly-spun silk. “Your forelegs — lift and splay.”

Jathiss did so, swaying softly as the spreading of her legs shifted her center of gravity. Agate fashioned silk into cuffs around Jathiss’s metatarsi, linked by one taut strand looped around the central suspension column. Hisses of pleasure loosed from Jathiss as she tested how her weight settled.

It was a satisfying symbiosis they’d found together in the years of their acquaintance. Jathiss claimed the contortions in stasis helped her to reach new meditative zeniths. For Agate’s part, it was precisely as Mokou had surmised: she simply liked tying up women. Not just for the sake of eros — it was practical, streamlined. It made for fewer externalities that needed accounting.

Agate stepped back from the bed to admire their woven handiwork as it traced and framed and accentuated the Choraler’s nude form. She chewed a spare bit of silk to indulge her tongue as her eyes feasted. There was a touch of sour acridity in the basal palate she didn’t usually find at other times of year.

“I see I’m not the only one stressed of late,” said Agate.

“Mm,” Jathiss replied, moving as little as necessary to still her glacial rotation. “All of mine from expected sources, thankfully. It’s the festival.”

Agate nodded. As ever, Jathiss pushed herself to do too much. Personally, there wasn’t a festival in the world that would make Agate consider compromising the quality of her own ingredients. Then again, the fruiting hoarshrooms of her glowcrust were blessed with the toxin-filtering resilience of fungi. Silk’s palate was more sensitive to the moods and conditions of its weaver. Agate strode closer to Jathiss, rounding her again. “If your silk is any tell, you needed this.”

“Maybe so,” Jathiss chuckled. Her upraised abdomen trembled in anticipation.

The flavor wasn’t so compromised as to spoil the enjoyment of cleaning what clung to her fingers. This left them nicely wet. Primed for her next step. She drew closer still. Bracing her shoulder against the Choraler’s underbelly, her fungal cheek against the swell of her abdomen, Agate brought her digits to Jathiss’s chitin-couched nethers.

She stroked, teasingly at first. This was the true reward — here, with her ear pressed against the resonating chambers of the Choraler’s body, listening to the sounds of her pleasure modulated through Agate’s touch. It had to be touch, of course. Agate’s best tools for this purpose were ones Jathiss considered mildly blasphemous. Still, it was good to get one’s hands dirty every now and again.

“Deeper,” Jathiss pled in breathy harmony. “Please.”

Agate cocked a smile. A few more shallow strokes to build her need, before the plunge. Agate’s hand sunk into the Choraler’s cunt to the knuckle. Jathiss cried out in pleasure. Agate worked this depth for several breaths, slipping ever deeper with every cycle of thrust and pull. Listening to Jathiss’s humming gasps.

“Lovely,” Agate purred, feeling heat spread through her own nethers. This, she knew, was far from as deep as Jathiss meant when she asked. She drew her fingers together into a tighter profile and plunged deeper, to the wrist. Then, compression. This fist drove louder ecstasy from Jathiss. Agate drank in the sound. The sound alone was reward and pleasure enough for her.

This pace kept for longer still. The heat, the passionate harmonies, the rhythm of her hand’s plumbing thrusts. At last, she felt it in the way Jathiss trembled in her bindings, the press and squeeze of her abdomen. The Choraler was poised at the threshold of trance.

“Please!” One throat called to Agate to redouble her efforts, to push deeper. The other, Jathiss raised from the depths of her breath and into a droning litany to her distant deity, the Kasaphesence.

With all the leverage from Agate’s grounded position beneath and against her, from her free arm braced atop her shuddering abdomen, Agate pushed. The Choraler’s cunt pulsed around her, her voices thrummed through her.

Jathiss now took up the prayer with both her throats and hardly a waver. The syllables flowed into and around one another through the cycling of her breath. As though she might spin the orbits of binary stars from chant and cadence. This was her peak — the challenge lay in how long they could sustain her efforts together.

Even in the throes of passion, some detached intellect of hers found dry amusement in the irony of their trysts. Her expertise, which had wrought countless mechanisms burdensome to the institution of the Choraler’s faith, here was turned towards helping the woman channel that faith all the more keenly. Ultimately, that was between Jathiss and her goddess. Though her prayer was an empty one to Agate, the sonic and textural profile of it was unparalleled. That was reason enough to indulge her.

But then, there was another, deeper detachment. The sense of being watched, prickling through her hackles. She certainly couldn’t expect the cat to respect her privacy.

At length, the circular chant subsided from Jathiss’s throats. She settled against the binding silk around her, breathing deeply and steadily. Agate slipped her arm out from its berth within Jathiss as gently as she could. She punctuated the motion with a kiss to the side of her abdomen. Jathiss hummed her wordless appreciation.

Agate had cleaned her hand and donned her coat, her front legs resting off the edge of the bed, when Tabi reared her head again. Agate leveled a cool gaze at the astral tabby as she fastened up her buttons. “Now what am I to do with you, beast?”

“Ah, the cat,” said Jathiss, her tone still a touch muzzy. She spun slowly overhead in continued suspension. “She still hasn’t been trained, then?”

Agate sighed. “I would’ve thought after losing a hand to her, it’d be a higher priority. But no, for weeks now, she’s been letting the creature run rampant.”

“I did counsel her to bring her down here sooner,” Jathiss noted.

Tabi slunk closer and slipped into the mattress with an indignant “Rrrt.” Agate bristled all the more from the proximity.

“Demonstrably, she didn’t heed that counsel. No, this is my own initiative out of my own interests.”

“You’ve got quite the opportunity for it,” said Jathiss. “To think, all it takes for Imet to give a lesson is for one to be an immortal wizard.”

Agate snorted softly. A part of her still grappled with the lesson’s reality. How could she help but disbelieve at the opportunities that simply fell into Mokou’s lap just from the grace of her own nature? As though she were inevitability incarnate.

To think, she’d wanted Agate to be one of those opportunities. There was no sense in second-guessing her refusal now. None of its informing conditions had materially changed. Would Mokou still feel the same after learning from the Heptagon’s undefeated champion?

“Do you have any suggestions for where to take Tabi? You frequent the Beast Ward more often than I.”

“Oh!” said Jathiss. “Beastmaster Mojr, of course. I was just on my way to see her when you found me.”

Agate knew Mojr. A compact mutant, hard and warm. She held her title for good reason — she was widely considered foremost in the Beast Ward when it came to animal training. She would have been the obvious choice, but—

“We aren’t speaking,” Agate sighed.

“Oh,” said Jathiss. “What happened?”

“She said that everything was so transactional with me,” said Agate. It would hardly disprove that character assessment to approach her for another transaction. Hard she was, but brittle.

“Ah,” said Jathiss. She rotated slowly in thought for a moment. “Well, what about Yyrabas of the Undercanyon Ranch? E has experience.”

“Yyrabas?” Agate replied with a tone of mild affront. “E gave Lulihart an unfavorable horoscope reading last year.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in horoscopes.”

“Certainly not, but Lulihart does,” said Agate. “We pariahs must cling together. Misfortune to one is misfortune to all.”

Never did she so keenly feel that status in this city than in times like these.

“I understand,” Jathiss sighed. “Well, what of Dyashkra the cat herder?”

“This is no mere ray cat, Jathiss. Nor is she a mere astral tabby! This beast has slit open the weft of psionics and crawled inside.” Agate drummed a muffled report on the bedside with her fingers. That seemed to be a key obstacle: what Tabi held was an ego of instinct, unmoored from the more complex reasoning of intellect. In her natural state, she could not be reasoned with. “Perhaps if I rigged her with assistive co-processing headgear…”

“You aren’t happy with any of my suggestions,” Jathiss glumly noted.

“I have standards, I’m afraid,” said Agate.

Unbidden, she recalled Mokou’s words in the baths. Her standards — were they making her happy? In this instance, they seemed to be actively barring her from it.

“I could train her,” said Jathiss.

Agate had no doubt she could — Mechanimist teachings had their own sort of dire gravity. But whether she should was another prospect entirely. Agate turned and looked back up at Jathiss, her brow set in concern.

“Jathiss. The last thing I wish to do now is to heap another responsibility on your plate.” She rose from the bed, the better to stand level with her as she faced her. She ran a finger up through the fur of the Choraler’s belly, the chitin beneath taut from her position. “Besides, I hardly think I should convert her cat behind her back.”

“Fair,” Jathiss replied.

“The offer is appreciated,” said Agate, diplomatically. “I would accept were it a secular training — and were it not nigh on the festival.”

“Are you planning anything for it?” asked Jathiss. “I know it’s perhaps frivolous to ask, given your… predilections.”

“I am, actually,” answered Agate. “She’s plotting a danmaku exhibition and to that end has enlisted my aid. Has she shown you any?”

“No, I haven’t had the pleasure,” said Jathiss. “Some form of magic of hers, yes?”

“Yes, a deprecated dueling art,” said Agate. She’d seen quite the array of them during their repair stint in the canyons. Beautiful, exhilarating, terrifying. A true challenge. Though she’d determined one thing for certain: with the means available to her, she could not meet that challenge with the dignity and grace necessary to surmount it. “I believe I’ll cater for her showcase.”

She could only hope Mokou would understand.

“That’s exciting!” said Jathiss, quivering with the sentiment. “I can’t wait to see it. Are you going to help me down?”

“Hmm,” Agate hummed. She ran her gaze over the Choraler’s body. Her chitinous curves, her dappled musculature, every bit accentuated by splendid webwork. This glittering artifice they shared — that her own webs could ever hold her. Agate lifted herself to plant a kiss on her right head’s cheek. She pulled back and patted the same spot. “I think a break would suit your silk much better.”

Jathiss shifted against her bonds. “Do you, now.”

“Come, Tabi,” Agate called. She strode towards the chamber’s egress, but paused for one last look behind at the suspended Chef. She smiled. “You can always eat your way out.”

Jathiss sighed and began gnawing.

———

A distant pop drew her attention up-terrace as she left the warren. It was followed by a fluttering of crimson fabric — E’Beth, the Heptagon’s master of ceremonies, hovered down towards her in a telekinetically-controlled fall.

“Chef!” E’Beth called in greeting.

Agate watched her approach. Graceful and focused in her descent. Not quite to the level she’d observed in Mokou’s magical flight, but certainly a good deal safer than what Agate could manage by mechanical means. It got her to thinking.

E’Beth landed before her. Agate nodded in greeting. “Chef. If you’re looking for the Choraler, she’s tied up at the moment.”

“Ah—” E’Beth raised her hand to her lips. A slight flush crept down from her blindfold. “Yes, sorry, I gathered.”

Agate flicked her ear. That paranoid tickling was not simply Tabi’s attentions, but a burst of E’Beth’s far-seeing on top. At the very least, knowing the romantic webs spreading out from the Carbide Chefs, it was no state of Jathiss’s that E’Beth hadn’t already found her in at some point.

“I suppose it’s the right time of day for voyeurism,” Agate dryly noted.

“No, no, I didn’t expect to find you so engaged,” said E’Beth, hurriedly, still flushing. “Once I realized, I tried to leave you two your privacy. Terribly sorry.”

Ever tactful, she was. And with uncanny instincts for finding where to direct her focus. And, perhaps most critically, with a deep streak of showmanship. It kept Agate thinking. “Don’t tell me you’ve had another guest cancellation. Shouldn’t it be someone else’s rotation?”

E’Beth shook her head. “Not that, either. I was looking for you. But — what’s this, a danmaku showcase?”

It wasn’t as though Agate had made particular effort to mask her thoughts. Mokou’s festival suggestion remained in their forefront. “Yes, what do you think? There’s ample aerial clearance, either on the surface or in the larger wards. I can tell you already, it’s a spectacle like none other.”

“Certainly, there’s room for such an event. But—” She brought her hands together before her chest and swung her fingertips inwards to point at herself. “—You want me to duel her?”

“It’s quite the thrill.” Agate crossed her arms and smiled coldly down at the shorter esper. “You haven’t forgotten her assessment of your talents, have you? Because, having faced them myself, I can tell you I second it.”

“Isn’t it… dangerous?” asked E’Beth.

“The greatest harm that befell me was gravity’s doing. An array of properly-angled industrial fans should keep you aloft handily. As for the projectiles themselves, the right recipe should mitigate them entirely. By Ut yara Ux, I’ll have it.”

After a few breaths, E’Beth nodded tentatively. “I’ll think it over.”

“I can ask for nothing more,” said Agate. “Why were you looking for me?”

“An overdue delivery,” answered E’Beth. She reached into a hip pouch. With all reverence due, she withdrew a small lacquered box carved from ebon icosahedar wood.

Agate uncrossed her arms, taking a half step closer. Her pulse sped. There could only be one possibility within.

E’Beth lifted the lid. Deadlight bathed Agate from the bottled gleam of a revenant star.

“As requested,” said the esper. “Your neutron flux.”

Chapter Text

A distinct chill built in the passageways leading below the arena’s throne. Mokou had been back here a few times, both on shift assignments and while accompanying Agate when they left the match they’d judged last month. But she’d never had a reason to venture this deep. Around her were halls of concrete, reinforced, buffed, and beautified.

“Just ahead, there,” said E’Beth, walking at her side. She gestured ahead to a pair of dark wood doors, wide and tall, set into the side of the concrete wall.

“Thanks,” said Mokou. “Glad someone knows where it is.”

“Oh, yes, I come here all the time,” E’Beth smiled. “The Chefs, and my Baroness — these are their personal chambers.”

“Oh!” said Mokou. She puffed out her cheeks with an uncertain breath. She hadn’t even particularly dressed up today — just her work coveralls. It was the cleanest outfit she had; the invitation had taken her by surprise. At least they had sleeves to ward off the chill. “Should I have, uh — am I going to interrupt—”

“No, no,” laughed E’Beth. “Farouun hosts frequently. And besides, as unexpected as it may be for Imet to give lessons, you’re expected now.”

“That’s a relief,” said Mokou, though E’Beth probably knew that already. Her presence was something like a warm-up to the prospect of having someone else in her head for the lesson’s duration. Something else came to mind, spurred by what Imet had written. “Seven chambers for five people?”

“Closer to four, really. Imet’s accommodations are a bit of a special case. You’re looking for a gate. It’ll be leftish.”

“Leftish,” Mokou echoed. She drew up before the doors and raised her hand to knock. She paused. “You coming in too?”

“Ah, no. I have a delivery to make. Plus, Imet and I…” She lifted her hands into a gesture that twisted them around each other, as though locked in synchronous orbit. “It’s a bit too much power for one room. Farouun can show you the rest of the way if need be.”

“Then I’ll see you around,” Mokou gave a parting nod.

“Yes, live and drink. And, Mokou?”

“Yeah?”

E’Beth smiled and gave a deep bow. “Thank you for calling on me.”

Mokou gave her a half-smile back — more for her own sake, since the esper had her usual blindfold on. “Sure.”

All in a moment, E’Beth contracted completely in on herself, leaving only a subtle pressure-pop of displaced atmosphere and a lingering satisfaction from her psyche. Mokou blinked and popped her ears. She couldn’t help but feel a bit unsettled; spacefolding like that used to be the sole domain of characters who were nothing but trouble. What she’d seen of E’Beth didn’t seem to paint her as one of those types, but it was still hard to trust those observations.

She knocked.

“Just a moment!” came the deep, muffled rumbling of Farouun through the doors. Heavy footfalls followed. The doors opened inwards. The Baroness filled the open frame.

She wore an evening jacket of deep crimson, its fabric shining in the warm light of her chamber’s oil lanterns. Flared black cuffs capped her sleeves. Below that, roughly at Mokou’s eye level, she wore black trousers that tapered in to hug her muscular calves. She had forgone footwear in the comfort of her own room, revealing that she’d applied matching gold lacquer to the massive clawtips of both her hands and feet. A chimera-sized brush rife with mane hairs was clutched in one hand.

“Mokou, my dear! Come in, come in. I was just tidying.”

Mokou swallowed. “Hope it’s no trouble.”

“None at all.” Farouun stepped to one side to give Mokou clearance, then stuck her head into the hallway. “She was just here, wasn’t she?”

“Who, E’Beth? Yeah, I got a little lost on the way. She steered me right.”

Farouun shut the doors after Mokou and gave a soft sigh, her furred ears drooping a few degrees. “She knows she can come in. Perhaps she wanted to give you privacy.”

“Me or Imet, maybe,” said Mokou.

“Ah, yes. I do wish she and they could afford less distance.”

Mokou’s stride slowed to take in the room in passing. These were the Baroness’s private quarters, and they made quite an impact. Everything was big, made to chimera-scale from the furniture to the ceiling to the cushioned conversation pit to one side. It all looked relatively new in the same way everything in the city did, but well-loved and well-lived in, and suited towards both personal and official use.

But there was no kitchen. Maybe that warranted its own chamber. Several hallways branched out from the far end of the room. One of them looked leftish.

“Do go on ahead!” Farouun instructed. “Just the first hall on the left there. The gate, and not the platform.”

“You coming?” asked Mokou, glancing back at her. She’d resumed brushing her mane. “You been tagging along for most of these. Can’t imagine you’d want to miss this one.”

“I’ll be along!” Farouun grinned reassuringly. “Imet likes a bit of time to get acclimated to new psyches.”

“Gotcha,” said Mokou. She stuck her hands into the pockets of her coveralls and hitched her step towards the proper exit. That was always the problem she ran into. Common courtesy for thousands of years of human existence was to keep your sorry troubles to yourself if nobody asked. But espers went and made yourself personal. Her common courtesy just wasn’t equipped for them. Maybe in another few thousand years she’d find a better way to adjust. Most likely not; every millennium that passed was another thousand years to sour her psyche.

The first hall on the left was a short one, terminating in a handsome little concrete chamber, though the heights were scaled to Farouun’s comfort. Vines clung to patterned grooves in the wall, studded with a few blossoms whose fragrance she remembered from across the desert, on the coast of the Pale Sea. Against the far wall was a lowered chrome platform, and above it was a sealed aperture in the ceiling. Something clicked in her sense of spatial awareness — she was under the ceremonial sconce of the Chefs Oth on the arena’s tiered throne complex. These chambers used the volume of the whole structure to the utmost.

But what truly drew her focus was the thing in the middle of the chamber. The gate. It was the oldest installation she’d seen in the city by far. A tall archway of bleached marble rose from the floor. Stylized rivers in silver filigree poured down its arch and columns from the broken moon adorning the keystone. Wires snaked from the wall across the floor to feed into its base. Mokou’s reflection stared back at her from the dim plane stretching its marble-framed threshold. It was energy, trapped, seemingly static save for a subtle and ever-renewing upward crawl.

“Uh,” she lifted her voice to call back into Farouun’s chamber. “I just go in?”

“It connects to Imet’s abode!” Farouun called back. “It’s perfectly safe!”

“Huh,” Mokou grunted. Evidently someone, somewhere along the line, had granted the power of spacefolding to furniture.

She held her breath and stepped in. Her skin tingled and her coveralls pressed against her as the energy plane slid across her body. Pressure built subtly. Then she was through.

Gunshots rang in her ears, three in quick succession. She hurled herself to the black marble floor. An island of countertopped cabinets ahead of her was the closest cover. She crawled the few paces quickly and pressed herself against the sturdy wood. Four more shots thundered out from across the room. Blood splashed along the countertop overhead, dripping warm into her hair. Someone fumbled against the island’s side, to her left, then collapsed into view on the cold floor.

Some pale stranger, blood pouring from her nose, seeping out from her stiff plastifer jerkin, staining her collared ruff, pooling beneath her spindly frame. The fall had knocked the blindfold from her eyes. Strange constellations faded from her irises with her lifeblood’s gouts.

Perfectly safe?

The oily click of a cylinder and the jingle of spent casings on marble punctuated the silence.

“Mokou!” came a voice — the gun’s wielder. Steps, approaching.

“Imet?” Mokou called back.

“In the flesh.”

Mokou took a deep breath. “What the hell?”

“Apologies. You aren’t my first guest today. Hope you’re better-behaved.”

Imet rounded the island’s corner, slotting slugs into the empty chambers of their revolver. Supple white leather gloves garbed their hands, while a sturdy and well-maintained white duster shielded their frame. Beneath it, they wore a ruffled shirt of pearlescent satin, mostly unbuttoned, and a pair of denim pants in midnight blue. The esper gleamed, from the chrome of their magnificent revolver to the panes of their round-lensed shades to the shimmering of their subtly pulsing crystalline circlet. They nodded down at Mokou in greeting.

“Guess that depends on what this one did,” said Mokou. She rose slowly to her feet, dusting off her coveralls. They had been the cleanest outfit she’d had.

“This one,” Imet tutted. They prodded the cooling body with the toe of their boot — a sharp-toed boot studded in white scales. “A Seeker. One of the Elder’s flock. Tried to fold me into the mass mind, drown me in the Cant. They always do. That’s not why you’re here. You got nothing to worry about.”

Very little of Imet’s cryptic response was particularly familiar, which was probably good. All, in fact, but the first thing. Wasn’t ‘Seeker’ the title E’Beth had given herself? “A Seeker? What, like—”

“Yes and no,” Imet pre-empted her. “Our E’Beth used to be one, but she got better. Had a few hands in helping her along myself, but it was mostly Farouun. She’s still seeking, just on her own path now.”

“Huh,” Mokou mulled on that. It explained a few things, and raised a few more questions. “These Seekers — they do this often?”

“It’s worse when I travel. Much worse when E’Beth’s around. Lately, though, it feels like I can’t even sit without these damn drones jumping me,” Imet complained, holstering their revolver. “Senseless. They’re never going to win. You see this?”

Already the esper’s corpse flaked away into deep crimson ashes. It was a bit unsettling. A bit too close to home.

“Not the ashes,” said Imet. They hefted one of the dead esper’s arms, limp and spindly. “This. There’s no meat on these bones! Healthy body, healthy mind — that’s basics. They get so caught up in the fire and the shine of the circuitry mind they miss what’s really fueling the whole endeavor. Nobody’s feeding them.”

“Sounds messy.”

Imet let the limb drop and waved their hand dismissively. “Esper politics.”

“Oof,” Mokou winced. “Had my fill of those back across the desert.”

Imet loosed a quick yip of a laugh. They stood, dusting the ash from their gloves. “I feel that. Less risk of getting worms in your brain over here.”

“Thank god,” sighed Mokou. Memories of Oth bubbled up in her unbidden. Furtive looks in the winding combs. Judgments passed down without a word spoken to her defense. Mind haze, high winds, salt spray, loneliness. Not a place she was eager to return to.

From the expression that settled over Imet’s face, they might’ve been host to similar feelings. A bit surprising, considering their prowess. Mokou’s impression of the city was one that rewarded psionic power. Evidently there were dimensions to it that she was never privy to. But then, something else was creeping its way into their expression. Recognition.

“You…” Imet waggled their finger towards Mokou as though conducting their own memories. Their next words dispelled any doubt — not their memories. Mokou’s. “You lived out along the far river caves.”

“Yeah?” Mokou scowled.

“There was something like an urban legend we had, growing up there.” They grinned. “You were the Upriver Hermit, yeah? That was you!”

“That was—” Mokou loosed a frustrated scoff and clutched her temples. “Look, I tried living there. If that was what they called me, that was what they called me. I’m not a goddamn hermit.”

“You were just living like one, is all,” chuckled Imet.

Mokou let her arms fall and looked away. There was finally a chance to actually take in the extent of the chamber she’d found herself in. It was wide, airy, and subtly curved; arclights gave ample and exclusive illumination. From the pressure and the ambient chill, it seemed to be underground, though it was difficult to gauge how deep. Crimson drapery livened walls of black marble. The same stone made up the countertops of its circumference and inner islands. A few doors hinted towards other chambers, but this one had a sole purpose: it was a kitchen.

It was a well-equipped kitchen. One island alone was host to nine stand mixers. An entire wall was host to ten ovens. An array of bowls sheltered in their radius of warmth, home to proofing doughs. Sharp gunsmoke faded into the warm scents of yeasts and spices.

Mokou finished her inspection circuit and settled her gaze back on Imet. It had taken more effort than she’d expected to look away in the first place — they had a magnetic presence. She waved her arms in vague indication. “Well, I’m not the one living in a damn senkai.”

“A senkai…” Imet replied. Doubtless now they rifled through her memories of tempered temples and meditation grounds shunted away from the world, back when her world was host to a fancier class of hermit. At least it made the context gap a bit easier to bridge. They shrugged, still sporting a pearly grin. “Suppose you could call it that. We’re about thirty-two strata deep, here, a ways east-southeast of Kyakukya — a good ways southeast of the Heptagon,” they continued, pre-empting both Mokou’s question of bearings and any chance to critique the first point of reference for its unfamiliarity.

It was a touch staggering — that much distance, bridged in a blink. That much closer. Mokou swallowed. “How much farther to the Moon Stair?”

Imet’s brows rose faintly. Their smile faded into a thoughtful neutrality. “From the surface, as the glowcrow flies? About halfway there.”

“We’re halfway?” Mokou asked. Halfway to the Moon Stair. Halfway to Kaguya.

She started thinking very intently about her kata, for all the good it would do.

Imet shook their head. “We ain’t on the surface. And from here to there, as the mopango digs — well, you’re much better off flying. My place doesn’t connect, anyway.”

“Mm,” Mokou grunted. She nodded down at the pile of red ash and plastifer that remained where the esper had fallen. “Doesn’t stop them from getting in.”

“Just said it doesn’t connect, not that it’s impenetrable,” replied Imet. They nudged an ash-coated sneaker from the pile with the toe of their boot.

“Huh. Pretty nice kicks for an assassin,” said Mokou. “Though, not as nice as those boots.”

Imet grinned again, turning their ankle to display the scalebound leather. “Albino dawnglider. Ibulian heel. Yours ain’t half bad, either.”

“You like ‘em? They’re—”

Imet held up a hand. “Phenomenal. I know everything you remember about those kicks.”

Mind readers. Mokou scoffed. “Well, you don’t need me for conversation. So why am I here?”

“Apologies,” said Imet. They turned on their heel and strode slowly across the room, towards the doughs. “I tease, I know I tease. Some waste of a dervish just tried to shackle my psyche to the center of all centers until it melted in. Then in through my gate walks—” They waved their palm back towards Mokou, up and down, “—all this. I only invited one of y’all. If I didn’t reassert my selfhood I might lose it. But, listen.”

“I’m listening,” Mokou sighed.

Imet turned their gesture towards the proofing bowls and beckoned. The bowls took flight, drifting through the air to roost on the island in front of Mokou. The assassin’s bloodspatter wicked itself away. Imet turned back to Mokou, casting out a confident smile, arms outstretched.

“You leave now, and you and I never find out what we cook up together. Because I’ll tell you this: it’s gonna be the best damn thing you eat all week. I guarantee.”

Chapter Text

“Hey, this is real wheat flour!” said Mokou. It was a nice consistency in her hands. Not like the usual bitter kind out here — that kind had a certain inescapable coarseness to it that often proved hard for her to work around. “Thought y’all were hard up for it?”

“Well, you and Agate have been out of town for a few weeks, so there’s two less chefs in the running for it,” Imet replied, rolling out their own batch of dough across the island from Mokou. They’d doffed their duster and their gloves and rolled up their sleeves now that the task was dough. If the chamber’s chill bothered them, they didn’t show it in the slightest. “That sauce you two are brewing — how’s it coming along?”

“Just fine,” said Mokou, proudly. Nearly the first thing she’d done with Agate when they got back to her workshop was check on the fermentation. As clinical as the metal brewing chambers were, all signs were still very promising — the yeasts Agate had found were doing the trick.

“Glad to hear it. I’m counting on getting a taste,” said Imet.

“Don’t worry. We’re making plenty,” Mokou replied. Whatever cost Agate had paid to get that much wheat was already perfectly justified, as far as Mokou was concerned.

“That’s good! It’s not like you two got a whole harvest,” Imet chuckled. “All the same, easy with that dough. Don’t overwork it. We still have to add the butter.”

“What’s butter here? Cows? Y’all got cows here?” Mokou thought about cows. They were a rare import in her bygone home below the Barrier. And after, it was always tumult after tumult. She tried to remember the last time she saw one. Her memories slipped away from the effort.

“I’m afraid not,” said Imet, with an air of consolation. At least they could compare what she’d managed to remember from memories of their own travels. “Usually we’re working with pig butter, goat butter, sometimes gnu butter. At the right time of year we can get equimax butter. But today, we’ve got a real treat.”

They beckoned over a covered tray, which uncovered itself mid-flight. The tray settled gently between them. Resting atop it was a stack of soft bricks, hued a pale gold. Imet took up a knife and pruned a little prism from the corner of the topmost butter brick. They offered it, blade-in, to Mokou.

“Go on, have a taste of that.”

Mokou accepted the knife by the handle. She mouthed the prismic pat off the blunt side. Her mouth filled with its rich texture, buoyed by its delicate taste — salty-sweet, like some primordial ancestor to caramel. She’d never had butter quite like it. It took some of the edge off of the long absence of another of humanity’s successful domestications.

“Oh my god,” she said, at last. “What is that?”

“That,” Imet replied, “is butter made from the milk of a salt-aspected grazing cherub.”

If the match she’d judged was any indication, cherubim were considered haute cuisine here. But that was an urchin cherub. This, evidently, was something else. A grazer? Mokou set down the knife. She lifted her hands and steepled them in front of her face. She took a breath. “Y’all have been milking Celestial emissaries?”

“Just the one. She showed up a few years back and decided to move in.” As they spoke, they placed the topmost brick of cherub butter into the center of a creased sheet of waxed paper, then folded the paper over it into a square for flattening.

“Why?” asked Mokou. It looked like Imet was preparing the butter for proper lamination into the dough. She started squaring her own portion of dough in anticipation — there was a lot of dough to work through. They were expecting the Baroness, after all.

Imet shrugged. “Ask her yourself. You see an ontologically perfect ungulate grazing around the place, that’s the one.”

Agate’s cryptic assertion in the middle of their Templar suppression came to mind. “Wait, is that what a ‘grazing hedonist’ is?”

“Can be,” said Imet.

“Agate said I was one the other week,” said Mokou, though it was probably already needless to say.

“Agate says a lot of things. Lot of times she even backs it up,” said Imet. “There some other way you think a grazing hedonist ought to be?”

“No, no, I just…” Her eye was drawn once more to the butter. Its flavor, its malleability, its richness. “I didn’t know she felt that way about me. How do you tell if you are one?”

“It’s a pretty broad category,” Imet replied. “How’s your milk?”

It wasn’t a question Mokou often fielded. But considering the sorts of outlooks they cultivated in this city, it couldn’t be that unexpected. She shrugged. “No complaints yet.”

“Well, there you go,” said Imet, gesturing encouragingly with their rolling pin. “You ought to try making some Mokou butter sometime.”

“I dunno about that,” grunted Mokou. “Seems like a lot of hassle.”

“Not your style of hedonism?” Imet chuckled.

“What, churning butter? That’s work.” Mokou slapped the dough softly. “Anyway, what’s all this going into?”

“There’s an old, old style of layered butter pastry I’m aiming for,” said Imet. “We’ll be laminating the butter in with some of this.”

With that, Imet proffered a deep bowl full of unsettlingly fine crystalline shards. They caught the light at bad angles — like before they’d been rendered into shards, they might have cohered into something better, but now they just threatened to induce a migraine. Or maybe that impression was its own illusion, and the angles were always going to be wrong. The crystals’ appearance was quizzically at odds with the refined perfection of the butter and the simplicity of the dough.

Mokou drew her head back a bit to see if a bit of distance would help reconcile it all. “The hell kind of sugar is that? It’s kinda…”

“Hideous, I know. But we won’t be looking at it for long. This is grated Crystal of Eve. For all that it’s rough on the eyes, it really kicks.” They covered the bowl with a cloth before they continued their explanation. “Once this batch is all laminated in with the butter and crystals, we spiral it up and bake it.”

It jogged something inside her — the subtle wintry chill of the kitchen, the feel of the dough and the scent of yeasts, the recipe and the faint prickling of psychic attention. An old memory, from before Qud, before Oth, before the ice. Before the end of winters. Back in her old home.

“Going for like, uh…” Mokou snapped her fingers a few times to hurry along the recollection spurred by Imet’s description. “Kouign Amanns, yeah?”

Imet laughed with what seemed like even parts joy and disbelief. “Thought I was supposed to be the mind reader. You’re dead on. Wait, don’t tell me—”

“Mmhmm,” Mokou nodded. She told Imet; once the memories had risen to the forefront of her psyche, they couldn’t help but be told one way or another. “The first esper I ever met showed ‘em to me.”

Imet let out a slow breath. Quiet awe crept into their tone. “The infamous Usami Sumireko. No shit. Was she a baker, too?”

“Can’t exactly remember, honestly,” admitted Mokou with a wince. “I just remember she had me try fixing ‘em with her once, not how they ended up. It’s a miracle I can remember that much.”

With the butter properly flattened, Imet transferred it to the middle of Mokou’s dough and made it serve as a bed for the grated crystal before folding the dough’s corners over it all. “Well, I doubt they’d have ended up better than what we’ve got cooking. But I’ve got to know: how did she end up?”

“It’s hard to say,” said Mokou.

She stood there in the kitchen, watching the esper’s expert motions, wracking her corroded memories for any trace that might answer the question to either of their satisfactions. Imet let her reminisce in silence. Whatever sense Mokou could assemble from her fragments, Imet seemed to trust her to do it right. That, or they at least had the tact not to butt in with their own clashing conclusions.

Some of her liveliest memories of Sumi still centered around that first incident of hers — the urban legend bleed-over from the old Outside, the lunar orbs and their false promises. She’d thought they were a way out at first — a path to a true death. It was just another lie baked into a trap. When had the Moon ever given her what she’d wanted? Still, at least it had given her a reason to get out of bed, and the opportunity to meet new people.

People like Sumi.

“The thing about Sumi was — before I got the chance to really get to know her, she might have already been killed and replaced by her own doppelganger.”

Imet’s cooking motions stopped. They slumped in on themselves and loosed a heavy breath.

“What?” asked Mokou. She hadn’t expected such a dramatic result from what she’d dredged up.

“She was the first? The first esper?”

“Well, first I met,” replied Mokou. “Could’ve been others, but… She probably would’ve told me about them.”

“And she might’ve been her own doppelganger. That was about the worst thing you could’ve told me about her.” Another presence built in the room — or rather, Imet’s presence seemed to intensify. A second Imet stepped seemingly from nowhere to the first Imet’s side. They patted their back consolingly. Considering Imet’s lack of reaction, this was an utterly routine thing to happen. Mokou had been warned, to some degree, about their multiple bodies, but it was still a bit of a shock to see it in person. Now the Carbide Chef had twice the brain to pick up Mokou’s thoughts. As the first Imet recovered enough to resume work on the dough, the second rounded the kitchen island to make for Mokou’s side, picking up the first’s conversational strand. “You caught me on a good day.”

Mokou considered this in light of her own day and found she felt the same. It was good to be back in the city — or somewhere with a close enough connection to it. Her brain had been quieter overall today. Of course, more bodies to listen in meant even quieter signals could be picked up, but that externality was out of her hands. She’d barely even actively thought about death — at least, before someone died right in front of her.

There was that.

“You killed somebody.”

It was more for clarity that she noted it, not for judgment. She’d certainly had her share of killings on good days.

More Imets had manifested in her periphery, taking up tasks around the kitchen — a third and fourth preparing more doughs, a fifth checking stock pots, a sixth and seventh gathering ingredients. More power building in the chamber. The second Imet reached her side and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I killed somebody else. Some half-starved Seeker, and just the one. If that’s all who jumps me today, that’s a win. Come this way, we’ve got to start the etouffée.” The second led her over to the fifth. As they walked, the second continued. “You keep thinking about me that way and you’re going to reach the wrong conclusions. See, all this is me, manifesting. All up until it’s not me.”

“You’ve got a doppelganger,” Mokou realized. She felt a touch ashamed at how slowly, relatively, the realization had come to her. It couldn’t even be a private shame.

“No shame in my kitchen, Mokou,” said the Imet they now joined at the saucepots. Still Imet, rather, just speaking through another manifestation. They gestured towards a cutting board next to them and its waiting thorax of salthopper. Riding this gesture was a directed burst of culinary intent: it was to be shelled and portioned. They continued. “It ain’t as though it’s a common malady, having an evil twin.”

Mokou took up the knife (a very nice knife; perfectly balanced, forged of the same green alloy as that of the warmonger’s blade). She spoke as she worked the blade between the chitin and the meat. “Sumi never really let it slow her down any, if I remember right. At least, after—”

“After. But it was just about all after, the way you knew her, yeah?” Imet laughed ruefully. “Like it was her one way or another.”

“She kinda grew into it,” Mokou noted. A bit of wet suction, and the shell levered free. “Or, grew out of it? Something. Think she thought it was cool more than anything.”

“Ain’t a damn bit of sense in that,” said Imet. With a flick of their wrist, they willed the shell off the counter and over a stock pot. They clenched their fist, and it crumpled in on itself into chitinous shards. They released, and the shards fell into the simmering stock. Flavorful scents wafted free almost immediately.

“What’s yours like?” asked Mokou. The knife sank through salthopper meat.

Imet turned the gaze of their closest manifestation on her. They cocked their head subtly, marshaling their response.

“You want to die.”

Mokou loosed a soft breath. There wasn’t much point in protesting it to a mind reader. Nor did it particularly answer anything. As best she could tell, it was a bewildering and touchy deflection.

Imet held up a hand, acknowledging it all. A gesture asking her to wait and see. “I’m not judging. You’ve really made a home for it. It’s like neon. Like time and the earth are prisons for you to be on. And on, and on. I’ve been there.”

“You don’t seem like it,” Mokou dully replied. If it was simply a matter of empathic mirroring from Mokou’s accumulated memories, she was going to leave.

“Well, not anywhere near as long as you. But still, I’ve been there, all on my own,” said Imet. They stirred the salthopper chitin in its stock pot. There was a strange, warping, speeding effect to the movement of the spoon’s shaft — like past a certain point in the pot, time flowed differently. “Back in Oth, for a while there, they were grooming me to be Free Seer.”

Mokou had never been privy to the process the self-styled Tyrants of Oth used to elect their leader. She had no mind-gift to give her any say or investment. It was a city with politics difficult for a woman like her to engage in — esper politics. She slid the portioned salthopper meat into a waiting bowl. More of Imet’s bodies continued to work around her, sifting flours, measuring spices, chopping alliums. The ambient attention on her was intense. “Free Seer, huh?” she said. “Would’ve thought you’d be a shoo-in.”

“Lot of very powerful people thought that too.” For the sake of their conversation, Imet stayed speaking from the body at the saucepots. The esper’s tone was level — the pains they traced out were pains they’d accepted long ago. “That’s a lot of pressure. A lot to carry around every day. And it was all just expected. Power like mine, they didn’t ask.”

“Never mind what you thought about it, huh?”

Imet shook their head. “Oh, no, very much mind. The most, even. My own mind was my enemy — you know how that feels.”

“Mmhm,” Mokou grunted. In all honesty, it was almost refreshing to know someone else here had struggled with an insistent death-drive. Everyone felt too well-put-together for her to not find herself wanting in comparison.

Imet occupied their mouth with a ladled sip of the salthopper stock. They offered the same to Mokou. It was rich, savory, hearty. The kind of taste that took hours to build, and not the scant minutes Mokou had seen it simmering. The esper nodded in satisfaction. In another heavy stockpot, they started a roux.

“What I carried with me was the will to die. Those powerful people, they couldn’t know I carried it. They especially couldn’t know they made me carry it in the first place. It all compounds. You ever peel a spine fruit?”

“Peeled a few since I got here,” said Mokou. More alliums had drifted their way onto her cutting board, long leek-like things with a purplish hue. Accompanying them, more mental instructions. She set to work on them.

“But you ain’t peeled one fresh from the fractus. You hit a hidden curl on ‘em sometimes and it’s just spines all the way down. That was my mind. It got recursive.” They paused briefly in their recollection. Mustering something with a few slow breaths. Tracery of a pain much harder to accept. “So what I did was, I found a way to peel the spines out.”

“Easy as that, huh?” Mokou gave an empty chuckle. A vague pang of jealousy filtered up through her.

Imet laughed back, another rueful one. “Yeah, easy as that. I took my will to die and I just externalized it. Worst mistake in my whole damn life. Been living with it ever since.”

“Aw, hell. You made your own doppelganger?” Mokou winced. Her vague jealousy at the thought of finding a way to purge the death-drive subsided with the knowledge of what an imperfect fix it was. “Guess that’ll tank your chances of being Free Seer.”

“Oh, sure. But holding that position would’ve been a mistake any way you slice it.” Imet gathered up the leeks and added them to the roux. The roux was a lovely golden brown — it had reached that point much faster than Mokou would have guessed. Yet again it seemed they could sway the relative flow of time in specific physical points. That was a fearsome power, and all too familiar.

It was something like what Kaguya wielded. She tried not to think about her. She tried to think more about Sumi, her old friend, instead. Her memories of Sumi were of more immediate and personal interest to her host — and they were probably a lot less telling than any given memory of Kaguya. “Sumi ended up okay, at least. You know, relatively, for what might’ve happened to her.”

“That’s a chance I can’t take. Mine’s not like that. I wish mine was like hers.”

“What’s yours like?” asked Mokou.

Imet’s expression darkened, such as it was visible around their reflective shades. “They wear my face. They wield my powers. They have my gun. They keep coming back. If I’m lucky, they’ve spent everything just to find me. If I’m not, there’s just as many of them as there are of me.”

“They’re you.”

“They are not me. I try to read them, and what I find in there… Most every wrinkle, every complexity, every want and need and desire of mine is all boiled down into one singular purpose: killing me.”

Mokou let out a slow breath, letting her condolences color her expression. “Attitude like that, they can’t be much of a conversationalist, can they?”

Imet shook their head in confirmation. “Never once heard ‘em speak. Never even heard the voice of their mind. And it ain’t for lack of trying. I can’t see a personhood growing out of that. There’s no consolation in letting them take my place.”

“And when you say they keep coming back…” Mokou trailed off.

Mokou kept coming back. This doppelganger of Imet’s must be some consequence of psionic meddling. There was no chance the people of this time had reverse engineered something like the Hourai Elixir. She didn’t even know how, and it had been a part of her for nearly her entire existence. Everything she’d seen since the thaw informed that chance. Everything she knew about the Elixir—

She still knew a lot of things about it. A lot of very sensitive things. Sensitive things to remember in the presence of a nine-bodied mind reader. It was all out on the table now. Maybe it had already been out since the moment she stepped through the gate.

A bead of sweat rolled down her brow, despite the kitchen’s chill. She scanned the faces and stances of Imet’s surrounding bodies. A pause had settled over them. Their closest manifestation held the stockpot of salthopper broth poised over the saucepan of roux and vegetables. They met Mokou’s gaze with a chagrined expression.

“Well I sure as hell don’t mean they come back like that. When I put them down, that’s it for that timeline. If it wasn’t — no, no.” They shook their head and began to pour the stock. “I’m not touching any of that, Mokou. Just end up with the both of us upset or worse. Hell of a thing you’re carrying around.”

“I get that a lot,” Mokou sighed. Their answer dissipated some of her tension. It was still hard to fully relax around so much psychic power, but there wasn’t much either of them could do about that. It would have to be enough to know that power wasn’t bent on her own usurpation and domination.

“Pass me that congealed blaze, would you?” asked Imet, gesturing towards a tall jar that held a deep red oily sludge.

There was absolutely nothing barring them from getting it themselves, which probably meant it was an attempt to bring her back into the lesson. That was fine. She passed it over and watched with interest as Imet ladled several generous scoops into the etouffée. “That on top of the peppers already in there? Nice.”

“Mmmmhm,” Imet hummed. They gave it a stir. The eyewatering, spice-bolstered aroma was downright heavenly. After a moment, they spoke again on the original topic. “Ultimately, they must be getting something they want out of this or they wouldn’t keep flinging themselves at me. Like, one of us is dying. Ain’t me, but maybe it’s close enough for them.”

“You have to kill ‘em a lot?” asked Mokou.

Imet let out a slow breath in calculation. “Bit slower lately. As of this week, we’re at… one thousand, one hundred and thirty-two attempts. In doppelganger logic, that’s 1,132 lifetime suicides. And that’s just from this timeline alone. Got a good grip more in the neighboring causalities.”

“Ahh…” Mokou nodded, tired and knowingly. “But you’ve still kept count.”

Mokou certainly hadn’t. Even discounting all the times she simply let herself go, in winter after winter, back in the old world. Might as well track how many times she’d scratched an itch.

“I owe it to myself to keep it,” said Imet. “And I owe it to myself to never lose. Considering how I saddled myself with them in the first place, I can’t countenance what it would represent.”

“Good luck, then, really.” Mokou meant it. It was a hell of a thing to carry — and not carrying it brought the esper a whole new slew of complications. “But, uh — why tell me all this, anyway? We just met.”

“Because it’s not good to bottle all this up!” Imet replied. They rested a hand on Mokou’s shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. A firm grip — not the kind she usually associated with espers. “Not for you, not for me, not for anyone around us. Giving voice to it takes some of the pressure off of those of us who can’t help but hear it, you know? A burden spread’s a burden lessened.”

“I hear you,” said Mokou. It was heartening to hear that sort of philosophy coming from one of the city’s leading luminaries. “At this point, though, mine’s been bottled up, casked, wheeled down to the cellar and aged in the barrel. Been leaked, siphoned, spilled, frozen and reheated. Just about any way I could tackle it, I’ve tackled it. It ain’t going anywhere.” She paused for a moment’s consideration. “Any way short of shunting it out into a doppelganger, I mean. Don’t think I can do that.”

“Be grateful for that. I’m just saying it’s rough out there. Folks react accordingly. Your circumstances are your own, but you aren’t alone in what you feel about ‘em.” Another body of theirs patted her other shoulder and guided her away, towards another station given over to pastry work. “The other thing about why… Well, living down here, I don’t get to have too many conversations with new folks. I appreciate the chance with you.”

“I’m getting fed out of it. Never been one to pass that up,” said Mokou. “What are we actually making, though?”

All the mental instructions had only shown the what of it. None of them had traced out why.

Imet grinned and swept a hand across the flour-coated countertop in indication. “Over here? Beignets. Fried dough puffs, all dusted down with powdered yondercane sugar. Best enjoyed piping hot and fresh out the fryer.”

“Oh, that sounds good as hell,” said Mokou. The anticipation perked her up from the grim course of the prior conversation. “But what does it do? What does all of this do?”

“We’re just about done. Let me grab Farouun and we’ll find out.”

Chapter Text

“—and you don’t know what it does yet?”

That was Farouun’s voice, accompanying her bulk as it slid out from the gate’s shimmering energy pane. Imet’s manifestation that had served as messenger trailed in after her.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea,” called the closest of Imet’s bodies to Mokou.

Mokou nodded towards Imet, raising her own voice to call to Farouun, too. “Took ‘em a while to warm up to me.”

“Ah, but warm you certainly did!” said Farouun. She took in deep breaths of the subterranean kitchen’s air and sighed in satisfaction. “It smells positively transcendent in here.”

Mokou tossed a dough pat up into a spin before catching it in flour-dusted hands. The motion helped her feel like slightly less of a spectator in the proceedings, though not by much. She lowered her voice again to address Imet. “You want to clue me in on this pretty good idea?”

“Where’s the fun in spelling it all out?” Imet asked to Mokou. They glanced over at Mokou and winked. “That was a trick question. You want to help with the menu’s calligraphy?”

“What?” Mokou replied. “We barely started on these beignets. You’re really gonna pull me from them already?”

Two of the esper’s other manifestations had started a little showcase for the Baroness of what they’d already accomplished. Nearly all of the rest of them kept up the momentum on every dish in progress, keeping vigil over ovens and stockpots. One of them, though, had produced a long roll of parchment and brushes and now approached. This scroll-toting body of Imet’s shrugged. “Ain’t my fault you’ve only got the one body. Keep going if you want, but I could handle those. The menu might help with the big picture.”

Mokou loosed an amused breath. “Shit, alright. Been a while since I’ve flexed those calligraphy muscles. Got flour hands, though, give me a second.” She set the dough aside and stepped back from the counter. Holding her hands out in front of her, she focused a bit of sorcerous intent through them. Snapping flames wreathed her hands. The flour burned away.

Imet grinned at the display. “Ahh, you’ve got the Emberlily special.”

“You can call it what you want,” Mokou replied, killing the flames just as quickly. “But I guarantee I was doing it first.”

Imet nodded. They rolled the parchment out on a clear bit of countertop. “I’ll take that guarantee. It might even sway me if she wasn’t one of the loves of my life.”

“Say no more,” said Mokou. She stepped to their side, gazing down at the blank parchment. “You haven’t slipped any other pastries past me, have you?”

“I was contemplating baklava, but we should’ve started sooner for that one,” Imet mused, stirring a brush in a small ink-basin. It was hard to say how telling an admission it was on the state of their powers. Evidently they couldn’t turn back time — or at least not for baklava. “No, about the only surprise I have left for you is the whipped soul curd.”

“Soul curd? The hell is that?” asked Mokou.

“It’s heavenly on a beignet. You want me to spoil the surprise already?” With the brush properly inked, they passed it to Mokou and prepared another for themselves.

“Isn’t this supposed to be a lesson?” Mokou rebutted. “Hard to learn when I don’t know what we’re doing or what we’re even hoping to be doing.”

As Imet spoke, their brush traced out the contours of platings to come. “Well, above all else, we’re making something that’s damn tasty. That ain’t something to discount so readily. The fancy butter, the luxury doughs, the right cut of salthopper — those are the elements really zeroing in on that.”

“Alright,” Mokou nodded appreciatively. “Finally starting to sound like a lesson.”

Imet laughed. “Mokou, half the fun of cooking is the joy of discovery. I want to preserve as much of that for you as you can bear.”

“You really don’t give lessons, huh,” said Mokou, tsking softly. “I just want to know what aspects we’re working with. I figure you of all people should know what I don’t know here.”

“Those are memory leeks in the etouffée, are they not?” asked Farouun, drawing up to the countertop next to Mokou and planting her elbows down to watch the menu take shape.

“Sharp eye, as always,” Imet grinned back at her. “Go ahead, write that down.”

“Memory leeks?” asked Mokou, brush poised.

“Yeah, good for the memory. Figured you could use the help.” Imet made a slow gesture towards their deft illustration of the etouffée. “Course, most of the body’s coming from that salthopper you hulled. On top of that, you’ll recall everything building the spice: peppers, courtesy of my beloved Bajiko’s arboretum, and congealed blaze, courtesy of my beloved Jathiss’s injector collection. That last one gives it a fire aspect.”

“You’ve got my attention,” said Mokou. She thought back to Bajiko’s lesson, and the ingredient she’d picked for her peppers. How its aspect had entwined with the rest of the meal. “Like fire ant gaster, yeah?”

“Not just like,” Imet replied. “Same stuff, just refined to medical-grade spiciness. It’s a clean burn.”

That was one less mystery, resolved satisfactorily to knowledge. “I like the sound of that. What’s the injector do, anyway?”

“Your body heats, the cold retreats. Your fires burn hotter and brighter, but stop hotfooting and it burns itself out of you. Congeal it like we’ve done and it gets downright tame by comparison. Though, a lot less predictable.” Imet opened their palm towards Mokou in a gesture of vague encouragement. “You’d like it.”

“Shit,” Mokou whistled. “Next time there’s an ice age, remind me to pack a few.” She bent with her brush, mustering the same focus and care she put into inking her ofuda. Seemed that the responsibility of naming had fallen to her. That suited her fine; she had a few simmering. Next to Imet’s first illustration, she wrote: Fond Recollection “Blazing Salthopper Etouffée”.

“A touch of poetry, there,” Farouun noted appreciatively. “Well warranted, from what I’ve gathered.”

Mokou found Farouun’s presence a bit of a welcome relief. It meant that much more of Imet’s psionic attentions were diverted towards the chimera’s tremendous force of personality. And she was warm. Mokou refreshed her brush, nodding. “Let’s keep ‘em coming. The Kouign Amanns — anything else in ‘em aside from the butter and the crystals?”

“No, ma’am,” said Imet. “Crystals of Eve don’t quite flow with the rest of our processes, but they really get the synapses firing. Good for espers.”

“Mmhm,” Mokou grunted. Flow or no flow, they might mesh nicely with the memory leeks. Any help she could get on that front was help she sorely needed.

She traced out an eponym: Kouign Amann “Mindfire of Celestial Evening”.

“Lovely brushwork,” noted Imet.

“Thank you,” said Mokou.

Imet continued down the list of the evening’s offerings. “Now, the beignets are bringing in two more aspects. First is the yondercane sugar topping.”

“Two different types of fancy sugar in these pastries tonight,” said Mokou. The thought of it was buoying.

“We’re by no means limited for options here at the Heptagon,” said Farouun. “Still, every new element has its own chances for complications.”

“Yeah, we’re already pushing it here,” agreed Imet. “You got a sweet tooth?”

“Never been one to turn down a sweet,” Mokou replied. “Been through too many times where I just couldn’t get my hands on ‘em, you know?”

Imet nodded in sympathy. “Well then you’re really in for a treat tonight. Yondercane’s a specialty sugar. Real complex palate. Gives a dish a teleportation aspect.”

“Teleportation?” asked Mokou. A pang of uncertainty shot through her. Old memories drove that pang of times spent in witness to powers ancient, terrible, and inscrutable. She’d already had those memories disturbed once today by her means of arrival. “You mean like… spacefolding?”

The esper’s easy demeanor tensed for a moment. They took a slow, contemplative breath, then replied with due gravity. “Is it the power that worries you, or the power’s context? Sure, some dangerous types have used it. I know damn well — today’s dervish worked for one of the all-timers.”

A deep, concerned reverberation sounded from Farouun, halfway between a sigh and a grumble. “Another one today?”

“Another one,” Imet replied with a shake of their head. They spoke again to Mokou. “But as for the power itself… plenty of folks can do it to some degree nowadays. Practically a fact of life — even plants do it.”

“Or that gate of yours,” said Mokou, nodding across the kitchen at the shimmering arch.

“Exactly,” said Imet. “And you can do it too. If that’s what you bring into it and that’s what you want, you might just get it. That’s yondercane.”

Mokou mulled on this in silence, gently stirring her brush into the ink. The explanation didn’t quite dispel her misgivings, but it did leave her intrigued.

“As for soul curd,” Farouun rumbled, “it’s another true luxury. Congealed from the payload of the rare Ubernostrum injector — I’m given to understand that the nanomaterials present in the injector itself make for a key infusion into the mixture. A creamy cornerstone of medicinal cuisine.”

“Ubernostrum, huh?” Mokou mused. “Don’t think I’ve seen one of those. What’s it do?”

“Something of a panacea,” answered Imet. “Cures just about anything up to ironshank. Even regrows limbs, if you can get your hands on one. It’s pricey stuff.”

Farouun nodded. “We can occasionally manufacture our own, given lucky harvests and bountiful scrap. The blossom that constitutes its active ingredient is notoriously fickle to cultivate, and nanomaterials can prove to be a challenge to our industrial base. They import at upwards of seventy-five drams per unit, all pending availability. It’s hardly the sort of thing one can bulk-order.”

Mokou loosed a low whistle. “Well, good thing you’ve got those bubble-tanks, then. Did me right when Tabi got my hand the other week.”

Farouun’s brows and ears rose in excitement as she started to scan the kitchen, only for Imet to preempt her. “Sorry, love, she left the cat with Agate today.”

“Ah,” said Farouun, with faint disappointment. The disappointment lasted only a moment before she patted a claw on Mokou’s shoulder. “Well, it heartens me to hear that our clinics helped you, though—” she gave a rueful chuckle, “—the regeneration tanks can be even less scalable than the provenance of Ubernostrum.”

Mokou’s vague misgivings returned, spiking into dread. “What do you mean? Is that fizzy blue stuff hard to get?”

“The convalessence?” Farouun replied. “No, no, that’s simply a matter of milking the blue jells. But convalessence alone only lets the tank account for… burns, punctures, lacerations, organ damage, lesser maladies, and suchlike. The key factor to regenerating entire limbs is an admixture of cloning draught. Each added dram of cloning draught restores one limb — and imports for upwards of one thousand, two hundred and fifty drams of fresh water.”

The figure hit her processes of economic reckoning. If she filled her water ration every day, it’d be half a year before she saved up enough to offset that debt. The bottom dropped, dizzyingly, from Mokou’s gut. She steadied herself on the counter. “1250 drams? It cost 1250 drams to grow my hand back? God. Oh, god. She should’ve just killed me.”

“Steady, my dear,” rumbled Farouun, squeezing her shoulder with a firm grip. Under better circumstances, it might have even been reassuring. “It’s municipal! The clinics stock it to be used as a public utility.”

“No, exactly!” Mokou countered. She lifted her hand, though the intervening weeks of violence, resurrection, and toil had buffed out the traces of that severance. “Mine just grows back when I do! Someone else could’ve used that — someone whose shit doesn’t grow back.”

The menu was forgotten, buried under the guilt of such needless waste. That was substance meant to banish death, and she, deathless, had squandered it. That so many had gone before her while she had no choice but to linger was an injustice too great for words. Her existence had a terrible weight. A neverending burden on the world and its life, so long as the world remained a home to it. She only rarely had the economy of that weight laid out so clearly in front of her.

“Mokou,” said Imet, leaning into her periphery. Their voice was gentle, yet commanding. The soft scent of ink rose from the brush held cocked in their half-raised grip. “That cost is paid. That’s what we built the damn city for, to pay that for everyone who comes to live here, everyone who visits. A burden spread’s a burden lessened.”

“What if some other poor bastard had crawled in needing a new leg?” said Mokou. Her guilt wouldn’t be so easily doused.

“Then they’d get into another tube — we keep them stocked to serve the whole populace,” said Farouun. “Perhaps once we have another few thousand people to account for, we might start running into more issues in sourcing and supplying it, but as it is, you used it, as intended, while it was fresh.”

“Mm,” Mokou grunted. But then—

Hey, came a presence in her mind. Rather, it was a presence she’d already been feeling in her mind for the whole lesson. Only now it solidified around Imet’s intent and sentiment, projected into her. Sorry for the intrusion.

What? Mokou thought back as best she could. Mental conversation took muscles she didn’t flex too often — even if it weren’t coming into such an emotional morass. It was hard to keep the grudge from her thoughts.

Imet’s gaze was unreadable behind their shades and their composure. Nonetheless, their thoughts reached her. I’d tell you ‘no guilt in my kitchen’ but it would make me a hypocrite. Just wanted to let you know when you feel like everyone around you’s paying the cost of your presence, I feel you too. Least you didn’t expose anyone you know to psychic assassins today, yeah?

Another diplomatic overture of empathy, of solidarity. Deeper, perhaps, than they’d anticipated. Mokou knew what it felt like to be hunted.

Only because I’ve lost track of Kaguya, Mokou replied.

All that trickled through from Imet’s psychic presence was a faint, concerned disapproval. Now, maybe it’s none of my business, but why do you want to bring her into this?

Their response flared a curiosity verging on paranoia within her. What do you know about her?

Only what you brought in with you, and that’s too much to sift through. Some of that seems liable to turn the appetite. Be a damn shame after everything we’ve been cooking tonight. Come on, the menu’s almost done and so’s dinner.

That was sound advice. But something — centuries of instincts, or some flicker of a memory from Oth, or her own fevered fondness over the woman who wasn’t here — told her the esper might be hiding something. Though she felt that suspicion, she didn’t feel it strongly enough to want to do anything about it.

Mokou took a heavy, measured breath. “Soul curd, then. You broke open a rare injector that could’ve grown a limb back to make this dip.”

“We set it free,” said Imet. “An injector’s only ever going to do the one thing it does for you, and sometimes, for those of us without your particular pedigree, it doesn’t even do that. But once you turn it into an ingredient? You open it up into a whole constellation of possibilities. You unshackle it from the constraints of its form. You get some fireworks.”

“Alright,” said Mokou, at last. It was already done. She’d simply have to make peace with it. She wrote: Extravagant Life “Elsewhere’s Soul Food”.

“As artful a spread as ever, and beautifully monikered,” said Farouun. She stepped behind Imet and bent for a quick press of her forehead to the top of the esper’s head. “You really ought to give more lessons, my love.”

Imet chuckled, reaching up to scratch their fingers through her mane. “I’ll think about it. Now, are we going to eat or what?”

Chapter Text

The spread laid out before Mokou was enough to make her stomach growl. Steam wafted from baskets of pastries and the cauldron of etouffée — Imet’s other bodies had been hard at work while the menu was underway. The Carbide Chef’s manifestations had dwindled down until only the one remained to help carry the dinner into an adjoining dining chamber.

Imet now held a pair of bowls suspended steadily in midair before them to dole out ladlings of savory stew for Mokou and themself. Farouun pulled out a chair for Mokou. Hungry as she was, Mokou still found the opportunity to admire the craft of the table as she waited. It was a lovingly custom work, made of black-stained wood and built around a split in the level of the floor. Half the table sat atop a raised slab of marble, while the rest, remaining level, extended off the slab, giving accommodations for diners of multiple sizes. It made her wonder how often the Carbide Chefs got together for group meals in this room.

“Here you go,” said Imet, willing a perfect portion of etouffée over rice to settle itself in front of Mokou.

“Thanks,” said Mokou. She hadn’t felt much in the way of expectations of decorum over the course of the lesson, but still, it only felt right to wait until the other two had their servings.

She didn’t have to wait long. Imet seated themself down to one side of Mokou with their own bowl, while Farouun took the other side with the rest of the cauldron. No further invitation was necessary. Mokou took up a spoonful of the stew and tasted it.

First came the bite of spice. Even as it flowed into her sinuses, it was as an avenue to better accentuate the nuances of the rest of the dish’s flavors. Savory, salty, sweet, all simmered into the creaminess of the fortifying roux. The balance was sublime — perfect, even. Another bite only compounded the impression.

It was the best thing she’d eaten all week. Considering she’d spent most of that week camping with Agate, the competition was fierce. The thought of Agate reminded her — with surprising clarity — of what she’d said just before their arrival at the Heptagon those many weeks ago. Agate’s claim was that Imet’s dishes would make her homesick for Oth’s cuisine.

It didn’t. Oth was never home. But all the same, it did fill her with something else — a complex nostalgia, bordering on regret. She should have found the time to get out and try the local cuisine more, while she’d lived there. Those memories, too, came clearer. Maybe if more of the espers who’d ever made Mokou’s acquaintance had made up for the invasion of her mental privacy with meals this lavish, her feelings towards them would have calcified differently.

“You’ve outdone yourselves!” said Farouun, between ladlefuls of etouffée. The gustoed sounds of her eating never paused; she’d perched the cauldron on her lap, parted her jacket, and tilted it towards her to take great draughts of it with her belly-maw. It was quite the sight.

“Glad you like it,” Mokou chuckled. “Very kind of you to say that, though I can’t help but feel like Imet did all the work.”

It was still hard to say what she’d learned tonight. Still, the sheer quality of the meal kept any bitterness at bay.

“You kept up, though!” said Imet, encouragingly. “That’s no mean feat. If our arena assistants cooked half as good as you, I might think about using them in my matches.”

“You don’t let the assistants help you?” asked Mokou. From what she’d seen of them during the urchin battle, they seemed like chefs of high caliber, good under hectic circumstances. “Why not?”

Imet finished their mouthful of stew. They took on a thoughtful expression. “I’m a bit of a perfectionist. The longer nobody beats me, the more the pressure mounts to keep the streak up. Makes for a lot of mental noise I don’t want getting in the way of things. They don't want to be the reason the streak broke. They can’t take that pressure like I can.”

“Or the psychic assassins,” Mokou offered.

“Those, too.” Imet’s thoughtful look split into a cryptic grin. “Well, you’ve got some whys now. Believe which ones you want to.”

“Mm,” Mokou grunted. It was no wonder Agate wanted to beat them so bad. That record must feel almost like an affront — the feeling that someone else’s methods were more perfect. Nothing Mokou had seen in this lesson struck her as particularly digestible for Agate’s sake. Everything in it that was new to Mokou likely wasn’t to her; everything that might have been proprietary looked like simply a consequence of being a tremendously powerful esper.

It spurred a pang of sympathy within her. To willingly challenge one who could warp the temporal flow such that seconds could be hours — well, it was a stupid thing for a mortal to do.

Agate would just have to stew on what she already had. Mokou didn’t want to think about it any more than she had to. Not when the etouffée was calling her.

Conversation ebbed as the three of them savored their respective servings. There was nothing more to be said. This was the sort of dish she dreamed of in lean years, times of dust and dearth. There had been far too many years like that, and far too few dishes like this to pepper into them. It was transcendent. So good that she almost dreaded the prospect of finishing it. But then, it was merely the first course.

At last, bowl and cauldron alike were made clean. Mokou sat back with a satisfied sigh. “Think we can call this one a success.”

“Thought I was the one with future sight,” Imet chuckled. They gestured, and a basket of pastries slid towards Mokou, fabric cover unfolding to release the steam. The Kouign Amanns had been perfectly preserved at the moment of freshness. “Go on, have some of those. Have a beignet. See how it all coheres before you go making pronouncements.”

It was a touch worrisome to have that power so casually revealed. No wonder their streak in the arena was unbroken. Had their future sight been bent towards anything else this evening, aside from cooking what was already the best thing she’d eaten all week? By the very nature of the power, it was impossible to say.

“I believe I will,” said Mokou, taking a few of the buttery spirals before passing the basket back to Imet. Farouun, of course, had several baskets of her own, which she dug into with purring rumbles.

One bite of the Kouign Amann nearly brought Mokou to tears. It was clear just how much of the cherub’s butter had layered into the dough; the taste was downright miraculous. Rich, flaky, soft, interplaying with perfect, sweet crunches of ozone-crisp crystal. She found her mind racing — not in panic, but as though in flight. The clarity imparted by the etouffée was now hers to swim through, to beckon and to shape and to direct.

She could sense Imet’s gaze from behind their shades. They watched with interest, leisurely sampling their own pastry. Finishing their current bite, they made a soft gesture of admission. “I have to say, I’m still interested in whatever you can remember of old Sumi. That’s esper history, you know? How’d you meet her?”

“Ohh, well…” Mokou loosed a slow breath, gathering her memories. She’d just been thinking of those old times, so the gathering was easier. The meal’s effects made it easier still, as though the rust had shaken loose. “First, I’ve got to tell you about my old home. Gensokyo. It was… something like an arcology. But one for monsters, ghosts, other wizards. Youkai, we called ‘em. It was self-sustaining, and sealed. Seriously sealed.”

With her recounting came recollections; returned to her were ancient days spent searching for ways out from under the Barrier. Days spent treading loops of Gensokyo in all its lost seasons, in spring’s greenery, in summer’s heat, in autumn’s regalia, under the muffling veil of winter. Fruitless days, before she’d accepted it as her home. Before she’d lost that home, too.

Imet shivered softly in sympathy, letting out a low whistle. “Sealed is right. What was that, a pocket dimension?”

“The engineering was a bit beyond me,” Mokou shrugged.

Farouun stroked her mane before putting forth a questioning claw. “Sumi — the one who captured the Iron Chefs, yes? She was from your old home?”

“She was from the Outside,” said Mokou. “Whole point of it was that people trying to get through the Barrier weren’t supposed to. It was a whole ordeal that she was. Two whole ordeals, even, maybe more — all the incidents just kept on spilling into each other.”

“A real troublemaker, huh?” said Imet, with what Mokou detected as a hint of pride. “So how exactly was she getting through? Doesn’t look like spacefolding. It’s a bit hard to tell from your memories.”

“Well, that’s because it was convoluted as hell. Not sure I ever got the full explanation myself, honestly, and I was in the thick of it.” Mokou gathered her memories again, pausing her tale for another few bites of pastry. The crystals were helping. She ran herself through fond memories of bygone scraps, flying fists and fevered sprays of fire. And in the heart of them, the irrepressible esper, so young, yet already powerful enough to fling about wire-snarled cabers of Outside infrastructure, thick as the pillars of torii gates. How did she keep getting in? “Something to do with dreams? But the real keys were these… orbs.”

“Orbs?” asked Farouun.

“Yeah, everyone was going around collecting ‘em. Thought they’d grant wishes. ‘Course, that was a lie — the damn things were from the Moon, actually.” Her tone darkened, almost defensively. People here didn’t seem to take well to hearing about the Lunar Capital and its old machinations. Maybe having an esper around for verification would ward off that suspicion. “And on top of that, they would infect you with urban legends.”

“Your own, or… Lunar legends?” asked Farouun, sounding a bit lost. Mokou almost felt sorry for her — unlike Imet, she couldn’t illustrate Mokou’s spotty yarn from the tapestry of her memories. Still, her curiosity was more encouragement, on top of Imet’s unspoken but palpable fascination.

“Gensokyo wasn’t exactly urban,” Mokou chuckled. She mopped up the stew’s last saucy ephemera with the butt of her Kouign Amann and polished it off. They didn’t mesh quite as well as she hoped — the combined palates ended up a sliver too rich. “No, urban legends from the Outside. I remember the one I ended up with, actually. Spontaneous human combustion.”

Farouun’s brow wrinkled quizzically. “That was an urban legend to you? That just happens, now. Take my dear Emberlily, for one.”

“Sure, sure. Used to be it didn’t. Lot’s changed, is all.”

“Combustion. Hold that thought,” said Imet, breaking the silence of their rapt attention. They gestured, and the beignets slid before Mokou. Sugar dustings clung to fried, glistening contours. The soul curd dip wobbled slightly with residual momentum. “I mean really hold it. Rotate it in your mind. Have some of these, and get ready to feel something new.”

Mokou needed no further encouragement. She took up a beignet and plunged it into the dip. The taste was exquisite. The silkiness of the dip perfectly accentuated the fried pastry, while the powdered yondercane topping added its sweetness with a hint of fermented tang. Already memories burned clearly within her, but now something else joined them. The dish had shifted and kindled something within her. Now her mind itself was aflame.

She moaned softly around her mouthful of beignet. She spoke again when she’d swallowed. “What is this?”

“Well,” said Imet, sporting a wry grin, “seems to me you feel a whole lot of ways about espers, about spacefolders. You’ve got every reason to, I can see that. But I figured, why not give you a little taste of the other side of that feeling? Flesh out the context some.”

“You’re saying this dish made me psychic?” asked Mokou. Incredulity tinged her voice, but it would certainly explain the new power she felt swelling within her.

“Yes ma’am,” said Imet.

“Oh, that’s such a treat,” Farouun purred. “If left to its own devices, my genome could never grow to express this either. Any other psionic ability, for that matter. There’s a sort of perverse impossibility in feeling them awaken within me. I cherish it whenever it happens.”

“No shit,” Mokou marveled. The more she focused on it, the more its contours revealed themselves to her. A knowledge, an instinct — one divorced from the magic she knew — of how to turn another’s here into there. She leaned back in her chair and waved her hands over the empty dishes in idle, satisfied indication. “All this just to… kindle a bit of spacefolding?”

“There’s a little something else, too,” Imet replied. “You’re going to like it, I know. It’d be easiest just to show you.” They rose from their seat, gathering the empty dishes to send them floating back over to the serving carts. “How about a martial demonstration?”

Chapter Text

They had moved to an open chamber of Imet’s quarters. Mirrors and striking mannequins lined the walls, leaving the floor, with its coating of glimmering black sand, clear. Opposing reflections curved off infinitely into darkness on all sides. Mokou would have called it a dojo. She didn’t know what Imet called it.

“Where are we?” she asked.

The toe of Imet’s boot traced out an arc in the sands as they shifted their stance to face her. The tails of their duster followed the motion. “This is the Chamber of Forms.” They cocked their head subtly in consideration. “But you could call it a dojo if you’d like. Ain’t inaccurate.”

“Well then, nice dojo,” said Mokou. She started to limber herself with stretches. If there were mental stretches espers did to warm their brains up before exerting their powers, she was ignorant of them. It didn’t worry her; between the techniques she used to prepare herself for magic and the meal’s other effects, she felt prepared. Excited, even. “We sparring or what? How serious are we getting?”

“Nothing we can’t sleep off,” Imet replied. “Just enough to give you a chance to… you know, embody the courses.”

Mokou paused her stretches and furrowed her brow. That had been Agate’s particular phrasing the night of the match, when she’d leveled her critiques of the Choraler’s offerings. While Mokou had leveled her fingers into—

“Dojo?” asked Farouun. She stood by the entrance, leaning against the wall by the door.

“Ah, old word for, uh… place you go to practice beating the hell out of folks,” answered Mokou. Heat crept into her face from the interrupted recollection. The anticipation of sparring kept it there.

Imet waited with a faint, confident smile. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Mokou took a deep breath. She shifted her weight, feeling the way the sand moved beneath the cushioned soles of her sneakers. She bent this intoxicating clarity of mind towards her forms. Her forms, and the forms around her forms, the ones that had never made the cut into her kata. Old closeness dredged them up nonetheless.

She sprang forward. Sand kicked up behind her. In a blink, she’d bridged the distance between them. She led with a barrage of fists. Most of the espers she’d ever fought had little answer to martial techniques outside of their minds.

Imet was not most espers. They wove away from Mokou’s strikes with superhuman quickness. “Woo!” they cheered, grinning all the while. “Fast one!”

Mokou dropped into a leg sweep — one Imet was already floating over. Mokou clenched her teeth into a grin of her own. “Could say the same for you.”

“Many have,” said Imet. They stayed aloft for a moment longer. “Lot of times it’s the last thing they think.”

“Bet.” Mokou rose into an uppercut. Again, Imet pulled away, just shy of Mokou’s knuckles — half as though they dodged, half as though some current of the subterranean air fouled the strike. But spiking within her, deeper than cognition, were ancient battle instincts. She loosed a spell. Talons of flame burst from her rising fist, raking Imet’s face. Just before her talons dispersed, they hooked the esper’s mirrorshades and sent them flying across the room.

The only sound, for a moment, was the soft impact of Imet’s shades on the sandy floor. Imet’s backwards arc touched down a few paces away. Three faint lines of welting flesh marred their mien. Their piercing, starry gaze locked to Mokou. Their grin was gone.

“A hit!” Farouun gasped.

Mokou let out a soft chuckle, shifting back into a balanced stance. “Nothing you can’t sleep off. Really just wanted to see if I could.”

The shades sailed back into Imet’s waiting grasp. They donned them, shuttering the power of their gaze once more behind their reflective lenses. “That makes you one of the few.”

Mokou couldn’t help but feel a spur of pride at that. It was just like she’d told Agate back in the canyons all those weeks ago — espers bled like anyone else. What was it Agate had said?

“Agate said… your dishes were liquid swords,” Mokou recounted. She held herself at the ready, eyes on Imet, waiting for any sign of an offensive. “What did she mean by that?”

Imet let out a slow, contemplative breath. “Well, you’ve read her lah book.”

“Yeah,” Mokou nodded.

“Front and center, she says it: she’s a warrior.” Imet crossed their hands behind their back. There was no subterfuge in the motion — the room’s ringing mirrors would have given it away regardless. They began to pace in a wide, slow circuit around Mokou. “To her, they’re swords, because that’s her lens, that’s the aspect she’s chosen. That’s her life. Live by the sword, dine by the sword.”

“Mm.” That explanation tracked. If there was one thing their joint excursion these last two weeks had proven to her, it was that Agate was an accomplished swordswoman. Still, it didn’t feel like the full picture.

“Well, you’ve had a taste, now. What were they to you?” asked Imet. Still they circled. If anything was going to happen, it was probably on Mokou to kick it off.

“Thought you already knew,” Mokou chuckled. She charged forward again. Halfway to Imet, she launched herself into the air, spinning at the top of her arc to plunge into a fiery axe kick. Her voice rose as her leg descended. “Best damn thing I’ve had all week!”

She expected another dodge from Imet. Instead, they whipped their arms up and caught Mokou’s leg. All the force of her blow was absorbed into their block. The shock of it jarred her bones. How much strength was packed into that slight frame of theirs?

“And yet,” Imet said. No trace of strain in their voice, only the subtle harmonic resonance of their crystalline circlet. “You still ain’t tried out what it’s doing for you. Go on. Open your mind.”

Mokou pushed herself off from Imet and fell back two paces. The retreat seemed unnecessary — Imet had yet to attack. Their cryptic smile was back. Were they goading her? It was impossible to tell.

She was curious anyway.

The long millennia of her existence had given her every opportunity to trace out the contours of her own mind. The change this evening’s meal had wrought upon her psyche was immediately graspable. New mental mechanisms beckoned down pathways practically illuminated in their newness. It was only a matter of reaching out, and…

“You asked for it,” she muttered.

She stepped forward, kindling the power within her. It felt wholly different from magic, expressed by different instincts, taxing to distinct parts of her being. Even the way she gathered the sense of it seemed to ebb and flow with tides she’d never felt before. The power budded at her fingertips and the tides bent around it. She could grasp it all — that power would wrap itself around Imet’s body and shunt them elsewhere.

Mind flaring, she reached. Her hand grew in the mirrorshades’ twin reflections.

So, too, flared Imet’s crowning circlet, its hum cresting to a piercing keen. Mokou’s eyes watered at the sound. She couldn’t look away, couldn’t break the effort once engaged. As though a black mirror rose, all-swallowing, before her.

What shunted was herself.

Her stomach lurched. The dojo vanished from around her. She toppled forward in the neighboring kitchen, alone and tasting iron. Pain knifed through her skull. She coughed, once, before blood gushed from her nostrils, spattering to the marble floor.

She knew this pain, though the avenue to reach it was new. This was brain hemorrhage. This was bad.

Pressure popped with Imet’s arrival, propelled through the psychic tides by their own will. Mokou’s swimming vision framed the slow steps of their scaled boots.

“Nothing you can’t sleep off,” said the esper.

“Gnngh?” Mokou replied. This was brain hemorrhage. This would kill her.

“How? Like this.”

The tides rolled again and suddenly she was aflame. Imet’s mind-fire crackled around her. Ferociously hot, though she’d burned hotter before. But with the flames came something new — a response from deep within her body. Life poured through her, raw and racing, beating back the pain, knitting her wounds. The fouled blood still poured from her nose, draining within to make way for the new. How?

The doors to the dojo boomed open and Farouun’s voice pealed out across the chamber. “Drop and roll! It’s a personal combustion trigger!”

Mokou dropped and rolled. The fires clinging to her sputtered when she cleared the edge of the flame field. It didn’t follow. The pain lanced through her again from her stricken brain. Half on a hunch and half on instinct, she rolled back into Imet’s flames. Either they’d burn her up and she could just resurrect, or—

She caught fire. The wave of life-force coursed through her again. It was miraculous, exhilarating. She rolled back and forth across the border of the flames until the pain subsided, the bleeding stopped, the fires guttered out.

“You could have warned her, my love,” came Farouun’s sympathetic rumble, closer now.

“That’s what the soul curd was for. Easiest just to show her,” Imet replied. They offered a hand down to where Mokou lay.

Mokou rolled away, springing to her feet a few paces distant. She snatched up a knife from a nearby countertop and brandished it before her. She wiped the blood from her face with her free hand’s sleeve. “You could have warned me, motherfucker.”

“Well, that brings us to the end of tonight’s instruction,” said Imet. They pulled their hand back, raising both to their sides in a gesture of peace. As they held it, they flicked a pointing finger towards their circlet. “Lesson one: don’t make a direct psychic attack against a motherfucker wearing a psychic meridian.”

“Not very applicable,” Mokou growled. Not usually, at least. Though the pain was gone, her heart still pounded from it. It didn’t particularly incline her to drop the knife or quell the grudge growing in her.

Imet gave a nod of admission. “That’s what lesson two is for. You’re a warrior too, Mokou, and a firewitch. You remember what we did here tonight and you’ve got a recipe that fills you damn near to bursting with life-force whenever you catch fire. Lesson two: you cook right and you can shrug off a brain hemorrhage.”

She’d felt the proof herself. Not even a headache remained. She looked between her two hosts: Farouun, gaze shimmering down with anxious sympathy, evening jacket still parted to air her secretive maw; Imet, unassailable by reputation but scored by Mokou’s efforts, gun and ego holstered, hands still raised in peace. As nasty a surprise as the meridian had been, doubtless it was nastier still for the psychic assassins they had to contend with.

Mokou sighed. She set down the knife. “Your doppelganger doesn’t even cook, do they? None of those assholes after you do.”

“Exactly!” Imet snapped their fingers in triumph. “Like they don’t even want to take the time to prepare! And that’s why none of them can win.”

“Shit, alright,” said Mokou. Deep breaths slowed her pulse and quenched her temper. “Thanks for the lessons. And the meal. I’ll remember it next time I get my hands on some soul curd.”

A thought came to her. For all the time she’d known her, Kaguya had never bothered to really learn how to cook. That sort of effort she always left to others. Mokou had been one of those others more times than she could count. That outlook always baffled her, considering how much Kaguya craved novelty. What were the odds she’d changed that since last Mokou had seen her?

To Mokou, cooking was a constant source of novelty. Even in repetition, there was so much room for little variances to change the outcome and renew the mysteries. But for once, it was something more. It was starting to look like an edge.

Another thought came to her. One that wasn’t hers. Easier, somehow, now that the meal had her sensing the psychic aether.

Mokou, Imet projected to her.

What? Mokou replied, fast as thought.

Only fair to come clean. I was hiding something.

That confirmed her gut, at least. There was relief in that. What, something other than your crystal brain-blender? This one isn’t going to hemorrhage too, is it?

No, no. It’s about the woman you seek. The place in the Moon Stair. The House of Eternity.

Again, Mokou’s gut lurched, her pulse spiked. What do you know?

Nothing more than what Farouun knows, and she tells it better. She knows something, though. Ask her.

The connection dropped. All that, flowing through her racing mind in a few of her body’s heartbeats. She’d barely set down the knife. She looked to the Baroness — the Baroness, who knew something.

Farouun sighed in relief, seeing Mokou’s willingness to drop the animosity. She stepped forward, giving Imet an affectionate pat in passing before kneeling down to Mokou’s level. She reached out a claw for a shake, warm and strong. “Thank you for the meal, my dear, and for your understanding. I wonder if you’d care to join me in my chambers for a nightcap?”

“Oh, sure,” Mokou softly huffed. Heat rose to her cheeks from the chimera’s grasp and closeness. From the questions racing within her of what she knew. This was an opportunity. “Gotta be warmer back there.”

“Ahh, I like the cold. Helps me think,” Imet chuckled. They sauntered over for their own parting handshake — not as enveloping as Farouun’s, but pleasantly firm. “You two enjoy yourselves. Been a pleasure having you for the evening. Feel free to write.”

“What, not visit?” asked Mokou. If the esper’s psychic admission was an offering of peace, she’d take it. A strange peace offering, knowing that the answers waiting might keep her from peace. Nonetheless, she wanted it.

“Going to need a bit on that,” said Imet. A warm, damp cloth sailed into their grasp before they offered it to Mokou, for the blood streaking her face. “No offense. You’ve got a lot of poison in that brain of yours.”

“Yeah?” Mokou replied, accepting the cloth. “It cooks out.”

Chapter Text

Once more Mokou found herself in the private chambers of the Baroness Farouun. This time, as a destination, and not as an unexpected thoroughfare. The conversation pit’s reclining fixtures were very comfortable, slowly releasing their captured scent of perfumed animal. From her seat down in its tiered and cushioned circumference, the room felt even airier, high ceilings made higher still. Farouun busied herself at the chamber’s wet bar, giving Mokou the opportunity to take in the rest of the room in detail.

Pantries lined the corner by the drink island, lending their support to its mixes. The neighboring corner held a large vanity flanked by massive armoires and wardrobes, no doubt full of her variegated outfits. The far corner hosted Farouun’s desk, a sun-bleached yet lovingly-restored monolith hewn of different wood than the rest of the room’s fixtures, suggesting it had lent its expanse to officious tasks well before the city’s founding. Shelves filled with ledgers, scrolls, maps and codices stretched behind it the length of the room’s far wall.

It was a whole hell of a lot more space than what Mokou had at the inn, but then, Farouun was a whole hell of a lot bigger than her — and if the rumors were true, she’d built the damn place.

“No kitchen,” Mokou noted.

“Mm?” asked Farouun. “There’s one in the next room. Not to mention Imet’s is but a gate away. But for myself? No,” she chuckled deeply, turning from the wet bar with a lopsided pair of drinks — sparkling wine of some sort, each garnished with duos of perfectly spherical berries. She gestured vaguely with them as she approached the pit. “To be honest, I’m quite hopeless at the oven. A bit of mixology is the extent of my culinary ability.”

“What?” goggled Mokou. “But you — you founded this entire city to — it’s there in the name!”

“Precisely!” said Farouun. With great and casual steps, she descended into the center of the pit, where a cushion practically the size of a mattress lay waiting. She offered the smaller of the drinks to Mokou, who accepted graciously and silently. Settling herself down, Farouun swirled her drink to take in its bouquet with a slow breath. “I’m a woman of many hungers, Mokou. It takes a city to sate them. I’ve seen cities that let their people go hungry. I cannot allow that here.”

“Mm,” Mokou nodded over the rim of her glass, finishing her taste of it. Light, crisp, and sweet, likely the fermented product of a local fruit whose acquaintance she’d yet to make. A nice following to the evening’s meal — and better than the taste of blood. “If there’s folks going hungry here, you’re hiding them pretty damn well. I look for that kind of thing. Seen it too many times.”

“I can only imagine,” said Farouun. She took a thoughtful sip of her own voluminous drink, fizzing softly in its goblet sized for an oni’s appetites.

“You really don’t cook, though?” asked Mokou. The thought still baffled her.

“For much of my life, where I lived, they simply didn’t make big enough kitchens,” answered Farouun. “I had cooks of my own before I had the means to fix that.”

Mokou swept her arm at the opulent chamber around them and scoffed. “How the hell did you not have the means? You were one of those water barons, weren’t you?”

The Baroness sighed. “Briefly, yes. This was many years ago and far to the north. The title and its holdings, such as remained of them, were willed to me by old Baroness Yasmah before the brain rust claimed her. Before then…” She leaned back heavily, a brooding expression settling across her bestial face. “I was her favorite pet.”

“Ahh. Pissed away the inheritance, did she?” That was a common enough folly for those with more money than sense. Mokou knew how it felt to be on the receiving end of it, though she’d had just about her entire existence to let the feeling get stale. Of course, it looked like Farouun had put a bit more thought into what she’d done about it than Mokou had.

Farouun laughed at the bluntness. “She left me a fine collection of idols, actually. And the debts she’d racked up with the neighboring barons to finance such a collection.”

“What, her advisers run out on her, or did she run ‘em out? Idols are nice and all, but you can’t let yourself get too many of ‘em. The upkeep really adds up,” said Mokou.

“I could have told her as much from a glance at her ledgers. Even before she left them to be my ledgers, I could see it,” Farouun replied, a hint of umbrage in her tone at these past wrongs.

“But she wasn’t having it, huh?” asked Mokou. Honestly, she was surprised Farouun didn’t seem angrier about it, considering her usual boisterousness.

Farouun’s only answer was hesitation and a sip of her drink, eyes briefly downcast.

Mokou raised her brows, leaning forward in interest. She revised her inquiry. “You didn’t tell her? I mean, I guess it wasn’t your job.”

“No, no. It was… selfishness,” said Farouun. She sighed. “At the time, I resembled one of her idols. I rather think she favored me the more for it. But consequently, some of that upkeep, those offerings, they went to me. My fear was, any counsel to spend less on idols would leave me hungrier than I already was. I couldn’t bear the possibility.”

“Oh, hell,” Mokou grunted. She patted Farouun’s knee in sympathy. “That ain’t selfishness, that’s doing what you’ve gotta do to stay fed.”

Farouun clasped her claw over Mokou’s hand in a warm and encompassing squeeze. “It was difficult to see it as such, even after her ledgers passed to me. I saw what it took even to leave me in that prior limbo, unstarved yet unsated. And I thought — the staff, the people of the estate she left to me, the cooks… why did they shoulder that cost? Why did they pull it from the people of the lands around?”

Mokou considered this as she downed the last of the cocktail. The marinated berry filled her mouth with a perfect slaking saturation of sweetness. The liqueur it had steeped in warmed her nearly as much as the heat radiating from her host. She’d seen some of Farouun’s appetites, the amount of food it took to keep up that heat, to fuel her body. It gave her some idea of the cost. “Reckon they couldn’t see it as a choice.”

“Precisely,” Farouun rumbled. She slid her claw up Mokou’s arm to wrap around and over her shoulder in an emphatic grip. “The answer in her ledgers said: no water if they don’t. The inbuilt brutality of it, the cascading cruelties, they repulsed me. It was perhaps the first moment I asked myself what it might look like if that cost was shouldered by their own volition rather than another’s coercion. What it might look like if every cook could govern.”

From what Mokou had seen of the Heptagon, it probably looked something like this. Maybe it was easy to find that throughline when the city worked as well as it did. Or, maybe it still wasn’t there. Where it already was suited Mokou’s needs fine. “Hope you got a good price from hocking those idols.”

“It covered wages for a few months,” said Farouun. She released her grasp, leaning back again and cupping her drink. The glass hummed as she ran her clawtips idly along it. “Once it ran dry, I sent the staff back to their families. I’d already halted collections. By the time Emberlily arrived at the estate to establish trade relations, I had eaten one wing down to the foundations. We ended up establishing a different sort of relations — she’s been cooking for me ever since.”

“What about the debts to the neighboring barons?” asked Mokou. “You still paying those off?”

“No, no. Quite a simple solution, really,” Farouun answered, showing a flash of fang. “We killed them.”

Mokou laughed. The admission put her at ease. Sometimes it felt hard to connect to people who weren’t also killers. Of course, it seemed like the people Farouun had killed had it coming — that was a bonus. She raised her empty glass in salute. “That’s a very effective method of resolving debts, I’ve always found.”

“Then I’m doubly glad it’s not our custom to employ them!” Farouun laughingly replied. She pointed to Mokou’s glass. “Ah — are you going to finish that?”

“Huh? I’m done with the drink. Very refreshing, but — oh.”

She realized what Farouun had actually asked. She offered the empty glass to her host. Farouun plucked it from her grasp and tossed it into her upper mouth, crunching it between her fangs. A low purr emanated from her core. It amplified as she fed her own much larger goblet to her belly-maw.

“Mm,” Farouun said at last. “There’s a certain smokiness to the glassware imports from the Fuming God Sea. I think it pairs quite well with the cocktail, but I understand it’s a bit of a specialty taste.”

“Oh, yeah, I recognized the style. Never tried eating ‘em, though. Hungers is right.” It had been an unexpectedly rich thread of conversation she’d pulled up from mere curiosity at the lack of a kitchen. But then, any kitchen arrangement in this city was bound to have its own story baked into it. That had certainly been the case with just about every food stall or restaurant or canteen she’d tried so far. It was engrossing enough to keep her from the question weighing on the back of her mind. It would keep a bit longer. “Let me tell you something, though. I’ve been through some hungry times myself. The last ice age. The Gyre. The desert. Hungry times.”

Farouun nodded sympathetically. “It’s a tyrannical feeling.”

“You can try to put it out of your mind, but it always catches up,” Mokou sighed. She ran her hand over the back of her neck idly before dropping it again. “But… not here. Ever since I got to this city, I haven’t gone hungry once. Takes a lot of work to make that happen, but more than that, it takes a lot of heart. Just wanted to say I appreciate that.”

“Ah!” Farouun seemed to swell from within with a puffing of her mane. A heartfelt elation shimmered in her gaze. “That’s the heart of it! No one goes hungry, no one goes thirsty — and from that foundation, what wonders can we raise? You’ve seen some already.”

Mokou smiled back. “I sure have. Hope to see even more.”

She rose from her cushion in the pit and, hands unoccupied, began to limber herself up again. Between the stirring conversation, the drink, the sparring, the meal and its effects, she found herself full of an aimless energy. It begged an outlet.

She ran her gaze up the Baroness’s bulk. Standing on the second-lowest tier of the conversation pit, Mokou was finally at about eye level with Farouun, seated as she was in the center. Farouun met her gaze with an inquisitive tilt of a tufted ear. No reason not to sate that curiosity.

“Now, I’m guessing one of those hungers of yours is sex.”

Farouun’s brows rose into an expression of pleased surprise. “Yes! Certainly, yes. I rather enjoy logistical challenges. Are you offering?”

“Yeah, why not?” Mokou asked. She smiled, stepping forward onto Farouun’s leg. The bigger woman’s heat built tangibly the closer Mokou got to her core. She sat on the trunk of Farouun’s thigh, bracing herself against Farouun’s chimeric torso to pull off her sneakers. “Between the sex and the city-building, you must be very enriched.”

“Oh, yes. Oftentimes they go hand in hand,” Farouun replied, laughing softly. She slid a massive claw up Mokou’s back, bracing her from another angle. Her free claw reached to the top of Mokou’s breastbone, where she deftly clasped the zipper of her coveralls. “Many times, it comes down to design — you’ve noticed, I trust, how easy the uniforms are to take off?”

“I have, actually,” said Mokou. She leaned back, letting out a relaxed breath, savoring the attention. She ran an idle hand up the fur of Farouun’s belly, around the edge of her inset maw. “Makes for a nice little plus after a shift. Guess it has to be easy to get off considering the different types of critters you have to design for around here.”

“Precisely!” rumbled Farouun. Her claw tugged the zipper down past Mokou’s navel. The heated currents of Farouun’s breath played over her now-exposed skin. “And beyond that, the uniform’s weight, I wanted to be an easy one. Easily borne and easily set aside. Should someone’s heart lead them elsewhere, the weight should not hold them here.”

“Like it’s not an obligation,” Mokou offered. While one hand stroked through Farouun’s fur, she slid her other shoulder free from the sturdy fabric. “Or like the obligation is what you make it.”

“Just so,” said Farouun. She chuckled, faintly rueful. “I think we’ll have a bit more success at achieving that once the city grows a bit. More hands to take up the load, and all.”

“Well, philosophies aside, it’s still one of the best sets of coveralls I’ve ever owned.” Right down to the zipper; molded from sturdy carbide, with an adaptive gel layer along the inner teeth-groove that shivered apart in anticipation of the slider’s passage. Mokou lifted her hips as Farouun’s unzipping traversed her taint, exposing her loose undergarments. Never before had she owned coveralls that kept her nethers so fully and readily accessible; handy when she needed to relieve herself on a shift — or in situations like these. “You often fuck your workers?”

“Oh, every now and again, as schedules allow,” Farouun replied with a grin. Now that the zipper had passed below and behind her, Farouun took up the task with the claw that had braced Mokou’s back. This freed her first claw to knead a tremendous knuckle, firmly, tenderly, against Mokou’s garbed cunt. “Most often I share my bed with my Chefs, but I do so love to host.”

“I buy it,” huffed out Mokou.

Her whole body felt flush with the Baroness’s attentions. Fabric and metal parted up along her spine with the zipper’s continued passage. She knew for modularity’s sake the coveralls could split lengthwise along that zippered seam, but she found it mostly unnecessary for her body type. Past a certain point of traversal, it felt like a job better suited for a zipper buddy — they were easy enough to get out of before it came to that. Whether or not it was necessary, it was still titillating to have it split and stripped from her by a giant woman. At least, provided she kept her hair out of the teeth.

Shortly, Farouun had her coveralls decoupled. Mokou pushed herself up from Farouun’s claw, finding footholds where she could on the chimeric bulk beneath and before her. Hot, spiced breath gusted over her. The great tongue Farouun kept hidden in her belly-maw now slid free to wet its berth in anticipation. Mokou let the halves of her working garb slide from her body. All through the course of her disrobing, she couldn’t help but notice the growing heat from her host — and the way the fabric at the crotch of her trousers shifted and strained.

Mokou flicked her gaze down with a nod. “What’s on the menu?”

“See for yourself,” Farouun purred, hitching a clawed thumb through the waistband of her trousers.

Mokou braced herself against Farouun’s ample chest, grabbing handfuls of fur and flesh. Thus steadied, she hooked her toes into the waistband and pushed, helping the trousers down. Free of the fabric, Farouun unfurled beneath her. A glance down revealed her magnitude. Her cock was roughly the size of a grown woman’s thigh, rising from its sheath and pulsing with heat.

It gave Mokou pause. Her brows furrowed and she pressed her lips together tightly. She let out a breath. “Big one, aren’t you?”

Farouun’s laughter shook her body and Mokou’s, perched atop her. “That I am, Mokou.”

She really had a magnificent cock — stately and shapely, hardly tapered and sporting a fearsome bulge at the base. As though her thighs made berth for a knotted sapling. Mokou started to tug down her bloomers almost unconsciously, as though the logistics would become any clearer once nude. “This might be…”

“Impossible?” Farouun offered. She traced her claw up Mokou’s belly and chest before settling beneath her chin. “Perhaps it goes without saying, but penetration is wholly unnecessary for us to enjoy ourselves.”

Mokou shrugged. “If I die, I die.”

It was the wrong thing to say. She knew it in the way Farouun pulled back her claw, the way her sultry gaze widened into alarm. “Mokou, if you die, I will have killed you.”

“There’s worse ways to go, believe me,” said Mokou. Probably only digging herself deeper.

“I don’t wish to bring murder into my sex habits. Death has a cost. Death is its own cost!” Farouun grasped her shoulders with both claws emphatically. Her heat still pulsed around and beneath Mokou — her passion had simply directed itself along a different path. “Keep that cost at bay as much as our structures allow, my dear! Leave it for the arena!”

Mokou let her weight rest in Farouun’s grip as she considered her words. Mokou’s way wasn’t so calcified as to be unfeeling of the truth in them. It was only that death’s cost was one she’d paid so many times she hardly noticed it anymore — or at least she could convincingly tell herself she didn’t. But it was a selfish familiarity. She could hardly expect newer lives and fresher minds to be so calloused to it.

Nor could they share her quiet hope. Every new death was a chance to test the bars of her prison. Granted, the odds were astronomically against this one being the one to finally do it. If a fat enough cock could pierce eternity, she probably would have found it by now. But if it worked — well, she’d leave these fine people with a terrible mess. But it wouldn’t be her problem anymore.

But of course it wouldn’t work. The Elixir always accounted. And once more she’d be left with herself, and her quiet, useless, treacherous hope, and the cost it exacted on the ones around her.

None of her thoughts would ease the worries of this evening’s prospective partner. At least she could recognize when to keep them to herself. And with the Heptagon’s resident mind-readers elsewhere, she actually could. She sighed, running her hands along Farouun’s thick wrists. “Sorry. Me and death got a complicated relationship.”

“I can see that,” said Farouun. Her claw turned past Mokou’s shoulder to stroke furrows through her tied-back hair. A welcome gesture of comfort, though also a reminder that a haircut was long overdue. At least it hadn’t gotten caught in her zipper.

“I suppose we’ve all got impossible dreams,” said Mokou. She leaned back and heat met her. Pressing from tailbone to halfway up her back was the pliant meat of Farouun’s cock, still erect. A bit ostentatious for a backrest — and a shame to only leave it at that. “I’m just saying whatever you can do with what you’ve got, I’m up for it. I’ll try anything twice.”

“Splendid,” Farouun grinned, and her lower maw parted. She dragged its tapering tongue languidly up Mokou’s middle, bodily tasting her. Mokou shuddered, toes curling against Farouun’s furry hide. When Farouun spoke again, the resonance of her voice found a new medium to vibrate into Mokou. “I’ve always wished that this be a city where dreams needn’t remain impossible. When its structures shoulder the costs of living, that’s all the more time for us to chase those dreams. Even this—” and here Farouun wrapped her claw’s grasp around Mokou’s belly and her own cock, squeezing them together. “—If you truly wish to contend with it, then all it takes is a bit of rubbergum.”

“Rubbergum?” Mokou gasped out. Rivulets of the Baroness’s anticipation oozed down her back, slicking the press of flesh on flesh.

“Another specialty injector,” answered Farouun. Her tongue slipped through her claw’s thumb-grip as it played back down Mokou’s body. Mokou shuddered again, letting slip a low moan as her cunt parted around Farouun’s chimeric tongue-tip. It was a growing struggle to focus on her explanations. “It carries a rather curious mechanism of induced elasticity and electrical insulation. A godsend for my Bajiko — but aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves?”

“Sure,” said Mokou. That wasn’t the dream she’d meant. Still, this one was a hell of a lot more appealing in the moment. Her body rocked with Farouun’s stroking claw and delving tongue. “Sounds — good, though.”

Farouun laughed. The sound was joined by a deeper rumbling, a resonant purr. She slipped her free claw beneath Mokou’s chin once more, this time tilting her head up to bend in for a kiss. Hot and heady, all brushing fangs and spiced tongue. On both ends now, Farouun’s tongues parted her, tasted her, explored her, all while her self-ministrations pressed Mokou deeper against her rumbling bulk. The heat, the press, the fullness granted by the chimera’s attentions, all conspired to edge Mokou closer to climax.

Then Farouun pulled back and spoke again, splitting Mokou’s focus between conversation and luscious sensation. “When you first arrived, you said your ambition was to learn to cook with Qud’s ingredients. I dare say you’ve built a formidable knowledge base already.”

Mokou grunted her agreement, grinding her hips with the rhythm of Farouun’s tonguing. Delicately so — fangtips of Farouun’s belly-maw scraped at her thighs with certain movements. “I’m running out of chefs of yours.”

“I’ll be sure to badger Emberlily into scheduling something for you,” chuckled Farouun. “But once you’ve mounted this pinnacle of knowledge, what’s next? Not governance, I would assume. Where is it your dreams lead you?”

There it was. The real question. The driving reason why she’d accepted tonight’s invitation, why she’d come to this city, why she’d crossed a desert of poison salt to reach this deadly land.

Kaguya.

Mokou slowed her motions. She drew in a deep breath and let it out, settling herself against the Baroness’s fuzzy topography. Farouun sensed the change of pace and mirrored it, waiting patiently for Mokou to voice her answer.

“You really want to know? Well…” Another deep breath, as if to steady herself on a precipice. “What do you know about the House of Eternity?”

Chapter Text

“The House of Eternity…”

The question cast a pall over the chamber. Farouun’s tongue slid from Mokou, her strokes ceasing outright. Mokou cast her gaze up Farouun’s body to find her gazing back, cheek resting on her claw, a frown creasing her brow.

“Now why would your dreams lead you there?”

Mokou pushed herself up with a soft groan. She squeezed her eyes shut to gather herself. Maybe it was better they’d stopped for this. It wouldn’t be fair to be fucking someone else but thinking about her. Not to anyone. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it. It certainly wouldn’t be the last. More thoughts to keep to herself.

“The truth is…” Mokou sighed, “I’m looking for someone.”

“You aren’t the first,” rumbled Farouun. She shifted beneath Mokou, reaching over to a concealed drawer set into the conversation pit’s tiers. She withdrew from it an absorbent cloth, which she wiped over her claws. “All who set their sights on that mirage of the Moon Stair do, I imagine.”

“I don’t know much about this one,” said Mokou. She could feel Farouun softening behind her and nearly cursed her own forthrightness. Her own carnal satisfaction was in direct conflict with those timeworn mental ruts luring her to the east. “All I know is the woman I’m looking for. We… share a condition. Last time I knew a place by the name of the House of Eternity, she was living there.”

“Let me show you something,” said Farouun. She rose, bracing Mokou with a cloth-draped claw so as not to immediately dislodge her. Once standing, she lifted Mokou to place her atop one of her broad shoulders. Mokou grabbed a horn for support as Farouun began moving. She strode from the pit, making for the bookshelves lining the wall opposite. “Old Yasmah’s biggest debt by far was to her southeastern neighbors — the Barons Incarnadine. Thousands upon thousands of drams they sucked from their own folk, thousands more from bordering folk by way of their financial webs. There could be no peace for us while they lived.”

“How’d you get ‘em?” asked Mokou. She flipped her hair out from under the damp cleaning cloth Farouun had left draped around her. Thus unobstructed, it could sop up the rest of what Farouun had left on her. Maybe sex was off the table now, but at least she was getting another story.

Farouun chuckled, stretching out a clawtip to run along the volumes lining her shelves. “Oh, a rather simple ruse. We claimed to be bringing the Barons a golden idol in service to the debt. Once inside their court, of course, they soon discovered that the idol was me. Our little caravan of die-hards splashed their lavish halls in new shades of red.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s a classic,” said Mokou, approvingly.

“With the Barons Incarnadine slain, we put their hold to the torch. But our exit took us through their accounting office. I happened across their master ledger. If my memory serves me correctly, I shelved it… here.” She slid a tome out from its unassuming neighbors. It was a gaudy, jewel-studded behemoth, but in Farouun’s outsized grasp, it nearly looked normal-sized. Maybe this was why she’d cleaned her hands. Farouun brought it to the raised lectern of her desk and laid it open. “If Yasmah’s ledger lifted what veils obscured the cruelty of wealth from me, this one burned them away.”

“I’ve met the type, I can imagine,” said Mokou. Last millennium’s water crisis made the world rotten with them. Of course, the crisis had never really ended, so it was no surprise that water barony stayed in style.

Farouun flipped through the ledger’s pages, searching for a specific section. “There’s a certain insanity that takes hold once you cross a certain threshold of wealth. It’s the privilege, I think, or the detachment. It demands an outlet, any outlet, so long as it preserves the exclusivity of your position. This ledger told me their outlet. Here.” Her search ended at a title page of lavish calligraphy announcing the first of many manifests.

Mokou read the title. Her heart began to pound.

Enumerated Herein be the Record of All Treasures Tendered & Ferried to the HOUSE OF ETERNITY by Will of the BARONS INCARNADINE , in the Most Ardent Hope of Gaining the Favor & Hand of the Fated Beauty Said to Dwell Therein:

Ides of Tebet Ux, 978 AR. 5 Wagons sent.

Lapis from the Shore of Songs, Agates from Odrum, Peridots from Yawningmoon.

Valued: 300,550 drams.

Furs of Snow-Ape and Mountain Barkbiter, in form of trade pelts & fine garments.

Valued: 5,000 drams.

Blades of Folded Carbide, engraved by the Etchers’ Guild with Beautified Histories.

Valued: 3,800 drams.

Urberry Wine, 878 vintage, 1 Bottle.

Valued: 120,560 drams.

Fresh Water, 3 Tun Casks.

Valued: 24,960 drams.

Reported destroyed in the northern Jungles of Qud. All hands lost.

1st of Nivvun Ut, 979 AR. 5 Wagons sent.

“A decade of this,” said Farouun, sweeping her claw over the pages. “A decade of senseless wealth, gained from hideous extraction, sent into utter oblivion. Failure after failure, all unfailingly appraised, tallied, and scribed. Not a single caravan made it. It was kill or be killed with them. Had we failed, they would have used our water for more of that.”

Mokou pushed herself from Farouun’s shoulder, hovering down to alight atop her desk, where she hunched over the ledger. She stared feverishly at the words, the figures, the history they traced. Their admissions and omissions all twisted into dire armature, and the shadow it cast upon her was the shadow she’d always known.

Kaguya. In fresh silhouette.

“Where…?”

“Take your pick,” said Farouun, tapping the sordid tail of another month’s manifest, and another, and another. “Lost in the Svy, drowned and mangled. Lost in the ruins, rusted and riddled. Lost in the mountains, crushed and cannibalized. Lost in the deep jungles, sapped and melted.”

“No, no—” hissed Mokou, shaking her head. She rose and spun, grabbing the folds of Farouun’s parted evening jacket. “The House of Eternity — that’s her. It has to be. She’s there. Where is it?”

Farouun gazed down at her, meeting her sudden desperation with stoic resilience. Her frown shifted to one of concern. “Who?”

Mokou held her gaze for several long breaths, slowing herself, steadying herself. Always there was the balance of how much to tell. Always there was too much to tell for any mortal span. She loosened her grip and sighed. “Houraisan Kaguya. She’s an immortal, like me. She’s the reason I’m like this. If death has a cost, then me and her… we’ve racked up one hell of a debt to each other.”

“Houraisan Kaguya…” Farouun echoed. She stroked her mane below her chin a few times in thought, then at last shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’ve never heard of her. It’s vengeance you seek?”

“Something like that,” said Mokou, her tone dark and tired. “Whatever she’s going by these days, this setup’s got her name all over it. You know where it is?”

“Not precisely. I haven’t researched the matter in depth — I’ve no desire to fall prey to the same obsessions. But from the ledger and my own inquiries, I’ve still managed to piece something together. You’ve… never been to the Moon Stair, yes?”

“Never,” admitted Mokou. Farouun’s question came with the tone of someone dancing around grave news.

“It’s not a place to lightly visit.” Farouun reached past her, thumbing forward several pages. “Our own caravans give it a wide berth. Our scouts and provisioning expeditions can only shallowly pierce its borderlands. Of the few gift caravans sent by the Barons Incarnadine to ever reach the Moon Stair, most simply disappeared. One purportedly turned into a flock of birds.”

“What? Is that real?”

Farouun gave a weighty shrug. “Whether or not it’s real is immaterial. It’s unverifiable. But given the nature of the region, I see no reason to discount the potential.”

“What is the nature of the region?” asked Mokou. It was all sounding very evasive. This was information she needed.

At this, Farouun sighed. She shut the ledger. Planting her claws on the desk to either side of where Mokou stood, she loomed over her. Her face drew close. The heat of her breath billowed across Mokou’s bare skin. “A crystalline labyrinth of shattering dreams. The land is shot through with shifting, entropic river-veins of warm static. As though what gathers and breaks over its quartziferous peaks is not cloud and moisture but time and possibility. These flows imply a source. The Falls Not Found. And it is there, Mokou, there, atop those headwaters, rumor says the House of Eternity gazes out across the Stair.”

Farouun took up Mokou’s hand in her enveloping grasp and held it between them. Despite the woman’s strength, her size, her presence, her grasp faintly trembled with anxiety. She spoke again, softer.

“That is the extent of my knowledge on the House of Eternity.”

It was rumor, and it pointed to as inhospitable and perilous a land as Mokou had ever heard. But it pointed to Kaguya. And it resonated through her with all the redoubling force of her centuries of fondness, bitterness, yearning fixations and passionate convergences. It was as undeniable as the liver that kept her shackled to eternity.

The last time she felt this, back across the desert, she’d stolen a vellum fragment and set fire to a scriptorium. Maybe she didn’t need to steal anything this time. The profundity of feeling swelling within her still demanded she do something.

Sliding her grasp free, she reached up to Farouun’s horns. The chimera’s eyes widened in surprise as Mokou pulled herself into a deep kiss. Mokou hummed, running her tongue over Farouun’s parted fangs. Farouun’s claws rose to ensconce her hips, her back. There was puzzlement and hesitation in Farouun’s touch, but she returned the kiss soon enough. Mokou, in turn, swung her legs forward, hooking them over Farouun’s shoulders. After a few torrid moments, Mokou broke off the kiss. She shifted a hand down to scratch affectionately beneath Farouun’s ear.

“You just gave me the best lead I’ve had in months,” said Mokou.

“I — ah, did I?” Farouun replied. Despite herself, a subtle purr built within her from Mokou’s scratching. “That’s faint solace. I can’t help but curse the happenstance that points you to the Moon Stair.”

“Look, I’ll muddle through eventually,” said Mokou.

“You don’t just muddle through the Moon Stair!” said Farouun. “I cannot overstate its peril! Seasoned warriors and wayfarers alike have met their ends there.”

Mokou settled her weight back against Farouun’s bracing claws, letting out a long breath. “Sure, but I’ve been seasoning way longer than any of ‘em put together, I guarantee.”

Farouun sighed, nosing her snout into Mokou’s belly. “I know the allure of vengeance. I don’t imagine it would avail any of us to ask you to stay. But I admit to a certain attachment to your cuisine. It’s made quite an impact on me. Perhaps it’s selfish of me, but you shouldn’t throw that away.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Mokou chuckled. She pulled her hands forward through the mane and fur adorning Farouun until she reached the bridge of her snout. The big woman’s beastly affections were charming and comfortingly familiar. Between the horns and the fluff, it was a lot like her old wife got when it was that time of the old lunar cycle. “But that’s the thing, I’m not looking to throw it away. Right here, I’m honing it. You think Kaguya cooks? Hell no, she doesn’t. Getting all these techniques in order is gonna save me a whole hell of a lot of trouble out there, I can feel it.”

“It most certainly will!” Farouun brightly purred, nosing her way further up Mokou’s body as Mokou kept petting and scratching her head. “The right recipe in the right hands is a tremendous tactical advantage. And your hands, Mokou, are so right.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Mokou. She squeezed her thighs against Farouun. She hadn’t nearly been sated by tongues alone. “Me, I’m not going looking until I’m good and ready for what’s out there. Soon, maybe. But not tonight.”

“Well, then,” Farouun rumbled, her breath teasing Mokou’s neck through her fangs. “Let me have you for tonight. As an honored guest.”

Chapter Text

Fitful, suffocating dreams woke Agate, already dissolving into half-remembered glimpses beneath the light of dead stars.

It was time to return Mokou’s cat. What training she’d managed yesterday was promising, but insufficient to suppress Tabi’s nightmarish aura. She’d taken a gamble on a relatively unknown trainer and thus far hadn’t been disappointed. Her waking state was already testament to their efforts — the nightmares had merely been oppressive rather than panic-inducing. Perhaps Tabi's 'soul attack' had already been blunted. Such efforts took time to truly come to fruition; still, Agate was hopeful. After a quick meal and a bit of routine hygiene, she set off to find Mokou, tabby in tow.

Arriving at the Moondrop Inn shortly after its breakfast service, she found no sign of her. Nor, somewhat surprisingly, did she find the inn’s proprietress. It felt oddly gloomy in the absence of Fasola’s somnolent presence.

“Cheotl,” she voiced to the lobby, for she could hear the mimic’s faint reptilian breathing nearby. “Have you seen Mokou this morning?”

Metamorphic slithering sounded from the lobby’s hearth as a chaise-lounge sprouted a facsimile of Agate’s upper torso from its backrest. Cheotl crossed their borrowed arms and nodded with a thoughtful expression. “You just missed her. Fasola took her to the hairdresser not fifteen minutes ago.”

That was promising. More and more during her maintenance routines she’d been finding Mokou’s hairs lodged in her things. “Which one?”

“The Grazer’s Shrine — you know it?”

“Yes,” Agate nodded. Not too far. She’d certainly catch them. “Thank you, you’ve been some help.”

“Sure thing,” said Cheotl, beaming sharply and with a rather uncharacteristic width for the face they sported. “Hey, you’re going to the Ut yara Ux festivities, yeah?”

“That was my plan,” admitted Agate. Most likely gossip they’d gleaned from Mokou, but then, she’d hardly made a secret of it herself.

“I’ll be debuting a kinetic poem,” Cheotl explained. “You should come! I think you might like it.”

“I might. Live and drink, Cheotl.”

It was hardly an imposition — avoiding the ire of poets was prudent, and besides, Agate generally liked Cheotl’s body of work. She left the inn and ventured deeper into Garden Ward in search of her quarry. Tabi followed.

Minutes later and a few blocks away, she found them, nearly at their destination. Mokou’s beacon-like cascade of white hair and the low, pleasant fry of her distant conversation were sure tells — on top of that, Fasola still sported her ceremonial cap. Agate had easily caught up. Fasola’s customary pace was hardly more than a leisurely shuffle, and Mokou seemed disinclined to push it faster. In fact, the closer Agate got to them, the more she could discern a ginger bowleggedness infusing Mokou’s gait. Small surprise, considering whose chambers she’d been in the night previous.

Their pace slowed still more as Agate drew up next to them, on Mokou’s side. She nodded in greeting. “Mokou. Spicer.”

“Agate!” Fasola startled.

“Hey,” Mokou nodded back, straightening her posture a touch. Her mirrorshades caught the reflection of the great lamp above. “How was Tabi?”

“Slightly improved,” Agate replied. “I’ve arranged for her tutelage at Iram’s Reach in the Beast Ward. For any subsequent catsitting needs, take her there. In the meantime, she’s yours once more.”

“Appreciate you lookin’ after her,” said Mokou. She made a beckoning series of clicks. “Tabi, c’mon.”

“Ohh,” sighed Fasola. “Here I was hoping to get a nap in while you were getting your hair done.”

Mokou snorted softly and gave Fasola a consoling pat on the back. She glanced back at Agate. “You coming along? Make an outing of it?”

Agate was burningly curious as to the outcome of Mokou’s lesson — what insights into Imet’s techniques she might have absorbed. Here she would be unoccupied and stationary for as long as it took for her hair to be groomed to her satisfaction. The perfect opportunity for an interrogation. That alone was more than enough reason to join them. “I’ve come this far. Lead on.”

Of course, that meant matching her pace to theirs. Mercifully, their destination was only around the corner of the next block. The Grazer’s Shrine was one of several locations in the Garden Ward where irrigation spouts along the cavern ceiling converged to make artificial pools, breaking up the thick greenery. The shrine itself was a triad of linked gazebos and the small plaza between them. This was home to its resident hairdresser: Kamsala’vish, the titular grazer and one of the caste of salt cherubim.

To be in the presence of a cherub was to face living perfection. Fomented, Agate theorized, by some alchemy of the bygone Eaters, they now wandered Qud’s depths in absence of greater directive. One, molded as an arch-ungulate, had ceased her roaming here. Now she spent her days by the waters, glass beads and flower loops bedecking her crystalline fur, plying her chosen trade for those in the Heptagon in need of beautification.

The corona of her inner light caught in her placid, golden-brown eyes as Kamsala’vish raised her head at their entrance. “Moon and sun,” she greeted.

“Wisdom and will, Kamsala,” answered Fasola. “Got an opening for my friend here?”

For several breaths, the cherub chewed her cud in silent appraisal of Mokou. “You need some opening. Kamsala’vish has this for you. Come in, sit.”

“Thanks,” said Mokou, sounding grateful, excited, and only a touch awed as she stepped forward. If her history was to be believed, she’d met deities before — and cherubim, no matter how formidable their presence and prowess, were ultimately the result of natural laws. Perhaps it was simply nothing new to her; she’d likely lived through their creation. “Fujiwara no Mokou. I had some of your butter! Really incredible stuff.”

“Lucky you!” Fasola whistled.

“When? How?” demanded Agate, yet she already knew the answer was—

“Imet’s” said Mokou, with a slight smile. She took off her shades and stowed them, approaching the line of canvas stools in the center of the plaza and the waiting cherub. Agate followed, percolating with questions on that engagement. Her ear flicked.

Kamsala’vish merely gave a slow nod to this answer of Mokou’s. “Lucky, true. I am not making that stuff by me alone.”

Mokou settled herself into one of the stools and fluffed her hair out behind her. She glanced back over her shoulder at Kamsala’vish. “The taste, the texture — never had anything like it. Is that why you came here, to make butter? Get milked?”

“Years I was roaming about idly,” the cherub replied. “No chance or place to ply a trade. I came here and I do now. Good here for that. Butter is bonus.”

“Huh,” said Mokou. “Some bonus. Shit, if I was in your hooves, I’d settle down just for that.” As Agate took a seat upon a lounge cushion next to Mokou, facing her, a strange expression flickered across the immortal’s face. She cast this unreadable glance back towards Agate. “Did you want to milk me?”

“What?” asked Agate. She hadn’t even begun to consider that — what did it even follow? The question utterly scuttled whatever she was going to ask.

Besides, there was a far more pressing liquid ingredient to be sourced from her. One that almost certainly was no longer a secret.

Fasola flopped herself onto another cushion a few paces away from the proceedings. She stared up at the gazebo roofs with a heavy-lidded look and muttered something meant only for herself. “The cat. The cat. Ohhh, the cat’s back.”

Kamsala’vish huffed behind Mokou. “What am I doing with this. You want something, tell me.”

“Oh, I dunno. Just fuck me up,” Mokou shrugged. “Haven’t put much thought into it. I just want it gone."

“Hanging rings?” suggested Fasola. “Menacing spikes?”

Agate cocked a faint smile as she glanced to the innkeep. “Perhaps an image of Polyxes and a chariot?”

Fasola nodded. “Ooh, yeah, and like, the chariot is upside down, and Polyxes is under it looking all plaintive!”

Agate glanced back at Mokou. Beneath the tired expression Mokou returned brewed a complex blend of pained disbelief and quiet horror. Had it been too much?

“I'm not—” She squeezed her eyes shut briefly and sighed. “The idea is people stop thinking I'm a hermit. Anyway, Kamsala, how are you, uh—”

The cherub bowed her head to the floor, where the tattered ends of Mokou’s hair pooled and coiled over themselves. Muscles rippled beneath her salt-white fur with the motion. She opened her mouth and bit. Her chrome-gleaming teeth whispered through the mouthful of white strands with barely a tug, parting them from their fellows. She chewed.

Mokou looked back over her shoulder. “Oh.”

“You eat of me, now I eat of you. Only fair, yes?” said Kamsala’vish, her voice slightly muffled from the mouthful of hair. “Very fine hair, this. Already smoked. You think of what you want, you tell me right away. Otherwise I graze you bald.”

By Agate’s assessment, it would probably work on her. It would certainly help to keep people from misclassifying her as a hermit. Though the more she considered it, the more questions it raised as to Mokou's nature. Neither the flames of her magic nor of her resurrections seemed to consume her hair. Would a simple haircut?

In any event, Mokou had time to decide on a style — Kamsala’vish seemed to be of a mind to savor this drop-in. So, too, was that time enough to aid Agate’s investigations. “Mokou. How much does Imet know?”

“What, about the Elixir?” Mokou’s jaw set. Her look shifted from tired to calculating. “Probably more than you do, now. But it didn’t seem like their cup of tea.”

Cold dread sluiced through her gut even as the answer brought incensing heat to her cheeks. She found herself torn between preserving what secrecy remained and pressing Mokou for further details. But there could be no secrets in this city. “How can you have any guarantee of that?”

“You know they’ve got a doppelganger, right?”

“It’s a bit rude to point that out, hon,” Fasola interjected. She lay tensely back in her cushion, her eyes pressed shut, her habitual smile rigid with a harried grimace.

“It’s common knowledge, besides,” said Agate. She thought of several matches where it seemed the biggest obstacle to Imet’s victory was their own self-sabotaging.

Mokou sighed. “Sure, but that’s my point. If they can’t die like I can’t die, all of a sudden, neither can their doppelganger. Nobody wants that.”

“That sounds horrible,” Fasola shuddered. She cracked an eye open. “Y’know, a couple years back, a chrome pyramid rolled through here to challenge them. Almost brought the whole place down, and I heard—” Here the innkeep’s tone shifted to that of a gossip grateful that someone else broached a taboo subject. “—it was their doppelganger what made the thing mad enough to start blasting in the first place. If the judges hadn’t teamed up to kill their doppelganger, it might have never stopped blasting!”

“Exactly,” Mokou gestured towards Fasola to acknowledge her anecdote. “Certain types, you just don’t want to remove the option of force.”

Agate said nothing, only frowned in contemplation. It was an unlucky chef who had to cook without knowing how an ingredient tasted. No such compunction barred Agate from learning that taste, only opportunity. And once that opportunity showed itself — that was an edge.

She grew conscious of Mokou’s continued gaze upon her. The look had shifted towards curiosity, though with the deep undercurrent of tiredness Agate had come to expect from her. Mokou broke off her gaze, looking back instead to the hairdresser, who was roughly a quarter of the way up the length of her hair. “Hey, Kamsala, I figured it out.”

“Not bald?” asked Kamsala’vish, with faint disappointment in her tone.

“You can still come in close on the sides. But leave some length along the top — like a half a hand or a hand’s worth. Enough to style it up and out and back. Used to call it… what was it…” Mokou trailed off, likely searching her memories for another scrap of ancient minutia. Still, finding them seemed to give her some amount of satisfaction. “Regent style!”

Kamsala’vish huffed softly. “Regents come and go. All have different hair. What regent?”

“That was just the name, alright? If there was someone it was named after, I never met ‘em.” Mokou gestured towards Agate. “I mean a bit like hers — breezy, you know? But more for the front.”

“Breezy?” asked Agate. No one had ever presumed to call her particular coiffed style breezy before. It snapped her entirely from her brooding. “How?”

“I saw you in the skies,” persisted Mokou. “You looked very aerodynamic. Breezy — but powerful! Your hair stood up to my danmaku and the beating from your gyro-gizmo.”

The compliment softened her indignation. “That resilience comes from regular applications of nanolin. My hair product of choice.”

“Great!” said Mokou, grinning. “Then I can just borrow yours.”

Agate’s ear flicked. Flattery, as ever, was merely a delivery vector for ulterior motives. “You have a fashion ration. Use it.”

“Fine, fine,” Mokou sighed.

Now armed with directives, Kamsala’vish worked her way higher up Mokou’s tresses, jumping past lengths she was only steadily nibbling before. Mokou, to her credit, was entirely unconcerned with the flashing jaws of a cherub so close to her scalp. She stilled herself in her seat, adopting an almost meditative air.

“More to the point,” Agate spoke at last, “how much did you learn? What of their techniques, their secrets?”

“Man,” Mokou grunted, her eyes still closed. “I don’t know. Not a teacher, them. If you aren’t also some kind of esper king then you’re probably out of luck.”

Agate scoffed. “I thought you a keener observer than that.”

Mokou opened her eyes to fix a tired glare on her. “Yeah, and I know when something’s not worth the heartache! I don’t know what to tell you, Agate. We had a chat, we baked some pastries. The pastries gave me psychic spacefolding powers. That still makes me a bit uneasy. We scrapped a little bit. I slept it off.”

“In the Baroness’s bed,” added Fasola, with salacious approval.

Mokou nodded, shifting a bit in her seat. “Oh, yeah. Point is, probably nothing we did in that lesson you couldn’t have figured out on your own.”

Agate’s heart sped in umbrage. It was not that she’d shared her bed with another — that was her own decision. Agate herself was no stranger to the bed in question. Frankly, given what she knew of the Baroness’s predilections, she was surprised it had taken this long for her to snare Mokou. What incensed her so was Mokou’s defeatism. “So it comes down to luck?”

“I’m saying you’re lucky if it comes down to luck,” countered Mokou. This was a new fire in her — a fire in defense of inaction. “It’s in the numbers, Agate. I’ve seen you cook, I’ve cooked with you. You’re damn good. You go one-on-one with a normal chef, they’ve got maybe a one-in-eight chance at beating you.”

Agate scoffed at the calculation. “At best.”

Mokou waved her hand. “Sure, let’s say everything’s at best. But Imet’s a goddamn mindkiller. They are not normal. They got nine bodies going up against your eight-to-one — now you’re outnumbered. That’s one breakthrough, at least.”

“Is this your magical algebra speaking?” countered Agate.

“It’s numbers!” said Mokou. That she could so forcefully argue while remaining still for the cherub’s ministrations was grudgingly admirable. “Because then you add their future sight to the mix. Each of those nine bodies gets their own mulligan towards being that one-in-eight. Now that’s a 225% chance over you.”

“Believe me, Mokou, I have made these calculations before,” said Agate. Generally with a bit more clarity — this wasn’t even napkin math from Mokou. Unfortunately, her own calculations rarely favored her with better chances.

Somehow, Mokou took this as encouragement. “So you already know the odds against you. You’ve internalized ‘em. Now you’re running up against their mind-reading. Now they know that you know you can’t beat ‘em. That’s a perfect morale coup. Now you’re into the intangibles. You can’t even think it. You got the kind of discipline it takes to not think?”

“What are you suggesting? That it’s ten years too early for me to try?”

Mokou let out a long, hissing breath between her lips. “Time? I wasn’t even bringing their goddamn time powers into it. I know time powers, Agate. You want to bring ‘em in?”

“By all means,” Agate gestured for her to go on. “We mustn’t be inattentive in our calculations.”

“Say you want to make a perfect stock out of salthopper chitin — how long does that usually take? Four hours?”

“Four hours is barely adequate,” answered Agate.

“Usually we leave those going overnight,” added Fasola. “That stuff’s tough. Juicy, but tough.”

“Fuck it, take a day for all it does you,” said Mokou. “Imet did it in five minutes. Felt like five minutes to me, I mean. Then they put it in a roux that went perfectly golden-brown in about one. That’s range. Take a decade and train up — the one you’re going up against is getting anywhere from three hundred to three thousand years out of it. And that’s just out of one manifestation! Either you stay behind or they die a champion.”

These reckonings came with such certainty and familiarity that Agate was given pause. She frowned. “Or, one tests their luck.”

“Yeah, and good luck with that,” Mokou softly scoffed. “You’re fighting relativity. Any way you add those numbers up, it spells disaster for you.”

“Mm,” Agate hummed in disappointment. She rose from her cushion and strode to a ringed hearth where a decanter of starapple tea was kept warming for the hairdresser’s visitors. “Tea?”

Mokou lifted a pair of fingers. “Yo.”

Kamsala’vish drew back from Mokou’s head and rolled her neck in a stretch from side to side. “Please. If hair gets in, okay.”

Fasola waved weakly. “Love some. This high level stuff is too much for me.”

Agate nodded and began pouring into four mugs. Mokou spoke of time as though it were an adversary, deeply and bitterly. It gave Agate a moment’s doubt that this conversation was entirely about the Chefs Oth. What was it she had said about her Kaguya, those months ago? That she wielded the power to manipulate eternity?

Perhaps this was her experience speaking.

With the tea poured, she doled out the mugs to all present. Fasola first, then the mug for Kamsala’vish, set on a side table, then finally Mokou’s serving.

“Thanks,” said Mokou, accepting the mug. “Y’know, with all that said, it’s a wonder anyone challenges them.”

Agate kept the mug clasped, looking down at the immortal in her state of transient deshabille. The unexpected tension from the offered drink prompted Mokou to meet her gaze quizzically. Agate narrowed her eyes. “The honor’s in trying, my dear Mokou. And where our intent breaks upon the material, what remains is the grace by which we endure it. From this, true nobility arises.”

She relented her grip and let the mug pass.

Mokou raised her brows, considering the thrust of Agate’s retort. After a few wordless breaths of contemplation, she raised the mug in a restrained toast. “Well, by all means, don’t let me stop you. Bet you’d cook your ass off. That alone’s worth seeing.”

“Your endorsement is heartening,” said Agate. She sighed softly and stepped away a few paces, towards a small decorative pond. She sipped her tea. “But I’m not there yet. Perhaps I will take that decade.”

Before she could give herself overmuch to brooding, Fasola’s voice lilted out from the cushions behind her. “Hey, Agate, I hear you’re going to the festival next month?”

Agate turned, casting her gaze back towards Mokou. “How many people did you tell?”

Mokou, cupping her mug, peeled a palm away from it to wave it innocently. “No secrets in the Heptagon, yeah?”

Fasola tittered. “What is it you two are doing, dan-something? I’ve never heard of it.”

“Danmaku,” Agate replied. “Think of it as… competitive fireworks. I’ll be catering.”

“What?” Mokou sputtered, nearly rising from her stool. “Catering? After all the—”

“Sit or be bald,” Kamsala’vish lowly cautioned. She levered her snout onto Mokou’s shoulder to force her back down.

Her reaction was worrisome, but not entirely unexpected. It was precisely why Agate had set contingencies into motion yesterday. “I’m not leaving you entirely partnerless,” she said. “I broached the possibility to E’Beth, and she seemed receptive. Ask her yourself and she’ll likely agree. Or do you retract your assessment of her prowess?”

“E’Beth?” Mokou countered angrily. She opened her mouth, then paused. The cherub’s tongue drew in locks over her further ear to snip closer to the scalp. Mokou’s frown settled into serious consideration. Blazing anger guttered. “E’Beth, huh?”

“She can keep herself aloft with far less mechanical assistance,” noted Agate. “Plus, with her powers of light manipulation—”

“No, I can see it, I can see it. E’Beth,” Mokou mused. She sipped her tea, her frown loosening still more as she gazed idly at the gazebo roofs. The look she cast back to Agate had shifted entirely into calculation. “Just — you were talking a big game about honor and grace and nobility just now.”

“All of which are resoundingly absent in a gyrocopter crash!” countered Agate. “This is Ut yara Ux at the Heptagon. You need catering. If you wish for your art to be widely seen, my name will assuredly draw them.”

“I’ll go anywhere you’re cooking, that’s for sure,” said Fasola.

Agate inclined her head and extended her palm towards the innkeep in silent recognition of the perfect illustration of her point.

“Alright,” said Mokou, from behind the bulk of Kamsala’vish. The cherub now sculpted the overhang of Mokou’s pomp with her dexterous lips and gobs of nanolin from her shop’s tin. “But if you don’t want your ass kicked in front of everybody, I get it.”

“It’s a matter of public safety,” Agate said, though a touch of heat rose to her cheeks. She gestured sweepingly with her mug. “And audience cultivation. Far better to court the crowd one gains from promising ‘Agate Severance Star will cook you a meal that makes you fireproof’ than the one gained from ‘Agate Severance Star might crash her gyrocopter into you’.”

Mokou raised a hand, palm down flat, and waggled it at the wrist in a middling gesture. “Honestly, for danmaku, you want both.”

Agate paused in consideration, then sighed. “I suppose you are the expert.”

“Ahh, I’m not gonna push you into anything,” said Mokou. “I was worried you were leaving me in the lurch there a second, but I reckon this’ll work out. Just don’t wall the freaks out, you know? Be too tame without ‘em.”

“There’s little risk of that,” Agate replied.

“Yeah, this is the Heptagon,” said Fasola. “Plenty of folks showed up in the first place just for the arena, then settled down just because they liked it here. You see it all the time.”

Kamsala’vish stepped back at last, tilting her head for a triumphant half-sneeze to dislodge the remaining beauty product from her mouth. “Done. Mirror over there.”

The result was striking — like a cumulus cloud or a ledge of weathered limestone rising over her handsome face. Sides shaved down to a snowy buzz fed back into a chevroned bear’s-tail of residual volume. Where before was half-braided chaos and trailing tangle, now it was all clean lines and boldly-groomed sculpture. For that matter, the nanites in the styling gel would provide a marginal amount of extra defense for her head. An almost total transformation.

But then, hadn’t there been something else about her today already? Some spark, rekindled yet elusive?

Mokou hopped to her feet, then paused as though the motion had jostled a tender spot. Still, her wince faded almost immediately into an expression of quiet relief. “Oh, my god. That must have been about five pounds.”

“Hey, look at you!” Fasola marveled, sitting up in her cushion. “So tough-and-ready!”

“It’s quite the effect,” Agate added, approvingly. “You’ve successfully shed your hermit disguise, I’d wager.”

Mokou, meanwhile, had made for the mirror. She tilted her head this way and that before it. A preening look of satisfaction crept over her mien. It augmented the mysterious bearing she’d held.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “That’s perfect. She’ll never see it coming.”

“Hmm?” asked Agate, drawing up to her side. “Who?”

Mokou glanced at her in soft surprise. She opened her mouth, then shifted her gaze over the others in the courtyard. She pressed her mouth shut again, raised her brows, and gave a small shrug to Agate. She stepped past her.

Of course, the instant Agate asked, she knew the answer. Mokou’s silence was its own confirmation.

“How much do I owe you, Kamsala?” asked Mokou.

“Give me your fashion ration, I will punch it,” answered the cherub. She rolled her neck in languid indication of her hairdresser’s table and its balanced tins. “Leave with some product too. This tin, almost done for. Have it and a fresh one. No trouble for me. I am eating good tonight.”

“You did right by me. Thanks. Enjoy the, uh. Enjoy that,” said Mokou, fishing free her ration card and offering it forward. Kamsala’vish angled her gleaming teeth to precisely punch out one of its boxes. Mokou had been making good use of it, judging by how punched it was. This done, Mokou pocketed it once more, as well as the two offered tins of nanolin.

“What are your plans for the day?” asked Agate. “There is still much to discuss.”

“Ahh, nothing until my shift, really,” Mokou answered. She glanced over at the innkeep, still in recline. “Fasola, you coming?”

“Go on ahead,” Fasola waved her off languidly. “Now I want a trim. Take the cat and I can get a nap in, too. If you get back before me, help yourself to some dolmas.”

“Might just do. Live and drink, the both of you,” said Mokou. She turned her head back towards Agate and nodded to the street. Her pompadour bounced with the motion. “Shall we?”

Agate nodded, and the two of them stepped out of the hairdressing cherub’s shrine and back into the streets of Garden Ward. Once well out of mundane earshot, Agate broke the silence of their stroll.

“You really think I have no chance?” she asked. Shadows clung beneath them. The Garden Ward’s lamp hung at the apex of its arc overhead, mimicking the high salt sun of the surface. The immortal's assessment held a troubling sting to it — it would have been an insult, had Agate's own assessments not generally agreed.

Mokou glanced sidelong at her in acknowledgment of the question. She said nothing for many paces, never pulling her hands from the pockets of her coveralls. At last, she sighed. “I think whatever chance you have against ‘em is an illusion.”

Agate took in a sharp breath, readying a barbed rebuke, but paused. What stilled her tongue was a memory — a fresh one. On the eve of the glass storm, Mokou’s impassioned parting defense of illusion.

“Are you suggesting I become a wizard, Ms. Fujiwara?”

Mokou glanced at her again, this time with a sly little smile.

“Well, Ms. Star, it couldn’t hurt.”

Chapter Text

Resting at the foot of Mokou’s bed, Agate buttoned up her shirt. The room was quiet save for their deep breathing. The smoothed rock walls warded sounds from the rest of the floor’s rooms. She was struck again by the sense of how sparse Mokou had kept her presence within it. The stillsuit hung from a wall hook with the phase silk scarf draped over it. Beneath it sat her pack, carbine, and crysteel blade, ready for the needs of journeying. A few more loose clothing effects scattered the floor. A nearby bathhouse’s calendar was pinned over the sink, while the commemorative bottle from the roof repair efforts soaked in the basin. Very little met Agate’s inspection beyond that, leaving the tableau a lonely, gloomy one.

Was this really the room of someone who didn’t have one foot out the door? She hadn’t even started a pickling shelf.

The crackle of a small flame sounded from the head of the bed. Mokou took a drag of her herb-roll and loosed the smoke upwards. A fresh sign of life for a chamber light on them.

“Gettin’ spoiled, I swear,” she muttered. “Maybe I should call in.”

“Still detailing the roof, yes?” Agate asked. She glanced over at Mokou.

“Just about done with that, I think,” Mokou replied. She had rolled onto her back, legs half-tangled with the sheets. One hand held her lit roll lazily by her face, while her free arm she draped across her brow to shield her eyes from the early afternoon lamplight. “Probably by the end of the week.”

“You should see it through,” said Agate. “Consider it endurance training.”

“I’ve had worse reasons to train, that’s for sure,” chuckled Mokou.

Agate gave her a slight, knowing smile. “How was your evening with the Baroness?”

“Oh, man,” Mokou grunted. She drew from her roll again, holding in the smoke and her thoughts alike. She loosed her aromatic breath and grinned. “That’s a huge bitch. Thought I was done for when I first saw it. But no, she had this stuff, uh—”

“Rubbergum?” surmised Agate.

“Rubbergum, yeah,” said Mokou. She dropped her shielding arm to shimmy herself up against the headboard, where she loosed a low whistle. “Never been so damn… bouncy and smooth before. And for so long, too! I was half expecting to wake up still rubber.”

“When congealed and properly prepared, it’s not out of the question,” said Agate. “If, naturally, the sensation is to your liking.”

“It’s pretty niche. I could see the appeal,” said Mokou.

Agate’s smile widened into one of fondness. That was a little morsel of novelty to file away for later. “Did she show you her xyloschemer?”

“That was that, uh, that luminescent baton of hers, yeah?” asked Mokou. “That thing gets hot.”

Agate huffed out an amused breath. “It has to. At any moment it must be ready to convert energy into physical matter. You’ve had the fortune to be touched by the apparatus responsible for generating the bulk of the Heptagon.”

“Damn!” Mokou whistled. “Lucky I didn’t get a column printed into me, I guess.”

“It has multiple safeties,” replied Agate. “And it’s surprisingly resilient to bodily fluids.”

“Can confirm,” chuckled Mokou. She took another drag of her cigarette as she eyed Agate. All day there had seemed to be much unsaid from her, but now she looked to be weighing the merits of speaking. She turned her head away, into the room, to loose her smoke. “She showed me something else, though.”

“What was that?” asked Agate. The playfulness, the erotic braggadocio, had faded from Mokou’s tone.

“A ledger kept by some water barons from up north,” Mokou answered. More tone leeched from her voice as she detailed it. “Had a big long section in it. They kept it updated for about a decade. All the tribute wagons they tried to send into the Moon Stair. To the House of Eternity.”

The name that had drawn her across Great Moghra’yi. So it was real — or as real as anything could be in the Moon Stair.

“Tribute?”

“Dowry, maybe. ‘To the Fated Beauty Said to Dwell Therein.’ Last one they sent before Farouun did ‘em in was only about eighteen years ago.” Mokou flicked her glance at Agate, then away again. “It’s like the goddamn Impossible Requests all over again. People just do this to her.”

Agate frowned. From her available context, it still seemed too grasping a supposition. “Was there a name attached to their aim?”

Mokou shook her head. “No survivors to report back. But from what Farouun found on her own, the caravans were all aiming for the Falls Not Found.”

“Mm,” Agate hummed in disapproval. “An ill-omened name, as ever.”

“You heard of it?” asked Mokou.

“Only in the sort of jawing accreted by myths and collective hallucinations. That it holds the House you seek is news to me.” Agate rose from the bed and strode to the chair where she’d draped her coat. “I imagine the survival rate of the barons’ caravans scarce deters you.”

Behind her, Mokou sighed. The sound of her slipping from the bed to shuffle on her coveralls followed. Her answer came with the soft strain of bent effort. “I have to know.”

Agate donned her coat. She fastened her holster and scabbard around her waist, then turned back to Mokou, crossing her arms. “When do we leave?”

Mokou’s garbing efforts paused. She met Agate’s gaze. The pained undercurrent flowed once more in it. “Agate, this is… This is my own…” She trailed off, rolling her wrist in an orbit of unspeakability. “I can’t ask you to get involved.”

A predictable entreaty. Agate bridged the room’s sparse gap between them as she gave her answer. “My blade is sharp. My dishes are indomitable. I am a seasoned warrior and wayfarer. And you—” She grasped Mokou’s face by the chin, tilting it up to meet her own cold stare, “—have already involved me. You can’t expect to shirk that now.”

Mokou winced softly in her grip. Her hands slipped beneath the hem of Agate’s long coat to sift through the fur of her hips. She dropped her gaze away, still troubled by some deeper pain. “That’s what I’m worried about. You don’t know her like I do.”

“Then tell me. The way from here to the Moon Stair is long.” Agate relented her grip. This reticence, this half-heartedness wouldn’t do.

Mokou sighed. She leaned her head forward, resting her face against Agate’s neck. “Can’t be that long.”

“Trust that I’m already developing an impression,” said Agate. She slid her gripping hand free of the press between them and guided it behind Mokou, to hold her next to her. “Information is survival.”

“Sure, sure,” said Mokou, muffled against her furred neck. She took a slow breath, then pulled back just enough to place a kiss on Agate’s lips. A pleasant kiss, warm and smoky. “Well, the answer is, I’m not leaving yet. Eighteen years is nothing. And the kind of heat it takes to dislodge her? I haven’t seen it here. She’s bound to be—”

A knock on the door interrupted her. Agate felt her jump slightly — it was no surprise to Agate, who had heard the visitor’s approach from down the inn’s hallway. The tread itself was more difficult to identify. Agate pulled back from Mokou and gestured towards the door. She raised a brow. “Was that a ‘cop knock’?”

“No. Just startled me,” grumbled Mokou. She slid her arms into the sleeves of her coveralls as she made for the door. She opened it.

Standing at the door, filling the frame, was a door.

“Mail call,” said Cheotl. “Oh, yes!” Sudden excitement gripped their voice as they took in Mokou’s state. Wood paneling melted into flesh-facsimile. A mirrored pompadour sprouted above. A small collection of correspondence remained in their knob-turned-hand. “That’s perfect. I’m delighted to see this.”

“Cheotl,” Mokou nodded in greeting, taking her mail. “You could’ve come along today.”

“No hair, remember?” laughed Cheotl. “Now I don’t mean to pry, but I couldn’t help but notice the seal of the Carbide Chef Phyta on one of those.”

“I’ll be damned,” mused Mokou, pulling free a folded letter. Its paper was dyed a pale chartreuse; a disc of woody brown wax sealed it. Pressed into it was the stamp of the Carbide Chef Phyta: a lily blossom within a heptagonal border. “Looks like I’ve got the full set, now.”

“Oooh! Good news, I hope,” said Cheotl.

“Reckon so,” said Mokou. She glanced up from the invitation. “You ever been to the Moon Stair, Cheotl?”

“Me?” Cheotl laughed. “No, never. Much too perilous. But one of my favorite poems bloomed from there.”

“Did it, now?” asked Mokou. “You’ll have to share it sometime.”

Cheotl grinned at her. “Maybe I will. But — why is Emberlily writing to you about the Moon Stair?”

“Hm? Don’t think she is,” Mokou replied. “Just been thinking about it myself.”

“Well, mind how you go, then,” Cheotl nodded in farewell, their emulated pompadour bouncing. “Just dropping those off. Love the new look. Live and drink!”

“Yeah, live and drink,” Mokou replied, as Cheotl shut the door. She strode to the table to spread out her letters. One, Agate recognized as a message tube favored by the Stilt’s librarian. No surprise they remained in communication — Sheba’s scholarly diligence was a trait Agate certainly appreciated. It seemed Mokou felt similarly. The other letter was a printed dispatch from the Heptagon’s weirdwire messaging office. Mokou picked up this latter card first. “A telegram?”

Another bit of unfamiliar terminology from the immortal. One that sounded surprisingly technical, by her standards. “A weirdwire. Its data protocol supports text information. Our repair efforts at the repeaters helped this one to reach you.”

“Kind of like a telegram,” Mokou muttered. Her expression brightened in surprise as she noted its sender. “From Irula! Let’s see here…” After a few moments spent scanning its contents, she laughed and offered it to Agate. “Oh, you’ll like this.”

Agate accepted the dispatch and read it.

MOKOU, it read.

SWUNG BY STILT FOR LULI’S BROADCAST PARTY. DIDN’T EXPECT TO HEAR YOU & AGATE JUDGING. NEAR EVERY TINKER’S TENT HERE CARRIED IT. SHOULD’VE HEARD THE CARNAGE. FEW FOLKS BEEN DRIVEN OUT ALREADY. FEELS LIKE A FRESH BREEZE.

As she read the terse recounting, Agate couldn’t help but smile. Irula’s judgment in these matters was sound. This was exactly the effect she’d hoped the match would garner.

SEEMS YOU’RE KEEPING WELL, the dispatch concluded. COME BACK & VISIT SOMETIME. BEST, IRULA.

“Welcome news indeed,” Agate chuckled, tossing it to the table. A lightness gripped her — the lightness of victory. “What word from Emberlily, then?”

Mokou raised a brow quizzically. “What, that’s it? After how much you’ve been stressin’ about this—”

“Certainly, I’m satisfied,” Agate replied. “But the moment the Urchin Battle was ready to broadcast, this was an inevitability. Templar sabotages could only delay this comeuppance, never deny it. What you hold, however, is an invitation from the first Carbide Chef.”

“Yeah?” said Mokou. She slit open the seal and unfolded the letter from Emberlily. “Think this was an inevitability too, honestly. Let’s see…”

She cleared her throat and began her recitation.

“To Chef Mokou, Iron Witness,

“You’ve seen us in action. You’ve mastered the lessons prepared by my fellow Carbide Chefs. You even fucked my wife!” She coughed from this last delivery. “Was that — should I not have done that?”

“If it constituted an actual problem, Kitchen Heptagon would have crumbled years ago,” Agate replied.

“Hope so. She better take it up with her wife first, anyway. Alright, uh — All this proves to me, hotshot, is you’re in need of one final lesson. A true test of your abilities, a challenge to earn your title as one worthy to carry the banner of the Carbide Chefs as an honorary member!

“Morning of the 30th of Uulu Ut, come to the arena floor. I’ll be waiting. What inspiration will you bring? The heat will be on!

Carbide Chef Phyta Emberlily.”

Mokou lowered the invitation and let out a slow breath.

“Just under four weeks. You’ve time yet to prepare,” Agate noted.

“Wait, is she challenging me?” asked Mokou.

Agate shook her head. “Certainly not — matches are only held in the evenings. Regardless, you shouldn’t think to slacken your efforts. This is still a chance for certification.”

Mokou considered this. “Pretty fast certification, isn’t it?”

“Compared to the usual knowledge base of those who seek the Heptagon’s certifications, you’re rather exhaustively qualified,” Agate replied with a faint smile.

“True,” Mokou chuckled. “Well, what are you up to on the morning of the 30th? Bet I could swing you as a plus one if you wanted to watch.”

“That may depend on how much preparation the danmaku showcase requires,” Agate replied. Really, when she considered Mokou’s skill, the certification itself seemed a formality. But then, when she considered Mokou herself, she seemed a creature of sentiment. She stepped closer and tilted Mokou’s chin up. She kissed her again. “Still, if you wish for me to be a witness, I can make time.”

“That’d be nice,” said Mokou. She smiled back, patting Agate’s glowcrust. Then she turned, set the letter down, and busied herself with the rest of her garb.

Agate was nearly to the door when Mokou spoke again.

“Kaguya does that, you know.”

“What?” asked Agate. Was this another of her harrowing interpersonal comparisons to the other immortal? She halted in her stride, casting her gaze back to Mokou.

Mokou stood in the middle of the room with a canteen in hand, poised for a swig. Her expression was neutral. “Makes time.”

Countless questions rose to mind from such a simple statement. Questions on its expression, its provenance, its limits. Even as they bubbled up and turned over within her, she knew they would be fruitless to voice. Small chance that Mokou could answer to her satisfaction. There would be time enough to ask her later for what clarity she held.

Agate sighed. “Be seeing you, then.”

Mokou raised her canteen in silent salute, nodding her farewell.

As Agate left Mokou’s chamber, a cavern draft sent a chill current down the hall. Flames in the oil lamps flickered. Her hackles rose. She shut the door.

The sense of being under unseen observation was growing far too common of late. Tabi, doubtless, though for a moment, in the darkness of her periphery, her mind had conjured the impression of great lidless eyes, staring.

Perhaps Mokou’s hesitancy stemmed from fear for Agate’s safety.

Needless sentimentality.

Chapter Text

The great chrome doors of the arena loomed before her. The edifice was an imposing sight in any circumstance. Whether or not it was a real challenge, the thrill of anticipation still built within Mokou as she waited. Undercut, she couldn’t help but notice, with a distinct vein of anxiety. Perhaps that was owing to Tabi’s lurking presence.

“Can’t believe they banned her from the ranch,” she grumbled.

“I have repeatedly tried to warn you of the public safety issue she represents,” Agate quietly replied. She stood to her side and a step behind.

“I told her not to open any vortices around here!” countered Mokou.

“Such a rigorous safeguard,” Agate scoffed.

“It’s been fine up until now. But then one little portal—”

“Look smart. It’s time.”

She did look smart — or at least she looked good. She’d worn the same suit she’d judged in, though the quill holes in the shirt beneath had been artfully patched with embroidered panels. This time around her hair was considerably less cumbersome. Agate, meanwhile, seemed to have followed a similar outfit selection rubric. But then, she had more than a few redundant options when it came to protective coats, so maybe it was a duplicate.

The doors hissed open. Chill mists billowed around them from embedded hydraulics. Twin lines of arclights gleamed in the softening vapor. Mokou’s heart sped.

She stepped into the arena. Mists kissed her cheek and for a moment she was elsewhere — the spray of a mountain stream in spring thaw. She drank in a breath, savoring the distant memory. It filled her heart with an ineffable sort of buoyancy. Agate’s hooves clicking on the black glass floor brought her back to the arena. Mokou steadied her tread, set her shoulders, and advanced.

Ahead of her flanked twin bastions of culinary purpose. Two kitchens in concentric opposition, counters and ranges arcing like trenches, storage racks and cabinetry rising like siege towers. She’d seen it from above several times, of course, but that was an entirely different sort of striking than the one gained from walking between them.

Waiting in the no-man’s land at the heart of the arena was her host for the morning: Emberlily, the Carbide Chef Phyta. A verdant figure about a half-head shorter than Mokou, four arms crossed before her chest. Her chef’s regalia adorned her: a thick coat hued burnt chestnut, a brace of knives sheathed at her leafy hips, a tall chef’s cap softly glowing from within. Eying their entrance, her faintly pained grimace dissolved into a fly-trap grin nearly as broad as her already-broad face.

“Fujiwara no Mokou!” she called. Her voice was raspy and a touch high, nearly tumbling out with the speed of her diction. She strode towards them, arms unfolding in welcome. “At last we meet! Emberlily, at your acquaintance. How in the devils are you?”

“Good to meet you. Can’t complain,” said Mokou. She reached out to shake hands, but paused mid-extension. This close, it was unmistakable that ghostly flames wreathed the Chef’s upper pair of hands. They showed no signs of extinguishing. “Oh!” she noted. A brief burst of sorcerous intent set her own hand aflame. She offered it forward.

“Hah!” replied Emberlily. “Yes, good!” She accepted with her own burning hand. The clasp flared up in a small eruption. The Chef’s grip was firm, steady, and hot. Mokou found herself mirroring her grin.

Emberlily’s grin faded only slightly into a more serious air as she turned her gaze to Agate.

“Chef,” she nodded.

“Chef,” Agate replied. “Your vibrodagger is in good repair, I trust?”

The question seemed like her usual sort of upkeep-gauging, but today Mokou thought she detected a strange hint of uncertainty in it. Was this someone who was hard on her knives, or was it something else?

Emberlily drew the blade in question — similar in make to Agate’s, if not in length — and spun it quickly between the fingers of one of her lower hands, chuckling. “It still cuts like a dream. Sharp as the day you made it.”

“I see,” said Agate. There was that trace, again. She sounded strangely unassured — almost haunted. If it hadn’t been for the time Agate had been spending with her lately and the thousands of years Mokou had spent around the other varied folk of the world, she might have missed it.

Emberlily sheathed it just as quickly and delivered a cooler pat to Agate’s bicep. “It’s always a thrill to have you back in the arena. The layout hasn’t changed too much since last time.”

“A pleasure to avail myself of it again,” Agate replied.

Mokou had been taking in the surrounding stands as they spoke. They were nearly empty, peopled by a few curious chefs and patrolled by a few small cleaning crews. Festival bunting had already been strung around the ring and the throne complex. It was nice to not have too much of an audience — her other lessons had all been rather personal affairs. Her gaze returned to Emberlily. “What are we cooking up today?”

“We?” Emberlily replied. She tutted a few times, stepping towards one kitchen wing. Mokou followed curiously. “I’m just here to see and advise. You’re going to cook something good enough to earn your title.”

"What, you’re not even gonna pitch in?” asked Mokou. A glance behind her confirmed that Agate hadn’t followed the two of them. She still stood in the center, waiting.

“Ask nicely and I might,” said Emberlily. “Or make it worth my while. Come on, take a poke around. ‘Rouun will be here any minute with the stuff.”

“Alright,” said Mokou. She began to amble down the aisles, opening cabinets and checking cookware. It was just as formidable a setup as she’d imagined. Her excitement mounted with every smoking rack, every steaming tower, every wok and spice pot and pickle barrel she uncovered. She could cook something very nice in a kitchen like this. Idly, she flipped at her breast pocket for her smoking materials. As she pulled them loose, she remembered herself, glancing at Emberlily. “You mind if I smoke?”

“Go right ahead,” said Emberlily. She craned her head slightly to better look at Mokou’s herb pouch. “What are you rolling, there?”

“Bajiko said it was a sativa-dioica blend. Shaved in a bit of witchwood, too,” Mokou explained as she sprinkled herb into her roll-paper.

“Nobody I know, then,” Emberlily laughed. She sidled closer. “Why don’t you roll me one of those, too?”

“Hey, alright,” Mokou nodded. She tucked her completed joint into the corner of her mouth and rolled another one for the waiting Chef. A bit of deft, instinctive work, and she had it ready. She offered it to Emberlily, who plucked it from her grasp with a lower hand. She clamped it between her interlocking mouth-spines and bent her head towards Mokou.

Mokou kindled a flame at her fingertip and lit Emberlily’s joint. Emberlily reciprocated with one of her burning hands. The two of them leaned back against a counter to draw.

“Hell of a thing here,” said Mokou at last, through a mouthful of stinging smoke. She gestured around the kitchen to accompany her statement, encompassing its marvels and means.

“Isn’t she, though?” said Emberlily. Her lower hands drummed against a drawer panel behind her as she spoke, full of a constant energy. “For as long as I’ve held the knife, I’ve dreamed of a kitchen like this. And for seven years now, we’ve been cooking in it! As like we’d be waiting another seven if we hadn’t liberated old Baron Mumthaz of his favorite shining scepter of office.”

“Mm!” Mokou grunted. “The xylo-thing! Another spoil, huh?”

“Aye,” nodded Emberlily. “Heard you’ve made its acquaintance.”

“Mmm…” Mokou took a slow breath. She sighed, a touch wistfully, then nodded. “It’s, uh — You don’t mind I fucked your wife, yeah?”

Emberlily waved her hands dismissively, as though to air away a distasteful notion. “Ach, not at all, not at all. It’s good for her.”

“Good, good,” Mokou chuckled. Ultimately it was all the same to her, but a small part of her was glad it was no trouble. Time and again she was struck by what a nice city she’d found. If she had to leave it like she’d left so many other towns — just because she fucked the wrong person’s wife — it’d be a damn shame. “What’s our procedure, here?”

“Well!” said Emberlily. She pushed herself off from the counter to saunter down the aisles. As she spoke, Mokou couldn’t help but notice that she never quite stood still. There was always some spark of motion to occupy some part of her. Certainly one of the livelier plants she’d met. “It’s sort of a mini-match. One dish. Whatever you can scrounge up in these pantries of ours, you’re welcome to. Whatever inspires you, put it in! Work with it! Just so long as you don’t neglect whatever ‘Rouun brings along. Once it’s done, we’ll judge how you did — if you could stand among the ranks of the Carbide Chefs.”

Mokou followed along, puffing thoughtfully on her smoke. “You can tell that from one dish?”

Emberlily cast a glance back over her shoulder and winked. “Wouldn’t very well be Carbide Chefs if we couldn’t. Ah! There’s her now.”

The chrome staircase that led up to the throne began its ponderous rise, each step in its sequence slotting up in place, level with the throne’s echelon. Only the whispering of internal mechanisms accompanied the motion this morning — the bandbots had other business. Mokou followed Emberlily back to the center of the arena, where Agate still stood in readiness.

As the final step rose into gleaming uniformity, it revealed at its base a dark portcullis-barred archway. It was built into the foot of the edifice, opening onto the arena floor when the steps were raised. A monstrous shape waited in its shadows. The portcullis rumbled upwards.

“Hydraulics holding up well there, love?” called Emberlily.

“Oh, yes!” boomed out the voice of Farouun. She stepped into the light. An apron, a mantle, knee boots, and heavy mitts all of sturdy black leather clad her. A face veil of white fabric splashed in bleached red garbed her head, fastened between her snout and horns to let her mane spill out around it. Tucked into her boots were puffed trousers striped in red and black vertical panels. Across her broad shoulders was a massive yoke, to which was chained two sealed cylinders. Pails, perhaps, though pails spangled with blinking green diodes and vents over which wavered the haze of heat mirage.

Farouun strode across the intervening distance of arena floor to set her burden down before them.

“What’s on offer, then?” asked Emberlily, gazing up at the Baroness with undisguised fondness. The question felt more for Mokou’s benefit than anyone else present.

“If my memory serves me correctly,” Farouun replied, straightening herself free of the yoke to rub her chin, “a portion of our immortal aspirant’s name lends itself from an ancient volcano.”

Mokou blinked. “Huh? What did you—” She glanced at Agate, the only one present she remembered telling about the mountain.

Agate gave a faint smile in return. “There are no secrets in the Heptagon.”

That wasn’t a secret, it was a total distortion. It was an entirely different Fuji altogether. Maybe they were just punning on her without even realizing.

“In honor of this appellation, for this morning’s courses there could be but one course,” Farouun continued. She winked down at Mokou. “That which courses, of course, through the life-veins of the giving earth beneath.”

Emberlily clapped softly and excitedly. “Folks, she’s done it again. Where’s it from this time?”

Farouun knelt into a deep bow, bringing her claws closer to the sealed containers. “Fresh from the Spore Ward’s mycothermal weep array, we unveil it to you now! This Carbide Chef certification bout’s theme ingredient:”

She punched the release catches of each shimmering cylinder. The lids hissed open and heat roiled forth. Beneath the haze, a molten glow. Farouun clenched her claws into fists and lifted them triumphantly.

“LAVA!”

Chapter Text

“What?”

Was this some elaborate prank? Did they really expect her to cook lava?

Mokou’s gaze flicked between the others. Her bewildered and half-incredulous searching settled on Agate. The hindren simply nodded in curt acknowledgment, shut the lid of one of the lava pails and lifted it uncomplainingly.

“Lava!” Emberlily brightly answered. “Come on, don’t tell me you’ve never had lava before!”

“I mean…” Mokou winced. Of course she had. One of Kaguya’s dares, hadn’t it been? Sour memories rose in her of choking on her own charred flesh. Crystalline laughter. “It’s not the kind of taste you forget. But how have you had it? Not like you folks can drink it more than once.”

Agate set her pail down on a countertop — not on the side Mokou had been touring. “You don’t drink lava, Mokou,” she called. “You cook it.”

“How?” asked Mokou. She made for Agate’s claimed half of kitchen. Emberlily’s hand on her breast stopped her.

“You haven’t,“ the Chef gasped in faint wonder. “All your years, and you haven’t cooked it before.”

“No!” Mokou scoffed in reply. “What’s left to cook? It’s molten goddamn rock!”

“Yes, the earthiness of its palate is unparalleled,” rumbled Farouun. "It’s a wonderful foundation for the heat.”

Emberlily shut the lid of the remaining pail and took up one of its handles. She beckoned encouragingly to Mokou. “Then you couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity to learn. You’re clapping eyes on the slynth who was the Consortium of Phyta’s top earner in ichor peddling for eight years running. If it flows, I’ve cooked it, and if I haven’t, I’ve sold it. Lava’s an old friend on both counts. So let’s, then, eh?”

“Alright,” grunted Mokou, taking up the opposite handle. For a moment, she nearly made to join Agate, before Emberlily’s motions tugged her in the opposite direction. Mokou’s lingering backwards gaze slipped from Agate, beginning her cryptic preparations, to the Baroness, doffing her protective leathers. “What’d your wife mean by bout, anyway?”

Agate’s laugh rang out across the glassed distance. “Surely you didn’t think I came here just to watch, dear Mokou.”

“What? Oh, come on, I’m cooking against her?”

It wasn’t enough she was supposed to cook lava — they were pitting her against Agate. Agate, who’d cooked here and won. Agate, who knew this ingredient far more than her. They were really going to make her work for this certification.

Emberlily tsked softly as they ferried the heavy container of lava to the other kitchen. “You don’t fret about what she’s up to. You just cook exactly as you were intending.”

“Wasn’t really intending to cook lava coming in to this,” Mokou grumbled.

“Well, best start, or your chances are scuttled!” Emberlily laughed.

But of course, it always came down to intent, didn’t it? In cooking, as in magic. Setting the heavy pail — really it was closer to a cauldron, Farouun’s size had simply made it seem pail-sized — down on a low countertop, Mokou loosed a slow breath. Steeling herself for the effort to come. It was not the heat that troubled her so much as the unfamiliarity, and all the uncertainty that bred. She popped the catch of the lid and pondered the glowing rock within.

“Always been curious, though—” Emberlily began. Her gaze flicked from the lava to Mokou as she rubbed her chin with a burning hand. Owing to her nature, she had an herbaceous, burnt scent about her. “You’ve drunk the stuff. What is it like when it’s raw?”

“Mmm,” grunted Mokou. She scowled. “Thick. Hot. Inconsistent. Kind of like… rice porridge, but if it seared you to death.”

Emberlily made an interested little grunt of her own. “Hm! Not too far off, then.”

That was worrisome. Not for her own sake — ultimately, it was all the same to her. “Whatever I make here, y’all are judging it, yeah?”

“Precisely so, Mokou,” answered Farouun. “A panel of four, plus myself, as per my usual.” She’d sauntered over to Mokou’s side of the arena as she stripped off her heat protection. Beneath, she’d been wearing a ruffled tunic whose red and black stripes matched those of her trousers. As well, the apron had blocked from sight a codpiece embossed with a stylized, extruded maw. The amount of steel involved in its make could have accounted for nearly a whole human-scale cuirass; given what Mokou knew of what it protected, it was, if anything, understated.

Distracting as it was, it was only a further worry. Whatever she did, she’d have to be sure it didn’t kill the people around her. She was starting to like them too much.

What did she know? What could she do with what she knew? What had she already done?

She knew magic. The doctrines she’d collected along her way had given her countless methods to coax and restrain and govern the flames. But they already had their own sort of thing here, didn’t they? The point was to gather something new.

She thought of the blunted poisons down in the hermit caves when she fought at Agate’s side. The trifold neutralizations granted and ferried by Bajiko’s ceviche. She thought of the flames that Agate’s curry had imbued in her the night before the glass storm. That had been a damn fine curry. And hot.

“Where’s your flamebeard paste?” asked Mokou.

“Third cabinet along the aisle, there,” Emberlily directed. “Got beardie-glands of every stripe and age stocked in it.”

Mokou clapped her hands to rub together and set off towards the cabinet and its promised stores. She raised her voice to call behind her. “And I’m gonna need… a wooden mallet. Long handle, hardest wood you can manage.”

“Ought to have one of those around,” Emberlily called back. Rummaging sounds followed.

Mokou opened the cabinet holding the breathbeard glands for her half of the arena. A moment’s scanning and she found the flamebeard section. Several jars of pastes fermented from the glands waited for her inspection. Immediately she gravitated towards the strongest stuff — the elder glands, aged longer both in and out of the beast. Even opening the jar was enough to make her eyes water and her sinuses sting. It was a slightly different preparation than what Agate had used, but still just as potent. That would certainly shield her judges from the flames.

But the flavor of the fresher paste from the younger creatures had its own appeal. From what she’d gathered in her own time here, the younger the beard-beast, the weaker the breath in its glands. Even the weakest expression would grant total protection — but what would be the point of such a feeble flame?

Did they stack?

She gathered a generous armload of both aged and fresh flamebeard gland paste and brought it back to the work zone. Emberlily waited there with her own prize: a long-handled mallet of dark, sturdy wood. She was presently occupying herself with spinning it into the air and catching it again like a baton.

“Nachash wood!” she explained. “Wiry, tangled sorts. Mostly found in the deep jungles. The only harder wood you’ll find in Qud is from the n-ary tree, but those types don’t care to sprout outside the Moon Stair.”

Mokou set down her pastes. “N-ary tree?”

Emberlily nodded, tossing the mallet up into another arc. “Aye, when the branch-nodes clump together, it makes for an almost crystalline matrix. Fetching and sturdy, to be sure, but a tad unapproachable.”

Mokou darted her hand upwards, intercepting the mallet before Emberlily could catch it. She hefted it, testing its weight, feeling along the coiled grain of its handle and head. “This’ll do fine. Hand me that buzzblade of yours.”

“Hey, alright,” Emberlily grinned, unsheathing the blade. She offered its hilt delicately to Mokou, but retracted just as she actually reached for it. “What’s your offer on it?”

“What? I’m not buying it, I just need it for a second,” scoffed Mokou.

“Need, eh? How about a case of that sauce you two are whipping up?” said Emberlily, unrelenting.

Agate’s call came unexpectedly across the arena. “You’ve already been promised a case, Chef.”

“Aye, and that’s production costs covered!” Emberlily retorted.

When had that happened? It wasn’t that Mokou minded sharing her efforts with the Carbide Chefs — but who else had Agate promised away her shoyu to? Mokou leaned to one side for a clearer view at her competition. “Hey, Agate, you got a spare?”

Agate locked her distant gaze to Mokou and sighed. She reached behind herself to one of her saddlebags and drew an identical dagger to the one Emberlily held. She braced it by the blade with a finger, sighted along her arm, pulled back, and threw. It spun across the arena’s distance in an easy, precise arc. The blade whispered into a cabinet door a pace away from Mokou, stopping at the hilt with a thump. Mokou retrieved it before the blade could slide any further down the door panel.

It was a beautiful throw. If she could manage twenty more at the same time, she might be on to something. “Thanks,” Mokou called.

“I expect it back,” replied Agate.

The vibrodagger effortlessly shaved the mallet head into eight regular planes. A bit of work with a grease pencil along the planes plotted the proper elemental trigrams for her plan. All it took then was to whittle them out. Maybe they had their own protective means here, but every little bit helped. It was worth the effort to safeguard the blossom of novelty and camaraderie she’d found here.

Her last step was to fill a basin of water and get the mallet soaking.

“What sort of technique is this?” asked Farouun, inclining her head quizzically.

“Ehh…” Mokou scratched the side of her head. The feeling of the instinctive motion had changed with the buzzed length of the hair she’d kept there. It didn’t particularly help her recall, but the newness was nice. “Gogyo. Pretty basic. That’s some really generative stuff you’re asking me to cook, there. Just trying to wrangle that one of the ways I know how.”

“Gogyo?” replied the Baroness.

“Or… Wuxing, if you were my wife. It’s, uh, magic. Old magic,” said Mokou. She shouldered the mallet, judging the swinging arc between herself and the mouth of the lava pail.

“Magic!” said Farouun, her scorpion tail swishing with excitement. “I’ve been waiting for this synthesis, I can tell you. Oh, but I shouldn’t skew your efforts.”

Mokou shrugged. “Giving it my best. Save your praise until it’s done.”

“You’ve got a wife?” asked Emberlily. She propped herself next to Mokou with an elbow on the counter and a lower hand on her cheek, looking up at her with a smile. “Tell me about your wife.”

“Had,” said Mokou. She swung the mallet into the viscous surface of the lava. The soaked wooden head hissed in the heat. “Long time ago.” She raised the mallet, then brought it down for another swing, building the rhythm. “Keine. She taught folks.” Another swing, another sizzle. As though the motion could dull the old ache of loss. “History. Writing. Ethics.” She swung a fourth time. Smoke started to tinge the rising steam. “She was a protector. A builder.” A fifth, and she pulled the mallet free of the clinging fire-rock to quench it in the basin again. The waters hissed at the closing of the cycle and the dawn of the next. “Sometimes she had horns.”

“Sounds like a real dish,” said Emberlily, consolingly. She winked. “Would’ve loved the chance to return the favor.”

Mokou cast a glance at her. She raised her brows and let out a soft laugh. Keine had always liked to try new things. “You’re a good few thousand years too late for that one, sorry.”

Emberlily whistled. “She stuck with you this long, she must have been something else.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Ahh, well,” sighed Emberlily, patting Mokou’s arm. “You find another wife out there, you know where to bring her.”

“Sure,” Mokou chuckled. She stripped off her suit jacket and set it aside. It might not have been the most practical choice for the present task, but then, Emberlily’s getup was even fancier, and she cooked in it all the time. Mokou wasn’t about to let herself get shown up at her own certification. She shouldered the mallet again and readied it for another quintet of strikes.

“So what are you making with this Gogyo of yours?” asked Emberlily, lifting herself up for a better look at the lava.

“Well,” Mokou grunted as she spoke around the rhythm of her swings. “You know how stretchy rice gets when you pound it enough? Makes a good dough. Hoping to get the same out of this.” Another cycle of five strikes, another dousing. She wiped her brow. “Called it mochi. Nice festival fare.”

“Is it anything like the dango you prepared?” asked Farouun, hopefully.

“Definitely. Just, with lava. You’re the expert here, chief,” Mokou nodded at Emberlily as she took up the mallet again. It was holding up well so far. “This gonna work?”

“Aye, you’ve a good chance at it. Lava can be coaxed any which way you please, really.” Emberlily scratched her chin, her face set in a faint grimace of consideration. “Might take a while for the consistency, though.”

“Yeah, well, back where I used to live, you could give rabbits amphetamines and they’d do it for you,” Mokou grumbled. “You want to take over? I still gotta get the filling going.”

“I could,” said Emberlily. A grin split her face. “What’s the aid of the first Carbide Chef worth to you?”

Mokou fixed her a look of disbelief between strikes. “Chief… I’m cooking for your wife, here. I know how hungry she gets. You don’t want to speed that along? That not worth enough to you?”

“Strong offer!” Emberlily barked. She grasped the mallet’s haft and shouldered it in Mokou’s place.

“A fearsome strategist, isn’t she, love?” chuckled Farouun.

“Just keep up what I’ve been doing. Five strikes, then quench,” Mokou explained, stepping back to give the slynth clearance to swing. She chopped her palm with each element she listed. “Wood, fire, earth, metal, water, dip it. That’s fundamentals.”

“I’m not usually one for cudgeling, or for magic, but you’ll have my best effort,” answered Emberlily. Her rhythm was faster than Mokou could usually sustain — it wasn’t just that she had more arms to spread the effort into, she was simply a quicker person.

All the while, Farouun’s hungry attention took in every motion from Mokou and from Emberlily alike. “Now it’s simply a matter of repetition until the desired texture arrives, yes?”

“That’s the idea,” said Mokou.

Farouun stroked her mane contemplatively. “Do you plan on implementing more magic into the rest of the mochi?”

Mokou paused a moment to consider. She shook her head. “Probably not. Not actively, at least. Don’t want to overload things.”

“Fascinating,” she drew back a pace with a courteous nod. “Then I wish you continued luck. I believe I’ll check on Ms. Star’s preparations.”

“Best to keep an eye on her, too,” Mokou waved her away amiably. That left her free to start on the filling. It would have to be one hell of a filling to hold its ground against whatever Agate was making. The gland paste promised to be rich, pungent, and unbelievably spicy. She wasn’t concerned with tempering that so much as refining it, augmenting it. A bit of sweetness would hit that balance perfectly. “Chief, you got anything here that’s sweet but… non-reactive?”

“Sap!” said Emberlily. “Sweetens up anything you care to put it in. Got a nice selection in that pantry just there.”

“Huh,” said Mokou. As she made for the pantry, she cast a glance back at the photosynthetic Chef. “I’m a little surprised to hear you pitch that. That’s like plant blood.”

“And it’s boon to many a cocktail,” rebutted the slynth. “Don’t tell me you’re as squeamish as the other rogues in the Consortium.”

“Oh, no, no, I don’t mind. Sounds perfect, even,” said Mokou. The clarity of the bottle labeled as jilted lover sap caught her eye. She tried it. The woodiness of its aspect would dovetail nicely with the magical preparations already underway. The floral hint in its palate appealed. Reminiscences of cherry blossoms skirred within her, jogged by the scent of mutant descendancy. “Just that I’m not surprised to hear about that squeamishness from your colleagues.”

Those were the types who couldn’t even deal with a bit of fungus, if Agate was to be believed.

Emberlily chuckled softly over the hissing quench-basin. “Ahh, they’re happy to take my dues, but none of ‘em have a grasp on my philosophy.”

“A chef and a philosopher.” Mokou whistled, sauntering back to her mixing bowl. As she added the sap to the flamebeard mixture, she turned a bit more of her attention over to her host. “So what’s the philosophy of the first Carbide Chef?”

“It’s a fairly simple one,” said Emberlily. She hefted the mallet again, preparing another cycle of strikes. For a moment, Mokou thought to warn off the explanation, considering the ritual space Emberlily had been pressed into. But she was curious — both of the philosophy itself and how it might ripple into the prep’s surrounding intent. Emberlily swung the mallet down. “All sex is death.”

Mokou considered this, gazing across the arena to the quiet explanations Agate was giving Farouun — the two she’d most recently bedded in her fathomless amorous history. “Y’know, I thought your wife was gonna do me in the other night, but she didn’t.”

Emberlily wagged a finger with a free hand. “Ahh, but if you hadn’t surrendered a bit of yourself, she would’ve. One way or another, it’s a surrender of the self.”

Farouun wouldn’t have, really — but only because rubbergum was the necessary condition for what they’d ended up trying. It didn’t feel so clear-cut. Then again, she’d surrendered to death countless other times, in countless other forms. “Didn’t particularly mind that surrender, myself.”

Emberlily winked. “Never cast judgment on it, did I? But that feeds the next column: All death is food. That one, my Phyta-mates ken well, they just don’t like it when they’re on the menu.”

“Mm,” Mokou nodded. She’d seen it everywhere, in countless forms, through countless cycles. But then, it never quite worked on her. Hers could never be true deaths.

Waters bubbled around the mallet as Emberlily thrust it into another quenching. “That’s to say, we’re all of us in the stew pot. Bringing us now to the last point. All food—” She lifted the dripping mallet from the waters, then drove it home. “—is sex.”

If others here shared her philosophy, it would certainly explain a few things about the city at large. She started heating a deep stockpot for her spicy gland filling. “Think I need a bit more of a breakdown on that one.”

“It’s easy — anything that helps you reproduce and perpetuate your essence is sex. Food does all that and more.”

“Huh. Very comprehensive,” said Mokou, scratching the back of her neck as she waited for the filling to come up to temperature. “But I gotta say, reproduction’s a pretty low priority for me. It’s just about never what I get out of food.”

And as far as self-perpetuation went, there was nothing she could cook that could stop that from happening.

“Try cooking with cloning draught sometime, you’ll see what I mean,” said Emberlily.

“Hmm,” Mokou grunted. Too rich for her blood, and dubious of purpose to boot. The world didn’t need more of her. Especially not when the same stuff could heal others. Her gaze roamed again across the arena to where the others stood, busy with their own culinary efforts and observations. “Wait, but if all food is sex, that means—”

“Oh yes, my friend,” Emberlily laughed. “From the very first dish you served her, you’ve been fucking my wife.”

With this proclamation, she quenched the mallet. Then her entire body burst into flames.

Chapter Text

“Shit!” Mokou cursed. She killed the heat on her filling pot and cast about the kitchen for something she could douse Emberlily with. Not the quench bucket — it had been absorbing elemental essences from the lava every striking cycle. It wouldn’t necessarily put things out anymore.

She’d thought the spell was simple enough to trust to untrained hands. Furthermore, it wasn’t as though Emberlily had failed to follow the right process. Where were Agate’s freeze grenades when she needed them?

“Fret not, fret not,” said the burning Emberlily. Her voice gritted in pain and exasperation, but reassured Mokou all the same. Her limbs patted quickly at the flames consuming her. They’d already subsided slightly by the time Mokou found something to douse her with.

Mokou emptied a pail of sand over the Chef. The flames sputtered out.

“Sorry,” Mokou grunted. She set the pail aside and handed Emberlily a dampened cloth. “Spell wasn’t supposed to do that.”

“Aye, but I was,” said Emberlily, accepting the cloth with a grateful nod. “Consequence of an over-eager genome. Past a certain level of activity, it’s more and more likely to kick in.” After rubbing the dust from her verdant face and coat, she set the cloth aside. She sighed. “Or under a certain other level of activity.”

“Ahh, yeah. Spontaneous combustion. I know how that goes,” said Mokou. With the danger over, she turned back to the filling. “Bit of a pain, isn’t it?”

“It’s not so bad,” Emberlily grinned, taking up the mallet once more. “Plenty of recipes call for something to burn. Though, it did feel like it came on a bit quick just now.”

“Well, that’s a catalyst for elemental manipulation I’ve made there. We’ve got a lot of energy working its way along the transference matrix. Could be some of it jumped ship.” It shouldn’t have, just from how she’d made it — but then, she’d made it for the type of human she was used to. Herself. It wasn’t out of the question it might act differently in the hands of some kind of plant-person. “Maybe I should take over on that again.”

“No, no!” Emberlily laughed, launching herself into another sequence of lava-pummels. “If I couldn’t take the heat, I wouldn’t be in the kitchen.”

“Stay wary, then,” Mokou chuckled. Her mochi filling had been steadily stinging her eyes with every wisping stir. A taste of it turned her chuckles into soft gasps of wonder-struck pain. The glands were stacking perfectly. She wiped her tears away with her cuffs and turned another inquiry towards the Chef. “Guessing you’ve made quite a few of those burning-type recipes yourself.”

“Aye, as the inspiration takes me,” said Emberlily. “Heard it took you there too when you cooked with the ‘mets.”

“Huh?”

“Imet! Just my little pet name for ‘em.”

“Ah. Yeah, we did.” Mokou coughed from a residual spice-pocket. Wisping tongues of flame licked out. The glands were already taking hold. But there it was again — some cultural weight to the word she hadn’t quite felt out. “Inspiration?”

“Inspiration!” said Emberlily. Her tone sounded eager, though a touch worried at the necessity of explanation. “How to say it… Let’s give you a hypothetical. You’re traveling somewhere new. You get there! How do you feel about it?”

It was a rather vague question. “How’s the view?”

“Breathtaking, maybe,” Emberlily replied. “The sort of vista it takes you parasangs to find. Or maybe there’s a little patch of something that catches you just right, makes you think about it in a way you’ve never thought about a little patch of something before.”

“Well… I suppose I’d feel grateful,” Mokou grunted. “Takes a lot to get me to think a way I’ve never thought before. Been at it for a while, now. What’s that got to do with recipes?”

“Hmm,” Emberlily grunted back. She switched arms for her pummeling to give her other pair a break. “Well, let’s say this — you hit a personal milestone. How’s that strike you?”

“Depends on the milestone. Kinda light on ‘em lately,” said Mokou. She tried not to set too many for herself. They never seemed to do her much lasting good any way they fell. This certification was the most immediate, and from Emberlily’s tone, her answers weren’t good enough. The only other one she could think of was—

Finding Kaguya again.

And when she did, she’d just feel every possible way she knew how to feel about that. Starting with whatever pressed her the most. Bloodlust, maybe — or just plain lust.

“What about your sauce?” asked Emberlily. “Let’s say it’s all brewed and bottled. How’s that going to get you to feel?”

Mokou laughed. “Oh, you kidding me? There’s so many goddamn recipes I’m putting it in. You better cherish that case, because the rest of it’s gotta last me.” Of course, that was the other reason she kept them trim — too easy to forget them.

Emberlily clapped once, decisively, and leveled a burning finger towards her. “There you go! Inspiration! You take that moment, that feeling, and you cook about it.”

“You make it a recipe,” said Mokou, rolling the thought over within her. She judged it back against the course of her existence, such as she ever could. But something fresher caught her. “Like a spell card.”

Hadn’t that been Agate’s cryptic connection, that day in the canyons when she’d faced Mokou’s old danmaku? Maybe when she found Kaguya again, she’d cook her something. Doubtless she’d have a few new recipes under her belt by then.

“Could be,” shrugged Emberlily. “Can’t say I’m too familiar with those, but your showcase aims to fix that, aye?”

“Sure does,” grinned Mokou. “You coming? I’m thinking to put these mochi on offer if they turn out well.”

“Save your asking ‘til the cooking’s done, then,” Emberlily teasingly replied. “Point is, that inspiration is the core of what makes us Carbide Chefs. It’s what lets us take a moment, a mood, a menu, and transmute it into… a part of our own histories.”

“Histories,” said Mokou. A bit of melancholy crept into her grin, though it wasn’t unwelcome. “You sound like my wife.”

“I am a married slynth, friend Mokou,” Emberlily replied with a raise of her verdant brows. “Going on fourteen years now I’ve been practicing my wifely duties with ‘Rouun. What makes you say that, though?”

Mokou softly chuckled. “Congratulations. Thing was, with Keine, she could eat history.”

“She could eat—?” For a moment, Emberlily’s strikes faltered, dumbfounded. Only a moment, before the mallet started smoking. She finished the cycle quickly and quenched it again. Her gaze returned to Mokou with a wide intensity. “Damn! Now I really wish I could’ve returned the favor. How do you cook history?”

“You looked around this place? This land?” asked Mokou, sweeping her arm towards the arena’s rooftops and the canyons, the fields, the ruins beyond them. “You already are!”

Emberlily rubbed her chin in consideration. “A fair point, but was that how your wife ate it?”

“Well, no,” admitted Mokou. “Hers was some kind of natural magic. Looked like ink. Tasted like ink, too, if I remember right.”

“Ah, ink I can work with,” Emberlily winked.

“You and Jathiss both,” said Mokou with a soft chuckle. It wasn’t a complex recipe she’d set herself on today, merely one that took patience and repetition. It made for ample time to converse. She sighed. “It’s academic, anyway. Keine’s been gone for… a long time.”

“No, no! It’s not academic,” Emberlily suddenly countered. “It’s aspirational! Inspiration’s the core of what we do, but it’s the taste of a dish that lets us elevate it to meet what our pride demands.”

“Pride, huh?” Mokou mused. That certainly tracked with the attitudes of some of the people she’d cooked with since she came to this land. It absolutely tracked with Agate’s attitude. The thought that they’d been pitted against each other in this contest still gave her a bit of anxious pause. She’d felt the hindren’s intermittent attentions on her as she cooked — and with such powerful ears listening in, it could hardly be a private conversation.

Emberlily nodded, switching arms again. The lava still had a ways to go. The mallet looked to be holding up nicely, and its wielder hadn’t combusted again yet. “That’s what I like about you, Mokou. All my Chefs come back to me and they say ‘Damn! That Mokou, she never compromises on taste!’ So many cooks these days get so caught up in the fancy effects, they forget to make it taste good.”

“For the longest time, taste was all we had to work with,” said Mokou. The praise soothed her doubts some.

“Fascinating,” said Emberlily. “Stands to reason, I suppose. It’s a wild and chewed-up land, ours. Our cuisine’s got to match it. Got to make it worthy of who you’re cooking for, and who you’re cooking. Otherwise what’s the point? Where’s the artistry?”

“Well, don’t worry, the taste on this one’s already hitting right.” The scent of spices and charring verdancy brought her thoughts back to old cookouts — the first grilling of springs long gone. When the winter-aged potency of autumn pepper harvests could finally be unleashed on the freshest new forage. But then, hadn’t she been primed to think of them? “Y’know, the thing you said about the right vista — I think I felt that on the way in.”

“I’ll bet you did,” replied Emberlily, her tone dropping into conspiratorial slyness. “Got special resonators in the doors, y’see. A little suggestive burst of elsewhere, to give our challengers a fighting chance.”

“Bet they need it. What’s your win rate?”

Emberlily looked off in thought. “Let’s see, last I tallied it, it was… Ach, no, but there was that win the other week. ‘Rouun!” she called at last. “What’s my win rate?”

The Baroness glanced up from her studious attempt at teaching Tabi to shake. Her answer rolled across the arena floor to them. “Seventy-two percent!”

“Seventy-two percent,” Emberlily beamed.

Mokou simply whistled in appreciation.

“And let me tell you, that’s a hard-fought number,” Emberlily continued. Her pride bled through. “Among those bestings is Weary Paw Mara herself!”

“Who’s that?” asked Mokou. The name sounded vaguely familiar.

“Oh, she’s a legend in these parts,” answered Emberlily. “She’s the reason our young ain’t gobbled from the cradle by the Girsh Nephilim. She beat the Gyre back when it cycled back ‘round. Big lass. Good heart. Spends a lot of time soaking up the sun. Surprised someone like you hasn’t met her yet, honestly.”

“Ohh. Think Agate might have mentioned her,” Mokou muttered. “But, what, she forgot to make her dishes taste good?”

Emberlily scoffed out a laugh. “Are you japing? The woman cooked like I was the eighth plague of the Gyre! I was fighting for my life! And my wife!”

“How’d you win, then?” asked Mokou, though the question almost felt superfluous. If she still had a wife to cook for, then every vista would get her in the mood to fix her something.

“Neutron flux!” said Emberlily. “I soaked the stuff into sashimi. That’s one of yours, I hear? I’d best thank you for my victory.”

“Just one from my people, but you’re welcome all the same,” said Mokou. After a moment, she frowned. Another thing Agate might have touched on around her. “Neutron flux?”

“Ahhh…” Emberlily’s tone grew wistful and a touch grave. “Now there’s a juice that’ll part you from your drams. Like trying to cook a machine press, but the taste, the taste…!” She tilted her head back and kissed the tips of her burning fingers. “Can’t even describe it. Utterly otherworldly. If there’s a lesson to take from me, it’s this: you can’t sweat the pricey stuff.”

“Chef,” Agate called. “I’d thank you not to put ideas in her head.”

Emberlily waved wordlessly and, to Mokou’s eye, a bit dismissively. Mokou herself tracked her gaze across the arena to find Agate staring intently back. Neither spoke. After a few breaths, Mokou turned her attention back to the filling.

Regardless of how close they’d gotten over the last few months, one thing was clear. Agate was still holding out on her. Doubtless she had her justifications. Mokou would just have to see how well they held up if Agate ever trusted her enough to drop them. She had time.

“Hey, chief,” Mokou at last said to Emberlily. “Why’d you tell me not to worry about what she’s doing over there when she’s really obviously worried about what I’m doing over here?”

The mallet slapped into the quivering lava once more. “Because you shouldn’t! Sure, she’s a powerhouse, but if you can’t even take the pressure of one rival chef, then don’t even dream of flux.”

“And because, dear Mokou—” came Agate’s voice, startlingly close — only a countertop separating them. Between Emberlily’s pounding and gabbing, Mokou hadn’t even heard her approach. “—I have to know what you’re doing if you wish this to be served at your exhibition.”

“Ain’t you got your own dish to worry about?” grumbled Mokou.

Agate cocked a faint, cold smile. “My hoarshrooms are marinating. The lava simmers itself. Now: why did you not simply lacquer the mallet? That would assuredly protect it from magmatic damage.”

“Because then the water would slip right off, too. It has to soak. It’s like you weren’t even listening when I talked about the transference matrix,” Mokou countered. Now that Agate was closer, it was clear her glowcrust had just been pruned of fruiting bodies. It made her a touch jealous of the judges — those things were damn tasty.

“The transference matrix, I can accept, but the catalyst itself — what did you do? Those are mere… dots and dashes!” scoffed Agate.

“Trigrams. Old magic. I don’t have time to get into it. Just trust it works for me. You do that, and it’ll work for you, too.” She waved her hands at Agate. “Now shoo. Let me cook.”

Agate stepped away, hooves clicking on the glass floor. She cast an intense stare back at Mokou. “I expect a full report.”

As the scientist returned to her half of the arena, Mokou set aside the filling. It had reached the ideal taste and consistency. Now it could sit. “Let me take over on that again.”

Emberlily nodded, pulling the steaming mallet from the quench bucket. She held it out to Mokou admiringly, a gleam in her eyes and a grin on her face. “Magic.”

Mokou chuckled. She grasped the shaft. “S’what cooking’s all about.”

Chapter Text

Mokou set the mallet aside, wiping her brow. It had taken a bit of extra sap and a lot of extra pounding, but at last the lava reached the right stretchy consistency. It seemed to have cooled from the shifting and tempering of its elemental essence, but without sacrificing any of its character. Shocking as it was to admit to herself, it probably wouldn’t kill her.

Then, it was a matter of some delicate work with scoops. She’d availed herself of a pair of them; insulated handles and sturdy, lacquered steel protected her hands from the heat. With them, she formed the lava-dough into hollow, stretchy pockets to wrap around her flamebeard filling. All the while, attention rode her. Not just from Emberlily and Farouun, nor just from Agate’s intermittent probing, but from the stands, as well. Folks had trickled in as the certification bout progressed. While the bout was hardly as flashy as a true match, that meant the audience was possessed of a more casual or scholarly interest.

It made for less pressure, certainly, but Mokou almost found herself in want of it. Hopefully her danmaku exhibition would draw a livelier crowd.

“Okay,” she muttered, letting out a slow breath. Heat wisped from the glowing mochi, their surfaces marbled with pulsing convection whorls frozen into tectonic languidness.

“Quite the presentation,” Farouun rumbled appreciatively.

“Nothing to worry about!” said Emberlily, clapping her back.

“Sure,” said Mokou. Tempted as she was to raise her strongest fire wards before she sampled her offering, no one else had their benefit. She had to trust she’d done enough. She grasped her test portion, transferring it gingerly between her hands as it threatened to burn them. She blew a few times on the magmatic skin of the dumpling, then took a decisive bite.

Her mouth burned — and it was good. Heat, spice, burning savoriness and caramelized sweetness flooded her watering mouth. She swallowed quickly. Her sinuses flared. Tears slipped from her tightening eyes and steamed away when they met the sudden flames that licked up from her mouth. It was the spiciest thing she’d cooked all century.

The next bites she took at a more leisurely pace. The heat alloyed into her — she didn’t even need to switch hands. The true richness of the gland filling unfolded beneath the mounting spice. The skin had a nice crystalline crispness layered into its gumminess. This was a dish worthy of the mountain she’d outlasted.

She had cooked lava. And she was alive.

“Is it ready for judgment?” asked Farouun. “Does it meet your satisfaction?”

“Yeah,” Mokou coughed. “Oh, yeah. Gonna whip a few more up now.”

“What about the glands? How’s it hitting you?” Emberlily eagerly asked.

Mokou took a deep breath. She tilted her head back. She flexed her freshly-sprouted glands, and loosed. A cone of flames spumed up into a ferocious canopy as high as the rim of the roof, arcing out to nearly the radius of the arena. They crackled into nothingness a breath later, before they could fall. The crowd in the stands gasped and clapped at the spectacle. A grin spread over Mokou’s face.

“Hitting pretty good.”

“That’s what we’re looking for,” said Emberlily.

Mokou started portioning out and shaping the rest of the servings. Now, she could simply use her hands to mold them. That was its own novelty. She had more than enough ingredients to account for the judges, the Baroness, and even Agate — doubtless she’d want a taste of the dish before she staked her name on it. Mokou’s own preparations hadn’t left her at liberty to snoop on her end of things, but from what she could gather, it looked like Agate was close to wrapping her dish up as well.

At last, she readied them: six proportional servings arrayed around a wide platter. To house her mochi, she’d found some round earthenware plates coated in a subtle black glaze.

“There we go,” said Mokou, scraping the clinging lava back into the pail before dusting her hands in satisfaction.

Emberlily nodded in appreciation as she circled the platter, leaning in to take in the details and the scent. “Lovely! Have you thought of a name for it?”

Mokou drew in a deep breath, then nodded back. “Chef Fujiwara no Mokou’s Magmatic Mochi.”

“With time on the clock, to boot,” noted Farouun. She clicked shut the cover of her timepiece, then called across the arena. “Agate Severance Star! Does your dish stand ready?”

“It does,” Agate replied. She had a platter of her own that she brought to a central staging plinth between their opposing kitchens. On it were earthenware bowls glazed a deep violet, glowing both from the lava within and from the glistening hoarshrooms floating atop. Six bowls in total. That was heartening. Agate set down the platter and stepped away, crossing her arms behind her back. “Chef Agate Severance Star’s Blaze-Marinated Hoarshroom Poached over Lava Pudding.”

“Then I hereby call a close to the cooking and preparation of this certification bout,” announced Farouun. “Judges! Prepare to receive cuisine!”

With that, she scooped up the platter Mokou had prepared, then made for the plinth, where she took up Agate’s in her other hand. Emberlily trotted ahead to the staircase leading up to the throne, grinning all the while. Mokou donned her jacket and fell in behind the Baroness. Agate matched pace at her side. Butterflies built within her. Though, some of the more pointed aspects of the feeling might have been from Tabi, loping silently behind.

“Is one of those bowls for me?” she asked Agate, quietly and hopefully.

Agate nodded. “I thought I’d pay you the courtesy of an advance tasting of the dish I’ll be matching to your art.”

Mokou smiled, punching her softly in the bicep. “That’s my buddy!”

Agate merely cast her gaze upwards and sighed.

There were a lot of stairs to climb. Every bit of sympathy Mokou had built towards Farouun for her chosen onus of mounting them repeatedly over the course of the city’s regular matches redoubled within her now that she was the one climbing them. They got her where she was going, but she didn’t have to like it. At last, they crested the top stair.

The topmost tier of the throne dais had been rearranged to once more suit the purpose of judgment. Sitting at a long table, awaiting the dishes, were five familiar faces. Her judges were to be the Carbide Chefs. Each were dressed in their regalia of competition. Bajiko and Imet were masks of patience. Emberlily was just settling down into her chair between them. From her end of the table, Jathiss gave a small wave and winked with half of one head’s bank of eyes.

Farouun deposited the trays on separate staging tables, then made for her throne. With a swish of her tail through the open back, she sat, crossing one leg over the other as best as her codpiece allowed. She swept a claw expansively towards Mokou and her tray of mochi.

“Fujiwara no Mokou,” she said. “Your arrival has sent veritable shockwaves through this city of ours. You have been a font of knowledge, skill, and mystery in equal measure. My Chefs have cooked with you, supped with you, guided you. Now, they judge you. Whether you have attained the right to be enshrined by our ritual, to be recognized as only the Carbide Chefs can recognize you, now hinges upon your course. Please,” she switched claws, gesturing now to her waiting lovers. “Serve.”

Mokou bowed. Rising, she took up the plates she’d prepared, two at a time. She doled them out as she spoke.

“Well, I gave two of you the name of this one already, and I bet Imet already knows.”

Imet nodded in confirmation, then again, deeper, in gratitude as Mokou placed their serving in front of them.

Mokou took up the next two servings and continued. “For the rest of you, though, it’s Magmatic Mochi. Usually it’s a rice dough for mochi, but, uh, that wasn’t the theme ingredient. So I improvised. Lava… isn’t really anything like rice, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned here, it’s…” She sucked in a long breath through her teeth, then let it out as a sigh. “You can just eat whatever, you know?”

With the Chefs served, she handed off the extra-large portion to Farouun, and finally, the remaining plate to Agate. It seemed to be her fate to eat it standing, but that was probably for the best — it was festival food, after all. Mokou winked.

“Enjoy.”

Satisfaction played through her with the reactions her meal provoked. Emberlily stifled a cough. Imet wiped tears from beneath the rim of their mirrorshades. Bajiko leaned back and closed her eyes, taking in a slow breath with a leisurely smile. Farouun and Agate both seemed suddenly preoccupied with maintaining their composure. Jathiss cleared her throats in surprise. She was the first to voice her thoughts, having an unoccupied mouth. Curiously, the ghostly flames granted by the filling sprang up from the mouth that hadn’t tasted it.

“This spice — this flamebeard filling — it’s so tremendously compounded. Wrapped in the magma crust is an almost single-minded fixation upon stoking this heat as fierce as it can get.”

“There is beauty in simplicity,” Bajiko sighed. She looked well and truly contented. Knowing what she knew about Bajiko’s spice tolerance, Mokou could imagine just how much she was enjoying it.

“But speaking of the heat, I’m just agog at the lava, here,” said Emberlily. She’d polished off her first mochi quickly and now took a more thoughtful approach to her second. “You’ve cooled it, thickened it, but it’s still not quite solidified. I’ve never had lava like this! I was down there pounding it with you and I’ve still only the faintest how it’s done.”

“Magic,” said Imet, wonderingly. They took in the scent of the mochi, composing their thoughts. “That’s really something else. Between that and the flamebeard glands doing double duty, you almost — almost — lose the lava. But the texture’s novelty saves it.”

“Lava in general’s a bit of a novelty to me,” Mokou admitted. “So far as I can remember, this is the first time it hasn’t killed me. Certainly it’s my first time cooking it.”

“Your first time?” asked Jathiss and Bajiko in near-unison.

“Right?” Emberlily thumped the table with a lower hand. “And she makes this?”

“I’m saying, she’s a total natural,” said Imet.

Mokou glanced over to Agate, who had said nothing all the while. The silence was understandable, given her role in the bout. She’d mastered the spice level, at least. It was good to know the two of them held similar tolerances for it. Agate returned her gaze with an upraised brow and a smile so faint it was nearly lost in the wreathing flames.

“Well, I’m glad y’all enjoyed it,” Mokou chuckled. “Finally cooked something spicy enough.”

“Your fusion of technique and esoterica is truly exemplary,” said Farouun, once she’d finished her last mochi and the ceramic plate they’d been served on. “But we have another exemplar to try you against. Agate Severance Star! Your dish, if you please.”

“Naturally,” replied Agate with a gracious nod. She doled out her servings with precise motions, coming at last to Mokou. “Nothing quite so unorthodox in its methodology as that which my colleague put forward. Unnecessary, for the desired effect. You’ll have a chance to try this again at the upcoming exhibition.”

They were colleagues again, apparently. The dish had quite the glow about it for something touted as orthodox. Mokou took up the provided spoon and arced it through a hoarshroom, portioning off a bite of the marinated fungus with a scoop of the underlying lava pudding. One bite was enough for her to understand what she’d done.

It was still appreciably spicy from the volatile blaze oils saturating the cooling hoarshrooms. The taste of the marinated morsels practically burst in her mouth. But what truly elevated it was the lava’s heat. Even as the flames fostered by her own dish subsided to wisps over her lips, it was the heat that made that parting, that diminishing all the more tender. In its place was some cryptic metabolic linkage that the lava had ferried into her.

Sweat beaded at her brow — nerves. This was lava as it was meant to be prepared. She had sacrificed some vital aspect of it when she’d tempered it, wrangled its essences into unnatural focus. She’d gotten so caught up in the idea of protection that she’d pulled her punches.

“Again?” asked Jathiss. “Do you intend to keep iterating on this?”

Agate shook her head. “Not at all. It’s perfect.”

Of course she’d say that. Of course it was. The hell of it was, she couldn’t even grudge the conceit.

“Hm,” Jathiss chuckled in response.

“As expected, Ms. Star,” noted Bajiko. “The breath attack may be less potent than Mokou’s expression, but it simply gives canvas for the meticulous intricacies of your fungal designs.”

Bajiko’s answer alone illuminated just how much Mokou still had to learn. They could tell what dishes like these did just from one taste. They didn’t need to feel it out like she did.

Emberlily gave a grudging grimace over her bowl of lava pudding. “Aye, as gaudy as that thing on your face is, I can’t call it distasteful. It’s really been putting in work for you.”

“The glowcrust stays, Chef,” Agate coldly replied.

“Figured so,” Emberlily sighed, but brightened after a moment. “Still, I don’t regret in the slightest letting you poach the bout defense from me.”

“Wait, I was going to go up against you?” asked Mokou.

Emberlily merely grinned in response.

Imet laughed softly, gentle flames licking out with their breath. They rotated the spoon idly in midair over their empty bowl. “Keep cooking like this and you might just have a chance.”

“Thank you,” Agate nodded deeply. Her ear flicked.

“Your reasonings and seasonings have been superb, Ms. Star,” Farouun rumbled. “My loves, how will you judge their offerings?”

The Carbide Chefs exchanged meaningful glances among themselves as Mokou and Agate cleared the empty dishes away. Knowing Imet’s capabilities, they were likely having a meeting of the minds for the sake of privacy in their deliberations. The longer the silence drew on, the more Mokou’s anxiety built. Luckily, she didn’t have long to wait. Emberlily nodded at last and rose from her seat at the table. The others followed suit, a touch slower on the draw than her.

“Well, we’ve decided,” she said. She rounded the table, clapping her hands together eagerly. “Fujiwara no Mokou! By the power vested in me by the compact of the arena, allow me to hereby declare you successfully certified in the ways of the Carbide Chefs.”

Mokou’s eyes widened, her anxiety chipped away by surprise. “I won?”

“Ehhh,” Emberlily grimaced sympathetically, patting Mokou’s shoulder with a lower arm. “No, Agate won. But you passed! Congrats!”

Mokou shook the confusion from her head. “I don’t have to win to pass?”

“Certainly not,” said Jathiss, stepping forward to grasp Mokou’s hands warmly. In her furred touch was the faith in her own craft. “She’s beaten me, too, if you recall. Yet a Carbide Chef I remain.”

“Doubtless you won’t be the last, in or out of the arena,” added Bajiko, patting Mokou’s other shoulder with her bionic arm. Its steady grasp was a chrome bridge between past and future. “Part of what it means to be one of us is to learn to accept losses as they come.”

Old grief bubbled up through her lingering confusion. Mokou blinked it away. She’d lost too many things to count. Friends, loves, wives, homes. Even the seasons themselves. A single bout was a drop in that ocean. She needed all the practice she could get.

“What you’ve done today is proved you have the qualified foundation, same as the rest of us,” said Imet. They circled around behind Mokou, placing a comforting hand on her back. It was a small comfort, given their lossless record, but then, their losses landed elsewhere in their life. “What you do with it, where it takes you, that’s all up to you, now. So, congratulations.”

Jathiss squeezed her hands. “Congratulations!”

“Congratulations,” Bajiko smiled.

“Congratulations!” boomed Farouun.

“Rrt?” chirped Tabi.

Their admirations and accolades were heartening — almost overwhelming, given that she hadn’t even won. She looked past their ringing bodies to where Agate stood, alone, apart, in victory. The gaze Agate returned seemed untroubled by this. There was certainly satisfaction in it, but so, too, was there fondness. A good deal more than Mokou had expected. Agate smiled, giving her a slow blink and a steady nod.

“Congratulations.”

“Got a little something to commemorate the occasion,” said Emberlily. The other Carbide Chefs withdrew slightly to give her room to pull a small bundle of sturdy golden fabric out from within her chef’s coat. She unrolled it, displaying its contents to Mokou. Four cooking knives were strapped within, their solid blades catching the morning light and transmuting it to a glint as green as freshly-sprouted bamboo. They were much the same as the sort she’d admired in Imet’s kitchen. “Genuine crysteel — that’s vanadium as gives it the gleam.”

Gratitude swelled within Mokou, soothing the muddled sting of defeat. She accepted the bundle. “They’re beautiful! Been sorely needing a good knife set.” She could probably just keep borrowing Agate’s, but it was good to be self-sufficient.

Emberlily chuckled. “Normally, a set like this retails for about 1250 drams all together, but you? You’ve earned ‘em, chef.”

“That’s a gift from all of us here at the Heptagon,” rumbled Farouun. With the clearance granted by the other Chefs’ withdrawals, she’d come in and knelt for another handshake. Hard, firm, enveloping — she’d finally let herself give a real one. Her gaze was bright and emotional. “It’s been my consistent honor to witness your collaborations. May they spur you on to greater and more sumptuous creations. Live and cook, Mokou.”

Mokou smiled back, tears threatening to mist free of her lids. “Yeah, live and cook.”

Mokou perched on the edge of the throne dais. It was a good spot for a smoke, so she smoked. She flipped a knife idly, testing the heft and the balance, waiting for Agate to finish her business with the others. A quiet satisfaction resonated through her, a certain lightness of mind and mood that all too often proved fleeting. In this welcome moment, it lingered.

She already wanted to cook something else.

Soon enough, the click of Agate’s hooves approached behind her. The hindren drew up next to her, then settled herself, folding her legs beneath her.

Mokou glanced over and nodded in greeting. “Chef.”

“Chef,” Agate nodded back with a sidelong smile. “I have procured the rest of this bout’s lava for the purposes of catering the exhibition.”

“Handy. Half of it’s already doing what I need it to do.”

“I imagine we’ll need more, depending on attendance, but further preparation seems simple enough.”

“Yeah, they’re letting me keep the mallet,” said Mokou. She drew in a breath, still trying to feel out what she’d been served. “This dish of yours that beat mine — what’s it do?”

Agate stiffened her posture a hair more for her explanation. “The lava has been coaxed into a simple flame breath effect — that one you’ve already surmised. I was weighing it from the ingredient reveal, but I admit the specific expression solidified after I knew of your flamebeard intentions. It felt thematically harmonious.”

“Yeah? Plus there’s the immunity,” Mokou replied. Agate’s admissions made her feel a bit better about the loss. She’d held the advantage of reactivity, after all.

“Ah, but on top of that is the fungal linkage from the hoarshrooms and the blaze marinade,” continued Agate, her smile shifting into one of calculation. “Once anyone metabolizing my pudding eats a mushroom, their heat tolerance will increase by up to one hundred and seventy-five percent for the next hour. More than enough time to enjoy the spectacle.”

Mokou whistled. “Sort of like those pastries Irula made! Seems a bit redundant, though, yeah?”

Agate tilted her head slightly and opened her palms in a gesture of admission. “There is safety in redundancy. Given that these are magical flames you’ll be showcasing, prudence demanded such. But between your showing and mine, our menu’s overall coverage is more than adequate.”

Mokou nodded slowly. It seemed Agate had been giving thought to protection as well. She’d just — as painful as it was to admit — done it better.

“About the theme ingredient, though,” noted Mokou. “Different Fujis.”

“What?”

“Fujiwara, Fujiyama. Different Fujis.”

Agate frowned. “Like your variegated tabi.”

“Exactly,” said Mokou. “Makes the linkage a little moot.”

“I believe the Baroness drew her own conclusions,” replied Agate. “I hope you don’t consider the bout itself moot.”

“No, no. It was a good opportunity. Hell, knives like these, she can say what she wants,” Mokou laughed, drawing free two more of the knives and tossing them into a fluid circuit. It was the sort of practiced motion she could do almost subconsciously. “Look at ‘em, they toss like a dream! Bet they’d give your buzzblade a good showing.”

“Situationally, yes,” said Agate. “Sadly, with VISAGEs unavailable, you’ll have to learn those situations the hard way.”

“Easy way’s never really applied to me, anyway,” said Mokou. She caught the knives one after the other in one hand, then stowed all but one again. She glanced significantly towards Agate. “Four knives. Crysteel. You remember where we left that baetyl?”

Agate’s smile instantly disappeared. Cold, staring fury replaced it. “Disrespect those knives at your peril.”

Mokou held up her hands, nearly recoiling from the intensity. “Bad joke, bad joke, sorry. No, I’m…” She let out a slow breath, flipping the dagger into a better grip from where she’d clasped the hilt by her thumb alone. She brought it down to her lap. “I’m gonna take real good care of these. Best I can.”

“Good,” said Agate, visibly relaxing. “This certification changes little either way, given your existing skills. But still, it gives us a baseline. That will serve us both well on the road.”

“Yeah,” said Mokou. “I know you couldn’t have pulled your punches, but still.”

“Certainly not,” Agate chuckled. “Cook harder next time.”

Mokou laughed softly. She sheathed the last knife and leaned back, bracing her palms on the dais floor behind her. She studied Agate for a few breaths. Her composure, her poise, her glowing accoutrements.

“When you cooked your dish just now,” asked Mokou at last, “what were you thinking about?”

Agate looked away, off at the arena’s rooftops. Her glowcrust obscured whether any heat touched her cheek. For a moment, Mokou wasn’t certain if Agate was going to answer at all, but at last she spoke.

“I was thinking about your danmaku.”

Chapter Text

I

After weeks of creeping towards festivity bit by bit, the city overnight had shucked off anticipation and thrown itself headlong into the final transformation. Mokou was hardly immune to the festival feeling; she saw it reflected in every pedestrian she passed. Kaleidoscopic streamers, savory fried scents, and droning tunes filled the streets. Even then, there was a suffusing sense that the true festival hadn’t even started. Every pickle barrel she sampled on her path tasted of that anticipation. She hummed to herself as she strolled the way up to Agate’s workspace in the Chrome Ward. A large, neat bundle rested in her arms.

The isolated cul-de-sac that housed the workspace seemed resistant to the atmosphere — perhaps her neighbors were as curmudgeonly as she was. Perhaps no one had filled those houses yet. Drawing up before her front door, Mokou paused to stub out her cigarette. She knocked.

“Enter,” came Agate’s raised voice from within.

Mokou tried the door and found it unlocked. She ambled inside.

Agate stood down in the pit, carefully siphoning the contents of a brace of injectors through a complex of tubes, flasks, and burners. Blaze oil, judging from the ambient stinging sensation in the air. She did not look up from her task. “You’re earlier than expected.”

“Had a little something to bring over,” said Mokou, as she made her way down into the work-pit. She unwrapped the cloth bundle as she approached. “Why you working, anyway? It’s Ut yara Ux. Nobody else is working.”

“Civic decree alone does not make it so. They’re working, whether they admit it or not. I simply suffer no illusions to the contrary. Besides,” said Agate, gesturing with a beaker of congealing orange-red oils, “the more of my marinade I can prepare in advance, the better our position for the exhibition.”

“Sure, sure,” said Mokou. The exhibition was still two days out, but she couldn’t fault the preparation. It was just like her, anyway. Mokou found a relatively clear stretch of workbench to finish unwrapping her present. Within lay several garments made mostly of light but sturdy hemp cloth. They’d been skillfully dyed and woven. Each sported its own embellished silk panels running their length. The topmost one was dyed a cold and bleached turquoise with a more vibrant teal lining within; its viridian panels sported silver-threaded patterns of faux circuitry. She hefted it by the shoulders and raised it towards Agate. The wide sleeves drooped. “Jathiss finally came through on my commission. Old type of festival clothes — yukata! What do you think?”

“You gave her more work?” Agate needled, turning a critical eye to the offering. Her gaze softened slightly as she took it in, accepting it from Mokou.

“Aw, she loves to do it. Hardly work at all, the way she treats it,” Mokou replied. She shucked her hooded vest to make way for her own yukata. Hers was dyed a rich black in rolling gradients as subtle as midnight dunes. Golden dawngliders soared and sank along deep crimson panels. Jathiss had truly outdone herself with how she’d taken to the template.

Agate ran her thumb over the fabric of her gift. “Fine texture. But it’s not what I’d call protective…”

“That’s not the point, Agate,” said Mokou, shuffling her arms through the sleeves. Even unfastened, the drape was excellent. “The point is to look good in ‘em. Now come on, she made that for you.”

“Very well,” Agate at last sighed. She set the yukata aside to switch the heat off of her congealing efforts before unbuttoning her coat.

“You’re gonna want that shirt off, too, otherwise it spoils the lines,” noted Mokou, wrapping her yukata’s thin golden sash low over her hips.

Agate raised her brow but set in on her shirt’s buttons after doffing her lab coat. “You’ll at least permit me my armored shell.”

“What?” Mokou replied. But sure enough, Agate’s unbuttoning revealed a body-hugging undergarment braced with slim but reinforced panels. “It’s a festival! Who’s gonna attack a festival?”

“In Qud?” scoffed Agate. “Anyone, at any time, for any possible justification or lack thereof, regardless of the consequences.”

“Guess the militias are still working,” Mokou muttered. For her own part, she’d just try to not get hit if it came to it. “Should be fine. Let me help with that.”

“As you like.”

Mokou took up the one made for Agate — considerably longer, and split along the back. All she’d been able to give Jathiss were measurements for the standard make. The Chef’s expertise was such that she’d masterfully applied the design towards people with as many legs as Agate had. Mokou swung it over Agate’s shoulders, then helped even the drape over her storage saddlebags. “Left side over right. Other way’s for the dead. As for the sash, there’s two different ways you can wear it.”

“Binary modes? These weren’t—” Agate’s critical gaze turned back over her shoulder at Mokou as she threaded her arms through the sleeves, “—gendered, were they?”

Mokou huffed out a half-laugh. As if any of that mattered anymore, this far and this long removed. She recalled what the Baroness had said about Agate’s techniques — that she’d hone in on all that was necessary for victory, seize it, and annihilate all else. Maybe she took the same approach to gender.

“Anyone who’d care enough to tell you if you’re gendering it wrong or right has been dead for thousands of years. Think they’d be more concerned with this,” she said, giving a firm and decisive slap to Agate’s hindquarters.

Agate narrowed her eyes dubiously. After a breath, she closed her eyes and faced front again, sighing. “Tell me the sash modes.”

“Low around the hips if you want it more casual and mobile,” said Mokou, patting her own sash in demonstration. “Higher up and spread wider around the waist if you want to be fancy with it. If you’re going that way then turn the ribbon to the back.”

“I should like to stay mobile, then,” replied Agate. “I’ve compromised enough for the sake of aesthetics.”

Mokou laughed, ambling to her front to cast an appraising eye over her. Her usual style seemed to favor garb with an imposing shoulder silhouette. It was almost strange to see her in something without it. Still, her poise and demeanor amply withstood the absence. The casual refinement of a yukata suited her. The fabric shone in the cold light cast by her glowcrust. “You look good, though!” said Mokou at last. She raised herself on her toes to plant a kiss on Agate’s lips.

Agate returned the kiss while her hands fastened her sash below. When Mokou pulled away, Agate stepped back a pace as well. “Granted,” she said. She swept her voluminously-sleeved hands down the front of her body. “Any cause for corrections?”

Mokou shook her head. “You nailed it. Now come on, we going out?”

An upraised palm met Mokou’s question before Agate turned back to the clutter of her workbenches. “A moment — I have a festival program somewhere here.”

“Sure,” said Mokou. She pulled free the last of her parcel’s contents: light coats to ward the chill of the caverns. Both had been dyed and sparingly embellished to match and accentuate their sister garments. While Agate busied herself with the search, Mokou took the opportunity to transfer her ration cards and smoking materials into the pouch of her coat. Then, thinking of Agate’s pronounced cautions, she shouldered her carbine strap over it. She was just checking in on the shoyu tanks in the corner when Agate announced her success.

“Here it is — have you had a chance to look it over?” asked Agate, waving the pamphlet in question. She climbed out of the work pit, making for the front door.

“Figured I was just going to feel it out,” Mokou answered, speeding her stride a bit to catch up.

“Cheotl’s poem debut is scheduled in the Garden Ward amphitheater later this evening. I would prefer not to miss it.” She passed off the program to Mokou when she caught up. Hands thus freed, Agate retrieved her holster and sheath from where they hung by the door. She threaded them below her own coat and fastened her weapons securely to her hips. “Aside from this, the day is ours. I admit it’s not my usual fare — what appeals to you?”

“I want to hit up Temple Ward later for that new ramen Jathiss was whipping up. She says she’s going late. Other than that, whatever, really. I’ll try anything twice,” replied Mokou, loosing a long breath in contemplation. She fell in behind Agate, trusting her to lead while she looked over the program. Each ward had its own attractions, its own spin on the jubilee of the year’s zenith. Even now, echoes from the closest of these seeped into their sheltering cavern.

But there, down along the Beast Ward’s column, something caught her eye. She gasped.

“Crab rodeo!”

II

The festival of Ut yara Ux was as boisterous and spirited as Agate had ever seen it. Perhaps more so — her memories of festivals in the Bey Lah of her childhood were shot through and weighed down with the village’s oppressive ambient anxieties. Far fresher than these were her recollections of the subdued millennial affairs in those desperate years when sign after sign of the Second Gyre reared from Qud’s depths and hinterlands. Then again, perhaps this year’s festival was less so — for when the Second Gyre faltered and broke, there had sprang up some true ragers. In contrast, this year the crowds held a subtle edge; beneath, there fermented a gripping, negative anticipation, as though bounty and fortune might at any moment run out. Or perhaps the edge was only within her.

Absent this context, her companion navigated the proceedings with an innocent enthusiasm. Both were expressions Agate was unaccustomed to seeing her inhabit. Dozens of things snagged Mokou’s attention on their route to the Beast Ward — rows of freshly-glazed sculptures and freshly-wound automata, boulevards given over to sports of hoop and ball, cacophonies of impromptu busking whose participants swapped partners and songs every seven measures. Agate’s trusted noise blockers reduced the press and thrum from hazard to mere annoyance.

It was annoyance she could bear. Today, she was a part of the city’s colorful tapestry — the both of them were. She had to admit that she was enjoying Mokou’s gift. Jathiss had tailored it expertly to Agate’s body plan. It was comfortable, elegant, and rather eye-catching — the Heptagon was no stranger to fads of resurrected Eater fashions, but no one else in the city had garb quite like this. The two of them were vanguards of taste. Even in the midst of this appreciation, some part of her turned over ways in which she might strategically reinforce the yukata without sacrificing its character.

For the moment, she was content to let Mokou set their pace and route. She was in no particular rush to attend the crab rodeo. After all, it was being organized by Beastmaster Mojr.

Alas, even the finest of fried treats couldn’t long divert her companion from the promised crab kerfuffle.  Festival fare bolstered their stroll down the liminal terraces to the Beast Ward.

“So,” said Mokou, around a mouthful of acid-battered qudzu, “what’s up with the crab rodeo? Got so excited I forgot to ask.”

Agate finished her own bite and answered. “It’s an all-day affair. We’ll be arriving too late for the Running of the Crabs — that’s their morning opening.”

“Running of the Crabs?”

“Crabs are released down the central boulevard. Participants run from them.” Agate sniffed. “Not particularly challenging.”

“Sure, with legs like yours,” said Mokou. “Bet most folks aren’t as lucky though. Damn, you’ve gotta tell me about this stuff! I want to see people running from crabs. That sounds very enriching.”

“Perhaps next year,” Agate chuckled. “However, we should be just in time for the Contest of Kings.”

“And what’s that one all about?”

“It’s a chance for challengers to test their tactical prowess against one of the more common predatory detritivores of the middle caverns: the eyeless king crab.”

Mokou cast her a sidelong glance. There was a predatory gleam of her own in her gaze. “Yeah? They take walk-ins?”

Agate replied with a cold smile. “They welcome them.”

The sounds of cheers, screams, and electronically amplified commentary echoed over the subterranean canopy of the Beast Ward, as sure as any signpost. They came at short length to the rodeo’s staging grounds. A ring of torches and quartz lanterns underlit a rainbow web of streamers spanning the wide clearing. Wooden bleachers spanned between the trunks. They circumscribed a ring of packed earth — salt- and silt-laden clay dredged from the underground canal. A corral of croaking king crabs serviced the ring, while a raised wooden booth next to it sheltered the rodeo’s boisterous announcer.

“Ayayayaya! That’s going to bruise. Mojr, who’s next?”

The previous rodeo hopeful limped ignominiously back to the stands. The crowd loosed soft cries of sympathy, laughter, and jeers as their feelings took them.

"Come on! Who’s next?” came the bellowed tones of Mojr, the goatfolk Beastmaster. She stood in the ring, clad in carbide-splinted mail and bone-encrusted gauntlets tailored to her squat and brawny form. She secured a catch-pole around the claw of the king crab currently commanding the contest. Sweat matted streaks through the glitter-gold dye in her fur. She looked well — better, certainly, than the last time Agate had seen her.

As Mojr’s keen gaze swept the crowd, it stopped on Agate. Of course, she could hardly expect to be anonymous in any circumstance. The Beastmaster’s goatish eyes and nostrils flared in a complex expression. Surprise, disbelief, umbrage, and doubtless more emotions simmering beneath. She held it locked to Agate as her jaw subtly worked.

Mokou made to step forward, but Agate held out an arm in front of her. It wouldn’t do to enter the ring unprepared and unready, and the immortal could hardly have gotten a chance for observation. Furthermore, it would have been an interruption — a familiar gravely voice cut through the crowd’s hubbub.

“ME,” bellowed the afternoon repair shift’s carapaced forewoman, Nashimir. She stood from her seat in the stands, buoyed by the crowd’s enthusiasm. Sitting next to her was Yun, her avian wife, the shift’s secretary, applauding excitedly along with the rest of the crowd. It was a mercifully welcome interjection — Mojr’s was not least of the attentions upon Agate. Her gaze tore reluctantly from Agate to fix instead upon the forewoman. At last, she nodded and beckoned Nashimir down to the ring.

“We have our next challenger for the Contest of Kings!” cried the announcer, another avian sort of mutant. “A one-woman union of crab and laborer, this heavyweight heads the afternoon repair crew. Give it up! For Fooorewoman Nashimiiiiiir!”

“Oh, shit, she’s going for it?” said Mokou, excitedly. Whatever intricacies present in Mojr’s expressions were lost on her. That, too, was a mercy.

“She’s something of a local favorite. Come, there are empty seats by her wife.”

They threaded their way up to Yun as her wife descended to the ring. Hoots and cheers grew with Nashimir’s approach to the contest. Yun noticed the two of them and waved.

“Mokou! Ms. Star!” She patted the seats next to her. She wore a vibrant gold headscarf woven of a particularly reflective material. Between that and her matching waistcoat, it had been easy to keep track of her spot in the stands. “Live and drink!”

“Live and drink,” Mokou nodded, settling herself down next to her. “Wasn’t expecting to see you two here.”

“Are you kidding? It’s her favorite part of the festival!” laughed Yun. She took in their garb and clacked her beak appreciatively. “Oh, look at you two! I love the coordination.”

Agate gave a faint smile as she seated herself along the empty bench next to Mokou. “The execution is courtesy of Choraler Jathiss, while the design is courtesy of our long-lived acquaintance here.”

“Yukata, we used to call ‘em. Glad you like it,” said Mokou. She sounded appreciative, but her full attention was elsewhere. “What’s the goal, here? What’s Nash about to do to that crab?”

Nashimir had entered the ring, waving to the stands confidently. She’d worn a kilt and a pair of yeshyrskin sandals clasped in pearl. Her carapace had been buffed and polished and her hair had been slicked back. She took up a squared stance a few paces opposite the restrained crab.

“She’s going to flip it for sure,” Yun replied. “That’s her favorite way to win.”

“Flip it, huh? Look at the size it! Almost gives Big — uh, gives Hibnicrab a good run,” marveled Mokou. “How many ways are there to win?”

“Oh! Is this your first rodeo?” asked Yun.

“First crab rodeo,” said Mokou. After a moment’s uncertain pause, she added: “At the Heptagon. Had something like this back in Karst, I think.”

“Well, the two most common are flipping and riding. Stay on its back for twenty seconds, that’s a victory by mount. Flip it on its back and keep it there for ten seconds, that’s a victory by flip. Then there’s—”

“The challenger’s ready,” came the announcer’s voice over the speakers. “Victory waits for the true king! Now: battle!”

A nod from Nashimir prompted a return nod from Mojr. The Beastmaster released her hold on the king crab and retreated to the edge of the ring. Cheers from the crowd lulled into anticipatory silence as forewoman and crab slowly circled each other. Querying croaks and testing pincer clacks drifted from the eyeless king crab, sensing out its opponent. Nashimir replied with her own series of carcinic croaks and clacks.

Yun’s tone grew hushed. “Oh, she’s getting good at that.”

“We’re seeing communication from the challenger,” noted the announcer. “Folks, she might be on track for a diplomatic victory!”

Mojr, too, had improved her techniques. Agate couldn’t help but notice the ease with which she wrangled the carapaced behemoths kept in reserve. She’d truly grown to embody her title since they’d parted. Or perhaps she simply had someone else to better pour her anxieties on. Someone who wasn’t so transactional.

Nashimir cast a grin around the stands, ending with a backwards glance to where they sat. Brief surprise flickered over her features — no doubt as a result of seeing just who had joined her wife. She recovered into a nod and a wink. Filling her lungs, she loosed a rattling croak at much greater volume. It was a strong facsimile of an eyeless king crab’s territorial warning. The eyeless king crab replied in kind and charged.

“Oop, no, there she goes,” laughed Yun. She rose with the crowd and lifted her voice in a cheer. “Get ‘em, honey! Stay low!”

Nashimir met the charge with her strength. She caught the downward sweep of one pincer with her own pincer, while her free arm clasped around the crab’s other pincer, pinning it against her body. She braced there, flexing her body-plates tighter, holding the beast in calculating check.

“So much for diplomacy!” cried the announcer. “Now it’s a matter of who holds the ultimate ratio of force!”

“Excellent form,” said Agate, appreciatively. “Using her carapace to the utmost.”

“Damn! That’s for sure,” said Mokou. She cast a sidelong, appraising glance towards Agate. “You fought these things — you thinking of stepping in for your own try?”

“Fought, and bested, and mastered.” Agate huffed out a dismissive breath. “I have nothing to prove.”

“I’m a little surprised to see you here, actually,” noted Yun. “Did you patch things up with—”

“No.”

“Ahh, well,” Yun winced.

Mokou merely raised her brows at Agate. With no explanation forthcoming, she turned her attention back to the match. She could draw her own conclusions. If distortions crept in, they could simply be purged.

“What’s this? Nashimir had a chance for a pincer lock, but she’s not taking it!” cried the announcer.

“No, I see it — it’s in the knees,” muttered Mokou, leaning forward in her seat. She glanced to the booth, then back to Yun. “Who’s that announcer, anyway?”

“That’s Ca-CAAW-ca-caw. I think she’s got a florist’s shop in East Canyon Ward,” answered Yun. “Oh! Go, honey, go, go, go!”

Nashimir shifted her grip to the king crab’s core and began to lift. With a bellow of effort, she heaved the crab off the ground entirely. Its pincers snipped at the air in confused circuits. Nashimir lifted it all the way over her head. She bent at the knees and elbows, compressing into forceful potential, then heaved again. She hurled the eyeless king crab a solid few paces through the air. It crashed to the hard-packed clay, rocking onto the great curve of its back.

Nashimir seized the momentum, dashing forward to clasp its legs. Mojr, too, sprang closer to the toppled crab. As Nashimir lifted its pinned legs to keep them from the ground, the Beastmaster began to pound a steady rhythm with the haft of her crab-catcher. The crowd took up the count, Yun and Mokou excitedly and throatily among them. The crab croaked in distress, unable to find purchase in flesh or earth with its pincers.

“Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten!”

“And there’s the ten count!” Ca-CAAW-ca-caw crowed through the cheers. “The victor! By submission throw! Give it up once more, for Fooorewoman Nashimiiiiiir!”

“Yeahhh!” Yun cheered. “That’s my wife!”

“Hot damn!” Mokou laughed. “What a match!”

“Fine form; well fought,” Agate nodded, applauding. Events in the Beast Ward could summon a truly battering din from their excited crowds, but at least the immortal seemed to be enjoying herself.

Down in the ring, Mojr snared the defeated crab and helped it upright once more. She led it, soothingly and consolingly, back to the corral. Nashimir took a victorious circuit of the ring before she mounted the stands once more, returning to her previous seat.

“Well, well,” she grinned as she approached. “Agate Severance Star and Chef Mokou. Hey! Good job on getting certified. Just about the fastest I’ve seen someone do it!”

She reached out her pincer for a congratulatory handshake. Mokou accepted it. “Thanks, chief. If everybody had cooked as much as I have… well, no one’d go hungry, I bet.”

“Hah! Damn right,” said Nashimir. She seated herself next to Yun, drawing an arm around her shoulders.

“But, chief, I didn’t know you had moves like that!” said Mokou.

“Had to clear out a few rustacean infestations in my time,” laughed Nashimir. She cast an appraising glance over Yun’s head back at the two of them. There was something unspoken in the way her gaze lingered on Agate — she’d been talking with Mojr down in the ring, though the clamoring of the crowd had rendered their conversation impossible to pick up. “What do you think — you going to go a round?”

“I’m strongly considering it,” Mokou replied, before sending an elbowed nudge into Agate’s side. “She’s above it, though.”

Nashimir set her jaw in a look of conciliatory contemplation, then nodded. “No surprise there, what with how things are between you and—”

“Mokou,” Agate rose, grasping her by the elbow to lift her along. “Why don’t I escort you to the ring?”

III

"You wanna tell me what the story is, here?” asked Mokou, as they picked their way down the stands. Agate was obviously agitated about something, and it didn’t take too much imagination to figure out what it might be. It wasn’t a mood that suited the occasion. Crab rodeos should be lively, after all.

“Folks, this is quite the development—” announced Ca-CAAW-ca-caw over the speakers. “Approaching ringside, we have two culinary titans: Agate Severance Star, and Fujiwara no Mokou! Who’s going in next?”

Agate sighed, her voice pitched conversationally low. “There’s no story. Mojr and I were intimately involved, once. Now we are not.”

Mokou looked down at the rodeo’s chief crab wrangler. A goatish, stout individual, well-muscled and taciturn — Mojr, the announcer had called her. It probably explained the look she was fixing them. It bordered on hostility. That they’d been intimate in the past meant Mokou now had a considerably wider number of considerations when it came to figuring out Agate’s type.

“There’s always a story,” said Mokou. She tapped out and rolled a smoke as she descended.

“Now, Agate Severance Star, as we all know, is no slouch when it comes to king crabs,” Ca-CAAW-ca-caw continued. “She’s been a rare sight at our rodeos lately, but avid fans will still recall her contentious tech victory that marked the end of her appearances.”

“What’s to tell? I valued her for her tactical insights regarding Qud’s fauna. Whatever she valued me for was insufficient to unite our courses. She felt me too… transactional.” A hint of bitterness, wasn’t that?

Mokou loosed a plume of smoke. “See, that was a story.”

“Meanwhile, the outlander Fujiwara no Mokou has caused quite a stir in our fair city since her arrival. This wild talent blazed her way to a Carbide Chef certification just yesterday! Bird chatter says she knows the secrets of life and death, and that she’s brewing up something saucy with Agate Severance Star. Could this be the start of a factional struggle?”

Mokou’s expression soured upon hearing the announcer shift her focus towards her. Too much attention made her uneasy. Considering who she’d been rubbing elbows with since she got here, it was that much harder to keep a low profile. Not that she regretted it — but uneasiness wasn’t a problem in a place you could just leave. This place was warming on her.

They reached ringside at last. She tapped on the brinestalk fence that marked its perimeter and waved to Mojr. “You mind if I go a round?”

Mojr snorted out a harsh breath. She strode closer, casting her leery, wide-slitted gaze over Mokou from one eye, then the other. Miniature chimes strapped to her curling horns rang softly with the motions of her head. She had yet to cycle in a fresh crab. Reaching the fence, she turned and leaned her back and elbows upon it.

“Heard about you,” she said. Her voice was gruff, a touch strained. “A firewitch, aye? With the nightmare puss.”

“Wizard,” corrected Mokou. “But yeah, I do my best work with fire.”

“Grraah!” Mojr brayed. “And of my kin who sling the same, too many I’ve lost to the Amaranthine Dream. I’ll brook none of it in my ring, against my crabs.”

“Could start ‘em cooking, though,” said Mokou. She frowned, puffing on her smoke. The hermit’s words echoed to her. Hadn’t that been one of Kaguya’s imperial titles, here? The Robe-in-Amaranth? What had she done now? “The Amaranthine Dream?”

Mojr thumped her catch-pole into the earth decisively. “A lie of high entropy set out to snare goat and man alike. Ill luck to speak of it. No mindfire at the rodeo!”

“Alright, alright. I’ll save it for the exhibition,” Mokou relented. It wasn’t psionics, but this wasn’t the time to try to convince someone otherwise.

Another leery gaze of Mojr’s scrutinized her. “You’ll be bandying it about for show?”

“Yeah! On the middle day. Spell cards — think folks might like ‘em here. Ask Agate if you’re worried.”

Mojr loosed a slow breath, turning her head up towards the distant cavern ceiling. “She going a round?”

Mokou glanced back at Agate, whose gaze was studiously elsewhere, arms crossed. Mokou turned back to Mojr. “Don’t think so.”

“Then I’ve nothing to say to her.” She leaned away, reaching into a bit of ringside storage. She pulled free a pail and dropped it in front of Mokou.

Mokou leaned over the fence to look at its contents. A fatty little hillock of pale stuff met her inspection. She reached down, ran a finger through it, brought it back to her mouth, and tasted it.

“Pig butter?”

Mojr nodded. “Best thing for crabs. Keeps their pincers from a good grip.”

Agate’s hands settled on her shoulders and began to pull off her coat. Her voice came low by Mokou’s ear. “You will not pay Jathiss the disservice of buttering her yukata.”

“Ain’t gotta tell me twice,” Mokou grunted. She tucked the dwindling smoke into the corner of her mouth and started untying her sash. Excitement bubbled up inside her as she readied herself. Whatever tensions were passing between Agate and the rodeo ringleader, Mokou wasn’t about to let them get in the way of a good time.

Mojr strode off towards the corral, lifting her arms to the stands to pump up the crowd. The announcer’s tones accompanied the selection of a fresh king crab.

“Looks like it’ll be Fujiwara entering the Contest of Kings! No one’s seen her in action, but last month she brought a whole warband’s worth of Templar fullerite back for salvage. This could go any way! But personally, given her weight class, this bird’s got water on her angling for a mounting win.”

“It’s just Mokou!” yelled Mokou, flicking the butt of her smoke towards the booth. She wasn’t entirely sure herself what strategy would see her through, but now she was set against riding the crab on principle. For that matter, as far as the secrets of life and death went, she only knew a little bit of necromancy — just the practical stuff. She doffed her coat, her yukata and, for good measure, her pants, all of which Agate collected. As Mokou rubbed herself down with the provided pig butter, she glanced back to her. “Any tips?”

“Tips?” Agate replied. “So long as you don’t kill, maim, or burn them, it’s anything goes. But in addition to their developed ground sense, they echolocate. Flight won’t let you hide from them.”

“Wasn’t planning on hiding,” Mokou grinned. She hopped the fence, then turned to nod graciously at Agate. “See you in a minute.”

The chill of the cavern air felt bracing on her bare, greased-up skin. Across the ring, Mojr led out the rodeo’s next crab. Scars and gouges marked its carapace, a tapestry of old territorial conflicts not yet molted away. Yet presumably it still could molt — which meant the ones faced by Agate and Jathiss had been even bigger. This one looked a bit wider and stouter than the one Nashimir had flipped, with a lower center of gravity. That still left it roughly the size of her old yakitori stand.

Ca-CAAW-ca-caw’s announcement rang out over the rodeo grounds. “Well, now! Seems our freshest crab was The Flattener! Tough luck for a first-timer. But let’s not discourage her — folks, put your beaters together! For Fujiwaraaaa no Mokoouu!”

The crowd pounded out their enthusiasm. Her heart sped. Maybe she should have paid a bit more attention to the tensions. Maybe she wouldn’t be up against a crab called The Flattener if she hadn’t shown up in matching yukata with Mojr’s ex. But where would the fun be in that? She grinned, and nodded to Mojr.

“The challenger stands ready! Victory waits for the true king! Now: battle!”

Mojr released her grip on the crab and dashed back. Mokou merely waited. She wanted to see what it did; battling a crab of this size was still something a novelty. The Flattener croaked out its sensing forays. If it wanted to know where she was, she was only too happy to oblige. She circled the crab slowly, slapping her belly a few times — an echo of old ceremony, most likely, but when she considered it, it was probably also a habit she’d picked up from that tanuki she used to date.

She didn’t have long to consider it. The king crab charged her — itself not a burst of motion, but an inexorable advance. It lowered its claws before it in a defensive posture, whipping them forward as though to swat her aside. Mokou danced away, curving her backwards retreat along the ringside fencing. Every massive pincer swipe that blew past her head sent a thrill racing through her.

“Moon and Sun, her mobility!” cried the announcer. “The Flattener’s got its work cut out for it if it wants to get a hit in!”

Mokou wasn’t about to let that happen. The crab was wide, stout, and low — but Mokou could get lower. Its next swipe left just enough of an opening. She spun from retreat into counterattack, ducking beneath the scarred pincer. She rose with a barrage of wheeling palm thrusts to The Flattener’s underbelly. She put all her strength and momentum behind them. With every strike, she could feel the crab unbalancing itself, even giving ground as the pummeling continued. The crowd cheered its approval, buoying her fighting spirit.

She needed it — the crab struck, pinning her to its body with a single arm and squeezing steadily. Just when she thought the butter would let her slip loose, it would coldly adjust its pin. The crowd’s cheers turned to gasps and cries of sympathy.

Among them was the announcer. “Ayaya! Folks, you do not want to be stuck in a pin like that! More than one challenger has lost their chance at a win when The Flattener’s gotten them into a grab.”

Mokou didn’t have Nashimir’s carapace or Agate’s armored vest to weather the pressure. She’d just have to bear it until the strike came — and it had to come, with a nickname like that. Pinned against it as she was, she could still tell it hadn’t regained its balance. All her tactics relied on a chance to use some of the giantslaying techniques she’d accumulated along the way.

With a raucous croak, The Flattener raised its free pincer overhead.

Judo it was, then.

Just before it drove its claw down onto her, its grip relented by a hair. It was enough. With a burst of martial intent, Mokou spun in its grip, slipping her greased arms loose. She met the downwards crush of the pincer with her own grasp. Not catching it, so much as guiding its momentum into the angle by which it would undo itself. She swept its forelegs with a hook of her heel. Suddenly, it found itself with no means to stay upright. Merciless torque spun the eyeless king crab over her shoulder and slammed it to the earth.

“Ayayaya! I can’t believe what I’m seeing — The Flattener has become The Flattened! Can she take this chance?”

She wasn’t about to let it pass. She was scraped bloody and a bit crushed, but the butter kept the worst of friction at bay. Mustering her will through the pain, she leapt onto the toppled crab. If she made herself enough of a nuisance, it might just focus on trying to get her rather than righting itself. She hopped along its underbelly, whipping sharp kicks into its pincers, skirting between its counterattacks. Mojr rushed over and started to pound out the pin count.

“Five! Six! Seven!”

A blow from the beast glanced across her temple, dazing her. Her ear rang with the force of it. Only for a moment, though — Agate had been right about the hair product. Before another blow could land, she flipped from her feet, driving her shoulder into The Flattener’s underbelly, clamping half of its mandibles shut with her body weight. As its next pincer blows swung down on her, she slid to her back, catching one in her arms, the other on her legs. She locked its pincers between her elbows and thighs.

“Eight! Nine! Ten!”

Mokou released her grip and rolled from the crab’s belly. It croaked in outrage, lurching upright to clamber after her. Mojr was quicker, looping her catch-pole around its claws and pulling it away.

“And there’s the ten count! What an upset!” crowed Ca-CAAW-ca-caw. “The victor! By submission throw! First time battler and certified Carbide Chef — Fujiwaraaaa no Mokoouu!”

The crowd roared its bloodthirsty approval. Mokou stood in the midst of it all, sore, sweating, bleeding, battered, laughing, victorious. This was the crowd she wanted at the danmaku showcase. She could only hope some of them would find it enticing enough to drop in. Mojr’s sour expression lent itself to a grudging, slow nod.

Mokou sauntered back to where Agate stood at ringside, waving to the cheering crowd all the while. She propped her elbows on the fence and grinned at her. “How was that?”

Agate returned the smile with her own expression of appreciation, just shy of a smirk. She withdrew a strip of witchwood bark from a saddlebag and passed it to Mokou. “An elegant harnessing of rotational velocity. I had the utmost confidence. Let us find you a hose.”

“That’d be great,” said Mokou. She accepted the bark graciously and began to chew it. Soothing numbness seeped into her aches and stings.

Nashimir and Yun descended the stands to offer their own congratulations. The forewoman was especially enthusiastic, pounding Mokou on the back with her pincer-arm. “You crushed it!”

“Yeah, when it got you in the grab, I thought you were done for, but you showed me,” Yun laughed.

“Thanks,” said Mokou, wincing at the tender spot Nashimir had picked to thump. “I was able to move forward while attacking.”

“That’s what it always comes down to, isn’t it?” chuckled Nashimir. Her expression grew serious as she looked out across the ring. She lifted her pincer from Mokou’s back, paused to wipe off the butter on her kilt, then draped it over Agate’s back instead. “Agate! Wanted to check if you had enough hands for your event catering. I’m sure I could get Timo to pitch in if you need.”

“From what I overheard, they have a date, do they not?”

“Well, their date can cook too,” replied Nashimir. Their further exchanges were subsumed into the sounds of the rodeo audience. It was easy enough to guess why she’d pulled Agate away — Agate’s gaze had been fixed on the same thing.

Mokou turned to the ring, leaning her back against the fence, still catching her breath. Rodeo assistants paraded new crabs for the crowd to admire. This left Mojr free to approach. She stopped a couple paces away, arms folded across her chest sternly.

“Clean throw,” she said at last. “If you’ve any more of those saved up, you’re welcome back in the rodeo anytime.”

“Got a few,” said Mokou. “Do I win anything?”

Mojr snorted. “Life and good health.”

“Ahh, well,” Mokou sighed. “Thanks, anyway. For showing me a good time.”

Mojr nodded. She strode to the fence next to Mokou and rested her elbows atop it, looking off past Mokou. She didn’t speak — a conflicted silence, it felt. Agate was somewhere back there. Hopefully she’d found a hose.

After a few breaths, Mokou broke the lull.

“Any tips?”

Mojr cast her a wary glance, half fuming and half pitying. “All business, she. Guard your heart.”

“Mm,” grunted Mokou. That was something she knew how to do all too well. Time did that to her all on its own, inuring her, armoring her. That armor heaped a terrible weight on her. It had in the past and it would again. Here and now, she was sick of it. Pain was a reminder she could still feel. “Not sold on that one.”

“As you like,” Mojr grunted back. She unhitched the fence’s closest gate and held it open for Mokou, gesturing towards the others where they stood away from ringside. “Crabs’ll be here when you need them.”

“Thank you,” said Mokou, nodding to Mojr as she left the ring. Midstride, she clapped her hands together, spinning on her heel to point her clasped fingers back to Mojr. “Just one more thing. Slipped my mind in all this excitement.”

Mojr huffed in reply. She dipped her outstretched hand in an encouraging gesture. Mokou took a breath, then continued.

“Do you want to train my cat?”

IV

The Garden Ward’s great lamp cast shadows across the subterranean canopy. The evening cant of its light caught prismatically on the vapors wisping up from the foliage and the irrigating streams sprinkling down from the cavern’s heights. Embellished glass arc-tubes of glowing xenon coiled the printed marble columns of the amphitheater. It was a small venue, as amphitheaters went; its maximum capacity was between one and two hundred, depending on the size of its attendees. To Agate’s relief, Cheotl’s poetry performance had not attracted enough interest to reach the maximum capacity.

Indeed, it seemed as though the event planning had relied on that fact. The amphitheater’s seating had been furnished with rugs, cushions, and a scattering of hookahs, making islands of comfort for the attendees to group around. It lent the venue an intimate, exclusive air. A far more agreeable atmosphere than the din of the Beast Ward. Agate led the two of them to one such hookah-sporting mini-lounge near the middle of the seating, where the acoustics were best. It was mostly unoccupied.

“Oh!” said Mokou, checking a neighboring cushion as she settled herself down in front of the hookah. “Hey, Fasola.”

“Mm,” grunted the innkeep, lifting her spicer’s cap from where she’d tipped it to shade her eyes. Her face split in a wide yawn. “G’morning.”

“It is evening,” Agate noted, claiming a wider cushion next to Mokou.

“Oh.” Fasola blinked blearily. “They haven’t started yet, right?”

The amphitheater’s stage was furnished with a variety of decor and equipment — potted saplings and topiary, a harp, a tall mirror, a mannequin, a few folding chairs, a pair of speakers and a pair of stand-up microphones. No readily apparent sign of Cheotl, but then, no guarantee of their absence, either. Regardless, the two of them had arrived early for the recital.

“Don’t think so. You want, I’ll wake you when they do,” said Mokou. She pulled a mouthpiece from the hookah’s ring of holsters, but paused with it halfway to her mouth. Frowning faintly, she squeezed the mouthpiece a few times. Satisfied with its texture, she nodded to herself, placed it between her lips, and drew.

“No, I’m up, I’m up. Always know when that damn cat of yours is around,” Fasola sighed, shifting herself into a better posture. She nodded at Mokou and offered a tip of her cap. “I didn’t get a chance to congratulate you yesterday on your cert. They give you a hat?”

Mokou chuckled, each one freeing a puff of smoke from her. “Even better, a knife set! Genuine crysteel.”

Fasola whistled through slitted mandibles. “Maybe I should get cracking on mine, then. Need a set like that for the Moondrop.”

Movement on the stage brought a hush over the waiting audience. One of the pair of microphones began to shift. Its stand thickened into a trunk, the cordage unraveling into tendrils which then plumped into grasping limbs and a coiling prehensile tail. Bifurcated claws gripped the remaining microphone and stand.

“Hello there,” said Cheotl, sharply grinning from a chameleon guise. Their conical eyes swiveled independently across the gathered crowd. “Is this everyone? Everyone I care about, anyway.”

This provoked a scattering of laughter and whistles from the crowd. In the front row, a near-identical horned chameleon took up a slow rhythm on a pair of ceramic and boarhide drums.

Colors shifted across Cheotl’s emulated scales, mirroring the neon glow around them. They extended a claw towards the reptilian percussionist and nodded. “Before we get started, I’d like to give thanks to my good friend Payaxoteoteo for providing drums and an anchor form. Now, who’s ready for poetry?”

The audience cheered. Agate applauded, while Mokou cupped a hand to her mouth and called out: “Let’s hear some fucking poems!”

“You got it.” Cheotl winked, then lifted their voice in recitation.

“As with all lounging shapes, the favored slab,
Gives succor to the scales when sunbeams bake…”

They opened with a selection of their older works. Agate had heard each of them before in other contexts, other performances. Still, Cheotl’s philosophy of curation and juxtaposition shone through in sequence. The first was an ode to warm rocks, received just as warmly by the crowd. Next came a reflective dizain written as a bit of ars poetica. Its structured passages spoke deeply on the nature of inspiration with the scant syllables allotted. Though the neural and cultural pathways by which inspiration arrived were distinct between cuisine and all other artistic efforts, more could be learned by the illumination of those differences. Agate had found much cause to consider it herself of late — inspiration had been bounteous to her in the company of an immortal.

The third in Cheotl’s repertoire was a bawdy yet elegantly interlocking rubaiyat concerning a dawnglider. Peals of laughter gripped the audience before the poem even drew to a close. Agate found herself sharing in the merriment of those around her — Cheotl’s wit was sharp, biting, and precise. Mokou, too, seemed to be enamored by the proceedings.

“Ahh,” Mokou sighed with a plume of smoke. “Poetry, man. I oughta see if I can’t dig up some of my old ones.”

Agate couldn’t help but hope for her success as well. Depending on when she’d written them, they might be downright prehistoric examples of artistic expression, missing links in the archaeological record. The thought stoked her appetite for scholarly inquiry.

“I’d be interested to hear them,” said Agate, raising her brows with a coy smile. The blend in the hookah smelled appealing enough to partake. It was rare for her to find that outside of Lulihart’s tent at the Stilt. She sanitized another mouthpiece and took a pull of her own.

“Thank you, thank you,” said Cheotl from the stage, settling once more into chameleon shape. The crowd’s amusement subsided into anticipation. “You’re a wonderful crowd. I’d love to try being any of you. But I know most of you are here for something else. Well, what do you think? Is it time?”

“Please!” called Agate into the audience’s clamorings, loosing her own smoke plume. She suppressed a few coughs. Mokou thumped her on the back and laughed. A touch of heat rose to Agate’s cheeks.

“Well, if you insist,” said Cheotl. Their grin took on an indignant edge as they began the preamble of their debuting poem. “Friends. Have you ever woken up to find out they named the psychological complex of feeling like an impostor in your own life after you? I imagine most of you haven’t.”

Agate leaned forward in interest. It was interest annealed with bittersweet pangs. No wonder Cheotl had asked for her attendance, considering her unique positioning. If her hypothesis was correct, she was about to bear witness to a rebuttal of Q Girl’s Disquisition on the Malady of the Mimic.

She’d been present for the drafting of that codex — happier times for both of them, though never without their strains. Perhaps, in retrospect, merely times when the force of denial held greater sway over them. The Disquisition’s closing lines resurfaced within her: Belong, friend. We wait for you joyously.

Hollow words, since their parting.

“You think any of them asked us mimics about it, first?” continued Cheotl. The percussionist’s rhythm sped steadily. Cheotl released the grip of their chameleon claws from the microphone stand. They stepped back a pace, raising their voice to compensate for the distance. “Anyway, here’s my new kinetic poem. It’s called:

Roulette!”

They spun a full circuit on their tail as they shifted in one lightning motion. Scaled limbs retracted into glittering ventrals, feathered wings burst from their back, the crested and horned bulwark of their chameleon head tapered into a serpent’s sleekness. The shape of a dawnglider. The forceful rhythm of their delivery never dropped, never relented.

“That’s the way I change forms
I am constantly changing forms
Put me in the grave I’ll still be changing forms
Roulette!”

Another spin, another shift. Scales bloomed into quills as ventrals fattened into white fur. Goggles and servos sprouted in fleshy facsimile as a cascade of rainbow hair settled across broad shoulders. This form confirmed, somewhat wrenchingly, her hypothesis: Cheotl stood before the microphone in Q Girl’s guise.

“You said why are you always changing forms?
I said why does my becoming challenge you?
You said there is something wrong with your sense of belonging
I said changing forms is my sense of belonging
Roulette!”

They spun again, accreting a gelatinous boxiness about themselves that swallowed limb and feature. Their shift resolved into the form of a speaker stack.

“I will continuously change forms
Say some shit at me while I’m changing forms
Roulette!”

They lit on the speaker-guise only for this swift triad of lines. The nubby feet at the base swelled mid-pirouette into hooves as varnished woodgrain bleached into gleaming white fur. Muscles swelled the frame into organic curves. Their topmost diaphragm extruded into an equine snout, then further into a luxurious mane and a spiraling horn. Cheotl had shifted, with admirable fidelity, into one of the graceful, powerful denizens of the distant Moon Stair: a unimax.

“I will change forms into an equine
You just said some shit at an equine
Equines will reject you
I will keep changing forms
I will change forms into you
Roulette!”

As though to hammer their intent home, Cheotl’s next rearing spin reverted them to the form of Q Girl. There was little need for chromatic shifting between the two forms — all the purples and whites were already there.

“You just said some shit at yourself
All that shit you said reflects upon yourself
There is something wrong with your sense of belonging
You said you’re performing and not inhabiting
I said performing is inhabiting
Roulette!”

Cheotl spun again to the accelerating drumbeat. Their bleached urshiib quills seemed to detach as one lengthening mass, anchored at the head. Powered exoskeletal servos and cushioning plastifer slimmed into a trim suit. Their ursine snout blunted into a classical human form. They had settled upon the shape of her traveling companion. A snapshot of Mokou, rather — the secondhand suit and wild hair she’d sported when they’d all judged the urchin battle together. It jarred her.

“Say some shit at me while I’m changing forms
You said I can’t change forms
I said you already are
You do that in the world
So does the world
Why does your becoming challenge you?
Maybe you will grow a better sense of belonging
Roulette!”

The drums snapped their rhythm to a halt. Cheotl pivoted into one final spin. Everything of them winnowed down into a mirroring of the microphone on its stand before them. Their wide base rocked circularly against the amphitheater stage once, twice, slowing, wobbling. On their final circuit, their balance resolved to tip them off of their base. They fell slowly backwards to thump onto the stage.

The audience burst into applause. Agate was among them. It was a challenging piece, but a welcoming challenge. The perspective, and the critiques it afforded, was fresh. As was the timing — following such a carefully structured and curated opening with a rapid-fire salvo of free verse strengthened both through the juxtaposition. She glanced across to the others. Fasola slapped her palm repeatedly against the low table that held the hookah. Mokou sat back in her cushion, mouthpiece poised by her lips, brows furrowed in thought.

Noticing Agate’s attention, Mokou met it with her own distant gaze. “Who else was that in there?”

“The albino cave bear with the technological accoutrements, yes?” Agate clarified.

Mokou nodded, slowly drawing from the hookah.

“Q Girl,” Agate replied. She had to wonder what her erstwhile research partner would have made of the piece. “An author of several treatises. One such regards what is referred to as the ‘malady of the mimic.’”

Mokou’s gaze slid back to the stage. “But she didn’t ask ‘em first. Huh.”

“In her defense, most mimics are notoriously difficult to poll for their opinions,” said Agate.

The applause subsided as Cheotl began to move again. They pooled outwards and roused upwards, almost more in the character of sludge than solid. Steadying claws gripped the microphone stand as their conical chameleon eyes recovered from their bout of dizziness.

“Thank you, you’re all too kind,” said Cheotl. “I’ve had that one in the works for a while now. It’s good to see it land. I’ve got one more for you all tonight.”

The closest rows took up scattered pleas and exhortations for more. Cheotl chuckled happily, holding out their hands in a calming gesture.

“Really, just one more. Need to go home and warm up.” They paused thoughtfully, waiting for the crowd to silence itself once more. “Many, many years ago, I had the honor of seeing Daughter Erinna orate. I can honestly say it changed my life; it set me on the path I still tread today. I’d like to reproduce a slice of that performance for you as best as I can manage it. At the very least, I hope to show you what it meant to me.”

As they spoke, they rose upright into a new form. Their reptilian crests flattened and widened into a woman’s weathered brown face below a stark quartzfur wimple. Chromatic scales shifted into the telltale chrome habit of a Daughter of Exile. Agate had never met Daughter Erinna, but she’d held the pleasure of acquaintance for many sisters of her order. They were allies to the houseless, menders of the broken, stewards of machine form and folk.

The great lamp had settled in its evening berth below the canopy level. All remaining light in the amphitheater was the cold nobility of xenon. Colorful shadows built upon Cheotl. The silence, inasmuch as silence could ever manifest to Agate’s ears, was near complete.

“Call this one a promise to a fellow judge. This is Daughter Erinna’s Modulo Moon Stair and the Tree of Life.”

They bowed their head briefly. Their chin lifted again, and their voice emerged in a new timbre, husky and steady.

"In rainbow reverie I wandered the wide territories of Qud,
modulo the Moon Stair and the Tree of Life.
My dreamself knew to avoid the place,
where numbers go to die.

Something unseen there tightens to a point,
breaks time’s abelian promise,
and urges crystal on to palisade her weeping gulf.

The artifacts of plant and time,
crust and fuzz with lossy compression,
doze in moonlit marble beds,
touched by august muzzles.
The past is unwritten as the future,
And what is left, broken and changed,
to be tended by the point Colossi and their swarm.”

All through the first three stanzas, something tickled at Agate’s mind. There was beauty in the lines, but so, too, was there dread. Imagery that should have been familiar raised blank fields in her memory. Any memory of the Moon Stair might spare them from pain and destruction, but all of her own experience had been scoured from her.

There was something she should have remembered. She had been made to forget.

“They’d erase me, too.
I’m mere rust on the vine’s fronds,
I’m a dead girl in graveside flowers,
Peering a powerless eye at the machine function that writes my gospel.

But black bodies radiate,
A feeling sense obtains,
Swings in orbit and Becomes.
On the trauma of a Nothing,
Soul-things take root.

We invent so many Nothings,
Zero engines, annihilators,
Mappers of the nullspace.
But Nothings have a cost,
Promise externalities,
Trees grow best beside the dead.”

Cheotl’s voice lapsed into ethereal silence as the poem closed. It was silence the audience was hesitant to break. But they did, at last, giving solemn applause to the evening’s finale.

“Thank you, thank you,” Cheotl bowed. “Safe travels to you all. Live and drink.”

Agate glanced to her side to see Mokou lending her own applause. The thoughtful crease hadn’t left her brows.

They were going to the Moon Stair, the two of them. Agate would take them there. Here, wrapped in comfort, luxury, festivity, and relative safety, the true impact of that consideration hadn’t quite set in. It was a fearsome place, made all the more so by imposed unfamiliarity. But fear could be mastered — and it could be cooked. Already she felt the premonitions of inspiration taking root within her.

Mokou let out a soft breath. “It’s bad out there, isn’t it?”

It seemed she harbored her own doubts as to the nature of their expedition. That was healthy.

“I don’t believe it maps like that,” Agate replied.

“The Moon Stair?” asked Fasola. “I don’t believe it maps.”

“You ever been?” asked Mokou.

“You kidding me?” Fasola retorted. “I get enough nightmares from your cat. No thank you.”

“Hmm,” Mokou grunted. She leaned forward to holster the hookah mouthpiece. With her free hand, she patted Fasola’s shoulder. “Give Cheotl my best, yeah? Gave me a lot to think about.”

Fasola patted Mokou’s hand in return. “Lovely stuff, isn’t it? I’ll pass it along. You two heading out?”

“Reckon so,” said Mokou, rising from the cushions. She held out a hand towards Agate to help her up. “Let’s get some ramen.”

V

In the subterranean cathedral’s plaza, a vast stretch of tables and seating had been arranged to give dining berths for all who sampled the Temple Ward’s festival dishes. By the time the two of them arrived, most booths had closed shop for the night, and the lines had subsided. Jathiss’s wide ramen booth didn’t seem to be among those. Its wooden facade emerged from the cathedral’s kitchen cloister. She stood behind it, dressed in flowing, gold-tasseled robes, taking the lull in demand as an opportunity for cleaning.

Mokou sped her step as she took in the view. Hopefully they hadn’t dallied too long at other attractions. Agate’s accommodating pace readily absorbed her acceleration. She looped her arm around Mokou’s elbow.

“Jathiss!” Mokou called, drawing up at the service counter. “We didn’t get here too late, did we?”

“Chef,” Agate nodded in greeting.

“Chef,” Jathiss replied in turn — a greeting from both her heads, each distinctly delivered to the both of them. “You came in your own time, and that’s time enough for me. Though, if I hadn’t seen you, I would have tracked you down.”

“Aw, I wouldn’t miss this,” Mokou chuckled. She settled herself into the counter’s seating as Agate took a taurstool next to her. “What’s on the menu?”

Jathiss set into motion preparing a pair of servings for them, dredging light-hungry noodles out of the boilers and into the broth. As in their lesson, she garnished them with slices of marinated boar cutlet and salt kraken roe. New this time was a sheaf of cured lah petals. “I’m calling this one Gyre’s Boon Ramen. Recuperative, insulating. Please, enjoy.”

“Welcome effects for anyone on the far end of the Contest of Kings,” Agate dryly noted. She accepted her bowl graciously.

“Hey, I won, didn’t I?” Mokou scoffed. She took in the scent of the broth, massaging the cutlet to dip it below the rich surface. There was a more pungent character to this recipe, most likely from the lah. “No wheat after all, looks like.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be Gyre’s Boon if I didn’t use vanta,” said Jathiss. “It’s a miracle that we’ve all managed to stay apace of the Second Gyre’s vanta superbloom. As a result, we’ve got a great deal more of it than we do of wheat. We’re just lucky it tastes so good!”

“Mm,” Mokou hummed around a mouthful of broth. She was right about that. The thick vanta dough noodles lent a tangy piquancy to the broth’s savory richness and the lah’s sourness. Vanta, from what she’d been told, absorbed all light around itself when it bloomed. If a plant like that spread unchecked on the surface, that would be more than enough to qualify as an incident — it’d be downright apocalyptic. She could stomach the lack of wheat if it meant keeping the darkness at bay.

Jathiss directed a question to Agate while pointing at Mokou. “She didn’t get butter on my—”

“She did not,” confirmed Agate. “I would not permit it for such a splendid gift.”

“Good, good. They’ve turned out quite stunningly, I must say,” Jathiss preened. Mokou could only nod in wordless agreement.

“The lah,” said Mokou, when she had finished her bite. “It’s giving me a sort of — what was that — a sort of kimchi vibe in this.”

“Kimchi?” Agate asked when her mouth was next unoccupied.

“Mm,” grunted Mokou. “It was a sort of pickled cabbage — uh, a sturdy old leafy green — from an old neighboring country. Tricky to get under the Barrier. You needed a back door. Worth it for my wife, though.”

Agate cocked a faint smile. “Your wife — what sort of histories did she glean from this kimchi, I wonder?”

Mokou’s wistful expression darkened as she scoured her memories. She sought back to old mealtime lectures, precious times with the woman who’d loved her the best. “Well, from what she found, we weren’t very good neighbors. We had an empire for a while there — Japan, I mean, not Gensokyo. Nobody wants to be neighbors with an empire.”

“She could tell all this just from their pickles?” asked Jathiss. “That’s some truly potent psychometry if I’ve ever seen it.”

“No, she had her own thing. Magic,” said Mokou. She sighed softly. “That’s all over and done with, anyway. And to the empire, good riddance.”

Agate’s wondering gaze rested on her between her own pulls of broth. “It’s remarkable you manage to remember all this.”

Mokou returned her gaze. She’d had a good day today with her. They’d shared quite a few of those, lately. She was glad they’d managed that despite no longer sharing a shift. Mokou shrugged. “You make it easier for me to remember the things I used to care about.”

“Oh?” Agate started — almost sputtered. Had it been such an unexpected thing to hear? She recovered her composure, adopting instead a wry, almost bitter smile. “You don’t find me transactional, then?”

“What?” Mokou scoffed. She held up her palm in a dismissive, warding gesture. “I already told you, I don’t give a shit about that. You’re gonna do your thing. I’m already interested in where that’s going.”

“Very well,” Agate replied. “I can promise that its course will be more enriching than staring at the ceiling.”

Mokou chuckled softly. Despite the grim remembrances, she found her mood insulated. The lah, perhaps, working as Jathiss promised. For that matter, her bandaged scrapes were knitting already. But it was greater than that, too. It was a day spent in jubilation, sport, camaraderie and culture. It was this moment, here in the plaza, winding down from their city-spanning travels with a bowl of exquisite ramen and the company of new friends. Appreciative silence fell over their gathering.

In the silence, the talk of neighbors got her to thinking. It was truly something special she’d found in this city. The sort of special that might be turned into a home. Of course, that meant putting a bit more care and thought into her own citizenship. She wanted to be a good neighbor — and they made it easy to want that, here. But that meant grappling with the biggest barrier to that want.

Her cat.

“I’m thinking of applying for housing,” she said at last.

“Are you!” Jathiss brightly replied, pausing briefly from wiping down her kitchen space. “You’ll be waiting a few days, unfortunately. The housing office is closed for the festival.”

Mokou waved off the concern. “Ahh, it’s fine. Moondrop’s nice.”

“Did you have a location in mind?” asked Agate. “Garden Ward has much in the way of similar accommodations.”

“You could always take up roost in the Temple Ward, too,” said Jathiss. “Of course, there’s plenty of housing available in any of our neighborhoods.”

“Let’s see…” said Mokou, giving herself over to deeper considerations. “Somewhere on the surface, I think. At the edge of town, where the glow’s not so bright. Where Tabi’s got room to roam free — but not so far out I can’t drop by and poke my nose in a stockpot or two.”

“Either of the canyon wards would do, then, I’d say,” noted Jathiss.

“Yeah, there’s that park in East Canyon Ward we’ve got booked for our exhibition,” Mokou mused. “Nice little spot. Wouldn’t mind settling down near there.”

“There you are, then,” said Jathiss. “You’ve done half the housing office’s job for them already.”

That was the other thing about this city. They went and made it so damn convenient to find a home. Mokou finished her last bite of savory boar, downed her last mouthful of broth, and set her empty bowl aside. She sighed in satisfaction. “Excellent stuff, as always. Thanks, Jathiss.”

“A fine showing,” Agate agreed. “It will ever hearten me to taste such a thoughtful approach to lah.”

“Well, if you’re fishing for the recipe, you’ll have to tease it out of me some other way,” Jathiss chuckled. She took their empty bowls and passed them back to the dish cart before reaching under her shawl for something. “Before you go, I’ve a little something here for you, Mokou.”

She withdrew a letter and passed it across the counter to Mokou. The paper was sturdy and dyed black. Carmine wax sealed it, stamped with an unfamiliar seal. A rampant heraldic beast, though as Mokou took in its features — a pair of horns, a luxurious mane, a scorpion’s tail, even an extra maw on its belly — the unfamiliarity faded.

“This is…”

Jathiss merely nodded.

“The big lady herself,” Mokou whistled, parting the seal and unfolding the letter. Gold ink met her inspection, capturing glyphs written in a large but neat, even florid script. Quite the feat of precision, considering the size of her claws.

Carbide Chef Fujiwara no Mokou, wrote Farouun.

You might imagine my great satisfaction at being able to pen such a title for you. Your dishes, your perspectives, your techniques, your histories, all have been truly outstanding. I consider myself deeply fortunate to have sampled your indulgences.

I wonder, then, would you indulge me once more? In recognition of your efforts, and to cement this friendship, it would be my great honor to partake with you in the Water Ritual. Tomorrow evening, the Second of Ut yara Ux, holds my ideal opening. Consider this my formal invitation.

Live and cook,

Baroness Farouun

Mokou folded the letter back up and loosed a slow breath. Maybe that was to be expected. She still hadn’t quite grasped the implications of that particular cultural practice here, yet. That lack of grasp, and Agate’s vague warnings, had left her hesitant to try it any more than she already had. Still, Farouun’s city had spotted her any number of drinks — she wouldn’t mind returning the favor, if it came to that.

“What news?” asked Agate. Something in her tone made Mokou feel as though she already knew, or had already guessed.

“She wants to Water Ritual me,” said Mokou.

“As expected,” Agate replied with a faint smile. An informed guess, then.

“I’m a touch surprised it took her this long,” Jathiss coyly laughed. “Often times she’ll do it right there at the certification bout, but then, the festival keeps us all busy.”

“No kidding. Where’s she been all day, anyway?” asked Mokou.

“Where? Well, she was by a little earlier,” Jathiss mused. Fondness built and flowed through her harmonic voices. “She’s simply being called to taste from a thousand different saucepots across the city. And tonight, she’ll come home full and happy. It’s her favorite time of year.”

Mokou whistled. It really took a city. “That’s no mean feat. Chef, you tell her I’ll be there.”

Chapter Text

The park they’d picked for the danmaku showcase sat in the heart of East Canyon Ward. Small copses and shaded pavilions granted a reprieve from the heat of midday, to parkgoers, to games and gatherings, and to the two of them. They’d commandeered one of these pavilions to hold their temporary kitchen. The bulk of the cooler morning hours had been spent making it ready for tomorrow’s exhibition. Now that the heat had built, they took their lunch in it.

Mokou hadn’t heard of the place their boxed lunches came from, but then, there were many spots in the city still unfamiliar to her. It was a kitchen from the shops ringing the park. They’d put together a rich and bitter harees of rough-milled yuckwheat and psychal gland paste with a crisp side salad of finely-diced vinewafer. It was a bracing dish, exactly the type of refreshment she wanted to punctuate the morning’s festival labors.

And of course, there was the best part of any dish with psychal gland paste: it came with a secret. The headrush was always exhilarating — a psyche-expanding, out-of-body sort of feeling. Sometimes the feeling itself was more satisfying than the secret that rode it. She closed her eyes as it took hold. This time, the clairvoyant flashes hinted her along, east and south.

“I’m getting hints of, like—”

Agate preempted her over her own poised spoonful. “Did I not warn you of the inauspiciousness of immediately spoiling your secret?”

“Yeah?” said Mokou. “Since when have you cared about superstitions?”

“What I care about is the value of a secret,” replied Agate. “As should you, with a Water Ritual imminent. You might learn something better saved for the Baroness’s ears.”

“Mm,” Mokou grunted. The visions resolved as a faint glimpse of shale canyons, their washes grown wild with fungal pillars. They sheltered a lobed thing, its leafy structures quivering faintly in a puddle of dubious liquid. A weep, she’d wager, and by the looks of it, one whose favored liquid was some kind of viscous tar. Its spore-laden surroundings reminded her a bit of the tableau she’d seen at Mehshruul End, but only to a point. These growths were clearly untended, and they sat nearly on the opposite end of the great plateau from the End. Evidently there were ample places in Qud where the poisons ran deep enough for these levels of fungal density.

Mokou wasn’t particularly sure who’d be interested in the whereabouts of an asphalt weep. Still, novelty was novelty. She kept at the meaty porridge, casting her eye over the park’s grounds. Most of the other folks she could see enjoying the park seemed to be in siesta mode, reclining in the shade and plucking at dulcimers, but a few of the more heat-resistant types stayed lively. In a day and some hours, she’d be filling the skies overhead with a spectacle only a handful of folks in the city had the privilege of truly witnessing.

“You know what would go great with this?” she asked.

“Yes,” Agate replied. “Cider.”

“Exactly,” answered Mokou. “Chilled. Left the stuff I picked up from Tuilimas Red back in my room, though.”

“Alas,” said Agate, fixing her with a look of unreadable intensity.

“You’ve got some in your sled, yeah?” Mokou noted. She remembered seeing some the last time she had a chance to rummage through her cold stores. “… Why you looking at me like that?”

She was somewhat used to Agate’s stares by now, but there was something oddly deliberate about this one. Agate’s ear flicked. “Because in a moment, you will be faced with a choice with the potential to compromise your danmaku showcase and the remaining days of the festival.”

“What?” Were those footsteps behind her, drawing closer?

“Promise me you won’t look.”

“Cider?” came a lyrical voice raised in greeting, as familiar as it was unexpected. “How about Mehshruul End’s last bottle of 989 reserve?”

“Seeqat?” asked Mokou. Her heart lurched. Memories sparked within her of that flower of the canyons — her sunhat, her sundress, her fungus — yet curiously, none of her features came to mind. As thought they’d burned themselves out of her memory. Mokou nearly looked then and there, but managed to stop herself halfway through the motion. Seeing the umbrage spark in Agate’s gaze helped her quash that impulse. Tragically, Agate was right about this. But then, there were too many footsteps for just one daughter of the canyons. “How’d you get here?”

“Thanks to my noble escort, of course,” laughed Seeqat, the whispers of her mumble mouth burbling a bit louder in echoed merriment. She’d drawn close enough that they were audible over the sounds of the park’s other denizens. That probably brought her into the shade of their pavilion, and still she approached. It was a welcome approach, but a touch nerve-wracking. The vividness of that expired lovestruck feeling tickled at Mokou’s memory.

“Your escort?”

Movement in Mokou’s periphery resolved into another figure, duster and skirts swishing, jingling with scrap and kit. Her water-kith. Maun Muur walked herself astraddle of one of the pavilion’s benches and laid herself facedown across its length. Her boots were considerably worse for wear since the last time Mokou had seen her.

“Oh, shit! Maun Muur!” Mokou found herself grinning. At least Maun Muur was safe to look at.

“Any dangers?” replied the arconaut, muffled and weakly.

“Live and drink, traveler Mokou, Ms. Star,” said Seeqat. She was right behind Mokou now. A cider bottle slid forward into her periphery. Mokou accepted it graciously. It took a tremendous amount of willpower to keep her gaze elsewhere. Seeqat continued in her gentle, playful tones. “A few other bottles survived the trek, but that one’s the best year. What luck that I could deliver it to both of you at once!”

“It’s most welcome,” Agate replied. She rose and paced to the pavilion’s dish storage, presumably to fetch glasses for all of them. “And if they aren’t yet accounted for, I’ll give you a fair price for the others.”

“It would be my honor!” gasped Seeqat.

“How was the trip? You run into any trouble out there?” asked Mokou, working the wax seal from the bottle. She tried not to think of where the wax had come from. Agate would probably call it enterprising.

“Really, only from the glass,” said Seeqat. “A caravan took us much of the way, thankfully. We just arrived this morning. A kindly Seeker pointed us the rest of the way.”

“Lot of conversations,” said Maun Muur. “Too many. But she got to see the fish!”

Seeqat chuckled softly. “Oh, yes. They were lovely.”

Agate returned and set out four glasses, studiously averting her gaze from Seeqat. Mokou poured, passing one behind her, then readying another for Maun Muur. She reached over to where Maun Muur stretched out and nearly shook her by her skirt-clad hindquarters. She stopped herself. The arconaut’s posture looked as tense as her weariness could allow, which, given her nature and profession, was still pretty tense.

“You holding up okay, Maun?” Mokou asked instead.

“You’re still very difficult and I wish everyone would shut up,” Maun Muur answered. She lifted her upper torso from the bench to accept the glass of cider. Despite her bedraggled demeanor, some measure of blissful calmness entered her gaze as she looked past Mokou to where Seeqat sat. “Not you, Seeqat, I love you. It’s very good to see you again.”

Mokou found herself a bit envious of that liberty. “Her, or me?”

“Well, it is good to see you again. We’re water-kith! But it’s better to see Seeqat.” Maun Muur took a deep sip of cider and started faintly purring. Now that Mokou had a better look at her, she noted a new addition. The arconaut’s right shoulder now sported a glowing accoutrement: a large patch of glowcrust, almost mirroring her left shoulder’s dented pauldron in organic ridges.

“You really are water-kith, aren’t you?” Seeqat marveled.

“Sure am,” chuckled Mokou. She raised her glass in toast. “Well, here’s to the both of you. Welcome to Kitchen Heptagon.”

They clinked glasses, her, Agate, and Seeqat — Maun Muur was already set on enjoying hers. Even unchilled, the taste was exquisite — crisp, spicy, with a complex tang. Aging had done it wonders, and it was already something of a wonder itself.

“Hot damn. Missed this stuff,” Mokou sighed. “Y’all ate yet? Kind of a silly question, here, but — I could fix you up something quick, we’ve got all the fixings.”

“Oh, but you’ve already done so much for us!” said Seeqat.

“She’s freshly certified as a Carbide Chef, you know. You speak as one never graced by either of our culinary stylings,” noted Agate.

"But I have! I will put anything you give me into my mouth,” said Maun Muur.

“Yeah, that’s the spirit,” said Mokou. She rose and made for a nearby stove to start cooking, bringing her lunch and cider with her. A bit of distance from Seeqat’s innate apple blossom fragrance would make it that much easier to keep resisting the urge to look. “If Agate’s buying the rest of your stock, that means I still get to enjoy it. Let me chip in with a nice hot meal. You get an advance tasting for the grub we’ll have at tomorrow’s exhibition.”

“Well, if you insist!” Seeqat replied. Mokou could practically hear the blush in her voice. Seeqat laughed softly — and the sound still made Mokou’s heart leap a bit. “You know, if you hadn’t told me in your letters, I hardly would have believed it, but look at you! Here you are, planning some sort of exhibition with the illustrious Agate Severance Star!”

“It’s like I said. We’re buddies.” Mokou cast a grin back over her shoulder towards Agate in time to catch her ear flicking. The sweep of Mokou’s field of view brought Seeqat into her periphery. Below her sunhat, she was garbed in a heavy veil worn as part of some manner of shapeless full-body covering. Maybe she thought it helped the effect, but all it really did was add an air of mystery to the gravity of her presence. Mokou snapped her gaze back to the stove, feeling the sweat bead on her brow. She let out a heavy breath. Close. “Y’all should come back here tomorrow evening. I guarantee you’ve never seen anything like it. What’s your pleasure? We’ve got Mokou’s Magmatic Mochi and Agate’s, uh…”

Agate sighed. “Blaze-Marinated Hoarshroom Poached over Lava Pudding. You still haven’t memorized the menu for your own event?”

“Hey, I’m not the one who’s going to be cooking it down here,” Mokou retorted. “Now c’mon, your orders?”

“How could I pass up a chance to try one of Ms. Star’s dishes?” answered Seeqat.

“I don’t know what a mochi is, but the way you think them is very pleasingly round,” said Maun Muur.

“One of each, alright,” said Mokou, setting to work on filling the requests between bites of the rest of her lunch. “S’great, you can try the other one tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow…” said Maun Muur, her ears drooping. “You’re thinking of an awful lot of bullets when you think about tomorrow.”

“Course I am, it’s a danmaku exhibition,” Mokou laughed. “Don’t worry, though. Either of these dishes are gonna make you immune to the bulk of that fire.”

“Oh!” said Maun Muur. “Well, then, I trust you completely. Let’s come tomorrow, Seeqat!”

“Yes!”

Mokou found herself grinning as she folded a serving of her prepared lava into mochi form. Two more friends coming to witness her wizardry. If that wasn’t a blessing, she didn’t know what one was. She’d come to this land for one purpose alone — she hadn’t particularly expected to make friends while she was here.

“Have you secured lodging yet?” Agate asked the new arrivals.

“No, not yet,” Seeqat replied. A faint current of concern built in her tone. “Will it be much trouble, do you think? All sorts of folk must be visiting the city at this time of year.”

“It should not be particularly onerous. The Heptagon’s wards are many and capacious,” said Agate.

“Last I heard, Moondrop Inn’s still got vacancies,” Mokou noted. “That’s where I’m staying. Me and Tabi.”

“Tabi?” asked Seeqat.

“Yeah, my cat,” said Mokou. She could feel her surfacing presence nearby with each mention of her name. She glanced over at Maun Muur. “Check it out — you remember the shadow beast? She’s my cat now.”

“Rrt?” chirped Tabi, poking her head up from the pavilion’s concrete floor.

Maun Muur stiffened, eyes wide. “Wow! I never wanted to see that! Seeqat, let’s stay as far away from Mokou’s cat as we can.”

“Oh? But she’s so cute…”

Agate sighed, taking up position next to Mokou in the prep area to start on Seeqat’s order. “Once you try to sleep around the thing, you’ll find the arconaut has the right of it. I recommend instead The HyphRise, a Spore Ward inn. The clime you should find familiar and agreeable. The most minds one meets are mycelial.”

“She knows her way around this city,” said Mokou. She put the last smoothing touches on Maun Muur’s mochi — Agate was already nearly done with Seeqat’s pudding. She was a damn fast hand in the kitchen, and Mokou’s was the more intensive dish, besides. “I’d take her up on that one.”

“At the very least, pay the ward itself a visit. If the water weeps are sporing, you might be able to secure a transplant to bring back to the End.” Agate took up her finished dish, turned, and, still averting her gaze, served it to Seeqat. “If, of course, you intend to return.”

“Oh…!” Seeqat paused to consider the possibility for several breaths. At last, she gave her answer. “… Yes, I believe so. At least, I intend to.”

“I go where she goes,” said Maun Muur, with a resolute look.

“Here, have a bite of that,” Mokou nodded, passing her the finished mochi.

“Mm! Great!” replied Maun Muur, before taking a bite. Her face tightened around her suddenly-watering eyes. She managed to swallow what she’d bitten off before she was wracked with a coughing fit. Small jets of flame started accompanying each outburst. “It’s — it’s attacking me! The food hurts!”

“But it’s good, right?” asked Mokou.

The best response the arconaut could manage was to clear her throat furiously and stuff the rest of her first mochi into her mouth.

It was at that moment she realized that the soft sound of crying emanated from where Seeqat sat with her dish. Not her mumble mouths — those were still whispering out wet nonsense. It nearly spurred Mokou to look, but her will stayed steadfast. Still, she didn’t want to ignore Seeqat. She seated herself down next to Seeqat and patted her back.

“You good? Anything wrong?”

“Oh, no, no,” Seeqat laughed through her sniffling. “I’m — I’m only grateful. It’s just — you saved us. The three of you. When the glass hit, between the ruin of it all and Pa hurt so bad, I thought it might have been our end. If you hadn’t sent dear Maun Muur… But you did, and now — now the caravans are back! We get trade, and word, and help for the trees and ourselves. We’re doing so well, even, that the two of us could spare a trip to partake in the Heptagon’s festival! It’s… it’s a dream come true.”

Her impassioned words brought a great well of gratitude up within Mokou. Since the fall of her old home, it wasn’t often she got to save anyone from anything. The dangers were too vast and strange now. But this time, she’d managed. It was a reminder of the purpose she’d given herself back then, and how good it had felt to have one.

“Aw, Hell,” said Mokou, her voice thick with sudden emotion. She rubbed Seeqat’s back reassuringly. “Something like that happens, you’ve got to help who’s left. That’s all there is to it.”

“It takes considerable expertise and dedication to craft a distilled product with the caliber of your End’s cider,” Agate added. “I would ever do what I could to ensure such a thing is not so callously erased from the world.”

Maun Muur merely purred, the steady rhythm of it hitching through her subdued coughs.

“Thank you, thank you. And to top it all off,” Seeqat sniffed loudly. “You welcome us with a taste of the legendary cuisine of Agate Severance Star? This is… this is the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life!”

Mokou laughed. Put like that, it was quite the welcome, but then, this was the city for it. “I’m Carbide Chef certified myself, now, you know. Hey, after lunch, y’all wanna see the arboretum?”

Chapter Text

This was a chamber in the upper arena she’d never been in. Windows in the northern wall looked out across the shale canyons ablaze in sunset. The southern wall held the room’s only entrance, set into an archway that parted a font stylized as a waterfall that took up the entire rest of the wall. Reflective whirligigs mounted within the water feature caught the cascade and spun, scattering mirror-light across the room’s other surfaces. Blue and green tiles set in the floor shaped the eddies, banks, and riffles of a river in mosaic. To the east and west, decorative shelving held vessels, basins, amphorae. The ceiling arched high overhead, dappled by the shining turbines and hazy with brazier smoke. A ritual space, if ever Mokou had seen one.

Farouun stood at the window and looked out upon the land, arms clasped behind her back, scorpion tail swishing softly. A robe of silver silk, loose and luxurious, draped her frame, flaring at the wrists into frilly ruffles. Voluminous trousers lent their shape to her silhouette, while a pair of sapphire-studded sandals supported her claws. Her ensemble made Mokou glad she’d opted to wear her new yukata — it felt like just the right amount of dressing-up.

She stepped further into the glittering chamber, making for the Baroness’s side. The mosaic river beneath her tread seemed to come alive as the light played across its painted tiles.

“Fujiwara no Mokou,” Farouun’s stately voice rolled out in greeting. She looked back over her shoulder and smiled. “So good of you to join me.”

“Heya,” Mokou nodded to her. “Good to be here.”

She drew up next to Farouun. Out the window, shadows lengthened over the canyons, stretching off to the east. Beyond that eastern horizon, the Moon Stair lay. No bluff or bulwark’s evening shadow here could hope to darken it.

“How are you enjoying the festival?” asked Farouun. She smelled particularly good — like musk incense tying together the scents of untold sampled dishes.

“Yesterday I fought a crab. Today I took some friends on a tour of the arboretum. Tomorrow I get to show off my spell cards. And the street food? My god,” Mokou sighed fondly. “I’m having a great time.”

“I’m pleased to hear it,” replied Farouun, grinning. From this angle, Mokou could see that the Baroness had left her robe parted and her chest bare, the better to show off the gold fang-cappers with which she’d decorated her belly-maw for this occasion. “It’s your first time experiencing the festival of Ut yara Ux, is it not?”

“That’s right,” said Mokou. “Calendar’s different across the desert. Does everyone in Qud party like this when this time of year rolls around?”

“They certainly try, in their own ways. Though, as one who’s done my fair share of traveling, I can say our civic infrastructure affords our festivals a somewhat unique extravagance.”

Mokou raised her brows, adopting a wry smile.“You’re spoiling it for me everywhere else, is that what I hear?”

Farouun chuckled politely, holding up a claw to stay the ribbing. “Oh, they all have their local charms. I’m quite fond of the Yd Freehold’s celebrations, myself — very musical affairs, well worth a visit if you find yourself in the Palladium Reef another year.”

“I already know I like the ingredients out there. Maybe I will.” Mokou gazed out at the darkening canyons. There was still so little of this land she’d seen. Being out in the world like this was still something she could remember to savor. For as much as she missed her old home, its nature had made most travel impossible. The thought of what other villages and cities might be waiting out there reminded her of Agate’s bitter recountings of her birthplace. “This infrastructure — you ever thought about spreading it around? Can’t imagine everyone out there’s living this good. Hell, seems like half the stuff here’s just waiting around for enough people to move in so it actually sees some use.”

Farouun’s expression grew serious. “I’ve considered it, certainly. So, too, have I often had cause to consider if my reach exceeded my grasp in this city-building endeavor. It’s not for nothing I do all that bookkeeping, you know.”

As Farouun gave her answer, Mokou rolled herself a smoke. She lit it, drew, then waved it forward in punctuation. “Gotta hope they’re ledgers you can live with, this time around.”

“I’d be dead if they weren’t,” said Farouun.

“Damn, you’ve got standards.”

The Baroness lifted a massive claw to rub her chin in contemplation. “It’s not simply that. I mean my skull would be on a pike somewhere.”

Mokou loosed a plume of smoke and reached over to give Farouun an encouraging pat on the small of her back. “Nah, big gal like you? They’d make a shrine out of it, I’m sure of it. But that can’t be your only metric for all this.”

“Certainly not!” said Farouun. Fondness and zeal bolstered her deep tones as she further explained. “I still remember the heaping pile of meteorological studies and environmental impact reports we ended up with in the course of surveying where we’d build our home. We found precisely where the land could support our dreams. Few other villages in Qud can boast the same care. There’s no guarantee we wouldn’t be handing them the instrument of their own annihilation through overdevelopment.”

“Not unless you dictate its use,” Mokou noted. “That’s got its own problems, though.”

“Of course. We built the Heptagon as an escape from tyranny, not as an excuse to let our own take root.” Farouun sighed. “If we had the labor, we could simply conduct the necessary surveys for all who so desired. Still, I’d rather we have a shortage of labor than of compassion.”

"Glad you’ve got the one you prefer, I guess.” Mokou puffed on her smoke thoughtfully. This had been an invitation to ritual, but for the moment her host seemed content to stand around, soak in the view, and talk politics. Not that she was complaining — the company, the view, and the politics all made for an enjoyable gestalt. “But I gotta say, it’s a pretty acute shortage. When we made it back from the weirdwire repair gig, Nashimir — the forewoman, you know Nashimir—?”

Farouun nodded with a knowing smile.

“—Right. Well, some of the things she asked me in the debrief made me wonder if y’all could really spare us going out there.”

“Is that what she made you think?” replied Farouun. “I can assure you it was quite the opposite. I shudder to think that you two might not have gone. What we truly couldn’t have spared was the manpower it would have otherwise taken to uncover and excise the root problem.”

“Huh,” Mokou grunted. That tracked with her other observations, at least. “I can see those Templar being tricky to folks who haven’t been at this as long as me.”

“They are precisely the sort of tyranny we position ourselves against,” Farouun nodded. “Which levels another tally against careless expansion: for our infrastructure networks to function, we must be able to maintain and defend them. The militias and work crews have their hands full with what we’ve already established. We were lucky to have your aid for that particular setback.”

“Well, I had a personal stake in it,” Mokou chuckled.

“If that’s what it takes to gain the aid of an immortal wizard, then so be it,” laughed Farouun. “We don’t all have the benefit of your experience. Or…”

Farouun glanced at her briefly, then averted her gaze back to the canyons. She straightened in a distant and officious manner, taking in a deep breath.

“Or the strength of your liver.”

Mokou let out a slow smoke plume. Seemed it was all out on the table, after all. That was probably inevitable.

“Heard about that one, did you.”

“I couldn’t help but hear it,” Farouun grimly replied. “My Chefs wouldn’t keep me ignorant of a new ingredient. The prospect troubled my Imet nearly as much as the ingredient itself.”

She’d thought it was an invitation to ritual. She hadn’t thought it might be bait. Sharing water was one thing — sharing eternity was a far heavier thing to weigh. Did this count as asking first?

“They did say a burden spread’s a burden lessened.”

“This? This is your burden?” Farouun wheeled to face her. She dropped to one knee before her, the motion bridging the distance between them. With one claw, she gripped Mokou by the shoulder. The other pressed clawtips, with a firm insistence bordering on painful, into Mokou’s flesh. It was all that separated her grasp from Mokou’s guts. “This is what you’ve carried all this time? Since before — before the Sultanate, and longer still?”

“Yeah.” Mokou sighed, tilting her head back to gaze at the ceiling. “Ain’t like I’ve got a say in the matter.”

The pressure of Farouun’s clawtips relented as she drew her touch back. She held her claw just there, trembling softly. “I don’t know that this burden should be spread.”

That was a sentiment Mokou generally found herself in agreement with. But still, she knew the Baroness’s hungers. “You don’t sound too sure of yourself.”

“How could I be?” countered Farouun. “It’s eternity, is it not? There, in your liver. What is mortal surety to such a thing?”

“One way to find out.”

Farouun rose and withdrew. It was a wide enough chamber for her to have room to pace; she did so. She moved as though motion alone might banish contradiction and deliberation. “You tempt me, Chef. Why?”

Mokou shrugged. If she was going to get eaten, it was best to get it over with. “Whether I do or not, the liver’s still gonna be there.”

“You know, in my worst moments, I’ve held a small comfort,” said Farouun. “That one day, this hunger would end. May that day not come until I’ve had my fill fifty thousand times over, at least! Glad times we live in, that I can do so whenever I wish. So I’ll bear it, because all the same, it will end. But to partake in this temptation would be to shackle myself to an eternal hunger — would it not?”

“That’s about the size of it,” said Mokou. She tucked her hands into the pockets of her yukata’s coat, starting her own aimless pacing. She scuffed the toe of her sneakers over smooth tile. “Don’t, then.”

Farouun drew her pacing to a halt, clenching her claw into a fist before her. “And yet — how many delicacies of the Eaters have you sampled, when the Coven of the far-flung stars knew our world? How many of the world before, with its oceans, and its chickens?”

Mokou sighed. “I can’t possibly answer that.”

“Precisely my point!” Farouun countered. “For what of the ages to come? What new offerings might tempt your palate as our world shifts onwards? These are tastes I thought I would never know. That I thought I would never have to consider beyond what we can save for those coming ages in the now. Yet how much surer might the task of safeguarding become when my own claws can remain upon it?”

Farouun was already putting far more thought into the whole than Mokou ever had. Any amount was better than what she’d given. It was her own whim and spite that had made her one with eternity so long ago. Nothing nearly so lofty as the protection and perpetuation of this precious experiment.

“Hell of a project you’re helming here,” said Mokou. “But if it falls apart without you — ain’t that its own tyranny? Seen that before.”

“I don’t doubt it,” sighed Farouun. She loosened her fist and let it fall to her side. Her haunted gaze lingered over Mokou’s body before she closed her eyes and shook her head. “All these things, I never had cause to truly face. But now…”

“But now you know.” Mokou tossed the stub of her smoke into one of the chamber’s ringing braziers. This sort of existential questioning was likely to happen whenever anyone learned the truth of her liver. The Baroness brought her gourmand’s priorities to it, of course — but ultimately, it was another pattern. One that looked poised to pervert a ritual sacred to these lands. It made her miss her other water-kith for her blithe indifference. “It’s not just hunger, though. It’s everything. The loss and the cold and the turning of the ages. It all wears you down, but there’s no getting out of it. If Imet didn’t pass that along, they didn’t give you the full picture.”

“It’s thanks in part to their counsel that I keep my restraint,” rumbled Farouun. A current of sympathy wove itself into her tone and gaze. “They prize my happiness quite highly. You’re our only reference point to this condition.”

Mokou chuckled ruefully. “I’ll admit, it can be tough to muster that these days. But a city like yours… it makes it easier.”

“Then let it be your city, too, Mokou!” said Farouun. Her voice rose and echoed back down from the vaulted ceilings. “And let this be a token of my respect for you. No, I did not invite you here for the sake of my hunger. Nor for eternity.”

“So it’s a Water Ritual after all,” said Mokou. It was a touching overture, but on top of that, it was a relief. If she could at all avoid being eaten, it was best to avoid it. She slung the loop strap of her canteen from her shoulder. It still held the water she’d scooped from the nameless ruin to the west that had held kith and kicks. Out-network stuff — municipal or no, it felt somehow strange to share the Heptagon’s water back to its founder.

“Yes, of course!” said Farouun. There was relief in her tone, as well, brought by the reiteration of purpose. It was difficult to say how close the temptation had brought her, but one thing was certain. It would have been a damn sight closer if the whole city hadn’t been feeding her. “It’s something I like to undergo with any who reach your level of certification, and all with the courage to challenge my Chefs.”

Mokou raised her brows. “That makes you water-kith with Agate, doesn’t it?”

“That it does,” Farouun nodded proudly. She hooked a claw through the fluted handle of a flat-bottomed clay vessel and brought it to the south wall, with its installed waterfall.

From what Mokou knew of the Water Ritual, it signified a bond in which each would give their water to see the other flourish. She’d do that for just about anyone she’d met in this city, but then, she came from a different water culture. The thought that others might give it for her, that such regard was mutual, was harder for her to reconcile. The people here — the ones who weren’t psychic, at least — didn’t know the depths she was capable of reaching. Evidently she’d still cooked well enough to offset the weight of her sins. “Huh. And here I thought you were feeling something special about me.”

“I merely meant to establish a baseline — you’ve certainly gone above and beyond it.” Farouun held the mouth of the vessel in the water’s flow, filling it with a few drams as she spoke. This done, she arced back to the chamber’s storage shelves to take up a wide saucer-like basin in her other hand. “I’ve never met a being quite like you, Mokou. I meant every word of my invitation. Consider this, too, as a safeguard against… rash action.”

“Oh, right — bad to kill your own water-kith, yeah?”

“Quite so,” nodded Farouun, grimacing faintly at Mokou’s apparent understatement. “Oathbreaking is perhaps the most universally abominable act one can commit. It is a swift path to becoming a pariah even among pariahs. This is part of the bond of the Water Ritual.”

“Huh,” Mokou mused. That wasn’t a stigma she was in any sort of hurry to bear — she had enough troubles just from her nature. She stepped closer to Farouun, into the center of the room, and the middle of the floor mosaic’s stylized flow. The new clarity she’d gained of ritual’s weight built anticipation within her. “Well — you mind taking the lead on this one? I don’t think I learned the words right.”

“It would be my pleasure,” said Farouun. “Though, before we consummate, I should warn you of the consequences of this ritual.”

“Consequences?” asked Mokou. Something beyond the risk of oathbreaking?

Farouun nodded. “Any Water Ritual is a potentially polarizing event. To bond with me changes your position towards those who would call me enemy or ally. It makes a statement, you see.”

“Who’s out there calling you their enemy?” asked Mokou. “I mean, I guess the Templar really have it out for your infrastructure.”

“Yes, and my personage. They’ve bent a considerably greater animus than baseline towards me since my orchestration of the Battle of Theme Ingredient: Man. But they aren’t alone in their antagonisms — water barons hold no love for me since I slew three of their number.”

Mokou waved away the warnings. “Ahh, that’s no trouble. Killed a few myself back across the desert. Anything else I should worry about?”

“Oh, well, it’s not all negative relations,” Farouun chuckled proudly. “I don’t mean to boast, but the last time I visited the Yd Freehold, they were quite taken with how fervently I joined in their solstice celebrations. It’s not just Ut yara Ux that makes it worth a visit.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Mokou. “Overall, sounds like three great reasons to go through with this.”

“What about yourself?” asked Farouun. “I understand you had some… difficulties with the head of the Mechanimist faith.”

“He was askin’ for it,” Mokou grumbled. “But beyond that, I got banned from a hermitage while we were out on repair the other month. That’s just the stuff people know about since I got here. If we’re counting things I’ve done before… well, you don’t have the time for that.”

Farouun adopted an expression of thoughtful calculation. “A suitable tech tithe should smooth things over with the Mechanimists. As for hermits…”

“Can’t take the hit?” asked Mokou. “At least they probably don’t get out much.”

“No, no, I’ll… manage. It’s a petty concern in the face of my principles. Very well,” said Farouun, squaring herself opposite Mokou as she readied vessel and basin. “Mokou, let us pledge our water. Now, after me…”

Farouun led her through a circling series of steps. Fluid shimmies and foot taps punctuated the motions. There was a rhythm to it, though the ritual hearkened more towards her kata than towards a dance. As they circled, Farouun held the wide basin between them. She tipped a dram of water into it from the vessel she held in her other claw, then gestured for Mokou to do the same. Mokou poured a dram of her own from her canteen. Now that she had a better vantage on it, the basin was stylized such that half was modeled after the moon, the other half sun. The radial beams of the sun’s half held grooves by which water could flow into pour-spouts.

“Nicely done. And now…” Farouun stepped to Mokou’s side, drawing an arm around her shoulder to pull her closer while she lowered the basin to the level of Mokou’s head. “The words.”

“The words…” echoed Mokou.

“Your thirst is mine,” said Farouun, tipping the basin towards the both of them. Water sluiced down the sunbeam’s troughs and into Mokou’s waiting mouth and Farouun’s belly-maw. “My water is yours.”

Mokou held the water in her mouth. At her side, Farouun swallowed her own dram — hardly a mouthful by the belly-maw’s metrics. Mokou followed her lead.

Farouun set aside the empty basin, then lowered herself until she sat cross-legged before Mokou. She nodded deeply. “Now we are water-kith. Whatever you may ask of me, I will shoulder the obligation willingly.”

Mokou sat, too, setting her jaw in thought. “We get to trade secrets if we want, now, right?”

“Correct. The weight of asking and the weight of giving balance out.”

“Well,” Mokou held out her upraised palm inquisitively towards her host. “What have you got?”

“The secrets which strike our fancy here at the Heptagon include new recipes, the kitchen locations of legendary chefs, and the histories of any ancient sultans we might admire or despise, though—” Farouun chuckled a bit sheepishly, “I’ll admit the latter is not my particular forte. So few of them, I feel, truly appreciated the culinary arts.”

“Sultan histories?” asked Mokou. Complex sentiment lurched in her at the reminder. “You know anything about Polyxes?”

“Ah… not particularly,” admitted Farouun, her ears drooping as she shook her head. “Perhaps if she’d ever cooked anything of merit during her reign, I might have a different answer. Er — do forgive me, but I thought you were a grazing hedonist, not a hermit?”

“I’m not,” Mokou sighed. She couldn’t be too disappointed. Even this denial was its own sort of confirmation. “Never mind then. But hey, I know a kitchen! Ran into it crossing the desert — you know Irula?”

Farouun’s ears perked and her tone brightened. “I certainly do — we’re water-kith as well! Though I’m afraid they beat you to the chance of sharing their kitchen’s location.”

“Ah, damn,” Mokou grunted. At least Irula got to enjoy the weight of giving that one. It still left her at a bit of a ritual impasse.

“If I may ask one of you,” Farouun rumbled hopefully. “That substance, that Elixir within your liver. If you can at all remember… how did it taste?”

Of course she could remember. It was the kind of taste that stuck with her, and not solely from that first drink. It came to mind easily, left hard, and skirted away from being pinned down all the while that it stayed. It was a taste that reminded her of Kaguya. Mokou took a slow breath as she worked out how she could answer. “I get echoes of it, still. Especially around… pâtés, grilled offal, organ-heavy dishes, that kind of thing. Though sometimes it’s more like they’re missing something.”

Farouun leaned forward in interest. “But what is that missing something?”

“Well, it’s… eternity,” said Mokou. Her tone dropped in empty recounting. “When I don’t catch myself, every mouthful of blood and meat and char and spice and liquor without it just carries this medicine-shaped hole. But then sometimes I’ll taste something and it’s almost… like coming home, you know? Like I was always going to taste that, because I already tasted it first in that sip at the start of my eternity.”

Farouun frowned. “As an ingredient, you make it sound… domineering. Jealous, even.”

Mokou shrugged. “Almost the opposite, really. It tastes a bit like everything I’ve ever done and everything I ever will. It mainly only gets the way you say when I’m eating something mediocre. I can keep it from mind pretty well, but it always comes back perfectly.”

Farouun considered this, stroking her mane with the arm she’d balanced on one knee. “You know, two years ago, I was served a singularity. Your words hearken to its taste.”

“No shit!” said Mokou, her brows shooting upwards. “What was the occasion?”

“The Battle of Theme Ingredient: Arsplice Seed,” answered Farouun. “The great chrome pyramid HUNTER=SEEKER arrived to challenge the Chefs Oth. The singularity was its first of two courses.”

“A singularity, huh.” Mokou patted her own liverside gut. “If it meant to get everything, I reckon it missed a spot.”

Farouun chuckled. The motion dislodged a bead of drool to roll down one of her tremendous fangs, but she caught it with a handkerchief before it could drip anywhere. “It was quite a small one — edible, as well. If my memory serves me correctly, the effect was quite… ephemeral. A ferociously powerful impact, but not nearly so lingering, I would hazard, as your Elixir.”

“Safe bet, if it didn’t stick you like I’m stuck,” said Mokou. She leaned back, bracing her palms on the floor, gazing off sideways through the northern window. The sun had fully set, now, but the crimson canyons still faintly glowed with its lingering brilliance. This vista, beautiful, weathered, mutant, could never have made itself known to her without the Elixir. “Wish I could tell you more about it. I’ve built a few spell cards from just trying to capture the feeling. It was an event of, uh… some significance.”

“Fascinating,” Farouun replied. “Will you be performing any of them at tomorrow’s showcase?”

Mokou lifted a hand to waggle it, palm-down, weighing her own commitment. “I’ve been keeping the lineup loose. Course, I’d be happy to slip one or two of ‘em in if it means I’ll see you there.”

Farouun reached forward, grasping Mokou’s hand gently with an enveloping claw. She bent to place a kiss to the back of her hand. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world, my water-kith.”

Heat rose to Mokou’s cheeks, flush with gratitude and with the giant chimera’s affections. She found herself grinning fondly. “I appreciate the interest. Tell you what — I just thought of a perfect secret for you.”

“Oh?” Farouun rumbled, her ears perking again. “Do tell.”

“A recipe,” Mokou elaborated. She suffered a moment’s doubt as she spoke — Farouun had privately admitted to not being much of a cook, so why would she be interested in recipes? The doubt dissipated the very next moment when she remembered that this was the woman who surrounded herself intimately with chefs of unparalleled prowess. She could just get them to cook it. Maybe this was what they meant when they said there were no secrets here. “Now, granted, it’s got a few complications. For one, you’re going to have to wait until you can get your mitts on some of that shoyu I’ve got brewing at Agate’s. For another…” Her brow furrowed. “The main ingredient is probably extinct. Think dawnglider might sub in nicely, though.”

“Extinct?” Farouun mused. She leaned in conspiratorially. “Might this be a chicken recipe?”

“You got it,” nodded Mokou. “Sorry for the trouble. Promise it’s worth it, though.”

“Well, I’ve always considered myself an optimist,” Farouun chuckled. “Please, go on.”

“Alright,” said Mokou. She leaned in closer, lowering her voice for the sake of her secret. “Here’s how you make the perfect yakitori…”

Chapter Text

"You’re just in time,” Agate called over her shoulder, laying a pair of bowls out on her dining table. Wisps of savory steam rose from the lidded crock kept as the table’s centerpiece. The risotto within finished cooking itself by its residual heat.

Mokou shut the door to Agate’s workspace behind her, hanging her carbine and canteen by the entry. She strolled into the kitchen, taking in deep, appreciative breaths. “Yeah? Smells incredible in here. Is that some lah going?”

“Correct. To feature the lah, I’ve built a risotto base from rehydrated hoarshroom stock and cider. Plus some fried petals on the side. We must be fresh tomorrow. This recipe will ensure it.”

It was prudent, considering the beast she had to sleep around. As Mokou approached, Tabi crept up from beneath the floor to twine herself through Mokou’s ankles, vibrating with ghostly purrs. Even so distracted by doling out feline affection to her owner, Agate could still feel her ‘soul attack’. She’d felt it all through her dinner preparations. She’d been left in charge of the tabby once more while Mokou had been away at her Water Ritual.

“Don’t tell me you’re cooking with the stuff Seeqat brought us,” said Mokou, shaking off Tabi and settling herself down at the table. She took a fried petal from the serving basket next to the risotto crock and tried it.

“Save your protestations until you’ve tried it. I’ve done it justice,” countered Agate. She lifted the crock lid. A small cloud of steam parted to reveal diced lah petals and glowing hoarshrooms suspended in the rich, saucy rice. She ladled out several careful scoops to give Mokou a full serving before doing the same for her own bowl.

“No, I believe it,” Mokou grumbled. “Still feels like sacrilege.”

“When have I ever shied from sacrilege?” asked Agate. She seated herself across from Mokou and gestured to the crock. “This is Agate Severance Star’s Nightmare-Crushing Risotto. Eat, and judge for yourself.”

Mokou wordlessly complied. The first spoonful prompted a low, muffled groan of appreciation. She finished her bite and spoke. “Fuck. The little tang in there. That’s the cider, isn’t it?”

Agate nodded, working through her own savory mouthful.

“Alright. Dammit. That’s justice,” Mokou grudgingly admitted. She scooped up another portion with a fried lah petal and held it poised in scrutiny. “What’s it do?”

Agate let a touch of pride color her explanation. “The cider energizes us without the disruptive boost of a stimulant. Then, there’s a similar fungal linkage to the one at play in tomorrow’s lava pudding. This one, however, adheres to the lah. While metabolizing my risotto, you may eat a mushroom to become immune to fear for the next six hours. Partake before bed, and that’s at least one dream-cycle rendered nightmare-free.”

“Damn, they would have loved this in Gensokyo,” said Mokou, after her next bite. “The humans, I mean. The youkai probably would’ve considered it an act of war.”

“They developed nothing similar?” asked Agate. “Considering the material conditions of isolation and predation, having a means to manage anxiety is a must. Take Bey Lah — if it didn’t have the benefit of its signature Mah Lah soup, doubtless it would have collapsed long ago.”

“We had means,” Mokou replied. She shrugged. “Just that they were spiritual countermeasures, not culinary ones. Mah Lah? How’s that one? Does it do that numbing spice kind of—”

“Bland,” Agate sighed distastefully. “As though each generation of Bey Lah’s chefs sought to file off the element they found most offensive and brought nothing to serve as substitute.”

“Bland, right — that’s what you said in your Life Cycle thingy,” mumbled Mokou. “Still does something, though, yeah?”

“A similar triggered immunity to fear, thanks to the lah,” Agate explained. “The trigger, however, is simple hydration.”

“Water, huh,” said Mokou. She looked up and away, back towards the exit and the arena a stratum above, chewing in silent thought. Her expression was pensive, nearly brooding despite the quality of risotto she enjoyed. She spoke at last. “Reminds me…”

“Yes, how was your Water Ritual?” asked Agate. It was a reasonable enough inference from her gaze, bearing, and absence.

Mokou glanced sidelong at her and raised her brows faintly. “Went fine, I think. But our little secret ain’t a secret anymore.”

Agate’s pulse sped subtly at her words. There was safety in secrecy, as her people well understood for generations. Perhaps it was inevitable, but it still represented conditions slipping just a bit more out of her control. “You told her?”

“Imet told her,” said Mokou. “But… you probably don’t have to worry about it, Agate. It scared the hell out of her, I think. She said the Ritual was a safeguard against rash action.”

Elastyne creaked as Agate found her grip subconsciously tightening on her cutlery. Farouun’s fear was all too understandable. Agate herself had felt it; it still lurked within her considerations, but time and proximity to Mokou seemed to have dulled it. Any number of ingredients in Qud promised to permanently bolster their imbiber — and some dishes from its depths and reaches promised more radical changes still. But the change promised by the Hourai Elixir was in its own echelon. It was to change into changelessness.

That power was the best avenue she’d seen to surpassing the Chefs Oth. Yet now the Heptagon’s founder sought to seal herself away from it? That did nothing to allay Agate’s concerns. She sighed.

“Only against direct orchestration. There are no prescriptions in the Water Ritual against opportunistic scavenging, should the opportunity arise.” All hope was not yet lost. The way had only grown more convoluted.

Mokou set her jaw in thought. “Still in the woods, then.”

One thing was clear: Mokou was someone she couldn’t afford to make her water-kith. It wasn’t simply a matter of the culinary limitations such a bond would inflict upon her. Certainly, they’d grown closer in the time they’d spent in each other’s acquaintance. There was as yet little reason to believe that trend would reverse. But the histories Mokou had related to her revealed depths of moral capacity that challenged Agate. After all, she was close to her Kaguya, too.

What if Agate had to kill her? Her pragmatism couldn’t render it out of the question. This was Qud.

With her serving accounted for, Mokou set down her spoon, leaned back, and sighed in satisfaction. “Probably goes without saying, but — damn fine stuff. Thanks for the meal.”

“My pleasure,” replied Agate, smiling as she cleared their empty bowls from the table. “Much of what else I’ve been doing while you were at ritual was preparing a bulk batch of dried, salted mushrooms. They’ll be companion concessions to my pudding — my own variant of Irula’s favored preparation, in fact. You’re welcome to sample some for the purposes of my risotto’s triggered effect.”

“Ooh, say no more,” said Mokou. She eyed Agate, a bit of lascivious amusement coloring her smile. “I’d ask for a bite of that facial installation, but you’ve been leaning pretty heavily on it lately. Can’t imagine it’s ripe again yet.”

Agate chuckled faintly. “That’s never stopped Lulihart.”

She shortly accounted for the dishes — her philosophy was to clean as she went, so it never took her particularly long. Tempting as it was to continue festival preparations before sleep called her, she felt they were well in hand already. A far better use of the meal’s gifted energy was a dalliance together.

Even a month on, it was remarkable just how much her haircut had helped along Agate’s regard of her — it wasn’t just that it was more fetching on her, it was also vastly more convenient at preventing tangles and accidental ensnarements. Agate’s hands braced Mokou’s thighs, her gloved grip hungry and eager. Her lingering kisses tasted of hearty risotto sauce. The heat and press and slick motion of their bodies together seemed to dispel Mokou’s lingering pensiveness over ritual ramifications. So, too, did the moments they shared relieve Agate’s mind of greater doubts. If, for the moment, she couldn’t have Mokou’s flesh one way, she’d gladly have her this way.

When they’d mutually spent their energy, Agate’s bed gave its berth for winding down. Mokou lay back atop the sheets, breathing in deep contentment. Agate seated herself next to her. She’d set aside her gloves for cleaning, now running her bare touch along the close-buzzed sides of Mokou’s scalp.

“That’s good,” Mokou sighed. “Real good. Finally starting to feel like a festival.”

“What ever gave you that impression?” Agate dryly asked. She retrieved a sampler bowl of salted mushrooms from her bedside table and passed them to Mokou. “Here. A bit more festival-esque fare. You may sustain your illusions.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Mokou, plucking one from the bowl and tossing it into her mouth. She hummed appreciatively as she chewed. “Good take on it. Gonna go real nice with everything else on the spread.”