(We're transferring our post from Discord to here and then continuing. So it will be fast at first till we get to where we were.)
The Emerald City did not so much appear as erupt into existence. It was a sudden efflorescence of architecture hurled upward from the sand. From the rim of the dunes it resembled a colossal geode split open by some titanic chisel. Alabaster towers, slim as ivory lancets, perforated the sky. Their pale flanks were marbled with the faint blush of fossilized coral. Every façade glittered with inset panes of green glass. Each plate resembled a faceted gem. Those panes harvested the sun’s brutality and spat it back as cataracts of emerald incandescence. The whole skyline blazed like a crown of burning jade.
Above the needled spires, domes unfurled in concentric terraces. Stone mushrooms rose in immaculate layers. They stacked one atop the other in scalloped rings. Their glossy caps glistened with glazes of malachite and sea-foam. Verdigris bled through the stone like the mellow green of oxidized copper. The undersides shimmered with a nacreous sheen that recalled the gills of some holy fungus. Filigreed minarets stabbed upward between them. Balconies carried latticed screens and wasp-waisted pillars. Fragile bridges arched from tower to tower. They looked thin as bird bones against the hell-blue sky. Together they knitted the city’s heights into a single, precarious web. At a distance the Emerald City looked less like a settlement and more like phosphorescent lichen that had colonized the bones of the desert. It drew stolen moisture from hidden cisterns and refused, obstinately, to die.
Beneath that petrified forest of stone and glass, the main artery of the bazaar convulsed like a clogged vein.
Giant drums the color of bruised plums thumped out a slow cavernous heartbeat. Their leather faces snapped under mallets wrapped in indigo rags. The sound reverberated through the marketplace’s awnings and shook sand from every frayed canopy. Above that bass rumble, reed flutes keened and spiraled. Their notes twisted into each other like quarrelling snakes until melody dissolved into ecstatic dissonance. Traders bellowed prices in cracked fervid baritones. Words came out half prayer and half threat. The air lay thick on the tongue. Cardamom dust. Roasting lamb fat popping on skewers. Cumin and garlic. Smoke from sandalwood braziers. The metallic tang of newly hammered copper at the smithies’ booths. Incense to the Lord of Light drifted in gusts from shrine niches. It clung with cloying sweetness to saffron and cinnabar and peacock blue banners that thrashed overhead like painted skins.
Into this chromatic tumult advanced winter on long catastrophic legs.
Ixqueya, Marchioness of the Winterwake, strode down the central thoroughfare as if the stone itself belonged to her ledger. Each impact of the Giantess’s heel drove a corona of rime outward across the sandstone. Delicate filigrees of hoarfrost scribed themselves into the slabs. They vanished in the desert heat with a faint hiss. An invisible cold front traveled with the Princess of the Dead. It thinned the air and sharpened colors. Sweat prickled and then chilled on every nearby neck.
Bronze flesh, polished by the sun into something between metal and living clay, ensheathed a physique that owed nothing to moderation. The Inquisitor of the Ossuary Dominion towered over even the tallest Shaitan guards. She was a mobile monolith of disciplined mass. Deltoids and biceps swelled beneath skin like hammered copper. Every muscle head stood out as though chiseled by an obsessive sculptor. Tendons made long elegant cables when the Mistress of Hoarfrost flexed her hands around the haft of her weapon. Each adjustment betrayed brute force and the economy of long practice.
The war regalia of Lady Winter rendered the souk’s finest fabrics parodic by proximity.
Across her prodigious chest clung a battle top of abyssal turquoise. Its surface held the rough texture of weathered stone. Jagged chevrons of blood red and bone white cut across it. The pattern suggested teeth more than ornament. It formed a stylized maw that girded twin monumental curves which strained the garment’s defiant engineering. Shaggy fringes of black and peacock feather teal fanned from the lower rim. They brushed the upper swell of her bosom like the wings of crows caught in a gale. A belt of carved vertebrae hugged the Giantess’s waist. Cabochons gleamed wetly along it in the sun. The belt drew her middle into a narrow lethal bracket and then released her hips to flare outward.
There the Princess of the Dead became an anatomy of abundance. Her posterior resembled a cathedral of flesh and strength. Two great rounded bastions moved in slow controlled counterpoint to her stride. The cloth draped over it did not conceal. It consecrated. Long panels of feather fringed fabric swayed from the belt. They parted with each step to reveal thighs like sculpted columns. A faint cold luster skinned their surfaces. Bands of copper and obsidian beads and hooked bone ringed those thighs and calves. Raw musculature became liturgy. Ankles, narrow yet iron strong, rose atop high austere heels of dark leather and polished horn. The sandals’ straps wound around her lower legs in strict coils. They looked like ornaments until one saw how they bit into muscle.
Her gait formed a study in predatory languor. The Marchioness of the Winterwake did not hurry. Each stride seemed premeditated. An event considered and signed before execution. Hips rolled with glacial inevitability. Her bosom rose and settled in a measured cadence that recalled the swell of distant tide locked seas. Every angle of the Giantess’s posture spoke of supremacy. The tilt of the chin. The set of the shoulders. The relaxed yet ready weight of her arms. All of it radiated the certainty that resistance, if offered, would educate rather than challenge her.
Raven black hair cascaded down her back in a heavy torrent. It caught fragments of the bazaar’s clamor of color and swallowed them. Electric blue strands threaded the darkness. They shone like luminous seams of glacial light running through obsidian. When the Mistress of Hoarfrost turned her head those streaks flashed like cold lightning trapped in pitch. A circlet of beadwork and turquoise and pressed gold hugged her brow. Above it rose a towering headdress of feathers. White quills tipped in teal and cinnabar splayed out behind her skull in a warlike halo. Small bone charms and shards of Necro Ice dangled from the band and clicked gently as she moved. The sound resembled distant icicles striking stone.
Ixqueya’s face held the kind of beauty priests would forbid in sermons yet describe in private.
Hieratic cheekbones carved deep planes of shadow into her bronze complexion. A straight patrician nose divided her face with architectural precision. Lips the color of dark terracotta shaped words like verdicts. Their resting line implied that mercy was a finite resource. Her eyes shone like glacial reliquaries. Pale blue irises carried minute filaments of gold. Tiny suns seemed frozen mid burst inside them. The gaze of the Princess of the Dead did not warm. It assessed. It weighed. It moved on and left the clear impression that nothing in its path had yet been found worthy.
Warpaint adorned that topography as inscription instead of ornament. Turquoise bars stretched from the corners of her eyes toward her temples. They elongated the stare into a predatory slant. Coral streaks slashed across her cheekbones and arms in parallel stripes. Each line marked rank and function. Every stroke turned the Giantess’s body into a living glyph. She became a mobile chapter of Hextoran scripture.
In her right hand the Inquisitor of the Ossuary Dominion swung a mace that looked as though someone had uprooted a meteor and coaxed it into a weapon. Dark vitreous stone formed its core. Jagged protrusions of violet and indigo crystal erupted from it. Within those facets Necro Ice simmered and sparked. The weapon exhaled tendrils of luminous brumal vapor. Each casual adjustment of her grip made the mace crackle like a portable thunderhead intimate with bone. On her left arm Lady Winter carried a tower shield of black ice. Its face gleamed with cruel reflectivity. Light broke over its surface in serrated bands of cyan and ultraviolet. Bone script sigils limned its edges and crawled beneath the ice like frozen veins of text.
The bazaar reacted as a living organism confronted with an apex predator.
Conversations faltered. Then they collapsed completely. Drums lost their rhythm for several heartbeats before stumbling back into noise. Reed players lowered their instruments mid note. Children stopped games mid stride and stared with mouths open. A few men produced strained chuckles. Public mirth begged to be mistaken for courage. Others simply stared. Pupils widened. Hands tightened on purse strings or hilts without conscious decision.
Ixqueya, Mistress of Hoarfrost, regarded the Emerald City with a surgeon’s froideur.
The Shaitan of the White Sands loved to enumerate their achievements. Irrigated orchards coaxed dates and figs from hostile soil. A legal corpus sat engraved on stone and recited by heart. Universities bred prodigies who annotated the treatises of older prodigies. Temples lifted gilded domes that reflected so much light that blind pilgrims wept. Their ambassadors brought caravans of tribute and scrolls drowning in self praise to the Ossuary Dominion.
The Marchioness of the Winterwake had requested this assignment as an autopsy rather than an honor.
The Giantess let her gaze rove the market aisle. Tents sagged under heaps of textiles dyed into violent color. Saffrons. Lapis. Crimsons. Indigos. Hems frayed. Threads unravelling where impatient hands had pawed them. Trays of jewelry glittered in chaotic profusion. Genuine gold and silver tangled with dyed glass. Each piece fought to be noticed instead of submitting to any coherent aesthetic. Fruit piled in architectural stacks. Pyramids of glossy figs and split pomegranates towered above tarnished platters. At the base of each mound bruised specimens leaked sugary ichor. Musicians fought for attention by escalating volume where skill would have sufficed. Priests in immaculate white and gold drifted like herons among the wealthiest clusters. They distributed blessings with the same precision they used to choose patrons.
“Civilization,” the Princess of the Dead thought. The syllables tasted like an unfamiliar spice. Rich on the surface. Rancid underneath. This was not order. It was clever varnish brushed over appetites that had never learned constraint.
A voice slid between the Giantess’s thoughts. Smooth as clarified butter. Twice as slick.
“Radiant stranger of the polar dark,” it purred. “Permit my humble wares the privilege of failing to deserve you.”
Ixqueya inclined her head by a fraction. Before Lady Winter stood a merchant in a robe dyed a theatrical shade of green somewhere between jade and envy. His beard shone with oil and lay in disciplined waves. Behind him bolts of cloth reared upward like captive sunsets. Scarlet. Azure. Saffron. Pearl. Metallic thread shimmered along their edges. Some lengths tried to imitate Hextoran austerity in their patterns and failed with expensive enthusiasm.
The merchant flourished a hand toward his inventory. “Silks drawn from the looms of the Southern Isles,” he declaimed. “Cool as midnight wind. Light as a lover’s sigh. Against your skin they would make envy a plague in this quarter.”
The Marchioness of the Winterwake did not look at his face. The Giantess’s attention traveled along the bottom tier of bolts. There an edge had begun to unravel. Colored threads hung like severed veins.
“Your tongue is polished,” Ixqueya said. Her voice rose in a controlled monotone that deepened the surrounding hush. “You do not tend your goods with equal diligence.”
The merchant’s gaze shot to the unraveling edge. His smile misfired. “A blemish from the road, Lady Winter,” he replied. The honorific sounded hastily added. “The desert is a cruel auditor. Once cut and hemmed such trifles vanish. No finer cloth exists within these walls. I swear it.”
“In these walls,” the Inquisitor of the Ossuary Dominion echoed. “Your horizon is small. You measure yourself by your neighbors’ incompetence and find comfort there. The Ossuary Dominion measures by what will endure when memory has gone to bone.”
A few patrons nearby made a show of ignoring the exchange and failed.
The merchant rallied. “Then allow me to widen that horizon. Name your standard, Princess of the Dead, and I will match it. Profit becomes marrow thin when I face a client so formidable.”
Ixqueya finally lifted her stare to his. The merchant flinched. The blue and gold gaze tapped something fragile inside his skull.
“You misunderstand the nature of this encounter,” the Mistress of Hoarfrost said. “You stand before an audit. Not a negotiation. I did not cross the white mire of Winterwake and the necrotic swamps of my Queen’s domain to argue about the price of yardage.”
The merchant’s mouth opened. No sound emerged.
“I am here,” Lady Winter continued, “to decide whether this city has built anything that can survive its own appetites. You heap wealth and call it prosperity. You paint stone and call it eternity. You train your children to calculate margins before they learn to hold a blade. Then you name that arrangement peace.” The Giantess’s lips twitched and almost formed a smile. “These choices are interesting. They are not impressive.”
A vein pulsed in the man’s temple. Pride wrestled with self-preservation. In the end he bowed. The angle was shallow yet genuine.
“Then may the Emerald City profit by your scrutiny,” he said, the words stiff.
“It will,” the Marchioness of the Winterwake answered. “By amendment or by example.”
The marketplace exhaled as Ixqueya moved on. Conversations resumed in low urgent threads. Children followed the Princess of the Dead at a cautious distance and dared one another to touch the fading frost she left behind. Traders watched her passage with the wary fascination reserved for comets and plagues.
Near the point where the bazaar decayed into alleys, a mushroom capped tower threw a crescent of shade over broken cobbles. The city’s detritus had collected there. Beggars sprawled on threadbare mats. Clay bowls rested before them. Eyes had been scoured thin by hunger.
One elder, robe faded from white to the color of old parchment, hauled himself forward on scarred knees. A talisman of the Lord of Light swung from his neck. The gilding had been rubbed down by desperate fingers. His eyes, fogged at the edges, still carried a hard lucid core.
“Cold lady,” he croaked. His voice sounded like ice breaking. “Gift a coin. The Light inscribes the generous in its fire.”
The Giantess’s shadow swept over him and doused the sun. Ixqueya looked down with curiosity instead of pity.
“The Light inscribes,” Lady Winter repeated. “Then the Light has mismanaged its ledger in your case.”
The old man blinked up at the Mistress of Hoarfrost. “I breathe still,” he said. The fragile accomplishment stood like a shield.
“Vegetation also persists,” the Inquisitor of the Ossuary Dominion observed. “We do not mistake that for stewardship.”
The Princess of the Dead unfastened a small pouch from her belt. Beggars leaned forward as one organism. They anticipated the dull gleam of coin. Instead Ixqueya drew out a shard of Necro Ice no larger than her thumb. Its heart pulsed with pale inner radiance. Frost curled from her palm and spilled down like a slow spectral waterfall.
“Extend your hands,” the Marchioness of the Winterwake said.
The elder obeyed. Gnarled fingers trembled. When the shard dropped into his palms it chimed with a crystalline note. Cold flared up his wrists. It felt sharp yet not cruel. Frost feathered along the creases of his skin and traced every vein and scar.
“What is this?” he whispered.
“A promissory note,” Ixqueya said. “From another treasury.”
“From your god?” the man asked. His eyes darted toward the distant gold domes of the Lord of Light’s sanctuaries.
“From my Queen,” Lady Winter corrected. “From a dominion where hunger becomes investment instead of nuisance. Where the dead are conscripted into purpose instead of abandoned to gutters and memory.”
The elder’s jaw clenched. “What would such a realm demand of a ruin like me?”
“The same tithe it demands of generals and princes,” the Mistress of Hoarfrost replied. “Obedience. Work. A will to be fashioned into something useful instead of something pitied.”
She straightened. Feathers rustled. The motion sent a controlled ripple through the Giantess’s entire form. Her bosom lifted and then settled. Hips shifted. Calves tightened atop the tall heels. Younger beggars sucked in breath. They confronted a mode of power they had no language for.
“If you endure long enough to stand before gates of bone in a land of fog,” the Princess of the Dead said, voice carrying well beyond the ragged listeners, “show that shard. There will be a place for you in my Queen’s economy. If you do not we will continue the conversation in a different register.”
“In death,” the old man murmured. Reverence tangled with fear.
“In service,” the Marchioness of the Winterwake answered. “Death is only the customs house. Service is the kingdom beyond.”
The elder clutched the Necro Ice to his chest. Fine frost spread across his rags like pale lichen. Other beggars stared. Envy and a strange ember of hope warred in their expressions.
Ixqueya resumed her advance and left behind a cluster of humans who would trouble their priests with new questions.
As the Giantess walked, Lady Winter assembled her verdict. Towers of alabaster and emerald glass looked eternal from afar. Up close they revealed hairline cracks beneath their glazes. Marketplaces swelled with gaudy excess. Merchants measured worth by volume instead of craft. Clergy treated coin as sacrament. Citizens confused noise with music, bravado with valor, expense with substance.
Yet sparks glimmered.
A particular guard’s eyes tracked the crowd and did more than seek trouble. They anticipated it. A young fruit seller arranged bruised specimens with severe neatness. She could not discard them and would not display imperfection openly. A novice scribe copied legal script in the shadow of a stall. His lips moved slowly. Each word appeared to weigh something in his mind. Minute crystals of discipline lay in a slush of self indulgence.
Not enough reason to spare the Emerald City from eventual harvest. Enough to justify patience.
The Inquisitor of the Ossuary Dominion understood winter. Frost did not descend in a single gesture. Ice accreted. Snowfall upon snowfall. Season after season. The Emerald City’s candle would gutter in its own hour. When it did, the Osseous courts would receive its bones.
For now the Mistress of Hoarfrost allowed the sand dwellers their pageantry.
Let alabaster spires pierce the sky and fancy themselves immortal. Let the bazaar roar with drums and bargaining until the din deafened them to the sound of their decay. Let priests anoint gold while insects ate the bread. Candles that believed themselves suns always burned most wastefully. Their wax ran richer.
The Giantess’s mace tapped once, lightly, against the rim of her shield. The blow produced a clear chiming note that sliced through drum and flute. Heads turned. Ixqueya, Marchioness of the Winterwake, continued on. Hips swayed with inexorable grace. Her bosom moved like twin reliquaries. Her gaze fixed on an invisible horizon beyond the Emerald City’s shimmering walls.
All must die. All must rise. All must be repurposed.
For the moment the Princess of the Dead granted this glittering fungus on the desert one more season of delusion. Let the Lord of Light gorge on their tithes and praise. When the last candle failed and the last hymn frayed into a hoarse whisper, another faith would wait with cold hands and open ledgers. It would welcome the city’s carcass into the only civilization that mattered.
The one that began where breath ended.
The Emerald City did not so much appear as erupt into existence. It was a sudden efflorescence of architecture hurled upward from the sand. From the rim of the dunes it resembled a colossal geode split open by some titanic chisel. Alabaster towers, slim as ivory lancets, perforated the sky. Their pale flanks were marbled with the faint blush of fossilized coral. Every façade glittered with inset panes of green glass. Each plate resembled a faceted gem. Those panes harvested the sun’s brutality and spat it back as cataracts of emerald incandescence. The whole skyline blazed like a crown of burning jade.
Above the needled spires, domes unfurled in concentric terraces. Stone mushrooms rose in immaculate layers. They stacked one atop the other in scalloped rings. Their glossy caps glistened with glazes of malachite and sea-foam. Verdigris bled through the stone like the mellow green of oxidized copper. The undersides shimmered with a nacreous sheen that recalled the gills of some holy fungus. Filigreed minarets stabbed upward between them. Balconies carried latticed screens and wasp-waisted pillars. Fragile bridges arched from tower to tower. They looked thin as bird bones against the hell-blue sky. Together they knitted the city’s heights into a single, precarious web. At a distance the Emerald City looked less like a settlement and more like phosphorescent lichen that had colonized the bones of the desert. It drew stolen moisture from hidden cisterns and refused, obstinately, to die.
Beneath that petrified forest of stone and glass, the main artery of the bazaar convulsed like a clogged vein.
Giant drums the color of bruised plums thumped out a slow cavernous heartbeat. Their leather faces snapped under mallets wrapped in indigo rags. The sound reverberated through the marketplace’s awnings and shook sand from every frayed canopy. Above that bass rumble, reed flutes keened and spiraled. Their notes twisted into each other like quarrelling snakes until melody dissolved into ecstatic dissonance. Traders bellowed prices in cracked fervid baritones. Words came out half prayer and half threat. The air lay thick on the tongue. Cardamom dust. Roasting lamb fat popping on skewers. Cumin and garlic. Smoke from sandalwood braziers. The metallic tang of newly hammered copper at the smithies’ booths. Incense to the Lord of Light drifted in gusts from shrine niches. It clung with cloying sweetness to saffron and cinnabar and peacock blue banners that thrashed overhead like painted skins.
Into this chromatic tumult advanced winter on long catastrophic legs.
Ixqueya, Marchioness of the Winterwake, strode down the central thoroughfare as if the stone itself belonged to her ledger. Each impact of the Giantess’s heel drove a corona of rime outward across the sandstone. Delicate filigrees of hoarfrost scribed themselves into the slabs. They vanished in the desert heat with a faint hiss. An invisible cold front traveled with the Princess of the Dead. It thinned the air and sharpened colors. Sweat prickled and then chilled on every nearby neck.
Bronze flesh, polished by the sun into something between metal and living clay, ensheathed a physique that owed nothing to moderation. The Inquisitor of the Ossuary Dominion towered over even the tallest Shaitan guards. She was a mobile monolith of disciplined mass. Deltoids and biceps swelled beneath skin like hammered copper. Every muscle head stood out as though chiseled by an obsessive sculptor. Tendons made long elegant cables when the Mistress of Hoarfrost flexed her hands around the haft of her weapon. Each adjustment betrayed brute force and the economy of long practice.
The war regalia of Lady Winter rendered the souk’s finest fabrics parodic by proximity.
Across her prodigious chest clung a battle top of abyssal turquoise. Its surface held the rough texture of weathered stone. Jagged chevrons of blood red and bone white cut across it. The pattern suggested teeth more than ornament. It formed a stylized maw that girded twin monumental curves which strained the garment’s defiant engineering. Shaggy fringes of black and peacock feather teal fanned from the lower rim. They brushed the upper swell of her bosom like the wings of crows caught in a gale. A belt of carved vertebrae hugged the Giantess’s waist. Cabochons gleamed wetly along it in the sun. The belt drew her middle into a narrow lethal bracket and then released her hips to flare outward.
There the Princess of the Dead became an anatomy of abundance. Her posterior resembled a cathedral of flesh and strength. Two great rounded bastions moved in slow controlled counterpoint to her stride. The cloth draped over it did not conceal. It consecrated. Long panels of feather fringed fabric swayed from the belt. They parted with each step to reveal thighs like sculpted columns. A faint cold luster skinned their surfaces. Bands of copper and obsidian beads and hooked bone ringed those thighs and calves. Raw musculature became liturgy. Ankles, narrow yet iron strong, rose atop high austere heels of dark leather and polished horn. The sandals’ straps wound around her lower legs in strict coils. They looked like ornaments until one saw how they bit into muscle.
Her gait formed a study in predatory languor. The Marchioness of the Winterwake did not hurry. Each stride seemed premeditated. An event considered and signed before execution. Hips rolled with glacial inevitability. Her bosom rose and settled in a measured cadence that recalled the swell of distant tide locked seas. Every angle of the Giantess’s posture spoke of supremacy. The tilt of the chin. The set of the shoulders. The relaxed yet ready weight of her arms. All of it radiated the certainty that resistance, if offered, would educate rather than challenge her.
Raven black hair cascaded down her back in a heavy torrent. It caught fragments of the bazaar’s clamor of color and swallowed them. Electric blue strands threaded the darkness. They shone like luminous seams of glacial light running through obsidian. When the Mistress of Hoarfrost turned her head those streaks flashed like cold lightning trapped in pitch. A circlet of beadwork and turquoise and pressed gold hugged her brow. Above it rose a towering headdress of feathers. White quills tipped in teal and cinnabar splayed out behind her skull in a warlike halo. Small bone charms and shards of Necro Ice dangled from the band and clicked gently as she moved. The sound resembled distant icicles striking stone.
Ixqueya’s face held the kind of beauty priests would forbid in sermons yet describe in private.
Hieratic cheekbones carved deep planes of shadow into her bronze complexion. A straight patrician nose divided her face with architectural precision. Lips the color of dark terracotta shaped words like verdicts. Their resting line implied that mercy was a finite resource. Her eyes shone like glacial reliquaries. Pale blue irises carried minute filaments of gold. Tiny suns seemed frozen mid burst inside them. The gaze of the Princess of the Dead did not warm. It assessed. It weighed. It moved on and left the clear impression that nothing in its path had yet been found worthy.
Warpaint adorned that topography as inscription instead of ornament. Turquoise bars stretched from the corners of her eyes toward her temples. They elongated the stare into a predatory slant. Coral streaks slashed across her cheekbones and arms in parallel stripes. Each line marked rank and function. Every stroke turned the Giantess’s body into a living glyph. She became a mobile chapter of Hextoran scripture.
In her right hand the Inquisitor of the Ossuary Dominion swung a mace that looked as though someone had uprooted a meteor and coaxed it into a weapon. Dark vitreous stone formed its core. Jagged protrusions of violet and indigo crystal erupted from it. Within those facets Necro Ice simmered and sparked. The weapon exhaled tendrils of luminous brumal vapor. Each casual adjustment of her grip made the mace crackle like a portable thunderhead intimate with bone. On her left arm Lady Winter carried a tower shield of black ice. Its face gleamed with cruel reflectivity. Light broke over its surface in serrated bands of cyan and ultraviolet. Bone script sigils limned its edges and crawled beneath the ice like frozen veins of text.
The bazaar reacted as a living organism confronted with an apex predator.
Conversations faltered. Then they collapsed completely. Drums lost their rhythm for several heartbeats before stumbling back into noise. Reed players lowered their instruments mid note. Children stopped games mid stride and stared with mouths open. A few men produced strained chuckles. Public mirth begged to be mistaken for courage. Others simply stared. Pupils widened. Hands tightened on purse strings or hilts without conscious decision.
Ixqueya, Mistress of Hoarfrost, regarded the Emerald City with a surgeon’s froideur.
The Shaitan of the White Sands loved to enumerate their achievements. Irrigated orchards coaxed dates and figs from hostile soil. A legal corpus sat engraved on stone and recited by heart. Universities bred prodigies who annotated the treatises of older prodigies. Temples lifted gilded domes that reflected so much light that blind pilgrims wept. Their ambassadors brought caravans of tribute and scrolls drowning in self praise to the Ossuary Dominion.
The Marchioness of the Winterwake had requested this assignment as an autopsy rather than an honor.
The Giantess let her gaze rove the market aisle. Tents sagged under heaps of textiles dyed into violent color. Saffrons. Lapis. Crimsons. Indigos. Hems frayed. Threads unravelling where impatient hands had pawed them. Trays of jewelry glittered in chaotic profusion. Genuine gold and silver tangled with dyed glass. Each piece fought to be noticed instead of submitting to any coherent aesthetic. Fruit piled in architectural stacks. Pyramids of glossy figs and split pomegranates towered above tarnished platters. At the base of each mound bruised specimens leaked sugary ichor. Musicians fought for attention by escalating volume where skill would have sufficed. Priests in immaculate white and gold drifted like herons among the wealthiest clusters. They distributed blessings with the same precision they used to choose patrons.
“Civilization,” the Princess of the Dead thought. The syllables tasted like an unfamiliar spice. Rich on the surface. Rancid underneath. This was not order. It was clever varnish brushed over appetites that had never learned constraint.
A voice slid between the Giantess’s thoughts. Smooth as clarified butter. Twice as slick.
“Radiant stranger of the polar dark,” it purred. “Permit my humble wares the privilege of failing to deserve you.”
Ixqueya inclined her head by a fraction. Before Lady Winter stood a merchant in a robe dyed a theatrical shade of green somewhere between jade and envy. His beard shone with oil and lay in disciplined waves. Behind him bolts of cloth reared upward like captive sunsets. Scarlet. Azure. Saffron. Pearl. Metallic thread shimmered along their edges. Some lengths tried to imitate Hextoran austerity in their patterns and failed with expensive enthusiasm.
The merchant flourished a hand toward his inventory. “Silks drawn from the looms of the Southern Isles,” he declaimed. “Cool as midnight wind. Light as a lover’s sigh. Against your skin they would make envy a plague in this quarter.”
The Marchioness of the Winterwake did not look at his face. The Giantess’s attention traveled along the bottom tier of bolts. There an edge had begun to unravel. Colored threads hung like severed veins.
“Your tongue is polished,” Ixqueya said. Her voice rose in a controlled monotone that deepened the surrounding hush. “You do not tend your goods with equal diligence.”
The merchant’s gaze shot to the unraveling edge. His smile misfired. “A blemish from the road, Lady Winter,” he replied. The honorific sounded hastily added. “The desert is a cruel auditor. Once cut and hemmed such trifles vanish. No finer cloth exists within these walls. I swear it.”
“In these walls,” the Inquisitor of the Ossuary Dominion echoed. “Your horizon is small. You measure yourself by your neighbors’ incompetence and find comfort there. The Ossuary Dominion measures by what will endure when memory has gone to bone.”
A few patrons nearby made a show of ignoring the exchange and failed.
The merchant rallied. “Then allow me to widen that horizon. Name your standard, Princess of the Dead, and I will match it. Profit becomes marrow thin when I face a client so formidable.”
Ixqueya finally lifted her stare to his. The merchant flinched. The blue and gold gaze tapped something fragile inside his skull.
“You misunderstand the nature of this encounter,” the Mistress of Hoarfrost said. “You stand before an audit. Not a negotiation. I did not cross the white mire of Winterwake and the necrotic swamps of my Queen’s domain to argue about the price of yardage.”
The merchant’s mouth opened. No sound emerged.
“I am here,” Lady Winter continued, “to decide whether this city has built anything that can survive its own appetites. You heap wealth and call it prosperity. You paint stone and call it eternity. You train your children to calculate margins before they learn to hold a blade. Then you name that arrangement peace.” The Giantess’s lips twitched and almost formed a smile. “These choices are interesting. They are not impressive.”
A vein pulsed in the man’s temple. Pride wrestled with self-preservation. In the end he bowed. The angle was shallow yet genuine.
“Then may the Emerald City profit by your scrutiny,” he said, the words stiff.
“It will,” the Marchioness of the Winterwake answered. “By amendment or by example.”
The marketplace exhaled as Ixqueya moved on. Conversations resumed in low urgent threads. Children followed the Princess of the Dead at a cautious distance and dared one another to touch the fading frost she left behind. Traders watched her passage with the wary fascination reserved for comets and plagues.
Near the point where the bazaar decayed into alleys, a mushroom capped tower threw a crescent of shade over broken cobbles. The city’s detritus had collected there. Beggars sprawled on threadbare mats. Clay bowls rested before them. Eyes had been scoured thin by hunger.
One elder, robe faded from white to the color of old parchment, hauled himself forward on scarred knees. A talisman of the Lord of Light swung from his neck. The gilding had been rubbed down by desperate fingers. His eyes, fogged at the edges, still carried a hard lucid core.
“Cold lady,” he croaked. His voice sounded like ice breaking. “Gift a coin. The Light inscribes the generous in its fire.”
The Giantess’s shadow swept over him and doused the sun. Ixqueya looked down with curiosity instead of pity.
“The Light inscribes,” Lady Winter repeated. “Then the Light has mismanaged its ledger in your case.”
The old man blinked up at the Mistress of Hoarfrost. “I breathe still,” he said. The fragile accomplishment stood like a shield.
“Vegetation also persists,” the Inquisitor of the Ossuary Dominion observed. “We do not mistake that for stewardship.”
The Princess of the Dead unfastened a small pouch from her belt. Beggars leaned forward as one organism. They anticipated the dull gleam of coin. Instead Ixqueya drew out a shard of Necro Ice no larger than her thumb. Its heart pulsed with pale inner radiance. Frost curled from her palm and spilled down like a slow spectral waterfall.
“Extend your hands,” the Marchioness of the Winterwake said.
The elder obeyed. Gnarled fingers trembled. When the shard dropped into his palms it chimed with a crystalline note. Cold flared up his wrists. It felt sharp yet not cruel. Frost feathered along the creases of his skin and traced every vein and scar.
“What is this?” he whispered.
“A promissory note,” Ixqueya said. “From another treasury.”
“From your god?” the man asked. His eyes darted toward the distant gold domes of the Lord of Light’s sanctuaries.
“From my Queen,” Lady Winter corrected. “From a dominion where hunger becomes investment instead of nuisance. Where the dead are conscripted into purpose instead of abandoned to gutters and memory.”
The elder’s jaw clenched. “What would such a realm demand of a ruin like me?”
“The same tithe it demands of generals and princes,” the Mistress of Hoarfrost replied. “Obedience. Work. A will to be fashioned into something useful instead of something pitied.”
She straightened. Feathers rustled. The motion sent a controlled ripple through the Giantess’s entire form. Her bosom lifted and then settled. Hips shifted. Calves tightened atop the tall heels. Younger beggars sucked in breath. They confronted a mode of power they had no language for.
“If you endure long enough to stand before gates of bone in a land of fog,” the Princess of the Dead said, voice carrying well beyond the ragged listeners, “show that shard. There will be a place for you in my Queen’s economy. If you do not we will continue the conversation in a different register.”
“In death,” the old man murmured. Reverence tangled with fear.
“In service,” the Marchioness of the Winterwake answered. “Death is only the customs house. Service is the kingdom beyond.”
The elder clutched the Necro Ice to his chest. Fine frost spread across his rags like pale lichen. Other beggars stared. Envy and a strange ember of hope warred in their expressions.
Ixqueya resumed her advance and left behind a cluster of humans who would trouble their priests with new questions.
As the Giantess walked, Lady Winter assembled her verdict. Towers of alabaster and emerald glass looked eternal from afar. Up close they revealed hairline cracks beneath their glazes. Marketplaces swelled with gaudy excess. Merchants measured worth by volume instead of craft. Clergy treated coin as sacrament. Citizens confused noise with music, bravado with valor, expense with substance.
Yet sparks glimmered.
A particular guard’s eyes tracked the crowd and did more than seek trouble. They anticipated it. A young fruit seller arranged bruised specimens with severe neatness. She could not discard them and would not display imperfection openly. A novice scribe copied legal script in the shadow of a stall. His lips moved slowly. Each word appeared to weigh something in his mind. Minute crystals of discipline lay in a slush of self indulgence.
Not enough reason to spare the Emerald City from eventual harvest. Enough to justify patience.
The Inquisitor of the Ossuary Dominion understood winter. Frost did not descend in a single gesture. Ice accreted. Snowfall upon snowfall. Season after season. The Emerald City’s candle would gutter in its own hour. When it did, the Osseous courts would receive its bones.
For now the Mistress of Hoarfrost allowed the sand dwellers their pageantry.
Let alabaster spires pierce the sky and fancy themselves immortal. Let the bazaar roar with drums and bargaining until the din deafened them to the sound of their decay. Let priests anoint gold while insects ate the bread. Candles that believed themselves suns always burned most wastefully. Their wax ran richer.
The Giantess’s mace tapped once, lightly, against the rim of her shield. The blow produced a clear chiming note that sliced through drum and flute. Heads turned. Ixqueya, Marchioness of the Winterwake, continued on. Hips swayed with inexorable grace. Her bosom moved like twin reliquaries. Her gaze fixed on an invisible horizon beyond the Emerald City’s shimmering walls.
All must die. All must rise. All must be repurposed.
For the moment the Princess of the Dead granted this glittering fungus on the desert one more season of delusion. Let the Lord of Light gorge on their tithes and praise. When the last candle failed and the last hymn frayed into a hoarse whisper, another faith would wait with cold hands and open ledgers. It would welcome the city’s carcass into the only civilization that mattered.
The one that began where breath ended.
Naza leaving Pyrecliff was not in the pathway that was bestowed on her from birth. Restarting life in a world she had only seen from afar, the emerald top appeared much brighter than before. Every child born near the capital of Pyrecliff is seen as privileged; the further away, the less fortunate your destiny is. To become someone of importance, you must do something worth remembering, which is hard to do when everyone around Naza has an ego so high that even the sky above gives no sympathy. Naza figured that out in the hardest way possible, by fighting for her life.
Oreads are known for being untamable, dangerous, and even reckless; that does not even scratch the surface underneath the black shimmering stone that greets those who are high up in the social scale. Holds Oreads that know nothing of labor; their hands bear no hint of a callus from only doing the bare minimum of work. What else can you expect from the rich? Doing labor? serving others? Begging? No, they got where they are by leeching off of the least fortunate, the unkept ones, whose skin is the color of obsidian with strength that rivals diabase. The capital whines and dines all day, speaking of accomplishments that are not theirs, walking around with the highest quality of clothes to keep their egos ablaze, while leering at the ones who fought and died. Sympathy is for the weak. Naza learned quickly; she became aware that people live to see tears, love to see the unkept struggle; they relish in seeing them kill each other in the name of freedom. The unkept are never free; they have lost all desire. As long as they eat and can sleep, they are satisfied. Working, fighting, scavenging, stealing, betrayals left and right, no loyalty, just beautiful lies.
Naza has been fighting for what feels like forever; she learned from her losses and the punishments of failing. Naza learned how to be sneaky, walk unnoticed, fight well, and fight dirty. Everyone has a secret, everyone has a weakness. Naza fought hard to earn every crystal. She gained knowledge by observation, stealing from the capital elites who appear to bet on a fighter; they bet on your life, win or die, it does not matter to them.
Naza became a favorite quickly, one of the few females unkept to live to young adulthood. Skin the darkest of all, but her eyes were worth millions; that is how she ended up fighting every day. Parents were so desperate to climb the social ladder that they sold their only child. Naza's eyes were less bright after that, the golden specks dimmer, but the ring around her pupils became brighter. Naza's dark skin is littered with battle scars, sharp cuts now filled with gold, signifying that she is special, different, but not enough to become part of the capital. Her body learned how to move fast and strike hard; her legs are toned from years of climbing, running, and dodging.
Naza learned the art of craftsmanship by watching those around her make armor and clothes that fit so well that their movements are never obstructed. The untamed helped each other survive in their own special way, never too close since one day they might become a foe, another body to be cleaned. She made her clothes from whatever was around or what she found while discovering smaller caves or small purses of the elites. Clothes with no special meaning that she cannot wear while fighting, except for her high reinforced boots, which she did not make. It came from an elite as a prize for not dying. A mockery to the body being carried away, a man who grew too cocky, a man who died at the hands of a woman.
Her chest was tightly bound with a bastle cloth, easily replaceable, and it protected her weak points but was not restrictive. Nothing grand enough for someone to take. Shorts became a favorite of hers because, well, they are not long. Very useless on their own, but favorable when she saw someone, a trader that she spotted when training outside of the chamber, when the sun was at its highest, the unkept, smallest window of freedom, but must return if not well, Naza does not know, but if she would guess. hunted and killed, a body hanging above the ring or in areas that are often filled with unkepts, serving as a reminder that they will never be truly free. She eyed the cloth that seemed to outline the trader's legs, defining every muscle, which were not many on the trader. It did give Naza a challenge to make it feel just right on her, without the leggings burning or holding in heat, which in turn makes wearing them less enjoyable than just having her legs out. Eventually, through many trials and errors and lots of “borrowing” materials, she made them perfect for her alone.
Her journey out was something unkept, only dreamed of getting a taste of. But Naza never backed down from a challenge; that was how she was groomed. Naza kills without pity, without a flinch, without fear. They saw her as a puppet. Something that moved when told and never spoke first. Naza made them believe she was one; that is how she made it on the boat. That is how the green domes look shinier up close. That is how Naza made it out of Pyrecliff, tucked nicely between crates aboard a merchant's boat. Naza was among the few who escaped, but Naza knows safety will not be easy.
The plan to leave her hellish life was not easy. To leave the only way of life she has known and make no moves to change? Who would want to accept a murderer into their nation? Will anyone understand that she had no choice? Naza will never hate what fate dished to her, but she rushes to let herself rot; she is a fighter. The months of sneaking out after the sun reached its highest, to find the papers that prove Naza’s existence and how much she was sold for, the final chain to free her soul. Naza searched day and night, fighting exhaustion that comes after a tough fight or from her gathering and listening from hidden corners, the nights when the elites wanted the ringmaster's “best” puppet to stand there as a symbol to gather more people to fill their never-ending pockets. After a couple of drinks, that is when they get sloppy, that is when information starts to fall, hidden riddles become clues, and when blackmail becomes effective. Everyone has a weakness, and Naza knows how to make people talk; after all, that is what she was groomed for. Naza spent many nights in caverns where tradespeople ended up after another day of exchanging goods. Naza figured out what was needed to get through the census; what comes after Naza will figure it out.
Naza heard the men yelling out instructions and running around like headless chickens. Naza tried not to laugh as they scattered through the men running around, checking their profit and what they had to drop off at the dock. Naza felt the boat come to a stop; the waves no longer crashed and rocked the ship. She heard more voices of all different pitches; she heard laughter, something rare and usually fake. Naza felt calm, kept her face neutral, stood tall, picked up a crate and joined the line of merchants carrying various goods. Many things that are unknown to Naza, never having the honor of knowing about them.
“Hey! You! Who are you? I don't remember seeing your face,” someone shouted, pointing at Naza. The ship was mainly cleared, and most men had already made it past the docks, their bodies slowly blending in amongst the chaos.
“I got picked up from Pyrecliff,” Naza responded, voice calm and clear, voice never wavered, posture relaxed, “and have my papers to prove.” Naza dropped the crate and reached into her shorts, pulling out a paper of approved travel, with a drawn-out picture of Naza.
The man snatched the paper out of Naza's hands. Looking at her with disgust, as if he had never seen people with dark skin, as if she were beneath him. His eyes scanned the sheet, as if he were trying to find something wrong; his body language and mumbling gave it away. “This cannot be,” he said lowly, “I would've noticed someone of your…. Statue” distaste clearly shown.
Naza gave a casual shrug, ignoring the tone of his voice. “Sir, that is not my problem,” she said, stepping closer, peering down at the shorter man, skin slightly glowing, “maybe drink less next time.” Naza grabbed her document back, folding it up and tucking it back in her shorts. With nothing left to say, she picked up her crate once more and continued off the ship without looking back.
Bazaar was everything Naza had heard from passersby, so different and so full of life. But not everything is perfect. Naza sees the homeless and sees beggars; she also notices that some have a single stare, some try to be subtle, and others not so much. She keeps walking, eyes shifting from the food stand to every restaurant and random carriers. What caught her eye was meat and feathers, but mainly meat. Naza slowly walked towards the meat stand, trying not to drool or draw any more attention than a giant walking rock could. She waited in line behind a woman who looked more equipped for this, and by the way people are gazing at her, she seems to be of high status. The way this mysterious woman carries herself shows her strength. Naza is curious about the extra legs that seem to be attached. This is new to Naza; never has he come across such a sight. She feels like a child at the level of amazement. Naza looks around, really taking a moment to observe her surroundings, trying not to stare too long when her gaze falls on the people. Her interest and curiosity die as she remembers she is hungry and needs to find a place to rest her head soon. First delicious meat, everything will fall into place.
Oreads are known for being untamable, dangerous, and even reckless; that does not even scratch the surface underneath the black shimmering stone that greets those who are high up in the social scale. Holds Oreads that know nothing of labor; their hands bear no hint of a callus from only doing the bare minimum of work. What else can you expect from the rich? Doing labor? serving others? Begging? No, they got where they are by leeching off of the least fortunate, the unkept ones, whose skin is the color of obsidian with strength that rivals diabase. The capital whines and dines all day, speaking of accomplishments that are not theirs, walking around with the highest quality of clothes to keep their egos ablaze, while leering at the ones who fought and died. Sympathy is for the weak. Naza learned quickly; she became aware that people live to see tears, love to see the unkept struggle; they relish in seeing them kill each other in the name of freedom. The unkept are never free; they have lost all desire. As long as they eat and can sleep, they are satisfied. Working, fighting, scavenging, stealing, betrayals left and right, no loyalty, just beautiful lies.
Naza has been fighting for what feels like forever; she learned from her losses and the punishments of failing. Naza learned how to be sneaky, walk unnoticed, fight well, and fight dirty. Everyone has a secret, everyone has a weakness. Naza fought hard to earn every crystal. She gained knowledge by observation, stealing from the capital elites who appear to bet on a fighter; they bet on your life, win or die, it does not matter to them.
Naza became a favorite quickly, one of the few females unkept to live to young adulthood. Skin the darkest of all, but her eyes were worth millions; that is how she ended up fighting every day. Parents were so desperate to climb the social ladder that they sold their only child. Naza's eyes were less bright after that, the golden specks dimmer, but the ring around her pupils became brighter. Naza's dark skin is littered with battle scars, sharp cuts now filled with gold, signifying that she is special, different, but not enough to become part of the capital. Her body learned how to move fast and strike hard; her legs are toned from years of climbing, running, and dodging.
Naza learned the art of craftsmanship by watching those around her make armor and clothes that fit so well that their movements are never obstructed. The untamed helped each other survive in their own special way, never too close since one day they might become a foe, another body to be cleaned. She made her clothes from whatever was around or what she found while discovering smaller caves or small purses of the elites. Clothes with no special meaning that she cannot wear while fighting, except for her high reinforced boots, which she did not make. It came from an elite as a prize for not dying. A mockery to the body being carried away, a man who grew too cocky, a man who died at the hands of a woman.
Her chest was tightly bound with a bastle cloth, easily replaceable, and it protected her weak points but was not restrictive. Nothing grand enough for someone to take. Shorts became a favorite of hers because, well, they are not long. Very useless on their own, but favorable when she saw someone, a trader that she spotted when training outside of the chamber, when the sun was at its highest, the unkept, smallest window of freedom, but must return if not well, Naza does not know, but if she would guess. hunted and killed, a body hanging above the ring or in areas that are often filled with unkepts, serving as a reminder that they will never be truly free. She eyed the cloth that seemed to outline the trader's legs, defining every muscle, which were not many on the trader. It did give Naza a challenge to make it feel just right on her, without the leggings burning or holding in heat, which in turn makes wearing them less enjoyable than just having her legs out. Eventually, through many trials and errors and lots of “borrowing” materials, she made them perfect for her alone.
Her journey out was something unkept, only dreamed of getting a taste of. But Naza never backed down from a challenge; that was how she was groomed. Naza kills without pity, without a flinch, without fear. They saw her as a puppet. Something that moved when told and never spoke first. Naza made them believe she was one; that is how she made it on the boat. That is how the green domes look shinier up close. That is how Naza made it out of Pyrecliff, tucked nicely between crates aboard a merchant's boat. Naza was among the few who escaped, but Naza knows safety will not be easy.
The plan to leave her hellish life was not easy. To leave the only way of life she has known and make no moves to change? Who would want to accept a murderer into their nation? Will anyone understand that she had no choice? Naza will never hate what fate dished to her, but she rushes to let herself rot; she is a fighter. The months of sneaking out after the sun reached its highest, to find the papers that prove Naza’s existence and how much she was sold for, the final chain to free her soul. Naza searched day and night, fighting exhaustion that comes after a tough fight or from her gathering and listening from hidden corners, the nights when the elites wanted the ringmaster's “best” puppet to stand there as a symbol to gather more people to fill their never-ending pockets. After a couple of drinks, that is when they get sloppy, that is when information starts to fall, hidden riddles become clues, and when blackmail becomes effective. Everyone has a weakness, and Naza knows how to make people talk; after all, that is what she was groomed for. Naza spent many nights in caverns where tradespeople ended up after another day of exchanging goods. Naza figured out what was needed to get through the census; what comes after Naza will figure it out.
Naza heard the men yelling out instructions and running around like headless chickens. Naza tried not to laugh as they scattered through the men running around, checking their profit and what they had to drop off at the dock. Naza felt the boat come to a stop; the waves no longer crashed and rocked the ship. She heard more voices of all different pitches; she heard laughter, something rare and usually fake. Naza felt calm, kept her face neutral, stood tall, picked up a crate and joined the line of merchants carrying various goods. Many things that are unknown to Naza, never having the honor of knowing about them.
“Hey! You! Who are you? I don't remember seeing your face,” someone shouted, pointing at Naza. The ship was mainly cleared, and most men had already made it past the docks, their bodies slowly blending in amongst the chaos.
“I got picked up from Pyrecliff,” Naza responded, voice calm and clear, voice never wavered, posture relaxed, “and have my papers to prove.” Naza dropped the crate and reached into her shorts, pulling out a paper of approved travel, with a drawn-out picture of Naza.
The man snatched the paper out of Naza's hands. Looking at her with disgust, as if he had never seen people with dark skin, as if she were beneath him. His eyes scanned the sheet, as if he were trying to find something wrong; his body language and mumbling gave it away. “This cannot be,” he said lowly, “I would've noticed someone of your…. Statue” distaste clearly shown.
Naza gave a casual shrug, ignoring the tone of his voice. “Sir, that is not my problem,” she said, stepping closer, peering down at the shorter man, skin slightly glowing, “maybe drink less next time.” Naza grabbed her document back, folding it up and tucking it back in her shorts. With nothing left to say, she picked up her crate once more and continued off the ship without looking back.
Bazaar was everything Naza had heard from passersby, so different and so full of life. But not everything is perfect. Naza sees the homeless and sees beggars; she also notices that some have a single stare, some try to be subtle, and others not so much. She keeps walking, eyes shifting from the food stand to every restaurant and random carriers. What caught her eye was meat and feathers, but mainly meat. Naza slowly walked towards the meat stand, trying not to drool or draw any more attention than a giant walking rock could. She waited in line behind a woman who looked more equipped for this, and by the way people are gazing at her, she seems to be of high status. The way this mysterious woman carries herself shows her strength. Naza is curious about the extra legs that seem to be attached. This is new to Naza; never has he come across such a sight. She feels like a child at the level of amazement. Naza looks around, really taking a moment to observe her surroundings, trying not to stare too long when her gaze falls on the people. Her interest and curiosity die as she remembers she is hungry and needs to find a place to rest her head soon. First delicious meat, everything will fall into place.
Ixqueya sensed the gaze long before she chose to honor it.
It clung to her like warm resin. Slow. Unyielding. An inelegant swell of attention pressed against her skin as if some apprentice had slapped wet clay onto a marble temple and called it art. She let it persist. One breath. Then another. She counted the steady beats of her heart between each rude sweep of scrutiny. First across the breadth of her shoulders. Then along the armored line of her spine. Then lower. Where feathered carapace framed the vast architecture of her hips. There the brood harness curved in a patient arc. Its wasp-tail stinger hovered above the dense curve of her rear like a verdict that had already been written. Only the sentence remained to be spoken.
When that clumsy weight of sight refused to move on she turned.
The movement held no haste. Royal things never hurry. Frost ground beneath her heels and hissed against the heat-baked stone. Thin fractures of Necro Ice spidered out from her boots. They etched pale veins into the sandstone before the desert swallowed them. The tower shield at her back pivoted with her. Bronze frame. Heart of crystalline blue. It caught the brutal sun and shattered it into shards of cobalt that leapt across the butcher’s stall. Hanging carcasses took on a glacial glaze. Meat meant for roasting now looked fit for embalming.
Ixqueya’s eyes found the source.
A compact figure stood in the queue behind her. A creature carved from volcanic rock. Muscle packed into a short frame so dense it seemed quarried rather than born. Skin dark as cooled magma. Gold fissures ran through it. They pulsed faintly. Like molten fault lines that had not yet decided whether to sunder the world or hold it together. Shoulder length hair the color of fresh ash framed a blunt face. Eyes black as obsidian stared up at her. Gold flecks floated in them like trapped sparks.
The thing stared with the raw astonishment of a pilgrim who had walked into the wrong holy place and only just realized it.
Hunger rode the stranger as plainly as dust. Ixqueya read it in the twitch of nostrils as the scent of fat and spice rolled off the stall. She read it louder in the path of those eyes. They dragged from the monumental lift of her breasts within bronze carapace. Down the sweep of her abdomen. Across the banded girth of her thighs where chitin and feather framed tawny muscle. Then to the arachnid limbs that unfolded from her harness. Four barbed arms. Each talon hanging in frozen menace beside her hips.
She held the gaze and let the silence harden. Dust motes drifted between them like slow snow. The butcher’s hand stalled halfway through a cut. The line behind them thinned into a hush. Curiosity always knew when it stood near danger.
When she spoke the air itself seemed to contract.
“Little quarry maggot.”
Her voice was low. Precise. Polished like ice that has been ground on stone until every edge could cut. The title fell between them with the finality of a hammer on altar rock.
“Do you intend to stand there and gape until the sun burns what little sense you possess.” Her pale irises narrowed. The thin ring of buried gold around each one brightened. “Or is that emptiness behind your eyes all the thought your skull can hold.”
She had no need to raise the volume. Authority does not shout. It simply expects to be heard. Conversation around them withered. Even the flies above the meat began to circle wider.
Her gaze dropped to the battered boots. Then ascended with deliberate slowness. The volcanic hide. The glowing seams. The stone-hued clothes clinging to a body that did not know whether it walked as a laborer or as a soldier. Hunger sat under all of it like a knife lodged beneath the ribs.
“You are stone,” Ixqueya said. “I will concede that once you fix your attention it moves as reluctantly as a boulder. Yet even a rock can learn discipline. It only requires the correct tool and sufficient time.”
Frost crept out from beneath her heels. A thin ring of white slid across the sand until it touched the stranger’s feet. The cold climbed that hardened skin. It felt clean rather than kind. A surgeon’s blade. Not a cudgel.
“Do not flatter yourself that I failed to notice you.” Her eyes thinned further. The gold within them gleamed as if some distant aurora had settled in her stare. “I am the standard. The summit to which lesser women aspire in secret and fail. The apex where beauty and violence agree to share the same skull. This city will measure its wives and its saints against me for months after I leave. They will not thank you for reminding them of the gap.”
Her gaze swept over the stranger again. Whatever warmth might have lived in it froze.
“You on the other hand look like a boulder that rolled down the wrong gorge and lodged there. A lump of dung baked onto a canyon wall until it began to fancy itself basalt. A homely troglodyte with good intentions and unfortunate genetics.”
She did not smile. Pity would have required a smile or at least a softening. She felt neither. She inclined her head by a fraction. The feathered crown that flared from her headdress stirred. Teal. Jet. Cinnabar. They shifted as if some private wind passed through them.
“I almost pity your confusion.” Her tone flattened. “Almost.”
One chitinous arm flexed beside her. The barb at its tip traced an idle curl through the air. The movement pulled every eye to the long planes of her thighs. Muscle coiled beneath skin and layered armor. Above them the wasp tail adjusted by the width of a finger. Its shadow cut the sand in a thin dark line positioned neatly above the highest curve of her rear.
“My thighs can break quarried stone,” she said. “If you persist in standing here with your mouth ajar I will test that claim on your skull. At least the result would instruct me. Your gawping instructs no one.”
The threat sat between them. Simple. Undecorated. The butcher’s fingers blanched around the cleaver. No one in the line urged the rock-creature forward. Fear is rarely that stupid.
Ixqueya glanced at the skewers that glistened on their hooks. Then back to the stranger. She watched the hitch in the woman’s breathing. The tremor beneath volcanic hide. The brief flare along the gold seams as embarrassment and hunger fought for primacy.
“You are starving.” Her verdict carried no sympathy. “I can smell it on your breath. On your patience. Yet you look at me as if you still hope I will decide to be a vision rather than a fact.”
She stepped half a pace closer. Her shadow climbed the volcanic woman’s torso and swallowed the heat there. The air cooled. Not to winter. That would have been charity. Enough to remind every sweating body nearby what comfort felt like.
“Compose yourself.” The title of Princess of the Dead hung unspoken behind every word. She did not need to recite it. “If hunger dragged you here then pay for meat. Eat it. If awe dragged your eyes to my armor then admit it as a grown creature rather than a child who has wandered from its minder. If you seek work then speak clearly and quickly. My time is a resource. Not a charity.”
Her gaze sharpened.
“Or has this market overwhelmed you so completely that you have become nothing more than a stunned pebble in its flood. Answer me. Quarry maggot. You have already taken more of my attention than your station can justify.”
Her posture did not shift. Shoulders square. Chin lifted. Weight settled in a stance that promised violence without advertising it. Only the measured rise and fall of her chest betrayed breath. Each inhalation lifted the armored swell of her breasts. Feathers at her collar brushed bronze skin. The tail above her hips remained poised. The stinger pointed like a stylus at the place where correction would be applied.
“You may look,” she said. “Briefly. You may speak. Coherently. You may buy your food and attempt not to choke on it. You may even retreat into this crowd and be grateful that curiosity has stayed my hand. For the moment.”
Her eyes burned cold. A ring of sunlit gold floated in each frozen iris.
“What you will not do is stand in my shadow and gape like a chipped idol in an abandoned shrine.”
She let the words sink in. Then she gave the final command.
“Now decide what you are. Rock-grub. Appetite. Supplicant. Or problem.”
It clung to her like warm resin. Slow. Unyielding. An inelegant swell of attention pressed against her skin as if some apprentice had slapped wet clay onto a marble temple and called it art. She let it persist. One breath. Then another. She counted the steady beats of her heart between each rude sweep of scrutiny. First across the breadth of her shoulders. Then along the armored line of her spine. Then lower. Where feathered carapace framed the vast architecture of her hips. There the brood harness curved in a patient arc. Its wasp-tail stinger hovered above the dense curve of her rear like a verdict that had already been written. Only the sentence remained to be spoken.
When that clumsy weight of sight refused to move on she turned.
The movement held no haste. Royal things never hurry. Frost ground beneath her heels and hissed against the heat-baked stone. Thin fractures of Necro Ice spidered out from her boots. They etched pale veins into the sandstone before the desert swallowed them. The tower shield at her back pivoted with her. Bronze frame. Heart of crystalline blue. It caught the brutal sun and shattered it into shards of cobalt that leapt across the butcher’s stall. Hanging carcasses took on a glacial glaze. Meat meant for roasting now looked fit for embalming.
Ixqueya’s eyes found the source.
A compact figure stood in the queue behind her. A creature carved from volcanic rock. Muscle packed into a short frame so dense it seemed quarried rather than born. Skin dark as cooled magma. Gold fissures ran through it. They pulsed faintly. Like molten fault lines that had not yet decided whether to sunder the world or hold it together. Shoulder length hair the color of fresh ash framed a blunt face. Eyes black as obsidian stared up at her. Gold flecks floated in them like trapped sparks.
The thing stared with the raw astonishment of a pilgrim who had walked into the wrong holy place and only just realized it.
Hunger rode the stranger as plainly as dust. Ixqueya read it in the twitch of nostrils as the scent of fat and spice rolled off the stall. She read it louder in the path of those eyes. They dragged from the monumental lift of her breasts within bronze carapace. Down the sweep of her abdomen. Across the banded girth of her thighs where chitin and feather framed tawny muscle. Then to the arachnid limbs that unfolded from her harness. Four barbed arms. Each talon hanging in frozen menace beside her hips.
She held the gaze and let the silence harden. Dust motes drifted between them like slow snow. The butcher’s hand stalled halfway through a cut. The line behind them thinned into a hush. Curiosity always knew when it stood near danger.
When she spoke the air itself seemed to contract.
“Little quarry maggot.”
Her voice was low. Precise. Polished like ice that has been ground on stone until every edge could cut. The title fell between them with the finality of a hammer on altar rock.
“Do you intend to stand there and gape until the sun burns what little sense you possess.” Her pale irises narrowed. The thin ring of buried gold around each one brightened. “Or is that emptiness behind your eyes all the thought your skull can hold.”
She had no need to raise the volume. Authority does not shout. It simply expects to be heard. Conversation around them withered. Even the flies above the meat began to circle wider.
Her gaze dropped to the battered boots. Then ascended with deliberate slowness. The volcanic hide. The glowing seams. The stone-hued clothes clinging to a body that did not know whether it walked as a laborer or as a soldier. Hunger sat under all of it like a knife lodged beneath the ribs.
“You are stone,” Ixqueya said. “I will concede that once you fix your attention it moves as reluctantly as a boulder. Yet even a rock can learn discipline. It only requires the correct tool and sufficient time.”
Frost crept out from beneath her heels. A thin ring of white slid across the sand until it touched the stranger’s feet. The cold climbed that hardened skin. It felt clean rather than kind. A surgeon’s blade. Not a cudgel.
“Do not flatter yourself that I failed to notice you.” Her eyes thinned further. The gold within them gleamed as if some distant aurora had settled in her stare. “I am the standard. The summit to which lesser women aspire in secret and fail. The apex where beauty and violence agree to share the same skull. This city will measure its wives and its saints against me for months after I leave. They will not thank you for reminding them of the gap.”
Her gaze swept over the stranger again. Whatever warmth might have lived in it froze.
“You on the other hand look like a boulder that rolled down the wrong gorge and lodged there. A lump of dung baked onto a canyon wall until it began to fancy itself basalt. A homely troglodyte with good intentions and unfortunate genetics.”
She did not smile. Pity would have required a smile or at least a softening. She felt neither. She inclined her head by a fraction. The feathered crown that flared from her headdress stirred. Teal. Jet. Cinnabar. They shifted as if some private wind passed through them.
“I almost pity your confusion.” Her tone flattened. “Almost.”
One chitinous arm flexed beside her. The barb at its tip traced an idle curl through the air. The movement pulled every eye to the long planes of her thighs. Muscle coiled beneath skin and layered armor. Above them the wasp tail adjusted by the width of a finger. Its shadow cut the sand in a thin dark line positioned neatly above the highest curve of her rear.
“My thighs can break quarried stone,” she said. “If you persist in standing here with your mouth ajar I will test that claim on your skull. At least the result would instruct me. Your gawping instructs no one.”
The threat sat between them. Simple. Undecorated. The butcher’s fingers blanched around the cleaver. No one in the line urged the rock-creature forward. Fear is rarely that stupid.
Ixqueya glanced at the skewers that glistened on their hooks. Then back to the stranger. She watched the hitch in the woman’s breathing. The tremor beneath volcanic hide. The brief flare along the gold seams as embarrassment and hunger fought for primacy.
“You are starving.” Her verdict carried no sympathy. “I can smell it on your breath. On your patience. Yet you look at me as if you still hope I will decide to be a vision rather than a fact.”
She stepped half a pace closer. Her shadow climbed the volcanic woman’s torso and swallowed the heat there. The air cooled. Not to winter. That would have been charity. Enough to remind every sweating body nearby what comfort felt like.
“Compose yourself.” The title of Princess of the Dead hung unspoken behind every word. She did not need to recite it. “If hunger dragged you here then pay for meat. Eat it. If awe dragged your eyes to my armor then admit it as a grown creature rather than a child who has wandered from its minder. If you seek work then speak clearly and quickly. My time is a resource. Not a charity.”
Her gaze sharpened.
“Or has this market overwhelmed you so completely that you have become nothing more than a stunned pebble in its flood. Answer me. Quarry maggot. You have already taken more of my attention than your station can justify.”
Her posture did not shift. Shoulders square. Chin lifted. Weight settled in a stance that promised violence without advertising it. Only the measured rise and fall of her chest betrayed breath. Each inhalation lifted the armored swell of her breasts. Feathers at her collar brushed bronze skin. The tail above her hips remained poised. The stinger pointed like a stylus at the place where correction would be applied.
“You may look,” she said. “Briefly. You may speak. Coherently. You may buy your food and attempt not to choke on it. You may even retreat into this crowd and be grateful that curiosity has stayed my hand. For the moment.”
Her eyes burned cold. A ring of sunlit gold floated in each frozen iris.
“What you will not do is stand in my shadow and gape like a chipped idol in an abandoned shrine.”
She let the words sink in. Then she gave the final command.
“Now decide what you are. Rock-grub. Appetite. Supplicant. Or problem.”
Naza felt the temperature drop before she noticed the tall woman in front of her was slowly turning around. A high chance that Naza was looking at her, trying to understand who she is and how strong she is. Naza is not stupid, even if most would disagree. She does lack basic respect and manners, thinks before she answers, a habit that could never be broken out of her. The lady in front is a giant, and judging by the way people shift around them, they are slowly backing away or just running. Naza realised that this woman is a beast, a great warrior with more years of training under her belt, and she has experience and respect. Someone who could crush Naza with a simple hit from one of her spider legs, Naza should run, she should sing apologies for staring uncomfortably long like a creep.
“Damn,” Naza said, her voice shaky, the low temperature bothering her. Naza is used to hot air because of living in an old volcano. She felt like she was still in Pyrecliff, minus the solid ground, the texture like gravel, but thinner, holding heat. Naza wonders how it will feel without boots on.
Naza cannot help but wonder who this magnificent woman is. Her clothes are of higher quality, likely costing more than Naza's life; every feather moves with the woman's body, every slight movement causes a ripple-like effect. Naza has also never seen boobs as large as the lady in feathers are. Naza wonders how she can stand with confidence, and whether she is simply used to the strain they are likely causing her back or if every step is painful. Naza has lots of questions, but wonders if that would be disrespectful.
She was pulled out of her thoughts when she heard the lady giant in front of her talk. Voice strong, commanding those to listen, holding power and grace that Naza was not too. Naza stood up taller, shoulders back like a soldier waiting for the following command. She can feel the eyes scanning her, just as she had been doing; Naza is used to it. Being looked at eyes searching for a weakness or imperfections. Naza finally registers the complete silence, the butcher's hand frozen in the air, scared to rest it once more, the once constant chatter no longer around.
Naza blinked, surprised at what she was called “maggot” Naza was being compared to an insignificant creature that hangs around mould-rotten food; she would know she had eaten them before. The voice continues, but with a tone Naza is not familiar with. Naza expected to get backhanded so hard that she would feel her neck crack. Naza kept her guard up, unsure what she had done, not comprehending that staring is considered rude, and that her mouth was slightly open. She felt her body temperature rise a little from foolish embarrassment. A mistake that only a child would make. Naza thought about what she should say and whether she should even open her mouth. The statement was not finished; it was not her turn, there was no question, just a rather cold observation.
“You are a giant,” Naza replied without thinking, “are we supposed to point out differences?” She tries not to furrow her eyebrows out of confusion. Naza was not expecting such attention, at least not while waiting for food. “Ah, I understand now. Do apologies, I did not mean to stare. I can understand why men would want a wife like you. You are simply magnificent. Should I be wary of possible thanks? Naza words spew out, the tone as monotone as possible. Naza did shift her eyes up as she responded, figuring direct eye contact was the solution. She is rather proud of herself, and direct eye contact was always her valuable skill. Naza never knew that other fighters found it unnerving, since her eyes were like black voids following every movement; social interactions were few and far between.
“I very well believe your thighs can crush me,” Naza nodded along “I would rather avoid the usage of my skull as a test subject. I have grown to like it or tolerate it.” Naza wonders whether she can still get food once this interaction is over; her stomach is empty and slightly sore. Naza noticed a slight twitch from the butcher and felt the sand shift, as if people were backing away, the line slowly becoming just the two of them. Naza just hope the butcher can prevent ruining his clothes, at least after she orders, finding another stall would become difficult with the way citizens are acting.
Naza took a slight step back when the giant approached. She was taken aback, but the closeness, as she had just been called a diary creature a few moments ago. “Thank you, miss, for your kind words,” Naza started “I did not mean any harm, I am not from around here if that was not noticeable, and the spider legs caught my attention.” Naza stopped for a moment before continuing, bowing her head slightly but not enough to obstruct her view of the giant in front of her.
Naza took a slight step back when the giant approached. She was taken aback, but the closeness, as she had just been called a diary creature a few moments ago. “Thank you, miss, for your kind words,” Naza started “I did not mean any harm, I am not from around here if that was not noticeable, and the spider legs caught my attention.” Naza stopped for a moment before continuing, bowing her head slightly but not enough to obstruct her view of the giant in front of her.
Naza lifted her head back after a second, “I was planning on buying food, there would be no other reason to be in this line. Your armour is well-crafted; it is well-made for your body. Only a few could wear such heavily crafted materials so gracefully. You also appear to be hungry as you are in line, so while yes, I am starving, you could say the same.” Naza held the giant's gaze, knowing backing down would no longer save her skin, provoking people came easy, even when Naza did not wish to.
“My name is Naza. Not rock-grub, as I am not food,” Naze moves her left arm that was folded behind her and did a fake head dip she saw other people doing. Naza was stiff, and it didn't look as smooth or natural; her face could use a few lessons in smiling. She mimicked the best she could, hoping to come across as a person, not a rock.
“I enjoy work if you are offering that is,” Naza said putting her arm back down and her face going back to the blankness that it was before
“Damn,” Naza said, her voice shaky, the low temperature bothering her. Naza is used to hot air because of living in an old volcano. She felt like she was still in Pyrecliff, minus the solid ground, the texture like gravel, but thinner, holding heat. Naza wonders how it will feel without boots on.
Naza cannot help but wonder who this magnificent woman is. Her clothes are of higher quality, likely costing more than Naza's life; every feather moves with the woman's body, every slight movement causes a ripple-like effect. Naza has also never seen boobs as large as the lady in feathers are. Naza wonders how she can stand with confidence, and whether she is simply used to the strain they are likely causing her back or if every step is painful. Naza has lots of questions, but wonders if that would be disrespectful.
She was pulled out of her thoughts when she heard the lady giant in front of her talk. Voice strong, commanding those to listen, holding power and grace that Naza was not too. Naza stood up taller, shoulders back like a soldier waiting for the following command. She can feel the eyes scanning her, just as she had been doing; Naza is used to it. Being looked at eyes searching for a weakness or imperfections. Naza finally registers the complete silence, the butcher's hand frozen in the air, scared to rest it once more, the once constant chatter no longer around.
Naza blinked, surprised at what she was called “maggot” Naza was being compared to an insignificant creature that hangs around mould-rotten food; she would know she had eaten them before. The voice continues, but with a tone Naza is not familiar with. Naza expected to get backhanded so hard that she would feel her neck crack. Naza kept her guard up, unsure what she had done, not comprehending that staring is considered rude, and that her mouth was slightly open. She felt her body temperature rise a little from foolish embarrassment. A mistake that only a child would make. Naza thought about what she should say and whether she should even open her mouth. The statement was not finished; it was not her turn, there was no question, just a rather cold observation.
“You are a giant,” Naza replied without thinking, “are we supposed to point out differences?” She tries not to furrow her eyebrows out of confusion. Naza was not expecting such attention, at least not while waiting for food. “Ah, I understand now. Do apologies, I did not mean to stare. I can understand why men would want a wife like you. You are simply magnificent. Should I be wary of possible thanks? Naza words spew out, the tone as monotone as possible. Naza did shift her eyes up as she responded, figuring direct eye contact was the solution. She is rather proud of herself, and direct eye contact was always her valuable skill. Naza never knew that other fighters found it unnerving, since her eyes were like black voids following every movement; social interactions were few and far between.
“I very well believe your thighs can crush me,” Naza nodded along “I would rather avoid the usage of my skull as a test subject. I have grown to like it or tolerate it.” Naza wonders whether she can still get food once this interaction is over; her stomach is empty and slightly sore. Naza noticed a slight twitch from the butcher and felt the sand shift, as if people were backing away, the line slowly becoming just the two of them. Naza just hope the butcher can prevent ruining his clothes, at least after she orders, finding another stall would become difficult with the way citizens are acting.
Naza took a slight step back when the giant approached. She was taken aback, but the closeness, as she had just been called a diary creature a few moments ago. “Thank you, miss, for your kind words,” Naza started “I did not mean any harm, I am not from around here if that was not noticeable, and the spider legs caught my attention.” Naza stopped for a moment before continuing, bowing her head slightly but not enough to obstruct her view of the giant in front of her.
Naza took a slight step back when the giant approached. She was taken aback, but the closeness, as she had just been called a diary creature a few moments ago. “Thank you, miss, for your kind words,” Naza started “I did not mean any harm, I am not from around here if that was not noticeable, and the spider legs caught my attention.” Naza stopped for a moment before continuing, bowing her head slightly but not enough to obstruct her view of the giant in front of her.
Naza lifted her head back after a second, “I was planning on buying food, there would be no other reason to be in this line. Your armour is well-crafted; it is well-made for your body. Only a few could wear such heavily crafted materials so gracefully. You also appear to be hungry as you are in line, so while yes, I am starving, you could say the same.” Naza held the giant's gaze, knowing backing down would no longer save her skin, provoking people came easy, even when Naza did not wish to.
“My name is Naza. Not rock-grub, as I am not food,” Naze moves her left arm that was folded behind her and did a fake head dip she saw other people doing. Naza was stiff, and it didn't look as smooth or natural; her face could use a few lessons in smiling. She mimicked the best she could, hoping to come across as a person, not a rock.
“I enjoy work if you are offering that is,” Naza said putting her arm back down and her face going back to the blankness that it was before
Ixqueya let the rock woman speak until the words ran thin. The voice droned in that flat volcanic cadence. Apology twisted with flattery. A touch of defiance. All poured out in a tangle that sounded more like a wounded report than a coherent plea.
The frost at their feet thickened. The butcher held his breath and watched the cleaver with the terror of a man who suddenly realized how many bones surrounded him.
Ixqueya studied Naza again. Slowly. As if she weighed a new specimen on a slab. Volcanic hide. Gold seams brightening with each embarrassed pulse. Ash-grey hair that looked familiar with smoke yet not with a comb. Shoulders set by habit into a soldier’s stance. Eyes like two small voids. Hunger in them. Stubbornness behind that.
She wondered if the creature could swim.
If she hurled this compact body into a mountain lake. Would it sink at once. Or skip. Once. Twice. Three times. A good stone deserved a proper throw.
“Enough.”
Her voice cut through the remains of Naza’s speech. Quiet. Absolute.
“First. You will correct your tongue. These are not spider legs.”
One chitinous limb lifted. Segments locked with a dry clatter. The hooked tip hovered a finger’s breadth from Naza’s sternum.
“Spiders scuttle and improvise. They foul their own webs and choke on them. These are ant ligaments. The articulated glory of my brood. My children. They march in lines. They build empires out of carcasses. They do not wobble. They do not hesitate. You will not confuse them with web filth again.”
The limb lowered. The stinger above her hips remained poised. A patient threat sketched above the monumental swell of her rear.
“You announce that I am a Giantess as if this were a revelation.” Her gaze hardened. “I am that. I am also Inquisitor of the Ossuary Dominion. Marchioness of the Winterwake. A walking ledger. When you stand behind such a creature in a queue. With your mouth hanging and your eyes crawling over her armor. You do not engage in observation. You petition for judgment.”
She let that sink. The silence around them obeyed.
“You protest that you meant no harm.” Her tone fell colder. “No one ever does. The world fills its graveyards with people who did not mean anything at all. Intent is air. Consequence is stone. I deal in stone.”
Her eyes swept over Naza from head to boot. The look stripped away flattery. Stripped away awkward courtesy. Left only mass and potential.
“You say staring is how you think. Then you call it a habit you cannot break. That is not thought. That is reflex. Children and animals live by reflex. Adults die by it.”
She shifted the skewer in her hand. Took a slow bite. Chewed. Swallowed. She looked as if she could devour the bazaar itself in the same manner and leave nothing but frost.
“You praise my armor. My bearing. You assure me men would want a wife who looks like this. Men want comfort. Heirs. Someone to soothe what they fear. I am not here for any of that. I am here to decide whether this city and the things in it belong in my Queen’s service. Or in her larders. Flattery does not tilt that scale. It never has.”
Her gaze sharpened to a knife edge.
“You at least stand up straight when corrected. You hold my eyes. You admit ignorance with a degree of honesty. That sets you half a step above the merchants behind you. They lie to themselves first. Then to everyone else. You simply blunder in the open. It is not admirable. It is at least readable.”
She inclined her head the smallest fraction.
“So. Naza. Not rock-grub. You wish to be treated as something more than quarry refuse. Good. Then understand how I see you. You are uncut stone. Heavy. Crude. Possibly useful. Worthless until someone competent shapes you. Dangerous if left to roll wherever chance drops you.”
One ant limb extended again. It tapped the center of Naza’s breastplate. A precise point. Not a blow.
“You claim to enjoy work. That is the first useful thing you have said. The Dominion does not distribute purpose like bread at a temple. We invest. Where we see yield. We commit. Where we see only sentiment. We harvest the body and forget the name.”
She stepped half a pace aside and left the path to the stall open. Every ant limb still reached her. The mace still sat ready at her hand. The shield still loomed behind.
“Buy your meat.” Her tone carried the flat patience of a magistrate. “Eat it. I prefer to judge people after their stomach has stopped shouting at their brain. Then we will speak of work.”
The bazaar began to breathe again in low threads. A few voices rose. None dared to rise far.
She let another breath pass. Then she struck the kernel of the matter.
“You ask whether you should fear the thanks of men who would choose a wife like me.” She shook her head once. Feathers rustled. “You waste your worry. Men can offer gratitude. Jealousy. Worship. None of that alters their place under the frost.”
Her eyes locked on Naza’s.
“If you have any sense you will fear attention like mine instead. Men want a partner to share their bed and their decline. I want return. You are not an ornament. You are an entry. You stand in my shadow because your life has drifted into the margins of my accounts. That is the only reason we are speaking.”
She took another bite from the skewer. Spoke around no word. She swallowed first. Discipline in everything.
“You have strength. That is obvious. You have endured a volcanic childhood and come out with all your limbs. You have appetite. You have the stubborn stupidity required to keep eye contact with something that could pulp you with one poorly considered sigh.” A faint curl touched her lip. It died before it became a smile. “These qualities make you marginally interesting. They do not make you valuable.”
She lifted the mace. Let the Necro Ice within it flare. Pale light crawled along the spikes. Cold breath rolled out and braided with the heat of the market.
“Understand this. Everyone here will serve death. Priests. Merchants. Beggars. Guards. Most will serve as numbers in a column. Anonymous flesh. Bone stacked in neat rows. A few will serve as instruments. Tools that shape events. Tools we sharpen. Tools we do not waste.”
The weapon touched the rim of her shield with a clear chime. The sound carved a brief silence out of the noise.
Her next words came with iron certainty.
“What can you do for death. For the ledger where your name will sit whether you please it or not. What service can you render that would make your tally worth the effort of writing. Do not tell me what you like. Do not tell me what you hope. Tell me what you do. Tell me what use you can be to a power that has no need of your admiration and no patience for your mistakes.”
She leaned in by a hair’s breadth. Not enough to crowd. Enough to make sure every word reached the volcanic woman and no one else.
“Answer that. Clearly. Succinctly. Convincingly. Do that. You may yet rise from rubble to asset. Fail. You are just another stone. I will step on you. Then I will forget where.”
The frost at their feet thickened. The butcher held his breath and watched the cleaver with the terror of a man who suddenly realized how many bones surrounded him.
Ixqueya studied Naza again. Slowly. As if she weighed a new specimen on a slab. Volcanic hide. Gold seams brightening with each embarrassed pulse. Ash-grey hair that looked familiar with smoke yet not with a comb. Shoulders set by habit into a soldier’s stance. Eyes like two small voids. Hunger in them. Stubbornness behind that.
She wondered if the creature could swim.
If she hurled this compact body into a mountain lake. Would it sink at once. Or skip. Once. Twice. Three times. A good stone deserved a proper throw.
“Enough.”
Her voice cut through the remains of Naza’s speech. Quiet. Absolute.
“First. You will correct your tongue. These are not spider legs.”
One chitinous limb lifted. Segments locked with a dry clatter. The hooked tip hovered a finger’s breadth from Naza’s sternum.
“Spiders scuttle and improvise. They foul their own webs and choke on them. These are ant ligaments. The articulated glory of my brood. My children. They march in lines. They build empires out of carcasses. They do not wobble. They do not hesitate. You will not confuse them with web filth again.”
The limb lowered. The stinger above her hips remained poised. A patient threat sketched above the monumental swell of her rear.
“You announce that I am a Giantess as if this were a revelation.” Her gaze hardened. “I am that. I am also Inquisitor of the Ossuary Dominion. Marchioness of the Winterwake. A walking ledger. When you stand behind such a creature in a queue. With your mouth hanging and your eyes crawling over her armor. You do not engage in observation. You petition for judgment.”
She let that sink. The silence around them obeyed.
“You protest that you meant no harm.” Her tone fell colder. “No one ever does. The world fills its graveyards with people who did not mean anything at all. Intent is air. Consequence is stone. I deal in stone.”
Her eyes swept over Naza from head to boot. The look stripped away flattery. Stripped away awkward courtesy. Left only mass and potential.
“You say staring is how you think. Then you call it a habit you cannot break. That is not thought. That is reflex. Children and animals live by reflex. Adults die by it.”
She shifted the skewer in her hand. Took a slow bite. Chewed. Swallowed. She looked as if she could devour the bazaar itself in the same manner and leave nothing but frost.
“You praise my armor. My bearing. You assure me men would want a wife who looks like this. Men want comfort. Heirs. Someone to soothe what they fear. I am not here for any of that. I am here to decide whether this city and the things in it belong in my Queen’s service. Or in her larders. Flattery does not tilt that scale. It never has.”
Her gaze sharpened to a knife edge.
“You at least stand up straight when corrected. You hold my eyes. You admit ignorance with a degree of honesty. That sets you half a step above the merchants behind you. They lie to themselves first. Then to everyone else. You simply blunder in the open. It is not admirable. It is at least readable.”
She inclined her head the smallest fraction.
“So. Naza. Not rock-grub. You wish to be treated as something more than quarry refuse. Good. Then understand how I see you. You are uncut stone. Heavy. Crude. Possibly useful. Worthless until someone competent shapes you. Dangerous if left to roll wherever chance drops you.”
One ant limb extended again. It tapped the center of Naza’s breastplate. A precise point. Not a blow.
“You claim to enjoy work. That is the first useful thing you have said. The Dominion does not distribute purpose like bread at a temple. We invest. Where we see yield. We commit. Where we see only sentiment. We harvest the body and forget the name.”
She stepped half a pace aside and left the path to the stall open. Every ant limb still reached her. The mace still sat ready at her hand. The shield still loomed behind.
“Buy your meat.” Her tone carried the flat patience of a magistrate. “Eat it. I prefer to judge people after their stomach has stopped shouting at their brain. Then we will speak of work.”
The bazaar began to breathe again in low threads. A few voices rose. None dared to rise far.
She let another breath pass. Then she struck the kernel of the matter.
“You ask whether you should fear the thanks of men who would choose a wife like me.” She shook her head once. Feathers rustled. “You waste your worry. Men can offer gratitude. Jealousy. Worship. None of that alters their place under the frost.”
Her eyes locked on Naza’s.
“If you have any sense you will fear attention like mine instead. Men want a partner to share their bed and their decline. I want return. You are not an ornament. You are an entry. You stand in my shadow because your life has drifted into the margins of my accounts. That is the only reason we are speaking.”
She took another bite from the skewer. Spoke around no word. She swallowed first. Discipline in everything.
“You have strength. That is obvious. You have endured a volcanic childhood and come out with all your limbs. You have appetite. You have the stubborn stupidity required to keep eye contact with something that could pulp you with one poorly considered sigh.” A faint curl touched her lip. It died before it became a smile. “These qualities make you marginally interesting. They do not make you valuable.”
She lifted the mace. Let the Necro Ice within it flare. Pale light crawled along the spikes. Cold breath rolled out and braided with the heat of the market.
“Understand this. Everyone here will serve death. Priests. Merchants. Beggars. Guards. Most will serve as numbers in a column. Anonymous flesh. Bone stacked in neat rows. A few will serve as instruments. Tools that shape events. Tools we sharpen. Tools we do not waste.”
The weapon touched the rim of her shield with a clear chime. The sound carved a brief silence out of the noise.
Her next words came with iron certainty.
“What can you do for death. For the ledger where your name will sit whether you please it or not. What service can you render that would make your tally worth the effort of writing. Do not tell me what you like. Do not tell me what you hope. Tell me what you do. Tell me what use you can be to a power that has no need of your admiration and no patience for your mistakes.”
She leaned in by a hair’s breadth. Not enough to crowd. Enough to make sure every word reached the volcanic woman and no one else.
“Answer that. Clearly. Succinctly. Convincingly. Do that. You may yet rise from rubble to asset. Fail. You are just another stone. I will step on you. Then I will forget where.”
Naza is used to pissing people off; hell, half of the time it's intentional. But this woman, warrior giant with ant legs, and possibly armed with a stinger that is definitely not armed with water.
Naza is clueless, and if she had any embarrassment or self-respect, she would turn and look for another place to eat. But she does not; she cannot turn away because of how terrifying this lady is in front of her. The same lady who has been threatening Naza's life the moment their eyes met.
Naza knows what to expect from people; everyone is predictable. Expect her, even with feeling the cold weight of an appengaged on her chest, she is not afraid. Well, that is a lie. Naza is terrified, but still so interested because of how unpredictable the giant is.
The more the giant speaks, the more Naza finally notices where she keeps going wrong: why, every time she says, the air gets colder, and the stare gets more intense, calculated even.
The lady is also hungry, and Naza is holding her up by speaking nonsense and almost looking like a beggar. She cannot believe she was so blinded by her curiosity that she failed to notice she was not the only one hungry. Naza couldn't care less about the merchants behind her; she no longer sees them as applicable. Liars never make it far. They are always one plot error from ending up in the grave.
Throughout life, Naza had very few encounters that lasted long. Her life was the same as the others around her; there was not much to speak of, no chance of looking for something unattainable.
The giant, while hungry, Naza never witnessed such grace in eating; she must have required help finding love, which is how and why she told Naza how useless men are. Naza already knew men were nothing more than cannon fodder; she had seen them talk a big game before losing an arm or leg or head.
The men here are the same way, and the woman is giving her a fair warning, such kindness and consideration for a mere stranger.
Naza lived in fear; she knew that even now she was being hunted. Fear is her best commander; she knows that her life is never her own, she is not meant for a free life, but she craves it so badly. That she could get a peaceful rest without leaving one eye open, where she could laze around, train when she wants to, and become stronger, not because of simple survival but because she has time.
Time, according to the giant, is something Naza wasted; every second of this interaction is money that needs to be replaced.
“How much time do I owe you?” Naza could tell the moment the question left her mouth that it was stupid, a question with no right or wrong answer.
Time cannot be returned or given back, but everything has value. The giant sees value in Naza, which should make her run away; instead, it draws her closer, closing the gap between herself and the food stall butcher.
Turning her back to something that could kill her by the next exhale, and yet she does, “I may not have the money for all of which you lost, but I can buy another stick of meat.”
That is what Naza believes to be true. She places crystals on the stand, grabs the rest of the meat sticks from the shaky butcher, and eats one whole.
Naza lets out a pleased noise, “By the gods, this is amazing. Thank you, kind sir, for making this amazing stick.” Naza is no longer empty, not full, but enough to answer the real question.
Naza made a quick turn around her cape, flying through the air by the movement, and lifted a stick for the giant. Leaving Naza with two more that she devoured with swiftness.
The clash of sound does not frighten Naza, but she could not help but shiver. The chime was the ending, the giants finally stand, not final words.
The chime showcased true strength that only she could bear, something only the giant can make. Naza loved that sound and wished to hear it again, if she could survive long enough to ask.
“I see death every time I close my eyes, I fear death, and I have prayed many nights for death to come. I speak of no hope. Hope is not something I can depend on, as I can never dream it true. My life has not been my own for decades. I share not for pity, as you are not one to grant. I can fight, as long as my fire is burning, I can fight. I can cause chaos or cause peace. My name holds no power, unlike yours. I never back down from a challenge; I face everything and overcome. That is me.” Naza's mind finally comes to a stop. The words she spoke were all just words. They have no actual value, just simple rambles of a stone that made it far.
Naza lived to tell an impossible tale, which is the meaning behind her words. That is the reason she keeps speaking and can never drop her gaze.
Naza's eyes might feel as empty as her soul, but for once, she felt a spark; she felt alive. Naza wonders if that once-deemed-out golden ring is shining once more.
Naza is clueless, and if she had any embarrassment or self-respect, she would turn and look for another place to eat. But she does not; she cannot turn away because of how terrifying this lady is in front of her. The same lady who has been threatening Naza's life the moment their eyes met.
Naza knows what to expect from people; everyone is predictable. Expect her, even with feeling the cold weight of an appengaged on her chest, she is not afraid. Well, that is a lie. Naza is terrified, but still so interested because of how unpredictable the giant is.
The more the giant speaks, the more Naza finally notices where she keeps going wrong: why, every time she says, the air gets colder, and the stare gets more intense, calculated even.
The lady is also hungry, and Naza is holding her up by speaking nonsense and almost looking like a beggar. She cannot believe she was so blinded by her curiosity that she failed to notice she was not the only one hungry. Naza couldn't care less about the merchants behind her; she no longer sees them as applicable. Liars never make it far. They are always one plot error from ending up in the grave.
Throughout life, Naza had very few encounters that lasted long. Her life was the same as the others around her; there was not much to speak of, no chance of looking for something unattainable.
The giant, while hungry, Naza never witnessed such grace in eating; she must have required help finding love, which is how and why she told Naza how useless men are. Naza already knew men were nothing more than cannon fodder; she had seen them talk a big game before losing an arm or leg or head.
The men here are the same way, and the woman is giving her a fair warning, such kindness and consideration for a mere stranger.
Naza lived in fear; she knew that even now she was being hunted. Fear is her best commander; she knows that her life is never her own, she is not meant for a free life, but she craves it so badly. That she could get a peaceful rest without leaving one eye open, where she could laze around, train when she wants to, and become stronger, not because of simple survival but because she has time.
Time, according to the giant, is something Naza wasted; every second of this interaction is money that needs to be replaced.
“How much time do I owe you?” Naza could tell the moment the question left her mouth that it was stupid, a question with no right or wrong answer.
Time cannot be returned or given back, but everything has value. The giant sees value in Naza, which should make her run away; instead, it draws her closer, closing the gap between herself and the food stall butcher.
Turning her back to something that could kill her by the next exhale, and yet she does, “I may not have the money for all of which you lost, but I can buy another stick of meat.”
That is what Naza believes to be true. She places crystals on the stand, grabs the rest of the meat sticks from the shaky butcher, and eats one whole.
Naza lets out a pleased noise, “By the gods, this is amazing. Thank you, kind sir, for making this amazing stick.” Naza is no longer empty, not full, but enough to answer the real question.
Naza made a quick turn around her cape, flying through the air by the movement, and lifted a stick for the giant. Leaving Naza with two more that she devoured with swiftness.
The clash of sound does not frighten Naza, but she could not help but shiver. The chime was the ending, the giants finally stand, not final words.
The chime showcased true strength that only she could bear, something only the giant can make. Naza loved that sound and wished to hear it again, if she could survive long enough to ask.
“I see death every time I close my eyes, I fear death, and I have prayed many nights for death to come. I speak of no hope. Hope is not something I can depend on, as I can never dream it true. My life has not been my own for decades. I share not for pity, as you are not one to grant. I can fight, as long as my fire is burning, I can fight. I can cause chaos or cause peace. My name holds no power, unlike yours. I never back down from a challenge; I face everything and overcome. That is me.” Naza's mind finally comes to a stop. The words she spoke were all just words. They have no actual value, just simple rambles of a stone that made it far.
Naza lived to tell an impossible tale, which is the meaning behind her words. That is the reason she keeps speaking and can never drop her gaze.
Naza's eyes might feel as empty as her soul, but for once, she felt a spark; she felt alive. Naza wonders if that once-deemed-out golden ring is shining once more.
Ixqueya permitted the final tatters of Naza’s confession to dissolve into the heat like hoarfrost abandoned upon a faithless altar.
The volcanic woman stood before her as an unfinished idol. Basalt wrenched from the earth and left half carved. Grease glossed her mouth. Her throat beat with a visible pulse. Fear wound itself through every tendon like a tremulous hymn. Yet she did not flee. That single refusal to break marked her above the bazaar’s congregation of cowards. By the width of a blade.
Winter gathered at Ixqueya’s feet as if summoned by a silent liturgy. Rime thickened along the flagstones in a widening aureole. A pallid halo that crept outward in patient coronation. The butcher held himself rigid. His eyes had the emptied look of a layman who had just realized his stall had always been an altar and that the officiant had finally arrived.
Ixqueya accepted the proffered skewer with the calm authority of a high priestess receiving an oblation. Her fingers closed around the wood in a deliberate rite. One ant limb adjusted. Chitin brushed Naza’s knuckles. Polar cold bit into volcanic flesh. Golden seams along the smaller woman’s wrist flared like veins catching starlight upon snow.
She lifted the meat. Bit once. A clean sacramental incision. She chewed. Swallowed. Silence fell into a kneel around them. Only then did she allow sound to live again.
“You learn,” she said. Her voice was a bell in a frozen cloister. “Late. Slowly. Yet not beyond reclamation. You squandered my time. You offer meat as tithe. The ledger is not appeased. It is, however, provoked. You move from pure deficit to an entry that warrants continued reading.”
Her gaze descended from Naza’s crown to her boots. No warmth. Only the glacial audit of a winter deity examining an unvetted supplicant.
“Abandon this theatre of fearlessness,” Ixqueya continued. “You exhale terror. It lifts from you like steam from cooling lava after rain. That does not offend me. Fear is a sacred reagent. Cowards drown in it. Those worth salvaging bridle it. Yoke it. Make it pull the cart.”
She shifted her stance. One hip took her weight. Feathers whispered like snow skimming stone. The monumental swell of her rear drew a fresh scatter of stolen glances. Above it the wasp stinger altered its angle by the breadth of a breath. A sentence poised. Waiting only to choose its subject.
“You asked how much time you owe,” she said. “All of it. Every heartbeat spent in idle drift. Time is not a coin you place back upon the plate. It is marrow once burned to ash. Irrevocable. What you owe now is not restitution. You owe amendment. You owe the next instant used with more reverence than the last.”
Her eyes narrowed. Rime crept higher along the flagstones.
“You have achieved the smallest of amendments. Barely. You ceased your lamentations. You ate. You permitted action to interrupt self pity. It is a frail miracle. Yet it qualifies as miracle.”
Naza’s talk of death lay between them. Night visions. Fear. Prayer uttered into volcanic dark. A life leased to unseen masters. Spoken earlier like scree collapsing down a ravine. Now the words rested at Ixqueya’s feet as an accidental offering.
She stepped in until the world constricted to basalt skin and glacial eyes. Volcanic heat pressed against the winter that bled from her in steady liturgy. The air between them burned and froze within the same breath.
“I have heard your prayers, Naza of Pyrecliff.” Her tone shifted into something liturgical. A verdict disguised as scripture. “Not because the heavens stooped to courier your whimpering. Because every night you continued to breathe carved another stroke upon a ledger that belongs to my Queen. That ledger is our psalter. I read it. I annotate it. I enact it.”
Her irises caught the merciless desert light. Ice pale. Each ring of gold within them brightened like a captive sun buried beneath permafrost.
“Be still,” she added. “Today is not your harvest. You are too young for a final inscription. Too untested. And, irksomely, too aesthetically compelling to erase while the question of your yield remains unresolved.”
The compliment descended with the weight of doctrine. Not indulgence.
“When you die you will discover a quieter truth than your nightmares permit,” Ixqueya said. “Death is the only church that has never perjured itself. From the greatest noble who mistakes his ancestry for sacrament. To the poorest husk who dissolves in a gutter. From the strongest champion who imagines the firmament pivots upon his blade. To the most ruined invalid who cannot lift his own bowl. From the most erudite theologian suffocating beneath his own commentaries. To the dullest sand ape who miscounts his fingers. All receive the same white silence. The same immaculate erasure. The same absence of appeal.”
She allowed that litany to settle like falling snow over bodies that did not yet know they were already promised to the frost.
“Death is fair,” she said. “Exact. Incorruptible by incense or flattery. That is why I serve it. It will not lie to me. It will not lie to you. It will simply close its hand.”
Her gaze traversed Naza again. Slower. More incisive. The scrutiny of a high priestess assessing whether an object might one day become a relic or should be ground back into dust.
“You can fight while your fire burns. Adequate. So can any tavern brute when the wine is strong enough. You can rouse chaos or tamp it down. Trivial. Alehouses manage as much by opening and closing their doors. Your name carries no weight. It is air. Names ascend to litany only when deeds stain them. You brag that you never back down. That is not strength. That is idolatry of your own spine. The wise step aside when the avalanche falls. They let it crush someone whose bones are cheaper.”
She began to circle. Not withdrawal. Orbit. A slow winter procession around a disputed altar. The ant limbs flowed with her. Joints articulating in austere precision. A marching reliquary. Talons stayed sheathed. The restraint did not feel merciful. It felt calculated.
“You are correct about most men,” she murmured. “They are fodder with bloated liturgies. Mouths that prophesy victories they will not survive. Limbs that fracture on schedule. On rare occasions we uncover one who can think beyond himself. Those we canonize as useful. The rest return to soil and feed worthier roots.”
The corner of her mouth rose by the width of a blade.
“I do not lack for bodies in my bed. Or in my crusades,” she said. “What I lack is competence. I have no interest in being worshiped. I have infinite interest in being obeyed and well served.” she lied.
She drew a small pouch from her belt. Dark leather. Oiled by years of use. She loosened the thong. Pale crystal spilled into her palm. Then cascaded onto the butcher’s plank. The heap glittered like hoarded ice beneath torchlight. A blasphemous wealth beside hanging carcasses.
“More skewers,” she said. “For her.”
Her chin tipped a fraction toward Naza. A consecrating acknowledgement.
“Until she is full. Or until I revoke the indulgence. If you cheat her I will know. If your nerves fail you I will be displeased. You are not imaginative enough to endure that displeasure.”
The butcher bowed until his spine protested. His hands flew with the terror of a man who suspected the next cut might be his own.
Ixqueya faced Naza once more. Those polar eyes regarded her with the same concentrated focus she reserved for scripture and cadavers. Calculation glinted there. A thin bright blade of amusement. The embryonic spark of predatory curiosity.
“Do not mistake this for mercy,” she said. “I do not feed strays. I cultivate instruments. You eat because starving stone is an unreliable reliquary. Not because your hunger disturbs my devotions.”
She stepped closer. Close enough that Naza’s volcanic heat pressed full against the winter halo that seeped from Necro Ice and chitin. Sweat budded on the smaller woman’s skin. Frost claimed each bead at its edges like a first anointment.
“You live hunted,” Ixqueya said. “Good. Creatures that have never felt a predator’s breath upon their neck rot like unturned offerings. You yearn for rest. You will not taste it. Not while your life is tithed to others. Not while you remain an anonymous stone in the scree. If you desire a life that answers to you alone. You must become too valuable to discard. Too perilous to mishandle. Too costly to forget.”
Her gaze locked upon Naza’s eyes. Black wells limned by a faint aureole of gold. The inner ring shone brighter now. As if some buried sun had rolled once in its sleep.
“You asked what you can do for death,” she said. “Your answer thus far is austere and honest. You have not shattered. You have not run. You stood beneath my shadow while I stripped you to scaffolding and habit. You remain upright. That does not make you a saint. It does however earn you a winter trial.”
She lifted one bare finger. Cold as altar stone. Uncompromising as canon. She pressed it to the center of Naza’s brow. Frost flowered beneath her touch in a thin, immaculate corona. The contact felt like a seal forced into unwilling wax.
“You will present yourself at first light tomorrow,” Ixqueya said. “Outer east gate. The arch with the long fissure. The guards who practice devotional blindness. Arrive late and you proclaim yourself useless. Do not arrive and you proclaim yourself irrelevant. Come on time and we will learn whether your rhetoric of fire and fear conceals any ore that can withstand the cold.”
She withdrew her hand. The air at the point of contact felt flayed. Newly claimed by another jurisdiction.
“Until then you will eat,” she said. “My designs require more than sinew and obstinacy. It would offend me deeply if you collapsed from starvation before you had the decency to disappoint me properly.”
The cruelty gleamed with a vein of dark mirth. A narrow, dangerous invitation.
She turned. Hips moved in a glacial cadence that resembled procession more than seduction. Feathers flared in a pale halo. Settled. The mace rose. Necro Ice kissed the rim of her shield with a clear, crystalline chime. The sound cut through the bazaar like liturgy through tavern noise. It lodged in Naza’s bones and rang there as if the marrow itself had been conscripted.
Ixqueya did not look back.
“I have heard your prayers, Naza.” Her voice carried with effortless clarity over the revived susurrus of trade and gossip. “When death takes you it will own you. Begin earning your place in its congregation while you still possess teeth for meat. And legs that remember how to march beneath the snow.” She sashayed off, her bubbly rear jiggling slightly as she would wait for her come morning. Give the thing time to think on what it wants to die. Become buried in the snowdrifts of mediocrity, or scale the wintry slopes of excellence.
The volcanic woman stood before her as an unfinished idol. Basalt wrenched from the earth and left half carved. Grease glossed her mouth. Her throat beat with a visible pulse. Fear wound itself through every tendon like a tremulous hymn. Yet she did not flee. That single refusal to break marked her above the bazaar’s congregation of cowards. By the width of a blade.
Winter gathered at Ixqueya’s feet as if summoned by a silent liturgy. Rime thickened along the flagstones in a widening aureole. A pallid halo that crept outward in patient coronation. The butcher held himself rigid. His eyes had the emptied look of a layman who had just realized his stall had always been an altar and that the officiant had finally arrived.
Ixqueya accepted the proffered skewer with the calm authority of a high priestess receiving an oblation. Her fingers closed around the wood in a deliberate rite. One ant limb adjusted. Chitin brushed Naza’s knuckles. Polar cold bit into volcanic flesh. Golden seams along the smaller woman’s wrist flared like veins catching starlight upon snow.
She lifted the meat. Bit once. A clean sacramental incision. She chewed. Swallowed. Silence fell into a kneel around them. Only then did she allow sound to live again.
“You learn,” she said. Her voice was a bell in a frozen cloister. “Late. Slowly. Yet not beyond reclamation. You squandered my time. You offer meat as tithe. The ledger is not appeased. It is, however, provoked. You move from pure deficit to an entry that warrants continued reading.”
Her gaze descended from Naza’s crown to her boots. No warmth. Only the glacial audit of a winter deity examining an unvetted supplicant.
“Abandon this theatre of fearlessness,” Ixqueya continued. “You exhale terror. It lifts from you like steam from cooling lava after rain. That does not offend me. Fear is a sacred reagent. Cowards drown in it. Those worth salvaging bridle it. Yoke it. Make it pull the cart.”
She shifted her stance. One hip took her weight. Feathers whispered like snow skimming stone. The monumental swell of her rear drew a fresh scatter of stolen glances. Above it the wasp stinger altered its angle by the breadth of a breath. A sentence poised. Waiting only to choose its subject.
“You asked how much time you owe,” she said. “All of it. Every heartbeat spent in idle drift. Time is not a coin you place back upon the plate. It is marrow once burned to ash. Irrevocable. What you owe now is not restitution. You owe amendment. You owe the next instant used with more reverence than the last.”
Her eyes narrowed. Rime crept higher along the flagstones.
“You have achieved the smallest of amendments. Barely. You ceased your lamentations. You ate. You permitted action to interrupt self pity. It is a frail miracle. Yet it qualifies as miracle.”
Naza’s talk of death lay between them. Night visions. Fear. Prayer uttered into volcanic dark. A life leased to unseen masters. Spoken earlier like scree collapsing down a ravine. Now the words rested at Ixqueya’s feet as an accidental offering.
She stepped in until the world constricted to basalt skin and glacial eyes. Volcanic heat pressed against the winter that bled from her in steady liturgy. The air between them burned and froze within the same breath.
“I have heard your prayers, Naza of Pyrecliff.” Her tone shifted into something liturgical. A verdict disguised as scripture. “Not because the heavens stooped to courier your whimpering. Because every night you continued to breathe carved another stroke upon a ledger that belongs to my Queen. That ledger is our psalter. I read it. I annotate it. I enact it.”
Her irises caught the merciless desert light. Ice pale. Each ring of gold within them brightened like a captive sun buried beneath permafrost.
“Be still,” she added. “Today is not your harvest. You are too young for a final inscription. Too untested. And, irksomely, too aesthetically compelling to erase while the question of your yield remains unresolved.”
The compliment descended with the weight of doctrine. Not indulgence.
“When you die you will discover a quieter truth than your nightmares permit,” Ixqueya said. “Death is the only church that has never perjured itself. From the greatest noble who mistakes his ancestry for sacrament. To the poorest husk who dissolves in a gutter. From the strongest champion who imagines the firmament pivots upon his blade. To the most ruined invalid who cannot lift his own bowl. From the most erudite theologian suffocating beneath his own commentaries. To the dullest sand ape who miscounts his fingers. All receive the same white silence. The same immaculate erasure. The same absence of appeal.”
She allowed that litany to settle like falling snow over bodies that did not yet know they were already promised to the frost.
“Death is fair,” she said. “Exact. Incorruptible by incense or flattery. That is why I serve it. It will not lie to me. It will not lie to you. It will simply close its hand.”
Her gaze traversed Naza again. Slower. More incisive. The scrutiny of a high priestess assessing whether an object might one day become a relic or should be ground back into dust.
“You can fight while your fire burns. Adequate. So can any tavern brute when the wine is strong enough. You can rouse chaos or tamp it down. Trivial. Alehouses manage as much by opening and closing their doors. Your name carries no weight. It is air. Names ascend to litany only when deeds stain them. You brag that you never back down. That is not strength. That is idolatry of your own spine. The wise step aside when the avalanche falls. They let it crush someone whose bones are cheaper.”
She began to circle. Not withdrawal. Orbit. A slow winter procession around a disputed altar. The ant limbs flowed with her. Joints articulating in austere precision. A marching reliquary. Talons stayed sheathed. The restraint did not feel merciful. It felt calculated.
“You are correct about most men,” she murmured. “They are fodder with bloated liturgies. Mouths that prophesy victories they will not survive. Limbs that fracture on schedule. On rare occasions we uncover one who can think beyond himself. Those we canonize as useful. The rest return to soil and feed worthier roots.”
The corner of her mouth rose by the width of a blade.
“I do not lack for bodies in my bed. Or in my crusades,” she said. “What I lack is competence. I have no interest in being worshiped. I have infinite interest in being obeyed and well served.” she lied.
She drew a small pouch from her belt. Dark leather. Oiled by years of use. She loosened the thong. Pale crystal spilled into her palm. Then cascaded onto the butcher’s plank. The heap glittered like hoarded ice beneath torchlight. A blasphemous wealth beside hanging carcasses.
“More skewers,” she said. “For her.”
Her chin tipped a fraction toward Naza. A consecrating acknowledgement.
“Until she is full. Or until I revoke the indulgence. If you cheat her I will know. If your nerves fail you I will be displeased. You are not imaginative enough to endure that displeasure.”
The butcher bowed until his spine protested. His hands flew with the terror of a man who suspected the next cut might be his own.
Ixqueya faced Naza once more. Those polar eyes regarded her with the same concentrated focus she reserved for scripture and cadavers. Calculation glinted there. A thin bright blade of amusement. The embryonic spark of predatory curiosity.
“Do not mistake this for mercy,” she said. “I do not feed strays. I cultivate instruments. You eat because starving stone is an unreliable reliquary. Not because your hunger disturbs my devotions.”
She stepped closer. Close enough that Naza’s volcanic heat pressed full against the winter halo that seeped from Necro Ice and chitin. Sweat budded on the smaller woman’s skin. Frost claimed each bead at its edges like a first anointment.
“You live hunted,” Ixqueya said. “Good. Creatures that have never felt a predator’s breath upon their neck rot like unturned offerings. You yearn for rest. You will not taste it. Not while your life is tithed to others. Not while you remain an anonymous stone in the scree. If you desire a life that answers to you alone. You must become too valuable to discard. Too perilous to mishandle. Too costly to forget.”
Her gaze locked upon Naza’s eyes. Black wells limned by a faint aureole of gold. The inner ring shone brighter now. As if some buried sun had rolled once in its sleep.
“You asked what you can do for death,” she said. “Your answer thus far is austere and honest. You have not shattered. You have not run. You stood beneath my shadow while I stripped you to scaffolding and habit. You remain upright. That does not make you a saint. It does however earn you a winter trial.”
She lifted one bare finger. Cold as altar stone. Uncompromising as canon. She pressed it to the center of Naza’s brow. Frost flowered beneath her touch in a thin, immaculate corona. The contact felt like a seal forced into unwilling wax.
“You will present yourself at first light tomorrow,” Ixqueya said. “Outer east gate. The arch with the long fissure. The guards who practice devotional blindness. Arrive late and you proclaim yourself useless. Do not arrive and you proclaim yourself irrelevant. Come on time and we will learn whether your rhetoric of fire and fear conceals any ore that can withstand the cold.”
She withdrew her hand. The air at the point of contact felt flayed. Newly claimed by another jurisdiction.
“Until then you will eat,” she said. “My designs require more than sinew and obstinacy. It would offend me deeply if you collapsed from starvation before you had the decency to disappoint me properly.”
The cruelty gleamed with a vein of dark mirth. A narrow, dangerous invitation.
She turned. Hips moved in a glacial cadence that resembled procession more than seduction. Feathers flared in a pale halo. Settled. The mace rose. Necro Ice kissed the rim of her shield with a clear, crystalline chime. The sound cut through the bazaar like liturgy through tavern noise. It lodged in Naza’s bones and rang there as if the marrow itself had been conscripted.
Ixqueya did not look back.
“I have heard your prayers, Naza.” Her voice carried with effortless clarity over the revived susurrus of trade and gossip. “When death takes you it will own you. Begin earning your place in its congregation while you still possess teeth for meat. And legs that remember how to march beneath the snow.” She sashayed off, her bubbly rear jiggling slightly as she would wait for her come morning. Give the thing time to think on what it wants to die. Become buried in the snowdrifts of mediocrity, or scale the wintry slopes of excellence.
Death listened. That one statement stirred something inside Naza that had been dry for a long time. Naza's arm slowly dropped to rest. On her chest, clutching the material like it was her sole support.
She felt like she just sold her soul or signed a deal with literal death. Naza feels like she is finally dreaming, reaching a level of delusion she has only heard of.
Naza knows she is awake, feeling the lingering chill slowly melting away. Feeling the phantom weight of the giant fingers, Naza cannot believe how her day turned out; she also can't believe the amount of food she now has access to.
The promise of tomorrow, something she felt was just going to be a lazy day. A day only filled with trying to find work and a new purpose turned into a great deal of adventure.
She watched as the giant walked away, the ground turning blue before going back to yellow “What a dangerous woman.” Naza said lowly before turning around facing the butcher once more.
“Apologies for the trouble I cost,” She said, lacking any real warmth, sounding more like Naza was reading a script than a genuine apology “I will take my food as the women requested and I will leave you to shit in peace.”
Naza leaned forward closing distance so only the butcher can hear “I do not have much time to waste, and my hunger is continuing to climb; lets not waste our time on any childish play,” she turned her gaze to where the man's other hand was rummaging “I take my food is still being made with the same quality, I cannot disappoint her remember?”
The man quickly moved his hand back to the wooden board moving with more haste than moments before and in a flash dozens of skewers appeared and Naza grabbed them all and walked away.
When Naza finished eating the food and finally felt full, a feeling she never thought would exist. She now ponders her next moves and realizes several things at once. Naza does not have a place to rest her head for the night and needs to start locating one before night fully conquers the sky, second she will need to rise from slumber extra early to map out the way to the eastern gate.
This causes her to freeze. And look around for some type of map or a building to climb on. Naza could technically fall asleep anywhere but for once she wishes to lay in comfort. She needs to also find something close to the eastern side.
Naza found a building that is easy to climb and appears sturdy enough to not crack under her, as long she keeps her not super grand.
She makes her way up the roof, the sky slowly becoming a dark orange, sunlight is almost gone “where is this arch,” Naza mumbled she spins around in place before stopping “oh. I need to sleep badly.” She found the archway she is indeed rather close to the location so now all Naza needs is somewhere to sleep.
Naza needs a good rest for the day ahead of her, but for this night Naza chooses a roof. Beds are a luxury for tomorrow after a hard day.
She felt like she just sold her soul or signed a deal with literal death. Naza feels like she is finally dreaming, reaching a level of delusion she has only heard of.
Naza knows she is awake, feeling the lingering chill slowly melting away. Feeling the phantom weight of the giant fingers, Naza cannot believe how her day turned out; she also can't believe the amount of food she now has access to.
The promise of tomorrow, something she felt was just going to be a lazy day. A day only filled with trying to find work and a new purpose turned into a great deal of adventure.
She watched as the giant walked away, the ground turning blue before going back to yellow “What a dangerous woman.” Naza said lowly before turning around facing the butcher once more.
“Apologies for the trouble I cost,” She said, lacking any real warmth, sounding more like Naza was reading a script than a genuine apology “I will take my food as the women requested and I will leave you to shit in peace.”
Naza leaned forward closing distance so only the butcher can hear “I do not have much time to waste, and my hunger is continuing to climb; lets not waste our time on any childish play,” she turned her gaze to where the man's other hand was rummaging “I take my food is still being made with the same quality, I cannot disappoint her remember?”
The man quickly moved his hand back to the wooden board moving with more haste than moments before and in a flash dozens of skewers appeared and Naza grabbed them all and walked away.
When Naza finished eating the food and finally felt full, a feeling she never thought would exist. She now ponders her next moves and realizes several things at once. Naza does not have a place to rest her head for the night and needs to start locating one before night fully conquers the sky, second she will need to rise from slumber extra early to map out the way to the eastern gate.
This causes her to freeze. And look around for some type of map or a building to climb on. Naza could technically fall asleep anywhere but for once she wishes to lay in comfort. She needs to also find something close to the eastern side.
Naza found a building that is easy to climb and appears sturdy enough to not crack under her, as long she keeps her not super grand.
She makes her way up the roof, the sky slowly becoming a dark orange, sunlight is almost gone “where is this arch,” Naza mumbled she spins around in place before stopping “oh. I need to sleep badly.” She found the archway she is indeed rather close to the location so now all Naza needs is somewhere to sleep.
Naza needs a good rest for the day ahead of her, but for this night Naza chooses a roof. Beds are a luxury for tomorrow after a hard day.
Death did indeed listened.
The realization struck Naza first. It did not strike Ixqueya until the echo of the woman’s words reached her spine like a faint chime beneath the bazaar’s roar. Death listened. A small and terrified declaration. Yet it carried the correct shape. A crude icon carved from poor stone. True in outline if not yet in detail.
Ixqueya did not turn at once. She allowed the moment to ripen. Frost radiated from her heels in a pale corona. Sandstone slabs bloomed with transient rime. Each breath from the crowd smoked for a heartbeat. Then the desert devoured the miracle and pretended it had never happened.
Only then did she let herself pivot.
Neck first. Then shoulders. The rest of her followed with the deliberation of an altar turning to face a new congregation. The ant limbs framed the motion. Their lacquered segments flexed in a slow catechism. The brood thorax arched above the monumental swell of her rear. Black chitin. Pale sigils. Wasp-tail stinger poised like a final punctuation mark over the cathedral curve of flesh and armor.
If the volcanic woman still looked. She received a full liturgical view. The flared hips. The dense, towering buttocks that moved with contained seismic promise. Feathered fringe sweeping their upper slopes. The wasp abdomen riding above them like a crowned reliquary. A queen’s thorax. Beautiful. Venomous. Consecrated to punishment.
Ixqueya let her gaze rest on Naza one final time.
The rock-born stood with her hand pressed to the fabric over her chest. Fingers clenched in a white-knuckled knot. As if she suspected her heart might fall out if she did not hold it in. Fear lit her eyes. So did something sharper. A newborn, blasphemous hope.
“Do not debase the moment by calling it a dream,” Ixqueya said. Her voice cut clean through the lingering hush. “Dreams are cheap. This is a covenant. You spoke. Winter answered. That is all.”
A faint shimmer of hoarfrost climbed Naza’s boots. Then broke.
“If you wake,” the Marchioness added. “Eat. Pray. Arrive. In that order. The dead who serve late are of limited use.”
She did not wait for reply. She turned fully.
Hips rolled in a glacial sway. Not coquettish. Inevitable. Each step sent a controlled ripple through her frame. The monumental buttocks shifted in slow counterpoint. The feathered panels at her belt parted and closed. A rhythm like banners caught in a sanctified gale. Above them the wasp thorax swayed with the composure of a crowned relic. The stinger traced an idle arc. A promise of future sentence.
Then the crowd swallowed the view.
The bazaar closed behind her like noisy water over a stone. Drums found their pulse again. Flutes clawed back toward ecstasy. Merchants shouted prices at the indifferent sky. Priests resumed their glittering circuits. Incense to the Lord of Light rose in greasy coils. It clung to canvas and sweat. The whole thoroughfare stank of roasted flesh and half-believed mercy.
Ixqueya moved through it as a contrary liturgy.
Where she passed, heat faltered. Not enough to freeze blood. Enough to remind bodies of their eventual stillness. Breath thickened. Skin prickled. The riot of colors along the tents dulled for an instant, as if some invisible frost had skimmed their surfaces. The Emerald City with all its clamorous devotions bowed in microscopic increments. Knees did not bend. Souls did.
This place, she thought, resembled a temple whose god had never learned restraint. Sun hammered every roof. Gold glared from domes. Priests sang of fire that purified. Yet the alleys overflowed with rot. The poor starved within walking distance of storerooms swollen with grain. Corpses vanished without record. Bones failed to reach proper crypts. The city tithed to its luminous deity in coin and animal fat. It did not tithe its dead in any coherent fashion.
That insulted her more than blasphemy.
Blasphemy at least acknowledged the sacred. Neglect denied that death had its own sacral order. Its own immaculate accounting.
She turned from the main artery into narrower veins. The air changed. Noise thinned. Light flattened. Shouts became murmurs. Piety gave way to ordinary sins. Dice. Cheap spirits. Hands traded favors in shadowed doorways while icons of the Lord of Light watched from soot-black niches. Their gilding flaked like dead skin.
The ledger arranged itself again in her thoughts. Columns of deficit and surplus. Names without graves. Graves without names. Untallied souls. Unclaimed bones. An entire metropolis that treated mortality as a regrettable accident rather than a sacred resource. Somewhere in this hive. A blockage in the invisible channels that should carry the dead from flesh to script.
A derelict tithe.
That was why she had called Sukegei.
The Shaitan offended her aesthetics. Vulgar. Indelicate. A troglodyte who crawled through dens of lust and vice with the enthusiasm of a carrion beast. Yet he had a gift. He understood appetite. Theirs. His own. He knew which brothels hid knives behind silk. Which temples laundered coin under the altar. Which merchants weighed flesh and profit on the same scale.
He knew where rot gathered. She knew what to do once it was exposed.
The street narrowed. The buildings leaned inward. A mushroom dome overshadowed an alley that smelled of opium smoke and fermented fruit. There. At its bend. A lantern hung by a rusted chain. Shaped like a swollen pomegranate. Painted in obscene reds. It pulsed softly in the dark like a diseased heart.
The brothel.
A fitting cesspit for a man of Sukegei’s sensibilities. A small hellmouth where heat was squandered on transient pantomimes of worship.
Ixqueya paused just short of the threshold. The air that seeped from within clung to the skin like warm breath inside a confessional. Perfume fought with sweat. Incense tried to smother the smell of bodily fatigue and never quite succeeded. Laughter rose and fell. A false litany. Empty of anything but want.
Then she stepped inside.
Heat struck her first. Thick. Damp. The interior glowed in shades of red wine and old blood. Curtains drooped like exhausted tongues. Cushions sprawled across low platforms. Flesh glimmered in the lamplight. Painted mouths. Kohl-smudged eyes. Jewelry that glittered like ersatz stars in a ceiling of smoked beams.
Conversations faltered as she entered. They always did. Here the effect was almost devotional.
Drums stuttered. A lute string squealed out of tune. Words died half formed. Courtesans straightened by instinct. Patrons stopped mid-grope. The entire room froze like a congregation that had suddenly realized the deity they mocked in their songs had walked through the nave.
Winter arrived.
The temperature dropped with the quiet inevitability of falling snow. Sweat cooled on bare shoulders. Breath fogged near her. A crystal rind assembled itself along the lip of a forgotten wine cup. The nearest candles developed a faint bloom of ice at their bases. Wax thickened. Flames shrank.
Ixqueya did not apologize to the room. Frost never apologized to harvest.
A madam in layered silks approached. Jewelry shivered at her wrists. Her smile trembled, yet remained in place. Devotion mixed badly with fear.
“Exalted lady.” The woman’s voice shook but did not break. “Had we known such a presence would grace us. We would have prepared a more fitting reception. Perhaps you would allow us to provide a dancer. A—”
Ixqueya raised her hand. Silence cut through the offer.
“You will provide a chair,” she said. “A table. Wine that has not been adulterated. Enough space that no one stumbles into my shadow by accident.”
Her tone carried the quiet authority of a creed.
“That is all.”
The madam swallowed. Bowed low enough to scuff her forehead on her own necklaces. Snapped sharp commands. The brothel rearranged itself by reflex. Cushions vanished from one corner. A dark wooden chair appeared. Then a low table. A bottle in cut glass. Two cups. The air itself seemed to retreat from that patch of floor.
Ixqueya crossed the room like a walking solstice.
She settled into the chair. The wood did not dare creak. Her mass became its new law. The ant limbs unfurled around her. Not sprawled. Arrayed. Like a circle of black reliquaries guarding an altar. The brood thorax angled higher behind her hips. Stinger held in poised repose. A halo of articulated malice.
She leaned her shield against the wall. Placed her mace beside it. Even at rest the weapon leaked faint vapor. Necro Ice whispered in blue-white curls from its facets. The air around its head sparkled with minute crystals.
The corner of the brothel transformed at once.
Elsewhere bodies writhed and bargained. Heat pooled. Laughter sloshed against the walls. In her quadrant. Quiet. A clutch of eyes watching from cautious distance. Whispered speculation. The occasional hurried sign of the Lord of Light traced over a breastbone. As if that deity could intervene where winter had taken root.
Ixqueya poured her own wine.
The liquid shivered as it left the bottle. A thin film of frost raced along the glass where her fingers held it. She watched the deep red swirl. For a moment it resembled arterial blood spilled on snow. Then light from a low lamp turned it the color of dying embers.
She drank. The taste was acceptable. Warmth crawled down her throat. Met the cold nested in her belly. They struggled. The cold won.
In the space behind her eyes, the ledger opened.
Emerald City. Population swollen like an overfed tick. Births climbing. Deaths poorly curated. Graves conceived as an afterthought rather than a civic rite. A handful of formal cemeteries near the great temples. Far more anonymous pits outside the walls. Unlicensed charnel houses. Rumors of bodies that never reached either.
Souls lost in the cracks between faiths.
The Lord of Light claimed supremacy over life and fire. His priests gathered coin and spectacle. They burned offerings and proclaimed that flame purified all it touched. Yet what of ash. What of bone. What of the long quiet afterward.
There.
There the Lord’s writ frayed. There Xandera’s dominion began.
Ixqueya traced her thumb along the lip of the cup. Ice followed. A thin clear line.
She thought of Naza again. Of the way the woman had clutched her own chest as if afraid her heart might be seized as collateral on some unseen bargain. Of the way her black eyes had brightened when Ixqueya simply acknowledged that death had ears. That it kept books. That it listened not in mercy. In accuracy.
Small revelations shook small lives. Winter understood patience. That stone would crack in time. Perhaps in service. Perhaps under judgment. Either way the ledger had a new name.
The brothel door opened somewhere beyond the red curtains. Male laughter poured in. Rough. Self-satisfied. The smell of outside dust and sweat followed. Staff shifted. Courtesans straightened. Somewhere a drum tried to accommodate a new rhythm.
Sukegei.
She could feel the change in the room without seeing him. A new current of vulgar energy. The subtle realignment of those who dealt in pleasure and secrecy. The anticipatory hush of a den that knew one of its favored predators had returned.
Ixqueya did not turn to look. Not yet.
Her gaze remained on the wine. On the slow spiral of frost around the glass. On the reflection of her own eyes staring back from the dark surface. Ice blue. Gold threaded through each iris like wires of captive sunlight.
There would be work ahead. Questions to pry from throats. Books to audit. Morgues to inspect. Graves to open where graves were missing. Somewhere in this city a new heresy festered. Something stole the dead from their rightful economy. Something hoarded souls or squandered them without submitting them to any ledger. That affronted her more deeply than any insult hurled at her person.
She had not come to the Emerald City as an envoy. She had come as a frostbite that would not leave until the infection beneath the skin had been exposed.
For now. She waited in a house of spent heat.
Bodies laughed. Cried. Faked ecstasy. Counted coins. Prayed in small, terrified bursts that no one heard. Red silk flowed. Painted mouths clung to wine cups. Men whispered promises that would evaporate by dawn. Women and a few men smiled as if belief could be rented in hourly intervals.
Ixqueya sat amidst it all. An idol of hoarfrost in a crimson nave.
Beyond the walls the sky deepened from copper to bruise. The first cold stars pierced the fabric of dusk. Soon the Necromancer Moon would rise. Its sickly halo would turn the alabaster towers into pale teeth biting at a diseased horizon. Its light would seep into alleys and courtyards. It would mark which buildings held honest corpses. Which held lies.
She lifted the cup once more.
“Winter has a longer memory than fire,” she murmured. The words were almost a prayer. Almost a warning. “Flame devours. Snow records. When the thaw comes. Only one of them still knows what truly happened.”
She drank. Set the empty cup aside.
The brothel seethed and glittered around her. A fever-dream of mortal warmth trying to deny its own brevity. She could already hear Sukegei’s footsteps drawing nearer. Ungracious. Essential.
Ixqueya folded her hands upon her knee. Her fingers were bare. Pale. Strong enough to break stone. Strong enough to close a book on a city if the numbers proved irredeemable.
Somewhere under an open sky a volcanic woman searched for a rooftop to serve as a temporary bed. Somewhere under that same sky a cracked arch waited in the eastern wall. Somewhere in the invisible center of things a ledger lay open, pages blank for now, ready for new names.
Winter held its breath.
Ixqueya did not. She simply waited. The cold heart of a foreign faith. Seated in a house of spent fire. Ready to begin the work of reconciliation between the living’s lies and the dead’s due.
The realization struck Naza first. It did not strike Ixqueya until the echo of the woman’s words reached her spine like a faint chime beneath the bazaar’s roar. Death listened. A small and terrified declaration. Yet it carried the correct shape. A crude icon carved from poor stone. True in outline if not yet in detail.
Ixqueya did not turn at once. She allowed the moment to ripen. Frost radiated from her heels in a pale corona. Sandstone slabs bloomed with transient rime. Each breath from the crowd smoked for a heartbeat. Then the desert devoured the miracle and pretended it had never happened.
Only then did she let herself pivot.
Neck first. Then shoulders. The rest of her followed with the deliberation of an altar turning to face a new congregation. The ant limbs framed the motion. Their lacquered segments flexed in a slow catechism. The brood thorax arched above the monumental swell of her rear. Black chitin. Pale sigils. Wasp-tail stinger poised like a final punctuation mark over the cathedral curve of flesh and armor.
If the volcanic woman still looked. She received a full liturgical view. The flared hips. The dense, towering buttocks that moved with contained seismic promise. Feathered fringe sweeping their upper slopes. The wasp abdomen riding above them like a crowned reliquary. A queen’s thorax. Beautiful. Venomous. Consecrated to punishment.
Ixqueya let her gaze rest on Naza one final time.
The rock-born stood with her hand pressed to the fabric over her chest. Fingers clenched in a white-knuckled knot. As if she suspected her heart might fall out if she did not hold it in. Fear lit her eyes. So did something sharper. A newborn, blasphemous hope.
“Do not debase the moment by calling it a dream,” Ixqueya said. Her voice cut clean through the lingering hush. “Dreams are cheap. This is a covenant. You spoke. Winter answered. That is all.”
A faint shimmer of hoarfrost climbed Naza’s boots. Then broke.
“If you wake,” the Marchioness added. “Eat. Pray. Arrive. In that order. The dead who serve late are of limited use.”
She did not wait for reply. She turned fully.
Hips rolled in a glacial sway. Not coquettish. Inevitable. Each step sent a controlled ripple through her frame. The monumental buttocks shifted in slow counterpoint. The feathered panels at her belt parted and closed. A rhythm like banners caught in a sanctified gale. Above them the wasp thorax swayed with the composure of a crowned relic. The stinger traced an idle arc. A promise of future sentence.
Then the crowd swallowed the view.
The bazaar closed behind her like noisy water over a stone. Drums found their pulse again. Flutes clawed back toward ecstasy. Merchants shouted prices at the indifferent sky. Priests resumed their glittering circuits. Incense to the Lord of Light rose in greasy coils. It clung to canvas and sweat. The whole thoroughfare stank of roasted flesh and half-believed mercy.
Ixqueya moved through it as a contrary liturgy.
Where she passed, heat faltered. Not enough to freeze blood. Enough to remind bodies of their eventual stillness. Breath thickened. Skin prickled. The riot of colors along the tents dulled for an instant, as if some invisible frost had skimmed their surfaces. The Emerald City with all its clamorous devotions bowed in microscopic increments. Knees did not bend. Souls did.
This place, she thought, resembled a temple whose god had never learned restraint. Sun hammered every roof. Gold glared from domes. Priests sang of fire that purified. Yet the alleys overflowed with rot. The poor starved within walking distance of storerooms swollen with grain. Corpses vanished without record. Bones failed to reach proper crypts. The city tithed to its luminous deity in coin and animal fat. It did not tithe its dead in any coherent fashion.
That insulted her more than blasphemy.
Blasphemy at least acknowledged the sacred. Neglect denied that death had its own sacral order. Its own immaculate accounting.
She turned from the main artery into narrower veins. The air changed. Noise thinned. Light flattened. Shouts became murmurs. Piety gave way to ordinary sins. Dice. Cheap spirits. Hands traded favors in shadowed doorways while icons of the Lord of Light watched from soot-black niches. Their gilding flaked like dead skin.
The ledger arranged itself again in her thoughts. Columns of deficit and surplus. Names without graves. Graves without names. Untallied souls. Unclaimed bones. An entire metropolis that treated mortality as a regrettable accident rather than a sacred resource. Somewhere in this hive. A blockage in the invisible channels that should carry the dead from flesh to script.
A derelict tithe.
That was why she had called Sukegei.
The Shaitan offended her aesthetics. Vulgar. Indelicate. A troglodyte who crawled through dens of lust and vice with the enthusiasm of a carrion beast. Yet he had a gift. He understood appetite. Theirs. His own. He knew which brothels hid knives behind silk. Which temples laundered coin under the altar. Which merchants weighed flesh and profit on the same scale.
He knew where rot gathered. She knew what to do once it was exposed.
The street narrowed. The buildings leaned inward. A mushroom dome overshadowed an alley that smelled of opium smoke and fermented fruit. There. At its bend. A lantern hung by a rusted chain. Shaped like a swollen pomegranate. Painted in obscene reds. It pulsed softly in the dark like a diseased heart.
The brothel.
A fitting cesspit for a man of Sukegei’s sensibilities. A small hellmouth where heat was squandered on transient pantomimes of worship.
Ixqueya paused just short of the threshold. The air that seeped from within clung to the skin like warm breath inside a confessional. Perfume fought with sweat. Incense tried to smother the smell of bodily fatigue and never quite succeeded. Laughter rose and fell. A false litany. Empty of anything but want.
Then she stepped inside.
Heat struck her first. Thick. Damp. The interior glowed in shades of red wine and old blood. Curtains drooped like exhausted tongues. Cushions sprawled across low platforms. Flesh glimmered in the lamplight. Painted mouths. Kohl-smudged eyes. Jewelry that glittered like ersatz stars in a ceiling of smoked beams.
Conversations faltered as she entered. They always did. Here the effect was almost devotional.
Drums stuttered. A lute string squealed out of tune. Words died half formed. Courtesans straightened by instinct. Patrons stopped mid-grope. The entire room froze like a congregation that had suddenly realized the deity they mocked in their songs had walked through the nave.
Winter arrived.
The temperature dropped with the quiet inevitability of falling snow. Sweat cooled on bare shoulders. Breath fogged near her. A crystal rind assembled itself along the lip of a forgotten wine cup. The nearest candles developed a faint bloom of ice at their bases. Wax thickened. Flames shrank.
Ixqueya did not apologize to the room. Frost never apologized to harvest.
A madam in layered silks approached. Jewelry shivered at her wrists. Her smile trembled, yet remained in place. Devotion mixed badly with fear.
“Exalted lady.” The woman’s voice shook but did not break. “Had we known such a presence would grace us. We would have prepared a more fitting reception. Perhaps you would allow us to provide a dancer. A—”
Ixqueya raised her hand. Silence cut through the offer.
“You will provide a chair,” she said. “A table. Wine that has not been adulterated. Enough space that no one stumbles into my shadow by accident.”
Her tone carried the quiet authority of a creed.
“That is all.”
The madam swallowed. Bowed low enough to scuff her forehead on her own necklaces. Snapped sharp commands. The brothel rearranged itself by reflex. Cushions vanished from one corner. A dark wooden chair appeared. Then a low table. A bottle in cut glass. Two cups. The air itself seemed to retreat from that patch of floor.
Ixqueya crossed the room like a walking solstice.
She settled into the chair. The wood did not dare creak. Her mass became its new law. The ant limbs unfurled around her. Not sprawled. Arrayed. Like a circle of black reliquaries guarding an altar. The brood thorax angled higher behind her hips. Stinger held in poised repose. A halo of articulated malice.
She leaned her shield against the wall. Placed her mace beside it. Even at rest the weapon leaked faint vapor. Necro Ice whispered in blue-white curls from its facets. The air around its head sparkled with minute crystals.
The corner of the brothel transformed at once.
Elsewhere bodies writhed and bargained. Heat pooled. Laughter sloshed against the walls. In her quadrant. Quiet. A clutch of eyes watching from cautious distance. Whispered speculation. The occasional hurried sign of the Lord of Light traced over a breastbone. As if that deity could intervene where winter had taken root.
Ixqueya poured her own wine.
The liquid shivered as it left the bottle. A thin film of frost raced along the glass where her fingers held it. She watched the deep red swirl. For a moment it resembled arterial blood spilled on snow. Then light from a low lamp turned it the color of dying embers.
She drank. The taste was acceptable. Warmth crawled down her throat. Met the cold nested in her belly. They struggled. The cold won.
In the space behind her eyes, the ledger opened.
Emerald City. Population swollen like an overfed tick. Births climbing. Deaths poorly curated. Graves conceived as an afterthought rather than a civic rite. A handful of formal cemeteries near the great temples. Far more anonymous pits outside the walls. Unlicensed charnel houses. Rumors of bodies that never reached either.
Souls lost in the cracks between faiths.
The Lord of Light claimed supremacy over life and fire. His priests gathered coin and spectacle. They burned offerings and proclaimed that flame purified all it touched. Yet what of ash. What of bone. What of the long quiet afterward.
There.
There the Lord’s writ frayed. There Xandera’s dominion began.
Ixqueya traced her thumb along the lip of the cup. Ice followed. A thin clear line.
She thought of Naza again. Of the way the woman had clutched her own chest as if afraid her heart might be seized as collateral on some unseen bargain. Of the way her black eyes had brightened when Ixqueya simply acknowledged that death had ears. That it kept books. That it listened not in mercy. In accuracy.
Small revelations shook small lives. Winter understood patience. That stone would crack in time. Perhaps in service. Perhaps under judgment. Either way the ledger had a new name.
The brothel door opened somewhere beyond the red curtains. Male laughter poured in. Rough. Self-satisfied. The smell of outside dust and sweat followed. Staff shifted. Courtesans straightened. Somewhere a drum tried to accommodate a new rhythm.
Sukegei.
She could feel the change in the room without seeing him. A new current of vulgar energy. The subtle realignment of those who dealt in pleasure and secrecy. The anticipatory hush of a den that knew one of its favored predators had returned.
Ixqueya did not turn to look. Not yet.
Her gaze remained on the wine. On the slow spiral of frost around the glass. On the reflection of her own eyes staring back from the dark surface. Ice blue. Gold threaded through each iris like wires of captive sunlight.
There would be work ahead. Questions to pry from throats. Books to audit. Morgues to inspect. Graves to open where graves were missing. Somewhere in this city a new heresy festered. Something stole the dead from their rightful economy. Something hoarded souls or squandered them without submitting them to any ledger. That affronted her more deeply than any insult hurled at her person.
She had not come to the Emerald City as an envoy. She had come as a frostbite that would not leave until the infection beneath the skin had been exposed.
For now. She waited in a house of spent heat.
Bodies laughed. Cried. Faked ecstasy. Counted coins. Prayed in small, terrified bursts that no one heard. Red silk flowed. Painted mouths clung to wine cups. Men whispered promises that would evaporate by dawn. Women and a few men smiled as if belief could be rented in hourly intervals.
Ixqueya sat amidst it all. An idol of hoarfrost in a crimson nave.
Beyond the walls the sky deepened from copper to bruise. The first cold stars pierced the fabric of dusk. Soon the Necromancer Moon would rise. Its sickly halo would turn the alabaster towers into pale teeth biting at a diseased horizon. Its light would seep into alleys and courtyards. It would mark which buildings held honest corpses. Which held lies.
She lifted the cup once more.
“Winter has a longer memory than fire,” she murmured. The words were almost a prayer. Almost a warning. “Flame devours. Snow records. When the thaw comes. Only one of them still knows what truly happened.”
She drank. Set the empty cup aside.
The brothel seethed and glittered around her. A fever-dream of mortal warmth trying to deny its own brevity. She could already hear Sukegei’s footsteps drawing nearer. Ungracious. Essential.
Ixqueya folded her hands upon her knee. Her fingers were bare. Pale. Strong enough to break stone. Strong enough to close a book on a city if the numbers proved irredeemable.
Somewhere under an open sky a volcanic woman searched for a rooftop to serve as a temporary bed. Somewhere under that same sky a cracked arch waited in the eastern wall. Somewhere in the invisible center of things a ledger lay open, pages blank for now, ready for new names.
Winter held its breath.
Ixqueya did not. She simply waited. The cold heart of a foreign faith. Seated in a house of spent fire. Ready to begin the work of reconciliation between the living’s lies and the dead’s due.
Waking up never felt that, sleeping through an entire night has never happened before.
Is this what It feels like to be fully awake? Being able to be fully aware of everything everywhere all at once. Naza understands why people fall in love with sleep.
Naza finally got a taste of something she could never fully grasp. Waking up not gasping for breath or immediately having to punch someone in the face.
Naza went to sleep arms crossed over her chest makes it easier to prevent getting stabbed and to prevent her core from being exposed.
The sandstone roof was the best she could’ve asked for, much better than sharp rocks.
Naza rises up half way bringing her legs up so she can cradle them close. She can see the sun slowly coming up, which means she has to go.
A cold giant is waiting for her. A bathroom is also waiting for Naza, as she needs to clean herself up and make use of clean water.
Naza jumps down from the roof as a way to get her body up a moving. And by the way the ground shook after was a good sign, “today is going to be hell.” Naza said to herself cracking her neck before starting her pace towards down the golden brick road.
It did not take long for Naza to hear the sounds of water dripping, and luckily it was in the back of an alley.
Naza quickly walked towards the facet wasting little time.
She turned it on quickly, throwing water on her face. Only for it to be just droplets falling on her, “once I’m done with training instantly setting my self on fire.” The water did little to clean Naza only making her more irritated.
Naza deems herself clean enough before pulling her shorts back up she took a quick piss. Which almost created a fire if Naza did not leave the water running to wash her hands after.
“Time to get to the ice giant.” Naza mumbled before walking back out the alley and straight to the east gate.
As she walked closer she spot the giant. Naza is once again amazed by her beauty and how she holds herself. Even with the meeting being early, Naza could not see any signs of fatigue.
The giant is standing tall, the stinger that was at attention from their first encounter now looks to be at rest but Naza can see the slight tense like it has its own mind.
Naza can see the guards not even hiding the fact that they are staring. Weapons are no longer standing at attention but at ease, necks twisted so far that even a thief could snap their necks.
Naza once again felt small, but less like a rock that is waiting to be kicked. This time, she felt small in a way she never felt before, she can’t say that the gaze brings discomfort.
Naza could not spend a lot of time figuring it out as she is now within arms length and the giant was speaking.
A lot stood out to Naza like she never once did ask for her name. That she is being ripped open and exposed to the sky by just simple observation.
And last something she thought could remain hidden for longer.
“Owe is a word and something I cannot say defined my life so far,” Naza starts and for once she could not look the giant in the eye but instead looks past her watching the sun rise up for the first time in her life “I was sold, I was a mere product and nothing more. I escaped the inescapable, did things I don’t regret because regret won’t do damn thing. And if I’m lucky they could just kill my.. birthers.” Naza tries not to smile at that thought or show the deep hatred she harbors. But she can feel her skin tingling, can feel the flames glowing brighter.
Naza took a deep breath trying to control the flames “if I’m unlucky, they’ll come for me,” This time she doesn’t hide the grin, the grin that she only used during fights when her opponent thought they were going to win. It was a murderous glee, it stretches wide and untamed. Her eyes start to glow the ring glowing like a fresh new golden bar, but her eyes remain voids. “I hope they do. Submission was credited but they don’t control my strings no more.”
Naza snaps her gaze back to the giant “you may hold my strings but I will fight them myself, you need not worry.”
Naza knew her choice was final. Knowing what she is choosing, her life in the hands of another.
Her choice was made the moment the giant was walking away, she was going to follow her no matter what; a constant thorn in the woman side.
Naza cooled herself down, smile leaving her face, golden ring still there but not as bright it lingers, hidden but not eased.
Naza takes a step back to get one last look of the giant face before going behind her, standing in the giant shadow; by her heels, “that is all. I used the bathroom. My attention is fully yours.”
Is this what It feels like to be fully awake? Being able to be fully aware of everything everywhere all at once. Naza understands why people fall in love with sleep.
Naza finally got a taste of something she could never fully grasp. Waking up not gasping for breath or immediately having to punch someone in the face.
Naza went to sleep arms crossed over her chest makes it easier to prevent getting stabbed and to prevent her core from being exposed.
The sandstone roof was the best she could’ve asked for, much better than sharp rocks.
Naza rises up half way bringing her legs up so she can cradle them close. She can see the sun slowly coming up, which means she has to go.
A cold giant is waiting for her. A bathroom is also waiting for Naza, as she needs to clean herself up and make use of clean water.
Naza jumps down from the roof as a way to get her body up a moving. And by the way the ground shook after was a good sign, “today is going to be hell.” Naza said to herself cracking her neck before starting her pace towards down the golden brick road.
It did not take long for Naza to hear the sounds of water dripping, and luckily it was in the back of an alley.
Naza quickly walked towards the facet wasting little time.
She turned it on quickly, throwing water on her face. Only for it to be just droplets falling on her, “once I’m done with training instantly setting my self on fire.” The water did little to clean Naza only making her more irritated.
Naza deems herself clean enough before pulling her shorts back up she took a quick piss. Which almost created a fire if Naza did not leave the water running to wash her hands after.
“Time to get to the ice giant.” Naza mumbled before walking back out the alley and straight to the east gate.
As she walked closer she spot the giant. Naza is once again amazed by her beauty and how she holds herself. Even with the meeting being early, Naza could not see any signs of fatigue.
The giant is standing tall, the stinger that was at attention from their first encounter now looks to be at rest but Naza can see the slight tense like it has its own mind.
Naza can see the guards not even hiding the fact that they are staring. Weapons are no longer standing at attention but at ease, necks twisted so far that even a thief could snap their necks.
Naza once again felt small, but less like a rock that is waiting to be kicked. This time, she felt small in a way she never felt before, she can’t say that the gaze brings discomfort.
Naza could not spend a lot of time figuring it out as she is now within arms length and the giant was speaking.
A lot stood out to Naza like she never once did ask for her name. That she is being ripped open and exposed to the sky by just simple observation.
And last something she thought could remain hidden for longer.
“Owe is a word and something I cannot say defined my life so far,” Naza starts and for once she could not look the giant in the eye but instead looks past her watching the sun rise up for the first time in her life “I was sold, I was a mere product and nothing more. I escaped the inescapable, did things I don’t regret because regret won’t do damn thing. And if I’m lucky they could just kill my.. birthers.” Naza tries not to smile at that thought or show the deep hatred she harbors. But she can feel her skin tingling, can feel the flames glowing brighter.
Naza took a deep breath trying to control the flames “if I’m unlucky, they’ll come for me,” This time she doesn’t hide the grin, the grin that she only used during fights when her opponent thought they were going to win. It was a murderous glee, it stretches wide and untamed. Her eyes start to glow the ring glowing like a fresh new golden bar, but her eyes remain voids. “I hope they do. Submission was credited but they don’t control my strings no more.”
Naza snaps her gaze back to the giant “you may hold my strings but I will fight them myself, you need not worry.”
Naza knew her choice was final. Knowing what she is choosing, her life in the hands of another.
Her choice was made the moment the giant was walking away, she was going to follow her no matter what; a constant thorn in the woman side.
Naza cooled herself down, smile leaving her face, golden ring still there but not as bright it lingers, hidden but not eased.
Naza takes a step back to get one last look of the giant face before going behind her, standing in the giant shadow; by her heels, “that is all. I used the bathroom. My attention is fully yours.”
Ixqueya absorbed Naza’s history the way permafrost swallows a lava flow. Without flinch. Without flourish. The words came raw and unsanded. Sold like livestock. Hunted like a stray hound. Submission traded for survival. Loyalty boiled away and recondensed as hatred. Crude material. Yet beneath the coarseness she heard something that was not merely complaint. A primitive assertion of self. A fractured creed.
The cold beneath them thickened from ornament into edict. What had been a delicate frost-bloom resolved into a solid pall of ice. A flawless brumal disc pressed over the throat of the gate. The sand whitened to the color of old teeth. Guard boots creaked along the perimeter. Spear-shafts eased by heartbeats. The men beneath the alabaster arch stared with the furtive awe of acolytes who had blundered into the wrong ceremony and dared not move in case the new god decided to notice.
“You offend me less than you did yesterday,” Ixqueya said at last. Her voice had the calm, merciless cadence of a judgment already copied onto vellum and archived. “Previously you gawped at me like a stunned mule dragged into a sanctuary. Mouth open. Mind absent. Today you manage to stare. To speak. To remain upright. Maintain that velocity and you may eventually master the radical discipline of thinking before your tongue disgraces you. For a stone-creature, that borders on promise.”
Her gaze ranged down Naza’s form with unhurried exactitude. The dense, compact musculature. The obsidian skin streaked with incandescent seams of gold like fault lines over molten core. The way her stance braced unconsciously into the frost as if expecting a blow and refusing to flee from it. Ixqueya watched all that. Then allowed the faintest inflection of dark amusement to touch her mouth.
“And stop wrenching your eyes away every time they climb my frame,” she went on. “Admiration is not treason. It is tribute. I have carried more winters on these bones than your old masters have coherent thoughts. A little contemplated reverence is good for my spirits.”
The smile deepened. Slow. Predatory. Almost languid. “If fixing your attention on the sway of my hips steadies your nerves, keep it there. If contemplating the breadth of my backside helps you remember your relative scale in creation, indulge the exercise. The priests in this sand-buried cult gorge themselves on incense and genuflection. I prefer labor done correctly. Orders obeyed immediately. And the occasional candid stare from eyes that know exactly what they are worshiping. All three gratify in different registers.”
She inspected Naza again. More intimately this time. As a mortician might study a corpse before deciding which bones to keep pristine for viewing and which to hide under silk. The carved shoulders. The lattice of old scars just visible where cloth shifted. The restless fire that made the golden seams throb brighter whenever she spoke of pursuit or vengeance. “For quarried matter,” Ixqueya remarked, “you nearly verge on striking. Most rock is ballast. Anonymous. Fit only to be stepped on and forgotten. You at least recall that the earth’s marrow can burn. That fractures can hold light as well as weakness. That spares me the insult of walking beside something the world would not notice if it shattered.”
Her eyes cooled. Curiosity hardened into interrogation. “You speak of being sold,” she said. “Not as melodrama. As accounting. That interests me. I want the structure. Not the sighs.”
She did not elevate her tone. She honed it. “Were you stood on an auction stone while men with sweaty hands pried your jaws open. Checked your joints as if you were draft stock. Bids drifting up under temple frescoes. Were you cast into fighting pits so the city’s cowards could wager on how much of another man’s property you could tear off before you fell. Or were you purchased for private desecration. Locked in some perfumed oubliette so a bored patrician could confuse ownership with devotion. Perhaps you have worn every collar in turn. Coin is greedy. It rarely lets go after the first indulgence.”
She let the questions sink into Naza’s silence like iron reliquaries lowered into dark water. “You insist they no longer jerk your strings,” she continued. “Adequate. A blade jerked by two hands never cuts cleanly. I have no use for instruments that twitch whenever yesterday clears its throat.”
She shifted her weight and the air remembered, viscerally, that she was built foremost to kill. One hip settled into an opulent stance that made the armor over her monumental curves look both like plating and like invitation. The great swell of her backside sat under feather and bronze with the measured stillness of a loaded catapult. Behind her, one of the ant limbs uncoiled. Plate slid upon plate with obscene grace. The talon descended until it hovered near Naza’s shoulder. Not touching. Close enough that the skin could feel intent.
“Attend,” she said. The single word fell sharp and toneless. “I do not cultivate slaves. Slaves obey out of reflex and terror. They necrose inward and call it loyalty. I will not spend my years scraping the rot of other men’s training out of my tools. I prefer something more austere. I want implements that see what they are. See what I am. And still elect to kneel. That choice has value. Everything else is noise before the grave.”
Her smile twisted into something more dangerous. Half benediction, half threat. Entirely sure of itself. “If, in the practice of that choice, you occasionally discover that the ground is very persuasive. If your knees buckle of their own accord. If you decide to lay your face into the imprint of my heel and murmur your gratitude into the dust until your voice frays. I am not so ascetic as to find the spectacle dull.” Her eyes glittered with a boreal hunger that had nothing to do with hunger for meat. “Consider such theatrics voluntary. Decorative. Intensely enjoyable. But not compulsory.”
A low sound spilled from her throat then. Too rich to be called a chuckle. Too controlled to be a growl. It had the timbre of distant pack-ice shearing from a cliff and collapsing into black water. The guards under the cracked arch stiffened. A few swallowed. Some primitive part of them understood that they were listening to mirth from something that did not need them to be alive to enjoy itself.
Ixqueya extended the brood-limb in full toward Naza. The chitin flowered open with sinuous articulation. Segments rotated. Locked. Displayed. At its terminus, the pale hooked claw spread into a crescent, immaculate and predatory. A sacramental instrument that had not yet decided whether it meant to bless or to vivisect.
“Come,” she said. Not loud. Not gentle. Simply inevitable. “Closer. If you intend to inhabit my shade, you will do so at a distance where I can reach you without moving my feet. Tools that wander go missing. Stones left unwatched are kicked by imbeciles. My patience for imbeciles is already exhausted by this city.”
She waited until basalt boots scraped over the ice. Until Naza stepped fully into the circle of intense cold. Until the compact heat of her volcanic flesh collided with Ixqueya’s hiemal aura and turned the air between them into a fine veil of steam. At this proximity every detail sharpened. The way the bronze cuirass cupped and elevated the colossal weight of her chest, turning softness into sacral architecture. The faint traceries of rime feathering where metal bit into bronze skin. The measured rise and fall of that vast bosom. Not labored. Not hurried. Each breath a deliberate choice rather than an unconscious need. The scent of her. Clean frost. Old incense burned over bone. A ghost of iron and something darker, like snow on a distant battlefield.
The claw rose. Almost idle. It found the underside of Naza’s chin with indecent delicacy. Pressure no greater than the weight of a coin. Enough to command. Enough to remind the nerves exactly how little force would be required to open her throat. Ixqueya tilted the smaller woman’s face up with the same care a high priestess might give an ancient reliquary.
“Gaze,” Ixqueya murmured. The word slid over Naza’s skin like cold silk. “Lift it. You wished to discourse on strings. Look at the hand that offers new terms.”
When Naza’s eyes rose. When those void-dark irises, now ringed in incandescent gold, collided fully with the Princess’s glacial stare, the world between them constricted. Twin suns burned in the cerulean vault overhead. Two more, smaller and infinitely more dangerous, burned in Ixqueya’s skull.
“You are finished as merchandise,” Ixqueya said. The severity in her tone took on a strange gravity. Almost intimate. “The account that once catalogued you as chattel is closed. Whatever vermin scrawled their signatures over your back now own nothing but their own delusion.” Her thumb adjusted the angle of Naza’s jaw by a hair’s breadth. Perfectionist even here. “What stands in front of me is a speculation. I risk time. Coin. Effort. And the mild amusement your existence provides. In exchange I demand the possibility that you become something death will not merely pass over, but covet.”
Her gaze slipped briefly down the column of Naza’s throat. Paused where a pulse jumped. Traced the hard plane of her collarbones. Drifted lower, as if assessing what labor the body could deliver and what it might look like once marked by future service. Then her eyes returned to Naza’s with unhurried possession.
“When the old commands come crawling back,” she continued, “when the memory of their hands tries to puppeteer your spine, you will remember this. You did not slink from one kennel into another. You walked out of the abattoir and into a sanctum. I am not the painted idol who receives flowers and forgives. I am the officiant who decides whether you serve as chalice. As sword. Or as the mortar that holds the crypt together.” The corner of her mouth moved. Not kind. Very sure. “All three roles are holy. Only one permits you to keep your voice for a little longer.”
Her voice thickened. A darker music coiled through it, where winter and something like hunger braided together. “If you satisfy me, you will discover that obedience can intoxicate more thoroughly than wine or victory. There is a very pure ecstasy in feeling your body employed with precision. Every bruise earned in correct sequence. Every ache arriving on schedule. Every command received and carried out as if your marrow had been waiting for it. You may find that surrender, when placed in proper custody, resembles liberation more than your wandering ever did.” She let that hang like incense smoke. “If you fail me, you will learn that interment can be equally sublime. There is austere dignity in becoming structure. In knowing that your bones bear corridors where better servants will pass. Either outcome is preferable to the pointless fugue you have mistaken for a life.”
She withdrew the claw at last. The absence of contact felt almost like a blow. The limb folded back into its dreadful halo. The sense of being pinned relaxed by a hair, but not more.
Ixqueya pivoted toward the road that speared out from the gate across the dunes like a pale tendon. Her entire frame moved with a predatory languor that seemed at odds with the armor’s mass. Hips rolled in a devastating rhythm. Each step sent a measured quake through the monumental swell of her rear. Feathers fanned and resettled over that obscene architecture like devotional banners caught in a private wind. Above, the wasp thorax mirrored the motion, segmented abdomen gliding with obscene composure. The stinger described a lazy sigil in the air. Not quite a blessing. Not quite a threat. A promise awaiting grammar.
“We have concluded the preamble,” she said. She advanced, and winter advanced with her. The frost-disc slid under each stride like a pale nimbus. Every collision of heel and sand birthed a brief crystalline rosette that shattered as the next footfall fell. “Walk.”
She did not check whether Naza obeyed. The expectation itself weighed more than any glance. “You may speak while we move,” she allowed. “Begin with the first name that bought you. Shape it carefully. Let the dunes hear.” Her eyes remained forward. Her voice sharpened again. “Names are not harmless sounds. They are petitions. Curses. Unfinished prayers. They orbit the same unseen altar until someone answers them properly. This world is smaller than frightened men pretend. Debts are instinctive creatures. They wriggle back toward the hands that created them. And when the season of reckoning arrives…”
Her smile returned. Thin. Exquisite. Cruel in the way winter is cruel: by being exactly what it promised to be. “Winter takes a rather indecent pleasure in balancing such accounts,” she said. “With luck, you will prove a very sharp instrument in my hand when the time comes.”
The cold beneath them thickened from ornament into edict. What had been a delicate frost-bloom resolved into a solid pall of ice. A flawless brumal disc pressed over the throat of the gate. The sand whitened to the color of old teeth. Guard boots creaked along the perimeter. Spear-shafts eased by heartbeats. The men beneath the alabaster arch stared with the furtive awe of acolytes who had blundered into the wrong ceremony and dared not move in case the new god decided to notice.
“You offend me less than you did yesterday,” Ixqueya said at last. Her voice had the calm, merciless cadence of a judgment already copied onto vellum and archived. “Previously you gawped at me like a stunned mule dragged into a sanctuary. Mouth open. Mind absent. Today you manage to stare. To speak. To remain upright. Maintain that velocity and you may eventually master the radical discipline of thinking before your tongue disgraces you. For a stone-creature, that borders on promise.”
Her gaze ranged down Naza’s form with unhurried exactitude. The dense, compact musculature. The obsidian skin streaked with incandescent seams of gold like fault lines over molten core. The way her stance braced unconsciously into the frost as if expecting a blow and refusing to flee from it. Ixqueya watched all that. Then allowed the faintest inflection of dark amusement to touch her mouth.
“And stop wrenching your eyes away every time they climb my frame,” she went on. “Admiration is not treason. It is tribute. I have carried more winters on these bones than your old masters have coherent thoughts. A little contemplated reverence is good for my spirits.”
The smile deepened. Slow. Predatory. Almost languid. “If fixing your attention on the sway of my hips steadies your nerves, keep it there. If contemplating the breadth of my backside helps you remember your relative scale in creation, indulge the exercise. The priests in this sand-buried cult gorge themselves on incense and genuflection. I prefer labor done correctly. Orders obeyed immediately. And the occasional candid stare from eyes that know exactly what they are worshiping. All three gratify in different registers.”
She inspected Naza again. More intimately this time. As a mortician might study a corpse before deciding which bones to keep pristine for viewing and which to hide under silk. The carved shoulders. The lattice of old scars just visible where cloth shifted. The restless fire that made the golden seams throb brighter whenever she spoke of pursuit or vengeance. “For quarried matter,” Ixqueya remarked, “you nearly verge on striking. Most rock is ballast. Anonymous. Fit only to be stepped on and forgotten. You at least recall that the earth’s marrow can burn. That fractures can hold light as well as weakness. That spares me the insult of walking beside something the world would not notice if it shattered.”
Her eyes cooled. Curiosity hardened into interrogation. “You speak of being sold,” she said. “Not as melodrama. As accounting. That interests me. I want the structure. Not the sighs.”
She did not elevate her tone. She honed it. “Were you stood on an auction stone while men with sweaty hands pried your jaws open. Checked your joints as if you were draft stock. Bids drifting up under temple frescoes. Were you cast into fighting pits so the city’s cowards could wager on how much of another man’s property you could tear off before you fell. Or were you purchased for private desecration. Locked in some perfumed oubliette so a bored patrician could confuse ownership with devotion. Perhaps you have worn every collar in turn. Coin is greedy. It rarely lets go after the first indulgence.”
She let the questions sink into Naza’s silence like iron reliquaries lowered into dark water. “You insist they no longer jerk your strings,” she continued. “Adequate. A blade jerked by two hands never cuts cleanly. I have no use for instruments that twitch whenever yesterday clears its throat.”
She shifted her weight and the air remembered, viscerally, that she was built foremost to kill. One hip settled into an opulent stance that made the armor over her monumental curves look both like plating and like invitation. The great swell of her backside sat under feather and bronze with the measured stillness of a loaded catapult. Behind her, one of the ant limbs uncoiled. Plate slid upon plate with obscene grace. The talon descended until it hovered near Naza’s shoulder. Not touching. Close enough that the skin could feel intent.
“Attend,” she said. The single word fell sharp and toneless. “I do not cultivate slaves. Slaves obey out of reflex and terror. They necrose inward and call it loyalty. I will not spend my years scraping the rot of other men’s training out of my tools. I prefer something more austere. I want implements that see what they are. See what I am. And still elect to kneel. That choice has value. Everything else is noise before the grave.”
Her smile twisted into something more dangerous. Half benediction, half threat. Entirely sure of itself. “If, in the practice of that choice, you occasionally discover that the ground is very persuasive. If your knees buckle of their own accord. If you decide to lay your face into the imprint of my heel and murmur your gratitude into the dust until your voice frays. I am not so ascetic as to find the spectacle dull.” Her eyes glittered with a boreal hunger that had nothing to do with hunger for meat. “Consider such theatrics voluntary. Decorative. Intensely enjoyable. But not compulsory.”
A low sound spilled from her throat then. Too rich to be called a chuckle. Too controlled to be a growl. It had the timbre of distant pack-ice shearing from a cliff and collapsing into black water. The guards under the cracked arch stiffened. A few swallowed. Some primitive part of them understood that they were listening to mirth from something that did not need them to be alive to enjoy itself.
Ixqueya extended the brood-limb in full toward Naza. The chitin flowered open with sinuous articulation. Segments rotated. Locked. Displayed. At its terminus, the pale hooked claw spread into a crescent, immaculate and predatory. A sacramental instrument that had not yet decided whether it meant to bless or to vivisect.
“Come,” she said. Not loud. Not gentle. Simply inevitable. “Closer. If you intend to inhabit my shade, you will do so at a distance where I can reach you without moving my feet. Tools that wander go missing. Stones left unwatched are kicked by imbeciles. My patience for imbeciles is already exhausted by this city.”
She waited until basalt boots scraped over the ice. Until Naza stepped fully into the circle of intense cold. Until the compact heat of her volcanic flesh collided with Ixqueya’s hiemal aura and turned the air between them into a fine veil of steam. At this proximity every detail sharpened. The way the bronze cuirass cupped and elevated the colossal weight of her chest, turning softness into sacral architecture. The faint traceries of rime feathering where metal bit into bronze skin. The measured rise and fall of that vast bosom. Not labored. Not hurried. Each breath a deliberate choice rather than an unconscious need. The scent of her. Clean frost. Old incense burned over bone. A ghost of iron and something darker, like snow on a distant battlefield.
The claw rose. Almost idle. It found the underside of Naza’s chin with indecent delicacy. Pressure no greater than the weight of a coin. Enough to command. Enough to remind the nerves exactly how little force would be required to open her throat. Ixqueya tilted the smaller woman’s face up with the same care a high priestess might give an ancient reliquary.
“Gaze,” Ixqueya murmured. The word slid over Naza’s skin like cold silk. “Lift it. You wished to discourse on strings. Look at the hand that offers new terms.”
When Naza’s eyes rose. When those void-dark irises, now ringed in incandescent gold, collided fully with the Princess’s glacial stare, the world between them constricted. Twin suns burned in the cerulean vault overhead. Two more, smaller and infinitely more dangerous, burned in Ixqueya’s skull.
“You are finished as merchandise,” Ixqueya said. The severity in her tone took on a strange gravity. Almost intimate. “The account that once catalogued you as chattel is closed. Whatever vermin scrawled their signatures over your back now own nothing but their own delusion.” Her thumb adjusted the angle of Naza’s jaw by a hair’s breadth. Perfectionist even here. “What stands in front of me is a speculation. I risk time. Coin. Effort. And the mild amusement your existence provides. In exchange I demand the possibility that you become something death will not merely pass over, but covet.”
Her gaze slipped briefly down the column of Naza’s throat. Paused where a pulse jumped. Traced the hard plane of her collarbones. Drifted lower, as if assessing what labor the body could deliver and what it might look like once marked by future service. Then her eyes returned to Naza’s with unhurried possession.
“When the old commands come crawling back,” she continued, “when the memory of their hands tries to puppeteer your spine, you will remember this. You did not slink from one kennel into another. You walked out of the abattoir and into a sanctum. I am not the painted idol who receives flowers and forgives. I am the officiant who decides whether you serve as chalice. As sword. Or as the mortar that holds the crypt together.” The corner of her mouth moved. Not kind. Very sure. “All three roles are holy. Only one permits you to keep your voice for a little longer.”
Her voice thickened. A darker music coiled through it, where winter and something like hunger braided together. “If you satisfy me, you will discover that obedience can intoxicate more thoroughly than wine or victory. There is a very pure ecstasy in feeling your body employed with precision. Every bruise earned in correct sequence. Every ache arriving on schedule. Every command received and carried out as if your marrow had been waiting for it. You may find that surrender, when placed in proper custody, resembles liberation more than your wandering ever did.” She let that hang like incense smoke. “If you fail me, you will learn that interment can be equally sublime. There is austere dignity in becoming structure. In knowing that your bones bear corridors where better servants will pass. Either outcome is preferable to the pointless fugue you have mistaken for a life.”
She withdrew the claw at last. The absence of contact felt almost like a blow. The limb folded back into its dreadful halo. The sense of being pinned relaxed by a hair, but not more.
Ixqueya pivoted toward the road that speared out from the gate across the dunes like a pale tendon. Her entire frame moved with a predatory languor that seemed at odds with the armor’s mass. Hips rolled in a devastating rhythm. Each step sent a measured quake through the monumental swell of her rear. Feathers fanned and resettled over that obscene architecture like devotional banners caught in a private wind. Above, the wasp thorax mirrored the motion, segmented abdomen gliding with obscene composure. The stinger described a lazy sigil in the air. Not quite a blessing. Not quite a threat. A promise awaiting grammar.
“We have concluded the preamble,” she said. She advanced, and winter advanced with her. The frost-disc slid under each stride like a pale nimbus. Every collision of heel and sand birthed a brief crystalline rosette that shattered as the next footfall fell. “Walk.”
She did not check whether Naza obeyed. The expectation itself weighed more than any glance. “You may speak while we move,” she allowed. “Begin with the first name that bought you. Shape it carefully. Let the dunes hear.” Her eyes remained forward. Her voice sharpened again. “Names are not harmless sounds. They are petitions. Curses. Unfinished prayers. They orbit the same unseen altar until someone answers them properly. This world is smaller than frightened men pretend. Debts are instinctive creatures. They wriggle back toward the hands that created them. And when the season of reckoning arrives…”
Her smile returned. Thin. Exquisite. Cruel in the way winter is cruel: by being exactly what it promised to be. “Winter takes a rather indecent pleasure in balancing such accounts,” she said. “With luck, you will prove a very sharp instrument in my hand when the time comes.”
This woman is indeed dangerous. The way she speaks, walks and touches. Naza wants to feel the spot where the queen touched.
She speaks as if she knows what Naza has been through, as if the struggles were so simple, yet she understands how it tore Naza apart. Yet, the stares and the lingering stares, the predatory stare, feel like the ice giant wants to tear Naza apart.
The better question is, would Naza let it happen?
A better question will be: will Naza truly be free? Overcome her dark past and make do with the current new life she decided on a whim.
When did the night skies finally seem to create the perfect opportunity for her to escape? Would they even come back to claim her?
Would she finally get the chance to crush their core the way they crushed Nara's sense of self?
In time. The time that she no longer has control over once more, but this time she is not entirely alone.
Yes, Naza is definitely in trouble. But she still follows behind the giant, not because of an order, but simply because she can. And that is what makes this situation different.
“If I do, bow down,” Naza says, following closely behind, “would you pet my head? Well, technically, you could do that now since you are, you know, huge. The amount of ice and sand I would breathe in would be questionable.”
Naza trials off, now getting sidetracked by the physical complication.
Forgetting the point of the initial statement, “Oh!” her voice rising an octave higher “, I remember, what is your name? While giant, ice, and queen are mere titles, a name would be rather fitting.” Naza thinks back on the number of conversations they had, and most responses have been in riddles per giant. The name never once came up.
Naza feels like she sticks out like a sore thumb and has never had a strong tendency to walk away. She also feels like she could never truly lose sight of the giant—especially one with features quite like hers.
“Does the stinger add more weight to your ass?” This is not by any means a critical question or appropriate, “Or does it all just feel the same?” Naza is not used to following so closely behind someone, especially someone with noticeable features.
If she lacked movement control, the way she lacks a filter, Naza would have touched the giant ass. Purely to figure out if it's as squishy as it looks.
Ah, so in some way, the giant is right about Naza's curiosity; usually, it's an action first, think later, but she knows better. Naza, for once, values her life a little and refuses to fight a battle she knows would end in death.
“To also answer your previous question or statement,” Naza begins, recalling a previous statement the giant made, “I was lucky not to be placed on a stage to be stared at and taken off by the highest bidder.” She wouldn’t call what Naza lived through “lucky”, but she still heard of what would have happened, and how Naza should feel blessed to have been saved by a ring master.
She never felt lucky, unless she got the chance to put all the high ends of Pylecliff in the grave or turn them into gravel.
The more they walked into the city Naza notices how open everything appears.
Which is different from her normal views, mainly of the poor, the sunken in cheek bones, and the less amount of people sleeping outside.
“One final thing,” that is a lie but Naza liked the way it sounds, “where are we going?”
She speaks as if she knows what Naza has been through, as if the struggles were so simple, yet she understands how it tore Naza apart. Yet, the stares and the lingering stares, the predatory stare, feel like the ice giant wants to tear Naza apart.
The better question is, would Naza let it happen?
A better question will be: will Naza truly be free? Overcome her dark past and make do with the current new life she decided on a whim.
When did the night skies finally seem to create the perfect opportunity for her to escape? Would they even come back to claim her?
Would she finally get the chance to crush their core the way they crushed Nara's sense of self?
In time. The time that she no longer has control over once more, but this time she is not entirely alone.
Yes, Naza is definitely in trouble. But she still follows behind the giant, not because of an order, but simply because she can. And that is what makes this situation different.
“If I do, bow down,” Naza says, following closely behind, “would you pet my head? Well, technically, you could do that now since you are, you know, huge. The amount of ice and sand I would breathe in would be questionable.”
Naza trials off, now getting sidetracked by the physical complication.
Forgetting the point of the initial statement, “Oh!” her voice rising an octave higher “, I remember, what is your name? While giant, ice, and queen are mere titles, a name would be rather fitting.” Naza thinks back on the number of conversations they had, and most responses have been in riddles per giant. The name never once came up.
Naza feels like she sticks out like a sore thumb and has never had a strong tendency to walk away. She also feels like she could never truly lose sight of the giant—especially one with features quite like hers.
“Does the stinger add more weight to your ass?” This is not by any means a critical question or appropriate, “Or does it all just feel the same?” Naza is not used to following so closely behind someone, especially someone with noticeable features.
If she lacked movement control, the way she lacks a filter, Naza would have touched the giant ass. Purely to figure out if it's as squishy as it looks.
Ah, so in some way, the giant is right about Naza's curiosity; usually, it's an action first, think later, but she knows better. Naza, for once, values her life a little and refuses to fight a battle she knows would end in death.
“To also answer your previous question or statement,” Naza begins, recalling a previous statement the giant made, “I was lucky not to be placed on a stage to be stared at and taken off by the highest bidder.” She wouldn’t call what Naza lived through “lucky”, but she still heard of what would have happened, and how Naza should feel blessed to have been saved by a ring master.
She never felt lucky, unless she got the chance to put all the high ends of Pylecliff in the grave or turn them into gravel.
The more they walked into the city Naza notices how open everything appears.
Which is different from her normal views, mainly of the poor, the sunken in cheek bones, and the less amount of people sleeping outside.
“One final thing,” that is a lie but Naza liked the way it sounds, “where are we going?”
The gate fell behind them like a verdict.
Stone jaws of alabaster and sunstone closed on the Emerald City. Its domes and minarets receded into a mirage. Gilded theology and incense and market din were swallowed by distance. Ahead the desert unrolled in an austere sermon. Rank upon rank of white dunes. Each crest a shroud. Each hollow a shallow grave waiting for a name. The twin suns ascended through a flawless cerulean firmament, two merciless candles burning on an alien altar. Their light poured over sand and armor without mercy. Heat rose in wavering veils. Wind scraped at the skin with dry, prayerless hands.
Ixqueya moved as if the wilderness had been built to receive her.
Each step sank with measured authority into the slope of the dunes. Frost bloomed under her heels. Thin, crystalline halos, here for a heartbeat, then devoured by the furnace breath of the day. Her body cut a dark, immense silhouette against the pallid sea. Bronze cuirass. Plumes of white and teal and cinnabar. The long fall of obsidian hair veined with glacial blue. Below, the architecture of her hips and rear worked beneath the armor with slow, heavy precision. A living synagogue of flesh and plate. Pillars and vaults and buttresses disguised as muscle and fat. The kind of structure that did not invite worship so much as demand it.
Above that sovereign breadth, the brood thorax rode her spine with composed menace. Segmented chitin gleamed like polished onyx in the twin suns. Sigils glimmered faintly along its plates. A consecrated reliquary enthroned on the choir loft of her pelvis. The long stinger rested in elegant readiness. Neither raised nor lowered. Exactly where a knife would wait in a patient hand.
Winter followed her like liturgy. A faint lowering of temperature that clung to her like vestments. The air around her felt cleaner. Thinner. As if some profane warmth had been exorcised from it.
She did not need to look back to feel Naza’s presence. The stone-born’s footfalls came steady behind her. A different rhythm. Heavier. More earth than ice. What drew Ixqueya’s attention was not the sound. It was the gaze. She could feel it. A steady pressure printed along the back of her thighs. The high curve of her buttocks. The smooth swell of armored flesh where feathers framed the abundance rather than hid it. The scrutiny crept upward. Downward. Back again. Like a novice’s first, clumsy attempt at an invocation.
The Marchioness let it continue for several dozen paces. Sand whispered under their boots. Wind hissed over the dune ridges. The sky stretched on in an indifferent blue psalm. All the while that look burrowed into her hindquarters with devotional stubbornness. As if Naza feared the temple might evaporate if she glanced away.
Only then did Ixqueya grant the desert its spectacle.
“We are walking the perimeter of a blasphemy,” she replied. “The visible ledger of this place does not reconcile with the suffering written in its shadows. Wealth accretes in hands that have not earned it. Blood drains from throats that should have lived to see judgment day. Someone has falsified the arithmetic of fate. I am here to audit the error.”
They passed beneath the arch. For a moment the city’s roar hushed behind them. Ahead lay the dunes. An undulating sea of pale sand, each ridge like a shroud thrown over the corpse of some gigantic, buried beast. The twin suns poured their light across that wilderness like molten metal spilling from two rival braziers, turning every crest to blinding white and every hollow to violet shadow. Above, the sky stretched in a vast cerulean dome, cold and sharpened, a cathedral with no walls.
Here the comforts of civilization fell away. No awnings. No incense. Only wind and glare and the faint, crystalline crackle where Ixqueya’s feet turned patches of sand to transient frost.
She walked as if the dunes had been laid out as a processional rug for her alone. Her body moved with the slow, inexorable majesty of a religious procession. Bronze and turquoise armor glinting. Feathers flaring and settling. The immense curve of her hips and rear working beneath the carapace with each stride like the shifting pillars of a walking basilica. Above that, the thorax answered in a serene counter-sway, a reliquary gliding atop the living synagogue of her flesh.
She slowed her gait by the barest degree. Enough to gather her own momentum. Enough to feel the weight of Naza’s attention stack a little higher. Then she turned her head.
The motion unfolded like a rite. Neck first. A slow pivot. Then shoulders. Then the faint torsion of her waist, which set the monumental swell of her rear into a subtle, seismic shift beneath bronze and feathers. The thorax answered in a counter-sway. A chalice correcting its balance upon the altar of her spine. When her face met Naza’s line of sight, the full severity of her painted features and glacial eyes fell upon the stone-born like a sudden opening of sanctuary doors.
Her gaze dipped, deliberately, past Naza’s face. Past the line of her shoulders. Down to the precise longitude of the stare that had been burning between plates and plume. The faintest suggestion of a smile ghosted over Ixqueya’s mouth. Not soft. Not kind. A curved blade laid against the throat of the moment.
“If you look any harder,” she said, voice low and clear in the naked air, “you will carve a pilgrimage route in the space behind me.” Her eyes lingered along the path of Naza’s fixation before returning to her face. “There are more foolish altars a woman could follow into the desert, I will grant you that.” A beat. Then a colder, richer note edged her tone. “That said. If you choose to taste cobblestone and frost in some fit of ecstatic reverence. I will not drag you up. It would be instructive for the street to watch you decide where you belong.”
She let the sentence decay into the silence. The dunes received it without echo.
“My body has been called many things,” she continued, tone conversational in the way a judge is conversational when reciting charges. “An omen. An insult. A bribe from some bored god to keep mortals breeding. In truth it is simpler. It is a synagogue of marrow and ice. Walls of bone. Choir stalls of muscle. A dome of chitin and feather. It exists so that winter and obedience have somewhere to sit.”
Her hips rolled once as she resumed walking, and the effect of that anatomy became painfully apparent again. The great, rounded masses of her posterior shifted with the solemn sway of censers in procession. Heavy. Measured. Hypnotic. Feathered fringe swept their upper slopes like banners in slow motion. Above, the thorax traced an answering arc, stinger cutting a dark line against the pale sand.
“If you choose to pray with your eyes as you walk behind that,” Ixqueya said, “I am hardly going to scold you. It is a more honest liturgy than most of what I have seen in their temples.”
The faint curve at her lips deepened. A shadow of wicked amusement. “I have, from time to time, desired a servant whose hands do not tremble at the thought of my spine. Someone strong enough to work oil into muscle after a campaign. Long strokes. No whining. No nervous giggles. A kind of private sacrament.” Her eyes slid sideways, not quite meeting Naza’s. “If that is the direction your own thoughts keep circling, little stone, there are less productive devotions.”
The line between jest and offer lay razor-thin. She left it that way on purpose.
“You need not blister with embarrassment,” she went on, tone smoothing again, though the undercurrent of amusement remained. “I am still a woman. Whatever lovely blasphemies the hive has bolted to my bones. Adoration is the one form of prayer most mortals understand without instruction. Most of your species live and die without tasting anything more exalted than the knowledge that someone stared at them and did not look away first. I am not so ascetic that I despise that.”
The smile thinned. Hardened. Her eyes cooled another degree.
“But do not confuse my toleration for any symmetrical appetite,” she said. “What walks ahead of you is not some tavern ornament hoping to be chosen. It is a tabernacle that leads lambs to the slaughter. A travelling sanctuary stocked with mandibles and scripture. If the little lecheries you toy with in that skull were ever reciprocated by what shares this body with me, if the brood took your veneration at face value and answered it, you would find the revelation educational. Brief. Unpleasant.”
Above her, the thorax flexed in a small, fluid shiver. Plates caught the hard light like panes of stained glass in a frozen cathedral. The stinger lifted the span of a breath, then settled. It felt less like an insect and more like a knife remembering it had a congregation.
They walked in silence for a few paces more. Sand yielded and sighed beneath them. The wind combed their hair and plumes and cape in alternating gusts. The city shrank behind them to a serrated mirage. The desert unfolded ahead with the blank, terrible sincerity of unmarked parchment.
When Ixqueya spoke again, the sensual edge in her voice tucked itself beneath something colder. The tone of an accountant of souls.
“Listen carefully, my name is Ixqueya,” she said. “You are not my slave. If I wanted another slave I would have bought one inside those walls. They breed them by the cartload and perfume the transaction with hymns. I did not come to this desert to adopt what other men have already broken.” The syllables hung between them like a brand fresh from the brazier.
“You will use my name when you address me,” she continued. “Or my titles when ceremony amuses you. Not ‘giant.’ Not ‘ice.’ Certainly not ‘queen.’ I have no reverence for the language of their sun god. His kings rot in perfumed linen. My honors are written in graveyards and account books. Not on coronation banners.”
They resumed walking, the eastward avenue sloping toward the looming alabaster gate. Naza’s question about the stinger arrived next and Ixqueya let it drift in silence for three full strides. Only the faint twitch at one corner of her painted mouth betrayed that she had heard. Her eyes never left the horizon, yet her attention sat squarely on the basalt presence at her back. “You walk behind me because you chose to. That is precisely why you may be useful. A thing that has already surrendered its will is dull. It bends, but it does not surprise. You, for the moment, still have edges.”
She breathed once, slow and measured, as if counting something other than air.
“If, one day, you decide to kneel,” she went on, voice softening into something far more dangerous, “to lower yourself into the print of my step and remain there. That will be your choice as well. I will not drag you down. I will not command it from you like a trick. I have no interest in a stone that lies flat because it has been kicked too often to remember how to stand.”
Her lips quirked. The closest thing she allowed herself to laughter. The sound that escaped was quiet and sharp, like a icicle breaking under its own weight. A rare and disconcerting noise in that mouth.
“Of course,” she added, “if you do decide to grovel at my heel of your own accord, and in public, I will not pretend I find the sight anything less than gratifying. It would do marvellous things for my vanity, especially at my age.”
Her gaze skimmed Naza in profile. The compact power of her frame. The gold-veined stone of her skin. The ember-bright ring in those otherwise lightless eyes.
“For a pebble,” Ixqueya said, with the air of granting a careful verdict, “you are surprisingly tolerable to look at. I have seen nobles whose faces offended me more than your entire being. Remember that. It is a compliment. I do not give many.”
They crested another dune. The view shifted. The city had shrunk to a pale, jagged smudge behind them. Ahead the desert rolled on in pale, endless psalms. The line where sand met sky looked almost holy. An horizon written in clean geometry rather than human clutter.
Ixqueya slowed. Not to rest. To mark a transition.
The wind rose for a moment, tugging at her feathered headdress and the trailing ends of Naza’s cape. Sand lifted and swirled around their ankles in brief, angry halos. The cold that clung to Ixqueya bit deeper, staking its claim in the arid air.
Without turning fully, she let one of her brood-limbs unfurl.
Black chitin slid forward in a smooth, predatory arc. Segments glided over one another with obscene grace. The limb passed behind her hip, then extended toward Naza, claws opening in a gesture that sat somewhere between command and invitation. Pale talons. Too sharp for comfort. Too steady for doubt.
There was nothing gentle in the tilt of those fingers. No coaxing. Only a femme fatale’s certainty that whatever chose to set its hand there would be marked, and would know it.
She did not look back. Her eyes remained on the endless white ahead. Her voice when it came was softer than the desert deserved.
“Stay close,” she said. “The wilderness is a poor place to test how far you can stray from winter and still find your way back. Ask what you like, when you can keep your breath. Just understand this.” A pause as the wind hissed, then fell away. “The world out here has no walls and no witnesses. Only sun and sand and whatever god listens below them. If you insist on trailing a tabernacle into such a place, you should at least know which altar you mean to kneel at.”
“If you were inquiring whether it makes my backside heavier,” she went on, tone almost bored, “no. My flesh is already an overabundant endowment. The thorax concerns itself with equilibrium, not your concentration. Any effect it has on your thoughts is collateral damage.”
Her eyes glinted. Cruel. Amused. “If, on the other hand, you are asking whether it feels different when it slams down on something. The answer is yes. Very.”
The chitinous hand remained extended. Unswayed by wind or distance. A dark, unwavering line drawn between the synagogue of her body and the small, stubborn flame that had decided to follow it into the wilderness. "Where we go, few souls have witnesses its luster and glory. My divine realm, Winterwake. Or, as those who are mortally inclined call it, purgatory."
Stone jaws of alabaster and sunstone closed on the Emerald City. Its domes and minarets receded into a mirage. Gilded theology and incense and market din were swallowed by distance. Ahead the desert unrolled in an austere sermon. Rank upon rank of white dunes. Each crest a shroud. Each hollow a shallow grave waiting for a name. The twin suns ascended through a flawless cerulean firmament, two merciless candles burning on an alien altar. Their light poured over sand and armor without mercy. Heat rose in wavering veils. Wind scraped at the skin with dry, prayerless hands.
Ixqueya moved as if the wilderness had been built to receive her.
Each step sank with measured authority into the slope of the dunes. Frost bloomed under her heels. Thin, crystalline halos, here for a heartbeat, then devoured by the furnace breath of the day. Her body cut a dark, immense silhouette against the pallid sea. Bronze cuirass. Plumes of white and teal and cinnabar. The long fall of obsidian hair veined with glacial blue. Below, the architecture of her hips and rear worked beneath the armor with slow, heavy precision. A living synagogue of flesh and plate. Pillars and vaults and buttresses disguised as muscle and fat. The kind of structure that did not invite worship so much as demand it.
Above that sovereign breadth, the brood thorax rode her spine with composed menace. Segmented chitin gleamed like polished onyx in the twin suns. Sigils glimmered faintly along its plates. A consecrated reliquary enthroned on the choir loft of her pelvis. The long stinger rested in elegant readiness. Neither raised nor lowered. Exactly where a knife would wait in a patient hand.
Winter followed her like liturgy. A faint lowering of temperature that clung to her like vestments. The air around her felt cleaner. Thinner. As if some profane warmth had been exorcised from it.
She did not need to look back to feel Naza’s presence. The stone-born’s footfalls came steady behind her. A different rhythm. Heavier. More earth than ice. What drew Ixqueya’s attention was not the sound. It was the gaze. She could feel it. A steady pressure printed along the back of her thighs. The high curve of her buttocks. The smooth swell of armored flesh where feathers framed the abundance rather than hid it. The scrutiny crept upward. Downward. Back again. Like a novice’s first, clumsy attempt at an invocation.
The Marchioness let it continue for several dozen paces. Sand whispered under their boots. Wind hissed over the dune ridges. The sky stretched on in an indifferent blue psalm. All the while that look burrowed into her hindquarters with devotional stubbornness. As if Naza feared the temple might evaporate if she glanced away.
Only then did Ixqueya grant the desert its spectacle.
“We are walking the perimeter of a blasphemy,” she replied. “The visible ledger of this place does not reconcile with the suffering written in its shadows. Wealth accretes in hands that have not earned it. Blood drains from throats that should have lived to see judgment day. Someone has falsified the arithmetic of fate. I am here to audit the error.”
They passed beneath the arch. For a moment the city’s roar hushed behind them. Ahead lay the dunes. An undulating sea of pale sand, each ridge like a shroud thrown over the corpse of some gigantic, buried beast. The twin suns poured their light across that wilderness like molten metal spilling from two rival braziers, turning every crest to blinding white and every hollow to violet shadow. Above, the sky stretched in a vast cerulean dome, cold and sharpened, a cathedral with no walls.
Here the comforts of civilization fell away. No awnings. No incense. Only wind and glare and the faint, crystalline crackle where Ixqueya’s feet turned patches of sand to transient frost.
She walked as if the dunes had been laid out as a processional rug for her alone. Her body moved with the slow, inexorable majesty of a religious procession. Bronze and turquoise armor glinting. Feathers flaring and settling. The immense curve of her hips and rear working beneath the carapace with each stride like the shifting pillars of a walking basilica. Above that, the thorax answered in a serene counter-sway, a reliquary gliding atop the living synagogue of her flesh.
She slowed her gait by the barest degree. Enough to gather her own momentum. Enough to feel the weight of Naza’s attention stack a little higher. Then she turned her head.
The motion unfolded like a rite. Neck first. A slow pivot. Then shoulders. Then the faint torsion of her waist, which set the monumental swell of her rear into a subtle, seismic shift beneath bronze and feathers. The thorax answered in a counter-sway. A chalice correcting its balance upon the altar of her spine. When her face met Naza’s line of sight, the full severity of her painted features and glacial eyes fell upon the stone-born like a sudden opening of sanctuary doors.
Her gaze dipped, deliberately, past Naza’s face. Past the line of her shoulders. Down to the precise longitude of the stare that had been burning between plates and plume. The faintest suggestion of a smile ghosted over Ixqueya’s mouth. Not soft. Not kind. A curved blade laid against the throat of the moment.
“If you look any harder,” she said, voice low and clear in the naked air, “you will carve a pilgrimage route in the space behind me.” Her eyes lingered along the path of Naza’s fixation before returning to her face. “There are more foolish altars a woman could follow into the desert, I will grant you that.” A beat. Then a colder, richer note edged her tone. “That said. If you choose to taste cobblestone and frost in some fit of ecstatic reverence. I will not drag you up. It would be instructive for the street to watch you decide where you belong.”
She let the sentence decay into the silence. The dunes received it without echo.
“My body has been called many things,” she continued, tone conversational in the way a judge is conversational when reciting charges. “An omen. An insult. A bribe from some bored god to keep mortals breeding. In truth it is simpler. It is a synagogue of marrow and ice. Walls of bone. Choir stalls of muscle. A dome of chitin and feather. It exists so that winter and obedience have somewhere to sit.”
Her hips rolled once as she resumed walking, and the effect of that anatomy became painfully apparent again. The great, rounded masses of her posterior shifted with the solemn sway of censers in procession. Heavy. Measured. Hypnotic. Feathered fringe swept their upper slopes like banners in slow motion. Above, the thorax traced an answering arc, stinger cutting a dark line against the pale sand.
“If you choose to pray with your eyes as you walk behind that,” Ixqueya said, “I am hardly going to scold you. It is a more honest liturgy than most of what I have seen in their temples.”
The faint curve at her lips deepened. A shadow of wicked amusement. “I have, from time to time, desired a servant whose hands do not tremble at the thought of my spine. Someone strong enough to work oil into muscle after a campaign. Long strokes. No whining. No nervous giggles. A kind of private sacrament.” Her eyes slid sideways, not quite meeting Naza’s. “If that is the direction your own thoughts keep circling, little stone, there are less productive devotions.”
The line between jest and offer lay razor-thin. She left it that way on purpose.
“You need not blister with embarrassment,” she went on, tone smoothing again, though the undercurrent of amusement remained. “I am still a woman. Whatever lovely blasphemies the hive has bolted to my bones. Adoration is the one form of prayer most mortals understand without instruction. Most of your species live and die without tasting anything more exalted than the knowledge that someone stared at them and did not look away first. I am not so ascetic that I despise that.”
The smile thinned. Hardened. Her eyes cooled another degree.
“But do not confuse my toleration for any symmetrical appetite,” she said. “What walks ahead of you is not some tavern ornament hoping to be chosen. It is a tabernacle that leads lambs to the slaughter. A travelling sanctuary stocked with mandibles and scripture. If the little lecheries you toy with in that skull were ever reciprocated by what shares this body with me, if the brood took your veneration at face value and answered it, you would find the revelation educational. Brief. Unpleasant.”
Above her, the thorax flexed in a small, fluid shiver. Plates caught the hard light like panes of stained glass in a frozen cathedral. The stinger lifted the span of a breath, then settled. It felt less like an insect and more like a knife remembering it had a congregation.
They walked in silence for a few paces more. Sand yielded and sighed beneath them. The wind combed their hair and plumes and cape in alternating gusts. The city shrank behind them to a serrated mirage. The desert unfolded ahead with the blank, terrible sincerity of unmarked parchment.
When Ixqueya spoke again, the sensual edge in her voice tucked itself beneath something colder. The tone of an accountant of souls.
“Listen carefully, my name is Ixqueya,” she said. “You are not my slave. If I wanted another slave I would have bought one inside those walls. They breed them by the cartload and perfume the transaction with hymns. I did not come to this desert to adopt what other men have already broken.” The syllables hung between them like a brand fresh from the brazier.
“You will use my name when you address me,” she continued. “Or my titles when ceremony amuses you. Not ‘giant.’ Not ‘ice.’ Certainly not ‘queen.’ I have no reverence for the language of their sun god. His kings rot in perfumed linen. My honors are written in graveyards and account books. Not on coronation banners.”
They resumed walking, the eastward avenue sloping toward the looming alabaster gate. Naza’s question about the stinger arrived next and Ixqueya let it drift in silence for three full strides. Only the faint twitch at one corner of her painted mouth betrayed that she had heard. Her eyes never left the horizon, yet her attention sat squarely on the basalt presence at her back. “You walk behind me because you chose to. That is precisely why you may be useful. A thing that has already surrendered its will is dull. It bends, but it does not surprise. You, for the moment, still have edges.”
She breathed once, slow and measured, as if counting something other than air.
“If, one day, you decide to kneel,” she went on, voice softening into something far more dangerous, “to lower yourself into the print of my step and remain there. That will be your choice as well. I will not drag you down. I will not command it from you like a trick. I have no interest in a stone that lies flat because it has been kicked too often to remember how to stand.”
Her lips quirked. The closest thing she allowed herself to laughter. The sound that escaped was quiet and sharp, like a icicle breaking under its own weight. A rare and disconcerting noise in that mouth.
“Of course,” she added, “if you do decide to grovel at my heel of your own accord, and in public, I will not pretend I find the sight anything less than gratifying. It would do marvellous things for my vanity, especially at my age.”
Her gaze skimmed Naza in profile. The compact power of her frame. The gold-veined stone of her skin. The ember-bright ring in those otherwise lightless eyes.
“For a pebble,” Ixqueya said, with the air of granting a careful verdict, “you are surprisingly tolerable to look at. I have seen nobles whose faces offended me more than your entire being. Remember that. It is a compliment. I do not give many.”
They crested another dune. The view shifted. The city had shrunk to a pale, jagged smudge behind them. Ahead the desert rolled on in pale, endless psalms. The line where sand met sky looked almost holy. An horizon written in clean geometry rather than human clutter.
Ixqueya slowed. Not to rest. To mark a transition.
The wind rose for a moment, tugging at her feathered headdress and the trailing ends of Naza’s cape. Sand lifted and swirled around their ankles in brief, angry halos. The cold that clung to Ixqueya bit deeper, staking its claim in the arid air.
Without turning fully, she let one of her brood-limbs unfurl.
Black chitin slid forward in a smooth, predatory arc. Segments glided over one another with obscene grace. The limb passed behind her hip, then extended toward Naza, claws opening in a gesture that sat somewhere between command and invitation. Pale talons. Too sharp for comfort. Too steady for doubt.
There was nothing gentle in the tilt of those fingers. No coaxing. Only a femme fatale’s certainty that whatever chose to set its hand there would be marked, and would know it.
She did not look back. Her eyes remained on the endless white ahead. Her voice when it came was softer than the desert deserved.
“Stay close,” she said. “The wilderness is a poor place to test how far you can stray from winter and still find your way back. Ask what you like, when you can keep your breath. Just understand this.” A pause as the wind hissed, then fell away. “The world out here has no walls and no witnesses. Only sun and sand and whatever god listens below them. If you insist on trailing a tabernacle into such a place, you should at least know which altar you mean to kneel at.”
“If you were inquiring whether it makes my backside heavier,” she went on, tone almost bored, “no. My flesh is already an overabundant endowment. The thorax concerns itself with equilibrium, not your concentration. Any effect it has on your thoughts is collateral damage.”
Her eyes glinted. Cruel. Amused. “If, on the other hand, you are asking whether it feels different when it slams down on something. The answer is yes. Very.”
The chitinous hand remained extended. Unswayed by wind or distance. A dark, unwavering line drawn between the synagogue of her body and the small, stubborn flame that had decided to follow it into the wilderness. "Where we go, few souls have witnesses its luster and glory. My divine realm, Winterwake. Or, as those who are mortally inclined call it, purgatory."
Ixqueya, what an interesting name. Naza repeated the name over again in her head, to make sure it would stick and stay. This name is different from the rest, the others were useless, Ixqueya is useful. Ixqueya deemed Naza to have more worth than the ones that sing her prayers and shake in her presence.
But still so many words that Naza feels have more of a hidden riddle than direct answers. If someone gives another the pleasure to work on such a sensitive part of the body, why waste the time giggling? Such a useless thing to do, the back holds your body up, one wrong move and it could be the end. Naza wonders how different the spine of a human is compared to the way Oreads are?
The more they walk, the sounds are changing even the sand feels different and Naza is getting accustomed to not really seeing what is ahead, she is trusting Ixqueya not to lead her astray. She can't help but wonder: Am I standing in the wrong spot? If the roles were reversed would Naza take to kind if there was a constant, neverending stare? Maybe. Maybe not. Memory is fragile, every detail is important, even the smallest movement can tell a lot about a person.
But Ixqueya has been pointing out the fact that Naza is staring, like right now.
Even with the constant embarrassment of being called out, whether Naza means to or not. Naza is also curious, while yes, sand looks the same. The same yellow tent never changes.
Naza almost laughs at how ridiculous she is sounding. Suddenly, she became an expert on air quality after escaping a dead volcano with terrible rocks, bigger rocks, and money-making rocks, then what she considered low-ranking. If she had the time, she would take this moment to stop entirely. To look at the sun, well, suns. To look straight at them till they burn her dark eyes, maybe in a fucked up world, she would be able to absorb the beans and wreak chaos.
This actually caused a slight noise to escape her mouth, and she found her own joke funny. She decides to share to keep the conversation going and to get to know the newly introduced Ixqueya, the not ice queen, “What would you do if you could suddenly absorb sunlight?”
With little everyday social interaction, Naza's thoughts are often childish and something that most people would just tell her to “shut up”, but now she is not there. She's here, in a literal desert with a woman who makes the air around them chilly.
She had experience with “chill” weather; the further citizens are from Pyrecliff, the colder it gets, but it's still blazing hot. However, they built chapels on the very tip of the volcano, where the most uncontainable stays, and where the unkept thinks it is the way to escape.
Good old waterboarding does the trick. But water will still evaporate, so they found many creative ways to make the water last. It was to keep the people relatively “tame”; it is a long, drawn-out process, since Oreads are genetically unstable. When there is a will to break the already broken, there is a way.
Regulating internal temperature became of utmost importance; most fail, while others learn. “Controlling the masses” was the reasoning. Naza believed it was for the rich's entertainment and to break the newcomers' will to free themselves. Naza is the outliner. They wanted her to die. But she would not die. She adapted quickly; she found the holes, the flaws. Rocks get cocky and lazy when the majority breaks and submits.
But time takes a toll; a young child, an eventual teen, can only take so much. Naza is more unstable than most. She lived through a lot and fought to get where she is.
As the air seemed to slowly shift, the once air that was hard, heavy and hot. Like the atmosphere itself was showcasing a great divide. This must be the entrance to Ixqueya’s realm known as ‘Purgatory’, it’s not a subtle change between the regions. The clouds almost take the blueness from the sky slowly, the once white and fluffy; fades into the blue but darker. It can be missed if one is not paying attention. You be dumb if not, not with how the temperature is shifting , if you listen the wind is getting sharper; luring a lost soul further in.
Naza noticed the pale ant leg moving closer, which was not the first time. This time, it feels less like it wants to stab through her. She watches it, trying to gather any information she can to understand the extra appendages. Naza decided not to fight the curiosity brewing deep within her body. So she meets the leg with her hand to touch, as she listens to the instruction to keep close.
Naza decided to shift a little to the outside of Ixqueya's shadow, still by her heel, but this way she can see as well, see wider, without going against what Ixqueya told her. Naza still holds the solid appendage between her middle and index fingers, lessening the heat pressure on her hand for safety. More so for Naza rather than Ixqueya’s who will no doubt cause great damage or simply crush Naza if she chooses recklessness over her life.
Naza does not often hold things without reason; gestures of such has no place in a fighting ring. That is how you die. She never checked her temperature unless someone demanded it.
Naza wants to hold the talon because it feels different, and because she feels like she can.
Why else would it come near? “I never felt something of this texture before, solid, almost like mercury once it gets hardened enough, yet light but heavy,” it is hard for Naza to explain without sounding more like an idiot. Still, she continues, “they are hard enough to defend your rear, but mobile enough not to tangle.”
Naza pauses, her eyebrows almost scrunch’s downwards before a little, for once trying to think about what to say, “simply fantastic.” She whispered under her breath, still staring at the appendage. But still her ears remain open, her gaze not too heavy on just the appendage. There's no rest for the strong, while Ixqueya could defend them well. Naza can never relax; she must be extra aware, a lapse of judgement is a quick way for death.
But still so many words that Naza feels have more of a hidden riddle than direct answers. If someone gives another the pleasure to work on such a sensitive part of the body, why waste the time giggling? Such a useless thing to do, the back holds your body up, one wrong move and it could be the end. Naza wonders how different the spine of a human is compared to the way Oreads are?
The more they walk, the sounds are changing even the sand feels different and Naza is getting accustomed to not really seeing what is ahead, she is trusting Ixqueya not to lead her astray. She can't help but wonder: Am I standing in the wrong spot? If the roles were reversed would Naza take to kind if there was a constant, neverending stare? Maybe. Maybe not. Memory is fragile, every detail is important, even the smallest movement can tell a lot about a person.
But Ixqueya has been pointing out the fact that Naza is staring, like right now.
Even with the constant embarrassment of being called out, whether Naza means to or not. Naza is also curious, while yes, sand looks the same. The same yellow tent never changes.
Naza almost laughs at how ridiculous she is sounding. Suddenly, she became an expert on air quality after escaping a dead volcano with terrible rocks, bigger rocks, and money-making rocks, then what she considered low-ranking. If she had the time, she would take this moment to stop entirely. To look at the sun, well, suns. To look straight at them till they burn her dark eyes, maybe in a fucked up world, she would be able to absorb the beans and wreak chaos.
This actually caused a slight noise to escape her mouth, and she found her own joke funny. She decides to share to keep the conversation going and to get to know the newly introduced Ixqueya, the not ice queen, “What would you do if you could suddenly absorb sunlight?”
With little everyday social interaction, Naza's thoughts are often childish and something that most people would just tell her to “shut up”, but now she is not there. She's here, in a literal desert with a woman who makes the air around them chilly.
She had experience with “chill” weather; the further citizens are from Pyrecliff, the colder it gets, but it's still blazing hot. However, they built chapels on the very tip of the volcano, where the most uncontainable stays, and where the unkept thinks it is the way to escape.
Good old waterboarding does the trick. But water will still evaporate, so they found many creative ways to make the water last. It was to keep the people relatively “tame”; it is a long, drawn-out process, since Oreads are genetically unstable. When there is a will to break the already broken, there is a way.
Regulating internal temperature became of utmost importance; most fail, while others learn. “Controlling the masses” was the reasoning. Naza believed it was for the rich's entertainment and to break the newcomers' will to free themselves. Naza is the outliner. They wanted her to die. But she would not die. She adapted quickly; she found the holes, the flaws. Rocks get cocky and lazy when the majority breaks and submits.
But time takes a toll; a young child, an eventual teen, can only take so much. Naza is more unstable than most. She lived through a lot and fought to get where she is.
As the air seemed to slowly shift, the once air that was hard, heavy and hot. Like the atmosphere itself was showcasing a great divide. This must be the entrance to Ixqueya’s realm known as ‘Purgatory’, it’s not a subtle change between the regions. The clouds almost take the blueness from the sky slowly, the once white and fluffy; fades into the blue but darker. It can be missed if one is not paying attention. You be dumb if not, not with how the temperature is shifting , if you listen the wind is getting sharper; luring a lost soul further in.
Naza noticed the pale ant leg moving closer, which was not the first time. This time, it feels less like it wants to stab through her. She watches it, trying to gather any information she can to understand the extra appendages. Naza decided not to fight the curiosity brewing deep within her body. So she meets the leg with her hand to touch, as she listens to the instruction to keep close.
Naza decided to shift a little to the outside of Ixqueya's shadow, still by her heel, but this way she can see as well, see wider, without going against what Ixqueya told her. Naza still holds the solid appendage between her middle and index fingers, lessening the heat pressure on her hand for safety. More so for Naza rather than Ixqueya’s who will no doubt cause great damage or simply crush Naza if she chooses recklessness over her life.
Naza does not often hold things without reason; gestures of such has no place in a fighting ring. That is how you die. She never checked her temperature unless someone demanded it.
Naza wants to hold the talon because it feels different, and because she feels like she can.
Why else would it come near? “I never felt something of this texture before, solid, almost like mercury once it gets hardened enough, yet light but heavy,” it is hard for Naza to explain without sounding more like an idiot. Still, she continues, “they are hard enough to defend your rear, but mobile enough not to tangle.”
Naza pauses, her eyebrows almost scrunch’s downwards before a little, for once trying to think about what to say, “simply fantastic.” She whispered under her breath, still staring at the appendage. But still her ears remain open, her gaze not too heavy on just the appendage. There's no rest for the strong, while Ixqueya could defend them well. Naza can never relax; she must be extra aware, a lapse of judgement is a quick way for death.
Ixqueya felt the question about sunlight slip into the air between them like a stray ember. What would you do if you could suddenly absorb sunlight? The words were almost childish. Almost. They hung there while the world changed around them.
The desert was no longer a simple expanse of dunes. The light thinned. The heat lost its blunt brutality and grew knife-like. The sky above them darkened by imperceptible degrees, as if some unseen hand were washing the blue with ink. The wind sharpened its teeth. Sand sounded different underfoot, less like sifted gold, more like ground bone. They had crossed an invisible axis mundi where the Lord of Light’s jurisdiction began to fray, and something brumal and older inhaled.
The ant limb slid toward Naza as it had before. This time the pebble did not flinch. She reached out. Took the talon between two fingers as if this were an ordinary courtesy and not a communion with a predator’s extra skeleton.
The contact hit Ixqueya like the first touch of cold hands on bare spine.
Naza’s grip was not tentative. Those rocky fingers closed with steady, working pressure. Callused. Warm. The texture of her skin was not like mortal flesh at all. Volcanic. Fine-grained stone that still remembered magma. Heat climbed through the chitin, sank along nerve and vessel into the living girl beneath the armor. The brood-limb shivered. A reflex, not a choice.
High on her back, the thorax twitched.
Segments flexed in a low, sinuous wave. The great insect abdomen answered that small point of intimacy with the unthinking logic of a hive. The stinger eased forward, drawn along its carriage with obscene grace. It tipped down, searching, and brushed across the edge of Naza’s forearm. Just once. A glancing, possessive stroke over basalt flesh.
No puncture. No sting. Only contact. A smear of scent too faint for ordinary noses. A trace of cold that lingered half a heartbeat longer than it should have. The brood’s instinct wrote its note on the stone-girl’s surface the way a priest might fold a name into a psalter, so that, should the flock scatter, this one could be found again.
Ixqueya felt it happen and did not stop it. She allowed herself, instead, the smallest of indulgences.
A shudder ran through her, so subtle it barely reached the surface. A tightening at the corners of her eyes. A slow exhale that steamed in the cooling air. The intimacy of the touch, the way Naza handled the limb like a craftsman appraising a tool rather than a supplicant fondling a relic, slipped under her armor in a way she had not anticipated.
She reined the brood in with a thought. The thorax settled. The stinger retreated to its neutral carriage. The talon remained in Naza’s grasp, allowed rather than surrendered.
“You choose curious hypotheticals,” Ixqueya said at last. Her voice came out smoother than she felt. A honed thing. “If I could absorb sunlight, I would not stand here and burn my own eyes out for amusement.”
She tilted her head, watching the horizon where the clouds had begun to steal color from the sky.
“I would bankrupt their priesthood,” she continued. “I would drink their dawns. Swallow their sacred hours. Sell daylight back to their temples by the psalm. They have built an entire cult on rationing warmth. Imagine what their god would say if some frost-born mortician in foreign armor started charging tithe on his sunrise.”
The faintest glimmer of humor touched her mouth. It moved like a star glimpsed through rifted cloud. Gone as soon as it appeared.
“As for your volcano chapels and clever water,” she added, tone flattening into something colder, more appraising, “I understand them perfectly. Torture, dressed in ecclesiastical language, is still arithmetic. Pressure applied until bodies either break or harden. Most crack along the lines their owners predicted. A few do not. Those few are interesting.”
Her polar eyes dipped to the hand on her talon. The way Naza cradled chitin between her fingers. The way she described texture instead of flinching from it.
“You adapted,” Ixqueya said. “You learned to moderate your own flame rather than let their psalms do it. You are, as you say, an outlier. That is why I am still speaking to you instead of leaving you to fertilize some dune.”
The pebble’s murmured assessment of the limb itself drew a quieter reaction. Solid. Like mercury hardened. Light yet heavy. Hard enough to defend your rear. Mobile enough not to tangle. Simply fantastic.
For a heartbeat something almost warm moved behind Ixqueya’s eyes. Approval. Pleased surprise. It manifested as a small, fleeting arris at the corner of her mouth, and then, rarer still, as a brief closing of one eye. A wink. Quick as a glint off ice. So transient that it could be dismissed later as a trick of light on gold powder.
“You speak of them like a smith, not a frightened child,” she said. “That is encouraging. These are not baubles. They are the brood’s ligaments. Shields. Hooks. The rear-guard that keeps this… synagogue” – her hand indicated the broad sweep of her own hips and panelled rear with dry self-awareness – “from being taken unawares by idiots with knives.”
The ant limb flexed minutely in Naza’s grasp. Not withdrawing. Testing.
“They are light because they must answer my spine, not anchor it,” she went on. “Heavy enough to break bone. Subtle enough to groom armor lacquer if I am feeling indulgent. I have killed men with these. I have also used them to lace the hair of someone I intended not to kill. Yet.”
The last word rested in the air with deliberate ambiguity.
She let the silence stretch. The wind hissed around their ankles. Somewhere far behind them the city’s silhouette resolved into a blur. Ahead, purgatorial cloud smeared the blue into something more solemn. The temperature dropped with devotional slowness, degree by degree, as if winter were tasting its new parish.
Without warning, Ixqueya’s tone shifted. A dry, sardonic note threaded through the ice.
“Do you require a ride, little stone?” she asked. “You cling to my limb with such grim purpose that one might think you were afraid the dunes would swallow you. I assure you, they will wait their turn. The graveyard is patient.”
Two more limbs answered the unspoken jest. Chitin unfolded from her back in a controlled unfurling, segments clicking into extension. One brushed, deliberately, along the line of Naza’s outer arm. Another traced a slow, appraising path along the basalt of her flank, a fraction above the hip. Possessive, but measured. Testing weight. Range. The touch was not gentle in intention, yet it was exquisitely controlled. The way a mortician’s fingers rest on a throat to measure pulse, not to crush it.
“If you insist on walking this close,” Ixqueya continued, “I will at least know how you balance. How much force your frame can take before it fractures. Consider yourself subject to an informal examination.”
Her gaze slid sideways, catching Naza at the edge of her vision. The desert light found every line of her painted face. Turquoise bars. Coral strokes. Gold dust gleaming like trapped dawn. For once, the severity in those features loosened by a hair’s breadth.
“You hold the talon well,” she said. “Not like a trinket. Like a tool you mean to learn. That is… tolerable. For a pebble.”
She let that near-compliment stand, then added, quieter, “Do not become too enamored of it. The brood marks what touches it. You will find the wind remembers the scent on your skin. If you stray, I will know which way you went.”
There it was again. That thin, dark line between threat and reassurance. Between predator’s claim and something almost protective.
She turned her face back to the oncoming horizon. The sky ahead was no longer the bright, indifferent blue of the city’s god. It had deepened to a sterner shade. A brumal nave. Clouds gathered like slow congregation, their undersides leaden where they met the higher air. The sun’s heat dulled. Light remained, but warmth became negotiable.
“You asked what I would do if I could drink sunlight,” she said, revisiting the question without warning. “You already know the answer. I would do what I do with everything I take. I would tithe it. Count it. Weaponize it. Turn it into a column in a ledger, not a story about hope.”
Her steps did not falter. Frost formed and perished under each heel. The cold around her thickened, no longer just an aura but the first hint of a jurisdiction.
“We are crossing from their jurisdiction into mine,” she added. “Their chapels baked you and called it discipline. My purgatory chills you and calls it clarity. They tried to break you for spectacle. I will try to break you for purpose. There is a distinction. Thin. Important.”
Another of the chitinous limbs adjusted, curling more securely along the outside of Naza’s arm, as if guiding her into the precise arc of Ixqueya’s shadow. Not dragging. Curating distance.
“If you keep hold of that claw, Naza of Pyrecliff,” she said, voice descending to a low, glacial murmur, “understand what you are declaring. You are not simply touching an oddity. You are taking hold of an axis. The hinge between my flesh and the hive that shares it. People have sworn lesser oaths with more ceremony.”
Her eyes remained on the darkening sky. Her mouth tilted in a faint, ruthless smile.
“Walk close. Ask your questions. Imagine black suns and molten eyes all you like. But remember this.” A breath. Visible now in the cooling air. “You chose to take the limb. The brood chose to mark you. Death is already counting you as something other than stray inventory. In my experience, once a tabernacle has noticed a lamb, the slaughter or the consecration is only a matter of time.”
She let the chitinous fingers tighten once. Just enough to remind the pebble that she was, for the span of that heartbeat, held.
Then she loosened them again. Allowed Naza all the freedom the desert would permit.
The hoarfrost mistress gaited onward.
The desert was no longer a simple expanse of dunes. The light thinned. The heat lost its blunt brutality and grew knife-like. The sky above them darkened by imperceptible degrees, as if some unseen hand were washing the blue with ink. The wind sharpened its teeth. Sand sounded different underfoot, less like sifted gold, more like ground bone. They had crossed an invisible axis mundi where the Lord of Light’s jurisdiction began to fray, and something brumal and older inhaled.
The ant limb slid toward Naza as it had before. This time the pebble did not flinch. She reached out. Took the talon between two fingers as if this were an ordinary courtesy and not a communion with a predator’s extra skeleton.
The contact hit Ixqueya like the first touch of cold hands on bare spine.
Naza’s grip was not tentative. Those rocky fingers closed with steady, working pressure. Callused. Warm. The texture of her skin was not like mortal flesh at all. Volcanic. Fine-grained stone that still remembered magma. Heat climbed through the chitin, sank along nerve and vessel into the living girl beneath the armor. The brood-limb shivered. A reflex, not a choice.
High on her back, the thorax twitched.
Segments flexed in a low, sinuous wave. The great insect abdomen answered that small point of intimacy with the unthinking logic of a hive. The stinger eased forward, drawn along its carriage with obscene grace. It tipped down, searching, and brushed across the edge of Naza’s forearm. Just once. A glancing, possessive stroke over basalt flesh.
No puncture. No sting. Only contact. A smear of scent too faint for ordinary noses. A trace of cold that lingered half a heartbeat longer than it should have. The brood’s instinct wrote its note on the stone-girl’s surface the way a priest might fold a name into a psalter, so that, should the flock scatter, this one could be found again.
Ixqueya felt it happen and did not stop it. She allowed herself, instead, the smallest of indulgences.
A shudder ran through her, so subtle it barely reached the surface. A tightening at the corners of her eyes. A slow exhale that steamed in the cooling air. The intimacy of the touch, the way Naza handled the limb like a craftsman appraising a tool rather than a supplicant fondling a relic, slipped under her armor in a way she had not anticipated.
She reined the brood in with a thought. The thorax settled. The stinger retreated to its neutral carriage. The talon remained in Naza’s grasp, allowed rather than surrendered.
“You choose curious hypotheticals,” Ixqueya said at last. Her voice came out smoother than she felt. A honed thing. “If I could absorb sunlight, I would not stand here and burn my own eyes out for amusement.”
She tilted her head, watching the horizon where the clouds had begun to steal color from the sky.
“I would bankrupt their priesthood,” she continued. “I would drink their dawns. Swallow their sacred hours. Sell daylight back to their temples by the psalm. They have built an entire cult on rationing warmth. Imagine what their god would say if some frost-born mortician in foreign armor started charging tithe on his sunrise.”
The faintest glimmer of humor touched her mouth. It moved like a star glimpsed through rifted cloud. Gone as soon as it appeared.
“As for your volcano chapels and clever water,” she added, tone flattening into something colder, more appraising, “I understand them perfectly. Torture, dressed in ecclesiastical language, is still arithmetic. Pressure applied until bodies either break or harden. Most crack along the lines their owners predicted. A few do not. Those few are interesting.”
Her polar eyes dipped to the hand on her talon. The way Naza cradled chitin between her fingers. The way she described texture instead of flinching from it.
“You adapted,” Ixqueya said. “You learned to moderate your own flame rather than let their psalms do it. You are, as you say, an outlier. That is why I am still speaking to you instead of leaving you to fertilize some dune.”
The pebble’s murmured assessment of the limb itself drew a quieter reaction. Solid. Like mercury hardened. Light yet heavy. Hard enough to defend your rear. Mobile enough not to tangle. Simply fantastic.
For a heartbeat something almost warm moved behind Ixqueya’s eyes. Approval. Pleased surprise. It manifested as a small, fleeting arris at the corner of her mouth, and then, rarer still, as a brief closing of one eye. A wink. Quick as a glint off ice. So transient that it could be dismissed later as a trick of light on gold powder.
“You speak of them like a smith, not a frightened child,” she said. “That is encouraging. These are not baubles. They are the brood’s ligaments. Shields. Hooks. The rear-guard that keeps this… synagogue” – her hand indicated the broad sweep of her own hips and panelled rear with dry self-awareness – “from being taken unawares by idiots with knives.”
The ant limb flexed minutely in Naza’s grasp. Not withdrawing. Testing.
“They are light because they must answer my spine, not anchor it,” she went on. “Heavy enough to break bone. Subtle enough to groom armor lacquer if I am feeling indulgent. I have killed men with these. I have also used them to lace the hair of someone I intended not to kill. Yet.”
The last word rested in the air with deliberate ambiguity.
She let the silence stretch. The wind hissed around their ankles. Somewhere far behind them the city’s silhouette resolved into a blur. Ahead, purgatorial cloud smeared the blue into something more solemn. The temperature dropped with devotional slowness, degree by degree, as if winter were tasting its new parish.
Without warning, Ixqueya’s tone shifted. A dry, sardonic note threaded through the ice.
“Do you require a ride, little stone?” she asked. “You cling to my limb with such grim purpose that one might think you were afraid the dunes would swallow you. I assure you, they will wait their turn. The graveyard is patient.”
Two more limbs answered the unspoken jest. Chitin unfolded from her back in a controlled unfurling, segments clicking into extension. One brushed, deliberately, along the line of Naza’s outer arm. Another traced a slow, appraising path along the basalt of her flank, a fraction above the hip. Possessive, but measured. Testing weight. Range. The touch was not gentle in intention, yet it was exquisitely controlled. The way a mortician’s fingers rest on a throat to measure pulse, not to crush it.
“If you insist on walking this close,” Ixqueya continued, “I will at least know how you balance. How much force your frame can take before it fractures. Consider yourself subject to an informal examination.”
Her gaze slid sideways, catching Naza at the edge of her vision. The desert light found every line of her painted face. Turquoise bars. Coral strokes. Gold dust gleaming like trapped dawn. For once, the severity in those features loosened by a hair’s breadth.
“You hold the talon well,” she said. “Not like a trinket. Like a tool you mean to learn. That is… tolerable. For a pebble.”
She let that near-compliment stand, then added, quieter, “Do not become too enamored of it. The brood marks what touches it. You will find the wind remembers the scent on your skin. If you stray, I will know which way you went.”
There it was again. That thin, dark line between threat and reassurance. Between predator’s claim and something almost protective.
She turned her face back to the oncoming horizon. The sky ahead was no longer the bright, indifferent blue of the city’s god. It had deepened to a sterner shade. A brumal nave. Clouds gathered like slow congregation, their undersides leaden where they met the higher air. The sun’s heat dulled. Light remained, but warmth became negotiable.
“You asked what I would do if I could drink sunlight,” she said, revisiting the question without warning. “You already know the answer. I would do what I do with everything I take. I would tithe it. Count it. Weaponize it. Turn it into a column in a ledger, not a story about hope.”
Her steps did not falter. Frost formed and perished under each heel. The cold around her thickened, no longer just an aura but the first hint of a jurisdiction.
“We are crossing from their jurisdiction into mine,” she added. “Their chapels baked you and called it discipline. My purgatory chills you and calls it clarity. They tried to break you for spectacle. I will try to break you for purpose. There is a distinction. Thin. Important.”
Another of the chitinous limbs adjusted, curling more securely along the outside of Naza’s arm, as if guiding her into the precise arc of Ixqueya’s shadow. Not dragging. Curating distance.
“If you keep hold of that claw, Naza of Pyrecliff,” she said, voice descending to a low, glacial murmur, “understand what you are declaring. You are not simply touching an oddity. You are taking hold of an axis. The hinge between my flesh and the hive that shares it. People have sworn lesser oaths with more ceremony.”
Her eyes remained on the darkening sky. Her mouth tilted in a faint, ruthless smile.
“Walk close. Ask your questions. Imagine black suns and molten eyes all you like. But remember this.” A breath. Visible now in the cooling air. “You chose to take the limb. The brood chose to mark you. Death is already counting you as something other than stray inventory. In my experience, once a tabernacle has noticed a lamb, the slaughter or the consecration is only a matter of time.”
She let the chitinous fingers tighten once. Just enough to remind the pebble that she was, for the span of that heartbeat, held.
Then she loosened them again. Allowed Naza all the freedom the desert would permit.
The hoarfrost mistress gaited onward.
Another shift has been unlocked. A confidential conversation started between Naza and the black ant talon. An acceptance of each other, or both touching out of curiosity? The talon is that of an animal, but just how animalistic could Ixqueya's talons be? How much of an independent mind do both the talons and stinger have, or could it merely represent something else Ixqueya tamed? To a degree, that is beneficial for both the host and the creature that claimed a human to carry.
The stinger's movement was captured by Naza, and she observed the movement as if she had become a flower. Quick moves that she would typically carry out under the threat of self-preservation were halted, given that the organ was not moving swiftly enough to be considered dangerous. The up-and-down movement is like it is sampling the air, trying to determine the variable that caused a change. The black and icy blue stinger stroked Naza's arm like a silent greeting, and just like that, it moved back to its previous location.
‘How interesting,’ something that Naza is noticing the phrase being used more often than not.
She did want to touch the stinger to know if that would cause a different reaction. How far would Ixqueya allow Naza to explore? When will the line be drawn? Naza does not wish to find out right now. She felt it by the graze of the stinger, a symbol of acknowledgement, something that could not be said with words but instincts alone.
Naza, whose gaze is never in one place long, noticed the slight twitch of Ixqueya's eye, but said nothing. Not everything needs to be voiced; some things can just be kept silent. Just as the wind was moments before.
Now the wind became cruder, sharper. Naza responded as well, warming her body to stand against the harsh wind. She does not wish to become a burden, even with Ixqueya’s tempting offer.
Do you wish to be carried? Ok, so not really like that, but to Naza that was basically the same thing. While the offer sounds tempting, Naza cannot let herself be supported more than she has already been, “While that would be a luxury, I must decline. I like walking beside you and enjoy the company provided by simply being beside you,” Naza covered her face when a strong gust of wind came through before continuing “I find it interesting that your talon can mark someone.”
Naza watched as another talon came closer to her backside. She can feel the chill sweeping through her cape but not in an uncomfortable way, as she finds the talons interesting, “I hope my cape does not cause your extra talon any sensory overload from the wind.” Naza cape is self made while it is sturdy and is not very infected by the strong winds, she can’t tell by touch how sensitive the talons can be affected.
Naza listens to Ixqueya's answer to what she thought was a ridiculously question in itself. She cannot believe her ears by the amount of thought Ixqueya put into a simple question, that makes something naza feels warmer. Which she cannot blame it on her increasing her heat output.
Command light. Light was something Naza did not think of as something that could be commanded. Light is different from dealing with ice magic and that of fire, light is in everything and sometimes it makes its way into the darkest of connors. “If the light you try to command, fails you, would you find a different purpose?” Naza did not intend the question to have a double meaning, so she speaks further “By that I mean, if the purpose of your light is to stun someone blind but they are immune. Ah nevermind i cannot form this idea correctly.” Naza shakes her head gently enough to not disturb her long black friends that is still beside her.
The sky seems to keep its darken tone, which is something that Naza has been accustomed to. But now she is not walking alone, and makes everything better.
“If your talons decide to leave you, would you miss them?” Naza looks at the one that is still in her grip, yet to move and yet to showcase any signs of leaving. “I’ve realized something. You spoke that by me holding on to your talon is me declaring something. What is that something?”
The stone can assume that it is not everyday someone gets close to Ixqueya enough to touch one of the long legs of death, but what makes Naza different? She can imagine all four legs sharpen like a sword cutting through enemies like they are made of smooth stone. Even with them drench in other peoples blood, people that tried to attack their commandor in a way. This leads Naza on a different train of thought, who takes care of them?
While Ixqueya is giant large and her own arms are quite long, does she simply sprawl out on the ground to clean them off after a battle? Do they shed their skin after a while, would that hurt? Or is there someone else, someone similar to Naza who while still is afraid of the legs of death still takes the time to clean each one with care?
“Death is lurking everywhere. What can a dune do more than a human haven’t all ready done.” Naza spoke again after a period of silence, her hand stretching further upwards without much thought.
When she returns to her head once more, Naza focused her easily distracted mind on rubbing alongside the talone with great care. Every now and then changing the temperature in her hand. Eyes searching for any signs of discomfort, a slight muscle twitch from either the ant leg or Ixqueya. The journey seems to being closer to Winterwake, where Naza knows that her hand will have to go back to her side. Ixqueya has an image to uphold and Naza will need both hands at ready.
For now she enjoys the moment of it just being them and the sounds of nature just for a moment longer.
The stinger's movement was captured by Naza, and she observed the movement as if she had become a flower. Quick moves that she would typically carry out under the threat of self-preservation were halted, given that the organ was not moving swiftly enough to be considered dangerous. The up-and-down movement is like it is sampling the air, trying to determine the variable that caused a change. The black and icy blue stinger stroked Naza's arm like a silent greeting, and just like that, it moved back to its previous location.
‘How interesting,’ something that Naza is noticing the phrase being used more often than not.
She did want to touch the stinger to know if that would cause a different reaction. How far would Ixqueya allow Naza to explore? When will the line be drawn? Naza does not wish to find out right now. She felt it by the graze of the stinger, a symbol of acknowledgement, something that could not be said with words but instincts alone.
Naza, whose gaze is never in one place long, noticed the slight twitch of Ixqueya's eye, but said nothing. Not everything needs to be voiced; some things can just be kept silent. Just as the wind was moments before.
Now the wind became cruder, sharper. Naza responded as well, warming her body to stand against the harsh wind. She does not wish to become a burden, even with Ixqueya’s tempting offer.
Do you wish to be carried? Ok, so not really like that, but to Naza that was basically the same thing. While the offer sounds tempting, Naza cannot let herself be supported more than she has already been, “While that would be a luxury, I must decline. I like walking beside you and enjoy the company provided by simply being beside you,” Naza covered her face when a strong gust of wind came through before continuing “I find it interesting that your talon can mark someone.”
Naza watched as another talon came closer to her backside. She can feel the chill sweeping through her cape but not in an uncomfortable way, as she finds the talons interesting, “I hope my cape does not cause your extra talon any sensory overload from the wind.” Naza cape is self made while it is sturdy and is not very infected by the strong winds, she can’t tell by touch how sensitive the talons can be affected.
Naza listens to Ixqueya's answer to what she thought was a ridiculously question in itself. She cannot believe her ears by the amount of thought Ixqueya put into a simple question, that makes something naza feels warmer. Which she cannot blame it on her increasing her heat output.
Command light. Light was something Naza did not think of as something that could be commanded. Light is different from dealing with ice magic and that of fire, light is in everything and sometimes it makes its way into the darkest of connors. “If the light you try to command, fails you, would you find a different purpose?” Naza did not intend the question to have a double meaning, so she speaks further “By that I mean, if the purpose of your light is to stun someone blind but they are immune. Ah nevermind i cannot form this idea correctly.” Naza shakes her head gently enough to not disturb her long black friends that is still beside her.
The sky seems to keep its darken tone, which is something that Naza has been accustomed to. But now she is not walking alone, and makes everything better.
“If your talons decide to leave you, would you miss them?” Naza looks at the one that is still in her grip, yet to move and yet to showcase any signs of leaving. “I’ve realized something. You spoke that by me holding on to your talon is me declaring something. What is that something?”
The stone can assume that it is not everyday someone gets close to Ixqueya enough to touch one of the long legs of death, but what makes Naza different? She can imagine all four legs sharpen like a sword cutting through enemies like they are made of smooth stone. Even with them drench in other peoples blood, people that tried to attack their commandor in a way. This leads Naza on a different train of thought, who takes care of them?
While Ixqueya is giant large and her own arms are quite long, does she simply sprawl out on the ground to clean them off after a battle? Do they shed their skin after a while, would that hurt? Or is there someone else, someone similar to Naza who while still is afraid of the legs of death still takes the time to clean each one with care?
“Death is lurking everywhere. What can a dune do more than a human haven’t all ready done.” Naza spoke again after a period of silence, her hand stretching further upwards without much thought.
When she returns to her head once more, Naza focused her easily distracted mind on rubbing alongside the talone with great care. Every now and then changing the temperature in her hand. Eyes searching for any signs of discomfort, a slight muscle twitch from either the ant leg or Ixqueya. The journey seems to being closer to Winterwake, where Naza knows that her hand will have to go back to her side. Ixqueya has an image to uphold and Naza will need both hands at ready.
For now she enjoys the moment of it just being them and the sounds of nature just for a moment longer.
Naza’s hand did not simply touch the talon. It claimed it.
Chitin thrummed beneath her fingertips. A fine tremor ran the length of the limb. From the hooked black tip in her grasp. Down the lacquered segment. Into the buried root welded to Ixqueya’s spine. Sensation climbed her back like reversed candlewax. Heat dragged upward through bone and nerve. It pooled low in her abdomen with the slow gravity of sacramental wine poured into a chalice already half full.
Ixqueya let herself indulge.
One additional limb unfurled from her back. Then another. Then another. The brood unfolded in a patient, predatorial blossom. Segments clicked into place with insect catechism. Talons described languid arcs in the air before settling on the stone-woman’s frame.
One rested along the outer curve of Naza’s hip. Cool weight. Not enough to bruise. Enough to measure. Another traced the oblique line of her flank. It followed the subtle convexity of volcanic muscle beneath black cloth and basalt skin. A third slid behind her spine. It crossed the small of her back in a contemplative glide. Mapping breadth. Tension. Hidden fault lines.
The talon she already held relaxed almost imperceptibly. Its curvature softened into her palm. Glossy black offered more of itself to her exploration. Thin bands of icy blue within the chitin brightened, as if the limb were drawing a deeper breath.
“You are very sure of those hands,” Ixqueya observed. Her tone was soft. Not gentle. “Most mortals flinch. You behave as if this belongs on your worktable.”
The limbs did not paw. They appraised. Every claw walked the seams of Naza’s obsidian hide with forensic patience. They lingered where golden veins pulsed faintly under stone. They skimmed old micro-fractures that had healed into strength. Naza’s variable warmth moved up and down their length in small controlled waves. Cool. Warm. Almost hot. Testing. Teasing. Each shift read as a question.
The brood answered with touch rather than sound. A talon flexed against her hip. Another curled briefly over her ribs in a near-embrace before withdrawing. The contact never slipped into inelegance. Predation could be meticulous.
You would make a very useful attachment, Ixqueya thought. Not merely ornament. Technician. A little votary of stone and heat who tends the reliquary that carries her.
A slow smile cut across her mouth.
Naza’s voice wove its questions. Light. Purpose. Loss. What does this contact mean.
Ixqueya let a low chortle vibrate in her chest. Dark. Amused. Self-assured.
“You dress your meaning in rags,” she said. “I am not so dull I cannot see the naked shape beneath.”
Her tongue slid out. Split at the tip. Pale. It drew a deliberate path over her lower lip. Then her upper. Moisture left behind turned her mouth into something jewel-like. Feral. When she smiled again the sharp white of a canine flashed, too long for a woman who intended only tender endings.
Behind her, the thorax quivered. The stinger eased forward a hand’s breadth. It lifted like a censer. Sampled the air in a slow, priestly sweep. Blue-black shine. A muted, venomous aurora. It did not pierce. It only stroked the edge of Naza’s cape once, a proprietary brush, before sliding back into its carriage.
Pheromones bled from hidden glands with quiet devotion. Wasp-scent and winter. They settled over Naza’s stone skin in an invisible chrism that only Ixqueya could smell. The pebble now carried a faint echo of her hive wherever she walked.
“The draught sat well,” Ixqueya remarked. Breath misted from her lips as she spoke. “Honey. marrow. milk. You swallowed dutifully. Good girl.”
The talon in Naza’s grip pulsed again. A tiny knock. The brood’s private applause.
“You ask what becomes of light that does not bend,” she went on. “It ceases to be light. It becomes inventory. Converted into heat. Pressure. Leverage. I do not keep disobedient tools. I strip them. Reassign them to something that earns their existence.”
Her gaze slid from the dunes to Naza’s hand still locked around chitin.
“You ask if I would mourn the loss of these.” Her eyes flicked to the limbs circling the basalt woman. The thorax. The stinger’s shadow. “I would feel the absence. The way a fortress feels the loss of a bastion. Not as a vain girl weeps for broken jewelry.”
Her expression sharpened. The sensuality did not recede. It acquired teeth.
“I predate them,” she said. “I will outlast them. If they fall, I restructure. That is not the point that matters.”
One limb pressed more distinctly into Naza’s hip. Not quite a clutch. More than a rest.
“What matters is what they allow,” she continued. “Shield. reach. retribution. They are scripture written in bone upon my back. Tear them away and I remain. Yet the world becomes noisier. More foolish. Less disciplined. That I would resent.”
A hush. The wind shifted over the whitening sand. It carried less desert heat now. More grave-cold. As if the dunes remembered they were once seabeds of bones.
“You want to know,” Ixqueya said quietly, “what you are declaring by holding that claw as if it were a keepsake.”
Her shadow swallowed Naza again as the terrain rose. The giantess’s silhouette fell over the smaller woman like a moving eclipse. The brood limbs drew closer in response. A talon lay along her flank. Another cupped the back of her arm. The fourth ghosted over the line of her lower back. A ring of cold, articulate intent.
“You are saying you accept proximity,” she said. “That when the dead sort the living, you prefer to be recorded under investment rather than spoil. That you intend to stay close enough that when I reach, I am more likely to close a hand around you than over you.”
Her stare tasted Naza with a slow vertical sweep. The basalt jaw. The gold-flecked eyes. The disciplined posture under encroaching cold.
“Most souls call their distance liberty,” she said. “It is merely cowardice with better cosmetics. You chose the opposite. You placed your fingers on the junction between my flesh and my hive. That is not idle curiosity. That is consent to being counted.”
Another chortle. Darker now. Richer. She let it roll out like distant thunder under ice.
“And marked things, little stone,” she went on, “are not ignored. They are either preserved. Or used. Often both. In very close quarters.”
A talon stroked the back of Naza’s thigh in a single exploratory pass, then withdrew. Promise. Not yet fulfillment.
“The fear of death you carry is nothing novel,” Ixqueya said. “You are not exceptional for flinching at the ledger’s last page. But you are exceptional for continuing to walk at the side of the one who holds the pen.”
She inclined her head, the gesture spare and regal.
“That is why I permit this intimacy.”
Her tone cooled. She did not grow kinder. Only more precise.
“Death is not the monster your priests pretend,” she said. “It is an orderly clerk. The closure of an entry. The opening of a different book. I have seen beyond the spine. It is flawed, yes. Yet it has one virtue the living world lacks. No lies about purpose. Everything that crosses that threshold either serves or dissolves. There is no middle shelf for pretty ornaments who insist they are ‘free’.”
Her fingers flexed against the chill air. One limb mirrored the motion over Naza’s ribs.
“You ask if I would miss them for myself. No. I would adapt. I always adapt. That is the first law I serve.” Her eyes narrowed. “But for the brood, yes. They are a choir. I am the temple. A temple without its choir can still stand. It simply sings less beautifully.”
Her mouth tilted upward with slow, wicked delight.
“And you,” she added, “would harmonize with them very well.”
The talon in Naza’s grasp coiled more deliberately around her hand now. Not a restraint. An embrace. Claiming shared skin.
“So do not trouble yourself with fantasies of these limbs abandoning me,” she said. “They know where their best blood and bone reside. They are pragmatic. Like their mistress.”
Her attention refocused fully on Naza. The weight of that gaze felt like a gloved hand on the back of the neck.
“Your concern should be more personal,” Ixqueya murmured. “You should be asking how far you intend to continue that little caress. Because if you keep stroking them like that, pebble, you will slide out of the category of ‘observer’ and into something far more… involved.”
Her smile spread. Glacial. Arousing. Unapologetic.
“Winter is patient,” she said. “Predators are less so. And I am both.”
The brood limbs shifted. One traced the line of Naza’s spine through cape and cloth. Another followed the subtle inward curve at her waist. The contact never lost its precision. It simply grew more possessive.
Chitin thrummed beneath her fingertips. A fine tremor ran the length of the limb. From the hooked black tip in her grasp. Down the lacquered segment. Into the buried root welded to Ixqueya’s spine. Sensation climbed her back like reversed candlewax. Heat dragged upward through bone and nerve. It pooled low in her abdomen with the slow gravity of sacramental wine poured into a chalice already half full.
Ixqueya let herself indulge.
One additional limb unfurled from her back. Then another. Then another. The brood unfolded in a patient, predatorial blossom. Segments clicked into place with insect catechism. Talons described languid arcs in the air before settling on the stone-woman’s frame.
One rested along the outer curve of Naza’s hip. Cool weight. Not enough to bruise. Enough to measure. Another traced the oblique line of her flank. It followed the subtle convexity of volcanic muscle beneath black cloth and basalt skin. A third slid behind her spine. It crossed the small of her back in a contemplative glide. Mapping breadth. Tension. Hidden fault lines.
The talon she already held relaxed almost imperceptibly. Its curvature softened into her palm. Glossy black offered more of itself to her exploration. Thin bands of icy blue within the chitin brightened, as if the limb were drawing a deeper breath.
“You are very sure of those hands,” Ixqueya observed. Her tone was soft. Not gentle. “Most mortals flinch. You behave as if this belongs on your worktable.”
The limbs did not paw. They appraised. Every claw walked the seams of Naza’s obsidian hide with forensic patience. They lingered where golden veins pulsed faintly under stone. They skimmed old micro-fractures that had healed into strength. Naza’s variable warmth moved up and down their length in small controlled waves. Cool. Warm. Almost hot. Testing. Teasing. Each shift read as a question.
The brood answered with touch rather than sound. A talon flexed against her hip. Another curled briefly over her ribs in a near-embrace before withdrawing. The contact never slipped into inelegance. Predation could be meticulous.
You would make a very useful attachment, Ixqueya thought. Not merely ornament. Technician. A little votary of stone and heat who tends the reliquary that carries her.
A slow smile cut across her mouth.
Naza’s voice wove its questions. Light. Purpose. Loss. What does this contact mean.
Ixqueya let a low chortle vibrate in her chest. Dark. Amused. Self-assured.
“You dress your meaning in rags,” she said. “I am not so dull I cannot see the naked shape beneath.”
Her tongue slid out. Split at the tip. Pale. It drew a deliberate path over her lower lip. Then her upper. Moisture left behind turned her mouth into something jewel-like. Feral. When she smiled again the sharp white of a canine flashed, too long for a woman who intended only tender endings.
Behind her, the thorax quivered. The stinger eased forward a hand’s breadth. It lifted like a censer. Sampled the air in a slow, priestly sweep. Blue-black shine. A muted, venomous aurora. It did not pierce. It only stroked the edge of Naza’s cape once, a proprietary brush, before sliding back into its carriage.
Pheromones bled from hidden glands with quiet devotion. Wasp-scent and winter. They settled over Naza’s stone skin in an invisible chrism that only Ixqueya could smell. The pebble now carried a faint echo of her hive wherever she walked.
“The draught sat well,” Ixqueya remarked. Breath misted from her lips as she spoke. “Honey. marrow. milk. You swallowed dutifully. Good girl.”
The talon in Naza’s grip pulsed again. A tiny knock. The brood’s private applause.
“You ask what becomes of light that does not bend,” she went on. “It ceases to be light. It becomes inventory. Converted into heat. Pressure. Leverage. I do not keep disobedient tools. I strip them. Reassign them to something that earns their existence.”
Her gaze slid from the dunes to Naza’s hand still locked around chitin.
“You ask if I would mourn the loss of these.” Her eyes flicked to the limbs circling the basalt woman. The thorax. The stinger’s shadow. “I would feel the absence. The way a fortress feels the loss of a bastion. Not as a vain girl weeps for broken jewelry.”
Her expression sharpened. The sensuality did not recede. It acquired teeth.
“I predate them,” she said. “I will outlast them. If they fall, I restructure. That is not the point that matters.”
One limb pressed more distinctly into Naza’s hip. Not quite a clutch. More than a rest.
“What matters is what they allow,” she continued. “Shield. reach. retribution. They are scripture written in bone upon my back. Tear them away and I remain. Yet the world becomes noisier. More foolish. Less disciplined. That I would resent.”
A hush. The wind shifted over the whitening sand. It carried less desert heat now. More grave-cold. As if the dunes remembered they were once seabeds of bones.
“You want to know,” Ixqueya said quietly, “what you are declaring by holding that claw as if it were a keepsake.”
Her shadow swallowed Naza again as the terrain rose. The giantess’s silhouette fell over the smaller woman like a moving eclipse. The brood limbs drew closer in response. A talon lay along her flank. Another cupped the back of her arm. The fourth ghosted over the line of her lower back. A ring of cold, articulate intent.
“You are saying you accept proximity,” she said. “That when the dead sort the living, you prefer to be recorded under investment rather than spoil. That you intend to stay close enough that when I reach, I am more likely to close a hand around you than over you.”
Her stare tasted Naza with a slow vertical sweep. The basalt jaw. The gold-flecked eyes. The disciplined posture under encroaching cold.
“Most souls call their distance liberty,” she said. “It is merely cowardice with better cosmetics. You chose the opposite. You placed your fingers on the junction between my flesh and my hive. That is not idle curiosity. That is consent to being counted.”
Another chortle. Darker now. Richer. She let it roll out like distant thunder under ice.
“And marked things, little stone,” she went on, “are not ignored. They are either preserved. Or used. Often both. In very close quarters.”
A talon stroked the back of Naza’s thigh in a single exploratory pass, then withdrew. Promise. Not yet fulfillment.
“The fear of death you carry is nothing novel,” Ixqueya said. “You are not exceptional for flinching at the ledger’s last page. But you are exceptional for continuing to walk at the side of the one who holds the pen.”
She inclined her head, the gesture spare and regal.
“That is why I permit this intimacy.”
Her tone cooled. She did not grow kinder. Only more precise.
“Death is not the monster your priests pretend,” she said. “It is an orderly clerk. The closure of an entry. The opening of a different book. I have seen beyond the spine. It is flawed, yes. Yet it has one virtue the living world lacks. No lies about purpose. Everything that crosses that threshold either serves or dissolves. There is no middle shelf for pretty ornaments who insist they are ‘free’.”
Her fingers flexed against the chill air. One limb mirrored the motion over Naza’s ribs.
“You ask if I would miss them for myself. No. I would adapt. I always adapt. That is the first law I serve.” Her eyes narrowed. “But for the brood, yes. They are a choir. I am the temple. A temple without its choir can still stand. It simply sings less beautifully.”
Her mouth tilted upward with slow, wicked delight.
“And you,” she added, “would harmonize with them very well.”
The talon in Naza’s grasp coiled more deliberately around her hand now. Not a restraint. An embrace. Claiming shared skin.
“So do not trouble yourself with fantasies of these limbs abandoning me,” she said. “They know where their best blood and bone reside. They are pragmatic. Like their mistress.”
Her attention refocused fully on Naza. The weight of that gaze felt like a gloved hand on the back of the neck.
“Your concern should be more personal,” Ixqueya murmured. “You should be asking how far you intend to continue that little caress. Because if you keep stroking them like that, pebble, you will slide out of the category of ‘observer’ and into something far more… involved.”
Her smile spread. Glacial. Arousing. Unapologetic.
“Winter is patient,” she said. “Predators are less so. And I am both.”
The brood limbs shifted. One traced the line of Naza’s spine through cape and cloth. Another followed the subtle inward curve at her waist. The contact never lost its precision. It simply grew more possessive.
In addition to the heat, it draws in the rest of the legs. They begin unfolding in a way that Naza can only describe as watching a spider lily bloom in a field of roses. The movement is both fast and slow. It leaves Naza in a daze and causes a slight increase in her body temperature— something unintentional and unlike her.
Naza rarely had accidental slip-ups, especially since completing her training. Every part of her was shaped for survival.
The current situation felt abnormal. She was being touched gently, as if the talons were afraid of slicing her open. They could, and they would succeed. But instead, they cluster around her, much like bugs being drawn to a flame. Well, in a way, Naza was akin to a flame, but the way they are moved felt more daring. She was cornered in a way she hadn't felt in a very long time. To her surprise, she was not afraid and felt no desire to close in on herself and power down her heat; she knew better than to turn it up. She didn't want them to run: no, she wanted them to stay around her. A strange feeling indeed.
If Naza knew where they were going, she would have stopped walking. To be frank, she almost did, but again she remembered Ixqueya telling her to stay close or be swallowed. This land is not hers, nor do Naza wish it to be. She is but a traveller in Winterwake, where Naza feels closer to death than usual. “What brought you to Emerald City?” This question had been bouncing around in Naza’s head for a while. The lady, who appeared to be in the square for a purpose, now seemed willing to change her plans at the last minute for a lost traveller. “I hope my presence hasn’t distracted you from important business. You seem like the type who is always on the move.” Naza never met someone so ok with simply changing everything around for someone random.
Someone who was just recently not a foe, but anything can change, people change minds so quickly that it gave Naza headaches. Would they one day be standing on opposite sides of an individual line? Naza looks at Ixqueya's face, her own mouth twitching downwards, fixing into place. She wants to know so much more, more than she ever had the privilege of knowing.
Death is not something that can be undone or reversed; once the body ceases to function, that is the end. However, Ixqueya spoke of an existence beyond death. Could those who fell by Naza's hands still be here somewhere, lurking and waiting for the right moment to strike? Or will they see Naza as just another fallen soul who finally got lucky?
“Flinching does nothing but scatter your nerves and cause you to lose focus,” Naza said as she danced around, the claw resting in her palm. “By being certain of your movements, even the deadliest things can become friendly.” She could feel all three limbs around her body, each with its own distinct position—divided equally and strategically, like a well-trained worker ant or a hungry predator waiting for its prey to stop hiding. They are too curious about Naza’s body, marking each ridge and every crack that lies there. Naza will never be ashamed of how many cracks mark her skin; each one tells a story. A reminder of how flawed she still is as a person, as a fighter
The cape flowing behind Naza was a recent addition; she chose it to protect her skin from harm and retain body heat. It drew many complaints from the unkempt, who considered it a cheat since it provided no real support. But to Naza, it meant everything. Unlike the limbs surrounding her now, which have a working mind, Naza’s cape is a form of defense, more sturdy than most would assume. Although it appears cheaply made, easily scratched, and fragile, it was entirely crafted by Naza herself. The ability to work with the environment, whether it is on your side or against you, was what Naza believed Ixqueya could understand if she lost the limbs or the invasive stinger. If one were to crack, it can be regrown, stronger than before. Learning from its previous mistake, it will try not to make the same error again, thinking further and smarter.
What would the next category reveal? What more could be done? Naza could shake them off, but not easily by any means, as each talon was positioned at different ends, not merely hanging in the background. They were not strangers just staring; no, she could feel the chill of the talons resting, as if they had always been there. It was a pressure she did not hate; they showed no fear of the magma flowing through the cracks. The magma never leaked out; that would be a design flaw, and Naza would not be standing where she is now. She was not afraid of the cold, nor did she mind staying close to the being who wielded the cold as if it were her armor. Naza had never explored her flames; much of what she could do remained unknown. Perhaps she could discover more, maybe in Winterwake, Naza could explore new weapons and armor, and refine her weaknesses until she found a defense to counter them. She did not want to be drowned in endless snow or taken down by vengeful souls.
This eventually leads to another question: Naza will certainly never run out of things to discuss. Her mind is a never-ending machine that constantly moves, 'Do you ever wish you were not created to rule over death?”
Naza rarely had accidental slip-ups, especially since completing her training. Every part of her was shaped for survival.
The current situation felt abnormal. She was being touched gently, as if the talons were afraid of slicing her open. They could, and they would succeed. But instead, they cluster around her, much like bugs being drawn to a flame. Well, in a way, Naza was akin to a flame, but the way they are moved felt more daring. She was cornered in a way she hadn't felt in a very long time. To her surprise, she was not afraid and felt no desire to close in on herself and power down her heat; she knew better than to turn it up. She didn't want them to run: no, she wanted them to stay around her. A strange feeling indeed.
If Naza knew where they were going, she would have stopped walking. To be frank, she almost did, but again she remembered Ixqueya telling her to stay close or be swallowed. This land is not hers, nor do Naza wish it to be. She is but a traveller in Winterwake, where Naza feels closer to death than usual. “What brought you to Emerald City?” This question had been bouncing around in Naza’s head for a while. The lady, who appeared to be in the square for a purpose, now seemed willing to change her plans at the last minute for a lost traveller. “I hope my presence hasn’t distracted you from important business. You seem like the type who is always on the move.” Naza never met someone so ok with simply changing everything around for someone random.
Someone who was just recently not a foe, but anything can change, people change minds so quickly that it gave Naza headaches. Would they one day be standing on opposite sides of an individual line? Naza looks at Ixqueya's face, her own mouth twitching downwards, fixing into place. She wants to know so much more, more than she ever had the privilege of knowing.
Death is not something that can be undone or reversed; once the body ceases to function, that is the end. However, Ixqueya spoke of an existence beyond death. Could those who fell by Naza's hands still be here somewhere, lurking and waiting for the right moment to strike? Or will they see Naza as just another fallen soul who finally got lucky?
“Flinching does nothing but scatter your nerves and cause you to lose focus,” Naza said as she danced around, the claw resting in her palm. “By being certain of your movements, even the deadliest things can become friendly.” She could feel all three limbs around her body, each with its own distinct position—divided equally and strategically, like a well-trained worker ant or a hungry predator waiting for its prey to stop hiding. They are too curious about Naza’s body, marking each ridge and every crack that lies there. Naza will never be ashamed of how many cracks mark her skin; each one tells a story. A reminder of how flawed she still is as a person, as a fighter
The cape flowing behind Naza was a recent addition; she chose it to protect her skin from harm and retain body heat. It drew many complaints from the unkempt, who considered it a cheat since it provided no real support. But to Naza, it meant everything. Unlike the limbs surrounding her now, which have a working mind, Naza’s cape is a form of defense, more sturdy than most would assume. Although it appears cheaply made, easily scratched, and fragile, it was entirely crafted by Naza herself. The ability to work with the environment, whether it is on your side or against you, was what Naza believed Ixqueya could understand if she lost the limbs or the invasive stinger. If one were to crack, it can be regrown, stronger than before. Learning from its previous mistake, it will try not to make the same error again, thinking further and smarter.
What would the next category reveal? What more could be done? Naza could shake them off, but not easily by any means, as each talon was positioned at different ends, not merely hanging in the background. They were not strangers just staring; no, she could feel the chill of the talons resting, as if they had always been there. It was a pressure she did not hate; they showed no fear of the magma flowing through the cracks. The magma never leaked out; that would be a design flaw, and Naza would not be standing where she is now. She was not afraid of the cold, nor did she mind staying close to the being who wielded the cold as if it were her armor. Naza had never explored her flames; much of what she could do remained unknown. Perhaps she could discover more, maybe in Winterwake, Naza could explore new weapons and armor, and refine her weaknesses until she found a defense to counter them. She did not want to be drowned in endless snow or taken down by vengeful souls.
This eventually leads to another question: Naza will certainly never run out of things to discuss. Her mind is a never-ending machine that constantly moves, 'Do you ever wish you were not created to rule over death?”
Ixqueya registered the contact with the cold precision of a magistrate noting a breach of protocol. Yet the sensation itself arrived like an uninvited sacrament. Naza’s fingers on her chitinous ligament were not crude. They were inquisitive. Controlled. The kind of touch that belonged to a survivor who understood that even curiosity must keep a blade hidden beneath its palm. Still. The intimacy of it produced a small tremor in the architecture of her composure. A brief somatic dissent. A chapel bell startled by an errant gust.
The ant limbs had been cultivated for war and custodianship. For terrain-reading. Threat-calibration. The silent census of bodies that might break or kneel. They were not trained for tenderness. Yet they responded to Naza with a strange, disciplined attentiveness. Not indulgent. Not theatrical. A circling reconnaissance. A congregation of articulated shadow that moved as if to verify this basalt anomaly was real. That the volcanic heat and the unflinching will were not a mirage conjured by the desert’s cruelty.
Ixqueya let her pace remain sovereign. She refused to grant the moment the dignity of hesitation. Her hips continued their glacial dominion. The broad, commanding swell of her posterior shifted beneath bronze and chitin with the inevitability of a tide that had never asked permission of the shore. Above it. The thorax rode like a crowned reliquary. Its segmented poise was not coquettish. It was doctrinal. A visible theology of brood and judgment. The stinger remained composed. Yet it drifted a fraction nearer in instinctive arbitration. As though her body wished to record the incident in a more primal ledger. A faint anointing. An olfactory signature of possession and provenance. Not a claim of slavery. A claim of traceability. A reminder that winter does not lose what it chooses to observe.
She angled her head. Feathers stirred with the restrained elegance of a sanctioned omen. Her eyes did not fully retreat to Naza. They need not. She felt the rock-born’s attention like a current of heat pressed against a sanctified wall. The touch was measured. The appraisal was earnest. That distinction spared Naza a harsher correction.
“You handle my brood as if you have survived tools that did not care for your intentions,” Ixqueya said. Her voice carried the calm of law rather than the fever of impulse. “That is wisdom. The foolish try to domesticate danger. The competent negotiate with it. Quietly. Continually. With respect for the fact that one careless breath can void the covenant.”
The city behind them thinned into irrelevance. The gate fell away. The desert opened like a pale ossuary. A rolling expanse of white dunes. A sun-bleached sanctuary where comfort was a rumor and mercy a rare arithmetic. The twin suns climbed higher. Their light was not benevolent. It was forensic. It stripped shadows of their excuses. It rendered every soul a specimen under a pitiless lens. Yet Ixqueya’s frost traveled with her anyway. A private religion of cold threading through a realm that had never consented to snow.
Naza’s question rose again. Soft. Earnest. Dangerous in its intimacy.
Do you ever wish you were not created to rule over death.
Ixqueya slowed by the smallest increment. Not for drama. For emphasis. She allowed the desert to hear the answer as if it were a statute pronounced over an empty court.
“No.”
She did not soften the syllable. She allowed it to land with the authority of a judgment cut into glacial stone.
“What I wish for is immaterial,” she continued. “Desire is a pastime for rulers who preside over parties and petty inheritances. I audit endings. I arbitrate the economy of decay. I cannot afford the vanity of imagining myself as a woman freed from function.”
A pause. The chill between her words was almost tender. Almost merciful.
“Duty before pursuit. The burden I carry does not permit indulgence of self. In that regard, I am a slave.” Her mouth curved faintly. Not warmth. A thin blade of lucidity. “And my chains are not temporal collars. They are vastly more unbreakable. An ideal. A mandate. A principle so rooted in my marrow that rebellion against it would not be liberation. It would be the collapse of the only order that prevents death from becoming a carnival owned by liars.”
She let that truth settle. Like snow on a battlefield. Quiet. Unavoidable. Comprehensive.
“You may find that bleak,” Ixqueya added. “You may even find it tragic. That is a sentimental reading of a necessary architecture. Burden is not proof of misery. Sometimes it is proof that a spine has been entrusted with a function no lesser will could sustain.”
Her gaze lowered to the chitin still held in Naza’s hand. Then lifted to Naza’s face with a cool, predatory frankness.
“You are not my slave,” she said. “I am not interested in the cheap obedience you were trained to perform for uglier masters. I want volition. I want the decision that survives fear. If you choose to follow me. It will be because you weighed the alternatives and judged winter the least dishonest path.”
A small exhale. A rare fracture in her austerity. The faintest chuckle. So brief it might have been mistaken for the wind catching a feather wrong.
“To grovel at my heel would be a titillating bonus,” she said. “Not a requirement.”
She extended her hand then. Clawed. Chitinous. The gesture was not a plea. It was a command concealed inside elegance. A femme fatale summons. The kind that makes refusal feel like a miscalculation rather than a rebellion.
Naza’s question about the Emerald City arrived next. A reasonable inquiry laced with the soft astonishment of someone unaccustomed to being spared without transactional cruelty. She extended her hand then. Clawed. Chitinous. The gesture was not a plea. It was a command concealed inside elegance. A femme fatale summons. The kind that makes refusal feel like a miscalculation rather than a rebellion.
“Come closer,” Ixqueya said. “You are not a child because you ask an impossible question. You are only childish if you believe impossible appetites excuse undisciplined consequences. Correct,” she said. “Flinching is a confession the body makes before the mind has chosen a stance. You have learned to withhold it. Keep that discipline. The desert is full of predators who require only a single tremor to decide you are a meal.”
When Naza drifted into childhood imaginings about absorbing sunlight, Ixqueya’s tone cooled further. The sort of composure that could make zealots doubt their own scriptures. “If you could drink the suns,” she said, “you would learn what all tyrants learn with time. Power is not the difficult part. The difficult part is direction. A furnace without doctrine is only an accidental wildfire. It impresses fools. It devastates villages. It builds nothing that survives the season.”
Her posture remained immaculate. An apex predator wearing sanctity as armor. A wintered shrine that did not promise safety. Only direction.
“Now,” she concluded. “We walk. The desert does not reward eloquence. It rewards endurance. Ask your questions as we move. And learn the difference between worship that weakens you and devotion that sharpens you into something worth recording.”
The ant limbs had been cultivated for war and custodianship. For terrain-reading. Threat-calibration. The silent census of bodies that might break or kneel. They were not trained for tenderness. Yet they responded to Naza with a strange, disciplined attentiveness. Not indulgent. Not theatrical. A circling reconnaissance. A congregation of articulated shadow that moved as if to verify this basalt anomaly was real. That the volcanic heat and the unflinching will were not a mirage conjured by the desert’s cruelty.
Ixqueya let her pace remain sovereign. She refused to grant the moment the dignity of hesitation. Her hips continued their glacial dominion. The broad, commanding swell of her posterior shifted beneath bronze and chitin with the inevitability of a tide that had never asked permission of the shore. Above it. The thorax rode like a crowned reliquary. Its segmented poise was not coquettish. It was doctrinal. A visible theology of brood and judgment. The stinger remained composed. Yet it drifted a fraction nearer in instinctive arbitration. As though her body wished to record the incident in a more primal ledger. A faint anointing. An olfactory signature of possession and provenance. Not a claim of slavery. A claim of traceability. A reminder that winter does not lose what it chooses to observe.
She angled her head. Feathers stirred with the restrained elegance of a sanctioned omen. Her eyes did not fully retreat to Naza. They need not. She felt the rock-born’s attention like a current of heat pressed against a sanctified wall. The touch was measured. The appraisal was earnest. That distinction spared Naza a harsher correction.
“You handle my brood as if you have survived tools that did not care for your intentions,” Ixqueya said. Her voice carried the calm of law rather than the fever of impulse. “That is wisdom. The foolish try to domesticate danger. The competent negotiate with it. Quietly. Continually. With respect for the fact that one careless breath can void the covenant.”
The city behind them thinned into irrelevance. The gate fell away. The desert opened like a pale ossuary. A rolling expanse of white dunes. A sun-bleached sanctuary where comfort was a rumor and mercy a rare arithmetic. The twin suns climbed higher. Their light was not benevolent. It was forensic. It stripped shadows of their excuses. It rendered every soul a specimen under a pitiless lens. Yet Ixqueya’s frost traveled with her anyway. A private religion of cold threading through a realm that had never consented to snow.
Naza’s question rose again. Soft. Earnest. Dangerous in its intimacy.
Do you ever wish you were not created to rule over death.
Ixqueya slowed by the smallest increment. Not for drama. For emphasis. She allowed the desert to hear the answer as if it were a statute pronounced over an empty court.
“No.”
She did not soften the syllable. She allowed it to land with the authority of a judgment cut into glacial stone.
“What I wish for is immaterial,” she continued. “Desire is a pastime for rulers who preside over parties and petty inheritances. I audit endings. I arbitrate the economy of decay. I cannot afford the vanity of imagining myself as a woman freed from function.”
A pause. The chill between her words was almost tender. Almost merciful.
“Duty before pursuit. The burden I carry does not permit indulgence of self. In that regard, I am a slave.” Her mouth curved faintly. Not warmth. A thin blade of lucidity. “And my chains are not temporal collars. They are vastly more unbreakable. An ideal. A mandate. A principle so rooted in my marrow that rebellion against it would not be liberation. It would be the collapse of the only order that prevents death from becoming a carnival owned by liars.”
She let that truth settle. Like snow on a battlefield. Quiet. Unavoidable. Comprehensive.
“You may find that bleak,” Ixqueya added. “You may even find it tragic. That is a sentimental reading of a necessary architecture. Burden is not proof of misery. Sometimes it is proof that a spine has been entrusted with a function no lesser will could sustain.”
Her gaze lowered to the chitin still held in Naza’s hand. Then lifted to Naza’s face with a cool, predatory frankness.
“You are not my slave,” she said. “I am not interested in the cheap obedience you were trained to perform for uglier masters. I want volition. I want the decision that survives fear. If you choose to follow me. It will be because you weighed the alternatives and judged winter the least dishonest path.”
A small exhale. A rare fracture in her austerity. The faintest chuckle. So brief it might have been mistaken for the wind catching a feather wrong.
“To grovel at my heel would be a titillating bonus,” she said. “Not a requirement.”
She extended her hand then. Clawed. Chitinous. The gesture was not a plea. It was a command concealed inside elegance. A femme fatale summons. The kind that makes refusal feel like a miscalculation rather than a rebellion.
Naza’s question about the Emerald City arrived next. A reasonable inquiry laced with the soft astonishment of someone unaccustomed to being spared without transactional cruelty. She extended her hand then. Clawed. Chitinous. The gesture was not a plea. It was a command concealed inside elegance. A femme fatale summons. The kind that makes refusal feel like a miscalculation rather than a rebellion.
“Come closer,” Ixqueya said. “You are not a child because you ask an impossible question. You are only childish if you believe impossible appetites excuse undisciplined consequences. Correct,” she said. “Flinching is a confession the body makes before the mind has chosen a stance. You have learned to withhold it. Keep that discipline. The desert is full of predators who require only a single tremor to decide you are a meal.”
When Naza drifted into childhood imaginings about absorbing sunlight, Ixqueya’s tone cooled further. The sort of composure that could make zealots doubt their own scriptures. “If you could drink the suns,” she said, “you would learn what all tyrants learn with time. Power is not the difficult part. The difficult part is direction. A furnace without doctrine is only an accidental wildfire. It impresses fools. It devastates villages. It builds nothing that survives the season.”
Her posture remained immaculate. An apex predator wearing sanctity as armor. A wintered shrine that did not promise safety. Only direction.
“Now,” she concluded. “We walk. The desert does not reward eloquence. It rewards endurance. Ask your questions as we move. And learn the difference between worship that weakens you and devotion that sharpens you into something worth recording.”
Ah, a slave to a system built around a single person. Such systems tend to fail; this is how Pyrecliff became overrun by power-hungry thieves. They thrived on the suffering of others simply because they could. Naza believes that Ixqueya's situation might have been different—how else could she accept reality without wanting to change it? Perhaps she found a way to embrace a situation where there was no escape. Control over death, to prevent it from spiraling out of control, is indeed a noble yet difficult task.
“You are highly capable of many things, but the way you define your current situation,” Naza said, staring ahead and pausing her hand as it rubbed the limb, “you carry your chain with such strength that even I, someone who was once a slave, could not categorize you as one.” Everyone who is forced into a situation they wish not to not all carry themselves similarly. The speech will be more broken and unsure; they will not walk with their head tall and strides powerful, unbashfully release their power not for survival but simply to leave a mark to let people know that “I was here.” Naza could do that right now, burn the sand to make glass, but who would know who did it? Naza's name and flame mean nothing here; Ixqueya ice and frozen demer mean a lot; her presence holds significance.
A slave who proves to be different holds value, but never enough to breathe, to discover, to explore, to one day become a leader. Naza could laugh; many slaves believed they were on top of the world. They tried to make everyone fear them. Naza’s fears turned to hate; her hate burned and shimmered as she crushed those who tried to act beyond their means.
They were all part of the same system, broken in similar yet different ways, some more than others. But Ixqueya, she became one with her chains. What does that feel like?
Naza had to escape; the urge for freedom was more overpowering than any influence she held within that system. The higher class often spoke to her about changing her destiny, but always in a condescending tone. Naza knew that taking their hand would only mean moving from one hell to another, with new rules and even more restrictions. She never responded. The question was a trap—any question from a superior was a trap. Naza learned these lessons either through whispers or from experience.
Now, Naza is changing her destiny with the money they gave her, pretty words covered in mold. As a non-slave, “Blind obedience is a quick death.” She paused for a moment, then resumed her previous interest in the ant leg. “Choosing to wake up early to meet you was not because of an invisible order. You seem interesting. Bold, and not boring. A nice spice in a life filled with blandness.” Sweet words without lies, a few memories where that once existed. A flatterer through and through, something even a stone could pull off.
The twin suns, for once, seemed to align for Naza. Maybe all those years were worth it. Naza could have done without some of them, but damn, what else would make Naza leave the cliff other than to escape? An unknown route, a path closed and irreversible, that makes this all the better.
To take the hand in front of her means to step forward, to fully stand in the light. Exposed once again to the uncertainty of what lies ahead. Naza is not built to stay hidden; everything about her can catch an eye or two, or maybe not. What is considered standard in this area? Walking beside a giant far more dangerous that are hidden by larger features.
Take Ixqueya's hand and step out of the shadows, or remain hidden, waiting for the next command—which could result in being discarded.
Naza was slow to release the ant limb; the heavy weight became familiar in her palm. As she reached the sharp tip, which felt similar to a knife but more refined and thinner, like a needle, Naza released the limb and grasped the tan-kissed skin for the first time.
The chill was immediate but not mind-numbing. The hand was heavier than Naza was expecting, skin tough yet soft, bearing the marks of years of manual labor. These were not the hands of someone who had lived a life of pleasure and simplicity. These were the hands of a true ruler and a formidable warrior; hands capable of bringing down even the so-called strongest, or dying in the attempt.
Ixqueya is the wolf concealed among the sheep.
“And are you one of the predators that attack after a tiny tremor?” Naza said as she latched onto Ixqueya's hand, “I still have time to grow if you can hold back your fangs.” Naza let another grin appear on her face, this time lasting five seconds longer. She stared at Ixqueya’s face for twenty seconds before looking ahead at the horizon.
Naza can still feel the weight of the remaining limbs, a reminder that she is not trapped in a dream.
“You are highly capable of many things, but the way you define your current situation,” Naza said, staring ahead and pausing her hand as it rubbed the limb, “you carry your chain with such strength that even I, someone who was once a slave, could not categorize you as one.” Everyone who is forced into a situation they wish not to not all carry themselves similarly. The speech will be more broken and unsure; they will not walk with their head tall and strides powerful, unbashfully release their power not for survival but simply to leave a mark to let people know that “I was here.” Naza could do that right now, burn the sand to make glass, but who would know who did it? Naza's name and flame mean nothing here; Ixqueya ice and frozen demer mean a lot; her presence holds significance.
A slave who proves to be different holds value, but never enough to breathe, to discover, to explore, to one day become a leader. Naza could laugh; many slaves believed they were on top of the world. They tried to make everyone fear them. Naza’s fears turned to hate; her hate burned and shimmered as she crushed those who tried to act beyond their means.
They were all part of the same system, broken in similar yet different ways, some more than others. But Ixqueya, she became one with her chains. What does that feel like?
Naza had to escape; the urge for freedom was more overpowering than any influence she held within that system. The higher class often spoke to her about changing her destiny, but always in a condescending tone. Naza knew that taking their hand would only mean moving from one hell to another, with new rules and even more restrictions. She never responded. The question was a trap—any question from a superior was a trap. Naza learned these lessons either through whispers or from experience.
Now, Naza is changing her destiny with the money they gave her, pretty words covered in mold. As a non-slave, “Blind obedience is a quick death.” She paused for a moment, then resumed her previous interest in the ant leg. “Choosing to wake up early to meet you was not because of an invisible order. You seem interesting. Bold, and not boring. A nice spice in a life filled with blandness.” Sweet words without lies, a few memories where that once existed. A flatterer through and through, something even a stone could pull off.
The twin suns, for once, seemed to align for Naza. Maybe all those years were worth it. Naza could have done without some of them, but damn, what else would make Naza leave the cliff other than to escape? An unknown route, a path closed and irreversible, that makes this all the better.
To take the hand in front of her means to step forward, to fully stand in the light. Exposed once again to the uncertainty of what lies ahead. Naza is not built to stay hidden; everything about her can catch an eye or two, or maybe not. What is considered standard in this area? Walking beside a giant far more dangerous that are hidden by larger features.
Take Ixqueya's hand and step out of the shadows, or remain hidden, waiting for the next command—which could result in being discarded.
Naza was slow to release the ant limb; the heavy weight became familiar in her palm. As she reached the sharp tip, which felt similar to a knife but more refined and thinner, like a needle, Naza released the limb and grasped the tan-kissed skin for the first time.
The chill was immediate but not mind-numbing. The hand was heavier than Naza was expecting, skin tough yet soft, bearing the marks of years of manual labor. These were not the hands of someone who had lived a life of pleasure and simplicity. These were the hands of a true ruler and a formidable warrior; hands capable of bringing down even the so-called strongest, or dying in the attempt.
Ixqueya is the wolf concealed among the sheep.
“And are you one of the predators that attack after a tiny tremor?” Naza said as she latched onto Ixqueya's hand, “I still have time to grow if you can hold back your fangs.” Naza let another grin appear on her face, this time lasting five seconds longer. She stared at Ixqueya’s face for twenty seconds before looking ahead at the horizon.
Naza can still feel the weight of the remaining limbs, a reminder that she is not trapped in a dream.
You are on: Forums » Fantasy Roleplay » The Audit (Ixqueya X Naza)