Love Conquers All
"Welcome to the Dojo of Kaleidoscoping Shards, we do not commonly have visitors, I am Fire without smoke, can I offer you tea?"
"Thank you, I am Love Conquers All, wait, you don't remember me, do you?" The petite Chiaroscuran looked at him pensively.
"I do not, why would I?"
"I've been here before. I wasn't your guest, Fire without smoke, though, I was a guest of the The hostler, like you. We even sparred, I fought you to a standstill. Even if I can't imagine myself being that good, I know another of my personalities took over and gave you the hardest fight of your existence."
'You're the most dangerous of us, the monster we dare not release.' Signed Breeze, who had come out of the Dojo after his sparring practice.
"I am not a monster."
'I intend no disrespect, but none know your limits, in many ways, you are like the moon, unpredictable, presenting a different face upon every situation.'
"He is right, at least in one way, none know your limits, not even those that fight with you, let alone against you. You lost to Breeze, then beat him, then beat me, then lost to me so bad, I wondered if you were playing... I've noticed you use at least five, possibly seven distinct, different martial arts styles."
"Yes, only in a few of them can I equal either of you, in some, I still have much to learn..."
'How can this be? Most people ache just to learn one style to that level, it seems you've mastered so many.'
"You know how, you and I, In another time, in another place, were viceroys of the lawgivers, your soul knew me then. But, shortly after the great upset, I was made a prisoner of those called 'Fair' by the ill-informed. I was kept there, for lifetimes, seven five-hundred year sentences their gaolers thrust upon me in The Wyld, or so I estimate. I became a different person, with a different personality, during each sentence, learning new skills, developing new ways to cope, some things they thought me, some things I taught myself, as their displeasure, until I finally escaped. The time is not the same in the wyld, so I don't know how long ago, I washed ashore on Luna's beach cove, inspiring her this convention. To preserve me, I often get frozen away, 'to keep me', but I doubt they keep me so much as protect their new weapon."
'Then you fight with us unwillingly?'
"No, not unwillingly, I would preserve this reality our forebears built, but I recognize I fight partly because I can do ought else, I have been too hurt, in too many ways, to keep on fighting much longer, as well."
"I know that feeling, of being stretched... thin?"
"Yes." Then a most unsettling thing happened, Love Conquers All's body language changed, where she had been assertive, playful, at ease in her own skin, she was now slouching, as if finding herself hideous or at least, unimportant, unworthy of notice. She started signing: 'Who are you two? Where am I?'
"We were talking..." Breeze put his hand on Fire without smoke's wrist, as to indicate he should stop talking.
'Well met.' Breeze signed, and Love Conquers All replied the same way: 'Well met, where am I?'
Fire without smoke did not usually sign, but since he knew how, and the others were going to continue the conversation, it seemed, without him, joined in, signing: 'The dojo of bright crystals, I am teacher here, I am Smokeless Fire, and you are?'
'I am Love surpasses everything.' She signed, the sign language they used having quite a few hiccups translating the more abstract words they were using, but otherwise getting her point across.
'I am Breeze blowing smoke away.' Breeze joined in. 'But you can call me stick, and him sword.'
'Then call me heart, I liked that, stick and sword, I imagine you fight?' The simpler code words were much easier to sign, for one, which helped Fire's blood pressure.
'We practice-fight.' Trying to translate sparring was proving more difficult than he thought for Fire, Breeze tried to spell him, given his greater ease.
'We false-fight for improvement. Would you like to join us?'
'If it's no trouble.' She signed back, and going behind some screens, changed into a gi.
With the gi she looked even more like a naive young woman, wearing clothes two sizes too big. But to Breeze and Fire's practiced senses, she was more dangerous now than before. She set herself into a form they both knew, and although she claimed not to remember Fire, she had faced him in this form before, and Breeze as well. Breeze faced her, matching her form, for he too knew this form.
They took turns striking first, and it was almost a normal day at the dojo for a time, until the more occult moves of the martial art they shared started to become manifest. Fire, while the referee, had slipped into a defensive form as well, but it didn't protect him, Love had stolen from him the time between actions, the breaths between blows, as the artists of the style called them.
Love conquers all had slipped into the Form of Aeons Untold, and rained blows against Breeze that he hadn't bothered to return or defend against. This was a spar, not a fight to the death, but in such a fight, Breeze'd have been dead five times now, by Fire's count.The same strange warping of reality occured again, and instead of the shy maiden whose body language looked misadapted, a predator stood, in a voice both like and unlike the one she had used previously: "Where am I?"
"This is the dojo of kaleidoscopic shards, I am Fire without Smoke, I am Sifù here, this is Breeze blowing smoke through a Sakura orchard, the taste of rain."
"Oh, were we sparring? FIght me!" Her body language and enthusiasm replacing the uncertainty of time made wibbly-wobbly, as she took another form to defend. And quite a contrasting one too, her body like a lithe panther of shadows, curled up to defend. It took some effort for Breeze not to end the fight from sheer confusion, he did know this style's weaknesses though, and demonstrated one, fighting with another style, one that flowed like the essence of sorcery through the land of heaven.
"Oh, you're good." She purred, like a great cat, her eyes narrowed as she looked onto her opponent, from where he'd dumped her on her behind.
Another flicker. Like reality too frayed in this time and place, Fire was sure of it.
Love was silently taking another form, and apparently preparing to sing.
"Duck!" Fire screamed, as Love conquers all's song shattered all metal and glass objects in the dojo, leaving both men uninjured but shaken.
"I'm sorry, I didn't... I didn't mean to do that." Another body language, and she affected what was almost another voice. "Please, don't hurt me." And fainted.
"You do know me, you recognized that form, few know it these troubled days..." As often, after 'an episode', Love was reconsitituting herself, reintegrating what she had just seen and done, fighting the dissociation that was the strongest symptom of how the Raksha had wounded her.
"Yes, you've broken my sign outside four times now, I should make it more robust."
"I'm sorry. I must repay."
"You're one of us, you need not worry about money."
"You'll still work to fix it."
"No, there's already a god fixing it, see?" He pointed, and indeed, a manager-of-secrets was putting up a new brass sign.
'You should stay here, at least until we understand this flicker.'
"Until I'm no longer a threat to myself an others? I'm afraid I'm long beyond ever reaching that point."
'Well, you've never switched mid-spar before, something's not right'
"I guess that's fair."
'Do you have names for them?'
"Yeah, I guess why?"
'I like to know the names of those who defeat me.' Breeze signed, with solemn respect.
"Oh, that was Skulker, she knows Timeless Dance of Centuries, the rest of me doesn't."
"Which one knows The Demon's Claws?"
"Lyana, I don't like her very much."
"And the singer?"
"Lux is the singer." She blushed, remembering what Lux had felt, that had caused the outburst. Lux didn't understand boundaries, good thing he'd been stopped before... She tried to stop thinking about that, that led nowhere safe.
"How many are there?"
"Seven: myself, or Nayla, that's how the others call me, at any rate. Lux, Urger, Skulker, Lyana, Pyara and Veiltender. I hope you never meet Urger, I think she's more dangerous than the others, she has less control, she might not even understand the limits of a spar."
"Which ones likes Nayla the most?"
"Veiltender and Pyara, maybe Lux, again, why?"
"Seems to me they'd be the ones suffering the least, or perhaps the most stable?"
"No, at least, I do seem to slip into them least often now, except for Lux, and while Lux likes Nayla more than some, he compensates by hating all Creation more than most. In an odd twist, Veiltender, Skulker and Urger think they're sisters."
'Then it's possible they're not just creations from your mind, but come from the Wyld. Passengers, refugees from the wild.'
"I hadn't considered that, you think the heh Fair ones put things in my mind?"
"There's lots that's not understood about that place, for sure."
'Constructs from your mind having a hierarchy, believable. Constructs from your mind being siblings? Who's the mother?'
"Oh."
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This soul took the second breath in 767, in Chiaroscuro. Her mother, a half-djala exiled from White Refuge for political reasons, she attracted the Council of Entities' official attention in Nexus, enough that the city was much too hot for her. Taking to Chiaroscuro, the woman found happiness there and laughs, apprenticing to a weaver, and doing well as a dress maker once the business devolved to her, due to a 'technicality'. To this day I don't know if my mother murdered her benefector to get her business, saw her committing horrible crimes and denounced her, something in between, or if another actor decided to throw things into chaos, like the fivescore fellowship is wont to do. Apprenticing to mother, I became acquainted with dressmakers, haberdashers, milliners, hatters, weavers, coiffeurs, barbers, shoemakers, lacemakers, and most shop owners close by, like bakers, confectionary makers, pastry chefs, and the like. Affluent living tinted my early life, but I soon struck out on my own, the smallest person on many a caravan, helping with the numbers, writing down the letters some caravanmasters were too lazy to know how to do."You know there's more than five score, right?" "Yeah, they should be called the six score fellowship, but that would betray a secret, and Jupiter is being a stick in the mud about that." "How many Lunars are there?" "There's officially twenty score lunars, according to the internal census of the Silver Pact." "Any chance there's extranumerous lunars, like there are sidereals?" "No, at least, not that many, there's not 80 lunars extra. I think I've met all the extra lunars, there's like four of us." "Four?" "One of each caste. And one each of each Solar caste in the solar auxiliaries. Someone decided that the special convention needed to be sidereal-heavy, for some reason." "Like the fact that there are five maidens out of seven incarnae, but no one makes it past Ignis Divine or his lawgivers?" "Something like that." "Not all of it is unintentional either, is it?"
"Who are you?" "I am Love Conquers All. Who are you?" "I am Fire without smoke." "I bet you're someone who walks without leaving holes in the ground." "On the words broken, on the lives spent, there is no end, there is no meaning."
"Hello."
"How are you today?"
"I'm fine, Fire, and you?"
"Everything going ok, what's the
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