/monster/ - The Last Bastion of Romance★

>Take pendant.

Devotion - the snowy branch reaching through the black night, the horn atop the battling stag, the rime of light on the horizon. You've had this since you first flowered, so why let go of it now? It's compact and wearable besides.

Twin canvas straps woven through the rings, pulled tight, and the pack is sealed. Nothing more to be done. The sun dips below the treeline and the first fingers of evening chill creep under the windowsill. A board creaks outside as one of your guards shifts his weight. You wash your hands at the small sink. A pointless little action, but why not? It’s something to do.

Sharp clack of footsteps outside. Unexpected, though not unhoped-for. The rough scraping of oversized key inside iron sealing-bar-lock. When did you get up? Breathe. It couldn’t be, not now. The door opens to reveal one of your grey-veiled guards. Just as breath is about to return to you, he steps aside to reveal your husband.

Chad. Your childhood crush, your adolescent fling, your lover, your confident, your husband, and soon your widower. Wide shoulders, broad chest, rough hands, so-familiar lips pressed tightly against the urge to speak, eyes desperate. You can’t cross the threshold and neither can he. But this chance to see him again! You’re so glad he hasn’t done anything stupid, that he’s still alive. Your nipples flush and stiffen against chill air, reflex and desperation disregarding context and custom utterly. The wrong word at the wrong time, or the wrong touch, or the wrong… well. You both know the rules that govern things right now. Everybody does. It’ll be no different for you, but for him…

Brass ring hangs heavy on your left. The fingers of your right brush over it, tracing warm familiar metal. It’s of no significance now: Death annuls marriage.

>Return.

>Retain.

>Retain.

Why disturb now what will be severed soon? Leave things be. You raise your left hand and put it over your heart, squeezing it down with your right.

Chad forces a brave smile. Bless that silly man. You were so lucky to have been with him. He’s going to be alright. The last few of your rationed seconds pass in silent longing, then he steps back and the door is pulled closed by the same grey guard. A shroud settles over your heart as you climb into bed, sheets cold and blanket heavy against nude skin.

You wake with the sun. Face the rise, bow, touch the crest stained on your right wrist to your forehead, give thanks. Dress for the first time in days. Underwear, thick stockings, thick shift, blouse, skirt, shoes. A few gulps of freezing water to distract your churning stomach then wet fingers run through sleep-mussed hair. Coat, beret - the former buttoned securely and the latter pulled neatly to the side. Your pendant nestling comfortably under your throat and above the swell of your breasts, silver branch tracing - perhaps - the shape of welcoming firelight spilling past a figure through an open door. You've never managed to properly decide what it really depicts. Back to the centre of the floor. Pack next to you. Kneel, wait, back straight and eyes ahead.

The door opens soon enough. Both men are practiced and efficient. You still don’t know how they see through their heavy veils but they show no hesitation as they hold your arms and secure iron bands around your neck and waist. A bar is slid behind your back to connect the two and your wrists shackled to it in turn. Not comfortable nor unnecessarily cruel - practical is the word. Fit for purpose, like you. One of them picks up your pack, the other takes hold of your back-bar, and together the two march you out of your chamber, through dim corridors, and finally into the chill outside air where a small van waits. Its back doors are heavy and tiny rear windows covered by strong grilles - no need for pomp or ceremony here.

That comes later.

---—

Silence falls inside the car as you watch sand and rock speed by your window. The air blowing around you from the vents on the dashboard is nice and cool despite the swelter outside. You're not sure how that happens, but you're not sure of very much at all anymore.

"There’s something I want to understand", says Ashara, one dark-furred paw darting deftly downwards to shift gears, "Why did you keep the ring? As I heard it, you wanted him to live as well as he could without you. Therefore why leave such a strong marker behind? Would it not have been kinder to release him completely?"

You turn your head to regard her. Smart suit, open collar shirt, long black hair cascading over furred jackal ears, two blue-and-gold hair tubes framing her cinnamon face, gunmetal-frame glasses darkened against the invasively bright desert sun, lips pursed slightly in thought. Did she mean that to hurt? Probably not. You’re getting used to the demon’s - no, not demon, what was it she called herself? - the anubis’s blunt-trauma manner surprisingly quickly. She simply wants to know, so she asked. Nothing more.

"I suppose it's like… that thing there." You gesture to the tiny yellow-headed, claw-handed plastic figurine riding in one of the small depressions just below the dashboard's rim that you spotted Ashara taking out of her jacket pocket when she was getting into the car earlier. "Just something you keep around."

Ashara's gaze traces your gesture, an embarrassed smile breaking out over her face as her cheeks flush slightly. "The ring gives you comfort?"

You shrug, looking back to the road. "Sort of. Marriage ends when one person dies, so it would have been the same whether I'd taken it off or left it on. If I'd taken it off, maybe I'd have started checking for it and panicking before I realised I'd given it back. Maybe Chad would have done something brave and silly. I don't really know. It just felt right in that moment."

Ashara returns to pursed-lip thinking, both paws on the wheel. One black ear twitches. A few minutes pass in silence before she speaks again.

"Was Chad wearing his ring, too?"

---—

>CONTINUE

>>338229

In ancient days, the records say - before the world needed protection - some cultures used to use an animal. Then the world changed, shrank, new threats arose, and so too did society and custom adapt to necessity.

It is that necessity which presently has you shackled to an iron plate facing the sky, the angry roaring of your fellow humans boring through your ears. Your right sleeve has been fastened back to reveal the twofold Crest of Humanity Ascendant stained under your skin, the mark of your submission to the will of the Protector since birth and your only defence against damnation. The faint shimmer of the barrier far overhead owes its existence to these crests, and to the virtuous maintenance of humanity so that their purified spiritual power may sustain it.

Six robed Advocates stand facing outward around you, their powerful voices carrying to the crowd far above as they read through the lists of crime and sin that you are personally responsible for causing. Rapes, blasphemies, cheating, frauds, murders, manslaughters, lies, dark desires, self-abuses, misappropriations, and more - each instance and probable instance laid out and thrown to the slavering mob as meat to dogs. Ultimately, as ritual demands, it was you who caused these things to happen. If you had not caused these things, humanity would not have to suffer abrogation of the Protector's will. You are a well-poisoner, a baby-strangler, a niece-beater, a degenerate pornographer, a wife-torturer, a plague-spreader, a rotten core of spiritual filth and infection. Every so often a particularly heinous charge is read and the crowd’s anger swells to unrestrained hysteric fury. The sun crosses overhead and passes its zenith before the charges are all laid out. You’re ultimately guilty of it all, of course. You deserve this.

First the Advocates fall silent, then the crowd. A scraping of metal and clanking of chain as a great and ancient mechanism activates, and then the High Advocate is gazing down at you. The kindly face you’ve seen gazing through countless posters and newspaper etchings is now stern and flinty, matching the gleaming steel of the silver sickle gripped in his fist. His voice is soft, carrying only to you. This part of the ceremony is not for anyone else.

"Oh, child. What a disappointment you have been. For all our effort, we've been left with no choice."

His sickle flashes down and lightly scores along your right wrist. Curiously enough, there is no pain - but the tiny amount of blood that seeps from the surface wound is made irrelevant as your crest dissolves and flows upward into his blade like ink into a dry brush. His face twists in a scowl.

"Blonde and blue-eyed too. What a waste. There aren't many of you left, but you and you alone brought this on yourself. Have you anything to say, Scapegoat?" He leans down towards you. "I'll hear your final confession."

>Bare your throat and confess to all charges.

>Remain silent and composed.

>Spit in his eye.

>Note that his incision was imperfect; his sickle has touched your blood.

>Note that his incision was imperfect.

Barking laughter tumbles from Ashara, wagging tail thumping against the side of the car. The sound is quickly swallowed up by the deep bass grumble of the huge vehicle parked alongside, a single massive metal cylinder its sole cargo. Ashara’s paw is squeezing down on a kind of trigger attached to a broad nozzle through which fuel flows from the large vehicle into hers.

"You were strapped down-ahaha- being cut on with a ceremonial knife, and your first response was to critique his technique?” She blinks merry tears from her eyes and sucks in a huge breath before fixing a gaze equal parts warm and appraising on you. “You’re a… special kind of girl, no?”

"Sickle, actually, and when you put it like that it does seem odd - but yes.” You feel your face reddening. It’s true and she seems to mean it as a compliment, but to just come out and say it like that… “Advocates are the Protector’s agents, the High Advocate most of all! They’re charged not to damage nor injure. It was shocking in its own way."

Ashara’s suit jacket has been shed and hung on a convenient hook behind the driver’s seat, and your coat and thicker underclothes have both long since been shucked as the heat advances. Sweat is collecting on your collarbone and hers alike, tamping fabric down against skin. Hers are a little bigger than mine, a primitive part of you quietly notes.

The nozzle is pulled free and a big meaty paw slaps the tank cover back into place. Ashara walks the hose back to some kind of retracting reel and locks the nozzle back into the holder you saw her take it from, closing and fastening another hatch atop the whole apparatus.

"Alright, I’ll see Gharol off. Best I not introduce you yet - she’s… a little particular about proper first meetings but on a pretty tight schedule right now. Back in a minute."

The anubis reaches the cabin and yells something up to it. A chocolate-skinned woman leans out of the window and thumps a hand against the metal of the door, shouting something back in a guttural roar. She’s impressively toned, you notice, skin hugging firm muscle without an unnecessary ounce anywhere. A shaggy white mane of hair flows from her head down her back, roughly tied in places with what seem to be thin pieces of coloured rope.

The two banter a little, and then Gharol shouts something through a huge grin before disappearing back into the cabin. Ashara walks back to you as the - the tanker, that’s what she called it - pulls off in a deafening hiss and roar. The anubis shakes her head, smiling.

"Thousands of klicks to cover yet she and her girls manage to be bang on time and loc every time. Even I don’t know how she does it."

>CONTINUE

>>338329

Sheer cliff rises beside you as the ancient cage is lowered. While you earnestly inquired after the finer points of the High Advocate’s sickle technique and the qualifications of the man welding it, the rest of the ritual took care of itself. The High Advocate stepped back, the metal plate to which you were affixed rose to vertical and kissed the positioned cage, then ancient hasps released to deposit you within. Bailiffs stood surrounding, their long iron staves prepared to push you away should you attempt to struggle or interfere as the cage doors slid closed. For any human to suffer even the slightest physical contact with you now would be anathema - you have been severed from the sole source of spiritual protection and have had sin stuffed into your soul like so much rotten straw. Hence the cage, winched out beyond the cliff’s edge and lowered while the Advocates declare to the assembled spectators that the corruption within has been purged and the Protector’s lifeblood runs cleaner for it.

This is the edge of the world. It isn’t much to look at. At the base of the cliff lies a tiny spit of sand surrounded by dark, choppy water. A rock ramp leads upwards to a ramshackle causeway bridge, its rickety span disappearing into the shimmering mist of the Barrier. The sand will disappear as the tide rises.

The cage clanks to a halt about three person-spans above the sand, a small high-pitched creak of a wire under tension is heard, and then all at once the base of the cage falls from beneath you.

ROLL: Agility [OXX] -> FAIL

You plummet unceremoniously and crumple on the sand, your pack falling atop you a moment later. The cage hangs, swinging in the sea wind, then slowly begins its ascent. Cold gusts blast from the bridge as you swap your shoes for your leather boots and repack. You are supposed to walk now, carry all your accumulated wrongdoing out of the world. Not that anyone is watching; you could just stay here on the sand as the tide rises, or wade out into the waiting currents…

A crack develops at the edge of your heart, hot ball of grief welling in the bottom of your throat, a swelling that aches when you try to swallow it but threatens to burst upwards through you if you don’t. Everything is gone and you will die alone.

ROLL: Will [OXO] -> SUCCESS

It is a hard fact that if you stay where you are, you will drown very soon. You manage to force your limbs into a rough shambling impression of a walk and climb onto the rusted bridge. Ordinarily you wouldn't be able to do this, but every two years the barrier weakens as humanity's corruption accumulates. With nowhere else to go but out, you might as well see this through to the end.

----

You know that you should be able to hear the lapping of water against the causeway pillars but the thick mist makes even seeing your own feet difficult. The slap of your boots seems deafening by comparison. You've stopped taking rests; walking's rhythm cuts the complete silence that makes you acutely aware of the noisy blood rushing through your veins and the rattling suck of your breath.

----

It's becoming easier to breathe. You check whether you can see your boots and realise with a start that not only can you see your boots and the planks of the bridge, you can see your shadow! A little further along and you realise why you've not been able to hear water: There is only dry sand beneath. A little further and you feel a faint warmth: The sun!

Then all at once, you emerge from the mist, nearly stopping in shock. Rocky sand stretches in every direction, early-morning sun illuminating great dunes piled in the distance. To your right, a neatly-lettered sign written in twenty or so languages you don't understand…

ROLL: Intelligence [OOO] -> SUCCESS

…and one you do: DANGER - DEMARCATION LINE - DO NOT STOP.

>>338677

ROLL: Perception [XXX] -> FAIL

Ahead, the bridge disappears into a sand embankment. Your boots touch sand, the faint crunch a welcome relief from the monotony of wooden planks. Just a little further, and you'll be able to see what's over this-

"TARFE!"

Too late, you hear the sucking sound of something emerging from the sand behind you and then what sounds like a couple sets of heavy boots tramping towards you. They stop a short distance away. You freeze, adrenaline flooding through you.

"HYMA."

The shouting voice is unmistakably female but utterly devoid of inflection. What was the capture protocol they taught in Civil Defence? D is for Drop, H is for Hands, A is for as- no, that's not right. You turn and

ROLL: Will [OOO] -> SUCCESS

Every fibre of your being is telling you to scream, to run, to cower, to fight, but you manage to keep it pushed down long enough to suck in a few breaths and take stock. The voice belongs to a terror in the shape of a gigantic beetle. Four great legs support the thorax, khaki cloth splashed with patterns of yellow, grey and brown stretched over the abdomen's black chitinous plates. Riding where an ordinary (what of this is ordinary?, a part of you incredulously demands) beetle's head would be is a short girl - she'd be about a head shorter than you were she not suspended on the beetle - dressed in clothing of the same pattern as stretched over the beetle's body, head protected by a helmet, and solid black expressionless eyes fixed on you over rifle sights. Behind her, you see another beetle emerge, shaking sand off the same clothing as your captor's.

"FRREIE BASILIC."

ROLL: Intelligence [XOO] -> SUCCESS

You have no idea what she's saying but she hasn't killed you yet. This, therefore, is probably a capture. That would mean she wants you to surrender any weapons. You show both hands to the beetle-girl, palms flat. She nods curtly and then gestures with her rifle in the direction you were originally heading.

"Walaka."

That's clear enough. You crest the rise, giant beetle legs thumping the sand behind you. At the bottom of the scree-laden dune, you see two vehicles. One is clearly a service vehicle, its general purpose clear to you from your civil defence drills - a brown, blocky four-wheeled lump of metal and canvas with a broad rear tray. The other is completely enclosed, smoother, sleeker, and jet black. As you descend, a female figure emerges from the driver's door of the black vehicle and begins walking to meet your group. You're close enough to see two black protrusions coming off the woman's head when your escort speaks again.

"Tarfe."

Ah, that's what she shouted at you. Taking a wild guess, you stop moving. The woman approaches and stops just out of arm's reach. Long black hair cascades down behind her, high cheekbones framed by blue-and-gold hair tubes, her eyes unreadable behind what appear to be glasses but darkened somehow. Perhaps she's blind? You don't see any evidence of a cane or other guide. She's wearing a nicely-cut suit that reveals a trim waist and wide hips, but what catches your eye most of all are the gigantic paws on the end of each of her arms, both covered in black fur and capped by neatly-smoothed claws. A piece of paper is held in one, and she consults it briefly before looking you over. Her mouth perks upwards in a slight grin before she speaks.

"Was ki wa yor dha her ciel."

A few heartbeats pass in silence before she speaks again, her syllables accented and slow but perfectly understandable.

"Welcome. My name is Ashara. You are my prisoner. Please do not be afraid. I am here to help you."

You say nothing, stunned to hear your language coming from the mouth of a demon. What can you say? Ashara continues.

>"What is your name?"

>Additionally, you may:

>FREE CHOICE: Ask Ashara questions.