Survival Of The Fittest

Kelsey lay on her stomach, ankles crossed behind her back, sketching out some very pretty girls.

It wasn't the most ergonomic position, but her mattress was more than squishy enough, the overlaid comforter plush heaven. And it felt good, having the entire weight of her body—such as it was—pressed full against something. A cozy little comfort in the cavernous space. Not that she lamented the relative luxury that surrounded her, but even the grandest palace had somewhere soft to relax. For now, her world was constricted down to the tablet propped up before her, curved lines and bold designs and wonderfully short skirts.

Thump.

She let the tablet fall flat against the covers as she twisted around toward the source, which followed up with a plaintive, muffled, "Mrrrrllp?"

"Shanny!"

Kelsey rolled off her bed and took several long strides across the carpet to open the door. A black blur shot immediately through the gap, running circles over the floor and mewing enthusiastically.

"C'mere, Shanoa!" Kelsey said, returning to her bed and patting the covers next to where she sat. Shanoa leapt up and looked up at her, twin amber rings set into a vaguely cat-shaped void in reality. Smiling, Kelsey picked up her tablet and doodled a little bug. Splashed color across its wings and gave glow to its bulbous abdomen. She flipped it around to show Shanoa, who perked up, eyes snapping back and forth as Kelsey zoomed and panned. She gave it a couple swats and then wiggled het butt and pounced, then opened her paws for the deftly-won bounty and cocked her head. Kelsey laughed—thankfully, she hadn't used her claws this time—and leaned in to plant a kiss between her fuzzy little ears.

"Want to hear a story?"

"Mrrlp?"

"I thought so." She heaved over onto her back and patted the covers next to herself, "C'mere."

Shanoa stepped over her to the proffered spot. The light pressure of her paws dug deep into Kelsey's thighs, but she bore it without complaint. It was all forgiven as Shanoa settled in against her side, a softly-purring lump of warmth and affection. Kelsey held up her tablet before them, wiping away a few stray hairs with the special half-glove she wore with only pinky and ring fingers covered to avoid accidental inputs.

"Old Magic: Prologue," she read, unable to suppress her grin, scanning over the author's note. Thoughts about the process, promises for the future, effusive praise for @ViolettWitch and her wonderful art bringing the world to life. After a moment's pause, she scrolled to the next page.

A girl with long, blonde hair walked all alone through the dappled half-light of a city stirring in uneasy slumber. Several panels caught her outfit from different angles; Ribbons in her hair. A ruffled skirt. Thigh-highs that ended in physics-defying geometric shapes. The end to which everything else was just a vehicle for Kelsey. There was so much emotion in it, so much life, and all the more for the promise of its swift and sudden end. It was the outfit of a magical girl, part prom dress, part soldier's uniform, part gymnast's leotard. Earnest in its aesthetic, pride in its myriad forms, a sense of vulnerability for a being who could tank half the armament in the US military if put to it.

Narration cut through the panels, speaking of hope and love and duty. Of stepping down backstreets at an acute angle to reality, a monochrome duty ever after that destined day awash in red and gold and violet. She'd tried to achieve a level of artistic incongruity with different vanishing point for different sets of objects. Buildings one way, lights and shadows another, the solemn protagonist a third. As if reality itself was fraying at the edges. She wondered, looking at it, it it had been too subtle. It all stood out to her eye, of course, but that didn't mean everyone would see it. Either way, there was no pride in compromising vision for a segment that wouldn't appreciate the whole thrust of the idea in the first place. She shrugged to herself and stroked Shanoa's side and scrolled on.

On the next page, a fracture in the fabric of existence. Another ambitious effort. It was easy to follow the rules; breaking them properly was much harder. What did a hole look like edge-on, but projected into 3D space? More narration about the levels of thought and emotion and the physical world, the dire nature of such a fissure so near to the layer of mundane reality. Four figures emerged, manlike in form but with a uniform dull brownish-grey composition that shone like glass. The really fun bit there was how the sheen seemed to come from somewhere below the surface. Subsurface scattering was something of a buzzword in graphic design, and millions of dollars went into its pursuit. But for simple static images, you could trick people well enough into thinking you'd gotten it right.

A spear appeared in the nameless protagonist's hand, a rounded shield with crescent cutouts. The figures brandished weapons of the same material that made them up, which may or may not have simply been parts of them. One of them sniffed the air deeply from its featureless face, and then they clashed. Motion like that was always difficult to portray. You could flow from stance to stance, of course, from action to reaction. But bright and polished and tightly-woven as they may be, such rigid forms always had gaps between them. In a landscape shot, that was to its credit; the mind's eye supplied voices, acoustics, ached to imagine light and shadows shifting in the most pleasing possible way. But scenes like this? They leaked. That space between moments, the heaving and sweating, rippling emotion, action and reaction—that was life. And death. Kelsey sighed and gave Shanoa a scratch behind the ears, which was reciprocated with a delighted burble. She smiled and moved to the next page.

The fight went poorly for this magical girl. The hits she scored didn't take. Her spear hewed through one apparition's arm in a nice panel of spewing smoke and crystalline fragments, but her opponent fell back and let its fractured stump lengthen out again. One terrible blow deprived her of her shield. Another swing crashed through her guard and bit deep into her thigh. One being bound the shaft of her weapon in the bristling claws at the end of one arm and raised the other to glint in dingy lamplight. There was the suggestion of motion, eyes wide in shock, a blade sprouting from her slender back. The spray of blood from her mouth was something Kelsey had needed a little convincing on. It didn't work quite like that, of course, and magic being involved didn't change that. But her argument—that verisimilitude was the water in which your deviations from reality swam, and that things should fall as they did, except when they very deliberately didn't—had crumpled under the might of, 'But it does look pretty cool.' She couldn't argue that point, nor the fact that it made a hell of an evocative panel, and so it had gone in.

"But from the depths of the blackest night does the light of hope shine most brilliant," she read out loud, and smiled at the specific wording as Shanoa chirped back. That was one thing she'd insisted on, though she hadn't needed to push much on it.

Violet lightning flashed. The ruins of the apparition's kneeling body crumbled into strange cubic fragments, a broad-bladed sword stood askew, shock and hope flashed across the face framed in that V-shaped gap. And then...

The blade's owner, standing in relief against the sky. Tall and slender with a long, thin face. Violet streaks running through her dark hair. Bangs slanting just past her jawline over one side of her face and the rest pulled back into a short and extremely messy ponytail. Her outfit, dark and slim and intricate. Kelsey had been warned not to overcomplicate things, since every little flourish was something she might have to draw a hundred times over or more. She'd fired back not to threaten her with a good time.

The new girl leapt down two stories from her perch—a nice panel of a stiletto heel, improbably square against the pavement in her landing—and met the fallen girl's gaze with one violet-rimmed eye and a broad, sad smile. Then she took up her fight. The limitations of such sequences in the format remained, but Kelsey was keen to do her best for them. She'd researched proper forms, made pages of sketches with lines of force and avenues of movement. Gone deep enough into it that she'd been half-jokingly called horny for Talhoffer, which she of course entirely jokingly denied. After all, if she wasn't supposed to spend so much time and imagination over people swinging swords around, then why did they look so damn good doing it?

At any rate, the dark-haired girl cleaved through the remaining monsters in short order. She snapped forward for an elegant thrust, wheeled around for the next, caught the last with a feint and a brutal downward smash. Those smoking cubic fragments spewed across the ground, and her blade sublimated away in kind when she released it. She ran over to her fallen sister in arms. Pressed two fingers to her wrist, lit a spark at her fingertip and told her to follow it with her eyes. Told her she could fix it all, but needed to bet met partway. The next bit leaned a bit abstract for her comfort. Purple and gold swirls for the melding of powers, sure. A face full of hope and awe, and maybe something else if she really gave herself some credit. But this was really the writer's big moment, stringing together ideas of warmth and heartbeats and reservoirs of power, hope and connections and the bonds we forge together. All it really needed was some vague glow of power behind it for set dressing.

Scenes of the city from above slid by, the blonde girl in a bridal carry. With her strength spent, her outfit flashed back to her pajamas. Time passed, according to the narration, and a feeble conversation passed between them as they flitted from rooftop to rooftop—flight would have constricted storytelling too much by its freedom, apparently, but the dark-haired girl was a hell of a jumper. Kelsey smiled at that concession. Eventually they alighted on a balcony and slipped through the open window overlooking it. The interior was an intimate glimpse that Kelsey had spent a surprising amount of time on, a catalogue of hopes and dreams and sources of comfort for the sweet and innocent and battle-torn contract slayer. The dark-hared girl deposited the protagonist on her bed, turned toward the window, received a pleading injunction. Another broad, sad smile, and deft fingers began unlacing tall black boots.

"'Yet even as the bleakest darkness enlivens hope's beacon, so too does such brilliance cast the longest shadows...'" Kelsey finished. A bit edgy, but, hey, that wasn't strictly a negative. "What do you think?"

"Mrrrowl?"

"Interesting. And what do you suppose happens next?"

"Prrbbblt."

"Huh. I'll keep that in mind." She looked around conspiratorially and tabbed back over to her sketches. "Here's a little sneak peek..."