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Clea sighed heavily as she turned from Verso's Canvas, allowing the chroma to clear from her eyes. Well, that had been a clusterfuck, and she doubted it would get much better in the next day or so. Before she walked away, she glanced again at Alicia, her little sister's still form standing between their parents with one arm outstretched.
Clea hesitated. Her sister was so, so small. She flicked her hand, sending a final impression into the Canvas, just enough for a short message or conversation with whatever new self that Alicia would become. It wasn't as though the fraction of chroma would make much of a difference at this point. They had already decided on their methods, and their consensus was to resolve the matter rather more… directly. If all had gone to plan, the supplies were already gathered.
She avoided looking at Papa's parableistic paintings as she exited the cursed atelier. If there was any justice, that wretched representation of herself would have a sword through its head, just as its enormous chroma-imbued reflection did. Regardless, she would carry the weight, fix the family's problems, just as she always did. She didn't need a reminder, Papa.
Noco raised his head to whine at her softly as she passed the basket by the fire, but she waved him back to sleep, striding towards the entrance, and the stairs to her room. Hopefully, she hadn't taken too long setting up in the canvas (and excising her parents' wretched creations), and Lucia would still be asleep.
As she slipped quietly through the door, Clea spotted the small form bundled beneath the covers, all of the blankets drawn up into an enormous, tousled lump. Shucking her paint-stained shirt and skirt, she burrowed into the pile, wrapping herself around Lucia's back. The woman shifted, wiggling her way backwards to spoon into Clea, mumbling sleepily. "—you 'kay?"
Clea hummed, burying her nose in the other woman's hair. "Go back to sleep, I'll tell you about it later."
After a short nap, the pair made their way down to the kitchen to scavenge breakfast. Clea managed to dig out an assortment of barely-stale bread, meats, cheeses, and other assorted foods. No one in the Dessendre household had been cooking properly in the recent weeks.
"So, no help from Renoir, then?" Lucia asked, rolling an olive in her fingers.
Clea scoffed. "No. He's too obsessed with trying to save my mother. As if she needs to be saved."
"You would do the same if I was the one wasting away," Lucia pointed out.
"If I had to pull you out of a canvas, it wouldn't be much of a battle," Clea declared.
Lucia pulled the other woman down into her lap. "Well. I might not be much of a paintress, but it's a good thing we're better matched in the real world."
Clea leaned in to kiss her, but startled when the front door crashed open, echoing through the entrance hall.
"Up and at 'em, lovebirds," a raucous voice yelled.
"In here!" Lucia called, and they watched as a grinning face peeked through the kitchen doorway.
"Ysabeau. Any issues?" Clea asked.
"We got the goods," Ysabeau said, sauntering in and pilfering a slice of cheese from the shared plate. She continued mumbling around her mouthful, "n' Jehanne bribed the police commissioner."
"I am a member of the budget commission," another woman said as she walked in. "It is perfectly within my remit to allocate funding."
"Not for this, it's not," Ysabeau snickered.
Jehanne sighed. "Regardless. We are still waiting on the others, then?"
Clea nodded. "Yes. Nicole and Margot are next door, of course. They should be here shortly. Have you heard from Marie?"
"She's finishing up the disguises," Ysabeau said. "We'll be a dapper bunch of young gentlemen." She elbowed Jehanne. "At least that scruff'll be good for something, eh?"
"It's for a good cause," Lucia told her. "Don't worry, we'll clean you up once it's all over."
Jehanne nodded, and sighed again. "It's not like it's the first time, but thank you."
By the time the final three women walked into the manor, arms piled high with clothing, the group was deep in an argument.
"Chroma doesn't work that way." Clea insisted, throwing her hands in the air. "You can't just paint a Canvas of the Writers' Guild on fire!" She broke off suddenly. "Well, you can actually. I have." She got a dreamy look in her eyes. "It was rather cathartic."
"But just imagine if you could!" Ysabeau insisted. "Margot, Nicole. You're Paintresses, back me up on this."
Margot, the shorter of the pair, sniffed. "If it worked like that, the entire world would be on fire."
Nicole just shook her head when Ysabeau turned to her.
"Fine! We'll do it ourselves!" Ysabeau threw her hands in the air.
"Yes," Clea told her. "That is rather the point of all of this. Regardless, the Writers have invested their own chroma into the building. Just as we Painters protect our own homes. At least, from those who don't already reside there…"
Lucia clapped, breaking her train of thought. "Alright girls, go get changed. Marie, thank you for arranging the clothing."
"Of course. Are you sure you don't want me to come with you?" Marie asked.
Lucia shook her head. "No. There's a good chance we'll have to flee on foot. It's not worth the risk."
Marie looked ready to argue, but Clea grasped her shoulders. "From each according to her ability, to each according to her need. You have done your part, and we are grateful. It is time for us to do ours."
She held the other woman's gaze until she nodded, then pulled her in for a hug. "Thank you. Wait for us, we'll still need you if anyone gets hurt."
Several hours later, the group's packed carriage rolled through the dark streets. The women huddled together inside, speaking softly as they reviewed the plan.
"I looked over the city's diagrams with Jehanne," Lucia said. "She knows where to bring us so we can enter as close as possible."
Ysabeau wrinkled her nose. "I wish we didn't have to go in through the sewers. It already smells bad enough down here."
"Well, if you want to be caught carrying a cask of gunpowder down the street, you're more than welcome to," Lucia told her.
"Fine, fine."
Clea cut the other woman off. "Margot and Nicole need private space to work while they break through the Writers' barrier. The estate doesn't have any adjoining buildings, the sewer was the only option regardless." She looked at the other two women. "Are you ready for this?"
Margot nodded. "We've been conserving chroma. As long as it's a small hole, we can manage."
Clea nodded. "Good. I will handle any direct confrontations."
"If all goes well, there shouldn't be any," Lucia said.
Ysabeau smirked. "Does anyone actually expect things to go that well?"
A rapping sounded from the roof as the carriage rattled to a halt. "We're here," Jehanne's low voice sounded from the driver's seat.
Clea opened the door to reveal a low doorway. She turned to look as Jehanne landed with a soft thud next to her. "Can you go with Lucia, find the access point?"
Jehanne nodded. Ysabeau pushed by them and inserted a prybar into the doorjamb, heaving once and popping the door open with a loud cracking sound. The women all paused for a moment, then resumed their motion at the lack of reaction from the city around them. Lucia leaned up to peck Clea on the cheek, then grabbed Jehanne's sleeve and pulled her through the doorway. "We'll be back in a moment," she said.
Clea watched the light from their lanterns fade down the stairs. Ysabeau nudged her. "Hey, you can kiss her again later. Hell, you can kiss all of us later if this works. Give me a hand with these." She heaved a small iron-bound barrel out of the carriage. Clea grabbed a cask of her own, and followed the woman down the stairs.
By the time Lucia and Jehanne returned, they had accumulated a small tower of barrels at the bottom of the staircase. "You're up," Lucia said to Margot and Nicole. She led them back through the tunnels, while Jehanne helped Clea with the final cask.
"Should have brought a wheelbarrow," Ysabeau grunted.
"It wouldn't fit down the last side-passage," Jehanne told her.
"Ugh. Is it safe to roll these?"
Clea interrupted. "Better not to risk it. We'll carry them. Take your time, take breaks. Whoever is resting can carry the lantern."
Relaying all of the barrels was a long and painful slog. By the time they finished, the pair of paintresses had completed their own work. Margot was sitting against the wall, sweating profusely, and Nicole leaned next to her as she updated the group quietly. "We're through their chroma," she said. "The other side of that wall should be the cellar."
Ysabeau ran her hand over the mortared bricks. "Breaking through this is going to be loud," she warned.
Clea sighed. "I'll take care of it."
Lucia glanced at her. "Are you sure? Didn't you want to conserve your chroma?"
"It'll be worse if we make too much noise and end up facing a dozen Writers on the other side," Clea said. She pulled a large paintbrush out of her pocket, and focused, before swiping a long line of chroma across each horizontal line of mortar, and cross-hatching the offset verticals. She gestured Ysabeau towards the wall, before sitting down next to Margot. "I'll rest, and gather as much chroma as I can while you take down the wall."
The three non-paintresses formed a small disassembly line, scraping away the weakened mortar, and sliding bricks out one at a time, stacking them out of the way. The wall slowly came down to reveal a large cellar packed with barrels, old furniture, and other miscellanea. Once the gap reached the ground, Lucia slipped inside, and started clearing narrow pathways through the junk, stacking items carefully on top of each other. She took Jehanne's blueprints, and started directing the other two to specific locations as they carried barrels in, one after the other.
When all of the barrels had been placed, Ysabeau affixed a precisely measured flax match cord at each location, cracking open the lids and inserting the fuse into each, before tamping them back down. Once she was done, she returned to the tunnel.
"We'll have about an hour," she said. "Best if we light them all around the same time, but the first one to pop will probably set off the others."
Clea looked at the two exhausted women sitting against the wall. "Want to get a head start?" she asked.
Margot shook her head, and stood, pulling Nicole to her feet. "We stick together," she said.
Clea nodded, and turned back to Ysabeau, who handed Lucia and her a small length of cord each, lit from the lantern.
"Last chance," Ysabeau warned.
"They made their choice already," Lucia answered.
"Fuck the Writer's Guild," Clea said.
Despite Clea's worries, they all made it back to the sewer entrance without any mishaps. Ysabeau shouldered the doorway closed, and they piled back into the carriage, bickering quietly. The vehicle was filled with an oddly nervous, yet jubilant mood as Jehanne drove them a few blocks away, before stopping the horses at the top of the nearby hill.
Clea opened the window and stared down at the shadow-strewn estate that housed the Writer's Guild. They had gone to so much work to tear her family apart over the years. Political strategies, Machiavellian plots, lies and manipulations, all failing pathetically one after the other until they managed to get their hooks into her baby sister, leveraging her trust and naïveté to harm Clea's family from the inside. Now her brother was dead, her sister irreparably harmed, her mother hysterical, and her father useless. Once again, it had fallen on her to take responsibility. So she had.
Clea broke from her musings as she felt Lucia's warmth press against her back.
"You're being morose, again," the other woman said. "Don't worry so much, the plan went off without a hitch."
"Not yet," Clea said, keeping her eyes fixed on the shadows.
"Okay. I'll watch with you." Lucia rested her chin on Clea's shoulder, staring out into the night with her.
They spent the next few minutes like that, peacefully, ignoring the quiet murmurs behind them. Clea's breath lined up with the other woman's, and she began to relax.
Finally, a thunderous boom rocked the carriage, as though a bolt of lightning had struck directly overhead. They watched as fragments of wood and stone ripped through the walls of the building from the inside out. Slowly, the roof began to topple inward, collapsing down, striking each floor from the top down. Flames began to lick up from the pile of rubble that remained.
Clea smiled. "Let's go home."