Marceline balanced on the twin wooden canes like gravity had personally offended her. Her palms were the only points of contact with the world, her entire body arched in an impossible curve - spine bending like a drawn bow. Her legs rose behind her in a controlled sweep, toes pointed with lethal precision. Not poised. Not graceful. Weaponized elegance. She didn't look at the target. She didn't need to. Upside down, her hair brushed the floor as she shifted her weight with the casual confidence of someone who had spent more time inverted than upright. One slow breath, then she hooked the bowstring with the edge of her foot - the supple curve of her instep acting as if born for a string's tension. The world held still. Muscles trembled, not with strain, but with suppressed power. Every line of her body was focus. The arrow nocked between her toes gleamed. She exhaled. The string thrummed, a soft, deadly note, and the arrow tore through the air - a flash of motion that blurred beneath her inverted gaze. Thwack. Dead center. A perfect shot. And she still hadn't looked. Marceline lowered her foot with lazy indifference, as if she hadn't just performed a feat most trained assassins wouldn't attempt sober. Inverted, balanced, bow still swinging lightly from her toes, she smirked - the expression upside down and somehow even more arrogant. "Next?" ^ excerpt from The Sovereign.