Cold Iron, Empty Throne

You look up at the sun. There's rain clouds on the horizon, but they aren't going to be here before late afternoon, unless they miss the island entirely. "We should see about getting food," Kalju reminds everyone. No matter what great heights you've reached today, going hungry is, sadly, still an immediate concern.

Your group tries to look relatively inconspicuous as you hunt that out. It's not too hard. There's always been a certain amount of armed people in the capital, and that's only grown lately. Plus, most people are trying to keep their heads down until things are worked out.

Some streets further along, you see a bit of a crowd. A few armed men and women in Regency Council colors stand guard, but they're clearly cut more from the 'give someone a mace and pretend' cloth than actually being trained warriors. They're there to ensure things run relatively smoothly as others give out packages of food to the crowd. So far, the rationing doesn't seem to be causing anything much more than annoyance and grumbling here, so it's a well-behaved crowd, by and large.

You notice Zahira looking at the crowd appraisingly, tapping her front teeth with one finger as she does so. "Wait here. Look menacing." She strides off. As she gets close, she shoots a jet of fire into the air to get people's attention, then brazenly cuts in line, has a quick discussion where she seems to be berating the workers a bit, and comes back with food.

You take your parcel first, then look at her askance. "What did you do?"

"I got food and information efficiently, you ass. Would you rather skip meals?" She doesn't seem at all angry. Insults just come standard. "I just told them we were friends of Ariel's and that we needed the food right now, then pressed a bit while they got our packages together. It's mostly fish, but they were saying that there's a baby kraken off the coast that's bothering the fishermen. Keeps making threatening gestures, but there's no evidence that it's attacked anyone yet. Just hungry, too, I guess." Zahira shrugs.

Dawn clears her throat for attention. "Never mind that. I have a question that's been bothering me. If the Regency Council and Adara's group are scrapping for power, why didn't either of them send an even larger force to the potion vault? We just saw that they have more men at arms than were there."

"That's because you didn't think it all the way through, ass," Zahira has a special delight in revealing this. "How did we know that the potions might reasonably still be around? Because we had an inside source. If Ant is the only source on this island as to what happened with the Great Dying..."

Dawn picks back up the thought. "Right. They don't have any reason to think any special powers survived. You dispatch small squads to investigate when you can, though, because it's normally a low-risk/high reward thing. They're probably going through every magic lab, artificer's back room, and magic weapon vault they can, and all the others are broken."

"Yup! And now not only do we have these potions, but by letting Ariel go the way we did, we have revealed that this is real. Everyone is going to have to take this seriously, because we've demonstrated this."

- -

You put Samir on door duty, with instructions as to what he can and can't accept. The Council and Adara are going to be sending messengers back and forth, and Samir is exactly the sort to not give when they press for some concession that you don't want to have. The more callous part of his nature is a strict positive here.

Kalju puts a hand on your shoulder once that's done, however. "Boss? I could use your hand in the kitchen."

It's not that he needs the help, but he has something he needs to get off his chest. You join him, and spend a few minutes in silent work, with him just gesturing what he needs you to accomplish, and you complying. He spends a little time with a knife quickly disassembling the fish and getting them ready for cooking. Eventually, as you had known to expect, he clears his throat. "Boss. The summit." You give him an encouraging nod, to keep going. "I have concerns."

"I do, too," you confess.

Kalju accepts this evenly. "I hope that we're going to try to find a good outcome. There's a lot of people, innocent people, here and all across the Shallow Ocean. They could easily suffer. This sort of fight is bad for everyone. I don't really know how this should turn out."

"I have some ideas."

He nods in response, and turns his back to briefly check the coal-burning stove, ensuring it's acting as he wants it to. With his back turned, he continues. "I just want to do good. Sometimes the path to get there isn't easy, I know." You wisely stay silent. Anything you do say here is only going to make things harder. "I just need to know that I tried."

Kalju turns back to the cutting board, and grips it with both hands, eyes staring into the middle distance. "Egon."

That's a cue you can't totally ignore. "He had some unknown power we didn't know the extent of. That's dangerous. Surrender or no, he was a killer who was willing to take down any number of people in pursuit of a prize that he probably didn't even think was still there. If he had the opportunity, and knew we were leaving with that sort of prize... I thought about it hard. Really I did."

"I'm sure you did. But maybe we could have done something better, been something better. But we didn't.

"Even.

"Try."

With each of his last words, there's a sound of stressed wood, and at the last it finally snaps. Wood splinters fly across the room, and he looks down at the twisted, broken remains of his cutting board. You stand silently for a moment, too. Kalju breaks the silence, looking up at you. "I can finish up here."

You leave.

- -

Fresh from being kicked out of the kitchen, you see Dawn and Zahira. The two of them are having an improvised training session in the main room. It's a half-speed, no-contact bout, with Dawn showing how she fights. You stop and watch for a bit.

"Really? Your shield is good enough to deflect a fireball?"

"It doesn't matter," Dawn explains, patiently. "If the shield is enough, I can block or, better, deflect an attack. Even magical fire might glance off. If it's not good enough, my shield might catch fire, but should still provide some protection. I'd shuck the shield, then, and at the cost of a shield I have a few seconds to do something else. Attack, fall back, whatever. I have even more options if I have allies with me." Here Dawn gestures for you to join the two of them. Zahira accepts this evenly. "We can jump behind each other, spread out to pincer the foe, whatever."

"How do you know what you'd each do?"

"Practice." Dawn favors Zahira with a smile and one hand placed on cocked hip. "We've been trained to fight together. At this point, we just know."

"And what if the foe's too strong?"

"No power is so all-encompassing that it can't be beaten, in the right circumstances. If it's the wrong circumstances, if it just really doesn't mater... then we die." Dawn doesn't seem bothered by this. "When we fought the angel, that was what was happening. The angel attacked Azer, and Azer tried to shield himself, but it didn't matter. A strong enough magical blow sent him flying, broke our formation. As long as we hold together, we're stronger than you might expect, but one crack can break that. We've practiced to try to minimize the ability of enemies to find those cracks."

"Hm. So you... need to judge the situation and have a variety of tools to respond right, then?"

Dawn nods, firml. "Exactly. It's not just 'oh, I am a fire mage, I can beat anyone but a water elementalist', or any such pat idea."

"So that's why you were showing me hand to hand techniques a bit ago."

"Right. I'm sure you'll do well enough on your own, refining your magic, and I can't help directly with that, but in a fight you can't just rely on burning things and call that good enough."

"Let's go back to that, then," Zahira says, curling her hands into fists a few times, experimentally. Dawn nods, and sets aside mace and shield. Dawn uses you as a training aid, too, demonstrating something of how to brawl unarmed before working more directly with Zahira.

Dawn is clearly enjoying herself. She's a taller and far stronger woman than Zahira, even beyond the training difference, but she likes having a serious student, and she's probably also having fun with the chance to throw you around a bit and give Zahira some direct experience with grappling.

Zahira is eventually too tired to continue. Coincidentally, that's about when Kalju comes out with food, which he serves as wordlessly as normal. He looks a lot better after his outburst, though.

You volunteer to take Samir's portion to him. As you leave, Zahira, having already inhaled lunch, is practicing shaping her fire powers, testing her stamina and seeing how to use it more effectively.

- -

Once lunch is delivered and you check in with Samir about messenger runs that have come in, there's one more person you need to check in with. For this one, you retire to the armory, surrounded by silent weapons. You touch the pendant in your pocket. While not necessary, it does remind you that it's there.

"Ant, come out."

"Oh, invoking me by intent? That's new." Ant takes shape in front of you, an unreal figure that doesn't actually block your line of sight.

There's something different, though, and you don't figure out what it is until Ant's hood comes down. Ant is no longer faceless. Ant now looks like...

...like you and Dawn had an adult daughter. Your stomach does a few flip-flops as you process this. Ant lets you, smoothing out her robes as you do. They're no longer tattered, and now they hint at the figure beneath them. "You look different," is the only thing you can think to say.

"I do, don't I? Can't say I can complain about this. You don't miss havin a face until you get one back." She tosses her head, long curls of hair settling down her back. You know spirits often have a more malleable identity than most humans, but Ant still seems more amorphous than most, to look like this now. "So, boss, what brings you to my office?"

You keep your face as blank as you can, which is pretty blank. "I'm working on a summit," you start.

Ant claps her hands. "Yes! It's a glorious plan. Announce yourself to two power blocs by slaying one champion and making another indebted to you. Call the leaders together under your roof by a show of power. Slaughter them all. Take command of everything."

You pause. Ant quirks an eyebrow at you. "Don't tell me you haven't at least considered it. You know as well as I do that a meeting isn't likely to just... solve things. Groups of ambitious people at loggerheads aren't going to suddenly sit down and agree to share nicely just because it's your smiling face that's asking. I may not have been able to join you for it, but I saw your fight in the potion vault. I saw your ruthless core."

Ant disappears. Her voice whispers in your ear from behind. It's a cheap trick, and having seen it before it has lost much of its power over you. Still, she feels more predatory than before, and you can almost feel her hands on your shoulders from behind. "And if not you, who better? I'm happy to be a useful tool. I don't care about the why, as long as I get my satisfactory fight. Ambition or a burden to be shouldered for the 'greater good' look the same to me. Use me."

You stare resolutely ahead. "Well.. I was hoping to check in and make sure you don't mess up my actual plan. I don't need Dawn to start slapping everyone who gets in range or any such thing."

"Okay, sure," Ant says, reappearing in front of you with a shrug. You stare at her, thinking over what you've just said in case Ant is scheming something. She puts one hand on a cocked hip, in a somewhat Dawn-like motion. "Don't give me that look. You're getting in enough trouble on your own. I don't need to screw up your plans. Whether I've read you right or not, I'm sure you'll get in over your head or get involved in some horrible situation anyway. Mind, I could always change my mind during the event without breaking any sort of Contract we have, but I can't imagine I'll have a reason to." She shrugs again, a broad expression taking in the whole world. "You're playing in a new arena now. You're not fighting some aimless zombie or half-dead monster. Even if you don't go straight for your sword, you're playing with the people who saw the world crumbling as an opportunity and managed to claw to the top of the heap. These are people every bit as smart, every bit as tough, every bit as driven and dedicated, every bit as good as you and your team."

"Do you know the Regency Council members or Lady Adara, then?"

"Not at all. I was trapped in a prison so tight I couldn't even hold onto a real self-image, boss. I just know that no one gets that high up while being a good-hearted oaf."

You nod, firmly. "I know that, too."

Ant grins at you, already beginning to fade away. "You know? I think you do. Whistle for me when you need, boss."

You stand alone in the shadowed armory. You do know. You grew up knowing that. The side of the angels is the side that saw you as a commodity to sacrifice for divine glory.

You shake yourself, violently, and leave.

- -

What is the actual plan?

[] Good faith negotiations. This power struggle is bad, and you really do hope to talk it out.
[] You've already made the Regency Council indebted to you. Lean on that for your own advantage.
[] Ant read you right. This is a trap.
- [] ...for both groups
- [] ...for Lady Adara
[] Write-in?

I'm really sorry for the delay, everyone. November was a rough month for a lot of reasons: family woes, work overwhelming me, trying for a promotion that I didn't get, getting ready for a lateral transfer with a radically different schedule after that... It also probably didn't help that I got back into playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, and couldn't let it go until I fifteen-runed and won a new race. I'm also now officially a goodplayer. So, as you can see, it was basically unavoidable. I'm not going anywhere, though, and my new schedule should hopefully be more conducive to writing time, too.

- -

Despite Ant's talk about ambitious people and scheming, your hope for this summit is, legitimately, that you want it to succeed. You want to see things get sorted out with only minimal bloodshed. Your talk with Samir as you brought him food is a perfect example of this. He's been here, talking to messengers as they come and go. Samir was your choice specifically because he is so unmoved by people's pleas. Here, you can put that to good use. He won't budge an iota beyond what you told him were the minimal terms you were willing to accept, and is willing to barter hard to get you a better deal.

"Both of them have sent around different messengers," Samir explained between wolfed-down bites. "I think just to see if I'd be more easily pushed if I get a huge scary guy or a kid or whatever, but maybe it's just who's available and not too tired. They're far enough away to make it inconvenient for them." He snickered a bit there. "I have all day, of course, so I don't care if it's a thirty-minute turn-around to tell them 'I said no' again."

Samir probably never cared too much about the actual deal, or at least not as much as you, but even with that, enough time has passed for the basic deal to shape up. It looks like the actual agreement is going to be pretty close to your minimum acceptable, which is unfortunate, but also probably unavoidable. Both Lady Adara and the Regency Council can send a delegation, and that delegation can be no more than five people, no more than three of which are to be heroes or other fighters. Technically, your group sort of breaks that, but since you're an unknown factor, they probably won't be able to call you on that at all until the summit's already in motion, and then... well, maybe by then you'll have a miracle.

It would be nice to have one, after all.

The other notable part of the pre-conditions you've had Samir working through is that everyone has to have the complete guest list ahead of time. The Regency Council insisted on that one. It seems that this one wasn't one Lady Adara disliked, and Samir didn't see a reason not to share the unfamiliar names of your forgotten little group. Beyond your five, the Regency Council is sending five, and Lady Adara is sending only three, to your surprise. To your greater surprise, her name is on the guest list (and, to be fair, is the only name you recognize, anyway, so maybe the guest list isn't that helpful, the more you think about it). Apparently you're going to be meeting this mysterious noblewoman tomorrow, when this whole shindig kicks off.

There's more, so Samir isn't going to be bored any time soon, but the guts are there. It's going to happen, you have a good idea of what it's going to look like, and the exact precedence of who sits where or the timing of when people arrive isn't going to change most of it. You left Samir knowing those details would get hashed out.

- -

After your talks with Samir and Ant, you returned to the main room, to discover that Dawn hadn't eaten fast enough for Ant.

From the far side of the room, you see Dawn arguing with her arm. "Ant, stop it! I can't eat that fast. You're going to make me choke." It's very much a one-sided conversation; Ant can't talk without the presence of the pendant, and you seem to be too far away. Ant can just make use of her ten minutes a day.

That's what's going on now, it looks. Since Dawn didn't start her meal in good time, according to Ant, Ant is helping her feed herself. Dawn is resisting, working out some sort of self-takedown where she grabs her own wrist and smothers it on the ground with her body weight, then under Ant's command her arm tries to wriggle free.

Zahira giggles at Dawn's plight. Dawn growls back, still flat on the floor. "It's not funny."

"Oh, yes it is. More than that, this is your own fault."

Dawn's arm wiggles free and grabs for her spoon, but she rolls away until it's clearly out of arm's reach, regardless. "In another eight minutes I'm going to show you some very painful holds."

The mage sniffs disdainfully. "You wish." She waves you over at that point, as Dawn waits out the rest of Ant's ten minutes. "So, those earrings we got off Egon," she says, "I think the principles at work there may not be too far off that crown you burgundy tunics took off of the angel. It's just that the working one doesn't have any more go-juice and the the broken one is ludicrously more advanced. A smith's hammer to a proper water trip hammer, type of difference. Still, there might be something we could salvage there. We're getting a real collection of magic trinkets, aren't we?" Her delight seems to suggest that the 'we' here is more 'me'. She loves any chance to get her hands on magic, of any sort.

Zahira doesn't have a chance to talk you through the entire theoretical backing before Dawn, out of breath, staggers back over to finish her meal. Ant's still staying quiet, apparently happy to get her kicks entirely through deeds at the moment. "When's the summit going to be, boss?" Dawn asks, trying to pretend that nothing particularly unusual has happened. You tell her. "So, we have a bit of time first. We should put it to good use." Dawn doesn't suggest what that good use is immediately.

[] You need more personal power, and you just figured out a technique for developing heroic powers. Put yourself through the wringer, see if you can develop some power of your own.
[] You need more magic on your team. Try to find some place to teach Dawn elemental magic.
[] Try to help Zahira. Between the broken crown, Egon's ring and jewelry, Ant's prison, and the potions, there's something to be learned by studying your magical items.
[] ...No. It's too much. You need some down time. Relieve Samir, and maybe the two of you can relax. He's a lot less uptight than everyone else.