Cold Iron, Empty Throne

"Why don't you come with me, then, Zahira?" There wasn't really a good way out of that awkward moment, so you try to brush past it as well as you can, instead. Samir falls back, a bit deflated. "I'll make sure to snag some things for you, though, Samir."

"Yeah, sure, thanks." Samir turns around and wanders away. You let him go.

Behind you, Dawn rolls over onto her belly, then, very slowly and painfully, pushes herself up against Tal-Roshath's throne, until she manages a sitting position. "Well, you two have fun." She takes a deep breath, clasping her hands together before pulling them apart.

A little fire gutters there. The elemental gauntlet you'd created had been a serious undertaking. To master elementalism, the would-be elementalist must stand between two threatening forces of nature, and find within themselves the balance to steer and guide both. It is only in that narrow, personal path between extremes that the magic thrives, so there is no such thing as someone who commands merely one element.

The closest anyone could get to that is a conceptual mage binding something close. Zahira thus supplied an excellent source of one of the elements: her magic could allow some tricks related to common associations of fire, sure, but it could also allow her to simply set ablaze a prepared fuel.

The big challenge had been finding something else to pair with it. In the end, the best method you had come up with involved a tremendous amount of pumping water to the temple roof, rigged to a container that would dump it all at once. Water is heavy; a large enough flow from high enough could sweep someone off their feet, break bones, or worse.

The timing had not been easy, but it had, luckily, worked the first time. Dawn had disappeared behind a wall of flame, a huge amount of water had been dumped near, but not on, it, and Dawn had stood in the middle, where either or both could have seriously injured her.

You couldn't see the exact event through the steam and smoke, but it had looked as if, at the very last second, both fire and stream had curved around her.

As if to confirm it, Dawn transfers the sourceless fire to just one hand, and gestures with her other. A puddle balls itself up and hurls itself at her, and she 'catches' it with her gesturing hand.

Holding fire and water both, she gives a smug grin to Zahira. "Jealous, sweetie?"

Zahira laughs. "No, you ass. If I wanted something so basic, I would have gotten it. Elementalism is the province of those too simple to master something that requires a brain."

The magic vanishes. Dawn isn't currently up to maintaining it. She clearly isn't completely done with banter, by the grin on her face, but sheer physical exhaustion is overcoming her. She mumbles something you can't hear.

"I only spend enough time on cosmetics as I need to look this good," Zahira says in response to whatever it was. She shakes out her long hair so it floats elegantly for a moment, then stalks off, out of the hall, as Samir had done earlier.

Dawn gestures for you. You come close, then find a bit of floor that's neither been burnt nor soaked to sit near her. She speaks after a moment, much more serious than she had been with Zahira. "We've got an opportunity," she manages. You let her catch her breath a moment before she goes on. "You showed it. Ant's... trainable. We can make her into what we want. We can make her into a god, even. An enforcer god of a new pantheon, leashed and unleashed as we need. I don't... even think she'd mind, if she gets to fight some." One hand suddenly finds life, and flies to your sleeve and tangles there. "I could do it. I could be that high priestess making a new deity. There's worshipers out there who would be anxious to find that stability, and we can even make a few more changes to her holy writ as we share it, so she's more tractable. It could work, given how much she reflects people. We can make Contracts with her from a position of power, not desperation. That kraken fight? That was her desperate. She would do anything to get her fix." The fingers fall away. "You don't have to come to a decision right now, but just imagine it. We can fix things, and this is key. I do want this to be something we all agree on."

- -

Councilor Omar is as good as his word on supplying outfits. You and Zahira show up at the appointed time at an ostentatiously large mansion, and a servant who seems rather unhappy to be serving people so lowly as to not even have a title or their own ship guides you through.

For you, things happen quickly. You end up with something with more feathers and ruffles and uncomfortable heels than you would like, and which feels weird no matter how you move in it, but that just leaves you standing around waiting for Zahira. She occasionally yells from another room in various muted tones of frustration, so it's clear that she's still there.

When she does stalk in, it's definitely the result of the time she took, though. Her dress is a fairly simple black top without much of a back, but with a muted red to the skirts that probably wasn't intended as fire by the designer, but which looks like the theme on her, especially with matching lipstick. Her hair is even more elaborately done up, with braids so intricate you're not entirely sure how they all come together.

She stops as she gets close to you. She looks up. She's always been on the shorter side, and tonight you're wearing heels and she isn't. You see some thoughts on her face as she tries to decide if she wants to say anything about this, but in the end she doesn't. She offers you a hand to take. "Shall we?"

- -

You don't know most of the people at the ball. You know about them, in the sense that you can sort of identify the likely reason they were important. There's several other people who are here due to their growth as heroes and mages. Some of them look about as uncomfortable as you do about the situation and what they're wearing, though some of them manage a breezy confidence that says they were comfortable in this sphere anyway. Others are merchants and industrialists and the like, whose capital and connections are important, and who are taking the chance to network further. Your family was never high up in that sort of field to get invited to such events, at least last time you were at home. Perhaps the newest water-powered pieces of equipment have changed that.

Others you don't recognize as easily. There's people who are probably nobility, a few who you're not sure exactly who they are, and the servants are in a nice enough uniform that you had a challenging first few minutes as you worked out that they were, in fact, the servants and not some sort of guests in dress code. All in all, there's a few dozen guests, maybe as many as fifty, but you don't take a careful count.

It didn't take Zahira long to abandon you. Shortly after you got here, the two of you ran into Talib and Paris, the mages that Adara and Omar had taken to your meeting. Zahira and Talib had immediately disagreed on some point of magical theory that you didn't even catch, and the three of them almost immediately retired to a corner to argue it out, with Paris acting as a mediator for them. Paris is still in mask, of course, but they have upgraded their clothing to match the swankiness of the occasion. Every so often, Paris is sent to a library that seems to be an adjoining room, coming back with some other text.

That corner gathers a few observers, too, with people watching the new mages argue things out, so you're still feeling too awkward to try to drag Zahira out of her argument just to spend time with you. The main entertainment of the evening seems to be a dance, something very energetic and intricate, where most of the participants exchange partners at some points according to arcane rules. The totality of it is intimidating. There is a section of the dancers that are doing a less advanced version of the dance that doesn't include the partner switching, but Kalju and Ariel are there.

Wallflower it is, then.

After a bit, you notice someone at your elbow. It's Lady Adara, with Nokomis behind her, as well. "Not a dancer?" She doesn't smile. She has a fluted glass (they're serving drinks in actual glass) of something in one hand.

"I don't know the dance," you tell her.

"Of course not. It's deliberately designed to be exclusionary. Something challenging enough that no one can master it unless they have the free time to dedicate to an otherwise worthless activity, or are so gifted that they never need a day's dancing instruction in their lives." She drains her drink in one long swallow. You suspect that that wasn't the first and won't be the last drink for her this evening, but just because she's about three times your age doesn't mean that she can't hold her liquor. "Naturally it's popular among the upper classes."

You give Adara a curious look, not sure what to say to that. Now she gives you a brief, humorless grin. It vanishes almost as quickly. She leaves, heading towards some other knot of guests. Presumably, she's working on her own agenda.

Nokomis, notably, doesn't leave. She hangs out near you. You feel a little awkward about that. "Shall we hit up the buffett?" the older woman suggests.

"I'm not hungry."

"Oh, I insist." She takes your elbow and guides you over there, wending past Paris laden down with two more books.

The food is still not the most varied. The immediate crisis is averted, but that doesn't mean wild abundance yet. Nonetheless, expert cooks have done the best they can with the spread they have available, using whatever hoarded spices they have. It's fairly aesthetically pleasing.

You pocket a few things for Samir, and eventually end up grabbing something for yourself, too.

Nokomis takes a few slices of roasted fruit from among magically-conjured ice that's beginning to melt into a drainage bucket under the table, along with what looks like actual beef, not any sort of seafood, in a sauce you don't recognize at all. "I should train you," she says, with a genuine-seeming smile as she begins to eat her food with unselfconscious, inelegant fingers.

That gets a widening of your eyes. "What? I thought I killed one of your prized students."

"And if I were here for revenge, that gets me nowhere. It just ends the chain." Nokomis sighs. "I had some promise with the Untouchable Blade style even in my youth," she says. "I became unexpectedly pregnant and retired from that life. The boy's father went on to be the grandmaster of the style, until he passed on with our son in the Great Dying. I used what I could to keep the style alive. Egon had been one my son had taken under his wing, saying that there was a spark of something that could be great in him. He was so new when the Great Dying hit. Now you've taken my son's protege from us." She doesn't seem particularly mad, but this is not the easiest woman to read. "If I train you, there is a chain from my lover and my son that's still in the world: a passing of the torch, if not in an expected way. I'm not so selfish that I would do that without some other benefit, mind. If I do this, at least consider ruling in favor of Adara if the Council splits and you play tiebreaker. She needs that support, or nothing will ever improve. We'll just... go back to what we were before the Great Dying, but with different names at the top of the heap."

Her eyes narrow. "And it is a training you can use. Watch. I'm going to tickle you." Nokomis wiggles a finger, playfully, and slowly slides it towards your side.

Your blood freezes. You almost try to swat her hand, but you realize that you can't find any arc that will let you do that. There's no block, no way to twist aside, no way to see where it's coming from even though it's right there... You take four hurried, huge steps backwards, nearly running into some probably important noble you don't know.

Nokomis doesn't follow. She just puts her hand down. "It's a very useful technique, and it's not dependent on your weapon in any way." She crams a huge chunk of beef into her mouth. "This is really good," she adds in a muffled voice, around it, licking up sauce that had been smeared around her lips. "I'm going to go hunt down something to drink."

She disappears behind Kalju and Ariel, who are both catching their breath now, as they have come off the dance floor. They see you only once you're close. The crowd is just large enough to lose people, but not quite large enough to separate them, it seems.

Ariel has a happy smile on her face, and Kalju's got a small smirk, too. "Boss," he greets you.

You nod at them. "I want to train him," Ariel tells you. She's hanging off him. She's not quite as young as you had thought at first, you realize. When she was thrown into the hot seat and asked to be intimidating muscle in a situation where she wasn't sure which side was right, she just looked young. In a different context like this, where you can see her mooning over Kalju's tall, handsome looks and just enjoying herself, it's clear that she's your age. Kalju's arm goes around her shoulder.

"You do?" you say, to give yourself a moment to think.

"It'll be great!. His strength isn't quite the same as how we approach things, but I think we can make things work so they... what's the word? Synergize?"

Kalju nods. "Yeah."

It seems to you that Kalju has made a strong, independent bond free of your little band.

From the corner, you hear a series of noises, people reacting as if things were settled.

Kalju, Ariel, and you all look over that direction, to see a smug Talib closing some books while Zahira stalks your direction in a huff.

"He's stupid and his argument is stupid," Zahira tells you as she gets close.

"Is it?" You blink. It's not that you have no magical theory background, but their specific talk seems to have been on something so minor and abstract that you didn't even get into it.

"Yes, it is!" She glares pointedly at you.

"Right, of course it is."

"That's better." Zahira relaxes a bit, and only then notices Kalju and Ariel. Suddenly she's all smiles and cuddling up next to you as closely as Ariel is to Kalju. "Azer," she announces. "We're going to the dance floor."

"I don't know the dance."

"Neither do I, so I'll show you how to do it as I figure it out. Come on!"

As you are dragged away, Kalju catches your eye and gives you a rueful shake of the head. Better you than me, you can almost hear.

- -

You have several decisions you will need to make as this new Regency Council shakes out and you find your place in it. These votes will be by plan, because the overall attitude and tone is part of what you're deciding, so picking together is part of it. There are three decisions you're going to have to make.

[ ] Plan name

- [ ] Accept Dawn's plan to try to turn Ant into a tame god.
- [ ] Reject Dawn's plan.
-- [ ] Why?

- [ ] Accept Nokomis' deal, accepting that you'll be favoring Adara in exchange for training.
- [ ] Avoid getting entangled in this mess further.

- [ ] Don't interfere with Kalju and Ariel and their budding connection.
- [ ] Try to discourage Kalju from getting any closer to the woman; you may not always be on the same side.

- -

There will be a bonus this week: two shorter interludes regarding things in the rest of the world. They won't interfere with this vote, though, as there's nothing to vote on there.