Of Silver, Jade, and Steel (Exalted)

[X] Let Svetlana do it. After all, deep down, you know it to be true that you have to do ignoble things to get ahead in life, sometimes. What do the lives of a kinslayer and a greedy fool matter compared to your own safety and the hard work of someone you appreciate? Not even like it's the first time you've seen people die, either. You could do good things with all the riches they leave behind.

You deliberate with yourself for a time, watching the lightning bugs flicker on and off in the field. You are painfully aware it was only through Kash's intercessions and foresight that you were able to avoid the Wyld Hunt. If you could simply read Fate's ledger yourself and see the consequences of sparing them, you might let them live or at least do this with a clearer conscience. Since you are not a starry-eyed prophet, but a criminal with your gaze stuck to Creation, you know what exactly needs to be done. Sighing, you say, "Go ahead."

Svetlana frowns and says, "Didn't expect you to fold so easily. I figured you'd at least try to draw this out."

You shrug and say, "Why argue about it? They're a threat, and they've got money I need for when I head back to Nexus. That spear alone could probably get me a manse in Bastion District. Maybe I'll be sad about this for a time, but I'll definitely be a fool forever if I let them walk away."

"How very pragmatic. I hope you've got the fortitude to live with that pragmatism, for your sake." Svetlana turns away from you and draws her bow off her back, the black metal drinking in the last rays of the sun. She speeds out of your field of view, clambering her way over the ziggurat like some kind of panther. Perching at the top of the tomb, she takes aim and looses an arrow, the shot screaming louder than the man you hear it strike. Svetlana barely has time to dodge the White Moth's response, which takes the form of a deafening bolt of lightning that breaks apart stone and sends fragments raining down to the earth like meteors. Your mentor slings her bow back over her back, barely drawing her own steel just in time to turn away the daiklave of the Dragon-blood, who is carried aloft by the white wings of her armor.

Tepet Samara orbits Svetlana, ducking out of range of Svetlana's mighty blows to harry her with more blasts of lightning arcing through her blue jade sword. At this point, the Dragon-blood's anima has roared to life, the image of a bright-blue sword ascending to the heavens along with a column of cerulean light. Her aura sends arcs of fulmination that seek out everything in range. Your mentor's brow is adorned with a disc of silver light, and her tattoos line her skin, making every stroke of her sword trail a stream of grey light. You hurl yourself down the stairs, hoping to reduce the odds of a stray bolt hitting you, as you hear yet more thunderclaps and the sound of metal striking metal.

Turning back, you see the White Moth attempting to gain distance from Svetlana, her wings beating furiously as she heads west. Svetlana reaches her off-hand out towards her foe, and you can only watch dumbstruck as her arm lengthens into a dozen coils of fleshy tendrils that stretch as long as the trees surrounding the clearing are tall. The mass forms around Samara's legs tighter than any steel cabling ever could be wrapped, and with a sharp tug backwards the Dragon-blood is flung into the side of the ziggurat as fast as a sling bullet, stone shattering as she smashes into the steps back-first. You duck to avoid shards of rock blasting outwards from the impact.

When you finally look at the Tepet, her armor is shattered in several places, plates of jade bent by the sheer force of her fall. Her anima has guttered out, her body covered in dust. Her eyes, however, still shine through her blood-caked white hair. She raises her left arm, the right almost certainly broken into a hundred pieces, as if to beckon you. Pity drives you to walk up the rubble towards her, and you can only mutter, "I'm sorry about this," when you reach her. Svetlana remains atop the ziggurat like a gargoyle, staring down as you speak to her beaten enemy.

Samara raises a finger as if to hush you, and then speaks to you, gasping and wheezing as she tries to talk with what you're sure is a punctured lung. "I saw this. A silver-tongue, a black bow, and then my own demise. I thought maybe I could stop it, flee from this fate, but that was false. More is to come. The red crane will fly off into the rise of hundreds of suns, gold and black and green. A city will die and a mask will rule it. The dragon cut into a hundred pieces." Her eyes begin to waver now, losing their prior focus as she begins to look off in the sunset behind you. You keep your distance, perhaps too overly wary of a last minute trick, and all you can say is, "I'm sorry, I don't understand you."

She whispers, "Neither can I. An old family curse, and one too rigid for me to break. Deliver my sword to my son, silver-tongue. He'll have need of it in the years to come." She inclines her head towards her daiklave. You think for a time, and finally say, "If I can."

"Good. Burn my body. I have no desire to linger in the dark." She closes her eyes, and soon her ragged breath slows down and then stops forever. You look at her for a time, perhaps to embed this image into your mind, before you rise up. Svetlana descends from her perch and asks you, "So, what were her last words?"

You shake your head and say, "Mostly gibberish. She was lucid for a while, though. Asked me to deliver her weapon to her son and to give her a proper funeral." Svetlana nods, saying, "Alright. But not here. We'll perform her rites at the Bastion."

You sigh, and say, "What of the Guildsman?"

"I'll inter him with his dead employees. Perhaps they'd like to have words with his ghost in the Underworld."

"Fine by me," you mutter, as you strip off the White Moth's sword belt. You attune to her daiklave, lifting it up before sheathing it. As you wrap the belt around your waist, Svetlana says, "Hmm, do you know how to use that thing?"

"I've practiced with a short sword back in Nexus. I don't think I'll be using it much, though. How are we going to get everything to your manse?"

Svetlana says, "I've got a spell for that. We'll be back at the Bastion in a day."

"Good. Let's get that man buried, then." You pick up a shovel and toss it at Svetlana, who swipes it out of the air and heads off to where she felled Lan Rihaya.

---

Night has fallen by the time you've finished, the light of a full moon peeking out occasionally onto the clearing through the clouds. All of the urns are tightly packed together, laid next to the corpse of Tepet Samara and your own camping supplies. Lan Rihaya had such an odd expression on his face that you still see in your mind's eye well after he was buried. You can't tell if it was confusion, fright, or resignation, and you're unsure why you care so much what it was. Svetlana, not at all tired from doing most of the heavy lifting, is currently weaving her hands into a bizarre cat's cradle, twisting her fingers to and fro as though she were wringing a cloth. You ask, "What are you doing?"

She doesn't stop, but answers, "Cloud weaving." You suppose you shouldn't be surprised when mist begins to congeal around the urns, the body, and you. More and more begins to float in as Svetlana continues to shape her magic, the fog thickening into thick white cloud stuff that seems remarkably stable to walk on. Eventually, it's taken the rough shape of a full-sized barge that one might spy in a harbor, sans the mast, sails, and sailors. Svetlana steps in and says, "Alright, I have to ask, do you get vertigo?"

You shake your head and say, "Never felt it whenever I was climbing around the monastery as a kid. I swear my hand was coated in welts for a week after I managed to get on top of the statue of the Fire Dragon."

"Well here's hoping you don't get it at a mile above Creation. Up we go." The barge begins to rise, smoothly and steadily. You look below you and can see quite clearly through the "floor" of the cloud vessel, the ground quickly parting ways with you. You decide this sight is rather disagreeable with your stomach and you endeavor to just look at the sky instead. Within a few minutes, the boat has ascended to the level of the clouds, blending in perfectly with its brethren. Once it reaches this altitude, it orients itself southwest, aimed towards the Eighth Flame Bastion at incredible speed. Oddly, everything is perfectly comfortable up here; something about the vessel seems to be preventing the wind speed without from buffeting your body and freezing you to death.

"Maybe I should've took Kash up on his offer to teach me how to cast," you mutter, as you set up a bed roll for yourself. Svetlana, near the prow of the ship, calls back, "You wouldn't want to learn it from him, I think. He learned all he knows from the mage-assassins of the Violet Bier; his tradition draws on death to fuel its magic. I think you'd be more suited to a scholarly approach, honestly."

"Well, where did you learn it from?"

She sighs, and says, "Raksi."

"Oh ho ho! Here I thought you hated her guts."

"I couldn't pass up on learning what she knew. She's a cannibalistic authoritarian, but she's the greatest living sorcerer left on Creation. Now, this was centuries ago, back when Ma-Ha-Suchi, my shahan-ya, could reign her excesses in. I set out on my own after they started to feud. Another case of factionalism getting in the way of the bigger picture." She looks wistfully at the moon, sighing deeply.

"Tragic. How far until we get back to your house?"

"About eight hours."

"Then wake me in eight hours." You slide into your bed and bundle up, done with the day. Sleep claims you eventually.

---

You awaken not on the cloud barge, but rather on a woolen rug. It's remarkably soft and ludicrously detailed with scenes of woodland creatures lining the outer border of it in what appears to be cloth-of-gold on black dyed wool, the center depicting a spreading rose in silver and red. Lifting yourself up, you behold a fire place, flames merrily crackling and reflecting off the polished brown wood flooring. To its sides are two bookshelves, each six feet tall and packed to the brim with finely bound books, tomes, and grimoires. In front of this are two armchairs, cushioned with velvet. One of them is occupied.

The man sitting in the chair on the right looks like he comes from the near South perhaps, the olive skin and curly hair resembling that of traders from Chiaroscuro. A pair of eyeglasses, framed in gold, complement his simple black robes quite well. He waves to you awkwardly, pushing his glasses back onto his nose as he says, "Oh, erm, hello! I see you're dreaming now. Great! That's really great."

You stand up and rather than take a seat, look around. There is no door leading out of this place; in its place are more and more bookshelves. You turn to the man, and he preempts you by saying, "Oh, you've got to think the door into existence if you want to leave. But, I mean, I could explain this-"

You collapse into the other chair, your face already in your palm. "Gods, what now?", you groan, not in the mood for more bullshit today.

The man says, "Well, er, allow me to welcome you to the Palace of the Rose. I can see you're wearing the Key." He motions towards your moonsilver arm, and you laugh, going, "Oh, a key is it? Here I thought it was just a simple replacement for my old arm. Thank the gods above that it's far more complicated than that, I was getting worried for a moment that something in my life would be straightforward for once."

He fake-coughs rather awkwardly, before saying, "Er, yes, I figured Meril was dead. I'm still rather sad about that, Dragon-blooded revolt and all that, but I suppose I'm happy her masterwork is being used again! Speaking of, what year is it? Are you part of the Deliberative?"

"Oh, it's 17 Descending Fire, Realm Year 762. And, uh, I think your Deliberative is different from the one I have in mind."

"Oh dear..." He twiddles his thumbs, the deep implications of this seeming to shake him to his core. He changes the subject rather quickly, saying, "Well, um. This complex was her brilliant idea to manipulate the matter of her own dreams in a far more useful matter than just passively witnessing them every night and forgetting them in the day. Everything you see is shaped by her design, although I'm afraid it lacks substance since her untimely demise."

To demonstrate, he rises from the chair and plucks a book from a nearby bookshelf, and then opens it to display empty page after empty page. He grins sheepishly and says, "Everything is rather superficial at the moment; all of this was in her head, you're just witnessing the echo of her wonderful mind. But, look on the bright side, you could make this space into anything you want!"

You say, "Well, that's all very good, uh..."

He straightens up and declares in a rather proud voice, "Ah, just call me the Assistant. It's what Meril named me."

"Alright, "Assistant". I just don't see much of a use for this all. I suppose I'm glad for her she could read while she was sleeping, but this seems more like a novelty than anything I could make use of in the waking world."

The Assistant chuckles, and says, "Oh, no, the Key is quite capable of shaping the stuff of dreams while you're awake, so long as you're willing to devote time and effort into unlocking its fullest potential. I suppose its most basic function is that you can make it look as though it were flesh and blood; artifact prosthetics tended to go in and out of fashion in our time, so it was a useful effect to have. Give it a shot."

You will it so, the arm going from silver to skin tone starting from the fingers and rising towards your shoulder. You pause for a moment, impressed at how realistically fleshy it looks, and then say, "Maybe I'm being a little too harsh on you. Today was really difficult. Call me Blue. Lunar Exalt."

He bows, and says, "Well, then, Blue. The domain is yours now; she did leave me instructions for what to do in the event of her death, and mostly they amount to letting her heir have free reign over the Palace. I'll advise you that what you cultivate it into affects what the Key can manifest in the waking world; Meril usually used it to teach and aid her research, hence the library; she could pluck books out of it, feed information from it into the dreams of others, draw on her own dreams for sorcerous might, and so on. She did theorize about what it could do if it were, say, a dojo rather than an archive, but she was more of a researcher than a warrior. Erm, apparently to her detriment."

[ ] Why not make the "Palace" part more literal? A resplendent manor is what you want so that you might project an air of majesty and glory.
[ ] You're thinking something like the quarters of a spymaster (or what you imagine that would be like). Infiltration and intelligence gathering, what else could be better for a Changing Moon?
[ ] A dojo is just fine if it helps you avoid the fate of the previous owner with more martial manifestations from this dream.
[ ] Might as well leave it a library. Knowledge and its applications are infinite, after all.