Yawning Abyss, Soaring Shrike [Exalted]

[] Revenge for Flawed Topaz

A plan coalesces. It has more moving parts than you'd like, but it is the chance to do something good, even if it's just destroying people who deserve it. It also helps that if it works, it will keep you from having to look over your shoulder all the time. You'll try it. Before you go to sleep that night, you hunt. You let the little predators of Gem try to attack a tempting target, so you can suck blood and power and be sure your reserves of strength are at their absolute maximum.

At work the next day, you end up paired with Flawed Topaz, again just filling the vast reservoir the Shrike emptied. The water level is coming back up, for all that even the powerful rivers generated by your sorcery do not appreciably raise its level over the course of a day.

You're not sure how the Despot decides which sorcerers go where. You think it might be intentionally random, to keep people like you from developing too much of a routine. You are here for the Despot's coin, in theory, so it makes some sense to make sure you understand you serve at his pleasure.

Topaz at least looks somewhat recovered. Her color is better, and if she's unsteady on her feet and hesitant about her steps, she at least can walk unaided without running into walls or tripping over every bit of uneven ground she crosses.

She still has the silk blindfold tied over where her eyes had been. It's a simple, plain thing, far less decorated than the rest of her colorful outfit.

It's also the first time you've seen her water-conjuring. You don't recognize the spell she's using: it creates a thick, rainbow-hued mist, from which condenses a driving, if very localized, rain.

It's in a pause between sorceries, sitting near each other on the lip surrounding the pool, that you broach the subject. "I think I know who the attackers were, the one who took your eyes."

"Really?" A lifetime of habit dies hard: she turns her head as if to look at you. "Why do you know them?"

"They're after me, if they're who I think they are."

"And why are they after you?" There's an edge of something a little sharper than annoyance in her tone.

"Well, one of them is after me because he thinks I want to tear down the whole Realm, and the other because she thinks I don't."

"Really." Topaz turns her head back forward, no longer facing you as you look over the dark waters below. "Fine. Whatever. Why tell me?"

"Because I had been hoping that they'd leave me be and not hurt people, but since they aren't, I'm going to crush them utterly." The Despot's workers aren't close enough to overhear, and are too bored with the sorcery they see every day to pay attention, anyway. "Since that attack, I've been working on a plan. But in order to make this work, I'll need a bit of subterfuge. You'd be a big help. So will Dub-dubs."

A hungry smile appears on Topaz's elfin face. "I like this plan. Tell me about it."


You know how Wyld Hunts work. Dynasts of the Realm are taught it almost from birth, and the Realm has long had standing agreements with regional powers it hasn't overwhelmed to mutually extend such hunts, and the general understanding and structure extends even beyond that. When Anathema appear, the righteous Dragon-Bloods will band together, link up with any Immaculate elements in the area for information and support, and ride out to hunt them down, before they become a massive problem. Such proper Hunts are hard to organize out in the deep Threshold, beyond the Realm, and harder still in this new world where the Empress is not holding the Realm together personally.

However, your second cousin Peleps Deled is nothing if not a hardline traditionalist, even if his support for this hunt is a deathknight. You already know he followed the template here: he went to Understanding Auris for information on you. Even if Deled and Clochard are laying low, doubtless he is keeping an eye on the Temple and any Dragon-Blooded who visit it. That's just what a Wyld Hunt does.

Thus, you have a way to lure them out, once. Get a clearly trustworthy sources like Dub-dubs the Dragon-Blood to report Anathema in the area, and ensure it gets back to Deled. Just to be safe, Auris needs to be prepped to play her part before Dub-dubs shows up. The whole exercise will be worse than useless if she tries to be helpful. She already ignored the rules once to pass a warning on to you. That's where Topaz comes in: tell Auris what you need, ensure that she's willing to play along, before Dub-dubs shows up, just so Dub-dubs' story can be consistent from their entry.

After work, the two of you get Dub-dubs. Unsurprisingly, they are willing to play their part, too, once you get past the awkward explanation of the fact that you are being hunted for, very clearly, no good reason at all. The fact that you're a friend, and that Deled and Clochard left both a personal mark and a wider bloody trail behind them certainly helps make you convincing.

Dub-dubs is clearly no fighter, but they are an obvious Dragon-Blood, so when they come in and report a figure matching your description and the suspicion that you're Anathema, as well as the fact that you're on a butte outside Gem, the hunters will come for you.

This is where you need the rest of your plan to work. The pieces are there, so long as you've read the Original Fox right. The timing is going to be the hardest part: if you time this wrong in one direction, you're going to be painfully killed by this Wyld Hunt. If you time it wrong the other, there's going to be a very dramatic light show that doesn't do what you need and things can get significantly worse from there, depending. Luckily, Exalts tend to be swift and decisive. You can use that.


You send Dub-dubs and Topaz on their way, along with a measured delay to let the rest of this set up. Then, you go down into the mines again. It's time.

You find your rock, down there in the dim depths, and focus again on the wall. The strange, fully-sensed non-presence of the Original Fox materializes behind you. "A butte, today. You can follow me there," you tell the complete empty darkness around you.

Why would I? occurs to you, and could almost be your own thought.

"There will be two other Exalts there. I will be fighting them. They will be honing their senses to track me, so they will be very easily induced to hunt for you, too, to avoid ambush."

The presence might have nodded, and then you are alone again.


You sit alone. You chose this butte after asking around a bit. It's useless, a lump of high sediment with no plausible valuable or useful gems or metals, no water source, and not the right soil composition to let anything grow beyond a handful of low bushes and scraggly brown grasses, clinging tenaciously to the rocks, some of which are man-height or taller.

A steady, cool breeze blows out of the north. It feels like a good omen. You sit on your shins, quietly meditating, Blizzard's Scourge resting on your knees. A little hopping rodent bounces across the sand and dust, pausing a moment in your shadow, where it is cooler. You think it might be a jerboa.

You hear a tiny noise, like a dragonfly buzzing its wings, and a familiar-looking little sprite flits up to you. It lands on your shoulder. "I bear a message from Welcome Wellspring, contracted through my mistress. 'Amphora, they're coming. They tried to get me to come, but I didn't.' Message ends." Like with the last one of these you'd met, it turns into a varicolored cloud of Wyld energy once it has delivered its message to you, which blows away on the wind.

You raise your head and scan the sky, very carefully. You can see a buzzard or two, somewhere in the distance, and a handful of what's probably pigeons. The Five-Metal Shrike is nowhere to be seen. Good. It would be... frustrating if it appeared just a little too early.

You look down at the jerboa, washing its face with quick movements. It isn't scared of you while you keep presence in check with meditation like this. Still, you flap a hand at it a couple of times. "Shoo, shoo. This isn't a good place to sit." It tilts its head at you and then hops away.

You take Blizzard's Scourge in one hand and stand up, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. The hearthstone on your necklace pulses in time. You don't even think about the hearthstone much, not any more. It was a gift from the Lonely Waif, something to stir the winds around you and make you more convincing as an Air Aspect. Letting breath and air swirl together as one, you execute a quick kata that's become almost instinctive over the last few weeks, and enter Air Dragon Form.

A few steps puts Gem in view, through the haze of smoke and aerial grime that it puts out, and lets you see anyone who would approach. You stand sentinel.

You think there might be a speck on the horizon when the two come close enough for you to resolve them. You don't look at it to confirm; that might give the game away. Clochard is riding on her undead mount, comparatively slowly to let Deled's long strides keep pace. They come up the winding trail to the top of the butte. You don't move, so they don't hurry. Eventually, you all come close enough to begin to see anything more than the barest details.

"No closer," you call, as soon as they're within literal shouting distance. "We can talk from here."

Raw hate twists Deled's features into something only barely human. "Talk, cousin? With you?" You're genuinely surprised he didn't just attack immediately. He's probably savoring the anticipation.

The deathknight, however, looked around the area and then back at you. "You look about right. You're Vessel, right?" She gives you a bright smile, as one might when meeting someone you expect to be a friend.

You nod. "I am. I suppose I should introduce myself properly." You look more at Deled. "My title is Vessel of the Mourning's Light Unyielding. I am a Wretched Anathema, but I have set myself to the destruction of the Deathlord known as the Lonely Waif of Cooling Embers." Talk is good. Any talk, any syllable. Moments where you're talking instead of fighting is more time for the Shrike to get here, more moments where you aren't going to be overwhelmed. You aren't going to be able to overcome these two by force of arms. You don't know if you could take on either one alone. Even if they aren't fighting as a team, there's definitely no way you could win against them together.

Clochard leaps down from Bony Pony, bare feet kicking up a little cloud of dust. She clutches her black blade tight across her white-garbed chest, and smiles back, practically dancing with elation. "Ooh, decisive. I like that. My title is the Clochard of the Vermilion Trail, loyal Dusk caste deathknight, the greatest warrior of all servants of the Lonely Waif, and loyal to she who Chose me. She said I get to kill ya. The sword's called Throatfinder. I named it myself." There's just a little flash of red gums between her smiling teeth and her white skin. She nudges Deled with her foot. "Introduce yourself, silly."

Deled starts at the touch. "Peleps Deled, Pinnacle of the Wyld Hunt." It's said with a surly disbelief that he's expected to go along with it. That shorter speech is actually more dangerous, now.

"Now, though, I gotta ask." The Clochard spins gracefully on one heel, taking in the space around her, white hair floating with the motion. "What are we doing here? I think ya lured us here, yeah?"

"I called you out here to crush you both. You're my enemies, and you hurt someone I like. So I'm going to take my payback."

"You and what army?" The deathknight phrases it as a serious, real question. She expects there to be an actual answer if you're saying that in a sober tone and putting your life on the line the way you are. "Far as I can see, we're basically alone here."

You nod. "I have all the back-up I need already." You raise Blizzard's Scourge high, the jade catching the afternoon sun.

"Enough of this farce," Deled growls as he drops low into the Water Dragon Form stance, his clawed hands raising. The black jade claws, one on his fleshy arm and the other on the orichalcum, point straight at your heart.

"Yeah," the Clochard agrees, dropping into her own ready stance, Throadfinder lowered to her left hip while her right hand hovers half an inch or so away from its grip. "After all, since you don't--HAH!" She spins in place and the air behind her is rent with a storm of slashes. Divots are torn in the dusty ground, and a rock face some twenty feet from her is deeply scored.

She attacked nothing. She pauses, cocking her head. "Clochard, what are you doing?" Deled doesn't take his eyes off of you.

"There was--huuuunh." She looks around a bit. "There was somethin'."

"Stop playing around," the Immaculate growls. "Danaa'd, grant me strength."

He attacks. Benthic depths surround him, an aura of water. He skates forward, carried by the unstoppable force of a tsunami.

You are not the foe he's fought before. It's time to demonstrate that. You have been studying the Air Dragon Style scrolls you carried with you to Gem, internalizing its advantages and movements. Perhaps you aren't really an Air Aspect, but today... you can be close enough. "Mela, speed my steps," you say, a common counterpoint to Deled's prayer.

You summon the winds around your leg and drop an axe kick straight to the ground. Dust clouds instantly billow up in the howling gust, and you spring away on a hard-to-predict angle, disappearing into the raised dust.

Perhaps you can't win, but you know how not to lose. Air Dragon is a style that meshes well with stealth and with ranged attacks. Keep disengaging, keep sniping... and hope that the rest of this goes well.

Deled pauses his charge, hesitating. A hood of water like a cobra's cowl turns with his head. He doesn't pause long, knowing better than to let you maneuver for advantage. You hurl Blizzard's Scourge to your right, letting it carve out the shape of a large oval where he shouldn't be able to find you by either where it came from nor where it goes.

He hears it coming, and arches his back impossibly far to let it pass above him, just above his chest. It only works due to the water aura, which catches and drags at the skycutter, giving him the all-important last half-inch he needs. He darts in the direction it goes, loses it in the dust clouds, and doesn't see it twist in the air and come back to you.

Dust. The centerpiece of your plan is dust. You're a silent shadow when you try: the concealment of hanging clouds of dust will give you cover to draw this out, and serves... one more necessary purpose.

Your instincts jangle warning of a beast behind you, of something mid-pounce to bear you to the ground. "Not a good time, Fox," you hiss under your breath, your senses straining to keep a hold of the Clochard's and Deled's locations with the distraction. The threat vanishes with no sense of apology.

Deled is easy to track, for now: his water melds with dust in the air and falls from his anima to the ground as mud. The water keeps coming, and will continue to keep coming until his anima fades or he has no strength left. The mud trail helps keep an eye on him, but the more he moves around and keeps crossing his own trail, the less useful that will be.

The Clochard is easier, after a fashion. She won't stop chuckling under her breath, a sound you can follow. On the other hand, she is unbelievably quick, darting from place to place with a speed that defies following it with your eyes, and you get the sense she's searching for you as carefully as she can, under all her laughter.

They just both need to be sure that you're still in the dust cloud with them, and not look outside it. You hear a "Hah!" of Deled striking out, somewhere well away from you, followed by "Where are you?" The Fox must be having a blast.

The Clochard's attention goes towards his voice, assuming that you must have been somewhere there. You attack from behind and to her left as she focuses there, hurling Blizzard's Scourge low, to cut her off at the knees. There is the ringing of steel-on-steel, and the skycutter is deflected away just before it can hit her. It flies skyward before seeking to return to your hand.

Through instinct, a flash of motion, or simple luck, the Clochard nearly finds you. She is suddenly close to you, closer than even she seems to have expected, and you're close to her right shoulder.

Acting on pure reflex, you save your life by latching onto her right forearm with your hand, preventing her from drawing the sword.

She's no one-trick warrior, though. No sooner is her draw interrupted than she's already changing her approach, looking to engage on another level: she's shifting her weight and seeking to kick at your practically intertwined feet, ready to drive heel or toe into your ankle, your knee.

You kick hard, pushing down on her where you've grabbed her, launching yourself into the air above her. For an instant, your faces are only a few inches apart, her feet planted on the ground and your feet seeking an impossible purchase against the dust twelve feet up. Blizzard's Scourge is suddenly there, and it falls into one hand even as the Clochard coils herself up and explodes outward in the sort of full-body stroke which makes Single Point stylists so fearsome, every muscle in her body bent to overcoming your resisting hand.

You can't stop the instant stroke, but you have an invincible weapon of your own. You interpose the skycutter in a parry, and again the two weapons ring against each other. The force of it sends you skyward, but keeps the cutting edge away from your body. At least, the first one. A second, a third, a fourth: the Clochard's blows can't be literally simultaneous, because there's only one sword blade, but it certainly feels it. You pirouette in the air and the second strikes only dust and empty sky. The third opens a cut along your shoulder and propels you further. The fourth doesn't reach you because you've been flung too far away.

For a moment, you're above the dust clouds, and risk a glance around. A shadow moves in front of the sun. This is working, if you just don't die in the meantime.

You hurl Blizzard's Scourge earthward, a zig-zagging scythe that will criss-cross the field and keep your foes distracted while you shove yourself in a new direction with the force of your throw, to land not quite where they will expect.

Still, Deled is there. As you land on all fours, he's on top of you, a flood compressed into human skin. Black jade claws bite through your funeral clothes and dig into flesh, stopping only against rib bone. You saw it coming and your arm is coming around in a chop even as his blow is landing. Your sweeping chop breaks his nose--you feel it give--and imparts sideways momentum, diverting the unstoppable flow of a Water Dragon master just enough off course that he surges past you.

You straighten up, seize Blizzard's Scourge as it sails past, and exhale sharply, commanding a burst of wind. Another layer of dust is blown into the air, obscuring you as you back off. You listen to them talk through the dust you can't see through.

"Didja get 'im?" The Clochard sounds like she's enjoying the sport. "I tagged 'im once."

"A solid hit, but not crippling," Deled reports, trying to be clear through the difficulty of his nose.

"Looks like he got ya back. Nose looks awful."

"I noticed, thank you. Shouldn't you be trying to kill him?"

"It's a matter of time, now," she reports. "Even if he stops his bleeding so we can't just track him, he has injuries. Throatseeker unerringly finds weak spots, so he's just more and more vulnerable to me the more we fight, even if he's somehow still feelin' his best." She pauses. "What's the... other thing?"

"I don't know," Deled reports. "I keep--gah." You hear jade claws swung through nothing. "What is that? It's gotta be something."

"Yeah. Hmmm..." The deathknight trails off on an almost musical musing. "Gotta say, no idea. It doesn't seem to have done anythin', but he seems to think he can take us because of it. Why?"

"He overestimates his stealth." You start to feel the firm tread as the two Exalts begin to seek you again, moving vaguely in your direction while keeping their options open. "He's trying to hide in the dust clouds while we get distracted, hoping to rip us to pieces from range. It's not going to work."

"Sure ain't," the Clochard agrees.

Unfortunately, they're correct. In close combat, you aren't at your best, and they are too good at forcing this to be a close combat. You'd hoped to be able to drag this out longer, but they're too experienced, too powerful... you can't drag this out too much longer. You look upward. A new star is being born in the afternoon sky. Perhaps you don't need to.


"I can't believe it!" Twine furiously slips lens after lens into place, scribbling down notes and observations with the other hand with the sort of wild, shorthand abandon that she'll pay for later, when she has to figure out what she meant when writing it down. "This is great!"

She has every piece of her instrumentation out, set up, and pointed in the same direction, gathering every piece of data she can.

For the first time since she came to Gem, she has a chance for real observations. Not the sort of fleeting glimpse and distant observation she'd had to get by before. Today, the Five-Metal Shrike isn't soaring past. It's come relatively close to the city, then slowed. It's considering a lump of rock outside the city.

Twine throws one notebook aside, filled, and starts a new one. "These Essence signatures--they're stronger!" She's talking to herself with the wild gusto of someone who usually has only herself for company. "It must be drawing more power. It's not just flying in cruise mode. What else would it be drawing power for? Unless it has more systems that I don't know about, I know only one thing it could be sucking up that much sheer energy to do."

She grins. "It's only a matter of time." She pauses her note-taking to look at the artificial bird the size of a medium fishing boat that's hovering in the air on beating wings of starmetal. "Even if it takes me a week to do the calculations, I have you now. Your bases are mine." Her grin is avarice made manifest.


Artificial mind-analogue elements consider. The Five-Metal Shrike is unaware of its own name, unaware of the passage of millennia, and barely awake enough to know of its own existence.

Simple circuits flash through command hierarchies. Location of being associated with the great enemies of the gods: confirmed. Any artifacts that must not be damaged by order of the Deliberative: none located. Collateral damage possibilities: three, all Exalt. Dutifully, the three are in turn run through a database of important personages who had been part of or in good graces with the Second Deliberative the last time its libraries were updated. No matches.

Usage of the Godspear is thus authorized, per standing directives. Surging energy created and focused through the absolute pinnacle of First Age Twilight caste genius is pulled from hidden bases, cohering into the most powerful aerial weapon ever crafted. Few things short of the Realm Defense Grid, the ultimate sword of Creation itself that the Empress had tamed, could even begin to compare.

The Shrike has no ability to comprehend if its attack was overkill or unlikely to be effective. It just has a target, and it has authorization from its long-dead creators to attack.


You pitch your voice to echo off of rocks, disguising your exact location. "Cousin, do you know why the Wyld Hunt always seeks to kill Anathema when they first Exalt?"

For half a second, Deled pauses, trying to localize the sound, before he continues forward. "You're lost to evil powers, and need to be kept away from the good people of the world?" Both of you ignore the Clochard's snickering.

"That's part of it," you agree. "But have you not heard of the terrible powers Anathema wield?"

"I've heard. I've faced it. I've triumphed. You will fall, too."

"You've never faced Anathema like me before. Cousin Deled, the reason the Wyld Hunt wants to hunt and slay new Anathema is the longer we have to grow, the more power we can bend to our will. And I, ah, I had a leg up from the very start. I was trained to be a ready Dragon-Blood, the same as you."

"Come on, then," Deled growls. "Show me what you have. Then die. Because it's never going to be enough."

He sees you, then. For a moment, the illumination above you reaches a point where it pierces through the clouds of dust you have so industriously raised. He sees you, and you can see, too, that his gaze is drawn upwards beyond you. "It is enough," you say, as he takes a moment to register what it is. "I am Vessel, born and raised Peleps, and I will never be overpowered again. Mela, speed my steps."

You turn and sprint. You sprint for your life, for that is exactly what is at stake. Every bit of speed you can wring from the wind, you do, rushing to get clear.

Because the Five-Metal Shrike is overhead, its weapon is charged, and it's ready to fire.

You hurl yourself off the butte's top, kick three times off its slope as you fall, and land on a single cactus spine, which bends a quarter of an inch before you spring off and hit the ground.

The world turns white. You squeeze your eyes shut as a giant's oven cracks open behind you, heat and pressure and howling fury roaring past. You tuck and roll, covering your ears from the end-of-the-world sound, suffering lacerations of your flesh as shrapnel tears at you. The thunder rolls on, and on, and on.

A second or an hour later, it's over. You get unsteadily to your feet, wobble in place, and turn around.

What had been a butte is now a glowing crater, superheated rock casting an eerie light into the sky. You approach its edge, looking carefully for any sign of another survivor, trying not to breathe in too much of the pulverized rock that floats in the air.

You look down. There is a black blade with a starmetal edge, rammed nine inches into the stone wall, holding its purchase there some six inches below the rim. The red-lit white form of the Clochard is hanging from the blade by one hand, her feet slipping on the scree. She tried to run up the slope, having somehow survived the initial blast, and nearly succeeded. But she didn't. Her feet can find no purchase on the loose and half-melted rock, and her other hand holds Throatfinder's scabbard.

Of Deled, there is no sign at all.

Another layer of rock slides out from under her foot, slipping down into the lava below. Even at this distance, it still feels like you're inches from a roaring bonfire, the heat a physical thing. The Clochard looks up at you. "Help me up," she commands, before her awareness catches up to the fact that you did this to her intentionally. "Please," she follows up, a whisper. "Please. I don't want to die here. Anythin'."

[] Help her up.
[] Push her down.