Rising in the East

You stare across the clearing at Fateful Jewel, still pointing a deadly artifact weapon at you. Looking at her face, at the hard accusation there, you feel a painful tightness in your chest. For a second or two, you almost can't breathe.

"... I'm sorry," you manage, finally.

Jewel's impossibly green eyes narrow. "'Sorry'?" she repeats back, incredulous more than mocking.

"I—" you freeze in place, not sure how to begin. This all feels wrong. Before anything else, you toss the staff down, casting aside the length of heavy jade into the snow and holding up your empty hands to show her. Immediately, you feel the absence of the weapon's invigorating wood essence, the bitter cold of the shadowland seeping back into your body. At least the sky is beginning to lighten overhead again, with Jasmine's disappearance — the ghosts won't be able to stay solid anymore, the others will be able to escape. "I really am sorry. I didn't want to lie to you!"

"You were lying, though. The whole time."

"I was scared!"

Jewel doesn't exactly blink at your outburst — not while she's staring down a Solar Anathema with no backup — but you sense that it's caught her off guard in some way. "Scared?"

"Of this!" You look pointedly at the dragon sigh wand. "Of... people looking at me like you are. Like they don't know me anymore, like I'm a monster. And I... don't want to die!"

Slowly, warily, like it's against all her better judgement, Jewel lowers the weapon. It's still on hand, though, still loaded, and you've seen exactly how fast she can bring that thing up, aim and fire. The blade at the tip gleams a wicked, antique gold. "Aster," she says, words slow and careful. "you are a monster."

It hits you like a blow. The hurt is so obvious in your expression that she seems to regret the words, at least on some level. "I know," you say, voice small and helpless. "I just... liked you, a lot! And you kept wanting me around, and it was really flattering that you'd want to... with me. I'm sorry."

Jewel looks at you for a long, searching moment. When she finally speaks again, there's a faintly horrified note in her voice: "You were not choosing this for yourself, were you?"

Numbly, you shake your head. "It just... it happened. I can't help it."

There's another long, awkward few seconds, before abruptly, Jewel turns away, giving her back to you. "Maybe I was arriving too late," she says, tone strange. You frown, not understanding her at first. "Maybe I was arriving too late, and Guardswoman Aster na Nuri was already having been slain by the Anathema. Who is to say, if no one is ever seeing her again, after now?"

You stare, flummoxed. Jewel isn't looking at you anymore, a defeated set in her shoulders. She's offering to cover for you, to lie for you, if you're willing to run and never come back. You'd just be a brave, stupid mortal girl who got in over her head and died. One your family can mourn proudly. A bitter part of you absolutely believes that it would be easier on them than the truth. But what happens if you're caught? When the lie is inevitably found out? It will absolutely come back onto Jewel, and she'll be tried for aiding and abetting an Anathema. It's one of the few crimes where her being a Dragon-Blood would make things worse for her — a mortal could have credibly claimed to have been under demonic influence, but an Exalt is expected to be above that. And it won't take long for your entanglement to come up, making things look all the more damning.

This is a last-ditch chance to save yourself, to preserve your secret and your good name, at the expense of someone else's safety. And... you've been faced with that choice before, haven't you? You're Anathema, and you know how all this ends, but you won't become a creature that only hurts others to survive.

Especially not Jewel.

"Tell them the truth," you say, quietly. "About... Everything. Don't get yourself in trouble for me."

She sighs, a bitter sound, and says something in a stream of fluid, musical Flametongue. A curse or a prayer, you have no idea. You would have found that distractingly attractive under better circumstances. "You will be hunted down."

"I know."

"If I am seeing you again, I will not be your friend."

"I... I know." You swallow hard, squeezing your eyes shut for a moment against a sudden burning there. When you open them, you almost take a step toward her, but the venomous aura that's still surrounding her is almost as forbidding as the lines of her back. You open your mouth to say something, anything that might make this even a little better, but you come up with nothing. So you just tell her what she needs to know, instead. "The spider-Ogre's name is Winter Jasmine," you say instead. "She's old — really old, I think, she mentioned knowing Jochim the Anathema. She's behind all the ghosts, and she's planning something, I don't know what. It'll be really bad for the city, though. Tell Captain Wandering Heart that?"

"I will be telling them what happened," Jewel says. Then she walks away from you, leaving a trail of live vegetation in her wake, slowly dying and frosting as she moves on.

You stare after her for a moment, before you scoop up the staff from the snow nearby. The mere touch of it drives away the worst of the icy pain in your extremities... but it does nothing for the deeper ache in your chest.

"Are you alright?" you ask Pause. "I mean... can you walk?"

With a groan, he sits up. "Jasmine poisoned me quite severely," he explains. "It's going to take a while to get over it. I'll be... slow."

Well, you can't stay here, the numb part of you still concerned with such matters reasons. "Do you need to use my shoulder?" you offer, finally.

The Anathema monk considers this, then nods gratefully. Instead of standing up and leaning on you, though, his whole body flashes silver again, and a bedraggled looking parrot flaps up in his place, landing on your proffered shoulder.

"Oh! Uh... okay," you say, unavoidably flustered by this casual display of shapeshifting. Even as a bird, his chaotically twisting anima is a different sort of cold against your skin. "I have no idea where I'm going, though."

"Out of the forest?" Pause suggests. His voice is softer than any parrot's should reasonable be, and in the mindgled glow of your animas, you can see he still somehow has fangs despite the beak.

"Well, uh, yeah, I just mean..." your legs start moving, seemingly without consulting you. The cut on your side has already closed up, although it burns in the open air. "It's all over, isn't it?"

"I also felt that way, when I was newly Chosen," Pause says. "I am truly sorry that you've been on your own all this time."

"Well," you say, not sure how to take this sympathetic note, coming from a parrot with the crescent moon of a Face-Stealer on its green-feathered brow, "it makes sense, I guess. That's what happens to Forsaken, isn't it? We end up alone."

"Do you know why Dawn Castes are called Forsaken?" Pause asks.

You frown. It's an odd thing to test you on, now of all times. "When the Dragon-Blooded rose up against the Anathema, the Forsaken were abandoned by all their allies, who left them to fight and die while they escaped." It's in all the stories.

"It is a moral lesson," he explains."Your Caste is used in such parables as a shorthand to caution against rule through martial strength alone, unguided by enlightened principles. How such power earns no loyalty, only fear, and leaves those who rely upon it alone at the end when they most need allies. Is that what you've done with your power, Aster? You told me before that you've done nothing wrong."

"I... don't know," you say. This explanation, confusingly, casts what you'd always taken for dramaticised history instead as a sort of instructional allegory.

"Why did you join the Tributary Guard?" Pause asks.

"To protect people," you say. "My family. Do something good, while I still could."

The parrot nods wearily, an oddly human gesture. "So, you haven't used your power that way. And you are not forsaken, Aster. I am your friend for as long as you need one."

You sniff, gripping your staff as if for comfort. "Why? We barely know each other."

"Because I had friends who helped me, when I was in your position. I believe you deserve the same."

You fall silent for a good while, trudging through the snow, staying out of the deeper shadows all the while. "... was it Winter Jasmine, who helped you?" you ask, quietly.

"Yes," says the parrot, still huddled on your shoulder. "Eventually she and Argent came to find me — she's never quite settled down, despite her age. They're not the first ones I was thinking of, though. Before them, there was Whisper."

You stop up short. "Wait, Whisper?"

He misses the look of recognition on your face. Yes, the last member of our Circle," he says. "Jasmine, Argent, Whisper and myself... And Cal."

"Uh... black hair, Nexus accent, speaks in riddles a lot?"

Pause cocks his head. This gesture is entirely bird. "You've met her," he realises.

"Once? Briefly?" You shrug. "She, uh... tried to warn me about Jasmine, I think." Just not in any way that had actually been actionable, at the time.

"Tried does sound about right," Pause admits, laughing a little. "It's not her fault. It's just... the way she is."

Your mind, already over-crowded with too much information, reels with all this, having understandably forgotten about the mysterious woman who had startled you, delivered a cryptic warning, then left. "Is she..." she was part of an Anathema 'Circle', had refused to walk in sunlight, and had appeared from nowhere before vanishing just as quickly. "... a Wretched?"

"Night Caste, you mean," says Pause, "but no, Whisper isn't a Solar."

"Well, what is she, then?" you ask, frowning. Can't even one thing just be simple or obvious?

"A shadow cast by a spark, stolen by a shadow," says Whisper herself, who has just seemingly materialised beside you.

With a cry, you whirl on her, staff pointed at her throat, moving so quickly that Pause has to flap his colourful wings to keep from falling off your shoulder, talons digging into your flesh painfully for a moment. Whisper herself doesn't move, barely blinks.

"Hello, Wisp," says Pause, with a long-suffering air. "How long have you been near Greyfalls?"

"Longer than you," she says, without greeting, unphased by Pause being a talking parrot.

"Well, you could have said hello, then," he says.

"Were you still the spider's friend? I did not know, before now."

"You could have asked," Pause says, a little exasperated now.

Whisper shrugs, slightly awkward, but she says nothing.

"Who are you?" you ask her, almost pleading.

"A Whisper," she repeats, maddeningly.

Pause comes to your rescue. "Aster, this is Whisper, the Chosen of Shadows. Exigent champion of Five Days Darkness. Whisper, this is Aster na Nuri, Chosen of the Unconquered Sun."

"I know," says Whisper.

"Yes, but you haven't actually introduced yourself," says the parrot.

Whisper shrugs, defeated by this logic.

An Exigent, you vaguely know, is the rare Exalt of a lesser god. They're by their nature spiritually dubious — a base mortal should not be in contact with such a deity to begin with, and are definitionally not born with the spiritual purity to be worthy of such power, the way a Dragon-Blood is — but are not necessarily Anathema. Five Days Darkness himself is a strange sort of god, who you know mainly as a fixture of numerous Scavenger Lands folk tales and ballads. A largely benevolent figure, willing to help an intrepid hero at his lowest point, or punish a villain who no one else can touch. Despite this, he's still always spoken of as a being shrouded in the darkest night.

You lean heavily against a tree. You're very nearly out of the woods already, but this is all a little much, after everything else. "Why are you following me?"

Whisper frowns, going through some sort of intense internal struggle in order to produce an actual straight answer. "Cal died," she says. "You shouldn't."

This really only brings up a very big question that has yet to be addressed — who was Cal, and what does he or Jasmine or any of this have to do with you? Before you can voice this, however, Whisper continues:

"Things will get very bad here. I can aid in your journey, to shield you from prying eyes."

You stare at her. "You mean... leave?"

She nods. "Sindeq, and then on to the No-Sky proper, beyond the Realm's Reach."

You shake your head. "No," you say.

"The Hundred Kingdoms are not as safe. A well-trod hunting ground for the Dragons."

"No," you say, more firmly, "I mean... I'm not leaving.

Whisper stares at you. "The spider will kill you. The Dragons will kill you. It's all they'll agree on." There's something vexed in her expression. "Why?"

That you're staying isn't actually in question. If you were going to simply vanish, you would have done it a long time ago. It just wouldn't be who you are, who you've chosen to be. No more than letting Jewel take the eventual fall to buy you some breathing room would have been. Whatever Winter Jasmine is planning, Whisper's right about one thing: It's likely to get very bad here. And with her presence about to be revealed by Jewel, Jasmine is liable to act sooner rather than later.

Article:

You have many reasons for staying through the days ahead. In all events, you want to protect the home your clan and your family lives in. What else immediately comes to mind, though? What is going to be a particular priority alongside that?

[ ] Let Prince Thay know you're still her woman

You're too toxic an asset to be publicly acknowledged anymore, but that doesn't mean you can't be of use, more discreetly. You are going to focus on upholding your oath, even if it's all gone wrong faster than anticipated.

[ ] Stop Winter Jasmine at all costs

You don't know the details of Jasmine's plan yet, but she's a dangerous and unstable witch who engages in foul necromantic rituals, a sworn enemy of the Realm who doesn't seem to care about collateral damage. Whatever confusing feelings you experience around her, you will resolve here and now to stop her.

[ ] Fateful Jewel