[Exalted] The Dragon's Spite
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
- Mature Fantasy
- Location
- Dreiländereck
[X] They have underestimated her too long. She's about to show her real power.
That one isn't meant to be there. Oh. It's you.
[X] "Don't you think this has gone on long enough?"
Yes. I do. You weren't buying it, were you?
[X] "No," Jema said, "I'm not. What gave it away?"
The Fey deserve what is coming to them for that flatbread scene.
That one isn't meant to be there. Oh. It's you.
[X] "Don't you think this has gone on long enough?"
Yes. I do. You weren't buying it, were you?
[X] "No," Jema said, "I'm not. What gave it away?"
The Fey deserve what is coming to them for that flatbread scene.
How does Inaan turn the tide?
[X] The people here don't know how to use the ruined terrain like a Cahzori. She simply outsmarts the villain with a cunning collapse of the buildings.
I'd like the option where she puts a plan into action under pressure. Rena needs her apprentice to have some self-confidence if she's going to grow into a realSith unfairly maligned innocent sorceress someday.
That one isn't meant to be there. Oh. It's you.
[X] "Don't you think this has gone on long enough?"
Yes. I do. You weren't buying it, were you?
[X] "No," Jema said, "I'm not. What gave it away?"
After she gets the win she needs, Rena pulls the house of cards down.
[X] The people here don't know how to use the ruined terrain like a Cahzori. She simply outsmarts the villain with a cunning collapse of the buildings.
I'd like the option where she puts a plan into action under pressure. Rena needs her apprentice to have some self-confidence if she's going to grow into a real
That one isn't meant to be there. Oh. It's you.
[X] "Don't you think this has gone on long enough?"
Yes. I do. You weren't buying it, were you?
[X] "No," Jema said, "I'm not. What gave it away?"
After she gets the win she needs, Rena pulls the house of cards down.
Da Boyz
The Cutest Apocalypse.
[X] The people here don't know how to use the ruined terrain like a Cahzori. She simply outsmarts the villain with a cunning collapse of the buildings.
[X] "Don't you think this has gone on long enough?"
[X] "No," Jema said, "I'm not. What gave it away?"
A little sad that Rena got bored, the degeneracy of the fae isekai hasn't gotten stale yet.
[X] "Don't you think this has gone on long enough?"
[X] "No," Jema said, "I'm not. What gave it away?"
A little sad that Rena got bored, the degeneracy of the fae isekai hasn't gotten stale yet.
So we do not know how closely this cleaves to how fae work in the books, but in the books? They rapidly move from eating 'temporary' mental resources to permanently nomming on their prey's statistics. If we let this run for too long then Inaan might end up with less force of will, less personality and vitality, etc.
A fae who feeds on the courage of a valiant warrior? Leaves that warrior without the spark that made them so 'delicious' in the first place if they feast instead of sampling. Ultimately they leave their prey as listless zombies who lack any motivation or ability to act on their own initiative and would die if not fed or work themselves uncaringly to death if urged.
A fae who feeds on the courage of a valiant warrior? Leaves that warrior without the spark that made them so 'delicious' in the first place if they feast instead of sampling. Ultimately they leave their prey as listless zombies who lack any motivation or ability to act on their own initiative and would die if not fed or work themselves uncaringly to death if urged.
- Location
- USA
That sort of concern is why I hadn't wanted to play along initially with the foxes on arriving, and again voted to not do so (admittedly 50% was desire to Rip and Tear) for how we end our stay here. Sadly Rena specializes in playing chicken with brain-eating fire.
But we're in a bit deep for that sort of thought, may as well try to get some character growth and direction out of Inaan while we're at it yeah?
I mean, "my apprentice got her brains eaten because I was way too smug about my ability to handle Fae" is a perfectly in-character failure for Rena. Not one I want to see, obviously, but also sort of a thing a Villain Quest is signing you up for.
LXXI. A Feast of Foxes
LXXI. A Feast of Foxes
And now the two of you are backstage in this theatre of dreams, watching the masked figures dance and the puppeteers twitch their strings and gnash their teeth. It isn't as beautiful here as the dream world and there is a lot more of Cahzor here. There is dust in the corners, tracked in from outside, and the paint on the stone walls is flaking. But for all the rot and ruin here in this underground place, the foxes have set up a grand (if battered) table that they must have found elsewhere in the ruins, and the chipped plates are stacked high with morsels which shimmer with dreams. You recognise some of them. That bit there is the curve of your bare arm seen through Amigere's eyes; over there is a fragment of Cheraki pine; there is formless smoke that smells of old paper and a hint of wyld-touched delirium.
Silk-and-Eye claps his hands, and ruffles up his hair around his fox-like ears. The slick look he was using when he was pretending to be a functionary is gone, and there is a smile on his soft face. His fine, transparent silks draped around his waist shush around him as he wanders around, always keeping a certain distance away from you. The other foxes here backstage are watching you, paused between fight and flight, but he seems at ease. "A little wine of dreams for you? Or perhaps a spirit of fantasy? How would you like to get drunk off your own lust? I can have them bring you what you want."
"I think I'll pass." You lick your lips. "But you didn't answer what I asked you. What gave it away?"
"Well, lots of little things. Her dreams told me you're a dragon child. But I think, more than that," he dabs at his eye with a handkerchief, "you don't like it when you're not the main character. Such ego! So admirable! So," his voice drops into a husky whisper, "so attractive."
"Flatterer."
"But of course! To flatter one such as you is much more fun than dealing with the silly little concerns and pathetic dreams of wandering jansi nobles. So few of them have ever left this valley. And they hate and envy the ones who leave and usually never come back because they find much better new things. Squalid little men and pathetic little women. They dream so small!"
"Maybe I just don't like being killed," you point out. "And this story is one likely to end with my death. Killing the mentor is a cheap way to let the protagonist come into her own. I wouldn't mind it so much, except you had me playing her instructor. In person."
"Now, now, I was just going to have her find a fantasy of your body," he says, flapping his hand at you. "I can feel your dreams. You spun a feast for us to hide your true nature, didn't you? You are far more interesting than this insipid little girl. Do you know how many Cahzori nobles we've fed on that are just like her?"
"I presume many."
"Yes! Far too many! And they're all the same. I," Silk-and-Eye says, resting his hand on his bare chest, "am an artist of dreams. A painter of the sleeping mind. And it is a drag to have to deal with these dull, dull dull jansi; so limited, so creatively sterile. Did you see what she thought of her fantasy? She wanted to be somewhere other than Cahzor, but she can't even imagine a landscape that isn't filled with mouldering old ruins."
There is something personal about the way he puts that. "Ruins offend your sensibilities," you muse.
"Yes! Yes! They are so ugly! And not just at a skin-deep level! Ruins are ugly to the core. They can never be beautiful! What beauty lies in the idea that hated Time can fasten its hands around the throats of that which was once pure in intent? What is attractive about the idea that such an abomination can turn grace into something scarred by its cruel touch?"
"Did you see the spires when they were whole?" you ask. How old is he?
"Not whole, but more wholesome than they are now. When your kind were here in numbers."
"My kind?"
"I know you're a dragon-child," Silk-and-Eye says breathily. "And you play this game so well! So marvellously! It's truly beautiful to find a creature of Shape who understands this. Oh, the other ones — so weak, so stupid, so foolish! Believing that stagnation is a good thing! Believing that this world is all that there can ever be!
"But you — you've seen that there is no beauty in rot. No grace in decay. No elegance in having but a single nature!"
Chronophobia is far from rare among your handsome gentlemen, but Silk-and-Eye seems to particularly hate the touch of Time. But then again, he has lived in Cahzor. Look at this city for too long, where everything that was great and good has been broken down by time and the pretentious, petty jansi squat in the ruins of wonder and think themselves wondrous and you too might come to hate it too.
But you are a creature of Time, born to it, and that means you can see the beauty here too. Which might not be able to outweigh a stinking lake and sandy soil and ruined comforts, but it is not the pure hatred that drips from Silk-and-Eye's melodious voice.
"There are many things I would change about the world," you offer. "It is why I took up wyldworking in the first place."
"It isn't just a question of you being a wyldworker!" Silk-and-Eye is suddenly speaking from behind you, sprawled out on a mouldering chaise longue, eating grapes that gleam with half-seen dreams. He doesn't seem to care that the leopard-fur short skirt he wears under his thin silks isn't hiding anything.
But then again, he is showing off. In more than one sense. He has given away that what you see isn't really him. The princes of chaos do not shift their location with a thought easily, but giving someone the illusion of movement? Yes. They love that.
And that tells you that this is another dream you have woken into. Oh, Silk-and-Eye, what a charming devil. You smile, almost despite yourself. He knows how to do this properly. You can believe some of his contempt for the jansi and for small dreams like Inaan's. He doesn't like small dreams. He wants the madness and scope of the dreams of the deepness of chaos.
"And why isn't it just a question of being a wyldworker?"
"Because so many wyldworkers are merely creatures of Order who seek to enslave us! To control us! To bring their Time and Shape and Causality into our spaces… as if the blasphemy of the Centre was not enough to marr existence with!"
"You came to this world at the end of the last Age, didn't you?"
He smiles at you, showing sharp teeth between soft, plump lips. Around you, the false reality begins to shift again. The shadows against the wall are only shadows — but such shadows! A fox the size of a hillside, savage and keen, its eyes burning in the dark, but its songs so beautiful that the very waves and weather follow it. Cloaked in the winds, it steps forth into the world — so say the shadows — and where it stands the world is swept away from its once-forms and all is set anew. "And you are well-informed and learned — and keen-eyed — to know that. But then again, you feel chained by Shape. You feel chained by Time!"
"Yes." It is not much of a confession. Sometimes, it is true. Sometimes it is less so, but you are haunted by past mistakes and past deeds and past events that you can never, ever undo. Never, ever put right. Never change.
"You are not the kind of wyldworker who wants to — like a miser — steal our freedom and use it to loosen the laws of this Creation in small, measured ways. You are a woman who wants to be free. Like we once were. Like we tried to be again. And failed."
Oh. "The wandering migrants who come to the shores of Time are fleeing the monsters of the deep. But you were one of those monsters. Seeking to devour the world."
"Not devour, no." He waves the grapes around in his grandiose gesture. "To devour the world is the sin of Ukt Ghulah. She eats it and makes it part of her. She swallows lead and iron and will never be free of its shackles. But I would have washed away the sins of this world. Set everything within free. Undid the chains on existence laid by the titans."
"No more time. No more shape."
"Freedom once more." His smile is the smile of the fox on the walls; the fall of immaculates, the awakening of hidden urges. "For everything. Because the titans marred everything that could be with their petty desires. I am so much reduced from what I used to be, but I remember those early days. I remember when anything awful could simply not have been if it was more beautiful another way. That this is memory is their curse upon us. Because memory is one of their creatures. How things once were — listen to my words! 'Once'! 'Were'! We are all trapped in their selfishness! Once there was no need for memory because joyous moments could be simply lived again afresh and anew.
"They took that from us," he says, his voice full of hate.
The silence drags out. Half-seen beyond the smoke-like wall where the fox stands, Inaan gets in a staid and pointless duel with her rival in a river valley. You've had dramatic fights with rivals in river valleys, when you were a younger woman. They're much more enjoyable in the retelling. When the taste of ruined friendships have faded.
"So," Silk-and-Eye says with a flick of his hair. His ears are alert, aware. "How about it?"
He has jumped over a few conversational steps. "What are you offering?" you ask cautiously.
"You wouldn't be the first wyldworker who I've come to a very enjoyable deal with," Silk-and-Eye says with an easy smile. "The right kind. The ones who want to be free as much as I do. And I know your lusts." He exhales, sparkling mist wreathing him for a moment. "Your desires. Your secret passions. Your furious wants. I am exactly your kind of man."
He's not wrong, but you feel called out by this pretty soft fox-man. "Why deny it when you see everything that I am?"
Silk-and-Eye chuckles. "So are you ready to turn on Ukt Ghulah and the two of us can walk out of here?" his voice comes from right behind your ear.
"And what makes you think that's what I'm up to?"
"Love, I know exactly what you're up to. Ukt Ghulah is predictable. She feeds off betrayal and broken hearts," Silk-and-Eye says with a happy titter. "As soon as she peeled off her near-human face and showed the world her hungry side, I knew she was making her play. I thought she'd do it earlier! Ha! Marvellous! Just marvellous!"
You can't help but smile wryly. Foxes are often such fiends for drama. "So who do you want to win? Her, or Redtail Dae?"
"Either. Neither. Both of them are brutes, and I'd rather not spend any more time around either of them. It's been a couple of decades since we set up our little triumvirate, and it simply doesn't work. All of us know that. But the first one to break it would have been eaten by the other two, so we didn't break it. Right until Ukt Ghulah found you, a dragon-child no less — and she really has a thing for dragon children! — and so on and so forth, blah blah… well… she thinks she can turn on the two of us and eat both of us."
"That is the way it is done in the Wyld."
"It is! Oh, just marvellous!" His tail flicks lazily behind him. "One of them will win, but they'll be greatly weakened - and busy digesting their meal. And quite frankly both of them are savages!"
"Oh?"
His eyes gleam with reflected flame. "Yes-yes, very much so! You've spoken with Ukt Ghulah, of course you have. You're party to her treachery. But she's such a simple being, so impulsive in all the worst ways. She's base and venal, a flesh-eater who likes her meat rotten. She poisons herself with the Dead places of this shaped world, and it will kill her in the end. And Dae is little better. He came out of the north, but he is a different kind of fox to us."
"Very ugly?" you test.
"Oh, you wouldn't believe it!" Silk-and-Eye sighs. "He has no flair, no style, no grace! His artistry is barely there! I tell you, do you know what it's like to work with someone whose only interest in spinning a tale is to get close enough to tear and maim? This is what I have to deal with; those two idiots who only argue about whether to eat the body when it's fresh or when it's gone rotten."
"Poor you. It must have been so hard."
"It is! It is!"
"You're not a killer, are you? Not directly. A trickster like you would rather not have blood on his paws." If he's like the trickster-foxes you know, he wouldn't mind leading someone wandering close to a mountain-edge off the cliff, or screaming like a dying man to scare someone so badly their heard gives out, but actual bloodshed? "You're not as bad as them."
"So true, so true. It's hard being as soft-hearted as I am," he says without a hint of irony or self-awareness. "Eating flesh is a route to power, yes, but it is one that I'd never take. But with you…"
"With me?"
"With a wyldworker on side, you can shield me from the inclement weight of Order. And we can head out of this worthless, dying city. Together we can find somewhere else, somewhere rich in larger dreams, somewhere close to the shores of the change-sea. We can work together. You will have all your delights, me included, and a legion of fae servants to dwell in luxury. And I will have your magic to spread over the land. Just imagine it!" He spreads his arms wide, and the shadow fox that creeps over the walls tilts its head back and screams at the distant moon. "This desert is a thing of Order; we can be rid of it. Who even likes deserts? Not me. It was the wretched titans who liked them, and burned them into this Creation of theirs. But their rules can be washed away. Sand can become so many other things. A lush and fertile paradise. A world of rain and trees. Soft, gentle, hidden from the hateful eyes of the sun and the fangs of the moon. Who needs a world like this when it brings time and decay with it? Not I, and not you!"
"I have often thought things like that," you say. You aren't lying there, but he does rather go on. Pompous, like so many of the once-mighty lords of Chaos.
"Of course you have." His eyes burn, and this is not a saying. "Because you're a creature not too different from me. Ruled by passion, but trapped in this wretched place You were born in this prison; I was stranded here, but Time alike holds us too closely. So we wait. Wait while Ukt Ghulah and Redtail Dae exhaust each other, and then I'll eat the survivor. And in the meantime, we can make merry. Seal our alliance, in the oldest way."
"Presumptuous," you say, eyeing him up and down and liking what you see.
"Tell me you're not interested."
"I am not interested," you say, and know it sounds real in that moment.
"Ah, such a wonderful liar."
"I know," you smile. "An alliance?"
"Yes. One of eternal friendship, sworn to Dharma who will bring calamity and despair on those who break from it. And then we wait. I feast for the long road ahead. And when I have consumed the winner of those two savages and their scrap, we leave these ruins behind. Head away from them. To somewhere new. Somewhere fresh."
"Somewhere they won't see us coming."
"Exactly," says the predator before you.
You know the shape of his deal. And it is a good one. A very, very good one. A powerful ally, and a path out of Cahzor. Some would say it means selling out the world, but they say that about everything you do. Why should you care about the strictures of the gods?
And more than that. Someone like Silk-and-Eye is someone who could protect you from Zed. A demon lord is a peer to the stronger of the lords of Chaos, and if Silk-and-Eye truly was one of the invaders who once threatened the world — and you believe that he was, he has a hubris and a sophistication that matches it — then he could be again. Someone who could keep you safe from the machinations of Zed. Someone who, unlike that ungrateful bastard, loves you for what you are. Entirely and utterly.
Your eyes flick to Inaan. She isn't begging for help. She isn't mouthing pleas to you asking for your help. She is blissed out of her mind, wrapped in a pleasant dream of what she has wanted most in her life. There will be no pain, no unpleasantness, no imperfection in her death-of-self. Inaan will just have a few days of living her dreams, and then there will just be a shell.
A lot of people have a lot worse deaths.
So maybe you could leave her to him. Let him hollow her out. She'd be happy. And you'd be happy. And he'd be happy. What's wrong about that?
What's wrong about that, and why does it make you feel bad? It's not like you can easily kill him. He's still got you trapped in a dream. Hunting him down would be hard. Really hard. It's not like you have a way to make him show himself. So it's not like you could save her. Not without the risk that if you don't find her fast enough there'll only be a husk — or at least a girl who'll never have the same wits, the same keenness again.
And if you can't save her, there's really no point in putting yourself at risk, is there? Amigere is just a flunky. He was only ever expendable. And Zia would be a shame, a waste of a pretty boy, but Silk-and-Eye is prettier. No real loss.
Really, what reason do you have to not take his offer? It's the best outcome for you. That's what really matters. What reason do you have to do anything else?
And now the two of you are backstage in this theatre of dreams, watching the masked figures dance and the puppeteers twitch their strings and gnash their teeth. It isn't as beautiful here as the dream world and there is a lot more of Cahzor here. There is dust in the corners, tracked in from outside, and the paint on the stone walls is flaking. But for all the rot and ruin here in this underground place, the foxes have set up a grand (if battered) table that they must have found elsewhere in the ruins, and the chipped plates are stacked high with morsels which shimmer with dreams. You recognise some of them. That bit there is the curve of your bare arm seen through Amigere's eyes; over there is a fragment of Cheraki pine; there is formless smoke that smells of old paper and a hint of wyld-touched delirium.
Silk-and-Eye claps his hands, and ruffles up his hair around his fox-like ears. The slick look he was using when he was pretending to be a functionary is gone, and there is a smile on his soft face. His fine, transparent silks draped around his waist shush around him as he wanders around, always keeping a certain distance away from you. The other foxes here backstage are watching you, paused between fight and flight, but he seems at ease. "A little wine of dreams for you? Or perhaps a spirit of fantasy? How would you like to get drunk off your own lust? I can have them bring you what you want."
"I think I'll pass." You lick your lips. "But you didn't answer what I asked you. What gave it away?"
"Well, lots of little things. Her dreams told me you're a dragon child. But I think, more than that," he dabs at his eye with a handkerchief, "you don't like it when you're not the main character. Such ego! So admirable! So," his voice drops into a husky whisper, "so attractive."
"Flatterer."
"But of course! To flatter one such as you is much more fun than dealing with the silly little concerns and pathetic dreams of wandering jansi nobles. So few of them have ever left this valley. And they hate and envy the ones who leave and usually never come back because they find much better new things. Squalid little men and pathetic little women. They dream so small!"
"Maybe I just don't like being killed," you point out. "And this story is one likely to end with my death. Killing the mentor is a cheap way to let the protagonist come into her own. I wouldn't mind it so much, except you had me playing her instructor. In person."
"Now, now, I was just going to have her find a fantasy of your body," he says, flapping his hand at you. "I can feel your dreams. You spun a feast for us to hide your true nature, didn't you? You are far more interesting than this insipid little girl. Do you know how many Cahzori nobles we've fed on that are just like her?"
"I presume many."
"Yes! Far too many! And they're all the same. I," Silk-and-Eye says, resting his hand on his bare chest, "am an artist of dreams. A painter of the sleeping mind. And it is a drag to have to deal with these dull, dull dull jansi; so limited, so creatively sterile. Did you see what she thought of her fantasy? She wanted to be somewhere other than Cahzor, but she can't even imagine a landscape that isn't filled with mouldering old ruins."
There is something personal about the way he puts that. "Ruins offend your sensibilities," you muse.
"Yes! Yes! They are so ugly! And not just at a skin-deep level! Ruins are ugly to the core. They can never be beautiful! What beauty lies in the idea that hated Time can fasten its hands around the throats of that which was once pure in intent? What is attractive about the idea that such an abomination can turn grace into something scarred by its cruel touch?"
"Did you see the spires when they were whole?" you ask. How old is he?
"Not whole, but more wholesome than they are now. When your kind were here in numbers."
"My kind?"
"I know you're a dragon-child," Silk-and-Eye says breathily. "And you play this game so well! So marvellously! It's truly beautiful to find a creature of Shape who understands this. Oh, the other ones — so weak, so stupid, so foolish! Believing that stagnation is a good thing! Believing that this world is all that there can ever be!
"But you — you've seen that there is no beauty in rot. No grace in decay. No elegance in having but a single nature!"
Chronophobia is far from rare among your handsome gentlemen, but Silk-and-Eye seems to particularly hate the touch of Time. But then again, he has lived in Cahzor. Look at this city for too long, where everything that was great and good has been broken down by time and the pretentious, petty jansi squat in the ruins of wonder and think themselves wondrous and you too might come to hate it too.
But you are a creature of Time, born to it, and that means you can see the beauty here too. Which might not be able to outweigh a stinking lake and sandy soil and ruined comforts, but it is not the pure hatred that drips from Silk-and-Eye's melodious voice.
"There are many things I would change about the world," you offer. "It is why I took up wyldworking in the first place."
"It isn't just a question of you being a wyldworker!" Silk-and-Eye is suddenly speaking from behind you, sprawled out on a mouldering chaise longue, eating grapes that gleam with half-seen dreams. He doesn't seem to care that the leopard-fur short skirt he wears under his thin silks isn't hiding anything.
But then again, he is showing off. In more than one sense. He has given away that what you see isn't really him. The princes of chaos do not shift their location with a thought easily, but giving someone the illusion of movement? Yes. They love that.
And that tells you that this is another dream you have woken into. Oh, Silk-and-Eye, what a charming devil. You smile, almost despite yourself. He knows how to do this properly. You can believe some of his contempt for the jansi and for small dreams like Inaan's. He doesn't like small dreams. He wants the madness and scope of the dreams of the deepness of chaos.
"And why isn't it just a question of being a wyldworker?"
"Because so many wyldworkers are merely creatures of Order who seek to enslave us! To control us! To bring their Time and Shape and Causality into our spaces… as if the blasphemy of the Centre was not enough to marr existence with!"
"You came to this world at the end of the last Age, didn't you?"
He smiles at you, showing sharp teeth between soft, plump lips. Around you, the false reality begins to shift again. The shadows against the wall are only shadows — but such shadows! A fox the size of a hillside, savage and keen, its eyes burning in the dark, but its songs so beautiful that the very waves and weather follow it. Cloaked in the winds, it steps forth into the world — so say the shadows — and where it stands the world is swept away from its once-forms and all is set anew. "And you are well-informed and learned — and keen-eyed — to know that. But then again, you feel chained by Shape. You feel chained by Time!"
"Yes." It is not much of a confession. Sometimes, it is true. Sometimes it is less so, but you are haunted by past mistakes and past deeds and past events that you can never, ever undo. Never, ever put right. Never change.
"You are not the kind of wyldworker who wants to — like a miser — steal our freedom and use it to loosen the laws of this Creation in small, measured ways. You are a woman who wants to be free. Like we once were. Like we tried to be again. And failed."
Oh. "The wandering migrants who come to the shores of Time are fleeing the monsters of the deep. But you were one of those monsters. Seeking to devour the world."
"Not devour, no." He waves the grapes around in his grandiose gesture. "To devour the world is the sin of Ukt Ghulah. She eats it and makes it part of her. She swallows lead and iron and will never be free of its shackles. But I would have washed away the sins of this world. Set everything within free. Undid the chains on existence laid by the titans."
"No more time. No more shape."
"Freedom once more." His smile is the smile of the fox on the walls; the fall of immaculates, the awakening of hidden urges. "For everything. Because the titans marred everything that could be with their petty desires. I am so much reduced from what I used to be, but I remember those early days. I remember when anything awful could simply not have been if it was more beautiful another way. That this is memory is their curse upon us. Because memory is one of their creatures. How things once were — listen to my words! 'Once'! 'Were'! We are all trapped in their selfishness! Once there was no need for memory because joyous moments could be simply lived again afresh and anew.
"They took that from us," he says, his voice full of hate.
The silence drags out. Half-seen beyond the smoke-like wall where the fox stands, Inaan gets in a staid and pointless duel with her rival in a river valley. You've had dramatic fights with rivals in river valleys, when you were a younger woman. They're much more enjoyable in the retelling. When the taste of ruined friendships have faded.
"So," Silk-and-Eye says with a flick of his hair. His ears are alert, aware. "How about it?"
He has jumped over a few conversational steps. "What are you offering?" you ask cautiously.
"You wouldn't be the first wyldworker who I've come to a very enjoyable deal with," Silk-and-Eye says with an easy smile. "The right kind. The ones who want to be free as much as I do. And I know your lusts." He exhales, sparkling mist wreathing him for a moment. "Your desires. Your secret passions. Your furious wants. I am exactly your kind of man."
He's not wrong, but you feel called out by this pretty soft fox-man. "Why deny it when you see everything that I am?"
Silk-and-Eye chuckles. "So are you ready to turn on Ukt Ghulah and the two of us can walk out of here?" his voice comes from right behind your ear.
"And what makes you think that's what I'm up to?"
"Love, I know exactly what you're up to. Ukt Ghulah is predictable. She feeds off betrayal and broken hearts," Silk-and-Eye says with a happy titter. "As soon as she peeled off her near-human face and showed the world her hungry side, I knew she was making her play. I thought she'd do it earlier! Ha! Marvellous! Just marvellous!"
You can't help but smile wryly. Foxes are often such fiends for drama. "So who do you want to win? Her, or Redtail Dae?"
"Either. Neither. Both of them are brutes, and I'd rather not spend any more time around either of them. It's been a couple of decades since we set up our little triumvirate, and it simply doesn't work. All of us know that. But the first one to break it would have been eaten by the other two, so we didn't break it. Right until Ukt Ghulah found you, a dragon-child no less — and she really has a thing for dragon children! — and so on and so forth, blah blah… well… she thinks she can turn on the two of us and eat both of us."
"That is the way it is done in the Wyld."
"It is! Oh, just marvellous!" His tail flicks lazily behind him. "One of them will win, but they'll be greatly weakened - and busy digesting their meal. And quite frankly both of them are savages!"
"Oh?"
His eyes gleam with reflected flame. "Yes-yes, very much so! You've spoken with Ukt Ghulah, of course you have. You're party to her treachery. But she's such a simple being, so impulsive in all the worst ways. She's base and venal, a flesh-eater who likes her meat rotten. She poisons herself with the Dead places of this shaped world, and it will kill her in the end. And Dae is little better. He came out of the north, but he is a different kind of fox to us."
"Very ugly?" you test.
"Oh, you wouldn't believe it!" Silk-and-Eye sighs. "He has no flair, no style, no grace! His artistry is barely there! I tell you, do you know what it's like to work with someone whose only interest in spinning a tale is to get close enough to tear and maim? This is what I have to deal with; those two idiots who only argue about whether to eat the body when it's fresh or when it's gone rotten."
"Poor you. It must have been so hard."
"It is! It is!"
"You're not a killer, are you? Not directly. A trickster like you would rather not have blood on his paws." If he's like the trickster-foxes you know, he wouldn't mind leading someone wandering close to a mountain-edge off the cliff, or screaming like a dying man to scare someone so badly their heard gives out, but actual bloodshed? "You're not as bad as them."
"So true, so true. It's hard being as soft-hearted as I am," he says without a hint of irony or self-awareness. "Eating flesh is a route to power, yes, but it is one that I'd never take. But with you…"
"With me?"
"With a wyldworker on side, you can shield me from the inclement weight of Order. And we can head out of this worthless, dying city. Together we can find somewhere else, somewhere rich in larger dreams, somewhere close to the shores of the change-sea. We can work together. You will have all your delights, me included, and a legion of fae servants to dwell in luxury. And I will have your magic to spread over the land. Just imagine it!" He spreads his arms wide, and the shadow fox that creeps over the walls tilts its head back and screams at the distant moon. "This desert is a thing of Order; we can be rid of it. Who even likes deserts? Not me. It was the wretched titans who liked them, and burned them into this Creation of theirs. But their rules can be washed away. Sand can become so many other things. A lush and fertile paradise. A world of rain and trees. Soft, gentle, hidden from the hateful eyes of the sun and the fangs of the moon. Who needs a world like this when it brings time and decay with it? Not I, and not you!"
"I have often thought things like that," you say. You aren't lying there, but he does rather go on. Pompous, like so many of the once-mighty lords of Chaos.
"Of course you have." His eyes burn, and this is not a saying. "Because you're a creature not too different from me. Ruled by passion, but trapped in this wretched place You were born in this prison; I was stranded here, but Time alike holds us too closely. So we wait. Wait while Ukt Ghulah and Redtail Dae exhaust each other, and then I'll eat the survivor. And in the meantime, we can make merry. Seal our alliance, in the oldest way."
"Presumptuous," you say, eyeing him up and down and liking what you see.
"Tell me you're not interested."
"I am not interested," you say, and know it sounds real in that moment.
"Ah, such a wonderful liar."
"I know," you smile. "An alliance?"
"Yes. One of eternal friendship, sworn to Dharma who will bring calamity and despair on those who break from it. And then we wait. I feast for the long road ahead. And when I have consumed the winner of those two savages and their scrap, we leave these ruins behind. Head away from them. To somewhere new. Somewhere fresh."
"Somewhere they won't see us coming."
"Exactly," says the predator before you.
You know the shape of his deal. And it is a good one. A very, very good one. A powerful ally, and a path out of Cahzor. Some would say it means selling out the world, but they say that about everything you do. Why should you care about the strictures of the gods?
And more than that. Someone like Silk-and-Eye is someone who could protect you from Zed. A demon lord is a peer to the stronger of the lords of Chaos, and if Silk-and-Eye truly was one of the invaders who once threatened the world — and you believe that he was, he has a hubris and a sophistication that matches it — then he could be again. Someone who could keep you safe from the machinations of Zed. Someone who, unlike that ungrateful bastard, loves you for what you are. Entirely and utterly.
Your eyes flick to Inaan. She isn't begging for help. She isn't mouthing pleas to you asking for your help. She is blissed out of her mind, wrapped in a pleasant dream of what she has wanted most in her life. There will be no pain, no unpleasantness, no imperfection in her death-of-self. Inaan will just have a few days of living her dreams, and then there will just be a shell.
A lot of people have a lot worse deaths.
So maybe you could leave her to him. Let him hollow her out. She'd be happy. And you'd be happy. And he'd be happy. What's wrong about that?
What's wrong about that, and why does it make you feel bad? It's not like you can easily kill him. He's still got you trapped in a dream. Hunting him down would be hard. Really hard. It's not like you have a way to make him show himself. So it's not like you could save her. Not without the risk that if you don't find her fast enough there'll only be a husk — or at least a girl who'll never have the same wits, the same keenness again.
And if you can't save her, there's really no point in putting yourself at risk, is there? Amigere is just a flunky. He was only ever expendable. And Zia would be a shame, a waste of a pretty boy, but Silk-and-Eye is prettier. No real loss.
Really, what reason do you have to not take his offer? It's the best outcome for you. That's what really matters. What reason do you have to do anything else?
Article: This is a non-trivial vote. The first option is one which will bring the story to a conclusion. If you vote for it, do so in the full knowledge that it ends the quest.
Rena's Choice
[ ] Sacrifice Inaan. In the end, the dragon was too full of spite to live in an imperfect world. She will take Silk-and-Eye as her new consort and leaves Cahzor behind. [Will end the story.]
[ ] Hunt Him Down. He tried to screw you over. You want him dead above all else. Inaan can just wait a little longer while you try to find him in this web of illusions. If Inaan comes out of all this in a state that will take time to heal - if she ever does - at least she's alive.
[ ] Sacrifice Inaan… Only Not Really. If Rena is willing to accept his deal and swear alliance, he'll let down his guard and bare his throat to you. He's fae. They can't break their word. You're human. You can, even if it means paying a price that'll hurt badly.
[X] Sacrifice Inaan… Only Not Really. If Rena is willing to accept his deal and swear alliance, he'll let down his guard and bare his throat to you. He's fae. They can't break their word. You're human. You can, even if it means paying a price that'll hurt badly.
It would be better to save our student.
It would be better to save our student.
- Location
- The North
[X] Sacrifice Inaan… Only Not Really. If Rena is willing to accept his deal and swear alliance, he'll let down his guard and bare his throat to you. He's fae. They can't break their word. You're human. You can, even if it means paying a price that'll hurt badly.
I know that an any% speedrun record is in the cards, but I really think we should keep this story going.
I know that an any% speedrun record is in the cards, but I really think we should keep this story going.
- Location
- France
[X] Sacrifice Inaan… Only Not Really. If Rena is willing to accept his deal and swear alliance, he'll let down his guard and bare his throat to you. He's fae. They can't break their word. You're human. You can, even if it means paying a price that'll hurt badly.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Honestly, I feel like the first option is meant to be ambiguous. Does it mean that the story ends because the character has gone out of bounds and there is nothing to draw there?
Or does it end because she becomes lost in fae dreams, and the promise of something better than this dustbowl?
Or does it end because she becomes lost in fae dreams, and the promise of something better than this dustbowl?
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
[x] Hunt Him Down. He tried to screw you over. You want him dead above all else. Inaan can just wait a little longer while you try to find him in this web of illusions. If Inaan comes out of all this in a state that will take time to heal - if she ever does - at least she's alive.
I think that this is the type of fae that is more like our familiar than our pretty boys. And we have more than enough of those already.
I think that this is the type of fae that is more like our familiar than our pretty boys. And we have more than enough of those already.
[x] Hunt Him Down. He tried to screw you over. You want him dead above all else. Inaan can just wait a little longer while you try to find him in this web of illusions. If Inaan comes out of all this in a state that will take time to heal - if she ever does - at least she's alive.
I don't like the sound of that cost.
I don't like the sound of that cost.
So the question is really how much do we pay for our Minion to get out of this; we can Hunt Him Down (which will give him time to feed on her) or cross our fingers and take a hit in order to end him now. Have we made any promises in regards to Inaan's safety before that this would risk? Also wondering what the status is on Finally Feeling Masculine Man.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Sacrifice Inaan… Only Not Really. If Rena is willing to accept his deal and swear alliance, he'll let down his guard and bare his throat to you. He's fae. They can't break their word. You're human. You can, even if it means paying a price that'll hurt badly.
So here's the thing. I'm voting this option, but not just because it's the "good" option. I have a logic to this.
I think Rena's angry.
She's not a good person. She considers sacrificing Inaan for real - and as far as I'm concerned, it is a very real temptation, and I'd frankly go for it over "Hunt Him Down" in my order of preference. But two things stop her. The first is that Rena discovers, quite without meaning to, that she's gotten soft in ways beyond the physical. Back in her 50s or 60s, when she was a ferociously ambitious young thing in her heyday, flush with bargains as she built her power, she'd have thrown the girl over without a second thought for power like this. But she's gotten older, and it has actually changed her, morally. She's experienced now. She's gone through more. Age and Time have started to occupy her thoughts and she's been thinking about legacies and passing on the torch. She took Inaan as a student on a whim, but she's realising that teaching the next generations actually matters to her more than she realised.
And that pisses her off. But not nearly as much as the second thing. Which is that as much as she has changed from that young reckless girl who threw herself into pacts with the Wyld to escape the cruelties of the world-as-it-was, she also hasn't. And that haughty, fierce, dragon-blooded pride is rising up, nettled and prickly and dripping with venom, at how this fox lord is talking like he knows her. Like he's just assuming she'll fall the way he predicts. Like it's not even a choice.
She's angry at him for reading her so accurately and smugly assuming she'll follow his play. And she's even angrier at herself for having changed enough that it's not so accurate a reading anymore. Because she wants it to be. She wants to be that person again, the ruthless, vicious, strong woman who'd slit her best friend's throat for power and who never let her guard down. But she isn't. She's still ruthless, she's still a terrible person, she's still a soul-stealing wyld-witch. But she's lost something since her younger days; a certain level of callous selfishness, and try as she might she can't get it back.
And because she's angry at Silk-and-Eye and angry at Inaan and angry at herself and furious at the entire stupid situation making her realise this about herself, she's going to do something reckless. Because if he's going to smirk at her like it's a foregone conclusion, he's made himself a target for her to take out her frustration on by showing him it's not.
So here's the thing. I'm voting this option, but not just because it's the "good" option. I have a logic to this.
I think Rena's angry.
She's not a good person. She considers sacrificing Inaan for real - and as far as I'm concerned, it is a very real temptation, and I'd frankly go for it over "Hunt Him Down" in my order of preference. But two things stop her. The first is that Rena discovers, quite without meaning to, that she's gotten soft in ways beyond the physical. Back in her 50s or 60s, when she was a ferociously ambitious young thing in her heyday, flush with bargains as she built her power, she'd have thrown the girl over without a second thought for power like this. But she's gotten older, and it has actually changed her, morally. She's experienced now. She's gone through more. Age and Time have started to occupy her thoughts and she's been thinking about legacies and passing on the torch. She took Inaan as a student on a whim, but she's realising that teaching the next generations actually matters to her more than she realised.
And that pisses her off. But not nearly as much as the second thing. Which is that as much as she has changed from that young reckless girl who threw herself into pacts with the Wyld to escape the cruelties of the world-as-it-was, she also hasn't. And that haughty, fierce, dragon-blooded pride is rising up, nettled and prickly and dripping with venom, at how this fox lord is talking like he knows her. Like he's just assuming she'll fall the way he predicts. Like it's not even a choice.
She's angry at him for reading her so accurately and smugly assuming she'll follow his play. And she's even angrier at herself for having changed enough that it's not so accurate a reading anymore. Because she wants it to be. She wants to be that person again, the ruthless, vicious, strong woman who'd slit her best friend's throat for power and who never let her guard down. But she isn't. She's still ruthless, she's still a terrible person, she's still a soul-stealing wyld-witch. But she's lost something since her younger days; a certain level of callous selfishness, and try as she might she can't get it back.
And because she's angry at Silk-and-Eye and angry at Inaan and angry at herself and furious at the entire stupid situation making her realise this about herself, she's going to do something reckless. Because if he's going to smirk at her like it's a foregone conclusion, he's made himself a target for her to take out her frustration on by showing him it's not.
mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Sacrifice Inaan… Only Not Really. If Rena is willing to accept his deal and swear alliance, he'll let down his guard and bare his throat to you. He's fae. They can't break their word. You're human. You can, even if it means paying a price that'll hurt badly.
How badly is [ ] Sacrifice Inaan… Only Not Really going to hurt? Does Rena know the consequences what the consequences of breaking a bargain with like this are or is it something she's never had to think about before. She seems like the kind of person who'd been willing to take the risk if it got her something she really wanted but she probably knows enough to know how dangerous it is so she'd have had to really want it and also have no other way of getting it.
- Location
- Dethklok
I like what Aleph wrote, but I'll skip a step and go right for the stabbing
[X] Hunt Him Down. He tried to screw you over. You want him dead above all else. Inaan can just wait a little longer while you try to find him in this web of illusions. If Inaan comes out of all this in a state that will take time to heal - if she ever does - at least she's alive.
[X] Hunt Him Down. He tried to screw you over. You want him dead above all else. Inaan can just wait a little longer while you try to find him in this web of illusions. If Inaan comes out of all this in a state that will take time to heal - if she ever does - at least she's alive.
[X] Sacrifice Inaan… Only Not Really. If Rena is willing to accept his deal and swear alliance, he'll let down his guard and bare his throat to you. He's fae. They can't break their word. You're human. You can, even if it means paying a price that'll hurt badly.
Amused Bystander
Herald of 'She who Umu's' Be Brave!
- Location
- Philippines
[X] Sacrifice Inaan… Only Not Really. If Rena is willing to accept his deal and swear alliance, he'll let down his guard and bare his throat to you. He's fae. They can't break their word. You're human. You can, even if it means paying a price that'll hurt badly.
Im back after being offline for nearly a year!
Im back after being offline for nearly a year!