[Exalted] The Last Daughter -- Dragon-Blooded Sorcery School Quest

"... Well, I suppose I will be here for a while longer, then," Peony says, letting the amusement enter her voice. She has a sudden, intense image of Ambraea, age twelve, so enthralled by a beautiful, laughing girl going through the hallways of the Imperial Palace that she'd walked directly into a pillar. It's a memory that's a lot easier to square with the darkly imposing sorcerer she serves now when Ambraea isn't in the room.

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This moment conjured a very vivid mental image for me and I just had to draw it:

Ascending Air, 761
Two years, fifteen months before the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress

There's a light dusting of snow underfoot as you make your way out to the site of V'neef Darting Fish's experiment. It's early enough in the morning that the sun is only just beginning to creep its way up over the horizon, hidden as ever behind the mist. The hour alone would be unpleasant most of the time, but coming right after the five exhausting days of work that are Calibration, it's outright evil. It's also treacherously close to being outside at night, not something you make a habit of, after your ill-advised and extremely fruitful midnight walk back in your first year.

L'nessa brings up the front, her bushy hair tied back for once. A strung bow is slung across her back, along with an ornate quiver stamped with her house's mon. It's a strikingly martial look for her, compared to how she normally conducts herself. Even if you periodically catch glimpses of a small, winged figure peering at you from behind one of the grape bunches in the mon. "Did he have to pick such a cold day?" she asks.

"Oh, is it cold?" Amiti asks. She's declined to wear so much as a cloak over her uniform, unbothered by the early winter's chill. Out of the three of you, she's the only one that hasn't made a point of arming herself. Although she has been fingering her pendant the entire time, and you suspect she's deadly enough, with that.

"Did you notice the snow?" you ask her, keeping a wary eye out, and a hand on the hilt of your saber. There are things on the island who will make a play for a lone younger student; far less for three third years ready for a fight. Still, it's best to present an alert and united front nonetheless.

"Oh, I suppose I did," Amiti admits. Her distraction is at least from a constructive source; she's holding a mirror in her free hand, using it to peer around in all directions as she walks down the path between you and L'nessa. Even if she does have a tendency to fixate on some of the things she catches sight of slightly more than is necessary, you'll at least have much better odds of spotting something invisible than you otherwise would.

"Most of us notice cold weather a little more than you do, Amiti," L'nessa says. Despite her griping, she's carefully watching the path underfoot; you're getting close to the cliffs, and no one wants to veer off track here.

"Well," Amiti reasons, "if the food turns out to be poisoned, somehow, you'll be able to feel better about it." You give a small huff of amusement at that. You're getting better at telling when she's making a joke on purpose.

"My darling nephew is not going to serve us poisoned food," L'nessa says. You're all skipping breakfast, so Darting Fish promised to have scraped up something — it's probably not going to be terribly good eating, but anything is an improvement over L'nessa taking another excuse to show off Food From the Aerial Table again.

L'nessa stiffens, her bow coming down off her back. You take note of the shape coming at you through the fog, even as it resolves itself into something more or less humanoid, until you recognise who it is.

"Well, I hope you're not planning to shoot anyone with that," says Peleps Nalri, stepping out of the fog with her hands up. She must be at least as cold as L'nessa. Still, the rich, warm tones of her skin and the gently waving kelp fronds that wind through her dense curls bring to mind nothing so much as clear seas warmed by the summer sun.

"Goodmorning, Nalri. What are you doing out here on your own?" L'nessa asks, not actually putting the bow back away. There's a note of suspicion in her voice beneath the pleasantries.

"I'm simply enjoying the brisk morning air," she says, smile barely wavering in the face of the two skeptical glances she gets in return. Amiti isn't looking at her; the moment she'd been certain it was just another student, her attention had snapped back to her mirror.

"Of course you are," L'nessa says, smiling back, the gesture veering a little closer to a bearing of teeth than to anything with real warmth.

Nalri seems unphased. "Now, if you'll—"

"First quarter!" Amiti's voice is loud and urgent, her eyes wide at whatever she's seeing reflected. L'nessa doesn't hesitate — she draws an arrow, brings up her bow, and fires at the correct angle. Her arrow streaks over Nalri's shoulder, striking the insubstantial thing that has only just started to wind itself together from the mist. It shrieks and recoils, withdrawing the clawed hand that had been grasping for Nalri's throat from behind. The arrow vanishes with it as it flees back into insubstantiality.

When it becomes obvious that there's not going to be any more trouble, you snap your sabre back into its sheath; you hadn't even had time to draw it all the way out. "Thank you, Amiti!" L'nessa says, all smiles. "I do hope you'll be more careful in the future, Nalri — it would be a shame for such a valued upperclasswoman to be harmed over wanting to take in the morning air."

Mortified, Nalri storms past her, unable to meet her eyes. "Consider the company you keep," she says to you on her way by.

"Thank you, but I think I have considered that quite carefully," you say, not even bothering to smile. You're all silent for a short while, until she's credibly out of earshot.

"Well, that was exciting," Amiti says, briefly raising her pendant to her lips.

"Well-spotted," you tell her. Amiti gives you a tentative sort of smile past her hand — you're not sure she gets a lot of praise, ordinarily.

"What was she doing out here, I wonder?" L'nessa says. "And coming from the direction of Fish's experiment. I don't like that."

"How seriously does she take inter-house politics?" Amiti asks.

"Well," L'nessa says, "her mother commanded an escort flotilla in the Merchant Fleet. So the bad blood between our families may be slightly more than just politics to her. Let's just try to hurry, shall we? Fish said he'd managed to find some help, but I have a bad feeling about this now."

The path takes you through a much narrower stretch, a sheer drop to your left with the sound of crashing waves far below, and a small, stunted stand of trees to your right. You try to keep a weather eye on the path behind you, as well as the dark spaces between the trees. You arrive without further disaster, however.

There's a semicircular clearing up ahead, illuminated by a single magical light resting on a small, wooden table. Two figures lean over it, studying a page laid out on it in the growing light. The first is expected — V'neef Darting Fish is as he was the last time you saw him, offering you a friendly, if nervous smile. Today, his eyes are a deep green-grey, water beneath heavy fog. "Ladies," he says, giving you all a polite bow. He's a lot more keen to observe such niceties here at school than many of your peers — keenly aware of his status as a former patrician, one assumes.

"Hello," says L'nessa, a little tightly when she takes in who his companion is.

"V'neef Darting Fish," you say, likewise looking at the second person in the clearing more than at him.

"Did we know that Deiza was going to be here?" Amiti asks, her head cocked to the side.

Simendor Deiza pushes herself up from the table, grinning. "Oh, probably not," she says. "It was a little bit of a last minute arrangement."

"She half-invited herself," Fish says, looking uncomfortable.

"And where did the other half come from then, I wonder?" Deiza asks. She gives an abbreviated sort of wave in your direction, and tosses off a perfunctory: "V'neef. Sesus. Prasad."

"You're not going to punch her again, are you?" Amiti's voice is strange in your ear, her muttered aside carried on the breeze to reach you alone, silent to anyone else present. She has her pendant up near her mouth again, her hand blocking her lips from view. "I think it would cause problems if you punched her again."

You're torn between scowling, and laughing out loud. You settle for sighing, and reaching up to stroke Verdigris's head where it's poking out from your cloak. — the snake is glaring daggers at Deiza. You offer Amiti a tight shake of the head, and resign yourself to ignoring the unexpected complication as best as you can.

"We found Peleps Nalri prowling around," L'nessa tells Fish. "She was coming from this direction."

"That's... strange," he says. "We didn't see any sign of her, though."

"You should probably give everything another look-over," Deiza says.

"We would have seen if she'd tampered with anything," he says.

"Have you ever seen what one of those things looks like up close?" Deiza asks him. "I have. The last thing you want when you're messing with them is for some bitch with an axe to grind causing you problems."

"She's right," L'nessa allows.

And so, the five of you end up crouched on the ground, going through every component of Darting Fish's experiment. Namely, several live saplings, their trunks each carved with a sign to ward off chimerical guardian beasts, like the ones that nest in the cliffs you're standing on top of.

"It would be more useful if I could use dead wood," Fish admits, "but I want to confirm that they work as consistently as I'd like before moving forward with any changes. The instructors can obviously do something to keep them away from the Heptagram ships, but I don't know if that's inherent to the creation of the beasts here, or if it's even repeatable. There are a few trade routes in the Southwest that I think would benefit from some sort of countermeasure against this kind of creature. It's harder, where they're flesh and blood instead of spirits."

"Our method involves more whips and spells of compulsion," Deiza admits.

"That sounds very messy," Amiti says, looking up from where she's been comparing a sapling against Fish's plans.

"Sure, but it's effective," Deiza says, grinning in a way that makes you angry all over again. Darting Fish keeps shooting you guilty looks — you do best to keep your frustration to yourself.

In the end, you can't find anything obviously wrong. With some misgivings, you decide to carry on with the original experiment.

Darting Fish stands on the edge of the cliff, ending a sequence of Heptagram mudras with the Azure Sign — a stiff wind is summoned from behind him, rolling in to blow away the worst of the mists immediately around you. The cold sea opens up beneath you, lit by the early morning sun. The strange, distorted calls of the guardian beasts wheel around beneath you, their forms subtly wrong, disturbed by the mist's sudden departure.

"They're spelled not to be able to come up to the island proper," Deiza says.

"Well, that's good," Amiti concludes, brightly. She's looking at them a little too intently. "I'd love to have a dead specimen to examine — I'm interested in how the skeleton links up, and I've just learned an excellent spell for cleaning the flesh from bones."

"The school would prefer we not actually harm them unless it's absolutely necessary," Darting Fish says. "Also that we do our best to not make it necessary."

"Fine," Amiti says, sounding resigned. "Retrieving the carcass before the others ate it would be more trouble than it was worth, anyway."

Familiar enough with your task, you move over to the table and pick up one of the saplings. The weight is not insubstantial, between the tree, the pot, and the soil it's growing in, not to mention the length of rope anchored to the pot at several points. You lift it easily enough, though.

"Not that I object as long as I'm not the one doing the grunt work, but wouldn't a spirit have handled this part better?" Deiza asks.

"I don't feel like trusting this to a demon," Fish says. "I know Lady Ambraea, and all of you, will be careful — you're all sorcerers, after all."

"I'm not," Amiti reminds him. This draws a twinge of discomfort from Darting Fish, and a grin of amusement from Deiza.

"You are close enough," L'nessa says, definitively. Amiti looks briefly as though she'd prefer to argue this semantic point, but ultimately swallows her objection.

You position yourself near the edge of the cliff, slowly lowering the potted plant toward the chimeras, their distant, malformed bodies wheeling around below. Amiti and L'nessa peer over the edge, taking meticulous notes, while Darting Fish keeps an eye on the tree, clearly seeing something you don't.

"... I don't like this," Deiza decides, looking down at the chimeras.

"What don't you like?" you ask, through gritted teeth. Verdigris, coiled around your arm beneath your cloak, lets out a quiet hiss at her, agitated by her proximity.

"They're acting strangely," she says.

"Isn't that the point?" you ask, doing your best not to sound irritated just by her proximity.

"Yes! But it's not..." To your startlement, she darts forward, seizing you by the arm. "Let it go!" she says.

You try to physically yank your arm out of her grip without jerking the rope, and Verdigris seems on the point of preparing to strike at her. That's when the first of the chimeras actually lands on the pot... and begins to surge up the rope. It's followed by several of its fellows, the weight you're holding up sharply increasing.

You are an Earth Aspect. As such, you are very difficult to knock down or pull off your feet. But Simendor Deiza is also an Earth Aspect, and these are not exactly ordinary circumstances — the next thing you know, you're toppling over the edge of the cliff, along with Deiza and Verdigris, your friends' grasping hands missing you by scant inches.

The rope slips out of your hand, the pot swinging wildly to smash against the cliffs. You barely notice as the air screams in your ears, the water rushing up toward you. With a heroic effort, you shoot out a hand and grab hold of the cliff face, your fingers dragging furrows in the stone as you slow to a halt.

In that brief moment, you see a body falling past you, and without thinking, you reach out to grab it.

Deiza lets out a strangled sort of sound — you've caught her by her collar from behind, and she's dangling in your grip, her tunic cutting off her airflow. In a moment, she's managed to plant her feet against the cliff face enough to drag in a breath or two, and start cursing. "You couldn't just let it the fuck go when I fucking told you to, could you?"

"I should just let you go right now!" you shout back, absolutely at the edge of your patience. Verdigris is still around your neck, although you can tell that she's terrified, hanging on for dear life.

Trying to reach something approaching the cold calm required, you use the gem hanging around your neck to reach out to Diamond-Cut Perfection. I need help!

They stir at your mental touch. I'm about twenty minutes away from the island.

I don't know if I have twenty minutes!

I've never exactly had reason to learn a teleportation spell! You can feel them coming closer, despite their annoyance, and that is both reassuring and somewhat useless, given the circumstances.

There's a ledge above your head. "Deiza, can you catch hold of that ledge if I throw you?"

"I can't even see it!" she complains, with some justice.

"And I can't climb one-handed!" You look up — you've fallen at an angle, a spur of rock between you and the top of the cliff. You can't see the others. "Can you catch it if I throw you?"

"Fine!" she snaps. "Just do it!"

You take a deep breath, counting down from three out loud. Then you hurl her upward with all your might. You watch Deiza twist around in midair, landing on the ledge with both feet, and wobble dangerously at the edge for a moment before finding her balance. Then she laughs out loud like a lunatic, apparently from sheer relief.

"Are you going to help me up?" you hiss at her, your hand reaching up for the ledge she's standing on.

"No," she says, simply. You believe her for a heart-stopping moment, before she goes down to her knees, seizes you by the arms, and hauls you up after her.

For a stunned, disorientated moment, you both lay there beside one another; the ledge is wide enough for that, and slopes upward. You can hear the raucous, ear-splitting cries of the chimeras still attacking the tree somewhere above. "Weren't they meant to stay away from it?"

"Well, yeah, guess Peleps found a way to fuck with it after all," Deiza says, pulling herself up to her feet. She says a word in Flametongue and makes a sign you remember her using before, and a lethal length of razor-edged, metallic chain appears looped in her hand. "I think we can make it back to somewhere with a clearer shot to the top. This is still your fault."

"My fault?" you demand, scrambling up your feet. You draw your sword — not to run her through with it, as tempted as you are.

"You heard me," Deiza says. She seems intent on leading the way. You're certain that's not the most tactically-sound decision — you're the one with the sword, and Deiza is the one with a throwing weapon, whatever else she can do with that thing. You're also fairly certain that you're just a stronger overall physical combatant than she is.

But do you really want to insist on going first, and have her at your back?

Article:

What will you do?

[ ] Let Deiza take the lead

[ ] Take the lead yourself