The Last Daughter -- Dragon-Blooded Sorcery School Quest

I bring arts

Ascending Water, Realm Year 762

One year, eleven months before the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress

Spring is finally threatening to emerge from a particularly harsh winter by the time anything comes of Amiti's situation. By then, you'd very nearly forgotten about it.

"This works fine, when the soldiers and commanders are numbers on a page," Instructor First Light says, glancing up from the plans you've written. Her battle-weathered frame looks out of place sitting behind the desk in her impeccably orderly office. Fortunately, you've long since gotten over any lingering surprise at the former outcaste existing in an academic setting. You're in the middle of seeing her for half an hour of scheduled one-on-one feedback; you prefer the strict timeslots that First Light demands, compared to the first come, first serve approach some of the other instructors take — Cynis Bashura being the worst.

"I have tried to account for that," you say, stiffly. "The soldiers would have minimal contact with the spirits in question, and I'm certain that the commanders could be prevailed upon to be reasonable, given enough time to talk to them about the idea."

"You and I may have spoken to different front-line commanders," First Light says, casual words backed by her long decades of experience. "May I be frank for a moment, Ambraea?" she asks.

You blink. She's never felt the need to ask permission for such a thing, before. "Of course," you say.

"Are you thinking about your own house one day?" Light asks.

This throws you, of course — you've never had someone ask you this so casually. "If that is what our empress desires," you say, carefully neutral. The real answer is, of course, yes — power means safety.

"That is about what I thought," Light says.

"I'm sorry, Instructor, I don't understand," you say.

"You have a decent enough grasp of the sorcerous principles, and I've made decent headway at teaching you to apply it strategically — you're more open to actually learning than some Dynasts I've taught over the years, or I wouldn't even be mentioning this." First Light places the paper carefully down. "You still approach all these scenarios like you expect to be in charge, or at least influential enough to be able to get everyone relevant in charge to listen to you. It's a consistent weakness in your tactical and strategic approaches. It would serve you poorly in a situation where you had to deal with a commander who wasn't impressed by you."

You swallow an indignant feeling that swells up in your chest. "I am unhappy to learn that," you say, through strained courtesy.

"I'm not trying to insult you," Light says, still entirely calm. "I hope you can make something of the advice."

"Yes. Thank you, instructor."

There's a moment of silence there as she studies your expression, Verdigris twining a little tighter around your arm. Then, First Light gives a small sigh, and moves on. "Well, let's get down to the actual feedback you're looking for," she says. She taps the page in front of her. "You're using a siltwinder here. Have you considered what those things eat?"

"I have," you say, relieved to be moving to a subject that has, as far as you're concerned, a right answer.

---

As you exit First Light's office, you're a little surprised when Maia falls in at your side. "Weren't you busy studying?" you ask, smiling at her.

"I was," Maia agrees. Plainly nervous, she bites her lip, which you try not to get too distracted by. As much as you could use a good distraction after that meeting. Something about her bearing makes you think it's not a good time for that.

"Is something wrong?" you ask. You angle toward the stairs; leaving the staff level of the residential tower is only polite. It's also smart, if you don't want to be overheard.

"Amiti's in trouble," Maia says.

"You don't just mean her sleep schedule?" you ask. Amiti has looked conspicuously exhausted these past few weeks, and whenever you've brought it up, she's artlessly changed the subject.

"I think it's related," Maia says. She shrugs her narrow shoulders, walking slightly closer than you than strict propriety would demand. "But this time, she admitted that she needs help when I asked."

"Well, that's nothing good," you say, "assuming it's about whatever she's been working on." Amiti paying more than token heed to the risks or dangers of interesting varieties of necromancy is a new and worrisome development. "Whatever she's been working on in that cave?"

"Has to be, she's not been doing much of anything else," Maia says. "I have no idea how she keeps up with her ordinary studies as well as she does."

Through a combination of being incredibly smart and incredibly foolish, you would say. You like Amiti too much to say this out loud, however.

Predictably, Maia leads you to the library, although not to a level you usually go to. It's high in the library tower, up several flights of stairs requiring bespoke unsealing rituals to access — Maia performs all of these with ease, including one that you don't recognise, and carefully reseals each door behind her.

Amiti is standing by herself in the stacks, frowning deep in thought as she references a book connected to the shelf by a sturdy length of chain. She doesn't notice your approach, even as you try to make your footsteps slightly louder than usual while walking toward her.

"Amiti? I'm back," Maia says, her voice gentle. Amiti doesn't look up — She's hunched over the reading podium, poring over the tome as she works her pendant back and forth in her mouth. She doesn't seem to hear Maia.

"Amiti." Your voice is both a little louder than Maia's, and a great deal firmer. Amiti starts visibly, jumping back a step and whirling to face you. It takes a moment before Amiti remembers to spit out her pendant in order to speak to you.

"Ah! You scared me!" Amiti says, unnecessarily.

"I noticed," you say, voice bone dry. You approach her, pulling a book off the shelf to examine the subject — exorcism. "What's going on?" you ask, deciding to be direct.

"Oh, well, lots of things," Amiti says, trying and failing to sound airy. "I just got a letter from Kasi — she shared a very funny story about Cynis Wisel's youngest daughter, who just started this year. I can show it to you, if you like!"

Ordinarily, you might say yes to that. Amiti has thought to share parts of her sister's letters with you already this year, now that you've met her twin — Sesus Kasi has a talent for rendering Spiral Academy gossip both highly interesting and deeply funny. You both know this is her attempting to change the subject, though.

You give Amiti a long, searching look. You take in how tired she is, how hunched her posture, the nervous way she's wrapping and unwrapping the chain of her pendant around her hand. Then you ask, a little more gently: "Are you well?"

"... No."

"What's wrong?"

Amiti wavers, looking at Maia, and then back to you, then to the bookshelf nearest to her. To the shelf, she says in a very quiet voice: "I may have made... a little bit of an accidental mistake. Slightly." She lets that hang for a second or two, before she adds: "I need help."

Your stomach sinks. "What kind of accident?" you ask.

---

"This was not an accident!"

"Well, no, of course not! I did that on purpose."

The cave that Amiti has been spending all her time in is a little out of the way, partway up a shallow slope and more or less invisible if you're not standing right at the entrance. A convenient lip over the top, and the slight incline the entrance is at keeps it dry, presumably even in heavy rain. Which is good, because someone has conspicuously laid down several lines of salt across the entrance.

Stepping carefully across the salt creates a strange sense of warning in your heart, a subtle wrongness prickling against your third eye. The cave takes a gentle left turn, terminating in a dead end that Amiti has clearly been working in. There's a portable writing desk in one corner, several stones used as impromptu shelves for materials. Most of the ground and part of one wall, both swept and scrubbed meticulously clear, is taken up by an intricately drawn summoning circle.

Stepping inside is briefly like plunging into icy water, before the ambient chill recedes to merely being unpleasant. Outside, the air is clammy, but with spring a matter of weeks away, winter's grip on the Isle of Voices has started to break, snow and ice thawing in rivulets that flow down the island to the sea. This is a wholly different kind of cold from the fog outside, however — an eerie, graveyard cold that you feel in your heart as much as anything.

"Amiti, is this what I think it is?" you ask.

Amiti wrings her hands a little, once again not quite meeting your gaze. "Well, that depends."

"On what?" you ask.

"On what you think it is."

You give her a flatly unimpressed look, trying to channel a little of your mother into the expression. "A shadowland."

"Oh," Amiti says, wilting, "Well, it's just a little one!"

"What did you do?" you ask.

"Well!" Amiti says, trying to find her footing in this conversation. "Well! Someone must have already died in this cave — quite badly, I think, which is useful — So it was just a matter of... widening things? Deepening? Like picking at a loose thread in a dress until it turns into a hole."

"You needed a sacrifice for that," Maia says, speaking up for the first time. She's just behind you, frowning deep in thought.

"You're making it sound so sinister!" Amiti says. "You've both had goat before, I assume. It wasn't anything more dreadful than that." After a moment, she reconsiders. "It wasn't so much more dreadful than that."

"I hadn't actually been in here before," Maia says, looking to you. "I mostly just looked in from the outside. I didn't know what she'd done."

This is serious — not only would the school be deeply displeased by Amiti having opened even such a small shadowland on the Isle of Voices, it is also not a practice that is viewed at all favourably by either Realm law or the Immaculate Order. Ghosts and other dangerous things can crawl out of its depths in order to vex the living. You're about to tell Amiti exactly how dangerous and reckless you think this is, but what she says next stops you short:

"You still don't know what I've done!" Amiti says, giving Maia an exasperated look. "You two won't let me explain!"

You don't like the sound of that — your eyes drift back to the circle. "What happened?" you ask.

"Well," Amiti says, suddenly a lot less eager now that you're actually asking. "Well! I wanted to talk to a ghost."

"Why?" you ask, frowning.

"Well, to ask them about the Underworld, their nature, their life..." Amiti shrugs. "General academic curiosity! Isn't it normal to speak with spirits? You speak with a spirit all the time!"

You want to defend Perfection against this comparison with some common ghost refusing to accept its next place in the cycle of reincarnation. Except, you really don't, actually. "If this were like me and Perfection, I doubt you would be this concerned about it."

Amiti winces. She takes a deep breath, and lets it out. "I shouldn't have drawn the circle half on the wall. But I've read you can do that as long as you account for it, and there's not enough room in here, otherwise!" She frowns at her handiwork, clearly mentally correcting all the missteps she can see.

"What happened?" Maia prompts her.

"I... made a mistake," Amiti says. "Two. I lost control during the actual binding, and this wall..." She frowns at the cavern wall that the circle is partially drawn onto. "There was a crevice."

"A... crevice?" Maia asks.

"She seeped through it!" Amiti says. "I sealed it up, but now she's somewhere on the island!"

You take a deep breath, and try to swallow the worst of your exasperation. "It's just a ghost, though?" you ask. Most of them aren't that dangerous to even a relatively young Dragon-Blood. There are worse than that on the island.

"Oh, no, worse than that!" Amiti says. "It's a cavern wraith." You and Maia stare blankly at her. "A cavern wraith! A soul that's spent too long lurking alone in the dark, until it's lost its voice and tends to, um... drag people into the dark to steal theirs and kill them. A little."

"Dragons, Amiti!" You put your face in your hands, feeling Verdigris tighten around your arm.

"How were you even going to talk to it?" Maia asks.

"Well, I'm sure I would have figured out something," Amiti says. "I could always have just given her a stick of graphite, I suppose." Maia looks dubious.

"Never mind that, how dangerous is this thing?" you ask.

"It might be able to hurt one of the younger students," Amiti admits. "But that won't happen."

"How can you possibly know that?" you ask.

"Well, because we're going to find her and stop her first, before that happens, or the school finds out!!" Amiti says. She hesitates. "... assuming you're going to help me."

You look around at the tiny shadowland, and what she's done. "This is not a small thing, Amiti," you say.

"I know!" Amiti says, "but... you'll still help me, won't you?"

You think back to Amiti at the cliffs last year, no hesitation or regret in risking her safety to help ensure yours, and to her sister's obvious relief that Amiti has made a friend in you. You sigh. "Yes, I suppose I will," you say.

"I guess we're looking for ghosts then," Maia says, her manner resigned, but committed. You feel a mingled stab of guilt and gratitude toward her.

Amiti beams at you both in open relief. "Oh, good. This won't be too much of a problem now, then!"

You know she's wrong the moment she says it, and this feeling will only grow in certainty as the days go on. Still, there isn't any point in telling her that. You'll just have to salvage a bad situation as best as you can.

Article:

When things come to a head with this horrible ghost, you will fortunately have help. In addition to you and Amiti, two other of your friends will be on hand to assist. Who are they?

You can pick as many options as you like, but the two with the most votes will be the winning vote.

Spoiler: Ambraea

Earth Aspect Dragon-Blood

Ambraea is a talented sorcerer focused on elemental summoning and elementally-resonant spells. She's also a trained swordswoman with enhanced senses and superhuman strength and durability.

Sorcery:
Initiation level: Emerald Circle
Initiation: Pact with an Earth Dragon
Shaping rituals: A gift of gems (wealth sacrificing ritual)
Spells: Plague of Bronze Serpents (control spell), Summon Elemental, Breath of Wretched Stone

Spoiler: Sesus Amiti

Air Aspect Dragon-Blood

Amiti's morbid preoccupations have translated to an intense focus on necromancy, the death, and related subjects, as well as esoterica about Essence manipulation and other arcane subjects. She is not particularly physically inclined, and mortifying in social situations.

Necromancy:
Initiation level: Ivory Circle
Initiation: Half-Souled
Shaping rituals: Soul-Forged Token (draw on soulsteel pendant to focus necromantic power)
Spells: Raise the Skeletal Horde (control spell), Summon Ghost, Flesh-Sloughing Wave

---

[ ] [Character] Maia

Spoiler: Erona Maia

Water Aspect Dragon-Blood

Maia is trained in stealth, brutal combat, and assassination, and her studies of sorcery have only expanded those abilities. She can shape illusions of herself and others, and summon a lethal sorcerous weapon from her own blood.

Sorcery:
Initiation level: Emerald Circle
Initiation: Student of the Heptagram
Shaping rituals: Sorcerous Archives (ritual research and study)
Spells: Sculpted Seafoam Eidolon (control spell), Blood Lash

[ ] [Character] Sola

Spoiler: Tepet Usala Sola

Air Aspect Dragon-Blood

The ancient daiklave, Storm's Eye, allows Sola to synergise her gift for swordfighting directly with her sorcery. Even at her age, she is already deadly with a weapon in her hand and studied in tactics, and has made fast progress at marrying her talents over the past few years. Her sorcery takes on a more logistical bent, but her combat prowess more than makes up for it under these circumstances.

Sorcery:
Initiation level: Emerald
Initiation: Blade of Ten-Thousand Eyes
Shaping rituals: Inner Storm (focus inner eye to flood the body with sorcerous power)
Spells: Beckoning That Which Stirs the Sky (control spell), Stormwind Rider

[ ] [Character] L'nessa

Spoiler: V'neef L'nessa

Wood Aspect Dragon-Blood

L'nessa is already a competent sorcerer for her age, although her focus is on useful, support oriented spells. She's a gifted socialite when given the chance, a trained medic, and a competent archer by Exalted standards — extraordinary by mortal ones.

Sorcery:
Initiation level: Emerald Circle
Initiation: Student of the Heptagram
Shaping rituals: Sevenfold Art Evocation (precisely memorised mudras and equations to open the mind)
Spells: Infallible Messenger (control spell), Food From the Aerial Table

---

Additionally, Ambraea's studies have continued apace, and are not wholly focused on combat and elemental summoning. What additional spell has Ambraea mastered?

You may vote for as many options as you like, but only the one with the most votes will win.

[ ] [Spell] Corrupted Words

Ambraea can lay a curse on a target — whenever they attempt to speak about a topic of her choosing, instead of words, all that issues from their mouth is fat, white maggots.

[ ] [Spell] Dragon of Smoke and Flame

Ambraea can create a serpent of smoke to guide her to a location — either a specific she knows, or to a place with specific properties she asks it to find, such as fresh water, or a lode of precious minerals.

[ ] [Spell] Theft of Memory

Ambraea can steal a memory from someone by trapping it in a gemstone. This leaves them with no recollection of it, and allows her to review the memory at her leisure, or show it to others.