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

"Well," L'nessa says, her eyes oddly distant, "it's in a cave."

"Oh. Which cave?" Amiti asks this as though she fully expects a useful answer.

"The one that's dark and wet and awful," L'nessa says, voice prim.

"I suppose that doesn't narrow it down as much as I'd hoped," Amiti admits, toying with her pendant.

"Well, it gives us something, at least," Sola says, looking both bored and antsy. "What message did you even send it?"

"A quote I remembered from Danaa'd and the River Ghost," L'nessa says.

"'Force not my hand, o wretched spirit. As the river flows to the sea, so too must a soul return to the Cycle of Reincarnation when its time in life is at an end. Give up your unwholesome hold on the world, or I shall', etcetera, etcetera. Honestly, a little heavy-handed, L'nessa." You all turn to look at Amiti, who shifts uncomfortably under your regard and adds: "I did pay some attention to the monks, growing up!"

"At any rate, yes, that was the passage I chose," L'nessa says, "I felt that layering depths of clever literary meaning was not precisely my biggest priority, at the time."

It's late afternoon, and the four of you are outside, in your usual training spot with Sola — there's a bit of a nasty Northern wind today, for all that it barely seems to shift the fog that hangs heavy over the island. It's the third day since you agreed to help Amiti. While Maia has been forced to remain back at the school to fix a mishap with a complicated binding, L'nessa and Sola had been similarly resigned to helping with this dubious project as you had. It's heartening, you suppose, that while you were the one who originally introduced Amiti into your friend circle, she's evidently grown on you all by this point. Inconvenient for each of you, but heartening.

It had been Amiti's idea to use L'nessa's Infallible Messenger spell to try and sneak a look at where on the island the ghost currently is. This has proven to be a mixed success at best.

"Did you at least get a look at it?" Sola asks.

"A little," L'nessa says. "There was a pool of water on-hand, although the lighting was terrible. I'm not sure I'd rather it were better, though — did you have to summon such an ugly ghost, Amiti?"

"I thought her eyes were pretty!" Amiti says, defensively. "The illustrations I saw really don't do that inner glow justice. Like a nice piece of polished amber."

Sola makes a vaguely disgusted sound in the back of her throat. "Right, so, how's plan A coming, so we can actually find this thing and deal with it?"

You mentally reach out to your dragon scale pendant, still hanging under your clothes, on the same chain as Maia's dagger.

"Ambraea," Perfection says, sounding annoyed, and far less self satisfied than normal, "I demand you hurry up and deal with this vile shade."

You raise your eyebrows. "I had the impression that you were barely interested in helping with this."

"It ate one of my servants," Perfection replies. "That cannot be borne, letting it get fat and bloated off of my largess. And obviously I can't lower myself to simply tearing its head off myself."

"Obviously," say out loud, your voice equally dry as the thought you send to Perfection.

"What is the point of having a young Exalt learning from me if not to deal with vermin like this? At any rate, I know where it is, in a general sense."

"Thank you. I wish you'd led with that," you say, enduring their grumblings about your lack of respect.

"I take it that's good?" Sola asks. "I'm here to cut the thing's head off, right? Kind of useless to bring me otherwise, unless you really need the weather changed."

You could also cut its head off quite effectively, you think. But quibbling over this would be slightly petty. "My benefactor has located the ghost," you say, fishing in a pouch on your uniform belt. "It ate one of their minor elementals, I gather."

Amiti makes a face. "I'm glad we're dealing with things now, then. We can't just let her keep getting stronger until someone notices."

"I don't love your priorities, sometimes," L'nessa says.

You pull several small gems out of the pouch, examining them briefly — an amethyst, a ruby, and an emerald. You examine the emerald for a second or two, but eventually let it full back into the pouch alongside the amethyst. The ruby you keep in your palm for long enough to kneel down and entomb it in the soil, whispering the prerequisite words under your breath. Power comes through from your link with Perfection, along with the dragon's grudging approval.

"What would happen if I waited for you to be gone, then dug that up?" Sola asks.

You raise your eyebrows. "If your family ever falls on hard enough times that you feel the need to steal gems from a dragon, I suppose we'll find out."

Sola laughs.

---

You wind your way through the narrow gorge, Sola at the back, you at the front — Amiti and L'nessa are unquestionably the more vulnerable out of the four of you, so it only makes sense to arrange things like this. With you being the one who has access to Perfection's directions, there's similarly no question that you be the one in the lead position of your little column.

It's not because you always have to be in charge, whatever Instructor First Light has to say. You can take criticism gracefully, after all.

"How close are we?" Amiti asks, looking up at the foggy sky overhead, clearly trying to tell what time it is.

"To the cave? Near enough," you say, eyes fixed ahead. "We're—"

"Above us!" L'nessa's voice snaps your attention up, in time to see her arrow bounce harmlessly off of a crude stone torso, and feel the eerie cold of the bolt of lightning Amiti hurls up at your apparent attacker. The pale lightning hits home as well, but doesn't slow the construct's momentum. It's a squat figure formed of rough-cut stone, featureless and inscrutable. No doubt the creation of some past student nearly as careless as Amiti, but less proactive in correcting her mistakes. Regardless, it's now plummeting straight at you.

Following Amiti's example, you hurl a bolt of Earth Essence at it, coalescing into a mass of quartz crystal that strikes it square in the head. The force of the blow sends the construct veering off course enough for you to side step its flailing landing, the earth shuddering underfoot as it hits the ground. You may have been able to catch it, but this isn't the time for foolish heroics.

A spell is on your lips, when you hear the crackle of lightning once again, sensing the passage of a body moving in from the back of the line. A booted foot uses your shoulder as a springboard, and in a flash of blue anima and gleaming orichalcum, Sola strikes it three times in rapid succession. Her daiklave finds the hidden joints between the stone limbs, rapidly reducing it to a twitching pile at her feet.

"Oh, well done!" Amiti says, plainly impressed.

You rub at the dusty bootprint she left on the shoulder of your uniform. From your opposite shoulder, Verdigris gives Sola a look of mild reproach. "I could have handled it," you say.

Sola laughs, shouldering her daiklave. Electricity crackles in her eyes, and her outline is traced in sky blue. "Who says you get to have all the fun? And that thing wasn't even what we're here for — we needed to deal with it fast."

You open your mouth to reply to that before L'nessa cuts you off again, although this time less urgently: "Boys, boys, you're both handsome. We are on a time limit, remember."

Sola's smile turns wry. "You're a good five years out of date with that crack, in my case."

L'nessa looks abruptly mortified. "... Ah. Yes," she says.

Amiti reaches up to pat L'nessa on the shoulder. "Don't worry, I forget things about people all the time. We are going now, though, aren't we?"

Suppressing your amusement at L'nessa's expense, you reach down and physically shift the largest pieces of the fallen construct aside, giving everyone the space to pick their way around it.

As Perfection suggested, the gorge curves onward for a time, before terminating in what should be a cave mouth. Unlike what Perfection told you, the entrance to the cavern is obviously and unceremoniously blocked off by what looks like a recent rockslide.

"Could the ghost have done this?" you ask, doubtful. The large pile of gravel and rock is too high to conveniently crawl over for anyone but Amiti. Or Verdigris, you suppose, but you don't exactly plan on sending your familiar into the cavern alone without a way to retrieve her again.

"Oh, probably," Amiti says. "They like to suffocate miners, sometimes."

"Could you not have mentioned that earlier?" Sola asks, giving her a despairing look.

Amiti shrugs awkwardly, the fingers of one hand tangled up in the chain of her pendant. "I didn't think it would come up."

"How quickly can you shift this?" L'nessa asks, glancing at you.

You frown at her. "How quickly can I shift this loose pile of gravel? With nothing to move it with? Faster than most people, I suppose, but it's not exactly convenient."

"At least we know that she's probably inside, this way?" Amiti suggests.

"It's definitely inside." The voice comes from above you, so sudden that all four of you whirl around to look at its source. A figure stands atop the gorge looking down at you, one hand extended where it had reached out to snatch the arrow L'nessa had reflexively fired at it.

"Dragons, Idelle! I nearly shot you!" L'nessa says, glaring up at your classmate.

Idelle considers the arrow in her hand briefly. "Yeah, I guess you really nearly did," she admits, frowning. She holds a spear in her other hand, no more a practice weapon than L'nessa's bow, or your sabre, and had apparently come up on you all so quietly that none of you noticed.

Maia would have noticed Idelle lurking around long before this, you're almost defensively certain. Your senses are supernaturally keen when you sharpen them correctly, but you don't have Maia's practiced brilliance at stealth and concealment, or her habitual wariness for the same being turned against you all. She'd have had enough practice at that, over the years.

"What are you doing here?" you ask, giving Idelle a hard look.

"There's a loose ghost on the island," she says, simply. "I would hope that we're all here to find it. However it is that we know about it in the first place." This last is accompanied by a sharp look in Amiti's direction. Instinctively, you step in front of her, positioning your body between Idelle and Amiti.

"How do you know about it?" Amiti asks, peeking out from around your shoulder.

Idelle steps forward, letting herself slide down the side of the gorge with improbable stability. As she draws close to you, once again, you hear that familiar chime.

"Her jewelry detects spirits," you say, looking at the tiny, bell-shaped earrings.

"More or less," Idelle says. She points to them in order, first black, then green, then red: "This one chimes in the presence of spirits, this one in the presence of death magic, and this one to alert me if something is trying to alter my mind. I have been following the first two."

"And why, exactly, are you out here on your own, instead of alerting the staff?" Sola asks. She still has her daiklave drawn and rested against one shoulder, the veins of blue jadesteel in its blade pulsing faintly in glowing counterpoint to her anima. "I think you know why we are."

Idelle gives a deeply disapproving look at Amiti again — or tries to, when Amiti has shrunk back behind you. "Perhaps I wanted to give certain guilty parties a chance to confess."

"You just want to show off!" Amiti says, braver out of sight. "The daring warrior-exorcist hunting down dangerous ghosts. You'd tell them it was me as soon as you had proof!"

Genuine outrage crosses Idelle's features, swift as a flashfire. "I had all year to tell them what I suspected you were doing. If I did it now, you'd deserve whatever you get!"

"Regardless," L'nessa says, pitching her voice to rise above both of them, "we cannot go on the way we were planning, so this is all a bit premature."

Idelle blinks at that, turning to look at the rockslide with a frown. Then she shoves the arrow into L'nessa's hand, plants her spear in the ground, and begins to use both hands to flash through a sequence of familiar mudras. Smoky red light curls up around her, turning white hot as she completes the casting with the Sign of Essence Consumed. A stream of blue-white flame leaves Idelle's outstretched hand, striking the pile of rubble and igniting it.

All of you save for Idelle are forced to take a step back from the heat coming off the pile of loose stone and dirt, earthen material burning like wax, rising into the air as a noxious smelling smoke.

"Won't that just make it run again?" Sola demands.

"It's a ways inside," you say, doubtfully.

"The sun won't hurt her unduly, but she doesn't like to travel during the day," Amiti says, the flames reflecting oddly in her pale grey eyes. "She should be trying to establish a refuge she can hide in. And drag victims back to."

"How long is that going to keep burning?" you ask Idelle.

"For loose particulate? A few minutes," Idelle says. "Burns like tinder. It shouldn't have the power for the whole cliffside to catch."

"Shouldn't?" you ask.

"Well, you know, I..." Idelle visibly falters, before squaring her shoulders and rallying: "I've never used it to burn a pile of gravel in the middle of a gorge before, have I? It's my control spell, but I'm not reckless with it." You notice that she glances in the direction of Amiti, who steps out from behind you again you glare:

"I am not reckless with my control spell," Amiti says.

"You set loose a horde of small zombies in the grounds last year!" Idelle says.

"They were chicken carcasses! Perfectly harmless! More funny than anything!"

"They attacked someone!"

"They didn't even have heads!"

"You know perfectly well that it's the principle of the—"

"The tunnel is clear," you say, loudly. Or, clear enough — the fire has burned itself out, leaving the much-reduced landslide an ominously smoldering pile of gravel melted into bizarre configurations. It's at least more passable than it used to be, if not exactly comfortably so.

"So it is," Idelle says. She produces a hand mirror from a belt pouch, picks her spear back up, and strides forward, not waiting for the rest of you.

Frowning, you quickly catch up to her, clapping a hand on her shoulder. She shrugs you off, turning around to frown up at you. "We need to coordinate, or this is going to be a mess," you say. "Five Dragon-Blooded against one ghost is obviously overkill — but it will get away if we're tripping over each other."

"... Fine," Idelle says. "What do you intend to do?"

"It was huddled over a drowning pool, when I saw it through my messenger," L'nessa says.

"Perfection hasn't told us that it's been moving again since then," you say. "Which makes sense, if Amiti's right about it finding somewhere to lair." It's easier to just think of the spirit as a dangerous animal, rather than the malignant ruin of someone's soul. It's a good example of what comes of not accepting one's place in the Perfected Hierarchy and moving on at the appointed time.

"So, we need to go in with a plan," L'nessa says.

Article:

Three courses of action emerge in particular, suggested by three different members of your makeshift group. Which plan do you decide on?

You may vote for as many options you like, only the one with the most votes will be selected:

[ ] Amiti's Plan

You catch the ghost by surprise, using your petrification spell to turn it temporarily to stone, allowing everyone else time to surround it.

[ ] Idelle's Plan

Idelle attacks the ghost with techniques that burn the undead, along with Amiti and L'nessa; you and Sola cut off its avenues of escape.

[ ] Sola's Plan

Sola attacks the ghost, driving it toward Idelle, while you, Amiti, and L'nessa provide ranged support.