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

You walk quietly through the dark, relying on Verdigris's preternatural senses to guide you, one hand running along the rough stone of the wall as you go.

After a bit of careful scouting, you've ascertained that Amiti was correct — the ghost has stayed holed up in the same chamber L'nessa caught sight of it in, hovering over a dark, tranquil pool of water. Per Idelle's plan, you've agreed to circle around to the far side of the chamber through a series of narrow side passages, poised to cover one of the two most obvious avenues of escape. Mind you, this is all happening because the wraith is capable of seeping through tiny crevices in otherwise solid stone — entrapping it will be tricky regardless.

The ghost's presence is not subtle. The closer you are to the chamber where it resides, the thinner the air feels around you, tasting of blood and the least wholesome varieties of earth, creating the distant sensation of suffocation. You're determined to ignore it as the cheap parlour trick that it is; it should take far worse to unsettle a Chosen of Pasiap surrounded by her own element.

Likewise, you're determined not to complain about your specific role for other reasons. Sola had been displeased at being relegated to a rear guard position, but had ultimately understood the tactical value of such things, and furthermore the value of not undermining a plan once it's been agreed to. You try to follow her lead as you put yourself into position.

Up ahead is a fork — through Verdigris's flicking tongue, you scent the sickly sweet aroma that you've come to realise marks the ghost, and turn accordingly. It only takes a few more moments before you find yourself at your goal: the narrow mouth into a wider chamber, an eerie, oppressive silence ringing in your ears from the other side. Your foot comes down in a shallow pool of cold water. Annoying, but useful enough that you don't move aside.

You send a thread of Air Essence down into the water, bidding it to serve as your window into the world of the unseen. Twin points of amber light slowly form at your feet, defusing outward like drops of ink until you realise what you're looking at. Two eyes burn in the dark, watching you with an unblinking vigilance. The body that they're set in is a shadow that's somehow deeper than those around it, a point of darkness that seems to draw in all light not its own. You regard the ghost coolly for a few seconds longer, ignoring the sense that you can't quite breathe clawing at your chest. Then the ghost's eyes snap over to the other side of the cavern, and you know that things are proceeding according to plan.

"Hello, again!" comes Amiti's familiar voice, as she steps into view. She has a lit candle in one hand, a mirror in another. Points of reflected light glitter in the darkness of the cavern all around. "I've been looking all over for you." Her voice is strangely distant, muffled by the ghost's presence. As you see its reflection rearing up in apparent outrage, the taste of dirt and blood on your tongue intensifies.

It's at this point that Idelle darts out from behind her, feet carrying into a flying leap by a rush of hot air, spear poised to strike. Guided by the bells ringing in her ears and the mirror secured to the back of one hand, she gives a cry that demands the ghost be struck by her weapon, impaling the figure messily through its insubstantial torso. Golden fire drips from the spearhead, wracking the wraith's corpus, starkly different from the red anima that has started to bloom around Idelle's body.

Watching the fight from murky reflection in the puddle, cast now in charnel colours by Idelle's anima, you see the ghost fall back into intangibility enough to pull itself free from Idelle's spear, bleeding shadows. With a twitching flick of one hand, it sends a barrage of loose stones flying as it scuttles backward.

Amiti gives a cry, the lightning she'd intended to throw striking the ceiling instead. L'nessa ducks from where she's just come around the doorway, her hand mirror shattering as a stone takes it from her grasp. Idelle turns aside the worst of it with her spear, tries to dart forward to stab the ghost again — she misjudges the angle somewhere in the confusion of the reflection, missing it by inches.

You see the ghost make a split second decision on where to go. L'nessa, guiding her aim by the distorted image in a crystal formation, manages to make up its mind when her arrow clips the side of one of its limbs — there are four Dragon-Blooded in one direction, and only one in the other.

In the reflection at your feet, you see the ghost turn toward you inhumanly fast, streaking across the cavern floor toward your passageway. You have your sabre drawn in one hand, eyes cast down at the water, trying to stay aware of the real space the reflection represents. Taking in a deep breath, you slash out with your sabre, forcing the ghost back in a skittering, flickering motion. Its proximity makes the air feel even closer, as though a weight is pressing down on your lungs from every angle, noise all but sucked from the world.

It tries to get past you, and you slash it from shoulder to hip, driving it back. It's like hacking into cold treacle, and your bizarre vantage point prevents you from getting the angle you need to simply shear the wraith in two, instead drawing a shallower cut. A small barrage of stones hurl themselves at your back — Verdigris does her best to defend your head, flicking rocks aside with her metallic tail. A fork of icy lightning half blinds you as it strikes the ghost from behind, followed by an arrow burying itself in the spirit's leg.

The ghost collapses, and you're treated to the image of its shadowy form crumples at your feet for just a second, before Idelle's spear takes it where its spine should be, golden flame immolating its corpus from the inside out. The light seems to boil away the darkness, and for just a moment, you see a human face, an unremarkable looking woman, bloodied and terrified, lips moving in silent pleas.

You cut off its head, and it collapses back into formless shadow, this time utterly inert.

A more ordinary, wholesome silence stretches on there, broken only by relieved gasps as you can all properly catch your breath again. The one who speaks first is Amiti, rubbing at the side of her head where a rock struck her. "Well! That's taken care of then, I suppose."

Idelle rounds on her, still wreathed in ruddy flame. "Taken care of?" she repeats.

"Well, yes, we killed her. Again," Amiti says.

Idelle crosses the short distance between her and Amiti, glaring down at the shorter girl, spear clutched, white-knuckled, in one hand. "We don't even know that it won't just reform later!"

"Well, she might," Amiti allows, "but I think there's a good chance she won't — she's alone out here, after all, no worshippers, and not so strong as all that." She shrugs. "If she turns back up in the Underworld, I'd hope that she simply leaves. Or at least, doesn't come back here. It wasn't such a good place for her, was it?"

"Are you even capable of accepting responsibility for your actions?" Idelle demands.

"Excuse me, but I did take responsibility for my actions," Amiti says, suddenly indignant. "I'm out here, aren't I? I would have gone after her even if no one else had helped me! No one even got hurt, that we know of, except for that elemental! And me." She gingerly touches her head again — her fingers come away dry, at least. It shouldn't be too serious a wound for an Exalt.

For your part, you quietly pull a particularly sharp stone out of your back, where it had embedded somewhere near the end of that fight. It hasn't gone in deep, however — not worth drawing attention to.

"It wouldn't have been here at all if you had any sense of restraint or decency!" Idelle's eyes quite literally blaze with the force of her anger, and Amiti flinches back.

"Idelle, we took care of it," L'nessa says, "yelling at Amiti won't help anything."

"Clearly not!" Idelle says. "If shouting at her did any good, she'd be a model daughter by this point in her life!" That, of all things, hits home, and Amiti shrinks in on herself.

Sola, emerging from the other tunnel looking vexed for more than one reason, is less diplomatic than L'nessa: "Piss off, Ledaal," she says. "If you're going to go snitch us out, just do it and spare us all the melodrama."

Frowning, you sheath your sabre, and approach the others, free hand fingering something in one of your belt pouches.

"Obviously I'm going to report this!" Idelle says, rounding on Sola. "She's endangered herself, her fellow students, and the security of the entire school, to say nothing about the moral implications. Not that I should expect anything better than heresy and slinking avoidance from a Sesus to begin with — whatever her father is to my parents, she obviously doesn't take after him!"

Your dragon scale pendant surges cold against your skin as you whisper the words you need, an odd tingle coming from the small object you've palmed at the same time. As calmly as if you were plucking off a piece of lint, you reach out, and press the tiny emerald to the back of Idelle's neck. It flashes green as you feel the spell hit home, and the red jade bell dangling from her ear rings out a sharp alarm.

Fast as wildfire, Idelle whirls around, spear poised to stab you where you stand. Before you have a chance to fully intervene, Sola is there, her daiklave catching the blow right beneath the spear's head, forcing it upward. "No," Sola says, final and inarguable.

With a cry of outrage, the spell no doubt already taking effect, Idelle falls upon her, spear whirling through a complex pattern of strikes, red flame rolling off her body, golden flame off of her weapon. Sola meets every blow with a calm parry or expertly placed sidestep, lightning crackling in her wake, until she finally outright cleaves Idelle's spear in two.

"Alright," Sola says, "that's en—"

Barely missing a beat, Idelle lets the pieces of the spear fall, and executes a perfect roundhouse kick aimed squarely at Sola's head. You catch the blow on your sheathed sabre, the force of it sending a shock through your arm. Then you give Idelle a hard shove backward. "That's enough," you finish for Sola.

Idelle steadies herself, glares at you, but there's something uncertain in her expression. The bell is still faintly sounding, but you're certain the spell will have done what it was meant to by now, if you were successful. "What did you..." Idelle falters. "You did something to me! Where are we?"

"A cave?" ventures Amiti, voice cautious.

"I... can see it's a cave!" Idelle says. She looks down at her broken spear at her feet, then around at you all — the minor injuries, the flaring anima. "What happened?"

"You were in a trance," L'nessa says, stepping in without missing a beat, lying to her face with gentle confidence. "Something must have affected your mind — that bell of yours was ringing." She gestures at Idelle's earring, which is still faintly chiming. "So, of course we wanted to see if you were alright, and followed. Unfortunately, things got a little hectic before you snapped out of it."

Idelle's frown deepens, her eyes sweeping from L'nessa's smooth concern, to Amiti's half confused panic, to Sola's stormy expression as she sheaths her daiklave with a metal-on-metal snap. Her eyes light on you again last, the flickering radiance within them particularly prominent now. "And you didn't see what did it?" she asks, her hand reaching up to touch the back of her neck, where you'd pressed the gem.

"No," you say. Against the weight of her burning scrutiny, you shroud your feelings with Earth and Water, thoughts as opaque as a dark, tranquil pool. "But something clever enough to ensnare you would be clever enough to keep out of sight."

Idelle is clearly dissatisfied, but she's also confused, and unable to actually dispute your version of events at present. "I see," she says. "My apologies for lashing out at you, Ambraea. It would be a poor way to repay your attentiveness, if things were as you all say."

"We should all return to the school, I think," L'nessa says, "otherwise, we'll be at risk of missing a meal."

On the way back, Idelle is uncertain and brooding, and Sola is outright displeased, this time leading the way without any discussion about who should go first. You think that, perhaps, Sola does not entirely approve of your course of action.

The look of relieved gratitude Amiti shoots you is enough to warm your heart, at least. If nothing else, you'd helped a friend who had truly needed you.

---

Resplendent Wood, Realm Year 762

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

Months go by and the end of your fourth year looms ahead, the halfway point of your secondary school education having passed you almost unnoticed.

Sola's annoyance with you turns out to be relatively short-lived. Idelle's suspicious glances, by contrast, continue on without abatement. You have responded by quietly offering the emerald containing her stolen memories to Perfection, who was equally pleased to receive it as they were to hear that you'd dealt with the ghost. Amiti had promised to be more cautious in her experimentation — with sincerity, you hope. You can't all keep covering for her forever.

As the end of the year draws closer, however, Maia continues to grow quieter and more distant, although never quite to the point of outright avoiding you. When the yen finally drops, it's a beautiful, summer day.

"Have you been thinking about independent study projects, for next year?" You ask Maia, carefully organising your stack of books. You're very near the top of one of the towers, in a tiny reading room you hadn't been able to open until the month before. The volumes it houses, primarily written about advanced spirit summoning theory, have proven to be shockingly dull and abstract, even where they have the potential to be extraordinarily dangerous.

Maia looks up from the monstrous tome she's referencing, pages open to a sprawling diagram depicting a demonic soul hierarchy in taxonomical detail. "... No," she admits.

"We'll be fifth years soon," you remind her, "it's going to be expected of us."

"I know," Maia says, closing her eyes.

You watch her for a moment, framed by the light of a rare sunny day streaming in through the window. "Are you even reading that?" you ask, approaching her.

She gives you a weak smile. "Not very well," she admits. "How did you know?"

"You've run your finger across that one line about the Living Tower at least five times," you say. "I've been watching." On your shoulder, Verdigris flicks her tongue sympathetically.

"You're getting too good at reading me," Maia says, and you're not entirely certain it's a joke.

"Is that a problem?" you ask her.

She grimaces, and doesn't immediately respond, looking out the window instead.

You move even closer, one hand bracing against her reading table, looming over her in a way that's hard for her to simply ignore. "Are you ever going to explain to me what's wrong?" you ask.

She opens her mouth to give an evasion, to change the subject, to deny that there's anything wrong. But you catch her gaze with yours, and something in your eyes seems to hold her fast. "The Black Elder Tree," she says quietly, after a moment.

"What about it?" you ask, frowning.

"This evening, after the lecture. Meet me there." Carefully, she shuts the book, tearing her eyes away from yours. Rather than any kind of relief, a terrible sort of tension has come into her, like she might either bolt or snap at any moment.

"Nobody goes to the Black Elder Tree that close to dark," you point out.

"I know," she says. She gets up, the book cradled in her arms as she moves it back to its niche on the far wall. "That's the idea."

The dominie's lectures are difficult to follow at the best of times, even with the base of knowledge you've managed to accumulate by this point. With how distracted you are, these are not the best of times, and you already have a feeling you'll need to beg to have a look at Amiti's notes before the week is out. Hers are always at least thorough, even if they inevitably contain drawings of small animals and quotations from her favourite books in between the actually useful information.

You don't actually see when Maia slips out of the lecture hall, in the end — nonetheless, you gather your things, pawn off putting them back in your room on a mildly annoyed L'nessa, and head out onto the grounds.

---

The Black Elder Tree is one of the Isle of Voices' more infamous landmarks, the sort of place that older students take ghoulish satisfaction in pointing out to the sacrifices every year. The tree itself is massive, an ancient sentinel standing proud on top of a lone, grassy hill far inland. Its leaves are so dark as to be black, a hint as to the plant's strange and macabre nature. Few students are foolhardy enough to test to see if the dark rumours surrounding it are true, but there had been one boy during your second year who'd tried it, spending a night sleeping among its sprawling roots.

He'd gone home in disgrace, a nervous wreck, the next week.

Neither you nor Maia intend to actually let yourself spend the night here, of course, and the place is no one's idea of somewhere to spend a pleasant summer's evening. So it works well enough for a private meeting. You spot Maia by the time you get near to the base of the hill, a small figure solemnly watching as you make your climb, the lighter blue of her uniform standing out against the tree's dark trunk.

"So," you say, as you crest the hill, "here we are."

"Here we are," Maia agrees. The shade beneath the tree's spreading branches is pronounced, unripened elderberries hanging heavy overhead, thick roots protruding from the earth all around you. Maia bites at her lip, hands clasped in front of her. Then, she begins to pace.

You watch her go back and forth a time or two, before you ask: "Have you changed your mind, then?"

"Yes! Three times, back and forth," Maia says, shooting you a grimace. "But... I'm here now. We both came here. It's too late to back out?" The way she says it, it's almost like she wants the option taken away from her.

"I'm afraid I can't know that until you tell me," you say, eyebrows raising.

Maia takes in a deep breath, then lets it out, scanning the horizon around you for any sign of anyone within earshot. Then she produces her hand mirror, turning it this way and that, checking high and low for any sign of an invisible spirit who might be listening in. Evidently, she finds no one. Stuffing the mirror back into a belt pouch, she abruptly says:

"We talked about my grandmother. At the end of last summer."

You'd expected it to be something about this — how could any other topic warrant this much concern and secrecy? "... Yes," you say. "It's not the sort of thing I can easily forget."

Maia nods sharply, resuming her pacing, not quite looking at you. "Have you ever wondered... have you thought about how she came to be married to my grandfather? Who arranged it?"

"Not in-depth," you admit. House Iselsi's reputation for espionage, while eclipsed in recent decades by the scandal of their treason and subsequent slow destruction, is something you're at least passingly familiar with. You had simply assumed that such subterfuge was not beyond them, even at the end — did there need to be someone who'd arranged to hide one woman's identity, when her name had become such a liability?

Maia is silent overhead. A cool breeze sweeps up the hill, and the tree groans gently as it sways behind you. "It was... arranged," Maia says, hunching in on herself. "By someone with the power to spare my grandmother."

She looks up then, meeting your eyes for the first time since the reading room that morning, not wanting to come out and say it, clearly wishing for you to put things together yourself. In the end, there are only so many possibilities that can require this level of secrecy. You open your mouth slowly, and it's a few seconds before you can form the words: "... the one who told me?"

Maia looks away again, hunching down, suddenly ragged with relief. It's hard to say whether she nods or not. She doesn't need to.

There's another few seconds of silence. Across your shoulder, Verdigris shrinks back in distress, slithering under your clothes. When you finally speak, voice urgent with concern, what you say is: "You should not have told me that!" It doesn't matter that she didn't come out and say that your mother had arranged to spare some portion of Maia's family. She'd made certain that you understood it, and that was very nearly as bad. The word 'treason' keeps buzzing at the back of your mind. "Why are you telling me this?"

Maia whirls on you, eyes intense in a way you've only seen them once or twice before. "And what, you should have told me what you did, after you found out the first part of this? Do you know what I've been taught to do to anyone who knows what you know?"

You think back to that moment of startling speed, her hand covering your mouth. You can well imagine what she may have been told to do with the other. It isn't something you've wanted to put too much thought into. "I think I have an idea, yes."

"So, we're both stupid," she says, still holding that glare. She's trembling a little, though, and not only from the relief of what she's just put out into the open. She seems to be waiting for something from you, bracing herself for a blow.

"This... doesn't change anything," you say, "it doesn't have to." For some reason, the words sound appallingly stupid even as they leave your mouth — something a child would say. For an excruciating moment, you resent yourself intensely for that feeling.

Maia reaches up, gripping a fistful of her own hair hard enough that it must hurt. "No, you don't..." She stares at you, torn between frustration that you haven't pieced something together, and fear of what you'll say when you do. "We're... hers," Maia says. "I am too. I was always hers, the whole time. Another weapon in training, another... another set of eyes and ears."

You understand then, and take a step back as if you've just been struck by something heavy. "Oh," you say. You sink down on top of the nearest tree root, staring at her. You'd known, of course, that someone was keeping track of your actions — there would be someone at the Heptagram feeding information to the Empress's information network regardless, and it would be simple enough for them to include you in the ordinary reports. But if there had been someone else much closer at hand, from the very first day you'd arrived... "The whole time?" you ask.

"Yes," Maia says, voice small and miserable.

You take a steadying breath. "I thought you..."

"I did! I do! I'm not with you because I'm keeping track of you, I'm with you because of you!" She takes a tentative step forward, then freezes, like she doesn't know what you're going to do next. You don't either — you can feel a terrible blankness coming over your features, masking whatever it is you're feeling inside.

"You can... you can still trust me," Maia says. Then, voice quavering, she adds: "Please trust me?"

You look at her for a long, quiet moment. What you ask is: "How?"

Maia takes another step forward, pauses again, then all but throws herself to her knees, looking up at you beseechingly, like a supplicant before a lady. She hesitates, then reaches for your hand. You let her take it. She forces herself to look up into your eyes, tears brimming at the edge of her vision. "I'll swear it," she says.

"Swear it?" You ask, not yet following.

"An oath. A real oath. So you'll know that I'm not going to betray you. So we can just... Please?"

"Maia, I—" you're not exactly sure how you plan to finish that sentence, but she doesn't give you the chance. She's already speaking, words coming out in a rush, so quietly that you can barely make out what she's saying, rehearsed phrases so dangerous that they were never meant to be spoken out in the open:

"I... Iselsi Maia, swear to stand by your side as sworn kin, to defend you above all others, to keep faith with you above all others. To be the shade that you take refuge in, the water that soothes your wounds, the blade at your enemies' throats. In the name of Danaa'd, I swear. In the name of Mela, Sextex Jylis, Hesiesh, and Pasiap, I swear. By Water, by Air, by Wood, by Fire, by Earth, I swear. On the memory of my murdered house, I swear."

You're momentarily stunned not just by the force of her words, but by the genuine power that's behind them. She's offering you something real and serious — you both know what this means, or think you do. It's the most profound show of good faith she could make, but as always, there are strings.

Article:

The Hearth Oath, or Kinship Oath, is more than a mere promise — it is a supernatural link formed between Dragon-Blooded, tied into the particular nature of your Exaltations. Ten-Thousand Dragons fight as one, but the members of a sworn kinship forge a bond closer than any other. It is also a relationship with both social and legal weight in the Realm, and something most Exalted Dynasts enter into at some point in their lives, albeit not usually this impulsively, or this soon.

You may accept Maia's oath by returning it with one of your own. If you do so, you will be sworn to one another as hearthmates. You will be aware of one another's presence, capable of finding one another across vast distances, and the other will sense it if either of you dies. A Dragon-Blood's Hearth is a source of strength and comfort for her, but attempting to betray one's Hearthmates is psychologically difficult and traumatic as well as looked upon as the blackest sort of treachery within Realm society. Your hearthmates are those companions who you've sworn to stand beside whatever might come, regardless of family or station, and backing out of it again once entered into such a commitment would be a mark against you as well as unpleasant. Additional Dragon-Blooded may be added to an existing hearth, although it is increasingly difficult or impossible to do so beyond the traditional five.

Despite how little time you have to consider this, you are intimately aware of the ramifications of saying yes:

Pros:

- It is an irrefutable sign of renewed trust and faith in one another
- It represents a higher chance of your relationship with Maia surviving the trials ahead, in some form or another, and gives your tie to Maia more weight in the face of her troubling family commitments
- Long term, as your Hearthmate, it would be less remarkable and more socially acceptable for Maia to associate with you in public in settings where bringing someone who is merely your patrician lover would be inappropriate
- It is common for new Hearths to form upon or in the year before graduation from secondary school; while this is certainly early, it is not unthinkable that you two would have made such a promise to one another in the natural course of things
- It is unspeakably romantic.

Cons

- Should word of this get out too soon, you may be viewed as rushing too quickly into an important tie
- This is quite literally the opposite of what your mother advised you to do; the Empress thought it prudent to treat Maia as a youthful indiscretion, and part ways with her when you were finished
- It would make breaking things off with Maia in the future very awkward
- Can you trust her, after what you've learned?

What do you do?

[ ] Accept Maia's oath

[ ] Reject Maia's oath