The Last Daughter; Dragon-Blooded Sorcery School Quest

No one needs Sola's particular area of study to see what's looming ahead of you all. Morning brings a red sky, towering dark clouds heavy on the horizon. It's in this spirit that Sola plots the downfall of Cathak Garel Hylo.

"I helped," Amiti explains. Her voice is pleasant as she turns the pages of her book — Chains of Love and Iron, a romance about a Legionary general falling for the barbarian princess who has taken her hostage. Amiti may have lent it to you after the first time she read it. Perhaps not the worst thing you've ever leafed through.

"Helped how?" you ask.

"He would have suspected something if he'd had me tell him," Sola says, leaning back against a pillar.

"... But no one is going to expect subterfuge from Amiti, of all people," L'nessa says, faintly impressed.

"Oh, yes, I'm absolutely useless at it," Amiti agrees. "Or, so my mother tells me. My sister got all the talent for that sort of thing."

"I think I'd like to meet her, eventually," L'nessa says, "as surreal an experience as it might be."

Amiti glances up from her book, frowning. "How do you mean? Kasi is the pleasant twin. Everyone says so."

"Perfectly pleasant," you agree. Which isn't quite the surreal part about meeting Amiti's sister, but this seems to be enough to mollify Amiti. "What exactly did you tell him?"

"Oh, about the storm guardian off the western coast," Amiti says. "It should be here again during this storm! Or the next."

"So... what does that mean for Hylo?" Maia asks from her place beside you.

Sola grins. "Supposedly, it's bestowed enlightenment on sorcerers before."

"... By striking them with lightning," you say, raising your eyebrows. "Does he know that?"

Sola waves this off. "He knows that you went out and did something stupid in your first year, and a spirit gifted you with power for your trouble. And that, in my second year, I uncovered an ancestral daiklave lost to the ages. He's here in his fourth, and what has he fucking done other than run his mouth? Boy's a Fire Aspect, it's not that hard to bait him, really."

"Is the goal to get him killed?" you ask.

Sola considers this for a moment, disconcertingly serious about the matter.

"Some insults are worth killing over," Maia says.

The five of you are arranged on the floor of a study room, books and notes spread out in a rough circle. L'nessa, who has claimed this room's only good cushion, gives a light sigh. "You seemed like such a sweet little mouse, before I really got to know you, Maia," she says. She shoots a sly sort of glance to Sola. "You should have seen some of what she got up to over the summer."

"She can be more than one thing," you say, frowning at L'nessa as Maia hunches in on herself slightly. You don't pull her in against you, although you'd like to.

"Well, if anyone is qualified to speak to Maia's sweet side, it's you," L'nessa allows.

This is, objectively, true. She doesn't need to be so insufferable about it, though. And as ruthless as Maia had been, that had been against mortal criminals — Hylo is an Exalted Dynast, one of your peers. It's a different situation.

"Honestly, though, I'll be fine with him getting stuck out overnight and crawling back like a bedraggled cat tomorrow." Sola sets her notes down, casually pulling her daiklave onto her lap, examining the Melaist designs on the sheath as if for the first time. "Can't enjoy his humiliation if the brat's dead."

"His grandmother is the commander of the Cathak Legions," L'nessa says. "Murder breeds rather more bad blood amongst great Dynastic households than childhood humiliation does."

"Assuming they can tie it back to you, anyway," Maia says.

Sola laughs. "We'll keep it in reserve. For the future."

"So, are you just counting on him going out on his own and getting lost?" you ask.

"A bit more involved than that," Sola says. "We know the island better than him — I'm hoping that your girl will help me get him turned around."

"Well, I would be very good at that," Maia ventures. She gives you a small smile.

You feel your own lips twitch up in return. You sigh. "And I'm not going to let you drag her out into something like that on your own."

"I thought you'd probably say something like that," Sola says.

"Apparently," you say, "I'm predictable."

---

Cathak Garel Hylo is by all accounts an intelligent young man. A gifted scholar, already a competent sorcerer. He is not, however, half as brilliant as he imagines himself to be. This makes him vulnerable to manipulation in the way of all young Exalts whose egos outstrip their abilities.

You're glad that you're more level-headed than that, at least.

By evening, the storm breaks over the Isle of Voices like the wrath of Mela. Black clouds roll over the sky, sending sheets of driving rain split by bolts of lightning. The wind moans against the towers of the Heptagram, icy drafts snaking their way through every gap and crevice in the building.

"Honestly, I'm surprised that he's going through with it," you say.

"You went through with it when it meant wandering out into a blizzard," Maia says.

"It wasn't quite a blizzard," you say. "And I would have been fine — you followed me out."

Maia's smile is barely visible in the darkness, but it warms you more than the cloak you have wrapped around yourself ever could.

"Can you two step it back a little?" Sola asks, voice dry, only a little strained from her ongoing efforts.

"I'm sure I have no idea what you mean," you say.

The three of you walk close together, the fury of the storm howling all around, but not quite touching you. Sola has her daiklave resting across her shoulders — even through its sheath, you can see a pulsing glow from the irregular lines of jadesteel on the blade. It fills the air around you all with a faint, electrical hum. Through the power of the sword, Sola maintains a sphere of calm weather large enough to enclose several people walking shoulder to shoulder. At least, when one of those people is as small as Maia.

Beyond the edge of the sphere, visibility is terrible, but you don't quite need your eyes to see, at the moment. One with the Earth underfoot, your senses extend outward through the ground in all directions, sketching your surroundings in your mind's eye in lines of white Essence. It shows you the path ahead of you, the steep hill to one side, and the figure of Hylo struggling against the wind and rain at the edge of your perception.

Sola, meanwhile, is walking with her eyes closed, relying on the daiklave's strange sight magic to extend her senses through the storm itself. Seeing how effortlessly she can move through the worst of storms — storms she can call with her sorcery — you can imagine exactly what she might do for a Tepet general willing to fully put her to use, in a few years. Especially if she can learn how to shield more than just a handful from the weather she summons.

Hylo is walking perilously close to the edge of the hill, battered at by lashing branches from the slope above.

"Why's he walking so blind?" you ask, frowning. "Are those eyeglasses he's always fiddling with just for show?" The lenses — made from razor thin pieces of crystalline blue jade — presumably have some capacity to do more than just correct his bad eyesight.

"He uses them to help him understand difficult texts, and to see hidden spirits," Sola says, with the air of someone who had done her groundwork. "If they could help him pierce the gloom here, he hasn't made the effort to find that power yet."

"That could let him see through the illusions, though," Maia says.

"Eventually," Sola agrees. "Not fast enough for his sake, though." Lightning lights up the sky, followed almost immediately by a peel of thunder, loud enough that you feel it in your bones. "Speaking of which... give him a start, Maia?"

Maia nods, stepping past Sola far enough to stare out through the pouring rain, frowning with concentration. Lacking the more advanced techniques that you and Sola are employing, she simply narrows her eyes and channels a bit of Water into her sight to help pierce the gloom. "Okay, I see him," she says.

Even hooded and cloaked, Hylo looks incredibly small and frail, in a way you're sure you never had in your younger years. His arms are wrapped tightly around himself, shoulders hunched, looking more like a drowned rat than a Prince of the Earth. Even the sorcerous flame circling doggedly around his head seems drastically inadequate in the face of the storm. Unsurprisingly, he has chosen to focus on other areas to the exclusion of his senses. He can't see the three of you, or hear Maia quietly chanting the words to her spell, even as her hands flash through a series of sorcerous signs.

Threads of rain condense into foam in the air in front of her, and then foam into a figure that slowly gains definition and partial solidity. Soon, a ghost floats in the air before you all, monstrously pallid, inhumanly wasted and skeletal, its mouth full of twisted fangs and its eyes full of hate.

Sola cracks an eye to regard Maia's handiwork. "Well, that's awful," she says. "You come up with him yourself?"

"It's copied from one of Amiti's research books," Maia says. "Some kind of terrible ghost. The sketch stuck in my head."

"There should be plenty of room for him to land safely down at the bottom of the slope he's coming up on," you say. "I don't see him getting back up again afterward. He'll be stuck down there."

"That's the idea," Sola says.

You watch Maia's illusion glide toward Hylo. Gliding intangibly over the ground as it is, it's visible only with your eyes, and you soon lose sight of it through the wind and rain. You see Hylo clear enough in your mind's eye, though. He tries to stay alert with his limited senses, head whipping back and forth, but the false spectre is right on top of him before he notices anything. It lets out a deeply convincing shriek — Hylo's hand shoots up, and the flame orbiting around his head leaps into it, forming a fiery sword. Unfortunately for him, as he falls into a basic defensive guard, he puts his foot down on the wrong spot, just as Sola intended. His feet fly out from under him and, with a yelp, he goes tumbling down the hillside in a trail of gravel and mud.

Through the vibrations in the ground, you see him land in a heap at the bottom of the slope, sprawled out on a narrow shelf between the hill and a sharper drop. The position leaves him sheltered from the very worst of the storm at least, but you doubt he's in much of a frame of mind to appreciate this as he furiously picks himself up. Even as you watch, Hylo tries to scramble back up the slope. He gets halfway, then slides back down with a cry of frustration.

Sola can't suppress a sharp, satisfied laugh. "That's almost as good as I'd hoped."

Maia, by contrast, doesn't even crack a smile. She stares through the rain at Hylo with that same cold expression you've seen from her a handful of times before. "This weather really is too dangerous to be going out in alone."

"We're not going to take it too far," Sola says.

"I can keep scaring him, then," Maia offers. "He might figure out that they're illusions if I keep it up too long, though."

"Maybe," you say. "It could take a good while, if you don't let him get a good look at them. Honestly, it's what he gets for neglecting his physical conditioning to this degree." You're not enjoying this quite as much as Sola is, but... Hylo is an incredibly aggravating man, after all.

"Only one way to find out," Maia says. Finally, she cracks the ghost of a smile.

---

Amiti sets her brush down with a satisfied sigh, having just spent the better part of an hour transcribing shorthand observations into long form documentation. She moves the filled notebook aside to dry, stretching in a contented sort of way.

Outside, the wind howls and the entire tower groans with the impact. The draft in this corner of the library is particularly vicious, knifing into exposed skin at unexpected intervals. Amiti is largely unbothered — somewhere between the element of her Aspect and the pocket of graveyard chill in her soul, the cold barely bothers her. This is normally a prime spot, and Amiti would never be able to have it to herself here normally; at least not without Ambraea onhand to give people stony stares.

Things are so much easier when one has friends.

By the light of the sorcerous lantern overhead, she pulls out some more recreational reading, and loses herself in it:




"Pardon me, but is this seat taken?"

Amiti lets out a startled yelp, jumping a little in her seat. She bites down on her pendant in the process, the soulsteel giving slightly under her teeth, for a split second feeling like something much softer than metal. She stares up at the newcomer with wide eyes. "Mno?" she manages, before remembering to spit the pendant out. The taste of copper lingers in her mouth, her teeth marks already having vanished from the pendant. "I mean, no!"

Peleps Nalri barely waits for the invitation before she neatly slides into the seat opposite Amiti. "What a lovely place to wait out a storm," she probably lies.

Amiti stares for a long, quiet moment — probably too long, but she never can tell. Nalri is smiling at her in that way that means someone likes her, or that someone is pretending to like her. She decides from surrounding context that it's most likely the latter. It's rude to just ask someone what they want without at least exchanging a few niceties, however. "I think so," Amiti says, not returning the smile. Should she return it?

Nalri laughs, covering her mouth daintily with one hand. "Oh, I'm sorry, it's just your expression."

Amiti is never sure what this sort of comment means, or what to say to it. "Okay, then!" she offers. Then, waiting a few seconds, simply asks: "Can I help you with something?"

Nalri's eyebrows climb toward her hairline. "Maybe I'm just interested in your company."

This seems very unlikely. "You're not my friend," Amiti points out.

"Well," Nalri says, "I don't quite get along with some of your friends — V'neef L'nessa, and, regrettably, Ambraea. Perhaps this is my first opportunity to speak to you this year without one of them hovering around." Nalri steeples her fingers.

This is... slightly more plausible. Something still gives Amiti an obscure sense of foreboding. "What would you like to talk about?" she asks.

Nalri's smile widens. "Why, your research, of course!"

Amiti immediately brightens in spite of herself. "Oh, really?"

"Yes!" Nalri says, seemingly just as enthused. She leans across the table toward Amiti. "You've been studying geomancy as well, haven't you?"

"Yes," Amiti says, "its effects on necromantic workings — they're subtler than on conventional sorcery, but my preliminary findings are already quite promising!"

"That," Nalri says, "sounds fascinating. Everyone says you have the most impressive eye for detail. Would you be so kind as to tell me all about it?"

Amiti can't entirely shake the bad feeling she has about Nalri's intentions, but it's so rare for someone to show such an interest, and really, what could it hurt? So Amiti starts talking, cautiously at first. But when Nalri listens with rapt attention, asks intelligent and encouraging questions whenever Amiti pauses for breath, Amiti loses track of who, exactly, she's talking to.

She loses track of a lot of things.

Article:

Ambraea, Sola, and Maia are engaging in prolonged revenge against Cathak Garel Hylo. The situation has been manageable so far, if miserable for the boy. It's about to get out of hand.

Where does the complication originate?

[ ] [Complication] Something from the sea

[ ] [Complication] Something otherworldly

[ ] [Complication] The storm itself

Furthermore, when this complication puts Hylo in more danger than you'd all intended, do you intervene to help him?

[ ] [Help] Yes

[ ] [Help] No