The Last Daughter; Dragon-Blooded Sorcery School Quest

---

Hylo's sorcerously summoned sword swings through the air to ward off his phantasmal attacker. The false ghost seems to jerk back into the storm at the last possible moment. His voice thick with frustration, he shouts something that's lost somewhere between his mouth and your ears. You're still sensing his movements more than you're seeing them, with the wind and the rain. In your mind's eye, through the vibrations of the earth, you see the drops pounding the ground, the wind bowing the trees, and Hylo hunched alone on a ledge below the path.

"He's catching on," Maia says, faintly impressed. "Those glasses really aren't for show."

"I'd hope not," Sola says. "Boy's wearing at least an obol's worth of jade on his face, it shouldn't be for nothing."

Verdigris stirs beneath your cloak, tightening against your skin almost as if in warning. You can sense everything around you in a wide enough area that it can't be anything on the ground that's bothering her. Which leaves...

You're already reaching for Maia as Sola shouts: "Above us!"

The air fills with a charge that has nothing to do with Sola or her sword. You pull Maia to your chest and throw both of you to the ground, shielding her with your body. Immediately, you're beset by drenching bands of rain — you've put yourself outside Sola's circle of calm air. You barely notice this, however. A blinding flash comes down behind you, filling the air with the scent of ozone.

"Sola!" You twist around to check on her, but she's unharmed — she's pulled her daiklave free of the sheath in order to seemingly parry the lightning bolt. The lightning crawls over the surface of her blade now, as blue as the anima that outlines Sola's body.

"I'm fine," Sola says, "it's still moving!"

"What is it?" you demand, rising enough for Maia to roll out from under you. Her ability to repel unwanted water doesn't quite extend to mud.

"A.... cloud," Sola says. "Moving against the wind, toward Hylo."

You make a snap decision. "We're not going to leave him to whatever that is," you say. That ledge he's on is not actively dangerous, currently — that will change in an actual combat situation.

Sola barks a laugh. "We are, are we?"

You shoot her a look.

"Joke!" Sola says. "Joking. Right, not going to let the cocky little idiot get eaten by a cloud."

Maia flicks open the mirror she wears around her neck, the lid having protected it from the mud — you'd gifted it to her for her birthday. Angling it up and squinting in the Illumination of Sola's anima, she decides: "Not a cloud, a hellstorm." Seeing the lack of immediate recognition this draws, she elaborates: "A Radeken, progeny of the Vitriol Dragon. A minor demon. They steal weather to torment people with." She has a knife in her hand as she finishes, using her mirror to pinpoint the throw she intends to make.

"Keep it busy," Sola tells her. The lightning seems to sink into the surface of her daiklave, seeping up the sword's length and up into Sola's arm.

"Right," Maia says.

"I'll get him," you say. As you step back out into the biting rain, you can hear Sola chanting, one hand held against the flat of her blade.

In your mind's eye, you see Hylo dive away from a maliciously-aimed bolt of lightning, the ground exploding where he'd been and crumbling away down the cliffside. You break into a run.

Maia throws her knife and the cloud screams — a horrendous sound like a snake vocally strangling a cat, cutting through the basic howl of the storm.

"Cathak!" you shout, projecting your voice above the din.

Hylo jumps, whirling to stare up at you, his sorcerous blade poised defensively in front of him. He squints at you through the water running down his face, his hood fallen back to reveal red hair plastered to his head. Steam faintly rises around his scrawny frame. "Ambraea?"

"Grab my hand!" you say, letting yourself slide down the slope. A thread of Earth forces the mud underfoot to hold you fast in place, reaching a hand out to him.

He shoots you a look of mingled gratitude and suspicion, grabbing at your hand with slippery fingers. With a groan, the ground under his feet finally lets go, beginning to slide away down the cliff, sending a spike of alarm through your chest. Before he can fall, though, Verdigris shoots out of your sleeve, winding her length around both your wrists, a miniature bridge of living bronze.

The clouds part overhead in a strange whirl of wind and rain, sunlight lancing down mercilessly through the gap. As you haul Hylo's slight weight back up onto solid ground, you glance up and see it — something vast and insectoid overhead, arthropod legs on a massive scale looming out of the sky, stirring the storm with no effort at all, spreading an unnatural stillness all around, centred on Sola. Every cloud in the sky is swept aside by the thing her spell calls. Every cloud but one.

"What is going on?" Hylo demands. You and Verdigris both let go at once, and he very nearly slips in the mud. He's far enough away from the edge that it doesn't matter.

You see that Maia's bleeding — a drastic understatement. A semi-solid cord of dark red blood extends from a gash in her left hand, forming a wickedly barbed whip. She has it twined around a writhing, screeching shape that she's physically hauling free of the miniature storm cloud. It's halfway between a panther and a bird, with haphazard reptilian features tossed in here and there.

Before you can step in, Maia shouts: "Sola!"

"On it," Sola agrees. Then she takes a step forward and in a flash of lightning, she moves through the demon blade-first without any evident resistance, landing near you on the far side.

"Cathak," Sola says. "You look like you've had better nights."

He glares, shoving his glasses back down onto his face. Beside Sola, the demon is in two pieces, each still madly thrashing as the spirit gradually dies.

You step around the demon to reach Maia. She lets the lash vanish from her hand ss you reach for her wrist. The lash becomes mundane blood splattered in the mud at your feet. "You're hurt?" you ask.

"Only superficially," she says, letting you examine her hand without any resistance. "I did it on purpose, for the spell."

She's correct -- the gash in her hand is clean, and not deep enough to be serious for an Exalt. The loss of blood will have cost her a bit more, but it's not truly something to be concerned about. Still...

"You know what you're doing," you say, almost reluctantly letting her go. "I still don't like seeing you hurt."

She gives you an almost startled look at that, like it's a thought that hadn't quite occurred to her. The smile that spreads over her face is small, but affectionate. The air around her tastes like a different sort of rain from the storm Sola just banished — cold and heavy and drenching. For that moment, though, her eyes are warm. She says something too quiet to hear out loud, but a summoned breeze brings it to your ears anyway: "I love you."

The only response you have time for is a startled smile, before Sola approaches with Hylo sullenly in tow. "Don't think I don't understand what's going on here," Hylo says, glaring at you. "This was deliberate!"

"Are you accusing us of setting a demon on you, then killing it?" you asked, raising your eyebrows.

"Obviously not." He pushes his glasses up his nose pointedly. "The demon is branded with the mon of the Versino — you didn't summon that."

Sure enough, when you look at the demon's body, a large, circular burn is seared into the creature's flank — the mon of the Heptagram's predecessor school, lost to disaster more than three and a half centuries prior. "It broke free from the ruins?" you ask.

"Bindings fail, containments are breached," Hylo says. "These things don't last forever."

"It could have gone anywhere in the world, and it decided to lurk around this island to pick fights with Exalts?" Sola asks, resheathing her sword.

"They're particularly vicious and stupid, as demons go," Maia says, "and the storm would have excited it. It found a vulnerable looking person, and it took the opportunity."

"Foolish of it," Hylo says. "I could have taken it easily, had I been less distracted by petty illusions."

"Distracted by falling off a cliff?" you ask.

He stiffens, so indignant that it is impossible not to think of Sola's soaked cat comparison from earlier. "And who lured me out here to begin with? I should have known you put Sesus Amiti up to that conversation."

"You should have," Sola agrees, shrugging. "Let's be honest — blind ego lured you out here. Isn't it a good thing that I was there, with my companions? Always happy to save a helpless young man."

Hylo literally splutters at that. "How dare you—"

As you all begin to make your way back to the school, walking through the strange gap Sola's spell has carved through the storm, they continue in their increasingly heated exchange — Hylo is obviously losing.

Maia, walking beside you, sighs and glances at Hylo. "I'm glad we didn't leave him back there."

"Are you?" you ask, mildly surprised.

"He's annoying," Maia says, "I don't like him. That doesn't mean he has to die. There's... more than one way to handle things."

In spite of everything, a smile tugs at the corner of your mouth.

You tell the staff that you'd all been working on Sola's weather magic — miraculously, Hylo holds his tongue. He's weighted the satisfaction of accusing you of wrongdoing against the humiliation of admitting to fall for it, and acted accordingly.

You still get a lengthy chewing out for endangering a younger student, and additional busy work for the next month in the form of the least pleasant rituals they can ask you to maintain.

Still, you feel like you've all made out very well, until the next morning, when you see Amiti's face.

---

"What happened?"

Amiti sits on the edge of your bed, hunched in on herself. "It's gone!" she says again.

She and Sola are currently crammed into your dormitory along with yourself, Maia, and L'nessa.

"You're sure that you didn't misplace it?" you ask, although you don't really believe it. Amiti is flighty and absent-minded about many things, but never books or research. She's gone everywhere with those notes with her all year.

She doesn't even bother answering that. "I'd just finished putting my notes into longform and then... well, I had a conversation, and I almost missed lunch, because it ran so long, and I put everything into my bag, but then when I checked later there was a pair of blank notebooks in there instead of the full ones, and they're not in the library tower anywhere!" To your horror, she looks on the verge of tears. This tugs on your heartstrings, obviously, but... your lover in complete privacy is one thing, but you have no idea what you're supposed to do about a Dynastic lady who you're good friends with actually crying in front of you.

Fortunately, you don't have to. Maia sits down beside Amiti, putting a consoling hand on her shoulder. The rest of you are thus free to pretend that the tears in Amiti's eyes aren't there — for the sake of her dignity as much as anything.

"Who did you have the conversation with?" L'nessa asks, voice gentle. There's a certain narrow-eyed quality to her face, however. Like she suspects she already knows the answer and isn't particularly happy about it.

Confirming her suspicions, Amiti hesitates, not meeting L'nessa's gaze. "Please don't be angry?"

"... Who was it?" Sola asks, voice insistent.

"Peleps Nalri j— See, I know you'd act like that if I told you! I was just being polite, but then she asked about my research, and it was a really interesting conversation, and she made me feel like she was really fascinated, and no one ever seems that interested, and I know she's horrible and threw Ambraea off a cliff and hates L'nessa because of her family ruining her mother's career, but I'm..." the energy starts to go out of Amiti again, and she half slumps into Maia's hands. "This is exactly the sort of thing that Kasi was worried about. I'm always too trusting."

Objectively, she is — it's an exceptionally dangerous trait for a Dynast to have, and you can well imagine why her twin sister would have preferred Amiti be with her at the Spiral Academy instead. Nonetheless, a cold, protective fury blossoms in your chest. You don't have to look around the room to know thatit's reflected in everyone present, to one degree or another. You do see the look on Maia's face, though, and you understand that if you can't do something, she certainly will. You think about Maia's relief earlier at admitting that she's glad Hylo didn't die, and the contrast makes you all the angrier.

---

"Ambraea, I'm quite sure I have no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps she's just lost track of her things. You know how Amiti is." It's the smile that does it — that sympathetic twist of Nalri's lips, with just the hint of cruelty beneath. Whatever else she says to Ambraea after that barely matters. From that moment on, Peleps Nalri's fate is sealed.

Exaltation is rare enough among the patriciate as a whole that each child who joins the ranks of the Dragon-Blooded is an occasion. And so the dinner Maia's family had hosted to celebrate hers had been entirely normal, attended by a significant sampling of Incas Prefecture's patrician households. There had been gifts, an endless stream of congratulations, probing hints to her parents about sons near Maia's age and future marriage arrangements. As was the case in moments like these, it had been briefly possible to pretend that her family was no more than what it presents itself to be.

Then, late in the evening, when the food was eaten and the guests had gone to bed, Maia's grandmother had led her downstairs, through a hidden door and into one of the rooms that Maia ordinarily wasn't allowed free access to. There, a tied and bound woman had awaited her, and a knife had been pushed into her hand. When Maia had asked who the woman was, all anyone would tell her was, simply, "an enemy".

Afterward, Maia's grandmother had held Maia's hands by the wrists, making Maia look at the blood her grandmother had deliberately smeared there, and had told her: "Nothing can ever take this back. An instrument of vengeance, so anointed, may never be unstained again. Always, remember what you are."

As Maia had looked at Peleps Nalri's smile earlier that day, she had remembered. "The shade that you take refuge in, the water that soothes your wounds, the blade at your enemies' throats." In the end, perhaps Ambraea is right not to take immediate action herself. Why should she have to sully herself with such a sordid task? It is, after all, what Maia is for.

Even if, like that dinner, Ambraea makes her forget it sometimes for beautiful, fleeting moments.

Amiti... Maia understands that she should guard her heart better than she does, that anyone from one of the wretched bloodlines of the betrayers have already been marked for death long ago. But even more than L'nessa, Maia's dormmate of five years, something about the Sesus girl slips right through all her defences. Strange, morbid, guileless... and when it matters most, a good friend even when it doesn't benefit her directly. Fortunately enough, Pelep's Nalri's loathsome family is no less deserving of retribution, in the end. Not that her family would be pleased if they knew about her undertaking an unauthorised killing.

No one appreciates a weapon that picks its own targets.

Maia watches silently as Ambraea does her best, too late, to correct what's been done. To get Nalri to admit what she's done, return what she's stolen. Later, even appealing to the school staff at Amiti's urging.

Somewhere near the end of it all, Maia had left an illusion in her place, and slipped away. She almost thinks Ambraea notices when she does it, but if so, Ambraea doesn't say a word.

"She's not in the school."

Maia reminds herself not to go for a knife with some effort — it's been a while since anyone has really gotten the drop on her, Maia turns around to face the voice, recognising it before she sees the owner. "I'm not sure who you mean, my lord," she says.

Simendor Deizil smiles, unfolding himself from where he leans against the wall of the passageway. "You're here skulking alone, coming from the hallway where our Peleps friend's dorm is. Find anything useful, rifling through her things?"

Not particularly — banal correspondences, papers of a not-very-sensitive nature. Minor trinkets and keepsakes. Maia had minimally disturbed the place, as her training demands. She doesn't say this, though. Instead, eyes cast down, posture meek, she says: "I'm sorry, my lord, you must be mistaken."

Deizil's smile takes on a wry cast, and he takes a few steps toward her, looming over Maia. "Oh, you're good at that -- just a boyish little patrician mouse. Is that what Ambraea likes? Do you call her 'my lady' in bed, too?"

"... When it's fun," Maia says, so quietly that it's almost inaudible.

Deizil barks a startled laugh. "I didn't know you had a sense of humour."

"What is it that you want?" Maia asks.

Deizil leans in closer, the sorcerous lights of the hallways casting an irridescent gleam on his hair. "Nalri sent me over that cliff too, you know. Not all of us are as good at overlooking that as your girl is. You notice how frantic that smug bitch has gotten, how all her experiments go just a little bit wrong, or her results turn out unusable?"

Maia tilts her head, curious. "You?"

"Who is to say?" Deizil asks, smile gaining a self satisified twist. But, if it were me... I think I'd just let her graduate like that, a mediocre student from a family that demands excellence. You just know that eats at her. That it infuriates her like nothing else. I'd let her stew on that. Then, years down the line, when I'm a fully fledged sorcerer-prince of Chalan and she's a second-rate navy officer, I'd tell her: 'It was me.'" He pauses, then shrugs. "Just, hypothetically speaking."

Maia can respect it, in a sense. She might even have been satisfied with the knowledge that someone was taking such action already, before what Nalri had done to Amiti. "You know where she is," Maia says.

"Maybe," Deizil says, giving her a searching look. "Ambraea didn't put you up to this. Does she even know you're doing this?"

"She knows where I am," Maia says. Technically, this is always true, if Ambraea cares to check.

"Did you even tell her you were planning anything?" Deizil persists, more and more curious.

Maia hasn't, of course; she'd expressly told Ambraea she wouldn't, in point of fact. Things had simply changed since then. Ambraea would have to find a way to understand.

"My lord, please just tell me where she is," Maia says. As needlessly antagonistic as this boy had been toward Ambraea, Simendor is not necessarily part of the Vendetta, unlike nearly everyone else in the school, student or instructor.

"The entire school knows about Amiti," Deizil says. "What are you going to do if you find her?" There's odd reticence there, the hint of a frown coming through his amusement.

"Does it matter?" Maia asks. This time, she's the one who takes a sharp step forward, looking Deizil straight in the eye. "Is it your concern?"

Despite himself, Deizil takes a half step back. He looks down at her for a moment of further hesitation, then glances away, not meeting the intensity of her gaze. "If she were using Amiti's research to try and get something out of her project, there's a place she'd logically start..."

As he tells her, Maia smiles.

---

When Maia slips away, you notice quickly enough, although you don't draw attention to it. When it means, for hours afterward, you're accompanied to a lecture by a silent, trailing illusion. You're a little surprised that no one else notices, but you suppose that, day to day, not that many people pay close attention to Maia.

You spend that time distractedly checking her precise location through your Hearth sense, so when you put your hand on the latch of your dormitory late in the day, you sense her approach immediately.

"Where have you been?" you ask, frowning as you turn around to look at her.

Maia only flinches a little. "... Solving a problem," she says.

Your grip on the handle intensifies. "Inside," you say, slipping into the dorm. Maia obeys, silently follows you, closing the door behind her. "What did you do?" you ask her, face stern.

Maia doesn't quite meet your eyes. "Amiti is going to find one of her notebooks in her dorm. What's left of it. Water damage."

You narrow your eyes. "Nalri?"

Maia looks up into your face then, her gaze hard. "You won't have to worry about Nalri after this."

Your stomach lurches with alarm. Maia doesn't even flinch as you snatch up her hand, examining it — the cut she'd used to call up her direlash before has been opened again, and hastily bandaged. This close, the scent of salt hangs off of her; she's been in the sea.

"We agreed not to do this!" you hiss, mind racing at the implications.

Maia pulls her hand away from your grasp. "You told me not to," she says, "circumstances changed."

"And you decided this unilaterally?" you ask.

Her expression wavers for a moment, as if she almost loses her nerve. In the end, though, she plucks up her courage and asks: "Am I your Hearthmate, or am I your vassal?"

That stops you short. "What does that have to do with anything?" you ask.

"I love you," Maia says, "I know what's proper in public. I am happy to follow your lead, most of the time. But if you can't make this kind of choice, I'm happy to do that for you too. I swore to."

You just stare for long moments, gripped by a strange combination of indignation and wounded shock. You don't treat Maia like a vassal — you're the Dynast, and it's of course your responsibility to take the lead where required but surely that's not what this is about. "I'm not angry that you disobeyed me, Maia." You stop yourself — it tastes horribly like a lie. "... Well, not only that. I am upset that you'd do something like this behind my back! But, more than that, I am worried for you."

"I... wasn't seen," Maia says.

"You can't know that, Maia!" you say. "And people know that I had trouble with her. I can prove where I was, but how hard is it to think that you could have slipped away exactly like you did? You're fostered by her house! This was reckless!"

This seems to get through to her. She visibly deflates. "No one wants a weapon that chooses its own targets." They're so quiet, you barely make the words out.

"You're not a weapon to me!" You hiss. You feel Verdigris slither out of your sleeve. She lands on your bed, curling up miserably. You're so frustrated, you very nearly kick the wall. "Are we Hearthmates, Maia, or—"

You stop as a familiar knock on the door sounds through the room, polite but firm. A moment later, L'nessa steps through, her eyes widening as she takes in the two of you staring each other down, the abrupt, ragged silence hanging in the air. The three of you just stand like that as seconds crawl by.

Then, in a truly heroic display of polite avoidance, L'nessa changes the subject: "Well, I'm not entirely certain I understood everything about that scrying lecture. Would one of you be willing to lend me your notes?"

"... Of course," you say, trying and failing to relax as Maia does her best to simply fade into the background. You'll think of something.

Article:

Peleps Nalri is dead. Only parts of her body are ever found, washed up on the rocky shore of the Isle of Voices. Perhaps she grew careless, going out into the waters around the Isle alone without proper preparation, and was taken unawares by a spirit or a beast.

But Nalri was no raw Sacrifice taking stupid risks. She was an experienced Seventh Year student, with skills that should ward her against such dangers. That makes this being a tragic accident significantly less likely. Suspicion will fall where it will.

However, you have it in your power to give Maia a false alibi that no one will be able to contest without publicly calling you a liar: As Maia's Hearthmate, your word about where she was when Nalri went missing would carry great weight, should it come into question. This would, of course, require you to publicly announce it, as well as making you secretly complicit in the crime.

What will you do?

[ ] Announce your status as Maia's sworn kin, lie to protect her

[ ] Attempt to keep the secret for at least another year, stay out of it