Vahelo leans over the table in her command tent, staring at the map laid out on it, not meeting Sola's eye. "I assume, if any of you had useful communication sorcery, you would have mentioned it before now?"
"A fair assumption, Talonlord," Sola says, frowning at her.
"It's not an area of study we've explored," you admit. It's an area of sorcery that is extremely useful — at the same time, you can only focus on so much. Having L'nessa around certainly makes things easier in that way, however.
In the days since Yueh Mei cautioned you about animals behaving strangely, her paranoia has not been wholly born out. It has, however, became increasingly more plausible. Sentries who venture out of sight of other soldiers simply vanish. All attempts to communicate with the rest of the Wyld Hunt have gone ominously unanswered, with no sign of any messenger that Vahelo has dispatched to Winglord Sesus Oregano or any of the other nearby groups. In response, the soldiers have been instructed to go nowhere without a fangmate, to greet each other by requesting a code phrase or a piece of private information.
Such precautions can only ever be temporary measures — mortals simply cannot be expected to maintain hypervigilance for long. The truest barrier to subversion from Lunar Anathema must always be the Dragon-Blooded. You would not admit it before any but your Hearthmates, but perhaps more than the enemy you'd already expected to face from the outset, just the thought of a shapeshifting monster like that lurking out in the darkness sets you on edge.
"I might have something," Maia says, voice cautious. She looks directly to Vahelo. "I don't think you'll like it." Maia is standing a ways back from the rest of you, her back up against a wardrobe. Her expression is thoughtful in a way that Vahelo doesn't seem to find reassuring. She has enjoyed Maia's unseen servant's bloodcurdling shriek heralding each and every dawn as little as the rest of you have, even if she has been admirably circumspect about it.
"A demon?" Sister Briar asks, not without a note of disapproval. She has seemingly been meditating for the entire conversation, her eyes closed, kneeling on a nearby rug. You know the monk well enough by this point to have assumed that she'd been listening in to the entire conversation regardless.
"A relatively harmless one," Maia says, unapologetic.
Sola groans. "... Not an oldrasek," she says, giving Maia a pained expression.
Vahelo looks between Maia and Sola, clearly receiving mixed information. "Relatively harmless, Mistress Maia?" she asks.
"Yes," you say, "they're messengers. They're just a little more enthusiastic than is convenient."
"If you don't mind a messenger that will knock a door down rather than wait for it to be unlocked," Sola says.
"The point is," you say, glancing at Briar, "they don't attack mortals or livestock, they don't deliberately destroy infrastructure, and they don't work to actively spread heresy or subversion. This may work, I think." There's no particular need to mention that the paths they travel when delivering their messages, when charted, are theorised to spell out a prayer to the demon princes on a grand scale — it's not immediately important or destructive in any practical sense.
Briar opens an eye a hair, regarding you coolly. "I suppose we shall all simply have to rely on a sorcerer's good judgment then, Lady Ambraea." You have decided that you strongly dislike it when she employs double meanings like that.
"Surely, Sister, it would be more irresponsible to not inform the other groups of information on the Anathema's movements than to it would be to bring one more demon into the world," says Yueh Mei. "Should we fail, others will need to take up our cause."
Briar nods, although reluctantly.
"Even if the winglord doesn't like it, it's better for him to be informed and reprimand me later," Vahelo decides. She doesn't add that she's only temporarily under his command, and that it's her Dragonlord's opinion of her actions that will ultimately carry the most weight, but she doesn't have to. "Will you allow me time to write a message out?" she asks Maia.
Maia nods. "We can't begin until sunset, in any case. The message will have to be read aloud, but the demon will memorise it immediately."
"Very well," Vahelo says. "I will see to it presently."
And so along with Sola, you spend a good part of the night helping Maia summon a lesser demon. You flatten out the earth while Sola draws the circle and prepares the necessary incense. Maia reviews the incantations and the steps of the ritual.
In stark contrast to when you'd sworn your oath, the soldiers want absolutely nothing to do with whatever you're doing, giving it an extremely wide berth, or even deliberately averting their eyes. The latter is for the best, perhaps — even 'relatively harmless' demons can have a corrupting influence on a mortal's character, after all.
As the sun finally slips below the horizon, Maia takes in a deep breath, and begins to speak. She has a tome of profane spirits on a nearby stone outcropping, the pages weighed open for easy reference. Her words speak of the invocation of ancient oaths that compel demonkind to service, of binding and obedience, of the journey the lesser demon must take to reach her here in Creation.
It is hours later, the sky dark overhead, when her efforts finally bear fruit. The summoning circle is lit up by hellish green light, a rift forming in the air, out of which something rolls unceremoniously. It's an orb formed from a series of rotating rings — some bone, some brass some glistening flesh, all surrounding a burning opal the size of your fist at its heart. It's hard to see such detail, however, with how little interest the thing has in staying still. It rolls back and forth within the confines of the circle.
An oldrasek — an eternal wheel, brought forth from the depths of Hell.
"You have a message for me?" the demon asks in Old Realm, despite having no mouth. "A message? A message? A mess—" it repeats the question in a dozen different languages, showing no sign of stopping.
Maia speaks over it: "Hear me, demon — I bind you to my service, to carry a report to Winglord Sesus Oregano, and to bear back his reply. Those two, and no others. Once your task is completed, your binding will end and you will return to where you came from."
Unlike most demons, abruptly torn away from their vast prison and enslaved to the will of another, an improperly bound oldrasek is unlikely to attempt to kill a summoner for supplying it with a message to deliver, if it hadn't already been pursuing one in hell. The real danger in Maia losing control of this particular summon would be that she would have no control over where it went and what it did after delivering its first message, and optimistically a reply. Not nearly so bad as a blood ape loose in the countryside, but still embarrassing.
The binding takes, the rift closes, and the oldrasek forces itself to stop bouncing its way around the circle — it does still seem to be vibrating, but that's more acceptable, under the circumstances. "Ready to receive, Mistress!" it says.
Unphased, Maia unfolds Vahelo's written report and reads it aloud, noting that it's coming by the proxy of Erona Maia, Chosen of Daana'd, as well as by this messenger demon. Stressing one's status as an Exalt doesn't protect a sorcerer from all social consequences, but it never hurts.
As soon as the orders are given, the demon begins to spin in place, the concentric rings of its strange body whirling up to full speed, digging a shallow furrow in the rocky soil beneath it. With a determined cry, it speeds away, vanishing into immateriality as it goes. Maia watches the direction where it went in the darkness for a moment or two. "Anathema could still kill it, but that should be more trouble than sending out another poor mortal to not come back," she says.
"Agreed," Sola says. "I didn't particularly like Oregano — I hope it tears a hole through his tent to get to him."
You do your best not to laugh at that, turning to lead the way back to your own tents, even as Maia stops to scoop up her books and what's left of her supplies. To your surprise, you have a small audience to the entire proceedings. Yueh Mei stands a distance off, where she has apparently been watching the entire time.
"Lady Mei," you say by way of greeting, "you've stayed up late."
She looks up at you, for a moment seeming like she has something on her mind, something in particular she wants to say to you. It passes, though. "I haven't had a reason to watch a demon summoning, before," she says.
"Most don't see the appeal," you say.
"I suppose I've gotten used to the company of sorcerers," Mei says. She nods her head politely, and walks away toward the tents ahead of you.
"You're certain that the smoke is coming from the village?"
"Yeah, no mistaking that, Talonlord." Stinging Nettle, fully embodying her guide persona, stands beside her austrech, keeping a firm hand on the bird's reigns to stop it from biting at Vahelo if she drifts too close. Nettle herself keeps her eyes cast down as appropriate when addressing a Dynast. "Smoke column like that, it's not a bonfire."
Tepet Usala Sola gives her a hard, narrow-eyed look. "You've seen a burning village before, then?"
"You see a lot of things traveling through the mountains, my lady," the guide says. To everyone, she has an unavoidably crooked air about her, beyond any physical appearance. A poacher at the very least. It isn't precisely the same as the one Nettle gives off normally, but Grace still has to concede it's a very convenient Resplendent Destiny — the less one needs to act against one's base nature, the easier it is to keep up the disguise.
"How far?" Vahelo asks.
"Half a day, at our current pace," Sister Briar says, her voice very grim. Seeing the other Dragon-Blooded look to her, she shakes her head. "It's not my village. But I know it, I pass through it on my circuit twice a year. I've ministered to their spiritual wellbeing, I've driven off minor spirits that trouble them. I've spoken the names of their children for them." She takes in a long, slow breath. "Talonlord, I am going, even if it's alone."
"That should hardly be necessary," Ambraea says, her face blankly stony in that particular way it gets when she's pretending not to be upset. Ambraea might look at unfamiliar servants and peasants the same way she does furniture, most of the time, but Grace has never known her to be so callous as to be unaffected by the prospect of Realm citizens butchered by Anathema. "We can have no clearer sign of where the Anathema have been. We are meant to be protecting these people, are we not?"
For her own part, Grace has had a cold, sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach ever since she saw the smoke drifting up over the nearest hills.
"It doesn't seem like there's another sensible course of action," Vahelo says. She grimaces lightly. "I just wish we'd known about this when we sent that demon." She looks to Bright Thrush — the scalelord is always a study in contrasts to Vahelo, easily twice her size and old enough to be her father. "Scalelord, have us moving in an hour, prepared for combat at the end of the march. I doubt the monsters will still be lingering by the time we arrive, but it wouldn't pay to be caught unawares."
"At once, my lady," Thrush says. His expression is carefully respectful, but his tone has that faintly approving quality it always takes on whenever the acting talonlord behaves in a way that seems vaguely sensible. Grace isn't a military woman by any means, but she can understand the benefits of pairing a young commander up with a much more seasoned second.
As the camp begins the process of packing itself up and going on its way once again, Grace heads to her tent to change and properly equip herself for the day ahead. She slips under the loosely closed flap, and freezes.
"Sorry, let myself in while no one was looking at me," Nettle says. She's seated on a rickety little wooden chair that Grace keeps expecting to fall apart in between camps, tilting it precariously back on its hind legs as she waits. Notably, it's just Nettle — she seems to have slipped her Resplendent Destiny off for the moment. That presumably means she intends to break character, at least for a short time.
"I didn't ask," Grace asks, "but what exactly have you been wearing. The Gull?"
"The Guardians," Nettle says. "Gull's good if you want people to think you're a shifty drifter or some kind of out-doorsy crook. The point of what I'm trying to do here, though, is that they need to think I have rustic knowledge they can use."
"I see," Grace says, waiting.
Nettle lets the chair fall forward back onto all four of its legs — it creaks ominously. "Right," she says, looking uncharacteristically serious for a moment. "You seen a raided village before?"
Grace blinks. "No?" she says.
Nettle nods. "Yeah, it's what I figured — palace girl, and all. Whole point of a palace is the ugly shit is happening to someone else where you don't have to see." Grace doesn't respond, instead waiting for Nettle to get to her point. "Right, okay, so, I was younger than you, first time I saw one. Well, I didn't just find it, I guess — shitty little settlement, never had much to begin with. But, their headman got a little mouthy to my old boss, disrespected her in front of a crowd. Even if they weren't really holding out on us, that can't stand, right?"
Grace does not want to hear this story. "Why are you telling me this?" she asks.
Nettle sighs, running a hand through her short hair. "I'm going somewhere with it. So, yeah. We come back that night to 'teach them a lesson', the boss said. The kind of lesson that kills you, not the kind that you actually learn something from. Then we burned it all. Houses weren't made of much, they went up like kindling. Whole thing took a couple hours, but I just... it doesn't seem like a lot of people, until they're all dead, you know? Everything smelled like blood and ash and burning hair. I..." she shrugs uncomfortably, grimacing a little. "Well, I needed a minute. The boss was understanding, at least. She could be that way, right after she finished doing something atrocious. She thought it was good leadership, I think."
Grace closes her eyes, taking in a meditative breath, and letting it out. Knowing that you're traveling with a barely repentant bandit is one thing, a thief and a murderer elevated to high office instead of facing any true justice. But she hadn't needed to hear it described so cavalierly. "Where, exactly, were you going with this?" she asks, making her voice stay calm. She suddenly doesn't want to be alone in this tent with Nettle.
Nettle gets to her feet, crosses her arms over her chest, takes a step toward Grace. When Grace automatically takes a step back, she gives something like a self conscious grin. "Yeah, thought you'd take it like that. The point I'm making, though, is that that was bad for me, and I was a hardened killer already — killed a man over a loaf of fucking bread when I was twelve, and it was all downhill from there. There's a difference between that, and what we're going to walk into today."
"Are you trying to tell me that I won't like seeing a group of murdered shepherds? I knew that," Grace says.
Nettle shrugs. "Everyone thinks they know that, but they're fucking wrong. It's always worse, unless you're some kind of murder-horny freak. Take a minute if you can make it discreet. You're wearing a destiny from the House of Battles, and not a green inexperienced conscript or nothing — you fall apart when you see what we're going to see today, and you're going to damage the destiny, or make someone start asking questions. Or lose your shit when we're going to be jumped by an Anathema."
Grace nods slowly, not sure how to take the combination of Nettle's nonchalance for her past crimes and seeming genuine concern for Grace. "I see," Grace says. "Thank you for your... anecdote."
Nettle shrugs again. "Just remember it, and follow my lead, whatever happens. We need to have each other's backs out here." She makes as though to leave — something pushes Grace to ask one last question first:
"Are you sorry?" Grace asks.
Nettle stops up, tilting her head to the side as she considers the question. Like it's not something she thinks about in those terms very often. "Dunno," Nettle admits. "The village wasn't my call, the others would have burned it anyway if I'd never joined up, or just fucked off over them doing that. Still, glad that's not the kind of shit I have to do anymore. This job's been a real step up — You can always tell you're moving up in the world when you don't have to see so many of the bodies." Finished, she slips her Resplendent Destiny back on, becoming the guide once again. Then she steps out of the tent without a further word.
As ever, Yueh Mei's guide has an uncanny knack for finding a route that leads an entire column of soldiers on a route that very nearly turns half a day's march into a morning's hard work. When you crest a hill and the buildings come into view, you can see Sister Briar give a start of surprise. She casts a sidelong glance in the guide's direction, but is perhaps too distracted by the looming horrors of the situation ahead of her.
The village itself is built on a shelf just above the base of one of the mountains surrounding the valley you find yourself in, accessible by a long, narrow path that gradually climbs up to it. Carving straight through that path is a narrow, fast-moving stream, spanned by a wooden bridge. What you can see of the buildings isn't encouraging — smoke rises as thick and dark as it had seemed from a distance, and you can see what looks like vultures circling above.
"I don't like that slope for the horses," Briar says, already dismounting to go on foot. With perhaps slightly more reservation, Vahelo and the officers likewise dismount, preparing to make the climb on foot.
When you've let someone take your horse, you eye the cliff face to your right speculatively. "A moment," you say, selecting a jagged slate edifice. Vahelo eyes you with surprise, but allows you to carry out what you have in mind.
Placing a hand against the stone, you take in a deep breath, communing with the Earth Essence of the mountain itself. Then you pull at the stone, urging it to flow up your arm, creeping past your shoulder, over your chest, and slowly down your remaining limbs. The process takes several minutes, but you're left wearing something very much like a set of articulated plate formed wholly from dark, polished stone. Through the vagaries of magic, it doesn't feel significantly heavier than mundane metal would have.
"Show off," Sola says, rolling her eyes in a joking sort of way. She herself is wearing much more mundane lamellar armour, each plate bearing a Melaist prayer or inscription. She has a round wooden shield across her back again, this time sturdier than the one she'd lost during the school year — it's bound in metal, with the mon of House Tepet painted prominently across it. "Let's see how you enjoy walking up the hill in that."
You shrug, still in the process of letting Verdigris slither back down to your shoulder — she'd taken refuge on your head when the process had started. Now, she noses tentatively at the surface of your armour... before simply slipping directly into it, the bronze serpent coming to adorn your breastplate like a metallic inlay. You hadn't considered that when you'd managed to give her this ability, but it gives you several ideas that you file away for a different time. You don't think you're going to have much in the way of energy to consider academic topics once you get to the top of the hill. "I'll manage," you say.
You all make the slow, cautious climb up the hill, the talon moving in single file along the narrow path. While your endurance is up to the task, you have to admit that Sola wasn't wrong about the armour making it a little harder on you. Every step produces a strange, almost musical stone-on-stone sound as the stone plates shift.
Every step also makes the thin mountain air a little more acrid, your eyes and throat burning with smoke. The mortals seem to suffer under it more than the Dragon-Blooded, until the wind mercifully shifts, carrying the worst of it away. The wind also carries a cloud bank over the mountainside, casting the entire scene into shadow.
As you near the crest of the hill, you spot something down near the base, near to a flock of sheep grazing untended on the grassy mountainside. A dark, human form, lays shattered on top of a boulder below — as if they'd jumped. Or been thrown. You steel yourself for what you're about to find.
The outlying buildings have been gutted by fire, thatch-roofed hovels reduced to little more than piles of smouldering ash. The more substantial buildings toward the centre of town, ones that must have served more of a communal function, or belonged to what passed for well-to-do in a place like this, are a little more intact, their rooves gone, some of their interiors still burning.
Around these buildings, the dead are piled like kindling, all the village's inhabitants cut down by blades or, horribly, claws. Even the small Immaculate shrine, humble with its slate roof and brightly painted wooden dragon statues, hasn't escaped desecration — the corpse of a youth lays sprawled over it. Perhaps having held out a last, desperate hope that they might have spared him the ravages of the savage Anathema.
Sister Briar stands ahead of the rest of you, looking out at it with a horrible blank expression on her face. Not a thing stirs in the scene other than billowing smoke and the birds circling up above. The monk closes her eyes, pulls a string of prayer beads the sash around her waist, and begins to murmur a prayer for the dead. Yueh Mei stands stock still, a hand over her mouth — in horror or deep thought, you can't quite say.
The rest of you are silent, staring around at the ruins of the village, the soldiers filing in behind you. Then Sola takes a deep breath, and screams at the top of her voice: "Show yourselves, you cowardly slime!"
Her voice resounds against the mountainside, unanswered by anything but its own echoes and, far below, the plaintive calls of a few startled sheep.
Beside you, Maia takes a step back, coming up against the still-standing wall of what may have been a meeting hall, two days ago. For some reason, her eyes are fixed on the birds overhead. "Spider." She says it low, like she doesn't intend for it to carry far. In response, a spirit materialises on the wall beside her — an anhule of the same small, grey variety that you once saw Mnemon Rulinsei conversing with.
The spider scuttles close to Maia's ear, whispering something there. Maia glances up at the birds overhead again, then back at the bodies. She turns to look at you, her eyes going very wide. "They hadn't landed," she says.
"I'm sorry?" you don't quite follow her.
She speaks in a low hiss, for your ears only. "They're here because they smell a meal, but we didn't scare them off, they were already in the air. Vultures are shy, they don't land if there are people around, or anything that scares them. The demon says it smells necromancy."
You whirl around, taking in the sight of the corpses all around you as if seeing it for the first time. You experience a vivid flashback to Amiti animating bodies from nothing but a pile of centuries old bone, and a deep chill runs down your spine. You draw your sword, stepping forward to seize Vahelo by the shoulder. She turns to look up at you, startled, but not pulling away. "It's a necromancer!" you say, letting your voice carry where Maia's didn't. "We're not safe here!"
To Vahelo's great credit, whether she fully takes your meaning or not, she hears the urgency in your voice, and acts without any hesitation. She looks around at her soldiers, raising her voice to carry: "Form up, three ranks between those buildings, slings in back, the edge of the cliff to our back!" Her scalelords start at the suddenness of the order, but they waste little time, conveying her words to the soldiers under their command in hurried Low Realm.
In short order, you, your Hearthmates, Vahelo, and Yueh Mei stand behind a wall of soldiers, the short line stretching between the remains of two largeish buildings build close to the edge of the shelf. Most of the dead are laying near the centre of the village — they're outside your line. As is, unfortunately, Sister Briar.
"Sister!" Sola shouts to her. "Sister, the Anathema is a necromancer!"
This seems to pierce the veil of her grief. Her eyes snap over to you all, but then they fix on something behind you.
Before you can follow her gaze to check behind you, something lands on the ground at your feet, carelessly tossed there — it's one of the carved wooden dragons from the village shrine. You turn to face the direction of the structure. It's set at the very edge of the cliff, separated by the line of soldiers by an open expanse of rocky ground, presumably left there for a crowd to form for festivals and other religious ceremonies. The corpse of the youth that had been draped over the altar has sat up, plainly alive. A pale, thin thing with a vaguely Northern cast and the kind of breakability that some people appreciate in a young man. A noticeable ring of scar tissue encircles his throat, as though it had once borne a prisoner's collar. His wrists bear similar marks, when your eyes flick to them.
He perches on the edge of the wooden altar like he owns it, one leg casually crossed over the other. In one hand he holds another of the Dragon statues, idly examining its painted body and the bright stones that serve as Pasiap's eyes. Outrageously, while making eye contact with you, he uses the tip of the dagger he holds in the other hand to pry at one of them.
"What do you think you're doing?" You demand, taking a furious step forward, not yet thinking.
"Ambraea, it's him!" You would have pieced it together momentarily even without Maia's warning — who else could the strange youth be? — but she stops you short, making you regard him more warily.
The boy just gives you a thin smile, with just the hint of a malicious smirk. He doesn't say anything at all, but something about the expression alone conveys a statement with complete clarity: He was just wondering if dragons are as blind as they look.
Behind you, you hear the sound of many bodies scuffling on the ground and a wordless cacophony of groans and screams. Every one of the corpses has gotten to their feet, zombies one and all. You hear a startled, stifled scream from one of the soldiers, horrified at the sight.
From the far side of the village, a woman literally crawls out of a crevice in the mountainside like an insect emerging from its burrow. She straightens, revealing herself to be tall, Southern, her hair a dark, tangled curtain matted with blood. She's barely wearing a stitch, revealing almost every inch of the intricate moonsilver tattoos covering her muscular body. What clothes she is wearing are stained as red as her hair, and her face and chest are adorned with necromantic runes drawn in blood. She grins once, an oddly human, nervous gesture. Then in a flash of silver, she becomes something truly nightmarish.
Yellow-green chitin creeps over her skin. A set of gigantic insect wings sprout from her back, beating furiously even as she propels herself up into the air on massive grasshopper legs. A pair of antennae sprout from her forehead, twitching in the breeze — most profanely of all, between them, the silver ring of an Ogre's Mark blossoms to life, setting every line of her tattoos blazing silver. She speaks a single word in Flametongue, and the horde of zombies surges forward, slamming into the wall of red-and-black painted shields.
At the back of your head, a small part of your mind wonders if Vahelo ordered the talon to form up where she did to make sure that there's nowhere for the mortals to break and run to.
Briar, at risk of being swamped in undead, pulls her longbow free from her shoulder, somehow using it like a staff to force her way through the throng, heading straight for the witch hovering over the zombies.
You can't afford to pay too much attention to the Ogre, however — there's another Anathema much closer at hand. "Do we look blind?" you demand, glaring at the youth, bringing your daiklave up in an opening guard. Beside you, Sola unhooks her shield from her back, and does the same.
The Anathema only smiles. Yes, you do.
Up above, one of the circling vultures swoops down out of the sky, going into such a steep dive that it can't hope to pull up before crashing into the cliff-face. That, it turns out, is the intent — in a flash of silver light, the bird becomes a man, a grand goremaul held in both of his hands, aiming to crash straight down on top of Maia, club-first.
"Maia, move!" you shout, your composure breaking entirely for just a moment.
Maia looks up, starts to dart back, but not fast enough. The goremaul crashes down on shoulders, smashing her flat into the earth with the sound of a rolling thunderclap, setting the very ground beneath your feet rumbling. The third Anathema lands heavily beside her, a savage grin spreading across his face, moonsilver lines glowing from beneath his clothes as the silver disc of a Frenzied blazes to life on his brow.
Rather than watch the woman you love be crushed by a weapon as tall as she is, however, the Maia that he has just struck dissipates into mist. The Frenzied stares in surprise — you could have laughed with relief.
Three more Erona Maias step out from within the ranks of soldiers or from behind the buildings, each of them holding a summoned Blood Lash in a newly-bleeding hand. Without your Hearth sense, it would be difficult to tell which is real, and which are merely more illusions created through Sculpted Seafoam Eidolon. "I'm still here," all three of them assure you in unison.
The Frenzied scoffs, disgusted with Maia, or himself, shouldering his jade tetsubo, tensed to continue the fight. He looks straight at you, and under any other circumstances, the intensity of his hatred might have made you want to flinch. "Don't worry," he says, his voice frighteningly soft. "I'll show you what her brains look like yet, before the end."
Vahelo stares at the Anathema that have suddenly appeared behind her, her sword drawn, clearly overwhelmed by the sudden escalation the situation has undergone. Unable to do anything else, she turns her attention back to her talon, still fighting for their lives against the reanimated villagers.
The youth smiles at the Frenzied's words, tossing the Pasiap statue over the side of the cliff as he slides to his feet. With a smooth motion, he raises his right hand, closing it around a hilt that seems to solidify from the air at his side. Pure noonday sunlight forms the elegant length of a daiklave in his hand, casting the entire area into a dazzling glow.
At this point, something inexplicable happens, the details of which will later flee from your head, as if they'd never occurred, replaced by far more reasonable memories you will only question years later. A braided cord of red leather and red jadesteel cracks through the air, grazing the Frenzied's face, sparking where it makes contact with his skin. He screams in pain and fury.
"Don't like cheapshots so much when you're not the one making them, do you?" asks the woman holding the direlash. Her other hand holds the leg of an ordinary looking mospid, the flying lizard somehow having carried her entire body weight up the cliff on its raptor-like wings. Her eyes snap to Yueh Mei, who has so far stood frozen through these events. "Kid!" she says, jerking her head back in a come here sort of gesture. Yueh Mei immediately breaks into a run, actually leaping over the edge of the cliff, throwing both arms around the woman's neck, hanging from her back. The woman offers the Frenzied a lazy salute with the handle of her direlash, and the mospid wings away, carrying both of its passengers down toward the grassy hillside where the sheep had been grazing before.
The Frenzied, eyes filled with an unnatural rage, a strange brand glowing on his face in red Essence, literally turns on his heel and charges after them, leaping his way down the cliff face, going from crag to rocky protrusion as fast as if he were running over open ground.
Whatever else, the Blasphemous hadn't expected that anymore than you had, and he now finds himself face to face with three Dragon-Blooded on his own. Nonetheless, he drops into an expertly formed guard, daiklave in one hand, dagger in the other. You and Sola move on him as one.
"Kid!" Nettle meets Grace's eye, gesturing for Grace to go with her. She doesn't know what Nettle is planning, and she's still not entirely certain she trusts Nettle. But Grace does trust Holok, and he wouldn't have told her to follow Nettle's lead without good reason. Almost before she knows what she's doing, Grace is leaping off the edge of the cliff, wrapping both arms around Nettle's neck, clinging on for dear life.
With a flap of Grinner's wings, they sail away down the cliff face trailing yellow starlight. From Grace's awkward angle, she can barely twist her head around to see the Full Moon following them with murder written in his every motion. Grace's guilt at leaving Ambraea like this is only partly assuaged by the knowledge that she's facing one less Anathema than she might otherwise be. Nettle and Grace scatter panicking sheep before them as they come in for a landing, and by the time that Nettle lets go of Grinner's leg, she has very little distance to fall, coming to stand on the hill with surefooted ease. Grace herself stumbles, and has to hold onto Nettle for a further moment to keep herself from tumbling down the grassy hill.
"Good job not falling," Nettle says.
"Happy to have contributed to our success," Grace replies. The trip down has at least helped her shake off the worst of the paralysing horror of that village, the sight and the stench of an honest, peaceful existence cut short so monstrously. As much as she wishes it weren't true, Nettle had been right to warn her. Grace's sarcasm draws a brief chuckle from Nettle, who hasn't taken her eyes off the Full Moon since landing.
The Full Moon leaps the final distance to land near to them in a crouch, still holding the tetsubo against his shoulder in both hands. Staring daggers, he straightens up to his full, impressive height. He takes them in, eyes lingering on the sign of Mercury glowing faintly on Nettle's brow. Silvery anima blooms around him, seeming to coalesce on his skin, solidifying into plates of rippling moonsilver, protecting himself for the battle to come. His weapon is truly monstrous — a towering piece of carved snakewood thicker than a man's leg, the wood's distinctive pattern still visible through layer upon layer of blue jade lacquer. Rows of jadesteel spikes encircle the club at regular intervals, small arcs of lightning periodically playing between them to match its wielder's mood. Coiling between and around the spikes, a dragon is painted on the tetsubo's surface, the long handle forming its tail. In the hands of an Anathema, the Immaculate weapon looks to Grace like nothing so much as a heretical joke.
Grace takes the time to step back from Nettle, taking up the weapon coiled at her waist. Sixteen feet of finely braided rope, a razor sharp blade secured at one end. Grace carefully watches both Nettle and the Anathema as they stare one another down, at the same time uncoiling the rope dart to bring it up to speed, long hours of practice making the flowing motions involved oddly calming.
Nettle grins at the Full Moon. She's adopted a deliberately provocative stance, her direlash in one hand, the other planted jauntily against one hip. "I don't get on well enough with jade to make actual fire with my old friend here," she says, meaning her direlash, "but pissing people off? That's red jade too, and it's a bit of a special talent of mine." Real flame or not, sparks crackle off the surface of the weapon with every motion — it's still a terrifyingly potent weapon, even in a Sidereal's hands. "That's a real nice beatstick you've got there, though. You know how to use it for anything other than killing shepherd families in their fucking beds?"
The only warning is a low growl and a burst of white-silver light, and the Full Moon blurs forward, swinging the tetsubo for Nettle's head as if it weighs nothing. She ducks with a laugh, backpedaling in a deceptively uncoordinated scramble of limbs. The tetsubo slams into a nearby boulder — there's another thunderclap, the ground shaking ever so slightly, and the boulder actually shatters under the impact.
Nettle is well clear by that point. Her limbs move impossibly fast, refusing to stay still, arms seeming to form a ring of trailing, confounding phantom arms behind her as her Caste Mark grows out to form a wheat yellow mospid-feather halo around her head. Her whip cracks out in reprisal for his attack, but the Full Moon bats it aside with the Tetsubo.
Grace circles wide around them both, her stance low, her posture almost supernaturally forgettable, even the rope dart barely making a sound as it whirls through the air beside her in a steady circle. It's capable of hitting harder than most suspect, but looking at the moonsilver carapace that the Full Moon has covered himself in, Grace doesn't trust her own strength alone to strike true. A calmly analytical part of her mind fights its way through the heart-pounding terror of her situation, like a parent gently guiding her hand. She does what she knows needs to be done.
Once, there was a maiden...
... who learned that the faster she ran, the faster she could run.
For a fractured instant, the seemingly endless days of Singular Grace's predestined life stretch out before her. At her will, several of them in the far distance crumble to ash, never to be realised. The vitality stolen from this tiny piece of her own lifespan floods Grace's limbs with a painful jolt, burning in her muscle and bone like violet flame, but giving her the strength that she needs.
"Laughing Monster," the Full Moon says, disgust and anger dripping from his lips as he stares at Nettle, "a style for vicious cowards. Perfect for—"
With a flick of her wrist, Grace's rope dart spears straight for his face, drawing a line of blood along his scarred cheek. The Full Moon lets out an angry hiss, wheeling to face Grace so quickly that his foot draws a furrow in the grass. The brilliant moonfire of his anima banks higher around him. For just a moment, the bones of his legs shift and lengthen, the muscle of his arms seem to bulge, his body rearranging itself to bring as much speed and power to bear on Grace as he can. She knows simply by looking at him, at the way he fights, the way he talks, the way he carries himself, that in this man's hands a single blow from that weapon will kill her.
However temporarily, though, Stinging Nettle has deliberately made herself Grace's student. This comes with some benefits — pulled by the shadowy bond of master and student, Nettle almost seems to slide into the Full Moon's path. The whip whirls over her head once, twice, then snaps out to meet his charge head on. This time, it snakes past his guard, cracking beside his ear deafeningly, accompanied by the sound of ninety-eight phantom hands clapping at once. The attack goes wide, and the Full Moon staggers, disorientated. Grace still feels the rush of wind from the weapon going past her and Nettle both.
Grace takes advantage of the situation, darting around to the far side of the Full Moon. This time, she sends the rope dart sailing for the armour gap right behind his knee, propelled by a carefully aimed kick. It strikes home, and when she pulls it back to herself, the tip of the blade is red. Leaning aside to avoid the returning dart, Grace lets the rope wrap itself around her body, spinning to bring it back to her side, ready to strike again.
"I am Wounded Hound, Chosen of Luna, survivor of the Scarlet Empress's deepest dungeons and cruelest torments!" the Full Moon shouts. "Fight me head on, you skulking rats!"
Nettle laughs again, full-throated with malicious glee. "Right, right, so sorry, my mistake — I figured you were used to taking things from behind. How many years were you the Empress's bitch, exactly?"
Wounded Hound goes pale and still with transcendent fury, white hot rage somehow beyond anything that Nettle had managed to induce so far, even with the magic of her direlash. When he speaks, his voice is the calm of a deadly promise. "I don't care who or what you are — you have made light of my decades of torture. For that, I am going to break every bone in your body and leave you to slowly suffocate in your own blood."
"Yeah," Nettle says, seemingly unaffected, "you'd be shocked at how often I hear that."
Grace has already slipped away and out of sight, obscured by another large rock, Venus's mark glowing coolly on her brow, her own life still burning painfully in her body. Overlooked again, Grace prepares herself for her next move.
The Anathema doesn't give you the chance to close the distance with him. He steps forward, his summoned sword whirling into a perfect overhead cut. You catch it on your daiklave, the searing heat uncomfortably close to your face as you fight to keep the sword from snaking past your guard and into your throat. It still scores a shallow cut across your nose, drawing a hiss of pain — it's like being cut by a sword still red hot from the forge.
Sola appears behind him in a burst of electricity, trying to take advantage of his distraction. His offhand dagger catches Storm's Eye once, twice, three times, the good steel of the dagger's crossguard straining against the daiklave's orichalcum edge, but holding firm.
Maia's blood lash streaks for the air, the barbs at its head glistening in the light of his sword as it strikes at his face in reprisal for your wound. Disengaging from both you and Sola at once, he rolls back, coming up again in a guard without missing a beat. He's not even breathing hard, although the golden disc blazing malevolently on his brow is a clear sign of the supernatural effort he's exerting. It's obvious that things haven't gone to plan for the Anathema — he and the Frenzied had intended to form a pincer with the Ogre and her reanimated victims, driving you together where you couldn't fight to your fullest without risking harm to the mortals from your own raging anima. He still seems to be doing well enough, nonetheless.
The Blasphemous meets your gaze from across the shoty distance, and actually smiles. Your looks favour your mother. That makes this easy for him.
"Harder than killing helpless peasants, I imagine," you tell him.
He laughs darkly, an odd sound, his voice rusty from disuse. It's the first noise you've heard from him. As he laughs, you see for the first time that he has no tongue. In a real sense, killing the villagers was much harder for him than doing this to you.
On the far side of the line of soldiers, there's a rush of necromantic power, a wind kicking up that carries a fetid stench with it. Shards of spectral bone and trailing streamers of rotting meat rise up from the ground beneath the Ogre, orbiting her slowly at first, before picking up speed with shocking quickness. A legionnaire at the front of the line cries out as a bone shard strikes him through a gap in his armour, the moment of distraction letting three of the zombified villagers seize him and drag him under their weight. The woman behind him rushes in to fill the gap, not without a horrified cry of her own.
The mortals can't withstand this forever, and as much as you admire the sister's experience and skill in these matters, she's fighting an Anathema alone. Maia's thoughts run in the same direction. Surprising you both, her and her illusions all look to Sola. "The monk can't hold out on her own, you can get through that and get to her."
Sola hesitates, the enemy she's come all this way to throw herself against is here in front of her. "You're my Hearthmates," she reminds you.
"Yes, and right now, your duty to your Hearth is not letting our allies die while you can stop it!" Maia says. "Like what I did for L'nessa back at the Versino!"
Sola is not used to Maia speaking to her in such a manner, but she adjusts quickly. "You're right," she says. As she says it, the Blasphemous comes forward in a lunge that seeks to spear her through, or at least prevent her from going anywhere — you interpose yourself, turning the sunlight blade away to let it scratch a hot furrow into the pauldron of your stony armour.
"Both of you, stay alive!" Sola tells you. Then in another burst of wind and lightning, she leaps over the front lines, landing on the writhing shoulders of the undead, using them as a spring board to leap directly into the path of the storm of flensing bone shards.
The Blasphemous, intent on pushing his advantage now that he's only facing two Dragon-Blooded rather than three, redoubles his attacks. Effortlessly, he puts you on the backfoot, movements flowing into one another with impossible grace. It's not like with Yoxien — Yoxien was inhumanly potent, ancient and powerful, but he'd fought like a spirit. Bursts of uncanny speed, sorcerous knowledge from Hell and the Realm Before, demonic magic relating to his peculiar nature. The Anathema fights you much more like a human, but in the way his smile doesn't leave his face, in the number of times he scores a bruising cut against your armour just because he can, on the small, burning wounds he leaves on your face again and again, in the way that he so casually fends off your and Maia's every effort to harm him, you understand that he is simply a better swordsman than you, or anyone you've ever fought. It terrifies you.
But he's also arrogant in that knowledge.
You catch a sword strike aiming for your head with the blade of your sword, and channel a burst of seismic force into the jadesteel itself. It sets his sunfire sword painfully vibrating in his hand as your anima roars up around you, and the weapon flies away through the air, landing in the dirt. It leaves an opening that neither you nor Maia are going to pass up.
The Anathema lunges for his fallen sword, but you, Maia, and both of her illusions move to strike at the same time. You step into his path, your daiklave coming down on him as he kneels to scoop up his sword. He throws up his dagger again, his arm straining from the force of your blow, the White Serpent's edge cutting a visible notch into the mundane weapon's blade. Maia and her illusions — he still can't reliably tell which of them is real — uncoil their blood lashes at the same time that she shouts: "Now!"
A billowing cloud materialises out of the air near the Immaculate shrine. From within its obscuring depth, an insectoid limb emerges, bearing a fearsome looking axe. A second holds a flail. A third, a spear. You recognise it instantly as a Tomescu, the very same demon that has been waking you up every sunrise with a bone-chilling scream. For the first time, you find yourself grateful that Maia summoned it.
The Solar, still caught on one knee with only his offhand dagger, trapped beneath the weight of your sword, sees the demon coming for him as it scrabbles on ten-thousand unseen legs, sees the descending Blood Lash that will lay his flesh open. Then sunlight explodes up around him, his anima soaring up into the cloudy sky, searing the image of a soaring garda bird into your retinas in white gold.
The Anathema moves almost too fast to see — you may as well have all been standing still. He rolls out from under your blade, shoots to his feet, plunges his dagger into a slender gap in your armour, filling your side with the sensation of fiery Essence burning you from the inside out. By the time you've registered this, he's already stepped away, hitting all three of the images of Maia, dissipating two of them into mist, slashing the throat of the real one. Maia lurches back, nearly falls over the edge of the cliff, waving on the edge of collapse as her free hand goes up to stop her jugular from fountaining blood.
Not finished, the Anathema meets the onrushing demon head on, weaving around its scything weapons, stabbing its unseen body three times in rapid succession — the creature howls with burning pain, seemingly rebuked by the Anathema's very nature. The spirit shrinks back, collapsing onto the stone at the Anathema's feet.
Your vision wavers, your legs threaten to buckle, but you refuse, even as you watch the Anathema hold out a hand. His fallen sword flies into it, burning the same defiant gold as his anima. With a hard glare, he plunges the weapon into the Tomescu, silencing it.
You stare at Maia, willing the wound she's taken not to be quite so terrible, for her to, somehow, be alright. She stares back at you, blood still welling up between the fingers of the hand she has pressed to her neck, steaming from the heat of the Solar Essence filling her wound. As you watch, she opens her mouth and mouths three words to you.
The monk fires off a flurry of arrows, even as she weaves around the clutching, grasping hands and snapping teeth of the zombies around her.
Hope For Rain summons up the darkness of night to obscure herself in, her wings carrying her back and away with a loud thrum. She lets out a hiss of pain as one of the arrows hits home, punching straight through the gossamer membrane of her lower left wing. At least it didn't catch.
"Shadows can't hide you from the justice of the Dragons, monster!" the monk shouts, her eyes full of hate. And well they might be — Hope didn't miss the look of recognition on the woman's face when she'd seen the bodies, and that was before they'd gotten up and started trying to eat her.
"The Dragons have no justice, they're a self-glorifying fantasy!" Hope hisses back. "Die with their name on their lips if it suits you!" The whirling debris of Hope's spell pass her minions by, the Flesh and Bone Wind honing in on her enemies with malicious intent. Even as Hope watches, it takes its toll on the monk, tearing at her skin and robes, a bone shard having embedded itself between the links of the chainmail she wears between the humble garment.
The soldiers are holding out better than Hope had hoped for — she'd wanted to spring this ambush before they'd had a chance to properly form up, and it had been Hound's job to lay into their rear ranks, scattering them like kindling. As it is, they've dug in, and Beacon is seemingly too busy fighting the remaining Dragon-Blooded to take Hound's place in the plan. She'll need to give them something worse to think on.
She beats her wings harder, rising up into the air. Hope's antennae twitch — beneath the scents of smoke and blood and death, she still detects green and growing things on the mountainside. A stand of stubborn, stunted trees grow on the mountainside above the village. Calling upon their living Essence, Hope begins to speak a sorcerous incantation, prepared to unleash a storm of obsidian butterflies onto the helpless ranks of mortals.
A figure wreathed in Air Essence leaps over the line of struggling soldiers, lands on the shoulder of a zombie, then leaps again, appearing at the monk's side in a flash of lighting. To Hope's alarm, the howling necromantic winds of her earlier spell don't seem to touch the new Dragon-Blood. The veins of jadesteel in the blade of the daiklave she holds pulse out at regular intervals, surrounding her in a sphere of calm that Hope's necromancy can't touch. She's chanting something — Hope recognises it too late as counter magic, the Dragon-Blood's own sorcerous knowledge wrestling with Hope's. She hadn't been prepared for this — with a cry of frustration, Hope is forced to let the spell go, the backlash temporarily cutting off her flow of sorcerous Essence entirely.
Below, the monk has switched momentarily to fending off the zombies that try to come for the two of them, circling around the Air Aspect with honed efficiency, cracking skulls and tossing uncoordinated bodies back into the mass of their fellows. "Can you spare them the rest of this indignity?" the monk asks her.
The Air Aspect shoots a stormy glare up at Hope, then shakes her head. "I can work to undo the spell doing this to them, but I'm not a necromancer, it won't be easy. And if they turn back into regular corpses, that wind spell is just going to feed off of them. Look!" Proving the sorcerer's point, the bodies of a fallen zombie and a fallen legionnaire blow past, carried up and away by the whirling storm. Both bodies are shredded, adding to the lethal debris, strengthening the spell's howling wind.
"Then can you do anything about the storm before it gets worse?" the monk says, having to shout to be heard over the wind now.
The Air Aspect looks briefly like she wants to argue — looking up at Hope as though she'd much rather be putting that sword to use against the one responsible for the spells directly. But she steels herself, and nods. "I'll try. Keep them off me." She holds her sword in both hands, somehow using it as a channel for her sorcery, seeking to fray the edges of Hope's spell.
It feels insultingly like being ignored, and as much as Hope feels an increasing panic at the back of her head that this is all going horribly wrong, a seething, primal rage, that familiar companion to all Lunars, wells up from her very Essence. She reaches up to her head, tearing three dark hairs out by the roots, each held between her fingers. With a surge of silvery-dark Essence, each hardens into a long, viciously-barbed needle, weighted perfectly for throwing.
"The zombies aren't all you need to worry about!" she shouts down at the pair of them, and hurls her darts.
Maia's lips form the words keep him distracted.
You tear your eyes away from Maia, looking fully back to the Anathema. After that display, he is breathing hard, and he's taken a long cut going from his shoulder down across his chest. It's superficial, however, nothing like what he's done to you or Maia.
Still, you'll manage. She's counting on you.
The Anathema ignores Maia, apparently writing her off as beaten. Certainly, you're standing better than she is, the stability of Earth keeping you on your feet. He smiles at you again, a vaguely crazed look coming into his eyes. Don't worry, he doesn't plan to kill you.
"What?" you demand, in spite of himself. "That's a feeble lie at this point, demon."
The Blasphemous shakes his head, amused. It's not a lie — he's decided he'd prefer to cut off all your limbs and make a gift of you to his Full Moon companion. The Lunar has been looking forward to drinking the blood from your still-beating heart and taking your face as a trophy. As a sign of the 'love' that they both bear for your mother.
Your stomach roils with horror, but you press it down. He's still underestimating you, as much reason as he has for his confidence. You can use that — you can do as Maia asks, and keep him distracted long enough for whatever she has planned.
Article:
Faced by the overwhelming martial perfection of a Solar swordsman, you cannot best Beacon of Truth through only skill at arms. But Ten-Thousand Dragons fight as one, and you are not yet alone — Maia seems to have a plan, and she is relying on your capacity to play a part in it.
What do you do to distract your opponent?
[ ] Knock him down
For all his advantages, Beacon is smaller, lighter, and unarmoured. You can use your sheer physicality and the seismic power of your anima to keep him off his feet. He will make you suffer for this.
[ ] Coordinate an attack with Verdigris
Your familiar still hides within the stone of your armour, and has not yet made her presence known. Beacon will not expect yet another surprise spirit, and you will likely be able to at least catch him off guard. This will be dangerous for both of you.
[ ] Use your words
He's 'talking' already — you can keep that going, distract and unbalance him with words alone to stall him until Maia is ready. You risk driving him to his cruelest anger.
If not for this, what have we been enhancing Verdigris for? "This is exactly the right time to have a snake pop out of your chestpiece to bite a Solar," as my mom always used to say. She doesn't actually say that.
