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

Descending Wood, Realm Year 765,
One year, nine months after the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress

Rural Chanos Prefecture, the Northern Blessed Isle

Denouement 1: Under a Cloudless Sky

There had been a great deal to do in Chanos. While your invitation to stay in the Imperial Residence there has not been revoked, your presence there feels precarious in a way that doesn't appeal to you. Preparations to take your leave, and for the staff to shut the house up again, are already underway, and would likely benefit from your oversight. However, upon Sola's insistence, you have left these preparations in Evening Garnet's hands, and you and Maia have allowed yourself to be dragged out into the middle of nowhere with no servants on hand but a few summoned spirits.

Chanos Prefecture's weather is not famously pleasant, as much as the relentless rain and gloom lessens a bit the farther away one gets from the coast. Still, it would not ordinarily be your first choice for a place to deliberately sleep out of doors even in the height of summer. The chances of a rainy, miserable experience are simply too great.

There is a benefit to traveling with Sola in particular, however — she is fully capable of chasing away unwanted rain clouds with a simple casting of her control spell, leaving the little forest she's brought you to dry enough to be pleasant. Wedged into a cleft between two large stretches of rocky hill, the place is surprisingly green and picturesque. It's plainly untouched by signs of logging or other peasant industry, for all that the well aged hardwood trees are obviously tended to, their lower branches cut back enough to easily walk or ride through. Apparently, Sola's family had leased it as hunting grounds from the Empress for several decades, for a reason that she couldn't remember.

"Honestly, after seven years of rough living at school — dressing and preparing yourself, sleeping in cramped dorm rooms, enduring Northern cooking — this was the first thing on your list?" you ask Sola, taking in the little clearing. A large tent has been pitched behind you. Nearby is a pool of clear, fresh water — shockingly cold, fed by a mountain stream. With the beginnings of a bonfire going, it's surprisingly cozy, in a rustic sort of way.

Sola has been sitting near the edge of the pool, getting in a few minutes of meditation with her sword. She cracks an eye, looking from you, to Maia, to the peaceful woods all around you. "Can't think of anything I'd like more, right now," she says, with an attractive amount of sincerity, for all that it entirely spoils any fun you might have had with griping. "We're all going our separate ways for a while, soon enough," Sola says. "And I doubt I'll have a happy homecoming in Lord's Crossing, all considered. It's nice to have a bit of time, out here where it's peaceful."

Sola being called back home is not particularly surprising, especially given her family's circumstances. Once there, she both hopes and fears to learn of the status of the close family members who were present for the Battle of Futile Blood — her three elder sisters and her father, to say nothing of many close cousins and other relations. She seems resigned to the necessity. Meanwhile, your father has sent you a very urgent sounding missive requesting your presence in the Imperial City. Maia's family likewise expects her to return to Incas Prefecture for the first time in seven years.

While you and Maia will be able to travel together for most of that journey, Lord's Crossing Dominion lies in almost the opposite direction to the Eastern Blessed Isle. You'll certainly all see each other before too long, but none of you are pleased about parting so quickly after graduation, with the uncertainty hanging over you and Sola in particular.

Sola gets up, stretching languidly, and sheathing Storm's Eye. She's wearing white again, as impractical as it is for a camping trip — a pale tunic with a silver dragon motif along the cuffs and the deep neckline, tailored to hang loosely on her wiry frame. With her sword belt around her waist. It's a good look for her.

"We could have taken that time any number of places," you remind her. "I have my stipend."

Sola shrugs. "Maybe I wanted you both to myself, for a while." She holds your gaze for a moment or two, before glancing over your shoulder, frowning a little at a slight commotion away in the trees down a short slope, in the direction of the stream flowing out of the pool. "Are you sure that ordering the wood spider to hunt for us was a good idea?"

"Yes," you say, "I ordered it not to use poison."

"Well, it seems to have caught three large trout," she says.

You sigh. "Well, that is one interpretation of what I told it to do," you admit. You'd told it not to harm humans, livestock, or other domesticated animals — it seemed that the spirit had played it safe by staying away from mammals entirely.

Sola laughs. "I take it I'm the only one here who knows what to do with a raw fish?" she says, looking to you and Maia. "Right, yes, of course I am. I'll go take care of that." She considers her tunic for a moment, presumably thinking about how poorly white fabric mixes with gutting and preparing several fish. Sola unfastens her swordbelt, resting Storm's Eye on a nearby tree stump and, with a casualness that would have been utterly shocking in the company of almost anyone other than her Hearth, pulls off her tunic, folding it briskly to leave it atop the sword. This leaves her unclothed from the waist up apart from a chest wrap.

She bends to sling a nearby pack containing the necessary supplies over her shoulder, and walks away. You do your best not to stare at the lean muscle on display as she walks away down the hill.

Maia, who has been sitting against the tree stump reading a book, catches you watching Sola go. She looks up from her reading to give you a sly sort of look.

"What?" You ask, feeling your face heat.

"Are you going to kiss her or not?" Maia asks. She's sitting between two large tree roots, her legs folded beneath her. She's dressed lightly, wearing only a dark blue robe with minimal ornamentation, clearly enjoying the fading hours of the cool summer's day.

You feel very put on the spot, frozen to the ground, staring down at Maia. "Should I?"

"She's been eyeing you up more than usual for most of the year," Maia says. "I assumed you were waiting until we were away from school."

You frown. "What do you mean 'more than usual'?"

"Well, she's been noticing you ever since your figure filled out." As she says this, Maia's eyes trail a lazy path up and down your body with an open appreciation she once would have been far too shy for. While you've hardly gone as far as Sola has, you've shed the outer layers of your clothing already, leaving you dressed in a similar state to Maia, albeit your clothing characteristically trending black and dark grey. "I think that you pinning her to a wall and then holding her while she cried might have a bit of an escalation, though. It's always worked on me."

Well, it would be a little silly to deny the tension, lately. "You really wouldn't mind? You're here too."

"Of course not," Maia says, faintly surprised. "I know you love me. You kissing someone else doesn't affect that. And..." Maia shrugs, a little self conscious, for the first time. "It is just the three of us out here — there are worse ways to pass a night together."

"Oh," you say, as you take her meaning. She has a point, there would be far worse ways to pass a night before you have to split up for a time. You also know that if you do that kind of thing with Sola — your Hearthmate, 'sword sister', and close friend, it won't be able to just be a casual dalliance, even if it will be different from what you have with Maia. You're certain that Maia understands this as well as you do, but it needs to be a consideration on your part. "You've put a lot of thought into this," you tell her, tone dry.

"Well," Maia says, "it seems like someone has to, out of the three of us." She returns to her book.

---

Despite the years you've known Sola, you find yourself genuinely surprised at the discovery that she is apparently quite a competent cook. She turns the fish and the ingredients she'd brought with her from Chanos into an entirely pleasant meal. Simple compared to what you might have enjoyed in the city, but it's filling and well-seasoned. There's also a genuine sense of novelty to eating a meal prepared for you by your own Hearthmate, despite her also being an Exalted lady from an elevated family.

You feed the last bit of fish from your plate to Verdigris, who happily swallows it whole. You're sitting by the fire with Maia and Sola, the latter having retrieved her after the worst of the work was over. The sun has long since slipped below the horizon, and with the clouds having been driven away from the patch of sky overhead, the stars and thin sliver of a moon are bright overhead. You decide that your eyes are simply drawn to Venus because of your conversation with Maia earlier, rather than because it actually looks particularly bright tonight.

"The summer before she went north," Sola says, speaking slowly, "my sister, Tepet Usala Sumara, general of the Third Tepet Legion, told me that, when they got back from the North, her legion's main sorcerer would likely retire. She... intimated that there might be a place for me, if I deserved it."

"To help keep your mind off of how much you wanted to go?" Maia asks, thinking back to how Sola had been that year.

Sola laughs. "Yes, I think, looking back. But she didn't want me to get the idea that it was out of affection for me. She was a little..." Sola pauses, thinking about how to phrase this. "... she was a bit of a bitch about it, honestly. 'This is not charity, sister. Be worth my time', she said. She's everything I'm not — stern, cold, meticulous, absolutely unforgiving of weakness or failure, a general before she was 80..." Sola trails off, and you almost think she's finished speaking, before she adds, quieter: "I still wanted that more than anything. For her to come back and tell me that I was. She might be dead. She's probably dead."

"Have you had word?" you ask, voice quiet. Sola has mentioned her sisters before — the other two were a Sublime Armiger with the Second Tepet Legion and the Quartermaster of the same. Still, she'd never spoken about Sumara in this much detail.

"All the descriptions of the battle agree that the Third was in the centre of the formation," Sola says. "They would have taken the worst of it when the Anathema finally broke the line." She takes in a deep breath, then lets it out, grounding herself. "I wanted to become the general of one of those legions, someday. It's all I've wanted my entire life, even back when I was still being told that boys don't often have the temperament for command. I don't know what I'm going to do now."

There isn't that raw grief that had been there before — the wound is still there, but it's begun to scar over, if not yet truly to heal. After a moment's hesitation, you open your mouth, and you say: "I wanted my own Great House. I wanted to be a matriarch, for my name to live on in history, to prove myself worthy of that. To prove that I wasn't going to be one of the Imperial daughters who died in obscurity. I wanted..." you hesitate, your next thought sounding painfully naive even before you give voice to it. "I wanted to be so powerful that I could keep my family and my loved ones and I safe."

Maia looks into the fire, not quite meeting your gaze. "Houses can still fall, Ambraea," she reminds you.

"I know," you say, understanding exactly where her head has gone, "but not as easily as I can."

Sola is looking at you, her expression full of sympathy, but it's coming from a place of understanding, not of pity. "I used to think it was strange, how you never talked about it," she says. "How you might want there to be a House Ambraea. At first, I wondered if you might not even want it, before I really knew you."

"I always did," you say, "but bringing it up always felt like bad luck. And gauche besides. My mother did not always look kindly on entitlement in this regard, and it was the kind of thing that would find its way back to her if I started saying it too much." You let out a mirthless sort of sigh. "I really am already acting like she's never coming back, aren't I?"

"You can only live on false hope for so long," Sola says, bitter experience in her words. She was always sitting on the same large stone as you, but you're not sure when she got so close. Or was it you who moved? This close, the faint breeze of her Aspect markings whispers across your face, gently tousling your hair. The electric blue of her eyes are almost luminous in the darkness. "Eventually, you just have to accept that, and focus on what's real."

"And what's real?" you ask, voice very quiet.

"That can be hard to figure out too," Sola says. Her eyes drop down to your lips, before going back to meet your own again. "Maybe sometimes, it's just what you can reach out and take."

It would be the easiest thing in the world to just lean forward and kiss her. To lose yourselves in one another, however far it ends up going tonight. There will come morning, however, and then you'll have to decide where the three of you stand.

You don't have to look away from Sola to know Maia is watching you, or to picture the expression on her face — curious, wanting to see whether you'll actually go through with it, but willing to let the two of you figure out if this is really what you want.

What do you want, though?

Article:

This decision will shift the dynamic within your Hearth in a profound way. You were drawn to Maia by her need for you — for your strength, for your support, for your unconditional love. With Sola, if you reached out to her, you would be falling together in your mutual grief and fear for the future, reaching for someone who understands.

Do you kiss Sola?

[ ] Kiss Sola

[ ] Do not kiss Sola