A Vision in Bronze; A Sidereal quest

You pass through a narrower passage, forcing you to walk in single file. It's dark and secluded enough that Chalus has elected to light your way, a golden ring surrounded by eight rays blazing on his forehead.

Rika, naturally, is still close at hand, keeping up her conversation. "Well, my mother is a pekumi," she says, referencing what you vaguely understand to be a rank of some distinction in Rika's homeland. So far, you have never had cause to visit Randan yourself. "But I was too frail to do any actual smithing, and I wasn't even a thaumaturge to make up for it. Never mind that it was my designs that my siblings were using for all of their works, I was a disappointment to the family. She told me that, more than once."

"That sounds painful," you say. Her voice has a quietly heart-breaking charisma behind it, and beneath that, an invitation to comfort her. You refuse to let her slip under your guard, though, or to lose track of just what she is. The Scripture of the Expectant Maiden plays through your head, girding yourself against any ill-advised sympathy.

Once there was a maiden...

...who was always looking forward to the way things would be.

"Is that why you left?" you ask. Up ahead, the passage narrows even further, forcing Chalus to turn himself sideways and hunch to squeeze through. The rock of the passageway is rough granite, slick with moisture. The ground squelches unpleasantly underfoot.

"Well, yes, as soon as I was Chosen," Rika says, "adventure on the high seas, studying sorcery and exotic crafts, meeting fascinating people... I'll be back some day, of course. And I'll wave Heartshine in her face — a masterwork spear forged out of solid orichalcum should change my mother's tune. She'll beg to have me back."

As Chalus slips out of the passage ahead of you, you're confronted by a colossal, toppled statue depicting some forgotten Shogunate hero. Once, it must have towered over the rooftops of old Bittern. Now it lies in two pieces, snapped at the waist from the impact, its head lost somewhere in the dark water lapping at the edge of the island of rubble it's sitting on. The way the torso rests against the legs leaves a path forward, however, even if you have to jump across a nerve-wracking channel to do so.

"Where did all of the people go?" Flotsam asks, frowning.

"You asked to be taken to the Blue Chimney," you say, gaze facing studiously forward. "The locals avoid it, unless they're using it to... dispose of the dead. They think it's bad luck."

"As if anywhere down here is pleasant enough to be good luck," Chalus mutters, looking out at the darkness. His Caste Mark reflects off of the dark seawater, the stench of which you've almost gotten used to. It's not the only source of illumination now, though. Up ahead, illuminating the massive shape of one of Bittern's support pillars, an eerie blue light seems to emerge from beyond the ruins.

"That way," you tell him, perhaps unnecessarily. He leaps the gap to the next island easily enough, then unthinkingly holds up a hand to help you across yourself. You choose to pretend to need it, accepting his help with a falsely grateful smile. Fortunately, there's a wooden walkway from here, particularly sagging and rickety, the seawater lapping up between the boards at several points. You're glad that you risked a pair of good boots, despite the otherwise threadbare nature of your disguise.

"Do you have any sisters, Breeze?" Rika asks, leaping over the gap adroitly ahead of Flotsam and Radiance.

"No, except in a manner of speaking," you say. When it doesn't conflict with a resplendent destiny or anything you've already established for a given cover, honesty is often easier than pure fabrication. It prevents discrepancies or slipups over irrelevant details. "I grew up as the companion and servant of a Dynastic lady my age. We were raised together."

"Well, that doesn't seem to have lasted," Rika says. "What happened?"

"She went away to secondary school, and I joined the bureaucracy," you say. Both of these things are true, even if you're being misleading about the precise order of events and which bureaucracy it was that you joined.

"Was she a Dragon-Blood?" Rika asked, moving back up beside you. For the first time, you get the sense that you've fully piqued her interest in your answers, as opposed to just in you.

"Yes," you say.

"And she didn't help you when you had to run from the law?" Rika asks, sounding scandalised, but not surprised.

"Well, I suppose she forgot about me," you say, not having to feign a sad tone. Strange how it still hurts to think about, even eight years later.

"So, she didn't care about you at all!" Rika says.

"Did you expect better from a Dynast? They're taught that all the world exists to serve them, why would they care about their lessers?" Radiance says, surprising you by speaking up. You hadn't thought she was listening. From her position in the rear guard, she had seemed fully preoccupied with keeping a wary eye out.

"I guess not," Rika admits. "Still, though."

You don't visibly react to this denouncement. Despite yourself, though, you can't stop your mind from wandering.

You remember Lady Ambraea, an awkward, red-haired ten-year-old, throwing herself down onto her bed in despair. Not yet rendered strangely stoic and serious by her Earth Aspect Exaltation, she'd been wistfully speaking of one of her childhood tutors. The tutor had been a particularly pretty Varangian woman who had taught her basic mathematics for several years. Ambraea had become hopelessly, childishly smitten with her in a way that had foreshadowed several things about her developing character, but of course was no longer seeing her since starting primary school the year before.

"I just wish I knew where she is now," Ambraea had said, staring soulfully up at the ceiling. "Did she find another student?"

"I can ask around, if it makes you happy. Some of the other servants might know," you'd told her.

She'd sat up like a shot and taken you by surprise by pulling you into a hug, the way she'd done more often when you were very young. You remember it so well, because this was the last time she'd ever done it. "What would I do without you, Peony?" she'd asked.

You remember Lady Ambraea, thirteen and newly Exalted, holding the wrist of a servant woman in a painful vice grip. You had bumped into the older servant, causing the tray of dishes she'd been carrying to scatter over the floor. The woman hadn't known who you worked for when she'd struck you across the face, and she certainly hadn't known that Ambraea was within eyesight.

"Raise a hand to my handmaiden again, and you will lose it," Ambraea had said. You had been horribly afraid that she'd meant it.

You remember Lady Ambraea, age nineteen, tall and beautiful and imposing, looking through you like she had never met you before in her life, the way you'd always been terrified she would one day. Even though it hadn't been her fault, in the end.

It would have hurt less if Ambraea really hadn't cared about you.

"I couldn't say," you say instead.

Then Rika reminds you of exactly what you're talking to by leaning closer and saying, horrifyingly earnest: "I can make her pay for that when we finish here."

"My former lady is quite highly placed, and a sorcerer herself," you say, as though you're concerned for Rika's safety.

Rika gives a disdainful little laugh. "I'm not afraid of a Dragon-Blooded sorcerer. Don't worry." Then she actually reaches up and gives your nose a playful flick, showing exactly how silly your worries are. You know of several ways to dislocate someone's arm from this position. You usually aren't tempted to actually use them.

The source of the blue glow gets closer and closer, seeming to come from the base of the support pillar. You've seen one before, but they're on a breathtaking scale, larger at the base than most buildings, soaring up to the ceiling high above. Thinking about the sheer weight that each of the pillars bear is enough to make your heart pound. Whole, densely-packed neighbourhoods and the very earth beneath their feet are built atop the artificial ceiling that stands overhead. How many thousands of souls does that represent?

As he leads the way, the wood of the walkway groaning ominously underfoot, Chalus frowns up at the pillar, shaggy head tilted like a confused dog. "You're sure bringing that down's gonna do it?" he asks.

Rika sighs. "I've explained before, it's not about just bringing down the pillar. I've seen the old schematics, this 'Blue Chimney' is the remains of a First Age water reservoir. It's a quasi-infinite, impossible space flooded with water. Collapsing the pillar into it drags the rest of the artifice it's anchored to down into the hole, and widens the shaft enough to create a catastrophic gyre. I've made models! It works. Honestly, Chal, I've told you this five times."

"Pillar collapses into big hole, drops half the city down on top of it, sea rushes in and drowns the rest, smashes up ships in port," Flotsam says, tone impatient. "You sure we've got time to get clear of this shit?"

"No, Flotsam, I decided to be imprecise with that part. I love gambling with all our lives, I felt like winging it," Rika says, struggling not to be irritable. "Once the device is in place, the process will be irreversible. But we will have time to get clear of the disaster zone, as long as your girl comes through on her part."

"She's her own woman," Flotsam says, eyes fixed on the pillar, "and she's not going to just fuck us over for no reason."

"Right, she's just fucking you," Rika says. "But it's not like Lunars are prone to lying, or anything."

"For once, can you two avoid bickering like children right before we do something dangerous?" Radiance asks, giving them an exasperated look.

"Well, if he'll stop questioning my expertise!" Rika says, but subsides.

How nonchalant they are about all this is utterly chilling. You'd known the scale of the destruction they had planned, how many lives they were willing to sacrifice for the sake of crippling the Water Fleet and House Peleps, but if you had any doubts, this would have extinguished them. You don't know how any right-minded person could think otherwise.

More than that, the revelation of their mysterious fire-setting fifth ally's true nature does little to comfort you. The last thing you need is a Lunar Anathema in the mix in a situation like this. It isn't something you can modify the plan to account for at this point.

As Chalus steps off of the walkway and onto a broad, sloping islet, he stops short, looking around uncertainly. "Where do we go next?" he asks you.

You feign a gasp. "The bridge is out," you say, pointing. The remains of a ramping walkway beneath your islet and a much taller pile of rubble is a series of wooden posts and makeshift stone pillars, with the jagged remains of the next bridge far out of reach. This leaves you closer to the great support pillar and the Blue Chimney than ever, but with a large stretch of fetid water between your group and their destination.

Flotsam rounds on you, seizing you roughly by the front of your frayed robe. "Did you know about this?" he hisses, nearly dragging you off your feet.

"No!" you lie, a wide-eyed, horrified mortal. "No, of course not! I'm trying to help!"

He stares hard into your eyes until Chalus grabs him roughly by the shoulder, and pulls him off of you. "She's been helping, Flo. You're scaring her."

"I can find us another way over there," you say, putting Chalus between you and Flotsam. Predictably, Rika steps up beside you, glaring daggers at Flotsam. "Please, just give me a moment."

"Think quickly," Radiance says, frowning as she surveys the place you've led them to. The only way to and from the islet is the long, dubious walkway you've just come from. To one side is a sheer edifice of granite forming a cliff somewhere overhead. To all other sides, there is only water. She's on the verge of realising just what their situation is.

Flotsam, of all people, steps in to distract her. "I could make it across with the satchel," he decides, looking at the shattered remains of the bridge.

"As if I'd trust you to arm it yourself," Rika says.

For the first time since you've met him, Flotsam twitches a smile of genuine amusement at her. "I could get across carrying you carrying the satchel, if it comes to that."

You need to set things in motion fast. These are not people who you can trust to follow your plan indefinitely. You step closer to Smiling Chalus, and tug at his sleeve. He glances down at you questioningly. "Little lady?" he asks.

"I heard something in the water," you whisper, as if afraid, and embarrassed to make too much out of it. "It's probably nothing."

Chalus smiles at you, a gallant, condescending expression. "I'll look," he says, actually ruffling your hair. He steps past you up to the edge of the islet you'd indicated, at the far edge of the islet, a several foot drop above the swirling waves, his Caste Mark still lighting the way.

"If you drop me, I'm never going to forgive you," Rika says to Flotsam, checking the strap that secures her satchel to her shoulder.

"Don't worry," Flotsam says. "You're li—" He freezes in place, suddenly on alert.

Radiance looks at him sharply. "What is it?" she asks.

"I just thought..." Flotsam is keeping his voice very low, not moving a muscle. "Rad, check for spirits?"

Looking exceptionally grim, Radiance blinks once, expanding her senses to perceive the immaterial.

This is it. You raise your fingers to your lips, and blow a single quick, carrying note. Chalus looks up from the waves, startled. "What—"

Before he can finish, a woman leaps up from the surface of the water, flinging herself into the air with the agility of a dolphin. A sorcerous whip formed of something dark and liquid uncoils from one of her hands, extends nearly ten feet, and wraps around the halt of Chalus's axe. Before he even realises what's happening, his grimcleaver is torn out of his grip. It spins through the air, landing in the water with a splash. Roaring with outrage, Chalus turns to see the woman disappearing back into the water. He holds out one massive hand, clearly intending to call his weapon back into it — he doesn't have time.

A tendril of seawater shoots up out of the waves from his blindspot, coils around Chalus's throat like a noose, and hauls him forward with a brutal tug. He goes into the water with a strangled cry, arms pinwheeling.

"Chalus!" Flotsam's sword clears its scabbard, even though he hasn't seen the actual threat yet from his vantage. You, closer to the water, have a better view. The gold of Chalus's Caste Mark pierces the dark water just enough for you to see the dark, humanoid shapes converging on him from under the waves, cutting through the water with unnatural swiftness. At least three Water Aspect Dragon-Blooded, and one of them still has him by the neck.

Radiance is still staring up and around, her eyes very wide. "Demons!" she shouts, dropping into a fighting stance. Behind her, Rika gropes for her spear, pulling it free from its clever holster. Up on the cliff above, several spirits materialise, insectoid shapes wreathed in shifting white clouds. More shapes stir behind them.

"Breeze, stay behind me!" Rika tells you.

"As you wish, Lady, Rika." You step up behind her, shedding your resplendent destiny as you go — you'd only damage it, doing what comes next. One of your hands takes her by the shoulder, the other by the spear arm. Then you wrench her arm back and to the side using just enough force to very nearly pop the arm out of joint. Rika screams in pain and surprise, and the golden spear drops to the ground with a clatter. She's immobilised and defenseless as the indistinct shapes up above step forward into sight, and send at least five arrows into her chest.

You're forced to twitch your head aside as you let Rika's body fall, feeling the wind from the last of the arrows as it nearly grazes you. These might be the best sharpshooters the Peleps marines can scrape up in Bittern on short notice, but accidents happen.

"Rika!" Flotsam locks eyes with you, hated and understanding on his face as he sees you for the first time without the obfuscation of a resplendent destiny. You're still a slight young woman whose mother had been born in the Neck, dressed in ragged clothes, but there's no sense of the dutiful clerk about you anymore. Your fighting stance is expertly trained, and your eyes are a cold blue, stars glittering in their depths.

He steps forward, the good steel of his sword passing a hair's breadth in front of your nose as you step back from the first slash, duck under the second. You instantly recognise the lethal efficiency of Violet Bier of Sorrows Style — you know exactly how deadly a combatant that makes him.

The demons have clambered down from the cliff tops by then, and you're able to put one of them between you and Flotsam. A sword of its own shoots out of the roiling cloud, followed by a spear, each gripped in a different insectoid appendage. Flotsam turns aside each blow easily, but it takes the heat off of you just long enough to matter.

Radiance turns aside an arrow with one hand, kicks a demon into the water, and is blindsided as a young man runs straight down the cliff face toward her, jumps off into a flying kick, and connects solidly with the back of her head, fiery red Essence already flaring around him. Radiance is slammed violently to her hands and knees. Another Dragon-Blood touches down on the other side of her in a rush of air. A third shoots up from the earth and stone of the islet, a monk with an iron-studded club as tall as you are clutched in her hands.

To Radiance's credit, even under the circumstances, she doesn't panic. She turns aside an axe-blow from one of the summoned demons, rolls away from the Air Aspect's sword blow, and springs back up to her feet, her anima flaring gold and defiant as the noonday sun. "Flotsam, the satchel! Get to the pillar, don't let them—"

Just as she's almost gotten her feet under her, the monk swings her tetsubo, striking Radiance in the back with savage force, throwing her back onto the ground again.

Flotsam is still fending off the first demon, with you near at hand. The water that Chalus went into is now ablaze with golden light, clouded by blood and violence. Rika lays motionless on the ground. Radiance fights for her life. And up above, the marines are still taking any clear shot they can manage. You can tell that there is no part of Flotsam that wants to abandon his friends under such circumstances.

With an almost pained cry, Flotsam ducks under a sickle flashing out from the demon's veil of smoke, snatches the satchel from Rika's motionless body. He makes a mad dash for the broken bridge, with his drawn sword still in one hand, the gap that he had been so certain he could cross before, dodging demonic weapons and mortal arrows both, a ring of gold flaring on his brow. With one single, great leap, he soars across the intervening gap. With a thrill of horror, you understand that he is going to make it across.

Not alone, though. Making yourself one with the world, you follow him, spring after him, moving from rickety post to water-slick stone as though they were a broad avenue, the sounds of unrestrained violence still deafening behind you.

Bittern and its people will live. Destiny demands it, and so do you.

Article:

You are racing in pursuit of Flotsam, Night Caste Chosen of the Unconquered Sun, and master of the deadly Violet Bier of Sorrows Style. A truly deadly foe, you cannot allow him to set his Circle's plan into motion.

Where does your dramatic confrontation take place?

[ ] A dark passage ahead, with little room to maneuver and less room for error

[ ] The rickety walkway, with any misstep threatening to send either of you plunging into the water below

[ ] The very edge of the Blue Chimney, on the far side of it from the support pillar, offering you space and light but also bringing Flotsam close to his goal