A Vision in Bronze; A Sidereal quest

Even if you don't take joy in actual violence, you enjoy studying martial arts. The physical and mental discipline, the fascinating way that a style's philosophy of combat informs its techniques. The moment where the fundamentals click together into something of purpose, of power, feels like pulling order out of chaos. Over the years you've grown accustomed to how naturally such systems of fighting come to you.

Now, though, you feel like you're stumbling through the dark.

Physically, you're being drilled in circle walking, rhythmic breathing, palm strikes and spinning kicks devised to not break the pattern your footwork is supposed to be tracing. Nothing you do feels quite right, though. Try as you might to follow instructions, to follow Kejak's example, you're getting nowhere.

Utterly winded, you sink to your knees in the sand. Your Caste Mark burns on your brow and your limbs actually shake from exertion. "I don't understand," you say. "I don't even understand what I'm doing wrong. How can I fix it if I don't understand?"

The look Kejak gives you is patient, but not even a little apologetic as he watches you struggle back to your feet. "You will understand," he says. Then he pulls back his hand, and his Caste Mark flares bright enough to wreath his head in a green halo.

You know what's coming next, that you shouldn't deflect it, but you still tense. The palm strike hits you full in the chest — you fly off your feet, feeling yourself sailing backward at shocking speed. You don't hit the sand of the practice ring, though, or even the surrounding walls. The world blurs green around you, this one moment stretching out impossibly far, your mind struggling to comprehend what's happening to you. Your teacher, the courtyard, the entire Forbidding Manse of Ivy, simply disappears.

EMERALD GYRE OF AEONS STYLE: LOTUS LABYRINTH DURANCE

You land hard in your chair, back in your office in the Cerulean Lute, dressed in the robes you'd worn while leaving your home the day before. Above the doorway, the clock strikes midnight. Hours to go before you have to leave for the Forbidding Manse.

Carefully, you set the ink brush in your hand down on the waiting holder and push yourself up to your feet. The fatigue from the training session is gone — there is the slight twinge of your injuries from the fight with Flotsam, but you're as fresh and as well rested as you'd been before you'd ever left.

The first time you'd gone through this day, you'd spent the morning at work. You'd written several memorandums, and gone to a brief meeting before you'd finally changed and left to go meet Sapphiria. This time, you step over to one of your bookshelves, selecting a heavy volume bound in green leather. Its cover is blank apart from an infinity symbol seared into the leather, but you know what it is. Clearing away the writing from your desk, you set it down on the mahogany surface and sit down to read.

The Tractate of Eternity is dense with figures, arcane equations, and meandering footnotes that can sometimes cover several pages. In the thin margins and in between lines are annotations in Kejak's hand, ostensibly attempting to chart a course for you through the text, but nearly as confusing in their own right. The very act of binding the Tractate into a book is one of interpretation in its own right. It's recursive, with no true beginning or end — any assigned to it are semi-arbitrary in order to appoint to a particular interpretation. Someday, you may well develop your own.

When Forest Bell sticks his head in to remind you of an appointment, you tell him: "I'll be busy today, Bell. Clear my schedule." You ignore the faint nauseous feeling this gives you.

Hours pass, and you barely make headway, reading and re-reading the same few pages over and over again. You don't understand it anymore than when you began. You'll have time, though. As much time as you need.

Eventually, you change, and leave on schedule for the Forbidding Manse of Ivy.

Sapphira laughs as she tells you: "Oh, Grace. Sometimes you're so adorably ethical that I just want to put you in my pocket and take you home. So you can be my conscience full-time."

You fall to your knees in the sand of the practice ring. Even more exhausted than you'd been before, anima glowing blue around you.

"You will understand," Kejak says. Then the blow that had sent you back in the first place hits you again.



You slam back into your office chair. Above the door, the clock strikes midnight.

You attempt to go through some of the motions that Kejak has taught you over the past two sessions.

"I'll be busy today, Bell. Clear my schedule."

You're already tired by the time you leave.

"I don't recall anyone by that name," says the spider goddess.

You slowly get back to your feet after collapsing in the practice ring. "You will understand," Kejak says. Then the day begins again.

And again.

And again.

Days blur together. Each time, you fail and you go back to the beginning. You have walked this labyrinth before, though. The only way out is through, and the only way through is to learn the lesson that your teacher is seeking to impart. This is how you first learned Throne Shadow, after all, the basic motions drilled into you day after endless day until they'd become second nature.

Studying Emerald Gyre of Aeons Style isn't simply a difference in difficulty compared to that, though, it is a difference in kind. It isn't enough to simply hone your body, memorise the movements, and cultivate your Essence. There is something you're fundamentally missing, a necessary truth lurking behind the impenetrable pages of the Tractate that you cannot comprehend. Your mind is too narrow, your thoughts too linear.

"Yes," Kejak tells you on the seventh day, "but you know there are ways to fix that."


The clock strikes midnight.

The creator of Emerald Gyre, the man who'd written the Tractate of Eternity, had received his revelation by being struck by the Prince of Hours. That blow had aged him a thousand years, during which he'd glimpsed some fundamental truth about the nature of time and the shape of eternity. For obvious reasons, this is not a feat you'd be in a hurry to replicate directly even if it had been possible.

As Kejak had said, though, there are other ways to loosen one's grasp on time, and there are fortunately few places better equipped to facilitate that than the Cerulean Lute of Harmony. As a pleasure manse without peer in all of Heaven and Creation, the Lute can cater to almost every vice and hedonistic pursuit — even if you have something more purpose-driven in mind than the mere pleasure for its own sake.

"Are you sure?" asks the clever-fingered god as he lights the pipe for you. "I usually don't give this blend to beginners, and you'll hardly know up from down with this much."

"Or now from then," you say, deadly serious. You bring the pipe to your lips, and inhale deeply.

Your perception shifts, body growing numb and distant, thoughts growing trancelike. You feel as though you're watching yourself from across a vast distance as you begin to walk the pattern again, breathing slow and rhythmic.

You lose whole days like this. Sometimes, you don't even remember to go to the Manse on time.

The clock strikes midnight.

"Grace, you're late. That's not like—" Sapphiria gasps, seizing you by the shoulders and leaning in to peer at your face. Her expression is both shocked and delighted. "Look at your eyes! Whatever have you been getting up to?"

No matter how far away you are, the blow still catches you at the same time every day.

"You will understand."


The Tractate of Eternity is still impenetrable, it makes your head hurt just to think about it too hard. But you can almost follow it sometimes. Almost glimpse the shape it's describing. Everytime you study the text, you write out your thoughts. Your own notes quickly become sprawling and seemingly incoherent, always erased again with every loop.

The clock strikes midnight.

You walk the pattern.

The clock strikes midnight.

You fall to your knees in the sand once again.

The clock strikes midnight.

You return home early, not even trying to train today. Your mother looks up from her reading, startled. There is no recognition on her face. "Is something wrong, my lady?" she asks, seeing the frustrated tears brimming in your eyes. Wordlessly, you hug her.

The clock strikes midnight.

"Sapphiria: I hate coffee. It is sincerely one of the least appealing drinks I've— don't laugh at me!"


You slam back into your chair.

The clock strikes midnight.

You carry out your work as normal. Memos, paperwork, meetings.

At the right time, you wash, change into your training clothes, and leave for the Forbidding Manse. After all, you have two very different oracles to go see.

You stand across the training circle from Kejak, and you go through the motions. Not simply a circle — a spiral, ever winding and unwinding, a pattern you can just barely glimpse, and not yet fully embody.

This time when he strikes you, you land on your back in the sand. You stare up at the distant sun, blinking. The green glow of Kejak's anima falls onto you as he steps closer. "Three months, twenty-five days," you say.

"You know, Grace, I have seen many people walk the labyrinth. Few actually claim to keep track of the days they spend in it."

"I have a very good mnemonic, sir," you say, voice faint.

He chuckles and leans down, offering you a hand up. You take it gratefully. Already, the memories are fading away, leaving only a vague sense of all that had transpired. It's like waking up from a dream. The only thing that will stay with you are the skills you learned.

The entire ordeal had taken place in the blink of an eye.

"You have the basics, then," Kejak says, releasing you once you're steady on your feet.

"Barely," you say, making a face.

"The Gyre of Aeons is not mastered in a day, Grace," Kejak says.

Or in four months, as the case may be. "Yes, I understand, sir," you say.

"You will still have much more to learn, but the foundation must come first."

You nod, giving him a tired, but genuinely grateful smile. "Thank you for your time as always, sir."

---

The Golden Barque of the Heavens, Division of Journeys headquarters,
Above Yu-Shan, the heavenly city,
Two weeks later

The Golden Barque is, by far, your least favourite out of the five Division headquarters. The barque itself is a marvel of a skyship. At first light every morning, it takes off from the Quay of Dawn in the far East of Yu-Shan, arcing up over the entire city to descend again at the Quay of Dusk at the end of the day.

Below decks are a series of movable bulkheads forming hallways and offices, broken down and rearranged at regular intervals to suit the needs of the Division of Journeys' current projects. The place is always a hive of activity, minor gods going this way and that, a low buzz of voices filling the air in many places. You've been on enough ships that the faint up and down rocking of the barque as it sails through the sky doesn't make you feel ill, but it is certainly distracting.

You have to ask for directions three different times before you find what you're looking for — they've moved everything around on this deck since the last time you visited, including Hari's office.

You press yourself to the side of the narrow hallway to let two lesser gods pass by, carrying a massive seachart between them. Beyond them, a lively debate between at least five deities has spilled out of a nearby office and partially into the hall. Something about the development of Southern trade routes. You politely skirt around them. Your destination should only be two doors beyond.

Sure enough, just past the office of a minor god of mountain travel, an unassuming door is marked with a name plate reading Teresu Hari, Chosen of Mercury in both Old Realm and Riverspeak.

You raise your hand to knock politely, and are forced to step back out of the way as the door slides open before you have a chance. "Oh, Grace, there you are. I was just about to come looking."

"I'm here when I said I'd be," you say, extremely prim.

Hari shrugs. "So you are." She's a sturdy, broad-shouldered woman half a head taller than you are, her features blunt and striking. Her light skin is tanned from time outdoors, her dark brown hair pulled back and arranged in a topknot. Her eyes are a yellow that verges on amber, often deceptively impassive. She steps fully out of the office.

Hari is closer to your mother's age than she is to yours, or any of your other Circlemates, easily old enough to be Lew's mother. Despite the fineness of the dark fabric, her clothing is in a vaguely martial cut, the mon of Gens Teresu subtly sewn onto either shoulder. It's otherwise largely featureless, except for just over the ribs on her left side — there, it's impossible to miss three narrow slashes of colour. It's as though something raked Hari with vicious claws, and she patched the resulting tears in the most obvious way possible with red-and-gold silk. That seems a little fanciful for you to credit, though.

"How do you feel about dumplings?" Hari asks.

"Positively, in general," you say. After a number of scheduling conflicts and similar hiccups, you and Hari have finally settled on having lunch together, a process which required you catching a ferry up to the Golden Barque.

You catch a glimpse of Hari's office as she vacates the doorway. It's as cramped as junior Sidereal offices often are, and relatively spartan. A small desk, a set of chairs, and a tiny shrine tucked away in one corner. What catches your eye is the weapon hanging on the wall above the porthole — an ornate firewand, its barrel of dark metal banded with something silvery. That's certainly new.

"Good, because that's what we're having." Her delivery is consistently so deadpan that you have a hard time telling when Hari is making a joke and when she's just being rude. You decide to assume the former in this case.

You fall in beside her as she leads the way, heading down the ship's hallway in the opposite direction to where you came in. "Where are we getting lunch?" you ask.

"Vendor usually flies by around mealtimes," Hari says. "It's worth their while. You know, between Sidereals and the gods who can afford to eat." The tones of her polished Riverspeak accent have an almost square feeling to your ear, her syllables sectioned off with precision.

"You know, there are some very good restaurants around the Most Perfect Lotus," you say, having to increase your pace to keep up with her longer stride. In your experience, Harbingers often have a bad habit of walking just a little too fast.

Hari shrugs. "Sure, but these are good dumplings. Made by a god who used to live in Great Forks. I got a taste for the local food there over the years."

"You lived in Great Forks?" you ask, mildly surprised.

"In the Lookshyan enclave there, for most of the time I worked for the Stores Directorate," Hari says. "At least theoretically. It was always supposed to be a desk job, but didn't I always end up going up and down the river and getting attacked by pirates anyway? I wish I could have told my husband it was Mercury's fault at the time. He could have been snippy at her about it instead. Fewer arguments in his life now, I suppose."

"Was your husband who you wanted to talk to me about?" you ask. Her letter had said 'family issues'.

Hari gives a startled laugh. "Larias? Oh, no. Things went bad there a long time ago. Easier for him this way, I think. Can fuck his girl on the side now without any guilt, or worrying about one of my brothers finding out and wringing his neck over it. He was a little fixated on that, they're both Exalted and decorated naval captains."

"Oh, dear," you say, feeling your face heat slightly. Which is absurd, you read about such matters on a daily basis, and even arrange them in person sometimes. You hadn't expected her to be so blunt about it, though — Hari hasn't confided very much of her family life to you in the time you've known her. That isn't unusual. Some Sidereals are very open about their own personal tragedies in the first year after they come to Heaven. Others, like Hari, or you, need time to process things before they can open up about them.

Hari doesn't immediately pick the conversation back up, taking a sharp turn to lead the way toward a ladder at the end of the hall. You attempt to change the subject. "Was that a dragon sigh wand I saw in your office?" you ask. Not that an artifact firewand can be mistaken for much else — they aren't common weapons.

"Oh, yeah," Hari says, pausing at the bottom of the ladder. "That—" she steps aside as a canine god dashes down the ladder headfirst, tossing off a friendly wave in Hari's direction as he runs down the hall. "If he slept under his desk less, he wouldn't be late so often," she mutters. She glances back to you. "Right, the firewand. It was a bribe."

"What?" But she's already halfway up the ladder. You follow before anyone else comes rushing down. It leads onto another deck barely less cramped than the one you'd just come from, yet more rows of doors to all sides. You hastily pull yourself up out of the ladder, and almost scurry to catch up with her again. "Hari, that's not the kind of thing you can just say," you hiss.

Hari laughs. "Oh, relax, Grace. I'm half joking. It was a gift from a goddess who hopes I'll 'remember my roots and my first loyalties in my time serving the Celestial Bureaucracy'. Nothing more specific or illegal than that. Family heirloom, actually — it got snapped in two and lost in the Yellow River after my aunt died in the Autocrat's War. No idea how she found it or got it fixed."

"She?" you ask, still frowning.

"Tien Yu, city mother of Lookshy and patron of the Seventh Legion.," Hari says, shrugging as if this is something she can feel casually about. It's not entirely convincing. "I was a little surprised she could keep me in her head long enough to arrange this, but apparently she has connections in the Division of Battles. So that helps."

"Assuming Wun Ja didn't put her up to it," you say, keeping your voice very low. The Goddess of the Shining Metropolis is also the Director of the Bureau of Humanity, and the superior of every city parent on Creation. Her disagreements with the head of the Division of Journeys are well known, and while Hari is the most junior Harbinger, with less than twenty currently active in Heaven, gaining influence over her comes with certain long term advantages.

"Dragons, Grace! Don't get me worrying about that. It's not as though Tien Yu doesn't benefit from keeping me well inclined for her own sake." Still, Hari gives you a slightly worried look, a crack in her usual air of brisk confidence. "Should I not have accepted?"

"She's your goddess, and this was your family treasure," you say, "I won't tell you not to accept gifts from her. But remember that she's not above the politics of the Bureaucracy — be careful what you do for her."

"Right." Hari takes in a deep breath, then lets it slowly out. "A year and a half ago, I knew how the rest of my life was going to go. Now I'm here."

"I know the feeling," you say, sympathetic. Daylight spills through a doorway up ahead, the exterior deck of the ship visibly buzzing with activity even from here.

"Must have been even more of a shock for you," Hari says.

"In some ways," you say. She knows you were a Dynastic servant, the handmaiden to a Dragon-Blooded lady. Lookshy's gentes are not the Dynasty, but they are still lineages of Dragon-Blooded warrior nobility, and servants filling such roles are hardly alien to her. Hari at least had already been used to being in a position of authority within a bureaucratic structure, of having subordinates and superiors to report to, of being someone who mattered, in some sense. "No one can really be prepared for it, though."

"Yeah," Hari says. Stepping outside, she blinks against the sudden noonday light as she he scans the deck. She flashes a relieved smile as she catches sight of a figure standing near the railing. The god in question has a pair of giant dragonfly wings folded on his back, and is busy unfolding an impromptu food stand from an enchanted case. Dodging air sailors with ease, Hari angles her way toward him. You follow in her wake.

Soon enough, the pair of you have a large order of hot rice dumplings, each wrapped in its own bamboo leaf and bound with twine. Hari leans terrifyingly against the Barque's railing, seemingly oblivious to the danger despite all of Yu-Shan laid out in miniature behind her. You take a seat nearby, on top of a massive, seemingly unused coil of golden rope.

"What is it that you wanted to talk about?" you ask, after swallowing a mouthful of rice and chicken. Hari is right that they are very good, even if the price she'd paid for them would have made anyone in Great Forks weep.

Hari makes a face, halfway through unwrapping her second dumpling. "Have I ever told you about my children?" she asks.

You assume she's been avoiding it, just as she avoided relaying any details about her husband. You keep your voice raised just enough to carry over the wind — it isn't quite as bad as it should be, considering how high up you are and how fast the Golden Barque moves. Some of the ship's innate magic must help with the worst of it. "Not in any detail," you say.

"It's just three of them," Hari says. "Amilar Mari, Amilar Hana, and Amilar Tarius. Mari is twenty, and going through ranger training like I did. I think she'll make the cut." She sounds extremely proud, despite the distant pain that you can hear in her voice. "Hana is sixteen, still at her studies. Angling for a position in the Shogunate Bureaucracy. What teenage girl wants to be a bureaucrat? Her and her brother are what I get for marrying into Gens Amilar."

You nod as though you're more familiar with the various Lookshyan gentes and their reputations than you actually are. You're still faintly surprised by the reminder that Hari married into her husband's family, although you shouldn't be. You're more than familiar with the concept of patrilineal marriage by this point — your job ensures that. Still, you can't help but feel like it must be very inconvenient to do things backwards like that while trying to accurately track Dragon-Blooded lineages.

"You remind me of her, sometimes," Hari says, catching you off guard.

"At seventeen, I wasn't thinking about much more than being a good servant," you say.

"I didn't know you at seventeen. I just know you now," Hari says. "There are worse ways she could turn out."

"That's very flattering," you say, not sure how else to feel about it.

Hari shrugs. "Tarius Exalted last month. Eleven years old. Air Aspect — from his father's side, obviously."

"Congratulations!" You say, automatically. "You must be so proud!"

Hari smiles at you, obscurely amused.

"What is it?" You ask.

"You say that like a Dynast would," she says. "As though, thank the Dragons — my son's blood running true means my life finally has value."

"That isn't what I meant at all!" You say. "And Dynasts aren't that awful to their mortal children."

You ignore a small, inconvenient flash of memory — Ambraea, thirteen years old, confessing her deep anxieties on the matter. "I don't even know what I'd do with myself, Peony!"

"You are proud, though, I assume?" you press, scrambling for familiar ground. "And so is your— well, your husband's family?"

"Well, yes, but it's not—" Hari sighs, seeming to give up on whatever point she'd been trying to make, and takes another bite of dumpling. She chews and swallows in a hurry. "He's starting at the Firmament Academy this year — he's been obsessed with warstriders for most of his life. I always thought it was impractical fancy, but he could actually pilot one someday, now." The thought seems to cause her to deflate a little. She stares down at the dumpling in her hands.

You sense that she's finally coming to what she actually wanted to ask you about, and remain quiet, watching her with silent concern.

"So, we both might live for hundreds of years now," Hari says. "Two hundred years from now, after Larias and Mari and Hana are all... after they're gone, Tarius and I could still be here. It's made me think about things. People, other Sidereals, talk about you sometimes, you know."

"About me?" you ask, although you think you know what she means.

"About you and your mother. The older ones act like you're tormenting yourself. Like she's just a wound that you're opening again and again because you can't let her go." Hari gives you an apologetic look. "Radiant Sky might have said that, verbatim."

Radiant Sky, Chosen of Mercury, is a Sidereal well over a thousand years old, the chair of the Convention on Commerce, and Hari's mentor. She has a terrifying habit of seizing on young Sidereals who she perceives to take their work too seriously, and doing her best to shake it out of them. You're extremely thankful that you somehow escaped her notice in your early years. "Was she sober when she said that?" you ask.

"Hungover," Hari admits.

You smile faintly at that, but find yourself looking past Hari. Your eyes flick over the shining buildings of Yu-Shan far below, seeking to find your own neighbourhood. "My mother asked me to bring her here," you say, amusement dying. "Five years ago, I went to visit her, and she knew me. And she asked me to take her to come stay with me — she was a palace slave, and she trusted me to get her safely away. What else could I do? Leave her there?"

"No," Hari says. "I'm not saying that you should have."

"I know," you say, still looking out at the city.

"Is it worth it, though?" Hari asks. "Seeing her as often as you do. Seeing her everytime you go home. Do you ever wish you could have done things differently?"

She's not just asking about your relationship with your mother, you understand — this is about her family, about the children she clearly loves, mortal and Exalted both. "I—"

As you open your mouth, a piece of paper slips out of a fold of your dress. You manage to snatch it up before the wind takes it. Flicking it open, you stare for a long moment at its contents.

"Bad news?" Hari guesses, reading your expression.

... Good news, in a sense," you say, carefully tucking the paper back away, and returning your attention to Hari's question.

There are good days and bad days with your mother. There are even times where you do selfishly regret bringing her here. How could you not, everything considered? These low points are far better than the alternative, though — her left in the Realm, the property of a woman who had vanished without a trace seven years ago as the whole empire grinds inexorably toward civil war. She had obviously been miserable there, mourning the loss of a daughter she couldn't even remember.

How you answer this question matters, though. Hari's situation is not yours. You'll need to be careful about what you say next.

Article:

Please vote for an option from both categories.

Influencing Hari

By offering something real, which you normally wouldn't, you can sway Hari in one direction or another. From this conversation, you know that she cares deeply for her family, and that this will dictate what she does next.

[ ] [Hari] Offer a painful truth that focuses on the positive

Push Hari toward attempting to actively cultivate a relationship with her family, in particular her recently-Exalted son. This will be very hard on her, at times.

[ ] [Hari] Offer a painful truth as a cautionary tale

Push Hari toward a more measured approach, not ignoring her family or abandoning them entirely, but guarding her heart in the process.

[ ] [Hari] Avoid the truth

Don't open up to Hari, increasing the chances that she heeds the advice of her older colleagues.

---

The message

The message you just received holds exciting information — the efforts you've made to try and find evidence of your mystery Lunar's continued activities on the Western Blessed Isle have borne fruit. Your relief is not without reservations, however.

This choice will affect the precise information Grace has going into the next arc, and establishes a debt that will have to be repaid in time.

Who has given you actionable information?

[ ] [Info] A friendly goddess from another Division, whom you have mixed feelings about

[ ] [Info] Another Sidereal, whom you do not particularly like

[ ] [Info] A god from your own Division, whom you hate, but who holds a mutual interest with you in this matter