You are a young agent of heaven's Bureau of Destiny, working to mitigate or forestall a civil war that will ruin countless destinies, and kill or destroy millions of lives. All the while, shadowy forces strive to make the coming conflict worse.
A Vision in Bronze; A Sidereal quest
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Year 1, Arc 1: Bittern 01
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This quest is a sequel to my previous Exalted quest, The Last Daughter. It takes place after a five year timeskip, has a different protagonist and a different area of focus, but characters will reappear, plot threads will be picked back up, events may be referenced. It is not my intention for the events of A Vision in Bronze to be impenetrable for someone who hasn't read the last quest, but it feels useful to flag nonetheless.
Port City of Bittern,
Voice-of-the-Tides Prefecture,
The Western Blessed Isle
Ascending Air, Realm Year 770
The monk fights for his life against the brawny woman's chokehold. Calmly, as if preparing to stamp out an insect, one of the woman's companions draws his sword. "Hold him still, Rad," he says. There is nothing you can do to stop this.
But, that's untrue. It's a comforting lie you don't afford yourself at the moment. There is nothing you're willing to do to stop this, given the likely consequences. One of the harshest lessons of wielding power is that it is impossible to save everyone or to protect everything. For someone like you, both action and inaction are choices that carry a cost in lives. You understand this better now than you had years ago, when your mentor first told it to you.
Bittern is an old city, and it's seen its fair share of pain and loss. It sprawls grand and ancient along the coast of the Silk-and-Pearl Peninsula, built around a deep natural harbour opening out into the Gulf of Danaa'd. The city is one of the largest in the Realm, the ancestral stronghold of House Peleps, the birthplace of ten thousand ships, and the ravenous maw into which the blood-soaked plunder of the West flows. Hundreds of thousands make their home here, from wealthy Dynasts and patricians to common sailors and shipwrights to slaves and beggars.
There has been a city here since the darkest days of the Realm Before. Bittern has withstood the fall of the Solar Anathema, the endless wars of the Shogunate, the twin horrors of the Contagion and the fair folk, and the chaos of the Scarlet Empress's early conquest of the Blessed Isle. By the grace of your goddess, it will withstand today's trouble as well.
Over the centuries, sinkholes opened up beneath the city proper, causing whole neighbourhoods to fall into the network of sea caves below. The rest of the city was shored up during the Shogunate, with massive pillars raised from the cavern floors to prevent further damage, the holes covered over with new streets and buildings. The pillars hold to this day. Beneath the bustling streets, however, an undercity remains. The long-sunken First Age architecture of the lost neighbourhoods form sad islands amid the dark seawater, bridged by walkways and natural caverns. A refuge for the poor, the desperate, and those who wish to avoid the law.
You and your four companions had been in the process of creeping down into the undercity when the monks found you — two mortals and a Dragon-Blood. The monks had been far more surprised than you all had, presumably heading in the direction of the fire at the docks, still visibly burning through the mouth of the passage behind you. They had not been prepared to face four Solar Anathema. Few ever are.
The mortal monks are strewn on the sloping wooden floor of the walkway. One of them lays face down in a spreading pool of his own blood, and will not get up again. The other, a young monk of the First Coil, may be merely stunned from where she'd been thrown hard against the wooden railing of the walkway you're standing on. The mix of old sea caves and vast sinkholes stretches out beyond it, along with a stomach-lurching drop to the seawater somewhere far below. The distant roar of the waves rushing in and out of the caves is already inescapable, echoing up from the darkness. It fills the air along with the brackish reek of saltwater and decay and hot blood.
The wrestling match between Descending Radiance and the unfortunate Dragon-Blood had been swift and brutal. She'd struck him hard between the eyes before he'd had a chance to more than register their presence, and used his pain and distraction to slip behind him, putting him in a hold that somehow left his limbs useless and one strong arm around his throat. Now the monk struggles as best he can, attempting to use his legs to lever her off of him, but she has at least a head of height on him as well as the might of the Unconquered Sun. The only sign of visible exertion from Radiance is the solid disc of golden light that blazes on her brow, illuminating the passage.
The ragged swordsman who calls himself Flotsam looks at the monk with a pitiless dislike, pulling his sword arm back to stab him neatly through the heart. The monk sees it coming with wide, fiery eyes, but he can do nothing, doesn't even have the air in his lungs to scream.
"No!" The word comes out as a low, desperate shriek. The mortal girl has pushed herself unsteadily back up to her feet, seizing her superior's fallen staff. By all appearances, she is preparing to throw herself at two Solar Anathema in a brave, foolish attempt to protect him. The girl has only taken one step when she's seized roughly by the back of the neck, a giant of a man lifting her bodily up off the floor with the hand not grasping the half of a jadesteel war axe. She flails uselessly in his grip, helpless as a kitten in the jaws of a mastiff.
At this, you do speak. Your tone is soft but subtly arresting, the faintest hint of power behind your words. "Wait, my lord."
Flotsam ignores you just as he'd ignored the girl, putting his sword between the Dragon-Blood's ribs. The monk tenses up a final time, then goes limp. Flotsam hadn't been your target, though.
The giant, Smiling Chalus, does turn around. He frowns at you, the expression crossing his handsome face like a stormcloud on a sunny day. He's nearly seven feet tall, heavyset with solid muscle, purple-black hair falling around his shoulders. Most of the time his kind, guileless eyes make him look deceptively gentle. He's also an Azurite, though, with many of the odious attitudes this implies. He seems to at least exempt his female Circlemates from the unthinking condescension he directs at women in general. You, having taken some pains to be taken for a mortal yourself, have not been so fortunate. He replies as if explaining something simple to a child. "They attacked us, little lady. She was going to attack us again!"
"But, surely, my lord, she doesn't have to die," you say, making your voice as soothing and reasonable as possible. As if nothing in his manner toward you could possibly be objectionable. "She can't be more than nineteen. She's just a girl. She's no match for any of you." Chalus actually falters at this very direct appeal to his worldview. Doubt creeps into his blue eyes.
"Those who have taken vows to spread the lies of the Immaculate Philosophy deserve no quarter," Radiance says, dumping the body of the Dragon-Blood unceremoniously at her feet. "She'd show none to us."
This is all the justification Chalus needs. The world is made simple for him once again, his expression clearing. He nods once. Then he casually tosses the young woman over the side of the railing. She screams briefly before catching her head on a beam. She plummets the rest of the way down into the long dark in silence.
"I understand you have been indoctrinated by the Immaculates, but you must learn better. We will have a long talk about it, once our task is complete," Radiance says. She looks at you, stern and imperious, clad in the sunset-coloured robes of a Vaaisami warrior-priestess. Her attire reveals quite a bit of toned golden-brown skin, and goldshot braids hanging down past her waist. With the Fire Aspect's corpse still at her feet and her Caste Mark still glowing defiantly, she looks every bit the returning god-queen. Once, the sight would have been a horror that would have shaken you to your core — unfortunately, in the eight years you've pursued your calling, you have seen worse.
That monk girl and the look in her terrified eyes, though, you will remember.
Whatever you really feel, it's vital that you continue to play your role. "Apologies, my lady," you say, bowing low. The repentant servant is a part you know very well, and one you barely have to think about. Swallowing your own displeasure and soothing the egos of the powerful is something you learned from a very young age, and the skill has proven transferable to both gods and monsters in your more recent life.
Flotsam snorts derisively, bending down to clean his sword on the Dragon-Blood's simple robes. He has a deep tan expression, a mop of dark, poorly cared for hair, and hard, narrow eyes. He's a Baihu man out of the Southwest with an accent that gives him away as a former noble, however threadbare his clothing have become. Out of all of them, he's the only one who has yet to speak to you directly.
"Don't feel bad," whispers the fourth member of the group. A tiny, olive-skinned Randani woman who has spent the entirety of the brief struggle fussing over something in the heavy satchel she carries in her thin arms. She has a soft, distractible affect, belied by the wickedly sharp spear of solid orichalcum that hangs on her back by a leather strap. "We'll be done here soon, and then you never have to see this city or this horrible island again. I'll make sure Radiance isn't too harsh, she means well."
The sentiment would seem sweet, if you didn't know exactly what she is, and what done here entails. "Thank you, lady Rika," you say, smiling back at her.
As ever when trying to predict the movements of the Exalted, things have not gone perfectly to plan. For one thing, you hadn't expected an unknown fifth ally of the Solars to start that fire. And for another, those monks should not have been here. They shouldn't have had to die. Still, things are not unsalvageable. It is vital that you guide these four to their destination far below — heaven requires it, and you don't lightly accept failure on this scale. Bittern will never know what you do today, but you'll do it for them nonetheless.
"There," Chalus says, having picked up and tossed the two dead monks over the same railing that the living one had gone over. "Mostly cleaned up. We should get going again."
"Of course, my lord," you tell him, and slip past to take the lead. It is going to be a long, nerve-wracking walk down into the very bones of Bittern to reach their destination.
And as always, you must remember who you are today.
Article: Who have you presented yourself as to your charges? What constellation have you cloaked yourself in? This is a guise you have used before, and will use again in the future.
[ ] The Lovers
A humble slave girl belonging to a naval officer. Your companions struck your chains, leaving you grateful beyond words to your rescuers, and surprisingly knowledgeable about the seedier parts of Bittern from the dismal tasks you were forced to carry out for your master. A firsthand witness to the evils of the Realm, your companions have no difficulty in believing that you see them for the heroes that they are, and will help them in any way you can. They've promised to take you away with them to a better life.
[ ] The Musician
The feckless consort of a wealthy merchant from Bittern, knowing the undercity from your troubled youth. Your companions have seduced you away from your comfortable life and your spouse's blood money, and you have promised to aid them and help them strike a blow for all the free peoples of the world. It's the most they seem to expect from a friendly mortal, and they don't question it as much as they should. They've promised to take you away with them to a better life.
[ ] The Pillar
Formerly a lowly clerk in the Imperial Bureaucracy, what little happiness you once had has been shattered entirely by your corrupt employers, scapegoating you for their own crimes and condemning you to a hardscrabble existence in the undercity. Your companions accept your story easily enough with your power to smooth over the edges, ever willing to believe that the Realm is a place where happiness can only come to the wicked. They've promised to take you away with them to a better life.
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Singular Grace Character Sheet
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Singular Grace, Chosen of Venus
Singular Grace is considered to be a talented young Sidereal, an Exalted agent of Destiny skilled at social intrigue, matchmaking, and martial arts, the latter of which she enjoys for the focus and discipline it requires. She has no love of actual violence any more than she takes any joy in seduction, but a tool is a tool.
Born in ry743. Exalted in ry762. A Sidereal of eight years seniority.
Birth Sign: The Sword
A constellation in the House of Endings that governs the end of hopes and dreams, whether by being fulfilled or dashed, as well as slow and painful deaths. The Expectant Maiden. There is always an ending.
Exaltation Sign: The Lovers
A constellation in the House of Serenity that governs unequal or imbalanced interpersonal relationships, positive, negative, or in between, frequently those where one party holds power or authority the other. The Desperate Maiden. Love is hard.
Skills
A Vision in Bronze is a narrative quest, and does not formally use numbered statistics or abilities. However, the strange and esoteric magic of the Sidereal Exalted are strongly tied in with both their abilities and the constellations associated with them. This section will document Grace's strongest areas of focus. Grace's skills will change and develop over the course of the quest, and she knows techniques found outside of these five places, but this establishes her core competencies.
Constellations of focus:
- The Gull (Thrown)
- The Ewer (Dodge)
- The Lovers (Socialise)
- The Peacock (Craft)
- The Mask (Stealth)
- The Rising Smoke (Athletics)
Martial Arts Styles:
Grace knows several martial arts well, and has dabbled in others. These will not be listed in full, and will be voted on and revealed as the quest goes on. She may learn more in the future.
Intimacies
Intimacies represent the values and relationships that are both important to Grace and carry narrative weight and focus. Principles represent abstract beliefs and values, ties represent feelings and emotions for people and organisations. They are ranked either Minor (1), Major (2), or Defining (3), depending on their intensity. This list is nonexhaustive, and more will be discovered or created as the quest proceeds. Others will change, strengthen, or weaken over time. Other characters will also have intimacies for Grace — these will be recorded in a separate post, once we have more of our main cast introduced.
Principles
Defining: I embody my name
Defining: What I do is for the good of Creation
Major: A guiding hand achieves more than a closed fist
Major: My work is my life
Major: Replacing one flawed system with another is not an improvement
Major: Violence is not a first resort
Minor: The best lies contain no falsehoods
Minor: Eternity has a shape
Ties
Defining: Lohna Prince's Scribe (Love)
Major: Anathema (Disgust)
Major: Chejop Kejak (Respect)
Major: The Realm (Bitter homesickness)
Major: V'neef Ambraea (Conflicted sisterly affection and resentment)
Minor: The Bronze Faction (Loyalty)
Minor: The Immaculate Philosophy (Lingering affinity)
Minor: Incarnadine Chorus (Wariness)
Minor: Shajah Holok (Admiration)
Minor: Stinging Nettle (Despairing trust)
Minor: Venus, Maiden of Serenity (Wary ambivalence)
Minor: Yaogin: (Muted dislike)
Minor: Yula Cerenye (Friendship)
Minor: Sapphiria the Night-Lily (Quiet fascination)
Minor: Scattered Silver (Frustrated trust)
Minor: Teresu Hari (Trust)
Minor: Lew Stojca (Mixed affection and concern)
The Great Curse
All the Exalted unknowingly suffer from a baleful death curse placed upon the concept of Exaltation itself, its specific form and manifestation differing between the different types of Exalted. Unlike the Dragon-Blooded, whose behaviour is affected in more subtle ways, the Chosen of the Celestial Incarnae, Sidereal Exalted among them, are driven to far more dramatic manifestations.
Sidereal Essence is heavily defined by instruction, orderliness, and manipulation. As such, the Great Curse takes the form of a growing certainty among a Sidereal that they are right in their beliefs in methods, that they alone understand the correct course of action. It fills them with confidence and self assurance.
This is measured for Grace through a resource called Limit. As the quest progresses, certain decisions and events will cause her to gain or to lose Limit. When she reaches Limit 10, she will experience Celestial Hubris. This will cause problems for her.
Grace gains Limit in the following circumstances:
- She denies or goes against one of her major or defining intimacies
- Someone ignores her advice or rejects one of her plans
- She receives evidence reaffirming the necessity of her methods
She may lose Limit in the process of carrying out Destiny's will, and loses all of it after an episode of Celestial Hubris.
Limit: 2/10
Arcane Fate
The Sidereal Exalted in particular carry a second curse, this one far better understood and far more intrusive. Whenever a Sidereal leaves someone's presence, they are forgotten completely, the individual's memories rewriting themself to attribute the Sidereal's actions to other characters or plausible coincidence. If documents or records detailing a Sidereal, or giving detailed information on the Sidereal Exalted in general, are kept in the care of someone who is affected by arcane fate, the information is destroyed or obscured by bizarre coincidence.
This effect can be resisted or overcome with difficulty and luck. It is easier for supernatural beings, like the Exalted or powerful gods, to do so. It also becomes easier the closer a tie the individual holds for the Sidereal in question, and the more they know about Sidereals and arcane fate. Their feelings for a Sidereal do not change even after they have forgotten her, although the context becomes unclear.
Certain beings are immune to arcane fate. These include:
- The Sidereal Exalted
- Spirits, magical constructs, or familiars created or bound into service by the Sidereal Exalted, such as demons and elementals summoned through sorcery, or bound by stranger Sidereal magic
- Gods employed by the Bureau of Destiny, although not gods employed by other bureaus of the Celestial Bureaucracy, or by other spirits or humans employed by the Bureau of Destiny
- Particular "enemies of fate" who are very powerful or Exalted. An enemy of fate is a being such as a ghost, a demon, or a fae, who originate or draw their power from outside the borders of Creation. They are not subject to the normal workings of fate and destiny, including arcane fate. Enemies of fate immune to arcane fate include the Abyssal, Infernal, and Getimian Exalted categorically.
Resplendent Destinies
In order to operate in Creation, Sidereals frequently use specialised magic to create Resplendent Destinies, a magical disguise that draws on one of the Constellations to cloak her in a role or archetype. These are not physical disguises, but people instinctively connect the Sidereal to her role. They can remember the specific resplendent destiny as a distinct person, but their impressions will be broad and lacking in small details, and they will forget small details.
While a Sidereal is wearing a resplendent destiny, she must continue to act out her role even in private, or risk damaging or destroying the destiny. A damaged resplendent destiny still functions, but is much more fragile than it would normally be. If a destiny is destroyed or discarded permanently, memories associated with it are subject to Arcane Fate. Beings who are immune to Arcane Fate are not affected by resplendent destinies, and see the Sidereal as they truly are.
Grace may possess a limited number of resplendent destinies at any given time. Some she already has on hand, otther she will create, lose, or discard over the course of the quest.
Grace's Resplendent Destinies:
1. The Pillar: A junior Bureaucrat (intact)
2. The Lovers: An expensive slave-handmaiden (intact)
3. --
4. --
5. --
6. --
Singular Grace is considered to be a talented young Sidereal, an Exalted agent of Destiny skilled at social intrigue, matchmaking, and martial arts, the latter of which she enjoys for the focus and discipline it requires. She has no love of actual violence any more than she takes any joy in seduction, but a tool is a tool.
Born in ry743. Exalted in ry762. A Sidereal of eight years seniority.
Birth Sign: The Sword
A constellation in the House of Endings that governs the end of hopes and dreams, whether by being fulfilled or dashed, as well as slow and painful deaths. The Expectant Maiden. There is always an ending.
Exaltation Sign: The Lovers
A constellation in the House of Serenity that governs unequal or imbalanced interpersonal relationships, positive, negative, or in between, frequently those where one party holds power or authority the other. The Desperate Maiden. Love is hard.
Skills
A Vision in Bronze is a narrative quest, and does not formally use numbered statistics or abilities. However, the strange and esoteric magic of the Sidereal Exalted are strongly tied in with both their abilities and the constellations associated with them. This section will document Grace's strongest areas of focus. Grace's skills will change and develop over the course of the quest, and she knows techniques found outside of these five places, but this establishes her core competencies.
Constellations of focus:
- The Gull (Thrown)
- The Ewer (Dodge)
- The Lovers (Socialise)
- The Peacock (Craft)
- The Mask (Stealth)
- The Rising Smoke (Athletics)
Martial Arts Styles:
Grace knows several martial arts well, and has dabbled in others. These will not be listed in full, and will be voted on and revealed as the quest goes on. She may learn more in the future.
Throne Shadow Style:
Grace is a master of Throne Shadow Style, a strange fighting style focusing on mentorship, quiet guidance, and hiding in plain sight. The first martial art Grace studied, it was first taught to her by her mentor, Chejop Kejak, and she has taken many of its philosophical lessons deeply to heart.
Current shadow fingers:
- Lew Stojca
Grace is a master of Throne Shadow Style, a strange fighting style focusing on mentorship, quiet guidance, and hiding in plain sight. The first martial art Grace studied, it was first taught to her by her mentor, Chejop Kejak, and she has taken many of its philosophical lessons deeply to heart.
Current shadow fingers:
- Lew Stojca
Emerald Gyre of Aeons Style:
Grace has began her studies of Emerald Gyre of Aeons Style, a powerful Sidereal Martial Art focused on manipulating time through physical and spiritual emulation of the shape of eternity. Grace has honed the physical elements of the style to a perfection that is inadequate to wielding its supernatural techniques. This will come gradually through time, training, and the cultivation of Emerald Gyre's principles. This style was taught to her by her mentor, Chejop Kejak.
Grace has began her studies of Emerald Gyre of Aeons Style, a powerful Sidereal Martial Art focused on manipulating time through physical and spiritual emulation of the shape of eternity. Grace has honed the physical elements of the style to a perfection that is inadequate to wielding its supernatural techniques. This will come gradually through time, training, and the cultivation of Emerald Gyre's principles. This style was taught to her by her mentor, Chejop Kejak.
Intimacies
Intimacies represent the values and relationships that are both important to Grace and carry narrative weight and focus. Principles represent abstract beliefs and values, ties represent feelings and emotions for people and organisations. They are ranked either Minor (1), Major (2), or Defining (3), depending on their intensity. This list is nonexhaustive, and more will be discovered or created as the quest proceeds. Others will change, strengthen, or weaken over time. Other characters will also have intimacies for Grace — these will be recorded in a separate post, once we have more of our main cast introduced.
Principles
Defining: I embody my name
Defining: What I do is for the good of Creation
Major: A guiding hand achieves more than a closed fist
Major: My work is my life
Major: Replacing one flawed system with another is not an improvement
Major: Violence is not a first resort
Minor: The best lies contain no falsehoods
Minor: Eternity has a shape
Ties
Defining: Lohna Prince's Scribe (Love)
Major: Anathema (Disgust)
Major: Chejop Kejak (Respect)
Major: The Realm (Bitter homesickness)
Major: V'neef Ambraea (Conflicted sisterly affection and resentment)
Minor: The Bronze Faction (Loyalty)
Minor: The Immaculate Philosophy (Lingering affinity)
Minor: Incarnadine Chorus (Wariness)
Minor: Shajah Holok (Admiration)
Minor: Stinging Nettle (Despairing trust)
Minor: Venus, Maiden of Serenity (Wary ambivalence)
Minor: Yaogin: (Muted dislike)
Minor: Yula Cerenye (Friendship)
Minor: Sapphiria the Night-Lily (Quiet fascination)
Minor: Scattered Silver (Frustrated trust)
Minor: Teresu Hari (Trust)
Minor: Lew Stojca (Mixed affection and concern)
The Great Curse
All the Exalted unknowingly suffer from a baleful death curse placed upon the concept of Exaltation itself, its specific form and manifestation differing between the different types of Exalted. Unlike the Dragon-Blooded, whose behaviour is affected in more subtle ways, the Chosen of the Celestial Incarnae, Sidereal Exalted among them, are driven to far more dramatic manifestations.
Sidereal Essence is heavily defined by instruction, orderliness, and manipulation. As such, the Great Curse takes the form of a growing certainty among a Sidereal that they are right in their beliefs in methods, that they alone understand the correct course of action. It fills them with confidence and self assurance.
This is measured for Grace through a resource called Limit. As the quest progresses, certain decisions and events will cause her to gain or to lose Limit. When she reaches Limit 10, she will experience Celestial Hubris. This will cause problems for her.
Grace gains Limit in the following circumstances:
- She denies or goes against one of her major or defining intimacies
- Someone ignores her advice or rejects one of her plans
- She receives evidence reaffirming the necessity of her methods
She may lose Limit in the process of carrying out Destiny's will, and loses all of it after an episode of Celestial Hubris.
Limit: 2/10
Arcane Fate
The Sidereal Exalted in particular carry a second curse, this one far better understood and far more intrusive. Whenever a Sidereal leaves someone's presence, they are forgotten completely, the individual's memories rewriting themself to attribute the Sidereal's actions to other characters or plausible coincidence. If documents or records detailing a Sidereal, or giving detailed information on the Sidereal Exalted in general, are kept in the care of someone who is affected by arcane fate, the information is destroyed or obscured by bizarre coincidence.
This effect can be resisted or overcome with difficulty and luck. It is easier for supernatural beings, like the Exalted or powerful gods, to do so. It also becomes easier the closer a tie the individual holds for the Sidereal in question, and the more they know about Sidereals and arcane fate. Their feelings for a Sidereal do not change even after they have forgotten her, although the context becomes unclear.
Certain beings are immune to arcane fate. These include:
- The Sidereal Exalted
- Spirits, magical constructs, or familiars created or bound into service by the Sidereal Exalted, such as demons and elementals summoned through sorcery, or bound by stranger Sidereal magic
- Gods employed by the Bureau of Destiny, although not gods employed by other bureaus of the Celestial Bureaucracy, or by other spirits or humans employed by the Bureau of Destiny
- Particular "enemies of fate" who are very powerful or Exalted. An enemy of fate is a being such as a ghost, a demon, or a fae, who originate or draw their power from outside the borders of Creation. They are not subject to the normal workings of fate and destiny, including arcane fate. Enemies of fate immune to arcane fate include the Abyssal, Infernal, and Getimian Exalted categorically.
Resplendent Destinies
In order to operate in Creation, Sidereals frequently use specialised magic to create Resplendent Destinies, a magical disguise that draws on one of the Constellations to cloak her in a role or archetype. These are not physical disguises, but people instinctively connect the Sidereal to her role. They can remember the specific resplendent destiny as a distinct person, but their impressions will be broad and lacking in small details, and they will forget small details.
While a Sidereal is wearing a resplendent destiny, she must continue to act out her role even in private, or risk damaging or destroying the destiny. A damaged resplendent destiny still functions, but is much more fragile than it would normally be. If a destiny is destroyed or discarded permanently, memories associated with it are subject to Arcane Fate. Beings who are immune to Arcane Fate are not affected by resplendent destinies, and see the Sidereal as they truly are.
Grace may possess a limited number of resplendent destinies at any given time. Some she already has on hand, otther she will create, lose, or discard over the course of the quest.
Grace's Resplendent Destinies:
1. The Pillar: A junior Bureaucrat (intact)
2. The Lovers: An expensive slave-handmaiden (intact)
3. --
4. --
5. --
6. --
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Year 1, Arc 1, vote 01
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Year 1, Arc 1: Bittern 02
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The Pillar: 34
The Lovers: 25
The Musician: 7
The Lovers: 25
The Musician: 7
The walkway leads to another, and then to a rough stone staircase carved into a cavern wall, carrying you ever-lower. You memorised this route in preparation for this plan. It's just a matter of retracing your steps, and watching your footing on the damp wood and stone.
Try as you might, you can't entirely put the sound of the monk's scream out of your mind. Obsessing over every death or misfortune you encounter will only drive you mad, but this one was so pointless, so easily preventable, if your companions were only willing to listen. It's foolish to think like this, of course. These aren't reasonable people you're guiding. They're Anathema, gripped by the near-insanity of Solar Essence, ploughing brutishly through any person or obstacle in their path while thinking themselves righteous. Even if they aren't really possessed by demons who have stolen the power of the sun, in many ways, they are the monsters that your Immaculate upbringing taught you to expect them to be.
This thought doesn't stop the smouldering indignation you feel at having been dismissed and lectured out of hand. If they were capable of following your guidance, what you're doing here might not have been necessary. It reaffirms that reasoning with them is pointless.
You have gained 1 point of Limit. Current Limit: 1/10
All Exalted unknowingly suffer from a baleful death curse placed upon the concept of Exaltation itself, its specific form and manifestation differing between the different types of Exalted. Unlike the Dragon-Blooded, whose behaviour is affected in more subtle ways, the Chosen of the Celestial Incarnae, Sidereal Exalted among them, are driven to far more dramatic manifestations.
Sidereal Essence is heavily defined by instruction, orderliness, and manipulation. As such, the Great Curse takes the form of a growing certainty among a Sidereal that they are right in their beliefs in methods, that they alone understand the correct course of action. It fills them with confidence and self assurance.
This is measured for you through a resource called Limit. As the quest progresses, certain decisions and events will cause you to gain or to lose Limit. When you reach Limit 10, you will experience an episode of Celestial Hubris. This will cause problems for you.
You gain gain Limit under the following circumstances:
- You deny or goes against one of your major or defining intimacies
- Someone ignores your advice or rejects one of your plans
- You receive evidence reaffirming the necessity of your methods
You may lose Limit in the process of carrying out destiny's will, and will lose all of it after an episode of Celestial Hubris.
Sidereal Essence is heavily defined by instruction, orderliness, and manipulation. As such, the Great Curse takes the form of a growing certainty among a Sidereal that they are right in their beliefs in methods, that they alone understand the correct course of action. It fills them with confidence and self assurance.
This is measured for you through a resource called Limit. As the quest progresses, certain decisions and events will cause you to gain or to lose Limit. When you reach Limit 10, you will experience an episode of Celestial Hubris. This will cause problems for you.
You gain gain Limit under the following circumstances:
- You deny or goes against one of your major or defining intimacies
- Someone ignores your advice or rejects one of your plans
- You receive evidence reaffirming the necessity of your methods
You may lose Limit in the process of carrying out destiny's will, and will lose all of it after an episode of Celestial Hubris.
By the time you get closer to the water level, Radiance's Caste Mark has gone out. Which is just as well — you're not alone anymore. Your way is lit by torches, lanterns, bonfires, and rarer sources of illumination maintained by the folk of the undercity. Ramshackle shelters cluster around one island of crumbling masonry, hollow-eyed beggars shrinking back from your group of heavily armed strangers as you pass. On another, a gang of hard-bitten street toughs cluster around a sloppily repaired First Age building, crude masonry filling in the gaps of the ornate brickwork. The gang eye your valuables speculatively, but quickly avert their eyes when Smiling Chalus raises his massive axe in their direction.
You yourself, with your ill-used clothing and unkempt hair, physically look as though you might belong among these people. But your bearing tells a different story. You are draped in a resplendent destiny of the Pillar, a constellation in the House of Serenity that governs long-term relationships, whether they stand the test of time or fail under pressure. When people look upon you, the impression they get is of a steadfast clerk, a career junior bureaucrat, the kind of woman who one expects to be a fixture of a Thousand Scales office somewhere in the city above. You'd chosen the Pillar for a reason. It not only makes your supposed former profession more believable, it also makes the betrayal you claim to have suffered all the more galling.
You often find the Pillar useful in this way. This is the first time you've used this particular resplendent destiny under such strange circumstances, but you often find the guise of a hardworking junior official useful for moving through multiple levels of Realm society unremarked upon. It is a role you can inhabit with little effort — it's not entirely dissimilar to what you did before you lived in heaven, after all. In truth, however, among those in the House of Serenity, the constellation does not particularly resonate with you.
The constellation of the Pillar is wrapped up in a certain optimism in one's relationships. Holding faith in the goodness of the people around you, viewing human connections as something stable, enduring. It is an outlook you can imagine, but not one that you relate to. The most important relationships in your life have always been ones touched by significant imbalance, whether that be social class or age or supernatural might. Human connection is precious precisely because it can be so precarious and conditional. Bonds can die, or be forgotten. To be close to someone is to give them the power to hurt you, and to hurt in turn. You learned these lessons the hard way from a very young age.
You have been told by friends that this is an excessively gloomy outlook, and you suppose that they may have a point. Maybe that's why you've made such an effort to try and connect with this outlook.
As you go, moving from island to island, crossing over walkways and through rocky passageways, the great stone pillars that hold up the city loom closer into view. They're built on a scale that the Realm would struggle to replicate today, each a monumental work of magic and mundane masonry. Your group mostly proceeds in silence, Chalus walking ahead of you, accepting your quiet directions, Radiance taking up a rear guard, and Flotsam and Rika walking just behind you. You are both highly protected and extremely boxed in.
Eventually, Rika seems to reach a point of satisfaction with whatever her last minute preparations had been, tying her satchel closed and slinging it over her shoulder, opposite her spear. You become aware of her moving up closer behind you, of her gaze following your movements a little more closely than can be merely casual. You're not surprised when she speaks up.
"So! What exactly did you used to do, Breeze?" Rika asks. Her tone betrays a keen interest, but perhaps not actually in the details of your theoretical job. "Something about... weights?"
You've told them that your name is Salt Breeze, unremarkable among Voice-of-the-Tide's largely Western-descended peasantry. Your own name had felt a little too conspicuous — there are few enough low born mortal girls with a name like Singular Grace. "Yes, I was a clerk in a local office of the Ministry for Weights and Measures," you say, maintaining a quiet, studious voice. A thread of nervousness beneath seems entirely appropriate. The persona draws on your experience as a domestic servant from your youth, but also on several petty or unemployed gods you've met in heaven.
"What did you measure?" Rika asks,
"Cargo mostly, my lady," you say. "Spices, usually. My... well, my superior would do the actual weighing and measuring. I would write down what she said. It wasn't very interesting, until the authorities were told about discrepancies. Then she claimed I had been the one taking bribes to fabricate the records."
"Well, you'll never have to deal with that again. And that boss of yours will be sorry, after today," Rika says. "Along with anyone else in this horrible city who hurt you, and the entire Water Fleet."
"You're very kind, my lady."
"Just Rika is fine," she says. The move to do away with formality is always an interesting one. It's at once a request to ignore the difference in power between you, and an admission that she is the one capable of dictating the terms of the conversation. The name 'Joje u Rika' tells you that she was an aristocrat even before she Exalted. Rika slips past you, turning around to face you as she walks backward while the island you're currently on is large enough to accommodate this. She's smiling, but something about her expression makes you feel like a flower she wants to pull up by the roots and keep in a little vase.
Flotsam gives an irritated scoff. "Can we go anywhere without you trying to pick up another stray, Rika?"
Rika shoots him a quick glare. To you, she says: "Don't listen to him, he doesn't know how to be polite."
"She's not like that mud rat girl you picked up in Wu-Jian," Flotsam says, coming to a stop. His voice is thick with scorn, even as he speaks about you like you're not present. "She was born here. Even if she's not rich, she was a collaborator for as long as she could be one."
"I just want to be helpful," you say. They both ignore you.
"She's not a collaborator anymore! She's just Breeze now!" Rika insists. She stops as well, putting a hand on your shoulder as she continues to stare him down, equal parts protective and possessive.
You don't shrug her off — if she's thinking about bedding you, she's not questioning your story. You don't particularly enjoy being handled this way by a near stranger, though, especially not by such a dangerous Anathema. She is a Twilight Caste sorcerer capable of creating horrors and wonders as easily as someone else might sew a shirt. One of the Unclean, who had featured as villains in many of the morality tales that the monks had told you growing up.
"She worked for the Thousand Scales. How many people suffered and died for those spices she was tallying? She's not a victim of the Realm, she was just part of it. There's blood all over her hands." Flotsam's own hands, never far from the hilt of his sword, tighten into fists.
"Leave the girl alone, Flotsam," Radiance says, voice weary. "Whoever she was, she's seen the error of her ways enough to help us. You know Rika is always going to... make friends wherever she pleases."
Flotsam subsides, grumbling. Rika giggles at her word choice. Before Rika lets go of your shoulder, she gives you a reassuring squeeze, and leans in to murmur directly into your ear. "She's right, you know. I do make friends wherever I please." Then she lets go with a smile, releasing you to continue guiding them all.
This plan is risky in several ways — you and your colleague went back and forth debating its merits as opposed to other approaches, and then about as long gathering sufficient support for it to make it viable. Ultimately, you are taking these people very close to their goal, and if things go wrong, it may be too late to course correct. But you're shorthanded — always shorthanded — and your superiors have trusted you to manage this task with the resources you have at your disposal. You won't risk this situation spiralling out into something genuinely disastrous. This plan is the cleanest, fastest way to solve the problem.
"Have you ever been to sea, Breeze?" Rika asks, walking alongside you now. She smiles at the play on your assumed name.
"Not often," you say, "Or very far. I've never gone farther away than the next prefecture."
"You'll love it!" Rika says with baseless confidence, "I know I do. I think my favourite place I've ever been is..."
You allow her to draw you further into conversation. It's better for at least some of them to be lax, overconfident. The sheer arrogance to be this comfortable in the heart of one of the Realm's great cities is staggering already, but you can't take it for granted. So you deliberately lean a little closer to her, answer her questions with more lies, and listen with rapt attention to whatever she wants to tell you.
She is right about one thing — this will all be over soon.
Article: While you are playing a role, the best deceptions contain some truth. What is something you tell Joje u Rika about yourself or your life that has more truth in it than you intended?
[ ] Something about your childhood
[ ] Something about your parentage
[ ] Something about your work life
Last edited:
Year 1, Arc 1, vote 02
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Year 1, Arc 1: Bittern 03
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Something about your childhood: 19
Something about your work life: 16
Something about your parentage: 10
Something about your work life: 16
Something about your parentage: 10
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
Last edited:
Year 1, Arc 1, vote 03
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Year 1, Arc 1: Bittern 04
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The walkway: 23
The Blue Chimney: 8
The passageway: 6
The Blue Chimney: 8
The passageway: 6
You trace an impossible path, following the pale gold of Flotsam's anima as you pursue him down what remains of the walkway. Stepping from rotting post to rotting post, the seawater licking at your heels, lighting on half-splintered boards that barely bend under your weight, running along a thin wooden rail without slowing at all. You're filled with the grace of the Ewer, your being in perfect balance with itself and all the world.
Behind you, a storm of conflicting anima rages. Red-stained dawn and brilliant light of midday battle with all the elements, Chalus and Descending Radiance outnumbered, separated, and fighting just to stay alive. Ahead of you, the shattered bridge you're navigating ramps up an embankment of stone and rubble, curving up and away out of sight of the battle below. By the time you spy an actually solid stretch of walkway, the others are only discernible by the echoing din and the surreal play of lights on the water and the cavern walls.
The moment you set foot on the wooden platform, Flotsam steps out of the shadows, somehow hidden there in spite of his flaring Caste Mark, and very nearly cuts you in half. His sword catches the front of your robes, razor-sharp edge cutting a diagonal slash in your already-ragged garments. His followthrough slash actually shears off a lock of your hair, aqua-blue curls dropping away to the water below.
Staring into his eyes, you fully take stock of your situation. You are in close quarters with a Solar Anathema who has been exquisitely trained in one of heaven's most lethal fighting styles. Barely any room to maneuver, cut off from your allies. Despite how dangerous this entire sequence of events has objectively been, you've on some level felt entirely in control. One or two hiccups aside, things had been going to plan.
You may die here, though. This, you hadn't planned for.
You cannot let him reach the Blue Chimney, though, no matter what the cost. You were right to chase him. You don't need to defeat Flotsam singlehanded. You're not here alone after all, not really. All you need to do is hold his attention, stall him, and survive. This renewed resolve doesn't banish your fear, but it lets you master it. Love, after all, is smiling at your troubles.
You smile at yours as he next tries to run you through. An amused twitch of the lips, a glimmer in your eye, the tears in your clothing suddenly provocative instead of merely shabby — your grace in whirling clear of his thrust is truly singular. Students of Violet Bier of Sorrows Style practice detachment in combat, freeing themselves of base emotion, of anger or guilt or bloodlust, leaving only killing intent as sharp as any blade. You deliberately rob Flotsam of that, hooking a delicate, teasing finger into his heart. By the time he turns on you again, you're nowhere to be seen, an elusive object of desire.
He still wants you dead, obviously, but if you've done this right, even if it's not quite on a level he would ever admit to himself, he also wants you. More keenly and more personally than Rika ever had. Maybe that's why he brings her up — either way, if he's shouting at you instead of making a run for the Chimney, you have him.
"Rika died trying to protect you, because she was stupid enough to trust you. To like you!" The accusation is raw, pained, hurled into the surrounding cavern and echoing against the nearby rock wall.
"Joje u Rika died because I killed her," you correct. "She liked the thought of a desperate, grateful mortal girl adorning her bedroom until she got bored. Unfortunately, I was never available." Your voice calls up from somewhere below, but he can't immediately pinpoint your hiding spot. The wooden boards overhead creak as he turns in place trying to find you.
"She was still my friend!"
"She meant nothing to me, and the world is better without her." You put some amusement in your voice, making it a joke rather than a grim necessity.
His only answer is to plunge his sword down through a gap in the boards of the walkway. He misses you by at least half a foot, but the gesture is certainly vicious enough. You're just below the walkway, one foot wedged into the fork between a post and a flimsy support beam. You don't waste the opening he's just given you.
Vaulting up from your hiding place, you land nearly silently on the walkway behind him. He still hears and turns on you, but by then you're already in motion, a palm thrust striking his chest, and your knee driving into his stomach. From the pained gasp he makes, you know it hurt him. You're prepared to dance away from another sword stroke, but when it comes, it's a feint. You duck under the blade only to receive a sharp kick straight to the jaw.
Your head spins as you struggle not to be sent sprawling over the edge of the walkway, throwing yourself into a roll and popping back up onto your feet. You taste blood in your mouth, a bad sign — Violet Bier is at its most dangerous when an opponent is already weakened from injury.
By this point, your own Caste Mark has flared on your brow, the soft blue of Venus's sign seeming almost dim against even a Night Caste's garish anima. It's the Caste Mark that forestalls the expected attack. He glares at it, hate filling his dark eyes, mingled with the confused desire that's so effectively diverted him. Rika's satchel is still slung over his back, forgotten for the moment. "I knew what you were," he says, "I knew as soon as you murdered her, and I could really see you. I recognised the eyes."
"You've met a Sidereal before. You've been trained by one," you say, boards groaning ominously as you take another step back. It's a troubling notion, but, frustratingly, no longer surprising. You hold more than one of your colleagues in the Gold Faction in personal esteem, but far too many of them have been showing a shocking lack of good judgement in such matters.
"Just figured that out?" He moves forward almost too fast to track, and you just barely flit out of the way of a cut that would have slit your throat from ear to ear if it had properly connected. You leap backward without taking your eyes from him, just so happening to alight on a teetering plank of wood. Something hot and wet is flowing down from the bridge of your nose. The stinging pain of it only hits a few moments later. The wound is superficial, except, faintly, to your pride.
"No, it was obvious," you say. You'd known exactly who taught him Violet Bier of Sorrows Style from the first time he'd tried to stab you. "Is there anything you'd like me to tell your master for you, once you're dead? I'm sure I'll run into them again around the offices at some point."
"I don't have a master," Flotsam says, making the word sound like something dirty. "I had a teacher. They warned me about you."
"About me? I've been accused of being cold before, but I'm not so unpopular in the Fivescore Fellowship," you say, feigning amusement. You don't trust his stillness — you're poised to make another leap for safety if he so much as twitches in your direction.
"You know what I mean," he says, staring you down with unblinking intensity. Every time you evade him, his obsession deepens just a little more, rage and perverse attraction mixing together into a murderous lust alien to you twice over. "They warned me that your 'Faction' would kill us just for having the temerity to exist, if you could. That you know what the Realm is, what it does, but you prop it up anyway, because it's convenient. For your own gain. Allow an evil to exist in the world you're not even trying to curb — that you protect, that you feed — supposedly for a greater good. When the Realm killed my family, was that for a greater good?"
"Will the deaths of all the families you came here to drown be for a greater good?" you ask. "The dockworkers, the shopkeepers, the slaves..."
"And the Western cities that the Realm has destroyed?" Flotsam demands. "The people that their navies kill, enslave, brutalise? If a little more blood has to be spilled to kill a monster, then I'm willing to do that."
"Funny. I've been thinking something similar ever since I met you all," you say, smile equal parts infuriating and beguiling.
The only sign is a slight narrowing of his eyes. The distance between you disappears, and his sword is falling from every imaginable angle. Dodging the deathblows is like weaving between raindrops in a storm, fragile sections of walkway falling to splinters beneath your feet.
You fall to your knees on the far side of it, blood trickling down one arm, from your chest, a shallow cut bleeding on your neck, your breath coming out in ragged gasps. The fight has taken you to the far side of the walkway, jagged gravel digging into your knees through the thin fabric of your robes, the towering support pillar horribly close. Flotsam stands over you. Within the golden light that wreaths him like a beacon, ships made from shadows burn.
"So, we're the monsters," he says, angrier than ever. His sword, very near your eyeline, is wet with your blood. "And we need to die, so that this city can live and keep glutting itself on the wealth of an entire Direction. Because that's what you do, isn't it?" His hand shoots out, seizing you by the throat. This time, you're too sluggish to dodge. "You show up from nowhere and you decide who lives and who dies, don't you? Don't you?"
You struggle for air, blood-slick hands clawing against his grip. In your panic, however, for just a moment, you see something over Flotsam's shoulder. You manage two words: "Different... Division."
Rika's orichalcum spear whistles as it flies through the air, burying itself in Flotsam's back. He hisses in pain and drops you, staggering past you to collapse onto his hands and knees.
"She's right, you know." The young Fire Aspect from before, the one who had kicked Radiance, sails through the air, his tether to the earth cut. He lands neatly, all smiles. Despite the fiery anima that burns around him, you feel no heat. "Who lives or dies is my job." He's barely twenty years old, his frame narrow, features strikingly Northern. He wears a flaming red cloak clasped with the mon of House Peleps — to look at him, no one could take him for anything but a Prince of the Earth. That is, until he unclasps the cloak and tosses it aside. The fire vanishes, fading away into a steady, violet light, a halo of purple smoke framing his head from behind.
Flotsam reaches behind him, pulling the longfang free with a choked scream. It weighs heavily in his hand, and you can already tell that he's furious to see it wielded against him. "That isn't yours!" he says, getting shakily to his feet.
"You know, I think it might be — I'm keeping it, at least!" The Reckoner's smile, if anything, grows wider. Lew has always been incurably annoying, in that way.
Lew Stojca, Chosen of Saturn, your junior colleague and Circlemate from the Division of Endings. You've known him for three years, since he first arrived in heaven as a confused Clovinan teenager who had spoken only Skytongue. Lew is alternately endearing and frustrating, but you hadn't been wrong today when you'd gambled with your life that he would find you in time.
Flotsam drops Rika's spear, raising his sword again and stepping toward his new enemy despite his wounds. He isn't ready for it when you grit your teeth, force yourself to your feet, and hit him with a shoving palm strike directly onto his open wound — not hard enough to do much more damage, but hard enough to get his attention. Flotsam barely has time to scream again before Lew is on him.
One of Lew's hands sketches the Lesser Sign of Saturn in violet stardust, the other hits Flotsam square in the face with a blow that scours his flesh with angry, golden fire.
Flotsam reels back and spits out a mouthful of blood, crazed burn marks fresh and livid on his cheek. "Golden Janissary? I'm not a demon, you idiot."
"You're close enough!" Lew says. Flotsam evades his next blow, moving swift as a shadow. You use the opportunity to slip away again, however — the subtle shift in the battle's energies are enough to cause a tiny relaxation of Flotsam's guard, and Lew takes full advantage. He punches Flotsam hard in the throat, followed by a sweeping kick that hits Flotsam square in the chest with a hideous crunch.
"Fuck... you!" Flotsam wheezes, robbed of any eloquence. "You didn't get all of us!"
"We never do," you say, scooping up Rika's longfang in both hands. Without attuning yourself to the Essence of the orichalcum, it's too heavy to be practical. You still manage to toss it the short distance to your ally, who catches it as if it weighs no more than a length of bamboo.
Lew moves in for the kill, making the sign again as he whirls around to ram the spear into Flotsam's side. For an instant, the world itself is literally painted in shades of red. The two men stare at each other, Lew's spear plunged into Flotsam's ribs, Flotsam's sword having punched through the metal of Lew's borrowed naval cuirass.
As the red haze fades, It isn't hard to see who had the worst of that exchange, though. Lew winces in pain, but remains on his feet. By contrast, Flotsam's sword falls from slack fingers, and he drops to his knees again. He opens his mouth, but he only hacks up a mouthful of blood.
You kick Flotsam's sword again and step up beside him, not willing to let him go without prying at least one bit of information from him, despite how much you wish you could just collapse where you stand. The subtle magic you'd already slipped into Lew's attack compels an answer, despite Flotsam's wounds, despite his better judgement.
Article: Through your use of the Deadliest of All Weapons technique, you may compel a truthful answer from Flotsam before he dies. His answer may be vague or misleading, but it cannot be outright false. What do you ask him about his mysterious Lunar ally?
[ ] "Who is the Lunar who was helping your Circle?"
[ ] "What was the Lunar's goal in helping you?"
[ ] "What is the Lunar going to do next?"
Last edited:
Year 1, Arc 1, vote 04
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Year 1, Arc 1: Bittern 05
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
"What is the Lunar going to do next?": 18
"Who is the Lunar who was helping your Circle?": 12
"What was the Lunar's goal in helping you?": 10
"Who is the Lunar who was helping your Circle?": 12
"What was the Lunar's goal in helping you?": 10
"What is the Lunar going to do next?" you ask. Lew sends you a surprised, alarmed look — this is the first he's hearing about a Lunar.
Flotsam seems to try to resist, but he's on the edge of death, his supernatural might spent. The power of a Throne Shadow master is insidious and deceptively hard to escape. He manages to speak around the puncture in his lung, his voice wet and gurgling. "She'll skip town when we don't make the meeting point — I made her promise." He visibly wavers, his eyes drooping, his vision going out of focus. It becomes very hard to hear his words over the echoing background roar of seawater. "After that, she was... we were... there's more than one Realm fleet in the West." With that, Flotsam slumps to the side, his anima completely guttering out, as dead as Rika before him.
You lean your weight against a nearby rocky outcropping, trying to catch your breath and gather your thoughts. "The Merchant Fleet, obviously," you say, thinking out loud. "House V'neef or their holdings was a target as well. It still might be, it depends on what exactly the Lunar was planning. It's going to have to go in my report, regardless."
"What Lunar are we talking about?" Lew asks. With his free hand, he wrestles with the buckles of his borrowed navy cuirass, finally dropping it to the ground with a clatter. To your relief, you see that Flotsam's last stab had not been deep enough to cause real damage after it had pierced his armour.
"They had one working with them, it was not a nice surprise," you say. Steeling yourself, you fall to your knees beside Flotsam's corpse, carefully undoing the satchel to examine its contents. "I didn't meet her, but she may have been bonded to him. They were lovers at any rate. She set a fire to cause a distraction while they were down here — some of the monks who were supposed to be in the rear guard went out of position as a result. They're all dead."
"Things are never boring," Lew says, grimacing.
Inside the satchel is a disc of solid white jadesteel, its surface etched in a mixture of Seatongue and Old Realm characters formed of black jade and orichalcum. You lift it free from the satchel like the dangerous weapon that it is, turning it over to examine the set of orichalcum spikes on its underside. You have no idea how it works, but based on what Rika had claimed, it's probably best if you turn it over to the Crimson Panoply of Victory for study and safe storage, rather than letting House Peleps stumble onto a city-destroying superweapon made with Solar-level artifice.
"Are the other Solars down?" you ask.
"I helped keep the Blasphemous busy until Peleps Paran could put an arrow through her skull," Lew says. "That's what kept me. The other one didn't seem like he was coming back out of the water when I left."
Sure enough, The distant brilliance of the other Solars' anima banners has also gone out — both Smiling Chalus and Descending Radiance are now dead. In the end, it had all landed within acceptable parameters.
"Our losses?" you ask.
"Hana went down right before we killed the Blasphemous. I think one of the Water Aspects got hit pretty bad in the fighting. Aside from that, some injuries. The Dragon-Blooded knew their business," Lew says. He isn't happy about the losses — he'd fought alongside these people, obviously — but there's a certain fatalism about how he describes it. There's always an ending, after all.
You aren't a Reckoner, obviously. Still, you've had to grow very accustomed to people dying as a result of your decisions as well over the years. You don't like it but you try to focus on the positive — losing three Dragon-Blooded in the process of killing four experienced Solars is a very favourable trade, pragmatically. "You should go tell the shikari that you killed him," you say, putting the weapon back into the satchel and lifting it free of Flotsam's body. "When they ask, we can say that the artifact fell into the water during the fight."
"Well. About that!" Lew says, giving you a deeply inappropriate grin, given what you were just discussing.
You give him an incredulous look. "You ruined your resplendent destiny while you were grandstanding, didn't you?" His cover had been as a Dragon-Blooded scion of House Peleps, and deliberately gloating about being a Chosen of Endings had surely at least damaged it — from Lew's expression, you assume that it had already been frayed enough from an earlier slipup to fail entirely.
"Yeah, sorry, I forgot," Lew shrugs. "In my defence, you knew what you were doing when you set me up for that line."
"Saturn Chose you to play a joke on me, specifically," you say, shouldering Rika's satchel. You don't immediately rise, though — you're going to have to, but your injuries are definitely slowing you down.
"I'm not sure that's exactly her sense of humour. Who can say, though," Lew says. "Either way losing the destiny is annoying for me too — I was supposed to meet up with Paran after all this."
You frown at him, horribly certain you know exactly what he'd had in mind. "Why, exactly, were you going to meet Peleps Paran after this?"
Lew's smile, if anything, gets a little more brazen. "Just some good, harmless post-battle celebration between two Dynasts. You know how men are. It doesn't matter now, though, he'll have forgotten."
You ignore the jab at certain Realm gender norms that Lew is currently entirely living up to, and think about Peleps Paran, a man you have met in passing during the planning of all this. "Good. He's too old for you."
Lew scoffs. "And his wife is too old for him."
"I don't see what that has to do with anything, Lew!" you say, heat slowly building in your face.
"What do you expect me to do, fuck someone in the Fellowship?" he asks. "That would just make things worse, if you're worried about 'too old for me'. Old man Kejak is very spry for someone who's pushing five-thousand, though."
You know that he's only saying this to needle you, but that doesn't stop it from being appalling. You glare up at him.
"What can I say? Power is very attractive. Oh relax, Auntie Grace. You'll give yourself wrinkles looking like that."
He offers you a hand up, and you reluctantly take it. "Don't talk to me like I'm an old woman — I'm not even thirty."
"You're sure moving like an old lady at the moment," Lew says, watching you straighten up. Despite his cavalier tone, there's genuine concern in his eyes. "He got you pretty good, huh?"
You try your best to hide the stab of pain that straightening up gives you. "Have you ever had to defend against someone using Metal Storm before?"
"In training," he says, looking even more alarmed, "and never when they were armed."
"Well. It's worse when they're actually trying to kill you. I'll be fine once we're out of here and I can see about getting some medical attention." You hesitate before adding, more quietly, "thank you for the save, though. I knew you'd come after me."
Lew glances at you critically, and bends to pick up his discarded cloak, tossing it to you. "Those rags are not doing a lot right now, Grace. Here."
You manage to catch it. It's sized too big for you and incredibly ostentatious, but at this point you're not going to complain. He's not wrong. Your down-on-her-luck bureaucrat disguise is getting perilously low on intact fabric at this point. And you don't want to walk around advertising some of the cuts you've taken — a mortal would be in the middle stages of bleeding to death. You reverse the cloak to at least hide the most garish of the bright colours and flame pattern.
"We should go," you say. "The shikari will come to look for him before long, and even if I put my resplendent destiny back on, I don't have a good explanation for how I could have killed him. And they'll try to take the artifact from me."
"Right," Lew says. He produces a rag and cleans the blood from the head of Rika's longfang, examining the weapon with a freshly appraising air. It's made in a Randani style, its tip long, thin, and blade-like with a maker's mark etched into the golden metal, its shaft solid orichalcum in place of wood. Along the shaft, placed perfectly for where Lew would place his hands, is a sharkskin grip. Now that you look at it, you're struck that the weapon seems to have subtly resized itself to better suit its current wielder's height. Orichalcum doesn't resonate very well with Sidereal Essence but it does have its beneficial quirks at times.
Lew shoulders the weapon, letting you set the pace as you put distance between you and Flotsam's corpse, heading toward an exit that you know lies deeper in the caverns. "Does this thing have a name?" he asks you.
"Heartshine," you say, remembering what Rika called it.
Lew makes a face. "I'll think of something else."
You don't have the energy to laugh, but the comment does produce a tight sort of smile. Things certainly got dodgy at the end, but you're both alive, the Anathema are dead and Bittern is still standing. You'll have to call that a win. Reaching for a cord that miraculously still hangs around your neck, you pull a leather pouch out from beneath your rope. Inside it is a small stick of graphite, a roll of paper, and several friction matches. Not your preferred medium for sending important memos, but understandable under the circumstances. You carefully tear off a piece of paper and write:
Sir,
Bittern still exists, and we're alive. Found evidence of Silver Pact involvement.
- Grace
Bittern still exists, and we're alive. Found evidence of Silver Pact involvement.
- Grace
You strike a match along a halfway dry stretch of cavern wall and light the piece of paper on fire. It's consumed almost instantly. You're surprised when the reply comes as fast as it does, a much neater piece of paper falling out of your sleeve into your palm.
Grace,
Well done. We can discuss the details in person when you arrive back. I will be in Yu-Shan tomorrow and for two days after that.
— CK
Well done. We can discuss the details in person when you arrive back. I will be in Yu-Shan tomorrow and for two days after that.
— CK
The praise is gratifying, even though you're certain he'll find several points of gentle criticism for how you've handled things. His being in Yu-Shan for three whole days at a stretch is rare enough these days, though — he spends most of his time in the Palace Sublime in Sion, wielding his influence through the Immaculate Order.
At Lew's questioning look, you hold up the note for him to read. "My plans were a wash anyway," he says. "I'd like to at least find out for sure how the hunt went before we go, though. We could ask that monk who helped arrange this."
"We can," you say. You'd also like to know the final outcome, both for your report, and as a matter of personal interest. It had come as a surprise to you, but you'd known one of the Dragon-Blooded House Peleps had scraped together for the hunt, even if not closely. You feel obligated to find out how she fared.
You don't know what you'd do, if one of the women Ambraea loves were killed during an operation you planned and coordinated.
Radiating cold, blue-black anima, Erona Maia emerges from the fetid seawater, hauling an unconscious monk twice her size. She ignores the salt-burn in the deep gash on one leg and the smaller abrasions to her face, laying the monk down on the island that the ambush had been centred around. A small sigh is the only outward sign of relief she allows herself.
Behind her the dark water is stained with Exalted blood. Two bodies float on the waves. The larger one belongs to one of the monsters that they'd all lain in wait here to kill. The smaller corpse, floating in several pieces, belongs to one of the other Water Aspects that had fought the Forsaken Anathema with her. Maia hadn't known him well — her cold heart doesn't stir for him.
Maia is a small, slight, androgynous woman, her hair and eyes the black of an oceanic abyss, her presence bringing a sense of cold and dark places to any who meet her. She wears form-fitting silken armour of cloth-of-black-jade, a refitted hand-me down from her grandmother she'd only received the year before, easily the Erona family's greatest heirloom. Even with its miraculous ability to repel water leaving it bone dry, it still reveals her wiry build and contrasts her pale, classically-Wàn features. Despite her size she cuts a foreboding figure, the sinister coil of her blood lash wrapped around one arm. The weapon is an eerily fluid whip with a barbed head, the entire thing the red-black of fresh arterial blood.
The last time she'd been on a Wyld Hunt, she'd been twenty-one, not even a secondary school graduate. Barely an adult, with far too much time in waiting and nervous anticipation as they'd tracked their quarry through the wilderness. In the end her Hearth and their allies had been the ones to be ambushed by far more Anathema than expected. She and her lover, V'neef Ambraea, had fought desperately against a foe who had outmatched them. Only its rank arrogance had allowed them to kill it together. In the aftermath, three Anathema had lain dead, and Ambraea had swept Maia up into an awkward, fumbling, relieved kiss, for once not caring who saw them — despite everything it had been the best kiss of Maia's life.
This hunt had been different in almost every way. Mere days ago, she had been on the verge of leaving Bittern after landing there from the Isle of Wrack, sent north on a dark and vital task by her family. The errand had promised her a rare opportunity to see some of her Hearthmates again — Ambraea included. She had cleared it with her Peleps handlers, packed her things, and arranged transport. Then she had been instructed of a last minute change of plans. Maia had been told to join a hastily assembled and direly important Wyld Hunt. From there, she'd been forced to follow a daring scheme that had hinged on an ambush where any number of things could have gone disastrously wrong.
It had worked out better than it had any right to. This time they had taken the Anathema by surprise. They'd had every advantage they could possibly arrange, equipment, planning, numbers, location. Once in the water, the Forsaken Anathema had been so slow, sluggish, gradually drowning. Maia and the other Water Aspects had swam circles around it, breathing as easily as if they'd been on dry land. The monster had still fought with all the fury of a cornered animal, fully living up to its kind's reputation as army-shattering war demons.
At the end, Sister Peleps Valri had gotten in close, plunging black jade claws into the Anathema's chest, ending up bludgeoned into unconsciousness in the process. This had left the Forsaken too preoccupied to stop Maia from laying its jugular open. The blood had filled the water so thickly that at first she hadn't known whose it was, or even that they'd won. Now here she is, standing alone and cold in a stinking cavern with no Ambraea to collapse against. There's not even a trusted comrade here who Maia can truly let her guard down in front of.
She has barely had time to catch her bearings when the sole surviving demon scuttles up to her, stopping just short of where her anima would cut rather than simply sting. Its smoke-shrouded body towers over her. Nonetheless, it affects a low bow as best it can, dipping its unseen head in a way that makes the entire cloud swift downward. "Mistress," it says, its voice hissing and chitinous, but always strangely polite.
"Which are you?" Maia asks, her eyes flicking around to assure herself that the other two demons really are dead.
"You called this one 'Tomescu Two', Mistress," the demon says.
Maia nods. "Well-done on surviving then, Two." The three tomescu she had had in her service at the beginning of the day had been fairly interchangeable in most ways, but it's still good to know. She steps past the demon without a further word.
On the far side of the island, multiple Dragon-Blooded animas rage, Air, Earth, and Wood, originating from the other survivors of the fight. Two bodies lay motionless on the ground at their feet. Rather than immediately approach, Maia glances down at another body:
The dead Anathema takes the shape of a woman even smaller than she is, its pathetic form sprawled on its face. Maia nudges the body over with one foot, staring dispassionately down at it. Its eyes are blank, its chest feathered with arrows and utterly devoid of breath. Nonetheless, one can't be too careful with an Anathema. Heedless of the way her anima bites into the monster's dead flesh, Maia produces a dagger with the flick of a wrist and cuts its throat for good measure. Satisfied at the lack of any response, Maia straightens, and prepares to greet her betters.
One of the other bodies on the ground belongs to a third Anathema, it having put up an impressive fight. This one has been so thoroughly peppered with arrows and hacked at with weapons before dying that Maia feels confident that it won't be getting up again. The last, though, is a Dragon-Blooded woman, an Air Aspect clinging to life after her throat had seemingly been torn out with the Anathema's barely hands. Her anima is already guttering, and she stares up at the ceiling of the cavern in uncomprehending pain. A Wood Aspect man kneels over her, doing his best to save her life, though Maia thinks he won't succeed.
Maia does a quick headcount. Originally there had been six Dragon-Blooded, between herself, the other two Water Aspects, and the three on land. Her three tomescu were very dangerous as lesser demons went, but not individually a match for an Exalted warrior. The marines overhead, who Paran had commanded. Against four Solar Anathema? Even with as well-executed an ambush as this had been, surely they should have had at least two or three more Exalted present on the island — there would have been room enough for that, and there are several with the rear guard who could have been called upon, rather than simply laying in wait to cut off the enemy's avenue of escape.
Maia is contemplating this when one of the survivors finally speaks to her, an Earth Aspect with one arm hanging broken at her side. "Erona Maia," she says, politely inclining her shaven head, even offering Maia a pained smile. "I am pleased to see that you survived."
It's more courtesy than she looks for from the Dynasts, but the Erona family has held quite a bit of favour with the Immaculate Order, ever since they'd given over her elder brother to the monkhood — an Exalted son is the sort of extravagant show of piety that the Immaculates don't forget. Maia returns the bow, despite her protesting leg. "You as well, Sister," she says.
The monk glances behind Maia, at the motionless form of the monk she had pulled out of the water with her. "Sister Peleps Valri..."
"... should recover, I hope," Maia says. "She took a blow to the head at the end of the fight, right as we killed the Anathema together."
"Thank you, she is a friend," the monk says, sounding genuinely sincere. She bows again before going to see to her fallen comrade, giving Maia's tomescu a wide berth.
The Air Aspect gives one last gurgling gasp and dies. The Wood Aspect stays kneeling over her for a further second. "Well-fought, cousin," he whispers, before rising. Peleps Paran is a Dragon-Blooded man who physically looks at least thirty, roughly placing his true age several decades older than that. He's tall, broad, handsome, his neatly-trimmed hair and beard tinted green. A bow of supple black jade is slung over one shoulder, and a quiver of arrows hangs at his back. He regards Maia unsmilingly.
"Peleps Lai Hana is no longer with us, I see," Maia says, bowing to him. "My condolences. And congratulations — is that your arrow through the Anathema's eye, my lord?"
"It is," Paran says, with less relish than he otherwise would have shown.
"I regret to inform you that Peleps Rolon has also fallen," Maia says. Then, because it's expected, she adds: "He was very brave."
"Thank you," Paran says, without warmth. "My family appreciates your skill, as ever." Maia knows how little he actually appreciates her presence. Maia is undeniably useful — this horrible Wyld Hunt she's been most recently dragged onto is testament to that. But she has several marks against her. She's a patrician, and a sorcerer, and is Sworn Kin to both V'neef Ambraea and V'neef L'nessa, two highly placed young members of House Peleps' most hated rival within the Dynasty. To say nothing about the vague suspicions still whispered about the mysterious death of Peleps Nalri back in secondary school. That Maia is quiet and unsettling on top of all that is just the last straw.
Maia pulls the Forsaken's grimcleaver off of her belt, offering Paran the black jade weapon haft-first. Hana had been in command, and with her dead, that responsibility now falls to Paran. Maia can see the assembled mortals, monks and marines both, waiting uneasily on the walkway, out of range of the anima flux that is still a threat to anyone unblessed by the Dragons, looking to him for further orders. "What became of the fourth Anathema, my lord?" she asks.
"The Wretched ran with the artifact," he says, seeming to abruptly realise how serious that should be as he says it. How he'd forgotten, Maia doesn't know. "The mole pursued them. I think. A great deal was happening."
Maia frowns. "Wasn't your spy with the Anathema a mortal? Did anyone else follow them?"
Paran looks as though he's about to say 'yes', but he stops, frowns, a deep furrow forming in his brow. "I... did anyone?" he asks.
Somewhere in the back of her head, Maia can almost hear L'nessa saying: "A sad object lesson in what happens when men are placed in leadership unsupervised.".
"I could not say, my lord," Maia says, trying not to sound frustrated, or like she is questioning his competence as much as she is. "I was underwater, if you'll recall."
Paran nods sharply, seeming to come back to himself. He raises his voice, looking to the mortals behind him, focusing his attention on the highest ranking mortal officer. "Scalelord, send word to the rearguard, — we are moving to secure the Blue Chimney site."
"I can send my demon after the Wretched, my lord, to scout the Anathema's location," she tells him, already steeling herself for the possibility of this day growing longer, and the possibility that she may yet die here for the good of the Realm. There's more at stake than that, though — House Peleps has tried with mixed success to avoid Maia acquiring any intelligence she could hurt them with if she decided to start supplying it to her Hearthmates. Maia has still spent the past five years serving the house, though, and has spent quite a bit of time on the Isle of Wrack, in close proximity to the decision-making apparatus of the Imperial Navy.
Peleps relies on Bittern's drydocks and shipyards to build and maintain their ships. If this attack were to succeed, if Bittern were destroyed and that capacity and expertise along with it, they would very likely do something very rash. With the Realm already steadily hurtling toward civil war, why would they wait another two years for the Throne to be officially declared vacant, letting their ships deteriorate and their strained financial straits worsen? Under such circumstances, it is not difficult to imagine the bloodthirsty old women of the Admiralty Board turning a hungry gaze on House V'neef's shipyards in Eagle's Launch, dragging their allies into a war that no one is entirely prepared to fight.
Maia's family might secretly be pleased by this outcome, but it would be exceptionally bad for more than one person who Maia loves.
"Do it," Paran says.
Maia nods, looking over to the tomescu. "Did you hear that?" she asks it. "Did you see the direction the surviving Anathema went?"
"I did, Mistress," it says. "It will be done." With that, it dematerialises again, seeming to vanish out of the world.
They will all be very confused when the demon reports finding Flotsam's corpse, and alarmed that the artifact itself is not with him. By that time, though, you will be well clear.
From the still-smouldering naval docks, the column of smoke is visible from almost anywhere in the city.
Aboveground, Bittern is built around a series of steep hills rolling steadily down to the waterfront. The Hill of Seventeen Spires rises up impossibly high among the rest. From atop it, stately mansions and governmental buildings literally looking down on the common folk of the city, wealth literally flowing uphill.
Between the hills and the city's myriad wharves and docks, the streets become a chaotic tangle, filling the city's ancient walls to burst with vibrant life. Bustling markets peddling the stolen wealth of the West — spices, precious minerals, rare woods and dyes are only scratching the surface. Tenements rise up mere streets away from affluent storefronts and the generational homes of wealthy peasants. These themselves are only a few wrong turns away from crumbling, blighted slums. Neighbourhood enclaves for countless peoples from across the West coexist here, making Bittern one of the Realm's most cosmopolitan cities — Seatongue is nearly as common as Low Realm.
It's still a little strange, after a childhood growing up in the Imperial Palace and the Imperial City, just being in a Realm city with so many people who look like you. It makes you unusually conscious of the mannerisms you learned in Scarlet Prefecture, and the way you speak even Low Realm with a noticeable High Realm accent. That you were educated to at least interact with Realm high society, whether as a servant or through providing some other service to Dynasts or patricians, feels painfully obvious.
Street musicians play on busy corners, ordinary peasant men run errands for their families, poor children run through the streets, expertly weaving through the crowds. Carts and wagons navigate the warren of streets, bringing goods up the hill from the waterfront, and carriages carry the wealthy to and fro without their having to set foot on squalid streets. Slaves are deceptively rare in this part of the city. Officially only a Dragon-Blood can own a slave, and so most of those who live in Bittern are either the household servants of Dynasts or engaged in labour at naval docks. Out of sight or not, you know that they are here in their thousands.
A note of strained tension hangs in the air above it all. The people do not know exactly what happened, exactly how close they'd all come to sudden death. Still, they know something is wrong, between the fire and the conspicuous movements of marines, the Black-Helm constabulary, and the city's many Immaculate monks. With the entire Blessed Isle hanging on the edge of war, they don't entirely trust this kind of trouble to remain ignorable.
After escaping from the Undercity injured, dirty, and tired, the exit you'd picked had fortunately not been far from the Immaculate Temple where you'd stashed most of your things at the outset of this operation. Fortunately, unlike Lew, you still have the resplendent destiny that you'd used to make contact with the Immaculate Order. Using it, the abbot you'd dealt with before had immediately recognised you as the same woman, and remembered the unconventional credentials you'd shown her. This gives you a chance to wash, receive basic medical attention, and slip into a set of clothing that is neither ragged nor filthy.
The abbott and some of the others involved with the Wyld Hunt will remember the figure that that particular resplendent destiny inspires for as long as you maintain it. A junior bureaucrat named Sea Breeze, hardworking, plucky, but obviously in over her head and involved in dangerous things beyond her knowledge. Details about her will slip away — your hair, your eyes, the sound of your voice, maybe even the specific name you used — but the general impression will remain. You, Singular Grace, will not be remembered by a soul here anymore than Lew will be. One of the harsh realities of life in the Fivescore Fellowship is that you can never rely on anyone as much as you can on one another.
"Who was that sorcerer to you?" Lew asks.
"Erona Maia?" you ask, moving across the crowded street and expecting Lew to follow. You still feel far from your best, and the injuries to your face draw more than a few glances. You're wearing a clean set of clothes in the style of a merchant or other affluent peasant, though, and you don't stand out so much beyond that.
No one casts a second glance at Lew, despite the fact that he's still carrying an orichalcum spear on his shoulder. His near-Northern features make him stand out more on the streets of Bittern than you do, but the eyes of the crowd pass over him as if there's nothing else unusual about him, not truly registering the weapon he bears. It's a handy trick that you've never quite picked up, although you keep meaning to.
"Is there another sorcerer involved in all this that I'm not familiar with? You asked that monk about her by name back there," Lew says.
You suppose that it would have been stranger for him not to notice that. "She's Sworn Kin to my former lady," you say. "I knew her a little, in Chanos. She often... came and went at Lady Ambraea's residence there. During the summers where they weren't both at the Heptagram."
"Came and went, huh?" You don't need to look back at Lew to know that he's smirking.
"Yes, they're lovers," you say, cutting through his insinuations with a roll of your eyes. "It would have been awkward if she'd been among the fallen. Lady Ambraea and I didn't depart on bad terms. She would take the loss very hard." You've successfully fought your way to the front of the crowd outside a market stall, the tangy scent of hot broth filling the air.
You produce a string of coins to pay the proprietor, who raises his eyebrows at you. He immediately addresses you in Seatongue, and it takes you a moment to understand what he's saying — the Solars had been speaking Seatongue the entire time you'd been among them, but they'd settled on some variety of elevated Wavecrest trade dialect amongst themselves. In truth, you struggle more with the highly colloquial dialects commonly spoken by many other Blessed Isle peasants of Western descent.
"You alright? You look hurt, Miss," he says.
"Two bowls," you say. "And, I'm fine. I took a fall earlier."
"Onto a knife? Repeatedly?" He asks, waiting for you to provide an explanation that never actually comes. When none comes, he adds: "Half a yen for two." Your money spends just as well no matter what you've been up to.
"That is robbery," you say, without much conviction. Times are hard, and your generous salary in Heaven doesn't leave you needing to quibble over pocket change. You unthread a single copper coin, and drop it onto his countertop. He shrugs, lifts a cleaver, and brings it down in a hard, practiced motion. He sweeps one half of the coin into a wooden box beneath the counter, leaving you to retrieve the other. A moment later, two steaming bowls of noodles are placed in front of you.
"You still sent her into the water," Lew says, picking up the thread of conversation as you step away with the food. "You know she's the only one who came back out in one piece, right?"
"I knew Peleps was sending a sorcerer who would be providing combat demons. I didn't know that it was going to be her, specifically, until it was too late to do anything else," you say, "And, we all had our risks. My plan gave us very good odds."
"I guess so," Lew says, looking much more dubious about the bowl in your hands than about your words. He still accepts it and leans his spear against the wall beside him, before taking a set of chopsticks as you push them into his free hand. "Are you sure this isn't spicy?" Lew asks, staring down at the contents of the single-use clay bowl as if they might rear up and bite him. It's filled with Wu-Jian style noodles in fragrant broth, thick with shellfish and pickled vegetables.
You lead him to a spot a little ways away from the stall. You lean against the dais of a nearby dragon statue, not currently up to pulling yourself up to perch on the edge of it without a great deal of pain. "No," you say, once you've properly swallowed your first mouthful of noodles. They're as good as you'd hoped, and you're ravenously hungry — nearly dying has that effect.
"See, that's what Saph said about that horrible Gralon stew she made me eat, and that nearly killed me," he says.
"Sapphiria did that on purpose, as a joke, because she is a habitually cruel woman," you say, eminently reasonable. The curry in question had also been extremely good.
He eyes you dubiously. "You laughed too!"
"Well," you admit, "you were being extremely dramatic, at the time. Still, I don't find it particularly hot." You demonstrate this by picking up a shrimp with your chopsticks, and happily eating it. Despite everything, being surrounded by people who would be exceptionally dead without your efforts is doing a lot for your mood. You try to relish the feeling whenever your work feels this gratifying.
"Right, sure, but you're from the Realm, you people will basically eat anything as long as you stole it from somewhere else first."
You laugh. "Only the parts that taste good."
Lew gives you a long, suspicious look, before he inexpertly maneuvers some of the noodles into his mouth. "It is a little spicy," he says, but fails to act like you've poisoned him, so you'll take it.
You're most of the way through your impromptu meal when you're taken by surprise by yet another slip of paper falling out of your sleeve. You just barely manage to catch it before it ends up in your broth.
"How many Memorial Style messages do you get in the run of a day?" Lew asks.
"Depends on the day," you say. In addition to formal Bureau business, you frequently use the technique to exchange messages with your particular friends among the Fellowship. You expect it to be something of the sort, until you recognise the tight, efficient hand it's written in.
Grace: I'm in Bittern, we should talk. I can give you a ride to the Rushing Waters Gate afterward. Fisherwomens' docks near the collapsed pier. I'll wait for two hours.
— SS
— SS
"Bad news?" Lew asks, studying your expression.
"Silver is here," you say.
You watch Lew go from shock to slow anger. "Oh, that absolute hypocrite!" he says.
"We don't know that he had anything to do with it," you caution.
"Then why is he here, Grace?" Lew demands. "What did he say to you the other month? That 'the blood of every soul the Realm murders is on your hands'? Then he's just coincidentally here when all this happens?"
"Let's not jump to conclusions. It wouldn't be like him to contact us just to gloat if he'd been outright involved," you say, although you're not exactly sanguine about this development either, and it shows in your grim tone. You bring the bowl to your lips and drink up your remaining broth. When you finish you toss the unglazed vessel into the gutter. It shatters amid the shards of past customers' bowls. "There's only one way to find out, I suppose."
The fisherwomens' section of the docks is, thankfully, as far away from the naval docks as possible. You can still see them swarming with activity where at least one warship had been set alight, in a way that had threatened to spread to other ships or even to the city itself. A very handy distraction that likely would have kept the heat off the Solars for more than long enough, if your mentor hadn't been tipped off about the scheme ahead of time — Descending Radiance had been far too trusting of the wrong ocean gods, in the end.
Here, humble vessels are moored to a slew of smaller docks, mostly belonging to the locals who fill Bittern's nearby fish markets. Barrels of bream and halibut are staged on the docks — the smell is inescapable, but you resolve to ignore it. The collapsed pier, a neglected older structure markedly larger than most of the working docks around you, is not hard to spot, its support posts and a few sad boards all that remains out of the water. Sure enough, nearby you find a familiar little sailboat.
"Try not to say anything rash?" you say to Lew. You step back out of the clattering path of a fast-moving cart laden down with crab traps.
"When am I ever rash?" Lew asks.
"Right now, judging by your tone of voice," you say. You skirt around a group of street urchins attempting to use a stolen fish to bait a fat, black cat down from atop a stack of barrels.
"I'm not going to kill him," Lew says, defensively.
"Well, that wasn't in question."
"What?" Lew demands. "You think I couldn't take Silver?"
"Let's not find out," you say. At least he's too angry to turn this into an excuse for innuendo.
Up close, the sailboat is sleek and trim, painted a handsome red-brown. It has a single occupant sitting with one foot braced against the gunwale, watching the children and the cat with a strangely morose look.
Scattered Silver, Chosen of Mars. A Tya from the Auspice Islands, he would stand out anywhere in the Realm but a major port. Dressed in simple sailor's garb, he's short, compact, and well-muscled. His bright purple hair is shorn nearly to the scalp. He has piercings in his ears, his nose, and dangling from his lip. Nautical tattoos start just below his jaw and continue down to disappear beneath the neck of his shirt, fish and ships and sea monsters. He also has a very nasty looking black eye, which surprises you. Not because Silver isn't prone to getting into fights, so much as he's usually very prone to winning them.
"Silver," you say, refusing to sound winded. Your injuries and being on your feet for so long are taking a toll, inconveniently.
"Grace." He glances over to take you in, pausing as he sees the wounds on your face and neck. Then Lew steps forward, and Silver's gaze lingering on the spear that Lew carries. "You took a trophy, I see," he says.
At times, Sidereal Circles have a strange tension about them. While entry into one is never involuntary, their formation within the Bureau of Destiny is almost always strongly influenced both by convenience and a degree of institutional pressure. There are tasks, after all, that require the intervention of more than one Division, and an established working group with representatives from several or all of them is useful to more than just the individual members. In your case, when five Sidereals are Chosen in under ten years, each of a different Caste, when the Bureau is busier than it's been in centuries, it starts to feel like the Maidens themselves are trying to send a message.
You and Silver work well together, can rely on one another under pressure, can even compliment one another's abilities. You saved one another's lives, a year or two back. The thing that keeps you from getting along, primarily, is politics. Unlike your more pleasant relationships with Gold Faction Sidereals, he is much less willing to talk around an awkward point of disagreement at the best of times.
"What are you doing here?" Lew asks. He's keeping his voice low, but it comes out with exactly the kind of hostility that gets Silver's back up.
Silver sits up, frowning at Lew's tone. "I was in the neighbourhood, and I knew you'd be here."
Lew doesn't bother taking another step forward. He leaps neatly onboard the boat, briefly setting it to rocking, and looks down at Silver with clear accusation. "Right, just in the neighbourhood. On the day that four Solar Anathema try to murder the whole city."
Silver springs to his feet, perfectly steady on the deck of the boat. The top of his head only comes up to Lew's nose, but you all know exactly how little that matters. Despite his youth, Lew was trained to be an elite Clovinan monster hunter by his ancient noble family and the Immaculate Order — he's deadly, relentless, and very good at what he does. By contrast, Silver came up brawling with men twice his size and killing pirates with his bare hands long before he was Chosen by the Maiden of Battles herself. Whatever Lew's ego might require him to believe, it would not be a good matchup. "Stojca, I'm not here to pick a fight, I'm here to talk." Silver says. "Back off."
"Lew, take a breath and give him some space, you're not helping," you say, stepping closer to the edge of the dock. You could make the jump to the boat, but you suspect you'd re-open the cut on your chest.
"When he answers the question!" Lew says, shooting you an outraged look.
"Today is a bad day to push me," Silver says, a note of genuine warning in his voice.
Dragons give you strength in the face of headstrong men. You take a deep breath, and vault over the gunwale. You're not quite able to avoid staggering as you land in the face of the expected shooting pain in your chest. It forces you to throw a hand out to brace against the mast to avoid slumping to the deck. It's enough to distract Silver, at least. "Are you alright?" he asks.
"One of the Solars nearly killed her today," Lew says. "He— Shit! Grace!"
Sure enough, you can feel the blood seeping out of your chest wound, soaking through your bandages immediately, followed by the blue-grey of your top. Silver gets to you first, grabbing hold of your arm and lowering you down to sit onto the spotless deck, the boat's gunwale giving you a modicum of privacy. "What happened?" Silver asks, all traces of anger gone.
"I had to distract the Night Caste. Metal Storm," you say, not stopping Silver as he starts to undo the ties on the front of your dress. He's played team medic before, even if you've never been hurt quite so badly in front of him, and you trust him for this as much as you'd trust him at your back in a fight. Re-opening your wound is more annoying than immediately life threatening, at present. Exalts bleed, but never enough to kill them on its own, and you don't need to worry about blood poisoning from the filth of the Undercity. It's still far from pleasant for you.
"Anyone ever tell you that you're tougher than you look?" Silver mutters, more concerned than you would have expected.
"Often," you say, "including you."
Silver manages a smile, although you can tell his unhappiness today runs deeper than your injuries or Lew being overly aggressive. "Who killed him?"
"I did," Lew says, hovering nearby. "Grace helped." He isn't exactly giving Silver a friendly look, but this has at least deflated his anger. Maybe you should have collapsed sooner.
"Sounds about right," Silver says, not sounding particularly happy. He studies the bandages under your clothes. "This was good work before you ruined it, Grace. Mortal healer?"
"I bandaged her up the first time," Lew says, stung.
"Right, I should have guessed. Are you ever going to learn anything in the sequence of the Maiden and the Road that isn't for killing ghosts?"
"I'm an exorcist! Dealing with ghosts is important!" Lew says. An embarrassed flush is creeping up into his face.
"You sure are," Silver says. The Scripture of the Maiden and the Road is associated with the constellation of the Corpse, which governs the end of life and other sudden changes. It's also associated with physicians, which is both a bleak notion, and currently a useful one. "Let me try to fix it. Healing supplies are in the green sack over there, Stojca," says Silver. Lew hesitates a moment, but sets his spear down and follows instructions.
"You knew the spear," you say as he works at your bandages. "You met them before."
"You could say that," Silver says. "Short-sighted idiots." Despite his obvious frustration, his scarred, tattooed hands are gentle as he works on your bandages.
You study his face, eyes lingering on his black eye. The realisation that he really had been treating with the same monsters you'd had to deal with earlier is hardly welcome, but something about his expression stops you from leaping to the same conclusion that Lew had earlier. "You had a disagreement."
Silver outright scowls. "You could say that," he says again. "That dumb brute practically laid me out — that's what you get for letting your guard down around a fucking Azurite."
"Right, like Anathema are fine as long as they're not from Azure," Lew says, handing Silver the green pouch in question.
"You're not from Coral. Don't talk about things you don't understand just because you're pissed off," Silver says, accepting the pouch and pulling fresh bandages free from it. "I tried to talk them out of this. I told them that they were compromised. I told them that they'd just die and not accomplish anything. That they should just write the plan off. Live to fight smarter another day, kill fewer bystanders..."
"You expected that to work?" You think you do a good job of not sounding outright scornful.
"It might have, if it weren't for that fucking Lunar being there and telling them not to trust me," Silver said, keeping his voice low enough not to carry. "Radiance was always reckless and bloody-minded. She could get the Randani and the Azurite to go along with her nine times out of ten. Flotsam was usually better than that, even if he was a ruthless bastard. I don't know what the Lunar said to him but he wasn't listening to anyone else."
"Did they know who you were?" Lew asks. He has his eyes averted as Silver changes your bandages.
"No. More trouble than that's worth half the time. They knew the destiny I was wearing, though. I'd helped them before. Sit up a bit, Grace, if it's not going to kill you."
You comply. "I think I'll survive," you say. "You didn't know the Lunar?"
"No," he says, "she was new. Spirit shape's some kind of dog. She seemed Realm-born, but not as posh as you sound. You can't tell anything like that for sure with a Lunar, though." He gives you a sharper sort of look. "I don't know much more than that, but don't try to pump me for more information; you know that's not how this works. There." He finishes tying off the bandages over a wound that you can already tell has not only closed again, but is also quite a ways down the path to healing. You recognise the technique — Silver has deferred the injury for you, and as long as he keeps deferring it for the length of time it would have taken to heal naturally, you won't have to worry about backsliding.
"Thank you," you say, experimentally rising. Finding yourself steady, you begin to retie your shirt. There's no helping the blood stain, unfortunately — you'd liked this outfit.
"Yeah," Silver says, straightening up and tossing the bloody bandages into a nearby bucket. You follow his gaze. The children you'd noticed before are staring, having apparently caught sight of your earlier collapse. One of them is now holding the cat, its dark bulk dozing contentedly in the girl's thin arms. Silver cleans his hands on a handy rag, and moves over to a barrel on the far end of the deck. Reaching inside, he tosses several objects to the children, one for each of them. Oranges, you realise.
Despite the distance involved, the fruit arcs its way over to the urchins, and those of whom are not currently holding a cat catch them — they're surprised, but if they didn't snap up an opportunity for free food, they wouldn't make it far. The one with the cat grins in thanks, and they all disappear down a sidestreet in a hurry, before the strange sailor can either change his mind or try to get something from them.
Silver watches them go, the troubled look from earlier returning. "I don't like what you do, or who you do it for," he says, glancing between you and Lew.
"I know," you say, "you've told me quite often."
"I'm not finished," Silver says, flashing you an annoyed look. "I don't like what you do — and those four you killed today didn't need to die. You didn't make them come here, though, and you were actually protecting something worthwhile for once. There are real people here, not just a vague idea of 'the Realm."
"There are always real people," you say, shrugging. "The Realm is made of them."
Silver rolls his eyes, as if you've missed the point. You wonder if he feels any differently about the Division of Battles authorising a city's destruction, when it comes in the form of violent conquest, rather than a handful of Exalts taking it upon themselves to engineer a calamity. You don't bring it up, though — you all need to rationalise the things you do for the sake of destiny, at some point.
"Was that your way of saying it's alright that we killed these Anathema in particular?" Lew asks.
"Don't put words in my mouth Stojca," Silver says, giving him a hard look. "The Blessed Isle would have less Exalted looking to destroy its cities if you all spent less time murdering them."
"Or it would have more," you say. "Considering that we're spread so thin that we are currently spending less time doing that, and you can see where it gets us."
Silver takes a deep breath, biting back something less charitable than he might otherwise say. "I'm going back to Yu-Shan," he says. "Like I told you in the note, I can still give you a ride. I can't have this argument again today, though."
"As you wish," you say, finding a seat on the boat somewhere out of the way. Silver is more than capable of operating it on his own. "Thank you. Are the port authorities just letting people leave right now without permission?"
"No," Silver says, "but I already bribed an official. And if he gets any ideas, they can try and catch us." He sets about preparing the boat to push off. Lew recovers his spear and takes a seat near you.
"Please tell me you're not going straight back into the office to write a report when we get back," he says.
"I'm going home first," you say.
"Are you sure?" Lew says, raising his eyebrows.
"Yes," you say. "I do go home, sometimes!"
"Alright, then," Lew says, giving you a grin. "Good for you."
You are going to have to go into the office soon — some of what's occurred here and what you've learned should be known to the Bureau sooner rather than later. You're also going to need to speak to your mentor while he's in Yu-Shan as well. But after a day like today, you would like at least a few hours of actual sleep in an actual bed. And you'd like to speak with your mother.
You have to steal quiet moments for yourself when you're able, before the next crisis.
End of Arc 1
Article: When you go back to heaven, you intend to first stop by your home, a manse you inherited from your predecessor, located in a relatively quiet neighbourhood in the heavenly city near to the Cerulean Lute of Harmony.
A manse is a magical structure, a house, palace, or fortress, built through advanced geomantic techniques to harness the power of a demesne. Demesnes themselves are wellsprings of supernatural power, fed by Dragon Lines and aspected to a particular kind of naturally occurring Essence. A manse will reflect this aspect in its design and power. On Creation, most manses are aligned with one of Creation's five elements — Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Wood. In heaven, however, the vast majority of manses are Celestial in nature, built to harness Lunar, Sidereal, or Solar Essence. Yours is not an exception.
What best describes the manse that you inherited when you first came to heaven?
[ ] Lunar
A miniature palace, prominently featuring a great deal of glass, mirrors, and filigree, its interior confusing to those not used to navigating it. You're still finding new rooms that seem to appear overnight.
[ ] Sidereal
A deceptively sleepy looking tower, obscured by ornamental foliage and shrouded in vines, the noise of the city outside completely cut off. It appears larger and more luxurious from the inside.
[ ] Solar
An airy, open structure built around a central garden thick with exotic plants and water features, the different structures connected by bridges and covered walkways. It seems to be highly opinionated.