A Vision in Bronze; A Sidereal quest

Gazetteer · Dec 12, 2024

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.

Gazetteer · Dec 14, 2024

The Pillar: 34

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.

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

Gazetteer · Dec 17, 2024

Something about your childhood: 19

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

Gazetteer · Dec 19, 2024

The walkway: 23

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?"

Gazetteer · Dec 27, 2024

"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

"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

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

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

"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.

Gazetteer · Jan 3, 2025

Solar: 27

Lunar: 14

Sidereal: 10

The Gulf of Daana'd,
Equidistant between the Silk-and-Pearl and Daoshin Peninsulas

For completing your goal and safeguarding destiny, you lose one point of Limit. Current Limit: 0/10

The Serpentine River is one of the great waterways of the Blessed Isle, flowing westward out of the mountains to the coast. It empties out into the Gulf of Daana'd, a vast body of water over two hundred miles across at its widest, opening up to the Great Western Ocean itself.

Your destination lies almost due south from Bittern, Silver sailing the boat out into the sheltered waters of the Gulf with calm expertise. The sun grows lower and lower on the horizon over the course of your journey, and you'd call the winter air cold if it wouldn't have made Lew scoff so hard.

Rising from the water is a rocky outcropping, seven sharp, hull-breaking rocks thrusting up out of the waves. The locals avoid this place — apart from the very real danger of being smashed onto the rocks themselves, stories about spirits dwelling here beneath the waves abound. The rocks are adorned with Immaculate talismans hanging from rusting chains, more a warning for the ignorant than a serious impediment for the gods who use the heavenly gateway hidden here.

"I hate this gate," Lew says, watching the rocks with displeasure.

"The boat is blessed," you remind him, "it won't take on water even if we hit a rock."

"We are not going to hit a rock!" Silver shouts up from his place at the tiller, clearly insulted.

"Granted. But if we did—"

"Grace, I will shove you overboard," Silver says.

"Do it. She'll be passive aggressive about it for the rest of our lives. She'll still be making snippy little non-references to it two thousand years from now!" Lew calls back. Thankfully, the boat trip has given him time to calm down — he's needling Silver a much more normal amount, for him.

Silver ignores him, tacking into the wind in order to bring the boat dangerously close to the rocks. The boat tips alarmingly as it circles around alarmingly close around the rocks. He repeats this maneuver again and again, completing a full seven circuits, once for every stone. You've seen the Rushing Waters Gate opened before, at least, so you aren't so alarmed when the water begins to violently swirl beneath the boat. A whirlpool forms beneath the boat's hull, unnaturally swift and powerful, pulling it in faster and faster.

You still instinctively hold your breath as the boat is finally dragged under the waves. Instead of being plunged directly into cold water though, you have the strange experience of the whirlpool forming a sloping tunnel in the sea itself. You're carried down nearly to the seabed before finally landing with a splash, everything going still again.

The boat is floating in a pocket of air, water to all sides, light dimly filtering down from the twilit sky above, the sandy floor of the gulf less visible beneath. A school of fish swims past, oblivious to your presence.

Directly ahead, rising out of the ocean floor, is an arch of stone formed out of the base of the rocks Silver had been circumnavigating, its interior pitch black. On carved platforms to either side, elevated clear of the water, two large, intimidating guardianss doze. Each is a lion the size of Silver's boat, formed out of pure, living orichalcum. They've presumably materialised here for your benefit, the gate opening above giving them ample warning.

One of the lions stretches and yawns like an overgrown housecat, the feline motion showing off flesh-rending claws and skull-crushing teeth. "Business and identification?" the celestial lion asks in a deep, masculine voice. The second one, a lioness, continues to feign indolence, barely cracking an eye in your direction.

Silver speaks before the rest of you, leaning over the edge of the boat. "Scattered Silver, Chosen of Battles, returning to Heaven after completing official business on behalf of the Bureau of Destiny," he says. His Caste Mark flares crimson on his brow for emphasis, casting the water around you blood red. "Accompanied by Singular Grace, Chosen of Serenity, and Lew Stojca, Chosen of Endings, who are doing the same."

"Good day," you say, giving the lion a polite smile. Celestial lions are prickly, and it never hurts to show them courtesy even if you do have a good excuse for going past them.

The lion nods self importantly. "You may proceed," he says.

The boat's sails hang slack and empty, but the lioness gives a languid flick of her paw and a current grips the craft, pulling it forward toward the gate. Silver was ready for this, calmly steering the boat into the gate.

As you pass through the stone archway, the world goes dark and cold, and your entire body is filled with the sensation of hurtling forward at truly terrifying speed. You bite back a yelp. You know it will be over soon, and you've lost enough dignity today just from having collapsed the way you had.

When the darkness disappears, you're sailing under a wholly different sky than Creation's.

Rushing Waters District
Yu-Shan, the heavenly city,

The sights and sounds of Heaven waste no time in assaulting your senses. The other side of the Rushing Waters Gate sits in a circular quicksilver lagoon ringed by stores and eateries. One quarter of the lagoon borders on a large canal thick with water traffic, separated by nothing but a low wall.

Yu-Shan is the city of the gods, peopled by spirits great and small in every shape and size imaginable. Here walks a woman with the head of a rodent, arm and arm with a being formed of featureless shadow. There, an earth elemental sweeps the walk outside a teahouse dripping in gold and jewels. Very near to you, just at the edge of the water, what looks for all the world like an ordinary seagull is having an animated conversation with a stern lion dog made of varicoloured jade, gesticulating with both wings from atop a stall that she appears to run, piled high with fresh fish.

"I have a permit, hold on!" the bird-god squawks.

All around the marketplace, a series of ornamental waterfalls cascade down into the lagoon from tiers above, somehow not disturbing its glassy surface. The sound of the quicksilver competes with nearby traffic, with the conversations of the crowd thronging the streets, and with the sound of music and laughter drifting out of a nearby drinking hall. The city stretches out in all directions, buildings grander and more fantastical than anything in Creation rising up wherever you look, connected by the canals that Silver is preparing to maneuver you all into. Overhead Yu-Shan's sun is setting, the glimmering shape of the Golden Barque of the Heavens following its arc across the sky.

"Where do you want to be dropped off?" Silver asks, furling the boat's sails. He gives the two celestial lion guards lounging on the shoreline a polite nod — his Caste Mark is still plainly visible, making it obvious who you are and why you were let through. Nearby gods stare, or hasten to take themselves elsewhere. The gods of heaven are not precisely hostile to the Sidereal Host as a group. Nonetheless, your strange natures and unique status as humans in a place of power within the Celestial Bureaucracy can make your presence an uneasy one for many gods.

"I could catch a water taxi, if you'd like to just drop me off at the shore," you offer, not really expecting him to go for it.

Silver rolls his eyes. "Grace, you almost got hacked into little pieces by a Solar today. Don't be difficult."

"Fine," you say. "I'd like to go home first, but I have something with me that I'd intended to turn into the Crimson Panoply directly, which I don't think can wait." You hold up Rika's satchel indicatively.

"Just give it to me, I'll get it there," Silver says, looking at it with mixed emotion. "I'm just glad you didn't give it to the Dynasts."

You laugh at that. "Please. Our goal is still to put off a civil war in the Realm for as long as possible. Arming House Peleps with a city destroying super weapon is not constructive for that. The Admiralty Board is not to be trusted to be sensible indefinitely." You only hesitate for a moment before you pass him the satchel, handling it as carefully as ever. If Silver tells you he's going to take it to the Panoply, you believe he will. And if you did have any doubts, you're in Yu-Shan, in front of a witness.

"You have a place in Heart's Rest, right?" Silver asks you.

"Yes," you say. He's never been there to call on you. Truth be told you rarely entertain at home outside of one or two people who more or less insist. There is a limit to how much of your work life you want to bring back there, all things considered.

Silver glances up, seeming to consult his mental map of the city. He kneels to take up a pole that had been stowed in the bottom of the boat, necessary for navigating the canals in places. "It's on the way if I'm already going into the Panoply. What about you, Stojca?"

"Works for me. Let's see if you're as jealous of her as I am," Lew says, leaning back in his seat as Silver guides the boat out of the lagoon and into the main flow of traffic.

"That seems unnecessary," you say.

"Not everyone's past life left them a whole celestial manse, Grace," Lew says.

"I know," you say. Sometimes, you wish that's all she'd left you.

By the time you get home it's nighttime, the moon a thin sliver overhead. Heart's Rest is a relatively quiet, relatively downscale neighbourhood. It was originally settled by gods of art and culture who couldn't afford to live directly adjacent to the Cerulean Lute but who still wanted some sense of proximity. Many of the gods who live here now are lesser deities employed by the Division of Serenity or its surrounding amenities. Its structures are beautiful but for the most part relatively humble by Yu-Shan standards.

There are exceptions, of course. Translucent Alabaster, goddess of fine porcelain and famed patron of the arts, keeps a splendid gallery-manse here. Other great dwellings rise up above the brightly-tiled rooftops of their neighbours, impossible to miss as Silver finally steers the boat onto Heart's Rest's smaller, quieter waterways.

"It's that one," Lew helpfully supplies, leaning over the boat to point it out to you..

"Yes," you say, too tired for much else. You still feel a distant throb in the worst of your injuries despite what Silver had done to alleviate them. You desperately need another bath and to put on clothes that you haven't bled into.

Silver lets out a low, appreciative whistle. You can clearly see the walls surrounding your home standing head and shoulders above the surrounding buildings. Gold filigree lattices the pale brickwork, seeming to glow faintly in the light of the street lamps. The wooden gates are visible past the obscuring shape of a wine shop, eight feet tall and adorned in a glittering pattern of sapphires.

You jump the slight gap to land on the street alongside the canal. Solid land feels very good to you after hours on the water. "Thank you for the ride," you tell Silver.

"And for patching you up," Silver agrees.

"I already thanked you for that," you say. But you manage a thin smile.

"Try to get me some documentation for this artifact I'm turning in. They'll want a papertrail at the armoury, and you're the one who 'found' it," Silver says.

"I'll get on it," you say. You glance to Lew. "Don't put off your report."

"I won't put it off," Lew says, scowling.

"I'll send you a copy of mine to look over, so that we can be sure we don't have accidental discrepancies," you say.

Lew mutters something under his breath in Skytongue. You're almost certain that it contains something to the effect of "Auntie Grace". You give them both a polite parting bow, then approach the ostentatious gates of your home.

As the gates come fully into view, the sapphire pattern becomes more obvious — it traces the constellation of the Musician, which governs joy, desire, art, and excess. It had been more appropriate while your predecessor had still lived. From what you've heard, Wayward Prayer was well known for hosting particularly wild revels. Here and now, the house is dead quiet.

You reach beneath your dress, pulling out an amulet that would have been worth more than your lifetime earnings as a mortal. At first glance it looks to be wrought from silver, but the hearthstone socket set into the middle of it is lined in red jadesteel. Socketed into the red divot is a piece of clear, round-cut amber, the faceted stone always warm to the touch. You hold the amulet up to the locked and barred gate. "I'm home," you say.

In answer, you hear the bar lift from the far side of the gate. It swings open enough to admit you into the main courtyard. As you set foot onto the paving stones within, you feel a faint rush of Solar Essence welling up into you. The thin moonlight overhead immediately feels brighter, lighting a garden full of rare and supernatural plants in silvery light. Despite their subtle and enticing fragrance, you barely spare them a glance tonight, trudging wearily toward the largest of the buildings that ring the garden.

The structures are made of the same white stone as the outer wall, rising up several stories to an elegantly peaked roof covered in gilded tile. Large glass windows look from every floor at regular intervals, enchanted light spilling out of several of them. You could house countless people here, a large family and a full staff of servants. Right now it's only you, your mother, and the house itself.

Speaking of whom, you pause at the round reflecting pool near the centre of the courtyard, staring down at your own reflection there. "House?" you ask.

The water shimmers and glows faintly gold, a face formed of shadow materialising within, staring up at you with a slight frown. "Do you know what time it is, my lady?"

"Yes, as you know," you say. Sensing the time of day and the current position of the stars overhead is one of the less flashy gifts of the Sidereal Exalted, but it is also one of the truly universal ones.

"Ah, my mistake then, my lady. I just wanted to check." The house smiles. Its voice has a faint, chiming edge to it, clearly artificial. It isn't nearly subtle enough at this kind of falsely servile nudge toward a superior — it faintly bothers you, in a professional sense.

"Is my mother awake?" you ask, choosing to ignore the tone.

"Miss Lohna went to sleep hours ago. Would you like me to wake her for you?" the house asks.

"No, please let her sleep. The blood would upset her," you say.

"Very well," the house said. "Shall I run a bath for you in your chambers?

"Please," you say. "And reroute my mail from the office, please." You have absolutely no idea how the house manages to do that and no one at the Bureau has been able to explain it either, but it's very convenient.

"It shall be done," the house says. With that, the glow fades, and the face disappears.

"Thank you," you say, before going back on your way. Most manses, even particularly powerful ones, are not truly intelligent, let alone verbal. Yours is fully capable of carrying on a conversation and carrying out a variety of household tasks. It's alternately very helpful and very annoying.

You enter the main hall. The large portrait of Wayward Prayer and her circle stare down at you along with many other pieces of iconic art showing people and landscapes from centuries past. As always, you consider packing it all away and replacing it with something more to your tastes, but a strange mix of guilt and a distant nostalgia not entirely your own always stops you. Ayesha Ura, Chosen of Mercury, smiles from beside Wayward Prayer. It had been a nightmare to get her to stand still for long enough for the artist to capture her likeness, you remember, but Harbingers are like that.

You tear your eyes away from the painting, and climb the first of several curving flights of stairs leading up and away from the hall. Already, you're debating whether or not you actually want to go to bed. You rarely sleep anymore. You'd learned the technique — well known among the Fellowship — of replacing rest with reading, writing, or bureaucratic tasks. Eight hours of writing your after action report should leave you every bit as refreshed as eight hours in bed, and with fewer strange dreams.

The stairs lead up to a doorway that opens up onto an enclosed bridge spanning the gap between the main hall and the smaller tower your personal chambers are housed in. You pass through it, and into a landing filled with books you mostly haven't found the time to read yet, then finally onto the bath chamber.

The baths are set into the yellow-and-white tiled floor here, large enough for a group. Which, given what you reluctantly know about your predecessor, is probably deliberate. True to your instructions, the house has filled the smallest of the tubs with hot water for you. You efficiently strip off your clothes, followed more tentatively by your bandages. Sure enough, though, Silver's magic has spared you the worst of your injuries — the wounds themselves have closed and are well on their way to healing, leaving you bruised and aching in strange places, but not at risk of fountaining blood again. Reassured, you step in, slipping under the gently steaming water.

By the time you emerge, clean and pleasantly warm, you have entirely convinced yourself that sleep would be a waste of your precious time. You have two official after-action reports to write, one for your Division, one for the Convention on the Center. You also have to see to the paperwork for the Crimson Panoply that Silver asked for. It only makes sense to get a head start on it now.

You pull on a comfortable dress in slate grey and a pair of silken slippers before you head for your study. You take a route that brings you through a largely-unused sitting room, a space full of comfortable chairs and low tables, well stocked with drink of all kinds. Arched picture windows give a commanding view of the gardens and the neighbourhood beyond your walls, depending on which direction you look in.

You would have passed through this room as quickly as the others, but you're stopped short by a wine bottle sitting on the edge of a table, far newer than the racks of old spirits that dominate one wall of the room. A yellowing label handwritten in High Realm is affixed to the glass with a blob of green wax, declaring it to be a twenty year vintage from Pangu Prefecture. It had been a gift from a senior colleague, Fox of Paradise, the month before last, who had been trying to butter you up to ask you for something, you remember, and you've been saving it as obviously too good to open alone. On impulse, you snatch it up and set about opening it anyway.

As you open it and pour yourself a cup, you reassure yourself that red wine gives your mother a headache, and that the friend who drags you out drinking most often passionately detests wine from the Eastern Blessed Isle. You aren't going to have enough to impair your work, after all, and after a day like today, you're in the mood for something to take the edge off at least a little.

As you pour, you catch sight of your reflection in one of the windows, your light blue curls still hanging damp around your shoulders. The light brown complexion and soft Western features you get from your mother have changed little in the eight years since you came to Yu-Shan. Having Exalted at nineteen, you'd continued to mature for several years, losing the last of the childish roundness in your face, but from here, it's very likely that you could look more or less unchanged for centuries. Or millennia.

The dress you wear is plain, but made of fine fabric with delicate patterns embroidered into it. It is genuinely difficult to get a heavenly prayerwright to lower themself to making common clothing from good ambrosia, and often more expensive when you can talk one into it. The dress sits flatteringly on your slight frame, the Hearthstone amulet is still around your neck, hanging visibly on the outside of your dress.

It's amazing the things you get used to.

You take an experimental sip of the wine. It's rich and dry and doesn't particularly need to breathe, you decide. You move over to the couch beneath the window you'd been looking at, and curl up with your drink. You'll just take a few minutes to have one cup, and save the rest of the bottle for the following night.

The fabric feels deliciously soft as you curl up on it, silver cup in hand. As you drink the wine, your eyes grow heavier and heavier. You've barely finished it before, for the first time in weeks, you slip off into genuine sleep.

It is twenty years before your own birth, and you are pacing furiously back and forth across the very parlour where you'd just fallen asleep. "Oh, of course, appeals to 'the lesser evil'," you say, making it sound like a curse. Genuine anger thunders through your veins. With every word, you gesticulate forcefully. "That's only ever an excuse to change nothing and reassure yourself that there was nothing else you could have done. There's always something else you could have done!"

The young Shieldbearer tracks your movements from his seat on the couch, a look of genuine fascination in his arresting eyes. Like this is more of a novelty than anything to him — it only makes you angrier that he isn't taking this as seriously as you are. "Yes, but sometimes we don't have the luxury of choosing the righteous option — sometimes, it really is down to one evil or another." He brings the glass in his hand up, inhaling deeply as he savours the nose on your third best liquor.

"Always very convenient, after the fact," you say, giving him a very hard look. You turn to face him more fully, a hand on your hip. You catch sight of your reflection in the glass of the window behind him: A dramatically tall Zhao woman, the angles of your face knife-sharp with piercing blue eyes to match, your straight dark hair cut efficiently short. A scar angles across one cheek, a souvenir from a duel you'd fought in your youth. You're still dressed for outside, wearing a long jacket of supple leather. A spray of blue flowers splash along the hems and run up the sleeves. Over the jacket, hanging from a swordbelt, is a sleek, slender daiklave in a pure white sheath. Comet's Tail, the Wandering Blade. It is the same one that, in several decades time, will be found shattered and driven through the heart of your own cold body.

"You're too young to remember the Shogunate," you say, a swerve that takes your guest a little aback.

"Well, no," he admits, smiling at you infuriatingly over the rim of his glass. "But we can't all be a thousand years old, or whatever enchanting age it is you're up to."

"Nine-hundred seventy-one," you say, a little stiffly. "I remember what it was like. Hundreds of years of pointless war, the Dragon-Blooded murdering each other over who got to sit on a fancy chair that they kept moving around every few years, and trampling the world underfoot as they did so. I remember what my seniors told me here when I was your age — 'it's the lesser evil'. And all the while, the corpses piled so high you could barely see the sun, while the ground grew soft underfoot from spilled blood. Was it true then? Why should it be any truer now that one of them has finally clawed her way to lasting power? The Realm's rule was ushered in by the complete destruction of my homeland, my people forced to flee for their lives." You finally unbuckle the sword belt, lifting it free of your waist and carefully laying the daiklave down on a nearby table.

The young man's smile fades a touch. "Now you're just putting words in my mouth. I'm talking about practicalities. The Realm exists, it isn't going away overnight or because we might wish for it. While it's here, it has its uses."

"And that makes up for the sheer weight of human misery that it inflicts upon the world? The lives lost or destroyed just to enrich the Dynasty?" You pull your gloves free, first one, then the other, tossing them onto the table next to your sword.

"No. that causes far more problems than it could ever be worth. Desperate mortals are stupid mortals — stupider mortals. Leave them alone, and they're mostly content to sit on their squalid little farms and play in the dirt. What the Realm does pushes them to all sorts of idiocy that makes my job harder."

"Your compassion for those beneath you is truly boundless and admirable," you say, real acid behind the sarcasm.

The smile comes back, charming as ever. "You know, I have often been told I'm generous to those beneath me, if you can believe it." His eyes have never left you, but you feel the weight of them more than ever, trailing a hot path down your body.

You give a derisive scoff. It's precisely this kind of arrogance that made you demand to continue this argument in private to begin with — some things you just can't work out in the staid confines of a destiny planning meeting. "So what, exactly, are these 'uses' that you feel are so important?"

"It's good enough as a tool for cleaning up its own messes even if it causes its share of them. When you can get the Dragon-Blooded pointed in the right direction." He brings the glass to his lips and takes a slow, savouring sip of the drink.

You shrug out of your jacket, tossing it over the back of the nearest chair. "Which is good, considering the amount of time, energy, and blood we spend murdering anyone else we could turn to for these things."

"Oh, please, spare me the plight of the poor maligned Lunar Host," he says, actually rolling his eyes. "I simply don't have the energy for a line of argument this tedious."

You take two long steps forward to stand over him, snatching the glass out of his hand and downing the entire thing in one smooth motion. The liquor burns in your mouth and throat, giving you no time to appreciate its delicate complexities. This is fine — you're too busy savouring the outrage on his face to notice. You cast him a contemptuous look down your nose.

"Well! If you lack the energy, should I leave you to your rest?" you ask. You lean past him to set the glass down on the windowsill behind his couch, a little firmer than necessary. With your other hand, you're already working at the knotted fastenings of your shirt, starting at the top and working your way down.

He stands up all at once, glaring down from a vantage of inches. You're fully in each other's space now — you can practically feel the frustration coming off of him. "Maybe I was saving it," he growls.

He grabs you roughly, shoving you down onto the couch, forestalling your reply with a hard kiss. You return it hungrily, channeling all of your anger with him into it, your nails digging into the back of his neck.

Some things really can't be worked out in a meeting.

You wake on the couch, yourself again and back in the present. Your first, absurd thought as you study the ceiling is to reassure yourself that the furniture in this room has to have been cleaned at least once in the past fifty years. Still, you get up in a bit of a hurry. This is part of why you usually avoid actual sleep, along with the lost productivity.

The worst part is that, as is all too often the case, you recognise the other Sidereal from the memory as a man who is very much still alive and still working for the Crimson Panoply. It's going to be impossible not to think about this encounter the next time you have to interact with him. Just the thought of it makes you hunch in on yourself with mortification. Many people have good things to say about your predecessor, but you can't exactly speak to that. Given that you were born the same day that she'd died, you never had a chance to meet the woman. You just wish that she'd been capable of practicing even a modicum of restraint or discretion when it came to initiating... entanglements with gods and Sidereals who you now need to work with.

Her politics were also hopelessly naive for someone as old and experienced as she was, but you can live with that more easily.

The sun has risen outside, early morning light reflecting off of the rooftops of the manse, bathing everything in a bright, warm glow. You examine yourself — your dress now looks like you slept in it, and to your horror, you fully realise that you went to bed with your hair wet and without combing it first. With a heavy sigh, you put away what's left of the wine, before heading back toward your bedroom to change and to try and fix the tangles that you know must already have formed.

Once you're more presentable, you venture out into the house in search of your mother. In stark contrast to your long and unpredictable office hours and constant coming and going to Creation, your mother has settled into a well-established routine in the five years since you brought her to Yu-Shan. Every day, she rises with the dawn as she had for the two decades she'd spend as a palace slave, eats a light breakfast, then occupies herself with reading or correspondence.

You make your way down from the upper floors of the manse, making your way outdoors. You hear the voices just before you see them.

"I have addressed a letter before," your mother says, audibly struggling not to laugh. "You might recall."

"She's a particularly prickly goddess!" says the house, annoyed, but not angry.

"I'm not addressing the letter to the goddess, I'm addressing it to her guest," your mother says.

Lohna Prince's Scribe sits at a small table set up on an outdoor patio overlooking the garden, already halfway through a bowl of rice porridge. Beside it, a cup of tea curls gentle billows of steam. She's dressed in a simple, silken day dress, blue-green curls longer than she'd ever let them get before coming here and with a touch of grey that hadn't used to be there. She still bears the signs of a hard life in the lines of her face, and the brand of the Imperial Household burned into her neck is still visible, but she's smiling. Genuinely happy.

Across the table from her, an indistinct figure of shadow and flickering golden light seems to sit in another chair, somehow managing to convey displeasure with its very body language. "You're addressing it to a mortal in her household; she may read it. Do you want to cause problems for Lady Grace? She is responsible for your conduct, you know."

"Lady Grace?" your mother asks, not a trace of comprehension in her voice.

You ignore the dull lance of pain that goes through your chest. You're used to hearing that from her. Or, you should be.

"Lady Grace! Good morning." Noticing your arrival, the house's insubstantial form seems to dissolve from the chair, reappearing a few feet away to execute a perfect bow. "I trust you slept well? I appreciate the thought, but I would have made up your bed, if you'd cared to use it."

Lohna shoots to her feet, face wide with surprise. "Oh!" she says, briefly giving you hope for the morning. But she's only realised that you're her host, not recognised who you are. "My lady. I had no idea you'd returned." She bows low.

"I told her this morning, twice," the house says.

You shoot the house a look of mild reproach, before focusing on your mother. "I only arrived back late last night," you tell her. "Do you mind if I join you?"

"No, not at all," Lohna says, straightening up again. Mixed emotions are clear in her eyes — she doesn't know you, but she is glad at your presence. She still loves you even if she doesn't know why.

"Shall I fetch my lady some breakfast?" the house asks.

"Yes, thank you," you say, taking the seat that the house had formerly pretended to occupy. You glance at your mother's simple breakfast. "I'll have the same, thank you."

"As my lady desires," the house says, and the figure vanishes.

Food, a luxury for the gods, is shockingly expensive in heaven. It either needs to be crafted from pure ambrosia, brought in from Creation at nearly as much expense, or bartered for with one of Yu-Shan's few, scattered human communities that manage to grow their own food. Even a simple meal of rice porridge with pork floss and vegetables for two people costs you more than you care to think about. The Bureau pays you enough that it shouldn't bother you, but it still does.

"What were you talking about before I arrived?" you ask your mother.

"Ah," Lohna says, hesitating a moment before she takes a seat. "Well, a letter I've been meaning to write." She glances to a nearby table where ink, paper, and other writing supplies have been laid out.

"To a guest of Translucent Alabaster?" you ask.

"Yes. The goddess has brought up a... young mortal 'guest' to stay with her in heaven," Lohna says. "An artist from the Blessed Isle. Heart's Desire met him in the market yesterday. Ah! Apologies, my lady, Heart's Desire is my friend."

You're well aware of who Heart's Desire is. A god-blooded courtesan who works at an upscale brothel just beyond the limits of your neighbourhood. Her unlikely friendship with your mother had taken you off guard, originally, but there are only so many humans in this part of Yu-Shan. You well understand finding friendship in places you wouldn't have thought to look when you still lived on Creation.

"Risky, on Alabaster's part. I've heard she has a good reputation with the Immaculate Order — that won't last if they find out she's spiriting away mortals," you say.

"I suppose you would know more about that, my lady," Lohna says, a trace of irony in her voice.

You laugh in spite of yourself. "I'm not a goddess," you say. You rather suspect that the larger objection to you taking your mother away from the Palace would have been more along the lines of "theft of Imperial property". You doubt you would have gotten away with it if the Empress were still there.

Lohna studies you, curious as she always is when she can't recall your precise nature. "As you say," she says. She takes a mouthful of porridge, chewing thoughtfully before asking: "Is the house right? Will Lady Alabaster really object, do you think? I wouldn't wish to cause you any difficulties."

"I can write to her and explain that you only want to help the boy adjust to things here," you offer. Translucent Alabaster works for the Bureau of Humanity, and so may forget, but hopefully the good feeling will stick even if your name doesn't. You feel awkward about the offer. It's a reminder that, while she isn't a slave anymore, legally, your mother relies on you as a patron here. She'd understood that when she'd asked to come stay with you, however.

"Thank you," Lohna says, giving you a tentative smile.

The shadowy figure reappears, somehow supporting a golden tray with your food and tea stacked onto it. Spirits ordinarily can't dematerialise in Heaven, but from what you gather, the house is doing something different. "Here you are, my lady," it says. "I have rerouted your mail, as you requested. It's waiting for you in your study."

"Thank you, House," you say.

"I literally exist to serve," it says, before vanishing again.

You finally make it up to your study after breakfast. Irritating past life memory dreams or not, you do feel refreshed and renewed after a night's sleep and a quiet meal in your mother's company. Her not knowing you is always disappointing, but you try to keep things in perspective. She remembers you much more frequently than she used to, even if not today.

Still, the work isn't going to wait forever. Your study is one of the few rooms in the manse that you have heavily modified. Wayward Prayer's taste in furnishing is both sumptuous and gaudy, which you'd found almost as distracting as the beautiful-but-risque artwork she'd hung around the place. Instead, you've remodelled the room after your office in the Cerulean Lute. It's a pleasant, well-lit space with furnishing in polished mahogany, the desk low to the ground in a style common in the Realm, shelves of useful books taking up much of the wall space.

True to the house's word, your mail waits for you on the desk in several neat piles, organised by date and importance. One pile is for urgent work correspondence and memorandums, the next for purely social matters, and the third for missives that probably aren't worth your time — largely mail delivered directly to the house itself, hawking various services or opportunities.

You quickly sort through the first two piles. Near the top is a brief but cordial letter from the office of Chejop Kejak, your mentor setting a date and time he's set aside for the meeting he's asked of you. It doesn't require more than a quick reply confirming that you have received the letter and intend to be there at the agreed upon time. There are other letters regarding the status of particular long term destinies, but nothing as pressing as the reports you already need to work on.

The social pile turns up a thick letter from Yula Cerenye, another Joybringer and the first friend you'd made in Heaven. Presumably she had sent it to you while you were on Creation as part of her ongoing policy to studiously ignore the parts of your time that you spend supporting or organising Wyld Hunts. You set it aside to read in full later — her letters are usually long, eloquently written affairs full of amusing anecdotes, unkind observations about mutual acquaintances you both dislike, and her frequently-caustic thoughts on plays or books she's seen or read lately. They're usually thoroughly entertaining, and you always make a point of responding to them in full, especially when your mutual work periodically makes in-person socialisation impractical.

The other thing from this pile that particularly catches your interest is a thin, plain letter sealed by a Dragon-Blooded family mon pressed into yellow wax. You immediately recognise this as coming from your newest and least experienced Circlemate — Hari isn't prone to letter writing unless it's a particularly practical matter. You're about to read it, when something near the bottom of the trash pile catches your eye:

You pull free a letter on heavy paper embossed in gold, your name written out on the front in green ink in antique Flametongue. You sigh with irritation. You're aware that the house doesn't particularly care for Sapphiria, but putting her mail in the trash pile is just petty. You split the seal on both letters. Unlike Hari's, which is more than a week old, the ornate letter was clearly written and sent while you slept.

Grace,

I know you're busy right now. When you make it back alive, I need some advice. Family issues. I don't know who else I could even ask. Maybe you'll understand, given your situation. It's not that time sensitive, but let me know.

— Teresu Hari

That's both cryptic and a little concerning. Apart from your booth being Sidereals, your own family "situation" couldn't be more different from Hari's. Gens Teresu, from what you understand, is large, wealthy, powerful, and still very much in Lookshy. All you have now is your mother. You hope it isn't anything too serious.

Dear Grace,

It has come to my attention that the Cerulean Lute's most precious jewel has returned to grace (ha!) Heaven once again.

This is particularly fortuitous, as I have recently acquired a trifle that I feel would suit you far better than I, and I would like the opportunity to pass it on to you before one or both of us are dragged away to Creation once again.

I would consider it a profound kindness if you would help relieve the endless tedium of my days, before I'm forced to entertain myself by tearing out the tongue of the next fool who asks something of me. I have been positively drowning in paperwork, between that affair in Kamthahar last month and the Department of Celestial Concerns quibbling over my choice in servants, and any excuse to to come up for air would be most welcome.

With all my affection,
Sapphiria the Night-Lily, Chosen of Jupiter, Sorcerer-Prince of Ysyr

Sapphiria certainly does enjoy having fun at your expense. The absurd flattery is rarely actually annoying enough to actively object to, so you usually just try to ignore it rather than letting it get a rise out of you. Still, you're very curious about what exactly she has to give you. You have to visit the Forbidding Manse of Ivy anyway for your meeting with your mentor, and it would be easy enough to make time for her earlier in your day.

You try to lay out a mental map of your schedule for the next week or so. Not only will you have the meeting you're already committed to and the reports you need to write, you'll also want to try and follow up on the information Flotsam had given you before he died yourself. House V'neef has a personal component to it for you that all of the other houses lack.

You have a lot to do.

Article:

You are very busy. From long experience, you're certain that the moment you set foot on the grounds of the Cerulean Lute of Harmony, even more work will land in your lap. Still, you try to make room for friends and Circlemates — keeping yourself sane and functional is part of your responsibilities as well.

Which of your two remaining Circlemates do you make time for first? You will have an opportunity to follow up with the other as well before the end of this arc, but the context of the conversation will differ as a result.

Other, similar choices in the future may be mutually exclusive, or carry costs that can't be immediately taken back.

[ ] Sapphiria the Night-Lily

Sapphiria probably won't actually maim a clerk-deity out of frustration, but she does really have a gift for you. She also treats you to a drink at a coffeehouse near to the Forbidding Manse of Ivy.

[ ] Teresu Hari

Hari is asking you for advice, and invites you to meet her at her favourite place to be alone with her thoughts, an overlook in an abandoned park overgrown into a wild forest.

Gazetteer · Jan 10, 2025

Sapphiria the Night-Lily: 24

Teresu Hari: 18

The Cerulean Lute of Harmony, Division of Serenity headquarters,
The Most Perfect Lotus of Heavenly Design,
Yu-Shan, the heavenly city

In the end, you granted yourself the time necessary to finish your reports — they described the same events but there are many distinct ramifications to the destiny and stability of Bittern and the larger region. Some details pertain more or less to the differing remits of your Division as opposed to the Convention on the Centre, and they needed to be tailored accordingly. You also wrote a summary for Lew, as promised. He occasionally gets himself into trouble by omitting 'unnecessary' details.

The work resonated deeply with your Essence, leaving you as restored and refreshed as if you'd spent the hours resting in bed. By the time you stepped out of the house, you felt genuinely ready to face the day.

The Cerulean Lute almost glows beneath a cloudless sky. The Unconquered Sun has just pulled ahead in the Games of Divinity, his temporary victory heralded by blinding sunlight across all of Heaven. Gods of means take shelter beneath delicate parasols and silk awnings — those without find what shade they can while waiting for it to pass.

Even from a distance, the elaborate contours of the Lute's supernatural construction make it look more like a work of art crafted of glass and blue stone than a building. Its grounds contain vast gardens and tranquil pathways, surrounded on all sides by one of Yu-Shan's most popular pleasure districts. Theatres, galleries, restaurants, and brothels — most pale in comparison to the wonders found within the Lute itself.

You avoid the main entrance. The various entertainments housed here, to be used freely by all gods, are popular on even a slow day. The Sun's grandstanding means that some of the public areas will be downright crowded by spirits seeking respite from the heat. Fortunately, while its interior is complex and winding, the Cerulean Lute is downright straightforward to navigate compared to the Forbidding Manse of Ivy or the Golden Barque of the Heavens. It has a sort of flowing, asymmetrical logic to its layout that had only taken you a matter of months to become used to.

The entrance you use is hidden behind an attractive stand of cherry trees seemingly permanently in full blossom. You slip inside the small door set into an inset section of wall, automatically shaking your hair to dislodge pale blue flower petals. You find yourself at the bottommost landing of a gently curving staircase that hugs the interior of much of the building, the steps wide and pebbled in turquoise for easy traction. You take a moment to savour the cool, sweet-smelling air before beginning a familiar climb.

Light filters in through regular windows along the stairwell's winding length, gentled by stained glass in a variety of blues. Each window that you pass depicts a slightly different image of the same flower, gradually growing taller and taller as you go on, glass petals unfurling. You count the windows quietly in your head, a simple method of keeping track of how close you are to your floor.

You come this way sometimes even on quieter days. The calming beauty of the stairwell seldom fails to set your mind at ease, giving you a pleasant transitional space between the noise and traffic of the city outside and your office.

You stop at your landing, pushing open the doorway here to let yourself out into a broad, office-lined corridor. Blue-stained doors are set into the walls at regular intervals, interspaced by plush benches against the walls. Clusters of desks sit in several places, staffed by clerks and other minor functionaries. The entire corridor is illuminated by a ceiling of curving glass panels overhead. Above the low murmur of voices, you can hear distant music drifting up from somewhere below.

Immediately in your path, several gods are finishing a conversation. One of them stops short at seeing you, giving you a polite smile, gesturing at you with the folded fan in her hand. "Singular Grace — good to see you on your feet. There are some very dire rumours drifting around about that last trip to Creation you made." The goddess in question takes the form of a handsome, middle-aged woman wearing robes covered in intricate leaf patterns. A young man follows in her wake, his arms overburdened by a slightly precarious stack of paper.

You offer her a polite smile in return. "Exaggerated, I'm sure. Your well-wishes are appreciated though, Pherula." Gentle Pherula is the Divine Provisioner of Maiden Tea, the ambitious and well-connected goddess of Creation's most popular contraceptive.

Beside Pherula, the young man is looking at you a little blankly from over the top of his load, as if trying to place you without outright asking. You take pity on him. "Hello to you as well, Talent," you say.

"I wasn't sure if we'd met before," he says, hunching a little in on himself.

"Only once," you say, smoothly lying for his benefit. You have, in fact, introduced yourself to him at least three times before — Pherula's office is near enough to yours that you've encountered him before in the several years since you arrived in Heaven.

Mortals aren't commonly employed by the Celestial Bureaucracy in general, short-lived and powerless as they are. Pherula symbolically adopts the accidental children that result from the rare failure of maiden tea, however, and has a habit of occasionally bringing them up to heaven when their situation on Creation is bad enough. It's not as though you're in any position to criticise with that kind of familial practice, but their lack of the same immunity to Arcane Fate that the Bureau's gods have can be inconvenient.

"Well, I must be going. Lovely seeing you, Grace," Pherula says, tossing off another smile, and flicking her fan open as she leaves. "Try to keep up, darling."

The latter is for Talent, who had been attempting to offer you a bow without completely dislodging his papers. He settles for a little dip instead, and turns to catch up with his mother's rapidly retreating form.

You suppress a smile, and continue onward to your own office a few doors down, marked by a silver nameplate etched with the name "Singular Grace, Chosen of Venus" in both Old Realm characters and High Realm script. The lesser god sitting at the desk beside the door gets to his feet, bowing neatly at your approach. "Lady Grace! You look well."

"Well enough. Thank you, Bell," you say. While each Division has formal robes of office, those are mostly saved for special occasions. Day to day while in the office and working in Heaven, most Sidereals opt for Ambrosia-wrought finery from their culture of origin. You aren't an exception, having long ago settled on a slightly conservative rendition on Realm bureaucratic robes, favouring soft greys and blue-greys. Today's outfit suits you very well and it helps that your visible wounds are largely healed.

"I was a little worried at first," he says, fidgeting with his overly-large spectacles. Forest Bell takes the form of a slight, wispy young man. His complexion is a reddish brown you often associate with far-Easterners, a flower crown woven through his green hair. Once a god of an obscure marriage practice, he had lost most of his purview when the peoples who still practiced it had largely died out. This had seen him demoted to clerk — becoming your assistant has been a step up from that.

He's also very sweet in a way that lets you forget that he's a centuries-old spirit. "Well, I'm well enough," you say. You step past him to push open your office door. He snatches up a board of papers, and follows you.

Like most Sidereals eventually do once they have the pull to do so, you'd traded in the cozy confines of your original office for something larger and more practical. Compared to some, you keep things relatively comfortable. A row of large windows at the back of the room lets in the morning light, illuminating a large mahogany desk organised exactly as you'd left it. Your desk is flanked by wooden bookshelves and cabinets filled with useful supplies and texts. In front of the desk is a carpet with a floral pattern in blue, as well as a table and seating for entertaining. The walls are hung with art and ornamentation, some gifts, some that you'd picked out yourself.On the wall directly behind your desk is a very lifelike painting of the Imperial City. Directly opposite it, above the door, an ornate Varangian-style clock quietly ticks away.

Bell shuts the door behind you as you make your way toward your desk. "I've prepared the minutes from the last Convention on the Centre meeting for you to go over, my lady," he says, crossing over to lay a thick sheath of paper down on your desk.

"Yes, thank you," you say. It had occurred early on, while you'd been dealing with the Bittern situation. Unfortunately, given the ongoing state of the Blessed Isle, it is unlikely to be a dry read. "Is there anything in particular that needs my attention today, beyond the usual?" Things will pile up, of course, now that you're back behind your desk, but you can start planning out your day from an optimistic standpoint.

"The destiny planning committee for the Calinti Secession Day festival is convening in the Lute this afternoon," Bell says.

"Has something gone wrong with that again? Or, right with it, I suppose." Your voice doesn't show much enthusiasm. It is important, for a variety of reasons, that the entire thing be a dismal failure this year, but heroic feats on the part of several Calinti officials keep salvaging it.

"Just a routine update as far as I know," he says.

"Put it on my schedule anyway," you say. "I should hopefully have time to go over these minutes, after I fill out a form for the Crimson Panoply about a city-killing artifact."

"Shall I make you tea in the meantime?" Bell asks.

"Yes, thank you, Bell," you say. You find yourself studying a scroll hanging on the wall over his shoulder. It contains a quotation from the Immaculate Texts in High Realm calligraphy, describing the Exalted as dutiful gardeners tending to Creation. It had been a gift from Shajah Holok a few years before, after a personal low point involving a very bleak destiny you'd overseen. At the time, it had helped. "I have some documents for you to deliver. There is something else I have for you today, though."

Your reports will adequately inform the Bureau, including your faction, of the potential threat that the mystery Lunar poses. You started this, though, and so you feel you have a responsibility to look into the matter yourself.

As the loving gardener must uproot a weed to save the rest of her plants, so must the Exalted see to all of Creation.

Near the Forbidding Manse of Ivy, Division of Secrets headquarters,
The Most Perfect Lotus of Heavenly Design,
Yu-Shan, the heavenly city,

The following day

Work, both official and otherwise, consumes the entirety of the day, and most of the night. The Cerulean Lute, famously concerned with the comfort of its members, has excellent chefs on-staff, and more than sufficient facilities for you to take meals and freshen up without ever having to leave the office.

It leaves you feeling at least reasonably on top of things when you depart in the late hours of the morning, setting out across the Most Perfect Lotus in the direction of the Division of Secrets. You have two very different Oracles to meet with today, after all.

The Forbidding Manse looms up among the sprawl of the Perfect Lotus, an austere edifice of white stone choked in dark green ivy. What windows it has emit no light, staring darkly out at the surrounding neighbourhood. The closer one gets to the Manse itself, the denser the lesser buildings get, seeming almost to huddle together for protection.

Despite the morning light overhead, you enter into a dim maze of back alleys and side streets, passing obscure bookstores, shadowy parlours, and little shops specialising in everything from stationary to antiquities of dubious origin. The sort of places that, to the uninitiated, might seem to be perfect for clandestine meetings or private conversation.

You find the place you're looking for without too much wandering, thankfully. A tall and narrow coffee house, seemingly built to fill the too-small space between the buildings directly adjacent to it. Its door is marked enigmatically with the sign of a broken key. The moment you push it open and step past the threshold, you're struck by the scent of coffee beans and freshly brewed coffee, the darkly pleasant aroma seeming to fill the poorly lit space entirely.

A counter takes up most of the space immediately in front of you, with a sliver of a hallway skirting around it, marked by faded carpet. Beyond that, curtains and hangings conceal the tables and any customers that congregate around them.

"Hello, Miss, may I help you?" Asks a voice like a whisper. A goddess steps out of the shadows behind the counter, eight black eyes staring out of an otherwise pretty face, wisps of cobweb clinging to her hair. It is a mark of how long you've been living in Yu-Shan that you don't flinch. As a mortal, you might have outright fled in terror.

"Yes. I'm here to meet a colleague, Sapphiria the Night-Lily," you say. Noise is curiously dampened in here, as if the very air is trying to assure you that what you say won't carry and won't be overheard. That's almost never actually true, so close to the Forbidding Manse. You realise that you can't actually see the ceiling — the sorcerous candles set in sconces along the walls don't seem to penetrate the gloom that far up. It strikes you as suspicious.

The spider goddess looks at you doubtfully, seeming to register your eyes fully for the first time. "I don't recall anyone by that name. Could you describe them?" she asks.

"I doubt you'd find her memorable," you say.

The air is filled with laughter, deep and rich. A hand snakes out from around the corner, fingers capped with decorative golden talons seizing the goddess by the chin. "Is she right?" a green-eyed woman asks, voice nearly a purr. "Am I forgettable?"

The goddess swallows nervously. The anatomy of her face doesn't allow her to go wide-eyed, but she seems to be at a complete loss for words. "I... no!" she manages.

"Oh, Silk! And after everything that's happened between us! I'm wounded." She puts a heartbreaking inflection into her voice.

"Sapphiria, leave the poor woman alone." You give her a look.

With another laugh, Sapphiria releases the dazed goddess. "Two cups of your jasmine for the second table on the right," she says. Then she turns on her heel and slinks back around the corner, clearly expecting you to follow.

Faintly bemused but trying to remain visibly disapproving, you do so, trailing her deeper into the dim interior of the coffeehouse. You duck the trailing tassels of the curtain that had originally obscured her from your view. "Have you ever actually met that goddess before in your life?"

"Once. The last time I was here. The conversation lasted exactly long enough to find out her name is Silk." Even after years in Yu-Shan, Sapphiria's Ys accent is thick and musical, notably distinct from Flametongue spoken around much of the Dreaming Sea. Its rise and fall reminds you of water flowing over stones.

"Lying to her wasn't nice, then," you say. Even if she'll forget all about Sapphiria and her torrid insinuations again soon enough.

Sapphiria laughs again. She stops at a low table painted with a chipped, silvery key pattern, and sinks elegantly down to lounge against the pillows waiting around it. "Oh, Grace. Sometimes you're so adorably ethical that I just want to put you in my pocket and take you home. So you can be my conscience full-time."

Once, your work took you to the Island of Gralon, in the deep Southeastern corner of Creation. There, the ancient city of Ysyr rises up amid the mountains to subjugate all that it can touch. The people of the wider island speak of Ysyr's sorcerers in tones of fear. As warped and altered by the unnatural energies of their city as any Ys, they wield a power that they use to reshape themselves into beings of terrible beauty and endless cruelty. Slowly flensing away their pity and their humanity along with all physical imperfection.

You'd conveyed this last to Sapphiria once — you've never seen her laugh quite as long or as hard.

Objectively speaking, Sapphiria is the most heartbreakingly beautiful human you have ever met. She's tall, all long, slender limbs and elegant curves. Dark for a Ys, her skin is a flawless tan, her hair a wavy black cascade falling to her waist and framing a face with features sharp enough to cut glass. She surveys you with bright green eyes heavily lined in kohl, an enigmatic smile curving her lovely lips, currently painted with a dusting of gold. At her throat, seemingly set into her flesh itself, is a smooth, faintly luminous green gem, fully revealed by her black, dramatically-cut dress's plunging neckline. A delicately wrought tiara of cold iron rests on her brow and decorative golden chains twine the length of her bare arms.

The result is not aesthetically displeasing.

You sink down onto the pillows opposite to Sapphiria, glancing at her outfit briefly. "I wouldn't think you would have room for pockets in an outfit like that."

She smiles at you. You can't prove it, but you swear she must have left her teeth just a little bit sharper than she had to. "I might read more into that comment, coming from someone else. But speaking of clothing: You seem like you're dressed for an interesting sort of meeting."

She's not entirely wrong. You're wearing a grey, long-sleeved top with a cloud motif along the sleeves over simple trousers in a slightly darker shade. Your hair is pinned back practically, keeping it well clear of your eyes. A blue sash around your waist is one of the few aesthetic flourishes in what is obviously an outfit intended to be both presentable enough to wear outside but also suitable to train in.

"We'll be talking about the Bittern incident, but we won't only be talking," you say, offering her a light shrug. "He is my teacher as well, remember."

Sapphiria grimaces at that, only half affectation. "Well. Better you than me. The closest I've come to learning anything from him have been some very frustrating assign— Oh! Your poor nose!" she adds the last very abruptly, and leans forward to get a better look, having just noticed what's left of the cut that Flotsam left on your face.

"It shouldn't leave a scar," you say. You have access to some of the greatest healers alive, but they don't tend to heal things like purely cosmetic scarring without something in return.

"Who do you need me to curse for this?" Sapphiria asks. Her tone is light, as it always is when she makes this offer. You're still sure that if you ever take her up on it, she would be absolutely delighted to follow through.

You shake your head. "No, that isn't necessary. He's dead, one of the Solars who attacked Bittern."

"Well then. I certainly won't mourn for him," Sapphiria says, settling back against the pillows. "But really! You spend so much of your time doing these things. Running yourself ragged. Putting yourself into mortal danger. All just to try and right that sinking ship full of ingrates that you call an empire. Don't you ever get sick of it?"

"Yes," you admit, "but I'd get tired of the consequences of ignoring them faster. That 'sinking ship' is my home."

Sapphiria sighs, full of long-suffering despair. "That's my good little authoritarian stooge, I suppose."

You raise your eyebrows. "Says the sorcerer-prince."

Sapphiria clasps a theatrical hand to her chest. "Please! I am but a humble slave to the Maiden of Secrets and to all Creation. As I once was to my fair Ysyr."

To your understanding, the Ysyri notion of enslavement is strange and contradictory, seeming to interchangeably encompass a sort of honourable service to the city state as often as it does more recognisable forced labour and chattel slavery. What is actually meant by it seems to largely depend on who is using the word, and about whom. It's an extremely frustrating philosophical moving target even before you get into Sapphiria's periodic claim to being a slave of Jupiter, something which few other Sidereals are particularly comfortable with.

The spider goddess appears standing above your table, carrying a tray of tarnished silver that she sets down on the table between you and Sapphiria. Two cups of steaming coffee sit there, smelling genuinely heavenly, although notably absolutely nothing like jasmine. "Thank you, Silk," Sapphiria says, casting the goddess a smile. She picks her cup up despite how hot it still is, seemingly just to savour the scent.

"Has your paperwork flood let up at all?" you ask, taking the opportunity to change the subject.

"Oh, no. Not in the slightest yet. It's annoying and unreasonable." Sapphiria gestures with her coffee cup in a way that makes you increasingly anxious that she's going to spill it.

"Didn't you kill a Prasadi goddess?" you ask, frowning at her. You've never quite gotten the full story about what happened in Kamthahar — things have been too hectic over the past weeks.

"Of course not!" Sapphiria says, and the hurt look in her eyes makes part of you want to immediately apologise for having accused her of such a thing. "I merely invoked the Terminal Sanction to imprison a nosy, meddlesome little bitch of a garden goddess. She's fine and will be right as rain." Sapphiria lets the hurt look drop away, replacing it with a thin, cruel smile. One of the problems with associating with a student of Black Claw Style is that they are literally experts at playing the victim and manipulating an audience. It's usually not something you let yourself forget, with Sapphiria.

She continues: "Right as rain as soon as someone finds her at least. I put her in a handy stone. I may have even tossed the stone the Dreaming Sea afterward. Who can say? They'll find her eventually if it's really all that important. I have seen far worse things done for far less provocation while I was still in service to my former mistress." Something odd flickers in Sapphiria's eyes at this last comment. She usually avoids speaking about the sorcerer-prince she had previously been apprenticed to, and when the woman does come up, the references are always studiously vague. You already know far more about the situation than almost anyone in Heaven, but only to a point.

"That seems rash," you say, tentatively taking a sip of coffee. It is slightly too hot in addition to being overpoweringly bitter like all coffee is, tasting absolutely nothing like jasmine. That feels like false advertising to you — it had lulled you into a false sense of comfort by making you think of jasmine tea.

"I had just cause," Sapphiria says, as if this is a trifle. She has the self-satisfied air of a cat being chastised for brutalising a songbird: unrepentant and likely to repeat the offence in the future. "I was in Prasad hunting a raksha at the direct behest of the Convention on the Wyld. She played stupid games and deliberately got in my way — obstructing a Sidereal in the apprehension of a dangerous enemy of fate is quite illegal. And did you know that more or less every notable Prasadi deity is also guilty of a few fairly serious crimes, as a matter of course? Just how that absurd contrivance of an empire works. It's not enforced by Heaven and obviously isn't a priority, to say nothing about the political mess it would be. But it's very convenient for this sort of thing as long as I can scrape together the proper evidence and still get the job done. And I did." She slips a cold iron bangle off her wrist, examining it in the faint light — its band is twisted in a spiral pattern, a pattern of staring eyes scattered over its surface.

You give her a half-weary sort of look. It's extremely like her to stay within the letter of the heavenly law, while making things as difficult as possible. "Why are you in trouble, then?"

Sapphiria rolls her eyes extravagantly. "That's only the Fecund Court's allies in Heaven making a fuss. Forcing me to justify my actions. Calling them too extreme, eccetera, eccetera. The Convention on the South isn't particularly pleased that I kicked a hornet's nest, but neither the Convention on the Wyld nor the Forbidding Manse are actually willing to throw me to the dogs, under the circumstances." She leans back, looks directly up at the shadowy ceiling, and grins, giving a cheerful little wave to whatever unseen observer the Division of Secrets has saddled with spying on this particular shop.

"I wish you didn't deliberately make so many enemies. The Fecund Court has Exalted descendants, you know," you say.

"I don't feel particularly threatened by the wrath of Clan Akatha. There are benefits to falling out of most peoples' heads the moment they learn who you are. You're very sweet to fret over me, though," Sapphiria says.

You sigh. There's no point in trying to get her to take the risk more seriously than that.

"Oh! Before you make me forget..." Sapphiria leans down, snatching an item up from a bag near to her seat: a small box of dark wood, clasped in bright silver. She sets it down on the table and slides it over to you.

You'd almost forgotten that, ostensibly, her reason for asking you here this morning had been to pass on a gift. Curious, you set your coffee down and pick up the box. Flicking it upon reveals what looks like a sleek hairpin in dark wood, the thicker end carved to suggest a flower. You pick it up to examine it, finding it slightly heavier than you expected.

"There's a seam in the middle," Sapphiria prompts.

Sure enough, a thin seam encircles the centre of the hairpin, invisible if you didn't already know to look for it. You pull the hairpin apart — one half proves to be a hollow cap, sliding free to reveal an elegant writing brush with silvery bristles. You stare at it almost blankly for a long moment. Experimentally, you reach out to it through your Essence.

"Sapphiria, this is an audient brush!" you say, staring at her.

"It is," she says.

"This is too much for a casual gift!" you say. Brushes such as these might be lesser artifacts, but they're still not cheap even for a Bureau member in good standing.

Sapphiria holds up a placating hand. "The Prasadi goddess tried to bribe me with it before things really turned nasty with her. So I didn't have to pay for the thing. And I have one at home already — quite a nice orichalcum piece I inherited from my predecessor. I didn't really have a use for another one." She looks at the brush in your hands, then at you, seeming to approve even more of her decision. "That sort of practical, understated elegance seemed like more your style than mine, and this way you won't have to be fussing about with graphite or charcoal in a pinch quite so often."

"I..." you look down at the brush in your hands. You've never seen one that could be so easily disguised as this, and in a real sense, it is an extremely thoughtful gift. Even a flattering one, put in those terms — it is very much your style, and a magical brush such as this never needs ink and can even dictate notes on its own. Is a thoughtful gift all it is, though? What is she after?

You look up at Sapphiria. Her expression is faintly hopeful, like she very much wants you to accept.

Article:

Social relationships:

As Sidereals, you often find yourselves in the position of building relationships on a foundation of half-truths and outright falsehoods in the line of duty. Utilitarian bonds, one-sided and transitory. Amongst yourselves and those few others who can be relied upon to remember who you are long term, however, you have the capacity to form ties as real as anyone else.

Singular Grace is a guarded, reserved woman with whom true emotional intimacy is only gradually earned. Her worldview is also profoundly coloured by the experiences of her youth, and now guided by the constellation under which Venus Chose her. As the Desperate Maiden had to give up power to get it, Grace must make herself submit to the influence and scrutiny of others in order to grow close to them in turn.

Sapphiria is currently seeking to alter Grace's existing intimacy for her, changing it from "Minor: Sapphiria the Night-Lily (quiet concern)" to "Minor: Sapphiria the Night-Lily (quiet fascination)", offering a token of friendship in order to invite Grace to grow closer to her. She is doing this by directly appealing to another of Grace's intimacies, "Defining: I embody my name". Denying a defining intimacy causes Grace to gain Limit, but this is sometimes worthwhile or necessary.

Do you allow Sapphiria's influence? What do you gain from her in return if you do? Neither of you will outright voice anything truly secret here, but if the conversation proceeds, you will be able to learn things about her that she would not necessarily volunteer under other circumstances.

[ ] [Accept] Learn something new about the nature of Sapphiria's feelings toward her former mistress

Follow the Blue String: When you discover the nature of one character's feelings for another, you are able to follow the strand of fate connecting the two of them to find out how those feelings are returned, whether or not the second character is present.

[ ] [Accept] Learn something new about Sapphiria's ambitions and desires

[ ] [Accept] Learn something new about Sapphiria's political beliefs

[ ] [Reject] Pull back and reject Sapphiria's influence (Gain +2 Limit)

Gazetteer · Jan 14, 2025

Accept, Sapphiria's former mistress: 28

Accept, Sapphiria's ambitions and desires: 12

Accept, Sapphiria's political beliefs: 2

Reject: 0

You relent, attuning the brush to your Essence with a thought. "Thank you, Sapphiria. It's beautiful," you say.

Sapphiria looks distinctly pleased. She slides a piece of paper over to you. You test the brush by writing a few High Realm characters down the page's length — they flow beautifully, changing colour at will. "I'm glad you're enjoying something better than you liked that poor coffee," Sapphiria says.

You put the cap back over the audient brush again, slipping the resulting hairpin carefully into your hair. "I enjoy most things more than I like coffee," you say. You pointedly take a sip from your cup anyway, declining to make a face.

"I will choose to take it as a compliment that my company is worth suffering through my excellent taste in coffee," Sapphiria says, as magnanimous as any queen.

"I really need to introduce you to some decent tea, someday," you say.

"Well! You can't take that back now. I may hold you to it in the future," Sapphiria says.

You give a quiet laugh. "I suppose you might."

A moment passes in companionable silence — a true rarity, with Sapphiria. You find yourself thinking about something she said earlier, for all that it's a bit of a dismal topic to return to. "Did you really see worse things done to people than being trapped in stone and thrown into the sea?"

Sapphiria looks at you with a sort of curious surprise. She hadn't expected you to linger over this. "Oh! Yes. On the steps of the Pavilion of Perfected Power in Ysyr is a collection of golden statues. Flawless down to the last detail. Men and women locked in the throes of pain and terror."

You have a very bad feeling about where this is going. "They're not really statues, are they?"

"They're not," Sapphiria agrees. "It happened almost a century ago. A gang of rebels attempted to take control of one of the sacred engines of Ysyr. They were trying to hold it hostage to force concessions from the magocracy. They failed — obviously. Open-Handed Yasza, the woman who I trained under, devised the working to curse the survivors with immortality. After all these decades, it still holds."

"I see," you say. You dislike the note of ghoulish admiration in her voice for the skill behind her mistress's atrocities.

Something of your discomfort must show in your face. "The engines are the heart of Ysyr and the source of our power. People need to know that tampering with them or crossing the magocracy will not be brooked. And surely this wouldn't shock you." Sapphiria seems genuinely puzzled. "You grew up in the Scarlet Empress's own palace. You must know of your own share of horrors."

Your mind goes to stories you've heard about Houses Cathak and Ragara crucifying rebels and bandits. The Empress ruining whole prefectures in reprisal for rebellion by the house controlling them. The dark dungeons far away from the dignified beauty of palace life. You hadn't been forced to witness any of these things yourself, the faces transfixed in agony or the starving villages, but you'd known of it. "Never where I had to see it."

"You are alarmingly honest with yourself sometimes, Grace. I enjoy that." Sapphiria's smile takes on a softer, more bittersweet cast. This time, the admiration for her former mistress is tinged with a familiar sort of loss. "She once told me that for the truly powerful, kindness and cruelty have to be two sides of the same coin. One can't last in the world without the other. It was certainly true of her."

"The powerful often think so," you say, contemplating your faint reflection in your coffee.

"Oh?" Sapphiria leans forward, bright green eyes hungry with sudden curiosity. "Do you, Chosen of Venus? Are you kind to the people who threaten your faction's social order? Rebels? Enemies of the Realm? Forbidden lovers threatening your oh-so-important marriage schemes? Do you bring them joy too?"

There is no doubt in your voice as you tell her: "I don't kill people unless it's necessary, or do more harm than I have to."

"And your 'Anathema'? Or are they conveniently not people for these purposes?" From Scattered Silver, this would have been a heated accusation and a prelude to an argument about the necessity of the Wyld Hunt. Sapphiria, by contrast, enjoys such arguments. She simply wants to hear what you'll say.

"I don't torture them," you say, frowning. "I don't take pleasure in death or pain. It doesn't sound as though Open-Handed Yasza can say the same."

"She's famous for her charitable works and generosity," Sapphiria says, not without a faintly defensive note. "It's where her name came from."

"Did she give herself that name, the same as we both did ours?" you ask.

"Ah. Well. Yes. Really, though — she could be extremely magnanimous to the people who were hers. But I won't deny that she had a vindictive streak." There's a look in her eye that you've seen before.

You think back to the first time you met Sapphiria, over three years ago. You had been in Nysh, a Ysyri vassal state in Northern Gralon, resolving a monstrously complicated familial dispute within a powerful merchant clan. You had only just finished when Heaven sent word to you that, by their best predictions, an Oracle was in the process of Exalting in the Chalcedon Mountains. You'll never be certain whether it had been mere luck that put you so close at hand, or the Maidens playing subtle games amongst themselves. Regardless, despite your never having brought another Sidereal into the fold before, you could get there before anyone else, and so the task had fallen to you.

You had found her days after Jupiter had fully Chosen her. Mistaken for a spy, she had been stripped of all finery and pride and confined in a dungeon beneath a mountainside palace. There had been a terrible hurt in her eyes, a furious, heartbroken betrayal that you see the faintest ghost of now. It hadn't, as you'd initially thought, just been the destruction of her life or the loss of the opportunity to live as a sorcerer-prince that had brought that on.

You realise now that Sapphiria had loved Open-Handed Yasza, the woman who had thrown her into a cell and forgotten she existed. That she still loves her.

Curiosity getting the better of you, you reach out with the most delicate touch of Essence. In your mind's eye, the thin strand of fate that links Sapphiria's heart to another far away glows blue amid the warp and the weft of the world. With a subtle effort, you follow it.

You've done this many times before, traced the bonds, delicate and breakable, between friends and lovers, family and bitter enemies. This is different. There is something strange about this bond, something unnatural, unholy. Hellish. There is no give to it, a sentiment horribly transfixed in amber, not a living, breathing relationship that can break or change over time. Despite your unease, you follow the thread to its destination.

As your mother still loves you even when she doesn't know your face, so too does Open-Handed Yasza still feel for Sapphiria even years after she has been driven out of all memory. You have to force yourself not to recoil at what you find. True, Yasza reciprocated Sapphiria's feelings in a sense — she had cared for Sapphiria in the way one cares for a prized toy, or a work of art one has shaped with their own hands. The feeling is both proprietary and cruelly grasping.

You take a sip of coffee to mask your reaction. Is this why you've always been warned against Black Claw Style?

"What was that Dynast you belonged to like?"

The question from Sapphiria catches you off guard. "I didn't belong to anyone," you say, a defensive note of your own creeping into your voice. "I was born in the Realm, I was a free Realm citizen and a servant, not a slave."

"But you had to do as she ordered, and she ostensibly protected you in turn," Sapphiria says.

"Yes," you say, "Lady Ambraea is a Dragon-Blood, and I was her handmaiden!"

"And if you disobeyed, she could punish you, and if you left, she could have had you tracked down and retrieved?" Sapphiria takes a long sip of coffee, clearly enjoying something in the bitter taste that eludes you.

"If I'd left without leave and without returning the rest of my wages for the year. I feel like you're being willfully obtuse, Sapphiria."

She shrugs eloquently. "You're fussier about these things than Hari is, sometimes. The Realm does love its artificial distinctions."

You let out an irritable huff. You're still privately too shocked by what you'd seen in Yasza's heart to be as rankled by this as you normally would.

"Fine. What was the woman you served like?"

You relent. "I knew Lady Ambraea all her life. She could be self-absorbed, thoughtless at times, even. But she was never cruel on purpose."

"Never on purpose?" Sapphiria asks.

You check the time in your head. "You'll have to ask me another time. I need to go." You pointedly take a long sip of the coffee, unwilling to waste too much of it, however it tastes.

Sapphiria watches you rise. "You don't sound completely eager."

You pause, taking stock. You suppose not. "Worthwhile training is often difficult," you decide. You know what is likely to be on offer, and are resigned to it. "Thank you again for the coffee, and the thoughtful gift."

"Until you deign to brighten my lonely days once more." Sapphiria says, remaining seated to finish her coffee.

You roll your eyes. You often find a long conversation with Sapphiria to be a little exhausting, even when it's not itself objectionable. She can be so unpredictable and so argumentative that you're usually on your guard the entire time. You don't feel that way this time, though — despite how harrowing part of what you'd learned about her today was, she has truly piqued your interest in a way that you just can't shake.

"I may look forward to it," you say.

The Forbidding Manse of Ivy, Division of Secrets headquarters,
The most Perfect Lotus of Heavenly Design,
Yu-Shan, the heavenly city

From the moment you set foot inside, the noise of the city beyond the manse's walls disappears entirely.

The interior of the Forbidding Manse is infamously mazelike, a densely packed warren of offices, libraries, laboratories, and archives. It's nearly impossible to keep track of what floor you're on unless you know where you're going, stairs leading up or down at semi-random, narrow hallways looping back on themselves unpredictably, or dead-ending just when you're certain you're finally getting somewhere.

Your own Division's headquarters is a place of light and pleasure and beauty, deceptively open and harmless. There is none of that here, and you can well believe the worst stories of this place. Ancient vaults containing terrors of the First Age, gaols in its depths housing prisoners who haven't seen the light of day in millennia, places where you can lose yourself more than just physically.

Fortunately, you have a guide. A small god, veiled and quiet, had been waiting for you in the entranceway. You followed him now down a tight, wood-panelled corridor, his footsteps not making a sound against the thin carpet underfoot. As you went, you'd tried to recall if the specific route he'd been leading you on had been one you'd taken before, and quickly give up.

The office of Chejop Kejak, Chosen of Jupiter, is a small, unassuming place tucked away on an inconvenient floor of the Forbidding Manse. Famously, it is the same one that he was assigned when he first came to Heaven thousands of years ago, a cramped, unpretentious little room almost entirely taken up by his desk and his personal files. You have been there before, sat across from him on the same plain wooden chair that the many great and powerful gods who have called on him there have been forced to use. The affectation of humility can be its own show of power.

You're not being taken to that office this time, though. As you'd implied to Sapphiria, you're not here simply to have a quiet conversation with your mentor.

"You did well, considering the time and resources at your disposal."

The training ring is technically in an open courtyard, but it's still located in the depths of the manse. Walls rise up on all four sides, impossibly tall, the glimpse of sky overhead oddly claustrophobic. It makes the space seem smaller than it really is. You stand at one side of the practice ring, greenish sand underfoot. Across from you is the unquestioned leader of the Bronze Faction, a central architect of Creation as it exists today, and one of the most powerful men in Heaven.

Unless interrupted by violence or other misfortunes, a Sidereal's lifespan runs anywhere from three thousand to five thousand years. A fixed number that is set for each of you from birth, which can never be extended, only whittled away. The man standing across from you is well over four-thousand, finally nearing the end of his life. He shows it in the lines of his face, the white of his neatly-trimmed beard and the hair he has left. He's still obviously anything but frail, still standing straight and tall, his body lean and well-muscled. This is particularly obvious with him dressed for the training ahead, his pale torso left bare.

You absolutely refuse to recall any horrible comments from Lew about how spry he is.

"Thank you sir," you say, inclining your head. "But?"

This earns you a thinly amused smile. "Grace, don't rush me while I'm praising you. It's impolite." Kejak's eyes are a darker shade of green than Sapphiria's, but no less sharp.

"You seemed as though you were working your way up to a 'but'," you say. Your tone and posture are deferential, but not obsequious as you look at him expectantly.

He gives a very slight sigh. "Always in a hurry to hear the worst," he says. Still, he moves on to the constructive criticism of your methods that you'd known would come. It always does. "Could you have avoided having to throw yourself alone into the path of a Solar swordsman if you'd chosen a different ambush site? One further removed from the support pillar that they intended to bring down?"

You mull over the details you'd considered countless times when you'd planned the ambush in Bittern. "... Yes. No places that were both as suitable for hiding a large number of marines and Dragon-Blooded, and as empty of bystanders, though."

Kejak nods, as if this is what he'd expected. "What was your goal, first and foremost?" His tone isn't harsh or condemning. Still, he clearly expects you to have the right answer.

"To prevent Bittern from being destroyed, both for the sake of destiny and the stability of the Realm," you say. To say nothing of the thousands of innocent people who had never known their true danger.

"Would risking the lives of a few more bystanders have been worthwhile to ensure that you did so?" he asks.

You hesitate. "If... it had been necessary."

"And who else present was there to decide what was and wasn't necessary? Lew Stojca is reliable and skilled in a fight, but you know that he isn't a leader, Grace. He looks to you for such decisions. It came down to you."

"Yes," you admit, frowning at where you can see this is going.

His voice is oddly gentle as he continues: "If things had gone differently, if you'd failed, what would have happened? We would have lost two Sidereals, an entire city, and what fragile peace in the Realm we have all fought hard to maintain these past seven years. House Peleps would have lashed out like a wounded animal, and millions would have suffered for it. Beyond that, our capacity to guide destiny on the Blessed Isle would be drastically reduced, a situation that would spiral outward to the rest of Creation and take many years to fix. What is the more selfish choice? Leaving that possibility open, or shouldering the responsibility of a few lost lives to save many more?"

"I see." It's a logical objection to your tactics, given the stakes at hand. Still, something inside you rebels at the thought process.

He studies your pensive bearing. "I am not chastising you, Grace. I am teaching you. I didn't lie when I said you did well. You recognised the danger, organised a full Wyld Hunt on short notice, successfully orchestrated the destruction of a Circle of young Solars, and averted catastrophe. I do not regret trusting you with this matter."

You force yourself to relax, struggling to reconcile your mixed feelings on the matter. "Thank you, sir. That means a great deal."

"I would like you to reflect on this. Compassion is not a fault in a Joybringer, but there are times where acting on it extracts a cost that others have to pay as much as you do, where you must set it aside. You make things harder on yourself than is needful."

"I will give it thought," you say.

He nods, ostensibly satisfied. Still, while it's hard to tell exactly what he's thinking, in times like these. It's hard to shake the feeling that he's looking for something in you that you're not sure you can live up to.

To your mixed relief and trepidation, he moves on to the other topic you'd expected. "You have fully mastered Throne Shadow Style," he says. "Your successful use of World-as-Weapon Mastery against the dying Night Caste proves that. You remember what we discussed before?"

"Of course," you say, your heart picking up a little. "I've been studying, as you suggested."

"You've been wounded recently. You know what this training will involve. Tell me now if it will be too much for you today. Even in their rudiments, the veiled arts of Heaven are more demanding than lesser martial arts," Kejak says. You're entirely certain he'd accept a 'no' from you, but you're almost as certain that he would think a little less of you if you gave him one.

You also don't want to wait. Even with the techniques he has at his disposal, you're all so busy that you can't be sure when the next opportunity will arise. There isn't time to take things slower. You need to learn whatever he's willing to teach you while you still can. "I've recovered enough. It won't be a problem."

You bow to him, and assume a fighting stance that still feels rough and unpracticed. By the time you leave here today, the physical movements, at least, will be nearly second nature.

Article:

The Sidereal Exalted are known as unparalleled martial artists for a reason. Conventional wisdom holds that only they can devise and teach the Sidereal Martial Arts, the greatest secret arts of the Fivescore Fellowship. Each as much a meditation on a specific cosmic principle or fundamental concept as it is an advanced fighting style, they are strange, esoteric, and extremely powerful.

Having fully mastered an ordinary martial art, your mentor, Chejop Kejak, feels that you are ready to begin training in your first Sidereal Martial Art style. You have previously discussed this with him, and between the two of you, you have settled on style.

This is a long-term character direction vote. Grace will continue to study and grow more proficient with this martial art throughout A Vision in Bronze, and it is likely to partially affect her outlook over time.

What style are you studying?

[ ] Charcoal March of Spiders Style

A brutal style that emulates the rapid, skittering movements of pattern spiders and explores the concept of consumption. Students of the style are capable of spinning strands of pure Essence to entrap their enemies. Masters are capable of venomous techniques to devour Essence, matter, and souls, as well as reweave a victim's very fate.

This style will challenge Grace, both physically and philosophically. Consumption is a natural part of the world and it is not without its own cruel beauty, but it is neither kind nor gentle. This isn't beyond her, though. It will be extremely effective in her hands, honing her existing combat skills in a particularly lethal direction, and helping her defend her allies more effectively than she already does.

[ ] Emerald Gyre of Aeons Style

A style that uses characteristic spiraling movements for power and evasion, as well as to emulate the neverending flow of time, in which there is no end and no beginning. Students of the style are capable of bursts of foresight, as well as slowing and even reversing the flow of time in limited ways. Masters can entrap their enemies in endlessly repeating cycles, borrow power from their future selves, and even claim scores of lives in a single instant.

For all its challenges, esoteric mysteries, and lethal potential, as Grace has already experienced, Emerald Gyre is an extremely powerful teaching tool for advanced practitioners. Its methods are harsh, but exceptionally fast and effective. This can serve as a continuation of the mentoring techniques that she has learned in Throne Shadow Style. It will require Grace to hone herself through abstract thought and mind-altering substances.

[ ] Prismatic Arrangement of Creation Style

An exclusively-unarmed style focusing on strategic pushes and indirect strikes to disrupt and redirect. It is a meditation on the flow of Essence through all Creation, an ancient and foundational Sidereal Martial Art and a common first choice when a Sidereal selects one to study. Students of the style learn to emulate and manipulate the Essence of artifice, geomancy, other Exalted, and fate itself. Masters learn to heighten and combine these practices into techniques of immense power.

Prismatic Arrangement of Creation is a highly versatile style with a host of techniques that have utility both in and out of combat. In particular for Grace's purposes as a Sidereal commonly working in the Realm, it is an exceptionally good style for Sidereals who wish to disguise themselves as other kinds of Exalted, perfectly emulating the volatile elemental anima banner of a Dragon-Blood in a way no other technique can. Her training would lead her to studying the Essence of many kinds of supernatural beings and supernatural locales.

Gazetteer · Jan 19, 2025

Emerald Gyre of Aeons Style: 35

Prismatic Arrangement of Creation Style: 33

Charcoal March of Spiders Style: 22

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

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

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

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

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

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

EMERALD GYRE OF AEONS STYLE: LOTUS LABYRINTH DURANCE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE SCRIPTURE OF ETERNITY

One day, there'll be a maiden...

Who'll slip free of Time's clutches

and stand outside eternity.

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

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

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

You're already tired by the time you leave.

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

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

And again.

And again.

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

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

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

But try as she might,

she won't be able to escape

her memories

or her hopes for the future.

The clock strikes midnight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The clock strikes midnight.

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

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

"You will understand."

Perceiving the nature of her prison,

She'll see how many times she's escaped

and how many times she failed.

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

The clock strikes midnight.

You walk the pattern.

The clock strikes midnight.

You fall to your knees in the sand once again.

The clock strikes midnight.

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

The clock strikes midnight.

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

"Do you understand now?" asked Time,

"There is no end and no beginning."

You slam back into your chair.

The clock strikes midnight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Barely," you say, making a face.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"She?" you ask, still frowning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hari smiles at you, obscurely amused.

"What is it?" You ask.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hungover," Hari admits.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Article:

Please vote for an option from both categories.

Influencing Hari

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

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

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

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

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

[ ] [Hari] Avoid the truth

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

The message

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

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

Who has given you actionable information?

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

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

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

Gazetteer · Jan 27, 2025

Hari

Offer a painful truth that focuses on the positive: 31

Offer a painful truth as a cautionary tale: 11

Avoid the truth: 0

Info

A friendly goddess from another Division, whom you have mixed feelings about: 15

A god from your own Division, whom you hate, but who holds a mutual interest with you in this matter: 14

Another Sidereal, whom you do not particularly like: 13

"When I Exalted, I was nineteen," you say.

"That's almost as bad as Lew," Hari mutters, vaguely appalled.

"I was never as young as Lew is," you say with what you feel is a great deal of justice. "It was almost a year exactly, once I finished training, before I went back to the Imperial City to see my mother. She didn't know me of course, but I could tell she wasn't well." You feel your shoulders slump at the memory. "It had only been two years since the last time I'd seen her, but she was so much... older, frailer than before."

"I've heard many people say the same about their parents as they age," Hari says, with what is probably intended to be a comforting tone. It's hampered by your knowledge that her parents are both Dragon-Blooded and likely look younger than she does.

You shake your head. "No. My mother spent decades telling herself, and me, that it didn't matter what had happened to her. The invasion of her homeland, her enslavement halfway across Creation... everything that happened in between. As long as I had the chance for a better life. It was a little suffocating sometimes, but I was all she had." Lohna had cared for Ambraea deeply, and had raised her with care, but Ambraea had never been hers the way Grace had been. The realities of rank and power had never made that possible.

"Arcane fate didn't just fill in the details?" Hari asks, looking less and less comfortable with the direction of this story.

"It made her forget me, and she didn't question that I was gone," you say. "But I was still missing. It couldn't make her stop loving me."

"Too much to hope it would only hurt for us," Hari mutters.

"Your family's situation wouldn't be so bad," you say. "They have each other. Aspirations for the future they can still work toward." They hadn't pinned all their hope on Hari — she hadn't been a child of the Sword hanging over her loved ones' necks.

Hari nods slowly, although you're not sure if this has been any help. "Did it help your mother to bring her here?"

"Yes, actually," you say. "It may just be that Heaven agrees with her, but I think that she is happier now that we're together again. Even if she only remembers who I am occasionally. You know your family and what they need best, but keeping up contact isn't only for our benefit, if you choose to do that. Part of them may still know you, and need what you can give them."

Hari is silent for a long moment, in which she finishes off her dumpling. You take a bite of yours as well for the sake of commiseration, although the subject has sharply lessoned your appetite. "Right. Thanks, Grace. I'll think about it," Hari finally says, her tone as hard to read as ever. "What was the message?"

You know a change of topic when you hear one, but it's fine by you. You've said your piece, and she'll need to sit with it for a while. "I've been probing for information about who the fifth Anathema at Bittern was. Someone came back with a lead."

"You don't seem entirely enthusiastic," Hari says, looking at your face.

You're not. "I'm sure it will be a productive meeting," you say. Which is true enough, but doesn't address the concern that Hari is picking up from you. Sometimes, the problem isn't one of productivity.

"Oh, one of those," Hari says, smiling thinly.

The Crimson Panoply of Victory, Division of Battles headquarters,
The Most Perfect Lotus of Heavenly Design,
Yu-Shan, the heavenly city

You pass through the ring of smithies, combat schools, and artisanal prayerwright workshops that surround the Crimson Panoply. The streets here are wide and regular, designed to not offend the martial sensibilities of the gods who the proprietors intend to profit from, or at least to bask in the glow of.

The Panoply itself rises up from a defensible position on a hill, for all that it hasn't seen actual combat in millennia. From a distance, it can be taken for a fortified military encampment on a massive scale, rugged wooden walls encircling tents of crimson silk. On first impression this renders it deceptively mundane compared to the more fantastical structures of the other Divisionary headquarters — this changes as you get closer.

When a Sidereal first comes to Heaven, working with gods is a difficult adjustment for most. For you, the gods of Yu-Shan are not distant beings of great and terrible power. Even more than for most Exalts, overnight they become peers, superiors, and subordinates. Merely people, good and bad, selfless and venal, kind and cruel.

The second trap to fall into after learning that lesson, however, is to expect them to be human. They simply are not. Gods are spirits — unaging, undying, not truly feeling the pang of hunger or burn of thirst. Their outlook, motivations and morality are not the same as those of humanity. This is part of why Immaculacy is necessary as an intermediary force between gods and mortals on Creation, as controversial a position as this is among many gods. Their actions toward ordinary people must be constrained somehow, in the face of the Bureau of Heaven continuously failing to uphold its own laws.

Still, as one grows more used to them, the gods of the Bureau of Destiny in particular can become close colleagues, friends, or even lovers to the Sidereal Exalted. Inhuman or not, their positions render them immune to arcane fate, allowing relationships with them to form and grow naturally in a way that a Sidereal can no longer take for granted.

As you approach the sturdy timber gates, one of the war gods standing guard steps forward. He's tall, broad-shouldered, and heavily armoured, with the head of a hawk and talons where his hands should be. His partner is smaller, unassuming, the very model of a helmeted, blank-faced soldier.

"State your name, rank, and your business with the Crimson Panoply of Victory," the bird-headed war god says, in a crisp, formal tone that is not unfriendly, but could become so depending on your answer.

You don't balk, this isn't your first time. You draw yourself up straight and say: "Singular Grace, Chosen of Venus, of the Division of Serenity. Here for a meeting with Incarnadine Chorus, Warden of Unrighteous Slaughter, of the Division of Battles."

The bird-headed war god nods sharply. "Very well, ma'am. Please follow me." On cue, the gates behind him rumble open of their own accord, just enough to admit the two of you. You follow him through, offering the remaining god a polite nod on your way before they slam shut again.

In truth, the Crimson Panoply is a particularly grand and powerful manse, much like the headquarters of the Divisions of Serenity, Secrets, and Endings. Up close, the tents are revealed for what they truly are — larger than life, each carved from solid red jade so finely that they appear to be made of cloth billowing in the breeze. Between the tents are broad avenues and training yards.

The bird-headed god leads you confidently past row after row of tents, past ranks of his drilling fellows. It's hard for you not to find the general atmosphere a little oppressive — the Panoply believes in harsh discipline and a well-established chain of command, very different from the Cerulean Lute's looser, more personable style of leadership.

You aren't entirely surprised when you see a familiar face walking toward you in the other direction. There are only so many Shieldbearers in Heaven, after all. Scattered Silver, still dressed in humble sailor's garb, tosses off a lazy wave in your direction as he draws near. You stop short as he does.

"Hey," he says. The guard stops as well, offering Silver a salute and coming respectfully to attention, clearly willing to wait until he's done with you. Silver returns the salute with that certain air of suppressed impatience he sometimes gets — he occasionally chafes against the stricter elements of the Panoply's working culture.

"Hello, Silver," you say, offering him a tight smile.

"Keeping busy, Grace?" Silver asks. Despite his drab clothing, he has swapped out several of the piercings you'd seen him wearing last for flashier or more expensive looking pieces. In particular, a symbol of Mars dangles ostentatiously from one ear in rose gold, glittering in the afternoon sun.

"Aren't we all?" you ask, shrugging delicately.

"Yeah." Scarlet eyes give you a quick, professional once-over. Silver seems satisfied with what he sees. "You've healed up nicely enough. Good. I can stop hanging onto the worst of it for you soon, then."

"I appreciate you taking the trouble all this time," you say. "I'm pleased your eye is looking better as well."

Silver gives a slight shrug of acknowledgement, as if it isn't any particular trouble. He could reasonably have chosen to defer your wounds until you'd gotten back to Yu-Shan, and had had time to seek proper medical attention — more than one of your other colleagues would have, especially considering how contentious your relationship with Silver is at times. "So, what are you here for, anyway?" Silver asks.

"Chasing down leads on that 'dog' we discussed before," you say. If he'd minded drawing the attention of the Bronze Faction to that particular Lunar, he wouldn't have told you as much as he had.

"From who? If you can say," he asks, giving you a sidelong look.

"Incarnadine Chorus," you say.

"Huh," Silver says.

"She can be very helpful," you say, half-heartedly defensive.

"Sure, helpful. Just not who I'd usually imagine you working with." His expression has gone carefully blank.

"We've known each other for years, mostly through her wife," you say.

"... Right, I guess you would." If Silver had been unwilling to voice his feelings about Chorus in public, in the middle of the Crimson Panoply's grounds, he is significantly less willing to say what he thinks of her choice of spouse anywhere that it might get back to Chorus. The distaste in his tone is impossible to miss, however.

"You're well aware of the company I keep," you say.

"And yet I keep being disappointed anyway. You have that effect."

"You do keep telling me as much," you say, voice very cool. You refuse to allow yourself to look affronted.

He frowns, either in frustration with you, or regret for his choice of words — perhaps both. "Yeah. Anyway, good luck 'defending the Realm', Grace. I'm off to Creation again tomorrow."

"I do my best," you say. "Where to, exactly?"

"Satrapy in the West," Silver says, only half answering your question. He begins to walk away, tossing off a farewell wave as he goes. "Let's just say, I'm probably not going to be making your job any easier."

You allow yourself the tiniest of sighs as soon as he's out of earshot. "I'm sorry for the delay," you say to the guard.

"It's no trouble, ma'am," the bird-headed god says. He takes this as a cue to lead on.

Soon enough, he stops again at a specific tent the size of a large building, parting the mock-cloth flap for you to enter. "Thank you," you say.

The god nods, and lets the flap close behind you.

You find yourself in a hallway that is still keeping up the thin pretence of being in a tent, all the noise of the Panoply outside instantly vanishing. Plain wooden doors are set improbably into the 'silk' walls — You find your destination two doors down from where you begin.

Incarnadine Chorus, Warden of Unrighteous Slaughter, reads the door plate. You knock lightly, and are greeted immediately by a voice from within:

"Enter."

You accept the invitation, opening the door to step inside. Within is an office that is spacious, but relatively bare. A low desk dominates much of the floor space. To one side is a large filing chest. To another a glass-walled curio cabinet full of intricately worked miniature figures of the kind that the Crimson Panoply use on maps, or give as commendations. As you step into the room, you try to avoid looking at the morbid, viscera-esque pattern of the rug underfoot.

The goddess behind the desk rises to greet you, the movement made in eerie silence. She's taller than most men, statuesque and powerful. Her facial features possess a pale, sharp beauty, but are devoid of heroism: A Wàn warrior ideal brought to life and then betrayed by the horrors of war. Hair the colour of dried blood falls loose past her shoulders. Black eyes take you in with the flat, unfeeling stare of a jaded executioner. She dresses in the style of a late-Shogunate soldier — beside her desk, currently unworn but within arm's reach on a wooden stand, are her other trappings of office. Antique officer's plate armour flecked in red, paired with a dark mantle. Beside them, a spear with its point permanently wetted with fresh blood.

"Singular Grace," Incarnadine Chorus says, her voice calm and polite, almost soft. She gestures to the side. "Please, have a seat."

You attempt a smile, following her direction by kneeling on one of the cushions arranged nearby. Chorus follows suit, settling herself down across from you. Her unsettling stillness isn't quite predatory, you'd decided years ago. A predator is actually invested in killing its prey. Slightly incongruous, a gold amulet is pinned to her uniform near her neck, set with several Zephyrite pictographs in red jade. You remind yourself, as you often do when you're alone with her like this, that she isn't always this way. You've seen her bearing thaw, her empty eyes kindle with a kind of muted warmth. Only ever in private settings with those she is genuinely close to, though, never while she's in the office.

"Thank you for seeing me on such short notice," you say.

An assistant appears standing over you both, a tea tray in her hands — it takes you slightly by surprise, but Chorus doesn't even blink as the woman sets it down between you, and pours. You're unsurprised to note that the cherry blossom pattern on the off-white surface of the cups looks a great deal like blood splatter. The tea itself is pleasantly fragrant, a Realm-style green tea flavoured delicately with jasmine, one of your favourites. You do your best to focus on that part.

"You're a friend," Chorus says, succinctly.

You aren't entirely sure how to feel about that, sometimes, and not only because of Silver's recent comment. Your ambivalence comes with a degree of guilt — Chorus is a bit of a monster by any conventional moral reckoning, but she's never been anything but generous and gracious toward you. You're well aware that a god is shaped by their purview as much as they're empowered by it. "Even so," you say. After a pause, you add: "I hope Nettle is well."

Chorus gives the slightest of sighs, barely noticeable. "As per her last message this morning. She's been on the Blessed Isle for months. A very complex problem involving the Great Coast Road and Great House troops pretending to be highwaywomen. I don't expect I'll see her again for at least several more weeks."

You had already known this, although it wouldn't have surprised you to learn even if you hadn't. Stinging Nettle, Chosen of Mercury, is Chorus's wife of several years, with whom you formed an unlikely bond after your first Wyld Hunt. During the course of that misadventure, Nettle had put herself on the line to keep you safe multiple times, getting her ribs smashed in by a Lunar in the process and necessitating you to save her life in turn. The Golden Barque and the Bronze Faction have both kept her even more busy than most, of late — she has a reputation for accepting particularly unpleasant or morally murky assignments without complaint, and is not well-liked by some of the Fivescore Fellowship's more moralistic members.

"Well, I hope her business there wraps up quickly," you say.

"I as well," Chorus says.

You pick up your cup, savouring the scent of the tea for a moment as well as the feeling of hot porcelain against your hands. "You said you had something for me about my mystery Lunar?"

"Yes," Chorus says. "I approached my sister, in the Bureau of Nature about the subject. She has dealings with the Silver Pact in the Southwest."

That gives you some pause. As far as the laws of Heaven are concerned, there is nothing illegal about treating with the Lunar Exalted. Their allies still strike you as dubiously reputable. "And her information is trustworthy?"

"Entirely trustworthy. When adequately paid for," Chorus said. "I called in a favour she owed me. My relations are not..." her mouth tilts down slightly, the most emotive she's been since the conversation began. "... Sentimental. Business is business."

"Thank you for taking the trouble," you say. You'll have to make it up to her now — you really must be friends for her to have gone this far on your behalf.

Chorus takes a surprisingly delicate sip of tea, tasting it thoughtfully before swallowing. "A Changing Moon Caste Lunar bearing the shape of an ill-favoured cur, called Bitter Cherry, has troubled satrapies in the South and Southwest for over thirty years. She departed for the West in the company of a Solar this past year. A woman of Western-descent from the Blessed Isle, born into slavery before Luna came for her."

"No one is born into slavery on the Blessed Isle. The children of slaves are Realm citizens, and not even the dispossessed can be made a slave for almost anything short of treason," you say. You force yourself not to grip your own cup uncomfortably hard.

Chorus blinks slowly. "For how long?"

"For well over two-hundred years! It was part of House Cynis's reforms when they were given the slave trade as their remit. It's why I was born free," you say.

Chorus nods slowly. "Creation moves very fast, sometimes. She may have merely been raised on the Isle, then."

This strikes you as much more likely, if she came to the Realm as a sufficiently young child. It isn't pleasant, but it's far from uncommon. You sample the tea — it's just barely cool enough to drink, but heavenly. "This is excellent," you tell Chorus.

"I recalled you mentioning you enjoyed jasmine," Chorus says. You don't remember when you'd said that in her hearing, but it's thoughtful of her nonetheless. She holds up a hand, and the lesser goddess appears again, this time holding a sheath of rose coloured paper dense with Old Realm characters written in what you know is blood. She's uncannily stealthy for an office aide. Chorus accepts it from her with a nod of thanks. "I have what I know of the Lunar, Bitter Cherry, compiled here."

"Thank you," you say. You set the tea down to leaf through it, eyes scanning over the Old Realm characters. Assuming this is the same Lunar — and enough details line up that it seems very likely — she has a penchant for focusing on satrapies controlled by House V'neef and House Peleps. You frown. "Mass casualties don't appear to have been her style," you say. Economic sabotage, targeted assassination and infiltration, yes. But something had apparently changed in her by the time she encountered Flotsam.

"No," Chorus agreed, "otherwise her name may have crossed my desk sooner."

Conflicts of interest are an uncomfortable reality of working with Celestial deities. A god's star can wax or wane with the prominence of their purview on Creation. This often drives already-well-positioned gods to maintain and spread their area of responsibility through both legal and less-legal means. For a goddess like Incarnadine Chorus, either option could look exceptionally bleak for the people of Creation.

You choose your words carefully. "If this Face-Stealer, Bitter Cherry's, plan had succeeded in Bittern, hundreds of thousands could have died. The Civil War may have begun sooner than anyone was prepared for, and in spectacular fashion. She no longer has a Circle of Solar Anathema working with her, but I have to assume her ultimate ambitions have not changed."

So why is Chorus going so far out of her way to help you? These things would keep her busy, but they would be very good for her career.

Chorus thinks about the implied question, watching the steam rise up from her cup. "I spent centuries staying out of the petty factional politics of the Sidereal Host. I was warned that marrying one would make that harder to keep up. I just didn't expect it to happen so fast."

"You're supporting the Bronze Faction because Nettle asked you to?" you ask.

Chorus covers her mouth and actually laughs — a surprisingly demure gesture for such a chilling sound. "Have you ever known that hopeless woman to bring politics into her personal life? No, she didn't ask me for anything of the sort. I just have no desire to see her become busier than she already is — I enjoy seeing my wife more than every three months, ideally. My purview will be fine regardless. Humans will always go to war and no war is ever as clean as they hope."

Whatever your misgivings about her, and whatever she might say about her family, you suppose that no one can say that Chorus isn't sentimental in her way. Or that she isn't a thoughtful spouse.

"Regardless, I am in your debt," you say.

"Don't let it weigh too heavily on you. You're a diligent woman — I'm sure you'll return the favour in due time," Chorus says.

You take a long sip of your tea. "Yes. Thank you." For now, you have plenty on your plate, including the leads she's just given you.

The Cerulean Lute of Harmony,
The Most Perfect Lotus of Heavenly Design,
Yu-Shan, the heavenly city

One month later

"Are you sure, Grace? This will likely be personal for you."

"Yes. I want to go," you say, staring down at the report in front of you. When it comes to House V'neef in particular, or even to the Civil War in general, it's always going to be personal for you in a way.

"I'm the best we have available for this task," you say. "And I have reason to believe this may be connected to the matter at Bittern."

You sit at a long table along with a handful of other gods and Sidereals, its surface carved from a single slab of lapis lazuli. Visible through towering bay windows framed by wrought silver roses, the sun hangs low over the horizon, the Golden Barque just barely visible against it. A harpist sits on a stool in one corner, plucking out a gentle, heart-wrenching tune.

"What's your thinking?" Shajah Holok, Chosen of Venus, looks particularly shabby in this setting. Dressed in a threadbare martial arts robe, he's short, compact, and muscular. One hairy-knuckled hand strokes thoughtfully through his wild beard as he regards you.

Steeling yourself to address a room full of people centuries your elder, you indicate part of your copy of the report. "Destiny wouldn't be snarling this badly over just one man at risk of eloping with the wrong person. Dozens of other destinies are falling into disarray. Even the number of Dragon-Blooded in attendance shouldn't be doing this — the spiders say that they've accounted for them. There is something more at play here than the ordinary machinations of the Great Houses. We have reason to believe that the same Lunar who played a part in the attack on Bittern has designs against House V'neef. There would be few better opportunities than this."

A lavish Dynastic wedding to take place in House V'neef's holdings in the Sideshores. It will be attended by many high profile scions of House V'neef — including the Matriarch herself — as well as those of their allies and the groom's family. You make no mention of the one V'neef scion most on your mind at the moment. It wouldn't help your case.

Holok nods, his expression turning grim. He takes Lunars very seriously. "It is certainly a possibility. You should keep a wary eye out, but make sure you don't lose track of the specifics of the mission."

A dainty yawn comes from the head of the table, drawing every eye toward it. There, a beautiful young man dressed in the finest silks has seemingly been dozing through the entire meeting. Now, he turns his dreamy, half-lidded gaze in your direction. "Yes, quite." he says. "That boy is destined to become a highly influential artist. His work is bold, experiential — it cannot be allowed to languish in obscurity because of an elopement to the Threshold. To say nothing of everything else tied to his upcoming marriage." The latter is added almost as an afterthought, despite ostensibly being the more important factor.

It's no accident that one of Yaogin's current favourite artists has ended up as the lynchpin of a vital marriage destiny in the first place. You have enough experience of your Division head not to even consider disputing his priorities to his face. His whims are to be followed where possible, worked around when necessary.

"Of course, sir. I know my duty," you say, bowing your head respectfully.

Yaogin flashes you the same dazzling smile that had once, briefly, stolen Venus's heart. "Good. I expect to learn that you did nothing less upon your return."

The rest of the meeting proceeds predictably enough — you are the best available Joybringer to quietly infiltrate a Dynastic wedding and prevent a guest from doing something rash, whatever else might be at stake. You don't think it was ever going to go another way unless you'd balked.

As everyone files out at the end, however, Holok makes eye contact. Following his unspoken request, you hang back to hear what he has to say. "As much as we need to make the Division head happy about this, I meant what I said — be careful. Your worries are credible."

"Thank you," you say. It does you some good to hear that, although you don't have hard enough evidence to actually receive significant backup.

"Keep yourself safe, and if you have to, use whatever allies you can. There are upshots to infiltrating a Dragon-Blooded party, as much as it makes things complicated. Especially ones you've worked with before." You both know what he's referring to.

"Yes, I know," you say. "With any luck, I'll be wrong, but I'll plan for the worst."

Holok nods. "Good. You know better than underestimating a Changing Moon, Solars or no Solars." He looks at you closer, though, frowning. "Is something else wrong, Grace?"

"It's just about the painter boy," you say. "We're encouraging mortals to undermine Immaculate teachings about iconic artwork."

Holok reaches out, and clasps you gentle on the shoulder. "We have to put out the fires in a house before we can look at patching up the roof."

You nod. "I understand." And you do, for all that it doesn't sit well with you. "I hope you can excuse me — I have preparations to make before I depart."

The Gilded House,
Heart's Rest District,
Yu-Shan, the heavenly city

You step through the front door into the house in the early hours of the night. You don't jump when the figure of the house spirit steps out of a nearby golden mirror — you're used to it.

"Good evening, Lady Grace, and welcome home," the featureless figure says. "And at a much earlier hour than usual. Do you require dinner, or have you already eaten?"

"Thank you, House, but I had a meal before I left the office," you say, already heading toward the stairs.

"I did expect as much," the house says.

You refuse to be shamed. "Is my mother still awake?" you ask.

"Miss Lohna is reading in her study at the moment, I believe," the house says.

You ascend the relevant staircase up from the main entrance hall, walking under the watchful eyes of the paintings as you go. You step out onto a walkway that leads in the opposite direction to your tower, heading for the small wing set aside for your mother's use.

As matches her preferences, Lohna's study is what passes for cozy in the manse, the furnishings markedly simpler than what Wayward Prayer's tastes had once been. Lohna is seated by her favourite window, reading one of the Dynastic tragedies that you'd brought back for her several months before. You're forced to admit that your mother has rather morbid taste in High Realm literature.

"Hello," you say, announcing your presence.

Lohna looks up in surprise — as expected, she doesn't know you. She sets the book down, getting to her feet and bowing. "Hello, my lady," she says, taking in your appearance. "Are you my host?"

"This is my house," you confirm. You offer Lohna a smile, and sit down on a nearby couch. "Please sit. I'd like to talk."

Lohna follows your directions, only hesitating a little. "Is something the matter?"

"Not quite. I just wanted to tell you that I'm going to be going back to Creation again very soon. I know you don't remember me at the moment, but it's important to me that I at least try to tell you when I do something..." you stop yourself from saying 'dangerous'. "... important."

Lohna stares at you for a long moment, frowning as if in effort. "You're..."

"A Sidereal, yes," you say, leaning toward her. "There's going to be a V'neef wedding at the Sidershores. Something there will go wrong, unless I prevent it. Lady Ambraea will be there." Your smile turns a little bit more wry. "I worry about what her outfits will be like. Her current handmaiden is competent enough, I suppose, but she's a little lax about a few things."

Lohna sits up in shock. "Lady Ambraea? You—" She gives a long blink as something shifts in her head. When she opens her eyes again, she truly sees you for the first time in months. She gets back to her feet, an apologetic look coming over her face as she crosses over to sit down beside you. "Peony. Oh, my flower, please forgive my absent mind."

"Always," you say, tension draining from your entire body. You don't let the prickling at your eyes become anything more substantial — you're not a girl anymore, and it would be ridiculous to break down crying every time you have some version of this exchange. Still, you certainly don't resist as your mother puts an arm around you, pulling you into a hug.

"And you're leaving again," she says.

"Soon," you agree. "Preserving destiny, saving the Realm. Just the usual."

Lohna frowns. "Are you going to be in danger?" she asks.

"I hope not," you say. "There's a boy from the groom's family who may run off with an attractive stranger. I need to stop him from doing so. Trust me, it's important."

Lohna nods slowly, her expression growing increasingly pensive. She pulls away to get a better look at your face. Her hand stays on your shoulder, her grip tightening. "What aren't you telling me?" she asks.

You hesitate. "Someone may cause problems. You know what Dynastic intrigues are like."

You're not quite sure she believes you, which is fair enough — you're not being entirely honest after all. Still, she swallows it. "Is Lady Ambraea going to be in danger?"

"You know she isn't helpless," you say.

"Occasionally oblivious, though," Lohna says. It's not something she would have dared say so overtly when she still lived in the Imperial Palace.

"Yes. I'll keep an eye out," you say.

Lohna nods. "I chose you, Flower. And I'd choose you again. But I raised you both."

You take in a deep breath, swallowing down a rush of mixed emotion. "I know, mama. I'll be careful for both of us."

"Good. I know you will," Lohna says. She manages a smile, finally letting go of your shoulder. "While we have time, why don't you tell me what I've missed over the past few months. Just, talk to me."

"Alright," you say. "Almost right after the last time we spoke like this, I attended a dinner party hosted by a goddess of war atrocities."

"That sounds awful," Lohna says, without a moment's hesitation.

You laugh. "It had its moments. She's actually quite a good host."

The two of you talk late into the night, about your life and your colleagues and your friends. When your mother wakes up again the next morning, she will remember none of it.

Private island estate of Matriarch V'neef,
The Sideshores, off the coast of the northwestern Blessed Isle,
Creation

It's unseasonably early for a party in the Sideshores. An archipelago scattered off the Blessed Isle's northwestern Storm Coast, they are home to many manses and island getaways for affluent Dynasts. In the summer, the waters around the islands are filled with pleasure vessels, the nights playing host to gala after gala. Then come the winter storms — the individual islands are protected from the worst of it by ancient artifice, but few want to be trapped there through the worst of the gales. Most Dynasts depart by late autumn.

It's the very edge of spring, winter reluctantly releasing its grip on the island. Nonetheless, it will soon be awash in Dynasts in their best finery, here to celebrate the matrimony of a daughter of House V'neef to a groom from House Cynis. The timing was selected to avoid the worst of the Peleps presence in the neighbouring islands. Still, more than few of their ships are moored at some of them, their flags glaring across the cold waves in a distinctly unfriendly manner.

The sentry, Wood Sparrow, stares out at them as she walks her rounds along the walls of the manse, drawing her green and puple cloak tighter around herself. If she's honest with herself, this whole arrangement makes her nervous. The matriarch and a good number of the most important women in House V'neef present under one roof, along with a number of equally well-heeled Dynastic guests from the other houses. It seems like tempting fate — Sparrow prefers this job when it's merely cold and lonely, not actually dangerous.

While the evening has seen things quiet down, by day the estate's grounds are already abuzz with preparations, ships arriving daily to disgorge staff and supplies to prepare the place for V'neef's arrival. The estate itself is a Water Aspected manse, all crystal-clear waterfalls and floating gardens lushly in bloom even during the winter. Its deceptively ornamental walls sprawl out over much of the island, eventually giving way to snow-dusted ever-green forest on the island's northern edge. For Sparrow, the splendour had been overwhelming at first, even relegated as she is to the guards' barracks most of the time. Familiarity has gradually made the shine come off of things.

Sparrow's route along the walls takes her beneath a wide archway, briefly out of sight of the rest of the grounds. As she passes through it, a woman brushes past her.

"Pardon me, ma'am!" the woman says, giving Sparrow a deferential dip of the head as she goes.

"It's no problem," Sparrow says. But she frowns, glancing over her shoulder for the woman — she'd been dressed as a servant, Sparrow thinks, but it's hard to keep any of her features clear in her head. And what was she doing up on the walls? The woman's already out of sight, though, and Sparrow attempts to put her out of her mind.

As Sparrow continues on her route, she feels a little strange. A numb tingling starting at her wrist and working its way up her arm. Despite the crispness of the evening air, she feels a feverish sweat start to break out on her forehead. By the time Sparrow's legs give out from under her, she's very nearly to the next archway.

Surprisingly strong arms catch her, dragging her fully into cover. Sparrow tries to struggle, but her limbs feel like iron, her spear dropped and forgotten back out on the walkway. Her attacker kicks open a hatch inside the arch, carrying Sparrow down into a storage space within the wall as if she weighed nothing.

Sparrow is dumped unceremoniously on her back, still unable to move, unable to speak or cry for help. It's increasingly difficult just to breathe.

The strange servant woman from before is kneeling over her, an unsettling expression on her face. Half apologetic, like she's just slammed a door Sparrow's face. She has brown skin and purple-black hair. An ugly scar on her neck bears the distinctive appearance of a hastily-defaced slave brand. It's a contrast to the cleaner scar that stretches slices across her face, starting beneath her right eye and cutting through the bridge of her nose all the way down to her jaw. How had Sparrow ever thought a woman with eyes this hard had been forgettable?

"I'd like you to know, I don't take pleasure in this," the woman says, speaking Low Realm as a native would. "I try to only do as much harm as is necessary." She already has a knife in her hands as she says it — heavy-bladed and terrifying.

Sparrow tries one last time to scream for help, but she can't. By the time the knife parts her throat from ear to ear, it had been all she could do to force air into her lungs. She barely manages to gargle out a few more breaths before shock and blood loss finish what the poison had already begun.

It's a mercy, in a sense. When the strange woman uses that knife to open her chest and cut out the still-warm prize within, Sparrow is already well beyond pain or fear.

End of Arc 2

Article:

You have been sent on a solo assignment to the Sidershores, a chain of islands off the coast of the Blessed Isle, in order to infiltrate a high profile wedding between a daughter of House V'neef and her Cynis groom. There are many tactics that you can employ to do this — what is your approach, and what special preparations do you arrange?.

Resplendent Destiny

What is the main resplendent destiny and cover that you use to infiltrate the wedding?

[ ] [Destiny] The Lovers

A handmaiden, well-trained, ornamental, and obedient. Even given some differences in situation and status, coming back to something so close to your old role is a little like returning to a childhood haunt — a mix of easy familiarity and forgotten discomforts. Somewhere that looks larger in your memory than it really was.

This role will allow you to pass overlooked by the great and the powerful, and will give you broad if conditional access to most of the estate during the long days of the wedding gala. It will not be very difficult to come up with excuses to interact with and guide your primary target. This cover will infer upon you no social status at all other than your association with your mistress, a dance you've had to walk before.

Gilded Cage Entrapment: You allow fate to place you legitimately into the employ of a Dynast at the centre of the event. Passing yourself off as a wedding present from the groom's family, you will be put into the bride's personal service and, unnaturally quickly, into her confidence. With this relationship enshrined by the magic of the Lovers, you gain subtle advantages in several areas. You are easily able to discover the bride's private affairs, and become supernaturally empowered to scrutinise those who believe you to be their social inferiors without being noticed, hiding in plain sight — with this particular destiny, that will be very nearly everyone. People want what they can't have: you appear more beautiful and desirable than normal to everyone other than your mistress.

[ ] [Destiny] The Peacock

An Exalted patrician from a family close to House V'neef, using an identity that several in attendance would have heard of, but none will have met personally, a woman married and long since settled into the role expected of her. You have become accustomed to passing yourself off as a Dragon-Blood at need, even if there is still a lingering strangeness to it.

Dragon-Blooded patricians have an odd status, at once standing among the Princes of the Earth and as social inferiors of the Dynasty. While this can create complications, you can wield this ambiguity to your advantage. As a scion of the Cirrus family who ostensibly spent most of her time in the Threshold over the past two decades, few of the Dynasts here will be intimately familiar enough with the patriciate to catch you out. It will be simple enough to seek out your target and to navigate the estate during the party, but this cover will make you and your movements conspicuous.

Masque of the Uncanny: Twisting the strands of your own fate around yourself, your disguise allows you to superficially but convincingly mimic the Aspect Markings and anima banner of a Dragon-Blood as long as it is intact. Flaring your anima will not damage or suppress this resplendent destiny, although a particularly keen observer may notice something strange about any magic you wield. Your anima may manifest as a storm, but it is ultimately an illusion.

[ ] [Destiny] The Sword

A mortal Dynast, far past any hope of Exaltation, quietly settled into a life in her siblings' shadow. An obscure cousin of the groom, just one of many lesser scions in attendance among their betters. It is a role you once observed from a distance, and have grown to emulate over time.

Yours will be a relatively unremarkable presence as long as you manage to navigate the social minefield of Dynastic life. As a distant cousin of your target, you will have little trouble approaching him and presuming to establish a rapport, and you will not be greatly questioned in your travels within the estate. A mortal Dynast is still a Dynast — only the Dragon-Blooded will stand above you.

Preparation

What other special preparations have you made? You may vote for as many options as you like as normal, but you will have the two options with the highest number of votes at your disposal for Arc 3.

[ ] [Prep] Complete guest list

A complete and accurate list of all party guests, which you have memorised. A useful thing, when you suspect a shapeshifter may be at work.

[ ] [Prep] Flawless credentials

While you have the capacity to gain admittance regardless, you have taken great pains to obtain a forgery that even supernatural scrutiny will be unlikely to pierce.

[ ] [Prep] In-depth knowledge of the estate

Systematic Understanding of Everything: Forcing yourself to sleep through the night once again, your dreams have revealed secret insights as to the design and layout of the manses of the Sidershores.

[ ] [Prep] Trusted contact

As part of your cover, there is a trusted contact at the party who can assist you in blending in and carrying out your task, although how much they know and the precise nature of the ally depends on your disguise.

[ ] [Prep] Weapon

Not wishing to be caught empty-handed in a crisis again, you have smuggled in one of your weapons of choice, and will have it onhand in case of an emergency.

A Vision in Bronze; A Sidereal quest

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