Cold Iron, Empty Throne

[VagueZ]

Slowly, you take out the pendant. It's such a small weight, but it's never felt heavier. You set it in Dawn's outstretched hand. She lets out a long, long breath. "Thank you," she says, simply.

Her eyes latch onto a figure that you can't currently see. "Yes... I do... The latter." Dawn closes her eyes.

She almost immediately falls to her knees, right there in the city street. You earn a couple of curious stares, but no other attention. Shakily, Dawn holds out the pendant for you. A coil of worry you hadn't even acknowledged until then untwists. You take the pendant back.

Your nose explodes with pain.

You stumble back, and meet Dawn's horrified gaze... and see her bloody hand. It's a long, horrible moment before you convince yourself that your nose isn't broken, she isn't going to follow up, and you will be all right.

You know what happened, of course "I'm not going to do that again," Ant's voice says in your head, "but you deserved that. A commander sends his people into danger. A leader goes first. People may listen to one, but they will die for the other. Learn that well."

Now you really are attracting stares. You're bleeding from your nose, Dawn's still on her knees, and you can hear Ant's laughter, sounding stronger than ever before. "Ye gods, that feels great!" Dawn's hand flaps around as Ant runs her arm through its full range of motion. "You have no idea how cooped-up I've been!"

"W-we should probably get out of the street," you tell Dawn, trying to staunch the blood flow. She nods. You help her to her feet, slinging her free hand around your shoulder to support her weight as her other arm contorts pointlessly under Ant's exuberant direction.

You find a small park a few minutes later and set Dawn down under a tree, ignoring the crowd at the far end of the park. Her arm's stopped, apparently timed out for the day. You both take a moment to check up on each other, before Dawn is recovered enough to manage anything more than the niceties. Finally, though, she broaches the subject. "Sorry, boss, for punching you."

A tentative check tells you that he bleeding's mostly stopped. "Well, it was't exactly you."

"If I hadn't... hadn't... I wouldn't've..." Dawn gives up, shrugging.

"I hope you learned something from my pain." It's a feeble joke, but Dawn dutifully cracks a smile.

"I did learn something," Dawn says. "Ant offered to tell me or let me experience its insights and thoughts, as directly as possible. It was a bit overwhelming. I... don't have quite the vocabulary, but I'll do my best to tell you what I learned." You nod, and she continues. "Think of our souls as... a sort of sail. They gather a wind of... of strength or something from the flow of the world's energies. A bigger 'sail' lets you gather more of that wind, and use it for magic or secret techniques or clairvoyance or whatever. They don't exactly get pushed, normally, but rather just catch and gather that strength.

"The attack that triggered the Great Dying basically briefly poisoned that wind. Not long. A heartbeat or so, before the normal flow of energy scoured it away and it was replenished with normal energy. During that moment, rather than empowering, it just pushed. So a powerful sail let it push the soul out of the body." She snaps her fingers. "Instant, silent death from no visible cause. Those of us who survived, we did so because we were too weak to affect. So... that's it. That's what happened. Someone deployed a weapon that our champions were too strong to resist."

"So you're sure it was an attack?"

"Well... it doesn't seem like an accident or natural disaster? It's never happened before. Ant wasn't sure where it came from, or how far it could have reached beyond 'really far', or if it could be directed in a line or if it would expand in every direction..."

"Can we defend against it? Is it going to happen again?"

"Um..." Dawn colors slightly, only just barely visible on her tanned skin. She didn't get that. She only retained what interested her.

Ant appears with a long-suffering sigh, this time to both of you. "Yes, of course you can defend against it, through at least two ways. One is that layered sanctums may last long enough for the attack to pass... this is what happened to me. The outer layers of my prison broke, but it lasted long enough to protect the inward-facing layers and me, as well. Magic items are basically artificial souls that generate a consistent effect without a mind behind it, so they're just as vulnerable, or as useful to shelter in. The other way... well, to use Dawn's charming and quite weird analogy, it would be to let the 'sail' flap free for a moment. Less than a heartbeat, as she said. Any hedge witch or pissant village hero could defend against it by simply letting go their powers and not catching that 'wind' for a moment. It wouldn't be more than day's training to ready a mental tool to detect the oncoming poison and stop for the necessary instant. It's just that no one ever needed to before. I'll show you how whenever you want, for free."

"You're back to being awfully helpful for someone who just punched me." You check your nose again, less gingerly.

"Take it as a learning experience. I gain from offering this, you know. People don't gain power and then not use it. You'll only get in more scrapes if you feel confident enough to build up your personal power. Oh, and as far as I know? No reason it had to be stuck tuned at this level. Maybe next time they fire it off it only affects great gods... maybe they put enough juice in that it kills every man, woman, and animal stronger than a toddler. Enjoy your day; I'm out." Ant gives a jaunty wave and disappears.

You shiver.

Before you can compose yourself, the crowd you had mostly tuned out forcefully impresses itself on you. You realize that, while you were having your private chat, someone's been whipping up the crowd. You're too far away to get all the details, especially over the roar of the mass, but it seems like in the last minute or so it's turned vicious. You make out "Regency Council" spat in a tone of distaste, some accusations of something, and a demand that something be given or else be taken by force.

Here and there in the crowd, you hear roars of acknowledgement, which are then re-echoed by other people. There's a surge, almost suddenly. The crowd has gotten riled up enough that it's turning into something of a mob, and the mob seems to have decided on a target that's on the far side of you and Dawn.

You start trying to scan the ways out, knowing that the last thing you want here is to be swept up in this... but it seems that the mob was not entirely unexpected. There are armed men, most with large shields, who are starting to congregate, with a "planning to bust heads" expression on their faces. Some are wearing the Regency Council purple, most aren't... but you don't see any wearing gold cloth right now. They're entirely missing. That's something you note almost in passing, though. You're actually looking for an easy path out, but none presents itself. Paths out are sealed, and it looks like there's going to be a fight between the mob and the guards.

You're stuck between them, of course.

One sharp-eyed man stands out in front of the guardsmen. His hands are empty, and he has a purple cloth worn as a headband. He performs a couple of warm-up stretches... then suddenly staggers like he's been drinking entirely too much. Which isn't too far from true, you realize: he must be one of the Viper's Kiss heroes, and it looks like he's here as an enforcer.

That direction is absolutely the last way you want to go. Even without a weapon, he's going to be incredibly dangerous. You scan for a different route, perhaps a less-protected side alley you can slip down as the crowd begins to reach your area. Nothing seems promising. You're not going to get out without a fight.

[] Defend yourself as minimally as possible as you escape. You risk injury, but you'll attract minimal attention.
[] Fight aggressively as you escape. If someone's going to get hurt, you don't want to let it be you.
[] Shout some derogatory slogan and try to get some of the mob to support you, so you'll have more weight to break out of the cordon.

 

[VagueZ]

Unfortunately for you, the enforcers recognize their outnumbered nature: they aren't letting anyone through, no matter how inoffensive. If they did, it wouldn't take more than a handful of rioters on the other side of the cordon to get them trapped in a pincer and overwhelmed.

Thus, it doesn't matter that you'd really rather clear out than engage: you don't have a choice. "Dawn, try to look... I don't know, inconspicuous." She shoots you a dubious look, but nods. Both of you adjust your tunics, covering a bit of your face. It's not much, but it's at least something.

The enforcers begin to engage with the mob. The guardsmen are outnumbered, but some are armored and all of them are trained. They lay about with spear haft, sword in the scabbard, truncheon better suited than mace to this sort of fight. They stand shoulder-to-shoulder, most with shields to protect both themselves and each other. They're not trying to kill, but they are savagely putting down anyone they can.

The mob is only sparsely armed, but vicious. There's no single, unified cry that you can make out, but "down with the Regency Council!" and "food-hoarding pigs!" make several appearances. Broken bricks an the occasional stone arc overhead, hurled with anger but without the training of an archer or slinger.

The man you'd seen previously, the VIper's Kiss warrior with the drunken approach, puts down more than his share, and comparatively nicely. He staggers away from and around attacks. When someone overcommits, he grabs their wrist, or elbow, or jaw, or ankle. Any exposed skin works. After a second or so, whoever he's touched falls over and starts snoring off the worst bender of their life.

The mob is all surging in one direction. You try to resist, to go against the flow, but the best you can manage without drawing even more attention, and the attached violence, is to pull off to one side. You see a lightly defended side street, where a couple of fighters lurk, delivering a hearty thump at people who get too close and otherwise try to pretend that they aren't there. Smaller numbers mean easier to overwhelm, even if there's not room for more than two people abreast.

Eyes lock. The guards see you weighing your options, and ready their weapons in a business-like manner. Both of them have spears, which they're intent on leveraging for a reach advantage. "Go back, on your knees," the man instructs. "Set your weapons aside and don't resist, and you'll be processed once the disturbance is over."

You're not willing to do that. You aren't even particularly sure who the Regency Council are, and you're not willing to trust that they have your best interests at heart. You and Dawn nod to each other, and plow forward.

It's not an equal fight, because you're not all aiming for the same goal. The enforcers are here to prevent anyone from getting out, but especially can't risk a general breakout. You just want past, and won't double back on them. That's an advantage, since if you're even a handsbreadth past them, they're not going to pursue you. On the other hand, you aren't aiming to hurt them, just get past, while they're intending to beat you down.

The first attack comes in on a downward diagonal. It's a powerful swing, meant to overpower you or force you to keep your distance. You deflect it with your shield, and from the corner of your eye you see Dawn do much the same. Your foe gives half a step, readjusts his grip, and scythes at your legs. You get your sheathed sword in the way, eating up most of the power and keeping you from tripping.

You're on him after that, and he blocks a feint you throw, and then you're past. You have just a moment to feel smug before you stumble, a sharp pain at the bottom of your ribcage. You manage to keep from falling, though. You realize a moment too late what happened: the woman Dawn was distracting shifted her focus, and stabbed you hard with the butt of her spear.

Once you're a turn or two away through the streets, you and Dawn stop running. "Are you all right, boss?" She got away mostly unscathed. It's you who got unlucky.

You gingerly feel the injury, and are greeted by a sharp pain. "Not sure. Cracked or bruised rib, maybe. I don't think it's too bad." Neither you nor Dawn have much first aid training. It never seemed relevant, given that everyone knew that those destined to the burgundy tunic always died in their big fight. That means that all you can do now is double-check, carefully, and find out that you're still able to move as normal, though it does hurt and the mother of all bruises is already threatening to form. "I think we got away cleanly, at least. The cordon's got enough people in it that they're not likely to come hunting, and we look... relatively non-descript, I hope."

- -

You meet up with the others at a quite place near the docks, where you can catch up without much of anyone paying attention. The others turn out to not have had nearly as exciting a time as you have. You and Dawn sketch out the relevant portion of your day, including what you've found out from Ant. Samir considers Dawn warily, but it's hard to imagine what he thinks is going to change. The two of them have never gotten along very well, so he doesn't spend much time in arm's reach of her, anyway.

"Well," Zahira says, once you've caught her up, "this sucks. You're getting beaten up, we're probably going to get in trouble with angry men with swords if we go back to the temple you sort-of promised we'd vacate, we don't have much money, and the only thing of use that we've learned today is that it should be relatively safe to learn magic if we get Ant's trick to protect us from whatever that is." By tone, she sounds more frustrated at the world than angry with you. She waves around a book she picked up from the temple, one of the theory books she was looking at earlier, explaining how to bind a concept to one's mind to work that path of magic. It's not quite clear how this emphasizes her point. "I don't know about you, but I think I want a plan to get us somewhere good before we end up dead in a gutter or something."

A group of men carrying a barrel of fish walk past. Conversation among your group stalls until they, and the smell, are gone. "Did you notice?" Kalju asks abruptly. "They all had weapons and were side-eyeing us."

"So?" Samir clearly did notice. When he did, he pulled out his little blade and began ostentatiously cleaning his fingernails. "We have weapons, apart from the bookworm, and we side-eye people all the time." Zahira ignores him.

"So," Kalju continues, "they aren't warriors, normally, but they are afraid someone is going to steal the fish. Didn't you listen to anything else today?" Kalju looks over you all, then sighs. "The Regency Council is stockpiling most of the food that comes through the port." He lapses into silence.

In a flash, you realize where Kalju is trying to go, and nod. "Right. It's a power struggle, that's what you're getting at. The Regency Council is trying to hold onto power, and this 'Lady Adara' is a competitor--she's gathering her own sort of legitimacy by getting together remaining priests. Maybe others. We have dueling groups who are trying to hold power here in the capital, and it's starting to boil over." The mob you got caught in may have been the first, or maybe not, but there will be more clashes unless there's a resolution.

Kalju looks satisfied. "Yes. Also, they're trying to sway Admiral General Hobi, who took charge of the military here." By the looks that go around 'Hobi' is not a familiar name, but Kalju was the one paying attention to this side of things. Still, that must be the soldiers you've seen who are not wearing either gold or purple, which is most of them. Whoever sways the admiral general will get enough military might to hold the capital.

"Right," Samir says, finally putting away his knife and inspecting his not particularly cleaner nails. "So I see a simple plan. Let's sign up somewhere. I don't really care where. Anyone who's expecting some fighting is going to be happy to pick up four more fighters. And a bookworm. At least if she learns some magic. They can feed us."

Dawn shakes her head. "That's... not a good plan. If we do that now, we're no one. In a world where heroes are starting to come back, we need something to set us apart, or we're just going to be front-line fodder. We've seen that people are starting to pick back up magic and enlightened martial traditions already. Although we didn't succeed before... we got training on the theoretical side of things already, and we have resources at the temple that we can access to help. That's more than most people are working with. Let's try to develop some superhuman skill. Something that isn't Ant, who isn't much of a bargaining chip with other people." Samir shrugs. He doesn't seem too against this plan, either, but it seems somewhat irrelevant to his goal.

"We can do both," Kalju points out. "Go to the admiral general or go to Lady Adara, and offer to help develop skills for us and others."

Zahira checks some of her notes. "There... is something else special that we might get at." You all look at her. "There's one type of magic item that may have survived, given what Ant said to you. Most magic items broke, right? There's one that I think would be immune to this type of attack. Potions. It's a long shot, but given that any defenses or guardians probably also died in the Great Dying, it could work. We should try to break into the Emperor's potion vault. A single potion of something like hell's heart or hydra's breath, much less having a bag full of them, would be a tremendous advantage to have." You wince at her cavalier description. A single drop of hell's heart creates a nigh-unquenchable fire that burns for days without fuel. A full potion could burn a squadron of war galleys to the waterline. Hydra's breath is an invisible, odorless poison that can be poured out into the air, where one breath causes dizziness, two causes vomiting, three paralysis, and four instant death. Again, a single potion contains so much that a spill could choke an entire town. The best potions are valuable for their tremendous power, but using one is a heavy responsibility, even the ones with positive effects such as healing. Zahira looks around at everyone. "Or, well, I don't mind Dawn's idea, either. I will be learning some magic again."

The discussion turns to the merits of the various plans, giving you a chance to steer it to wherever sounds best.

[] Go back to the temple, try a self-guided crash course to power.
[] Time to break into a potion vault. It's too tempting to resist.
[] Try to sign up as the well-trained fighters you are. People need that.
- [] Lady Adara is looking for people exactly like you.
- [] The Regency Council might still be worth looking into.
- [] Never mind the power struggle. Admiral General Hobi's forces can get away with being apolitical.
- [] Sign up for the next boat somewhere else. Maybe back to your family. This isn't your fight.
[] Write-in.

- -

Sorry this took a while to get out. I lost my pet bunny of eleven years recently, and it took me a bit to get back in the writing groove. She used to always sit on my left foot as I wrote...

 

[VagueZ]

I put together a little primer on the supernatural elements that our protagonists would know in character, in case this assists anyone in making a decision. If there's no change when I come to write the next update, I'm going to declare myself a tiebreaker and go for the choice I think is more interesting to write.

If you think you recognize something: yes, you probably do. I tried to make interesting twists on the magic for this setting, but it's definitely drawing inspirations shamelessly.

- -

For mortals, there are generally accepted to be a few specific methods to acquire superhuman power. There are enlightened martial arts and the five paths of magic: Conceptual Magic, Elemental Magic, Contracts, Tome Magic, and Divination. It's far from unheard of for any given great man or woman to take an eclectic approach to these, mixing and combining various talents to find the best tricks that the individual can achieve. Thus, terminology is quite inconsistent, both due to the radical differences possible and the fact that, even with the seer network, long-distance communication in the Shallow Ocean is slow and unreliable. The most typical terms are just "hero" and "mage". A hero is someone who has more combat power than average when they fight, either with a weapon or barehanded: typically, anyone who could defeat at least three normal fighters at once is going to be called 'hero' by someone. Mages are those whose primary talent is magic.

Not every person who can use magic is considered a mage. There are countless people with some small talent, usually some weakly-bound concept or a specific effect or two that mimics tome casting. From the village elder who has some power to soothe pain to the champion pearl diver who can charm oysters into giving up themselves to the hedge witch who can bless or wither crops (a bit), these hardly count. For one, it doesn't put them beyond human capacity, for all that their specific trick gives them some new ability. Something more is needed.

The enlightened martial arts are a varied lot. Most established schools expose some intrinsic flaw in how the world works, and exploit it ruthlessly and in increasingly difficult and subtle ways, as mastery grows. Most can be used either bare-handed or with weapons, though many clearly lean to some specific angle. A comprehensive list would be difficult and beyond what you currently know, anyway. There are three that you know of that are currently in use in the capital. The first is Bear's Mantle, focused on superhuman strength and shifting weight in impossible ways to make oversized weapons both easier to handle and hit even harder than they should. The second is Viper's Kiss, which manipulates the user's own body chemistry to generate poisons they can pass with a touch, as well as synthesize other things to boost their own abilities. The third is Untouchable Blade Style, which apparently is creepy to watch and is great for one-on-one fights against other people, but you don't know anything about its mechanisms. There are a few others you're familiar with. Stroke of Midnight is a technique that combines divination magic to fight both in the present moment and prep for the future, while gracefully avoiding attacks and hazards, though its users occasionally get so caught up in the future that they falter in the now. Screaming Fiery Monkey involves acrobatics and converting body heat into flame attacks. Swirling Winds reads the air around and uses small changes, caused by its user's own breath, to control thrown and missile weapons to attack beyond sensible range, redirect in midair, or just fire absurdly quickly.

Conceptual magic is probably the most common type, and is considered close to the intrinsic supernatural power of a god, angel, or spirit. By binding a specific concept to the soul through meditation and enlightenment, the user can focus will to evoke related effects. For instance, someone who has bound the concept of "Fire" can do things from lighting a candle to throwing great balls of fire (at least, if the user has enough magical strength and stamina), but the more they press themselves, the more they can pull off effects tangentially related to the concept, such as sparking fiery anger. The concepts themselves aren't necessarily perfectly described by one word, as they are concepts, but it's rare to find. Concepts can also change over time, based on usage and intent. Wind and Music are somewhat infamous for flipping from one to the other, but many concepts somewhat overlap each other, meaning that it can take some observation to figure out the exact concept of a mage you don't know. Other common concepts to bind include water, weather, fields, healing, earth, and shadow. A powerful mage who binds an unexpectedly useful concept is a staple of many tales, but rare in reality.

Elemental magic is the most physically oriented magic. Elementalists, as they are often called, have to step out into a dangerous situation where two or more elements meet, and find an internal balance between the two. This lets them control and shape both the related elements, though unlike concept magic, it doesn't extend to more metaphorical connotations. Still, someone who is properly open to it while walking along a beach during a thunderstorm may find that commanding the waves and summoning lightning has great utility for him. Poison elementalists are always some of the most sought-after, because of their ability to extend a poison to food stores, to protect it from vermin, then counter it when it's time to eat. Although the strength of the effect depends on the elementalist in question, much of the reshaping of the ocean and islands to make them friendlier to mortal lives, as well the speeding of ships along routes that might not be quite in line with natural currents, spin from the actions of teams of elementalists. If not for the danger involved in gaining elemental magic, it would be even more popular.

Contracts are a form of magic that exploit the differences between mortals and spirits. The mortal gains some powers related to the spirit they contracted with, and the spirit can extract whatever concessions both agree to. Contracts are absolute to the parties involved: the magic structure is delicate. If the mortal agrees to a blood sacrifice every moon, the magic cannot consider extenuating circumstances that weren't hashed out ahead of time. Far-sighted or experienced spirits thus tend to offer contracts with detailed clauses to cover minor or unintentional breaches. Contract powers can be both broader and more esoteric than conceptual magic. Between this and the relative simplicity of gaining contract magic, contract magic is extremely popular. Beyond the delicate structure, another downside of contract magic is that the spirit feels, in the back of their mind, something of the mortal's thoughts. This is not a deep mind-reading ability, and is often mostly a headache, both for the mortal with minimal privacy and the spirit who may not want to listen in or who may get distracted from too many too disparate voices and suffer various mental maladies from it. To combat this, most of the spirits (such as gods) who have a large number of contractors specify codes of conduct for the 'clerics' or 'paladins' who echo their power. A god who values cold logic and even tempers may demand celibacy, or something close to it, while a deity of passion and desire may demand, ahem, something else.

Tome magic is the most difficult branch to master, but offers the broadest possibilities. It approaches magic from a studious, logical perspective, where known theories lead to specific results. Magic on this level is intricate and arcane, however: a spell to light a candle and one to throw a fire ball may have almost nothing in common, and you certainly can't replace the one with the other. Still, nothing prevents a tome mage from knowing a wild collection of spells: something to silence movement, to hurl bolts of force, to read the lips of someone facing away from you, to generate giant sticky ropes. Tome magic is called as such due to how complex spells are: without a substrate to simplify things that other branches allow, tome mages write down most of the spell and connect to it when they cast. Usually, this takes the form of a book, hence the name, where the caster touches the inscribed magical symbols and makes it part of the spell, only finishing the spell in their mind to decide such things as "where do I aim this" and similar effects that are best decided on the fly. Some casters will use other things to hide the powers they have with them: staves with subtle magic circles or perhaps clothing with the spell shape stitched into the cloth. Sometimes, a spell is learned so thoroughly that no external aid is needed, which is usually the case for those who pick up one or two spells that are technically "tome magic". For them, without further theoretical grounding or broader applications, it ends up as singular tricks. For a lot of non-mages, they think of tome magic as the highest or best type, assuming that its challenging nature and broad ability completely counter its lack of flexibility. In fact, few mages dedicate themselves solely to tome magic, and most have at least one bound concept or some elemental ability.

Tome magic is also closely related, fairly intuitively, to the creation of magic items. Laying down spells logically and using physical aids is only a skip away from making the entire magic item. Technically, most magic items are a type of artificial soul, though not one that has any sapience or sentience. Instead, they create, for instance, a soul in a sword that exists only to cast "my blade is sharp, hard, and casts a glowing light" over and over, forever, thus creating the effect. Despite centuries of effort, no one has been able to create a soul with any more of a self than this. The most complex they've ever achieved is something like "cast my spell when this condition is met", such as the fancy lights for the rich that turn on or off when verbally commanded to. Potions are distinct from this; they use a special brewing process to arrange most of the spell, but not to attach it to anything. It simply stays in a specially-prepared glass container that doesn't react to it. When used, the soul that they use to 'cast' themselves is the one holding the container. This means that a potion spilled during an earthquake will be wasted, but will not trigger itself. It also means that mechanical aids to pour out a potion while the setter is far away tend to be frustratingly difficult to arrange, and tend to require a specialize magic item to get any effect.

The last of the paths of magic is divination. Divination is the only path that does not seem to be able to be taught or imparted. Mostly, it seems to be a gift people are either born with or not, and training simply enhances and helps this. Seers, as users of divination are often called, can typically see communicate with each other over long distances, if both parties are willing. This is the "seer network" that constituted most fast communication across the Shallow Ocean. Seers can also sometimes see distant locations, catch frustratingly almost-but-not-quite trustworthy images of the past or future, intuit people's thoughts and motivations, or otherwise manifest knowledge they shouldn't be able to have. The exact set of talents varies by individual.

 

[VagueZ]

Gradually, the consensus of the discussion comes around to the benefits of building some power now. Although the potions are tempting, they aren't quite enough for you to risk it. Presumably most defenses on them are gone, courtesy of the Great Dying, but that doesn't mean everything is. Plus, for all you know, someone else has already looted them if they were available. Learning at least something first sounds more practical.

You make your way back to the temple of Tal-Roshath and ensure the outer doors are reasonably barricaded.

Samir pipes up with a concern once you're all there and sealed away. "Are you sure this is going to work? It didn't work for us before."

It will. You feel... oddly certain of that. It's not exactly related to what Ant said. You never had a good reason to try hard before. Before, succeeding might have given you some praise, but it would only have meant your quicker death at the hands of your god. You flash back to a handful of half-remembered faces of people who had succeeded, gone on to private training, and then gone off to their deaths as ritual sacrifices with nowhere near enough power to stand up for themselves. That's not what you're going for any longer. For the first time ever, you're going to try for yourself. For... whatever ideals you think are important.

And the temple itself won't hurt. The effect is not large, because it never is, but it was constructed with the intent of making it easier to channel energies while inside it. You also have access to all the memories of training you've had, and a library with further resources.

Just as you're feeling good and considering how to express it to Samir, Zahira pipes up instead. "Didn't work for you losers. I had a broad suite of destruction powers until my patron rolled over and died. Help me set up and bind a concept already." No one moves to help her. "...er, please?"

In the end, it does prove easiest to just get Zahira set up and out of your hair. All she actually wants is a lit candle on a holder. She sets it on a table, stares at it intently from very close, and is thus completely disinterested in whatever you're up to.

What you're up to ends up being a lot of discussion. Dawn points out that the marble floor and high ceilings to catch smoke could allow a nice, brisk fire. You could use that to try to set up an elementalism course... but elementalism is all about the balance between two dangerous forces. A heated discussion follows about what you could use to balance it out. In the end, no one can think of a good way to bring in hurricane winds, crushing water flows, or the like.

One of the classic methods to teach someone enlightened martial techniques is to put increasingly stiff competition between them and their only meal of the day. Then, step up the competition and decrease the amount of food each time. For some, they can overcome the limits of possible and turn this into fighting as a hero. You have a spirited debate on exactly how likely it could work by compressing the time scale and having it be water but the fighter would be thirsty.

Divination magic is the only path you and your group never were tested for. It's not a path that normally leads to any special combat ability, and thus not something that would up your sacrificial value. The school called Stroke of Midnight is the exception, which still doesn't really up your power at all, but rather just lets you fight by planning ahead and relying on hunches on how to secure an advantage. If you wanted to gamble on someone possessing that, you could blindfold them and scatter caltrops, which is exactly the style's usual first exercise.

The biggest challenge, of course, is that there's no good way to train everyone at once. The only somewhat solo method you have right now is trying to bind a concept, like Zahira is doing,and none of your squad thinks that they have that lined up right now. You're going to have to pair up instead, or even go three-on-one, instead. It's just a basic fact of how you can try to arrange things.

Before you can settle on that, Zahira abruptly makes a high-pitched "oh", which catches your attention. You turn to see her. Her stare is intense, focused, all-encompassing. She's been staring at the flame for so long, trying to bend her will to it, that you're not sure she's been blinking. After a moment, you realize that the wick hasn't gone down the whole time she's been exerting her will on it, either. It's a tiny miracle, just the smallest possible spell effect... but it's being maintained.

Then, Zahira reaches out with one hand, and pinches the fire. Somehow, it comes off the wick, remaining between her thumb and finger as she pulls it away. In an almost dream-like state, she pulls the flame away and presses it to her chest, just over her heart, where it disappears. Then, she seems to wake up. "I... I did it!" Zahira jumps up, excitedly, clapping her hands for joy.

She turns back to the now-snuffed candle. With a deep breath and a gesture, and three tries to get it right, she manages to relight it, magically. "I did it!" She's louder now.

"Big deal," Samir grouses. "I could've done that in half the time and without so much effort just with a quickmatch. And good luck setting anyone on fire faster than they could put an arrow through your eye socket."

Ignoring Samir, Zahira dances a couple of loopy spins while little flames spark from her fingertips, laughing the whole while. She stumbles about halfway into the third spin, and you have to catch her. "Whoo..." she continues. "Right. Overdid it. I need to build up my magical strength and stamina. But I did it." Impulsively, Zahira grabs you by the temples and pulls you into for a quick kiss. It's not a romantic gesture; she just had to express overflowing emotion and anyone would have done. Except maybe Samir.

Still, you find yourself blushing. "Er... uh... let me help you to bed. You'll feel stronger in the morning." You sling one of her arms around your shoulder. She's short, but you're not so tall that it's impractical to help her along this way. Samir has changed his tune and now chases you out of the room with a wolf whistle and some comment you try very hard not to hear. Zahira shouts something back at him, still way too happy to take anything badly. You try not to listen to her, either.

When you exit Zahira's room, though, your mood sobers up instantly. Ant's manifesting again. Its robed figure seems to be waiting for you in the hall. "What now, Ant? Are you going to tell me this isn't going to work and offer me something else?"

Ant shakes its head and rolls up its sleeves. It seems to be re-establishing itself more. It's got all four limbs quite defined, now, though hood and loose clothing still hide half its face and anything to hint at a gender. "No, it's probably going to work, at least partially," Ant says. That's odd. The teeth seem a lot less pointed now. They're still sharp, but it's not the array of horrible needles any longer. "But, yes, I'm here to offer a trade."

You sigh, and head up the hallway. Ant keeps up, of course. This figure is an illusion, after all. Ant's real body is in your pocket, forced into a magical prison. "Okay, so what's your trade?"

"I'm offering two," Ant says. "But you can only pick one, at most. If you would like, I will help you all train, physically. Let me out of my prison and I'll beat some enlightenment into your bodies. I won't break anything or cause lasting damage, but it will be extremely painful, because I'll just batter you until you're able to fight on a reasonable level. I know it won't last and I'll get stuck in this form again afterward, but a chance to stretch my muscles and exert myself like that is all the payment I need... for now. If you prefer, I'll just tell you and your group what I can of your potential and what I think you're each capable of with proper growth. I don't recommend you take that option, though. I think you'll be upset at what I say if you do."

"And I don't get to pick both, huh?"

"Nope!" Ant lounges back, crossing its arms behind its head. "I don't want to, so that's not an option."

You consider. If you do take Ant's offer, that would solve one logistical problem. One mighty spirit could absolutely challenge all four of you at once, and with the specifics of Ant's situation there's no chance of this going too wrong. Its prison is very thorough, and it will be returned to its current state if Ant so much as acts funny, never mind actually breaking either the intent or spirit of the training class. On the other hand, Ant's never been shy about oversharing. Why is it playing coy now, when you've previously shown such trust and openness with your team?

You don't have much time to puzzle it out. You're almost back to the others.

[] Let Ant spar with all of you, see what develops from such a rough challenge.
[] Listen to Ant's rundown of your true potential.
[] Never mind Ant. Keep to the plan you already have, and pick two people to be the focus of training:
- [] Yourself
- [] Kalju
- [] Dawn
- [] Samir

 

[VagueZ]

You sigh again. "I think I do want to hear what you have to say."

"Really?" You hear something unexpected in Ant's voice, an emotion you can't quite identify. "You really are an honest soul, aren't you? Even when I tell you it's something you won't want to hear, you seek to get and share information with your fellows." It dawns on you: it's respect, at least after a fashion. "You've been very consistent on that. I don't know what to make of it. I guess we'll see if you continue to do so... boss."

Ant fades out. You join your three companions in the middle of the oversized audience chamber. Kalju notices your expression as you approach, and inclines his head in an unspoken question. Samir and Dawn, as familiar with him as you are, notice and follow his line of sight.

There's the inevitable round of explanations. People are growing somewhat used to the idea of Ant, so that simplifies it somewhat. It doesn't take long before you're all arranged in a circle, touching the pendant that is Ant, so its phantom form can be seen and heard by the four of you.

"I confess I hadn't expected to actually share this," Ant says. "But your boss is oddly consistent in his principles. So... forgive me if I'm not very eloquent." Ant clears its throat unnecessarily. "I am not a seer myself, so there is always a little wiggle room in what I know. I just have experience to draw on. I've seen people succeed, and I've seen people fail. I've seen the difference between people who are unable, people who never saw a reason to develop their potential, and people who lacked the conviction to stick to things."

Ant first looks back the way you came. "I suppose it's fairly obvious, and I suppose you'll have to tell her yourself, but Zahira is almost born to do magic. She's going to do well with any path, I think, save perhaps divination. She's got some interesting luck to have not been skilled enough to die in that big attack."

Its hooded glance turns to you. "You, Azer, seem a good example of someone who never saw a reason to develop before. You'll never be amazing. You're no prodigy. But you should be... adequate at whatever you put your hand to. You have a logicl enough mind you could work tome magic, you could pick up something martial, bind a concept, learn elementalism, whatever."

It turns to Dawn. "Ah, Dawn. You're an interesting case. You have the self-assurance needed to balance opposing forces. I believe you could be good at elemental magic, first and foremost. Enlightened martial traditions or conceptual magic, possibly, but not as much." Dawn closes her eyes at that, taking a deep breath. It's clear she was tense, wondering what the spirit would say.

A pale hand wobbles as Ant turns its attention to Kalju. "You have some promise towards the martial side, too, probably more than Azer. It's hard to tell. I don't think you are likely to be able to work magic, however, or at least not with any great skill." Kalju is impassive on hearing this.

Ant drops its harms limply by its side as it turns to Samir. "You, however, I see nothing for. Maybe you could show a miracle by sheer dint of extreme effort. Other than that, maybe a good Contract?"

There is a long moment of silence and stillness. It finally breaks when Samir turns and walks away, having said nothing.

You immediately, instinctively, move to go after him. You find yourself restrained. You look down. Dawn has a hand on your arm. "Boss, I know you're going to talk to him, but... think it through, okay? He's always been the weak link, hasn't he? Don't sugarcoat things, or..." She falters. "I know you like to be kind, but sometimes tough truth is the best we can do."

You try to shake off her hand, but she holds on, trying to think of something more to say. Kalju puts a silent hand on her shoulder. Dawn glances at him briefly, and lets you go.

As you go after Samir, Ant starts to manifest in front of you. "Go away, Ant," you say through gritted teeth. The figure vanishes instantly.

Samir isn't hard to find. He just walked back to the room he'd claimed, and is sitting on the floor, arms curled around his knees. You sit near him.

He offers you a weak grin. "Come to check up on me, hm? Going to see if I'm going to try to figure out how to shoot an arrow back at my own head or something?" He loosens his hands to mime a confused working of his bow.

"Well, you were upset," you say.

"Yeah, I am." He shifts position a few times. "Not for why you probably think, though." He pauses, putting his own thoughts in order. "I wish I had some more of that booze," he says, conversationally, before continuing. "I don't actually care if I get to command the forces of nature or whatever. I just want to have enough for me. And it's never happened."

Two more adjustments, and Samir stands up to begin pacing, instead. "I was born in a little fishing village. We lost all our boats to raids one year. We were starving. My parents sent me to the temple of Tal-Roshath knowing I would be a blood sacrifice for the god... but hoping I'd have a chance to live a little longer first and maybe die with food in my belly." He throws his hands in the air. "Then, a miracle occurs! The whole damn order of the world up and dies and I get a reprieve. Hell, maybe I can live. We should've taken that magic sword from the angel. Why didn't it break?" He doesn't slow down long enough for you to try to answer the question. "But, no, we don't pick that up, or go for easy scores like those potions. Fine, whatever. But now apparently I can't achieve anything in what you wanted to do. I don't care how I get there--I just want to have a comfortable life. And all the world has given me is failure and pushing me aside to die." Most of this is new to you. When all your companions are doomed to die, and most of you came from bad backgrounds to begin with, thinking about where you came from was discouraged by the priests. You never really knew your companions' backgrounds before they came to the temple.

Samir halts pacing. His voice returns to normal. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," you assure him. "I think I'd be upset, too."

"I'll be okay in a minute. But, boss... what am I going to do? I don't know what I..." He massages his temples with one hand. "Every time I sort of get something together it turns to rot."

You need to come up with an approach for Samir. It doesn't need to be detailed right now, as the flow of conversation will determine that. What you're looking for is a central thought.


[] Cruelly kind: send him off alone to join up with the Admiral General as a normal fighting man.
[] Tell him Ant's probably wrong. Ant doesn't know everything. Samir will develop fine.
[] Emphasize the team, and the fact that he's part of it.
[] Write-in.

 

[VagueZ]

"It's not so bad as all that," you say, once Samir is calm enough to listen instead of get touched off again. He spares you a look of mild disbelief. "Think about it from another angle. You're basically telling me everything you've overcome so far, haven't you?"

Samir leans against the wall, giving you a sort of faint smile as you recount his story with a different twist. It's clear he knows what you're doing, but that doesn't mean it's not working. "You nearly starved to death, but through a loving family making a hard choice you didn't. You theoretically didn't succeed from there, just failed to gain magic or the powers of a hero over the years, but in a way that kept you alive when you were on the cusp of dying again. You're walking around right now when every god and angel in the whole Shallow Ocean died. Here we are, trying to make the best of it, and you're still breathing and still eating along with us."

He puts his thumbs on his temples and massages his eyes. "I know. I know. It's just... pathetic. I shouldn't let it get to me, right?"

"It's not bad that it gets to you. We're all people and we have our own feelings. But you've beaten the odds an awful lot to get here. You know what miracles are called when they happen every time?"

"What?"

"Skill. You're very skilled at surviving, Samir. It may be hard work, maybe even harder for you than others, but you're still part of the team if you want to be."

Samir barks a laugh, sour but stil with an edge of genuine amusement. "I tell you I wanna be lazy, and you respond by telling me to work hard? That's stupid, boss." He grins.

"Maybe." You run a hand through your hair, thinking that over. It probably needed to be said, but maybe that wasn't the best place to say it. Or maybe it really needed to be said there to make it clear you weren't minimizing the hard times probably ahead. You'd drive yourself spare wondering about the what-ifs there if you let it. Instead, you clear your throat, to indicate a change of topic. "Well, the night's still young. It may not be more alcohol, but I do have something else we can do that's both productive and fun to pass the time."

"Oh?" Samir plays up his doubt with an outrageously exaggerated expression.

"Yeah. I figure we can all go beat on Kalju for a while, pretend that that's going to help things."

"It would be a shame to set up the hall and not use it," Samir says with an equally exaggerated thoughtful pose.

You and Samir exit. He's still a little fragile, but you seem to have found something very appropriate for him for now.

- -

Picking Kalju wasn't a random choice. Right now, with tensions running as high as they are, you and he were much better choices than Dawn or Samir, and you're not in your best shape with the shot to your ribs earlier. The fact that he is supposed to have the best aptitude for enlightened martial traditions is just a bonus.

The super-compressed method you discussed before is employed, once everyone re-arms with appropriate training equipment from the armory: heavy, serious equipment, but not bladed. It can absolutely injure or kill, just not as easily as the real deal. Normally, this training would involve longer periods of time and a meal on the far side of opposition. When pressed hard, some people respond by overcoming the limits of sanity and claiming some new power. Here, lacking in time, you've substituted water. Kalju has to hold himself close to a fire you've constructed, sweating, and once he's very thirsty, the other three of you fight to prevent him from reaching a small mug of water, but also ramp up your opposition each time. The first time, it's almost a token struggle. You're only putting maybe half your strength into it.

The second time, you do try, but not to an extreme. You and Dawn fight independently, occasionally having to 'correct' to not fight in cohesion like you were trained until it became a habit. For this fight, Samir replaces his bow with a sling, which lets him throw stinging bullets but not ones likely to seriously damage Kalju. Or Dawn by 'accident', for that matter. A sling is absolutely a weapon, and potentially nearly as nasty as a good compound bow, but Samir can throw something rounded instead of sharp and at a controlled lesser velocity with it quite effectively.

The third time, Kalju falters. You and Dawn set up your shield wall, and leave him no room for attack. When he tries to muscle through you, you push him down and hack at his legs with your forward-curved sword. He rolls aside and springs lightly to his feet, but Samir nails him with a sling bullet to the gut. He stumbles back, and Dawn mimes a crippling strike before he can reset himself. He looks at her macehead with an intense focus. "Again," is all he says.

The four of you set yourselves for another round of the spar, you and Dawn directly between him and a small mug of water that is his goal, with Samir behind you and off to one side. Kalju stands in front of the fire, sweating from both head and exhaustion. Silently, Kalju advances again. This time, he fights smarter, using his spear and greater leverage to control the distance of the fight. It's a longer match, this time. He eventually drives you back far enough by good control and good footwork for him to make a dive for the water when you didn't expect him to. Success, technically.

He sweats it out again, while the other three of you refresh yourselves.

For the fourth round, he's clearly drained, and you're not. It's not a question of tactics or trickery this time. He's pushed to a limit, and again you're not going to give him an inch he hasn't earned. In fact, the fight goes the other way. He thrusts his spear, trying to force you back, but you push an angled shield towards him and it glances off, letting you step forward. He has to give ground. Dawn is right there, too, and he has to dodge from her, too. Samir is providing his own sort of support, which is half verbal abuse and half painful sling bullets.

His left foot comes up against the hearth. He spares a flicker of attention to it, as you and Dawn circle to surround him. You come in with a quick slash. No matter the outcome, you have to push like it's real for any hope of success.

Then, you dodge. Kalju's training spear comes whistling down where you just abandoned. It almost impacts the floor, then stops incredibly suddenly. It wasn't a stab, that time. It was an overarm smash that came out with an outrageous speed and power behind it, especially for how drained he is. Dawn tries to attack while he's distracted, but he jumps away. Has he always been able to jump that high?

Your dodge wasn't one that put you entirely out of position, either. You set your feet in your new location and go for an upward cut and--

--you just get your shield up in time. He stabs out again, and despite your attempt to deflect it, the sheer power of his thrust throws you back. Cat-like, you manage to twist and keep your feet under you, so you don't fall, but you're not up against normal Kalju now. He's broken some shell, and it's clear what that shell is.

Two or three more rounds of blows are exchanged, but his brute strength pushes you and Dawn back irresistibly, and even throws Dawn into Samir to keep the latter from bothering him. He gets his water.

"Not what I expected a new hero to first drink," you comment as he finishes it, trying to shake feeling back into somewhat numbed arms.

"Yeah," Kalju agrees, still somewhat unmoved. He checks the cup, just in case there's more water hiding in it after he finished it. "Need more."

"Go for it. I think training is done for the night." On any objective level, this has to be an unmitigated success: you took dross and found a way to polish it into a new hero. "That strength you showed... it sort of reminds me of Bear's Mantle techniques. Do you think you could handle oversized weapons with their special grip?"

Kalju shrugs. After a stop for more to drink, you head to the armory to test it out. Kalju's new brute strength persists if he focuses on it, but oversized weapons still end up overly awkward. Without training, he's either going to have to re-develop the style on his own or find another one. It's not like there are any shortage of enlightened martial traditions that benefit from or even require massive strength.

Samir and Dawn drift off to bed during the discovery process, leaving you and Kalju alone for a bit. You're flagging, and it doesn't look like Kalju's much better, but before you can make your own excuses, Kalju decides to speak up. "Boss?"

"Yes, Kalju?"

"We're running out of time, you know. Not just for grabbing those potions or even working off the less perishable foods the temple stored. The capital's going to blow up in violence, sooner rather than later. Not enough food is getting out to people, no one's sure who's in charge, and... more terrible things are going to come from the Great Dying that we haven't figured out yet. We need to be ready." With that, he leaves.

It's nice to end the day on a cheerful note.

You head to your own room, footsteps echoing seemingly loudly in the oversized and empty halls.

- -

Who do you first run into in the morning?
[] Kalju
[] Samir
[] Dawn
[] Zahira

What is your plan for the day?

[] Potion run. Maybe it's still unclaimed.
[] Find the next ship out of here.
[] Try to sign onto someone's payroll.
- [] Who?
[] Write-in

- -

Hopefully that flows well enough. I intended this to be an interruption from the training, so returning back to it within an update should still make sense.

 

[VagueZ]

You find that you're up first the next morning. Apparently, without the actual structure of the priesthood pushing you to a schedule, most of the others prefer to sleep late. The quiet gives you a little more time alone with your thoughts than you really would prefer right now. You aren't the most outgoing person, but it can be nice to have conversations and people around, preferably at a safe distance.

You rummage through the food stores, finding that, as Kalju had said, things are getting a bit thin here, and this is after the tall spearman had made a more thorough search and stored everything as accessibly as he could. You find a few unappetizing lumps and decide that that's breakfast today.

As a distraction from the food, you decide to also take the time to care for your sword a bit. You have a strong impression you're going to need it again soon, even if things do go to plan. With only so many hands, though, you can't do both at the same time. The end result is that breakfast ends up half-eaten and pushed to one side as you instead focus on the sword, which is where you are when Zahira joins you. It's not too surprising to see her. She was the first to bed, so being up makes sense.

You've seen her first thing in the morning before and again her long black hair is definitely showing the wear of sleeping on it. She dumps a collection of things on the table. Cosmetics, you think. "Don't you ever sleep?" she grouses.

You don't say anything in return, mainly because right at that moment you were looking down the blade of your sword to ensure nothing had bent it. It's a familiar pattern, one you've mastered so long ago that it's not even worth thinking about any longer: inspect, test edge, sharpen or otherwise work as needed, clean, polish.

Looking up from her cosmetics, Zahira wrinkles her nose at the oils and cloths you have to care for the sword. "Yuck. I almost can't tell what of that is supposed to be edible." She leans across and grabs some of the jerky at your elbow. She doesn't look any happier about its state than you do. "Sorry about kissing you without warning last night. Wasn't really thinking. I was just so happy to have magic again."

"It's all right," you say, finally content that your sword is ready for action. You re-sheathe it and set it aside, then wipe your fingers and go back to the bits of breakfast she hadn't grabbed. "Kalju had a breakthrough last night, too, after you went to bed. Oh, and Ant says you're going to be good with any magic you try."

Zahira snorts. "Years and years of training, nothing. One night of giving you a purpose, and suddenly the ex-sacrifices are achieving things. Life's a bitch."

"We're going to try to steal the emperor's potion reserves." Engaging with Zahira isn't always a winning proposition.

"I'm coming with you, then."

You swallow the last of your breakfast before replying. "Are you sure? We wouldn't mind a fire mage backing us up, but... you're not a warrior quite like we are. Magic's good, but it's not going to help much if we do run into something that decides to, say, shoot an arrow at you. I don't think you're ready to incinerate flying arrows before they hit you or anything."

"You're right. But..." Zahira holds up her hands. Small, steady flames, like super-bright versions of the best candles, tip a finger on each hand, completely banishing shadows from her face... and revealing what might be a weird flush. "You don't know. You really don't know. You've never felt the rush of magic flowing through your body the way I have. I'm looking for an excuse to cast. Besides, you owe me for this being my idea."

"If you're going to do anything stupid or put the rest of us at risk, you're not coming." There's iron in your tone, and Zahira recognizes it as such. She deflates, and the fires wink out.

"Fine. No, that's not it. I'm gonna be a good little soldier girl today. But I'd like to be this new world's first archmage, and part of that is exercising my magic. It does have to be pushed."

You give her a lopsided smile. "Welcome aboard."

- -

The rest of your group gets up and readies themselves for the day. There's no complaints about your decision to go for potions today. Having a goal now seems to be almost a release of tension, even if you're not sure that anyone else has yet put thought into what you'll do once you have a power that probably no one else alive possesses... but not one that will solve all your problems on their own. This is a bargaining tool, not an endgame.

Getting as far as the front entrance to the potion vault is relatively easy, as well. It's public knowledge, even if standard procedure before the world fell apart was to have the doors sealed shut and protected by ceremonial guards who would warn people away from the true guardians within.

Given the current tension between Lady Adara, the Regency Council, and general unrest of people, that's changed. No one wants guards defending something useless, and the doors are still closed, though they're as thoroughly cracked as most magical items you've seen. A foul stench emanates from the doors as you approach. It's probably the stench that has driven people away, as there's little evidence of people on the street in front.

The door is still an interesting challenge. Although, like many magical items, it cracked and broke, it's still largely effective as a barrier, as the cracks mostly were not clear through. Additionally, it is huge. This is a door meant to allow access by even gods, so the scale is enough that you indeed feel small as you approach it at a merely human size. There's only one place you can see that potentially would allow you through. Near the place where the double doors would swing wide, there's a chunk of wall material that has come free, thanks to a diagonal crack that did go all the way through.

The dirt around it looks somewhat disturbed, and cobblestones have been pulled up. You note this with some concern. Has someone already gotten in here? But, no, the block is still in place. Or back in place? You push concern out of your mind and call for the group to slide it away. It takes you, Dawn, and Kalju a significant struggle to find a place to grip and still more to slide it clear. Once it is, you have a little path in. It's not a big one: you're going to have to more or less go double to go in. You have a bit of a bad feeling about it, so you sneak a glance before you commit.

An unblinking eye almost as large as your shield stares back out at you. With an undignified yelp, you fall back and scramble away. A second, even more cautious approach reveals two things: one, it's unblinking because it's dead. And, two, it's the source of the awful stench. The dead guardian creature seems to not have been quite flush up against the door, but it's not far away, hence why it seemed to be watching any previous thieves who had tried to slide out the door-chunk before now.

You dictate the order: you first, then Zahira (you need light), Kalju, Samir, Dawn. It's the best you can come up with to get a variety of assets in while staying a bit safe.

The actual infiltration almost makes you lose the breakfast that wasn't great the first time. You're hunched over, wriggling through a god-sized door, towards a rotting beast of some terrible nature. The stench is unbearable, almost a physical barrier in its own right, but you force yourself past, and slide to one side. No light penetrates far; the cracks in the door let in what there is, and the immense pile of rotting fur blocks a lot of that.

Zahira complains excessively the whole time she comes in, despite Dawn trying to encourage the mage to be quiet. Unlike you, Zahira does end up having to pause to empty her stomach, by the sound of things. It doesn't make the smell any worse. Once she's in, she throws a couple of little fiery lights. The first one she tries fizzles out in only a couple of seconds, but the second stays hovering in the air and gives you enough to see.

There are actually two bodies here already. One is the beast you'd already squeezed past. It turns out to be some fearful chimera, with one of its heads having fallen just right to eye the outside, and the smallest, snake-headed end on the far side towards the second body. The second one is a spirit of some kind, as it's vaguely human but with the sort of androgynous perfection of form no real person can match, and it's not rotting. It will just disappear eventually, instead. You eye it. A demon of some sort, you guess, but it's hard to be sure. You slip a little closer, for a better look. A succubus, you eventually decide. All demons have in common that they gather their spiritual energy not from general worship, but from draining dry the life force of one being at a time. Up until the Great Dying, a captive demon was a last-ditch resort for many of the powerful. Just throw it its food now and then and aim to compel it when at your weakest... or even threaten to just release it unbound if some foe cornered you.

You whirl.

Some unknown sense set you turning just in time. The snake-head that made up the chimera's tail was, somehow, still alive, and it had lunged at your back. Fangs pass both above and below your shield, which is wedged in the monster's gaping jaws, but it's not so large as to entirely engulf it.

Zahira shouts something and throws flame at it... but it's not a fireball. Not an attack spell. She's just throwing fire, and that's not the same thing. You and the mostly-dead chimera feel the heat, but are not burnt up. The snakehead tries to wrench the shield from you, but you hold onto its center-grip gamely. If you let go, it could spit it away and nip at you, and you're not sure you could jump away from it in time.

You realize that holding on here is a losing game, too. The snake will drag you closer, and then loop a coil around you to crush. It's got enough length for that. You stab your sword up, under the lower jaw, then hack at its nose above you. Neither attack penetrates as far as you need it to, though blood flows from both.

Then Kalju is there. His spear stabs the monster in its coils, and it lets go your shield to attack this new threat.

That was a fatal mistake on its part. As soon as you're free, you slash for its throat, and cut clean across it. It sputters for a while, but it's incapable of movement and clearly mortally wounded. You all back away, and let things happen.

"That's stupid," Zahira pants, trying to pull herself together after the danger passes. "You can't be partially rotting, partially alive. It doesn't work. What... oh, gods. It had multiple souls, didn't it? One per head. The stronger souls died... and the weakest was only able to control the tail." She looks queasy at this thought, too.

By now, though, everyone has come in. There's nothing more to be gained from the dead, so you pass by the corpses.

With Zahira's light, you pass further in, and around the one corner in the vault. This puts you up against a wall, with shelves carved into the bedrock, all high above you, and a ladder on a sliding fixture for those of more mortal stature to reach.

There are three apiece, each in its own cabinet, protected by a glass sheet. Each is well-labeled. The leftmost is a scarlet one that is lit with its own internal light: "Hell's Heart". Next to it is a grey-brown mess labeled "Gorgon's Gaze". Then a sickly green "Hydra's Breath". Those three are all ferociously deadly; potions that will break armies or fleets. They are something of a strategic reserve. The last two are less destructive, but no less potent. "Veritas' Touch" is a truth serum. Low doses make it painful to lie and middling doses are said to inspire great insights, discoveries and inventions. High doses, it is said, strip away every comforting illusion and break the mind of those who are exposed to it, but its other effects are more regularly pursued; taking a medium dose is an occasional reward for a would-be genius who needs an edge... and can afford the chance. The last one is "Asklepian's Staff". This potion heals all ills with enough exposure... all ills. It can even reverse aging itself, making it a potential immortality serum. The gods always forbade mortals from taking it more than once, for reasons of their own, but the occasional rogue mage or thief would still try to pursue this route at times, instead of any approved methods of life extension.

That's it. You've reached this first. You frown. Did you just hear voices that aren't from your group? Kalju, in the back, turns to look, but the one corner you've turned hides you, at least, and Zahira's floating light is faint.

As your group falls silent, straining your ears, you hear the conversation in the chamber you've left behind.

"...for the Regency Council!"

"I don't recognize your authority. Lady Adara--"

"--Your jumped-up noblewoman and her--"

"You have no respect for--"

Samir quietly nocks an arrow. Zahira glances at you for orders. The other two wait. They know you'll give them a recognizable signal without looking at you.

You glance at the potions, but just using them is not a good move right now. They are... somewhat uncontrolled in effects. And you're in an enclosed underground space. And whoever is arguing is directly between you and the way out.

[] Grab the potions. Bluff your way out.
[] Grab the potions. Wait for whoever wins whatever showdown is going on to come to you.
[] Write-in?

 

[VagueZ]

The encounter at the other end of the vault isn't your immediate concern. The potions are. You are to keep your eyes on the prize if you want to get something out of this, and whoever holds these potions is going to be holding quite an ace. The better part is that no one even suspects you're in here. Let them exhaust themselves on each other. You look over the team quickly, then gesture for Samir and Kalju to stand with you, ready to fight whoever comes around the corner. The best way to get at the potions is to have one person up the ladder, and another push the ladder from recess to recess, so the one on the ladder can get them quickly. Samir's bow is your best ranged support, so he can't go for the ladder, Kalju's new strength means you don't want to take him from the front lines, and Zahira is your shortest and lightest companion, making her the most obvious to go up the ladder.

It was thus down to splitting you and Dawn between fighting and pushing the ladder, and you're not going to demand one of your squad fight while you stand back. You stand in the front, shield ready. Behind you, you hear Zahira trying to give Dawn a lesson on exactly how huge an undertaking any of these potions were to make: expensive and rare ingredients, a great mage's knowledge, multi-year brewing processes... and Dawn shushing Zahira until it takes.

The fight in front is over quickly, as most fights are. Human bodies are frail. Not every injury is crippling, but few give the injured an advantage. A ruthless warrior is a competent warrior is a survivor; advantages are not squandered by those who mean to win and come back for another struggle. You follow the progress through sounds, as you cannot see it. The posturing ends. There's some further shouts, of people coordinating and being surprised. There's screams, and the stomach-turning noise of weapons striking bodies.

There's silence.

Then, a couple of seconds later, you hear a bright voice saying "Idiots. Quantity is not quality." Then it strikes up a whistle. That makes it all the easier to follow as it rounds the corner.

A young man, lips pursed in music-making, comes around the corner, not seeing you until he's perhaps eight or ten meters away, pressed up against the wall for cover as your group is. Samir lets fly an arrow at the moment of mutual sight. Surprise, and the fact that the other is already somewhat tired from his previous exertions, combine to give Samir the edge. The arrow strikes him in the lower rib cage, near the solar plexus. He gives a sharp whuff noise, but the arrow penetrates only slightly. There's some protection at work there.

You're on him next, thrusting your shield at his face to obscure your movements while your sword comes up in a slash. The man parries your blade as he gives ground, splitting attention somewhat between you and Kalju, who comes in with a thrust to support you.

"What's this? More Regency Council goons?" He seems still a little arrogant even at this second battle in quick succession. "Numbers mean nothing against me!" His weapon is a longer, straighter sword than your own, a bastard sword that could be used with one or two hands roughly as easily.

He looks past you, to see Zahira collecting potions as he brings his sword back up. He tsks. Wait, you're pressing him. How does he have time to collect himself? "Never mind. I am Egon, master of the Untouchable Blade. You will fall, like the others."

His counter-blow is slow, telegraphed, as it comes at you. It's just a simplistic slash, but without the brutal power or speed or readied follow-up combination that makes such an attack work. You can interpose your shield. The hair on the back of your neck stands up. You can't interpose your shield. There's no angle where your shield can meet that arc. You can parry. You can't parry. You can't see what angle his attack is coming from. It's right there, but you can't grasp it.

The only thing you can do is throw yourself backwards. You don't dodge completely. The sword catches your sword arm, a glancing blow across the top of your forearm. You flex your wrist experimentally. Not the worst. You can fight.

Egon steps lightly, spoiling Samir's next shot by keeping you and Kalju interposed. He can't completely negate the positioning advantage you have by outnumbering him, but he's doing his best. "You're a quick one, aren't you?" he says to you. "Most people who face that move don't manage to dodge before it strikes them down. Some reflexes on you."

"What sort of move is that?" Cold sweat covers your forehead. You've faced down magic and heroic techniques before, as part of your training, but nothing quite like that. It was almost an amateur move, but you couldn't even react properly to it.

Egon smiles, feints towards Kalju, can't get past the longer spear, and has to give up the attack when you threaten his exposed side. He gives ground. "Something you can't defend against."

Kalju goes on the offensive, swinging his spear through a waist-high arc. Egon blocks it, but he underestimated Kalju's strength, and it throws him off-balance and locks up his blade for one crucial moment. You have a clear shot across his side, and you take it. Your sword shudders in your hand as if you'd hit a solid tree stump, but you feel something crack.

"Damn it!" Egon gives ground again. It wasn't his body, but whatever magical protection he was warded with. He glances back and forth between you and Kalju, but his attention, and his physical stamina, have been pulled in too many directions. He wasn't as fresh as he thought coming against you three, and you had surprise. Samir puts another arrow into him, this one into his thigh.

Egon drops his sword as he sinks to one knee, unable to keep his feet with that injury. "Wait! I surrender!"

Your fight has taken you into the first room of the vault. Extra bodies have been added, three of the four of them clearly slain outright by a single slash each. Egon's technique is deadly, but it's weaker against a close-knit team. The fourth... you find yourself brought up short.

The fourth body isn't quite dead. It's a familiar face. Big eyes look out at you from behind blonde hair, and she's busy trying, and failing, to push herself to her feet by using her enormous sword as support. It's Ariel, who claimed to be grandmaster of the Bear's Mantle style. "Look out!" she squeaks. "Adara's equipped him with a bunch of magic items. He can walk through walls!"

His hand twitches slightly towards his fallen sword, but he doesn't grab it. It doesn't look like he's going to be walking through walls any time soon, but he might still have some fight in him.

Dawn and Zahira join you. Dawn steps up next to you, shield and mace ready. She's ready to join the fray if need be. Zahira, on the other hand, has all the potions you have collected, all in a bag and she looks a little overloaded by it. She's not a combat asset.

Egon glances towards Ariel, realizing for the first time that she's not with you as none of you seem ready to rush to her side. "You realize these no-name thieves have no reason to spare either of us, right?" He bites out the words, doing his best to maintain composure despite his poor situation. "We're a liability to them now."

Samir shrugs, fitting an arrow to his bowstring. "Kinda."

Ariel looks at you, groans, and slides all the way to the floor.

You have the upper hand right now. Egon is down, but he's not dead and will doubtless make his way out if you give him enough of a chance. Ariel, however, is doing poorly. She won't survive without some of Askeplian's Staff. It wouldn't be a full potion, or even half, but it would be a measurable drain on a resource that, right now, is quite literally irreplaceable.

You have to think ahead to know what to do here.

[] Leave them to their fates. You have what you came for.
[] Strike both down. Your potions are all the more valuable if the vault is, apparently, still deadly and impenetrable.
[] Heal Ariel. You can't hope to avoid the Regency Council afterward, but you have both a debt and a bargaining chip if you do.
- [] ...and strike down Egon.
[] Introduce yourselves to Egon. You understand Lady Adara has been gathering the remnants of the priesthoods?
- [] ...and heal Ariel.

- -

Hopefully the options here cover your possibilities well. If one of the options with a sub-vote wins, the sub-vote will happen or not based on if at least half of those votes have the sub-vote.

 

[VagueZ]

Calculations run through your mind. Risks, opportunities, costs. Even goodwill has a place on balance sheets, you know, as something that can be bought and sold, after a fashion. Given all that, the best option right now looks like... a chance to dictate terms while protecting your group. "Zahira? Let me have one of the healing potions." She seems hesitant, but she did promise she would be a good soldier today, so she complies readily. You look at the mundane-looking glass container in your hands for a second. Magic items can't easily be mistaken. They may look normal, but to focus one's eyes on it, to hold it in one's hands... it weighs on the mind. No one will mistake it, even if it's the first time they've ever seen such a thing.

You look up at the two fighters. Ariel isn't awake any longer, and Egon... Egon is dangerous. You know it. He knows you know it. He knows how this is going to go. You give Samir a hand signal as you walk over to Ariel. He puts another arrow in Egon. The swordsman falls. Whatever his power was, it wasn't enough to handle this. You hold up the potion, letting the little sunlight filtering in shine on it. It's reflective, from this angle. You see the others behind you, distorted in it. Dawn looks resolute. Kalju's brow is furrowed, which is close to screaming anger for him. Samir, of course, is completely unbothered.

Zahira looks confused. "He had surrendered," she says. It's more question than a complaint.

"He had," you acknowledge. "But he was still a threat. Whatever his technique was, it went through Ariel's squad like a wildfire. Without knowing the limits of it, there was no way for us to be sure he was neutralized. Stronger foes can't easily be set aside, regardless of if they were captured or surrendered or the like."

Zahira shrugs. "I see."

Ariel is face-down on the ground. You can't see the extent of her injuries from this angle, which is probably for the best. You may not be too bothered by death or injury, but it's not pleasant to look at, regardless. You think back over what you know. There's no need to ingest the potion or apply it topically. Magic supercedes such logical elements. You unstopper the potion, and pour out a little of it on her back.

Instantly, she jerks awake and alert. It's faster than you expected, so fast that the damp part of her tunic brushes against your hand. You feel a sudden rush. A harsh tingling covers your body, and the cut on your arm, the ache in your ribs, a crooked tooth you hadn't thought about for years, and one of your old training scars on your chest all feel an especially strong buzz... and then feel better.

For Ariel, it was even more dramatic. She's huddled up a little way away from you now, covering what had been a horrific gut wound that is now just a bloody rent in her clothes. The skin beneath is fine. "T-thank you? That... hurts still." She's doubled up.

"I'm not surprised," you tell her, as you re-stopper the potion. "If I judged it correctly, you're probably going to be able to have a full recovery, but not be there without some actual time to recover." That's not a very informed judgment, so you attempt to just look confident about it. Actually, you were expecting it to take even more, but the powers of the best quality potions are greater than you had realized.

Ariel considers herself, then looks across the chamber and sees Egon's body. She lets out an eek at that, then looks at you with the potion in your hands again. Her lips move as she tries to work this out. "But... what about me?"

"You're a known factor. You also have potential use to us, and you tried to warn us of a threat." The blonde nods, then looks behind you. You glance over your shoulder, too, alert in case she's suddenly trying to be clever, but she's just watching Samir and Zahira start to go through Egon's belongings. They're like kids with a birthday present. "Don't mind them, Ariel. They like to rob dead bodies."

"How... practical," is all she can offer for a moment. Eventually, though, she continues. "I'm going to want to report this incident to the Regency Council." There's a note of uncertainty in her voice. She doesn't know if that's going to make you change your mind and strike her down, too.

"That's not necessarily a problem," you say. "We're not against negotiating with the Council. As equals." You're pointedly looking 'casually' through the remainder of the healing potion. It's a most useful prop.

Ariel glances back and forth between the potion and your face a couple of times, then lowers her gaze. "I understand," she says in a whisper.

"Before you go, though," you say, "maybe you'd give us an overview of who the Regency Council is and who Lady Adara is? We haven't seen too much of either one, yet."

This seems to unnerve Ariel more than anything else. "I... how haven't you?" You give her a blank look. "I mean, it's been the biggest thing since the Great Dying." She looks around at you all nervous, then clears her throat and begins. "Um, the Regency Council is a group of concerned citizens who are trying to keep the empire together, in the name of Prince Ketut, the only surviving member of the Imperial family. Since he's only a few months old, they have to keep things together in the interim. And, uh, there's a lot of other problems? So they have to take charge and do some planning to get us through the tough times until things get back to normal. Like, the capital doesn't produce enough food by itself to feed itself, even with fishing included. The outlying islands don't want to give their food over, so the Council has to ration it. Things like that.

"Lady Adara, on the other hand, isn't a bad person, but she's... too idealistic. She was gathering a bunch of the remaining priests and mages and the like, people who were new or just didn't wield enough power to die. She's talking a lot about building a better way, but that doesn't get anywhere if people don't have food in the meantime?" She glances at the bodies around her again. Her questioning tone is pretty clear. "But now I think it's going to get worse. Both sides are trying to get Admiral General Hobi to throw the military behind them, and now I guess we're fighting openly. This is only going to get worse from here, and that's without the out islands getting worse, either, and there's rumors that they're having breakdowns of their own..." Ariel takes a a deep breath and collects herself. "That's why it's so important that we all pull together. It's why it's so important that we centralize and work together. Um, and..." she gestures towards the potions you and Zahira are holding. "You know." She can't find the words to convince you to donate your new treasure to the cause, but she wants to.

You thank Ariel and send her on her way, with arrangements in case you decide to take an invitation to meet with the Regency Council. She leaves, looking much diminished.

As for you, you breathe a sigh of relief when you're out of the vault, potions in hand, and no rotten meat smell in your nostrils.

Almost immediately, Zahira says, brightly, "I think I should get one of these Veritas' Touch potions."

You cringe. The last thing you need is any sort of argument like that. "No!" Everyone turns to look at you, startled by your vehemence. "We can't do that. Nothing like that. The value here is that we have the potions." You turn to Samir. "What do you do if someone is going to pull out a potion and use it to attack you?"

"I shoot them," he says, reflexively.

"Right. Having a group holding them is a much better way to threaten with them. If we start trying to divvy them up, split them up, instead of presenting a unified front, we're more vulnerable. The power here is in having it together."

Zahira considers this. "Can I have Egon's earrings, then?"

Your shoulders sag. "Why?" There's a defeated note in your voice that you can't quite keep out.

She displays them in one hand. "They're why he was tough. They're a sort of a protection that can be charged up with magical power, which discharges to protect the wielder. They were drained dry over the course of the fight, so I was going to try to recharge them."

"He also had this ring, which I think was how he got in," Samir adds. He's wearing the ring. He didn't ask. "I think it went something like this: Ariel's squad came in the same way we did, he walked through the wall with this to avoid being ambushed and to counter-ambush them in turn. They both postured briefly, then he cut them down before they could work through his earrings." He waves his hand around, magic ring sparkling in the early sun. "I can't make it work. It might be drained, too, or maybe I don't know how to use it."

"We'll... work it out later." You run a hand through your hair as you think.

You're committed, now. The Regency Council is going to know all about you, and doubtless Lady Adara won't be too far behind in finding out. You have the tiger by the tail, and if you can just hold on, things should reach a point you can control.

Surely.


- -

Right now, though, there's a definite way things are going to go: the Council is going to want to reach out to you. How will you go to the negotiating table?

[] With a mercenary attitude. You're no leader, but you won't be cannonfodder, either.
[] By demanding an equal seat at the Council. You're in charge, now.
[] A larger summit. Get together Lady Adara and the Council in your Temple, and work everything out.

 

[VagueZ]

You look up at the sun. There's rain clouds on the horizon, but they aren't going to be here before late afternoon, unless they miss the island entirely. "We should see about getting food," Kalju reminds everyone. No matter what great heights you've reached today, going hungry is, sadly, still an immediate concern.

Your group tries to look relatively inconspicuous as you hunt that out. It's not too hard. There's always been a certain amount of armed people in the capital, and that's only grown lately. Plus, most people are trying to keep their heads down until things are worked out.

Some streets further along, you see a bit of a crowd. A few armed men and women in Regency Council colors stand guard, but they're clearly cut more from the 'give someone a mace and pretend' cloth than actually being trained warriors. They're there to ensure things run relatively smoothly as others give out packages of food to the crowd. So far, the rationing doesn't seem to be causing anything much more than annoyance and grumbling here, so it's a well-behaved crowd, by and large.

You notice Zahira looking at the crowd appraisingly, tapping her front teeth with one finger as she does so. "Wait here. Look menacing." She strides off. As she gets close, she shoots a jet of fire into the air to get people's attention, then brazenly cuts in line, has a quick discussion where she seems to be berating the workers a bit, and comes back with food.

You take your parcel first, then look at her askance. "What did you do?"

"I got food and information efficiently, you ass. Would you rather skip meals?" She doesn't seem at all angry. Insults just come standard. "I just told them we were friends of Ariel's and that we needed the food right now, then pressed a bit while they got our packages together. It's mostly fish, but they were saying that there's a baby kraken off the coast that's bothering the fishermen. Keeps making threatening gestures, but there's no evidence that it's attacked anyone yet. Just hungry, too, I guess." Zahira shrugs.

Dawn clears her throat for attention. "Never mind that. I have a question that's been bothering me. If the Regency Council and Adara's group are scrapping for power, why didn't either of them send an even larger force to the potion vault? We just saw that they have more men at arms than were there."

"That's because you didn't think it all the way through, ass," Zahira has a special delight in revealing this. "How did we know that the potions might reasonably still be around? Because we had an inside source. If Ant is the only source on this island as to what happened with the Great Dying..."

Dawn picks back up the thought. "Right. They don't have any reason to think any special powers survived. You dispatch small squads to investigate when you can, though, because it's normally a low-risk/high reward thing. They're probably going through every magic lab, artificer's back room, and magic weapon vault they can, and all the others are broken."

"Yup! And now not only do we have these potions, but by letting Ariel go the way we did, we have revealed that this is real. Everyone is going to have to take this seriously, because we've demonstrated this."

- -

You put Samir on door duty, with instructions as to what he can and can't accept. The Council and Adara are going to be sending messengers back and forth, and Samir is exactly the sort to not give when they press for some concession that you don't want to have. The more callous part of his nature is a strict positive here.

Kalju puts a hand on your shoulder once that's done, however. "Boss? I could use your hand in the kitchen."

It's not that he needs the help, but he has something he needs to get off his chest. You join him, and spend a few minutes in silent work, with him just gesturing what he needs you to accomplish, and you complying. He spends a little time with a knife quickly disassembling the fish and getting them ready for cooking. Eventually, as you had known to expect, he clears his throat. "Boss. The summit." You give him an encouraging nod, to keep going. "I have concerns."

"I do, too," you confess.

Kalju accepts this evenly. "I hope that we're going to try to find a good outcome. There's a lot of people, innocent people, here and all across the Shallow Ocean. They could easily suffer. This sort of fight is bad for everyone. I don't really know how this should turn out."

"I have some ideas."

He nods in response, and turns his back to briefly check the coal-burning stove, ensuring it's acting as he wants it to. With his back turned, he continues. "I just want to do good. Sometimes the path to get there isn't easy, I know." You wisely stay silent. Anything you do say here is only going to make things harder. "I just need to know that I tried."

Kalju turns back to the cutting board, and grips it with both hands, eyes staring into the middle distance. "Egon."

That's a cue you can't totally ignore. "He had some unknown power we didn't know the extent of. That's dangerous. Surrender or no, he was a killer who was willing to take down any number of people in pursuit of a prize that he probably didn't even think was still there. If he had the opportunity, and knew we were leaving with that sort of prize... I thought about it hard. Really I did."

"I'm sure you did. But maybe we could have done something better, been something better. But we didn't.

"Even.

"Try."

With each of his last words, there's a sound of stressed wood, and at the last it finally snaps. Wood splinters fly across the room, and he looks down at the twisted, broken remains of his cutting board. You stand silently for a moment, too. Kalju breaks the silence, looking up at you. "I can finish up here."

You leave.

- -

Fresh from being kicked out of the kitchen, you see Dawn and Zahira. The two of them are having an improvised training session in the main room. It's a half-speed, no-contact bout, with Dawn showing how she fights. You stop and watch for a bit.

"Really? Your shield is good enough to deflect a fireball?"

"It doesn't matter," Dawn explains, patiently. "If the shield is enough, I can block or, better, deflect an attack. Even magical fire might glance off. If it's not good enough, my shield might catch fire, but should still provide some protection. I'd shuck the shield, then, and at the cost of a shield I have a few seconds to do something else. Attack, fall back, whatever. I have even more options if I have allies with me." Here Dawn gestures for you to join the two of them. Zahira accepts this evenly. "We can jump behind each other, spread out to pincer the foe, whatever."

"How do you know what you'd each do?"

"Practice." Dawn favors Zahira with a smile and one hand placed on cocked hip. "We've been trained to fight together. At this point, we just know."

"And what if the foe's too strong?"

"No power is so all-encompassing that it can't be beaten, in the right circumstances. If it's the wrong circumstances, if it just really doesn't mater... then we die." Dawn doesn't seem bothered by this. "When we fought the angel, that was what was happening. The angel attacked Azer, and Azer tried to shield himself, but it didn't matter. A strong enough magical blow sent him flying, broke our formation. As long as we hold together, we're stronger than you might expect, but one crack can break that. We've practiced to try to minimize the ability of enemies to find those cracks."

"Hm. So you... need to judge the situation and have a variety of tools to respond right, then?"

Dawn nods, firml. "Exactly. It's not just 'oh, I am a fire mage, I can beat anyone but a water elementalist', or any such pat idea."

"So that's why you were showing me hand to hand techniques a bit ago."

"Right. I'm sure you'll do well enough on your own, refining your magic, and I can't help directly with that, but in a fight you can't just rely on burning things and call that good enough."

"Let's go back to that, then," Zahira says, curling her hands into fists a few times, experimentally. Dawn nods, and sets aside mace and shield. Dawn uses you as a training aid, too, demonstrating something of how to brawl unarmed before working more directly with Zahira.

Dawn is clearly enjoying herself. She's a taller and far stronger woman than Zahira, even beyond the training difference, but she likes having a serious student, and she's probably also having fun with the chance to throw you around a bit and give Zahira some direct experience with grappling.

Zahira is eventually too tired to continue. Coincidentally, that's about when Kalju comes out with food, which he serves as wordlessly as normal. He looks a lot better after his outburst, though.

You volunteer to take Samir's portion to him. As you leave, Zahira, having already inhaled lunch, is practicing shaping her fire powers, testing her stamina and seeing how to use it more effectively.

- -

Once lunch is delivered and you check in with Samir about messenger runs that have come in, there's one more person you need to check in with. For this one, you retire to the armory, surrounded by silent weapons. You touch the pendant in your pocket. While not necessary, it does remind you that it's there.

"Ant, come out."

"Oh, invoking me by intent? That's new." Ant takes shape in front of you, an unreal figure that doesn't actually block your line of sight.

There's something different, though, and you don't figure out what it is until Ant's hood comes down. Ant is no longer faceless. Ant now looks like...

...like you and Dawn had an adult daughter. Your stomach does a few flip-flops as you process this. Ant lets you, smoothing out her robes as you do. They're no longer tattered, and now they hint at the figure beneath them. "You look different," is the only thing you can think to say.

"I do, don't I? Can't say I can complain about this. You don't miss havin a face until you get one back." She tosses her head, long curls of hair settling down her back. You know spirits often have a more malleable identity than most humans, but Ant still seems more amorphous than most, to look like this now. "So, boss, what brings you to my office?"

You keep your face as blank as you can, which is pretty blank. "I'm working on a summit," you start.

Ant claps her hands. "Yes! It's a glorious plan. Announce yourself to two power blocs by slaying one champion and making another indebted to you. Call the leaders together under your roof by a show of power. Slaughter them all. Take command of everything."

You pause. Ant quirks an eyebrow at you. "Don't tell me you haven't at least considered it. You know as well as I do that a meeting isn't likely to just... solve things. Groups of ambitious people at loggerheads aren't going to suddenly sit down and agree to share nicely just because it's your smiling face that's asking. I may not have been able to join you for it, but I saw your fight in the potion vault. I saw your ruthless core."

Ant disappears. Her voice whispers in your ear from behind. It's a cheap trick, and having seen it before it has lost much of its power over you. Still, she feels more predatory than before, and you can almost feel her hands on your shoulders from behind. "And if not you, who better? I'm happy to be a useful tool. I don't care about the why, as long as I get my satisfactory fight. Ambition or a burden to be shouldered for the 'greater good' look the same to me. Use me."

You stare resolutely ahead. "Well.. I was hoping to check in and make sure you don't mess up my actual plan. I don't need Dawn to start slapping everyone who gets in range or any such thing."

"Okay, sure," Ant says, reappearing in front of you with a shrug. You stare at her, thinking over what you've just said in case Ant is scheming something. She puts one hand on a cocked hip, in a somewhat Dawn-like motion. "Don't give me that look. You're getting in enough trouble on your own. I don't need to screw up your plans. Whether I've read you right or not, I'm sure you'll get in over your head or get involved in some horrible situation anyway. Mind, I could always change my mind during the event without breaking any sort of Contract we have, but I can't imagine I'll have a reason to." She shrugs again, a broad expression taking in the whole world. "You're playing in a new arena now. You're not fighting some aimless zombie or half-dead monster. Even if you don't go straight for your sword, you're playing with the people who saw the world crumbling as an opportunity and managed to claw to the top of the heap. These are people every bit as smart, every bit as tough, every bit as driven and dedicated, every bit as good as you and your team."

"Do you know the Regency Council members or Lady Adara, then?"

"Not at all. I was trapped in a prison so tight I couldn't even hold onto a real self-image, boss. I just know that no one gets that high up while being a good-hearted oaf."

You nod, firmly. "I know that, too."

Ant grins at you, already beginning to fade away. "You know? I think you do. Whistle for me when you need, boss."

You stand alone in the shadowed armory. You do know. You grew up knowing that. The side of the angels is the side that saw you as a commodity to sacrifice for divine glory.

You shake yourself, violently, and leave.

- -

What is the actual plan?

[] Good faith negotiations. This power struggle is bad, and you really do hope to talk it out.
[] You've already made the Regency Council indebted to you. Lean on that for your own advantage.
[] Ant read you right. This is a trap.
- [] ...for both groups
- [] ...for Lady Adara
[] Write-in?