[Exalted] Ain’t No Devil
- Location
- Texas, USA
[X] Daji
[X] Chapter Thirty-Six Splash Art (aka the Mystery Box)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Sidir
I'm bad at visualizing, and Sidir has the most unique appearance of the characters available. I would very much like an image of him.
I'm bad at visualizing, and Sidir has the most unique appearance of the characters available. I would very much like an image of him.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
[X] Jiro
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Much to my consternation it appears there's a tie between Sidir and Daji. Either someone breaks the tie or I pick.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
And sold to the man in the trench coat and fedora. Sidir it is.
Chapter Thirty-Six: Something Deep Inside
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
It's probably something stupid. It's probably something that'll get you killed.
But Daji asked. They came back and they asked you to trust them, after all the horrible shit you said. You can't say no to that. Not for anything.
You close your eyes and exhale, long and low and slow.
"I trust you," you murmur.
And you even mean it. You'd forgotten what that was like.
<Kid let's just stop an' think about this- wait, Daji don't-!>
Something's happening. Your skin's tingling, prickling, your heartbeat growing louder and louder until it's the only thing you can hear. Your cloak is writhing, squirming sinuously, even growing as it wraps around you and this time the deathly essence of your armour doesn't stop it. It reminds you of the night you met Sidir, the silky warmth of his wings enveloping around you, smothering you, preparing you for the change. The cloak wraps around and around, binding you tightly in a sanguine cocoon. There's nothing, no sight, no sound. Just the coppery stink of blood cut with the acrid smell of ink, your vision filled with red. Your thoughts are slowing, stopping, mingling and merging, your train of thought coming to a standstill in a moment of almost tranquil dissociation You wonder, faintly, if there should be pain. It feels like it should be agony, but no such thing comes.
And then fire flows through your veins.
The bloody ovum is torn asunder as you erupt from the crimson cocoon, stretching out your arm like a striking snake. Ayano is there, of course she's there, both of her, but your grasping hand reaches not for either of them but the empty space between. Your talons close around the blurr of air and lightning and she's just there, emerging from the echo with a choked-off grunt of surprise and anger. You don't slow, you don't give her a second to recover. You keep rising with the motion, scooping her off her feet and swinging her down into the floor with every ounce of your might. The weakened timbers break beneath her back, beneath your weight, the supports fail. The hole in the temple yawns beneath you like a splintered maw and you both plummet into its darkened depths, wrestling and writhing, fighting each other for dominance only to at last kick away before you both break upon the solid stone rushing up to meet you. She lands neatly, almost crisply, cushioned by the air and only a few hairs out of place. You roll with the landing and spring up with an animal's grace, hunched so low and ready to pounce.
For just a moment her attention wavers, her gaze rising above your head to focus on something you can't see. You don't care. You take off, streaking toward her faster than you've ever moved, and she responds in kind. You clash at the forearm with a burst of air, flesh and blood meeting brass and gemstone, each as immovable as the other.
You've changed. Not just your arm but every part of you. You're something new, something alien and terrifying and wonderful. What was once emerald now glows bloody ruby, the brass carapace now the colour of jet. Your other arm is the same, even your legs, sheathed in black with wickedly clawed digits dyed crimson as if already soaked in blood. Scarlet veins squirm in the darkness, pulsing with power, with energy and life. Everything else is soaked in red, your chest and back daubed in calligraphic black markings. The four tentacles are four tails now, vulpine ears crown your skull. All of it glistens wetly, half-liquid or more, your skin ever-flowing, rippling and squirming like skeins of blood and ink. There's not an inch of the old you that remains, not a scrap of humanity. Your eyes are like luminous rubies, pupils razor-thin slits of darkness, snarling vulpine snout full of bloody fangs. And in your chest, where once there was a sucking emptiness, a green glass heart burns as bright as Hell's sun.
"And I thought there was no lower depth of heresy and depravity to which you could sink," Ayano snarls.
You smirk. "I'll take that as a compliment." Your voice isn't your own, neither deep nor high, rough nor smooth. It doesn't belong to the old you, either of them. You like it. "Nostalgic for Uncle Sho?"
The Abbess breaks the lock with a sneer of disgust, foot flickering out like an axe-swing to ward you away as she makes space. You back up in kind, skittering almost on all fours, and whirl around to watch her.
<K-kid? Daji? What's- what are you!?> Sidir stammers, even his deep voice all but breaking as the twin tidal waves of shock and worry crash down on him all at once.
"I'm using Jiro's body- I mean I'm using Daji's- look it's both of us!" you answer, and that's about as well as you can put this indescribable feeling into words on short notice.
Ayano isn't waiting for you. She's focusing her own power, answering the fullest outpouring of your spark in kind. Her power rolls off her in waves of gale-force wind, in the stink of storms and the sizzling hiss of lightning. Lightning strikes, thunder booms, the swirling air taking shape even as it draws a tighter and tighter circle around the two of you. The power of her blood becomes all too external, all too literal and real, as a ghostly shape of sinuous scales and flowing mane and incomprehensible power resolves itself from the storm. The dragon that is Ayano's resolve forms the ring, and within the arena there is no sound, no air. Just stillness. A void. Perfect. Absolute. The Abbess takes her stance anew, and from her clenched fists sprout daggers of leashed lightning like a dragon's fangs.
The distance between the two of you seems to vanish in an instant. Just a flicker of movement from her, from you, and the fight resumes. She's fast, faster than you ever thought possible, each swing and slash and stab barely a flicker. You're fast too, but not faster. You can just see what she's doing, the intent in the flex of her muscles, the tiny motions of her eyes, every twitch and curl of her lips. She's an open book and her story is flowing from every pore like sweat, like blood. Every strike that doesn't land only fuels her anger, every moment an abomination such as you spends alive in her presence stokes her fury. Each 'knife' strike is answered in kind by a slash of your claws, streaks of ink and blood intermixed trailing every motion of your limbs like splatters of paint.
This power, this feeling, it's like nothing you've ever felt. Not even the surge Jiro used to kill Sho. It's two bodies overlaid and moving in tandem, two minds thinking as one, a union that should be the tangled agony of two rats joined at the tail but couldn't be further from it. You're grinning as you fight Ayano, bloody fangs bared, but it's not to mock her. It takes you precious moments to realise why. You're happy.
<Kid! Daji! Er- fuck, whatever y'are now!> Sidir interjects anew. <I'unno what's goin' on but if this is even close t' what I think's goin' on, this kinda power don't come free. You keep this up too long it could tear you apart for all we know!>
It's fine. No matter how phenomenal this power feels, the sweet blood singing in your veins and pulsing in your ears, the scent of the fight in your nose, the taste of it on your tongue, the electric energy coursing through every muscle, no matter how much fun you're having, it doesn't have to last forever. Just longer than her.
You twist your body, sweeping your legs up and overhead as you shift your weight to your hands. Your scything feet strike Ayano's guard again and again, heels shaking her bones in her arms, claws slicing the air inches from her face. You spin like a top, more exotic dance than fighting style, momentum and muscle in equal measure keeping your endless hail of kicks going until you switch again, fast as lightning. Speed and flexibility Jiro never had before send your legs sweeping down and around, hooking her own out from under her. She spins into the air, helpless for just the moment you need. You drop to all fours and dart back and forth, pouncing again and again, your tails striking her helpless form on every pass with such bone-breaking force she doesn't even have the chance to fall.
Ayano rights herself with an earsplitting shout. The burst of air picks you up like a great hand and hurls you aside, rough stone floor screaming in protest as you dig your claws in to slow yourself. The Abbess wastes no time at all, driving her fist into the earth as she falls, and the raging storm within her erupts in all directions. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, nowhere to dodge, so you don't. You face the rolling thunder head-on and tear it in two. The air bleeds, the searing lightning nothing but light, the shockwave just an aimless wave, the bone-shivering sound nothing but spilled adjectives. Letters and meaning run through your fingers and fall to the floor like ink. You lick them clean with a scarlet tongue and you can taste her desire, the pure killing intent like a potent spice to the boiled blandness of her piety and discipline that turns the mix heady. Seasoned with... something else. Sadness. Desperation. Fear. All seared away so thoroughly, so methodically, that only the ghost of the taste remains for a palette as refined as yours.
"I might be the only person in all Creation who understands you, Ayano," you giggle. "Is that fucked up or what?"
"Be silent!" In the blink of an eye she's on you again, fists and feet and daggers of searing blue-white lightning flashing before your eyes in a whirlwind of violence, but all you can do is laugh.
You still haven't landed a serious hit on her. There's a few scratches, glancing things, superficial in the grand scheme of things. But the angrier she gets, the more you taste her hatred and fear, the easier she is to read. Your body moves at the speed of thought, blood and ink splattering and spraying across the cold floor, painting greater swathes of it in ever more vibrant shades, and her every attempt to drive her up against the walls of the arena she created is thwarted. But you can't play with her forever - annoying as Sidir's intrusions were he does have a point. You need a way to move things to the endgame, soon.
You flip gravity, as much as it galls you to use a power that isn't Elloge's. Your tails lash and snap and slash, each one producing a diamond-shaped dagger of ink and hurling it at her faster than a crossbow bolt, and all the while you skitter backwards across the ceiling. The hail of missiles is nothing to Ayano of course, each dagger dodged or swatted out of the sky with almost contemptuous ease, but it slows her ever-so-slightly. Just enough to be hanging over just the spot you want as she leaps toward you. You leap at her in kind, twisting in the air to bring your heel down like a hammer, and the crack of it striking her hastily crossed arms is like a thunderclap in its own right. You don't let up, not for a moment. You dart all around her, claws flashing and slashing, bleeding her through every miniscule opening in her guard you find and there are so very few of those. All just preamble, a smokescreen for the main event in the split-second you hover in the air above her. You thrust your open hands down at her, and streaks of bloody ink like a torrent of liquid arrows swarm down around her.
She falls, but not alone. Her hand closes around your ankle and you don't have time to say anything more insightful than "oof" as she swings you at the floor like a flail. You land with a splash and a crash, black and red fountaining up around you like a sanguine screen. The spilled 'paint' has pooled to become a lake that cushioned your landing, the shallows of the vast sea that is the ever-bleeding Sphere of Speech. She rises first. You rise second. There's no time to back up even if you wanted to.
The daggers sizzle and hiss. Bloody ink ripples and splashes. The two of you stand your ground what little space remains between you becomes a whirling storm strikes and near-misses, feints and counter-feints, interceptions and retaliations. There's no room for thought or doubt, nothing but kneejerk instinct is fast enough to survive contact. There's no air, not a scrap. The void between you is only growing wider, deeper, more intense as the flurry drags on. Your lungs are burning in your chest. Your throat is catching. Even your vision is blurring. Your power may have sustained you before but this is something different. Something even you can't thoughtlessly overcome.
You grow weaker. You grow slower. You blink and that's it.
The dutiful daughter, so eager to prove her worth, claims her greatest prize. She drives her daggers into the abomination's chest and they strike home, strike true. In the moment of stillness that follows only her hitching breath can be heard, a gasp of something like surprise, of relief. Her shoulders tremble. Her eyes travel up from the sizzling, scorched demon-flesh around the storm-fangs and up to meet your shocked gaze. And she smiles.
"You see?" she whispers, her voice wavering with triumphant glee. "Perfection after all."
You rise from the bloody lake behind her and drive your claws through her heart.
"Not exactly," you hiss in her ear.
It takes her so long to realise what's happened. So long to realise her mistake, turning her shaking head by degrees just to catch a glimpse of you, eyes wide with shock. You think it's only when the false body melts and runs through her fingers in a slurry of blood and ink that she finally starts to get it. You set your free hand against her shoulder and pry your fist free. Ayano staggers forward, clutching her chest as if that will staunch the flow of exalted blood pouring from the gaping wound in her back. That she manages to stay on her feet isn't surprising after the punishment Sho took. The fact that she manages to turn around and face you is more so.
"This... this isn't... how it was... s-supposed to go," she stammers, the blood pooling in her lungs beginning to drool from her lips. "I was... I was meant to... be perfect..."
"Oh shut up." You kick your heel to the inky mess below and it spits your sword up from the depths. You catch it by the blade, wrap your mismatched hands tight around it, and swing the crossguard down into the crown of Ayano's skull.
She goes stiff, her eyes glassy. Her hands fall to her sides and she stares straight ahead, uncomprehending.
"I... w-was..."
You wrench it free. The last word dies with her as Ayano slowly, almost gracefully, topples over with a splash. You lower your sword and gaze down at your handiwork, the Abbess laid low in a demonic mire, and you'd almost call her expression peaceful if you hadn't had so close a brush with the turmoil that lay far below the surface of her mind. The storm dies with her, the ghostly dragon fading, the air rushing back in to fill the void, and at last you can breathe again. You let out a grateful huff and take a step back. The Abbess lies dead at your feet. Another name crossed off your list.
Or is that-
no that's Jiro's list but-
you're him, aren't you?
No you're Daji, but...
Daji is Jiro then what does that make you-
It's like being in shock. Taking a bad hit in a fight and running on adrenaline until you get back from the front lines and have a buddy point it out - or just collapse on the spot. This feels like a combo of the two, crossed with just a dash of getting sawn in half from the head all in the span of a second. Your hands fly to your temples and you only have a moment to let out a cry of pain before sparks flash behind your eyes and nails get hammered into your brain. You fall to one knee and it all just... sloughs off you like paint that didn't have time to dry. The demon-fox's skin peels away to reveal yours, you, Jiro's underneath. You're Jiro, just Jiro again, and you feel like you just had a hammer taken to every muscle in your body. Fever-sweat springs up all over your face, and your breath rasps in a throat that feels rubbed raw and bloody. Even your lungs hurt.
"(oh... fffffuck... me...)" you wheeze.
<There y'are!> Sidir exclaims. <What the fuck were the two'a ya thinkin'? Y'coulda been killed or- or melted or somethin'!>
"Yeah, and if we hadn't Ayano probably woulda pulled my bones out one by one." You cough - blood, pretty common these days, but this time it's probably bad. "Daji in there with you? They ok?"
<Yeah I got 'em right here they're jus'... wiped out, I guess.> Sidir pauses, maybe cradling the demon fox in his arms, maybe finding somewhere to lay them down. <It all happened so fast, it was like- there's some kinda interface here, First Age stuff I ain't got the first clue about but it's how we see an' hear with ya. Reckless kid went an' poured out every scrap o' essence they had an' jus'... melted into it.>
You grunt softly, cradling your stomach - not that it's hurting worse than any other part of you - as you force yourself to rise and take a few staggering steps away from the body. "Daji?" you pant. "Y'there? Can you hear me?"
<m'here> the familiar androgynous voice replies in a bad-hangover murmur. <don't have to shout>
"I just-" What? Just what? Don't overcomplicate it. You shake your head and let your shoulders slump. "Thank you, Daji. For coming back."
<yeah yeah whatever> the fox mumbles. <didn't do it for you>
You laugh, cradling your head in one hand. "Sure, Daji. Sidir, could you-?"
<I'll look after 'em, kid. Don't worry.> Sidir sounds calmer now. Maybe Daji's looking a bit healthier. Maybe he just has one less anxiety chewing away at him now. Either way it makes the pain a whole lot easier to bear.
"Thanks. I'll uh- I'll be in to check on you soon. Once I go make sure Qiangong didn't go and get himself killed. And once my insides stop bleeding, (ah, fuck)."
You don't feel up to climbing out of this inexplicable pit right now, so you figure you might as well see if it's explicable while you recover. You turn in a slow circle and take a look at it with fresh eyes - looks like it was carved straight out of the mountain rather than built on top of it like the rest of the temple, the floor of the training hall far above going straight over the opening like the floor of Sho's townhouse did that open mineshaft. There was a way to get in normally, a finely-carved stone arch on the far side of Ayano's corpse, but it looks like it was deliberately collapsed at some point. No getting through there now without the proper tools and some determination. Which, come to think of it, makes you turn and look for the thing that distracted the Abbess when you first fell down here.
There was a statue down here. The immense storm of Ayano's unleashed power seems to have turned it into scattered chunks of masonry at some point, but there's enough left to tell what it was - enough to be just as confused about its presence as she was. You shuffle across the room and pick your way through the debris, sorting through the chunks and piecing them together with a frown on your face.
<What is it, a statue?> Sidir chimes in. <What's so weird 'bout a statue?>
"Because the Order doesn't worship idols," you mutter back. "Never has, 'least not officially. Shrines, idols, statues, figureheads, ancestors, it's all too... specific. When you give your prayer to a name and a face it can come with an identity of its own. That's where new gods come from, or at least that's what they taught me."
<So they don't wanna manufacture new gods t' keep in line, sure. But ain't they worshippin' the elemental dragons anyway? This was clearly a dragon 'fore Ayano broke it, what's wrong with makin' statues o' them?>
"Well you'd say that, but as far as I know..."
You pause, sweeping your eyes across all the pieces you've collected, and realise what's been staring you right in the face.
"... none of them have three heads."
The air runs cold. Your breath hitches in your lungs. Your armour writhes across your body, flowing over your shoulders and across your sides, dripping off your spine in thin tendrils and strands. An icy fist clutches your heart and you almost don't have the courage to turn around. Some primal part of your brain wants to stay put, keep it out of sight, out of mind, deny the impossible no matter how much it demands your attention. But you do turn. You turn and you rise and you raise your sword for all the good it'd do you.
There's a hole in the world. A rip in the air, in Creation, and a darkness deeper than moonless night spills forth. Many branching tendrils seeking blindly, questing for their prize in all directions, but she isn't hard to find. You get to watch it spread across her cooling corpse just like Sho's, threading across her skin like a tarry fungus, clinging close and dragging something from the bloodied meat that you can't see or touch but you know damn well is there. There's only a few possibilities. You don't like any of them.
A familiar scent...
The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. It makes your muscles seize, your blood freeze, your bones ache. You can't breathe. The presence steals the air from your lungs. It's all you can do to keep a grip on your sword. All you can do not to fall, even as those tendrils draw ever closer.
So... curious...
You have to fight. You have to run. You have to do something but instead you do nothing at all, staring wide-eyed at the liquid shadow stretching out to touch you, to claim you like it claimed Ayano, grasping claws of night and death only inches from brushing you-
No.
The tendrils pause, and draw back.
My knight craves you so desperately. It would be cruel to deny the boy.
And then it's just... gone. In the blink of an eye the air is warm and you can breathe again. You collapse to one knee, gasping for air, clutching your chest as if to calm your racing heart. Gone but not forgotten, gone with all but a threatening, parting wink. That thing, whatever it was, it knew you. It recognised you. It's all you can do to keep breathing, keep reminding yourself that you're not dead yet no matter how much that thing's attention made you feel like you were.
<Once is one thing,> Sidir murmurs, <but twice? Both times y'kill a Tamura? That- that ain't a coincidence.>
"(Yeah no shit)," you pant, forcing yourself to swallow to wet your terror-dried throat. "Something- something Kyo said. About how close the dead are to the surface here. Was she trying to warn me about this?" You shake your head to clear it, planting your sword in the ground and leaning on it to rise. There's something going on here, something more, and if you don't figure out what it is soon there's no telling what could happen next.
You leave Ayano where she fell, shifting gravity to crawl up the wall and back to the ground floor. If there's one upside to how she sicced all those monks on you right from the start, it's that it cleared out the rest of the temple for you. You don't run into any opposition as you search for the late Abbess' private chambers, nor shouts or running footsteps when you smash the door open and step inside. It's just as sparse and austere as the rest of the temple is, as the woman herself was - one thing she wasn't was a hypocrite you guess - with nothing but a bed and writing desk for furnishings. The latter is just what you're looking for. You rifle through the drawers, leaf through the old letters you find, searching for something of immediate significance.
"Daji?" you ask.
<mn, what?>
"I have to go check on Qiangong as soon as possible but I need to know more about what Ayano knew too," you explain quickly. "Can you take a look at her shit for me while I do?"
<ffffffine. i guess.>
"Thanks. For what it's worth it should be less boring than Sho's papers."
<you know her thoughts only tasted that good because she was trying to kill us, right?>
"Yeah, but maybe some of that seething anger at the entire world bled through in her writing?"
<i already said i'd do it, don't butter me up.>
You can sort through the letters at a glance into discrete topics, but stopping to read over everything and select the important bits could be wasting time Qiangong doesn't have. You have to just grab everything that seems relevant to a topic, even tangentially. But which?
[ ] The interior. You've heard all about those constant beastman rebellions, but you've learned the Tamura love telling lies. What's really going on to the east?
[ ] Hayate. Or 'the Promised Prince of the Empty Sky', whatever he's calling himself now. He came back from the dead an Exalt and Ayano's the only one who seemed to find that odd. What game is everyone playing? Is he a player, or another piece?
[ ] Shuzen. The man himself, an inscrutable enigma that could've killed you once already. Everywhere you turn everything seems to lead back to him, directly or indirectly. What did Ayano really think of daddy dearest?
But Daji asked. They came back and they asked you to trust them, after all the horrible shit you said. You can't say no to that. Not for anything.
You close your eyes and exhale, long and low and slow.
"I trust you," you murmur.
And you even mean it. You'd forgotten what that was like.
<Kid let's just stop an' think about this- wait, Daji don't-!>
Something's happening. Your skin's tingling, prickling, your heartbeat growing louder and louder until it's the only thing you can hear. Your cloak is writhing, squirming sinuously, even growing as it wraps around you and this time the deathly essence of your armour doesn't stop it. It reminds you of the night you met Sidir, the silky warmth of his wings enveloping around you, smothering you, preparing you for the change. The cloak wraps around and around, binding you tightly in a sanguine cocoon. There's nothing, no sight, no sound. Just the coppery stink of blood cut with the acrid smell of ink, your vision filled with red. Your thoughts are slowing, stopping, mingling and merging, your train of thought coming to a standstill in a moment of almost tranquil dissociation You wonder, faintly, if there should be pain. It feels like it should be agony, but no such thing comes.
And then fire flows through your veins.
The bloody ovum is torn asunder as you erupt from the crimson cocoon, stretching out your arm like a striking snake. Ayano is there, of course she's there, both of her, but your grasping hand reaches not for either of them but the empty space between. Your talons close around the blurr of air and lightning and she's just there, emerging from the echo with a choked-off grunt of surprise and anger. You don't slow, you don't give her a second to recover. You keep rising with the motion, scooping her off her feet and swinging her down into the floor with every ounce of your might. The weakened timbers break beneath her back, beneath your weight, the supports fail. The hole in the temple yawns beneath you like a splintered maw and you both plummet into its darkened depths, wrestling and writhing, fighting each other for dominance only to at last kick away before you both break upon the solid stone rushing up to meet you. She lands neatly, almost crisply, cushioned by the air and only a few hairs out of place. You roll with the landing and spring up with an animal's grace, hunched so low and ready to pounce.
For just a moment her attention wavers, her gaze rising above your head to focus on something you can't see. You don't care. You take off, streaking toward her faster than you've ever moved, and she responds in kind. You clash at the forearm with a burst of air, flesh and blood meeting brass and gemstone, each as immovable as the other.
You've changed. Not just your arm but every part of you. You're something new, something alien and terrifying and wonderful. What was once emerald now glows bloody ruby, the brass carapace now the colour of jet. Your other arm is the same, even your legs, sheathed in black with wickedly clawed digits dyed crimson as if already soaked in blood. Scarlet veins squirm in the darkness, pulsing with power, with energy and life. Everything else is soaked in red, your chest and back daubed in calligraphic black markings. The four tentacles are four tails now, vulpine ears crown your skull. All of it glistens wetly, half-liquid or more, your skin ever-flowing, rippling and squirming like skeins of blood and ink. There's not an inch of the old you that remains, not a scrap of humanity. Your eyes are like luminous rubies, pupils razor-thin slits of darkness, snarling vulpine snout full of bloody fangs. And in your chest, where once there was a sucking emptiness, a green glass heart burns as bright as Hell's sun.
"And I thought there was no lower depth of heresy and depravity to which you could sink," Ayano snarls.
You smirk. "I'll take that as a compliment." Your voice isn't your own, neither deep nor high, rough nor smooth. It doesn't belong to the old you, either of them. You like it. "Nostalgic for Uncle Sho?"
The Abbess breaks the lock with a sneer of disgust, foot flickering out like an axe-swing to ward you away as she makes space. You back up in kind, skittering almost on all fours, and whirl around to watch her.
<K-kid? Daji? What's- what are you!?> Sidir stammers, even his deep voice all but breaking as the twin tidal waves of shock and worry crash down on him all at once.
"I'm using Jiro's body- I mean I'm using Daji's- look it's both of us!" you answer, and that's about as well as you can put this indescribable feeling into words on short notice.
Ayano isn't waiting for you. She's focusing her own power, answering the fullest outpouring of your spark in kind. Her power rolls off her in waves of gale-force wind, in the stink of storms and the sizzling hiss of lightning. Lightning strikes, thunder booms, the swirling air taking shape even as it draws a tighter and tighter circle around the two of you. The power of her blood becomes all too external, all too literal and real, as a ghostly shape of sinuous scales and flowing mane and incomprehensible power resolves itself from the storm. The dragon that is Ayano's resolve forms the ring, and within the arena there is no sound, no air. Just stillness. A void. Perfect. Absolute. The Abbess takes her stance anew, and from her clenched fists sprout daggers of leashed lightning like a dragon's fangs.
The distance between the two of you seems to vanish in an instant. Just a flicker of movement from her, from you, and the fight resumes. She's fast, faster than you ever thought possible, each swing and slash and stab barely a flicker. You're fast too, but not faster. You can just see what she's doing, the intent in the flex of her muscles, the tiny motions of her eyes, every twitch and curl of her lips. She's an open book and her story is flowing from every pore like sweat, like blood. Every strike that doesn't land only fuels her anger, every moment an abomination such as you spends alive in her presence stokes her fury. Each 'knife' strike is answered in kind by a slash of your claws, streaks of ink and blood intermixed trailing every motion of your limbs like splatters of paint.
This power, this feeling, it's like nothing you've ever felt. Not even the surge Jiro used to kill Sho. It's two bodies overlaid and moving in tandem, two minds thinking as one, a union that should be the tangled agony of two rats joined at the tail but couldn't be further from it. You're grinning as you fight Ayano, bloody fangs bared, but it's not to mock her. It takes you precious moments to realise why. You're happy.
<Kid! Daji! Er- fuck, whatever y'are now!> Sidir interjects anew. <I'unno what's goin' on but if this is even close t' what I think's goin' on, this kinda power don't come free. You keep this up too long it could tear you apart for all we know!>
It's fine. No matter how phenomenal this power feels, the sweet blood singing in your veins and pulsing in your ears, the scent of the fight in your nose, the taste of it on your tongue, the electric energy coursing through every muscle, no matter how much fun you're having, it doesn't have to last forever. Just longer than her.
You twist your body, sweeping your legs up and overhead as you shift your weight to your hands. Your scything feet strike Ayano's guard again and again, heels shaking her bones in her arms, claws slicing the air inches from her face. You spin like a top, more exotic dance than fighting style, momentum and muscle in equal measure keeping your endless hail of kicks going until you switch again, fast as lightning. Speed and flexibility Jiro never had before send your legs sweeping down and around, hooking her own out from under her. She spins into the air, helpless for just the moment you need. You drop to all fours and dart back and forth, pouncing again and again, your tails striking her helpless form on every pass with such bone-breaking force she doesn't even have the chance to fall.
Ayano rights herself with an earsplitting shout. The burst of air picks you up like a great hand and hurls you aside, rough stone floor screaming in protest as you dig your claws in to slow yourself. The Abbess wastes no time at all, driving her fist into the earth as she falls, and the raging storm within her erupts in all directions. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, nowhere to dodge, so you don't. You face the rolling thunder head-on and tear it in two. The air bleeds, the searing lightning nothing but light, the shockwave just an aimless wave, the bone-shivering sound nothing but spilled adjectives. Letters and meaning run through your fingers and fall to the floor like ink. You lick them clean with a scarlet tongue and you can taste her desire, the pure killing intent like a potent spice to the boiled blandness of her piety and discipline that turns the mix heady. Seasoned with... something else. Sadness. Desperation. Fear. All seared away so thoroughly, so methodically, that only the ghost of the taste remains for a palette as refined as yours.
"I might be the only person in all Creation who understands you, Ayano," you giggle. "Is that fucked up or what?"
"Be silent!" In the blink of an eye she's on you again, fists and feet and daggers of searing blue-white lightning flashing before your eyes in a whirlwind of violence, but all you can do is laugh.
You still haven't landed a serious hit on her. There's a few scratches, glancing things, superficial in the grand scheme of things. But the angrier she gets, the more you taste her hatred and fear, the easier she is to read. Your body moves at the speed of thought, blood and ink splattering and spraying across the cold floor, painting greater swathes of it in ever more vibrant shades, and her every attempt to drive her up against the walls of the arena she created is thwarted. But you can't play with her forever - annoying as Sidir's intrusions were he does have a point. You need a way to move things to the endgame, soon.
You flip gravity, as much as it galls you to use a power that isn't Elloge's. Your tails lash and snap and slash, each one producing a diamond-shaped dagger of ink and hurling it at her faster than a crossbow bolt, and all the while you skitter backwards across the ceiling. The hail of missiles is nothing to Ayano of course, each dagger dodged or swatted out of the sky with almost contemptuous ease, but it slows her ever-so-slightly. Just enough to be hanging over just the spot you want as she leaps toward you. You leap at her in kind, twisting in the air to bring your heel down like a hammer, and the crack of it striking her hastily crossed arms is like a thunderclap in its own right. You don't let up, not for a moment. You dart all around her, claws flashing and slashing, bleeding her through every miniscule opening in her guard you find and there are so very few of those. All just preamble, a smokescreen for the main event in the split-second you hover in the air above her. You thrust your open hands down at her, and streaks of bloody ink like a torrent of liquid arrows swarm down around her.
She falls, but not alone. Her hand closes around your ankle and you don't have time to say anything more insightful than "oof" as she swings you at the floor like a flail. You land with a splash and a crash, black and red fountaining up around you like a sanguine screen. The spilled 'paint' has pooled to become a lake that cushioned your landing, the shallows of the vast sea that is the ever-bleeding Sphere of Speech. She rises first. You rise second. There's no time to back up even if you wanted to.
The daggers sizzle and hiss. Bloody ink ripples and splashes. The two of you stand your ground what little space remains between you becomes a whirling storm strikes and near-misses, feints and counter-feints, interceptions and retaliations. There's no room for thought or doubt, nothing but kneejerk instinct is fast enough to survive contact. There's no air, not a scrap. The void between you is only growing wider, deeper, more intense as the flurry drags on. Your lungs are burning in your chest. Your throat is catching. Even your vision is blurring. Your power may have sustained you before but this is something different. Something even you can't thoughtlessly overcome.
You grow weaker. You grow slower. You blink and that's it.
The dutiful daughter, so eager to prove her worth, claims her greatest prize. She drives her daggers into the abomination's chest and they strike home, strike true. In the moment of stillness that follows only her hitching breath can be heard, a gasp of something like surprise, of relief. Her shoulders tremble. Her eyes travel up from the sizzling, scorched demon-flesh around the storm-fangs and up to meet your shocked gaze. And she smiles.
"You see?" she whispers, her voice wavering with triumphant glee. "Perfection after all."
You rise from the bloody lake behind her and drive your claws through her heart.
"Not exactly," you hiss in her ear.
It takes her so long to realise what's happened. So long to realise her mistake, turning her shaking head by degrees just to catch a glimpse of you, eyes wide with shock. You think it's only when the false body melts and runs through her fingers in a slurry of blood and ink that she finally starts to get it. You set your free hand against her shoulder and pry your fist free. Ayano staggers forward, clutching her chest as if that will staunch the flow of exalted blood pouring from the gaping wound in her back. That she manages to stay on her feet isn't surprising after the punishment Sho took. The fact that she manages to turn around and face you is more so.
"This... this isn't... how it was... s-supposed to go," she stammers, the blood pooling in her lungs beginning to drool from her lips. "I was... I was meant to... be perfect..."
"Oh shut up." You kick your heel to the inky mess below and it spits your sword up from the depths. You catch it by the blade, wrap your mismatched hands tight around it, and swing the crossguard down into the crown of Ayano's skull.
She goes stiff, her eyes glassy. Her hands fall to her sides and she stares straight ahead, uncomprehending.
"I... w-was..."
You wrench it free. The last word dies with her as Ayano slowly, almost gracefully, topples over with a splash. You lower your sword and gaze down at your handiwork, the Abbess laid low in a demonic mire, and you'd almost call her expression peaceful if you hadn't had so close a brush with the turmoil that lay far below the surface of her mind. The storm dies with her, the ghostly dragon fading, the air rushing back in to fill the void, and at last you can breathe again. You let out a grateful huff and take a step back. The Abbess lies dead at your feet. Another name crossed off your list.
Or is that-
no that's Jiro's list but-
you're him, aren't you?
No you're Daji, but...
Daji is Jiro then what does that make you-
It's like being in shock. Taking a bad hit in a fight and running on adrenaline until you get back from the front lines and have a buddy point it out - or just collapse on the spot. This feels like a combo of the two, crossed with just a dash of getting sawn in half from the head all in the span of a second. Your hands fly to your temples and you only have a moment to let out a cry of pain before sparks flash behind your eyes and nails get hammered into your brain. You fall to one knee and it all just... sloughs off you like paint that didn't have time to dry. The demon-fox's skin peels away to reveal yours, you, Jiro's underneath. You're Jiro, just Jiro again, and you feel like you just had a hammer taken to every muscle in your body. Fever-sweat springs up all over your face, and your breath rasps in a throat that feels rubbed raw and bloody. Even your lungs hurt.
"(oh... fffffuck... me...)" you wheeze.
<There y'are!> Sidir exclaims. <What the fuck were the two'a ya thinkin'? Y'coulda been killed or- or melted or somethin'!>
"Yeah, and if we hadn't Ayano probably woulda pulled my bones out one by one." You cough - blood, pretty common these days, but this time it's probably bad. "Daji in there with you? They ok?"
<Yeah I got 'em right here they're jus'... wiped out, I guess.> Sidir pauses, maybe cradling the demon fox in his arms, maybe finding somewhere to lay them down. <It all happened so fast, it was like- there's some kinda interface here, First Age stuff I ain't got the first clue about but it's how we see an' hear with ya. Reckless kid went an' poured out every scrap o' essence they had an' jus'... melted into it.>
You grunt softly, cradling your stomach - not that it's hurting worse than any other part of you - as you force yourself to rise and take a few staggering steps away from the body. "Daji?" you pant. "Y'there? Can you hear me?"
<m'here> the familiar androgynous voice replies in a bad-hangover murmur. <don't have to shout>
"I just-" What? Just what? Don't overcomplicate it. You shake your head and let your shoulders slump. "Thank you, Daji. For coming back."
<yeah yeah whatever> the fox mumbles. <didn't do it for you>
You laugh, cradling your head in one hand. "Sure, Daji. Sidir, could you-?"
<I'll look after 'em, kid. Don't worry.> Sidir sounds calmer now. Maybe Daji's looking a bit healthier. Maybe he just has one less anxiety chewing away at him now. Either way it makes the pain a whole lot easier to bear.
"Thanks. I'll uh- I'll be in to check on you soon. Once I go make sure Qiangong didn't go and get himself killed. And once my insides stop bleeding, (ah, fuck)."
You don't feel up to climbing out of this inexplicable pit right now, so you figure you might as well see if it's explicable while you recover. You turn in a slow circle and take a look at it with fresh eyes - looks like it was carved straight out of the mountain rather than built on top of it like the rest of the temple, the floor of the training hall far above going straight over the opening like the floor of Sho's townhouse did that open mineshaft. There was a way to get in normally, a finely-carved stone arch on the far side of Ayano's corpse, but it looks like it was deliberately collapsed at some point. No getting through there now without the proper tools and some determination. Which, come to think of it, makes you turn and look for the thing that distracted the Abbess when you first fell down here.
There was a statue down here. The immense storm of Ayano's unleashed power seems to have turned it into scattered chunks of masonry at some point, but there's enough left to tell what it was - enough to be just as confused about its presence as she was. You shuffle across the room and pick your way through the debris, sorting through the chunks and piecing them together with a frown on your face.
<What is it, a statue?> Sidir chimes in. <What's so weird 'bout a statue?>
"Because the Order doesn't worship idols," you mutter back. "Never has, 'least not officially. Shrines, idols, statues, figureheads, ancestors, it's all too... specific. When you give your prayer to a name and a face it can come with an identity of its own. That's where new gods come from, or at least that's what they taught me."
<So they don't wanna manufacture new gods t' keep in line, sure. But ain't they worshippin' the elemental dragons anyway? This was clearly a dragon 'fore Ayano broke it, what's wrong with makin' statues o' them?>
"Well you'd say that, but as far as I know..."
You pause, sweeping your eyes across all the pieces you've collected, and realise what's been staring you right in the face.
"... none of them have three heads."
The air runs cold. Your breath hitches in your lungs. Your armour writhes across your body, flowing over your shoulders and across your sides, dripping off your spine in thin tendrils and strands. An icy fist clutches your heart and you almost don't have the courage to turn around. Some primal part of your brain wants to stay put, keep it out of sight, out of mind, deny the impossible no matter how much it demands your attention. But you do turn. You turn and you rise and you raise your sword for all the good it'd do you.
There's a hole in the world. A rip in the air, in Creation, and a darkness deeper than moonless night spills forth. Many branching tendrils seeking blindly, questing for their prize in all directions, but she isn't hard to find. You get to watch it spread across her cooling corpse just like Sho's, threading across her skin like a tarry fungus, clinging close and dragging something from the bloodied meat that you can't see or touch but you know damn well is there. There's only a few possibilities. You don't like any of them.
A familiar scent...
The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. It makes your muscles seize, your blood freeze, your bones ache. You can't breathe. The presence steals the air from your lungs. It's all you can do to keep a grip on your sword. All you can do not to fall, even as those tendrils draw ever closer.
So... curious...
You have to fight. You have to run. You have to do something but instead you do nothing at all, staring wide-eyed at the liquid shadow stretching out to touch you, to claim you like it claimed Ayano, grasping claws of night and death only inches from brushing you-
No.
The tendrils pause, and draw back.
My knight craves you so desperately. It would be cruel to deny the boy.
And then it's just... gone. In the blink of an eye the air is warm and you can breathe again. You collapse to one knee, gasping for air, clutching your chest as if to calm your racing heart. Gone but not forgotten, gone with all but a threatening, parting wink. That thing, whatever it was, it knew you. It recognised you. It's all you can do to keep breathing, keep reminding yourself that you're not dead yet no matter how much that thing's attention made you feel like you were.
<Once is one thing,> Sidir murmurs, <but twice? Both times y'kill a Tamura? That- that ain't a coincidence.>
"(Yeah no shit)," you pant, forcing yourself to swallow to wet your terror-dried throat. "Something- something Kyo said. About how close the dead are to the surface here. Was she trying to warn me about this?" You shake your head to clear it, planting your sword in the ground and leaning on it to rise. There's something going on here, something more, and if you don't figure out what it is soon there's no telling what could happen next.
You leave Ayano where she fell, shifting gravity to crawl up the wall and back to the ground floor. If there's one upside to how she sicced all those monks on you right from the start, it's that it cleared out the rest of the temple for you. You don't run into any opposition as you search for the late Abbess' private chambers, nor shouts or running footsteps when you smash the door open and step inside. It's just as sparse and austere as the rest of the temple is, as the woman herself was - one thing she wasn't was a hypocrite you guess - with nothing but a bed and writing desk for furnishings. The latter is just what you're looking for. You rifle through the drawers, leaf through the old letters you find, searching for something of immediate significance.
"Daji?" you ask.
<mn, what?>
"I have to go check on Qiangong as soon as possible but I need to know more about what Ayano knew too," you explain quickly. "Can you take a look at her shit for me while I do?"
<ffffffine. i guess.>
"Thanks. For what it's worth it should be less boring than Sho's papers."
<you know her thoughts only tasted that good because she was trying to kill us, right?>
"Yeah, but maybe some of that seething anger at the entire world bled through in her writing?"
<i already said i'd do it, don't butter me up.>
You can sort through the letters at a glance into discrete topics, but stopping to read over everything and select the important bits could be wasting time Qiangong doesn't have. You have to just grab everything that seems relevant to a topic, even tangentially. But which?
[ ] The interior. You've heard all about those constant beastman rebellions, but you've learned the Tamura love telling lies. What's really going on to the east?
[ ] Hayate. Or 'the Promised Prince of the Empty Sky', whatever he's calling himself now. He came back from the dead an Exalt and Ayano's the only one who seemed to find that odd. What game is everyone playing? Is he a player, or another piece?
[ ] Shuzen. The man himself, an inscrutable enigma that could've killed you once already. Everywhere you turn everything seems to lead back to him, directly or indirectly. What did Ayano really think of daddy dearest?
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- Location
- Singapore
[X] The interior. You've heard all about those constant beastman rebellions, but you've learned the Tamura love telling lies. What's really going on to the east?
I smell treasure. Only follow the evidence. People's motives don't matter until they are on their knees with your sword at their throat.
Also if the beastmen are rebelling, we can direct them to our cult. Free recruitment!
I smell treasure. Only follow the evidence. People's motives don't matter until they are on their knees with your sword at their throat.
Also if the beastmen are rebelling, we can direct them to our cult. Free recruitment!
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Deadly Snark
Tryhard As Fuck
Oh fuck I had forgotten Great Grand Ancestor Tree Daddy does that when we kill one of his descendants. Gods that always kills the good feeling from winning.
[X] Hayate. Or 'the Promised Prince of the Empty Sky', whatever he's calling himself now. He came back from the dead an Exalt and Ayano's the only one who seemed to find that odd. What game is everyone playing? Is he a player, or another piece?
I think we've been beaten with the head enough over Hayate and the Tamura's connection with the dead to start to really look into what the fuck is going on there.
[X] Hayate. Or 'the Promised Prince of the Empty Sky', whatever he's calling himself now. He came back from the dead an Exalt and Ayano's the only one who seemed to find that odd. What game is everyone playing? Is he a player, or another piece?
I think we've been beaten with the head enough over Hayate and the Tamura's connection with the dead to start to really look into what the fuck is going on there.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
And that, Jiro, is what a speedclone means.
Though you probably already know that due to the whole fusion thing I guess...
OH MY GOD, THEY WORSHIP KING GHIDORAH!
(^knows nothing of Exalted)
[X] Hayate. Or 'the Promised Prince of the Empty Sky', whatever he's calling himself now. He came back from the dead an Exalt and Ayano's the only one who seemed to find that odd. What game is everyone playing? Is he a player, or another piece?
We need to know more about the one out to kill us.
By which I mean that I want to know more about our edgy anime rival.
- Location
- Somewhere else
[X] Hayate. Or 'the Promised Prince of the Empty Sky', whatever he's calling himself now. He came back from the dead an Exalt and Ayano's the only one who seemed to find that odd. What game is everyone playing? Is he a player, or another piece?
- Location
- London, England
Well that was spectacularly creepy.
And also a really well written fight scene, I must say, I am always a sucker for power-up transformations, especially ones that make use of a bond of trust and the like.
[X] Hayate. Or 'the Promised Prince of the Empty Sky', whatever he's calling himself now. He came back from the dead an Exalt and Ayano's the only one who seemed to find that odd. What game is everyone playing? Is he a player, or another piece?
Gonna find out about the "knight" that the creepy tree thing is so fond of.
And also a really well written fight scene, I must say, I am always a sucker for power-up transformations, especially ones that make use of a bond of trust and the like.
[X] Hayate. Or 'the Promised Prince of the Empty Sky', whatever he's calling himself now. He came back from the dead an Exalt and Ayano's the only one who seemed to find that odd. What game is everyone playing? Is he a player, or another piece?
Gonna find out about the "knight" that the creepy tree thing is so fond of.
Don't mind me, just off to the side humming Devil Trigger. Excellent update. Very satisfying end.
[X] Hayate. Or 'the Promised Prince of the Empty Sky', whatever he's calling himself now. He came back from the dead an Exalt and Ayano's the only one who seemed to find that odd. What game is everyone playing? Is he a player, or another piece?
Rival.
It's a nice word. Let's learn about Jiro's, eh?
[X] Hayate. Or 'the Promised Prince of the Empty Sky', whatever he's calling himself now. He came back from the dead an Exalt and Ayano's the only one who seemed to find that odd. What game is everyone playing? Is he a player, or another piece?
Rival.
It's a nice word. Let's learn about Jiro's, eh?
[X] Hayate. Or 'the Promised Prince of the Empty Sky', whatever he's calling himself now. He came back from the dead an Exalt and Ayano's the only one who seemed to find that odd. What game is everyone playing? Is he a player, or another piece?
ThatGazzer
Minds Eye Bind
- Location
- PNW
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] Hayate. Or 'the Promised Prince of the Empty Sky', whatever he's calling himself now. He came back from the dead an Exalt and Ayano's the only one who seemed to find that odd. What game is everyone playing? Is he a player, or another piece?
- Location
- Vermont
[X] The interior. You've heard all about those constant beastman rebellions, but you've learned the Tamura love telling lies. What's really going on to the east?
Sho was fucking up basically everything, and the satrapy might be about to fall apart, but I want to see what kind of rebellion is going on, and get deeply involved with that.
Also, holy shit, Zerban. You just keep writing amazing fights, with so much new, cool stuff. DaJiro form kicks ass.
Sho was fucking up basically everything, and the satrapy might be about to fall apart, but I want to see what kind of rebellion is going on, and get deeply involved with that.
Also, holy shit, Zerban. You just keep writing amazing fights, with so much new, cool stuff. DaJiro form kicks ass.
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