[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?
[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 can't wait to see these two have their rematch. They're both going to be so fucking angry, and posturing with their new limbs and flashy Exalt powers like, "Look how much stronger I am than the last time, you bastard! You don't stand a ghost of a chance!" And then Daji will whine about what a lame pun that is.
I'm still convinced that Hayate was the one who saved Jiro from the tentacle monster in the Underworld. He's not going to let anyone besides himself cut off Jiro's ugly head, and he refuses to fight Jiro unless he's at his best.
I'm still convinced that Hayate was the one who saved Jiro from the tentacle monster in the Underworld. He's not going to let anyone besides himself cut off Jiro's ugly head, and he refuses to fight Jiro unless he's at his best.
Ok, so that's a valid theory, but the first fight they were in Jiro was fighting with a dulled blade, and Hayate got still got curb stomped like an actual child. It was so bad they needed propaganda to make it less embarrassing. If that dude was within 100 feet of Jiro at any point in time, the murder-lust would have set everyone on fire. Hayate doesn't have the subtlety to pull off anything like that.
[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?
Ok, so that's a valid theory, but the first fight they were in Jiro was fighting with a dulled blade, and Hayate got still got curb stomped like an actual child. hard they needed propaganda to make it less embarrassing. If that dude was within 100 feet of Jiro at any point in time, the murder-lust would have set everyone on fire. Hayate doesn't have the subtlety to pull off anything like that.
Hey, he's been subtle enough to keep his undead-ness hidden from the public so far. I don't think we've seen anything from Hayate that suggests such a lack of self-control as you're suggesting.
[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?
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.
God, this is rad. I knew Daji's anime watching would come in handy one day, shame about their taste. Bleach went downhill after Soul Society, if you ask me.
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.
<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!>
Man, I really do feel bad for Sidir. Like, he expects it'll be as typical as it can be for an Exalted, but he ends up with Jiro and he spends most of his time either having or recovering from an anxiety attack purely from what they're getting up to.
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.
Gggggod okay the entire fight is really really cool but like, this bit really grabbed me. The whole idea of Elloge's power literally tearing something physical into just words and sounds and meaningless word salad that Dajiro just eats to gain insight into Ayano as they're beating the shit out of each other is rad.
"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.
You can't not expect me to read this in the exact tone of voice that Remake Sephy says "Don't deny me, embrace me", I hope you know that.
[X] 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?
The interior could be interesting especially with the implications via Harrower that the same Xaum rebellion is happening there that partially helped create him, and more about Hayate who's gearing up to be Jiro's anime rival would be neat. But honestly we've had so much influence from Shuzen on the story with, really, very little actual understanding of the man, and with all the bizarre shit going on that he can't not have his fingers in, I'm really really curious.
All in all an absolutely fantastic chapter and resolution to a sickass boss fight, can't wait to see Qiangong and Yanxiu making out while the other two are frozen and forced to watch or something.
nah i'm sure it's just about jiro reconciling with his a part of himself as an actual piece of his being instead of just a weird gremlin living in his brain garbage can who has no relation to him whatsoever and doesn't have anything actually to do with the hidden shrine to the garden of steel and blood mr. "i am the alpha and the omega and the progenitor and the conclusion" ancestor-ghidorah-palpatine beneath the seat of the immaculate's holy monastery.
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.
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.
This whole update was wonderful but I really really just wanted to pull out these two sequences in particular as like- especial highpoints. Elloge's kinda hard to characterize I think, since a lot of her stuff is fanwork and that involves a degree of hunting down bits in the core, robbing fanmade charmsets for Good Shit, and then synthesizing it in a way that makes it look not completely schizophrenic (the dialects of creative writing in Exalted ;v) but I think you absolutely nailed it. And the moment in the spotlight was super intriguing and massively compelling- both in the visceral execution (the shockwave being robbed of intention and direction was a fantastic fucking turn of phrase and action) and in the overall scope if that makes sense? Jiro and Daji fusion dancing shifted things from the usual Jiro style of like..."it's a high octane ugly back alley brawl with superpowers" fighting, where a lot of it's about tanking the hits that won't kill him, trying to miss the ones that'll fuck him up, and just being super blunt and practical and process focused about it. 'Cause he's a big strong -such a big dense man /jennynicholson- guy, swinging a massive slab of sharpened metal. And there's a lot of attention paid to how he's leveraging the environment, wrecking his surroundings, the weight of it all and the lactic burn in his muscles and the feeling of impact.
This was different in a really intriguing and thrilling way. It was about writing the story of the fight from a diegetic perspective. Shaping the expectations, controlling the context, Jiro and Daji working together to basically write the story of how Ayano wins, so in that moment of triumph she's vulnerable to the backstab. In-universe rolling with the fact that they're not strong enough to just knock her teeth out with a brick and scoring the kill that way. It shows off a lot of...range? Range would be the word I think. And I loved it a lot.
(Also in general it was a great flourish for, like, establishing that Daji and Jiro aren't completely in synch all the time, or even most of the time tbh, but that they value each other and genuinely care about each other, the weird demon exalt and his spontaneously incarnated teenaged hell fox. And I'm a huge sucker for soft shit like that.)
[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?
Something bad happened in Sekigahara once.
Something bad happened and then it never ended, never stopped, and the land remembered and the blood of the people remembered and that memory took on a shape. 'Cause that's the thing you know? At their hearts, part of what Deathlords are are ghost stories, a tale about someone and what they did and how they fell all the way to the bottom of the world and what they became down there, far, far away from the sun. Jiro's perspective is pretty limited, both because he's coming into this with a "I was a mercenary for like a decade, I just hit shit and got paid for it, I wasn't asking big questions because I didn't need to and didn't want to" perspective. And because it feels like he's interacting with different facets of an established conspirac(y/ies) as they play shadow games in the background of the satrapy.
Part of it is definitely centered around Shuzen, but the Dead stuff feels like something...moving in parallel and definitely in conjunction but not necessarily one and the same if that makes sense? Shuzen is repeatedly highlighted as being this remote and singular figure of awe and fear. Aligned with the Garden and with Lady Kyo (despite the Garden and Lady Kyo very probably not being aligned with each other) but very much doing his own thing. Which is probably partly why he's his own option. But Team Goth is defined by- well being a team. There's the Garden who's the local Deathlord and is 100% calling, if not all the shots, then quite a few. There's Harrower who seems to be working at cross purposes with Kyo and is at least nominally following the Garden's lead. And then there's Sky, the Garden's Deathknight and Harrower's student, empowered by one and trained by the other, who has what we can only assume is a massive murderboner for Jiro himself.
Jiro only vaguely knows the Garden exists and his interactions with Harrower are pretty much summed up as "that midget asshole who wanders in Whenever and does things arbitrarily before leaving pretty much immediately". Sky is his window into whatever dynamic's happening behind the scenes, what the greater scope aims of Team Goth even are, and how (and why) they're pursuing their goals. And given how intimately they're all tied into what's happening with the Satrapy itself like...it feels like a little bit of information would go a very long way.
[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?
[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?
[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?
That was amazing, such a delight to read. I loved the music too!
Well, you and Ayano had a nice little chat about a whole slew of things while you were busy killing each other, but the first foothold you got against her was bringing up her brother. Hayate Tamura, 'the Promised Prince of the Empty Sky' according to that tiny bastard up on the cliff. She would've liked nothing more than to twist his head off and throw it into the sea - you'd know, you and Daji tasted the spice of her disdain - and yet he gets to publically ride off to the interior with his brother like all's going as planned? There's a whole lot more to this particular twist in the tale, and you're more likely to get close to the truth with Ayano's barely-veiled antipathy than anything else. So you pass your prosthetic hand across the reams and reams of Ayano's letters, playing 'hot and cold' with a sleepy-voiced Daji until they tell you you've probably picked up anything related to the enigmatic prince.
<she writes a lot, huh?> Daji mumbles.
"You just rest up," you reply. "Sidir, take 'em to their shrine so they can rest, ok? They've done plenty today."
<On it, back soon.>
You take advantage of the unusually quiet moment to lean up against a wall and just sigh, kneading your brow with the heel of your gloved hand. It feels like fusing with Daji like that sucked out days worth of energy. You feel dead on your feet like almost never before, only barely a step up from your dunk in the waters of the underworld. Used to be it'd take days of campaigning to get you this fucked up. But you don't mind it, really. It's easier to stomach than any of those other times and you don't know why. You'd try to puzzle it out but it feels like your brain's wrapped in brambles and thinking hurts, so you decide to count your blessings and move on.
You hobble down the stairs, across the foyer, through the doors and back out into the open air. The storm's still raging, even stronger than when you got here if anything, the skeletal cherry blossom trees bowing dangerously low in the face of the gale-force winds. You squint irritably, holding up a hand to shield yourself from raindrops like razor-sharp slivers of ice, shattering on your exposed face again and again until the skin goes numb.
<The gods must still be dukin' it out,> Sidir observes, puffing from his sprint to Daji's landscape-body and back. <'least we still got time. If we hurry we might still->
"This isn't them," you murmur.
<What?>
You lower your hand, gazing into the upturned palm as the driving rain keeps on falling. Staring intently into the glowing emerald surface as the dark rain sizzles and spits, hissing and evaporating on contact with the Malfean artefact. It seems to soak straight through your suit where it falls, clinging to the skin, leeching the life and what little warmth you have left out of you. It reminds you of being down in the Underworld. Just a taste of what it was like to sink below the surface.
"It's him," you say, and draw your sword.
There's a figure at the other end of the bridge. A figure that shines even in the gloom, that stands out stark in the shadows. A man in full armour made of gleaming silvery-white jadesteel, his helm crowned by an impressive horsehair plume that dances and swirls in the wind. He's walking towards you, each step so slow and calm they're almost measured. He carries a sheathed sword in his left hand, the scabbard and hilt and guard all white as snow. Another weapon hangs from the same hip, some kind of metallic crossbow maybe, you don't get a good look. You can only stare into his eyes, the only part of him you can see under that armour. The eyes you stared into one day so long ago before you stabbed one of them out. That one looks like it's still bandaged, but the other one glitters with enough hatred for both.
"Came all the way back west just for me?" you call across the courtyard, almost shouting just to be heard over the storm. "I'd be flattered if it weren't for the circumstances. Still don't think you can take me in a fair fight, huh? Figured you'd jump me after Ayano wore me down, make it easy on yourself? Well I've got news for you pal-"
"You misunderstand." The dead man speaks for the first time and it's not a thing like you expected. A little higher-pitched than you, refined and accented as all the nobles deep in Realm culture sound. But there's something else, a bluntness that reminds you of... well, you. He doesn't raise his voice, and yet it cuts through the storm as if he were right beside you. "Honour is a privilege, granted to men."
He comes to a stop at the end of the bridge, elaborately-carved clawed boots sinking into the soft earth. The armoured skirts sway and flap in the breeze as he shifts his stance, slowly drawing his sword. The blade is black as night, blacker than the deepest shadow, only the faintest silvery gleam of reflected light dancing across the keen edge. It reminds you of the shadow that claimed Sho and Ayano, the darkness like a crack in the world. It's sickening just to look at it.
"You? You are a rabid dog," he says. "And dogs like you are to be put down."
He flourishes his sword and sinks it deep into the earth. The world bleeds. Darkness black as pitch, fluid and flowing like blood, bubbles up from the depths and soaks the courtyard in an ever-growing swathe before him. The grass withers and dies, the soil sickens and turns black, even the white sands are dyed the colour of ink by the encroaching mire of death. Tendrils writhe from the darkness within that blade, forking and spreading outward, sinking into the corrupted earth like tree roots eagerly seeking out the waters of the underworld, and they find it. Each root pulls taut like a fishing line, slowly reeling up a writhing shape from the shifting sea. They're misshapen things, mutant and half-formed, recognisable only in reference to how Sho's body was overwhelmed by its own power before being sealed away in armour. Half corpse, half tar, half dragon, half writhing network of gnarled tree roots no different to the hateful worms that once made up Viermaan. Faceless shades clutching weapons of all kinds, one of scant few reminders to the lives they once lived, clawing and staggering their way through the churning muck until they can right themselves.
Outnumbered again, and Hayate doesn't look any worse for wear from summoning them. He pulls his sword out and casually cleans off the blade in the crook of his arm, neatly sheathing it again like he won't need it. You can't count on your memories of how he fought in the arena but he can't have pulled far ahead, not when you only Exalted about a week apart. You'll just have to take the shades quickly-
Hayate shoots you, his arm a blur of movement. You lurch aside in a panicked jerk of motion and a hissing, keening bolt of pitch-black lightning goes arcing past.
"Fuck this," you spit, and you turn tail and run. If you're going to survive this, step one has to be getting out of this life-sucking rain and into someplace where the numbers advantage won't see you dead in seconds. That means charging right back into the temple, once a second shot from Hayate turns the already ruined front doors into a blasted ruin of charred and burning wood. You duck away from the shot and veer out of the line of fire with a curse, shouldering your sword as you scramble up the stairs as fast as you're able.
<Eyes on the rear kid, no tellin' how fast those things're movin'!>
Sidir's suggestion is a lifesaver. You whirl at the top of the stairs to find the summoned shades hot on your heels, swarming in through the shattered ruin of the door ahead of the rolling waves of wind and rain that herald Hayate's approach. Two pull ahead of the pack, one crowned by a pair of broken horns with a pair of daggers glinting in clawed hands, sprinting up the railing with unearthly balance, the other dragging a half-skeletal lizard tail and bearing a chain-sickle, running up the far wall like it's using the power of Isodoros too. You grit your teeth and swing, aiming to fend off the shade on the railing, but the one on the wall flings out the weighted end of the chain-sickle the moment your attention is diverted. The links wrap three times 'round the blade and the shade abruptly yanks you off-balance, opening the way for its comrade's daggers to go lunging for your throat. You lurch forward with a grunt of distaste and drive your prosthetic fist into its face instead, sending it flying off the railing to splatter on the floorboards below.
Not that that stops it. The shade pulls itself back together, peeling away from the dark stain it left and rising to its feet like a puppet lifted by the strings - maybe literally, going by how those black tree-roots infesting its body squirm.
Hayate crosses the threshold, and the storm doesn't die down. Far from it. The temple seems to groan all around you, ancient timbers creaking and cracking piteously as the rain lashes against its skin with redoubled fury. Lightning strikes outside, close enough that you feel the wall of sound rolling over you, feel your bones shiver in your body. The chain-sickle shade presses the advantage, lunging in close with the sickle while the chain keeps your sword bound. You grab the blade in your false hand, wrench it off-course, but the shade disengages in a flurry of movement and confusion. The weighted end of the chain lashes out again, and in your frustration you can't drive it away before a third rushes up to join the fray. "(fuck off)" you snarl, jerking your head out of the way as a long-bladed spear hisses past your ear.
"That day, in the arena," Hayate says almost conversationally as you wrestle with his flunkies, drawing closer to the foot of the stairs step by measured step, "To you no doubt it was but one of many opportunities to win riches and glory through violence, but do you know what it was to me? Do you have any idea what it is you took from me?"
"I dunno, a chance to listen to yourself fucking yammer on-?" you shout down at him, shoving away the gaggle of three shades pressing up against your guard. And then Hayate shoots you again.
Your guard was already up. That's probably the only reason you survive it. The bolt of black lightning gouges its way through the shades in its path, weapons clattering on the floor. It strikes your sword and it feels like taking a blow from Sho again. The shock rolls up your arms, numbing the one that's still flesh and blood, hammers your sword into your chest and sends you reeling back. The wall dents around your back and you stagger away, breath rattling in your throat as you fight to catch it.
"I did not give you permission to speak," Hayate says coldly, lowering the weapon to reload it in some fashion. You'd pay closer attention, but that's about when the reforming shades scoop up their weapons and swarm you. "How quickly you must have grown accustomed to being the centre of attention, pillaging and rampaging as you pleased through the satrapy. Your time is done. Now I will speak, and you will listen."
You back up fast, putting some solid walls between you and Hayate while you figure out what to do. The second floor such a hopeless maze of hallways and side-rooms it almost brings to mind the spiralling Coils - whether deliberate or not, it's just what you need to put some distance between you and your enemy. A brief surge of Isidoran energy is all you need to force them away and buy time, yet even that small burst of power is enough to make one of the many dagger-like pains in your stomach twist. You force your way through door after door, yanking them open only to slam them shut behind you, latching them where you can, hoping every spare second it makes Hayate waste counts.
"Did you get a look at that lightning-thrower?" you pant.
<It's powered by 'is essence? Maybe?> Sidir asks, frantically throwing up his arms very much implied by his tone. <S'a limit to what I can tell ya about it without a good look!>
The doors don't stop the assassin shades. Not because they can break them down, no they don't even bother. They just slip through the cracks as nothing but the shadows they spawned from, mutant mockeries of the draconic form rising from puddles of darkness like spreading rainwater, only the squirming tendrils that connect them to their master's sword remaining as proof they're anything more than living night terrors. The dual-daggers one is back, supporting the chain-sickle one and the spear one, and now there's one with a spiked club trying to get in on the action. You keep on backing up to make space, skating across the bamboo matting underfoot in search of a stable spot to turn the tide. And all the while you hear Hayate climb the stairs, step by heavy step.
"You must think the life of a dynast an easy one." He still sounds so calm, so composed, like he's giving a prepared speech. In the heat of the moment it's hard to even tell where his voice is coming from. It just seems to drill straight through your ears and into your brain, overriding the louder sounds of battle with ease. "From an objective standpoint my upbringing was privileged. I am no simple serf, one meagre harvest from starving. But you crane your neck to gaze up at my kind from the gutter, and it is a perspective without clarity."
Maybe he's planning to make you want to fucking kill yourself to escape this monologue. You'd say so if you weren't busy with his goons. Keeping one eye on the doors, one ear out for the sound of that lightning-thrower cocking and charging, you block the chain-sickle wielder's thrown weight and yank it into its comrades' line of fire. The spear-shade spits it through, and as the weapon melts like the wielder you punch through the inky slurry and rock the club-wielder's head back so far it snaps. It, too, falls. But they're rising again, with more on the way.
"The anathema steal their power, from the sun or the moon, from Hell or the Underworld," Hayate goes on. "My kind, the Dragonblooded, breed for it. The change comes when we are still young, still growing, still learning who we are and what our place in the world will be. We push ourselves, each and every one, to reach the tipping point between a short life of mediocrity and a long, blessed life of glory and purpose. Do you understand what this means, Jiro, son of no one?"
"It means you and your sister think you're special for disappointing your father," you spit back.
He shoots you again.
The bolt bores through the wall sight unseen, catches you in the side. Your brass arm deflects some of it but not all, far from all. You go flying, wind knocked out of you in a sickening retch, far wall shattering to splinters around your body as you go tumbling into the hall beyond. Sidir's begging you to get up as you stir in the pile of smoking debris, charred wood and embers, a long streak of molten metal sizzling along your right arm. You grit your teeth and force yourself to rise, slowly and unsteadily, the floor catching fire where your lightning-scorched arm touches it. There's a hole in the wall right here too, right through to the outside world where the rain falls hard enough and the wind howls loud enough to strip the paint from the wood. Lightning strikes, thunder crashes fit to deafen you. You smell something like ash. Something like rot and decay. The storm's starting just as many fires on the outside as Hayate's starting on the inside.
A chill wind blows through the matching holes in the walls, a scorched and blackened highway between him and you. You can almost see it, an ethereal darkness, black so translucent and faint it becomes grey but always there, always lingering. Rather than blow out the embers left by the shot it only fans them, stokes them into a raging inferno. You see him through the rising smoke, burning embers crunching underfoot as he strides through the flames.
He's reloading. You don't give him time for another shot. You lurch out of the way and stagger down the hall as fast as your feet will carry you, thumping your free fist into your side as if to jog your Exalted healing to pick up the pace. In no time at all it's coming from everywhere and nowhere, ever-present and always calm. Another shade rises from a patch of inky blackness before you, and the lecture goes on.
"You're very quick with the cutting remarks," Hayate observes, and his voice seems to have just faded into the background already. It could be coming from somewhere behind the enemy shade or right behind your ear for all you know. "What was it you said that day? Ah, yes. You called me an embarrassment, I believe. You mocked my training. You used me to mock my entire family."
You fend off another frenzied assault from the new shade, this one almost crocodilan compared to the others, and wielding its own sword. The more attacks you repel the more you realise just how easily Hayate could finish you already. All it'd take is a blade in the ribs while you grappled with a shade or three and he'd be down one enemy, simple. But he's not looking for simple. You know that better than anyone.
"Do not misunderstand me. I don't say this asking for the pity of an enemy." How can a sound that seems to come from everywhere also seem like it's getting closer? "I ask only that you understand the true magnitude of what you have done. Twice I faced lightning in the hopes it would trigger the transformation. Twice I was burned, never to recover if there was a third and it was only this that stopped me. That day, the tournament... it was my last chance. My moment to prove I was worthy."
Your skin crawls with the thought that he's getting closer and drawing a bead even now. You redouble your efforts, pushing past and through the shade with a few cheap shots to where a human's kidneys would be. You break into a stumbling run, keeping low, eyes darting all around for any sign of another shade or Hayate leaping out from around a corner-
"I spared my opponents, every one of them. You killed me over wounded pride."
He fires again. You throw yourself on the floor and you don't know what would've happened if you didn't. The shot's different this time, not just a bolt of black lightning but this squirming, writhing, organic mass twisted around an electric core, smashing and boring through every obstacle between it and where you were standing. Something like tentacles, something like tree roots, married to howling wind and freezing black water. When the gale dies down and the writhing vines dissipate like smoke only flames remain.
"(fuck)" you pant, scrambling to your feet again for fear of another shot like that following on the heels of the first.
<Kid I know it kinda goes without sayin' but do not get hit by that,> Sidir mutters, and you can almost hear the white-knuckle grip on whatever he's holding onto in there. <The other bolts were charged with 'is essence the way y' might charge a sword-swing but that shot was like yer Ebon Dragon poison, what y'used on Viermaan.>
"(Well that's comforting, I'm half-dead already so maybe it'll just tickle.)"
You forge on ahead into the maze, the threat of another shot prickling across your back and shoulders as you turn corner after corner, throw open door after door. The wind follows you, plucking at your hair and cloak, chilling you to the bone the way the mountaintop never could. More lightning outside, more thunder. A hole opens up beside you in a bright flash of light and you jerk away, assuming it's another shot at first. Just another wound in the temple's side, just another place for the cold wind and colder rain to seep through. The ragged edges are aflame, spreading fast despite the storm. At the rate you're going Hayate'll just end up burning himself in a bonfire of his own making.
Yeah. You just keep telling yourself that. A nice warm fantasy before his next bolt hits you in the face.
"Do you- hah." Hayate's voice falters for the first time, and the little laugh almost sounds pleasant. Almost. You don't let it slow you, racing to get ahead of the shades swarming through every crack and seam in the temple. "I must make a confession. That my teacher told me you were here was a stroke of fortune but I have been planning this for so, so long. You might think it ridiculous but I did prepare my speech, to ensure I made the most of my moment when it arrived. But now?"
Another laugh, echoing and hollow. You're grunting and straining, fending off four shades as they combine their strength and pin you against a wall, but still you hear Hayate's laughter. Maybe it's coming through them, travelling along the umbilical roots embedded in their bodies.
"All I can think about is all the ways I can kill you. It is so very... distracting."
Your caste-mark flickers to life on your brow. You shove the shades away with a shout, Isidoros' power lending you strength as well as driving a white-hot needle through your eye. You don't delay an instant, throwing yourself to the side and out of the line of fire as another blast of storms and darkness punches through half a dozen walls and doors like a spear.
The pain sets your mind spinning on its axis, but it comes with a kind of clarity. It's a nudge in the Boar's direction. You can't keep running and hiding like this, playing his game until he gets bored and sweeps you off the board. His shades just keep coming back. You need to take the fight to him, take control. You've got a plan but it's borderline suicidal - also known as 'the usual'. You take off running, parallel to the path the storm-shot took, shouldering your sword as you go and keeping an ear out for the sound of Hayate's boots. He doesn't seem to be moving yet, if you strain to hear above the sound of your own breathing you think he's just reloading on the spot. You've only got one shot at this. You have to make it count.
You burst through a sliding door on his left. He whirls and fires like he was waiting for you, unleashing the storm's fury in a torrent of air and lightning and flame. His mistake was aiming at ground-level. You're on the ceiling, the pain of drawing on power you down't have down to a dull ache in your bones as Isidoros' prideful anger fills you. You only have moments, less than a second of surprise from Hayate, his other arm hanging slack and unprepared to defend himself. You coil and spring.
Those tendrils, the roots animating the shades. They're coming from the sword. He holds it sheathed in his free hand like his father, but it still has a role to play. Gravity shifts and spins, human perception tries and fails to keep up but you're used to it, now more than ever. You turn as you go, rising and falling in the same movement, twisting and landing and hacking through those squirming roots like an axe through young growth. The strands go slack, the power coursing through them fading all at once like a snuffed-out candle, but you don't stop there. You follow through with all your might, and the backswing sends your sword careening into his helmet hard enough to snap the straps and send it flying free in a useless, crumpled mess of metal and horsehair.
It's the first time you've seen his face. You didn't care what he looked like before, but now that you're looking it's all you can think about. He's barely older than you, late twenties at the most, tanned skin clean-shaven, a bandage wrapped around his head to cover the hollow socket where his left eye once was. His hair is black as night, black as most of yours used to be, swept back away from his face. And for just a moment the loss of his helmet seems to leave him in a stupor. You're on his left side after all - hard to read expression without the eyes.
"Black sheep of the family, huh?" you snarl. "With hair like that you sure you're even his son?"
You swing again, for the neck this time.
He blocks it on his arm. The jadesteel buckles and fails, cleaved in two, but something stops your sword all the same. Something far stronger, as strong as the arm Sidir made you. Your blow rebounds, leaves you off-balance just long enough for him to hook his sheathed sword over your shoulder and yank you closer.
You feel the barrel of the lightning-caster against your stomach.
He fires.
You've been stabbed before and it wasn't like this. You've been shot before and it wasn't like this. You were impaled by Viermaan before and it still wasn't like this. The lightning bolt tunnels through you like a white-hot drill and carries on through the walls behind you but the rest of it? The squirming tendrils of ink and rain? They stay. They burrow into your gut like parasites and writhe, thrashing around in the meat like snakes. It feels like they're shredding you from the inside, churning you into bloody paste, and what little strength you had to stand against him vanishes in an instant. You vomit up blood, splattering down your chin and chest and pooling on the floor, but not on him. He doesn't even have a speck of soot on him, how could you expect your blood to stain his armour? He remains spotless, untouchable. He pulls the weapon away from your stomach, lets you see the scorched crater it left in you. You're sagging, falling in slow motion with legs too weak to support you, and he lets you fall.
"You would have seen me die in disgrace. In pain and shame and humiliation," he says, and he isn't so calm any more. The veneer of refinement is wearing thin, straining around a bloodlust that's only growing stronger by the second. He brings up one boot, one armoured boot shaped like a dragon's claw, sets it against your chest and slams you down. The impact knocks the wind out of you, whatever scrap of it you had left, but you can't stop. If you stop now you let the agony in your stomach rise up and claim you, if you stop now you submit to lying here helpless and in pain as he reloads and puts the next shot between your eyes. You grit your teeth and cry out, a shout of pain and exhaustion and anger forcing strength into your arm as you lift your sword one more time.
He bats it away with his tail. Your arm falls with a dull thunk and he plants his other foot on your wrist to keep it from rising again.
The disguise burns away like the smoke surrounding the two of you, like a layer of paint set alight, revealing the revenant prince in his full glory as he stands over your broken body. Those decorative boots aren't boots at all but the silver-white claws of a dragon, a daggerlike dewclaw slowly sinking into your chest just below the breastbone, hooked talons gripping your ribcage like a bird of prey. His gauntlets aren't gauntlets at all but the claws of a dragon, like but unlike Sidir's design, the articulated white jade plating of such breathless complexity that it flows like flesh with Hayate's movements. The bracer you smashed simply crumbles away, and the forearm beneath is jade-plated as well. He never needed his old armour. He wore it for old times' sake. And from the cruel light that dances in his mismatched eyes, one black and white, one white and black, you can tell your reaction is everything he was hoping for and more. White scales like scars pull at the skin around his regrown eye as his face twists into a grin of triumph, sharpened fangs bared.
"Maybe I should thank you," he says softly, and he grinds his heel into your chest like a twisting knife. His talons dig through armour and flesh, gripping the bone like he intends to disembowel you hands-free. You cry out in pain and it's like music to his ears. "I like this better."
He reloads, oily darkness flowing through the seams in his mechanical hand to coalesce into a glistening black diamond which he loads into his weapon like some kind of ancient Shogunate cannon, shrunk to the size of a crossbow. The air ripples around the lightning-thrower as it accepts the charge, leaping in his hand like a hound eager to hunt. He lifts it to eye level for a moment, gazing down at you with only the one you gouged out. Flames lick greedily at the ceiling above and behind him, smoke filling the temple faster and faster from a dozen different spot-fires, but he shows no concern. Maybe he doesn't even need to breathe any more. Even if he did he wouldn't care. Nothing else matters more than seeing you suffer.
"It took me three days to die," he says. "Every moment of it was agony. And now I can share it with you."
You have to move. You have to get out of there but how? Can't flip to the ceiling, can't kick him, can't swing at him, can't even make space to turn you cloak into tentacles with how hard he's got you pinned - the more you rack your brain the more helpless it all seems, the more Hayate lowers the barrel. A whole book of powers and techniques to flip through and you can only think of one thing. But that one thing's all you got. You just hope it works or Hayate kills you quickly because you'll look like a fucking idiot if it doesn't.
Your breath wheezes out of your rubbed-raw throat, laced with the coppery taste of blood, and the pain gets a whole lot worse. Your body screams at you, like the spark itself is writhing in your chest, tearing you apart the more you draw on it. But you don't need it for long. The air shivers around you, the floor trembles, gravity lurches but only in the same direction it always pulls as your weight just seems to double. And then it doubles again. And then it doubles again. The floor groans under you, under him, creaking and straining to remain whole. In only moments that thing's going to be pointed at your head and then your head's going to be gone so you have to make this work right fucking now. You grit your teeth, ball your gloved hand into a fist, and slam it down into the floor with a cry of pain and effort.
The floor drops out from under you and you fall. He falls with you. You're blinded by flying debris, by rushing air, the world flying up to meet you as you fall. It spoils his aim, he doesn't shoot, this is your chance! You hit the floor below and punch straight through, wood shattering, bones shivering in your body, talons scraping against your ribs. You keep falling and something's wrong but you don't have time to realise what that is until you hit the ground and stop, hard. Stone buckles beneath you, carving out a crater just for you in yet another room of the secret underground level, long walled up and abandoned. The impact makes you retch, more blood burning in your throat and drooling past your lips.
Hayate hasn't moved. If anything his foot is more deeply lodged in your chest, blood welling up freely around the razor claws as your armour struggles to close over the wounds. He lifts the lightning-blaster slightly only to laugh, grinding his heel in deeper until he drags a fresh scream from you.
"No more tricks, demon. No more games. No more struggling." He levels the barrel at your head. "This is where it ends."
You're not here. You're not now. You're not Jiro. And it fills you with such a burning, roiling, all-encompassing fury that something inside you just
snaps.
You roar a name you don't recognise and your armour unravels to the shoulder. The hammer is in your hand, so long without you almost forgot, but your hand remembers. The marks of ownership scrawl their way up your arm, burning bright, it hurts but it's a good pain. It reminds you who you are. Hayate's eyes widen in shock and that's all you need to raise it high and strike the stone.
Golden light spreads from the point of contact like a flood, painting the cold stone with the blazing glory of the sun. That alone is enough to make Hayate flinch, even recoil, but the hammer is capable of far greater miracles than that. Weapons fly forth like arrows from a bow, swords of gold purer than gold, alike at a glance but infinite in variety and complexity. Hayate has to back away or be skewered a dozen times over, fending away the worst of it with his free arm and his tail, but it won't end there. You have more. You will always have more. You spent centuries beyond counting on your arsenal and if he thinks those toys he wields will be enough then another lesson is needed. You roll over, ignoring the pain in your feeble body, propping yourself up on an arm you didn't make - sloppy, pitiful work, it sickens you to look upon it - and you bring the hammer down anew.
The temple shakes around you, the mountain quakes to its bones. Hayate gets a shot off, but it means nothing. He can fire from the tallest tower, but he will never strike the sun. The squirming, seething, writhing mass of darkness is torn asunder before it can ever reach you, shredded by swords and burned away by light. The bolt at its core grounds itself uselessly, chaining through a dozen weapons until only the stink of ozone reaches you. The swords strike with more force than ballista bolts, pulverising huge chunks of stone, shredding the long-forgotten carvings into pulp and punching through to the temple above. Rubble streams down, the flames raging above flare bright in the sudden flood of air. The light of flame and gold dance across your enemy's face and his features seem to shift in the shadows they cast. He holsters the gun and you rise to one knee, wrapping your other hand around the haft of the hammer no matter how it burns and rejects the demonic touch, and you bring it down one last time with a defiant bellow.
Your hammer falls, and the world isn't worthy to be its anvil. The stone shatters, golden light shining through the cracks in the floor as if to repair the damage your blow deals, but only weapons fly. Swords sprout like golden brambles from every inch of the floor and smother Hayate in a storm of blades as the mountain crumbles apart. Daylight shines through the gaping rents in the walls, meagre and muted compared to your brilliance, but so too does it mean that his storm of deathly energy is waning. He draws his sword in a flash of black lightning and deflects the barrage, tracing half a dozen blazing lines in the air with a single sweep of his arm, but it doesn't matter. It only delays the inevitable.
The room splits completely in two. Your half falls away, sliding down the mountainside as if sliced from its face by a great sword. It takes Hayate precious moments to realise what's happening, more to react. His face is a mask of fury, shouting for you to stop, to stay and finish this. He runs to catch up with you, and perhaps he could've even made it. But then the roof caves in on him, the temple crumbling on hollow foundations, imploding in a great fireball that scrapes the sky. A sheet of stone and flame keeps him from reaching you and you fall, your plummeting platform breaking into ever-smaller pieces until it's just you. Just you.
Mercifully, blissfully, you black out. But it takes so long for the burn in your arm to fade.
<-id. Kid! Jiro, c'mon, don't give up on me now!>
You don't want to wake up. Waking up means you're conscious of the absolute fucking agony you're in. It means shaking hands with the migraine-ache in your head, the hammered-to-paste burn in your muscles, the stabbing white-hot pain in your stomach, and the fact that even if the rest weren't true you'd still be wrung so thin and dry you don't know if you can move.
But Sidir's shouting in your ear and there's... water lapping at you, and either of those would make it hard enough to sleep. So you reluctantly stir, groaning softly, head rolling like your neck's too weak to hold it upright as you force your leaden eyelids to rise. You're lying on a riverbank, a mile out from Thousand Steps maybe, bleeding slowly but steadily into the water as it flows merrily past you like nothing's wrong. There's something standing over you, four somethings, shifting shapes, and you have to blink a whole shitload before you realise you're not seeing quadruple.
"Jiro!" Qiangong exclaims, "thank all the gods in Yu-Shan, when I first saw you in the river I assumed the worst. Can you stand?"
"(m'fnh)" you mumble.
A great hand grabs you by the scruff of the neck and hauls you up off the riverbank, dripping mud and blood and water. You dangle like a drowned cat, too weak to struggle much less have a real shot of freeing yourself. A towering sculpture of a god is holding you, hefting your entire weight at arm's length without a shred of difficulty, some kind of metal and crystal statue come to life and wearing the shredded remains of what once was probably the same kind of uniform as Yanxiu. There's another god standing next to him, a woman in a similarly ripped and scorched uniform. She's deeply tanned and tattooed in white geometric designs that glow like lightning bound in ink, her short white hair swept back in spikes that almost conceal her rounded tiger-ears.
"This is the Exalt that was making all the fuss?" the man rumbles, sounding distinctly underwhelmed. "It looks broken."
"That Exalt killed the Abbess for us single-handedly," Yanxiu retorts, their voice sharp and clear. They're not wearing their uniform at all any more, dressed in a flowing gown of snowflakes and icy feathers, gloves and heels like silver avian claws. You'd say something but your lungs feel like shrivelled raisins. "And his counsel is what pushed me to Qiangong's side. We owe him a great deal."
"Killing Ayano was no small feat, true, but it would have been nice if he killed her brother too," the unfamiliar woman says, craning her neck to get a better look at you. "He won't be fit to fight for days, maybe weeks, and the prodigal prince is at our door today. How are we supposed to see this as anything but trading one master for another?"
"Bailei, please. Give him a moment." Qiangong floats over to you, offering you a waterskin. He cups your chin in his hand to help you drink - you splutter and choke on it instantly. It's cold, ice-cold, scorching your throat like fire, and you swear it leaks out the sucking hole in your gut too, but he offers it again and you keep drinking until he seems satisfied. The god pulls away and you slump in the other god's grip, blinking blearily. The pain seems to be ebbing, the cold water in your stomach doing something to wash away the sharp edges.
"Water from Yanxiu's spring, and enhanced by my own powers" Qiangong explains. "It has healing properties but... unfortunately not the quality of miracle you are in need of right now."
"('anks)," you croak, swallowing painfully. "... (ah, shit, reminds me)"
You laboriously lift your prosthetic arm, holding it out straight ahead of you and grasping at the air. Something flashes into your talons, not your sword but Qiangong's oar, so easily forgotten in all the excitement.
"(gotcha present)"
Qiangong's breath hitches. He stares at the jade-banded oar in your hand as if half-expecting this to be a dream, or a cruel joke. Like you'll yank it away from his hand and mock him for ever daring to hope that he could hold something so precious again. His hand shakes slightly as he reaches out and gently pulls it from your grip. A smile flickers across his face as his other hand joins it, as he grips his beloved oar tightly and something passes between the two of them. He looks better somehow, something in him you didn't even notice he lakced suddenly restored. Healthier, brighter, more energetic, just stronger. There's a new light in his eyes as he smiles.
"Thank you," he says softly. "You have given me more than you know."
"('yano made a go of shoving it up my ass so,)" you mutter, waving your other arm, "(was in the neighbourhood.)" You weakly crane your head to catch a glimpse of the big god out of the corner of your eye. "(lemme down, m'fine)"
He drops you in the mud and let out a sickening "urk", crumpling into a heap.
"Tiegong!" Qiangong snaps. "He said 'let him down' not 'throw him violently'!"
"He said he was fine," Tiegong protests.
"Sometimes mortals do not say precisely what they mean, I thought you would know this."
"You're the one who talks to them all the time, how am I supposed to know how they work?"
You tune it out, struggling to rise. Yanxiu stoops down and takes your arm unasked, stronger than their slender frame suggests. You nod at them slightly and they return the gesture, lifting you to your feet and leaving you to straighten up unaided. Your hand goes to your stomach immediately, gingerly cradling the hole in your gut you can feel even under the healed layers of necrotic armour, but you're on your own two feet again and that counts for a lot.
"So," you say, breath wheezing slightly in your throat as you fight to get it all back. "Walk me through this. What'd I miss."
"The four of us fought," Yanxiu replies. "I on Qiangong's side, they united. We were evenly matched, and refrained from causing serious harm, until suddenly we felt the Abbess die. We agreed to cease hostilities until you returned, and I took Qiangong to my spring to purge him of the Dead powers he so recklessly imbibed-" the god in question seems to grimace at the memory "-and collect healing waters to treat the injuries you no doubt sustained. But the undead Exalts followed close behind, the Tamura prince and a shorter man of even greater power."
Your expression darkens. "Harrower. I know that asshole. He didn't just show up, he was here the night I killed Sho."
Yanxiu nods. "We do not know what he and his charge intend for the city, now that you have broken the back of the Order. I know we - that is, Qiangong and I - have already asked much of you, but I am afraid we must still ask for your counsel. What can we do now if not fall back under the family's thumb or be destroyed?"
Your shoulders slump. You'd hit something if you had the energy. Why's everything always have to be so fucking complicated? It's bad enough you had the good mood of killing Ayano taken away from you - twice - but now you've got a bunch of gods looking at you like you're supposed to have all the answers? You cradle your head in one hand, raking gloved claws through your wet hair to comb it out of your face. You're a mess. An absolute mess and it feels like your mind's cracked into a bunch of jagged shards all stabbing into each other and you can tell already what Sidir's thinking. He's quiet now, letting you talk to the gods without bothering you, but you can sense what's on his mind. The hammer came out again and it was different this time. It felt... felt like nothing you've ever felt before. The more you think about it the less you like it. Fuck, what are you supposed to do now? Where are you supposed to go from here? Who in their right mind would think you're the guy to turn to?
<jian>
<Daji? What're you doin' up, you're meant to be restin'!>
<shut up you're not my dad> Daji's voice grows a little stronger, a little louder. <aren't you forgetting someone, stupid?>
And then you realise you are, freezing on the spot. Not just him, but a lot of people. Everyone back at White Tower, the entire cult of mortals and demons you worked to save rather than corner Sho the first time you had him. You got them to link up with Sanaan and his people, didn't you? Had them all go deeper underground to...
"... the waterway," you murmur.
"Waterway?" Qiangong repeats, puzzled. You turn to him.
"When I first got back to Creation there was this cult in the bunker network under White Tower," you explain hurriedly, seizing the spike of energy before it can fade. "A demon cult I mean. Sho ran here in the first place because he noticed me working with them and he got spooked. But there's this other group too, sharkmen living on an island out in the bay, do you know them?"
"Faintly, my influence is diminished at sea but they border my river."
"Before I left I got them to join up and move to another place in that network, somewhere near the water," you forge on ahead. "There's plenty of people there, demons too, all ready and willing to work with me. Can you get in touch with them now you have your oar back?"
Qiangong's expression grows brighter as he realises what you're getting at. "Yes, yes of course," he replies. "I can reach any point along my river in the blink of an eye now that I have my oar, even bring others along if only a few at a time."
You nod slightly. "I- ngh. I'm in no shape to do anthing useful right now. And I need to go back to Hell for other shit anyway. It's gonna take me, I dunno, two weeks minimum but it could be a month for all I know. But I'm gonna be back, understand? I'm not done here and neither are all of you." You take a breather, gritting your teeth to stifle a grunt of pain. "Look, I know you've all been through some shit, but you don't have to sit back and take it just because that prick and his pint-size pal showed up. Get in contact with my cult in White Tower, bring some people over here, start a new chapter with people from the lower city. When I come back I'll need a desecrated site to cross over and you can give me exactly that now that the Immaculate aren't watching. And then we all get together and kick the Tamura out of this fucking city. Sound like a plan?"
"Big words for a small man," Tiegong remarks behind you.
"Fuck you," you say without turning around.
"Hn. But you don't know when to quit, which leaves you in good company with the four of us."
"It sounds like more of a plan than blind hope," Bailei says. "Which is all Qiangong and Yanxiu had to offer when we fought, so I suppose if we're to be fools there's no sense in stopping now."
"You speak your mind without fear or doubt," Yanxiu says. "And you showed me more respect than I was owed when you did so the day before this battle. If you say you will return to free us, then I trust you."
"You have already given me far more than mere hope," Qiangong adds at last, a smile on his face. "Go, return to Hell and heal your wounds. We will prepare the way for your return, however long it may take."
"(Alright alright, fuck me you're making it sound like I'll be gone a decade,)" you mutter, shuffling away from the group to face the horizon. The storm's finally cleared and it looks like sunset, long streaks of red-gold light scrawled across clouds finally free of rain and thunder. You squint at the mountains far in the distance, turning your head aimlessly left and right until Sidir mutters directions in your ear.
"The way back isn't anywhere along the river, so... guess this is goodbye for now," you say haltingly. "See you in a while."
"Thank you, Jiro," Yanxiu says.
"Thank you for everything," Qiangong agrees. "For what you have done and what you already intend to do."
"... y-yeah." You don't know what else to say to that. You stiffly raise your hand in a brief parting wave and go, shuffling along as fast as your wrung-out body will carry you. You don't look back, you don't dare to, but about a dozen steps in you think you sense the four gods just vanish like phantoms, off to tend to their business. The words just keep echoing in your ears, burrowing in deep and refusing to fade. 'Thank you'. Why would they thank you? You only ever did shit that got you closer to killing Ayano, why are they acting like you did them a favour? It feels weird, unearned, alien - you don't remember the last time someone thanked you for anything.
But... feels nice all the same.
<hey> comes Daji's weak voice again. <what was that other stuff?>
"What other stuff?" you grunt.
<woke up a bit while you fought sky and there was this- everything started rumbling and i saw gold light in the windows, up on the higher levels of the castle> they go on. <was that you?>
<Jiro's got uh... 'e's got some kinda condition goin' on,> Sidir replies. <Somethin' about 'is spark. It's been actin' up ever since 'e got to Hell but never like that before. Never that bad. Plan is we go talk t' Lilunu about it, quiet-like so she don't know about uh... you.>
<why shouldn't she know about me, i'm flawless>
<Yer a walkin' heresy an' we'd all be killed instantly if Orabilis or Iudicavisse ever found out,> Sidir says sternly. <So ya gotta be on good behaviour in Hell, okay? We all gotta lay low an' just recharge for a while, figure things out.>
You gaze down at your hand as you walk, cradling your stomach with the one Sidir made you. There's nothing to see in the sleek glove, no secrets spelling themselves out across the black material. Only an echo of the way it burned, the strangely freeing pain of those golden lines inscribing themselves in the skin as you grasped the ghost of the hammer. You remember the way the haft felt in your hand, the surge of anger and pride as you wielded it, and a name you never knew rises to your lips.
"Halphas..."
End of Act Two
By defeating both Lord Sho and Abbess Ayano, striking a terrible blow against the stability of Tamura government in the satrapy, reuniting the four gods of Thousand Steps, narrowly surviving an encounter with the Promised Prince of the Empty Sky and forming an unexpected bond with a shard of his own soul, Jiro has earned another 2,000xp. This must all be spent on Jiro's gear and abilities between acts, voting by plan. @TheOneMoiderah has a bonus 100xp to spend as they wish separate from whichever plan wins.
Leaves us with 225 left over, I kind of wanted to push up Remote Satisfaction Demand another rank if we can though, because getting our punchyfist mode started, Behemoth's Stubborn Retort to knock people around, and then the fucking Devil Bringer to grab the flying victim and just beat them into stuff while they've already been knocked around is just hilariously violent in a wonderful way.
Aside from that wombo combo, this goes for a comprehensive boost to pretty much all of Jiro's core fighting skills, except his swordplay. Even that is improved somewhat by his sword getting an upgrade, but the biggest thing is just increasing how comfortable he is with his power and unlocking new vistas of action combat ability.
Oh that poor, poor Dynast. Can't we think of what we did to him?
Seriously, this entire family is made of self entitled assholes. Kill them all.
At least have some fucking self awareness when you insult us. Calling us a demon when you agreed to destroy Creation to live is hilariously hypocritical.
[X] Scrap and Sutures Armory
- [X] Invulnerable Wounding Futility (+250)
- [X] Sun-Heart Furnace Soul (+75)
- [X] Sinew-And-Debris Corona (+250)
- [X] Dragon-Slaying Overrun Style (+175)
- [X] Reforged Hand of Malfeas Style (+375)
- [X] Anima Banner (Slayer) (+375)
- [X] Death's Embrace (+250)
- [X] The Mantle of the Stars (+250)
This plan is mostly defensive, because holy shit, Jiro, you NEED those organs. You've been impaled, shot, and dragged out of the water plenty of times already, stop worrying Sidir so much.
Hand of Malfeas and the mantle getting upgraded is also partially a gift to Daji, and their murder-shintai form. They've been filling in for other, less defensive stuff so far, but if Daji gets in a fight, I want Best Fox to have the good shit.
Ok, so I'm really happy about Sky showing up, but I have a whole lot of things to say about why I liked it.
Exalted has the basic assumption that everybody has wants and desires, and nobody is fundamentally evil. They're just people who continue on as they've been taught, and don't take the time to look out of their worlds to sympathize with other people. Sky and Ayano are terrible people with no mercy, but when we look through their eyes, we can see their justifications, why they need to do this, and the ideals that they use to hold themselves up. We can see how you work hard, and a fair and just world rewards you. For all the terrible things Ayano did, and as cruel as she was, she was doing things that she could justify as ultimately good for the souls of the people.
Promised Sky was angry that everything he worked for was pointless, and he'd never get a chance to be incredible. He hated Jiro because some nobody took away his future, and on paper, that's not serving any grand purpose, but that's fair. He could have gotten his revenge, and killed Jiro in a duel to restore his honor. Instead, he showed up after his sister had died trying to prove herself, and he was just an absolutely fucking terrible person.
I mean, holy shit, what a fucking asshole. For all his constant striving to be something, to be worthy of greatness, any ideals he has are false idols. All the virtues he could have are gone the minute he interacts with other people, like a shell he wears when he's alone to convince himself he's a good person. It's a parody and a mask of what a noble dragonblood is supposed to be, and at his heart he's a self-absorbed, spoiled prick.
I mean, he spends the whole fight stalking after his opponent, fucking monologuing about how hard his life is while he casually strolls after Jiro, shooting him with a gun he got as a gift while bound ghosts do all the actual work. He's not even in the fight, really, it doesn't touch him physically or emotionally, he's just an entitled little shit hunting down the kid who wouldn't surrender. It feels like a betrayal that The Prince is just this shitty, and I fucking love it. He's such a good villain, he could have been just like Jiro, always pushing to be good enough and failing, but he's the Prince of the Promised Sky. He thinks the world owes him greatness, and he's not going to bother reaching out to anyone else. It's such a deep divide between the two of them, that they've been given nothing but expectations they couldn't meet, but Jiro never stopped hating the people who stepped on him, and The Prince was just waiting for his chance to (almost literally) meet the people who got in his way and kick them when they're down. Zerbaan, you're a fucking artist, and I don't know how I could love your heros and villains any more.
Also, I'm really sorry to put this essay on how Sky is a piece of shit right after this, but uh... I hope the story gives you what you're looking for? I had Feelings about this update.
