Kind of want to the reaction to this chapter while it's still fresh in my mind.
Not sure if I'll ever manage to make myself go back to do the last one.
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That's kind of a hilarious way to refer to a collection of the most frightening murdermachines the Realm has to offer.
I suppose it's rather accurate though, with how none of the people present are
that politically influential on their own.
Hundred Orchard Pavilion blazed with splendor and munificence, its signature golden apple-trees glowing bright bronze in the rays of the twilight sun. The sky was blood red, pale blue, and violet with tinges of amethyst, broken only by the rare slash of cloud. They had made good time, but the Feast was already in full swing. Ulyssian had consented to the carriage only because he'd wanted to confront Nilul; normally he would have asked for Sorcerous transport, and used the extra time to train.
Should have known that Uly would have never been satisfied with such slow methods of transportation without a solid reason and obviously he didn't bother leaving early enough to still arrive before festivities being.
I mean, that'd have cut into his actual training time for the sake of more time spent at a party. It's basically inconceivable.
In his heart, he didn't trust the self-proclaimed Tepet, not fully, but he had decided that devoting so many mental resources to vigilance against one of his friends was likely wasteful. When he'd told her as much, Nilul had hugged him and proclaimed that he was sweet.
This kind of thought process is an incredibly adorable mix of complete bluntness, naivety and solid reasoning that makes Ulyssian appear unbelievably tsundere. I'm not ashamed to admit I wanted to hug him really badly as well.
That said, I can't help but wonder whether a Nilul assumed to be genuine is actually happier with this outcome than she would be with Uly truly trusting her. I mean, someone whose obvious trust issues prevent her from being all that honest with her friends learning that her firend still trusts her seems liable to have to deal with a lot of internal guilt and self-recrimination over her inability to truly reciprocate, whereas her friend just telling her he can't be bothered to keep questioning her intentions all the time removes that source of tension without any of the guilt.
He didn't understand her.
Don't worry, Uly! That massive denseness is part of your charm.
The wine-red horses leading their carriage cantered to a trot, then trotted to a walk, and finally stopped. The coachman opened the door, offering a hand to Nilul, who primly ignored him and jumped free, spreading her hands to the sky as if to embrace the whole world. Ulyssian heard her sigh, deeply and with gentle contentment, as she began to walk towards the Pavilion. He walked out himself, nodding awkwardly to the driver, producing a full half-obel's worth of tip that he flipped over. The man thanked him effusively, producing more awkward nods, and Ulyssian eventually caught up to Nilul.
Watching Uly awkwardly stumble his way through interaction with people who are not his friends and therefor put him out of his comfort zone, but whom he still doesn't feel justified in being rude to like with anyone whose presence vaguely annoys him is honestly hilarious.
Now I want to engineer more situations where Uly can neither default to his gruff asshole nor to his overly blunt friend approach to socialization.
Coyly, she held out an arm, elbow crooked.
He raised an eyebrow. "We're doing that."
She pouted. "Do you want my help or don't you?"
It's certainly nice to see that Uly doesn't see his decision as any reason to stop being gruffly annoyed at her all the time and their relationship continues to be as amusing as ever.
Sighing, he took her arm in his, and allowed her to lead them to the gate. Nilul curtsied to the doorman, announcing them and producing their invitation. As they wandered into the Pavilion Gardens, her eyes darted around like lambent stars, searching, seeking...
I'm honestly more than a bit excited to finally get to see Nilul fully moving in her element for once.
Laying a conspiratorial hand against her mouth, she whispered, "Eleven o'clock, to my left. Our classmate."
Wondering if she's using lagnuage like that because she knows framing it more like a mission is one of the few ways to keep Uly's interest on what's going on.
Saery? He turned to see a rugged edifice of a man, clad in dark red Dragon Armor, towering over Cathak Vaela. There was a doting sort of half-grin on his face, which was horribly scarred, three bright slashes of white straight across nose and eyes, and half of it replaced by a dull, matte alloy of orichalcum and starmetal. His metal jaw worked slowly as he spoke to his... grand-daughter? grand-niece?
Or maybe she's just using intentionally misleading language because she gets kicks out of setting him up to expect Saery when he gets an impossibly scarred Elder DB war veteran.
And while Saery being present at all already indicated such, the presence of two classmates of ours as seconds here shows rather neatly that the other people at the Academy may easily be more important and skilled than we give them credit for.
After all, even if there are some mitigating factors in that the most important members of their houses can probably show up independently and not every combatant (rather likely the opposite) needs a minder for social matters, the two of them getting an important assissting position in the most prolific tournament in the Realm says a lot about how good they are and how much their Houses want to prop them up further.
Cathak Polemgaos. A legend by any standard. The greatest hero of war in a House famed for its heroes. Three hundred years old, the Iron Serpent of Cathak had held off Ma-Ha-Suchi itself for four hours at the Battle of Haubreki Pass. He had wrestled the Behemoth Jondr to death with his bare hands, had single-handedly beaten down the Rebellion of Black Leaves.
It's nice to encounter people famous enough that even Uly has heard of their exploits. Makes foe a much smoother paragraph introducing them, though it does admittedly also mean our opposition appears all the more formidable.
He was here to compete. Of course he was. Short of Lung Feng Zao and the absent Empress, the number of Dragon-Blooded in the entire Realm that would dare challenge Cathak Polemgaos, could be counted on the digits of a single hand. Even if that hand had lost a finger or three, as his left had.
And that tidbit of exposition makes his ridiculous strength even more clear. I do love how all his scars and battle wounds only make him appear even more intimidating since they mean he survived things dangerous enough to permanently scar a DB of his power without actually being crippled to a punishing degree.
Nilul shifted her posture, somehow catching his attention. She batted her eyelashes at him, playful to the point of sarcasm, almost to the point of mockery. Polemgaos' expression shifted rapidly from confused interest to unguarded confusion, and then his eyebrow twitched as he regained his composure. Abruptly, fluidly, Nilul turned away and leaned closer into Ulyssian's shoulder, her lips coming up to brush his ear, to whisper: "This is hilarious, don't you think?"
It's more than a bit depressing when you are just as to what the hell Nilul is trying to accomplish as Uly is.
I mean, sure, Nilul's schemes within scheme do kind of make that less embarrassing but it still means you are in this particular instance just as socially incompetent as Uly.
To any outside observer, her expression made it clear that she was conveying spitefully amused nothings to Ulyssian, very near an outright insult to the Cathak general. Ulyssian groaned internally. Cathak Vaela shot them a look of burning hatred.
Man, I have literally no clue what she's doing here.
Was she completely serious about how the only thing important here is to be noticed and remembered? Is she setting people up for some sort of weird Ebon Dragon Charm that requires you to piss people off first? Is this really jsut the catalyst for later schemes? Or is she really just annoying a classmate she njoys to annoy?
"Are you sure that's wise?" He whispered, returning their classmate's stare with a glare of his own.
For all that he's groaning inwardly and not even remotely convinced this is a good idea, it's kind o hilarious how Uly is just playing along with her attempt to antagonize people.
Though that admittedly may just him being way too stubborn and dickish to try and smooth things over with someone he offended.
"I don't tell you how to hit people with swords," Nilul replied daintily, bending her right knee to raise her calf up to her thigh. "So just leave it to me, okay? This will help you win."
As right as she is here, I can't help but feel hopelessly lost, which doesn't help ease my paranoia regarding her at all.
I wish I had the mental discipline to just decide to stop double-checking her every statement already. Then again, double checking her every statement is half the fun of reading a Nilul scene.
They walked on, Nilul drawing away from him now, holding onto his arm with only her fingers. Her eyes seemed to open wider, slightly brighter, becoming more approachable, naturally drawing admirers and confidantes into her orbit. Odyssial was content to hang back, letting her take the attention, do what she had to.
So at the very least her intention isn't to piss off everyone present.
That's not doing a lot to convince me she wasn't just being petty with Vaela.
Sixteen candidates were invited, one from each House, one from the Immaculate Order, one from the Legions (now defunct, it was essentially a wildcard slot), one from the Admiralty (Zao had arranged this spot for Ulyssian), and one from the general populace. Besides the champions and their seconds, only the great luminaries and most well-connected of Dragon-Blooded were attending this Feast in person. When the battles began tomorrow, the crowds would arrive in force.
That's honeslty less combatants than I thought there'd be. I had kind of expected at least 32.
I suppose this make Zao securing us an invitation a lot more significant and it makes it clear that there is a lot more politicking in this Tournament involved than I thought there'd be.
This is less an opportunity to actually determine the strongest combatant f the realm and more an opportunity for the various factions in the Realm to show up their rivals, which does a lot to explain why Uly won't have the time to show up next year when he's supposed to be acting from a position of power and is no longer primarily seen as Zao's pet project intended to show up everyone else.
They took a slow semi-circular route around the gardens, Nilul pointing out each champion as they passed, sometimes slowing to perform some maneuver or another. Ulyssian's focus was on his enemies, each one of them formidable. There were none here so weak as a single-element Immaculate Master, like Ledaal Syryns or Resolute Flame. Only the cream of the Realm's fighting elite was gathered here, sixteen swords with the blood of a hundred thousand men between them.
It's just ridiculous how we, after only a three months of Exalting, consider Immaculate Masters to be rather weak and we're even likely to scoff at killing the Perfect Brotherhood by now. Makes it all the more apparent how crazily fast we're growing in strength and how impossibly far away we're still from the power ceiling.
There was Cynis Esertia, Whose-Sword-Falls-Like-Rain, the famously ascetic lady-at-arms whose poetry and calligraphy was so beloved among the mortal patrician houses. She wore a simple traveler's robe, the color of green tea leaves, jian strapped to her back with twine. In response to Nilul's prodding, she stuck out her tongue, impish.
She sounds kind of hilarious. I find myself hoping we get to see more of her.
There was Sesus Taldrim, the Morning Hammer, who regarded Ulyssian with surly dislike. His knotted fists, which had smashed the Ten-Meter Gates of Porschifel, were wrapped in bandages. Nilul leaned over to Ulyssian's ear again, pitching her voice so that Taldrim could hear: "He could almost be your brother, if only he weren't so ugly."
As much as I find myself hoping we get to smash his face in, I can't help but think that'd be very suboptimal, especially if we don't end up winning the Tournament though that's really only an afterthought.
I mean, if we don't meet him and lose, Houses Sesus might just continue to sullenly pretend we don't exist.
If we don't meet him and win, they should be more willing to reconcile simply because we're still bringing them prestige in a somewhat roundabout way.
Hell, even if we get defeated by him our relationship with House Sesus might benefit somewhat since at least their pride will be somewhat assuaged and they'd be therefor be more likely to forgive us even if the price they ask for would undoubtedly increase.
But actually publically beating the shit out of their champion is going to be another slap in their face regardless of whether we end up "costing them the Tournament" by losing afterwards.
There was Ledaal Haruste, general of the renowned Airbright Legion, which had returned recently from a victorious campaign against the Fair. His gleaming copper sword, Lightene, crackled as he moved, shining more like ice than any metal.
I can't help but notice the plyo Nilul pulled with him isn't described.
Until now there was always something that can more or less be described as antagonizing the other party, so I was really suspecting that Nilul was clearing some sort of Charm requirement.
Pity that we lose a data-point when we do kind of need all of them to make a clear judgement on this.
And then there was Nellens Raern, and Nilul broke off to hug his second.
really loving this transition.
"Saery!" She gushed, embracing their classmate warmly. "It's so good to see you. So sorry about your impending loss, but I'm afraid Uly doesn't really take prisoners."
The way she pushes the somewhat passive agressive threatening of the competition on Uly and his dickishness is kind of hilarious.
"Nilul," Saery greeted amicably. "We just saw each other three days ago! It's nice to see you too, though. Hi, Uly!" She waved. "Good luck out there."
And Saery not even reacting to the provocation beyond pointing out how over the top Nilul's acting is jsut great.
"Don't call me Uly," he addressed the both of them, to no more avail than usual.
Man, he's not even trying to be polite to his friends. Uly really is the best at friendship.
Raern had been glancing thoughtfully his way. The blonde-haired youth was not much older than Ulyssian himself, and his elemental Aspect was non-obvious at a glance, likely a result of Nellens' weak blood. He broke into a welcoming smile, offering Ulyssian his hand. There was something off in his stance, a slight palpitation to his breathing rhythms. Readiness.
I know that there are several solid reasons for Nellens' representative to not be a century old badass, among others that Nellens doesn't have that many of those, that they are more likely here to show that they have very talented DBs even among their youth than in the hope to win the entire thing and that he could easily have bloodline powers and Uly like dedication that together with the Nellens connections make him jsut as formidable as others, but I can't help but immediately jump to the conclusion that this guy is not in fact a DB.
He is now my frontrunner for the slot of secret Siddie participant.
He was going to pull it back if Ulyssian went for the shake, and otherwise make the Sesus look rude. But Ulyssian didn't care if he looked rude, and so stared blankly at Rearn. Saery looked apologetically over at him. Please don't kill me, she mouthed, before she moved to affectionately but forcefully scolding Rearn.
Rearn uses Underhanded Social Maneuver Meant To Make You Look Like A Dick!
It's not very effective.
Uly uses "I'm and asshole anyways and Nilul said I shouldn't bother pretending otherwise."
We should get Nilul's permission to be an asshole more often. It makes social interactions a lot more hilarious.
Nilul looped around his arm again, and off they went. Evening had settled like an autumn blanket across the celebration, gentle but cool. Multi-colored lights now illuminated the gathering. Nilul seemed especially fetching in the shadows, moving with an effortless agility that concealed her total lack of combat experience. As she assured him that they were doing well, and that everything was so far going to plan, Ulyssian guided them over to the food tables and descended on the buffet.
It's honestly hilarious how Uly effortlessly connects "She looks more fetching in the shadows" to "It conceals how bad she is at fighting."
He really has his priorities for what he likes in a woman set straight.
Nilul sat across from him, resting her cheek upon her palm.
"Why am I not surprised," she said, amused, gently rolling her eyes. "Despite your charming companion, your thoughts and attention are only on the free food."
And here I was afraid they'd be too busy insulting other people for us to get another scene of them snarking at each other.
"You're learning," he drawled, leaning back to enjoy the evening air without the yoke of necessary social interaction. Mentally he reviewed the opponents he'd seen and evaluated. Maybe he could figure out some way to train...
You know, considering that Uly doesn't even seem to get much enjoyment out of their banter and always tries to get back to training somehow when the to of them talk, makes him seem like much more of an asshole whenever he's interacting with Nilul.
Well, if you believe Nilul is enjoying these conversations enough for the both of them, I suppose you can see this as more Uly indulging one of his friends than him treating her horribly, but without that tidbit their relationship doesn't paint a nice picture.
"Saery told me you complimented her the other day," Nilul said, sounding heartsick. "You're too cruel to your faithful second, never a kind word for poor Nilul, always just the grumpy Uly. And yet here I remain, as devoted to you as ever. It's tragic!"
Considering that Uly knows Nilul is in fact very impressive and that he's normally very straightforward, I have to wonder why he'd never compliment Nilul.
Does he jsut stay away from that social stuff enough that he never gets to see her in action when she's doing the really impressive stuff? Does his dislike for the entire field of social interaction make him subconsciously biased against impressive accomplishments there? Or is it something else entirely?
"Don't you get enough vapid praise from your sycophants and admirers?" He raised an eyebrow.
Ah, he just doesn't want to encourage her. He's really commited to never showing Nilul any genuine kindness, isn't he?
"They're genuine!" she admonished, suddenly energetic. "And no," she continued, wearing an avaricious grin, "I can never get enough. I'm a being of great appetites, Ulyssian."
She reached over and plucked a cherry tomato off his plate, popping it into her mouth. "See?"
Well, at least she doesn't seem to mind too much, but who can really say for sure with her?
"That's a lie," he said, idly scanning the Pavilion for the combatants they hadn't yet met. He saw a women in a fluorescent blue kimono, patterned with pink, carrying only an umbrella - the second of the towering Peleps champion, and yet her stride indicated she was far deadlier to him. A ploy, or was the champion truly that good? About ten meters away from her, meditating silently in the middle of the garden, was an Immaculate monk, clean-shaven, who Ulyssian recognized. Strange Heart, the famously eccentric warrior monk, who was one of the few Fivefold Masters - grandmasters - of the Immaculate Dragon Styles. Rumors abounded that he had transcended any solitary Elemental Aspect.
Hmm.
Is the Peleps second perhaps some sort of super assassin? I guess, a Siddie is also possible (which obviously doesn't preclude an assassin).
It's also kind of hilarious to hear that there are rumors of awe and reverence about someone maybe having achieved the thing that causes us to make Captain Planet jokes about Zao all the time.
There was a masked individual dressed only in black lamellar, and only his supernatural hearing alerted him to the fact that they were likely female. She was muttering to herself in a language he didn't understand. Ulyssian had been alert for chances to compile blackmail information, using his new powers of hearing, but the partygoers had not been obliging. At the confluence of so many great powers, perhaps they were simply being cautious. Tepet Fokuf, the Lord Regent, strolled by, accompanied by his small horde of handlers.
Dissapointing that this didn't work out at all, though we probably shouldn't ahve beens urprised at people being carefuly over eavesdroppers here.
Otherwise I'm kind of tempted to make completely baseless predictions over the women completely dressed in black being the the E4 combat mosnter Abyssal, but that's starting to get a bit far-fetshced even for idle musings.
Still wondering whether she's the Legion Wild-Card or the general populace candidate.
It was, all of it, mostly banal conversation intermixed with veiled threats. Quite uninteresting as far as he was concerned. There was one person, far to the other side of the Pavilion, who was humming. She was completely out of sync with the musicians, and from the sound of her steps, likely barefoot.
Well, that certainly isn't familiar or ominous at all, though admittedly by now it's still almost as far fetched as all of my other wild theories.
Ulyssian's attention returned to Nilul. "What else did Saery tell you?" he asked idly.
Nilul shrugged. "Nothing we didn't already know, though there was one interesting tidbit."
I can't help but wonder whether Saery really told her everyything interesting then.
Though I suppose Nilul would have probably noticed and mentioned that.
She placed her elbows on the table, looking around. "Apparently the Mnemon champion was upstaged at nearly the very last minute, by some newly Exalted girl. She demolished him, it was very strange. She's here now, with a mortal retainer as her second."
Obviously not suspicious at all.
I'm somewhat curious why she's here though. That maneuver was, to be honest, not subtle at all and while it's certainly possible that the Infernal's plans for the tournament require a Sorcerer present or noone else could be brought into position quickly enough, the Sorcerer could have also been the second and both the Wild-Card and the general populace could have been used to sneak in someone with skills more traditionally suited for this kind of thing.
Then again, a combat monster "DB" that appeared our of nowhere, may have been harder to make believable than a late-blooming Sorceress of House Mnemon trashing the more directly combat focused champion through clever use of her skills.
Ulyssian listened briefly for the Mnemon name. Seconds later, a server addressed the humming girl as "Ms. Mnemon," asking her if she would like any wine. The girl cheerfully declined, then continued speaking to her second, who she called Fei Ling.
Fei Ling's presence on the other hand does lend credence to a different theory.
After all, Ayala did propose a plan to create Yozi flavoured pseudo-Elemental Dragons with the growth potential of a Celestial Exalt as the progenitors of entirely new types of Yozi flavoured Terrestial Exalted by fusing DBs with 3CDs and Fei Ling was one of the members of the Infernal research division in favour of the plan.
Of course we don't actually know whether the Infernal research division exists as such in this setting and if it stayed largely the same I don't actually believe they would have picked this course of action. (Mainly because I'm not quite willing to project enough nerd stereotypes on Savin to assume he folded and agreed with everything she wanted as soon as a g-g-girl talked to him and he did seem a bit too full of himself to pursue someone else's ideas.)
Still, I wouldn't be too surpised if Ayala is in fact here to at least scout out some of the strongest DBs around for the sake of her project and wouldn't be surprised either if she's here to even kidnap some candidates if they prove themselves suited enough somehow, she feels she has an opportunity or they simply seem easier to get on boar than most. This of course gives us, the unorthodox genius who has beef with the Immaculate Order and shouldn't be old enough to be set in his ways a lot of reason to watch out for her, especially since even if she's only scouting she might be enough of an expert on DBs to learn we are in fact not one.
And that's not even talking about the potential mouth-watering value Nilul could have for her project or the risk of having Fei Ling, the master assassin with access to celestial tier Stealth Charms around, when Zao already warned us that other factions wuld try to assassinate us.
He frowned. She didn't sound like a great warrior at all. A sorceress, more like, though an idiosyncratic one. Ulyssian shook his head. He was tired from dealing with Nilul the whole day, and the Feast gave him a headache. He could endure that easily enough, but wanted to conserve his energy. The drawing would occur in the morning tomorrow, which meant that he had no specific opponent to focus his preparations on. Rather than splitting his attentions over fifteen potential foes, he would simply hope that he didn't get Polemgaos early, and concentrate on strengthening himself.
It's honestly astounding that Uly hates this stuff enough to literally get a headache from it, which he then summarily proceeds to ignore.
"Have we done enough?" he asked, "May we go?"
"Aww, is Uly feeling tired?" Nilul reached over to feel his brow with motherly care.
He looked up at her hand, then at her.
The way Nilul reacts to his whining does make the headache rather worth it though.
She giggled, sitting back down. She began to subvocalize, speaking the words so that even he had slight trouble hearing from point-blank range. "Not as much as I would've liked, but yes, we learned a lot! With this, you should be able to win easily. Well, maybe not easily, but you shouldn't die. I'm worried about the Mnemon girl and the other unknowns, but we've hit most of the high-value targets."
It's honestly frustrating that we did not in fact learn anything of the stuff that's apparently so valuable.
Nilul should also really learn to stop tripping about a million death-flags per sentence.
That's a bad habit to get into.
"Oh," she suddenly cried, shooting straight up, placing the back of her hand to her forehead as if she were about to faint, "I can't take it anymore. They're all just so boring! Uly, take me from this place!"
You know, for all that Uly is acting even grumpier for attending this with Nilul, at least Nilul isn't letting any of his grumpyness stop her from enjoying herself immensely.
Why, he thought to himself. Why had he ever thought this would be a good idea. Ulyssian stood up and trudged off silently, ignoring Nilul, a look of bleak emptiness on his face. He could hear Saery stifling her laughter.
I'm starting to wonder whether Nilul intends to maek Uly seem less dickish by making it abundantly clear as time progresses that he can't stand her messing around anymore than everyone else.
Probably not the case, but it'sa hilarious thought nonetheless.
"What purpose did that serve?" he asked grumpily, as Nilul caught up.
"It was fun," she answered cheekily.
And when being at a party with Uly you absolutely need to create your own fun.
An enormous trunk awaited them outside the near-palatial suite of rooms that was to be their residence for the week. There was enough space here for a full Councilor of the Deliberative and all his retinue, much less just Ulyssian and Nilul.
So much opulence!
Kind of a shame Uly doesn't even care for one of the chief advantages of staying in the Realm.
Seeing the trunk, she darted over, hugging it gleefully. "Clothes, clothes~"
Nilul acting extremely girlish is always adorable to watch.
"You brought luggage?" His expression was skeptical.
Luggage? It's almost as if you aren't here just for the sake of beating the shit out of some people.
Standard supplies for a week-long mission should have been sufficient.
"Didn't you?" She turned to regard him, eyes wide and innocent.
Love how much she plays along.
"I travel light," he replied, sliding open the door and walking inside. "I'll be in one of the rooms, finishing preparations."
I'm not sure travelling light accurately describes treating literally every isntance of travelling the same as a mission.
"I'm Ulyssian, and I only care about Training and Moon," she said, her inflections eerily mimicking his own. "I'll just be in one of the rooms, no need to specify which one, just search them all until you find me."
He continued walking.
Don't forget that you also have to dodge the traps he leaves for all the people who might try to break into his rooms!
Obviously he isn't going to warn you about those because there's no way he'd risk the telling another person when you can just stay in your room and never bother him.
"Uly?" Nilul asked, her voice unbearably sweet, "Won't you help me carry my luggage?"
I'm really glad we inflicted Uly on someone who actually keeps having fun with this and not Saery.
Can imagine how hard this degree of grumpyness must be to deal with when you neither have past life memories of riendship to tide you over nor thrive off of his antagonism as much as Nilul?
