Shattering Point
Luseng sprawled out before him, the jewel of the North-West, a satrapy of such incredible wealth that even now, while times were unquestionably dire, their coffers still held barrels upon barrels of jade obels, stacked-high columns of silver coin, and neatly arrayed strongboxes of Realm scrip. He had toured the city's environs, its Royal Palace (now Satrap's Palace) and rosewood outer walls, its towering market and temple districts that were now over-full slums. From his vantage point on the gate-tower he could see the city entire, out to the Glittering Ford, and to his eyes it seemed a vast and delicate constellation of miniatures, painstakingly crafted, exquisitely formed, mired in dirt and shit.
The mood in the city was grave, and his arrival - the arrival of seven Terrestrial Exalts, five of them Immaculate shikari - had done little to raise hopes. His demeanor was uninspiring, he knew that, so he had mostly kept his mouth shut as they briefed him, the viziers and the dragonlords. The Fae would arrive soon, and it was his duty to learn all he could about this city that thought itself doomed.
Two days ago, Zao had told him that he'd honestly expected it to be worse. Anys Syn's interference was crippling, but Ulyssian had had four full months to prepare, to train in relative peace before being released to confront the world. They'd had a plan, and they'd executed it, and Zao's Solar protege had grown strong. It was more than he'd expected, though not more than he'd hoped for.
He had passed the Naval Exam, but this was his first real test, true responsibility at the highest ranks of power. Millions depended on his blade now. It would have been everything he'd dreamed of as a mortal, if he hadn't been sent to fail.
The Legion auxiliaries, at least, had competent reconnaissance officers, and so they knew the form of the doom that was to fall upon them.
Ten thousand Wyld horrors, hobgoblins and stranger things, and at their head three hundred full Cataphracts, the hunt-masters and celebrated knights of the Fair Folk. Their siege engines were Behemoths, ragged cast-offs of dismantled worlds: one a titan of mottled flesh, faceless, with raw bludgeons for fists, seventy meters high, that exhaled fire and forge-light; and the other a great spider of sharpened glass, pale green and violet, whose limbs hummed and shrieked as they cut the air. Upon that spider rode Duke Iron Sislay, who had in his time cut down fourteen of the Exalted and two Anathema besides, a great conquerer among the Fair Folk whose sword of false steel reflected lurid blue in the daylight.
Sislay Chorus was a freehold, but it was no shallow province. Empress Slay commanded a dominion that harvested millions of mortal lives, hundreds of leagues in radius. It was the equal of the greatest Lunar domains, and that was how it had survived for six centuries in a Creation that feared and despised it.
He could hear the rumbling of that army as it rolled towards them. The troops marched in uncanny lockstep, hobgoblins and horrors broken to the will of their Cataphract minders. They were coming, faster than he'd predicted, and moving with a coordination that eclipsed even the dedicated drill of the Ghost-Water Legion. He turned to watch as the army spilled across the horizon, a seething tide, pennants flapping and curling in the air, pikes upraised with mortal skulls impaled upon them. They blanketed the countryside in apparent moments, drowning out the greenery: a titanic and outstretched hand come to crush Luseng within its grip. At the front strode the behemoths, whose steps boomed like thunder, and Ulyssian heard from the city the cold, desperate clarion of the trumpets, as they called its defenders to action.
His eyes, keener than any mortal's, picked out the Duke atop his spider mount, and the Duke looked back with eyes of sapphire blue, saluting jauntily with his scimitar flange. A mocking smile adorned the great noble's feature, a preening certainty in his victory. Ulyssian found himself unusually irritated. Was this what passed for 'Iron,' among the Fair Folk? Or was his name merely an 'ironic' misnomer?
Below, the Dragonlords called their troops to order, a small tide of men pouring out of the barracks in Nellens blue and grey, manning the walls of Luseng with crossbow and spear. Ulyssian stepped down from the Gate Tower and met Dragonlord Talomar on the walls. The Dragonlord was grim, now, his dark blue hair soaked through with sweat; not at all like the haphazard, vaguely innocent man Ulyssian had encountered on the harbor docks. He'd been chewing a bun between breaths then, apologizing for his rudeness while maintaining that a soldier needed to eat to optimize performance. Ulyssian was all about forgoing social niceties to optimize performance, so it was hardly a black mark in his eyes.
"They've got us outnumbered," Talomar shook his head, tugging his beard worriedly. "And outmaneuvered, too. Your orders were clear, and the soldiers seemed to take to them well, but... this Iron Sislay, he's fought Exalted generals before. Tangled with our commander quite a few times, in skirmishes, and came out on top more often than not. His positioning counters our walls too well."
"I will take the field," Ulyssian cut in, "tell the soldiers that they are to fire on me with no concern, so long as they strike the enemy as well."
"...What?" Talomar asked, shaking his head as if in disbelief. "Sir, we've got-"
A few soldiers turned to look at them, drawn by Talomar's outburst.
Ulyssian held up a hand. "Dragonlord, they're moving quickly. We don't have time, so let me finish my instructions. Tell the other Dragonlords that they are not to rescue me under any circumstances, even if it looks like I will fall. The Exalted are to hold the wall at all costs. Accelerate the migration of the refugees into the city proper. Deploy a half-wing of Legionnaires and a dragon of militia into the Blue-Light District to facilitate refugee placement into those streets. Place the Shikari alongside the troops at the Central Gate. They are to intercept and delay the behemoths if any wander too close. Otherwise, I leave the tactical decision-making to the discretion of individual Dragonlords. Am I clear?"
"Yes, sir." Talomar said, crisply but not without hesitation.
Ulyssian gave him a nod. "Iron Sislay may have been the better general this day, but we will show him who the better warriors are. Dismissed."
Above, the sun beat down on the Satrapy of Luseng - its rustling verdure, its shimmering, white-capped peaks. The air was clean and chill, despite the filth of the once-beautiful city, and the festering swarm before it. Sesus Ulyssian climbed to the top of the Gate Tower, until he was nearly at-height with Duke Iron Sislay, and called forth his blade.
The booming of drums came from the Hobgoblin host, a tidal wave of sound that rushed over them, unsettled the stomach and rattled the bones. Ulyssian stood unblinking as the tension built, as the air grew thick with hate and murderous intent, and as the scarlet-clad Cataphracts raised their swords, as they opened their mouths to bellow the charge-
He struck.
In a single blinding arc he vaulted from the Gate-Tower, a sword plunging through heedless sky to land embedded in the spider-behemoth. It shuddered beneath him, cracks rippling through it like the webs of its lesser kin, and made to shriek, but its movements were too slow, and he was already moving, dashing forward, blade drawn to thrust and cut. The Raksha Duke met him on that battlefield, the behemoth's flesh like a lake frozen over, their reflections rippling across its surface, a hundred times in a ringing second.
That was the exchange, orichalcum against steel, and as it progressed it became overwhelmingly clear that mere generalship would not protect Iron Sislay from Odyssial's Ambition. The sword like a scythe fell, and the space in which Sislay could move became ever more constrained. He panted, arrogance leeching from his features, even as he grinned at Ulyssian. Between sword-strokes he spoke, and his voice was a mocking caricature of Ulyssian's own.
"Tell the soldiers that they are to fire upon me with no concern, so long as the enemy is struck! Hm... I like it." The grin turned savage as reality twisted, and then came the arrows.
The Cataphracts, milling about the legs of the spider-beast, their bows of lucite and golden wood launching curdled dreams. Arrows that passed like ghost-fire through the Duke of Sislay, even as they sought Ulyssian ferociously. But his blade was swift, and around him its blurring afterimages built a nimbus like a porcupine's hedge. He turned aside their countless arrows while maintaining his assault, and then the Duke began to despair.
The other behemoth struck next, its fists like falling hills, glowing dull-red like iron from the forge, but with a complexion somewhere between mottled flesh and mottled stone. Its blows were ponderous, though, and easily read; Odyssial stepped between them unconcerned. Splotches of blood began to mar the Duke as his defense was systematically dismantled. Before Ulyssian's onslaught, his limbs and blades were slowly pushed into a helpless configuration, like an unruly constellation facing the judgement of the Sun.
Then came the hobgoblins and their feral slings, a skyward avalanche that blotted out the sky, but Ulyssian moved like a dancer between raindrops, the incident arcs of his sword sufficient to ward off that assault. A few struck glancing blows, for there was simply no room to evade them all, but the Storm Armor rebuffed them with effortless contempt.
"This is what your army amounts to," said Odyssial. "Duke of Raksha, did you have enough men?"
Sislay said nothing, for a final time lashing out, his blade shooting forward with unnatural speed, pulled through reality as if by a vigorous current. Odyssial parried the blow, spinning with the force; the tremendous power behind it cratered the glass beneath him. Ambition glowed as if in response, shining bright and brighter, a light which eclipsed the sun but devoid of heat, of warmth. As he completed his rotation it seemed to grow heavier, shearing through the air like a blade-shaped meteor. As he struck, it fell like a world descending, the air cracking and splintering around it, as if reality had burst a seam. Straight through Sislay's armor it fell, that plate of oath-bound gossamer and solid nightmare; straight through his neck, and down, into the beast below him, the spider-behemoth larger than a city district.
The juddering, shivering force of that blow traveled in harmonic currents through the beast, in great shard-ripping waves, and it keened one final exhalation, which pierced the ear like a sudden knife, before shattering - not into fragments, but into blades.
No accidental explosion was this. It was killing power morphed into a pulsing wave, sent hurtling through a medium that could not contain it: that, indeed, shifted to transmit it.
Blades rained down upon the Cataphracts below, and the hobgoblins around them; blades of crystal that sang the hymn of morning, a hundred thousand fangs disgorged from the disintegrating corpse of the behemoth as it fell. Great sickles of glass scythed into the other behemoth, slicing its flesh like the layers of a cake, and from its interior, lava boiled out in hissing goops and streams. Ambition blazed like a bar of sunfire, emitting resonant waves, a light which seemed to cut through eyelid and skull to strike at the naked soul.
Duke Iron Sislay's head tumbled down, blackening to ash in the light of that blade, and the hobgoblins broke.
Samāpta, they whispered in terror, as they fled. Always the story ends. It had not always been so, but that was the law now, in Creation or out of it.
But Ulyssian was not looking at them. The lava behemoth, which trembled and staggered under the colossal weight of its wounds, now leaked unending gallons of boiling stone towards the city. Stumbling about, it emitted low groans of agony, and the disbelieving exultations of the Legion died in their throats, as a steadily rising tide of lava crept towards Luseng.
---
You are not particularly suited to managing this type of incident. Unchecked, this behemoth will succeed where all its minders failed.
[ ] Organized Containment - It's too risky to kill the monster and let it potentially explode, so a Dragon-Blooded force will be sent to harry it, containing it within specified bounds as it continues to bleed out. Using Crowned by Metis, you will organize efficient evacuation and combat-engineering teams. Earth and Water aspects can build furrows to guide the lava flows across specific channels. Time is limited, so you'll have to sacrifice a fraction of the city to the burn, but if you do well, you can minimize lives lost. However, you will have to openly use Crowned by Metis, which could draw undue attention. Especially given your recent, distinctly un-DB-esque performance in battle.
[ ] Attempt to Master It - Though you have no instinct for controlling beasts, the thing seems to rightly fear Ambition's edge as one of the few weapons capable of devastating it. It's incredibly risky, but with Crowned by Metis, you can try to master the beast, as it was tamed by the Fae. Perhaps it can be somehow convinced to close up its wounds, or at least move away from Luseng. The Dragon-Blooded will have to deal with the tide of lava on their own, but the potential gains are, you feel, well worth it.
[ ] Drive it Away - Rather than risking open usage of the Metis, you could simply attack it more, hopefully forcing it to run away from Luseng. Though this will undoubtedly leave a trail of burning devastating in its wake, if you are swift about it, you could minimize damage (relatively), getting it to a safe distance before you put it down.
[ ] Write-in: A large effectiveness bonus for write-ins and stunts.
