XLVIII. Leafy Treasures
You don't sleep well. Not when your body is still humming with energy from the flight from the demons, and not when you're in an unfamiliar place with the scratching of a demon lord coming from behind the door.
Not when the scratching gnaws its way into your dreams. There is a woman there, an old crone with her right eye covered by an eyepatch, dressed in rags and tatters. And there's a rat too, the size of a dog, with its left eye normal and its right milky white. She - for the rat and the woman are one - want something. But you've walked the wyldwoods of the world where weird things wander into one's sleep with ease, and you drive those things away, rising up into shallow dreamless semi-rest.
All things considered, therefore, it is quite natural for you to be sleep-deprived and exhausted when you wake at sunrise.
Zed is already awake and as bright-eyed as a man who seems born with bags under his eyes can be. Like an utter bastard. He hasn't even made you breakfast. So instead dry crackers, cheese, date jam and resinous Cahzori wine serve as your repast. Over your meal, you keep your eyes on him. And not for the reason you'd prefer to be keeping your eyes on him. Your suspicion of him just - barely - outweighs your attraction. Oh, you want the secrets he holds. You want the lore that this god surely knows. And you wish you didn't have the nagging suspicion that his air of mystery hides other things below it.
Just to be sure, you inspect his flower-shape. But there's no trace of anything untoward in his divine irises. And maybe that's part of why you're suspicious of this godling with his floppy grey hair and lean body and deep dark eyes and a physique of a swimmer - and right now he's only wearing that short, short kilt so you can admire it all.
Okay maybe you also wanted an excuse to look at him, but in reality you're more interested in his mind than his body. Not that you're
uninterested in his body. But you're just not sure if you can trust him.
But you're in too deep to back out now. "I'm interested," you say to him. "Let's talk the terms of our pact, and what you want me to do - and what sureties you'll give me of your word."
He scoops back his hair, and a hint of eagerness wars with his usual quiet lassitude. "Oh, thank the gods," he says. "I was afeared that I'd be losing my only chance to see this evil put to rest."
Only chance. Yes, it's a good thing you didn't tell him about Haldun Farran outside. "Why don't you tell me what's holding the spellwall in place, and what you need me to do. Because I'm just one woman, and I'm not interested in dying."
"I can do more than tell you. I have the old notes from the sorcerers who wrought this in the first place - and I will grant you a copy freely as proof of my bona fides."
Hot damn. If you were to flee this place now, notes on an old working like this - and one so powerful as to safeguard this place for generations - nearly makes this whole palaver worth it. And you know he's trying to buy your favour with such a generous gift.
It's working, too. But there's one thing you need more than that.
"Okay, darling, it's too early in the morning and I didn't sleep well enough to be up for reading sorcerous notes," you say. You run your hands through your hair. "Do you have a bath here - or a shower, or something? I need to wake myself up and clean myself. For… sacred reasons, if I'm going to be practicing magic."
Joy of joys, he does. It's not much, a divine reflection of one of the ponds which once existed in the inner gardens but are now choked with wyldwood, but you can strip down and wash away the awful smell of the basement level and the fear-sweat of your desperate flight from the demons. And now you don't have the nagging discomfort of
you're not clean pushing at the back of your head.
Washed and with your black hair hanging damply around you as it dries in the morning warmth, you make your re-appearance. You feel much more human. It's almost enough to banish the tiredness of your haunted dreams. And of course...
"Well?" you say, posing for him. You've washed and hung up your inner layers and so while they dry you only really have your overcoat, belted loosely around you for modesty.
His eyes dance between your neckline and your bare legs. "Such is the nature of an exchange; to gain one thing and lose another," is what he says.
"... I beg your pardon?"
He lets out a melancholy sigh, as if having to be anything other than wilfully obtuse is personally offensive. "You are clean, but now I have to worry about your wet hair damaging my books."
He's playing sullen, but you're pretty sure you've had an effect. At the very least, he might be slightly distracted in negotiations if he's coming off a dry spell of a century.
The notes he has for you are fascinating. So much knowledge; so dense, so beautiful in its crafted elegance. You are in awe of the minds that devised this spellwall. It is a cultivated, living thing; an evocation of Creation itself, telling a vibrant spell-tale of the genesis of the world in the coils of the Dragons and how it stands firm in the face of wickedness. So too does this spell-wall stand - not eternal, like the world itself, but it has withstood a long time with no one to tend to it in the face of Cahzor and its wyldstorms.
Oh, to think what spells you could weave with this! With the right aids to anchor such a working and an exorbitant amount of wealth, you could make a fortress that stands against the madness born on the wind, which can raise walls of fire or biting thorns to devour any invader. If only you had such wisdom at your disposal, you would no doubt have made the Odat fortress impregnable!
Well, in theory. Your fingers tap on the table. Impregnability would be ludicrously expensive and you've never had the kind of money that they spent on this place. Part of being old Cheraki aristocracy is never actually having much money compared to those bastards from so-called Great Houses because all your theoretical wealth is tied up in ancient land that no one with any trace of morality would ever think of mortgaging to those Ragara blue-blooded assholes who lurk like wolves to go after anyone who shows a trace of weakness. But still! You could definitely have made it less pregnable.
And the ones who built this place didn't have the wealth to make it truly invulnerable. Oh, you spend the morning studying the notes, and you can't actually find a way to break it from the outside. Tsulur's Third Dictat states that there must be one, but you can't find it. But from the inside, the flow of the quasi-planar nature of the Creation facsimile imposes certain weaknesses on it.
"Three elements will shatter it completely and cleanly," you conclude, doodling in the corner of the notes you're making. "As long as the third one to be removed is Earth; anchoring, stability, wholeness. Wood will be something I can handle so I can start with that. There's ritual instructions here that should let any child of Sextes Jylis remove that node. And Wood cleanses Air, so if I move onto Air next, it will be weakened by the removal of Wood such that it shouldn't be
so risky. Somewhat risky, yes. But manageable."
Well, okay, you're not just thinking about the classic cycle of elements, though you do think that'll make it safer and less painful for you. You strongly suspect that the elements that remain might get shattered when the spellwall breaks, and Air is associated with coldness and clarity of mind. Things there are not much of in Cahzor. It is your desperate hope that the anchor of Air will have been infused with enough of its nature that you can keep it and use it to cool yourself.
You'd like to go for Water, but you can't; Water leads onto Wood in the Reinforcing Cycle, so it'll be least affected by the removal of Wood.
Zed looks up from the handwritten book he's reading. "Excuse me?"
Typical! He wasn't paying attention! You explain your analysis again, and he nods.
"And you are sure?"
"All knowledge requires some risk," you say, with a one-shouldered shrug. "But given that it's my skin at risk, I believe it's acceptable. Now, let's talk about the terms."
He sighs, pulling himself to his lanky feet like a handsomely deshabile scarecrow. "With the spell-wall down, I will have ended my purpose here, fulfilling the spirit of my duties. You are a prince of the earth, and once I was a guardian spirit to a jansi house. They are gone, but a fallen archway can be re-built. And an arch requires a keystone."
"I want the anchors of the spellwall, and whatever sorcerous lore the Elemi gathered." It's blunt, but you have him in a bind.
"If they survive, you are welcome to them. As for the lore - well, if I am to be your patron, I will make what I have available to you."
"Wonderful," you purr. "Now, paper and ink. Let's just get this contract signed. With all the proper terms and surety, of course."
You are delightfully smug as you set off under the heat of the early-afternoon sun. You now have the contract you need for your spell, as soon as you fulfil your side of the bargain. You're safe here from the demons and the forces of the wyld, for the burning sun is enough to discomfort you - let alone the creatures of wickedness who shun his sight.
The Wood-aligned node of the spellwall is easy to find. It's located in a little open-aired shrine on the eastern side of the compound. You don't even need to follow the phantasmal wildflowers to see it. There are real wildflowers forcing their way up between the heat-cracked paving tiles. They thrive in the little shaded niches in the wall where early-morning moisture condenses and drips down, and in the holes where once ceiling timbers sat to hold up the roof. Hell, you could find this place with your eyes just by following the delicate perfume that rises above the stink of the stagnant basement, the acrid smell of hot pine resin, and the dryness of sun-heated rock.
There are demons stationed around it. Or, rather, things that were once demons. Their flesh has become wood, their fur grass, and their heads have split open as trees sprout from the nut of their skulls. Some are relatively fresh, new enough that you can still see the shape of their bodies. Others are so old that you can only guess that they must have once been other than they are now from their position at the edge of the mass of phantasmal wildflowers.
The force of elemental wood reaches out, and brushes against you. It holds you, knows you, lets you pass through with nothing more than a slight edge of nausea as the contents of your stomach churn.
Your eyes gleam at the sight of the dragon statue at the centre of the plinth. It is the rich green of leaves seen from below; a gentle colour that's warm and soft and dappled with countless slightly different shades. Interestingly, it looks more like a fire-aligned elemental dragon in some of its proportions, suggesting that the long-ago artisan did not have a wood dragon to work from. It is about a cubit from nose to tail, wrapped in a cave of flowering desert plants.
"It is beautiful, is it not?" Zed says softly, standing back behind the ring of demons.
"Oh yes," you agree. "So very beautiful." A statue of that size carved from pure green jade is worth a
fortune. Enough to cover your debts. If you were to sell it. Maybe you won't. It must have been mystically potent to start with to anchor a spellwall for a century and more, and to have remained here all this time soaking in the power of Sextes Jylis will have only strengthened it. You tap your fingertips together lightly, imagining what wealth you'll have when you get all five of the anchoring statues. More wealth than is in Cahzor. You'll need to get it out of the city, to Gem. That city might be rich enough that you can sell one or two of them without beggaring the ruler.
Rocking back and forwards on your heels, you feel the heat of the sun-based stone seeping up through your boots. For all your confidence, here in person this is terrifying. Such power passing through this anchoring node. And you have to touch your bare hands to it. It needs to know you, to taste you as a child of Sextes Jylis.
Zed says nothing, of course. He must know patience. And for all his reassurances, he has been here a very long time. Your stomach churns - from the wood nature, of course, but also from the worry that maybe other people have tried to break it and paid the price for it.
But on the other hand, it's so beautiful and so precious! How can you resist it?
With ease, as it so happens. You're not the kind of person who would grab something just because you want it, no matter what anyone else says. You are careful and calculated and willing to spend three… two… at least an hour under this awfully hot sun, examining the working and what was done with it and how it's changed from the notes.
Your conclusion is that it is mostly holding, though you can see the patches and the holes in the ancient magic. There are places in the tangled thicket of phantasmal flowers where, as you examine it closely, you can see holes large enough to poke a hand through. Gingerly you poke a finger through, and feel nothing. Fortunately it is not because it has clearly taken your finger, too.
Only once you feel sure do you retreat to strip down. The instructions are very clear. The wood aspect doing this should be dressed in purified, blessed robes that are made only from plant fibres and have been ritually cleansed of all other aspects. You… don't have any of those garments, and Zed says they rotted to mulch decades ago. Your clothing has been stained by the wyld-polluted waters of the basement layer and you don't want to give the elemental wood here anything to latch onto. It might not scourge your flesh, but if it lashes out with barbed thorns at your boots or trousers, it'll still make a mess of you. Nudity will have to do, because your body is saturated with the nature of wood. Sitting under the shadow of the little shrine, you kneel down, palms on your thighs, and try to ignore the scorching heat around you. Gods, if you get sunburnt doing this, it will be deeply unpleasant.
When you have cleared your mind, you rise. "Dragon of Wood," you begin, reciting the old lines from the notes. "Your time here is done. I, a pure-born daughter of Sextes Jylis, have come to free you from your unceasing duties. Rest, dragon-guardian of this place." A breath, and you reach out and prick your finger on the dragon's teeth. "Know my blood, and know my birthright," you say. And maybe think a prayer
very very hard.
Zed is waiting for you as you stagger past the tree line, the dragon held in both hands. He must have seen the flash of green light.
"The dragon did not bite?" he asks, one brow raised.
"Oh, actually it was remarkably easy," you say wryly. "Everything went exactly as planned. The old spells knew me as a child of Sextes Jylis, and let me remove this," you heft the statue up slightly, "this pretty boy with me. I was afraid something would have succumbed to rot and it wouldn't have known me. Nope. No worries."
"Then that is good," he says, eyes lingering on the dragon, or maybe what's behind it. "But we are but one third done. And one third of victory is no victory."
He's not wrong, but you feel he's rather letting down the side with his depressing aphorisms. "Well, we used to have a whole not-a-victory, but now we only have two-thirds of a not-of-victory," you point out.
"Only the foolish look at a boulder and call it a pebble."
You just cannot. Not right now. You're going to have to get used to his depressing, fatalistic ways in time, but you'd rather not do it when you're elated from victory. He should be admiring your genius and your everything else, not gloomily looking at how much you have left to do.
Especially when he's not exactly wrong. This
is going to be a problem. The authorised way of shutting down the air-aspected shrine is not going to work, because you don't have a child of Mela to hand. And-
Zed is in front of you, his slim runner's build so close you can feel the lack of body heat that you'd get off a human. "But it is the way of the ungrateful prisoner to condemn the polish of the key," he observes, leaning in to kiss you on the brow. His lips are soft, and cool against your sun-heated head. You're suddenly aware that you're still naked and that you're sweaty all over from your time outside. You meet his dark eyes, and stare at the stars that swirl inside "I have waited for a woman like you for so very long," he says, leaning in to
almost kiss you on the lips, his forehead against yours. "Even a dragon child such as you would not understand the time I have waited for the daughter of Sextes Jylis who would free me from this endless duty."
Of course you like a
fucking idiot ruin the moment by dropping the statue and then you have to both leap away to avoid someone ending up with a broken foot and the moment passes and
fuck fuck fuck. How dare he be that hot? And so able to say such things like they're dark secrets rolling off his lips?
And how dare he be like that when you don't exactly trust him. Not when he's been here for so long, all alone, in a demon-infested and chaos-polluted jail.
"Well, uh, hmm." You lick your lips, still tasting his breath. "I'll go get. Um. Dressed. And we can at least take a look at the air-aligned place." Wait. What kind of weak bullshit was that? You should- "Unless you want to give me another reward right now because… and you're already walking off towards the northern shrine." Yes! Fine! Go ahead! Do that!
You take a moment of meditation to clear your head, because the truth is, no, there was a moment there when the green light flashed and you felt the pressure of a forest upon your head that you were stone-cold terrified. It's just as well you relieved yourself before you came here, and if you'd been wearing the wyld-stained clothing you know the dragon would have lashed out and maybe torn you in two. You don't want to look weak in front of him. But you really could do with someone to hold you and tell you that you were very brave. It's not even that you desperately want to lie with him right now. You just want someone's arms around you.
Dragons, you wish you had Blue and Amigere in here with you. Zed just isn't the same. You… you don't feel
safe around him. Amigere is safe. While Blue isn't safe, he's also an idiot and that makes the way he's a danger to you very predictable and easy to avoid. But Zed is smart, Zed is unknown, and Zed is… cold.
While also having an
excellent ass, you do note as you watch his retreating figure. Damn.
Dressed and with your precious precious statue moved to a safe place where no hateful demons will lay their filthy hands on it, you head on to the northern shrine. It is just too damn hot. The stone is baked, and heat-hazes hang heavy over the rocks of the structure. The air itself hurts to breathe for too long.
And yet there is ice on the outside of the shrine structure here. Ice, under the sweltering sun, hoarfrost from what little moisture there is in the air touching the structure and freezing solid. There are no pretty trees here. There are only bones, and as you squat down to examine them you notice the characteristic pattern of cracking caused by many, many freezings and thawings.
"Interesting," you murmur. "Air was always weaker here. Or less constant. Probably because it was opposed by fire, which is strong. It fluctuates. Sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker - and from the fact it's still too damn hot its area of influence was stronger once. Maybe it's a yearly thing. I'd expect Air to be stronger in… well, Air."
"That is right," Zed says, from behind you. He's keeping well back. "Air chokes as fires are fanned."
You watch a bead of water runs down the hoarfrost. With a clatter some of it gives way, falling down to the hot stone and immediately sizzling into nothing. The phantasmal mountain flowers are flickering, and some wilt, no longer fed by the vital nature of wood.
"Like I said," you declare confidently. "By removing the wood-aligned node, we have weakened the Air here. The whole spellwall has been lessened by the removal of the Wood-aligned aspect from the Creation facsimile."
"The great work of Creation nearly collapsed when Wood detached during the great plague and invasion of the dream locusts," Zed says, shielded by his parasol. "Waking nearly awoke to find it was a dream."
Your eyes widen. "You
must tell me more about that."
"Later."
"Oh, indeed." Inside, you want to dance for joy. That was spoken as if he had first hand experience. So little is known about exactly what happened in the twin cataclysms that ended the mighty Shogunate.
But later is the right choice. You're not aspected to the element of air. You can't disable it with the described safe ritual. Although there was the other one...
The anchor of the power of Mela will not be so easy. You can see this immediately. You'd say that it makes a chill run down the back of your neck, but actually the chill is being caused by the mass of air essence that drops the temperature and has left the shrine building worn down by what looks like uncounted years of desert gales. Reaching out you touch the exterior wall of the building with the back of your hand, and yelp as the cold burns.
"Tch," you mutter.
You're going to have to get creative.
Well, that was quite a delay, wasn't it? Blame... well, several things. But right now we can thank
@mothematics for giving me the kick in the ass to get this done, as well as general "thinking more about Exalted" from the Exalted Essence kickstarter stuff.
Anyway, to the vote!
How Does Rena Try to disable the Air Node of the Spellwall?
[ ]
Break It - Rena knows Death of Purple Irises. Cause enough damage to the local geomancy, and she might be able to cause the energies to vent rather than be contained. It'll be
reliable but
risk destroying the precious anchor.
[ ]
Drain It - It's already weakening, and every time it has to lash out at something approaching it, it'll be using power that Wood can't replenish. And there are demons here to use as soul-servitor fodder. It'll be
safe, but
shows Zed she's a soulthief.
[ ]
Try The Risky Ritual - There's a method described there, for a more… unorthodox shutdown of elements of the spell wall which is only meant to be done in emergencies. There was lots of red text warning about how that shutdown isn't safe. But it'll be
fast even if it
puts Rena in peril.
