You are Aster na Nuri, a farm girl born outside the Scarlet Realm-controlled city of Greyfalls. Many calamities are about to befall your homeland -- unfortunately, one of them is arguably you.
Flowing Grasp Province, the Old Realm,
770 years ago,
The death rattle of the Shogunate
The world is dead. No birds sing in the trees, no fish swim in the water, no deer drink at the shoreline. The plants have turned to dust in the soil, whole trees shriveling and blackening almost before the eye. Even the flies are gone, despite the abundance of dead meat to be feasted on. Humans and beasts and spirits — from the lowliest insect to mighty Exalts and gods — none have been spared by the illness that's torn through the land. Corpses float down the course of the great Silver River, or lay sprawled in the riverside towns and farms that have become their open-air tombs. The dead refuse even to rot, no matter how hot the sun beats overhead, as though all of nature has sickened and died at once. They just lay there, green-tinged, wide-eyed, bodies still twisted in their final moments of agony.
The boat clans were lucky. It's not that they're less susceptible to the Contagion than anyone else, but the water kept them isolated as the farmers all perished. They had been Isolated, insular, moving from place to place in little canoe flotillas, plying what minor trade they could with Flowing Grasp's wealthier permanent settlements. They had nearly been wiped out as well, of course, but at the end of the day, they just hadn't been packed in quite so tightly.
Sometimes, as the girl stares out at what had once been lush and green, gripping the icon of a river god who she does not yet know is dead, she wonders if it's been any kind of a mercy for her group to live this long at all, to dwindle from resurgences of the plague, or slowly starve, or fall prey to the things that stalk the shore. Wouldn't it have been better to be dead already? Like her parents, her siblings, nearly everyone she'd ever known before this began. Giving up is easy, though. The girl has never settled for easy.
Her companions now are the sad remnants of at least three boat clans, maybe more. Accepting new members is dangerous, of course — each new addition might bring on another wave of sickness and death — but who could have turned them away, when they're all seemingly the only humans left alive in a world that belonged to the corpses and the monsters?
"It's a risk."
The girl sighs. "Of course it's a risk. What isn't?" She doesn't look at the man who's leaning in to confer with her, even as she kneels to take her turn at paddling the boat they're both using. "We have no food. It's this, or eat the dead fish from the river. And we've seen how that ends."
He frowns, staring ahead at the town in the distance, its rooftops peaking up above the withered treeline. "Are we sure we're staying ahead of the fair folk?"
"Yes," the girl lied. She didn't claim to comprehend the ways monsters like that could travel. Assurances were pleasant noise to calm people down, not the truth. "We'll be there an hour, find a few bags of grain. It's not as though there are rats to have eaten them."
The man looks deeply unconvinced, but in the end, he can't argue. They are starving. Thirty years her senior, weathered where she's young, he and the girl make an odd pair. They're in charge because they took charge, with all the clan elders long dead and many frightened sets of eyes looking to someone, anyone, to make the hard decisions. It's his job to worry, the girl's job to do. "Be careful," he said. "Gods keep you safe."
"If they can anymore," the girl says. It's meant to be lighthearted, but it doesn't come out that way.
==========
The silence is its own kind of horror. This had been a place of life, once. A place of noise and bustle, more people than a younger version of the girl had been able to comprehend, each going their own way on unknowable, townsfolk errands. Many of those people are still strewn in the street, where they'd fallen once there had no longer been anyone else to care for their bodies. Like all such sites, this place will be rife for hungry ghosts come nightfall. With the noon sun high overhead, they're the least of her worries.
"Fan out, look for anything non-perishable. Don't take anything any of the dead are touching." It's almost more for their peace of mind, than for anything more substantial. Like the cloths tied over their noses and mouths, soaked in an infusion of herbs meant to drive away evil spirits. Whatever spirits are the cause of the illness, they didn't fear such paltry measures.
She picks her way carefully through the vacant streets, avoiding one house with a corpse laying sprawled out directly before its front door, crossing to another that strikes her, irrationally, as likely. It hadn't been the home of the rich, but it's comparatively well-maintained nonetheless, even after all this time abandoned. The walls are painted a deep, warm brown, with the sad remains of a once beloved garden out front. The door hangs ajar, and the girl nudges it open with a booted foot.
Inside, she sees a group of motionless forms huddled in one corner, trying and failing to ignore how small some of them are, eyes scanning for what she's truly here for. She feels a surge of hope as she actually spies it: A large, half-full sack, dried corn barely visible through its open mouth. She takes a careful step into the building, careful to touch nothing but what she needs. Before she reaches what she's looking for, she hears the scream:
"Hobgoblins! Back to the boats! Hobgob—" The member of her shore-party, whichever one it was, dies then, his warning delivered. He does not die slowly, or well.
The girl forgets the grain, leaves the building, and breaks out into a headlong run for the shoreline.One hand hovers at the knife on her belt. It's cold iron, but she has neither the skill nor the stamina to make that count for a group of these monsters: they always hunt in packs. She's young and had once been both strong and healthy, but long months of little food have hollowed her out, left her a shell of herself. As she nears the waterfront, her vision is already swimming, her breath stinging in her lungs, her legs on fire.
Two fleeing figures come around a corner ahead of her. Before she can reach them, call to them, a dark shape leaps out from behind them. A slimy, frog-like horror made of teeth and claws, both of which it sets into the back of the screaming woman it falls upon. The girl doesn't even think, doesn't consider hiding or using the woman's unlucky fate as a distraction to get to safety. She draws her small knife, and with a wordless battle cry, half-charges, half topples on top of the hobgoblin, plunging her small blade into it again and again and again.
The beast lets out a shuddering, croaking cry, spasms, swipes at her with webbed talons. Then falls over, as dead as the woman it had been savaging a moment before. The girl sways in place, narrowly avoiding following it as she gets to her feet. Her gaze falls upon the second human figure.
A child, painfully thin, pale-eyed and pale-haired, staring up at the girl with uncomprehending terror. The girl doesn't have a moment to consider whether she knows this child, whether they came from her group or anywhere else, when she hears hideous, croaking laughter coming their way from the direction she'd been running in. With the hand not holding onto the knife, the girl seizes the child's hand, and runs down a side alley, throwing down first the child and then herself behind a large rain barrel.
They hear the creatures scamper past, laughing as they go. More screams in the distance. The child trembles against the girl's side, as she draws them closer against her, a faint whimper coming from their throat.
"Shh," she whispers, stroking pale hair. Remarkably pale, for anyone but the very old. The only time she's seen the like, as opposed to the mottled black-green of her own people, was a brief glimpse she'd once caught of the daimyo's eldest daughter, who had been blessed by the gifts of Mela. "Shh. We're safe for now."
The child stares up at her with large, grey eyes and an unmasked face. Their voice is equally quiet when they ask: "What are we going to do?"
"We'll wait for the right moment, then get back to the river. Back to the boats." The boats that, if the others had any sense at all, would be long gone.
"What if they're not there?" the child asks.
"We'll find them again. We'll do whatever we have to. We can't stay here, this is only the leading edge of the horde." The girl isn't above lying to a child, but it doesn't do to hide everything from them. These creatures are merely peons, near-mindless, forging ahead of the main host, that vast and merciless fair folk army that had descended on the world in the wake of the Contagion.
The child gives her a strangely searching look. "How long can you keep going on like this?"
The girl is taken aback by how much this question disarms her. "... as long as I need to," she says. "Forever, if I have to. As long as even one of my people needs me." There's a long, quiet moment of huddling there in silence with this strange child. There's something hollow, verging on broken in her voice as she admits: "But I'm not... strong enough for this."
The child shifts around, laying one tiny hand on the girl's shoulder. The fear they'd been displaying earlier is gone, and the small smile they give the girl now seems to belong to someone far older and more worldly. "You are strong enough, but you will be stronger still," they say.
The girl stares back. "What?" she asks.
"Your road will be a hard one," the child continues. It's physically difficult to look away from their eyes. How had the girl ever thought that they were grey? The child's eyes are deep, piercing silver. "Not everyone will want your protection, or deserve it. But you will have the power to grant it to those who you will." The child repositions themself, placing a hand on either side of the paralysed girl's face. "Winter Jasmine," they say, "from this day until your last, you are Chosen."
There's a glow about the two of them, now. A soft, silver light that slowly builds in intensity, filling the girl up like an empty vessel flung into a raging river. She doesn't feel weak from hunger anymore, or spent from running — these mortal weaknesses are replaced by a boundless, uncontainable energy, accompanied by an overriding sense of elation wholly inappropriate to her situation.
The child smiles one last time, pulls away from her, and is gone. Jasmine never sees them again.
The hobgoblins saw the glow first. They didn't see the girl until she was standing in their midst, holding one of their number's severed head, a savage grin stretching from ear to ear. The monsters cringe back from the Celestial radiance of this foe who feels no fear, this young woman wreathed in chaotic, twisting spiderwebs of silver light that soar up to the sky. Winter Jasmine laughs as she kills them.
==========
She's still faintly glowing when she catches up to the boats, running along the riverbank faster than she's ever moved in her life, catching up with them inside of an hour. She'd expected some degree of relief or astonishment at her miraculous survival. What she gets instead, however, leaping out of the water and onto the little island the boats are moored at, is nothing less than shock and horror.
Whether or not she'd killed the hobgoblins, she was Anathema, as plain as the silver mark branded onto her forehead. A monster in her own right. An eater of hearts, stealer of faces, worker of darkest magic.
This could have been overcome, perhaps. People will get used to a lot, when they're dependent on someone for basic protection. Jasmine, however, simply can't take the way they look at her: she flees, and never appears before them again. For years, however, she stalks the group, solving their problems from a distance, eliminating threats, guiding their way in whatever guise is necessary. Until one day, at long last, the Sword of Creation seems to rend the very heavens, scouring the fair folk back to the far reaches of the world.
She leaves them all then, heading East through the still-ravaged forest, searching for something, a basic need that she couldn't have articulated to anyone. To this day, she's only ever found it fleetingly.
Kovental, protectorate of the Lap,
Decades ago,
A fond farewell
Lucky Stone's mother had told her not to dawdle after her errands in town — she isn't even a little sorry not to have listened, considering what she found there. "You're really going to leave today?" she asks, narrow shoulders slumping.
"I am. Sorry, Farm Girl! You knew this was just until father's business dealings were all finished." Wending Stream gives her that same smile that had first turned Stone's legs to jelly from across the street. It had only been two weeks ago, which felt both like an eternity, and no time at all.
"Yeah, but I didn't..." Stone trails off, and Wend gives a small giggle. Wend's laugh is like her smile, a crack in the courteous facade she presents to most of the world. Now, with Wend sitting so close, with her dark eyes dancing as she looks at Stone, it seems impossible that she could ever have seemed the good, buttoned up Tengese girl she had at first glance.
"I'll miss you too," Wend tells her, and then brushes a kiss against Stone's cheek. She smiles even more as Stone's face heats. "But this was only ever going to be for a little while. We had fun, but mother has a very boring boy for me to marry back home. And you have your goats."
"Ha ha," says Stone, voice flat. A sinking feeling has lodged in her gut, and it won't leave. She had known that this could never be forever, but still... a beautiful girl had taken an interest in her, foreign enough to seem exotic. At seventeen, she's only a year older than Stone, but Wend still seems so much more worldly and sophisticated, with stories of Chiaroscuro and Paragon and her own strange homeland. With a graceful, delicate frame and eyes the deepest, warmest brown Stone has ever seen. Stone hadn't even been sure that a girl was what she wanted before that first kiss.
Wend perches demurely on the back of the last of her father's wagons, her head higher than Stone's from this position. They're both enjoying the shade cast by the wagon's covered top and the roof of the trade house it stands beside. Kovental's elevation makes it cooler than its immediate neighbours, but this is still the South, and the sun is unforgiving. Here, they have a modicum of privacy. The sounds of the town are muffled and rendered artificially distant by the wagon's bulk, and Stone can pretend one last time that they're in a little world all their own.
"Are you sure you're fine with this marriage thing?" Stone asks. "You said you don't even like boys."
Wend laughs, clear and delicate. "What's that got to do with anything? I'm the only daughter, so I'll be inheriting all the land from mother. I need someone to go traipsing across the Direction doing the buying and selling while I manage business at home. And there will be children to think of, eventually. No, I'm quite pleased to have a boring, reliable boy to handle those parts! While I look...elsewhere for my pleasure." Wend's hand cups Stone's cheek, and, feeling Stone's face heat, she laughs again. "You're so uncomfortable! Foreign girls are adorable."
"I'm from here!" Stone splutters. "You're the foreigner!" This only makes Wend laugh harder.
Stone's sulking is only allowed to last a few more seconds: Wend leans in, grips the back of her head, and kisses her full on the mouth. Stone quickly forgets why she was annoyed and even, for a short time, why she was sad.
That time ends when the cry goes up for the caravan to leave, and Wend is pulled away from her by the cart lurching forward. "Bye, Farm Girl!" she calls, flashing Stone one last smile before she carefully arranges the skirt of her dress, and retreats back into the shade of the wagon. Stone is left standing there alone, staring after her. After a few moments, Stone sighs, picks up her bundle of errands, and goes on her way, the lingering sensation of Wend's lips fading quicker than the scent of perfume in her nose.
As she goes to find Happy, she catches sight of one face in the small crowd who is watching her, rather than the departing caravan. Pale Cloud is glaring at Stone as if she's stolen something that was rightfully his. A handsome boy from a wealthy town family, who had of course set his sights on a beautiful foreign girl. Wend had returned his advances with nothing but polite flirtation, and now he had just caught sight of her kissing a dirt farmer's daughter. Stone hastily averts her eyes, and continues on her way.
It's a young town, bustling with activity at this time of year. A collection of buildings built upwind of a massive enclosure where several local zebu barons began congregating to trade in the cattle that are Kovental's lifeblood. Their stock in turn attracted merchants from all over the South. The money changing hands had brought skilled trade and business folk plying their services. There were also Immaculate missionaries from the Lap, who had built a small shrine to cater to the spiritual needs of the booming local population, lest anything too unsavoury take hold in their absence.
Surrounding it was the vast expanse of rolling foothills, yellow-green grass stretching in all directions, half enclosed by the looming grandeur of the mighty Firepeaks to the west. Beyond those mountains is Wending Stream's native An-Teng, wealthy and verdant, along with the rest of the Southwest. To the east, the Lap, and from there the well-worn road that curves its way along the great nations and cities of the Inland Sea's Cyonosure Coast.
Today, the sight of the towering mountains against a blue sky makes Stone feel very small and insignificant. "And you have your goats." It had been a bit of teasing, but was it wrong? That is what she has here, that's the rest of her life. Raising goats and eking out a living in the same place she'd lived all her life, the same place her father had died.
Happy trudges along in front of Stone, as placid as his name suggests. In stark contrast to the girl holding his lead, the mule carries his burden without a care in the world, knowing the way without needing encouragement.
"I'm glad one of us is having a good day," Stone mutters to him.
Happy just flicks an ear good-naturedly, as if to say "I'm glad too!" In her head, Happy can be a bit of an ass.
A small rock sails through the air, striking Happy on the flank. The mule lets out a shrill whinny of pain, and Stone whips around, trying to spot just who had thrown it. As she does, a second hits poor Happy in the head, and the usually-steady animal bolts, hauling Stone off her feet. She hits the ground and drags a short distance before the lead is torn from her hand.
It's only as she lies there, watching Happy making a beeline for home without her, that Stone registers the laughter. Face and clothes filthy with dust, Stone pulls herself up to her feet, finding Pale Cloud standing a ways behind her, flanked by two friends. "You could have hurt him!" Stone says, furious. Her hip aches from where she'd hit the ground. Her leg and arm ache where they'd been dragged.
"And your family certainly can't afford to buy a new one," Cloud agrees, voice malicious. "Next time, I'll hit you instead — you don't have any shortage of sisters, at least."
A coil of anger twists in Stone's gut as she limps her way over to the three snickering boys. Only one of them is taller than she is, but all are more heavily built and much better fed. Stone is a wiry thing, her height rendering her gangly more than imposing. She fixes Cloud with a glare, filled with something powerfully resentful, an outright venomous surge of protectiveness. Who is this rich little snot to talk about her family? To harm a good-natured animal they've had all Stone's life? And over something as petty as childish jealousy.
Her head swims. The world seems at once both dreamlike and hyper-real. Life teams all around. Blades of grass swaying in the breeze, straining always toward the sun. Insects flit through the air, preyed upon by brightly singing birds. Small animals creep through the field, skirting wide around the four angry humans on the road.
Stone's voice is strange and distant as she speaks, compelled to hurt him somehow, to drive a thorn deep into his pride and twist: "Even if she did care about men, she wouldn't pick you. She thought you were cocky and annoying. She told me."
Cloud's eyes go wide. When he strikes her, Stone doesn't feel it the way she should. Her head snaps back from the force of the blow, but she maintains her glare. Past the fury, she feels wonderful, every ache in her body slipping away, a boundless energy beginning to seep into her, almost as if drawn up from the soil itself, from the fields all around.
"Cloud, what's wrong with her eyes?" one of the boys asks.
Later, Stone would understand what they must have been seeing. Her dark eyes lightening to an intense green, her brown hair slowly going blonde from the roots down, becoming the exact shade of sun-bleached grass. At Stone's feet, the plants of the field overtake the dirt road in an instant, the grass all around sprouting up and going to seed, twining ominously around the three boys' legs, joined by a collection of brightly-flowering weeds.
"What are you doing?" Sky demands, voice shrill. The air seems to somehow thrum with living vitality.
Stone doesn't know how to answer that. Fortunately, she doesn't need to. The trickle of power becomes a wild rush, filling Stone's soul, pushing it outward and overflowing the confines of her body. The plants at their feet shoot up impossibly fast, a mass of thistles and razor-edged grasses rising as tall as a man, twining and clinging viciously. All this is bathed in a green glow centred on Stone herself.
The boys cry out in pain, stymied by the many sharp, stinging plants as they try to flee. Stone lets them — she instinctively knows that they're already poisoned by the Wood Essence in her anima, even if she doesn't have quite those words to describe it yet. It won't kill them, but they'll have a bad day or so. More than that, she's stolen what little dignity they had between them.
Satisfied by this retribution, Stone takes a deep breath, glorying in the feeling of her new Aspect's element all around her, her soul soaring up with every airborne grass seed swirling into the sky. She's still standing there, shrouded in Terrestrial Anima, when the party of fearful townsfolk comes to investigate the wild claims of the frightened boys.
Stone will not be punished — she's not just a farm girl anymore.
==========
Two months later
"The baron would give you more work if you stayed," Stone's mother tells her, hands fretting in front of her.
"He would!" Stone agrees, packing the last of her meagre belongings in the pack she's kneeling over. "He'd pay more, too, if I asked." She'd shown him she was reliable over the weeks she'd worked for him, guarding his herds from opportunistic raids. Such small time thieves are prepared for some hired toughs to try and run them off, not a young Exalt. Stone is starting to get a better idea of what she's worth, and she's sure she could leverage that to increase her rates, for all that she's already been making more money than she's seen in her life.
"Then why are you leaving?" Stone's mother asks.
Stone sighs. She rises, and rests the battered brass length of her second-hand firewand against her shoulder with a jaunty, casual air still more affected than natural. She can see the path her mother is imagining for her. Staying in Kovental, making her fortune by serving this baron or another or several in turn. Exalts at loose ends aren't so common as to be undervalued in a backwater country like this one. Buy some real land once she's rich enough, and then — treasure of treasures — a cattle herd of her own.
Zebu Baron Lucky Stone. Wealth and security for her family. Something to pass down for generations to come. A far cry from what they have now — a cramped farmer's hut where her mother has laboured to raise five daughters. It's the sensible choice, probably. It's certainly more appealing than shaving her head, giving up all food with flavour, and never kissing a girl again, which is what the monks in town have tried to suggest. Somehow, though, her mother's preference feels like nearly as much of a cage. "I can't stay," Stone says. "I need to see some of the world. I'll find work with a caravan out of the Lap." She crosses to her mother, and gently kisses her forehead. When had the woman who'd raised her gotten this short?
Stone's mother only sighs pensively, her features a preview of what Stone might look like later in life, a middle-age many, many decades away now.
"I'll always send money home," Stone adds, an earnest promise she'll keep all her life.
"Just be careful," her mother says. "You're not invincible, whatever the Immaculates like to say."
Stone laughs, bending down to ruffle the hair of one of her younger sisters, who grins up at her. "Well, it feels that way, a little!"
"That's not funny!" her mother admonishes.
"Sorry, sorry," Stone says, raising her free hand placatingly. "I won't get killed, mama. I promise."
"Just be careful," her mother repeats, looking despairingly at this grinning demigod with the face of her eldest daughter.
Stone leaves then, pausing only to give Happy a fond pat. She'll return now and again, she tells herself, believing it. In truth, she will only return to this place once more before her mother's death, scarcely recognisable, bearing another name entirely.
The five days of Calibration are a time where the boundaries between worlds grow thin and the ordinary laws of nature and magic cannot be relied upon. Tales of unwary travellers ensnared by restless dead or seized upon by rogue demons are near-universal. In many parts of Creation, those who can do so lock themselves indoors with their closest friends and family, and make an occasion out of it — food and dance and strong drink to chase away the terrors of the night.
For those without a home or family to turn to, however, it can be an altogether more harrowing time. For one urchin girl in particular, the past five days are a blur of sleepless nights, lonely days, bursts of raw fear and panic. In the light of a new day, with life returned to the great city's streets and a gnawing hunger in her wasted stomach, the child crawls out of the cramped space between buildings where she'd spent the night, and staggers out into the world.
Buildings soar up into the sky all around her, carts and foot traffic throng the streets, people from every corner and culture of Creation in evidence, if one looks hard enough. None of this holds any wonder for the child, however. Nexus, with its famed splendors and infamous dangers, its staggering wealth and appalling squalor, lawless ideals and brutally enforced customs, is the only world she has ever known.
Furtive as a mouse, the girl moves out into the busy marketplace, always ready to evade a kick or a lunge from an adult, dark eyes trained for any hint of discarded food or coin on the ground.
"Catch!"
The girl's head snaps up in fright, and she barely has the wherewithal to snatch the object out of the air before it can strike her square in the face. She stares at the young man who has just thrown it to her in wary shock, small fingers clutching the hot pastry greedily to her chest.
"It's a gift, stupid girl!" the well-dressed man says. "I haven't poisoned it!"
The woman beside him tsks critically. "She'll never learn to get by if you teach her to rely on handouts," she tells her companion.
"Oh, lighten up," the man says. "She's rail thin — she won't make it much longer anyway."
The girl is already off and running, her prize clutched held securely, knowing better than to try and eat an entire meat pie where another young scavenger might see it and snatch it away from her. She makes it back to her alley unmolested, sliding down with her back against the grimy wall, staring in wonder at what she's been given: Food. Real food, not dirty or half eaten or gone bad. Fresh and hot and fragrant, full of real meat and real gravy. She doesn't even know where to begin.
That's when she understands she's not alone. She looks up to meet the dark, hopeful eyes of an emaciated dog. It's small, with pitch-black, curly fur and a heartbreakingly hopeful gaze. Nexus has no shortage of hungry dogs — lean and vicious strays roam the streets, travelling in packs and scavenging what they can. Instinctively, the girl shrinks back, anticipating the lunge that never comes. This particular dog only sits there, sad and helpless. When it finally creeps forward, it does so with a pronounced limp.
It's a surreal moment when the child realises that, for the first time in her life, she's faced with a creature more lowly and wretched than herself, a comparative bounty of wealth held in her hands. Hunger churns painfully in her gut still, but nonetheless, small, shaking hands split the pie roughly down the finger, trying hard not to waste the contents on the ground. She swiftly stuffs one half of the pie into her face, barely registering the heavenly taste as she swallows it nearly whole. Offering the rest to the dog is the hardest thing she's done in her young life, but in the end, she holds it out, and the dog timidly accepts.
The girl is almost too preoccupied with licking juices from her fingers to take notice of the dog tearing into its own half with every bit as much enthusiasm. Then it sits down, licks its chops, and asks, in a deep, velvety voice: "Your kindness is appreciated. What is your name, girl?"
The child freezes, staring at the animal in front of her. When she finally breaks her silence, she can't think of anything to do but answer, which is surprisingly difficult. No one's called her by her name since her mother, and that feels increasingly distant and hazy. In the end, all she remembers of it is one word: "Wisp."
"Well met then, Wisp of Nexus," the dog-thing says, inclining his head. His tongue lolls out for a moment in a canine grin before he goes on: "What would you have me grant you in exchange for your good turn?" Despite the dog not growing an inch, Wisp has no idea how she ever thought he was small. He looms huge in every shadow, his sheer presence filling all the space in the alley.
"What can I ask for?" she asks, voice cautious, raspy from disuse. Her usual timidity is gone, somehow, in the face of this utterly strange situation. She doesn't know what else to do other than go along with it.
The dog grins again. "Whatever I have to give."
The girl considers this. Despite her age and lack of education, she still feels as though she's heard stories of spirits and gods and other strange beings of power, for all that she's sure she's never been this close to one. She has the unshakable certainty that they're very wise -- or at least, very old, so they must know more than she does. Somehow, it doesn't occur to the child to ask for wealth, or power, or even for more food. When she opens her mouth again, it's to give voice to a frustrating question that's been playing through her head over the last five days:
"Tell me what's Cal'bration for?"
The dog throws back his head in a full-throated laugh. "You could ask me for anything, and all you want is knowledge?" He's plainly delighted at the thought.
The girl nods slowly, uncertain if she's said something wrong or not.
Grinning again, the dog's form melts before her eyes, becoming truly one with the shadows. What reemerges is a man — tall, broad-shouldered, with an extra set of arms. Everything about him is so dark that it's believable that he really is a shadow given humanoid form. His smile matches the dog's as he sits cross-legged across from her. "Well, no reason not to make ourselves comfortable while we talk." With a snap of his fingers, a bowl of fresh, black cherries rises up from the ground, followed by a chalice of something delightfully sweet.
And he tells her the truth of Creation's seasons, about the boundaries between the world and heaven and hell and the land of the dead, of the five days Creation needs to maintain itself year after year, and how all of this came about. Hours pass like minutes, the girl completely enraptured. It should be too much — it should all go over her head, be too much for her to understand, let alone retain. Instead, she wicks up all this knowledge like a sponge, stores it all away in a deep, dark part of her mind that seems to open up only now, at the time that it's needed.
The next time she's fully aware, the food is gone and for the first time she can remember, she's full.
"How old are you?" the god asks.
The girl tentatively holds up her hand, splaying five digits to show him.
The god grins again. "A good number," he says. "I've enjoyed this — let's make an occasion out of it. I'll offer you a bargain: In five years' time, when you are ten, you'll see me again, and you'll have a chance to ask for another boon. Then again when you're fifteen, and twenty, and finally twenty-five."
"... what happens then?" the girl asks, a little overwhelmed by these allusions to a future she's never even considered.
"Then," the god says, "you'll do something for me." Then he reaches over, and touches her forehead with one large, cool index finger. For a moment, she feels the shadows surge around her, cold and intense. Then they're gone.
Slowly, carefully, the girl gets to her feet, peering up and down the tiny alleyway. She's alone, as if her bizarre experience had never happened at all. Almost. She stares at her hand in front of her face, studying how her pale skin seems to blend ineffably into the shadows, the darkness drawn to her like a friend.
When she creeps back out into the market again, this time no one notices her at all.
==========
Nexus having no laws against theft means, in truth, that there are no laws to protect a young thief against the fullest reprisal her victim wishes to inflict. Wisp has no family to protect her from such vengeance. Vengeance can only be taken on one who is caught, however. And it is hard work indeed to catch a shadow, one who can slip in silent as a whisper, take a meal for herself, and be gone again almost as fast.
Wisp's life, from this point onward, is not easy. The streets of Nexus are far from safe for a child, even when she isn't actively starving to death. Still, Wisp survives the seasonal floods and the periodic diseases and the treachery of one of Creation's most famously violent cities, growing taller, if no less thin and pale.
She spends her tenth year's Calibration squirrelled away in the basement of a family home, living off their largesse and staying relatively safe against the dangers outside. It's with a sense of uncertain trepidation that, the day after Calibration, she huddles in the shadow of a large building and chews on a pilfered apple. She's not sure if she really expects anything, if she's honest with herself. Will a god really keep an interest in a street urchin like her? One miracle is surely all one can expect a mortal lifespan.
"You remembered."
Wisp tenses at the voice, but doesn't jump. She turns to face the shadows. There's a figure there, or at least the impression of one. Half-real, half-not. Somehow, she can tell he's smiling.
"It was hard to forget," Wisp says. She looks at him with solemn eyes, made older than her years by hardship. Still, her voice is thick with nervousness as she adds. "You're... Five Days Darkness, aren't you?"
"I am," the shadow admits, pleased she's guessed. "You remember that you have a boon to claim?"
Wisp nods slowly. She has a much better idea of what kind of being she's dealing with this time — has sought out stories about gods that match his description until she's sure. The impression that such tales give her is that the god of Calibration is a fickle creature, famed for cruelty as well as for kindness, a god of vast strength, dark nature, and uncertain motives. She also understands better now just how much is in his power to give her. Wealth or supernatural abilities or both. Even so, in her heart of hearts, that's not what Wisp wants. Wisp wants to know things.
So what she says is, very simply: "Teach me how to read."
Once again, her request makes Five Days Darkness laugh. "Knowledge again. You are an entertaining mortal." There's a moment's pause, and a shadowy hand extends to her, pushing a small, dark-bound book into her arms, its spine and cover encrusted in cut onyx. "Take this, study it every night — never let the sun touch it, or you'll lose it forever. By the end of a year and a night, you'll know how to read many things."
He tells the truth. The book speaks to Wisp as she reads it, explaining the simplest elements of written Riverspeak to her, then eventually the more complex. Then other, less familiar languages — the tongues of the East and the South and the decadent centre, as well as languages older and more steeped in power and mystery. After a year and a night of diligent study, the book vanishes into black smoke — this is fine, though. Wisp doesn't need it anymore.
Those five years bring dramatic change — she now has genuinely marketable skills, whether in stealth or language or both. She spends much of her time and resources making up for her lack of education, accepting rare books or the opportunity to study well-stocked collections as payment for serving as a covert messenger, translator, or specialised scribe.
When Five Days Darkness comes for her in her fifteenth year, for the first time, she has a roof over her head she hasn't had to steal or scrounge. By this point, the youthful naivete that had led to her making the requests she did has given way to a more worldly, wary outlook. Still, she still chooses her boons wisely.
At fifteen, she learns the history of light and shadow, and walks away with knowledge that almost seems to burn at the edges of her mortal mind, expanding her perceptions ineffably. At twenty, she asks after the nature of the dark places beneath Creation, and finds that silver and jewels fall easily into her hands, as if in her touch they recall the sunless depths of their birth.
There are tradeoffs, of course — her skin becomes as pale as paper, and she shuns direct sunlight instinctively wherever possible. An encounter with a Dragon-Blooded Golden Janissary master nearly costs her her life, burning her as though she were a thing of the Underworld. She has become something akin to a powerful god-blood, but it has rendered her a creature of darkness at her deepest nature. And of course, she's still no match for even the least of the Chosen, even as her activities in her twenties expose her to them with unusual frequency.
After all, if she didn't know not to meddle with things beyond herself, would she even be where she is today?
It's with a feeling of fretful anticipation that Whisper — what 'Wisp' eventually became short for — sits in her modest study, drinking black tea as she awaits her oldest benefactor, now a woman of twenty-five. She doesn't know what precisely will happen after the last of her five boons has been used up, or what particular service a god like Five Days Darkness will ask of her. Try as she might, though, Whisper cannot actually dread it. As always, she wants to find out.
==========
"You're late," Whisper says to her cramped and empty study. The windows are shuttered, and not a single candle is lit, yet she sits cross legged on the floor, reading as comfortably as if she were in a sun-drenched garden.
"Am I?" asks a voice, the speaker abruptly standing over her.
"Yes. A full three minutes, thirty two seconds later than last time," Whisper says. She closes the book and carefully puts it away, before she finally straightens, and looks up into her god's face.
Currently, it's stern. "And you think you know more about time than me?" Five Days Darkness asks.
"So it would seem," Whisper says, undaunted.
He laughs, and the deep shadows of the little room laugh with him. "I knew I liked you when we first met."
"I was five," she reminds him.
"You had the promise of intelligence in your eyes," he says, lowering himself to sit across from her. "And prospects that seemed likely to snuff it out before it was realised." There's a note of sentimentality in his words. For this instant, he seems very human. Spirits often do in her experience... until the moment when they don't. Whisper never lets herself forget that second part, especially not with her patron.
This is the first time he's ever admitted to knowing that he saved her life, however, that it was more to either of them than an utterly capricious whim. "Your gifts kept me alive," Whisper says. "But today will be the last. You have something planned."
"I do," he says, smiling. He doesn't waste her time denying it. He takes a seat across from her, leaning back with one set of arms. With one of the others, he holds out a hand. Perched atop it is a small, onyx effigy of himself. "Your last boon will be different from the others."
Whisper frowns, studying the little statue. The only thing breaking up its dark colouration is its eyes — glowing with a brilliant, inner light that makes her want to flinch away. "What is it?"
"This," he says, sounding extremely self satisfied, "is the truest mark of my favour. Accept it, Whisper of Nexus, and you alone will be raised up as my Exigent champion — what powers I have granted you up until this point will pale before this gift, granted by the Unconquered Sun himself. I had... difficulties in acquiring it."
"Because you couldn't ask him for it?" Whisper asks, mercilessly. Her eyes never leave the statue, an intense hunger growing in her chest for what he's offering. She knows just enough about Exigents to understand that he is holding out an Exaltation to her, the chance to be as mighty and long-lived as a Dragon-Blood, and more importantly, to plumb the deepest shadows for all the secrets they hide.
His smile slips. "... yes," he admits. "As in all things, I cannot exist where he does not, but I cannot stand fully in his light... or in his attention." This hurt him, Whisper realises — another strangely human foible. Is this deliberate, a way to lower her guard, or is this moment as exciting for him as it is for her?
"You stole it," Whisper says.
"Only from a thief," he says, shrugging one set of shoulders.
Whisper studies the carving, frowning a little. "What will it cost?"
"There will be more of a cost for me," he admits. "But, you need not concern yourself with that. Perhaps there will be a lesser one for you. This Exigency has changed hands many times over many years, never used — the essence of other spirits will mingle with my own within it. You will be empowered, but... changed, very likely."
"Changed," Whisper says, rolling around the implication in her head. "I want to know as much as I can. I want to pry secrets away from the world, no matter how deeply they're hidden. This will help me do that?"
"An Exigency grants power derived from the patron god that empowers it," he says, "but always shaped by the nature of the human herself. Between the two of us, you will have few secrets truly barred to you, I think."
She nods. It had never really been a decision, and there's no more use pretending at this point. "What will you expect of me in return?"
"To be my champion," he reminds her. "There are tasks I require to be completed — things an Exalt can do easier than I. It will simply be a favour here and there, always duly rewarded, never you worry." He smiles again, knowing that he truly has her.
Wordlessly, Whisper reaches out for the effigy. "I accept." She takes a deep breath, and her hand closes on the cold stone of the carving. There's a moment of silence, pure and absolute, even the sound of her own heart going quiet. Then the stone cracks open, and a spear of light and darkness drives itself deep into Whisper's heart. As she screams, she drags in her Second Breath, the shadows surging inward, pouring over her, into her, cloaking and smothering her completely.
For the rest of her long life, she will never truly leave them again.
The Unrepentant Sinner Palace,
Forbidden lair of the Grass Spiders,
A decade ago
For the first time in the several weeks since Parting Sigh was Chosen by the Dragons, she feels truly nervous. A sense of gut-deep uncertainty overtaking her. The blindfold itches, and it's a struggle not to just tear the thing off — she has no idea where she is or where they're going, but the sound of rushing water in her ears and the occasional bit of spray have been setting her on edge.
"Do I really have to keep this on?" she asks.
"You do!" comes a good-natured voice from over her shoulder. Sly Magpie's hand on her shoulder is the only thing that's guiding Sigh along. "It's required until you're properly sworn in. Don't worry, worst that can happen is you slip and go for a swim, right?"
"Easy for you to say," Sigh mutters. Magpie is the only other Dragon-Blood Sigh has met in her life, but it wasn't hard to tell that they have very different Aspects from one another — Magpie had dashed across a small river as casually as anything, the surface of the water not daring to be so rude as to let her fall in.
"It is!" Magpie agrees. "No, calm down. You'll be one of us soon enough. Riches, prestige, and the respect of some very terrifying people. The knowledge that you're leaving your mark on history like an artist painting a canvas! All this and more can be yours."
"You sure know how to make a pitch," Sigh mutters, sullenly sarcastic.
"Hey, it's worked on you so far," she chirps. It had, of course. It had been the poem most of all, though.
Sigh is a young Dragon-Blood with, it feels like, all the world unfurled before her. She can go anywhere now, do anything — what could possibly stop her? But the poem that Magpie had recited to her had been stirringly, heartbreakingly compelling. It had made death seem beautiful and impactful in a way that Sigh couldn't help but be drawn to.
Somehow, the fact that the poem was describing a murder that Sly Magpie had carried out for money didn't seem to matter. It probably should have, but... Exalted or not, Parting Sigh is a thirteen year-old girl, and the Grass Spiders have been drawing in young outcastes since before her grandparents had been born. There would be months and years to work on her before they finally put blood on her hands. By that point, she would already be too entwined with the dark and insular world of the clan to truly balk. It's said that Dragon-Blooded Essence craves companionship — whatever else, Sigh would find that much here.
It's clear that they're underground. They'd had to go down quite a ways at some point, and now, water aside, the air is cool on her skin, and charged in a way she's never felt before. Pregnant with a power that tastes of moss and shade and the things that live and die on the edge of light and dark.
Once again, Magpie guesses where her thoughts are going. "Your first time in a manse," Magpie says. It's not even a guess — she's completely certain. "Here, though—" and mercifully, she reaches out and pulls Sigh's blindfold free.
Sigh blinks around at her surroundings. She's in a small room, windowless, carved from dark, living wood, lit by strange mushrooms sprouting upside-down from the ceiling, casting a soft, greenish light. There's a table and chair here, and a few crates.
"Hold tight," Magpie says, patting Sigh's shoulder. "That's not a suggestion, by the way — I'll tell them you're here."
"'Them'?" Sigh asks, but Magpie's tall figure is already closing the door behind her. Sigh stares after it for a long moment, before sinking down into the chair with a slow exhalation.
Minutes drag past, and the stir-crazy feeling in Sigh's stomach won't subside. She's tilted the chair back, balancing it on its back two legs, bracing a foot on the table to keep from tipping over as she studies the wave-like pattern the strange lighting casts on the walls. When the door opens again, she's forced to surge to her feet, catching the chair at the last minute to prevent it from crashing to the floor.
The person standing there is decidedly not Sly Magpie. Instead, it's a girl her own age, pale, dark-haired, and smiling infectiously. "Hello!" she says. "They're ready for you."
Sigh slides to her feet a little awkwardly. "Who's 'they'?" she asks.
"Oh, the Fiends," the girl says, already leading the way out the door, seeming to assume Sigh will follow.
"... right," Sigh says, but the sarcasm seems to be lost on her guide.
"I'm Violet Sunset," the girl says, over her shoulder. "Call me Sunny, though. Violet is my mother."
'Sunny' seems like a bizarre nickname for someone associated with this kind of place to go by. Violet at least has the ominous distinction of being a colour associated with death. "I'm Parting Sigh," Sigh tells her.
"Oh, you already have a great Spider name!" Sunny tells her. "Was that the one you were born with?"
"Well, no," Sigh admits, "it was Parting Stream, but... then I Exalted." 'Stream' just hadn't seemed right for a Fire Aspect — her new name is at least suitably dramatic, she thinks.
"How did you Exalt?" Sunny asks, a sudden keen interest coming into her voice. Unlike Magpie, who had taken her on many probably unnecessary twists and turns, Sunny is leading Sigh on a very direct path. The water from before is nowhere to be seen — it would be a nightmare for Sigh to try and find her way out of these dark, narrow hallways. There's no one here, which might have been deliberate.
"Oh, uh... I fell into a cooking fire," Sigh says, caught off guard. "And then I... didn't burn?" It had felt pleasantly warm, and the smoke had tasted as fresh as a spring morning. She'd been gripped with a sense of euphoric understanding, for a brief moment becoming utterly one with the element of Fire. "... I almost burned the house down, though," she adds.
Sunny giggles a bit at this last, before admitting: "I'm still waiting to see if I will. Exalt, not burn a house down! Mother's a Wood Aspect, so it could happen for me any day now — or, you know... never." Despite the flippancy of the comment, Sunny isn't entirely able to hide an envious note in her voice, although Sigh isn't sure if she would have noticed it if she were still mortal. Sunny doesn't let the moment last too long, at least. "Anyway, I'm just happy to have someone close to my age here. Assuming they don't just decide to kill you instead."
Sigh tenses, coming up short. "What?"
Sunny laughs again, and Sigh feels her face grow hot. "Joking, joking," she says, airily. "They won't do anything like that. Taking in new outcastes is part of how the clan grows."
"That... wasn't funny!" Sigh says, falling back in with Sunny to prevent being left behind.
"You're cute when you're flustered," Sunny says. And before Sigh can properly react to that, she's pointing to a set of large, ominous doors that abruptly loom ahead at the end of the hall. They're engraved with three elaborate masks, as well as disturbingly realistic renderings of death in various forms. "We're here. Good luck. Don't speak unless spoken to and be respectful, you'll do fine."
Sigh stares at the door for a lingering moment, anxiety fluttering in her chest. "So do I just go in?" she asks. Then she turns to discover that Sunny is already gone, having seemingly vanished on the spot. Great. If Sunny comes and goes so silently now, Sigh doesn't want to think about what she'll be like if she really does Exalt.
Now she's just stalling. Taking a deep breath, Sigh pushes the doors open, and steps through, and into the darkened chamber beyond.
As soon as she's fully inside, the doors swing closed, seemingly of their own accord, causing Sigh to jump. "Be seated," a voice tells her, from somewhere out of the perfect darkness.
Slowly, Sigh sinks to the floor, going into a kneeling position that she'll be able to rise from again in a hurry, if she needs to. She almost demands what's going on, until she remembers Sunny's advice, and manages to keep her mouth shut.
"What's your name, girl?" a second voice asks. And as it speaks, a red light flares to life, illuminating a figure seated on a dais in front of her. They're leanly dangerous in an androgynous way that's hard to pin down. The mask they wear is of a snarling beast, and they're armed as if they plan to fight their way through half a legion — swords and knives hang from their waist and back, and the ominous, sheathed bulk of a reaper daiklave lays on the dais beside them.
Sigh finds her voice to speak. "Parting Sigh," she says.
"An odd choice, for a Chosen of Hesiesh," the figure says. Concentrating on the speaker, Sigh can tell that the air around them is shimmering, as if a great heat is rising off of their body. They seem to be taking it for granted, as Sunny had, that 'Parting Sigh' wasn't what she had been born with — an impromptu name change is seemingly not uncommon for the recently Exalted. "I approve, though. It's poetic."
"Never mind that." Another light, this one a pale, washed out blue, comes on from the far side of the dais. A man lounges there in disdainful repose, tall and well-muscled, face covered by a white mask carved in an expression of sorrow. One hand strokes through the fur of a large hunting cat that sits obediently at his side. A snow leopard, Sigh will later learn. His voice carries the chill of winter with it as he continues: "You wish to become one of us. Do you truly know what that means?"
"I... think so," Sigh says, trying to keep her voice steady in light of this display. Her earlier anxiety has curdled into a small knot of fear. Even if Sunny had been joking about these people killing her, she was uncomfortably aware that they probably could if she gives them a reason to.
"Thinking you do isn't good enough." This time, a sickly green light flicks on in the center of the dais. A thin woman kneels there, hands concealed within large sleeves. Her presence is like the bitter-sweet scent of decaying leaves, the darkness moving unnaturally around her like shadows cast by skeletal trees. Somehow, the smiling mask she wears is the most intimidating of all.
These are the Three Elite Fiends, as Sigh would learn shortly — Crimson Weaver, Pallid Wolf, and Emerald Widow. Elder Dragon-Blooded of rare power and dread reputation, who had presided over the Grass Spiders since its inception.
Widow continues: "There are promises you cannot take back. Oaths that are not to be entered into lightly. We would become your family, but this carries with it certain expectations — you will have to kill for us. This is the art we practice. Do you believe you are prepared for this?" She sounds incredibly skeptical.
Sigh swallows, squaring her shoulders to try and look more confident. "I want to be!" she says. Then hastily amends: "I mean... I can learn. That's what training is for, isn't it?"
Crimson Weaver gives a short laugh. "The most honest answer! Few truly are ready, when they come to us, as much as they won't admit it." They sound approving, or maybe even intrigued.
"We'll see in time," Pallid Wolf says. "For now, tell us of what skills you already possess."
==========
The Grass Spiders' Code:
1. A Grass Spider obeys her Elite Fiends in all things
2. A Grass Spider does not reveal the secrets of her clan to any outsider
3. A Grass Spider never interferes with one of her fellows' pursuit of a contract
4. A Grass Spider never kills or maims another Grass Spider, whatever their quarrels
Each rule is superseded by all those that come before it.
==========
City of Mishaka,
Three years later
One of the lessons that only experience can teach is exactly how fast everything can go wrong.
"It'll be just you and him in the room. Get close, open his throat ear to ear -- slice his windpipe while you're at it. No screams, no noise. You think you know how quickly a mortal bleeds out, but you don't really until you see the real thing."
The memory of Sly Magpie's words are calm and reasonable in Sigh's mind as she approaches the man from behind. In the eternity of those few seconds, she studies him -- his broad, muscled back, his shaven head, the sword casually left on the floor beside him. "Hurry with that refill," he says, voice gruff, cup held high.
"Right away, sir," Sigh says, scurrying up with the wine jug in hand. She plays what she's about to do in her head over and over again, drawing on months and years of relentless training. As she makes to pour from the jug, a knife slips down from her sleeve, into her palm. The jug drops to the floor with a splash -- the man is still scowling at it when she grabs him by the chin with one hand, and drags the blade across his neck, just like she's been taught.
Unlike what was supposed to happen, an elbow slams into her jaw when she's halfway through, knocking her back. The man lurches up to his feet, letting out a strangled scream before Sigh can tackle him from behind, driving the knife into his back again and again and again until he crumples to the floor. He goes down heavy and boneless with a crash, bright arterial blood mingling with dark wine on the floorboards, Sigh toppling after him. She awkwardly climbs up to her feet a second later, staring down at the bloody knife clutched in her white-knuckled grip, at the scarlet ruin of her serving dress. She barely has a few seconds, no time at all, really, to process her first kill.
"Since you're not going to give him time to scream, you shouldn't need to worry about the Lookshyan. Seventh Legion washout -- they tossed him out on his ear after he murdered another officer in a brawl. A drunken wreck, generally, mainly kept on as a legbreaker by the target's crime family. Still not a fight we want to pick tonight."
The door smashes inward, admitting a man who could easily have made two of Sigh, his eyes bleary from wine, but his nails and knuckles and teeth the mottled grey of cut granite. He takes one look at the room, at his dead employer on the floor, and at the pale serving girl standing over him with a knife, and he charges Sigh like a bull yeddim.
At this point, fortunately, her training doesn't fail her. As the Lookshyan barrels down on her, she flickers out of the way, sending him staggering past her hip with a knife wound in his flank. He looks up at her, confusion mingling with his anger — he hasn't realised that she's Dragon-Blooded as well, yet. She can't afford to give him the time to adjust that assumption.
She hurls the knife at the same time as she lunges past the corpse on the floor, snatching up the target's sword as she hears a satisfying bellow of pain from behind her. The Lookshyan is just pulling the knife from his eye when Sigh lunges in to ram the sword into his chest.
"If you do end up fighting him... well, shit. Try not to let him get a grip on you — the thing most people are saying about him is that he crushed someone's skull with his bare hands a few months back. And you just know he'd be a pain to take down. Earth Aspects just don't know when to die."
Faster than she'd expected him to be able to respond in his state, a calloused hand shoots out, grabbing onto the blade of the sword with skin strengthened by Earth Essence. The pain of the injury, it seems, has rendered him stone-sober. "Oh, Dragons, you're Exalted," he growls, disgusted with the discovery. Then he seizes her and hurls her into the nearest solid wall with bone-jarring force.
Sigh feels all the air go out of her as she makes meteoric impact, the sword slipping from her grasp and stars dancing in front of her eyes. Still makes out his fist, coming for her face so fast that she only barely ducks, and he punches clear through the solid wooden wall to the next room. From her place on the floor, Sigh aims a kick at the inside of his knee. It's like striking at a boulder, but she feels the satisfactory give of a joint popping out of place before she rolls free.
She makes a grab for the sword, just in time to see him raise a fist as if to pound it down into the floor, white anima flaring around him along with flecks of whirling stone. Acting on pure instinct, Sigh launches herself upward with a burst of hot air. His fist strikes hard enough to make the entire building groan, floorboards shattering out in a ring around him from the impact, the entire room shaking so violently that the furniture is tossed around like a collection of toys. Sigh knows she would have been thrown flat to the floor if she'd still been standing on it.
The ceiling rushes up toward her, and she takes it as an opportunity. Pushing off of it with both feet, she dives back toward the Lookshyan, flame-wreathed blade punching down into his back, searing its way through stone-hard flesh to pin him to the ruined floor beneath him. He gives a furious cry, thrashes where he is, and then lets out one final, startled scream as the floor beneath him gives way entirely, Sigh just barely leaping clear. He lands in the room beneath with a thunderous crash of shattering porcelain. When she looks down at him, he's not moving, the sword still impaling him cleanly. With the roaring in her ears beginning to fade, she becomes aware of the sound of numerous pounding feet heading for her location.
"When you take your exit, make it quiet and careful. Don't draw attention to yourself, don't just charge into a situation you can't control if you can help it."
Sigh aims for the nearest window, flings it open, and leaps out onto a four-story drop, the nighttime city unfolding beneath her. Half-formed plans to catch a railing on her way down are stopped short as a hand reaches out and seizes her before she can fall more than a few feet, hurling her upward again as if she weighs nothing. She lets out a deeply undignified squawk as she lands on the roof tiles, struggling to ready herself for this new attacker.
"Calm down," says Sly Magpie, easily making the climb to crest the rooftop. She gives Sigh a grin. "Didn't go quite to plan, huh?"
Sigh's shoulders hunch in mortification. "Well..." she says, "... the Lookshyan's dead."
Magpie laughs. "Tell me about it when we're not on this roof. And when you're not glowing like a beacon and covered in blood."
Sigh looks down at herself, realising that she's still glowing a noticeable smoky red-orange. She looks up to see Magpie already on the move, and hurries to catch up, trying to match the easy confidence the Water Aspect uses to make the leap between rooftops.
Mishaka is a small city by Scavenger Lands standards, but it still seems incomprehensibly large, compared to the sleepy countryside where she grew up. In the moonless night, Sigh can see the shape of its shattered walls, but not the blasted wasteland beyond them, or the many buildings that burned years ago and have yet to be rebuilt. As it turns out, being the unlikely site of one of the greatest battles of the Second Age means that you can still lose even in victory.
"Here," Magpie says, calling her up short with a raised hand. They've been fleeing for long minutes now, and they're currently on top of what looks like a bakery. Magpie leans down to scoop up a waiting bundle, and tosses it at Sigh. "Clothes are in there. Get rid of what you're wearing." She turns politely away to let Sigh get that over with.
Without worrying about modesty, Sigh strips off the dress, and begins pulling on the simple, dark clothes from the bundle. "Are they going to be disappointed?"
"Who, and about what?" Magpie asks.
"Weaver. For me doing a sloppy job." Sigh pulls the shirt over her head, scowling at her own performance. "Everything went a little wrong."
"Of course it did. A poet doesn't compose a masterpiece the first time she puts ink to paper," Magpie says, dismissively. "The job was to kill him and get away without any witnesses. The negotiations between the families fall apart, fingers get pointed in every direction, and the client comes away happy. Killing the Lookshyan wasn' exactly what you were being paid for, but it sure sends a message. Weaver will love hearing about that, especially if you start composing a poem about it first. You killed an Exalt, even if it was a pretty shabby one! Of course, then they'll start working on fixing every one of the many problems with your approach until you wish that the Earth Aspect actually had killed you instead."
"Yeah, sounds like them," Sigh admits, relief mixed with a new apprehension at the thought. Properly dressed now, she pulls a hood up over her head, and a mask up over her face. Then she holds the ruined dress in both hands, and focuses on burning it to ash.
"You'll keep getting better," Magpie says, almost dismissively. "I've had a good feeling about you all along."
Sigh grunts disbelievingly. The dress flares brightly for a moment as the fabric is eaten away. It's a risk, but it's better than leaving as clear a clue behind as the garment itself. The mystery of it all is the point. "How am I supposed to feel about it, though?" she asks.
"About Weaver's training? Awful, while it's going on."
"No, about... I just killed two people. How should I feel about that?"
Magpie looks back at Sigh for the first time, shrugging her narrow shoulders. "There's no 'should', Sigh. Feel how you need to — what's important is you did your duty for the clan, justified our faith in you." Then she grins a little ruefully and adds: "I puked my guts out, my first time."
Sigh blinks. "Really?"
"Daana'd shun me if I lie," Magpie says, putting a hand over her heart. "But your girl, the way I hear it, she came away from her first kill practically skipping. Hasn't lost a wink of sleep. Violet Shadow's insufferably proud about it. It's different for everyone."
Sigh shrugs uncomfortably. "Sunny's not... we're just friends." There had been some adolescent flirtations, even some kisses stolen in moments here and there, but the truth is, Sigh doesn't particularly like the person Sunny has become since she Exalted. It's probably a little ridiculous for a murderous assassin to have a preference for the virtuous type, but... well, Sigh can't do anything about that. Of course, it doesn't help that Violet Shadow is a particularly skilled and fearsome Grass Spider, and it's impossible to kiss her daughter without remembering that.
"If you say so," Magpie says. "We should go, though. Still a ways off to the safe house."
"Right," Sigh says. She'll sort out the confusing mix of feelings she's experiencing later, probably messily.
Still, all she feels is a strange glow of camaraderie as Magpie adds: "I'll help you get started on that poem, if you like. It's good to start in on it while the kill's still fresh in your head. It's all up here from here, kid."
"... thanks, Magpie," Sigh says. And with a start, realises that the Grass Spider — the other Grass Spider — is already off and running again. With a growl of frustration, Sigh chases after her into the darkness.
