The following is set between updates XIII and XIV. When I'm posting it is a little awkward, pacing-wise, but it will make more sense in the thread index. I've been wanting to write this for a while, but update XV being as short as it was seemed like a good excuse to sit down and do it.
"Damn it all, I
forgot about the party." Cynis Roho scowls in annoyance, the deep blue of his skin blending into the night. "She'll be in the middle of all that."
Fateful Jewel follows his gaze, looking up at the grand architecture of the satrap's manor, ensconced here in the heart of Garrison Point. Even separated from it as she is by the stone wall encircling the house, the lights and sounds of muffled music and merrymaking spill out into the still air, impossible to ignore.
"We are waiting, then?" she asks her companion.
Roho shakes his head emphatically. "Dragons, no.
Four Anathema! We're going to find her."
"If you are saying so," Jewel agrees. The two of them are exceedingly tired, dirty, and bloodied, freshly returned to Greyfalls within the hour — she even imagines her flower must be looking a little wilted. Jewel knows how they must look to the guard at the gate that Roho is approaching, as that uniformed woman takes them in. In particular, the legionnaire's eyes follow Jewel herself, dragon sigh wand still carried on her shoulder.
"Lucky Blossom," Roho says, by way of curt greeting.
"Sir!" She recognises him a moment too late, hastily coming to attention.
"We need to see the satrap immediately," he tells her, voice grave.
Blossom pauses, looking nervous. "Yes, sir. We... if you could leave your weapons behind?" She's clearly talking to Jewel specifically, rather than Roho. But he impresses Jewel by giving Blossom a hard look before unbuckling his swordbelt, laying it on the table of Blossom's guard station next to an empty teacup and a battered deck of playing cards. It's quickly followed by an exquisite black jadesteel knife, worth more than Lucky Blossom has likely earned in her life. From her expression, she knows it.
On another night, Jewel would have had a bit of fun here, lightened the mood for the nervous guard's sake. Tonight, she just wordlessly takes Spite from off her shoulder, leaning the weapon's bulk against the wall beside the guard station. She then proceeds to lay down both of her flame pieces by Roho's sword, followed by a pair of flame piece bayonets and the worn leather pouch that houses her precious supply of firedust. It's a great deal of flame weaponry for this part of the world, and Blossom looks at it all as if it might explode into a conflagration just from her breathing too hard.
Jewel sighs, taking pity on her. "They are none of them being loaded. Pouch is being fireproof, as long as you are not throwing it into a brazier. Use your good sense and you'll be fine, yes?" Jewel claps the legionnaire on the shoulder, giving her a smile she doesn't feel a bit.
"... Right. Thank you, ma'am." Blossom looks mortified for her fear to have been so transparent.
"Saying a prayer to Ingenious Flame is never hurting your chances though," Jewel adds as they pass through the now-unlocked gate.
The manor is now just on the other side of an orderly courtyard, walls sheer and ornate. The building is smaller than the Prince's Palace, but even at a glance the sheer magnitude of the wealth the Realm extracts from this satrapy can be almost viscerally felt.
"Don't encourage heresy in the mortals where anyone who matters can hear you," Roho says. It's a gentle reproof at worst.
"Apologies," Jewel, says. Encouraging someone to invoke the goddess of flame weaponry while handling firedust is common sense in her world. She doubts that Ingenious Flame is even afforded space on the local Immaculate prayer calendar, this far north, so there's no point in waiting, is there? But then, she's not Immaculate.
"Did you claim it after a Wyld Hunt?" Roho suddenly asks.
Jewel blinks. "The firedust pouch?"
"No, I mean the firewand."
Obvious in retrospect. Jewel
is rattled about what happened, to have missed that. Still, she forces a grin. "Ah, you are meaning Spite. No, I am claiming
her from a very lucky hand of Deliberative." Roho laughs a little nervously, glancing from side to side as they cross the courtyard. The arrogant Dynast from that morning is gone. It's always hard to tell with a Dragon-Blood you don't know, but Jewel adjusts her assumptions about his age down a good ten years. "We have been getting along very well since! She doesn't give up
all her secrets to me, but jade is not growing on every tree, for some of us." This is patently misleading. Jewel wouldn't trade Spite for all the jade in Prasad. The weapon is a vicious, cruel thing, but it's been Jewel's only constant companion for a long time, to say nothing of its inarguable power. Even if she can't quite wring as much out of the demon-gold as a Solar Anathema supposedly could. As much as—
Jewel enjoys the notoriety, the spectacle carrying it affords her. The only reason she feels no panic in leaving the weapon unattended as she has is the sheer impracticality of a mortal thief moving it in a hurry.
"You
have fought them before, though?" he presses. Hesitates. Then to Jewel's surprised relief, switches to fluent Flametongue.
"Anathema, I mean."
"Yeah, a few times," Jewel says, matching his dialect. His Flametongue is notably Tengese, but that's fine by her. At least she can feel like she's not tripping over her own words for a little while.
"A Lunar nearly killed me in Steel Lotus, but we got it. Then a few years later, still in An-Teng, an Exigent — their Pale Mistress has one that crops back up just often enough to keep everyone on their toes. I got the kill on that one." The Chosen of Woe is a recurring horror, a rare, reincarnating Exigent that arises every two or three generations. From what Jewel had witnessed in that fight, the Immaculates were far from unfair in designating each new one Anathema the moment they were Chosen.
"Years after that, a Frenzied, South of the Lap. We wounded that one badly, but it flew away."
Jewel doesn't mention Varang. Those long, fruitless nights in the desert far beyond Urim's glittering walls, searching for the young "caste thief" who had turned around and gorged themself on the hearts of an entire squad of Varangian peacekeepers sent to arrest them. The vultures had gotten there first, and Jewel and the others had found little more than bones and bloody sand. She doesn't think that Roho wants to hear about an utter failure, just now.
"Never a Solar before?" Roho asks. He's plainly impressed, but there's a note of nervousness that's easier for Jewel to detect now than in his Riverspeak.
"Never a Solar," Jewel agrees, struggling to maintain her false good cheer.
"What kind was it today, exactly?" He seems fascinated in a half-fearful way.
"A sunburst mark," Jewel replies, touching her forehead.
"With rays. Whatever that one means." The specific varieties of Solar Anathema, with their tritely moralistic names, had never been common enough outside of tedious Immaculate fables to bother with memorising. Before now.
"A Forsaken." Roho looks openly pensive.
"Mela, give us strength." There's a moment of silence between them, before he admits:
"I've never even seen one. Any Anathema at all, I mean."
Which is exactly what Jewel had assumed. What is she supposed to say to him now? That everything will be alright if he's smart and follows her lead? Jewel has never been part of a Hunt that's had to deal with
this many before. Even if they are fighting each other... and one of them seems mostly to be lost. Then they're inside, and there's mercifully so much noise and warmth and stimulus that the memory of a guileless, uncomplicated smile is momentarily scoured from Jewel's mind.
Heart-pounding music fills the grand chamber Roho leads her into, though Jewel can't see the source through the press of humanity. The place is packed -- nearly every suitably adventurous Dynast in or around Greyfalls must have been there, along with whatever local elite and hangers-on could scrape up an invitation. Alcohol flows like water. She can taste opium and marijuana smoke on the air, along with traces of stranger and more exotic substances, all provided by comely servants wearing impressively little. Not that all of the guests are currently wearing much more, by this point in the evening. Dark corners and side rooms offer the barest deniable privacy for the numerous tangled forms that occupy them.
Fateful Jewel, Chosen of Sextes Jylis, is no stranger to a good time, has dabbled with no shortage of recreational substances and exciting companionship in her day, even if her tastes eventually settled on the tamer end of things. Still, faced with this scene of almost surreal debauchery, she freezes on the threshold, momentarily stunned.
For all his nervousness at the prospect of further monster hunting, Cynis Roho forges ahead unflinchingly, a fish returning to the water, albeit one with a very specific task to complete. Jewel only has a second or two to follow, or risk his narrow-shouldered frame vanishing into the crowd. She catches up in several long strides, snatching a glass of the best liquor she's ever had in her life and flashing an utterly hollow smile to the gorgeous woman serving it. Jewel swallows it down in one gulp, appreciating it as little tonight as she does the girl's undraped beauty.
"Are you drinking?" Roho frowns at her.
Jewel shrugs, focusing on the pleasant warmth filling her chest.
"Just a splash. I'll be sober enough for this." A Wood Aspect can't be affected by mundane poison unless she wants to be, anymore than a Fire Aspect can be burned or a Water Aspect drowned. Unfortunately, Jewel has never wanted to be drunk quite so powerfully in all her life. To lose everything in a smothering haze. She can't, of course. Not while she still has a satrap to be dragged in front of. A little buzz can't hurt, though.
Roho winds his way through the heady delights of the party and up a short flight of steps. They terminate in a small balcony overlooking the whole mess below. The music is a little quieter here, the atmosphere less thick with intoxicants. There, seated in a comfortable chair like it's a throne, Cynis Verheen, satrap of Greyfalls, surveys her own party like it's something sordidly amusing. Like she's above all her guests in every conceivable way, rather than just physically. A mortal man in finery is attempting to bend her ear when she spots Roho. A single wave of a bejewelled hand is enough to have him backing off, all apologies and well-wishes.
"You've returned," Verheen says, taking a small sip from a glass of finest Eagle Prefecture red. Her emerald gaze flicks over both his and Jewel's clothes, their bearing, the evidence of treated injuries. The gaze lingers on Jewel. "... and you brought the outcaste. I take it things have not gone well?"
Verheen is a handsome, middle-aged woman, skin tinged a lighter green than the foliage growing amid her greying hair. Middle-age for a Dragon-Blood is old indeed — Jewel knows that the satrap is likely closer to two hundred years than she is to fifty. Verheen's mood is impossible to read, as inscrutable as an oak.
Roho swallows, bows. Jewel barely remembers to follow suit. He opens his mouth to address Verheen, but stops short as a fourth Exalt appears. "Roho. You look like a mess." Jewel recognises the speaker, stepping aside to allow him past. Cynis Knife Dancer, Verheen's consort, Garrison Commander of Greyfalls, and Jewel's direct employer. He acknowledges her with a nod, scarred face unsmiling as ever. "Koventali." He almost glides more than he walks in that way that some powerful Air Aspects have, white hair blowing out in a breeze felt by no one else around him. The former-outcaste comes to a stop beside Verheen's chair, a stalwart pillar of support at his wife's side. Jewel notes that
he is very much still wearing his daiklave.
"Sir!" says Roho.
"Commander," says Jewel.
"Well, don't you two stop on my account," Knife Dancer says. Verheen nods her assent.
Roho begins, speaking in rapid High Realm. Unfortunately, Jewel's grasp of that language has always been fairly limited, but she recognises the word "Anathema" many times, as well as her own name... and the word "Nuri". A certain tightness twists in her chest everytime that last comes up.
When he finally finishes, Knife Dancer is the one to speak up, dropping back into Riverspeak. "The Forsaken was one of the Tributary Guard? You're sure?" His cold eyes lock onto Jewel, and she can't look away.
"Yes," Jewel says. "She is being... I knew her." Thought she had.
Verheen sits forward. "Knew her? A mortal soldier?" She sips her wine, giving Jewel a shrewd look that feels like it lays her bare in an instant. "Sleeping with her, then?"
Jewel flinches, too obvious to lie now. "It was... being something like that."
Verheen nods. "So," she rolls the word around on her tongue in a contemplative manner, and Jewel understands ahead of the true confirmation that her life depends on what comes next. "Tell me. How
did you walk away from four Anathema, all on your own, barely hurt?"
Jewel chooses her approach carefully before replying. "They were fighting each other," she says. "And I was escaping." Not technically a lie. Absurdly though, it tastes like a small betrayal on her part, considering what had really happened. She'd gotten away because a monster who looked exactly like a tearful young woman had never wanted to hurt her in the first place.
Verheen raises an eyebrow. "I see," she says. "How fortunate for you. Why don't you tell me what happened, in your own words. From the beginning."
Jewel begins speaking, talking about Anathema witches and ghosts and Solars disguised as allies... and carefully
not about confusion or heartbreak. When she finishes, Verheen holds her gaze for a worrisome moment, but the satrap is distracted by Knife Dancer.
"We aren't prepared for this," he says, stormy eyes full of urgency. "We'll need to act now — this changes much."
"We'll discuss this later," Verheen says, sipping her wine again.
"Verheen, this
cannot wait."
"It can." Something sharp enters her voice for the first time, and the look she shoots him takes in both Roho and Jewel. It can wait, clearly, until they're actually in private.
Jewel watches the hardened veteran, chastened, give way before the look and falling silent. An obedient Dynastic husband, whatever his recent origins. Verheen turns to look at the two younger Dragon-Blooded present. "You're both tired," she says. "Go get some rest."
Jewel thanks her, bows to them both, and is halfway down the stairs before she really knows what she's doing again, pushing back into the churning mass of the party. Even more so than before, some combination of her bearing, her appearance, and her obviously being a Dragon-Blood makes anyone sober enough to care step out of her path.
"I thought she was going to yell!" Roho says as they step back out into the cool, night air. Jewel hadn't realised he'd been keeping pace. "Where are you headed now?"
Jewel lets out a long breath. "To be properly drunk. Somewhere that is quieter than here."
Roho opens his mouth, as if he might invite himself along, but the set of her shoulders makes him reconsider. "Well, I suppose you've earned it."
"If nothing else," says Jewel, expending the very last of her false good cheer. "Be taking care."
Then she goes back through the gate, collects her weapons, and walks off into the city night. Entirely alone.
==========
"... and don't get me started on that ungrateful, ignorant child!" Winter Jasmine's skirt swishes around her ankles as she whirls in place, continuing her violent pacing across the small chamber. "Lecturing
me. After I tried to help. I tried to
help!" At this last, Jasmine whirls again, this time facing her only audience: her own dark-haired reflection in a full length mirror. Her reflection looks back at her, always ready to listen to her problems without judgement.
She takes a deep breath. "I never learn, do I?" she asks the mirror, a little calmer. "Sometimes, I think Shahan-ya was right.
They're never worth it." Still looking into the mirror, Jasmine sinks down onto the narrow cot that serves as her bed. Most of the chamber is taken up by shelves of magical component`s: odd bones and dried Underworld insects and wyld-touched herbs that glow in the dark. An entire shelf full of what look like human skulls lined up beside each other, carved with strange runes. The chamber itself is underground, hollowed out from the earth and linked with silk, supporting beams of conjured bone helping to bear the weight of the ceiling. It's warm down here, the power of Jasmine's magic warding off the worst of the chill from the Frozen Wood overhead.
"Why
should I even bother?" she continues. "Let her get herself killed like all the others. It doesn't have to be my problem. Better that it's now, while she's still a stranger." Jasmine closes her eyes, taking a deep breath. "Better than the alternative, right?" Her voice comes out much deeper than it had moments before, and the cot creaks as if a greater weight has settled onto it. With a sense of misgiving, she opens her eyes, looking into the mirror again.
The man who looks back at her is tall and broad-shouldered, brown-haired, perpetually unshaven in a way Jasmine had teased him for, but had secretly loved. She slowly stands up, eyes locked with her reflection. With those same eyes she'd watched the light slowly go out of. "Better than that," she says again. She can abruptly taste his blood on her tongue, hot and metallic. Luna is a kind enough goddess to remove certain inhibitions when they bestow their gifts upon a mortal, but the mere memory of
this blood in particular makes her want to gag.
"... Jasmine?" She turns around, startled to find Maw Lurking Argent standing in the doorframe. At the sight of her wearing Cal's face like this, he does a double-take, his remaining eye going wide with shock.
Cal's body shines faintly silver, shrinking back to Jasmine's true shape. "Don't you knock anymore?" she demands.
"I
did," he says. "You didn't hear me. You were shouting."
Jasmine stops short. "Was I really being that loud?"
"You were," says Jasmine's own voice, from directly behind her. Having spoken for the first time in the conversation, her reflection steps out of the mirror, identical to her in every way, albeit with subtly inverted features. "Are you alright?" they ask.
Jasmine pinches the bridge of her nose. "Rattled," she admits. "I'll be fine."
Reflection nods. "I understand. She hurt you." They let that linger in the air for a few seconds before adding, carefully, "All Exalts are young and stupid at some point. You've grown a great deal yourself, since you first pulled me into the world. Perhaps it is best not to judge her too quickly."
Jasmine sighs. "We'll see."
Reflection nods again, understanding that this is the best they're likely to get. "I'll look in on the excavation. Nice to see you, Argent." They add the last just as they dematerialise through the nearest wall. In their absence, Jasmine has no reflection in the mirror at all.
Argent, who had briefly scowled at the mention of Jasmine's latest Solar mate, jumps directly to his actual point. "We have a visitor. A messenger."
Jasmine goes completely alert, already moving past him to sweep out of the room. "From above or below?" she asks.
"Below." He keeps up with her, but Jasmine knows him well enough to see the pain he's hiding. He can regenerate, and Jasmine did what she could for him with her own magic... but, frankly, he shouldn't be up and walking around at all, after multiple broken bones and his eye. There had been no saving his eye, and it will require much more time and effort to repair such a wound. Thinking about it makes her furious with Aster all over again, to say nothing of that Wood Aspect she'd been shielding. Silent Pause was a deeper, more bitter betrayal that Jasmine isn't ready to process yet.
"Who sent them?" Jasmine asks.
"I don't know," Argent admits. "She's
not a ghost."
Jasmine pauses briefly in the passage. It's a narrow, rounded tunnel, massive ribs curving up silk-lined walls with a winding spine overhead, as if they're walking through the gutted carcass of a giant snake. Ghost lights hover overhead, illuminating everything in a pale blue light. She thinks about this for a moment, and comes to a quick conclusion. "Did she come from upriver, or down?" From further into the East, or from the Scavenger Lands. Such things had their Underworld equivalents.
"I... don't know," Argent says again. "She just showed up from out of nowhere."
There are many lords and petty monarchs of the Underworld. The East is lousy with ancient ghosts of power and influence, groaning under the weight of thousands of years of restless dead. There's always the chance that this is merely a ghost-blooded heir or byblow. A living scion sent as an ambassador to the living. In her gut, Jasmine doesn't believe that, though. It's only ever been a matter of time before her work draws the attention of one of the great horrors of the Underworld, and such beings don't need to rely on servants as frail as a half-mortal.
Jasmine starts walking again, heading for an exit tunnel. Her moon-sense tells her that night has fallen hours ago — it will take her where she needs to go, now. "Where did you put her?"
"Rains has her waiting in the overseer's office," Argent says.
Jasmine reaches a dead end. At her touch, the terminus of the passages becomes a door, swinging outward into a different world entirely. The deathly chill that pervades the Frozen Wood is still here, less a sharp cold and more a pervasive ache in Jasmine's bones, barely discernible. At the same time the black Hearthstone set into her forehead burns with power. Eternal night's gloom closes in on her, unnaturally inky and oppressive. Alien stars hang overhead, just barely illuminating the outline of a river in the distance, flowing as black as tar. The trees here are strange, skeletal, stretching out too tall, roots spreading in all directions like broken insect legs.
Argent shudders very slightly as he crosses over, and like always, Jasmine elects not to notice for the sake of his pride. Herself, she's as at home in the Underworld as any living being can be. She first walked its shadowed forests over seven hundred years ago, and has since plumbed the depths of the very Labyrinth and emerged with her mind intact. This place is for the dead, but it is the nature of Luna's Chosen to adapt to any extreme they find themselves in.That is what Jasmine has done, more or less.
In the distance, she can see the lights of the excavation, faint shapes of her workers moving with renewed vigour as they get so close to their goal. There had been setbacks — the original structure had been nothing but a barely-visible, plant-choked foundation, and Jasmine hadn't imagined that any of its defences would still be in place. When they'd broken through the stone, every hungry ghost for miles had converged on the spot, forcing her to counteract the old spell with a necromantic working of her own. That this had driven so many of them into the shadowland and out into Creation had been an intense annoyance, with complicated results.
Aster's infuriating, judgemental voice comes to mind:
"You're lurking in a haunted forest working magic so foul that you've blocked out the sun, setting vicious ghosts on the surrounding countryside to terrorise innocents..."
Complicated.
Jasmine's destination tonight is a cluster of wooden buildings on the river's edge. As she approaches, the shades she passes stop what they're doing to bow respectfully. Not only her workers and war ghosts — also peasants, traders, travellers. The denizens of the Underworld know what power is, and they don't risk offending it lightly. Jasmine acknowledges each of these pallid, deathly figures with a shallow nod of the head, striding implacable forward. She would have flown over to save time, if she didn't think Argent should avoid that kind of activity just yet.
These are new structures, especially by Underworld standards. Wooden houses built to accommodate her people. Jasmine pushes her way into the largest of them. Inside, she immediately freezes up. Several ghosts crowd the building's entranceway. Three are fairly standard war ghosts — spectral figures clad in ancient armour, still bearing arrow wounds or with gaping cuts in their throats. The fourth is Early Rains Kutari. "... here you are, my lady," Rains mutters, seeing her. "Queen of Fangs be praised."
As massive in death as he had been in life, Rains' black fur still bears the claw marks of the demon who ended his life all those centuries past. A powerfully built giant of an apefolk, a methodical and ferocious warrior and a powerful ghost in his own right. Jasmine has known him since her days studying under her Shahan-ya, when he was newly dead and she had been Exalted for less than a century. Now, Rains is slumped on the floor, Simian face trying not to let on just how much pain he's in. A fresh cut, deep and jagged, goes down the length of his torso, spectral blood escaping from his corpus in alarming quantities. The dead are as solid here as anyone else.
"What happened?" Jasmine asks, kneeling beside him.
"The messenger grows impatient," Rains says. "I tried to convince her not to wander around looking for you. Maybe successfully. But she was not
pleased."
Jasmine feels the familiar fury well up in her. That cold-burning fire in her chest, spurring her to storm into the dining room, physically seize this messenger, and rend her limb-from-limb. To hurt anyone who would dare to harm a man under her protection, dead or not. The rage of Luna is an old companion, though. Jasmine keeps her composure, taking a deep centring breath. "You'll be alright?" she asks Rains.
He grunts. "Better once she's gone, my lady."
"Well," Jasmine says, "I'll see what I can do."
The food and drink of the Underworld can sustain a mortal as well as that of Creation. The tales of such fare trapping the unwary forever do have some truth to them, however. The living human who lets even a single crust of bread from the Underworld pass their lips will have their soul subtly anchored there. When they die, the possibility of leaving behind a ghost reaches a certainty. The thing Jasmine is confronted with now shows no reservations about this possibility.
The messenger sits along at a large, ebon dining table, stuffing her face from a plate of sticky rice cakes. Upon seeing Jasmine, she pauses, swallows one last time, and gives the Lunar a grin with fangs that seem too big for her childish features.
"Finally! You took forever. I was gonna have to go looking!" She speaks in a broadly rustic North-Eastern Forest-Tongue. Separated by time and tribe from Jasmine's native dialect, but closer to it than most.
"You have raised a weapon to my servant," Jasmine says, voice still under control.
"By most measures, that forfeits your right to my hospitality, messenger or no."
The messenger rolls her eyes, an appropriately juvenile gesture.
"Yeah, but then you're not gonna know the message or nothing, and that'd be pretty dumb, right?" She's a scrawny girl of twelve, hair a dark tangle crudely hacked off at shoulder-length, garbed in a threadbare burial shift, the white of the garment's hem stained and ragged from travel. Her skin bears the red-brown tones common to much of the East, but pallid, washed out, as if she hasn't so much as seen the sun in years. Behind her, leaning against the wall and still wet with ghost blood, is a wickedly sharp sword, black surface filled with a thousand screaming faces frozen in agony. The weapon would properly be classified as a short daiklave, but even this seems too big for the messenger.
"You wanna hear it or not?"
Argent growls at her lack of courtesy.
"Do you have a name?" His accent is terrible even after all these years.
The messenger looks at him like he's being appalling stupid, before rolling her eyes.
"Nope."
He bristles further, taking a menacing step forward.
"Do you think I'm going to stand here and be mocked by a child?"
The messenger shoots forward, a small hand slamming down on the table, sending the plate of rice cakes crashing to the floor. A Caste Mark opens like a blackened wound on her brow, an eight-rayed mark of Dawn weeping blood down her face. Somehow in that moment, fangs bared, eyes blazing, this unkempt waif of a girl exudes an aura of supernatural terror that not even Jasmine can entirely disregard.
"I think I can do whatever I want!" she says.
"I'm not here with a message for you. Mother won't care a bit if I take your other eye out or nothing."
In Argent's brief moment of hesitation brought on by this display, Jasmine gives him a sharp look. "Out," she says, dropping back into Riverspeak.
"But—"
Her expression silences him. "Haven't you had enough for one day? Leave us." Reluctantly, Argent nods and stalks out of the room. Luna preserve her from newly Exalted
children and Full Moons who should know better.
When the door shuts behind him, Jasmine regards the messenger again, who has subsided back into her chair, chewing on a stray rice cake that didn't make it to the floor.
"What are you called, then?" Jasmine asks, not repeating Argent's mistake.
The girl grins again.
"I'm the Shoat!"
Jasmine considers this, the girl's Eastern appearance, the ominous allusion to a 'mother'.
"You're from the Dowager."
"Yep!" the Shoat agrees. The Caste Mark has vanished, but blood still drips down her face in a gruesome reminder of what she is.
"What is your message?"
"That mother knows what you're about, and she'll be here to pick up the pieces once you get yourself killed at it." There's a definite edge of malice to the Shoat's words. Impersonal, amused in the way a child is amused by the misfortunes of a stranger.
Jasmine's jaw tightens.
"Anything else?"
"A lot about you sticking your nose where the living don't belong, 'cause you're a nosy witch-spider with more pride than sense."
Jasmine nods slowly.
"In that case, please tell your mistress that I wish her all luck in staring vacantly into a well and muttering to herself, in the meantime."
The Shoat stares, blinks, then laughs, high and delighted.
"Can I really tell her you said that?"
"Be my guest." Not the wisest decision Jasmine has ever made, but she's angry, and it's hard to truly direct that at the girl, rather than the power that created her. And if a Deathlord were actually in position to interfere with her work directly, Jasmine wouldn't be being sent patronising messages born by offensive deathknights. Instead, they would simply do it. She's close now, so close she can taste it. That what she's digging for is so close to Greyfalls, an ideal first target, is only icing on the cake that will make anything afterward all the easier.
The Shoat laughs again, then glances down at the shattered plate and mashed rice cakes still laying on the floor.
"You got any more've these?"
Jasmine nods.
"I'll find you some more. To go."
