You're sitting in the atrium with your tree companion, idly working with patterns of life aura. Since Beti finds you making a certain amount of noise to be comforting, you've taken to explaining thoughts aloud to her, sometimes. It can help you think your way through things, so it helps both of you. You've decided to complete your study of your family path. This is the time to do it: you've decided you want to try to get to Bosc's wedding, and so this is the best time you'll ever have to consult with the masters of the Desiccated Valley. You just need to do the prepwork.
That actually is pretty pratical it's a family path so asking the family for help makes sense.
"Meira's move was meant to trim plants, just shearing them off at the point she chooses. This is also meant to get rid of plants, just my family does it by simply removing all the life power in the area. It's a lot harder to do than the Verdant Valley, and also it is potentially dangerous, so I get why Dad didn't talk about it a lot when I was a little kid. But it really does sort of complete the family Path, when I consider it in its place. We empower ourselves, we grow new plants where that helps, we use our Forger move to help brace weaker trees... and then we have this move to clear a field when it's not doing what we need. Could just be cycling food plants through, or could be getting rid of blighted trees, could even just be claiming an orchard field from wilderness. Obviously we can get rid of them by hand, but this is way more efficient. Just... harder." You frown, as the green aura in front of you finally obeys you. Swirling your own madra outside it to suck the ambient life madra away isn't harder than what you've evolved your techniques into, but it is harder than just getting the basics out of them. It's slow and obvious, though, so it's not hard to see why Dad just calls it a gardening technique, not a combat technique. Even he could only use it to kill someone if he got them to stay still for a few crucial moments and they were a stage weaker.
Keras thinking about the origins of the family path is really neat.
"I can do a few things that no one else can, though. Say I both remove life power and add in death power. It's still not really an easy combat move, at least not yet, but the principle is there. And it should be even more madra-efficient as a gardening move." The void you've opened in front of you is just a bare patch of soil: you don't need to see the technique kill something to work on it. You add in the wan grey flicker of death madra, and it stabilizes the suction: there's extra pressure there to push life away. A beetle comes up to the edge of your circle, then pauses, sensing something amiss, so it turns ninety degrees and goes about its business without dying.
Keras being able to use death madra makes this technique more potent and efficient which makes it very scary. Also this feels like the start of Keras becoming an actual death artist, sure they've included some into Clinging Vines but this feels like a much deeper use of it.
You suck all the loose madra back up and look at Beti again. "I don't know if I can bring you with me, though. Would you even want to?"
Beti opens her eye and looks at you. She sends two sets of symbols to you through your link: in one, a bird leaves a tree, and then returns. In the other, the bird leads and the tree follows. The second one quickly becomes a larger image.
Communicating through images is useful.
You are greeted by endless silence, so you eventually plow forward. "I was planning to be gone for a few weeks, to meet up with my family. My sister's getting married." You give the dates, and continue to get no indication that Cheng even knows you exist today. "Can I take Beti with me?"
"Okay." He talks with his mouth full, but it's still clear enough to be sure.
You blink. "Thank you? I thought you might be worried something will happen with her."
"Nah. My real work needs to simmer for a few months, now, and staying with her bondmate is probably best for keeping her docile. And if anyone threatens her, tell them that I'll kill them." He stuffs the last of the food in his mouth and licks his fingers clean. "Oh, or if they threaten you, I suppose."
That's probably the best consideration you'll get when he's focused on something that doesn't include you.
Cheng is chill like that and his work is kinda dying down for a bit.
Today, you're blindfolded. Prachi has taken you to one of the public parks in Great Crevasse, one with a rocky, broken-up area. Prachi has told you to repeat taking one step forward, then fall into a defensive stance. It's surprisingly difficult: you never know exactly where your foot will land. Sometimes you stumble over a rock, other times you find that you're landing on a little ledge, and other times you're having to recover your balance because there's an eight-inch dip in front of you instead of flat ground. Your spiritual sense helps more than zero, but you're still mostly as discombobulated as intended.
Being able to fight without you sight and being forced to adapt to the environment is good.
"Because the Brightflares are also trying hard?" Prachi doesn't say anything, so you try to dig a little deeper. "I have a couple tricks that work best if people don't expect them, like Dandelion Rain and charging in close to get a good hit with my—ahh!—with my axe." You manage to avoid falling when your foot finds nothing for a worrying second. "But outside of that, a lot of what I know might let me hurt them in a real fight, but doesn't fit the Exhibition rules." You bring your axe to a ready position again. "That's what you mean, isn't it? I'm not winning all the time, and a real part of that is because I'm learning to fight in ways that are more serious than for winning a competition with rules."
Keras is being trained to survive and if necessary kill in life or death situations.
Prachi comes a little closer, before picking up his cane and using it to point at a spot right between your eyes. "Every combat path, and thus the path of everyone who must use violence for a living, has strengths and weaknesses. They have something that they think will let them defeat their foe. They polish techniques and train their bodies and equip themselves to set up and execute this guaranteed victory and to give them protection and cover while they do so. The Sky-Myrmidons of the Great Mushroom Tablelands hone their speed and precision to sever their target's neck with one strike. The Seishen royal family manifest ramparts and armor to weather any attack. The Winter's Blade, before they were nearly wiped out, relied on escalating Ruler techniques to freeze battlefield and foe alike." The butt of the cane taps your forehead. "The classical method to train youths teaches them to fight in competitions first, then ingrains the differences needed for true combat. I cannot teach you the competition level of your path, I do not favor this approach, and you do not seem drawn to it. Thus, I imparted only combat fundamentals, focusing on full aggression intended to deny your opponents any ability to set up for their killing blows the way that they prefer. Even this has trade-offs; it will serve you poorly against foes who can pre-empt your attacks, or against those who know the first moment you can attack, as with your Exhibition Day fights."
Sacred Arts has heavily effected how people fight. Keras specializing in stoping people from getting off their killing blows through being aggressive is an interesting specialization but one that works given Keras's stats, Fields Strength and ability to heal.
Your combat teacher grunts wordlessly, planting his cane again to lean on it. "I tell you this because you have reached a point where you must make informed choices. Your assiduous drilling, especially while this young, will stand you in good stead for self-defense. However, you are reaching an end. You have mastered the basics. If you just wish to be able to protect yourself from the average life's travails, you may have no further need of me. If you want to train more on the art of armed combat, we cannot continue to work until you have a clearer vision of what your combat will be like. So: are we done?"
You think about it. Prachi has chastised you before for social niceties that interfere with actual intent. What that means here is that he is not asking this for no reason. If you say you're done and thank him, he will consider that a task successfully completed. But, instead, you shake your head. "No," you say. "I want to learn more, if you're still willing to teach me."
Keras is hungry for more and is going to be pushing beyond the normal level of combat skills.
All six of your squad are Lowgold, and the Winter's Blade should know that from their own spiritual scans. Without a Highgold of your own to match their champion, they expect you to fall back through the woods towards the Truegold knight that King Dakata has assigned to prosecute this flank of the offensive against the Winter's Blade. They are too arrogant to imagine you could go on the offensive here. So, as your squadmates play their part in holding attention and falling back in good order, you veil yourself as tightly as you can, take your halberd in hand, and work your way around their left flank.
Ah we're seeing Prachi's fighting days and him fighting the Winter's Blade.
By the time he realizes that and tries to redirect his madra to defend himself, you're too close. The Severing Blow from your halberd is a vicious attack aimed at his shoulder, and with all the weight of your body, weapon, and madra behind it, it cuts deep. His Highgold body is too tough for you to remove his left arm, but the pain and the loss of control of his arm gives you an instant more before his superior power can strike you dead as you finish charging in.
Your gauntleted hand seizes his temples, and the Swordsman's Sidearm flickers to life from your palm. His innate spiritual defenses negate the first conjured blade from your Striker/Enforcer move, but he's off-balance and you are not. You try again, and this time your razor-sharp madra blade pierces eye and brain.
Prachi is really good at fighting and seeing him in his prime is impressive, he was really lethal and able to puch up above his level due to his skill. Also that was pretty brutal and I think that's what Prachi wanted to show to Keras.
You drop the body and back away as quickly as you can, but still take a hard impact of icy madra to your chest, and feel a rib protest in a way that it shouldn't even through your armor, but both of the Lowgolds are too busy rushing to check on the Highgold to finish you off.
Getting hurt is an inevitability when fighting.
You shudder as you come back to yourself, seeing the dead Winter's Blade's face in your mind even now. Prachi waits for you to master yourself, clearly recognizing what you're experiencing. "When you find yourself in a true life-or-death battle, either you or your opponent could suffer that same fate," he says. "It is good to never be comfortable with killing, but it is foolish to withhold your best. Consult all the dream tablets. You will know more about your options for truly becoming a warrior after you do, and then we will work further."
Keras is more mature then most and weird but this is exposing them to death and gore in a save environment in the kindest way possible. Prachi giving this to Keras and then letting them choose shows that he cares and he understand the nature of this choice.
You nod. "That was so weird, the fact that they all had those eerie, still faces."
Prachi tilts his head, clearly not expecting that. "That is a Goldsign of the Winter's Blade," he says. "A century or so ago, there was a war between them and the Seishen, that the Seishen lost badly. Once he advanced to Overlord, King Dakata did much the same back to them. There was little discussion of peace until he had crippled their faction's military power."
"I didn't know that."
Prachi shrugs. "I have never had much interest in history, myself, but soldiers talk when on the campaign trail."
Keras is weird like that. The Goldsign and history are neat little tidbits.
Prachi frowns, rubbing his chin. "An act of sabotage or violence, or else an accident." He considers this a minute longer. "There was a protest going on near that section of the city. It could be an accident; chance cares nothing for convenience. At least as likely is that some violence broke out and that this is its collateral damage."
"How can we help?"
"Go to the Bronze Serpents," Prachi suggests. "They will urgently need every volunteer they can get, I suspect."
You sense that that's also a dismissal. "Thank you," you tell him. "And I'll look at the dream tablets later, I promise! But—" You break off, not finding words.
"A crisis brings out the truth of people, for better or for worse." Prachi seems philosophical about this. "Your first instinct was to help. Go help." He turns and starts walking in a different direction as you climb onto Beti and encourage her to walk to the Serpents.
It is also telling of Keras's charecter that their first instinct is to help, I think that's a good thing though.
There's maybe a dozen others with you, people who don't have Bronze Serpent outfits or Goldsigns but who are here to volunteer their healing efforts, along with a pair of Bronze Serpent Lowgolds and even one Jade. Over a hundred people are lain out on the grass to help, though, and that's with those who are no longer in danger moved out of the area.
Lot's of people showed up to help.
The sheer quantity of misery from the injured batters at your spiritual sense with scores of horrific impressions until you ruthlessly cut it down to just the closest patient.
Keras's senses is made the experience even worse but they where focused and able to lock in and help.
The closer Bronze Serpent healer murmurs to you as he senses you begin to summon your Ruler field: "Remember, this is triage. Just get people out of immediate danger. Try to save limbs or eyes when you can, but we're all going to be out of madra far too quickly, so don't overdo it."
That's some good advice for Keras to have.
And then, while she's quietly sobbing and still bleeding but no longer in danger, you move to the next. He's lost an ear, but thankfully nothing too much more. You seal the injury and murmur something encouraging, you're onto the third, who has a mangled finger. You can't save that without spending far too much madra, but with a little work, you keep the rest of his hand. The fourth has almost no heartbeat. It breaks your heart not to try, but you just move on, to where the Jade-rank Bronze Serpent is trying to set a splint. The healer is already dry of madra, so you take over working on the patient's flesh and bone for a minute while the healer finishes a splint that hopefully will allow full recovery over time.
Really sucks that Keras needs to make these calls and is getting exposed to this but honestly Keras is helping a lot and gaining some valuable experience so I think this is a moment of a lot of growth for Keras.
After a dozen, you're almost light-headed from madra exhaustion. You look up and around at the courtyard for the first time since you started work, to find that it's more full than when you started. You ruthlessly blink back tears; you're not the one hurt, and you're just going to have to do what you can—
Keras has been really effected by this not just because of the exposure to death and gore but also because they've been forced to mke choices to save as many lives as possible and there's only so much they can do to help.
A torrent of madra pours into you, your core filled to full in an instant. Whirling, you look at Beti, standing by herself, with a patient leaning against her roots. She has vastly more madra than you do, and you cycle together. It's a shared system. Of course she can grant you more madra, but... she doesn't care about these people.
Her wooden eye opens as she feels your question, focusing on you. Her reply is almost in your language, and it means but you do.
That, it seems, is enough. She will give her bird power because that will soothe your distress.
Having Beti to help and provide extra juice is really useful. And even if Beti doesn't care about the other people she cares about Keras.
While the other volunteer healers have to break off as they run dry of madra, you are suddenly topped off again, and Beti's reserves are vast, as befits a Truegold.
With Beti's help, you save an eye, a leg, two arms, and two lives before you're dry, and she fills you up again. Then again later.
You don't notice as the sun sets, or as entirely powerless Bronze Serpents make use of your miraculous stamina, taking over triage and lining up patients as best possible to make use of you, the senior Lowgold murmuring advice and lists of maladies to you.
Eventually, though, even Beti's reserves are close to empty. By that point, it doesn't matter. The urgent cases are either handled or else they didn't make it. There's going to be lots of work in the days and weeks to come, trying to help people finish recovering, but most people won't get any worse if they wait for a couple days.
Keras managed to do a lot of good with those extra boosts from Beti's reserves, holding the tide until the urgent cases where handled one way or another waas huge.
"Oh. Wait, what happened today?" You saw the effects, but don't know the actual causes.
"A demonstration turned violent." Yuyan punches the air for emphasis. "The people we saw mostly said that the Luxe attacked them while they were still peacefully protesting, but a lot of the Luxe got hurt, even some Highgolds and and a Truegold, and they released a statement right away that the protestors had attacked them. Also, someone hit the elevator's supports and it collapsed on a lot of people."
Sounds like a real mess.
His wound is on his left shoulder. There's a ragged point of entry, and then, deep inside and trying to squirm through his body and spirit towards his heart, is... something. You frown, digging at the tiny nugget of madra as best you can. It squirms away, trying to disguise itself. But you have three things that mean you can pin down things about it: you have familiarity trying to hold unknown madra delicately from your time refining, you have an unusually developed spiritual sense of surprising potency... and you use the sort of madra that makes up some of it.
"Death madra," you announce, as you recognize the wan grey power trying to burrow through the poor Lowgold man. But death isn't the only power. Twined deeply with the death madra is another madra type, a bleak and formless black, and not one you recognize. Both of them possess a furious power, the sort of endless strength you felt when you tried to fight the Nightworm Venom in Dad when you were just Iron.
{If I had to call the other madra something, it might be 'destruction',} Etaja puts in.
"...and maybe destruction?" you say, unsure.
Kaila winces, but marks it down on a sheet. "Madra of death and destruction? Who'd ever embark on a horrible path like that?" It's a rhetorical question, and you treat it as such, but she also asks "Can you help?"
A Death and Desturction Path would be hilariously dangerous to everyone including the user. Also Keras's senses and Etaja makes them really good at identification of problems.
Yet, when you reach her, Beti enfolds you in her branches with delicate care and carries you. While she's walking back home to Cheng's place, you see a teenager up way past any sensible curfew stop and look at you on the street. "Thank you," she calls out as Beti goes past. "You saved my dad today." You try to make some response, but you don't quite manage it. The teenager seems to understand.
Nice to see the effects of Keras making a difference.
Today, Keras has brushed up against death in new and personal ways. They have seen death through the eyes of a killer in a dream tablet, and then seen death in the aftermath of a bloody tragedy. Keras' healing ability has been pushed beyond what had been its limit and made a difference for a lot of people, and yet still run up against limitations. Keras will have to grapple with implications and what else they can learn over time, but in the short term, there are families who want to show their appreciation for their miracle-worker.
I feel like this turn was the real start of Keras's path to become a death artist and healer. So far they've been focusing on combat and the plant side of things but this was an introduction to death and healing in a way that will shape Keras.
[X] A glove created to help a healer
Being able to heal better would be useful. Also I feel like the other choices are redundant. Beti is already growing and Keras is kinda falling a bit behind raw power wise which is okay but I'd like to keep them somewhat balanced. Protection is nice given the danger of the setting and given that Keras's stat weakness is toughness, but the Cycling is taking care of that and Keras can heal. Also for Remnants we've already helped Keras's hometown a lot through sharing advancement resources.
[X] A codephrase you lack context for
This could lead to the most chaos and interesting events, the other stuff just gives knowledge and context.
