II. The Deadly Embrace
The ringing of steel upon steel. Flames roaring. Bones snapping like twigs.
The anger, burning in your chest.
"I find you guilty."
The old man's voice draws you out of your reverie.
"You still have not told me your name," Abanya says gently. You blink your eyes open, shaking your head to shed the figments of memory.
"I am Golden Road, of the Centipede School," you say, a touch of bitterness in your voice. The name seems like a cruel irony now that you can't walk. "Once, I was a Magistrate of Prasad. Now I am merely a pilgrim."
Abanya nods thoughtfully. "I thought I recognized that red brand on your brow. More and more of your people are coming to the Grave these days. Is your home such a dreadful place you would rather flee to this cursed land?"
You chuckle. "Quite the opposite. Prasad is… young, and prosperous, and its ambitions are great. I suspect those Prasadi who come to the Grave seek power they can bring back home to earn respect and fame."
Abanya takes a long sip of beer, looking in the distance. The sun is setting past his beaded curtain, casting the room in shadows, and a chill on the evening air makes your knees ache.
"Like you," he says finally.
You sigh. It would be useless to deny it.
"Even among travelers to the Grave," he continues, "few come through Embercairn. We are poor and out of the way. But you are a martial artist, and you have lost your legs. You are here for the Golden Hounds."
"I am no thief," you say firmly. "Whatever I can do to earn them - whatever price or service you demand of me-"
"Do not insult me," Abanya says with enough sharpness that you are caught off-guard, falling silent with your mouth half-open. "We do not
barter such treasures. We are lorekeepers, not merchants. What if I told you that there
is no price you can pay for the Hounds?"
You nervously bite your lip, goosebumps riding up your arms. But you force yourself to take three slow breaths and quiet your beating heart. You bow your head.
"Then I shall leave, all the more desperate than I was yesterday."
Abanya nods sternly, still not looking at you.
"That is the correct answer, of course," he says. "But I did not mean to say that
we will refuse you - only that it is up to the Hounds themselves. For three hundred years they have been in our keeping; every few years a traveler comes who seeks to bond with them, or a youth from Embercairn wishes to take them and go on to a life of adventure. Most leave disappointed. Perhaps once in a generation, someone succeeds in claiming the boots - but life for those who wander the earth wearing such treasures is often as glorious as it is short. Eventually, the Hounds come back to us, always."
Your relief at knowing that the old man will not keep you from your goal is so palpable, you almost don't hear the rest of what he's saying. As he pauses, you blink, trying to get your bearings.
"...you are saying the Hounds themselves could… reject me?"
Abanya nods, finally looking at you again. "Items of such power have a will of their own. Some who have mastered the flow of Essence have failed to bind them, and some who have never held power of their own found their favor. You are free to make the attempt, but know this: to come so far, being given such hope, come so close to one's goal, and fail… This has broken men's spirit before. Some who fail leave into the sunset on another quest but with the weight of despair on their backs; some lose the strength to go on, and stay here in Embercairn, fading into our peaceful normality. And some... die. It is not a light thing that you aim to do."
"I am aware," you say with a thin, sad smile, "but I
am desperate. I surrender myself to the will of the gods and your Golden Hounds. If I am found wanting… Such is my fate."
Abanya returns your smile after a moment. "I am not used to such humility from your kind."
You raise an eyebrow. "From the Prasadi?"
"No…" He waves his hand towards the door. "From martial artists."
Ah. Of course. You remember his expression of wrath when he entered the room earlier to see you with the Adder disciples - he knew instantly that they had come into his home to break the sacred law of hospitality by harming you in some way, staining him with their crime. As frustrating as the students' immediate change of mind on seeing your injuries might have been to you, it saved the old man much grief.
"I suppose not all schools are equal in their attitude towards the outside world," you say cautiously, though inwardly you welcome the change of topic to one you are both more familiar and more comfortable with. "The Steel-Fanged Adder must have grown quite bold to assert themselves like this, when they do not even hail from this place. How long has their school been here?"
"Four years," Abanya says dejectedly. "Long enough that some of our own youths have begun to swallow their tall tales and join their dojo. Soon they will be so entrenched that nobody will be able to think of life without them."
"What are they after?" you ask.
"At first? Safety. Their school was formed deeper within the Grave, in the valley proper, and for some reason they won't admit to - probably because it doesn't make them look good - they were exiled. Their master led them here, at the edge of the Grave where neither the Steward nor the Fourth could reach them, and rebuilt his school as best he could. Once he was confident they were safe, he left, gods know where, and left his best pupil in charge. She's still running the place, and has only grown more ambitious."
You frown. Something in this doesn't quite fit. "This place is too out of the way," you say, "and has too few people besides. What do they do with their day, being the only martial artists in a day's walk's distance?"
Abanya lets out a sharp, barking laugh. "That's the thing, isn't it? These kids are
bored out of their skulls. And they think they're above labor, too! Back where they came from, the Adder
was their trade - they would be paid to act as bodyguards, soldiers, assassins, teachers to some uppity riverborn kids. Here? None of that matters. Before they came, our relationship with the mountainborn was… tense, but manageable. Their tithe was harsh, but they did not commit violence against us, and we could rely on them for meat, leather, furs and milk. But the Adder declared that we were under their 'protection' now, we didn't have to pay a tithe anymore. So now we have to feed their students for free, and the mountainborn keep trying to raid us - which of course is to the Adder's liking, because it gives them a chance to put their skills to use - and we can barely get any meat at all. The children born in the last four years are already smaller and weaker than those before."
You listen quietly as the old man rants on, more venom seeping into his voice with every sentence as his bitterness and anger come through. He probably hasn't had a chance to open up this way in a long time - and he likely wouldn't, if you were not bound by sacred hospitality, if you were not one of 'the meek,' someone he doesn't see as a threat to the peace of his village. But you cannot resent him for it. His pain is obvious.
And then suddenly something clicks as Abanya's words fit into a picture shaped by years among, and as one of, the students of the art in your own homeland.
"They weren't going to rob me out of greed," you whisper. "Or at least it wasn't their main motivation. They were going to rob me because it was the first
excitement they'd had in weeks."
Abanya nods grimly. "And now you understand. Watch yourself. Do not give them cause to harm you."
"I understand," you say, and then… wait.
You're not sure what for. Something seems missing.
Abanya clearly seems to consider the conversation over, and is busy ruminating over his cup, no longer at you. But that doesn't feel like the right ending. What is…
Oh. Of course.
He's not asking for your help as a magistrate.
You've been in this position a hundred times before. Facing a village elder telling you of whatever troubles plague his kin, whatever wrong has gone unavenged, whatever crime has gone unsolved, and then kneeling and bowing and pleading for you to bring them peace and resolution.
But not anymore.
Nobody expects somebody who can't walk to fight their battles.
You swallow bile and pick up your wooden legs. "I should sleep," you say, "today's been a long day."
"Of course," Abanya says, standing up. "I will show you to the room."
***
You fall asleep like a stone, drifting on shapeless dreams, too elusive to retain a memory of. When you wake up midway through the night, the bile has left you; you feel calmer and more at peace, at least a little. The bed, too, is more comfortable than sleeping on bags of millet in Marrow's cart, although you've never seen its like before - mudbricks have been arranged in a rectangular raised pattern, forming a 'chest' out of the ground, in which rice-straw and leaves have been piled up, covered with goatskin. Abanya sleeps besides you, snoring softly; it seems he will not wake up. He is an old man, after all.
You climb out of the bed, landing on your knees, and reach for your luggage and walking stick. You don't bother to strap on your legs this time - it is a small house, and there is no one to see you as you push yourself across the floor, past the door to the main room, and stop in front of the fireplace. The large clay pot still sits above it, the fire still down to embers. You are familiar with such traditions: the stew is typically a semi-permanent fixture, the fire rarely rising above a smoulder, and as days go by the house's inhabitants add in water, stock, and vegetable to compensate for what they draw with each meal. As week-roots disintegrate fully, they flavor the broth for those added on the day. It's a decent way to make food while keeping the home warm. But you're not here for a late-night meal.
The night has come, and you have left the road; your destination is reached, at least for now. Ruvia will be no aid to you now.
You rummage through your bags and pull out the incense-holder, the stick, and two prayer strips, laying them before you. The incense-holder is a beautiful thing, a flat wooden side with a slope at one hand, adorned with two centipedes embracing (or fighting to the death; you were never sure which). You bring the stick up to the fireplace, lighting it against the embers, and place it in the holder; fragrant smoke wafts through the room, rising through the hole in the ceiling, and you breathe deeply of it. The familiar scent brings with it memories of home and peace, of the stern kindness of your teacher and the calm that fills you when practicing the katas. Then you take out a piece of charcoal and begin writing on the blank paper.
"Ta-Sepa, God with a Thousand Feet, bring me guidance. Give me clear eyes with which to see the path towards righteousness, the wisdom to know which battles are worth fighting, and the strength to restrain myself when the path of war is wrong."
You raise the first prayer strip to the fire, and let it burn to ashes in your hands, a small mound forming in front of the burning incense. Then you write the second one.
"Kegare, God with a Hundred Hands, bring me guidance. Give me burning eyes with which to see the corruption in this world, the wisdom to discern the wicked among men, and the strength to destroy what has no right to exist."
You raise the second prayer strip and burn it as well; when it is done you mix up the ashes with one finger, then raise it to your forehead, drawing two lines from your hair down to your nose. When you are done, the incense has finished burning; you sit with your hands on your knees, waiting for the smoke to disperse, hoping for an answer.
Something very light falls from the ceiling, and you look to the corner of the room where it lands. At first you see nothing, your eyes blinded by the glare of the embers, but as you squint you can make out furious motion on the ground.
A millipede and a centipede, locked in a fight to the death.
***
The morning sun greets you with gentle warmth, the last of a night air bringing with it welcome dampness compared to the dry heat of yesterday. Your body relaxed from the aches and bumps of the long road, you walk with surer steps, your walking stick clicking on the ground in a beat with your wooden legs. A child approaches you and offers to help you walk, and you turn him down gently after offering him one of your last candied dates.
It takes you some time to cross the full breadth of Embercairn, but you find comfort in walking unaided, however slow your steps might be. Eventually you reach the outskirts and find the trade square: a wooden fence closes off a wide square of beaten earth, where Marrow's ox-dragon lazily munches on dry shrubbery. Its massive stature does not seem to scare off the only animals you've seen in the village so far (though you suspect there are cats and dogs around, as in most settlements): a dozen of turkeys in a pen connected to the square. Aside from these, the only other thing of note is the triangular tent made of sewn-together goatskins in front of a small campfire that has long guttered out. You root yourself on your walking stick with one hand to swing open the fence-gate and enter, warily eyeing up the three-horned beast. It greets you with an amicable moo, and you decide to honor this truce for now.
The tent's front flap opens up from inside, and you expect the familiar sickleman to walk out, but instead it is a young graveborn man who stretches in the sunlight, bare-chested with his tunic slung over his shoulder. When he notices you, he smirks; he is clean-shaven with short curly hair, and his lithe musculature and lack of fat hint at one of the Adder folk.
"You are the Centipede girl, yes?" he says, putting on his tunic and tightening his belt around his skirt.
"I am Golden Road of the Centipede School, yes," you say warily.
"What luck! I am Shay Grass-born of the Steel-Fanged Adder, first disciple to Mistress Nashai. It is a pleasure to meet you, Centipede girl."
'Mistress Nashai.' Abanya mentioned the original master of the Steel Fang as a man, so that would be his 'prized pupil' he left in charge of the place. You give the man a slight bow, repressing your frustration at the nickname.
"The pleasure is mine. Why is this lucky?" You can't help but add with a touch of suspicion.
"I was going to leave a message for you with my dear Marrow, but since we stumbled upon each other, I can give it to you directly!" Shay says with a smile that somehow fails to reach his eyes.. "My sifu invites you to come visit the Steel Fang dojo at your leisure; she has brought out the good rice-wine, and hopes to have you for dinner, so that she may talk with the first student of the art to come by this shabby little village in a long time."
"You… honor me," you say, raising an eyebrow at his manners. This man is clearly quite fond of himself; if he is 'first disciple' to the head of the dojo, then he must likely consider himself its best student bar only his teacher. Arrogance is often the curse of such proud pupils.
You would know. You were one.
"It's a shame, really," Shay adds with a sigh. "I'd have loved a chance to spar with a student of another school, but…" He glances at your legs. "Oh well."
Your lip curls up in distaste, and you say nothing. If he recognizes your offense, he makes no sign of it, instead smiling and walking past you - and then pausing, a hand on your shoulder, not looking directly at you.
"Do not go to the shrine before you have met my master," he whispers. "That would end badly for all of us."
You snap to look at him but he is already happily striding away before looking back. You open your mouth to say something, but then Marrow finally comes out of the tent, stretching out his feather-crests and yawning loudly.
"Road!" he says then, looking cheerful. "I see you've met Shay."
"Is that your boyfriend?" you ask, raising a dubious eyebrow.
"When I'm in Embercairn, at least."
"He's a dick."
Marrow laughs at that, and produces a small bag from within the tent. "Boiled egg?" he asks.
"Sure," you say, and he tosses you two heavy eggs - you catch them both in one hand without looking, stick one in your teeth and start peeling the other.
As you look up, you see Marrow plop down three eggs in his mouth, one after the other, crushing them in one bite without taking off the shell. You pause and take your own egg out of your mouth.
"Why are you eating the
shells, you weird bird."
"Scales like these," he says grinning, tracing his impressively-chiseled chest with one talon, letting out a metal-like sound as it strikes the thick emerald scales, "don't come from your kind's diet. This flawless wonder of nature that is my body is quite expensive to maintain."
You roll your eyes and go sit down next to the dead fire so the ill-fitted nail in your right leg can stop bothering you.
"I thought you were going to visit me yesterday," you say.
"Missed me?" Marrow says with a cocky look. "I apologize. The village folk flocked to me and I had to do a lot of greetings - and not a lot of trading, but that's the way of things, you never trade on the first day, you have to show friendship first - and by the time I was done chatting and drinking the sun had already set. You could have sent for me though, instead of walking all the way."
"What, and miss meeting your delightful lover?"
"His personality is not his greatest asset, but he has… others," Marrow says, pulling a long, sharp bone out of his bagg and worrying at his teeth to dislodge bits of eggshell. "So, how are you doing?"
"Not great," you concede grimly. This seems to surprise him.
"You did not find what you were looking for?"
"No, the Golden Hounds
are here," you say. "But I am getting the feeling that I am not the only one after them."
"Ah." Marrow's eyes darken and he looks past you, at the fence-gate and the road leading back to the village. "The Adder."
"It is not the only issue," you add. "I have received an omen last night - in the between-time."
When you first speak of omen, Marrow opens his mouth to make some quip about you praying too much, but then he stops, and looks thoughtful. The sicklefolk worship earthly spirits and totemic beasts and spurn the gods of Heaven, but even they know to respect the between-time.
"What did it say?" he asks, uncharacteristically serious.
You reach into your habit and pull out a piece of cloth, opening it to reveal the tiny body within, which you upturn over the campfire.
The dead millipede falls into the ash, buried instantly.
"There is a corruption in this place," you whisper. "The way of peace is for me to leave now. To get what I want most, I will have to follow the path of violence."
Marrow slowly nods.
"How familiar are you with graveborn customs?" he asks.
"Not nearly as much as I would like right now."
"You are, on the face of it, safe here," he says, staring at you with his strange vertical pupils. "Pardon me for putting it this way, but you are a cripple. That makes you untouchable to the graveborn. All owe you hospitality free of charge or service, and furthermore no one, not even the most arrogant bastard in the Adder school, will raise a hand against you - unless you strike first."
The word is painful to hear, but you know why Marrow used it specifically. To the graveborn you are not merely crippled - it is not just a state. You are 'a cripple,' an identity which defines you enough so strongly that you fit into a wholly different set of social expectations and obligations than the able-bodied. You bite your lip to keep from a vicious comment that nobody deserves. It is kindness that guides them, even if that kindness comes from a place of pity. Not all who share your condition also have your gifts to make up for it, after all.
"So they can't hurt me unless I hurt them first," you say. "That is good to know."
"Do not be mistaken," Marrow notes. "This does not mean the graveborn cannot refuse you things. You are not
owed entrance to the locals' shrine, after all, and trespass could be considered offense enough to end their obligations."
You frown. "Abanya said any traveler who wished it was entitled to at least an attempt to bond with the Hounds."
"And that may be Abanya's law, but is it the Adder's law?"
You sigh and rub your temples. Conflicting jurisdictions were already painful enough to deal with as a Magistrate when they were proper codes of law, let alone when one jurisdiction is rooted in oral tradition and the other in a dojo-gang's strength of arms.
Although to be frank, the latter was always far more common than the former.
"And of course," you add, "if I
did strike first or trespass,
I would be the one to break the law of hospitality, and since I am a foreigner, the blame would not fall on me, but on lorekeeper Abanya for sheltering me in the first place."
"You catch on fast," Marrow says with amusement. "I guess you might not have been lying about being a magistrate."
"I wasn't lying," you say with a kind of sour amusement, "and I have spent ten years of my life dealing with this kind of dilemma and contradictions. I'll work something out."
"Well then," Marrow says, grinning and raising an egg as if in a toast, "I am eager to see how you work your way out of that pickle, Magistrate of Golden Roads."
"You and me both," you mutter.
Refining Golden Road's skillset
I am currently tentatively working off the narrative-based skill system used in @EarthScorpion's The Dragon's Spite. More details will be forecoming towards the end of the prologue and details might change, but this shouldn't bother you much, as this vote focuses on broad narrative descriptions of Golden Road's skillset.
Take an an hour to discuss this before the vote opens. This is a Plan Vote. You don't need to wait for me to officially open it, though, just check the timestamps.
Main Combat Approach
[X] [LOCKED]
Secondary Combat Approach (Pick One)
Basic: You are a skilled rider, able to tame and ride fierce horses and draw the most out of them.
[ ] Horseback Judge Style: You have been trained to track down and capture criminals over long distances. You know how to follow a trail and push your mount past its limits to catch up with the swiftest criminals. While the Centipede School is not well-suited to mounted combat, you have adapted its fighting-chain techniques to run down and grapple wrong-doers from range, reeling them in for judgement.
[ ] Law-Giving Lion-Dog Style: You have a keen sense of companionship with animals, and can train them into loyal, skillful battle-mates. Once you have bonded with a familiar, you can fight as a team, using their natural talents to push your opponents off-balance and open them up to your deadly strikes. You also know how to make use of an animal's talents to investigate wickedness, from a dog's sense of smell to a hawk's far-ranging vision.
Main Investigation Approach (Pick One)
Basic: You know both the basics of how to case a scene and interrogate a suspect, and the general shape of the law.
[ ] Mist-Dispersing Sunlight Style: People are elusive and deceitful. You work best with places and items. Footsteps in the mud, old blood on a knife, hidden compartments, displaced bodies; all these things stand out to you, and as you catalogue them you retrace the past of your surroundings in your mind, until the truth stands before you clear as a painting.
[ ] Demon-Revealing Glare Style: The world of matter is only tools. You work best with people. Detecting lies is a party trick; what you do is deeper work, getting into the minds of people, drawing a portrait of their backgrounds and foibles, and then you find the right questions to ask for them to reveal the truth even when they do not know it.
Main Bureaucracy Approach (Pick One)
Basic: You know how to wrangle underlings and allocate skilled people effectively to their tasks, and you are quick to grasp the basics of law and administration.
[ ] Devil-comes-at-Nightfall Style: You have grown all too familiar with crime gangs and corrupt nobles whose reach and asset dwarf yours. Ever the underdog, you have learned to identify points of weaknesses in organizations too large for their own goods and exploit them - bribing the low rungs of the ladder, exploiting the vices of the higher-ups, and generally playing on the wicked's tendency towards betrayal and self-sabotage to disrupt their activities.
[ ] Hero-comes-at-Sunrise Style: As a magistrate you were a wanderer, and could not rely on extensive resources. Thus you have learned to ingratiate yourself to trustworthy locals wherever you went. You are quick to make yourself a fixture of any given place, identifying reliable organizations and people and convincing them to help you, and you can easily familiarize yourself with obscure or unknown customs to leverage them to your advantage.
