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The Last Daughter -- Dragon-Blooded Sorcery School Quest

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Vote closed, Year 4 03
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    • Scheduled vote count started by Gazetteer on Mar 8, 2023 at 9:49 PM, finished with 61 posts and 42 votes.
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    Year 4: Flames and Frost 04
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    • Character:
    Sola: 25
    L'nessa: 22
    Maia: 17

    Spell:
    Theft of Memories: 28
    Dragon of Smoke and Flame: 13
    Corrupted Words: 3

    "Well," L'nessa says, her eyes oddly distant, "it's in a cave."

    "Oh. Which cave?" Amiti asks this as though she fully expects a useful answer.

    "The one that's dark and wet and awful," L'nessa says, voice prim.

    "I suppose that doesn't narrow it down as much as I'd hoped," Amiti admits, toying with her pendant.

    "Well, it gives us something, at least," Sola says, looking both bored and antsy. "What message did you even send it?"

    "A quote I remembered from Danaa'd and the River Ghost," L'nessa says.

    "'Force not my hand, o wretched spirit. As the river flows to the sea, so too must a soul return to the Cycle of Reincarnation when its time in life is at an end. Give up your unwholesome hold on the world, or I shall', etcetera, etcetera. Honestly, a little heavy-handed, L'nessa." You all turn to look at Amiti, who shifts uncomfortably under your regard and adds: "I did pay some attention to the monks, growing up!"

    "At any rate, yes, that was the passage I chose," L'nessa says, "I felt that layering depths of clever literary meaning was not precisely my biggest priority, at the time."

    It's late afternoon, and the four of you are outside, in your usual training spot with Sola — there's a bit of a nasty Northern wind today, for all that it barely seems to shift the fog that hangs heavy over the island. It's the third day since you agreed to help Amiti. While Maia has been forced to remain back at the school to fix a mishap with a complicated binding, L'nessa and Sola had been similarly resigned to helping with this dubious project as you had. It's heartening, you suppose, that while you were the one who originally introduced Amiti into your friend circle, she's evidently grown on you all by this point. Inconvenient for each of you, but heartening.

    It had been Amiti's idea to use L'nessa's Infallible Messenger spell to try and sneak a look at where on the island the ghost currently is. This has proven to be a mixed success at best.

    "Did you at least get a look at it?" Sola asks.

    "A little," L'nessa says. "There was a pool of water on-hand, although the lighting was terrible. I'm not sure I'd rather it were better, though — did you have to summon such an ugly ghost, Amiti?"

    "I thought her eyes were pretty!" Amiti says, defensively. "The illustrations I saw really don't do that inner glow justice. Like a nice piece of polished amber."

    Sola makes a vaguely disgusted sound in the back of her throat. "Right, so, how's plan A coming, so we can actually find this thing and deal with it?"

    You mentally reach out to your dragon scale pendant, still hanging under your clothes, on the same chain as Maia's dagger.

    "Ambraea," Perfection says, sounding annoyed, and far less self satisfied than normal, "I demand you hurry up and deal with this vile shade."

    You raise your eyebrows. "I had the impression that you were barely interested in helping with this."

    "It ate one of my servants," Perfection replies. "That cannot be borne, letting it get fat and bloated off of my largess. And obviously I can't lower myself to simply tearing its head off myself."

    "Obviously," say out loud, your voice equally dry as the thought you send to Perfection.

    "What is the point of having a young Exalt learning from me if not to deal with vermin like this? At any rate, I know where it is, in a general sense."

    "Thank you. I wish you'd led with that," you say, enduring their grumblings about your lack of respect.

    "I take it that's good?" Sola asks. "I'm here to cut the thing's head off, right? Kind of useless to bring me otherwise, unless you really need the weather changed."

    You could also cut its head off quite effectively, you think. But quibbling over this would be slightly petty. "My benefactor has located the ghost," you say, fishing in a pouch on your uniform belt. "It ate one of their minor elementals, I gather."

    Amiti makes a face. "I'm glad we're dealing with things now, then. We can't just let her keep getting stronger until someone notices."

    "I don't love your priorities, sometimes," L'nessa says.

    You pull several small gems out of the pouch, examining them briefly — an amethyst, a ruby, and an emerald. You examine the emerald for a second or two, but eventually let it full back into the pouch alongside the amethyst. The ruby you keep in your palm for long enough to kneel down and entomb it in the soil, whispering the prerequisite words under your breath. Power comes through from your link with Perfection, along with the dragon's grudging approval.

    "What would happen if I waited for you to be gone, then dug that up?" Sola asks.

    You raise your eyebrows. "If your family ever falls on hard enough times that you feel the need to steal gems from a dragon, I suppose we'll find out."

    Sola laughs.


    You wind your way through the narrow gorge, Sola at the back, you at the front — Amiti and L'nessa are unquestionably the more vulnerable out of the four of you, so it only makes sense to arrange things like this. With you being the one who has access to Perfection's directions, there's similarly no question that you be the one in the lead position of your little column.

    It's not because you always have to be in charge, whatever Instructor First Light has to say. You can take criticism gracefully, after all.

    "How close are we?" Amiti asks, looking up at the foggy sky overhead, clearly trying to tell what time it is.

    "To the cave? Near enough," you say, eyes fixed ahead. "We're—"

    "Above us!" L'nessa's voice snaps your attention up, in time to see her arrow bounce harmlessly off of a crude stone torso, and feel the eerie cold of the bolt of lightning Amiti hurls up at your apparent attacker. The pale lightning hits home as well, but doesn't slow the construct's momentum. It's a squat figure formed of rough-cut stone, featureless and inscrutable. No doubt the creation of some past student nearly as careless as Amiti, but less proactive in correcting her mistakes. Regardless, it's now plummeting straight at you.

    Following Amiti's example, you hurl a bolt of Earth Essence at it, coalescing into a mass of quartz crystal that strikes it square in the head. The force of the blow sends the construct veering off course enough for you to side step its flailing landing, the earth shuddering underfoot as it hits the ground. You may have been able to catch it, but this isn't the time for foolish heroics.

    A spell is on your lips, when you hear the crackle of lightning once again, sensing the passage of a body moving in from the back of the line. A booted foot uses your shoulder as a springboard, and in a flash of blue anima and gleaming orichalcum, Sola strikes it three times in rapid succession. Her daiklave finds the hidden joints between the stone limbs, rapidly reducing it to a twitching pile at her feet.

    "Oh, well done!" Amiti says, plainly impressed.

    You rub at the dusty bootprint she left on the shoulder of your uniform. From your opposite shoulder, Verdigris gives Sola a look of mild reproach. "I could have handled it," you say.

    Sola laughs, shouldering her daiklave. Electricity crackles in her eyes, and her outline is traced in sky blue. "Who says you get to have all the fun? And that thing wasn't even what we're here for — we needed to deal with it fast."

    You open your mouth to reply to that before L'nessa cuts you off again, although this time less urgently: "Boys, boys, you're both handsome. We are on a time limit, remember."

    Sola's smile turns wry. "You're a good five years out of date with that crack, in my case."

    L'nessa looks abruptly mortified. "... Ah. Yes," she says.

    Amiti reaches up to pat L'nessa on the shoulder. "Don't worry, I forget things about people all the time. We are going now, though, aren't we?"

    Suppressing your amusement at L'nessa's expense, you reach down and physically shift the largest pieces of the fallen construct aside, giving everyone the space to pick their way around it.

    As Perfection suggested, the gorge curves onward for a time, before terminating in what should be a cave mouth. Unlike what Perfection told you, the entrance to the cavern is obviously and unceremoniously blocked off by what looks like a recent rockslide.

    "Could the ghost have done this?" you ask, doubtful. The large pile of gravel and rock is too high to conveniently crawl over for anyone but Amiti. Or Verdigris, you suppose, but you don't exactly plan on sending your familiar into the cavern alone without a way to retrieve her again.

    "Oh, probably," Amiti says. "They like to suffocate miners, sometimes."

    "Could you not have mentioned that earlier?" Sola asks, giving her a despairing look.

    Amiti shrugs awkwardly, the fingers of one hand tangled up in the chain of her pendant. "I didn't think it would come up."

    "How quickly can you shift this?" L'nessa asks, glancing at you.

    You frown at her. "How quickly can I shift this loose pile of gravel? With nothing to move it with? Faster than most people, I suppose, but it's not exactly convenient."

    "At least we know that she's probably inside, this way?" Amiti suggests.

    "It's definitely inside." The voice comes from above you, so sudden that all four of you whirl around to look at its source. A figure stands atop the gorge looking down at you, one hand extended where it had reached out to snatch the arrow L'nessa had reflexively fired at it.

    "Dragons, Idelle! I nearly shot you!" L'nessa says, glaring up at your classmate.

    Idelle considers the arrow in her hand briefly. "Yeah, I guess you really nearly did," she admits, frowning. She holds a spear in her other hand, no more a practice weapon than L'nessa's bow, or your sabre, and had apparently come up on you all so quietly that none of you noticed.

    Maia would have noticed Idelle lurking around long before this, you're almost defensively certain. Your senses are supernaturally keen when you sharpen them correctly, but you don't have Maia's practiced brilliance at stealth and concealment, or her habitual wariness for the same being turned against you all. She'd have had enough practice at that, over the years.

    "What are you doing here?" you ask, giving Idelle a hard look.

    "There's a loose ghost on the island," she says, simply. "I would hope that we're all here to find it. However it is that we know about it in the first place." This last is accompanied by a sharp look in Amiti's direction. Instinctively, you step in front of her, positioning your body between Idelle and Amiti.

    "How do you know about it?" Amiti asks, peeking out from around your shoulder.

    Idelle steps forward, letting herself slide down the side of the gorge with improbable stability. As she draws close to you, once again, you hear that familiar chime.

    "Her jewelry detects spirits," you say, looking at the tiny, bell-shaped earrings.

    "More or less," Idelle says. She points to them in order, first black, then green, then red: "This one chimes in the presence of spirits, this one in the presence of death magic, and this one to alert me if something is trying to alter my mind. I have been following the first two."

    "And why, exactly, are you out here on your own, instead of alerting the staff?" Sola asks. She still has her daiklave drawn and rested against one shoulder, the veins of blue jadesteel in its blade pulsing faintly in glowing counterpoint to her anima. "I think you know why we are."

    Idelle gives a deeply disapproving look at Amiti again — or tries to, when Amiti has shrunk back behind you. "Perhaps I wanted to give certain guilty parties a chance to confess."

    "You just want to show off!" Amiti says, braver out of sight. "The daring warrior-exorcist hunting down dangerous ghosts. You'd tell them it was me as soon as you had proof!"

    Genuine outrage crosses Idelle's features, swift as a flashfire. "I had all year to tell them what I suspected you were doing. If I did it now, you'd deserve whatever you get!"

    "Regardless," L'nessa says, pitching her voice to rise above both of them, "we cannot go on the way we were planning, so this is all a bit premature."

    Idelle blinks at that, turning to look at the rockslide with a frown. Then she shoves the arrow into L'nessa's hand, plants her spear in the ground, and begins to use both hands to flash through a sequence of familiar mudras. Smoky red light curls up around her, turning white hot as she completes the casting with the Sign of Essence Consumed. A stream of blue-white flame leaves Idelle's outstretched hand, striking the pile of rubble and igniting it.

    All of you save for Idelle are forced to take a step back from the heat coming off the pile of loose stone and dirt, earthen material burning like wax, rising into the air as a noxious smelling smoke.

    "Won't that just make it run again?" Sola demands.

    "It's a ways inside," you say, doubtfully.

    "The sun won't hurt her unduly, but she doesn't like to travel during the day," Amiti says, the flames reflecting oddly in her pale grey eyes. "She should be trying to establish a refuge she can hide in. And drag victims back to."

    "How long is that going to keep burning?" you ask Idelle.

    "For loose particulate? A few minutes," Idelle says. "Burns like tinder. It shouldn't have the power for the whole cliffside to catch."

    "Shouldn't?" you ask.

    "Well, you know, I..." Idelle visibly falters, before squaring her shoulders and rallying: "I've never used it to burn a pile of gravel in the middle of a gorge before, have I? It's my control spell, but I'm not reckless with it." You notice that she glances in the direction of Amiti, who steps out from behind you again you glare:

    "I am not reckless with my control spell," Amiti says.

    "You set loose a horde of small zombies in the grounds last year!" Idelle says.

    "They were chicken carcasses! Perfectly harmless! More funny than anything!"

    "They attacked someone!"

    "They didn't even have heads!"

    "You know perfectly well that it's the principle of the—"

    "The tunnel is clear," you say, loudly. Or, clear enough — the fire has burned itself out, leaving the much-reduced landslide an ominously smoldering pile of gravel melted into bizarre configurations. It's at least more passable than it used to be, if not exactly comfortably so.

    "So it is," Idelle says. She produces a hand mirror from a belt pouch, picks her spear back up, and strides forward, not waiting for the rest of you.

    Frowning, you quickly catch up to her, clapping a hand on her shoulder. She shrugs you off, turning around to frown up at you. "We need to coordinate, or this is going to be a mess," you say. "Five Dragon-Blooded against one ghost is obviously overkill — but it will get away if we're tripping over each other."

    "... Fine," Idelle says. "What do you intend to do?"

    "It was huddled over a drowning pool, when I saw it through my messenger," L'nessa says.

    "Perfection hasn't told us that it's been moving again since then," you say. "Which makes sense, if Amiti's right about it finding somewhere to lair." It's easier to just think of the spirit as a dangerous animal, rather than the malignant ruin of someone's soul. It's a good example of what comes of not accepting one's place in the Perfected Hierarchy and moving on at the appointed time.

    "So, we need to go in with a plan," L'nessa says.

    Article:
    Three courses of action emerge in particular, suggested by three different members of your makeshift group. Which plan do you decide on?

    You may vote for as many options you like, only the one with the most votes will be selected:

    [ ] Amiti's Plan

    You catch the ghost by surprise, using your petrification spell to turn it temporarily to stone, allowing everyone else time to surround it.

    [ ] Idelle's Plan

    Idelle attacks the ghost with techniques that burn the undead, along with Amiti and L'nessa; you and Sola cut off its avenues of escape.

    [ ] Sola's Plan

    Sola attacks the ghost, driving it toward Idelle, while you, Amiti, and L'nessa provide ranged support.
     
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    • Vote closed, Year 4 04
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    • Scheduled vote count started by Gazetteer on Mar 31, 2023 at 9:20 AM, finished with 29 posts and 29 votes.
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    • Year 4: Flames and Frost 05
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    • Idelle's plan: 23

    Amiti's plan: 7

    Sola's plan: 2

    You walk quietly through the dark, relying on Verdigris's preternatural senses to guide you, one hand running along the rough stone of the wall as you go.

    After a bit of careful scouting, you've ascertained that Amiti was correct — the ghost has stayed holed up in the same chamber L'nessa caught sight of it in, hovering over a dark, tranquil pool of water. Per Idelle's plan, you've agreed to circle around to the far side of the chamber through a series of narrow side passages, poised to cover one of the two most obvious avenues of escape. Mind you, this is all happening because the wraith is capable of seeping through tiny crevices in otherwise solid stone — entrapping it will be tricky regardless.

    The ghost's presence is not subtle. The closer you are to the chamber where it resides, the thinner the air feels around you, tasting of blood and the least wholesome varieties of earth, creating the distant sensation of suffocation. You're determined to ignore it as the cheap parlour trick that it is; it should take far worse to unsettle a Chosen of Pasiap surrounded by her own element.

    Likewise, you're determined not to complain about your specific role for other reasons. Sola had been displeased at being relegated to a rear guard position, but had ultimately understood the tactical value of such things, and furthermore the value of not undermining a plan once it's been agreed to. You try to follow her lead as you put yourself into position.

    Up ahead is a fork — through Verdigris's flicking tongue, you scent the sickly sweet aroma that you've come to realise marks the ghost, and turn accordingly. It only takes a few more moments before you find yourself at your goal: the narrow mouth into a wider chamber, an eerie, oppressive silence ringing in your ears from the other side. Your foot comes down in a shallow pool of cold water. Annoying, but useful enough that you don't move aside.

    You send a thread of Air Essence down into the water, bidding it to serve as your window into the world of the unseen. Twin points of amber light slowly form at your feet, defusing outward like drops of ink until you realise what you're looking at. Two eyes burn in the dark, watching you with an unblinking vigilance. The body that they're set in is a shadow that's somehow deeper than those around it, a point of darkness that seems to draw in all light not its own. You regard the ghost coolly for a few seconds longer, ignoring the sense that you can't quite breathe clawing at your chest. Then the ghost's eyes snap over to the other side of the cavern, and you know that things are proceeding according to plan.

    "Hello, again!" comes Amiti's familiar voice, as she steps into view. She has a lit candle in one hand, a mirror in another. Points of reflected light glitter in the darkness of the cavern all around. "I've been looking all over for you." Her voice is strangely distant, muffled by the ghost's presence. As you see its reflection rearing up in apparent outrage, the taste of dirt and blood on your tongue intensifies.

    It's at this point that Idelle darts out from behind her, feet carrying into a flying leap by a rush of hot air, spear poised to strike. Guided by the bells ringing in her ears and the mirror secured to the back of one hand, she gives a cry that demands the ghost be struck by her weapon, impaling the figure messily through its insubstantial torso. Golden fire drips from the spearhead, wracking the wraith's corpus, starkly different from the red anima that has started to bloom around Idelle's body.

    Watching the fight from murky reflection in the puddle, cast now in charnel colours by Idelle's anima, you see the ghost fall back into intangibility enough to pull itself free from Idelle's spear, bleeding shadows. With a twitching flick of one hand, it sends a barrage of loose stones flying as it scuttles backward.

    Amiti gives a cry, the lightning she'd intended to throw striking the ceiling instead. L'nessa ducks from where she's just come around the doorway, her hand mirror shattering as a stone takes it from her grasp. Idelle turns aside the worst of it with her spear, tries to dart forward to stab the ghost again — she misjudges the angle somewhere in the confusion of the reflection, missing it by inches.

    You see the ghost make a split second decision on where to go. L'nessa, guiding her aim by the distorted image in a crystal formation, manages to make up its mind when her arrow clips the side of one of its limbs — there are four Dragon-Blooded in one direction, and only one in the other.

    In the reflection at your feet, you see the ghost turn toward you inhumanly fast, streaking across the cavern floor toward your passageway. You have your sabre drawn in one hand, eyes cast down at the water, trying to stay aware of the real space the reflection represents. Taking in a deep breath, you slash out with your sabre, forcing the ghost back in a skittering, flickering motion. Its proximity makes the air feel even closer, as though a weight is pressing down on your lungs from every angle, noise all but sucked from the world.

    It tries to get past you, and you slash it from shoulder to hip, driving it back. It's like hacking into cold treacle, and your bizarre vantage point prevents you from getting the angle you need to simply shear the wraith in two, instead drawing a shallower cut. A small barrage of stones hurl themselves at your back — Verdigris does her best to defend your head, flicking rocks aside with her metallic tail. A fork of icy lightning half blinds you as it strikes the ghost from behind, followed by an arrow burying itself in the spirit's leg.

    The ghost collapses, and you're treated to the image of its shadowy form crumples at your feet for just a second, before Idelle's spear takes it where its spine should be, golden flame immolating its corpus from the inside out. The light seems to boil away the darkness, and for just a moment, you see a human face, an unremarkable looking woman, bloodied and terrified, lips moving in silent pleas.

    You cut off its head, and it collapses back into formless shadow, this time utterly inert.

    A more ordinary, wholesome silence stretches on there, broken only by relieved gasps as you can all properly catch your breath again. The one who speaks first is Amiti, rubbing at the side of her head where a rock struck her. "Well! That's taken care of then, I suppose."

    Idelle rounds on her, still wreathed in ruddy flame. "Taken care of?" she repeats.

    "Well, yes, we killed her. Again," Amiti says.

    Idelle crosses the short distance between her and Amiti, glaring down at the shorter girl, spear clutched, white-knuckled, in one hand. "We don't even know that it won't just reform later!"

    "Well, she might," Amiti allows, "but I think there's a good chance she won't — she's alone out here, after all, no worshippers, and not so strong as all that." She shrugs. "If she turns back up in the Underworld, I'd hope that she simply leaves. Or at least, doesn't come back here. It wasn't such a good place for her, was it?"

    "Are you even capable of accepting responsibility for your actions?" Idelle demands.

    "Excuse me, but I did take responsibility for my actions," Amiti says, suddenly indignant. "I'm out here, aren't I? I would have gone after her even if no one else had helped me! No one even got hurt, that we know of, except for that elemental! And me." She gingerly touches her head again — her fingers come away dry, at least. It shouldn't be too serious a wound for an Exalt.

    For your part, you quietly pull a particularly sharp stone out of your back, where it had embedded somewhere near the end of that fight. It hasn't gone in deep, however — not worth drawing attention to.

    "It wouldn't have been here at all if you had any sense of restraint or decency!" Idelle's eyes quite literally blaze with the force of her anger, and Amiti flinches back.

    "Idelle, we took care of it," L'nessa says, "yelling at Amiti won't help anything."

    "Clearly not!" Idelle says. "If shouting at her did any good, she'd be a model daughter by this point in her life!" That, of all things, hits home, and Amiti shrinks in on herself.

    Sola, emerging from the other tunnel looking vexed for more than one reason, is less diplomatic than L'nessa: "Piss off, Ledaal," she says. "If you're going to go snitch us out, just do it and spare us all the melodrama."

    Frowning, you sheath your sabre, and approach the others, free hand fingering something in one of your belt pouches.

    "Obviously I'm going to report this!" Idelle says, rounding on Sola. "She's endangered herself, her fellow students, and the security of the entire school, to say nothing about the moral implications. Not that I should expect anything better than heresy and slinking avoidance from a Sesus to begin with — whatever her father is to my parents, she obviously doesn't take after him!"

    Your dragon scale pendant surges cold against your skin as you whisper the words you need, an odd tingle coming from the small object you've palmed at the same time. As calmly as if you were plucking off a piece of lint, you reach out, and press the tiny emerald to the back of Idelle's neck. It flashes green as you feel the spell hit home, and the red jade bell dangling from her ear rings out a sharp alarm.

    Fast as wildfire, Idelle whirls around, spear poised to stab you where you stand. Before you have a chance to fully intervene, Sola is there, her daiklave catching the blow right beneath the spear's head, forcing it upward. "No," Sola says, final and inarguable.

    With a cry of outrage, the spell no doubt already taking effect, Idelle falls upon her, spear whirling through a complex pattern of strikes, red flame rolling off her body, golden flame off of her weapon. Sola meets every blow with a calm parry or expertly placed sidestep, lightning crackling in her wake, until she finally outright cleaves Idelle's spear in two.

    "Alright," Sola says, "that's en—"

    Barely missing a beat, Idelle lets the pieces of the spear fall, and executes a perfect roundhouse kick aimed squarely at Sola's head. You catch the blow on your sheathed sabre, the force of it sending a shock through your arm. Then you give Idelle a hard shove backward. "That's enough," you finish for Sola.

    Idelle steadies herself, glares at you, but there's something uncertain in her expression. The bell is still faintly sounding, but you're certain the spell will have done what it was meant to by now, if you were successful. "What did you..." Idelle falters. "You did something to me! Where are we?"

    "A cave?" ventures Amiti, voice cautious.

    "I... can see it's a cave!" Idelle says. She looks down at her broken spear at her feet, then around at you all — the minor injuries, the flaring anima. "What happened?"

    "You were in a trance," L'nessa says, stepping in without missing a beat, lying to her face with gentle confidence. "Something must have affected your mind — that bell of yours was ringing." She gestures at Idelle's earring, which is still faintly chiming. "So, of course we wanted to see if you were alright, and followed. Unfortunately, things got a little hectic before you snapped out of it."

    Idelle's frown deepens, her eyes sweeping from L'nessa's smooth concern, to Amiti's half confused panic, to Sola's stormy expression as she sheaths her daiklave with a metal-on-metal snap. Her eyes light on you again last, the flickering radiance within them particularly prominent now. "And you didn't see what did it?" she asks, her hand reaching up to touch the back of her neck, where you'd pressed the gem.

    "No," you say. Against the weight of her burning scrutiny, you shroud your feelings with Earth and Water, thoughts as opaque as a dark, tranquil pool. "But something clever enough to ensnare you would be clever enough to keep out of sight."

    Idelle is clearly dissatisfied, but she's also confused, and unable to actually dispute your version of events at present. "I see," she says. "My apologies for lashing out at you, Ambraea. It would be a poor way to repay your attentiveness, if things were as you all say."

    "We should all return to the school, I think," L'nessa says, "otherwise, we'll be at risk of missing a meal."

    On the way back, Idelle is uncertain and brooding, and Sola is outright displeased, this time leading the way without any discussion about who should go first. You think that, perhaps, Sola does not entirely approve of your course of action.

    The look of relieved gratitude Amiti shoots you is enough to warm your heart, at least. If nothing else, you'd helped a friend who had truly needed you.


    Resplendent Wood, Realm Year 762

    One year, eight months before the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress

    Months go by and the end of your fourth year looms ahead, the halfway point of your secondary school education having passed you almost unnoticed.

    Sola's annoyance with you turns out to be relatively short-lived. Idelle's suspicious glances, by contrast, continue on without abatement. You have responded by quietly offering the emerald containing her stolen memories to Perfection, who was equally pleased to receive it as they were to hear that you'd dealt with the ghost. Amiti had promised to be more cautious in her experimentation — with sincerity, you hope. You can't all keep covering for her forever.

    As the end of the year draws closer, however, Maia continues to grow quieter and more distant, although never quite to the point of outright avoiding you. When the yen finally drops, it's a beautiful, summer day.

    "Have you been thinking about independent study projects, for next year?" You ask Maia, carefully organising your stack of books. You're very near the top of one of the towers, in a tiny reading room you hadn't been able to open until the month before. The volumes it houses, primarily written about advanced spirit summoning theory, have proven to be shockingly dull and abstract, even where they have the potential to be extraordinarily dangerous.

    Maia looks up from the monstrous tome she's referencing, pages open to a sprawling diagram depicting a demonic soul hierarchy in taxonomical detail. "... No," she admits.

    "We'll be fifth years soon," you remind her, "it's going to be expected of us."

    "I know," Maia says, closing her eyes.

    You watch her for a moment, framed by the light of a rare sunny day streaming in through the window. "Are you even reading that?" you ask, approaching her.

    She gives you a weak smile. "Not very well," she admits. "How did you know?"

    "You've run your finger across that one line about the Living Tower at least five times," you say. "I've been watching." On your shoulder, Verdigris flicks her tongue sympathetically.

    "You're getting too good at reading me," Maia says, and you're not entirely certain it's a joke.

    "Is that a problem?" you ask her.

    She grimaces, and doesn't immediately respond, looking out the window instead.

    You move even closer, one hand bracing against her reading table, looming over her in a way that's hard for her to simply ignore. "Are you ever going to explain to me what's wrong?" you ask.

    She opens her mouth to give an evasion, to change the subject, to deny that there's anything wrong. But you catch her gaze with yours, and something in your eyes seems to hold her fast. "The Black Elder Tree," she says quietly, after a moment.

    "What about it?" you ask, frowning.

    "This evening, after the lecture. Meet me there." Carefully, she shuts the book, tearing her eyes away from yours. Rather than any kind of relief, a terrible sort of tension has come into her, like she might either bolt or snap at any moment.

    "Nobody goes to the Black Elder Tree that close to dark," you point out.

    "I know," she says. She gets up, the book cradled in her arms as she moves it back to its niche on the far wall. "That's the idea."

    The dominie's lectures are difficult to follow at the best of times, even with the base of knowledge you've managed to accumulate by this point. With how distracted you are, these are not the best of times, and you already have a feeling you'll need to beg to have a look at Amiti's notes before the week is out. Hers are always at least thorough, even if they inevitably contain drawings of small animals and quotations from her favourite books in between the actually useful information.

    You don't actually see when Maia slips out of the lecture hall, in the end — nonetheless, you gather your things, pawn off putting them back in your room on a mildly annoyed L'nessa, and head out onto the grounds.


    The Black Elder Tree is one of the Isle of Voices' more infamous landmarks, the sort of place that older students take ghoulish satisfaction in pointing out to the sacrifices every year. The tree itself is massive, an ancient sentinel standing proud on top of a lone, grassy hill far inland. Its leaves are so dark as to be black, a hint as to the plant's strange and macabre nature. Few students are foolhardy enough to test to see if the dark rumours surrounding it are true, but there had been one boy during your second year who'd tried it, spending a night sleeping among its sprawling roots.

    He'd gone home in disgrace, a nervous wreck, the next week.

    Neither you nor Maia intend to actually let yourself spend the night here, of course, and the place is no one's idea of somewhere to spend a pleasant summer's evening. So it works well enough for a private meeting. You spot Maia by the time you get near to the base of the hill, a small figure solemnly watching as you make your climb, the lighter blue of her uniform standing out against the tree's dark trunk.

    "So," you say, as you crest the hill, "here we are."

    "Here we are," Maia agrees. The shade beneath the tree's spreading branches is pronounced, unripened elderberries hanging heavy overhead, thick roots protruding from the earth all around you. Maia bites at her lip, hands clasped in front of her. Then, she begins to pace.

    You watch her go back and forth a time or two, before you ask: "Have you changed your mind, then?"

    "Yes! Three times, back and forth," Maia says, shooting you a grimace. "But... I'm here now. We both came here. It's too late to back out?" The way she says it, it's almost like she wants the option taken away from her.

    "I'm afraid I can't know that until you tell me," you say, eyebrows raising.

    Maia takes in a deep breath, then lets it out, scanning the horizon around you for any sign of anyone within earshot. Then she produces her hand mirror, turning it this way and that, checking high and low for any sign of an invisible spirit who might be listening in. Evidently, she finds no one. Stuffing the mirror back into a belt pouch, she abruptly says:

    "We talked about my grandmother. At the end of last summer."

    You'd expected it to be something about this — how could any other topic warrant this much concern and secrecy? "... Yes," you say. "It's not the sort of thing I can easily forget."

    Maia nods sharply, resuming her pacing, not quite looking at you. "Have you ever wondered... have you thought about how she came to be married to my grandfather? Who arranged it?"

    "Not in-depth," you admit. House Iselsi's reputation for espionage, while eclipsed in recent decades by the scandal of their treason and subsequent slow destruction, is something you're at least passingly familiar with. You had simply assumed that such subterfuge was not beyond them, even at the end — did there need to be someone who'd arranged to hide one woman's identity, when her name had become such a liability?

    Maia is silent overhead. A cool breeze sweeps up the hill, and the tree groans gently as it sways behind you. "It was... arranged," Maia says, hunching in on herself. "By someone with the power to spare my grandmother."

    She looks up then, meeting your eyes for the first time since the reading room that morning, not wanting to come out and say it, clearly wishing for you to put things together yourself. In the end, there are only so many possibilities that can require this level of secrecy. You open your mouth slowly, and it's a few seconds before you can form the words: "... the one who told me?"

    Maia looks away again, hunching down, suddenly ragged with relief. It's hard to say whether she nods or not. She doesn't need to.

    There's another few seconds of silence. Across your shoulder, Verdigris shrinks back in distress, slithering under your clothes. When you finally speak, voice urgent with concern, what you say is: "You should not have told me that!" It doesn't matter that she didn't come out and say that your mother had arranged to spare some portion of Maia's family. She'd made certain that you understood it, and that was very nearly as bad. The word 'treason' keeps buzzing at the back of your mind. "Why are you telling me this?"

    Maia whirls on you, eyes intense in a way you've only seen them once or twice before. "And what, you should have told me what you did, after you found out the first part of this? Do you know what I've been taught to do to anyone who knows what you know?"

    You think back to that moment of startling speed, her hand covering your mouth. You can well imagine what she may have been told to do with the other. It isn't something you've wanted to put too much thought into. "I think I have an idea, yes."

    "So, we're both stupid," she says, still holding that glare. She's trembling a little, though, and not only from the relief of what she's just put out into the open. She seems to be waiting for something from you, bracing herself for a blow.

    "This... doesn't change anything," you say, "it doesn't have to." For some reason, the words sound appallingly stupid even as they leave your mouth — something a child would say. For an excruciating moment, you resent yourself intensely for that feeling.

    Maia reaches up, gripping a fistful of her own hair hard enough that it must hurt. "No, you don't..." She stares at you, torn between frustration that you haven't pieced something together, and fear of what you'll say when you do. "We're... hers," Maia says. "I am too. I was always hers, the whole time. Another weapon in training, another... another set of eyes and ears."

    You understand then, and take a step back as if you've just been struck by something heavy. "Oh," you say. You sink down on top of the nearest tree root, staring at her. You'd known, of course, that someone was keeping track of your actions — there would be someone at the Heptagram feeding information to the Empress's information network regardless, and it would be simple enough for them to include you in the ordinary reports. But if there had been someone else much closer at hand, from the very first day you'd arrived... "The whole time?" you ask.

    "Yes," Maia says, voice small and miserable.

    You take a steadying breath. "I thought you..."

    "I did! I do! I'm not with you because I'm keeping track of you, I'm with you because of you!" She takes a tentative step forward, then freezes, like she doesn't know what you're going to do next. You don't either — you can feel a terrible blankness coming over your features, masking whatever it is you're feeling inside.

    "You can... you can still trust me," Maia says. Then, voice quavering, she adds: "Please trust me?"

    You look at her for a long, quiet moment. What you ask is: "How?"

    Maia takes another step forward, pauses again, then all but throws herself to her knees, looking up at you beseechingly, like a supplicant before a lady. She hesitates, then reaches for your hand. You let her take it. She forces herself to look up into your eyes, tears brimming at the edge of her vision. "I'll swear it," she says.

    "Swear it?" You ask, not yet following.

    "An oath. A real oath. So you'll know that I'm not going to betray you. So we can just... Please?"

    "Maia, I—" you're not exactly sure how you plan to finish that sentence, but she doesn't give you the chance. She's already speaking, words coming out in a rush, so quietly that you can barely make out what she's saying, rehearsed phrases so dangerous that they were never meant to be spoken out in the open:

    "I... Iselsi Maia, swear to stand by your side as sworn kin, to defend you above all others, to keep faith with you above all others. To be the shade that you take refuge in, the water that soothes your wounds, the blade at your enemies' throats. In the name of Danaa'd, I swear. In the name of Mela, Sextex Jylis, Hesiesh, and Pasiap, I swear. By Water, by Air, by Wood, by Fire, by Earth, I swear. On the memory of my murdered house, I swear."

    You're momentarily stunned not just by the force of her words, but by the genuine power that's behind them. She's offering you something real and serious — you both know what this means, or think you do. It's the most profound show of good faith she could make, but as always, there are strings.

    Article:
    The Hearth Oath, or Kinship Oath, is more than a mere promise — it is a supernatural link formed between Dragon-Blooded, tied into the particular nature of your Exaltations. Ten-Thousand Dragons fight as one, but the members of a sworn kinship forge a bond closer than any other. It is also a relationship with both social and legal weight in the Realm, and something most Exalted Dynasts enter into at some point in their lives, albeit not usually this impulsively, or this soon.

    You may accept Maia's oath by returning it with one of your own. If you do so, you will be sworn to one another as hearthmates. You will be aware of one another's presence, capable of finding one another across vast distances, and the other will sense it if either of you dies. A Dragon-Blood's Hearth is a source of strength and comfort for her, but attempting to betray one's Hearthmates is psychologically difficult and traumatic as well as looked upon as the blackest sort of treachery within Realm society. Your hearthmates are those companions who you've sworn to stand beside whatever might come, regardless of family or station, and backing out of it again once entered into such a commitment would be a mark against you as well as unpleasant. Additional Dragon-Blooded may be added to an existing hearth, although it is increasingly difficult or impossible to do so beyond the traditional five.

    Despite how little time you have to consider this, you are intimately aware of the ramifications of saying yes:

    Pros:

    - It is an irrefutable sign of renewed trust and faith in one another
    - It represents a higher chance of your relationship with Maia surviving the trials ahead, in some form or another, and gives your tie to Maia more weight in the face of her troubling family commitments
    - Long term, as your Hearthmate, it would be less remarkable and more socially acceptable for Maia to associate with you in public in settings where bringing someone who is merely your patrician lover would be inappropriate
    - It is common for new Hearths to form upon or in the year before graduation from secondary school; while this is certainly early, it is not unthinkable that you two would have made such a promise to one another in the natural course of things
    - It is unspeakably romantic.

    Cons

    - Should word of this get out too soon, you may be viewed as rushing too quickly into an important tie
    - This is quite literally the opposite of what your mother advised you to do; the Empress thought it prudent to treat Maia as a youthful indiscretion, and part ways with her when you were finished
    - It would make breaking things off with Maia in the future very awkward
    - Can you trust her, after what you've learned?

    What do you do?

    [ ] Accept Maia's oath

    [ ] Reject Maia's oath
     
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    • Interlude 4: Necessity 01
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    • Accept Maia's oath: 40

    Reject Maia's oath: 8

    For a few seconds, you stare down at Maia on her knees in the dirt, her heart bared to you, an almost hungry desperation in her eyes. She's offering you the most precious thing she has to give you, the only thing that she has to give you. The smart thing would be to say no, however much it hurts her, and you can see the knowledge of that on her face. She's terrified that you'll reject her, refuse her oath, push her aside. That some part of what she's just told you will be a bridge too far, and that you'll leave her because of it.

    Where she's taken your hand in hers, you reach down and take it in both of yours, bringing it up to your lips to brush a kiss against her knuckles. Her relief is almost painfully sincere. Heedless of the thousand ways this is a terrible idea, not letting go of her hand, you recite words you've been learning variations of since primary school:

    "I, Ambraea, swear to stand beside you, Iselsi Maia, as sworn kin. To defend you against all others. To keep faith with you ahead of all others. To be your pillar of strength, the solid Earth you walk upon, the bulwark against your enemies. By Pasiap, I swear. By Mela, Sextes Jylis, Hesiesh and Danaa'd, I swear. By Earth, by Air, by Wood, by Fire, by Water, I swear. On my honour as a Prince of the Earth and an Imperial daughter, I swear."

    As you begin to speak your half of the oath, Maia's anima begins to flare around her, cold and dark and lethal. It washes over you without harm, and as you near the end, the white of your own radiates out from you to meet it. Your animas flow together, mingled Earth and Water, visual evidence of the spiritual link being formed. Even if you couldn't see this, you feel the moment when Maia's soul touches yours, your words knitting them together, for one moment fusing them together.

    You freeze in place, looking into her eyes and seeing in them the same rush of elation that you're feeling. For this moment, all external worries fade away, and you're only able to bask in the closeness of it. Warmth. Safety. Home. You can barely tell where you end and she begins.

    Then it starts to fade, the Hearth bond solidifying, the anima around both of you receding back to normal. But you can still feel her there, her soul knit to yours at the edges, a connection that will hold fast no matter how far you go from one another as long as you both live.

    Still kneeling, Maia lays her head against your knee, and you move one hand from hers to gently stroke her hair. The other stays where it was, your fingers intertwined with Maia's. The two of you stay that way for long minutes, her head in your lap, your back against the trunk of the tree. A kinship of two.

    Maia speaks first, her words small and tentative: "I love you." It shouldn't mean so much after what you just shared. It still does, though.

    "I love you too," you say, "no matter who you are, or what you've done."

    She lifts her head a little, just enough to see your face, not enough to disturb your hand in her hair. "You mean that?"

    You bend down, planting a kiss against her forehead. "I've never meant anything more in my life." The words taste like something you might regret later, but you try to push that aside. Instead you just focus on the girl kneeling before you, on the sobs that wrack her small body as she buries her face back in your lap, and the hot tears you can feel seeping into your tunic. Verdigris finally reappears, slithering her way out of your sleeve, and looping herself gently around Maia's neck.

    It will be a long time before you realise the true extent of what you've committed to, of what Maia is seeking respite from in your arms. Of the true horror of what exactly the Empress has made of Maia's family, and what she was trying to spare you from all along in her own inadequate, inscrutable way — not once yet have you heard any mention of a Vendetta. By the time you do, it will be too late to take anything back, and too late to forgive or condemn your mother for anything. The secret that should have broken you and Maia apart has already tied you together. Some decisions cannot be unmade, even if you wanted to.

    Beginning very soon, the world will begin to take from you in ways that your life so far cannot prepare you for. For better or worse, though, Maia, you'll get to keep.


    You do not, immediately, tell your classmates about this development in your relationship with Maia, by silent mutual agreement. As explaining the actual context of it is obviously completely out of the question, it is better to try and keep it quiet until things are at a point where it can be announced with less general loss of face. Amiti would certainly be delighted by you and Maia apparently swearing a kinship oath based on nothing but your overwhelming affection for one another, and it would make for incredibly juicy gossip in general — few others would respect you for it, however. You try to remind yourself that your mother told you to do what you would with the information she had gifted you, that she most likely won't read your failure to follow her advice as an insult. The weathervane quality of her approach to interpersonal relationships makes it unfortunately difficult to look upon this with a great deal of confidence, however.

    There is little to be done about this prospect at the moment, however, and a certain joy that you can't help but find in your newfound closeness to Maia. Multiple times a day, even when you're otherwise busy doing something else, you find yourself reaching out to find her, your relative locations coming as easily to you as levitating a pebble. In a way, even though you're both going to be busy during the initial weeks of the academic break, it will feel less like being truly apart even when you're miles and miles away from one another.

    On the very last day, you're running a minute or two behind your friends on the way down to the ship back to Chanos, having felt compelled to make an offering to Perfection before you leave the Isle of Voices for the next several months.

    As you start down the path to the edge of the cliffs, you register a presence falling in beside you, her identity betrayed by the small, telltale chime as she draws close to Verdigris. You don't speak up, however, letting her be the one to address you first:

    "Ambraea."

    "Idelle," you say, glancing over at her. She looks much as she has since that misadventure back in the Spring — namely, frowning at you. "May I help you?"

    "I just wanted a word before we leave," she says.

    You give her a shallow, gracious nod, pausing at the head of the cliff path, off to the side so that the other stragglers can pass you both. "Well, you've found me."

    "I want you to understand — I can't know exactly what happened back in that cave. But I have a long memory, Ambraea." She gives you a hard look.

    You don't have to deliberately look down your nose at her; it's merely a function of your respective heights. There are a lot of ways you can respond to that; the accusation is veiled enough not to break propriety, even if you weren't in the relaxed social environment of the school, but it's obvious to you what she's trying to say.

    So your reply is a bland: "Do you?"

    Idelle's eyes narrow. She leans forward, ready to give you a no-doubt blistering retort, when a laugh carries through the air, and a hand claps down on Idelle's shoulder. She jerks away in surprise, but she's certainly not glaring at you anymore.

    Simendor Deizil stands there, his smile as infuriating as ever, looking between the two of you , and the path you're neglecting to go down. "Oh, don't look so mad, Ledaal, her face just goes like that."

    "I beg your pardon?" you ask, almost too shocked to be offended.

    Deizil continues on, undeterred. "I don't think she means to look at you like you're a bug she can't be bothered to crush. Don't take it too personally."

    Idelle takes in a deep, steadying breath. Without a word, she turns on her heel and stalks down the path toward the ship landing, posture stiff and angry.

    "Still making friends, I see," Deizil says to you.

    You regard him coolly. "Keeping them where they count, more to the point."

    Deizil laughs, and moves past you. "You know," he says, "the problem always was, I couldn't help but like you."

    You stare after him with a frown for a few seconds longer. What a truly intolerable man — and yet, it's still an improvement over last year, somehow. You give it a minute, and then follow the others down to the ship.


    Descending Wood, Realm Year 762

    One year, seven months before the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress

    The Port of Chanos

    Intelude 04: Necessity

    "I swear, she's starting to repeat herself," you say, leaning back against the seat in the carriage, "if she's going to keep doing this, I hope that the veiled lectures at least cover new material."

    Your carriage rolls through the streets of Chanos, carrying you back from a long and frustrating meal taken with the archimandrite of the local Immaculate mission. The incident with Perfection and the monk has not gone unnoticed, it would seem, and the consequences have taken the form of two invitations to dine with the prefecture's highest ranking monk.

    Surprising no one, these ostensibly pleasant, otherwise acceptable social encounters have primarily been a delivery method for a series of allegorical points on the responsibilities that Dragon-Blooded have toward mortals, as well as the appropriate use of sorcery and spirit summoning. The worst part is, she's too important for you to turn down the invitations without giving slight.

    "Not that I begrudge her concern, of course," you add, "Dragons know, Perfection could have been a little more discreet." You look out the window as you speak, watching the city's now-familiar narrow streets and stone towers roll past.

    At the very least, you have seeing Maia again to look forward to, in the coming weeks; she's been busy being introduced to prospective marriage candidates. House Erona's middling status and her being a sorcerer are marks against her, but Dragon-Blooded are uncommon enough in the patriciate at large that she's still a reasonably desirable match in the eyes of many families. You anticipate similar preliminary meetings in your own future, arranged by your father. There will, of course, be a far more complex situation in your own eventual arrangements than in Maia's. An Imperial daughter's circumstances are not the typical ones for a Dynast.

    "I'm sorry," you say, remembering yourself and looking at Peony fully for the first time in several minutes, "I shouldn't be complaining about your betters so much to you." It puts her in an awkward position, however private the circumstances may be.

    To your surprise, Peony doesn't respond even to this direct apology — she's sitting still in her seat across from you, hands folded primly in her lap, eyes obediently downcast as per normal. Less normally, there's a fixed quality about her bearing, like she's distracted by something you haven't noticed.

    "Peony?" you say. She doesn't respond. You raise your voice a hair. "Peony."

    Peony practically leaps out of her skin, eyes wide with mortification. "I'm so sorry, my lady!' she says, "Please accept my most effusive apologies! It was not my intention to ignore you!"

    You frown, concerned rather than angry, for all her worry. "It's not like you," you say. "Have you been getting enough sleep?"

    "I—" Peony seems confused, "I haven't. I suppose that must be it, my lady. I thought..." she shakes her head. "Please forgive my negligence, I will attend to you more diligently in the future, as is my duty."

    You know her too well to try and stress the personal nature of your concern — she always gets even more formal than usual when she's startled or embarrassed. "You always do," you say instead. It's true, and you think hearing it makes her relax at least a little.

    Thoughts of Peony's brief distraction are soon driven from your head, however. No sooner do you return to the Imperial residence and step out of the carriage, then you're stopped short by the sight of one of the household servants in a state of poorly disguised agitation.

    "Yes?" you say to the woman, stepping into the shadow of the manse. The sun is already hot overhead, and you'd been looking forward to getting inside out of the heat.

    She bows low, not making eye contact as she speaks: "My lady. You have a guest."

    You raise your eyebrows — you hadn't been expecting anyone. "Who is it?"

    "A man, my lady — an Exalt. I do not know him, but he is here to see you," the servant says. "He won't come inside or let anyone else tend to his... mount. We offered, my lady!"

    "What is his name?" You ask, trying not to exacerbate the servant's obvious distress at the thought of having seemed to leave a Dragon-Blooded guest outside in the stables.

    "He says his name is Ophris Maharan Teran, my lady," the woman says. "I... do not know his family — he is well-dressed, but he has a foreign cast."

    Well, that's a surprise. There are Ophrises on the Blessed Isle — a patrician house bearing the name in Arjuf, as you understand it. That house is made up of the descendants of the portion of the defunct Great House who had remained behind after the Ophris' and Burano's legions had gone rogue and carved out an Empire for themselves on the far Threshold. Maharan is a Prasadi jati name, however. Your father's jati, in fact, even if Ophris is not his clan.

    You have no idea why a scion of one of Prasad's ruling Dragon Clans would be here looking for you, of course. It merits investigation. "Thank you for notifying me... Thrush," you say. Unfortunately, the name had to be supplied by Peony subtly mouthing it behind the servant woman's back. L'nessa has started to make a few choice comments about your failure to remember the names of servants you deal with on a regular basis but have no close relationship with. As you head to the stables, Thrush bowing low again behind you, L'nessa's voice comes almost audibly to mind 'It's a very unbecoming trait in a lady, Ambraea.'

    The first thing you notice when you enter into the residence's large, well-kept stables is the distinct air of nervousness in the horses. The animals stamp and whicker, tossing their heads in a distinctly unhappy manner, and as you spot your guest, it's not hard to see why.

    He's a surprisingly young man, several years your senior at most with the sort of willowy, athletic build you associate with the more daring of the heroes from Amiti's romance novels. His skin is slightly darker than yours, and when he looks up to see you, he has wide, inquisitive eyes and a smile that seems to seems to belong on his face more than any other expression. His Aspect isn't hard to guess — his curly, close-cropped hair is a bright orange and faintly incandescent.

    You can see what's gotten the horses so unhappy: The animal he's been tending is obviously not a horse, although its confirmation is built along the same lines as one. It regards you with yellow, predatory eyes set in a leonine head, prominent sabre-teeth protruding from its mouth. In place of hooves it has paws, wicked looking talons protruding from shaggy, golden fur. You've seen a simhata before, legendary battle mounts that the lion-horses are, but never quite so close. The Prasadi — Teran — has a brush in one hand, having been using it to tend to the simhata's mane and fur, its saddle and bridle having already been removed and hung up, tasks that he evidently prefers not to trust to the servants. Looking at the beast's fangs and claws, you admit to yourself that, perhaps, he has good reason.

    Teran sets his brush down, turning to face you fully, and bowing. "My lady," he says, speaking in thickly-accented High Realm, "I hope you will forgive our descending on you so suddenly. You are Ambraea, daughter of the Scarlet Empress?"

    "I am," you agree, returning the bow with a gracious nod. "You are very far from home, aren't you?"

    Teran smiles. "I am," he agrees, echoing you. "At great need, however. My name is Ophris Maharan Teran — I have journeyed here to the motherland with an urgent task to complete. My kinsman, Burano Maharan Nazat, indicated to me that I might avail upon his daughter for assistance."

    "Did he?" You haven't received any message indicating this in the past several months.

    Teran nods. "Yavis, the letter," He says. This inexplicable aside is explained as a young man shoots to his feet, where he'd been kneeling in your presence so quietly that you hadn't fully noticed him. He's mortal, perhaps sixteen, dressed in Prasadi garb similar to Teran's. The servant moves to the saddlebags hanging on the side of the simhata's stall, and begins looking through them. This draws your attention to the weapons there — an unstrung powerbow, gleaming dully in black wood and red jadesteel, and the curved edge of a forest green grimcleaver. Between the artifacts and the mount, Teran must have cut a particularly distinctive figure on his journey.

    Yavis produces what looks like an unopened letter bearing your father's seal from the saddlebags. The boy approaches you, bows... And to your mild surprise, hands the letter to Peony. After a pause, she hands it to you with a subtle look in her eyes that only someone who knows her well would correctly read as bemusement.

    "Thank you," you say, breaking the seal on the letter. The contents are a mix of the expected and the novel: Your father politely wishes you well and hopes you're successful in your academic endeavors, before explaining that the man bearing this letter is his cousin, and that he is compelled to offer assistance to another Maharan so far from home. He furthermore hopes that you, his only daughter and already a gifted sorcerer, will be willing to help Teran in Nazat's stead.

    He adds a further warning that Teran's servant is Ophris Maharan Yavis, a Sage Caste Scion of Clan Ophris in his own right, and Teran's first cousin — it is improper in Prasad for a member of the lower castes to act as body servant to one of the Dragon Caste, and it is important that Yavis otherwise receive all courtesy due to a mortal cadet house Dynast.

    There is also a longer correspondence of a more mundane variety, although that's always interesting in its own right. You intend to give it a more thorough read later — your eyes briefly light on the words potential marriage candidates before you tear yourself away to look back at Teran. "Well, that isn't particularly ambiguous," you say. You hand the letter back to Peony, who you trust to put it away for when you have a moment to go over it in detail. "Peony, please make sure that we have accommodations prepared for Lords Teran and Yavis, suitable for two Dynasts who have traveled a very long way."

    Peony only gives a blink of surprise at this, having evidently taken Yavis for a servant of similar status to herself, before bowing. "It will be done, my lady."

    Teran watches her go, a slight frown creasing his face. He seems to be on the verge of asking you something, but seems to think better of it. "Your hospitality is appreciated, my lady," he says.

    "The house belongs to our Empress," you say, choosing your words carefully, "but I have been permitted to exercise such rights, within reason." As ever with your mother, there are no hard lines to show you the limits of this privilege; it is up to you to intuit when you would be crossing them, and to suffer the consequences should you fail to do so.

    You glance around at your surroundings, taking in the stable. "If you would like," you say, "we could discuss the particulars of your request under more pleasant circumstances, after you've had a chance to tend to your mount and refresh yourself after the road."

    "It would be appreciated, thank you," Teran says.

    This will also give you a chance to do the same, albeit from your own much briefer journey across the city. It's not the kind of conversation you want to have without a chance to have your hair fixed first.


    Some hours later, you sit across a table from Ophris Maharan Teran, trying not to feel too awkward about the meal arrangements.

    Through a combination of Teran being willing to be flexible as a stranger to the Realm proper, and you wanting to be accommodating toward a man following your father's faith, you've worked out how you might serve him a meal acceptably. There are, apparently, protocols for such things; ritual purity must meet real world conditions, after all.

    What this ends up looking like, however, is Yavis being provided the prepared ingredients, carefully selected for their suitability, by the very confused staff. Yavis does the majority of the work, and serves the meal to Teran with each dish incomplete in some way — noodles not added to broth, sauce missing from poultry, and so on. In this way, he can be said to have prepared the meals himself.

    For some reason, it makes you very conscious of the fact that you were simply brought your food by one of the household servants, putting off eating it until after Teran had completed his work.

    "The food is quite good here too," Teran says, after sampling several dishes. "The Blessed Isle is much larger than maps make it look! I keep being surprised by the variety."

    You smile graciously, relieved that he isn't making such a naive comment in front of more judgemental Dynasts than yourself. "What route did you come by?" you ask.

    "We set out from Kamthahar and traveled Northwest along the Jade Road through the Summer Mountains, then Northeast through the Fallen-Star Lakes until we reached Jiara. From there, a ship to Gloam, and another to your Imperial City," Teran says this matter of factly, laying out a truly heroic journey for such a small group that you can only assume he's deliberately downplaying its difficulty. "From there, we traveled up the Imperial River, and over land through the mountains to arrive here. By far the most pleasant leg of our journey, since leaving fair Prasad."

    "That must have taken many months," you say, still charting out the route in your head.

    "Just so," Teran agrees, "but a man must be willing to undertake such hardships for his Hearth."

    You look at him with some interest, taking a slow sip of tea. You can't help but instinctively reach out to your link with Maia, sensing her miles away in a prefecture to the east. "What does your Hearth require that sends you here, with only the company of your cousin and a simhata?"

    Teran looks a little chagrined, all at once. "Well," he admits, "I admit, I have not been permitted to swear the oath yet."

    "I'm not sure I understand," you say.

    "The Hearth of the Peerless Garden is half a century old, and its deeds are famous," Teran says. Then he says something in highly colloquial Prasadi High Realm, a term that you can't quite penetrate, to your slight embarrassment. A Hearth renewed by heroism? That seems overly literal, and unlikely to be the whole story. Evidently, you don't hide your incomprehension well enough, because he continues to explain: "Twenty-two years ago, one of their number, Burano Nermaia Sylva, died in defence of a city of thousands. For the past five, his surviving Hearthmates have been searching throughout Prasad for his reincarnation. The signs point to me." Experimentally, he takes a sip of tea — a green Tengese blend — and noticeably brightens at its pleasant, grassy flavour.

    "I... See." That makes slightly more sense. The Pure Way puts a much greater emphasis on material divinity than Immaculate orthodoxy does — Dragon-Blooded as gods in human flesh, sometimes outright ascending to spiritual godhood upon death, or reincarnating endlessly alongside their hearthmates. You have read references to the concept, as much as you didn't expect it to be particularly relevant to your life. "And they... require you to come to the Blessed Isle before they'll let you join?"

    "I have completed tasks set by three of my once-and-future Hearthmates already," Teran explains, obviously pleased that you're following him now. "Meant to demonstrate my skill and bravery, and show without a shadow of a doubt that I am their friend come again. The fourth and and most arduous was set by the Hearth's leader, Akatha Junam Sarva."

    Clan Akatha is the enigmatic third Dragon Clan, descended from Prasad's original ruling god-blooded, long since intermarried with the Dragon-Blooded of Burano and Ophris. You understand that they have a strange familial structure that includes Prasad's two major pantheons of deities, and are so heretical and marginal to worldly concerns that the Realm does not even acknowledge them as a cadet house.

    Teran goes on: "Long ago, her divine mother, the goddess Precious Sheltered Orchid, lent a priceless heirloom to a lesser god. Calamity and time has separated them, however, and he has proven unwilling to either journey to Prasad and give it back to her, or to arrange to have it sent. So! You see my task. I am here to retrieve the Mirror of Necessity, at long last."

    You do, see, although it's all incredibly Prasadi in a way you don't think you could have explained to most other Dynasts in a hurry. "And my father thought that I could be of use to you in accomplishing this?" you ask.

    "He did, my lady," Teran says. "I know that the rogue god I seek dwells in the northern Blessed Isle, not so far from here, but my ignorance of these lands, their customs, and the state of the spiritual gods here are a barrier. I am also to understand that you are a sorcerer of some skill." His eyes fall on Verdigris for almost the first time, having been deliberately ignoring her. Your snake is coiled up on your side of the table, drinking from her own teacup with delicate flicks of her forked tongue.

    "He didn't lie to you," you say.

    "Such things are useful when treating with spirits," Teran says. "I understand, my lady, that I arrive on your doorstep with a significant request. But I have few others to turn to in this matter." He bows his head. "I would be greatly in your debt for any aid you could offer."

    "Well," you say, refilling your teacup, "I have weeks to spare, at least, and I am not one to refuse a reasonable request from my father's kin."

    Teran smiles widely, showing relief and excitement in equal measure. "Ah, good! Thank you. I promise you, lady Ambraea, if nothing else, it will be a fine adventure."

    Article:
    Maia's family commitments will let up in time for her to assist Ambraea in assisting Teran, but most of Ambraea's other friends will be busy with similar matters to those that kept Maia away. One of them is available, however — who is it? You may vote for as many options as you like, but only the one with the most votes will win.

    Earth Aspect Dragon-Blood

    Ambraea is a talented sorcerer focused on elemental summoning and elementally-resonant spells. She's also a trained swordswoman with enhanced senses and superhuman strength and durability.

    Sorcery:
    Initiation level: Emerald Circle
    Initiation: Pact with an Earth Dragon
    Shaping rituals: A gift of gems (wealth sacrificing ritual)
    Spells: Plague of Bronze Serpents (control spell), Summon Elemental, Breath of Wretched Stone

    Water Aspect Dragon-Blood

    Maia is trained in stealth, brutal combat, and assassination, and her studies of sorcery have only expanded those abilities. She can shape illusions of herself and others, and summon a lethal sorcerous weapon from her own blood.

    Sorcery:
    Initiation level: Emerald Circle
    Initiation: Student of the Heptagram
    Shaping rituals: Sorcerous Archives (ritual research and study)
    Spells: Sculpted Seafoam Eidolon (control spell), Blood Lash, Demon of the First Circle

    Fire Aspect Dragon-Blood

    An adventurous young man from distant Prasad, Teran has made the arduous journey to the Blessed Isle to complete a quest of grave import. He is both gallant and daring as befits a son of his Clan, but finds many aspects of Realm society foreign and confusing at best. He travels with his familiar, the fierce simhata named Talent, and wields the artifact weapons Ash Rain and Edge of Spring. He is skilled at tracking, navigation and wilderness survival, mounted and unmounted combat, as well as the handling of large animals in general.


    [ ] Amiti

    - Results in closer ties to House Sesus, in the form of favours owed
    - Amiti's family is greatly respected and feared in Chanos Prefecture and its surrounding Prefectures, and her name will open doors both mundane and supernatural
    - Amiti is unfailingly herself; her predilections will disturb Teran and cause problems for you along the way

    Air Aspect Dragon-Blood

    Amiti's morbid preoccupations have translated to an intense focus on necromancy, the death, and related subjects, as well as esoterica about Essence manipulation and other arcane subjects. She is not particularly physically inclined, and mortifying in social situations.

    Necromancy:
    Initiation level: Ivory Circle
    Initiation: Half-Souled
    Shaping rituals: Soul-Forged Token (draw on soulsteel pendant to focus necromantic power)
    Spells: Raise the Skeletal Horde (control spell), Summon Ghost, Flesh-Sloughing Wave

    [ ] Sola

    - Results in closer ties to House Tepet
    - Sola's spells will speed the journey, in addition to her sword arm always being useful. Teran will respect her as a warrior
    - Sola's family is in the midst of mustering out its legions upon Imperial decree; Sola is distracted and impulsive at being left behind, which will cause problems

    Air Aspect Dragon-Blood

    The ancient daiklave, Storm's Eye, allows Sola to synergise her gift for swordfighting directly with her sorcery. Even at her age, she is already deadly with a weapon in her hand and studied in tactics, and has made fast progress at marrying her talents over the past few years. Her sorcery takes on a more logistical bent, but her combat prowess more than makes up for it under these circumstances.

    Sorcery:
    Initiation level: Emerald Circle
    Initiation: Blade of Ten-Thousand Eyes
    Shaping rituals: Inner Storm (focus inner eye to flood the body with sorcerous power)
    Spells: Beckoning That Which Stirs the Sky (control spell), Stormwind Rider

    [ ] L'nessa

    - Results in closer ties to House V'neef in the form of favours owed
    - L'nessa's way with words and familial connections come in very useful, and she is entirely capable of leveraging these advantages to overcome the Realm's ordinary stigma against sorcerers
    - She and Teran get along... too well, and it's a little annoying — unlike you and Maia, who are very discreet and easy to travel with, you're sure

    Wood Aspect Dragon-Blood

    L'nessa is already a competent sorcerer for her age, although her focus is on useful, support oriented spells. She's a gifted socialite when given the chance, a trained medic, and a competent archer by Exalted standards — extraordinary by mortal ones.

    Sorcery:
    Initiation level: Emerald Circle
    Initiation: Student of the Heptagram
    Shaping rituals: Sevenfold Art Evocation (precisely memorised mudras and equations to open the mind)
    Spells: Infallible Messenger (control spell), Food From the Aerial Table
     
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    • Scheduled vote count started by Gazetteer on Apr 20, 2023 at 8:37 AM, finished with 40 posts and 32 votes.
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    • Interlude 4: Necessity 02
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    • L'nessa: 26

    Sola: 4

    Amiti: 1

    "Allow me to introduce my friend and classmate, V'neef L'nessa," you say. "L'nessa, this is Ophris Maharan Teran and Ophris Maharan Yavis — cousins, on my father's side." Rather more distantly in Yavis's case, you suspect, but there wasn't a great deal of cause to split hairs.

    L'nessa smiles, the picture of a gracious lady. "Delighted to meet you both," she says, giving the two young Prasadi men a nod — deeper in Teran's case, shallower in Yavis's. Then she drops her voice conspiratorially, leaning forward to stage whisper: "I am also Ambraea's niece, if that helps you picture the relations a little more clearly."

    "It's not exactly an exclusive club," you say, with perfect honesty. The full list of your living blood nieces and nephews is vast, including as it does Dragon-Blooded as far apart in age as L'nessa, multiple Great House matriarchs, and Ragara Bhagwei, dominie of the Heptagram. Addressing him in those terms would be ridiculous as well as ill-advised.

    "The pleasure is mine," Teran says, bowing to her in the Prasadi style, his smile growing even more than usual.

    "Likewise, my lady," Yavis says. The boy seems a little startled to have been addressed by you so quickly — he is trying hard not to keep stealing glances toward the third Dragon-Blood in the room. In Prasad, Dragon Caste is Dragon Caste. Here, mortal though he might be, Yavis is still a Dynast.

    "And this is Erona Maia, another classmate from the Heptagram," you say, indicating Maia where she's stood small and quiet through this exchange.

    Maia bows, but does not immediately speak, assessing both of them with a curious look. Once again she's dressed in a more masculine patrician style, dark greys and blues, the fit of the clothing making her look particularly slender in a graceful, androgynous way. It's a very good look for her. It's a stark contrast to L'nessa's lavender coloured gown, a subtle grape motif woven into the silk.

    "You are... all sorcerers?" Teran asks. There is some unease there, as is perhaps natural.

    "We're fifth year Heptagram students," you say, "I should hope so. I have heard that you have an equivalent in Kamthahar."

    Teran shrugs. "The Mandir of Sixfold Insight teaches many strange things, beyond sorcery," he says, "but, I have little direct experience of such matters; your father's clan has adopted your practices of schooling, but mine prefers to tutor our own scions. Regardless, I will certainly not turn down help from women capable enough to meet with your approval, Lady Ambraea."

    "I admit, I know little of Prasad myself. I look forward to you curing me of my ignorance," L'nessa says. She's the first to take a seat — the five of you are in the Imperial residence's small walled garden, a stone table near at hand, arranged to give a commanding view of the garden's fountain. Five dragons twine around a central pillar, water pouring from their mouths into a pool upon the surface of which live flames dance. It's pretty enough here in the day, but quite spectacular at night.

    Teran follows suit, sitting across from you. "I would be pleased to tell you whatever you like about my homeland," he says. His smile turns self-effacing, then: "But, first, perhaps you could cure me of my ignorance? Prasad is far away, and perhaps I am unfamiliar with the names of every one of your great clans." He glances between L'nessa and Maia as he says this.

    Fortunately, L'nessa doesn't take offense. "I won't hold that against you — Matriarch V'neef, my honoured mother, only ascended to founding our house eight years ago. We don't yet have the history that most of the others do."

    "I'm not surprised that you don't know House Erona, my lord. We are not a major family," Maia says, finally speaking up.

    Seeing Yavis's mild confusion, you clarify: "Maia is from a patrician family. Not unlike your Sage Caste clans." The Dragon-Clans each have Sage Caste members, like Yavis, a status enjoyed by all their scions who fail to Exalt. Others, though, particularly in jatis associated with scholarship or administration, represent their own independent families.

    Yavis seems even more confused by this comparison. "She is Exalted, though?" he asks. The boy has remained standing where the rest of you have sat down.

    "I am," Maia agrees.

    "Exaltation does not automatically grant elevation to one of the Great Houses," you say.

    L'nessa seems mildly baffled by this characterisation. "Does it in Prasad?"

    "All those who bear the Dragons' divine Blood, regardless of birth Caste, are elevated to the Dragon Caste, and so must join a Dragon Clan, or take the vows of monkhood," Teran says. Nearby, the elaborately patterned iron teapot hung over one of the fountain's flames is beginning to steam noticeably. Yavis steps forward, carefully removing it from its hook with a cloth, and adding it to a wooden tray, which he presents before Teran. Teran adds tea leaves to every untouched cup, pouring water over top of each in turn, noticing the hot metal of the pot as little as any Fire Aspect might. You try not to let it remind you too much of your mother.

    "A strange thought," L'nessa says.

    "I'm sure it seems so," Teran says, tone diplomatic.

    "Well," L'nessa says, "at any rate, Ambraea did her best to describe the situation to me, and of course I've agreed to help, but I feel that some of the... finer details may have escaped my understanding."

    You certainly had done your best. It had been roughly as confusing for L'nessa as you'd expected — Maia had followed things a little better. Or maybe she'd just been less overt about her confusion.

    Smiling with good humour, Teran launches into his explanation again; about his extended quest to join a famous Hearth. About what that even means, about the complex, centuries old grudge of a Prasadi goddess, and about the criminal god who Teran has come to the Blessed Isle seeking out.

    "He's a god of... losing fights?" Maia asks, trying to puzzle this out.

    Teran laughs. "Taste of Blood and Ashes is, or was, a god of defeat and the defeated," he says. "Now, he is a thief and a vagabond, hanging on to that which is no longer his."

    Maia nods, thinking this over. "Why not go to the Immaculate Order with this, if he's a criminal god as you say?"

    Teran shrugs uncomfortably. "While I will not question the skill of your monks, I do not have connections with the Order, and my clan is not... popular with them." This is certainly true — the Pure Way is a heresy, in the eyes of the Immaculate Order.

    "And you're here acting on behalf of a foreign goddess that few in the Isle would recognise," L'nessa says. "I imagine this artifact is valuable? It's hard for you to know whether any given authority in the Realm would have a different opinion as to where it should end up."

    Teran grimaces. "Just so," he says. "Burano Maharan Nazat is at least a countryman of my jati, and he told me I could trust Lady Ambraea."

    "She's quite trustworthy, if she's made you a commitment," L'nessa says. Which is halfway flattering, at least. You suppose there's a reason why she might feel the need to qualify that, however.

    Maia catches your eye, flicking her gaze at something over your shoulder. You turn to look — Peony is standing at the entrance to the garden, paused as if distracted in the middle of approaching the table.

    "Yes, Peony?" You ask.

    She gives a slight start, then takes a few steps forward, bowing. "The arrangements have been made as per your request, my lady. You will be able to depart tomorrow, at your leisure."

    "Well done as always," you say. "We'll be departing relatively early — please try to get some rest."

    The last is said with the slightest amount of emphasis, causing a flicker of embarrassment to cross Peony's face. "I will, my lady. Thank you for your concern."

    You give her a nod, allowing her to consider herself dismissed. As you turn back to the group, you briefly catch a glimpse of Teran glancing after Peony with a small frown on his lips. It's short-lived, however. He looks back to you, smiling again. "Very well! I look forward to all your companionship in this journey."


    You wake up early the next morning in a tangle of limbs, yours and Maia's, reluctantly extricating yourself in order to rise, wash, and get dressed for a long day ahead.

    "I'll like getting a chance to see a bit more of the Northern Isle," Maia says, carefully braiding your hair for you. Ordinarily Peony's job, but Maia had volunteered, and you enjoy it — the feeling of her perched on the bench behind you, her slight weight leaning against your back while her clever hands carefully twine dark strands together. "It feels like I'm always only ever seeing the same parts, every year. The same families."

    "How was the gala?" you ask.

    "Pleasant," Maia says, meeting your eyes in the mirror. "House Pazal was hosting — I like the matriarch's youngest daughter well enough. She's still friendly, as long as we very deliberately don't talk about sorcery. So I have someone to talk to, at least."

    "How did you fare as a suitor?" you ask.

    Maia makes an ambivalent face. "Fine enough, I suppose? House Cirrus, so it would be an odd match at the moment — they're pulling away from Peleps at the same time as we're outright negotiating client status there. There are more than a few Cirruses in the Merchant Fleet, so ties to V'neef just make more sense from their perspective. I could get along with the man, I think, but he's a little full of himself."

    You raise your eyebrows. "Full of himself how?"

    "Oh, fancies himself a poet with an acid tongue. He recited a piece that was a veiled joke about one of the other guests present making horrible financial decisions. Her brother had to drag her away before she started a fight."

    You give a brief laugh. "Well, it wouldn't make for a dull marriage, at least."

    "Not quite the kind of excitement I'm looking for in my domestic life, sadly," Maia says. She puts the finishing touches on your hair, and then rises to drape herself over you from behind, resting her chin on your shoulder. "I'd at least want someone reliable, and capable of discretion. Hand is going to try something like this with the wrong person, some day, and I'd rather not be in the general vicinity. I told mother as much, and she agrees it's a reasonable objection, at least, even if she likes his mother being the head of the Imperial Purse."

    Hearing her talk about her more mundane responsibilities to her family, it's almost possible to forget what you know about House Erona now, and just think of them as an ordinary patrician family. Almost. You find one of her wrists, closing a hand over it. "For my part, father wrote that he was going to have an evening with my mother to discuss preliminary options for marriage candidates in a month's time. She probably won't directly involve herself at this stage. Unless she does."

    You might have quite a bit more say on who you end up with than many Dynasts; the primary concern will be your father's opinion and your own political interests. Of course, should your mother decide that a certain match suits her interests, it will be a very different matter.

    "Higher stakes than patricians jockeying for sway in the Thousand Scales," she says.

    "A little," you admit. Or much lower, if you really make a mess of things. "Father's letter said that he would tell me once there was anything meriting my concern. It's still very early now."

    Maia plants a kiss against your neck. "Good luck," she says, quietly.

    You entertain and regretfully discard thoughts about shoving her back into bed — it would mess your hair up all over again. You hold out your hand to the nearby pillow, and Verdigris slithers up your arm. "You as well," you say. "We shouldn't keep the others waiting too long."


    Southern Chanos Prefecture,

    Days later

    You make for a modest enough traveling group, by Dynast standards. Four Dragon-Blooded, their body servants, a handful of house troops wearing V'neef colours for the sake of security and appearances — barely more than a dozen people and their mounts.

    You've been heading south along the main road — it winds its way gently through a great pass in the mountains, eventually forking southwest toward the Imperial Mountain and East to the vast Dragon's Blanket plains that Perfection had carried you over the summer before. It's a vital artery that connects much of the interior of the eastern Blessed Isle's interior to the Shadowed Coast; as such, it's impressively well-maintained, and accommodations are found along it at regular intervals.

    Now, though, you find yourself veering off into the foothills, surrounded on all sides by rocky slopes and scrubby brush. It's much rougher going, particularly for the mortals, and you're forced to slow your pace.

    "Are you ordinarily left at your leisure to this degree, during the summers?" Teran asks L'nessa.

    She laughs, channeling more than a little of her mother. "And what makes you think I'm not exactly where my house wants me to be?"

    You're not trying to eavesdrop — in point of fact, you've been trying to keep your horse clear enough of Teran's simhata to ease some of its nervousness. Teran's beast is fairly well behaved, you think, but it's difficult to explain that to a horse. But you're in the lead at the moment, for good reason, and you can't get too far ahead.

    "What, riding with me?" Teran asks.

    L'nessa laughs again. "Oh, no, riding with you was my idea — but it isn't difficult to make my mother agree that an association with Ambraea could be useful." It isn't new or surprising information for you, but it's still strange to hear it explained to someone else as if you weren't present. You are continuing to demonstrate yourself as both a potential useful asset and a potential future rival, for a woman in V'neef's position. Acquiring you as the first means you're significantly less likely to become the latter.

    It had only taken a few well placed comments about the simhata's grace and beauty, and how L'nessa had never ridden one before, for Teran to offer her the opportunity as if it had all been his idea. Glancing back to where he rides with L'nessa perched behind him, not doing anything untoward but certainly seemingly very cozy, you're quite certain that Teran knows what L'nessa is after, and that he's prepared to let her have it.

    Do they have to be so blatant about it all, though?

    Up ahead, revealed between one hill and the next, rises a rocky crag, a spur of stone split down the middle in a dark, yawning expanse. Nearby, you see a trail head, a tiny path snaking its way up the hills, marked by a tiny roadside Immaculate shrine. You hold up a hand for the others to see as you pull your horse to a stop, dismounting near the shrine. "That's it," you say.

    Behind you, Teran dismounts and holds a hand out to help L'nessa down off the simhata. You notice he very carefully keeps a hand on the beast's reins the entire time, clearly not confident in how well behaved his familiar will continue to be for a rider other than himself.

    "You're quite certain?" L'nessa asks, looking up at the hill.

    "Yes," you say, glancing down at the trail. Just beyond the shrine, there are several stones laid across the start of the path. Characters of warning and of warding are etched there in High Realm, with a simpler message below it in Low Realm forbidding mortals to proceed past that point. "Perfection showed me an image of it, when I asked."

    As the others catch up and climb down off their mounts, you look to the other Dragon-Blooded. "We'll want to go ahead on foot, I think — just the four of us. Give the mortals a chance to rest here." Where you're going isn't for them to begin with.

    L'nessa nods. "There should be some manner of town nearby," she says, "we'll have somewhere to rest, after this."

    You nod, glancing at Peony, who has appeared near at hand at some point in this conversation. While this much riding and travel is hardly restful for her, you can tell that she prefers it to either of the more supernatural means of transportation you've dragged her into over the past few years. "See to Lord Yavis," you instruct her, quietly.

    Peony nods — the mortal Ophris's precise status continues to be awkward, and you've given her particular instructions to this effect more than once already. "Of course, my lady."

    "We don't need to set up a full camp, thankfully, but try to get some rest as well."

    "Understood, my lady."

    "Where would I be without your singular grace and dedication?" you ask her, very nearly smiling.

    Peony keeps her eyes humbly downcast. What she says, though, is: "somewhere in the mountains still, I'm sure."

    You give a brief, quiet laugh, and turn back to the path.

    "We had two lower caste servants, setting out from Kamthahar," Teran says, clearly in reference to your fist instruction for Peony, "it has been more difficult for poor Yavis since losing them."

    "They both died?" Maia asks.

    "Ahrmed did," Teran admits, something faintly like shame flashing over his face, "brigands, while crossing the Summer Mountains. An arrow struck him in the throat. The other, however, merely found love."

    L'nessa's raises an eyebrow. "Found love?"

    Teran smiles, clearly preferring this story to the first. "Yes — we had fallen in with a Guildswoman, for a time. Very eventful, I should tell you about the behemoth, later. Aadila fell for one of the caravan guards, and begged to be released from our service. I didn't have the heart to refuse."

    L'nessa laughs, even as she's stringing her bow. L'nessa dressed for travel and riding, with the outside chance of combat, still manages to strike an elegant image. Even if you can see an autumnal leaf working its way free from her hair, bound up behind her head. "What a delightful attitude," she says. You're even sure that she means it.

    Maia catches your eye, and you can tell that she's amused by the flirting. Which makes sense, you can't very well find it too annoying, considering what L'nessa has had to put up with having the two of you as roommates. It would be hypocritical of you.

    "You are all very light-hearted about intruding on the court of strange spirits," Teran comments, as you begin the climb up the path. You've all dismounted, although Talent, the simhata, is padding along at Teran's side, briefly eying Verdigris with a yellow eye.

    "Well, we are all sorcerers, as you remarked upon," L'nessa says. "The Isle of Voices is not exactly bereft of dangerous spirits. We get used to it, I suppose."

    "And my particular sorcerous initiation gives me greater sway among earth elementals," you say. "There may be some posturing, but I'm certain we'll be able to find some information on your rogue god, if it's here to be found." Earth elementals are famously stubborn, but even spirits in such a remote part of the Blessed Isle as this are unlikely to seriously entertain picking a fight with four Exalted Dynasts, you assume.

    The climb is slow and tedious, but not altogether difficult for you, however hot the sun is overhead. You walk ahead, Maia at your side, headed toward the crag in the distance. Along the path, weathered stones repeat the warning from its beginning in simplified form, as if to browbeat you all into obeying when you hadn't heeded the earlier ones. It's not until you reach the very crest of the hill, finally, that anything overtly supernatural happens. It certainly happens dramatically, however:

    You feel a faint twinge in your third eye, enough warning to draw your sword, to give the others a chance to do the same, when a vast and shaggy form erupts out of the ground, giving a bugling call that sets the earth beneath your feet trembling. You brace yourself as it charges at you, eyes wild with anger, antlers lowered, vast and powerful — you don't have to intercept it in the end, however.

    An arrow snaps off from over your shoulder, trailing fiery sparks and green Wood Essence, striking the beast's shoulder and erupting into vines that twine around it, tripping it up, and sending it sprawling to land at your feet. It struggles against the vines holding it, trying to push itself back up onto powerful legs, when it freezes:

    Maia stands atop its flank, one hand braced against the centremost of its three antlers, the other pressing the tip of a spiral-bladed dagger into its throat. She'd moved past you so fast that you'd barely registered the motion. "Stay still," she says, voice very cold. It had been charging you, after all.

    "I'd do as she says," you tell the elemental, looking down at it with a distinctly unimpressed expression. "Did you even look at who you were attacking before you leapt out?" Your attacker is a kri, the bulk of its stag body rendered awkward and ungainly by its current circumstances, the massive peasant robes it wears draped over itself knocked askew by the fall.

    It looks up at you sullenly, muttering something about it being hard to tell who you were from underground, about the sun being in its eyes, about how it had never actually seen a Dragon-Blood before, and did you even look that different from ordinary humans? That it had only meant to scare you off, not actually to break too many bones. Kri are not known for their intelligence, caution, or friendly good nature.

    You interrupt this string of excuses with a stern glare, pulling on the threads of your oath with Perfection. The scale hanging around your neck goes cold against your soul, and something of it enters your voice: "I am Ambraea, daughter of the Empress. My companions and I came here for information, treating with your court under our natural authority as divinely appointed intercessors — I am willing to overlook your transgression if your master will comply in good faith."

    The words strike the kri like the weight of obligation, and it — he? There's something gruffly masculine about its intonation — tries hard not to cringe under it, salvaging what's left of his wounded pride. "I will need time to convey these words to my lord, and for it to contemplate your request."

    L'nessa and Teran move more fully into view, arrows still nocked, but not yet drawn back. The simhata prowls behind Teran, not as large or as powerful as the spirit you're conversing with, but still tensed to leap into action. You're quite certain it was Teran's arrow that entangled the kri in vines.

    You raise an eyebrow, looking down at the object hung around the kri's neck on a rough cord. An iridescent gem, its translucent colour changing with every minute movement the kri makes. It's shaped like a cut jewel, rather than the scale Perfection gave you — an eye from a true gemlord, not a dragon who was once one. "You're wearing one of its eyes, are you not?"

    "... I am," the kri says with obvious reluctance.

    "Then, perhaps, you could avoid wasting all of our time, and simply contact it?" Between you, being surrounded by so many Exalts, and Maia's knife in his throat, the elemental gives in.

    "Very well, my lady. I will contact it."

    "Good," you say, "that didn't need to be as hard for both of us as it was."


    Echo Prefecture,

    The Northern Blessed Isle

    Echo Prefecture is not large, or prosperous, or particularly well known. Its soil is too rocky for good farmland, its forests too sparse and elevated for good lumber. Its main contribution to the Realm comes in the form of stone quarries universally agreed to be inferior in quality to those in neighbouring Dejis Prefecture. It's the kind of place that a human fugitive might go to ground; it's appropriate, you suppose, that a spiritual one might do the same.

    The meeting with the kri's gemlord had been both tedious and brief, by Earth elemental standards. A combination of your sorcerous pact and the vast, mineral intelligence's lack of any desire to antagonise Exalted Dynasts had led to a terrible meal involving salt and mushrooms and cold cavern water, along with a conversation that makes Perfection look accommodating and easy to deal with. Cold, calculating, alien — in the end, it hadn't been too difficult to induce the gemlord to tell you of what it knows of a god named Taste of Blood and Ashes.

    The god does not hold official rank in the eyes of the Immaculate Order. He'd been struck from the prayer calendars years ago after he'd been discovered fomenting a cult to his own glory, preying upon the poor and the helpless. The monks had broken the god himself, destroyed all symbols of his worship they could find, punished his followers, and left him to crawl away once he reformed, well aware of what might happen if he returned to his old ways of manipulating desperate mortals into worshiping him.

    It's not quite how the gemlord explains it, but you can read between the lines.

    Regardless, you are directed toward Echo Prefecture, where the disgraced criminal god has been hiding for the better part of a century, given the information in the interests of it being the best way to get you to simply leave and not come back.

    Having left the major roads behind, it takes some careful navigation to get you there as quickly as possible, several times necessitating that you extract directions from local peasants. L'nessa does much of the talking herself, to your surprise. You could probably hold a conversation in the predominant Low Realm dialect spoken in Scarlet Prefecture -- if you needed to, for some reason -- and you can mostly understand the one spoken along the Shadowed Coast at this point, but you have genuine difficulty making out what these mountain peasants are saying. L'nessa, though, holds court amongst them with a gentle sort of grace, and they respond to her with an overawed wonder.

    It's good she was free for this trip -- between Teran and Yavis being Prasadi and Maia coming from the southern Isle, you probably would have had to rely on one of the servants for translation, and the directions L'nessa comes away with are invariably more reliable than the maps Peony bought in Chanos, once you leave the major roads behind. You don't blame Peony for this; it's hard for a cartographer to match the intimacy with which the common people here know their lands, and impossible to know how accurate the minutiae of such maps are going to be beforehand.

    Weeks later, it leads you to the prefecture's capital, Nightflower. The small city's modest stone structures struggle to live up to its poetic name, adorned by a scattering of temples as well as crumbling monuments hinting at past glories you're only dubiously certain you believe in. As such, it's not a surprise when your arrival is quickly noted. In a grander city, the invitation to be hosted by the local prefect herself would be an honour. Here, you'd almost be insulted if your presence weren't acknowledged somehow.

    "Maia, do you know anything in particular about our host? You seemed to recognise the name." L'nessa stands in front of the mirror, already dressed in a gown of striking blue, one of her servants working on taming her thick, red hair with some difficulty. For expediency as well as for ease of gossip, you, Maia, and L'nessa are sharing a changing room in preparation for a meal. The walls are adorned by faded hangings depicting aniconic artwork centuries out of style — it's a running theme with the prefectorial estate, so far.

    "The family, not Rose Laughter herself," Maia says. She is being assisted by one of the other House V'neef servants, but due to her short-cropped hair, she requires less attention from the woman. "House Rose has a great deal of sway in the Stewards of Imperial Assets, and are clients of House Mnemon. My cousin married one of their daughters five or six years ago"

    "Is she out here as a reward, or a punishment?" you ask, noting your surroundings.

    "Oh, a reward," Maia says, without hesitation. "Any prefectural office is very high for a mortal patrician to reach, and no one can reasonably expect to be granted one for a wealthier prefecture over a Dynast. A comfortable retirement, although I'm sure her house is profiting from it."

    You nod — that much only seems reasonable. You'd met your host briefly the day before, a woman at least in her 50s, although canny despite it, and very obviously curious about what it is that brings you all out here to Echo Prefecture. You glance down at Peony's handiwork, as she finishes fastening the outer layer of your dress; not at all bad, for something that's been packed away on the road. "Hopefully, she'll be of some help," you say.

    "We can presumably work something out," L'nessa says, "I'd hate to leave our Prasadi friends disappointed."

    You would also not like that terribly much — Teran came to your father for help, obviously, and sending him home empty-handed would reflect poorly on both you and on Nazat. Admittedly, though, his affable, pleasant nature even under the circumstances has made him good enough company that it would feel bad on a personal level as well. You rather suspect that L'nessa's motives are increasingly less pure than your own, however. "Why are you making me feel as though I need to step in to defend my guest's virtue?" you ask, not entirely serious.

    "Please," L'nessa says, tilting her head to allow her hair to be finished, "I have been a perfect lady. So far. And I know interested when I see it in a young man."

    You raise your eyebrows. "Really? It was my understanding that you go through boys like candy, over the summers."

    L'nessa quirks a smile, glancing up from where she admires herself in the mirror. "Well, I can make one last, when I put my mind to it."

    Maia gives a sort of choking gasp, face going slowly bright red.

    You subtly roll your eyes. "Honestly, L'nessa, must you be appalling on purpose?"

    Fully armoured in finery and prepared for the evening, L'nessa raises a hand to gesture the servant attending her back a few steps, allowing her to turn in place. Satisfied, she glances from you to Maia. "I think that might have more to do with my audience than anything I'm doing," she says. Then she reaches into a crystal dish of candied almonds on a nearby table, carefully selects one, and deliberately puts it into her mouth with an audible pop before drifting out of the room.

    You can't help but feel like you're being made fun of, somehow.

    Maia lets out a nervous sort of giggle as L'nessa leaves, as much at your expression as anything. "Well," she says, trying to regain her composure, "you look beautiful — Peony does always have you looking your best, doesn't she?"

    "She does," you agree, glancing at your servant. Then you frown. She's in the middle of stowing the travel box that she produced your jewelry from, staring into the mirror with a strange sort of expression. "Peony?" you ask.

    Peony starts with surprise, slamming the lid of the box hastily down. "Yes, thank you, my lady, Mistress Maia. You are both very kind."

    "Are you quite sure you're alright?" you ask.

    "Yes, my lady," Peony says, "I must be tired from the road."

    "And that's all it is?" You take a step closer to her, looking her over for any sense of a deeper malady than fatigue.

    She looks down at the ancient carpet underfoot. "Yes, my lady. I thought...well, I suppose the road has seen me sleeping poorly."

    Frowning, Maia steps over to the mirror, gently tapping its surface, eyes flicking over the room's reflection. You know what she's doing — even for a mortal, mirrors can sometimes reveal unseen things, and a quick sweep of the room for hidden spirits can't hurt anything. She gives a slight shake of the head, communicating that the room seems safe.

    "Please get some rest while I'm at dinner, then," you say. You're starting to worry — you would hope she'd say something to you if something were really wrong, but this all just hasn't been like her.

    "Yes, my lady. Thank you," Peony says, bowing a little lower than usual, before taking this as the dismissal that it is and busying herself with tidying up the rest of your things and hurrying out the chamber's side door. The other servants have already left.

    You hold out a hand for Verdigris to slide up your arm from her nearby pillow. With the other, you follow L'nessa's example by taking a candied almond from the dish — unlike L'nessa, instead of eating it, you hold it out to Maia. After only a second or two of hesitation, she leans forward and takes it in her mouth. "Well, we shouldn't keep them all waiting," you say, already turning to leave.

    "No, we shouldn't" Maia agrees. She follows you out, and crunches the almond.

    Article:
    You have arrived in Echo Prefecture, a remote part of the Northern Blessed Isle, where the criminal god that Ophris Maharan Teran is hunting has been hiding. You are currently a guest of the local prefect, the patrician Rose Laughter. While her position grants her respect and authority here, you outrank her socially by dint of your Exaltation and your birth, to say nothing of you being a sorcerer, along with two of your companions.

    L'nessa will take point on assuring the prefect that you aren't here to cause her any trouble, as well as to obtain useful information on the precise whereabouts of Taste of Ash and Blood. In addition to this information, you'll come away with several potential leads. What approach do you take, going forward? You may vote for as many options as you like, but only the one with the most votes will be selected.

    [ ] Aiding a holy cause

    The prefect has another guest at the moment — an itinerant monk looking into suspected cult activity in the area. While Teran had avoided petitioning the Immaculate Order for help directly, this particular monk is more concerned with the spiritual health of Echo Prefecture's peasantry than any artifacts you might be searching for, and you suspect your criminal god and her cult activity are linked — once you pool your information, she will make it much easier to find and pin down the spirit you're looking for. The monk in question will remember your cooperation, and so will the Order. There will be some slight awkwardness with the Prasadis.


    [ ] An instrument of vengeance

    A prominent local deity is a guardian of the broken and the infirm — she will not be particularly pleased with a fugitive god with such a strongly overlapping purview to her own lurking around the region, particularly one with a track record of instigating direct worship in mortals. Teran's suggestion is to seek her out, and ask for her assistance in dealing with Taste of Ash and Blood. She will help greatly, but you cannot fully account for her own motivations.

    [ ] Swallowing a spider

    If you wish to avoid as much outside entanglement as possible, Maia's quiet suggestion is that she can summon a useful demon to hunt the god down — a spirit can go places a human can't, and there is no refuge in the immaterial against a demon. Such creatures always cause their own complications, however.
     
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    • Interlude 4: Necessity 03
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    • Aiding a Holy Cause: 16

    An instrument of vengeance: 9

    Swallowing a spider: 7

    Rose Laughter might be charming under other circumstances. Having five Dragon-Blooded and three sorcerers under her roof with so little warning puts a definite strain on it.

    "That is quite a reason to come so far," she says, smiling graciously.

    "It is a worthy undertaking, bestowed upon me by a hero of Prasad," Teran says. His mannerisms are considerably stiffer under the circumstances. It is not uncommon for mortals and Exalts to eat separately at formal dinners — in the same room, but at separate tables. With how few your numbers are, and with your host being herself one of the mortals present, the prefect has instead opted to give you the place of honour at her own table, taking a seat further down its length along with her quiet, amiable husband. You think that the more separate arrangements would have lined up better with Teran's and Yavis's upbringing.

    "Of course, my lord," Laughter says, her smile growing just a little bit more strained.

    The decor of this dining room is as dated as the rest of the estate, seemingly having last been updated before you were born, presumably by one of Laughter's more industrious predecessors. The food is good, at least, if not quite as elaborate as what you'd expect at an actual Dynast's table. It's warm and well-prepared, and a welcome change from the road. Of course, Teran, Yavis, and another guest, the fifth Dragon-Blood present at the table, are each eating somewhat differently than the rest of you, due to their various dietary restrictions.

    "I'm certain Lord Teran means no offence, Prefect. It must be a difficult adjustment, being treated as merely your better, rather than a god," says Sister Briar. The Immaculate monk has the slightly shabby appearance of an itinerant, simple robes worn from years of travel. She's a short woman with laughing eyes and round features in both face and body, her Aspect Markings subtle in the manner of most outcastes, taking the form of fingernails of living wood. Otherwise, she could almost pass for any woman from the northern Blessed Isle who had taken the vows of the Immaculate Order.

    Yavis tries, poorly, to disguise a frown. Teran gives Briar an annoyed look. He doesn't deny what she's saying, however. "I was aware of the... theological differences before I journeyed to the Realm," he says. "My family teaches us to be flexible, when traveling abroad. I will cleanse myself of impure influences when I return to Prasad." You very pointedly do not notice whether or not L'nessa's expression changes at the words 'impure influences'.

    Briar gives a tilt of the head that seems interested, more than simply disapproving. She's older than you, looking to be at least in her mid twenties. In a Dragon-Blood, that could mean anything from twenty-five to her fifties. "And how, exactly, do you intend to do that?"

    Teran shrugs uncomfortably. "A symbolic physical cleanse, followed by a month of secluded fasting and contemplation, under the supervision and instruction of a Pure monk of the Dragon Caste."

    Briar maneuvers some rice into her mouth. "Fascinating how much your people have diverged, so far away from the Blessed Isle," she says, in a way that is ostensibly not supposed to be condescending, but can't help but be.

    The prefect's smile is trending toward something closer to a rictus grin between this argument and Verdigris emerging from your sleeve to lap at the second cup of rice wine you'd requested. Fortunately, L'nessa steps in, smoothly changing the subject before anything can deteriorate further: "Do you always dine at prefectoral tables along your circuit, Sister, or are we all just lucky enough to receive the rare pleasure?"

    Briar turns to her, quirking a smile. "No," she admits, "my ordinary route usually sends me only briefly through Echo. I am extending my stay a little longer in order to investigate some troubling rumours. I had hoped that our honoured prefect might have information to aid me in my task." You see Teran relax a little as the attention is drawn away from him, shooting L'nessa a grateful sort of look.

    Rose Laughter takes a sip of her drink, when clearly she'd have preferred a gulp. "Unfortunately, I can only tell you that I believe they are only rumours. Or greatly exaggerated. We have had no significant trouble with illicit cult activity in Echo Prefecture."

    "But, you have had some, then," Briar says, "insignificant as it might seem. That's already more than what my mortal colleagues heard, when last they paid you a visit! It's so good that they prevailed on me to try my own hand."

    "Sister, every prefecture has some small amount of heresy, surely," Laughter says, not meeting Briar's gaze.

    "I suppose so," the monk agrees, "but small heresy tends to grow, if ignored over long, and then correction becomes... messy."

    The prefect nods. "I will bow to your greater wisdom, Sister," Laughter says.

    It isn't difficult to decode the interaction — whatever problems with cult activity Laughter has in her prefecture, she would prefer they stay small and ignored, rather than risk the kind of reprisal or accusations of negligence that can come with too much scrutiny from the Immaculate Order. Faced with an Exalted monk, however, she is less able to brush off the concerns than she otherwise would have been able to. Barring something greater going on that you don't know about, it's a mundane sort of tension.

    The rest of the meal passes like that, L'nessa periodically doing her best to rescue an awkward conversation, you speaking only a little, Maia barely speaking at all, unless directly asked about her family. You get the impression that the prefect is even more alarmed at the prospect of you all scouring her countryside in search of a rogue god than she is at the suggestion of cult activity. Throwing sorcery into the mix will do that, you suppose.

    By the end of the meal, you're already considering what you might do to get actually useful help from official channels within the prefecture, when Sister Briar flags you down in the hall. "Lady Ambraea, might I have a word?"

    You pause, halfway to your chambers, standing in front of a silk hanging featuring quotations from the Immaculate Texts — a little on the nose, frankly, given your current circumstances. "Yes, Sister?"

    The monk gazes up at you as she approaches, unintimidated by both your height and Verdigris's curious stare. She has an almost startlingly pleasant smile, you decide. "Forgive me for speculating," she says, "but it occurs to me that my task and yours are not wholly unrelated."

    "You think that your cult activity involves Taste of Blood and Ashes," you say. The thought has occurred to you as well, over the course of the meal.

    "Oh, good, you understand," Briar says. "There are only ever so many criminal gods in one small prefecture, in my experience. Would you be willing to share what information you have with me? I promise you, whatever it is your cousin is intent on retrieving is not my concern. I am here to protect the spiritual health of Echo Precture's peasantry, not to treasure hunt."

    You consider this, your eyes idly flicking over the scripture on the wall behind her; it's one of the most commonly quoted passages from the Texts, an extolment of industrious humility as demonstrated by Pasiap. "I would be happy to do so, sister. I am only concerned of potentially working at cross purposes from one another, if our goals are so closely connected."

    Briar tilts her head. "What do you suggest instead?"

    You choose your words carefully. You're almost certain that Briar is an outcaste; the careful, neutral tones of her High Realm speak more to an education at the Obsidian Mirror and the Cloister of Wisdom than they do a native speaker. It's never wise to adopt too much of an air of social superiority with an Exalted monk, however, particularly one potentially a decade or more your senior; the Order grants its own form of authority. You don't want to come across as though you're attempting to compel her to assist you. "I am certain your experience of hunting and dealing with criminal spirits is much greater than ours," you say, "however, we can be of some assistance as well, I would hope. We're young, but my classmates and I are already skilled sorcerers, and our companion is quite a capable young man. I wouldn't want to get in the way of your investigation. Surely, if we worked together, we could assist one another."

    Briar considers this, sizing you up, curious as well as mildly surprised. "Nazat of Prasad is your father," she notes.

    That she knows who you are isn't that unexpected. The Empress only has so many daughters and so many consorts, and from the perspective of the Immaculate Order, your father is... distinctive, even if you hadn't been traveling with two of his cousins. "I am," you say. You have a rough idea of where she's going with this. "My father still observes the faith of his homeland, which is his right as a Dragon-Blood; he is an honourable man and a dutiful consort, and I will brook no insult to him."

    Briar puts her hands up. "I am not in the business of insulting a woman's father the first time I meet her," she says. "Particularly not a Dynast. I was merely curious if you share your father's viewpoint on matters of Immaculacy."

    "I am my mother's daughter first," you say, "and she, of course, would never tolerate a child of hers to grow up without proper religious instruction. I may be a sorcerer, but I have only respect for the Immaculate Order, and the work that you do. As is only becoming. If you are concerned for Ophris Maharan Teran, I can assure you that he is exceptionally easy to travel and get along with. He would appreciate the assistance, I'm sure." At least given her declaration that she was uninterested in any lost heirlooms. You believe her; the priorities of an individual itinerant monk are not the same as what the Immaculate Order's administrative hierarchy might decide.

    "It was curiosity, not accusation," Briar says. But she seems pleased enough by your answer. "I wouldn't say no, as long as you agree not to interfere in the way I intend to carry out my duties. I am here to break up a cult, if such a thing is required, but with a minimum of bloodshed and reprisal. I understand that young Dragon-Blooded can get... excited, in certain circumstances."

    "We're not here to carry out a massacre," you say. "If violence occurs, it will not be at our wish."

    Briar scrutinises you a while longer, still looking at you like a curiosity she's stumbled across. You suppose one doesn't meet a great deal of Imperial Daughters, as an itinerant monk traveling a route through the mountains. She gives you another smile, warmly infectious. "Very well, Lady Ambraea. It is my hope that we can all help each other, then."


    An hour later, you're in your borrowed chambers, dressed for bed, but not yet planning to sleep. Quietly, you rise from the bedside chair in a bedchamber cluttered with ornamentation, quietly moving through the darkened chambers as quietly as possible. You can sense Maia out in the hall, waiting for you to quietly let her in as planned. She has her own accommodations in the prefect's estate, of course, but you doubt they'll see any use. The two of you are hardly going to pass up the opportunity a proper bed and a modicum of privacy provides.

    As you make your way toward the door leading out onto the hall, however, you spy a light filtering out from a different door. It's half open, smaller and more humble, set into the wall opposite your bed chamber, space set aside for a personal body servant. You frown, glancing at it as you pass. You can see Peony inside in her bed clothes, hands curled around what looks like a cup of tea, looking out the narrow window her chamber allows. Her eyes are looking at something in the middle distance, however, as if she's not really looking out at the darkened world beyond the glass.

    "Peony?" you ask, voice quiet.

    Nonetheless, Peony gives a start, only avoiding spilling tea on herself by sheer luck. She turns to see you, setting her tea down on the windowsill, and hastily bowing low. "My lady!" she says, "I hope I didn't disturb you."

    "You didn't," you say, frowning, "but I believe I told you to mind your rest."

    Peony winces. "You have my deepest apologies, my lady," she says. "A... dream woke me."

    You take a step into her room, examining her closely. "Has this been happening often?"

    She hesitates, not wanting to lie, not wanting to make excuses for herself. Her shoulders slump as she admits: "Everytime I fall asleep, my lady. Since before we left Chanos."

    You nod, frown deepening. "What kind of dreams are these?"

    "I'm not sure, my lady," Peony says, honestly enough. "It's always the same, but I never remember much about it when I wake up. Just this music, and that I'm going to see someone important. It's been hard to sleep."

    You take a step closer. She stiffens in surprise as you reach out to her, but it's only to lay a gentle hand against her forehead, doing what you can to try and detect any supernatural influence. "Do you ever get to the person you're going to see? Do you recall anyone asking your questions, giving you instructions?"

    "No, my lady," Peony says. For once, through a combination of fatigue and stress, she's an open book, torn between discomfort at so much touch, and genuine relief at the fact that you're concerned rather than angry. "Just... the music. I don't think anyone's trying to make me do anything, in the dream. But I don't remember any details. Is it... not just a dream?"

    You don't feel anything, but possession and other forms of mental ensnarement are very often tricky to detect. Hopefully, you're overreacting. "Tell me immediately if that changes," you say. "Is there anything else, beyond the dreams?"

    Peony hunches in on herself a little more. "Sometimes, I think I hear the music while I'm awake, too. I think it's just how badly I've been sleeping."

    You don't like that at all. "I'll ask Sister Briar to have a look at you tomorrow," you decide, pulling your hand away. Hopefully, it is just recurring dreams and fatigue, but the monk's training and experience may well pick up on something that you miss. "For now, get some sleep. I'll have need of you in the morning."

    Peony seems more comforted by this last comment than the rest, looking torn between relief at having come out with it, and concern at how seriously you're taking the matter. "Yes, Lady Ambraea," she says. Then, after a pause, she adds: "... Thank you, my lady."

    She should save the thanks for if there's actually anything to be done about it. "Goodnight, Peony." You step out of her room, and close the door behind you.

    You don't head back toward the door to the hallway, as you'd originally planned. Instead, you simply cross the room back to the door to your bedchamber, opening it to confirm what you can already feel in your soul. Sure enough, Maia sits cross-legged on the bed, dressed down to the inner layers of her dinner outfit. In the brief window of time you spent speaking with Peony, she has somehow gotten into your chambers, past you, and into this room, even with your Hearth sense honed in on her.

    She's holding Verdigris, the snake having happily slithered up to drape over Maia's arms. "Is everything alright with Peony?"

    "I'm not sure," you say, "She says she's been having bad dreams. Hopefully, that's all it is. I'm going to ask the monk for help tomorrow. I've already suggested we work together to find our god and her cult."

    Maia nods, expression thoughtful. "Sister Briar is not a lot like my brother," she decides.

    Her brother, the monk. As always, though, whenever Maia mentions her family, there's a subtext there that neither of you need to voice out loud. "Is that a good thing?" you ask, closing the door behind you.

    Maia shrugs, flashing you a little smile that doesn't quite make it to her eyes. "You could say that. He's a lot more... stern. Briar seems nice enough, though; hopefully, she'll be willing to help."

    "I hope so," you agree. Hopefully, you're just overreacting when it comes to Peony. Someone casting some sort of magic on your personal handmaiden is both far from outside the realm of possibility, but at the same time simply not the most likely explanation for a young woman being kept up by bad dreams.

    You really don't want to have to dwell on this all night, though, when you've already sent her back to bed, and there's nothing more to do about it before morning. You put an amused expression over your features, deliberately taking in the sight of Maia waiting for you here. "I don't know that I want to be talking about the comparative virtues of different monks while I'm looking at a beautiful girl in my bed, however."

    As you hoped, after a moment's hesitation, Maia's smile becomes something more genuine, taking on a shyly playful edge. You're aware of her eyes on you in your nightgown, drinking in the sight of you now that serious matters have been addressed. "Well, then my lady should steer the conversation as it suits her, I think."

    "I should," you agree. Then you cross the room to the bed.


    Perhaps seeing through your stoic demeanor to the real anxiety beneath, Sister Briar takes your concerns with Peony quite seriously. Briar subjects her to several tests against possession by demons, ghosts, and even rogue gods, a surprisingly quick process that she carries out with a sort of gentle care that puts Peony far more at ease than she normally is with strange Dragon-Blooded.

    At the end of it all, the monk is resigned as she takes you aside to explain. "I can't find evidence of any common supernatural compulsion on her," she says, "I'm sure that between the three of you, you and Lady L'nessa and Mistress Maia would be better equipped at ruling out the less common varieties. The girl may simply be working too hard — a mortal can only take on so much, especially when exposed to the... lifestyle of a sorcerer." Her eyes flick to Verdigris as she says this, and you try not to feel too guilty about how regularly you have Peony feed her during the summers.

    "If I were not mindful of my own servants' wellbeing, would I have come to you for help at all?" you ask, stung.

    Briar smiles, ostensibly a mollifying gesture, but there's something vaguely frustrating about it as well. Like you aren't entirely understanding what she's saying. "I am not accusing you of not caring for the wellbeing of a trusted servant," she says. "But these things look different, depending on what end of things you're on. You're a Dynast." You don't entirely know what she's getting at, but it reminds you enough of First Light that, combined with the lack of an immediate solution to Peony's problem, you find yourself in a bad mood for the rest of the day.

    The temple that Briar takes you to is deceptively large, an unpretentious structure in dark stone with minimal ornamentation. While quaint compared to those you've seen in larger cities, you're forced to acknowledge to yourself that the place has a certain quiet dignity to it.

    As you enter, you find the central hall empty save for a mortal monk, who two peasants are consulting with. They all stare for a split second at your group, consisting as it apparently does of five Dragon-Blooded. Then the monk bows low, and the peasants fall respectfully to their knees.

    "A lovely day, Brother," Briar says to the monk, her smile reassuring.

    "... Indeed, Sister," he says, straightening. "I hope your meeting with the prefect was satisfactory?"

    "Not as much as may be desired, more than was feared," Briar says, expression ambiguous. "I apologise for interrupting you at your work, but if you would inform the abbot of my arrival, along with my young companions?"

    From his sash, you can tell that the man is a monk of the First Coil, in addition to being a mortal, — Briar outranks him twice over. Though phrased as a request, as though coming from a guest to a respected host, the other monk treats it as having all the weight of an order. "Of course, Sister," he says, bowing again, before looking to the rest of you. "I hope you will make yourself welcome in our temple my ladies, my lord," he says, with equal politeness and slightly less deference. Then he's gone, heading through a door in the far wall.

    Briar's eyes fall on the peasants still kneeling on the floor. "We thank you for your pious respect," she says, dropping into a low dialect you can just barely follow, "but I think the point has been made. It's a very hard floor for old knees, I think. My companions would not object to you rising and finding somewhere comfortable to wait for the brother to finish attending to my request."

    "Of course not," L'nessa agrees before any of the rest of you have a chance to reply, her smile gentle and accommodating.

    There is a great deal of additional respects given and thanks offered from the elderly couple as Sister Briar leads them away to a bench on the far side of the room, leaving you, L'nessa, and Teran to wait for the moment. Maia isn't here anymore, having replaced herself with an illusion during a moment of distraction. You're not sure you would have noticed, if it weren't for your Hearth sense telling you that she'd followed the young monk further into the temple. You'll have to ask her what he said to the abbot, later.

    You're admiring the craftsmanship on the painted wood statues of the Dragons above the central shrine, when Teran speaks up, glancing from you to L'nessa. "You have so much contact with common mortals here," he says.

    "You knew that the Realm is not Prasad," you remind him.

    "Yes, I did," he agrees, "but knowing and seeing are different, are they not? It is... disconcerting."

    "You might be more comfortable in Deijis, or Arjuf Dominion," L'nessa says, not unkindly. "Houses Mnemon and Ledaal believe very strongly in a harsher enforcement of the Perfected Hierarchy."

    "Harsh?" For the first time that you can recall, Teran looks at L'nessa with something approaching actual displeasure. "It is better for the spiritual health of the Exalted, certainly, but is it not also kinder to allow those of the lower castes to better themselves ahead of their next life, according to their stations? Without interference from the powerful? Direct contact between a god and those of the common castes is improper, it inflicts pressures on them that they cannot hope to combat, with their low spiritual refinement."

    You glance over to Briar, who you are very certain is catching at least the gist of this exchange. "I am not certain that an Immaculate temple is the best place to have this discussion," you say.

    Teran grimaces. "Yes, apologies," he says. "The strangeness simply catches up to me, at times. Temples in Prasad have different entrances for different castes."

    "Many of the grander temples have something similar here," L'nessa says, "but, things are simpler in the more rustic parts of the Isle. Have you been fretting about this often?"

    "From time to time," Teran admits. He glances to you and to your surprise, says: "Your body servant..."

    "What about Peony?" you ask, apprehension gripping you.

    He hesitates, as though not knowing how to phrase something delicate. Then he ploughs ahead: "Is she a slave?"

    You reel back a little in surprise. "What? No, she's a free retainer in my service!"

    Teran looks distinctly awkward. "Ah. My apologies. I... was uncertain."

    You swallow the worst of your indignance on Peony's behalf — from the way she addresses you to the manner of her dress, no one actually raised in the Dynasty would have mistaken her for a slave. Teran wasn't raised in the Dynasty, however. "I suppose you're not used to having to tell the difference," you say.

    Teran shrugs with some discomfort. "The Dragon Caste does not keep slaves in Prasad. It is an unacceptably close association between the two ends of the Hierarchy."

    You'd been aware of this, of course. L'nessa looks more than a little surprised, however, and may have asked about it. At approximately this moment, however, the monk from before reappears. Briar drifts back toward the three of you, looking curious.

    "Is everything quite alright?" Briar asks. "It was hard to ignore the raised voices."

    "Things are fine," you say. The others don't contradict you.

    The monk from before approaches. "Sister, the abbot wishes to speak with you, as well as our honoured guests. She apologises for any inadequate preparations for your presence." The latter is directed at you. Presumably, even Exalted itinerant monks have unreasonably high expectations of such things less often than Dynasts famously do.

    "There is no need for the abbot to apologise," you say. "I look forward to meeting with her."


    "What did you mean, when you told the abbot that we needed guidance?"

    A day later, Sister Briar walks ahead of you on a narrow road, night already beginning to fall around you. "Am I not proving to be a useful guide?" she asks. "I was born in Ventus Prefecture to the north of here, and I've passed through Echo on my circuit for years. I think I know where I'm going, at least!"

    This much is true, and not what you asked. Which you're entirely sure she knows. "I mean the way you said it — that you think we could use guidance, 'for the sake of many people'."

    Briar hums thoughtfully. She has a pretty, melodic voice when she wants to use it. "The Tale of the Careless Gardener," she says.

    "... I am familiar with the children's fable," you say, struggling not to feel offended. Beside you, Maia gives Briar a fleetingly unfriendly look. Walking alongside several mortal monks, the V'neef house troops behind you are trudging along in silence. You imagine they'll tell L'nessa whatever you say here if she asks them to. Fortunately, you're not keeping secrets from her. Apart from your oath with Maia.

    L'nessa and Teran are circling around the other direction, because of course they are — Teran's simhata is adept at climbing, even with riders, and so they have positioned themselves at the top of the towering cliffs up ahead.

    "I think it's an important lesson no matter what your age," Briar says. "The careless gardener, who fails to mind the wisdom of Sextes Jylis, who tramples her own budding crops in her bid to uproot unsightly weeds, does as much harm as good."

    "I don't like your implication," you say. "Do you think we're going to go around, carelessly unleashing demons and brutalising every peasant we meet if you're not here?" There is only so much insult you're willing to swallow, even from a monk.

    "No," Briar says, "but situations like this have a tendency to... spiral, if not carefully contained. A harsher reprisal than necessary can come down on the heads of innocent and guilty alike, if the circumstances aren't carefully managed."

    "So you want to keep an eye on us, and make sure that yours is the description of events that makes it back to the Immaculate Order?" you say.

    "More or less," she says, not engaging with any note of accusation that may have been in your words. "The heresy can be dealt with without necessitating a wider reprisal; the abbot and I are of the same mind, on this subject. There's no need to frown like that, Lady Ambraea — we are all cooperating toward shared ends, after all, and it is the duty of an itinerant to serve as the Order's eyes and ears, so that it might best understand distant from its great missions.."

    "We wouldn't have found out about this meeting without her," Maia says from your other side. "That man would never have volunteered to talk to us. Not even to Lady L'nessa. He'd have been too afraid." She's less formal in front of Briar than she might have been in front of a Dynast you don't know very well, but still more than when you're alone.

    You're forced to acknowledge this — you'd been told about this place from a frightened former cultist throwing himself on the Immaculate Order's mercy. A poor farmer who had allowed himself to be deceived by a god who sounds a great deal like Teran's descriptions of Taste of Blood and Ashes. You would have had quite a bit of trouble tracking down such a convenient source of information on your own, although you're confident you would have gotten ahold of the god somehow through your own efforts.

    The path you're going down wasn't easy to find, however, deliberately hidden from view as it is, winding through looming cliffs to either side, rough stones underfoot. Up ahead you see the faint flicker of firelight on stone, hear voices beginning to echo in from the distance. "Let me go ahead," Maia offers, checking her knives. "I'll see what it's like, then come back."

    "Just scouting?" Briar asks.

    Maia doesn't entirely meet her gaze, but says: "I'm not going to do anything unnecessary." She's looking to you, clearly willing to let you say yes or no.

    You nod. "Good luck," you say, but she's already gone. You follow her with your Hearth sense as she slips into the shadows and moves out of sight. The silence stretches on, broken only by the sounds of distant people.

    A few moments later you hear Maia's voice carried to your ear alone by the wind, as though she were standing beside you and leaning up to whisper into it: "You should all come now, but come quietly."

    "She says to go on ahead. Quietly," you say, casting a stern glance at the mortals behind you in particular. The house troops are used to you by this point, and L'nessa has asked them to obey your instructions for the time being — they seem to take the order seriously enough. The monks, fortunately, simply take their cue from Briar, who is willing to follow your lead in this much, at least.

    Slowly, quietly, you round the corner. There, you find Maia standing over the motionless corpse of a man dressed like a peasant. He has a red line arcing across his throat, a neat motion that managed to splatter arterial spray onto the rock behind Maia, but somehow, not onto Maia herself. At Briar's look, she shrugs, mouthing, "It was necessary", and then kicking at a strung hunting bow laying in the dirt. The man had presumably been a sentry, and would have alerted the gathering if he hadn't been silenced.

    Just beyond this spot, you can see a bonfire, a voice lifted in prayer, echoed by many others. What you can understand of the Low Realm seems to be beseeching a deity to lift them up from a low place in the world and deliver them from misery. Briar looks away from Maia to take this in. "Be ready when we have Lady L'nessa's signal," she says, whispering, "arrest those who surrender, but be prepared for some to flee, or to fight, if they're particularly foolish — a god's hold on vulnerable mortals can be strong enough to drive them to deeply unwise action."

    You draw your sword with one hand, and with the other, allow Verdigris to slither more securely from out of your sleeve and onto your shoulder. Beside you, Maia murmurs incantations under her breath, hands forming signs that bind together the moisture in the cool night air, condescending it into a second Maia, identical in every visual detail.

    Then there's a flash of red light, and a new voice booms out above the crowd, Low Realm too colloquial for you to make out even so much as you did from the mortals. The kind of language that's understandable in a fieldhand, but which even a particularly shabby god really has no excuse for.

    Then, L'nessa's Infallible Messenger is hovering in front of you, the tiny cherubic figure trailing miniature autumn leaves — you don't even bother to listen to the actual message, pre approved signal that it is. "They're in position," you whisper.

    Briar nods once. She draws herself up to her full, less-than-impressive height, clasps her hands behind her back, and steps out into the hollow, in full sight of the gathering beyond. When her voice rings out, it's startlingly stern and forceful compared to her ordinary mannerisms, cutting over the noises of the assembled crowd and the god both:

    "Taste of Blood and Ashes! You stand in violation of the law and of the Perfected Hierarchy itself, instigating mortals to direct worship! Surrender yourself to the Immaculate Order's justice, or be corrected by force!"

    You step out around the corner in the scant half instant between Briar's proclamation, and the complete pandemonium that follows. Briar stands before a shocked crowd, all traces of levity gone from her unassuming frame, outlined with soft green Wood Essence. Beyond her is a crowd of mortals from humble walks of life, farmers and stone masons all down on their knees, twisted around to look at her with frightened eyes. Formerly, they had been led in devotion by several more wearing what might pass for vestments — garments that could be pulled off, or reversed to avoid detection by passing authorities under other circumstances, now clearly bearing a god's holy symbol.

    Taste of Blood and Ashes himself is an impressive figure, a man at least seven feet tall, armour rent, clothes bloodied, one arm ending in a stump below the elbow, the other clutching a spear. His whole body exudes a charnel red glow, and he floats just barely above the meager offerings assembled at his feet. But past the god's intimidating appearance, you see something like genuine fear flash through his eyes at the sight of Briar, mingled with the more dignified anger. He turns to run, and a blazing arrow streaks down from a high cliff, spearing into his arm. A second later, another arrow from L'nessa's bow follows. The god screams, and his followers do likewise.

    The smartest among them simply stay kneeling, prostrating themselves before you all. Others, especially on the edge of the gathering and those smart enough to come wearing masks, attempt to flee into the coming night. As Birar predicted, however, a rare few are more foolish or desperate even than that, armed and ready against some lesser raid — a few mortal monks, or perhaps a patrol of rural Black Helms. An arrow streaks toward Briar, loosed by panicked fingers, and she calmly sends the shaft spinning harmlessly away with a flick of one hand. The V'neef house troops and the mortal monks surge forward past you, following instructions to deal with any who would dare to raise a weapon against a Dragon-Blood, and to detain the rest.

    The mortals aren't your immediate concern, however. Blood and Ashes struggles to dematerialise, the process slowed somehow by Teran's still-burning arrow. You can slow it further. You step forward toward the god with every expectation that the various assembled mortals will be smart enough to get out of your way. You hold your sword in one hand, the other flashing through the appropriate signs, drawing cold, still Earth Essence into you, curdling in your chest and filling your lungs. You exhale, and the hungry, pallid cloud of Breath of Wretched Earth surges forward to cover the god.

    One of the priests, following a particularly stupid impulse, throws herself between your spell and her god, arms flung protectively wide. The cloud engulfs her, and him, and when it clears, they've both been petrified. The mortal stands utterly still, slate to her core. Behind her, the god falls to the ground, his own statue veined with rose quartz and shuddering with his attempts to escape the spell as it seeks to destroy him. You don't expect it to hold him forever, but it should for long enough.

    You don't have time to contemplate the mortal woman's sightless, dead, stone eyes staring at you — one man wrenches himself out of the grasp of one of the monks to give a horrified cry at what you've done, and hurls a knife at you.

    Maia, who had appeared to be at several places at once throughout the hollow, steps into its oncoming path, snatches the knife out of the air, and sends it spinning directly into the man's eye. There's a look of outrage and contempt on her face as she watches him fall to his knees, briefly trying to wrench the weapon out before he stops moving and simply slumps the rest of the way to the ground.

    As outnumbered as you are, the actual fighting doesn't last long, after that. The priests are arrested or killed, the bulk of the other cultists are apprehended, the mortal monks taking charge of them along with L'nessa's bodyguards. You and Maia and Briar stand over the god's petrified form, watching cracks appear on his body as he tries to break out.

    "That knife was not going to hurt me," you tell her. "I think he was going to miss by a good few feet."

    "Yes," Maia agrees, "his form was horrible."

    "I don't know that he'd have actually broken the skin even if he had hit me," you say, glancing at her.

    "Ambraea, he threw a knife at you," Maia says, her formality burned away by a cold rage at the principle of the matter. "He threw a knife at you."

    You glance at the woman you killed and the god that you just trapped, unsure what to say to that. Briar saves you the trouble: "He did," she agrees, "he threw a knife at an Exalted lady of the Dynasty, to say nothing of the Empress's daughter. He would have died for that regardless, and likely not well. That he didn't stand much of a chance at success is beside the point." Still, she gives Maia a look that's a little close to actual dislike for your comfort. Resigned to the necessity or not, that isn't the same thing as approving the almost nonchalant efficiency in which Maia takes a life.

    It occurs to you, this is probably not the first time Maia has slit a throat or driven a blade into someone's skull. You're not entirely sure how you feel about having done it yourself, just yet.

    "Many of the others, the ring leaders and those who fought, will die as well," Briar says, "others may redeem themselves through labour. The necessities of ridding a garden of disease."

    As you watch, the stone cracks around the god's face enough to reveal spiritual flesh beneath, one eye wildly looking up to meet first yours, then Briar's.

    "Can you speak?" Briar asks him, voice very cold.

    The god is quiet for a moment, clearly assessing his options. Finally, in a deeply tired voice, he says: "Yes."

    "Good," Briar says. "You have gone against the edicts of the Immaculate Order, not for the first time."

    "What choice did I have?" he demands, finding his anger again, "the first time, I was made an example of, a lesson for the benefit of my peers who have done far worse than I ever have! I was struck from the Calendar, was I supposed to subsist on whatever scraps I can get when heaven actually remembers to pay me?"

    "Your excuses do you no favours, spirit," Briar says, "you are giving me exceptionally little reason why you shouldn't be broken again for this."

    There's a series of startled cries as a simhata carrying two riders leaps its way down the cliffs, landing adroitly in a clear patch near the fire. Teran dismounts, offering a hand to L'nessa, who accepts. Then he looks toward the three of you standing over the god, his eyes flashing with excitement.

    "Taste of Blood and Ashes!" he calls, "I am here to right a wrong you committed long ago!"

    "... what now?" Blood and Ashes demands, more stone falling away. He still can't quite get up.

    "I, Ophris Maharan Teran, have quested long and far to recover an object you stole from the goddess Precious Sheltered Orchid of the Fecund Court. You will surrender it to me immediately, thief."

    Somehow, this seems to only make the god more incensed. "Orchid did this to me?"

    "In part," Briar says. "I dare say we would have had words regardless, but this task is what brought my young companions to tell me of your identity and nature, and save me a good deal of investigation."

    "Sun burn that wretched woman!" Blood and Ashes snarls, "I thought I was rid of her centuries ago. Stolen, she says? As if she ever had any better claim on it than I do! She's not an orchid, she's a hemlock! Deadly nightshade!"

    Teran's eyes narrow, and he speaks harshly before the god can think of a third kind of poison flower. "I will not hear this slander against a goddess of Prasad, let alone from a low criminal such as yourself."

    "I would suggest you cooperate as fully as you can manage," Briar tells Blood and Ashes. "To do otherwise certainly can't help your situation."

    "... It's at my belt," the god says, sighing heavily.

    "You have it with you?" L'nessa asks, faintly surprised. "I didn't get the impression that it's the kind of thing that's particularly useful, day to day."

    "I don't leave my valuables unattended, since the monks ransacked my sanctum," Blood and Ashes says, voice thick with venom. "Go on and take it, then. Rob me again and call it justice, you—" his words cut off in a wheeze, as Briar presses one sandaled foot into the newly revealed flesh of his throat.

    "That is quite enough of that," she says, without any sign of the pity she holds for the human cultists.

    You kneel to examine the god's belt, still petrified. His armour has been rendered to stone along with the rest of him, but one object has resisted your spell, hanging from the stone of his belt by a shining chain. You shatter the stone over the belt with the pommel of your sword, and cut free the leather, pulling the object up to examine the Mirror of Necessity:

    It's a black jade bowl, small enough to hold flat in two hands, currently completely empty. A metal deceptively like steel shines along the rim, and in the Old Realm characters written within, reflecting a spectrum of colour in the firelight. Your eyes go wide.

    "Valuable, I take it?" Briar asks, without evident interest. It seems you at least entrusted the right monk.

    "It would be difficult to assign a price, I think," you say, almost reluctantly handing the mirror over to Teran, who accepts it gratefully. Jade, you've seen in abundance through your life, orichalcum and moonsilver in lesser amounts. You don't know that you've seen this much starmetal in one piece very often, however.

    "Thank you, cousin," Teran says, relief palpable, "I should never have recovered this so quickly, without your assistance, and those of your worthy companions." He glances particularly favourably at L'nessa, who smiles back.

    "My father's honour could allow nothing less," you say, returning the bow. Then you look to Sister Briar. "And thank you, Sister. I will not forget your assistance."

    "Nor I yours," she says, keeping a gimlet eye on Blood and Ashes. "I assure you, the Immaculate Order will not forget your service."

    You nod, stroking Verdigris's head thoroughly. "I am honoured to hear that." There are far worse outcomes than this, to a summer's misadventure in the mountains.


    Ascending Fire, Realm Year 762

    One year, six months before the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress

    The Port of Chanos

    Your return journey was not so eventful, involving much less trekking through obscure mountain paths. Teran's spirits are, of course, incredibly high — he agrees to accompany you back to Chanos to properly see you all off before he departs, despite how clearly a part of him wishes to depart immediately for Prasad.

    You assume that L'nessa has something to do with it. At least once, you've caught sight of a bright orange leaf tangled in his red hair. It's a little shameless, but you suppose you only have so much room to complain, all considered. And besides that, you have other things occupying your mind.

    On your second night back at the Imperial Residence in Chanos, you're in the midst of reading a mildly insipid novel that Amiti pressed onto you, when you hear a loud crash from the hall outside your chambers. Alarmed, you toss the book down and stalk purposefully out to investigate. There, you find Peony kneeling in obvious distress amid the ruins of a large and very valuable vase.

    "My lady, I apologise!" she says, looking up at you. "I was simply — I thought the flowers could use some straightening, and I lost focus, and, this is inexcusable, I know!" As far as you can tell, she'd been kneeling there, staring at the spreading puddle as it spread across the floor, surrounded by shards of pottery and bedraggled blue flowers.

    "Did you fall asleep on your feet again?" you ask, frowning, "are you still hearing music?"

    Peony lowers herself further, very nearly prostrate before you. "Yes, my lady."

    "Has the ward I gave you done nothing?" you press. "Tell me the truth."

    Peony hesitates, before slowly, she nods. "I've still been getting the dreams, my lady."

    Annoyance at her keeping this from you wars with your concern. "... It's unlikely to be supernatural, then," you decide. "I'm going to send for a doctor."

    "My lady should not have to go to such trouble on behalf of this servant," Peony says.

    You sigh. "Get up." She does so, water soaked into her dress, looking tremulous. "You look awful," you say, noting the fatigue she's failing to hide.

    Peony winces. "My apologies. I... hope you will see fit to garnish my wages, until the vase can be paid for."

    That would likely take at least a decade. "Forget the vase," you tell her, although you'll certainly need to see about replacing it. "You need rest. Real rest. You're no good to me or anyone like this."

    Peony stands frozen in place, shoulders hunched, clearly fighting back tears, and mortified by the lack of composure. "Forgive me, my lady," she says again.

    A distant memory comes to mind from your early childhood, before expectations of decorum had been quite so fixed in either of you. Peony hugging you tightly while you cried over some long forgotten woe. You don't know why it should come to mind now. You take her by the shoulders, and her flinch sends a wave of frustration through you at your strange sense of uselessness. You're more forceful than you mean to be when you ask: "Am I not allowed to be concerned for your wellfare?"

    Peony goes rigid, seeming to search your face for the correct answer to that question. The permitted answer, the one that wouldn't be some kind of breach on her part. It stings, as much as you know that you're the one who is acting badly. You pull back, taking a step away to put proper distance between the two of you. A chunk of porcelain cracks underfoot. "You don't have to answer that," you say, gentler. "Please, go to bed. We'll see about the doctor in the morning."

    Relieved beyond words, Peony nods, and then bows deeply. "As you wish, my lady. What of the mess?"

    "Inform one of the household servants on your way to bed," you say. "That will be all, Peony."

    "Thank you, my lady," Peony says. She bows again, then leaves.

    You watch her retreat down the hall for a few moments, not sure what you should have done to handle this situation better. What you should have said. Then, with barely a glance at the mess, or the unfortunate flowers underfoot, you retreat back to your rooms.

    When most other details of this altercation have long since faded from your recollection, the one thing that will stick out is something that you pay very little attention to, in the moment. The flowers, round, full-petalled and fragrant, had been blue peonies.


    Calming music drifts on the air, subtly sweetened with an almost intoxicating perfume. These are the sounds and smells that have been haunting her waking hours for weeks, finally rendered into sharp focus. Demure Peony knows she's dreaming as surely as she knows the beautiful woman walking ahead of her isn't human.

    Peony has lived all her life amid the splendor of her betters, grown up in the incomparable opulence of the Imperial Palace. Here, though, in this strange place her dream takes her, she sees frescos that bring awed tears to her eyes, walks upon a floor mosaiced in turquoise and sapphire, follows her guide through halls and galleries so delightful that her dream-addled senses can scarcely take them in.

    By the time the woman brings Peony to a stop, they've gone somewhere quieter, more subdued — the music is still here, though. She can still hear it in the distance. "Wait here," the woman says, her manner businesslike, her garb ephemeral, her gossamer wings folded politely at her back, "I'll let her know that you're here, finally." Then she crosses the hall to vanish behind a door marked by a name written in several languages.

    Peony knows how to follow instructions — she doesn't have to think about it before she finds herself sitting on a navy upholstered sofa, rigid and proper, afraid that she'll be reprimanded by someone or another, if she looks too relaxed in such a setting. That someone will realise she doesn't belong here, demand to know what her business is, or where her lady is. She has no answer to either of these things, and so she sits there, quiet and still and poised.

    In a minute or an hour, the woman returns, leading Peony to the door that she'd vanished into. "Try not to waste her time," she says, holding it open long enough for Peony to slip inside. The blue painted door swings shut behind her and she's faced with an office at once stranger and more familiar than anything else she's encountered so far.

    "Have a seat," says the woman who sits behind the desk — resigned, but not unkind. She sets down an ornate writing brush, carefully puts the lid back on a crystal inkwell, and moves the board bearing the page she'd been writing on off to the side, giving Peony her full attention.

    "I've never made it this far before," Peony says, obediently sitting down in front of the desk. All at once she knows that this is true, that this is not the first time she's come to this place in her dreams, only the first time stepping into the office hasn't immediately woken her.

    "I know," the woman behind the desk says. She's dressed in the sort of ministerial robes that Peony associates with powerful patrician bureaucrats, the cut conservative, colours muted. Her bronze skin, Western features, and tight blue-green curls are only a little incongruous to that, her small frame exuding a quiet sort of confidence and authority. "Have some tea," the woman behind the desk says. Unlike the woman who led you here, she's speaking proper High Realm.

    Peony reaches for the cup, although she knows she won't drink it. "Where am I?" she asks.

    The woman shrugs delicately. "Where you were always going to end up, I'm afraid. It's been a long time coming."

    Peony looks away from the reflection sitting across from her, instead staring down at the one looking back at her from her cup of tea. The sky blue porcelain is soothingly warm in her hands, but it fails to make the strange dread in her heart recede. "Something bad is coming, you mean," she says.

    "Well," the woman says, tone sad, horribly sympathetic, "only the worst day of your life. It won't be their fault — they won't be trying to be cruel to you. The cruel part won't be because of anything anyone chose."

    Hot tea sloshes onto Peony's hands, soaking into her sleeves. She tries to put the cup back down on the desk, but it tumbles out of her trembling fingers, cracking on the tile underfoot. She looks down at it for a long moment, before forcing herself to look back up into the eyes of the woman sitting behind the desk. They're the wrong colour. "Why?" she asks, the question too expansive for specifics.

    The woman sighs, actually reaching across the desk to take Peony's hands in hers. "Because, you're needed more elsewhere. And love is hard."


    Peony wakes up in a cold sweat, blankets tangled around her, staring up at the ceiling of her little room in the Imperial residence in Chanos. It takes her a moment or two to pin down what, precisely, feels so wrong.

    Light streams through her narrow window, and she hears the sounds of the household already awake, the other servants going about their daily chores, talking quietly among themselves. She starts up to her feet, scrambling the short space to her wardrobe, pulling clothes on at several times her ordinary speed, sparing a moment to be impressed by how well she manages this trick.

    Peony pauses for a moment to splash her face with water from the wash basin before she's out the door, hoping that it's not so late that Lady Ambraea will have risen and noticed her absence. She might not have — they've only just returned from the trip, and she tends to rise unpredictably late, depending on whether or not Mistress Maia is present. Peony doesn't pretend to be able to keep track of Erona Maia's increasingly obscure comings and goings.

    It won't be until later that she registers her reflection. Or thinks at how rested she feels, how full of energy, all the tiny aches and pains of an ordinary life spent at work having melted away overnight.

    The manse's servant passages are narrow, comparatively plain — barely room for two to pass without knocking shoulders, and not even that if one of those two is Robin, from the kitchens. But they are brightly lit by plainer versions of the sorcerous lights that illuminate the main rooms and passages, and well ventilated in a way that such spaces aren't always. Approaching her going in the other direction is Mountain Thrush, the older woman carrying a broom with her, destined for one of the currently-unused wings of the residence. Peony gives her a harried sort of smile — she likes Thrush, and has come to think of the woman as a friend over the past four years. "I'm running so late! I don't know what's come over me."

    Thrush only blinks at her, her face falling into a frown of confusion, but she passes Peony without comment, and Peony is in too much of a hurry to question the uncharacteristic bit of rudeness.

    Up ahead is a fork, the passages branching off in several directions and a narrow spiral staircase leading up to the floor above. Two young men talk there, Field and Placid Stream — Peony has always considered the latter's name slightly unfortunate, in light of his frequent vacant expressions. He's nice enough, and not nearly as slow as he seems.

    Field, she actively tries to avoid, for reasons made obvious by the hungry quality of his eyes on her. Peony could end it very quickly, she knows, by simply telling Lady Ambraea of the unwanted attention, but you don't go carrying stories about someone to a Dragon-Blood when things haven't advanced beyond lingering glances and veiled hints.

    Peony offers them both a smile on her way to the stairs, but is pulled up short as Field returns the smile, and asks: "Are you new?"

    Peony looks between Field and Stream, seeing no more recognition on Field's companion face, and a tingle of surreal unease runs down her spine. Things from her strange dream linger at the back of her mind in a way that she can't immediately banish. "This isn't a funny joke, Field, I'm running late."

    Field only looks perplexed. "It's not a joke. I haven't seen you before, I'm only trying to be friendly. Did someone already give you my name?"

    "... We've known each other for four years," Peony says.

    "I think I'd have remembered a pretty girl like you," says Field.

    "Stream?" Peony says, turning to the other man. He only shrugs his broad shoulders, looking awkward and uncertain. "I'm Demure Peony," she says, "I'm Lady Ambraea's handmaiden."

    The invocation of Ambraea's name, at last, has an effect, although not the one Peony is looking for — the two men stand up straighter, a look of mild alarm passing over their face. Exactly as if they'd been speaking carelessly to someone with a higher place than them without knowing it. "Apologies," Field says, "we shouldn't hold you up."

    Peony doesn't flee up the stairs, of course — she moves with haste only because of her increasing lateness, seeking out conversation with no one on the way. Still in the grips of that last, desperate hope that she'll find some measure of normality in service to one of the two people in the world who has known her the longest.

    The dream was right about one thing — you won't intend to be cruel to her. It won't be your fault. How can it be, when you won't even know what it is you're doing?

    Peony slides open a wall panel, exiting the servants' passages for the lavishly appointed main halls. She walks up to the doors to her lady's chambers, forcing herself to knock firmly, and waiting with her hands clasped behind her back. After a brief delay, a familiar voice calls out, giving her exactly the command she'd been hoping for: "Enter."

    Peony pulls the door open, slipping inside, and immediately giving an apologetic bow. "My lady, I apologise for my lateness," she says.

    Ambraea stands ready before the dressing mirror, clad only in a nightgown, her hair long and unbound, a familiar canvas that Peony has worked on many times before. Behind Ambraea, the door to the bedchamber is closed — Peony barely spares a thought as to whether or not Maia is here. Nothing strange stirs on her stoic features. She only regards Peony for a long second, and says: "No matter. I've only just risen."

    If she'd been of sounder mind, she'd have seen the warning signs then, noticed the lack of concern for Peony's health, despite the circumstances under which Ambraea had sent her to bed. If it had been possible for her to be of sounder mind, however, would any of this be a concern at all? As is, Peony chooses to take Ambraea's lack of reaction to her presence as a sign of nothing being amiss.

    Peony sets to work garbing Ambraea in layers of dark silk, carefully brushes out Ambraea's hair, arranging it into a comparatively simple braid, fastened with a hair ornament of bright silver. Then she steps back, letting Ambraea admire her handiwork, as usual.

    Ambraea is quiet for several seconds, looking at herself in the mirror, a faintest hint of a frown crossing her lips.

    "Is something the matter, my lady?" Peony asks.

    "No," Ambraea says. "You have dressed me before, have you not?" As if she hadn't really been sure, before seeing how good a job Peony had just done.

    Peony freezes in place. "... Yes, my lady." Hundreds of times before.

    Ambraea, who is in the process of lifting up Verdigris from the snake's nearby cushion, mistakes her reaction. She says, not unkindly: "She doesn't hurt strangers, unless she thinks they mean me harm. I'm afraid I don't recall your name, however. It is more than a little embarrassing."

    That creeping sense of unease comes back to Peony, building in her chest until it becomes mounting horror. What is happening to her? "Demure Peony, my lady."

    "Yes. Thank you... Peony. You are dismissed." During this entire exchange, Ambraea has barely looked at her. Peony stands there, rooted in place, mouth half open to say something, to protest this, to explain to Ambraea that something unnatural is happening — what other explanation can there be? But she can't find the words, and instead she simply hovers in the room for long enough for Ambraea to notice. She looks at Peony with slightly raised eyebrows, and says, with the barest hint of a sharp note in her voice: "You are dismissed."

    "Yes, my lady." Peony's legs carry her out of the room at an ordinary speed, somehow. As she proceeds out into the hall, head spinning and vision blurring, she begins to go faster and faster, before breaking out into a full on run. Unfortunately, her problems aren't the kind one can simply flee from.


    Due to the length of this update, for the sake of pacing, I will leave you on this note, and return with the second half ideally within the next few days. The vote will be in that update
     
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