Vote closed, Interlude 5 01
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The Last Daughter -- Dragon-Blooded Sorcery School Quest
- Thread starter Gazetteer
- Start date
- Fantasy
- Pronouns
- Reader
Nominating this for best ongoing quest.
Where can we do this?
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- Reader
Interlude 5: The Precipice 02
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
As always, my planned two interlude updates simply did not fit the number of things I had in my outline in under ten thousand words, so in the interests of getting you this content sooner rather than later, I'm giving you the first half as its own update. This was the most sensible place to make the cut, I feel, but the end result is that there's no Ambraea in this update, so I'm not including a vote here either. The outcome of last update's vote will be depicted in update Int 5 03 along with our regularly scheduled voting content, so I hope you all enjoy this in the meantime.
One week ago
Entertainment district just beyond the Cerulean Lute of Harmony, headquarters of the Bureau of Destiny's Division of Serenity
Yu-Shan, the heavenly city
The Cerulean Lute shines like a precious jewel even among the glorious opulence of heaven. A pleasure manse of unsurpassed beauty, its gentle curves both pleasing to the eye and impossible to fully keep in the mind. Beyond the impossible blue of its walls lies a ring of fine parks and ornamental gardens featuring flora drawn from every corner of Creation, as well as some found nowhere but here. Beyond that, businesses hoping to cater to the Division's employees, or at least to bask in the reflective glow of the Cerulean Lute's many wonders — theatres, teahouses, eateries, brothels, and more. Music drifts through the air, and everywhere one chooses to walk, the scent of intoxicating spices seems to hang enticingly on the breeze. Gods great and small walk the streets here, some so deceptively ordinary they might pass for human on casual inspection, others bearing the shapes of beasts or more fantastical creatures. All solid and visible to the naked eye. The city beyond is grand beyond description, its spires and buildings and shining, metallic canals putting every great city of Creation utterly to shame.
For Singular Grace, Chosen of Serenity, a year spent living and working in this place has served to numb her to its overwhelming splendor, at times. At others the surreality of her situation hits her all over again, and she finds herself utterly overwhelmed. Even for a young woman who, in her previous life, had grown up in the Imperial Palace of the Scarlet Realm, worked in the personal service of an Exalted sorcerer, and been twice carried by a Lesser Elemental Dragon, it's beyond anything that she had been raised to expect.
"Darling, while I empathise deeply, there is a perfectly adequate window right there. It seems like a much faster way to escape this bottle than wearing a hole in the floor."
Grace stops short in her pacing, turning to stare at her companion. "... I'm sorry?" she asks.
The other woman inspects the contents of her cup with a vaguely disgusted air. "Dry, he called this. House Cynis should all be hanged for liars, along with the proprietor of this shop. I don't know why I expected anything different — Pangu Prefecture is Creation's finest producer of overrated dross, and this captures that quality perfectly." This doesn't stop her from finishing off her serving and holding the glass up for one of her servants to refill the cup from the bottle of alleged dross. Grace does her best not to look directly at them.
"You know, I was born there," Grace says, feeling a faint inclination to defend the honour of the Realm's most famed wine country. Although not, perhaps, that of the Great House that largely controls it.
"Present company excluded, then," her companion says.
Taking the hint, Grace crosses back to her vacated chair, sitting down, and taking up her abandoned glass. Unfortunately, it is a rather accurate likeness of a dry Pangu red, so she can't even offer Yula the excuse of blaming the ambrosia artist who'd shaped it. "Remind me to never drag you out for Realm cuisine again."
"It has its several saving graces," her companion acknowledges, if grudgingly. "Tragically, none of which include anything I'm likely to partake in from this establishment." She takes another long sip. "I suppose you won't have to settle for a facsimile of dreadful Blessed Isle wine soon enough, at least. Gate travel is very convenient to and from the Imperial City this time of year."
"I was in the middle of writing three reports for Tattered Veils!" Grace protests, a little weakly.
"I know for a fact that Tattered Veils' filing system consists of dropping reports directly into a 'to be sorted' drawer. Which of course means, 'to be sifted through every decade or so by some luckless assistant'. Don't look so scandalised, we are talking about a goddess of broken marriage vows, after all — one can only expect so much diligence. I'm sure your very important reports will keep for a few weeks while you take an actual break. It should do you some good."
Grace slumps in her seat. "I don't remember the last time I've taken more than a day off at a time," she admits. Even for the last few years in service, with Ambraea away at school, she'd kept herself busy during the school year by assisting the household staff at the Imperial residence.
"I think I may have surmised as much from the way you responded to an assignment to take a brief sabbatical as though you'd been ordered to set yourself alight." She gives Grace a wan smile.
They make an odd pair. Singular Grace with her unplaceable Western features and sea blue curls, dressed like a particularly conservative junior Thousand Scales minister, drab as a sparrow, the bright, sky blue of her starry eyes the only thing that betrays her nature. Beside the other Joybringer sitting across from her, she may as well be a background element, for all the attention she's drawing from the room at large. Yula Cerenye, formerly of Skullstone, is a gaunt woman with striking albino features. Her thin frame is draped in layers of black and grey silk, wrapped in a deep red shawl and a violet headscarf loose enough to leave white curls visible. Most arresting of all are her eyes — Bright blue, like any Joybringer's, but each surrounded by a ring of burst blood vessels. Her throat is usually obscured by her choice of clothing, but once or twice, Grace has caught sight of deep red imprints in her flesh; strangulation marks.
When Grace had first put two and two together about this, she'd thought back to her brief encounters with Sesus Amiti, with her Aspect twisted toward deathly chill and a piece of her soul willingly torn away for power, and she'd decided that, even more than sorcery, necromancy is a practice that Grace wants as little to do with as possible. But despite Yula's dark practices and unavoidable eccentricities, she is the next youngest member of the Division of Serenity after Grace, and has proven to be both friendly and sympathetic to Grace's own fresh woes. She's also surprisingly good company, and it would be hard not to like her, even if Grace were interested in trying. She's been far too lonely for that. Even if she's uncomfortably aware of just what the shrouded, masked servants that accompany Yula wherever she goes are.
"Yes, well, it seems a little excessive," Grace says. "I've only just completed my training."
"Sometimes, one requires a bit of a push," Yula says. She eyes the contents of her cup as though daring it to disappoint her again. "I spent most of my first year with the Bureau going between my office and my lodgings, drinking in my own company and working on my poetry and other writings in solitude. Not even my best work — what is even the point of being a tortured artist, I ask? Criminally overrated."
Truth be told, Grace doesn't go to her home in Yu-Shan for much more than to wash up and have a meal, ever since she'd figured out the trick to not having to sleep at all as long as she's actively working. Perhaps it's not the healthiest thing, completely burying herself in work whenever she's not being actively harassed to stop and enjoy the many pleasures of heaven by one of her colleagues. It is easy, though — as long as she's completely occupied by the petty details of committee minutes and destiny planning and diligently filing every report, she doesn't need to think about what she's lost.
Grace sighs. "It's..." she trails off at the sound of a muffled crash from the nearest table. They are sitting at the topmost level of the wine house, positioned on a balcony literally above the happy babble of drunken gods on the ground floor. The whole thing is fashioned in the likeness of a Realm eatery on a massive scale, serving food and drink that one might encounter in the Imperial City — at least, that the very wealthy might encounter. Peony is at least passingly fond of the place, on most days.
Unfortunately, tonight they have been sharing this balcony with a couple at a different table, a slight, nervous-looking lesser god Grace faintly recognises as an attendant of one of the Lute's galleries, and his companion, a fire elemental of some variety in the shape of a pretty young woman. Despite the decent amount of space between the tables, it has been increasingly difficult to ignore them the longer they've been there. Longing glances leading into meaningful whispers, meaningful whispers into cuddling. At this point, the two are physically occupying the same chair, kissing so intently that embers have started to drift up into the air from the elemental, surrounding them with motes of floating light, fireflies in the atmospheric gloom of the eatery. The noise that had drawn Grace's attention was an empty wine bottle being knocked over by an errant limb, hitting the floor and rolling away to rest against the railing.
It's more than a little unseemly, and Grace fights not to openly frown with discomfort. It's not as though she's opposed to physical intimacy — it is famously within Venus's purview, and arranging for predestined liaisons to occur or not is an important part of the work Grace has found herself doing — but she's never felt cause to partake herself, and there's something deeply inconsiderate about making others audience to it for one's own enjoyment.
She does her best to put it out of her mind, though, eyes going back to Yula, and not on what's occurring behind her. Yula, however, glances at Grace's face, follows where she'd been looking a moment before, and visibly rolls her eyes. Grace leans across the table, voice a tight whisper: "You don't have to—"
"If you don't mind," Yula says, her voice cutting through the background hum like a knife, "some of us are attempting quite heroically to enjoy our drinks in peace, which, given the piss we're drinking, is already a struggle without the sounds of your slathering over one another. I quite understand that the ambience might encourage otherwise, but if we could please refrain from public rutting, at the very least? I believe there is an animal pen outside — it might be a more appropriate venue." Horribly, as she punctuates her words with sharp hand motions, two of her zombie attendants ape the motions along with her.
The two spirits freeze in mortification. Then the god, his lime green complexion flushing several shades darker, very nearly shoves his date off of him, shooting to his feet, staring at first Yula and then Grace. When a minor Cerulean Lute functionary brings their lover to a nice wine house to impress her, very likely they do not anticipate being denounced for public indecency by two Joybringers. He gives the two of them a stricken, panicky look, his clothes still smouldering in places.
"You're not in trouble," Grace says, "go on." Looking immensely relieved, the god tosses some money on the table, and grabs the wrist of his increasingly irate companion, towing her toward the stairs. Grace has the abrupt memory of how terrified she'd been of interacting with Ambraea's elemental snake. Doing her level best to not look pleased at the couple's departure, she gives Yula a look. "You didn't have to do that," she says.
"What I didn't have to do was put up with that kind of behaviour in an eating establishment," Yula says. "One might hope for better behavior from the petty spirits of heaven, if she had spent very little time among them. Such a complete lack of regard for the common dignity would be considered disgraceful in Onyx, or anywhere the Sable Order held sway. I consider it my solemn duty to model something approaching proper morality, for the benefit of those in whom it is so insufficient." There's something meaningful about the sidelong glance she casts Grace, for all the haughty self-righteousness of this speech, as if to stress that Grace needn't put up with such behaviour either, if she were a bit more willing to impose herself. The kindness mixed in with Yula's overbearing presence is part of her strange charm, even if manners and strict courtesy have been Grace's best protection for too many years for her to so easily abandon them now.
"It wasn't exactly commonplace for me either, in my social circles," Grace admits. Seeing Yula arch a pale eyebrow, she frowns. "There is a time and a place for such things, and I made a point of never being around for either, where possible. It's not as though Lady Ambraea had a habit of dragging me to orgies."
"How considerate of her." Yula drains her cup again with a long sip, the motion somehow expressing every bit of real disdain she feels for the Dynasty. "Do you plan to see her as well?"
Grace follows suit, her own sip coming out as a bit of a gulp as a result. "No," she says. "Not to speak, anyway. I'll check in to see that she's well, if she's actually in the capital while I'm there, but... she's very nearly a grown lady. A grown Exalted lady. She doesn't need me." That's not quite adequate to articulate what, precisely, Grace feels toward Ambraea, the woman who she grew up alongside and served for most of her life. But for all that Yula is shockingly easy to talk to at times, she is very nearly the bottom of Peony's list for people to speak to about the subject. It's exactly the kind of complicated feeling that a noblewoman, any noblewoman, is utterly unprepared to understand, let alone empathise with. "I worry more about my mother," Grace admits. "She's... I'm all she had. Almost literally. All the hopes and aspirations she let herself have, she pushed it all onto me — as long as I was free and had a good place and a comfortable future, she was fine. I don't know how she's going to take having that all taken away from her."
"Well, it's good you'll get to see her soon enough, then," Yula says, voice quieting a touch.
"Seeing her isn't going to fix the problem," Grace says, shoulders tightening.
"I know, darling," Yula says. "It's an utterly barbaric custom." By which she means slavery — a sentiment Grace might find more compelling from someone whose own culture doesn't valorise reanimating the corpses of their own family members for cheap labour quite so much. Fortunately, Yula continues, her voice softening. "When I I visited Onyx again, it was in the company of friends. Companions who I could trust to help me bear the weight. It's always worse than you remember, seeing someone who should love you look at you like you're a stranger." There's an offer there, and a sincerely made one at that. It's genuinely touching, and catches Grace a little off guard.
"No," she says. "No, I think I should be alone for this, this time. I... wouldn't mind showing you the Imperial City, another time. Maybe you'd find something to like about it."
"I have witnessed greater miracles," Yula says, giving her a smile.
Maybe her superiors were right to force this time off — Grace would simply have to make the most of it.
The Imperial Palace, the Imperial City
The palace doesn't feel like home anymore.
Grace had felt it two years previous when she'd come here with Ambraea. Time and distance had made her forget just what the atmosphere was like here. The sense of being observed even when no one was present, the lingering weight of power and authority hanging on the air, reminding her of just how small she was and just how precarious her position had been. It had made her realise that the palace had never been her home — she'd just been permitted to live in it.
It's worse now with her senses fully awakened to the supernatural, layers of sorcerous Essence from centuries of great workings tingling against her skin, far more brash and open than what she's felt from the homes and offices of those similarly powerful Sidereals she'd had direct experience with. Grace hasn't been Exalted for long, but she can already appreciate the fact that even when they're being subtle or achieving complex effects, the magic of Dragon-Blooded has a natural tendency toward the straightforward. And the Empress is not being subtle in this place. It is very obviously her desire to make certain that anyone who enters this space knows whose palace they're standing in at all times.
The trip itself would have been pleasant, if not for her nerves. The well-traveled gate she'd chosen to journey back to Creation through is located near to the Eye of Heaven District, a deeply literal-minded thing of polished wood, barred and adorned with polished orichalcum. Unlike their behavior at smaller, less frequented celestial gates, the guards had been neither indolent nor lazy — but as intimidating as the massive lions and their lion dog subordinates might be, they had only eyed her briefly, heard her business explained in brief, and allowed her to pass. As a Sidereal Exalt and a heavenly official in good standing, travel to and from Creation is Grace's right.
The gate's location is deeply convenient, letting out into the midst of a glade just upstream from the Imperial River Basin. In the glory of a particularly warm summer, the scenery around the gate is pristine, almost overwhelmingly green. The land around the glade is forbidden to mortals for five miles in every direction, the area demarcated by a ring of Immaculate shrines, and well monitored by the Immaculate Order. As with most of the gates to heaven that they're aware of, the monks make no attempt to restrict the proper business of heaven, but they do keep a very wary eye out for improper behaviour on the part of visiting gods and other spirits. Grace is, of course, none of these things, but she'd be surprised if any of the observing monks remembered her after she'd left.
Grace had garbed herself in the destiny of a lesser official with business in the Palace. She had then hired a boat to carry her to the city, the influence of the constellation of the Messenger adding a sense of urgency that's obvious to anyone she tells of her task. She'd seen the way Sidereal power and resources could let someone slip seamlessly through the world before, but being on her own in the Realm, being treated as a person of authority and means, it had felt particularly stark to her. It somehow only heightens the feeling that she's utterly fallen out of the world in some crucial way.
The city itself had gone by in a blur, until hours later, Grace had found herself in front of the domineering jade gates of the palace itself. A great deal of patience and credentials thoughtfully provided to her by her superiors in the Division of Serenity eventually gain her admittance. There's a certain small pleasure in the fact that they trust her to be sensible with such access — it would be exceptionally easy, if also exceptionally foolish, to abuse if Grace were so inclined.
And then all at once, she's here, sooner than she'd expected. Up ahead, Grace sees Lohna Prince's Scribe, palace slave and the only family she has in the world, waiting quietly near the main entrance to Lady Ambraea's quarters, utterly dwarfed by the grandeur of her surroundings. She looks terrible alone, shockingly frail and delicate, for all the quiet strength Grace has always seen in her. She knows she should wait to speak to her mother, that Lohna is certainly here so early in the morning because Ambraea is in the palace — Grace barely knows what she wants to say to Lohna, and she certainly doesn't want to have that conversation with Ambraea present. Among other reasons she doesn't want to see her former lady just now. She should leave, and come back later.
Instead, Grace quietly slips off the destiny like shrugging out of a cloak. This doesn't coincide with any physical change. She's still herself, dressed like any of the many junior officials who visit the palace in the run of a month, but the air of purpose and urgency slides away as if they'd never been, the ineffable sense that Grace has something important to do for someone who matters wicking off into the morning air. She's left as just herself, exposed and unprotected in the halls of the palace, walking toward an aging mortal woman with as much trepidation as she feels for any of the great deities she's been forced to speak with over the past year.
She's still thinking of what she's going to say, when Lohna notices her first. Their eyes meet for just an instant, and the utter lack of recognition is like a knife to the heart. Nearly as bad, Lohna immediately flicks her eyes downward, and drops into a low bow.
The world reels around Grace, and for just a moment, her legs threaten to buckle beneath her. "You don't remember me," she says, like a perfect idiot. Because she has to say something.
Lohna tenses imperceptibly. She straightens, still not looking Grace in the eye. "I apologise, Miss," she says. "This slave's recollection fails her."
"It's Demure Peony," Grace says, speaking the name for the first time in months. A servant's name, ill-suited for the role she'd been thrust into. But there's an edge of desperate longing she can't quite hide as she repeats: "It's Peony."
There's still no flash of recognition from Lohna, no clear sign that she knows she's looking at her only child. But she reacts to that tone, to that need, as if something in her heart wants to remember, even where her mind won't let it. Her eyes briefly flick up to Grace's face and her hand twitches at her side, as if fighting the urge to offer physical comfort. "Are you alright, Miss?"
"No," Grace says, with an unwise degree of honesty. She tears her eyes away from her mother's face. Lohna is standing in front of a large bronze statue of Sextes Jylis, the Dragon's expression sympathetic, but somehow also mildly incredulous. It's a little much to feel judged by statuary, so Grace looks past it...
... And immediately sees Lady Ambraea approaching them down the hallway. Ambraea looks much the same as she had the year before, tall, imposing, darkly beautiful in the same way an impressive snake might be, pretty to look at, but with a hard to place sense of danger. Frustratingly, somewhere in the back of her mind, Grace takes note of at least three changes she'd have made to Ambraea's outfit, as serviceable as it otherwise is. At the sight of her, after a year amid the dizzying wonders of heaven, after having been forced to converse with great gods and millennia old Exalts as a near peer, Grace doesn't see quite so much of the intimidating sorcerer or mighty Prince of the Earth. She sees Ambraea in her mix of generosity and selfishness, protectiveness and petty grudges. The girl she'd been raised beside, been trained to serve.
"Do you need help, Miss?" Lohna asks, taking half a step toward Grace.
Yes, she does, more than anything. "No," Grace says, shaking her head. "No, I—"
She can't talk to Ambraea just now, doesn't want to deal with that same lack of recognition she'd just gotten from her own mother. Doesn't want to see the woman who had finally, painfully looked at her like she was nothing after knowing her all her life. Doesn't want to be confronted once again with the awful truth that, when Grace had finally needed Ambraea's protection, the supernatural forces that had come for Grace had been far beyond the power of one young Exalt to combat. She can't deal with the pain of seeing her mother and the irrational sense of betrayal at seeing Ambraea at the same time.
Fortunately, Grace doesn't need to. She doesn't need to be here. She doesn't need to have ever been here, as far as they're concerned. Under the heady influence of this lack of consequences, Grace gives in, looking Lohna right in the eye. "I love you, mama," she whispers.
"Who are—" the words catch in Lohna's throat as Grace swoops in for an impulsive hug. Grace can tell that it's affecting her, even if Lohna wouldn't be able to say why. She makes herself pull away despite the tears brimming in her mother's eyes, mind already scrabbling for the Scripture of the Hunted Maiden, her power subtly building inside her.
There once was a maiden who was driven from her land…
She sees the invisible threads of destiny that make up this coming conversation with her mother and Ambraea, and attempts to execute the impossible little sidestep that should remove her from it without a trace. She should have felt a strange shifting, and found herself somewhere nearby, completely forgotten as though she had never been present at all. The entire situation neatly dodged.
Instead, the power hovering in the air all throughout the palace becomes abruptly hard and unyielding, a bejeweled hand clamping down on her shoulder, keeping her trapped in the here and now. Grace is forced to look between Ambraea's approaching curiosity and Lohna's watery confusion, and take much more mundane matters into her own hands: her face burning, she turns on her heel, and begins to walk away. Briskly.
Ambraea calls after her in clear annoyance, but fortunately, she doesn't pursue. Grace is able to slip away into the great expanse of the palace, a small city in its own right. She had, in a real sense, already been regretting not accepting Yula's implicit offer of company. After this humiliating flight from Lady Ambraea, she feels it even more keenly.
Without thinking about it, her feet take her down a series of narrow side passages, and out into an odd little courtyard — small, ill-used, perpetually shabby in a way that is simply not allowed for the parts of the palace that the Empress's eyes might ever fall upon. The small space is almost entirely taken up by a piece of abstract statuary, a vertical slab of dusty white marble carved with a relief of stars hanging over what she'd always taken as the spires of a city, a Flametongue inscription running along the bottom. In the springtime, the blossoms of a nearby fruit orchard have a tendency to find their way here, brought by the wind to pile up in a small drift by the statue's feet. Grace has many memories of curling up on the plinth with a book or a bit of sewing, taking in the pleasant silence.
It's summer, though, and those blossoms crunch underfoot now, dried and desiccated under even the few hours of direct sunlight that this place receives. She approaches the statue, running a hand over its surface. The weary smile freezes on her lips all at once as recognition passes through her: The stars above the cityscape aren't merely arranged in a pleasing pattern, as a younger Grace had always assumed. They form the unmistakable shape of the Peacock, a constellation in the House of Serenity. Her Flametongue isn't good enough to make out the entire inscription, but she recognises the name "Urim" amid the rest of the flowing script — one of the Varang City-States, she recalls. Some monument to that distant city's glory, dragged all the way back to the Imperial City when the place had been made a satrapy, and put here, in the equivalent of an out of the way broom cupboard. And still she'd found it.
Grace slumps into her old spot at the base of the statue, the plinth harder and less comfortable than she remembers. How much of her mortal life had been like this? How many tiny signs had there been that she'd been unequipped to recognise, signs showing the entire thing head been just a prelude destined to be ripped away from her?
Something flutters out of one of her voluminous sleeves, landing amid the browned flowers at her feet. Frowning, Grace leans down to fish it out, finding a small, folded piece of paper. It's a note, written in neatly efficient High Realm, simple and to the point:
By sheer happenstance, Singular Grace is not the only Sidereal in the Imperial Palace today. Her senior colleague, no doubt here on urgent business, has nonetheless somehow learned of her presence, and is being courteous enough to invite her to tea later that afternoon. She stares at it for a long moment, conflicted by relief at the prospect of speaking with someone who even passingly knows who she is, and anxiety at receiving such an invitation from a man who she knows to be a truly great figure in heaven.
Slowly, she lays the paper out on the statue plinth beside her, and fishes around in the hidden pocket in one of her sleeves for what she's looking for — a graphite pencil and a friction match. There's a part of Grace embarrassed to not be able to use ink, but he must know that she's away from her desk, and that allowances must be made in circumstances like these. Carefully, she writes her reply in the space provided, strikes the match on the stone, and sets the note on fire. It goes up almost instantly, consuming the paper and text completely, a thin trail of smoke rising up into the blue sky overhead.
At any rate, it will be something to do.
House Erona Residence, The Imperial City
"Tell me about how she would have died, if you had committed such a thing."
"I would have killed her demons first. First one then the other, before they could alert her. They were lesser spawn of the Vitriol Dragon, native to the shallows of Ki—" registering the impatience in her grandmother's stoic bearing, Maia hastily course-corrects. "Aquatic demons, but not as dangerous to a trained Water Aspect as she might hope. Scavengers, not true hunters. A knife behind the gills for either. Then she would be alone."
Maia kneels on the hard floor, her body wound so tight that she's half worried something will give out in her chest. Standing over her, dressed in austere grey and blue, is her grandmother, Erona Vermillion Shore. The outcaste who'd married Maia's grandfather and renewed his flagging bloodline, who had filled his house with her descendants. She had never been a matriarch — Maia's grandfather had been succeeded by her aunt, who holds the title still — but from the moment she'd entered the family and taken in their name, it's unquestionably Vermillion Shore who has led House Erona from the shadows. She's small, deceptively thin, almost fragile, with eyes like the pitiless sea, after all these years still dressing in a faintly martial style, reminding all who meet her of her status as a decorated war hero. Despite her increasing age, Maia has never held any illusions about her grandmother's physical capabilities.
The training room the two of them are meeting in, kneeling across the small space from one another, is bare, even spartan, the blank faces of its walls seeming to close in around Maia. With her sorcerously-awakened senses, she'd noticed the subtle enchantment on the space almost instantly. At some point, someone had woven sorcery into the walls to swallow sound, assuring that nothing that occurs within them will be heard in the house beyond.
"You'd kill her pets. What then?" Vermillion Shore leans forward, gaze intent.
"Trail her for a time. Slowly, not disturbing the current. Get as close as possible without alerting her, gather sorcerous power. The spell she employed to stay underwater was useful and versatile — she wouldn't have been helpless, even if she couldn't match a Water Aspect."
"Do you imagine you would have been successful?" Vermillion Shore's eyes bore into Maia, daring her to lie.
For a moment, Maia is back in the sea off the shore of the Isle of Voices, hanging near motionless in the abyssal gloom, watching Peleps Nalri carefully following a dragon line along the seabed. A plant is wound around Nalri's body, its roots plunging into her mouth and nose to filter breathable air directly from the water, fronds twining her limbs like the fins of a strange fish. One of her hands carries a bespoke instrument of silver and black jade to guide her in her work.
Maia will never know what actually it is that betrays her presence, but one moment Nalri is none the wiser and the next she's wheeled around to see Maia, a human shape trailing her through the dark of the sea. There's a frozen moment as the two regard each other, one cold, the other openly alarmed. Then they both explode into motion at once.
Maia shoots forward through the water, one hand drawing her knife, a wound already opening on the palm of the other. The water churns with a storm of obsidian butterflies from Nalri's outstretched hand, but what would be lethal on dry land is rendered slower, more sluggish here as each razor sharp projectile drags its way through the water. Maia is already on her, the barbed whip formed from her own blood coiling mercilessly around Nalri's outstretched wrists, hauling her close enough for Maia's knife to sever the viridian stem of the plant keeping Nalri from outright drowning. There is a fight after this point, but the outcome is already decided.
"Well enough," Maia says, in the here and now. It may have gone differently, if she'd been a little bit slower.
"Good." With a slow, fluid motion, Vermillion Shore rises, standing over Maia with a dangerous expression on her face. "Hypothetically speaking, of course. Because, I do not recall permission being granted for you to claim the life of one of our enemies among your classmates. I am not privy to all that is done in our patron's name, however — am I mistaken?"
Maia forces herself not to look away. It will be worse if she looks away, or does anything to betray the helpless fear hammering in her chest. "You are not mistaken, grandmother."
"How curious, then, that she's dead. Why do you imagine that would be, granddaughter?"
Maia needs to answer this. Her tongue seems to have seized up, though, her mouth gone dry. "... She crossed Ambraea," she manages.
"Hm." Vermillion Shore looks down at Maia, her face horrible blank. "You were advised to ingratiate yourself to her. That girl's bed wasn't the place we'd planned for you, but it's too useful an opportunity to pass up — you've done well, in that regard. I expected you to please her long enough for the connection to be useful, not to inspire binding and public displays of devotion."
Maia is torn between a measure of genuine relief at this faint praise, and a tiny and extremely dangerous anger prickling into existence somewhere in the depths of her chest. What she has with Ambraea — the first thing that Maia's had that really belongs to her — being reduced to a cynical act of seduction sets her blood to boil. "... Thank you, grandmother."
"Don't thank me yet, girl." Maia's stomach drops as Vermillion Shore begins to slowly walk, moving around Maia in a leisurely, circular motion, her hands still clasped behind her back. It's a bit like being circled like a shark. "I'm not sure I believe you."
"I'm sorry?" Maia asks.
"The V'neef girl, whose family Peleps Nalri exercised her grudge against, your other roommate. The Sesus girl who helps you with your schoolwork, whose work she stole. What are they to you, Erona Maia?"
Maia closes her eyes briefly, not letting her shoulders slump. "... Enemies," she says, voice barely more than a whisper.
"Enemies." From almost directly behind Maia, where Vermillion Shore currently stands, something cold and metallic comes to rest on Maia's shoulder, the smooth length of a wrackstaff weighting heavily down on her. "What do we give to enemies?"
"Patience," Maia says automatically. "Patience, then vengeance."
"Correct," Vermillion Shore says. "Sesus, who were our enemies before ever we fell, who leapt at the chance to destroy us and slither into the void we left behind. V'neef, who eagerly snatched up our stolen holdings into undeserving hands before our corpses were cold. If either of them knew who and what you were, our little house would be utterly ruined. They are not our friends. We do not kill for them without good reason. Our Empress stands surrounded by wicked advisors and self serving children — we do not kill simply to please ourselves. Do you understand me, granddaughter?"
She does understand it. Maia has known it since before she set foot in the Heptagram, from before the moment she first met any of her school friends. She knows what's been done to her family, how many were killed or vanished or destroyed in more insidious ways at the hands of the Great Houses. How quickly the warmth that L'nessa and Sola show her would evaporate if they actually knew what she was. How singularly lucky she is that Ambraea loves her regardless. But it's all so much easier to remember when she's looking into Nalri's terrified eyes than when she's with L'nessa or Sola or Amiti. Particularly Amiti. But all she says is: "Yes, grandmother. I understand."
"I feel that your understanding may have grown more selective of late. Remember, child, if you ever resent the weight of our duty, if you ever look at your 'school friends' and see in them the wealth and power that you should have grown up taking for granted, if you ever envy them the vapid idleness of Dynastic youth, remember: they stole all this from you. It was snatched away from you before you were ever born. If you ever resent our secrecy, the harshness of my lessons, the hard life that is left to us to lead, the blood on your hands, remember who it was who pushed us to it. And how quickly they would do it again, and worse."
"I know!" It comes out sharper than Maia means for it to, angrier, and her heart stops for a moment. "Apologies," she hastily adds, "I meant no disrespect."
"I'm sure you didn't," Vermillion Shore says, her voice almost softening. "The anger is good. Keep it burning, but keep it in check. I don't doubt your commitment to our path, girl, but your discipline is slipping. Fortunately, I have time to help you with that."
"Help how?" Maia asks, whatever relief she'd felt plunging back down into icy dread.
The wrackstaff seems to grow heavier against her shoulder. "Unarmed self defence against an assailant with a deadly weapon is a valuable skill," Vermillion Shore says. "I also find that it is particularly good at sharpening the mind. At reminding you of the cost of discovery if any of us slip up for an instant. I do this for your own sake, child. Do you understand?"
"Yes, grandmother." Maia doesn't move yet, but her body slowly tenses, ready to dart aside from whatever blow is about t
o come, ignoring the spike of real terror in her heart.
"Good," Vermillion Shore says. "Defend yourself — you are forbidden to break any bones,"
Then, of course, there comes pain. But pain is an old teacher.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
Why is there no "Oof" rating? Hugs doesn't really cut it in this situation, but it'll have to do I suppose.
- Location
- an unseen void
- Pronouns
- Any
oh wow it's really misty in here that's weird can't remember why
- Pronouns
- Reader
Oof. Peony. Such heart breaking loneliness.
Maia is going to have a very hard time retaining those views if she ends up inhabiting a sesus holding with Ambraea and Amiti.
This was a compelling set of povs. I enjoyed the look into the hierarchy of heaven and seeing the new pov of a previous scene, as well as Yula's scathing wit. No, actually, Yula's Scathing Wit was by itself a particularly enjoyable experience. I desperately want to see her and Deizil exchange insults.
Maia is going to have a very hard time retaining those views if she ends up inhabiting a sesus holding with Ambraea and Amiti.
This was a compelling set of povs. I enjoyed the look into the hierarchy of heaven and seeing the new pov of a previous scene, as well as Yula's scathing wit. No, actually, Yula's Scathing Wit was by itself a particularly enjoyable experience. I desperately want to see her and Deizil exchange insults.
- Pronouns
- Reader
Ambraea is her favored daughter here to be personally honored for coming into her own. Some lunar exalted former servant isn't allowed to simply stand there eavesdropping, not in the empresses palace.
- Location
- Probably at sea
You are technically correct!
Peony unquestionably has it very rough, but as heart-wrenching as a Sidereal Exaltation is her life would be way worse if she'd been a Lunar.
Shorter, for one.
Otherwise, great update - no-one is having fun right now, are they? Grace is failing to connect with her past, Maia is connecting far too hard with her friends for her family's liking, Yula isn't connecting with her friend's cuisine, and Vermillion Shore's wrackstaff is connecting solidly with Maia.
The Celestial Bureaucracy we love to hate.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Getting to vocally complain about Realm wine varietals that she doesn't like is probably a decent consolation prize for not drinking wine she enjoys more.
- Pronouns
- Reader
Actually pretty sure Yula is is having a decently good time ridiculing creation and heaven both. If she was expecting something of quality, well, she and Grace wouldn't be anywhere quite so public, I suspect. *Sage nod*
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The Empress has many valid reasons why she might want to restrict teleportation magic within her palace, and is one of the exceedingly few people with the means to seriously do so. She also thinks fucking with Sidereals who are messing around in her home is hysterical, though, as an upshot.
- Pronouns
- Reader
Lol. Just realised that means the empress snubbed the old man and pranked some newbie sidereal in the space of half a dozen hours at most? And in the same timeframe she revealed she flexed on a famous swordsmith to get Ambraea a sweet sword? No wonder she was in such a good mood at their reunion after the ceremony.
i Love her and i love that singular grace gets a horrid little necromancer bestie (affectionate) too
honestly when the reveal came it was a little bit heartbreaking but it's been really fun (if super bittersweet) watching grace come into her own and adapt to her new circumstances?
god forbid a woman do ANYTHING
goddddd i love how evocative this is
this is very Oh No but this is also such a wonderful way to end the update, it's such a punchy line ;;
Interlude 5: The Precipice 03
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
V'neef Darting Fish: 23
Sesus Ambar: 20
Cathak Isri: 15
Mnemon Tomon: 5
Peleps Lai Vemi: 4
Sesus Ambar: 20
Cathak Isri: 15
Mnemon Tomon: 5
Peleps Lai Vemi: 4
The Imperial City
The Imperial Palace itself contains numerous shrines and several full-sized temples to the Immaculate Dragon within its walls, built by the Empress in dedication to great victories, or to honour great heroes. Singular Grace isn't entirely surprised that her invitation directs her to one well beyond the palace walls, however. What it lacks in immediate convenience, it will certainly gain some measure of actual privacy. Despite the many people on the far side of the side gate she departs through, stepping beyond the compound's outermost walls and back out into the Imperial City proper immediately removes the creeping sensation of being watched that's only grown while she's been in the palace.
Grace is left in a solidly middle rung neighbourhood, taking in the sights and sounds of ordinary life. Living this close to the palace, with its slightly uncomfortable guard presence and heavy traffic, this is neither the domain of the truly wealthy nor the genuinely poor. Affluent peasants live here in handsome buildings, running businesses that cater to guards, soldiers, servants, and higher status folk bored of the palace's endless pleasures. Eateries, teahouses, an outdoor theatre. She even spots an unlit blue lantern in the window of an exceedingly polite looking establishment partially obscured by other buildings, the Maiden of Serenity's colour marking it as a brothel.
She realises with dull amusement that this is more or less exactly the sort of entertainment district in which she'd met with Yula a week prior, albeit one on a Creation scale, rather than the heightened supernatural excesses of heaven. She's sure that, if she had taken Yula up on her offer, they might have sought out some manner of diversion here, or somewhere like it. She's sure Yula would have found something to viciously criticise regardless, but Grace had surmised relatively quickly that the primary use Yula has for the Realm is despising it. Perhaps Grace might feel similarly, if she'd been raised in a blighted shadowland ruled over by a tyrannical ghost king.
If Grace ever visits Onyx, she is determined to be perfectly mildly polite about the entire affair, no matter how many horrors she's exposed to in the process.
Without company to immediately distract her from the pang in her heart, Grace arranges for transportation deeper into the city. She suppresses the automatic anxiety over the state of finances she doesn't need to worry about any longer as she flags down a carriage, settles into it, and sinks into quiet contemplation of the city rolling by.
Daana'd-Vanquishes-Corruption Temple is conspicuous in its magnitude, a towering structure made of black stone carved with religious imagery of its namesake dragon in her capacity as bureaucratic crusader. Its outer walls curve gently like waves, drawing the eye to its two large gates, propped open to admit the faithful. It utterly dominates one side of the grandly appointed square it sits in, opposite the headquarters of the Honorable and Humble Caretakers of the Common Folk, staring down the Thousand Scales ministry as if daring it to fall down in its duties.
A brightly coloured mosaic gleams underfoot as Grace moves through the well-dressed crowd, an aniconic design by some Mnemon artisan or another. She takes note of a very pricey looking stationary shop on her way, deciding that she'll spend some time there after this meeting. The thought of it does something to quiet the nervousness in her stomach — it's been told to her in jest before, but Grace has to admit that there may be something to her having been born to be a bureaucrat.
Passing between the two dragon statues that flank the entrance, Grace takes a deep breath, enjoying the cool, incense-laced air that washes over her from the temple's interior. Whatever confusing revelations recent years have brought on about the history of the Realm and the Immaculate Philosophy, she's abruptly certain that it's been far too long since she's been in a temple. She spends a long moment just taking in the art on the walls, the meticulously tended shrines around the main chamber, the air of contemplative tranquility hanging in the air.
"You seem lost, Miss."
Grace's heightened senses mean she doesn't jump when the man speaks to her, despite how little attention she'd been paying to her surroundings. "Oh, in a sense," she says, unable to quite stifle a little laugh. He's a monk a little younger than Grace's mother, his robes spotless, his expression politely confused. "Forgive me, brother, I was simply taking a moment to admire your temple. I do have business here. I was told to make it known that the Mouth of Peace's secretary is expecting me."
That certainly gets a reaction, as well it might. "Ah," he says, his manner growing considerably more formal, "I hadn't realised— please, allow me to fetch the abbot."
In short order, the abbot directs one of the temple's lay servants to lead Grace out of the main hall, and up into the strangely curving passageways built into the building's outer walls. In addition to the cells where the monks who live and work here sleep, the temple serves as one of the major administrative centres of the Immaculate Order's Breath of Daana'd, the bureaucratic arm of the Immaculate Order responsible for monitoring and facilitating the needs of the many mortal communities under the Order's guidance. As such, it contains offices, records chambers, and pleasantly appointed meeting rooms.
Grace is led up to the top floor, to what turns out to be a modest study maintained in one corner of the building. The space features an antique desk, seating for several others, and an obsessively ordered bookshelf. Narrow windows on several of the walls let fading sunlight in to stripe the floor. Off to the side of the room is a small stove for making tea. It has the air of a place that is cleaned and dusted regularly, but not used on a regular basis. A place to work while in the Imperial City. Or today, apparently, to meet with junior Sidereals.
As her host doesn't immediately arrive, Grace finds a space on the hard floor to sit down on, produces a small notebook she keeps tucked into her robes, and begins to carefully scribble away on a blank page in graphite. She writes in High Realm shorthand, carefully laying out in brief the report that she'll have to finish when she goes back to Yu-Shan. It's been a stressful morning, and half an hour's rest will be a welcome respite. She so loses herself in the work that, were it not for the missive apologising for her host's lateness an hour into things she finds tucked mysteriously between two blank pages of her notebook, Grace might have wholly failed to mark the time.
When the door finally slides open behind her, Grace stands in a hurry, tucking her notebook away back in the pocket up her sleeve, thankful to be free of the ordinary stiffness and pains of a mortal body — it's always a little mortifying to have to pretend your leg hasn't fallen asleep in front of a superior. "Hello, sir," she says, bowing.
"I admit," he says, closing the door behind him, "I had hoped that you would find something more diverting to occupy yourself with in my absence than waiting in my office. I realise that it's very poor form for me to have invited you then showed up late." There's a dry, weary humour in his voice, but also, Grace thinks, genuine irritation. She has no indication that it's directed at her, at least.
"Would you like me to make tea?" Grace offers, glancing toward the tea making supplies.
"It was not my intent for you to have to wait on me," her host says.
"I like making tea. And we're in the Realm — it's polite here, to show courtesy to one's elders." And for all that she'd lived fully at the mercy of Ambraea's good opinion, Grace had taken pride in her former profession. She doesn't get enough chances to make tea for people, these days. Which is probably more a statement on her refusal to have a social life than anything. Her colleagues at the Cerulean Lute might have had a point.
Her host has a seat, watching her go through the automatic motions of heating the water and preparing the tea leaves he has on hand. He's old enough to show his age in his face and what's left of his grey hair — which is truly ancient, in light of the dizzying lifespan Grace has been told Sidereals can achieve. Still, there's nothing to show a decline in his physical conditioning, his posture straight and upright, his green eyes tired, but still piercingly intelligent. "So I've been told," he says, but doesn't seem to object further.
"May I ask what delayed you so dramatically?" Grace asks, carefully portioning out the leaves — a top quality green harvested from Numinous Rolling Waves Prefecture, unless she was mistaken. A surprising touch of luxury here amid all the deliberately cultivated humility.
"That certainly isn't a secret," her host says. "I came here to advise the Empress on certain critical matters. It is her wont to deliberately waste my time now and again. Both for her own amusement and to remind me who really holds power in the Realm. She is an endlessly frustrating woman, as I'm sure you'd find as well should you ever have to deal with her directly."
"So far, Her Excellency has spoken..." Grace thinks hard for a moment, waiting for the water to reach the precise temperature she was waiting for. "... Exactly two words to me in my life. So I will simply have to take your word for that for now, sir."
"Which words are those?" He asks.
"'Leave us'." Grace only barely suppresses a wince at the memory, despite the humour — as a servant living in the palace, she had taken great, if unspoken, comfort in the thought that the Empress hadn't known that she existed. She doubted that the Imperial Presence would be significantly less overwhelming at this stage.
The old man twitches a smile, although it's only on his face for a scant instant. "You remind me of your predecessor, in some ways," he tells her.
Grace doesn't look up from carefully pouring the tea into two earthenware cups, but she does blink in surprise. "You're the first person who knew her to feel that way."
"I mean in your mannerisms, at times," he explains. "You learn to notice these commonalities among the different bearers of Exalted lineages, eventually. I grew to have a great deal of respect for Wayward Prayer over the centuries we worked together, as much as our political disagreements prevented anything as intimate as friendship."
Grace hands him his tea, before demurely taking a seat on the floor across from him. "I think I might be a bit of a disappointment to some of her contemporaries."
"Thank you. The Gold Faction are few in number, and have still fewer elders so committed to their projects as she was. I suspect that some had hoped you would grow to fill the void she left." He eyes Grace a little more keenly, even as he breathes in the steam of the tea with obvious appreciation. "That you have so little sympathy for her politics, as I understand it, would be naturally a little disappointing for them."
Grace had heard at least five different pitches involving her predecessor and her great and noble goals — had the Realm's many crimes laid out to her in detail, the unfairness of of power and resources being concentrated on the Blessed Isle at the expense of the world, the mercilessness of the Immaculate Order in spreading their philosophy throughout the Threshold. All of them had worked around to her mother eventually, and the circumstances they imagined had been representative of Grace's childhood.
It's true that the Realm had invaded Lohna's homeland on a thin pretense and stolen her away to a life of slavery on the Blessed Isle, but slavery and war are cruelties far from unique to any single empire of Creation. The fall of the Realm, fast or gradual or otherwise, would do little to protect the world from these horrors, and do less than nothing for the peasants and slaves on the Blessed Isle in their millions. Doubtless, a very large part of this is her Immaculate upbringing and attachment to the land of her birth, but it's more than that. Grace has lived all her life in the shadow of the great and powerful, has lately even be risen up into their ranks quite against her will — in her heart of hearts, if she's truly honest with herself now that this is something she's had to think about, Grace is forced to admit that she simply does not trust anyone who would seek to fill the power vacuum that the Realm would leave behind to be better than the Dynasty in any appreciable way.
Maybe part of why she spends so much time burying herself in desk work is that it means she doesn't have as much time to contemplate the position of terrifying, life-destroying influence she's been raised up to. She misses when such considerations were too far above her station to be worth fathoming.
What she says is: "Happiness for the greatest number of people means more to me than burning everything down for the sake of justice."
The look he gives her is coolly assessing, as if he's seeing through to the heart of her. Oracles often give her this feeling. "This sabbatical was not your idea, as I understand it," he says.
It takes Grace a second or two to recover from the abrupt change of topic. "It wasn't," she admits. "My superiors were concerned for my wellbeing. They felt that I needed to step away from work for a short while."
"This is not uncommon for the Cerulean Lute," he says. "The Division of Serenity is exceptionally... proactive when it comes to such concerns. Has it been helpful in your case, do you find?"
This is not a question that Grace had been prepared to answer when she'd come here. "Maybe," she says. "The change of scenery, perhaps, but seeing..." The look of blank uncomprehension on her mother's face. "... home has been difficult. I'm not used to not having anything to do with myself."
"Some people are not made for idleness," he says, although there's a faint, ironic edge that Grace doesn't think is aimed at her. "Would you like something to do with yourself, while you're here? A task to work on outside your official duties?"
Grace understands what this is. That she is speaking with the undisputed leader of the Bronze Faction, the political faction that has steered the Bureau of Destiny toward support of the Realm for its entire history. That any task that he gives her, however minor, is likely to be in pursuit of their goals. That once she starts down that road, allows herself to finally become drawn into the Bureau's meticulously civil political infighting, it may be difficult to extricate herself again.
Would that be so bad, though? The idea of having something useful to do is incredibly appealing just then. Anything to keep her from remembering the encounter with her mother and Ambraea.
"I think I'd like that," she says. "Thank you."
His smile lingers for slightly longer this time, something close to approval. He brings his teacup to his lips and takes an experimental sip. "Perfectly prepared," he tells her, "thank you."
Private pleasure craft of Matriarch V'neef,
The Imperial River Basin, Scarlet Prefecture,
The Eastern Blessed Isle
The ship cuts through the waves at a leisurely pace, the sun gleaming off of the surface of the Imperial Basin. The sky is clear overhead and the weather is as fair as could be hoped. It gives you all a truly picturesque prospect as the yacht navigates down the coast, heading toward the mouth of the Basin and the wider Inland Sea. You're not really going that far, of course, but it's an amusing fancy.
"I suppose one way to get us to socialise is putting us together on a ship where we're the only sorcerers aside from you."
L'nessa laughs. "It's not all that bad," she says, leaning over the railing. "I find it helps if one doesn't insist on showing up to a party with a snake wrapped around one's neck."
Verdigris stirs at this, flicking her tongue at L'nessa sullenly. You reach up to give the snake's head a reassuring stroke. "Of course they're talking more to you. They're here to make nice to your mother, and she clearly favours you."
L'nessa flips her hair over her shoulder — it's been painstakingly straightened and left daringly unbound. It's a style that has been growing gradually more fashionable, you notice. The motion still dislodges an autumnal leaf, and it falls down to land on the shoulder of her cream gown. "I don't get invited to quite so many parties, you know," she says, "not wearing my sorcery on my sleeve only gets me so far, after all. I simply go out of my way to be pleasing and nonthreatening when I am invited to one. That's not quite the approach that works for you, I'm afraid."
"I have noticed," you say. The yacht pays host to a number of Dynasts, entertainers, and hangers on, here to enjoy a gentle day's sailing through sheltered waters. Food is plentiful, wine flows as freely as anyone would hope from a social event put on by Matriarch V'neef herself, and sweet music drifts over the air. The yacht is more than large enough to let the other guests avoid you to a deniable degree. You had been slightly surprised to see L'nessa here in the capital as well, but you suppose you aren't the only one playing suitor to eligible young men. Not that L'nessa has any lack of practice in that role. And you certainly aren't complaining about her being here.
"I hope you're giving him a chance," she says, her tone turning a little more serious.
"Is there some reason I shouldn't?" you ask, raising your eyebrows.
"Well, there's the obvious," L'nessa says, "blood's as thin as any upjumped former peasant's son. But his mother is a very capable, well-placed upjumped former peasant, and you could do a lot worse than Darting Fish. The boy's talented, accomplished, and not terrified of you. Also quite pleasant to look at, in his way, but I expect that benefit to be entirely lost on you." She sighs. "Like gifting a good wine to a monk."
You laugh in spite of yourself. "I like him well enough," you say.
"Well, good," L'nessa says. "It wouldn't be the worst thing, surely, to marry into my house? Political maneuvering aside, I understand that you have... various feelings about your siblings, but I'd like to think that my company would be worth something? You could be my aunt and my niece by marriage." For just a moment, there is a trace of something close to actual vulnerability in her. She is saying that she would enjoy having you aligned with her house because you're her friend, as directly as she can bring herself.
"By marriage and adoption," you say, but you don't rebuff the notion out of hand.
"Look at you, already sounding like him," L'nessa says, smiling beatifically.
You scan the deck with your eyes, finding Darting Fish on the far side, watching the shoreline slide past from the opposite railing. You should get back to him in a moment. "No one seems to want to talk about that last girl he was nearly married off to."
L'nessa gives a very faint grimace. "Oh, well, you know how these things go," she says. Then she leans in close, and adds, in a scandalous whisper: "A Ragara woman, you recall, yes? Patrician adoptee, but the household's rich as you might hope. Well, things were progressing well toward an actual engagement, when it came out that her paternal grandfather had been an Iselsi."
"... Shocking," you say, feeling your mood plummet a little.
"Well, yes. We're not going to accuse them of concealing it, but obviously they were concealing it. Regardless, that got broken off in a hurry. She's Ragara's problem that they may attempt to handle as they will, but mother was hardly going to marry even an adoptive grandson off to that sort when they tried to outright hide it."
"Understandable," you say. And it is, from a political standpoint. The disdain that the Dynasty holds for the dregs of House Iselsi as the destitute descendants of traitors is very real. Maia's family has reason enough to hide it, even before you consider the darker secrets you've been let in on.
"Well, you didn't hear that from me," L'nessa says.
"Certainly not," you say, the lightness in your tone more feigned than it had been a moment before. "If you'll excuse me, I believe I have a bottle of wine to consider." Her laughter follows you as you move across the gently rolling deck. As you're used to, none of the partygoers are precisely impolite to you. You get nods or words of greeting whenever you directly catch the eye of anyone your passage takes you close to, but their manner is rarely inviting, and a striking number of them somehow avoid seeing you at all. It's at least useful when you have places to be.
As you approach Darting Fish, you take two glasses of wine from a passing server, determinedly not getting distracted by the very pretty smile she gives you as she ducks her head in acknowledgement. Or by the cut of her dress. You're entirely aware that L'nessa is watching your progress out of the corner of her eye, and that she'd have some very pointed jabs to make later if you allow yourself to be so diverted.
"Are you thirsty?" you ask, stepping up beside him.
Darting Fish smiles politely at you, accepting the glass. The shifting grey of his eyes feel like an altogether gloomier vision of the sea than the deep blue all around you — you wonder how pleased he is by this potential match. "Have I mentioned that you look lovely today?" he asks, taking a sip of sweet red wine.
"You may have," you say, "but repetition doesn't hurt." You're wearing a deep purple gown beneath a diaphanous black overrobe, a pattern of scales present where the sheer fabric catches the sunlight. The dragon scale around your neck is fully visible, glittering bewitchingly to anyone who looks too long into it. Evening Garnet has proven to have an entirely capable eye for the line between current fashions and your burgeoning reputation as a darkly mysterious sorcerer. Fortunately, there's no heat behind Fish's compliment. A one-sided infatuation in a potential marriage partner would be more trouble than you quite want to think about.
"I've heard that our Empress has called in your sorcerer's boon already," you say, reaching for an easy topic of conversation.
Fish smiles ambivalently. "Yes," he says. "I have been tasked with shoring up the enchantments on a retaining wall along the southern coast. Important work, but it will likely take me the better part of two years." The Empress has the right to demand such a boon from each and every sorcerer of the Realm. You've always been morbidly curious about what she might ask of you, in time.
"Are you displeased by the boon being called in so quickly?" you ask.
"Oh, no. Better than to have the uncertainty hanging over me," he says. "I am of course happy to serve at the pleasure of our Empress, but it will make future plans less complicated."
"Do you still intend to take a post with the Merchant Fleet after that?"
"I do," Fish says. "I want the travel, and I think it's important that my house gets at least a few good years out of me, before I get married off."
"Unless you get married to someone who doesn't have a house yet," you remind him, examining the contents of your wine glass.
He looks as though he'd genuinely not considered that aspect of things. "... Yes, I suppose that would make things different," he acknowledges. "I'm sorry, I'd gotten so reconciled to the inevitability, that I hadn't entirely considered that."
While you would not be quite joining your spouse's house in the same way a man might marry into one, anymore than V'neef herself had joined House Tepet when she'd married her husband, as an unattached Imperial daughter, the difference would be largely academic. At least, until the hypothetical day decades in the future when your mother might allow you to found a House Ambraea. Until then, your household would be attached firmly to your husband's house in all but name. If Darting Fish marries you, there is very little reason why he might not keep a post with the Merchant Fleet.
"No offence taken," you say, offering him a slight smile. More a reassuring nicety than anything.
"How is your research proceeding, by the way?" he asks, his eyes falling on Verdigris.
You find yourself genuinely glad for the change to a subject that feels neither stilted nor awkward. "Well, I hope," you say, "I spent a great deal of last year in research and preliminary ground work — the boring parts, but I would never touch my poor Verdigris with transformative workings without knowing exactly what they'll do."
His expression softens slightly, becoming something less guarded. "You do seem to be fairly close to inseparable," he says. Intellectually, you can see how he'd be someone who L'nessa would consider attractive — boyish features, deeply tanned skin, and an easy smile.
"It feels wrong to leave her behind," you say, with rather more candor than is your norm. You take a pleasant sip from your glass, leaning companionably forward. "What I had in mind, though, was..."
You tell him about your work, what you're hoping to achieve, how progress has been. Your general research into the topic of elementals and the sorcerous modification of spirits, and how it differs from the natural Essence cultivation that elementals engage in on the scale of centuries. Darting fish listens with clear interest, both following your explanations and asking intelligent questions of his own. Before long, you've naturally transitioned to discussing Fish's own work, and then aquatic elementals and demons.
All the while, everyone else is giving you both a much wider berth than they had for you and L'nessa sharing marriage gossip. It's even understandable — you're two sorcerers openly conspiring about your sinister craft, and they're more than pleased to leave you to it.
Is this a microcosm of what marriage to another sorcerer would be like? Both of you sliding into the role of the valued social pariah, the person who people want to have at their disposal, but not their social events. In some ways, it would be easier, founding a household with someone who can understand your work without fear or disgust. But is that really the best idea? Would it be better to have a husband who you can rely on for the things you're less suited to, more than just one who can provide a harmonious domestic life? Darting Fish's bloodline is also a serious concern. You do need Exalted daughters and sons, if you're to establish a real lineage. It's a lot to consider.
"May I engage in some unwise frankness?" Darting Fish asks, at length.
This takes you by surprise, lost as you'd been in your troubled thoughts. "If you wish," you say. On the shoreline behind him, you can see a family of peasant fisherfolk, who have obviously paused to gaze in wonder at the passing vessel, resplendant as it is with House V'neef's colours.
"I know that I could not possibly hope for a better match than you," he says. "It's a little surprising that it would even be considered."
"I think you're aware of the advantages," you say, uncertain of where he's going with this. He's also very certainly correct — it's only House V'neef's nascent state that makes this match even potentially viable. "Do I sense a degree of reluctance even with that?"
"Well," he says, suddenly looking very much like he'd like to take his previous statement back, "that's not quite what I—" he stops, frowning at something on the shoreline.
"Is something the matter?" you ask, following Fish's gaze.
"That child is drowning," he says, pointing to the fisherfolk. Sure enough, there is a small figure splashing around in the water, too distant to make out the details of.
"Are you sure?" You ask, straining to look.
"No," he says. And then, outrageously, he strips off his outermost layer of clothing, and dives over the side of the ship, drawing gasps from all around you. You're left watching, dumbfounded, as he begins to swim toward the shore with superhuman speed that not even most Water Aspects could match.
"He is a very good-hearted boy, isn't he?"
You turn to see your host. V'neef is staring after Darting Fish with an expression halfway between amusement and exasperation, so much like L'nessa that, for a moment, you can't remember what it is you dislike about her so much.
"I have always thought so, elder sister," you admit.
"You certainly seem to get along amiably enough. I should hope an impromptu display of heroics wouldn't give you too bad an impression of a young man." She seems pleased by this, even as she turns to address a nearby servant: "Prepare a change of clothes for Darting Fish, should he require them upon his return."
You and the curious crowd of party goers watch from the railing of the ship as the distant figure of Darting Fish reaches the struggling child, pulling them along back to the shore. Even from this distance, you will admit that he looks particularly gallant, stepping out of the water with the peasant child in his arms. The rest of the family falls to their knees in gratitude.
There are other Water Aspects onboard today. One of them may have done something if Fish hadn't, if they'd noticed — but he'd been the first to act, without even a moment of considering otherwise. It's the sort of thing that a good, Immaculate Dragon-Blood should be prepared for, theoretically, protecting mortals with your divinely granted abilities in exchange for their deference and obedient service. Still, there are many Dynasts who would not have gone out of their way like this.
Would Maia have done this? It's a strange thought — it's never occured to you to directly compare the two of them before now. Whoever you marry, you're keeping Maia no matter what he thinks. It still comes to you now, though, and the answer is so obvious that you don't need much time to reflect upon it: She would if you asked her to, or if someone pointed out the need.
Somehow, the thought just makes you miss her.
Imperial hunting preserve,
Scarlet Prefecture,
The Eastern Blessed Isle
Although the clouds on the horizon threatened to spoil the fine weather, in the end, they stayed dutifully far to the south. You stand amid a hunting party consisting mainly of other young Dynasts, along with a decent number of older Dragon-Blooded. Among these is your father, already mounting his steed with the ease of long practice — this is, after all, his event.
Scarlet Prefecture is almost entirely settled land — cities, towns, and the vast farmland necessary to feed them. Nowhere on the Blessed Isle is so wholly tamed as that, however, if only by deliberate design in this case. No doubt expressly for the purposes of arranging this hunt, the Empress has granted your father the use of one of her private hunting reserves. You've all assembled at a comfortable hunting lodge on its edge, prepared to muster out into the rolling, forested hills.
A flock of hunting austrechs have been gathered, the flightless birds slower and more temperamental than horses, but braver and more surefooted over difficult terrain. Yours is a dark grey creature, a fierce intelligence glinting in the amber eye that it regards you with. It sniffs at your jacket once, directly over the spot you know Verdigris is sleeping, but it's clearly accustomed enough to the supernatural not to spook immediately — it had been one small part of the gifts given to you by your mother, so you suppose such things were taken into account. Slowly, you reach out to stroke it where savage beak turns to feathers. When it consents to this without trying to bite your fingers off, you pull yourself up into the saddle.
You're smartly dressed for riding, your hair tightly braided in a crown behind your head, your new sword hanging reassuringly from your belt — you shouldn't need that, of course, but being able to show it off a little doesn't hurt. Your peers are similarly dressed, following your example as they climb onto their own austrechs, some with more or less confidence than yourself. One of them, you're actually familiar with:
"A pleasure to see you again, lady Ambraea." Sesus Kasi's austrech is smaller than yours, to better suit her, but she handles it well. In addition to her more practical hunting clothes, you note that she still has the feather-shaped jade-steel ornament in her blonde hair — your certainty that it must do something truly useful only strengthens.
"Equally," you say, with some genuine meaning behind it. Amiti's twin shows every indication of being as friendly now as she had been when you'd encountered her two years before. Perhaps even more — you're not sure how much Amiti chose to tell her about the incident with the ghost and Ledaal Anay Idelle, but your impression is that the two of them are strikingly candid about sensitive matters.
"I hope my sister is well," Kasi says, as if confirming the direction of your thoughts. She makes it sound like polite inquiry,
"Very well, when last I spoke to her," you say. "Her studies are progressing nicely — I think, sometimes, that she would be counted as the best in our year, if her area of focus were more conventional."
"That's great to hear," Kasi says, although you can see a certain calculation in her eyes as she decides how to take the latter part of your comment. You're not trying to be dismissive of Amiti's talents, and she's a dear friend who you can and have defended before, but she is a necromancer, and it's good to be realistic about these things.
Some of the others have drifted closer to the two of you, apparently following Kasi's example of acknowledging the sorcerer. Which is good, because one of them is the boy you're supposed to be speaking with.
"There are so many frightful rumours about poor Amiti, these days," says Sesus Ambar. "Is it true that my cousin has grown so ghostly pale that you can see through her on moonless nights? Kasi insists on making exactly the very threatening, polite little smile she's making right now whenever this comes up, but she hasn't had the privilege of her sister's company in person either, these past years. Does she truly bathe in blood to fuel her dark rituals?" Ambar is a Fire Aspect, and a handsome young man — narrow in the shoulder, but pretty in the face, his dark hair wavy, and lit by a strange inner furnace glow. Like smoke choking a bonfire. He doesn't ride quite as well as Kasi, but that doesn't stop him from having an infuriating sort of partial smirk on his face.
You give him your most level stare. "Nothing of the sort. Amiti has been blessed by Mela, whose purview includes winter's chill — it's nothing particularly remarkable that she has prominent Aspect Markings, coming from a good bloodline as she does." That she has instead carved out a piece of her soul and wears it in a pendant around her neck is, to you, less distasteful than whatever nonsense he's describing about blood baths, but you suspect that it still wouldn't be particularly helpful in dissuading the most lurid rumours.
"Maybe one day, my cousin will learn not to take vicious rumours so seriously," Kasi says, voice light. You don't know her well enough to tell if she's hiding annoyance or true anger — once again, it's very strange to see someone who looks so close to Amiti who doesn't wear such things on her sleeve.
"I make it a point not to take Ambar seriously in general," says a younger girl — a Wood Aspect with a Cynis mon stitched into her clothes, "Dragons know, it does seem to be what he's going for."
In spite of his earlier joke about Kasi's false politeness, Ambar shoots her possibly the most passive aggressive smile you've ever seen. "Thank you, Deya — You're venomous as ever, this morning."
The main thing that strikes you about the interaction is that all three of them are students together at the Spiral Academy, and likely have been for years. The undercurrent of existing relationships, grudges, and alliances leaves you feeling a little at a disadvantage. From what you've heard, the social environment of the Realm's largest great Secondary School makes what you're used to at the Heptagram seem tame and straightforward in comparison.
You only have so long with that thought, however — the trackers are ready to get underway, and so the hunt can finally begin. You all start forward, your austrechs eager to be on the move.
The first chance you get for a private word with Ambar, you're all following a rough trail through the forest, still waiting for word from the trackers of the deer that they've been following signs of. It's narrow enough to not accommodate more than one or two austrechs abreast like this, offering you the illusion of privacy. In reality, both the nearer of Ambar's peers or your father and the other chaperones have the opportunity to listen in to whatever conversation you're having. It's not as though either of you know one another well enough for confiding anything too sensitive to one another at any rate.
"I've heard good things about you from three of my cousins now," he says, conversationally. "Albeit indirectly from Amiti — we are not quite one another's frequent correspondents."
"Who is the third, beyond her and Kasi?" you ask.
"Vahelo," Ambar says, giving you an almost conspiratorial little smile. "I believe her exact words were 'an intelligent and upstanding lady'. Whatever did you do to leave such a good impression from so brief an acquaintance?"
You cast him a sidelong glance, keeping most of your attention on guiding your mount down the shallow slope ahead of you. "Nothing that would interest you at all, from what I've been told."
Ambar laughs, seemingly genuinely delighted. "Now, that's certainly fair enough. But from what I've been told of you, my lady, I might think that attention to such matters isn't what you'd seek in a man anyway."
You don't let your mouth twitch in amusement. "I may also look for some measure of discretion," you say instead.
"Well, of course," Ambar says, with surprisingly little resentment, "it's all well and good to be so blatant while I'm still young and unmarried, but trust me when I say I fully intend to allow whatever lucky woman I end up with full credit for finally 'taking me in hand' — I will certainly continue seeing to my needs, of course, but I am confident that I can do so without being an embarrassment to my spouse or our household. Although I doubt I'll go so far as to outright declare a lover sworn kin. Such a show of devotion is a little beyond my cold little heart."
You turn your head to consider him fully for a moment. He's too much of a stranger to you to be able to tell how sincere he's being, but if you were to marry a man already notorious for his conquests while in his twenties, his reforming his ways only after marrying you is certainly one way to make up for it. The remark about Maia is a little pointed, but hardly unfair, following your own jab. "And who could ever ask for more in a groom?" you say, voice bone dry.
"Well, I do bring intelligence, wit, and social connections as well," Ambar says, "but it's true, my unwillingness to maliciously cast doubt on my eventual wife's ability to control her own household is the best feature I'd bring to the table. For my sake as much as anything."
"For your sake?" you ask.
"Well, of course," he says, "I trust that my honoured mother and matriarch will conspire to see to it that I marry well, and I don't intend to squander the opportunities that union provides to me or my family."
"What opportunities are you hoping for?"
"What opportunities am I hoping for through marriage to a powerful woman?" he asks, "oh, well — political power, wealth, prestige, an enviable place for my children. Surely, that's not so unusual."
"I suppose not," you say, "are you always so forthright?"
"Oh, certainly not," Ambar says, "I wouldn't survive long in the Spiral Academy if that were the case. But sometimes, there is a benefit to disarming honesty, when one wants to learn a few things about one's conversation partner. You really don't give much away, do you? Even for an Earth Aspect."
"I've been told as much," you say.
"I'd hope that you'd have ambitions of your own," Ambar says, giving you a significant look. "Goals in life? Plans for after graduation?"
"In the short-term, I've always wanted to visit Prasad," you say.
"Well, that is a bit more of an adventure than I'm looking for in a grand tour," he says. "But I suppose it's natural enough to want to see the land your father left behind. And when you return?"
"Settingling into the dull work of establishing a household," you say. Which you both know will likely be rather more exciting than you're letting on, and not necessarily in a good way — carving out a place for yourself in the Dynasty, building a reputation and a name of distinction for yourself, remaining someone who your mother might still think well of, when next she raises up a Great House.
Which is, of course, what Ambar is driving at. Predictably, even more than from Darting Fish, there is nothing at all of lust when he looks at you.There is, however, desire of a different kind. While there are no guarantees, a marriage to you might well lead to your husband as the honoured spouse of a Great House matriarch, his blood flowing down through generations to come. For just a moment, past his facade of amused nonchalance and your wall of cool stoicism, an understanding passes between you — you're abruptly certain that he might want that even more than you do.
You don't know if you trust him, but would it be the worst thing in the world to be paired with an ambitious, politically minded man? The kind who people find likable, who people who are reluctant to seek you out directly might look to as an intermediary. Assuming your goals remain aligned, such a match certainly has its advantages. To say nothing of the strength of his bloodline and the vast resources of his house.
It will be something to talk over carefully with your father.
"I think," you say, "that we have skipped over several rounds of smalltalk, and have come dangerously close to emotional honesty."
Ambar laughs again. "True enough!" he says, "Shall we circle back? Speak of schoolwork, amusing anecdotes about social engagements, our respective idle hobbies?"
You raise your eyebrows. "I wonder exactly how much you'd really enjoy hearing about my schoolwork," you say.
To his credit, Ambar doesn't grimace. But his eyes flick to where Verdigris's head is poking out of the collar of your jacket, and his discomfort with the brief eye contact he shares with the elemental is clear enough. "Well," he says, briefly disconcerted, but mastering himself quickly enough, "I did have a deeply funny encounter at a galla I attended earlier this year..."
He's not wrong about the entertainment value of the story, and you find him startlingly likable when he's making the effort. A dangerous trait, in its own way, even if his obvious reluctance to directly talk about your being a sorcerer stops you from being wholly taken in. Game proves remarkably scarce, but at least you can say you spend an hour in more or less pleasant conversation.
This is more or less what you find yourself thinking, when you become aware of a commotion at the head of the group. "What's going on?" you ask Ambar.
He frowns, craning his head. "One of the scouts, I think? It's hard to entirely make out, but she doesn't seem happy." This difficulty is due to the peculiarity of the trail's geography having led to the two of you being a little more isolated from those directly ahead of and behind you, winding around the side of a forested hill as you are — you have to squint through dense foliage to make out anything happening at the head of the party.
You're about to put a little more effort into the matter when the wind shifts slightly, no longer coming from directly ahead of you. The effect on your mounts is instantaneous, with yours balking, stamping from foot to foot and letting out a deep, alarmed sort of squawk. Ambar's responds in a similar, but more dramatic way — the austrech panics, and he can't quite manage to get it to calm down.
"Here!" you say, reaching out to try and do something. You're a moment too late, though. His animal bolts away down the hillside, carrying Ambar with it. You hear him give a startled cry of his own as it throws him partway down, leaving him to roll down the hillside in a distinctly undignified manner. You stare after him for a fraction of a second, glancing up and down the trail for any sign of help, but don't hesitate any longer than that.
Your own austrech is deeply reluctant to go after him, but it obeys with a bit of coaxing from you, plunging down the forested slope with agile, sure-footed ease, following the sounds of Ambar's unhappy progress. It reasonably doesn't take so long to find him where he lays painfully against a tree, but it's more than enough time for you to have lost sight of the trail amid the trees.
You leap down out of the saddle as adroitly as you can, carefully picking your way to Ambar's side. "Are you hurt?"
"... Most definitely," he groans. As you approach, you can see that he has indeed landed badly, his leg trapped between him and the tree trunk. You're not quite certain what to do about that — you're certainly not a healer. Still, you crouch down over him.
"Can you get up?" you ask.
He tries, letting out a hiss as he tries to put weight on the injured leg, falling heavily back down into a sitting position against the tree. "Well, this is not quite the impression I meant to give," he says, looking up at you wryly, despite the pain.
It takes you so off guard that, for the first time that day, you laugh out loud. "Yes, I can imagine," you say. "If you will allow me—"
A crash comes a distance away, like a small tree being toppled. Then another, and another — as if something very large is pushing its way through the forest toward you.
"... I don't like the look of that," you say.
"Thank the Dragons we have your Heptagram-trained mind to give us these insights," Ambar says, without any real acid. "Is it a bear?"
"Too big." You're quite sure, at least — you don't think that bears make that much noise. As whatever it is approaches, you hear a shrill cry from behind you, and turn around to see your austrech's nerve finally fail. It's ruffled its feathers up dramatically in alarm, head lowered, murderous eye fixed on whatever it is that's approaching you, torn between fight and flight. When another tree comes crashing down, it settles for the latter, racing away from you in a spray of dirt. You mutter something distinctly impolite under your breath.
"Aren't they supposed to be brave?" Ambar asks, some degree of panic entering his voice.
"Under normal circumstances," you say, turning back to the direction of whatever it is that's bearing down on you. It's close enough now that the scent of it can reach you, a fetid, animal musk. You step in front of Ambar, drawing your daiklave in a smooth motion. It's beautifully light in your hands, but the length of the weapon will make things a little difficult, with the close trees all around you. Assuming that whatever you're looking at doesn't simply knock all of them down. With your free hand, your fingers flash through a series of Heptagram signs — as you bring your foot down on the slope in front of you, it shakes as per normal, but you feel the daiklave pulse slightly in your grip.
"What are you doing?" Ambar asks, voice distinctly nervous. You ignore him as you finish the ritual, Perfection's scale cold against your skin as you draw on it to empower the spell. Bronze serpents boil up out of the ground, twining around your feet in the manner of an overeager pack of hounds. Ambar, still on the ground and much closer to them than he'd like, visibly recoils.
"Guard," you tell the snakes, and they abruptly snap to attention, forming a line ahead of you. "Just a little insurance," you say to Ambar. "They won't hurt you."
You don't turn to see how convinced he is — you're too busy looking ahead to the large shape shouldering its way through the trees ahead, your heart dropping at the sight. Taller than you at the shoulder, a mass of muscle and wiry, black hair. It might have been mistaken for a large boar, if it weren't for the elongated muzzle full of flesh-rending fangs. Its jaws are stained red, and there's an agitated quality to the rumbling grunts that it's emitting.
"Hellboar," you say, sounding a great deal like a calm person.
"Weren't the scouts meant to look out for things like this?" Ambar demands, trying to pull himself up to a standing position.
"Ideally, yes," you say, adjusting your stance to a two-handed grip. Your sword's elongated hilt facilitates this easily enough — its design would make it ideal for slaying horses or other large animals, but you're not altogether pleased to have an opportunity to put that to the test so quickly. "I think they found it a little late." As the monster approaches, you can see several arrows stuck into its flank. That might explain the blood on its mouth, unfortunately.
You harden your heart the moment it locks eyes with you, the two of you standing stock still for just a moment. Then, letting out a squeal that shakes the trees all around you, it charges, knocking small trees and branches aside as if they're nothing. You centre yourself, feet rooted in the ground underfoot, willing yourself to not be moved as those massive jaws are carried toward you at increasing speed.
It comes at you with the force of a rockslide, mouth lunging for your midsection. You just barely slide out of range, your daiklave coming up in a brilliantly shining underarm arc, jadesteel biting deep into the hellboar's neck with all your strength behind it. Such a stroke would have cleanly decapitated a horse or split a grown man in two — with this beast, you're left trembling from its sheer weight and strength, splattered messily with its gushing blood as the sword lodges partway into the muscle.
It screams in pain, wrenching itself free of your sword, dancing back from the numerous lunging bites that your snakes inflict on its feet. You step back, giving yourself room for a second blow, when a ball of fire streaks over your shoulder, hitting the beast square in the gore-coated snout. That, as it would happen, is enough — it turns around, shrieking its displeasure as it crashes down the hill, half a dozen bronze snakes still clinging to it with their fangs buried in its thick hide. You stare after it for a long, harried moment.
Once you're certain that it's not about to circle back in a hurry, you turn to look at Ambar, who has pushed himself up to a kneeling position, one shaking hand still outstretched from where he'd hurled the bolt of flame. "Well aimed," you tell him, pulling the ornate sash free from your shoulder. It's already utterly ruined from the pig's blood, so you don't feel too guilty about using it to clean the blood from your daiklave, your hands going through the motions as if you've done this countless times before.
"What else could I have hit? It was nearly on top of us!" he says, eyes very wide. Not a man who has faced direct physical danger beyond the schoolyard, you decide. Still, he'd kept his head better than most, at the very least.
"Me, for one thing," you say, sliding the White Serpent back into its sheath. You can hear the sounds of the rest of the hunt approaching, voices calling out for you. It will make things easier to go meet them, of course. You lean down, extending a hand to Ambar. "Can you walk?" you ask him.
"Not well, or with any dignity," he admits.
"Do I have your permission to carry you?" you ask, with as much gallantry as you can muster under the circumstances.
He sighs, accepting your hand. "Well, it does seem like the most practical solution, for the time being." You lift him up easily enough, carrying him in your arms without complaint as you begin to walk toward the loudest of the voices. "This would be disgustingly romantic, if we were different people, wouldn't it?" he asks.
You laugh again. "Yes. It would be."
House Erona townhouse,
The Imperial City
"You look halfway presentable." Erona Vermillion Shore's gaze is critical as she takes in Maia's attire, her arms crossed over her chest.
"I suppose so, grandmother," Maia says, her own glance distinctly unenthused as she looks at herself in the mirror.
Vermillion Shore sighs. "Nothing to be done about the hair, of course. Why you insist on keeping it so short, I'll never know — it's as though you want to be mistaken for a boy."
That's not quite it — Maia has no particular desire to follow Simendor Deizil's example, although she thinks it might actually make things simpler in some ways if she did. But she's never felt entirely at ease in extremely feminine attire, and has done what she can to avoid it whenever possible. This is not one of the times where it's been possible. There's no safe answer to her grandmother's criticism, so Maia makes none.
The elaborate layers of the dress are a faint, silvery grey chased with white, the mon of House Erona subtly worked into the fabric, silver glinting in her short hair, and rubies at her throat. It's easily the finest thing she's ever worn, and the cost of having such a dress made is disquieting, to say nothing of the several others she's been presented with. With a tasteful amount of cosmetics around her face, Maia wouldn't call herself unrecognisable, but it's a near thing. She wouldn't look so out of place in the halls of the Imperial Palace.
Which is good, because that is where she's going.
"Do you recall your instructions?" Vermillion Shore asks.
"Yes, grandmother," Maia says. She has been well drilled on who she is to greet, who she is to convey particular messages to, and who she is to avoid at all costs. Patricians, even Exalted patricians, may not freely visit the Palace, instead requiring an invitation from a Dynast or a palace official. Now that her status as Ambraea's Hearthmate has been publicly acknowledged, such an offer is almost a formality — no one will find it at all odd that Ambraea would invite an avowed boon companion to be her guest while she stays at the palace. Still, though, for a house like Erona, not particularly important in a political sense, such an opportunity is not to be taken for granted, and obviously must be exploited for all that it's worth.
She's also been instructed to continue to keep Ambraea well pleased, but Maia likes to think that that much will be less of a chore.
One of the house's few servants arrives at the door, bowing low before the two Dragon-Blooded. "She has arrived, Mistresses," she says.
"Punctual," Vermillion Shore says. "There are worse traits in a Dynast."
As Maia walks alongside her grandmother, working their way to the townhouse's front hall, she feels a strange sort of anxiety in the pit of her stomach. The plainness of the place jumps out at her for perhaps the first time. The places where artwork has been sold or traded away, leaving walls strangely bare, the small signs of neglect where repairs have been too expensive, the scant handful of servants, barely adequate for a townhouse this size. Maia never forgets the differences between her and the Dynasts she goes to school with, but it's still easier to overlook them at the Heptagram, where everyone is wearing the same clothes and sleeping in the same dorms.
Ambraea won't care. Maia believes the sentiment as she thinks it, but it doesn't quite quell all her anxiety. Seeking reassurance, Maia reaches out through her Hearth sense, confirming just how close Ambraea is, growing nearer with every step.
When they arrive in the modest reception room off of the main entrance hall, they find her. Ambraea is seated at a small table, politely sipping from a cup of hot tea, being attended by Fallen Leaf, Vermillion Shore's aged slave valet. The rest of the household servants are present, kneeling to either side of the door, honouring a prestigious guest. Upon entering the room, both Maia and Vermillion Shore bow as well, Vermillion Shore less deeply than the mortals, and Maia less deeply than her grandmother — a Hearthmate greeting another, rather than a patrician greeting a Dynast.
"Ambraea, you look well," Maia says. For someone who had recently faced off against a hellboar with only a wilting socialite at her back. The incident is a little nerve wracking to think about, but just the sight of Ambraea is a relief. She's tall and dark and beautiful as ever, and not noticeably torn limb from limb by a large predator.
Ambraea looks Maia up and down, taking in her attire, although not lingering. "And you," she says, rising from her seat.
"This is my grandmother, Erona Vermillion Shore, mother to our matriarch," Maia says, by way of introduction. "Grandmother, this is Lady Ambraea, my Hearthmate."
"An honour," Ambraea says, acknowledging Vermillion Shore with a polite nod, finally enabling her to rise.
Vermillion Shore straightens. "The honour is mine, my lady. I only hope that the modest hospitality of our house pleases you."
"I could not be more pleased," Ambraea says, "the tea is excellent. As is the company." The latter can't help but draw a slight smile from Maia, although Vermillion Shore takes it stoically.
"My lady is kind to say so."
It's always strange to see her grandmother like this: a placid, servile exterior hiding all her least savoury depths. The domineering shadow matriarch, the cold assassin, the stern teacher were nowhere to be seen — one might be excused at disbelieving that she could be anything more than an aging Outcaste, retired and comfortably married into the patriciate.
Ambraea, however, knows better, which is a strange and terrifying thought all over again, with them in the same room. Fortunately, Ambraea doesn't do or say anything to let on to this fact. Polite niceties proceed apace, further compliments are exchanged, offers of more extended hospitality offered and politely refused.
Still, Maia doesn't really relax until she accepts Ambraea's offered hand to join her in the carriage that waiting outside, ignoring the slight twinge of pain in her back as she takes her seat across from Ambraea within the cramped confines of the compartment.
"That dress..." Ambraea looks Maia up and down rather more closely than would have been appropriate before. The carriage rumbles and sways as the driver starts it on its way.
"Yes?" Maia asks. There's a part of her who hopes Ambraea hates it.
"It doesn't seem like you," Ambraea admits.
"Oh, no, not even a little," Maia says, smiling more easily than she has in weeks. "Not my choice, of course."
"I didn't think so," Ambraea says. She leans forward, and the path her eyes trace from Maia's neckline to the fastenings near her waist can nearly be physically felt. "I suppose it will just have to come off at some point, then."
Maia can't quite suppress a shiver. "We haven't seen each other since arriving in the capital, and that's the first thing on your mind now?" It's not really a complaint.
"I've missed you," Ambraea says, simply. "I have been in the company of a parade of extremely eligible young men, and I am quite sick of it." She closes her eyes, sighing deeply. She seems to be taking some genuine relief in the simple fact of Maia's presence so close to her. "I hope you don't mind if we take dinner in my chambers tonight. Once I've had a chance to show you around the grounds, and you've had the opportunity to satisfy your family's desire for politicking."
Maia leans forward, gently putting her hand on Ambraea's. "There is nothing in the world I could want more than that, right now."
"Good," Ambraea says, her fingers lacing through Maia's. "That goes for both of us, I think."
For Maia, the day passes in a blur — Ambraea's presence does a great deal to soothe the pit of dread that settles into her gut the moment they pass through the outermost gates of the palace, and she's almost managed to ignore the sense of being watched when it comes time for her to conduct herself socially.
She walks side-by-side with Ambraea in the shade of walled gardens. She is introduced as Ambraea's Hearthmate numerous times, to people she was instructed to make nice to as well as many others. In the scope of one day, Maia sees more beauty and wealth on display than she had in the previous twenty. While she has an acceptable reason to be here, however, she is not quite able to forget that she's only here due to a connection to Ambraea, and the various Dynasts she encounters are quick to remind her in small ways.
In light of all of this, as evening approaches she's not even a little bit sorry to retire to Ambraea's chambers for the night.
"You really carried him to safety?" Maia asks, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "I'd assumed that was just exaggeration."
"It was a bit awkward for both of us," Ambraea says. She tips the last of the wine from her cup into the bowl that Verdigris is coiled up beside — the snake happily begins to lap it up. "But, well, he wasn't particularly heavy."
Maia giggles at the thought. "Now you can't marry him," she says, "imagine having that kind of story hanging over your marriage. You'd have sensitive young men the Realm over — and Amiti — swooning over it."
"We would, wouldn't we?" Ambraea says, torn between amusement and mild horror.
The room is just off of Ambraea's bedchamber. It's small — just the table, some furniture against the wall, an aniconic design on canvas covering one of the remaining walls. The cozy nature of the room only increases the intimacy of the moment. The little table between the two of them is littered with empty bowls and plates, their meal having been delivered by servants who had departed afterward at a glance from Ambraea. There is also a mirror, which Ambraea pointedly draped a cloth over the moment the two of them were alone — Maia chooses not to think about that too hard.
"It's really not what's on my mind at the moment, however," Ambraea says.
"What is, then?" Maia asks.
Ambraea rises to her feet, moving around the table to where Maia sits. "I believe there was some talk earlier of that dress coming off of you."
The look in Ambraea's eyes sets Maia's heart racing, and it's with that same sense of nervous anticipation that she rises to meet her. "I'm sure you can find the ties without too much difficulty."
That's all the encouragement Ambraea needs. She steps forward, scoops Maia up off her feet with stomach-fluttering ease, and seizes Maia's mouth with hers. Maia wants nothing more than to just let herself be carried away by it all, to forget everything but Ambraea's strong arms around her. She wraps both her own arms around Ambraea's neck, doing her best to drown in the kiss.
Ambraea carries her to the nearest couch, dropping down heavily onto it, Maia cradled in her lap, hands already working at the many hidden ties of Maia's dress. It's a very good feeling — Maia lets her work, the ornate sari being pulled away first, then the gown beneath. By the time Ambraea's questing hands have found their way to bare skin, Maia has pulled away from Ambraea's mouth, trailing her lips down the line of quartz chips that follow the curve of Ambraea's neck. Maia barely has the satisfaction of hearing Ambraea's breath hitch when she abruptly jerks back, a pained hiss escaping her.
"What's wrong?" Ambraea asks, looking down at her in obvious concern.
"It's nothing serious," Maia says, averting her eyes.
Frowning, Ambraea pushes away the loosened fabric of Maia's dress, revealing the long, deep bruise that stretches diagonally from the back of Maia's shoulder to nearly her hip.
"I'm sorry, I forgot," Maia says. And she had — the pain has faded to background noise throughout the past two days, and she'd allowed it to slip her mind. It isn't her first time.
"You forgot what?" Ambraea is all confused worry still, not yet piecing together what exactly must have left the injury in the first place.
"... A training accident." The lie comes easily to her lips, although it's not actually intended to deceive Ambraea.
"Who are you 'training' with who hits you hard enough to leave this?" The anger is creeping into Ambraea's voice now. Her grip on Maia's shoulders tightens imperceptibly, and Maia can see dangerous notions taking root behind Ambraea's eyes.
"My grandmother came up through the legions," Maia reminds her, "Pasiap's Stair left an impression." She makes herself look Ambraea directly in the eye, willing her to recall where they are. That absolutely nowhere could be less safe to discuss this, however much Ambraea knows that Erona Vermillion Shore has never set foot on Pasiap's Stair. However much she might know what Maia has done recently to provoke such a punishment.
The possibility that this conversation might be somehow overheard, might be recalled at a later time by the Empress or someone else, hangs in the air between them. With a pang, Maia watches as Ambraea swallows her mounting anger with veiled difficulty. Maia is aware, as she sometimes is in moments like these, of the fact that Ambraea is the only person in the world who both really knows Maia, and still loves her well enough to be outraged like this on her behalf.
"... I see," Ambraea says. "We can stop."
"No!" Maia startles them both with the outburst. Taking Ambraea's face in her hands, Maia looks up at her in open beseechment. "No, please. It's fine — it's going to hurt either way. We can't do anything about it tonight. Just... help take my mind off of it?"
Ambraea is conflicted for a long moment, meeting Maia's gaze with an unreadable frown. Then her expression softens, her grip on Maia's shoulders relaxes. One hand gently draws Maia closer against her chest, while the other goes up to gently trail along the full line of Maia's lower lip. "That may be within my power," she says, voice very quiet.
"It always is," Maia says. Then she closes her eyes, and surrenders to Ambraea's touch once again.
And for Erona Maia, for a brief time, things are as good as they can be. All the while, beyond this room, the world grinds ever closer to the edge.
Article: Ambraea returns to school for her sixth of seven years, well on track to graduate with distinction. The history books will mark this as the year where things changed irrevocably. For most people living through it, however, that will only be obvious after the fact.
Throughout the year, Ambraea will continue to research workings to modify and empower spirits. What areas of experimentation is she building toward? The full process will take some time, but will bear some promising signs of early success.
[ ] Concealment
As a minor elemental, Verdigris is a material spirit, physically present on Creation and unable to vanish at will. This makes it impractical to bring her into certain settings, something which distresses her and Ambraea both. Taking advantage of the bond between them and her deep connection to the element of Earth, Ambraea discovers a novel solution to the problem.
[ ] Enlargement
Verdigris is a relatively small snake, born as she is from Ambraea's control spell, Plague of Bronze Serpents. Ambraea feeds her on a diet of lesser spirits swollen with Earth Essence, granting her the ability to grow larger at need.
[ ] Venom
Verdigris has a painful bite that is life threatening to mortals and inconvenient to more powering beings. Drawing on her knowledge of stillness and sorcerous petrification, Ambraea imparts Verdigris with deadlier venom, and a more dangerous delivery method.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I like Ambar a lot. Just this totally flaming gay couple who are only interested in others, and not really hiding that too much more than being the socially-acceptable level of discreet.
He'd probably appreciate it more if we didn't have a magical snake hanging around his wife and harassing him.
[x] Concealment
...or very possibly he'd be even more terrified of a magical snake that can invisibly walk through walls, and that's pretty great, too, so this is my vote either way.
He'd probably appreciate it more if we didn't have a magical snake hanging around his wife and harassing him.
[x] Concealment
...or very possibly he'd be even more terrified of a magical snake that can invisibly walk through walls, and that's pretty great, too, so this is my vote either way.
