[] Push her down.
You look down at her, considering. You remove the hand you hadn't even quite realized you'd been holding to your shoulder to help staunch the injury she gave you with Throatfinder. It comes away slick with blood, a literal handful.
You squat on the edge of the pit, holding your hand just above hers, and pour. Your blood flows over her hand. There's a moment as she doesn't quite get it, then you see her eyes widen. She drops the scabbard in her other hand and tries to grab a hold of her hilt with both hands. The new hand slips, blood lubricating it until she can't hold on. Desperately, she shifts the first hand, but now blood gets in under her palm. "No. No, no,
nonono!"
She could have sprung up, jumped off her own sword blade, and bounced out of the pit, you're sure, if she just hadn't taken a landscape-obliterating blast. Unfortunately for her, she did. She has no recourse.
Her grip gives way, and she falls, her scream turning wordless. You watch the lava to be sure there's no extra last trick. The Clochard's end is, at least, mercifully swift. Not even a deathknight can survive being immersed in molten rock. Once you are convinced she is dead, you focus on Throatfinder.
Whatever else it is, Throatfinder is an extremely valuable relic and a peerless weapon. You aren't just going to leave it be for some random scavenger lord to make her fortune on. Carefully, you prise it out of the rock face it's been jammed into, and haul it up. It's a delicate piece of balancing: you are not attuned to Throatfinder, so it fights you, an awkward and unwieldy thing that is heavier than it looks and keeps trying to twist in your hands to cut your hands.
There's no real rush, though. You're alone here, right now, and even the swiftest of people from Gem, whether they are gawkers, would-be heroes, or anxious to turn a profit, won't be here for at least fifteen or twenty minutes yet. You take your time, and claim Throatfinder.
The soulsteel
hums almost subliminally once you retrieve it. The soulsteel feels...
right, in a way that even Blizzard's Scourge never did. You'd always heard that the Solar Anathema favored orichalcum above all other magical materials, but perhaps deathknights have a preference for soulsteel.
You lack any sort of sheath to carry it in, so you sling Throatfinder over your shoulder, instead. By now, the first wave of people coming to investigate are starting to be visible in the distance, but you don't feel like dealing with them.
After all, assuming that the Fox continues to cooperate, you now have an utterly unique military advantage that is very probably the most important single development since the Empress herself tamed the Realm Defense Grid almost eight centuries ago and founded the Realm. It's best not to flaunt that until you're ready to.
Your anima is a flaring black aura after that fight, enough though it hasn't quite burst into full iconic horror. Still, you can hide surprisingly well with it like this. You wait under a rock until it gutters out, then make your way back to town, unmolested.
* * *
The Lonely Waif has her routines. Ghosts, even the almost indescribably mighty titans of undead power that are the Deathlords, have a hard time not falling into familiar routines and long-standing habits, punctuated by moments of crazed effort when something rouses their passions: curiosity, anger, desire, whatever it may be.
The Waif never fought the instinct to have a daily routine. Even in life, she had lived much the same. Now her routines are different, of course: contacting and dealing with the vassals who serve her, expanding her own library with newly-collected works and penning her own new tomes, crafting new spells or artifacts, tracking down certain astrological signs in the Underworld's false stars, and more.
One of her daily stops through the twisting, intentionally-baffling halls of the Last Redoubt of Knowing is the all-but-invincible vault where she keeps a small handful of treasures beyond any possible price: they look something like a monarch's coffin, each unique. They are called Monstrances of Celestial Portion, and each hold a single spark of Exaltation a prisoner here when the Exaltation has no living host. She can take one of these out and send it to find someone, as she has done almost a dozen times over the five years she has had these.
Today, there is a new amber spark visible within one of them: one of those she has Exalted has died, and the Exaltation has come back to its home. This was expected, of course. Though she didn't know the day it would happen, she has kept her eye out. Now that it has, the Waif pulls one of her accounting-books from Elsewhere, letting it manifest in her hands now that she has need of it.
She is halfway through the new entry on the flame-resistant pages before it dawns on her what she is marking down. The Waif has only ever possessed the spark of a single Dusk caste Exaltation. Frowning, she looks up, already annoyed at her mistake.
It is no mistake.
There is a frozen moment as she tries to deal with this unexpected fact. Reality stubbornly refuses to correct itself, regardless of her attention. When she is able to, the Waif calmly finishes her entry, lets the book vanish into the non-space of Elsewhere again, and leaves the vault. Once its door closes behind her, five locks of completely independent design sealing it against any possible intruder, only then does the Waif vent her fury. Her eyes go wide and her lips peel back in a rictus, showing teeth. Her fist slams into the hall's opposite wall so hard that a chandelier made mostly of glowstones and polished obsidian falls from the ceiling, rocky shrapnel spreading in a great fan across the floor. She takes no notice. "Damn it, Clochard, how?
How did you even get yourself killed? The world exists just to spite me, doesn't it?"
Nothing answers her, which is for the best, given she would have obliterated any servant-ghost that had happened to catch her eye in that incandescent instant. The Waif pulls herself together, her lips gradually untwisting and her posture straightening back up. "Fine. Something else, then."
* * *
Dub-dubs and Flawed Topaz are waiting for you as you return to Understanding Auris' Immaculate Temple. It's late enough in the day that lessons are over, so the last of the children there for school are gone before you return.
Dub-dubs hurries over to you as you darken the doorway, concern evident on their soft features. "Amphora, you're hurt," they say. "Let me--" They're fishing for medical implements and various self-collected healing herbs from interior pockets before you're even all the way in.
You let them, though most of your focus is on the now-carefully-wrapped-up sword you're carrying in one hand. Flawed Topaz looks at it, through the silk covering where her eyes had been. "Aren't you worried to be carrying something like that around where anyone can see it?"
It takes you a moment to parse this. "Topaz, it's actually wrapped up very thoroughly.'
For a moment, she doesn't understand, either. "Damn." She retreats into herself a bit. Dub-dubs isn't able to take up the conversational slack: they're focused entirely on your injuries, gentle but firm hands cleaning the lacerations you'd taken from jade claws and soulsteel blade.
"I had a bad feeling about those two from when they first came here," Understanding Auris says. The god-blood looks down, too. "But I didn't know they were going to do
this. It's over?"
You nod. "They're both gone."
"How?" It's a simple question from Flawed Topaz, craving a little more closure than just seeing the weapon that was used against her.
Briefly, you consider lying, but there's not much point, here. They know where you had them send your pursuers, since you asked it, and
no one is going to miss exactly where the Shrike attacked. "I hit them with the Shrike. I knew exactly one place and time where it was going to strike, and lured them there." The fae-blood leans back in the pew she's sitting in, and gives a satisfied sigh. She's heard what she needed to.
Dub-dubs shudders from just to your left. They let go of you to do it, and then return to efficiently bind up your shoulder again as soon as the motion passes. The good doctor can't let their own instincts jostle their patient. "I can't say I'm sorry you did that, but I think that's completely enough detail for me."
"Who were they?" Auris asks, using this as a way to distract Dub-dubs from what would otherwise be more nightmares for the Water caste should Dub-dubs keep dwelling on it.
"Well, one was a distant relation to me who... decided I was a monster based on someone he saw me with." Technically, that's true. "The other was a deathknight."
Dub-dubs flinches again. Auris' eyes go wide. It's easy to see why: that is exactly the sort of thing that Dub-dubs took a peaceful life in Gem to avoid, and Auris knows exactly why Immaculates normally know better than to deal with such dark powers. If there was any possible doubt as to if they'd done the right thing, it is very efficiently erased by the confirmation that Deled had been dealing with one of the darkest figures of the Underworld.
It's probably for the best that you don't complicate things by explaining yourself.
"What are you going to do with that thing?" Topaz inclines her head to indicate Throatfinder.
"I hadn't decided yet."
"Well,
I'd rather not see it again after today," she says.
"Agreed." Dub-dubs is equally fervent in their sharp nod, even though they technically haven't seen it today. They finish their work and step back, considering your body. Their medical attention was welcome. Your arm can already move more freely after treatment and being carefully bound up with healing herbs to encourage the flesh to restore itself, and your chest feels better, too. Not bad for about fifteen minutes' work.
"I can arrange that." Keeping them
away from a concerning artifact you aren't really well-suited to use yourself doesn't seem hard.
"Well, all things considered, I think I'm going to celebrate by getting black-out drunk tonight and do something I'll regret once I wake up in the morning. You in, Dub-dubs?" Topaz looks at them.
They smile back at her. "Like normal, I'll have one or two drinks and be ready to hold your hair back out of the way."
"Good plan. Priest-lady, you in? I bet we can find you someone cute, whatever way you swing."
Auris starts in surprise. One of the downsides of a shaved head is that it's harder to disguise her expression when she is thrown. "I'll stay here. What you're proposing would... fall outside my monastic vows."
"As my dad would say,
bo-ring. Amphora?"
You shake your head. "Tonight I have something that I don't think will wait. I'll take a sandstorm-check, if you don't mind, though." In areas of Creation where rain is bad weather and sandstorms are less common, it would be called a raincheck.
"Oh, poo. Still, thank you. I really owe you one." Both Topaz and Dub-dubs give you hugs before they leave, which is a little awkward. Dynasts don't
hug, as a rule.
* * *
Night falls. You're back in your own apartment, considering a small mirror in near-darkness. You can't be sure it will be tonight, but you do rather expect that the Deathlord will be in contact at some point.
You doubt she has any direct ability to track you--your assumption is that Clochard sought out Deled to have someone handle that. You don't know how often, or even
how, Clochard was supposed to check in. But, eventually, the Waif will discover her fate, and likely will--
Ah.
There's blood dripping from the top of the glass, from nowhere. The Waif can
communicate with people she knows, through her necromantic spells. She's used this before, while you were in the Lap, so it makes sense that she'd rely on it again now. The blood starts to pool in spots on the mirror, forming words.
Let's talk
You smile, tightly. You've scored a telling blow. So long as she is willing to keep the necromancy going, the two of you can talk by writing on your respective mirrors with blood, and she has no way to track you through it or she would have tried this earlier.
[] Say nothing--just shut her down.
[] Threaten her to put more pressure on her to make a mistake--but you have to tip your hand to do it.
[] Fish for information you'll need later, but she learns something, too.
