[] Unstoppable Fountain of the Depths
[] Your skill impresses Nine Leagues Strides and Soot Column Ascending, who will remember it.
You step into the fire. "Open your eyes. Observe.
See." The ifrit lord's voice comes from all around. It's as if the crackle of the fire itself is speaking.
The flames twine around you, burning something without actually consuming your flesh. You try to keep your eyes open, as instructed.
"That's not it." Soot Column Ascending's voice seems strangely disappointed in you. "Why does not every Exalt learn sorcery? Why not every enlightened mortal, every demon, god, or powerful spirit? It isn't as simple as a new tool. It's a fundamental change, a way of looking at the world in a new fashion, to become something different than you were before."
An ifrit is born from the world, and comes into being fully adult and a mighty being of elemental flame, aware of and connected to the geomancy underlying the whole South. Even for someone like that, learning sorcery is a change to how they interact with the world.
You have had one fundamental change to how you view the world already, when the Lonely Waif of Cooling Embers fused to your soul the black Exaltation she had in her possession. It was an immediate and radical change. You could feel Essence as it pulsed through your veins, your thoughts sizzled swifter and more clearly in your mind, and your body was newly quick, strong, and resilient.
This is the same: you are no longer to be bound as you were. Instead of shedding mortal frailties, however, you are to open to the world and connect it directly to your mind, so the one can affect the other... both directions. You'll be able to draw power from the world to shape spells, but equally the world will encroach on your
self in a way it hasn't before, at least not outside of painful meditative sessions or those brief days of Calibration when the changing air of the world was close enough to the Essence of death for you to respire it.
Subliminally, the burning fire begins to take on a flow you can perceive. It's not
quite vision, but it's the closest of the mundane senses. The bonfire Soot Column Ascending built is a locus of power, drawing from the countless subtle dragon lines of force that radiate from the Elemental Pole to cover Creation, making this part of the world inherently More. More heat, more light, more power. It is shaped again by the will of the ifrit.
And it can be shaped again by you. As a dam in the river shapes its course, your Essence can shape the Essence of the world.
"Good. Draw it forth." The elemental being can feel the change as you begin to pull and manipulate Essence externally from yourself for the first time. "Fire is easy. Fire is change itself, so it responds easily to shaping. Pull power from the flames, and bend it as you will. You already know the shape of the spell you want."
You do pull. You draw forth every mote of power, and the bonfire you were standing in is suddenly, instantly, snuffled out. You stand in the darkness under the night sky, with the smaller campfire the only non-celestial light. You suddenly realize why they were separate.
So that was shaping sorcery. But the spell...
The roaring noise you hadn't taken full notice of before fills your awareness. You look down. There's a jet of water bursting forth from just in front of your feet, creating a second stream to carve its own little bed in the desert.
It is a mighty flow, one fully as powerful as Nine Leagues Stride's demonstration spell.
The ifrit's body burns to life again, providing another nearby illumination source for you, including reflecting off the torrent of water flowing away from you. "Well done," he says.
You can still feel the flames licking at you, even now that they're completely snuffed. No wonder the Realm prefers to create sorcerers through more restrained and predictable (and less dangerous) methods like studying texts that awaken the mind.
The No Moon Lunar grins as you and the ifrit return to her campfire, her camel-shadow still standing out on the rocky ground behind her. "Not bad, Reddy, even if you did have someone else do all the work. Now, rest. Come the dawn, you'll pay us back for that."
* * *
The sun rises, but all three of your party are already awake. No one is going to sleep in on this day. Nine Leagues Strides seems to think that these Pacharenai are not unreasonably dangerous, but any fight is a serious one. Even a mortal can land a heavy blow if given a chance, and a hobgoblin, panjadrum, or silverwright is more than mortal to begin with.
You have a little jerky, some sweet dried fruit, and water to prepare for the fight, but go lightly on all of it.
Breakfast over, you roll out your shoulders, shake life into your arms and legs, and draw Blizzard's Scourge. Despite its size, bulk, and shape, the jade skycutter is light as a feather in your hands, because you've attuned to it.
Soot Column Ascending, the ifrit, rather unsurprisingly steps into the night's campfire and breathes deeply. A being of smokeless fire, whose body is spiritual and not base matter, needs little more than the flame.
Nine Leagues Strides uses a warm-up routine similar to yours, if one a little more grandiose in its motions. That accomplished, she touches the moonsilver snake decoration that's been wound around her upper right arm, lifting the snake's tail. It comes away at her touch, the winding coils loosening and then straightening. In a moment, it becomes clear that what had looked much like a piece of jewelry is, in fact, a moonsilver longfang, a javelin-like weapon. The snake's head is the weapon's point, and in this shape you rather suspect that the snake's venom is real. It certainly looks as if it's pooling for it to inject on a hit, at least.
"C'mon, then. The fae won't wait much more than this." Nine hops up on a rock to see better, then leads the way out.
The terrain in this area is mostly rock, formed from dense-packed sediment. Some sightlines extend unbroken for many miles, but there's chasms dug into the ground where it's cracked open after endless baking sunlight. Most of these look to be dozens of yards long, but narrow enough to be easily leaped over, and few are deep enough that you wouldn't be able to see out if you stood at the bottom. There's also scattered larger rocks and light, clumped vegetation.
Several miles away, there's a little wagon moving along. It's sized about right for two families traveling together. A mile to a mile and a half away from you, forming a narrow-based triangle with the wagon, a pride of lions stalks the wastes.
Even at this distance, there is no doubt that these are not ordinary lions. The mundane sort seek only to find enough meat to fill their bellies, and they don't seek to challenge prey dangerous enough to hunt them back, in turn.
These are a foot larger at the shoulder, mass at least two hundred pounds heavier, and have their eyes fixed on the wagon to the exclusion of possible closer prey. So far, the wagon seems unaware of the danger.
"Not my people, not out here, but I don't mind showing the Fair Folk who's boss of the deep desert," Nine says, seemingly as much to herself as to you. She glances at you and Soot then, and continues in a more commanding tone. "I'll shoot as soon as we have them in range. They'll either split up or try to bring us to bay, depending on how they read the fight going. If they scatter, we split up and hunt down as many as we can. If they come to us, Reddy, you engage as soon as they're in your range. Soot, you're close-in fighting."
Then there's nothing but the chase. The lions and you draw closer, as your trio cuts the chord to intercept them. They seem to take a good while to notice you, and longer still to react.
Once you are close enough, Nine Leagues Strides begins collecting sorcerous power in her free hand, which glows with heat from the first moment. Once she has enough, she points towards the pride. "Flight of the Brilliant Raptor!"
Briefly, a conjured firebird adorned with diamond and ruby exists, streaking away at incredible speed and landing amidst the lions, exploding in flame. Lions are hurled around, broken, and those far enough to escape immediate obliteration are seeming stunned by the sudden bonfire.
"Huh, only hobs?" Nine comments idly as she begins readying a second strike. "Gotta be. Anything tougher wouldn't go down
that easy. So that's not the real leaders, so then they're somewhere else, planning a counter-ambush..."
Other lions and leonine-aspected men appear as Nine makes her deduction. The closest are still nearly a full arrow's flight away. Some leap forth from the chasms, where they must have hid themselves during the night. Others simply stand up from where they had been laying very flat and covered in dirt. Your rough count puts it at forty or so effective combatants, spread out in a broad arc in front of you, though they're not perfectly distributed. They weren't that good at reading Nine Leagues Strides.
"More of them than I had expected," Soot Column Ascending says in the maddening calm of a spirit. "They were traveling lightly, to not upset my pattern. There are some mighty ones."
"Get your fiery butt going and stomp on them, then! Sorry, Reddy, I hope you were right to think you're a hotshot in a fight."
The three of you instinctively fall into a semi-circle of your own, as you moderate your breathing to emulate the power of the Immaculate Dragon of Air. The attackers close, and a second sorcerous bird takes down three of them that were foolish enough to clump too closely. You hold your breath for a long moment, looking for your opening as they come within range of your boomerang. You find it. With a powerful explosion of air, Blizzard's Scourge scythes through the air at a range greater than anyone else expected, neatly bisecting one of the weaker ones and gouging a second from behind on its arc back to you.
Two more throws, then the Fair Folk's swift charge brings the fastest of them to you. Soot Column Ascending steps forward, grabbing them and clamping on hard. There's no need for much skill for him: his touch burns.
Nine Leagues Strides shifts from sorcery to her snake-spear, wielding it with her left hand and using it to aggressively skewer targets.
The problem is that there are many of them, and the remaining ones have a higher proportion of those that aren't so frail as to go down to a single blow.
For a little bit, you do well to keep clear and use your skycutter to clear the area around you, as its attacks are not something the fae can easily ignore. Between the three of you, a dozen more of them fall in short order.
Things get more complicated. To avoid a lion's sweeping paw, you end up stepping into the only available space and find that now there are fae between you and the others. There's not an easy way to rejoin.
Three steps more and one more throw of Blizzard's Scourge later, and you're suddenly almost alone.
One of the more man-like of the Fair Folk faces you now. His eyes blaze with fire, but not real fire. It doesn't quite cast convincing shadows, nor does it flicker right. He wears armor of gossamer, and holds both a shield and mace of the same material. All of it, even the mace, has lion fur growing out of it. The mace's head is wrong, too, as its impacting flanges are replaced by lion fangs. He bows to you in a parody of honor. "I am the cataphract Thominas. I shall defeat you in single combat for the glory of, and to catch the eye of, our great Queen Elegance."
He doesn't give you a chance to introduce yourself in turn, as he immediately charges in. You catch the mace on the flat of Blizzard's Scourge, stepping in to stomp your heel onto his toes. He cries out at the impact, but swings his shield-arm in a haymaker, trying to bash you with the shield. You flare the Stone of Chilled Breath at your neck, and a pulse of cold air softens the force of the impact even as it throws you further back.
You hurl Blizzard's Scourge forward even as your heels dig in to give you traction. Thominas tries to block it, but fails to completely halt its momentum. It slashes across his left shoulder as it goes past. "Foolish of you to choose a weapon you lose when you use it," he tells you.
Cataphracts are the elite of Fair Folk warriors. They are effective and deadly in combat, but they are also fundamentally unreal in the same way as any of their kind, meaning that while they may possess supernal skill, they also lack understanding of certain things.
You demonstrate one of them as you step forward as quickly as a sharp breath, slipping your knuckles past his guard and burying your fist deep in his gut. He makes no noise at this impact, and the scrape of his dream-woven mail is painful on your hand, but he does double over somewhat. He tries to bring the toothed mace down at your neck, but your other hand grabs at his wrist, immobilizing it while still high. Just because your hands are empty doesn't mean you're helpless.
Especially not while your weapon is still in the air, behind him, and trying to return to you.
He realizes the danger, and twists to put his shield in the way. This time, Blizzard's Scourge bounces off cleanly, but it took his attention and his arm away from you. The same hand you'd used for a gut punch comes up, and the heel of your hand slams his jaw in an uppercut that rattles his head and probably knocks out some of his fake imitation of teeth.
He twists further in a blur of speed and power. He lets go of the mace, lets go of the shield, then his shield hand grabs the mace as it falls, and he swings it into your ribcage, tearing at your flesh despite its corpse-hardy strength. He has to stoop low, but his now-free mace hand catches the shield before it even hits the ground. He stands up straight as you stumble back, shield and mace having swapped hands.
You hold up your hand. Blizzard's Scourge alights in it. Thominas glares at you, considering. "You are mightier than I gave you credit for, human. But you are out of tricks, now."
One finger comes up in admonishment. "I didn't say I was out of tricks." You have no idea what you say after that. You simply let the Whispers speak, using your voice to utter a mindless glossolalia that tears at the ears and minds of whatever you are speaking to.
Thominas' eyes widen at the first few syllables, and then he's overcome. It's a more dramatic effect than you had with Strength of Many. The cataphract whimpers for a moment, clutching at his ears. "No... no, you're dead. You're
dead." He scratches at his own ears with fingers that are suddenly claws, scoring his head deeply. He straightens up afterwards. You know perfectly well that he's not completely shutting out the Whispers. They don't need ears to make themselves heard. Still, he can function again.
Thominas paces forward, mace and shield at the ready. You give ground, circling closer to a stand of grasses, too thin and reedy to give any cover. You're a little hurt, but he has definitely taken the worse of it. "I'll shut that mouth of yours for good, spawn of the great enemy."
He charges. You throw Blizzard's Scourge behind your back,
away from him. His mace swings. You leap, and with the Cloud-Treading Method you alight on a single blade of grass, which bends only half an inch under your weight before you bounce off. His toothed weapon abruptly shifts and swings through where you would have been should you have landed normally. You're behind him as you land. His attention goes two ways, both towards your skycutter and your body, with him between the two.
Your hands snake around his body in that moment of split attention, clamping down hard and nearly immobilizing him. Desperately, he parries the returning skycutter with his mace, trying to simultaneously silence your Whispering mouth with his own head, by simply obstructing it.
A foolish and final mistake, as he does not notice your canines extending and sharpening. You cease jabbering, but only to bite deep into his neck and drain his life.
It is delicious, the best meal you've ever tasted, a riotous explosion of vibrant flavors of infinite complexity and depth. There's precious little left, sadly, not enough to restore all of what you used in fighting him, but you suck him dry eagerly. You're so lost in the flavor you barely notice when you catch Blizzard's Scourge.
As the cataphract's body falls and begins to unravel into nothingness, you look for the other two. The fight's all but finished on their end, too. Even as you take stock, the ifrit's blazing hands force the last effective combatant into the Lunar's reach, and her snake-spear goes cleanly in through the back of its neck. The swiftest and most cowardly of the fae look like they have escaped, but the majority of them are wiped out.
Soot Column Ascending and Nine Leagues Strides are in about the same shape as you are: tired and a little hurt, but not seriously impaired. Fires burn merrily around them. It's not too surprising, of course. The sorceress is operating on the same ritual that the ifrit lord opened for you. She sets her enemies ablaze, then draws sorcerous power from that very same fire to conjure further fiery spells: it's an effective feedback loop that makes her potentially more deadly the more a fight drags on. You commit that strategy to memory, so you won't ever be caught off guard by it.
"Not bad, Reddy." Nine Leagues Strides says, joining you in just a few large steps. She holds up her fist to you. You're still primed for a fight; it takes you half a second to realize she wants a fist-bump, instead of her about to punch you. You comply. "That guy was the leader of this bunch, and you took him down yourself. I guess some of you people
can still fight without your Empress." You're in a little too much pain to feel like you want to snark back.
You look over at the wagon, making every effort to disappear into the distance. They've clearly realized the danger now, but didn't follow the rest of the fight. They're hurrying on their way, and you can see people with bows in their hands atop it. Probably best to let them go.
Soot Column Ascending looks over the battlefield as you do that, stroking his fiery beard. "This was a more organized attempt to lure in large prey than I had anticipated. Spread rumors of their presence, but understate their strength. I do not think it was targeted at you and I in particular, Nine Leagues Strides. Concur?"
"Yeah, but you don't have to be so stupidly formal about it, flame-brain." The Oni turns and walks away, stretching her arms over her head and arching her back as she does. "They were looking to draw in some local heroes and winnow 'em out, and they weren't expecting us. Glad we came; I don't mind fae if they behave themselves, but the Pacharenai never do." She turns back to you. The penetrating look is back on her face. She doesn't say anything about it, but you can tell she's re-evaluating exactly what you are. Maybe she didn't care when she thought you were just some moderately powerful warrior who had left the Realm behind, but it's clearly not just the skycutter that lets you fight. She might even recognize Air Dragon Style, which doubtless would confuse the issue further. Then, she just grins. "You, though. Long as you deal straight with us, I ain't gonna be upset if you hang around my people. Handy to have competent people around."
Soot nods his agreement. "You have a quite orderly approach. It is good for my pattern. As long as you do not disrupt the efforts of the Court of Orderly Flame, you are welcome to my hospitality and that of my children." Children? Ifrits, as a type of elemental, are created by the world, not a species that breeds true. Well, he does seem to like human women, but this is the first you've heard of him actually having kids.
"Now, c'mon, let's get going again." Nine Leagues Strides slaps the moonsilver longfang to her arm, and it again coils up and looks like an innocent decoration. She transforms into a camel without actually stopping speaking as she goes. "There's nothing more to do here and we all want to head to Gem, apparently. Let's go. We'll break out the good booze this evening!"
* * *
The 'good booze' manifests in Nine's hands when she's ready for it. Apparently, she was storing it Elsewhere, instead of in any sort of mundane sack or other container. It's highly alcoholic, but smells more mellow than a lot of barbarian efforts that are simply a vehicle to getting drunk efficiently. She pours a little bowl for each of you three, then downs her own in one gulp before pouring a second to actually sip like it deserves.
You start with sipping, just to be safe, enjoying the flavor of honey in the drink, but you can't really relax. You keep your eyes on your companions even now. All these Lunars and untamed spirits is not good for your nerves, never mind your spiritual health. You don't really think you could unwind enough to really get too tipsy.
Soot Column Ascending takes his last. Rather than drink it, he simply touches it and sets the alcohol ablaze to enjoy the smoke. While startling, it makes some sense, so you let him enjoy it in his own way. Still, though, you have a question now. "You said you have children?" It's both curiosity and a genuine attempt at small talk.
"Yes." The ifrit lord takes a deep breath of his lit booze. "About eight right now."
"'About'?" You raise an eyebrow.
He shrugs. "Ages are difficult. Maybe some of them have died of old age and I haven't noticed yet. I am also not fully involved in all of their lives. I travel a great deal."
And this is a big part of why the Immaculate Order doesn't let gods and elementals do whatever they want. It makes things harder for everyone, and means that there can be powerful children out there who lack a family or matriarch to keep them stable. Even beyond any spiritual concern about future reincarnations, it is much better to keep things organized and let Dragon-Bloods do what they are supposed to do in terms of serving as an interface between humans and spirits.
"So, how is it I'm welcome to their hospitality if they barely know you?"
"Kinda rude, Reddy," interjects Nine, swirling her bowl and staring into it.
"It is alright. He deserves an honest answer for a legitimate question. My children know that, should they incur an expense in my service, I will repay them as needed, as soon as they inform me."
You don't know how anyone can handle this nomadic life, never mind how well-suited they all seem to it. A good, honest city with a functioning bureaucracy just seems inherently superior. Better to have a ledger than to have a complex web of favors owed and the vagaries of obligation complicated by everyone being on the move. It's just a mess. Even without all the Lunars.
The Anathema.
* * *
You approach Gem on foot and alone. It's not the ideal, but it's all you have. The evening before you got to Gem, there was a white flare that went up on the horizon. It was the same "presence requested, non-urgent" as when you first met Nine League Strides and Soot Column Ascending.
They left you behind for that, rather naturally. You don't know what their business is in Gem, but they don't feel the same urgency that you do. You're already feeling antsy that it's taken you so long to get here. Everyone, even the Whispers in your head, agree that fewer Fair Folk in Creation is a good thing, but hunting them down still means you're rather late to the party, all things considered. Starting from the same place in the Lap as you, someone who rushed could have been here five or six days before you, or even faster yet if they possessed some sorcery to hurry along. However, you still feel it was a reasonable course: a sorcerer is going to have more freedom, fewer obligations, and be more socially acceptable than a simple mercenary or hired tinker.
You're on foot this afternoon because when the Lunar and ifrit lord went after the flare, Nine asked if she could take the horses you had been loaned. It wasn't actually a question.
Now, though, you're at Gem. Gem is an old city, a dense city, and a place of commerce and heavy industry. In comparison to the elegant and geomantic cities and farms of the Blessed Isle, or the verdant fields and vineyards with wide streets that make up the Lap, it's hardly a welcoming place. Houses and places of business, maybe of them shoddy or run-down, jumble up against each other and crowd around any place that the surrounding peaks may offer some shade to. It stinks, even from out here: the stink of a city lived-in for hundreds of years, with hundreds of thousands of people crammed in too tightly into too tightly-packed a place, with too much heat and too little water for bathing. No amount of perfume can cover up the smell of sweat. It is pervasive and as permanent as the very bedrock, now.
It matches you. You don't cut a particularly heroic figure right now. You may be tall, know how to carry yourself, and have a jade skycutter at your waist, all of which is to your credit, but you're also still feeling the cataphract's blows a bit and your clothes are notably the worse for wear. To top it off, you're on foot and hardly look wealthy or well-off.
"Crazy desert hermit" might be within your reach, but that's not an aesthetic you want to embrace.
A group of armed guards in the Despot's livery lounge around, watching the comings and goings of people on the road. Like any large metropolis, there's satellite locations nearby. There's always people on the roads linking Gem to nearby mines, manors, and the rest, and gradually fewer people going further away, until you reach the long-distance travelers who go in organized, well-armed caravans with large numbers. Gem isn't Nexus with its "anything goes" attitude: when something
does get to Gem, the Despot wants to be sure that he has at least some idea if it is major weapons shipments, undeclared gems, or any other sort of concerning or potentially destabilizing goods.
You earn a few judgmental looks, but no more than any other unfamiliar more-than-mortal warrior would earn, and there's certainly no shortage of beastmen, godbloods, enlightened martial artists, and countless similar types. They're hardly common, but there's a few. As you make your way in and through the city, you see a hawkman and a ratwoman, along with someone who's trying to look as if he is a user of Golden Janissary Style, although you can't exactly confirm at a glance.
You stop in at an establishment that offers some amenities for travelers, so for a few coins you can clean up, make your hair look presentable, and consider their stock of available clothing (it's in reasonable condition, lightly used if at all, and any actual bloodstains are discreet enough to be ignored).
[] (optional) Fashion write-in. Do you find some new type of look? Remember that Abyssals only feel comfortable in something that evokes funerals or the grave in some fashion.
Then, it's off to find the Despot's public desk. He has to have some public-facing office, just as a practical matter. It's in one of the market streets, a few levels below the Despot's palace, in a nook off the primary walking and wagon paths. By the fact that when you locate it the desk is staffed by a single woman writing something to herself, four armed guards looking bored, and no line whatsoever, you suspect that the Despot has taught people well that bothering him with inconsequential things (that is to say, things that don't bring him more power, money, or stability) doesn't end well.
As you approach, the woman suddenly shoves the paper she was writing on underneath a larger pile, but not before you can read a few words, upside-down. It seems to be the tale of two men who are currently in the throes of passion. She pushes her thin-rimmed glasses further up her nose and considers you. "You are?"
"A sorcerer. I can conjure water, and heard that the Despot is hiring."
"Mm..." With the frustration of someone who has to do her job when she didn't think she could have to today, the woman opens a drawer and pulls out a few shetts of mildly yellow paper, which she hands to you. "You did hear correctly. Here's the standard contract. If it suits, I can get someone to relieve me and we can go to the audition cistern to see how you do."
You scan the contract. It's not the worst you've seen: it specifies that the sorcerer will be paid per cast, and that the Despot has first claim on any such spells. If the Despot were to choose not to buy all the water-conjurings you are capable of in a day, you have the right to negotiate your own additional sales to any parties of good standing in Gem. There's plenty of clauses regarding conduct, arbitration, and the sundry details required.
You bring out a few of your more pointed and difficult questions, just to make the point that you know what you're doing. It doesn't take long for the front desk paper-pusher to get in over her head. You allow her to push off signing for after the audition, as long as you're paid standard rate for it, on the understanding that someone with more standing can negotiate if you show good results.
That will do for now. She summons her relief with the pull of a string that rings some distant bell, and soon you, her, and two of the guards are off to show what you can do.
"I'm Tehli, by the way," she says as she leads the way. "What's your name?"
Your mind goes briefly blank and you say the first thing that comes into your head.
[] "Vessel."
[] "Reddy."
[] Write-in.
* * *
This took a little longer than normal. It's also a little long. I'm sure those aren't related.
