|
|
| Line 1: |
Line 1: |
| − | By MunificentPerception
| + | #REDIRECT SaltLotus/SaltLotus |
| − | | |
| − | | |
| − | '''Weeks later in the city Great Forks…'''
| |
| − | | |
| − | | |
| − | My life ended the day the demon arrived. It was not as if this was entirely unexpected. There had been portents of change; not just for myself, but for all Creation. It had been just over a year earlier that the Scarlet Empress, the Dragon-Blooded ruler of the Realm, had vanished from her Seat of Splendors on the Blessed Isle. Everyone who drew breath knew that her absence portended a myriad of changes for the world. Soon after followed the first eclipse to be seen in over a millennium. Then, just weeks ago, the dead overthrew the Eastern city of Thorns. They say that the cursed corpse of some long-dead behemoth spearheaded the assault, dragging its rotten hulk over the earth until it butted its fortress-sized bulk up against the city’s outer wall. Even the demon who came to me, her very presence deforming Fate and Creation, had cast signs of her coming in the manner that we mortals have shadows under the light of the sun. But the day I first acknowledged that life as I knew it was coming to an end was the day the Dragon-Blooded arrived.
| |
| − | | |
| − | I should begin by introducing myself. I have already done so for two of my circle, Dawning Daughter and Holvic Kagi. Where they each have but two names, I have had many. I am most commonly known by the name given to me by the temple priests upon the occasion of my 15th birthday, Passic. My fellow students in the House of Learning — Great Forks’ university — often called me Shady Scholar due to my proclivity for studying only after the sun had set. They claimed that this was due to my rising late each day, but I hold that it was because the hours of daylight are full of things in need doing and not studying. As for my birth name, I know it not. I have never met my parents. They were apparently quite poor and had sold me into slavery soon after my birth. I can not say that I have forgiven them for this, but at the same time I have never harbored strong sentiment against them either. It is hard to miss that which you have never had and hate those whom you do not know. And anyway, it is not an uncommon practice for families with too many mouths to feed. The name I am most proud of is Taut. This is the family name of the man who had sensed some potential in my infant self, who had purchased me and then given me to his wives to raise as one of his own. He did not have to do that. He could easily have kept me as a laborer to scrub the house’s stone floors, or to work alongside the slaves in the fields around the city. Instead he had given me the name of his ancestors, making me as much his son as if I had carried his blood in my veins.
| |
| − | | |
| − | Berdi Taut. If you live in Great Forks or have had business with the dealers of antiquities within the Scavenger Lands’ Confederation of Rivers, then you have heard of him. Like many successful scavenger lords he is a banker, an organizer of expeditions and a tomb thief. He assembles the bands of laborers needed to excavate the fallen cities of the First Age, and pays priests or shamans to propitiate the spirits of the earth into relinquishing their property. He employs the soldiers who protect the workers as well as the heroes who brave traps and ghosts to bring the relics up to the light of day. Most importantly, though, he has the knack for knowing who will be willing to buy the artifacts he finds.
| |
| − | | |
| − | Two years ago he decided that there was more he needed to know about the world. One day, without fanfare, he announced that I was to attend our city’s great university and learn these things for him. It was an honor that should have impressed me more than it did, I suppose. I did enjoy myself in the House of Learning, even if I ultimately proved to possess a less-than-scholarly attitude. Rather than bemoaning the subjects I should have studied with greater diligence, I will tell you briefly of those topics I took pleasure in and therefore mastered with little effort.
| |
| − | | |
| − | The mysteries of mathematics and the sacred geometry of the heavens bored me to tears until I realized that these had some application in divining a glimpse of future fates in the motions of the stars. After that I became increasingly enamored of occult studies, though much of, well, nearly all the subject matter I studied within this area was not on the House of Learning’s curriculum. I can make a charm or a fetish that will shield you from bad luck, perform acts of geomancy, draw wards to fend off hungry ghosts, and perhaps even affect a small change or two in my surroundings. At first, the most enjoyable part of the required curriculum was the university’s martial art. I achieved a basic proficiency in the style before I was distracted by the art of the bow, or rather a young woman of many charms who was enrolled in a salon where archery was taught. Here I did find a talent that fast became a prodigious skill. I must admit, though, that the chance to flaunt my abilities on the range and especially at the hunt probably contributed to my approaching this area of instruction with proper assiduousness. I also found that I possessed a flair for language. In addition to my native Riverspeak , the language of the Scavenger Lands's Confederation of Rivers and merchants across Creation, I speak Fire Tongue, the language of the South’s civilized lands, and I know the rudiments of Old Realm. I am conversant with the basics of demonkinds’ circles, the nature of the Fair Folk, as well as something of the lore of the unseen hierarchies of gods and elementals who maintain the world. I know the five magic metals and their properties, including the elemental virtues of jade.
| |
| − | | |
| − | It was these same topics that brought me so much trouble. What I learned was of interest only in so much as I could find a use for that knowledge. When I discovered an application for some bit of old lore, I could easily be distracted by trying to put it into practice. After translating the tattered remains of an ancient text on the metallurgy of the Shogunate, I found myself wondering how much of this knowledge and technique was still being practiced in the modern world. So I went and found out.
| |
| − | | |
| − | The answer was, not as much as you would think. It did take some wine, a bit of flirting, and perhaps even a small romance with a young lady who was apprenticed to one of the city’s artisan smiths to discover this. You can imagine the scandal that followed when I was found out. They were horrified to learn that a student had intruded into the privileged domain of a tradesman. Though in the three weeks before I was discovered, I found that I could make a knife, a necklace or a ring just as well as any journeyman, much to the annoyance of my lover. Despite this display of talent, the uproar nearly earned me an expulsion from the university. They were, as the headmaster had screamed at me — his rattan cane clutched in an upraised hand — teaching thinkers, not soot-faced laborers.
| |
| − | | |
| − | It was soon after this incident that the Sesus Bera, scion of one of the Scarlet Dynasty’s great houses and Dragon-Blooded aspected of wood, arrived with his daughter and entourage. It was early in the evening, with a summer twilight glow illuminating our city of temples, when I looked out my chamber window and saw them entering the courtyard of my father’s villa. Still till this day I can not think of Bera without recalling the great Redwoods of the East. He was an enormous man, broad and towering, with the eternal smell of pine sap hanging about him. There were light patches of bark on the backs of his hands and neck, and a deep green shot through his thick hair. He had a broad smile, which he displayed as my father approached him and a powerful laugh that followed soon after. His daughter, though, was so different that she appeared not to be of his blood at all. Sesus Leda, aspected of Air, was almost ethereal. Slender, pale-skinned and blonde with highlights of blue, she was so thin and aloof that even in her jade-alloyed armor you would think that a stiff breeze might carry her away like a feather. She bore a heavy Dire Lance of white jade and ironwood and smelled of cold mountain winds and lilacs.
| |
| − | | |
| − | The scent of my enemy, which still puts the hair up on the back of my neck.
| |
| − | | |
| − | There is still a pair of introductions left to make before I can continue with my story. And as it was at the time, the tales of these two would soon be entangled with mine own.
| |
| − | | |
| − | | |
| − | Next: [[/Night]]
| |
| − | | |
| − | Back to: [[/Zenith]]
| |
| − | | |
| − | Back to: [[Salt Lotus]]
| |
| − | | |
| − | | |
| − | | |
| − | ''This is a work of fan fiction set in White Wolf’s Exalted fantasy setting and is no way meant to challenge White Wolf’s copy rights or trademarks. The characters Joyous Gift, Mirror Flag, Ribbons of Sorrow, Shield of a Different Day, Spinner of Glorious Tales and Weaver of Dreams of Victory, as well as the city Great Forks are trademarked White Wolf Property.''
| |
