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| − | By [[MunificentPerception]]
| + | #REDIRECT SaltLotus/SaltLotus |
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| − | '''Somewhere on the border of the Confederacy of Rivers:'''
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| − | Dawning Daughter was strong, fast and to her parents’ endless worry, utterly fearless. On occasion she vanished for days at a time into the cloud forests that bored tenaciously into the compacted granite of the mountains that surrounded her home. The young girl had even once strayed ten miles away from the village into the high country to catch a glimpse of the rainbow-shrouded Demen’s Demise, an abandoned outpost where the laws of Creation had broken down and the air was as likely to be filled with jeweled songbirds as with whirling shards of onyx. It was soon after this, on the occasion of her 13th birthday, that she was approached by a god.
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| − | In the coming years there were those who would say that it was her name — an overly religious one in the opinion of some — that had drawn the attention of Yu-Shan’s gods. In Nexus, a former lover claimed that her naming had been a deliberate and heretical act of maternal hubris. However, the prostylizing monks of the Immaculate Order had made few inroads into the Cloud Forest Mountains, and it was not unknown among Dawning’s people for a child’s naming to reflect her parents’ gratitude towards one of the Incarna. Dawning had been born at sunrise after a long and difficult labor in which her father and the village women had feared for her mother’s life. In the mother’s thoughts, such a name was an appropriate expression of thanks to the deity who had dominated the skies at the moment of her infant’s uncertain First Breath.
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| − | Wiry, with coffee-colored skin, amber eyes and peach hair, Dawning was standing alone in the mountains, looking down on the village and the well-built stone house of her family, when a falcon landed in the branches of a tree above her. Startled, she backed away respectfully. The raptor was enormous, far larger than any mountain eagle she had seen, and it fixed her in place with its predator’s gaze.
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| − | “Winemaker’s daughter.” Its voice was every bit as hard and weathered as the living wood it perched upon. “Destiny singles you out on the Loom of Fate.”
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| − | The god’s powerful golden eyes and talons glittered as the divinity took flight and attacked. Sharp pain punctuated burning humiliation as Dawning futilely fought to defend herself. When she ran and her back was raked by the diving raptor, she wept not from fear but frustration — the angry injustice of not being able to strike back. No matter how fast she darted and wove among the trees, the falcon always struck her, until finally, glimpsing a diving shadow out of the corner of her eye, she dove as well. This time there was only the powerful hiss of air being rent as she rolled herself into a ball; then sprang to her feet and continued running.
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| − | She skidded to a halt when the hunter alighted on a branch in front of her.
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| − | “Good. Well timed. More practice,” the little god said as it launched itself towards her. Now, when it did strike her, it only butted hard against Dawning, sending her stumbling to the ground, bruised instead of bleeding.
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| − | Finally, when the attacks stopped and Dawning Daughter hunched over against a tree, retching, she managed to gasp out, “why?”
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| − | “You mean what,” the falcon answered. “What am I teaching you?”
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| − | The angry 13-year-old glared back. “No, I wish to know why.”
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| − | The small god returned her gaze, and though it could not smile, she heard something like humor in its voice.
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| − | “You have a destiny, and you will have many enemies. You also have divine patrons in Yu-Shan who wish to remain anonymous. At their behest I am teaching you avoidance, so that you may learn to dodge the blows of grown men and things stronger than men. In this world of gods, ghosts and demonkind there are always beings more powerful than men.”
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| − | “Stronger than the Dragon-Blooded?” she asked.
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| − | The bird cawed into the air, as if trying to laugh.
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| − | “Yes,” it replied. “There are many things stronger than those mortals Exalted by the blood of the Five Elemental Dragons.
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| − | And with that, the day’s lesson was done.
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| − | Dawning Daughter was angry with herself when she found the wounds that the falcon had inflicted to be scratches and not the gashes she that had imagined. She washed off the crusted blood in a creek and went home to receive a loud scolding over the condition of her clothing. She explained to her mother that she had slipped and stumbled down a granite outcropping. This did not stop her from being switched. Even in a prosperous village, food on the table was not always a certainty, and many villagers considered themselves lucky to have two sets of work clothing and an embroidered tunic or jacket for feast days.
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| − | Time passed as the Tapestry of Creation played across the Loom of Fate. On the valley’s steep eastern slopes, dark tea leaves budded, curled and ripened, while on its southern hills the wine maker and his wife fussed over their vines, nervously eying the skies for signs of early freezes or late frosts. Moving around them in a ceaseless whirlwind of girlhood energy, Dawning Daughter grew up as a child truly blessed.
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| − | It never occurred to Dawning not to go back up into the mountains. As often as she could, she would slip away, winding her way upwards until she inevitably encountered the falcon.
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| − | “Will you make me faster?” she asked the spirit one day.
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| − | “No, I will not. I will teach you timing.”
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| − | Dawning waited. She had learned that this small god respected patience.
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| − | “Fighting is not about being fast, fighting is about striking your enemy when and where he is weak. Strength, little one, is not constant. It comes from your breath, and like your breath it rises and falls.”
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| − | With that, the raptor launched itself into the air and beat its wings laboriously as it spiraled upwards. Once it found a steady updraft, it circled far above Dawning Daughter. She tensed, sure that the spirit was about to attack her, but then it tipped and dove into the valley below her. She watched, her heart pounding, as the hunter plummeted and then opened its wings a little. Just before it hit, the god flared its wings wider, and the dive changed into a sweeping curve. The power built up in the spirit’s plunge struck both downwards and forwards, snapping the spine of a rabbit and carrying both predator and prey aloft. The attack had been fast, but there had been a dreadful coordination to it: a pulling together, concentrating and unleashing of force.
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| − | The dead rabbit plummeted to the ground in front of Dawning. She removed her belt knife, carefully slit the animal’s abdomen and chest open; the removed the entrails with as much dexterity as any hunter in the valley. When finished, she placed the heart and liver on a flat rock beneath the falcon's tree.
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| − | “Good. You do have manners,” it said as it flew down to the ground to feed from the small sacrifice.
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| − | “What will you make me, then?” Dawning Daughter asked.
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| − | “Hard,” it replied, its beak shiny with blood, “and adaptable. You are learning the realities of battle; the waxing and waning of strength; and of how distance shapes that strength. You are also learning the advantages of firmness and fluidity. I will teach techniques built on these realities. In mastering those you will become strong in body and mind.”
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| − | “Hard,” said Dawning.
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| − | “Hard and bending,” replied the divinity.
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| − | Two years later, just after she had turned 15 and became a grown woman, Dawning Daughter killed a man. 18 years of uninterrupted peace in the valley came to an end as the remains of a war spilled over into its spaces. One of the Scavenger Lands kingdoms had attacked a rival and unleashed some artifact of the First Age on its enemy. Hailstones and lightning had destroyed crops in not just the targeted land, but had reached into two other kingdoms, causing misery for all concerned. The city of Lookshy’s Seventh Legion responded. They had sent professional troops and their Dragon-Blooded officers to bolster the peasant armies of the aggrieved kingdoms. Wielding the elemental Essence of Creation, the exalted of the Five Dragons had shattered the army of the aggressor and taken the artifact for themselves. It was a band of fleeing, starving former soldiers that forced their way into the valley.
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| − | Despite her having come of age, Dawning Daughter’s mother had refused her permission to join the defenders at the village gate. Instead she was given a naginata — a staff with a curved steel blade on it — and told to protect their home, where the children of the village sheltered behind its granite block walls. The fighting at the gates was fierce, and during the confusion a band of men tore down a section of the wooden stockade that encircled the village. They then ran amok and drew off defenders from the gate.
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| − | Dawning stood in front of the house, listening to the sounds of horror and pain, when an armored man on horseback rounded the corner of a nearby farmer’s home. He was filthy from months of living out of doors, and the wildness in his eyes spoke of his having abandoned the laws of civilization. He turned and aimed his mount at the five men and women who guarded the stone house. The others sought cover inside. Dawning Daughter took stock of the situation as the horse and rider bore down on her, heavy hooves thudding and mud flying. She moved to stand behind the knee-high rim of the Shoguante-era fountain that was the household well. She could see the calculating glint in the rider’s eye — aware that his saber could not span distance of the fountain — as well as his nervousness at her outward calmness.
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| − | Her heart pounded in her chest and ears, her mouth was dry as stones, but it never occurred to Dawning to be afraid.
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| − | Coming up on the stone fountain, the rider veered away, seeking another victim to ride down. In that moment, Dawning Daughter lunged forward on to the fountain’s rim. The naginata’s staff covered the distance as she struck between the bottom of the leather breastplate and the top of the thigh-protecting greeve. Blood flowered outwards as she spun with the horse’s momentum so that that the motion of mount and rider would not tear the weapon from her hands. The man’s mouth opened silently in a noiseless scream and his sword dropped from his nerveless hand as the horse slowed to a trot.
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| − | Two more former soldiers, both wearing leather and steel, came running up the street on foot. Again, Dawning Daughter used the fountain. One man leaped into it, the other started to circle to her right. She darted around the latter, placing him between his comrade and her. She employed the superior length of her weapon to dive her opponent backwards into the fountain. Then she abruptly swung the weapon in a wide arc to strike the leg of the second man who tried to step out of the fountain and around his fallen companion. Tendons and muscle gave way beneath her blade. She impaled the man who stumbled over the fountain; then finished the one whose ligaments she had severed.
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| − | Soon after the battle, Dawning Daughter left her village. The falcon had announced that her instruction was finished, and she now wished to see the world beyond the valley. Her parrents gave what coins they could afford and walked with her to the creek canyon road that led downwards and outwards to the world.
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| − | By the age of sixteen, she had become known for her skills at unarmed combat, which were said to rival even those of the monks of the Immaculate Order. She fought women and men in those cities where fighting for profit and entertainment was allowed. She took work as a bodyguard and soon gained a fearsome reputation for wielding a pair of hooked swords. By the age of seventeen, she had made her way to Nexus, the free-port city state that lay at the heart of the Confederation of Rivers. She became a protector for wealthy merchants and used her skills to earn a well-paid living. It was during a trip out of the city that she was again visited by the spirit of the falcon.
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| − | “Girl, you must wake and flee.”
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| − | “Am I dreaming?” Dawning Daughter asked, sitting upright in her sleeping roll.
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| − | “Yes you are, and you must wake. The assassins of the Wyld Hunt are coming for you. Your destiny has been defined, and your enemies have seen you among the stars. Now go.”
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| − | For the first time, the falcon god sounded wary, as if it was now he who was in awe of Dawning.
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| − | With that Dawning sat upright again, now in the waking world. She had been sleeping by the wooden stairs attached to the wagon of the Guild merchant prince whose life she was guarding.
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| − | The spirit had said the Wyld Hunt. But why her? The Wyld Hunt was for slaying the Anathema, those demon-possessed mortals who stole the Essence of the moon and the sun to perform wicked acts of magic. Was her association with the falcon some special blasphemy that made her one of the Anathema? The Scarlet Empire’s Dynasts and their state religion, the Immaculate Order, forbade the worship of spirits. Be that as it may, much of Creation’s population still sacrificed to divinities, even if they happened to live in an area not ruled directly by a god-king.
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| − | There was no time to waste on ponderings, however. The sentries around the camp were startled as she went riding past, but their job was to keep people away from the caravan at night, and not to prevent their paymaster’s bodyguard from departing.
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| − | During the moon-lit hours of the pre-dawn morning, Dawning pressed the horse to its limits, seeking to place as much ground as possible between herself and the camp. She rode until the beast stumbled, unable to see. She left it there and fled upwards into the forested hills. The sun came and brought warmth to her cold limbs. She pushed herself relentlessly, sweating as she picked the roughest and steepest country to traverse. If the Dragon-Blooded wished to chase her here, they would have to make a choice between armor and speed.
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| − | The afternoon found her still moving, on the run for over twelve hours, and the shouts of her pursuers not far behind her. As she pushed on through the steep leafy countryside, she felt less and less weary. The burning of her limbs seemed meaningless beside the smell of the sun-warmed loam and the illuminated dappled green of the leaves above her. Without hesitation she scampered up rock faces and jumped effortlessly from boulder to boulder. The afternoon air became a warm tangible thing that buoyed her. What finally startled her from reverie was a radiant flash of sunlight that dazzled her as she leapt over a small creek. The air was cool and dark here under a thick canopy of leaves. Puzzled, she turned back, looked in the water and was nearly blinded. A circle with emanating sunburst rays shone brightly on her forehead, and when she touched her brow, she found that her hands were surrounded by golden fire.
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| − | Even before the vast voice filled her being, Dawning Daughter knew that she had been chosen by the Sun.
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| − | Next: [[/Zenith]]
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| − | Back to [[Salt Lotus]]
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| − | ''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.''
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