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Chapter One - Nothing Ever Works Out

The Empress Garden in Cherak bloomed with a hundred different varieties of scarlet roses, delicate petals seeming to glow softly in the reflected light of a setting sun. The light peeked over the trellis walls of the garden, and the plants glowed golden, the light dancing off of the petals and the dew, seeming almost physical with the smells of a garden after rain. The Thousand, the garden was called, for its incomparable variety of flowers, whose multiplicity of scents filled a block around with sweet airs. Two lovers, each showing the first touches of lines around their eyes, sat at a bench, smooth and polished, that had been coaxed out of a living willow; the swaying branches of that tree hung about them. The woman leaned her back against the tree, rested a hand on her stomach, large with child, only a month away. The man smiled as only someone with nothing but contentment in mind can, kissed her softly for a moment on her forehead, and placed his hand on hers, his head on her shoulder. They watched the sun descend towards the horizon, and its light crept through the trellis walls of the garden bathing them in soft red. They watched the sky and its red and its blue, they watched the flowers in that last moment of light when the colours are brighter and sweeter, and the air is warm.

A woman was walking the garden, stopping to smell the lilac, breathing deep in the scents of it, holding the air in. She sighed, gently, and saw the two lovers readying themselves to leave. As they passed, she greeted them with such friendly air that she seemed as natural as a flower of the garden herself. “I hope your child takes after its parents, as then it seems it will be both very beautiful, and very happy.” The lovers smiled, and the pregnant woman spoke. “Thank you. You have a way with kind words.” “No, thank you. The most wonderful thing in this garden was not the lilacs, but seeing the two of you enjoy it. You've made a hard day easier.” “A hard day?” The man spoke, and helpfulness flowed from his voice. “Do you need anything? We'd be glad to see you to whatever you need.” “No, nothing like that. It is just that I have been travelling for a long time, and I must be on again, before night finishes falling.” She sighed, and it seemed for a second that as she did, her black hair glinted, beautiful like jade. “But your kindness is much appreciated.” She took the mother's hand in hers. “I wish you the best the world has.” She placed a hand gently on where the child peacefully slept. “And you too, precious.” She bowed politely, smiled, and walked away. Her long red kimono, embroidered in gold with images of hope being pursued by fear trailed behind her, the very end of the hem gathering soil. The lovers watched her go, kissed once, and walked home, slowly, happily.

Three hours later, they were sound asleep when the door knocker rapped sharply three times. The man started up in bed and ran to the door, sliding open the view-latch. “Commander Drajha, Sir! There's been an incident in the Dragon's quarters. We've got reports of a pair of monsters attacking a citizen.” The man snapped up the red jade sabre that stood by the door, grabbed his breastplate from the wall, and ran with the page to the rickshaw that awaited. As they passed the gate into Dragon's quarter, Ferem Drajha Kellis, Fifth legion (ret.), now of the Cherak citizen's guard, looked with dismay on the east wall of the Empress garden, laying flattened to the ground. On top of a bed of roses, the body of a young man in merchant's clothes who had been torn apart, a pair of creatures standing over him. He drew his sword, leapt from the rickshaw, and flared brightly with the essence of Hesieh, and as it burned through him his aspect markings, flames travelling along his neck and around the back of his skull to his forehead, suddenly burned from invisibility to a furious furnace glow. His sword trailed fire as he swept it from its sheath and brought it to bear on the two creatures, like wolves but like apes, and with green glinting teeth, that had stopped feeding and started to charge at him. “That was somebody's son.” He said, his voice calm but with unmistakable fervor laying under it, as the light of a glowing sword fresh from the forge shows only the idea of its warmth and not its searing power.

Afterwards, he had to wait an hour until he could come back to bed without setting it aflame; and as his wife rolled over to see him, she smiled. “I was worried about you.” “It's all right, I'm still here.” He climbed back to bed, carefully, slowly, favouring his right leg heavily, making sure that none of his blood stained the sheets.

“Revered Brother, sir.” Squeaked a small spirit in a high voice, as the transluscent image of a large rabbit on hind legs wearing a fine kimono formed at the foot of a sleeping monk's cot. “I am very sorry to disturb you. But there is something very wrong at the hospital. A child was just born, and she bears the essence of a demon.” “An demon infant? Take me to her. Page, inform the brothers when they return of my duties.” The young monk, bearing almost bark-like flesh along the back of his neck, green skin thick with his wood heritage, strode purposefully to the hospital.

Dennet, the Hundred-Births Hare, God of Birth and Midwives in Cherak, waited at the door, fully material. He led the impatient monk through the corridors, to a wing of the hospital reserved for house Ferem, to the finest room, reserved for honoured members of the house. The monk drew in breath at the political implications of his holy duty, but with a quick recitation of a catechism of the Dragons opened the door and entered.

Ferem Drajha Kellis sat, stony faced, in a chair to one side of the room. He held a swaddled newborn in his arms, and rocked her gently as she cried. Ferem Drajha Essisa, a boy of thirteen, wept as he held his mothers hand. She was still, dead, on the table. The monk hardened his heart as best he could, and again weighed the merits of what he was to do. It was not too late simply to offer his condolences and disappear quickly. But his duty was the most important thing. “Sir, I am sorry for your loss. But it is with regret that I must say I have come on suspicion that your child is a half-demon.” Kellis looked up, his face completely still, no sign of emotion to be found on his features. “You have come to tell me over the body of my wife that she would consort with blasphemies? You would come to take away our child, her last beautiful gift to the world?” He looked away, sighed, and sat still in his chair. His son, though, turned and through tears roared at the young immaculate. “Where were you with your preaching when my mother died? Where were you when they had to cut her to save my sister?” His voice cracked and tore at the air, full of all the furious power of a lost child. “You are a worse monster than any demon!” He bellowed at the monk, and as he roared, his voice ignited the air, his hair kindled, and as the second breath filled his body, he launched himself at the monk, pummeling him fist and foot, unleashing all his father's martial instruction. The man was taken to the ground with the burning boy on top of him, barely managing a single blow off of the child's shoulder, before the furious rage of the young man landed a flaming blow on his skull, knocking him unconscious.

The boy's father, regaining his senses, curled around the baby, shielding her from the flames that filled the room with his body, his back burning and seared. “Essisa!” He roared, trying to overcome the flame rushing through the boy's ears for the first time. “Essisa! Stop!” The child looked down at the burned monk, his body covered in cauterized, bubbling wounds, and the fiery anima that surrounded him blinked out, leaving him again only a child. “It's all right, Ess. Let's go. We have to go now.” He took his child by the hand, cradling his daughter in the other arm, and led them out of the room, out of the hospital, to his horse, and out of the city at a run all before anyone smelled the charred body of the immaculate.

It was three hours before the three elder immaculates that maintained the temple at Cherak returned to the city, their boat met at the shore by a page-monk looking more terrified than that already fearful man ever had. Moments later they were in the temple, at the bedside of a now healthy monk. “Reverend brothers.” He spoke with a rasp, a single lasting souvenir from his meeting with fire. “I am sorry. I was overcome and surprised, and they escaped with the demon-touched child. But I did soul mark the boy. I can find them.” The oldest monk, an air immaculate whose very breath chilled the air, spoke slowly. “You brought this on yourself by your impatience and your bravado. A great man may be lost today because of it. Let it be a lesson in tact to you, idiot boy. But they may not be lost yet; you are still alive, thank the Dragons for that. They would have been beyond mercy in another blow, although they would have saved us an irredeemable fool. Let us see if we can bring them back; be ready if we can't.” The four monks began to dress for battle, grim and precise.

They followed the trail of essence that Essisa bore in a typhoon they had conjured, and the wind tore the leaves from the trees in their passing. Dawn broke as they saw the horse, still running, ahead of them; essence buoying its stride so that after four hours its gallop was as sure as the first step. As they closed the distance to within the range of weapons, sorcery outmatching even the finest steed, the young wood aspect raised his eyes in supplication to the dragons and gasped. “Sirs! Above us!” Flying above the treetops, just behind the typhoon winds, hiding behind branches, were a pair of things. One, like a great bat with a woman's body, skin constantly tearing off her wings in sheets as she flew; the other, a thing that could not truly be described by human words, a twisting mass of tentacles and meat, fangs and talons bursting from flesh and retreating, a flying hunger.

The air aspected exalt reacted in a flash, perhaps too fast, and hurled a barrage of shuriken at the pair, uselessly sinking into the rubbery flesh of the shapeless mass. The two things wheeled off of their pursuit and met the typhoon, which the earth-aspect sorceror released. The dragon-bloods hit the ground at a stride, and by the time they stood still, their weapons were drawn and charms had started to fill their bodies. The air dragon felt the essence of the world in his bones, in his breath, in his lungs, and channeled it through his hands into his chakrams. His arms curled about his body as he crouched, ready to attack. “Foul things, I have fought Anathema with my these hands and these blades, and surely I can destroy their demonic servants. My judgment will be swift, I assure you.” “Servants?” The woman chittered through her hooked beak, stretching her long, membranous wings around herself as she did, flexing them so they seemed to pulse with muscle that glowed as the magma blood of the earth. “We have no time for your mockery, dragon-fool.” She began, and began to carve deep, rough furrows into her own flesh with the curving talons on her hands, drawing out red ichor that made the air pulse with heat. “We will have what is ours. Tayala cannot be kept from us.” The other demon twisted, and a perfect porcelain face emerged from the tentacles and squirming muscle to speak. “The scent of meaning fills the air here. You smell nothing, and you would hinder us. There is nothing for you in this.” The air aspect prepared himself and spoke, his voice booming and resonant as though all the sky spoke in sympathy with him. “You cannot take that child. It will be judged by the order, and you will never touch it.” “Human child?” The bat-woman cackled again. “We taste the power here, we smell the meaning of our being. We will have it.” She shrieked the last as a hawk's call diving on prey, and scooping the ichor that welled from the rents in her chest, hurled it at the party of monks; the sorcerer, struck bodily by it, fell screaming to the ground, smoke rising; in a flash, the air dragon's form blurred and vanished, and the only sign of him was the flickering waves of chakram that glinted in the sunlight, whistling as they flew. The young monk's bow sang as it loosed shaft after shaft at the two demons, the arrows sinking noiselessly into the flesh of the misshapen monstrosity, blades beat rhythm on bones and all the music of battle surrounded everything.

The two horsemen ahead could hear the wind gaining at their backs, the roar of a tornado furious at its constraint, and dared not look back for a second. When it ceased, they dared a glance – Kellis saw the two demons riding down, and leaped from horseback. “Essisa, ride. Protect your sister until I find you!” Kellis yelled as he ran, sprinting unnaturally quickly back towards the battle as it started to unfold, his footprints leaving flaming craters with every step, a flaming sword springing from his palm. As the young exalt rode away, his last sight of his father was of his blade slicing a tattered, smoking wound through the bat-woman's chest, splitting her in two even as her claws tore at the immaculates. He was too far away to hear, and unwilling to look, as the floating concretion of flesh encircled his father, writhing tentacles enveloping him, the tentacles split apart from the inside by the blade of spiritual fire, and reforming around him. Fanged sinews snapped the last standing immaculate, the air aspect elder, in half to land on the body of his Wood aspect student. When the Wyld Hunt finally arrived, four days later, they found the bodies of four immaculate monks, seared by acidic flame, torn by talon and claw, and the brass skeleton of a second circle demon, melted shards of an obsidian heart among the ribs. The horse and its riders were gone, listed officially as heroes of the realm deceased in combat with creatures of Malfeas, as befit the children of Hesieh. The issue was quickly forgotten, in the way that nothing can be without great effort.