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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.

By Munificent Perception

In the light of early morning, Dawning Daughter approached the pale, marble-sheathed walls of Great Forks. Her father would have been proud with how well she absorbed the details of flat cropslands, the terraced hillsides and noted the micro-climates of the various small, vine-laden valleys. While she had never displayed a strong interest in her father’s trade, a lifetime of proximity had instilled the basics of its aesthetic within her. What she saw now in the many vineyards around the city delighted her. The well-plotted layouts spoke to her father’s sense of craftsmanship, and the scope impressed Dawning Daughter’s innate appreciation of ambition. Here was a city-state that obviously prized its wines, in both quantity and quality.

There were also dense paddies of rice, terraces of tea bushes and fields of tarp-covered ginseng. Small shrines to the local deities of crops and turned earth were everywhere, guaranteeing harvests of generous yield. The seemingly endless hillside orchards above were orderly riots of blossoms and blooms as Creation’s long summer entered into its second growing season.

Other agricultural undertakings pleased Dawning Daughter less. Slaves by the hundred tended long rows of tobacco, met, quat and marijuana. Dawning was still too much the offspring of a small, conservative, free farming community to trust anything that would dull her senses or lessen her martial abilities.

The granite-walled tributary towns that she had passed through during the last few hours were nothing like the pathetic freeholder village where she had driven out the mercenaries. Each settlement had two stout gates, slate-roofed houses, and though the mortal militia and watchmen were spread thin, at least one elemental, ifrit or minor spirit of combat was present in every town square. The city ahead, with its strong defensive structures and size, impressed her. In a world of lost glories and plague-shattered civilizations, nearly three quarter of a million beings dwelt within the metropolis. Dawning had heard Great Forks described as a place softness and decadence, but now, seeing the City of Temples in person for the first time, she decided that its legendary pleasures must be much like gems locked safely away behind a jeweler’s high walls and paid guards.

Above Dawning, the falcon god circled, leading her onward towards her fellow Chosen.

Midday...

Under the noon sun, Holvic Kagi was surprised to see several former brides of Ahlat at the western entrance to Great Forks. Though it had been over a generation since the Kagi mercenaries had arrived in the Scavenger Lands, its members and their family still spoke Fire Tongue in private, and Holvic was perfectly capable of reading the syllabary script embroidered on the female warriors’ cloaks.

As rare as former brides might be so far from their distant native kingdom and tribes, Holvic and these veterans were not only southern-blooded waiting for admission — dark hair and olive, bronze and black skin could be seen here and there in the crowd. The Blessed Isle might be Creation’s heart, but Land of Many Rivers was its crossroads, and this showed in the varied features of its inhabitants and visitors. There were several individuals who clearly bore fae blood within their veins, leaving Holvic to wonder how their mortal ancestors had escaped with minds and souls intact after breeding with the mad children of the Wyld. Tribesmen from the jungles of the far East waited in line alongside civilized folk, and green-haired Haltans accompanied wagon cages filled with the unusual beasts they had bred. As for the natives of the city, they were of a mixed breed. Holvic knew from both discussion and reading that the inhabitants of Great Forks had once been three separate peoples, each of which had arrived here led by one of the three deities that now jointly ruled the city.

The former brides looked travel worn but sharp eyed as they waited their turn in line to speak with the thunderbirds who guarded the gate. The powerful elementals, half of who carried out their duties wearing the shapes of men, appeared to be asking only the most cursory questions of those who sought entrance to the city.

Holvic bided his time astride his horse, and when his turn came, he explained the that he was a master come to give instruction in the way of the sword to those who sought such lessons. The material spirit demanded only a token payment before allowing Holvic to enter. Once inside, the Zenith priest was assailed by the cries of sellers hawking charms, potions and talismans. Others called out the locations of hostels, bathhouses and gymnasiums, advising pilgrims and petitioners not to visit the temples of the city unpurified. The former brides apparently chose to heed such a call, as they elected to turn off the main avenue in favor of a public bath. Holvic chose a small hostel with a blossoming cherry tree in its tranquil courtyard. The omens that had led him to the city had been general. Now was the time for meditation and prayer, and if more specific signs were not forthcoming he would rely on his wits. He was not a man given to much philosophical discourse, but he was patient. In time he would discover why he had been called to this place.

That evening, a vision came to him.

That evening...

An unsettled air about hung over the riverside teahouse that Leda had chosen. Not that her stuck-up imperial highness had bothered to ask my opinion on the matter. She had picked this establishment based on tactical considerations rather than looking for a place of harmony or delight. The Plum House was to be Sesus Bera’s battlefield headquarters for the evening. Arrangements had been made, the hunt would shortly be underway, and the wood-aspected Dragon-Blood would covertly manipulate his pawns and pieces while being entertained in Scavenger Lands style.

After five hours of sleep, a day of being assigned to Leda as a native guide had been a grinding bore. At first I had wondered if Lord Sesus had paired us to encourage amity between his daughter and myself. If so, it had proved a miserable failure in practice. Then I had begun to ponder his offer of friendship to me. It had seemed genuine, but I had begun to suspect that it had been made not so much to me but to the posterity of Berdi Taut. Just how did the long-lived Dragon-Blooded see mortals? Did they think in terms of individuals, or were they accustomed to seeing virtues, vices and utility in family lines?

At any rate, accompanying Leda had been far less edifying than my previous evening with Bera. After the Dragon-Blooded Lord’s revelation about the existence of my brother, I had followed him in a state of shock to the Wisteria House, and watched as he renewed his acquaintance with the former thief Silen. Words had been exchanged and jade coins had changed hands, giving Sesus Bera a small army of rented eyes and ears with which to observe the city during the following night. That he had done so personally was something of a small revelation. I had been taught that the Dynasts never soiled their hands with money. Instead they relied on servants to perform actual transactions. Yet Bera had shown no obvious aversions to either carrying coin or personally doling out the lucre. The towering, green-haired man seemed capable of swimming in the opulent sea that was his native culture, and then pulling himself ashore to navigate the tangled thickets of edict and norms that are the Scavenger Lands’ social terrain. There was a lesson in this. I wondered if I could go so far as he in setting aside my native assumptions of how the world ought to be, but at the same time I still nearly choked whenever I thought of my father and his wife. Perhaps certain acts should be seen as wrong by every culture, or maybe this was just me being small minded.

After Sesus’ meeting with Silen, we retired to a smaller, quieter establishment on the edge of the city’s riverside teahouse district, outside the municipal walls. The choice of venue had been his, and it quickly became obvious that, despite his earlier statement, he was at least somewhat acquainted with the city’s leisure spots. Lean men with calloused hands and the rangy looks of riders had been waiting for him. One by one they had bowed their heads or touched their brows and reported to him. Routes were being monitored, and only a small group in one of the outlying freeholder villages had failed to send a messenger.

Hours later, when I was home and lying in my own bed, I had tried to plot. My tired eyes had fluttered shut, though; then a servant was shaking my shoulder and announcing that Sesus Leda would be ready to depart in a matter of minutes. Now, late into the afternoon of a day spent being dragged across the city, I followed her onto the causeway that led to the Plum House. We arrived, trailing a small contingent of House Sesus servants and the soldiers who acted as Bera’s personal guard while aboard in the Scavenger Lands. In deference to local sensibilities they had left their Dynastic house uniforms behind, but the soldier’s alertness and well-maintained weapons were enough to inform even casual observers of their professionalism.

The Plum House was situated just off the shore of the Rolling River in the placid shallows. This establishment and a handful of others built along the banks formed small, but opulent teahouse district on the southern side of the city’s piers. Where most of the dockside houses catered to sailors with obvious prostitutes, the Flowering Houses – as the five were collectively called — employed skilled performers to amuse ships captains and wealthy passengers. The Plumb House itself was in actuality an interlinked collection of tea huts and platform gardens built on stilts above the slow flowing waters. The three-story, pagoda-roofed central house offered baths in its lower levels and excellent views of the city skyline from its upper balconies. Its entrance was a calligraphy-decorated passageway that led to a lacquered wooden central chamber, three stories in height. Preparations were still underway at this late afternoon hour, so it was an irregular collection of masseuses, servants and a few apprentice courtesans who answered the house mistress’ clanging of the gong to bow in greeting.

Sesus Leda, clad in her jade plate and bearing her Dire Lance, came to a halt in the middle of the room, with only the most perfunctory of nods to acknowledge the courtesy paid to her. The house mistress, an aging blond-haired beauty in a strawberry-colored robe, came shuffling up and dipped her head deeply.

“Lady Sesus, I was unaware that it was your Exalted self we will be entertaining this evening.”

“No, it is my father whom you will amuse. I am here to see to the preliminary arrangements and the disposition of the guards.”

The house mistress licked her lips carefully.

“You are certain, Lady, that you’re father wishes to have the entire teahouse for himself and his retinue. Even knowing the costs-“

“Yes, I am, and you will be adequately compensated before we begin. If necessary I am willing to buy this establishment. Now, I would like a bath while there is time.”

With that, we were taken downstairs. Having been swept along by the will of the Dragon-Blooded all day, I needed a quiet moment to put my thoughts into order and devise a stratagem for extricating myself and the unknown Solar from the trap that was closing around her. Only there was to be no private time. Sesus Leda’s request was for a single bath in an open room. The rest of us were expected to busy ourselves waiting on her

While her father was making the journey through the Scavenger Lands with two masseuses, his personal astrologer, a physician, majordomo, the majordomo’s scribes, a chef and five assistants, and twenty-five household guardsmen, along with all of the oxen, drivers and laborers needed to support the accompanying trains, Sesus Leda had only her three maidservants. They were of an age with Leda herself, and I had gathered from earlier conversations that that they had been given as gifts during her childhood. Their hair was streaked with airy blue in imitation of their mistress’, and they removed her armor and body suit there before the rest of us. Leda stepped to the side of the copper tube in the middle of the room, and glanced back over a bare shoulder at me, clearly intending to catch me in a moment of profound embarrassment. While I was made mildly uncomfortable by the situation, I was hardly mortified. I had grown up in a city known to many by the appellation Decadence, and was accustomed to public baths in which members of both genders often swam together unclothed. I met Leda’s eyes with careful disinterest, and she looked away with irritation, stepping and settling herself in the steaming water.

One of the maids began to pour water over her hair, pausing only when two guardsmen approached to seek clarification about Leda’s scheme for the placement of sentries. Then, before the maid servant could begin to shampoo her mistress’ hair, the young Dragon-Blooded turned my way again.

“Perhaps Passic would enjoy performing this task?” she asked in her High Realm-accented Riverspeak, and a false smile settled on her lips. Her three maid servants tittered, sharing their mistress’ petty malevolence.

“Perhaps I would not,” I said, not addressing her directly, nor speaking of myself in the third person, as she was used to by custom.

Now she pulled herself up against the side of the copper tube so that I could see the wet tops of her breasts and her glistening arms. Her blue-streaked hair was plastered to her neck and shoulders, and the smell of blossoming lilacs filled the room. I looked way, feeling the first stirrings of lust and embarrassment. It is not easy to cleave to the careful compromises of one’s native culture if the other party feels little need to reciprocate — especially as a man of 17 confronted by naked female. Leda laughed, enjoying the effect she was having on me. The maids snickered and the rest of the household slaves looked carefully unconcerned.

Servants of the teahouse entered the room carrying trays of fruit, decanters of wine and pillows for us to sit on. A small brazier was lit to warm water for barley tea.

“Should I ask for a courtesan to entertain you while you wait for me to finish?” Sesus Leda asked. “Perhaps you would like a full massage lying unclothed on the pillows. Maybe you can sing. A pretty boy like you could do much to enliven the atmosphere of this room.”

I looked Leda in the eye and tried to speak calmly, but the words came out sharper than intended. “I spent today acting as an advisor on the city of Great Forks out of gratitude for your father’s friendship, and I know that he did not mean for me to spend that time amusing his petulant daughter.”

Leda’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and each servant in the room paused, holding his or her breath.

From the entrance, a dulcet voice distracted us with fluid power. The stunning, golden-skinned courtesan’s words struck with a soothing impact that was disproportionate to the mundane meaning of her welcome, and she dipped in a curtsy with such grace and posture that Leda responded with a sigh of admiration rather than envy. The performer wore a pale-green kimono that matched her cobalt hair and eyes with swimming schools of jeweled lapis fish and a silk sapphire water serpent woven into the river-bottom scene skillfully depicted on her garment. Behind her stood two younger courtesans and an apprentice who carried their musical instruments.

“Would the Chosen of Mela care for singing or music?”

Four soldiers and the chef of the restaurant that would provide food for the evening arrived, all of them obviously bearing questions. Leda ignored them.

“Can you dance for us? A dance of the River Province?” Leda asked.

“I am best known for my talents at singing. However, the instructors of the city’s Western School have perhaps unwisely granted me a certificate of competency in the seasonal dances at the 3rd level.

“Dance then,” Leda said and leaned back into the embrace of the water’s heat. The instruments were set up, the two courtesans and the apprentice seated themselves, and the blue-haired entertainer took a place, directly across from Leda. She unfolded two performance fans — larger than the ones that a lady or gentleman might use to cool themselves — and took up a pose, left foot flat, and her right foot elevated on its forward pivot point, so that her heel was off the floor and her right leg slightly arched. The apprentice courtesan brought her hand and pick down the strings of her instrument and the room flowed into motion. The song was of summer on the mighty Yellow River, and the dancer held her fans flat, recreating the skimming of fisherman’s boats and messenger skiffs. As she pivoted gracefully from side to side, we felt the busy pulse of river traffic, and the fans, held vertically like screens, mimed the passage of sails on junks seeking for the distant Inland Sea. Her hands told the story of people and their instruments of travel, and her body was the river itself — its gods, legends and eternal motion from east to west. When she finished, there were genuine smiles of small delight at having seen something beautiful, and Leda seemed pleased.

“We will expect more of such when my father arrives,” the Dragon-Blooded said, sounding polite for the first time since I had met her. She then gestured for the waiting soldiers and the chef to step forward. “If you would be so kind, keep young Passic entertained, and light music would be appreciated.”

As the negotiations began, the courtesan approached and bowed to me. She took a seat on a cushion to my right, though forward so that I could observe her profile. Tea and wine were offered, though I declined the wine, wanting my wits clear for the evening.

“There was something mentioned earlier about a massage,” she said. Then she leaned towards me and whispered disarmingly, “I’m Fia, and I humbly recommend something more discreet than Lady Sesus’s suggestion of a massage without clothing.”

“Passic Taut. And yes, something that would leave me with a little dignity, please,” I replied.

She smiled as if my response had been clever, then moved and seated herself behind me.

Her fingers bit deep into my shoulder muscles through my top’s cotton weave, and they were every bit as skillful as her dancing had been. For all her talent, though, I could sense that her heart was not fully committed to the task at hand. It occurred to me that her that by taking up a position behind me, she could clearly observe Sesus Leda and her dealings from over my shoulder. Before I could formulate suspicions about Fia’s motives, the shards of the Unconquered Sun’s power within us cried out to each other. A deep current of Solar-aspected Essence passed invisibly between us. Fia froze, and my sight washed out in an inner flare of bright sunlight and golden recognition.

I knew this woman: councilor, adviser, sorcerer and an ambassador of the Deliberative. A mother to golden children, an ally, an enemy and savage foe. She had been golden skinned even then, but so had we all — for we Solar Exalted had lived to such years with the Sun’s power that pale skins became as platinum and black turned to ebony gold.

When my vision returned, Sesus Leda was looking at us, her brow furrowed in irritation.

“You must be fantastically skilled at your art to provoke such a reaction,” she said to Fia. “Though maybe it’s a trick that’s entirely too easy to perform on a boy of so few years. He looks like he finished before you had even really begun.”

We both began to blurt out explanations and stopped as our words clashed. This amused Leda, and it was with satisfaction that she turned her attention back to the ordering of the guard force.

Fia and I sat in silence, she kneading my shoulder muscles and neither of us sure which action to take.

“Is there a place where can I relieve myself?” I quietly asked.

“Follow me.”

With that we stood, and she led me out of the room and into a narrow wooden hallway that ran to the back of the teahouse. The music of the younger courtesans and the apprentice followed us down the passageway to the deck, which overlooked the harbor. Waves lapped below us, and the smell of the toilets was muted by incense and scented woods.

“I know little of escapes,” Fia whispered.

“I have some experience with intrigues,” I replied quietly. It could be said that I was lying, but I like to think that this was not a complete falsehood. I had participated in and, well, instigated several small schemes in the House of Learning. I and some of my fellows had on occasion stolen into our masters’ bed chambers to rearrange their possessions in ways that would sow confusion. We had succeeded in turning a one-ton statue backwards and bargained our way at midnight past a library guardian spirit to copy from a thaumaturological tome that had been placed off limits to us. I had even taken a handful of my companions to the Wisteria House, and Silen had entertained us as though we were visiting scavenger lords rather than students of limited means. A scavenger lord is part scholar and part thief, and not only did minor larcenies suit my nature, I had decided that even more hands-on training was in order.

Weighing those petty exploits against the dangers of the present, I decided to ditch intrigues and scheming. Directness would be best.

“Is there a boat here, something that we might use to depart now?” I asked.

“Yes, under the kitchen.”

I opened my mouth to continue and stopped. Something was wrong. I turned as Sesus Bera stepped noiselessly out onto the deck. He was dressed in dark-green leather, which was partially concealed by a silk robe patterned in a weave of artful birch leaves over a background of dark pine needles. His protective carapace contained cunningly worked pouches that held solid plates. The wood-aspected Dragon-Blooded came to halt facing Fia, and he was suddenly much too still. It was the motionlessness of a trained martial artist, relaxed, poised and ready to launch a bone crushing blow that would smash stones and lay low an Exalt.

“It would be best if you did not say anything from here on,” he told Fia in River Tongue. “We have all heard the stories about how deadly the voice of Essence can be when wielded by one of The Deceivers,” he said, using the Immaculate Order’s term for the Eclipse Caste. “Stay silent and you will live a while longer.”

Fia nodded.

A woman stood behind Sesus Bera at his shoulder. She had been so quiet that I had overlooked her presence until now. She had an ageless face, violet hair and ancient dark-purple eyes. She was utterly forgettable in spite of her distinguished appearance, and it took some seconds to recall that she was Bera’s household astrologer. Pale points of white flecked her eyes like constellations in the sky.

“I told you that there would be at least two,” she said in Old Realm to Lord Sesus. Her fluid speech was far beyond my level of accomplishment, and her accent could very well have come from the Heavenly City itself, for all I knew.

“She could be of such use as the Realm moves towards civil war,” Bera replied, his eyes still locked on Fia. His Old Realm was rougher.

“She dies tonight, once she has served to lure out the other,” the astrologer said evenly.

Bera nodded and gestured for Fia to precede him back into the hallway. He kept a wary distance as she swept by. Then he and the astrologer followed, paying me not the slightest heed. Soon after sunset, the first violence of the night was underway.

Only feet away...

In the calm waters below the teahouse, the demon Malwia waited. She swam noiselessly as her preternatural senses allowed her to track her charge through the rooms and hallways above her. She trailed along as the Twilight Caste scholar followed the Dragon-Blooded lord and the captive Eclipse Caste Solar across a short bridge and into the largest of the tea huts — a structure located at the rear of the assemblage of small buildings and large enough to accommodate a party of 25 with space to spare.

The demon was tempted to simply grab the scholar and make good an escape, but the risk was too great. She cared not at all that the other Solar would surely die, but the compulsion that had been laid upon her forbid her from taking needless chances with her ward. And so she bided her time, listening to the thumps of motion and the whispers of plots that reached her from inside the hut.

That night...combat...

In the dark, the dead and the living closed on the inn that the former brides of Ahlat had selected. The targeted establishment was located on a rim street next to the city’s wall, and it was separated from its nearest neighbor, a stable, by a small garden.

Wendai and her sisters had relocated to the flat roof of the two-story stable only minutes earlier. They watched from this hide sight as men in leather armor quietly moved into the garden and approached the inn’s back entrance. Then the shambling dead appeared, draped in thick robes and moving up a side street on a course that would take them into the garden. Hidden by flowering bushes and blossom-laden trees, the men in armor sank deeper into the evening shadows as the slap of shuffling feet grew louder.

Wendai gestured to Laril and the others in the hand speak of the brides. Prepare for bow fire, she communicated. Take the officers first.

With that done, she silently removed from a pouch a led bullet meant for a sling and weighed it in her hand. When the dead began pouring through the garden’s side gate, she flung the heavy pellet down into the head of the nearest man in armor. There was a satisfying snap followed by the heavy thud. The dead froze, turned and charged; the living met them head on. None of the combatants cried out, there were only muffled grunts as mortal soldiers were wounded and stifled their pain. The arrows of the former brides rained down unerringly on both sides as Wendai picked out targets of importance for her sisters.

When the melee had run its course, Wendai descended into the garden to examine the toppled combatants. As the others joined her and began to retrieve useable arrows, Laril approached and gestured at Maris, youngest of the ex-guardswoman who had guarded their backs and faced the other way during the melee. “Maris says that we were observed. There was someone quiet, very quiet on the building behind us. Also, she believes she saw a group of men moving to the north of us, and one more to the west.”

“What do you suspect?” Wendai asked.

“That the mortal soldiers were a strike force meant to kill us in speed and stealth. They fought well, like commandos. The dead were a separate unit, possibly here for the same reason. I also believe that there are additional fangs of soldiers whose presence is a redundancy meant to ensure our deaths in battle.”

“We will act accordingly,” Wendai whispered back. Laril brightened at this and touched her fingertips to her brow. With that, Wendai set out at a run, and the others followed in single file. Clearly, the wandering woman had not exaggerated the level of danger within this seemingly soft city, and Wendai now intended to escape the possible cordon that had been set up around her.

She could only hope that the wandering woman’s lateness — already an hour overdue – did not mean that her mentor had fallen prey to one of the hazards she had described.

They had covered two blocks when Wendai paused at the corner of a building and held her breath to listen. The clashing sound of men running in metal armor reached her ears. She gestured for her companions to establish a fighting line where they stood, and she joined them with shield and spear in hand.

The Dragon-Blooded who led his men around the corner was a dilettante of House Cynis, and both he and his soldiers were stunned to encounter a small formation of battle-ready warriors awaiting them at point blank. The former brides screamed their fearsome war cry and impaled the leading footmen on their spear points. Wendai thrust at the Dragon-Blooded in his full plate, her weapon surrounded by a golden nimbus. The man flew upwards in a fiery, evasive flare of Essence that carried him to safety behind his soldiers. Wendai followed. Her magic-fueled leap took her over the shaken Realm infantrymen, and while descending, she thrust again with her spear. It was only the Dragon-Blooded’s flashing steel armor that saved his life by preventing him from being run through completely. The spear blade punctured his chest plate and dealt a wound that would have crippled a mortal. Still, he was a Dynast of the Realm and did not cry out or faint. He lashed back with his jade daiklave as Wendai landed. She absorbed the strike with her shield, and the wicked spike on the Dragon-Blooded’s weapon punched through mere inches from the former bride’s eye.

The two combatants strained, her weapon buried in his breast and held back by one hand, his locked in her shield. Wendai threw her weight into the spear, twisting and screaming with the effort. She had always been slender and strong, and her Exaltation had granted her additional strength. Slowly, she drove her opponent to his knees. An anima of fire licked the air around the Dynast as he dropped his daiklave and grasped the shaft of the spear with both hands, but it was already too late. The weapon slipped deeper in, and not even the Fire-Aspected’s spark of life could withstand the assault. The blaze of red Essence guttered and flickered out as Wendai’s foe toppled over.

The Night Caste Solar drew her short sword and spun in place, deflecting axe blows from two soldiers who had left their companions to aid their lord. Her blade shone with sparks of Essence as she fended off the attacks, then stepped forward and thrust its point home into the throat of the nearest soldier. Maris, the youngest of the former brides, drove her spear through the back of the other. The fight was over, and Wendai stood with the empty golden ring of her Caste Mark shinning on her forehead.

A few blocks away to the north...

Watery illumination rippled across the buildings of the florists’ neighborhood as a Dragon-Blooded’s anima flared. The light washed over the walking dead against whom the Dynast fought, and over the two Abyssal Exalted who watched from above.

“Should we intervene?” the Seer of Morbid Pleasures asked quietly. “No,” Abnegation of Ebullience responded.

Crystalline white light erupted, and shards of the purest, elemental stone scythed into the shambling dead. An earth-aspected Dynast and his assassins had joined the fight.

“We could win,” the Seer said.

“The fight here and now, or the evening’s battle?” Abnegation asked.

His Day Caste companion was silent.

Already a significant portion of their dead warriors were so mangled as to be ineffective. The Abyssals’ liege maintained a small network of mortal devotees who had stocked the basements of their homes and workplaces within the city with abused corpses. Abnegation of Ebullience had expended much dark Essence in using the priestly powers of his Caste to raise these bodies and form two small, ready-made strike forces — forces that had been cut apart as they had unexpectedly encountered fang after fang of mercenaries and a handful of Realm house guards who fought in civilian clothing, without banners or unit insignia.

“There was a baleful light that hung over the inn where our target supposedly lodged,” Abnegation of Ebullience observed as he gazed upwards into the sky. “I believe the stars here have occulted one and another other. We were told to expect a single girl only moderately skilled in a secular fighting style, and instead we have encountered both Terrestrials and a Solar with elite soldiers at her disposal. Too much remains unknown, and our power is limited here.”

The Seer nodded in silent agreement. The motion and breath of Creation held no accessible Essence for the two Death Knights, and the city itself was aspected towards carnality, hedonism, learning and culture. The humid, infectious rot of life was intense, and it threatened to spoil the marble purity of death in the Abyssals’ souls if they remained exposed overly long.

Additionally, the dark Exalts were not the only beings abstaining from bloody war. Above, the city, five thunderbird elementals circled, watching but not intervening. Both Abyssals wondered what level of violence would cause the city’s Enforcers to join the fray.

“Has there been no word of Flower of Retribution?” The Seer of Morbid Pleasures inquired hopefully.

“None. Our lord has not seen fit to release our sister from her struggles against the Fair Folk in the south. We remain on our own,” Abnegation of Ebullience replied

“Very well. As we lack both information and resources, I concur with your sentiments that we should withdraw.” With the prospect of battle gone, The Seer’s voice was again laden with its customary tone of ennui.

“What outcome do you see for the conflict?” Abnegation asked his companion.

A smile returned to the Day Caste’s lips.

“If the Solars survive this night, we will meet them in wondrous strife soon enough.”

Simultaneously...

The wandering woman’s leap carried her to the top of the Cherry Blossom House. Her long coat rippled in the night’s breeze, and her ironwood pole arm with its curving blade of meteoric iron bobbed slightly as she landed lightly on the stone tile roof. Her negotiations with the city’s rulers had left her running late, and haste was now required. Cautiously, she peeked over the roof’s central peak. Out on the river, she could see that the Plum House’s outlying buildings were lighted with paper lanterns, and that sentinels armed with bows were out in force on the balconies. Whoever had chosen this venue had picked well. There was only one approach, a wooden causeway, and the leap from the roof of the nearest, landlocked teahouse was beyond even the wandering woman’s magics.

Though not, as she soon discovered, beyond the prowess of an angry Solar. As the Sidereal Exalted pondered how she might guide Wendai and her companions into the Plum House, the sky exploded in a wrathful golden light tinged with early morning greens and blues as a dawning sun fell upon the cluster of buildings. The wandering woman turned her head to save her night vision, and tried to blink away the brilliant image already seared into her eyes. As her sight returned, she saw that the influence that had distorted the stars above the city had been rescinded. Five gold stars shone revealed in the night sky above Great Forks.

Inside the tea hut…

Fia’s hands trembled with restrained anger and fear as she knelt on the floor at the room’s center. Her characteristic calm had fled, and her inner self railed that her life should be made forfeit so near to freedom. Though her face remained composed, primal Essence surged within her body as a fundamental urge towards continued existence. Behind her, the floorboards creaked softly as Leda shifted under the weight of her armor, waiting for the signal to take Fia’s life. The young Dragon-Blooded had been furious when Lord Sesus had explained to her that she had been unknowingly entertained by one of the Anathema. On Fia’s left, at the back of the long room, Sesus Bera bided his time, seemingly at his leisure. The Dragon-Blooded lord reclined on two large pillows and watched his daughter’s maidservants on the other side of Fia perform a simple, if enthusiastic harmony. His astrologer sat beside him, cross legged and with perfect posture.

Hard-eyed men and swaggering women entered the hut and made their way among the pillars along the sides of the room so as not to interfere with the entertainment in progress. They delivered whispered reports to Lord Sesus’ majordomo. Normally, the light-skinned, high-collared man would relay a summary, but on occasion he invited a courier to Sesus Bera’s raised platform to explain hers or his observations in tones inaudible to Fia. Orders were issued, and the messengers departed.

Aside from the passing couriers, Fia was left with only two polished pillars and an empty expanse of wall to contemplate. She had been told not to move, and it had been explained to her that she would forfeit a hand and a foot if she stirred from her position. She had much experience in sitting silently and still, but none in facing her imminent end. At one time she had thought that she would greet death gracefully, thankful to be released from the bonds of a lifetime spent in slavery. Now, unexpectedly, she wished desperately to live. Even in her fear, she could no longer abandon hope for the here and now.

Her heart stirred as the young Twilight scholar passed before her, apparently on his way to address Lord Sesus. He encountered a messenger who was departing, and as the two walked by each other, the courier’s long, curved dagger disappeared from its sheath. Fia blinked, she had been looking directly at the two, and yet no one, including the messenger, seemed to have noticed what had just transpired. The young man moved on out of her field of vision, and as the maidservants continued to sing, she could hear the scholar speaking in an earnest voice. Bera’s laugh rumbled in response as he dismissed whatever suggestion the youth had made. Fia could hear her fellow Solar walk away and take a place with servants waiting alongside the wall behind her, behind Leda as well.

The maidservants’ song faltered as dawn-like sunlight illuminated the hut’s rice paper door, silhouetting the guards outside. In an instant of panic, Fia looked to her left. Sesus Bera was sitting bolt upright, his still-sheathed sword in one hand, and the other hand on the hilt, prepared to draw and strike in a single move. He nodded to his daughter; then both his and the astrologer’s expressions collapsed into shock.

From behind, Fia the young Twilight scholar spoke.

“Don’t move Leda.”

The air-aspected’s sharp intake of breath was audible over the screams of men and calls for reinforcement.

Next: Strife, resolutions and denouements in Salt Lotus: Cycle 4

By Munificent Perception

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