Difference between revisions of "Salt Lotus/Eclipse-4"

Revision as of 11:52, 30 July 2006

By MunificentPerception

Offshore from Great Forks…

“This is madness,” the captain of the Salt Lotus hissed through clenched teeth. Around him, the crew paused in their preparations — seemingly frozen in place as they watched the conflict play out between the master of the ship and the sunburst-marked young woman who would not let him approach the wheel. “When the Three send you an order telling you to depart their city, you do so at once or end up with curse that will blister your shoulders and wither your posterity!”

“I don’t care what the rulers of this city think or threaten,” Dawning Daughter answered angrily, still surrounded by flames of white and gold and sunrise violet. “Tell your men on the skiff to stay at the dock and wait for the saffron woman’s return.”

Watching this exchange and twined through ropes of the rigging was the triumvirate’s messenger — a small, sinuous dragon made of multicolored jade with ivory-like claws and emeralds green eyes. None of the crew nor Fia nor even Passic could ascertain if the entity was a savant’s automaton or a spirit manifested.

Before Fia or Passic could intervene, a falcon’s cry split the air and caused the planks of the deck to reverberate. Men clutched their ears and glanced upwards. A pair of golden talons could be seen grasping the rigging above the dragon-like messenger, and a pair of predators eyes glared down at those below.

Dawning Daughter relaxed, and then turned her hazel eyes back to the captain. “It seems that the orange traveler wishes us to leave. Also, the Dragon-Blooded’s troops are on their way.” With that she walked past him to the port side of the ship, which was nearest to land. The captain glared at her back incredulously.

“By your leave, lady Anathema,” he muttered almost silently under his breath, though Fia, standing nearby, could sense that even in his anger he had been careful not let his crew overhear his choice of invectives. Around them, the sailors needed no urging. The mention of the Dragon-Bloodeds’ approach served to goad them into frantic action. Ashore, the skiff’s crew pushed the small boat away from the dock and strained at the oars. The jade messenger untangled itself from the ropes and took to the air, slithering in flight towards the palatial Manse of the Three.

Fia approached the ship’s gunwale beside Dawning Daughter. “That might have been better handled,” she said to the younger woman.

Dawning Daughter glared back at her, surprised and angry to find herself being reprimanded. “There are two of our kind and an ally still in the city. We can’t leave them because some local gods say so!”

“I do not think you understand the combined power of the Three,” Fia said. “They are not normally violent, but-.”

“The Dragon-Blooded!” Passic shouted.

On the shore of the Dock District, a group of wildly varying figures on foot and on horseback rushed towards the nearest pier. Sesus Bera led at a run with the astrologer close behind him.

The men on the skiff exerted themselves to the utmost, and as the Salt Lotus began to move — its anchor leaving the harbor’s bottom — the Captain dispatched men with a hook and grappling line to the aft of his ship. They were to snag the skiff as soon as it came into range and draw it alongside the Lotus. A second pair of men with a rescue line stood close by.

Riding on horseback, Seus Leda pulled ahead of her father and rode down the pier as fast as her mount would carry her. Lord Sesus shouted at her in High Realm, but she ignored his orders. Gusting, luminescent clouds of pale blue light sprung up around her as she swung one leg over the side of her mount and leapt clear. She scissored her legs in midair and landed lightly at a full run, despite the heavy panoply of jade alloyed armor that encased her.

“A bow!” Passic yelled. “Do any of you iron-headed sailors have a bow?” but the crew members backed away from him in fear. Fia looked into Leda’s hate-filled eyes across the space that separated them, and she knew what was about to happen. The windy blue anima brightened as Leda jumped towards the skiff. The men onboard the boat shouted in terror as the Dynast landed among them and then leaped again, overturning their small craft. The Dragon-Blooded soared towards the Salt Lotus, rising in her arch and then descending. Fia’s breath caught in her throat as she realized that Leda was going to fall short of her goal. At the last instant, the young scion of House Sesus thrust her dire lance into the side of the ship, just below the gunwale. The pole arm’s blade bit deep, and an icy mountain breeze washed across the ship, rippling its sails. As light as the wind and inhumanly nimble, Leda flipped around the weapon’s handle and came up standing balanced on the long ironwood shaft. At the captain’s command, sailors surged towards her with axes and long knives, even as Dawning Daughter sprinted afterwards towards the Dynast. The knife-wielding crewmember who was first to arrive at the gunwale was sent reeling backwards by a gauntleted blow to the face. Leda vaulted on to the deck and kicked the legs out from under the second sailor, and then leaned over the side to grasp her weapons’ haft. An axe and a knife glanced off her heavy armor as a sailor tackled her legs. Her attuned weapon released itself from the ship’s body, allowing her to draw it forth one handed and smash its heavy, jade-capped butt down on the man who was attempting to throw her overboard. The sailor screamed even as Leda rammed her elbow into the hatchet-wielding attacker. Dawning Daughter was nearly upon her when the young Dragon-Blooded spun her wide-bladed lance in a glittering arc, sending the other attacking crewmembers sprinting away from her in fear and causing Dawning Daughter to slide to a halt, just outside the lethal reach of her enemy.

The Dawn Caste warrior cut through the air as she re-invoked the Raging-Eagle Form, and Leda’s anima brightened again as the Dynast readied her own Charms. On the pier Lord Sesus’ party had come to a halt. The astrologer pointed towards a nearby dock, which a messenger catamaran was in the process of drawing alongside. The group set out in a run, and in a moment of detached relief, Fia decided that there were apparently none among the party with the ability to make themselves light enough to reach either the ship or the midpoint of the abandoned skiff. Secure in that knowledge, the former courtesan unfolded her fans, and her sodden kimono was again infused with a silver shimmer as motes of sun-like Essence drifted up around her. As Passic cast around and called for the sailors to give him a bow or blade, Fia channeled Essence into her paper fans and used a now steel-strong edge to effortlessly slice through the heavy bolt of silk wrapped around her waist. The water-heavy material fell away, and she made her way aft, towards the combatants.

Surrounded by the radiances of their animas, Dawning Daughter and Leda glared at each other as Leda held her white-bladed dire lance thrust forward, forcing Dawning to stay outside the weapon’s long reach. The Dynast tossed her head violently in an attempt to shake off the concentration-sapping effect of Dawning Daughter’s Essence-charged stare. In that instant of distraction, Dawning attacked, reversing one of her hooked swords to snag the dire lance’s ironwood haft with a wickedly curved edge. The blade caught the lance and Dawning drove the huge fighting spear’s point into the deck as she lunged forward and struck with her other sword. The second blade sparked off Leda’s shoulder guard as the young Dynast snap kicked Dawning Daughter in the pit of her stomach. The Solar staggered backwards and was jerked off her feet by her grip on the sword that held the dire lance trapped in the deck. Leda pulled hard, freeing her weapon and disentangling it from Dawning’s blade. The Dragon-Blooded coiled and stabbed at her supine opponent, who rolled aside and then sprang to her feet. Leda cut in a wide arch, seeking to slice Dawning Daughter in two at her waist, but the Dawn Caste Solar leapt over the blade in a back flip that carried her to safety.

Fia’s heart pounded violently within her ribcage. The memories of past lives and ancient Celestial combat styles aside, she was no warrior by temperament or training. Her enemy, conversely, was a Dynast whose skills and martial talents had been honed by the battle-scarred, Exalted instructors of the Realm’s preeminent military academy. Fia’s pounding heart urged her to flee the melee, but a desperate sense of loyalty to another of her kind impelled her towards the fight.

Leda did not wait for her opponents to gather their wits or for one of them to attempt to flank her. She attacked aggressively, thrusting at Dawning Daughter and driving the Dawn Caste warrior towards Fia. The former courtesan backpedaled frantically and only managed to avoid being trampled by her fellow Solar by throwing herself to the side. Dawning dodged and parried, giving ground, and then Leda spun and slashed at Fia. The dire lance shone with power, leaving a sparkling arc of frost crystals in its wake. Only sheer reflex saved the Solar. She blocked with both her Essence-stiffened fans, and her weapons were wreathed with a hypnotic, mirror-like energy every bit as distracting as Dawning’s empowered gaze. The impact of Leda’s parried blow and the supernatural winds that accompanied it sent Fia sliding backwards, but the Sun’s diplomat nimbly kept her feet beneath her and avoided being knocked over the ship’s waist-high gunwale. Below her, in the water, men screamed. The crew of the messenger skiff had abandoned their overturned boat and seized the rescue line that had been thrown to them. Now a blackness as severe as pitch boiled up in the water around them, and it sparkled with green motes of madness. On the ship’s deck, the lanterns’ illuminating flames lost all color and became wavering forms as clear as glass.

Malwia’s oval face and misted eyes emerged from the ink-like river water. In his fear, the foremost man clinging to the rescue line lost his grip on the rope and was swept away by the water’s pull before his fellows could reach him. Malwia seized the line where the man had clung to it and climbed easily, her gray cloak hanging around her shoulders and a pair of matched, brass axes sheathed on her belt.

Burning bright with expended Essence, Dawning Daughter and Leda exchanged a flurry of blows. Dawning twisted around or knocked aside Leda’s Essence-guided strikes. The Solar’s answering attacks were either likewise parried or turned by the Dynast’s heavy plate. Dawning Daughter was more skilled than Leda, and her celestial Charms more potent than the Terrestrial Exalt’s, but the power invested in the mystic jade of armor and lance gave the Dragon-Blooded an edge.

Passic had just discovered a cutlass set aside to repel boarders when the demon Malwia vaulted onto the deck beside Fia. Startled, both Dawning and Leda backed quickly away from each other, warily watching the demon as they opened a space between them. Malwia laid eyes on Passic and sighed in the sudden stillness. She strode across the deck between Dawning and Leda’s weapons, the smile on her lips daring either of the two to attack her. Passic swallowed as Malwia planted herself beside him and turned to watch the pugilists. Leda and Dawning warily took turns eyeing each other and the demon, trying to ascertain the newcomer’s intentions. Malwia returned the warriors’ gazes evenly.

“By all means continue.” The demon’s resonant voice seemed to linger in the air above the silent ship.

For a motionless moment, there was only the rippling of the sails and the sound of waves. Then Dawning Daughter hurled a hooked sword at Sesus Leda with all her might. The blade rebounded off the Dragon-Blooded’s armor with a loud ringing, and the weapon shivered as it tumbled through the air. Dawning sprinted towards Leda as the air-aspect staggered, one hand clutching the newly formed dent in her breastplate. Recognizing an opening, Passic and Fia charged from opposite directions. Leda stayed on her feet and swung one handed with her dire lance at Dawning Daughter, who rolled under the blow. The Dawn Caste Solar came up and plowed into Leda with her shoulder, smashing the Dynast into the gunwale behind her. Both staggered but remained upright, and as Dawning drew back to strike with her remaining sword, Leda hit her hard in the solar plexus with her free hand, dropping the Dawn Child to her knees. Passic found himself charging towards an enemy who was suddenly free to meet his headlong attack. Leda split the air thrusting at him with her lance, and a brass axe flashed by, driving the blow off to the side. A steel-like hand seized Passic by the collar and yanked him off his feet.

“I am forced against my will to keep you alive, Setting Sun,” the demon said as she dragged him back from the melee. “Do not make my work difficult.”

Sparks erupted from a shoulder guard and the side of Leda’s armor as Fia struck with her fans, the disk-within-a-circle Caste Mark blazing on her brow and golden-edged nimbus of white light struggling against elemental blue. Leda in turn slammed the butt end of her pole arm into the Eclipse diplomat’s stomach. Fia grunted as her infused robes absorbed most of the blow’s force. Then abruptly Leda was struggling, wrestling for control of the dire lance as Dawning Daughter seized it with both hands. The two women strained, and again sparks exploded as Fia attacked. Leda screamed as the fans lacerated her back. With one fist firmly locked on the lance, Dawning drew back and struck. Her free hand flared in a brilliant corona of gold, and bright falcon talons of Essence were visible in the heartbeat before her blow passed through the Dragon-Blooded’s armor and plunged into her enemy’s flesh.

Leda’s eyes went wide with pain and her mouth worked silently as she fell to her knees.

Dawning withdrew her bloody hand through the armor leaned her full weight onto the jade dire lance, tearing it out from the Dragon-Blooded’s grasp. Then she and Fia were on Leda, forcing her down to the deck.

“Rope!” Dawning Daughter cried. Before Passic could react, the ship’s captain was striding over iron shackles in hand. In short order the wounded Dragon-Blooded’s wrists and ankles were bound.

Dawning dragged Leda to her knees and forced her up against the gunwale facing towards where her father was ordering the crew of the catamaran off their boat.

“With her as a hostage, they will be forced to let us go,” Dawning Daughter explained to the captain and her fellow Solars.

Leda coughed blood. It took her two attempts to speak, and when she did so her voice was faint with pain and fear. “Forsaken,” she whispered as she shook, “my father will sink this ship to prevent my being defiled by captivity.” On the pier, the astrologer pointed towards the Salt Lotus as Sesus Bera was joined by the earth- and water-aspected Dynasts. At the astrologer's urging Lord Sesus turned to look. The expression on the elder Exalt’s face was horrible to behold as sudden pain collapsed into a brutal determination. One of the signature magics common among the Dragon-Blooded was the ability to cast bolts of elemental Essence from their hands, and everyone standing on the deck of the Salt Lotus found themselves wondering if Sesus Bera would prove capable of single-handedly sending the ship to the bottom on his own. After Lord Bera, the astrologer and a handful of archers had boarded, the earth-aspect joined them and shoved the messenger catamaran away from the dock. Soon the water-aspected Dragon-Blood was moving in supernatural flurry of naval activity as his maritime Charms aided him in single-handedly rigging the small ship for pursuit.

“Can we go faster?” Passic asked nervously as the Salt Lotus drew farther out into the Rolling River. Ahead waited the confluence with the massive Yellow River.

“Not by much…” the Captain said, and then fell silent as the messenger catamaran’s sail snapped taunt and the smaller craft was nearly lifted out of the water as it shot forward. “They have an unnatural wind behind them,” he said, his eyes fixed on the water-aspected Dynast, whose anima banner now boiled like a typhoon driven sea.

“Then we’d better come up with a way of finding a more powerful wind,” Dawning Daughter snapped.

“Charms, artifacts, small wonders? Anyone?” Passic asked.

“I know the spirits of the river and the strand,” Fia stated. “Both are patrons of mine.”

With that, Passic strode towards the Sesus Leda’s white jade dire lance, which lay abandoned on the deck.

“No!” The wounded Dynast screamed hoarsely as Passic reached for the heirloom weapon. Still surrounded by the radiant blue of her anima, she rolled painfully on to her side, away from the scholar so that her bound hands faced towards him.

Passic blurred into a golden flash as shards of white ice slashed through the space where he had stood and blew through the far gunwale. The sole of Malwia’s grey boot slammed to Sesus Leda’s forehead, snapping the Dynast’s head violently backwards. On catamaran, Bera raised a hand with a glinting jade lens strapped to the palm and sent a jagged lance of barbed wood flashing through the air. The elemental shot disappeared neatly into the water a few hundred yards behind the Salt Lotus, and a thunderous geyser exploded up into the air at the point of impact, hanging for an instant well above the Ship’s masts.

“He doesn’t need to hit us,” the captain hissed as water rained down. “A near miss could capsize us.”

Passic strode past the dire lance and checked the supine form of Leda, where she lay on the deck. His hands found a pulse, weak but steady, and her lips still flared with breath.

“We need her alive,” he growled at Malwia, meeting her cold gaze in with the heat of his anger.

“It matters not to me,” the scarlet-eyed demon replied.

“It will matter for my staying alive later on, and you will obey me in this, daughter of the Yozi.”

In the time before history, when the Celestial Exalted and their Dragon-Blooded host had defeated the enemies of the gods, the vanquished primordials had been made to swear oaths on their own names. Beyond imprisonment, the gods had also forced servitude on their former masters by carving out weaknesses within their souls, and such fissures were driven deep into the Messenger Soul that was Malwia.

With no choice but to comply, the demon lowered her eyes.

Passic took up the heavy dire lance and dragged the weapon across the deck. He faced away from the city, and Fia offered to prop up the lance while he performed the ritual. He asked her the name of goddess of the river, and having received it he clapped his hands three times loudly. In his limited scholars Old Realm, he called for the goddess’ attention.

“Beautiful spirit of the Rolling River, tributary to the majestic Yellow, Passic Taut, Chosen of the Unconquered Sun calls to you. Goddess, I offer a tribute worthy of your time and trouble, this spear of white jade and ironwood.” His words rang across the river, and though no god manifested, he sensed a shift in the waters. Then he began to sing. It was a simple song, often sung by the sailors and rowers of Great Forks, offering thanks for the bounty of the river and the joy of a safe return.

As he sang the river goddess rose from the flowing water. She had taken on the form of a silver-skinned woman. She wore no clothes, though her body was concealed by her light green hair, which was draped wetly around her torso. Her eyes were the soft dark brown of silt and her teeth startlingly white as she smiled at her supplicant. From the waist down, within the water, she possessed the body of a river serpent.

“Well spoken, Setting Sun,” the goddess said in Riverspeak, her voice a calm ripple of sound. And then to Fia, “Well met, Crowned Sun. Your newfound station gladdens me. Your beauty will not soon wither, but span millennia, even if you must leave my domain.”

Fia fought the habitual impulse to drop to her knees in ritualistic greeting. Though many of her patrons had been callous or deliberately cruel, the river goddess had been one of the few visitors to the Plum House whom she had looked forward to serving. It was in the Plum house that the goddess manifested when the whim to sample terrestrial pleasures overtook her, and her chief delights had been Fia’s dancing, singing and stories of the creatures of land. Her company had been cheerful and often sister like — as befitted the bond of elemental blood between the two. During the darkest moments of moonless nights, secrets had been whispered between them in the cool and embracing sanctum of the goddess’ shoreline shrine.

Passic glanced over his shoulder at the messenger catamaran. The small vessel skipped across the water towards the Salt Lotus like a perfectly pitched flat stone, and already Sesus Bera and the other two Dragon-Blooded had gathered at the prow.”

“You have practiced the dances and songs that I am fond of?” the goddess asked, and Fia nodded as Passic began to pray silently to the Unconquered Sun.

“You have sung those praising my mistress, the Yellow River?”

Again, Fia nodded, and the goddess turned her face to address Passic.

“Very well. Young scholar, in exchange for the lance and the praising of my name in song, I will shield your passage from my domain into that of my lady’s. As long as Fia sings, a mist will obscure the vessel’s movements and smother the sounds of your leaving.”

The three Solars took up the lance together, and after a short count, heaved it into the waters. The weapon arced into the river without a splash or ripple. Then Fia began to sing in praise of the Yellow River's name. Her voice was magic, her mastery of the vocal art enhanced by a Charm that lent the strength of her Essence to inflection, tone and projection. Her song of tribute rooted the ship’s passenger and crew in place, and it was not until Dawning Daughter roused herself and bestirred the Captain that the sailors began to see to their tasks again. Even as a heavy murk of dark gray rose out of the waters, a rippling path of silver formed on the water before the ship, and broke apart into moonlight dapples in its wake. On the catamaran, the Dragon-Blooded and their Sidereal advisor waited in vain as the world vanished into muted gray. They did not see the path of light nor hear the song that sustained the obscuring fog. For them there was only the unbroken gloom and the whispers of the unclaimed dead — the murmurings of those who had drowned in the river and for whom no mourning songs had been sung or ceremonies made.

After some hours…

The strident footfalls of the violet-haired astrologer faded away, leaving wakes of anger and cold calculation in the brightly-lit, marble-walled cellar. In the aftermath of her departure, The Spinner of Glorious Tales continued with his self-appointed task of rummaging. Bins of cedar were heaped with the token payments of those who had entered the city during the last week. These had not yet been taken to the municipality’s temples to be smashed or burnt as sacrifices to the Three. His hand closed around a small coin of bronze, and he shut his eyes, scrutinizing the inward image of Holvic Kagi handing the coin to the man-shaped thunderbird. The token dropped into a pouch which contained the thumb-sized statuettes that the Dragon-Blooded and many of their soldiers had given to the gate guards.

“Our false astrologer had little reason to complain so,” Tale Spinner said out loud, his enunciated amusement overlaying and then overwhelming the fading wisps of anger left by the purple-haired woman. “The Dragon-Bloodeds’ soldiers were easily twice the number she informed us of.”

“And we did not interfere with the Hunt, as promised,” Shield of a Different Day said, her granite-like eyes alight with an ever-present gleam of deliberation. The goddess belonged to Creation’s pantheon of martial divinities, and she was manifested as a warrior bearing both shield and lance.

“There was no intervention in any overt fashion, not in any military sense,” said Weaver of Dreams of Victory. In the absence of the astrologer, the third member of Great forks triumvirate was slipping back into a ripple of seemings and miens: the shifting appearances of all who had beheld it or passed through its multifaceted domain. In the Chosen of Saturn’s presence, Weaver had appeared indistinct and feminine, displaying the facets and traits of the women — some thousands of years dead — whom had been important to the Sidereal during the long ages of her existence: the eyes of a mother, the voice of a long-passed friend, the complexion of a rival.

“We never blocked their movements nor pressed against their attacks,” the goddess continued. “We only covertly prevented a disastrous encounter which would have resulted in not but heartache for all concerned. We can correctly claim that the destructive interference and manipulations sensed by the astrologer were not our own.”

“Though it was for the best that we did not divulge that these were the works of The Spinner of Glorious Tales’ newest protégé,” said Shield of a Different Day.

There was a fourth entity within the cellar, whose presence had been concealed from the Sidereal astrologer by the three divinities’ magics. Those cloaking Charms now fell away, revealing a figure who wore a bright mask along with robes and armor which obscured its form, figure and gender.

“Are you content?” Tale Spinner asked the young actress. “Is it satisfactory, Mirror Flag, that you were able to aid your fellow Chosen of the Sun by only indirect means?”

The Eclipse Caste Solar responded in a voice that was nearly as well tuned as the storytelling god’s for expressing emotion and craft. “My lord knows full well that such manipulations are my preferred medium. Art and artifice will always suffice where a thousand swords will not. Through my actions my fellow Chosens’ enemies have been played against one and another, and your city has been spared conflict with the Scarlet Empire.”

“That is if Orich Lythe can find the three who were on the Salt Lotus,” Weaver of Dreams of Victory observed. “The Solars aboard that ship so pleased the Yellow River with their songs and homage that she has confounded friend and foe alike with the intensity of her response. Indeed, after last night, it will be interesting to see who reaches the Solars first, Lythe or Sesus Bera.”

Hearing this observation, The Spinner of Glorious Tales ceased his rummaging and turned to face his fellow rulers and the Solar, Mirror Flag.

“Yes, though not as entertaining as what those three Solars will accomplish in the meanwhile,” he said, and then paused, recalling the stories of the Dawn, the Twilight and the Eclipse. “By the time the Dragon-Blooded have another chance at confronting them, the Sun’s Chosen may well have won glorious victories, created strange wonders and founded kingdoms.”

The next morning…

Wearing the resplendent destiny of the traveling Gull and the identity of the wandering woman, Orich Lythe looked nothing like the bureaucrat and courtier that she was in the officialdom of Heaven. Just now, rather than letting fly with the elegant string of Old Realm curses that would have been appropriate to her nature, she laughed and shook her head in accordance with the template destiny she had assumed. She and Wendai and Holvic faced a wall of fog that glimmered in the morning light, reaching down the length of the Yellow River to the horizon. Tendril branches of sliver mist had shot off from the murk and now wound through tributary river valleys, sectioning the visible world into discrete, geographic sub-regions.

It was not merely the sight of hindrances and physical concealments that led her to shake her head in good-humored resignation. A conjured phantasm of shimmering Essence had just delivered a message sent to her by a member of her Circle — a fellow Sidereal whose superiors had overheard something of the potential futures of the Solars aboard the Salt Lotus, during a planning session for the Loom of Fate. A gulf of possibility had been opened by the Twilight scholar’s improvised sacrifice to the Rolling and to the Yellow. The way ahead and the meeting of the five Solars would be a path strewn with obstacles far more difficult that the ephemeral barriers that lay before Lythe’s sight in the here and now. The most problematic of those would arise from the two Solars who stood beside her, watching the mists that blocked them from their companions.

fin

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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.