Salt Lotus/Twilight-4
By MunificentPerception
Moments earlier, inside the tea hut…
Fia stood up slowly — her only concession to the last two hours of stillness the cautious deliberateness of her motion. Her hands disappeared into her wide sleeves and reappeared holding folding paper fans. A silver shimmer infused her kimono, and bright motes of Essence drifted upwards from the garment. She dropped into a fighting stance with both fans spread wide and backed cautiously away from Sesus Bera and his astrologer. The Dragon-Blooded lord’s hands remained on his sword, ready to draw and strike.
The dawn light on the paper screen door diminished, as if its source had moved indoors.
“Passic,” Sesus addressed me calmly even as he tracked Fia’s movements toward me. “You have my forgiveness if you are under her control.” Beneath my hands, Leda was utterly motionless. The stolen knife pressed up against her vulnerable throat just above the jade collar of her armor. I had the power of death over life, but I knew that could not exercise it, not like this. I had never killed, and cutting a helpless victim’s throat was beyond pale, even with my life at stake.
“But you are not under her control, are you?” Lord Sesus observed, his features hardening. “You would not be so frightened.”
I found it necessary to clear my painfully dry throat before speaking. “No lord Sesus, I am-“
The astrologer’s hand blurred and her darts were at my side before I had registered what had happened. My anima flared and filled the room with twilight purple and fading red as the weapons were stopped cold. The scholar-adventurers of the Twilight Caste have always been explorers and meddlers, and where our Dawn brethren’s animas can be made to inspire awe, ours shield us from the physical dangers that have accompanied our inquiries and sorceries.
As if the attack had been signal, the floor began to buckle and tendrils of darkness boiled up into the room through the splintered cracks.
Lord Bera was on his feet, sword out and lunging towards Fia and me. I kicked Leda forward into her father’s path and the floor fell apart entirely beneath us. I managed to grab Fia’s loose sleeve and wrap my hand within its voluminous fabric before we hit the water. Discharges of Essence and an inky enveloping darkness vied for dominance as an indigo-lit, polished wood blade slashed through the blackness inches away from my eyes. A powerful surge pulled me backwards. My arm was nearly dislocated in its socket, and I lost my grasp on Fia, but not before she had been caught up in the same flow.
Points of green, sunlit insanity sparkled in the living darkness around us. Struggling, I fought towards the surface to escape the mad lights that plucked at my higher soul. I broke into the air and looked around. Fia appeared next to me and fought desperately to keep her head above the water. A formal kimono is a weighty garment, even before its accompanying, heavy and lengthy sash is wrapped around the wearer. Dropping the courier’s knife, I swam behind Fia, reached under her arms and then strained backwards, towing her. Fia kicked as best she could, losing her silk slippers, and we found ourselves heading towards the shore. A flash of submerged, forest-green fire appeared and disappeared in the depths. Ashore, the brilliant dawn radiance enveloped a girl who sprinted and dodged between the buildings of the Plum House as she searched the river and fended off attackers. Some twenty or so yards away, the water parted and the violet-haired astrologer surfaced. Her dark eyes found ours and glowered.
Fia and I redoubled our efforts.
The astrologer broke into a quick crawling swim towards the stretch of shoreline nearest to her and called out for aid. The unnatural current that had pulled Fia and me from the battle had carried us further north, and we reached land there only moments before our enemy gained the shore. I helped Fia out of the water and onto a walkway, just as a group of mercenaries reached the astrologer. She snatched the bow out of the first man’s hands and an arrow from his quiver before he could protest. She loosed the shaft, then stole a second and loosed again in a display of skill that had been honed over centuries. Fia and I expended Essence dodging, leaving behind halos of water where we had stood. The arrows punched through stacked crates. Charms of archery burned within my mind and on the tips of my fingers. If I had had a bow, I could have answered the astrologer with shafts lit with blazing Essence. The violet woman drew another arrow from the quiver of the now unresisting soldier for hire and took her time. She let fly, and the arrow rode a cable of fate, keening with its imbued destiny to take my life.
A rake-thin woman in a battered long coat and an equally weathered traveling hat appeared beside me from out of the shadows and slashed the air with an iron-bladed lance. Threads in the Tapestry of Creation snapped with a metallic ringing, curled back and rewove themselves. In a nearby teahouse, a customer and a concubine who had been destined to conceive a male child would now receive a daughter. In the warehouse beside us, a drunken guard dicing with his equally inebriated companions came up with a pair of ones instead of the double sixes that the pattern spiders of the Loom of Fate had intended for him. The line of destiny guiding the arrow broke, and the missiles spiraled away over the water as if it had glanced off a solid object. The Astrologer drew another arrow and knocked the shaft against her bow. The woman in the battered coat threw herself in front of Fia and me, arms held wide to shield us.
The astrologer glared at her with cold rage, but did not loose.
“Run,” the woman in the long coat said tersely in Riverspeak.
“What?” Both Fia and I asked stupidly. In our addled state of shock the situation around us had ceased to make sense.
Sesus Bera emerged from the water next to the astrologer, nimbly drawing his armored bulk from out of the water without assistance. The astrologer directed a cold smile at the woman who was attempting to shield us with her rake-thin body.
“Run!” the mendicant shouted, and her free hand flashed through the motions of making the sign of Mercury, the Maiden of Journeys and Travel. A saffron light enveloped the three of us, and the astrologer drew her arrow fully back and loosed.
Each of us dodged out of the missile’s path with our battle magics and ducked around the corner of the warehouse. We ran, and I nearly went sprawling to the stone street as the ground seemed to flow beneath me. With the yellow-orange light of Mercury radiating around me, the paving stones sped under my sandals as if I were riding a charging horse rather than merely sprinting on foot. We covered several city blocks, leaving startled shouts in our wake. Ahead, to the west, a column of golden light rose up above the buildings, along with burning curtains of green and purples. The woman in the long coat came to a halt with an expression of wonder on her face. Fia and I also paused in our flight.
“Not merely two, nor three, but a perfect circle of the sun,” our benefactor whispered to herself in Old Realm. Her accent was disturbingly similar to the astrologer’s. Then she turned to address us in Riverspeak. “Run north and stop for no one. You are familiar with the dock district?” I nodded. “Good. At the fourth dock there is a ship’s skiff. A captain and some of his men will be waiting. They will have a yellow glass lantern lit as signal, they and are instructed take you to the ship Salt Lotus. That is our transportation away from this city and to safety. When you are aboard the Lotus, make sure the captain sends the skiff back to dock to wait for myself and the others. Understand?”
We both nodded and then she was off, running in a flash of orange starlight.
Her patron deity’s grace receded from around us as the woman moved away, leaving Fia and myself to make our way north at our own speed. After several minutes we reached the dock, and winded, staggered to the lighted skiff. Four oarsmen and a tall man with a sword and captains long coat watched our approach with disbelief.
They allowed us aboard with the briefest of explanations, despite our being able to recall only a general description of the traveling woman. She had apparently briefed them to be prepared for anything, and I wondered if they would have accepted us with the full knowledge of what Fia and I had become.
They might have, considering the worshipful looks on the faces of two of the rowers.
We had shoved off from the dock and were only twenty yards out when our benefactor appeared — the orange starlight of the Maiden of Journeys’ blessing commingling with the gold flames of the dark girl from the teahouse who bore twin hooked swords. The woman gestured and the girl sprinted down the wharf towards us, her sunburst Caste Mark shining brightly. The captain shouted, “No!” certain that the young woman would overturn the boat if she somehow managed to reach us, but this was not to be the case. She arced gracefully through the air, her passage illuminating the water below her with dawn radiance, and alighted lightly, as if she weighed no more than a bird of the air.
“Dawning Daughter,” she announced proudly, balancing effortlessly on the prow of the tiny boat. On the shore, the Chosen of Travels turned her back and set out running tirelessly towards where the burning curtains of night fire reflected against the clouds above.
Next: /Night-4 Back to: /Zenith-4
Back to: Salt Lotus
This is a work of fan fiction set in White Wolf’s Exalted fantasy setting and is no way meant to challenge White Wolf’s copy rights or trademarks. The characters Joyous Gift, Mirror Flag, Ribbons of Sorrow, Shield of a Different Day, Spinner of Glorious Tales and Weaver of Dreams of Victory, as well as the city Great Forks are trademarked White Wolf Property.
