Salt Lotus/Night-3
By MunificentPerception Back to: /Twilight-3
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.
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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.
