TenThousandBrokenDreams/Session15

Mother Cypress speaks:

"Hello, my little sparrows. Come closer, that I might tell you a tale of long ago. What tale shall I tell you tonight? Would you hear of the dragon of the people of Ai, which soared on wings of silver and glass to guard their sacred fields? Would you hear of the heroes who slew the dragon of Ai, and of how they were rewarded by the jealous neighbors of Ai who came to take that land for their own? Or would you hear more of the tale of the Sun’s bright children, and the end of the Second Age?

"Then gather round, my children, and spread ears like elephants; that I may tell you more of the tale of the Solar Exalted, of how they departed the Tomb of the Anathema, and of where they went in the days and the hours before that terrible Calibration."

Our heroes trudged slowly upward out of the deep places of the tomb. They gathered up their fallen companions Rei and Thorwald, brought them across the dark water, and made their way up the trapped stair to the upper level. Li took the rear, holding the helpless Rei in her arms. Her body and spirit blasted by the demoness Sondok, she could not move, nor do any more than move her eyes and whisper.

“Li,” she whispered, “wait. I beg a favor.”

Li halted. “What can I do?”

“There is a healer,” said Rei, the effort of whispering a few words enough to leave her gasping for breath. “In the thorny tower… to the south. I do not… trust… my companions. They will slit my throat… for my jade. Please. Take me there.”

“I will do as you ask.”

In the upper vaults, Li informed her brothers of this. They were pleased to be able to aid a companion in arms. They were not so pleased to find that Iwa and Urei were trying to smuggle what appeared to be some very large artifacts out of the tomb.

“What are you holding?” Zera demanded.

“Um, nothing, nothing at all,” said Urei. “It’s, um, supplies.”

Zera shook his head. “Why don’t you put that down.”

“I knew this wouldn’t work!” Iwa hissed to his companion.

Iwa and Urei sullenly set down a pair of long, loosely wrapped bundles. Zera’s direction, the scavenger lord Kurokami unrolled the bundles to reveal a pair of magnificently crafted jade weapons that the Solars swiftly claimed for themselves over the mortals’ objections. Tepet Aekino claimed one, a black jade staff chased with golden dragons, which he recognized as ‘Havoc in the Dragon Palace,’ once borne by the Immaculate missionary Harahané Chal in the latter days of the Shogunate. The Circle thrust the other, an elegant white jade daiklave in the ‘Drifting Pear Blossom’ mode, upon Thorwald despite his disdain for anything other than plain steel.

Deprived of these treasures, Iwa and Urei sought only to leave before the Solars discovered the other, smaller treasures of jade and orichalcum that they had secreted about their persons. Sulkily, they trooped up the stairs amid the jangling of packs full of copper cash. The scavenger lord Kurokami, however, offered to remain with the Circle for a time.

“I’m surprised that you would agree to travel with us,” observed Zera, “after all you’ve seen. Those others couldn’t move fast enough to get out of our sight.”

Kurokami shrugged. “This has been a profitable venture. I have no doubt that you will find yourself in other such treasure houses before too long, and I can hardly complain about having companions with so little interest in the acquisition of wealth. Although,” he added with a glance at the insensate Thorwald, “on the subject of companions… no offense intended, but I can’t believe that your friend will survive. Though I admit that he has been a long time in dying.”

Zera smiled. “I have not yet met the creature, or natural force, that could kill that man.”

Carrying Thorwald and Rei, our heroes ascended from the dusty halls of the Tomb of the Anathema into clear afternoon sunlight. From the vantage of the ruined stone pagoda, they looked out over the wooded hills whose green trees had just begun to gleam with the red and gold of autumn. The slope below them bore the wreckage of their battle against the Tul Tuin soldiery: flattened tents, broken and discarded gear, blood and bits of flesh. The clean light revealed tracks amidst the debris, where soldiers broke before the Solar charge and fled in all directions.

Casting her eyes about along the tracks, Li spotted movement behind a rock some ways down the hillside. Zera followed her as she moved quietly in that direction. There they found a badly wounded soldier who had concealed herself there after the previous night’s battle. She cringed as Li approached, then glared, clutching a dagger in her bloodstained, white-knuckled fist.

Li gave the injured soldier a rare smile. She set down an armful of supplies that she had gathered from the wrecked tents. “Here are some bandages,” she said, “and food and water.”

The soldier looked up with wide, uncomprehending eyes. “I don’t understand,” she said.

Li simply shrugged and rejoined her brothers. They gathered their supplies, placed Thorwald and Rei on rough travoises, and started on their way to the Tower of Barbs.

Aekino blinked in the evening light as a thought came to him. “Where’s Fetek?”

Zera laughed. “Guarding the rear, no doubt.”

The Lunar Fetek, of course, had been following our heroes again in the form of a magpie. He flowed back into his own shape and replied, “As I said I would.”

Zera twitched in surprise. Aekino laughed. Li only shrugged her shoulders as she continued to drag Rei’s travois along the route they had chosen.

Two slow days passed. Our heroes dragged their injured fellows over the pine-clad trackless hills, driving off tigers by day and wolves at night. And then they crested a hill and saw the Tower of Barbs in the valley below. It rose amidst mounds of greenery. Trees and bushes and brambles and briars all merged together into a single green mass, a living tower that made the trunks about it looks small and weak. Two great oaks were its gateposts, tangled about with roses and morning glory.

A small group of soldiers, perhaps two score, had encamped outside the Tower gates. “Will you be killing them too?” asked Kurokami.

Aekino shook his head. “No more killing,” he replied. “Especially my own people.”

“Not unless it’s absolutely necessary,” Zera added.

From their vantage point, Li regarded the tower critically. “We cannot all slip past the guards. And some of the survivors from the tomb are likely to have fled here; they will recognize us.”

“They will not recognize me,” said Fetek. “I will carry your friend there.”

As the Sun’s children concealed themselves amid the pines and undergrowth, their Lunar companion bore Rei down into the valley, to the flowering gates of the Tower of Barbs. The guards questioned him; they were wary of strangers in those cursed hills, and many were indeed survivors of the massacre at the Tomb of the Anathema. But silver-tongued Fetek talked his way past the guard-captain. Escorted by soldiers, he entered the living Tower to meet its healer.

The soldiers brought him up stairs and down halls made of living wood and vines, illuminated by sunlight passing through gaps and shafts in the brambles. They passed through a curtain of leaves to enter a round room. There, the healer stood amongst her shelves of herbs and books.

“Why, Rei!” said the healer. “What has happened to her?” The woman addressing Fetek was small and dark. She wore a kimono of sea-green silk; a pale, luminous jewel gleamed on a diadem upon her brow.

“She has been cursed,” said Fetek, “by a demon.”

The woman nodded distractedly as she fussed over Rei. “Set her down there,” she said.

He complied. Then he viewed the woman with the eyes of Luna. He saw power; Essence wove itself through her blood and bone, focused upon the living jewel she wore. A host of spirits of leaf and branch hovered around her. Unnerved, Fetek made his excuses and departed as swiftly as he could.

The Circle found a cave nearby where they might rest for a time. Blessed as they were with the swift healing powers of the Exalted, it would still take weeks to fully recover from their wounds, for most had suffered enough injury to kill a mortal. So they sat in their cave, where they spoke, and thought, and remembered, and waited.

Several days passed before Thorwald finally opened his eyes and spoke. “Why do I keep surviving these mortal wounds?” he asked.

Zera smirked. “Because mortal wounds kill mortals.”

Thorwald groaned. “And the worst part is, I still owe you three weeks of drinks.”

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

With Thorwald awake and aware, our heroes could finally plan their next move. Would they go to Kaihan and wrest their grave goods from the dead, or would they fulfill the vow that Zera and Thorwald had made to the lady Idris, and free her mother Cessair from the Iron Tower?

Zera wished to procure their old gear from Kaihan. None were surprised that he would choose the route that would allow him to wreak harm upon the walking dead, but he gave other reasons: to gain tools that would aid them in other causes, and to avenge the desecration of the bodies of their former lives, which he likened to the defiling of the graves of one’s ancestors.

Thorwald snorted disapproval. “We need no toys,” he said, “only our own strength. And Kuro the Raven and Blessed Wind deserved what they got. They were arrogant and wicked.”

“Kaihan,” Aekino asserted breathlessly, “is the cleaner route. I will not slay another of Ledaal Vir’s men, not even to save my own life. We must change our path.”

Zera shook his head. “You are allowing the wisdom of your words to be subjugated to your despair,” he said. “There will be bloodshed no matter what, so long as we remain in this region. And we can’t leave, not until we finish what we’ve started.”

Aekino shook his head. He looked into his comrades’ eyes, one after another, and his own eyes were moist. “How many children,” he asked, “do you all have?”

“Ah!” boomed Thorwald. “Now I understand you, Aekino. These are your people. But people die. It is that simple. I have no animosity towards them; I hope that they have no animosity towards me. And we, too, may die; and if we die in Kaihan, our oath will remain unfulfilled.” Aekino could only nod in reply; he hung his head in his hands.

“Remember,” Thorwald added, “we agreed only to take the queen to Idris, but not anything further. If that faerie tries anything stupid –”

Zera nodded. “I would not stay your hand, brother.”

“We must do this,” continued Thorwald, “if only to teach ourselves a lesson: that an oath is not entered lightly. Do you think I wanted to free this faerie whore?”

“There is a third option,” said Li, who had sat quietly for some time, as was her wont. “We may also go and speak with Fetek’s teacher, of whom he has spoken. There we might learn more of the lore of the First Age.”

“Bah!” Thorwald dismissed the notion. “We can always do that later.”

The debate flowed back and forth for hours. In the end, they chose to travel to the Iron Tower when they had recovered further. But that very afternoon, Fetek returned from his scouting to report that a large contingent of soldiers had arrived from the south, led by a red-haired man bearing the mon of Tul Tuin. (“Ledaal Martin!” exclaimed Aekino as the man was described.) The man had argued loudly with the healer, he said, after which the healer had returned to the Tower of Barbs and sealed its gates with a wall of thorns.

This decided matters. If the healer was in any way at odds with Tul Tuin, then they felt safer in going to her for healing. They sent Fetek in to speak with her that very evening. In the form of an owl, he flew in through one of the many shafts that let light and air into the Tower. There he confronted the healer, his tattoos and his castemark blazing with silver light.

The woman faced him with some apprehension. “I know what you are, child of the moon,” she said. “Why have you come to me again?”

“I have comrades in the forest. They are also wounded. As you might guess, they do not want to be seen by the soldiers of Tul Tuin.”

She shook her head. “I will not involve myself in such political struggles,” she stated. “I have an arrangement with the lord of Tul Tuin. He does not disturb me in my Tower, and I do not disturb him in his.”

Fetek smiled. “That is all very well,” he said, “but my companions are like me. As you can imagine, if they want to enter your tower, they will do so, and possibly not in a way you might like.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Not at all.”

She sighed. “Very well. Have them come to the rear of the tower at nightfall. I shall open the way for them.”

Meanwhile, Kurokami the scavenger lord had gathered his possessions. “I think that it may be time for us to part ways,” he said. “Demons are one thing, but the Fair Folk are another matter. And there are politics to consider. I would rather not get involved.”

Zera and Thorwald nodded in understanding and agreement. Aekino said, rather archly, “I recommend that you travel north.”

“Actually, I was planning to go south.”

“North.”

“I am not planning to go anywhere near Tul Tuin, if that is what you are getting at.”

“That will be fine,” replied Aekino smugly.

“You have been a good companion,” added Li. “Go safely and well.”

At dusk, our heroes slipped around the rear of the tower, where the living wood opened before them. A path lit by phosphorescent blooms led them upward and inward to the healer’s workroom. There, she met with her uninvited guests.

“I am Dandra Dinesh,” she said. Whatever displeasure she might have felt was concealed. “Welcome to my home.”

She spoke cordially with the Solars for a time, explaining that she had come to that region some fifty years earlier from her birthplace in the demon-haunted Southwest, to study the ways of Essence from certain masters who dwelt in the vicinity. Then she directed our heroes to lie upon beds of leaves and living wood, and applied poultices to their wounds. A clear white glow emanated from the jewel upon her forehead and bathed them in its light.

In the first hours of the next day, with false dawn just starting to glimmer in the east, our heroes found that the worst of their injuries had healed miraculously, leaving bruises and glaring red scars. Rei, too, had begun to recover; she could move now, though Dandra Dinesh said it would take some time for her strength to fully return.

“You are welcome to come with us,” Aekino told her. “You have been a good companion.”

“Thanks,” smiled Rei, “but I don’t think I’m quite ready to travel yet. Maybe I’ll catch up with you on the road or something.”

“Well. I have something for you.” He brought forth the black iron blade they had won from the demoness Sondok. “I thought you might like it.”

Rei took the blade. “Nice balance,” she said. “Thank you. I’ll put it to good use.”

Dawn came. Our heroes said their farewells and crept out the back way, which sealed itself with brambles as soon as they departed. They made their way out of the valley; but their journeys were interrupted by the cry of a wolf, a call that brought Fetek to a halt.

“Isn’t it unusual for wolves to howl during the day?” asked Aekino. The others nodded.

“That is not a true wolf,” said Fetek. “That is my teacher. She wishes to speak to me.”

“Will she speak to us?”

The Circle remained behind as Fetek flew off to speak with his teacher. When he returned, he did not speak of the details of that conversation; he did not explain that his master had forbidden him to speak with or meet with them, and had threatened to tear out his throat if he were to disobey her again. He only said, “She will speak with you.”

Fetek led the Circle toward the source of the call, a wide, low cave where great golden eyes shone in the darkness. “What is your teacher’s name?” Aekino whispered to him. “Just call her Mother,” Fetek replied.

A rough, throaty voice came from within, like the grating of polished stones. “Come closer,” it said. “I cannot see you with these old eyes.”

The Solars crept into the cave. “Come closer, come closer,” the voice crooned. “I still cannot see you.” They edged closer and closer, until they could see the glint of light upon fangs. At last, Li said, “Then we shall give you light,” and set her castemark alight, followed by her brothers. The light revealed a great shaggy black bulk, perhaps ten feet in height; a great wolf-woman whose ivory teeth gleamed in a huge grin. “That’s better,” she said as she dipped her head to sniff at them.

“So,” asked Aekino, “what do you want? Why have you called us here?”

“I have your scent now,” she replied. “I can find you now, wherever you go, wherever you hide, anywhere in Creation. You cannot escape.”

“Is that what you brought us here for?” Aekino demanded incredulously. “To threaten us?”

“I will tell you this: you wasted your time in being born.”

“I didn’t choose to be born. I did it anyway.”

“Foolish boy! Do you not think that a spirit is restless? You chose to come back!”

Thorwald growled. “Let us kill this creature.”

The ancient Lunar laughed. “Why am I not surprised? Go back to your lives, little Sun-spawn. You are as broken and incomplete as ever. Just remember that when you abuse your power, I will be waiting.”

They turned their backs on the Lunar and made their way out of the cave. There, Fetek uttered a spell; silver light flared around him as he dissolved into a flock of birds and scattered among the trees.

“I hate them,” snapped Aekino. “With their magic and their cryptic statements. And their magic.”

Zera nodded. “They’re all the same,” he said. “Judging us.”

Our heroes spent the next nine days journeying westward through wooded hills turning red and gold with the coming of autumn. They avoided travelers and farmers, evaded military patrols, and detoured around the Monastery of the Red Butterfly and other settlements. And on the last day of the year, they found themselves on the outskirts of the town of Iron Tower, where they concealed themselves in an abandoned farmhouse and discussed how they might enter the rusty needle of the tower and free the queen.

(Note: all PCs received 3 XP for this session. Fetek comes in with a base 50 XP. Fetek and Zera received an additional 4 XP for contributions. XP totals to date: Aekino 80, Fetek 57, Li 75, Thorwald 77, Zera 84.)