TenThousandBrokenDreams/Session22
- Mother Cypress speaks:
- “Welcome, children. So my little flock has flown back to hear one of my stories, eh? And what would you hear of tonight? Would you hear the tale of the Golden Children, born of the Exalted of Sun and Moon in the First Age? Would you hear of how the Dragon-Blooded slaughtered those children with their parents in the Usurpation, and of how a special few were given immortality and a place in Heaven, from which they might forever watch Creation for their parents’ rebirth? Or would you hear more of the tale of the Sun’s bright children, and of the turning of the Age?
- “Then gather round, my children, and spread ears like elephants; that I may tell you more of the tale of the children of the Sun, and of their doings in the new year.”
* * * * *
Our heroes rode through the night and into the day. They looked over their shoulders, fearing pursuit from Idris, and slipped into the woods and fields to avoid passing through villages along their route. But no one stopped them; no dust rose behind them other than their own.
Their mounts panted with the exertion, their flanks lathered with sweat and foam caking at their lips. The Circle slowed, then stopped, so that the horses might rest. One by one they dismounted to walk their steeds along the road to the south.
Thorwald shaded his eyes with his hand. He watched the sun’s rays slant through the clouds, shimmering amid a haze of pollen and wind-borne leaves. He breathed deep of the crisp autumn air. “Let us camp.”
“Yes, big brother.” Aekino trailed his staff lazily through the dust. Its golden dragons seemed to stir fitfully in their bed of black jade. He looked sidewise at Zera and said, “Tell me, younger brother, do you think you had time to father a child on her?”
Zera scrunched up his face in irritation. He still wore nothing but his trousers and a cloak borrowed from Li, having left all else behind in Cessair’s bedchamber. Patches of sunburned skin glowed an angry red. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Aekino.” Thorwald loomed at the Dynast’s side, a mountain of muscle and slow burn. “I do not think that you are taking this seriously.”
“But I am serious.” Aekino met his comrade’s eyes. “And if you could see things as I do, through the eyes of a father, you would understand just how serious I am.”
“Bah! A Fair Folk’s brats are not children. They are things. Abominations.”
“What, like Martin? Tanith? They are also her children.”
Thorwald flushed. “That is different!”
“No, they’re not.” Aekino grew irritable; how could this barbarian lunkhead miss the point? “Their Essence is different from ours, yes, but that doesn’t make them alien.”
“Aekino, it is you who do not understand!” The northman looked like he wanted to hit something, or someone. “The Fair Folk are not like us. My people’s lore stretches back a thousand years. We have met the Fair Folk many times. And every time we meet, they are the same: soul-stealing monsters from beyond the edge of the world! They are not like men; they are evil creatures by nature. Chaos and destruction follow wherever they go!”
“You are biased by your upbringing. You can’t open your eyes to see what is actually before you. Think, Thorwald: what about us?”
“What about us?” Thorwald grimaced, nonplussed. “That is different!”
“No, it isn’t! Think of this region. It suffers from our presence! We are like,” he flailed for a metaphor, “like great boulders tossed into ponds. We came here and everything changed, because of our mistakes. Our lack of forethought has brought chaos and destruction. How is that different?”
“You exaggerate,” interrupted Zera with his characteristic drawl. “Not everything we’ve done has been a mistake. After all, without our intervention, there would be two demon princes in the world, not just one. And while I know you’d rather debate every little thing to death, we have to make decisions eventually. Or would you rather sit and wait for the Wyld Hunt?”
Distant birds cried in the trees, filling the silence. Then Thorwald spoke, more subdued: “Maybe all that has happened was inevitable.”
“Inevitable?” Zera shook his head in disbelief. “Now there’s a good excuse.”
* * * * *
Our heroes considered finding Master Ro and accepting his offer of magical aid in exchange for cleansing his Manse, the Well of Ashes, of whatever beings had moved into it since his capture. But they had no way of finding Ro since he left them in Idris. In any case, the route to the Well of Ashes passed by the Monastery of the Red Butterfly, where the Immaculate Shima trained her outcaste students, and that scarcely seemed a good place to visit.
Aekino poked at a spot on the map. “I wonder what’s become of Brinlack?” he asked, pointing to a town just across the water from Tul Tuin. They’d taken a ferry from there on their first journey to the area. “It must be difficult for them.”
Zera shrugged. “I’m more concerned with the people of Tul Tuin,” he said. “And with getting myself some clothes.”
Nonetheless, the idea of visiting Brinlack quickly took root. It was a town of no small size, they had no enemies there that they knew of, and it would give them a good view of what had happened to Tul Tuin. Furthermore, Zera’s visions had shown that the town was built on the ruins of the city that he, in his former incarnation of Kuro the Raven, had once ruled.
That afternoon, after leading their mounts across the cool splashing of a knee-deep creek, they stopped at a farmhouse at the edge of a village. There they spoke to a couple of farmers, offering them good silver in hopes of procuring a bow and some new garments for Zera.
“I’m sorry,” said the husband, “but we have nothing for you.”
The wife nodded vigorously. “Those people from Tul Tuin, they’ve been coming through for days, and they had more coin than clothes. We’ve already sold off everything we can spare. You can ask around, but I ‘spect it’s the same.”
Thorwald gave them a shrewd look. “If you have nothing, that is understandable. But if you have anything, even old rags, we will purchase them. As you can see, my friend is none too discerning.”
Though their money had run short, our heroes scraped up a few silver coins, in exchange for which they got a handful of old rags and a barn to sleep in for the night. Zera smoldered quietly as he wound scraps of cloth around his feet as a substitute for boots. Later, peering through the farmhouse’s distant window, he saw the farmers count out stacks of coins, but he kept that to himself. Better to let the farmers cheat him, he thought, than for an enraged Thorwald to tear them apart.
The Circle kept watches that night, just in case some enemy came upon them, for they had many enemies in this land. On his watch, Fetek Breath-of-Midnight looked out upon the moonlit field; and there he saw a matchstick figure lurching all ‘round the borders of that plot of ground, a staff over its shoulder, kicking up chaff and dead leaves to drift on the autumn wind. Silently, the Lunar stalked the figure. It proved to be a scarecrow-spirit, bearing its stand upon its shoulder, walking the borders of the field it guarded.
“Hello, Breath-of-Midnight,” it said with a grin. (Its face could hold no other expression.)
“You know me?”
“I know many things. As do you. Perhaps you’d care to swap a secret or two?”
The field-spirit asked a few small things, and offered some interesting tidbits in exchange. Here’s what it sounded like, more or less:
“Two days ago, a dark woman on a dark horse rode west from here.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. But that could mean anything.”
“Indeed.”
“Something else I’ve heard; the Wyld Hunt chases a man with a giant daiklave.”
“You don’t say?”
“Oh, I do. Could be true, could be untrue.”
“It’s not true anymore.”
* * * * *
Come the morning, the scarecrow was firmly placed at the middle of the field, showing no sign that it might be anything other that what it appeared. As our heroes gnawed on a breakfast of late fruits and stale bread, Fetek tersely explained what had transpired in the night. “I have been given information,” he said. And, making a rather large assumption, “Forty-Four Devil Blossoms rides to the west.”
Our heroes debated what this might mean. Why would their deathknight nemesis have passed this way, moving ahead of them rather than following them, as opposed to her usual way? And where might she be going? They could come to no conclusion; but the discussion jogged Zera’s memory, recalling to him a ruined bridge that lay to the west.
The thing was old and green, perhaps dating back to the First Age, and its wreckage spanned the river. The River of Willows rushed cold and swift through the stone pilings and rubble. Though no one could cross the bridge any more, and only the smallest of ships could pass through the gaps in the debris, it found a new purpose as a crude weir, and fisherfolk gathered about it in their quaint little boats.
Aekino regarded the river. It was broad, swift and deep. “How are we going to get across? Some of us can leap from stone to stone, but it’s something that no mortal could do. It would attract attention.”
“Easy enough,” Fetek observed, taking the form of a pike and diving into the waters.
“An excellent suggestion!” Thorwald dove into the water after him.
Li, Aekino and Zera watched them splash away. Aekino raised up his staff in both hands; Li fingered her blades, one of which exceeded her in length. Swim with all that gear, they thought? Not likely.
The fisherfolk wondered a bit as three figures leapt like crickets from piling to piling, dancing lightly over the algae-slick stones, gliding like birds over gaps no mortal could cross. They wondered, too, as the third figure slipped and fell, and at the uproarious laughter that drifted up from downstream: “Ha ha ha! Zera has fallen in the water!”
But, like peasants all across Creation, they simply assumed that any such strangeness must be the work of spirits. They returned to their hooks and lines and nets, and forgot all about it.
* * * * *
That night, Zera took a bit of charcoal from the fire and drew the sigil of Makarios upon his forehead. He covered it with his kerchief, curled up amid crackling leaves at the edge of the firelight, and slept. He slept without dreams.
* * * * *
By the time Thorwald had gotten bored of ragging Zera for taking a dive and being swept a mile downriver, it was the next day, and our heroes had come close to the town of Brinlack. It lay within and around the walls of Old Brinlack, where Kuro the Raven had ruled hundreds of years ago, before the war with Tul Tuin and the coming of the Wyld Hunt. Now wooden palisades filled the gaps in the town’s shattered walls, which lay tumbled in mossy, lichenous heaps. Smoke rose from farmhouse chimneys and burning leaves. And out across the water, a tangle of alien towers loomed bleakly above the skyline of Tul Tuin.
A handful of town guards stood by the town’s north gate. Their spears and buff jackets were well tended, but their conduct left much to be desired. Aekino approached them, to inquire as to recent events in Tul Tuin. A particularly smug guardsman smirked insouciantly, sizing up the Dynast’s ragged and travel-worn finery. “In case you haven’t heard, ‘Your Highness,’ Tul Tuin has fallen.”
“Who rules here now?” interjected Fetek.
“The right honorable Mayor, Stone Rain, rules here… he has for quite some time.”
After a few more moments of cranky interaction, the watch captain arrived. He regarded the visitors with a more cautious eye. “May I have your name, sir?”
The Twilight preened. “Tepet Aekino.”
The captain blanched. He slapped the guardsman, hard. “Tepet!” he hissed furiously in the man’s ear. “He’s from the Realm!”
“So sorry, sir,” replied the guardsman, flinching.
After taking pains to mollify Aekino, the guard captain informed our heroes of suck knowledge as had drifted out of Tul Tuin with its wrack of refugees. A demon cult now ruled the city, it was said; power had fallen to the Easterners, while the Northerners and Realm-folk had mostly fled.
“And what of Ledaal Vir?”
“There are a thousand rumors,” the captain said, “but no one knows for sure. I am sorry.”
Apologizing again for the inconvenience, the guard captain placed the offending guardsman, one Torram by name, at our heroes’ disposal for the rest of the day. Sheepishly, the fellow led our heroes into town. He showed them the sights, such as they were; the high old buildings that still remained from the old time, the pools and weed-gardens that nestled amid the rubble, the homes and shops built from antique carved stones.
“Why are we keeping this one?” asked Fetek, voice pitched low.
Aekino smiled. “To fetch and carry, of course.”
Our heroes took only a brief moment to deposit their gear at an inn. Then they went to visit the mayor of the town. Why? Aekino wished to do so, and the others did not challenge him. The reasons will shortly become obvious, so:
They went to the Brinlack Manse in the last hour of the afternoon. It rose in blocky tiers of living wood draped in vines. Reddish light blazed over its battlements, where a few last lonely bees buzzed amidst the musky leaves. They entered, their passage facilitated by Aekino’s family name, and met with the mayor in his office on the highest tier. Stone Rain resembled a retired wrestler, balding and bearded, his fat underlaid with muscle. He greeted Aekino with respect, and answered his questions gruffly but civilly. He even agreed to a private conference with the Dynast and his retinue, without his guards.
“Excuse me for being so blunt,” he asked, “but are you a Prince of the Earth?”
“I appreciate your candor,” answered Aekino with a proud smile. “See for yourself.” And his castemark blazed with gold.
The mayor’s eyes grew wide as saucers. He gaped. Then he threw himself to the ground, kowtowing and groveling madly. “Great one!” he moaned. “Oh, forgive me, mighty lord. I did not know who you were.”
Our heroes questioned Stone Rain. He claimed to follow the “old ways,” the worship of Kuro the Raven and Blessed Wind, whose cult still perpetuated itself among the Easterners of the region despite the efforts of Cessair and, later, Vir, to stamp it out. Like most of the cult’s adherents, he believed the Solars to be demons, but revered them nonetheless. Perhaps this was the source of demon-worship in these parts? In any case, he told them more of what had transpired in Tul Tuin. Another, darker branch of the demon cult now ruled there, under the auspices of the Darien family.
The mayor offered our heroes the hospitality of the Manse, and any resources they might require. “My quarters are yours,” he told Aekino, and, “My wife is yours.” Aekino boggled; Zera Thisse laughed that the Dynast would have no use for her.
Our heroes settled in with aplomb. Having adhered to the asceticism of necessity for far too long, Aekino threw himself wholeheartedly into indulgence. He immersed himself in every luxury available in a small town like Brinlack, all in the context of a small floating orgy. The others rolled their eyes at the parade of servants trailing into and out of Aekino’s room. Li, for her part, meditated and practiced the art of the sword; Thorwald wandered the town, speaking to such Northmen as he could find, and finding a certain unexpected affection for an older woman; and Zera threw himself into preparations for their next journey, acquiring food, weapons and horses.
And where was Fetek, the last member of our Circle? He was on the wing, in eagle’s form, soaring away from the crumbling, green-tangled walls of the town, out over the rushing waters of the River of Willows, and toward the black and silent towers that intertwined in what remained of the city of Tul Tuin.
Through the afternoon, the Lunar stalked through the lower streets of the old city in the forms of rat and dog. Rubble and rubbish concealed him, masking his movements. The city stank of smoke and garbage and human waste. A few late looters picked through the detritus of homes and offices already sluiced by rioters, while others lurked in corners and alleyways to pursue other avenues of illegality. But some few citizens continued with ordinary business. Seedy public houses remained open to sell food and drink, looters-turned-peddlers spread their wares on soot-stained blankets, and the occasional artisan’s workshop clattered with business. Everyone bore weapons, though, and many surrounded themselves with proto-feudal constellations of armed assistants, bodyguards, former soldiers and thugs.
Raised voices emerged from a stone building that might once have been a counting house. Softly, rat-Fetek crept inside. There, amidst the drips and the damp and the dim sputtering lamps, a handful of worshippers sat before their priest, a stocky fellow whose black cassock and cylindrical hat bore the sign of a green and golden sun.
“Once, I was just a man,” said the priest, his voice gravely with smoke. “In that life, I worked mortal iron among other men. But now the light of our goddess fills me! Now I work words and souls, to bring others into the light of our lady’s truth. Once I was named Gray Mantle, but that name has burned away. Now I am Morning’s Promise, and I bring to you my namesake: my promise of a new dawn in the arms of our lady, the great Queen Amalion, bride of the Unconquered Sun.”
Fetek edged forward to drink in every word. He recognized the name of a demon prince; how, he wondered, could such a creature claim any connection with the Unconquered Sun? The priest, red-faced, took a sip of beer and continued with his sermon. “Our lady has spoken. She tells us that the children of the Unconquered Sun now walk among us, as they have not done since the day of Blessed Wind. If you should meet them, offer them no harm! They are the blessed of Amalion. Give them your hospitality. Show them the way to the Queen, that they might rejoice in her immortal presence.”
The Lunar wondered at this. He continued to watch as the priest ended his homily with what sounded like a rote dismissal: “Make peace with your neighbor. Make sure that the world trembles at your message.” Then the congregation dispersed and went out into the night.
Gray Mantle and his men patrolled the darkling streets of the ruined city. Along their route, they came across a fracas where others of their cult had subdued a Northerner family that had apparently defiled a Yozi shrine. The demon priest addressed them furiously; he cursed their ignorance of his goddess, and demanded their conversion to the true path. “Your souls depend upon it!” he shouted.
“No,” groaned a Northerner through her bloody, broken mouth. “Cessair has returned. She will protect us, and give us strength.”
“Repent!” frothed Gray Mantle. “Acknowledge the lady Amalion as the one true goddess! Abandon your blasphemy… or die!”
As one of the cultists put a sword to a girl’s throat, Fetek snapped. Taking on his great beast-man form, he surged forward into the midst of the cult soldiers. Bones cracked; bodies flew; hot blood spattered on cold stones. Just as the sword-bearing cultist sliced the girl’s neck open, Fetek disemboweled the man, strewing his guts to the five winds.
Then there were only the echoes of the fleeing survivors, escaping Northerners and a few wounded cultists lurching away down side streets, and Gray Mantle’s feeble whines as Fetek knelt heavily upon him. Blood dripped onto the priest from the Lunar’s gory antlers.
“Mercy!” The man wept pitifully, but Fetek felt no compassion. “Mercy! Please, Moon-child, spare me! Please, come with me to the Queen. She wishes to see you. She will give you everything!”
“She has nothing I want.”
Gray Mantle twitched helplessly, like a hare in the jaws of a tiger. “She will make you a Power!”
Fetek smiled, and the priest quailed to see it, for it was a cold and cruel smile, with nothing of humanity in it. “I am already a Power.”
* * * * *
Fetek let the man run off. He seemed too small, too weak, to be worth killing. Instead, he winged back to the town of Brinlack to speak to the Solars. He settled on Zera’s window-sill, where he returned to his own shape. “Where is the Descending Sun?” he said to the archer. “We need to talk.”
“The Descending Sun,” replied Zera sourly, “is diving into a couple of serving maids.”
Zera listened quietly to Fetek’s reconnaissance. Quietly, at least, until the name ‘Gray Mantle’ came up. He remembered how old Nala had asked the peddler Gray Mantle to bring him and Thorwald out of Tul Tuin just a few months earlier. He remembered their discomforting reverence; he remembered how, like Stone Rain, they had spoken of upholding the old ways. His eyes narrowed.
He burst in on Aekino. The Dynast was enjoying their host’s hospitality to the full; though Zera’s entrance startled the bevy of youthful masseurs and attendants, Aekino himself simply sighed in contentment as he savored a candied plum. “Why, Zera. It’s so nice of you to join me. I’d been wondering when you’d find time to relax.”
Zera fumed. He glared. He explained tersely what was going on in Tul Tuin, with Fetek speaking up to fill in the gaps. Aekino stretched languorously. “Amalion, eh?” He trailed his fingers along a young woman’s thigh, then accepted a puff from an opium pipe. “I’ve never had sex with her…” He yawned. “So I don’t really care.”
Sparks crackled around Zera’s angry squint. “Since you don’t understand, I’ll spell it out for you. All that happens there, happens in our name. And I am not going to allow that to go on.”
“Oh, I understand. But really, we can’t think of going anywhere until we’ve had time to heal.” Aekino gestured to the servants massaging his shoulders and feet. “And I’m doing the best that I can. Mm, a little more gently, dear. Yes, right there; that’s the spot.”
“They said they seek the children of the Sun.” Fetek regarded the scene with leashed distaste. “We can expect assassination attempts, kidnapping attempts. If we linger here, we will be asking for trouble.”
Zera nodded. “But if we move on to Kaihan, they’ll hear about it. They can move in behind us, catch us in a vise.”
Theatrically, Aekino fluttered a red-lacquered fan. “Why don’t you all discuss the matter, and tell me later what you’ve decided.”
“Tell you later?” Zera boggled. “You don’t want to discuss it? That’s the most uncharacteristic thing you’ve ever said.”
“Oh, relax. You’re too tense! Come on over, join me on the bed. There’s room enough for two, and these boys have the most marvelous hands.”
“There’s no time for peace.” Zera clenched his fists. “When the hand of the Unconquered Sun came upon us, we ran out of time for that.”
“You’re very pretty when you’re angry.”
Zera stormed out. Fetek gave the scene one last, cold look before he followed. Aekino, for his part, enjoyed another candied plum. “Don’t let them bother you, my dears. Come closer, and I’ll show you something…”
* * * * *
Matters proceeded apace for the next few days. Aekino would not be moved, so his fellows set about finishing their preparations so that they could be ready to move at a moment’s notice. Fetek, for instance, procured himself the finest horse that could be had, rode it out of town, and killed it to drink its heart’s blood. Zera enjoyed the tender ministrations of a healer that Thorwald sent to him, after telling the fellow that Zera liked pain. And Thorwald himself took the orichalcum trinkets that Aekino had entrusted to him, and gave them to Stone Rain in repayment of hospitality. He also apologized to the man for Aekino’s excessive use of the mayor’s personal resources. “If Lord Tepet gets a child on my wife,” said Stone Rain, “it will only bring honor and prestige to my family.” Thorwald’s reply is best left to the imagination.
Zera healed. Li danced with the sword. Fetek hunted. Aekino indulged. And Thorwald dallied with his woman, giving her and her children the last of his funds, their parting strangely sad for the little time they’d shared.
The sun shone palely on the morning of their departure. Aekino staggered into the courtyard where his comrades had gathered, ready to leave with or without him. His eyes were bloodshot, his breath noxious. He seemed dazed. “How long have I been here?”
Fetek assessed him clinically. “Four days.”
“Four days!” He shook his head in confusion, denial. He approached Zera with a weakly feigned jaunty swagger. “I trust I’m not too tardy?”
“No. You had five more minutes.”
“Oh, good.”
They made their way down to the docks, where they found a familiar old ferryman to haul them and their horses across the water. They helped the deaf old fellow pole the ferry, and disembarked a little ways south of Tul Tuin. There, they spotted clumps of refugees on the road. They were surprised to find that the refugees were not fleeing from Tul Tuin, but rather, were fleeing to that city.
“Why are you coming here?” Thorwald, as always, was brusque. “There are demons in this city. You should not be here.”
The mother of the household, her baby strapped to her back, shrugged. Lines of hunger and fatigue creased her features. “Demons they may be, but we’ll take our chances,” she grunted. “Better that than the slavers of Longcorner. They burned our village, took all our neighbors and relatives to the Guild pens. We heard what happened here. Now that Prince Vir is gone, Longcorner’s gone to war.”
Diffidently, Aekino approached. “You may yet find shelter at the Tower of Winds,” he said, pressing the last of his silver into the woman’s hand. “Give my name at the gate – Tepet Aekino – and if my family still rules there, you will have sanctuary.”
* * * * *
They made good time, skirting the city as they moved through farms and groves, feeling the chill of the twisted demon towers that sprawled to their west. Local folk peered out of windows and doors to watch them pass. Then they moved into the forest. They camped upon a hillside as the first stars appeared.
They watched the fire’s glow; they listened to its crackle. “Three days,” said Zera Thisse. “Three days lost… three days.” He prodded the glowing embers with a stick. “I suppose that leaving earlier would have been dreadfully inconvenient.”
“I couldn’t help myself.” Tepet Aekino pleaded with his brother. “I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t even try.” He wiped the moistness from his eyes. “I don’t even remember. I never felt like that before. I used to make the others, the Dragon-Blooded, feel that way. That was my job. But I never felt it myself. It was never me.”
Zera sighed. “I’m not here to berate you,” he said. “But I am stretched to my limit.”
“I know. I held you, that night, when you wept.”
“Yes.” Zera waved away the memory. “I can’t have you break down. The others depend on you. When we reach Kaihan, things will go from difficult to impossible. You must have all your wits about you.”
Aekino laughed weakly. “If you’re going to die, have some fun.” Looking Zera in the eye, he added, “I enjoy riding with you.”
“Do you know what I see when I close my eyes?”
“No…”
“You should. You saw it, too.” The archer stared into the fire. “I see my father lying in a pool of his own gore. I see those bastards, my own countrymen, raping my mother and my sister. I see it over and over again, whenever I rest, whenever I try to sleep.”
“I also fear for my own family. I have a wife on the Blessed Isle; I have children. But you can’t let it eat you up inside, Zera. You can’t let it consume your every moment. Enjoy the time you have.”
“Deal with things in your own way. Leave me to mine.” Zera frowned. The firelight cast strange, hollow shadows across his face. “Three days is too long.”
Eventually Aekino slept. Zera kept watch with Thorwald later that night. The archer showed the northman a treasure: a black jade box, containing a vial full of shining liquid.
“I bargained for it in a dream,” he said. “It has the power to destroy the dead.”
“I had the same dream,” replied Thorwald slowly. “There was a demon with copper hair and glowing eyes. He offered to sell me weapons. I refused them. They are accursed things.”
“Maybe so. But I will deal with whatever I must to get weapons like these.”
“Let us hope that it is what you think it is, and that you have not been fooled.”
Zera grinned. “If I am cheated, I’ll find a way to get my own back.”
* * * * *
They continued on their way, to the north and east, past many troubles. They watched airships buzz far overhead, the flying eyes of Lookshy watching the darkness that crawled through Tul Tuin. They fought demons and brigands and the strange monsters that dwelt in the East, that lurked in cave and wood and hungered for living flesh.
In the last range of hills before the land sloped down to Kaihan, they saw ravens circle to their right. “That’s strange,” murmured Zera. He fingered his fine new bow, all of Eastern yew, gauging distances with a keen eye. “Let’s take a look.”
Our heroes climbed the sharp and stony slope, among stunted trees and jagged cracks in the rock. They reached the top of the ridge. And they looked down into the valley below, but it was filled with mist from edge to edge; and at its center, there rose a great dragon-backed temple, roofed in gold and silver and jade.
(Note: all PCs received 3 XP for this session. Zera and Thorwald gained 2 XP each for contributions (a brief story and a prelude sequence, respectively). Li's player did not attend this session; she received no XP. XP totals to date: Aekino 104, Fetek 89, Li 100, Thorwald 108, Zera 112.)
