SJE/Session53
Session 53
21st Ascending Air RY 769
The Exalts of Gem and the Convention of Cruel Fate and Untimely Death face off against each other in the Loom of Fate itself. On one side, we have Burning Brand, Captain Ibrahim, Cathak Alana, Floating Summer Orchid, Ravistu Cail and Shizu. One the other, we have:
Heru Marr, Chosen of Secrets - an aged Sidereal martial artist and master of the Prismatic Arrangement of Creation Style.
Sad Ivory, Chosen of Endings - clad in a white ninja suit, she bears a starmetal Seven Section Staff.
Alente Fachion, Chosen of Serenity, her softly-glowing blue anima carries with it a hint of waltz music. An easterner, she carries a mighty bow into battle.
Olaf the Wild, Chosen of Battle - a mighty, bearded northern barbarian, wearing starmetal articulated plate and bearing a starmetal daiklaive and thundershield.
Basking Shark, Chosen of Journeys - a blueskinned Westerner, he carries a handful of starmetal-tipped javelins.
Their arena is the twisted geometry of fate itself, dominated by the great Loom, but featuring myriad balconies, galleries, walkways and staircase, twining around each other and the Loom in an eye-searing Escher-esque confusion.
Brand wastes no time on small talk: "Bugger off, we're fixing Creation!"
Shizu, though, locks eyes with Sad Ivory. "Haven't you got a committee to go to? Seeing as you're here, though, I wouldn't mind a word about my brother..." Like Brand, though, Sad Ivory is not looking for a debate. "The only word you need is 'die'!" And, with that, battle is joined!
The Captain hopes to draw a couple of the Sidereals towards him, taking some of the pressure off the rest of the circle. He leaps across to a balcony at the edge of the chamber, with a stage whisper "If they all go for you, I can take them from behind!" This not-so-subtle trick works rather too well, as Olaf the Wild, crying "By the gods, they've let the idiot loose on the Loom of Fate! After him!" Leads Sad Ivory and Heru Marr after the Captain. The other two Sidereals stay up near the entrance with missile weapons ready. Alente Fachion's anima, accompanied by the gentle music of a waltz, illuminates the chamber with a soft blue glow. Her colleagues automatically synchronise their movements with the rhythm of her music in a dance that is no less warlike for its grace.
As Sad Ivory leaps towards the Captain, she reaches out a hand and casually twangs his life thread. With a resounding thrum! it vibrates like a guitar string, the reverbrating note hinting at wild bacchanalian excess as it blends with Alente Fachion's waltz. The Captain has a queasy moment of vertigo as his destiny seems to shake around him. Before he can fully gather his senses, Sad Ivory pummels him with precise Snake Style palm srikes.
Reeling, the Captain grabs a banister and swings himself out and around the edge of the balcony, his stomach flip-flopping as the Escher-esque geometry alters the direction in which gravity works on him three times in as many seconds. At the furthest extent of his swing, he pounds his smashfist into Heru Marr's stomach. Or, thinks he does, as the Sidereal, moving in time with the waltz, dances away from the blow.
Shizu runs across what might or might not be, at any given point, walls, floors and ceilings, plotting a convoluted course around the balconies and stonework of the chamber. From second to second, she blips from one side of the chamber to another, through some instinct navigating the many dimensions of the Loom of Fate's geometry as she manouevres for position...
Olaf the Wild charges the Captain but, with an "Oi!", Rav's mighty wings carry him across the chamber to intercept. A blow from Rav's direlance that would surely have impaled him had it struck home glides off Olaf's shield. Basking Shark hurls a pair of javelins at Rav. As Rav twists in the air to evade them, Olaf rolls with the impact of his attack, spinning around Rav to hack at the Captain. The Captain shrugs off yet more wounds, roaring his defiance and rage.
Alente Fachion reaches across into the Tapestry, plucking out a random thread to use as an arrow. As her shot buries itself in Rav's arm, he feels an echo of the sorrow that is now missing from Myca the Red's life.
"The awesome power of Heru Marr's Sidereal kung fu will turn you into history!" Heru Marr, tastelessly referring to himself in the third person, strikes Captain Ibrahim with lethal starmetal claws, ripping great rents through his orichalcum armour, and terrible wounds in his chest. The Captain falls sideways from the edge of a balcony, tumbling into the Tapestry itself where he lies unconscious, precariously tangled in its threads.
The Sidereals grin in smug satisfaction. The battle against these upstart Solars is going exactly as they have foreseen it! All is in accordance with Fate...
While their friends fight to keep the Sidereals off their backs, Burning Brand, Alana & Orchid survey the damage to the Tapestry. They know they have to keep out of the fight and concentrate on the Loom itself. Way down at what is, from their point of view, the bottom of the chamber, they see a tangled knot, beyond which no further weaving is possible. It is the end of Creation, beyond which is nothing but a terrifying void! One silver and five golden threads - the destinies of the circle themselves - are wound all around and through it.
Alana looks at her colleagues and shrugs, then leaps out into space, just catching herself on the edge of a balcony before she plunges past the knot into the aching void below.
Orchid follows her, looping her sash behind her and around Captain Ibrahim's vibrating life thread to take her weight as she leans forward and sprints headlong down the golden thread to the terrible knot. Fraying, weakened by the terrible wounds the Captain has taken in sacrificing himself for the sake of Creation, it nevertheless has the strength to hold her. For a few moments, Orchid feels as close to the Captain as she ever has...
Brand, too, leaps down, entwining himself in the threads just above the knot in the Tapestry. Seeing how the battle above goes against his friends, he decides that desperate measures are needed. Focussing his power, he blazes with Essence as he gathers a huge hank of threads in one fist (as previously unconnected threads cross each other, Orchid's astrologer finds himself falling in love with a Northolm lass called Agnetha). "Stop fighting or I tear it apart!" Creation itself is held hostage at the whim of an enraged Solar - that's enough to wipe the grins from the Sidereals' faces and make them stop to think.
"Good," Brand continues. "Now let's talk like adults instead of fighting like children!"
"If you destroy those threads," Basking Shark remonstrates. "You destroy yourself, fool!"
"Not just these threads..." Brand bluffs. "All of it! You know what the power of the Solars can do!"
The Sidereals gape in horror and hurriedly consult with each other on how to react. Ravitsu takes advantage of Brand's distraction to swoop down and snatch up the Captain, pulling him free from the tangled threads (as one, stretched too far, snaps - the small town of Meridian henceforth ceases to exist) and depositing him safely on a walkway.
Sad Ivory is more than half certain that Brand is bluffing, but the Conventions consensus is to not risk letting him be. She leaps down the Tapestry, her fingers glowing with violet essence, to claw at Brand. Brand twists himself deeper into the threads and, twining them around his arms (as the threads twist and twine into new configurations, a hundred people who have never met find themselves inexplicably acquainted with one another) pulls himself up the Tapestry, flipping up and around to elude the white ninja's attack. Out of control, she hurtles past Brand, Alana and Orchid, flying past the knot that ends Creation. Brand - moved by stupid, useless compassion - flicks out a loose thread to lasso her ankle before she plummets into the void. She swings gently to and fro, nothing between her and the awesome nothingness below...
Above, Shizu darts out from behind a column, somehow having found her way to a point 30 feet above Alente Fachion and Basking Shark. She grins - they're not even looking in her direction... Mustering all her will, she whirls her sling around her head and hurls a glowing cascade of sling bullets at Alente Fachion. Inconceivably, the archer reacts to the attack, spinning her bow around in a desperate, essence-powered parry. She batters aside enough slingstones to save herself, though her bow is shattered in the process.
Alana and Orchid confer - they must defend Brand, his Twilight-caste skill is desperately needed to repair the Loom of Fate, but work has to begin on untangling this knot. They split up. Alana clambers back up to help Brand beat away an attack from Olaf the Wild. She deflects one blow behind his back as, gripping the threads of the Tapestry with his legs Brand swings his body out into open space to give him room to draw his daiklaive and make his own desperate parry (as he accidentally severs a couple of threads, Tepet Kai dies of a heart attack and Khaled the Slaver finds himself rotting in prison) of Olaf's second blow.
Basking Shark glances from Shizu to Brand and goes for Brand who has, after all, threatened the destruction of the whole of Creation! Drawing drops of his own blood from beneath his eye with the tip of his javelin, he charges it with all his power and throws it at Brand. The power of his throw is such that he himself is drawn along in its wake. As the javelin blazes in towards Brand, Alana throws herself in front of him, taking the terrible blow herself to save Brand for the crucial work he must do.
Heru Marr uses Flickering Moonsilver Approach to stretch his starmetal claws out at impossible length, battering aside Brand's parry and a desperate attempt from Alana, struggling despite her own wounds, to push his blow aside with her own blade. He rakes a series of dreadful cuts into Brand's chest.
Meanwhile Orchid, standing on the Creation-threatening knot itself, grins wolfishly. Her war fans whirling about her with a life of their own, she begins to cut the knot in the Tapestry apart. Severed threads are flung in all directions as Orchid tears the Tapestry into shreds! Her onslaught has far-reaching consequences in Creation -
- The Celestial Lions who were rushing to intervene at the Loom find themselves "elsewhere".
- Chejop Kejak, stepping at this moment through the entrance to the Loom of Fate, suddenly finds himself in a tavern in Northolm, watching young love blossom.
- The Convention of Cruel Fate and Untimely Death, until they shake the feeling off, believe themselves to be running through a maze of doors and blank walls.
- The fates of the circle are torn away from the Loom of Fate altogether.
- The West ceases to exist.
Sidereals and Solars alike gape at her, aghast. Is there more than a hint of the Maiden Of The Mirthless Smile's influence in that predatory smile? Surely this isn't still Evil Orchid, after all?
Thankfully, it seems not... Concentrating hard, Orchid grabs at the loose threads, sorting them, hooking them on the stonework around her, tucking them into her sash, winding them around herself, all so that none are lost, so that they are ready for Brand's repairs. She throws one sundered thread down to Sad Ivory. "Don't drop this, or there'll be trouble!"
Brand, bleeding terribly, reaches out and grasps the great golden thread of the Unconquered Sun himself and slides down it to join Orchid at the knot. "Father!" he implores. "Lend me your strength to make things right!" He expends all the Essence he can muster in a glorious blaze of golden light as he picks up the loose, severed and torn threads in his bare hands. With flawless dexterity and speed, he winds them back into the correct positions and they reweave themselves under his hands, splicing themselves together with a joyous will of their own. The new Tapestry is free of knots and entanglements - the fate threads of Gem no longer entwined with those of Creation as a whole. The knot that prevented all further work on the loom is gone altogether - the end is no longer nigh!
Brand weaves further damaged parts of reality back into existence - Meridian once more exists, the West returns from the void, the damage done to Gem since its Fate was screwed up is repaired - the Ruby Citadel stands once more, those once thought slain by demons live again, the nascent Shadowland beneath Gem fades away, Gem mysteriously gains a city zoo, complete with a (sadly, empty) mammoth enclosure. Even Orchid's house is restored to how it was before her demonic doppelganger burned it down. The Abyssals, far from occupying the East Wing, now find themselves crammed into a closet under the stairs...
The chamber fills with sunlight as the Unconquered Sun himself gazes down upon Brand's handiwork and sees that it is good.
"WELL DONE MY CHILDREN!"
And then he is gone.
Brand, still burning with golden Essence, leans down to give Sad Ivory a hand up from her precarious position. Orchid looks daggers at the two of them. "I know we're going to regret that..."
Ravitsu takes out the Captain's hipflask and, with a flash of inspiration, douses his torn and frayed life thread with the stinking rotgut within, saving enough of it to pour a few drops into the Captain's mouth. Through the power of alcohol, the Captain is revived! "Did we win?" He wonders.
His question is answered by a rib-crushing hug from Brand, who is just beginning to feel the euphoria of his mighty deed. For several minutes, he pinballs around the chamber, embracing anyone who will stand still for long enough and babbling incomprehensibly and joyfully about tea and medals.
Shizu helps Alana and Orchid up from the tapestry to the safety of a balcony. The Sidereals, thrown completely off-balance now that Fate has not turned out in accordance with their calculations, retreat into a huddle to confer. Orchid confronts them: "I suppose that a 'thank you' would be expecting too much..." The Sidereals mutter among themselves:
"Well, the problem has been fixed."
"But they're Solars!"
"If we make a fuss, everyone who saves Creation will want one!"
"They must have done something we can pin on them..."
"..."
Orchid taps her foot impatiently. "I'm waiting..."
Alente Fachion clears her throat: "The Convention of Cruel Fate and Untimely Death would like to offer you a vote of thanks. And... we've laid on a buffet outside."
Shizu interjects. "You'll be dropping the charges, too?"
"Ah, we shall be placing an announcement in the Yu-Shan Times..."
As the victorious heroes (curiously, Brand has a new medal and is swigging from a mug of tea that nobody remembers seeing him with; has he been abusing his power over fate...?) emerge, battered and bloodied, from the Loom of Fate, the Times' special correspondent - Ssseth - calls out from the crowd of confused celestial lions, gods and spirits. "Are these," he gloats. "The base villains of Gem, brought to justice at last?"
Chejop Kejak, northern snow still on his boots, steps forth. "On behalf of the Bureau of Destiny," he blandly declares, ever the politician. "We would like to declare the Exalts of Gem innocent of the future destruction of Creation and extend a vote of thanks to them!" After a long moment of silence, a ripple of applause, quickly growing to a crescendo, passes through the crowd.
Burning Feather sprints woozily from the crowd to embrace the Captain. "Darling, what have they done to you?" Glaring with intoxicated rage at the Convention of Cruel Fate and Untimely Death, she orders celestial wine to be brought immediately to heal her stricken husband. With the threat to Gem ended, his head resting on the lap of a beautiful woman and wine on the way, the Captain reflects that the revised version Creation really is a better, shinier place...
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