TenThousandBrokenDreams/Session08

Mother Cypress speaks:

"Hello, my little sparrows. You have come for a tale, haven’t you? So what tale would you hear tonight? Would you hear the tale of Jori of Chaya, whose lover was poisoned by a jealous rival, and how she sought out the dragon Uktené to grant her a cure? Would you hear the tasks that the dragon set her that she might repay him for his aid; of her travels and adventures; and of how her lover came to grief in the course of her repayment? Or would you hear more of the tale of the Solar Exalted, and the fall of the Second Age?

"Then gather round, my children; come closer, and spread ears like elephants; and I shall tell you more of the tale of the Sun’s bright children, and their adventures in the lands of the East."

When the deathknight Forty-Four Devil Blossoms leapt nimbly from a warehouse roof into the darkened alley before them, Zera froze in his tracks and threw up a hand to halt Thorwald as well. Zera’s attempts at negotiation proved fruitless; the deathknight drew her long black blade from over her shoulder and aimed it at Zera, mocking him as she called him by name. Seeing combat as inevitable, Zera leapt onto a rooftop to launch an arrow at the deathknight.

Twisting like spidersilk to avoid the arrow, the deathknight leapt to the warehouse wall and ran along it, right past Thorwald, and flipped up onto the rooftop. Dark fire blazed along her blade as she aimed a fierce blow at Zera Thisse. Zera dodged in a swirl of golden light, only to find that he was not the target, but rather his bow, which split with a resounding crack.

Not to be left out, Thorwald leapt from crate to crate to reach the roof. His great sword failed to reach its mark, however, as the deathknight neatly sidestepped his blow so that it fell upon the hapless Zera. The deathknight ignored the northman and concentrated her attacks on Zera amid a rising tower of black flame. Zera’s anima likewise flared as he dodged and twisted wildly. Unarmed, Zera tried to shove her off the roof. He almost succeeded, but she kept her balance on the very lip of the roof. When Thorwald swept his blade about in an effort to finish the job, she danced lightly along the roof’s edge, easily maintaining her perch… until her consuming anima rotted the edge out from beneath her feet, dumping her into the alley.

Forty-Four Devil Blossoms leapt back onto her feet as the glowing Solars jumped down to take the battle to her. Zera swept up a throwing axe from Thorwald’s belt and hurled it as the northman warrior leveled a mighty blow backed with the force of the Unconquered Sun… only to find their blows turned aside by her soulsteel armor. The stones beneath her feet cracked as she considered her foes, her blade moaning with hunger.

And in that moment, the sounds of shouting and booted feet could be heard approaching. The prince had set patrols upon the city to seek out the Anathema that he believed were coming, and the flares of golden anima-fire in the night had drawn their attention. With much of her Essence drained and more adversaries closing in, Forty-Four Devil Blossoms chose to withdraw. Leaping back to the rooftops, she spat a final curse at Zera before vanishing into the shadows. Faced with discovery by the guards, our heroes likewise turned to bolt, their animas casting wild shadows upon the warehouse walls.

The two made their way through the lower city, with Zera dragging his companion this way and that along alleys and byways he’d studied in his scant few days in Tul Tuin. Golden fire still flickered fitfully around Zera as he kicked open a cellar door, revealing a tight and musty passage, and the golden disk of the Zenith still burned on Thorwald’s forehead as he followed his comrade into that narrow place. Their backs to the door, they waited as the footfalls and cries of the guard rose and faded. And as they waited, another door opened before them…

Meanwhile, back in the Tower of Winds, Aekino had finished his first cursory reading of the history of the city, and was speaking of his discoveries with Li. He had found references to a pair of long-ago Anathema that had settled, died and been entombed in that province, Anathema with familiar names: Kuro the Raven, and Blessed Wind. Knowing that spirits had named Zera as Kuro the Raven, and not recognizing the other name themselves, Li and Aekino concluded that Thorwald had likely been Blessed Wind in an earlier life. Aekino hoped to jar Thorwald’s memory by slipping the name into conversation, while Li expressed some skepticism as to the worth of the plan.

Then came a knocking at the door, as the guard captain Shield Willow came to fetch Tepet Aekino into the presence of the prince. He complied with some small trepidation, and guards fell in around him and Li to bring them into Ledaal Vir’s presence. As it happened, the first reports of the altercation between the three Anathema in the lower city had just reached the prince, who felt it imperative to assure his cousin’s safety. Noting that the fleeing Anathema had slain some of his soldiers, Vir assigned several of his own men to Aekino as a personal guard, led by one of his best men, a squat and muscular man named Thundercloud Star. Though disturbed by the incipient loss of privacy, which would make it difficult to discuss anything regarding their nature as Solar Exalted, Aekino could only accede to this well-meant gesture with good grace. He then questioned his host regarding the Anathema in the city, but Vir ended the discussion soon after, claiming fatigue and the need to further organize matters on the city’s behalf, earning more sympathy from Aekino thereby.

Back in the lower city, the cellar door opened to reveal a stringy, middle-aged woman, whose eyes grew wide to see the golden figures before her. Zera leapt forward to deal with the woman; he seized her and pressed a knife to her throat, warning her that he’d kill her at the slightest outcry. When she agreed, he released her, only to step back as she fell to the floor and kowtowed in abject submission, begging to be allowed to serve them in any capacity that she might.

Zera’s gentle questioning revealed that the woman, Nala, belonged to a secret community that upheld what she called the “old ways,” who revered the Anathema and had long awaited their return. Accepting her words as truth and her loyalty as his due, Zera asked her to procure him a bow to replace the one sundered by the deathknight. This would be no trouble, she replied, as one of the city’s armorers subscribed to the same creed. Given leave to depart, she returned some time later with a bow, a sword, and a supply of food for the road.

Upon further prodding from Zera, the woman Nala agreed to fetch a peddler belonging to her sect who might provide them with cover so that they could leave the city undetected. When the peddler, one Gray Mantle by name, arrived, he seemed doubtful as to the divinity of these scruffy fellows. Then Zera and Thorwald set their golden animas aflame. His eyes bugging out of his head, the peddler fell to the floor, kowtowing frantically as he begged forgiveness from these dread lords.

Gray Mantle: “We have kept faith! We apologize for our lapses...”

Zera Thisse: “We are coming back. But you and yours are a blessing we did not expect. Thank you.”

As Thorwald and Zera made their way out of town on the back of a peddler’s rickety cart, Li and Aekino rose to the sound of sparrows as the light of early morning sifted through the richly curtained windows of their suite. After breaking their fast upon eggs and fried meats, of which Li ate but sparingly, they went about their ablutions, katas, meditations and studies until it was nearly noon, when a servant came to ask Aekino whether he would attend that day’s court.

Dressed to the nines, Aekino swept into the court amid whispers of intrigue and speculation, and took his place at the side of his distant cousins Martin and Tanith to the right of the prince’s seat. And shortly thereafter, a petitioner entered the room, escorted by his adult daughter and borne aloft on a litter by four brawny northman slaves. It was the merchant Darien Tal, the bandages around his knee still wet with blood from the wound left by Zera’s arrow, and he had come to seek recompense for his injury.

Tal harangued the court with complaint, demanding that the woman Li who stood outside of the audience hall be brought in for judgment, along with her archer companion. He brought forth one of his guardsmen, a man named Tai Ru, who described how Zera and Li had threatened his master, how they had tried to flee, and how Zera and Li had cornered them and assaulted them without mercy. When the prince mocked the notion that a dozen men would flee a man and a woman in the midst of the marketplace, Tal claimed that our heroes fought with inhuman ferocity and skill, making them somehow more or less than human – a charge that cut dangerously close to the truth.

Li, for her part, calmly stated the truth of the matter: that her companion had antagonized Tal in some way on the voyage to Tul Tuin, that they fled Tal and his men in the marketplace, and that they fought back only when cornered, and then only in self-defense. Though she knew that Zera’s friend Bamboo Purple was a witness to the initial confrontation in the marketplace, Li chose not to mention her when the prince asked about witnesses, for she did not wish to endanger the woman. Aekino added that he had full faith and trust in the veracity of his “servant” Li, and that any accusation of falsehood leveled at her would thus fall upon him as well.

Thinking on the matter for a moment, Ledaal Vir first asked whether Li wished to level charges of her own against Tal. When she declined, the prince cleared her of the charge of assault, accepting that Li and her friend, whomever he might be, had only fought to defend themselves. But the harm they had inflicted upon the merchant, and the deaths of those of his bodyguards that had died in the fight, demanded recompense. So Aekino agreed to pay the merchant a sum of silver, while Li would receive twenty lashes in punishment. Though he muttered complaints of leniency to his supporters as he departed, Darien Tal nonetheless agreed to the terms.

Aekino then proceeded to regale the court with a poetic rendition of the assault on Thorns. As the courtiers listened spellbound to his words, some of them weeping over the hopeless defense of the Dragon-Blooded nobles who sacrificed their lives for a city not their own, guards escorted Li out to the courtyard to receive her twenty lashes from a bamboo rod. Though the blows that rained down upon her back tore and bruised her skin, leaving great red and purple welts that dripped blood onto the stones, she did not cry out.

When Aekino returned to his chambers, he found Li there, binding her wounds; she had elected not to heal them with the Sun’s power, lest such unnatural resilience arouse notice among the inhabitants of the Tower. Not long thereafter, a guest arrived: the prince Ledaal Martin, who’d come to visit his cousin. They greeted one another affectionately and settled down to speak of the events of the court… until the impatient Martin made his move. In an instant, the two lustful young Dynasts were sucking face. Li and the guards politely averted their eyes while the pair went at it.

Matters proceeded in this vein for a few moments, but before these kissing cousins could further disrobe or otherwise proceed to rut like weasels, another knock came at the door. Lo, it was cousin Tanith, come also to greet the most eligible bachelor Aekino! With the speed normally reserved for Charms, the two young men disentangled themselves and adjusted their clothing, making themselves presentable.

The three talked for a time, starting with the events of that day’s court and proceeding on to other matters. Aekino plied the others with strong drink all the while, in the hopes of inebriating them sufficiently to pre-empt any further awkward romantic interludes. Tanith, however, seemed distracted. This proved to be the result of her sensing a spirit lurking in the room, a child of gold and silver that hovered insubstantially on the threshold. Discovered, it fled, but Aekino would take no chances; he and Tanith decided to ward the room against further spiritual intrusion. Later, the rite finished and both cousins departed amidst much flirting, Aekino watched the stars from the balcony and sighed, thinking of his beloved, the Dragon-Blood Mnemon Dara, and wondered where his love might be.

In the countryside, Zera and Thorwald made their way north toward the city of Idris. Along the way, amid the small villages and lone farmsteads they passed, they came to a bridge that curved over a small, yet fierce river that fed the River of Willows. There a wizened figure in a white wrap and wide bamboo hat confronted them. This was Flying Reeds, the spirit of the bridge, who gleefully announced that our heroes could only pass if they would pay his price: a heartfelt prayer to Flying Reeds himself.

Zera, amused, thanked the spirit for his “grand” bridge with flowery, overblown praise, then prodded his companion to do the same. But Thorwald would have none of it. He rudely questioned the spirit as to the need for a bridge over such a small river, to the amusement of a water spirit that poked its head out of the flow to watch. He then leapt into the rushing waters and swam to the other side. To add insult to injury, Thorwald then praised the river spirit for the refreshing swim.

After a night’s rest, Zera and Thorwald continued along the road, the River of Willows flowing towards them at their left hand. Here, over a day’s travel from any city, there were few signs of civilization. But come the afternoon, they heard a mewling in the hedge, which proved to come from a little girl in dirty, tattered clothes. The pair questioned the girl, who haltingly replied that she had been parted from her mother in a storm, and that she wanted to go home. Zera assured the girl that they would bring her home, assuming that the girl lived in the city to which they traveled. Thorwald was more suspicious of the girl’s story, and set his mind to keep an eye on her.

That night, as Thorwald kept watch, the rising moon cast long shadows across the river’s bank. A movement caught Thorwald’s attention; as the northman looked on aghast, the girl scooped up handfuls of Zera’s shadow and lapped at it, the darkness staining her face and hands. Thorwald drew his sword in sudden rage, cutting the girl-demon deeply in the side and sending it wailing into the night. Zera, weary from the supernatural consumption, could not follow, and so Thorwald remained with him, the stolid protector.

When the next day dawned, Zera remained exhausted, but despite the dark circles hanging beneath his eyes, he resolved to travel on. Our heroes walked onward, hoping to reach Idris by nightfall…

... and there Mother Cypress ended her tale for the night, for the new day was dawning and she could speak no more. Therefore she faded into the shadows of the swamp, leaving the rest of the tale for other tellings.

(Note: all PCs received 3 XP for this session. Aekino and Zera received an additional 2 XP each for contributions. XP totals to date: Aekino 49, Li 50, Thorwald 47, Zera 45.)