Mockery/Fifty Missing Shards
Of Eggshell Masks
Alokke had expected a knife in the back, perhaps from Ekerrin. The Night Caste had never sat well with him, for all that Ekerrin had insisted that it was merely those natural inclinations that made him good at his calling. He had been ready and waiting, ever since the Iron Wolf had disappeared, for him to reappear, and try to kill him and the rest of their circle to fulfill some sadistic whim.
He had not expected it to come from the front
He had not expected to see her face.
He had not expected to see her face. But then again, Eloquent Refrain had always been unpredictable--alternately moody and light-hearted, temperamental and then calm. Her loyalty to the circle had never been in question. Her humanity had never been in question. But now, as her skin turned first translucent before accquiring a brilliant, shining clarity, her hands gripping a dagger that cut across his viscera and forced him to choke up blood with every staggered, agonized breath, he realized that neither were true.
Her arms distended as they ceased to be flesh, and skin that he knew had been all-too-soft took on the appearance of chitin.
She should have been monstrous, he realized. It should have been profane, to see the light of her anima banner refracting and dazzling across the clear and crystalline facets of her eyes. It should have been hideous, and it horrified Alokke, in his last conscious and living moments, to find it beautiful.
"I'm sorry, Alokke." She said. "I was never who or what you thought me to be. I wish I were, but I'm not." She yanked away the knife, and his guts fell to the dirt, beating the rest of him by half a second. "I'm sorry." And in those few seconds, before the last of her humanity sloughed away, she really was.
It was a great confusion to savants of the First Age, why the Yozis and demons seemed to have an interest in human souls. If the Exalted had seen so much as a single soulsteel implement in the hands of the demons, perhaps, their curiosity might have been assuaged. That would make sense.
But there was nothing, save evidence of the occasional soul which the enemies of Creation took and never returned, with no indication of reason or motive.
Certainly, Solars could have demanded the souls back, but the general concensus was that it would be far much more trouble than could possibly be worthwhile; monsters such as Gorol Thrice-Damned deserved whatever fate they recieved in the bowels of Malfeas. Besides, nothing ever seemed to come of it; the Solars were remarkably efficient at bringing the masses around to their own personal glory, and only the occasional Exalt who was foolish enough to pledge himself to the Yozis, clever enough to not be caught, and (un)fortunate enough to not have the proper funerary services quickly performed upon their death found themselves in the hands of the fallen Primordials.
The higher souls were all that was taken, too--to this day, Gorol's hungry ghost still roams, far from anyone who could care.
There were many theories, but no Exalt of the First Age suspected the truth. The Akuma who learned it--and thus, their own final fate--could not speak of it. None had guessed the precise surgery that was performed upon the souls of the Exalted, and a few unlucky cultists. The fine artisan demons of the second and third circles sheared away the memories and passions of those people, sanded down everything until there was just enough to give that soul being--any more than the feather-lightest touch, and that too would cease to be. It was not an easy process, and in secret alleyways of the demon city, when Adorjan blows and silences all, one can hear the fragmented whispers of the failures.
None guessed at the waiting and patience of the Yozis, as the Solars fell.
Infernal Exalted were all good and well in the day of the Old Realm--Solars were powerful, but there were enough of them that their agents could move, and not be pinpointed; a mere terrestrial could be tainted, but there were, of course, difficulties in this as only the rarest of the demons a Dragon-Blooded could summon could invest them with that kind of power, and with agents more rare in a larger crowd, the Yozis could not effect thorough control; the Scarlet Empress was too visible a figure to manipulate directly.
Their efforts and plans were thus stymied for a time. They hoped to capture the remaining shards, the ones the Wyld Hunt kept moving from incarnation to incarnation, but this was too slow a process, and the scattered and infrequent reincarnations made accquiring shards difficult.
It was one thousand five hundred years of waiting, with no results. The Yozis could have waited ten thousand more, persistent and patient, but the emmissaries of their dead cousins came; they had a plan and a request. The Yozis had a price. For in this was the chance to take a greater portion of the Solar shards than they had ever had, and release them at once.
This merited something more interesting than the mere tainting of a shard of exaltation. This was the chance they had been paiently waiting for ever since their imprisonment.
They took demons--those of the first circle, expendable for this sort of project--and forced the shards of Exaltation into them, imbuing their minions with power that tried to destroy them. And it did, for many. Agatae shattered, Erymanthoi hemmorhaged, and the spines of Firmin turned inwards, to shatter this anathema energy.
The strongest demons survived for more than an instant, and that was all the yozis needed--this was no job for the crude hands of their mere souls, and so they took a more direct role here. They took the gossamer shreds of a hollowed soul, and wrapped it around each one, giving them a veneer, a patina of humanity in body and spirit and Essence. This soothed the shard of Exaltation to an extent, and they further placed the being of the demon into a sort of quiescence. Thus dormant, the demonic energies no longer agitated the bastardized Solar.
Then then, carefully, thoughtfully, they were placed into Creation, with no memory or idea or clue to their true nature, and allowed to grow. Creation recognizes them as human, and Fate sticks to them. They wield the powers of the Sun, and wield it as any man or woman might--for personal gain, personal glory, for righteousness agaisnt all the enemies of Creation. Perhaps in their time they might even fell demons, for they know nothing yet.
It is a temporary sort of peace; eventually, as the shard of Exaltation takes root in the ersatz Po--a demon through and through--it begins to bloat, and grow in power. Perhaps suddenly, perhaps slowly, their mask of humanity slips, sloughs, and is shed entirely. Old thoughts and memories return, and the demon--wholly integrated with the Solar Exaltation inside it--prepares to shake Heaven and Creation.
Perhaps some of these Exalts will come to realize what they are before there is nothing left of them--that they are not even eggs waiting to hatch, but the mere shells that will be broken and left behind in the hatching--but this does them little good. Even their own deaths will do little but quicken the demon inside of them sooner.
All they can do is hold onto their selves as tightly as possible, and pray to the Unconquered Sun, if he will listen, that he will give them the strength to last another day.
