TenThousandBrokenDreams/Session17

Mother Cypress speaks:

"Why hello, my dears. I see you’ve come for another story. What story would you hear tonight? Would you hear the tale of Darien Gisla, whose family was cursed by three small gods for failing to give worship and offerings at their shrines? Would you hear of how her business failed, her husband left her, and her children withered away under the power of the curse? Would you hear, too, of how she turned at last to the worship of the First Gods, and of how she read their prayer-book and grew strong in the ways of the Yozis? Or would you hear more of the tale of the Sun’s bright children, and the fall of the Scarlet Realm?

"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 returned to the Iron Tower to free the faerie queen Cessair, and of the dark hour of Calibration.

When last we left our heroes, they had parted ways after stealing the faerie queen’s heart from the bedchamber of Ledaal Vir. Zera Thisse, Tepet Aekino and Fetek Breath-Of-Midnight traveled south and east toward the Iron Tower to free the queen. Meanwhile, Thorwald of Stonehold and Li of Orchid ran northward, their blazing animas illuminating the night, to lead the soldiers of Tul Tuin away from their brothers.

We shall leave them to their journey for the nonce. Instead, we shall return to the bedchamber of Ledaal Vir, where that worthy Prince of the Earth has gathered his elder cousins and trusted servants for a brief council of war. They knew their decision must be swift, lest the trail of the Anathema be lost. As they spoke, servants ducked in and out, binding the prince’s wounds and preparing his red jade armor for what was to come.

The taciturn general Shield Willow bowed to her prince. “It is my considered opinion that we must act immediately. The Anathema must not be given time to escape. My lord Vir, I urge you to mobilize our forces as swiftly as possible, track these creatures down, and destroy them.”

“Not so fast.” A fair-haired man in blue silks raised a languid hand. This was Ledaal Daikani Chen, a scholar of military affairs, who had been present during the theft of the heart. “This could easily be a trap. Be cautious, cousin. Do not get caught up in the fervor of the moment; do not discard your resources needlessly.”

“No,” interjected another elder. This was Ledaal Goren, once a dragonlord to the Second Ledaal Legion. “I agree with your general. We have to act. I will lead the forces myself.”

Vir shook his head. “I have a responsibility to my people –”

“Yes, you do. And you shall best fulfill that responsibility by remaining alive.”

“If I may speak, Your Highness?” White-bearded and white-robed, the astrologer Ikari bowed before his master. Permission granted, he continued: “There is something you must know, Your Highness. There is a danger here, now, over this city. The aether is disturbed; the stars are out of alignment; divinations yield impossible readings, and all that is sure is that this place holds the nexus of danger. Your Highness, I beg you to see to the city’s protection.”

“But this is Calibration,” protested Chen. “The stars are always confused at this time of year.”

Ikari shrugged. “I know what I have seen.”

As his servants fitted Vir with his red jade daiklave and his scarlet cloak, with talismans and shimmering Hearthstones, that noble prince assigned his counselors to their tasks: Ledaal Goren to follow the Anathema north with a party of younger Terrestrials, Shield Willow with the main body of soldiers to the Iron Tower, and Ikari the Astrologer and Ledaal Daikani Chen to scour the city for the source of dark magic. Prince Vir himself strode out onto the balcony to marshal his thoughts and emotions. The sky slowly grew pink in the east. He watched with heavy heart as color flowed into the world, as the city woke beneath him.

Li and Thorwald ran on beneath the same lightening sky. They stayed away from the farms and villages that lay around the city, but they likewise avoided the deep forest; they wished to be followed, to draw off pursuit from their brothers. As the sun began to peer above the horizon, their pursuers came clear, dozens of riders who cast up a cloud of dust to the south.

“We cannot outrun them forever, my brother,” said Li as she ran.

“What, then?” Thorwald replied.

“We must find a good place to do battle,” Li replied.

Thorwald grinned. “Good! I like the way you think. There is a swamp not far from here, that we passed through on the way to Idris.”

Li nodded. “Their horses will be useless there,” she said as she quickened her pace. Though fatigue left her face pale and worn beneath her tattoos, she pressed on.

They waited in the swamp as the sun rose. The first fallen leaves drifted across the murky water. Knee-deep they stood there, among twisted trees and scattered shrubs, all of it tinted a wavering scarlet hue by the dawn.

The Hunt was fifty strong; hardened soldiers led by half a dozen Dragon-Blooded in glistening armor of jade alloy, the green-clad Ledaal Goren foremost among them. They dismounted at the edge of the water, leaving their mounts amidst the trees and tall grass.

Goren stretched out his hand. A massive wooden bow formed therein, its twigs shedding golden leaves. Birds burst squawking from the water at his booming shout: “Anathema! Surrender yourselves to my men! Your deaths will be merciful!”

“We surrender!” replied Thorwald with a laugh, twirling his daiklave in anticipation. “But we are stuck in the swamp. You will have to come in and get us!”

“I see… so that is the way it will be.” Goren nocked an arrow as he stepped forward into the muddled brown waters of the swamp. “Charge!”

Soldiers poured forth into the swamp, plashing through the muddy waters as they waved their swords and spears. Fire and storm blazed around the Dragon-Blooded as they advanced in a half-circle, bearing swords and spears and mauls of brilliant jade. And Li of Orchid raised her swords in a brilliant display of golden fire.

It was as if the sky had opened up and disgorged a thousand suns. Bladed rays of orange, gold and crimson stabbed outward in all directions. Overwhelmed by awe and terror, the mortal advance collapsed in an instant. Some soldiers fled, others fell to their knees or collapsed outright, their minds withdrawing in abject horror before the unbridled fury of the Sun. Only a handful of the soldiers pressed on, shielding their eyes and gritting their teeth against the unholy power of the Sun-demon before them.

In the moment before the wave of troops washed against the Solars, a whirlwind of green leaves swirled out from Ledaal Goren as he drew upon the might of the Elemental Dragon of Wood. Arrows cascaded from his bow with a sound like a tree trunk cracking under its own weight, and his furious strength split the bow itself in two as he fired the last shot. Li of Orchid spun her swords through the intricate pattern of the Five-Fold Bulwark Stance, shattering the arrows in mid-air; but several splintered shards of those arrows pierced her defense, wounding her in face and side.

Then the soldiers struck, and the melee began. The mortals could not harm the young Solars; Li’s blades brushed their weapons aside like gnats, while Thorwald simply accepted the blows, allowing them to fall upon him like rain upon the elephant’s back. Our heroes disdained to strike the mortals down; it seemed beneath them to do so.

Then came the Dragon-Blooded. One leapt forward amid a haze of flame, only to be stymied by Li’s bright blades. Another struck at Thorwald with a javelin of crystal that shattered against the Zenith’s skin, leaving shallow cuts that dripped blood into the dawn-reddened water. And Ledaal Goren swept through the press, a great green jade daiklave in his hands, and as he raised it aloft, bark and leafy twigs grew along the length of the blade.

Surrounded by whirling blades and crackling elemental animas, the remaining mortal soldiers backed away through the knee-deep water, leaving the field to the Exalts. While Thorwald hammered away at one of the Terrestrials, cracking the fellow’s red jade armor and shoving him underwater amid a plume of superheated steam, Goren and Li tested one another’s swordsmanship. Both came away wounded.

Goren stepped back and raised his blade in salute. “Let no one say you were not a worthy opponent,” he said. “I fear no death.”

Li saluted back. Her blades thrummed with power as she leveled them at the Dragon-Blooded, and her eyes gleamed with the light of the dawn.

Essence blazed through air and water as the Exalts drew deeply upon their strength. Thorwald cut the Fire aspect almost in half in a spray of blood and flame, then barely avoided being crushed by a great pillar of stone that another Terrestrial called up from beneath the water and sent toppling, deluging everyone in mud and water and rotten swamp debris. And Ledaal Goren drove Li backward with a torrent of verdant strikes, rending her flesh as he entangled her with twining briars that uncoiled from his blade.

Goren raised his blade to finish off the defiant Solar. And a darkness descended from the sky.

The deathknight Forty-Four Devil Blossoms had arrived.

Soldiers screamed as plunging raitons pecked and clawed at their faces. They broke and ran. Ledaal Goren himself staggered back as the deathknight’s black blade cut deeply into his side. Scarlet blood poured from his green jade armor. A Water Aspect moved to his side and leveled his spear at the newcomer; with a single contemptuous blow, the deathknight cut the man down.

“Fall back!” cried Goren. This new Anathema seemed more powerful than the others, and together, they would destroy his men. He would not allow that; he would sacrifice himself to give the others time to flee.

But that proved unnecessary. The Sun-demons did not join with the deathknight, but struck at her instead. In a moment, the Dragon-Blood and the Solars were fighting side by side. And outnumbered, her wounds accumulating, Forty-Four Devil Blossoms broke away from the battle, leaping across the fallen stone pillar and up into the canopy of the bordering trees, where she vanished from sight.

The survivors leaned upon their blades and regarded one another warily. “I don’t understand,” Goren said. “How can this be? Are you not demons?”

Thorwald shrugged. “Perhaps.”

Goren nodded. “I am not without honor,” he replied. “You have saved my life.”

“And you have saved ours. I am Thorwald, and this is my sword-sister Li.”

“I am Ledaal Goren. I thank you for your aid, Anathema, but know that this is only a reprieve. The next time we meet, we will finish this.”

Thorwald grunted. “Until we meet again.”

Goren withdrew, leaving the bodies of his fellow Dragon-Blooded in the mud as he rejoined the survivors. Li and Thorwald leaned on their blades and regarded one another. The sun rose higher, brightening the day and gleaming on jade and blood and fallen leaves. And in that prolonged moment, as our heroes savored their victory and thought to have a moment of peace amidst the strife, the corpse of a Dragon-Blood stirred amidst the waters.

It flopped over with a splash, then began to rise. It lurched to its feet. It straightened and shook itself. And it walked towards Li of Orchid.

Pale from blood loss beneath her tattoos, Li shuffled forward to battle the walking dead. Thorwald interposed himself between the two; he knew that Li could barely stand. Clad in shattered armor of black jade, twirling an ebon spear, the nemissary sneered through a face full of clotted blood. “Out of the way, Northman,” it said. “I’ve no interest in you. But the girl… she’s mine.”

Thorwald spat insults at the thing, but Li did not hear. She heard that voice, and saw that whirling spear, and in her daze of blood and pain she looked back into the past. The world blurred around her in a scarlet fog…

She remembered another dawn, another battle, where she stood knee-deep in water upon a sandy shore. Her steel blade clashed with a great barbed spear as the gulls cried overhead. Flames leapt up from her burning village, bathing the beach in blood-red light. The pirate’s teeth gleamed white through his beard as he mocked her. She could not see the shark-spirits that he had called to battle her master Wudi, for that battle was at her back; but she could hear Wudi scream.

The pirate toyed with her. He wore her down. He cut her, pierced her, over and over again. And at last, as the sun raised itself up over the horizon, he thrust his spear’s point through her heart.

She remembered the pain and the fire, as she died and was reborn with the power of the Sun. She looked up, then, and whispered his name. “Zerus.”

He grinned the evil grin that she remembered. His teeth glittered redly in his corpse’s face, and he spat blood into the stagnant water. “Now you remember me,” he said, chuckling. “I’ve followed you for a long time, girl. And now I have this magnificent new body. You’re not going to get away from me this time.”

“I don’t think so.” Thorwald stepped forward. Golden sparks crackled from his eyes as he raised his daiklave. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t care. If you lay a hand on Li of Orchid, I will cut it off.”

“Really?” Zerus laughed, and more blood bubbled from his lips and nose. “We’ll have to try that and see.” And the spear clashed with swords of orichalcum and jade, there in the swamp in the early morning, where birds cried harshly and the red leaves fell.

While Li and Thorwald gave battle, the rest of the Circle rode at all speed along the road to the Iron Tower. They pressed their horses hard throughout the day; by the time they reached the Tower’s encircling villages, their steeds were lathered and foaming, ready to drop from exhaustion. Our heroes dismounted at the edge of the woods to observe the town.

“The gates are shut,” said Aekino. He leaned upon his staff of black jade as he peered through the reddish evening light.

Fetek smiled. “Do you need secrecy? For I can break down those gates, no trouble.”

Zera shook his head. “That would bring more trouble that it’s worth,” he said with a wicked grin. “But don’t worry; I can get inside.”

Moments later, our heroes were pounding on the town gates. They had rubbed their bodies with dirt and rent their garments, and upon being confronted by the gate guards, they cried, “Help us! We are fleeing the Anathema! They have destroyed our village!” They pleaded and begged, and their tongues were of silver and gold; so befuddled were the guards that they allowed our heroes entry and left them alone to bear news of the ‘invasion’ to the Tower.

Our heroes darted down the town streets. They passed dancers in stylized spirit-masks and carousers with mugs and casks of beer and mead; they passed devotees offering prayer strips and noodles at small shrines and children playing with slapsticks and wooden pikes. At the center of town, hundreds of soldiers sang and gambled amid their tents. They paid little notice to the Exalted in their midst. Soon our heroes were at the Tower doors.

These guards remained alert despite the Calibration festival. They crossed their spears before the rusting iron doors. “State your name and business,” said one. The other smirked, seeing only beggars before her, and added, “And then turn around and leave.”

Stymied at the Tower gate, unwilling to press a direct assault in the midst of hundreds of soldiers, our heroes drew back to consider their options. They would have to act quickly, for had they not seen dust on the horizon behind them as they approached the Iron Tower, raised by pursuit from Tul Tuin? So they mused; and then Aekino smiled. “I have an idea.”

Aekino took a moment to peer into a rain-barrel and adjust his hair and apparel. When he returned, he was transformed. While his delicate good looks had always made him look younger than he truly was, a careful application of cosmetic and a few well-chosen rips in his garments made him look like nothing more than an adolescent waif just waiting to be ravished.

As he went among the soldiers, Aekino told a tale of how raiders had destroyed his village and despoiled his family. “And they did this to me,” he said breathlessly, “and this, and this,” and he used the brawny soldiers to demonstrate the sexual acts of which he spoke. The soldiers, drunk and bored and excited by the show, were only too eager to join in. This display of debauchery attracted attention, and soon a circle of soldiers had gathered round to watch. Zera snickered to himself at the decadence of it all as he moved off to implement his own portion of the plan. Fetek smiled to himself. Who knows what he was thinking? He was inscrutable.

Zera slipped into a tent. He emerged a moment later clad in pilfered mail, with a bundle of similar gear for Aekino’s use. But Aekino’s ‘distraction’ had turned into a full-fledged orgy, and the Dynast showed no sign of extracting himself from it. Zera shook his head; he would have to handle matters himself. And was he not best suited to handle the difficult matters, in any case? So he marched to the doors of the Iron Tower in full sergeant’s regalia, Fetek hiding in mouse-shape in a pouch at his belt, and talked his way in. Easy enough, for one of his talents.

He talked his way past the iron gate on the second story, too. The stair beyond was quiet, too quiet; and the door loomed like a gravestone before him. He entered.

Cessair stood there. The faerie queen waited for him in her chamber, clad in jewels and silk, a veil of blue gauze scarcely concealing her dreadful beauty. She smiled. “Is it finally time?”

Zera nodded. “Just don’t try anything funny,” he warned. “I’m not in the mood for games.” Fetek took on his human form once more to stand at Zera’s side; his moonsilver tattoos blazed in mute agreement with his Solar ally. Was she intimidated or unnerved? It is hard to say, concealed as she was by the veil.

“Of course,” she replied. “And now, I ask you to return my heart, if you please.” When Zera seemed unwilling, she continued: “You have come a long way to fulfill an oath. You may not care for my welfare, but you do care for your oath. And I shall not leave without my heart.”

Wordlessly, Zera brought out the cage. He opened its doors. The songbird that was her heart flew out on wings of silver and gold, to land on Cessair’s outstretched hand.

She raised the edge of her veil and opened her smiling mouth. It unhinged like a snake’s. The bird flew in and alighted on her tongue. She swallowed; they could see the pressing wings stretch the skin of her throat as it went down.

In that moment, she seemed to glow with an inner light; she seemed larger somehow. “Let us go,” she said.

Zera descended the stair. He heard voices ahead; it was a shift change, and the guards were talking about how a sergeant (Zera in disguise) had gone upstairs to check on the Queen, and was this in order? Full of bravado, Zera barked orders. The guards complied; the iron gate clacked open.

Then Cessair stepped into view.

The guards gasped. “It’s the Queen!” they called to one another. “Stop her!” They charged forward in an effort to slam the gate shut. Zera blocked them until one guard kicked him in the stomach; he reeled back, but managed to shove the butt of his stolen pike between the bars so that the gate could not close. “Fetek!” he called.

The Lunar, who had followed the faerie queen down the stairs, did nothing. After all, he had not been so foolish as to make an oath to free one of the Fair Folk!

Cessair then stepped forward. She drew aside her veil. “Stop,” she said, and the guards halted their efforts to close the gate. “Stand aside,” she said, and they did so. She walked forward then through the open gate, past the glaze-eyed guards, and descended the next stair.

Fetek approached Zera and whispered in his ear: “I am under no such promise. I can slay her for you.” But Zera only shook his head.

They descended the stairs to the guardroom, where the guards stood like statues. They opened the tower’s great iron doors and let the queen step through. Drawn by her presence, the guards and soldiers turned as one to look upon her. She removed her veil, and her beauty blazed like the sun and the moon. She smiled. “Sleep,” she said, and like wheat before the scythe, they toppled into slumber.

The queen stepped among the heaps of snoring bodies. She smiled at Zera Thisse, and a shiver ran through him. “Thank you,” she said. “You have set me free.”

“Enough.” Zera was displeased with the whole affair. “Let’s get you out of here. It’s a long road to Idris.”

“Oh, do not trouble yourself,” she replied with a little laugh. “Your work is done; I shall see myself to my daughter’s door.” She raised her arms then, and light shone through her fading flesh. In a twinkling, there was no faerie queen to be seen, but only a songbird of silver and gold that took to the sky.

Fetek leapt up after her, becoming a white eagle whose wings beat hard against the air. Then Zera was alone among the sleeping multitude. Others were just beginning to poke their heads out of buildings and tents, Aekino among them. And the sound of hoofbeats could be heard from the town gates. Their pursuers had arrived.

“Where’s Cessair?” Aekino asked as they came together.

“She left. She said she didn’t need us.” Zera cast his eyes about; men and women and children, soldiers and militia, were hefting their pikes and blades. “We’d best leave too.”

Seizing their possessions, Aekino and Zera leapt to the rooftops. Overhead, clouds had begun to gather; seeing herself pursued, Cessair had called upon a storm. Fetek pressed on against the winds. Soon, his eagle’s talons were close to the faerie queen’s tail. But by then the air had begun to crackle, and he feared a lightning-stroke. So he turned about and returned to the town of the Iron Tower, where his Solar allies were struggling to escape the guards and militia that were boiling up out of trapdoors onto every rooftop.

Racing to the edge of town, Zera looked out across the thirty-yard gap between the outermost buildings and the town walls. He ran faster. Golden sparks crackled about his heels as he leapt. The air boomed as he arced through the air; like an arrow, he soared over the wall and into the fields beyond.

Aekino winced at the thought of making that same jump. He looked over his shoulder as the sounds of battle rose behind him. Fetek had returned, and in his form of a staglike man-beast, he was tearing guards and soldiers apart.

Aekino shouted, “Fetek! Stop! Come with us!” The Lunar laughed, and hurled a soldier down into the street below. Aekino grimaced at the waste and the slaughter, but what could he do? So he turned and ran, and ran swiftly; and as he reached the end of his run, he slammed the tip of his staff down at the roof edge and pole-vaulted out, and over, and down beyond the wall.

Zera and Aekino bolted across the fields through the gathering dark. The soldiers of Tul Tuin poured out after them.

To the north, Li and Thorwald had long finished their battle with Zerus. Could he truly have thought that he might defeat two of the Solar Exalted in combat? To be sure, he was mighty among the dead and wore Dragon-Blooded flesh in armor of jade, and his foes were sorely wounded and low on Essence; but in the end, he was no more than a nemissary. Like a weasel caught between a tiger and a wolf, he fought with an uncanny ferocity, but in the end he fell before their blades. They cut his carcass to pieces and cast it into the swamp. Bodiless, he rose laughing on the wind and vanished into the morning air.

“Let us go,” said Thorwald. “I mislike the stink of this place. We need cover, and you need rest.”

Li winced as Thorwald put his arm around her. Together, they limped into the woods and vanished into the trees.

The day passed slowly. They rested in a nook of brambles and stones; Thorwald crouched against a tree, his daiklave in his lap, and watched the sun move across the sky, casting shifting shadows through foliage and falling leaves. And Li slept.

Li slept, and as she slept, she dreamed. She dreamed that she stood in a foyer of apple-green chalcedony and white alabaster, scented with the swirling smoke of fine incense; and with the feather-lightness with which one walks in one’s dreams, she floated into a grand hall filled with wonders. Windows full of green light shone upon racks and tables full of the most marvelous things.

A slender youth sat before a table carved from a single sapphire. His hair was spun copper; his eyes shone with all colors; his robe was of white silk patterned in green and gold. He rose to his feet and bowed before his guest; and when their eyes met, she felt a shock deep within. She knew then, with a deep and sudden certainty, that this was more than a mere dream. Somehow, this was real.

“Welcome,” said the young man, his voice soft and sure, the demon-fire awhirl in his eyes. “Welcome to my home. I am Makarios.”

(Note: all PCs received 3 XP for this session. XP totals to date: Aekino 84, Fetek 63, Li 79, Thorwald 83, Zera 88.)