TenThousandBrokenDreams/Session18
- Mother Cypress speaks:
- "Welcome, my little starlings. You have come for another story. What tale shall I tell you tonight? Shall I tell the tale of Sambara Eyes-Like-Knives, who found a stone of power in the waters of the River of Tears? Shall I tell you of how Sambara used the stone to gain wealth, and might, and long life in the countries of the Scavenger Lands? Would you learn, too, of how Sambara struggled against the stone’s will, and how, in the end, she cast it back into the river to be washed down to the sea? 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 fled the Iron Tower after they freed the faerie queen Cessair, and of what dooms arose in the dark days of Calibration.
- "For many months, our heroes had wandered the earth in the eastern lands. And high above, in the heavenly city of Yu-Shan, their wanderings had come to the attention of the Celestial Bureaucracy. For elementals had spoken to elementals, and spirits to spirits, until the word of the return of the Solar Exalted traveled from earth to heaven. The gods spoke of the Sun’s children in their bright salons, whispered their secrets in alley and bedchamber, and bet upon their survival in the gambling halls of the heavenly city. And in the Manse of Gray and Silver Dream, perched high upon the seventh tier of the Spire of Infinite Radiance, the children of the Maidens met in sober council.
- "On one side of the hall hung a banner of deepest scarlet cloth; on the other, a yellow banner bearing a wheel of five jade dragons. The Star-children sat before a table of mahogany and platinum and glass, and there they debated the matters that had come before them.
- "’What shall we do about the Solar Exalted?’ a Star-child asked, resplendent in her robes of black and gold. ‘They were to strike against the Ghost-lords and the offspring of Malfeas. Instead, they have loosed the Fair Folk upon mortal men.’
- "’They must be dealt with,’ spoke a red-robed elder, brandishing his scepter of copper and crimson glass. ‘They should never have been free.’ The others nodded in agreement.
- "’And what of the dark cult in Tul Tuin?’ asked the elder in black and gold. ‘Do they not seek to summon Amalion from her Malfean lair?’
- "The red-robed elder shook his head. ‘Irrelevant,’ he said. ‘They are mortals. They have not the power to draw her forth from her den. No, the Sun’s children alone concern us now. All of our differences are meaningless in the face of this peril. You prepare your agent, and we shall prepare ours, and we shall settle this matter once and for all."
* * * * *
Panting and wheezing, Tepet Aekino doubled over as he crested yet another low rise. Zera and Fetek had run well ahead; they were barely visible in the dark. Aekino halted, resting his hands on his knees while he caught his breath, and looked back to the south. Miles of farm and wood and bracken stretched out behind them, all the way to the distant glow of Iron Tower. Glimmers of torchlight haunted the space between, as Vir’s soldiers spread out in pursuit. They had outdistanced their pursuers thus far, but the young sorcerer struggled with the effort.
“Wait for me,” he gasped into the night.
The others returned for him. They helped him along. They camped in the rotten stump of a great fallen tree. There they waited. The stars turned in their courses overhead.
* * * * *
To the north, Li and Thorwald made their way through the woods. Despite the dark, their eyes were keen and sharp, discerning the dim shapes of rock and tree as they made their own way toward the town of Idris. They traveled in companionable silence. All that marked the quiet were the hoot of owls, the scuttling of mouse and hare, the scuff of their boots on rocks and roots and fallen leaves.
Then they heard the music.
Low and mournful, with moments of clear high sweetness, it sounded of flutes and oboes, of wind in the branches given melody. They stopped to listen.
“Where is that music coming from?” asked Thorwald.
Li listened. “It has the sound of spirits about it,” she whispered.
Thorwald turned his ear to the wind. He focused on the melody. And as he opened himself to the music, his spirit rode the melody into the past, calling up a vision of another life. He remembered his travels in the flesh of Blessed Wind, centuries ago; he recalled wandering these forests with his lover Kuro in those days, seeking someone named Kiri in the eastern forests. He remembered traveling among the tumbled hills and wooded dells, visiting the old places and the spirit courts. He heard that music in his vision; he saw spirits with cloven hooves and silken fur, with robes of bark and hair of red and green and golden leaves, dancing and playing pipes that skirled like the wind gusting through the trees.
He pushed the memories away. “Forest spirits,” he said with a nod. “They are not important. We shall not waste our time with them.” Frowning, he loped off through the darkened wood, away from the wood-gods’ tune. Li shook her head at her brother’s obstinacy. Nonetheless, she followed, and the music faded behind them.
* * * * *
While Li and Thorwald trod through the woods, Aekino and Fetek hunkered down in their makeshift shelter. Zera had gone out to scout amid the treetops while Aekino regained his strength, and in his absence, the other two bickered.
“I don’t see what you’re so worried about,” Fetek said in a reasonable voice. “They’re unlikely to find you in the dark. And even if they do, well, they’re only mortals.”
“Is that how you see them?” snapped Aekino. “As ‘only mortals’? No wonder it bothers you so little to kill them without reason.”
Fetek shook his head. “Believe me,” he said, “I have my reasons.” And Aekino could press him no further than this.
The three of them took turns on watch while the others napped; they had not slept for days, and needed all of the rest they could get. And they got little, for the soldiers approached despite the dark. Fetek woke the others. “I hear bells,” he said.
Yawning, Aekino wiped the sleep from his eyes. “The soldiers use those to co-ordinate on the battlefield,” he said. “They must be using them to keep track of one another in the dark.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky, and they’ll attract something nasty to snack on them.” Zera shouldered his pack and his bow. “Let’s go.”
Aekino nodded tiredly. “I’ll do my best,” he said without conviction. “But I don’t know that I can do this much longer.”
Shadow played across Fetek’s silhouette. He grew larger, more bestial, and antlers gleamed palely upon his brow. “Get on my back,” he said. “I will carry you. I can carry you both.”
And he did.
Fetek raced northward. Plains and downs and tree-cloaked hills unrolled beneath his hooves. Then they broke out of the woods; settled farmland opened up before them, traced with the dimmest sparkle of rivers and streams. Zera leaned across the Lunar’s massive shoulders, and spoke to his brother Aekino over the wind of their passage. “This is working out pretty well,” he said. “Fetek can take you to Idris.”
Aekino gave him a look, but could distinguish little in the dimness. “And what of you?”
“I can slow them down.”
“No.” Aekino shook his head. “Do you think we can just abandon you? What will happen to you without us? No. We will not leave you behind.”
“Of course not.” Zera grinned. His teeth shone in the starlight. “I know you can’t leave me. You love me too much.”
Aekino flushed. “Shut up!”
* * * * *
“Hush.” As they passed through a clearing in the trees, Li touched Thorwald’s shoulder to draw him to a halt. “Wait.”
“What is it?” grumbled Thorwald. “I don’t hear anything.”
Li pointed. Eyes gleamed amidst the trees. In ones and twos, they grew closer.
Thorwald grinned. “Good. Something to fight.” He drew forth his daiklave; it shone faintly beneath the stars and the lightening sky.
The silhouettes of wolves padded silently out from the cover of the trees. Their eyes glinted red; their teeth flashed ivory. And as the foremost entered the clearing, starlight glinted on brain and bone; part of its head had been shorn away, blackening its fur with clotted blood, yet still it moved, and walked, and hungered.
“This is foul,” Thorwald hissed. Li said nothing, but her blades came into her hands. Golden light spilled out and illuminated the wolves. Each of them bore terrible wounds. Each of them was dead.
A shadowy figure followed the wolves into the clearing. Small and slim it was, clad in soulsteel armor, bearing a naked daiklave. Pale blue eyes shone through a crudely mended mask of black leather.
Thorwald grunted. “It’s that Forty-Four Blossoms of Frost,” he muttered to Li. “Stay behind me. I’ll take care of her.”
The deathknight Forty-Four Devil Blossoms pointed at Thorwald. “Kill,” she said. The undead wolves stalked forward. They leapt.
* * * * *
Fetek had halted by the banks of a swift-flowing river. This was the River Balkatha, or the Barrelwash, that flowed westward from the Five Towns to the docks of Tul Tuin and the River of Willows. Standing in the shadow of a barn, for this was a settled place, they discussed possible crossing places over the rush of the water.
“I still think we should try the bridge,” Aekino said. He was tired and frustrated, and had almost poked his own eye out on Fetek’s antlers.
Zera rolled his eyes. “Haven’t you been listening?” he snapped. “It’s half a day away. We don’t have time. Now, the ford –”
“No time,” Fetek said. He pointed at the bobbing torchlights that peppered the fields to the south. “The soldiers are almost here.”
They looked at each other. “We could try and swim,” offered Aekino dubiously.
Zera shook his head. “I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s fast and cold, and let’s be honest, you’re in no shape for it.”
Aekino sighed. “I guess you’re right. Hmm… Fetek? Can you take the shape of something that can carry us across? Like maybe a giant turtle or something?”
“Nothing like that,” said the Lunar. “But I can carry you, if it’s not too deep.”
“How deep is it?” Zera asked.
“How should I know?”
So they climbed again onto the Lunar’s back, and perched on his shoulders as he walked into the swift-running river. Within moments, he was waist-deep, and then shoulder-deep, and then neck-deep. He kept going. Soon only his antlers could be seen, with Aekino and Zera waist-deep in water on either side. Then the antlers, too, were gone, and the river eddied around the Solars’ shoulders.
Zera raised his bow as high as he could, so as not to wet the string. Water rippled around his neck. He smiled wryly at Aekino and quipped, “I hope we’re not in over our heads.”
* * * * *
Thorwald hacked another of the undead wolves in half. Entrails spilled out to join the pools of gore at his feet. “Li!” he shouted as more wolves seized his limbs and pulled him to the ground.
Li of Orchid had her own problems. Ledaal Goren had cut her deeply the previous day, and now she moved awkwardly, her blades barely moving quickly enough to deflect the deathknight’s vicious assault. Her buff jacket seemed no more useful than cobweb in warding off the black blade; new injuries quickly accumulated among yesterday’s wounds. She stumbled back.
Thorwald leapt to his feet with a roar. With two blows, he smashed the skulls of the zombie wolf that clung to his legs. They fell away, shattered jaws gnashing uselessly, and Thorwald jumped to his sister’s defense.
Jade clashed with soulsteel. Sparks flew. “So,” said Thorwald, “you’re still coming back for more? You make an excellent lap-dog for your master.”
“How dare you speak of the master!” The deathknight’s shriek lanced the air. “You are not fit to say his name!”
The battle was furious and quick. Our heroes’ weapons were like hummingbirds of light, dazzling and swift, but the deathknight’s sword was a vortex of darkness, and her body a thing of air and shadow that twisted and whirled around and past her opponents’ blades. When she finally struck Li in the head with a vicious flying kick, the Dawn warrior crumpled like a snake’s skin as her consciousness flew to the four winds.
“No!” Thorwald’s muscles surged as he seized the deathknight by the arm and flung her into a tree. The trunk cracked. She got up. She grasped the fallen Li and slung her over a shoulder.
Thorwald attacked with manic intensity. Forty-Four Devil Blossoms parried one-handed as she backed away. Cricket-like, she leapt into the forest canopy above. As she danced along a branch, Thorwald drew forth a throwing-axe and flung it upward. It cut through the branch; the deathknight tumbled. Thorwald caught Li in his arms. The deathknight vanished into the foliage.
“Damn it!” Thorwald settled Li on the ground, examined her injuries. “Where is that Fourth Breeze when you need him?”
The air whispered. “Master,” it said, “I am here.”
A startled Thorwald stood and stepped back from the elemental’s cloudy blue shape. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!” he shouted. “Now, I need you to do something,” he added in a lower tone. “I need you to carry my sister Li to the town of Idris. Can you do that? Do you know where that is?”
“Yes, master,” said Fourth Breeze. It lifted Li in its translucent arms.
“And my name is Thorwald. Stop calling me ‘master’!”
“Yes, master Thorwald.” The elemental bore Li off into the brush, and they vanished from sight.
Brandishing his blade, the northman shouted into the trees. “Come and get me then!” he cried, striving to draw the deathknight’s attention and ire. “What are you waiting for? If you want to fight, I am right here! Are you a coward? Come on now. I am waiting!”
He heard only wind, and silence.
* * * * *
The river gurgled merrily as Fetek and his Solar companions rose out of its waters. Who could think that such a trivial obstacle would defeat the Chosen of the Moon and Sun? So they emerged, dripping, in the dim light of the hour before morning, to stand on the bank.
“Look!” cried a voice. “Spirits!”
Our heroes turned. A farmer and his nephew sat on a mossy log, swishing bare feet through the water as they fished with bamboo poles. The father was dumbfounded, the son excited.
The Sun’s children looked at each other. Zera turned then to the boy and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “We are water spirits. We have come to bring your village luck. You will find your fishing goes well this day.”
The father sputtered and stammered. His eyes rolled across Fetek’s massive form, silvery antlers branching and gleaming. “You’re not river spirits!” he shouted at last.
“Uncle!” The boy, infected by fear, grabbed at the older man’s sleeve. “Run!”
They ran. Our heroes laughed as they watched them go, stumbling and sliding along the muddy bank.
* * * * *
Thorwald waited for the deathknight to strike.
Leaves fell, their reds and golds slowly brightening as the sun touched the sky with morning. Birds twittered in the trees; squirrels and voles quarreled in the brush. Branches quivered as a chill wind moved through the foliage. But the deathknight Forty-Four Devil Blossoms did not appear.
The air quivered. Fourth Breeze swept in, empty-armed and alone. “Master,” he said plaintively. He bled mist from a dozen wounds.
“What has happened to you?” Thunder rumbled in Thorwald’s voice.
“The dark one came,” the spirit told him. “She struck me with her blade. Master… she has taken your friend. I am sorry.”
The northman scowled. “Show me where this happened,” he said.
They went to that place. There they found the marks of hooves upon the leaf-mould, a track that led south through the wood. And Thorwald ran after them, following the traces of the deathknight’s pale steed, and the trees flowed past him like anger or tears.
* * * * *
“Keep running.” Zera tugged at his faltering comrade’s arm. “We need to put… as much space between us as possible.”
Aekino slowed to a walk, then stopped. He looked up at the slope that slanted upward between the trees. “I’m too tired,” he panted. “And they can’t… be on us yet. They had… to go to the ford.”
“Which was half an hour away. Sooner or later, we’ll have to rest, and we need distance.”
“Where’s… Fetek?”
“Scouting.” Zera looked up through the foliage, glorious with sunlight and autumn colors. “He’s got eagle eyes. Don’t worry; he’ll spot us. Now, I think you’ve rested enough. Let’s get moving.”
The pair of them jogged up the slope, swerving around trees and shrubs and stands of rock. At the top of the rise, they found out about the sharp overhang on the other side, the hard way.
It was a long drop.
* * * * *
Fetek soared over the lands east of Tul Tuin on eagle’s wings. Sunlight shone softly on golden leaves, blazed on patches of white stone, glittered on lakes and streams. The wind whistled and sang. He loved to fly, to look down upon the world from a height and see its secrets unfurl before him.
There was another eagle, a real eagle, which ignored him regally from where it hung enthroned upon an updraft. There flew a flock of crows from tree to tree; there, a family of deer darted across a meadow. And there? To the southeast? A line of riders in bright armor, red and green and blue, riding north and west, towards the town of Idris. His own destination.
Interesting, he thought. He flew closer.
Yes, thought Fetek; those were Dragon-Blooded warriors, or at least they wore armor of jade. He knew it well. And in the lead, a man in gray, a great daiklave strapped to his back? That was no Dragon-Blood. They pursued the man. A victim of the Wyld Hunt? Perhaps… but what concern was that of Fetek’s? He had work to do. He left the hunt behind; he winged back toward his fellows, to where their route would most likely have taken them.
He circled for a time over the woods and hills. He saw the soldiers crawling across the landscape; he saw landmarks he had marked with an eagle’s eye. But of his comrades? There was no sign.
* * * * *
Zera Thisse looked up at the sky. Clouds drifted across a narrow band of blue, flanked by rock and scrub and scree – a ravine. He lay in a narrow cleft of stone and tree roots, a cave mouth, leading into shadow to his left. Aekino slumped upon the rock nearby. Assessing himself, Zera found no bones broken, albeit a number of new bruises and scrapes to join his existing collection. He leaned over to peer out of the cave.
It was a long way down. He shook himself and rose to his feet, and helped a groaning Aekino do the same. They stepped away from the edge. They looked into the darkness of the cave, and saw three figures there.
One of the shapes raised a hand, and a faint amber light spread through the darkness. The figures clarified.
There stood a bear, a slouched and hairy thing, with eyes that shone like mirrors. By its side, there stood a raccoon near as tall as a man, garbed in satin breeches and silken vest, a slim sword at its side and a tricorn cap on its head. And behind them towered one like unto a tree, with arms like bent branches and hair all of trailing moss.
The tree whispered, and its whisper filled the cave with a susurrus of sighs. “You have entered my home,” it said in the River tongue.
“Ahh… it was an unintentional act,” said Zera. He glanced uneasily behind him at the lip of the cave, and the drop below. “We will leave.”
“Oh, no! Don’t leave so soon,” the raccoon-spirit chortled. “Rest. Take a nap!”
“I wonder,” grumbled the bear in the Old Tongue, “what they are fleeing from.”
The raccoon sniggered. “Oh, don’t be such a worry-wart!” it replied.
“Many soldiers,” said the tree-spirit. “With torches.”
Aekino stepped forward. He still felt breathless and sore after his escape from the Iron Tower; but now, at least, he was in his element. He bowed deeply. “Oh spirit,” he said in the Old Tongue, “we have stumbled upon your lair only through accident. We humbly apologize for the intrusion.”
Zera looked back and forth, utterly baffled. He did not know the Old Tongue.
The tree-spirit stretched to its full height, perhaps twelve feet; it loomed in the amber shadows. “Hm,” it said.
“It is my understanding,” Aekino continued, “that my kind and your kind have long-standing accords.”
The bear-spirit sniffed the air then. Its snout crinkled in disapproval. “Sun’s children,” it grumbled. “Yes, there were accords. But that was long ago, before your kind broke the world.”
The tree nodded. “It is long,” it said, its voice like a bassoon. “But we remember.”
Aekino bowed again. “Your memory is good,” he said. “We cannot begin to apologize for what happened then. But we need not dwell on the past, not when we have this moment in which to discuss the future.”
“Very well, then.” The tree beckoned, its twig-like fingers crackling. “Do come in. We shall discuss these things at leisure.”
Zera shook his head. The words might be nonsense to him, but the gesture was clear enough. “I’d love to go in, sit down, have some tea,” he said, “but we have to go.”
“We should go in,” replied Aekino under his breath. “They might be able to help us.”
“Against two hundred and fifty soldiers?” Zera hissed.
“Tree-spirits speak slowly. Do you want to have this conversation out here where we can be seen?”
Zera grimaced, but he acquiesced. The pair walked deeper into the cave.
The tree roots around the cave opening slithered free of their moorings. They gathered together, knotting and tangling around and about, closing tight over the cave mouth. Then there was silence, and birdsong, in an empty gully, with nothing to be seen.
* * * * *
Fetek paused in his northward flight, and entered a long, slow glide. Another rider had caught his eye. A dark figure on a pale horse, galloping south, bearing a bulky bundle. Then he realized, as he came closer, that that was no bundle. That was Li of Orchid, bound weaponless to the saddle.
This must be the deathknight of which the Solars had spoken, he thought. And he smiled within the arc of his beak.
Moments later, the deathknight Forty-Four Devil Blossoms suffered a setback in her journey, as she learned what happens when a bird turns into a towering, antlered man-thing in mid-dive. She tumbled free at the last instant. Her steed was not so lucky. It fell, broken and screaming, spewing bloody froth. And Fetek stood, all ablaze with silver light, to free Li of Orchid from captivity.
The deathknight leapt at him, her blade screaming in her fists as it clashed upon his metallic hide. His own blows fell like hammers or like rain, and were likewise turned by her soulsteel cuirass. And as they fought, Li of Orchid climbed shakily to her feet, her hands bound behind her back. Carefully, carefully, she pulled the deathknight’s axe free from its sheath on the flailing horse’s saddle. With it she severed her bonds, one at a time. Then she weighed the thing in her hands; and she strode purposefully towards the fight.
Forty-Four Devil Blossoms had had enough. Her breastplate rang like a gong from Fetek’s parting blow; she danced back, somersaulted up among the leaves, and vanished.
It was not long before a crashing through the brush presaged the arrival of Thorwald. He grinned to see his friends safe and sound. “Fetek! Thank the gods. I should have known. You, of all of us, would not fail.”
Fetek smiled. “Thank you, Thorwald. Now, let’s go elsewhere,” he said with a gesture that encompassed the still-twitching horse, the deathknight, and all of the other perils of their journey. “And I’ll tell you all of what you’ve missed.”
* * * * *
“I’m still not sure that telling the truth was a good idea,” Zera whispered to Aekino as he finished telling the spirits of their trials and adventures. Aekino shrugged; his attention was all for his hosts, who seemed engrossed in his story.
“So you have freed Cessair?” The raccoon-spirit giggled inanely at Aekino’s tale. “Eh-heh-heh!”
“You show honor,” the bear grumbled. “If not wisdom.”
Aekino smiled. “You are generous.”
Zera sighed. He’d not understood a single word that was spoken for the past hour. “If you do not tell me what they’re saying,” he observed conversationally, “I will stab you with a knife.”
Blinking with surprise, Aekino spoke further with the spirits. Zera listened to the raccoon’s tittering, the bear’s low rumble, the tree-spirit’s slow groans. Then Aekino spoke again: “The tree-spirit has offered us the hospitality of his cave, and promises that no harm will come to us.”
“That’s a relief.”
“The raccoon-spirit wishes you to close your eyes and stick out your tongue.”
With some reservations, Zera did so. A moment later he felt a sharp pain; the spirit had bit him on the tongue! He felt at his mouth and found blood.
Aekino had to restrain his companion from violence. It was a task he was beginning to feel accustomed to.
* * * * *
Thorwald, Li and Fetek made their way north. As they passed through a small valley, all rocks and shrubs, they heard hoofbeats from behind. A dark-skinned rider in gray, a Southerner by his looks, came their way, pursued by half a dozen warriors in jade. Thorwald smiled and halted halfway up the shallow slope. Such a chance for battle, he thought, was not to be lightly turned aside.
The gray rider put on a burst of speed. His Marukani horse leapt across a rivulet, climbed the slope, and came to a halt before our heroes, its sides sweat-streaked and heaving. Its rider, similarly wild-eyed and sweaty, grasped the hilt of a great daiklave upon his back. “Friend or foe to the Dragon-Bloods?” he cried.
Thorwald looked him in the eye. “What do you think?”
The man’s face hardened. He drew his sword a few inches from its sheath, revealing a blade luminous in red and gold. “More enemies?”
Thorwald laughed, his face a lopsided grin. “You misunderstand me. I will fight anyone.”
Li watched the Dragon-Blooded approach. She drew Radiance and Brilliance, returned to her by Thorwald after her rescue. Fetek shifted and grew at her side, shedding human form to assume his half-stag, half-man battle-shape. And the rider in gray drew forth his grand daiklave, all of orichalcum and scarlet jade, garbed in flame.
The blade spoke to her. It whispered in her mind: We are one. The sun, the grass, the trees, all gave way to a plain of ice and snow, where she was once again the warrior-general Katsuro the Righteous, hewing down an army of Dragon-Blooded at the cold edge of the world. She could taste his blood and rage, as she tasted the fear and pain of those who fell beneath her blade, Burning Tiger.
It was as though she saw the world through a veil. Faintly, faintly, through the screen of ice and snow, she saw the Dynastic leader banter words with Thorwald; she saw the Dragon-Bloods charge with weapons raised; she saw Fetek’s charge, heard Thorwald’s battle cry, felt the heat from Burning Tiger as its wielder fenced with the Dynastic leader. She saw the Dragon-Blood’s fear.
And she saw Burning Tiger halt itself in midair, deliberately choosing not to strike. She saw the Dragon-Blood’s blade sweep up and out, saw the man in gray stumble back as his head parted from his shoulders. She watched as Burning Tiger tumbled through the air to bury itself in the turf at her feet.
It spoke to her again, in her mind. We are one, it said.
She reached out her hand, and took up the blade.
She was lost.
* * * * *
Zera leaned against cold, damp earth and stone. Aekino continued to chatter with the spirits in their odd tongue. The archer now understood what they were saying, as the raccoon-spirit’s bite had conveyed the language to him somehow. It wasn’t an improvement. They were boring.
“Your soldiers?” The raccoon put his paws to his face in helpless laughter. “Oh, I can get rid of them. I surely can! But you will have to do me a favor first.” Giggling, it looked Zera in the eyes. Its eyes were not laughing; they were dark and perilous and cruel. Vague memories swam through Zera’s mind at their touch.
“I know you.” Zera put hand to sword-hilt. He felt his composure waver, there in the cold and earthy damp.
The raccoon sniggered. “When all this calms down,” it said, “come back here and we’ll have a contest of my choosing.”
“This seems awfully familiar…”
“Don’t pay attention to the memory.” The raccoon rolled its eyes, fluffed up the tuft of rakish feathers clinging to its hat. “It’s really quite simple. Yes or no?”
“What kind of contest?”
“I’ll decide later. Eh heh… I haven’t made up my mind. So, yes or no?”
Zera sighed. “In the past, I have been honorable. Now I will be wise. I say no.”
Aekino looked nonplussed. “I thought you said you going to be wise.”
“So… eh heh heh… you wish to leave?” The raccoon-spirit pirouetted, its silken vest luminous in the cave’s tawny light. It sidled over to the tree. “They’re too stupid to take the deal.”
The tree-spirit shook its mossy head. Leaves fell to join the mulch that littered the cave floor. “There are soldiers,” it said slowly, “all around.”
Zera threw his hands into the air. “All right!” he shouted, loudly enough that the bear-spirit squinted and the tree-spirit drew its head back and away from the noise. “I’ll do your stupid contest.”
“Oh good! Now, all you have to do,” the raccoon-spirit said between bouts of mad chortling, “all you have to do, is stab me through the heart and cut me in half.”
The spirit had to repeat its offer, so surprised was Zera. But the archer quickly smiled, and it was a nasty smile indeed. As you might imagine, he didn’t much like the spirit.
“I can do that,” he said. “That won’t be any trouble at all.”
Zera stabbed the raccoon-spirit through the heart. It toppled like a rotten log.
He prodded the corpse. It seemed dead.
It took him many minutes to hack through its body with his small sword. Gore and filth befouled him, as though the creature’s innards deliberately sought to spray him with their contents. Finally, sweaty and stinking, Zera stood and examined his handiwork.
The halves of the spirit’s body twitched and quivered. They rose into the air. They writhed and flowed, stretching and smoothing and bifurcating. They took human shapes. With a quiver and a twist, two men stood there; spitting images of Aekino and Zera. Both smirked at their originals.
Eyes bulging, Zera nocked an arrow to his bow. Aekino threw himself in the way. “No!” he shouted as he grabbed the archer by the shoulders. “These are our hosts, they’ve promised sanctuary!”
The bear-spirit rumbled a low, guttural laugh. “Do you not understand the concept of ‘decoy’?” it asked. “Be calm. We are helping you.”
A shaft of sunlight spilled into the cave as the tree-spirit let its gate ajar. The false Aekino and Zera squirmed out. The roots knotted shut again. Soon thereafter, shouts and yells could be faintly heard from outside. These noises of alarm and pursuit dwindled, faded, and gave way to silence.
* * * * *
The battle ended when it had scarcely begun. Fetek and Thorwald had struggled briefly with the young Dragon-Bloods. The southerner with the strange blade fell. And then Li took the sword, and the field of battle filled with light, and fire, and corpses.
Thorwald watched Li chase the last two Terrestrials into the trees. She ran with preternatural grace despite her wounds; it was clear that she would catch her prey. The northman surveyed the carnage. The burning blade had cut cleanly through jade and flesh and bone, leaving limbs and cloven torsos strewn like a child’s fallen blocks.
He prodded the head of the Terrestrials’ leader. It rolled a few inches, then came up short against a stone. “Tell me, Dynast,” he asked, “does a Dragon-Blooded ever run?”
Fetek came up behind him. “What happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Thorwald shrugged. He kicked the head again; it rolled down the slope, banging against rocks and roots until it vanished into a stand of tall weeds.
“What is that weapon?”
“I don’t know.”
They waited there for a time. Li finally appeared below, cloaked in light and smeared with blood, bearing the new blade bundled in her cloak. She came among her comrades, but her eyes were leagues away.
Thorwald rested a hand on her shoulder. “I should have let that rider go by,” he said.
“I think it was destiny,” said Li. She sighed; she would not look up. “These things do not happen by chance.”
“Maybe not.” Thorwald shrugged. What would come, he thought, would come. He turned his back on the carnage and, with his comrades, made his way north once more.
* * * * *
- Mother Cypress speaks:
- “Our heroes traveled onward through the day. When the time came, they rested; and Thorwald slept, and as he slept, he dreamed. He dreamed of a palace of alabaster and green chrysoprase, a palace filled with ten thousand wonders. There, in the palace of Makarios, within a vault of mirrors, he spurned the offers of timeless Strephon, the Turning Wheel, that which draws forth justice and vengeance from the dooms of the past. He was not the first of his comrades to be contacted thus, nor would he be the last; for it was written in the stars of Malfeas that, in the end, one of these four heroes would come to an accord with the princes of Hell. Whether that accord would free the Yozis or seal their doom, none might say; for not every future has been written, and even the wisest cannot see all things. The tale of Creation is still being told, and who can say how it will end?”
(Note: all PCs received 3 XP for this session. Fetek received an additional 4 XP for a background, and Li and Zera received an additional 2 XP for contributions. XP totals to date: Aekino 87, Fetek 70, Li 84, Thorwald 86, Zera 93.)
