TenThousandBrokenDreams/Session20

Mother Cypress speaks:

“Welcome, my little starlings. You have come for another story. What tale shall I tell you tonight? Would you hear the tale of how Yalen of Greenwheel sold his sister to the Walker in Darkness for lore and power, and of how she returned ten years later as a deathknight to extract her revenge upon him? No? Would you rather hear the tale of how the demon Janequin rebelled against her master, how she fled to Creation to live among mortals, and of what stratagems her master used to regain her loyalties? Or would you hear more of the tale of the Sun’s own children, and of the turning of the Age?

“Then gather round, my children, and spread ears like elephants; that I may tell you more of the tale of the Sun’s bright children, and of how they did battle with demons on the last night of Calibration.”

Our heroes hurled themselves into battle. Li leapt down the slope, she and her sword howling in unison, and Thorwald followed in her wake. Golden fires blazed around Aekino as he called forth the Death of Obsidian Butterflies, which he sent out along his comrades’ flank, shredding flesh and shattering bone in a glittering swath of devastation.

Fetek and Zera ran leftward along the ridge, eliminating an additional pair of sentries. They watched as demons streamed away from their end of the valley, towards where Li and Thorwald had plunged into the midst of a demon swarm. Fetek peered into the valley with the eyes of Luna. Then he reeled back, and stood stunned for a long moment by what he saw. A vortex of malignant Essence spiraled up from the circle of stones at the center of the valley, forming a tunnel; and at the far end of that tunnel, he could see the twisted forms of the demon world, foremost among them a demonic shape that pulled and tore at his mind, one that clawed at the fabric of the world, struggling to break through.

Fetek shook his head to clear it. He waved away Zera’s questions and offers of aid. And as golden fires flared around Li and Thorwald, sending the demons reeling in confusion, Fetek charged forward into the near-empty stretch of slope beneath. Golden bolts of solar Essence leapt in profusion from Zera’s bow to clear the way.

Seen up close, many of the defenders proved to be human. Accoutered as bandits and soldiers and militia, each wore a living helmet: an iridescent demon-creature, half beetle and half octopus, whose tentacles penetrated their hosts through ears, nostrils, mouths, or even through holes that pierced the neck and throat. These were the most numerous of the defenders, but also the weakest, and they fell in waves before Zera’s blazing arrows and Li and Thorwald’s swords.

Other foes proved more puissant. Gnarled, twisted elementals lashed out with brazen branches and fists of black stone. Spiders pulsed with vivid, shimmering colors as they skittered across folded space. Cowled shapes ebbed and surged, their waxen bodies melting and reforming around the Solars’ blades. One lashed out with a pale, glittering tentacle that wrapped around Li’s throat, but a few cuts from Burning Tiger set it aflame. A pillar of fire, it thrashed away into the night.

In the midst of the press, Li spotted the hulking figure that bore a green spear. She cut her way through to him. He laughed; green fire blazed from his eyes. It was Urei, one of the survivors of Rei’s band of demon hunters, but he was no longer himself, for the spear ruled him.

“At last,” he laughed in a voice not his own. “It is the Solar Exalted. But you are too little, too late.”

She did not speak, for in that moment, she knew nothing but the fury of the sword. She cut at him, the air shrieking as she tore it asunder, but the green spear turned the sword aside. Then the spear flashed forward, and blood bubbled from Li’s mouth as the demon-weapon pierced her lung.

The three heroes encircled the wielder of the green spear, and the demons and elementals drew back from the duel. Essence blazed as Li employed ‘Hummingbird Takes Flight,’ but the demon spear turned it aside with ease, as it turned aside Thorwald’s sword and Aekino’s spear. Then it struck through Li’s belly. She doubled over, coughing up gore.

The demon spear laughed through Urei’s mouth. A shadow of the man showed through his eyes then, full of human fear and pain, for an instant before the green fires returned. But that instant was enough. Li roared with blood fury; Burning Tiger screamed against the night. In a flare of blinding Essence, they sheared Urei’s arms away at the elbow. The green fire faded from his eyes. He fell to his knees as blood spurted from his stumps. He moaned; he screamed. “Help me.”

Li ignored his plight; her bloodlust showed only that he was no longer a threat, and she turned her efforts to hacking at the fallen spear. Thorwald inclined his head in acknowledgement of a fallen ally and fallen foe. With a single blow he severed Urei’s head, ending his suffering. Aekino looked away.

The swordswoman from Orchid howled as she chopped at the spear of green light where it lay upon the blood- and ichor-stained earth. Green and gold sparks spat forth where her sword struck the spear. The spear whined and twitched. Then it shot away, streaking up the slope and then into the sky, where it struck the clouds in a spreading scarlet stain.

The demons that ringed our heroes hesitated for but a moment as their champion fled. Then they drew closer, and a wave of dark shapes closed around the light.

Fetek, for his part, charged through the demons before him and into the ring of stones. At its center, four cowled figures stood chanting around a stone altar, upon which a drugged-looking old man. The chanters paid him no mind, dedicated as they were to opening the path for their master. But a weighty shape loomed out of the dark to interpose itself between the Lunar and the infernalists. Gray as granite, the demon rode upon her own shadow as if it were a horse. Shadow flowed up her body to form black mail, congealed in her hands as hammer and axe of darkness. This was Sekai, the Shadow-Rider, and Fetek reeled back under the force of her blows.

While the two struggled, Zera slipped past and into the circle of stones. He hesitated, overwhelmed by choices: should he aid Fetek against the demon? Should he strike down the four chanters at the altar? Or should he free those tied to the stones as sacrifices? He chose the latter path, and moved from stone to stone, slicing away ropes. He saw that two were Dragon-Blooded by the elemental coronas that whirled around them as they strained at their bonds. One, a young boy, helplessly spattered Zera with spinning sand and pebbles; the other, a girl cloaked in a wind of green leaves, smote Zera on the back of the head with a stick when his back was turned.

“Ow!” Zera roared at the girl over the chanting and the howls of battle. “Can’t you see that I’m trying to help you?” Her eyes wide with fear, she only clutched the stick tighter as she backed away. And Fetek flew past him, hurled by the demoness Sekai, and struck one of the upright stones with a bone-jarring thud.

The archer from Thorns edged away from the demoness. He dodged this way and that. He flipped back and up, landing atop a stone; and as Fetek leapt for Sekai’s throat with a roar, Zera decided to end things quickly; he chose the foremost of the chanters in the circle, whose flesh gleamed with silvery spines and who bore a great open book, and shot an arrow at her throat.

Something fleshy boiled up from the collar of her garment and covered the woman’s throat, and the arrow shattered against it. She coughed, swayed, and then continued chanting. “Crap,” said Zera.

Corrupted elementals rained blows down upon Li and Thorwald and Aekino. Aekino laughed as his skin shimmered with golden light, the power of the Sun armoring him, and allowed his foes to strike him. He refused to admit weakness even when his ribs cracked under the weight of stony fists. Aekino lashed out about him with his black jade staff, Havoc in the Dragon Palace, and its blows echoed with the sound of thunder. But black stone fists bruised him and corroded brass leaves slashed him, until he had no choice but to dodge and evade those who attacked him. And Li coughed up blood even as she parried and struck.

Then the spirit Fourth Breeze descended among them, a blade of lightning and ice in its hand, to fight at their side. “Master,” it said to Thorwald, “the spirits of wind and leaf have come. They are ready to aid you in this battle. There will be a price; but if you say the word, they will come.”

“Then let them come!” Thorwald, who not long before had refused to treat with the spirits, now roared his demands to the sky. “Let them do battle with our ancient enemies!”

And the spirits came.

The thunderbird Fanged Gasp descended from the clouds, and the fires of the storm swirled around him like Heaven’s own blazing banners. Elementals and small gods fell like divine rain, and the demons fell back under their withering onslaught. The agatae were torn from the sky and fell like crushed flowers. Demons and warped elementals wrestled with the servants of the winds. Spirits of secrets flowed among the shadows and pounced upon demons. The woodlands themselves seemed to move, to overflow the ridges and pour down into the valley like a green tide. Two figures in scarlet armor followed them like feathers on a breeze, surrounded by auras of ruby and topaz, and demons fell around them.

The demons pulled away from our heroes as they battled this new threat. Li turned, looking for foes, and her eyes lit upon Thorwald. Her eyes blazed with the fire of bloodlust… but she mastered herself, and the fires died. She lowered Burning Tiger’s point to the earth.

Aekino pointed to the circle of stones. Thorwald nodded. “Let’s go.”

As they ran across the ruined vale, pursued by the two in scarlet armor, Zera shot the lead chanter in the head. Her head snapped back, but again, the fleshy armor that underlay her garments poured up to protect her. When it withdrew, her cowl had fallen back, revealing the demonic mark that pulsed and squirmed upon her brow. Zera frowned.

Fetek grappled the shadow-rider and flung her outside the circle, there to deal with the wind-spirits that had arrived. He then leapt across the altar to eviscerate three of the chanters. Blood arced in all directions.

The leader of the infernalists continued to chant. “Urnammu!” she screamed into the wind. “Crushing Weight of Shadows! I open the way! Come to us!” Zera squinted, shifted his aim. He shot the book. It screamed! Blood spurted from the book; the infernalist dropped it. She tried to continue the summoning, but the power was no longer within her grasp. The dark vortex above her tottered. The air throbbed as a dark presence made one final effort to push its way into the world… and failed. The vortex collapsed, as did she.

Fetek leapt for her throat. She pulled moonsilver needles from her flesh and flung them, space twisting around them so their path could not be blocked. Fetek’s blow tore cloth from her torso, and a bit of blood, revealing the perronelle-demon that still served her as living armor.

Li and Thorwald and Aekino joined their brothers in the circle, illuminating it with the blinding fires of their animas. They closed in on the ritualist, but the demoness Sekai leapt in before them. The infernalist climbed up upon Sekai’s shadow, and the pair bounded off into the night. The pair in red armor burst through the circle in pursuit.

Our heroes stood there for a time, panting and nursing their wounds.

They spotted the mysterious red-armored figures returning, their animas glowing like jewels. Aekino went out to meet them, to greet them and thank them for their aid, and (hopefully!) to learn who they were. His comrades followed in his wake. He spread his arms in a gesture of peace, and opened his mouth to speak.

The first of the red-clad ones raised its swords. Realizing his peril too late, Aekino started to lift his own staff in defense, but the figure moved too swiftly, more swiftly even than Li. He stared at the gleam of his own anima upon the deadly blades, and knew that he would die.

But a staff did block that death-blow. The other red-clad figure had parried with the same binding speed, driving the swords into the dirt. The two regarded one another, and an unspoken communication passed between them.

Aekino sputtered, his mind in turmoil as panic surfaced and sank in an instant. He found words. “On your way here, you seemed to be on the side of Creation.”

The second figure nodded. “Yes,” it said. “This once, a respite.” It pointed to the circle of stones, site of the broken ritual. “For this.”

Aekino nodded, his mouth dry. “Thank you,” he said. “But –”

Before he could speak further, the two figures had vanished into the dark. They were visible for a moment only as motes of light, yellow and red, climbing and cresting the valley ridge; and then they were gone.

* * * * *

Our heroes watched as the small gods and elementals of wind, wood and secrets finished off the demons that had guarded the rite, thankful that no true battle-demons had stood against them there. They cut the old man free of the altar, noting by the bluish cast of his skin that he must be an Air Aspect of notable age; they offered food to the Earth Aspect boy, who took it and ran off into the dark.

They picked up the old man and carried him off. They sought some place of safety to camp for the night. Thorwald looked around at the ruins around them, the black stone and brass, the blood and ichor, the bodies of demons and wind-spirits slain in the fray. He looked up at the black overcast. “What we need now,” he observed in his gravely voice, “is some rain, to cleanse this place.”

Within seconds, a light rain started to fall, its cool wetness wiping away the vale’s unwholesome warmth. Aekino peered upward sourly. “Convenient,” he said.

They made their way across the field of dead. Finding dead Urei, Li leant down to close the man’s eyes. Thorwald muttered something about the poor fellow’s soul; he called upon the power of the Sun, and set the corpse afire and the dead soul free.

They moved on. Climbing the ridge, Aekino nudged Li. “Why did you look like you saw a ghost, there at the end?”

Li recollected the face of the infernalist in that last moment of battle, distorted as it was by fury and spines of moonsilver. “I recognized Darien Tal’s daughter.”

“Ah.” The Dynast mulled that over. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

“Yes,” observed Zera, drifting up behind them. “We must go back to Tul Tuin.”

(Note: all PCs received 8 XP for this session. XP totals to date: Aekino 98, Fetek 81, Li 97, Thorwald 99, Zera 104.)