Xilanada - Descending Dark Of Past And Future/Part 13

There were times Ava questioned her judgment. When it came to the matters of the dead, no one at the School was better qualified, better educated. When it came to impersonating a death cultist, though, she was a little less sure. When it came to helping Glee impersonate a death cultist, she was almost certainly crazy.

"I don't know!" the half-Faerie wailed in distress. "I can't choose. You pick one."

"Iron Painting then," Ava said, doing her best to avoid sounding frustrated. "He's cute enough."

"But he's a boy!"

"You didn't like the other girls, remember?"

"...I like..." Glee's wine-dark eyes fluttered flirtatiously at her.

"No, you have 5 people to choose from, Glee. Pick one of them. I have very good reasons for choosing Lyla Olorom. I'm afraid you can't have her."

"Maybe we could both be her! Wouldn't that be fun?"

It was tempting to employ other methods to find why those students had tried to murder her best friend. Unfortunately, all the evidence pointed to a Deathlord cult and such would likely use a cell approach in a place like the Six Poses of Lightning School. Ava wasn't certain Xilanada could afford the time it would take for her to Sense-Ride someone and hope to get lucky. Even Voices on the Wind would only help if she got a break on the room she picked.

That was the reason she was tolerating the aggravating creature, who didn't seem to understand the whole point to why she was here. If Seya hadn't suggested it, Ava would have vetoed the involvement of the Fleshdreamt Professor at once. She was nervous enough about trying to pass for a student sworn to Oblivion. By the Dual Monarchy, how was Glee going to?

With Sorcery, with Disguise of the New Face, just like Ava would.

It was a necessary risk. In person, she could employ Charms that could only be used close up. Glee had undeniable abilities that no other teacher had and, taken off of Seya's very short leash, it was likely the flighty woman could force information no one else could compel.

Ava looked down at the composed body of Lyla Olorom and sighed regretfully. She'd been a small 16-year old brunette student, one Ava liked from the couple of classes the girl had been in. It brought a reminiscing pain to her heart to see the young woman dead now, a Deathlord's sigil over her heart. She would have liked to blame Lyla but the girl's will had probably been crushed by the Lover or one of her Exalts long ago.

"It miiiight be fun to be a boy," Glee said slowly. "I don't know. Have you ever been one? I'd be too worried about getting hit between the legs."

"Would you please...?" Ava started. She managed to swallow what else she had just thought of saying. "...please choose one." Despite her best efforts to remain calm, she could feel lightning arc off her skin, searing black marks on the table and the clothes of the corpse lying on it. "We're going undercover to find out how these students wound up bound to the Lover. Nexus is pretty far south and I know none of these students have been up there. Now, can you focus please?"

"On what?" Glee asked, her dark red eyes almost glowing with mischief.

"It's a wonder your students learn anything," Ava thought to herself.

"What was that?" Glee asked, brushing her long silver locks back to expose a pointed ear.

"I said I hope the thunder doesn't burn things." Not that it was raining or even cloudy. Not that Glee would have the attention span to even remember what the weather was like, much less look at it. She really would have to be certain not to think aloud, though. She had better discipline than that.

"You're so grumpy," fussed the half-Faerie. "Didn't you ever play dress up when you were a kid?"

Ava frowned at the Professor as she involuntarily remembered the days of her youth. Running around in father or mother's Funerist robes, or donning the garb of the dead had been the closest thing to it. For dress up in Sijan, the children of Funerists wore the ritual robes they hoped their corpse would be wearing after a lifetime of devoted service, just before death elevated them to the ranks of real power in the city.

She sighed and shook her head.

"Not in any way you would understand, Glee. Different lives. Speaking of which, we need to get busy choosing ours. I'm going to cast for Lyla now. When I'm done, I hope you'll have picked who you're going to be. If we hurry, we can make the last class of the day with Joybringer. Otherwise, we'll have to wait until tomorrow to get started."

Ava caressed the girl's face and began to draw up the Sorcery, still saddened at the senseless loss of life. The elemental power thrumming through her veins changed through the complicated weaves of Essence she wove, forming into Sorcery stronger than any Charm. Completing a last gesture, Ava closed her eyes and waited for the spell to finish its work.

When she opened her eyes, she'd lost a foot. Walking to the mirror took a moment to readjust to a smaller stride but she overcame the disorientation in moments. Ava grinned with someone else's face

"My turn!" exclaimed Glee.

A look of fierce concentration crossed her face and bands of pure Essence coalesced into recognizable runes. Glee's mercurial nature made it all the more surprising to Ava that the woman was an accomplished Sorcerer. What she knew about the Fleshdreamt was that they had more in common with their Wyld parent than they did with God-blooded or any of the other Exalts by blood. Sorcery was not generally something they could do, to her knowledge.

Yet Glee finished the Disguise of the New Face and became Gemstone Waking, Lyla's best friend. Ava sighed at her choice but couldn't dispute it. The spell was done and it did make a good cover for them being together.

"Let's go!" Glee exclaimed behind a pretty teen's face with dark eyes and hair.

"Remember how this is going to work, Glee. Take these knives," Ava said, handing over a set of blades from the bodies. "We already have student suits but we're knife-fighters who are supposed to be very good. At the very least, we'll have to carry them though I hope no more than that. I've never had weapons training."

"Never?" the Professor asked, garishly shocked.

"Glee, you're a better teenager than most teenagers are, but you're going to have to tone it down. Gemstone Waking was a bit bubblier than Lyla but we're going to be among other people who've sworn their souls to a Deathlord. People like that...just aren't happy, okay? Trust me."

"Fine, fine, but you've really never even held a weapon?" Glee looked interested as she stripped down from her school suit into a spare student suit Gemstone Waking's size.

"No," Ava muttered, mildly embarrassed as she stepped out of her own clothes. She kept the table between the two of them as she hastily donned the student clothing and breathed a sigh of relief at being decent again. "I was born Exalted. The Funerists saw my natural aptitude for elemental Charms and honed my defensive training toward using that. There was little need to spend years practicing with a sword when I could kill a man with a gesture at the age of six."

"Wow, you're all hardcore!" Glee said, admiration in her voice. "Does that sound death cultish to you?"

"The context yes, the tone, no," Ava deftly inserted in the middle of her reminiscing. "The first person I was ever forced to kill was a barbarian when I began my adventuring days, so obviously I never used fighting Essence in Sijan but neither did I learn any weapon skills. Like I said, I hope we won't have to use our knives because I've never been in a situation where I couldn't use my lightning."

Dressed, Ava and Glee left the section of the infirmary where the morgue was. The only person in the main section of the tidy room was a sleeping Xilanada. Ava paused before her, brushed a few of those curls away from her unconscious friend's face and patted her arm. It had not been the year for this new schoolteacher.

"Don't worry, Lana. We'll find out who did this and why." She squeezed Xilanada's arm, who didn't even stir, and then she left with Glee skipping behind her. "Gemstone, please stop skipping."

"Who?" Glee asked, stopping in the doorway, looking confused.

It was an effort not to show her anger. Thankfully for them both, Ava was a creature of self-control. And, thanks to Disguise of the New Face, she wasn't even leaking lightning now. "Glee, this isn't going to work unless you...why don't you just not say anything? Let me do the talking while you read their minds, okay?"

"Okay!" said the half-Faerie, snapping to attention and saluting sharply. They'd taken a dozen steps before she was already talking again. "Were you really born Exalted?"

"I was," Ava said, after a moment's effort told her there was no one around. "I understand it's never happened before. Of course, there were four others born around the same time. We were a Brotherhood for a few years, you know, before I settled down here. Those were grand times." She smiled in memory. "Ghosts and Hardened Killers, demons and wild beasts, barbarians, demons and even some of the things in Marama's Fell. There's a place you don't ever want to go."

"You were a hero!" Glee exclaimed. Thankfully, her volume was quiet.

"Were we?" Ava wondered aloud. "I suppose we were. At the time, we were just trying to save lives. From those Hardened Killers in Whitewall to that barbarian village we saved from the Fell, we just...were the people on hand to take care of things that came up. Even that demon incursion in Gethamane." She shuddered at the memory. "I always wondered what that man had to do with it, though, the one who steered us to the best place to weather it out. Black Ice Shadow. None of my Brotherhood seems to remember him anymore but I do. One of these days I'm going to find him and figure out what was going on back then. Maybe the other one, Felicity, could help me. He was very nice."

She shook her head at Glee as they passed out of the Facilities wing and moved into a Classroom wing.

"That's enough of that, though. We have a job to do. Remember, let me do the talking."

This late in the day, there weren't as many students moving about. It was surreal being eyelevel with them though. Ava remembered how Lyla had walked and did her best to imitate the girl's habits but it was difficult to walk with that bold, decisive step. She'd always been a woman of action, too, but it was unsettling to be so surrounded in the School.

Rainblown wasn't there when they arrived. That was unusual. Rainblown had always held question time before class started. Instead, Ava looked about and caught the eyes of a couple other students. There were frowns but at least they approached her.

"It's done?" asked one, leaning closer. "Anyone get hurt?"

"The other four came to the reward early," Ava sighed, with all the affectation of a young, if sober girl. "No, it's not. She had..."

"Demons," Glee improvised quickly. All of them gawked at her, Ava among them. "I think they were Erymanthus'." Ava smirked at the thoughtful grimaces from everyone. "Blood Apes," Glee added, sounding a little annoyed herself. Not surprising since she had co-chaired a general studies Introduction to Demonology class that all of these students had been at.

"No one saw you?" asked a girl nervously. "You know what you should have done if you were. You're going to lead the teachers right to us if anyone saw you!"

"Calm down!" Ava hissed in a cutting way. "Not so loud." A meaningful look at the rest of the class quieted the small group and diffused some of the tension. "No one saw us. We didn't even need the veils, no one saw us. But the others didn't make it." A good thing she remembered what cultists commonly called the almost ceremonial cowls the killers had worn.

"The Lover bless us," a boy sourly. "It's a good thing we're done with this tomorrow night. They'll be catching on soon."

But then Rainblown strode in right at the last minute, making further conversation impossible. The God-Blooded looked a little cross, believe it or not. Ava wondered what could possibly have ruffled the detached Sorcerer, always lost in his own meditations.

She almost reached for the books when she noticed no one else was. What was going on? Rainblown carried nothing in with him either. He was always prone to using books, and citing them at great length no matter the interest of the audience. Instead, he paused before his desk, looked at his chair and then turned around to face his audience.

He cleared his throat. His students looked at him, rapt expressions on their faces. By Acheron's rapids, what was Rainblown up to?

"Once there was an army encamped on the savannah."

"The army was mighty. It had hundreds of hundreds and it wore steel in its teeth, even then. It moved as the los'sorah scorpions move and in all it was a beautiful motion to behold. The army had never lost. And they were led...by Daimyo Shors Leget!"

Rainblown pronounced the last word with a snap and paused dramatically. Ava already found herself much more interested than she had expected to be. Rainblown had learned to try different teaching methods, obviously!

"The savannah welcomed the army but the Shor'vay People did not, for they were proud. Great was their esteem for their horses and their ways, and rich was their wisdom in the Shoals of the Southeast. The savannah was respected by the army but for the Shor'vay People the savannah was Mother, its rich grasses Sister, its deep pools Daughter, and its wild game Wife. They had never bowed. And they were led...by His Grace Ashala'ny!"

Again, the dramatic pause after a sharp hiss. Ava leaned forward on her elbows, wondering what any of this had to do with wards. This was the Intermediate Class Against Spirits, after all.

"The army came as all armies do. Do you know why they came?"

"They came to conquer!" shouted one student, completely out of turn. Ava turned, shocked by the breech of protocol, only to turn again as another and another answered as well. "They came to fight!" "They came to rule!" "They came to bring their way of life."

"And so wisdom shows itself," Rainblown said, with a slight nod and a grudging smile on his face. "The army came and it came with more than its steel. It came with roads! It came with dams! It came with walls and latrines and greatly crafted goods."

"The savannah was Mother! It would not tolerate such defilement, surely not! The Shor'vay People were outraged on her behalf and they rose as one and that one was His Grace Ashala'ny. Who could stand against them? The army and its Daimyo Shors Leget!"

"So."

Rainblown closed his eyes for a full minute. So did the other students, as if this was something expected now. Ava didn't bother to do so, instead taking the time to carefully note those who'd come to her earlier and who they sat next to. It also gave her time to privately wonder what was supposed to happen tomorrow night.

"Drums," Rainblown said, his high tenor still managing to rumble a little on the word. "Drums," he said again. "Drums in the grass. Drums in the night. Drums to call, drums to enspirit, drums to incite, drums to direct. And so, the Shor'vay People came against the army who was encamped in the savannah."

The God-Blooded Professor paused, looked about the room. His eyes were lit with a peculiar passion and his emotionless face bore myriad subtle feelings. Ava remembered the Great Stories of Sijan and the legendary storytellers of old who had taught her so much of what had once been. Though she would never have known it before, Rainblown could count among their number now. Where had he learned such amazing skill?

"The People...they came...against the army! Sha'raw they shouted and threw their spears! Nisi Nisi they cried as the army turned their great shafts aside with their walls. Ima'narost they bellowed as they fell away before the army's steel. Worst of all... Sho'roolos they sobbed when they found what the army had done to their village before their return."

"Hear their pain!" Rainblown shouted. "This army with its steel, this army with its walls to turn their spears, this army with their roads to flank and break any against them. This army had crushed the People!"

The Professor looked about the room in grave, somber silence, with the same visage of respect Ava had seen countless times on those showing honor to the dead. He sighed deeply and looked genuinely mournful. At long last, he looked up and fixed his students with a great glare.

"How did the People lose?"

"The army had better weapons!" shouted one student. "They had walls!" "They had roads!" "They had a better commander!"

"All true!" shouted Rainblown back. "But...the People won." A startled gasp from the students echoed off the walls. "Not that year but the next. How did they win?"

This time, the answers were not immediately forthcoming. Ava had some ideas but wanted to see where Rainblown was going with this. Some students studied past notes while others wrote down more. At last, they began to speak, one by one.

"Did they kill the commander?"

"They did but that was the fourth victory, not the first," Rainblown said quickly.

"Did they break their walls?"

"They did but that was the third victory, not the first."

"Did they...destroy their roads?"

"They did but that was the second victory, not the first."

"Did they...fight their supply lines?"

"Yes. That was the first." Rainblown gave the correct student a smile, which everyone seemed to treat as a prize worthy of envious looks. "What does this story teach us?"

"It teaches us the order of spiritual attack," said one of the cultist students near Ava.

"Go on," he said.

"When you build a ward against a God...or a wise Ghost or a cunning Demon, they will try to break it just as the Sho'vay People did."

"Yes," Rainblown said. Snatching up a piece of chalk, he wrote in bold, crisp lines across the back wall. Patterns emerged, then ward designs as sophisticated as any Ava had ever seen flowed across the surface under his hand. This was the Rainblown she'd known. But what an approach to teaching!

"First, the wise Spirit will fight your supply lines by isolating you. They will test the circle of your ward and seek to keep you inside of it by removing all interaction between you and the outside world. Second, the wise Spirit will begin destroying your roads by sabotaging the environment, changing the Essence flows to deprive your wards of strength as well as your ability to leave, even if you abandon your defenses."

"Third, the wise Spirit will begin breaking your wards directly. They will do so because you will be isolated and weak and they will have nothing but time. Fourth, the wise Spirit will avoid your own talismans and personal protections by going for your mind and heart. They will possess you if you are too weak. They will enflame you, confuse you, distract you and control you if you are too strong. In the end, they will bring you down. Just as the Sho'vay People once defeated a Shogunute Regiment and held their lands for centuries, in time becoming the Krantiri tribe of Kirigast."

Rainblown smiled broadly. "Of course, most spirits will not be wise, anymore than most people are wise. But it is not the incautious, foolhardy Spirit you must prepare for. It is the crafty and cunning, the experienced and strong. Today's class will focus on traditional methods to resist Spirit disruption of wards. Be stronger than the Shogunute was."

The rest of the class passed in like manner. Rainblown mixed a fascinatingly weird combination of high-scale ward mathematics with anecdotal stories to illustrate concepts. Ava had a hard time following it sometimes but it looked like the rest of the students had some practice with this style and shouted their answers out freely. Rainblown himself was more impassioned than she'd ever seen him, though he still lurked behind that mystic resolve that was as part of him as that long beautiful hair of his.

Ava dutifully took unnecessary notes and waited for the class to end. She had a masquerade to uncover, after all! Rainblown wrapped up only a minute before the end of the class and left as suddenly as he'd come. Again he'd avoided a question time! Perhaps he held more extensive office hours...

"Lyla, here's the word." A female student sat down next to her as the others were filtering out of the classroom. "No meeting tonight but there will be one right before classes tomorrow morning. Be sure and get some sleep, it's going to be brutal tomorrow." The girl smiled dreamily and Ava felt a chill creeping across her skin. The young student wasn't talking about tests but about something else, something bad if this death cult and its assassins were anything to judge by.

"Where's the meeting?" Ava asked directly.

"Where it always is," the girl answered, suddenly cross. "You know we're not supposed to talk about that, Lyla."

"It's still there? I would have thought we'd at least meet somewhere else since there's such concern about the teachers catching us." She was confident that the reasoning would protect her lack of knowledge.

"I'm telling you what I was told by Janasi, and he was told by the Master. Where we meet is the safest place, even now. I'll see you there."

"I'll be there," Ava said, with a bloodthirsty grin. "The Lover will bless us all after tomorrow." The answering grin eliminated all doubt from her mind that there was anything remotely innocent to this. There was going to be bloodshed and they had a day to stop it.

The last students left and Ava stood, looking at Glee guardedly. The half-Faerie seemed quite content to doodle where her notes should have been. There was a surprise.

"I don't suppose you learned anything," Ava remarked sarcastically.

"About what?" Glee asked, looking up inquisitively.

"About the plot!"

"Oh. Well, of course!"

"...you did?" Ava asked again, honestly surprised.

"Rainblown's story was so interesting, I almost forgot." Glee looked deeply guilty. "But no worries! I know where the meeting is and I know some of the students attending too. I couldn't quite catch the Master's image but I know he's the one behind all of this. There's an adult who has been teaching these students...deadly things."

The look on Glee's face turned dark and terrible, an expression of righteous indignation and even anger. The transformation was sudden and it was a look Ava had never seen on the Professor's face. Glee stood, gathered up her sheets of notes and moved to the door.

"What kinds of things?" Ava asked.

"Knife work, stealth work, how to kill someone in a hundred ways. And while he's been doing it, he's been killing their souls." Glee looked as enraged as any parent might be. "They still live but he's drained their spirits, twisted them and bent them in an unnatural way. I've never seen anything like it. A Faerie could do it but...it's not a Faerie. They aren't ravished in any way. They are...conditioned."

"Then we must be careful," Ava said, glancing about the hall to make sure they were alone. "We have a day to find out more. Perhaps we'll meet this Master tomorrow. In the meantime, I think we should wander a bit, see if you can catch any more thoughts, and I'll see what I can overhear. And then, a good night's sleep. Like she said, it's going to be brutal tomorrow."

Ava felt the anger inside her burning again, the drive to heroism and risk that had made her brotherhood legends in the North. She might have retired to teach but she was every bit as good as she used to be. Ava walked on and thought with some satisfaction about who, in the end, tomorrow would be brutal for.