[Mysterious Cities of Jade] Chapter 3 - Getting Paid

Sarky

Sarky

Drunken master
Everyone:


The undead crew has everything in hand; They're making good use of the wind, minor repairs here and there are almost done, one of them is even preparing supper for the living amongst you, although it's mostly chopped fruit and driet meat.


Night has fallen, and the remaining clouds have long since vanished, revealing the vast splendour of the heavens as far as the eye can see. the rapidly cooling winds bring a hint of salt from the coast a few miles north.


Elegy and Taletold Heart work away on their research, Pillar reads his new scrolls and books, Shadow meditates on a brilliant crystal, Shinji finds a bottle of something pleasant, Amaya... Is Amaya.


Ayo:


You're relaxing in your cabin, a small glass of the good stuff by your side, the engraved disc Shinji gave you lying on the desk, glittering in the candle light. The Lusty Maiden is running smoothly. The run in with those feathery slavers doesn't seem to have put much of a dent in the schedule, thanks to those villagers you can probably half the cost of restocking for your next trip. Without further delays, you'll make Chiaroscuro in about 5 hours. It was a pretty simple run, but as proof-of-concept and a reputation builder, it might end up being worth more than what that nice Ragara gentleman promised to pay you. Out of the cabin window, Mercury can be seen riding low on the horizon. Huh. Maybe a little lower than usual.
 
Amaya finds herself lying down on the deck, gazing at the night's sky. She holds a piece of paper in her hand that says "WITH FRIENDS, DON'T DO ANYTHING.", and she is following its commands like a good girl.


At a seemingly random point in time later, Amaya seems to shake out of her amnesiac stupor with a start. She glances around, slightly confused, and looks at the paper in her hand. Shrugging, she crumples it up and throws it away. As she does so, she notices something that makes her frown.


Amaya jumps up to a standing position and grabs onto her cloak, gazing at it with intensity. In a bemused voice she calls out a question. "Does anyone know why I have blood on my cloak?"
 
Shadow didn't bother opening an eye and simply stated, for the who knows how manyith time, from his typical perch. "You saved a bunch of villagers. I'm Shadow, you're Amaya, we're on a crew together, and you're suffering from amnesia so just be still unless you're thirsty or something." And he went back to meditating on the secrets his memory crystal had to offer.
 
Amaya sticks her hand on her hips and looks down at Shadow. In a slightly annoyed voice she states "You don't have to be so snippy about it. My ritual is over. I remember everything now, except what happened today. If you're gonna act like that, I'll just make it so you're the one having memory problems next time." She then peers down at his crystal, a curious expression on her face. With a quick hop, she jumps up right behind Shadow and queries, her attitude completely changed from before. "Ooh. What is that?"
 
"I don't doubt it." Shadow opened his eyes and turned to look up at Amaya, smiling happily now that she was apparently back to herself. "To be fair. I gave myself a headache, trying to figure out what was wrong with you. So I tell you about Raven," He held the memory crystal up, "and you tell me about this ritual you mentioned?" He rolled the crystal around in his hand a couple of times before he let Amaya hold it. "It's a memory crystal that holds the memories of a first age master martial artist. I nicked it relatively early in my thieving. I used to go to sleep listening to it, although since Raven can only really communicate in old realm I had a hard time gleaning anything of use from it before my exaltation, but since then I've been learning the Ebon Shadow martial arts style from it. Now it's your turn, what's this ritual that causes you amnesia?"
 
"Wow. That is really cool. That is one lucky find!" Amaya beams at Shadow. Then she shrugs and informs him what the hell had been going on all day. "Oh. I'm not sure if you've seen me do any, but when I use my fluctuations, the world kinda objects. My fluctuations let me change things about the world. For example, when we were meeting with that Astrologer guy we were being held up in a waiting room. I didn't really want to wait, so I created an obscure law that would send us right up to him, and y'now how law abiding they all are there."


Amaya then waves her hand as if to shoo the memory away and continues. "So, the world objects, and it kinda keeps track of how much I did to it. If I let that build up too much bad things happen, like 'Hosting a tea party for demons' kinda bad. Anyway, I have ways to soothe whatever is getting annoyed at me. I only know a few rituals right now; turning myself amnesiac is one, but I can also do the reverse, making everyone forget about me. I thought it would be easier if I was the only troublesome one, rather than having all of you cry 'Intruder!' every half hour when you forgot about me again."
 
A tune carries out of the half-cut marine's cabin, "Wasting away in Nexus-ville, looking for my lost oboooool!"
 
Shadow had to stifle a laugh at the obscure law bit. "Wish I could make obscure laws on the fly. I wouldn't have to run whenever someone happens across me while I'm working." He nods in agreement at her explanation. "Just in the future give at least one of us a warning before you do something like that again. Yeah, all of us forgetting about you would be bad. Let me tell you, trying to convince all of you that I wasn't a threat was not fun. Hm..." Shadow opened up his pocket watch and considered, "How do you think I would I react if I didn't know who you were and left a message for myself in here?" Shadow commented, "He's pretty good. It is nice having a musician on board."
 
The door to the crew berths opened in grand boot-kicked fashion. Shinji strolled on deck with a shoddy wooden cup of whiskey and clay pipe in hand. "Evening, gents and amnesiacs." He strolls along the deck, savoring wind in his face. The scent of the sea always put him half at ease/half expecting a knife in the back. His teachers always told him to mind his surroundings. I'll get around to that. Someday. Leaning on the rail, Shinji glances over his shoulder. "How goes the evening?"
 
Leaning back in his cabin, nursing the remains of a very good bottle of rum, Ayo stares at his star for a moment. Hello, lady.


Something niggles at the back of his mind... oh. The token Shinji had given him, a gift from a mysterious stranger who knew the Lusty Maiden's course and captain. He should probably take a closer look at that now that the excitement had died down.


Pulling it out of a desk drawer, he holds it up to the light, gently running his finger across its smooth surface over the Maiden's sign.
 
Below decks, a bleary-eyed Elegy stairs at her documents, contemplating them with the bloodshot clarity that comes only from staying up for too long studying necromantic grimoires. And, in that delirium, a brilliant clarity emerges. One does not simply banish a ghost. One banishes it with panache.


Putting on that nightmarish ritz.

Making my daily Intelligence + Occult roll to develop a new spell. Spending 10m from personal on the Second Occult Excellency to buy 5 successes.
 
Elegy:


Taletold Heart smirks at your sudden insight. "You look like you just received inspiration, m'lady. I trust it won't result in me having to kill anything this time?"


Ayo:


The Maiden's sign glitters faintly as you pick up the disc. Something just feels right about holding it in your hand, kind of like the feeling you get when you see your star outside, or stand at the helm of your ship. Fate, maybe? Nothing so crass as the contrived machinations of the Bureau though, purer than that. Tracing your finger along it leaves faint swirling green trails in the stone which disappear after a few seconds. After a little study it becomes apparent that it's actually two pieces of crystal, one disc set inside another, but so artfully done that you could easily miss it. A flicker of your power reveals essence circuitry of an incredible complexity. The design of this piece would have taxed any of the gods of the forge, engineering, lore or similar purviews that you've ever dealt with.


"Ayo."


Yeah, ok, they don't usually whisper your name either.
 
This is not Ayo's first rodeo. A rookie might toss the thing away or panic, but in his brief time in the Bureau and his longer time out of it he's seen some things. Best not to panic just yet.


"Yes?"
 
Everyone on deck:


A glimmer near the horizon catches your eye- Mercury is suddenly shining brighter. and brighter, and brighter still until it's almost daytime, the other stars drowned out by the yellow light. The Lusty Maiden lurches as if it struck a reef, and when you regain your balance, the light has faded, but the landscape is... Wrong. You were sailing across rocky scrub and grassland, but all around you is lifeless desert, an ocean of sand. The zombies carry on as if nothing had happened.


And then you hear it, somewhere nearby but also from all around. a whisper but clear as day.


"Ayo."


Everyone not on deck:


There's a sudden lurch and judder, like the ship just smashed into something.


Ayo:


You feel the faintest tug on your soul, as the device simply saps some essence from you and blazes to life, illuminating the room with crystalline incandescence. There is a shudder from the Lusty Maiden as if it ran aground. The light fades, and the stars outside look... Wrong. Come to think of it, there should be a mountain or two out that direction as well.


"Ayo."


Not the disc in your hand. The voice came from... somewhere above you? Up on deck, maybe?
 
Oh Gods.


Ayo tosses the bottle of rum aside and runs for the deck, frantically trying to straighten his clothes as he goes. Is that soup on his lapel? Oh fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, he's underdressed and he's got zombies and an Abyssal and...


Panicking slightly, Ayo goes to meet his Maker.
 
"The flying fuck?" Shinji eyes his whiskey and ponders sobriety not for the first time, thinks better of it, and swigs the rest down. "We're about to die, aren't we? We're dying, right?" Shinji calls over to Shadow and Amaya. "That tends to happen when the world shifts and the wind calls the name of your captain. Read it once in a book."
 
[media]
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I think this sets the mood I was going for here


Everyone:


Up on deck, the stars are clearly not where they should be. The sky puts Ayo in mind of an old astrology map he once saw during his history studies in the Bureau, but dancing through it there are shimmering nebulae and what would be northern lights, if this wasn't clearly a hot sandy desert. At the very prow of the ship, back to everyone, stands a female figure draped in golden yellow silks. Without turning she beckons you all to come closer, and points ahead of the ship. The dunes all around you flicker and become something else entirely: You're sailing through the night sky, desert sands, oases and large settlements below. An explosion of light from above illuminates something HUGE. What you thought was a constellation flaps wings as large as the Penitent of the Lap, revealing a draconic body of a billion glittering crystals bound together in threads of lightning. A gigantic ball of green flame streaks from its colossal mouth downwards to the ground, nearly burning your faces on its way down, striking tens of square miles of the surface. Where the flames fade, smoking, crystal-lined crater remains, out of which emerge swarms of crystalline insects. they pour towards an undamaged settlement, and even as high up as you are, you can hear the screams of terror and agony. The titanic dragon-thing laughs with a boom that rattles your bones, and turns to fly south, ahead of you.


A wind picks up- No, the ship speeds up, no longer propelled by the wind, following the huge creature. the woman speaks:


"Some journeys are secret. Yet all secrets are discovered."


The land flashes by in a blur as you reach immense speeds, suddenly stopping to reveal a new scene: Fiery volcanoes that must be a hundred miles high, wreathed in smoke. The Lusty Maiden plunges downwards towards one of the rocky slopes, where your eyes eventually pick out a group of people climbing upwards. They seem unaware of your presence. As one of them turns to look down, you see a mark on his forehead: a silvery crescent moon. Despite heavy armour and weapons they ghost up the cliffs silently and speedily ahead of you, reaching a plateau. down on the other side, you see a magnificent city, composed entirely of glittering red stone. Massive towers pierce the volcanic smoke and at the centre, coiled around the tallest of the towers, is the dragon thing from before.


The group begins to talk quietly, their leader sketching out a rough map of the city in the dirt:


"You were right, Tamaz. There he is, in all his dark glory..."


"Don't say his name. I know Autocthon said we were protected but let's not take the chance."


"Good point. So, the plan of attack: We infiltrate ahead of the Terrestrial Legions, removing that thing's precious Vaunted sentries. The Legions arrive by air and spread as much chaos as possible. Good news is I hear Nevarim's Wing is part of the first attack."


"Good choice. A few elder children of Hesiesh will cause some serious damage in a place like that."


"Yeah. Now while they're working, we continue to take out high profile targets. But we do NOT make a move on the central tower, is that clear? It's protected by its owner, and we haven't a hope until Brigid gets here."


"Whoah. Brigid's part of this one?"


"Yup. Brigid and her whole Circle will be joining us as soon as we give the signal. Something special about this Primordial, we can't afford to actually kill it, or bad things will happen Creation. The Solars have something in mind to sort it out, but no need to worry about that, we have our orders. Five hours until the Dragon-Bloods show up, then things get messy. Let's get down there and hunt."


"Right boss. that bastard's gonna pay for wiping out our people..."


The scene around the ship blurs and changes again: The same city, embroiled in fearsome battle. Winged crystal monstrosities clash with Dragon-Blooded warriors in in credible flying armour, blasts of elemental power scouring whole streets of life. the titan in the centre sweeps its tail, knocking whole squads of fighters out of the sky, and speaks terrible words of such power that the mountains shatter, crushing more troops in land slides and floods of lava.


Then suddenly he recoils as if burned himself. A golden web of essence forms around him, constricting his movements. He lashes out at it, but it holds firm, closing ever tighter until the massive form can no longer move, and it loses its grip on its tower, falling for miles into the city below with a pitiful wail, drowned out by the victory cry of the celestial host.


The scene shifts again: The deck of the ship is now a council chamber of red jade, one of the buildings of this great city. The fighting has died down, and teams of Earth-aspected Dragon-Blooded have already begun to repair the damage. The man with the crescent moon sign on his brow is present, with his four fellows. They sport serious burns and wounds, but they stand tall. Five figures dressed in golden armour enter. They are similarly injured.


"The plan is in motion. The Vengeful Tyrant is being divided up, and pieces will be sent North, East and West. This city of red jade was intended to destabilise the whole of reality in the South. We will alter it to to the opposite with the fourth portion of his souls, and build similar cities in the other Directions."


"That's a lot of jade that could be used to further the war effort."


"I know. It will take at least a century to mine enough. But consider: the war is going well. We are going to defeat the Primordials. But once that is done, we will have an infinite army outside of reality waiting to tear it apart in its weakened state. If we do this now, we can save lives by preventing another war so soon after this one."


"You don't have to sell it to us, Quicksilver Falcon, you know we're with you. So what do you want from us?"


"When the Vengeful Tyrant is divided, he will need protection as he is transported. We charge you with the duty of making sure his souls arrive at their destinations. Nobody outside this room must know, or the whole operation is imperilled. "


One of the golden figures spins essence into a large map. On it, you see Creation, but not quite... The Blessed Isle is certainly familiar, but there are landmasses that don't exist, including a huge continent in the West. she points at the map, and 4 dots of light near the edges appear. Each one covers an area of several hundred miles in diameter.


"This city will house one of the portions. Other geomantically favourable areas in the other Directions are here, here and here. Examine these areas, and once you find the ideal position, contact us, and we will begin construction."


"Some secrets are journeys. Yet all journeys end."


The Lusty Maiden reappears. Four scenes play out around you: To Port, a determined sailor in silver grimly weathering storms as he sails West. To starboard, guerilla warfare in an endless forest as another man swings through the trees, evading huge predators and entire tribes of inhuman monsters as he races to bring his treasured package East. Ahead of you lies an icy waste, and the man with the crescent mark trudges through the snows, leaping great chasms and battling frozen behemoths as he journeys ever further North. And behind, a fourth warrior stands on a mountain top overlooking the newly repaired red jade city. It glows with power, and as the man raises his arms and channels the immense essence of the place, it slowly sinks beneath the sands until even the tallest tower is lost.


And back again to sailing on the sands, as the stars begin moving, and settlements rise and fall around you in the blink of an eye, and the coastline and landscape gradually assumes the form it had before this craziness. The woman finally turns around to face you all. She is indistinct through a haze of yellow light, but somehow you know she is one of the most beautiful creatures you will ever see.


"It is almost time for a new journey to end an old one. My star will guide you, when the time is right. Travel well."


The woman fades slowly from view, revealing the dim lights of Chiaroscuro on the horizon.
 
Amaya's face is ghostly white as the crew phase back into reality, reappearing in their former positions. She opens her mouth as if to speak, and then closes it again, unable to properly articulate her thoughts. She stands silent for a few more moments, before she succinctly sums up her reaction. "Wow."
 
The cup tumbles across the deck. I have dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone from me.


Cataracts of thought gush in Shinji's mind. Part of him feels ill, confused, and not a little scared. Scarred, even. But in a good way, a way that'll make him smile later in life, if not weep, as he was doing now. Discreetly brushing a hand across his eyes, he doesn't even know why he was moved. Nor has he (o Myrcella forgive me) seen such a beautiful woman in all his life. Maybe it is the vision of days gone by and the vision of Her.


He remembers the most vital lesson of his fighting masters and the Immaculate tutor he'd had years and years ago: What do you see?


And for all the knowledge he'd spent life absorbing between running his mouth and for his life, he can only fill gaps of the distant past he once thought he knew inside and out. He is awed.


"Cheers?"
 
Shadow was in silent awe until the vision was ended and Mercury was gone. "Well, damn." There's practically no point in stealing anything anymore ever. It's all going to look like trash, not to mention the women. "Ayo, I hate you so much right now."
 
Wordlessly, Ayo sinks down, sitting with his back against the mast. "That's fair."


His hands are shaking. He'd met Mercury once before, and Her power had been veiled then - the Incarnae did that a lot of the time when interacting with other beings. That was his Maiden in Her full aspect - he'd never felt such power. And the things he'd seen...


"We've... I... I've been tapped. Marked as Her piece in whatever game is coming. It happens maybe once in a millennium. Usually it's subtle, the signs are there, afterward... people with the eyes to see will know, looking back. But that... congratulations, folks. We just had a religious experience."


Unsteadily, he rises to his feet. "I just hope it works out better than the last time this happened."
 
Amaya looks around at the others, and then back at Ayo, rushing to be the first person to speak. "Wait, wait wait! So we just got set on a task by one of the greatest gods in Heaven?" She queries, and then pauses momentarily.


"That. Is. AWESOME!" Amaya practically squeals as she jumps up and down, pure joy on her face. It is quite a disturbing sight seeing her act this way, especially in contrast to the horrendous slaughter she committed yesterday. Nonetheless, her opinion on the matter is clear.
 
Ayo:


Glancing down at the disc in your hand, you instantly see that the Maiden's sigil has faded, and been replaced with a glowing set of arrows, resembling a compass. This fades from view and becomes the sign of Mercury again as you feel it release your essence back to you.
 
Elegy peaks her head over the top uncertainly, Taletold Heart next to her. Could that have been...? Well, be still her beating heart. Elegy climbs the rest of the way up, tapping Ayo on the shoulder. "Well, um, my captain. Should I... ah... even have been here?" She's not even sure she is technically inside of fate.
 
Ayo shrugs. "If Mercury wanted you dead, you'd be dead. Outside Fate or not, you were in Her presence. I guess that's at least tacit consent..."
 
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