Yuki!"We have
problems," Timatheo says.
Wait, wait, let's back up. You're now at the *~Lucky Star~* just off Welcoming Plaza, finalizing your trip prep in one of its upper-floor lounges, and by you I mean the Fellowship of the Deerboy. Let's run down the list real quick while I add them to the Dramatis Personae, and then we can get back to Timatheo and his tablet.
- Princess Sulochana Arju. Her scales are a dull gold and warm brown, and she's wearing Aestivali fashion: loose, flowing, colorful silks. Her cloak does have a hood, but she's got it tossed back to show off the butterfly-combed ponytail. Her half-mask is white edged in gold, and silver tassels hang under it, her lips teasingly peeking out between them. A web of delicate golden chains covers her right hand from palm to elbow, looping in curves that draw the eye. She's burning a cover identity for this, one prepared by the spies of the Arju consortium for such a desperate hour, so she's spent the past hour going through the cover notes on her tablet and doing vocal warmups. Yah, she murmurs to herself, the beach house in Garnet's going to be lovely for the season, yah?
- Pasenne, who presumably has a last name but you haven't gotten it yet. The ribbons that were wrapped around her rattle are now in her pigtails, and when she moves, the bells on her collar and wrist cuffs jangle along with her rattle. The one thing she gets to wear that isn't gauzy and diaphanous is the embroidered vest, all knots and coils (barring the veil, naturally). The symbols etched into her collar indicate that she's served fourteen months of two years of gambled service. She's squirming a little self-consciously, but that adds to the authenticity (and there's some giddy awareness of her own hotness in there, too). She's also doing the finishing touches on Magasha's eyeshadow; she's the cosmetics expert for this operation.
- Anka Arju-Wajz, who's one of the non-serpentine Nagi. She's got scale patterns in her fur and wet golden eyes, but she's also big, shaggy, and broad-shouldered. Her mask is black and red, the swirls drawing attention to those intense eyes, and it exposes her glittering ruby-red lipstick. The mask, the red cloak tossed over one shoulder, the braided golden sash, and a charm dangling from her wrist: these things mark her out as a vicious agonistes. It's an assumed identity, but only barely one; I must have neglected to mention her whirlwind of heartblade violence at the disastrous ceremony last night.
- Magasha Arju, her indigo hair pulled up around a headdress. Elaborate swirls of paint along her skin meld into slowly undulating scale patterns, forming symbols of the elements like contractions of a muscle. Her dress is embroidered with fortunate constellations. She's going to be another currently-enfranchised citizen of Aestival working in contract with Suli, the elementalist mage with (literal) firepower backing up Anka's storm of blades if you run into trouble. She's actually Suli's cousin, and the resemblance is striking.
- And then there's Timatheo, also of an undetermined last name. His fur and skin are the kind of black that invite comparisons to ravens, to obsidian, to ink, which makes the white at the tip of his ears and tail all the more striking. He wears flowing violet that leaves his chest bare, and his cloak is the sort of grey that isn't fighting with his fur for attention. A subtle silver collar indicates that he's taking the role of a vazir contracted out to Suli.
"Firstly," he says, his voice conveying irritation while still being soft as the silk clinging to his lithe frame, "Purnima Karn-Pana has already left. I don't believe she's likely to make her way past the Khatun, and she might pull attention away from us, but she's yet
another uncertain element in this operation.
"Secondly, Hazel Valentine-Fletcher has been seen at the Hard Gem Cafe in Garnet." He waits a beat, glancing over at you, and then continues. "And at the Spiral Ring, and entering the White Star Teahouse, and in the Tark markets, and diving in Topaz Bay, and being welcomed into Saint Sparrow's of Highpeak." He flips his tablet around to reveal a map of Thellamie (in the same style as a map of the London Underground), with little antler logos all
over the place.
Suli groans and stares exhaustedly at the screen. "A shell game.
Damn it..."
(There's no antlered logo in the north, though. Not at Stoneward and not at Vespergift.)
While you ponder that- what disguise have you taken here, armed with the largesse of the Arju family? An enthusiastic venturer-scout with a cool cloak and a compass inked on your inner wrist? An apprentice-
agonistes with your hair in braids and a black cloak over your offhand? A glamorous, swashbuckling
ashiq, making your way with your wits, your seductive wiles, and your audacity? A cartomancer with a gilded deck of constellation-cards? Surely not a debt-girl like Pasenne!
Hazel!Vespergift is like New York City, you likely think at first.
At least, the NYC that you've seen in movies and TV shows: streets in the shadow of great towers, streets that are packed with people coming home from Crevas, carts on the sidewalk selling street food, snow coming down in flurries and getting packed underfoot into slush. That's a good starting point, and one which slowly complicates the longer you pull the rickshaw with Amali along the designated lanes- for Vespergift is a city of rickshaws, not of goblin-drawn carriages or wagons. You'll see few pets while you're here, too; even domesticated, the beasts of the Outside are suspect.
The buildings have a lot of character to them, too. Plenty of gargoyles (which is to say, the ones that spout water, or on days like today, loose flurries of snow). Plenty of intricate knotwork carvings are interlaced with crown designs all over the walls. Plenty of art deco posters plastered onto any space that will fit them. But down at ground level, there are less of
those: this is a place for the good and the grand.
This has taken you some time to get to, but we'll just gloss over the long journey from hub to hub, headed steadily northwards; Anat was the most notable person you met. You've eaten with Kel families with rolypoly kids, with Khaganate musicians looking to avoid conscription into a hunting-pack looking for the Golden Fawn, with a dark-eyed
agonistes brooding over being contracted to service in Vespergift instead of being involved in the hunt for the Golden Fawn, with a well-to-do Avel family all too happy to talk about their crystal horticulture business. Meeting people is part of the way that the Roads work, and so is the fact that Anat didn't show up in Vespergift at the exact same time you did. Maybe she got here earlier, maybe she's still finishing up a meal before she continues on her way to the Chrysanthemum.
You know. The same place that you're approaching with Amali.
"Let me do the talking once we're inside," she's saying, and there's a sternness to her voice. "You're going to come around to the side entrance; carry what I hand you and follow me, and don't talk to the girls, you understand? One way or another, you'll get in trouble for it, or
shenanigans will ensue..."
As if you could avoid them in one of my hallowed places.
Eclair!The eggs are glistening and ever-so-slightly wobbly when poked with a fork. Pierce one with the tines and the golden yolk oozes out sluggishly onto the plate. The pain au chocolat is buttery, fluffy, and rich whenever you bite into one of the pockets of chocolatey goodness. The tea is, alas, steeped for two minutes and ten seconds, but it's served to you with a wink by the waitress.
"I don't think I've seen you around before," she says, with a lilt to the S that suggests she was raised in Kel. Her hair is brown and black, tucked up into a messy bun, and her apron is stained to a degree that would never be acceptable in the Mansion. But her sleeves are rolled up to the elbow, and the shape of them, the effortless strain of holding a tray, that speaks to its own sort of dedication. "What brings you here, stranger~?"
On the other side of the street, someone is putting up a poster, dangling by a series of straps from a balcony so that they have both hands available for the work. The profile of a glowering maid with violet ringlets stares down balefully, lip curled to bare her teeth. It is not an attempt at realism, but constructed from the distinctive sharp-angled shapes of the New Vespertine School.
CIVIL REWARD
FOR THE PERILOUS ASSASSIN
ECLAIR ESPOIR
Injimo!The paladin laughs. There's a blush to it, certainly, but also a disarming sort of self-effacement. "I mean, she
did have her thighs around my head at one point," she says, and winks. "But I mean it, Heron. When she was talking to me, it was like she could have convinced me of
anything. Like she was asserting a world where she was justified so
strongly. I think she might be connected to... well. If you know, you know."
MASKERADE is a theory among the Paladins of Kel that argues that not only has Aestival been compromised by fallen star worship on a scale that beggars anything beyond the First Fallen, but that their ultimate goal is to take control of the Civil Church and the government of every Hub, at which point the Roads will be twisted into a Labyrinth and rule-by-masks will begin. (Don't worry, if it was true, wouldn't I tell you?) Conversely, DEMASQUE is the theory that the evidence for MASKERADE has been carefully faked to implicate the High Council when the true threat is a cult trying to weaponize mirrors in the name of Azaza, and then there's FAKEVELIA, which Heron
very definitely isn't supposed to know about, because she's honor-bound to kick the ass of idiots theorizing that maybe Civelia's been replaced by skilled imposters for the past three incarnations, but that would just add fuel to the fire.
This is where she'd take a String, but she's immediately burning it by impulsively taking your hand and dropping to one knee. "Great Hero," she says, pressing her forehead against your fingers (and it's warmer than you expected), "let me join your entourage while we hunt for Eclair Espoir and Tammithyn Murr." (Her grip is strong, just like when she wrestled with you, laughing and pointing out ways that you could overcome her, and then still managing to win anyway. She wanted you to be able to win fairly so badly, but she also wanted to push you to your limits first.)
Cair!You'd think an eight-foot tall woman covered in chains and hair would be easier to hear, right?
Her hair drags on the floor, covering her like a straw coat; her ears barely poke out of the tangled, coarse mass. She's like a walking fir tree. And she was very, very quiet, right up until she picked you up and pinned you against MOON (Aa-Da). The arm that is sticking out of the coat of hair is, as one might say,
swole. If she flexed, her bicep would be the size of your head, easy.
Long I languished / lost, forlorn
Kept in chains / of constancy,
Mistress-mailed / in my might.
Doomed, despairing / for her death."These chains ye
linked of
loyalty, to keep as
long in ground she
lie.
Void-tempered,
vast-holding,
vainly yet I strove. Now ye
reckon, riseth she;
rage-consuming,
rabid-fanged."
Architect I / arbor-ardent
Stone stacking / in straunge shape.
Hearing her horn / happy hasten
to turmoil / and torment of the towns."Where my
hammer, not to
hand? Spineless-one,
shivering-girl,
slave of Light;
speak! To
war I
waken, to your
walls I
wend,
woe to
world!"
...this is definitely, as Tsane would be able to identify for you, the Architect-Knight, raiser and feller of walls. She was the right hand of Dark Queen Aria, one of Sayanastia's incarnations, eventually defeated in epic battle far in the north of the world. But she's been marked as DEFANGED in the annals, since Aria very definitely bit it at the end there. The kind of gruesome death that fighting with heartblades helps everybody avoid-- but she was the one who used gross weapons first, so she can't really complain about the whole spearing thing.
Did You Know: Heron forced the Architect-Knight to build the Walls of Vespergift in a single night?She could crush your windpipe like a cheap tin can. She could bounce you off the walls like a tennis ball. But she is doing neither of these things. She is just holding you in place, effortlessly, and, hey, if you did find the hammer for her, you could definitely get a repaired suit for the Lunarian out of the deal. She's a terror, but a terror that pays her debts. And, hey, you got a mixed success, so you've got plenty of room to wriggle here and to talk her into a deal. Fair's fair.
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