Oh god it’s Holok again. That means it’s time for
To say that Holok’s appearance at the mouth of the waterfront alley caused consternation would be a vast and telling understatement. Contained within that alley were several of Port Calin’s less savory citizens, none of whom expected to ever pass within a hundred yards of an Immaculate priest until they died, and even then it was even money their bodies would simply be dumped in the river. Occupying the space within this rough circle of bravos, cutthroats, slitpurses and ruffians was a dice game, one in which several of the aforementioned unsavory types were deeply involved. It was a gesture demonstrating the depth of magnanimity which permeated Holok’s heart that he did not call for the watch to shut the game down, and a further testament to that sterling quality that…
And it just. Keeps. Going.
So he wins all the money and beats them up when they object, and then when he goes to use his winnings to buy stuff at the mapmaker, she’s all oh you’re so cool.
She laughed, a motion which shook her whole body, not to mention her rough mop of black hair and her long beaded earrings, from top to bottom.
Doesn’t this seem innocuous? But this is your first hint that this is going to be about how she’s a stupid ugly cow. The woman doesn’t like the dice games, which given they’re run by murderous cheating gangsters is kind of entirely reasonable, but Holok’s busy being pissed off everyone knows about this when he was trying to be subtle. That’s not her fault you stupid fuck. He tries quoting scripture about being humble and not taking credit, she doesn’t recognize what’s obviously a very under-quoted bit, he thinks That’s because you probably never got past the illustrated passage dealing with the thirty-seven appropriate positions for channeling dragon energy during lovemaking, you cow because obviously not knowing every line = fat stupid whore. The fat stupid whore continues to be aware of her surroundings and notice the obvious flaws in his story, which further proves what a fat stupid whore she is and not that he’s incompetent in every possible way.
“Which house is sponsoring you? I’m a V’neef by marriage, or at least I was, a long time ago.” Daiash preened for a moment at the memory, and Holok bit down hard on his tongue to keep from bursting into laughter.
This doesn’t make any sense with how houses work. Also, men can marry into the V’neef family just as much as women, which is why this really should be a guy – that’d tell us how Exalted is different, while this is just treading water, plus then we’d also be able to highlight how homosexuality isn’t a big deal by having Holok have to put up with a guy hitting on him.
Because Holok claims the sponsorship was anonymous just like everything else about him, she gives him it for free since if it is V’neef she wouldn’t want to take their money. Holok actually feels a slight twinge of remorse at deceiving the shopkeeper and then, even more amazing, actually follows it up with two justifications: he’s already done worse shit and he’s on a mission to save civilization, her included. He’s now just about tied with Ratcatcher for nicest character behavior.
Anyway, he finally extracts himself from the first shopkeeper and runs into the second, who’s also female so we do at least continue to have a good number of women sidecharacters. It all takes so much time he has to set out the next day, but really, when traveling you should never expect to buy your gear and then set out the same day, so he should be grateful he lost out on a chance to screw up.
Back to Yuyu and Dace, who are fighting hobgoblins. The hobgoblins fling themselves to their deaths, slowing our heroes so more brain eating chaos fairies can reach them.
Yuyu shoots one but it’s just an illusion to waste his arrows. Under different circumstances I’d say that this was poor writing, because if this is an option, they should have led with illusion, and only when Yuyu stops falling for it do the actual nobles appear. But they’re crazy brain eating chaos fairies, so they do dumb, showboaty things.
Speaking of, we get a dash of combat casting from a sorceress, melting the stairs because Yuyu wasn’t bright enough to shoot her. Sadly, he’s close enough that Dace manages to grab him before he falls.
Then another noble shows up to be arrogant at Dace and say that he can try using his solar powers because this is so boring and the noble would like to see.
Golden light erupted from his brow, crackling down hi arms and encircling hi head in a halo of lightning. He lifted the daiklave over his head and molten light poured from it, scattering on the ground like quicksilver. The thing took a pair of involuntary steps back and brought a hand up to shade its eyes, its sword sagging from the guard position. ‘‘I never knew…” it whispered. “What are you?”
“An old enemy,” Dace replied
Shit plotting. It specifically says it wants to see him use the powers of the sun, then it’s wtf are these powers???????
Meanwhile the hobgoblins are biting and stabbing Yuyu, but then he kills them all in a rage. Dace catches up and they keep going.
The massive chains arched across the ceiling and met over the pit, where they were bound in what could only be a giant shackle. From there, they continued down into the depths of the earth, and Yushuv could see now that they were shaking.
The author then remembers why you usually do have representative art when dealing with unknown people and says this room is full of it, then doesn’t bother to actually give a single detail.
Also, there’s one of them standing there swinging a hammer.
The creature stood nearly half again as tall as Dace was, its shape roughly that of a slender, noble man. Its skin, or more precisely its hide, was the dark green of old pine needles, and it gleamed. Scaly hands with claws the length of a man’s finger were wrapped around the hammer’s haft, and huge, unblinking yellow eyes surmounted the creature’s skull. A small single horn rose up from its nose, and a frill of others ringed the back of its head. Its mouth was very wide and filled with sharp teeth
Hi, bipedal fangy triceritops!
This would appear to be a dragon king. There are four breeds of dragon king but only one actually left by the time of the game, and I’m not sure when the four breeds were finalized. This does not sound like the raptor/t-rex of Rathess and the closest fit seems to be anlok, which were based on ankylosaurs and lived in the south so not particularly in the right place. More likely the author made up the details on his bipedal dinosaur.
The creature proceeds to chat in a tongue Yuyu can understand, because of course everyone’s fluent in Common. It explains it’s been waiting here all this time because of the prophesy about Yuyu which totally a thing. Y’know, if you’d told the sidereal just the part about holy shit the solars get lose?!?!?! would’ve probably gotten you enough leverge to save your whole species.
Apparently the prophesy is on the frescoes the author still will not give a word of actual detail about.
“It is a prophecy of endings.
So it is a prophecy of a type they have an entire sidereal type devoted to, and yet the sids don’t know about it.
You are to bring the ancient enemy with you, and all will perish in fire.”
Given you’re living next to an enormous pack of your ancient enemy and have some fiery pit thing going on, that’s not much of a prophesy.
Dinoface asks if Yuyu fights the brain eating chaos fairies, and Yuyu says no shit, and that convinces Dinoface that Yuyu is good people and The Chosen One.
It is good to see you do not serve the Fair Folk.
Given lying is kind of the brain eating chaos fairies’ thing, the species getting wiped out is starting to look a little more understandable.
Dinoface explains that he’s trying to break the chain to release the “spirit” that is a “beast of flame who dwelt in the lake of fire that once was here”. Incidentally, this happened in the “days of the first shamans” and uh, the dragon kings predate humanity by a long, long time, and humanity was around for a long time in turn before the gods created exaltations.
And spirit=god and gods have jobs to do, so how the fuck did some barely-above-mortal prayer-batteries chaining up a part of the intensely regulated divine bureaucracy go unnoticed for ten thousand years? Even going off the fact this appears to be an elemental from the description, they kept this thing chained up even as The Black Boar That Twists The Skies was running around Creation shoving reality out of the way? None of the dozens of world-shaking titans every shook the wrong area? No one took issue with this?
But yeah anyway so they hung out until the Balorian Crusade then got wiped out, and he’s been waiting here ever since because the brain eating chaos fairies have been constantly attacking him but somehow can’t beat one guy, only thousands.
The brain eating chaos fairies have been moving during the exposition and are now at the doorways. Apparently this place is not structurally sound enough to smash any of the doors so instead they decide to retreat up the chains toward Dinoface. Dinoface informs them that he’s been hammering at this chain for a solid eight hundred years.
Arrrghh!” An arrow had taken Dace in the leg, just below the knee.
Hee.
Dace is still on the chain, so Yuyu needs to cover him. But he’s low on arrows! If only he’d taken my advice about sticking a useless arrow in with the rest so he would never need to worry about a situation where he needs to use that last arrow. A lot of brain eating chaos fairies try combat casting and this time he shoots them for it.
A sudden, scorching heat enveloped Dace for an instant, and then both he and the chain he clung to were swinging free,severed from the length that ran up the wall of the chamber and out a gap in the ceiling. Even now, those monstrous links were slithering away, and as Dace looked back in a panic he saw the same clear fire that had destroyed the steps eating away at the metal links.
All I’m taking from this is that Dinoface really wasted his time trying to break the chain.
Naturally, he’s on his last arrow and finally explains to Dace the whole can’t fire, spirit will eat me thing. Dace says he’ll fight the goddamn spirit so save him already. Yuyu does, also finally using his charm to multiply the arrow into a hundred. You know, if you’d done that earlier, you might still have some arrows left over. You can’t be low on essence, you haven’t been doing anything else interesting!
Dace then says okay, plan die by fire, and cuts the chain. So yes, Dinoface wasted eight hundred years. He doesn’t even need to be here for exposition’s sake, because they were going to retreat to the chains as it’s the only possible chokepoint, and once they’ve desperate they can decide to cut the chain just because it can’t make anything worse. Maybe one of the chaos fairies can tell them to stop jostling the chains if they really need a hint.
“What have you done?” One of the Fair Folk stepped forward with sword in hand, its beautiful face distorted by fury. “You’ve doomed us all!”
“Good,” said Dace as he climbed to his feet. “I’ll see you in one of the hells, I expect.
The hells thing seems to pop up often, though it’s possible it’s not a D&D thing but because it’s an eastern thing.
Regardless, brain eating chaos fairies don’t have souls. Don’t you know anything, Dace?
Anyway more heat and rumbling.
Cracks split the stone floor, which surged and bucked like a horse with its first ride.
Is this really possible? It seems a movie thing. I’d think the rock would just end up crumbling into dust rather than doing too bouncing around.
Only Salastor remained standing, a rapturous look on his face.
“It is coming,” he said. ‘Now we just wait to die.”
Odd dragon-king fact: they do not have any meaningful concept of death, which is why they were so okay with hacking out hearts in the name of the Unconquered Sun. See, they reincarnate with memories intact, although it takes some time to remember, which is why you have Rathess full of baby dragon kings who can’t manage any higher tech level than pointy sticks because they keep murdering each other before anyone can get their memories back.
So, how would they deal with extinction and the certainty that there is no body to come back to? They’ve never had to fear death, but they’ve never had to face it either. And we get none of that here.
Instead, we move on to the thing in the pit, who looks humanoid because things always do.
I AM ZAKHAS, AND I HAVE BEEN BOUND FOR TEN THOUSAND YEARS.
Ooh, my estimate was right! This also confirmed humans are significantly younger than ten thousand years, and further underlines why it doesn’t make very much sense this thing looks like us.
It says it’s been asleep this whole time and maybe it’s actually a behemoth? That’d fit best, I think. Some behemoths were beloved pets but others were just there, and they generally don’t do anything meaningful but just exist being all weird and unique.
Dinoface is busy being all singing joy and worship. This is starting to annoy me. It’s like it’s just there to justify removing the character again. The author doesn’t want to spend more time with the dragon kings, but it’d look bad if his characters failed to save him, so he says Dinoface just wants to die to get him out of the way.
Dinoface makes a “deal” with the whatever-it-is that it can have the city and his life.
THE BARGAIN IS STRUCK, the spirit announced.
There’s no bargain, you were in the process of taking both and he didn’t get anything back! How is this a bargain?
Then it babbles some nonsense they don’t understand about how the city is its now and they should tell “them” this and Yuyu is just uh-huh yeah we’ll get on that. They run then look back.
“It’s beautiful,” Yushuv said. “It’s a shame the city has to die, but this is beautiful.”
Dace nodded. “And in an hour, we’ll be the only things left alive who remember what this city looked like, or who lived there. That’s precious, Yushuv. I can’t tell you why, but it is. Hold fast to that.”
Dace would know because as a mercenary he’s done this on a smaller scale.
Then it’s back to the other spirit issue. Yuyu explains what he knows, which is the name that is probably not even its real name and that it’s a giant black wolf.
“Huh. It sounds almost like a Fair Folk hound gone feral.
How the fuck can you tell? The chaos fairies can look like anything, so their hounds really aren’t going to have unifying marks, and I don’t really think “Bonecrack” seems particularly more fairy than it does anything else. Plus it seemed to be demonstrating a sort of immortality that’s much more a god’s thing, and its motivation of doing its job tearing him limb from limb didn’t seem too chaos fairy either.
Speaking of, as they continue they run across another noble there to surrender and say he’s got some great horses they might want, because like hell he’s getting pushed out of the story so early.
Then we change scenes to that of a squirrel. It’s being a squirrel, down to freezing in the middle between two trees because it heard a sound. It hears more sounds and runs up a tree. It’s Bonecrack, who still only has one eye. See, Yuyu? If you were going to insist on shooting him up like an asshole, you could’ve at least tried to be practical about it. It additionally smells of rot, but that’s probably meant as scary killer covered in gore and not that its other wounds have also failed to heal.
Time to check in on Wren. When last we left the monster and his guide, they were beset by ghosts that looked like zombies!
Fighting ghosts was very different from fighting men, Eliezer Wren quickly decided. For one thing, the living felt pain, which made dealing with them much easier. A kick to the groin would double over any living man in breathless agony, a result that generally reduced their combat efficiency. On the other hand ghosts, even solid ones, had no such weakness.
And it turns out Wren is really fucking stupid. Protip: if you are fighting things that look like they’ve rotted off half their mass without noticing, the balls are probably not a weak point. There’s a good chance they don’t even exist.
You know, you could go an amusing direction with this to highlight how absolutely not ready the sidereals are by making it clear that Wren’s had an amazing lot of training to be able to handle all sorts of situations for Ketchup Carjack, and not one bit of it involved the dead because pfffft, who cares about those losers? The loom of fate returned its annual absolutely no problems about the things it’s categorically unable to process, so everything’s fine.
(Also, he should be fighting proper nephwracks, which are horribly twisted ghosts but don’t have the rotting thing going on, in which case you can more easily see why he’d be treating them as unusual monsters that should still be stunned by a heavy blow.)
Anyway, so Wren’s struggling because he thought he’d taken one out with his first blow and then tried to deal with the second and got walloped by the first, and so on.
Where are the damned snakes when I need them? he thought desperately
They had the flesh devoured from their bones while they begged for mercy all because you found their chatter annoying. Some people might say that was a little excessive. Some people might say that if you have things whose only job is to follow and protect you, you should try to use that to your advantage instead of murdering them the first chance you get. Some people might go on to say that your death here is a very deserved one.
One of the ghosts is a woman! We continue to have women side characters if not anyone important.
While Wren flails around, his guide just bashes the ghosts into comas. Wren observes this, then tries a chest stab because he does not learn.
“Dismember, don’t impale!”
Thank you, Idli. Sorry you had to take the time to check out how he’s failing and tell him the obvious.
Hacking works amazingly well and finds himself cutting them in two easily.
What the hell are we fighting?“ he called out when the two were finally back to back.
“Lemures,” Idli replied, dropping another one. “Mindless spirits of the dead.
No, that’s hungry ghosts, made from the lower, non-reasoning soul.
Idli continues to explain that they’re cannon fodder controlled by mental suggestions from the devils to serve in the Blood War the deathlords to serve in the Labyrinth.
Idli nodded, a maneuver Wren felt instead of saw.
Look, if it’s too dark to see, just don’t write people nodding!
Anyway, the plan is now to try to jump back up the ledge because the hungry ghosts lemures up there jumped down and hopefully can’t make it back up. On the count of three!
Wait, cries Wren, I want to discuss this in detail! I don’t think I can jump, despite totally jumping hella high before. God damn you can just do it, Idli says, what sort of stupid solar failure are you. So Wren just jumps totally forgetting they’re supposed to jump together, because that’s the sort of person he is, and poor Idli curses him out while scrambling to follow.
Anyway, Wren finds he jumped so high he almost banged his head. He lands, Idli yells at him for being such an asshole, then says they need to get going and Wren decides now is the time to once again question if Idli knows where he’s going despite having no way to actually judge the answer. Idli reminds him again that the tunnels move so a strict map is useless.
Wren shook his head. Idli had been extremely touchy since the escape from the lemures. It couldn’t have been because he’d leapt early, could it?
He’s being exactly as touchy as every other time you fuck up, and yes, you leaving him to be stabbed to death is something that’s going to make people grumpy.
He thought back. Idli had told him to prepare to jump on a given signal, he’d leapt, and below him the ghosts surged forward.. .
… before Idli would have given the word. But Idli had fought with him against the lemures, hadn’t he? He’d struck down dead men by the handful.
Dismember, don’t impale!” The words floated out of the recent past. Dismember, yes, but Idli had used only his fists. The lemures he’d brutalized had fallen to the floor, but had they gotten back up again?
1) The fact the ghosts were rallying does not make Idli in league with them. That’s just normal tide of battle stuff.
2) If he wanted you to stay down there, all he had to do was not invent a way out, because until he suggested it you were planning on staying down there and continuing to fight.
2b) He could have even lied and said the ghosts weren’t there to delay you for worse things but operate independently so beating them and continuing on was a valid option.
3) Idli does not have a cutting weapon, and bashing damage does in fact take down ghosts. (Preferred method, actually.) It wasn’t working for you because you weren’t doing enough damage, but we’ve established he’s vastly stronger than you are and you said even he had to keep hitting them to keep them down.
But why argue when Wren has decided he’s cleverly realized his guide is evil? He’s a protagonist so he’s right. Wren tries to stop and start another fight, Idli is so done with this and starts beating his face in. Idli explains that his reward for delivering Wren will be way more than a single finger. Wren does not consider if maybe he should try renegotiating for a whole hand or anything.
Wren sprang to his feet, his fists in front of him. “I know how to hurt you, Idli. I’d rather not do it.”
Obvious bluff is obvious. You loved to do it, so you obviously don’t know how to actually trigger the light. Idli calls his bluff and he then tries saying he doesn’t want to draw attention. Idli continues to not fall for it, so Wren goes for Plan C: RUN RUN RUN and actually makes it a few feet from Idli’s sheer disbelief.
He’s thinking of ducking down some alleyway, but finds all the ones he thinks he sees are just crevices in the stone and then wonders if actually Idli is closing them. As he runs, he admits that yeah, he’s not sure how to call light. While he’s thinking, he runs headfirst into a wall and concusses himself good. I’m pretty sure you can’t actually do this to yourself as an exalt. Idli agrees with me and proceeds to thoroughly mock Wren for being such a failure.
I don’t even see why the dead gods want you. Ah well. Mine is not to question why. It’s just a pity I can’t take my payment. I can, however, make sure that you are delivered in as timely a fashion as possible.”
This would seem to suggest he’s not getting paid at all, which then begs the question of why do it at all. I guess maybe fear of punishment, but in that case why bother offering him any payment? Especially since it turns out all Idli has to do to send Wren off is make a fist and The floor beneath Wren vanished, and he plummeted into the abyss. so clearly, offering payment if Idli actually showed up with the guy was a mistake that nearly let Wren escape.
I’d also like to take a moment to say that regardless of if Idli was evil the whole time, being an asshole to him clearly wasn’t helping.
With that, we’re now 2/3 through this book!