Last time, die already Holok.

Now we’re back to Dace! It’s been a while, Dace. I’d forgotten how boring you were, but with your name, I remember. Still, at least your murderfests are against creatures that are basically Nazi philosophical zombies as far as the ethics of killing goes.

We learn Dace has had them in a run this whole time just in case. And by “them” I mean the horses, since they’re riding now. Also:

The terrain had grown steadily rougher as the day had progressed, and signs of any habitation were rare.

But they’re still moving at a blistering pace! Somehow.

The horses had picked their way steadily along trails that had clearly been made by animals, and which men had done little or nothing to improve.

I’m really not sure what to make of it. Is it trying to say in a roundabout way that these are definitely human-used trails and it’s just none of the users have been improving them? Because generally you say paths made by animals and then you stop. And it would be useful information if there are humans around in numbers enough to be definitely using all of these, but either not enough to keep paths wider or under some sort of threat that makes more obvious paths a bad idea. It’s probably just bad writing for the sake of word count, though.

By the way, the brain eating chaos fairy noble who gave them the horses is now their trussed prisoner. When they finally rest, Dace makes a point of going to check out their surroundings and after he’s left, the noble first says Dace shouldn’t worry, then, as if this follows, that actually This is all a sham on his part so he can convince himself he’s being suitably cautious with you. He’s not but in that case he already isn’t properly worrying so why is it he needs to stop because there’s nothing to worry about?

Then as if it’s a response Yuyu says he likes Dace being cautious and keeping him safe, despite this being in reply to the guy saying Dace is just making a show of pretending to be doing that.

“And what is he afraid might be down there, that could tax the powers of two mighty Exalted? A bear? An angry turtle? An army of Immaculate priests, hidden in the trees against the off chance that you’d wander this way? No, there’s nothing down there that could worry the likes of you.”

A weird moment, since the books so far have been all about how your solar PC is still at the bottom of the pecking order, but it turns out it’s because the author appears to have taken the fact PCs can be Immaculate priests to mean those guys are mooks, because Yuyu says that shows what he knows, there are also REAL threats: “Spirits, for one.” Right, because it’s not like the background for current canon is that everything started off great with the solars telling the spirits when to jump and how high, then when they were dead the spirits were all “but why should we listen to dragonblooded we do what we like” and then the dragonblooded punched them to death until they reconsidered. Spirits are totally a thing solar exalts must live in constant terror of, even solar exalts who nearly murdered an elder sidereal right after exaltation.

“That’s right. You must have met Bonecrack.

Of course! Obviously when Yuyu says spirits are dangerous, he must be thinking about that particularly unimpressive specimen, and thanks to conservation of detail kicking in with a vengeance, turns out they, ranging from possibly him and his underlings to all brain eating chaos fairies ever to exist, are the ones who sent Bonecrack after Yuyu, because obviously their biggest concern in life is helping murder the deposed rulers who could be great assets to their cause. Also, I guess that means he actually is/started off a fair folk hound? I can’t see why else Dace would’ve said that nonsense earlier about how from Yuyu’s description it was obviously a ‘shopped hound and not a real spirit.

Dace shows up to explain that Azula His kind always lies. Except when they’re giving unbreakable oaths.

The man’s hands he left bound, perhaps a bit tighter than absolutely necessary. “Don’t even think of running off,” he said, “And don’t talk to the boy anymore. Do we understand each other?”
“I understand you,” was the reply. “You’ll never understand me.”

Considering Dace is thinking this thing is “a man”, yeah, I’d say the brain eating chaos fairy absolutely has the right of it.

Dace nodded, then lashed out with his foot and struck the faerie in the ribs. It grunted in pain, and Dace smiled grimly. “You’ll understand that much, I think,” he said

Now, as I said, these guys are about the most acceptable a target you can get. It’s debatable if they even have feelings or just act like they do, and it’s also not clear if dying actually has any meaning to whatever the hell they are – I mean, they seem to not want it, but then we’re back to the fact everything they do is an act combined with the fact the ones that will naturally stick around longest and meet the most people are the ones who behave in a way that prioritizes avoiding death.

That said, the fact Dace is enjoying hurting it, just as he enjoyed the gruesome deaths earlier, is still disturbing.

When I was younger and the internet was new, the Creatures games had a huge online community, most of which was cute and about taking proper care of the little AI creatures and some of it was about torturing them. Now, the AI of the creatures was incredibly basic, and the claim they were “alive” is quite debatable, so it’s not like they could really be hurt. But making giant web shrines to all the ways in which you hurt them made me think that, regardless of if it was objectively animal abuse, the people involved sure seemed to wish it was.

Dace could be acting all this out on a human-shaped pile of straw. He seems to think it’s a person, and that means he would do these same actions to things that are people as well.

Dace tries conversing a bit later. He asks if it’s hungry, it says it can’t eat that but that it could use some water, Dace refuses to get it water. Yuyu, presumably hoping it’ll give him superpowers or something if he does it favors, does get it water.

Dace kept his eyes firmly on his boots, frowning as he took a knife and worked mud from the seam between the leather and sole.

I’m trying to think of a way that’d let you do this without getting rid of the very seam in question along the way. Maybe a very blunt knife, I guess.

Dace insists he knows all its tricks.

“You’re not wise to us, Dace. Your lady love is, and she gave you some lessons you only half understand.

So I wonder if the Dace/Lilith romance thing originates here, or if that nonsense was already planned in the main line and he was just told about it. It’ll return in the second series, which will at least try to show us how it happened, but I’m not aware of anything that’s gotten over the basic hurdle of Lilith should not want to get within social combat range of any solar ever again. Desus had the advantage of solar bond over her, but he managed to mindrape everyone else into agreeing he was the best guy ever, so it’s not like she’s safe from those effects as long as she avoids one particular solar shard, and given that one particular solar shard is the only one she’s actually in love with, she has no reason to seek out other solars, let alone start relationships with them.

Anyway, the noble explains to us that Dace is just acting like he knows all about them so he’ll look cool to Suesue, because that is the signature dawn character’s purpose in life, sucking up to the author’s newer, cooler dawn caste.

Said kid is now back, a cupped leaf full of water in his hands because all their gears for actually carrying water has spontaneously exploded. And of course, he has to come closer to actually give the water because the chaos fairy’s still tied.

Yushuv shook his head. “This happens every time someone asks me for a drink of water, you know.” He knelt down, and held the makeshift cup to the Fair Folk‘s lips.

Not exactly how I would characterize the last time, but does highlight why I’m sure you’re only doing this because you think you’ll get something out of it. The chaos fairy sure feels it’s won, saying this proves the point it was making about…Dace not knowing when it’s plotting and when it’s just saying shit to put him off guard? That’s my guess anyway.

“I’ll tell you a secret, though, as payment for your labors. Your soul used to be a woman’s. It’s one of the reasons you make Dace so uncomfortable.”

I don’t really remember anything about Dace but that he’s boring, the moral issues with his basic archetype of mercenary captain get glossed over, and somehow they thought it was a good idea to give him a dragonblooded lieutenant who was all yay I love my ordained role serving solars. I don’t think he’s got weird hangups about whatever this is (homophobia, misogyny, transphobia?) in anything else, though. Dace doesn’t even know much about what a solar is and also, timeline-wise I think the solar shard Suesue got was from well after Usurpation, which means Dace’s shard couldn’t even have known her so we don’t even have the “you guys used to fuck (and also there are no gay people)” answer for why he cares.

Yuyu’s all no it’s my soul who cares, continuing to confuse things by acting as if people have a single soul and he exalted because he’s the full reincarnation of the previous exalt. I actually saw someone argue that’s how the system worked, which ruins just about the entirety of the setting, from the general themes of handing people power for what they actually did to the basic fact that this means the primordials could’ve won by just nomming a few hundred souls and not worrying about the exaltation part.

“You may be the only one who doesn’t care about your soul’s provenance, Yushuv.”
“Don’t speak my name.” Yushuv felt something taking shape behind him, even as a dim glow filled the hollow. “My name is not for the likes of you to give voice to. You’ve no power over me.”

The author is tired of all this reasonable discussion and would like to return to his first love, bullying people with less power than you, so it’s time for everyone, including the chaos fairy, to think about how this out of nowhere snarl is sooooooo coooooooool. Then Dace throws dirt in the guy’s face, because otherwise the terrorists would win, and says he’ll torture whatever info he wants out of it. The brain eating chaos fairy is not impressed.

“I suspect that if I really thought about it, I could find something that could convince you to talk.” His eyes on the prisoner’s, he took the knife he’d used on his boots and held the blade in the flames. With theatrical flair he turned it this way and then that, so that the reflected light from the blaze played across the Fair Folk‘s face. The look he saw there was one of utter disdain.

No shit. Is this going anywhere? The noble makes another attempt to explain no seriously I am not a person you fucking idiot I just took on shape to fuck things up here.

Where the prisoner’s mouth had been was now smooth, seamless skin. His eyes remained, though, their gaze mocking and direct. Dace cursed and dropped his dagger in the fire, then cursed again as he burned himself retrieving it.

Did you notice how Suesue is cooler than Dace, the grizzled mercenary signature dawn? Look at how much better Suesue is!

Yuyu decides to show that off further by continuing the conversation now that Dace has stopped, and suddenly figures out what I’ve been saying:

“man” was not the right term for the thing that smiled up at him. It had donned the shape of a man, much as a man might ask a tailor to garb him in the fashion of a man he’d seen in the street, but this monstrosity was no more human than was a branch or a stone. It looked up at him, and Yushuv could see the terrible hunger that resided behind its eyes.

The thing smugs a bit more, and we’re reminded no one on camera is gay as Yuyu explains that it’s so beautiful which, due to Yuyu’s raging heterosexuality, makes him feel embarrassment for his own looks jealousy. Only embarrassment and jealousy.

The only way to end this would be to kill the prisoner, and even then, Yushuv knew that the memory of the face before him would haunt his memory.

Because of jealousy. Like all jealousy, it’ll probably be doing a lot of that haunting when he goes to bed.

Anyway, time for lots of words that say nothing, and then some cryptic stuff that’s at least new if not containing any further content:

Now is the time when old souls will come home to the world and not like what they see. Their time will be a time of blood and fire and steel, and their wars will fill the very seas with the stinking corpses of the dead.
“You are the harbinger of that time, boy.

You might be thinking, wait, why does Team Evululz object to this? And they don’t, they’re just really fucking confused about how exaltations work. If Yuyu’s shard/entire single soul of awesome is what’s the harbinger, if he’s killed now it just means it isn’t blood fire steel time yet and the apocalypse gets put on hold until he comes back.

Your soul will make the great circuit again, and time is nothing to us. But if we hunt you and you survive, then your power grows. Every battle makes you stronger.

Right, but if you kill him, he has to start over from square one, so while making him suffer makes sense, it’s incredibly stupid to do it as a matter of testing him instead. But this does explain why Raiton is on his side, even to the point of sabotaging a triggerhappy abyssal. Ratcatcher can’t promise turning the seas into corpse soup.

But yeah, so that’s Yuyu’s special destiny. It’s not that there are 150 solars returned to the world bringing powers that haven’t been seen in nearing two thousand years, or another 100 abyssals arriving with powers that just haven’t been seen ever. It’s not that the exalted have the capability to do the impossible if they push hard enough, and your characters may in fact be awesome enough to do so. It’s not that a thousand dooms were already converging on Creation ever since that day six thousand years ago when the exalted slew the heart of the River of All Torments and created the Silent Wind, and they all happen to be scheduled for next week.

No, it’s that Yuyu is just so damn important his existence will decide if the apocalypse starts. If it is, clearly your PCs are hear to witness his rise to power and maybe if you’re really good you can get to be led by him in his army where you just might get to see him using his awesome +1 sword to beat everybody!!!!

Anyway, Yuyu will destroy the world by releasing the seals that hold out the brain eating chaos fairies. The idea there are seals that need releasing is canonical, but dumb. The idea brain eating chaos fairies have set prophesies is a lot dumber. Yuyu, having no points in lore and therefore no clue how the Loom of Fate works and what prophesy means, is all omg nnnnnoooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Then it taunts Yuyu by saying hey, maybe it’s not true! Maybe it’s just to make you wonder! Now you’ll never know and be haunted by the idea and your future dreams, which can’t really be accessed automatically or anything, would hypothetically be delicious!

Dace is sick of this and cuts it in half, resolving the chapter. Ironically, he’d have been more ethical if he’d just done that from the start.