Next chapter is about Ratcatcher, of course. We learn that Ragged Fox is the Mulder of the camp, to the point people leave out weird stuff just to fuck with his head and hear batshit theories, and also that this means that no one’s paying attention when he tries to explain that Holok and Unforgiven Blossom accidentally a tavern. Naturally, this is a million lines long.

“An old woman, you say?” He resisted the urge to clamp his hands around the man’s throat and squeeze answers out of him, but only barely. “What did she look like?”

Ratcatcher has abandoned any pretense of actually figuring stuff out by reasonable inference. He knows there’s only one important old woman character, so he knows if anything plot relevant is happening involving an old woman, there’s a 99% chance it’s her.

Chatter chatter and finally Ratcatcher makes a break for it to chase after Unforgiven Blossom, presumably thinking that while he has no advantages whatsoever, this time his eyes are already poked out so victory will be his!

Then we shift to Holok.

Holok stopped. The mysterious woman who called herself Unforgiven Blossom marched right past him and kept going. “Hey!” he called. ‘‘I’m stopped here.”
“And I am not,” she replied, and marched on.
Cursing, Holok ran to catch up with her, and seized her arm with reasonable gentleness. She stopped, turned and looked at him. “I would remove that if I were you,” she said.
“And I would stop walking for a moment if I were you,” the priest said in return.

What the fuck is going on with the Holok sections? Why exactly does he get to control her?

Anyway, apparently he just knows that obviously she provided the poison.

I sold it for a pittance, after telling him suitable tales of your debauchery including children, his sister and a goat.”

That’s right, the main guy murdered and likely a lot of the other people also murdered were doing it under the impression he raped kids. Holok just says it was so suspicious because The poison seemed a bit sophisticated for a Guild bully because bully is sure what I think when I picture people attacking child rapists.

She got it personally from a particular place in Chirascuro, because Creation is all of five miles and you can totally go wherever whenever you like. And she did it to get him to travel with her by saving him at the last second, and also she knew he was a sidereal but finds it surprising an undercover sidereal didn’t immediately pull out their epic kung-fu charms and make it so the whole battle took place as components of a landscape or whatever. Also, when he’s bothered by her finding him, she says

“It took approximately nine nights’ worth of divination, tied to several other rites and one extremely costly sacrifice to a stag spirit during my journey here, to uncover who and what you were. Have no fear, it’s not something that’s likely to be repeated any time soon.

Yes, I’m sure it taking a bit over a week (for a mortal) is really just too much work for another else. Especially with the implication there’s at least one spirit who already knows and can just tell.

Anyway, she explains she doesn’t actually have any reason but Because Plot Told Me To for hanging out with him, and blah blah dagger blah priest…

“A priest named Eliezer Wren?”
Her eyes widened infinitesimally in surprise, but that was the only evidence of Unforgiven Blossom’s shock. “Yes. You know him?”

This means Ratcatcher is now significantly smarter than Unforgiven Blossom. He knows everything’s tied together despite there being no reason for it, she’s surprised just because it’s absurd verging on impossible.

She also recounts that Wren’s presumably dead.

“Oh. A pity. He was a talented man.” Holok digested the tidbit of news for a moment, and then found himself fighting the urge to grin. Kejak, he realized, was going to be very disappointed by all of this.

But Holok definitely values people as people rather than viewing them as objects or obstacles.

Then there’s a very D&D conversation where they discuss the fact that wow, he has really no reason to want to travel with her, and therefore he’ll do it because she’s the other guy’s character and the DM will slap him if they refuse to join up in a single party.

Then Ratcatcher appears. Thank you!

Jump back to him in the past, because the author really, really loves jumping about.

A lone tree stood at its crest; scrub acacia, perhaps. Ratcatcher knew only that in his altered vision it was ugly, and looked to be impossible to climb.

Under different circumstances I’d assume the vision thing was going somewhere, but I really don’t think so, especially with how we’re not getting information on exactly what it looks like.

Ratcatcher takes a minute to realize he hates Unforgiven Blossom as if it’s a surprise he resented everyone the Prince favored over him, which is everyone.

Apparently he stinks of rot and no one in the caravan noticed.

Holok moved to a point between the oddly shambling man and the woman who was clearly his target. “I said to stop,” he added, and settled into a fighting stance.
An inch in front of Holok‘s nose, Ratcatcher stopped.

Holok is clearly bluffing if he didn’t attack Ratcatcher before getting that close.

“Wren?” The dead man leaned in, so close he could have kissed Holok had he wanted. “You know Eliezer Wren?”
“After a fashion,” Holok admitted.
“Ah,” said Ratcatcher, and leaned forward to bite.

But he was already kissing distance, and that’s biting distance! But suddenly Holok’s martial arts trigger, as if he had all of them built around counterattacks and couldn’t do shit until the other guy made the first move.

So another fight scene begins. At least Ratcatcher’s being already dead and presumably unable to feel pain means we can’t get any of the supposed heroes glorying in their enemy’s suffering.

“You don’t understand,” Ratcatcher replied, sliding forward a step. “She has to die. That will make the prince take me back. I’ve died in his service. I’ve lost my eyes twice for him, and once she took them. You don‘t know what I’ve gone through because of her.”
“Her!” Holok snorted. “She’s ancient. Tiny. How could she do anything to you?”
“You don’t know her,” Ratcatcher warned

I have no idea what the purpose of this area could be beyond padding. Ratcatcher has no reason to think an enemy of the underworld in general would be sympathetic to his suffering or goals of making Sempai notice him. Meanwhile Holok has no reason to think size or age mean anything. “She’s a mortal. How could she do anything to you?” might work.

Fight continues, Holok uses his firepunch attack, then Ratcatcher is a copycat and lights his hands on fire with dark flame that drains life – essence drain, presumably. Then they kill him. I was hoping Holok would at least be maimed but despite having his head on fire it seems like it’ll heal.

Despite all evidence being that they killed the body and Ratcatcher has to get another one before he can bug them again, Holok decides he’s unconscious and should be jammed into a tree. This must be true because it’s a chance to make Ratcatcher the universe’s buttmonkey again.

His left hand caught nicely in a fork between branches; the right one less so. “No need to worry,” Holok mumbled to himself, and took the offending hand in his fist. With just the barest show of concentration, he crushed it, and wedged the broken extremity into another, smaller fork in the tree. Busily, he smashed Ratcatcher’s legs and folded them through the snaky branches, weaving the dead man into the fabric of the tree itself.

Unforgiven Blossom thinks this is cruel, and Holok explains that, like Batman, his strict moral code is for humans only, not undead.

He wedged the cadaver’s foot into a hole in the trunk that he sincerely hoped was inhabited by stinging ants, and looked at his handiwork.
Ratcatcher, astonishingly, was still alive. He stirred, moaning, and Holok smiled.

Unlike Batman, he clearly still views them as people capable of feeling pain, and he enjoys that pain.

This all done, they amble off.

We then go over to Wren, who, due to poor pacing, is now going to have his own fight with a possibly former abyssal. Shamblemerry tells us that Wren is super awesome, then that she must get the sword.

If she could take that back to the prince, she’d be richly rewarded, placed forever over that sniveling creature, Ratcatcher.

Shamblemerry, you’re already placed forever over Ratcatcher. Everyone is. Unless you two are the only servants, you should really want to be placed above one of the other people instead.

Also, as a side note – evil people, stop getting mad when your servants only bring back information because they can’t get the macguffin at the time! It’s better to know about it and send a proper force than have your people always killing themselves in the attempt so you don’t even learn about it. Really, just knowing the location of the place should be more than enough. Shamblemerry can come back with a force later.

But no. Wren is swinging around what the narrative is proud to explain is a daiklave, which, considering I don’t think he had time to attune to it unless that was a stunt earlier, should actually be bad as even Exalted admits that giant hunks of metal as big as you are just aren’t a good idea without the extra magic handwave of attunement making it light.

Shamblemerry just keeps thinking that oh she’ll show Ratcatcher show him good. I think this is partly coming from Ratcatcher being the primary character of the group. Of course Ratcatcher would view himself as being in competition with everyone else, but no one else should! They should be embroiled in their own dramas, barely remembering he exists.

Wren, perhaps because the daiklave really isn’t too usable due to lack of attunement, is getting his butt kicked by a random sword she grabbed from the floor and lit with evil essence fire, so he begs the ghosts for help, so she hacks them down with the same evil essence fire sword and whyyyy couldn’t she have done this before now?

“Sunchild, we need you!” It was the ghost’s voice again, tinged with desperation. “Her power has grown!”

THAT’S NOT A REAL EXPLANATION AND YOU KNOW IT.

Wren then starts playing Calvinball, explaining he totally would be strong enough but needs light and the ghosts won’t let him summon it, and instead of the ghosts saying oh right and retreating, the one talking ghost says Do what you must. Presumably all the others immediately scream no wait don’t and we’re just not told about them, because I can’t see everyone else letting one guy talk for them like this. Meanwhile, either Wren isn’t willing to kill them or he’s just forgotten how to summon the light, because he keeps ineffectually hacking in the dark.

Mosom V’tayn, once a captain in the Legion of the Ascending Phoenix and soldier in the great war against the Anathema, and since his death, a devoted servant of the Unconquered Sun

It’s like the book thinks it can just say stuff and doesn’t need any explanation because minor characters don’t need reasons for things, silly.

Wren is losing by inches, and he realizes the priest needs the light which we already established many paragraphs ago and he orders the rest of his ghost soldiers to leave and they’re all but no we need to help the priest by standing here ineffectually watching him handicap himself out of concern for us!

Mosom felt a sudden surge of pride in his soldiers. Even now, they would not desert a comrade.

With help like this…

He explains that they’re doing all of jack and shit for Wren standing here and as Wren demonstrates earlier, he’s got precisely enough ethics to not want to sunsear his friendly supporters to death.

The other ghosts left them, swirling away into the dark until only Mosom remained. He gave one last look to the tomb, the chamber that had been his home for so many centuries, and then uttered the words he so dreaded. “The others are gone,” he said. “Call the light!”

We are given no explanation for why he has to stay there and sacrifice himself like this, especially when he even managed to converse from behind a door earlier.

Anyway, Wren finally flares his anima, and

the woman was on her knees and sobbing. Her halberd lay on the floor, forgotten, and her hands covered her eyes. He could see rivulets of blood seeping between her fingers, and wondered briefly what she had seen in that first instant. ‘‘No, no, no, please no…” was all she could say

I can only assume this is one of Wren’s essence 6 broken effects where his anima banner, like his blood, counts as Holy damage. I bet you could get some fun results comboing it with Zeal, which allows you to win by breaking the virtue system to break the defense trumps offense system. So you use Zeal to autosuccess even for stuff explicitly designed to prevent that, designate whoever’s attacking you as a CoD, then the anima flare from using your charms plus any blood they drew kills them. Aggravated damage is also pretty horrifying, so they’ll die an impressive and screamy death. Because why be a priest-king if you can’t reenact the Indiana Jones Ark of the Covenant scene with your own raw glory, you know?

Definitely need to make a villain do this. If the effect only hits mortals it shouldn’t be too expensive – only the CoD part is hard, maybe outsource that to some artifact.

The ghost is the one narrating how cool Wren looks and how much pain Shamblemerry’s in, so he now says that, because the Unconquered Sun is totally definitely good and Holy effects still distinguish alignment, he’s being painlessly dissolved as a reward for his long service to Jesus the Unconquered Sun. What this reward involves is unclear, because Exalted doesn’t have anything beyond ghosthood. Either he’s being transported to Lethe, where his memories and as far as anyone can tell personality are scoured clean before reincarnation, or he’s being vaporized and removed from the cycle in which case thanks for admitting the abyssals are right about being murder Buddhists and it’s moral to throw everything into Oblivion.

Wren then looked at his foe with all the compassion of a butcher confronted with a particularly plump and docile steer. In the book’s favor, the fact it treats everyone terribly makes it hard to really tell if there’s any gendered bullshit going on. And steer is a surprisingly non-gendered comparison choice – not cow, not doe, not even calf.

He starts to ask who she is and what was she doing, then He bowed his head in disgust. “I know enough about you to know you have to die. I swear, the Unconquered Sun is turning me into his hatchet man, just like Kejak did.

Abyssals can in fact redeem themselves and go back to being solars. One of the fanon ideas is that this is actually the solution to the intractable problem of can’t live without solars, can’t live with them because Great Curse, can’t solve Great Curse because no one can figure out it exists, because abyssals get the curse removed and so upon redemption become a sane solar. You don’t even need them to figure it out from the difference since the Great Curse ones are prone to bouts of crazy stupid, so as long as the deathlords keep trying to catch solars to replace their runaway abyssals, they’ll primarily be catching cursed solars, just as wolves primarily catch hobbled deer. (This only works if the only problem with solars is the curse, of course. It’ll do nothing to fix the other problems.)

Point is: she doesn’t have to die, and even if she did, it sure as hell isn’t the Unconquered Sun telling you that. He gave you power and this is what you choose to do.

This could actually work okay in a story less in love with the characters. Killing people in someone else’s name for someone else’s cause is so ingrained into him that when left to his own devices, he continues to repeat the behavior down to assuming it’s all because of orders. And how will this continue? Will he just keep assuming his role is to murder people who seem to oppose the Unconquered Sun, resenting it all the while but thinking he has no choice? Will he snap completely and start applying the idea it’s “orders” to whatever he does, because he knows he does things when he’s ordered so if he’s doing stuff there must have been orders? Worse, while most people might justify what they actually want to do on this basis, Wren is all twisted up about orders and interprets them as things he doesn’t want to do, which could be very, very dangerous. Maybe Wren is looking at her and thinking god, I don’t want to kill her, I don’t want to have to do this, I want there to be another way – and that’s precisely what makes him think he has no choice. What if whenever he’s in a situation where there’s a better way, he’ll assume that means his orders are the worse one?

Certainly what he does say is:

When this is all over, I want to have a few words with the light.”

And I wonder what he’d do when those words are, “I gave no orders.”

Shamblemerry whimpered once, and then Wren struck and she didn’t whimper any more. Mechanically, he hewed her body again and again, severing limbs and cutting great gashes in her torso. With each blow he let out a scream of pure rage, the light around him flaring so bright that he could hardly be looked at.
Finally, when all that could be seen on the floor was a bloody, horrid wreck, Wren turned. “She’s dead now,” he said, unnecessarily. “I don’t think she’ll trouble you anymore

From this, I’m not sure what the reaction will be exactly, but it’s going to be something horrible. I mean, just look at the way he’s calmly and mechanically dismembering the corpse but also screaming, then suddenly he’s calm and composed again.

Come to think of it, Exalted is a really good fit for this kind of thing. One of the people who worked on it wrote up a lovely thing about how the tragedy of the sidereal is that they accepted the choices of Bronze vs Gold. They chose which they thought was better, had a quick fight to determine which side won, then the Bronze climbed over the Gold’s corpses and got to work, rather than finding a solution that wasn’t picking the least bad option. The Bronze didn’t want to do it, but they told themselves they had to do it, for the sake of the world.

Exalted is supposed to be about what people do with power when there’s no inherent oversight or morality, where your paladin doesn’t fall if you think poison is the way to go, but as this book and many others show, people’s first impulse is to interpret the setup as meaning you’re a servant of the Unconquered Sun and should follow his orders and spread his word and do his will upon the world. And so you do.

But back to Wren. He swears that he’ll do what they want to save the sword, give it to the more important author’s pet, and kill the Prince of Shadows in a messily impressive manner, but he won’t do anything else for the guy after this. Of course, the next time something comes up he’ll presumably interpret it as more orders. Maybe he’ll decide to go rogue and start trying to hide from further orders? This could actually be interesting.

Anyway, Wren then stumbles around until he finds the way out.

He would, he suspected, be less gentle with those who stood in his way in the future. If the Father of Snakes had given him the knowledge of how to use his powers, who was he to refrain from doing so?

But I don’t think Wren would actually have the strength to go his own way. He’d just keep complaining about the orders, which suggests that he does want to do these things on some level.

On to the end. It’s Dace and Yuyu again. They’re all sulky after the killing. Days pass, finally Yuyu starts asking where they’re actually going and Dace says to meet Lilith.

she’s visited the camp a few times while you were sleeping or off in the woods, and she should be able to help you.

So they’ve spent most of the book desperately trying to get to the meetup point with her, but she’s been there the whole time.

Also, for some reason Yuyu is upset Dace murdered the fairy noble, despite him graciously waiting until the thing was cackling about how it was happy to lie to terrorize Yuyu and otherwise completely destroying any goodwill or hesitation the kid should have.

“It still doesn’t make sense, though. Why would he have let us capture him unless he really wanted to help? Why the supplies? Why put himself in a place where he might get killed?” Yushuv’s questions were filled with terrified urgency, his expression pleading.

What doesn’t make sense is the kid’s character. There are people I can see being like this, but he’s never acted anything like them. Yuyu’s murdered plenty of people by now, he’s not the sort to see the good in everyone. Anyway, Dace just rambles about how sometimes you have to bait a trap and more relevantly, that the brain eating chaos fairies aren’t after killing but fucking with people, and Yuyu still isn’t convinced because there needs to be drama.

Time passes and they make up, then wolves appear.

They’ll probably be smart enough to stay away from the fire.” Still yawning, he stood and walked over to Yushuv’s side of the fire, closer to the water’s edge. “You hear that? Shoo! We’re ready for you!” He picked up a brand from the fire and waved it threateningly.
“The eyes aren’t moving, Dace,” Yushuv said quietly. “Should we be worried?”

Ah, this is a good little horror movie moment. You’ve got the person explaining why this is no big deal, then doing something that makes sense along those lines, only for the response of the supposedly mundane thing to be horribly wrong.

Unfortunately we stay on the horror movie train long enough to dip into the bad, as Dace just looks around to say there’s only about eight so No threat to us unless we both fall asleep. Naturally a lot more appear, but also, how can Dace know how dangerous eight are? He starts off assuming they’re normal wolves, but that’s off the table as soon as they don’t react, and Dace is the one who gave us the lecture at the start of the book about how everything in Creation wants to kill you while invisible. Something could look like a normal wolf but actually be far more deadly. Hell, there’s an entire exalt type who has “look like a normal X” as their thing! What if this was eight lunars, Dace, you still think they’re no threat unless you’re both asleep?

So they start fighting and Yuyu’s horrified by their “uncanny” intelligence.

Even as Yushuv watched, two smaller wolves took the downed one’s hind legs in their jaws and dragged it out of the fray

Yes truly the most upsetting thing is their ability to care for and protect their injured. In a better book – not even a good book, just any better one – this would be the moment the character realized these aren’t mindless monsters out to kill him but people that have feelings like his own. Here is seems to just be “aw fuck, the wolves are using tactics that means they’re extra tough!”

Anima flare has a weird effect, though:

A wolf at the back of the pack turned and ran, whining. Others took a step back, or bowed their heads submissively. Several lay down, their tails thumping the earth frantically.
“Go,” Yushuv commanded, and stepped forward. Much his surprise, three more wolves did. The howling was gone now, replaced by plaintive whimpers, and all around them the forest was alive with the sound of wolves fleeing. “Go!”
The last of the wolves wavered for a moment, then broke. Yapping defiance, they retreated, leaving their dead behind.
Yushuv watched them go, leaning on his bow. They ran swiftly, easily, and once they broke, they seemed utterly disinclined to resume their assault.

So they’re people.

“Hunh.” Dace moved next to Yushuv, daiklave still out. “I wonder what got into them.”
“I don’t know,” Yushuv said truthfully. “Maybe we’re trespassing.”
“More likely that wolf-spirit chasing you put them up to it.”

And that’s the beginning and end of anyone considering if maybe the people they just murdered didn’t deserve it.

Bonecrack appears. Dace tries to fight. Yuyu threatens to put out Bonecrack’s other eye and blind him, something he should have fucking done already if the spirit can be blinded at all. Bonecrack reminds Yuyu that’d be breaking a deal. Come to think of it, I think he was breaking a deal in continuing to run after firing his last arrow. He’s not exactly sitting quietly and letting it happen, is he?

Anyway, Bonecrack says he wants Yuyu’s soul, presumably because the book’s under the impression the exaltation is inherent to the soul. Yuyu decides now is a great moment to be an oathbreaker and desperately fires at Bonecrack, but the spirit can bat them aside with ease.

“Whatever the Fair Folk are offering you for my soul, I’ll match it,” he said, staring into Bonecrack‘s eye

Hey, Yuyu’s smarter than Wren! But Bonecrack’s getting paid in glamours, which only the chaos fairies make, and delicious children, which Yuyu lacks. Yuyu attempts to bargain with his tomb knowledge, but I don’t see why when he’s already an oathbreaker so even if Bonecrack cared he couldn’t trust Yuyu’s word.

What else would you give me?”
Yushuv took a deep breath. “My service for a year and a day.”
“Yushuv, no!” Dace had reached his knees and was crawling toward the daiklave. A disinterested kick from Bonecrack sent him sprawling again.

This is really not dramatic because the person negotiating is already an oathbreaker, his oath means nothing!

Then, even more insanely, Yuyu says he knows Bonecrack would want him to buy humans for food and heal the injuries and bring treasure. In return, I’d simply ask that I never be asked to do anything that would shame a true servant of the Unconquered Sun, and that you help me take vengeance on the one who killed my father.”

There is no “in return” when you’re bargaining for the life of you and your friend! And fucking “help me get revenge”? Mortals would offer this sort of service just to get that kind of aid from a far lesser creature than this one!

Bonecrack just points out the “nothing that would shame a true…” is an obvious out. Interestingly, he refers to the Unconquered Sun as the Most Radiant Coward which is weird given the Sun’s not exactly known as Unconquered on the basis of avoiding fights. I mean, treacherous, sure, an asshole, probably, stupid, maybe, but coward is a weird pick.

So Yuyu tries to stab him and that doesn’t work either, so he flees into the water and tries to summon Dace’s water friend. It doesn’t seem to work! Then it does!

A column of dark water burst from the stream, flinging Dace back into the shallows. Wrapped in its embrace was Bonecrack, snarling and snapping furiously, his claws tearing at his formless foe.
“You will go,” the amorphous shape demanded, and Dace realized with a shock that it was Shooth. “You will leave Shooth‘s friend be!”

It’s stupid, but not as stupid as it could be because at least Bonecrack turns out to be able to still fight this new opponent. In fact, he’s wearing it down and winning. Then Dace cuts his head almost off and he retreats. We end with Dace thinking about how he’ll find Lilith soon but for now he’ll keep taking care of Yuyu. That’s seriously the end.

Tonight, he had a boy, who for once seemed very small and very young, to tend to, and Dace, one-time scourge of the Threshold, took that responsibility very seriously indeed.

The author’s not even trying to pretend this is a complete story in itself. We just lurch to a stop.

But ah well. We’re done! I’m sure we’ll be returning to this tale eventually, especially since I’m probably continuing Unwind soon, but for now, it looks like next up is going to be Insurgent. Pokemon Yellow is second and I’m thinking of doing that on a weekly basis, since I’ll be skipping over all the parts that are the same as Blue. But neither of those will happen right yet. The rest of the month will be miscellaneous posts and we’ll begin Insurgent on the first of May. The new poll will also go up then.