Last time on mortal mortal mortal ABYSSAL, another mortal runs into Ratcatcher, but this one doesn’t die.

The dead men were waiting for Yushuv, down in the dark. And he had no choice but to go down and meet them.

We’ve used up what quality this book has and headed for straight melodrama. Yushuv starts complaining incessantly about the darkness despite the fact he didn’t bother with a light source originally, but now it’s so hard moving in the dark. Also, he has a cracked rib, which impedes his walking so he’s leaning on a broken spear. So because his upper body is damaged, he’s trying to help his undamaged lower half walk by relying on his upper torso to do some of the work.

The author remembers belatedly the fungi, but instead of editing the earlier bit, he explains only now that also, the fungi seem to be dying from Ratcatcher walking near them. Well, maybe? Abyssals do blight everything, but bizarre glowing corpse fungi seems like it’s already adapted for shadowlands. The author also remembers that Yushuv shouldn’t be scared of the place since he knows it, and again doesn’t think to edit things.

At least we do get a ghost suddenly appearing to justify his fear.

This is the same problem as the magic. See, ghosts follow rules. If a ghost can show up somewhere, then it could have shown up before.

Now, higher souls, the sort that talk, are a lot less dangerous than the lower ones that turn into hungry ghosts. It’d make sense if ghosts were a known issue but the Immaculates had cleaned up any hungry ghosts, and the kids just know to ignore them and flee. Instead, Yushuv acts like he has no idea what’s going on, he just freaks out. After he falls over, he decides to try talking because hey, what more can go wrong?

“We have something to show you, boy. Come with ussssssssssss. The words slowly grew more distinct, as if the speakers were unused to using their voices aloud.

These ghosts have just completed a correspondence course on how to freak out mortals and they’re pretty proud of what they learned.

Yuyu apparently ran out of caring on the last exchange.

Yushuv crossed his arms. “Not until you tell me who you are.”

They’re ghosts. You know they’re ghosts. They know you know they’re ghosts. You know they know you know they’re ghosts. Let’s move on.

The ghosts say they mean him no harm, using the convincing argument that they totally would have killed him by now if they wanted to. Sapient ghosts have a number of problems when trying to mess with the real world, so there’s actually no reason to trust them on this – with a right charmset they could slaughter him, but there’s no reason to think they have any abilities, so all he knows is that they’re sounding rather bloodthirsty by the way they mention killing him immediately, even if they’re claiming they chose not to, and let’s face it, if you want someone dead and can’t touch them, your next option is to try to talk them into killing themselves for you.

Yushuv says he still doesn’t care. He’s had a shitty day so just tell him who they are already. I wonder if when Ratcatcher dropped him it was on the head, because Yuyu can’t figure out they’re ghosts and just thinks it’s some unknown monster.

The ghosts say he’ll die down here, which makes no sense, Yuyu is hurt but he’s still capable of walking around and he knows the way out.

Yushuv just says that well, if he dies then he won’t be able to do whatever they want from him, so fuck you you’re not the boss of me. Then he starts laughing hysterically at the idea of bargaining with monsters.

Then there’s golden light? Golden light is associated with Solars, book. They explain they died here to protect people like Yushuv, presumably against a Solar, but now golden Solar-colored light is forming their ghosts because who needs consistent associations?

“And you died?” Yushuv hobbled forward.
“We all died. But it died, too, and was buried here with ussssss.

Since all Yushuv wanted was for an explanation, he figures that’s good enough and starts obediently following the creepy hissing ghost.

They keep going down.

Men and woman lay interred here, and for the first time Yushuv could see how many were clad in rotting remnants of armor or had broken weapons by their side.

It’s really hard to miss something like that. It’d make sense if they were going into a hidden area while the bodies in the known areas had their armor and swords removed by the priests long ago, but this is just Yushuv being unbelievably stupid.

The ghost explains that they weren’t Dragonblooded, just soldiers led by Dragonblooded.

And now you are here, and we will show you where she rests.”
“Why me?” Yushuv’s voice was plaintive.
“Because you are here.” The voice grew testy. “Is that not enough, boy?”

Because plot!

If Yushuv is supposed to somehow qualify for this, it’d make far more sense to say this is his first time down here – maybe he heard of someone else finding the dagger. Or at least he’s only been here a few times. It seems like what’s really going on is Ratcatcher spooked them and they want someone to deal with the sword, but then it dips into special destiny nonsense as ghost says it wants to show him so he can lead someone else to later, because apparently ghosts can see the future now, and yet they’re not bright enough to realize that if they know this, it’d be more productive to tell Yushuv before this.

So they go.

In the exact center of the floor lay a skeleton clad in the remains of intricate armor, marked by flame and pierced in a hundred places. Next to the skeleton lay a riven shield, and still clutched in a bony hand was a sword longer than any Yushuv had ever seen.

The +1 sword!

It was made of golden metal, and it shone brightly in the ghostlight. The blade was hooked, and intricate sun designs had been worked into the metal so skillfully it looked as if the metal had been drawn from the earth already shaped thus.

Whatever.

The ghost explains it’s orichalcum and that it’s why the body is surrounded by lots of other skeletons and never ever let “evil hands” like Ratcatcher get his hands on it!

“What if he does?”
“What happens if a wolf finds a flock of sheep with the shepherd away? What happens when the entire town drinks from a poisoned well? It is the same question.”

There are actually a handful of artifacts in Exalted that warrant this sort of “well then we’re all fucked” response. Soulbreaker orbs are like a nuke, if a nuke had a five mile instakill radius which isn’t blocked by any physical barrier because the killing was accomplished by mutilating your soul so horribly that your ghost will be crippled and insane when it inevitably manifests. Then there’s the Eye of Autochthon, which will always lead to something horrible happening just because it’s so powerful. It’s an item that lets you hack reality but can’t do any fine detail work – the smallest thing you can aim it at is a city. And every time you use it, you increase the chance you caused a bug in reality that’ll destroy you. Side effects of using the Eye include but are not limited to the sky spontaneously swallowing you and everyone else involved.

But any Solar can kill people with their bare hands. Queen Merela throttled a primordial to death.. Sure, a sword makes it slightly easier, but you don’t need one.

Plus, as explained earlier, Abyssals prefer soulsteel.

Yushuv says it’s like the dagger he found and that he sold it to a guy, and this worries the ghost.

A bunch of ghosts appear, whisper, and then everyone leaves except for one. Yushuv can’t tell if it’s the same one, because he can’t tell ghosts apart even though ghosts look like people. The current ghost says that the material is way more precious than gold because it’s super powerful.

Orichalcum is the metal of those who serve the sun.

Ah, here’s some setting-accurate failure! The books are all over the place on who knows what. The official line regarding Solars is that they’re demons. Sometimes they steal the Incarna’s powers, sometimes they get it from being demons, but they’re not working for any Incarna. If this place dates to the Usurpation, then the ghosts within would be first age ghosts who know better, but if this place dates to the Usurpation, they shouldn’t be talking about the Solar as a thing and abomination. The Solars were terrible people, but everyone involved understood they were people. The people part was where a lot of the problems came from, really.

We’re told this fight was eight hundred years ago, putting it at the every end of the Shogunate and making it so that none of the ghosts should know what a Solar really is unless they’re a Sidereal ghost.

Anyway, the dagger is less big of a deal. It was grabbed by someone during the fight and when she killed him, she didn’t retrieve it, which is why it was found well away from here. Yushuv asks again why the hell he’s involved, and the ghost just says because again. Then it disappears.

Yushuv sits a while and then decides to touch the sword. Suddenly, he’s in an arena, lying on the sand. He gets up and finds he’s no longer hurt, and then realizes he’s got boots and armor, and then that he’s in great physical shape.

A gate appears and opens, releasing Ratcatcher, now with the +1 sword. Ratcatcher attacks him, and Yushuv dodges and tries to flee, but finds there’s no way out.

“What’s the matter, boy? No sword? It’s a pity. You shouldn’t come into the arena unarmed. You shouldn’t come here human.”

This is a nice bit, properly summing up how the pecking order goes in Exalted. No, you shouldn’t challenge an exalt when you’re still human.

But when Ratcatcher attacks him with a sword, the sun flares, Yuyu’s skin lights on fire, and he exalts as a Solar. Also suddenly he has the dagger with him and paries with it, so he’s not a Twilight caste.

Ratcatcher freaks out despite the fact Abyssals are supposed to be the same tier as Solars and he’s vastly more experienced. He demands to know who Yuyu is, and then insists that it’s impossible because the kid is dead in the tombs despite it making no damn sense to assume a bruised kid would curl up and die in a place he knew his way around.

“I am Yushuv, who is Exalted in the eyes of the Unconquered Sun, and I wield the blade of one who came before me.”The words were strange to him, yet he knew somehow that they were true.

Ah, random knowledge. So annoying.

Around him a nimbus of dark energy swirled up from the sand, but it was ragged at the edges and the sun burned holes in it like a man pushing a knife through a sheet of parchment.

The book does do a good job on the sun symbolism, though. The sun’s been there consistently throughout the whatever this is.

Yuyu stabs Ratcatcher in the gut, which somehow is fatal because Ratcatcher sucks. Ratcatcher says thank you and dies. Yuyu goes for the sword, but continuing his string of just knowing stuff, just knows it’s not time to have it. Then the sun comes down to tell Yuyu he’s awesome.

“This place is nowhere, and you are here so that you might know yourself and return to the world more able than once you were. You have been Exalted, raised above mortals, Yushuv. Power is yours, and a great destiny if you choose to take it up.”

Though it barely needs saying, this too is completely uncanonical. Moreover? Fucking boring. A lot of the fun with exalts is that you exalt, maybe get a flash of some random past life moments or a hallucination of the sun saying a vaguely positive sentence basically telling you to do whatever the fuck you want, and then you have to figure out what the hell is happening on your own. You don’t get brought to an imaginary realm to wallow in symbolism.

Anyway, the sun explains that he’s got to leave his village because exalts are destined to have big things happen, and people will run across him to help so he doesn’t need to worry, and he should find the dagger because it’s a keyblade but first he should nap and god damn book, you sure you don’t want to put this all in verse because that’s what fantasy normally does when spoiling the whole plot for us.

So we end the chapter with Yuyu napping, having been assured that he’ll be fine. The book truly drips with suspense.