Last time, Holok made a big deal about caring for all of god’s creatures unlike those filthy anathema despite being a member of the faction defined around using anything and everyone they can to accomplish their goals while Yuyu generic newbie adventurered at us.

Today, three horsemen in a shadowland, presumably because the fourth horseman seemed redundant.
They’re bristling with weapons and nets, so, slavers. On the other hand, it’s a shadowland, so getting caught by them could be a net positive, since at least it wasn’t cannibals that caught you. Unless they’re selling to cannibals. Exalted: it can always get worse!

And indeed, the narration goes on to explain that sometimes, the people they find are too pathetic to work to death or be eaten by fae, so they just use them as target practice. Strangely there’s no mention of selling to the deathknights (no mention of deathlords still), who can always use parts, although the book informs us that they pay tribute to them by giving them their cut of the loot. That’s all the more reason to give them corpses, it means you’d have to provide proportionally less stuff of actual value.

They see a old woman dressed in black and decide it’s time to shake down granny.

Cut to the real POV character, who’s actually only thirty, but even more actually really is physically old. This is actually one of the better points in this – she doesn’t just have white hair to mark she’s been warped by the shadowlands, she’s wrinkled and her eyes are going because she has the body of a sixty year old.

“Three of them,” she said, dismissively after a long moment. “I shall wait here, and provide them with the opportunity to be courteous.”

This is because she’s from shadowland country. Their accent is melodramatic Transylvanian. She’s waiting for them to arrive so she can smug and monologue at them, like a mortal female version of Ratcatcher.

The prince himself had been surprisingly kind in the wake of the destruction of her orrery, which meant that she could no longer serve him as astrologer. He’d manufactured work for her, discussed the possibility of rebuilding the device, and generally been far more pleasant than he’d had any right to be.

This suggests there was some sort of reason he wasn’t allowed to kill Ratcatcher. My guess is Ratcatcher’s exaltation was controlled by another deathlord and they nabbed him first – he does appear to be a converted solar, so it’d have to have been a post-exaltation nabbing, but the Lover and the Prince of Shadows are both social monsters, so they could probably do that.

The Prince of Shadows quickly realizes Ratcatcher is not only incompetent but has delusions he isn’t and also won’t shut up about it, but the Lover, who doesn’t have to deal with the dumbfuck, says he can’t just kill the guy because a rival deathlord controls the monstrance.

And that’s why he not only doesn’t punish her for murdering his underling, but is actually kind to her even though she also refused to give any aid or call for reinforcements in the fight against Wren, which could’ve made the difference. He’s just out of his mind with gratitude.

Unfortunately, rebuilding the orrey is impossible for some reason. Did they not build it originally? Also, come on, you have magic science it can’t be that hard to make a couple swingy balls. And apparently she’s totally useless without it. She should try that jade bowl and ink thing what’s-his-face was doing back in the first book, that seems to work great. But anyway, she says that since she’s useless, she wants to leave his service temporarily. And instead of responding with, “Actually, since you’re useless I’ll tear your soul from your body and make both of them into artifacts,” he agrees.

He’d set out rich supplies for her journey, jade and wine and rich food. He’d given her a horse as well, a coalblack gelding she’d expressed admiration for once or twice. But in the end, she’d chosen to take only what she could carry, and to walk, rather than ride. It had seemed somehow appropriate.
The Prince of Shadows, for his part, had been much impressed with this show of humility, and had praised her to the other members of his household. She had been much embarrassed by this effusive show, and had begged him not to say such things. Solemnly, he’d acquiesced and done her the singular honor of bowing his head to her ever so slightly before leaving her in the courtyard, alone.

So everyone’s been doing a ridiculous melodrama, in sum. She then adds that by the way, she totally robbed him on the way out and now she’s got the dagger. Which raises the question of why she didn’t want the horse and to get as far as she can as fast as she can, and also the question of what the fuck.

She then explains the answer is plot:

She had no idea why she’d taken it from the hidden chamber where the prince had sealed it, other than a sudden urge to do so, and she was quite certain she’d regret doing so later.

Anyway, she then had a vision of Ratcatcher declaring vengeance and figures that’s the best direction to go, presumably because Ratcatcher is so incompetent it can warp reality. She’s totally chill about him coming back from the dead despite that not being how abyssals work. I’m not sure why the author didn’t just start off with her having a vision to take the knife if he’s going to use it to explain the next thing anyway.

In the meantime, the riders have arrived for her to be arrogant at.

“Who are you?” Traal asked roughly.
…
he could see that ever so slightly, she was smiling.
“You,” she said in carefully modulated tones that spoke of a wealthy upbringing, “are rude. You should dismount before addressing a lady of superior rank, and if you were from one of the more civilized cities, you would know to prostrate yourself and touch your forehead to the ground three times before speaking to me. However, considering the circumstances, I will ignore your lapse this time. Now, dismount.”

To really hammer in that she’s so great, this actually makes the guy almost dismount. The conversation continues the pattern of bluster/ridiculous Victorian novel speech. Finally the main guy is furious enough to just start stabbing and she proceeds to almost effortlessly take the whole gang down, despite how much Exalted loves penalties when more than one person’s attacking you. The fight scene is otherwise pretty decent – she fights brutally, as fits someone who hangs out with abyssals:

Blossom let her legs collapse underneath her, and the point of the sword passed over her as she dropped to the ground . It plunged into the horse’s flank and the animal screamed in pain. Bucking, it wrenched the sword from Heesh‘s grip, flinging him backwards as it did so. With a cry, he staggered back and reached for the broad-bladed knife he kept at his belt, but before he could reach it, Unforgiven Blossom was on him. Holding the index and middle fingers of her left hand tightly together, she drove them into his eye. An explosion of wet jelly burst forth, followed by dark blood, and he fell to the ground in slow, jerky stages.

See? It works both as the fact a mortal who wants to survive fights like this needs to be brutal and a mortal who works for a deathknight needs to like to be brutal.

She then nearly gets herself killed cuddling the dying horse and killing it to end its pain rather than finishing the fight. She really is very Ratcatcher-y. We’ll have to see what her competence level is when dealing with non-redshirts. The survivor ends up pinning her and chattering about how I doubt you’ve any money, I’ll have to find another way to make you pay which, refreshingly, just means hacking her up with his knives. Thanks, book!

We end with her explaining that she could loot the bodies which obviously carry money, and says that yes, she has less than no problem with dead bodies too, but the fight was unpleasant so she won’t touch the bodies. Arg. Authors really need to stop writing “explanations” that are listing all the reasons this doesn’t make sense followed by a non-reason. There was no reason she couldn’t just have moved on without discussing what a good idea it’d be to loot the bodies. She obviously isn’t interested in having stuff given she turned down all the stuff she was offered.

Then she says that somehow if they rise from the dead, they might track her with the items, which, no, not really, and even as she says this she’s discussing how super unlikely it is.

even if by some miracle the Deathlords sent them back.

The book seems to think the deathlords are actual lords of death, which explains a lot.

Anyway, she then steals their ponies despite just saying her reason for not looting the bodies is that they’ll follow her if she takes their stuff, and claiming that this would let them track her but the actual trail of a pair of heavily laden ponies apparently won’t.

Back to Wren!

The weeping sound Wren had heard had come from deep within a pit, one that he almost fell into in the dark.

It’s almost like heading toward something making noise in this place was stupid!

The snakes have still been following him saying cool stuff. Currently it’s about how converting to the dead gods will give him darkvision.

They’d followed him since he started walking, whispering suggestions and what they no doubt thought were seductive offers almost constantly.
The effect had been almost precisely opposite of what they’d intended. Instead of intrigued or convinced, he’d first become bored, and then annoyed, until finally he’d reached enraged.

I think this is basically protagonist specialness, but it actually works pretty decently as a stunt to handle the willpower drain from social attacks, and this again is quite in theme for the priest cast so the fact the serpents should be supernaturally good at this is covered by the fact it’s reasonable he’d be supernaturally good at lolnoping back.

Unfortunately annoyance can drive you nuts in its own way, so he asks them to shut up already.

You do not wish us to be silent, one of them said after a short pause. There are things here you are not ready to hear. Another wail arose from the pit, punctuating the statement.
“Perhaps, but most of them have been spoken by you.”

Wren’s actually being quite the good character today.

He asks what they want and they coo that really it’s their master who wants something. I bet they’re just so adorable. Snakes!

Wren, immune to that aspect of social attack as well, instead thinks he can use this. He keeps questioning and they say they’re here to tend to him, so he decides to try jumping into the pit. I can’t believe the editor didn’t read this and immediately flip back to the book’s opening to remove that line about never wanting to fall ever. But aside from that, the whole sequence is great.

The snakes, of course, rescue him, and inform us that anything that falls in the pit is eaten by nameless things, plural. Sounds cool. Wren’s all yeah whatever pull me up already.

Within seconds, he felt a thick coil wrapping itself around his waist, its scales large and pleasantly cool against his skin. Then it squeezed, and suddenly the sensation was not quite so pleasant.
“Too… tight” he gasped, and was rewarded with an ophidian chuckle.
We do not wish you to fall again. We must make certain of such things.
“Very.. . kind.. , of you.” Wren’s chest felt like it was on fire, the breath being forced from his lungs. A red haze rimmed his vision, and he knew this was not because the lighting here had suddenly improved. Did the serpents mean to crush the life out of him, and then drag him, unconscious, to their master?

Dammit! It was going so well and then plot hole. He even goes on to say

He hoped not, for if they did, there was precious little he could do about it.

So there’s no reason they don’t, they just don’t, because. It’d have worked fine to say that he just couldn’t get free of the crushing because he was dangling and still needed to be pulled up, or even to just not mention it and highlight the issue.

They tell him not to do it again, and he says he’ll do whatever he wants because they’re the ones who’ll be punished if he dies. He then fakes jumping into the pit again.

No! With a cry of desperation, the serpents flung themselves forward. Even as they did so, Wren leapt straight up. Desperation and perhaps something else lent his feet wings-suddenly there was a dim light in the chamber, and with shock Wren realized that the source of the light was him.

A clever plan, supernatural ability helping execute it, and a flash of anima glow to punctuate it.

In the light, Wren can see enough to tell that it’s two snakes a foot wide and each has two heads.

The first serpent had misjudged its position, he saw, and had flung itself past where he had been standing, into the pit. Already, it was plummeting, and its companion was striking to save it in the same way it had presumably once saved Wren. There was the unpleasant sound of fangs sinking into flesh, and then a cry like steam escaping from a punctured kettle, and the second serpent had caught its companion with both its maws. It hung there for a moment, the bulk of its body on the edge of the pit as it fought desperately for balance, the weight of its twin threatening to topple it.

This whole sequence makes me sad, though – okay, they knew how to make poison out of corpse eyes, but they seem so friendly! And he only manages to defeat them by first making them try to rescue him and then because one was trying to rescue the other.

As he limped off, Wren noted that the incessant cries from the pit to which he’d consigned the serpents had ceased. Instead, dimly but unmistakably, he could hear the sound of flesh being tom, and a low, greedy chewing. Any moans or pleas for mercy that also emanated from the depths of the chasm were, he told himself, doubtless figments of his imagination.

…

And he’s rewarded with the sight of a dim light in the distance, which he then heads for.

Time to check in on Yuyu!

He’s got meat (roasting on a spit because just because you have a pot doesn’t mean you use it like you should, apparently), which is venison because the world may be packed with mysteries and bizarre creatures, but we’ll be seeing the minimum possible of that. Dace points out Jupiter in the sky and how They’re not as powerful as the Unconquered Sun or Luna, mind you, but they’re nothing to be trifled with.” Also, they appear to be on the side of their chosen’s murderfest of your kind, so, yeah.

Yuyu is still haunted by not aceing the escape test, so Dace tells him it’s okay, he’s so awesome already.

If that priest came back today, I’d try to do nine different things and fail at all of them, and he’d kill me.”
“If that priest came back,”said Dace, dropping to his haunches, “we’d both run. Do you understand me, boy? He’s positively dripping with power, and I still have no idea how you survived your duel with him. By all rights he should have sliced you thin and then strolled down the road and roasted me for dessert.

Thanks, Canon NPC! It’s good to know you’re here to explain how Author’s New OC is so much better than you!

“How many other students have you had, and what happened to them?”
“Here’s another lesson, Yushuv,” Dace said, as he set the boy’s bowl down and turned away with his own. “Never ask questions you don’t want answers to.

Thus dodging the real question of where the hell is Dace’s band of mercanaries? He’s not a teacher, he’s a general.

Dace continues to think to himself how Yuyu is so cool, and he’s sleeping on a wolf pelt he personally murdered, etc. He also doesn’t know the last-arrow stipulation because he just says he’s noticed Yuyu’s concern, and then the capstone:

Dace was pushing him hard, but only because of the message the bird-spirit had brought him from the Lilith woman. She was a cold one, frightening and disdainful, but she’d sent him word that he needed to protect and train this boy, and to do so quickly.

Lilith being the poster child for why, while the solars were killed for pragmatic reasons, they’d also really really really earned it by then. She does not kill the reincarnation of her husband when she tracks him down, but that’s more a testiment to her own strength of character and it’s suggested she’s still keeping an eye on him in case he maybe does need a good murdering.

Also, none of the adjectives Dace used have anything to do with her character and seem to have just been dragged in as just a given because only arrogant ice bitches tell men what to do. She’s possibly the least like that of any lunar, given she’s defined around her conflicted feelings for her dead husband to the point she spent the last fifteen hundred years pretending to be a regular owl.

And since he didn’t know what he was training Yushuv for, that meant training him in a little bit of everything

“Thus letting me argue my character is good at anything you ask for. Or you could just give up now and hand me three dots in every ability. Either works.”

Then Dace reiterates that seriously Yuyu is the most specialest of the special with an incredible and unconscious knack for manipulating Essence, the very lifeblood of Creation despite the fact that manipulating essence is just a thing exalts can do. It’s not even unique to them! It’s the trait that’s shared by and in fact defines every single non-mortal creature in the setting.

He then says that oh, but he isn’t used to dealing with boys who don’t want to explain themselves but soldiers, which in the universe can be the same age as Yuyu. Also, still no word on where the hell his soldiers are.

“What happens next?” The boy rolled over onto his back and looked up at the stars. “Why are you doing all this for me? Or do you make a habit of rescuing orphans and strays?”

His answer is beautiful. Do you know what it is?

“I’m doing this because you’re special, though you knew that.”

“I normally leave kids who are potential solar allies to just die because apparently I am as evil as I am stupid, but you’re a sue so here I am.”

Yuyu is not satisfied to merely be told he’s the most awesome thing to ever exist. So Dace literally says the kid shines brighter than him and we get confirmation Yuyu is a dawn caste, ie, the crappiest one.

“The second thing is that, like it or not, you’re in the service of the Unconquered Sun now. What that means for you is uncertain-different things are asked of each one of us, and sometimes we’re just left alone to find our own way-but it means your life isn’t your own any more.

That is the exact opposite of everything in the setting, ever. It’s like the anti-mission-statement of the gameline. The Unconquered Sun is not Jesus. He does not have a purpose for you. He does not make sure not to ask more than you can handle. That time there was only one set of footprints in the sand? That’s because you’re that line there, from when you were dragging yourself along while he just kept walking not giving a fuck, and a little further there’s no footprints at all because he’s fucked off to play celestial x-box, which by the way is the most awesomest thing ever, no you can’t play.

Dace then claims that DESTINY will force Yuyu to obey Jesus Sun even if he tries to walk away, which is also the exact opposite of how fate works because actually exalting auto-destroys the destiny merit and also because all exalted can say screw the rules I have essence any time they want.

He finishes up by saying also there’s this abyss-swearing option, and how the fuck do you even know about that, Dace?

though I don’t think you’d like the cost of that very much. They take things from you, boy, when you do that. Things like a piece of your soul.”

No, they take your NAME, and then they hollow out the great curse so they can plug crazy hatevoid into the space to punish you for interacting with people in non-murder ways. Oh, also the exaltation requires killing you.

What they actually do is perfectly shitty, there’s no need to make up something entirely different.

Yuyu decides that’s as good as any to explain he’s even cooler than Dace thinks his tragic backstory.

Suddenly, arrows! Thank god for you, arrows.

The shaft was an oily, iridescent black, and the fletching seemed to grow right out it.

And they’re evil arrows, which are the best kind. The arrows continue to just miss them but get closer and closer until they’re pinned in place. While Dace is just going oh shit oh shit, Yuyu saves the day by telling the unknown shooters to just kill them already or else go. Fun fact: the top thing you should not say to someone with a gun is that they aren’t really going to shoot you. Tends to just goad them.

But he’s Suesue, so this tots works.

“They’re gone for now. They’ll be back, though, and soon. This was just to frighten us.”
“It looks like they’ve succeeded,” replied Yushuv innocently, which earned him a sharp look.
“Boy, if you’re not afraid, you’re a fool. Do you know what that was?”
“No, but whoever they are, they seem willing to listen,” Yushuv said helpfully.

This degree of smug sueishness is on a whole different level than anything seen before.

Dace explains that no, you dumbfuck, those were brain eating chaos fairies and they’re just playing with their food, we need to get the hell out of Dodge.