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Jaspio Tesa watched from behind a trashed market stall as she watched soldiers and monks swarm over the scene. Goldenseal's harbor market was in chaos after a blood ape hiding out in the office of Fedan Shipping showed itself to steal a valuable item she and her niece Jaspio Dimo were transporting. The same Dimo who lay, limp and cold now, as monks carefully moved the body to a stretcher. She didn't know the local language well, but she'd figured out they were going to take Dimo back to a temple to do the proper purifications and then cremate her.
The pendant that hid Tesa's God-blooded features hung heavy around her neck, and for the first time she regretted her desire to see more of Creation outside Great Forks. In Great Forks, she could show herself without disguise or dissembly, let them see the thin layer of golden fur covering her body and the faintly feline facial features. She could step out and say that she was God-blooded and on divine business and she needed them to turn over Dimo's body. Taking Dimo home to Yu-Shan, in these circumstances, wasn't going to happen. But Dimo, her young, only-recently-Exalted niece (though she'd told the Lunars 'cousin,' as it was easier than explaining the family dynamic), was a Shimmerside Corsair, and they had their ways.
Tesa still felt the ache left over after the initial sting of the Kinship bond's snap. She still needed to take some time and have a good cry. But after parting ways with the Lunars who were supposed to take the puzzle box, she impulsively decided to come back here and see if she could retrieve her kin's body before the Immaculates got their hands on it. She took some comfort from knowing that Dimo had gone out trying to stop the blood ape before it killed any more innocents, and that the accursed demon's roar killed her too quick to suffer.
Her vision blurred -- the tears were starting to come already. Not now, she thought. I have work to do, godsdammit. She wiped her eyes and cleared them to see an attractive, foppish man in an extremely nice kimono talking to the soldiers on the scene. Apparently he'd also had business with Fedan and wanted to know what was going on. She ignored him and tried to focus on the monks, waiting for a moment to retrieve the body.
"I should have overruled her, sent her after the box," she muttered to herself in Old Realm, the words too heavy to hold within. "I knew I could take the blood ape, but..."
"But what?" a voice behind her asked, also in Old Realm.
Tesa froze. Old Realm was the language of spirits and gods, the language of Yu-Shan. She knew one of the Lunars was conversant but anyone else who could speak it was trouble, at best. After all, hadn't they just seen proof that the Deathlords had spies in Heaven?
She turned around to see a woman about 40, with light brown, slightly-leathery skin. She dressed in sturdy but shabby clothing and traveling sandals, more dusty than dirty, and her dark gray hair was tied back in a ponytail so messy Tesa would almost suspect she wore a mop for a wig. She held a sword loosely at her side with what the Corsair's eye recognized was a deliberately unskilled grip.
"Pardon me, it's rare I hear someone from back home out in Creation proper," the woman said with a smile that wasn't a smile. Anyone who didn't understand Old Realm would mistake her for someone grateful to see a friendly face so far from home. "From what gens do you hail?"
Fuck. There was a short list of people who might be speaking Old Realm in Creation, but the question suggested she'd been identified as one of Heaven's Dragons, many of whom were descended from the Dragon-Blooded gentes who served the Deliberative. Tesa resisted the urge to answer, or grab the pendant she wore and to make sure it still worked.
Instead she ran.
She fled down an alley that ran parallel to the harborside streets. With a fluid grace granted to her by the Elemental Dragon of Water, she vaulted over boxes, crates, and barrels. She didn't look back, and instead focused on managing her Essence so she wouldn't flare her anima and draw attention. The biggest risk she dared was dashing out from between two buildings and leaping off the dock, running across the water's surface and ducking under piers.
She slipped into a storm drain she saw out of the corner of her eye, but didn't linger long in the tunnel for fear of getting lost. She instead found a spot where she could return to the surface, pushing aside a drain cover and bursting out like a geyser in a flurry of motion. She heard the sound of sandals scuffing the ground behind her, and spun around to strike.
The strange woman turned aside Tesa's initial flurry of knife-hand strikes with the sheath of her sword. She held it properly now, any sloppy pretense discarded, as she deflected Tesa's jabs. But Tesa kept moving, and delivered a perfect center-mass open palm strike that the woman had to brace herself against. Tesa let her feel some satisfaction at that.
"You've trained with Anys Syn," the woman said, still in Old Realm, and that gave Tesa pause. Partially because it took her a moment to remember who that was before she had to reel at the implications of the familiarity.
With a single deft move, the woman slipped a cord on the sword's scabbard over her shoulder to sling the weapon across her back. She hooked her foot on a tattered broom, tossed it up into her grip, and advanced on Tesa with fancy footwork and a series of sweeping strikes to try and trip her. While she was able to dodge or deflect the attacks, they still put her on the defensive. It felt like trying to fight an advancing wave of fire.
"Is Violet Bier of Sorrows your only style?" The woman's voice was suddenly very calm like an instructor's, almost parental. "It's less effective against an opponent who can put you off your guard."
Tessa ducked in close as she blocked one of the attacks, the broom breaking on the sleeve of her armored jacket. Her opponent dropped the pieces, shifted her stance, and came at Tesa with a combo of palm strikes that the Dragon-Blood managed to block well enough. She leaned back unnaturally far to duck under a perfect roundhouse kick that would have broken her nose if it had connected -- or taken her head off altogether, had she been mortal. Either way, she watched the woman finish the kick by dropping into a perfect Violet Bier of Sorrows stance.
Tesa held up a hand to concede defeat. The woman relaxed and took a step back, giving Tesa some space which she then used to stop and catch her breath.
"You've made your point," Tesa said, panting. "Who are you?"
The woman gave a knowing smirk, as if that was a silly question. "Hollow Thunder, Chosen of Mars. And you must be..."
"Jaspio Tesa."
"...as I suspected. The Lion of Shimmerside. Anys Syn has had few students your age. Your reputation precedes you, as does the Corsairs'."
Tesa felt an annoyed twinge run through her as she had to remember who that was. She vaguely recalled the Sidereal who'd been mentoring her and to a lesser extent the rest of her family, but anything beyond a vague silhouette in instructor's robes was hard to hang onto.
"Yours doesn't, I'm afraid," Tesa said with a frown. "But I think I understand why."
Hollow Thunder nodded. "Just so. Did you have something to do with what happened at the market?"
Tesa looked around to make sure they were alone. She noticed they were in some sort of alleyway or possibly tiny courtyard between a few buildings. She took a moment to get an idea of how far they were from the harbor market, which wasn't far at all.
"It's safe here, I assure you," the older woman said. Tesa didn't know how old she really was, but suspected Hollow Thunder was several times her own age.
Hollow Thunder had the Dragon-Blood dead to rights at this point, and if she was a Deathlord's servant they could probably just kill her and forcibly interrogate her ghost. So she told her everything.
Well, not everything. She described the puzzle box but not its contents, saying only that it was important. It felt almost blasphemous to openly speak of an Exigence -- one that had been lost under her watch at that. Hollow Thunder raised an eyebrow when Tesa told her about the Lunars she was sort of working with.
"Those three. Interesting. I'm familiar with them." The Sidereal glanced vaguely to the south before turning her attention back to Tesa. "Now what were you saying about the blood ape, earlier?"
Tesa winced. "I could have taken the blood ape. Dimo said the box was the more important thing, and she insisted she could handle it."
"Dimo?"
"My niece."
Tesa, despite herself, reflexively glanced in the direction of the market. Hollow Thunder's face fell as she pieced it together.
"I'm so very sorry."
"Thank you." Tesa tensed up to keep from crying again.
"What can I do to help?" Hollow Thunder spoke as if she already knew the answer to that, but Tesa suspected that tone was an automatic reflex of Sidereals of a certain age.
"Nothing, I-- wait, maybe..."
Before she could finish, a man in nice clothing -- the one from the market -- stepped into the alleyway. Tesa shifted back into her fighting stance.
"Ah, there you are," he said in Flametongue with a casual chuckle. He gave Tesa a slightly confused smile, like he had no idea that she was putting up a threatening display. "And who's your friend?"
Hollow Thunder leaned over and harshly whispered something in the man's ear in a language that Tesa couldn't hear well enough to place or understand. His body posture and facial expression immediately shifted, foppishness replaced with respect.
"My condolences," he said in accented Old Realm with a light bow. For a second, a golden disc within a ring flashed across his head, gone so quickly it could have been a stray beam of light reflecting off of some trash. Tesa recalled it as a Caste Mark of one of the Solar Exalted, but she wasn't entirely sure which one. "I am Jotaro of the Flowing Silk. Sorry we had to meet under these circumstances. How can we help?"
"If it's not too late, I'd like to retrieve my niece's body to properly send her on to the cycle. After dark, preferably close to midnight but I'm not going to be picky at this point. I just don't want her to wind up in an Immaculate temple's ash pile."
Jotaro gave her a big smile. "Well, then you're in luck -- I noticed the tattoo on her arm and suspected she deserved better than to be left to their mercies. They are holding onto the body, but I've offered to find her next of kin and sort out the funereal arrangements, to make sure their rituals and customs are respected."
"Why would they let you do that?"
Jotaro sighed and looked back at the market as well. "I, too, am a patron of Fedan Shipping, and have appreciated their discretion and daringness. The recently-deceased manager Zaaid and I weren't close, but I trusted him." He glanced at Tesa out of the corner of his eye. "I'm doing the same for him, by the way, though obviously when I offered I had much higher hopes of tracking down his family. But regardless, I may have strongly implied that... Dimo, was it?"
Tesa nodded.
"That Dimo and I had likely encountered one another in the course of doing business, and as a friend of Zaaid's she was basically a friend of mine."
"They bought that?"
Jotaro gave her a winning smile, one that'd probably charm the Empress into granting him his own Great House if he were so inclined.
Hollow Thunder smacked his shoulder. "Keep it in your breeches, you'll make you-know-who jealous." She sighed and shook her head. "Come on, let's go get as much of this sorted as we can before the Lunars come back with the box conveniently as the next crisis hits." She pulled the sword off her back and relaxed into the sloppy, lazy posture she'd had when Tesa first saw her.
"Is that likely to happen?" Jotaro asked as he followed her out of the alley.
"It's how these things work." She then continued, speaking Old Realm with a distinctly provincial accent from somewhere else in Creation (an unnatural-sounding combination to Tesa). "Betcha a quarter-dinar."
"You're on," Jotaro replied in Flametongue, his own fool's mask slipping back into place.
Tesa hurried to keep up with them as the pair settled into easy banter. She had to admit, even Great Forks wouldn't have gone this smoothly.
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