Welp, here we are again. This is going to be a relatively short one, as it's mostly prep work for the impending attack.
Cleverness escapes me at the moment, and I don't really have much else to add, so first I'll remind folks that the Indiegogo campaign for Abyssals: Sworn to the Grave is still going for the moment, and the book is still being previewed piece by piece. And, as near as I can tell, because of how Indiegogo works, the manuscript previews are available for free (just be warned that IGG has been putting an automatic but removable tip on pledges).
And now, we'll get into it!
We pick up where we left off, with the Pale Mistress' Essence-wreathed claws plunged into Kim Sơn's chest, infusing him with power. They're both screaming and struggling as this is a burden for them both. And after a few moments, they flicker into shadow and vanish, leaving the three alone in the room where they can now more clearly see a tunnel leading into what's likely the network of sea caves the Pale Mistress is known to use to travel around.
Jian comes downstairs, and asks, with an utter lack of surprise, "She started early, didn't she?" She says the Golden Lord saw this coming, that the Pale Mistress was supposed to wait until just before sunrise, so they kind of got put on pause and will be back when the time comes. Gou asks why they need to wait until sunrise, and Hǎifēng explains that the Golden Lord has a lot of ritual he wants to do and wants to do it then. Jian then adds that the Golden Lord is making this a formal ritual thing to cut down on the odds of something going wrong with the process.[0]
Gou totally gets it, though Hǎifēng points out that it's also the Pale Mistress' sacrifice, but this whole little ritual is about the darkness fading into light. Gou thinks it's about new beginnings, and Hǎifēng says it's also about the Golden Lord and Pale Mistress being opposites of each other. Jian confirms that a big part of it is the symbolism of darkness becoming light, about doing the ritual during the transition between night and day. (It could also have been done at sunset, but I wanted a little more build-up between the characters arriving and the ritual beginning, and the Golden Lord wouldn't have wanted to stop to chat for too long beforehand.)
The Lunars sit around at the temple to keep an eye on the remaining puzzle box containing the Golden Lord's Exigence. At one point, Hǎifēng pokes the box with a stick to see if it'll do anything, and brings up the subject of perhaps using the puzzle box itself as a decoy once the Exigence is expended. Jian explains that the puzzle boxes aren't part of the Exigence, they're just meant to contain and conceal the power within to cut down on how many people are aware of what's going on, but they won't be expended by the process. So there's some discussion about using the boxes as a decoy -- Gou floats the idea of going out with one, to get the Captain's fleet to turn away from An-Teng long enough for ally ships to move in. Hǎifēng points out they don't have 'ally ships' (at least, not enough to matter), and Jian says for something like that you'd need House Peleps navy, and they're busy elsewhere at the moment. Hǎifēng's pretty sure they've pissed off the Peleps in any case.
Gou says they could still use the box to get the captain to lower their guard with the box to get them on the ship, and just go ballistic -- take down the head, rest of the snake follows. Hǎifēng points out that they don't know what sorts of power the Deathlord might have if confronted on their ship. Xương agrees they need to have Captain Ash come down off the ship. Hǎifēng points out that if the ship were to suddenly become incorporeal underneath them, only one of the three has the capacity to fight at full strength in the water.
And this is, of course, assuming they'd even fall for a trick like that. But it still could be used as a lure. Either way, the group is in agreement they have to fight Captain Ash off the ship.
As sunrise approaches, Jian invites the group upstairs to join her in greeting the Golden Lord and his candidate when they arrive. They head upstairs as sunlight comes in through the window (albeit at kind of a sharp angle, since there are mountains to the east of Salt-Founded Glory).
"She started early, didn't she?" the Golden Lord asks as he appears, first as a humanoid glow of sunlight that resolves itself into his eight-foot tall form, wearing his armor.
"You'd think she wouldn't?" Hǎifēng asks.
"I knew, but wanted to confirm," he says with a knowing nod. Then he bows. "Greetings, Chosen of Luna. It's good to see you again." There are bows all around.
Jian asks where the Golden Lord's Exigent candidate is. Her voice is small, both hopeful and scared -- it's clear she suspects where this is going, but she's afraid to ask outright, is afraid to believe until she hears it from him directly. He looks down upon her and says, with a knowing tone in his voice, that his candidate is already arrived. She lowers her head and, just above a whisper, says "Thank you."
The Golden Lord then looks up and says he can hear them coming, as screams begin to return downstairs. He looks at the others and says he's going to make this a little easier. He claps his hands, and suddenly everybody -- the Lunars, the gods, the soon-to-be Exigents -- are in two places at once. They're in a sea cave as rays of sunlight come down from above outside through the clouds, but they're also in the courtroom at the Pinnacle of Mercy. If this were a TV show, you'd see the Lunars appearing in one location when they look to one side of the space, and in the other location when they look the other way.
Kim Sơn, driven to his knees by the power through him, looks up to the Pale Mistress as she removes the claws from his chest and takes his hand. Jian kneels before the Golden Lord and puts her outstretched hand in his. The two gods, in unison, begin to speak. While they're both saying the same lines up until the last one, the 'TV view' of events jumps from one to the other with each alternating line.
"Do you swear to defend An-Teng from threats..." the Golden Lord begins.
"...both real and nightmarish..." the Pale Mistress continues.
"...to adopt this land as your own..."
"...to bind yourself to it..."
"...to bring justice and balance..."
"...to plague the wicked..."
"...to shine and burn..."
"...even in the darkness?"
Then, simultaneously, the Golden Lord asks: "Do you pledge the fire in your heart to this service?" as the Pale Mistress asks "Do you pledge the darkness in your heart to this service?"
Jian and Kim Sơn both look up, and say "I do."
They both begin to blaze with bright light, their animas flaring for the first time -- Jian's warm and comforting, projecting a sense of rightness, Kim Sơn's cold and uneven like icy fingers dancing along a spine, meant to intimidate. The shared space blurs and all of a sudden they're all back in the temple, but the internal structure is changed -- rather than two separate floors, it's all one open space, with the Golden Lord's shrine on a balcony overlooking the basement-level space where the Pale Mistress' shrine resides.
Jian rises to her feet, now wearing the armor of the Golden Lord, and she looks bigger, stronger -- I'd compare the effect to Adora's transformation in the Netflix She-Ra series. The Golden Lord, bereft of his armor, is now in judge's robes, and while he bears it well, there are subtle signs that he's drained by the experience -- perhaps he looks a little older now.
Kim Sơn whooshes up to the balcony in a blur, positively tingling -- it'll be some time before he looks properly healthy, but he looks strong and eager. "Holy shit. This is what this feels like?" he asks the Lunars as he feels the Essence coursing through him. The Pale Mistress joins them on the balcony, her wrinkled crone form looking more tired. The Golden Lord says that the deed is done, but now is the time to begin preparations and training. The gods thank the Circle for their help and ask if there's anything they can do.
Hǎifēng asks about the puzzle boxes, if it's possible to make it look like they could make it look like they hadn't been used?
The two gods look at each other, a wordless conversation passing between them (not magical, just facial expressions and the like). They say 'maybe,' but they'd need to recover first. Hǎifēng says even if they can manage one, that'd work, as the Captain has probably only seen the one box, when they sank the Danaa'd's Wake, and the Golden Lord comments that that wasn't the Captain -- that they were just capitalizing on a freak accident of weather.
But, the boxes being more or less unique so the Captain wouldn't be expecting a copy or anything, they might be able to work out something. It's explained that if the Lunars need either the Golden Lord or the Pale Mistress, to come to the temple to pray for them, and to come back in a couple of days and they'll see what they can do.
The Lunars congratulate the Exigents, and Kim Sơn thanks Xương -- he doesn't know about Xương's involvement in events, but he suspects that Xương has more of a hand in these events than he's let on. Xương just nods at him, and both gods and Exigents vanish.
"I'm gonna tell everyone those two got married," Hǎifēng comments.
Time passes. The Circle has more planning meetings at the palace with High Prince Josei, where more intel is gathered and they can start taking preparatory actions. Meanwhile, all around the Shore Lands, the Realm garrison is mobilizing to protect the cities, and what little military is available to An-Teng is preparing for the fight of their lives. A chunk of the port cities' population is evacuating inland to the best of their ability to do so. The country's aristocrats and nobles insist the Princes attempt to parley, as they to figure out what this 'box' is and can they give it to the approaching fleet, that sort of thing -- the sort of chaos likely intended by the Deathlord's grim message. Few in Creation know anything substantial about Deathlords, if they even know the term; even those who know the true power behind the fall of Thorns or the ghost-emperor of Skullstone don't realize who or what the Mask of Winters and Silver Prince are. Similarly, the power-brokers of An-Teng have little if any clue that they're facing anything more than a pirate fleet they haven't heard of before.
Which is why the Lunars have work to do in the week to come.
They have an idea of where the Captain's fleet is, so Xương goes out to try and slow them down -- he flies out in bird form to find the fleet, based on the most recent projections. As has been described in reports, the fleet is wreathed in what looks like a moving fog bank, except rather than mist it's more like fine ash. It's hard to count the number of ships through it, but that's fine -- Xương doesn't need to keep score.
(I actually can't help but imagine this song playing over this next scene, for some reason.)
He flies over them in bird form until he can spot a ship with a ballista, and then shifts into shark form in mid-air to punch down through the ship like a missile. He remains in the water, moving as fast as he can, punching holes in hulls and doing damage to as many ships as he can. But whatever magics sustain the ashen fog also make it hard to keep track of space and distance, and after a while he becomes aware of darker things possibly stirring below -- there are a lot of dead monstrosities at the bottom of the ocean, after all. He eventually breaks off to return to An-Teng, having already done plenty of damage.
Hǎifēng spends this time rooting out hidden cultists and spies serving the Captain of the Ashen Umbra in the city. They use their various Charms to shift into a swarm of clone spiders, scrambling through taverns, gambling dens, boltholes, and the like, looking for people bearing the tattoo-mark of the Eternal Wave cult (an infinity symbol made up of a Hokusai-style wave) as well as any other spies and infiltrators. Over the course of the intervening time, there's a rash of deaths due to an intensely-potent spider-bite that reduce the cultists' numbers and break up their communications network.
While Xương and Hǎifēng are busy, Gou checks up on the temple and calls upon the Pale Mistress, who appears in the form of the blind woman he met earlier. She's got a decoy box ready, and he can feel the power within it. She explains that it took a combination of her powers and the Golden Lord's -- he provided the spark, she disguised it -- and says it won't hold up to the closest scrutiny, especially if they open it. However, she informs him with a slightly-too-wide grin, they'll have another surprise awaiting them if they do open it. He promises the effort won't be in vain, and she says it shouldn't be. She then adds that they could probably do the other box, but copying the illusion might be obvious. In other news, training's going well for the Exigents -- or at least, she's heard in passing that Jian's training is going well, she can only personally vouch for Kim Sơn. When the battle comes, they may be assigned to the cities that don't have three powerful Lunars defending them, but if it comes to it they may be able to show up and help out.
Gou says that hopefully Heaven as the right destiny for Jian and Kim Sơn, and she says it's more about what she plans for Kim Sơn than Heaven, but he's taking to the training well enough. Before Gou leaves, she reminds him that if his Circle needs them, to come to the temple -- they can pray at any time to pass messages along, but in the temple they can respond.[1]
But outside of that little errand, Gou has been taking to the skies, surveying the countryside, reporting back sightings of Eternal Wave movements along the coast -- not just traces of the fleet hitting and raiding the coast, but also signs of necromancers traveling inland. But the intel is valuable in helping to position defenders for both Salt-Founded Glory and the other major port cities.
The fleet takes a little longer to arrive than initially anticipated, but soon enough the ash-fog bank is sighted on the horizon, and the fleet approaches, ready to make landfall as sunset approaches and the full moon starts to creep up into the evening sky. The defense forces of An-Teng hold their breath as the lead ship approaches the docks. Nobody has any real expectation that they could be turned away, bought off, negotiated with -- but so many of them want to hope.
The Circle recognizes the lead ship approaching the docks. It's the Heaven's Apathy Shrouds Us All, and right there on the deck is Grasping Fingers of Bone-White Coral in her long leather coat with the Epitaph of Sunset slung across her back.
To be continued...
[0]-- It's not like the Terrigen Mist of the Inhumans or anything, it's not like Exigents are likely to come out randomly mutated or anything, but there's so much variability in an Exigent that it's best not to take chances. Especially if multiple gods are contributing to the Exigent's creation, which is sort of happening here but not quite.
[1]-- I actually don't know if you can pass along messages like that via prayer, but special circumstances and all that. I mean, presumably you must be able to, for the gods to hear specific prayers at all. But I bet pure communication that way can be tricky.
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