Greetings, my peeps. What? Okay, I'm being told by my people I'm too old to say that. Anyhow, hi.
So here's the next one of my 'catching up' posts. We'll see how far I can get in this one before my arm tells me to stop or I lose my ability to focus. And, um, okay. Lets go.
So where we left off, the trio are on their way to Sambel Island, where they conveniently find the vestigial remains of a dock -- or at least a couple of surviving posts from one, where they can tie up the boat without having to worry about it running aground. So they do that and quickly flap over to the beach in bird form. Xương's eager to explore, whereas Hǎifēng is more eager to stop hyperventilating at the thought of being back there.
They take their bird forms again and fly over the island to get a feel for it, but all they find is ruins and ash. There's even a faint smell of freshly-burned flesh, despite no sign of any bodies or anything -- obviously either a side-effect of one or more Shadowlands, the influence of the place being the home base of a god of volcanic sacrifice, or both. But either way, by daylight there's no sign of any actual life -- with volcanic soil, the place should be overgrown, but there are no plants, no creatures, nothing.
On their survey of the island, they see ground-level caves leading into the deflated volcano, so they pick a bigger one where they'll have a little bit of room to move, and return to human form. Xương goes in first, and out of the daytime sun the volcano is cool and comfortable and the smell of burning flesh fades into the background.
The tunnel appears to be a lava tube, and as the group travels inward they find tunnels branching off of it, and Hǎifēng and Shango both pick up the sound of wheezing breaths off in one of the side tunnels. Hǎifēng activates their Caste mark to light up the tunnel, and gets Xương's attention to tell him there's something down there. Xương lets Hǎifēng lead the way as they head into the tunnels, which seem to be sloping down beneath ground level as they narrow to about two people wide. The wheezing gets louder, and there's coughing.
Xương remarks that at least, at this rate, they're not going to have to kill whomever is down there.
It grows cooler as the group goes deeper in, but the air is still and stagnant. They round a corner in the direction of a blue light and reach a chamber that seems to be the source of the wheezing.
There's a large-ish chamber lit by magical blue lights, with a robed, hooded figure in the middle, and they see a single blackened arm sticking out from it. Xương stops to let Hǎifēng take point, but Hǎifēng is more than content to go in alongside Xương.
The breathing stops as they go in.
"You," a ragged voice hisses with a hatred so strong it's almost tangible. The figure rises to their feet slowly, as if doing so takes effort, and they turn around.
"Do you have anything to say?" Hǎifēng asks.
"All these years, and I never thought of a good answer," a voice, more clearly feminine, wheezes.
"Lady Valeska, is that you?"
"Is it me?" she asks, seemingly legitimately unsure, as the hood falls back, and they get a good look at her. One half of her body is burned beyond recognition, the flesh seemingly replaced by obsidian scales. "Is that really you? I've killed you so many times, I've lost track," she casually adds.
Hǎifēng freezes, scared.
"It is you!" she says with obvious delight. "You're never scared when I hallucinate you! Sometimes you're angry, sometimes you're weepy, sometimes you're happy to see me and stab me in the heart, but you're a hallucination so I kill you anyways!"
Hǎifēng starts to back off, so very close to bolting, and Shango's about ready to follow them.
"Tristian!" she calls out with hateful joy. "It's Hǎifēng, they're back!"
The overlapping whispers from the previous night begin to approach from the tunnels branching off of the cavern. Xương runs towards the danger, while Shango gives Hǎifēng a bit of a push.
Hǎifēng does go after her, preparing an attack. They can see a manic grin on her face, and see that for the briefest of moments she's considering just letting them end her so it's over... but then she remembers that wouldn't be the end, and the grin fades. Hǎifēng slashes at her with their fans, sending her staggering out of range of the follow-up strike. They bite their lip and hiss at her. "Bitch! Why did you do this to me?"
"It could have so perfect, so perfect, such a rare specimen, but..." she gasps out before her voice devolves into incoherent growls, years of not talking to anyone alive wearing at her.
Shango has an idea, and he says he's got an idea, and he aims Weirdflame at Xương and asks if he trusts him.
"Well, that's kind of putting me on the spot!" Xương says. "Do I trust you to shoot me with that thing? Absolutely not!"
Shango says 'Close enough' and pulls the trigger and red flame washes over Xương, awakening a rage within him.[0] Xương activates his beastman form enhancements (though remaining at his normal size, as it'd be too dangerous in the chamber) as the ghost of Tristian coalesces, fully materialized (which normally a susurrus can't do). Several dozen other ghosts -- the ghosts of the island's former inhabitants, among others -- summoned by Valeska's chattering, also manifest, forming skeletal bodies out of the nearby rock.
Hǎifēng immediately goes after her with a series of slashes, crying tear of rage as they do so. And every time they hit her, Tristian flickers, and soon enough she's bleeding out and they're still slashing, eyes wide in a manic glare.
As she breathes her last, coughing up blood, she hisses out "Wait 'till you see what you've done, you Caulborn bitch!"
The ghosts attack the group, though with Valeska's sudden death their grip on the material world is already starting to fade, and Tristian himself is starting to flicker as he rips at Xương with ectoplasmic claws. Shango taps into the power of Weirdflame, drawing upon the madness within it and blasting Tristian while Xương pounds on him again and again until he destabilizes fully. The ghost loses Tristian's appearance and fully dematerializes, beyond Xương's reach at this point.
But Shango has the Charms to hit a dematerialized spirit. He knows that Tristian is still in there and not gone, and draws on that between his capacity to Perceive the Hidden World and his ability to sense Essence flows through his weapon from his Righteous Devil Style training. He looks into the ether, beyond the veil, and uses that to feel the core of the Susurrus.
"May your souls be cleansed!" he calls out as he blasts the ghost.
Meanwhile, Xương focuses on the other ghosts, which are still solid enough for him to hit. They hit back, barely scratching him and taking a chunk out of Shango.
Hǎifēng takes a moment to focus as they stand over the puddle that used to be Valeska, feeling like they can win and rebuilding their confidence, and reaching inside themself... and then they vanish. They dissolve a cloud of cackling madness, becoming one with everything, embodying the Laughing Monster in its ultimate state.
Tristian, or at least the patchwork mass of ghosts that used to be Tristian, tries to flee, but can't get away from the group without being cut off.
Xương turns his attention to the materialized swarm of ghosts, enhanced by the presence of Hǎifēng's new form infusing the room, and manages to end them with a powerful strike, rendering the stone bodies into dust and scattering the Essence animating them.
But then, Hǎifēng goes after Tristian, appearing in a semi-hazy, semi-translucent image like a film projector putting an image into fog. They flicker into appearance and vanish, and then do it again, moving much like a ghost themselves until they're eye-to-eye and nose-to-nose with the ghost, and they bring their war fans, folded, up under the rib cage to strike.
For a brief moment, their mind flickers back to the night they Exalted, remembering the glowing figure of Luna handing them what appeared to be a pair of war fans as they ended Tristian's living days in the exact same fashion.
But back in the present, this is also enough to discorporate the ghost. Tristian's face appears for a second, and he wistfully laments "I could have had forever" before he dissolves again -- but for good, this time.[1]
Hǎifēng cackles again, dissolving back into the cloud of madness, laughter both manic and sad echoing through the chamber as the Charm ends and Hǎifēng's form returns to solidity near where they first vanished, kneeling and sobbing as the others quietly look on.
And we left it there. Next time, the showdown with Blackened Bone Whispers.
[0]-- This isn't a power of Weirdflame but Shango using the artifact as a prop in a stunt to use Rampage-Unleashing Provocation, which among other things can put another Lunar into a mental state where they can certain Charms without needing to normally meet the requirements.
[1]-- If anyone's curious, I wanted to take a moment to spell out what Tristian's deal was in terms of game mechanics. Basically, I turned him into a hybrid of the Mortwight from the core book and the Susurrus from Hundred Devil's Night Parade, having the better stats of either. Valeska's presence was keeping 'Tristian' more or less on the surface -- he was long gone, lost within the mass of ghostly essences making up the Susurrus body, but Valeska's necromancy forced the ghost to take on his form and appearance. It was practically a delusion made real, bordering on illusion, but she stabilized him in that state and gave him the capabilities of a Mortwight (thus capable of materializing and hurting people). But when she died, that magic sputtered out with her and he dissolved into basically a Susurrus, including losing his capacity to materialize and instead falling back on the Susurrus' normal capabilities to consume ghosts and possess people.
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