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Dynasty of Dovak	By : JohnDoe Category: +A through F > Exalted RPG Views: 4983 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Session 59 – The House of Black Waters – Reya (175XP 140DX, 179/131 spent; 9GP 23SP), Melody (175XP 140DX, 168/136 spent), and Ganan (175XP 140DX, 170XP/139DX spent; 2WhP 75GP 28SP)

The heroes and their allies stand in The House of Black Waters: the potent manse that serves as the home of the Patrician family Iselsi – a fallen Great House, struck from the Imperial Rolls for their perfidy and linked to the assassination of the Regent.

First, they broke down the manse’s mystically reinforced door, then solved the puzzle as to how to progress to the second floor, before overcoming the mystic illusions of the black waters. Now they stand ready to advance to the third floor.

Aharon Saber Edge touches his flaming halberd to the inky-black walls of the manse, but the fires do not catch. This level of the pagoda is gloomy: there are no visible windows, but the manse is more in shadow than pitch-blackness. Ganan proceeds up the staircase with Melody flanking him and the others behind.

“So… what did you see in the water?” Melody asks Ganan, wondering why it took him so long to wake up.

Ganan pauses, not willing to reveal the truth, “I was a published author.” He says, settling on a half-truth.

Melody flashes a look over to Reya, “Wow, big dreams.”

Ganan scoffs, “What about you?” He shoots back.

Melody tightens her jaw slightly, something only Reya picks up on, she sets her hands about two feet apart, “I just saw Ferad, only he was hung like a Varajtul cannibal.” She jokes.

Ferad chuckles, “I always knew you thought my penis was too big.” He sets his hands three feet apart for comic effect.

“Tripwire.” Melody warns.

Ganan drops to one knee and examines the black wire running over the penultimate stair, “Okay, we can just step over this.” He says offhandedly, waving at the trap.

Melody shakes her head in disbelief, “Jorod, is there anything you can do with this?”

Jorod approaches, and looks at it carefully, “It’s a dummy wire. It’s not attached to anything.”

Ganan furrows his brow, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Reya shrugs, exasperated, “Of course it does. You’re running away from that fucking nightmare pool, trip at the top of the stairs, and fall back down again.”

Ganan extends his senses, getting the impression of an invisible wire running across the top of the stairs. “Invisible tripwire.” He points out to Jorod.

Jorod nods, “Well that’s cool. I can’t tell what it’s hooked up to though.” He shrugs, “Sorry.”

Melody cuts the visible wire and Ganan stands over the invisible one, helping the others pass without setting it off. Ganan casts Invulnerable Skin of Bronze: the floor of the manse creaks, but bears his weight.

The third level of the House of Black Waters is laid out much like the first: an entryway (stairs instead of a front door, leading into a central corridor and flanked with six rooms.

Reya opens the first door to her left. The room is bare apart from a giant mural depicting the Dragon-Blooded battling against an endless horde of demons, and doors leading back to the central hall and the next room.

Ganan opens the next room to find a desk with papers laid out all over it. He walks over to the papers and examines them, releasing a great plume of dusty spores into the air. Reya slams the door to the room shut, kicking up a second load of spores. Ganan holds his breath, and the spores find no purchase on his invulnerable skin. He carefully brushes himself down before moving into the next room by the connecting door.

Melody opens the door from the central hall and shakes her head at Ganan despairingly. It’s stacked floor to ceiling with odds and ends: chamber pots, model houses, brushes clogged with dry paint, rusted nails, cracked tea sets, and hundreds of other odd items of varying size.

Ganan can’t pick his way through the trash, so he back-tracks whilst Reya opens the fourth room. Three small vials of blue liquid sit on a small end-table.

The fifth room contains half-a-dozen chairs around a table. Discarded on the table is a pack of salaciously decorated playing cards: each of the cards has a human depicted on them, alongside iconic imagery associated with the card. Several of the cards depict nudes, and the face cards are clearly meant to be Dragon-Blooded. Ganan wrinkles his nose at the subtle heresy, especially galling given house Iselsi’s close associations with the Immaculate Order. There are some half-eaten snacks and drinks scattered among the cards.

“Still warm.” Melody says, feeling one of the cups filled with rice wine.

Reya examines the scene, it doesn’t look to her to be a trap. “Looks like we interrupted something.”

Ganan snorts, “I was beginning to think the place was empty.”

The sixth room is completely empty.

The Dragon-Blooded stand in the central hallway and consider.

Reya breaks the silence, “Well obviously it’s a puzzle of some kind.”

Melody grumbles and kicks at the floor beneath her, “I hate puzzles.”

Ganan folds his arms across his chest and puts his tetsubo over his back, “I like puzzles, but I don’t get it.”

“Go examine those papers again.” Reya tells Ganan, “I’m going to examine the vials of blue liquid.”

Reya examines the vials closely: the liquid inside is not identical. One has tiny silver flecks in, one has long, but thin, red strands of something suspended in the liquid, and the last is speckled with black dots.

Ganan returns to the second room, careful not to disturb the papers. They’re written in archaic Old Realm, but describe the Exalted’s victory over the Enemies of the Gods. Specifically, they seem to pertain to the battle depicted in the mural in the first room. “Hmm.” Ganan considers.

Melody idly pucks her bowstring for a bit then wanders back into the room with the playing cards and gathers them up, slipping them into a fine leather case emblazoned with the Iselsi Mon laying discarded on the floor. Ferad gives her a look, raising an eyebrow. Melody blusters her defense, “I’m Exalted! It’s allowed!”

“It’s still frowned on!” Reya calls out from the other room, teasingly, (seeing the Immaculate Order’s objection to iconography nonsensically anachronistic).

Ganan emerges, carefully closing the door, “I think I have it. The mural in the first room is incomplete. We need to find the missing detail.”

Melody holds out a hand, “Which is what?” She holds out the other hand “And where?”

Ganan counts off on his fingers, “What? I don’t know. Where? I’m guessing in there.” He points to the third room filled with a million pieces of junk.

Reya walks out holding the three vials, “Well… I think one of these might help with the ‘what’. Or they might just be poison.” She hands one of the vials to Melody and one to Ganan.

Melody looks at the red strands suspended in the liquid she’s been given and pulls a face, “Tell me you don’t want me to drink this having no idea what it is?”

Reya looks to the ceiling in frustration, “This is an enemy manse. It doesn’t exactly come with handy instructions.”

“Let me see those!” Ganan says snatching the vials from Reya and Melody. Before they realize what he’s doing, he un-stoppers all three and drinks them all with a belch.

Aharon Saber Edge applauds, “Bravo!”

Nula hides her face in her hands.

Ganan’s anima starts burning with pure white light. “Right. One of those was definitely hemlock… and I think the other one was arsenic.” He turns to Melody, “How are you at treating arsenic poisoning?” He walks over to the trash room and looks around. A sword, perhaps the size of a toothpick, seems to shine with a golden light. He picks the sword up and takes it back to the first room, scrutinizing the mural until he finds one of the Exalted swinging an invisible sword. He places the sword over the mural, not noticing as a tiny war-hammer disappears from the hands of another Exalt. There’s a clanking and turning sound.

“I think it worked!” Ferad calls, opening the door to the sixth room, where a spiral staircase now leads up.

“Chew this.” Melody says, thrusting some dried licorice roots at Ganan. She examines him closely to see if his guess at arsenic was correct, “I need to examine you, and I can’t do that if you’re bronze.”

Ganan happily chews on the roots and lets his spell drop. The moment his skin turns back into flesh, Melody jabs a needle into his bicep and injects him with anti-toxin. He looks at her deadpan and says “Ouch.”

Melody withdraws the needle, “Yeah, we need to chelate that. You’ll be fine. Eat some avocados.”

Ganan walks up the stairs, with Melody close behind him (her bow drawn). At the top of the stairs is a door – Ganan opens it and looks into the next room.

It is empty save a door at the opposite end of the room… twenty feet in the air, upside down and attached to the ceiling rather than the floor.

“What the-” Ganan steps out into the room and begins to fall towards the ceiling.

Without thinking Melody snaps off a shot with her bow, the arrow turning into a strong sturdy vine as it flies. Ganan grabs at the vine as it shoots past him, using the rope to break his fall – glad that Melody made him discard his invulnerable skin. Ferad grabs at Melody to stop her toppling into the room after him.

Ganan looks down/up at the others, and mutters to himself thinking of a book in his mother’s library, “I was born in a water moon.”

Melody pulls a face and shouts back, “What was that?”

Ganan shakes his head, “Never-mind, climb down. Up.” He starts to cast Invulnerable Skin of Bronze again.

Reya takes a second arrow and uses it to pin her vine to the wall of the manse. The others carefully climb down the vine, and she easily slides down it.

Ganan smiles to himself and readies his tetsubo. “There’s someone on the other side. Four of them.” He opens the door to the fifth level of the pagoda and is immediately charged by a quartet of blood apes.

Melody snaps of a shot by reflex, her anima starting to glow. The arrow takes the erymanthus in the neck and it goes down in a fountain of blood.

Ganan charges into the fray, hitting the second blood ape with his tetsubo staving in the beast’s skull with a brutal overhead strike.

Reya fires an arrow at the third blood ape. She hits her mark, but the demon only gives a grunt of annoyance.

The fourth blood ape reaches Ganan first and swipes at him with his claws. Ganan handily fends off the attack with his tetsubo. It follows up with blinding speed, swiping out again, cutting under Ganan’s guard to knock him back a step. The ape hit by Reya then reaches him: it swipes out with its giant claws, which glance from Ganan’s invulnerable skin harmlessly, before it wraps its arms around him. Ganan roars and strains his body against the blood ape’s unnatural strength, wrestling the demon off of him.

Ferad and Aharon step into the room and butcher the fourth blood ape between them.

Reya fires on the remaining erymanthus as it wrestles with Ganan. This shot is more telling: it cuts the blood ape’s brow, spilling demonic ichor into its eyes.

Melody snaps off another shot on the demon, further wrong-footing it.

Ganan struggles free of the demon’s grip and knocks it to the ground.

Reya fires on the demon again. Her shot isn’t as neat as Melody’s, but it does the job of ending the demon’s life.

There’s a simple staircase leading up to the next floor.

“Nearly there.” Ganan grunts, tetsubo in hand as he leads them up the stairs, straining his senses for any more hidden tripwires. He stops at the penultimate door. “This is it. Seven of them. Definitely human.” He pulls a face, “Smallish.”

Melody looks back at him curiously, “Smallish?”

Ganan opens the door. Six children and their nanny huddle together in the middle of the hallway.

One of the children blusters forward, he can’t be older than 13, “I am Iselsi Manarah! You are trespassing in my home and I insist you pay for damaging my demons and leave!” His anima starts to glow with power, “Else feel the fury of Daana’d!”

Ganan walks over to the child, casually hoists him off the ground with one arm, and head-butts him (holding his tetsubo in the other hand). The vicious blow smashes Iselsi Manarah’s face with a great gush of nose-blood as yielding flesh meets invulnerable bronze. Ganan drops the unconscious child to the floor. He points his tetsubo at the other children, “Any of the rest of you Exalted?”

The terrified children burst into tears as their nanny tries to shield them with her mortal body.

“I’m going to take that as a ‘no’.” Ganan says raising his tetsubo to finish off the downed Manarah.

“Gan!” Reya reprimands harshly.

He looks at her puzzled, “You want me to kill the mortals first?”

Melody shakes her head, “We’re not here to kill a bunch of kids!” She objects.

Ganan turns his attention to Melody, “You want me to kill the nanny first? You kill the nanny.”

The nanny throws herself at Ganan’s feet, “Don’t kill us! Don’t kill us! I’ll take you to the manse!”

Reya grits her teeth, “You’ll what us to where?”

Between hysterical sobs, the nanny offers to take the Dynasts to the real House of Black Waters. Reya and Melody share a knowing look – she doesn’t seem to be lying.

“Where the hell are we now!” Melody explodes.

The nanny doesn’t dare look up from the ground, “This is the oubliette. It’s a distraction meant to weaken any enemy who dares to attack us, or any Ragara creditors trying to get jade from the house. The children like to play up here because the elders don’t come up here.”

Melody looks at Reya, “She keeps saying ‘up here’.” She nocks an arrow, not wanting to think that they fought their way this far for no reason.

Terrified, the nanny blurts out that the real manse is underground, and that they’ve fought their way up here for no reason. One of the children, a fat boy maybe ten years old breaks his silence to confirm what the maid is telling them. The other children shush him.

Ganan walks around the room: it’s a mirror of the first floor of the manse, four sitting rooms and two libraries. “This is floor six, there’s one more floor up.”

The fat boy points to a bookcase, “There’s a hidden staircase, but don’t go up there.”

Ganan pushes past the fat boy, sending him sprawling to the ground (bruised and crying). He hurls the bookcase aside and charges up the hidden staircase. When he reaches the top floor, he finds it empty except for a carved dragon-head. Lightning shoots from the dragon-head and strikes him square in the chest. The blast knocks him down the stairs again, his bronze body wrecking the woodwork as he falls.

The fat boy chokes out, “I warned him! I warned him!” Between sobs, he wipes his great flabby face with the back of a finely tailored sleeve.

Ganan picks himself off the ground and shoots the boy a warning look. “It looks like we need to go down.” He growls.

Aharon gestures at the Iselsi children, “So what do we do with the kids?”

Reya pinches the bridge of her nose, “We’re not murdering children, and we’re not running a daycare. Leave them.” She turns to the nanny, “Take us to the real manse. No tricks or I’ll revise my ideas about letting you and these children live.”

The nanny nods hastily as she rises from prone and leads them back downstairs. The Dynasts follow after her, Ganan stops only to scoop Iselsi Manarah off the floor, carrying him underarm downstairs with them.

The nanny picks her way past the dead demons, reveals that it’s possible to jump from one door to the other, she extends the hidden staircase with a wave of a hand and delicately steps over the invisible tripwire leading them back to the black waters on the second level.

She produces a small knife from a pocket and holds out her left hand, revealing a scar across her palm. She speaks with a wavering voice, “You need to cut your palm, and drip your blood into the water, reciting ‘I pledge to serve House Iselsi with every drop of my blood’.”

Reya shakes her head, “We’re not doing that.”

Melody chips in, “Why do people always cut their palms? Don’t they know how many nerves there are in the palm of the hand?”

Ganan answers her, “Actually, most sorcery specifically calls for palm blood. We manipulate the world with our hands, the dorsum is a striking surface, but the palm is intimate – personal and protected.” He checks Iselsi Manarah’s palm, it’s not as scarred as the mortal nannies, thanks to Exalted healing, but there’s evidence of a wound there. He dumps the unconscious Water Aspect at Melody’s feet, “Wake him, he’s coming with us.”

Melody throws a confirming look to Reya, then works to get Manarah conscious.

Reya questions the nanny, “Then what happens?”

The nanny gushes, “The waters turn red, you can dive and swim right through the floor, as you swam through the ceiling to get here. And then you’re in the manse. The real manse.”

Reya fixes the nanny with a hard stare, “This is not how every Iselsi comes and goes from this place.”

The nanny stammers and shakes her head, “You broke in! Knocked down the door! It triggered the defenses. If you’re invited in, you can swim through the floor by entering and leaving the drawing rooms in the shape of the Iselsi Mon.” She draws with her finger. “But we’re trapped by the Black Waters now.”

Reya nods, “Ganan, Melody, and I will go first. If you don’t hear from us, kill these two.” She cuts her palm using her iron belt-knife and drips the blood into the water, “I pledge to serve House Iselsi with every drop of my blood.”

She dives in and more sinks than swims to the floor at the bottom, passing through it and out of sight. Melody follows suit.

Ganan holds out his palm to Ferad, who is armed with his ancestral daiklave, “Help an invulnerable brother out.” Ferad sets jade to bronze and manages to draw blood, and Ganan follows after.

Merely pledging allegiance to House Iselsi does nothing, but as they swim through the black waters, mixed with their blood, the Dragons feel the weight of their words crushing against their mental defenses. Each of them swims through the floor and comes out in the true first level of the underground House of Black Waters. They steel themselves against the unnatural mental influence, shaking its hold on them.

Reya uses Wind Carried Words to signal to the others, warning them about the enchantment and telling them to come through. Ferad brings the nanny through, followed by the children, then Aharon and Iselsi Manarah.

The Dynasts find themselves in a natural cave: a hollow in the rock the pagoda is built upon. Bare rock has been sculpted smooth, leading deep underground. The rock is slick with moisture. Touches that burn without smoke, and show no sign of burning down, line the obvious trail down into the manse. The nanny leads them away from the lighted path into the darkness of the manse. Ganan follows confidently, sensing the hidden tunnel ahead: and Melody and Reya follow him, sensing his confidence.

The nanny keeps to the left, her hand pressed to the wall, and she cautions the Dynasts to do the same. Ganan’s enhanced senses feel the right wall periodically drop away, opening to a cavernous drop. Deep into the ground they go, the river above them now, and rejoin the lighted path. Melody’s anima has dimmed, and Ganan now only glows with power. They come to a wooden door – neither barred not guarded and enter into a structure built inside the cave. Rich carpet over hard-wood floors leads deeper underground. The nanny shifts a hidden panel in the wall, “Servants entrance.” She explains as she leads them into the cavity between the woodwork and stone walls, “We can go straight to the hearth room, by-pass all the traps.”

The Dynasts make their way through the damp of the cavity. Several times the nanny calls a halt, and Aharon clamps his hand over Manarah’s mouth, as an Iselsi scion walks the hall of the manse on the other side of the wooden wall. The wall is well made and shuts out the light of Ganan’s anima. Eventually, the nanny shifts a panel aside and points to a door of lacquered ironwood. “Iselsi Manoton’s study. The heart of the manse.”

Ganan drops to one knee and examines the lock, the door, and the hinges.

Jorod hisses in his ear, “Can you pick the lock?”

Ganan grins back at him, “No. Stand-back.”

Melody signals the others to get ready for a fight as Ganan winds back his tetsubo and smashes the ironwood door to splinters.

A mighty-looking elder Iselsi looks up from his writing desk as the door is blasted inwards. He silently raises an eyebrow. Ganan grabs the nanny by her arm, “Is this Iselsi Manoton?”

The nanny nods mutely, looking away, embarrassed by her treachery.

Ganan punches the nanny in the temple, using his full strength. His fist buries itself deep in her skull, killing her instantly. He withdraws his fist, and with a flick of the wrist, discards the gore splatter.

All the Dynasts save Melody gape at him. Aharon Saber Edge breaks the silence, “You have a real anger management problem Cynis Ganan.”

Melody jabs an accusing finger at Iselsi Manoton, “That’s not a Dragon-Blooded.”

“It’s sea-foam.” Ganan pronounces, “A simple enchantment.” He starts working his hands through the madras of distortion and usurpation.

Ferad looks skeptically as the elder rises and arms themselves, “Are you sure about that?”

Reya squints, “More yen-store Versino enchantment no doubt.”

The sea-foam elder aims Ganan with his bow.

Ganan completes his distortion, wrestling control of the illusionary elder, and puppets him into doing a silly dance. “Sea-foam.” He turns his baleful gaze at Iselsi Manarah, the illusionary elder aiming at the young boy, “Where’s the real Hearth room boy?”

Manarah raises a shaking hand, “Behind the bookcase.”

Ganan smiles and strides into the room, oblivious to the obvious lie.

“Gan wait!” Reya calls, easily reading the boy’s nervous smile as Ganan steps into the room.

As soon as Ganan steps into the room, he senses that the floor beneath him is hollow. He has time to look down at his foot and say “Sh-” before the whole room tumbles falls into an abyss. Ganan turns, lurching for the hallway, and he catches hold of the lip of the floor, bronze fingers biting into the wooden boards. He hauls his enormously heavy bronze body back over into the hallway as the break-away room hits the ground with a resounding ‘thunk’. His eyes settle ominously on Manarah.

The young Iselsi splutters, “But it is! You have to go down to get the hearth room! The waters run deep. The waters run deep!”

Reya drops to one knee and looks up at the Iselsi scion, “Your family does not plunge to their deaths in a stone box to get to the hearth room. How do we get down safely?”

Iselsi Manarah shakes his head, and spits out a loose tooth, “There is no safe way down. It’s this way or you swim.”

Reya nods and stands, “Swimming is fine.”

Manarah leads them around a corner, to a pool of faintly glowing water. “You swim forwards and down into a rock-pool. They don’t let us go any further than that.”

“Fine.” Ganan says, “Jorod and I will go first.’

Melody shakes her head, “I’ll go with you. Jorod goes with Reya.”

Ganan kicks off his boots and wades into the water, dismissing his invulnerable skin once again, his bulwark against the world being more of a hindrance than an aid in this manse, and the others follow after him.

They hold their breath and kick under the water, striking into the gloom. Melody notices the glint of serpentine forms slipping through the water towards them, and she readies her bow, raising the alarm.

Melody fires her enchanted bow, the water severely slows the shot but it still impacts a body in the swarm, and releases blood into the water.

Reya fires her own bow, but the arrow only travels a few feet through the water and she feels kinda cheated. She kicks forward through the water, feeling it press against her.

Ganan punches at the closest of the Benthic Knifetooths. The deadly creature bites back at him, mouth gaping even as he punches, but Ganan cannot be overcome by a mere twenty-foot shark, and his blow sends the sinewy, serpentine beast reeling.

The Knifetooths try to grapple the Dragon-Blooded and hold them underwater. One of the beasts snares Danireya, another grabs Iselsi Manarah, and a third latches on to Mnemon Nula. The beasts thrash and lash at their captives, clawing and mauling.

The other Dragons either hack at the Knifetooths else try to press forward. Aharon tries to rescue Iselsi Manarah, whilst Mnemon Muli tries to save his sister. Nula tries to fight her way free as Agoram tries to distract the beasts. Ferad and Jorod both keep pushing forward.

Melody sees Reya in trouble and sights the beast grabbing her. She lets fly with a killing blow that embeds an arrow in the head of the shark, killing it even as another slides between them, cutting them off. Her anima rises and starts to glow once more.

Ganan kicks hard through the water to reach his wife, and slams into the new Knifetooth, attacking it with a fierce savagery as his anima starts to burn with light once more, rising from glowing. The Knifetooths break and peel off under his assault.

The Dynasts continue to push forward. Reya’s lungs feel like they’re going to burst as the moon-pool finally comes into sight, and she gratefully heaves in massive lungfuls of air as they break the surface of the water. Manarah and Nula are shaken up from having nearly been eaten. They heave themselves out of the water and look around.

Ferad is the first to speak, “Is it just me, or is there no way out of here?”

Ganan lays a hand against the stone walls of the moon-pool. He pulls his tetsubo off his back, readying himself for a fight, and he gestures with it at the far wall.

“Karkinos...” Iselsi Manarah breathes, as the wall seems to come to life and crawl towards the Dynasts.

Thirty foot wide, and as long as the Knifetooths, eight legs unfurl from the body of a giant crab. Two great pincers rise from under the water as Karkinos squares off against the Dynasts. The water in the middle of the moon-pool starts to squirm as at least a few of the Benthic Knifetooths come back for Karkinos’s leavings. This leaves the Dynasts with only a thin ring of rock round the edge of the water to maneuver on – each of them in range of the beast’s massive claws.

Melody levels her bow, and whispers to herself in Low Realm as she unleashes her attack, “You can’t expect a decapod to beat a demigod.” She breathes as her arrow strikes the beast, but one arrow does little to deter the mighty creature.

Reya discards her waterlogged bow to return to an old standby: she speaks the burning name and hurls fire at the giant crab, only to watch in horror as her attack does absolutely nothing to slow the beast.

Karkinos lashes out with its pincers. One smashes into Ganan, who expends the last of his spiritual reserves to force his body into Earth Dragon Form, his anima flaring totemic. The crustacean plucks him from the safety of the rock ledge and plunges him into the pool among the Knifetooths. The other claw reaches for Melody who dodges aside at the last moment.

With only a lungful of air, Ganan focuses his mind and resolves to use his head to get out of this tricky situation. He slams his forehead against the hard carapace of the giant crab monster, managing to jar its claws, just a little, and win himself some breathing room.

The Knifetooths in the pool move in to nip at Ganan. Pinned by Karkinos, drained of power, and hampered by being underwater, by rights Ganan should be easy prey. He is not. The crab guardian has Ganan by the middle – his legs are free and they kick wildly at any approaching shark, driving them off.

The Dragon-Blooded form up and attack Karkinos. Aharon runs in with his halberd, slashing and stabbing at the beast recklessly as the others cover each other with their attacks. The Dragon-Blooded all start to glow as they expend their spiritual power to fight this threat. Only Iselsi Manarah doesn’t fight, pressing himself hard against the wall of the moon-pool and curling up as small as he can.

Melody fires another arrow, this time hitting one of the beasts eye-stalks. It makes an almost human sound of pain as the arrow impacts.

Reya directs the confused milieu of Dragon-Blooded, focusing their talents to create an effective response to the beast before them.

Using the factional space granted to him by his cunning headbutt, Ganan focuses his chi. His tetsubo is an extension of his arm. He closes his eyes and exhales, the air leaving his body buys him an almost imperceptible amount of slack for the audacious feat he is attempting. He drives his tetsubo through the water, feeling the resistance pull against him and his muscles strain to overcome it. He strikes Karkinos on one side of his claw and spins on the spot, turning his body in the giant crab’s grip to strike at the other side of the claw. The colossal whirling strike breaks the beasts grasp and sends its claw arm hurling backward. Ganan uses the reprieve to kick for the surface of the water and fill his lungs with fresh air.

The Dragon-Blooded attack according to Reya’s instructions. Tepet Agoram and Muli move in, covering each other. They strike and peel away as Jorod and Aharon crash through them and hammer the giant crab with fire and water. Ferad runs past Ganan and strikes out with his blade in a coordinated assault against the reeling beast.

The Benethic Knifetooths strike for Ganan again but released from the giant crab’s grasp he is a far more challenging target and once more he fights them off.

Karkinos strikes again. The claw that swept at Ganan now lashes at Melody, whilst the other plucks Iselsi Manarah from his hiding spot and plunges him underwater. Melody’s anima flares totemic as she dodges aside.

Ganan climbs from the pool and charges at the giant crab, battering it with his tetsubo. Jade cracks the beasts exoskeleton, dealing a telling blow.

Reya weaves Ganan’s impulsive attack into her strategy as she directs her kin to finish the monster off.

Melody fires again, hammering the beast.

Karkinos is an ancient being, and it has not lasted this long by fighting foes it cannot defeat. Still holding Iselsi Manarah, it dives into the water. Its body completely fills the pool, and for a moment it seems like it is too big to fit, but fit it does and it quickly disappears.

Cautiously, the Dragons pick their way around the pool to where Karkinos stood. They find a door of rippling moonsilver, stylized as a carved face.

Reya goes to open the door and the face yawns to life.

“What is so fragile that saying its name breaks it?” The door asks in Old Realm.

Reya smiles at the riddle, “Silence.” She replies confidently.

The door proceeds, “What can you break, even if you never pick it up or touch it, but keep after you give it to another?”

“Your word.” Ganan answers quickly before Reya can solve the puzzle.

“If you have me, you want to share me; if you share me, you haven’t kept me. What am I?”

Reya translates into High Realm, repeating the riddle back before answering, “A secret.”

The door pauses, perhaps as a human would pause gravely, “I am greater than the Dragons, more evil than the Anathema. You have me, but the Dynasts lack me. All women carry me to their graves. I am the only thing you may put before our Vendetta. What am I?”

Reya translates and thinks carefully. She weighs the various evils of the world against the Anathema, “Death?” She asks Ganan cautiously in High Realm.

Melody shakes her head, “Death is better than the Anathema. Nothing is worse than the Anathema. Nothing.”

Reya shakes her head at her foolishness, “Nothing.” She announces, and the door fades away to nothingness, revealing, at last, the Hearth room of The House of Black Waters.

The Dragons move forward and attune to the manse. Surprisingly, the manse’s hearthstone, the Fighting-The-Tide Gemstone, sits on a plinth unguarded. Danireya studies it carefully, expecting some sort of trap or guardian, but sensing no danger she takes it and inserts it into her shield.

Melody speaks, “Well now she should be able to move through the manse without setting off every single trap, right?”

Ganan scoffs, “Now we have to swim past the beasts again.”

Indeed, there is no other way out but back the way they came. Neither serpentine sharks nor giant crab bothers them, however. After their swim, they explore the rest of the manse. The Dragons find an atrium filled with masks – each mask is covered with delicate script detailing some illustrious history of an Iselsi scion. Beyond that atrium, they find Iselsi’s tomb – the Dragons resolve not to disturb the crypt on this occasion. They find an armory, no artifact weapons have been left behind but Melody restocks on arrows. They find living quarters with books, clothes, and provisions. They do not encounter another living soul. Eventually, they pass back up into the pagoda above and find it similarly deserted.

Reluctantly, Reya addresses the others, “It seems that House Iselsi has gone to ground.”

“Shit.” Ganan and Melody say in unison.

****

Melody spends 8XP to train Audience Enthusing Display.

Ganan spends 8XP to train Forge-Hand Prana and 12DX to train Crater-Gouging Blow.
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Dynasty of Dovak