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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 69 – The Palace of Dragon’s Repose – Reya (225XP 180DX, 203/143 spent; 9GP 36SP), Melody (225XP 180DX, 208/146 spent), and Ganan (225XP 180DX, 187/153 spent; 8WhP 77GP 62SP)

12^th Day of Ascending Water RY769
The Imperial Palace, Throne Room

By all accounts, the battle against Ragara Banoba’s forces was something to behold. Thousands of warriors clashed in the fields of Incas Prefecture. Two great war-machines of the First Age, Thousand-Forged Dragons, clashed in the skies above fields of infantry. Mnemon’s grenadiers and dinosaur cavalry clashed against Ragara mercenaries armed with shadow blades, their ranks swollen with nightmares given form. At the apex of the battle, when all seemed lost, Tepet Ejava, the Roseblack, had led the Vermilion Legion in a daring flanking maneuver that had ripped the heart from the Ragara coalition. One of the Thousand-Forged Dragons tore the heart from the other – it was not entire clear which of the two prevailed, then flew high into the skies. Banoba was taken in chains, and though many of his seconds escaped, there was now no further organized resistance to Mnemon on the Blessed Isle. Our heroes, of course, missed the entire battle.

Mnemon stands upon a dais, the Imperial Throne behind her. The room is flanked by the Legion of Silence. Cynis Ganan, standing alone, looks up at her. He holds two firewands – the original by Mnemon Issa, and his own iteration (-10SP: +9GP; +4SP).

“The designs are incredibly difficult to reproduce Madame Mnemon. But as you see, it can be done. I do not think I can produce these in numbers enough to make a difference before the end of the war.” He looks up her embarrassedly, “Not, of course, that our forces – your forces – require any additional help.”

Mnemon holds out a hand to silence him, “I did not call you here to discuss the war. Cynis Belar is suing for peace.”

Victory was all but assured on the Blessed Isle. Even Ganan was not ignorant of the fact that representatives from the Western Imperial Protectorate had arrived in the Imperial Palace yesterday to discuss peace. That left House Cynis as the other Threshold power. With their legions shattered at the Battle of Incas, House Cynis was now concentrated in Greyfalls: hundreds of pure-bred scions, safely insulated from the Realm by the war between Thorns and Lookshy.

Ganan bows, “Forgive me, Madame Mnemon. I was not aware that Cynis Wisel and Falen were-”

Mnemon cuts across them, “They are alive and well, both. Cynis Belar has betrayed her sisters. She has taken the Greyfalls war-manse and begs clemency for her House. Wisel and Falen, traitors to the Realm, are sheltering in a vast, fortress manse just outside of the city.”

Ganan shifts uncomfortably, not liking where this is going.

“This manse,” Mnemon continues, “Is too well defended for Belar to take. Apparently, it is officially listed as a brothel, and no-one bothered to notice that it was designed as a practical fortress. It predates House Cynis being awarded the Eastern Threshold Administrative District. Set on a hill. Surrounded by a wood. With over a year’s supply of food. The most significant manse, in geomantic terms for a hundred miles, excluding the war-manse itself.” Mnemon’s voice has grown in volume as she speaks, “Perhaps the last significant enemy fortress between me and the throne. Are you familiar with it?”

The word ‘familiar’ is stressed, practically shrieked hysterically.

Ganan drops his gaze, “The Palace of Dragon’s Repose.”

Mnemon smiles without mirth, “Oh, you’ve heard of it.” Her voice low, and dangerously calm now.

“I designed it.” Ganan admits without looking up, “And I’m carrying its Hearthstone… It’s my mother’s manse, Madame Mnemon, if it please Your Royal Highness.”

“It does not please me.” Mnemon spits, “It does not, in any way please me that House Cynis denies my claim to the throne. Nor does it please me that a scion of this treacherous House should involve himself so intimately in my ascension to the throne. Nor that he should have the unmitigated gall to venture inside my mother’s manse. And now one manse stands between me and victory. Your manse Cynis Ganan. And, somehow, the traitors have harnessed your manse’s geomantic energy and used it to cripple the Four Wind’s Throne war-manse! Compromising our forces and the defense of the entire region!”

Ganan chooses his words very carefully, “Meaning no disrespect Mnemon Denka, I am not sure how best I can serve you. Perhaps if you were to summon Reya-”

“Mnemon Danireya is not on trial here.” Mnemon says coldly.

Ganan looks around him, now realizing that it is perhaps unusual for the throne room to be filled with the Legion of Silence, and for courtiers to be completely absent.

“Oh.” Ganan says.

Mnemon explodes, inchoate with rage, “‘Oh’? ‘OH’! I’ll show you ‘oh’ you insolent!” She charges from the dais drawing level with Ganan’s chest, craning her neck up to look at him. Ganan looks back at her nonplussed. Mnemon takes a deep breath, and says levelly, “Fix this.”

Ganan’s eyes go wide, bewildered, “Yes, Your- I mean… What? How? Huh?” Mnemon glares at him, so he continues, “I mean… if I were in the Scavenger Lands, I might be able to break into the manse. There’s a weak-point… I could destroy the whole thing… But it is thousands of miles away, and the war with Thorns and Lookshy. And there are hundreds of Cynis scions in Greyfalls…”

“What I’m hearing,” Mnemon says tersely, her face close enough to Ganan that he can feel her breath on her neck, “Is that if I can get you to the Palace of Dragon’s Repose, you can get inside and kill all of the traitors within?”

“I mean… if I were there… I could get inside… and maybe… detonate the manse? That would kill most of them, and free up the geomantic blocks on the war-manse… and Belar could do the rest?”

“If you were there? Three thousand miles away?”

Ganan scratches the back of his neck, “I mean, that is to say that, begging your pardon, but my Hearth could get me there. It shouldn’t take longer than a week, even with the war.”

Mnemon turns from him and walks to the throne. She lays a hand lovingly on the carved dragons that make its back, caressing them, before looking back to Ganan, “I will be Empress tonight. House Cynis falls, tonight.”

Ganan opens his mouth to protest as Ylva Wataru walks into the room.

“Cynis Ganan, I believe we have an arrangement in Greyfalls.”

“Her!” Ganan splutters, “You can’t trust her! She’s a S-… She… was on Ragara’s side! She helped him into the Imperial Manse to steal your throne! Also… isn’t she dead? I thought she was dead?”

“Both of you were in the Imperial Manse,” Mnemon says coolly, “Neither of you can defeat House Cynis alone, but together… together you can prove your loyalty – Cynis and Sidereal – to me.”

****

Ganan rides on Ylva’s back in her draconic form. A hundred-pound barrel of firedust is loaded behind him, and he is wearing a green and gold robe stolen from the Cynis wing of the Imperial Palace. The land falls away beneath them as Ganan clings on for dear life. Ylva’s speed is staggering – faster by far than Danireya’s Stormwind Rider. They fly across the inland sea, keeping hundreds of miles from the conflict between Lookshy and Thorns. A vast explosion rocks the skyline to the South, but Ylva does not slow until the Palace of Dragon’s Repose comes into view.

Ylva sets them down next to a rocky outcropping, out of sight from the manse on Ganan’s direction. Ganan pushes his fist into the boulder and draws out his tetsubo. He hoists the firedust barrel onto his back and smashes his tetsubo into the rocks, breaking open a fissure leading to a hidden tunnel. Ganan squeezes his way inside. The tunnel is pitch black. Ganan reaches out with his senses and confidently walks the length of it, feeling the secret escape tunnel bend uphill towards the manse.

Just outside of the manse, he senses another figure in the tunnel.

Cynis Jinabar lights a torch as she hears a figure approaching and peers into the gloom, “Gan?” She calls.

Ganan stops in the tunnel, breathing hard, “Jin?” He calls back.

Jinabar rushes forward and embraces him.

“Careful!” Ganan warns pointing her torch away from the obscenely large barrel of firedust on his back.

She looks from the barrel back to Ganan’s face, “You’re not here to join us… how… how are you not here to join us?”

“Belar is suing for peace. Mnemon wants the hold-outs eliminated.”

Jin takes a step back, “You’re here to kill us all?”

Ganan shrugs, “I built this tunnel so that one day I could kill mother. I’ll admit, this is more collateral damage than I anticipated when I designed it. But I am going to go in there and kill everyone inside.”

Jin jabs forward with her torch, “Better I blow us both up here.”

“I feel compelled to point out that ‘out here’ isn’t ‘in there’. Mnemon has taken the throne, there is no-one who can oppose her now. This is a lost cause: are you really going to die for mother when you could just stand aside? Walk out the other end of this passage and go join Belar: House Cynis has a future with Belar. Go back to your archons. I believe you’d kill me – kill us both – for something you care about. But for the sake of prolonging a civil war? Tearing the Realm apart? Saving that monster? Let me pass.”

Jin relaxes a little, “You’d let me go?”

“You’re not in the manse.” Ganan shrugs, “Mnemon hasn’t asked me to kill you. I’ve got no personal reason to kill you.”

Jin grins at her brother, “I love you too.”

“Don’t start.” Ganan stops, “Tell me Mott and your other archons aren’t in there.”

“They’re in town.”

Ganan stands to one side, and cautiously Jinabar approaches, and squeezes past him. Ganan opens a hidden panel at the end of the tunnel, leading out into the manse’s wine cellar. Ganan grabs a couple of bottles of brandy.

Ganan carefully picks his way through the kitchens. It seems the staff has been reduced, and with a large number of strange Cynis Dragon-Blooded crowded into the manse, Ganan makes his way past the servants without incident. He rises up into the dining room, nods at a pair of cousins loafing with their feet on the table and moves out into the study. One of the loafing scions pulls a face and rises, heading off into another part of the manse. Ganan picks up his pace. Half-a-dozen Dragon-Blooded don’t even look up as he crosses the room: one does, and they seem to recognize the stranger in their midst (he taps the shoulder of one of the other Cynis in the room and points Ganan out. Ganan raps the Palace’s Hearthstone on one bookcase, and it swings open like a door – Ganan darts through, and pulls it closed behind him. There is a sound of commotion from the study as Ganan finds himself alone in the Hearthroom of the manse – having cleverly bypassed all the manse’s defenses.

There is a commotion from the hallway leading to the Hearthroom’s main entrance: Ganan quickly bars it. He sets the giant barrel of firedust on the empty plinth on which his Stone of the Ram’s Horn formed: a plinth set above a deep fault-line opened hundreds of years ago by the destructive energies of the Greyfalls war-manse – the structural as well as mystical foundation of the building. Wooden beams, old and dry, crisscross the room: he pours out one bottle of brandy over the wood and stuffs a rag in the other bottle before setting that on top of the firedust. Ganan lights the rag and sneaks back the way he came.

“You don’t call. You don’t write. You don’t even respond to sorcery.” Cynis Falen Lorena smirks at her son, “What’s a mother to do?”

She settles into Wood Dragon Form as four well-muscled Exalts armed with sledgehammers and wearing heavy chain swathing burst into the room flanking her.

Ganan’s eyes take in the room, without leaving Lorena, “Mother… we can talk about this?”

“No,” She shakes her head, “I don’t think we can.”

Ganan waits for his hammer-wielding relatives to close in and Lorena watches with distracted self-satisfaction. The first closes in with Ganan, and he turns to one side, parrying the blow. The second fares no better, unable to find its mark. But the third hammers Ganan full in torso, and Ganan takes Earth Dragon Form as the burly man fails to knock him backward. Ganan’s anima rises full around him, sand tearing at the treasury of books on the shelf behind him.

“That’s all you get.” Ganan grins.

The fourth charges at Ganan, who brings his tetsubo down on in response, battering him to the ground.

Cynis Lorena lashes out with her powerbow, using it like a staff to pierce Ganan’s flesh. The blow drives a thorn of deadly Essence into Ganan’s soul.

With a desperate burst of energy, Ganan throws himself forward smashing his mother to the ground and trampling over her as he runs out of the room (the heavily armed sledge troops being unable to stop him).

Lorena flips to her feet and chases after Ganan.

Ganan runs through the dining room, leaping over the dining table. The remaining loafer does not sit idle, raising to try and tackle Ganan as he barges past. Ganan slams his tetsubo into the distant cousin, punting him over the dining table and towards his mother.

Lorena spirals round the loafer, evading the clumsy attack with ease. As she moves, she draws her bow and looses an arrow. Guided by the soul mark, it strikes Ganan in the shoulder: the arrow shaft splinters as it smashes against his invulnerable skin.

The firedust explodes. The Hearthroom implodes. The geomantic fault-line, anchoring the thousand-ton foundation upon which the entire manse rests, yawns open and the manse begins to fall into the bottomless crevasse below. The floor lifts to a thirty-degree angle as slabs of the ceiling start to fall inwards.

“What did you do!” Lorena screams, shattering a marble slate as it falls from on high with a single punch.

Ganan throws himself down the stairs into the kitchen as Lorena sprints behind him. She looses another arrow: Ganan staggers at it hits him square in the spine, but he doesn’t stop running. The entire above-ground structure collapses in on itself, falling into the bottomless pit of Creation’s under-dark. The servants scatter before the Dragon-Blooded, milling in confusion: the main exit out of the manse having now been destroyed. There is a sickening lurch as the basement levels of the manse slip toward the chasm.

Lorena leaps on Ganan’s back, tackling him as the ground breaks up beneath their feet.

Ganan struggles out of her grasp. The combined devastation from their animas rips up chunks of the kitchen. He hammers her back with the short end of his tetsubo, breaking away for the wine cellar.

Lorena runs and jumps as the entire kitchen sinks away. Buoyed by Air Essence, she seems to hang suspended in mid-air as she fires her bow again. Ganan stops, spins on his heel, and swirls his tetsubo from the air, smashing the arrow apart mid-flight.

Lorena lands inside the wine cellar: her feet just finding the lip of solid ground. Ganan barrels into her: his muscles strain as he smashes her with his tetsubo, knocking her back with all his might. Her face twists up with shock as the blow connects, driving the air out of her body. She meets Ganan’s gaze for a moment before the force of the blow drives her back into the yawning pit. There is a look of something like pride on her face as she fires off a last parting shot. Ganan’s Invulnerable Skin explodes as he channels his anima through the sorcery to ameliorate the blow.

Ganan staggers over to the false wall concealing his escape tunnel and makes a run back for Ylva.

****

Meanwhile in the Mnemon Wing of the Imperial Palace

“Just breathe my love, you can do this.”

Mnemon Ferad holds his wife’s hand as Melody pants. The labor has lasted for hours now.

“I thought the second child was meant to come quicker.” Reya grins at her sister, holding her other hand.

“Fuck. You.” Melody says between breaths, “I need willow bark. I need morphine.” The air is thick with the scent of vanilla and honey as scented wax is melted in a large brazier. The smell makes Melody want to puke.

“You’ve had willow bark and morphine.” Ferad says gently, “Any more morphine and the baby won’t be able to breathe.”

Melody screams, “I can’t do this.” The pain is like an encircling python. Waves of cramping agony wrack her body.

“Yes, you can.” Reya coos as she strokes Melody’s hair.

“Can I get you anything? Do you need water?” Ferad asks, feeling thoroughly helpless and exhausted.

Melody shakes her head and reaches out for her Heath with her anima. Reya is right beside her. Udi is on the other side of the door. Ganan is…

“Where the hell is Ganan?” Melody hisses out-loud.

“I’ll call him,” Reya says, trusting her voice to the wind. There is no reply. She reaches out with her own anima to feel the presence of her husband – three thousand miles East. Her brow knits in confusion. Then Melody screams in pain again and Ganan is forgotten.

“Where are the doctors!” Melody grunts.

“You sent them out an hour ago my love.” Ferad reminds her, “You said you didn’t want anyone who knew less about childbirth than you telling you what to do.”

The feeling is one of mounting pressure: not stretching precisely, but an agony born of the movements below.

Melody screams again, “Is the baby crowning?”

Reya and Ferad exchange a look of utter terror. (“Look! No, you look!”) Reya’s hardens into a look of command and Ferad reluctantly positions himself between Melody’s legs.

“Alright then. That’s a baby. Yes. Reya you want to…?”

Reya shakes her head, “Okay Melody, looks like the babies coming so… push with the contractions.”

“I’m training you! I’m training you all in medicine!” Melody rants before the next contraction hits. Melody pushes down. She regulates her breathing, “You two first. Then the rest of you.”

“The baby is coming, keep pushing!” Ferad encourages, not sure where to put his hands.

“That’s. Not. How. This. Works.” Melody pants, “And take the damn baby as it comes out!” The contractions hit again, Melody pushes. It is like a dam breaking within her, they baby comes as a flood.

“I’ve got it! I’ve got… him. I’ve got him!” Ferad smiles.

“It’s a boy?” Melody asks, tearfully.

The baby’s skin is far darker than Melody’s or Ferad’s, and he’s covered with a fine down. His eyes shimmer with the prismatic colors of the rainbow.

“Big boy. Bigger than baby Lezabe.” Ferad smiles, awkwardly handling the baby and its cord, “He looks like you.”

Reya and Melody say nothing. The baby does look like her.
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Dynasty of Dovak