Memory 1: asteroid battle

[shintaiprotagonist]

If there were enough atmosphere to carry sound on this little nowhere planetoid, your footsteps would echo on the walls of the canyon you’re walking down. There isn’t, of course, not that it bothers you by now; the Endless Desert isn’t your patron, but you’ve learned one of her lesser gifts regardless and here it serves you well. Better, you think, than the power of the Wayward Sun serves your opponent; he’s wrapped in armor that generates air and warmth for him, while you need neither.

Still, you’d never dream of underestimating him. The day he stops challenging you is the day one of you dies.

You speak, knowing he’ll hear you through even without enough air to carry your voice. “I had almost begun to worry that we wouldn’t have this chance to meet. Have you been well, Dawnbreaker?”

“Better than you,” he says sardonically; the pearl beneath your tongue whispers his words in your ear, resonating with his voice. You raise an eyebrow. “I hear our last little encounter left you reeling for a while.”

He doesn’t know, then. Lies have never been your strong point, but you shrug, careless, artless. “Perhaps I simply took time to myself,” you say, just as wry as he, and smile when he laughs, genuine humor with a derisive edge. A lesser lie can conceal a greater, Eroas told you once, and there are few who can match his mastery of deception.

“You? Never.” You wave a hand, conceding the point, pretending not to see his hand twitch towards his massive blade in its sheath on his back. He knows you as well as you know him, by now, and you take a small pleasure in using that knowledge to throw him off-guard. You need every advantage you can get, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

He’ll be expecting you to strike, in that moment of hesitation, so you don’t. You circle him in the eerie silence, hands open, watching him turn with you warily. He’s buying time, not knowing that you are as well. The longer you can keep him from realizing, the better.

“Well. You certainly didn’t seek me out alone for tea and a chat,” he says, and you’re not sure you like the note of wariness in his voice. If he decides the game isn’t to his taste...it’ll be a disappointment, to be sure, but more importantly, you remind yourself, it risks your Circle’s careful work.

“If we meet again, I’ll be certain to bring tea,” you tell him, and his huff of laughter is unfeigned. You smile, brilliant and bright, and in that moment you unleash your will. Unseen Essence flashes out from you like a hurricane of razors to meet the edge of his blade, already in his hand as you formed the intent to strike.

You’ve fought other Exalted far too often to commit yourself too early, so the probing strike only tears hundreds of smooth gouges in the stone rather than cratering it, giving way easily before the counterstroke. Your defenses rise smoothly around you, your anima flaring a brilliant white as the space around you becomes impassable save by your will. A golden sun burns on your opponent’s brow, visible even through his life-sustaining armor, as he calls on his own power; you can see the flow of Essence burning through his meridians, speeding his reflexes, attuning him to the flow of battle.

Razen Dawnbreaker raises his daiklave in salute, and takes a single perfect step.

Your will hardens as that step takes him towards you, smooth and impossibly swift, and it’s enough to keep him at the border of the volume of space you’ve claimed as your own; you’ve surprised him, deflecting his speed and strength more easily than you ever have before, and he darts back before the shockwave of the clash has done more than raise dust from the stone around you, dashing up the side of a mound of rock as if it were flat ground. He’s swift, his sword everywhere at once as your killing intent takes form around him, showering fat sparks from the golden metal as you manifest edges without blades. You don’t pursue; he’s most dangerous up close, but at range the game is yours.

He knows that too.

His blade flares with golden light as he brings it down once, twice, sending shockwaves of pale Essence flashing towards you. Almost too late you see their nature; a new power he’s awakened from his bond with his weapon, cutting Essence rather than flesh. If you’d met them with your will, they’d sever intent from power, leaving you vulnerable -- an opportunity that could cost you the battle.

In the instant you have left, you define a law of separation that manifests as a membrane of force. The first shockwave strikes it and cleaves it cleanly in two, but the backlash sends it off-course and you dart to the side, rising on a crystalline platform of your power to evade the second by the width of a hair. From the shadow of his attack, Razen appears again, and this time you allow him close, letting your intent give way before him. There’s a haze of stone dust still in the air and at your will it resolidifies, clinging to his limbs and slowing him for just long enough.

The full force of your will strikes him like a falling star and this time you don’t hold back, pouring strength and Essence into the decisive blow, limning him with brilliant white flame. It hurls him down the canyon at speeds that would cause a sonic boom if there was air enough to carry one, and the ground shakes as his impact gouges a trench in the solid rock, glowing with heat as he burns. Cracks race up the canyon walls and massive chunks of stone break free, falling with deceptive, low-gravity slowness. You can no longer see your enemy.

The pearl under your tongue pulses once. It’s time.

Immediately, you begin casting a spell, drawing ambient Essence into precise shapes and formulae, a sequence of refinement and transmutation that ends with it shaped to your desire. A globe of solid light forms in the center of your array with breathtaking speed, coruscating with every color of flame. For a moment you dare to hope you’ve kept your advantage, but even as the sphere shatters to reveal a great bird of ruby and diamond, burning wings already spread to fly, the cloud of dust and stone parts to reveal Razen, his blade shining sun-bright as he raises it above his head and brings it down.

Under that blow, the brilliant raptor streaking towards him parts, detonating in a useless roil of flame that leaves stone glowing yellow-white. The platform carrying you parts as you dart aside, splintering like the crystal it resembles. And the stone beneath you parts, a cut extending long, long past the reach of the sword, the planetoid’s surface shuddering and cracking open like an egg sliced in half by an expert chef.

From the crevasse, a sleek metal shape rises from concealment, its engines venting Essence, its gangplank down and open. The voidship Flame of Dawn hovers, awaiting its master, the leader of its Circle, and Razen leaps to it in a single smooth arc, blade loose and ready in his hand to defend the ship against your interference. Void-suited figures, others of his Circle, stand ready to greet and aid him, pulling him inside the hatch before you can strike.

You don’t interfere. This, too, was expected.

As the voidship’s hatch closes and its engines hurl it away, vanishing from your sight in seconds, you let yourself drift among the floating rubble. Around you the planetoid continues to convulse, the massive wound in its surface tearing itself wider under the pressure of momentum. Only the faintest breath of sound reaches your ears, the already-thin atmosphere already shredding away, but the voice of your Circlemate is clear; as always, it seems that you see as much as hear her, the words writing themselves on the surface of your mind.

“Eroas was successful,” Lecia Rhetor says, coolly satisfied. “The beacon is transmitting. Wherever they go, we can follow.”

As the worldlet’s death throes play out beneath you, you smile, just as satisfied. When the Gunstar Autocthonia chooses its next world to devour, you and your Circle will be there to greet it.