"I've never entirely trusted Jupiter, I've never been entirely sure that her ends and mine coincide. This time however, the vision she sent me was appropriate and helpful; so I packed my things and went to visit the family in Juche." -- The diaries of Nellens Anila Kira, Bureau of Destiny.
Vasily wondered how the family managed to get away with the insult of seating him next to someone who was both a senior member of the House and a visitor from the Heptagram, but she didn't seem to mind. She had introduced herself as Nellens Anila Kira, an expert in translation carrying on her mother's work. Some of the books in the library had been translated by Nellens Anila, and hers was a name he knew from family lore, so he had a certain amount he could talk to her about.
She told him about her childhood, and her siblings, and then about the plague that carried off her mother, and broke her father's heart, and caused her to flee to the Heptagram and remain there until the impact of the memories had faded. She was visiting to deal with a few questions about an inheritance, apparently, although Vasily was unsure whose inheritance she was referring to.
Vasily retired that evening unsure as ever about his life. Despite his best wishes he had stubbornly failed to Exalt, and everyone was beginning to accept this as his lot in life. He mused on the unfairness of this for a while, so he was still awake when he heard one of the windows being broken. He started, and decided to investigate; stopping only to pick up the Wind-Fire Wheels he'd made a couple of years earlier, and the leather-hand straps that stopped him them from cutting his hands. He ventured towards the noise as he tightened the straps on his hands.
Lyosha, his elder brother, had taught him the basics of the Martial Arts before he went off to become an immaculate monk, and had since given him a copy of Five Dragons Fight as One in the hope that he would chose to continue learning after he Exalted. "I should call him Alexey now, I guess, since he's an immaculate and I, evidently, mortal."
The noise appeared to have come from the library, so Vasily prepared himself quickly outside the doorway, and stepped in. Within there were two thieves, apparently mortal. One was running his eyes across the books, initially unaware of Vasily's presence. The other, however was looking towards the door and holding a satchel which Vasily thought was the one that Nellens A. Kira had brought with her. The mortal threw the satchel at him, and ran towards him; drawing a short sword.
Vasily swore as the other mortal turned to face him, then dodged the satchel. He was entirely unprepared for this, and the mortal succeeded in bringing a blow down on his arm. Suddenly the theory he had read in the treatise began to gell in him and his skin shimmered briefly as if scaled under where the sword hit causing the blow to slide off. He had enough time to notice the room become illuminated in bright colours, and the second mortal stare at him in shock, before he was once again under attack. This time he was aware of what was happening, and once again he summoned the Dragons' scales to harden his skin, before counter attacking and leaving a large gash across the chest of the hapless mortal, who fell to the ground gasping.
At this point the second mortal regained enough composure to move. "Anathema!" he cried, vaulting out of the broken window. This gave Vasily pause, and he regarded himself in one of the glass shards left upon the floor. Upon his forehead was a golden circle, the top half burning gold, the bottom but outline. Shock forced the air out of his lungs, but his mind was racing. "I must flee, he will raise the Wyld Hunt."
He raced back to his room, grabbing the satchel on the way out of the library, thinking it would be useful for carrying things in. As he neared his room he narrowly avoided running into one of the family's maids, ran off screaming. Once inside, he scanned about the room for things he would need.
"Often changes demand sacrifices from us. This time it was to be something I had just acquired, and I found myself once again using my knife to tie my hair. I asked one of the maids to deliver my gift to Vasily, since then he would be sure that the household knew the events of the night." -- The diaries of Nellens Anila Kira, Bureau of Destiny.
On his bed was a small wrapped bundle, labeled "Vasily, may fate be with you". He had no idea from whence it came, but he placed it in the satchel nonetheless, in case it was of use. A couple of his personal possessions joined it, and traveling clothes before he realised he would need food. A cry was being raised within the house, but he felt he must risk it; and anyway the kitchen was one of the ways out.
What he hadn't expected was to find Sofia there.
"I'm sorry Vasje. I hope that this is swift and relatively painless."
He had no time to complain before he realised that she was casting some kind of spell. Probably the butterflies one she had demonstrated so proudly to him and Lyosha the other day. He had no choice, and lunged at her.
"I'm sorry too, Sofia."
She had been counting on a certain degree of surprise, and was definitely not expecting him to react so quickly. The last thing she remembered seeing was one of the rings of sharpened metal that he'd worked on so lovingly two years before sticking out from her guts.
Vasily retrieved his weapon, and wiped it down on the nearest thing available. His sister was still conscious, barely, but her wound was closing itself up. "Waiting will get you killed, Vasje" he thought, "but you can't kill her, she's family." So he waited a short while until he was sure that she wasn't going to bleed to death, then knocked her out with a careful blow.
"Get well, Sofia, and good luck."
"I was sure where he would be, because I had described the place to him only a few hours before. Still, there was chance that he'd move in the time I had to give him to accustom himself, so I left him a warning." -- The diaries of Nellens Anila Kira, Bureau of Destiny.
Vasily sat in the cave looking out over the lake, and watched the first signs of the sun rising over the hills beyond. The cave was set in the side of what was still known as the old quarry, and he had arrived here on an inspiration three nights before. Deprived of it's pumps the bottom of the quarry had filled in and now contained a small and still lake that reached up almost as far as the cave mouth.
He wondered briefly what it had looked like in Nellens Kira's day, and his mind turned back to the books he had stolen of hers. They were less of a puzzle though than the gift he had received. The first thing he had done the morning after arriving here had been to open the parcel. It had contained two things; a set of letters of rights made out to one "Nellens Dylan", a name he did not recognise, and an blue jade ornamental clasp in the shape of a butterfly.
The letters would be sufficient to keep him in comfort for the foreseeable future, and based on what he'd been reading he suspected that the butterfly was more than it seemed. In addition to what he had put in it, the satchel had contained three books; all translations by Nellens Anila. One was a treatise on artificing, which he considered to be perhaps the most inherently interesting, one text of terrestrial circle sorcery and the third a volume of tales from the first age.
The latter of these had a clip in the paper, which had induced him to look through to that part of the text. There he had found a marked passage -- "Look for me at dawn, on the third day."
As he mused once again on this he saw a spec on the horizon that soon formed itself into the shape of a crow flying towards him. The crow flew over the lake, and helixed downwards, before entering a quick dive towards a position not far from the cave mouth.
"I've never seen a bird do that before" he thought, and began to reach for his weapons.
Shortly before hitting the ground, the crow shimmered and bulked out to a homiform shape which breakfell, rolled and stood leaning on a staff. She stood, waiting and emanating a deep calm confidence. It took Vasily a short while to realise whom she was, and he stood there frozen taking every detail in.
She was short and lightly built, with the light blue hair of a Dynast of the Air Aspect. Said hair was tied back and held in place by a pin of some metal Vasily did not immediately recognise. She wore a faux peasant dress in deep violet with blue edgings, of a style that Vasily recognised from his great-grandmother's wardrobe. Over which lay a cloak apparently made of crow feathers.
Suddenly his mind made the connection. "Kira!" he cried, rolled and grabbed at his weapons.
"Indeed. I wouldn't bother if I were you, I could've killed you by now had I wanted."
He stood again, unsure, "well, would you mind leaving your weapons somewhere where you can't get at them?"
"I expected you to say that. If you'd care to collect them?"
Kira carefully placed her staff on the ground, where it morphed into the shape of a deadly looking sword of the same metal as her hairpin. Then in motions smooth and practiced, but so fast that they seemed almost a blur she surrounded it with five throwing knives of different materials.
She then walked away and watched while Vasily approached and collected the weapons. She waited until he had his hands full.
"Your first lesson, is this," in another practiced manoever she reached up behind her head, shook it; causing her long hair to flow down around her; and threw the starmetal knife that had been holding it in pace precisely between his feet. He jumped backwards, barely managing to keep hold on the load in his arms.
"never trust anyone without good reason, and understand that an assassin always has another weapon."
Vasily blanched, realising the pointlessness of his actions, and replaced Kira's weapons on the ground. His voice shaking slightly he invited her into the cave.
"After all, that's twice you could have killed me now, and it doesn't appear that I could stop you from doing so a third time anyway."
"I dispair at what the scions of the Dynasty are taught nowadays. Vasily didn't even have a good idea of how to remain out of sight. I saw it as my duty to the family to teach him some things, much as I was sure that Omari would see it as her duty to have him hunted down and destroyed. It was a game I'd hoped never to play, but Alea Jacta Est, and I don't play to lose." -- The diaries of Nellens Anila Kira, Bureau of Destiny.
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