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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ellinor" data-source="post: 6022584" data-attributes="member: 14561">31x05Thanks for the bump!  It's always so encouraging to know that people are looking forward to updates.  And sorry for the delay in posting -- real life commitments have intruded  on our fun writing time.  But have no fear:  there's lots more in the pipeline!31x05“Not that business again,” Brother Burnout said, as Mena stood in his office at the Temple of the Keepers.  “Tashita-san is one of our most active members.  She showed me the book explaining the blood-duel.  I advised against it, but it was in the book.  I couldn’t forbid it.”  He ushered her in through the anteroom of the Temple of the Keepers of Light into his office.Mena was still angry—angry at Savina for putting Rose in danger, and even angrier at Rose for making such a preventable mistake—but although she wished someone had given her some advanced warning about Ungato Tashita’s plan to challenge Rose, she wasn’t angry at Brother Burnout,  and in any case, she knew anger wouldn’t help her here.  She scanned the shelves of Brother Burnout’s office and, to her relief, found the text of Ehktian sagas she was looking for.  “May I?” she asked.Brother Burnout nodded.  “There are many tales of Ehktian blood-duels in history, and great variation in how they are carried out.” Mena flipped through the book until she found the saga she had in mind.  She’d thought it was funny when she was a child; she’d never thought it would be useful.  Now, it might be the one story in Ehktian history that could prevent this disaster.  “Take this one, for example,” she continued. “The blood-duel of Brother Ember and Brother Bright.  You see,” Mena continued, “some blood-duels result in actual blood, but they don’t have to.  This one didn’t.”   Brother Burnout considered for a moment, and then asked Mena to wait.  He returned in a few minutes with a spiky-haired girl of about 13.  She had recently dyed her hair red and pierced her eyebrow, but Mena recognized her instantly as <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/251423-rose-wind-saga-halmae-updated-august-27-2012-a-35.html#post5476139" target="_blank">the girl who’d been so eager to hear her stories when she first came to the temple</a>, months ago.  She’s just a kid! Mena thought, and settled in to teach a history lesson.It wasn’t easy.  The girl was as excitable as promised, and wouldn’t pay attention for more than a few minutes at a time.  But by the end, she agreed to a bout with practice weapons, designed to humiliate rather than injure.  “But Taku will be there to watch when I kick her butt,” the girl insisted.  “I’ll knock her down and make her look funny.”  Mena thought that was just fine.###Tavi was worried as they approached the Ungato home.  My whole life, he thought, and it all comes down to this.  “I’ll be right there, ready to switch places with you if you’re hurt,” he said.  “You won’t have to draw blood.” Rose seemed a good deal more comfortable than he did.  “I know.” “Look.  She’s going to hit Rose with a stick, Rose will fall down, and we’ll be on our way to Divine Mark,” Kormick told Tavi.  It wasn’t terribly comforting. True, they’d done their research this time. They could find no connection between Ungato Tashita and the Questors’ <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/251423-rose-wind-saga-halmae-updated-august-27-2012-a-41.html#post5678666" target="_blank">previous</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/251423-rose-wind-saga-halmae-updated-august-27-2012-a-8.html#post4823496" target="_blank">attempt </a>to capture Rose.  They knew that something was out to get Rose—they’d faced too many <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/251423-rose-wind-saga-halmae-updated-august-27-2012-a-24.html#post5174790" target="_blank">swarming attacks </a>on the road to Cauldron to think otherwise—but they weren’t on the road now, and whatever shady forces drove those attacks, there was no discernible tie between them and Ungato Tashita.  So this probably wasn’t an assassination attempt, and Kormick was probably right. But that didn’t mean Tavi wasn’t concerned.  My whole life, he thought again, and the refrain kept racing through his head. Our whole lives come down to this.A servant let them into the estate and to a courtyard behind the house where the girl’s father waited with his arms crossed.  Uroki Takumi stood beside him, shoulders slumped, not making eye contact with anyone.  There was a pit in the middle of the courtyard, filled with vegetable and animal waste.  It smelled horrible.  Two narrow posts stood in the middle of the pit, with planks leading to them.Ungato Tashita—dressed in bright red, her spiky hair glinting in the sunlight—strode from the house carrying two wooden swords and a large stone.  She handed the stone to Nyoko and held out one of the swords to Rose.  “We’ll stand on the posts.  The Adept will drop the stone.  When the stone lands, we’ll fight.  Whoever falls, loses.  Right?”  She looked at Mena, who nodded.  Tavi prepared himself. Our whole lives…The girls walked across their respective planks to the posts.  Servants removed the planks, leaving just the posts.  Tavi held his breath.Nyoko dropped the stone.Ungato Tashita swung her wooden sword like a bat. Rose waved her hand.  The post holding Ungato Tashita disappeared and instantly reappeared three feet away.  The girl fell, with a squelching noise, into the muck below.Rose fey-stepped the few feet from the post to solid ground.  “Can we go now?” she asked.Everyone else exhaled.###As the others were preparing to leave, Twiggy stopped by the Adept library to say goodbye to Tomako-san.  When she arrived, he had a stack of books and scrolls ready for her to read.  “I think I found some things that might help with your prophecy,” he said, visibly relieved that he could talk to her again.  “About that <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/251423-rose-wind-saga-halmae-updated-august-27-2012-a-46.html#post5876424" target="_blank">Sheh madwoman</a>.”Indeed, he had gathered some interesting information.  Twiggy wasn’t sure how it fit together, but she finally, after spending so much time reading old Sovereign texts, was starting to feel like she was getting closer to the larger picture.  The first was a basic matter of translation:  In the language of the Old Ones, the word “Sheh” meant “wall.”  That tended to support Kormick’s idea that the Sheh had something to do with the “guarding tower” in the prophecy.  Find the last stone of the ruined wall, Twiggy thought.  The records showed that the Sheh were eradicated—but maybe they really weren’t.  Maybe they had to find the last of the Sheh.The second piece of information was both more worrisome and less helpful.  At the time that the Sheh madwoman was executed, there was apparently a rash of murders of infant girls.  The records indicated that there were multiple killings by multiple killers, and that they seemed to spread East toward the coast from somewhere deep in the western Ketkath.  The Sheh were from the western Ketkath, Twiggy knew.  It meant that the Sheh madwoman wasn’t the only one killing infant girls.  But beyond that, it was hard to know what it meant.###Not long after dawn, the group gathered up their bags and bundles and headed to Cauldron’s teleport house. Unsuku was waiting for them there.  “Ready to meet Lady Akiko, heir to the Lord High Regent?”  Kormick asked as the telemancer prepared the circle for their travel to Overlook.  “We have a good bit of walking from Overlook to Divine Mark, first,” Unsuku reminded him.“But I’m still looking forward to it,” Twiggy replied.  She grasped Rose’s hand and squeezed as they stepped into the teleport circle.  The teleport activated.  The world went white, and instantly, the sulphurous smell of Cauldron was gone.  A telemancer said “Welcome to Overlook.”Twiggy’s hand was empty.  Rose was gone.</blockquote>

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