( imeeji ) memory registry

[worthathousand]

	DATE	LINK
亜子 Ako	day 75	you lift it anyway
Hero Worshipped	day 111	it has been my dream to live by your example
Alone in the Fields	day 111	the rice stalks sway
The Wyld Hunt pt. 1	day 127	your heretic chosen
The Wyld Hunt, pt. 2	day 127	the fate of those who lose their will to demons
Joined with Shiho	day 199	kimono in Serenity blue
A Fight for Father	day 201	once there was a maiden
The War Yeddim	day 201	the battle is a song
General Ascendant	day 201	white lily of war
Calibration Stories	day 201	born an exception
Shrine Maiden	day 260	you are my child of peace
First Battle	day 260	cries of the injured and dying
Shiho's Illness	day 260	a season of cold and fever
Meet-Cute	day 451	Tits, indeed.
Imagining a Future	day 456	"What do you want to do, after?"
TBD	---	---
TBD	---	---

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cw: animal death

[worthathousand]

All of you feel it before you see it—the shuddering of the ground beneath your feet. There’s a ripple of motion across the battlefield, even in the midst of the fighting, as a wing of heads turn at once towards the feeling that is becoming a sound: drumbeats paired with the slow and steady sound of heavy hooves.

The beast towers higher than the tallest trees, trunklike legs shaking the ground, a full complement of archers upon its back, soldiers ready to descend on ropes to join the fray. A whole talon or more—more than enough to turn the tide in the enemy’s favor.

Around you, soldiers are starting to scatter in panic. From the high back of the yeddim, the archers from Viridian Province have an ideal vantage point, and a hail of green-fletched arrows arcs over the battlefield; the screams that follow tell you that too many have found their mark.

There’s a tightness in your chest—an ember of fury. Did the god give his life for this? So that it took two battles for his people to be slaughtered, instead of merely one?

No. No, it won’t end like this. You won’t allow it. You tighten your grip around Ako’s hilt, and let out a cry of defiance. As soon as it leaves your lips, it takes on a kind of resonance, and for a single moment, you feel the armies around you go still at the sound.

Then dozens of green-clad soldiers swarm you, and you feel yourself smile with the sharp certainty of a blade being drawn. You flare the Essence within you—on purpose, this time—and then you and Ako are moving as one. The soldier nearest you unsheathes his blade but your naginata is already at his shins, sending his feet out from under him—right before your next strike goes clean through the mail armor on his chest.

Where the god’s power guides your steps, it tangles those of your enemies. Every strike you weave around goes foul, connecting instead with one of the Viridian soldiers’ own allies. It doesn’t matter how many of these foot soldiers they send at you; the higher the odds that mount against you, the more the Essence sings within you—and the more swiftly your blade moves, cutting them down like so much jade green grass.

A strange joyous sensation in you: as if the battle is a song, and you its melody—the whole of it shaping around you, rather than the other way 'round. And you are part of it, down to your very Essence.

The ground shudders again as the yeddim nears, and the warsong within you feels so natural that it doesn’t even occur to you to hesitate. You cut down the last pair of soldiers in your way, then let momentum carry you as you leap towards one of the gilded ropes swinging from its sides; as you whirl Ako and jab the naginata’s blade like a spear into the beast’s flank. The staff becomes your next handhold as you heave yourself upward to the next rope, and to war platform on its back.

Your smile is serene as you duck smoothly under the archers’ bolts, which they loose at you in a panic. And then you are behind them, sweeping their legs out from beneath them and sending them tumbling to the earth below. Their commander provides more of a fight, but only barely. You block the strike from his curved shamshir before shoving him back with a force he clearly wasn’t expecting; he does not have time to react before you strike in a flurry of attacks—one blow for each of his archers you defeated. When he falls, only the yeddim itself remains.

—It is only an animal, but on the battlefield, even undirected, it is deadlier than a talon of soldiers, and there is little time before it runs rampant. Fortunately, you can make this quick: you back up enough on the platform to give yourself a running start—and then slam down the butt of Ako’s staff to vault yourself into an arcing leap. Ako is still so light in your hands, but its blade drives through the beast’s skull with the force of an army. All that is left is to jump neatly to the ground as the yeddim staggers and falls.

At last, you can stop to take a breath. And that is when you realize: the brilliant essence around you, the image of the dragon god a red glow around your shoulders that can surely be seen for a league—and the triumphant cheers of the soldiers of Tsubaki Province. For the first time since that devastating initial attack, you can see it in their eyes: genuine hope.


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Notes:

• Though troops from Amaranth’s home province have generally been majority women (something like 60-40), the enemy army from Viridian Province is the other way around. Cultural differences!
• Speaking of cultural differences, Viridian seems to have cultural stylings somewhat reminiscent of Earth’s early Ottoman Empire, in contrast to Tsubaki’s similarity to Sengoku era Japan.
• The Tsubaki Province army has a bit of a ragtag look to it here: most of the soldiers look either a little too young or a little too old to be on the front lines. They wear simple lamellar armor.
• Like in most of her memories (and in Imeeji), Amaranth looks about 20; however, here she carries herself a lot less certainly (at least initially). She has very little armor—just simple bracers and leg guards.
• Yeddim are creatures unique to the world of Exalted/Creation; they’re hauling animals, like oxen, but approximately the size of a mammoth. artist’s representation.