-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--<* Great Forks *>-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-

    Oh, grand and beautiful Great Forks, the Heaven of Creation! The city stands girded in a circle of marble-clad granite 25 cubits tall and 78,125 cubits in circumference - auspicious numbers suitable for a divine city. Other treasures lie beyond the city walls. To the westerly lie vast fields of qat and hashish and other sweet and savory tinctures, drawn up from the rich earth by the soul-dead slaves and proud gardeners of the mighty city. To the easterly flow the rivers Rolling and Yellow, forking against the buttress of the city's docks. Armed men with machete and bow walk the roads to keep them safe for the peaceful and innocent.

    Within the city walls, the buildings lie close to the earth, two stories at most, built wide rather than tall. The exception are the high dangling tenement buildings near the city edges. The city roads are a divine-wrought web, with clean spokes and mad tangling cross-strands that defy comprehension by outsiders. The three city bureaucracies stand in a vast triangle around the Palace of the Three and the brilliant temple district, a sea of continuous festival and lyrical prayer.

    Forkers dress decadently and display their healthy flesh brightly in loose gauzy robes, open tunics, slit skirts, kilts, and breeches, all in many colors and magnificent dyes. The wealthy few are garbed in furs or silks, but even the poor have clothing worthy of display for special occasions. Beneath the citizenry, however, lie a mass of slaves, dressed roughly that their status might be known, constantly at work at all manner of menial tasks.

    "It's not true! It's not- I'm not a- oh no, no! No, please! PLEASE!" The sound of festival is momentarily silence by the incoherent begging and screaming of the young man. His face is bloodied, tear-streaked. He doesn't deserve this - not really. He's no more evil than most, just a little more desperate, a little more wily, a little more confident in his flim-flam than other, more cowardly liars. Which is why he has an arrow of glittering essence through his kneecap, bawling helplessly as Philokrates drags him on to the podium of public address.

    Now the crowd is silent, watching in horror. Philokrates looks out on to the crowd. "The economy is in turmoil," he announces briefly, his bold voice carrying over the muffled sobbing of his victim, the man he is murdering in public. "Many of my countrymen have faced this adversity and suffering with character and principle, and I thank you. Some have given in to weakness, and prey upon the desperation of their countrymen with lies and fraud. They are no more evil than us, most of them. Perhaps more desperate - more bold - more ambitious." His victim shudders, looks up, hoping against hope for mercy.

    He dies instantly, his head evaporating as an essence-charged arrow plows through his skull, and he drops in a heap, bursting in to flame. "I will kill you regardless if it becomes known to me that you are defrauding the people of Great Forks. Know that my insight penetrates all illusions; my principle penetrates all pleas for mercy. Trade profitably." He marches off the podium, leaving the corpse burning bright behind him.

    This did not go unobserved.

    Later in the evening, as Philokrates steps outside following another discussion with his father, a girl steps into view. He may recognize her as Suzume, a noble from out of town here as part of an embassie, or he may not. "Your judgement is thorough, sir. You stand in broad daylight and pronounce sentence." Her tone is nothing like her usual portrayal: gone is the vacuous smile, the vapid fawning.

    Philokrates is in a poor mood. He always wins these 'discussions', but it's a hollow victory. He never won arguments with his father before his exaltation - is it he who wins, or his sorcerer soul, as Zera defines it? So your arrival sets him bristling, his neck-hairs sharp, his posture leonine. "I do not act except publically. Suzume, yes? You're different, now. Sober."

    She smiles a very different little smile. "I'm always sober. It's easy to accomplish what I need to when people think otherwise." She steps closer. "I'm not arguing with your choice to act in the light. I just need for you to understand the problem with your decision. Not all of us do." She's taking her chances doing this, but there's too much at risk right now. "We've met before, like this. You and I stopped a riot at a festival months ago."

    The athlete nods, the winter wind dry and cool on the skin. "I remember. With your fans and batons, swift-leaping from your palms to your enemies, foe-felling. You've changed a great deal, since that day many seasons ago... Why do you come to speak to me now, then? Is it my judgement alone?"

    She shakes her head. "Part and parcel but not the thing alone. Things are moving too swiftly. This city is no different than all the others, each one sliding into chaos. We must be decisive but... careful. We cannot afford to be tyrants, Philokrates."

    "I am no tyrant. I act with the backing of the Three, when I act," declares Philokrates bluntly. "Should I stand idly by, when hucksters defraud my countrymen?" He shakes his head. "I cannot - my nature rebels at such a thing."

    The girl sighs. "Take care in your judgements. It's as natural for them to fear us as it is for them to look to us for leadership. We can be tyrants without trying to." A knife appears as though from nowhere in her hand, and she tosses it into the air. "If I wanted to I could force justice on this city from out of sight. Should I? Should I make them fear doing their evil in the cover of darkness? Should I make them fear the night?"

    "What are you, to say such things? Who are 'we'?" Philokrates asks with the quiet confidence of a man who sees through lies well and takes them poorly.

    She smiles, and a glow suffuses her forehead, forming itself into a burning brand the shape of an empty disk. "I am as you are: chosen. I simply work better when people don't know who I am. I have told you this because... I want you to trust me. I can work in darkness, unseen and unnamed, a face in more crowds than I can count, but I don't want us to be at cross-purposes."

    "I understand," murmurs Philokrates. "I know another of your kind, though she hides in light instead of darkness." He glances to the horizon. "You should come to the next Accord."

    She tilts her head, a look of curiosity. "Tell me of this Accord. I will certainly consider this, if nothing else."

    "It was a discrete meeting between many of the Exalted of the East - we discussed certain collective actions of interest to all," murmurs Philokrates. "The security measures are rigorous; you would need to prove your allegiance to Creation, or at least against the things of Darkness, before you were admitted."

    She nods. If she's offended by the implication she doesn't show it. "What do I have to do to prove this?"

    "I don't have the authority to invite you alone. But if you swear to me that you have no allegiance to the Neverborn, the Unshaped, or the Yozi, that will do well for my sponsorship, Jackdaw."

    Unexpectedly she smiles, a genuine smile. "That's not my name. None of them are. But a friend called me Wren once, so I swear by that name that I have no allegiance with any of the things of darkness within, outside, beneath or beyond Creation." She holds out her hand, remembering how this goes.

    Philokrates takes your hand. "So sanctified, sanctified, sanctified!" he recites, "Thrice Holy! Before Sol Invictus, it is sworn and sealed!" There is the familiar flame, the remembered bear, a leaner creature, more predatory, less magnificent, yet no less /intense/ than it was before as it exhales the sweet-scented smoke to Heaven! His anima, burning bright, a solemn sunrise at nocturnal night!

    Suzume's eyes widen. A bear?!? She looks at the man for something, anything that speaks of the dead musician in this man. "...Minus?" She shakes her head: that man is dead. Turning away from him, she starts walking away. "I must go. I... I will contact you."

    Philokrates' mouth opens, slightly. "You knew him?"

    Philokrates says, "...Everyone who knows him looks at me so differently. But I have no talent for music..."

    Suzume doesn't say anything for a time. Then: "...He was my friend. He made himself my enemy. I miss him: his music was beautiful. But you aren't him. I hope you understand."

    Philokrates looks away for a moment, upward, to the stars. "I hear his music. Always," he murmurs. "In the back of my heart, a treasure vault of music only for me... he wouldn't let it be killed with him. He sacrificed everything of himself, and left me only his music."

    "I think that tells me more of him than any memory could.

    Suzume says only, "I envy you." before darting off into the night.