<div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/GD4Ccek.jpg)</div><strong>Sagacious Emerald AKA "Sage"</strong>(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x2COni4h1cYJFuB9wqN-VtISzoRrXM0Rl5qhoQMuykQ/edit)<br/><span class="bbc_u">Location</span>: The tomb?<br/><span class="bbc_u">Time</span>: Night<br/><span class="bbc_u">Tagging</span>: All present<br/><span class="bbc_u">Actions</span>: Second Breath<br/><span class="bbc_u">Languages</span>: Riverspeak, Flametongue, High Realm, Old Realm<br/><br/><hr/><hr/><br/>As the spirit spoke of the oncoming Fair Folk hunters, Sage lowered his head and closed his eyes.  One warrior spirit would have been enough to do for all of them and now they had Heaven only knew how many raksha nobles, hobgoblins, and beasts?  It didn't look good.  He could hear his companions moving, looking for weapons, a few talking to each other.  Rapture called out and asked how they fought, trying to make some order of the chaos.  He smiled, "Bless you, Rapture.  I'm trained to fight up close, so it's the front line for me.  When we get out of this, remind me to thank you for your guidance."<br/><br/>"W-what do you mean?"  Qadira was visibly trembling and her wide eyes were glassy with the gathering tears that were already sliding down her cheeks.  "I knew it, I knew I was bad luck and n-now we're all-all going to-"  She cut herself off, apparently too overwhelmed at the moment to finish the sentence.<br/><br/>Ivory Willow had gone as white as her namesake, though she was holding up better than the teashop waitress.  "She's right, Sagacious Emerald.  I would thank you, but...it would have been better to die to some trap than be ravished by the Fair Folk."<br/><br/>The Scavenger Lord lifted his head to look at the two women.  "No one's ravished or dead yet."  He shook his head and walked over to them, putting one hand on a shoulder of each of them.  "The only time there's no way to change your fate is when it's over."  He gave their shoulders a squeeze.  "I said I'd do all I can to keep you safe and I meant it."<br/><br/>The dark skinned thief Zaina shook her head and laughed, but there was a brittle edge to it, "You're insane...but I'm not a quitter either.  What do we do?"<br/><br/>"Listen to Rapture.  I'm guessing none of you are the fighting type, so, find a good spot where you'll be away from the action and look for chances to pitch in.  Grab some small items you can throw or a spear or two from the grave goods so you can poke from a distance or over our heads."  He was glad his voice was confident because he wasn't as sure as he sounded.  But he was surprised himself that he wasn't afraid.  He was concerned, absolutely respected the raw power of the beings coming for them, but...he wasn't scared, not really.  He could hear the three women talking to one another but it seemed distant, somehow.  All of the others did.<br/><br/>His head turned and fell on an alcove that a few of the others had glanced into but then left be.  Sage caught a gleam of gold within and stepped towards it.  Almost all the noise of his fellow slaves getting ready to face the inhuman menace coming upon them fell away.  He walked into the alcove and there was a diagonally tilted bier; a lesser grave, that of one who had died in service of the queen.  Gleaming there, despite centuries, millennia of neglect was a long and slightly curved blade of golden orichalcum.  It was slender for a daiklaive and both the wider outer edge and the barely noticeable but present back edge seemed up urge him to take it up.  The weapon lay stop a magnificent suit of armor of the same supernatural metal.  It reminded him of those he'd seen worn by the Dragon-Blooded from the Realm that came to Great Forks on occasion.  He stepped up to the bier and brushed a hand along the long blade of the sword and caught his reflection in it.  He blinked in shock at his own face.  He had expected it to be different.<br/><br/>"Sagacious Emerald."  Ivory Willow's voice was closer, more present than the others, but still distant.  "We have as good a spot as we can, I think...you cannot be thinking of trying to use that.  Artifact weapons and armor are far too heavy to be useful without attunement, which requires awakened Essence, and you know that quite well."<br/><br/>"They've waited long enough," he answered.  His own voice sounded strange in his ears, again as if he thought it should be different.  "They want to be used.  And I will take them up again."  His hands were working at the leathers he had donned, pulling them free and letting them fall to the floor of the tomb.<br/><br/>"Again?"  Zaina's voice was hesitant.  "...Has he actually gone insane?  I was just being metaphorical before."<br/><br/>He looked back to see the scholar, thief, and waitress all looking at him with varying degrees of curiosity and fear in their faces.  Then recognition came over all three pairs of eyes, widening.  One of Qadira's hands clapped over her mouth.  Zaina was blinking rapidly.  Ivory Willow was the most composed of the three but even she looked at him as though he had just sprouted horns.  "It will be all right," Sage said.  Their faces were lighted now, with light in red, orange, purple, and blue though he could not see where it was coming from.  "Help me don my armor."  The three women stayed in place for a moment before mousy, scared little Qadira took a hesitant step towards him.  The other two followed after.  Sage closed his eyes as he heard the clink of metal, the creak of strapping, and felt their hands and the armor segments on him.  Their surprised and murmured comments about the armor fitting him against all odds, that it felt warm, drew no answer from him.  His voice was low as he sang a song he did not know, the lyrics all of Old Realm, offering thanks to these arms and to those who made them, to the Sun and Moon.  Ivory Willow's hands trembled, the scholar clearly recognizing some of the words he spoke.<br/><br/>When the last piece was in place, he felt a click.  Not just as the suit itself more solidly and snugly moved to fit him but a click within himself.  The armor was his now, as it had been, and as it would be again.  "Goldedge," he said, reverting back to Flametongue.  "My blade, give her to me."  His eyes opened and he reached out as Zaina and Qadira struggled to lift the weapon to grasp the hilt and lift it with the ease as if it were a bamboo practice blade.  He took a deep breath, "Stay here.  I won't let them touch you," he told the women, their faces now awed as much as afraid and curious.<br/><br/>Sage stepped out of the alcove and into the main body of the tomb as the yowling and shrieking of the hunting party could be heard as it drew nearer and nearer.  He wore articulated plate armor from head to his neck; only his head bare.  It was decorated with symbols and emblems known to sorcerers and savants and though it was heavy and thick, it hardly hindered his movement.  He was surrounded by a blazing aura of light as if he were the setting sun; oranges and reds closest around changing into brilliant blue and darkening to purple twilight at the edges.  On his forehead, visible even through his headband, was a golden circle, the upper half filled. He was striding towards the front to take position as per Rapture's instructions when the cries of the hunting party vanished entirely for a moment.  Then they surged into the burial chamber a moment later.  Nightmarish beasts that ought not to be able to draw breath in Creation led the charge, smaller and shrieking hobgoblins with bodies of flesh, sand, and desert beasts followed, and then behind them the utter beauty and terror of true Fair Folk.  Their expressions were eager and hungry and amused until they swept the room and saw the foes they faced.  Those inhumanly, impossibly beautiful faces contorted in surprise and denial before turning to excitement and even fear.  His comrades, those who were alight themselves with the animas of their new Exaltation, met the hunting party in a mad and glorious orgy of violence that Creation had not seen the like of in an Age.<br/><br/>One of the nobles, a sinuous yet curvaceous and androgynous being clad in gossamer armor of children's fears and wearing a crown of first love, pointed with a finger that trembled, whether from rage or fear or both and more was unclear.  "The Moon rises but also the Sun!  The Chosen of the Sun are returned!"<br/><br/>"Never to leave this world again," Sage said, but at least to his own mind, he spoke with more voices than his own.  The seven who came before spoke with him and he felt them as he moved.  The first, the teenage prodigy of artifice and making who looked small next to his fully adult peers.  The second, lean and hard featured but with a warm smile on her face.  Each face that this power had once worn was shown to him and their voices spoke with his in these first moments of his new life.  "Never to leave you to run riot, to leave our spouses alone to fight you.  Never to leave Creation open to its' foes!  Take this message to all your kin; we have returned!"  His golden blade danced as the spears of hobgoblins struck his armor and rebounded or broke as if hitting a mountain.  They screamed, their unholy igniting along the lines of the wounds he sliced into them.  "Creation!  Is!  Defended!"<br/><br/>He caught a flicker of movement to his right and saw another of the raksha raise their hands and warp reality with a lurch of space itself.  A blazing and spinning wave of glass razors curled and curved through the air towards him before it split into 13 tendrils and came at him from all around.  His fingers tightened on Goldedge's hilt and he set his feet, whipping his magical weapon into an impossible defense.  The razors burst as he parried that which could not be blocked, the shards sparkling and glittering as they fell harmlessly to the tomb floor, reflecting his anima in a dazzling display.  "And," his voice was once again only his own, "we will fix this broken world of ours."