The 1st day of Resplendent Wood, 425 in the Year of Our Empress
"As the body dies, the soul lives on. As the soul lived, so it shall live again according to its merits. May the blessings of the Immaculate Dragons be upon this one. Overlook his sins, take pleasure in his merits, and gift him with a better life in accordance with your will."
In the greenery of the graveyard, the Immaculate Monk bowed his head. His flowing white robes billowed in the brilliant sun and he seemed a supernatural force here in this wide open space with its tombs and grave markers. In fact, he was only mortal but it was the fervent wish of everyone in attendance that the Dragons would hear his prayers anyway.
Lying on the sheet of marble, its glossy pink stone warmed by the sunlight, Reposed Thought lay stiff and unmoving. His corpse was elegantly wrapped in sheets, expensive and rare herbs were tucked into the folds of his robes, his grave site was spacious, and he was being treated with great honor by the Monk and his assistants.
Those of his immediate family, his wife, his children, came up one at a time to pay their respects to their beloved husband, grandfather and patriarch of Haulister Household. Many had been awake for several days and nights of vigil over his body. Even in their grief and exhaustion, though, a few spared a thought to the luxury of the funeral, quite beyond the means of even their accomplished and respected elder.
Those same few able to think past that grief also wondered at the small crowd of merchants who lingered on the outskirts, watching the proceedings with as much sobriety as any relative. Reposed Thought's granddaughter, Ella, thought she recognized one of the wealthy travelers but, looking more closely at him, she realized she'd never seen him before. He didn't look like her at all, either, he just had a strangely familiar air about him. Perhaps a distant family relation.
The crowd thinned as people said what they had to say and moved on. The Immaculate Monk presiding smiled benevolently at each, assuring individuals that their respected ancestor would be treated with the utmost care and discretion. Reposed Thought had been a very good man in life so this took a while but at last the graveyard emptied.
Except for the crowd of merchants.
It would have taken a more cunning eye than the patrician family here to realize these men were not what they seemed. Their clothes were a little too uniform and well-made. They wore the appropriate House insignias of trained craftsmen but there was no sign of wear and many of the overcoats looked brand new. All of these things might be explainable except for the wary caution with which they observed every detail of their surroundings. These travelers looked like they were ready for trouble, even at a funeral.
Two of them split off from the others and the rest gave them a respectful berth. A trained observer might have noticed by the way the other merchants stood that one of the two was someone important. Realistically, no one with such skill would ordinarily have bothered.
Nonetheless, Elated Fury doffed his broad-brimmed hat and looked somberly at the body of his son, even as he want to fucking kill the thrice-be-damned All-Seeing Eye agent intruding on this incredibly personal moment with his Charms.
"Reposed Thought," Elated Fury whispered, brushing the cheek of a man whose face he knew better than any other. He looked peaceful and content with his white, lined face and snowy hair. Expensive medicines and even discreetly bought Charms had kept him alive for some time but in the end Reposed Thought had succumbed to his old age. Father, grandfather and with great-grandchildren on the way, he'd died happy and accomplished. But he'd still died.
Elated Fury looked at his son and wept for him, unashamedly, trusting that the spy would keep his distance and that his men would keep him secure from anything else. "No father should ever outlive his children," he choked through his grief. "But you had a good life. I'm proud, son. Rest easy. I don't...know that I believe in that Immaculate shit but I don't know what else to believe. I suppose I believe you're happy, now that you're no longer sick. Don't worry, kid, I'll make sure what you loved stays safe."
Next to him, covered head to toe in her black silk and veils, the Scripture of Crimson Silver thankfully said nothing. He knew her opinions and she knew his. They would argue about this later but she was wise enough to leave him be this once and let him be mortal. What Elated Fury didn't want to admit was that the Scripture was right.
For a man more than a hundred years old, who hadn't aged a day in that time, funerals like this were never going to stop happening.
"Rest, son. I loved you all the days you lived and I'll love you until the day this life finally gives up on me." Elated Fury patted his son's chest, coughed loudly and donned his hat again. With a commanding nod, he walked away, leaving the Immaculate to finish his work of cremating the body.
"We're sorry, boss." "Sorry, boss." "He did well by you, boss." "No shame, he was a good man." The men were worried about him, which was understandable. He'd been awake for days and nights too, keeping his own unseen vigil over his son's corpse. But now it was done.
The quiet chorus of sympathy from his men was welcome. Elated Fury shook hands, embraced a few, and managed to get his composure back. He flashed his famous grin and his men tightened their knuckles as hands found weapons. They knew what that smile meant.
"Now, my son's resting and can't complain about what his old man does anymore. So let's go and teach spies why they shouldn't intrude on a man's private sorrow."
To a mortal's eye, Elated Fury's fist was suddenly in someone's stomach and not by his side anymore. To the secret Dragon-Blooded who was a spy for the All-Seeing Eye, it was probably not entirely unexpected but the man had good enough training to take it like a mortal and keep his cover.
Too bad for him, Elated Fury knew he was an Exalt and hadn't pulled any of his strength.
His men grabbed hold of their fellow 'merchant' as the man's mouth worked, trying to draw in air and failing. Elated Fury locked arms with him, buddy-buddy, and they started walking away from the graveyard. With the assistance of his men, it even looked like the spy was going willingly instead of trying to avoid blacking out from his inability to breathe.
As soon as they were out of sight of the Immaculate, Elated Fury put his arm around the spy's shoulders and hugged him a little. The Dragon-Blood's eyes were wide and he wheezed. He had to know what was coming and it didn't bother Elated Fury in the slightest to make the little shit sweat first.
"Alright, Iselsi Manotan Velest. It's time we had a little talk. Don't look so surprised I know your name, you know mine after all. What the fuck did you think would happen when you went to spy on an Anathema? Or are all the other like me just that fucking stupid? Hope not, it'd make me think less of myself."
"...I'm not...a spy..." Velest gasped.
"Shit, forget the other Anathema, how fucking stupid are you? Do you think I don't know when someone's using Charms to pry on me? Don't you know we're fucking demons, Velest? C'mon, you can tell me. You really thought you were going to get away without me suspecting a thing. So, how long until the Wyld Hunt shows up?"
"...I never called...the Wyld Hunt..."
Elated Fury grinned and his men took a step back.
"Velest, you know the scope of this part of my operations. I've only been showing it to you for the past two months so you'd think you knew the full scale of my businesses. I didn't get this big by being stupid so don't insult my intelligence."
"I've been waiting for you to make your move and you made it last week. Arjuf has been seeing a buildup of Shikari ever since, all under the guise of a Wyld Hunt agent seeing a family member, looking at buying land, taking a brief vacation. Now, I admire your guts, kid. You had to have known I might catch you but you stayed around under the cadre was fully assembled, just on the off-chance you might pick up more intelligence. Good for you."
"I'm not an Iselsi!" Velest insisted, still a bit out of breath. "I'm from Arjuf, you know that. You know my family, my friends, my childhood, you know it all!"
"I know when someone's lying to me, Velest," Elated Fury growled suddenly. The low rumble sounded like a feral wolf and it never failed to frighten people the first time they heard it. "I can smell it on you. Hell, you All-Seeing Eye types are so thick in your own fucking deceit that I doubt it can come off with a bar of soap! But that doesn't matter. See, whether you talked or not, you can't hide your shit-for-blood heritage, Velest."
"My blood?" the secret Dragon-Blooded agent asked, showing only a hint of the real alarm he was feeling. Elated Fury could track the slightest chance in body chemistry and he knew the man was perilously close to making a break for it. That was fine with him. It was pretty obvious the man wasn't going to talk unless Elated Fury did things to him that he didn't want to do.
"You see, you're not the first Iselsi Manotan I've met, kid. Let me think, almost a hundred years ago, wasn't it? Your father was just about to graduate from the House of Bells and he came after me with his bow during the Hunt they do. Yeah, I was the quarry. Almost got me, too, the motherfucker. I still have his last arrow." Elated Fury pulled out the wooden shaft of the student's arrow, faded from rough traveling for a century. "Here, you can give it back to him." He pressed both broken ends into the Dragon-Blooded's hands and chuckled at his shocked expression.
"What are you?" the Agent asked at last.
"I'm a fucking demon, remember?" Elated Fury said, grinning more widely. "A monster, some horrible creature that's going to ravish your mind and eat your soul." He looked the Agent square in the eye. "Shit, I'm messing with you. I don't eat souls." He ruffled the spy's hair. "I'm just going to kill you."
Fast as a shoot of bamboo, the spy sprang backwards, clearing the heads of Elated Fury's men. Just as fast, Elated Fury rose right up after him. Velest's steel knife flashed in the bright sunlight as he jabbed to keep his enemy away. Elated Fury deliberately spread his fingers and slammed his hand through the point of the blade, all the way to the hilt.
They landed, Elated Fury laughing softly and the Dragon-Blooded gasping in terror. The Lunar closed his fingers around the hilt, using his bones to trap the blade in, and then pulled it right out of the man's hand with a flex of muscle. Velest tried to jump back again but this time Elated Fury's foot pinned his, locking him on the ground.
"You animal," the Dragon-Blooded breathed, hate chasing his fear as a spear of vines and thorny wood sprang from his hand.
"I'm not a fucking animal!" Elated Fury roared. As the Dragon-Blooded thrust the weapon forward, Elated Fury's Moonsilver knives were suddenly in his hands. One caught the spear, slipping around it and pulling wide. The other twinkled and then didn't as Elated Fury drove it into the spy's body a fast dozen times.
The Dragon-Blooded's eyes were starting to open in realization of the myriad fatal wounds just opened across his chest when Elated Fury's knife sliced through skin, muscle, bone and took his head clean off.
"You alright, boss?" one of his men asked, as the group moved up beside him. If there'd been a serious threat, every one of them would have died on his behalf, but they knew their employer. Elated Fury was charming and subtle but he liked his action now and then. Besides, none of them could behead someone with a knife, artifact or no.
"Yeah," Elated Fury said, tossing the broken arrow across the spy's body.
"You want us to clean the scene?" asked another.
"Nah. The Wyld Hunt's here for an Anathema. I might as well give the assholes one. It's not as if we didn't know this day would come. Leave the body and the arrow. I'm sure the Venerer Iselsi Manotan Denasi would figure it out anyway. That's fine. I want him to." Elated Fury rubbed his back absently, where a student's arrow had badly wounded a hunted mortal too many years ago. "Motherfucker," he added for emphasis.
"Dangerous game you play, lover." The Scripture of Crimson Silver brushed against his arm, her own wrapping around his and clinging to him much as a child would. That wasn't a child's body he felt, though, nor a child's mind that spoke so boldly.
"You're the one who told me this would happen sooner or later," he reminded her, cleaning his knife on the dead body and sheathing both blades in his forearm-sheathes.
"You are not ready for this." Her voice was crisp, precise like a teacher's would be. "You need another century."
"Well, I don't have one, do I, Scarlet? I suppose I'll have to pray my way out of this one."
The Scripture of Crimson Silver laughed merrily beneath her many veils. "Oh, you're a dead man but you've been courting that for years now. You remember my constraints, lover. I'm not worried about censure but there is not much I can do to aid you without risking an audit."
"Audits, fucking audits," Elated Fury repeated sarcastically. He nodded to his men and they fell in beside him as they headed back to the half-dozen carriages that had brought them out to his distant graveyard. "You'd think you worked in the Thousand Scales."
"I work in an organization far more complicated than that," she snickered. There was nothing of softness in the Scripture's voice, nothing of compassion or consideration. This was why she simply didn't speak if the situation called for something other than her blunt directness.
"I'll be fine, Scarlet. And if I'm not, there's a dozen more like me aren't there, bitch?"
"Not like you," she said, her voice biting, at once complimentary and condescending. She was an infuriating combination of aggression and amusement and the past 40 years had been all the more memorable for it. She accepted his hand, though, as he helped her into the carriage.
Elated Fury picked two to join him, trusting the others to sort out who sat where. He sprawled back in his seat and smiled appreciatively as one of his lieutenants handed him a hefty pouch of opium. He packed his pipe as the horses started forward and puffed on the pleasant poppies, watching the countryside outside of Arjuf.
It had been an ugly day, despite the beautiful weather. It was going to get uglier, probably. He'd weather it like he'd weathered every day. Elated Fury was a survivor and an architect. He didn't die, he outlasted all his opposition and his operations only grew larger year by year, decade by decade.
If the Wyld Hunt wanted a crack at him...well, he had plans that could benefit very nicely from having a horde of crack Dragon-Blooded soldiers after his life.