Hope in Varsi
Abbot Goruk walked along the fouled riverbank, surveying the recovery efforts. Were he younger or less rooted in the ways of the Immaculate Dragon of Earth, he would weep at the devastation before him: The rotting shells of merchant vessels, corroded from the inside out by black bile, surrounded by hundreds of birds and fish washed up dead on the shore as barely recognizable lumps of meat and maggots. Thousands were injured by the demon's attack; thousands more had fallen sick from the nether stench that arose.
The city's response had brought hope to a hopeless landscape. The Ten Thousand Iron Fists of Varsi had found a new arena for the display of might and virtue, as ronin and hired fists and dignified Sifus and eager students all competed for popular acclaim in the building of the city. The grapplers and the Stone Bears vied to see who could clear the heaviest stone blocks from the wreckage of the streets; kenshi of rival schools signed up for the city watch en-masse, and repulsed attacks from bandits and opportunists; ascetics of extraordinary willpower and endurance put aside doctrinal disagreements and stood inviolable watch over the city's food supply; esoterics and transcendent warriors walked the riverbanks and fought off spirits of taint and ill fortune.
And at the center of the recovery efforts stood the Immaculate Monks of Varsi. Goruk permitted himself a moment of pride that his students, from the most senior Exalted Masters of the Five Forms to the most lowly mortal initiates, had all volunteered to help clean the river. Some dug great pits lined with salt, while others braved the miasma's foul heart and returned wth bucketful after bucketful of bile-tainted water. When a pit was filled, still others covered it with sanctified earth and marked the borders with stones taken from further upriver, and charged the Small Gods of the stones with the job of watching over the marked land until the very earth itself had cleaned the poison.
All this required a veritable army of white-robed Immaculates and grey-robed initiates and brown-robed novices, and it exacted a terrible toll upon them all. To an outsider, they were as numerous and faceless as ants, but Goruk knew them all by name. Even the itinerants and penitents and missionaries who had trickled in from surrounding provinces to help; he learned their names too, and he counted them as his brothers.
Except for one grey-robed man. Try as he might, Goruk never had the chance to speak with one particular itinerant; every day for a week the newcomer had joined the lines of monks wading into the broad river, bucket in hand, damp cloths wrapped around their faces, scooping up the demon-blood taint and marching it to the pits of salt. The moment had never arrived to make introductions, and curiously, this monk mostly kept to himself. Goruk couldn't even say for sure that the man was even an Immaculate... but he worked as hard as any of the city's resident monks. "Come", said Goruk, beckoning to the two disciples walking with him, "Let us finally meet this diligent stranger." Walking behind him, the the disciples - water-caste twins - cast knowing and worried looks at one another. But as they began to approach the stranger, a hue and cry could be heard from the riverbanks.
"The current! The current!" "Brother Kalatak's been swept away!" "He'll never make it - he'll drown!" "The poison bile!" Goruk bulled his way through the crowd and spotted the young initate being carried downstream by the river, and he could hear the doomed man's anguished cries of pain as his flesh began to blister and boil. Goruk shook his head, and began chanting the Sutras of Unkind Providence. There was nothing he could do. Nothing anyone could do.
A further gasp rose from the crowd - someone had hurled themselves into the river, and was swimming after Brother Kalatak! Goruk watched in disapproval; surely, this could not be one of his students? He trained them better than this, to respect the line between self-sacrifice and suicide. No, it was the mysterious newcomer. A pity; he was throwing his life away in a hopeless gesture, and Goruk would never learn his name. No mortal, nor even a Chosen of the Earth could withstand immersion in the blood of a Demon of the Third Circle!
But Kalatak's rescuser was no mere mortal. Nor was he a mere Chosen of the Earth.
It took a superhuman effort to reach the drowning man in the first place, in spite of the inexorable water and the acid taint. Motes of golden essence trailed in the water behind the strokes of his arms, and there they lingered, suspended upon the oily surface like diamonds in a muddy field. When at last they met, rescuer and victim struggled briefly, the latter thrashing in panic until the rescuer violently struck him with open-palm; finally, the swimmer grappled his now-limp target under one arm and made for shore, where hundreds upon hundred of monks, merchants, and martial masters stood watching in awe.
When the swimmer finally planted both feet safely upon the shore, a mighty cheer erupted from those gathered... and then the cheer turned into a collective gasp of shock and horror. The hero's robe was scorched to tatters, and terrible black welts covered every surface of his body. Kalatak was even worse off. But it wasn't the agony of this sight that stilled their cheers... rather, it was the unmistakable Mark of the Dawning Sun that burned upon the man's forehead. He gently placed Kalatak on the ground, turned to the north, and ignoring their stares and his own grievous wounds, began to walk north along the riverbank, his gaze fixed upon the horizon. One by one, they all stood aside; the Ronin and the hired fists, the Sifus and the students, the grapplers and the Stone Bears, the kenshi and their rivals, the ascetics and esoterics and the transcendants... They all made way before him, watching his lonely progression with gratitude and awe.
Abbot Goruk turned away. He would not join the crowds in gazing upon the Anathema in awe and adoration. Doctrine stated that he should strike the Forsaken down now, while he was weakened. But Doctrine also states that the man who saves your student from drowning deserves your humble thanks. And so, caught between two fundamental principles, he stood by and did nothing.
His aides, Cynis Lachid and Layochi, looked at Goruk, at the crowds, at the Nameless Ravine, and at one another, and shared hidden smiles.
