Mortal Gauntlet Ramblings

(I still have no idea what I’m doing so if I got stuff wrong… I am sorry)

Holy shit I don’t know how I pulled this off. I don’t know how many miracles I pulled off but I did it. Somehow I have always come to associate the land of creation with massive amounts of pain and suffering. It did not disappoint me.

My wives and I began in the imperial city…with a Solar (who was a little girl), So we promptly decided to flee… which led to an incident where some hunters who were chasing her caught our sent and it was a race through the crowded city to get out before they got us.

We almost made it out without much incident but ran smack dab in to one of the dragon blooded hunting us.

Through some minor miracle I got a quick shot off before he realized what was going on and actually knocked him out. We managed to flee the city but we were being pursued…

Our little group decided to head to the northern lands because I knew the area from my time as a Lunar. We might be able to find some friendly lunars to help us or hide amongst the barbarians… yeah it wasn’t the best odds but we were a little desperate.

The travel was tough especially with a young girl. Strangely the hardship kind of brought She of fair eyes closer to us, we became sort of a strange little family. It turns out having a family was something she really missed.

I was having troubles of my own during the trip because I started having nightmares and waking up with wounds. So I tried to stay awake for as long as I could which meant I was in great condition to face the perils of the road… yeah.

During this time we came across a newly exalted Solar who seemed to take me as his sidekick much to everyone’s chagrin. He heard I was a bard and wanted someone to record how awesome he was. Unfortunately he happened to fall for the fiancé of a newly exalted Abyssal… who the solar promptly told me to handle… he couldn’t be bothered

So the Abyssal wasn’t out to murder me… I managed to somehow talk him down by convincing him that he was better off without her (this took lots of alcohol and listening about his shitty life, I was paying with my meager savings by the way… the solar wasn’t going to chip in anything) Anyways the fiancé turned out to be an ambassador and taught me some nice martial arts before we had to be on our way.

Eventually sleep deprivation was catching up with me so I had to face my nightmare… At first he was scary but strangely I found something wrong, there was no hate or anger in him. I fought back and actually managed to not die for a while over the nights, learning the ins and outs of fighting him. I started to talk to him while we fought. As he tried to slaughter me I battered his resolve by asking him stuff like why he wanted to kill me and actually making him think.

Eventually I knew I would face this person in real life. Somehow I knew he was coming and under a dark and dreary night I found the nightmare made flesh standing on a hill waiting for me.

It was a long and difficult fight, thankfully my sword held against his, he still should have won but I managed to shake his resolve and surprise him enough to disarm him.

He was stunned when I chose to let him live but I explained that I didn’t believe in killing.  He didn’t know what to think. we talked a long time on that hill about a lot of things. By the end we had gained a new member of our little group. He wouldn’t be welcomed back since he had failed.

Not long after that We were charged with protecting She-of-fair-eyes mate Makoto a very energetic girl. Despite being destined mates (or maybe because of it) the two rarely got along. Makoto loved to be the center of attention which is where She-of-fair-eyes was used to being. In retrospect I think this was perfectly normal behavior for sisters. We did our best to be fair with both of them which tended to piss them both off but somehow we managed to be a somewhat happy if odd family under the circumstance. At least Makoto’s mother helped us shake the tail we had on us.

We moved around a lot from place to place, took jobs beating up the bandits that were everywhere (the solars and other exalted couldn’t be bothered with such petty things) As it seems with most things, somehow, some way we ran down the clock despite all that was against us. When it came time to go we were allowed to ask the girls if they wanted to come with us. By that time they were daughters to us in all but blood. They agreed and so our little family has grown.