I decided to get on with the final book of the first Exalted trilogy!
The cover is depicting the climatic battle of Yuyu vs Ratcatcher, where for some reason both of them have apparently thrown away their soulsteel and orichalcum swords (after all the trouble of getting the +1 sword!) and either picked up mortal weapons or maybe white jadesteel ones.
Children of the Dragon does not, to my recollection, have anything to do with the actual dragonblooded, which is a shame because you’d expect better from the more accurate to Exalted title. Chosen of the Sun is vague and missing the point that technically the sun doesn’t have any power in choosing them. Beloved of the Dead is straight up nonsense because the neverborn hate everybody forever, plus all the lesser dead spend every second of their screentime hating each other. But Children of the Dragons? That is totally the dragonblooded.
Anyway, we open with Ratcatcher, the character who is at once buttmonkey and author’s fav.
They cut Ratcatcher down on the thirteenth day after he’d been left behind, thirteen days of torment authored by Holok and Unforgiven Blossom.
You may recall thirteen as that number that doesn’t matter much in Exalted.
There is a spooooooky connection in that there’s thirteen deathlords, but there’s only nine actual deathlords detailed, and the number of total neverborn is unknown beyond “more than three” and “definitely not thirteen”.
He goes on to say it’s been almost a fortnight, which is pretty correct. Creation’s weeks are probably seven days, unless they’re five days. Or ten.
The only water that had passed his parched lips had come from two brief rainstorms, and he’d tasted no food in all that time.
Luckily, he was dead, so it didn’t matter.
The most reasonable explanation here is that the idea was for him to possess such a newly dead body that he brought it back to life but, aside from it not working that way, he was previously concerned with minimizing his body’s rot. That’s definitely a corpse he’s piloting.
He also goes on about the agonizing pain of his broken limbs despite his last body rotting into a flesh puddle without sensory feedback ever being the slightest issue, and goes on to complain it prevents him from sleeping despite previously not needing sleep due to being a ghost animating a rotting corpse.
Finally, the visions had come. In one, he had seen the great carrion bird, Raiton, who had taunted him and promised to send his servants to feed upon Ratcatcher’s rotting corpse.
Seriously, he already is one. Previously, Raiton was fine tearing into him just because he was temporarily unconscious. Now he’s completely helpless and yet he wasn’t skeletonized by crows?
Anyway, the idea appears to be that his thirst and pain and sleep deprivation have opened him to visions, but it’s Exalted, if the gods want you to have a vision you’re damn well going to have one.
In another, the Prince of Shadows had turned away from him sadly, cloaked in fire and bleeding from both palms.
What I like about this is that it sounds incredibly symbolic but it’s pretty much nonsense, so I think the Prince of Shadows actually did send this. It sounds like something he’d think was super cool to do.
Finally, he sees Unforgiven Blossom, who’s now twice kicked his stupid ass and generally outdone every exalt in the book despite being born in a shadowland and so is a sickly, prematurely aged mess.
“You and I will meet again,” she had said. “This wheel is still spinning.”
CREATION IS FLAT. TIME IS NOT A WHEEL. FATE IS NOT A WHEEL. NO WHEELS.
Creation is not a cycle. Creation is a slow motion collapse in a straight line. Patterns repeat but they do not actually happen again. No timetravel. No reviving the dead. No takebacks. No getting into the same stream twice. The underlying reality of Creation is a computer-loom weaving the future. Their threads may cross again, but if they do, it’s because of metal spiders on a giant loom and not because of a wheel.
And that’s all the fun vision time we get, because next day people come to get Ratcatcher for some mysterious reason.
and they rode strong black horses that bore signs of hard riding.
Stop with the healthy things from shadowlands! Also, why are you putting effort into this.
They were not gentle when they cut him down. Wide bladed knives slashed at his bonds; rough hands pulled his twisted limbs free of their confinement. He would have screamed in agony, but no sound emerged from the parched flesh of his throat. And so they took him down off the tree, roughly, and bore him to the ground nearby. One brought water and bathed his face, then moistened a piece of silk and bade Ratcatcher suck the precious fluid, drop by drop, between his cracked lips. His broken limbs were straightened, crudely but effectively, and a folded blanket placed beneath his head.
Spoiler alert: in a few more paragraphs they’re gonna murder him. Why are they doing this? Because it makes it surprising when they murder him. That’s it.
Giving the dead guy water restores his ability to talk despite the fact his vocal cords are jerky by this point. He asks who they are, and they say the Prince of Shadows, yours for any deus ex machina needs. As in most cases of bad writing, this is not a needed deus ex machina. Ratcatcher should’ve been able to either wriggle free or the body should’ve rotted beyond use already like his last one.
The prince rides forth, even now, and Pelesh rides with him. We were told to tell you of that as well.”
“Pelesh?” Ratcatcher coughed.”“Things must be upside down for that old spider to leave his web. What is the world coming to?”
Pelesh, as you may not recall, is the mortal accountant. Now, yes, he did win social combat against an exalt, but it was Ratcatcher, so that doesn’t actually mean anything. There’s been no sign Pelesh is anything special at all, and even if he was, he’s still living only on the sufferance of the Prince of Shadows, and even aside from the part where the Prince of Shadows is a deathbyssal member of the cult of oblivion, there’s just the fact he doesn’t actually need an accountant. Pelesh doesn’t “leave his web”. Pelesh does exactly what he is told without question or gets gruesomely murdered and then spends eternity as a screaming chunk of agonized metal.
Also, Ratcatcher apparently paid for some of his cool nemissary powers with a custom flaw that makes you forget things, because last book he understood exactly what the world was coming to: nothing.
The mortal who’s so unimportant he’s in charge of going to find Ratcatcher points out that he does not know shit.
simply know I was told, along with my fellows, to find you, to cut you down, to tend to you, and to pass along these tidings. I was also given one more charge, which I may not speak of to you.”
That’d be the murdering, but Ratcatcher is oblivious to the fact that stuff people aren’t supposed to tell him is obviously stuff that’s bad for him. He continues to be oblivious when the guy tells him they’ll be leaving despite the fact Ratcatcher just said it’ll be a little while until he can move, and then keeps being oblivious through the guy slicing his neck open.
There was surprisingly little blood, a mere trickle.
That’s a surprising lot of blood for someone who’s been dead for like a month or so and then spent two more weeks doing nothing but bake in the sun. Even if he still had any left in him, you’d think it’d have clotted and/or drained from the upper half of his body.
Anyway, somehow cutting into the clearly nonfunctioning neck of the corpse Ratcatcher is puppetting around “kills” him.
“Forgive me,” he said, and left the knife on the corpse’s breast. “It is better that you be judged and reborn. I envy you your journey.”
And somehow this will let him enter a totally different cosmetology where it’s possible to get judged and reborn! That does sound like a step up.