Stories of singular importance unfolded as Li Wei perished, illuminating the First Firmament with glory unbound. Amongst their multitudes was Yufei, who bore across her brow and breast sweat borne of terrified awe. Eternity was reflected in the amber of her eyes as she struggled against an omnipresent shadow of Heaven, cinnamon strands of hair in disarray. Face flush with mania not her own, lain across a bed of flowers, the act of breathing was a struggle; indeed, as all but a select few, she was frozen by the potential of each sequential moment.
Through her mind swam transient truths and figures strange; booming whispers and silent shouts echoed from on high, perforating her personhood, twining in and out of freshly scarred skin so as to sew new shapes of her. Laughter and curiosity brushed their fingers against her bones: and Yufei’s entirety was revealed to unknowable others, imbibed by salivating tongues whose gratuitous affections scented the air mildly. Not even her tears were spared.
Full to bursting, vision hazed, two words pierced the tumult.
“Hold. Cease.”
For a moment in time too scarce for description, those who heard the spirited sayings were made to pause in their motions and being. From the passage of thought to the luminance of death, all was made still. Then came offended rebellion: the First Firmament decried the existence of such commands with imminent volatility and truest vehemence: the earth ruptured like a sea rocked by the passage of manifold storms, and the sky quaked and sought to crush itself against the ground, and the winds howled as if stabbed by the Wanderer’s fell dagger.
In defiance, Lingyang stood tall and untouched. The city’s erected defenses were swallowed, and its guardians made to abandon themselves or others in search of safety, but the strong walls remained as much.
Yufei knew naught of the buckling earth, nor of the quaking sky and howling winds. Her world was whitebright and stark like virgin snow. Clarity consumed her, body, mind and soul. Time-
-passed, marching onwards, a thickset stew flavoured by dust and gravel; slivers slunk into seconds, from which boulders sprung into conspicuousness. Fingers filled with dirt and dirtied petals, dress soaked, Lingyang’s pariah awoke to pandemonium.
The air was filled with laughter like a derisive storm, reverberations cutting. Underneath, the worry of allies and enemies both frittered and fled.
Rising from a bed of flowers, head pounding as if hammered from inside out, Yufei took stock of herself amidst the turmoil and wondered at the strength of her limbs: Core Consolidation, the sixth stage of the Mortal Realm. Head, heart, and bodily center, metaphysical seas she had no memory of birthing were made as solid as the earth beneath her heels - and their weight sat ill within her personage, like wet stones on the verge of fracturing. Looking towards the pillarous light which pierced the sky, she knew with certainty from where the change originated. Shouting stole her focus, then.
“You think to stop us?! Beast from Heaven, do not mistake my artifice for your victory!”
Through the wounded section of Lingyang’s storied walls, where mystical might of the modern day sought to stopper potential dangers, the croaking voice heralded a dull thunder: once, thrice – twenty-thousand times metal cracked against fist. Then, laughter of the most derisive sort slithered against Yufei’s consciousness. Again, shouting spilled into the city. But whereas mere seconds prior each word was intelligible, now naught but animalistic conviction communicated itself.
Curiosity and fear warred inside Yufei, gnawing indiscriminately. The scholar in her skull decried running, for want of knowledge; the survivor borne from her sweat-soaked skin spoke of caution. More potent still was the desire of her heart, touching upon bonds of mentorship - Chi and Shi, she needed to know of their wellbeing.
Springing to her feet in one smooth motion, she took advantage of her renewed strength and grasped the embers of her banked soul: and with practice borne of numerous iterations, she spurred liveliness throughout her limbs: and with such did she mold the workings of the world: the wind lightened her steps, the earth supported her weight, and the darkness blinded her not. Yufei made for the Blazing Heart Sect as if shot from a bow.
Nearest her home, the least ancient of Lingyang’s powers occupied much of the Seventh Layer’s eastern half. Where the Silent River looked to provide foods and potable water, and the Sacred Wind maintained a variety of barriers, they provided warmth and illumination. But such was unimportant, and so similar details were left untouched by Yufei as she raced across rooftop and street, past panicked citizens and convulsing disciples. Ignoring scaled faces and winged brows marred by pustules, she became as the risen sun and oathsworn rain: inevitable: and her traversal was mirrored by thousands looking to bring battle to the city’s sole injury, where the cacophony of crucial combat curdled the atmosphere. So the minutes passed.
She found Chi and Shi on the outskirts of Lingyang’s Seventh Layer, beset by wolves; bulky creatures of inky fur and icy eyes, whose savage growls sought to unbalance the mind and body. The boys bled from scrapes and punctures, and were merely two amongst hundreds guarding against incursion. At their backs, in the midst of bounding overhead, Yufei sighted fleeing citizenry: their panicked mass sought refuge behind the Blazing Heart’s hastily reinforced gates.
Clubs cracked against skulls, spears struck through shoulders, swords cleaved flesh from bone. Bodies alighted by ferocious purpose, the boys and their fellow disciples embodied valiance – and Yufei knew their efforts would fall short, for the wolves spawned from shadow like stalk from seed: and their prey could no more cease illumination than they could their defense; to do so would go against every fiber of their righteous being.
It was a brilliant, if simple stratagem; one Yufei deduced could be found repeated seven times or more - quality through endlessly replenishing quantity. To be certain, there were means of countering, but those left to defend the least endangered areas of the city lacked such prowess.
‘How fortunate I am unchained,’ and forcefully bequeathed the apex of her continually undone refinement besides. Here and now, she would use such for a great and selfish good.
Thusly, Yufei landed with a call to arms: to the earth beneath her feet, her qi sang, ‘I would hear you crush our enemies!’ To Lingyang’s winds, her spirit whispered, ‘I would taste the blood of our wolven foes!’ To the light of those she sought to aid, her gaze beckoned, ‘Burn!’ Resultant luminance threw their responses into sharp relief.
The Blazing Heart’s disciples fought with limbs fraught with new vigour; they were firelight intentions, and their spirits forbade the presence of shadow. Beneath them, there was but shining brickwork; a resplendent foundation which opened earthly maws to swallow decorated stone and wood, further accelerating the ends a mincing breeze bade of the wolves. Through such timely interventions, the world decreed Yufei righteous – and by such strength displayed was she presented to her assembled juniors, stepping lightly at their fore. Immediately, sounds of relief hushed past a hundred throats and some hundreds more.
“Teacher!” preceded the multitudes, bustling from Chi and Shi, who charged forth in greeting, heedless of the disapproving looks their doing earned.
Teeth reflecting their alighted spirits, Yufei’s resultant smile was comforted; and as they babbled of valiance and conquered fear, she held them close to her breast, that the tempered beating of her heart might soothe inflicted violence. Gradually, their intonations exchanged fervor for the base excitement of youth. Of their wounds, little remained ‘neath her healing touch.
“Chi, Shi,” she began lowly, “I would speak with your company’s leader,” and the winds lilted her words into the ears of those watching.
“Of course!” Shi bellowed, all too eager to take her by the hand. Yufei followed and traded an amused look with Chi, whose black hair was swept into a flurry by their sudden movement. His lips curled as her hand sought his in turn.
‘The city must be secured, inside and out,’ she thought between hurried steps, the sound of retreating citizenry overwrought by the boom of distant collisions. At her fore, the lankiest of the Blazing Heart’s disciples pressed palm to fist in greeting. More girl than woman, she couldn’t have been over twenty; not by Yufei’s reckoning.
“Honoured Senior,” the youth began, her tone hardened by recognition and onset necessity. “This one is Xie-”
The disciple stopped: the determined cast of her face, the subtle thrum of her qi, the unshed sorrow stymied for the sake of those she was leading - all came to an abrupt end. Embedded between her feet, cerulean in hue, a gargantuan petal shimmered.
Yufei reached out in horror, jostling the boys in her hurry. Tears falling, the girl reached back… then came a seam, manifesting down from the crown of her head. Cinnamon strands were painted in sanguine shades as Yufei recoiled from the resultant splatter. Below, the petal drank greedily of its bounty, growing fat on years not its own before incited disciples set the thing aflame, sonorous cries of vengeance echoing from wrath-spittled lips.
“Teacher?” Chi’s voice cracked, uncertain and fearful; his prior dearth of adrenaline served his countenance ill, for the scent of blood was making a home of his nostrils.
“Stay close to me,” Yufei hushed past the screams of onlookers near and far, amber eyes daring to flit skyward in confirmation; floating there, thousands of flowers were in the process of sprouting from seedlings unseen, their roots plunging into the gaseous fabric. Yufei felt her gorge rise at the sight of their twirling number, the taste thick and rotten on her tongue; she recognized the various hues were beyond her ability to match. Hands held tightly to the boys once again, her feet crept backwards with surreptitious speed, towards yet lower grounds as petals fell like rain.
Under normal circumstances, being closer to the palace proper would have entailed a heightened sense of security. But these were not such. Yufei could see the floral legions were concentrating on the uppermost layers, crumpling themselves against protective barriers, birthing perilous cracks. As such, she fled. Faced with an impotence borne of disparity, such was her limit. Naturally, Chi and Shi disagreed most heartily with her doing.
“Let me go!” they shouted defiantly, straining against her strength. “I have to help them!” they rasped, the black of betrayal marking their tones, which was well and good in Yufei’s mind.
‘Better enraged than resigned. So long as you survive…’ the city could burn; the boys could hate her with a passion to upend Heaven. She would endure.
So thinking - so swearing to herself with abandon - Yufei ran, refusing doubt and its multifarious cousins. Nine steps later, she was forcibly grounded by disbelief: “Why won’t you bleed?!”
~ X ~
When Zhiyuan was borne, it was said Daiyu of the Seventh Layer’s Song family cried herself into an irrecoverable blindness.
“Her babe is a wretched thing to look upon, more rat than Man,” claimed many.
Such was a lie. Albeit, only partially. Though his mother never possessed the gift of sight, both she and her lover had been (and were) quite human. Still, tales grew in their telling, and it had been centuries since another was around to speak in defense of his youngest self. And so the point remained: Zhiyuan was not a handsome fellow - had never been considered one, and he accepted as much with a grace rarely found amongst those who strove to embrace Heaven’s righteous harmony.
Suffice to say, he was not a vain man - to him, beauty alone was not virtue. So, when a claw tore through his cheek with vile necrosis, serrating teeth and tongue, forbidding holistic recovery, he was unfaltering. Indeed, pressed by a sea of snarling violence, another reason for maidens fair to look upon him with disgust failed to register as important. Wielding a spear whose sibling was even now thundering against the Wanderer’s person, Zhiyuan split his assailant in twain, and sought not the safety of Lingyang’s central layers: away he forged a path, towards the city’s wound. Idle defense would amount to little and less, as time sprinted past, he knew. The Tiger Lord of Ten Thousand Peaks was dead.
“To me, warriors of Lingyang!” he cried through shards of tainted bone which sought to clog his throat, and there was not a worthy soul within a league who failed to answer the vaunted scholar’s call. Bow and dagger, sword and shield - all and sundry worked in concert with his bladed qi. Their collective made for a supernal edge against which the wolven tide was riven.
Thousands of Lingyang’s strongest surged along the eastern way, a veritable storm of stalwart soldiery whose thoughts were as one. Flying, floating, or otherwise aloft, their majority met the eclipsing mass of the Wolf Mother’s brood and scoured the bulwark with symbology and elements. Zhiyuan was mindful enough to note the similarities between the ongoing conflict and the outward shell’s depictions. So too was he wise enough to immediately dispense with such frivolity. There were foes at his fore.
Slavering maws sought his throat, each fang therein a writhing growth. No two were the same, mirroring the eclectic make of the beasts. Zhiyuan battered hulking monstrosities and phantom motes both, and discovered with alacrity an issue unimpeded. Like a river poorly dammed, the wolves broke only to surge unto unity, cutting under and over, and all around to envelop attempted impediment. Their stench was a riot of putridity and sweetness, and iron tang that left him grimacing as corpses piled in every direction but his front.
‘They are dying.’ In droves, even. ‘But not swiftly enough. Not nearly so.’ All Zhiyuan could see were those warriors who had answered his call, and an undulating mass of fury whose breadth stole the meager remains of day’s twinlight. They were entrapped by physicality and necessity both, and how he despised such circumstances.
‘How long,’ he wondered: ‘How long has the Wolf Mother prepared for this day? For this confluence of events? Did we grow arrogant, Master? Secured by your city’s walls, ensconced away from the world’s tumult. Surely, we must have,’ he sighed, his breath serving as fuel for a palm with strength enough to encompass hundreds; a feat mirrored many times over, thereby fracturing the invaders.
“Forward!” shouted a womanly strength, and none could contest the desperation which bled from her breath, for none were fools amongst their company.
“The wound must be stemmed!” Zhiyuan echoed, reinforcing the stolidness of their collective; and as they made for Lingyang’s weakness, yet more voices arose in conflict with uncounted howls. Limbs broke, jaws cracked. Blood splattered and gathered, sanguine streams sent skyward to pierce a giant maw. Sand invaded snouts, and commands engendered death. All gave way to a single voice:
“Uukhai! Uukhai! Uukhai!”
Originating from a massive man of truly hairy make, the Khalkic battle cry swept through the ranks, a flame before droughted brush. His voice was a thing of jagged stone, low and harsh.
“Uukhai! Uukhai! Uukhai!”
It was base savagery and noblest oath, and Zhiyuan could taste the defiance coating his throat. His bones rattled alongside the warring music, harmonizing with those of his comrades: and the song soaring in volume with their every step threatened to unmake the wolven sea through which they strode. Then came solidity - fur matted and flesh melded, hardening unto a metallic sheen against which lightning and earth were rebuffed. Lingyang’s mightiest were made a yolk - and as all things destined for birth, they sought escape as fangs fell like rain, whistling descents heralding death.
“Uukhai! Uukhai! Uukhai!” they roared still, voices lending one another purpose in the face of such peril. Shields forged from the innermost soul blinked into existence, guarding against the aerial assault, joined in effort by thoughtless sacrifice and bloody edicts writ against the air. Ahead, their goal lay; a thickset shadow within the darkness from which howling wolves sprang to reinforce their prison.
Zhiyuan called upon the metal accouterments of his bones; Star Silver slunk out from within, slivers bloodlessly breaking skin to spiral about his speartip, where it shone with longfed years in spherical fashion. Laughing uproariously, illuminated by the concentrated qi, the Khalkic warrior pressed a meaty hand against his back, conveying the strength of thousands as he stained Zhiyuan’s dress a crucible crimson. The cumulative conviction was heavy in the way of sloshing buckets amidst a drought, oaths of relief intrinsic.
The rat-faced, fat-lipped son of Man was as a torchbearer made to embattle winterous night.
‘Three,’ he counted, charging foremost amongst his comrades, pressing past those who rushed to do as he. ‘Two,’ he breathed, muscles tensing as he eyed the centermost concentration of shadowed oblivion, mind a thing of serenity. ‘One,’ he thought, practicing patience for the sake of those protecting him from undue stoppage, well aware they were his bulwark against sidled defeat. Then came collision.
“Uukhai!” screamed past his throat. Oblivion pulsed in reply, and his arms strained. Each fiber of his being was bent towards disrepair. Bones fractured, then crumbled as Zhiyuan pushed onwards in forthright rejection of failure (echoing his young friend). Forcing his flesh to steel in defiance of naturality, serrated face a snarl, he-
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
-collapsed, stomach perforated. Breathlessly, inexorably, he was driven to the ground by claws of ice. From the darkness they came - and they reeked of a blackening death, and sapped all manner of energy. So injured, he dripped vigour and acuity, entrails exposed to luminant others.
“You were close,” whispered across his skin, further freezing Zhiyuan and his fellows as it filled their prison. The voice was feminized dread given shapeless strength, and it threatened to steal breath and mind both; a notion intensified as the clawed hand dragged a body into view.
‘Wolf Mother,’ Zhiyuan recognized, the stories more than matched by her truth. She bore no cloth, and her skin bled between black and palest snow - and in her eyes, he saw naught but hatred fit to scour bone. There sat no heart inside her chest, and no womb within her core – such were the wounds which marred her form. Languidly, she smiled with a mouth of frosted fangs.
What might have come of their meeting, none could say, as crudity boomed: “Why won’t you bleed?!”
~ X ~
Far from the fighting, Li Wei’s corpse leeched colour, dyeing its surroundings in hues of unfolded history. Images of youthful candor fluttered on wings of secreted truth, smashing themselves into and through illicit vortices. Scenting the air with copper grief, sanguine slicked the stone tiles beneath his body, joined by the ivory of his bones and the golden strength of his qi, further stirring the air into a frenzy of scarcely contained energy; the last wish of a regretful father wrought unto ruin.
The Tiger Lord’s chamber was an immortal firework on the cusp of outpouring its contents, and those outside recognized the sparks for true: to open the room’s sole entrance would spell instantaneous death for untold thousands, and yet stranger fates for manifold more. As such, guards and retainers of centenarian loyalty sought to impede the lonely soul capable of unleashing certain doom. Virtue and desperation demanded as much.
“Please, Young Master! Retreat to the Undercity!” begged some, falling to their knees, foreheads shattering stone as they grasped with words alone. “Your father is departed, Young Master!” preached others, shedding tears as they fought against a desire to flee for untold li. “You are going to kill us all!” warned the least loyal as they looked to physically impede the Tiger Lord’s lawful inheritor with fists and swords; a costly mistake. Limpid eyes saw nothing of the chorused dissuasion, or the resultant bloodshed as oaths and survival warred.
Indeed, beloved by the First Firmament, Lingyang’s Young Master strode unfettered. They were nine, today, and would not be denied their farewell. The air stole words and stopped flesh, granting safe passage, while the earth urged their silken steps. Theirs was a silent walk whose destination was barred not – twin doors wrought from the wood of an Utari’s kodama tree flung themselves wide in a show of fealty, eliciting gasps. Breaths lodged, pupils blown to fantastic proportions, the Young Master’s onlookers froze.
Three beats thumped, insouciant in the face of fear. Two men perished, shaken by sheer possibility. One of many women inhaled, isolated in her motion.
“Father,” whispered past a tear-stained veil.
Before them, six millennia swelled and rippled in time with a musical rhyme named Love. Each thinking soul saw singular scenes, tasting - and hearing and scenting - a world since departed. Then came touch, the haptic hallucination bringing with it miniaturized realities into which a hundred selves were pulled. Driest ash filled mouths where grass failed to tickle feet, lilting alongside fatherly kisses and the shameful weight of failure.
All swallowed, each for reasons unique to themselves as the Wanderer’s words faltered against Li Wei’s final moments.
“Why won’t you bleed?!”
~ X ~
South of the Lingyi Empire, over gleaming plains and rivers and seas, past mountains whose spines shed scales, and jungles where scope was without reason, there fluttered a lonely bird. Her pinions were sharp, her eyes a brassy gold, and her feathers a resplendent grey in the light of Li Wei. Neither ennobled nor enlightened, she was of a brave species beloved by the Pribumi for their ghostly plumage and speed - a caraka youth assaulted by inescapable danger.
It was said amongst the First People of the Soil such birds were once messengers of Heaven: “Every wingbeat a word.”
Truth or falsity, between blinks of a mortal’s eye, she could flap her wings a hundred times. Near Lingyang, on a field bereft of flowers, Alcaeus endured three strikes for every such motion.
Throat, eyes, breast, thighs, the Nemean page was assailed by a whirlwind of distilled skill, speaking to his foe’s fluency in the language of Violence. Indeed, his was a trying opposition: Riki’s chewed upon chunks of cheek had sprouted into yet more of himself, each wielding physicality to match the seeming replica he’d thought captured. Numbering two, they were thorns against Alcaeus’ heels, and kept in good health by dint of the dagger’s undecided threat. Consequently, accounting for their totality proved distracting: Alcaeus denied three limbs and suffered the pressure of twenty teeth. Saliva slobbered his heel, fingers scratched at his eyes. He broke limbs and skulls with a song of unapologetic destruction, only for the scorched earth beneath his feet to reverse such hurts with stolen vitality.
In reply, Riki stabbed, and sliced, and screamed, his sickly sinew shaking from the effort: and each instance proved ineffectual - or so it seemed to the Wanderer alone. Flesh unmarred, Alcaeus felt his spirit writhe at every touch of the jagged dagger. As the sea before stone, it warped beneath his skin wheresoever he was impacted.
“Fall,” the fell thing whispered, seeking to affect his song: “Fall.” Over and over, it commanded as much, inspiring revulsion - for it sounded of suffering, and tasted as odiferous rot. Faced with such, withholding his feelings was an effort titanic, but an effort won. By way of goldenbright will, Alcaeus denied worry sown truth.
Riki’s triplicate stilled, disengaging some thousand paces. “I-” and Alcaeus’ spear found their throats (the act of stabbing incurring bloody reaction), though not for the Wanderer’s temerity. Rather, a lesson from his mother: “To speak in battle is a sin most egregious; one whose penance is owed to the more mindful warrior.” Thus, so too did one motion split three spines.
Recovering between breaths, the Nemean’s triple-toned opposition was unabashed. “I will say my piece,” he swore, snarling, “And you-”
Lightning split his brow thrice over, pitching him backwards. Weighed by violent skies as the hammer does a nail, the bolt scored through the back of his skull as it glassed the ground. Alcaeus withheld a derisive snort as the Wanderer’s bodies were swallowed whole by the ruined earth, resisting tempestuous efforts to drag his foe into the air. When Riki was righted in three parts, readied once again by the environs’ deepest vitality, they repeated this dance of understated seconds - always, his jabbering was interrupted. It was a break in the relative normalcy of bloodletting, and the son of Nemea liked it not. How could he - though ignorant for true, he was not blind to the reality Lingyang faced: Dai Jing had escaped his immediate reach, and was wielding shadow in search of a child mistaken.
She of the Earth Realm, a veritable force of nature none within the city’s bounds could contest. Ideally, he would have placed himself inside the breach, forbidding passage. Ideally. But his response to the onset of violence had been too slow, and Riki would not allow for a change in tack; he was every bit as dogged as the First Firmament's moon, and could not be allowed freedom.
Alcaeus blinked in thought and suffered a failed stabbing for his mistake. The dagger smashed against his sternum and skittered downwards. In the moment wherein he lashed back, nearly stealing Riki’s much despised weapon, two of the Wanderer’s three bodies contorted themselves around Alcaeus’ limbs while divesting him of Zhiyuan’s gifted spear. Thus bound, he was subjected to the ancient’s fury.
Pommel pushed, grip tight, sinuous arms jabbed Li Wei’s death against the dauntless flesh of Alcaeus’ body:
Again and again another hundred times!
“Why won’t you bleed?!” Riki’s disbelief was such the clouds scattered, afeared of his clambering madness. The earth ruptured, and those distant hills - what few survived - flattened, retreating. Again, he stabbed.
Alcaeus loosed a booming laugh, thunder billowing forth to assail his attempted killer. Through his bones and blood, a storm of endings brewed, goldenbright in his eyes; he grimaced at the familiar seething.
“Well, beast from Heaven?!” Riki’s foremost self cried with arms askew, his form a mess of mending bones and pulped flesh, ivory sprouting from the skin of his legs and feet. The Wanderer spat, and his liquid deception was erased by a bolt from the blue mere instants before it could infect the ground. To so able a reaction - while constrained, no less - Riki snorted angrily. His feet stamped, birthing quakes, and his gaze flickered to Lingyang’s benighted walls.
Alcaeus tired of the man’s derangement, disdained their shared circumstances, and lamented his own failures. So too did he answer truly, thinking himself clever.
“My mother.”
“What?” Incredulity deepened in the swivel of Riki’s head, as Dai Jing resumed her assault.
Marshalling his strength, Alcaeus obliged yet further: “I was borne from her womb, Wanderer. What greater crucible can you lay upon this flesh of mine?” Owing to a lesson learned from Arkas, the son of Nemea allowed himself a teasing smirk. To Riki, he then held himself open to retaliation; chin lifted, neck bared, his presentation was daring in the extreme. Overly so, perhaps, if faced with an opponent possessed of sanity.
Riki was not sane.
Sickly eyes narrowed. “Die,” echoed.
Heart warmed by his success, Alcaeus withheld a regretful smile - and as the fell dagger failed for a final time, shattering against his skin, he bit down on the inside of his mouth. Blood welled, mixing with saliva. The red mass which then flew carried sacrifice, however temporary. So bloomed a small violence, for storms of sanguine scale were inevitably thus.
Riki avoided the perilously slow projectile, thinking, worrying, wonder-
-abounded, washing over his three and Alcaeus simultaneously. Together, they experienced fury and triumph, and a phantom of Rhium’s grief. Tears wet frozen visages as Heaven and Earth recoiled.
Alcaeus frowned, peripherally aware what remained of the ground and sky were warping towards distant horizons, moving in piecemeal parts no larger than a mote - he could taste their horror on his tongue, molten and electric. Swiftly, he escaped his fleshly bindings and saw for himself a wealth of fluids seeping from Riki’s triplicate pores. Riverous and slow, blood pooled at the ancient’s feet. There, it fed a growing flower over which the Nemean strode; petals a shimmering crimson, the sunset bud drank of the Wanderer’s dribbled bile.
Alcaeus’ frown flattened at the sight, for he especially misliked wielding the mournful histories within his marrow. But such were the times. Marshalling his will, thoughts steeled and heart becalmed, reluctant winds returned Zhiyuan’s gifted spear to his grip. Within his breast, warmth pulsed as he looked towards Lingyang. Eyeing the city’s blanketed walls, he took aim.
‘Higher,’ he corrected, adjusting thusly. Clenched, his spear vibrated in expectation. Loosed, it sang: of destruction, of repudiation, of a singular injury delivered posthaste – sharply, it flew as lightning: and so as lightning it rang, humming hither and thither, foretelling of conflict’s end. The resultant reverberation echoed alongside a lesser shade of Li Wei’s luminance, dispersing what darkness was not sloughed from the city’s walls by the initial impact.
Alcaeus stole a glance at Riki’s irresponsive behaviour and chose to away, trusting in the strength of his inherited grief. When he arrived at the breakage of weeks afore, no shadowed wolves were there to be found. Neither were there relieved miens or shocked others. Merely rictus victims remained - the dead were legion, and the dying lonesome.
“Zhiyuan,” he called out, the breadth of his voice softened by worry and hurry both. His friend of short weeks lay in pieces, evidence of clawed tearing in the estrangement of his legs and torso. No thought was given to Li Wei’s demands - Alcaeus surged towards Lingyang’s innards, intent on aid.
“No!” boomed in reply from Zhiyuan’s mangled form, panicked by his meaning. Still, Alcaeus continued onwards; otherwise was unworthy. He strode past the breakage: and in doing so the youth spelled death. Lingyang groaned, benighted layers buckling beneath the weight of his spirit: harmony was made discordant. Barriers shattered in their hundreds, rivers boiled in search of swiftest suicide. Lonely cookfires suffocated their ember beginnings - and afar came the luminous eruption of the city’s center, wrought unto ruin by the dying dregs of Li Wei’s personage.
Joined in concert by the dreadful plodding of his sandaled feet, Alcaeus’ tongue sparked a furious tune as he made to retreat.
Heedless of his injuries, Zhiyuan begged of the venturesome youth, “Too late! You must venture forth now! The Wolf Mother seeks the Young Master - save them!”
Panicked thusly, Alcaeus reacted - and in his mind did a memory sing: “To flit is to taste freedom. Astride the material, shape and space become suggestions. So to say, I expect you’ll quite enjoy your first realization of the Woodsea’s artifice.”
‘How the times betray us,’ he thought amidst colour and sound like chaotic seas bent towards disharmony. Fear abounded, a tempest squall swallowed by great waves of departure and resignation. No hidden love was there to be found therein. No gladhearted bravery was there to be admired. Merely terror and darker emotions besides.
Betwixt Here and There, worry for such inken dyes rendered appreciation impossible. Beyond the sweltering solarity panic had made of his limbs, the Nemean’s self was but focused on the shadow; a towering edifice wrought from maternity. He was a grain of sand aimed at harrowing heights - and so through the skin of babes he blinked, through scaled swords he shifted, through stone homes he swam. Alcaeus scaled palatial refusal to the tune of, “-save them!”
Spurred, sunstruck bronze became: manifesting inside a chamber destroyed, blue eyes riven by golden skies burned wolves from existence. First one, then three, then tens of thousands howling joyous grief - they were a cloak scoured from stone hide, shadows dispersed by light. Dai Jing and her throne of moonlit bones were revealed, consequently.
“Alcaeus,” she hushed, a child in her grip; a pale thing to whom consciousness was unknown. Their head lolled, hollow gaze falling upon the new arrival.
“Dai Jing,” preempted a cavernous shudder. Alcaeus flinched at the sound of his own voice, shredding the floor beneath his booted feet.
Chuckling, the Wolf Mother brushed an ebon claw along the length of the child’s jaw. “Do be quiet. I know not the fool who bade you enter Lingyang, but you’ve despoiled Riki’s prize quite thoroughly.” Her lips twitched, revealing fangs bled between starkest snow and pitch. Madness danced inside her eyes. “I’ll not have you ruin mine.”
Indecision gripped Alcaeus as Dai Jing took to standing. Enough to furrow his brow and draw a thin line of his mouth. He could flit, having done so once; the liminal existence felt to him a step discovered in part. With a second’s search, it would be wholly so. ‘To what end…’ he knew not - would not dare claim with confidence, for how his presence ravaged the city. ‘But, surely action must be preferred to inaction.’ Better to move against or away than to worsen his inflicted hurts. Better to risk not finding the Young Master than to lose them in the heat of battle. His focus flashed across Dai Jing, hoping his spear’s effects were merely hidden from his senses. Alas…
“You see, hm?” The Wolf Mother’s mooncast shadow writhed as it rose, swallowing her throne of bones. She nuzzled the unmoving child, a smile softening her features. “It is best for you to depart. Chase, if you must. But do not speak, here and now. Do not linger.”
Breathless, Alcaeus felt solidity return to his mind. Shame weighing his tongue, he flit.
Through babes and homes and paltry tomes, he departed from Lingyang by way of breakage. His heart was hurried as he took to the sky, leaping with all his might. Left behind for Zhiyuan’s ears, a message carried itself on those winds not buoying the Nemean, warning of the Wolf Mother’s theft.
In the sky cleared of clouds, where starry luster and lunar grace were abound, Alcaeus fought to dye his eyes a glaring gold. Forbidding rain and thunder by way of grit teeth and bloodied palms, he succeeded in part; what blue swam was reduced to rivers. Then, breathing in-
He called upon the panicked solarity of minutes afore, and envisioned a curtain large enough to envelop the horizon; a warning heat wrought from will from which there was no escape. He stole luminance from on high to further his work, forcibly translating the moon’s light into a language all his own.
-and out, he was a star made terrestrial. Alcaeus birthed an ethereal swaddling cloth whose innermost fringes crashed ineffectually against Lingyang’s sole remaining shield. Gold twinged in restrained disappointment as the artifice fell upon the city’s surroundings, extending a scant league from the walls. Pitiful - the word infiltrated his thoughts as manifold eons began to seethe against their prison.
Alcaeus cleared his mind, heart made kind by a warmth not his own. Goldenbright self wax before a storming flame, he drank deeply of his faltering day. The Wanderer’s catatonia, the frosted north, the hale grasslands of the west–all knowledge, all his. Where the light touched, the son of Nemea was king.
Seconds stretched across the sea of time: Alcaeus enlightened to the movements of iota, Lingyang wounded and mourning.
‘Nothing.’ The cloth of light shrunk and still, ‘Nothing.’ No signs of the Wolf Mother did he detect. Neither were inklings of Zhiyuan’s Young Master revealed. Tension gripped the Nemean’s frame.
“Alcaeus!” shouted from below as he considered the viability of traversing underground, so down Alcaeus went in question. His ethereal cloth dispersed, drifting on winds whose ownership he’d released, appearing as fireflies against the night sky.
Outside Lingyang, Zhiyuan stood on stumps of boulderish rock. To Alcaeus he confirmed, “Indeed. The Wolf Mother has escaped into the Undercity. Though a number of my fellows are giving chase, I have my doubts they will succeed. There exist portals a cultivator of her caliber can power alone; portals to her frozen abode.”
“You’ve a plan,” Alcaeus observed, head angled to account for Zhiyuan’s reduced height. His heart burned, for his failure. But the heat was muted. Distant.
“Of course. I must, for my mistake in begging you reenter the city. I thought Lingyang might endure further stress, that one so precious as… hah,” the native sighed, a conflicted twist to his mouth. “It does not matter. Unless Heaven bids otherwise, the Wolf Mother will abscond with the Young Master.”
Alcaeus’ brow furrowed, tepid curiosity overtaking his mouth. He’d not asked before, and the question struck him as insignificant, however: “Does your Young Master have a name?”
“No, and they never will,” and there was sad certainty in Zhiyuan’s voice. Caressing the rocks pressed against his hips, he smoothed their surface, shedding excess material until the pair resembled legs meant for a man half his size. Meeting Alcaeus’ gaze, he said, “Retrieving the Young Master falls to us. But first, we must attend to the Wanderer. Though their goals are clear in hindsight, there may be more to learn from the Wolf Mother’s contemporary.”
Alcaeus followed Zhiyuan’s eastern stride, and slowed himself for the man’s unbending gait. “What of your emperor and his allies? Will they not come?”
“‘None may command their kind, and fewer may predict their doings,’” said Zhiyuan, quoting himself. “I did not lie, then. And I shall not now. Those of the Earth Realm follow winding paths.”
“...But, Li Wei’s passing.” Though combat had consumed the Nemean’s focus, Alcaeus had not missed the eruption of ancient strength, nor how it lingered in defiance of the First Firmament’s fear. Even now, it swirled about his form, water to stone, a beacon. Alaceus shook his head. “If they remain awayed, I must stay. Lingyang is endangered. More so than before, and by my hand.”
Zhiyuan barked a grimsome laugh, tearing at the unhealed wound serrating his cheeks. “By your hand Lingyang has been rendered safe from true endangerment, Alcaeus! Broken as the city is, those of the Earth Realm have no reason to claim it as their own.”
“Lingyang is home-”
“To millions, yes. But Lingyang was merely a means to an end in the eyes of the truly strong. So, let us attend to the Wanderer,” Zhiyuan breathed, sighting Riki. “The sects will prove their worth, of that I have no doubt.”
~