Molten heat gathered in the palm of Gu Xiulan’s hand, flickering white tongues erupting from the wrap. She grasped the spiraling helix spear that erupted from it and spun, deflecting away the wailing green wave of ghostflame that threatened to engulf her and pack of riders galloping in her wake.

The waste churned again with the unquiet dead.

For two days their journey had been quiet, only minor packs of ashwalkers had risen from the sands to oppose their journey, and had been summarily crushed by her riders, without their guests needing to lift a finger. However, on the dawn of their third day, they had missed the patrol that should have been on the road from her Father’s base of operations.

She had ridden ahead with the finest of her soldiers to check the location of the outpost they should have been ranging from. One moment the outpost tower had lain ahead, under a clear blue sky, jutting up from the rocky ridge that overlooked the road carved through the dunes. The next, Refeng had let a high equine scream as he reared and brought flaming hooves down on clawing dead hands rising from a road that was now a shattered ruin.

Her fingers dug into the almost liquid spear of flame, in her hand maintaining it, forcing qi into the construct to keep it stable, holding back the natural explosive force as she dragged it back, dispelling the next wave of flame that came down upon them as well. “Left!”

Her riders scrambled to follow asin the plume of ash left as Refeng turned sharply, his steel shod hooves sparking off the air as they went nearly horizontal for a moment, to avoid the rising spearwall that churned out of the sand to block their way.

The sky was not right, red and purple, like bruised flesh, shot through with veins of black. A hole in the sky bleeding fire hung where the sun should be. It could be nothing but an illusion, she comforted herself with that.

But was it mere twisting light and distorted perception, or had some Ashwalker risen with the power to draw spaces into a hidden realm, a pocket like that within a storage ring, writ far larger?

She could only hope it was the former. If not, the fact that she could still sense the qi of her company and her guests meant they were all trapped.

“I think the strong Miss with us couldn’t be trapped easy! Yep,” LInhuo whispered.

She was certainly in a state if her fire fairy was speaking sense. Yes, the Ambassador, Guo Xinhua was in the fifth realm, of similar cultivation to her own lord father. She only required an escort out of propriety, only left them to deal with the dregs of the dead out of consideration for the health of the land they passed over.

She hauled her arm back, feeling charred skin break under her wraps as her veins pulsed with burning blood, and hurled her spear at the formation of Dead cavalry incoming from the dunes to their left.

The detonation ripped at Refeng’s mane and the plumes of her helm, send a wave of dust and grit washing over her riders and herself. But the dune was gone, and so were the Dead riders. “Forward!”

She roared above the wind, and the legs of their mounts became burning blurs. The wind screamed past her wedge as they trampled grasping skeletal hands and glassed sand alike underfoot, and escaped from the encirclement closing behind them.

As the ashen landscape and bruised sky blurred around her, it soon became clear that they were not the only ones who had come under assault.

The broken stone and sand rattled with the impacts shaking the earth in the distance, even as it formed into new skulls, new claws, new burning ghostfire eyes.

A cloud of dust and bone shrapnel, the only remains of some number of ashwalkers, pelted them as they crested the hill and looked down on where she had left the rest of her riders and their guests.

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Her men were scattered, the riders spread in packs like hers, dashing too and fro trampling down the dead before they could fully rise. Following their training as skirmishers even without her presence, showing discipline worthy of the Gu clan.

They were not however guarding their guests.

Because the people of the Golden Seas understood the limits of propriety, and where it gave way to the simple truth of their world.

A laughing meteorite crashed down atop an ashwalker in ancient and ornate bronze armor, worked through with imagery of vines and branches, who wielded a sword larger than its own torso. The blurring missile from the sky resolved into the tightly grinning Zheng Nan as the earth cratered for a dozen meters around them rock and earth shattering as a shockwave of stalled force erupted where rust pitted steel and clean polished wood collided. The sword shifted, hurling Zheng Nan away, and the big man twisted midair and crouched as if to leap the air under his feat distorting, and launched himself back.

Across the road, another red blur crashed down to earth and the ground under her feet rippled like water, a wave of force bowling over a gathering formation of the dead as a an open palm thrust out and struck a figure in ancient imperial armor in the chest, with a ring like a gong. The Ashwalker went still for a moment before dry and dusty blood and ash erupted, fresh green vines and shoots sprouting from the cracks in its armor, turning the Dead officer swiftly into a bristling shrub of flowers and leaves rooted in the earth, the field was littered with such, though the leaves were rapidly browning in the more distant ones.

She squeezed her knees around Refeng’s sides, and brought the stallion up short atop the hill, just as a crack of thunder reached her ears, her raised hand kept her riders from blowing past her.

A fissure opened in the sands, the stone and the coalescing forces of the dead alike, and Guo Xinyan now stood before her in a low runner’s, arms extended, hands held as if they were a scorpion's claws. Behind her dozens of bisected ashwalkers crumpled to the earth, bones and dusty flesh burning with billowing white smoke from the purifying liquid venom that dripped from her fingernails.

“Lady Gu, my Mother would speak with you,” Guo Xinyan said calmly, straightening up. Despite her serene tone, Gu Xiulan could see in her an excitement much the same as that which hammered in her own .

Her eyes drifted back over the tall woman’s shoulder, where one figure alone stood still on the battlefield. The Ambassador of the Guo remained perched delicately in sidesaddle atop her horse, pale green gowl tumbling down to nearly sweep in the dust. Her fan fluttered lazily in front of her face, and her half lidded eyes gazed up at the sky.

And in a thirty meter circle around her, all foes ceased to be. Dead reached across that absolute line, and were ripped apart as if by a million unseen blades, reduced to drifting dust. The ash and broken stone under her feet sizzled and burned without flame, liquifying into a pool of sizzling, bubbling venom, only the bare stone directly under her horses hooves was spared.

“Then, I shall have to speak to her. My deepest apologies for this interruption of our journey,” Gu Xiulan said, over the tremors and cracks of battle and the wails of the dead.

Eyes like knives turned to her from the sky and Gu Xiulan shivered, waving her arm.

“Very good. The enemy is falling back. For now,” Guo Xinyan said. “If you will allow me to run perimeter while you speak with Mother.”

“Please,” Gu Xiulan said. And the girl was gone.

The Ambassador's eyes remained fixed on her, and though the woman’s lips barely moved, her voice reached Gu Xiulan’s ears clearly.

“Do not blame yourself for this, young Lady. I recognize these arts. The Grave has resurrected troublesome foes this day. Old jin arts I judge, to fool the divinations of those aboard father Wan Li San.”

“You know the enemy?” Gu Xiulan murmured, charging down the hill. A shearing line of flame cut down the dead trying to return from the ash.

Zheng Nan let out a woop as his foe crumbled, its helmed head spinning off into the distance like a shot at the impact of his qi sheathed staff. He somersaulted midair, landing in stride with her as they began to regroup.

“Indeed. I am counteracting its arts as we speak. I suspect your father is having troubles,” The woman continued to speak without speaking as they reached the edge of her zone of death. “How soon can we reach his base of operations as full march?”

Gu Xiulan sucked in a breath as She brought Refeng to a canter, turning outward to the twilight shrouded dunes where the dead were still rising. “Six hours, if all mortal constraints are ignored.”

“Then I suggest you give your men the command.”