Thin white clouds crawled swiftly across the clear blue sky overhead, a mirror of the whitecapped waves below. The polished red hull of the ship cut swiftly through the waters of the northern sea, and in the south, the high cliffs of the Bay of Wrath faded behind the curve of the horizon.
Xiao Wen turned their eyes from the horizon above at the sound of snapping canvas, scrutinizing the quick motions of the red caste sailors as they secured the sail to catch the wind before turning to the starboard side.
The weather was good. If that held, they would be able to catch the great northern current within a week.
“Sir Wen.” The sailor who had been approaching from his right stopped a few strides away and spoke his name, clapping his fists together as he lowered his eyes.
Xiao Wen glanced his way. The sailor was a typical specimen of a red, wide shouldered and thick bodied. Coarse scales covered the powerfully muscled arms which stood in for his ancestor’s choking coils. His clothing was loose clothing and snapped in the wind, and he wore a simple cloth scarf over his bald head.
“Yes, boatswain?” Xiao Wen asked.
“The captain requests your presence at the prow, Sir Wen,” he replied. They struck a wave, and the boat rocked, but the boatswain’s feet remained steady, and his eyes did not rise from the deck. His mistress had a good eye for discipline.
“Thank you. Return to your duties. I expect the crew’s performance to continue in excellence,” Xiao Wen acknowledged, turning away to stride across the rolling deck.
The hot sea wind tugged at the braid his hair had been tied into as he headed toward the prow. Xiao Wen frowned faintly at the odd tugging sensation of his garments that came with the motion. He brushed his hand against his thigh, feeling the ripple of the black silk. He was not yet used to trousers, but although it was odd, he did not dislike it.
At the prow of the ship, standing high atop the carved serpentine figurehead, his mistress, or rather, his captain, awaited.
Bai Guzhen was a woman small in stature, as most white serpents were. Like her kin, her presence was enormous. Xiao Wen felt the immense pressure upon him as he approached, the primal terror of approaching a true apex predator, a queen of beasts. That same aura, he knew, wrapped their ship, driving away the beasts which would assail lesser ships.
Yet that is where his mistress’ similarities ended. Her white hair was shorn short with a careless cut, covered by a silk headscarf that glittered with embedded jewels. Rather than an elegant gown, she wore a sailor’s trousers and a loose tunic that hung freely off one shoulder, leaving half of her back and chest bare save for the tight wrapping about her chest. Rather than immaculate paleness, the whole of her upper body was inked with elaborate stylized tattoos of stormy waters and the leviathans of the deep. The tattoos rose as high as her neck and ran down beneath her tunic and to her lower arms.
“Xiao Wen, enjoying yourself so far?” she barked down from her perch as he stopped by the rail.
“It has been a pleasant trip, my la—” Xiao Wen began only to fall silent at a sharp look from her golden eyes. “My captain.”
Bai Guzhen grinned, flashing the gleaming bronze caps on her fangs. “That’s a good lad. Come join me up here. The sea spray is invigorating.”
Xiao Wen nodded in acknowledgment and bent his knees. A gentle leap carried him up onto the polished figurehead, and a small tug at the winds ensured that he landed an appropriate half-step behind his mistress. Out here beyond the envelope of formation barriers which shrouded the deck, the sea salt scent of the air was much stronger, and Xiao Wen felt the moisture of the spray clinging to his skin.
Yes, although he did not share his mistress’ particular fascinations, this was not unpleasant.
“How are you adjusting from your breakthrough?” his captain asked idly. Her gaze remained on the far horizon.
Xiao Wen glanced down at his narrow, flat chest, exposed by the deep necked tunic he wore. He flexed his slim, long fingered hands. Could it truly be put to words what it felt like to look at himself and no longer feel revulsion? To feel that for the first time in one hundred and fifty odd years that he was not being choked by his own skin?
“I am well. I am only sorry for the trouble this one's nature has brought upon you, my captain. Are you well after the arguments with your mother?”
“It is nothing to me,” she replied, the slight tightness in her voice audible only to him. “Our disagreements have been rising for some time. One way or another, I would have needed to leave if I was to keep growing. Your shedding of your old self merely provided me impetus.”
Xiao Wen was not so sure of that. He had been the handmaiden of the clan head’s daughter, even if that daughter was a maverick unlikely to inherit. The scandal of his change had been significant.
“I hope I do not need to remind you that you are forbidden from blaming yourself. That was a direct order,” Bai Guzhen said vehemently. “I would rather my companion be well in mind and body than have the approval of those fossils.”
Xiao Wen merely nodded, clenching his hands. It would be untoward to show the warmth he felt in his chest on his face. Lady Guzhen was a true white serpent, implacable in word and deed. She inspired confidence and drive in all who served her, making them achieve their greatest selves. He was truly fortunate to serve her. This was why he was so uneasy with the changes creeping into the Xiao clan.
“I cannot thrive under Mother’s policies, any more than you can,” Bai Guzhen said quietly, tapping her booted foot against the figurehead. “The Bai clan is declining, though few care to see it. What Mother proposes for the Xiao is only the most obvious proof of that.”
Xiao Wen pursed his lips. He did not approve of the proposals moving through his own clan either. The Xiao were already unlike most. He remembered fondly his childhood in the clan creches, raised by those adults of the clan most inclined to education and childrearing. He did not feel that he was lesser for not knowing the individuals whose blood had made him. However, what was being said was too much.
“It does not serve our masters well to lose the need to earn loyalty individually. It will only make the future white serpents and black vipers together lesser in character and lesser in spirit,” Xiao Wen agreed. “My captain is wise.”
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“We are stagnating, turning in on ourselves like an idiot hatchling swallowing its own tail,” Bai Guzhen said. “I can’t stand to watch it any longer. That is why this journey is not your fault, Wen.”
He lowered his head in acknowledgement. He was truly foolish to have still harbored doubts. For Lady Guzhen, this was a matter critical to cultivation and her future. He was too arrogant and small minded in making it about himself.
“What is our destination then, my captain? Do you intend to train in the Red Garden or seek out the sages and sorcerers of the north sea for inspiration?”
“We go beyond the lands of the Red Sun,” Bai Guzhen replied confidently.
“Beyond?” Xiao Wen asked dubiously.
“Beyond,” she agreed, a wide and feral grin splitting her features.
***
Reaching the great northern current had been the easy part of their journey. The tame coastal seas regularly fished by their violet caste brethren and the hermit folk of the Savage Seas was too well hunted to present any threats to his captain. The trouble had come when they had begun to sail westward.
The curse of the Red Garden did not stop at the shore.
The overgrown mobile forests of flesh-eating kelp which choked the ocean closer to its shore did not extend all the way to the waters of the current, but the many vicious beasts which had adapted to life in their confines could certainly range so far, and in the north, they had not been taught the fear of the white serpents. Although the weather remained good, Xiao Wen had lost count of the number of beasts which had assailed them in the two weeks it had taken to cross those blood-drenched waters. Five crew members had been lost in that time with their names recorded for future honor when they returned home.
It was commonly held that there was nothing of value to be had in making this journey, simply more jungle and barbarians. Indeed, Xiao Wen’s watch upon the distant shore seemed to bear that out as days turned into weeks.
Even as they passed an unnamed mountain range, they found that the deep tropical greenery clung to both sides of the slopes, extending out as far as their eyes and divinations could see. There had been a narrow inlet beyond the mountains whose rocky shore had seemed relatively clear of bloodthirsty jungle life, but cautious sailing had only brought them into contact with a barbarian war party from the collection of dirt and clay hovels that lay at its terminus.
Lady Guzhen had wisely retreated before the stride of the titanic warrior whose six golden spears churned windstorms and whose crimson eyes boiled the sea. Though they might have prevailed, the ship would have been damaged for nothing. Her spear and his hands had wounded the beast enough to deter the warrior from following.
Thinking back, that the demon had retreated at all should have been a clue that something was odd.
Beyond the bay, the land curved away from them, forcing their ship to leave behind the current. Their ship, the Redwine, was no Jin construction nor Xuan island; the open ocean and its horrors was beyond it and them.
It was here that they encountered strangeness, and it had excited his mistress greatly. Although thick jungle still covered the land, more and more often, his clairvoyance arts found gaps in the foliage where the land had been cleared for habitation. There, they had seen rural villages not so different from the drier farmlands of the southern Empire, inhabited by peoples of mostly darker complexions. Yet he saw no sign of the accursed jungle goddess’ worship there.
Even without his clairvoyance, they soon began to encounter smaller vessels with some regularity. Although their construction was strange, they were obviously fishing vessels. However, those vessels always fled before them, and the captain deemed it unwise to pursue or capture them, else they might bring battle where there need be none.
He had thought her overcautious at the time, surprising for his bold mistress, but as always, her wisdom bore out. As the weeks passed, he found his eyes falling upon more than meager villages. As they rounded the western horn of the continent, he found his eyes falling upon great cities and palaces which, if less than the beauty of Zhengjian, were not so less that he could wholly dismiss their builders.
But they could only observe from afar, at least until one day, they had sailed into a storm.
The waves lashed the sides of the ship, nearly cresting over the rails. For once, Captain Guzhen stood with him at the rail rather than upon the ship's figurehead, and her golden eyes were narrow as she gazed out at the churning sea and heavy black clouds overhead, rumbling with the fires of heaven.
Xioa Wen stood at her side as the crew rushed about, caring for the needs of the ship. His lips pressed together thinly as he looked out upon the sight that had caught her attention.
In the distance, he saw a great ship rising on a titanic wave. It was easily thrice the size of the Redwine with many sails and a very wide deck. At its center was a great construction of gold, bronze, and jewels, strewn with wreaths of flowers that hung still despite the wind and the rain.
Tiny shapes, difficult to distinguish individually, swarmed about the decks, their metal armor gleaming in the rain as they fought back against shapes that rose from the water. The wind howled, drowning out his hearing as he observed the dark tendrils of some leviathan curled about the prow of the ship. Between swells of the waves, he caught sight of the shapeless mass beneath the water and the three immense figures in armor of living coral who stood on it.
Thunder crashed without lightning, and the sea kings, or princes perhaps, halted in their advance upon the decks as something metallic cut through the air, leaving bloody craters in the rubbery hide of the leviathan. Upon the deck, standing before the jeweled container, was a foreign man. A star burned upon his brow, and the light of a thousand-petaled lotus blazed in an immense banner of light behind his back. His twelve arms were a blur, wielding something like metal whips, weaving a cage of thunderous bursts in a wide circle around him as he fought against the leviathan and its riders all at once.
As a tremendous wave swept across the deck, sweeping it nearly clean, it was clear though that he was being pushed back.
“My captain,” Xiao Wen said dully. “I can perceive your thoughts.”
“Hm, hm, it is good to have a wise companion,” Bai Guzhen replied, rolling her shoulders. Her expression was cast in dark green light, and the venom infusing the caps upon her fangs gleamed in the dark. “Battle is the universal tongue. To aid civilized folk against the barbarians beneath the waves... This will be understood, no matter their ways.”
“This is true, but not all act properly upon gratitude,” Xiao Wen warned, but he was already rolling his shoulders, and around his feet, his shadow bent into a wide spiral, the crimson eyes of his little cousin blooming in the dark.
“Then we might slay them too and have our artifacts for study,” the captain retorted. Across her back, the tattooed waves began to heave and flow, the crash of a second sea reverberating with the noise of the first. “And it will be assumed that they were lost to their own barbarians.”
“Of course, Captain.” Xiao Wen sighed. She was not wrong, but he misliked the risk. His gaze fixed upon one of the coral-clad sea men. Nine meters tall. No dorsal growth. Limbs out of proportion with human norm. Octopod base? Troublesome. Likelihood of nonstandard organ and channel placement was high. “Will you at least allow this one to strike ahead?”
“No. We will strike together.” Bai Guzhen’s eyes burned in the darkness as she extended a hand, and the first of her own leviathans swam from her tattoos into the water below. Her pressure grew, and she rose above him on coils of abyssal water, her petite frame towering higher as the mantle of their great ancestor overtook her.
“A true White Serpent is at the head of the spear.”
Xiao Wen smiled to himself as the waves tore apart in her wake, and the shadows in the water multiplied. The Redwine rocked as he vanished from her deck in a rising cyclone of shadow.
Behind them, a long-suffering crew worked vigorously to keep the ship from capsizing in the intensifying storm.