Tales of Destiny

Two months, and her cultivation soared, breaking into the Foundation stage, surging toward the threshold.

Two months, and the fighting had not stopped, the dead rose from the dunes without end, no matter how many were struck down.

Two months, and Father had rallied the Gu, rallied their neighbors, and pushed the dead back from the oasis system anyway.

Two months, and she had seen more men die than she had in the rest of her life together, not all of which she could blame on their own weakness.

“Find any jewels down in those mines?”

Gu Xiulan narrowed her eyes at her companion’s irritating bray, and didn’t deign to look at him.

Zheng Nan, as was his wont, had refused a mount, and trotted beside her horse on foot. His frayed sandals beating a steady tread on the wind-worn road. Frankly given what those sandals had been through she had no doubt that they were talismans of a quality with her own boots at least. Zheng Nan merely enjoyed playing the vagabond.

Arrayed behind them, her soldiers stretched out along the winding road that cut through the yellow dunes, the dust kicked up by the passage of their mounts hooves sending up plumes of dust and sand in every direction.

This she held too with pride. A full banner of cavalry, a hundred trained Gu outriders, all under her command. She tilted her chin upward, letting the wind take her hair, grown out, grown long, woven with streamers of red silk, lit from within by deep orange embers and sparks that jumped from strand to strand, she was no less eye catching than than the hardy company flag that fluttered from her steeds back.

No more veils for her. She didn’t need them, her scars were the pale blue lightning of a thunder god, a war god etched upon her skin. “I still do not understand why you are here, Zheng Nan.”

“Well we’re going to meet up with the big caravan comin in from your bosses aren’t we?” He asked.

She arched an eyebrow at him, deigning to look his way.

“Means my Bond Sister’s coming back this way you know?”

“No, I didn’t know,” Gu Xiulan snapped. She did recall distantly that a Zheng had been sent to the Guo as well. But she’d heard no such thing. “Why?”

“Well figure Lil Sis has been champing at the bit to get suck in on the dead,” Zheng Nan said. “And its prolly time for us to report back soon. Another few months maybe?”

“So you do not actually know.”

“Intuition. You should trust it!”

She pinched her nose between her fingers. Squeezed her eyes shut, and sighed. Of course, father wasn’t going to refuse her an additional third realm fighter either, especially if he volunteered for the duty, since he could not actually ‘order’ the man anywhere, officially speaking. “Did you really not have specific instructions on when to report back to your Elders?”

“‘Be back inside the year, brats! And don’t forget my souvenirs!’” Zheng Nan said, in a high scratchy mockery of an old woman’s voice.

Yes. of course. Why would she imagine anything else.

“Leaving Master aside d’you hear that?” Zheng Nan asked.

She frowned. If it was urgent danger she knew the ridiculous man wouldn’t be so blase. Nonetheless she turned her eyes back to the road ahead and strained her ears. She did not hear anything. But there was something…

Her horse tossed his head, snorted. She laid a hand on his neck, looking down. No she did not hear anything, but she could feel something, a vibration in the earth, pebbles on the road almost imperceptibly rattling. And… the wind was beginning to blow.

“Think we’re gonna meet ‘em soon,” Zheng Nan laughed.

“Most likely. They must have sent many men indeed,” Gu Xiulan said. After two months of lag from their request for reinforcements, with only silence to be heard from their liege lords, that was relieving. If they were already this far along the road as well, then they were moving at a rapid march too, or ride? It could be that they had chosen cavalry, for speed.

“Well, we better get moving then huh? You ain’t supposed to let the guests into your front hall before you’ve even greeted them,” Zhaneg Nan said.

“Agreed. If they wish to move quickly, then so shall we.”

Over the course of the next hour they rode along the wending path traveling upward along the stony ridge that marked the border of Gu lands in this direction and separated these lands from the long burnt dry river basin further to the east. As they did the signs continued to grow. The faint rumble under their feet, the scattering wind shredding the thin clouds overhead and kicking up dust. And the swelling feeling of power on the horizon.

But it couldn’t prepare her fully for what she saw as they crested the ridge and looked down on the eastern road below

A massive cloud of sand and dust, sweeping across the land. Roiling, airborne dunes that barred the approaches from the north and the south where the road did not go. And there on the road were the vanguard of the Guo clans march. Three massive beasts whose skittering limbs blurred as they chew up distance. Three scorpions whose backs were four meters or more off the ground, black and red-brown shells glinting under the desert sun. On each ones back was a wide palanquin, of polished wood and sturdy colorful canvas, the bright blue banners of the Guo clan flying above them, snapping and blowing in the wind of their passage. Each palanquin bristled with Guo bowman.

Spreading out to their flanks were three pairs of flying stone platforms, each six meters across. Bearing a squat fortified tower of stone and glinting crystal, the smell of lightning and the crackling sparks that gathered on the weapons platforms at their peak spoke their purpose. On the underside of the platforms, spiking organic growths of wind infused stone flared, blasting away sand as they propelled the platforms forward. Each one was surrounded by a dozen smaller man sized platforms, bearing a Deng clan wind rider.

Behind the vanguard came a pair of massive sandskiffs, cutting smoothly through the dunes and shrouded sandstorm, painted with the yellow and black colors of the Han, their decks throngs with men and tigers alike. Soldiers moving between the looming stripe furred behemoth cats resting so casually at the skiffs sides. Still others ran through the sandstorms, swift streaks in the shrouding wind, tigers as large as the vanguard scorpions, some bearing smaller simpler platforms and palanquins on their backs.

But at the center was the true sign of the Guo’s might. Because there in the midst of all of that, a castle slowly swayed along the road. On the back of a colossal scorpion, dwarfing the riders, the skiffs and the towers, towering nearly fifty meters in the air, was an ancient scorpion with a glistening black and gray shell, worn, pockmarked and scarred, radiating power. The castle on its back was set on a foundation of fused stone and chitin, molded perfectly to the great beasts back, as it were grown there.

From atop the ridge, Gu Xiulan swallowed. This was the muster of a duke, of the overlords of the Golden Fields. She was proud of her Gu family… but looking on, she felt she understood a little more what tempered her Father’s ambitions.

Beside her, Zheng Nan let out a low impressed whistle. “I don’t have an eye for it, but that’s a pretty big commitment isn’t it?”

Gu Xiulan nodded, hearing the whispers rippling back along her line of men. “It is. Of course, the honorable Guo clan wouldn’t leave their subjects to suffer without defense. Come, let us go down and greet them.”

She raised her voice as she spoke, letting a spark jump into her throat to amplify her voice back along the line. She raised her fist, signaling her riders to begin moving, and squeezed her knees around her own steed, sending him into a trot as well.

In truth, this amount of force was worrying. They had the dead pushed back, they were holding the line. What then, did the Guo clan know that they did not?

“It’s good to make sure people know their overlord’s not a flake, but that can’t have been easy to put together, eh?” Zheng Nan chuckled, following after her, angling his body and feet such that he slid down the shallow, sandy slope beside her.

“No, it can’t have,” Gu Xiulan replied quietly. She held her head high, and gave a whistle. Over her column, the flags of the Gu clan were raised high. She had no doubt the Guo detachment could detect and identify them, but it was important to follow the etiquette of things.

“So let us greet them, and find out their reasons for spending so freely.”