Threads Interlude: Unity

Their first duty was the coordination of the evacuation orders to keep panic down and movements organized even as the sky began to warp and the hairline fractures in it grew and grew, lingering longer before they were sealed. Steam and fire drifted from the fissures.

At the head of the clans’ forces, Cai Renxiang led her people to the prepared shelters, dug in and warded under the earth. Scouts from the various clans’ forces raced across the valley, seeking out scattered lives where they could. Servants, workers, and crafters gathered and marched in columns to the shelters.

Cai Renxiang felt the energies tapped into by the imperial Geomancers in their construction of the embassy roiling under her feet. Wang Lian’s consciousness thrummed under the earth, a thin skein over its meridians, guiding power into the defenses of the shelters. With each one filled, formations flared to life, locking and sealing the shelter and empowering defenses far past normal tolerances.

The sky began to bleed. First, there was a trickling rain of stinking black mud and brackish superheated water. Then, thin torrents fell from the sky.

Through the breaking sky, a pack of hounds raced, two giant hounds at their head. Where they ran, where they howled, the sky rippled, and cool silver flames sealed shut the cracks in the world. They met the gouts of searing hot flames that erupted and kept them from scorching the valley below.

All the same, more and more cracks appeared. Torrents became waterfalls, and more than mud and ichor began to pour through. Scab-like cysts of dried mud crashed to earth, bursting open, revealing a flood of wriggling nightmares, and more and more nightmares erupted directly from the cracks in the sky. Their buzzing cry was a song of torpor and despair.

Dozens of them died squealing in the jaws of the great Luo hounds, but still more crashed to earth and writhed about, seeking destruction. They grasped after any sign of life, drinking the vitality from trees and plants, leaving behind withered husks before battering themselves into her soldiers with suicidal abandon.

It was the scent of battle that she disliked the most. The scent of blood and ichor and fouler things still was nothing but repulsive muck, dogging at her thoughts and distracting other senses. In contrast, the sights and sounds, however superficially chaotic, still painted for her a picture of order. Steps in unison showed an advance. Shields locking and clashing with the charge of a slavering horde of nightmares showed a successful defense.

It was objectively incorrect to feel that way of course, and any Luo would tell her that. Scent was simply another information stream for categorizing the world properly, one she lacked the training to filter for useful data.

She disliked it regardless.

At the road in the center of the valley, the Bao heavy armsmen, armored in thick plate encrusted with precious metals and gems, held the center of their mixed house guard formation. Stolid like the earth with halberds and shields of solid metal, they beat back the gibbering nightmares trying to overrun them. Luo skirmishers, armed with bow and knife, shadowed their path on either side of the road. Jia and Wang regulars formed the bulk of the ranks. Their spears jabbed forth in unison, and their volleyed crossbow fire was like clockwork, driving back shrieking masses of oily flesh. The handful of Diao soldiers scrounged from their token representatives at the summit darted between the heavier Bao contingent, striking out and retreating with matched pairs of curved dueling blades.

Her radiance washed out house colors and limned metal in glowing white. It settled in the creases of armor, clung to the plumes on helms, and filled the rings of mail. It lent mere second realms the strength to withstand the claws and cries and speed of nightmares. Its pulse coordinated men who had never fought together in their lives and brought them to fight as one. She could not give the guards the armaments and drilled coordination of the White Plumes, but, in her presence at least, they shone like a heavenly legion.

Radiance pulsed, scattering shadows, and the center line parted smoothly without a word from her. Her sword Cifeng came down in a textbook perfect overhand chop, and blinding light tore down the road, leaving stone which pulsed with Wang Lian’s shen unharmed but scorching nightmare flesh to ash.

“Continue withdrawal to the central embassy,” she ordered. Her voice was clipped and strident, cutting through the noise and echoing up and down the battlespace, reaching every set of ears. “Maintain a tortoise shell around civilians. Do not prioritize engagement.”

To her own ears, her voice was cold and unaffected, tyrannical in nature. But an officer could only be a tyrant when blades were drawn.

“Hoh! You hear Lady Cai’s commands, brave warriors of the forest. Take heart, for we are nearly there!”

Gan Guangli’s voice, however, boomed with enthusiasm and passion. She saw shoulders straighten and flagging qi reignite, voices rising in a dull roar of affirmation. He towered over her, a giant of white and gold metal, grinning as fiercely as he ever did behind his helm. He plucked a writhing, locust-like nightmare from the air above their heads and squeezed until it burst, the ichor burning away to acrid ash on his gleaming plate.

As a child, she had been fond of her toy soldiers. She ordered their formations, marched them to and fro, and commanded the advance and retreat while Lin Hai bemusedly nudged his own forces on the painted maps rolled out on the floor of her room. Commanding troops in the real world was not the same. Soldiers were not wood and metal to be pushed about at a whim.

She needed Gan Guangli. She could speak the language of law and academics and unravel and parry twisting words. She could stiffen spines with calm and surety. But she could not inspire normal men and women to courage and passion. She had accepted that some time ago while she was practicing her trade among the parties and shifting social scenes of the sect.

To most eyes, she was odd at best and unsettling at the worst. She thought in systems and, to her distress, had come to the conclusion that the great majority of mortals and immortals alike did not, and no amount of explanation could make them do so. In fact, most saw such efforts as condescension and insult. It was Gan Guangli and Ling Qi who could transform the turning gears of her intentions into that which could take root in others’ hearts.

Cai Renxiang could feel the shade of the house guards’ anxiety and the rush of adrenaline that made hearts pound. It was only a shadow, a squirming unpleasantness resting like a blanket over her mind. But without it, the Heavenly Legion Art would be useless. One could not guide men and women well without knowing them and their limits and where those could be exceeded.

Stolen story; please report.

A true imperial hero of the sort immortalized in every tale would rise into the air. They would shout defiance into the teeth of the world and show their unbending courage, fighting the tide by themselves, or perhaps with a few boon companions, while their forces retreated to safety behind them.

That was not Cai Renxiang.

Bells chimed softly, and light surged. Gleaming bolts seared fissures in the squealing shapes of nightmares. Shields clashed and came together in a coordinated block, and her light rippled with a prismatic sheen, her qi dyed in turn by the soldiers that it was gifted to. Halberds braced, metal crunched and the wild charge was smoothly repelled.

The small plaza was behind them, and the quiet garden in the center which her office overlooked was overgrown with overcharged qi. The warding stones paired at the road entrances blazed with intricate formations, the traceries of elegant calligraphy still orderly and beautiful.

“Right flank, open fire. Left flank, back. Center formation, rotate and narrow. Begin evacuation.” The words were barely necessary; her intent traveled with the rays of light. “Gan Guangli, rearguard.”

The earth shook under his feet as Gan Guangli bounded over the guards’ heads. The wind of his passage whipped her hair and gown alike.