Ferenike 15 - Shadows Beneath the Sun
Like always the Desert was the same. Even as the arrival of the Trial Hunters loomed closer and closer. Golden sand for
li upon
li and the baking heat of the sun, now reflecting off her new metallic skin and rose red glass nails.
She felt almost as she had before she was injured, full of energy. But even if it felt no different she could
see the changes the coffin had wrought on her body and her dantian whenever she cared to look.
Confusing.
And all this free energy left her thoughts rushing back down well trod and formerly abandoned paths, returning to old conclusions and refining them anew, taking them even further and finding new conclusions with a healed and clear perspective.
Strange and wild ideas almost, now that it was the time for
Action.
Waiting was over and all the energy she had built while doing so, all the energy
they had built was rushing free.
The sun was setting now, as she guided her camel into the orchard of trees and fields of hardy and nutritious plants which surrounded the little unnamed Oasis she had come to.
Her camel nickered softly as she walked down the yellow cobblestones towards the center of the oasis. Around her she saw the shapes of people going about their business and watching this new traveler carefully. Some were rushing towards the center, and she gave them time to do so, taking her time to breathe in the sweet air of this place and its slightly denser Qi.
The central pool of the oasis was a well crafted thing, a natural spring bubbling up from some deposit of Spirit Stones or other crystalized organ tissue, that had been shaped into a square pool with a border of smooth white stone pavers and a subtle pattern of white and blue tiles. All around this square the channels of canals and irrigation directed the water of the spring to the oasis orchards around. Trees dotted the area in little plots of soil and sand for shade.
Seated nearby the shore, resting his bare feet in the waters was a very elderly man with three brawny boys and two equally brawny women standing near his shoulders as they looked at Ferenike. They all looked related, brothers and sisters near their grandfather it seemed from the set of their faces and mouths.
The younger ones were all near the second or third Heavenstage, but the elderly man was in the fourth.
Ferenike stopped at the edge of the open plaza around the central pool and dismounted. She bowed in the direction of the elder, who had not looked at her. "May we speak Grandfather?" She said in the Third Sea dialect of the sands, using an old honorific for this man, the soft syllables tugging at her throat as they reminded her of home.
There was a taut pause for a moment and then a tiny, wheezing laugh and a shifting of old cloth and a splash. "Come closer Traveler of the Sands, come share water with us and make merry." A thready, wizened voice said. Ferenike let out a knot of tension in her chest. That was a much better welcome than she expected.
There was a smack of flesh on flesh. "Jiji, go get food, we'll have ourselves a story here." The voice continued.
"Yes papa." A quiet voice said as Ferenike straightened. One of the women, whose voice was more masculine than she might let on walked towards a small domed building nestled in the trees on the other side of the plaza.
The elderly man was straight backed, seated cross legged with his hands clasped in his lap, and his skin was craggy like the dunes and dark from the sun, so much so that his eyes seemed like small glittering gems in the shadows of his weathered face. His beard, white, hung down to his lap.
She walked closer and sat across from the grandfather in the shade of the date tree. His children, had relaxed, hands moving away from weapons as they sat and lounged behind him in positions that reminded her of big cats and how her mother and father liked to relax. Stretched out and quiescent.
They waited for a moment until the girl from before came back followed by two much smaller children of seven or eight, all of them carrying bowls and linen bags and urns which they set out around the gathering. When she was done the woman chivied off the smaller children, who couldn't take their eyes off of Ferenike and particularly her shiny glass nails without prompting and then settled with her siblings after handing the elder an empty wooden bowl.
Carefully the man leaned over and scooped some of the oasis water into the bowl and then passed it to Ferenike.
She took it in both hands and bowed over it slightly, then drank. It was refreshingly sweet and extremely cool.
She smiled. "That was very good, thank you Grandfather."
The man smiled and nodded his head in a bow of his own. "Good! Come on then everyone, grab something to eat!" He said with a clap as he reached into a small jar and dug out some dates to chew.
A flurry of controlled chaos ensued as food was passed around and soon Ferenike had a half dozen bowls laid out around her, a spread of rice and seasoned meat and fruit at her fingertips.
Savoring the food in front of her Ferenike began to speak. "Agreements have been made amongst my peers to defend ourselves against what is coming using our gathered power. We come to trade."
The elder smiled. "I am Grandfather Laosha. Name yourself girl." He said with a coaxing gesture.
"I am Ferenike of the Ninth Legion of the Golden Devils and the Sands. Daughter of Hesha, who was daughter of Ziyou, who was daughter of Shucai." She said, a little girl before her mother reciting her names again. The fire of the hearth snapped in her ears, a sharp memory.
Grandfather Laosha frowned in sympathy. "May she rest." He rubbed his chin in consideration. "The Golden Devils have done right by us. You are respectful. And I knew Ziyou and traded drinks with her more than once. Lets begin negotiations then."
And so Ferenike began to lay out a loose outline of what she needed; long keeping food, medical supplies, navigation gear, water collection arrays, and the safe locations for caches in this area west of the Uncast Molds. All valuable things for those out in the sands for long periods, but easy to make if one was prosperous and already heading out of Clan territory.
She'd seen how Laosha's grandchildren had cheekbones a bit like hers, and lighter hair than was the Third Sea norm. They were at risk. And they were leaving, heading west into the mountains and towards their hillfolk kin.
They would return but for now they could make use of the funds she had received from the gathering, ferrying it to these people. Grandfather Laosha kept talks going for more than four hours, many courses of food passing between their lips as they haggled. Around them stacks of crates, urns and long boxes containing medical supplies and fragile arrays built up as Ferenike laid out her own wealth in Spirit Stones, and other easy to transport valuables.
It was deep in the night, the stars wheeling in the clear sky and reflecting off the oasis pool so that it looked like an inky expanse of the night sky brought down into reach, when they were finally done.
"A good deal Grandfather." Ferenike said as she clasped her hands and bowed. The stack of materiel behind her was at least twice her height and packed full of medical supplies and water catch arrays and some preserved food.
He laughed. "A good deal Ferenike. You'll make a terrifying merchant one day." He said in a thready rasp, his own pile of Spirit Stones, drugs and information all gathered in a wicker basket quite a bit smaller than her pile, but slightly more valuable than what he had lost.
Now it was just them out here under the stars, his children having left to do work in the family compound she could dimly see.
"My family will do well with these and be strong enough to make it to the hills." He said with satisfaction.
"You do not expect to return to the Sands." Ferenike said solemnly.
He shook his head. "I'm old and weathered girl. This'll be my last trip west, and my bones will return to the Sands." He stood, cracking his back with staccato pops. "Go, stay here as you like for a day. There's a room open for you, Jiji will have left a marker on it." He offered.
She smiled, glass teeth dim in the starlight. "I'll be training out here Grandfather till dawn I think. I'll rest when the sun rises." She told him.
He shrugged. "Feel free!" And walked towards his home with a jaunty step and a whistle, his basket under one arm. She gathered up her own goods into her storage ring.
Ferenike then waited until he was gone, taking in the air of the oasis and relishing the slightly denser Qi. She already had plans to visit oases like this one when it came time for her to form the Oasis Formation.
Now however, it was time for
training.
She took up a stance of Legion Standard, feet shoulder width apart with one in front. One hand and arm a spear held out, the other a shield held close. She practiced her strikes, hands stabbing out as a mantra ran through her head.
Make of your hands spears.
Strike. Strike. Strike.
There was only her feet on the ground. Strike.
Her body moving like a well oiled machine. Strike.
The energy within her, flooding down well carved channels. Strike.
Slowly she tried to align her channels, untangling them and shaping them so that the energy flowing from her feet and dantian, up and out through her fingertips erupted in one ferocious blow.
She remembered what she had done to Zu Jing and the vision of thousands upon thousands of soldiers invading his body
vividly.
As she struck again and again her mind sank into her body, the hyper awareness of her bloodline rising up and consuming her mind's eye. Sinking through her skin and muscle and tendon, to the veins that ran through and around everything and her little glass soldiers, each a single flake of glass invisible to the naked eye flowing through them.
All of them marching to the flow of her Qi. It was a little like drilling she realized, training every tiny part of her body to move how she wished it to. Made more complicated by each action needing to be unique. Again and again she moved, watching how her body executed the blow.
Hanging above her Dantian was an image of a technique, an Invasion of the enemy's body and the destruction of their meridians and acupoints and tissues. She'd done a very simple and incomplete form of it before and she knew how to do it again, but she wanted more. Something that could pierce even the hardest flesh, creating a breach for her inner armies to march within and destroy them.
Slowly as the stars wheeled over head it became clear that her body could move perfectly, down to the last speck of glassy blood, directed by her will without error. Again and again she could achieve what she had done to Zu Jing, molten glass beading on the tips of her fingers. She could go further, stronger and faster and she did it again and again. But as she came to realize, she was not strong enough to go even further than that.
Her Qi was not dense enough, fast enough, and the volume of its flow insufficient. The technique was incomplete. Patiently she worked at it, repeating the move over and over as she examined herself, no longer refining the action, but instead trying to see what she was missing.
And she could not see where the failure was, as Qi cycled up from her dantian and her rooted stance, up through her lungs and past her heart, and then along her arm and out her fingertips.
She let go.
Invasion!
A bright red glass spear flew from her hands, launched from ten thousand soldiers. It sailed over the trees and out of the oasis entirely. She breathed in, taking Qi from the air and cycling it through her body as she replaced what she had expended.
She took another breath, feeling the Qi of the air settling in her lungs, and she had an idea. Changing her breathing she opened a connection between the Qi of the air and her body, like her breath trick to create sandstorms, one long and great
breath. Qi surged through her, her skin and muscles and her little soldiers soaking in the energy. She felt like she was a tuning fork.
Again!
This time she was closer, her blows slicing through the air and her spears soaring even higher, seeming to rise towards the Heavens like birds. But still not strong enough, no matter how much she tried.
She was still missing something. She kept practicing, the mosaic in her mind shifting and clacking as her thoughts raced onwards, almost ignoring her body now.
She needed a stronger technique. She herself could become stronger by breaking through to the next stage, she could gain the ability to grasp more Qi and the skill to channel more of it at once, some alteration of the Qi distribution that increased the raw piercing ability of the technique.
But none of those felt right. The frisson of energy in gunmetal and rose glass dantian pushed her on to look at what she already had, and what she had was a bloodline that in some ways exemplified the idea of humans being made of an incredible variety of distinct parts. Each of her small muscles, every pore on her skin, every vein, every little glass soldier working together.
A wild fancy took her. Setting her feet she took another great
breath and aligning her body she struck again, this time diverting some Qi to settle within her tiny blood glass soldiers instead of leaving them. Trying to strengthen a part of the process of the technique.
There was a loud
bang as the spear shot away into the sky, trailing whipping winds, and her arm screamed at her in pain as part of her blood exploded. She hissed, stopping and clutching her arm. Examining it she could see a deep purple bruise beginning to develop on her forearm near her elbow, where the little glass soldiers that made up her blood had outright exploded under the Qi invested into them.
She went back over what had happened, the memories crystal clear in her mind. Qi had flowed into them, stopping and then building up and enhancing the little flakes of glass making them better at harnessing and directing Qi and improving the power of the spear as they were invested into it. Those that had remained in her arm had almost seemed to glimmer before exploding in a little burst of light.
Looking closely at the bruise using her heightened awareness she saw her veins and soldiers moving to repair the damaged and split veins and capillaries, each flake of glass carrying Qi which soothed the pain and broke up the clotting and damaged blood. And within them were some glimmers, shimmering grains, tiny soldiers which had survived the blast and been changed.
They were invested with Qi now...
"Interesting technique there. How long have you been working on it?" The wispy voice of Grandfather Laoshu appeared suddenly, the first light of dawn beginning to intrude and silhouette him.
She didn't break her focus on what she was thinking, her mouth absentmindedly answering. "Twenty years or so..."
The little soldiers that made up her blood which had survived the blast were faster, better able to handle Qi and move it to places where it could heal her. And they didn't seem to be losing the Qi invested into them as they moved under her direction, increasing her capacity. Maybe the analogy of soldier had more truth to it than she thought.
Because that almost seemed like cultivation.
Wonder bloomed in her chest as her brain stopped in the face of this little impossibility. "Huh."
"Realize something?" Grandfather Laoshu asked as he stood patiently besides her.
She nodded as she rubbed at her arm, the pain easing. Maybe more than one thing.
"You want some advice from an old man?" He asked her.
She looked up at his weathered face, brow raised curiously. "Yes Grandfather?"
He gestured in the direction of where she had been launching her spears. "Work with the world." He said simply.
She looked towards where he had pointed and thought about his words and she smiled. Definitely more than one realization. She'd have to work to make them a reality however.
"Thank you Grandfather. I think I'll rest now" She said as she turned to head towards his home and a bed. She had a lot to sleep and meditate on and then after that even more work to do.
He smiled, wrinkles folding happily and began to lead her back to his home. "Let me show you an open bed then." He told her.
@occipitallobe here's another omake! Another Fate supplemental please. Already having a ton of fun with this.
