Not sure if I want to vote to disagree or vote for the current Negotiate vote. Instead I'll write an Omake!
Ferenike 3 - Mortals and Direction
In the wake of Archegetes Konstantinos's battle with Child Corpse Gulper, the Golden Devil Clan moved to enact resettlement and reconstruction of the shattered regions in the Burnished Crags and Uncast Molds. Ferenike's squad of the Ninth Centuria under Centurion Dragoumis were currently stationed in Water Wings and Golden Tile City in the Burnished Crags. Not the most original name in Ferenike's opinion, but it was usefully literal as the entire city was swathed with golden sandstone tiles for its streets and on its roofs. It gave a sort of blended shimmer to the concentric rings of the city, rising steadily higher and higher till it towered like a man made mountain around the central Legion Fort and barracks which hung around the spire of the Colonial Magistrate's Palace like an armored cloak.
They were here to support crime mitigation and bandit security with the rest of the Century, though given her squad's status as relatively fresh trainees they were kept within the bounds of the city and its direct environs within five
li as was current Legion policy after the truce with the Cannibals. Couldn't be too careful and all that.
That was all the important official stuff. Right
now though Ferenike, Tiu and Nan were racing over the golden tiled rooves after a criminal in the second Heavenstage for stealing someone's coin purse and clothing. Markus and Gallius were ahead, moving to cut off the woman thief's flight. They'd spotted the fleeing woman as she bulled through the tea shop they were having lunch in. Tiu had ended up with a soup bowl over turned on his head as an eruption of debris and various flying dishware followed the criminal, and the poor boy was still pulling noodles off from around his ears and his black hair glinted with broth.
The mortals below were pointing up and calling out as they watched their antics, a mixture of excited screams and laughter. It brought a smile to Ferenike's face.
Ferenike's Qi boiled pleasantly under the light of the noonday Sun, humming along pleasantly as the flame of her Qi settled into her blood. Something she'd discovered after that strange night was that her Qi seemed to respond positively, very slightly stronger and more easily controlled, when she was near a source of heat. Didn't help with much else but slightly narrowing down the lists of possible bloodlines, but she'd take it for what it was, progress and reward for her patience.
Lightfooted steps rushing across the tiles with a staccato clatter Ferenike reached out to one of the Water Wings, a tall Spirit Steel pole with multiple protrusions modeled after an eagle's feather sticking from it with an array embedded in it that gathered and channeled water into the city's plumbing. She grabbed its shaft and spun around it, flinging herself after the thief as the criminal dropped off of the roof and to a lower balcony running along a shorter building.
Ferenike dropped to the balcony railing with a clank of her armor and charged after the woman in front of her, her ill-gotten goods flapping in the wind as she ran without looking back at her pursuers. To Ferenike's right, desert cacti and flowering shrugs grew in a long line and she swiped up a cactus pot in one hand.
With a grunt of effort she hucked the thing at the fleeing cultivator. With a crash and a yelp of surprise the pot and spiky plant smacked into the woman's back and caused her to tumble forward awkwardly. Ferenike surged forward, pouring hot qi into her legs. Twin thumps told her her companions were right behind her.
Then the thief didn't fall, tucking forward into a somesault and then something glinting bright lashed out across the intervening space and wrapped around Ferenike's leg. With a mighty jerk as she completed her roll the thief yanked Ferenike off her feet and sent her sailing over her curled back and off the end of the balcony and down towards the street.
"Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttt..."
Ferenike screamed as she fell head first, arms flailing. Before she could correct she landed in an open trash bin with a wet
splat.
Ugh.
Her mouth was full of fruit rinds that tasted like rotten meat. She wiggled fiercely, trying to right herself and get out of the bin, but all she accomplished was flailing her legs from where they stuck up out of the heap of trash near the butt of her spear.
"Tiu, after her! Ferenike you alright!?" Ferenike could distantly hear Nan shouting, somewhat muffled by the rotting slightly jellied animal skin jammed into her ears. She tried to speak and coughed as a variety of terrible things reached her taste buds.
"Oh dear that was a spill. One moment let me getcha outta there." A wizened woman's voice said as firm hands gripped her legs and pulled harshly. Ferenike, able to get one hand under her head after her wiggling pushed, and together their efforts caused her to pop out and flop to the ground with a wet smack.
A clatter of steps heralded Nan, her red eyes concerned. "Are you okay!"
Ferenike waved a hand and coughed out a yellowish peel of
something she didn't want to think about too much.
To her right was a elderly mortal woman in her fifties or so, grey haired, and with arms like thick timbers beneath her dark skin. She laughed. "Like pulling up Spirit Turnips. Come ere dearie, up you get." She said as she grabbed Ferenike by the shoulder and yanked her upright. As the girl wobbled unsteadily, using her spear to balance herself, the older woman patted her on the head and dusted her off.
"Blech!" Ferenike wretched as she spat out something meaty looking and nodded at the grandmotherly woman.
"Thank you grandmother." She said with a bow as she waved Nan away with a Legion signal to keep going after the thief. The silver haired girl hopped away rapidly, bouncing up to the roofs.
The dark skin woman laughed. "I ain't no grandmother yet, call me Auntie Caliope. Now," She gave her a firm pat between the shoulders, "Off you get dear. Don't want to loose that thief now do ya?"
Ferenike smiled and dashed away with a wave. "Bye Auntie!" she shouted back as she bounded up between the walls of two buildings.
She quickly caught up to Nan, putting her slightly longer legs to use hopping after her faster as they ran along a curving roof towards the city center and the next ring. Ahead Ferenike could hear Tiu shouting as he fought with the thief. Beyond him about two blocks away she could see the spire which marked the direction Markus and Gallius would be moving from.
Her and Nan leapt up and over a lip at the end of the roof and came down in a rooftop plaza. Assessing the situation happened in an eye blink for Ferenike, as Tiu struggled against the wires wrapping around his right arm and leg as the other woman puppeted him towards the edge of the roof.
Nan exploded forward, low to the ground as she lunged for the 2nd Heavenstage cultivator. Ferenike could see a sour frown under the rim of the thief's large circular hat, green and blue in the striped style of the southern desert. Nan slammed into the wires and grabbed them up, Qi sparking from the contact. That frown turned into a yelp of surprise as Ferenike shot forward and bounced up and off of Nan's crouched back, her spear flying for the other cultivator's face.
With a circling swipe of both of her arms she pushed Ferenike's spear aside and was forced to let go of the wires holding Tiu. Ferenike followed the momentum of the blow, flying through the air and rolling. As Nan came in low, sweeping her spear out in a scything arc, Ferenike and Tiu came high from two different directions with their own spears. As the wire cultivator spun in the air, bouncing off of Nan's spear tip, she could see the fear in the older woman's green eyes, peering out from between dark bangs from bronzed skin. Not the bronze of the clan, but the bronze of the deep south in Hong Xuan.
Ferenike and Tiu's spears were each knocked aside, flying in opposite directions, they both saw Nan flash a signal.
Scorpion. Ferenike spun with the momentum of her spear as Tiu let out a kiai and pressed in on the thief. Nan came in high, forcing the enemy to look at her and Ferenike used the opportunity to begin to circle around, spear held high and ready for when the other cultivator fled.
It was on her third circuit around the battle, throwing in the occasional jab to relieve pressure for the others, that the wire cultivator had enough and reaching into her kimono top threw down some kind of pellets. They exploded into noxious smelling green smoke and then there was a thud and a shout from Tiu before he flew out of the smoke and Nan stepped back out of it sneezing. Ferenike noted them in a tiny corner of her attention as the rest watched.
There! She jumped forward as a shadow shot out of the crowd, and her shoulder slammed into the gut of the wire cultivator.
"Fucking...!" The woman shouted in a deep voice and then the both of them were careening off the edge of the roof.
Dammit. That was not intended, she overshot!
Wrapping an arm around the other cultivator as they spun end over end through the air towards the road below, Ferenike ignored the punches the woman was landing on her helmeted head, tucked as it was into the woman's shoulder to limit damage and lashed out with her spear.
It sliced into the brickwork of a shop facing across the street and their fall slowed with an extremely sharp jerk! The momentum caused them to keep sliding down and Ferenike's feet slammed into the siding, slowing it further. The fucking bitch she was hanging onto though was raining blows like iron hammers on her back though.
Then she twisted like an eel and before Ferenike could twist out of the way the woman grabbed the back of her helmet and lifted her head so that she could slam a fist into Ferenike's nose. She felt a very gross and painful
crunch. The Legionnaire shouted in pain and flinched back, skidding down the side of the building as the thief bounced away towards an alley.
That didn't stop Ferenike for very long and she was right on the woman's heels, her brief head start having disappeared as the thief reached the mouth of the alley. There was a sudden sweep of something at head and ankle height and a very loud pair of
thunks. The 2nd Heavenstage cultivator collapsed like a sack of rocks flat onto her back, holding her broken nose.
"'Ey guys, ook oo fukin long 'nough." Ferenike griped, her throat full of blood and snot. "Hggh bwoke mah nose." Reaching up to it as she walked towards the emerging Markus and Gallius, their spears in their hands and shields on their backs. Gripping it she gave it a firm
yank.
The spike of pain cleared the last of her daze from her head and caused her to cough up a big glob of messy blood.
"Guh, fuck... As I was saying. She broke my nose." Ferenike said to the too of them, face painted with blood as she they surrounded the groaning woman.
She had a hand to her head and a massive welt starting up across her forehead.
"I can see that." Markus said with a wince. Gallius sighed and then looked up with a wave behind Ferenike, his spear generally pointed in the downed woman's direction.
"Nan, Tiu, over here!" The stout boy yelled in his deep baritone.
Two thumps behind them and Ferenike looked back. There they were, Tiu picking the last bit of a sprig of spice out of his hair.
He winced. "Yikes Fere that looks absolutely awful."
She twitched. Before she could react though the thief gave an abortive lurch and then a cough.
"Aghhh... alright alright you jumped up grasshoppers, I yield." She got out, voice woozy with pain.
Markus smiled ominously. "Good! Up you come then, Fere get the rope please?"
Ohhhhh she was gonna get the both of them.
Thoughts of pranks aside, they managed to get the woman bound up and carted off to a nearby Legion watch station and handed off to the 4th Heavenstage fellow on duty for processing and a trial.
Later that night they were heading home to their bunks after passing through medical where very nice nurses poked at her nose and then slapped a small bandage on it with a healing array attached.
Outside the med hall the rest of them waited. Before anyone could react she rushed up to Tiu and Markus and snaping out her arms got them both wrapped in headlocks, jamming them under her armpits with a pair of surprised yelps. "Nooooooow, what did I say about calling me '
Fere'..." She said ominously as she loomed over the two struggling boys.
"Don't do it, it's cutesy!/It makes you seem too cute!" They said at once.
She smirked darkly. "Yesssss..." She said with a terrifying hiss.
Then she cackled and let them each go with a peck on their hair and a slap across the back of the head.
As they fled from her grip she put her hand on her chin in a facsimile of a high born lady and said with an extremely faux haughty tone.
"I am of course much more than extremely cute. I am obviously
beautiful." She said with a flutter of her eyelashes.
There was a pause. Then Nan lost it, giggling hiccups filling the waiting room, and it was hopeless from there as everyone descended into giggles.
Their fun was broken as the door popped open and a bundle of something smacked into the back of Ferenike's head. "Oi you pack of jackals, go heck it up somewhere else! Patients are trying to sleep!" The grumpy nurse said as he picked up the bundle of cloth.
"Sorry sir!" They chorused and then made their escape.
Their cackling and jokes meandered as they did out of the barracks and eventually back into the neighborhood where they had caught the thief. It turned out Auntie Caliope ran a bar with a
mean curry, with a discount 'for the Legion children', with a drum band playing on the place's stage on the second floor and filling the whole building with sound.
A round of drinks was purchased with some of their leave currency, little bits of black jade scrip and slivers cut from a larger block, and they settled in around the booth. Ferenike was squished right in the middle between everyone, as was usually the case, with Gallius and Tiu on her left and Markus and Nan on her right.
"Gods that was a weird day. That tea shop looked like a bull went through it didn't it guys?" Ferenike mused as she held her sake bowl between two fingers.
Nan nodded, sipping heavily from her own bowl, as Markus and Gallius leaned across the table to arm wrestle, their sake already drunk. As the one unoccupied Tiu answered in his smooth mid voice. "I hope the proprietor is okay," He shook his head, "I'm pretty sure that was a variant of a Western Green Aurochs Style technique, the small horizontal tornado following her was a dead give away." He snorted as he ran a finger through his hair, obviously remembering how that soup got upended by said vortex.
Bang! "Hah! I win again Markus!" Gallius shouted as he slammed Markus's arm to the table, making all the bottles on it jump, and then threw up his hands in victory. Ferenike leaned forward again and reclaimed her part of the table as the two boys broke up.
Markus slumped, resting his head on the table. "Spirits damn you, you monster. What the fuck do you eat to be that fat and yet that strong?" Their erstwhile leader moaned.
Gallius chuckled, slapping his belly, a very thin layer of fat over reams of muscle. "Family secret recipes." He said in a whisper, holding a finger to his nose. "Buuuuuut, I could perhaps... invite you all over again?"
"YES!/Please god yes!/If you don't I'll murder you!/Yaaaaaay!" The rest of the squad exploded into pleas of joy at the thought of the Armenicus's cooking.
"Okay okay okay I will I will I promise, when we get back to the Fortress I'll do it, you pack of starving vultures I swear!" He said with a laugh as he held his hands up defensively.
With that sorted out the squad settled into companionable silence, somewhat huddled together in the booth as they drank. In the silence Ferenike looked out over the city from their position on a balcony on the third floor. It was a tangled, thick warren of streets set to obscure Legion defense patterns, channeling enemy invaders into kill zones and array traps. The rooves slowly rose as they approached the wall and the buildings were spaced such as to provide sightlines for both those on the rooves and the walls with bows and javelins and other devices.
Throughout it all though, the thing that really caught Ferenike's attention was all of the mortals. Water Wing and Golden Tile City had maybe eighty thousand in it with constant construction under way as it expanded and people emigrated in from the Core Territories. It was more people, mortals in particular, than she was used to seeing outside the Fortress. Her nomadic family tended to stay somewhat apart from the cities, surviving via knowledge of oases and the caravan trade overseen by the Golden Devils, and their children in particular weren't really let into the city.
The Fortress had been the largest congregation of people she had seen in her life, hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of people, most of them cultivators of some stripe. But here it was different.
The taste in the air and the tone of distant conversations she could hear, held a completely different tenor or atmosphere. If she was honest she felt relaxed here. The people around her were admirable in their happiness and downright cheery. She could imagine herself walking in amongst them as one of them in complete comfort.
"...ey, hey Ferenike. Hellllloooooo wake up girl." She blinked as Nan snapped her green painted nails in front of her nose.
Ferenike snorted and pushed her comrade's hand out of her face. "Feh I was thinking! Can't I do that?" She groused, bringing her sake up and taking a big gulp.
"Spacing out more like." The other girl snorted.
"Anyway we were talking about cultivation goals and were wondering about you? I want to get to tenth and then break through, works best with my family teachings my mom says." Markus said as he leaned back against the booth, arms spread, waving a hand as he talked.
"Yeah, and I want to get to ninth and move on if I have the time." Nan demurred.
Gallius shrugged. "Ninth would be good for me too, though I'll be surprised if I make it to break through." He said quietly.
Hmm. She hadn't thought about it much truth be told, face scrunching up as she peered into the dregs in her sake bowl.
"...wait, you haven't thought about it? Seriously Fere? Oh my ancestors this dork!" Nan shouted as she threw up her hands in exasperation.
"Hey hey hey I
have, just give me two seconds to string it all together proper-like!" Ferenike shouted back as the others sniggered.
She huffed and refiled her bowl, then swigged it all down in one go before sighing.
"Alright, alright. So, while I was poking around in the archives a couple months ago, this would be before Agatha had that little accident for your information, I ran across a reference to a stage in Foundation Establishment called 'the Emperor's Pillar'. And that was pretty much it, no information anywhere else, just a little dinky reference in an out of the way textbook on Turtle World history from a Clan perspective." The yellow haired girl shrugged.
"I want to get to 12th Heavenstage first and then, well, we'll see from there." She finished sheepishly.
There was silence around the table, and then a chorous of ooohs. Tiu smirked while the others smiled. "I see we have a very ambitious Clan sister amongst us. I say, this calls for a toast!" He said, lifting his bowl and standing. The others followed him, Markus and Gallius pulling Ferenike up as well as grabbing bottles. "To us! The best trainees in the Ninth Century in the Ninth Legion!" He said.
Everyone lifted their bowls and shouted "A toast to the Ninth!", the echoes ringing out into the night sky.
@occipitallobe another omake for you! A supplemental for my fate roll this time and I'll mark down where Ferenike is intending to go on her cultivation goals for you on my Background sheet. Hope you enjoyed! This was quite fun to write.
