- Location
- Earth
Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
deadcrystal
Slaaneshi Cultist
- Location
- The Warp
I didn't remember that one even existing let alone training and equipping it, so I will give you that one.
NoxOfUmbra
Shadow of the night
- Location
- Colombia, South América
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Late, tally already locked, [ ] Even walking alone, footfalls echo beyond your hearing won
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
When it comes to narrative impact it's very much a personal reader thing, which is why the argument is so hard to express. HDW did have a lot of scenes where it was used, while CDE didn't... but those scenes might not have had much of an impact on any given person reading them.
That, and there is multiple type of narrative impact. For example, FSS took over in 'subtle' clues like freezing her tea when she is stressed and so on.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
Inserted tally
Journey to the East: Part 1
Gu Xiulan ran her fingers along the curve of the carved jade tongue of flame. It was a simple piece, but masterful work for a third realm talisman. Her family's carvers and jewelers could not have done better. Ling Qi really had come far, to commission a piece such as this. Though it's purpose… her friend still had such little propriety. Gu Xiulan let out a huff as she let the pendant drop and rest against her chest. Composing a song like that for her… people were going to talk.
Well let them, she thought with a huff. She may not be the sort of woman her mother would have preferred, but Xiulan had learned her lessons well enough. Let the gossips do as they liked, she would roast them with words as well as she could flames.
"I bet you could get away with setting at least a few of them on fire," Linhuo giggled. The fairy manifested as a warmth radiating from the center of her chest, setting Xiulan at ease. "Maybe just one? Strong statements are important!"
Xiulan smiled faintly. Linhuo was a quick study, if a little direct. She wasn't entirely wrong either, if she was going to do this, to lean into a more masculine demeanor, throwing down a challenge or two would hardly go amiss. Strength needed no explanation.
The carriage jerked to a stop then, and Xiulan looked up from her gloved hands in startlement. The interior of the carriage shook, sending the silk curtains fluttering. In her soul, sparks began to burn. "Captain Yun, what is going on out there," she called flicking the curtain aside to peer out.
The man she was speaking too was peering ahead with a frown. An old man well into his second century. Sho Yun sat astride a black furred charger and wore the regalia of the Gu. Polished armor enameled with red and gold, with twin feather plumes atop his helm. A cultivator at the sixth step of the third realm, he had been the guardian of the Gu family's children for many decades. His face showed his age in a way few cultivators did, and was marked by deep wrinkles and weathered by sun and wind.
"Lady Gu, my scouts have reported a disturbance ahead," the old man replied, lowering his head. "We have Walkers ahead assaulting the village we were meant to stop at."
"What in the world are these borderlanders doing," Xiulan said with an exasperated frown. She peered outside. They were beyond the borders of Emerald Seas at this point but not by much. The land here was mostly flat, a stony plain marked by scrub brush, the occasional withered tree and little bubbling streams. If she squinted, she could see smoke rising in the distance. "You would think that they could handle the stragglers the rest of us have already culled."
"I cannot say Lady Gu," Captain Yun replied blandly. "If the Lady will excuse us. I and the others will move forward to assist…"
She gave the old man a hard look. "Captain, you are not implying that I am to stay behind are you. Do you think me a coward or a child?"
Sho Yun's expression was difficult to read behind the snarling face mask of his helmet, but it was easy enough to read the resignation in his eyes. Honestly this was the problem with retainers like him, they could never acknowledge when their charges has grown up. "Of course not Lady Gu, I merely believed the incursion beneath your attention."
"Well it is not," Xiulan sniffed. "I will not shirk my duties. Saddle my horse and prepare to ride out."
The old man thumped an armored fist against his breastplate and lowered his head. To his credit, he did not question her further, and instead immediately turned to bawling out his men to speed their preparations.
"Oh what fun! I was getting tired of the carriage!" Linhuo chirped.
Xiulan smirked, standing to emerge from the carriage. Father had sent only a small detachment out to receive her, a mere twenty men, though they were all veterans she noted clinically, older men and women of the second realm. Within moments a horse had been readied for her, a slim mare with an ash grey coat marked by sparking embers. She swung herself into the saddle with only a little hesitation. It had been more than a year since she had ridden, but one never really forgot.
Father's riding lessons had been one of the rare moments when the head of the Gu clan had been able to make time for his daughters. Very soon, the soldiers of Gu had gathered on the road ahead.
"Men, Vermillion Two formation," the captain barked harshly. "Lady Gu, take the center if you would."
Gu Xiulan tossed her hair proudly and did as he asked, trotted her mount to the center of the forming wedge while the captain took the front, a heavy golden spear materializing in his grasp. This too was a maneuver she knew from lessons, though she had never taken part in the real thing.
Yes, whatever anyone said, she was not a child. She was a Lady of the Gu clan. She was second only to her sister among her whole generation. Fire was her blood, in battle she thrived. On her shoulder a slender figure of pure flame and crackling lightning materialized, and the heat rising from her skin began to distort the air. Beneath her her horse whinnied tossing it's mane and stamping, kicking up dully glowing red sparks.
"Forward!" Captain Yun roared, and the formation moved.
Xiulan's grin grew, taking on a manic edge as she felt the qi of her Father's soldiers swirling around her. The soldiers of Argent Sect were well trained, but in the end, they were not Gu clan soldiers. She breathed in and the fire within her roared as she drank in the vibrant tinder of the Vermillion Formation Art. Her hair caught fire, flickering tongues of blue and white dancing in the rising heat, and all around her the dull sparks kicked up by a score of hoofbeats roared into a conflagration.
The world blurred by as the Gu clan's Ash-Mane Chargers reached their full galloping speed. The wind rushed past her, and Gu Xiulan wondered briefly if this was how it felt to fly. It took mere minutes to close the remaining distance. Cresting the last little hill that stood between them and the village.
It was a tiny settlement, little more than a rest stop on a long trade route, a few dozen buildings surrounded by a low stone palisade. Yet the gates were already broken open, and even now the Walkers surged through, screams rose from inside the village, but the attackers themselves moved in eerie silence.
Ash Walkers were the bane of Golden Fields, and had been since the Cataclysm. The unquiet remains of both the Twilight King's armies and soldiers of the empire slain in the final blast, their numbers were without end. They wore the shapes of men from days past, withered and skeletal, wearing the tattered and melted remains of armor and tabards, and where they walked, the world was cold. In contrast to the burning heat of the desert, the Walkers drank heat in and were as cold as death.
Of course, as the Gu clan had proven many times over the millenia, that did not mean that they did not burn. Around her soldiers lowered their spears. They were heavy things, with wide barbed blades. Not meant to merely punch through armor, but to shatter and crush. These were the foes they were made for, enemies who cared not for wounds or punctured hearts.
Gu Xiulan released the reigns of her mount, trusting the beast charge with the others and raised her hands above her head, where blinding tongues of white flame began to curl up her fingers. Pain shot through her damaged arm, but she had long since learned to ignore that. Power poured into her hands, not just from her own dantian, but from the men around her, the flows of the Vermilion Formation art refining and fusing the power of a score of men into sheer blazing heat. The horses whinnied and manes burst into flames, heavenly sparks danced on the tips of spears. Sparks and embers danced around her raised hands.
Lances of flame struck from the heavens, bolts of boiling sunlight that struck withered dusty flesh and reduced it back to ash in but an instant. By the time the rear of the Walker formation had begun to turn, slow and ponderous, a score of their number had been reduced to ashen smears.
It was only then as they began to thunder down the hill that Xiualn noticed an irregularity. The undead pouring into the village were bunching up in the mains street, as if stymied by something, charging bodies piling up in a mass of cold dead flesh. For a moment, she thought she caught a glimpse of red.
Then she heard it, over the sound of screams and splintering wood, over the thunder of hooves and the crackle of lightning, a voice boomed.
"OOORRRA!!!!"
The mass of ash creatures piling up in the center street shattered, broken bodies rocketing into the sky as if fired from catapults, trailing ash. She saw one crash down on the side of the road, it's crumpled armor and ancient bones exploding into powder and fragments from the force of the impact, hundreds of meters from where it had been launched.
Then, she had no more time to think as her formation struck the rear of the enemy force with a boom of heat and thunder. A golden spear spun, and the ancient dead shattered as it's weidler crashed through their lines like a burning comet. Lesser spears tore skeletons and walking corpses in half and burning hooves pounded what was left to dust. She could worry about allies later, right now these corpses needed to burn.
Gu Xiulan let out a whooping war cry of her own to join her soldiers and spread her hands, where twin white suns had been born. On her shoulder, Linhuo laughed and laughed as the conflagration grew.
It did not take long for the battle to end. There had been few Walkers, a mere handful of hundreds, barely enough to give them the awareness of beasts, this far from the Grave. So it was not long before the question of the mysterious fighter was answered.
He was tall, as tall as Ling Qi with wide shoulders and a veritable mane of auburn hair. He had stood in the path of their charge in the main street as it ground to a halt, crouch atop a small mountain of crushed Walkers. He was barefoot, wearing only a dusty and travelworn brown robe, and over his shoulders rested a long staff carved from red wood. Only the band of gold around his forehead showed any wealth.
"Ho there, thanks for the assist!" He called as she and the soldiers who had remained in the center pulled up to a halt. "It took a little while for me to wake up, so these buggers were already through the gates by the time I'd rolled outta bed."
Oh dear, Gu Xiulan thought, taking in the wild looking young man, he looked younger than her sister but his cultivation was a match for Captain Yun's.
"But this is convenient! You're Gu clan aren'tcha? I'm Zheng Nan, and I'm on my way to talk to your head man."
AN: And a commission piece to tide ya'll over till tomorrow
Well let them, she thought with a huff. She may not be the sort of woman her mother would have preferred, but Xiulan had learned her lessons well enough. Let the gossips do as they liked, she would roast them with words as well as she could flames.
"I bet you could get away with setting at least a few of them on fire," Linhuo giggled. The fairy manifested as a warmth radiating from the center of her chest, setting Xiulan at ease. "Maybe just one? Strong statements are important!"
Xiulan smiled faintly. Linhuo was a quick study, if a little direct. She wasn't entirely wrong either, if she was going to do this, to lean into a more masculine demeanor, throwing down a challenge or two would hardly go amiss. Strength needed no explanation.
The carriage jerked to a stop then, and Xiulan looked up from her gloved hands in startlement. The interior of the carriage shook, sending the silk curtains fluttering. In her soul, sparks began to burn. "Captain Yun, what is going on out there," she called flicking the curtain aside to peer out.
The man she was speaking too was peering ahead with a frown. An old man well into his second century. Sho Yun sat astride a black furred charger and wore the regalia of the Gu. Polished armor enameled with red and gold, with twin feather plumes atop his helm. A cultivator at the sixth step of the third realm, he had been the guardian of the Gu family's children for many decades. His face showed his age in a way few cultivators did, and was marked by deep wrinkles and weathered by sun and wind.
"Lady Gu, my scouts have reported a disturbance ahead," the old man replied, lowering his head. "We have Walkers ahead assaulting the village we were meant to stop at."
"What in the world are these borderlanders doing," Xiulan said with an exasperated frown. She peered outside. They were beyond the borders of Emerald Seas at this point but not by much. The land here was mostly flat, a stony plain marked by scrub brush, the occasional withered tree and little bubbling streams. If she squinted, she could see smoke rising in the distance. "You would think that they could handle the stragglers the rest of us have already culled."
"I cannot say Lady Gu," Captain Yun replied blandly. "If the Lady will excuse us. I and the others will move forward to assist…"
She gave the old man a hard look. "Captain, you are not implying that I am to stay behind are you. Do you think me a coward or a child?"
Sho Yun's expression was difficult to read behind the snarling face mask of his helmet, but it was easy enough to read the resignation in his eyes. Honestly this was the problem with retainers like him, they could never acknowledge when their charges has grown up. "Of course not Lady Gu, I merely believed the incursion beneath your attention."
"Well it is not," Xiulan sniffed. "I will not shirk my duties. Saddle my horse and prepare to ride out."
The old man thumped an armored fist against his breastplate and lowered his head. To his credit, he did not question her further, and instead immediately turned to bawling out his men to speed their preparations.
"Oh what fun! I was getting tired of the carriage!" Linhuo chirped.
Xiulan smirked, standing to emerge from the carriage. Father had sent only a small detachment out to receive her, a mere twenty men, though they were all veterans she noted clinically, older men and women of the second realm. Within moments a horse had been readied for her, a slim mare with an ash grey coat marked by sparking embers. She swung herself into the saddle with only a little hesitation. It had been more than a year since she had ridden, but one never really forgot.
Father's riding lessons had been one of the rare moments when the head of the Gu clan had been able to make time for his daughters. Very soon, the soldiers of Gu had gathered on the road ahead.
"Men, Vermillion Two formation," the captain barked harshly. "Lady Gu, take the center if you would."
Gu Xiulan tossed her hair proudly and did as he asked, trotted her mount to the center of the forming wedge while the captain took the front, a heavy golden spear materializing in his grasp. This too was a maneuver she knew from lessons, though she had never taken part in the real thing.
Yes, whatever anyone said, she was not a child. She was a Lady of the Gu clan. She was second only to her sister among her whole generation. Fire was her blood, in battle she thrived. On her shoulder a slender figure of pure flame and crackling lightning materialized, and the heat rising from her skin began to distort the air. Beneath her her horse whinnied tossing it's mane and stamping, kicking up dully glowing red sparks.
"Forward!" Captain Yun roared, and the formation moved.
Xiulan's grin grew, taking on a manic edge as she felt the qi of her Father's soldiers swirling around her. The soldiers of Argent Sect were well trained, but in the end, they were not Gu clan soldiers. She breathed in and the fire within her roared as she drank in the vibrant tinder of the Vermillion Formation Art. Her hair caught fire, flickering tongues of blue and white dancing in the rising heat, and all around her the dull sparks kicked up by a score of hoofbeats roared into a conflagration.
The world blurred by as the Gu clan's Ash-Mane Chargers reached their full galloping speed. The wind rushed past her, and Gu Xiulan wondered briefly if this was how it felt to fly. It took mere minutes to close the remaining distance. Cresting the last little hill that stood between them and the village.
It was a tiny settlement, little more than a rest stop on a long trade route, a few dozen buildings surrounded by a low stone palisade. Yet the gates were already broken open, and even now the Walkers surged through, screams rose from inside the village, but the attackers themselves moved in eerie silence.
Ash Walkers were the bane of Golden Fields, and had been since the Cataclysm. The unquiet remains of both the Twilight King's armies and soldiers of the empire slain in the final blast, their numbers were without end. They wore the shapes of men from days past, withered and skeletal, wearing the tattered and melted remains of armor and tabards, and where they walked, the world was cold. In contrast to the burning heat of the desert, the Walkers drank heat in and were as cold as death.
Of course, as the Gu clan had proven many times over the millenia, that did not mean that they did not burn. Around her soldiers lowered their spears. They were heavy things, with wide barbed blades. Not meant to merely punch through armor, but to shatter and crush. These were the foes they were made for, enemies who cared not for wounds or punctured hearts.
Gu Xiulan released the reigns of her mount, trusting the beast charge with the others and raised her hands above her head, where blinding tongues of white flame began to curl up her fingers. Pain shot through her damaged arm, but she had long since learned to ignore that. Power poured into her hands, not just from her own dantian, but from the men around her, the flows of the Vermilion Formation art refining and fusing the power of a score of men into sheer blazing heat. The horses whinnied and manes burst into flames, heavenly sparks danced on the tips of spears. Sparks and embers danced around her raised hands.
Lances of flame struck from the heavens, bolts of boiling sunlight that struck withered dusty flesh and reduced it back to ash in but an instant. By the time the rear of the Walker formation had begun to turn, slow and ponderous, a score of their number had been reduced to ashen smears.
It was only then as they began to thunder down the hill that Xiualn noticed an irregularity. The undead pouring into the village were bunching up in the mains street, as if stymied by something, charging bodies piling up in a mass of cold dead flesh. For a moment, she thought she caught a glimpse of red.
Then she heard it, over the sound of screams and splintering wood, over the thunder of hooves and the crackle of lightning, a voice boomed.
"OOORRRA!!!!"
The mass of ash creatures piling up in the center street shattered, broken bodies rocketing into the sky as if fired from catapults, trailing ash. She saw one crash down on the side of the road, it's crumpled armor and ancient bones exploding into powder and fragments from the force of the impact, hundreds of meters from where it had been launched.
Then, she had no more time to think as her formation struck the rear of the enemy force with a boom of heat and thunder. A golden spear spun, and the ancient dead shattered as it's weidler crashed through their lines like a burning comet. Lesser spears tore skeletons and walking corpses in half and burning hooves pounded what was left to dust. She could worry about allies later, right now these corpses needed to burn.
Gu Xiulan let out a whooping war cry of her own to join her soldiers and spread her hands, where twin white suns had been born. On her shoulder, Linhuo laughed and laughed as the conflagration grew.
It did not take long for the battle to end. There had been few Walkers, a mere handful of hundreds, barely enough to give them the awareness of beasts, this far from the Grave. So it was not long before the question of the mysterious fighter was answered.
He was tall, as tall as Ling Qi with wide shoulders and a veritable mane of auburn hair. He had stood in the path of their charge in the main street as it ground to a halt, crouch atop a small mountain of crushed Walkers. He was barefoot, wearing only a dusty and travelworn brown robe, and over his shoulders rested a long staff carved from red wood. Only the band of gold around his forehead showed any wealth.
"Ho there, thanks for the assist!" He called as she and the soldiers who had remained in the center pulled up to a halt. "It took a little while for me to wake up, so these buggers were already through the gates by the time I'd rolled outta bed."
Oh dear, Gu Xiulan thought, taking in the wild looking young man, he looked younger than her sister but his cultivation was a match for Captain Yun's.
"But this is convenient! You're Gu clan aren'tcha? I'm Zheng Nan, and I'm on my way to talk to your head man."
AN: And a commission piece to tide ya'll over till tomorrow
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Ebon rivers ducal clan, one of the founding clans of the empire with history going back to one of the three, the Conqueror in this case. Met one at the tournament. Their sublime ancestor is the sun wukong ish monkey spirit. Got a bit of a bandit culture with a bit of a matriarchal bend. Also offspring of male Zheng arent considered Zheng (unless they show a lot of monkey blood and get take in again) only female Zheng can have Zheng. They dont have families per say, no marriages and they put the children in groups with a minder, whole brother/sisterhood thing going on.
Fun fact, Ebon Rivers got a serious guest-rights and brewing tradition due to the Sublime Ancestor being very active and sending out shadow clone things across the duchy. You never know if that rude guest is a Ancestor or not.
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- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- He/They
Good sign of healthy mental recovery. Back in her FoD interlude it was her "Blessed arm" iirc.
When Gu Xiulan wears a serenade around her neck and burns anyone who dares question it, when rumors abound of Bai Meizhen building alliances by seducing every woman in Thousand Lakes, when Cai Renxiang pays about as much attention to her husband as her mother does hers...
Some speculate about a lesbian cabal centered around mysterious bachelorette Ling Qi, who when asked only replied: "Pfft, I wish."
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
*very very skeptical face*
Typos.
Also: "It took a little while for me to wake up
I bet sleep was helped by alcohol type substance. And now I think about the needed material for cultivators to get wasted...
- Location
- earth
They make Renxiang very angry about their marriage and inheritance laws.
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I'm pretty sure wandering youths in the Ebon Rivers try to copy the mannerisms of the Reveller Ape in general, given the reasons for their hospitality rules.
... IIRC, the Reveller Ape and his followers have raided Golden Fields historically, haven't they? I have to wonder what their modern relations are like.
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
not necessarily the Reveler himself, but the Zheng has historically raided other places like Golden Fields, yeah. Them running a Water-margin style government and all
Unseelie
(Verified True Fae)
- Location
- Tír fo Thuinn
That explains a lot.
Staff, circlet, strength, attitude...
ThatGazzer
Minds Eye Bind
- Location
- PNW
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Depends on the cultivation method, I'm sure there are drunken immortal types out there
TimEd
Meteor maker
Kai Merah
Hound Hearted Hedonist
- Location
- Somewhere in the corners of my imagination
This sounds very Sun Wukongish. I wonder if it's a uniform of sorts. Or maybe just a popular style.
- Location
- United States of America, Michigan
Obviously this Zheng is cosplayer who dresses up like his favorite hero. :\/