Noroboro
Consistency is key and I’m consistently tired :)
- Location
- Canada
We have special Ogre units, like the Maelstormbringers and Pulvierizers, as well as the Champions of Ostland.
Warhammer Fantasy: A Dynasty of Dynamic Alcoholism
- Thread starter torroar
- Start date
- Mature
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- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy intrigue happens male protagonist ck2 quest belief stronk count of cannons drunken wisdom foes in the shadows graf of guns if you have a question check the front page first it begins... mountain vietnam ogres paranoia rising unseen enemies everywhere use the search function before asking waifu wars wake the bull
- Location
- Titan
There actually is a named Ostlander Handgunner regiment.
Fireloques of Ferlangen
Along with the Ostlander 8th Swords, the unit in which Kruber served as State Troop Sergeant / Regimental Champion, this gives Ostland two named non-knightly order units.
Fireloques of Ferlangen
Along with the Ostlander 8th Swords, the unit in which Kruber served as State Troop Sergeant / Regimental Champion, this gives Ostland two named non-knightly order units.
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Is it possible we could form them in this quest, made from the bravest and most accurate handgunners in the province?
Again just curious if it is possible to make special units from the regular forces like Archers, Crossbowmen, etc. in this quest.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
I imagine they already exist, It's just not gonna be enough to provide any sort of bonuses at the level we operate at. If we were the leader of a regiment, it might be a different story.
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The issue with forming elite units by taking the best and brightest from existing military formations is that then those formations are starved of their veterans and leaders. Elite units are great, but veterans in the rank doing important things like NCO-ships and teaching the fresh blood are also vital, and something between those needs to be found.
(It was a serious issue for WW1 Germany late war, since their trench-breaking stormtroopers were used constantly, suffered a lot of losses, and in replacing them their normal forces suffered for the constant draining of experienced soldiers.)
(It was a serious issue for WW1 Germany late war, since their trench-breaking stormtroopers were used constantly, suffered a lot of losses, and in replacing them their normal forces suffered for the constant draining of experienced soldiers.)
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I've considered that possibility as well.
It would be neat. Genevieve and Johanna look to be getting a hell of an increase on the power scale from all of this.
Narratively I wonder what may be in store for us in the future that having two friendly, powerful vampires with unique skill sets may be necessary to have bumping around.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't think there's anything. That's just the way the dice roll and the decisions go sometimes.
Massgamer
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- Location
- The Future
Yes, but also drinking so much rich and powerful blood in short succession is clearly having a negative effect too, something they will have to spend time getting a handle on after all this.
Still, it is clear they have certainly risen up on the overall vampire hierarchy tree in pure power if nothing else.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I doubt it, judging from how she had treated vampirism all the times we have seen her.
More concerningly Jo on the other had seems to be much more at ease or accepting of her nature which is both good and bad, but definitely something to keep an eye on. If An's blood works better to lessen the thirst Jo could create a small unit of Ans' Fangs to break really strong enemies. Since An appears to have pulled Jo in with her charismatic nature.
[CANON] Fractured Amethyst, Fulminating Agate, Delusive Rubellite, Curious Gold, Falling Jet, Rising Onyx - torroar
Fractured Amethyst, Fulminating Agate, Delusive Rubellite, Curious Gold, Falling Jet, Rising Onyx
[2342 IC] Former Site of Legion War Camp Just Outside Tenshuto, Heavenly Capital of Nippon, Shiranaka Prefecture
Inhale.
Exhale.
Too much energy, too much blood, all of it flowing and swirling within. The beast had never raged within Genevieve like it did now, and oh how it loathed the bars she had long ago placed around it. It had been unleashed, unleashed like never before, and now she was forced to cage it. Old, old lessons with Master Po floated through her mind as she sat, legs crossed and hands loose atop her thighs. The air, something she didn't even need, still cycled through her lungs. Nearby, her get did the same. Ahead, to the east, was Tenshuto. Burning, smoking, dying Tenshuto. Even from here, she could smell the blood, and the beast did too. It wanted it. It wanted it all. It would drink the world if it could.
The sound of a horse clopping through stormclouds made her open her eyes.
"Fang Genevieve, Fang Johanna," the young Qi-Lin rider ducked his head, nervously wringing his hands as his beauteous mount came to a halt a foot off the ground. "My greatest apologies…,"
"The Princess is pushing," she stated, knowing the truth before he'd even spoken.
His presence was enough.
"Y-yes, oh Fangs of the Empire. She requests your…your presences," he stammered out.
It took a moment. Her mind was so jumbled up, her senses so skewed, but something bubbled to the surface as she looked at the man. Or rather, she looked at him as he looked at her, heard the blood pulsing through his veins, the thumping of his heart, the flush of his cheeks. That, surprisingly, helped center her. The beast cared for none of this, but dealing with the attraction of a man not past his third decade certainly helped re-engage her active mind, and she almost wanted to laugh at how thinking about such things was proving an able distraction. She didn't, though. The last few times it had spun into wild cackling.
"Of course," she said with a serenity she was holding onto with her fingernails. "We shall be there promptly."
The messenger stammered and coughed and eventually flew away, blushing up a storm.
"Johanna," she called, turning to look at her apprentice who was still holding in meditation.
Once more, she and her get wore the robes of the Chained Ghost. Johanna's usual set was completely destroyed, and her secondary set was tightly stretched across her body at the moment. It had even torn in a few places. But at least they were clean again. Somewhat. Where Geneiveve had been forced to make use of a bucket, Johanna had simply dunked herself into the river repeatedly. They had needed to get the blood off. If only for a little while. The thick coatings of the stuff had been clogging their noses, their senses, and very possibly their minds. In the future, despite the fury of the beast at the very idea of her saying so, she would have to request that the Princess never again be so…generous, with her own blood. At least not in that form.
"Yes, my sire. I heard," Johanna said, her voice a deeper and smokier thing at the moment, her eyes opening slowly.
Though her hair was no longer seemingly made of liquid fire, her body no longer literally burning, Johanna's eyes remained changed. A molten crimson, with a slitted black iris. Both of which steadily shifted to look over at her, rather than shaking and darting about like before. Without the blood clogging their noses, or regularly filling their mouths, they had managed some small measure of calm and sanity back. Not all of it, not even close, but some. Or at least, that was what Genevieve told herself as she flatly ignored the smiling wave from Chandagnac out of the corner of her vision. Her sire was dead, and never coming back, and that was that.
"Then let us go," Genevieve gestured back toward the city, that place of smoke, fire, and blood.
They did not sprint, nor did they did lope like the near animals they had been acting like beforehand. It was simply a controlled run that vampires could manage without growing tired or weary. Up through each of the tiers, to the seventh, and then onto the eight. There, they beheld a minor hellscape, the aftermath of reckless daemon summoning. The Nipponese had been clever enough to summon a great many daemons, but had been foolish enough to think them controlled, and then in turn been strong enough to deal with the immediate consequences of that foolishness. A curious situation, all told, but then based on everything that Genevieve had heard and seen up until this point, very little about this campaign seemed like it would go normally.
"There you are…ngh," An called to them, a hand still on her side.
"Princess," Genevieve knelt, Johanna beside her. "I am sorry we left the city."
"Bah," An shrugged, "I am not so foolish as to ignore the condition of my troops, yourselves included. You required time to rebalance your minds. Have you succeeded?"
Genevieve looked up at the Princess and refused to see the corpse of her mother parading about with the corpse of her father behind her. It wasn't even their faces that was the problem. It was the blood, that she could not have tasted at the times of their deaths, yet somehow was calling to her.
"Somewhat."
An frowned.
"It will have to do, for now. Afterwards…we shall see," the Princess murmured before pausing and clutching at her side again.
"Princess?"
"I have no idea where that skaven got such a poison," An grunted before pausing. "Actually, I have a very good idea."
Genevieve swallowed, still not rising from her kneeling position.
"Your Uncle Yi?"
"Yes," An growled. "This? This is his way. Proxies upon proxies upon proxies. Hints and gifts, aid and threats, delivered to those unsuspecting and those aware. Often through other proxies. All under his control, his influence, his web."
The princess let loose a brief plume of black smog from her nose.
"The Shadow under Heaven. Regardless," An sniffed and then glanced down at them. "You can see the problem inherent in this, I suspect."
"We can't fight him," Johanna said. "And, worse, he could try to command us. Burn us to ash if we refuse. Because…,"
"Because he is my senior in the Dynasty," An made a rude noise, "And my father's brother, and my uncle, and he of course knows the rites and rituals."
Around them, the Legion moved. Old Nipponese positions were scavenged, their cannons and handguns taken alongside their black powder supplies. New fortifications were build, and new supply caches were established as more were brought up from lower in the city. The wounded were cycled out, the healed and rested cycled in, and steadily the eighth tier was being conquered all around them. Progress was clearly swift, that was obvious just watching, but it was not yet complete. Not yet. Genevieve watched as she spied the wizards hustling past, rushing towards where a purple and black rocket had been fired off. But the vast majority of her attention remained, of course, on the Crown Princess.
"What shall we do, then?" Genevieve asked. "We cannot attack him. We cannot deny his commands if he gives them to us, or at least we shall, and will die doing so. I do not see a solution beyond us remaining back and supporting you from a distance."
"That will not save you," An shook her head. "I know my Uncle. He has had eyes…ngh," she paused, growling at her wound, "Eyes throughout the city, no doubt. Watching everything. He will know that I have two Fangs with me. He may well seek you out before I can find him, or may do so after the battle is joined, and command you to try and kill me, or something similar."
"But…," Johanna frowned, "I don't even know what would happen to us if that happened."
"You would burn," An informed her, "Or at least be frozen between your inability to follow the order, and the order itself. And that could end in your deaths, or mine."
Both vampires were silent as they contemplated such a fate.
"Then…what are we to do?" Genevieve asked, swallowing hard as she looked up at An, whose eyes were hooded, the setting sun in the west casting golden rays upon the princess' face.
A terrible suspicion came upon her there. The secret snake that had curled around her heart years ago. Hidden deep, deep inside when the Dragonguard had come for them, had called them to the Jade Palace. Fangs were not a lifetime position, not necessarily. This was known. There were operas and poems about those who worked their entire lives to be Fangs, as well as those who were mysteriously granted the position by the Celestial Court who foresaw something within them. It was an honorable service, a legendarily respected and feared one. Most served out their lifetime, and even then were considered highly respected elders in their waning years as retired Fangs. But not all Fangs reached that retirement. The quiet, but never gone snake of pride wound its way from where it had laid in stillness and silence and hissed. A vampire, so bound, was…
"It's very simple," An's calm words interrupted her, and suddenly her warm body was crouched with them, leaning so very, close.
Genevieve stared as one large hand ever so gently wrapped itself entirely around the amulet that hung from her neck. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Johanna similarly staring as An's other hand went around hers. A gentle nudging with her wrists forced both vampires to raise their heads to look directly at An, who stared first at Genevieve then Johanna directly in the eyes with an inscrutable expression. Being near An was, often, like standing too close to a bonfire, like being near the sun which weakened Genevieve so. The heat generally only ever raised, but in this moment it was utterly different. The warmth that literally radiated from An could not be purely just heat, for there was a confusing sensation of comfort that accompanied it. Her mind, muddled from too much blood, and dragon blood, and fear and pride, struggled for a moment to place it. But eventually it did, and suddenly her eyes were watering ever so slightly.
It felt like the warm blankets of home, snuggled into a bed, her mother's kind hand rubbing at her cheeks.
"My Uncle only ever saw the Fangs as an incomplete process," An murmured softly. "They still retained far too much free will for his tastes. Could even disagree, advise, and more."
"W-what are you doing?" Johanna stammered with a child's incomprehension.
An grimaced, and a faint trickle of green-black liquid trickled out of the wound in her side, but then after breathing deeply affixed a smile so kind it was almost shocking in its warmth.
"You have both sacrificed flesh and spirit time and again in service to the Dragon Throne. In greater excess than many Fangs I have known, and in such a short amount of time. I would ask only one thing of you two."
A faint yellow light began to peek out from within An's hands.
"Would you do this for me…help me defeat my Uncle, gain justice and vengeance for the slaughtered innocents of Cathay? Even if…you were compelled by nothing more than my asking?"
"An, I…," Johanna started, then stopped, eyes wide, at her breach of propriety.
Genevieve felt halfway disconnected from her own body as she turned her head slightly to look at her get. She watched as a subtle flush crept up Johanna's neck.
"Uh, sorry."
"Worry not," An continued in the same tone as before. "My question remains the same."
The snake unfurled and managed one last defiant hiss.
"Wh-," Geneveive swallowed. "What if we wished to leave?"
Now it was Johanna's turn to stare at her.
"They're summoning daemons," the younger vampire said, as if that was all that needed to considered.
"If you wished to leave," An gave a wan smile, "I would not stop you. Four possibilities lay before us, my friends who would drink my death. One, you remain, and remain bound, and are used against me and against yourselves. Two, you leave in a dead sprint towards the horizon, and remain bound, and watch as my Legion and I pursue this course without you. Third, you leave, are unbound, and watch as we go on without you. Fourth…," she trailed off, looking between them expectantly.
"We stay, and we fight," Genevieve murmured. "But unbound."
An nodded, and said no more. Instead, the vampires looked at one another. Their minds were fuzzier than normal, but they worked well enough for this. If they left, if they ran, there was no doubt they could commandeer a ship. But where they would go after that was entirely unknown. They had come to Cathay for a reason. It was here that Genevieve had found the greatest control over herself, had brought Johanna to the Far East for that same reason. But what else had they found here? Fear, certainly, for what they were, and what they did. But respect as well. Bowing soldiers and veterans, sorcerers and astromancers. Approval, in the strangest way, for a pair who were supposed to be so utterly removed. Prey and predators interacting. A freedom, in its own way, a freedom won while wearing what some would call chains too tight to be acceptable. And beneath that, beneath all of that…
"…the people of Cathay…," Genevieve said it slowly as revelation poured through her. "I feel responsible for them. For protecting them, a-a little. To at least…get some vengeance for them."
So many villagers, thanking her, sobbing as she returned those controlled by the Jade-Blooded to them. Weeping soldiers thanking her for saving them from a sure death. Reaching hands, just to touch her arms as she passed.
"Before I was one of the Fangs," Johanna spoke haltingly, "Before I was even…what I am now, I was part of the 5th Tiger Army. I remember the oaths sworn, even now."
"But you are not part of that army any longer," An said, each word soft and quiet, "And you, Genevieve, are free to wander as you wish, for you have left the Jade Dragon Monastery, and swore no oaths to the Chained Ghost. And yet, despite both these truths, I would ask you, not as Crown Princess, but as An. Will you help me, even if it is just this one last time?"
A single, resounding thump came from Genevieve's old heart, struggling mightily back into life for that one act. Bretonnian glanced at Talabeclander, and Talabeclander glanced back at Bretonnian. The connection between sire and get and even different vampiric generations was a strange one. Some, as near as could be told, had almost no connection at all. She doubted that even a single Necrarch in the Old World have even noticed when Zacharias was defeated. By contrast, the various gets of Anpu had been debilitated for hours afterwards. But Genevieve had only had the one get. The two of them were not so interconnected like the Hohenzollern twins, if anything those two appeared to have intermingled their own minds so thoroughly that there were times that neither Genevieve nor Johanna were certain that they had two separate minds anymore.
"For this…yes," Genevieve's eyes widened as the words slipped from her mouth before she'd fully consciously decided.
"I'm in. After…after we'll see, I think," Johanna muttered.
Qhaysh exploded into being within An's hands, spilling out of her grip where the amulets rested. Genevieve let loose a startled gasp as hooks she had been completely incapable of even perceiving were pulled free from her soul. A tightness she'd not consciously been aware of released in her chest. Similar noises came from Johanan next to her. The world didn't suddenly transform, their senses did not change, but there was most certainly a bit less weight on their spirits than there had been before. Not enough to have harmed them, never like that, not without reasons that they had never triggered. Simultaneous sighs came from sire and get as the Qhaysh slowly faded from sight. Then An slowly opened her hands, and let the inert golden circles fall back against their necks, the Cathayan character for Fang still glimmering there.
"Leave from here, and tell my father I failed," An suddenly said, a whipcrack of command in her voice.
Spines straightened, bodies tensed, but after a second passed, An looking at them expectantly, Johanna began fiddling with her amulet.
"I didn't…I don't…," she murmured in wonder.
"It doesn't…burn," Genevieve whispered, eyes wide.
Then An reached forward, gently tugging Johanna's hand free, and rubbed her thumb in a circle over the top of Johanna's hand before forming it into a fist. Before either of them could say or do anything more, An then violently wrenched Johanna forward and slammed her fist against her own cheek in a resounding crack that made several nearby soldiers jerk in surprise. Johanna was completely still, eyes wide as dinnerplates, eyes darting from her fist to An's face. Genevieve was not in a particularly better position, the shock freezing her in place. But then the moment passed. It was something that Johanna should not even have done, even if guided by An, her own muscles should have locked up. Actually striking An should have set her aflame.
But she hadn't.
"It is done then," An nodded and stood, wincing again as she did so, hand once more cupping against her side.
"I…thank you, Princess," Genevieve said haltingly.
"Thank me after we win," An snorted. "My father will not be pleased that I have tugged two Fangs free of the Throne."
"Is…would he…," Johanna immediately began to ask before An raised a hand.
"No," An said firmly. "He would not. If he tries…," she sighed and then growled. "Then we would have to have a discussion, me and him. In the meantime, however, we have work to do. Come on."
Work indeed. While the rest of the daemons had petered out without any sufficient sacrifices or destruction to maintain their existence beyond the Realm of Chaos, the Nipponese were still fighting. But their priests had been badly damaged, the skaven gone from the city, the Tyrant of their oni auxiliaries dead. They had already shown their blasphemy thrice over. Not just with making an alliance with the skaven, not just with the necromancy and mutilation of Fong's corpse, but with daring to summon forth the powers of the Dark Gods. At this point, the Legion was fighting for more than just Cathay like they had originally envisioned. By now, despite themselves, they were practically fighting for the rest of Nippon.
And fight they did.
Grueling combat ensued as the remaining defenders on the eighth tier were culled, and violently. By now, there were no peasant conscripts left. Only samurai veterans, the elites, those who had spent their entire lives fighting in the centuries of civil conflict across Nippon. What few oni were left were still fighting, knowing even with their crude minds that there was no possibility of escape besides killing their way out. Something they wholeheartedly attempted to do. But the Legion advanced regardless. They could not afford to do so recklessly, not after what the Emperor's servants had unleashed time and again. In fact, there were some few remaining priests now who desperately exhausted every last of their ofuda, and turned back to the dark ofuda, but their fumbling attempts were isolated and quickly surrounded and destroyed.
Within another hour, now solidly in the evening, they'd reached the gates to the ninth tier and subsequently broken them down. There were no more grand speeches, at least not from the Legion's commanders. A grim cast had come across An's features, and those who followed her. After all that the so-called Heavenly Emperor had done, there could be no retreat. Especially given the presence of Chaos. Such a thing quite simply could not be allowed to fester, beyond every other insult, every other desecration, every other slaughter of the innocent whether Cathayan or Nipponese now. But to leave, now, and let it grow strong in a foreign land that was so close to Cathay? No.
The final approaches to the tenth and final tier, were different. How could they not be? The tenth tier was wholly given over to the Heavenly Palace itself, which was no simple Nipponese castle. It was a fortress layered upon itself several times over. Both of its two gates, for there were only two, had no mere gatehouses. They were, in fact, castles built around those gates, with walls almost fit for the walls that ringed the outer limits of the entire city of Tenshuto. The Nipponese manned those walls, and began unleashing volleys of burning arrows essentially the moment the Cathayans came even slightly within range. Cannons upon the walls and in raised towers began firing, and so the Cathayans retreated, ever so slightly, but not so much that the Nipponese could afford to stop. Again and again they tested the Nipponese defenses. It was not a strategy without casualties, but not a wholly ineffective one. Ordinarily, a siege might be preferred, but it simply could not be allowed. Not if the enemy had tasted the dark fruits of daemonic summoning and necromancy, true necromancy, not the variant normally practiced in Nippon. Especially if there were other Clans of Nippon on the way, coming to reinforce their corrupted Emperor. So the enemy needed to be exhausted, of energy, of resources, of ammo.
Unfortunately for the Emperor, the Legion had done as they had across his entire land. They had scavenged the cannons and black powder of the enemy from every tier they had secured, and brought them to the fore once more. They had not even had to fight to do so in the upper tiers of the eastern half of the city after the disastrous summoning of the Slaaneshi daemons. An hour passed as they were all brought forth, volunteers continually provoking the enemy as they did so. Once that hour had come and gone, however, an artillery park that was now even larger than the one that the Legion had begun the battle with was fully set up. The barrier ofuda guarding the tenth tier's walls and gate were powerful, they had to be.
As such, the sustained bombardment continued for much longer than it had to break into the first tier of the city.
Even when they finally broke through, aided by An once more charging Ironblaster cannonballs with Qhaysh and Dhar alternatively, it was not enough. The cannons immediately had to shift to fire upon the tops of the walls and at their counterparts in Nipponese positions, for all throughout the bombardment the enemy had steadily begun trying to target said cannons themselves. It would, now, be up to the infantry to try and push through. Only they couldn't because the moment the gates were down, a group that had been absent since the beginning of the battle revealed itself once more. A marching block of Kensei, armored in black, each wielding powerful Ghost Blade nodachis. Their banners all showing allegiance to the Emperor, even now, even with some smaller emblems to their original clans.
========================================================================
[2342 IC] Entrance to Tenth Tier of Tenshuto, Heavenly Capital of Nippon, Shiranaka Prefecture
"Just-,"
"Die!"
Screaming, the twins hauled the Kensei away from his fellows, purple sheets of Shyish crushing their body or at least attempting to. They had to leap out of the way as beams of energy nearly cut them apart from another of the damned Sword Saints. Dragonguard, monks, the vampires, and more all tried to fight their way through the elite Kensei that had emerged from the shattered gate. Already, hundreds of Legion soldiers were dead on the ground, the number only growing larger and larger as time went on. An was roaring as she hauled one up by the throat and squeezed hard enough to obliterate the entire neck, only to stumble as another of the Kensei leapt upwards and stabbed through her back with his ghost blade, all the way down to the hilt. A burning backhand snapped their head around in a full spin, internally decapitating the Sword Saint, but the damage was still done. Hissing, sizzling blood spilled onto the ground as An tugged the sword out and let it fall to the ground with a pained scream.
Even worse, it became rapidly apparent that some of the Kensei were something that few had been expecting – brothers. As one Kensei died, another fighting nearby let out a furious scream and reached out with one hand. The spirits within the fallen Sword Saint's blade responded to the call, and to the shock of many fighting it outright flew off the ground and straight into that hand. The now dual-wielding Kensei screamed louder as an aura of furious souls surrounded him, and he began to fight with even greater speed and ferocity. The act was repeated a number of times over, even, each time the newly equipped Kensei requiring even more effort to finally put down. One, apparently blessed to be the last of his triplet brothers, managed to get one nodachi into his teeth, smashing his way through the Dragonguard and hacked deeply and savagely into An's front, just barely missing her neck with one of the blades. Though she managed to wrap a hand around his throat and snap it, throwing him away, the three burning lines spilled a terrible amount of blood onto the earth, forcing the Princess to retreat momentarily to at least patch her own wounds. It got to the point that Agatha and Alisa left the fighting, grabbed one of the Nipponse handguns each, and came back. One would summon forth a manacle of Shyish that forced one of the Kensei to finally just stop moving, their master would layer a crushing sheet of Shyish around them to keep them from responding immediately to any who came near, and the other sister would walk up, place the humongous barrel of the handgun against the Kensei's face, and fire. The resulting hail of fire and metal sufficed quite well.
But there were so many of them, and they were damned hard to kill regardless. Not a single one would retreat. There was no quarter given, there was none asked. Both sides knew that the only way out was the death of the other. So the Kensei fought, and reaped a terrible, bloody toll upon the Legion. No battle in the entire campaign had cost so many soldiers, and even the roughest estimates that either Hohenzollern could come up with were not particularly good ones. The devastation of so many battle groups by Anpu had harmed them. The constant harassment of the skaven before it was stopped had killed more. The oni working for the Heavenly Throne had beaten, crushed, and eaten others. Shinobi and priests loyal to the Emperor, or at least working for him at the moment in the former's case, had caused further damage.
Though, at least, there hadn't seemed to be any more Shinobi attacks on the Legion after the summoning of the daemons. At least yet. No one was willing to accept that it wasn't just another Shinobi tactic.
Even once the Kensei had died, to the last, because of course they had, there was no time to rest. An gave the order, leaning heavily against the walls as she bled, and the Legion finally poured through into the grounds of the Heavenly Palace. Directly into yet more arrow volleys and cannon fire as they reached the secondary walls. More blood was shed, bodies broken, or torn apart. Here, the Shinobi won their favor once more, scaling the walls and unleashing silent and sharp death upon the enemy attacking at range, aided in this by the vampires, some monks, and several other astromancers. After that, the Legion began to split by necessity. The last of the Cloud Altars had to be shut down, for lightning was still raining down from directly above the Heavenly Palace to strike the Cathayans. The towers and those upon them had to be silenced.
One inner wall. Another. The Cloud Altars were located, and their wielders were killed, one of them taken down outright solely by the vampire Johanna. Apparently it was a similar deed to one she had performed in the past. Another Cloud Altar was silenced when a group of Cathayan astromancers attacked their counterparts, distracting them enough for some Shinobi to arrive from behind to slit several throats. One tower was simply shot apart as more cannons were brought to bear, pulled through the broken gates. More Kensei appeared, as did samurai who no longer even let out battle cries, simply attacked them with grim acceptance of their own deaths.
More than a mile's worth of clearly painstakingly maintained Nipponese garden surrounding the true Heavenly Palace, the inner castle within the fortress complex that was the entire tenth tier. To go by the stories, it was an entirely manmade plateau, no gods, no spirits having aided in its creation. But past the artful topiary, the flowers, the sand art, the statues of kami and past notables of Nipponese history, was the last castle proper. It was richly, almost opulently furnished. Not with gold or other precious metals, not encrusted with gems. No, its wealth had been spent on defense. Its walls were thick stone and metal, the gates themselves practically solid metal blocks. The Nipponese defending it seemed to have endless stocks of arrows and even utilized Cathayan Mantis Cannons to augment their defense, alongside a handful more cannons that fired more sparingly at any particularly large clump of Legion troops. Burning hot oil, spike pits, and more were utilized just to try and slow the Legion down, and in that course they succeeded. But they simply could not stop the Legion, not entirely. A frantic fury had fallen over the Cathayans. The damage to their homeland was only one of many reasons, but the most immediate in the here and now were the fact that so many of their brothers and sisters were dying in so many different painful ways. It was a less noble anger, but a hot, burning, visceral one.
It was here that An slowed to a stop, leaning against a partially uprooted cherry blossom tree, just out of range of the enemy's cannons, surrounded by the ruined gardens of the Heavenly Palace. One hand propped herself up, another against her side from the Deathmaster's final gift. Blood no longer poured from her wounds in glowing white-hot streams, she had sealed them with Ghyran, but the pain clearly lingered. There simply had not been the time to make longer, more in-depth healing, going by her loud shouts about the matter. By now, the Dragonguard had moved to completely surround her at all times, no longer spread throughout the remaining Legion forces present. That she had been so grievously injured by the kensei clearly burned at them, regardless of the fact that they had clearly been the absolute best of the troops left to the Heavenly Emperor.
"J-..hnnng," An wheezed, "Fangs!"
Agatha and Alisa watched as the Princess called the vampires over, only to blink and glance back at their master as the Princess then pointed over at them and curled a finger.
"Best go see what she wants," Draken murmured, the wizards pushing through the mass of the Dragonguard to reach her.
"Good," An laughed before coughing wetly, leaving glowing hot blood on her hand that she grimaced at and wiped against the tree which immediately began to burn slightly. "You're here. Tenzo!"
It was an oddly serene thing to see, the assorted handful of Headmasters that had left their temples to accompany the Legion on its journey to Tenshuto. Their leader was, in fact, one of the first who had done so. Fujimoto Tenzo, the brother of one of the now fallen Clans, who had begged mercy for his family and in doing so had ensured that An would not ritually destroy their Clan Lord Ghost Blade. For he, along with the rest of the Plum Lotus Temple and some of the others, had foreseen the darkness in the capital, and in the Emperor. Here, now, they walked across the churned up garden, through ravaged topiary stomped into mud, statues broken and shattered, and near the bodies of the dead both invader and defender.
"Princess," Tenzo nodded, bowing slightly to her but not fully at the waist. "You are gravely injured. Do you-,"
"I'll be fine," An growled, a small trickle of burning blood from the corner of her mouth momentarily contradicting her before she wiped it away with a hand. "Are you ready? Do you have them?"
ʷIͪ ͣtͭhiͩnͦkʸ ͦwͧe'ͭrͪeͥᶰ ᵏabͭoͪuͤʸtͬ ͤtoͭ ͣˡfᵏiͥᶰnᵍd ͣᵇoͦuͧtͭ
Tenzo's old, weathered face scrunched slightly, as did the other similarly aged Headmasters.
"We have done our best, Princess," he sighed, "But we simply could not produce enough for all of your remaining Dragonguard."
"That was before," An grunted, "How about now? They're down by half, including…," she paused, the noise between a harshly suppressed sob and growl, "Including one of my own blood."
"What?" Johanna asked, head whipping about.
"I stepped over Zǐháo's corpse," An whispered, "Just to get past those damned gates."
"My deepest sympathies, Princess," Genevieve added quickly, but An just waved her hand and growled at Tenzo to continue.
For the Princess, burning tears were a bit more literal, though she managed to contain it to but one burning bead that dripped down her cheek to land on the ground below.
"Less than that," Tenzo said, now bowing his head.
"A third?"
"Less, Princess. My most humble apologies."
An worked her jaw, black smog starting to spill out of her nose with every exhale.
"A hundred."
Now Tenzo and all his Headmasters bowed at a full ninety-degree angle.
"Our deepest-,"
"Oh for," An grunted and slammed her forehead against the tree, causing several of its pink little blossoms to rain down around them. "Just tell me how many you were able to make," she groaned, grinding her forehead against the bark slightly.
Tenzo rose and sighed.
"Ten."
An paused in her forehead grinding, pulling her head back slightly to leave a smoldering imprint on the tree's trunk, her red eyes wide as she stared at them.
"Ten. Ten!?" She hissed.
"Ten that we are confident in, yes," Tenzo nodded, his lips pressed thinly. "After seeing the debauchery and foolishness of Mitsuhide, we revised our estimates of what our ofuda would accomplish."
All this, the wizards quietly watched, glancing through the back and forth. An just slammed her head a few more times against the tree, only to be forced to halt as she headbutted her way through the thin trunk entirely. All present, wizards, vampires, An, and the priests were subsequently showered in cherry blossoms from head to toe as the tree collapsed to the ground. She held up a hand to interrupt Tenzo's next words and just breathed for a moment, visibly struggling to restrain herself. In fact, she was almost shaking with the effort.
"That's not enough," she finally said, head hung low. "Not…," her head raised, then, and she glanced around her. "But it will have to be, I suppose. Give them to me."
Tenzo bowed his head again and withdrew a very, very thin stack of glowing white ofuda. Every part of it, in fact, was white. Even the ink which had been used to scribe it, as if they had taken liquid moonlight and scrawled it atop paper made of pressed snow. Each of them was barely a foot wide and long, a far contrast from the oversized Dark Ofuda that the priests of the Heavenly Emperor had been making use of. Still, they were blindingly heavy with Hysh, that much was undeniable. Neither Agatha nor Alisa wanted to even look at it with their Witch Sight lest it sear their souls slightly. The power that emanated from them was more than enough for those without it to feel, it buzzed at the very soul. In the cases of the vampires, their experience was more grimacing and slightly inching away at the radiance in the ofuda.
"Ten," An huffed as she took them, gaze slowly rising to glance about her.
Immediately, one of the remaining Dragonguard Captains, this a grey-haired woman named Xiu Lan, knelt, placing her halberd on the ground next to her. The last time either sister had heard of her, she was sent to the far reaches of the Legion's forces while they marched after some disagreement or another with the Princess herself. Which, if they remembered correctly, was sometime around when the Shinobi serving the Heavenly Emperor had first showed up to begin harassing the Legion. Here, now, her golden armor was completely covered in blood, as was part of her face.
"Princess, I volunteer-,"
"No," An said immediately, making the Dragonguard's face flush slightly.
"Princess! I must protest. We are the Dragonguard. Our only duty is to protect you!"
"And you will," An said, making Xiu Lan look up, blinking in confusion.
The Princess just looked down at her, and then gestured to herself with a bemused grimace on her face. Johanna inhaled sharply as she looked, and after squinting, the twins could see it too. The wounds had reopened at some point, the consequences of being so shallowly healed. Each of the nodachi wounds on her front had been delivered with enough force to cleave through the entire bodies of multiple Dragonguard, which was precisely what had happened on that last vengeful triplet's attack. On An, they had still cut deeply, one near her collarbone, another just below her chest, and the third at her bellybutton. All three of which were bleeding again, creating three glowing lines of hot blood that were now dripping onto the ground. The second hole in her torso, that had been punched through her back and out the front, was little bitter. The wound left by the Deathmaster continued to fester, the smell escaping again as An lifted her hand off that particular wound.
"Genevieve. Johanna," An said, looking away from the pale Xiu Lan. "Approach."
Hͥoͫwᶰ ͦdͭo ͤᶰyͭoͥuͬ ͤˡsʸuˢpͧpͬoͤsᵇeͧ ͭthͭeͪ ͤiͬnͤjuͫrͧˢiͭeᵇsͤ ˢtͦrͫaͤnͭsͪfͥᶰeᵍr ͭbͦetͥwͭeeͬnͤ ͫfͤoͫᵇrͤmͬs ͪIͦʷ ˢtͪhͤiʷnͣˢk ͣᶠyͭoͤuͬ'ᵇrͤeͥᶰ ᵍrˢiͭgͬhͧtͨᵏ,ᵇ ʸifͭ ͪiͤtˡ ͥᵍwͪoͭᶰuͥᶰlᵍd ͣᶰjͩusͨtͣᶰ ᶰbͦᶰeˢ fͥiͭxʷeͦdͧˡ ͩbᵇyͤ ˢsͦwͫiͤtͭcͪhͥᶰiᵍnᵇgͧ ͭfoͨˡrͤmͣsͬˡ ʸwᶰeͦlͭlʷ ͤiͬtͤ'ᵖsͣ ͬnͭotͦᶠ lͭiͪkͤe ͣGͫᵇhͤuͬrᵇ ͬiͦsͭ ͪnͤoͬtͪ ͦoͦuͩrʸsͤˢ
Agatha and Alisa watched, Draken just behind them with her hands across her chest, as An lifted one of the ofuda out and grabbed Johanna by the shoulder and spun her about. She then pressed the ofuda against Johanna's neck, getting a faint pained hiss from the vampire as it stuck and was flattened against her bare skin. It glowed brightly for a moment before fading away, remaining where it was placed. An then repeated the act with Genevieve. She then turned to the wizards. Draken didn't curse, their master was too even-keeled for that now that they'd all had some time to rest behind the barricades, but there was a subtle stiffening of her spine there.
"Wizards of the Hammer Throne," An said in Reikspiel with a small smile. "Have you gained the knowledge you sought on this campaign? Of Ghost Blades and Wraith Armors?"
Agatha and Alisa blinked. That was not the tack that they had expected. Thankfully, Draken recovered quickly.
"I…we have learned much, I would say so, yes?"
An nodded approvingly.
"Good. Now, I would ask of you something. A task. A choice. At the end of which…," An's eyes were almost hooded. "I would grant you a boon in return."
"…a boon?"
"Yes," An nodded, her lips quirking into a smile. "The specifics of which to be discussed later, of course."
Their master sighed, running a hand through her air.
"I would ordinarily ask what task you would suggest, but I suspect I already know…and I further suspect the reasoning for these ofuda."
An's grin widened slightly.
"You have proven yourselves intelligent enough that I would not insult you over it."
"And…," Draken's eyes moved to the vampires. "Them as well?"
"Of course! You work so well together," An chortled, making Draken's expression sour. "Chained Ghost and Amethyst College. Sisters not of the womb, but of mission and course, wielders of the Purple Qi. Known by its secret name, of course…as Shyish."
It was indeed almost poetic, if one could ignore that the Chained Ghost monks in question were simultaneously the exact sort of abomination that their peer Orders were meant to hunt down. The Winds of Magic blew intensely in this place, this city. Shyish may not have been especially prominent when the sun had first risen, when the armies were still assembling, before the gates had first been blown down hours and hours ago. But by now, the sheer amount of death brought forth had begun to call the Purple Wind down in greater and greater amounts. Nipponese citizens. Conscript soldiers. True samurai. Kensei. All the deaths of the Legion's own forces. Skaven killing, skaven being killed. All of it together. By now, thick torrents of Shyish were practically invisible rivers curling through the streets. There was, now, very little chance of any who wielded it being left without during the battle.
"I see many alternatives, but none that would be as certain," Draken said, running a hand through her hair again. "Your Dragonguard must protect you and you are…,"
"Not," An coughed more blood onto the ground, wiping at her mouth, "At my best."
"Right," Draken sighed and then straightened. "I accept. For now. A boon to be discussed later."
An grinned and gestured for her to come closer, which Draken did while lifting up her own long hair to reveal her neck, where the faintly glinting black and purple of Yemaraja's Noose lay. While their master had chosen a different tattoo design than their own, hers spread across the chest and shoulders and upper back, the one part that could not be changed was the noose itself around the neck. A reminder of the end that would inevitably come. An paused at that, placing a finger against it and then frowning as something in it almost sparked at her touch. The ofuda was then instead placed lower, in the middle of Draken's back. Agatha and Alisa's master twitched at the sensation but was clearly less pained by it than the vampires.
ʷDͤˡoˡ ʷyͤoʷuͥˡ ˡrᵖeͬaͦᵇlͣᵇlˡyʸ ᶠtͥᶰhͩinͦkͧ ͭtᵠhͧeͥyͭ'ͤlᵠlͧ ͥwͨᵏoˡrʸkʷ?ͤˡ ˡAʷnͤdʷ ͦᶰiͭf ͨtͣhͬeͤyʷ ͥˡdˡoʷnͤ't?
For the Hohenzollerns, it was placed higher, between the shoulder blades. It stung, certainly. But not like touching a fire or anything of the sort, more like stinging nettles against the back. An intense itching that flared up before suddenly fading away, leaving a cooling sensation instead. Something detached, nearly disconnected, that nevertheless remained close. Neither sister felt confident in trying to gaze upon them with Witch Sight, however. A bit of testing revealed that the ofuda did not seem to interfere with their ability to see, grasp, or utilize Shyish. Afterwards, each of the five were left looking up at An as she passed out a second ofuda to them, only they did not apply it to themselves.
"Just in case," An told them firmly.
"You really think-,"
"-we can do it?"
An tilted her head the question.
"Johanna has told me of your Father."
Draken and Genevieve's heads snapped around to look at the Talabeclander, who suddenly seemed almost desperately focused on the fighting going on at the inner castle.
"What would he think?"
The resulting screech of mental communication between the twins was downright unintelligible for any but themselves. Voice layered onto voice onto voice, words and syllables becoming so mixed together that if any had the chance to somehow listen in, they would not understand a single thing. Then it ended, the conclusion reached, and they turned their bodies as one.
"He would think it would be worth it to try regardless," they decided. "He wields a blade of Chaos. That's enough of a reason."
An nodded, looking grim.
"It should be, yes. You would be surprised how often it isn't, for some. Now then," she paused, groaning a bit as a bit more blood spilled onto the ground before pushing up and away. "Remember your orders!" She called out, drawing the attention of many of the Legion nearby. "Once we've breached the inner castle, do not approach the Emperor! Do not approach the Heavenly Court itself!"
Agatha and Alisa frowned. It wasn't the first time that the Princess had said such things. The reason behind it was obvious. What concerned them now was whether or not the ofuda that they had just applied really would be enough. Hopefully, even if it wasn't, the vampires would have the protection of their amulets to fall back on. Hopefully. Then again, they had been given ofuda as well, a fact that neither sister could quite keep out of their minds.
"Let's go!" An roared, stomping forward, steam billowing from her mouth as she advanced, the Legion roaring with her.
Seeing the Crown Princess approach, the Nipponese only fought more desperately. But when they tried to target her with their cannons, they found themselves targeted by already positioned counter-battery fire from the Cathayan artillery that had been brought up in the meantime. Fire rocket platforms had been firing with carefully determined arcs, igniting some of the Nipponese cannons and their black powder stores. The resulting explosions tore through the castle's defenses, while other Legion troops began to simply clamber atop the walls. Shinobi working with the Legion swept back and forth across the walls, leaving many cut throats in their wake, while others from Clans amenable to the use of black powder set off their own explosives.
It was not enough to take the outer defenses, of course. Just as every castle that the Legion had assaulted thus far in Nippon, it was layered. All the more so due to it being the true center point of the entire Heavenly Palace complex, that which was the tenth tier of Tenshuto. Even once the walls began to be taken, more Nipponese samurai poured out of the doors. Once the doors were taken, more appeared from the hallways. Once the outer passages were controlled, bodies carpeting the ground, every single room had to be opened and secured. Some had samurai within, katanas flashing until the last of them fell. Some had wielders of the Nipponese handgun, the aiansutōmu, though Agatha and Alisa considered them a substantially refined blunderbuss. At such close ranges, even opening the doors to those rooms could be deadly. There were even palace servants, some of them moving like a Cathayan monk, though without the additional techniques, who fought. Some were even clad in clattering, ill-fitting armor with katanas they fumbled with. But all fought.
There was not a single surrender, from any of the Nipponese, despite repeated calls to do so by the Legion at An's prompting.
In time, however, they reached the Heavenly Court. It could not be considered a throne room, not entirely. Instead, it was a large inner garden within the castle's absolute center, the entire so-called courtly grounds exposed to the heavens above. Such a thing might have been considered foolish, if one did not consider that the astromancers of Nippon, and of the Heavenly Court, were quite richly rewarded for ensuing that the goings on of the Heavenly Court were never tarnished by rain or snow. At the center, atop a raised hill of pure white stone which was all that remained of the original mountaintop, was the throne itself. A creation of marble and gold, it was not so grand as the throne that the Emperor Taizong utilized in Wei-Jin, but it was large enough regardless. Nearby, was small grotto with running water and a single large bamboo shishi-odoshi thumping quietly against the rocks.
Much more unfortunately, there were some of the Legion already inside. An let loose a violent curse that neither Agatha nor Alisa could quite manage to understand, given how gutturally it was delivered.
"Damn it!" She hissed. "I told them…nggh," she groaned, leaning against the wall, leaving hot blood to stain it.
The vampires stood in her stead, eyes utterly unaffected by the night and cloudy sky.
"I see…shit, that's Captain Sun on her Qi-Lin. How did she get in there?," Johanna muttered.
"Scouting," Genevieve answered, shaking her head. "Probably got too close. The others…"
"No Dragonguard, at least," Johanna sighed.
Now that Agatha and Alisa were able to look themselves with some spyglasses, they too could only wince. Captain Sun, who had led the Qi-Lin riders of the Legion since before they had even reached Nipponese soil, was still on her mount. But both it, and she, had slumped forward. It was not quite a bow, but it was most certainly submission. Around her, several other lesser Legion soldiers did the same, falling almost on their faces, spears and swords and Mantis Cannons laid down next to them. The Heavenly Court had four entrances, one at each of the cardinal directions, and somehow these soldiers had arrived ahead of the Crown Princess herself through one or more of them. It was less than a hundred, but even one was far too many.
"And…yeah, some of them too."
The Heavenly Throne was occupied, quite obviously, but a final core of defenders stood about it as well. One more black-armored Kensei, his back banner showing his sole allegiance not even to the Emperor but to the Akari Clan. One of the black-clad vampires, the get of General Anpu. A handful more of regular samurai, also aligned solely to the Akari Clan. And, just as Agatha, Alisa, and the rest of An's detachment saw them, they themselves were similarly sighted. Like a group of puppets with all their strings pulled at the exact same time, every single one of the Legion members slumped before the Heavenly Throne rose up and turned about, creating a rough formation of their own.
"Princess?" Johanna asked softly, glancing back at An who was still leaning against the wall.
An bared her teeth and then slumped slightly, her armor dragging furrows into the wood of the walls.
"Try."
"And…if they-,"
"Try," An said again, just as quietly but somehow with more force.
It was not a beg. It couldn't have been. But it felt very, very close.
"I'll try to see to the Legion, and the Headmasters too."
Johanna grimaced and glanced first at her sire and then at the wizards.
"Right," she muttered.
ˢIͦ ͫtͤhͦᶰiͤnkͨ ͣˡtˡhiͭsͪ ͤisͨ ͤˡgͤˢoͭiͥnͣˡg ͨtͦˡoˡ ͤᵍgͤo ͭpͪoͤʸoͬrͤlyͫ ͥˢsˢhͥᶰuᵍt it
All five of the wielders of Shyish stepped into the Heavenly Court. The very second they passed just beyond the doorways, it hit them. It was like walking into a cube of water, so completely and utterly it surrounded them, every inch of their skin and hair. It buzzed against it, a confusing and disconcerting warmth that was both humid and dry somehow. There were the vaguest whispers at the very edge of their hearing, but even as Agatha and Alisa tilted their heads to listen, there was a burning at the back of their necks where the ofuda rested. The burning went from barely there, to mild, to scorching hot in an instant and suddenly the whispers faded away.
"Well," Draken said as she walked along, layering Shyish around her body in invisible armor, "They seem to work. For now."
Agatha and Alisa hurriedly began layering Shyish as well. Perhaps a bit more around the head this time than usual, they had first thought, though they quickly discarded it. The spell was built along a certain framework and suddenly bulging one section over with extra portions made the matrix inherently unstable.
Lͥoͭoᵇkͣ ͬaͤˡtʸ ʷiͦtͬᵏ ͤtͩhiͭsͪ ͤwˡaͣˢyͭ, ͭiͥfͫ ͤsoͣᶰmͩetͫʸhˢiᵖnͥᶰgͤ ˢgͭoͥˡeˡsᶠ ͤtͤˡhˢrˢoͦuͬgͤhᶠ,ͬ ͦmͫaᵇyͤᶰbͩeͥᶰᵍ
"Fangs!" Captain Sun saluted as they got closer, her Qi-Lin trotting a bit closer. "Welcome to the Emperor's court!"
Johanna grimaced while Genevieve frowned a little. Agatha and Alisa just looked at Draken, who looked a mixture of fascinated and disgusted. Captain Sun looked exactly the same as before. Her eyes were not particularly widened, or bloodshot, and her body did not shake or shiver.
"Captain Sun," Genevieve said politely. "You were told not to approach the Heavenly Court."
"Ah, well," Sun shrugged, sounding embarrassed. "I did not notice, I was battling some tengu, and simply couldn't help but hear."
"…hear," Genevieve repeated. "Hear what, precisely?"
Captain Sun's lips quirked.
"The truth, obviously. The Emperor can explain it all to you, honestly," she gestured behind her to where the Heavenly Throne awaited. "It all makes sense."
"He's not your Emperor, Sun," Genevieve said gently. "You swore oaths to the Dragon Throne, remember?"
Sun's brow furrowed under her helmet, and she tilted her head to the side.
"Of course I do. But those don't matter anymore," she said simply.
"Ah…shit," Johanna mumbled, a hand going to her face.
"Don't they?" Genevieve pressed.
"No. Why would they?" Sun laughed lightly. "You can hear it as well, can't you? You know the truth, now."
"I took a hit to the head from an oni, actually," Genevieve lied. "I can't hear too well at the moment. What should I be hearing?"
Sun squinted at her, hands going to her hips.
"The truth," she emphasized again. "It's quite simple. He was right. He knew…everything," she said almost dreamily. "He's going to help me get my teahouse, even."
"Your teahouse?" Johanna finally spoke up, arms folding behind her back.
Or, at least she started to, and then immediately jerked her hands around, staring at her own hands for a moment before glancing back at Sun.
"It's…," Sun blushed, hand cupping her face. "It's my dream. I was happy serving, I don't know why, but I was the only one who could tame the Qi-Lin out of all my siblings. I never really wanted it."
It was then that the faintest of murmurs reached Agatha and Alisa's ears as Johanna continued to lightly interrogate Captain Sun.
"What is the widest spread spell you can quickly manage?" Genevieve's voice was just shy of being impossible to hear. "I know the Sun takes some time to prepare."
"Far too much time," Draken murmured back. "But…,"
"But?"
"There is another. There is more than enough Shyish in the air…,"
Ah. That one. A small amount of giddiness filtered into each twin's bellies.
"Good. Prepare."
Then Genevieve strode forward again.
"So…Captain Sun," she said with a smile. "Maybe we should hear this truth ourselves?"
Sun smiled widely.
"Of course! That's what my Emperor asked in the first place," she chortled before lightly chivvying her mount about to begin heading towards the throne.
Every single one of the affected Legion soldiers bowed or saluted to them, even as they kept their fronts fully facing their small group as they walked forward. As they passed, the rest turned back to looking warily towards where An and the rest of the Legion waited, their weapons held at the ready. The samurai guarding the throne were far less friendly looking, though some of them looked to be sharing some cruel smiles as they looked them up and down. The sole vampire had folded his hands behind his back, a small smirk on his lips that quite uncomfortably reminded Agatha and Alisa of Anpu himself. The Kensei's features were entirely obscured by his mask. But the majority of their attention was on the Emperor himself.
The solid white stone that made up the hillock that the Heavenly Throne sat upon was completely flawless. There was not a single line, a single crack, only one massive smooth outcropping of rock. The throne itself was made of the same stone, carved of it, in fact, the legs still attached to the small hill itself. The Heavenly Emperor, Akari Jubei, did not lounge in it, but neither did he sit easily. He was hunched forward leaning on his weapon, the accursed katana unsheathed, stabbing down ever so slightly into the stone. In doing so, of course, introducing the sole flaw in the whole of its structure. From this close, and in fact visible less than halfway across the Heavenly Court, a burning pink and black aura could be seen which surrounded it. Surrounded the blade, and furthermore seemed to have stretched its aura out from the blade and across Jubei's entire body. He was enveloped utterly in it. This close, the ofuda on their necks were now steadily burning like the sun of Araby itself located in a single spot. His dark brown eyes were even more bloodshot than before, while the dark appeared to have darkened to outright ink black. The gold lined black armor he wore looked utterly flawless, untouched by battle until now, the cape loose and folded against him bereft of any wind.
"Welcome to my court, slaves of the dragon," Jubei rasped as he looked down upon them. "Tell me," he clenched his fist around the hilt of his blade, and suddenly Captain Sun's smile became slightly confused as a small trickle of blood started to come from her left eye. "Have you any idea of what you have wrought?"
"I suppose we could ask you the exact same," Genevieve said up to him, projecting ever so slightly to ensure she was heard.
He was, after all, vertically about twenty feet up.
"So many have died for you," Genevieve continued. "More are still dying for you."
"They are dying for a cause," Jubei corrected, "They are dying for the truth. For freedom, freedom from the tyranny of dragons."
"The dragons that last set foot here three hundred years ago?"
Jubei snarled and stood, wrenching his sword up with him.
"You know nothing, slave. We, who have had to fight for every scrap the dragons deigned to feed us, who have housed and clothed all those who have seen the truth and fled the collars they fit around mind, body, and souls! And you…," he held the sword down towards them, point first, "Will tell me more than you ever realized you knew."
Sire and get glanced at one another and then back at him and tilted their heads.
"Will we?"
"You?" Jubei scoffed, "No. But they," he turned the blade slowly, the tip now pointing directly at the wizards. "They will."
The moment the blade pointed deeply at them, Agatha and Alisa felt the burning of the ofuda increase ten-fold. It felt now like a brand was simply being held against them. It burned, oh did it burn. But it was not as painful as so many things that they had suffered up until now. It certainly did not hurt much as the breath of Indan dead being ground into their very souls by the hands of Yemaraja Himself. There was a brief moment as Jubei stood, posing almost victoriously, the winds from the calming storm above making it billow in the air now that it was no longer being pressed against the stone. Then he blinked, and then glared, readjusting his grip and pointing it towards them again.
"What are those on your neck, nishiban?" Sun asked into the silence, with a disturbing amount of genuine innocence.
The Emperor's eyes widened.
"You-,"
"NOW!" Genevieve yelled while Johanna spun about and outright tackled Sun off her horse, taking the additional ofuda she'd been given and slapping it against Sun's neck.
There had not been an agreed upon signal, but honestly, there was little need for it. Agatha and Alisa ducked low, just shy of kneeling, and turned as one. Their hands outstretched to the sky, and then in an act that would almost be familiar to members of the Celestial College or the astromancers of the East, all three Amethyst Wizards outright tore and forced an entire miniature windstorm of pure Shyish into being. Three distinct but simultaneous blasts of the Purple Wind crashed into being and washed over the entire contingent of altered Legion soldiers. Perhaps they might have survived the first, the heartiest amongst them the second. But suddenly faced with three, it was not particularly surprising to see them all suddenly keel over having transformed into withered corpses as one.
One did not often trifle with the Wind of Death, after all.
But the world did not stop for anyone. Many things were happening all at once. The moment Geneive had spoken, the Kensei had unsheathed his nodachi, tossing the sheathe to the side. The vampire serving the Emperor had leapt forward at the backs of the wizards, only to be caught in the act by Genevieve who kicked him in the stomach with a leg surrounded in ten bracers of Shyish. All of which simultaneously exploded into the vampire's gut and sent him spinning away while smoking. Captain Sun started to scream from where she lay on the ground, Johanna atop her, clawing at herself as the ofuda outright smoked. Agatha and Alisa spun about again, readying their scythes alongside their master, as the Heavenly Emperor let loose a bestial noise of pure outrage and then outright leapt from his throne down towards them.
Agatha and Alisa were strong.
Freakishly so, it had been murmured more than once.
They still felt their arms screaming and tendons almost snapping as they barely caught the Emperor's first downward stroke on the blades of their scythes. The wood dragged along their hands, handles snapping in splinters and friction burns blooming on their palms as the whole of their weapons which had survived the entire journey from the Empire to now were broken on the ground. The metal of the scythes themselves were split in twain by the Emperor's blade, both weapons being destroyed in the same instant. Immediately, Agatha and Alisa leapt backwards, while Jubei swept his blade about in a figure eight that hacked through their robes and left trails of cherry blossom pink flames in the air. Draken spun her scythe about and attempted an upwards strike, only for Jubei to grasp the weapon by the hilt with his free hand and squeeze down, shattering the wood there. He glared her down and barked something in Nipponese too quick for them to catch.
"HEY!"
That was all the warning Jubei got before Johanna, all nine feet of her, spear tackled him. The Emperor and his new foe bounced away, while the sound of stomping announced the arrival of the Kensei and the rest of the Nipponese samurai, who brandished his blade at them and began to speak. Whatever he was saying, it sounded intensely aristocratic, poetic, and entirely too formal and archaic for either sister to understand. They also did not have the benefit of one of the vampires being nearby to help translate. Instead, all three wizards clapped their hands together and then steadily drew them apart, three shafts of solidified Shyish appearing between their palms. A curving swoop of the hand on one end, and the new scythes were created. These, at least, would hopefully last a bit longer. Captain Sun still lay on the ground, but her screaming had mostly subsided and now she was still and staring vacantly at the sky. Genevieve and the other vampire were currently striking at one another, fists and legs and elbows flashing as they struck, blocked or dodged, and struck again. All the while, the Kensei had continued speaking. Agatha and Alisa sighed alongside their master.
"We no speak Nipponese good," Draken ground out, making the Kensei pause, his blade lowering ever so slightly. "Can't hear speech words you say, sorry. Speak Reikspiel, maybe?"
Behind them, Jubei yelled again and slammed his blade down releasing a carving crescent of Chaos energies that split the earth apart for more than twenty feet. Genevieve barely dodged a blow from the vampire she was fighting which caused a crater to be planed into the garden's dirt, the vampire's skin flashing with a metallic sheen. The samurai looked especially outraged at their mangling of their language. The Kensei, for his part, growled and then pointed at them with his nodachi again, the energies of his Ghost Blade burning brightly.
"I," he ground out in the roughest accent that any of the wizards had heard so far, "Am…going…kill…you. For…Akari…Clan. Honor…less…dogs," he growled the last word out.
"I think lost poetry some words," Draken informed him, which only made the Nipponese glare all the harder.
Agatha and Alisa, on the other hand, shrugged as they flexed Shyish and twitched fingers and will all at once.
"Dogs?" They said together. "Dogs are okay."
Their shadows were twisted by the storm clouds above and the few torches that were still lit in the Heavenly Court. But now they stretched further as Shyish stretched into visibility, the purple almost leeching from their robes temporarily before falling in great splotches onto the ground. The Kensei and his samurai jerked back slightly as the splotches writhed, joining together, and then finally coalesced upwards and upright. From two dimensions to three, with previously nonexistent slobbering tongues, four of what could almost have been thought to be hound-shaped beings stood on all fours. Or at least seemed to. The moment some of the Nipponese turned their gazes upon the things directly, they vanished. But the snarling and growling could still be heard. Draken, meanwhile, sniffed and then stomped a foot down, corkscrew energies of Shyish enveloping her arms and legs.
"I going kill you because want to," Draken informed the Kensei before she was blurring forwards, her scythe of solidified magic crashing against his Ghost Blade.
Nodachi and scythe flashed back and forth in a great whirlwind around the two, grips switching and readjusting constantly. What Draken did not have on the Kensei in soul-granted strength from his ancestors, she was making up for in speed and her own weapon. None of the other samurai could even begin to get close, at least not at first, and that hesitation cost them. Four went down before the others could notice, screaming as maws filled with needles ripped into the backs of knees, tendons, and then throats once they had fallen over. The samurai turned, and to their credit did not hesitate as they charged the twins, some attempting to kill the hounds before realizing they had disappeared again.
"We going kill you-,"
"-because want to, too."
Unlike the now broken scythes of their station, which both twin was honestly a bit peeved about, the weapons they held now were superior even to Nipponese steel. They fought as one, as they ever had, hooking legs and arms, blocking and dodging, ducking and even at one point rolling atop each other's back as one twin stooped low and the other rolled high. Where their scythes flashed, death followed. Fingers, hands, arms were severed, as well as heads and legs. It was not to say that the samurai were not incapable, either. More than one katana found itself sliding right off of barriers they could not possibly have seen, tearing through their robes but not through the layers of magic atop their skins. All the while, the hounds bit and tore and clawed.
At one point, Genevieve flew by, still exchanging blows with the black-clad vampire. Now, however, the smirk was gone from the vampire's face. In fact, their pale features had twisted in consternation, and they were blocking and dodging far more than they had been attacking. A deep claw mark had been slashed across their face, narrowly avoiding the nose, and their robes were smoking and burnt in a few places. Still, Genevieve drove them back. Draken and the Kensei still battled, her scythe spinning and whirling in her grip like the haft had been greased, but then gripping concerns were slightly modified when one was holding something made of magic. Still, her robes had been badly cut near the chest and kidney where heavy slashes had struck hard against her own magical armor, but the Kensei bore some cuts of his own, ones that bled. Johanna, however, was fighting the most violent battle of them all. One half of the Heavenly Court was now burning in those same strange pink fires, the beautiful and picturesque garden completely ruined. By now, it looked like a churned muddy field that a thousand soldiers had marched back and forth across. Johanna's fists slammed against the Emperor's armor, but whatever enchantments the Nipponese had managed upon it, they were strong indeed. Indeed, it was Johanna who repeatedly had to dodge out of the way, portions of the skin on her shoulders and forearms blackened. Ordinarily her regeneration should have healed such things, but they weren't. Not those burns caused by the flames left by Jubei's katana at least.
Lͥeˢfͤtͤ oͥnͭ yͩoͧuͨᵏrˢ ͭlͤᵖeᵇfͣtͨᵏ ˢhͭeͤᵖ'ᶠsͦ ͬʷcͣoͬmͩiᵇnͬgͤ ͣᵏonͣᵖ ͣtͬhͭe ͨrͦiͫgͤhtͦᶰ pͣᶰuͩllͪ ͥbͭacͪkͥ ͫleͣˡtͬ ͤtͣhͩʸeʷmͪʸ aͩnͦᶰdͭ ʸnͦoͧw!
Constant communication. Minds transferring information back and forth at the speed of thought, faster than muscle twitch and darting eyes could see. What one saw, the other heard, what one heard, the other saw. They were surrounded on all sides, but they knew what lay to the side, what lay behind, what lay ahead. When one samurai stabbed forward, both dodged, one pulling another samurai into the way of that blade. A scythe flew out, decapitating, while another scythe flung up in a one-handed grip to block a katana that was going to strike that same decapitating arm. Johanna let out a pained scream as a deep slash from Jubei dragged down from her left shoulder to right hip, a wrenched leap backwards saving her from being cut in half entirely. The vampire that had been fighting Genevieve was growing more desperate. Fire sputtered and bloomed to life around his fists and feet, but the hollow ringing sound as she struck home against his metallic body were growing more and more constant. They were also starting to be accompanied by the shrieking sound of breaking metal. Draken grunted as she turned to avoid a hit, only to transform it into a pained shriek as the Kensei managed to redirect his strike at an impossible sharp angle into her side. She clutched for his arm, however, and held the Kensei in place while grinning with bloody teeth. He tried to pull himself free, and in fact managed to drag the nodachi several inches back, cutting that much deeper into Draken's side, but at the same time, she'd reached out with her scythe of Shyish in an underslung grip. The Kensei had enough time to look down before the tip of Draken's weapon punched upwards into his unguarded underjaw, and then was tugged backwards itself to split the jawbone in the middle while dragging the tip even further against the top of his mouth and into the brain.
It was not enough, not entirely, but the Kensei still stumbled back, Draken doing the same, blood pouring from their separate wounds. But where the Kensei slapped a hand up against his face, screaming as his now two loose jawbone halves hung loosely and the roof of his mouth had been sliced, Draken hissed sharply as she clutched her side with one hand. Then she flipped her scythe around and with a look of almost vicious satisfaction on her face tore some of the Kensei's life force out of him and into herself. Again, the Kensei stumbled. Again, Draken cast the spell. By that point, Agatha and Alisa were heading over, outright running away from the remaining samurai even as the hounds continued to harry them. It was needed as well, as the souls within the Kensei's blade seemed to burn all the brighter, and his grip steadied, his eyes almost clouded over with pain becoming clear with furious intent. Which, of course, was when both sisters arrived, simultaneously drawing forth sheets of crushing Shyish to begin compressing the large Nipponese man into a much smaller state. He roared, he strained, and the ghost blade flared all the brighter, forcing Agatha and Alisa to grind their own teeth, hissing with the strain that tugged at the mind and soul. But try as he might, there remained but one truth left that would matter for him.
He was not as strong as General Anpu.
As such, he could not escape before Draken placed both hands on the sides of his head and then violently began tearing his life force out again and again until there was nothing left. The wisps of his energies seeped into her mouth, nose, and eyes, and the badly savaged skin and flesh began to heal. Still, it was not nearly an instantaneous and neat process as it might have been for some, and Draken still winced as she stood straight, glancing out at the battlefield. The vampire lay against the white stone of the small hill atop which the Heavenly Throne rested. Or was being made to lay, at least. In that Genevieve had gotten her hand around the side of their head and was bashing them against it repeatedly until they stopped moving, at which point she leaned down and tore out their throat, drinking deeply of chalky, clotted blood. She looked to be ready to continue doing just that when another pained scream came from Johanna as an eruption of pink and black energies came to light on the other side of the Heavenly Throne. Smoking, her body a near ruin, and minus much of her left arm, Johanna came flying over the white stone hill only to hit the ground and keep rolling for several more feet.
She coughed, once, when she finally rolled to a stop.
Around the side of the hill, the Emperor stalked. There were a few dents and scratches in his armor, but thus far he did not even appear to have lost a single drop of blood. The daemonic fire of his blade had grown all the brighter, however, and now he left burning footprints behind him, a dark mirror to An herself when the Princess had been sufficiently enraged. The ofuda began to burn even more on their necks as he approached, eyes darting amongst them all. All that were left of his retinue were a few groaning and mewling soldiers who had been savaged but not properly killed by the hounds. Once he got close enough, those same hounds came leaping out of the edge of sight, only for both twin to jerk in shock as his katana flashed back and forth. Each hissed in pain, knees buckling slightly, as they felt the unwelcome and unfamiliar sensation of the hounds suddenly being burnt away by the fire that the Emperor wielded.
Tͭhͪaͦˢtͤ'sͪ ͦnͧᶰoͩˢt ͣsͬuͤppͫoͤsͣᶰeͭd ͭtͦoᵇ ͤbeͧᶰ ͭpͦoͧsͨsͪiͣᵇbˡlͤe
"Pathetic," Jubei finally said. "This is all the so-called Princess can muster? This…rabble?"
"You are alone, now," Genevieve said cautiously, slowly circling towards her get with her arms raised high.
"I have my city. I have my nation. I have the loyal clans," Jubei shook his head slowly, then raised his blade high as if examining it for defects. "And once I have slain the traitors, and that mongrel beast parading in human skin…I shall have all that I need to return to Cathay," he glanced down at the bodies of the dead Legion and then back over at Genevieve. "The power of my blade is beyond you, vampire. I am beyond you."
"All you are, then, is because of that blade?" Genevieve cocked her head.
ˢWͪhͤˢaᵍtͥ ͮiͥᶰsᵍ ʲsͦhͪeͣᶰ ᶰdͣoiͭnͥgͫ?ͤ!
Jubei snarled, flicking the katana about in his grip.
"The blade is mine. I conquered it with my will. It. Serves. Me."
"And to think, you speak much of collars and chains," Genevieve scoffed, finally reaching her get, eyes flashing as she glanced down at the slowly moving Johanna. "While you prize a weapon which steals the minds of those who face it."
The Emperor scoffed again.
"They are broken by my will. A human's will. As is proper. As it was meant to be. Not by dragons. Not by vampires. Not by the Dark Kami."
"Did you not see what happened to your own people?!" Genevieve cried; arms spread wide for a moment.
It was impossible to see the Emperor's expression at that, but his grip on his blade did firm again.
"They were too weak to control them," he said flatly. "That was their mistake. The next priests shall know better."
Finally, Johanna sat up, groaning slightly and shaking her head.
"Johanna?" Genevieve said without looking back down at her.
"Mnnggh. I…wh…," Johanna mumbled before finally clutching at her head. "No…no no no NO!"
She pulled her head back and screamed louder than Agatha or Alisa had ever heard, her skin going metallic in sparse patches before an aura of fire bloomed around her then guttered out. Genevieve was shouting something, before finally reaching down, dodging like lightning as Johanna swiped out at her master with unsheathed claws. She'd pulled the blow, however, ever so slightly, and that was enough for Genevieve to slap her hand on Johanna's neck, and immediately the younger vampire stilled, eyes wide.
"Tch. So you had more after all," Jubei grunted.
Now Genevieve rose, the burnt remains of the first ofuda talisman given to Johanan falling out of her hands as she examined them. Johanna leapt to her feet and growled, her wounded left arm hanging loosely as she crouched low. The Bretonnian's expression was grave indeed, a dark fury flashing in her eyes. For a moment, the ofuda on Agatha and Alisa's necks burned a bit hotter than before, or perhaps they just imagined it. To see Johanna's will crumple like that had been startling, though she had clearly been grievously injured at the exact same time.
"I must wonder, however. So few of you? How many of those little ofuda do you have left?" He sneered. "Your Fang amulets are not enough, clearly, and so all that stands between you kneeling or not…hah. What a foolish beast you have chosen to be collared by."
Johanna slammed her right arm into the ground and snarled, letting her injured left arm just hang limply.
"Fuck. You."
That was all that was said before both she and Johanna charged Jubei. What blows he could not block or divert with his katana, he simply took on his armor, grunting with each impact. But none managed to penetrate that armor. Agatha and Alisa glanced at their master, who nodded. All three began to draw on Shyish, watching warily as the vampires held the Emperor off for just a little bit longer, just enough to refill their reserves. In the meantime, more of the garden was destroyed as Jubei slashed and stabbed, his free hand almost as deadly as his blade. The same sort of effects often conferred by Ghost Blades were more than evident, the increased speed, the boosted strength, he possessed all of those things. His katana almost seemed to be cutting the air with how quickly it was moving. When he stomped, the earth crumpled and cratered, at one point his fist shattering a nearby statue that the battle had moved past. A moment longer, and then the wizards began to push forward, coils of Shyish wrapping around their bodies.
It was always somewhat disconcerting to move under the effects of this spell in particular, and it was difficult besides to practice it. Both to cast, and to maintain for long periods of time. For the moment, however, the world seemed to blur around them as they rushed forwards. Much to their consternation the Emperor simply sped up even more, the burning aura growing brighter and the ofuda talismans burning hotter. By now the heat had reached an odd point where it was almost ignorable, something they simply couldn't spare the attention on. They had to focus entirely on the Emperor. The mental link opened up, this time including their master, for a single instant of hesitation would surely bring about swift death.
There was no time for words. For insults. For speeches. Only the attack, and the defense. Scythes flashing, twisting, spinning, trying to hook and trying to scratch. Blades of magic and vampiric claws skittering and screeching as they struck the black armor of the Emperor. Bracers of Shyish impacting like gongs, exploding bursts of the Purple Wind that seemed to finally manage something, to push some measure of pain through that damned magical armor, but far less than desired. Jubei was a consummate fighter. Every part of his armor, every inch of his body, was given over to the fight. He whipped his head about to dodge one attack and to scrap the hands of a vampire with the sides. A fist nearly collapsed the entire edifice of layered aethyr armor on one wizard, while his Chaos-tainted blade let loose a spinning whirlwind which scattered dirt and cloth alike, creating dozens of cuts and burns in the vampires.
For the briefest of time, it was a stalemate.
That ended, however, when Jubei elbowed Genevieve aside, swept a leg out that knocked Agatha and Alisa away, and with an absurdly fast upwards sweep from his sword shattered Draken's magical armor and carved directly through a faint black mist which appeared and disappeared. She shrieked in pain as the middle of her chest was set alight with daemonic fire, but Jubei then managed to reverse his grip, bring the blade down, and shove forward to plant it directly through Johanna's stomach. The young vampire screamed in pain as the fire began to spread from within, rearing up and clutching at his wrists so that she could kick with both feet directly into his chin from below. As the Emperor fell backwards a single step, wrenching the blade out of Johanna's stomach and leaving her insides afire, so too did his helmet rise as some of the straps broke from the sheer strength of Johanna's kick. Rise, ever so slightly enough, to reveal a hint of pale skin. In the blink of an eye, Genevieve had leapt upon the Emperor's back, hands locking down on the sides of his helmet and her legs on his back, letting her haul backwards with every bit of her strength. Even so, she hissed and snarled with the effort, her inhuman muscles tensed and bulging. Jubei reached up with one hand, clamped it around one of Genevieve's wrists and clenched down, squeezing and fracturing the bone, while with his other hand the blade continued to dance and flash against all three of the Amethyst Wizards. But though Genevieve screamed, she did not stop, and with a final burst of effort finally tore the Emperor's helmet off of his head.
Akari Jubei's skin was not pale. It was translucent. Literally. Not utterly, like glass, but more than enough to see his outer veins, the red and white of musculature and interconnective tissues. It was not just translucent either. Dozens and dozens of sores were evident across his face and bald head, clearly caused by wearing his armor for so long and so often. As if one day he'd simply not taken it off ever again. Some of the sores, in fact, were not sores at all, but given by their bleeding and puckering now, but looked to have been points where the skin and flesh of Jubei's head had begun fusing with the inside of his helmet. The briefest look down now at his exposed neck and the faintest amount of his collarbone showed the same, portions where the armor was so tight to his sweat-soaked frame that they had fused outright. If the man had ever been handsome in life, it was not evident now. There was only the hard, gaunt frame of a man without an ounce of excess fat in his body. His dark brown eyes darted back and forth, and he lashed out with another punch that sent the already wounded Draken flying back with a crunch of breaking bones, leaving her to the ground ten feet away in a crumpled heap that was barely breathing.
Genevieve recovered quickly, immediately going for his no longer armored head, but Jubei blocked her just as quickly as before. Johanna was still rolling on the ground, pushing her own hands into the hole in her stomach to try and pat and scrub out the fire, while Draken just barely managed to keep her eyes open. The twins stretched out their hands, and a thick manacle of Shyish slammed into place around Jubei, or at least began to before he swept his blade through it and somehow severed the magic constraint before it could even fully close. They tried a different sort of enclosing force, a sheet of Shyish to crush and squeeze, only to suffer the exact same result. All the while, he fought off Genevieve, though he began turning about to glare at them as they kept trying to cast their spells.
He did not say anything, he simply moved. Though their scythes did not shatter like their regular weapons had, there was an undeniable sensation of being drained, of the magic itself beginning to flag and falter when they were in contact with the Chaos blade. Even a glancing blow against their magical armor nearly shattered it, every time, forcing them to try and retreat to give themselves time to layer more Shyish. The Emperor simply refused to give it. Even with Genevieve attacking him, it wasn't enough. Draken was still on the ground, Johanna still trying to heft herself upright but hadn't gotten more than one arm under herself. Jubei just kept coming, the Emperor's sword and fist crashing through every single defensive effort they made. Every. Single. One. Until, finally, the seemingly inevitable occurred. More than once, Yemaraja's Noose burned around their throats, and a fatal blow was diverted. But it still wasn't enough, not in the end.
Ņ̸̤̞̦̘̣̙̺̘̭͛́͐̅̏̈̔Ǭ̴̺̗̈
Agatha screamed as Alisa stared down, uncomprehendingly, as the sword in her gut. Their mental connection broke apart as their two minds, ever in sync, suddenly began to process at different speeds. One still alive and vibrant, the other abruptly trending towards total silence. Jubei merely sneered and twisted the blade in Alisa's belly before tearing it outwards horizontally, leaving her to begin to collapse by the time he had turned back to focus his attentions now fully on Genevieve. Agatha didn't care, she simply fell to her knees, and held her sister in place before she could fully fall forward. Nonsense words, mutterings, but not, in fact, the total despair that most might have expected. It was, in fact, words of encouragement. Not pleading, but murmurs to galvanize.
The incongruity of it was not enough to make the Emperor turn back from the vampire he was rapidly beginning to overpower.
As such, he did not see as the Shield of Yemaraja began to spin on the sides of Alisa's head. As the glinting black and silver noose around her throat seemed to solidify, somehow, to push outwards from her skin without bursting through. Every single part of the tattoo darkened, in fact, while speckles of previously unseen purple and silver began to show through, as if they had become windows into an alien realm. Or, as some might know, the Realm of the Deva of the Dead. Alisa's eyes blackened as if a pot of ink had been spilled inside of them, obscuring the iris, the sclera, and the veins until they appeared closer to black marbles. Grey mist spilled out of her mouth, clinging low to the ground, but never seeming to end. Then, steadily, Alisa began to rise. Her first step was with Agatha's help, but she no longer required it for the second. She did not glance her sister's way; she did not need to. For already, Agatha was stomping forward, and Shyish was falling in great torrents around her.
Agatha sundered her own aethyric layers, needing the Shyish that made them up. The corkscrew coils of magic around her body that let her move so swiftly dissipated as well, the energies there redirected entirely. A look, past Jubei to the widened eyes of Genevieve, the flick of a vampire's eye. Grimacing, the Bretonnian squeezed her eyes shut and when the Emperor struck at her next, there was a metallic clang and screeching sound as Genevieve clutched at the sword with both hands, her own pale skin turning a momentary shining grey. Jubei's eyes widened at the sudden usage of the technique, even as he began to wrench her off of it with his own unholy strength. But not, as it turned out, before a vaguely holy strength elected to contest him.
Jubei let loose a roar of outrage as Agatha appeared behind him, weaving her arms under his own. A huge sheathe of Shyish had enveloped the whole of the Hohenzollern's arms, from shoulder to fingertip, thick and utterly opaque. She flexed as she clasped her hands behind the Emperor's head, and now it was the Emperor's armor that screeched and cracked under the sheer strength that Agatha was now unleashing. Her tattoo burned on the sides of her head as she drew upon the power of the Deva, and though it would cost her, the price was worth paying in the here and now. Already she could feel her own energies waning from the strain. It was, however, enough.
Enough for her to haul Jubei upright into the air, kicking, and spun him about. Only then did Jubei witness Alisa von Hohenzollern again as she half-shambled towards him. He struggled to reorient his blade, but then Genevieve was there, applying the whole of her strength to that single matter, that single wrist, to prevent him from succeeding. Her feet dug trenches into the earth before she planted them flatly against Jubei's midsection, bending her entire body into the effort. Alisa thus managed to approach before leaping up and past Jubei's kicking legs to wrap her hands around his throat. Black and purple ooze spilled out of her blank, black marble eyes, out of her bloody nose, from her ears, and from her mouth amongst the continually pouring mist. Jubei continued to struggle, to snarl, at least until the ooze that spilled from Alisa flowed into his own mouth, nose, and eyes. More and more of it spilled out, until it coated his entire head, the entire upper half of his body, though its progress halted at the forearm of the limb which still held the Chaos blade. Then, with the most violent inhale that likely many present would ever see in their lives, Alisa tore life force from the Emperor's own body.
And this time, he no longer had the air in his lungs to scream with.
What almost looked like an ethereal wax mold of the Emperor's own form lifted a few inches off his body, and a significant amount of it was torn away by Alisa's inhaling, flowing back into her, with the rest snapping back down. The rune of Yemaraja continued to spin on the sides of her head, and suddenly the mist that poured out of her mouth became colored by strange pink and black specks which spewed back out and then dissipated in the air rather than fully travel inside her. As this happened, the burnt and shredded flesh and organs within Alisa's stomach began to pulse and twitch, portions beginning to heal. All the while, Agatha continued to hold, to bind, and to try and crush the Emperor in his own precious armor. Alisa inhaled again, tearing yet more life force free, and this time the wound in her stomach closed. At which point the mist ceased spilling from her mouth, though only after carrying away the discolored specks, her black, shark-like eyes clearing up to reveal clear white sclera and purple irises once more.
At which point Jubei finally managed to throw off Genevieve, tossing the vampire away with a slash to the side that set her alight and screaming. He thrashed, forcing Alisa off of him before she too was struck by a fist to her just-healed stomach, doubling her over and raising her off the earth slightly only to collapse back down on it. Agatha screamed in outrage, now shifting her hands to begin trying to squeeze the Emperor's head directly, but her momentary distraction was enough to let him elbow her directly in the side of the head. The first was diverted by the energies of the noose. The second, however, was not, and it was only her jerking her head back and pulling away that let it be a glancing blow that nonetheless cracked bone in her forehead and sent her to the muddy ground.
But as all three looked up from where they had fallen, they could only stare. The black and purple ooze had continued to spill downwards across the Emperor's body. The only part of his body that remained untouched was the forearm and the hand which held his accursed katana. The rest was completely obscured by the ooze, which was already looking like it was beginning to solidify. His screams were, at first, muffled. Then they were silent, as there was no longer any air left in his lungs to exhale with. Jubei swung his blade, letting loose another deadly crescent of energy, but Genevieve managed to leap out of the way. Johanna, who had just barely gotten to her feet by that point, stumbled back to avoid another of said crescents. Agatha was now the one being helped to her feet by Alisa, blood pouring down her face as she was guided towards the dying samurai, who Draken had already crawled their way to. It was, perhaps, a brutal thing to consider. They were, however, the enemy. And they yet had lifeforce to give.
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[2342 IC] Throne Room of Heavenly Castle, Tenshuto, Heavenly Capital of Nippon, Shiranaka Prefecture
The ofuda burned. It burned and yet that burning was good. So very, very good. The alternative was too horrifying to contemplate for long. A single cut, that was all that it had taken, and suddenly her mind had felt like it was covered in wool and cotton. Every second that had passed, the whispers had pressed in. They'd promised her everything. The Emperor would help her. He could even find a cure for vampirism if she wished. Because he could do anything, as long as she listened. Because he knew what he was doing. He was refined. He was perfect. Everything inside of her had been screaming, the beast and the woman Johanna Fuerbach in total unison with each other like they had never, ever been. Total impotent outrage as they were drowned by themselves, by something almost the same. So close together that for a brief confusing second they really had become one, an incongruity of thought that had lasted just long enough for her sire to save her.
And now, she watched, half crouched and half crawling away, as Emperor Akari Jubei clawed at his own face. The fingers of his heavy black metal gauntlet dug deep trenches into the ooze poured across his face but couldn't quite seem to penetrate. They had not dared to try and get close, not after Genevieve had almost lost her fingers. There was no control anymore, only fury. The Chaos blade hummed and buzzed, tearing through the air, unleashing waves of pink fire and blasts of energy, massive crescents flying outwards the dug trenches into the earth and screamed through the air. He was swinging it in every direction, even faster than he had been fighting before.
"Taal's Hairy Balls," Johanna muttered.
"You really shouldn't blaspheme the Gods, my get," Genevieve grunted as the two pulled back a bit more.
"Why, what's He going to do, bless me with great power for kicks and my gumption?" Johanna snorted, wincing with the motion as she placed a hand against her burnt flesh.
"It's been known to happen," Genevieve said grimly, readjusting the still unmoving and unblinking but still breathing Captain Sun on her shoulders, leaping backwards even further to place her down.
"I've never seen that spell before," Johanna continued, shuddering slightly as she looked over at the Amethyst Wizards. "Or felt that…whatever that was. Was that really…I've heard of Yemaraja, but..."
Genevieve swallowed, as she too watched the Wizards stoop like carrion birds over the samurai who had been left barely alive from those strange hounds. Had, because now all three of the wizards had once more healed themselves by way of ripping the life out of the dying Nipponese soldiers.
"He is not, traditionally, particularly well-disposed to our kind, no," Genevieve murmured. "But no, I've never seen anything like that either."
Which was saying something, considering she was four hundred years old.
"Head's up," Johanna said sharply, gaining the attention of all four other women. "We're not done yet."
Jubei had finally realized that his blade was repelling the ooze and was now struggling to lift it towards his own face, fighting with the constriction of his elbow as the ooze continued to solidify and harden. By now, his legs were not even moving. But even as Johanna said the words, the Hohenzollern twins had stepped forward with absolutely thunderous expressions on their faces, their master Draken looming just behind them. The trio inhaled deeply, exhaled deeply, and then reached out with their hands. Draken said nothing, merely setting her jaw, but the twins favored Johanna with one simultaneous look.
"Yes. We. Are."
Then all three reached out and hauled Shyish down into visibility. The same crushing force that they had normally applied to entire bodies, they placed solely upon the arm holding the blade. Jubei no longer had any air to scream with, but his entire body did spasm violently as they held the blade in place. The rest of the ooze was now fully solid, encasing his entire body and slowly beginning to constrict further. The sword's aura burned brighter, angrier, but now it was directly contesting all three Amethyst Wizards. Purple sheets of Shyish enveloped the arm and the blade as well, but there was a massive amount of trembling going on in the arms of the wizards. A small trickle of blood was coming from their eyes, and they were bleeding from the nose as well. Johanna inhaled sharply at that, but for a wonder the beast was silent. As if it were somehow exhausted to the point of unconsciousness, if such a state could ever be applied to what was within her, all from struggling against the blade's power.
"Oh to hell with this," Genevieve spat and then leaned down to take up Captain Sun's sword, which had never even made it out of its sheath and one of the blades off the broken scythes that still lay on the ground. "This will do."
She ran forwards as the wizards struggled, with all the speed she was capable of. The burning aura of the blade scalded her skin, the ofuda on her neck searing in its protective heat. But it could not stop Genevieve from circling around, carefully angling her appropriated implements, and then placing both of them directly through Jubei's eye sockets in a slow, deliberate, and forceful stab which managed to penetrate the ooze. After which she began to wriggle and stir them around with considerable vigor, continually, up, down, in circles, in corkscrews, and more. Jubei spasmed more as she did so, for at least the first few seconds, before finally he ceased moving. He did not fall, however, as the ooze continued to hold his body in place, while the burning aura of his sword grew brighter and brighter, forcing Genevieve to retreat back to the others. There was palpable malice in the air, coming no longer from Jubei, but wholly from his blade. It was offended. That was the feeling that spread throughout the entire Heavenly Court, something powerful, something filled with malice, something that was furiously offended.
One heavy metal boot stepped foot into the Heavenly Court, then another.
Johanna, along with the other four, looked as An entered, hand still pressed against her side and leaving a trail of burning blood behind her. No Dragonguard followed, not yet. An advanced entirely on her lonesome, eyes locked onto the blade and a silent snarl on her lips. As she approached, however, the katana seemed to flicker. Then, in front of all their eyes, it began to warp and twist. Within seconds, it was no longer a katana. It was a massive dao sword. Then some sort of archaic Cathayan hammer, a single massive sphere atop a long metal shaft. A bow made of metal. To Johanna's eyes, from one blink of the eye to the next, it was a guandao. A perfect one. The exact perfect weight for her strength, her grip. Then, much to her surprise, it was a Runefang. But not just any Runefang.
It was Stone Breaker.
But that was impossible. The Runefang that would have been hers as heir was where it was supposed to be. Not here. Surely not. But it felt like it. She, knew that blade better than anyone in the Far East, surely, couldn't help but think for a split second that it truly was the Runefang of Talabecland. Then she blinked again, and it was flickering through different sorts of weapons again. So many that she couldn't even tell all of them. The speed of the changing was only picking up as An approached, until she stood directly in front of it, braving the burning pink fire of its aura with a distinctly unimpressed look on her face. An growled, raised both hands high, and then there was a burst of utterly blinding Qhaysh. It continued on for a whole minute before fading away, and as it did so, the burning of the ofuda on her neck finally faded away as well.
"Oh-,"
"-my."
Johanna blinked rapidly, scrubbing at her eyes.
The Heavenly Emperor. The man responsible for the scourging of every coastal province and some of the inland provinces of Cathay. Who had, in fact, just about nearly killed everyone present. The corpse of that man lay naked and crumpled halfway on his side in an undignified heap. His head and much of the skin of his neck were completely purpled and blue from suffocation. A slurry of grey and red seeped out of his eye sockets onto the muddy earth below. His pale, partially translucent skin was ripped and torn from where dozens of points had begun fusing with his armor. On the ground next to him, standing upright, was a large black metal box that An was now leaning heavily against, wheezing again as more blood dripped out of her wounds. Then she raised her hand, clenched it in a fist, and a good few hundred of the Legion came pouring into the Heavenly Court, sweeping up Johanna, Genevieve, and the wizards in their exuberance as they all assembled around An.
It should have been a grand, triumphant moment. And for the Cathayans, it was. The Princess still stood. But Johanna could smell far, far too much dragon blood. She leaned on the box, and it should have been casually, but it really was to keep her upright. Her bared teeth were a grimace, not a grin. Still, she stood, and she laughed, and she pointed out some of the usual worthies, as she had done after every battle. But after a few moments more, she raised a hand for silence. It said something that even with all the cheering, the exhaustion, the Legion quieted immediately. An looked among them all, and Johanna was struck by the feeling that An was looking her right in the eye. But that, somehow, she was doing it for all of them.
"Genevieve," she finally said. "How is Captain Sun?"
There was much shuffling and staring. It was not, perhaps, the first thing they had expected the Crown Princess to say. Johanna glanced back at her sire, who grimaced.
"She breathes. She does not blink, does not speak."
An sighed, nodding her head, and then glanced at some of her Dragonguard.
"Get her to the Silver Snakes. Tenzo!" she tapped the box as the elderly leader of the Plum Lotus Temple appeared out of the crowd.
"Yes, Princess!" One of the remaining Dragonguard Captains saluted as they pulled the unmoving Captain Sun away, passing by Tenzo as they did so.
After which An had to stand without the benefit of what she had created, practically locking her knees to remain upright. But other than a flick of a glance to Johanna, she gave no hint of that to the others. Though, Johanna was reasonably sure, Genevieve and a number of the Dragonguard were able to tell.
"This," she called out to them all, "Was a hard day. This," she hefted the box and handed it to the priests, "Is not yet dealt with. It is contained. For now. Do not," she looked at Tenzo who nodded gravely, "Let it out of your sight." Then she looked back to her soldiers, but there were no congratulations, no smile. "And this day is not over yet. Scour the fortress, kill every soldier who does not surrender."
There was a slight pause, which made An frown.
"Did I stutter? At every turn, the Nipponese have shown their spirit, their defiant inability to accept defeat. I want the entire tenth tier cleared! Go! Now! All of you!"
The Legion jumped to obey, but a look from An had Johanna still in her movements, and in doing so made Genevieve stay behind as well. The Wizards noticed as well, but as An flicked her fingers at them, they blinked as a trio and then warily stepped away to join the rest of the Legion's troops. The Crown Princess of Cathay kept her arms folded under her chest, glancing about as her forces left through all four of the cardinal entrances until the Heavenly Court was occupied by only three breathing beings. Even if two of them technically only needed to if they wanted to talk. Only then did An let herself sag, outright staggering down to one knee, requiring Johanna to rush forward to try and hold her up. She wheezed softly, no longer attempting to conceal the amount of pain she was in.
"An?" Johanna said uncertainly.
The Dragon Princess was not well. Deep bags hung under her eyes, and the burning heat that poured off her body was banked far lower than it had been in the past. She had been nearly killed, perhaps, by the concentrated barrage after defeating Fong in a drawn-out battle. Then the Deathmaster. Then the elite Kensei that had been guarding the final gate into the tenth tier and into the palace itself. Even her wheezing was accompanied by a few wet coughs, and the flecks of dragon blood which had so entranced both vampires was now accompanied by the acrid smell of poison that still managed to stubbornly flow through An's veins.
"We need to get you to a healer," Genevieve said firmly.
"I'm the best the Legion has, at the moment," An shook her head. "I'll be fine. Just need time…and security, something that we won't find just yet. Not until-,"
"We know," Johanna ran a hand through her hair. "But how will we know if, or…or even when-,"
An held up a single finger, and placed it against her own lips.
"Patience, Johanna," she chuckled, coughing a few more times. "Wait until every single member of the Legion has fully spread itself out…,"
Then she slumped slightly, letting herself slip down to the ground fully, resting on it, and partially against Johanna, legs sprawled out as she continued to bleed. Johanna made to talk again, but An just shushed her. Genevieve remained silent, frowning deeply and worrying at her bottom lip, glancing about the ruined Heavenly Court. Her eyes fell upon the undignified pale body of Akari Jubei where it lay. The sounds of battle began to be heard again, which made Johanna's head snap around. The Princess had been correct, apparently. More fighting was going on, even with the Emperor dead. Still, they stayed, for a few minutes more, in relative quiet. It was enough time, at least,
Until a soft clapping echoed out, followed by a sibilant drawl in deep-voiced Cathayan.
"Well thought, and well fought, my niece."
Johanna and Genevieve spun as one, staring at the man who had appeared in the throne room without somehow being detected by their own senses. He was dressed completely in grey and blacks, wearing long flowing robes that were a dark mirror to the same worn by Emperor Taizong. A large, almost diamond shaped hat covered his head and much of his features, though that was swiftly tossed aside. Beneath it was a man that could easily have been mistaken for the Emperor, were it not for his eyes and his horns. Unlike the Emperor's own golden antler horns, this man's horns were a glossy black, closer to An's, though hers were more like solid black stone. His eyes, too, were a strange, stormy grey, literally so in that the hue remained inconstant. Not that it was easy to see, given how thinly opened they were, almost closed. He was grinning, baring a mouth full of pointed fangs like An, though his were somewhat less prolifically shark-like in their breadth.
He also made no sound whatsoever save from his clapping and his voice. Neither his steps, nor his clothes, nor anything else.
"There you are, my Uncle," An grunted as she made to stand, one hand still at her wounded side.
The First Shadow under Heaven tilted his head to the side, darting down to the wound and back up again, his grin widening ever so slightly.
"You have upset over a century of work, young one," he said, joining his hands together, concealed in their sleeves. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
"That I am no longer yours to discipline," An bared her teeth in a pained grin. "And that your manipulations to this land must come to an end."
Yi laughed, a sound so sharp it could have cut steel.
"Is that so? How long have the Nipponese bitten at our heels? Stolen our secrets? Black powder. Astromancy and other magics that their priests now call their own. Sailing charts of our secret sea routes," he sneered. "If anything, you should be thanking me for the opportunity to punish them."
"Opportunity?!" An scoffed. "You corrupted them all. Especially their priesthood, dancing broken tainted secrets in front of them."
"If they could not see the flaws inherent, then that was their own failure," Yi shrugged.
"Ah, of course," An shook her head, "As it has ever been with you. No, no, you do not dare taint yourself with the touch of necromancy and would never make a bargain with Chaos. No," she spat on the ground. "You will simply trick your proxies into damnation, thinking it is their idea the entire time."
"It is," Yi said with gentle reproof. "If they ever had the will, the intelligence, they would not."
An pulled her hand away from her wound, fingers clenching into a fist.
"Because they aren't you? Because they are not a dragon?" An snorted.
Yi's eyes widened, a faint twitch showing in his jaw.
"Because. They. Are. Tools. Foolish girl, have you learned nothing in all these years? Urgh," he placed a hand against his forehead. "If you had been but my daughter, and not my foolish little brother…,"
An snarled, her draconic bass rising with the noise, and exhaled black smog.
"Learned...learned?!" She sounded almost strangled. "I should ask the same of you! You…I…I thought that after…," she sputtered in her anger. "You could have done so much…and you return to…,"
Now it was Yi's turn to growl, the Heavenly Court rumbling around them as he did so.
"What, you thought that I would simply bow down? Follow my brother's every whim into indolence and weakness?!" He glared up at An, his human body at least a more regular Cathayan height. "That I would adopt the idiocy that your line calls virtues!?"
An scrubbed at her face for a moment, her growl turning into a sigh.
"What could you possibly have accomplished with this, Uncle Yi?" She asked, almost begging. "The death of so many of our people, and for what? Why?"
Yi drew himself up, eyes now fully wide and full of a zealous light.
"The only reason that matters, my foolish niece. The salvation of Cathay."
An just stared at him, hands falling to her sides, her mouth falling open slightly.
"You have been locked away, I heard through my agents," Yi went on, starting to walk back and forth. "You have not seen what I have seen. My brother weakens, the slumber comes for him! Cathay groans under his rule, the buckles are snapping, the metal rusting, the flesh rotting!"
He clawed at the air for a moment with one outstretched hand before continuing his pacing.
"The other Dynasties continue to circle, they want the Throne back, but your father has never had the will and strength to fully deal with them, and not then, and certainly not now!"
"And your solution…," An said each word slowly, teasing out each one to get past her incredulousness. "Was to invade our homeland? To…to…," her shoulders shook as she paused to take a pained, wheezing breath. "This is all to…try and take Father's throne?"
Yi paused in his pacing and glared at An. His hiss was so loud it could have made a regular human bleed from the ears.
"My throne," he spat. "It. Is. Mine. It has always been mine!"
An clutched at her own head now while shaking it.
"And what, did you think that the people would cheer for your return if you slew father, and took Wei-Jin at the head of a bloodthirsty Nipponese army?! You-," she cut herself off and then slumped while standing. "No, no that's not what they would see, is it."
Johanna had never heard An sound so virulently disgusted.
"No, they would see the returning hero, come to defend them against Nippon," An wheezed out a laugh. "Now it makes sense. It all makes sense!"
Yi narrowed his eyes and turned, facing her fully and lifting his chin.
"Oh?" He said casually, as if his spitting fury seconds ago had never happened.
"I thought the ofuda defending the West Gate were weaker than they should have been," An murmured. "And the knowledge that the priests thought they had discovered was incomplete, enough that it would turn on them if they pushed too hard. Treaties and agreements with the Jade-Blooded and the Monkey King that would inevitably fall through. You…," she let loose a pained laugh. "You built a cause, a threat, that could shatter in an instant if one knew exactly what flaws it had."
An army that thought it had mastered daemon summoning, only to have the monstrous denizens of the Realm of Chaos turn on them at a crucial moment. A vampire general who had no real loyalty to the Empire, only to their own desires to reach a dragon and drink from them. An alliance with another vampiric bloodline, one that desired their own domination over all of Cathay. Agreements with none other than the Monkey King, who had desired power and prominence over the dragons since before vampire had even existed. And, of course, the skaven, whose predilection for treachery matched that of the Jade-Blooded and the Monkey King easily. Johanna's mind whirled with the revelation of it all, even as she stood stock still where she had since Yi had arrived.
"And my father, unable to stop it," An ceased her laugh, her words cold and sober. "Unable to respond properly, like he would have long ago. Too many things occupying him, his mind slowing down."
Yi pursed his lips and gave a mockingly approving nod.
"And, of course," he added, "He sent you. Look at the state of your Legion, look at your own state!" He pointed at her. "Poisoned. Shot. Struck down by the skies themselves. Bloodied, again and again."
"A poison I am sure you had no aid in creating," An rolled her eyes before wincing in pain again.
Yi shrugged with a small smile.
"Perhaps."
"So, Uncle Yi. You knew he would release me from my imprisonment?" An ground out.
"I knew it was a possibility," Yi nodded, glancing past her and at Genevieve and Johanna. "The acceptance of those pathetic creatures into the Fangs is yet another failing on his part, but not one I expected. You, though? Yes, my niece, I suspected."
"And you just let me burn my way through your precious proxy nation you've built to make the people hail you as Emperor," An scoffed. "Such a good plan."
Yi just tutted.
"All these years, and you still fail to see more than what is directly in front of you," Yi snorted before…changing.
Johanna goggled as he stepped forward and was gone. Only to suddenly be replaced by An. Or at least an image of her. But it was more than that as well. The heat that radiated off of her. Her eyes. Her pained grimace, the wounds she'd sustained. All of it, all perfectly and utterly replicated on a level that not even her vampiric senses could penetrate. When she attempted to look with Witch Sight, she beheld total Aethyric replication of the energies and magic that surrounded An. The Talabeclander didn't even know what to say, and a glance at Genevieve showed her sire had the same thoughts.
"But," the new An said, "That will change, when I return, and my father welcomes me back with open arms."
"You…," the real An's eyes widened. "No. He wouldn't-,"
"Wouldn't he?" Yi snarled, black smoke puffing through the nose, "He's a fool, whose senses are dulled by the impending slumber. Why, in a decade, the Monkey King himself could walk into the Jade Palace and shove him off the throne!"
Yi stalked forward as An, and stood nose to nose with the true An.
"I am the First Shadow under Heaven. Tell me I cannot take the shape and form I desire," he sneered in An's voice, with An's face. "And you, Fangs! Don't. Move," each word of command like a gong.
Johanna and Genevieve swayed where they stood.
"You've spent too long in your hole, niece. You should have stayed there," the false An tutted.
An, the real An, exhaled sharply through her nose, her face becoming set.
"And you, Uncle, should have accepted my mercy the first time. Or did you think I spent all those centuries doing nothing?"
The stench of poison and slowly putrefying wounds faded. The bags beneath her eyes slipped away, as if they had never been in the first place. The hole in her side flickered once, and then was gone, and no blood fell from her body onto the ground any longer. Each individual splatter leading into the throne room, and down out into he hallway, were gone in the blink of an eye. An slowly straightened, her shoulders set, as she glared with baleful red eyes that glowed brighter and more clearly than they had just seconds before. Yi, his reflection now incorrect, stumbled back slightly, but not before An lashed out with one hand, slamming something into Yi's body that had him collapsing back onto the ground.
"I studied, Uncle Yi!" An grinned as the Ulgu she'd been weaving about her body was released. "I studied everything I could! My descendants brought me much, and when Father visited, so did he!"
The long, careful illusion faded. The wisps of layered and twisted Ulgu ever so delicately placed and manipulated not just for minutes, but for entire hours of battle, slipped away. Yi's hand shook as he reached down and slowly pulled out a small skaven dagger, staring at it the whole while.
"A gift, from Deathmaster Bonesplinterer. The poison was destroyed in the fight, but I kept the dagger," An purred, "I thought it a shame it never got used for its purpose of wounding a dragon."
"This…you!" Yi's image swirled for a moment as he corrected his mirror image. "No!"
"YES!" An snarled. "I STUDIED MY MOTHER'S WORKS! AND I! STUDIED! YOURS!"
The transition into her dragon form, her true form, was swift this time. In that instant, the battle was nearly over. But Yi leapt through the shadows cast by her body and out of another, transforming himself. Within seconds, a dragon even bigger than An was revealed, their combined bulks shattering through the walls of the Heavenly Court and then much of the inner castle. Johanna and Genevieve were forced to the ground, to flatten themselves against it, as one hundred feet of dragon slammed into a hundred and twenty feet of dragon, all in a space not meant for beings their size. Yi was a long undulating coil of pure black scales, a mane of grey hair, with glossy black horns and a mouth full of those same obsidian looking teeth. An and Yi roared at one another, the former releasing a blast of red and white hot fire, the second releasing what looked like outright black flame. They bit, they tore, and both began to ascend upwards into the sky, the storm summoned by the astromancers of Cathay and Nippon combined still present.
"Uh," Johanna said as the dragons rose up into the storm proper, which soon became illuminated from within by flashes of fire and blasts of magic.
She just stared with wide eyes up at the sky, Genevieve next to her doing the same.
"Should…we should…," Johanna stammered for a moment before blinking rapidly and springing up right. "The Qi-Lin!"
"Captain Sun is no longer in command of their contingent, who would be after her?" Genevieve noted as she rose as well.
"I'll tell you who," Johanna narrowed her eyes at the storm where two dragons dueled. "Fangs of the Dragon Throne."
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[2342 IC] Heavenly Palace Complex, Tenth Tier of Tenshuto, Heavenly Capital of Nippon, Shiranaka Prefecture
"Everyone understand your orders!?" Johanna was calling out, yelling at the Qi-Lin Corps.
Genevieve left her to it and instead turned back to the cannonry officers.
"You're sure?" She asked, looking from soot-covered face to soot-covered face.
"Pardon me, lady Fang, but," one of them cleared his throat and puffed out his chest. "But we haven't failed the Princess yet, have we?"
Genevieve nodded.
"Not yet, no."
"Master!" Johanna called, waving a hand. "We've got to go!"
Another draconic roar split the air, quickly followed by another. Even from down here on the ground, the air reverberated with the heavy impacts of two ancient dragons of Cathay coming to blows. Spatters of dragon blood were being scattered all over the tenth tier at this point. Once more, the storm was lit up as columns of fire were spat back and forth, almost like solid bars of light being used as burning bludgeons. The Qi-Lins stamped their hooves slightly, whinnying as a group. Genevieve saluted the artillery officers and then ran back over, leaping atop one of the Qi-Lin and its uncertain rider. There were grim looks all around at this point. The state of Captain Sun had been damaging to morale, but the idea that they, the aerial troops, would not fly to the aid of their mistress? Absurd. Even if it was against another dragon of Cathay, it was a traitorous dragon, one considered an enemy to the Dragon Throne and the Celestial Empire. After all that had been seen in Nippon, had been done to Cathay, not a one had questioned Johanna's explanation.
"All right!" Johanna yelled, raising a fist. "Let's go!"
As one, the remaining forty Qi-Lin rose up into the air, hooves stomping against the air and finding lift and thrust from it. It was a singularly odd experience to ride a Qi-Lin. They did not ride precisely like horses. If anything, they were too solid of a ride. Without any of the expected bumps, rises, and falls that one expected from riding against the earth. As they went from trot to full gallop, they ran against a perfectly even plane of their own creation through the air. A direct ramp upwards, heading towards the storm clouds which were, thankfully, rapidly beginning to dissipate. The Nipponese controlled no more Cloud Altars, and the Cathayans were quite insistent on giving the Crown Princess a clean sky to fight in.
"Come on!" Johanna called out as they breached the black clouds and out the other side.
On the other side, they beheld the nighttime sky. The green moon was barely visible in the far distance, and instead they were largely illuminated solely by Yue, as Mannslieb was known in Grand Cathay. They also beheld the absolutely terrifying sight of two dragons absolutely tearing into one another. Yi's body shimmered and flickered, leaving after images here and there, but every time he attempted to make use of them to lead up an attack on An, she simply released so much fire that every single one of the images was struck. Then, as the Qi-Lin began to get closer, An managed to clamp her jaws around part of Yi's body, squeezing down and then wrapping the long length of her own body against her Uncle's, each of her four limbs clawing and tearing. An eruption of Ulgu burst from Yi, an obscuring mist covering his entire body and somehow letting him slip free of An's grip. At the same time, he rose above her, and suddenly the very shadow he cast upon the Crown Princess transformed into a sea of shadowy flame all along An's body. One huge grey eye spotted the Qi-Lin as well, and suddenly their entire group was plunged into a darkness that neither Genevieve nor Johanna could perceive.
"Shit!" Her get cursed. "Everyone spread out, now!"
They scattered, and just in time it seemed, as Genevieve heard but still could not see the fire that poured through where they had just been. The intensity of the heat practically singed some of Genevieve's hair despite the distance. As the Qi-Lin continued out from the cloud of darkness, they watched as Yi plunged through that same cloud and disappeared from view entirely instead of coming out the other side. An roared, and then let loose another column of blazing hot fire, then thrashed her entire body about, managing to shift her entire bulk about at whipcrack speeds. Genevieve barely heard the barest sound of what might have been a scale scraping, and suddenly An was diving downwards to land bodily atop Yi as he had been ascending. As she did so, however, the innards of the storm clouds around her let loose with a veritable hailstorm of shadowy daggers that stabbed deeply across almost every foot of the hundred feet that made up An's true body.
"If you have a shot," Johanna called, "Take it!"
The Qi-Lin riders were a specialized, elite group. They knew that in a battle such as this, attempting to get involved in melee would interfere in An's ability to fight properly at best, or be a death sentence at worst. Each of them, therefore, was trained in both melee and ranged combat, and they showed it by taking out their Mantis Cannons and firing while flying about in the air as the dragons continue to rip and tear at one another. Genevieve even made to raise her own, knowing enough of the theory to at least get one shot off, when she spied something out of the corner of her eye. Something that she absolutely knew she shouldn't have been seeing.
"Johanna!?" Genevieve shouted at the top of her lungs, her voice shrill. "What are you doing?!"
Johanna was not taking out the Mantis Cannon she'd been offered. Instead, she was unsteadily rising to her feet on the back of the unamused Qi-Lin, steadying herself with a hand on the rider's shoulder. Then she tapped the rider's shoulder, and pointed towards the ongoing melee between the dragons, to which the rider, to Genevieve's absolute shock, nodded and began turning their mount about midair.
"Johanna!?"
Her get looked over at her, an absolutely wild look in her eyes that immediately uncomfortably reminded Genevieve of the days when Johanna had first been turned.
"I think I figured this one out!" Johanna called back, blinking rapidly.
"What!?"
"I just had to listen to some of the blood!"
"Johanna, sit down!"
But Johanna did not sit down. Instead, the Qi-Lin broke out into a full sprinting gallop, directly towards the dragons. Then, just as they were passing over them, Johanna leapt out into the open air. She tucked herself into a near ball and became enveloped in a sphere of fire that subsequently shot through the air directly towards Yi. Something that Johanna had never, ever learned. But something that, immediately, somehow came to Genevieve's lips amidst the chuckle of her own sire somewhere in the infinite distance, for she knew it as well. The Falling Fire Avalanche Technique of the Red Hare Monastery. The burst of Aqshy and direction proved just barely enough for Johanna to successfully land on the larger dragon, right near one of his eyes. A slight noise of surprise, magnified by An's massive lungs to become a sort of massive brass horn sound, came from the Princess as she caught sight of Johanna. Both dragons did not stop attacking each other, continually clawing the entire time, but neither could stop Johanna as she subsequently reached forward and plunged both arms down to the forearms into Yi's right eye. The resulting scream from Yi was absolutely deafening. Literally so, in the cases of the Qi-Lin riders, their cloud-riding equines rearing upwards in the air and momentarily rushing about in the air.
An, on the other hand, pounced quite literally on the sudden moment of weakness. Her mouth gaped wide and she bent at an incredibly sharp angle to latch around one of her uncle's arms and bit down. Hard. With a single wrenching motion, she tore it free and outright swallowed it, getting another pained screech from Yi as he whipped about and batted An's face away with his lower limbs, clawing her face badly. At the same moment, a massive almost completely invisible edge flew through the air and cut deeply along more than fifty feet of An's body. Even as Johanna plunged her arms deeper into Yi's left eye, now up to her shoulders, Yi only writhed and fought harder. A thick beam of purple slammed out of Yi's mouth and into An, and though An continued to bite and claw and snarl, such was the sheer size of her body that Genevieve could literally see as portions of her immense musculature spasmed and tore against itself from some sort of magical force.
By then, the Qi-Lin riders had begun firing their Mantis Cannons, though Genevieve could tell even from here that their bullets were not doing too much damage. The bullets that did connect certainly did not release any more of Yi's strange blood. Unlike An's, which was hot and burning, so vibrant with life it was almost painful to smell it, Yi's blood was almost completely without scent. Like the smell of fog on a rainy day, perhaps, only magnified a million times over while simultaneously retaining that strange subtly in her nose. Genevieve managed a shot herself, the gun thumping against her shoulder, but she cursed as she saw that hitting the main scales had barely done anything. Aiming at the numerous tears left behind by An was a different possibility, but Yi and An both continually rotated, spinning and twisting, crashing together with titanic force that buffeted every Qi-Lin, then separating and reorienting to try and get a better angle of attack.
Then Yi, constantly coiling and undulating, stiffened out in a singularly strange manner that Genevieve could scarcely have believed unless she had seen it. But then, she'd never seen someone standing practically horizontal, foot claws dug into the meat of the inner eye socket, arms having dug, ripped, and finally scooped out a significant amount of Yi's entire left eye out of his head. It was simply too large and fragile for her to have lifted the entire orb out, but she'd torn it apart so badly that the remaining half she hefted and subsequently threw down from the skies to Tenshuto below was more than enough. The remaining half lay limp and drained, a great river of eye fluid and outright blood gushing out and completely submerging Johanna momentarily, turning her triumphant yell at her deed into gurgled coughing.
The noise that exploded out of Yi was even louder than before, but An was more than happy to take advantage. Again, she crashed down on her uncle, this time directly from above, slamming him down below the cloud cover. Then Genevieve's eyes widened as she remembered the discussion beforehand. But then An spun entirely away from her Uncle's body. From this angle, the Qi-Lin she was atop still stumbled and stunned from Yi's scream, Genevieve could not see Yi's reaction to what lay below. But she could certainly see as the entire assembled artillery park of the Legion of An pointed upwards and fired at the giant target they had just been presented with. Immediately, Yi's body shimmered and seemed to half-fade out of reality, and to Genevieve's immense frustration the various cannonballs seemed to simply fly through him or around him, his image warping and bending for all who were looking at him.
However, what it did not appear to affect was the sole vampire still lodged in his eye socket, as evidenced by Johanna reappearing while hauling hard on the optic nerve within, both arms and claws wrapped around it as if it were a massive rope. Whatever spell effect Yi had managed, it was clearly difficult to maintain without a certain amount of concentration. Concentration that was likely difficult to maintain when Johanna roared and outright tore the nerve free, letting the huge cable of meat slop out of the eye socket to land below. Before she could do any more, however, An struck like a cannonball herself, mouth opening as wide as possible and then clamping around Yi's midsection as she drove them both back down towards the Heavenly Palace Complex, smashing down where they had begun in the Heavenly Court proper.
Yi attempted to rise once more, but this time An coiled her body up enough so that one of her arms could plant against the side of Yi's head, Johanna scrambling away as the Crown Princess began to slam Yi's enormous head directly against the Heavenly Throne and the white stone hill it was atop. The first time she did so, another cloud of massive shadowy spears shot directly into An's throat. The second time, several blasts of lighting shot out and struck An's face. The third time another long pendulum swung into existence and hacked along her back, getting a pained bellow but she still did not relent. Again and again, An slammed her Uncle's head against the stone, until the hillock itself began to crack and break, shattering into pieces as dragon blood spilled all over the obliterated gardens.
Until, just as the Qi-Lin riders reached the ground and the utter ruins of the Heavenly Court, Yi finally went limp.
An growled loudly, bleeding from a myriad of truly grievous wounds, and slammed her Uncle's head into the stone once, then twice more. Only then did she slump slightly, breathing hard, and the faintest sheen of Ghyran could be seen as she immediately tried to see to her wounds. Genevieve outright leapt from her Qi-Lin and scrambled forwards, stumbling through the mixing dragon blood, only to sigh in relief as she saw Johanna doing the exact same in her direction. Her eyes were still wild, her vampiric nature utterly unrestrained, but she still slowed when she saw Genevieve. Suddenly, there was sheepishness, her running through her blood-soaked hair.
"Uh…,"
"Don't ever do that again," Genevieve glared at her, poking her in the collarbone, a slightly more annoying task given she had to stand on her toes to do so. "You understand me?"
"But I-,"
"And what if you had missed?"
Johanna opened her mouth, closed it, and swallowed.
"I…would hope that my great and beneficent sire would ride to rescue me?"
Genevieve sighed.
============================================================================
[2342 IC] Tenshuto, Once Heavenly Capital of Once Unified Nippon
Dawn came, and with it, the city of Tenshuto had finally achieved the smoldering stage of occupation. The fires had burned their ways out, and now was the time for shellshocked citizens to blearily begin sifting through the rubble that had so abruptly been made of their lives. Vast corpse piles burned, samurai and conscripts alike, just as had been done in the fighting up until now. For once, however, the vast majority of the armor and swords were left in vast piles, instead of purposefully being smelted into impure lumps of metal. The Legion of An was, nonetheless, quite stringent in their occupation. Curfews were without exception for the Nipponese, and vast portions of the city were barred from those who had once ventured freely throughout most of the tiers.
"I think we-,"
"-have enough."
Draken glanced at them, then at the pile of Ghost Blades and handful of intact but cleansed pieces of Wraith Armor.
"I think you're right," she muttered.
The three of them had gotten the chairs from somewhere and were now celebrating in the traditional Imperial fashion after particularly hard battles. Which mostly took the form of drinking heavily, thinking about the many ways that death should have claimed them, and then praying about it. Though in their case it was to both Morr and Yemaraja. Especially the latter, in Alisa's case. Many thought, perhaps not entirely unreasonably, that each twin was exactly the same in physical appearance. And for the most part, they were. The sole part that was not, however, were the scars. Neither Hohenzollern was so idiotic as to try and match those, especially considering the wounds that created them more often than not. Still, so long as they were wearing their robes, and never identified each other by name, there was essentially no way for someone to know which was which.
Unless they were Father and Mother, who always somehow knew.
In any case, once all that was done, it was back to drinking. They were entirely out of ale, ostka, and beer in general at this point. Now they were just left with the spirits of the Far East, which thankfully weren't too bad. Opinions varied, of course, but enough bottles of sake, of any alcohol, could help make up for almost any issues with quality.
"I'm already having doubts about our abilities to keep these contained."
A heavy creak of metal on wood made them look up.
"I could teach you how to cleanse them of the spirits within," An said with a sniff, her expression cool and remote.
It wasn't as if they were particularly hidden, of course. The entire Heavenly Court had been effectively flattened into rubble. The greater Heavenly Castle Complex however, still had many rooms and buildings left, but all three of the Wizards had desired to see the sun rise from the east. They were far from the Empire that Sigmar forged, but that didn't mean that there weren't some things they would still enjoy doing. So here they sat, amidst the rubble, on scavenged chairs. An raised an eyebrow, shifting her weight and thus getting more creaking from the crushed lumber of ruins beneath her feet.
"We would appreciate it, but-," Draken began before An raised a hand.
"It would not count as your boon. If you aim to try and deal with such weapons, it would be better to be safe than sorry, I would think."
Draken, after a moment, nodded.
"My thanks, then."
An snorted, crossing her arms.
"It is of no great issue."
"Even so," Draken raised a cup of sake to her. "Would you like to drink?"
"Would that I could," An shook her head. "But there is much to do. We must prepare to leave the city and return to Nishimisaki. I would hope that our actions here would cause them to break off the siege, but there are no guarantees."
There was a contemplative silence after that before An cleared her throat.
"Well then…," she trailed off, tilting her head and then turning as Johanna ran up, bereft of her master for the moment. "Johanna?"
The younger vampire looked positively haggard now. She was continually twitching, reacting to sounds that weren't there, and itching at her arms almost constantly. At other times she muttered to herself in what sounded like a considerable variety of languages, not even seeming to notice that she was switching between them. Sometimes every few sentences, sometimes with every single word. Despite that, however, she was still managing to wander about, though Agatha and An had seen her doing so with a rather glassy-eyed look at times.
"Mis-Cr-Pri-," Johanna sputtered for a moment before pausing and centering herself. "Apologies," she cleared her throat. "Princess An, I bring strange news."
An just gestured for her to continue, one eyebrow raised.
"The…the Qi-Lin scouts have reported…that there is a dragon coming from the west."
An's eyes went wide.
"What!?
Johanna nodded, looking just as bewildered.
"They're flying east a healthy pace, and they'll reach us before long. There's a huge amount of Qi-Lin riders with them too. But…," her face scrunched up.
"But. What," An ground out.
"The dragon. It's…," Johanna looked confused. "It's pink?"
An arched her back, tilted her head, and screamed a tornado of fire into the open air.
==========================================================================
[2342 IC] Tenshuto, Once Heavenly Capital of Once Unified Nippon
"No! No! No no no no NO!" An screamed, stomping back and forth, pausing slightly to wince and clutch at her side.
That was for real, this time, Johanna knew. The long ploy had worked, just enough, to let An get a sucker punch in, but there was no way she'd been able to completely remove the hurt and pain from the fight proper. The Amethyst Wizards just stared up from the chunk of wood they'd made their table, clearly already a few drinks in. Johanna, meanwhile, was steadfastly ignoring how the world was melting around her. She was not next to a pyramid, she was on top of a mountain. A city, not a mountain. A tiered city, not Middenheim. She knew that, and she knew she knew that, but it didn't stop everything from swimming around her regardless.
"How could-," An sputtered, holding her hands out and then clenching them tight against her chest. "Of course, why wouldn't she? She has in the past. That little…conniving…rragh!"
"Uh," Johanna coughed quietly, making An whirl on her. "Princess? I don't…I'm afraid I don't understand."
An glowered at her, making Johanna itch hard enough at the back of her neck to cut through the skin with her claws.
"You will. Oh, you all will. Come on, we don't have much time. Captain!" An bellowed at a nearby Dragonguard. "Clear the mountain top, I don't want anyone but the priests and my Dragonguard on the entire tenth tier!"
It was a very confusing hour, one where An was exceedingly terse as the Legion was chivvied out into the rest of the city. Of the full thousand they had begun with, only four hundred of An's Dragonguard were left. Of those, a hundred formed up in a block parade formation, the rest spread throughout the entire tenth tier. Cathayan troops were facing towards the west, rather than the east for the very first time since the landing at Nishimisaki. At one point, An had to correct herself, saying that the vampires and wizards could stay, but it was terse as she continued to pace. In time, however, they all began to see it. Johanna didn't shout, didn't point, but what she saw made her mouth gape ever so slightly. Genevieve, next to her, was far more restrained. At some point her smoked glass lenses had been destroyed, so now she had appropriated a local Nipponese rice farmer's hat. She had also been dealing with strange side effects, but apparently four centuries was letting her deal with them a hell of a lot better than Johanna.
"What is…I thought it was a joke," Johanna sputtered.
"Oh?" Genevieve glanced up at her. "Had you really not heard?"
"Well…no! Who…you know. You knew?" Johnna turned to her sire. "Really?"
"Sure," Genevieve shrugged.
The scouts were right. They had not been lying at all. Soaring swiftly through the early morning sky came nothing more and nothing less than a pink dragon. It was only sixty feet long or so, compared to An's hundred, but was still undeniably a dragon of Cathay, and quite frankly was also something that Johanna had never even conceived of before in her life. It was absolutely rotund, more like a very long ale barrel than the massive muscles and sinuous nature of An or even Yi. A huge amount of Qi-Lin riders, almost five hundred compared to the single hundred that An had been granted for her Legion, accompanied the pink dragon. More than that, they were not bearing weapons. Instead, in something that Johanna once again struggled to accept, they were bearing instruments. Instruments that they were playing. As the pink dragon soared towards and then over the city's tiers, the music only grew louder. It was, on the whole, far less aggressive than the song that An's own musicians had played at the beginning of the attack on Tenshuto.
Then the pink dragon began to speak in a booming yet sweet voice that filled the sky like a clarion bell.
"People of Tenshuto! Brave folk of Nippon! Fear not! For I come not to conquer, but to offer a hand of peace and friendship on this day! Be well, for though the night was long, so too has come the dawn!"
An, standing much closer, audibly growled at the dragon's words. In the farther western distance, a column was marching. This one, however, was not nearly the army that was the Legion. Instead, it was mostly made up of carts, various cattle, and transports. It had a bare number of guards around it, but it seemed a terribly fragile amount given the fact that they were in an entirely foreign land. She stood, almost completely still, save for that growling, as the pink dragon circled once, then twice, and finally began to descend onto the tenth tier, followed by the literal cloud orchestra that had accompanied them, thankfully silencing their instruments as their Qi-Lin came as close to the ground as they could without being dead. The pink dragon was surrounded in an artful vortex of whirling bubbly pink energies that were as wholesome as the energies once surrounding the Heavenly Emperor had not been, before deposited directly in front of An and everyone else was a Cathayan woman.
A singularly spherical Cathayan woman, dressed in robes of pink, white, and silver.
Unlike An, who's entire transformation paid the barest heed to human standards, her eyes naturally hooded and lidded, her lips black because she'd decided that they would be colored that way, the new arrival was comparatively flush with makeup. Makeup that, just like An's own lips, were entirely the result of choice when transforming into a human form. Her hair was long and also in an incredibly elaborate style, almost looking like the sun itself was holstered at the back of her head. It also went without saying that she was of a far more average Cathayan height, much like Emperor Taizong. She also gasped upon seeing An, as if she had not seen her while flying down. Then she inhaled deeply, placed a hand to her cheek, and began to step forward.
"Sister! Oh! I can smell the blood and pain on you from here!" She cried aloud, now with a human throat.
Where An was volcanic, rumbling gravel and the boom of avalanche, the new arrival was higher pitched and sweetly voiced, honey and sugar both.
"Why," An growled, raising a hand up to block the advance, "Are you here, Léimíng?"
The Smiling Flower of Grand Cathay double gasped, shaking her head wildly from side to side.
"How could I not be here? Did you know that Father did not even inform the rest of the Dynasty that you had rejoined us in the skies?"
An snorted a thin twin stream of black smog through her nose.
"Is that what you call it?" An tilted her head to the side, "Not my…chastisement? My…imprisonment?"
Princess Léimíng turned her face as if slapped and then looked back, eyes watery. Johanna glanced at Genevieve, who didn't even bother looking back, and then straightened her back. The Dragonguard were all still, staring straight ahead. It was made somewhat more awkward as the hundreds of musicians that the Princess had brought with her started getting off their Qi-Lin. Even being as quiet as they could not entirely muffle the sounds of hundreds of instruments being put in cases. Not that they were being as quiet as they could. In fact, some of them were cheerfully chatting amongst each other as if there were not two members of the Wu Dynasty talking nearby.
"Oh, sister. Please," Léimíng begged. "Must you be like this?"
"Be like what, myself?"
"You know what I mean," Léimíng insisted, fanning at herself. "Do you know what I saw as I traveled east? Death. Ruination! You razed entire cities!"
An, very deliberately, inhaled and exhaled deeply a single time each.
"Your point?"
Léimíng's mouth dropped open.
"I thought…the whole point of your…time under that mountain…was supposed to teach you differently! But you just…," she grasped about in the air for nothing.
An stepped forward and loomed over Léimíng then, causing the shorter woman to shrink back ever so slightly.
"Let me be clear, little sister. I prosecute my wars in the manner in which I choose, under the approval of the Dragon Throne, by our Father, the Celestial Dragon Emperor," An ground out. "And if you had bothered asking any of the Nipponese, you would know that I spared every single civilian I could, that the terms offered were generous – half their food and drink, smelting of their weapons and armor, and no touching of their ancestral Ghost Blades."
At that, Léimíng gasped again.
"But very, very few of them took those terms. Those that did," An then turned and gestured towards a bleary looking Headmaster Fujimoto Tenzo and others stood, "Are alive today because of it. Once again, you judge what you choose to see, and not what is," An leaned in deep to almost bite the word off into Léimíng's face.
And then the Smiling Flower's face broke out into an enormous smile, which made An draw back in confusion. She was not, however, fast enough to stop Léimíng from reaching forward and hugging her tightly, or at least as tight as she could with arms that could not fully encircle An's waist.
"Oh…oh this is such wonderful news!" Léimíng said with a happy smile on her face. "You did, you did learn! Oh! And," she saw past An now, and past the entire Legion, and her mouth dropped open again.
At the same time, however, Johanna saw something. For all the swooning and cries, there was just the briefest moment there as Léimíng beheld what lay in the ruins of the Heavenly Court. A spark, she thought at first before reassessing. No. Not just a spark. There was a light in that previously empty gaze that disappeared just a quickly as it had shown up, to the point that Johanna was not fully sure she'd seen it correctly. Then Léimíng gasped again, and leaned against An, who grimaced and tried to hold her sister up while also trying to not quite shove her away.
"Is that…it can't be. Oh!" Léimíng cried aloud again, this time hugging An even tighter. "Oh after all this time!" She drew back, tears pouring down her face as she smiled up at An. "I knew it! I knew it wasn't true! All this time, all that fear…how wonderful! Please, may I?" She asked shyly, tugging at An's arm, who sighed and let herself be dragged along. As they did so, Léimíng half-turned back to shout at her musicians. "My beloved music makers! Hold your positions if you would! We may need a new song!"
All but fifty of them did, and those remaining fifty subsequently doffed their heavy weather-proof cloaks and revealed themselves to be Dragonguard in gleaming spotless golden armor. These quickly marched to keep up with their charge, passing by the dirty, dented, and bloodied members of An's own retinue. Some silent communication passed through them and fifty of An's Dragonguard turned about and began marching after their mistress. Johanna and Genevieve, not being part of that group, turned about and glanced at the wizards. Draken looked at her incredulously, then at the dragons, then drained her saucer and shrugged, standing with her apprentices.
So they joined the slow procession into the ruins of the Heavenly Court, Léimíng gasping and pointing and babbling the entire time.
All the way, at least, up to where the still unconscious Yi lay, an absolute cloud of Qhaysh hung over him and forcing him into continued unconsciousness. Several of the cannons were also present, ready to be pointed at him. Some of An's other Dragonguard were also here, weapons held at the ready literally just to plunge into vulnerable areas that had been opened up by the fighting the previous night. There were far more patches of the body whose scales had been viciously carved away, and the sight of his limp body laying amidst the rubble was enough to make Léimíng almost look like she would fall over.
"Such a foul, foul being. To think he was our Father's brother," Léimíng shivered, or in her case, wobbled, before smiling again at An. "Oh, but to think…all this time…for so many years, so many long, long years. Feared, maybe even hated by your own family. Oh An, oh dear sister," Léimíng clasped her hands together. "Can you ever forgive us?"
An rubbed a hand against her face and then sighed, looking down at her sister, her expression flat and remote.
"I'm going to kill him this time, Léimíng."
Two chubby hands clapped against two chubby cheeks.
"What!?" Léimíng cried, eyes as wide as they could go.
"The mercy I granted him all those years ago was a mistake," An said grimly.
"Mercy," Léimíng huffed. "Mercy and compassion, filial love, that was a mistake?" She put her hands on her wide hips.
An sighed, rubbing at her temples with one hand.
"In his case, yes."
"No!" Léimíng threw her hands up. "Don't you see. It took time, but if you can change, and learn, then he could as well!"
An growled, now, eyes wide.
"The death and devastation he has wrought upon the Cathayan people far outweighs my own mistakes!"
"But-,"
A brief swirl of Ulgu and Chamon was the only warning as one of the Dragonguard dissolved and an incredibly powerful weight on reality itself began to press down on all present.
"I must confess, I find myself curious as well," Emperor Taizong said mildly as he revealed himself.
A meteor could not have struck the earth harder than An's knee as she fell into a kneeling position. It was an act that was repeated across both contingents of Dragonguard, all simultaneously. Princess Léimíng was a bit slower about it, awkwardly shifting about and holding the ends of her robes scrunched in one hand. This also had the issue of abruptly revealing Johanna, Genevieve, and the wizards as the only ones who had not knelt immediately. Both vampires quickly did so, but not so quickly as everyone else, while the now clearly drunk Imperials did not kneel at all. Taizong glanced about before giving the slightest of nods in the direction of the vampires and wizards before returning to his daughters. Johanna's nose felt like it was on fire with the smell of four different dragons filling it, but she managed to keep some vestige of her sanity in control.
"This lowly servant greets the Celestial Father!" An barked out, face bowed so deeply it was practically in her own neck.
"T-this lowly servant greets the Celestial Father!" Léimíng squeaked out immediately afterwards.
"This Celestial Father greets his Celestial Children," Taizong murmured, those quiet words still managing to carry far. "My lovely An, my peacemaker. I find myself with questions."
"This lowly An will answer!" An shouted, face still parallel with the dirt.
"First," Taizong raised a finger even though An could not see it. "You lied to me? To Empress Huang? To the whole of the Wu Dynasty, to the whole of Grand Cathay?"
An swallowed before answering.
"Yes! This lowly An confesses to her liar's tongue!" She said, just as loudly as before.
Taizong stroked at his chin, golden eyes literally glittering as he glanced along the wounded bulk of Yi.
"Why?" He asked. "And raise your head, my peacemaker, allow me to look into your eyes."
Léimíng turned her head slightly to watch as An craned her neck upwards. The Crown Princess inhaled deeply before speaking.
"I…," An paused and then made to hang her head. "I thought that…killing one of the Wu was…,"
"I said look at me, daughter," Taizong injected steel into his voice for a brief instant, making An's face rachet back up instantly. "You slew Emperor Yong of the Shu. On my mother's order. You slew Jinhua of the Wei on her order. But my order, it seems, you chose to disobey."
"I!" An started before swallowing again. "It was a mistake," she said quietly.
"Pardon?" Taizong tilted his head.
"It was a mistake!" An shouted, barely keeping herself expressionless.
A soldier, being dressed down by a superior.
"I had thought that to spill the blood of the Wu was one thing, but to act to truly kill one of us was…wrong. But it was this lowly, foolish An who was wrong! This An begs forgiveness and swears to rectify that mistake!"
Léimíng tilted her face upwards, then.
"Father, you can't possibly-!" She was cut off by a simple look from Taizong.
"I have not asked you to speak yet, my peacekeeper," Taizong said reproachfully. "And do not think I have somehow forgotten that you organized this…relief mission without permission or even counseling with me and the rest of the Celestial Court."
Léimíng went so pale that her face matched some of the white highlights in her robes and looked back down. Taizong continued to stare her down for a moment before looking back at An, his expression still mild and bemused.
"Now then. Little An, you are the reason I am the Emperor at all," he cupped his chin, holding his elbow up with his other hand. "If you had not removed my brother…why, Empress Huang might not have made me Crown Prince at all. But you did not kill him, and instead set him to fleeing."
An said nothing, her molten red eyes unblinking as she gazed upon the earth. Taizong paused, waiting for her to speak, but eventually tilted his head and continued.
"Another question, then. Do you know why I placed you beneath Mount Chénsī Gōng?"
That, finally, managed to somehow increase the tension in An's shoulders.
"This lowly An failed the Empire and was punished for it!" Was her eventual answer.
At that, Taizong sighed and shook his head slightly. He opened his mouth to speak and then blinked, a thought coming to him as he glanced about the ruins. Taizong strode to one of the other true Dragonguard, pulled them to their feet, and murmured in their ear. It was so quiet that Johanna could not hear a thing, not a first, but she quickly realized she didn't need to. With incredible speed and rapid coordination, the Dragonguard rose and began spreading out, barking orders to both An's Legion and Léimíng's Orchestra. The tenth tier of Tenshuto was massive, but the discipline of Celestial Empire soldiers under the presence of three separate dragons of the ruling Wu Dynasty was great. Johanna blinked and stared as they began to all swiftly pull back from the Heavenly Court itself, to the point that she could not hear or smell or see any of them at all. Which, at the same time, made the continued presence of herself, Genevieve and the wizards all the more conspicuous. Then even the Wizards were approached, and with a shrug and some pursed lips Draken went, glancing behind her only once as they were led away.
Then they were all alone. Only dragons and vampires remained nearby, and throughout all of it An had not moved a muscle, though Léimíng had begun fidgeting halfway through.
"My apologies," Taizong sighed, "These are matters for the Wu themselves, and their Fangs. Not for the whole of your Legion and Orchestras to hear!" He chuckled airily.
An twitched, but it was enough of a movement for Taizong's head to snap around.
"Unless," he drew the word out, "They are not even that much," he glanced over at Johanna and Genevieve, and there was a subtle but incredibly pressure that fell on their shoulders as he surveyed them with far more than just his regular eyes. "Ah, my daughter, what have you done?"
"What this lowly An needed to, to defeat her treacherous Uncle," An said immediately, no longer shouting, instead just speaking at a normal volume. "She could not afford the possibility that the familial binding upon the Fang amulets would not allow him to command Fangs of the Throne into death or inability."
The Celestial Dragon Emperor pursed his lips, glancing up at Yi's bulk once more.
"I see. Wise," he murmured before his eyes lifted to Johanna and Genevieve again. "And do you still trust them?"
"With my life," An said earnestly, not looking at them.
"Come."
There was no question as to who he was speaking to, and Johanna hurriedly followed along after her sire as they came closer without an entire group of Dragonguard blocking them off. Neither of them, sire nor get, seemed to know what to say, and ended up saying nothing at all when Taizong gestured for them to kneel once more.
"To return to my question, little one," Taizong said, gently placing a hand atop An's head. "You are incorrect," he paused as An began to speak again and with incredibly but precise strength kept her head from rising up again. "Ah, I am not finished speaking." An's face became parallel with the earth once more. "Now then," Taizong lifted his hand and sighed, bringing his hands together over his waist. "You are incorrect, my peacemaker. Yes, your aggression turned what had been tense negotiations into the Three-Front War, and ruined young Léimíng's delicate work."
An's fists clenched and unclenched, while Léimíng just pursed her lips with what might have been the faintest downturn of her lips in old disapproval in An's direction.
"However," Taizong said airily, making both of his daughters still in confusion. "You were right to do so."
"Fa-," Léimíng began before a single finger from Taizong atop her head forced her to look down again, her face still one of shock and dismay despite that.
An, on the other hand, just looked mystified as Taizong delicately placed his other hand under her chin and lifted her face.
"This is a conclusion this Celestial Emperor reached after many centuries of contemplation," he declared softly.
Johanna had seen An's eyes wet with tears before, but these had been angry things, born of fury and frustration on the battlefield. These were altogether different, shimmering in An's eyes, the Crown Princess clearly attempting to will not a one to fall while being able to stop them entirely from forming. Léimíng on the other hand was struggling not to sputter, her rosy cheeks not taking on a distinctly redder hue.
"I…," An voice was choked. "Wh…"
"This Celestial Emperor was wrong," Taizong said, relentlessly continuing. "When he sent you to kill you his brother, this Traitor Yi, it was through ambition and fear for the future of Cathay. But, after you had reported to this Emperor slathered in the blood of his own Wu Dynasty, he thought to himself what you yourself had – that the Shu, the Wei, was one thing. But our own Wu?"
An's mouth just opened and closed without much sound at all, now.
"So eager. So…covered in blood. Making war without cease, seeming to disdain the compassion of this Celestial Emperor's mate, Cathay's Jade Dragon, this lowly An's own mother," he sighed, looking off into the distance now.
"Father, you…you are the Celestial Emperor," Léimíng finally spoke up again. "It was your decision to-,"
"And this Taizong cannot be foolish?" The Emperor's gentle voice sharpened once more, and Léimíng looked away, chagrined. "This Taizong was not responsible for nearly half a million soldiers dead, utter ruination of a vast fleet, all to challenge the Arabyans for spice?"
He paused for a moment and took a deep breath before continuing, looking back over at An.
"When the Three-Front War of An was born, it seemed a confirmation of all the worst fears. Unafraid to shed the blood of the Wu, the Shu, and the Wei. Of dragons. Of disobeying orders to approach with peace, of causing destruction for destruction's sake. But," Taizong lifted a finger in the air again, looking quietly mournful, "This foolish Celestial Emperor was in the throes of his own grief, by then, for his Jade Dragon was falling to slumber. And so he looked upon one who disdained that mate, that wife, with his own."
That managed to get some words out of An.
"Father!" An said hoarsely, "This lowly An never disdained her Celestial Mother. She – I…I loved her," An said quietly. "But she was everything I could not let myself be."
"And why not?" Taizong asked, an eyebrow raised.
"Because-!" An cut herself off, grinding her teeth slightly. "Because this lowly An thought she could not be."
"Why. Not?"
"Because," An hung her head. "Just…because."
An, Taizong, and Léimíng were silent. Johanna swallowed, but didn't dare move, falling to the same perfect stillness of her sire. It was helpful, besides, as she was feeling a strange twitchiness enter her body. Neither of them had drunk a single time after the battle, and instead had left the city entirely to meditate once more. But that hadn't stopped the strange whispers on the edges of her vision. The twitching of her fingers. She hadn't seen her father again, his face twisted into a rictus of hate, except in her memories. But it didn't mean she hadn't seen other things. More than once, it was faces and people she had never seen before in her life, that nonetheless felt far too familiar. She didn't understand what they were saying, but they were not wholly harmless either. Instinct told her that, where reason struggled to say otherwise. But the beast was still quiet, quiet inside after nearly being crushed into submission by the Jubei's blade.
"And now, this," Taizong's gestured encompassed far more than the still smoking Tenshuto. "I find that you had learned the lesson I sought to teach you before I even thought to teach it. Centuries before, in fact."
"Father?" An asked, looking confused again.
"Mercy," Taizong sighed. "Compassion. We are not the innumerable flights that once filled the skies under the First Celestial Emperor. And this Taizong does not believe that we should be killing one another when there are such greater threats to our Grand Cathay. A conclusion this Taizong reached only when you arrived before him, covered in familial blood. And yet, are we not all family, in some way, us dragons of Cathay?"
Silence answered him, and Taizong sighed again, shaking his head.
"The grand test that was this campaign, to see if you truly would leave but wastelands in your wake and call them peace as you had in the past, was a test unneeded," he murmured. "For truly, you did learn, but the lesson this foolish Celestial Emperor learned when you came before him drenched in familial blood was learned already."
An's next few breaths were shaky before she began to speak.
"This lowly An raged. This lowly An despaired. But as the centuries passed, this lowly An contemplated, and studied, and learned," An began to speak, haltingly. "She read the texts brought from the Far West, the stories and poems from beyond Cathay, and within it as well. This lowly An read her mother's treatises on medicine, on healing, on…philosophy. Studied the works of her Uncle Yi. The works of the Han and Yuan."
Taizong nodded, looking down at her warmly.
"Yes. Alas," he frowned and glanced at Yi. "We have paid the price of that same mercy. Tell me, daughter, what has this Traitor Yi done to our Grand Cathay?"
An inhaled deeply, deeper than even seemed possible for her admittedly enlarged body.
"As a result of Uncle Yi's manipulations," she began crisply, albeit through gritted teeth. "The Emperor of Nippon was installed wielding a blade tainted by Chaos."
Léimíng gasped quietly, while Taizong simply closed his eyes and motioned for An to continue.
"Said Emperor then formed an alliance with a powerful vampire, known as Anpu, who nearly struck down both Fangs Genevieve and Johanna. He spread knowledge of Dark Ofuda, summoning daemons aplenty. He formed an alliance with the Jade-Blooded and Monkey-King, who in turn provided extensive details of our defenses, military bases, trade routes, bastions, supply lines, and more," An continued, glaring at the ground now at the very thought of it all. "All aided by Yi, who I believe was acting as Jubei's personal Kage, given his uniform when we faced him."
Taizong nodded.
"Total casualties both military and civilian total five million across the coastal provinces. Another million amongst the inland provinces," An was growling the words now, black smog curling from her lips as her anger grew. "The 7th and 3rd Tiger Armies were nearly completely wiped out and are still working to recruit and train replacements. Jade-Blooded and Monkey King agents sabotaged and caused further deaths, totaling a quarter of a million dead due to their own efforts coinciding with the Nipponese invasion." Her words did not speed up, but the anger behind each one fell like steadily larger hammers. "I have no proof, but suspect he is also responsible for the agitation of the ogres and hobgoblins in the west, as well as the incursions of the naga along the southern provinces. Which, themselves, caused another quarter million deaths."
Only then did An raise her face up, struggling and failing to contain the snarl.
"Whatever mercy was granted to him before, he cannot be afforded it now," she insisted. "The sheer amount of death amongst our people he has caused is utterly unforgivable!"
Taizong sniffed, tilting his head to the side.
"And what damage was dealt to Cathay as a result of the Three-Front War of An?"
Johanna blinked as An answered immediately.
"Two hundred fifty-four thousand, three hundred twenty-nine deaths between the Tiger Armies, the Legion, and civilians, with multiple cities sacked and three razed," she said, breathing hard again. "As a result of the fury of Bulqy's tribes, the Naga attacks, and the alliance amongst the Chaos worshippers. But that does not include the one million killed and eaten with Bulqy's invasion of the western provinces, nor the three million killed and drained by the Naga in the south, or the fact that the Tong and Hung were already going to be attacking the Bastion whether together or not!" She had escalated into a strangled whisper by the end of it, and Taizong's eyes had widened slightly, as had Princess Léimíng's.
Neither of the other two dragons said anything as An's chest continued to heave.
"I know exactly how many died because of my actions. I know exactly how many would have continued to die if we had not struck back and forced the enemy away," she said harshly, glaring now at Léimíng who shrank back under the heat there. "I had centuries to count and centuries to think. And I also know many more would have died if the Legion had not evacuated their towns, villages, and cities. The infrastructural damage was severe, two major industrial centers lost, but the people," she stressed, "We saved more than we lost."
Then An was silent, and Taizong pursed his lips.
"And, as I said before, I have found you to be correct in this matter," he said, turning away so he was facing Yi fully.
"Father," Léimíng spoke up, shying away from An as much as she could without actually moving from her kneeling position. "This lowly Léimíng would beg mercy for Uncle Yi."
"Ho?" He turned back at her, while An rotated at the waist while not moving her lower half to stare incredulously.
"We are not the terracotta, the stone lions," Léimíng began to speak, slowly at first and then with more confidence. "As you, great Celestial Emperor, have proven, we are capable of acknowledging we are wrong. As she," Léimíng gestured at An, "Great Sister An, has proven, we are capable of change, of reflection!"
"But I never-," An began before Taizong raised a hand.
"You may be correct, young Léimíng," Taizong said, making An hiss loudly. "Daughter An. Release your Uncle from this," he gestured at the complex spell work that Johanna could not even begin to comprehend when she'd looked at it with her Witch Sight.
"But-," An started, faltering under Taizong's raised brow.
"If he attempts to escape, he shall face the fury of three dragons of the Wu," Taizong said, his words chilly and sharp as steel.
An ground her teeth audible and stood, closing her eyes as she moved her hands through the air, Léimíng watching anxiously and wringing her hands together. There was a quiet pulse which filled the air, almost buffeting Johanna and Genevieve where they remained kneeling. Almost immediately, the massive black scaled bulk began to shift, before utterly massive bands of gold Chamon formed in the air and clamped down on him. Yi stilled, ever so slightly, and then opened his sole remaining eye, blinking it but once before a low growl escaped his lips, the sound like a distant thunderstorm. That growl grew a bit louder as he sighted Johanna, kneeling.
"Brother," Taizong said pleasantly.
"Brother," Yi growled, glaring as best he could with one eye. "That is twice now that little An has failed in her father's task from so long ago."
An clenched her fists, but said nothing.
"This foolish Taizong finds himself glad and dismayed, older brother," Taizong sighed. "For he regretted the assignment when young An returned to court, covered in your blood, yet cannot find himself joyful at what your survival has wrought upon our Grand Cathay."
Yi exhaled a single gusty breath and rolled his single eye, though it narrowed as his form shimmered slightly before the golden bands tightened around him.
"Why have I awakened at all, then? Why not kill me already, have it be done? Ah, but the answer is clear already," Yi chuckled. "Your weakness. Our kind have spent too long taking the forms of our lessers."
"Our charges," An corrected, eyes glinting dangerously, "Our responsibilities! Our friends, our allies, our subordinates and trusted companions!"
"Is that what you call them when you lay with them?" Yi snorted a cool mist into the air from his nose and mouth. "Such deviancy is exactly why the Han collapsed."
"Deviancy?!" An growled, red scales beginning to grow through her skin, though she paused as Taizong held up a hand.
"Uncle Yi, please," Léimíng called out, hands clasped together. "It does not have to be this way! We-,"
"Spare me the ramblings of the Smiling Flower," Yi interrupted, eye shifting back to Taizong as Léimíng was left to stand with her mouth open in shock. "Speak, little brother. Before I tear my way free and kill you. It may be the last words you ever say."
Léimíng squawked again as Taizong narrowed his eyes, a gesture from his hand forcing the golden bands to squeeze even harder and getting a pained growl from Yi.
"I would not dismiss little Léimíng so swiftly. She is the only one calling for your continued survival," Taizong said calmly.
Yi's entire length wriggled momentarily as a full-bodied laugh traveled along more than one hundred feet of him to puff out of his mouth.
"I am a dragon. Mercy is a concept created by lesser creatures to trick themselves into feeling better about the cruelty of reality," Yi scoffed.
"Brother…," Taizong said warningly, a faint heated glare now in his low lidded gaze.
"What? You think to chastise me as you did your weakling daughter? To educate me? Convince me of the rightness of your insanity?" Yi growled, struggling roughly one more time in the golden rings that were now solidly crushing him, squeezing blood out of various wounds along his body. "It is you who are so willfully ignorant! Look at how Cathay has stagnated and begun to collapse out from beneath you! Threats at every border, left to fester! Foreigners and vampires as Fangs?! You do not control the Wu properly, let alone the Celestial Court, or Cathay itself!"
Yi was left gasping for air, by now, from the crushing rings of Chamon and his ranting both. Johanna was damn near gasping herself as some of the blood spilled nearby her. She was desperate to not fall to all fours and begin lapping it up like a dog. She was also desperate to do just that. She felt her fingers and toes twitching again, and the indistinct sound of several voices speaking all at once, all of them in agreement but what that agreement was she couldn't tell.
"And Nippon? An entire nation, made into tools for you," Taizong shook his head. "There is no guarantee that they would have turned on us, even if they had successfully reunified without interference."
"You…care…?" Yi sounded absolutely disgusted. "They're just another nation of fools following fools."
"A nation of humans leading humans," Taizong noted. "Not like Cathay, of course."
Taizong inhaled and then glanced over at Léimíng and her widened eyes, then back at An.
"There is a distinct difference here, I cannot help but find," Taizong said, a hand patting An on the arm. "When An gazed upon burial grounds of the Bastion, when she carried the children of the burnt cities in the west in her own arms, covered in soot, when she returned from smashing the Naga in the south with miles of wagons carrying the drained dead so they could be returned to their families…," he glared up at Yi. "There was anger, yes. And regret. The first, oh, yes, you have so much. For so many things. But the latter? No. I don't think there is even a little for what you have done."
"Why would there be," Yi growled, blinking his large eye once. "When all I have to regret is that without me, Cathay will shatter again. Another Dynasty War will begin, sooner or later," he moved his head ever so slightly to accommodate the appearance of shaking it while constrained. "The Wei breed relentlessly, trying to make up for what they cannot in age and power. The Shu huddle in their western territories, fondly remembering the height of their power when they brought the Maw forth. The Han may be a spent line, but the Yuan are proud and only barely stood down when the other Dynasties pushed them off the throne, and they will see your weakness."
Taizong opened his eyes fully and exhaled a cloud of what looked like gold dust that rapidly dissipated in the wind. Some of, however, flew near Johanna causing her to flinch as she realized that the cloud was somehow sharp, sharp enough to cut into her own skin.
"I am not asleep yet, older brother," he growled, and the ruins of the Heavenly Court rumbled with the power in his voice, before glancing at Léimíng. "The choice is clear, little peacekeeper."
"Uncle-!" Léimíng called out.
"Even if they did return me to Cathay alive," Yi growled, "What, did you think you would peel my mind open for my secrets? I am the First Shadow under Heaven, and you are little more than a pale, pink imitation."
Léimíng drew back, and drew herself up, and though it was not a particularly impressive height there was something ephemeral yet quite real in the change. The hunch and cringing posture were utterly gone, replaced with something that might have been steel, might have just been the morning mist with the shine of the dew within.
"Wrong," she said, and the higher pitch was gone, replaced with a voice still like honey, but now it was darker and smokier. "And that that was your only thought makes me all the sadder for you, Uncle Yi."
The Smiling Flower sighed and glanced at Taizong and An.
"He really doesn't regret it. He only contemplates escape and trying again," she said calmly, making Yi's eyes widen. "Even now, he struggles to grasp at Ulgu, even as I pull it from his grasp again and again."
"What-!,"
"I am here as the Smiling Flower, Chief Diplomat of Grand Cathay, Uncle Yi," Léimíng interrupted, somehow stealing the volume from whatever his words might have been and boosting her own with some of the subtlest magic manipulation that Johanna had ever seen. "Not as the Second Shadow under Heaven. But please," she clucked a tongue, "Do not presume to tell me what I am or am not."
"You are here to kiss babies on the forehead, fill bellies, and make everyone remember you fondly and remember me as the monster," An said, arms crossed as she looked away. "All so thankful and hopeful that Cathay would never send me again, only you."
Léimíng raised her chin but did not deny it.
"There is nothing within you that will be convinced in life, and you do not fear death," Taizong noted, speaking once more to Yi. "And yet, part of me still wonders if it is the right thing to do, for me or An to spill the blood of the Wu with the intent to kill."
Yi laughed again.
"Such weakness. If only Mother Huang had listened…"
"Perhaps," An raised her head, narrowing her eyes, "We need not, still."
"Oh?" Taizong glanced at his daughter. "What do you mean?"
"You have heard, of course, of the secret of vampires, when it comes to our kind," An continued.
At that, Yi twitched violently despite his bindings.
"You would not dare."
"Fangs cannot harm those of royal blood," An said, before she, Taizong, and Léimíng both turned to look at Johanna and her sire. "But these are no longer Fangs."
Johanna quailed slightly under the sight of all three dragons, four in fact as Yi's eye swiveled on her again and narrowed in rage.
"This is true," Taizong said, stroking at his chin before smiling lightly. "I had thought, my daughter, to reward these Fangs by releasing them from their duties and bindings, for their deeds and aid in all they had done thus far, including this campaign."
"You would not dare!"
An bowed her head.
"My apologies, Celestial Father, for causing you issue."
Taizong waved his hand dismissively.
"I find myself in the curious position of needing to reward such aid, such deeds, yet no longer in possession of the ability to grant the reward I had intended. And yet, for their curtailing of the Monkey King, of the Jade-Blooded, of near single-handed defeat of the Blue Scarves rebellion, for improving relations with the Deva Yemaraja…there must be a great reward indeed."
Yi strained in his bonds, causing more blood to squeeze free of his wounds. Johanna ran her tongue over her lips, her throat feeling drier than the sands of Nehekhara as in her youth. Except, no, she frowned, she had never been in Nehekhara as a young child. She grew up in the forests of Talabecland, not the desert.
"Kill me if you must, but the gall of such an insulting death?!"
"Genevieve Sandrine du Pointe du Lac Dieudonné," Taizong called. "Rise and approach."
Johanna blinked and stared, half-rising herself before a lidded look from Taizong had her cease. Her sire simply rose and walked forward, removing her hat and grimacing slightly as the eastern sunlight washed over her pale skin and body.
"Emperor Taizong," she knelt again directly in front of him.
"Master Po spoke of you, and yet this Celestial Emperor never met you before you arrived in our lands, dragging a child of your own blood with you," he mused aloud. "Tell me, have you any belief in this secret legend of vampires?"
Johanna wanted to open her mouth, wanted to scream, but didn't. Barely.
"I had thought them just stories," Genevieve answered honestly, "But recent events…," she licked her lips and her gaze grew momentarily distant. "Have made me reconsider."
"Oh?"
"I…I think it might well be true," the Bretonnian murmured.
In strange half-memories, Johanna briefly heard avalanches upon avalanches, and a single triumphant roar amongst it all.
"I find myself interested as well," Taizong said, making Johanna's eyes zero in on him, unblinking.
"…excuse me?" Genevieve sounded shocked.
She hadn't realized it, but Johanna had. Or part of her had. Admittedly, it was hard to believe, but perhaps that was the point? Or the voices in her ears were confusing her. Or both. But then Johanna caught sight of the Emperor's gaze, and in fact that of An as well. For all that the Crown Princess was such a fiery entity, it was impossible to forget that she was part of the overall Wu Dynasty that the Empress Huang had led since before they had even taken the throne. She remembered the quiet discussions with the wizards on the march on the nature of the Winds. And she felt the beast inside, just barely beginning to wake up again, go still as one might under a predator's gaze as she looked at the dragons. All three of them in fact, including Léimíng. Something in the depths, glittering in those golden, molten red, and demure brown eyes of all three dragons of the Wu standing together. Chamon. A wind of rigidity, of strength, but also…experimentation.
They all looked human, vaguely, especially vaguely in An's case.
But even before, when in their true forms, Johanna had never been so struck by the sheer level of inhumanity that they could possess than in this moment.
"This is an insult! Do you not at least have the will to do it yourself!? Coward!?"
None of the three Wu Dragons even responded to Yi's ranting. Taizong instead cocked and ear and then gestured for Genevieve to rise, then all four slowly walked down Yi's length to about a fourth of the way down. Which was, ironically, near where Johanna herself still knelt.
"Emperor Taizong – I…this is…," Genevieve spoke up, eyes still wide.
"If not this," Taizong raised an eyebrow, "Then I would do it. Or An. We would still be spilling the blood of a dragon of Wu on this day, and at the end of it Yi would still be dead. This way, at least, we will learn something new."
"You fools! The parasites will flock to Grand Cathay, they – they will come seeking a solution that was but rumor before!"
An laughed. Loudly.
"Already they are coming, foolish Uncle! Johanna and Genevieve have told me much of the 'bloodlines' in the rest of the world, beyond the Jade-Blooded. General Anpu but was one of the so-called Blood Dragons!" The Crown Princess had her hands on her hips.
"A terribly gauche term," Léimíng murmured.
"Bargaining, brother?" Taizong called out, tutting. "Is that not some measure of communication invented by lesser creatures not strong enough to simply take what they desire?" Then he turned to An. "Hold him down."
A few seconds passed, and then suddenly the tenth tier of Tenshuto was once more graced with two dragons of Cathay, An simply crushing her Uncle's body beneath her greater bulk, all four of her heavy limbs latching onto his body. Her jaw closed around Yi's throat, just below the jaw. Johanna just watched, staring, the whispers dying down as if they were fascinated as well, as Taizong then channeled Chamon around a fist, formed a shovel shape with it, and simply plunged into Yi's side. He carved out a large enough hole and then with a pained scream from Yi tore the skin and flesh loose and to the side. Suddenly, Johanna realized that one of the noises she'd been ignoring, the pounding drum that sounded like it was in an ogre camp in the Mountains of Mourn, was nothing of the sort. It was the pounding sound of a single gigantic heart, one that she now heard quite clearly, deep within the crimson depths of Yi's innards.
"I-," Johanna spoke up, only to falter as the dragons and her sire looked at her. "C-…I-,"
"Unfortunately," Taizong said quietly, "We have but the one traitor in our family."
"Living traitor," Léimíng murmured, to which Taizong inclined his head in agreement.
Then the Smiling Flower approached Johanna, a cool detached look on her face.
"And if it doesn't work," Léimíng said, leaning down to Johanna and putting a hand on her shoulder. "We will know either way. And even then…wouldn't knowing for absolute certain still be something?"
"But if it does work, and I don't…," Johanna didn't quite sob.
"Then you will find another," Léimíng shrugged. "In time. Perhaps. Perhaps not."
"Just like that?" Johanna shook, and slowly put a hand across her face. "Just like that?" she said into her hands.
"I…," Genevieve trailed off, making Johanna look up again. "Maybe she should-,"
"No," Taizong said firmly. "Look at your get and tell me, without lying, that she is not suffering already."
Her sire did not, despite Johanna's earnest silent wishes.
"Now then," Taizong gestured.
Genevieve looked back twice at Johanna as she pulled herself into the hole, even as Yi began to try and struggle all the harder, making the massive drum crash boom of his heart all the louder. Johanna watched, unmoving, unblinking, as her master disappeared into the bloody depths.
"No…NO! A PARASITE!? ME!? BROTHER! KILL ME YOURSELF! AN! FULFILL YOUR ORDERS!"
But An just held Yi down, aided by the golden bands of Chamon conjured by Taizong, while the flighty, gasping Léimíng folded her hands over her large belly and watched without any expression at all. There came a sudden internal thrashing, and then the drum beat changed, Johanna heard the great channels, the vast rivers of blood and their continual pulsing start to shift and change. Her nose twitched as she smelled new spilling inside of the body, blood splashing and squishing amidst organs and tissue. For a moment, Johanna contemplated trying to push them all aside, rushing the bloody tunnel. But she didn't. Whether because she was the get, and Genevieve the sire, or something else entirely, Johanna felt frozen to the ground.
"This cannot…I AM…THE SAVIOR OF CATHAY! I am…the true Emperor…of the Wu Dynasty!"
"You are not either of those things," Taizong called, eyes still locked on the hole he had carved into Yi's side. "You are a traitorous enemy of the Celestial Throne and are to be killed as one." He only briefly glanced back towards his brother's head. "I recall you spoke much of killing traitors to the Throne, once."
"I..nyrargh!" Yi bellowed in pain, and, Johanna could tell, actual fear.
More and more blood began to pour out of the hole when the thunderous drum beat started to falter, go wild, and start to beat at odds with itself. For the heart was, Johanna could hear, torn now. Torn open. There was so much blood sloshing around, she could not even hear her sire. Yi yowled, screamed, and yet with every passing second he grew weaker and weaker. Soon enough, he could not muster any more roars, not even a few wheezing breaths. His very heart had been torn open and burrowed inside. The flow of blood out of the hole in his body was steady, but that was more from the sheer volume than because it was being pushed through the body anymore. Another moment, and Yi let loose one last gasping wheeze, thrashing enough that An had to growl a bit and work to hold him down, his entire body flickering as he tried to cast forth some magic that Léimíng waved away with her own.
Finally, it all began to come to a stop, and Johanna could hear the sloshing of blood and shifting of meat.
Stumbling, eyes as wide as they could go, Genevieve stumbled to the edge of the hole torn into Yi's body. She was coated, from head to toe, in blood. Johanna's sire clutched at her own head, groaning slightly before falling backwards into the hole and into Yi's innards. The groan began to escalate as she began to thrash, violently, until Genevieve was outright screaming. Screaming louder and louder, louder than Johanna thought was even possible for her sire. Concern drove Johanna to rise, just in time to nearly be bowled over as Genevieve's scream grew louder still before there came something else entirely.
Some sort of…unseen wave exploded outwards from where Genevieve lay. There was no sound to it. Rather, it was the opposite. A silence, a consuming and expanding silence that rippled outward at speeds Johanna could scarcely comprehend. It nearly blew her off her feet again, while the Emperor and Smiling Flower just sank down their centers of gravity, their robes flapping and whirling about. It felt like there should have been a windstorm, but there was still that absolute silence. Johanna could not hear the wind, could not hear herself, could not hear the beast, could not hear anything at all. There was not even the ringing that normally accompanied sufficiently deafening sounds. Then came a blast of grey mist, spilling outwards at speeds more appropriate for a tidal wave, which grew and washed over Johanna and made her skin tingle. And though she did not know it at the time, it expanded further still, reaching the bounds of the entire tenth tier of Tenshuto and beyond, drifting down the mountain city's side like a rapidly moving flow of lava.
There were no nearby mountains to shake into avalanches for miles around.
But there was, briefly for miles, absolute and complete silence.
Then it began to dissipate, all at once, into nothingness. The strange mist, Ulgu made manifest in the physical realm at astonishingly strength, Johanna realized belatedly, faded away. The silence retreated, and sound from so many myriad sources returned. There were screams of fear and confusion from the city below, consternation and barked orders from the Dragonguard, and the slightest shifting of the robes of the Emperor and Smiling Flower, while above the bulk of An coiled as she brought her head around and released the corpse from her grasp. A vortex of fire later and the nine foot tall human form of the Crown Princess stomped over, tilting her head at the exact same time as Taizong and Léimíng when a shaky human hand clutched at the edges of the hole carved into Yi's chest. Only to subsequently tear apart the dragon's scales and flesh invertedly, leading to Genevieve almost falling over as she pulled herself free. Almost, because she simply held herself with her foot claws upright at an absurd angle before she could make her footing more stable. Johanna inhaled sharply at the sheer aura of power that surrounded Genevieve now. It felt like a weight pressed onto Johanna's mind and soul, though was not immediately uncomfortable. Her sire was not gasping for breath, her eyes were not squeezed shut, her lips were not pursed or thinned from pressure. She was completely and utterly calm.
"…master?" Johanna ventured cautiously.
Genevieve Sandrine du Pointe du Lac Dieudonné looked in her direction and slowly opened her eyes. For a moment Johanna was startled. Glassy, obsidian-like glowing spheres looked to have replaced her sire's eyes entirely. Her long black hair, her entire body, was still slick with the red of Yi's blood, but she moved uncaring of it as she approached Johanna and stood before her. To the most idiotic sort, it might have seemed that she had not changed at all save for the eyes. She was not taller, shorter, wider, skinnier, more muscular or more fat. She had not sprouted horns like the dragons of Cathay, or scales. But the sheer power that radiated from Genevieve was utterly undeniable. It was not quite like the dragons themselves. But neither was it not unlike that. When she placed her hands against Johanna's cheek a bit too quickly, it was like being lightly touched by both a sheet of silk and velvet as well as faint buzz of electricity and spark of fire, which made Genevieve just tilt her head to the side and take a deep breath.
"It's true," she said, and the emotions in those two words was like a storm.
Unbridled joy. Crushing grief. Utter bewilderment and acidic ruefulness. But most of all, most prominent, was the sheer apology in it. Johanna couldn't help it; she began to weep. Slowly, Genevieve wrapped her arms around her, and held her close, whispering nothing words, conveying apology and comfort and promises alike. The world was gone, save for that moment, at least briefly. As the Dragonguard were summoned back to begin extracting the last of the blood that Yi would ever give to the Wu Dynasty. As the Emperor conferred quietly with his daughters and then strode away, followed by them both. Neither Genevieve nor Johanna stirred as An lagged behind, glancing at them before she too walked away. None of it mattered. None of it, not at this moment. Whatever came next didn't matter, not right now.
Because it was true.
It was true.
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Telepathy Conversations:
A. What do you think they're talking about
A. I think we're about to find out
A. I'm not entirely sure but there must be something to it / Remember how she was after being struck by the lightning and cannons it would be something but clearly not / we're part of the amber brotherhood / yes
A. How do you suppose the injuries transfer between forms / I think you're right, if it would just be fixed by switching forms / well it's not like / Ghur is not ours
A. Well we will probably find out quite quickly / Well we won't care will we?
A. Do you really think they'll work? And if they don't?
A. Someone call the Celestial College they're missing -
A. I think this is going to go poorly / shut it
A. it barely worked the last time and my spine still feels sore from bending
A. Look at it this way, if something goes through, maybe-
A. I see it / duck / step back / step forward / break apart /come on and hit him already why don't you
A. Left on your left / he's coming / on the right / pull back / let them / and now!
A. Those hounds are meant to be untouchable!
A. That's not supposed to be possible!
A. She's giving Johanna time.
A. What is she doing!?
A. NO!
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- Location
- barking
me looks at sufficient nothing 5 seconds latter 34k update
Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
okay then, welp its going to be a very interesting time in China/Cathay as the saying goes. Glad that Agatha survived and her sister won't have to return home without her twin.
Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
and it's still not Torroar's longest update not counting the extremally long Lovely Lauralorn.
- Location
- barking
Vampire will flock to cathy you mean they weren't already I mean zachy and abrohos have got to be well known enough in vampire circles for them to know by now drinking dragon blood works (or at least expect)
deadcrystal
Slaaneshi Cultist
- Location
- The Warp
I KNEW IT!
I was getting initially worried as she progressed on with the injuries, but as it went on and on I started to think...An is far far from an idiot. What she's doing seems reckless and inadvisable and bound to end in disaster...so perhaps it isn't.
- Location
- barking
okay thats 4 of freddies children doing what they think freddie would do (Magnus, Anna and the twins) anything Arthur, Alex and Logan want to tell us
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
Superb update, @torroar. This whole little miniarc has been extremely compelling, which can be quite hard to do with sidestories about side characters.
I've been informed on the internet many a time that no such thing exists
DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
ADORABLE I LOVE OUR DAUGHTERS SO MUCH
Thanatos757
Captain of the Four Knights
Damn, I really would've thought that An would give the kill to Johanna. I guess Taizong thought differently.
But what's Johanna's reward going to be now, a lifetime supply of dragon blood elixirs from An?
But what's Johanna's reward going to be now, a lifetime supply of dragon blood elixirs from An?