Journey to the East 25

They rode under false, unquiet stars, and the desert dunes writhed with the dead. Gu Xiulan’s home was a harsh place, the golden dunes and blowing gray ash could kill as surely as the Walkers who roamed out from the grave far in the south. But it was not like this. Not like the nightmare caricature they rode through. Around her, she saw the ruin of what her family had wrought. Guard towers crumbled at the side of a broken road, a village crumbled and cold, no longer even smoking. Dead not in ancient panopoly but the colors of the modern Gu, the clothes of simple peasants, even faces she recognized if she looked too long into the shadow of a helm.

Worthless, they had accomplished nothing, wrought nothing that did not die too and return to ash.

Gu Xiulaln snarled, sparks snapping between her teeth, the plumes  on her helm catching flame as she hurled a spiraling javelin of blinding sunfire into the center of a formation of enemies blocking their way. Dead, nightmares, whatever they might be, they burned well enough.

The lances of her outriders rose and fell; bashing, crushing, breaking bodies knocked aside like pins and trampled under their horses hooves.

“Take heart, sons of the dunes. This is only pathetic artifice. This shadow is the work of the Enemy, to break wills and shatter spirits. It has no more power than you give it. You are stronger than mere trickery,”

Guo Xinhua’s rich voice reverberated in her ears, more than the mundane sound that would pass from a humans lips, it reverberated in the air, shook the nightmare desert from the earth to the sky, sending ripples through the crumbled ruins, leaving glimpses of golden dunes and a pale blue sky. Of watchtowers still standing proudly along an unbroken road. Utter surety and confidence manifest, bolstering them.

Where the dead still clawed at walls, but spears and arrows still answered them, and always burning purifying flames still lanced out.

False, false. The voice whispering despair and submission, so pathetic and repugnant, was false. The Pain in her arm was real, the fire in her veins was real. Guo Xinhua’s voice was real.

The Ambassador rode behind them, on hooves that never touched the earth, the mare she rode seeming to they to move at a mere lazy canter, despite keeping pace with the furious gallop of their own horses.

A dune ahead shifted with malignant life, sand pouring down over an opening maw large enough to swallow their troupe whole with teeth that were broken shards of masonry and fortification.

Guo Xinyan leapt over them from where she ran beneath her mother, crimson hair billowing like a banner. Her leg carved a downward slash in the air, and the dune horror split in twain with an echoing wail.

Her men echoed the ambassadors mantra, the words that had carried them through the nightmarish hours with a dull roar from ragged throats. She could feel them flagging. Through the military formation that bound them the qi pooled there down to its dregs. There was a reason that cultivators did not dash too and fro at all times with echoing thunder at their backs from the broken air. Reinforced as they were, still mortal bodies were not meant for such things.

“Children of the Phoenix, the walls come, home comes, just a little longer,” She said, raising her voice. The spear of lightning she conjured in her hand lit like a banner, renewing the heat.

“Children of the Desert, we who have clawed life from the very maw of death, have nothing to fear,” Guo Xinhua’s voice echoed her. So much more powerful than hers. She was appreciative of it, even her own mind might have flagged without it and yet…

She only wished to be so beautiful, so mighty, an unsheathed blade, gleaming in the sun untouched by any corrosion.

Her throbbing scars and burning arm told her how far she yet had to go.

They thundered over the crest of the last hill, and for a moment, Gu Xiulan saw a dead town, a bleach ruin, stalked only by the dead, the banners were torn down, the camp of the army outside was drifting ash and soiled wreckage. Father, father hung broken over the gates, his flames extinguished and…

Reality sizzled. It split and melted, gashes ripped in its fabric at the wave of a fan, melting from killing venom. She saw past it, saw a city under siege by the dead, few enough that they should have been easy to scatter. A Burning crown of fire-Father- roosted atop the Barons keep, wings of radiance spread over the sky like a shield.

What nightmare, what army did they see from inside those walls?

Ahead was a barricade, scrap and stone and bodies fused and piled high, a monument to defeat/ Raw rough stone compressed from desert stone, worked with antique defensive formations.

“Gu Xiulan. I will now force a confrontation. This will take all of my attention, and should soon bring the Lord Gu’s attention. You will be on your own in the interim. Break the Outer Defensive perimeter, it is tied to the nightmare.”

The Ambassadors voice drifted in her ear, a silent whisper, almost lost in the noise of the raucous host of the dead limitless and vast/ the splintering of bone and firing of counter siege engines into the masses of desiccated bodies.

“Zheng Nan! Open the way!!” She shouted over the din real and imagined. Staring staring at the wavering nightmare, she almost thought she could see threads, woven densely a net of cruel dreams thrown over the town and her Father alike.

She raised her hand and their formation parted, allowing the Zheng bond siblings to barrel through, blurs of muscle and laughter, even now they bumped their shoulders against each other as they ran, like children in a friendly footrace.

Even as the earth cracked under their feet,  and the thunder of their passage tore at the manes of her men's horses. The Impact against the sandstone barrier raised around the sieging force of the dead was deeper than a temple gong, and louder than the thunder. Sand and chips of stone erupted in all directions, only a conjured wall of roaring flame called up at her hand stopping the shrapnel from peppering them as they charged on.

The Ambassadors mare leapt, and carried her into the sky.

The nightmare wavered further, the yawning gashes in it more clear than ever, visible even too her lowest riders and the naked eye, by the ragged cheers she heard

It helped that the first ranks of the siege were slow to react and slow to turn. Grey and withered roots, nonetheless the size of centennial trunks bashed aside their defenses and ripped into their formations carving the sieging force into smaller chunks between towering walls of writhing living wood.

And Zheng Nan impacted among the closest like a meteor, a shockwave rippling out carrying fragmented bone, metal and sand.

“We make for the gates!” Gu Xiulan called out to her men as they stormed the path made for them. “We must show my father, show our Kin that their eyes are merely clouded!”

There was a thump, and Refeng let out a sharp whinny, Gu Xiulan felt a solid arm wrap around her waist, a body pressed against her back. Guo Xinyan’s sharp eyes peered over her shoulder.

“Every further detail wrong strains the lie more, and when Mother is in a cutting mood, the enemy will be hard pressed to begin with. The gate is right, make for the walls. There, your father will see you.”

She nodded sharply, digging her heels into Refeng’s sides as his mane caught fire, as she caught fire. If the nightmare legion were true, she would not be here. A stark and glaring hole in the lie.

Phantoms gnawed at her mind even now they, she saw the Zheng Siblings being torn down by the dead, saw the way they had cleared crumbling, nightmares rising. The eyes of corpses stared down at her from the walls of the town. It felt like cold claws… worse, worms in her mind slick and sickly, trying to burrow into her thoughts.

She drew on the last wells of her qi, let her fire rage, every hoofbeat was a flash of lightning, her banner like a pennant of sunfire, pouring her own will into her outriders formations, burning the worms in their minds as well.

The final, thin cordon of the dead crumbled. Refeng leapt. Whatever the soldiers of the city saw in her, weapons and techniques spoke in her direction. Guo Xinyan’s arched fingers tore them asunder.

She felt heat, a killing heat that would evaporate even her. Father’s attention, drawn to the breach in their defenses.

And she felt as he SAW her, not whatever image was being hastily thrown, like a dustcloth, over his eyes.

The wind stilled, the crackle of flames even seemed to quiet for a moment.

Until the vast wings that hung over the city beat, and a hurricane wind scoured the dead outside the walls, to the tune of phoenix's shrill cry.