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<blockquote data-quote="Emperor Valerian" data-source="post: 2480014" data-attributes="member: 15043"><p><strong>Dark News from the North</strong></p><p></p><p>“So that’s it?” Felonca asked some hours later. She shook herself for the seemingly countless time, and once again, a small cloud of dust flew from her body, illuminating the thin strands of light that petered down to their location, in the depths of the library’s catacombs. “Only those options?”</p><p></p><p>“Yes,” Won Wei replied after a moment, running his hands over his formerly fine silk robes with a somewhat saddened expression. Obviously his clothes were ruined. “Those are your only three chances.”</p><p></p><p>“Well... I said before that killing the Emperor is out of the question,” Felonca replied. Slaying the Emperor was the first option the two had found, easily located in one of the upper chambers, and one that both had immediately put aside. The slaying would fulfill the purpose of the dagger’s dark, unknown creators, but would cause so much chaos that more would likely die than if the young Emperor stayed alive. And Felonca couldn’t bring herself to kill a small innocent boy, hence their continued search for other solutions.</p><p></p><p>“Well, that leaves us two options,” Won Wei said, finally standing up after he’d removed as much dust from his clothes as possible.</p><p></p><p>“Leaves us two options?” Felonca asked, as Won Wei handed her the ancient tome that held the remaining secrets. </p><p></p><p>“Yes, us,” the scholar flecked a few final spots on his robe. “As one of the Council of Scholars, it’s my duty to ensure the safety of the Imperial Throne.” By his tone, Felonca detected an almost paternal undertone. </p><p></p><p><em>He actually cares deeply about the Emperor, not as a ruler, but as a young, growing boy...</em></p><p></p><p>“So. We have the two remaining options. Find a Celestial Dragon, messenger from the Heavens, and persuade the great creature to destroy the dagger...”</p><p></p><p>“Or stab someone close to the royal blood who claims the throne with the dagger,” Felonca finished, trying not to swallow on reciting those words. She was glad Won Wei hadn’t been looking when she’d read them initially... she knew of two people with the royal blood in such circumstances. One was at the head of an enormous army, marching away from the capital. The other was still inside this very building...</p><p></p><p><em>Thank goodness they don’t appear to know Nayu’s ancestry...</em> If they were forced to choose between hunting down Prince Hu in the midst of his legions, or killing the young man already in their midst, as much as Won Wei and many of the scholars liked Nayu, she doubted her friend would live for long.</p><p></p><p>“I think either of those is also a most difficult task,” Won Wei replied, not evidently picking up her inner thoughts. “I will have to do much research to find out what this ‘Celestial Dragon’ is exactly, and where it might be found. I highly doubt Prince Hu is going to just walk into our laps, however...”</p><p></p><p>From somewhere above, a loud, dull creak echoed through the dusty chamber. Both Won Wei and Felonca looked up, to see a stream of light blazing from the doorway... the rays of the setting sun.</p><p></p><p>“Pardon me, Master Won Wei,” a young man’s voice said breathlessly, “but a messenger has arrived from the north. His Imperial Majesty requests your presence immediately to discuss the news he brings.”</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>As she spurred her horse further on, slowly making progress, Felonca’s heart fell. Since the arrival of the messenger only a few hours before, she had been in constant panic. The news had been devastatingly sparse: there was a great battle to the north, and Quan-Shi’s army, which included both her father and her uncle, was defeated, and its remnants were now outside the city walls. How badly, who survived... she had no idea of knowing until now.</p><p></p><p>As officially the army was not under the Imperial banner, but under the banner of the provincial government of Dai, it needed permission to enter the Imperial City. Won Wei, as representative of the Council of Scholars, immediately said the troops should be let in, yet somehow Felonca hadn’t been surprised the Empress had disagreed.</p><p></p><p>The Empress had pointed out that letting in tens of thousands of wounded and dying increased the risk of disease, as well as starting a panic within the city streets, yet behind these facades, even the politically limited Felonca could see why she didn’t want the troops within the city; her power was already in retreat, the Imperial Guards were beginning to listen to the Council more than her, and most importantly, all of these new soldiers would undoubtedly listen to Felonca, Nayu, and thus likely Won Wei, before they would ever obey an order from her.</p><p></p><p><em>Stupid woman... thinking of her position more than her people,</em> Felonca snarled in memory. The arguments had lasted far longer than Felonca thought was necessary or appropriate, and finally it took Nayu’s quick mind to find a solution; he asked the young Emperor over his mother’s objections, and Yuandi promptly countermanded his mother. In a fury, she had stormed out of the Council Chambers, cursing the young boy, Won Wei, Nayu, and Felonca.</p><p></p><p><em>Maybe she’ll just jump off a tower or something,</em> Felonca thought darkly. Her brooding was interrupted when her eyes caught sight of a soldier carrying a tattered banner, the character “Wa” emblazoned in stark black on its white cloth.</p><p></p><p><em>That’s a Wa-Feng banner...</em> she realized immediately, and her mind turned to far more pressing matters than a pouting Empress. Her progress in the crowd ground to a halt, and as the masses of soldiers pushed onward into the city, she was forced to dismount, to clamber through the mob.</p><p></p><p>“Papa!” Felonca dashed, cutting amongst and through the long, broken streams of humanity that seemed to block the entire boulevard. As far as the eyes could see, all she could pick out were wounded soldiers, their armor bloodied, their weapons hanging in defeat. Somewhere behind her, she heard her horse whinny, but she didn’t care.</p><p></p><p><em>Papa...</em></p><p></p><p>Finally, amongst the sea of heads, she spotted the dark head of her father towering of the others, his helm gone, his white armor soiled and dirty. Within moments she ripped through the crowd, and leapt into him.</p><p></p><p>“Papa!” she cried, clutching him close in the closing darkness. He smelled of sweat, iron, and blood. <em>They didn’t say anything about you! I thought you were dead!</em> She closed her eyes tight, not caring if anyone saw.</p><p></p><p>“Felonca,” her father said quietly. The embrace lasted far shorter than she hoped, as he gently pushed her away. When she looked up at him, she saw worry, even fear, dancing within his eyes.</p><p></p><p>“We thought we were strong enough to cut off Prince Hu,” her father said quietly. “We positioned ourselves astride his only road back to Langya, and hoped to crush him. We...” he suddenly stopped, and a great dark hand started to run through his hair in frustration. “<em>We</em> had the high ground, and <em>we</em> had the better position. Hu should have had no choice but to charge into the teeth of our spears... but...”</p><p></p><p>The fear seemed to flare brighter in his dark brown eyes.</p><p></p><p>“Felonca... you must realize this. Hu is no ordinary man, he is no ordinary commander,” Felonxi said, his voice even quieter. “Lesser men would have been trapped but he... well...” Her father looked down, his hands gesturing towards the masses of wounded moving about. When his eyes flashed up towards Felonca, they looked meek, and for the first time she could remember, she saw something altogether foreign to his gaze.</p><p></p><p>Shame.</p><p></p><p>“We saw him come to the front, and raise his hands,” Felonxi began, “so we ordered our scholars to prepare themselves. Yet, no matter how they concentrated and called for Heaven’s Blessing, the skies opened, and flames rained down on our men. Then... then they charged...” Felonca stood speechless, as she read the horrible events that followed through her father’s quiet gaze.</p><p></p><p>“I...I saw him near the front of the battleline, and I realized that we had to kill him. So I charged him... but I couldn’t reach him in time, before the lightning and hail scattered what remained of us...” His voice faded into nothingness, before he looked down yet again. </p><p></p><p>“Dian and Quan-Shi set up the rearguard, while I organized the troops retreating in the smoke. I escaped unharmed... both were wounded, Quan-Shi badly.” He stopped again, as if the words near his tongue were words he did not want to utter, but words he knew he must say.</p><p></p><p>“I failed. <em>We</em> failed.”</p><p></p><p>Felonca closed her eyes, imagining the horror, the smell of sulfur blanketing the sky and earth, flames licking, burning everything, the chaos and confusion of a retreat through billowing smoke. The sheer horror of the event, of trying to organize thousands of fleeing people so they could make it to safety, instead of choking to death in the smoke, or being ridden down by Hu’s cavalry. When she opened her eyes, she gently touched her father’s shoulder.</p><p></p><p>“Many men retreated safely. You have succeeded, and you have no reason to be ashamed. You brought them here, where they will likely be needed,” she said simply. She heard no reply from her father, but his looking up from the ground spoke enough. </p><p></p><p>“They make for here with all haste,” Felonxi said, “the Prince and his entire host, now swollen with abominations against the <em>dao</em> and Heaven’s Will.” He stopped for a second, but Felonca’s slow nod prompted more. “There were seas of skeletons... they were easy for our men to kill, but they seemed endless as the sands of the desert beaches. There were great demons, spiders of great size, monstrosities of horn and flesh beyond number...” His voice once again faded, as he gave a slight shudder, before looking up towards the outer walls of the immense city, the same walls that had made Felonca feel so boxed in when they arrived a week prior. </p><p></p><p>“They will breach these walls,” he said simply, bluntly, “and the middle walls, and the inner walls.” A sigh of resignation. “They will even breach the walls of the Jade City. There is no hope.”</p><p></p><p><em>There is no hope.</em> Those four words coming from her father made Felonca shudder. Her family history had been built on situations where others said there was no hope. Her grandfather had held off 10,000 barbarians to the north with a regiment of barely a thousand, and only just before she was born, Felonca’s father had successfully defeated an ogre one on one. </p><p></p><p><em>For him to say there is no hope...</em> Felonca shuddered again, her mind’s eye imagining the sky growing dark, before a pregnant, orange glow let loose of torrent of fire onto the city below.</p><p></p><p><em>But he managed to get many of the soldiers out alive... thousands of the soldiers out alive! If it is as he describes, no one should have been able to survive such a firestorm! That alone shows there is hope!</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Regardless, Felonca... there is a battered army here, and a city needs to be defended. </em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>The greatest treasure of arcane tomes needs to be defended.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>An Emperor needs to be defended.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>An Empire needs to be defended.</em></p><p></p><p>“How closely do they follow?” Felonca asked, her voice no longer quiet. <em>The soldiers about need to hear this too.</em> </p><p></p><p>“Hu followed slowly... his army is too huge to move quickly,” her father replied. “That should give us a week to get the soldiers out, and if we do some forced marches, we could sneak past him...”</p><p></p><p>“We aren’t retreating,” Felonca replied, mustering some steel into her voice. Mentally she shuddered again, at the image of the city, and its hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, burning in the wind. “Someone has to stop them, so the people can escape.”</p><p></p><p>“<em>Stop them?!</em>” She heard the fight coming back into her father’s voice, and it made her happy, even if the ire was directed at her. “How are we going to fight them? You have no forest to hide in here, Felonca!”</p><p></p><p><em>Now, to just turn this ire a bit towards something productive...</em> she thought.</p><p></p><p>“We have just a week, papa,” she replied. “Enough time to get as many of these soldiers healed as possible, and as many of the people out of the city as well.” She stopped, and as she felt the eyes of soldiers around falling on her, she forced a smirk to her lips. “Call a meeting of all of your generals. I’ll get the Emperor’s guards to come as well.”</p><p></p><p><em>We have to hold them off, at least until the people can escape, and we can evacuate all the arcane tomes within the Imperial libraries. If it took us only six hours to find the ways to destroy that dagger...</em> She shuddered to think of the secrets someone like Hu could find with ease in those catacombs.</p><p></p><p>“Why? What for?” he asked, plainly confused.</p><p></p><p>Felonca changed the smirk to a laugh as she pointed at her father.</p><p></p><p>“Shang Wa-Feng is going to save Liaoxiang!” She turned, and pointed to one staring soldier, and shouted again, “Did you hear? Shang Wa-Feng is going to save Liaoxiang!” </p><p></p><p>As murmurs began to run through the bedraggled soldiers, she turned back to her now speechless father.</p><p></p><p>“Now you have a reputation to live up to, Papa.”</p><p></p><p><em>Let us hope we can both do this... I think the Empire is depending on us...</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Emperor Valerian, post: 2480014, member: 15043"] [b]Dark News from the North[/b] “So that’s it?” Felonca asked some hours later. She shook herself for the seemingly countless time, and once again, a small cloud of dust flew from her body, illuminating the thin strands of light that petered down to their location, in the depths of the library’s catacombs. “Only those options?” “Yes,” Won Wei replied after a moment, running his hands over his formerly fine silk robes with a somewhat saddened expression. Obviously his clothes were ruined. “Those are your only three chances.” “Well... I said before that killing the Emperor is out of the question,” Felonca replied. Slaying the Emperor was the first option the two had found, easily located in one of the upper chambers, and one that both had immediately put aside. The slaying would fulfill the purpose of the dagger’s dark, unknown creators, but would cause so much chaos that more would likely die than if the young Emperor stayed alive. And Felonca couldn’t bring herself to kill a small innocent boy, hence their continued search for other solutions. “Well, that leaves us two options,” Won Wei said, finally standing up after he’d removed as much dust from his clothes as possible. “Leaves us two options?” Felonca asked, as Won Wei handed her the ancient tome that held the remaining secrets. “Yes, us,” the scholar flecked a few final spots on his robe. “As one of the Council of Scholars, it’s my duty to ensure the safety of the Imperial Throne.” By his tone, Felonca detected an almost paternal undertone. [i]He actually cares deeply about the Emperor, not as a ruler, but as a young, growing boy...[/i] “So. We have the two remaining options. Find a Celestial Dragon, messenger from the Heavens, and persuade the great creature to destroy the dagger...” “Or stab someone close to the royal blood who claims the throne with the dagger,” Felonca finished, trying not to swallow on reciting those words. She was glad Won Wei hadn’t been looking when she’d read them initially... she knew of two people with the royal blood in such circumstances. One was at the head of an enormous army, marching away from the capital. The other was still inside this very building... [i]Thank goodness they don’t appear to know Nayu’s ancestry...[/i] If they were forced to choose between hunting down Prince Hu in the midst of his legions, or killing the young man already in their midst, as much as Won Wei and many of the scholars liked Nayu, she doubted her friend would live for long. “I think either of those is also a most difficult task,” Won Wei replied, not evidently picking up her inner thoughts. “I will have to do much research to find out what this ‘Celestial Dragon’ is exactly, and where it might be found. I highly doubt Prince Hu is going to just walk into our laps, however...” From somewhere above, a loud, dull creak echoed through the dusty chamber. Both Won Wei and Felonca looked up, to see a stream of light blazing from the doorway... the rays of the setting sun. “Pardon me, Master Won Wei,” a young man’s voice said breathlessly, “but a messenger has arrived from the north. His Imperial Majesty requests your presence immediately to discuss the news he brings.” As she spurred her horse further on, slowly making progress, Felonca’s heart fell. Since the arrival of the messenger only a few hours before, she had been in constant panic. The news had been devastatingly sparse: there was a great battle to the north, and Quan-Shi’s army, which included both her father and her uncle, was defeated, and its remnants were now outside the city walls. How badly, who survived... she had no idea of knowing until now. As officially the army was not under the Imperial banner, but under the banner of the provincial government of Dai, it needed permission to enter the Imperial City. Won Wei, as representative of the Council of Scholars, immediately said the troops should be let in, yet somehow Felonca hadn’t been surprised the Empress had disagreed. The Empress had pointed out that letting in tens of thousands of wounded and dying increased the risk of disease, as well as starting a panic within the city streets, yet behind these facades, even the politically limited Felonca could see why she didn’t want the troops within the city; her power was already in retreat, the Imperial Guards were beginning to listen to the Council more than her, and most importantly, all of these new soldiers would undoubtedly listen to Felonca, Nayu, and thus likely Won Wei, before they would ever obey an order from her. [i]Stupid woman... thinking of her position more than her people,[/i] Felonca snarled in memory. The arguments had lasted far longer than Felonca thought was necessary or appropriate, and finally it took Nayu’s quick mind to find a solution; he asked the young Emperor over his mother’s objections, and Yuandi promptly countermanded his mother. In a fury, she had stormed out of the Council Chambers, cursing the young boy, Won Wei, Nayu, and Felonca. [i]Maybe she’ll just jump off a tower or something,[/i] Felonca thought darkly. Her brooding was interrupted when her eyes caught sight of a soldier carrying a tattered banner, the character “Wa” emblazoned in stark black on its white cloth. [i]That’s a Wa-Feng banner...[/i] she realized immediately, and her mind turned to far more pressing matters than a pouting Empress. Her progress in the crowd ground to a halt, and as the masses of soldiers pushed onward into the city, she was forced to dismount, to clamber through the mob. “Papa!” Felonca dashed, cutting amongst and through the long, broken streams of humanity that seemed to block the entire boulevard. As far as the eyes could see, all she could pick out were wounded soldiers, their armor bloodied, their weapons hanging in defeat. Somewhere behind her, she heard her horse whinny, but she didn’t care. [i]Papa...[/i] Finally, amongst the sea of heads, she spotted the dark head of her father towering of the others, his helm gone, his white armor soiled and dirty. Within moments she ripped through the crowd, and leapt into him. “Papa!” she cried, clutching him close in the closing darkness. He smelled of sweat, iron, and blood. [i]They didn’t say anything about you! I thought you were dead![/i] She closed her eyes tight, not caring if anyone saw. “Felonca,” her father said quietly. The embrace lasted far shorter than she hoped, as he gently pushed her away. When she looked up at him, she saw worry, even fear, dancing within his eyes. “We thought we were strong enough to cut off Prince Hu,” her father said quietly. “We positioned ourselves astride his only road back to Langya, and hoped to crush him. We...” he suddenly stopped, and a great dark hand started to run through his hair in frustration. “[i]We[/i] had the high ground, and [i]we[/i] had the better position. Hu should have had no choice but to charge into the teeth of our spears... but...” The fear seemed to flare brighter in his dark brown eyes. “Felonca... you must realize this. Hu is no ordinary man, he is no ordinary commander,” Felonxi said, his voice even quieter. “Lesser men would have been trapped but he... well...” Her father looked down, his hands gesturing towards the masses of wounded moving about. When his eyes flashed up towards Felonca, they looked meek, and for the first time she could remember, she saw something altogether foreign to his gaze. Shame. “We saw him come to the front, and raise his hands,” Felonxi began, “so we ordered our scholars to prepare themselves. Yet, no matter how they concentrated and called for Heaven’s Blessing, the skies opened, and flames rained down on our men. Then... then they charged...” Felonca stood speechless, as she read the horrible events that followed through her father’s quiet gaze. “I...I saw him near the front of the battleline, and I realized that we had to kill him. So I charged him... but I couldn’t reach him in time, before the lightning and hail scattered what remained of us...” His voice faded into nothingness, before he looked down yet again. “Dian and Quan-Shi set up the rearguard, while I organized the troops retreating in the smoke. I escaped unharmed... both were wounded, Quan-Shi badly.” He stopped again, as if the words near his tongue were words he did not want to utter, but words he knew he must say. “I failed. [i]We[/i] failed.” Felonca closed her eyes, imagining the horror, the smell of sulfur blanketing the sky and earth, flames licking, burning everything, the chaos and confusion of a retreat through billowing smoke. The sheer horror of the event, of trying to organize thousands of fleeing people so they could make it to safety, instead of choking to death in the smoke, or being ridden down by Hu’s cavalry. When she opened her eyes, she gently touched her father’s shoulder. “Many men retreated safely. You have succeeded, and you have no reason to be ashamed. You brought them here, where they will likely be needed,” she said simply. She heard no reply from her father, but his looking up from the ground spoke enough. “They make for here with all haste,” Felonxi said, “the Prince and his entire host, now swollen with abominations against the [i]dao[/i] and Heaven’s Will.” He stopped for a second, but Felonca’s slow nod prompted more. “There were seas of skeletons... they were easy for our men to kill, but they seemed endless as the sands of the desert beaches. There were great demons, spiders of great size, monstrosities of horn and flesh beyond number...” His voice once again faded, as he gave a slight shudder, before looking up towards the outer walls of the immense city, the same walls that had made Felonca feel so boxed in when they arrived a week prior. “They will breach these walls,” he said simply, bluntly, “and the middle walls, and the inner walls.” A sigh of resignation. “They will even breach the walls of the Jade City. There is no hope.” [i]There is no hope.[/i] Those four words coming from her father made Felonca shudder. Her family history had been built on situations where others said there was no hope. Her grandfather had held off 10,000 barbarians to the north with a regiment of barely a thousand, and only just before she was born, Felonca’s father had successfully defeated an ogre one on one. [i]For him to say there is no hope...[/i] Felonca shuddered again, her mind’s eye imagining the sky growing dark, before a pregnant, orange glow let loose of torrent of fire onto the city below. [i]But he managed to get many of the soldiers out alive... thousands of the soldiers out alive! If it is as he describes, no one should have been able to survive such a firestorm! That alone shows there is hope! Regardless, Felonca... there is a battered army here, and a city needs to be defended. The greatest treasure of arcane tomes needs to be defended. An Emperor needs to be defended. An Empire needs to be defended.[/i] “How closely do they follow?” Felonca asked, her voice no longer quiet. [i]The soldiers about need to hear this too.[/i] “Hu followed slowly... his army is too huge to move quickly,” her father replied. “That should give us a week to get the soldiers out, and if we do some forced marches, we could sneak past him...” “We aren’t retreating,” Felonca replied, mustering some steel into her voice. Mentally she shuddered again, at the image of the city, and its hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, burning in the wind. “Someone has to stop them, so the people can escape.” “[i]Stop them?![/i]” She heard the fight coming back into her father’s voice, and it made her happy, even if the ire was directed at her. “How are we going to fight them? You have no forest to hide in here, Felonca!” [i]Now, to just turn this ire a bit towards something productive...[/i] she thought. “We have just a week, papa,” she replied. “Enough time to get as many of these soldiers healed as possible, and as many of the people out of the city as well.” She stopped, and as she felt the eyes of soldiers around falling on her, she forced a smirk to her lips. “Call a meeting of all of your generals. I’ll get the Emperor’s guards to come as well.” [i]We have to hold them off, at least until the people can escape, and we can evacuate all the arcane tomes within the Imperial libraries. If it took us only six hours to find the ways to destroy that dagger...[/i] She shuddered to think of the secrets someone like Hu could find with ease in those catacombs. “Why? What for?” he asked, plainly confused. Felonca changed the smirk to a laugh as she pointed at her father. “Shang Wa-Feng is going to save Liaoxiang!” She turned, and pointed to one staring soldier, and shouted again, “Did you hear? Shang Wa-Feng is going to save Liaoxiang!” As murmurs began to run through the bedraggled soldiers, she turned back to her now speechless father. “Now you have a reputation to live up to, Papa.” [i]Let us hope we can both do this... I think the Empire is depending on us...[/i] [/QUOTE]
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