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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emperor Valerian" data-source="post: 2204098" data-attributes="member: 15043">Thank you all for the kind applause... I'm not sure if I'm worthy of that much praise  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> .Here's the next section.  I decided to try to start using some more of the real terms in the story, so here goes.   I've put the definitions (there's only three) at the end. The Battle of the Wa-FengsFelonca froze in place, as her uncle’s great paws rose and pulled the immense helm from his head, the growl in his voice now audible and seething.Take the high ground! she told herself, as his towering form walked to within inches of her.“Hello, Uncle Dian,” she said quietly.  She knew it wouldn’t do a bit of good, but at least she’d be able to tell herself that he had started the conversation civilly.  If things went downhill from there...“I hear you found a new way to dishonor your father’s name!”  It wasn’t the shout that she had expected to come from her loud and expressive uncle.  It was a hiss, long, low and boiling with anger.  When her Uncle Dian shouted, things would be okay... when he, of all people, grew quiet, a thunderstorm was about to break...“I have dishonored no one,” Felonca replied, her back stiffening as she tried to keep herself under control.  I did what I had to do to stay alive!  Hsiu would have killed me at the Academy, and stealing was the only way I could eat!“What do you call cavorting about in a house of harlots?!” Dian snapped, his face only inches from her.  The blast felt like a typhoon crashing over her face.  “I did not ‘cavort’ in a harem!  I used it as a means to-““Or taking ten years to decide to flee the Academy, and then stealing your way about the north of the country!” he barreled onwards, his voice thundering over her own cool logic, and she felt her own rage rising, the infamous Wa-Feng temper coming to the fore.“I did what I had to do to survive!  It was no different than when you had to eat your steed by the north-“ she shot back, her own voice rising.“I did that as the commander of an honorable military campaign to drive back the barbarians! Not as an excuse to run away from training, or pickpocket the poor to make myself rich!” Dian snarled.  “Do not compare my campaigns to your little daytrips!”“Daytrips?!  You call what I’ve gone through DAYTRIPS?!” Felonca shouted, all vestiges of her former intentions long gone.  The gloves were off, the war was on.  “You call being chased by undead, nearly dying from disease, being attacked by White Wolves, giant spiders and giants a DAYTRIP!?  It was more like a nightmare, though I doubt the great Wa-Feng Dian would ever admit to having those!”“Stop with your internmible witticisms!  Your quick tongue can’t defend what you’ve done, Felonca!”  His hair was now standing on end, and she saw his face and hands change as he involuntarily shifted to hybrid, he was so angry.  Felonca didn’t realize that she’d already done the same in her own fury.  “You know that no person of honor would ever claim being a THIEF or being an ASSASSIN as HONORABLE!  The only honorable profession for a Wa-Feng is that of a soldier!” he exploded.  “You wouldn’t know anything of that, it appears!”“Your son Meiji is no soldier, yet he’s helped hundreds, even thousands!” she fired back.  Part of her mind instantly regretted the snide remark... when Meiji had left long before she’d gone to the Academy, it had devastated her proud uncle.  She still wasn’t sure if father and son had spoken since.The hairs seemingly all over Dian’s body raised at once, and she saw his hands opening and clasping, attempting to find something to crush in their grasp in his rage.  She expected a final explosion, perhaps even a slap on her cheek.  Instead, she felt hard, angry breaths wash over her face as he calmed his rage to the point he could speak again.“I wish to know, Miss Harlot, why it took you ten years to decide to flee the Academy, when I finished in four years and your own father finished in three?”I AM WORTHY OF MY FATHER’S NAME! Felonca wanted to scream at him.  The sniping comment was easily apparent, until she recognized the inlaid trap.  Her uncle was the louder one of the two brothers, impatient and impetuous.  Her father was patient, intelligent, decisive the hallmarks of a good general.  So she sent her own snide comment back by holding her tongue.  For several minutes it seemed, the two stared at each other, their eyes only inches apart, each furious with the other.  Finally, the glacial silence was broken.“My superior officer has stipulated you will be a part of this mission,” Dian said finally, his anger now hiding under the guise of a general issuing a command.  “However, this mission is vital, and frankly, I don’t want you to screw it up!”  As Felonca’s jaw dropped, her uncle plowed on.  “You may have a commission as a Zhong Wei*, but I will not give you a field commission!  You are hereby assigned to supply guard detail!”To her own surprise, Felonca let out a sharp curse that perfectly described her feelings on the subject.  “I AM CAPABLE OF COMBAT, UNCLE!” she snapped, “I have fought while diseased, I have fought while unarmed, and I have certainly fought unarmored!  If you down my prowess, just as the FRICKING GOVERNOR OF THIS FRICKING PROVINCE!”“I DO NOT CARE, FELONCA!” Dian shouted back.  His finger shot up like a knife cutting the space between them.  “I WILL NOT HAVE YOU DESTROYING ANY CHANCE WE HOLD OF RESCUING THE PRISONERS!”Felonca was about to fire a choice phrase before the words registered in her mind.  “What prisoners!?  Quan-Shi said nothing about prisoners!” she yelled.  Why didn’t he tell me that part of the mission!?  Does he not trust me as well!? “YOUR FATHER!!” Dian shouted, before taking in a deep breath.  Felonca stopped in mid shout at her uncle’s words, as he desperately tried to breathe out.  When he spoke again a moment later, his voice was amazingly calm.“Your father is being held in a prison section of the supply depot we are to attack,” Dian finally said, his voice not quite under control.  “You’ve screwed up enough, Felonca, I can’t allow you to screw this up!”  Now Felonca understood the furious anger, the overtly loud and angry assault against her.  Behind Dian’s facade of anger, there was worry and fear.Father?The dark, glowering face that had been haunting her for weeks now twisted in her mind, from a look of disapproval to a look of pain.  She saw his powerful form broken, bleeding...“What?  How?” she managed to gasp.  Father is one of the greatest warriors alive!  He was Shang Jiang** of the Army of the North ten years ago for a reason!  He has not sided with anyone in the conflict... they surely would have trumpeted his allegiance!  Why would Prince Hu seize him?“Hu seized many prisoners after Quan-Shi’s army left... relatives of chief commanders, like your father, to keep our loyalty, as well as gifted commanders in the area that had not sworn allegiance to him.”  Dian’s anger was ebbing away, and she could now see the fear in his eyes, naked, open.  “I swore allegiance to Hu... your father would not.  Now, he sits as a prisoner of war...  Quan-Shi wants them rescued, in addition to the depot burned.  There are a good many officers and men, who would greatly strengthen any army, and hold all of us in debt...”No....no...  Felonca ignored the statecraft reasons Dian listed, her mind focusing on one person shackled somewhere in the camp.  Tears started to well in Felonca’s eyes, memories of seeing Nayu’s father lying on the ground dead, now replaced with images of her own father, fallen beneath some blade, crushed under the beastly burden of a slave...The image jarred her.  Father would die before he submitted to something like that!  A shudder ran through her body.  He would die like a Wa-Feng rather than surrender!  She felt something rush through her veins, a jolt, a force, and she lifted her eyes, until they bore directly into the heart of her uncle’s.“I am going as a commanding officer,” she said quietly, her eyes blazing with an otherworldly power.  She saw her uncle’s hair begin to bristle again at yet another outright challenge to his orders.  She didn’t care.  “No, Felonca,” Dian said, keeping his barely calm.  “You have no experience in battlefield command, even if your skills in individual combat are as great as you claim.  You’ll only get in the way, and I can’t.... I can’t allow Felonxi to die because of an accident...”“Uncle, I wish for a command!” she repeated, her teeth starting to grate against each other.  “He is my father, as well as your brother!”  You will grant me this, Uncle!“No Felonca!” he shouted back.  “I am your commanding officer!  I forbid this!”“I demand a command, Uncle!” Felonca fired back, furious.  You WILL grant me this uncle!  My father is being held prisoner!  I WILL go and help free him!The argument waxed anew, growing in fury and tempo.  Felonca accused her uncle of holding past grudges against her, he accused her of being weak and not being a true ‘Wa-Feng soldier.’  The verbal duel continued for some time, until Dian finally lost his temper completely.“Fine!” he waved his hand up.  She could tell by his eyes that his rage was barely under control... they were blazing with an almost unearthly green light.  “Fine!  You want a command, you can have a command, but only if you take it under Military Law!***”Military Law? Felonca stopped, the term making her pause.  If I accept the command under those rules, and I DO fail for some reason...  I am liable to be executed without question.  Uncle will be FORCED to execute me if I sign on to such!He’s bluffing you, Felonca! another part of her mind chimed in.  He’s only threatening you with this to keep you from taking a command! He’s my father!“Give me the papers to sign!” she snarled back.“So that is what military law means?” Nayu asked only a few minutes later, after they’d left the fuming Dian in the palace behind them.  He’d spent the entire shouting match between her and her uncle confused and out of place, and he now bristled at hearing the requirements and threats the order imposed.  “You can’t be serious about going through with this, Felonca!  If you fail any order he gives you in the operation, you’re liable to be executed!  And from the way he talked, he didn’t sound if he’d mind!”“Uncle Dian probably wouldn’t mind,” Felonca sighed as they worked their way outside of the South Gate, towards the marshalling grounds for the raw recruits of the army.  “Even before I left for the Academy, he viewed me as too weak to hold the Wa-Feng name!”“You?  Weak?” Nayu asked with a huff.  “I’d never want to be on the receiving end of those fans of yours!  If you are weak, then a dragon has to be weak too!”“Thanks Nayu,” Felonca smiled slightly, the first time she hadn’t scowled or been lost in concern since the meeting.  It was only fleeting, before she sighed again.  “I was so much smaller than them... Uncle Dian is only a few inches shy of seven feet tall... and my father is seven feet tall.  I’m only halfway to six feet... tiny in comparison,” she groaned.“Its not the size of the kitty, its how deadly the kitty is,” Nayu said, trying to be comforting.“Yes... its too bad Uncle Dian won’t realize that,” Felonca sighed.  “He’d always predicted I would fail at the Academy, that I wouldn’t amount to anything... and year after year when I didn’t graduate, he kept saying more and more that I was a dishonor to the family, a blemish on the clan name...”“So?  I think Meiji is a bigger blemish than you in some ways.  At least you aren’t a lecher,” Nayu replied.“I have no doubt that if he wouldn’t mind Meiji’s stain being removed like mine by the old ways,” Felonca said.  Dian follows the old ways, the ancient ways...“Which is?”“Kill the blemish, restore the honor,” Felonca replied.“That’s a hell of a way for him to show his love to his niece!  Bastard!” Nayu spat.  Sometimes he reminded her of her father when he grew protectively angry.  Once again, it allowed for a small, thin smile to work its way through.“Well, it got me a command... a chance to rescue my father, and prove Uncle Dian wrong,” Felonca said, forcing the thin smile into a bravado grin.  “All I need to do is remember the things I learned from the Academy to fulfill the first part of my commission...”“Which is?”“Well, I’ve been assigned to command a new company of cavalry, raised from some of the brand new recruits.  They’re giving me a week to train them before we march out, and according to my Uncle, they need to be in ‘excellent shape.’”“Raw recruits in a week?  That seems awfully short,” Nayu scoffed.  “Seems to me your Uncle is setting you up for failure!”“Oh, really!” Felonca forced herself to laugh at the comment, despite sharing many of the same fears.  “It shouldn’t be that hard!  Come on!  I’ve spent a third of my life at a military academy!  I know drill inside and out, it can’t be that hard to teach...”The two crested a ridge outside of the city, and then Felonca saw the standards... the new gold standards of Dai province flapped highest on the staffs, below them a blue banner with the character for an eagle.  Underneath the standard of her unit was a motley array of peasants, clad in dirty, old uniforms.On one side of the small camp, a young man was riding his horse backwards, screaming that his animal wasn’t going the right way.  On the other side, ten of the soldiers were sprawled out, several overturned barrels of spiced wine lying nearby.  In the center, a big, burly peasant dressed in the clothes of a private was in the process of decking and kicking a small, thin man with the single plume of a sergeant, while a small crowd of other privates watched and laughed.“Dammit,” Felonca swore, before spurring her horse towards her new camp.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = *Zhong Wei = Captain**Shang Jiang = Chief General/Full General***Military Law = Arrangement in medieval and ancient China wherein officers were executed for failing to execute their orders, regardless of reason.  This was usually stipulated before the mission was sent ahead.</blockquote>

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