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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emperor Valerian" data-source="post: 2500474" data-attributes="member: 15043">The Assault on Liaoxiang Part Two“Please move along as best you can, ma’am,” Felonca called down from her perch atop the battlements, as below the sea of moving humanity slowly crawled through the gates of Liaoxiang.  Nearly a full week had gone by since the Emperor’s confession, yet Felonca had yet to say anything to Nayu.He swore me to secrecy, she thought to herself, telling herself that was the main reason she hadn’t said anything, knowing full well that the thought was a lie.  It was a bright sunny day when these dark thoughts returned, just as Felonca was attempting to manage the stream of constant evacuees now fleeing the city to the south and east.Still no sign of Hu, she distracted herself as she and several scholars and soldiers continually urged calm.  Even Meiji was helping, singing songs along one of the bridges, trying to lift spirits and above all, keep things orderly.  Yet even trying to dwell on those things didn’t keep her mind away from something that was troubling her.She looked up, just in time to see Nayu pointing and shouting commands and orders to the scholars and the soldiers, the bright blue robes the Scholars had given him flapping in the breeze as his plan slowly came to fruition.  From the top of the inner wall, she could also see the throngs of people below, looking up at him in awe as they filed out of the city, their lives on their backs.He looks like an Emperor, she sighed, as his voice  rang out with directions, encouragement, and orders.  Despite that cute young face of his.  Despite the stress and the trying situation, she couldn’t help but smile, at least for a moment, until more troubling thoughts came back.She thought back to the palisade wall a few weeks before, and those bright, piercing blue eyes that seemed to stare into her soul.”You are attracted to him,” the same dark voice from memory repeated in her mind.  She closed her eyes tightly, and tried to shake her mind free from the memory.  It would complicate things, it would make things awkward, something they couldn’t afford.  While she’d managed to keep herself under relative control the past two weeks, the last time the feelings had arisen this high, she’d snapped at him rather sharply on the road to Liaoxiang.  Not even two weeks ago...”You resist the thought,” the dark voice continued, lending its sound to the thoughts of her own mind, ”In a way, what you claim is true.  You are not attracted to him.You love him.”“I don’t,” she said quietly to herself.  We are friends. He doesn’t need that kind of distraction now!  I don’t need that distraction now!  Yet even as she closed her eyes again, she saw those piercing blue eyes turn to familiar ones of deep brown.  Against her will, it seemed, she felt her heart begin to race.She opened her eyes again, hoping to get those dark eyes from her mind’s eye, yet it seemed the fates were conspiring against her.  Nayu was leaning against the battlements during a brief moment of rest, and flashed her a bright smile, those deep brown eyes, even from afar, seeming to call to her.  To her conscious mind’s horror, she realized she had been staring only after she saw Nayu’s face grow puzzled.“Is something wrong?” his voice called across the walls.  “You keep giving me these strange looks.”It’s hard not to stare when everything you do occupies my every thought… part of Felonca’s mind lazily thought, before her more disciplined self shouted it into oblivion.  “No... nothing’s wrong!” she waved back, bravado on her face.  Go back to managing the people!  Go back to being the leader you are!  Then I can.... she started to think, before finally, inevitably, she sighed in surrender.I won’t be able to stop thinking of you, she realized.“You sure?” he yelled back, making his way past ranks of guardsmen and soldiers, towards her.  “You look like something’s wrong. You have for a while now.”He reached out and held her shoulders, the same way he’d done whenever he thought she’d been lying about something that was wrong.  She felt those hands on her shoulders again, those comforting hands.  Her mind shouted at her body to stiffen, to break away from this contact, but her instincts overruled her brain, and she felt herself relax.  Felonca... just surrender to it.  You can love him, just from a distance... then maybe... maybe one day...  She closed her eyes and gave another sigh. That’s why you haven’t told him yet of what Yuandi told you.  You want him for yourself... you’ve had him basically that way for almost a half year now...If he takes his rightful place, at best you’ll share him with an Empire full of others... and at worst...She squeezed her eyes tight, trying to banish the thought of never seeing him again, never being able to talk to him, to see those eyes...“Something’s wrong.  Tell me,” he said simply, at absolutely the right time.He cares for you too, she thought quietly, He’d never intentionally abandon you, even if he became Emperor...  She leaned back a slight bit more, and her mind finally came to a decision...You will be Emperor if you desire, I’ll make sure of that, and then…then you can decide if there is room for me in your life. The choice will be yours…my dearest friend. Her eyes opened and she was able to meet Nayu’s confused brown eyes with a genuine smile. “No.  Everything’s fine now,” she said quietly.  His look of confusion grew for a moment, before he gave her a grin she thought looked positively boyish.“Good.  And if you want to talk about it, I’m ready to listen,” he replied.  “After all, I can’t have my right-hand man, I mean kitty, feeling bad about something!”  The hands on the shoulders became a momentary hug, then a pat on the back, before he was gone again, shouting at some poor sop that had turned his cart, blocking the road.There he goes......an Emperor.“Someone help him get that cart upright!” Nayu barked, and instantly two soldiers were down, flipping the cart right-side up, and hurriedly tossing its former contents back into its hold.  Within a few minutes, the cart was ambling along its way again, and the crowds of people were yet again moving.He watched the masses for a few more seconds, before he felt an eerie presence on the back of his neck.  Turning around, he realized his instincts had been right, as Won Wei smiled and gave him a bow.“The troops have been finally disposed as you have advised, and the Emperor has commanded,” the scholar said.  “May the Heavens bless you if your cleverness is proven right.”“May the Heavens preserve us if my cleverness is right,” Nayu replied wryly.   For a moment, his mind jumped back to several months earlier, when he had served as Hu’s temporary double.  “The Prince of Langya is a tricky man... directness is not his usual approach.”  After a second, Nayu nodded, his mind assured.  “He’ll try that trick, if he’s as intelligent as I think.”“I trust you see him through and through... you two do look like brothers, even,” Won Wei said, drawing up alongside Nayu.  “If he had stationed our troops on the Middle Walls as I and Quan-Shi had recommended, and he did teleport his arcane masters inside the walls behind them...”“We’d have quite a few dead soldiers, and a sacked city,” Nayu finished the thought, before he furrowed his brow again.  “Are you sure that if the scholars formed their arcane might, they can keep his people from teleporting any further in?”Won Wei gave a slight, nervous laugh.  “That is the twelfth time you have asked me that question, and I believe this will be the twelfth time I have said yes.”  He smiled and turned to Nayu.  “For someone as young as yourself, you do worry quite a bit... a good trait to have in a governor once this is all done... in contrast to some of the fools the Dowager Empress allowed to remain.”  His eyebrows darkened momentarily as he frowned.  “How old are you, young Wakabayashi?  You surely cannot be thirty.”“I am almost eighteen, Master Wei,” Nayu grinned when Won Wei spun around, his eyes wide in shock.    “That’s it?!” he partially squeaked.  “Eighteen and you have done this much, and your powers are this great!?”“Is something wrong, Master Wei?” “In five years, ten years... the Heaven’s preserve us from what you could do!” the older scholar said quietly, shock having taken all the sound from his voice.“Heaven’s preserve Hu and his allies, you mean,” Nayu corrected. I have no intentions of turning against you, or the other scholars... you’re dong too much good, trying to help people instead of hurt them like the Empress...“Excellency!  Excellency!”“What?” Nayu turned, annoyance high in his voice.  He had grown fond of conversing with Won Wei, yet interruptions seemed to abound.  They’re calling me ‘excellency’ already... which is something good I suppose, though this endless stream of messengers is annoying to the extreme.  He regretted his snappish response when he saw the young man before him, barefoot and ragged, breathing heavily as if the very spirits of the past were running him down.“Northern wall sentries report a huge cloud of dust to the north!” the man breathlessly yelled, before stumbling forward and then to the ground.  “They think that...”“It’s Prince Hu’s army, yes,” Nayu finished the man’s sentence, before turning to some of the more idle scholars nearby.  “Someone fetch this man water!”  As some nearby attendants rushed off to find the messenger some sustenance, Nayu looked off towards the north.  While he saw no clouds of dust, only a blind man would not have been able to see the immense, powerful thunderhead forming in the sky...</blockquote>

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