Tales of Destiny

“Do you accept this mission, officer?”

“Naturally, I would not refuse such a vital duty,” Gu Xiulan said, unable to keep the slightly irritable twist out of her tone. “It pleases me that I am finally trusted with such.”

Major Gu Yu, regarded her over the top of his field desk coolly. One of her Father’s higher officers, he was naturally a member of the Gu family as well. He was… some degree of cousin, descended from one of her great grandfather’s brothers if she recalled her genealogy. Well out of line for the headship, and loyal if Father trusted him.

Which is why she felt such bristling irritation with him. Since Father had placed her under his command, he had been treating her as an errand girl, running messages between camps, overseeing the tending of the horses, riding the perimeter for watches and sitting in to listen to that droning quartermaster of his go over dull procedure after dull procedure.

There were never outright demeaning duties. It wasn’t as if she had to dig latrines like some common soldier, but she could not help but feel that he was needling her, testing her. As if trying to get her to react poorly and complain. Never outright insulting or condescending. He merely gave her bland orders and dared her to raise her voice with that dead eyed stare of his!

Well, she was not going to give him the satisfaction. It seemed her perseverance was finally paying off. Perhaps he had finally given up on testing her after she had delivered her report on the disposition of the south central ammunition and talisman stocks!

“Ugh, my head still feels swirly, yours must too after spinning all of those numbers around huh?” Linhuo lamented.

“Finally? It has been two weeks,” The Major said dryly, shuffling paper across his desk. He plucked a tied scroll from the tray set there. “You are to be given command of the third outrider company, present this scroll to the lieutenants as you explain the mission. Do you have questions?”

She furrowed her brows. That meant there was something she should be asking, going by the obnoxious man’s previous behavior. “You said that the fifth engineering group was requesting assistance. They indicated an unusual level of Ash Walker activity. Were there any other details?”

He nodded. “The report indicates high cohesion, but the numbers of walkers are small, and are engaging in heavy harassment.”

She frowned. Ashwalkers gained something like intelligence as well as power in high concentrations. But if they were not merely mobbing the engineers, then… “There is a third grade among them then. But that was not reported.”

“Just so. Be careful. Do not remain in place and engage. Retrieve the engineers and retreat immediately once they are secured. I will leave the tactical details to your discretion”

***

That had been three days ago, and Gu Xiulan could still remember how she had bristled at the implication that she should be so cowardly. Or that she needed to be condescended too in such a way. As if she would not recognize if she was truly overmatched.

…She wondered if that had been father’s point in assigning her to that man’s command. Would she have made the plan she did, without those two weeks of being forced to stare at reports and understand their troops’ abilities and limitations?

The sky roared with flame, and the earth churned with bones and rusted metal.

Another arrow screamed through the air, and met the spinning haft of the spear of flame in her hand. The sand under her horses hooves cratered in from the impact. She felt something tear in her shoulder, a hot flare of pain that barely registered as a prickle after the last year. She saw sparks, her vision wavering back and forth into lines of heat as the flames in her meridians flared, and felt her hair rise, strands wafting and flickering in flame.

“Breaking right! Our part is done!” She cried out, and she could not recognize her own voice, a thunderous crackling noise, infused with lightning.

Her company surged forward, and she yanked the reins, her warhorse leaping from the cratered dune in time for her to strike down the next arrow. This dead man wished to threaten her life, her record, her pride? None in her company had died today, and that was not going to change.

More fire, blood burning. She fed the wildflower flame in her dantian, fed it life and rage and blood, and it roared in response, filling her veins with molten power. One arrow, two, three, seven, eight, twelve.

They screamed from beyond the horizon, carving the air apart and trailing thunder in their wake, the volcanic glass of the arrowheads charged with deathly cold and consumptive fire.

And not one passed her by.

Flames flickered through her arm wrap, and the scent of her own roasting flesh filled her nose. Wings of vermillion fire spread in the sky above. The dead burned, and the soldiers of the Gu clan roared in defiance of the dead, boots pounding against sound and ash.

She felt the bones in her weapon hand cracking with the impact of each arrow. Felt the pain of hair thin fractures and tearing muscle, overstretched tendons. Her body, enhanced to the third realm, was still but flesh and blood. It could not match the output of her soul.

A brow crowned with heaven’s fire turns her way, eyes like suns see her, understands and feels in an instant the strain of the last day.

Gu Xiulan shudders as she feel’s Father’s fury like a dragon’s roar. When she drew upon their home, the desert and its heat, she had reduced a company of the dead to dust and the sand under their feet to glass.

When Father does it, the desert shrieks and the air turns cold, the whipping wind dragging at the tassels of her helm and her horses mane. A point of heat so bright that every shadow on the battlefield vanishes for one instant, blinding bright as it collapses in on itself, and lances out.

And it is like a ray of the sun reaching out for the unseen archer, dunes vanish or melt. She blinks away rings of light, and shields her face from the sand filled blast wave after the ray goes beyond her sight.

No more arrows come.

Honestly, Father… She was- she would have been fine.

She held her chin high as her horse tore after her riders at a full gallop.

“Madwoman.”

She blinked, glancing down, meeting the gimlet gaze of her horse, who had finally deigned to speak.

“I won,” she rasped, her throat parched and painful. It was all that needed to be said.