Tales of Destiny

Zheng Lei leapt from jutting stone to jutting stone, a blur of in the fading evening light. Each one carried her further up the towering waterfall which fell from the Waterfall Palace perched on the cliff above. She moved with all the haste a fourth realm could afford, without her every motion shattering the air with thunder, for time was running out.

If she didn’t reach the inner sanctum of the palace by the time the sun finished sinking beneath the horizon, she could only imagine how terrible the results could be!

A final leap, cracking stone and sending sprays of water in every direction carried her over the lip of the cliff, rising above the sprawling labyrinthe of balconies built around the palace complex which stood in the middle of the river, connected to the shore only by the delicate arches of red painted bridges.

Here, she met her first resistance. Shadows detached from pillars and screens, at first flat and black, depthless. Ink paintings coming to life and gaining depth with every passing moment, warriors with the heads of beasts and black serpents with glittering scales. Zheng Lei landed on the eastern bridge with a thump.

The ink guardians swarmed. Zheng Lei moved forward, expert steps carrying her between thrusting spears and slashing swords, her hand lashed out, open palmed and shattered a ink warrior like spun glass. Her other hand caught the throat of a striking serpent midair, and she spun, hurling it over the waters. On the bridge she danced, fighting, brawling but moving ever, ever forward, intent on the sanctum of the central palace.

In its halls, she found further traps. Formations charged with dark and binding qi, ink warriors that could not be broken with a single strike. The halls became twisted, a labyrinth of mirrored passages and warped perspective, seeking to slow her down, confuse her senses.

But Zheng Lei could not be stymied so easily! The great double doors of the inner sanctum banged open, while dark red sunlight still beamed through the windows. There, in the sanctum, the audience chamber, was a raised platform, lit by burning lanterns, and in its center was low throne piled with silk cushions, on which lounged the dark lady of the palace.

White hair spilled like silk across bare shoulders, and red silk clung to her lith form, a single layered gown worked through with embroidery depicting curling serpents. Her head tilted as the doors Zheng Lei had kicked open crashed against the walls, and her lips, painted crimson in sharp contrast to her pale skin, curled up in a cruel smirk.

“Barging in on a Lady without a thought. You truly are a brute Zheng Lei.”

Zheng Lei cracked her neck, wearing a fierce smile as she strode in, treading mud across the fine carpet. “Well, I can’t just leave you alone, can I? Who knows what you’d get up too without me around, Bai Mingzhu?”

“As if a simpleton such as you could unravel my plots,” Bai Mingzhu sniffed, slowly rising from her languid slouch. Zheng Lei’s eyes flicked down, following the path of the woman's hand as trailed down her slim side, tugging the already slim gown she wore infinitesimally lower.

“Particularly when you are so easily distracted.”

Zheng Lei’s eyes widened as she felt a flaring thrum of qi, echoing up from beneath the carpet she had just trod on. She moved, blurring backward, but it was too slow. Whips of ink lashed out from the wall hangings, curling around her wrists. She grunted as they snapped taut, dragging her into the air with her arms stretched to either side.

As the windows snapped shut, and the lanterns blew out, Bai Mingzhu rose from her throne, golden eyes burning in the darkness. “Now what shall I do with you?”

In the dark Zheng Lei very carefully did not break into a grin. She wasn’t gonna fuck up the scene after all.

***

There was, Bai Mingzhu admitted, something to this roleplaying business.

She traced her fingers along the lines of the muscular back beneath her. Glistening with sweat, such an odd impurity for a cultivator of the fourth realm to keep, but she could not say that she disliked it. A smile played about her lips as her lips as her hands played across Zheng Lei’s ribs, and the ape squirmed.

“Ugh, you know I’m ticklish there Ming-ming,” Zheng Lei complained, tugging at the ink ropes which still bound her.

As if she did not know that. One learned things, with a hundred years of experience. “Is that any way to speak with the dark lady of the Waterfall Palace brute? I would pluck your tongue from your mouth, if you had not proved so talented with it.”

“C’mon, games done,” Zheng Lei said, twisting her neck at a difficult angle to peer back at Bai Mingzhu, who remained perched upon her lower back. The Zheng’s arms were still stretched out, bound to the bedposts. “Let me outta this, I wanna cuddle.”

“No I don’t think I shall,” Bai Mingzhu replied imperiously.

“....You know I can break these, right?”

“Then do it,” she replied with a smirk.

Zheng Lei rolled her eyes. “Nah, you’re expecting it now.”

Bai Mingzhu chuckled, tilting her head up to gaze at the canopy of the bed, lit by the faint moonlight peering over the mountains and shining through the window of her bower. It had taken getting used too, the cool air of the Ebon Rivers. She didn’t want to leave it. “Duke Fuxi has created a great stir at court, raising a casteless noble to the position of general.”

Zheng Lei sighed. “Hey we can leave work till morning, can’t we?”

Ambassador Bai Mingzhu smiled wanly, lowering herself against her lover's back, to let her breath whisper across the larger woman’s neck. “I may be recalled soon Lei.”

The woman under her stiffened. “What? Why? I thought you set up the whole business so they’d not want you back?”

She had, it wasn’t hard, for a ‘tainted’ woman like herself. She had given up on rising among the clan. She had never been able to see her former home the same way after… opening herself.

The Bai clan was such an utterly miserable pit. Every positive thing was a weakness to be exploited. She hadn’t been able to keep her old face up. “There are… powerful factions of the clan, no longer willing to ignore the face we present to the outside world. It is… weakening us, bad enough that a mere third prince thought to take a daughter of the Bai as a wife. Now this?”

There was a madness, bubbling up in the cracks of the clan. More virulent than the venoms of their cousins. Inward facing, self reinforcing. She wondered sometimes how long it would be before it erupted into something far worse than knives and assassins.

Her breath hitched, and in an instant the warm body beneath her dissolved into pale grey smoke, one of the famed Zheng transformations. Before she could find herself upon the bed that same body reformed, facing her, cradling her body in powerful arms. “Hey, hey, Mingzhu it’s bad, but you’ve gone off duty before, had to go back before, what’s wrong?”

She shuddered, her every instinct warred against what she was about to do even now. “...I am afraid Lei. Afraid that I shall… have an accident. That I have pushed to far, been too open, angered Mother too much.”

She heard a short intake of breath, the broad chest she was pressed against expanding. “Fuck that. No hell no, look I’ll talk to my Master, he’ll chat up some of the grannies, he’s got a couple of sisters. You lot apparently haven’t had your noses tweaked enough. We’ll…”

“What in the world are you implying. That I just refuse? Lei, I can’t!”

“You can,” she blinked in surprise at the firmness in the womans voice. “Even if master can’t come through. We’ll hop a boat on the coast, or grab a caravan going east. I’m not letting you get knifed.”

Such an idiot. But perhaps she had grown too used to living among idiots.

“...I will consider it.”