The disciples of the Courtyard didn’t seem to appreciate Tian’s motivation. Which was a shame. They looked stressed. Doughy took charge again.
“Inverse Falcon Peregrination, then Drifting Sunsparks. Earthfang Wasteland for zone control, but hold until ordered. I remain the formation eye, set South to true South.”
“SET” They chorused back.
Tian shared a quick glance with the others. Everyone just shrugged. This was a new sort of fighting for them too.
Doughy called out numbers, colors and directions, and the array masters around him would adjust arcane emblems on their compasses. Another order, and they placed tiny talismans on prepared squares or circles painted on the wood, only for the paper talismans to vanish in a puff of blue fire.
A bare moment later, a few hundred ghostly blue motes of fire appeared in the jungle, winking through the trees. They didn’t seem to be burning anything, and, Tian noticed, they did seem to be heading their way. Quickly.
“Taking your time from me,” Doughy spoke with a heavy cadence, his horse hair whisk bobbing in time to his words. “Worshiper offers his bow to the Heavenly General, offers incense and sacrifice, from the North-East enemies descend, the people wail and tremble. Worshipers bang the gong and ring the bell, calling forth the Heavenly General and his hundred thousand fire bearing archers-”
The whisk flicked in time, leading the disciples in their chanting. Little cones of incense burst into fire, then thick ribbons of smoke, on the compasses, rising and vanishing into the trees.
Tian saw Hong’s eyes fixed on a point up in the canopy. He followed her gaze, and found a twisting morass of elemental energy. Fire dominant, but there was an underlying process going on that he wasn’t understanding. The effect of the array, presumably, but why chant? Why chant together? It must be doing something, or they wouldn’t bother with it. Even Elder Rui did it. He just didn’t have the first clue why. It’s not like chanting could affect how your vital energy or qi moved. Could it?
“Accept our humble offering, sorte and crush the enemy at the gate!” Carved gems the size of Tian’s fingernail were set into waiting receptacles, and vanished with a sun-bright burst of light. The twist of elemental energy convulsed, and streamers of fire descended.
The ten-leg horrors had reached the camp, rushing over the wide tree roots and weaving around the thick trunks, screaming and waving their too-long mandibles in insect fury. Jets of orange bile started flying towards them. They were hitting the earthwork for now, but Tian reckoned they would rush in and it would be down to hand-to-hand fighting in just a few seconds.
The Courtyard didn’t give the bugs those seconds. The streamers of fire reached for the little ghostly flames that were burning on the ten-leg horrors. The creatures burned.
Tian learned ten-leg horrors could make different sorts of screaming sounds. As the fires burned, some of them started to whistle as they screamed. With growing nausea, he realized it was steam bursting through cracks in their hard exteriors. They were burning and boiling alive, cooked in a kettle of their own shells.
He felt the Snow Grace Crane’s disgust. She was hiding up in a tree, ready to pick off any horrors that were isolated. Now she just felt revulsion. The whole scene was sickening. It took the horrors two minutes to die. It felt longer.
“And that, Daoist Tian, is how the Five Elements Courtyard goes to war. A little preparation, a good sense of timing, then two hundred and forty seven in one blow!” Doughy smiled victoriously.
“Well done.” Tian nodded. “Dead is dead, and the horrors certainly are dead. Out of curiosity, how much did that cost?”
Doughy tilted his head to one side. “Cost?”
“Yes, you used… I’d say six talismans each, a gem, and incense. How much did they cost?”
“That is none of your affair. Just be content knowing that our Five Element Courtyard can afford this little price, even if others struggle along with… are those even enchanted weapons?” Oily had stopped pretending to be polite.
Tian smiled, and did his best to project what he wanted to the Crane.
“Oh, that’s a relief.” Brother Wang patted his big chest. “I’d hate to think we’d bankrupted the younger generation. Again.”
“Well said, Brother Wang. I was worried you wouldn’t be able to afford another round of fighting, but since you can afford it, let’s clear the whole forest now. I’ve asked the Snow Grace Crane to-” Tian was cut off when a horror crashed from a hundred feet up onto the edge of the campsite. It splashed everywhere. There were a series of thuds coming from deeper in the forest, then in an arc around the campsite to the north.
“She’s already on it, it seems.” Liren nodded with easy approval.
“What, exactly, is your bird doing?!” Oily hissed.
“Well, since these consumables don’t cost too much, I figured, “Why fight through all these things in the jungle? Why risk getting ambushed?” You have a nice defensive position here. We just need to lure over all the Horrors between here and the temple, then you can clear them out. Safe and stable, a fine example of teamwork between our sects.”
Tian sounded entirely reasonable. He thought his plan was reasonable. His wallet might not stretch to expensive incense and talismans, never mind gems, but if theirs could, then they should take advantage of his support.
“Are you insane?” Oily reached towards Tian with convulsing hands.
“No?” He didn’t think he was. He was suffering with a heart demon, but it was much better these days. He only sometimes got lost in the mists and found himself back in the desert, and the times when he suddenly lost his temper for no good reason were becoming fewer. They might even be down to puberty.
Even if this cloud forest was starting to smell like the Redstone wastes. Even if he had the uncanny feeling of having been here before, or that everything that had happened since he met Elder Rui in the meeting hall had been a dream of peace.
He was quite sane, just not completely well.
“Incoming. I count five hundred horrors, incidentally, but that’s because of the limited range of my perception art.” Lin’s voice was cool as flowing water. Her tone made it plain she considered the oncoming rush of corrosive bile spitting insectoid abominations a problem for the help to solve.
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Tian clapped, half smiling. “I was worried she wouldn’t understand what I was trying to communicate. After all these months, a brief flash of telepathy, just as Sister Lin promised. Alright, Doughy. Let’s do it just like last time.”
He couldn’t keep up the calm enthusiasm for very long. Five hundred turned out to be just the closest bands outside the already slaughtered horrors. The cloud forest was infested with the monsters.
Tian’s brothers and sisters were all on the same page, following his lead. Everyone had their weapons ready. No one used them. They watched, and waited, and ignored the shouted insults and threats from the Courtyard daoists. The crane kept up the pressure, leading more and more insects over. Hundreds, then thousands of the spitting things, all screaming, all hungry.
The grinding pace of the battle started to run their nerves ragged. The ten-leg horrors got within bare feet of the wall before Doughy’s nerve broke. He swore and yelled “Earthfang!” The array masters pulled long teeth from their rings- animal fangs turned into stone. They vanished into the air in a cloud of dust, burned away to fuel the next formation.
From out of the earth, a forest of teeth arose. Earthfang was well named. The horrors were ripped apart as they approached. Then the ghostfire marked them and the sunsparks burned them.
Then the next wave came, and started climbing over the bodies of the ones who died before. The legs clattering on the hard exoskeletons now and then producing hollow thuds as the insides of their former cousins were burned and boiled away.
Sister Su had her darts in bundles of twenty, tied with a thin thread, loose in her hands. Sister Lin kept her bow low, but her hand was never far from the string. Everyone was ready, in their fashion, to jump in. If necessary. But not a moment before.
“Brother Chu-” Daoist Gongsung warned.
“I know.”
“Three left.”
“I know!” Doughy snarled.
Tian looked over at the others. “Wait until the first one dies. Let’s see if the elders of the Courtyard value their juniors enough to step in. If not, we kill our way south, break contact with the bugs, regroup and complete the mission.”
“If we die, you die!” Doughy shouted, his voice rising to a scream as his fingers convulsed in rictuses of pain. Even with the sacrificial agents, Tian could see their qi was burned down to next to nothing.
“No. We won’t die. We will simply kill our way out while they eat you.”
He kept his voice calm and reasonable. It was reasonable. Not nice, but reasonable.
“Our manors! My Uncle is Elder Ao, he will never, ever let you off!” Oily’s voice cracked.
“Oh. Oh well. He can sort it out with my elders, then. Nothing I can do about it.” He couldn’t deal with that level of problem. That was alright. There were others who wanted him alive, and they could deal with it.
“You look uncomfortable, fellow daoist, like you don’t know how to be in the bad place. We live here.” Tian spoke loud enough to be heard over the screams of both the insects and the cultivators from the Courtyard. They were burning even the dregs within them now. If their meridians didn’t collapse, they would need strong medicine after the battle before they could cultivate again.
Sister Lin gave him a long look. He wasn’t sure what she was seeing. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling. Nobody asked him if he was sure. Nobody asked him if this is really how he wanted to do things. Brother Wang looked sadly at Daoist Mei. Tian could see the hurt in him. It was entirely possible that his good brother would never forgive him.
Tian could bear that pain. It would hurt less than knowing he hurt everyone else.
“Two talismans left.” Tian’s voice didn’t fluctuate.
Three short minutes later, “One talisman left.”
Two and a half minutes until the next wave. “Sister Su, I will trouble you to clear us a path. Brother Wang and I will hold the rear, Sister Liren will be the vanguard while Sister Lin holds the center, attacking where needed. It won’t be long now.”
“Damn you! Damn you! DAMN YOU!” Oily was screaming now, tears running down his face. Animal terror and hate consuming him. He pulled something from his ring. It looked like a little dish, with black and white fish painted on it. Doughy went pale, and did the same. Then Daoist Gosung and the rest. Only Daoist Mei didn’t. She looked helpless and pulled out a spear and a shield.
Those with the little disks flexed them between their fingers. The discs shattered. Tian saw Oily twist towards him at the last moment. He was too slow. Heavenly Swallows drilled through Oily’s eyes, forcing him to turn away with pain and fear, aiming the disk back out into the woods as he fell.
What the disks unleashed was soft. A rolling murmur of light and sound. Heavenly person qi spread like a rushing wave into the woods, yin and yang intertwining, reducing all it touched into drifting dust. Trees, rocks, the horrors. Everything. Tian could feel subtle differences between the waves released by the discs. They felt like signatures.
Tian didn’t wait. He recalled his darts with a grunt before the light stopped flowing and silence came to the half mile arc of nothingness that surrounded the northern end of the camp. The four members from the courtyard who used their disks were surrounded by white lights. Tian was surprised to see Oily included. Perhaps he wasn’t all the way dead yet.
“It seemed you bet right, Brother Tian.” Brother Wang didn’t hide his relief.
“Bet?” Tian watched those surrounded by light slowly float up into the sky. He couldn’t see anything up there, but the Courtyard loved their illusion spells. There must be a sky barge up high, where he couldn’t feel their spells at work.
“You planned on them having some backup-”
“Brother Wang?”
“Yes, Brother Tian?”
“What, in your experience of me, would make you think I had a plan? I just knew how they would act, then made the smallest possible change. Everything that happened since we left the Courtyard was just letting things take their course.”
There was silence in the clearing. Those still capable of seeing anything stared at him. He didn’t look at their expressions.
“The Courtyard had a plan. Better than a plan, they had a strategy. They saw a defect in me, and perhaps all of us, that fit right into it. A nighttime attack, swarms of screaming enemies, a collapsing array? Surely we would panic. Surely our dao hearts would break. A brilliant Go move. What could be easier or more satisfying? The Fried Dough daoists were playing games. I wasn’t.”
“I’m so used to it that I had almost forgotten. You hate metaphors and overly complicated things. The Go playing strategists of the Courtyard must have been pissing you off since we got here.” Hong’s lips twitched up in a ghost of a smile.
“Yep. You too, I bet.”
“Yep. It seems Daoist Mei is not loved by her grandmother or remembered by her grandfather.” Hong’s voice turned dry.
The pretty daoist waved weakly at them. “No Manor would let me join, though many men promised they could get me in if I would just do a few things for them. Easy, joyful things. This Little Mei might be a bit silly, but she’s not that dumb.” She staggered over to a rock and sat hard. She pulled a calabash gourd from her ring and gulped mouthfuls of spiritual wine, spilling it over her chin and on her robe.
“I really think you would have left me to die. I really do think that.”
“Yes. I would have left you to die. Even if I had to knock out Brother Wang and drag him away. If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure I would have to.” Tian nodded.
The crane came flapping in, and gently butted her head against Tian’s shoulder. He gently caressed her neck. “Then I would have asked Her Highness to transform and carry us all away. Hopefully she would have understood me. If not, oh well. We just kill our way out. Wouldn’t be the first time. Probably wouldn’t be the last time either.”
That’s just how things were in the Wasteland. Look at the devastation. Look at the corpses. Smell the burned bodies. Weren't they in the Wasteland now?
He looked back up at the spot in space where he was pretty sure a sky barge floated. “That’s the Ancient Crane Monastery, you see. We aren’t very good at anything except surviving. We are good at killing, at hiding, at running. We are good at knowing when to trade a broken bone for a life. We are good at living with pain, and memories, and the terror of immortality. Though we aren’t very good at games.”