Fable - Ask Fear and Loathing in the Land of Barrows

[Half-Blade Zhi]

THE LAND OF BARROWS
MISERABLE ROADSIDE

Half-Blade Zhi sat on the ground by the sad little fire, his blade propped against him, dug into the ground. Fires never did well. It guttered against the cold, struggling. It made no difference to him. He didn't feel the cold and hadn't in a long time. It was a habit. If you wanted to sit somewhere, you start a fire. But the lizard-man might have mistaken it for courtesy. ​

​

Yes, the lizard-man. The one that was sitting a few paces away, crossed-legged, eyes shut. Meditating. Like a tool. What a load of shit this was. Raiding that tomb had been a waste of time. Plumbing those depths, and for what? A meditating lizard man who didn't even talk.​

​

Some ancient power that turned out to be.​

​

Zhi stewed in his rising annoyance and eventually decided to share his feelings. "Fuck you."​

 

[Four Sealed Sage]

The sealed sage did not move from where he sat upon a bedroll, as still as the tall pines in windless summer on High Cloud Peak.

No stars looked down upon them, occluded by the grey clouds amid the night sky. Snowflakes drifted down from them in small flurries, no hint of winter's wrath in their gentle, silent fall.

"You see copper where you sought gold."

The sage did not open his eyes, though he let out a long breath through the nose. Not quite a sigh. Too methodical.

"The bitter dram of disappointment."

The man's scaled features twitched ever so slightly.

 

[Half-Blade Zhi]

"What?" Zhi scowled at the lizard man. "Did you just recite me a poem?"​

​

Zhi reclined back, resting on his elbows. "No wonder you got chucked in there. Go on. Let's hear another."​

 

[Four Sealed Sage]

"I-"

Xun tilted his head slightly to one side and became, if possible, even more still - as stone.

Then his eyes snicked open and slitted, yellow opals stared out into the night.

From the darkness came the rattle of metal against metal and the glare of torchlight. A solitary figure emerged into view, wandering from out of the snow. His boots crunched against the snow underfoot. He was girded for war, though not an uncommon sight in these lands, and he wore a sword at his hip.

"Strangers," he called at the edge of their camp. "Can I share your fire?"

The sage stared at the man and murmured so quietly, as if only to himself.

"A wolf does not hunt alone."

 

[Half-Blade Zhi]

Well, the sage was not alone and did not have the luxury of speaking only to himself. Zhi scoffed again and wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Shut up, poet."​

​

Now Zhi looked at the stranger, who was tramping around in soldier's attire. Not a traveler. Wolves and soldiers always went in packs. but he didn't feel like giving the lizard man the satisfaction of agreeing.​

​

In fact, so black was the Half-Blade's mood that it could only result in vile, self-destructive contrarianism. Instead of directing the stranger to fuck off as he normally would, Zhi offered him a wide and toothy smile and slapped the ground nearest to him.​

​

"Oh, yes. Come right up, noble wayfarer."​

 

[Four Sealed Sage]

A sidelong glance flicked toward the irascible swordsman. Not very demure.

"What is your name, traveler?"

The soldier - for soldier he looked - approached, a congenial smile on his lips, broad and warm as the fire he no doubt yearned to sit beside.

"They call me Iron Gong," he rumbled before plopping down in a heap where Zhi had indicated. "You have any of that stew left?" He pointed eagerly at Zhi's bowl.

"A strong name," rasped Xun.

"Ha! It's on account of my stomach. I could eat three boars, drink two barrels, and still march 10 leagues at break of dawn."

 

[Half-Blade Zhi]

Zhi listened to Iron Gong speak and slowly the smile melted from his face. He was beginning to recall how much he hated talking to... Anyone! Poets, soldiers, prattling about empty nonsense. Didn't they know it was all a dream, and not a one of them was the dreamer?​

​

"Not a drop," said Zhi, suddenly sour. "And we have no boars or barrels either... Plenty of march left, though."​

​

He took up his bowl again and drained the rest of its shallow contents in one swig. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of a sleeve.​

​

"And why are you all alone on this road, Iron Gong?"​

 

[Four Sealed Sage]

"Eh," Iron shrugged, looking supremely disappointed by the lack of food.

"That's the thing, Swordsman.... I'm not exactly alone."

Iron Gong raised his torch into the air. Suddenly, dozens of lights blazed to life in the night, all around the campsite.

"You've got room for all my friends?" a tremendous, sinister grin lay plastered across the soldier's face.

The rattle of armor could be heard as soldiers shuffled forward in the snow with drawn blades and pointed spears.

Xun bowed his head slightly, regarding his shoes. "Hm."

 

[Half-Blade Zhi]

Half-Blade Zhi sucked in some cold air. It was a pained noise - the kind of hiss you made when you stepped on a sharp rock. He turned his head and performed a quick headcount.​

​

A few of them had bows, which was a problem, and more than a few had spears, which was also a problem. And those were just the ones he could see with his lonely eye. Comfortably, he could kill half of them. Uncomfortably, maybe three-quarters. For the rest he would need...​

​

Zhi looked back at Xun while Iron Gong was still flapping his gums. He squinted at the lizard for a long moment, then let his blade fall. It hit the dirt with a sad thud. A clear resignation if there ever was one.​

​

"Alright, fine," Zhi grunted, "They can sit too."​

-------------​

 

[Sky Rending Tiger]

---

Mount Hoa Qua Monastery
THE TIGER FESTIVAL

The first day is for bread. Food to satisfy Hu Ji's gluttonous appetite is brought by the Banners.​

​

The second day is for beverage. Spirits to sate Hu Ji's bottomless thirst is brought by the ascetics.​

​

The third day is for blood. The third day is the worst of them all. Champions presented by the clans and sect branches fight to entertain Hu Ji. Men fight like demons for the Tiger's favor.​

​

Unevenly laid steps trail up into the monastery, where the festivities take place in a spacious courtyard. The trek up to Hoa Qua is a grueling one. Xia Yan, the strongest of the Empty Palms, raised many powerful fighters within the monastery walls.​

​

Travelers come and go throughout the festival so few pay them any mind when the soldiers arrive.​

 

[Half-Blade Zhi]

Four Sealed Sage | Sky Rending Tiger

​

Half-Blade Zhi was starving like a hound by the time his captors herded him to Hoa Qua, so of course it was on the third day that they got there. No bread. No beverages. Only blood.​

​

They passed through the gates, into the uneasy bustle of the celebrating monastery. Zhi used his teeth to test the rough rope bonds around his wrists again. "Where's my sword?"​

​

"We've got your sword," said one of the bandits, who gave the sheathed thing a little wave. "Stop asking about it."​

​

They were going to put him in the ring to dance for the tiger. That way none of them had to do it. Lots of men died dancing for the tiger and none from this pack were keen to do it. He should've been a poet, like the lizard-man. Then he wouldn't have to risk his neck for this.​

​

What the hell were they going to do with that snake, anyway? Make him recite? For the tiger?​

 

[Four Sealed Sage]

Bursts of paints in reds and blues filled the air overhead.

Festival goers danced in the streets, on the stairs, on the shingles of the roofs.

One might never know them starving. One might never know their lives pitiful. This one moment of joy a bonfire in the ashheaps of their mortal spans.

Up the steps, Xunlóng strode, his wrists tightly bound. Bright banners set on bamboo poles at every step snapped in the cold, mountain air.

"Come on then," boomed Gong, looking smug as he mushed his prisoners into the courtyard. His chui mace rested on one shoulder. "Hu Ji awaits."

The sage's features remained impassive, scaled visage betraying little.

"Bared hands and bared fangs."

 

[Sky Rending Tiger]

"I wish to be strong like them, Master," Jaha the errand boy comments from the Tiger's side. Of course he desired to wield such might so that he could fell his captors. The monk's sturdy staff clashes with the warrior's rigid blade. They are caught in fierce stalemate.​

​

"You do well enough cooking noodle soup from chicken bones," the Tiger speaks. He would never set Jaha on the way towards martial mastery and induct him into the ranks of warriors. Jaha would fare better as the errand boy too weak to face the threat of death. Things would be much harder as a martial artist. There is an irresistible allure in becoming stronger, and all martial artists understand this as they walk the path. Until the moment they are stabbed through the heart, they don't regret the life they've chosen.​

​

"Isn't it warm, Jaha? Though sometimes life brings simple pleasures like bonfires, most days you are nothing but cold, hungry, and in pain. And odds are that pain is caused by other people. Most people struggle along even under normal circumstances, and men like the sword master or the warrior monk make their lives hell. You should never wish to be like them."​

​

Suddenly, Hu Ji finds himself in a foul mood and draws a graceful line in the air with his flat hand. The fighters fall dead, cleft at their midsections into halves. Jaha the errand boy flinches.​

​

"Next."​

 

[Half-Blade Zhi]

They cut his bindings and shoved Half-Blade Zhi into the ring. He glanced around at the spectators. They were an oddly quiet bunch. Zhi noted that the ring's last two occupants were still laying there, blood and guts strewn out. Cut in half. Not by each other. His eyes traced the path up to the steps to the monastery hall proper, where the seated Tiger was holding court.​

​

Well. Okay then. Don't keep the Tiger waiting.​

​

His opponent stepped forward. An unkempt man in rags unsheathed an immaculate red-tinted blade with spiraling glyphs running the length of it. Zhi could tell this man was nothing less than a true sword sage: so dedicated to the craft of killing men that he neglected everything else. He smiled politely and revealed precisely three teeth in varying shades of yellow.​

​

Indeed. An imminently and impossibly lethal specimen. "Sword," Zhi croaked without taking his eyes off the sage. "I need a sword."​

​

There was some annoyed muttering from among Gong's clique before they tossed Zhi's sword into the ring after him. He ripped it crudely from its scabbard. The sage raised his blade in a high-minded stance and edged forward. Zhi kept his blade pointed in the dirt and squared his shoulders. He looked something like an ape, which he could tell annoyed the sage. That was not a stance. That was nothing. That was a man waiting to die.​

​

The sage lunged forward with a downward strike that would have surely sliced Zhi in two... But the Half-Blade lurched forward like a stumbling idiot and swung his own sword underhanded. Their blades connected at an awkward angle and - in an instant and hideous flash of light - both shattered like the finest glass, leaving only a mean, jagged fragments at their hilts. For all his skill, the sage lacked the necessary frame of reference to process what had just transpired. He remained in the end-pose of his strike, brow still furrowed with focus.​

​

Half-Blade Zhi took a couple steps forward and jammed his broken sword into the venerable sage's neck. The sage grunted with surprise more than anything. He dropped his remnant blade and spent a few moments wandering the perimeter of the ring in abject confusion before finally dying.​

​

Zhi snatched up the sage's broken sword and slid it cleanly into his belt.​

 

[Sky Rending Tiger]

A murmur of discontent rises from the crowd as Iron Gong's representative combatant steps forward. Across the way from the nameless vagrant, a tall lord with a lengthy, wiry physique snickers. There were few martial warriors across the Barrows who had not heard the infamous tales of bloodshed of the sword sage from his youth. It would seem the old man has left his solitary training at last, leaving all in attendance curious about how much more powerful he had become.​

​

Now, what was the sage's name again? Hu Ji can't recall.​

​

The tyrant of Mount Hoa's brow lifts as the sage takes his stance, which is perfect in all ways. He prepares his strike, which is to be a fatal, swift blow, and Hu Ji could sense the depth to which he cultivated his inner strength. He has a soul as rigid and sharp as the crimson blade in his grasp.​

​

Then the Tiger leans forward from his seat at seeing the nameless swordsman's stance. In the next instant, the bout is over. To most, it is an anti-climactic, dull, and disappointing conclusion to the bout. The skinny lord's face is red and his long, slender arms quiver with rage and Gong, who had resigned himself to be disgraced, has a stupid expression on his face.​

​

A thunderous clap breaks the silence. "Spectacular. State your name."​

 

[Hundred Ivory Sovereign]

He had been captured in his sleep.

This was a lesson in the folly of sleeping in an open grave out on the fields. Sure, it aligned your humors correctly with the solstice and allowed you to feel the worms in the corpses around you, but it left you wide open to being man-handled by a bunch of smelly apes and thrown into a small cell.

Beaten. Starved. Bled.

He refused to say his name and they laughed when he referred to the Hundred Ivory Sovereign. This malnourished, sleeping-in-the-dirt peasant, with grimy hair and blackened nails could not be him.

It helped that he didn't turn them inside out the way the stories said he could.

The necromancer did not point out he needed his hands free for such feats. At least when he was starving. You couldn't just summon bones with your facial expression when it kept twitching into a hungry gasp each time your intestines violently growled for sustenance.

At the festival he was kept on the sidelines. His hands bound together behind his back, each finger rigidly kept in place by the metallic contraption reserved for suspected necromancers and other death mages. He could not move, not even to wrench back when the blood of Zhi's victim splattered all over his face.

His tongue flicked out and caught some of the life-water. It made his stomach demand even fiercer.

Ah, if only he was a blood mage or a meat mage, instead he was made of Ivory and his mind was too addled with hunger to try and scour this place for bones nearby.

Eyes flickered to the body carved in half.

Was that a flash of pale?

Sky Rending Tiger | Half-Blade Zhi | Four Sealed Sage

 

[Four Sealed Sage]

Ah, reckless Half-Blade. If only he could look beyond the cold steel of mortal men, perhaps then he might find the weapon which has so long eluded him.

"A warrior’s heart is as fragile as the petals of a lotus," Xunlóng muttered.

His gaze moved, flicking over the faces in the crowd. Iron Gong was pushing his way through the spectators, as predictable as ever. The soldier’s mind was consumed by the immediacy of the fight, a narrow focus that made him little more than a tool in the grand scheme of things. He, too, had learned nothing of the world beyond his narrow, blood-soaked view.

Beyond him, the Tiger—the one they called Hu Ji—sat upon his throne, a long shadow cast over the festival. The beast's eyes gleamed with hunger, the same hunger that had driven empires to ruin and consumed men. A creature of wild impulse driven by blood and the beat of the heart. Hu Ji believed that the world bent to the will of strength, that power was a simple matter of domination.

"What is fist or sword to Mount Hua? What is shield and spear to the rushing river?"

 

[Half-Blade Zhi]

The tiger clapped only once. Perhaps a good sign. The rest of the crowd alternated between mutterings and silence - either flabbergasted or annoyed. Zhi had won the bout, yes, but winning without style and form was almost as bad as losing to some people.​

​

Hairs on the back of his neck stood on in. Not because the tiger was asking his name, but because he knew instinctively the lizard was shitting couplets in the background. Asshole.​

​

"I am Zhi," he told the tyrant of Mount Hoa. He patted the hilt of his new acquisition, snug in his belt. "They call me the Half-Blade."​

 

[Sky Rending Tiger]

"Half-Blade Zhi, you are remarkable. Join me."​

​

Ji sits back in his seat. The Half-Blade put on the most entertaining show thus far, and the befuddled faces of the other pitiful lords and warriors around them is an extra, welcome gift to the tiger. He turns his attention to the crowd now.​

​

"I am in high spirits thanks to the Half-Blade. Do not dampen them. Dokgo."​

​

"Yes, my Lord?" An older man in a minister's attire speaks up beneath the platform.​

​

"Whom does the Half-Blade represent?"​

​

"Iron Gong, my Lord."​

​

"Have this Iron Gong present another combatant. And fetch the necromancer. Do not clear the arena of the bodies."​

​

"At once, my Lord."​

 

[Hundred Ivory Sovereign]

Something had shifted all of a sudden.

Ivory did not notice it. His attention was arrested by the allure of the shining pale hidden within ruined meat and cut flesh. He licked his lips. If only he could rip into the already decaying meat and yank out the pale, wrap it around his limbs and show all of them what a mistake it was to keep a necromancer hostage.

But his bindings were absolute. Not even a violent struggle that tore his own skin into raw flesh had provided him with the means of escape. Only another indicator of irritation and pain.

He could not be too annoyed by it since it was of his own making.

As transfixed as Ivory was even he could not ignore it when he was roughly yanked up to his feet by the metal bindings keeping his arms locked behind his back. His fingers in stasis in a hand-cage made by artisans hated by mages and beloved by smallfolk.

"Time to earn your feed, pretty boy." The foul-scented monkey growled in his ear to intimidate him. Ivory had no response because all of a sudden his bindings were loosened and removed entirely. He looked around, seeing the arena for the first time, and noticing the man on the throne.

Worshiped.

His liberator? His tormentor? Both?

Ivory did not wait for them to change their minds. He immediately threw himself onto one of the corpses just made by Half-Blade Zhi. Fingers blackened and raw tore into the meat, hasty, afraid they'd yank him away from the body before he could-

Ah.

His skin touched the pale ivory. More valuable than diamonds, worth their weight in gold. He yanked a bone out, a rib-bone, small, pathetic... but prized nonetheless.

While they seemed to be finding a new combatant, Ivory was busy... yanking another bone out, causing a gruesome mess as blood splattered across his arms. His fine robes had been run ragged, grime, but now soaked in the life-blood of the dead.

"Almost, almost..." He muttered feverishly to himself. Where was the greatest bone? The glory of the Pale? It would set him free from this monkey-infested place.

Sky Rending Tiger | Four Sealed Sage

 

[Four Sealed Sage]

“You next, poet,” grunted one of Iron Gong’s minions and shoved Xunlóng into the circle.

Xun stumbled forward, giving no resistance, head tilted down. They had not even bothered to undo his bonds. He rattled in a breath, then exhaled.

Foggy wisps curled from his nose and mouth, perhaps just from the cold.

Yellow eyes snicked to Ivory, where the man sat wrist deep in a corpse.

Xun’s head cocked to one side with curiosity.

“What treasure lies in a corpse for you to search it so?” the Sage’s words, spoken softly, seemed to carry easily across the distance - as though born by the wind itself.

Around them, soldiers started to jeer with impatience, ravenous for the spectacle.

 

[Hundred Ivory Sovereign]

His head jerked up at the words spoken to him.

Ivory's eyes were manic. Pupils dilated, induced by the high of viscera staining his finger tips and the perfect bone pressing into his palm.

"Bone, the ivory pale." He hissed as he snapped it in half. It was the largest bone a human could possess, the femur, the strongest too. Ivory had to go digging into the man's leg for it, but sometimes you needed to work for the right tool.

"Your face does not belong to a monkey." Ivory growled as he pointed with half the femur at Xun's head. "At least not half of it."

He spit on the ground and the remaining bones in the corpse shuddered.

"Does a skeleton animate your meat, serpent?"

Fists squeezed around the broken femur and bone fragments, loosened from the earlier snap, began to coil around his waist.

 

[Four Sealed Sage]

“Animate? No.”

Those serpentine eyes regarded Ivory’s every movement.

“They are but scaffolding for meat.”

Xunlóng stood there, still as stone, wondering what the necromancer might do next.

“Strings on which puppets dance.”

He canted his head the other direction and held out bound hands, palms up and flat as if to receive an offering.

“Are we to dance now?”

 

[Hundred Ivory Sovereign]

His eyes flicked to the offered up palms and then back up to the slit eyes of a monkey-serpent. How did an abomination come to be like that?

Disgusting.

"Why would I dance with a serpent?" His fingers twitched and then he jerked violently around. His gaunt and bloody hand lashing out towards the Tiger Warlord in his throne.

During the extended digging for bones, he had shattered numerous smaller bones into fragments. Shrapnel no more than several fingers long. They all reacted at once, sharp, serrated, launching themselves into the direction of Sky Rending Tiger.

A sane man would not have targeted the Lord of the Keep imprisoning them.

He would have recognized that even if he managed to kill his captor, the rest of the masses would fall on him and rip him to shreds.

Ivory was beyond caring. His eyes manic, his teeth stained crimson and blinking in a growl. Not all of the bone darts would fly into the direction of the Tiger either. Maybe if he hadn't been starved and beaten with his arms locked tight until they screamed in agony.

Some of them veered away almost immediately... and bore towards unintended targets nearby.

Four Sealed Sage | Half-Blade Zhi

 

[Four Sealed Sage]

Xunlóng stood where he was as ossified shrapnel shards zipped through the air like so many angered hornets.

The sage watched, impassive.

“Ah.”