Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior’s Path

by Johnson, M. H.

  Duration of turn? – Unknown.

  Value of A Gift Freely Given? – Unknown.

  Whereabouts of Board of Fate? – Unknown.

  Paradigm conflicts detected. (This card is outside Pantheon Paradigm! Your status as a disciple of Chaos and Change has been noted. Fox constellation trumps paradigm conflicts. Grandmother Yi Wang has ruled in your favor!)

  You have forged a Divine Artifact! Artificer is now Rank 5.

  Trembling hands reflexively squeezed his chest, feeling the sudden added weight upon his soul.

  Alex coughed once, spraying blood before taking deep, ragged breaths. The fierce ache in his chest quickly eased, though he stumbled twice while regaining his feet.

  Speechless with awe, he knew he had done something both profound and inconceivably perilous.

  He was a mortal daring to move his piece in a game played by titans, trapped in a fragile Bronze shell.

  He didn’t need a master tactician or WiFu to tell him how high the stakes truly were, or that a single fumble would probably kill him.

  Even so, he did smile to hear the concerned rustle in the divine tree’s leaves.

  “I… I wasn’t expecting that, but I think I’m fine?” he said, closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths, getting a quick sense of his flow of Qi. “That’s a relief. I had almost thought…”

  But the branches had taken on an urgent rustle, a weight of foreboding chilling Alex to the core.

  He was filled with the sudden awful certainty that he had done something forbidden. And if he didn’t make himself scarce…

  Hesitating no longer, his trembling legs soon broke into a powerful sprint, adrenaline and terror washing away any lingering fatigue.

  “The very air shakes with change. He must be here; he must be! When I find your piece, WiFu, I will tear his soul free of his corpse and cast him down to hell myself!” roared a voice that echoed through the heavens. The presence grew so terrible that Alex had to fight just to breathe, feeling smothered by a will so hot and furious, it took all his strength to resist being crushed to the ground, like he was trapped in a horrific gravity well.

  “Careful, Brother,” chuckled the amused voice of WiFu himself, also echoing through the heavens. “It almost sounds like you wish to challenge him directly. You know the rules of this game as well as anyone, Long Wang.”

  “I know he’s more than just your pawn, Fox! He is a contender! The heavens themselves decreed it. And what he did before the Golden Tree… I can sense the weight of her despair. Lifted! An eternal burden that has profited us for countless centuries has been lifted! How many Jade Queens and Kings have been enticed by her golden fruits to fight under our banners? And we detected nothing. Nothing! There is only one piece in all the worlds capable of acting under our noses in the Garden of Eve, and don’t pretend it isn’t your own! Your fool of a pawn puts our entire enterprise in jeopardy! I will not have your upstart piece interfering in our designs any longer!”

  “Everything he did was within the rules, Brother,” WiFu replied, his voice turning hard and cold.

  Cruel laughter mocked WiFu’s words. “Oh, how right you are, pestilent fox! Even now, he dares ascend beyond the mortal realms. The oaths that protected him upon mundus have no weight here!”

  And suddenly, the ground exploded in dirt, stone, and the shrieks and howls of countless souls lost to oblivion when a god dared to force himself between realms.

  “Run, Alex! For all your worth, run!”

  A cold jolt of fear flooded Alex as he raced for the far end of the massive garden, not needing to be told twice when he could feel doom’s full weight upon him. He sensed the growing presence of a greater god so incensed by his very existence that the divine being would risk the very tree he so claimed to prize if he could sweep Alex’s piece from the board.

  Bullrush chained 10 times! No additional Qi cost paid! You are welcome in Sacred Tree’s garden!

  Just when the howling storms roared to a crescendo, the heavenly skies themselves ripping asunder as the inconceivably vast and terrible presence began to tear through reality like wet paper, Alex was leaping for the pearlescent stairs which soared to heights undreamed of. He gasped when the roaring flood of Divine Spiritual Energy crashed into him with a force that made him lurch back for a single heartbeat. Alex was finally forced to tilt forward, lest he be swept off-balance as he took his first steps to whatever lay beyond even Jade’s noble reign.

  The furious howl tore through the sacred garden he had just left. Somehow, he had no doubt that the killing aura of the incensed god’s naked gaze would have frozen even him to insensate terror, had he not already taken his first steps free of Jade and begun ascending the staircase shimmering like a river of stars, leaving that realm far behind.

  “It is too late, brother. He has already left the garden.”

  “It matters not!” bellowed a furious Long Wang. “Fog of War does not hide the fact that he is somewhere upon those steps! A single breath, and I will send his soul soaring free, hurtling through the heavens for eternity!”

  Silver Fox was strangely silent.

  Alex’s heart lurched with dread.

  Then he cleared his throat and roared back as loudly as he could. “And what happens then, Long Wang? If you dare to knock my piece from the steps of this pillar, what happens to your own foundation?”

  It was a wild shot in the dark. Why should the gods be concerned with the rules of a contest seemingly arbitrarily chosen by one of the many thousands of schools in the realm below? But with every step forward he had taken, he had become increasingly certain that this was no artificially constructed test.

  If his hunch was correct, he and his companions had dared to ascend stairs flooded with the heavenly energies of the realm above, allowing them to step around dimensions and unthinkable distances in space, perhaps even time, with but a single stride.

  Even one as naïve and new to the life of a cultivator as he knew that this path was beyond profound. Was it such a wild leap to wonder if, in fact, it had been this very staircase upon this exact pillar of creation, with its spiritual energies so useful for expanding meridian channels and forcing their patterns into perfect harmonious alignment, that had been the key to the gods’ own ascension?

  Of course, he knew it was sheer madness to think that he could bluff a god.

  But the alternative was simply to accept a very quick, very ugly death.

  A terrible weight froze all sound, as if Long Wang had pitted his will against the pillar itself.

  Alex willed himself to speak on.

  “Will you be hurtled back to the mortal realm? Or merely descend to being the least of all your brethren? A laughingstock amongst all your kin for letting WiFu’s most pathetic piece serve as the harbinger of your own self-destruction? What will you do next? Slice your own throat, so the blood will stain your laughing brother’s clothes? How much of a fool will you look then? Perhaps my patron will have another disciple, and I will be calling you brother, in this life or the next!”

  The deadly silence was broken by Silver Fox’s howling laughter and the horrible weight of a second god’s killing regard.

  “How much does he know, WiFu?” demanded a voice with such terrible force and fury that even Alex could sense that the owner wouldn’t limit his retribution to cards in a single divine game. Not in this, at least.

  “Nothing from my lips, Grandfather,” WiFu said, which was technically correct. “But my disciple’s always been a clever one, more than willing to shoot arrows in the dark, wild luck assuring that, more often than not, they hit.” A reflective pause. “Save when they don’t, in which case it’s most likely a gruesome death for him, till he wakes up once more, and we begin our adventures anew.”

  “Silver Fox!” Zheng Yi’s roar filled the heavens.

  “Do you wish to end this farce of a game here and now, Grandfather?” Much to Alex’s horror, WiFu’s own voice had taken on timbres far different from the lighthearted trickster he
had grown to recognize.

  The words tasted of wrath and destruction, chaos in its most absolute form.

  “Don’t be any more of a fool than you already are!” the god of justice and storms thundered. “Your monster of a pawn dances upon secrets forbidden to all mortals! A pact you yourself swore to, WiFu!”

  WiFu’s cold voice sent shivers down Alex’s spine. “I did.”

  “So do what needs doing!”

  “I already am.”

  “Allowing your mad cur of a pawn to run free?”

  A roar like a howling winter storm froze Alex to the quick.

  “Not at all, Grandfather. I’m seeing if my disciple actually has what it takes to ascend to the trap you have set for all mortals who dare to rise past the Garden of Eve. If he survives it, there’s no need for me to act at all.”

  “WiFu…” A warning filled with dire promise.

  “Of course, you’re more than welcome to dispute his nature, if he actually survives what is to come. Why, you could even meet him there, if you chose. Assuming you’re brave enough to get your feet wet, of course.”

  Dead silence was met by peals of manic laughter.

  But Alex didn’t dare stick around a second longer to see whether or not Long Wang would call Alex’s bluff, or Zheng Yi would strike him out of hand. He was more than happy not to goad those deities any further, racing up those stairs nearly as fast as he had so many steps before, despite the pain, because the terrible pressure roaring through his meridians was nothing compared to a god’s killing gaze.

  It was a journey that seemed without end, his lungs heaving like bellows, legs and meridian channels blazing with a white-hot agony that froze as it burned, unlike anything he had ever endured before. “So, this is how it felt for everyone else,” he wheezed aloud, his mad pace slowing to a rapid climb and eventually a steady plod up those pearlescent steps. Yet no matter how much his legs throbbed with agony, or his core shivered under the mad currents of power and potency now expanding even his meridian channels, he continued his ascent without daring a moment’s rest, knowing that to stop now was to court absolute destruction.

  He wanted to cry out with relief when at last he saw it, the foggy mist presaging true transcendence, looking just as if he were at the lip of a waterfall, and he gasped with relief at knowing he was about to pass from the mortal realm entirely, just a few steps ahead.

  But he wasn’t so foolish as to believe his ordeal was actually over.

  Indulging in a fierce smile, he unsheathed his sharktooth dao, remembering all too well the warning his mentor had managed to slip by his fellow god’s bellowed demands for Alex’s death.

  Same as always, he thought, before plunging into a billowing fog of mist and screams.

  Flow of Qi embraced!

  Dark Qi projection activated! Your arms and the first foot of your weapons are covered in Dark Qi! Dark Qi projection can be used in this location without significant drain!

  Willpower check made!

  Save Versus Oblivion at (+6 modifier) made!

  You are now wading within the River of Souls!

  Water Walking (Soul Stride) now in effect!

  Alex took his first step into roiling waters howling with the shrieks and screams of countless tormented souls. A deadly step into what should have been a basin celebrating the most glorious of accomplishments. But in a move befitting the limitless spite and covetousness of the gods who had already ascended, Paradise had been turned to a purgatory that would doom any cultivator who dared to believe that they too were worthy of transcendence.

  A trap designed to destroy any and all competition before it could possibly threaten the already established powers-that-be.

  Yet Alex strode forward without fear. He knew better than anyone the nature of these chilly waters, their dark waves expert at coaxing any terrified soul free of its mortal shell.

  Save his own.

  He gazed around at the basin flooded in those waters steeped in death, which should have instead flowed with the pristine clarity of the most divine of heavenly springs, reflecting a beautiful heavenly sky. Instead, that golden light of ascension and deliverance was cruelly mocked and twisted by the turbulent surface of the drowning waters below.

  Alex felt a rage boil up within him like never before. His fists clenched the hafts of his blades as he gazed upon the roiling cauldron which spiraled in a deadly whirlpool at the heart of the basin, his Soul Stride keeping him afloat as he bounced upon churning rapids.

  Even so, he could feel its pull underneath his rage, and he was acutely aware that, should he lose his focus for more than a heartbeat…

  He shook such thoughts away. On some level he knew that his insane brashness was keeping him alive just as much as his darker gifts. The moment he focused on the sheer madness of risking his life in these currents of rebirth and damnation… He suddenly felt dark, sibilant whispers caressing his mind, the unholy glee of alien fingers reaching for his soul.

  “Fuck off,” he snapped, smirking as that hideous spiritual probe jerked away, as if physically stunned by Alex’s utter rejection of the fear it projected. “It’s like that movie I watched so many times when I was half delirious with pain after chemo. The moment the boy undergoing his trial begins to fear the twin Phoenixes that gaze down upon him is the moment their eyes will open with the promise of death.”

  Alex crouched down, smiling at his macabre reflection in the swirling waters. “And I don’t fear you at all.” He laughed as the image began to rot before his eyes, worms and maggots crawling over its decaying flesh, and he took bleak comfort that no matter how the river, or whatever dark influence corrupted its waters, twisted his spiritual reflection, even it couldn’t stop his echo from laughing in the face of his own demise.

  Because the bottom line was, after all he had been through, the horror of watching his body waste away without a single remission, seeing the look of his emaciated tumor-laden body in his mother’s tormented eyes, consenting to being frozen alive by smiling charlatans and quacks who saw him as nothing more than a check to cash the moment his heart stopped for good… after enduring that nightmare, the last thing he was going to fear was chilly water and fear itself.

  The blade of shadow and death whistling for his head, however, was another matter entirely.

  Quickness check made! You have dodged spectre’s blow!

  You have struck spectre! Your blade passes harmlessly through!

  Alex hissed and leaped back as first one, then a handful of specters of living shadow formed up before him, each and every one of them wielding scythes of darkest shadow and baring serrated smiles, their eyes glowing with crimson hate.

  Alex’s flashed a grin just as hungry as their own, eager to wring sweetest prizes from a trap so eager to seal his doom. Not only did he not stumble back, he flowed across the water with the same grace as a figure skater in absolute control of his medium, though his focus was split between his enemies and the dao in his hands. It was several perilous seconds, however, before he finally began to feel the whirlwind of white Qi even here, the perfect counterpoint to the Dark Qi covering his forearms and the first foot of his blade.

  The shadowy spectres hissed and lurched forward, eager for Alex’s flesh.

  Finesse check made! You have parried your opponents’ blows!

  But Alex held off from attacking, guarding his line and parrying only defensively with the forte of his blade, feeling a growing sense of unease as his enemies honed in on him, no matter how he weaved and dodged about the basin.

  Finally, he got the notifications he was so eager for, ruthlessly crushing the tiny voice of doubt at daring his most perilous powers while striding these waters as he tapped into the flood of deadly spiritual energy roaring through this pool, of which the mortal realms’ swirling tides was but the faintest trickle in comparison.

  White Crane Kung Fu skill check made! You have successfully harnessed the storm of Qi all around you!

  Silver Swan skill check made!
You can now channel the force and fury of the deadly waters all around you!

  And for just a heartbeat, he sensed something else as well. The flash of spiritual energy that presaged action within his ghostly foes. He felt on the cusp of a revelation that just might save his life… before it faded once more.

  In an eyeblink, Alex went from defensive maneuvers to seizing the initiative, lashing out with his pair of dao in tandem. His leftmost blade swept aside his closest foe’s attack as his alternate weapon tore through the air, silver-bronze cleaving through blackest shadow.

  To no avail.

  You have struck spectre! Your dao fails to penetrate shadow! Your foe is unharmed!

  Bullrush!

  You have successfully avoided Deadly Barrage!

  In perfect time with his swings, the lead five spectres dove for him at once.

  A movement flawlessly choreographed, as if they acted and thought as one… or were puppets dancing to the tune of another.

  All five horrors smiled in unison again as they flowed above the ice-cold waters, now seeking to hem him in.

  Alex swallowed, knowing the move he should be making, yet somehow aware that were he to reveal that card, it would be to his own detriment.

  A last resort that in this once sacred place, he would avoid if he could at all costs.

  Bullrush! Bullrush! Bullrush!

  Yet he was no fool. He wasn’t going to stick around to be cleaved into bits by monsters of Shadow.

  As he flashed straight up before blinking twice more to get behind them, somehow certain he could race for the far end of this dreadful chamber before they could strike… he suddenly sensed the brooding presence in the distance.

  In that moment, he understood the spectres’ true intentions. They were herding him into a trap, pincers coming to slice him from behind when an even greater foe demanded his attention.

  He ignored the hissing laughter and the growing shrieks of the tormented souls all around, chilled to see yet another spectre oh-so-slowly pulling itself from the wicked black waters, and he remembered something about revenants being little more powerful than paper tigers against a certain god.